Five Highlights of the Montreal Jazz Festival – posted 7/3/2014
It has been nine years since I was lucky enough to go to the Montreal Jazz Festival. Fortunately, I made it back this year. (For anyone who still can make it, the festival runs until July 6.)
The festival is such a great event. I am not sure which is better – the food in Montreal or the music at the festival. Both were wonderful. Since I went in 2005, the festival seems bigger. I think there are more shows with a wider diversity of international music being played.
For those who have never been there, there are a number of big stages set up downtown. From early evening til almost midnight, there are live shows. Most shows are free. There are some paying concerts for bigger name performers. Montreal is an excellent venue for young unknown musicians who get a chance to play before large crowds so they can make a name for themselves.
i thought I would highlight some of the acts and food places which wowed me. The food places are not connected to the festival but I wanted to mention them anyway:
- Ester Rada – I had never heard of this Israeli artist before the festival. She is a very lively performer and singer. There are jazz, funk, soul, and reggae sounds in her music and her band is tight. I think she has released a CD entitled Ester Rada. Check out her song Nanu Ney.
- Mai Xiang Yuan – This hole in the wall, totally unpretentious Chinese restaurant is located at 1084 Boulevard St Laurent in Montreal. It is the place for dumplings. They are made from scratch. You can get them boiled or fried. I thought the boiled were better. My wife Debra and I tried the shrimp, coriander and pork. We also tried the shrimp, egg and leek dumplings. The dumplings are to die for. The place has a limited menu – dumplings and soup with dumplings but what they do, they do great.
- Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite – These guys don’t need praise from me but their concert was terrific. Charlie seemed to be loving playing with Ben. I liked “I’m in I’m Out and I’m Gone”. Also, “You Found Another Lover (I Lost a Friend)”. There is no better blues harmonica player out there than Charlie.
- Au Pied De Cochon – My friends Mike and Sue suggested this restaurant. It was a treat. Debra and I split a duck special. The duck was thinly sliced in a very flavorful sauce. We also shared yummy poutine au foie gras. Debra had codfish fritters for an appetizer. She thought it was better than any she had eaten on Cape Cod which is high praise. We split sugar pie for dessert. It had a creme sauce and it tasted like luscious pecan pie. The place is not cheap but it is a find. I definitely would love to go back sometime.
- Diana Krall – She did a hugely attended free show at an outdoor stage. There was no room to move it was so crowded. Fortunately they had big screens set up so you could see even from faraway. I have always liked her music and it appeared thousands of Montrealers felt the same way. I liked her version of Temptation. Also her version of the Band’s Ophelia. She did a tribute to Neil Young and sang a fine version of Man Needs A Maid. Her husband Elvis Costello came on to sing a few songs with her at the end. I think she did more covers than usual, quite a bit of Dylan. I give her credit for doing Subterranean Homesick Blues, not a song I think she ever would have tried to do.
This is the 35th year of the festival. It is an annual event. If you can swing it, this is always a tremendous event. Go in the future if you can…
A Different Take on Bowe Bergdahl – posted 6/9/2014 and published in the Concord Monitor on 6/12/2014
This piece appeared in the Concord Monitor on June 12, 2014 under the title “Opinions on Bergdahl Too Often Stated as Fact.” Jon
I have been shocked at the amount of hatred unleashed against Bowe Bergdahl and his parents. I was driving to work after the prisoner swap, listening to Boston sports talk radio. One of the early morning show hosts stated Bergdahl was a worthless traitor as if that was an uncontroverted fact. There has been an avalanche of sentiments of that type.
You would not have thought Bergdahl was a POW for five years. Now we are finding out he was tortured after he tried to escape captivity. The New York Times reported that he was locked in a metal cage in total darkness for weeks at a time.
Critics of Bergdahl have called him a deserter, mentally ill, anti-American, a jihadist, and a warrior for Islam. One Fox News commentator said the Taliban could have saved the United States money on legal bills if they had executed him. Bergdahl’s parents have also received death threats.
How commentators know so much about the circumstances of Bergdahl’s separation from his unit and his capture remain a mystery. Just like how other commentators know that the five released Taliban prisoners are “the worst of the worst”.
Speculation becomes rampant when political agendas try to shape perception. Before the prisoner swap, the best information we had about Bergdahl was the 2012 story written by Michael Hastings that appeared in Rolling Stone.
Hastings article described a person very different from any stereotype. Bergdahl grew up near Hailey Idaho, deep in the mountains of Wood River Valley. His parents home-schooled him. He was a free-spirited kid who loved dirt bikes and boys’ adventure stories. His parents are devout Calvinists very concerned about ethical issues.
As a teenager, Bergdahl developed a passion for fencing. He also took up ballet where he met a girl friend. He dreamed of joining the French Foreign Legion. He actually travelled to Paris and started to learn French but his application to join the French Foreign Legion was rejected.
Bergdahl remained interested in a military career. He enlisted in the army. He was a reader. Hastings wrote that Bergdahl surrounded himself with piles of books including Three Cups of Tea about a humanitarian crusade to educate girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Hastings said that unlike others in his training unit, Bergdahl was more likely to hang out in Barnes and Nobles than a strip club.
Hastings goes on to say that after getting to Afghanistan, Bergdahl became disgusted with the war and the general incompetence of his unit. He had sincerely wanted to help Afghans but he did not see that going on. He gravitated away from his unit and he became more psychologically isolated. He had seen an Afghan child get run over by an armored vehicle.
