Jimmy Carter ( 1924-2024) A Good Man

 

It is not to be unexpected that a centenarian has passed, but if there have been obituaries I might have, as the sobriquet goes, "read with great interest", this is one I write with rue. Everything I suppose I will read will be some version of: "a good man and a terrible president". He was, in the office of the presidency, well-intentioned but poorly suited--and I don't think seasoning and acquaintance with the ways of DC would have remedied his "outsider" status. As for his status as a man on this earth, he was always in the right place--in service to others, actively living his faith, housing the homeless, looking for social justice, fighting to eradicate tropical disease. 

It's hard to take a view of the Carter presidency without the accumulated history of the last 40 something years. I'm not even going to try. He was born in a segregated state, his rise politically would always be admixed, but he tried to be on the right side. He was for human rights and included those of women. He saw the environment and health care as also being about justice. 

Rest in Power, Sheila Jackson Lee

 

The time is now to unite behind the President and get to work beating Donald Trump — one last time. https://t.co/d84qoX5n5h

— Sheila Jackson Lee (@SJacksonLee) July 19, 2024

What an admirable career of fighting for others! In that spirit, let's get right, unite, and fight.

Joe Lieberman RIP

 

Former US senator and Democratic Party vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman died at age 82 in New York City after suffering complications from a fall, his family said https://t.co/KNXD9UnQf7

— Reuters (@Reuters) March 28, 2024

I enthusiastically voted for Gore/Lieberman, although they did not, per history and SCOTUS, win. I did not always agree with Senator Lieberman, and truly did want the US Senate to skew more liberal. I never understood why someone whose VP chances were screwed up in part by Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan, would associate himself with No labels.

I don't have to understand every part of that to wish his family well. And his other loved ones. May his memory be a blessing. 

Sandra Day O'Connor, 1930-1923

 

To the surprise of the conservative president who appointed her, the conservative first female Supreme Court Justice kept Roe v. Wade on the books. But on the other hand, try as I might to come up with something different regarding her being a trailblazer, I kept coming back to the Bush v. Gore decision. 

She wanted to retire and wanted a Republican to replace her. George W. Bush replaced her with Sam Alito. 

And Roe v. Wade was eventually undone. 

So?

I can't expect someone to have the foresight to realize that the dominoes lined up like that. On the other hand, it was still some kind of selfish decision on her part, and from the 2000 decision, a lot of nastiness flowed. 

So I'm still mad. And I'm not over it. 

Dianne Feinstein Has Left the Senate

There is something jarring in considering that Sen. Feinstein was voting right until the end, giving her last vote really hours before her passing. It could speak to her drive and dedication to public life. It could also speak to the misperception of older politicians of their indispensability and their mortality alike. 

There's something of a "praising with faint damn" tack I want to tread softly with: she represented a more conservative Democratic Party than I prefer even while being a pioneering female senator. She still had her incredible moments, working on gun control, working to repeal DOMA, the release of the Senate report on torture, recently the reauthorization of VAWA.  It's easy for activists to criticize her moderation and willingness to reach out across the aisle--her job as a senator wasn't to be uncompromising but to find areas of areas of compromise for a purpose.

I don't know if there was any inkling of infirmity when she ran in 2018. I do know that the decline of her health in her final years and the speculation that she wasn't fully competent marred her final term. It gives one a terrible sense of pause: her eyes were those of a person whose body had been through the wars. Couldn't she have spent those final years at ease?

Could she have? Or did a sense of purpose make that seem impossible? And having forged on despite being condescended to in the Senate itself by such august personages (in their own minds) as Larry Craig and Ted Cruz, who tells her when to quit?  

That might just be a grain of thought elder statepersons will need to hold their own counsel about--to know not when to be told, but to realize when their age is telling on themselves.  But as for Senator Feinstein, she served until the very end. 

Smash Mouth - Walkin' On The Sun

If you want to know where the Generation X anthems went, why we weren't political enough and didn't do movements, the reality was they all got commercialized and co-opted and we were trying to make money to just not be fucking tragic. And a lot of us took shit tons of drugs and booze along the way. Not for creativity. But to be a little less real. To not feel the reality of what we were about right now. Some of our mamas felt the shelter of mama's little helper, We blasted Yagers and downed fifths like they were pints. We rolled tight jays in borrowed station wagons. 

But the future loomed:

It ain't no joke when a mama's handkerchief is soaked

With her tears because her baby's life has been revoked

The bond is broke up, so choke up and focus on the close up

Mr. Wizard can't perform no god-like hocus-pocus

So don't sit back, kick back and watch the world get bushwhacked

News at ten, your neighborhood is under attack

Put away the crack before the crack puts you away

You need to be there when your baby's old enough to relate

Bitch, DARE had nothing on that. We all needed to see what was coming--the storm despite the apathy. 

