Dayle in Limoux – Day #66

Elton John gave tribute to Queen Elizabeth at his concert in Toronto in last night.

“I’m 75, and she’s been with me all my life, and I feel very sad that she won’t be with me anymore, but I’m glad she’s at peace, and I’m glad she’s at rest, and she deserves it. She worked bloody hard. I send my love to her family and her loved ones, and she will be missed. But her spirit lives on. And we’ll celebrate her life tonight with music.”

And from the government of France today, a remarkably eloquent and gracefully written  statement historically honoring the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth II.

❥

M

A

R

C

H

E

D

A

Y

in Limoux. And it was 74 degrees! J’adore 74.

Épices! Beautiful.

The Grand Cafe                              Oui, s’il vous plaît.

This book.

“Those who dance are often condemned by those who cannot hear the music.”

Love every single page, all 721 of them. It’s been an education and beautiful guide book for the history and contemporary journeys into the sacred mysteries of our beloved Languedoc.

p. 673

There is only one way, and I repeat one way only, in which to understand the word forgiveness. By practicing it. And while practicing it, it is important to be aware that another judgment is not hiding within this forgiveness of the person or thing that is forgiven. For example, are you able to forgive yourself?

Be not afraid. There is nothing to be feared. But be aware that every thought, every word and every action has an impact in the cosmos. Remember that a wrong word said on one side of the globe is all it takes to creat a tidal wave on the there. Step outside fear.

p. 675

May the eye rest only on that which is new.

May the hand no longer take, but give.

May thought in the future be free in the service of the Exalted.

The heart is the mirror of the universe.

The heart is the true Grail.

☉

All this week Father Richard Rohr, the Center for Action and Contemplation, has been writing about the Grail. Juxtaposed with ‘The Manuscript,’ powerful and confirming.

“After our own Grail experience, our lives are characterized by some measure of perpetual dissatisfaction. Nothing lives up to our standards: not the church, not ourselves, not our country. There is a radical, aching longing: Ordinary life will never again be good enough, yet it is not meaningless either.

After the Grail experience, the ordinary forever becomes extraordinary. God is both perfectly hidden and perfectly revealed in everything.

A peak experience can be disconcerting. Sometimes we might even be ungrateful for it. We don’t fit in anymore. We live the rest of our lives at a tilt, wandering like Parsifal. We might feel a bit off-center. We can’t get excited about things most people get excited about. We just don’t believe they’re important anymore.

We get wounded in the hip, like Jacob (Genesis 32:26), and we limp the rest of our lives, but we’re not worried about the wound. We’re utterly confused, but we’re not confused by our confusion. We can live with our confusion now because, behind it all, we know.

Does that sound like double-talk? When one gets into Grail language, it’s all paradox. Everyone wants to pull us back to the first language of logic, law, and ego-tower building. But we can’t go anywhere with that. We have jumped off the ego tower. Once Parsifal has seen the Grail—even though he returns to the world—he is radically different ever after.”

Indeed.

À bientôt.

✿´¯`*•.¸¸✿

Dayle in Limoux – Dayle #43

  * .  .   ✧

* ✧  ✧   *    .   *   * .  .   ✧ ✧   *    .     .     ✧     .     * .  *   . ✧  ✧   *    .   * ✧  ✧   *    .   *   * .  .   ✧

* ✧  ✧   *    .   *   * .  .   ✧ ✧        *    .    *    ✧     .   *   .   *✧  ✧   *    .   *   * .  .   ✧  * .  .   ✧ .  *   .    * . .   *   * .  .   ✧

.  *   .    * . There is magic in this world and you’re part of it.     *    .   *

 ✧        *    .    *    ✧   * .  .    -Sydney Azari    .   *   .   * ✧  ✧   *    .   *
 .  *   .    * .  .   ✧        .✧  ✧   *    .   * ✧  ✧   *    .   *   * .  .   ✧   * .  .   ✧
 ✧  ✧   *    .   *        .       .     *.     .✧  ✧   *    .   * ✧  ✧   *    .   *

 ✧   *    .     .     ✧     .     * .  *   . ✧  ✧   *    .   * ✧  ✧   *    .   *   * .  .   ✧

  * .  .   ✧

‘I use my body as it was meant to be used, as a vessel of light, to express ℒℴve. I protect my body against the assaults of modernity from thoughts of

  c h a o s

to the contaminates of the physical environment, infusing my body with the light of the divine.’