Hastings speculated that the trauma of seeing an Afghan child run over had a big impact on Bergdahl. He quoted from an email Bergdahl had written: “We don’t even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down on the dirt streets with our armored trucks…We make fun of them in front of their faces and laugh at them for not understanding we are insulting them.”
I would offer an alternative speculation for why Bergdahl walked away. He was disgusted by the war. Hastings wrote that Bergdahl did not see the American war effort as an attempt to win Afghan hearts and minds. Possibly he was just a sensitive, idealistic guy who was horrified by a senseless war.
I think much of the criticism of Bergdahl reflects misguided militarism and jingoism. In the 21st century, we should be far down the road from gung-ho soldiers with John Wayne fantasies who never doubt and who blindly follow orders. The 20th century provides many horrible examples of the “I was just following orders” variety.
There has been a too cavalier acceptance of all the wars the United States has engaged since Vietnam. There have been so many. Maybe we should be questioning that – not focussing so much attention on what Bergdahl did or did not do.
Bergdahl’s situation made me flash on Dalton Trumbo’s novel Johnny Got His Gun and Ron Kovic’s book Born on the Fourth of July. Bergdahl is a different variant but it is so premature to be drawing the type of hateful criticism we have seen. How many of these armchair generals criticizing Bergdahl and his parents ever enlisted or put themselves in the type of dangerous situation Bergdahl did?
If the military eventually decides Bergdahl violated any military law, he should face military justice. Still, he also deserves due process of law and the presumption of innocence. That is the American way – not unsupported slander.
Making the Death Penalty Even More Barbaric – posted 6/1/2014 and published in the Concord Monitor 6/4/2014
The death penalty has fallen on hard times. The international community has largely rejected and abolished its use. No other Western democracy besides the United States resorts to the death penalty and it is widely considered barbaric in Europe. Only a handful of outlier nations cling to this nasty old practice. Not great when you are in the company of Saudi Arabia, Iran, China and North Korea.
Making things even worse, executions of late have not gone smoothly. I thought we were past the days of flames shooting out of peoples’ heads. However, we just had the spectacle of the State of Oklahoma botching the lethal injection execution of Clayton Lockett.
Mr. Lockett was alive quite a while after the time the State had expected he would be dead. Witnesses reported that he twitched and writhed in pain. He tried to lift himself off the gurney to which he was strapped. This went on until Oklahoma state officials drew the shades so observers could not see more. Later the state officials called off Lockett’s execution but it turned out he was already dead from heart failure.
Since capital punishment was restored in the United States in 1976, the Death Penalty Information Center has reported 44 botched executions. About 75% of these involved lethal injection, the form of execution now touted as humane.
Lethal injection has become more problematic partly because states have not been able to procure the drugs used in lethal injection. Some states like Indiana appear to be turning to untested drug combinations. A U.K.-based human rights group, Reprieve, has successfully lobbied pharmaceutical companies to bar export to the U.S. of drugs used in executions. There is a massive shortage of these drugs.
So what is a state to do when it can’t use more modern, sanitized, scientific forms of execution? It would appear states are moving backward, reviving old ways. For example, Tennessee’s Governor Bill Haslam has just signed a bill that requires the state to bring back the electric chair if lethal injection is not available. In Wyoming, the Legislature is considering a bill to bring back firing squads.
Since New Hampshire has not yet eliminated the death penalty, it too could face the dilemma of how to kill somebody if lethal injection drugs are not available. In the case of New Hampshire, our last execution was carried out in 1939. It was a hanging.
Since 1734, New Hampshire has executed 24 people. Hanging is the method of execution historically used by the state although lethal injection is now the primary legal form of execution. Hanging can still be used if lethal injection is determined to be impractical.
The late comedian George Carlin thought about this dilemma. He had a number of suggestions to offer. I think Carlin would have encouraged the state to think outside the box.
Carlin said enough with soft American executions. He suggested bringing back crucifixion, a form of capital punishment he thought both Christians and Jews could relate to. Except Carlin favored naked, upside-down crucifixions preferably held at half-time on Monday Night Football. He knew people would be tuning in who didn’t care about football.
Carlin thought if you liven up executions and learn how to market them, you might be able to raise enough money to balance the budget. He had a Hunger Games vision long before the Hunger Games became known.
He favored bringing back beheadings.
“Beheadings on TV, slow motion, instant replay. And maybe you could let the heads roll down a little hill. And fall into one of five numbered holes. Let the people at home gamble on which hole the head is going to fall into. And you do it in a stadium so the mob can gamble on it too. Raise a little more money.”
And he says, ” When’s the last time we burned someone at the stake? It”s been too long! ” Put it on TV on Sunday mornings. Nothing like satisfying bloodlust with a little human bonfire.
Also, don’t forget about boiling people in oil.
“Boy those were the days, weren’t they? You get the oil going real good, you know, a nice high roiling boil. And then slowly, at the end of the rope, you lower the perpetrator head first into the boiling oil.”
Carlin says maybe instead of boiling all these guys, you could french fry a couple. “French fried felons. Dip a guy in egg batter, just for a goof, you know. Kind of a Tempura thing.”
With Carlin for inspiration, the possibilities are limitless. How about a giant shark tank of great whites on the State House lawn? Bye-bye perpetrators. We could replace Jaws with the televised real deal, and time it with the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.
And for technology buffs, we have to work in a drone. Let the convict facing the death penalty loose in a major wilderness area. Give him a few days head start. Then give a drone one shot at blowing him away. Televise it and we can bet on results.
Those with a more religious orientation might recall stonings. I remember when the Taliban took over Afghanistan, stoning became official state policy for many crimes, including adultery. Admittedly, we might be a little rusty with stonings but no one can deny we have many great pitching arms here in the U.S.
