Sunday, October 2, 1774. Passing a resolution.

Congress passed a resolution requesting the preparation of an address to the Crown for the redress of grievances.

And it wasn't even Festivus.

Last edition:

Tuesday, September 27, 1774. Economic rebellion.

Labels: 1770s, 1774, American Revolution, Colonial North America, Economics, First Continental Congress, Massachetts

Sunday, September 27, 1964. The Warren Report issued.

The government issued the Warren Report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone and that Kennedy had been inadequately protected during his November 22, 1963, visit to Dallas.

US troops rescued sixty Vietnamese hostages and seized the main camp of Montagnard rebels operating at Buon Sar Pa.

The Beach Boys appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Last edition:

Saturday, September 26, 1964. Gilligan's Island

Labels: 1960s, 1964, actors and actresses, Communism, Congo, Growing up in the 1960s, Growing up in the 1970s, South Vietnam, television, Television is stupid

Saturday, September 26, 1964. Gilligan's Island

Gilligan's Island premiered on CBS.

Bob Denver, who had previously been portrayed as a beatnik, played the title role.  He'd been previously known for The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.  All of the actors in the short run series ended up typecast, in cluding the talented Alan Hale, Jr.

UPI critic Rick Dubrow commented:  "It is impossible that a more inept, moronic or humorless show has ever appeared on the home tube."

As a kid, I'd often watch the show, already in syndication, when I got home from school.

Rebels in the Congo rounded up of all foreigners trapped in Stanleyville and Paulis.

The "High National Council" was installed to function as the legislature for South Vietnam.

Last edition:

Friday, September 25, 1964. Gomer Pyle, USMC.

Labels: 1960s, 1964, El Paso Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson, Mozambique, Oklahoma, Portuguese Mozambique, television, Texas, United States Marine Corps, Vietnam War

Friday, September 25, 1964. Gomer Pyle, USMC.

Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. premiered on CBS.

Somehow, Pvt. Pyle managed never to be deployed to Vietnam, and seemingly, with the exception of one single episode I can think of, remain in the Pre Vietnam War era entirely.

President Johnson and Mexican President López Mateos shook hands on the International Bridge at El Paso.  Later that day President Johnson flew to Oklahoma for the dedication of the new Eufaula Dam and spoke about the Vietnam War, stating: "There are those that say you ought to go north and drop bombs, to try to wipe out the supply lines, and they think that would escalate the war. We don't want our American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys."

FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) launched the Mozambican War of Independence.

Last edition:

Blog Mirror: Kodak Instamatic Cameras, 1964

Labels: 1960s, 1964, Blog Mirror, Cameras, technology

Giving up on the weekend news shows.

I've always really liked them.  Meet The Press and This Week respectively.

But recently, it's become almost pointless to listen to them.

The political guests tend to be complete hacks.  Any GOP guest is going to support anything Trump says, or refuse to answer while stating something else. The Democrats aren't much better. And now the panels are the same way.  The Republican panelist won't say anything critical of the GOP, nor will the Democratic panelist say anything critical of the Democrats.

Sic transit Gloria Mundi.

Well, maybe I'll try Face The Nation.  It seemed to be holding up better.

Thursday, May 9, 1974. Probable cause.

The House Judiciary Committee opened hearings on whether there was probable cause for a vote of the full House on impeaching Richard Nixon.   The first 20 minutes, the open session, was televised.

The committee had 21 Democrats on it and 17 Republicans, back when there were real Republicans.

A 6.5 magnitude earthquake killed 30 people near Tokyo.

Last prior edition:

Monday, April 29, 1974. Transcribing tapes.

1970s, 1974, American Terrorist Organizations, Richard Nixon, Watergate

Friday, March 8, 1974. Exit Brady Bunch

The iconic 1970s television show The Brady Bunch aired for the last time.  It first aired in 1970.

Marcia, Marcia Marcia. . . 

Maureen McCormick, perhaps the most recalled character of the series, as Marcia.

Last prior:

March 6, 1974. Tout-nucléaire

The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian of the Week: The Victory Garden.

The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian of the Week: The Victory Garden.: 

Agrarian of the Week: The Victory Garden.

The television show, not the World War Two institution from which it takes its name.

Somewhat quirky and odd, the long-running show commenced in 1979 and was hosted by the late James Underwood Crockett originally.  I recall it from the Roger Swain era, however, which apparently from the mid 1980s to 2002, which surprises me as I recall watching it with my father, and not thereafter.  He died in the early 1990s.  Swain, with a huge red beard and suspenders was ahead of his time in the hipster movement, held a PhD in biology, so he knew his stuff.  It apparently ceased production in 2010.

One interesting thing I'll note is the name, The Victory Garden, which takes its name from the gardens people were urged to plant in World War One and World War Two to counter food shortages.  While both wars were obviously horrific, this aspect of the home front remains fondly remembered, and therefore the name is familiar.

Canadian World War One Victory Garden poster.