-Marianne Williamson

🌼

Marianne’s prayer is basically a Cathar approach to their beliefs. There’s a devil and a god and that everything material (including the body) was the domain of evil, and the ethereal soul was the domain of God and that life was about the keeping the soul GOOD and PURE. To be a light and a conduit for spirit. Baptism was a vessel of purification. They revered John the Baptist. If in this life they did not achieve their goal, the goal of purity, they were reincarnated. Not unlike the Hindus belief of samskaras (earthly conditioning) and moksha, ending the cycle of death and re-birth through purification at the Ganges River in Varanasi, India. The underlying similarities between many religions and faiths is truly remarkable, especially in the Jewish faith and practices in Egypt and Iran. There was a lot of borrowing and re-shaping over the centuries, and yet, the ugly inhumane violence and destruction in the name of those beliefs is beyond understanding. The Cathars would probably just say, “Well, yeah. That’s the Rex Mundi part of this existence, the evil…the devil. The human experience.”

Might be a good time to listen to the ever optimistic Coldplay with their song ‘Humankind.’ I listened to it today after Rolling Stone posted about the group’s new video for the ‘Music of the Spheres’ track. They’re holding on to h o p e for the humans.

Rolling Stone

Coldplay Break Out the Fireworks for Euphoric ‘Humankind’ Video

I know, I know, I know
We’re only human
I know, I know, I know
How we’re designed
Oh I know, I know, I know
We’re only human
But we’re capable of kindness
So they call us humankind

Some of us, especially in the u.s.a., just need a lot more practice.

It rains in France!

And it’s 72 degrees!

Woo-Hoo! Doing the Languedoc happy dance. :)

Now, bring on the flooding since the drought has dried everything and the earth can’t absorb. You know, I think the river already looks higher. They run these test sirens for flooding that sound like WWII air raids. Glad I had been told me about them early after my arrival or I would have taken shelter under the bed thinking Putin had gotten feisty.

From France 24 and AFP News:

‘The French weather service warned Wednesday of flash flooding risks across much of the south, where a historic drought has parched the rugged Mediterranean hills, a day after fierce rainstorms lashed much of the country.’

And the fires. Spain firefighters are having a harrowing effort battling blazes as have many in France this summer.

The Independent

‘Firefighters ran from towering flames as they tackled the Bejís fire in Castellón, eastern Spain, on Tuesday afternoon, 16 August. Footage shows firefighters repeatedly shouting “fuera”, which means “get out,” as huge flames and plumes of smoke close in. The fire has burned over 1,900 acres (800 hectares) so far. Around 1,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, Valencia’s president Ximo Puig said. At least 11 people were injured after they evacuated a train travelling near the flames through Castellón.’

There’s always music in Limoux! ..•*¨`*♫.•

´*.¸.• .¸. ❥❥¸¸.☆¨¯ ♫.¸.¸¸.☆¨¯`❥❥

With the rain, lots of reading and research today. One of my favorite things is unlimited time and be surrounded by books and journals. Divine grace. Learning so much about the deeply layered history of this area, along with Egypt and Spain. I hope to visit a number of the ruins and villages I’m reading about, although getting there is going to be tough without a vehicle; cell phone service is precarious in some of these places too, to be able to fetch a ride from a taxi service, if…big if…they want to drive to the places I need to go for drop-off and pick-up. I’m going to look into some day tours, too.

http://www.enigmatours.com/EnigmaTours-Rennes-Le-Chateau_en.html

And found another site, too, with great visuals and history of the Cathars and Languedoc/Occitanie region.

‘And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’ -F. Scott Fitzgerald

My favorite place to be.

https://www.payscathare.org/en

‘I believe the spiritual realm is so enmeshed with the physical that it is imperceptible. I believe in the mysterious nearness of my ancestors, but I believe they are located at the site of my own blood and bone.’ -Fr Richard Rohr

Oui! Or, as they said in Languedoc before they were overtaken by French kings and the Catholic church, ‘Oc!’ Yes. They had their own language, although not far from some of the French language. The dialect is so different here in this region and most likely the reason NOBODY UNDERSTANDS MY SIMPLEST OF FRENCH WORDS. Pronunciation. It’s mauvais. <sigh> Just wrong. It’s going to take me awhile. There’s a food server here I’ve gotten to know and she’s helping with my French pronunciation. So kind. She has trouble saying my first name. It’s very ‘flat’ sounding, I think…just kinda falls, well, flat. But! When I told her my middle name and try putting both together, it was beautiful! Dayle Ann…only she said it with her French accent and blurred the two names. It was parfait! Perfect. I think my new French name is now DayleAnn. My family once called me that when I was a little girl because I was named after my dad, Dale. So, DayleAnn it is. :)

À bientôt.