New Hampshire, I submit there are possibilities. We replay the same old debates about taxes and casinos. Here is a way we can move forward by moving backward.
Book Review: “Command and Control” by Eric Schlosser – posted 5/25/2014
The safety of nuclear weapons is not a topic that typically pops up in everyday conversation. At least in my house, that is true. The existence of nuclear weapons has long been a background fact of life. We all know these weapons are there and we hope and pray the weapons are being safeguarded so there will never be any inadvertent accidents or mistakes (or use).
In his book, Command and Control, Eric Schlosser takes a hard look at how the United States has done both with keeping nuclear weapons safe as well as preventing accidental nuclear war. I wish I could say the results are reassuring. They are not.
Although we have not had any accidental nuclear explosions which has to qualify as a form of success, Schlosser shows that there have been many close calls.
In reading Command and Control, I have been genuinely surprised at how little we know about the history of nuclear weapon safety over the last sixty or so years. Considering the importance of these weapons to ultimate life and death on the planet, much more discussion is merited. Secrecy and national security concerns should not have vitiated awareness to the degree it has.
Schlosser did tremendous research and the thoroughness of his story is impressive. I certainly did not know about many of the incidents he recounts. It is hard not to think we have been very lucky in escaping a nuclear accident in the U.S. Here are a few of the vignettes captured by Schlosser:
In 1961, a B-52 bomber loaded with two 4 megaton hydrogen bombs had a refueling accident while refueling with a tanker over Greensboro, North Carolina. Fuel started leaking from the plane’s right wing. The pilot could not get fuel to drain from the tank inside the left wing. The B-52 went into an uncontrolled spin.
The two H-bombs both fell from the plane after centrifugal forces pulled a lanyard in the cockpit. The lanyard had been attached to the bomb release mechanism. When the lanyard was pulled one bomb responded as though released by a crew over a target. The crew had bailed out. Almost all the safety systems failed but the bomb did not detonate. If either bomb had detonated, North Carolina would have been a memory. Both bombs were far more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was determined that a single ready/safe switch which was in a safe position when the bomb dropped saved the day.
In 1958, a B-47 bomber carrying a nuclear weapon crashed shortly after taking off from an air force base near Abilene Texas. The fireball from the crash caused detonation of the bomb’s high explosives. The detonation created a crater 35 feet in diameter and 6 feet deep. Fortunately the detonation did not produce a nuclear explosion.
Also in 1958, there was an accident in Mars Bluff, South Carolina when a crew member on a B-47 inadvertently grabbed a manual bomb release for support. This resulted in a nuclear weapon dropping out of the plane. The bomb landed in a garden. A high explosive detonation destroyed a nearby house and created a crater 50-70 feet in diameter and 25-30 feet deep. Fortunately the explosion only caused minor injuries to people who lived in the house that was destroyed. Again, there was no nuclear explosion.
I am only giving a couple examples. Schlosser recounts numerous situations where bombers carrying nuclear weapons crashed and burned. Then there were the situations where nuclear weapons have been lost or were missing. Schlosser recounts a 1966 incident over Palomares Spain when a B-52 bomber carrying 4 nukes collided in mid-air with a KC-135 tanker. Three of the bombs were accounted for. The fourth bomb fell in the ocean. The accident set off a huge search that lasted 80 days before the nuclear weapon was located. For anyone who remembers the James Bond movie Thunderball, there is a bit of a similarity to Ian Fleming’s plot. (Thunderball actually was written before this crash.)
Schlosser also describes a series of close calls with accidental nuclear wars. On November 9, 1979, the computers at the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) outside Cheyenne Mountain said the U.S. was under attack. The military command computers at the Pentagon received the same message. Screens showed missiles being launched from submarines and also from sites inside the USSR. It appeared the attack was massive. It was projected missiles would begin to hit American targets within five minutes.
The military quickly arranged a threat assessment conference. Tensions between the superpowers were not high at the time but the pattern of the attack conformed to Pentagon assumptions about the Soviet war plan. NORAD contacted radar and ground stations which had sensors that could detect launches. The sensors showed nothing. Still bombers and fighter interceptors scrambled and took off to look for signs of an attack.
It turned out the cause of the alarm was an error where a technician put a wrong tape into one of NORAD’s computers. The tape was part of a war simulation training exercise that simulated a Soviet attack on the U.S..
Another time, in January 1995, then President Boris Yeltsin mistakenly believed Russia was under attack by the U.S. He turned on his nuclear football, retrieved launch codes and prepared to retaliate. After a few scary moments, the Russians realized they were not under attack. Norway had launched a weather satellite to study the aurora borealis. They had previously advised the Russians about the rocket but the Russians still believed it was a real attack. There have been quite a few incidents of this nature where one side believed the other side was launching its missiles.
A good part of the book describes a 1980 accident and explosion with a Titan II missile that occurred in Damascus Arkansas in 1980. The Titan II had a 9 megaton warhead. The story is a great illustration of how a trivial accident can wreak havoc with complex technology. Schlosser shows how dangerous systems have difficulty when standardized responses are impossible and creative action is required. The technology is so tightly coupled and interactive that margins for error are narrow.
I think there is a good and bad news aspect to Schlosser’s narrative. The good news is that we survived a bellicose and scary period that made Dr. Strangelove not too far from the truth. People were debating winnable nuclear wars. Remember the phrase “launch on warning”. It does seem that most of the really bad accidents happened over 30 years ago. The end of the Cold War and the improvement of safety procedures did lessen danger.
