Jump to content

richardmurray

Boycott Amazon
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,971

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    74

 Content Type 

Status Replies posted by richardmurray

  1. richardmurray

    The Hemiclitoris of the snake

     

    Scientists finally discovered the snake clitoris, and they're 'very excited'

    News

    By Joanna Thompson

     published December 16, 2022

     

    Megan Folwell stood over a female Australian death adder (Acanthophis antarcticus), armed with a scalpel. The snake was dead, donated by a venom supply company. Very carefully, Folwell, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia, made an incision near the animal's tail. She was about to go where no scientists had gone before.

    "I went into it not knowing what I was going to see," Folwell told Live Science. 

    Until now, no one had taken the time to look for and describe a snake's clitoris. With the exception of birds, clitorises are found in every vertebrate lineage, including snakes' closest cousins, lizards. But when Folwell went looking for literature about the organ in serpents, she came up empty-handed. "It just didn't make sense to me," she said. "I knew there had to be something going on."

     

    So she and her team decided to investigate. Their results, published Dec. 14 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, describe the structure of the forked "hemiclitoris" in snakes for the first time.

     

    In contrast, male snake genitalia have been well documented across a variety of species. Male snakes have a structure called a hemipenis, essentially a two-pronged penis tucked under the base of the tail (and often held inside the body until mating). Much scientific ink has been spilled over the past 200 years describing differences between hemipenes, which range in size and shape from tiny twin toothpicks to huge, elaborate organs with "a lot of spines on them and whatnot," said Richard Shine, an evolutionary biologist at Macquarie University in Australia who was not involved in the study.

     

    Despite more than two centuries' worth of data on hemipenes, however, nobody had described an equivalent structure in female snakes. The lack of evidence caused some scientists to speculate that snake hemiclitorises might not exist at all — or that, if they did, they had been reduced to a stunted evolutionary remnant.

    A lack of research around female anatomy is a troubling scientific trend. Even in humans, surprisingly little is known about the clitoris. The full structure of the organ, which includes not only the little nub at the top of the labia but also two large internal bulbs full of nerve endings, wasn't discovered until the mid-1840s. Even then, it remained relatively obscure to the medical establishment until Australian urologist Helen O'Connell's work in 2005, which showed that typical textbook depictions of the clitoris were riddled with inaccuracies. In fact, just last month, scientists counted all 10,000 nerve fibers in the human clitoris for the first time.

     

    Data about female reproductive anatomy and behavior in nonhuman animals are even more scarce. A November analysis published in the journal Nature found that between 1970 and 2021, more than seven times as many papers were published about sperm competition in animals compared with female mate selection. A 2014 perspectives article published in the journal PLOS Biology found that about 50% of all studies of animal genitalia published between 1989 and 2013 focused exclusively on males, while 10% focused only on females. 

    "If genetal evolution research only investigates the male parts, it gives a very lopsided understanding of nature," Malin Ah-King, an evolutionary biologist and gender researcher at Stockholm University in Sweden who was not involved in the new research, told Live Science. This bias has led scientists to overlook certain important aspects of female reproduction — such as the existence of entire organs.

    Thanks to Folwell's efforts, we now know that hemiclitorises exist in at least nine snake species. Folwell carefully dissected preserved specimens from four snake families (Elapidae, Pythonidae, Colubridae and Viperidae) and ran them through a CT (computed tomography) scan, noting the size and shape of each hemiclitoris. She found that they varied as much as hemipenes.

     

    "Seeing the nerve structure, it was really exciting," said Folwell, the study's first author. And in other scientists' defense, she said, the tissue that makes up snakes' hemiclitorises is quite delicate (even though, in some cases, the organ was fairly large). 

    Shine described the new research as "an excellent piece of work." "It certainly convinces me that there is a structure there," he told Live Science. 

    For Folwell and her team, this study is merely the start of this research. She hopes that future work will uncover a fuller picture of the hemiclitoris's evolutionary history and how it fits into snake mating behavior. "We're really very excited about all of this," she said.

     

     

     

    URL

    https://www.livescience.com/snake-clitoris-found

     

    First evidence of hemiclitores in snakes
    Megan J. Folwell, Kate L. Sanders, Patricia L. R. Brennan and Jenna M. Crowe-Riddell
    Published:14 December 2022https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.1702

     

    LOOK IN THE FIRST COMMENT FOR THE ABSTRACT

    URL

    https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2022.1702

     

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      Abstract

      Female genitalia are conspicuously overlooked in comparison to their male counterparts, limiting our understanding of sexual reproduction across vertebrate lineages. This study is the first complete description of the clitoris (hemiclitores) in female snakes. We describe morphological variation in size and shape (n = 9 species, 4 families) that is potentially comparable to the male intromittent organs in squamate reptiles (hemipenes). Dissection, diffusible iodine contrast-enhanced micro-CT and histology revealed that, unlike lizard hemiclitores, the snake hemiclitores are non-eversible structures. The two individual hemiclitores are separated medially by connective tissue, forming a triangular structure that extends posteriorly. Histology of the hemiclitores in Australian death adders (Acanthophis antarcticus) showed erectile tissue and strands/bundles of nerves, but no spines (as is found in male hemipenes). These histological features suggest the snake hemiclitores have functional significance in mating and definitively show that the hemiclitores are not underdeveloped hemipenes or scent glands, which have been erroneously indicated in other studies. Our discovery supports that hemiclitores have been retained across squamates and provides preliminary evidence of differences in this structure among snake species, which can be used to further understand systematics, reproductive evolution and ecology across squamate reptiles.

       
       

      1. Introduction

      Genitalia are some of the fastest evolving characteristics in amniotes with internal fertilization [1]. In these taxa, comparative studies of genitalia provide insights into the role of sexual selection in speciation and the evolution of reproductive traits [2]. Unfortunately, studies of female genitalia have lagged next to an overwhelming focus on male genitalia across amniotes [1,3,4]. This is despite some evidence that female genitalia, and the clitoris in particular, have a key functional role in reproduction [5–8]. For example, variation in clitoris morphology has been linked to different degrees of sexual arousal that could lead to increased reproductive fitness by enticing females to copulate or forming social bonds. Increasing vaginal lubrication, relaxing the vaginal opening and preparing the reproductive tract to receive sperm are among other potential functions of the clitoris [8–11].

      Studies on the male hemipenes in lizards and snakes are extensive (e.g. [12]), and have fundamentally shaped ideas on the shared developmental origins of the phallus in amniotes (e.g. [13]), systematic controversies, sexual conflict (e.g. [14]) and diversity of sexual characteristics within the squamate reptiles (e.g. [14,15]). Similar studies of female hemiclitores are rare, and in fact, it is often assumed that the clitoris is vestigial or lost across lineages of squamates [16]. Even when hemiclitores are described in lizards, these have been hypothesized to provide a stimulatory role for the male during intromission [17], rather than to stimulate the female as is the case in other amniotes [8]. Hemiclitores in lizards are eversible and resemble features of the hemipenes such as the sulcus spermaticus and retractor muscles [17–20].

      The apparent lack of a hemiclitores in adult snakes is puzzling because this organ is found in most adult female amniotes with the exception of birds [21,22]. During squamate development, the paired genital buds continue growing to create hemipenes or regress in size to form the hemiclitores [23]. Reports of hemiclitores in adult snakes, however, are either, (i) inappropriate citations of literature that discussed lizards rather than snakes, (ii) different sex genitalia in snakes (e.g. intersex or male hemipenes), (iii) vague descriptions without anatomical references or (iv) confused with adjacent anatomy such as the scent glands (e.g. [24]). Many erroneous reports of hemiclitores actually describe hemipenes from intersex individuals, including Bothrops insularis, which have a remarkably high prevalence of intersex individuals with functional oviducts [25], Bothrops jararaca [26] and Lycodryas maculatus [27]. This confusion may stem from imprecise terminology combined with incomplete examinations of gonad anatomy, as some papers define intersex individuals as ‘females with a hemiclitoris', where the hemiclitores were actually intersex hemipenes, and females as ‘females without a hemiclitoris’ [28,29], while other papers describe intersex individuals as ‘females with hemipenes’ [26,27,30–34]. We reviewed these spurious reports and conflicting descriptions of squamate hemiclitores in [27].

      Here, we provide the first macro morphological descriptions of hemiclitores using dissection in seven adult female snakes (Elapidae, Viperidae and Pythonidae) and diffusible iodine contrast-enhanced micro-CT (DiceCT) scanning in three adult female snakes (Elapidae and Colubridae). We selected a focus species, the Australian common death adder (Acanthophis antarcticus), to conduct in-depth morphological descriptions of hemiclitores using a combination of dissection, DiceCT scanning and histology. Using histology, we compared hemiclitores structure in females of this species with conspecific male hemipenes from an adult and juvenile. Using DiceCT scanning, we demonstrate the difference between the hemiclitores and the adjacent scent glands, which have previously been erroneously reported as hemiclitores [24]. Clarifying the difference between hemipenes and hemiclitores clears the path for a more comprehensive understanding of snake hemiclitores anatomy and potential function, as well as improving our understanding of intersex genitalia in squamates.

       

      2. Materials and methods

       

      (a) Specimens and euthanasia

      We examined female genitalia in 10 adult specimens, eight frozen and two fresh-fixed females, across nine species: Acanthophis antarcticus, Agkistrodon bilineatus, Bitis arietans, Helicops polylepis, Lampropeltis abnorma, Morelia spilota, Pseudechis colleti, Pseudechis weigeli and Pseudonaja ingrami. We also examined the micro-anatomy of the male genitalia in an adult and a juvenile specimen (Acanthophis antarcticus) (electronic supplementary material, table S1). The adults were wild caught and were sourced from either Venom Supplies Pty. Ltd., private collections, or the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology (UMMZ). The juvenile A. antarcticus was born at Venom Supplies.

      Once euthanized via injection of pentobarbitone, the specimens were immediately frozen at −20°C. Adult female, male and juvenile male A. antarcticus specimens were used for histology, and an adult female was used for DiceCT scanning (electronic supplementary material, table S1). The adult females of A. bilineatus, B. arietans, M. spilota, P. colleti, P. weigeli and P. ingrami were used for dissection morphology, and H. polylepis and L. abnorma were used for DiceCT morphology (electronic supplementary material, table S1).

       

      (b) Histology

      For the female A. antarcticus, the tail was dissected dorsally to identify the hemiclitoral structure medial to the two scent glands, posterior to the cloaca. The hemiclitores structure and both scent glands were removed from the tail and fixed in 10% buffered formalin. For both males, the inverted hemipenes structures were removed and preserved in 10% buffered formalin.

      The excised genitalia from the A. antarcticus histology specimens were processed and stained for paraffin histology. Each sample was sliced longitudinally with a microtome 10 times at 5 µm (first nine slides not stained—45 µm), once at 10 µm, then once again at 5 µm. The slides were stained in haematoxylin and eosin (H&E), Bielschowsky silver and Masson's Trichrome, respectively. The slides were scanned using an Axio Scan.Z1 Automated Slide Scanner (Axioscan, Zeiss, Germany) and the ZEN Blue software version 3.4 (Zeiss Zen blue edition, Zeiss, Germany).

       

      (c) Diffusible iodine contrast-enhanced micro-CT

      The tail of the female A. antarcticus was removed with a transverse amputation just above the posterior lip of the cloaca. The tail of the death adder and the two colubrid full snake DiceCT specimens were fixed in 10% buffered formalin, rinsed for 24 h and transferred into 70% ethanol for at least two weeks. The tail and whole-bodied specimens were transferred into 50% ethanol for 48 h, then into 25% ethanol for 48 h before submersing in 1–1.25% Lugol's iodine solution (I2 + KI + H2O) for approximately 14 days, as per the following protocol for DiceCT [35]. Scanning was conducted on the tail prior to and post-staining using a SkyScan-1276 Micro-CT (Zeiss, Germany) at the University of Adelaide (Aluminium 1 mm filter, 10 µm, 90 kV, 200 µA), and on the whole-bodied specimens on a Nikon Metrology XTH 225ST µCT scanner (Xtect, Tring, UK) at the UMMZ. The two-dimensional tomography slices for each scan were reconstructed in Avizo version 9.2 (Thermo Fisher Scientific, USA) or Volume Graphics Studio Max version 3.2 (Volume Graphics, Heidelberg, Germany) and the hemiclitores segmented using a thresholding tool. The contrast between soft tissue in the tail was low but the hemiclitores could clearly be defined by comparing its position with the images of the dissection and histology and by demarcations between the hemiclitoris and the two scent glands.

       

      3. Results

       

      (a) Discovery of hemiclitores in colubrid, viperid, pythonid and elapid snakes

      In all species, the hemiclitores were clearly identified as two separate and non-eversible structures in the tails of females, posterior to the cloaca and medial or medioventral to the two scent glands (figures 1 and 2). DiceCT and dissection revealed the hemiclitores are separated medially by connective tissue that together forms triangular structures, with some shape variation and significant size variation across species (figures 1 and 2). Unlike lizard hemiclitores, all snake hemiclitores examined lacked spines, sulcus spermaticus and retractor muscles, and could not be everted by manual manipulation. Some hemiclitores were large and conspicuous, occupying most of the anterior tail region that extended dorsally towards the spine (Agkistrodon bilineatus) (figure 1a), whereas others were small and medioventral to the scent gland (Helicops polylepis—figure 1c; Pseudonaja ingrami—figure 1h). The elapids and colubrids presented with the smallest hemiclitores, and the viperids had the most prominent ones (figures 1 and 2). Some elapids, Pseudechis colleti, Pseudonaja ingrami and Pseudechis weigeli, presented with hemiclitores that were thin and laid over the top of the scent glands (ventral position) but still in a central position in the tail, thus, medioventral (figure 1f–h). However, Lampropeltis abnorma (figure 1d), like Acanthophis antarcticus, presented with small hemiclitores that extended deeper towards the spine than in other elapids. Another cryptic feature found in some species, Pseudechis colleti and Pseudechis weigeli, was the presence of detached ‘pockets’ anterior to the hemiclitores, posterior to the cloaca and medial to the scent gland openings (figure 1f,h). These pockets consisted of two empty soft tissue pouches, separated through the centre, with the opening along the posterior cloaca lip and pouch extending posteriorly towards the hemiclitores. There was no protrusion of pouch/pocket into the hemiclitores, thus the pockets were detached from the hemiclitores.

      Figure 1.

      Figure 1. Macroanatomy of the snakes hemiclitores and scent glands in mature female (a,b) viperid, (c,d) colubrid, (e) pythonid and (f–h) elapid snakes (specimen IDs and information in the electronic supplementary material, table S1). (a) Agkistrodon bilineatus. (b) Bitis arietans. (c) Unsegmented DiceCT scan transverse slice of a Helicops polylepis. (d) DiceCT three-dimensional model (left of dotted line) with ventral view of the two-dimensional segmented CT scan (right of dotted line) of a Lampropeltis abnorma. (e) Two dissection images of Morelia spilota specimen. (f) Two dissection photos of Pseudechis colleti specimen, undisrupted gross anatomy of the hemiclitores (left of dotted line) and hemiclitores moved to the side to show the scent gland (right of dotted line). (g) Pseudechis weigeli. (h) Pseudonaja ingrami. Dotted lines separate two images that are from the same specimen but a different view. CL: cloaca; H or HC: hemiclitores; M: muscle; P: pockets; SG: scent glands; SGD: scent gland duct. (Online version in colour.)

      Figure 2.

      Figure 2. Macroanatomy of two mature female common death adders (Acanthophis antarcticus) hemiclitores and scent glands (specimen IDs and information in the electronic supplementary material, table S1). (a) Female death adder ‘AA99’ specimen image. (b) Ventral view of a DiceCT three-dimensional model of female specimen ‘AA79’ with and dissection of female specimen ‘AA99’. (c,d) Two ventral view two-dimensional longitudinal slices from a DiceCT scan of a female specimen ‘AA79’ tail (blue line = slice position). (e) Transverse two-dimensional DiceCT slice of female specimen ‘AA79’. CL: cloaca; HC: hemiclitores; SG: scent glands. Death adder image credit: Luke Allen.

       

       

      (b) Intraspecific comparison of genital micro-anatomy in Acanthophis antarcticus

      The hemiclitores were clearly identified in the tails of two female death adders, posterior to the cloaca and medial to the two scent glands (figure 2). DiceCT, dissection and histology revealed the hemiclitores as two independent structures, separated through the midline by connective tissue, that together form a triangular shape extending and tapering posteriorly (figures 2 and 3). The hemiclitores were prominent although small (figure 2; electronic supplementary material, table S1) and extended dorsally towards the spine. Like all other species examined, the hemiclitores lacked spines, sulcus spermaticus and retractor muscles, and could not be manually everted, unlike the adult and juvenile male death adders' hemipenes (electronic supplementary material, figure S1). Dissection and histology of female A. antarcticus revealed that each hemiclitoris had extensive erectile tissue that contained clusters of nucleated red blood cells in the numerous vascular spaces interwoven with collagen, which were identified by H&E and Trichrome stains (figure 3a,c). By contrast, the erectile tissue of the hemipenis had dense muscle fibres alongside but separate from collagen (electronic supplementary material, figure S1). Nerve bundles and single nerve strands were also present throughout the hemiclitores and hemipenes, as seen in the Bielschowsky silver stain (figure 3b; electronic supplementary material, figure S1b,e). The presence of erectile bodies with blood cells suggests that the hemiclitores engorge with blood, while the presence of abundant nerve bundles suggests that their stimulation may provide sensory feedback to the females.

      Figure 3.

      Figure 3. Histology of the hemiclitores and scent glands from mature female death adder specimen ‘AA99’ with (a) hematoxylin and eosin (H&E), (b) Bielschowsky and (c) Masson's trichrome stains. Inset images: (a) red blood cells in the right hemiclitoris and muscle layer between the hemiclitores and cloaca; (b) nerves within the right hemiclitoris; (c) red blood cells and collagen within the right hemiclitoris. 😄 collagen; CL: cloaca; HC: hemiclitores; M: muscle cells; N: nerve fibres; NB: nucleated red blood cells; SG: scent glands. (Online version in colour.)

       

       

      (c) Differentiating the hemiclitores and scent glands

      To clear up the misidentification of scent glands with hemiclitores, i.e. [24], we investigated the DiceCT scan of Lampropeltis abnorma (figure 1d) and A. antarcticus (figure 2), and dissected a mature female Morelia spilota (figure 1e), which was one of the species used in [24]. We confirmed that the ‘ovoid structures cranial to the scent gland’ described by [24] were actually part of the scent gland because they clearly connect to the gland and extend to the cloacal opening (figures 1–3). Depending on where the tail was sliced longitudinally, it appeared as if the scent gland and duct were disconnected posteriorly, leading to misidentification of two individual ‘hemiclitores’ located posterior to the scent glands (figure 2). We confirmed that the structures labelled as ‘hemiclitores’ in [24] were actually ducts, by dissecting the tail in M. spilota and using a semi-blunt probe, we found the duct opening at the cloaca (figure 1e). This arrangement of hemiclitores medial to the scent gland and ducts was consistent across the females of the species examined (figures 1 and 2).

       

      4. Discussion

      Female genitalia are historically under-studied compared to males [3,4], and this neglect has delayed our understanding of reproductive biology and behaviour of females in nature. Even though the clitoris is present in most female amniotes [1], and as we demonstrate here, in snakes as well, very little is known about the possible functional role and evolution of the hemiclitores in squamates. Here, we report that the hemiclitores in snakes are diverse across a range of species and likely functional. These findings may help us broadly re-examine female choice in snakes via genital stimulation.

       

      (a) Evolutionary significance of snake hemiclitores

      Our discovery of hemiclitores in snakes is timely in the field of reproductive biology given the recent enthusiasm for using innovative imaging techniques for explore female anatomy [1] and confusion surrounding the anatomy of hemipenes/hemiclitores in intersex snakes, which is stymieing progress in the field [36]. Quantifying morphological variation in hemiclitores among squamates will be important for understanding mating strategies and testing hypotheses of genital coevolution. The phenotypic diversity of hemiclitores is evident within and between families of snakes and lizards [36] and suggests that courtship and mating differences may have influenced the evolution of hemiclitores morphology. A future comparative study including more reproductively diverse species would help to elucidate the potential role(s) of the squamate hemiclitores.

      Our discovery of well-developed, non-eversible hemiclitores in female adult snakes has previously not been accurately described and provides supporting evidence that hemiclitores have been retained across squamates. Several important differences between the male and female genitalia, and notable diversity of hemiclitores across species, challenge previous statements that squamate hemiclitores are a vestigial form of hemipenes, or an intersex hemipene [16], reviewed in [36]. The interspecific diversity of snake hemiclitores parallels that of the male hemipenes [37,38], suggesting that similar selection pressures may influence the shape, size and characteristics, such as detached pockets (figure 1f,g), of the hemiclitores. Further descriptions of hemiclitores, the vagina and conspecific male hemipenes morphology across snake species with different reproductive strategies will be important for mapping the full phenotypic variation and understanding genital evolution in squamate reptiles [1]. Moreover, variation in hemiclitores morphology presents new taxonomic characteristics that may prove useful for resolving the origin of snakes within other squamates (reviewed in [37,38]).

       

      (b) Functional significance of snake hemiclitores

      To establish potential function of the hemiclitores, we look at diversity across species, where variation could indicate the action of selection. We investigated variation in gross hemiclitores morphology across clades spanning 100 Myr of snake evolution and found variation across pythonids, colubrids and viperids, and even variation among closely related elapids. The viperid and colubrid species presented with similar interspecific hemiclitores shape and size within each family (figure 1a–d), whereas elapids presented with significant interspecific variation in size, shape and characteristics such as detached pockets (figure 1f–h and figure 2). Characteristics, such as soft tissue detached pockets in Pseudechis, indicate that there are species groupings that may be comparable to taxonomic groupings based on hemipenis morphology and ornamentation, such as spines and hooks, and should be investigated. Additionally, these pockets might represent the ‘mere shallow invaginations' referenced in early descriptions of female squamate genitalia [39]. Unlike ‘pockets’ previously described from inverted intersex hemipenes in snakes [40], these pockets are not the result of inverted genital structures, but rather a pouch of soft tissue detached from the hemiclitores. The presence/absence of these pockets may aid in external access for the males to the anterior section of the hemiclitores in some species, but the function of this structure should be investigated further.

      While hemipenes and hemiclitores in snakes share the same developmental pathways during embryogenesis [23,36], our histological comparison of these structures in A. antarcticus identified several anatomical differences between them (figure 3; electronic supplementary material, figure S1). The snake hemiclitores are composed of collagen and vascularized spaces (erectile tissue), connective tissue and dense innervation, but lack muscle fibres in the erectile tissue, and other hemipenis characteristics, such as spines. Since hemipenis spines and muscle fibres in the erectile tissue are present in both juvenile and adult males (electronic supplementary material, figure S1), it is unlikely that we missed their presence in our sample of females due to sexual immaturity or an early stage of genital development. Muscle fibres within the hemipenes provide structural support for inflation during hemipenile eversion, and the retractor muscles attached to the hemipenes allow retraction of the hemipenes back into the tail (electronic supplementary material, figure S1) [8]. A lack of these structures in the hemiclitores supports the observation that the hemiclitores are non-eversible in snakes, unlike hemiclitores in lizards [17–20]. Additionally, the hemiclitores are composed of erectile tissue that is likely to swell but not evert (e.g. [8]). Lizard hemipenes and hemiclitores both have muscle fibres and spines, and while these features are often present in snake hemipenes, they are absent in all the hemiclitores examined.

      The presence of nerve bundles and single nerve fibres in the hemiclitores may be indicative of tactile sensitivity, similar to the mammalian clitoris [8]. The innervation and erectile tissue of the hemiclitores, and their position close to the posterior lip of the cloaca where the skin is thinner, could allow stimulation during mating through copulatory behaviours, such as tail wrapping and dorsal body looping [8,12,17–20]. These male mating behaviours could provide female sensory stimulation that may elicit female receptivity. The presence of erectile tissue with some evident blood cells suggests that the hemiclitores may have the ability to engorge with blood if stimulated, much like what has been observed in mammals (e.g. [10]), and other amniotes during sexual activity (e.g. [5]). However, the neurophysiology and density of these nerves in snake hemiclitores needs further investigation with more comprehensive histology/immunohistology and behavioural studies to determine whether they have a copulatory purpose [20].

       

      (c) Intersex hemiclitores or intersex hemipenes?

      The literature on hemiclitores in snakes has suffered from either misinterpretation or misidentification with intersex genital anatomy [25–29,36,41]. Our anatomical description of hemiclitores in female snakes show that the ‘intersex hemiclitores' from previous studies are more accurately termed as ‘intersex hemipenes’. This is because early reports of intersexuality in snakes describe this condition as the presence of internal female characteristics (i.e. oviducts) alongside genitalia that are paired eversible uni- or bilobed structures with a sulcus spermaticus through the midline and retractor muscles [17,25,42]. Thus, intersex genitalia more closely resemble male hemipenes, albeit they are often a smaller size with minimal spine development. To our knowledge, intersex hemiclitores (accompanied by typical male gonads) have not previously been described. However, it is possible that intersex individuals with typical male gonads and hemiclitores exist, but their genitalia were not fully examined or are confused with small hemipenes. For example, Hoge [25] mentions that four Bothrops insularis embryos had testes with no hemipenes; however, the potential of intersex non-eversible hemiclitores was not investigated. Our description of hemiclitores morphology will allow future studies to properly assign genital characteristics of the hemiclitores and the hemipenes in squamates, which can result in better investigation of the prevalence of intersexual variation. Properly classifying intersex individuals according to whether they have testes and hemiclitores, or ovaries and hemipenes, would be the first step to potentially investigating the mechanisms that make intersex common in snakes.

       

      5. Conclusion

      Our study opens fruitful avenues for research into genital development, function and evolution. Our discovery of likely functional snake hemiclitores implies greater morphological diversity of genitalia within squamates than previously described, from the evertable lizard hemiclitores and squamate hemipenes to the non-eversible snake hemiclitores. Variation in the snake hemiclitores might prove to be correlated with courtship and mating behaviours and help us understand female choice. We suggest that the hemiclitores transduce sensation to the female snake during courtship and copulation, which might promote longer and more frequent mating leading to increased fertilization success. Further investigation into the sensory features of snake hemiclitores and hemipenes are needed to determine potential tactile sensitivity. Comparative morphological investigations of hemiclitores and hemipenes within and among taxa would also provide insight into the possible coevolution of male and female genitalia.

       

      Ethics

      All specimens were ethically euthanized, and all interactions with animals and collection of samples were conducted under the requirements of the Department for Environment and Water and the institutional guidelines of Venom Supplies Pty. Ltd and were undertaken in conformance with the Animal Welfare Act 1985 (South Australia).

       

      Data accessibility

      The datasets supporting this article have been uploaded as part of the supplementary material and online from the Dryad Digital Respository: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.j6q573nh3 [43].

      The data are provided in the electronic supplementary material [44].

       

      Authors' contributions

      M.J.F.: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, validation, visualization, writing—original draft and writing—review and editing; K.L.S.: investigation, project administration, supervision, validation and writing—review and editing; P.L.R.B.: investigation, project administration, validation and writing—review and editing; J.M.C.-R.: data curation, investigation, methodology, supervision, validation, visualization and writing—review and editing.

      All authors gave final approval for publication and agreed to be held accountable for the work performed therein.

       

      Conflict of interest declaration

      We declare we have no competing interests.

       

      Funding

      Funding was provided by the University of Adelaide student support fund to M.J.F. and an NSF CAREER grant to P.L.R.B. (grant no. 2042260).

      Acknowledgements

      For access to specimens, we would like to thank Nathan Dunstan, Luke Allen and the staff from Venom Supplies Pty Ltd, Tanunda, Ralph Foster (South Australian Museum) and Ramon Nagesan, Greg Schneider, Alison Davis Rabosky and José Martínez Fonseca (University of Michigan Museum of Zoology). For microscopy and scanning support, we thank Alessandro Palci and the staff at Adelaide Microscopy and Adelaide Medical School.

      Footnotes

       

      Electronic supplementary material is available online at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.6316560.

       

      © 2022 The Authors.

      Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.

  2. richardmurray

    IS SCHRUMPFT A LEADER

     

    I don't consider schrumpt a leader, 

    but I have a why. He doesn't organize. The maga crowd was the tea party crowd, was the christian conservative crowd in the 1970's-1980s , was the white folk who hanged black folk and burned black folk in the 1960s and before. 

    Schrumpf didn't get the MAga's angry, they have been ready to fight since the 1950s,since the war between thes tates, since the usa was founded...  what Schrumpf did was mob guide, not start , not lead, mob guide, ala the film intruder, take a look, for free:) linked at the end of my comment.

    And to get into the black community in the usa, black statians , unlike the white community in the usa, white statians where various whites guide white people with violent intent, black people with violent intent rarely have such a public guide. I know most white media and some black media today talks about people like Nat Turner, and Saint Garvey and  Brother Malcolm or lessers like  farrakhan or mumia but none of them, to be fair, ever said, just go out and hurt white people. Lock her up, that kind of talk was never uttered by the people i mentioned. The people i mentioned said defend yourself by any means and white media and to be fair, many in black media, take that as equivalent to people like schrumpf in the white community in the usa, with his opeds on five black children.  

    Leaders can motivate but the problem in the usa is people, black or non black, tend to view the supporters to schrumpft as needing him, they don't need him to be motivated, to be passionate, to be organized, they need him to guide. 

    This is why so many whites , immigrants, were so appalled by Schrumpt as president, while the maga were happy.  it was his executive shift. What if the USA stopped being the policeman of europe. What if the USA joined with Russia against china. What if the USA stopped being the center of the global human migratory  storm. For rural whites in the usa this is ideal. now for white city folk , many of whom are from immigrant stock as well as the hordes of non white immigrants, this is the nightmare. SCrumpft is not a legislator or organizer, sequentially his policies couldn't get through congress but as an executive, he put in place the seeds of that and again it was guiding, not leadership. 

    IF you can not organize, which schrumpft has proven he can not then...in my eyes , you can not be a leader

    https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2422&type=status

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      in the forum post

       

      a person can be well known or popular and be a leader.

      I oppose your assertion that schrumpf is a leader, i consider him a mob guide, that goes back to his central park 5 opinion. it didn't lead, scrumpft comprehends a simple truth, the usa is a multiracial country which means a populace in every race in the usa: women/white/black/native/men/young/old/immigrant/christian/muslim/chinese/nigeiran/russian/any other you can think of dislike/hate everybody else. And the populace inside the white community in the usa that dislike/hate everybody else is large enough to be profitable in one way or another. 

      The proof is the black followers, people say it is shocking but it isn't. The black community in the usa don't have anyone like Schrumpf. a black person , financially safe that can or desires to  mouthpiece pure dislike or hate with an anti immigratory or anti integrated position. 

      Take a look at the film, the intruder, for free

      https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2422&type=status

  3. richardmurray

    Week 4 of the workshop with Betts on Tumblr

     


    Ma'am 
    based on Girl from Jamaica Kincaid
    https://richardmurrayhumblr.tumblr.com/post/728165222399000576/narrative-writing-workshop-with-betts-week4
     
    The First Mass Of The Perihelion At Saint Lamma
    https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Title-The-First-Mass-Of-The-Perihelion-At-Saint-La-981961141

     

    Training Ground
    https://rmfantasysetpieces1.tumblr.com/post/728165870205009920/training-ground

     

    Complete writing workshop with Betts posts
    https://richardmurrayhumblr.tumblr.com/tagged/tumblr writing workshop with betts

     

    Companion Deviantart folder
    https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/gallery/88882719/tumblr-writing-workshop-with-bettsfic

     

    The soccer blog workshop posts- for it I didn't do all the weeks
    https://rmfantasysetpieces1.tumblr.com/tagged/tumblr writing workshop with betts

     

     

    After discussion side a fellow artist. I made a father to son , son to father reflection of girl from Jamaica Kincaid

    Title: Boy

    Get up and dig a new latrine hole; Get up and clean the tide off the boat; Get up and get the thrush from the field; Get up and clean the hotel's lawn; Get up and search for crabs; Get up gather and remove the hotel's trash; Get up and clean the hotel floor; always work with your head down; always go where Mr. White tells you to; never steal Mr. White's sugar; use your shirt to wrap the cane if no more cloth; when carrying fish don't trip up or no one will want you to carry their fish again; It is best to sweep the hotel at night when the customers are sleep; Is it true you fought in Sunday school?; don't sing songs on the road, people will not hire you; on Sundays act like a good man and be quiet and not the bums you learned those songs from; Don't fight in Sunday school; you musn't speak to those village girls, not even to give directions; don't eat in the street- people will think you are a bum; but I only fight the teacher on Sundays and always after class;  this is how to make a reel; this is how to make a hook for the reel; this is how to fish so you will not be a bum singing all over the place; this is how to you repair the roof of my house; this is how you repair the wall of my house; this is how you throw a net; this is how you reel in a net; this is how you clean out a net; remember never smile when you accept a delivery; remember never smile when you complete a delivery; remember never to smile when you confirm a delivery; never sing at any time during a delivery or people will think your a bum; don't sing with that voice or people may think your a girl; don't hang around in groups - a good worker never has time for partying; don't touch people's cars, you might dirty them; don't throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; you have to start fishing in the morning; you have to keep fishing in the afternoon; you have to stay fishing at night; if you don't feel good , keep fishing; only sleep with dem village girls at midnight; never trust dem village girls , never say their kid is yours; if the kid is yours , teach it what  i taught you; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doens't fall on you; always spend your money cause you can't save it anywhere; always squeeze bread to make sure it's fresh; but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of man who the baker won't let near the bread? 

     

    Title: Sir

    Why do mornings stink? why are mornings salty? Why do mornings cut my feet? Why do mornings make me cough? Why do mornings make me tired? Why do mornings never have breakfast? Why do mornings make my skin bleach? Can I look up at a white cloud? Is Mr. White your father? Why can't Mr. White cut his own sugar? Why didn't you tell me the cane can cut my skin? Why didn't you ever help me carry fish? Why couldn't you ever help me sweep the hotel? Papa never helped you to. Why you hit me whenever I was happy. Why does nobody smile at church? Why do we live in homes like the village people? why does no one have anything to eat ? My father loved me like I love you, the best love is the love you don't know.  why didn't you go out to sea with me? why didn't you fish with me? Why didn't you ever smile when you caught fish, or show off fish? Why do you always grunt to Mama? Why don't you ever smile to Mama? Why didn't you throw a net with me? Why didn't you reel a net with me? Why didn't you clean out a net with me? Why can't I want to do what I do? Why can't I like what I do? Why can't I love what I do? Why can't I tell people I am happy? Why do people think I am a girl if I am happy? Why don't you have any friends? Why can't I have a morning off? Why can't I have an afternoon off? Why can't I have an evening off? Why do you not sleep at home at night? Why do you never trust what mama say? Why is all your money spent on rum? Why did you never let me squeeze bread around you? I  don't need your help. So after telling me what do to all the time, you never cared what I did?