❀

Final days. #2022

‘I regret nothing.’ -Edith Piaf

‘I’ve learned a great deal this year. What kind of year did you have? No matter how many challenges you’ve had, no matter what pain you’ve endured, did you do your very best? Then have no regrets.’ -A. Stoddard

As a collective we should have so many, and we can do so much better. We must. -dayle

Brian McLaren from the Center of Action and Contemplation:

“Something beautiful lies ‘unveiled’ on the other side of complexity and perplexity.”

Gatekeepers have long built razor-wire fences around us with

• beliefs
• rules
• policies
• controversies
• budgets
• programs
• activities
• rituals
• offerings
• inquisitions

Spirituality, though, is available to everyone, like wind, rain, and sun. [Brian McLaren] This is what we harness and share, and protect. “In politics, we’ve been studying war for centuries. We must now study how to crate the conditions for deep and lasting peace. We must now cherish life on earth and engage with it by focusing our best energies on learning to love neighbor, self, earth, and God…Gaia…who is Love.”

LATimes

What LA astronomers and diviners have in store for you in 2022.

-Deborah Netburn, staff writer

‘Spend time dreaming about the world in which you want to live…get specific about what real-life steps you can take to make it a reality. Ask, what does it mean to you to release the Earth, working with others to help the land rest more?’

Full piece [paywall]:

https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2021-12-30/la-astrologers-diviners-2022?scrolltoken=7G1wK4-LOddBnq3lrBXBRqGFKlvWJcPXHjkIOTw9jTF3kSyGA9UZOrb3waBywAUn2pYBn0sDngba-7GmYEXZL7GvBuFhMSD_KICR-OOnXCUPRhbNjvh3uToqrMUVeLpI-1Oja7LcW_J4Dc7tl6o9Tk8vH5oYH4CxV-r17fQqh58EnRsVYTx_U7G9epr7tpZSfWmqBLN3SzcdwKw5G4xnmskMU7067A.eyJraWQiOiIyIn0

‘These are scary, uncertain times. The pandemic has thrown our lives into chaos once again. Global warming has upended the predictable flow of the seasons. The political climate is divisive and volatile. With all this anxiety swirling around us, is it any wonder that tarot readers, astrologers and other divinatory practitioners say they’ve never been busier? All of us want to know what will happen next.

From the Oracle at Delphi to the Yoruba practitioners of Ifá, there are myriad ways to approach divination and myriad reasons for wanting to see into the future. These tools can be seen as a framework to make sense of the events in our lives. Through this lens, divinatory practices encourage believers to pay attention to the patterns in their lives and the cycles of nature and to move through time with intention.

Los Angeles is among the most spiritually diverse cities in the world; we live alongside thousands of divinatory practitioners from a wide range of traditions — many of whom have devoted their lives to the study of ancient practices that go back thousands of years. As we enter a new calendar year, I asked a handful of them what archetypal energies they expect we’ll encounter over the next 12 months and how we might prepare.’

[Posted on twitter, as seen outside a pub in Europe.]

Eric Holthaus, The Phoenix:

“Any time a climate movie breaks through, it’s worthy of celebration. But this isn’t an ordinary climate movie. #DontLookUp is special.”

In the last days of 2021, a year in which Texas froze and the freakin’ ocean caught fire, the number one movie in the world on Netflix is a star-studded climate movie that’s not about climate.

Let me be super clear: Any time climate breaks through, it’s worthy of celebration. But this isn’t an ordinary climate movie. Don’t Look Up is special.

Watching it last night for the first time, I was legitimately blown away by how much I felt like I could relate to the main plot — well-meaning scientists being ignored because their message wasn’t pleasant or profitable. I was scared to watch it because I was worried it would make me feel even more depressed than I already do about being a climate communicator during these decades of climate delay, but it’s just the opposite. This is the climate movie I was waiting for.

