Today’s “music” is for the feeling “good” about feeling bad generation

  

I have to admit that today’s—and frankly that of the last twenty years—version of “popular culture” in this country is a sad shadow of its former “greatness.” In popular music, the U.S. used to represent the “zeitgeist” of the latest and greatest. That is not true anymore. The American music scene has been stuck in a rut for the past two decades, and there is no indication of growth, ever. This rat I saw by a bus stop has more “moves” than anything going on these days:

 

We live in a world today where a pathological liar and megalomaniac like Elizabeth Holmes could possibly get away with her crimes because a jury will believe the story she and her defense team dreamed-up, portraying her as another weak-willed, “victimized” white female, terrorized and sexually-abused by a (dark-skinned) male who she herself used (because she needed to con someone with actual business acumen, with the promise of sex) while admitting to cheating on him with another “lover” on the side.

Meanwhile mass shootings make headlines nationally, but on local news there continues the dreary “if it bleeds, it leads” stories seemingly every day. Instead of discussing what motivates it, that topic is avoided save in general terms in order to avoid accusations and backlash. Nobody “marches” the streets to protest crime, particularly if it means looking at oneself in the mirror.

It’s a different world we live in today for certain. You have people who are self-obsessed to the point of thinking they are the center of the universe and what other people do or say is a threat to their egotism, and when you have a whole country of people like this, the truth about oneself is hard to come by.

Which brings me back to “art,” and specifically music, or what passes for it these days. “Popular” music in America was once something that people could listen or dance to where one could at least imagine the world as they wished it to be, not necessarily how it actually was—and provide some hope that it could be better. “Love” was something to aspire to, not something you expected from others but were unwilling to give yourself. In the Sixties and Seventies, not just love, but peace and goodwill were what many artists aspired to achieve with their music. It wasn’t always about that, of course; but at least in most of those cases negativity was avoided, and there was at least some recognition of one’s own failings—and if things were bad, they could get better if one tried hard enough.

But not anymore. We live in a world of “entitlement” and “privilege,” and it is always someone else’s “fault.” People are told how they are supposed to “feel” by political and social activists, and once going into something with an expectation of taking without giving, if you don’t get what you expected, or didn’t “feel good” afterward, then retribution is in the offing—whether accusations of “abuse” or justification for crime.

I’m not saying that today’s music created this negativity; it is simply a reflection of today’s society. There is plenty of irony in Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well”—a re-recording of a song almost a decade old which Swift did out of spite for her former manager—being the “longest” number one hit over Don McLean’s classic “American Pie”; “Pie’s” radio edit cut 4 minutes from the song, and people have to suffer Swift’s dreary, monotonous 10-minute whine about yet another ex-boyfriend. Swift has had how many? Two dozen? And only they are to “blame”? Yes, that is the world we live in now. Swift is so conceited with undeserved adulation that she once ignored protocol and embarrassed Prince William by forcing him to join her in a song on stage during a benefit concert in 2013.

 

But back to the McLean song. “American Pie”—the lyrics I can still recite from memory—was about what he thought was the dying of old-time rock-and-roll as represented by Buddy Holly, devolving into the “Satan’s spell” of the Rolling Stones and the Altamont Concert tragedy in 1969. But the Seventies was stereotyped as the “have a nice day” decade in music, although in fact it represented the peak in musical achievement in popular music, and music at its most eclectic. Although he might say the politically-correct things about today’s “music,” I’d say that McLean and many musicians of his generation would probably react to it in this way if forced to listen to it with no way to get out of the room:

 

 

 

 

Yes, if you haven’t gotten the message yet, I think most of today’s American “music” sucks; maybe if they added “sweetener” like strings to otherwise tuneless, hookless (Swift doesn’t know what a “hook” is) arrangements, maybe some of it could be tolerable, but that would be either too “expensive” or too “classical.” Most of the music that I “like” today is coming out of the UK; there are a few exceptions from this country, but those songs are not likely to be favorites of so-called critics who would call it “retro.”