     

    URL 

    https://richardmurrayhumblr.tumblr.com/post/728754332023029760/boy-and-sir

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      forum

       

  4. richardmurray

    The only government that has global reach is the usa. so what is afria's role in the usa'a scheme. 

    The USA, like all empires before it and after, fears every other government.

    All the governments in Africa have a high level of impotence, but it isn't from a one size fits all narrative. The reality is, from a solely African lens, modernity, circa 2023,  is merely a continuation of the european imperial age. The only difference is the usa is in the place of western europe. 

    As a region Africa joins LAtin America, joins Southern ASia, as regions where the USA doesn't have any militaristic rivals< usa/china > or satraps< germany/japan>. Merely a collection of weak governments whose allegiance is always wanted by the usa but whose impotency or dysfunction makes them unable to be rivals or satraps. 

    Now things do change, that must be said. But  I can't see the future, to say when/how/why.

     

    Original question

    #Africa, a continent of 54 countries and a population of about one billion people,  accounts for just 3% of global GDP and global trade. How important is #Africa in the #global scheme of things? Discuss…
    https://twitter.com/osasuo/status/1700500796813529458
     

     

     

    now04.png

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      forum post

       

  5. richardmurray

    Pokemon Rainforest

    I put a Sudowoodo in there
    colored
    https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Sudowoodo-in-the-rainforest-Color-981132583
    coloring page
    https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Sudowoodo-in-the-rainforest-BW-981132421
     

     

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      black games elite post

       

  6. richardmurray

    The Intruder 1962

     

    Directed by Roger Corman

    Written by Charles Beaumont

    Starring William Shatner

     

     

     

    The Beautiful People

    By Charles Beaumont

     

    Cover

    Preface Illustration
    Principal Characters

    Mary was a misfit.
    She didn't want to be beautiful. And she wasted time doing mad things—like eating and sleeping.

    The Beautiful People

    By Charles Beaumont

    MARY sat quietly and watched the handsome man's legs blown off; watched further as the great ship began to crumple and break into small pieces in the middle of the blazing night. She fidgeted slightly as the men and the parts of the men came floating dreamily through the wreckage out into the awful silence. And when the meteorite shower came upon the men, gouging holes through everything, tearing flesh and ripping bones, Mary closed her eyes.

    "Mother."

    Mrs. Cuberle glanced up from her magazine.

    "Hmm?"

    "Do we have to wait much longer?"

    "I don't think so. Why?"

    Mary said nothing but looked at the moving wall.

    "Oh, that." Mrs. Cuberle laughed[6] and shook her head. "That tired old thing. Read a magazine, Mary, like I'm doing. We've all seen that a million times."

    "Does it have to be on, Mother?"

    "Well, nobody seems to be watching. I don't think the doctor would mind if I switched it off."

    Mrs. Cuberle rose from the couch and walked to the wall. She depressed a little button and the life went from the wall, flickering and glowing.

    Mary opened her eyes.

    "Honestly," Mrs. Cuberle said to a woman sitting beside her, "you'd think they'd try to get something else. We might as well go to the museum and watch the first landing on Mars. The Mayoraka Disaster—really!"

    The woman replied without distracting her eyes from the magazine page. "It's the doctor's idea. Psychological."

    Mrs. Cuberle opened her mouth and moved her head up and down knowingly.

    "Ohhh. I should have known there was some reason. Still, who watches it?"

    "The children do. Makes them think, makes them grateful or something."

    "Ohhh."

    "Psychological."

    Mary picked up a magazine and leafed through the pages. All photographs, of women and men. Women like Mother and like the others in the room; slender, tanned, shapely, beautiful women; and men with large muscles and shiny hair. Women and men, all looking alike, all perfect and beautiful. She folded the magazine and wondered how to answer the questions that would be asked.

    "Mother—"

    "Gracious, what is it now! Can't you sit still for a minute?"

    "But we've been here three hours."

    Mrs. Cuberle sniffed.

    "Do—do I really have to?"

    "Now don't be silly, Mary. After those terrible things you told me, of course you do."

    An olive-skinned woman in a transparent white uniform came into the reception room.

    "Cuberle. Mrs. Zena Cuberle?"

    "Yes."

    "Doctor will see you now."

    Mrs. Cuberle took Mary's hand and they walked behind the nurse down a long corridor.

    A man who seemed in his middle twenties looked up from a desk. He smiled and gestured toward two adjoining chairs.

    "Well—well."

    "Doctor Hortel, I—"

    THE doctor snapped his fingers.

    "Of course, I know. Your daughter. Ha ha, I certainly do know your trouble. Get so many of them nowadays—takes up most of my time."

    "You do?" asked Mrs. Cuberle. "Frankly, it had begun to upset me."

    "Upset? Hmm. Not good. Not good at all. Ah, but then—if people did not get upset, we psychiatrists would be out of a job, eh? Go the way of the early M. D. But, I assure you, I need hear no more." He turned his handsome face to Mary.[7] "Little girl, how old are you?"

    "Eighteen, sir."

    "Oh, a real bit of impatience. It's just about time, of course. What might your name be?"

    "Mary."

    "Charming! And so unusual. Well now, Mary, may I say that I understand your problem—understand it thoroughly?"

    Mrs. Cuberle smiled and smoothed the sequins on her blouse.

    "Madam, you have no idea how many there are these days. Sometimes it preys on their minds so that it affects them physically, even mentally. Makes them act strange, say peculiar, unexpected things. One little girl I recall was so distraught she did nothing but brood all day long. Can you imagine!"

    "That's what Mary does. When she finally told me, doctor, I thought she had gone—you know."

    "That bad, eh? Afraid we'll have to start a re-education program, very soon, or they'll all be like this. I believe I'll suggest it to the senator day after tomorrow."

    "I don't quite understand, doctor."

    "Simply, Mrs. Cuberle, that the children have got to be thoroughly instructed. Thoroughly. Too much is taken for granted and childish minds somehow refuse to accept things without definite reason. Children have become far too intellectual, which, as I trust I needn't remind you, is a dangerous thing."

    "Yes, but what has this to do with—"

    "With Mary? Everything, of course. Mary, like half the sixteen, seventeen and eighteen year olds today, has begun to feel acutely self-conscious. She feels that her body has developed sufficiently for the Transformation—which of course it has not, not quite yet—and she cannot understand the complex reasons that compel her to wait until some future date. Mary looks at you, at the women all about her, at the pictures, and then she looks into a mirror. From pure perfection of body, face, limbs, pigmentation, carriage, stance, from simon-pure perfection, if I may be allowed the expression, she sees herself and is horrified. Isn't that so, my dear child? Of course—of course. She asks herself, why must I be hideous, unbalanced, oversize, undersize, full of revolting skin eruptions, badly schemed organically? In short, Mary is tired of being a monster and is overly anxious to achieve what almost everyone else has already achieved."

    "But—" said Mrs. Cuberle.

    "This much you understand, doubtless. Now, Mary, what you object to is that our society offers you, and the others like you, no convincing logic on the side of waiting until age nineteen. It is all taken for granted, and you want to know why! It is that simple. A non-technical explanation will not suffice—mercy no! The modern child wants facts, solid technical data, to satisfy her every question. And that, as you can both see, will take a good deal of reorganizing."

    "But—" said Mary.

    "The child is upset, nervous, tense; she acts strange, peculiar, odd, worries you and makes herself ill because it is beyond our meagre powers to put it across. I tell you, what we need is a whole new basis for learning. And, that will take[8] doing. It will take doing, Mrs. Cuberle. Now, don't you worry about Mary, and don't you worry, child. I'll prescribe some pills and—"

    "No, no, doctor! You're all mixed up," cried Mrs. Cuberle.

    "I beg your pardon, Madam?"

    "What I mean is, you've got it wrong. Tell him, Mary, tell the doctor what you told me."

    Mary shifted uneasily in the chair.

    "It's that—I don't want it."

    The doctor's well-proportioned jaw dropped.

    "Would you please repeat that?"

    "I said, I don't want the Transformation."

    "D—Don't want it?"

    "You see? She told me. That's why I came to you."

    The doctor looked at Mary suspiciously.

    "But that's impossible! I have never heard of such a thing. Little girl, you are playing a joke!"

    Mary nodded negatively.

    "See, doctor. What can it be?" Mrs. Cuberle rose and began to pace.

    THE DOCTOR clucked his tongue and took from a small cupboard a black box covered with buttons and dials and wire.

    "Oh no, you don't think—I mean, could it?"

    "We shall soon see." The doctor revolved a number of dials and studied the single bulb in the center of the box. It did not flicker. He removed handles from Mary's head.

    "Dear me," the doctor said, "dear me. Your daughter is perfectly sane, Mrs. Cuberle."

    "Well, then what is it?"

    "Perhaps she is lying. We haven't completely eliminated that factor as yet; it slips into certain organisms."

    More tests. More machines and more negative results.

    Mary pushed her foot in a circle on the floor. When the doctor put his hands to her shoulders, she looked up pleasantly.

    "Little girl," said the handsome man, "do you actually mean to tell us that you prefer that body?"

    "Yes sir."

    "May I ask why."

    "I like it. It's—hard to explain, but it's me and that's what I like. Not the looks, maybe, but the me."

    "You can look in the mirror and see yourself, then look at—well, at your mother and be content?"

    "Yes, sir." Mary thought of her reasons; fuzzy, vague, but very definitely there. Maybe she had said the reason. No. Only a part of it.

    "Mrs. Cuberle," the doctor said, "I suggest that your husband have a long talk with Mary."

    "My husband is dead. That affair near Ganymede, I believe. Something like that."

    "Oh, splendid. Rocket man, eh? Very interesting organisms. Something always seems to happen to rocket men, in one way or another. But—I suppose we should do something." The doctor scratched his jaw. "When did she first start talking this way," he asked.

    "Oh, for quite some time. I used to think it was because she was such a baby. But lately, the time getting so close and all, I thought I'd better see you."

    "Of course, yes, very wise. Er—does she also do odd things?"[9]

    "Well, I found her on the second level one night. She was lying on the floor and when I asked her what she was doing, she said she was trying to sleep."

    Mary flinched. She was sorry, in a way, that Mother had found that out.

    "To—did you say 'sleep'?"

    "That's right."

    "Now where could she have picked that up?"

    "No idea."

    "Mary, don't you know that nobody sleeps anymore? That we have an infinitely greater life-span than our poor ancestors now that the wasteful state of unconsciousness has been conquered? Child, have you actually slept? No one knows how anymore."

    "No sir, but I almost did."

    The doctor sighed. "But, it's unheard of! How could you begin to try to do something people have forgotten entirely about?"

    "The way it was described in the book, it sounded nice, that's all." Mary was feeling very uncomfortable now. Home and no talking man in a foolish white gown....

    "Book, book? Are there books at your Unit, Madam?"

    "There could be—I haven't cleaned up in a while."

    "That is certainly peculiar. I haven't seen a book for years. Not since '17."

    Mary began to fidget and stare nervously about.

    "But with the tapes, why should you try and read books—where did you get them?"

    "Daddy did. He got them from his father and so did Grandpa. He said they're better than the tapes and he was right."

    Mrs. Cuberle flushed.

    "My husband was a little strange, Doctor Hortel. He kept those things despite everything I said.

    "Dear me, I—excuse me."

    The muscular, black-haired doctor walked to another cabinet and selected from the shelf a bottle. From the bottle he took two large pills and swallowed them.

    "Sleep—books—doesn't want the Transformation—Mrs. Cuberle, my dear good woman, this is grave. Doesn't want the Transformation. I would appreciate it if you would change psychiatrists: I am very busy and, uh, this is somewhat specialized. I suggest Centraldome. Many fine doctors there. Goodbye."

    The doctor turned and sat down in a large chair and folded his hands. Mary watched him and wondered why the simple statements should have so changed things. But the doctor did not move from the chair.

    "Well!" said Mrs. Cuberle and walked quickly from the room.

    The man's legs were being blown off again as they left the reception room.

    MARY considered the reflection in the mirrored wall. She sat on the floor and looked at different angles of herself: profile, full-face, full length, naked, clothed. Then she took up the magazine and studied it. She sighed.

    "Mirror, mirror on the wall—" The words came haltingly to her mind and from her lips. She hadn't read them, she recalled. Daddy had said them, quoted them as he put it.[10] But they too were lines from a book—"who is the fairest of—"

    A picture of Mother sat upon the dresser and Mary considered this now. Looked for a long time at the slender, feminine neck. The golden skin, smooth and without blemish, without wrinkles and without age. The dark brown eyes and the thin tapers of eyebrows, the long black lashes, set evenly, so that each half of the face corresponded precisely. The half-parted-mouth, a violet tint against the gold, the white, white teeth, even, sparkling.

    Mother. Beautiful, Transformed Mother. And back again to the mirror.

    "—of them all...."

    The image of a rather chubby girl, without lines of rhythm or grace, without perfection. Splotchy skin full of little holes, puffs in the cheeks, red eruptions on the forehead. Perspiration, shapeless hair flowing onto shapeless shoulders down a shapeless body. Like all of them, before the Transformation.

    Did they all look like this, before? Did Mother, even?

    Mary thought hard, trying to remember exactly what Daddy and Grandpa had said, why they said the Transformation was a bad thing, and why she believed and agreed with them so strongly. It made little sense, but they were right. They were right! And one day, she would understand completely.

    Mrs. Cuberle slammed the door angrily and Mary jumped to her feet. She hadn't forgotten about it. "The way you upset Dr. Hortel. He won't even see me anymore, and these traumas are getting horrible. I'll have to get that awful Dr. Wagoner."

    "Sorry—"

    Mrs. Cuberle sat on the couch and crossed her legs carefully.

    "What in the world were you doing on the floor?"

    "Trying to sleep."

    "Now, I won't hear of it! You've got to stop it! You know you're not insane. Why should you want to do such a silly thing?"

    "The books. And Daddy told me about it."

    "And you mustn't read those terrible things."

    "Why—is there a law against them?"

    "Well, no, but people tired of books when the tapes came in. You know that. The house is full of tapes; anything you want."

    Mary stuck out her lower lip.

    "They're no fun. All about the Wars and the colonizations."

    "And I suppose books are fun?"

    "Yes. They are."

    "And that's where you got this idiotic notion that you don't want the Transformation, isn't it? Of course it is. Well, we'll see to that!"

    MRS. CUBERLE rose quickly and took the books from the corner and from the closet and filled her arms with them. She looked everywhere in the room and gathered the old rotten volumes.

    These she carried from the room and threw into the elevator. A button guided the doors shut.

    "I thought you'd do that," Mary said. "That's why I hid most of the good ones. Where you'll never find them."

    Mrs. Cuberle put a satin handkerchief[11] to her eyes and began to weep.

    "Just look at you. Look. I don't know what I ever did to deserve this!"

    "Deserve what, Mother? What am I doing that's so wrong?" Mary's mind rippled in a confused stream.

    "What!" Mrs. Cuberle screamed, "What! Do you think I want people to point to you and say I'm the mother of an idiot? That's what they'll say, you'll see. Or," she looked up hopefully, "have you changed your mind?"

    "No." The vague reasons, longing to be put into words.

    "It doesn't hurt. They just take off a little skin and put some on and give you pills and electronic treatments and things like that. It doesn't take more than a week."

    "No." The reason.

    "Don't you want to be beautiful, like other people—like me? Look at your friend Shala, she's getting her Transformation next month. And she's almost pretty now."

    "Mother, I don't care—"

    "If it's the bones you're worried about, well, that doesn't hurt. They give you a shot and when you wake up, everything's moulded right. Everything, to suit the personality."

    "I don't care, I don't care."

    "But why?"

    "I like me the way I am." Almost—almost exactly. But not quite. Part of it, however. Part of what Daddy and Grandpa meant.

    "But you're so ugly, dear! Like Dr. Hortel said. And Mr. Willmes, at the factory. He told some people he thought you were the ugliest girl he'd ever seen. Says he'll be thankful when you have your Transformation. And what if he hears of all this, what'll happen then?"

    "Daddy said I was beautiful."

    "Well really, dear. You do have eyes."

    "Daddy said that real beauty is only skin deep. He said a lot of things like that and when I read the books I felt the same way. I guess I don't want to look like everybody else, that's all." No, that's not it. Not at all it.

    "That man had too much to do with you. You'll notice that he had his Transformation, though!"

    "But he was sorry. He told me that if he had it to do over again, he'd never do it. He said for me to be stronger than he was."

    "Well, I won't have it. You're not going to get away with this, young lady. After all, I am your mother."

    A bulb flickered in the bathroom and Mrs. Cuberle walked uncertainly to the cabinet. She took out a little cardboard box.

    "Time for lunch."

    Mary nodded. That was another thing the books talked about, which the tapes did not. Lunch seemed to be something special long ago, or at least different. The books talked of strange ways of putting a load of things into the mouth and chewing these things. Enjoying them. Strange and somehow wonderful.

    "And you'd better get ready for work."

    "Yes, Mother."

    THE office was quiet and without shadows. The walls gave off a steady luminescence, distributed the light evenly upon all the desks and[12] tables. And it was neither hot nor cold.

    Mary held the ruler firmly and allowed the pen to travel down the metal edge effortlessly. The new black lines were small and accurate. She tipped her head, compared the notes beside her to the plan she was working on. She noticed the beautiful people looking at her more furtively than before, and she wondered about this as she made her lines.

    A tall man rose from his desk in the rear of the office and walked down the aisle to Mary's table. He surveyed her work, allowing his eyes to travel cautiously from her face to the draft.

    Mary looked around.

    "Nice job," said the man.

    "Thank you, Mr. Willmes."

    "Dralich shouldn't have anything to complain about. That crane should hold the whole damn city."

    "It's very good alloy, sir."

    "Yeah. Say, kid, you got a minute?"

    "Yes sir."

    "Let's go into Mullinson's office."

    The big handsome man led the way into a small cubby-hole of a room. He motioned to a chair and sat on the edge of one desk.

    "Kid, I never was one to beat around the bush. Somebody called in little while ago, gave me some crazy story about you not wanting the Transformation."

    Mary said "Oh." Daddy had said it would have to happen, some day. This must be what he meant.

    "I would've told them they were way off the beam, but I wanted to talk to you first, get it straight."

    "Well, sir, it's true. I don't. I want to stay this way."

    The man looked at Mary and then coughed, embarrassedly.

    "What the hell—excuse me, kid, but—I don't exactly get it. You, uh, you saw the psychiatrist?"

    "Yes sir. I'm not insane. Dr. Hortel can tell you."

    "I didn't mean anything like that. Well—" the man laughed nervously. "I don't know what to say. You're still a cub, but you do swell work. Lot of good results, lots of comments from the stations. But, Mr. Poole won't like it."

    "I know. I know what you mean, Mr. Willmes. But nothing can change my mind. I want to stay this way and that's all there is to it."

    "But—you'll get old before you're half through life."

    Yes, she would. Old, like the Elders, wrinkled and brittle, unable to move right. Old. "It's hard to make you understand. But I don't see why it should make any difference."

    "Don't go getting me wrong, now. It's not me, but, you know, I don't own Interplan. I just work here. Mr. Poole likes things running smooth and it's my job to carry it out. And soon as everybody finds out, things wouldn't run smooth. There'll be a big stink. The dames will start asking questions and talk."

    "Will you accept my resignation, then, Mr. Willmes?"

    "Sure you won't change your mind?"

    "No sir. I decided that a long time ago. And I'm sorry now that I told Mother or anyone else. No sir, I won't change my mind."

    "Well, I'm sorry, Mary. You been doing awful swell work. Couple of[13] years you could be centralled on one of the asteroids, the way you been working. But if you should change your mind, there'll always be a job for you here."

    "Thank you, sir."

    "No hard feelings?"

    "No hard feelings."

    "Okay then. You've got till March. And between you and me, I hope by then you've decided the other way."

    Mary walked back down the aisle, past the rows of desks. Past the men and women. The handsome, model men and the beautiful, perfect women, perfect, all perfect, all looking alike. Looking exactly alike.

    She sat down again and took up her ruler and pen.

    MARY stepped into the elevator and descended several hundred feet. At the Second Level she pressed a button and the elevator stopped. The doors opened with another button and the doors to her Unit with still another.

    Mrs. Cuberle sat on the floor by the T-V, disconsolate and red-eyed. Her blond hair had come slightly askew and a few strands hung over her forehead. "You don't need to tell me. No one will hire you."

    Mary sat beside her mother. "If you only hadn't told Mr. Willmes in the first place—"

    "Well, I thought he could beat a little sense into you."

    The sounds from the T-V grew louder. Mrs. Cuberle changed channels and finally turned it off.

    "What did you do today, Mother?" Mary smiled.

    "Do? What can I do, now? Nobody will even come over! I told you what would happen."

    "Mother!"

    "They say you should be in the Circuses."

    Mary went into another room. Mrs. Cuberle followed. "How are we going to live? Where does the money come from now? Just because you're stubborn on this crazy idea. Crazy crazy crazy! Can I support both of us? They'll be firing me, next!"

    "Why is this happening?"

    "Because of you, that's why. Nobody else on this planet has ever refused the Transformation. But you turn it down. You want to be ugly!"

    Mary put her arms about her mother's shoulders. "I wish I could explain, I've tried so hard to. It isn't that I want to bother anyone, or that Daddy wanted me to. I just don't want the Transformation."

    Mrs. Cuberle reached into the pockets of her blouse and got a purple pill. She swallowed the pill. When the letter dropped from the chute, Mrs. Cuberle ran to snatch it up. She read it once, silently, then smiled.

    "Oh, I was afraid they wouldn't answer. But we'll see about this now!"

    She gave the letter to Mary.

     

    Mrs. Zena Cuberle
    Unit 451 D
    Levels II & III
    City
    Dear Madam:

     

    In re your letter of Dec 3 36. We have carefully examined your complaint and consider that it requires stringent measures. Quite frankly, [14]the possibility of such a complaint has never occurred to this Dept. and we therefore cannot make positive directives at the moment.

    However, due to the unusual qualities of the matter, we have arranged an audience at Centraldome, Eighth Level, Sixteenth Unit, Jan 3 37, 23 sharp. Dr. Elph Hortel has been instructed to attend. You will bring the subject in question.

    Yrs,
    DEPT F

     

    Mary let the paper flutter to the floor. She walked quietly to the elevator and set it for Level III. When the elevator stopped, she ran from it, crying, into her room.

    She thought and remembered and tried to sort out and put together. Daddy had said it, Grandpa had, the books did. Yes, the books did.

    She read until her eyes burned and her eyes burned until she could read no more. Then Mary went to sleep, softly and without realizing it, for the first time.

    But the sleep was not peaceful.

    "LADIES and gentlemen," said the young-looking, well groomed man, "this problem does not resolve easily. Dr. Hortel here, testifies that Mary Cuberle is definitely not insane. Drs. Monagh, Prinn and Fedders all verify this judgment. Dr. Prinn asserts that the human organism is no longer so constructed as to create and sustain such an attitude through deliberate falsehood. Further, there is positively nothing in the structure of Mary Cuberle which might suggest difficulties in Transformation. There is evidence for all these statements. And yet we are faced with this refusal. What, may I ask, is to be done?"

    Mary looked at a metal table.

    "We have been in session far too long, holding up far too many other pressing contingencies. The trouble on Mercury, for example. We'll have to straighten that out, somehow."

    Throughout the rows of beautiful people, the mumbling increased. Mrs. Cuberle sat nervously, tapping her shoe and running a comb through her hair.

    "Mary Cuberle, you have been given innumerable chances to reconsider, you know."

    Mary said, "I know. But I don't want to."

    The beautiful people looked at Mary and laughed. Some shook their heads.

    The man threw up his hands. "Little girl, can you realize what an issue you have caused? The unrest, the wasted time? Do you fully understand what you have done? Intergalactic questions hang fire while you sit there saying the same thing over and over. Doesn't the happiness of your Mother mean anything to you?"

    A slender, supple woman in a back row cried, "We want action. Do something!"

    The man in the high stool raised his hand. "None of that, now. We must conform, even though the question is out of the ordinary." He leafed through a number of papers on his desk, leaned down and whispered into the ear of a strong blond man. Then he turned to Mary[15] again. "Child, for the last time. Do you reconsider? Will you accept the Transformation?"

    "No."

    The man shrugged his shoulders. "Very well, then. I have here a petition, signed by two thousand individuals and representing all the Stations of Earth. They have been made aware of all the facts and have submitted the petition voluntarily. It's all so unusual and I'd hoped we wouldn't have to—but the petition urges drastic measures."

    The mumbling rose.

    "The petition urges that you shall, upon final refusal, be forced by law to accept the Transformation. And that an act of legislature shall make this universal and binding in the future."

    Mary's eyes were open, wide. She stood and paused before speaking.

    "Why?" she asked, loudly.

    The man passed a hand through his hair.

    Another voice from the crowd, "Seems to be a lot of questions unanswered here."

    And another, "Sign the petition, Senator!"

    All the voices, "Sign it, sign it!"

    "But why?" Mary began to cry. The voices stilled for a moment.

    "Because—Because—"

    "If you'd only tell me that. Tell me!"

    "Why, it simply isn't being done, that's all. The greatest gift of all, and what if others should get the same idea? What would happen to us then, little girl? We'd be right back to the ugly, thin, fat, unhealthy-looking race we were ages ago! There can't be any exceptions."

    "Maybe they didn't consider themselves so ugly."

    The mumbling began anew.

    "That isn't the point," cried the man. "You must conform!"

    And the voices cried "Yes" loudly until the man took up a pen and signed the papers on his desk.

    Cheers, applause, shouts.

    Mrs. Cuberle patted Mary on the top of her head.

    "There, now!" she said, happily, "Everything will be all right now. You'll see, Mary."

    THE Transformation Parlor Covered the entire Level, sprawling with its departments. It was always filled and there was nothing to sign and no money to pay and people were always waiting in line.

    But today the people stood aside. And there were still more, looking in through doors, TV cameras placed throughout the tape machines in every corner. It was filled, but not bustling as usual.

    Mary walked past the people, Mother and the men in back of her, following. She looked at the people. The people were beautiful, perfect, without a single flaw.

    All the beautiful people. All the ugly people, staring out from bodies that were not theirs. Walking on legs that had been made for them, laughing with manufactured voices, gesturing with shaped and fashioned arms.

    Mary walked slowly, despite the prodding. In her eyes, in her eyes, was a mounting confusion; a wide, wide wonderment.

    The reason was becoming less vague; the fuzzed edges were falling[16] away now. Through all the horrible months and all the horrible moments, the edges fell away. Now it was almost clear.

    She looked down at her own body, then at the walls which reflected it. Flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone, all hers, made by no one, built by herself or someone she did not know. Uneven kneecaps, making two grinning cherubs when they bent, and the old familiar rubbing together of fat inner thighs. Fat, unshapely, unsystematic Mary. But Mary.

    Of course. Of course! This was what Daddy meant, what Grandpa and the books meant. What they would know if they would read the books or hear the words, the good, reasonable words, the words that signified more, much more, than any of this.

    The understanding heaped up with each step.

    "Where are these people?" Mary asked half to herself. "What has happened to them and don't they miss themselves, these manufactured things?"

    She stopped, suddenly.

    "Yes! That is the reason. They have all forgotten themselves!"

    A curvacious woman stepped forward and took Mary's hand. The woman's skin was tinted dark. Chipped and sculptured bone into slender rhythmic lines, electrically created carriage, stance, made, turned out.

    "All right, young lady. We will begin."

    They guided Mary to a large, curved leather seat.

    From the top of a long silver pole a machine lowered itself. Tiny bulbs glowed to life and cells began to click. The people stared. Slowly a picture formed upon the screen in the machine. Bulbs directed at Mary, then redirected into the machine. Wheels turning, buttons ticking.

    The picture was completed.

    "Would you like to see it?"

    Mary closed her eyes, tight.

    "It's really very nice." The woman turned to the crowd. "Oh yes, there's a great deal to be salvaged; you'd be surprised. A great deal. We'll keep the nose and I don't believe the elbows will have to be altered at all."

    Mrs. Cuberle looked at Mary and smiled. "Now, it isn't so bad as you thought, is it?" she said.

    The beautiful people looked. Cameras turned, tapes wound.

    "You'll have to excuse us now. Only the machines allowed."

    Only the machines.

    The people filed out.

    Mary saw the rooms in the mirror. Saw things in the rooms, the faces and bodies that had been left; the woman and the machines and the old young men standing about, adjusting, readying.

    Then she looked at the picture in the screen.

    And screamed.

    A woman of medium height stared back at her. A woman with a curved body and thin legs; silver hair, pompadoured, cut short; full sensuous lips, small breasts, flat stomach, unblemished skin.

    A strange, strange woman no one had ever seen before.

    The nurse began to take Mary's clothes off.

    "Geoff," the woman said, "come[17] look at this, will you. Not one so bad in years. Amazing that we can keep anything at all."

    The handsome man put his hands in his pockets.

    "Pretty bad, all right."

    "Be still, child, stop making those noises. You know perfectly well nothing is going to hurt."

    "But—what will you do with me?"

    "That was all explained to you."

    "No, no, with me, me!"

    "Oh, you mean the castoffs. The usual. I don't know exactly. Somebody takes care of it."

    "I want me!" Mary cried. "Not that!" She pointed at the screen.

    HER chair was wheeled into a semi-dark room. She was naked now, and the men lifted her to a table. The surface was like glass, black, filmed. A big machine hung above.

    Straps. Clamps pulling, stretching limbs apart. The screen with the picture brought in. The men and the woman, more women now. Dr. Hortel in a corner, sitting with his legs crossed, shaking his head.

    Mary began to cry above the hum of the mechanical things.

    "Shhh. My gracious, such a racket! Just think about your job waiting for you, and all the friends you'll have and how nice everything will be. No more trouble now."

    The big machine hurtling downward.

    "Where will I find me?" Mary screamed, "when it's all over?"

    A long needle slid into rough flesh and the beautiful people gathered around the table.

    They turned on the big machine.