“The reason I think Don’t Look Up works so well is because the film’s creators did their homework. There are so many Easter Eggs thrown in throughout that it’s like a love letter to climate activists. There is a massive, waiting audience for authentic climate movies like this that speak to the deep, existential anxiety of being alive at this profoundly terrifying moment in history. We know how to solve the climate emergency — stop burning fossil fuels, build up a circular, caring society, and shift political power so that nothing like it ever happens again — and yet our leaders are staring us straight in the face and saying no.

Director Adam McKay wrote that his own climate anxiety after reading David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth helped inspire the film, and screenplay co-writer David Sirota wrote that empowering the climate movement was a primary goal of the film.

I reached out to McKay and Sirota, and they both confirmed this hunch I had that the movie wasn’t just a political satire, it was a gift for battle-weary activists after several long, hard years of struggle. “We literally made Don’t Look Up for the climate community,” McKay told me.

When I asked Sirota about the movie’s lack of a preachy, prescriptive call-to-action takeaways at the end, he said that was intentional.

“We want it to be a clarion call for the movement,” Sirota said, “But also respect that the movement should decide its tactics.”

The movie isn’t perfect. There’s too much of a focus on the United States, and there’s a valid criticism that seeking action from corrupt politicians during a time of crisis is counterproductive. We know that climate action at the scale and scope we need will only come from collective movements.

But that’s exactly our job now — tell more climate stories that build on this one.

This isn’t a movie that could exist without the decades of failures that have happened so far. But it’s also a movie that finally FINALLY acknowledges that the lynchpin to taking action on climate isn’t about data or carbon or graphs, it’s about finding our shared humanity.

That part is working:

Authentic climate action is way easier than shooting nukes at a comet — it’s treating each other and the Earth better. It’s listening. It’s building systems of power to replace the systems that have been built to kill us.

It’s up to us, the climate movement, to redirect the energy that Don’t Look Up gives us.”

David Wallace-Wells:

“Globally, 250 million people live within three feet of high tide lines. Ten feet of sea level rise would be a world-bending catastrophe. It’s not only goodbye Miami, but goodbye to virtually every low-lying coastal city in the world.”

“Thwaites Glacier is the size of Florida. It is the cork in the bottle of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 10 feet.” The great ⁦Jeff Goodell on the scary signs from the “Doomsday” glacier.

Rolling Stone

by Jeff Goodall

‘The Fuse Has Been Blown,’ and the Doomsday Glacier Is Coming for Us All

New data suggests a massive collapse of the ice shelf in as little as five years. “We are dealing with an event that no human has ever witnessed,” says one scientist. “We have no analog for this”

“Given the ongoing war for American democracy and the deadly toll of the Covid pandemic, the loss of an ice shelf on a far-away continent populated by penguins might not seem to be big news. But in fact, the West Antarctic ice sheet is one of the most important tipping points in the Earth’s climate system. If Thwaites Glacier collapses, it opens the door for the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet to slide into the sea. Globally, 250 million people live within three feet of high tide lines. Ten feet of sea level rise would be a world-bending catastrophe. It’s not only goodbye Miami, but goodbye to virtually every low-lying coastal city in the world.”

Power in disorder (Joan Didion). Let’s reclaim it now.

Order, disorder, reorder (Father Richard Rohr).

Pandemic life.

Climate Emergency.

Pari Center, Italy.

4 from Bruce.

Bruce Springsteen receives the 2021 Woody Guthrie prize. Here’s the full setlist, his homage to Woody.

1) Tom Joad 

2) Deportee 

3) Across the Border 

4) The Ghost of Tom Joad

‘Bruce Springsteen has been awarded the annual Woody Guthrie Prize. He will accept the honor on May 13th during a virtual event for Woody Guthrie Center members. “I’m honored to receive the 2021 Woody Guthrie Prize,” Springsteen said in a statement.’ [Rolling Stone]

“Woody wrote some of the greatest songs about America’s struggle to live up its ideals in convincing fashion,” Springsteen said in a statement.

Because, well, it’s Bruce.