 

No, we are told that tuneless, instrumentally-challenged “music” with depressing, boring whines “sung”  by people who can’t sing unless through an auto-tune device are “classic” by “music” critics who have no musical background or historical perspectives, but are forced to be marketers because there is nothing else for them to do. The fact that there are people who like this kind of “pop music” is only a statement on the state of society today. And don’t get me wrong: I hate even worse the vulgarity and proneness to promote negativity, criminality and even violence in rap/hip-hop “music.”

 

While there is little from today that I like, what is “old” can still be “new.” I’m still discovering previously buried gems like Kiki Dee’s Great Expectations from 1970, recorded with Motown’s fabled Funk Brothers. Somehow I think they could have done something different with the album cover design:

 

 

There was the obvious “expectation” that this would be a hit in America (it was in the UK), since most of the songs were cover versions of prior hits, which convinced me to purchase the Japanese release (Japan has been very good about releasing on CD old studio albums from the Seventies by soul artists). This record has been on the top of my preferred listening chart since March.

The record was hampered in the States for lack of an original hit song to power sales. But for someone like me who prefers the tight and tuneful single medium over albums, with every song here given the “classic” Motown treatment every cut is irresistible. To my ears, songs like “Love Makes the World Go Round,” "Love is a Warm Kind of Sorrow," the slowed-down version of the Stevie Wonder hit “For Once in My Life," and the haunting "Jimmy" are better than the originals; fans of “classic” Motown, or great music period, are certainly missing out on something special if they don’t have this record in their collection.

But then again, I suspect that today’s “music connoisseurs” would be reacting like this to anything with actual melodies, musical instrumentation, natural singing and positive vibes:

 

 

Stumbling upon what's left of the old Longacres Racetrack

 

No Packer game today, but I’ll keep this sports related. A little over a month ago I was wandering around Renton, got myself kind of lost and stumbled upon this:

 

I wondered what the signposts which referred to "laps" were supposed to signify; an apparently abandoned road leading up to it marked as Longacres Drive did however gave me hint. Of course I had heard of something called Longacres in the distant past and knew it had something to do with racing, although I wasn’t certain if it was of the stock car or horse variety. A quick Googling indicated that this was the location of a horse racetrack in Renton that closed in 1992; it was probably no coincidence that the Emerald Downs track in Auburn opened in 1996.

As I wandered about to see if there were any “ruins” to see, I wondered about the “old days.” Longacres Racetrack first opened in 1933, which was somewhat curious since the country was well in the throes of the Great Depression and the only people who had money to blow betting on races were the local gentry. Gambling had been banned by state law in 1909, but some tax “horse-trading” with  state legislators and the governor allowed betting only on horseracing, which led to the establishment of a number of thoroughbred racetracks in the state. The first race at Longacres had a purse of $1,000—the equivalent of over $21,000 in today’s money. The winner of that first race was horse named Vetsera.

At the time, Longacres was said to boast “state-of-art” facilities, including an electronic-operated starting gate, computerized betting and later a sophisticated television center that monitored strategically-place cameras. Well into the 1980s improvements were made to expand seating, the club house and lounges that were equipped with closed circuit television to view the races. The track and the open area surrounding it remained relatively unchanged when this aerial photograph was taken in 1971:

 

Yet in 1992 the racetrack was closed and its facilities entirely destroyed. Washington had passed a law allowing a state lottery as a new, cheaper way for residents to gamble away their money. Longacres, which was losing attendance and revenue, countered by allowing “satellite” racing so that bettors didn’t need to be physically present at the track, and lighting was installed around the track for night racing. But it wasn’t enough. Boeing bought the property in 1990, allowed racing to continue for two more years, and in 1994 demolished everything still standing at the site, leaving behind what is called the “Boeing Pond” in the middle of it.

