Monday, August 31, 2015

Folx want refund for Go Set a Watchman

     Life can suck even if you're Harper Lee. See El Guardian, US bookshop offering refunds for Go Set a Watchman,

     A US independent bookshop is offering refunds to its Go Set a Watchman customers, claiming that the work should be viewed as an “academic insight” into Harper Lee’s development as an author, rather than as a “nice summer novel”.
     Brilliant Books in Traverse City, Michigan, has said that its “dozens” of customers for Go Set a Watchman are owed “refunds and apologies” over the way the novel has been presented. “It is disappointing and frankly shameful to see our noble industry parade and celebrate this as ‘Harper Lee’s New Novel’,” the bookseller writes on its website. “This is pure exploitation of both literary fans and a beloved American classic (which we hope has not been irrevocably tainted). We therefore encourage you to view Go Set a Watchman with intellectual curiosity and careful consideration; a rough beginning for a classic, but only that.”

     "Brilliant!"
      Also, see US bookshop offering refunds for Go Set a Watchman,

     I don’t like to attack independent bookstores, they are an endangered species after all. But still I question the naiveté here: Brilliant Books stocked Watchman. No self-respecting bookish person could have missed the avalanche of press coverage leading up to the release of Watchman. In a recent review of an entirely different book, the New York Times book critic Dwight Garner observed that Watchman “left a blast pit commentators will be staring into for decades”. And even before “racist Atticus” saw the light of day as a hook for a hundred op-eds, there was never any real question that this was truly a new novel.
...And there is a more sinister question: how many of these dissatisfied customers, I wonder, are especially angry or disappointed because of the unflattering portrait of an elderly, racist Atticus this book contained? What is a bookstore doing when it insists that that revelation – and all it implies about racial politics in America – is purely “academic”?

     --If life doesn't go as we expected, can we sue God and ask for a refund?

Saturday, August 29, 2015

End-of-August saintlist

     Saints Rose of Lima, Bartholomew, Louis of France, Genesius, Joseph Calasanz, Monica, Augustine of Hippo, around this time of the feast of the Martyrdom of John the Baptist, please pray for us.

Friday, August 28, 2015

Funk nite at the BL pt. X, Peruvian style

     People may not think of "Peru" when they think of funk, but stuff happens. Ear this, Black Sugar's "Understanding FUNK 1970",

     Funk it up!

Monday, August 24, 2015

"Swimming while black" in Alabama and environs

     El Guardian, Swimming while black: the legacy of segregated public pools lives on,
     ...In the US, swimming ability is starkly divided along racial lines. White Americans are twice as likely to know how to swim as black Americans.
     The consequences of this can be deadly: according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black children aged five to 14 are three times more likely to die from unintentional drowning than their white counterparts. In the US, approximately 10 people die from unintentional drowning every day.
...
     [Terrell] Goodson, who’s 37 and works in the restaurant industry, ...growing up in Alabama, he was just simply never taught to swim. His story is part of a common narrative, not a singular occurrence.
     In the US, swimming ability is starkly divided along racial lines. White Americans are twice as likely to know how to swim as black Americans.
...
     Goodson says he knows that Montgomery closed its pools years ago to keep black people out. He says he has tried to read up as much as possible on the history of Montgomery, and race relations, but few people in his surroundings want to speak about it.
     “They say I am crazy,” he says. “So now I stay quiet. But I know things.”
     Emmett Till was murdered and drowned, but the drowning of black people without resources to learn how to swim, may be a more indirect form of murder.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

August 22 saintlist

     Saints Stephen of Hungary, Joan of the Cross, Louis of Toulouse, John Eudes, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Pius X, around this time of the feast of the Queenship of Mary, please pray for us.

Friday, August 21, 2015

Funk nite at the BL pt. IX

     "Play That Funky Music White Boy" even has the word "funk" in it, so that Wild Cherry hit must be played here sometime:

     Funk it up!

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Someone wants a lot fewer Dominicans

     A Daniel Greenfield who writes at FrontPageMag.com came up with this mess of de facto racist insult on Monday, Trump's Illegal Alien Deportation Plan is a Hell of a Bargain,

     "But if the pro-illegal alien lobby is suddenly worried about spending, here's a great fiscally conservative immigration solution.
Households with children with the highest welfare use rates are those headed by immigrants from the Dominican Republic (82 percent), Mexico and Guatemala (75 percent), and Ecuador (70 percent). Those with the lowest use rates are from the United Kingdom (7 percent), India (19 percent), Canada (23 percent), and Korea (25 percent).
     We obviously need a lot fewer Dominican immigrants and a lot more Koreans, Indians and Canadians."

     Excuse me?

     (As a "bonus round" of racism, that webpage links to a book by FrontPageMag chief honcho David Horowitz, and John Perazzo, called "Black Skin Privilege and the American Dream" and showing a picture of Barack Obama. I guess the black people shot at Charleston forgot to use their so-called "black privilege", huh? --Unbelievable.)

Girl. Batgirl. RIP

     Riffing off our post on Bond. Julian Bond, we sadly note the passing of TV's original "Batgirl", Yvonne Craig.

     RIP YC BG.

Monday, August 17, 2015

Bond. Julian Bond. RIP

     Not just some fictional superhero, Julian Bond was a modern-day civil rights hero. He died Saturday, see, e.g., N.Y. Times, Julian Bond, Charismatic Civil Rights Leader, Dies at 75 (noting, inter alia, "Julian’s grandfather James Bond, one of Jane Bond’s sons, was educated at Berea and Oberlin Colleges and became a clergyman." and "he is survived by . . . . a brother, James").

     (Check out also these posts riffing off the "Bond. Julian Bond" theme: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/07/25/the-names-bond-julian-bond/events/the-takeaway/
http://multicultclassics.blogspot.com/2008/12/6242-name-is-bond-julian-bond.html)

     JB, RIP.

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Mid-August saintlist

     Saints Edith Stein, Lawrence, Clare of Assisi, Jane Frances de Chantal, Pontian & Hippolytus, Maximilian Mary Kolbe, on this feast of the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, please pray for us.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Funk nite at the BL pt. VIII

     Parliament shines a high beam on funk this week, with "Flash Light":

     Funk it up!

Saturday, August 8, 2015

August 8 saintlist

     Saints Peter Julian Eymard, Eusebius of Vercelli, John Vianney, Cajetan, Dominic, and Mary MacKillop, around this time of the Feasts of the Dedication of St. Mary Major Basilica and the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, please pray for us.

Friday, August 7, 2015

Funk nite at the BL pt. VII

     Tonite we have the oft-sampled "Let It Whip" by the Dazz Band:

     Funk it up!

Saturday, August 1, 2015

August 1 saintlist

     Saints Joachim and Anna, Martha, Leopold Mandic, Peter Chrysologus, Ignatius of Loyola, and Alphonsus Liguori, please pray for us.