Don't delay, act now. (I always repurpose "Walkin' on the Sun" to do with climate change in my head. It makes sense that way, you know. RIP, Steve Harwell. We probably didn't have a whole lot of political overlap but shared a generation.) 

We also lost Gary Wright (I had "Dream Weaver" on a K-Tel compilation to play on my little turntable as a wee kid).  

Fly me high through the starry skies

Maybe to an astral plane

Cross the highways of fantasy

Help me to forget today's pain

And Jimmy Buffet and I don't know. (Yes "Come Monday" speaks more to me, by goodness. It's a fin romantic ballad). There's an uncool era of drinking shit well drinks and listening to popular music that spoke to not fucking around that personifies just wanting to, yearning to, love and live. Because otherwise, we were in the shit. 

I don't know how these guys hang together in my mind, other than all recently passing, except they also do. A couple songs loved and lived deeper and more meaningful to my generation and our consciousness. Part of an ethos of wearing our skin and drinking it in over again. 

Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown (Official Audio)

A real bard goes forth. The man did some classic lays, genuine remembrances passing into folklore. His songs have been covered and admired by the absolute greats he has shared this timeline with. He did really good.  Just beautiful poetic work. 

Barbara Walters, RIP

This was exactly the kind of job more interviewers could have done and should have done more often. She was sometimes underestimated, often imitated, but definitely a trailblazer for women in tv journalism and an inspiration to many. 

Fleetwood Mac - You Make Loving Fun

The amazing quality of Fleetwood Mac to have two great female songwriters has had my admirations since, I dunno--kindergarten? Whenever songs from Rumors hit the car radio where I first listened to music? But let me just talk about Christine McVie's voice for a minute: the positive vibes of her lyrics, the golden warmth of her no-doubt grown lady alto. 

I'm not comparing my love for Stevie Nicks with Christine McVie--my god, "Rhiannon" was the first song that took my little ass out and made me want to understand how to vocalize, how to lay down personal things in verse. But looking back on songs like "Everywhere" and "Little Lies", I'm hearing a such perspective. 

Of course, "Don't Stop" became a 90's anthem for the Clinton era. But the depth and the emotion she could manage, as if it was easy. 

I loved her voice, and her lyrics. I want her voice to woo me until the sun comes up and say that she loves me. Because I loved hearing her. 

Speaking Ill of the Ill-Starred Dead

 

There are people who find themselves appointed to unpleasant tasks and are called upon to serve, even in difficult circumstances, with zealous attention and exacting rectitude, to achieve a necessary goal with persistence and above all, honor. Ken Starr was not that guy.  And while one shouldn't speak ill specifically of the dead, I am not sure why I should stop a necessary conversation started while he was yet living.

He was, charitably, a nasty piece of work. 

He's most famous for dogging President Clinton and family and associates up until he came across an affair and dragged both the president and the 25-year-old intern through the most salacious interpretations of human interaction imaginable for partisan reasons. But he also defended Prop 8 and Jeffrey Epstein and ignored rape allegations at Baylor when he was president of the University.  He unironically defended Trump against impeachment in a way about as hypocritical as former impeachment manager Lindsey Graham. 

It's hard to imagine a person who took up for more horrendous things and yet (obviously) retained the respect of the larval creeps who managed to do stuff like get on the SCOTUS bench with his tutelage.  You know, like Brett Kavanaugh. 

If any of that sounds disrespectful to the dead, you should have heard what I would have said about him, alive. Probably even to his face with the appropriate lubrication. He had the opportunity to do an awful lot, and what he did was, well, awful. And a lot. 

Per Aspera Ad Astra

 

A life well lived is one that will be long-remembered, and Nichelle Nichols truly lived that meaningful life, where the example of talent and heart, interest and intellect, will long outlast the mortal journey. Her portrayal of Starfleet officer Lt. Nyota Uhura, an African woman who was a key crew member of the Enterprise 's bridge on the influential original Star Trek series, did not only entertain but inspired by representing to young people what could and should be. 

That her work on that sf tv program, so influential some of us want to see it as our aspirational future world, was seen as vital by Dr. Martin Luther King, and lead to her own considerable influence in the careers of actors and NASA figures--scientists and astronauts alike, is a story about her commitment to the idea of the future and human advancement. 

We humans are a messy folk, but there are people among us who remind us to look to the stars. Nichelle Nichols did that so uniquely. Set course for home--among the stars. 

Ivana Trump ( 1949-2022)

 

I used to wonder where Don Jr. got his dark hair from until I saw this picture of his young, athletic built mother. She wasn't always blonde, but she was always striking. She passed at a strange time in the story of the Trump family--the post-White House period, a time of subpoenas and depositions (delayed) and occasional strife. 