Blog Mirror: Sunday, February 9, 1964: The Beatles On "The Ed Sullivan Show"

 From Uncle Mike's:

February 9, 1964: The Beatles On "The Ed Sullivan Show"

I wonder if my parents watched it?

My mother was more of a music fan than my father.  My father's record collection consisted a few albums he had bought after, I'm pretty sure, my parents bought a very large and heavy combination radio and stereo set.  It's a massively substantial piece of furniture.  The records he purchased were all of military marches.  Nothing else.

My mother had a pretty extensive set of 45 rpm records, or singles as they were called, which weren't really singles but which had one song each on each side.  I should commit more of them to digital.  They included a lot of Elvis Pressley, and some jazz, and some odds and ends.  She later bought some albums that were from the 60s, but they were people like Tom Jones.  

Musically, FWIW, I can recall The Lawrence Welk Show being a weekly staple in the house.  I can barely recall The Ed Sullivan Show playing from time to time, which must mean that my father watched it on rare occasion.  It ran until 1971.

The 1964 Winter Olympics closed in Innsbruck.

Two random items. Andy Griffith and Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift

On "X", fka "Twitter" a man who was the father to a large family of daughters (it was either 7 or 9), and who is very conservative, posted an item expressing relief for Taylor Swift.

His points were really good.

Populist right commentators are all up in arms about Swift right now, for reasons that are darned near impossible to discern.  It seems to stem from her expressing support for Democratic candidates in the past, including Joe Biden in 2016.  Well, guess what, she has a right to do that.  You have a right to ignore it. 

She also expressed support for abortion being legal.  I feel it should be illegal.  That doesn't mean she's part of a double secret left wing conspiracy.

But, and here's the thing, there are real reasons to admire her, or at least her presentation, and the father in question pointed it out.  He'd endured taking his daughters to Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, "Lady Gaga" etc., and found them disturbing.

Indeed, they are.

Miley Cyrus went from a child actress to being a freakish figure posed nude on a ball, looking like she was a meth addict who was working in a strip club.  Ariana Grande has at least one song that's out right graphic about illicit sex.  Lady Gaga has made a career out of being freakish, until she couldn't any longer, and like Madonna is another woman who was the product of Catholic Schools who took to songs that are abhorrent in terms of Christian, let alone Catholic, morals.

Swift, in contrast, can only be criticized a bit for dressing semi provocatively on stage, but only somewhat so. Off-stage, she's always very modestly dressed.  Indeed, she's a throwback, with her ruby red lipstick and classic nearly 1940s appearance.

And in terms of relationships, it's noted that she's dating a football player.

Now, we don't know what their private lives are like, but they're admirably keeping them private.  It's hard to know what Swift's views are on most issues.  And we really don't need to.  But in their visible relationship, made visible to us only because of media fascination, they're quite proper.  As the poster noted, the football star is "courting" her.

It's not that there's nothing to see here.  There's nothing to see here which any conservative in their right mind wouldn't have an absolute freak out about.  They're behaving exactly the way in public that supposedly Christian conservatives want dating couples to do.  No piercings, no weird tattoos, no scanty clothing.

Which would all suggest all the angst is about something else, and what that is probably about is the secret knowledge that huge numbers of real conservatives can't stand Donald Trump and won't vote for him.

The Andy Griffith Show

I was at lunch two days ago at a local Chinese restaurant, and across the way an all adult family was discussing the plot of the prior night's Andy Griffith Show rerun.  It struck me that that may not have happened since the 1960s.

It's interesting. 

The Andy Griffith Show went off the air before the Great Rural Purge in Television, but not my much.  It ran from 1960 to 1968.  It was consistently focused on the rural South, and it felt like it depicted the 1950s, which it never did, save for the fact that what we think of as the 60s really started in about 1955 and ran to about 1964.  Indeed, while the show was in tune with the times in 1960, it really wasn't in 1968.

But that in tune with the times is what strikes me here.  The family was speaking of it as if it was a currently running show, not like it was something from 60 years ago.  That suggests that in some ways people have groped their way back in the dark to idealizing the world as it was depicted then, rural, lower middle class, devoid of an obsession with sex (although it does show up subtly in the show from time to time), and divorce a rarity.

Now, the world wasn't prefect in 1960 by any means.  But the show didn't pretend to depict a perfect world, only one that was sort of a mirror on the world view of its watchers.  To some degree, that world view had returned.

Epilog

The Taylor Swift story also appears on the most recent entries for City Father and Uncle Mike's Musings, both of which are linked in on this site.

Friday, January 18, 1974. Disengagement.

Israel and Egypt signed the Israel-Egypt Disengagement Treaty of 1974.

It stated:

A.  Egypt and Israel will scrupulously observe the cease-fire on land, sea, and air called for by the UN Security Council and will refrain from the time of the signing of this document from all military or para-military actions against each other.

