tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47358351700091931432024-03-05T15:54:21.115-08:00Roland Nikles Dot ComFilm reviews, theater reviews, medium to long form essays on diverse topics through a philosophical and historical lens, politics, issues of the day, and the Supreme CourtRoland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.comBlogger562125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-71013068756534625982021-12-16T22:34:00.000-08:002021-12-16T22:34:08.401-08:00Abortion, Constitutional Rights, and the Wisdom of Judges<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpigDr4Tnr3E2ew9dhlOO-duebgNUa5i6QN7SEouul7ouMzqBMKng9AOi4bfaLxwI1TEh-YZAudi5tk6hIJKcxqGgjouDsVFrYwBG3-vzounN_BhFYbIGzhSXsIP6V4uX7s0WvjH-6f18t/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="768" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpigDr4Tnr3E2ew9dhlOO-duebgNUa5i6QN7SEouul7ouMzqBMKng9AOi4bfaLxwI1TEh-YZAudi5tk6hIJKcxqGgjouDsVFrYwBG3-vzounN_BhFYbIGzhSXsIP6V4uX7s0WvjH-6f18t/w320-h240/fetal+development.png" width="320" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In <i>Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</i> a conservative super-majority on the Supreme Court appears set to approve a Mississippi law that prohibits all abortions after 15 weeks, except in cases of medical emergency or severe fetal abnormality. This will overrule <i>Roe v. Wade’s</i> (1973) bright line that the constitution does not permit a state to force a woman to carry a pregnancy to full term before independent life of the fetus outside the womb is possible. [1] </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">A woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy before independent life outside the womb is possible has been repeatedly challenged, but for 50 years the Supreme Court has stood by this right. States may impose regulations, but they may not unduly burden a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy before life is viable outside the womb. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Where does the woman’s right to end a pregnancy come from? </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The U.S. constitution in 1791 granted limited powers to the federal government, and it included a Bill of Rights to protect the citizens of the several states from potential central government overreach: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances;…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,…” etc. The Bill of Rights. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The Bill of Rights was added to the constitution as a specific constraint on the Federal Government. It was not intended to be binding on the states, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that the Bill of Rights is not binding on the states as such. See <i>Barron v. City of Baltimore </i>(1833); <i>U.S. v. Cruikshank</i> (1872); <i>Palko v. Connecticut</i> (1937). </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But over the years We the People have come to realize that, in order to guard our freedoms, our liberties, and to be secure in our homes and our possessions, we also need protection from overreach by state governments. We have petitioned the Supreme Court for such rights, and the court has responded. Gradually the Supreme Court has asserted itself to declare certain individual rights binding on the states. It has imported and declared these rights through the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall … deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In establishing rights that We the People have vis-a-vis our state governments, the court has tried to identify rights that are fundamental to “an ordered concept of liberty,” to “due process of law,” to “privacy,” to “autonomy to determine one’s life course,” and the court has looked broadly to the values expressed in the Bill of Rights. By way of example, the court has found that a state may not prohibit us from teaching a foreign language to our children (<i>Meyer v. Nebraska</i>), to use contraceptives (<i>Griswold</i>) and (<i>Eisenstadt</i>), to marry whom we choose (<i>Obergefell</i>); a state may not sterilize us while we are in its custody (<i>Skinner v. Oaklahoma</i>), and it may not force us to bake a wedding cake for a same sex marriage ceremony if we object to same sex marriage on religious grounds (<i>Masterpiece Cakeshop</i>), or to stop us from possessing guns (<i>McDonald v. City of Chicago)</i>, and, yes, a state must allow a woman to decide, up to the point of viability of a fetus, whether or not to continue a pregnancy to full term (<i>Roe</i>). </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The court has recognized that in the