I will admit--when I look back on when I got my first extremely negative impression of Donald Trump, it was because of the Big Divorce Story and Ivana's bid to get a little more than the prenup would allow after all she had been through. I took her side. I don't know what it was, but something about the whole deal told me that being married to Trump was absolutely a kind of work. And I didn't even know about the alleged abuse and rape, then, but felt like she had a story to tell that maybe we wouldn't ever know, fully, because she wasn't the type to tell, fully.  She struck me as a survivor. Not a person who tells tales. A person who lives through them.

I was a little proud of her "Living well is the best revenge" phase. She prepared for her landing.  She did not use her time after the dissolution of the marriage to disparage her ex, but to do her own thing. She raised the Trump kids until the age when they could choose to go follow in their father's path. 

Some people say she was Trump's twin, in that she also had an indefatigable will. Maybe.  I don't know what to make of the story that she fell down the stairs and received blunt force trauma to the chest a day before her ex and children were supposed to have a deposition in NY regarding their business dealings, but sometimes coincidences do happen.  It's only because of who Trump is and how naturally the question rises up in the mind that people are even thinking the thing that seems too shocking to say. 

But surely, that's only a delay and wouldn't be worth any person's actual life. Not anyone so near and dear to all concerned. Of course. We aren't so deranged by Trump's infamy to think the unthinkable. 

I do wonder what her residential security camera situation was, though. And whether she had any visitors that day. No reason at all. Just curious as any person might be. 

December is a Dark Month

 

 I haven't posted about the suckularity lately because to me, living in "pandemic time" only meant becoming wrapped up in the passing of so many lives and I never wanted to turn the blog over to obituaries and eulogies, but December hits hard, sometimes. Harry Reid, George Madden, April Ashley, bell hooks, Joan Didion, Mike Nesmith, even Bob Dole. Anne Rice, E.O. Wilson, Sarah Weddington. I note their passing, but just can't bring myself to write the damn things about them. 

Their time and mine intersected, and for their merits and their flaws, you can look anywhere, but as for me, it's memento mori as much as anything else. We carry the good in our memories and follow their positive example. 

That's all I've got.

May Senator Carl Levin's Memory Be a Blessing

 

With great sadness and heavy hearts, the Levin Family and Levin Center at Wayne Law announce the passing of Senator Carl Levin – a dearly beloved husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle, and life-long public servant.https://t.co/7E8PiA1q7R pic.twitter.com/wNqINaolt4

— Levin Center (@Levin_Center) July 30, 2021

I couldn't let the senator's passing go unremarked on the blog, as he provided such an amazing highlight, with such good outrage and preparation, when he threw the phrase "shitty deal" back at Goldman Sachs to let them know he knew that they knew exactly what they were peddling to their investors. I relished that moment because he tried to make them hear themselves and I admired that. He was a voice for government transparency and ethical government and a supporter of civil rights. All in all, he was great example of a dedicated public servant--an example to learn from.

He Heard It

President Trump and first lady Melania Trump paid their respects to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a crowd booed and chanted "Vote him out." https://t.co/M7m7kEIBg7 pic.twitter.com/tWYfyKIdIF

— CNN (@CNN) September 24, 2020

Trump can maintain that he barely heard whatever the folks in front of the court were chanting, but I simply trust and believe he heard, and he will continue to hear it. (Awake and also dreaming.) I think he was there to maintain the appearance that he can perform respectability, but the people who most admired Justice Ginsburg's work are also the people who most likely recognize that Trump is, in many ways, the antithesis of what she had stood for. She stood for equality under the law; he supports the law for some and mere order for others. (This is more particularly stated by Frank Wilhoit in The Travesty of Liberalism: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect...") He can pay empty respects as easily as make empty promises, but he remains who he is.

Being people who appreciate the rule of law and the importance of democracy, what was chanted there was not "Lock him up!", but "Vote him out!"--which has a meaningful difference. Trump's crowd wants vengeance for unspecified wrongs while liberals will settle for remediation of wrongs very well understood. I'm a poor liberal and I also want him to spend his post-presidency in court on the other side of the bench and looking up until his neck hurts.

I don't think he leaves his bubble often, or he would know he'd get a cold shoulder there. I understand that White House staff bottleneck information so that he doesn't become the recipient of too much bad news. I can't imagine what it must feel like to understand that one's presence brings down the tone of a funeral, but I'd have to understand that as a normal person. And I can't fathom how that registers with Donald Trump.

I know he heard it. How that registers with him, I don't know.

Farewell, Justice

Ruth Bader Ginsburg later in life acquired the nickname "Notorious RBG" (which had to be explained to her as being a take-off on the deceased rapper, Christopher Wallace, AKA Biggie Smalls or Notorious B.I.G.) because she was gangster in her dissents. In her dissent to Shelby vs. Holder, she lit up the premise of the decision, rephrasing MLK Jr.'s comment that the arc of the universe was long but inclined towards justice with the addendum that there must be a steadfast commitment to do the bending. In other words, it inclined towards justice because good people worked to do that. And had to keep doing that work. (And she was right, and that decision was wrong.)