B. The military forces of Egypt and Israel will be separated in accordance with the following principles:

1. All Egyptian forces on the east side of the Canal will be deployed west of the line designated as Line A on the attached map. All Israeli forces, including those west of the Suez Canal and the Bitter Lakes, will be deployed east of the line designated as Line B on the attached map.

2. The area between the Egyptian and Israeli lines will be a zone of disengagement in which the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) will be stationed. The UNEF will continue to consist of units from countries that are not permanent members of the Security Council.

3. The area between the Egyptian line and the Suez Canal will be limited in armament and forces.

4. The area between the Israeli line (Line B on the attached map) and the line designated as Line C on the attached map, which runs along the western base of the mountains where the Gidi and Mitla Passes are located, will be limited in armament and forces.

5. The limitations referred to in paragraphs 3 and 4 will be inspected by UNEF. Existing procedures of the UNEF, including the attaching of Egyptian and Israeli liaison officers to UNEF, will be continued.

6. Air forces of the two sides will be permitted to operate up to their respective lines without interference from the other side.

C. The detailed implementation of the disengagement of forces will be worked out by military representatives of Egypt and Israel, who will agree on the stages of this process. These representatives will meet no later than 48 hours after the signature of this agreement at Kilometre 101 under the aegis of the United Nations for this purpose. They will complete this task within five days. Disengagement will begin within 48 hours after the completion of the work of the military representatives and in no event later than seven days after the signature of this agreement. The process of disengagement will be completed not later than 40 days after it begins.

D. This agreement is not regarded by Egypt and Israel as a final peace agreement. It constitutes a first step toward a final, just and durable peace according to the provisions of Security Council Resolution 338 and within the framework of the Geneva Conference.

For Egypt: For Israel:

General Abdul Gani al Garnasy Lt. Gen. David Elazar, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army

The Six Million Dollar Man premiered on television. 

Tuesday, January 15, 1974. Happy Days.

Happy Days, the legendary sitcom, appeared to mixed reviews.

1974 Happy Days cast.

Clearly riffing off of 1950s nostalgia, less than 20 years after the end of the decade, the show had more or less been laid a path to success by the recent film American Graffiti, which also featured Ron Howard portraying a major character.  Even before that, however, nostalgia had seen the rise of the rise of the band Sha Na Na which appeared in 1969 in sufficient time in which to appear at Woodstock.

American Graffiti, as we've noted here before, actually takes place in 1962, not the 1950s, but its not recalled that way.  Howard, for his part, had grown up on television as Opie in The Andy Griffith Show, which had run from 1960 to 1968, but which is also commonly thought as taking place in the 1950s, even though there's no effort whatsoever to suggest that in the show, and contemporary audiences would not have taken it that way.

As the name of Happy Days implied, the American public, troubled by the news of the ear, or perhaps of the entire 1960s, conceived of the 50s as "happy days", irrespective of what they had actually been.  The series would run for a decade.  During that time, it had a pretty substantial impact on the pop culture of the era.  My family didn't regularly watch it, probably as they'd all lived through the 50s and weren't nostalgic about it, but I can recall the revival of 1950s rock and roll it caused. And at the junior high I was attending, there were dances called "sock hops", which was a revival of a term strongly associated with the 1950s.

College shock hop, 1948.  Sock hops were called that as students took off their shoes to dance on gym floors.

I was too shy to attend them.

On the same day, a panel of experts testified that the 18.5 minute gap in the now infamous Nixon tape conversation with H. R. Halderman of June 20, 1972, was made by serial erasures.

In Indonesia, a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka turned into a riot featuring an attack, oddly, on Chinese Indonesians.

The disappointing Comet Kohoutek made its closest pass by Earth.  I recall going outside to look for it and, like thousands of others, being disappointed by not really being able to see much in spite of predictions to the contrary.

John Wayne visited Harvard at the invitation of The Harvard Lampoon to debate students on his all but forgotten film, McQ.  He traveled to Harvard Square in an armored personnel carrier from Ft. Devens.  Native Americans interrupted his travels to protest events at Wounded Knee.  Wayne ignored a question about supporting the Hollywood blacklist.

All of which shows why people were nostalgic about the 1950s.

Saturday, January 12, 1974. How revolutions begin.

The Ethiopian Revolution began with the mutiny of the Negele Borana garrison over bad food and a lack of water.

They sized Lt. Gen. Deresse Dubale, Emperor Haile Selassie's envoy, and forced him to survive on the same fare they had for a week.

Gasoline rationing commenced in the Netherlands.

Television started operation in Tanzania.

Saturday, December 29, 1923. The dawn of television.

Russian-born engineer Vladimir K. Zworykin filed for a patent on his Television System, which would evolve into television.  He was employed by Westinghouse at the time, having immigrated to the U.S. during the Russian Civil War.  He died in 1982, living to an undetermined age in his early 90s.

Television advertisement from 1939.