Rolling Stone/By Brian Hiatt

Were it not for the intervention of a once-in-a-century global catastrophe, Springsteen — who turned 71 on September 23rd — would right now be preparing for that world tour with the E Street Band. It was supposed to start, he reveals, in the spring of 2021. Instead, he says, “My antenna tells me, at best, 2022. And I would consider the concert industry lucky if it happens then.… I’m going to consider myself lucky if I lose just a year of touring life. Once you hit 70, there’s a finite amount of tours and a finite amount of years that you have. And so you lose one or two, that’s not so great. Particularly because I feel the band is capable of playing at the very, very, very top, or better than, of its game right now. And I feel as vital as I’ve ever felt in my life.… It’s not being able to do something that is a fundamental life force, something I’ve lived for since I was 16 years old.”

It’s excellent. -dayle

“It’s the only album where it’s the entire band playing at one time,” says Springsteen, “with all the vocals and everything completely live.” (A few of Springsteen’s twangy guitar leads, played on a Gretsch, are among the only exceptions.)

“It was really like the old days,” says drummer Max Weinberg. “Just pure musical energy, with the hard-earned musical and professional wisdom of guys in their 70s, or close to 70.” It also happens to be the most classically, unabashedly E Street-sounding album since at least The River. It’s a late-period rebirth of sorts, and it started with thoughts of death.

Bruce: “You count the names of the missing as you count off time. Their spirit, their energy, their echo continues to resonate in the physical world.… A beautiful part of living is what we’re left by the dead.”

I’ll see the houses I lived in as a child. I’ll walk through their halls. We see all those folks in our dreams until we become a dream ourselves.

“We miss them dearly, but they’re standing right next to us.”

Brush with Bruce. Ketchum, Idaho…Chapter One. Turned my head to catch my breath. We had a brief exchange. It was a moment. And indelible.

♥ you, Bruce.

-dayle

“…ultimately a spiritual songwriter.”

THE ATLANTIC

Bruce Springsteen’s Playlist for the DT Era

“I don’t know if our democracy could stand another four years of his custodianship.”

by David Brooks

Contributing writer at The Atlantic and columnist for The New York Times.

This is a moment of tumult, anger, hope, and social change. At moments such as this, songwriters and musicians have a power to name things and help us make sense of events—artists such as Kendrick Lamar, Janelle Monáe, Tom Morello, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen.

The Democrats haven’t really made the preservation of the middle and working class enough of a priority. And they’ve been stymied in bringing more change by the Republican Party. In the age of Roosevelt, Republicans represented business; Democrats represented labor. And when I was a kid, the first and only political question ever asked in my house was “Mom, what are we, Democrats or Republicans?” And she answered, “We are Democrats because they’re for the working people.”

“I will miss you Richard.”

❥

“I’m so saddened to hear about the passing of Little Richard… He was the biggest inspiration of my early teens and his music still has the same raw electric energy when you play it now, when it first shot through the music scene in the mid ’50’s. When we were on tour with him I would watch his moves every night and learn from him how to entertain and involve the audience and he was always so generous with advice to me.  He contributed so much to popular music, I will miss you Richard.”

-Mick Jagger

Mick Jagger Pays Tribute to ‘Biggest Inspiration’ Little Richard

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Alan Davidson/Shutterstock (7527496ag)
1989 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the Waldorf Astoria New York Mick Jagger Little Richard and Bruce Springsteen
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – 19 Nov 1989

#JusticeForAhmaud

We can not stand by and be only witness to the cataclysm…we must be active participants. (Thomas Merton)

“We didn’t need a pandemic to remember how filthy America has been left by racism and the laws that uphold it.”

-Jamil Smith

Rolling Stone

Ahmaud Arbery Should Be Alive

[Remember his name.]

Convicting his killers is the start. But the family of this modern lynching victim can’t have justice in a country with laws that protect white people who kill black people.

by Jamil Smith

Ahmaud Arbery was 25. A former high school football player who reportedly was passionate about staying in shape, Arbery was out for a run in the Satilla Shores neighborhood of Brunswick, Georgia. That’s a little more than an hour north of Jacksonville, Florida, if you need to get your bearings on a map. So that you can spare yourself the horror of actually watching the video, I’ll briefly describe what happened in broad daylight on the afternoon of Sunday, February 23rd.