    THE END

    URL

    https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36258/pg36258-images.html

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      William Shatner side Roger Corman discussing the film

      TRANSCRIPT

       

      0:00

      foreign I remember this film in pieces it's been

      0:06

      so many years since uh we've worked on it that uh I remember the telephone call

      0:14

      I think it must have been from you saying you'd like me to be in the film and I was flushed From Success on

      0:21

      Broadway and and some major motion picture and this was a small picture this was uh not a large budgeted picture

      0:28

      and the thinking is you don't do that sort of thing if the promise of the of

      0:35

      the big films are there and I read the script and I think I may have told you in the

      0:42

      intervening years but you didn't know it then that I would have paid you money I wish you told me right I held it

      0:51

      but it was such a marvelous script from a wonderful book by Charlie Boy Charles Beaumont that you had to do one had to

      1:00

      do this film I believed in the picture very much I had had a string of successes at that

      1:06

      time I did something like 17 or 18 consecutive successes like the director I'd never had a failure and every idea I

      1:15

      gave to any production company was accepted this was the first script I

      1:21

      paid Chuck Beaumont for the book and he wrote the script and it was turned down by every company that had accepted all

      1:30

      of my other pictures for goodness so my brother and I pooled our funds and together with you we made the picture

      1:36

      yes but when you say pool your funds uh now that we're starting to talk about this I I recall that you more than

      1:43

      pooled your funds you you uh took loans on your houses yes we did as a matter of

      1:48

      fact I got a second mortgage on my house and and uh so there was a great deal

      1:55

      personally at stake for you uh not only financially but emotionally

      2:00

      emotionally the picture turned out very well it went to a number of film festivals including the Venice Festival

      2:07

      I won a couple of Awards as best director you won more Awards as best

      2:12

      actor the reviews were incredible I still remember one review in the New York Times

      2:19

      it started off by saying this motion picture is a major credit to the entire

      2:24

      American film industry it was the first film I ever made that lost money and

      2:31

      however luckily it didn't lose much it just lost a little bit so at least we didn't lose our houses yeah right that

      2:38

      second mortgage has been paid off indeed by the 16 or 17 successes that you had

      2:45

      um of course I guess success is defined by if it makes it makes it profit yes an

      2:51

      economic success an economic success uh but this film uh had a meaning and and a

      2:59

      sense to it that so many of of the films that I have made in the past hence uh before that and and and

      3:07

      after that did not have and I presume the same applies to you yes I believed

      3:12

      very deeply in the subject which was about racial integration in the South I

      3:18

      know you did and I think everybody connected with the film and that's one of the reasons why it's gone on to stay

      3:26

      alive so many years people remember it as an honest document for its time you

      3:32

      might say I'm in Social world I've come to do what I can for the time the integration problem Oh that but

      3:40

      that's all over I mean they've got 10 enrolled already in the schools and they're starting Monday yes I know

      3:48

      do you think it's right no well sure don't neither does nobody but it's the

      3:54

      law who's law to me as a Canadian coming down to the

      4:00

      United States uh I I was not aware of uh what was what the

      4:07

      turmoil was in in in in in in in in terms of the conflict black and white it

      4:15

      had no direct meaning to me because in Canada that that didn't exist

      4:22

      so I was I'm I read the newspapers and I would see the people and I would see

      4:28

      what was happening but I didn't insightfully intrinsically understand

      4:34

      what was going on to get into and live in behind somebody

      4:40

      who was being afflicted I did not get

      4:45

      into their heads until this picture until the intruder and it was only in

      4:51

      the Intruder did I did I was I forced to take a look at separate but equal

      4:58

      and integration and feeling of of uh of a partners because you're treated

      5:07

      differently you're an American citizen but you're not and I began to see what was taking place

      5:14

      and the ferment that was also taking place in a desire to change all that

      5:22

      uh this picture was an epiphany for me uh and working on it

      5:30

      it changed my life coming from California I was aware of

      5:35

      the difference between the races the uh problems of segregation but it was never

      5:41

      as strong obviously in the north this is in the South but it was there there was still uh a slight feeling of segregation

      5:50

      either even in a western or Northern State I had traveled a little bit in the

      5:55

      South and was amazed that in my own country this could be going on we read

      6:03

      about it we experienced a little bit of it in California but I remember the first time I was I think taking a bus

      6:10

      somewhere in New Orleans and I realized that all the blacks really were at the

      6:17

      back of the bus if you went to a theater the blacks were I think in the balcony

      6:24

      and the whites could be downstairs in the preferential seats and I realized

      6:30

      that this was institutionalized this was so built into their way of life that at

      6:37

      least for a period of time the whites accepted it as their natural right and

      6:42

      many blacks felt nothing could be done and I think it was although the great Revolution was to come later in the 60s

      6:49

      it was already starting I think coming out of World War II when blacks and whites had fought equally or

      6:56

      semi-equally in World War II and had come back to a society for which uh

      7:03

      blacks and Asian Americans as a matter of fact had fought and died for and had come back to find a society not equal

      7:10

      and they determined to do something about it right and and uh and when

      7:15

      you're not faced with it if you're in your own little white community and you

      7:20

      don't see the the trouble you tend to ignore it because it's

      7:28

      easier not to face it it's when you're looking at it through the eyes

      7:33

      of uh somebody who's been segregated do you understand the forces at work or

      7:41

      begin to understand and it's interesting to me that many people take the advances

      7:46

      of the last 30 40 years for granted my sons are both basketball players and

      7:51

      they play on fully integrated basketball teams and all that we've not yet reached Perfection we've made great strides I

      8:00

      tell them a little bit about what it was like and it's very hard for them to understand just in this short period of

      8:06

      History we've come so far well sir you see I represent the Patrick

      8:12

      Henry Society and what we'd like to know is just this how you stand with your four integration or against it that's a stupid question

      8:18

      young man I'm a southerner Sudan sedan thank you yeah I was born and raised in these parts so were my

      8:25

      folks that is you're against it of course I'm against it what's the matter

      8:30

      with you I don't remember exactly how I found the book The Intruder but as I recall a friend of mine had read it and

      8:39

      it simply recommended it to me as a good book because he knew that I was very

      8:44

      much interested in contemporary novels and I read the book and contacted Chuck

      8:49

      Bowman and luckily he lived in Los Angeles if he lived in Albuquerque he might never have made the film and I

      8:56

      talked to him and uh we worked out an arrangement and he wrote the script and again from inception it was something

      9:03

      that he believed in and I believed in I remember the first time I saw you we had not met you had done Marlo's play

      9:11

      Timberland which I thought was brilliant and I always remembered that performance

      9:16

      and uh so when I came to cast the picture I've been told you to come out to Hollywood and I remember it was the

      9:23

      simple thing at that point I gave the script to your age and who gave it to you we met and there it was yeah that's

      9:29

      interesting how one thing leads to another I think another element that makes the picture live

      9:36

      uh in the way it does it continues to live the way it does is the

      9:42

      emotions that are invested in the film not only prior to as we're talking now

      9:49

      I'm writing the script and getting the locations but in the actual filming we it was not

      9:56

      uh without its danger yes and that I think whether the audience

      10:03

      realizes it or not is reflected in some of the performances I mean there's genuine fear and Terror on some

      10:12

      locations where we were in Jeopardy particularly the Ku Klux Klan

      10:17

      drive-through scene which was the last scene we shot in the picture and at the

      10:23

      end of it because as you remember we were getting phone calls and threatening letters we shot that scene after having

      10:29

      checked out of our motel and at the conclusion of it we just stayed in the

      10:34

      cars and kept driving to St Louis I remember that and did you know do you remember that there was an actual

      10:40

      stabbing in the uh among the people lining the street somebody had been knifed yes I do remember that yeah so

      10:48

      the the danger was not uh was not in our own minds there were

      10:54

      if I remember uh there was a white gang it was a Black Gang both of whom were

      11:00

      dangerous but the most dangerous gang of all was a gang of ex-criminals who were

      11:06

      black and white yes so uh the vicious criminal element did not uh have its

      11:13

      roots in black or white they were just guys who wanted to get some money and uh and to hurt

      11:21

      somebody I could almost make up some sort of a moral there crime nose no racial

      11:27

      boundaries but that's true and in this case it's it's it's evident

      11:33

      um there was a guy that um I met huge man

      11:40

      tough and he was a source of irritant to the crew I

      11:46

      remember he was on the sidelines the whole time and

      11:52

      and he was Railing at us and jeering us and he was a real anime and he was

      11:59

      considered Dangerous by the by the police and by the by the crew

      12:05

      and I re forget now exactly how I met him whether he was brought in as a crew

      12:13

      member because he could take two stands I remember do you have a record of who

      12:18

      I'm talking about you know it does come back to me I think we did have him working because he was so strong because he was so strong and so potentially

      12:24

      dangerous so I talked to him and I found out that he had a great

      12:32

      quarter horse and I was interested in horses that he had his lucky chaps with which

      12:37

      he'd want I I forgotten probably cutting competitions

      12:42

      and he had the fastest car in the tri-state area of

      12:48

      and he had gone to Daytona with this uh Pontiac this jazzed up Pontiac and it

      12:55

      won some stuff and as I befriended him in the true manner of Southern generosity

      13:02

      he said anytime you want to ride my horse anytime you want to drive my car

      13:09

      I want you to do it well we were somewhere and Cairo Illinois was a

      13:15

      little further away and there was somebody there I forgotten now who I wanted to see and what it was I wanted

      13:20

      to see but I one day I asked him can I borrow your car and he said sure he said I want to show

      13:27

      you a couple of things he went to the trunk and inside that he opened the trunk and inside the trunk were his lucky chaps he says these are my lucky

      13:34

      chaps uh they brought me great luck in competition I they're right here don't

      13:40

      don't don't do you know just be sure that you don't open the trunk because these are very important to me

      13:46

      then he went to the truck the hood and Jack put the hood up and he said now

      13:53

      I want you to be careful you can see there are no air cleaners here that's because the raw air is sucked in

      14:00

      through the carburetor and and I've got four carbs here and it's the fastest car

      14:07

      in the tri-state area I won this is my great car this is a car it's one of a kind I love this car I love this car

      14:13

      very much so now I want you to be careful because the open mouth carburetor allows gasoline to be thrown

      14:20

      backwards as well so every so often it catches fire now come over here and behind the seat yeah that extinguisher

      14:29

      and he said here if ever you smell smoke

      14:34

      trip the hood get that off and just all you have to do is extinguish the fire

      14:39

      and it's fine I do that all the time so I said okay great the the fire extinguisher there had the hood

      14:46

      there and I had the trunk there and I drive to Cairo Illinois and I'm parked doing something on the curb I've

      14:51

      forgotten and somebody drives up alongside you say Hey sir your car is on fire

      14:58

      so I rushed to the trunk and I see Flames coming out of the trunk and now I

      15:05

      forget about the fire extinguisher I need something to put this fire on no I tripped the hood I tripped the trunk and

      15:11

      I run to the trunk and I grabbed some rags in the truck and I started beating out the fire and I'm beating out the fire and I'm beating out on it finally I

      15:17

      get the fire out and the engine is melted and I realized that the rags in my hands

      15:24

      are his lucky chips and this is one of the most dangerous

      15:29

      men we've ever met I had a tough time telling him what did he do what did he

      15:35

      do when you you told him I think he killed me yeah yes and we made a movie of that I remember a little different in

      15:42

      the later Seasons we had to resurrect me it was I I think

      15:47

      he was gracious about it actually I think he said oh I know something about it but it was it was

      15:53

      Dire and wonderful at the same time now he told me a very similar story but he said you know I'm getting a little tired

      16:00

      of this car and I've got it heavily insured and I've got this idiot that I'm gonna get to take the car

      16:07

      that's good but I remember some other tough uh

      16:12

      scenes do you remember the end of the picture where you uh and Leo Gordon and

      16:18

      Charlie Barnes the local uh black kid we had playing uh in the in the excuse me

      16:25

      which reminds me of the fact we only had four or five professional actors I think

      16:30

      it was you Leo Gordon uh Gene burnson and one other and all the

      16:38

      rest of them were local people and uh anyway in the final scene where which

      16:44

      takes place outside the school and Charlie is being swung back and forth in

      16:50

      the swing that was one of the roughest things we ever had we shot it in two days and the first day everything was

      16:57

      fine we got all our long shots all our establishing shots and when we went back for the second and concluding day and

      17:04

      this was the climax of the picture the sheriff of East Prairie Missouri

      17:11

      stopped us at the borders of the town and said you can't come into the town we had nothing else to do and I

      17:18

      remembered no place to shoot and I remembered that there were some swings in the public park in Sikeston so we

      17:25

      drove back to the public park and we shot during the morning shooting in

      17:30

      tight so you wouldn't see the uh the school on the public park swings and the

      17:37

      police of Sikeston came by to throw us out and you and I were working on the

      17:43

      set and my brother was doing a greater not a greater an equal job of acting talking to the police because he knew I

      17:50

      needed a little time to finish the scene and saying well I don't understand officers can you explain exactly what

      17:55

      your attitude is just double talking we kept shooting until it was time to break for lunch and I gave the sign to my

      18:02

      brother and my brother said okay we'll understand we understand we'll leave we'll leave town Gene your brother Gene

      18:10

      has not changed at all he double talks no matter what indeed and we still had

      18:17

      half a day of shooting to do and during lunch while everybody was breaking for lunch I had remembered another school

      18:22

      that we had scouted and rejected because it was out in the country and I drove to that school and uh

      18:29

      it was summer vacation and there was nobody there so we went to the school without any permits or anything we

      18:36

      didn't pull from that sort of thing and we shot the concluding part of the scene on the swings there and nobody has ever

      18:44

      noticed the fact that the final scene was shot in three different locations and the swings were of different heights

      18:51

      and it seen plays and I think it's partially the way we shot it and partially your performance was so strong

      18:58

      they were looking at you this town I'm talking about texting yeah

      19:04

      [Applause] people

      19:09

      something happened today 10 Negroes went into the caxton high school and sat

      19:16

      with the white children there nobody stopped them nobody turn them off

      19:24

      and you know what they're saying that means they're safe

      19:29

      as you all don't give a darn whether the whites mixed with the blacks because he didn't fight against it the

      19:35

      um the denuma of that film was uh also uh

      19:40

      Vivid still vividly lives in my mind um you had chosen as a location a a

      19:47

      courthouse an exterior of a courthouse uh and steps that went up and and now

      19:53

      the character I was playing was about to Harang the mob to rise up and and

      20:00

      pillage um so that the integration would not take place and

      20:06

      for several days before that final scene uh which was I believe at the end of the

      20:13

      week we had done a lot of yelling and jumping and screaming and running both from the

      20:19

      police from the gangs and uh and also on camera my voice was was shot and I had

      20:27

      the day before off so if it was a Friday night that we were going to shoot I had Thursday night off and I'd gone to the

      20:34

      doctor in the local Town who said you've got laryngitis which is fatigue and

      20:40

      overuse of the muscle The Voice you need to rest and you may be able to speak I could I

      20:45

      could not speak like that and I had this long several pages of speech to make

      20:52

      so I said can you give me some sleeping pills I don't work tomorrow night can you give me some sleeping pills and put

      20:59

      me to sleep for 24 hours which is what I did I took sleeping

      21:05

      pills and actually I remember waking up and thinking it was 12 hours later but

      21:10

      it was only a couple of hours later so I popped a couple more and finally I drugged myself out to be out of it for

      21:18

      24 hours during which if I had to speak like get something to eat I wrote it out

      21:24

      I never used my voice and I didn't use my voice when we went to location I did

      21:29

      not speak I wrote out the notes and you set up

      21:35

      over my shoulder onto the crowd first and then when you finished all your coverage facing away from me or over my

      21:43

      back onto the crowd and I didn't speak to the crowd even on their reactions you had it read by somebody either yourself

      21:49

      or people already read but what we wrote was not totally innocuous that's exactly

      21:55

      right you wrote innocuous things that's right it was you know buy at the sacks

      22:00

      you know Macy's window or whatever drink uh Perry

      22:06

      no I think I've got enough uh product placement in there yes um and work with Priceline

      22:12

      and buyers tickets uh and all of which was meaningless to the audience and then

      22:18

      you reverse and you went way away from me I still didn't speak and finally you were on me for the medium and close

      22:23

      shots by that time it was after midnight and the crowd realized the truth that

      22:30

      everybody who's not connected with the movie ultimately realizes that is making a movie like watching a horse show is

      22:37

      boring unless you're intimately connected with the details of of what it is you're doing so they had long since

      22:43

      left there were 10 people left in the out of the hundreds that had turned up and I began my speech and spoke the

      22:50

      speech for the first time with great gratitude that my voice was working but nobody was there and the following day I

      22:58

      think it was you and I were walking along the Main Street and the guy from the newspaper

      23:04

      called us over and he said do you realize that where you were last night that tree that was uh in the courtyard

      23:12

      was a tree that was used for lynching that people in the audience that you had last night would have remembered

      23:20

      uh uh the the terrible tragic events that that uh that

      23:27

      took place there and that had I spoken these fiery words that Charles Beaumont

      23:35

      had written they might we might have had a different ending on our hands very fast ended well

      23:44

      as a matter of fact I do remember that and I remember also the fact that people

      23:49

      did not totally know exactly the details of what you were doing the script we

      23:54

      gave handed out was a little bit different than the script we actually shot and I remember you had a group of

      24:01

      followers that I had chosen or there were sort of the guys who sat around the town square whittling and spitting and

      24:06

      talking they had great faces and they were loyal followers and well you were

      24:13

      saying these various inflammatory uh anti-integration as sentiments they were

      24:19

      yelling and applauding they were with you all the way and they thought you were a good guy and they were really

      24:26

      disappointed when they found out at the end of the picture that you were a bad guy they agreed with you all the way and

      24:31

      that the school's integrated yes you mean that's the way it is

      24:36

      and I'm willing to give my life if that'd be necessary to see that my country stays free

      24:44

      White and American [Applause]

      25:03

      everybody

      25:11

      so making the film uh was a a risk to

      25:17

      you as a personally financially and and I'm sure artistically uh and to you and

      25:26

      the rest of us it was a risk uh physically uh to make the film there was a lot at stake there was a lot of stake

      25:33

      and uh although it was not at that time of Commercial Success eventually because it's hung on so long it has finally

      25:40

      broke the black but emotionally I still remember it uh as one of the best

      25:46

      pictures of one of the films I remember most fondly and I'm most proud of and I

      25:52

      think your performance was brilliant the number of awards you won with that performance was amazing it was it was a

      25:58

      wonderful opportunity the Intruder was named several things as it went through its it was it started as

      26:05

      the Intruder and it was not a commercial success so uh a sort of an exploitation

      26:12

      distributed from the south that I knew said he could make this picture uh

      26:18

      commercially successful and I said fine and he put some wild title on it and it

      26:24

      did a little bit better but I don't even remember what the title was I have blocked it out of my mind the garbage man yes whatever and it's gone back to

      26:31

      being the Intruder and it's had a very strange life and keeps going for

      26:37

      instance the British Film Institute asked me if they could release it I was not aware that they did this in England

      26:44

      as part of some sort of a series of socially committed films this was two

      26:50

      years ago and it was a big success in England and of the films in that series

      26:55

      that they put in a series of art theaters it was the highest grossing uh and it got wonderful reviews so the and

      27:04

      I think what it is and I've always believed this if the people making the film the writer

      27:12

      director producer actors even the crew and so forth really believe in a film

      27:18

      and make it honestly and truthfully the film itself is permeated with that I

      27:24

      agree but I think it uh as they say a fish in this case uh the the vehicle uh

      27:32

      the the the the the the Cinematic vehicle is being led by the

      27:38

      head the the fish tanks at the head I think the the uh the uh the film is led

      27:45

      by the director and the passions and the and the uh

      27:50

      first force of creativity is the directors and it was you Roger that took

      27:57

      us uh there and was you your courage and your your commitment to your picture and

      28:04

      um and one doesn't that doesn't come to mind

      28:09

      uh when you think of a Roger Corman film you think of a Roger Corman film you

      28:14

      think of the wonderful talents that were started that you you spotted early on that you made for a price you taught a

      28:21

      lot of people in this industry to make films clean and uh and with no fat on

      28:28

      them at all uh and and put every penny that you spend put it up on the screen and not in a craft service table

      28:36

      uh it's a lesson I learned uh and am applying even as we speak You're

      28:42

      directing a film now I'm directing a film now and I'm searching for it's not

      28:48

      a controversial film but it's difficult to make a film

      28:54

      cheaply anymore uh people have gotten sophisticated

      28:59

      about asking for money for locations and and for performing performing is I'm it's all it's quite different and yet

      29:07

      it's not because the need if you have a limited amount of money and you want to make a film The need to put the money on

      29:14

      the screen is the same yes and you laid down some fine ground work there that

      29:22

      we're all still trying to follow but I've always believed is what ultimately

      29:27

      counts is what is on the screen not how many people as you say the craft service table although you can have pretty good

      29:33

      food on the craft service table not what's behind the camera ultimately what

      29:38

      is there and uh I think on the Intruder the fact that we shot it on the actual

      29:44

      locations with primarily non-actors who possibly their lack of ability showed

      29:50

      but the realism of what they did showed and talking about costs and so forth

      29:55

      that I remember we shot it in three weeks on a budget of around 70 or 80 000

      30:00

      which was would be impossible today but was pretty tough then and I think back

      30:07

      of it uh back on it as uh a kind of a milestone for me and uh a brilliant

      30:15

      performance for you are we both gone on we've had good careers you've had a great career and I think we can look

      30:21

      back at this film with pride and I do

      English (auto-generated)

       

       

  7. richardmurray

    KWL Live Q&A – Accessibility Tips for Authors with Wendy Reid started at noon

     

     

    MY THOUGHTS AS  I LISTENED

    12:02 what does accessibility mean?
    The main focus on the needs and requirements for people with disabilities

    12:03 How did you get involved?
    She did work for the world wide web technical standards. She mostly work on epub and digital publishing. She got a lot of insight from people in disability community cause they,epub and similar,  are so important for people with disabilities.

    12:05 The exercise to using the audio on her phone to navigating to her phone by audio was a challenge.
    Most tools are not accessible but the disability community members have figured out workarounds
    if you want to know more about accessiblity in kobo email the following
    < kobo-accessibility@rakuten.com >

    12:08 What is your day to day at Kobo
    A lot of meetings. A lot of time researching trying to find the best way to do things. Accessibility on a tech company with a lot of different interfaces is busy. 
    Another interview side wendy 
    < https://www.kobo.com/blog/learn-how-kobo-makes-reading-more-accessible > 

    12:12 What will you say to an author who ask with accessibility?
    We all deal with accessibility or disability  issues  in life. You are planning for your future self and being inclusive of your audience.
    Captions are designed for people who are hard to hear but they are a huge accessibility option 

    12:15 do you know about accessibility options that authors need to be aware of, top complaints?
    Image descriptions. If you are using a screen reader, and an image isn't described it is frustrating to the reader. Around NAvigation, have a really good table of contents. Name your chapters, or subsections.  Table your headings. That structure will help those who have a hard time seeing.  

    12:18 How will an author know if their file is as accessible as can be?
    if you are not creating the epub yourself, you can mark themself up in word. they all have accessibility checkers in them. Make sure headings are headings. Describe all images. 
    Question to ask platform you distributing to, are you using that information to make epub. Are you making sure the heading 1 in word is heading 1 in epub. 
    Alot of companies put disabled users to the side but one in five worldwide have a disability.

    12:22 how detailed should alt text should be
    There is no one way to make alt text. <She gives a great example of describing a cat> How to present a science fiction map, may be really long. The author has to decide which is best.

    12:25 Epub files
    It is better to make a bigger book be split into multiple files.

    <one thing you guys can do is allow people to have the choice of retaining old interfaces. Some people feel better accessibility with older interfaces>

    12:28 Accessibility Checker
    Kobo will add it. 

    12:31 How do you handle alt text in covers?
    We don't have that information cause and can't do it at scale but inside your book, describe your cover. 

    12:32 Can they work on fonts on covers?
    Make covers readable. She has seen covers that is barely visible in small image form. Be mindful of how busy an image is. Make text stand out more. She gets complaints, try testing covers in greyscale and it is hard to see. Her father's love sending screen shots in ereader. 

    Book on history of audiobook
    < https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-untold-story-of-the-talking-book-3 > 
    < https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/the-untold-story-of-the-talking-book-2 >

    12:35 what about accessibility in audio books?
    Underexplored area. Audiobooks were developed to be accessibile. Soldiers from world war 1 who lost their vision to be able to read. Two essential things: If you have images in book, describe in audio. Audiobook structure, she likes to know chapters in table of contents, not tracks.
    She uses a book that came out two months ago and it had track 1 track 2 not chapters.

    Audiobook format in Kobo
    < https://kobowritinglife.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360059385511-How-to-Upload-Your-Audiobook-Directly-on-Kobo >  

    12:40 What can authors do now in terms of metadata?
    Can include in description. The summary is the best place to do that. DRM is not really accessible. Kobo is looking at implementing more accessibility formats in DRM. But DRM isn't great for accessibility. 

    12:42 Is anything authors should be aware of for external links?
    Put in link text. Recommend don't using link text that uses vague things. Use the alt text. 

    12:44 How to make websites more accessible?
    Describe all images. Describe all links. Wix or squarespace have accessibility options. You can do yourself. Ask about color palette. No highlighter color on black. Try to avoid putting text on top of book covers. Highly recommend using simple fonts, dyslexia or visually processing issues, and the most readable fonts are times new roman, helvitica, georgia, callibri. Describe book covers. 

    12:48 any newsletter or email practices?
    Same issues for the websites or books. Alot of design fundamentals cross into accessibility fundamentals. 

    12:52 what about accessibility in social media?
     Alt text are needed for every image. Highly recommend. If a platform doesn't have it, use the caption. Alot of tiktokers use captions in videos. Apply captions for video post. Higly recommend reviewing captions for automated captions. Use the most simple captions , it is best for accessibility. They need to detect whether you have your own captions cause you get double captions at times. Youtube provide audio descriptions, consider that. 

    12:57 about emoji's?
    Use emoji's carefully. Every emoji has a name. use simplest, and don't open with emoji's. 

    1:00 What do you think the publishing industry need to be more accessible ? 
    The publshing industry in some countries, canada included, the biggest problem is funding, and going through backlist and making them more accessible.  Alt text is hard for very old books. Publishers try to figure that out. How do we make text that are visually complex , more accessible.

     

    List of her links in comments
    https://kobowritinglife.com/2023/08/03/kwl-live-qa-accessibility-tips-for-authors-with-wendy-reid/ 

    Ace by DAISY – accessibility checker for EPUB < https://daisy.org/activities/software/ace/ >  
    DAISY Knowledge Base, everything you need to know about coding accessible EPUBs < http://kb.daisy.org/publishing/docs/epub/ > 
    Accessible Publishing Learning Network – lots of excellent resources! < https://apln.ca/ > 
    WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool < https://wave.webaim.org/ > 
    Colour Contrast, an easy to use colour contrast checker < https://colourcontrast.cc/ > 
    Accessible Social, a resource for creating accessible social media content < https://www.accessible-social.com/ > 
    Social Visual Alt Text, fun web extension for viewing alternative text on social media < https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-visual-alt-text/bkpbmomfemcjdeekdffmbohifpndodm > 
    WordToEPUB < https://daisy.org/activities/software/wordtoepub/ > 


    MY CLOSING THOUGHTS

    I thought about accessibility. If accessibility was considered from the beginning of most processes it would undo alot of the schemes/scams/ aspects of entertainment/social media/wesbites or other. 
    For example, I like the mandolorian show from Disney. If someone is blind and they can't see the Mandolorian maybe they have an audio read version available. So they can hear each episode absent commercials. But imagine if you are listening to an on demand film, like Godzilla,  like from TNT of the warner bros group in Discovery. Imagine you hear:"this thing killed my wife!, have you ever had bad bowels, Well try..." The commercial break is by default a terrible element. For someone who can only hear they are bound to hear a commercial where those with sight can mute and move on and come back. 
    Accessibility if engineered optimally will delete many methods of commercialization in entertainment or media through electronic means. 
     

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      FORUM POST

       

  8. richardmurray

    Official Skettel Poster

    skettel poster from moon ferguson.png

    Screenplay + development from Moon Ferguson

    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/moonferguson/skettel

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      Forum post

       

       

  9. richardmurray

    The following is my neutral reply to a reply to my words appended after.

     

    science just means knowledge. 

    Using my own linguistic style, I will say, Researchers , who are able to be concurred to or refuted by others, suggest based on their studies that bias, communal positions based on interpreting race, has no genetic source.  

    I concur that biases , like linking intelligence or emotional quality to a racial factor like phenotype or gender,  are not genetically based most of the time.

    Yes, one can argue that downs syndrome, which is a known, publicly known,  genetically derived condition with symptoms of mental inaptitude or uncommon difficulty does at the least prove genetics has instances where it influences intelligence, but the genomes which tend to be variant in those with downs syndrome do not occur bounded to the presence of other genetic markers for gender or phenotype or other, at least to my knowledge.

    Yes, one can argue that women during pregnancy, which is a genetically based condition < men if healthy can not get pregnant whereas a woman who is healthy can> , have a long history of recorded emotional swings but like downs syndrome, it isn't bounded to the presence of other genomes. 

     

    I will speak for myself. 

    I am not being dishonest, I have said no lie, or betrayed my thinking. Nor have I spoken illogically, absent a structured reason,  or ignorantly, meaning absent knowledge. 

    And as this is the African American Literature Book Club, I think a greater point is being missed. The most important point of the trilog and that is use of words, especially in the black community of the usa.

     

    In literature, the use of words is logically the most important aspect of literature, not culturally or heritagewise but logically. That is why the word gay doesn't mean happy anymore for most people in the anglophone. 

    To me, as I said before, I didn't explain myself to get anyone else to change. I explained myself cause I felt it was warranted as functional reasoning that needs to be emitted, and not silent. I don't think any conflict exist between the three in the trilog. All explained themselves, and I said what Troy said makes sense, is logical,  based on the  elemental parts. But my elemental parts are other. It doesn't make me right or the other two  wrong., or them right and me wrong. We have two different definitions of race that have no middle point and in my eyes, none of us have a reason to utilize the other, unless we as individuals want to. 

    But, Troy, a member of this group, asserted at the end, that I , or anyone else, shouldn't have a different use of words than websters or majority users. And I oppose that 100%. Just because websters has decided on a definition doesn't make it irrefutable , regardless of how many people are taught it or are indoctrinated to it. 

     

    And this goes into the black community. If one hundred black people live in a room and 99 say things one way and have a different mind to the room, why should the one be uncomfortable because they are alone. Some speak of individualism quite often in the black community in the usa, yet they often suggest in parallel that individualism should give into communalism when one is not comfortable, defined as opposed to a majority. 

     

    And yes, I reject more than one word in websters. As a poet I study words and I have found heavy levels of misuse in words. So much so I do it often myself, cause the USA environment has made common a lot of incorrect word usages. I will love to have a chance to work on a dictionary for a less known or used  language. I wish Black people in the USA had not thrown away our many dialects for .... websters. 

    I nearly hate the blanc  french but I have always been a fan of the following. 

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_Française

     

    Why? I think the french are correct in the maintenance of language. In the same way the architects of timbuktu are correct in making buildings where aspects to their maintenance or  repair is part of their final structure.  Every language should have some organization to manage it to be within itself. American English is a terrible language in that way. It is unorganized, muddled, and ugly in the allowance of atemporal disjunction. 

     

    The USA thought about it 

    http://www.languagepolicy.net/archives/Adams.htm

     

    The continental congress logic wasn't flawed. From the beginning they realized, that having language be fluid opened up allowances in expression, which allows for the composite nation speech point.

     

    Composite nation from frederick douglass

     

     But Adams was correct. Language dictates the populace. When you look at the usa today and the individual liberty of it, it can be argued that the freedom of language plus the lack of management of language is a key to its populace's makeup. American English is looking to be mixed , so to speak. 

    But it is interesting that so many Black people in my creative circle, writers especially, are willing to suggest my use of words is false based not on anything official, but merely majority use, absent any management. I suggest a managed and researched language is best in any community, or you end up talking muddle. 

     

    John Adams penned this proposal while on a diplomatic mission to Europe during the Revolutionary War. Formally entitled "A Letter to the President of Congress," it was dispatched from Amsterdam on September 5, 1780.

    As eloquence is cultivated with more care in free republics than in other governments, it has been found by constant experience that such republics have produced the greatest purity, copiousness, and perfection of language. It is not to be disputed that the form of government has an influence upon language, and language in its turn influences not only the form of government, but the temper, the sentiments, and manners of the people. The admirable models which have been transmitted through the world, and continued down to these days, so as to form an essential part of the education of mankind from generation to generation, by those two ancient towns, Athens and Rome, would be sufficient, without any other argument, to show the United States the importance to their liberty, prosperity, and glory, of an early attention to the subject of eloquence and language.

    Most of the nations of Europe have thought it necessary to establish by public authority institutions for fixing and improving their proper languages. I need not mention the academies in France, Spain, and Italy, their learned labors, nor their great success. But it is very remarkable, that although many learned and ingenious men in England have from age to age projected similar institutions for correcting and improving the English tongue, yet the government have never found time to interpose in any manner; so that to this day there is no grammar nor dictionary extant of the English language which has the least public authority; and it is only very lately, that a tolerable dictionary has been published, even by a private person, and there is not yet a passable grammar enterprised by any individual.

    The honor of forming the first public institution for refining, correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English language, I hope is reserved for congress; they have every motive than can possibly influence a public assembly to undertake it. It will have a happy effect upon the union of the States to have a public standard for all persons in every part of the continent to appeal to, both for the signification and pronunciation of the language. The constitutions of all the States in the Union are so democratical that eloquence will become the instrument for recommending men to their fellow-citizens, and the principal means of advancement through the various ranks and offices of society.

    In the last century, Latin was the universal language of Europe. Correspondence among the learned, and indeed among merchants and men of business, and the conversation of strangers and travellers, was generally carried on in that dead language. In the present century, Latin has been generally laid aside, and French has been substituted in its place, but has not yet become universally established, and, according to present appearances, it is not probable that it will. English is destined to be the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age. The reason of this is obvious, because the increasing population in America, and their universal connection and correspondence with all nations will, aided by the influence of England in the world, whether great or small, force their language into general use, in spite of all the obstacles that may be thrown in their way, if any such there should be.

    It is not necessary to enlarge further, to show the motives which the people of America have to turn their thoughts early to this subject; they will naturally occur to congress in a much greater detail than I have time to hint at. I would therefore submit to the consideration of congress the expediency and policy of erecting by their authority a society under the name of "the American Academy for refining, improving, and ascertaining the English Language." The authority of congress is necessary to give such a society reputation, influence, and authority through all the States and with other nations. The number of members of which it shall consist, the manner of appointing those members, whether each State shall have a certain number of members and the power of appointing them, or whether congress shall have a certain number of members and the power of appointing them, or whether congress shall appoint them, whether after the first appointment the society itself shall fill up vacancies, these and other questions will easily be determined by congress.

    It will be necessary that the society should have a library consisting of a complete collection of all writings concerning languages of every sort, ancient and modern. They must have some officers and some other expenses which will make some small funds indispensably necessary. Upon a recommendations from congress, there is no doubt but the legislature of every State in the confederation would readily pass a law making such a society a body politic, enable it to sue and be sued, and to hold an estate, real or personal, of a limited value in that State.

     

    ORIGINAL REPLY

     

     

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      a sequent comment

       

    2. (See 1 other reply to this status update)

  10. richardmurray

    The following is my neutral reply to a reply to my words appended after.

     

    science just means knowledge. 

    Using my own linguistic style, I will say, Researchers , who are able to be concurred to or refuted by others, suggest based on their studies that bias, communal positions based on interpreting race, has no genetic source.  

    I concur that biases , like linking intelligence or emotional quality to a racial factor like phenotype or gender,  are not genetically based most of the time.

    Yes, one can argue that downs syndrome, which is a known, publicly known,  genetically derived condition with symptoms of mental inaptitude or uncommon difficulty does at the least prove genetics has instances where it influences intelligence, but the genomes which tend to be variant in those with downs syndrome do not occur bounded to the presence of other genetic markers for gender or phenotype or other, at least to my knowledge.

    Yes, one can argue that women during pregnancy, which is a genetically based condition < men if healthy can not get pregnant whereas a woman who is healthy can> , have a long history of recorded emotional swings but like downs syndrome, it isn't bounded to the presence of other genomes. 

     

    I will speak for myself. 

    I am not being dishonest, I have said no lie, or betrayed my thinking. Nor have I spoken illogically, absent a structured reason,  or ignorantly, meaning absent knowledge. 

    And as this is the African American Literature Book Club, I think a greater point is being missed. The most important point of the trilog and that is use of words, especially in the black community of the usa.

     

    In literature, the use of words is logically the most important aspect of literature, not culturally or heritagewise but logically. That is why the word gay doesn't mean happy anymore for most people in the anglophone. 

    To me, as I said before, I didn't explain myself to get anyone else to change. I explained myself cause I felt it was warranted as functional reasoning that needs to be emitted, and not silent. I don't think any conflict exist between the three in the trilog. All explained themselves, and I said what Troy said makes sense, is logical,  based on the  elemental parts. But my elemental parts are other. It doesn't make me right or the other two  wrong., or them right and me wrong. We have two different definitions of race that have no middle point and in my eyes, none of us have a reason to utilize the other, unless we as individuals want to. 

    But, Troy, a member of this group, asserted at the end, that I , or anyone else, shouldn't have a different use of words than websters or majority users. And I oppose that 100%. Just because websters has decided on a definition doesn't make it irrefutable , regardless of how many people are taught it or are indoctrinated to it. 

     

    And this goes into the black community. If one hundred black people live in a room and 99 say things one way and have a different mind to the room, why should the one be uncomfortable because they are alone. Some speak of individualism quite often in the black community in the usa, yet they often suggest in parallel that individualism should give into communalism when one is not comfortable, defined as opposed to a majority. 

     

    And yes, I reject more than one word in websters. As a poet I study words and I have found heavy levels of misuse in words. So much so I do it often myself, cause the USA environment has made common a lot of incorrect word usages. I will love to have a chance to work on a dictionary for a less known or used  language. I wish Black people in the USA had not thrown away our many dialects for .... websters. 

    I nearly hate the blanc  french but I have always been a fan of the following. 

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_Française

     

    Why? I think the french are correct in the maintenance of language. In the same way the architects of timbuktu are correct in making buildings where aspects to their maintenance or  repair is part of their final structure.  Every language should have some organization to manage it to be within itself. American English is a terrible language in that way. It is unorganized, muddled, and ugly in the allowance of atemporal disjunction. 