Zworykin wasn't the only individual working on televised images, and his system wasn't the only one that was around.  A system by a rival inventor,  John Logie Baird, would be the first one on the market, coming at an amazingly early 1928, with the first television station, WRGB, then W2XB, broadcasting from the General Electric facility in Schenectady, NY.  For various reason, however, television didn't really take off until after World War Two, with the 1950s really seeing an explosion in its use.  Even at that, however, many households did not have televisions until the 1960s.  I can recall the first television our family had, which must have been acquired in the mid 1960s.  My mother bought it as a gift for my father, but had as an additional motive the hope that he'd spend more evenings at home rather than stop by to visit his mother, who lived a couple of blocks away.  Indeed, my father took to television (my mother never did), and her hopes were realized.

Test pattern from when local television stations quit broadcasting at night, and reappeared in the morning, with this image.  I can recall this appearing on our television early in the morning when my father first turned it on.

That experience really shows one of the frankly negative aspects of what would prove to be a groundbreaking technology.  Prior to television, while radio had arrived, there was still a great deal of "make your own entertainment" and the visiting of friends and relatives in the evenings.  Television helped end all that, which proved to be a radical shift in long held societal patterns.  Interestingly, television itself has never portrayed that change, and continues to depict life in large part as it had been before its arrival.  You don't see television programs in which people sit around and watch television.

As we've noted here before, early television was all locally broadcast, from locally owned stations.  Indeed, the FCC strictly regulated this latter aspect of television, which of course broadcast over the public airways.  Cable made major inroads, however, not television and a near deregulation of the industry has mean that it now broadcasts over multiple channels, in multiple ways, 24 hours a day, with local ownership often not existing.

Televisions ultimately became so common that by the early 2000s, most American households contained three of them.  The number is now down to 2.5, reflecting the advance of computers, which has cut into television use.  

All in all, while undoubtedly there are other opinions, television has been enormously corrosive and detrimental to society.

Germany agreed to pay France's and Belgium's expenses for occupying the Ruhr.  The UK objected to the French collecting taxes on a British owned mined in the region.

The SS Mutlah disappeared in the Mediterranean with all of its 40 hands lost.

The Mexican Federal Army was advancing towards Vera Cruz, the rebels having been routed. . . and industrial school girls were on the warpath.

The Saturday magazines were out.

Wednesday, October 24, 1973. War Powers.

President Nixon vetoed the War Powers Act.  His veto was overridden on November 7.

A second ceasefire between Egypt and Israel went into effect in the Yom Kippur War.  By this point in the war Egyptian gains had been more than reversed.

At the same time, the Soviet Union threatened to deploy its troops to aid Syria, giving a warning to the US to that effect. As a result, the U.S. went to Defcon 3

Kojak premiered.

The day was the first UN World Development Information Day, which coincided with United Nations Day.

From a Jane Curtin Interview with People on Saturday Night Live.

So we sat around the TV, and I had that sort of anticipatory, open-mouth grin that people have when they’re waiting for something to happen, that they know is going to be really great. And ... it never happened. It wasn’t funny. Not one thing was funny. There was not one utterance of a laugh or a giggle.

At least she realized it. Saturday Night Live has been mostly unfunny its entire run. It's mostly National Lampoon snark.

Female agrarian resisters and. . . time traveling Saoirse-Monica Jackson?

 

This photo, which I found on Twitter, reportedly depicts Annie, Sarah, and Honoria O Halloran and their mother Harriet, who were at least briefly famous for resisting the authorities in an agrarian landlord tenant dispute in Ireland.  You can find copies of this photo all over the net, and there are some very good colorized versions of it.

Here's my super mature comment, however.  Sarah in this photo looks so much like Saoirse-Monica Jackson it isn't funny.

Seriously.  In her role as Erin Quinn that facial expression and appearance. . . uncanny.

What are you listening to?

Quite awhile pack I posted one of our "trailing threads" on the topic of what you are reading, titling it that, i.e. What Are You Reading?

It occurred to me the other day that I should post another one about what you may be listening to, and by that I mean in the form of podcasts and other audio data.  This occurred to me as I just completed listening to an excellent BBC podcast series called The Hurricane Tapes, which I highly recommend.

In posting this, I have to note that it seems to me that podcasts fall into two basic types, one of which are continual, and therefore like magazines.  I.e., you don't expect them to end.  And others that are a distinct series, like a mini series.  The Hurricane Tapes, for example, are more like the latter.  I'll note what's what in my list, as well as why listen to them.  If you listen to some, let us know what they are.

One thing that may be noted is that this list will seem rather long, and it is.  But I don't listen to every episode of most of these podcasts.  And they enormously in length.  I also tend to listen to them in certain settings, which is normally when I'm doing something else, such as driving, mowing the law, etc.  One thing I never couple with listening to podcasts with, however, is walking or riding a bicycle  I don't like to be distracted doing either and think it sad when I see somebody walking with earphones pasted to their head.

I'll also note that these are the podcasts that have sort of passed the test of time.  I try out other podcasts and discard them if I don't like them.

