[Kzyxtalk] Juneteenth.

[Marco McClean]

Subject: Juneteenth.

     /"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting, it has 
been found difficult and left untried... What are the Christian ideals? 
Charity. Hope. Faith. The poor. The mourning. The meek. Those who hunger 
and thirst. The merciful. The pure. Peacemakers. The persecuted. To lay 
your life down for another. These are all extremely tough. It will take 
a miraculous transformation of my desires. I will have to lose even the 
smallest desire left in me to save my life." -G.K. Chesterton/

The recording of last night's (2020-06-19) Memo of the Air: Good Night 
Radio show on KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KMEC-LP Ukiah is right here:
https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0389

For various fiddly I.T. reasons KMEC's automation switched away from 
this particular show an hour in, at 10pm, and there was nothing I could 
do to fix it from my remote location, even if I weren't busy doing the 
show. KNYO was consistent. There are just extra steps and extra links in 
the chain to have MOTA on KMEC, and so there's more that can go wrong. I 
contacted Sid; he offered to do what he can to get this set right by 
next week, though he's not really responsible for operations at KMEC 
anymore; he's just a dedicated radioman. And then things will go fine 
for a few weeks or months and something will break or get sabotaged 
again, or merely absentmindedly unplugged by someone sweeping, or who 
wants to plug in a phone charger there or something, and we'll deal with 
it again, and that's okay. That's the way the world is. My back is, I'd 
say, about 95 percent now and that's cause for good spirits. You'll 
remember my declaration that I'm never picking up a heavy thing again, 
that heaviness is God and Isaac Newton saying that's where that belongs. 
We'll see how long /I/ remember, this time.

Furthermore, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh 
batch of dozens of links to not necessarily radio-useful but nonetheless 
worthwhile educational items I set aside for you while gathering the 
show together. Such as:

Andra Day sings Strange Fruit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMqB5V-UqOg

That will teach teach them.
http://static.existentialcomics.com/comics/AnarchistOrganizing.png

And that'll learn ya. Nina Simone sings Pirate Jenny. (My internal 
Pirate Jenny story is a combination of the particularly well-realized 
one in /The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen/ graphic novel and a sort 
of kaleidoscopic montage of Sandy Glickfeld's stage career, including 
her Audrey in Gloriana Opera Company’s production of /Little Shop of 
Horrors/, and of course her Pirate Jenny.) Nina Simone first appeared on 
a big stage at twelve years old. Her parents were there, in the front 
row. They moved her parents farther back /so some white people could sit 
there/, and Nina Simone said she wasn't playing another damn note until 
her mother and father were back in their damn seats in the damn front 
row, and there was immediate compliance. Some performers spring 
full-blown from the brow of Zeus; they're who they are from the 
beginning. Nina Simone sometimes joked that she was a queen, but she 
really was. Every performance was a brave adventure, a flight into the 
unknown. She'd trail off in the middle of a song, in front of thousands 
of people, and have a conversation with someone in the audience who 
caught her eye, about something that just occurred to her to wonder 
about, or she'd get tired of a song and just start making things up, 
puzzling over whether this was working or not. Her eyebrow would twitch 
and she'd abruptly change direction and be singing /about/ the song from 
before, which all sounds like Biff Rose, too, doesn't it, except the 
queen part. I’m tired of talking about Nina Simone. Where was I? Oh, 
yes, thanks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7awW5nrDHk

-- 
Marco McClean, memo at mcn.org,
https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com