     

    The USA thought about it 

    http://www.languagepolicy.net/archives/Adams.htm

     

    The continental congress logic wasn't flawed. From the beginning they realized, that having language be fluid opened up allowances in expression, which allows for the composite nation speech point.

     

    Composite nation from frederick douglass

     

     But Adams was correct. Language dictates the populace. When you look at the usa today and the individual liberty of it, it can be argued that the freedom of language plus the lack of management of language is a key to its populace's makeup. American English is looking to be mixed , so to speak. 

    But it is interesting that so many Black people in my creative circle, writers especially, are willing to suggest my use of words is false based not on anything official, but merely majority use, absent any management. I suggest a managed and researched language is best in any community, or you end up talking muddle. 

     

    John Adams penned this proposal while on a diplomatic mission to Europe during the Revolutionary War. Formally entitled "A Letter to the President of Congress," it was dispatched from Amsterdam on September 5, 1780.

    As eloquence is cultivated with more care in free republics than in other governments, it has been found by constant experience that such republics have produced the greatest purity, copiousness, and perfection of language. It is not to be disputed that the form of government has an influence upon language, and language in its turn influences not only the form of government, but the temper, the sentiments, and manners of the people. The admirable models which have been transmitted through the world, and continued down to these days, so as to form an essential part of the education of mankind from generation to generation, by those two ancient towns, Athens and Rome, would be sufficient, without any other argument, to show the United States the importance to their liberty, prosperity, and glory, of an early attention to the subject of eloquence and language.

    Most of the nations of Europe have thought it necessary to establish by public authority institutions for fixing and improving their proper languages. I need not mention the academies in France, Spain, and Italy, their learned labors, nor their great success. But it is very remarkable, that although many learned and ingenious men in England have from age to age projected similar institutions for correcting and improving the English tongue, yet the government have never found time to interpose in any manner; so that to this day there is no grammar nor dictionary extant of the English language which has the least public authority; and it is only very lately, that a tolerable dictionary has been published, even by a private person, and there is not yet a passable grammar enterprised by any individual.

    The honor of forming the first public institution for refining, correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English language, I hope is reserved for congress; they have every motive than can possibly influence a public assembly to undertake it. It will have a happy effect upon the union of the States to have a public standard for all persons in every part of the continent to appeal to, both for the signification and pronunciation of the language. The constitutions of all the States in the Union are so democratical that eloquence will become the instrument for recommending men to their fellow-citizens, and the principal means of advancement through the various ranks and offices of society.

    In the last century, Latin was the universal language of Europe. Correspondence among the learned, and indeed among merchants and men of business, and the conversation of strangers and travellers, was generally carried on in that dead language. In the present century, Latin has been generally laid aside, and French has been substituted in its place, but has not yet become universally established, and, according to present appearances, it is not probable that it will. English is destined to be the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age. The reason of this is obvious, because the increasing population in America, and their universal connection and correspondence with all nations will, aided by the influence of England in the world, whether great or small, force their language into general use, in spite of all the obstacles that may be thrown in their way, if any such there should be.

    It is not necessary to enlarge further, to show the motives which the people of America have to turn their thoughts early to this subject; they will naturally occur to congress in a much greater detail than I have time to hint at. I would therefore submit to the consideration of congress the expediency and policy of erecting by their authority a society under the name of "the American Academy for refining, improving, and ascertaining the English Language." The authority of congress is necessary to give such a society reputation, influence, and authority through all the States and with other nations. The number of members of which it shall consist, the manner of appointing those members, whether each State shall have a certain number of members and the power of appointing them, or whether congress shall have a certain number of members and the power of appointing them, or whether congress shall appoint them, whether after the first appointment the society itself shall fill up vacancies, these and other questions will easily be determined by congress.

    It will be necessary that the society should have a library consisting of a complete collection of all writings concerning languages of every sort, ancient and modern. They must have some officers and some other expenses which will make some small funds indispensably necessary. Upon a recommendations from congress, there is no doubt but the legislature of every State in the confederation would readily pass a law making such a society a body politic, enable it to sue and be sued, and to hold an estate, real or personal, of a limited value in that State.

     

    ORIGINAL REPLY

     

     

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      a prior post

      https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2401&type=status

    2. (See 1 other reply to this status update)

  11. richardmurray

    She makes a number of points that are not contiguous.

    1) colleges admission process- Some of you may know history but the tragedy of the history of colleges is no college in the usa started as a public institution. I rephrase, most colleges start as race based organizations on whatever racial parameters the creators and financiers of the college set. So my first point is separating colleges started with racial entry rules, against colleges started as a truly public educational institution.

    If I start and finance a college for black people, as I define them, exclusively and a white person, as I define them,  wants to join, shouldn't my school be allowed to block this person no matter what?

    Forcing a college to find someone to join their school who fits the scholastic  racial requirements but not the financial or phenotypical racial requirements is what affirmative action is in the usa. The idea is to force only scholastic entry requirements but schools are financed. 

    If a christian finances a school for christians only shouldn't a muslim be banned from joining no matter what? 

    If a woman finances a school for women only, shouldn't a male be banned from joining no matter what? 

     

    2) coming from being raised in majority black towns/communities in the usa and being into majority white educational institutions explains how some want to use integration. A smart person from a black town should be able to go to a historical black college since many of them were started in the 1800s. But, what is the point? The point of the black going to the ivy league isn't about education, it is about communal integration. The idea is, in an environment where the phenotypical + financial race is not their own, the black fiscally poor student will intermingle side the rich white and potentially integrate into rich white society in some way or form. The problem is the pretense of educational betterment is deleted with this point. The idea that harvard is this elite place educationally isn't why the affirmative action is needed, cause harvard isn't. The truth that harvard is a communal zone for the financially wealthy or powerful who are usually white is why affirmative action is needed, cause through harvard maybe the halls of power or channels of business ownership may change through the communal connection.

    Why have so many Black people put so much effort in non black schools but then complain about non black schools being communally resistant to them? 

    Do black people who go to Ivy LEague schools hate Historical Black Colleges?

     

    3) The universality of affirmative action creates incongruent scenarios.  In Mississippi an all white elementary school had  affirmative action placed upon it so seats for black children were made. BUT, is any all white elementary school the equivalent to harvard? Harvard is a place for adults , truly of the greatest financial wealth. But is the all white elementary school the place of financial wealth or adults? The answer is no. Jefferson Davis elementary school in Mississippi isn't Harvard and too many all white educational institutions are more like jefferson davis elementary in mississippi, all white but not a hall of power or financial influence, and far from harvard or exeter.

     

    4) Coming from being raised in majority black towns/communities in the usa and being into majority non black educational institutions puts black individuals in communities of disbelief. Of course among black people, a black child that has a talent or skill is merely praised. but around non blacks, it is questioned. All communities do this. White men can jump? It happens. Humans like to be in their own subgroups, their own kinds, ala Anita in west side story. The problem is why do people not raise their children to know this? I don't like when any person doesn't realize being the only other in a room will yield to being treated as unwanted, that makes perfect sense.

     

    5) Black women in particular's rant about white inheritance. Yes, black women, white people are rarely like Mrs. PArkington.  < https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2371&type=status > who cut their descendants from the money if they don't earn or unwarrant it. but that is part of why you get money. And I argue in the black community many black people have developed an inverted sense of wealth through bloodline. Whites usually get money and believe it to be for their next generations no matter what, to make their life easier/lazier no matter what. But many black people seem to have this meritocracy idea in inheritance which is at best ideal for the usa that never was or will be, but at worst is a detriment to black growth. Yes, rich whites built harvard/yale/stanford/massachusetts instittue of technology/colombia , they built the museusm in new york city, shouldn't their children have a free ride in the institution that wouldn't exist if not for their forebears. 

    Again, if I started and financed a school, and after I am dead, shouldn't my descendants have free admittance in the school? I built the damn school, if one spot is open shouldn't my descendant have the seat over any other, black or white or with better grades? 

     

    6) and Yes, the whole point of the white community in the usa or the british colonies before it is, money talks. Yes, the descendants of the genocidal murderers to Native Americans + Enslavers to Blacks reap the rewards. That is fiscal capitalism. That is the usa. The USA isn't about equality, isn't about fairness, isn't about helping the weak or unopportune. It is about benefiting for self over others through their pain for your own benefit. And maintaining the benefits you earned for your descendants over the descendents of those you murdered or abused. Yes, that is the USA.

    Why is it so many black people don't know this? 

    Why do so many black people in the usa sound ignorant/stupid/dumb/foolish to what I said in point 6)? 

     

    @africanheritagecity HBCUs MATTER! @attorneycrump • Exactly. The misconception that affirmative action meant unqualified people have been admitted into college solely because of their race was never true and is quite frankly an ignorant interpretation. Thank you @joyannreid for setting the record straight and sharing your truth! #andthisiswhyweshouldgotohbcus #hbcusmatter #blackexcellence ♬ original sound - African Heritage City

     

     

     

    The USA wasn't started to be a place of fairness or equality or any similar positives and it can't change to be those. 

    Black people have wasted a lot of time trying to make the USA what it will never be

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      Forum Post

       

       

  12. richardmurray

    phantom lady 1944 - portrait of ella raines - photography alamy.png

    phantom lady 1944 - portrait of ella raines - photography alamy

     

    Column: How profit-driven turmoil at Turner Classic Movies placed a vast cultural heritage at risk

     

    Michael Hiltzik

    June 29, 2023

     

    It wasn't that long ago that the cause of film preservation and film history seemed to be on a roll. Multiple cable channels such as American Movie Classics, Bravo and Encore were devoted to classic films from the 1930s through the 1980s. When streaming supplanted scheduled cable programming, FilmStruck offered viewers a huge library of classics from the libraries of Warner Bros. and other studios.

    Through it all Turner Classic Movies, or TCM, was the much-admired king. The channel was founded in 1994 by entrepreneur Ted Turner to show the library of MGM classic films he had acquired. It evolved to not only screen classic films but also curate its offerings, providing historical commentaries and interviews presented by knowledgeable hosts.

    All those other services have either disappeared or been repurposed away from classic films. Until a couple of weeks ago, TCM appeared to be one of the sole survivors in the classic movie landscape.

     

    Bruce Goldstein, Film Forum

    But on June 20, David Zaslav, chief executive of TCM's new owner, Warner Bros. Discovery, swung the ax. Layoffs wiped out the network's entire top management, including some figures who had been its leaders for decades. TCM was placed under the supervision of an executive whose other responsibilities included the Adult Swim channel and Cartoon Network.

    The sense of dismay and betrayal that swept across Hollywood was almost indescribable. Film stars and character actors known to millions of fans took to social media to condemn the move. Film directors Steven Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson and Martin Scorsese reached out to Zaslav to urge him to back off, advice he seems to have taken, partially.

    The turmoil at TCM points to more than a single company's effort to squeeze as much profit as possible from a single asset. It reflects the impulse by the corporate stewards of America's immense film history to view that culture strictly in commercial terms.

    "Whether Mr. Zaslav planned to or not, he has inherited an American cultural treasure that he is responsible for safeguarding," film historian Alan K. Rode, a director of the Film Noir Foundation, told me. "But he's also trying to run a business that's over $40 billion in debt. I don't know how you square that circle."

     

    This is not a new conundrum. Almost all artifacts of film history are squirreled away in studios' vaults, where they've been subject to the vicissitudes of corporate accounting and the ebb and flow of mergers and acquisitions.

    Occasionally, when they're encouraged by cultural fashions or the appearance of new technologies, the studios have burrowed into their film libraries to assess their marketability and try to untangle ownership rights.

    Some 700 historic Paramount Studios productions, for example, are assumed to be nestled in the vaults of Universal Pictures, which inherited Paramount’s 1930s and 1940s film archive from its forebear MCA, which acquired the collection in 1958. (Universal was later absorbed by NBC and is now a division of the entertainment conglomerate Comcast.)

    The studios don't repurpose their libraries wholesale. Converting old films to digital formats to be screened online or on cable, or shown in theaters equipped with digital projectors, is an expensive and complicated process. Only films thought to have commercial potential get the favored treatment. Most of the others remain largely inaccessible to the public.

    Warner Bros., now absorbed into Warner Bros. Discovery, was long considered the best steward of its cultural hoard. Its Warner Archives division was the industry gold standard in the care and marketing of the past. Under division head George Feltenstein, now the Warner library historian, Warner put thousands of titles, including TV series, on sale as made-to-order DVDs and established a subscription video streaming service that has since been incorporated into the company's Max streaming service.

    Choosing which films to market as DVDs or Blu-ray discs was sometimes an easy call, sometimes a challenge, Feltenstein told me in 2015. “There always will be a place on the retail shelf for ‘Casablanca,’ ‘King Kong’ or ‘Citizen Kane,’” he said. But others required finer judgments or innovative marketing. Warner Bros. still offers DVDs and Blu-rays from its classic and contemporary libraries for sale.

    Classic-film cable and streaming services have tended to have short half-lives. Consider the fate of FilmStruck, which launched as the subscription-based streaming arm of Turner Classic Movies in November 2016 with an inventory of 500 films, including 200 from the classic movie library of the Criterion Collection. FilmStruck quickly became what Esquire termed "the new go-to movie destination for serious movie buffs."

    Two years later, FilmStruck was dead, slain by Warner Bros.' new owner, AT&T, which couldn't wait for the service to grow beyond its base of 100,000 subscribers and reach profitability. For AT&T, as I wrote then, "mass subscribership and profits are the ballgame," patience be damned.

    Other networks that had been founded to cultivate an audience of film fans suffered a similar fate. American Movie Classics was founded in 1984 as a premium cable channel to air classic films uncut and commercial-free. It even sponsored an annual film festival to raise money for film preservation. In 2002 it was rebranded as AMC and refocused on prestige TV. AMC produced "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Men," among other series — good TV, certainly, but not classic films.

    AMC's sister channel, Bravo, was launched in 1980 to present classic foreign and independent films. After NBC bought it in 2002, it was turned into a showcase for reality series.

    Yet audience interest in classic movies and film history continued to grow. "Ten years ago, I felt that we were in kind of a golden age of appreciation of film classics and appreciation, and TCM was a huge part of that," says Bruce Goldstein, the founding repertory artistic director of Film Forum, a New York repertory house. "Now it seems to be falling apart."

     

    TCM and the Criterion Channel remain the go-to streaming destinations for classics. Netflix, am*zon Prime and other networks have minimal classic libraries and no learned curation.

    On the surface, there is no great mystery about why Warner Bros. Discovery and Zaslav might want to draw in their financial horns a bit. The company is laboring under a crippling debt load of more than $49 billion, most of it resulting from the 2022 merger that brought together the cable programming company Discovery and the WarnerMedia division of AT&T, itself the product of AT&T's 2016 takeover of Time Warner.

    Given the combined companies' loss of $7.4 billion on revenue of $33.8 billion last year, plainly something had to give. The question being asked by cultural historians, cinephiles and plain ordinary film fans is why TCM had to be part of the bloodletting. It was reportedly profitable, if not hugely so, but by any measure not a significant factor on the merged company's profit-and-loss landscape.

    That low profile in corporate terms could be TCM's salvation. As my colleague Stephen Battaglio reported, an outcry in the film industry, including by Spielberg, Anderson and Scorsese, has prompted Zaslav to reassess the bludgeoning he visited upon TCM.

    The network's longtime programming chief, Charles Tabesh, who had been fired, will stay on, TCM says. Spielberg, Anderson and Scorsese will have a voice on TCM's curation and scheduling. TCM's classic film festival, held annually in Hollywood, will continue. In a move aimed at quelling outrage in the industry, the network will report directly to Warner Bros. Pictures Group co-heads Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy.

    Those developments generated an optimistic joint statement from Spielberg, Anderson and Scorsese: “We have already begun working on ideas with Mike and Pam, both true film enthusiasts who share a passion and reverence for classic cinema that is the hallmark of the TCM community," the directors said.

    It's impossible to overstate the reverence that film historians and preservationists, and fans, have felt for TCM.

    "They are the keepers of the flame," says Foster Hirsch, a professor of film at Brooklyn College and member of the Film Noir Foundation board. "They're an enormous resource for scholars and writers and fans of all ages. To start tampering with the brand or to view it in terms of marketing and data exclusively is horrifying. It's an assault on our common culture."

    Among TCM's virtues is its eclectic approach. "They didn't show only well-known masterpieces," Hirsch says. "They showed obscure films, some which aren't good, they showed films for almost all tastes, different genres. From an artistic or historical point of view it isn't broken. There was no reason to 'fix' it."

    The network has also been an almost unique portal introducing new generations to film culture. "It's been an essential part of people's film education, especially people of my generation," says Jon Dieringer, 37, founder of Screen Slate, a film culture website. "I grew up watching Turner Classic Movies."

    Yet how assiduously Warner Bros. Discovery will follow through on its stated commitment to TCM's mission remains open to question, as does whether the network can retain its stature in the cinephile community. The confidence that the network's fans had in its staff and hosts and their ability to provide a curated approach to film history has been deeply shaken.

    Many in the film community are hoping that TCM may have suffered nothing more serious than a near-death experience. Whether that's so won't be known for some time. Everyone will be watching, but experience suggests that when public companies pledge to treat the cultural assets under their control as more than generators of cash and profits, it's wise to expect the worst.

     

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/column-profit-driven-turmoil-turner-120049275.html

     

    https://filmnoirfoundation.tumblr.com/post/694678928670982144/fnf-donation-drive-giveaway-for-a-chance-to-win

     

     

    Too many classic films remain buried in studios’ vaults

     

    BY MICHAEL HILTZIKBUSINESS COLUMNIST 

    OCT. 23, 2015 5:48 PM PT

     

    Will McKinley, a New York film writer, is dying to get his hands on a copy of “Alias Nick Beal,” a 1949 film noir starring Ray Milland as a satanic gangster. For classic film blogger Nora Fiore, the Grail might be “The Wild Party” (1929), the first talkie to star 1920’s “It” girl Clara Bow, directed by the pioneering female director Dorothy Arzner. Film critic Leonard Maltin says he’d like to score a viewing of “Hotel Haywire,” a 1937 screwball comedy written by the great comic director Preston Sturges.

    Produced by Paramount Studios, these are all among 700 titles assumed to be nestled in the vaults of Universal Pictures, which inherited Paramount’s 1930s and 1940s film archive from its forebear MCA, which acquired the collection in 1958. They’re frustratingly near at hand but out of reach of film fans and cinephiles.

    Like most of the other major studios, Universal is grappling with the challenging economics of making more of this hoard accessible to the public on DVD, video on demand or streaming video. Studios have come to realize that there’s not only marketable value in the films, but publicity value in performing as responsible stewards of cultural assets.

     

    I would have to break the law to see that film.

    — Cinephile Nora Fiore, of a 1932 classic locked in a studio vault

     

    No studio recognizes these values better than Warner Bros., whose Warner Archives division is the industry gold standard in the care and marketing of the past. The studio sells some 2,300 titles, including TV series, as made-to-order DVDs and offers its own archival video streaming service for a subscription fee of up to $9.99 a month.

    The manufacturing-on-demand service, launched in March 2009 with 150 titles, has proved “far more successful than we even dreamed,” says George Feltenstein, a veteran home video executive who heads the division. “I thought that all the studios would follow in our footsteps, but nobody has been as comprehensive as we’ve been.”

    Other major studios have dipped their toes into this market, if gingerly. Paramount last year stocked a free YouTube channel with 91 of its own titles, mostly post-1949. This month 20th Century Fox announced that as part of its 100th anniversary this year, it would release 100 remastered classic films, including silents, to buy or rent for high-definition streaming — “enough to make any classic film fan weep with joy,” McKinley wrote on his blog. Sony last year introduced a free cable channel, get.tv, to screen films from its Columbia Pictures archive, though it’s only spottily available and often preempted by cable operators.

    Universal offers some manufacture-on-demand titles via am*zon as its Universal Vault Series and announced in May that it would restore 15 of its silent films as part of its 2012 centennial celebration. Curiously, Universal, owned by the cable giant Comcast, is one of the only majors without a dedicated cable channel or Internet streaming service for its archive. Universal spokesperson Cindy Gardner maintains that the studio is working on ways to improve: “Stay tuned.”

    Film buffs and historians have easier access to more classic films than ever before. But that only whets their appetite for important — but perhaps forgotten — films.

     

    The 1932 Paramount World War I drama “Broken Lullaby,” Fiore says, might provoke a reexamination of the career of its director, the master of graceful comedy Ernst Lubitsch. But a version that crept onto YouTube a few years ago was taken down at the insistence of Universal. “I would have to break the law to see that film,” laments Fiore, who blogs on classic films in the guise of the Nitrate Diva.

    “The studios seem to be sitting on a lot of films, but they’re limited by budget and by their projected return on investment,” says Alan Rode, a director of the Film Noir Foundation. “But it’s not like you open a valve and films come gushing out. If they can’t realize a profit on it, they’re not going to do it.”

     

    Adding to the challenge is that some of the major studios have become subsidiaries of large corporations, and not consistently huge profit centers. For example, Paramount last year contributed about 26% of the $13.8 billion in revenue of its parent, Viacom, but its $205 million in operating profit paled next to the $2.4 billion net income recorded by the whole corporation.

    Converting a film title for digital release can be costly, especially under the watchful eye of cinephiles who demand high quality. Some black-and-white titles can be digitized for $40,000 or less, says Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive — with 350,000 titles, the second-largest in the U.S. after only the Library of Congress.

    But the price rises exponentially for color, especially for important restoration. UCLA spent about three years and $1.5 million in donated funds on its heroic restoration and digital transfer of the Technicolor classic “The Red Shoes,” a 1948 backstage ballet drama revered for its beauty.

    That means that when deciding which titles to prepare for digital release, archive managers must walk a tightrope between serving their audience and protecting the bottom line. Some classics are easy calls. “There always will be a place on the retail shelf for ‘Casablanca,’ ‘King Kong’ or ‘Citizen Kane,’” says Warner’s Feltenstein. But finer judgments are required for what Feltenstein calls “the deeper part of the library.”

    “My job is to monetize that content, make it available to the largest number of people possible and do so profitably,” Feltenstein told me. To gauge demand, Feltenstein’s staff keeps lines open with film enthusiasts and historians via Facebook, Twitter, a free weekly podcast and other outreach. “They literally ask us, ‘What do you want to see?’” Fiore says.

    That gives them a window into values that others might miss. Take B-movie westerns made in the 1940s and 1950s that landed in the Warners vault. To Allied Artists and Lorimar, their producers, “these films were worthless and they said it’s OK to let them rot,” Feltenstein says. Instead, Warner Archives packaged them into DVD collections, “and they’ve all been nicely profitable.”

    Feltenstein says Warners is releasing 30 more titles to its manufacturing-on-demand library every month. “It’s growing precipitously and there’s no end in sight.” Universal’s Gardner says there’s “real momentum” at her studio behind “making our titles more available than ever before.”

    But there’s always more beckoning over the horizon. “The good news is that every studio is actively engaged in taking care of its library,” Maltin says. “That’s a big improvement over 20 or 25 years ago. But access is the final frontier.”

    [UPDATE: Nell Minow, whose excellent blog on film can be found at Movie Mom and who is a fan of “Alias Nick Beal,” reports that the title character, played by Ray Milland, is more than merely a “satanic gangster” as we describe him above--he’s Satan.]

    Michael Hiltzik’s column appears every Sunday. His new book is “Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention That Launched the Military-Industrial Complex.” Read his blog every day at latimes.com/business/hiltzik, reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @hiltzikm on Twitter.

     

     

    https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-20151025-column.html

     

    https://filmnoirfoundation.tumblr.com/post/706015057231986688/lee-van-cleef-born-on-this-day-in-1925-whats

     

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      portraits

       

      https://www.theguardian.com/film/gallery/2022/nov/10/mean-moody-and-magnificent-film-noir-studio-portraits-in-pictures

  13. richardmurray

    My final preaching on black leadership in the usa  in AALBC hopefully

     

     

    Who are the Leaders of the Black Community? - Black Literature - African American Literature Book Club (aalbc.com)

     

    MY THOUGHTS

     

    I said all this before in this very forum but I am too lazy to find and cite myself. so i apologize for preaching

     

     

    Quote

    Who are the Leaders of the Black Community?

     

    The Black community has a global existence which is intramultiracial, various regional existences<caribbean/south asia/africa/> each intramultiracial, an existence under each flag<usa/cuba/brazil/ghana/germany/pakistan/phillipines/australia> most intramultiracial.

    This is the same for all  phenotypical races.

    Under the USA, the black community is highly intramultiracial: DOS/Jamaican/haitian/colombian/brazilian/nigerian/ghanaian/south african/indian/phillipino/ plus many more. And many of said groups are intramultiracial. 

     

    So, the question who are the leaders of the black community requires specification cause the black community is different based on the geographic scope you are approaching it with. 

    To be blunt, what the black community in nigeria need is not the same as in jamaica or the same as in phillipines. 

    So my answer is specific to the black community in the usa. I repeat , the following is specific to the black community in the usa.

     

    Now to answer, the black community in the usa doesn't have a leader as a group or individual. But, in defense , this is all communities in the usa. The USA multiracial quality is so high no group or community has a leader, as every community or group in the usa has within it tribes or factions that just can't work together based on what they truly want. Ala even the white community in the usa is fractured. The reality is some whites want a return to a form of white power in the usa as well as a different posture of the usa in international affairs that other whites for various reasons don't want and no middle ground exist.  It is that simple. 

     

    The same to the black community in the usa, which has historically always been multivided in unbridgeable chasms, always, from the very start of the usa. The only problem is black people who knew this didn't teach this to black children, they lied about the nature of the black community in the usa for their own agenda.  Thinking foolishly that over time the truth can be undone. The truth always wins in the end.

     

    Quote

    Over the years there have been many conversations on this forum about how Black people should pool our resources, support our businesses, and control our destiny.  

     

     

    At this point in time I will merely restate what I said in this forum, apologize for not citing myself. 

    Black people in the usa need to focus on their tribes in the village and get said tribes to be efficient in that way. As I always say to Black elephants <republicans> or Black militants or Black donkeys<democrats> or Black socialists or Black garveyites or Rastafarians or Black baptists or Black catholics or others  <I know nearly every black tribe being in nyc>  They talk so much about what other black people need to do but never seem to be able to do something within their own tribe. 

    For example, the Black Elephants go on and on about financial responsibility and yet I can't recall the black elephants showing the rest of the black community their great acumen for financial responsibility to help the black community in the usa. Another example,  Black Donkeys go on and on about voting but and yet  I can't recall the black elephants showing the rest of the black community how effective voting will be to help black community in the usa. 

     

    Black people in various tribes in the village in the usa  love complaining about what the whole community isn't doing while their tribe is doing nothing.  Wealthy black entertainers couldn't even unite and make it where BET/Motown/Philadelphia international are black owned global media brands. 

     

    Quote

    In the past, civil right organizations lead the charge in organizing successful boycotts and getting important legislation passed. Today these organizations are a shell of what they once were -- toothless.  

     

    Well, the NAACP was white jew financed and served its purpose. And black financiers pre civil rights act had many of their financial revenue streams destroyed by the inevitable result of the civil rights act. Absent money, most organizations are like the people above complaining about what the community isn't doing while they do nothing.

    Quote

    Social media is seen by many as the modern way to mobilize Black people.  I've always lamented the fact that we hitch our wagons to platforms we do not own or control and claim it as a tool to support Black people.  This was always a flawed strategy. "Black Twitter" was a recent example of this.  I'd go farther and say that the entire social media universe not only does not serve Black people; it is harmful to us.

     

     do most in the black community want potent <note I didn't say positivit> effective leadership ? yes. Do most individuals in the black community think they are that leader ? no. in absence of potent effective leadership are people in the black community making false leaders? yes. 

    But all communities go through this. Now their is a historical issue here. 

    Many black leaders in the past, ala Frederick Douglass, embraced the idea of hyper individualism. Individualism in its most intense form, is against communal growth. The idea is the individual do for self, regardless of community. why blakc leaders in the past support this? Individualism is the answer to getting a multiracial populace to operate absent biases. Race will never leave humanity , calling yourself a name is a racial act, but bias is when people favor based on race. Individualism lessens biases ability to bind groups by the focus on the individual.

    To that end the black community through guidance of some black leaders side the external white manipulation have embraced the individualism.

    Quote

    In the past, any organization that has shown a sign effectively mobilizing Black people from the Universal Negro Improvement Association to The Black Panther Party even the Nation of Islam, was actively undermined by our government.

     

    Yes, any organization that functionally demanded some level of black segregation was an enemy to not only the federal government , who started the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the original KKK who had plans on making a shadow government in the usa,but organizations like the naacp financed by white jews. 

    Quote

    Obviously, our current lack of organization is not only a consequence of direct attacks against our organizations, but several hundreds of years of violent and legalized oppression.

    and our own manipulations to ourselves.

    Quote

    Today are we completely rudderless as a people?  Who, or what organization, could initiate a Montogomery Bus Boycott today? Are we so happy today that a boycott is completely unnecessary?  Which organization could do what the NAACP Legal Defense Fund did to win Brown v. Board of Education, or are we happy that "race" can no longer be used to help reverse hundreds of years of being prevented from learning to read, while benefits to white people like legacy admissions continue?

    Yes, in modernity, black leaders to the community in the usa, are absent. But, a why exists. It isn't unimportant how intramultiracial the black community is. Yes, all humans are humans. Yes, all black people are black people but people or humans all too often do want different things in the subtlely. The Sons of Odin want jobs and wealth but they wouldn't mind depriving blacks. Do Black Christians really want to embrace the black lgbtq+ community? I say no.

    Most Black people are not happy in the usa, but most black people have accepted the individual mantra, that black leaders often utter. Black people talk community, but most of us don't feel community, most from each of us feel one against the world. Again, Community has to be exhibited, not just talked about. 

     

    In the usa, The leaders of the black community today or a tomorrow have to lead effectively, but have to be able to give a hand to the doubtful blacks who are convinced correctly that black leaders don't uplift but merely tell other blacks to lift themselves. Black people have seen way too many black leaders help themselves and tell other blacks to lift themselves up by bootstraps to be convinced even with one great showing that a leader is actually trying to help left their bootstrapless selves  up.

     

     

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      1)what has to improve in how individualism works in said community?
      In my mind one point. The one thing I hear no one say...  Own up to it. It may sound silly but one of the biggest problems in the usa is people don't own up to their own culture that their actions display. 

      Black folk like me will always despise the KKK But, the KKK are better than the majority of whites who clearly dislike black people as negatively as the KKK but are too proud to admit it. If you are about you, just say it. No shame in saying,  I am looking out for me while all you do is look out for you. But the black community or the larger human populace in the usa suffers from an inability to admit in public what their actions show. The faux communal discourse form hyper individuals to me is the problem. I don't have a problem with anyone , and that starts with black people, being about themselves. I follow my own path. I like being communal. but I also profess my position publicly. I am not ashamed to say I like living around black folks and prefer living around black folks, and I don't care for living aside non blacks <as I define blacks side non blacks>. But too many individualists  are not ashamed to act for only self but are ashamed to advertise it. That will be a nice change. 

      2)What inevitable weaknesses come from such a system that need to be expected or embraced as truth?

      a dysfunction of the way... all ways have dysfunction. Communalism's great problem is it doesn't allow for individual growth at the same rate or width or uniqueness as individualism. But, Individualism's problem is it doesn't allow for collective action or interaction at the same rate width or flexibility as communalism.
       

  14. richardmurray

    now03.png

    Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times

    Pedro Pascal and Jenna Ortega Shouldn’t Be Exceptions in Hollywood

    July 23, 2023

     

    By Arlene Dávila

    Ms. Dávila is the founding director of the Latinx Project at New York University.

    Corporate America’s treatment of Latinx people as a homogeneous monolithic group, instead of the diverse demographic it is, has for decades perpetuated stereotypes of Latino authenticity. These stereotypes have disproportionately depicted Latinos on TV and in movies as Spanish speakers that hailed from Latin America and shared a particular Latin “look.”

    In Hollywood, this narrative has reinforced the notion that we are a niche market that is separate from the mainstream, which could be served through the importation of programming that is cheaper to produce in Latin America over programming that is produced in the United States.

    That’s why it was exciting to see Jenna Ortega and Pedro Pascal make Emmy history this month. For the first time two Latino actors were nominated in the lead acting category in the same year, for the hit shows “Wednesday” and “The Last of Us.”

    Though Latinx people make up 19 percent of the U.S. population, they account for less than 5 percent of actors cast in speaking roles in the nation’s top-grossing films. Additionally, representation in the media industry as a whole stands at a mere 12 percent, with the majority of positions being service oriented, like cleaning services and security. These numbers have remained stagnant for decades, which is outrageous when you consider that they make up nearly half the population of Los Angeles County.

    Why has the media industry been so unwilling to acknowledge and address this growing demographic of potential viewers and consumers?

    Latinx creatives have told me that many executives in Hollywood don’t understand why they are outraged by how few Latinx people appear in films and television shows. After all, there is already a variety of streaming offerings from Latin America and Spain. But there is a profound difference between these markets.

    We wouldn’t mistake the experience of Indigenous Mexicans living in Mexico for the experience of a fifth-generation Chicana. This is why many in the industry are identifying as Latinx — a term that signals gender inclusivity and recognition of our racial and ethnic diversity — to call attention to a pattern of exclusion of Latinx writers and creators that are representing the U.S. experience.

    The globalization of Spanish language media has only widened the existing gaps between the robust development of movies and shows produced in Latin America and the limited opportunities for Latinx writers, directors and showrunners in the United States. In recent decades, Latin American media companies have benefited from investments from American streaming conglomerates like Netflix, the lower costs of producing and importing programming in Latin America and investments by governments in the region that support their film industries.

    While streaming platforms offer a wealth of series and films from Spain and Latin America, there is a lack of representation of stories written by Latinx people that reflect their experiences. While actors and writers from Latin America have had the opportunity to expand their résumés with credits from global serials produced by platforms like Netflix, am*zon and Max, Latinx actors and audiences have fewer roles to choose from. The leads cast in series like “Wednesday” and the “Last of Us” are rare exceptions.

    Research shows that in the United States, Latinx actors are often cast in the roles of lower-class characters, criminals or immigrants. The gap is wider still for Afro-Latinos. In shows produced in Latin America, the majority of actors cast as leads and heroines are blond and white, while darker-skinned actors are often relegated to secondary roles, housekeepers or criminals, if they are represented at all. Additionally, Latinx writers face extra barriers when entering a shrinking industry, as highlighted by the writers’ strike.

    The few productions that have been written or created by Latinx people and have represented our communities in real and personal ways have been canceled after a few seasons. When shows like “Gentefied,” “Vida” and the “Gordita Chronicles” were shut down despite positive reviews, writers and fans alike were left wondering why. In the age of streaming, algorithm-driven decisions make it difficult to determine what counts as success with transparency, especially when algorithms are biased against new content.