So here's what we're currently listening to.  Well, sort of.

ABA Journal Podcast

This is a podcast I download, but I frequently don't listen to.  I should be better about it.

It's a serialized podcast on legal topics from the ABA. Some are quite interesting, others not so much, but that's typical of podcasts.

Type:  Serial

Catholic Answers

Catholic Answers is a weekday radio show committed to podcast which I've fairly frequently mentioned on this blog.  I don't listen to every episode but rather to certain guests and hosts.  The topics are extremely wide ranging and often highly intellectual.  They are, of course, from a Catholic prospective, but the show deals with an incredible range of topics and issues.  Usually they are presented in an question and answer format with calls from the radio audience, or even the electronic audience.  The diversity and depth of the show is perhaps demonstrated by the large number of non Catholic callers and the occasional non Catholic guest.

Type:  Serial

Catholic Answers Focus

Catholic Answers Focus is an offshoot of Catholic Answers with specific guests and a single topic.  It does not have the question and answer format.

As with Catholic Answers, I pick and choose on this one, probably listening to less than half of the topics.

Type:  Serial

Catholic Stuff You Should Know

One of the greatest podcast on the net, Catholic Stuff You Should Know is a podcast done by a collection of young priest. The topics are nearly always good and have an incredible range.  The strong, and sometimes quirky, personalities of the hosts really come through.

Like certain hosts on Catholic Answers, this podcast tends to have a really strong impact on its listeners, not all of whom are Catholic.

Type:  Serial

English Catholic History Association Podcast

This is an oddly English podcast featuring lectures delivered to the English Catholic History Association.  It's very typically English.  I listen to only a fraction of these which are always delivered on a slice of English Catholic history.

Type: Slow serial.

BBC History Extra Podcast

Perhaps the best history podcast on the net, the BBC History Extra Podcast is the podcast offshoot of the history magazine put out by the BBC.  It's simply excellent and features topics of a very wide nature.  I listen to most to the episodes.

Type:  Serial

Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World

Jimmy Akin is a polymath host of Catholic Answers and this podcast done by a different entity is on all kinds of mysterious topics.  I don't listen to all of them, but do to most of them.

I like Akin in general and this is a good podcast.  It says a lot that I listen to them because a podcast of this type isn't something I'd typically listen to.

Type: Serial

Mass Backwards

Mass Backwards is a collection of radio broadcasts by the late Gene Shepard. They very from inspired to awful.  A lot more are awful than inspired, but the good ones are great.

Shepard was a writer as well as a radio personality (and later a television personality) and is best remembered today for the script of A Christmas Story.  Some of the radio broadcast featured the same characters, of which he is one, but they often have a much darker theme.  His broadcasts on his time in the Army are absolute classics.

I don't know how to really characterize these as there's a limited, if large, number of Shepard radio tapes in existence.  These were released in a podcast form by a New York public radio station that often seems to be ignoring copyright laws, or maybe not.  Ironically, in at least one Shepard broadcast he makes fun, very briefly, of the same radio station.

Type:  Series.

Meet the Press

Meet the Press is the classic weekly television news program on politics.  They commit it to podcast form that very day, which is how I hear it.

Type:  Serial

Pritzer Military History Podcast

The Pritzer Military History Podcast is an excellent military history themed show put on by the Pritzer Museum of Military History in Chicago.  Many well known and excellent authors are featured in the show which focuses mostly, but not exclusively, on military history books.  As noted, it isn't always on a recent book, and some of the direct interviews on other topics I skip.

The show features questions from the audience and after you listen to it for awhile you get to where you recognize quite a few of the voices, so the audience must contain a high percentage of regular attendees.

Type: Serial

Right to Roam

This Wyoming based podcast is on outdoors topics.

I really wish this podcast was better than it is.  I have it on my phone but I'm often disappointed with it.

Type: Serial

ScotusCast

This is a podcast synopsis of United States Supreme Court opinions by eminent legal scholars.  It's excellent. All the episodes are brief and concentrate on recent Supreme Court arguments and decisions.  Our local bar will accept it as self study CLE, and for good reason.

Type: Serial

The History of England

This is a private podcast on what it says its on, the history of England dating back to antiquity.

I used to listen to The English History podcast by Jamie Jeffers and this podcast replaced it.  Jeffers podcast was at one time excellent but after he lost his job as a lawyer and became a full time podcaster the quality of the podcast declined and its pace became intolerably slow.  As that occurred,  he began to engage in rather broad speculation to where the answer to many things was "we just don't know".   The "battle cattle" hypothesis was flat out ignorant and after he went into the "we just don't know" routine on female Viking warriors (didn't exist) it was too much.

This podcast replaced that one.

Type:  Serial

History of English

This is an excellent history of the English language.  It's extremely well done.

Type:  Serial.

The Hurricane Tapes

I mentioned this one in our introduction.  It's a BBC podcast by two English sports journalist and is absolutely excellent.