rights creation business, words in the constitution are inexact. Words like “liberty” and “due process of law” and “equal protection” and “free speech” and “free exercise of religion” or “establishment of religion” are symbolic. And the lack of formal exactitude, or want of fixity of meaning is a feature not a bug. See <i>Palko v. Connecticut </i>(Justice Cardozo). </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In <i>Mastercake Cakeshop</i> justices Thomas and Gorsuch found that the right to refuse to bake a cake for a same sex wedding celebration on religious grounds was a fundamental right even though the constitution says nothing about weddings, or cakes, or gays, and even though the First Amendment by its terms is not binding on the states. Thomas and Gorsuch found this right in their conception of religious liberty broadly interpreted. What they are doing there is not different than what Justice Douglas did in finding a right of privacy in the penumbra of the Bill of Rights in <i>Griswold</i>, or what justice Blackmun did in <i>Roe</i>. It’s what judges do. It’s what we expect them to do, wisely. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Because judges must, of necessity, look to broad and ill-defined concepts of liberty, religion, freedom, speech, and due process of law when deciding cases that involve fundamental rights that are binding on the states, it is not surprising that different judges will find support for recognized fundamental rights in different words, in different concepts expressed in the constitution and in our traditions. No one should expect unanimity in reasoning. Here, again, is justice Cardozo in <i>Palko</i>:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">“To believe that this judicial exercise of judgment could be avoided by freezing "due process of law" at some fixed stage of time or thought is to suggest that the most important aspect of constitutional adjudication is a function for inanimate machines, and not for judges, for whom the independence safeguarded by Article III of the Constitution was designed and who are presumably guided by established standards of judicial behavior.” </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">To point out that the constitution does not mention “abortion” is to state the obvious. To argue that, therefore, there cannot be any such right, is to deliberately misrepresent what our constitutional tradition is all about. To paraphrase captain Louis Renault in <i>Casablanca</i>: “I’m shocked, shocked, you would recognize a right not made express in the constitution!” Do not take any such protestation seriously.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>Stare Decisis</i>: what reason is there to Jettison this Right? </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Should <i>Roe</i> be overturned? A majority of the country says “no, it should not.” But a strong minority sees abortion as immoral, even murder and says “yes, it should.” Across the political spectrum we all respond to the salience of a human fetus. But we also recognize that up until viability a fetus is literally flesh and blood of the woman; her ovum, her cells, her nutrients. The introduction of a male sperm does not alter this. The fetus is of the mother. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Justice Ginsburg made her best effort to formulate what’s at stake in her dissent in <i>Gonzalez</i>: </div><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">“As Casey comprehended, at stake in cases challenging abortion restrictions is a woman's "control over her [own] destiny." … "There was a time, not so long ago," when women were "regarded as the center of home and family life, with attendant special responsibilities that precluded full and independent legal status under the Constitution." … Those views, this Court made clear in Casey, "are no longer consistent with our understanding of the family, the individual, or the Constitution…. Women, it is now acknowledged, have the talent, capacity, and right "to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation." … Their ability to realize their full potential, the Court recognized, is intimately connected to "their ability to control their reproductive lives." … Thus, legal challenges to undue restrictions on abortion procedures do not seek to vindicate some generalized notion of privacy; rather, they center on a woman's autonomy to determine her life's course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature.”