    Latinx audiences remain avid consumers of films, TV and other media, even if they don’t see themselves reflected. Some may question why media conglomerates should change and invest in original content and programming or cast Latinx actors and writers when the cheaper importation-based model is so profitable and seemingly successful. Yet they should evolve because those formulas have historically left Latinx audiences mostly untapped. There are generations of talented scriptwriters, producers and filmmakers who have been underutilized and countless rich stories and ideas that have yet to be told. Film and TV that represent the experience of Latinx communities in the United States enrich the media ecosystem by offering a more accurate representation of American demographics.

    Additionally, we must address the negative impacts of the media’s import-heavy formula for Latinx audiences, which limits opportunities and perpetuates the perception of Latinx people as foreigners rather than fellow Americans deserving equal visibility on television and movie screens.

    It’s worth noting that Latinx people are not the only group excluded by the globalization of streaming. That Ms. Ortega and Mr. Pascal received recognition raises the question of whether we have reached a crucial turning point. It’s worth considering how we can leverage the current SAG-AFTRA and W.G.A. strikes to also address issues of representation and investment in productions that will provide working opportunities for Latinx actors, writers and showrunners alongside matters of pay equity for media workers.

    Finally, it is time to consider the global appeal of entertainment featuring Latinx actors. I want to see more roles for actors like Ariana DeBose, the first Afro-Latina to win an Oscar, for a supporting role in “West Side Story,” and productions by filmmakers and MacArthur “genius grant” awardees Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra, among many other outstanding Latinx creatives.

    I often wonder what it would look like if Hollywood dared to recognize that Latinx talent is not an exception.

    Arlene Dávila, the founding director of the Latinx Project at New York University, is the author of “Latinx Art: Artists, Markets and Politics.”

     

    URL

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/23/opinion/latinos-hollywood-representation.html

     

    now04.png

    The recently released Barbie movie has provided an opportunity for a bipartisan coalition of commentators and elected officials to see value in its dissection.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times, Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters, Jim Wilson/The New York Times, Alex Brandon/Associated Press, Warner Bros. Pictures via Associated Press

     

    ‘Barbie’ Movie Gives Left and Right Another Battlefront, in Pink

    Political figures of all types grabbed for the legs of a doll-turned-movie-turned-cultural moment, with predictable results.

     

    By Matt Flegenheimer and Marc Tracy

     

    Last week, Representative Matt Gaetz and his wife, Ginger, arrived at a Washington reception for “Barbie” in matching pink, grinning in photos along the “pink carpet,” mingling among guests sipping pink cocktails, admiring a life-size pink toy box.

    They left with political ammunition.

    “The Barbie I grew up with was a representation of limitless possibilities, embracing diverse careers and feminine empowerment,” Mrs. Gaetz wrote on Twitter. “The 2023 Barbie movie, unfortunately, neglects to address any notion of faith or family, and tries to normalize the idea that men and women can’t collaborate positively (yuck).”

    When another account scolded Mr. Gaetz, the hard-right and perpetually stunt-seeking Florida congressman, for attending the event at all — citing the casting of a trans actor as a doctor Barbie — Mr. Gaetz replied with a culture-warring double feature.

    “If you let the trans stop you from seeing Margo Robbie,” he said, leaving the “T” off the first name of the film’s star, “the terrorists win.”

    The non-terroristic winners were many after the film’s estimated $155 million debut: Ms. Robbie and Greta Gerwig, the film’s director, finding an eager audience for their pink-hued feminist opus; the Warner Bros. marketing team, whose ubiquitous campaigns plainly paid off; the film industry itself, riding “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” to its most culturally dominant weekend in years.

    But few outcomes were as nominally inexplicable (and probably inevitable) as the film’s instant utility to political actors and opportunists of all kinds. For a modern take on what was long a politically fraught emblem of toxic body image and reductive social norms, no choice was too small, no turn too ideology-affirming or apparently nefarious, for a bipartisan coalition of commentators and elected officials to see value in its dissection.

    “I have, like, pages and pages of notes,” Ben Shapiro, the popular conservative commentator, said in a lengthy video review, which began with him setting a doll aflame and did not grow more charitable. (He said his producers “dragged” him to the theater.)

    “I took a tequila shot every time Barbie said patriarchy … only just woke up,” wrote Elon Musk. (Mr. Shapiro, diligently but less colorfully, said he had counted the word “more than 10 times.”)

    “Here are 4 ways Barbie embraces California values,” the office of Gavin Newsom, the state’s Democratic governor, wrote in a thread hailing Barbie as a champion of climate activism, “hitting the roads in her electric vehicle,” and of destigmatizing mental health care.

    If there was a time in the culture when a giant summer film event was something of an American unifier — a moment to share over-buttered popcorn through big-budget shoot-’em-ups and sagas of insatiable sharks — that time is not 2023.

    And, as ever, the political class’s performative investment in “Barbie” — the outrage and the embrace — can seem mostly like a winking bit.

    What to make of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Democrat of Michigan, posting a Barbie meant to resemble herself beside the Instagram caption, “Come on Barbie, let’s go govern”?

    What does it mean, exactly, when Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia, says of himself, “This Ken is pushing to end maternal mortality”?

    Certainly, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, has summoned practiced gravity in accusing “Barbie” of working to appease the Chinese. (Some Republicans have fixated on a scene that features a crudely drawn map that supposedly depicts the so-called nine-dash line, which indicates Chinese ownership of oceanic territory that is disputed under international law. Vietnam has banned showings of the movie in the country over that image.)

    “Obviously, the little girls that are going to see Barbie, none of them are going to have any idea what those dashes mean,” Mr. Cruz told Fox News. “This is really designed for the eyes of the Chinese censors, and they’re trying to kiss up to the Chinese Communist Party because they want to make money selling the movie.”

    The response on the right is not a one-off. For a generation of conservative personalities, weaned on Andrew Breitbart’s much-cited observation that “politics is downstream of culture,” Hollywood and other ostensibly liberal bastions are to be confronted head-on, lest their leanings ensnare young voters without a fight.

    Recent years have provided ample evidence, some on the right say, for a “go woke, go broke” view that progressivism is bad business. Last year’s apolitically patriotic “Top Gun: Maverick” was a smashing success, as was this year’s kid-friendly “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” By contrast, critics on the right contended that Disney’s remake of “The Little Mermaid,” with its title character portrayed by the Black actress Halle Bailey, failed to match its producers’ hopes. (Of course, there is no way to trace exactly what determines any movie’s success or failure, and many observers adhere to the screenwriter William Goldman’s axiom: “Nobody knows anything.”)

    “Barbie” cannot be said to have gone broke. But its purported politics, conservatives have argued, did damage it by making it less entertaining — “a lecture,” in the words of The Federalist’s Rich Cromwell, “that self-identifies as a movie.”

    Kyle Smith, a reviewer at The Wall Street Journal, complained that the film “contains more swipes at ‘the patriarchy’ than a year’s worth of Ms. magazine.”

    The film seems at times (gentle spoiler alert) to be engaging with “the patriarchy” ironically, infusing it with knowing Southern California vapidity, décor that seems inspired by hair metal and a heavy emphasis on weight lifting and “brewskis.”

    When it comes time (less gentle spoiler alert) to reclaim Barbie Land, the Barbies distract the Kens by indulging their tendency for exaggerated gestures of malehood like playing acoustic guitar and insisting on showing a date “The Godfather” while talking over it.

    Mr. Shapiro has sounded unconvinced that the movie is broadly in on its own jokes.

    “The actual argument the movie is making is that if women enjoy men, it’s because they have been brainwashed by the patriarchy,” he said in his review.

    He called the film, with a straight face, two hours he will rue wasting as he sits on his deathbed.

    “The things I do,” he said, “for my audience.”

    Anjali Huynh contributed reporting.

    Matt Flegenheimer is a reporter covering national politics. He started at The Times in 2011 on the Metro desk covering transit, City Hall and campaigns. More about Matt Flegenheimer

    Marc Tracy is a reporter on the Culture desk. More about Marc Tracy

     

    ARTICLE URL

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/24/us/politics/barbie-movie-newsom-gaetz.html

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      forum post

       

  15. richardmurray

    Time to Break Up Hollywood
    Hollywood is trapped in a death spiral, with streaming giants struggling to profit while smothering the industry itself. Finally the writers stood up. But will it be enough?
    MATT STOLLER
    MAY 14, 2023

     

    Today I’m writing about the biggest Hollywood labor dispute in decades, as screenwriters enter their third week striking against streaming giants like Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Warner Bros, and Comcast. Far from a narrow conflict over money, this fight is existential, a question of whether America can be a place where stars are born and movies are made.

    As one striker put it < https://strikegeist.substack.com/p/daily-digest-why-this-strike-feels > , the strike is “about the whole corporate dominance of America.” 

    (The Ankler’s excellent Strikegeist < https://strikegeist.substack.com/ > newsletter is covering the strike, and I highly recommend it if you are interested in what’s going on day-to-day.) 

    Of America’s many inventions, reality TV does not rank as highly as, say, the semiconductor, the laser, the polio vaccine, or manned flight. But from Candid Camera in the 1940s to MTV’s The Real World in the early 1990s, the medium of reality TV has been as influential in its own way as rock music and hip hop. But today, it’s Great Britain, not America, creating many of the most popular reality shows

    Here are some of the shows that got their start in the U.K., and then were licensed for an American audience: American Idol, America’s Got Talent, X-Factor, Dancing with the Stars, Wife Swap, Undercover Boss, Super Nanny, Who Wants to be a Millionaire. And there are hundreds more. In the U.K, independent producers have increased their TV related revenues from £1.5 billion in 2004 to more than £2.6 billion in 2017.

    What happened? Put simply, governments changed laws so that independent producers gained bargaining leverage in the U.K., and lost it in the U.S.

    Let’s start with the U.K. In the early 2000s, the British government embarked on a strategy to grow its independent production industry. It facilitated something called the “Terms of Trade,” < https://cmpa.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Appendix-C-Oliver-Ohlbaum-Associates-2018-The-impact-of-the-UK-te...-1.pdf > a broadcaster code of conduct to remedy the bargaining asymmetry between dominant broadcasters and independent producers. This pact required four big public channels in the UK - BBC1, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 - to commission < https://www.smallscreenbigdebate.co.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/221955/annex-2-statement-future-of-public-service-media.pdf > 25% of their production from independent producers, and to allow those producers to retain copyrights from their work they could license abroad. 

    This was a soft break-up of the industry along vertical lines, and it made the U.K a great place to do business. As the CEO of the firm that makes American Idol, The X Factor, and Britain's Got Talent said, "There is no other country where you have these terms of trade. In the UK, it's brilliant!" In 2010, independents held 50% of the market, beating in-house network programming. Exports of British content exploded.

    In the U.S., by contrast, legal changes over the last thirty years stripped independent producers of their bargaining power with distributors, diminishing the ability to create great products. In 2019, I laid it out in one of my first newsletter issues, titled The Slow Death of Hollywood < https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-slow-death-of-hollywood > , explaining why weirdly themed movies like Back to the Future became smash hits in the 1980s, and why that wouldn’t happen today. 

    In 1985, theater owners had more choices about what content to sell, and could decide to distribute content that was well-liked and popular without assuming a massive barrage of marketing would force them to stock the most popular stuff immediately. So they could afford to show different movies, experiment, and then bring in the popular ones over time. The industry was more decentralized. Stars, directors and writers with good track records, studios, distributors, movie theaters, critics, and moviegoers shared power.

    [This market structure harkens] back to bitter battles in the 1930s and 1940s between New Deal antitrust attorneys and studio heads, which culminated in the Paramount Decrees of 1948 < https://www.justice.gov/atr/paramount-decree-review >  and the end of the autocratic so-called ‘Studio System.’ These decrees forced studios to sell their theaters, and prevented them from engaging in tying and bundling practices to force theater owners to take their films. New Hollywood, with countercultural stars like Jack Nicholson, emerged in the 1960s to revamp the industry. In 1985, weird popular movies like Back to the Future took advantage of this open market structure. 

    A similar situation existed in the television industry, which was broken apart in 1970 by Richard Nixon’s FCC with Financial Interest and Syndication Rules (‘fin-syn’) < https://www.csmonitor.com/1991/0404/finsyn.html > , and a related rule called the Prime-Time Access Rule (PTAR). These rules blocked TV networks from distributing their own content in prime time, opening the market for TV content to third party producers who would take more creative risks. The Cosby Show, Seinfeld, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and All in the Family were some of the results of this policy choice to open up the TV market. 

    Both the Paramount Decrees and the Fin-syn rules were designed to eliminate conflicts of interest by splitting the studio from the distribution. Studios had to create high quality work, and if they didn’t, distributors could choose to sell someone else’s art.

    The rules structured a profitable and high-quality industry, with different kinds of TV shows and movies. Media was a series of markets, from movie theaters and prime time TV, to hundreds of local TV networks for syndication, to video tapes and DVDs, to foreign markets. Creators experimented, while audiences ruled with their preferences. Hollywood is a politically left-wing place, but conservative religious hits, like The Passion of the Christ, got into theaters, and sold tickets.

    In the 1980s, antitrust enforcers, influenced by Chicago School scholars like Robert Bork, became far more tolerant of concentration economy-wide. This legal revolution had significant implications for movies. In 1995, the top five movie chains owned a third of U.S. theaters, with the biggest, Carmike, owning < https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/07/business/media/amc-biggest-movie-theater-chain.html> around 2,500. By 2016, the top five held over 53% of the movie theaters in the country, with the largest, AMC, owning 8,380. 

    This consolidation changed movies. In the late 1990s, giant new multiplexes “jolted the Hollywood power structure,” < https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB885343258697290000 > as theater operators played the biggest hits on several screens at once. Films began to do most of their business in the first few weeks, so well-branded tent pole movies with strong IP - aka Marvel-style movies - displaced word of mouth. As Adam Mastroianni noted with this chart, movies, along with much of pop culture, became an oligopoly. < https://www.experimental-history.com/p/pop-culture-has-become-an-oligopoly?s=r > 

    now03.png

    The Clinton administration enacted another legal change by ending fin-syn rules, causing a merger boom of content and distribution. Immediately, for instance, Castle Rock Entertainment, the production company behind shows like Seinfeld, sold out to Turner Broadcasting, which in turn sold out to Time Warner. Disney bought ABC, and then rolled-up a series of rivals < https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/its-time-to-break-up-disney-part >  to acquire large amounts of well-known intellectual property - like Marvel and Star Wars. 

    Then came streaming, which wasn’t very important at first. Prior to 2010, the major studios sold movies to theaters, and TV shows to cable and TV networks. Several sold to Netflix, which they saw as just another distributor. But in 2010, the Obama administration approved the merger of NBC and Comcast, a further erosion of the vertical separation at the heart of the Paramount Decrees and the fin-syn rules.

    Technological innovation happens along the legal framework it is born into, so streaming, which could have decentralized had it happened in another era, did the opposite.

    When Comcast bought NBC, Netflix, then a minor player, feared it would lose access to content from studios. So it began buying its own movies and shows, combining distribution and production as the first studio-streamer. Apple and am*zon, for whom Hollywood revenues were a rounding error, eventually entered the business. Netflix, Apple, and am*zon put pressure on the traditional studios, who were judged based on profit and loss. Studios realized Wall Street was valuing Netflix stock more highly as a ‘tech’ company. They wanted in on that as well. All except Sony followed Netflix and became studio-streamers.

    But something wasn’t right with the streaming model Netflix introduced. There was no way to know ratings or box office take, since Netflix held its own data without third party auditors. Its then-CEO, Reed Hastings, pretended Netflix used its data to scientifically know what users wanted. But that wasn’t true. (See “The Algorithm is a Lie.” < https://entertainment.substack.com/p/the-algorithm-is-a-lie?s=w > ) Netflix was just overpaying for content, and losing money to acquire market share, a technique known as predatory pricing (that used to be illegal until the Supreme Court de facto legalized < https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/509/209/ > it in 1993.) 

    Netflix’s model was an attack on the bargain between creators and studios at the heart of the industry. This bargain is that everyone who makes movies or shows - production houses, studios, writers, actors, or directors - split the profits from any individual piece of content, profits generated by selling movies or shows into actual markets. Producers, for instance, often retained the intellectual property of a show, and licensed it. Traditional labor compensation packages, known as ‘residuals,’ are based on theatrical releases, or what ratings TV shows achieved when broadcast. Additionally, both categories might qualify for additional compensation through syndication or DVD sales, foreign market sales, and sometimes streaming. (It’s why the cast of Friends is still making millions of dollars a year even today.)

    When Netflix sought to fully integrate the production and distribution, this bargain broke down, because there were no markets or prices to use to value anything. Netflix paid creators an upfront fee, and then that content was on Netflix, with no opportunity to syndicate or sell it elsewhere. Beyond breaking down price signals, Netflix wouldn’t even tell creators how their shows did in terms of ratings. It also refused to allow American production houses to retain IP. Other studios copied Netflix, upending the labor model for content. No one knew what anything was worth.

    The lack of market signals screwed up the industry because markets, as it turns out, have an important function in Hollywood. They represent a feedback loop to the studios, telling executives the preferences of the audience, based on whether the audience (or advertisers) are willing to pay. The tacky way to understand this dynamic is that when a movie did well at the box office, other studios would often copy that kind of movie, in hopes of appealing to the large audience that saw the original. But what happens when you can’t get distribution for mid-market movies because the few theater chain owners don’t want it? What happens when there are no TV ratings because it’s all streamed? What happens when, as happened during the pandemic, there is no box office?

    Obviously, at some level, people are still paying money in the form of subscription fees. But decisions for what to make happen about individual pieces of content are difficult without this feedback from the audience. A creative executive can’t, after all, green light a streaming service, they can only green light a movie or TV show.

     

    When pricing went away, when customers were simply paying a subscription fee every month instead of buying tickets or DVDs, executives had no way to know what to make or how to value anything. As just one example, in 2021, Warner Brothers put their whole slate of films onto their streaming service at the same time as they went into theaters, revealing how executives were mis-pricing their products. Another illustration of a deep structural problem with the industry is that bankable movie stars, the most important commodity in Hollywood, are aging, because you can’t break new stars.

    In an attempt to monopolize, studio-streamers accidentally transformed a high-wage, high-profit business into a low-wage low-profit commodified one. For a time, this decline in industry health wasn’t obvious. Netflix had told Wall Street a story that its overall goal was to get customers locked in, and this convinced the street to give the capital to make lots of content regardless of profit. Other studios followed, overpaying for content in the hopes of being the last man standing, in the era of what was known as “Peak TV.” < https://slate.com/culture/2023/03/peak-tv-over-golden-age-hbo-streaming.html >  As Discovery board member John Malone put it < https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/john-malone-talks-streaming-wars-1235264416/ > , “Everyone went for this mad Oklahoma land rush of streaming … That was a fool’s errand.” 

    The lock-in was a mirage, as consumers switched services to find content they wanted to watch. No one, as it turns out, wanted a streaming service, they wanted individual shows and movies. Vertically integrated streaming services, contrasted with markets where consumers pay for what they want, aren’t very profitable. HBO, Peacock, and Paramount all lost money < https://www.vox.com/recode/2023/1/5/23539590/streaming-losses-netflix-hbo-peter-kafka-media-column >  in the first three quarters of 2022, and this year, Disney’s streaming services raised prices < https://deadline.com/2023/05/disney-pulling-content-off-streaming-in-strategic-rethink-1235362374/ > and removed content, and still can’t make a penny. 

    Most of the consolidation discussed so far is vertical, where studios and distributors combined. But throughout this period, traditional mergers, where rivals bought rivals, also continued. In 2019, Disney bought Fox, shrinking the number of major studios into a narrower oligopoly (and cutting the output of films < https://theankler.com/p/the-disney-fox-deal-whos-right?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=15657&post_id=97369692&isFreemail=false> ). Last year, Discovery bought Time Warner, combining two big buyers of reality TV. 

    Consolidation, combining both production and distribution, and shrinking the number of studios, led to budget cuts. For writers, this meant smaller writer rooms, shorter seasons, and worse terms. Writer pay fell by 14% over < https://www.wcvb.com/article/what-do-striking-hollywood-writers-want/43791834 > the last five years, with sweatshop conditions < https://theankler.com/p/showrunner-crisis-its-a-sweatshop > even for those with the most creative control, the showrunners. Others felt it too; independent TV production houses, such as firms who create reality TV shows, struggled. They no longer have any choice but to sell to one of a few studio-streamers. Streamers demanded the intellectual property of anything they bought, which meant independent production houses began working as contract players for a fee, almost like chicken farmers or gig workers. There was no point in creating something great, since all the upside went to the streaming giants. 

    Nothing in Hollywood, in other words, is working now that the underlying pricing system has been reduced in importance. The studio-streamers aren’t making money, the workers aren’t getting compensated like they used to, and the cultural relevance of Hollywood is declining. (And that last point is very weird, because Hollywood should have been able to take advantage of the remarkable telecommunications revolution of the last thirty years, but hasn’t.)

    This industry-wide collapse is at the heart of the writers strike that’s taking place right now, ever since the industry contract with screenwriters expired at the beginning of the month. What the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) wants, is a fix to the devastation vertical integration has wrought on the industry. Their official demands are more money, access to data on how their shows do, as well as also minimum staffing requirements for shows and better lengths of employment for writers. To add to the pressure, over the next few months, the Director’s Guild and the Screen Actors Guild will also be renegotiating < https://abc7.com/hollywood-writers-strike-los-angeles-guild-of-america-directors/13229141/#:~:text=The Writers Guild of America's,Editor in Chief Cynthia Littleton. > their contracts. 

    Some of the WGA demands address the power imbalance more directly than others. More residuals is a standard labor demand, while better data on streaming would actually ameliorate industry structure. Minimum staffing requirements are a bit more controversial, according to The Ankler’s Richard Rushfield. But fundamentally, the problem the writers face is much bigger than an unfair deal. It is in fact the same problem that everyone - writers, actors, directors, producers, crew members, and executives - all face; the industry itself is badly structured, and there is no political leadership < https://theankler.com/p/rushfield-the-very-bad-choices-that > among studio CEOs to address the dysfunction.

    Most in Hollywood feel in their gut the dysfunction, and the proof is in the support unions are showing one another. Believe it or not, labor solidarity in the industry is rare. During the 2007 writers strike, for instance, Teamsters would drive past picket lines and give the strikers the middle finger. Two weeks ago, however, Teamster leader Lindsay Dougherty told < https://strikegeist.substack.com/p/rushfield-day-3-netflix-bears-the >  writers at a strike rally, “If you put up a line, the trucks will fucking stop... The only way we’re gonna beat these mother fuckers is if we do it together."

    It’s not just unions. Agents are pitching in, even though agents and writers had been at war relatively recently. And the producers are backing the writers as well, quietly. One strike captain told Elaine Low that “they’ve received boxes of doughnuts from producers who refused to share their names,” but that “the anonymous drive-by doughnuts were well received.” It’s remarkable that producers are afraid to have their names associated with a strike they support, but in a sense, the fear is the point.

    Even the Wall Street financiers themselves see the problem, in the form of stagnating share prices. From their point of view, however, the problem isn’t that studio-streamers are too powerful, but that they are too weak. As media tycoon John Malone last year told the New York Times, studios, especially smaller ones, don’t have enough pricing power, and will ”inevitably have to combine in order to try and become profitable.” This view is near-consensus in the C-Suite; former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar recently wrote in the WSJ < https://www.wsj.com/articles/jason-kilar-chaotic-streaming-wars-11670177734 > , he expects there will only be two or three studios remaining after another merger wave, and a bevy of billionaires from Comcast and Discovery are all planning < https://puck.news/lazard-fears-nbcu-c-suite-tea-leaves/?_cio_id=f6c60604e79a01a8c408&utm_campaign=The+Daily+Courant+-+LEADS+(5%2F1%2F23)&utm_content=The+Daily+Courant+-+LEADS+(5%2F1%2F23)&utm_medium=email_action&utm_source=customer.io > for the “inevitable” merger of NBC and Warner Bros. Discovery. And am*zon is reportedly interested < https://nypost.com/2023/03/28/am*zon-reportedly-interested-in-buying-amc-entertainment/ >

     in buying the AMC theater chain.

    In other words, rather than returning the industry to profitability by separating out distribution and studios once again, the goal is to further consolidate Hollywood to squeeze pricing power out of consumers and creators.

    And that’s why this fight is existential. For the strikers, the problem is how to negotiate a deal providing a reasonable living making commercially viable TV shows and movies. For the studio-streamers, however, preserving a domestic creative industry is fundamentally unimportant. Their problem is a lack of pricing power, aka too much competition among relatively undifferentiated streaming services who must bid against each for both talent and audience. Their way out is to drive a hard bargain, while trying to engineer another set of mergers.

    As the Entertainment Strategy Guy notes < https://entertainmentstrategyguy.com/2023/05/09/sending-a-strategy-postcard-from-strike-land/> , and as the reality TV imports from the U.K. show, there is now production capacity all over the world, and shows and movies are regularly imported into the U.S. The South Korean show Squid Game was the most popular show on Netflix, ever. This CNBC headline says it all: “‘Squid Game’ success shines a light on how cheap it is to make TV shows outside the U.S.”  < https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/16/netflixs-squid-game-success-shines-light-on-international-discounts.html > As unimaginable as it might be to think of Hollywood itself disappearing, why couldn’t TV and movies just be one more industry the U.S. outsources? 

    In other words, this strike is more than just a problem for the writers, it’s about whether the U.S. wants to have the capacity to make commercially viable movies and television shows. If we do, then we’ll need a real political coalition to break up the studio-streamers.

    It’s a good moment to have this conversation, because the strike has focused everyone in Hollywood on problems in the industry. Different stakeholders in the industry are going to have to build a political argument for a revival of some form of the fin-syn or Paramount Decrees. We need Congressional hearings, and industry commissions with recommendations. It could be a Terms of Trade type arrangement so producers get to keep IP, or it could be something else. But it will have to split the industry giants so they are either distributors or studios, but not both. Markets have to exist again. I don’t know how to address consolidated theater chains, but that’s a problem as well.

    Finally, I would note that this strike is just one of a series of battles over who controls our media systems. There are of course many legislative proposals and antitrust suits to address social media and big tech, but it goes far beyond that. Last year, for instance, the Biden antitrust division blocked < https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/book-publishing-mega-merger-blocked > a merger of Penguin and Simon & Schuster, foiling consolidation in books. At academic publishing monopolist Elsevier, 40 scientists just resigned < https://www.salon.com/2023/05/10/elsevier-editor-resignation-neuroimage/ > from editorial positions at a journal on brain imaging to protest the “greed” of their publisher. 

    There is also anger in the national security world, and on the right, over this problem. Congressman Mike Gallagher, from the Special Select Committee on China, led a delegation < https://deadline.com/2023/04/disney-china-bob-iger-mike-gallagher-interview-1235322443/ > to Hollywood to meet with CEOs about Chinese influence in the industry (which is another consequence of consolidation). There’s a public fight between Tucker Carlson and Fox News, which is about media control as well. Carlson was fired, and was subjected < https://www.axios.com/2023/05/07/fox-news-tucker-carlson > to a non-compete agreement to block him from creating a rival. And who else is fighting with studio giant Disney? That would be Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and at some level this conservative anger is with corporate power. Maybe a ‘break up Hollywood studios’ battle cry would have some pull with them. 

    America is a fractured society, but the truth is, most of us have something in common. We love storytelling, and we don’t want a small group telling us what stories we can tell one another. A coalition is possible to save this magnificent art form. When push comes to shove, very few Americans, in Hollywood or elsewhere, are happy “about the whole corporate dominance of America.”

     

     

    ARTICLE URL
    https://open.substack.com/pub/mattstoller/p/can-a-writers-strike-save-hollywood?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

     

    THE IMPACT OF TERMS OF TRADE ON THE UK's TELEVISION CONTENT PRODUCTION SECTOR

    end101.png

    end102.png

    end103.png

    end104.png

    end105.png

    end106.png

    end107.png

    end108.png

    end109.png

    end110.png

    end111.png

    end112.png

    end113.png

    end114.png

    end115.png

    end116.png

    end117.png

    end118.png

    end119.png

     

    PRODUCING PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA CONTENT
     

    end201.png

    end202.png

    end203.png

    end204.png

    end205.png

    end206.png

    end207.png

    end208.png

    end209.png

    end210.png

    end211.png

    end212.png

    end213.png

    end214.png

    end215.png

    end216.png

    end217.png

    end218.png

    end219.png

    end220.png

    end221.png

    end222.png

    end223.png

    end224.png

    end225.png

    end226.png

    end227.png

    end228.png

    end229.png

    end230.png

     

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      forum post

       

  16. richardmurray

     

    First act, a set of educators, i think college are helping a colleague leave but they all have an affinity to this colleague, a curiosity about his nature. I concur with Bixby, real human beings are not alarmist and in this select case, all of these are seasoned educators used to slowly thinking about something, so they wouldn't call the cops or paddy wagon immediately. 

    Why did I not guess the black leather jacket would call someone from outside first. I thought it would be billingly's character the physics or chemistry professor.

    Second act, a female teacher loves him, reminds me of that twilight zone , Long Live Walter JAmeson, by the dead early Charles Beaumont, but extended.

    I love Crude demonstration , hilarious, I am not superman. Loving Tony Todd's acting. 

    27:34 first seeing the ocean

    28:42 he studied with the buddha, and i loved the earlier birth of the vampire myth

    29:06 the first betrayal of character, leather jacket should had considered he think of being outed. Considering he called someone he is either biding time or betraying himself.

    29:38 ahh well done, he was expecting, 

    30:31 i wish i had been here from the beginning, I concur:) 

    32:16 he survived the bubonic plague, typhoid , smallpox

    32:53 good point, being immortal in a cage isn't desired

    33:33 black leather is wrong, common sense isn't insulted by an immortal being, common sense accepts tthe unique is plausible even if it can't not be explained.

    35:19 true Tony todd, but time is also the most precious thing in existence.

    35:52 exactly, the second is a human construct. an algorithmic truth, not assessed from nature.

    36:27 funny moment. slow movie but for those who like to overthink and like dialog fun

    37:21 is he lucky? that is the point of the story

    39:41 exactly, he is outside most of humanity yet still human, a minority of one

    41:46 I love that he didn't go into his past wives or children by the invasive psychiatrist

    42:50 good point, the one great chaotic moment is the "immortal man" chose to even do this. I comprehend the writer's point. It is a random idea in one of many lives. But I must admit, my long lived characters wouldn't do this, unless they wish to be caught or have their cycle of lives undone.

    43:07 he didn't think of these people's feelings before he told them ahhh, i disagree bixby.

    43:37 the psychiatrist, white haired is trying to pull off a guilt trip, i bet he was diagnosed to die soon

    44:50 ahh i knew it was a tragedy, the psychiatrist wife died yesterday
    I love it, permit me to be infantile by myself. 

    46:58 my first wedding :) funny charades

    47:54 this movie clearly couldn't make it in theaters.

    48:48 love his answer to 1292 ad

    50:04 funny, about the primitive tribe in new guinea:)

    51:03 the older woman is a hard core christian

    51:47 no way skipping the biblical figure, and now he wants to call it a night, this is what you get when you ask those who study knowledge about a person who has lived longer than common

    53:10 he is jesus hahaha! 

    53:24 sit down edith, i know 

    54:16 yes, sit down edith, lovely honesity from the biologist about his kin

    54:41 tony todd, modern, that's good:)

    55:29 ahh he is espousing the old belief that jesus learned buddhist ways. it makes sense historically in one way. Buddhism is older than the roman empire, and from the travelers, who were common at that time, labeled magi, who traveled freely in the roman empire because of the might of the roman empire... ok.

    56:41 exactly, Tony Todd, christianity was born from the multiracial roman empire. 

    58:26 good point, buddha /jesus/the christian god, may not be happy 

    59:04 you can tell this was written on bixby's deathbed, a great mortuary story. I wonder what I will write in my last moments.

    59:35 hhahaha, the psychiatrist came back:) haha soul saved:) 

    1:00:00 nice bridge, we don't need to reintroduce the old topics for the psychiatrist, his shame on leaving.

    1:00:53 great joke, nothing unusual in the path of the psychiatrist until the day he met a caveman who thought himself jesus

    1:01:46 piety is the mistake they bring to the lessons haha, he is on a roll, Bixby is enjoying himself in his last days

    1:03:10 thank you biologist, people make to light the influence of drugs, no, if he is taking a drug it isn't making him go up or down be violent or peaceful, it isn't changing him at all

    1:04:20 thank you tony todd, i don't blame you, stay calm and relax.

    1:04:55 exactly, psychiatrist, or the modern mythologies of MLKjr or Adolf Hitler

    1:07:42 Its funny , in a group called african american literary book club, do you know how many black members suggest the usa will be forever? why is that? why is it, black people who knows kemet has all other human communities by thousands of years will be bested by the usa? what are blacks in the usa afraid of?.... 

    1:08:20 how do you know?  I don't smell it. 
    exactly, you know when it will rain , all humans do. 

    1:09:20 etymology, this does happen. words matter.

    1:10:25 good acting, they are all trapped by this story of their colleague

    1:11:00 if edith says you aren't jesus one more time

    1:11:56 edith have broken down , the psychiatrist had to shed light

    1:12:49 the psychiatrist is wrong, he doesn't demand the truth, he demands the lie to keep peace

    1:13:44 he is bluffing, well done, he is giving them safety

    1:14:22 easy tonny todd:) he want to kill him

    1:15:44 it ends safe, well done bixby, he lets the thinkers get off easy

    1:16:25 exactly , the woman who lives him is right. 

    1:17:59 edith knows. she will leave it

    1:18:14 Tony Todd, a latitude in what we call reality... anything is possible
    I am going to watch star trek. and yes, good move tony todd
    Drop me a line whenever

    1:19:34 the psychiatrist found out
    easy psychiatrist , the break down. ahh well done, Bixby, ahh the psychiatrist was a man he knew. 

    1;21:45 exactly, he never saw his own child again.

    1:22:34 yes, let her decide

    hahaha, great hook, who knows, let the viewer decide.

    IN CONCLUSION
    Ok, this movie was fun, but not for the general audience. Alittle careless of him, but that is part of John's humanity, humans even long living one's will make mistakes. 
    I know this is an aside, but i love the credits , they are large enough to see and slow enough to follow, many movies have very uncaring or cheap credits.

    I say, this is a well constructed example of someone long lived revealing themselves in a paraspontaneous way.