A Google map overview of the site still shows where the original poplar trees were planted—but now mostly dead or dying—around the curve of the southern edge of the track:

 

 

As mentioned, there is nothing now to suggest that a racetrack existed there, although a few curious artifacts are to be found. What’s left of the old parking lots…

 

 

these floor tiles in the middle of nowhere…

 

 

these abandoned walkways crisscrossing everywhere, some of them with lighting posts…

 

 

and these overheads lined with poplars:

 

 

There is also this heliport fixture, with buildings in the background apparently constructed by Boeing; the box states that it is a “radio operated light system”:

 

 

There is otherwise really nothing to see; around the pond is just empty fields with a few scrubby trees and bushes. The track itself has long been covered up by grass and weeds. Before I vacated the area I saw this; whether or not this is an old artifact of the past, who knows:

 

 

Whether homeschooling or expensive private schools, maybe its more about the parents than the kids

 

I noticed a story in the Seattle Times the other day about the rise of homeschooling during the pandemic, and naturally a photo of an upper-income white mother (the “teacher”) and her two healthy-looking children (the “students”) in front of their nice suburban home was included. One wonders about the “rigor” of homeschooling, and whether parents—who in most states are not required to show proof of such—are qualified to teach.  Homeschoolers supposedly do “better” on “verbal” testing, but what evidence there is shows that they do worse in math, which makes sense because most parents are not equipped to teach math beyond simple adding and subtracting.

Finding nonbiased, factual information about homeschooling is virtually impossible to find. Googling pros and cons of homeschooling shows this interminably. Defenses of homeschooling is rampant, while actual legitimate studies are virtually nonexistent, which means that you will get pages and pages extolling the virtues of homeschooling, and when you do find something questioning things like, you know, cheating, phony “transcripts” and report cards which some websites brag about producing a nice-looking fake one for your kid, and the lack of standardize tests taken in properly supervised settings. 

Only a tiny percentage of college students are homeschooled (how colleges administer their admissions seems completely arbitrary), but the claim (based not on actual data) is that a slightly higher percentage of them graduate. While it may be true to assume that homeschoolers who actually get into college are more motivated to learn in the first place, the information about this is produced by biased sources whose “data” is of the “self-reporting” kind in which data is weighted toward whatever the data takers wants “proven.”

For example, CBS News reported on “research” done by a Michael Cogan, identified as the “director of institutional research and analysis at the University of St. Thomas,” and this “study” has been oft-quoted by homeschool defenders. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that this is where the higher college graduation numbers came from, and such claims that they have a slightly higher ACT scores than non-homeschoolers, that they allegedly earned more college-level credits prior to attending college, and that they had higher GPAs while in college.

There are, however, three caveats that lead one to question the validity of this “research”: it was conducted among students at “an unnamed medium-sized university in the upper Midwest”—thus cannot be independently verified—that 68 percent of homeschooled students were Roman Catholic (and all those Catholic schools they can attend and sit through Mass every morning to be properly indoctrinated, like I did), and that this was reported in 2010 and thus may be “out-of-date” information.

A 2019 report on the website ThoughtCo that pretends to be unbiased but is clearly pro homeschooling somehow managed to undermine its own arguments by acknowledging the generally true accusations of a lack of valid information about homeschooling, since most states do not keep complete records about homeschooled students or even how many there are, as well acknowledging the fact that most of the data about homeschooling is disseminated by the Home School Legal Defense Association, a clearly biased, right-wing, “Christian” advocacy group. It also admits that most data on homeschooling is self-reporting, and that in fact most homeschoolers do not participate in such studies, which as noted before suggests that only the “best” students are motivated to report, thus giving homeschooling an artificially “positive” slant.