I did want to say a couple things about Dr. Strangelove. I recently saw the movie again and Schlosser deals with the central issue of the movie: the safety of command and control systems. In the movie a crazy out of control right wing general authorizes a nuclear attack by his fighter wing on the USSR. In spite of the best efforts of the President (played by Peter Sellers) to recall the planes, one bomber cannot be recalled. It gets through Russian military defenses. Unknown to the Americans, the Russians installed a doomsday machine where technology takes over once there is an attack. The movie was dead on and so prescient.
The bad news is the large number of nuclear weapons that remain as well as the proliferation of the weapons to many countries. Schlosser states that the U.S. has 4,650 nuclear weapons. Russia has about 1740 deployed strategic weapons and perhaps 2000 tactical weapons. He says France has 300 nuclear weapons; the U.K. has about 160; China is thought to have 240. Then there is Israel, Pakistan, and India.
Instead of the big war between superpowers, there is much more potential for regional wars or civil wars like in Syria or the Ukraine. We live in a vastly different era than the Cold War. Nuclear weapons are useless for these type conflicts. Despite their uselessness, the weapons have not gone away. The most common nuclear nightmare now that typically shows up in action/adventure novels is the threat of Al Qaeda or other jihadis getting their hands on a nuke and then trying to detonate it in a large American city. That scenario does reflect the twisted reality of how nukes can come back to bite us.
Rational self-interest should move all sides toward elimination of these weapons. Even if elimination is not possible, there is no good reason nuclear arsenals should not be greatly reduced. Majorly reducing numbers of nukes would greatly reduce risk to life on the planet.
Schlosser’s book makes me think of a famous quote from Albert Einstein: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
The Success of Obamacare in New Hampshire – posted 5/10/2014
This piece ran in the Concord Monitor today, May 10, 2014 under the title ” Running on Obamacare Failure is a False Premise”. Jon
It is impossible to ignore the New Hampshire Obamacare sign-up numbers announced last week. The number of New Hampshire people who signed up for health insurance blew away all expectations. The numbers were double what had been expected. As the Monitor reported on May 2, over 40,000 enrolled.
As I recall, there were months of premature accusations of Obamacare failure. If you watched cable news, it was a regular right wing sound bite. Just associate the term “Obamacare” with failure. If you say it enough times that will make it so. The numbers now show that association is a big lie. The numbers have killed.
How to explain the success of Obamacare in New Hampshire? Credit must go to Karen Hicks, the project manager for Covering New Hampshire and a dedicated team of consumer assisters in our state who helped to connect people to and enroll them in New Hampshire’s Obamacare marketplace. They did an outstanding job. They had to overcome a rocky start with the early miserable performance of the healthcare.gov website. They were able to recover with a strong finish in March and April.
The numbers do reflect the degree of need in the community. Health care has been so expensive and insurance has been so expensive that Obamacare could not have been more timely. So many signed up because they needed it and there was no other practical, affordable alternatives.
I do think the success of Obamacare in New Hampshire calls into question the whole political strategy of making opposition to health care reform your platform centerpiece. To maintain and sustain that, you have to ignore or obfuscate what actually has happened.
The best example of the right wing dilemma was when a campaigning Scott Brown spoke at the home of NH state representative Herb Richardson. Rep. Richardson is a Republican from Lancaster. In his March campaign stop, Brown called Obamacare “a monstrosity”. What he did not know was that Rep. Richardson and his wife had hugely benefited from Obamacare.
Rep. Richardson had been injured at his job. He had been out of work and was receiving worker’s compensation benefits. He had lost his home as a result of his financial dilemma. Before Obamacare, he had been paying over $1100 a month under federal COBRA law. That was over half his income. Under Obamacare, with the benefit of a health care subsidy, Rep Richardson and his wife were able to lower their health insurance costs to $136 a month, an 88% reduction in cost. That is a reduction of almost $1000 a month, a savings of over $10,000 a year. Rep. Richardson’s wife was quoted telling Brown “thank god for Obamacare”. Brown apparently said little in response.
This little story highlights a central problem for Obamacare opponents. They have counted on the program flopping. Instead, the program is resurgent and it is attracting more and more people who have been in desperate need of affordable insurance. I think this is the same political problem experienced by earlier generations of right wingers who had opposed Social Security and Medicare. Over time, these programs became more popular with the American people.
You have to ask Obamacare opponents: what is so great about being without health insurance? is that part of your liberty, the freedom to be uninsured? Opponents have repeatedly argued Obamacare is an infringement on liberty.
I am at a loss to understand the logic of seeing receipt of Obamacare as reflecting a loss of personal freedom. The “right” to be uninsured is right up there with the right to starve. To call stuff like that a “right” is perverse. Being uninsured typically translates into an inability to access health care at all. Good luck with the emergency room.
The opponents of Obamacare have offered no credible alternative. Do opponents now want to take away affordable health insurance from the 40,000 New Hampshire residents who have signed up? They need to be asked that question. It looks like they are offering nothing but a bunch of rhetoric.
For those who are looking for health care alternatives that go farther than Obamacare, I would suggest looking at Vermont’s example. In 2011, Vermont enacted Act 48, the country’s first universal health care law. The Healthcare is a Human Right Campaign led by the Vermont Workers Center has been moving that effort forward. As the Campaign stated,
“This is the time to commit to a financing plan based on the principle of equity, which requires progressive tax-based financing so that everyone contributes according to their ability. It is time to commit to a truly universal system that puts people’s health needs first, leaves no one out, and is sufficiently funded to meet all our health care needs. The people of Vermont cannot wait any longer for a strong health care system that protects everyone’s health.”