    Just thoughtfulness.

    I didn't time index from the begining cause I was watching it side relatives , we do those things in our home, but I am glad my relatives went to watch other things as I could write more specifically and i forgot some points early on:) 

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      @Troy thank you, I am used to this, when I read books or listen to music or watch movies I am paying this kind of attention, part of it is how I was raised with art, my two black parents didn't blockade any art from me but also showed interest so it taught me to treat all art that way, while on the other side, as an artists always trying to learn, I want to see if I can decipher messages ideas and how they are executed in the work. 

       

      enjoy the book and definitely share your thoughts:) 

    2. (See 1 other reply to this status update)

  17. richardmurray

    now04.png

     

    NATO Isn’t What It Says It Is
    By Grey Anderson and Thomas Meaney

    Mr. Anderson is the editor of “Natopolitanism: The Atlantic Alliance Since the Cold War,” to which Mr. Meaney is a contributor.

    NATO leaders convening this week in Vilnius, Lithuania, have every reason to toast their success.

    Only four years ago, on the eve of another summit, the organization looked to be in low water; in the words of President Emmanuel Macron of France, it was undergoing nothing short of “brain death.” Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the situation has been transformed. As NATO plans to welcome Sweden into its ranks — Finland became a full-fledged member in April — and dispatch troops to reinforce its eastern flank, European Union allies are finally making good on long-deferred promises to increase military spending. Public opinion has followed suit. If Russia sought to divide Europe, President Biden could plausibly declare last spring that it had instead fully “NATO-ized” the continent.

    This turnabout has understandably energized the alliance’s supporters. The statement of purpose from Jens Stoltenberg, its secretary general, that “the strength of NATO is the best possible tool we have to maintain peace and security” has never had more loyal adherents. Even critics of the organization — such as China hawks who see it as a distraction from the real threat in East Asia and restrainers who would prefer that Washington refocus on diplomatic solutions and problems at home — concede that NATO’s purpose is primarily the defense of Europe.

    But NATO, from its origins, was never primarily concerned with aggregating military power. Fielding 100 divisions at its Cold War height, a small fraction of Warsaw Pact manpower, the organization could not be counted on to repel a Soviet invasion and even the continent’s nuclear weapons were under Washington’s control. Rather, it set out to bind Western Europe to a far vaster project of a U.S.-led world order, in which American protection served as a lever to obtain concessions on other issues, like trade and monetary policy. In that mission, it has proved remarkably successful.

    Many observers expected NATO to close shop after the collapse of its Cold War rival. But in the decade after 1989, the organization truly came into its own. NATO acted as a ratings agency for the European Union in Eastern Europe, declaring countries secure for development and investment. The organization pushed would-be partners to adhere to a liberal, pro-market creed, according to which — as President Bill Clinton’s national security adviser put it — “the pursuit of democratic institutions, the expansion of free markets” and “the promotion of collective security” marched in lock step. European military professionals and reform-minded elites formed a willing constituency, their campaigns boosted by NATO’s information apparatus.

    When European populations proved too stubborn, or undesirably swayed by socialist or nationalist sentiments, Atlantic integration proceeded all the same. The Czech Republic was a telling case. Faced with a likely “no” vote in a referendum on joining the alliance in 1997, the secretary general and top NATO officials saw to it that the government in Prague simply dispense with the exercise; the country joined two years later. The new century brought more of the same, with an appropriate shift in emphasis. Coinciding with the global war on terrorism, the “big bang” expansion of 2004 — in which seven countries acceded — saw counterterrorism supersede democracy and human rights in alliance rhetoric. Stress on the need for liberalization and public sector reforms remained a constant.

    In the realm of defense, the alliance was not as advertised. For decades, the United States has been the chief provider of weapons, logistics, air bases and battle plans. The war in Ukraine, for all the talk of Europe stepping up, has left that asymmetry essentially untouched. Tellingly, the scale of U.S. military aid — $47 billion over the first year of the conflict — is more than double that offered by European Union countries combined. European spending pledges may also turn out to be less impressive than they appear. More than a year after the German government publicized the creation of a special $110 billion fund for its armed forces, the bulk of the credits remain unused. In the meantime, German military commanders have said that they lack sufficient munitions for more than two days of high-intensity combat.

    Whatever the levels of expenditure, it is remarkable how little military capability Europeans get for the outlays involved. Lack of coordination, as much as penny-pinching, hamstrings Europe’s ability to ensure its own security. By forbidding duplication of existing capabilities and prodding allies to accept niche roles, NATO has stymied the emergence of any semiautonomous European force capable of independent action. As for defense procurement, common standards for interoperability, coupled with the sheer size of the U.S. military-industrial sector and bureaucratic impediments in Brussels, favor American firms at the expense of their European competitors. The alliance, paradoxically, appears to have weakened allies’ ability to defend themselves.

    Yet the paradox is only superficial. In fact, NATO is working exactly as it was designed by postwar U.S. planners, drawing Europe into a dependency on American power that reduces its room for maneuver. Far from a costly charity program, NATO secures American influence in Europe on the cheap. U.S. contributions to NATO and other security assistance programs in Europe account for a tiny fraction of the Pentagon’s annual budget — less than 6 percent by a recent estimate. And the war has only strengthened America’s hand. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, roughly half of European military spending went to American manufacturers. Surging demand has exacerbated this tendency as buyers rush to acquire tanks, combat aircraft and other weapons systems, locking into costly, multiyear contracts. Europe may be remilitarizing, but America is reaping the rewards.

    In Ukraine, the pattern is clear. Washington will provide the military security, and its corporations will benefit from a bonanza of European armament orders, while Europeans will shoulder the cost of postwar reconstruction — something Germany is better poised to accomplish than the buildup of its military. The war also serves as a dress rehearsal for U.S. confrontation with China, in which European support cannot be so easily counted on. Limiting Beijing’s access to strategic technologies and promoting American industry are hardly European priorities, and severing European and Chinese trade is still difficult to imagine. Yet already there are signs that NATO is making headway in getting Europe to follow its lead in the theater. On the eve of a visit to Washington at the end of June, Germany’s defense minister duly advertised his awareness of “European responsibility for the Indo-Pacific” and the importance of “the rules-based international order” in the South China Sea.

    No matter their ascendance, Atlanticists fret over support for the organization being undermined by disinformation and cybermeddling. They needn’t worry. Contested throughout the Cold War, NATO remained a subject of controversy into the 1990s, when the disappearance of its adversary encouraged thoughts of a new European security architecture. Today, dissent is less audible than ever before.

    Left parties in Europe, historically critical of militarism and American power, have overwhelmingly enlisted in the defense of the West: The trajectory of the German Greens, from fierce opponents of nuclear weapons to a party seemingly willing to risk atomic war, is a particularly vivid illustration. Stateside, criticism of NATO focuses on the risks of overextending U.S. treaty obligations, not their underlying justification. The most successful alliance in history, gathering in celebration of itself, need not wait for its 75th anniversary next year to uncork the champagne.

     

    Article Link

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/11/opinion/nato-summit-vilnius-europe.html

     

    I WROTE A LETTER TO NY TIMES IN REPLY TO THIS OP-ED

     

    If NATO isn't what it says it is, then Putin's leadership of Russia is mischaracterized. Did as leader of Russia he initiated the current war in Ukraine? yes. But was this unwise for Russia? no. Based on the op-ed's words, Russia will never be an appropriate NATO member as a nuclear power, while the actions of NATO members or Europe West of Russia based on the article are clearly prepared and wanting to be modern satraps <tributary states of the Persian empire> of the USA. And to the future, the Pax Statian has a countdown or conditional , either the condition that Ukraine is a buffer between the militaries of the USA + Russia will end or a countdown to violence will begin as NATO has no where to grow. 

     

    IN  AMENDMENT

     

    Putin argued that the USA is trying to close around Russia, this opinion piece essentially says, through the will of Europe west of Rusia, Putin is 100% correct and sequentially it is in Russia's interest to stake a claim before Russia is totally surrounded and becomes a satrap of Europe west of Russia while Europe west of russia is a satrap of the usa. 

     

     

     

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      forum post

       

  18. richardmurray

    Many people in the usa are complaining about the supreme court's rulings as if the supreme court didn't make rulings that upended centuries of prior conditions. Making rulings that upend fifty years worth of rulings isn't as devastating. 

    But the key here is state power. The future USA will be based on gangs of states in its fold. Those who try to fight that coming reality are fools. 

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

       

       

      To me for a long while the issue is the usa is a collection of states, that are legally free and are intended to be dissimilar. These surpreme court rulings are simply allowing all the states to control their own destinies more. I live in New York States. Women are free to have an abortion in NY State. All the parts of lgbtq+ are free to express themselves and are protected in NY State. Schools in NY State are all free to use race. These rulings aren't stopping any state from acting in any way it wants. But these rulings allow all states to be what their majority populaces want them to be. Majority should rule. I argue for black folk who felt they could stand alone in mississippi , well maybe its time for them to leave mississippi? https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2364&type=status

  19. richardmurray

     

     

    KWL Live Q&A – All About Audiobooks with Karen Grey

    All About Audiobooks featuring Karen Grey

    The Kobo Writing Life team is happy to announce our next Live Q&A on June 29th from 12:00 PM-1:00 PM EST. KWL Director Tara and author engagement manager Laura will be joined by audiobook narrator, author, and audiobook production consultant Karen Grey! Be sure to have your questions about everything to do with audiobooks ready for this amazing talk.

    Hello authors!

    For our sixth live Q&A of the year (we’re halfway through, everyone – amazing!), audiobook narrator, author, and all-around audiobook expert and founder of Home Cooked Books, Karen Grey (who narrates under Karen White), will be in conversation with KWL’s director Tara and author engagement manager Laura, discussing all there is to do with audiobooks! We will be discussing everything from Karen’s career as an audiobook narrator to audiobook production processes to marketing your audiobooks and more.

    https://kobowritinglife.com/2023/06/01/kwl-live-qa-all-about-audiobooks-with-karen-grey/

     

    Questions to your experience: 
    What must/need to/can't/shouldn't be in the description of an audiobook?
    What is the most effective audio book excerpts or samples?
    What is the most/least effective audiobook covers?
    How should an audiobook be utilized in a newsletter?
    What is the most unique utilization of audiobooks you know of?

     

    Untimed Index Notes

    How she started in the industry
    The different labors in the industry: readers/profers/editors- you have to give the different labors time: readers will need to reread. Profers will ask for things to be reread. Editors will massage the audio for the audience.
    Picking an reader- wait for the best voice, readers are booked. A reader needs to have read at least twenty books before.
    Voice tags and changing your writing to fit audiobooks- read words aloud
    If you are an indie author, if the narrator spoke it better than you wrote it, change the ebook. 
    Give narrarators a pronunciation list
    Accept the suspense of disbelief in a story involving characters not your native or multilingual
    You can be the producers in terms of paying narrators
    People are paid for how long when book is done not how long they work in composition, the rates are wide, be careful if they are for the full production or just narration
    https://www.sagaftra.org/contracts-industry-resources/audiobooks
    Cheapest marketing offer is her newsletter
    https://airtable.com/shrwJOoufJITREr5H
    Any do or do nots for audiobook samples or covers? 
    Cover should be professionally created, a square, be recognizeable as ebook. Include narrators.
    Sample- less than 5 minutes, choosing a good meaty section, if multiple narrators, represent all of them., highly recommend posting online, avoid any flag words
    https://airtable.com/shrwJOoufJITREr5H
    https://airtable.com/shrzWXKgatyH0qpny
    Advertising on Kobo
    Talk about audiobooks in newsletter
    Link to use kobo graphics in advertising
    https://kobowritinglife.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360059386211-Rakuten-Kobo-Logos-and-Website-Buttons
    Audiobook publishers associations have done research , people are liking shorter books, audible has a rule, a book can only be in one bundle
    One point of recording short thing, if anything is under an hour for Screen actors guild, you have to pay for one hour. 

     

    now03.png

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      forum post

       

  20. richardmurray

    Juneteenth 2023 review

     


    This Juneteenth 2023 I asked the larger community to come up with a unique cultural tradition and none came forth. 

    White people say : 1949-1973 displacement programs removed over a million people and two thirds were black. 

    Name an idea for a unique Juneteenth celebration
    https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10318-juneteenth-2023-name-an-idea-for-a-unique-celebration/

    Most Black Leaders didn't advocate for reparations even though most Black people wanted and that made the usa, but it came with a negative price for Black people
    https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10327-most-black-leaders-didnt-advocate-for-reparations-even-though-most-black-people-wanted-and-that-made-the-usa-but-it-came-with-a-negative-price-for-black-people/

     

    Movement to return land taken from Black and Indigenous people in the U.S. gains momentum
    Jun 9, 2023 6:35 PM EDT
    As cities and states across the country consider various forms of reparations, California has led the way in returning land to the descendants of the dispossessed. This includes African Americans and Native Americans. But as Stephanie Sy reports, the wealth, the community and the opportunities lost are not easily recovered.

    Read the Full Transcript
    Amna Nawaz:

    As cities and states across the country consider various forms of reparations, California has led the way in returning land to the descendants of the dispossessed. That includes African Americans and Native Americans.

    But, as Stephanie Sy reports, the wealth, the community and the opportunities lost are not easily recovered.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The story of Bruce's Beach is a story about what could and should have been.

    Over 100 years ago, an industrious Black woman in Southern California dreamt of owning a beach resort, but was refused whenever she tried. Willa Bruce eventually acquired land in Manhattan Beach, telling The Los Angeles Times in 1912: "I own this land, and I'm going to keep it."

    She and her husband, Charles, built a lodge, a place where Black vacationers could enjoy a stay at the beach.

    Patricia Bruce-Carter, Relative of Bruce Family: They were having a beautiful time, and they built it to share, because whenever people came to California, they wanted them to have somewhere to go.

    Kavon Ward, Founder, Where Is My Land:

    When I think about Charles and Willa Bruce, I think about entrepreneurs, I think about Black excellence, I think about community.

    George Fatheree III, Attorney For Bruce Family:

    The reality is, the Bruces and their patrons were wealthy.

    Stephanie Sy:

    A stately photo of the Bruces on their wedding day, decked out in finery, foretold the makings of a power couple. The display of Black success outraged the white neighbors and powers that be, says attorney George Fatheree.

    George Fatheree III:

    In the light of harassment, intimidation, violence, their business just got more and more successful, and until the city of Manhattan Beach hatched a scheme to take the property via a racially motivated eminent domain.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The Bruces' dream was stolen, their property essentially seized for a pittance in compensation, and only after they sued.

    Kavon Ward:

    This is it, I would say from right here to maybe this building here.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Community activist Kavon Ward first learned of the Bruces a few years after she moved to Manhattan Beach in 2017.

    Kavon Ward:

    This country often tells us that — Black people, that we're lazy, or we don't work hard enough, or all we have to do is pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. And here we are in the 19-teens and the 1920s, and this Black couple did exactly that, only to have their land stolen and to die as cooks in someone else's kitchen, when they had this whole beachfront resort here.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Ward began campaigning for the land to be returned to the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce during the summer of 2020.

    Less than two years later, she succeeded, with the help of Fatheree.

    George Fatheree III:

    For a century, our government at every level has enacted policies to dispossess Black people of the right to own property and create wealth. And what was so powerful about the return of the property of the Bruce family is, we see a path forward to finally counter some of those false narratives.

    Stephanie Sy:

    As unique and complex as the Bruce's Beach land back deal is, it does offer a path forward for other groups that might seek a return of land, not least of which are the original inhabitants of Los Angeles.

    Before Spanish missionaries arrived, the Tongva roamed a 4,000-square-mile swathe of Southern California called Tovaangar stretching from the coast to the mountains.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson, Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Land Conservancy:

    We have been very systematically erased. We were enslaved. We have gone through about three waves of genocide.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Twenty-seven-year-old Samantha Morales-Johnson recently became the land return coordinator for a Tongva conservancy, a job she could only have dreamed of as a child.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson:

    This land was returned, which I was not expecting in my lifetime, let alone my grandfather's.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The one-acre property in Altadena was transferred last year by a Jewish landowner whose own family faced displacement and oppression.

    Johnson said the protests that erupted after the police killing of George Floyd raised the nation's consciousness.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson:

    I think it made people more aware of all of the injustices that happen in America.

    Stephanie Sy:

    When Johnson was growing up, council meetings and holiday parties were held in a borrowed space.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson:

    I think it was a converted taco restaurant with, like, a little parking lot. There was no earth to even grow anything in that concrete building.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The Altadena property, which overlooks a scenic canyon, marks the first time in nearly 200 years the Tongva have legally owned land to use as they wish.

    So, this is the white sage.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson:

    This is the white sage. This is the only place where we can plant all Native trees with full sovereignty and Native plants with full sovereignty.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Work is under way to remove the overgrown invasive species that were planted here. The old resilient oaks will remain. Eventually, the site will host tribal gatherings and offer educational programs.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson:

    So, the beautiful thing about this land is that there is a lot of hope for restoration even underneath all of the mess that we have.

    Stephanie Sy:

    So-called land back agreements are still rare. Other recent examples include the purchase of nearly two square miles of land for $4.5 million by the Esselen Tribe in Central California.

    And the city of Oakland recently returned five acres of a local park to the East Bay Ohlone Tribe. In L.A., different Tongva groups are looking for more opportunities to reacquire land.

    Angie Behrns, Founder, Gabrielino/Tongva, Springs Foundation:

    It's not really just about the land. It's preserving what's left of our land.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Long before the land back movement had gained traction, Angie Behrns, now 86, fought to lease this two-acre property in West L.A. It was the early 1990s, and the Kuruvungna Springs, which had been the site of a Tongva village, had fallen into neglect.

    A small museum on the land shows the journey.

    Angie Behrns:

    When I stood at that gate and saw this area, I was so upset. I couldn't believe it. That's an archaeological and a historical society.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The Los Angeles Unified School District, which owns the land and built a high school next to the springs, agreed to lease the site for $1 a year.

    Bob Ramirez, President, Gabrielino/Tongva Springs Foundation:

    This is the medicine garden we have, which has many varieties of medicinal plants.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The president of the Gabrielino/Tongva Springs Foundation, Bob Ramirez, says the land is now abundant with Native plants and pristine drinking water.

    Bob Ramirez:

    Would you like to try some?

    Stephanie Sy:

    Yes, I would like to try some.

    Bob Ramirez:

    Yes.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Now is the time for the land to be returned, Behrns says.

    Angie Behrns:

    This is a sacred site. This is our place of worship. You have your temples. You have your churches. And what do we have?

    Stephanie Sy:

    But Ramirez says the "we" is debatable.

    Bob Ramirez:

    And there may be other people that say, well, wait a minute, if you're going to get that land, well, what about me? So it becomes contentious, I think.

    How do you compensate this group and neglect somebody else? Is that fair? Is that just?

    Stephanie Sy:

    What is fair and just is also in dispute at Bruce's Beach.

    Patricia Bruce-Carter, a distant relative of Charles Bruce, was at the ceremony in 2022 when county officials return the land to the Bruces' direct descendants. She thinks about what could have been if the land had remained in the family's hands all along.

    Patricia Bruce-Carter:

    I'm sure, at this time, there would have been multiple hotels and beachfront properties, and, I mean, just living the life.

    Stephanie Sy:

    A lifeguard administration center and parking lot stand where the Bruces' resort did. The descendants' lawyer, George Fatheree, says it would not be easy to develop.

    And so less, than a year after the land was returned, the four recipients of the land decided to sell it back to the county for nearly $20 million.

    George Fatheree III:

    As an attorney, my responsibility is to advocate in the interests of my clients. As a citizen, as an — and as an African American citizen,I think that's an important question.

    Who are the benefactors of restitution? Who should be the benefactors of reparations?

    Stephanie Sy:

    After her work getting the Bruces their land back, this is not the outcome community activist Kavon Ward wanted.

    Kavon Ward:

    I wanted to see strong, young Black entrepreneurs like Charles and Willa Bruce take up space here and be able to build and develop here, like the Bruces once we're able to do.

    Community is what got the land back. So, yes, the family won, but the community did not.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The work, Ward says, will continue, the reckoning far from over.

    For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy in Los Angeles.

    URL
    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/movement-to-return-land-taken-from-black-and-indigenous-people-in-the-u-s-gains-momentum

    The War Between The States
    https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10332-the-war-between-the-states/

    Cornell West and the problem with Third Parties
    https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10336-cornell-west-the-peoples-party-and-the-problem-with-third-parties-in-the-usa/

    How a shipping error poisoned Michigan
    https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2347&type=status

     

     

    Work from Lilac Phoenix

     

     

    I end with this paraphrase from Brenda stevenson < https://www.drbrendastevenson.com/ > from a PBS segment below, and a postparaphrase reply.  

    It's a strange dance that we have with race in the USA. We come forward with many steps,, twirl around, and we are going in the opposite direction. So, this continues to happen. But I think everyone had to own up to the fact that we live in a racialized society. The ways in which we find ourselves or define ourselves as being American, in part, is to have digested some of that racism. So, no group is- does not have it. No group does not act on it. And we have to understand that and we have to have some real hard discussions with ourselves, our families, our communities, and with other communities about how we fit into this dynamic of race within our society. Do we perptuate racism, stereotypes, et cetera, or are we actively trying to recognize that we hold some of that within ourselves and that we act on it and we need to eliminate it, or at least get it to a level where we can all act towards one another with respect, dignity and equality? But it's very very difficult. It is bound in the roots of American society. And once you eat of the tree of the USA , it becomes part of you. 

    For Juneteenth I have pondered freedom and the black community in the usa, and after various multilog side black people in various places I realize many, not necessarily most, but many black people are in denial about our village. The denial is through their preaching, and when I said preaching, I don't mean from a pulpit but in their desire for multilog that is inevitably dysfunctional. 
    I repeat, when the usa was started three tribes in the black village in the usa existed. Enslaved to whites/Free fighting side whites against the usa being created/Free fighting side whites supporting the usa being created. 
    Based on Sister Stevenson's quote, whenever a black person demands all black people in the usa are bettered for being in the usa, or nonviolence must occur in the black community, they are denying the internal reality all black people should know but don't because of the black tribes in the usa one common trait. NEarly all are filled with people afraid to admit the friction in the black community in the usa  based on the three original black tribes. 
    Most free black people fought against creating the usa, and again after the colonies freed themselves against the usa hoping britian take over. That means most free blacks didn't accept the usa's constitution of any aspect of the usa culturally that so many blacks in the usa today say all blacks do or need to. 
    And moreover, when the black community , as James Baldwin said of his father's religious community, has most who hate whites with a silent impotent passion. having black people who want to live with or comfort or find peace to whites or non blacks talk about why most blacks aren't engaged is a sign of their denial. 
    The black community in the usa, has never done the hard work of reaching in itself, even while the whites watch and accept what its majority wants doesn't suit the desire its minority, that is in most positions of leadership want. 
    Black people in the usa are individually freer in the usa than ever before. But, the Black Village communal desire isn't to be statian and most black leaders know it, and they don't know how to handle it, except to try and preach it away or hope some black person in the usa is born who can fit the usa's multiracial maze with their nonviolent, integrationist mantra while acquire or have the resources to guide the majority of black people with what black leadership in the usa usually doesn't have, opportunity, not talk.

     

     

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

       

      Hair Journey for Black reporter

       

      TV reporter takes off wig, reveals locs on Juneteenth, her 'natural hair liberation day''

      RALEIGH -- For Juneteenth 2023, a local television reporter celebrated the hair freedom she's always wanted.

      Akilah Davis, a race and culture reporter from our sister station WTVD in North Carolina, said growing up, her hair texture was misunderstood.

      Her mother used a variety of hair-straightening techniques to make her hair "more manageable."

      "I didn't think she had bad hair. She just didn't have the texture I had," Akilah's mom, Debra Davis, told her during an interview. "The only way I could fix it was to either hot comb it or perm it."

      Unknowingly, Akilah internalized the idea that straight hair was good hair and natural hair was not. Marketing campaigns on TV and in magazines reinforced that belief.

      "The message really stayed with a generation of Black women in particular who really had to work to overcome the idea that something about their hair was inherently inadequate," said Dr. Jasmine Cobb, a professor of African American studies at Duke University.

      It's a topic Cobb explores in her book, "New Growth, The Art and Texture of Black Hair."

      The professor said eurocentric beauty standards created a perception that only straight hair was beautiful.

      While George Floyd's 2020 murder sparked a global racial reckoning, a quiet movement among Black women was also growing.

      "One way we're redefining and reclaiming our identity is through our hair," said Maya Anderson, a loctician at Locs, Naturals, & More.

      Anderson said she's seeing more Black women starting locs in their hair, a choice she views as an expression of freedom and self.

      "Just get up, shake your hair, move on with the day and not have to worry about rain or humidity," she said.

      In December 2021, Anderson established micro locs in Akilah's hair. For more than a year, Akilah covered them with a wig. She wanted to reveal the big transition on TV on Juneteenth.

      Good Morning America Anchor Janai Norman made the natural hair transition on the national stage in 2018.

      "The way that we as Black women think about showing up as our authentic self -- it's rooted in fear. The fear of will I be looked at as professional," Norman said.

      "It takes courage. It takes strength. It takes resilience," she added.

      Davis chose Juneteenth to share her journey to hair freedom because she wants to be true to herself on the job. She hopes to inspire women and little girls struggling to embrace their roots. It's hair freedom she's always wanted.

      "I'm just proud of you doing what you're doing and being brave by presenting yourself how you want to present yourself," her mom said.

      URL
      https://abc7ny.com/black-hair-natural-liberation-journey-juneteenth-akilah-davis/13406297/
       

       

       

    2. (See 2 other replies to this status update)

  21. richardmurray

    The Ancestral Tree
    A juneteenth poem
    the full poem
    https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/the-ancestral-tree-1

     

    More Juneteenth art + poetry
    https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Juneteenth-2023-966928866
     
     

    Youtube video

     

    Tiktok video

    @richardmurraytiktok The Ancestral Tree excerpt - a juneteenth poem - the full poem https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/the-ancestral-tree-1 more juneteenth poetry or art https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Juneteenth-2023-966928866 my free email newsletter for more content https://rmnewsletter.over-blog.com/#rmaalbc #aalbc #juneteenth #poetry #poem #rmtja ♬ original sound - richardmurraytiktok

     

    My free email newsletter, click subscribe , its free

    https://rmnewsletter.over-blog.com/

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      forum post

       

  22. richardmurray

    Juneteenth 2023 review

     


    This Juneteenth 2023 I asked the larger community to come up with a unique cultural tradition and none came forth. 

    White people say : 1949-1973 displacement programs removed over a million people and two thirds were black. 

    Name an idea for a unique Juneteenth celebration
    https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10318-juneteenth-2023-name-an-idea-for-a-unique-celebration/

    Most Black Leaders didn't advocate for reparations even though most Black people wanted and that made the usa, but it came with a negative price for Black people
    https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10327-most-black-leaders-didnt-advocate-for-reparations-even-though-most-black-people-wanted-and-that-made-the-usa-but-it-came-with-a-negative-price-for-black-people/

     

    Movement to return land taken from Black and Indigenous people in the U.S. gains momentum
    Jun 9, 2023 6:35 PM EDT
    As cities and states across the country consider various forms of reparations, California has led the way in returning land to the descendants of the dispossessed. This includes African Americans and Native Americans. But as Stephanie Sy reports, the wealth, the community and the opportunities lost are not easily recovered.

    Read the Full Transcript
    Amna Nawaz:

    As cities and states across the country consider various forms of reparations, California has led the way in returning land to the descendants of the dispossessed. That includes African Americans and Native Americans.

    But, as Stephanie Sy reports, the wealth, the community and the opportunities lost are not easily recovered.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The story of Bruce's Beach is a story about what could and should have been.

    Over 100 years ago, an industrious Black woman in Southern California dreamt of owning a beach resort, but was refused whenever she tried. Willa Bruce eventually acquired land in Manhattan Beach, telling The Los Angeles Times in 1912: "I own this land, and I'm going to keep it."

    She and her husband, Charles, built a lodge, a place where Black vacationers could enjoy a stay at the beach.

    Patricia Bruce-Carter, Relative of Bruce Family: They were having a beautiful time, and they built it to share, because whenever people came to California, they wanted them to have somewhere to go.

    Kavon Ward, Founder, Where Is My Land:

    When I think about Charles and Willa Bruce, I think about entrepreneurs, I think about Black excellence, I think about community.

    George Fatheree III, Attorney For Bruce Family:

    The reality is, the Bruces and their patrons were wealthy.

    Stephanie Sy:

    A stately photo of the Bruces on their wedding day, decked out in finery, foretold the makings of a power couple. The display of Black success outraged the white neighbors and powers that be, says attorney George Fatheree.

    George Fatheree III:

    In the light of harassment, intimidation, violence, their business just got more and more successful, and until the city of Manhattan Beach hatched a scheme to take the property via a racially motivated eminent domain.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The Bruces' dream was stolen, their property essentially seized for a pittance in compensation, and only after they sued.

    Kavon Ward:

    This is it, I would say from right here to maybe this building here.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Community activist Kavon Ward first learned of the Bruces a few years after she moved to Manhattan Beach in 2017.

    Kavon Ward:

    This country often tells us that — Black people, that we're lazy, or we don't work hard enough, or all we have to do is pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. And here we are in the 19-teens and the 1920s, and this Black couple did exactly that, only to have their land stolen and to die as cooks in someone else's kitchen, when they had this whole beachfront resort here.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Ward began campaigning for the land to be returned to the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce during the summer of 2020.

    Less than two years later, she succeeded, with the help of Fatheree.

    George Fatheree III:

    For a century, our government at every level has enacted policies to dispossess Black people of the right to own property and create wealth. And what was so powerful about the return of the property of the Bruce family is, we see a path forward to finally counter some of those false narratives.

    Stephanie Sy:

    As unique and complex as the Bruce's Beach land back deal is, it does offer a path forward for other groups that might seek a return of land, not least of which are the original inhabitants of Los Angeles.

    Before Spanish missionaries arrived, the Tongva roamed a 4,000-square-mile swathe of Southern California called Tovaangar stretching from the coast to the mountains.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson, Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Land Conservancy:

    We have been very systematically erased. We were enslaved. We have gone through about three waves of genocide.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Twenty-seven-year-old Samantha Morales-Johnson recently became the land return coordinator for a Tongva conservancy, a job she could only have dreamed of as a child.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson:

    This land was returned, which I was not expecting in my lifetime, let alone my grandfather's.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The one-acre property in Altadena was transferred last year by a Jewish landowner whose own family faced displacement and oppression.

    Johnson said the protests that erupted after the police killing of George Floyd raised the nation's consciousness.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson:

    I think it made people more aware of all of the injustices that happen in America.

    Stephanie Sy:

    When Johnson was growing up, council meetings and holiday parties were held in a borrowed space.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson:

    I think it was a converted taco restaurant with, like, a little parking lot. There was no earth to even grow anything in that concrete building.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The Altadena property, which overlooks a scenic canyon, marks the first time in nearly 200 years the Tongva have legally owned land to use as they wish.

    So, this is the white sage.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson:

    This is the white sage. This is the only place where we can plant all Native trees with full sovereignty and Native plants with full sovereignty.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Work is under way to remove the overgrown invasive species that were planted here. The old resilient oaks will remain. Eventually, the site will host tribal gatherings and offer educational programs.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson:

    So, the beautiful thing about this land is that there is a lot of hope for restoration even underneath all of the mess that we have.

    Stephanie Sy:

    So-called land back agreements are still rare. Other recent examples include the purchase of nearly two square miles of land for $4.5 million by the Esselen Tribe in Central California.

    And the city of Oakland recently returned five acres of a local park to the East Bay Ohlone Tribe. In L.A., different Tongva groups are looking for more opportunities to reacquire land.

    Angie Behrns, Founder, Gabrielino/Tongva, Springs Foundation:

    It's not really just about the land. It's preserving what's left of our land.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Long before the land back movement had gained traction, Angie Behrns, now 86, fought to lease this two-acre property in West L.A. It was the early 1990s, and the Kuruvungna Springs, which had been the site of a Tongva village, had fallen into neglect.

    A small museum on the land shows the journey.

    Angie Behrns:

    When I stood at that gate and saw this area, I was so upset. I couldn't believe it. That's an archaeological and a historical society.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The Los Angeles Unified School District, which owns the land and built a high school next to the springs, agreed to lease the site for $1 a year.

    Bob Ramirez, President, Gabrielino/Tongva Springs Foundation:

    This is the medicine garden we have, which has many varieties of medicinal plants.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The president of the Gabrielino/Tongva Springs Foundation, Bob Ramirez, says the land is now abundant with Native plants and pristine drinking water.

    Bob Ramirez:

    Would you like to try some?

    Stephanie Sy:

    Yes, I would like to try some.

    Bob Ramirez:

    Yes.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Now is the time for the land to be returned, Behrns says.

    Angie Behrns:

    This is a sacred site. This is our place of worship. You have your temples. You have your churches. And what do we have?

    Stephanie Sy:

    But Ramirez says the "we" is debatable.

    Bob Ramirez:

    And there may be other people that say, well, wait a minute, if you're going to get that land, well, what about me? So it becomes contentious, I think.

    How do you compensate this group and neglect somebody else? Is that fair? Is that just?

    Stephanie Sy:

    What is fair and just is also in dispute at Bruce's Beach.

    Patricia Bruce-Carter, a distant relative of Charles Bruce, was at the ceremony in 2022 when county officials return the land to the Bruces' direct descendants. She thinks about what could have been if the land had remained in the family's hands all along.

    Patricia Bruce-Carter:

    I'm sure, at this time, there would have been multiple hotels and beachfront properties, and, I mean, just living the life.

    Stephanie Sy:

    A lifeguard administration center and parking lot stand where the Bruces' resort did. The descendants' lawyer, George Fatheree, says it would not be easy to develop.

    And so less, than a year after the land was returned, the four recipients of the land decided to sell it back to the county for nearly $20 million.

    George Fatheree III:

    As an attorney, my responsibility is to advocate in the interests of my clients. As a citizen, as an — and as an African American citizen,I think that's an important question.

    Who are the benefactors of restitution? Who should be the benefactors of reparations?

    Stephanie Sy:

    After her work getting the Bruces their land back, this is not the outcome community activist Kavon Ward wanted.

    Kavon Ward:

    I wanted to see strong, young Black entrepreneurs like Charles and Willa Bruce take up space here and be able to build and develop here, like the Bruces once we're able to do.

    Community is what got the land back. So, yes, the family won, but the community did not.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The work, Ward says, will continue, the reckoning far from over.

    For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy in Los Angeles.