</div></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Whether legal or illegal, abortion has been common world-wide since time immemorial—too often with deadly consequences for the mother. There is approximately one abortion for every four live births, and this does not appear strongly correlated to whether abortion is legal or not. The Guttmacher Institute reports that in the 1950’s and 1960’s illegal abortions numbered 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. In each case, the decision is personal. And it is terrible. But so too, and for many women more terrible, is being forced to continue to carry a fetus to full term and to bring a child into a world where the mother does not have the means, the support, the emotional make-up, or an environment conducive to properly caring for a child. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">There is no good evidence that making abortion illegal significantly reduces the number of abortions. Unwanted pregnancies are not subject to social engineering. On the other hand, making abortion illegal significantly increases deaths and misery. In 1962 reports Guttmacher, nearly 1,600 women were admitted to Harlem Hospital Center in New York City for incomplete abortions, which was one abortion-related hospital admission for every 42 deliveries at that hospital that year. In 1968, the University of Southern California Los Angeles County Medical Center admitted 701 women with septic abortions, one admission for every 14 deliveries. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In <i>Casey</i> the majority leaned heavily on the doctrine of <i>stare decisis </i>to stay the course on the bright line of viability. <i>Stare decisis </i>is the idea that the law should be steady and predictable and not flip-flop between competing positions willy nilly, based on nothing more than a different complement of judges. The court should give deference to prior decisions, and respect their holdings absent some very compelling reasons. When cases are poorly reasoned, or found wanting because they have failed to garner respect, or because they are unworkable, or deemed plain wrong, the court will overrule precedent. But it should never do so lightly. Consider <i>Plessey v. Ferguson</i> and its holding that states may separate the races in pubic spaces. The case was reversed in <i>Brown v. Board of Education</i> fifty years later in part based on the evidence of the evils of Jim Crow laws that <i>Plessey</i> fostered. Separate but equal came to be seen as morally repugnant, and rightly so. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The six justice conservative majority on the Supreme Court today genuinely believes that abortion is morally repugnant. They were hand-picked in no small part for their views on abortion. It is no secret they have been intent on overturning <i>Roe v. Wade</i> for a long time. But they represent a minority view. And not much has changed in public opinion since <i>Roe </i>was first decide. Let's see what wisdom these justices can muster in deciding this case. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">______</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">[1]<span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">According to a fetal development timeline on <a href="https://perinatology.com/Reference/Fetal%20development.htm" target="_blank">Perinatology,</a> at 16-17 weeks gestational period alveolar sacs have not formed and breathing outside the womb would be impossible. By 22 weeks there is a 9% chance of survival outside the womb, but with 0% chance of surviving without major morbidity. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-10634664886495785682021-09-30T11:31:00.001-07:002021-09-30T11:31:20.125-07:00Storm Clouds over Small Town Newspapers: a Fine Documentary About Why They Matter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaK26dBi3kSJ27T07k7bXLh301CDhOAiUbEXC5qSpgLAyXqs_0etPiNBkfEncz82_Xl_ByqrYezBF5mb4K8xocZDY79T3-5Oj4-xu2KMVqfBXJ1frXmuM3HE4Da0JoZKFhVtS6RHi2AB7p/s2048/Storm+Lake+times.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaK26dBi3kSJ27T07k7bXLh301CDhOAiUbEXC5qSpgLAyXqs_0etPiNBkfEncz82_Xl_ByqrYezBF5mb4K8xocZDY79T3-5Oj4-xu2KMVqfBXJ1frXmuM3HE4Da0JoZKFhVtS6RHi2AB7p/s320/Storm+Lake+times.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">photo Mark Brown/University of St. Thomas</div></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Storm Lake (2021)<br />Jerry Risius, Beth Levison, directors<br />Now streaming at Port Townsend Film Festival through Oct 3.