I’m going to word this carefully, because I don’t necessarily believe any part of the story Gregory McMichael and Travis McMichael and their neighbor William Bryan are telling. Gregory, a retired investigator for the Brunswick County district attorney, told police that he first saw Arbery “hauling ass” that day down Satilla Drive, according to the police report. That is what a young, athletic man might be doing on a jog, first of all. But that sight provoked him to tell his son Travis that he suspected Arbery was involved in two recent burglaries in the area, even though neither of the alleged incidents had been reported to police and no official description was on record. Gregory made that assessment, despite the guy “hauling ass” past him. Was a black man running away in this predominantly white community all the probable cause that he needed?

The men loaded themselves up with a .357 Magnum and a shotgun before pursuing Arbery in a white pickup truck. Bryan joined them in the pursuit. Gregory told police that they were packing because “‘the other night’ he saw the same male and he stuck his hand down his pants which lead [sp] them to believe the male was armed.”

If we are to understand Gregory McMichael correctly, he claims he believed Arbery to be armed because — and this is his deduction, based upon his career as an investigator for the local district attorney — he saw a person who he thinks was Arbery the previous night stick his hand down his pants. Because heaven knows, no man in American history has ever done so for any reason other than procuring a handgun. (That he keeps there at all times. Even while supposedly “hauling ass.”)

That is the best story that he could devise for what appears on the video to be the deliberate stalking of a human being. Sure, there’s the audible, “Stop, stop, we want to talk to you,” yelled by the McMichael boys, but what black man in America with a survival instinct stops when a bunch of white men with guns, without badges, hollers this at them?

The police report and full video, photographed by an as-yet unknown driver trailing the McMichaels’ truck, both detail what happens next. The McMichaels cut off Arbery’s path and then we see people getting out of the vehicle and hear yelling. As the car pulls up, per the police report account, the video depicts Arbery struggling over a firearm with Travis, the son. A man is perched in the bed of the truck overlooking. Shots are ringing out. By the end of it all, three shots are fired. At least two struck Arbery, who falls dead to the ground with a visibly bloody shirt. He was unarmed.

Arbery family attorney Lee Merritt, who last October secured a conviction of former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger for the murder of Botham Jean, told me Thursday morning that Bryan was the person that recorded the video and that he believes Bryan coordinated with the McMichaels in committing the murder. “We are demanding that all three of these men be arrested immediately,” Merritt said to me via text.

(Update, 5/7: The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced late Thursday evening, several hours after the publication of this article, that Gregory and Travis McMichael had been arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault in the death of Ahmaud Arbery.) 

However, it is the video of this incident, emerging earlier this week, that has both seemingly secured the nation’s attention and an eventual grand jury in Brunswick County.

The killing happened more than two months ago, and a series of prosecutors have recused themselves from the case because they’re connected professionally to McMichael.

One prosecutor — Waycross, Georgia district attorney George Barnhill — wrote a letter that candidly stated why he felt that the McMichaels should escape accountability for the incident, citing Georgia’s open-carry and stand-your-ground laws, as well as its state code for grounds for arrest: “A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge.”

[…]

I want these men put away, but this is why the solution to incidents like this cannot be sought primarily through the courts. We need lawmakers to get busy. Open-carry must be abolished. Stand-your-ground has to go. State codes that allow citizens to arrest people? Those are golden tickets for lynchings. They should be relics of an America that should embarrass us.

Why should these be the priority? Given that racism has such permanence, it only makes sense that Americans must do away with any law or standard that empowers those who embrace that ideology. First, there is too much money in it. Those who seek to maintain power invest heavily in seeding it amongst the poorest, whitest Americans, and frankly, a lot of rich folks believe it themselves. So especially in this pandemic age, I’m even more about survival than ever. If black folks want to vent about the racism of the individuals involved here, I don’t begrudge them, especially if it helps assuage their anger and grief. But another reason why Arbery is dead today is that the laws of the land, along with those who enforce them, have long ensured that people like the McMichaels don’t have to think twice about picking up that .357 and that shotgun before running off to harass or even kill someone like Ahmaud Arbery.

With laws that made sense, at the worst we’re talking about a young man with some viral tweets about white guys who confronted him about burglaries while he was out for a jog. Maybe he even takes cellphone video of it, and laughs to keep from crying as he runs off. A lot of people will be doing the same as they run Friday in tribute of Arbery on what would have been his 26th birthday. I’ll join them. It will help sate the pain, for now, and demonstrate that we should be able to do what he was doing that Sunday afternoon without threat of losing our lives.