    URL
    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/movement-to-return-land-taken-from-black-and-indigenous-people-in-the-u-s-gains-momentum

    The War Between The States
    https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10332-the-war-between-the-states/

    Cornell West and the problem with Third Parties
    https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10336-cornell-west-the-peoples-party-and-the-problem-with-third-parties-in-the-usa/

    How a shipping error poisoned Michigan
    https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2347&type=status

     

     

    Work from Lilac Phoenix

     

     

    I end with this paraphrase from Brenda stevenson < https://www.drbrendastevenson.com/ > from a PBS segment below, and a postparaphrase reply.  

    It's a strange dance that we have with race in the USA. We come forward with many steps,, twirl around, and we are going in the opposite direction. So, this continues to happen. But I think everyone had to own up to the fact that we live in a racialized society. The ways in which we find ourselves or define ourselves as being American, in part, is to have digested some of that racism. So, no group is- does not have it. No group does not act on it. And we have to understand that and we have to have some real hard discussions with ourselves, our families, our communities, and with other communities about how we fit into this dynamic of race within our society. Do we perptuate racism, stereotypes, et cetera, or are we actively trying to recognize that we hold some of that within ourselves and that we act on it and we need to eliminate it, or at least get it to a level where we can all act towards one another with respect, dignity and equality? But it's very very difficult. It is bound in the roots of American society. And once you eat of the tree of the USA , it becomes part of you. 

    For Juneteenth I have pondered freedom and the black community in the usa, and after various multilog side black people in various places I realize many, not necessarily most, but many black people are in denial about our village. The denial is through their preaching, and when I said preaching, I don't mean from a pulpit but in their desire for multilog that is inevitably dysfunctional. 
    I repeat, when the usa was started three tribes in the black village in the usa existed. Enslaved to whites/Free fighting side whites against the usa being created/Free fighting side whites supporting the usa being created. 
    Based on Sister Stevenson's quote, whenever a black person demands all black people in the usa are bettered for being in the usa, or nonviolence must occur in the black community, they are denying the internal reality all black people should know but don't because of the black tribes in the usa one common trait. NEarly all are filled with people afraid to admit the friction in the black community in the usa  based on the three original black tribes. 
    Most free black people fought against creating the usa, and again after the colonies freed themselves against the usa hoping britian take over. That means most free blacks didn't accept the usa's constitution of any aspect of the usa culturally that so many blacks in the usa today say all blacks do or need to. 
    And moreover, when the black community , as James Baldwin said of his father's religious community, has most who hate whites with a silent impotent passion. having black people who want to live with or comfort or find peace to whites or non blacks talk about why most blacks aren't engaged is a sign of their denial. 
    The black community in the usa, has never done the hard work of reaching in itself, even while the whites watch and accept what its majority wants doesn't suit the desire its minority, that is in most positions of leadership want. 
    Black people in the usa are individually freer in the usa than ever before. But, the Black Village communal desire isn't to be statian and most black leaders know it, and they don't know how to handle it, except to try and preach it away or hope some black person in the usa is born who can fit the usa's multiracial maze with their nonviolent, integrationist mantra while acquire or have the resources to guide the majority of black people with what black leadership in the usa usually doesn't have, opportunity, not talk.

     

     

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      Well, for me, this article is best for those in the black community in the usa  who suggest black people shouldn't have reparations, which is not just one or two people. I can recall many , not most,  black people who said black people in the usa shouldn't want reparations. I wonder if those blacks know of this. 

       

       

      What Reparations Actually Bought
      Opinion by Morgan Ome • 

      In 1990, the U.S. government began mailing out envelopes, each containing a presidential letter of apology and a $20,000 check from the Treasury, to more than 82,000 Japanese Americans who, during World War II, were robbed of their homes, jobs, and rights, and incarcerated in camps. This effort, which took a decade to complete, remains a rare attempt to make reparations to a group of Americans harmed by force of law. We know how some recipients used their payment: The actor George Takei donated his redress check to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. A former incarceree named Mae Kanazawa Hara told an interviewer in 2004 that she bought an organ for her church in Madison, Wisconsin. Nikki Nojima Louis, a playwright, told me earlier this year that she used the money to pay for living expenses while pursuing her doctorate in creative writing at Florida State University. She was 65 when she decided to go back to school, and the money enabled her to move across the country from her Seattle home.

      But many stories could be lost to history. My family received reparations. My grandfather, Melvin, was 6 when he was imprisoned in Tule Lake, California. As long as I’ve known about the redress effort, I’ve wondered how he felt about getting a check in the mail decades after the war. No one in my family knows how he used the money. Because he died shortly after I was born, I never had a chance to ask.

      To my knowledge, no one has rigorously studied how families spent individual payments, each worth $45,000 in current dollars. Densho, a nonprofit specializing in archival history of Japanese American incarceration, and the Japanese American National Museum confirmed my suspicions. When I first started researching what the redress effort did for former incarcerees, the question seemed almost impudent, because whose business was it but theirs what they did with the money?

      Still, I thought, following that money could help answer a basic question: What did reparations mean for the recipients? When I began my reporting, I expected former incarcerees and their descendants to speak positively about the redress movement. What surprised me was how intimate the experience turned out to be for so many. They didn’t just get a check in the mail; they got some of their dignity and agency back. Also striking was how interviewee after interviewee portrayed the monetary payments as only one part—though an important one—of a broader effort at healing.

      The significance of reparations becomes all the more important as cities, states, and some federal lawmakers grapple with whether and how to make amends to other victims of official discrimination—most notably Black Americans. Although discussions of compensation have existed since the end of the Civil War, they have only grown in intensity and urgency in recent years, especially after this magazine published Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Case for Reparations” in 2014. In my home state, California, a task force has spent the past three years studying what restitution for Black residents would look like. The task force will deliver its final recommendations—which reportedly include direct monetary payments and a formal apology to descendants of enslaved people—to the state legislature by July 1.

      In 1998, as redress for Japanese American incarcerees was winding to a close, the University of Hawaii law professor Eric Yamamoto wrote, “In every African American reparations publication, in every legal argument, in almost every discussion, the topic of Japanese American redress surfaces. Sometimes as legal precedent. Sometimes as moral compass. Sometimes as political guide.” Long after it ended, the Japanese American–redress program illustrates how honest attempts at atonement for unjust losses cascade across the decades.

      In February 1942, following the attacks on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the incarceration of more than 125,000 Japanese Americans mostly on the West Coast. In the most famous challenge to the legality of Roosevelt’s order, Fred Korematsu, an Oakland man who had refused to report for incarceration, appealed his conviction for defying military orders. The Supreme Court upheld Korematsu’s conviction in its now notorious decision Korematsu v. United States. Families like mine were forced to abandon everything, taking only what they could carry.

      After the war, many former incarcerees, weighed down with guilt and shame, refused to speak about their experience. But as their children—many of them third-generation Japanese Americans—came of age during the civil-rights movement, calls for restitution and apology grew within the community. In 1980, Congress passed legislation establishing a commission to study the issue and recommend appropriate remedies. After hearing testimony from more than 500 Japanese Americans—many of whom were speaking of their incarceration for the first time—the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians concluded that “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership” had been the primary motivators for the incarceration. The CWRIC also recommended that $20,000 be paid to each survivor of the camps.

      At the same time, new evidence emerged showing that the government had suppressed information and lied about Japanese Americans being security threats. In the 1980s, lawyers reopened the Korematsu case and two similar challenges to E.O. 9066. All three convictions were vacated. By 1988, when reparations legislation was making its way through Congress, the legal proceedings and the CWRIC’s findings provided the momentum and public evidence for Japanese Americans to make the case for reparations. The 1988 Civil Liberties Act authorized reparations checks to all Japanese American incarcerees who were alive the day the act was signed into law. (If a recipient was deceased at the time of payment, the money went to their immediate family). The Department of Justice established a special body, the Office of Redress Administration, to contact and verify eligible recipients. The CLA also provided for a formal government apology and a fund to educate the public about the incarceration: safeguards against such history repeating itself.

      Ever since, reparations advocates have invoked Japanese American redress as a precedent that can be replicated for other groups. Dreisen Heath, a reparations advocate and former researcher at Human Rights Watch, told me Japanese American redress proves that “it is possible for the U.S. government to not only acknowledge and formally apologize and state its culpability for a crime, but also provide some type of compensation.” In 1989, then-Representative John Conyers introduced H.R. 40, a bill to establish a commission to study reparations for Black Americans. Proponents have reintroduced the bill again and again.

      In 2021, as the House Judiciary Committee prepared to vote for the first time on H.R. 40, the Japanese American social-justice organization Tsuru for Solidarity submitted to the panel more than 300 letters written by former incarcerees and their descendants. The letters described how the reparations process helped Japanese Americans, psychologically and materially, in ways that stretched across generations. (In addition to drawing on that rich source of information for this story, I also interviewed family friends, members of the Japanese American church that I grew up in, and other former incarcerees and their children.)

      In one of the letters, the daughter of an incarceree tells how the $20,000, invested in her family’s home equity and compounded over time, ultimately enabled her to attend Yale. “The redress money my family received has always been a tailwind at my back, making each step of the way a tiny bit easier,” she wrote. Just as her family was able to build generational equity, she hoped that Black Americans, too, would have “the choice to invest in education, homeownership, or whatever else they know will benefit their families, and, through the additional choices that wealth provides, to be a little more free.”

      The redress effort for World War II incarcerees has shaped California’s task force in highly personal  ways. Lisa Holder, an attorney who sits on the task force, first saw the idea of reparations become concrete through her best friend in high school, whose Japanese American father received a payment. The only non-Black member of the task force is the civil-rights lawyer Don Tamaki, whose parents were both incarcerated. Tamaki, like many other people I interviewed, acknowledges that incarcerees have different histories and experiences from the victims of slavery and Jim Crow—“there’s no equivalence between what Japanese Americans suffered and what Black people have gone through,” he told me—but he also sees some parallels that might inform the reparations debate.

      Tamaki’s life, like that of many Japanese Americans, has been shaped by his family’s incarceration. As a young lawyer, he worked on the legal team that reopened Korematsu. Tamaki is now 72. In January, he and I met at the Shops at Tanforan, a mall built atop the land where his parents, Minoru and Iyo, were incarcerated. Next to the mall, a newly opened memorial plaza honors the nearly 8,000 people of Japanese descent who lived there in 1942. Neither Don nor I had previously visited the memorial, which happens to be near my hometown. In middle school, I bought a dress for a dance party at the mall’s JCPenney.

      In 1942, Tanforan was an equestrian racetrack. After Roosevelt issued his internment order, horse stalls were hastily converted into living quarters. Minoru, who was in his last year of pharmacy school, couldn’t attend his commencement ceremony, because he was incarcerated. The university instead rolled up the diploma in a tube addressed to Barrack 80, Apt. 5, Tanforan Assembly Centre, San Bruno, California. “The diploma represents the promise of America,” he told me. “And the mailing tube which wraps around this promise—the diploma—constrains and restricts it.” Don still has both.

      When the checks arrived in the mail in the ’90s, the Tamakis gathered at Don’s house. His parents spent one check on a brown Mazda MPV, which they would use while babysitting their grandkids. They put the other check into savings. “They didn’t do anything extravagant,” Don told me.

      To talk about reparations is to talk about loss: of property and of personhood. In 1983, the CWRIC estimated Japanese American incarcerees’ economic losses at $6 billion, approximately $18 billion today. But those figures don’t capture the dreams, opportunities, and dignity that were taken from people during the war. Surviving incarcerees still feel those losses deeply.

      Mary Tamura, 99, was a resident of Terminal Island off the coast of Los Angeles. “It was like living in Japan,” she told me. Along with the island’s 3,000 other Japanese American residents, she celebrated Japanese holidays; learned the art of flower arranging, ikebana; and wore kimonos. Then, on December 7, 1941, shortly after Pearl Harbor was attacked, the FBI rounded up men and community leaders, including Tamura’s father. Two months later, Terminal Island residents were ordered to leave within 48 hours. Tamura, who once dreamed of teaching, instead joined the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps. On Terminal Island, Japanese homes and businesses were razed.  

      Lily Shibuya was born in 1938 in San Juan Bautista, California. After the war, her family moved to Mountain View, where they grew carnations. Shibuya’s older siblings couldn’t afford to go to college and instead started working immediately after they were released from one of the camps. Her husband’s family members, also flower growers, were able to preserve their farmland but lost the chrysanthemum varieties they had cultivated.

      Shibuya told me that with her reparations check, she bought a funerary niche for herself, paid for her daughter’s wedding, and covered travel expenses to attend her son’s medical-school graduation. Tamura used part of her redress money for a vacation to Europe with her husband. The other funds went toward cosmetic eyelid surgery. “It was just for beauty’s sake—vanity,” Tamura told me.

      Many recipients felt moved to use the $20,000 payments altruistically. In a 2004 interview with Densho, the then-91-year-old Mae Kanazawa Hara—who’d given an organ to her church—recalled her reaction to receiving reparations: “I was kind of stunned. I said, ‘By golly, I've never had a check that amount.’ I thought, Oh, this money is very special.” Some recipients gave their check to their children or grandchildren, feeling that it should go toward future generations.

      The notion that recipients should use their money for noble purposes runs deep in the discussion about reparations. It helps explain why some reparations proposals end up looking more like public-policy initiatives than the unrestricted monetary payments that Japanese Americans received. For example, a 2021 initiative in Evanston, Illinois, began providing $25,000 in home repairs or down-payment assistance to Black residents and their descendants who experienced housing discrimination in the city from 1919 to1969. Florida provides free tuition to state universities for the descendants of Black families in the town of Rosewood who were victimized during a 1923 massacre. But if the goal of reparations is to help restore dignity and opportunity, then the recipients need autonomy. Only they can decide how best to spend those funds. (Perhaps recognizing this, Evanston’s city council voted earlier this year to provide direct cash payments of $25,000.)

      Not every Japanese American whom I interviewed deemed the reparations effort helpful or sincere. When I arrived at Mary Murakami’s home in Bethesda, Maryland, the 96-year-old invited me to sit at her dining-room table, where she had laid out several documents in preparation for my visit: her yearbook from the high school she graduated from while incarcerated; a map of the barracks where she lived in Topaz, Utah; a movie poster–size copy of Executive Order 9066, found by her son-in-law at an antique shop.

      She first saw the order nailed to a telephone pole in San Francisco’s Japantown as a high schooler, more than 80 years ago. A rumor had been circulating in Japantown that children might be separated from their parents. Her mother and father gave each child a photo of themselves, so the children would remember who their parents were. They also revealed a family secret: Atop the highest shelf in one of their closets sat an iron box. The children had never asked about it, and it was too heavy for any of them to remove, Murakami recalled. Inside the box was an urn containing the ashes of her father’s first wife, the mother of Murakami’s oldest sister, Lily.

      The government had told them to take only what they could carry. The ashes of a dead woman would have to be left behind. Murakami and her father buried the box in a cemetery outside the city. With no time to or money to prepare a proper tombstone, they stuck a homemade wooden marker in the ground. Then they returned home to resume packing. They sold all their furniture—enough to fill seven rooms—for $50.

      Murakami’s family, like the Tamakis, went to Tanforan, and then to Topaz. “The most upsetting thing about camp was the family unity breaking down,” Murakami told me. “As camp life went on, we didn’t eat with our parents most of the time.” Not that she did much eating—she recalls the food as inedible, save for the plain peanut-and-apple-butter sandwiches. Today, Murakami will not eat apple butter or allow it in her house.

      After the war, she did her best to move forward. She graduated from UC Berkeley, where she met her husband, Raymond. They moved to Washington, D.C., so that he could attend dental school at Howard University—a historically Black school that she and her husband knew would admit Japanese Americans.

      Absent from the documents that Murakami saved is the presidential letter of apology. “Both Ray and I threw it away,” she told me. “We thought it came too late.” After the war ended, each incarceree was given $25 and a one-way ticket to leave the camps. For Murakami, money and an apology would have meant something when her family was struggling to resume the life that they had been forced to abruptly put on pause—not more than 40 years later. She and her husband gave some of their reparations to their children. Raymond donated his remaining funds to building the Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism in Washington, D.C., and Mary deposited hers in a retirement fund.

      A $20,000 check could not reestablish lost flower fields, nor could it resurrect a formerly proud and vibrant community. Still, the money, coupled with an official apology, helped alleviate the psychological anguish that many incarcerees endured. Lorraine Bannai, who worked on Fred Korematsu’s legal team alongside Don Tamaki, almost never talked with her parents about the incarceration. Yet, after receiving reparations, her mother confided that she had lived under a cloud of guilt for decades, and it had finally been lifted. “My reaction was, ‘You weren’t guilty of anything. How could you think that?’” Bannai told me. “But on reflection, of course she would think that. She was put behind barbed wire and imprisoned.”

      Yamamoto, the law professor in Hawaii, stresses that the aims of reparations are not simply to compensate victims but to repair and heal their relationship with society at large. Kenniss Henry, a national co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, told me that her own view of reparations has evolved over time. She sees value in processes such as community hearings and reports documenting a state’s history of harm. “It is necessary to have some form of direct payment, but reparations represent more than just a check,” she said.

      The Los Angeles community organizer Miya Iwataki, who worked toward Japanese American redress as a congressional staffer in the 1980s and now advocates for reparations for Black Californians, sees the checks and apology to World War II incarcerees as essential parts of a larger reconciliation. In 2011, Iwataki accompanied her father, Kuwashi, to Washington, D.C., to receive a Congressional Gold Medal for his World War II military service. Throughout their trip, he was greeted by strangers who knew of Kuwashi’s unit: the all-Japanese 100th Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, known for being the most decorated unit of its size and length of service. As the Iwatakis settled into their seats on the return flight, Kuwashi told Miya, “This is the first time I really felt like an American.”

      For decades, former incarcerees have kept memories alive, and now that task falls to their descendants. Pilgrimages to former incarceration sites have resumed since the height of the pandemic, and new memorials, like the one at the Tanforan mall, continue to crop up. “The legacy of Japanese American incarceration and redress has yet to be written,” Yamamoto told me.

      In January, my mom and I drove to Los Angeles for an appointment at the Japanese American National Museum. We were there to see the Ireichō, or the sacred book of names. The memorial arose out of another previously unanswered question: How many Japanese Americans in total were incarcerated during the war? For three years, the Ireichō’s creator, Duncan Ryūken Williams, worked with volunteers and researchers to compile the first comprehensive list, with 125,284 names printed on 1,000 pages.

      I was stunned at the book’s size, and even more moved by the memorial’s design. On the walls hung wood panels with the names of each incarceration camp written in Japanese and English, along with a glass vial of soil from each site. My mom and I were invited to stamp a blue dot next to the names of our family members, as a physical marker of remembrance. When the museum docent flipped to my grandfather, Melvin, I was reminded that I’ll never be able to ask him what he experienced as a child. I’ll never learn what he thought when, in his 50s, he opened his apology letter. The only additional detail that I learned about him while reporting this article was that, according to my grandmother, he mistakenly listed the $20,000 as income on his tax return.

      But through my conversations with surviving incarcerees, many of whose names also appear in the Ireichō, I could see how a combination of symbolic and material reparations—money, an apology, and public-education efforts—was essential to a multigenerational healing process. For Melvin, a third-generation Japanese American, this might have looked like receiving the check. For me, in the fifth generation, placing a stamp next to his name helped me honor him and see his life as part of a much larger story. The project of making amends for Japanese American incarceration didn’t end with the distribution of redress checks and an apology. It might not even finish within one lifetime, but each generation still strives to move closer.

      URL
      https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/what-reparations-actually-bought/ar-AA1cnfwn?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=4f866a88792f42a098b7e44dd2837e59&ei=52
       

       

    2. (See 2 other replies to this status update)

  23. richardmurray

    Juneteenth 2023 review

     


    This Juneteenth 2023 I asked the larger community to come up with a unique cultural tradition and none came forth. 

    White people say : 1949-1973 displacement programs removed over a million people and two thirds were black. 

    Name an idea for a unique Juneteenth celebration
    https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10318-juneteenth-2023-name-an-idea-for-a-unique-celebration/

    Most Black Leaders didn't advocate for reparations even though most Black people wanted and that made the usa, but it came with a negative price for Black people
    https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10327-most-black-leaders-didnt-advocate-for-reparations-even-though-most-black-people-wanted-and-that-made-the-usa-but-it-came-with-a-negative-price-for-black-people/

     

    Movement to return land taken from Black and Indigenous people in the U.S. gains momentum
    Jun 9, 2023 6:35 PM EDT
    As cities and states across the country consider various forms of reparations, California has led the way in returning land to the descendants of the dispossessed. This includes African Americans and Native Americans. But as Stephanie Sy reports, the wealth, the community and the opportunities lost are not easily recovered.

    Read the Full Transcript
    Amna Nawaz:

    As cities and states across the country consider various forms of reparations, California has led the way in returning land to the descendants of the dispossessed. That includes African Americans and Native Americans.

    But, as Stephanie Sy reports, the wealth, the community and the opportunities lost are not easily recovered.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The story of Bruce's Beach is a story about what could and should have been.

    Over 100 years ago, an industrious Black woman in Southern California dreamt of owning a beach resort, but was refused whenever she tried. Willa Bruce eventually acquired land in Manhattan Beach, telling The Los Angeles Times in 1912: "I own this land, and I'm going to keep it."

    She and her husband, Charles, built a lodge, a place where Black vacationers could enjoy a stay at the beach.

    Patricia Bruce-Carter, Relative of Bruce Family: They were having a beautiful time, and they built it to share, because whenever people came to California, they wanted them to have somewhere to go.

    Kavon Ward, Founder, Where Is My Land:

    When I think about Charles and Willa Bruce, I think about entrepreneurs, I think about Black excellence, I think about community.

    George Fatheree III, Attorney For Bruce Family:

    The reality is, the Bruces and their patrons were wealthy.

    Stephanie Sy:

    A stately photo of the Bruces on their wedding day, decked out in finery, foretold the makings of a power couple. The display of Black success outraged the white neighbors and powers that be, says attorney George Fatheree.

    George Fatheree III:

    In the light of harassment, intimidation, violence, their business just got more and more successful, and until the city of Manhattan Beach hatched a scheme to take the property via a racially motivated eminent domain.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The Bruces' dream was stolen, their property essentially seized for a pittance in compensation, and only after they sued.

    Kavon Ward:

    This is it, I would say from right here to maybe this building here.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Community activist Kavon Ward first learned of the Bruces a few years after she moved to Manhattan Beach in 2017.

    Kavon Ward:

    This country often tells us that — Black people, that we're lazy, or we don't work hard enough, or all we have to do is pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. And here we are in the 19-teens and the 1920s, and this Black couple did exactly that, only to have their land stolen and to die as cooks in someone else's kitchen, when they had this whole beachfront resort here.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Ward began campaigning for the land to be returned to the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce during the summer of 2020.

    Less than two years later, she succeeded, with the help of Fatheree.

    George Fatheree III:

    For a century, our government at every level has enacted policies to dispossess Black people of the right to own property and create wealth. And what was so powerful about the return of the property of the Bruce family is, we see a path forward to finally counter some of those false narratives.

    Stephanie Sy:

    As unique and complex as the Bruce's Beach land back deal is, it does offer a path forward for other groups that might seek a return of land, not least of which are the original inhabitants of Los Angeles.

    Before Spanish missionaries arrived, the Tongva roamed a 4,000-square-mile swathe of Southern California called Tovaangar stretching from the coast to the mountains.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson, Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Land Conservancy:

    We have been very systematically erased. We were enslaved. We have gone through about three waves of genocide.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Twenty-seven-year-old Samantha Morales-Johnson recently became the land return coordinator for a Tongva conservancy, a job she could only have dreamed of as a child.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson:

    This land was returned, which I was not expecting in my lifetime, let alone my grandfather's.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The one-acre property in Altadena was transferred last year by a Jewish landowner whose own family faced displacement and oppression.

    Johnson said the protests that erupted after the police killing of George Floyd raised the nation's consciousness.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson:

    I think it made people more aware of all of the injustices that happen in America.

    Stephanie Sy:

    When Johnson was growing up, council meetings and holiday parties were held in a borrowed space.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson:

    I think it was a converted taco restaurant with, like, a little parking lot. There was no earth to even grow anything in that concrete building.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The Altadena property, which overlooks a scenic canyon, marks the first time in nearly 200 years the Tongva have legally owned land to use as they wish.

    So, this is the white sage.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson:

    This is the white sage. This is the only place where we can plant all Native trees with full sovereignty and Native plants with full sovereignty.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Work is under way to remove the overgrown invasive species that were planted here. The old resilient oaks will remain. Eventually, the site will host tribal gatherings and offer educational programs.

    Samantha Morales-Johnson:

    So, the beautiful thing about this land is that there is a lot of hope for restoration even underneath all of the mess that we have.

    Stephanie Sy:

    So-called land back agreements are still rare. Other recent examples include the purchase of nearly two square miles of land for $4.5 million by the Esselen Tribe in Central California.

    And the city of Oakland recently returned five acres of a local park to the East Bay Ohlone Tribe. In L.A., different Tongva groups are looking for more opportunities to reacquire land.

    Angie Behrns, Founder, Gabrielino/Tongva, Springs Foundation:

    It's not really just about the land. It's preserving what's left of our land.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Long before the land back movement had gained traction, Angie Behrns, now 86, fought to lease this two-acre property in West L.A. It was the early 1990s, and the Kuruvungna Springs, which had been the site of a Tongva village, had fallen into neglect.

    A small museum on the land shows the journey.

    Angie Behrns:

    When I stood at that gate and saw this area, I was so upset. I couldn't believe it. That's an archaeological and a historical society.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The Los Angeles Unified School District, which owns the land and built a high school next to the springs, agreed to lease the site for $1 a year.

    Bob Ramirez, President, Gabrielino/Tongva Springs Foundation:

    This is the medicine garden we have, which has many varieties of medicinal plants.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The president of the Gabrielino/Tongva Springs Foundation, Bob Ramirez, says the land is now abundant with Native plants and pristine drinking water.

    Bob Ramirez:

    Would you like to try some?

    Stephanie Sy:

    Yes, I would like to try some.

    Bob Ramirez:

    Yes.

    Stephanie Sy:

    Now is the time for the land to be returned, Behrns says.

    Angie Behrns:

    This is a sacred site. This is our place of worship. You have your temples. You have your churches. And what do we have?

    Stephanie Sy:

    But Ramirez says the "we" is debatable.

    Bob Ramirez:

    And there may be other people that say, well, wait a minute, if you're going to get that land, well, what about me? So it becomes contentious, I think.

    How do you compensate this group and neglect somebody else? Is that fair? Is that just?

    Stephanie Sy:

    What is fair and just is also in dispute at Bruce's Beach.

    Patricia Bruce-Carter, a distant relative of Charles Bruce, was at the ceremony in 2022 when county officials return the land to the Bruces' direct descendants. She thinks about what could have been if the land had remained in the family's hands all along.

    Patricia Bruce-Carter:

    I'm sure, at this time, there would have been multiple hotels and beachfront properties, and, I mean, just living the life.

    Stephanie Sy:

    A lifeguard administration center and parking lot stand where the Bruces' resort did. The descendants' lawyer, George Fatheree, says it would not be easy to develop.

    And so less, than a year after the land was returned, the four recipients of the land decided to sell it back to the county for nearly $20 million.

    George Fatheree III:

    As an attorney, my responsibility is to advocate in the interests of my clients. As a citizen, as an — and as an African American citizen,I think that's an important question.

    Who are the benefactors of restitution? Who should be the benefactors of reparations?

    Stephanie Sy:

    After her work getting the Bruces their land back, this is not the outcome community activist Kavon Ward wanted.

    Kavon Ward:

    I wanted to see strong, young Black entrepreneurs like Charles and Willa Bruce take up space here and be able to build and develop here, like the Bruces once we're able to do.

    Community is what got the land back. So, yes, the family won, but the community did not.

    Stephanie Sy:

    The work, Ward says, will continue, the reckoning far from over.

    For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy in Los Angeles.

    URL
    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/movement-to-return-land-taken-from-black-and-indigenous-people-in-the-u-s-gains-momentum

    The War Between The States
    https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10332-the-war-between-the-states/

    Cornell West and the problem with Third Parties
    https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10336-cornell-west-the-peoples-party-and-the-problem-with-third-parties-in-the-usa/

    How a shipping error poisoned Michigan
    https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2347&type=status

     

     

    Work from Lilac Phoenix

     

     

    I end with this paraphrase from Brenda stevenson < https://www.drbrendastevenson.com/ > from a PBS segment below, and a postparaphrase reply.  

    It's a strange dance that we have with race in the USA. We come forward with many steps,, twirl around, and we are going in the opposite direction. So, this continues to happen. But I think everyone had to own up to the fact that we live in a racialized society. The ways in which we find ourselves or define ourselves as being American, in part, is to have digested some of that racism. So, no group is- does not have it. No group does not act on it. And we have to understand that and we have to have some real hard discussions with ourselves, our families, our communities, and with other communities about how we fit into this dynamic of race within our society. Do we perptuate racism, stereotypes, et cetera, or are we actively trying to recognize that we hold some of that within ourselves and that we act on it and we need to eliminate it, or at least get it to a level where we can all act towards one another with respect, dignity and equality? But it's very very difficult. It is bound in the roots of American society. And once you eat of the tree of the USA , it becomes part of you. 

    For Juneteenth I have pondered freedom and the black community in the usa, and after various multilog side black people in various places I realize many, not necessarily most, but many black people are in denial about our village. The denial is through their preaching, and when I said preaching, I don't mean from a pulpit but in their desire for multilog that is inevitably dysfunctional. 
    I repeat, when the usa was started three tribes in the black village in the usa existed. Enslaved to whites/Free fighting side whites against the usa being created/Free fighting side whites supporting the usa being created. 
    Based on Sister Stevenson's quote, whenever a black person demands all black people in the usa are bettered for being in the usa, or nonviolence must occur in the black community, they are denying the internal reality all black people should know but don't because of the black tribes in the usa one common trait. NEarly all are filled with people afraid to admit the friction in the black community in the usa  based on the three original black tribes. 
    Most free black people fought against creating the usa, and again after the colonies freed themselves against the usa hoping britian take over. That means most free blacks didn't accept the usa's constitution of any aspect of the usa culturally that so many blacks in the usa today say all blacks do or need to. 
    And moreover, when the black community , as James Baldwin said of his father's religious community, has most who hate whites with a silent impotent passion. having black people who want to live with or comfort or find peace to whites or non blacks talk about why most blacks aren't engaged is a sign of their denial. 
    The black community in the usa, has never done the hard work of reaching in itself, even while the whites watch and accept what its majority wants doesn't suit the desire its minority, that is in most positions of leadership want. 
    Black people in the usa are individually freer in the usa than ever before. But, the Black Village communal desire isn't to be statian and most black leaders know it, and they don't know how to handle it, except to try and preach it away or hope some black person in the usa is born who can fit the usa's multiracial maze with their nonviolent, integrationist mantra while acquire or have the resources to guide the majority of black people with what black leadership in the usa usually doesn't have, opportunity, not talk.

     

     

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      Supreme Court rules in favor of Black Alabama voters in unexpected defense of Voting Rights Act

      MARK SHERMAN
      Thu, June 8, 2023 at 10:26 AM EDT·5 min read

      WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a surprising 5-4 ruling < https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23837566-allen-v-milligan ; 112 pages > in favor of Black voters in a congressional redistricting case from Alabama, with two conservative justices joining liberals in rejecting a Republican-led effort to weaken a landmark voting rights law.

      Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh aligned with the court's liberals in affirming a lower-court ruling that found a likely violation of the Voting Rights Act in an Alabama congressional map with one majority Black seat out of seven districts in a state where more than one in four residents is Black. The state now will have to draw a new map for next year's elections.

      The decision was keenly anticipated for its potential effect on control of the closely divided U.S. House of Representatives. Because of the ruling, new maps are likely in Alabama and Louisiana that could allow Democratic-leaning Black voters to elect their preferred candidates in two more congressional districts.

      The outcome was unexpected in that the court had allowed the challenged Alabama map to be used for the 2022 elections, and in arguments last October the justices appeared willing to make it harder to challenge redistricting plans as racially discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

      The chief justice himself suggested last year that he was open to changes in the way courts weigh discrimination claims under the part of the law known as section 2. But on Thursday, Roberts wrote that the court was declining “to recast our section 2 case law as Alabama requests.”

      Roberts also was part of conservative high-court majorities in earlier cases that made it harder for racial minorities to use the Voting Rights Act in ideologically divided rulings in 2013 and 2021.

      The other four conservative justices dissented Thursday. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the decision forces “Alabama to intentionally redraw its longstanding congressional districts so that black voters can control a number of seats roughly proportional to the black share of the State’s population. Section 2 demands no such thing, and, if it did, the Constitution would not permit it.”

      The Biden administration sided with the Black voters in Alabama.

      Attorney General Merrick Garland applauded the ruling: “Today’s decision rejects efforts to further erode fundamental voting rights protections, and preserves the principle that in the United States, all eligible voters must be able to exercise their constitutional right to vote free from discrimination based on their race."

      Evan Milligan, a Black voter and the lead plaintiff in the case, said the ruling was a victory for democracy and people of color.

      "We are grateful that the Supreme Court upheld what we knew to be true: that everyone deserves to have their vote matter and their voice heard. Today is a win for democracy and freedom not just in Alabama but across the United States,” Milligan said.

      Alabama Republican Party Chairman John Wahl said in a statement that state lawmakers would comply with the ruling. “Regardless of our disagreement with the Court’s decision, we are confident the Alabama Legislature will redraw district lines that ensure the people of Alabama are represented by members who share their beliefs, while following the requirements of applicable law,” Wahl said.

      But Steve Marshall, the state's Republican attorney general, said he expects to continue defending the challenged map in federal court, including at a full trial. “Although the majority’s decision is disappointing, this case is not over,” Marshall said in a statement.

      Deuel Ross, a civil rights lawyer who argued the case at the Supreme Court, said the justices have validated the lower court's view in this case. A full trial "doesn’t seem a good use of Alabama’s time, resources or the money of the people to continue to litigate their case.”

      The case stems from challenges to Alabama’s seven-district congressional map, which included one district in which Black voters form a large enough majority that they have the power to elect their preferred candidate. The challengers said that one district is not enough, pointing out that overall, Alabama’s population is more than 25% Black.

      A three-judge court, with two appointees of former President Donald Trump, had little trouble concluding that the plan likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the votes of Black Alabamians. That “likely” violation was the standard under which the preliminary injunction was issued by the three-judge panel, which ordered a new map drawn.