At the federal level, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has promoted a parallel plan. Sen. Sanders has argued that health care is a right, not a privilege. He has articulated a goal of having universal affordable coverage.
It needs to be asked: do the right wing opponents of Obamacare think the opposite end of the spectrum is desirable? Do they want to realize their dream by having no people on insurance? Is that what liberty means? Or maybe just coverage for rich people who have no financial problem?
I see no inconsistency in supporting both Obamacare and the goal of universal coverage. Obamacare has moved us closer to the goal of full coverage. There is more than one way to skin a cat. Hats off to the Covering New Hampshire organizers and enrollment assisters! It will be interesting to see if Obamacare opponents slink off or maintain. With the new Obamacare numbers in our state, either way is a lose-lose for them.
Donald L. Baird, Five Years Later – posted 5/2/2014
Hard for me to believe but it has been five years since my dad passed away. My dad, Donald Baird, died on May 4, 2009.
Memories of my dad remain vivid. He was a large presence and a big personality. He could be overwhelming. He did not countenance opposition easily and I gave him plenty of things to be upset about. Still we worked through much of the contention and reached a good place.
I do have memories from early childhood of hearing my parents arguing in their bedroom behind closed doors. My mom cried sometimes. My sister Lisa and I would nosily listen to their fights, straining to hear what we could. We moved to a listening post as close to their bedroom door as we thought we could safely stay.
It was hard to win arguments with my dad. He had an unfortunate tendency to equate loyalty with acquiescence. I think that was particularly hard for my mom.
I remain struck by the force of his personality, his drive and his optimism. He never stopped working. He lived to be 88 and he never retired. This was partly based on economic necessity but it was impossible to think of my dad living a retired life at home.
He probably would have driven my mom crazy. He was not the type to putter around his apartment, fixing things. Work gave him a profound sense of purpose. I think it was a source of passion and pride.
My dad built a very successful international textile trading business. He and my mom travelled all over the world many times, especially to Japan, Hong Kong, and Italy. I think he was something of a good will ambassador for America. He and my mom went off beaten tracks and they travelled to places Americans did not tend to go in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Dad went to Pakistan, Syria, India and especially the Far East. My parents made some very good international friends that way.
There is much I could say about my dad’s business career. He had his highs and lows. He made a lot of money but he also ended up going bankrupt twice. In the latter part of his career he was caught in a downward spiral and anxiety about money was a big part of his life. He got into the unenviable position of relying on credit cards, a disastrous course. He was typically using one credit card to pay off another credit card.
Dad tended to trust employees who were not trustworthy and he repeatedly was ripped off. For a guy with some degree of street smarts, he was seriously taken advantage of. He made mistakes in his judgment of people, erring on the side of undeserved trust.
I really wanted to write about his optimism. It was unrelenting and it carried him far. He had an amazing ability to persist even in dire and humiliating circumstances. Back in February, I read an article in the New Yorker about Diana Nyad, the 60 year plus swimmer who tried five times to swim from Cuba to the United States. She failed over and over but she never gave up. She finally succeeded. It is a great story.
The New Yorker story quoted Nyad saying, “A champion is someone who never gives up.” That is the way I look at my dad.
In the last 30 years of his life, I often wondered about the realism in his business efforts. He was barely keeping his head above water but he never quit. He had remarkable persistence and resilience. He was always optimistic, seeing the glass half full. He was also unfailingly generous, especially to family but not just family.
In retrospect, it is easy to look back and say he never realistically had a chance to turn things in his business around. The only thing is I believed maybe, just maybe, he could turn it around. My belief was based on his history and his will. He made me a believer because he didn’t quit.
Now it seems a little crazy to think Dad could have gotten his business back to a good place in his 80’s. It is just that he had massive experience, business connections, good will and he kept on. I guess my own belief in him is an indication of how far persistence can take you. I do believe it was William Blake who said, “If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.”
When my dad died we got emails from business people around the world who knew Dad. Here is one I saved from a Pakistani friend:
To the Family of Donald Baird:
Greatly shocked to know Donald L. Baird passed away. I have lost a great friend. He was a role model and helped me to establish in business since 1955. I pray to almighty Lord his soul may rest in peace in paradise. I will try to attend memorial event in his honor on Sunday June 7th 2009 if my doctors allow me to travel as I am on medication for the last few years. Deena Baird take care you have good children to look after you.
Warm Personal Regards;
Riaz
My dad’s memory remains a great source of strength and personal pride. Life routinely dishes out unfairness and tragedy. I was blessed to have a dad with the qualities of Don Baird. I will forever be grateful to him for setting such a positive and loving example. He modeled a good way to live and love life.
Tonight Debra made me a vodka martini, shaken not stirred. Drinking that is a good way to honor my dad.
Movie Review: “Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the Unites States” – posted 4/26/2014
Before I viewed this 10 hour documentary, I wondered what it would be like. Having seen many of Stone’s movies (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, Nixon and W. come immediately to mind) I did not know if he would veer off into weird conspiratorialism.
I still remember the hazy, surreal scenes from JFK when it appeared like he was implicating LBJ in JFK’s assassination. While Americans seem fascinated by conspiracy theories, that was too strange and irrational. LBJ has enough bad karma without piling on JFK’s assassination.
I have to report that Stone plays it straight in this film. It is pretty conventional stylistically although the film has a progressive take on recent American history. To his credit, Stone does cover much history you never see in the mainstream media. The movie starts with World War II and in 10 hourly episodes it takes us up to Obama.