This follows the two trials and ultimate release of Ruben Hurricane Carter and John Artis for the 1966 murder of three patrons in a bar in Patterson, New Jersey.  The events are famous as it came to be widely believed that Carter and Artis were wrongfully convicted and they did ultimately obtain release.  The sports journalist dig in and discover all sorts of new information that they set out in a thirteen part series.

I don't usually enjoy murder or crime mysteries, but I saw the film The Hurricane recently, which apparently other people are aware of but I'm was not.  In the film Carter is portrayed by Denzel Washington. That lead me to look up Carter, which lead me to The Hurricane Tapes, which was only done recently.  It's a great series.

Type:  Series.

This is That

Like Mass Backwards, this series is complete.

This is That was a brilliant Canadian Broadcasting Corporation comedy production in the form of a fake radio news journal.  It was always presented as being straight new and is absolutely hilarious.  The show featured a telephone number for caller feed back and always drew a large number of callers who had heard a broadcast and believed they were true, to additionally hilarious results.

The show concluded last year, which isn't surprising as it must have been the case by that time that too many people were in on the joke to make it work.  It's a classic.

Type:  Series.

This Week

This Week is the other weekend television news show that I listen to in the form of a podcast.

This Week was originally This Week With David Brinkley, which was better.  Both This Week and Meet the Press have suffered over the years by being hosted by lessors than originally, but they are still good. The panel on Meet the Press is frankly better than This Week's, and has been ever since George F. Will ceased being on the panel. It's still worth listing too however.

Type:  Serial.

_________________________________________________________________________________

July 17, 2019

This excellent podcast, fwiw, was mentioned recently in an article in the electronic ABA weekly listserve:

The Hurricane Tapes

I mentioned this one in our introduction.  It's a BBC podcast by two English sports journalist and is absolutely excellent.

This follows the two trials and ultimate release of Ruben Hurricane Carter and John Artis for the 1966 murder of three patrons in a bar in Patterson, New Jersey.  The events are famous as it came to be widely believed that Carter and Artis were wrongfully convicted and they did ultimately obtain release.  The sports journalist dig in and discover all sorts of new information that they set out in a thirteen part series.

I don't usually enjoy murder or crime mysteries, but I saw the film The Hurricane recently, which apparently other people are aware of but I'm was not.  In the film Carter is portrayed by Denzel Washington. That lead me to look up Carter, which lead me to The Hurricane Tapes, which was only done recently.  It's a great series.

Type:  Series.

On a completely different topic, I just heard listed to a long podcast episode in Farm To Taber taking a, well I guess revisionist, view of European and American family farms and their history that was quite interesting.  I'd like to disagree with it, but frankly much of it is really insightful.

A major theme of the podcaster, an ag professor in that episode Grappling With Our Ghosts:  The American Farm Legacy, was that a of of American family farming was done badly, with bad technology, deficient compared to the rests of the world, and that it still is.  For somebody with agrarian sympathies, that's a sad thought.

The episode is too varied in topic to really summarize here, so people who are interested should download it and listen to it themselves.

Type:  Serial

_________________________________________________________________________________

November 24, 2019

I've already mentioned the Pritzer podcasts above, but a recent episode is well worth listening to for students of World War Two.

Stephen Bourque: Beyond the Beach: The Allied War Against France | Pritzker Military Museum & Library | Chicago

I'm probably an exception to the rule, as I was aware of a lot of the data presented in this podcast in a very loose way. But the facts and figures presented are, quite frankly, horrifying and deal wit a topic that the Western Allies rarely do, the vast damage inflicted on France during World War Two by the Allies prior to June 6, 1944.

Indeed, to expand out more, and as an example, I suppose, of how our Seventh Law of History, the degree to which the Western Allies became comfortable with inflicting civilian causalities from the air during the war is something that we generally don't address much.  Americans are somewhat comfortable in addressing casualties inflicted by the British, but not the USAAC.  It's a topic that we really need to examine.

Another interesting Pritzer one I just heard was  Michael Neiberg: The Treaty of Versailles | Pritzker Military Museum & Library | Chicago

Very interesting on the background to the Versailles Treaty.

Has anyone here read the book?

________________________________________________________________________________

December 6, 2019

I added NPR Politics, a daily podcast of about 15 minutes in length, as I like politics and I wasn't able to keep up with the impeachment hearings, etc., like most folks.

It's a good short podcast and, contrary to the way people sometimes assert about NPR, it's pretty balanced and insightful.  NPR usually is.

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October 1, 2020

I haven't been keeping up with this thread which I realized when I went to update it.

Since I last updated this I listened to the excellent podcast The Clearing which details the story of the hunt for a serial killer and his daughters realization that her father was not only one, and her effort to bring him to justice, but also that he was responsible for some deaths close to the family.

Normally I don't like crime stories, but this podcast is an exception.  It's excellent.