In an interview in the Harvard Gazette, law professor Elizabeth Bartholet noted the lack of oversight in most states in regard to homeschooling, and suggested that while corporeal punishment is illegal in public schools, it is certainly a danger at home for students with trouble learning. She also noted the danger of right-wing and “Christian” ideologues teaching their children extremist views that are contrary to a civil society that recognizes differences. Bartholet also noted that the homeschool lobby is politically strong because its victims—children—have no voice; it is a adult-driven political enterprise.

State requirements on homeschooling vary wildly. The state of Washington is actually an exception to the rule: a parent must submit a test to prove that they are qualified to teach, meet with a state-certified teacher one hour a week, must teach a list of state-mandated coursework for a minimum of 180 days a year, students must take standardize tests overseen by a state-approved person, and a state-certified teacher must confirm level of educational progress. It almost doesn’t “pay” to homeschool unless you have some contrary agenda.

But most states are not so stringent in their requirements, and it goes all the way down to states like Texas, where parents only have to announce that the intention to homeschool, and are left to their own self-reporting devices. Accusations of fraud are of course rampant in such a “system,” with high school dropouts with “F” grades liable to turn up listed as “homeschooled” and receiving faked transcripts and diplomas which the state recognizes as “legitimate.” The Houston Chronicle reported that “Texas’ lax documentation and hands-off practices make it impossible to know how many students are actually being taught at home” and schools are using the “bad practice” of arbitrarily not reporting dropouts and classifying them as “homeschooled.”

But regardless of the “pros and cons” of homeschooling, as “virtual learning” during the pandemic has shown us, many students are ill-served by homeschooling, whether from lack of motivation, lack of an environment conducive to learning (such as “competition” with peers or attention from teachers) or parents who either don’t care or were poor students themselves and no help to their children’s learning.

So what is the other option if you don’t think public schools are good enough? Expensive private schools? Obviously some are more (or less) expensive than others. Take for example Seattle’s Northwest School, which apparently has a couple of “campuses”—the original location…

 

…and the new one with “state-of-the-art” classrooms and a “smarter” urban footprint:

 

I haven’t actually seen much going at the latter Pike Street location of late; maybe they are doing “virtual” learning. According to information posted on-line, academic tuition for the Northwest School is of over $46,000 a year, and an additional $19,000 for room and board. Only 15 percent receive any kind of financial assistance; the only comment I found on the socio-economic level of the students was on Quora, with someone mentioning that locally the school was only for “the most privileged families.” The rather high acceptance rate suggests that if you got the money, you’re in. Although its student body is claimed to be “diverse,” this of course is deceptive and only means that a large percentage of the students are Asian, many from outside the country. The student-teacher ratio is 9 to 1, and the average class size is 16, which of course means there is plenty of teacher attention to go around.  

The school claims to offer college-ready courses, although as its original name implied, it is one of those “arts and humanities” alternative-type schools, which tries hard not to make “slower” students feel overwhelmed compared to “smarter” peers. For example, “traditional” studies in subjects like math are afforded “non-traditional” teaching methods for slow learners:

We are aware of the diverse learning styles of our students. Within each course, instruction is targeted to meet the needs of individual learners. We do not separate courses as honors level or regular level. We believe all students deserve the most rigorous math course. We strategically target the use of technology and combine its use with traditional paper and pencil problem-solving techniques to help students learn, apply and visualize concepts…We use a variety of teaching strategies, including lecture, partner work, collaborative groups, discovery, flipped classroom models and projects in the pursuit of our goal of providing all students with the best possible mathematics education.

Obviously crowded public schools are limited in that regard, but what else does $46,000 in tuition (not counting room and board) pay for? One thing I noticed about the list of colleges and universities that graduates from this school went on to seemed to omit any mention of Ivy League institutions. Stanford is listed, however; it is interesting to note that Northwest School is more than twice as expensive to attend than, say, a public school like the University of Washington, and barely less expensive than a private college like Stanford. Are you really getting more “bang” for your buck sending a kid to Northwest School than if you send them to a public school just to avoid going to school with the less “desirable” students?

