How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again! (Mark Twain)
This is a photo from the scene of the 737 Max crash in Ethiopia. I am traveling and have no time to analyze the numbers, but did see a whole lot of eights and nine in various forms, including 35 nationalities, 18 Canadians, 9 Ethiopians, 8 Italians, 8 Chinese, 8 Americans …
This op ed is something I’ve been working on with Mike and Carole for several months. Say what you will about the New York Times, but the editors have been more than up to the task, and the map/graphics people are top drawer. Enjoy this rare chance to read about “fly-over” country in the Big Apple’s pride and joy.
I mentioned this show in the comments in another thread, saying that after I watched it I felt another project was in the works. However, I leave it all to others. It involves genealogy, twins, and a very unlikely story about how Carol Burnett made her way to stardom. I will give you the exact time at which the interesting events in this show occur so that you don’t have to sit through it or go searching.
This clip is from the 1981 movie My Dinner with Andre. Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, playing themselves, share their lives over the course of an evening meal at a restaurant. Gregory, on the right, is far more talkative. As I listened to him I was impressed at his ability to memorize a long speech.
Police and prosecutors will tell us that every man in prison claims to be innocent. Such protestations carry little weight in the smug world of our justice system. But in fact there are men in jail who are innocent, and a few have been set free.
Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck founded the Innocence Project in 1992. That was in the early days of DNA evidence. Having had personal experience with Peter, and in my own life seeing an innocent man incarcerated for fifteen years and then exonerated, I tip my cap. To date they have won freedom for (if I read it correctly) 361 people.
Some years ago I read a small weekly newspaper in Billings, Montana called the “Outpost.” It is since gone, its proprietor, David Crisp, retired. He turns up now and again here and there, an accomplished writer.
The reason I bring this up was because he one time praised another reporter (perhaps on passing) by saying that even as he knew him very well, he did not know his political beliefs. In American parlance, this is probably reduced to whether he was Democrat or Republican. Crisp was saying that the greatest attribute of a serious news reporter is objectivity.
Continue reading “Objectively speaking, we don’t have journalism in our country”
My reading lately has me wondering how in earlier years I could be immunized from absorbing the intelligence I was exposed to. A friend in college, Chuck, was deeply into the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), a Jesuit priest. Consequently, I know the name. Nothing more. Just the name.
I did not know, or even want to know more about the man. My college friend was, by use of reason, trying to come to grips with the problem of abortion. I wanted nothing of that, as I knew without thinking that abortion was wrong, a horrid evil.
My mother was a very wise person, although I have to say I rarely recall her reading a book. She had a saying that people of my era will recognize. The two dominant means of spreading propaganda in my youth and well into adulthood were Time and Life Magazines. As my mother said, probably repeating her own mother’s words, “Time is for people who can’t think, Life is for people who can’t read.”
I have two major means of interacting with other people: This blog, and Facebook. Our friend and writer Steve Kelly recently quit Facebook, and I admire that. I cannot make myself do it. I am connected to my cousins, a few real friends, and some former classmates. I don’t want to lose ties with them.
I meant for the trash bin story below to be about a number of topics, but got carried away on Henry Standing Bear. One other topic I wanted to let our commenters tear apart was New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft getting caught up in a prostitution and human trafficking scandal. His only offense is using the services of a prostitute, a misdemenaor. (That’s yet another topic … men use prostitutes because they want sex without all of the accompanying nonsense like long-term commitment and profession of eternal love. In my perfect world, it would be legal.) Read about Mr. Kraft here.
Consider this post my trash bin, things that I have wanted to write about, but which just don’t pan out well.
The above video is about the character “Henry Standing Bear,” Walt Longmire’s lifelong best friend in the Longmire series. He is played (very convincingly) by Lou Diamond Phillips. I thoroughly enjoyed his work throughout the series’ six seasons.
Continue reading “Trash bin Monday: Henry Standing Bear, casino operator”
Piece of Mindful 