Likewise, another one in this category that I listed to just recently is season 1 of the CBC's Somebody Out There Knows Something, which is on a decades old disappearance.  I haven't listened to any of the other seasons and I likely won't, but season 1 was compelling.

The podcast that caused me to come in and update this is one I'm listening to now, that being Bunga Bunga, a series on long serving and highly creepy Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.  Irreverent and witty, it's a stunning history of how Italy's politics descended into the muck under a prime minister who was engaged in numerous icky activities while in and out of office.  This one is also highly recommended, but as a warning, the language can be crude and Berlusconi's activities, which are detailed in the series, are not suitable for a non mature audience.

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February 23, 2022

Wow, been a long time since I updated this one.

The Pritzer podcast has sadly ended, a victim seemingly of COVID 19.  The series started interviews, with bad audio quality, at that time, and then just ended.  As it originally was principally made up of recordings of its talks at the library, I thought it would resume, but it never did.

And I've quit listening to Mass Backwards, I like Gene Shepherd, but I seemed to have listed to the ones I wanted to listen to.  

The same is true of Right To Roam. It just never picked up and I gave up on it.  I added the very good Hunt Gather Talk podcast, however, featuring the interviews of Hank Shaw, who 

I added Face The Nation to the political pods.  It's actually better than its two weekend competitors, although I oddly still prefer This Week.  I also added NPR's State of Ukraine, on the ongoing Russo Ukrainian War.  It's quite good.

I added Wyoming My 307, which is by a Wyoming podcaster, more or less, but not quite, a history podcast.

A recent add is the excellent Fighting On Film, a British podcast that takes a look, in a really unique fashion, at war movies.

And, what causes me to update this, I just started the eight part series The Coldest Case In Laramie. We'll see how I like it.  It's about an unsolved murder in Laramie during the early 1980s, by a New York Times reporter and author who lived there in her early teens, which has left her with a whiney view of the town.

July 7, 2023

I recently added Dead and Gone In Wyoming, an excellent series on crimes and missing person's in Wyoming.

Watching the mule auction this past Sunday brought me to a possible explanation as to why so many Western legal organizations like to feature cowboys in their propoganda.

And that's because it's honest, and manly, work.

Cowboy, 1888.   This is, for some reason, how lawyers often tend to see themselves.

It was Bates v. State Bar of Arizona in which the United States Supreme Court destroyed the professionalism of the legal profession.  In that 5 to 4 decision, the Court found that a rule of the Arizona State Bar preventing advertising violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. It further held that allowing attorneys to advertise would not harm the legal profession or the administration of justice.

They were wrong.

As was often the case in that era, the majority had its head up its butt.  In reality, advertising destroyed decades of work by the early 20th Century American Bar Association and drug the occupation of being a lawyer from that of a learned profession down to a carnival barker.

Recently I watched the Netflix uploaded episodes of the Korean television series The Extraordinary Attorney Woo (이상한 변호사 우영우). In it, every one addressed attorneys by their patronymic and the title "Attorney", even if they were personally familiar with them.  So, for example, every time somebody addressed the central protagonist, they did so as "Attorney Woo".   That struck me as odd, so I looked it up to see if that was correct, and found a Korean language site entry that stated off with a comment that was something like "unlike the United States, attorneys in Korea are a respected profession".

That struck me, as I hadn't really thought about it like that.  When I started off in this line of work, we were still somewhat regarded as respected professionals and its hard to forget that's now in the past.

The decline was in, however, already by that time.  When we were admitted to the bar, Federal Judge Court Brimmer gave a speech about civility in litigation.  I've heard versions of it many times since. When I first started practicing, advertising was just starting here, and it was the domain of plaintiff's lawyers for the most part.  It still is.

Bates got us rolling in this direction, but the flood of 60s and 70s vintage law school graduates did as well.  Too many lawyers with too little to do, expanded what could be done in court.  Lawyers have backed every bad cause imaginable in the name of social justice. That's drug the profession down.

How we imagine ourselves.

I think we know that, which is why I think we also go out of our way to associate ourselves with occupations that have real worth.  We like conventions featuring the West, both for defense and plaintiffs, rather than sitting in front of our computers in office buildings in Denver and Salt Lake City.

Nobody, that is, wants to go to the "2023 Sitting On Your Ass Asking Insurance Carriers For Money" conference.  No, we do not.  We want to go instead to the "2023 Blazing Saddles and High Noon Conference".  

But what are we really?

How everyone else sees us.

It's a real red meat question, but it needs to be asked.  To some extent, civil litigation started off as a substitute for private warfare.  But now?  Many people have asked if this is a virtuous profession, but beyond that is it, well, manly?

Many lawyers aren't men, of course.  But if there are occupations that exhibit male virtues and natures, is this one?

Our constant association of ourselves with occupations that do, and the use of language borrowed from fields that are, suggests we don't think so.

As we really are.

The death throws of the newspapers.

Back when I was in high school, I briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a journalist.