Arbery’s death didn’t get much media attention until now, in part because it happened right as COVID-19 began scaring us into submission. But even long before the coronavirus, there has always seemed to be some reason for us to look away from black death of this kind. The era that birthed Black Lives Matter is several years past, yet we keep needing to repeat those words to a largely white America that seems exhausted by them. The shock of Arbery’s limp body slumping to the ground after very real gunshots is here to once again wake up the “woke,” I guess. Saying their names over and over again to people who don’t hear them until we eventually lose our voices has to end. We cannot afford, as citizens, to continue propagating memes and other forms of online absolution without concrete action. Until there are severe and inescapable consequences for killing black people, anyone who isn’t fully antiracist will continue to do just that.

We didn’t need a pandemic to remember how filthy America has been left by racism and the laws that uphold it. However, we cannot baptize ourselves in the blood of the slain and leave feeling clean. We can no longer accept facsimiles. We must have actual justice.

‘A heart driven to connect.’

“A solitary man with a heart driven to connect to the world at large, with his poetry and music, he spoke honestly to people and connected them to each other.”

Bill Withers

1938-2020

♡

ROLLING STONE:

The three-time Grammy winner released just eight albums before walking away from the spotlight in 1985, but he left an incredible mark on the music community and the world at large. Songs like “Lean On Me,” “Grandma’s Hands,” “Use Me,” “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and “Lovely Day” are embedded in the culture and have been covered countless times. While many of Withers’ biggest songs were recorded in the Seventies, they have proven to be timeless hits. “Lean on Me” emerged once again in recent weeks as an anthem of hope and solidarity in the time of COVID-19.

He had to endure incredible racism in the Jim Crow South. “One of the first things I learned, when I was around four,” he said, “was that if you make a mistake and go into a white women’s bathroom, they’re going to kill your father.”

Looking back decades later, Withers was still amazed at his success at a relatively late age in his life. “Imagine 40,000 people at a stadium watching a football game,” he told Rolling Stone. “About 10,000 of them think they can play quarterback. Three of them probably could. I guess I was one of those three.”

In 2015, he made a rare public appearance when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “I still have to process this,” he said shortly after learning the news.

Bill Withers, Hall of Fame Soul Singer, Dead at 81

Plastic.

(AUSTRALIA OUT) SKM, a recycling company in Melbourne, has been declared bankrupt and its six major warehouses are full of recyclable materials awaiting processing. This warehouse is located in the industrial suburb of Derrimut. The Victorian Government and the warehouse owners, Marwood Constructions, are unsure how to deal with this material, which is largely unsorted and cannot be sold easily to materials processors. With no one to process their household recycling, Melbourne councils are being forced to send thousands of tonnes of recyclable waste to landfill. (Photo by Jason South/The Age via Getty Images)

Planet Plastic

How Big Oil and Big Soda kept a global environmental calamity a secret for decades

Rolling Stone

TIM DICKINSON

More than half the plastic now on Earth has been created since 2002, and plastic pollution is on pace to double by 2030. At its root, the global plastics crisis is a product of our addiction to fossil fuels. The private profit and public harm of the oil industry is well understood: Oil is refined and distributed to consumers, who benefit from gasoline’s short, useful lifespan in a combustion engine, leaving behind atmospheric pollution for generations. But this same pattern — and this same tragedy of the commons — is playing out with another gift of the oil-and-gas giants, whose drilling draws up the petroleum precursors for plastics. These are refined in industrial complexes and manufactured into bottles, bags, containers, textiles, and toys for consumers who benefit from their transient use — before throwing them away.

“Plastics are just a way of making things out of fossil fuels,” says Jim Puckett, executive director of the Basel Action Network. BAN is devoted to enforcement of the Basel Convention, an international treaty that blocks the developed world from dumping hazardous wastes on the developing world, and was recently expanded, effective next year, to include plastics. For Americans who religiously sort their recycling, it’s upsetting to hear about plastic being lumped in with toxic waste. But the poisonous parallel is apt. When it comes to plastic, recycling is a misnomer. “They really sold people on the idea that plastics can be recycled because there’s a fraction of them that are,” says Puckett. “It’s fraudulent. When you drill down into plastics recycling, you realize it’s a myth.”