Ruth Bader Ginsburg did that work. When she was one of the very few female law students at Harvard in the 1950's, the Dean asked her what she was doing there, taking a man's place. That same man, Erwin Griswold, later described her work on gender equality by comparing her to Thurgood Marshall. She was a champion of equal protection under the law.

Her business was justice: even when dealing, as she did for decades, with the disease of cancer that took her mother from her when she was still young, and her husband after many years. She kept her spirit and her drive to do the right thing up to the end.

I don't care to blog right now about her replacement, because there are some people who in reality are not replaceable. She supported the rights of people whose marginalization made their rights subject to being disappeared. Her belief in equality under the law for everyone made her a champion for the disabled and for minorities, for women and LGBT people. She stood in the gap for folks to keep the idea of equality alive. She wanted the feet of government off the necks of people living their lives.  Her career and her life need to speak for themselves, without the spotlight of electoral politics for the moment coloring her magnificent career.

She was a person so deserving of the title "Justice". May her memory be a blessing.

Chadwick Boseman Forever

pic.twitter.com/aZ2JzDf5ai

— Chadwick Boseman (@chadwickboseman) August 29, 2020

It is absolutely gutting to think of this gifted actor, having done some of the finest work while his body was suffering from a terminal disease, being gone, but it's a reminder of how much every day must count, and if there is any word for a career like his, even if cut too short, it's got to be: legendary.

My heart goes out to the loved ones he leaves behind.

John Lewis, 1940-2020

Even though I was arrested, I smiled bc I was on the right side of history. Find a way to get in the way #goodtrouble pic.twitter.com/SN0K6lHbqO

— John Lewis (@repjohnlewis) July 19, 2015

Lewis' passing after a life of good trouble is best memorialized by continuing his legacy, because there are still bridges to be crossed.

UPDATE: There were an awful lot of people today who should have kept John Lewis out of their mouths and tucked his life lessons into their hearts today, but a special place is reserved for Senator Lindsey Graham, who took the opportunity to smear Black Lives Matter as hating America. The idea that Black lives are being murdered in the street and their bodies brutalized even in their own homes is very much something they want to change, but I fail to see where wanting to fight for their own lives is an example of hatred for America. Are white Americans, or the idea of America itself, supposedly harmed by Black Americans--living? Do we consider ourselves one nation, undivided, with liberty and justice for all? Because they are the ones marching for that ideal, and I don't see Sen. Graham even bothering to do that ideal lip service. As one of Trump's great supporters, he stands with voter suppression and police brutality.

With regards to the largely non-violent struggle of BLM, Rep. Lewis said people should give it all they've got if they want to see change. Non-violence is not without unlawful behavior, because many things can be made against the law. Direct action often takes the form of civil disobedience for this reason--civil, but disobedient, uncomfortable, disagreeable. People have, in slagging the movement, confused vandalism with violence, as if property damage was equivalent to the loss of life--it's a sad reflection on what some people actually value.

John Lewis's head was cracked by a state trooper. He decried police brutality, but did not hate police for the job they do, but for what was done by people, behind a badge, that had no part of what the job of law enforcement should be. It is possible, just as it is possible to want to defund departments that are militarized and diversify response services so that force is not the only tool in the toolbox for dealing with people in a bad place. It is possible to love America greatly, and for that reason be in constant struggle for what it is not yet, but needs to be. We can see Lewis as a happy warrior, smiling because he knew the trouble he stirred was good, but let's not hurry to throw water on the outrage that that spurs the fighter on, or cast aspersions on the young who take up that fight, but haven't also had their images burnished with time.

We are watching a generation of greats fall away, as Rev. C. T. Vivian passed just recently as well, and Joseph Lowery earlier this year. They all were prepared to catch hell in their time from the people who opposed them. So it has to be for people standing up today, and from people like Graham, who isn't any different of better than people those gentlemen stood against. John Lewis doesn't need such as Lindsey Graham to write his history, Graham should tremble about who writes his.

Little Richard - Good Golly Miss Molly Live 1964

If he wasn't always considered the King of Rock and Roll, then Little Richard was clearly the Architect of Rock and Roll; the protean spirit of the sound that influenced generations. Vibrant and virtuoso, spiritual and sexual, he did and was an awful lot. He made history, and will be remembered well, and lives on.

Ain't No Sunshine

The man could repeat "I know" over and over in way that seemed to convey paragraphs. The lyricist of some of my favorites. "Just the Two of Us" popped on the radio in the limo when I got married and became "our song" almost 18 years ago. I know I just wrote about not being an obits blog, but Bill Withers is an exception.