be sure to wear flowers in your hair

This summer, as the always interesting Collectors’ Weekly informs, will be fiftieth anniversary of the Summer of Love, orchestrated by an ad-hoc council of advocates and artistic entrepreneurs, in San Francisco. In order to appreciate how much that event transformed the city, they reach back a decade more to view the various districts and neighbourhoods through the insiders’ travel guide by columnist Herb Caen, who pierced through the general mid-century squareness to find the emergent and incubating haunts of counter-culture.

the overview effect

An advocate for independent space exploration launched a weather balloon into the upper reaches of the stratosphere to send Dear Leader a missive and hopefully some perspective—though sadly the message is over the heads of him and his supporters who’ve been steadfast no matter what outrage is unleashed.
Though seemingly discourteous at first or a squandered opportunity “Look at that, you son of a bitch” is actually a rather poignant quote from astronaut Edgar Mitchell, expressed when he first went in orbit and experienced the overview effect, a shift in awareness when one hangs naked in the void of space and sees how tiny and fragile the Earth is. Mitchell, after his moment of awaking said that he wanted to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch!”

when you’re smilin’, the whole world smiles with you

Messy Nessy Chic has an interesting essay on the cultural ambassadorship, endorsed and sponsored by the US Department of State, of iconic jazz performers from the late 1960s onward through the end of the Cold War.
Somewhat facetiously since the criticisms of the Soviet Union regarding racial inequalities and racial tensions in America were valid, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and others were dispatched on world-tours. Their concerts were especially concentrated in countries that the US government feared might turn to Communism in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Even though accorded more respect than most people of colour at the time ostensibly, the State Department sabotaged the artists’ domestic record contracts to keep them on the road constantly. Nowadays—though the programme may have been slashed, the successor Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs sponsors hip-hop musicians and sends them on international tours.

dissonant and desensitized

Admittedly, I thought the flurry of reporting on San Bernardino was follow-on developments regarding the mass-shooting at an office Christmas party back in December of 2015 and didn’t pay the news of another tragedy its due regard.
What occurred yesterday in California involved a man walking into an elementary school classroom and shot his estranged wife (the teacher) and an eight year old boy before taking his own life. This story—which has become an all-too familiar refrain—was overtaken by the collective outrage of an individual who refused to give up his seat on a plane and was forcibly removed. The stock-market prices of the corporation responsible for the latter was re-accommodated precipitously, whilst the valuation of the industry aggregate before the former (the gun manufacturers) remained unchanged and saw a slight boost, due to waning fears that the American government might restrict sales at a later point.

potatoe

While I am certain that James Danforth Quayle made a lot of gaffs during his four year stint as US vice president, we only remember him for misspelling a type of tuber publicly for some reason and lambasting Murphy Brown for her indictment on the institution of marriage by having a child out of wedlock.
We shouldn’t be nostalgic for those days. The present administration ought to be afforded by history only a couple of indelible moments, but incredibly and uncharitably the awkward, ham-fistedly dishonest spokes-office has been unrelenting. After betraying a general ignorance and disdain for history by not knowing who social-reformer Frederick Douglass was during Black History Month, defending rapists on sexual assault awareness day (plus being a sexual predator himself), with surpassing irony—during Passover—Dear Leader’s first trumpet, in an attempt to portray the Syrian leader as the worst individual in all of human history (or rather that Dear Leader was not Russia’s puppet), made an awful and inaccurate analogy. “You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.” (EN/DE) Jesus wept.  After realising the outrage that his omission caused (or perhaps the regime considers Zyklon B gas a form of aromatherapy), the chief spokesman produced an equally awful wreck of an apology, referring to Nazi extermination camps as a “Holocaust Centre.”

fly the friendly skies

The Big Think features a thorough study of all the vectors of de-accommodation, security-theatre, toxic corporate culture and industry de-regulation that has bought the experience of air-travel to new lows and something to be avoided at all costs.
Of course the class that counts does not deign to subject itself to being treated like a battery hen and instead foregoes these indecencies with private jets. Beyond illustrating how business cannot become a surrogate for public institutions (flight is a mass-transit enterprise after all and airlines are either nationalised charters or benefit from government subsidies) the gaping chasm between the middle, working class and the outrageously rich is also bringing the incivility and brutality that happens in impoverished neighbourhoods and to people of colour constantly into stark focus. Those of us lulled with a sense of security and privilege are often spared these assaults and insults but it becomes something we must be prepared to stare down.