I liked the film and Stone’s perspective. In his retelling, he particularly exposes the history of U.S. imperialism and our many interventions around the world. His focus is much more on foreign than domestic policy. He also tells the story by focusing on big name leaders, especially Presidents.
It is a massive undertaking to explore American history for such an extended period and such a series necessitates choices. Although I have seen Stone’s movie compared to Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, what Stone attempts is quite different. He covers history from the top down. This series is not focused on people’s movements.
He does make clever use of Hollywood films to illustrate points. I loved his scenes from Dr. Strangelove, still probably the greatest comedy ever. Peter Sellers and George C. Scott were phenomenal in that movie.
Stone highlights some critical moments where history turned. I will mention a couple such moments where I learned things from the movie I never heard about before. The first of these moments occurred in 1944.
Henry Wallace, clearly a hero to Stone, was a candidate for Vice-President. He was the sitting Vice-President, elected in 1940 along with FDR. Stone tells what happened at the Democratic Convention held in Chicago in 1944. (When it comes to Democratic Conventions in Chicago, I always think of 1968). I knew nothing about the 1944 convention.
In what was a watershed moment, Wallace came extremely close to being the vice-presidential nominee. Congressman Claude Pepper was going to nominate Wallace on the convention floor. The hall was packed with Wallace supporters and the prevailing wisdom was that Wallace would be the nominee and the vote would be that night. He had strong support from labor and the progressive wing of the Democrats although he was widely disliked in the south and also by more conservative elements in the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party bosses who did not want Wallace played dirty. They abruptly adjourned the convention that night when the floor was packed with Wallace supporters. They did it in spite of a voice vote that did not support adjournment. Stone says they wanted time to unite behind an anti-Wallace candidate. Congressman Pepper was a few feet from the microphone and his desired goal to put Wallace’s name into nomination. He never made it to the mic.
The extra time allowed by the adjournment gave the party bosses time to mobilize behind the candidacy of Harry Truman. The momentum for Wallace faded. After several ballots, support shifted to Truman who ended up getting the nomination, largely behind the party bosses organizing. Probably not helping things for Wallace was FDR’s equivocal support for his candidacy.
FDR died in 1945 and Truman ascended to the presidency. If Wallace had been the nominee rather than Truman, Wallace would have become president when FDR died.
Stone gets us to ponder this “what if” moment in history. Could the Cold War have been avoided? How about the nuclear arms race? And what about Sen. Joe McCarthy and his Red Scare?
Wallace espoused very different views than Truman. He did not have Truman’s hostility toward the Russians. He favored peaceful co-existence of the two social systems. Wallace had frequently been accused of being a communist. It is impossible to know but maybe things would have played out differently. Wallace was not as intent as Truman on using the nuclear monopoly to gain political advantage. Stone clearly thinks we might have avoided a very dark period if we had a leadership that was less bellicose.
In 1946, Truman fired Wallace from his position as Secretary of Commerce. FDR had appointed Wallace to that post after Wallace lost the vice-presidential nomination. Wallace had been speaking out questioning Truman’s foreign policy. He presciently said that the Truman Doctrine would mark the beginning of a century of fear.
Later Wallace ran for President in 1948 on the Progressive Party ticket. Wallace ran on a platform advocating friendlier relations with the Soviet Union, an end to colonialism, an end to segregation, full voting rights for African Americans and universal health insurance. During the campaign he was redbaited. Wallace had dabbled in the occult and a series of letters he had written became public. Wallace’s eccentric religious beliefs and the letters became a big distraction. Both major party candidates, Truman and Dewey, decimated Wallace in the 1948 election. Wallace got zero electoral votes and 2.4% of the popular vote.
A second critical moment that Stone highlights was an incident during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. I had never heard the story he told. It was an extremely scary time. I remember going to school and wondering if I would be coming home that night. I do not think there was any time when the world was so close to a nuclear war.
During the crisis, an American submarine, the USS Beale, dropped depth charges on the B-59, a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine. The Soviet sub had been trying to hide. Other U.S. destroyers also participated in dropping depth charges. The destroyers meant the depth charges as warning shots but the B-59 thought it was under attack. The destroyers wanted the Soviet sub to surface for identification.
The B-59 sub had not had any contact with Moscow for a number of days.The sub had been too deep to monitor radio traffic since it had been in hiding mode.Those on board did not know if war had broken out. Conditions on the B-59 had been terrible. It had been sweltering hot on the sub over 104 degrees F. Men were fainting from the heat.
The captain of the Soviet sub, Valentin Savitsky wanted to launch a 10 kiloton nuclear torpedo because he believed war might already have broken out. The target was the USS Randolf, a giant aircraft carrier leading the American taskforce. There were three officers on board the B-59. Along with Savitsky were the political officer Ivan Maslennikov and the second in command Vasili Arkhipov. The three were authorized to launch the torpedo if they had lost touch with the Soviet chain of command and they unanimously agreed to the launch. Savitsky initiated the nuclear weapons firing protocol. Maslennikov said “yes” to fire the torpedo. Arkhipov said “no”. Since they lacked unanimity, they did not fire. Under tremendous pressure, Arkhipov held out. Rather than launching the nuclear torpedo, the B-59 surfaced. They were not sure if surfacing meant their death.
As Stone makes clear, Vasili Arkhipov, a total unknown to this day, saved the world from the consequences of a nuclear launch. Arkhipov did not come home to a hero’s welcome. The Russian military saw his action as a surrender. When you step back from the story, it is remarkable that we are all not more aware of what happened. An unknown and unheralded nobody saved the entire world from what would no doubt have been utterly catastrophic harm.