Whatever the reality is, it is more about the parent than the school, and parents don’t always seem to have the right “answers” to the question of what is “best” for their children.

The never-ending pandemic, Indigenous genocide and Bolsonaro's guide to Trumpism

 

The Washington Post is reporting that a timeline in former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ new book reports that Donald Trump contracted COVID-19 earlier than originally admitted, probably at the September 26, 2020 “super-spreader” event announcing Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court. A second test was inconclusive, which Trump used as an excuse to attend other maskless events. Trump wasn’t tested for the September 29 debate with Joe Biden because he arrived “too late,” according to Fox News moderator Chris Wallace; this was probably deliberate to avoid a likely positive test. At least a dozen people, some of them Trump administration officials as well as Melania Trump, tested positive after close contact with him. A more a stringent PCR test confirmed the original “diagnosis,” and Trump—having hoped that it would “go away”—became so sick he had to be airlifted to a hospital and receive treatment that cost taxpayers $650,000.

One wonders when the COVID-19 pandemic will ever end, and the fact is that the virus is likely here to stay, thanks to whoever is responsible for its upbringing (China). Europe is said to be experiencing an unexpectedly large “fifth wave,” the U.S. has seen a “spike” in the last few weeks that Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz think is no big deal, while India claims to have its lowest daily totals in months (right). Allegedly originating from South Africa is the Omicron variant, which some scientists warn is 500 times more infectious than the Delta variant, which was already 60 times more infectious than the original strain; others, however, insist that we shouldn’t panic (yet) over the new strain, and it is not yet clear how, even with its collection of mutations, it will “compete” with other strains, or what level of sickness it is capable of.

According to Worldometer’s numbers, Europe has nine of the top ten countries in the world whose "official" numbers would have them with the highest coronavirus death rates. Bulgaria, which currently has the highest death rate in Europe, predictably has the lowest vaccination rate as well. Since “the West” is supposed to have “smarter” people than the rest of the world, the people in those countries have fewer excuses than other parts of the world which do not have access to adequate medical facilities or PPE.

Africa and Latin America are such places, but they have tended to be off the radar screen in regard to the pandemic, so people need to be aware of what is going on in those places. There was a time when people claimed that Africa had some kind of natural “immunity” from the coronavirus because of its low reported numbers, but this was a myth created by low testing and a desire to ignore what was really happening. It was reported that the WHO’s target for every country to have at least 10 percent (a very low bar for certain) of their population vaccinated by September was missed by 50 countries, most of them in Africa. Half the countries in Africa have 2 percent or less vaccinated, while Burundi and Eritrea do not even have a vaccination program.

Thus if it isn’t a surprise that a new, more infectious variant is spreading in Africa, then what is happening in Peru, which currently has the highest coronavirus death rate in the world? NPR reported that a combination of isolation, lack of information, and a shocking dearth of hospital capacity is to blame. In the state of Loreto there was only 12 ICU beds for a population of 900,000—seven of them in one hospital in the capital city of Iquitos, population 400,000. Because of the lack of capacity, by May 2020 new patients were already forced to lay on Army cots or even on cardboard on the floor. The lack of oxygen tanks, or the ability to fill them, continues to be a major handicap; the lowest vaccination rate of any region in Peru shouldn’t be a surprise either, given that many residents only recently became aware of even the existence of the virus.

Peru doesn’t produce its own PPE, so it has to compete both with its neighbors and wealthier countries around the world for supplies. In states like Loreto, which is the largest in Peru but is mostly comprised of rain forest, the mostly Indigenous population is more isolated than most. In fact, despite its size Iquitos is hampered by one surprising fact: it is not accessible by road, only by river or air. As reported by Reuters a month ago, the area is so isolated that many were just hearing about COVID for the first time in October, when health care workers arrived in villages like Mangual, which has no electricity and “connection with the outside world is minimal”; the dissemination of information about the pandemic is also hampered by existence of dozens of local languages “developed in isolation over the centuries.”