      But the state quickly appealed to the Supreme Court, where five conservative justices prevented the lower-court ruling from going forward. At the same time, the court decided to hear the Alabama case.

      Louisiana’s congressional map had separately been identified as probably discriminatory by a lower court. That map, too, remained in effect last year and now will have to be redrawn.

      The National Redistricting Foundation said in a statement that its pending lawsuits over congressional districts in Georgia and Texas also could be affected.

      Separately, the Supreme Court in the fall will hear South Carolina's appeal of a lower-court ruling that found Republican lawmakers stripped Black voters from a district to make it safer for a Republican candidate. That case also could lead to a redrawn map in South Carolina, where six U.S. House members are Republicans and one is a Democrat.

      Partisan politics also underlies the Alabama case. Republicans who dominate elective office in Alabama have been resistant to creating a second district with a Democratic-leaning Black majority, or close to one, that could send another Democrat to Congress.

      The judges found that Alabama concentrated Black voters in one district, while spreading them out among the others to make it much more difficult to elect more than one candidate of their choice.

      Alabama’s Black population is large enough and geographically compact enough to create a second district, the judges found.

      Denying discrimination, Alabama argued that the lower court ruling would have forced it to sort voters by race and insisted it was taking a “race neutral” approach to redistricting.

      At arguments in October, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson scoffed at the idea that race could not be part of the equation. Jackson, the court’s first Black woman, said that constitutional amendments passed after the Civil War and the Voting Rights Act a century later were intended to do the same thing, make Black Americans “equal to white citizens.”

      URL
      https://www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-rules-favor-black-142654715.html
       

       

    2. (See 2 other replies to this status update)

  24. richardmurray

    How a simple shipping error poisoned most of Michigan
    Story by Matt Jaworowski • 8h ago

    ST. LOUIS, Mich. (WOOD) — In many ways, St. Louis, Michigan, is your typical small town. Main Street is one of the city’s primary throughways. The “downtown” shopping district spans just a few blocks. St. Louis doesn’t have a Walmart to call its own. That requires a quick drive over to the nearby city of Alma. 
    But St. Louis has its own claims to fame. The town of approximately 6,800 people prides itself on being the “Middle of the Mitten” — measured to be the geographic center of the state of Michigan. Signs throughout the city boast about that fact.

    A cynic could call it the middle of nowhere, but that isn’t necessarily true. At one time, St. Louis wasn’t just the “middle” of Michigan, it was also the center of a statewide controversy.

    Just a couple of short blocks from Main Street, there is a giant swath of open land, about 54 acres in all. It’s surrounded by chainlink fence, with construction equipment and power stations lining the paths. The warning signs are faded by the sun. The lettering that was once a bright red is now a pale pink, but all these years later they still read “Private Property, No Trespassing.”

    There is a gated driveway with a sign of its own. You have arrived at the former Velsicol Chemical Plant, now an EPA Superfund Cleanup site. < https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0502194 > On the other side of the driveway is a ceremonial bench, built on behalf of the city. The inscription reads, “We declare our mutual aim that our river and land be restored to their natural condition safe for any use.”

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been working off and on at the site for more than 40 years now — and the work continues. The Pine River and surrounding areas have been contaminated for much longer than that. But 50 years ago, a simple error at the since-demolished St. Louis plant spread that contamination from a handful of communities to the entire state.

    “It is the most underreported disaster I have known in my long journalistic career.”

    That’s how Joyce Egginton ends the first paragraph of her book, “The Poisoning of Michigan.” At the time, Egginton was an American correspondent for the London Observer. She says she stumbled onto the story tucked away deep inside an issue of The New York Times.

    “I remember calling out to my husband halfway through the task, ‘Can you believe this one?’” Egginton wrote. “Way down on an inside page of the New York Times was a brief account of how in Michigan a large quantity of a highly toxic industrial fire retardant, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), had been confused at the manufacturing plant with a nutritional supplement for cattle feed. As a result, there had been a massive, slow poisoning of dairy herds for almost a year before the accident was discovered. It was estimated that throughout that time virtually all 9 million people living in Michigan had been ingesting contaminated meat and milk on a daily basis.”

    That snippet from The New York Times led Egginton to years of research and interviews, culminating in more than 300 pages packed with details, outlining a quietly escalating tragedy that centered around PBB.

    PBB is a group of man-made chemicals that were first manufactured around 1970 and sold primarily as a fire retardant. They were also mixed into many plastics for consumer products, including computer monitors, televisions and textiles. But chemical manufacturers didn’t fully understand the health or environmental impact from these chemicals. Those questions came after the infamous “PBB Disaster.”

    It was a late spring day in 1973 when a truck driver made a delivery from Michigan Chemical to the Michigan Farm Bureau’s central mixing facility outside of Battle Creek. The driver thought he had dropped off 50-pound bags of Nutrimaster — Michigan Chemical’s product name for magnesium oxide.

    America’s first high-volume ‘PFAS Annihilator’ is up and running in West Michigan
    Farmers regularly mix in magnesium oxide as a supplement for milking cows. The compound provides iodine, which cows need, and it also makes the cows thirstier. The more water cows drink, the more milk they produce.

    This magnesium oxide was a grayish-white powder and was packed in 50-pound brown paper sacks. The powder tended to get clumpy when exposed to moisture. What the driver had actually delivered was Firemaster, another grayish-white clumpy mixture that was packed in 50-pound brown paper bags.

    “Except for the color coding on the bags, Nutrimaster and the powdery form of Firemaster could easily have been mistaken one for the other,” Egginton wrote. “Which is exactly what happened when, during a temporary nationwide paper shortage in the winter of 1972-73, Michigan Chemical Corporation ran out of preprinted bags and made do by simply hand-stenciling the trade names in black.” 

    now14.jpg

    Tens of thousands of animals tainted with PBB were slaughtered and buried in pits on state land to limit contamination spread. (Courtesy Archives of Michigan)
    © Provided by WOOD Grand Rapids

    now15.jpg

    Tens of thousands of animals tainted with PBB were slaughtered and buried in pits on state land to limit contamination spread. (Courtesy Archives of Michigan)
    © Provided by WOOD Grand Rapids

    now16.jpg

    Tens of thousands of animals tainted with PBB were slaughtered and buried in pits on state land to limit contamination spread. (Courtesy Archives of Michigan)
    © Provided by WOOD Grand Rapids

     

    In the ensuing few years, < https://www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/safety-injury-prev/environmental-health/topics/dehbio/pbbs/history > more than 500 farms across the state had to be quarantined. Approximately 30,000 cattle, 4,500 swine, 1,500 sheep and 1.5 million chickens either died from PBB-related ailments or had to be killed. That doesn’t count the sick animals that showed clear signs of PBB toxicity but were still allowed to be sold off and slaughtered.

    Rick Halbert, one of the first farmers to press the Farm Bureau on a problem with his feed, explained to Egginton how his herd’s health fell off a cliff.

    “As months went by the toxic symptoms in his herd progressed, producing a mangey appearance, matted hair, thickened skin, diarrhea, emaciation,” Egginton wrote. 

    Many cows also showed signs of distress during pregnancy, leading to a spike in aborted or stillborn calves.

    Gerald Woltjer bought a farm in Coopersville from a farmer who was forced to sell because of PBB contamination. He figured the property could still be successful with a new herd. He was wrong.

    “Within two years, Woltjer’s herd — which was never quarantined — was so sick and useless that he was on the verge of bankruptcy,” Egginton wrote. “He told of scrawny cows with perpetually bloody noses ‘who acted like they were blind;’ cows so weak that they could not get up to be milked; cows which had bodily infections but passed inspection to be butchered for human consumption.”

    Woltjer realized the land was contaminated and PBB exposure had spread to his herd.

    “The longer I lived on that farm, the worse it became,” he told Egginton. “After a time, there were no worms in the soil. There were no field mice, no rats, no rabbits, no grasshoppers. As the cattle were dying, the cats and dogs were dying, too. A fully grown cat would live only six weeks on that farm. Our three dogs went crazy. Our neighbors had bees that were dead in the hives. The frogs were dead in the streams. There was a five-acre swamp that used to croak at night so you could hardly sleep. Then, it was silent. And it was a long time before I knew why.”

    Most farmers, completely baffled by the sudden changes, fell into financial ruin. Even with the state eventually instituting PBB testing standards and a program to help compensate for their losses, many farmers faced drastic decisions. For some, it came down to killing your animals or selling an obviously sick one to market in an attempt to make any money back on a floundering investment. Many farmers, like Garry Zuiderveen from Missaukee County, refused to pass along the PBB-contaminated animals.

    “We should never have had to make that decision,” Zuiderveen told Egginton. “It was the darkest day in my life when I shot those cows. A farmer is an immensely proud person. Anything wrong with his herd reflects on his husbandry and his herdmanship.”

    The Michigan Department of Agriculture eventually opened a large tract of state-owned land in Kalkaska County to be used as a burial pit for tainted animals. But for farmers like Zuiderveen, who clearly had a poisoned herd but tested below the state’s safety threshold, there was no help offered.

    Zuiderveen ended up digging a burial pit on his own property. His neighbors and friends came to help, knowing it would be a difficult day.

    “We hauled the milk cows from the barn to the burial site on three stock trailers and put them in six or eight at a time. Within 20 seconds after they were unloaded, we shot them with high-powered rifles. This finished them instantly. They did not suffer,” Zuiderveen told Egginton. “My dad would not look at them. Tears were running down his face, a man of 78. … Those fellows don’t know what they put us through. We should never have had to kill our own cows; we were too emotionally involved.”

    Zuiderveen wouldn’t take any credit for doing “the right thing.” He credited his Christian upbringing and the concept of being “our brother’s keeper.”

    “I knew that, from the information we had at the time, it was the only decision we could make and still face ourselves in the mirror,” he said.

    Still, plenty of other farmers couldn’t pull the trigger. Between facing bankruptcy or foreclosure, many felt like there was no other rational choice. As a result, lots of PBB-tainted meat and dairy products were sold at market and scientists estimate virtually everyone who lived in Michigan at the time was exposed to PBB and had some level stored within the fats in their body.

     

    Though there were studies being conducted and clear symptoms that could be traced to PBB exposure, specific findings on how PBB impacts the human body came long after the 1973 disaster. By the 1990s, researchers had been able to tie chemical pollution to a rise in hormone-related abnormalities, including breast cancer.

    Michele Marcus is a professor of epidemiology at Emory University and is the lead scientist on the Michigan PBB Registry, < https://sph.emory.edu/pbbregistry/about/index.html > which began in 1976. She said that PBB essentially acts as estrogen in the human body. A PBB buildup throws off the body’s hormonal balance, leading girls to mature earlier and boys to mature later and be born with abnormalities in their urinary or reproductive systems.

    Researchers also found that PBB was being passed down from one generation to another, even today finding a higher rate of miscarriages in women who were born from mothers or grandmothers who were directly exposed to high levels of PBB.

    “The children of the mother are exposed as it crosses the placenta and then again in breast milk because (PBB) is lipophilic. It is stored in fat, and breast milk has a very high fat concentration,” Marcus said.

    The latest studies are focused on how PBB impacts a person’s DNA. Marcus explained that PBB does not mutate a person’s genetic sequence, but it can impact how certain genes are “expressed.”

    “You start from a single cell. You’ve got your DNA and then the cells change and they differentiate into heart cells, stomach cells, liver cells. And each cell type has a gene expression pattern. So genes are turned off and turned on depending on the function of the cell,” Marcus said. “This is kind of a new field, which is looking at the impact of chemicals or substances on gene regulation, not on the genes themselves. … We found that PBB does impact this methylation pattern and, in fact, that’s part of the evidence that it acts like estrogen because it affects this methylation pattern in the same way as estrogen.”

    Some good, some bad: Michigan DNR updates endangered species list < https://www.woodtv.com/news/michigan/some-good-some-bad-michigan-dnr-updates-endangered-species-list/ > 
    So can that gene regulation be inherited? Researchers haven’t come to a unanimous conclusion yet, but Marcus believes it can.

    “This is a very controversial question and for many years the dogma was no, it can’t (be inherited) because those things are stripped when the sperm are developed. When the DNA replicates that is supposed to be all stripped off,” Marcus said. “But now it seems that that’s not complete. … There have been a lot of studies that are very, very clear in animals that it happens, and the human evidence keeps accumulating.”

    The Michigan PBB Registry was launched in 1976 to gather data that could eventually be used to answer these kinds of questions. The study started with approximately 4,000 people and eventually added in their children and grandchildren. Eventually, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services wanted to shut down the research project. But thanks to funding from the National Institutes of Health, it was transferred to Emory University.

    Decades later, the St. Louis community remains heavily invested in the PBB disaster and anxious to learn more about how it impacted their health and environment. In 1998, after meeting with the EPA and other state departments, a community group launched the Pine River Superfund Citizen Task Force. < https://www.pinerivercag.org/ > 

    Jane Jelenek now serves as the chairperson of the task force. She didn’t live in St. Louis in 1973, but her husband worked at the chemical plant and had other friends and relatives who had direct exposure.

    Jelenek said her work is not focused on looking to the past or securing compensation for people who were exposed; those efforts have long failed. Instead, the task force is focused on working with the EPA and holding it accountable to make sure the land is restored. She said it has been an up-and-down relationship.

    “We found at our (monthly meetings) that they were more interested in the amount of dollars that they could get to do something that determined how much cleanup they actually would do. We did not think that was a very good measure,” Jelenek said. “And I remember saying at one meeting, ‘We don’t care about the money. We don’t care how much it costs. We just want it done.’”

    When will it be done? Thanks to an influx of investment because of the latest infrastructure legislation, work has gotten a boost. Tom Alcamo, the EPA’s remedial project manager for the site, hopes work will be done by 2026. Eventually, the Superfund site will be deemed clean and the land will be turned over to the community.

    But the scars will remain. And traces of PBB are still being passed down from one generation to the next.

     

    Instead of mixing in a nutritional supplement, the Farm Bureau was unknowingly poisoning thousands and thousands of animals. Even worse, the problem wasn’t limited to one specific type of feed. Any feed that was processed through the same mixer that used Firemaster was now being exposed to PBB, making it even harder for the investigators trying to find the root of the problem.

    URL
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/how-a-simple-shipping-error-poisoned-most-of-michigan/ar-AA1c7k2n?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=1b3fa566178a4d0795f5d87c6d30bf42&ei=93
     

     

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      juneteenth and reparations 

       

  25. richardmurray

    now06.png

    An illustration of the Union prisoners’ cemetery in Charleston, published in Harper’s Weekly two years after the May 1865 celebration.
    © Alfred R. Waud/New York Public Library

     

    Black people may have started Memorial Day. Whites erased it from history.
    Story by Donald Beaulieu • Yesterday 6:00 AM

    On May 1, 1865, thousands of newly freed Black people gathered in Charleston, S.C., for what may have been the nation’s first Memorial Day celebration. Attendees held a parade and put flowers on the graves of Union soldiers who had helped liberate them from slavery.

    The event took place three weeks after the Civil War surrender of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and two weeks after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. It was a remarkable moment in U.S. history — at the nexus of war and peace, destruction and reconstruction, servitude and emancipation.

    But the day would not be remembered as the first Memorial Day. In fact, White Southerners made sure that for more than a century, the day wasn’t remembered at all.

    It was “a kind of erasure from public memory,” said David Blight, a history professor at Yale University.

    The contested Confederate roots of Memorial Day
    In February 1865, Confederate soldiers withdrew from Charleston after the Union had bombarded it with offshore cannon fire for more than a year and began to cut off supply lines. The city surrendered to the Union army, leaving a massive population of freed formerly enslaved people.

    Also left in the wake of the Confederate evacuation were the graves of more than 250 Union soldiers, buried without coffins behind the judge’s stand of the Washington Race Course, a Charleston horse track that had been converted into an outdoor prison for captured Northerners. The conditions were brutal, and most of those who had died succumbed to exposure or disease.

    In April, about two dozen of Charleston’s freed men volunteered to disinter the bodies and rebury them in rows of marked graves, surrounded by a wooden, freshly whitewashed fence, according to newspaper accounts from the time.

    Then, on May 1, about 10,000 people — mostly formerly enslaved people — turned out for a memorial service that the freed people had organized, along with abolitionist and journalist James Redpath and some White missionaries and teachers from the North. Redpath described the day in the New-York Tribune as “such a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina or the United States never saw before.”

    The day’s events began around 9 a.m. with a parade led by about 2,800 Black schoolchildren, who had just been enrolled in new schools, bearing armfuls of flowers. They marched around the horse track and entered the cemetery gate under an arch with black-painted letters that read “Martyrs of the Race Course.” The schoolchildren proceeded through the cemetery and distributed the flowers on the gravesites.

    Other attendees entered the cemetery with even more flowers, as the schoolchildren sang songs including “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “John Brown’s Body.”

    “When all had left,” Redpath wrote, “the holy mounds — the tops, the sides, and the spaces between them — were one mass of flowers, not a speck of earth could be seen; and as the breeze wafted the sweet perfume from them, outside and beyond, to the sympathetic multitude, there were few eyes among those who knew the meaning of the ceremony that were not dim with tears of joy.”

    In 1865, thousands of Black South Carolinians signed a 54-foot-long freedom petition < look after the first image below >

    The dedication ended with prayers and Bible verses from local Black ministers, followed by speeches from Union officers and Northern missionaries, a picnic on the racecourse and drills by Union infantrymen, including some African American regiments. The observance didn’t end until sundown.

    And then, Blight said, the event was forgotten. Not right away — but within a few decades, any recollection persisted merely as rumor, in verbal anecdotes.

    The reason, he said, is that “by the middle and end of Reconstruction, the Black folks of Charleston were not creating the public memory of that city.”

    The Southern generals who stuck with the Union in the Civil War
    The portrayal of the Civil War and its aftermath was controlled in the South by groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Ladies’ Memorial Association, as well as Confederate veterans, Blight said.

    “The Daughters of the Confederacy were the guardians of that narrative,” said Damon Fordham, an adjunct professor of history at The Citadel, a military college in Charleston. “And much of that was skewed toward the Confederate point of view.”

    Blight chronicled the 1865 Charleston ritual in his 2001 book “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory,” based on evidence that Fordham helped him uncover. Blight had been researching the book in 1999, in an archive of the Houghton Library at Harvard University, when he found a collection of papers written by Union veterans that contained a description of the May 1, 1865, events in Charleston.

    If the description was accurate, Blight said, he knew that “that event in Charleston deserves its own full commemoration, just because of the poignancy of it, the sheer scale of it.”

    But first he had to corroborate it. One of the first places he contacted was the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston. “I called up the curator there,” Blight recalled, “and I said, ‘I just found this in a collection of veterans materials. Have you ever heard of this story?’ And the guy said, ‘No. That never happened.’”

    The “guy” was Fordham, who at the time was a graduate student at the college and a research assistant at Avery. Despite his doubts, Fordham knew the center had microfilm of the Charleston Courier, a daily newspaper from that time, so he checked it.

    “About two hours later, he called me back, and he said, ‘Oh my God, here it is,’” Blight said. It was a Courier article from May 2, 1865, “describing this extraordinary parade on the old planters’ racecourse.”

    Blight went on to find more proof, including an illustration of the fenced cemetery that was published in Harper’s Weekly in 1867. “Pretty soon I had all these sources that no one had ever bumped into, so one thing kept leading to another,” he said. “But even people in Charleston said, ‘No, never heard of it.’ That shows the power of the erasure of public memory over time.”

    In the book, Blight describes a 1916 letter written by the president of the Ladies’ Memorial Association in Charleston, replying to an inquiry about the May 1, 1865, parade. “A United Daughters of the Confederacy official wanted to know if it was true that blacks and their white abolitionist friends had engaged in such a burial rite,” he wrote. “Mrs. S.C. Beckwith responded tersely: ‘I regret that I was unable to gather any official information in answer to this.’”

    In the 1880s, the bodies of the Union soldiers, the “Martyrs of the Race Course,” were exhumed and moved to Beaufort National Cemetery. The horse track closed shortly after that, and the 60 acres of land became Hampton Park, named for Wade Hampton III, a Confederate general and Charleston native who became governor of South Carolina in 1876. Hampton enslaved nearly 1,000 people before the war, and his governorship was supported by the Red Shirts, a White paramilitary group that violently suppressed the Black vote.

    After slavery, Black people desperately searched for family through newspaper ads <look after second image below>
    By the end of the century, no vestige of the racecourse, the cemetery or the 1865 parade remained.

    More spring graveside memorials followed the one in Charleston. Several occurred in towns across the country in the spring of 1866, and many of these places — such as Columbus, Miss., whose commemoration became annual — claim to have held the original Memorial Day observance. Officially, the nation recognizes Memorial Day as having started in Waterloo, N.Y.

    In Charleston, the freed people didn’t have the power to develop an annual tradition after 1865. But the city now recognizes itself, regardless, as the holiday’s birthplace.

    “On May 1, 1865, a parade to honor the Union war dead took place here,” reads a state historical marker erected in Hampton Park in 2017. “The event marked the earliest celebration of what became known as ‘Memorial Day.’”

     

    URL

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/black-people-may-have-started-memorial-day-whites-erased-it-from-history/ar-AA1bPFSs?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=07a93f22676c4438d2e3eafde7baa12e&ei=5

     

     

    now05.png

    This 54-foot-long petition bears the signatures of hundreds of men who participated in the State Convention of Colored People of South Carolina in 1865. (Gwenanne Edwards/Library of Congress, Conservation Division)

     

    In 1865, thousands of Black South Carolinians signed a 54-foot-long freedom petition
    It goes on display Friday for the first time at the African American history museum in Washington.

    By Michael E. Ruane
    September 23, 2021 at 7:43 p.m. EDT

     

    In November 1865, eight months after the end of the Civil War, a group of African Americans formed a convention in Charleston, S.C., drew up a petition demanding their civil rights and sent it to Congress in Washington.

    “We the undersigned colored citizens of South Carolina, do respectfully ask … in consideration of our unquestioned loyalty [that in the] re-establishment of civil government in South Carolina, our equal rights before the law may be respected,” the handwritten document begins.

    What followed were 3,740 signatures, then-Sen. Jacob M. Howard (R-Mich.) told his Senate colleagues after receiving the petition — on a document that was 54 feet long.

    It was a striking appeal from the newly freed, and previously free, African Americans, asking that they not be forgotten in the country’s postwar reconstruction. Never displayed publicly before, it goes on exhibit Friday at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

    “The petition is a real touchstone for the expectations and the will of … African Americans …[who saw] this moment in the county’s history as a new beginning,” said Katy Kendrick, exhibitions curator at the museum. It’s a “very powerful and very direct claiming of full rights of citizenship.”

    The petition is part of a new exhibit of 175 objects at the museum entitled “Make Good the Promises: Reconstruction and Its Legacies.”

    The exhibit covers the turbulent postwar era of Reconstruction as the vanquished Southern states sought to recreate prewar racial oppression, and African Americans fought, ultimately in vain, to prevent it.

    And it examines the legacy of that struggle today.

    It includes a frightening Ku Klux Klan head mask with horns, made of cloth and animal fur, owned by a Confederate army officer in North Carolina and used to terrorize Black residents.

    It includes a document from the Freedmen’s Bureau, the federal agency set up to help the 4 million people newly freed, that tells of a mother’s attempt get her two children back from their former enslaver.

    Caroline Atkinson went to the bureau’s office in Vicksburg, Miss., in September 1867, two years after slavery had been abolished in 1865.

    But her daughters Elizabeth, 10, and Mary Jane, 11, were still in the hands of one William Atkinson, who had refused to return them unless he was paid $100 — roughly $1,600 today.

    She signed the document with an X. The bureau investigated and ordered the children returned to their mother, according to the museum.

    There’s an old pew from a former Black church, as well as the stained glass windows picturing Confederate generals that was removed from Washington National Cathedral in 2017.

    The Cathedral announced Thursday that the windows would be replaced with racial justice-themed windows created by Black artist Kerry James Marshall.

    The exhibit also includes a Bible and nine-page Bible study guide loaned by a survivor of the massacre at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where nine African Americans were murdered on June 17, 2015.

    That church is across the street from the site of the old Zion Presbyterian Church, where the freedom petition was drawn up 150 years before. (Zion Presbyterian was demolished in 1960, according to a study by the College of Charleston.)

    “Reconstruction was a pivotal moment … when the nation had an opportunity to make amends for the injustices of slavery and rebuild itself on a new foundation of racial equality,” Kevin Young, the museum director, said in a statement.

    “While some gains were made, this was also a period of voter suppression … violence and unlawful incarceration,” he said. “Because of the work left unfinished … and the decades of discrimination that followed, the struggle … continues in society today.”

    The signers of the petition to Congress met at the “State Convention of the Colored People of South Carolina” over six days in late November 1865 at Zion Presbyterian, according to an account of the proceedings printed by a local newspaper. At the time, Zion Presbyterian was the biggest church in Charleston and a center for the Black community.

    In addition to the petition, the convention issued a number of resolutions, including:

    “That in the death of the late President of the United States, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, this nation has sustained an irreparable loss and we, as a race, deprived of a noble friend. We sympathize with his afflicted family and will ever hold his name in grateful remembrance.”

    Lincoln had been assassinated the previous April.

    The convention resolved: “That we hereby object to a ‘negro code’ [of law]. … In our humble opinion a code of laws for the government of all, regardless of color, is all that is necessary for the advancement of the interests and prosperity of the state.”

    Oppressive state laws restricting the lives of African Americans, called “Black Codes,” soon became a grim hallmark of Reconstruction.

    The convention issued an address to the people of South Carolina:

    “Heretofore we have had no avenues opened to us or our children — We have had no firesides that we could call our own. … The laws that have made white men great have degraded us because we are colored. …

    “But now that we are free, now that we have been lifted up by the providence of God … we have resolved to come forward, and … speak and act for ourselves.”

    And it resolved:

    “As the old institution of slavery has passed away … we cherish in our hearts no hatred or malice toward those who have held our brethren as slaves, but we extend the right hand of fellowship to all and make it our special aim to establish unity, peace and love amongst all men.”

    URL

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/09/23/african-american-freedom-petition-museum-reconstruction/

     

    now07.png

     

    Mary Bailey searches for her children. Her ad ran Nov. 24, 1866, in the Daily Dispatch newspaper in Richmond.

     

    ‘My mother was sold from me’: After slavery, the desperate search for loved ones in ‘last seen ads’

    By DeNeen L. Brown
    September 7, 2017 at 7:30 a.m. EDT

     

    Ten months after the Civil War ended, an enslaved woman who had been ripped away from her children started looking for them.

    Elizabeth Williams, who had been sold twice since she last saw her children, placed a heart-wrenching ad in a newspaper:

    “INFORMATION WANTED by a mother concerning her children,” Williams wrote March 17, 1866, in the Christian Recorder newspaper in Philadelphia. Her ad was one of thousands taken out by formerly enslaved people looking for lost relatives after the Civil War.

    Those ads are now being digitized in a project called “Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery,” < https://informationwanted.org/ >which is run by Villanova University’s graduate history program in collaboration with Philadelphia’s Mother Bethel AME Church.

    In four column inches, the mother summed up her life, hoping the rich details would help her find the children. She listed their names — Lydia, William, Allen, and Parker — and explained in a few words that she last saw them when they were “formerly owned together” by a man named John Petty who lived about six miles from Woodbury, Tenn.

    She explained how her family was split apart when she was sold again and taken farther south into captivity.

    “She has never seen the above-named children since,” the ad said. “Any information given concerning them, however, will be gratefully received by one whose love for her children survives the bitterness and hardships of many long years spent in slavery.”

    The “Last Seen” ads started appearing around 1863. By 1865, when the Civil War ended, they were coming out in streams. Black people torn away from family members by slavery placed thousands of “Information Wanted” notices in black-owned newspapers across the country, seeking any help to find loved ones.

    In the ads, mothers looked for their children; children looked for their mothers; fathers placed ads for lost sons; sisters looked for sisters; husbands sought their wives; wives tried to find their husbands. The ads showed in real time the destruction slavery wrought on black families, tearing people apart and scattering generations like leaves in the wind.

    The ads often gave detailed physical descriptions of the missing, names of former slave owners, locations subscribers “last saw” family members and sometimes maps, tracing how many times they were sold from one owner to the next until they so far from family members all they had to cling to was sketchy memories.

    Many of the Last Seen ads, dating from 1863 to 1902, were placed in the Christian Recorder, the official newspaper of the African Methodist Church. Others ads were placed in the Black Republican in New Orleans, the South Carolina Leader in Charleston, the Colored Citizen in Cincinnati, the Free Men’s Press in Galveston, Texas, and the Colored Tennessean in Nashville.

    Judy Giesberg, the graduate program director at Villanova’s History Department, began noticing the newspaper ads while researching the story of Emilie Davis, a free black woman who lived in Philadelphia during the Civil War and kept a diary while there.

    “Emilie Davis would write about a lecture she would see or some event in Philadelphia,” Giesberg said. “If she said she went to see Frederick Douglass, we would look in the newspaper to see where he was. It was hard to overlook these ads.”

    Sometimes the ads took up columns and columns that would make up whole pages, which captured the weight of the missing and the desperation of subscribers to find them.

    Giesberg started collecting the ads with the intention of one day making them available to people online. “I started with the AME Church newspaper,” Giesberg said. “It was the first place I noticed the ads. When I started looking in other black newspapers, I found this was a common phenomenon to include ads taken by people who were one step out of slavery.”

    Last August, Giesberg created the “LAST SEEN: FINDING FAMILY AFTER SLAVERY” website, where genealogists and other researchers can search for specific names and locations. Two graduate students — Margaret Strolle and James Byrd — read microfilm to find the material. The site uses volunteers to help transcribe the ads. There are now more than 2,000 ads on the site, of which 1,500 have been transcribed. Since January, the site has been visited by more than 1 million unique visitors.

    “There are comparable projects that have collected runaway slave ads,” Giesberg said. What is unique about Last Seen ads, she added, “is they were taken out from the other perspective. They were taken out by the enslaved people.”

    The Last Seen ads break down what genealogists and researchers call the “1870 Census Wall.” Before the 1870 Census, there were very few official records of black people.  Enslaved black people were often listed as property, by a check mark, a number or by a gender. They were often listed on bills of sale, like chattel. When researchers try to get information on enslaved black people, they often hit a brick wall when searching for information before 1870.

    “What the ads do is reach from the other side of the 1870 Census Wall,” Giesberg said. “The ads place people together in a time before 1870.”

    The ads tell real stories of real people with real names, humanizing enslaved people, something slave owners often tried to prevent.

    “Slave owners often painted a portrait of enslaved people as part of a happy family in which white men were patriarchs,” Giesberg said. The ads go “beyond that myth, the myth of the benign slaveholder who believes he was a good slaveholder and all the slaves belonged to him. These ads are where real truth lies.”

    Enslaved people lived with the constant fear that they or a family member would be sold.

    “Slave owners’ wealth lay largely in the people they owned, therefore, they frequently sold and or purchased people as finances warranted,” according to a report by the National Humanities Center, a nonprofit that collects primary historical resources. “An enslaved person could be sold as part of an estate when his owner died, or because the owner needed to liquidate assets to pay off debts or because the owner thought the enslaved person was a troublemaker.”

    An exhibit entitled “The Weeping Time” at the Smithsonian’s African American Museum of History and Culture explains the circumstances that often split families apart.

    “Night and day, you could hear men and women screaming … ma, pa, sister or brother … taken without any warning,” according to a witness account in the exhibit. “People was always dying from a broken heart.”

    Another witness described an emotional scene at a slave auction. A mother clings to her baby while being whipped with a lash because she refused to put her baby down and climb an auction block.

    The woman pleaded for God’s mercy, Henry Bibb recounted.

    “But the child was torn from the arms of its mother amid the most heart rending-shrieks from the mother and child on the one hand, and the bitter oaths and cruel lashes from the tyrants on the other,” Bibb recalled. “Finally, the poor child was torn from the mother while she sacrificed to the highest bidder.”

    In a “Last Seen” ad placed on April 17, 1902, in the Christian Recorder newspaper in Philadelphia, a woman seeks information about “my people.”
    “My mother was sold from me when I could but crawl,” the woman writes.

    Since the sale, “I never saw any of my people. I was about 39 years old last March and am married and living at Panama, Vernon Co., Mo. My name is Mary Delaney; it used to be Mary Long. Address me at Post office: Panama, Vernon county, Mo.”

    In a “Last Seen” ad placed on April 17, 1902, in the Christian Recorder newspaper in Philadelphia, a woman seeks information about “my people.”
    “My mother was sold from me when I could but crawl,” the woman writes.

    Since the sale, “I never saw any of my people. I was about 39 years old last March and am married and living at Panama, Vernon Co., Mo. My name is Mary Delaney; it used to be Mary Long. Address me at Post office: Panama, Vernon county, Mo.”

    Some of the ads were intentionally vague, masking details, and  mysteriously leaving out specific names and locations. These ads showed mental calculations of a people one step out of slavery. Even after Lincoln declared enslaved people in Confederate states to be freed, they were suspicious about the terms of that Emancipation, fearing that at any time they could be pulled back into slavery.

    In a June 7, 1883, ad placed in the Southwestern Christian Advocate in New Orleans, an unnamed man searched for his son. The ad is brief: “Mr. EDITOR,” the man wrote, “I desire to hear from my son. His name was Tony Jones. I have not seen him since the war. He lived with Thomas Jones. His mother was Julia Jones.”

    If anyone should know Tony Jones — the enslaved man with the same name as his “master”— he asks them to write to him care of P.P. Brooks in Shelbyville, Tex.
    The ad is unsigned.

    Other ads gave insight into how people lived, their aspirations and successes.

    In an ad placed June 28, 1883, in the Southwestern Christian Advocate newspaper in New Orleans, Betty Davis inquires “for my people.” Davis explained that she was separated from her mother when she was three years old.

    “I am now 55 years of age,” she wrote. “I learned how to read when I was 50. I take and read the SOUTHWESTERN, it is food for my soul. I am anxious and would be glad to hear something of my mother or my brother Henry. Someone help me.”

    Sometimes, the ads led to happy endings.

    In an Aug. 26, 1886, ad that ran in the Southwestern Christian Advocate newspaper, which did not charge for publishing letters from subscribers, Alcy Boone wrote a letter to the editor saying she found who she was looking for:

    “I have found my mother through the dear SOUTHWESTERN. God bless you and your paper; it resurrects the forgotten, the lost can be found.”

    URL

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/09/07/my-mother-was-sold-from-me-after-slavery-the-desperate-search-for-loved-ones-in-last-seen-ads/

    1. richardmurray

      richardmurray

      forum post

       

×
×
  • Create New...