The DVD has some bonus material including a wide-ranging taped conversation between Tariq Ali and Stone that is enjoyable. Stone likes to be a bad boy. He takes up any number of topics that have evaded wide discussion like the role of U.S. business interests including Ford Motor Co., IBM and banks who did business with the Nazis before and during the war. He notes the role of the CIA in handing over the names of suspected Indonesian Communist Party members to the Indonesian military in 1965 when the military crackdown turned into a mass murder. Stone says 1,000,000 Indonesian communists died in that atrocity.
It can be dense and it is long but students of history will get something out of it. It is nice to see a documentary on U.S. history that steps outside conventional wisdom.
Desean Jackson, the Eagles and Racism – posted 4/13/2014
As a Philadelphia Eagles fan, it was painful to watch the Eagles cut Desean Jackson. Not much to feel good about there. Your team loses an extremely talented wide receiver and they get nada. Plus they take a $6,000,000 salary cap hit.
Jackson is a special player. It is not just the fact that he had 82 catches last season. Eagles’ fans will always remember that punt return against the Giants at the end of the game in 2010. I was watching at a sports bar in Anchorage Alaska that was full of Giants fans. I remember all the Giants fans filing silently out of the bar after that punt return. Earlier in the game they had been raucous. It was an exhilarating moment to be an Eagles fan.
Jackson’s speed, his swagger, his big play ability and his sheer talent put him in a unique category. The Eagles have not had players like that. I am certainly not surprised the Redskins signed him. I expect there are some Eagles players who wonder about this move as well. Witness Lesean McCoy in the Philly paper today.
After the Eagles cut him, I was surprised by much of the media speculation. Just to recap: there was the nj.com story about his gang ties. Then there was the Richard Sherman piece in Sports Illustrated that contrasted the fact the Eagles re-signed Riley Cooper, infamous for his racist video, with their handling of Jackson. Some speculated that the Eagles timed the cut to coincide with the nj.com gang story. The implication was the Eagles slimed Jackson on the way out to make this contentious move easier for the fan base to swallow. Eagles’ management knew it would be unpopular.
Dave Zirin, a sports columnist I generally admire, chimed in with his own defense of Richard Sherman and Jackson.
There were also other stories about how Desean has been lost since his father Bill died of pancreatic cancer in May 2009. That loss was, by all accounts, devastating to Desean. Bill Jackson had been a sports coach as well as a critical positive influence. Michael Vick and Jason Avant had been two players on the Eagles who had mentored Jackson and they are now gone.
The National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) has announced they are going to investigate how the Eagles released Jackson in light of the strange coincidence of the nj.com story coming out right before his release.The investigation will look at whether the Eagles smeared Jackson.
In his piece, Richard Sherman spent time talking about how he and Desean grew up together in Los Angeles, played sports, and hung with people from their neighborhood, some of whom went to jail or were accused of crimes. He thought it was unfair Desean was being judged by the company he kept.
I like Richard Sherman and I admire his bravado and I like to hear what he has to say. He might be the best corner on the planet. Still, i think his piece on Jackson and most of the media speculation are way off. I think, in this instance, accusations of racism against Chip Kelly or the Eagles are rubbish.
When the Eagles cut Jackson, they said nothing except that they were parting ways. As a new coach, developing a new system, Kelly has a right to decide who he wants on the team and who he thinks gives him the best chance to win.
Kelly did not want Jackson. Kelly is a smart guy and he knew what he had in Jackson. Still he did not want him. My best guess is that Jackson was a royal pain and Kelly was tired of it. Joseph Santoliquito of CBS Sports wrote that Jackson was “blatantly insubordinate” to Kelly and cursed him out several times in front of the team. Jackson had a history of missing team meetings.
Jason Whitlock of ESPN wrote that Jackson was “a massive headache for a coaching staff”. Many wide receivers are divas and Jackson was the latest Philadelphia incarnation. He is following in the T.O. tradition.
The nj.com story said, in part:
“…sources close to Jackson and within the Eagles organization say, it originally was Jackson’s off-field behavior that concerned the front office. A bad attitude, an inconsistent work ethic, missed meetings and a lack of chemistry with head coach Chip Kelly were the original reasons for his fall from grace.”
Whitlock argues that the Eagles had legitimate reasons for cutting Jackson. His selfishness, his unreliability and his difficulty committing to a team concept were likely factors. Whitlock wrote that Jackson was uninterested in practicing hard. He also mentioned Jackson coasting through an entire season because he did not want to risk injury in a contract year.
For those who were watching, there was that sideline incident with the Eagles wide receiver coach. The Eagles have a very young team and coaches may have worried about Jackson influencing other players especially at a time the coach has made dramatic changes and is trying to get all players to buy into his system.
Based on the evidence, I agree with Whitlock that it is irresponsible to paint the Eagles as racist in their dealings with Jackson. It did not work out and the Eagles decided to move on.
Raising the spectre of racism on this set of facts trivializes the issue. Racism remains an urgent problem in the United States. We still have our ghettos in every major city. In spite of making huge strides, African-Americans are discriminated against in employment, housing, education and health care. Racism is institutionalized and we have far to go as a society in addressing it.
When I was in Alaska, I read Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow”. That book focused on the mass incarceration of young black men. I think the book is the best introduction to how racism is currently functioning in the United States. It deserves far more attention than it has received.