I was never very serious about it, it was only one of the possibilities I was considering.  In junior high and my first year or so of high school, I was fairly certain that I'd pursue a career as an Army officer, but already by that time that desire was wearing off. I liked writing and still do, so it seemed like a possibility.  I also liked photography, and still do, and it seemed like a career where you could combine both, although in that era press photographers were usually just that, photographers.  

I took my high school's journalism class as a result and was on the school newspaper.  Doing that, I shot hundreds of photographs of our high school athletes, as well as some really interesting events.  I did learn how to write in the journalist's style, which involves summarizing the story in the first paragraph figuring that some people will read no more than that, summarizing it again in the last paragraph, and filling in the story in between.  Good news stories still read that way, although I've noticed in recent years that is observed less and less.

During that year or so I had the occasion to tour the local paper, and the class had a senior, a young woman, who actually already worked there as a reporter.

That paper was no small affair.  The paper was a regional one, as well as the city paper, and it's building just off of downtown, still there was very large.  That large structure, with a massive open news floor and a big printing room, was at least the fourth locality it had occupied, outgrowing the prior three.  It would outgrow that one was well and build an absolutely massive structure just outside of town.

Last year, it sold it.

Now, the paper is headquartered in what was once a bar/restaurant downtown.  Much, much smaller.  It doesn't have presses anymore, it prints the paper in another state.  Far from having a large staff of reporters with dedicated beats, it's down to one or two writers who are always "cubs", just starting out.  It doesn't print newspapers at all on two days a week, right now, but relies on an electronic edition that mimics the appearance of a newspaper on your computer.

You can't pick up and thumb through a pdf.

This past week, it announced that it was going to quit printing a Sunday edition and quit physical home delivery for the three issues per week it will still print. Those will be mailed from the printing location in another state.

It's dying.

It's not surprising really, but it is sad.

At one time, it was a real force to be reckoned with, and people frankly feared it.  Everyone subscribed to it.  I know one family that sued it for liable due to what they regarded as inaccurate reporting on them.

Newspapers reformed themselves after the introduction of radio.  That's something that tends not to be very well known about them.  Before radio, many newspapers tended to be some species of scandal rag and they were usually heavily partisan in their reporting.  You can think of them, basically, the way people think of Fox News today.  As radio cut into their readership, papers consolidated and adopted a new ethic that they reported objectively.

They frankly never really achieved full objectivity, as that may not be possible.  But they did strive for it.  The introduction of television reinforced this.  Newspapers became the place where you could, hopefully, get complete objective news and, hopefully, in depth news on various topics.  Even smaller newspapers had dedicated reporters per topic, larger ones very much so.  The local paper had local reporters that reported per topic assignment.  A big paper, like the Rocky Mountain News, had very specified reporters.  The Rocky Mountain News, for instance, had a religion reporter whose beat was just that topic.  A surprising number of local papers sent reporters to South Vietnam during the Vietnam War just to report on the war.

That's all long past.  For quite some time, reporters have become generalists by default, and as a rule, they can't be expected to have an in-depth understanding of any one topic. For that reason, they are frequently inaccurate, even on a national level.  Just today, for example, I read a national story which repeatedly referred to Communion Hosts as "wafers". That's not the right term.  Reporters on crime blindly accept the "mass shooting" and "high powered rifle" lines without having any idea what they mean.  Print reporters repeat in some instances, depending upon individual reporters, hearsay as fact, in part because they likely don't have the time to really investigate everything personally. 

Because we now get green reporters, the obvious fact that the local paper is dying is all the sadder.  At one time green reporters could at least hope to move up the ranks in their local papers, maybe becoming editors or columnists if they stayed there, or they could move on, as they often did, to larger papers.  They still move on, but papers everywhere are dying.  Ironically, the only papers that still do fairly well are the genuine small town papers in small towns. That's good, but that can't be a career boosting job for those who enter it.  

And with the death of the paper the objectivity that they brought in, back in their golden era, which I'd place from the 1930s through 1990 or so, is dying with them.  People are going to electronic news, which so far hasn't shown that same dedication, although recently some online start-ups actually do.  Television news has become hopelessly shallow, fully dedicated to the "if it bleeds it leads" type of thinking, or fully partisan, telling people what they want to hear.  Really good reporting, and not all of it was really good, was pretty informative, which raised the level of the national intellect.  People might have hated reporters, and they often did, but they read what was being reported about Richard Nixon and Watergate or what was revealed in the Pentagon Papers and had a better understanding of it in spite of themselves.  That helped result in Republicans themselves operating to bring Richard Nixon down and society at large bringing an end to the Vietnam War.

Now, in contrast, we have electronic propaganda organs on the net that feed people exactly what they want to hear, and that often is the same thing that comes out of the back end of a cow.

Not overnight, of course. This has been going on for decades, and indeed in some ways it started with the first radio broadcasts.  But radio was easier to adjust to.  The internet, not so much.

The death of a career, an institution, and unfortunately, also our wider understanding.

Sic transit.