Since 1950, the world has created 6.3 trillion kilograms of plastic waste — and 91 percent has never been recycled even once, according to a landmark 2017 study published in the journal Science Advances. Unlike aluminum, which can be recycled again and again, plastic degrades in reprocessing, and is almost never recycled more than once. A plastic soda bottle, for example, might get downcycled into a carpet. Modern technology has hardly improved things: Of the 78 billion kilograms of plastic packaging materials produced in 2013, only 14 percent were even collected for recycling, and just two percent were effectively recycled to compete with virgin plastic. “Recycling delays, rather than avoids, final disposal,” the Science authors write. And most plastics persist for centuries.

Americans who believed they were diverting plastic from the trash were, ironically, fueling a waste crisis half a world away. “It is easy to find American and European packaging polluting the countryside of Southeast Asia,” states a 2019 report from the Break Free From Plastics coalition, which coordinates an annual global audit of plastic waste. “When people in the global north throw something ‘away,’ much of it ends up in the global south because there is no such thing as ‘away.’”

In Washington, the plastics industry is asking government, and American taxpayers, to foot the bill to revitalize the moribund recycling industry. The RECOVER Act — backed by both PLASTICS and the ACC — would offer $500 million in federal-matching funds for investment in new infrastructure. This summer, PLASTICS showed off a demonstration project with high-tech, near-infrared scanning machines that can segregate plastics by their polymer type, improving on human sorters who can’t distinguish between two identical-seeming yogurt cups, each made from different plastics.

The legislation would formally ban the U.S. from exporting plastic waste to developing countries, in alignment with the Basel Convention. Perhaps most controversially, the bill would halt construction of new plastics facilities, giving the EPA time to craft new regulations. Udall insists his bill can return value to the economy, and save consumers a lot of money, noting that every year plastic worth up to $120 billion “is lost after one short use.”

The companies of the plastics industry, Lowenthal says, are ultimately “going to have to deal with the sticker shock that they are now responsible and they’re going to have to pay” to keep plastics out of the environment. The alternative, he insists, has become untenable: “What we have in plastic is something that has made our lives more convenient and easier. But unless we figure out how to keep this out of the waste stream, it’s just going to kill us.”

From Bill McKibbon, environmentalist and founder of 350.org:

‘One of the most damning pieces I’ve ever read, on how Big Oil and Big Soda teamed up to give you Omnipresent UnRecyclable Plastic.’

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/plastic-problem-recycling-myth-big-oil-950957/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

It was Cat. Not Rod. ❀

Rolling Stone

Massive Woodstock Box Set Planned for August

Massive 38-disc box includes nearly every note of music played during the festival’s three days in 1969 – but assembling old tapes and having musicians sign off 50 years later was a daunting task.

Yeah, but. It’s $799. Although, there’s a guitar strap.

“The box — which will also include a Blu-ray of Michael Wadleigh’s Woodstock movie, a guitar strap and a replica of the original program, among other items — will cost $799. More condensed versions — a 10-disc set and a 3-disc one — will also be available.  In the mega-box, the 38th disc includes various audio flotsam. The “Groesbeek Reel,” named after festival sound recordist Charles Groesbeek, includes comments from random attendees taped by Grosbeak–like, Zax laughs, “this one guy moaning about what a disappointing experience it was and that it was a sell-out. It’s a great slice of real people in the moment reacting to it, which pleases me immensely.”

“Complete performances of the Who, Joe Cocker, Sly and the Family Stone, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and others, along with acts who weren’t in the movie or the original Woodstock album, like the Band, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Janis Joplin will be available for the first time. The tracks are also arranged chronologically, by day and set times, from Richie Havens’ opening set that August Friday in 1969 to Jimi Hendrix’s festival-closing set on Monday morning. To ease the overwhelming listening experience, each act is accorded its own disc.”

“There have been large boxed sets devoted to particular eras or tours — the Grateful Dead do a great job of that sort of thing — but there’s never, to my knowledge, been an attempt to present a large-scale durational experience of this sort,” says Andy Zax, the Los Angeles producer and archivist who co-produced the set with Steve Woolard. “The Woodstock tapes give us a singular opportunity for a kind of sonic time travel, and my intention is to transport people back to 1969. There aren’t many other concerts you could make this argument about.”

Back to an Even Bigger Garden: Massive Woodstock Box Set Planned for August

Marvelous March Madness

..•*¨`*.•

´*.¸.• ❥❥L O V E .¸.