Desean Jackson is a multi-millionaire. His deal with the Redskins gives him $16 million guaranteed. I am not feeling sorry for him. If we are going to talk about racism, how about focus on the millions of minority people who are living in poverty in no limelight. Where are the advocates for them? Our system continues to fail poor people whether they are black, Latino, other minority or white. That is a class issue as well as a race issue.
I did want to say one other thing about Riley Cooper since he was injected into the Jackson story. What Riley Cooper said was moronic and racist. Hopefully he has learned from that hugely embarrassing experience. We need to allow room for people who say racist stuff to learn from the error of their ways.
I honestly do not know what Cooper has learned but maybe he did learn that racism is evil. Maybe he will grow from that awful experience and become a better person. I do not like the holier than thou, self-righteousness of people who act like they have never said stupid things.
After taking an Eagles team that was 4-12 and turning it around in one year, I give credit to Chip Kelly and I remain optimistic that he has a vision and knows exactly what he is doing. Time will tell.
Movie Review: “Standing in the Shadows of Motown” – posted 4/6/2014
I suppose it is not exactly news to review a movie that came out 12 years ago. Still, I wanted to write about “Standing in the Shadows of Motown” and the Funk Brothers who are featured. My friend Jim told me about the movie and passed it along.
I have always loved soul music so it was not too hard to get me to watch.
There is a scene early in the movie that pretty much says it all. The interviewer (this is a documentary) asks a number of young customers in a record store if they know about Motown music. To a person, everyone said “yes”. When asked about Motown artists, the names that came up were Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, the Four Tops and the Supremes.
The interviewer then asked the same customers if they knew who played the music for the Motown vocalists. Nobody knew. When asked if they had heard of the Funk Brothers, no one knew who they were.
I have to say I was another one of the ignorant. I had never heard of the Funk Brothers even though they figured in a long string of monster Motown hits. They played the music for almost all the major Motown acts. Martha Reeves said that without the Funk Brothers there would have been no Motown.
Berry Gordy, the founder of the Motown label, started assembling musicians in late 1958. They played in the basement Hitsville U.S.A studio known as the Snakepit. The musicians played around Detroit and mostly had background in jazz. Jack Ashford, one of the Funk Brothers, said they wanted to be like Miles Davis. They used to hang and jam at the Chit Chat club as well as other local venues. I will name some of the names. The movie does a good job of telling us interesting information about many of the musicians.
James Jamerson, the bass player, was prominently featured in the movie. He was a highly skilled artist and could play with one finger which was famously called the Hook. He was mostly uncredited (Motown did not list session musician credits on their releases until 1971) yet he is now recognized as one of the most influential bass players ever.
His story was tragic. When Motown moved its headquarters to Los Angeles in 1972, Jamerson and the other Funk Brothers were mostly left behind. They had been rooted in Detroit and its music scene. While some of the artists tried to relocate west, that apparently did not work out.
Jamerson struggled with alcoholism. His daughter poignantly described how he took pride in caring for those around him and providing for his family. His daughter said he felt like less than a man because he was not able to be a provider like he had been in the earlier part of his career.
At a live 1983 show commemorating the 25th anniversary of Motown, Jamerson had to scalp a ticket to sit in the balcony. It was never explained why Motown treated Jamerson so shabbily. It sounded like the music business as usual with the artist getting screwed while the label took all the cash. Jamerson died in August 1983, 2 months after that show where he was ignominiously relegated to a balcony seat. In 2000, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Jamerson.
Then there was Benny Benjamin, the drummer for the Funk Brothers. Berry Gordy insisted Benjamin and Jamerson both be included in recording sessions. Benjamin died very young in 1969 at age 43. He had drug issues and he disappeared and turned up dead.
On keyboards, there was Earl Van Dyke. His style was described as guerilla piano. Stevie Wonder described him as the musical foundation of the Funk Brothers. Stevie used to hang out and play with the band.
I feel like I should mention the other musicians like Joe Hunter, Jack Ashford, Eddie Willis, Uriel Jones, Joe Messina, Bob Babbitt and Eddie “Bongo” Brown, among others, because none got the recognition, reward, and fame they deserved.
Toward the end of the movie, the list of songs in which the Funk Brothers played is presented. It is nothing short of staggering and it did make me think more about how these guys could have done so much without any recognition. The movie politely sidestepped this question. I assume because it did not want to detract attention from the artists.
On the history of rock website, it says that for 14 years the Funk Brothers were on call 7 days a week, day and night. Usually sessions ran for 3 hours but things often went longer. The band had to do tunes in one take. Under union rules, they were not supposed to cut more than 4 songs but as the house band, the union was not around. The history of rock website says they would be paid $10 a song but not until everything was all right. When you think about the popularity of Motown hits, $10 a song is ridiculous. It did make me wonder how much money Motown records made and where the money went. That was not clarified.
Since the movie, things were a little bit rectified at least on the recognition front. In 2004, The Funk Brothers received a Grammy award for lifetime achievement and in 2013 they got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Unfortunately, after the movie, conflicts developed among the remaining band members. They split into two camps and performed separately.
One of the most enjoyable features of the movie are the live performances by artists playing with the Funk Brothers, circa 2002. Joan Osborne does a killer version of the old Jimmy Ruffin tune “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted”. I also liked her version of “Heat Wave”.
Ben Harper sings great versions of “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” as well as “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”.
I liked Bootsy Collins singing “Cool Jerk” too.
If you are a Motown fan, pick up the DVD or check it on netflix. I am sure it must be there. The music alone makes it worth it. If you want to know where the term “groovemaster” came from, it is probably these guys.
Jonathan P. Baird 