Whatever one may call the Peruvian government’s failure to address the pandemic in isolated Indigenous communities, there is one word that many are using in Brazil in regard to the policies of its current president, the far-right “populist” Jair Bolsonaro: genocide. Bolsonaro’s policies toward the “mitigation” of the pandemic generally can be summed up as anti-science and to largely ignore its existence, allowing “herd immunity” to take care of it. According to Worldometer’s numbers, Brazil’s death rate is unusually high for a country with a large population; if India’s death rate is actually ten times what is being “officially” reported, Brazil would still have a higher death rate.

But what is most “unusual” about Brazil’s numbers is the shockingly low test rate, only 63 million tests for a country with a population of over 214 million. More than one-third of tests are positive, which suggests that tests are only given if a patient appears to be seriously symptomatic. Out of those who test positive, Brazil has twice the death rate the U.S. does; but because of the low testing rate in Brazil—especially in Indigenous reservations—it is likely higher than that.

In those Indigenous reservations in the Amazon Rain Forest, Bolsonaro has allowed illegal mining and massive deforestation. Although a recent Brazilian Senate investigation declined to use the word “genocide” to describe Bolsonaro’s actions, it did accuse him of commanding “an anti-Indigenous policy that deliberately exposed the native people to neglect, harassment, invasion, and violence since before the pandemic.” He was also accused of deliberately exposing Indigenous people to the full brunt of COVID-19: “There is no disguise sufficient to cover up the president’s avowed willingness to target the Indigenous people. The hate speech and constant harassment reveal the hostile zeal against the Indigenous people, driven by greed and intolerance.” These beliefs certainly would give “comfort” to people like Trump, Stephen Miller and Laura Ingraham.

Bolsonaro has ignored court orders to expel the illegal miners, who are also accused of destruction of wildlife habitat and fisheries that the Indigenous people need for their survival, as well as the exacerbating the spread of COVID-19 among the Indigenous. But it isn’t just his behavior toward Indigenous people that has aroused anger. His bigoted beliefs naturally remind one of another “president,” and like him Bolsonaro has cultivated a “cult of personality” which attracts an extremist, ignorant legion of supporters. Some of these are “bikers”—Bolsonaro being a motorcycle enthusiast—although there are “leftist” biker groups in Brazil who are appalled that Bolsonaro is exploiting “biker culture” for anti-democratic and fascist designs.

In an interview on NPR, Cesar Munoz of Human Rights Watch notes that Bolsonaro is taking another page out of Trump’s playbook. “Bolsonaro is enlisting a gigantic army of like-minded people”—meaning thugs and insurrectionists—who will help him threaten and “pick fights” with the national legislature, the courts and the media. Like Trump, he is ready to allege voter “fraud” if next year’s presidential election doesn’t go his way, which seems likely given his low approval rating, which according to Statistica currently stands at 22 percent. That likelihood of defeat has Bolsonaro threatening to cancel the election unless “changes” are made in the vote-counting machinery—meaning making it easier for him to commit election fraud and voter suppression.

What happens next year in Brazil’s elections could influence Trump’s actions in 2024. If Bolsonaro illegally attempts to prevent the holding of, or invalidates, a constitutionally-mandated election simply because he will not or didn’t win, it could be a “guide” for someone of Trump’s megalomaniacal, narcissistic personality—and perhaps one that can even be described as borderline paranoid schizophrenic, living in an alternate universe where he is still president. Even though Trump wouldn't be camped out inside the White House, he and his insurrectionist supporters could find some way to make things "interesting."

Trump certainly influenced Bolsonaro (and certainly in a negative fashion), and Bolsonaro may return the “favor.” One can only pray that this will finally convince all but the most inhuman fanatics (a group that I would include Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and their ilk among) of the evil of Trump and Trumpism.