<br />86 min. </div><p>The city of Storm Lake, Iowa (pop. 11,300) is located on a five square mile lake in western Iowa. There are fish in the lake. The city has attempted to dredge the shallow lake (max. depth is 20’) to increase water clarity. Buena Vista University, a small (~1,500 students) private university affiliated with the Presbytarian Church lies on its shore. The town started in the 1870 with the arrival of the railroad. It is a blue redoubt in a red county. The city of Storm Lake voted for Biden over Trump in 2020 (52%/44%), while Buena Vista County as a whole voted for Trump by 26 points (62%/36%). For nearly 20 years the region was represented by Stephen King, a white nationalist. Trump once called him “the world’s most conservative human being.” </p><p>According to a Community History Archive, Storm Lake has been served by a series of newspapers. The Storm Lake Buena Vista Vidette started in 1885 and was published to 1917; the Storm Lake Register was published 1917-1987; the Storm Lake Pilot Tribune 1896-1988; the Pilot Tribune 1986-2018; and now the Storm Lake Times—the subject of the Risius/Levison documentary 1993-present. </p><p>The Storm Lake Times won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2017. The editor Art Cullen was honored for a series of blistering editorials exposing the financing by agricultural conglomerates of litigation by the county of Buena Vista fighting a lawsuit seeking the end of an indiscriminate discharge of nitrates into the drainage system of western Iowa. Art Cullen was rewarded for hell-raising in the best newspaper tradition. </p><p><i>Storm Lake</i>, the documentary, paints a portrait of Art Cullen and his family run newspaper. Art Cullen’s brother is the publisher, his wife is a photographer on the “happy beat,” and his son is a reporter for the paper (and a freelance journalist who is regularly published in The Guardian, The New York Times, and other major papers). The film allows us to observe this newspaper for a few weeks from the inside. We get to follow this newspaper family, learn about their paper, their community, and we discover some of their challenges. It’s what we hope for in a good documentary. </p><p>Art Cullen wrote a series of inspiring letters to his son as his closing argument for having the son join this economically challenged family enterprise. The film quotes from this letter, reproduced in Art Cullen’s book written after he won the Pulitzer, telling the son what to expect from a newspaper career: </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">“Dear Tom,</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">“We are delighted that you have agreed to work at Buena Vista County’s Hometown Newspaper. …The newspaper always comes first. If you are on your honeymoon … of course you tell your bride to wait a moment while you take photos of a fire. The marriage will be there in a half-hour; the fire will not be.…A pretty good rule is that an Iowa town will be about as strong as its newspaper and its banks. The best journalism is that which builds communities. You build your community by publicizing good deeds done, by reporting on the cheats and scoundrels and other politicians, by urging yourself and those around you to do better, by allowing dissenting voices to be heard.…Above all, rejoice that you write for a living. … You can change the world through journalism. …Love (you had better check it out), Dad."</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">“PS: Is that story done yet?”</p></blockquote><div>Long live small town papers. May they continue to survive, with good quality. We wish them lively, healthy communities to report on and help nurture. And some honest profit. Subscribe to your local paper! </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcPhUTv-8bNDKfU9w3kaK-V_CY-6NnZGy6vJSzk-mC4NM0vmUkI-gO8IIakz3u7sK6cn3b_g28Ge7X3EUCUpIaZLgRNCju5Dg32DVUfwpgLiAUnfqtbU09ZSMwbw__9TKAscN5CcDRheqe/s2048/Storm+Lake.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcPhUTv-8bNDKfU9w3kaK-V_CY-6NnZGy6vJSzk-mC4NM0vmUkI-gO8IIakz3u7sK6cn3b_g28Ge7X3EUCUpIaZLgRNCju5Dg32DVUfwpgLiAUnfqtbU09ZSMwbw__9TKAscN5CcDRheqe/s320/Storm+Lake.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Art Cullen, right, with his brother John in the newsroom of The Storm Lake Times.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Credit...Mark Brown/University of St. Thomas</span></div>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-34513235750107465232021-09-28T21:00:00.001-07:002021-09-29T15:32:52.992-07:00"Holy Frit:" Building the World's Largest Stained Glass Window<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB6DSX5P_MXsDERukn9tJgIflzSIWQF5L27zDb72LWBY0el0I1MZlwhs0CwQbDXSHb-w3WWJpbEnc3oYgr7UX-qpUxSttCgBXB1sn37fJxJeTWokPp_wvWsc93rHGkCDcdp87sGMQ7pJWe/s1500/20210922-094413-1HolyFrit.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB6DSX5P_MXsDERukn9tJgIflzSIWQF5L27zDb72LWBY0el0I1MZlwhs0CwQbDXSHb-w3WWJpbEnc3oYgr7UX-qpUxSttCgBXB1sn37fJxJeTWokPp_wvWsc93rHGkCDcdp87sGMQ7pJWe/w376-h239/20210922-094413-1HolyFrit.jpg" width="376" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Still from documentary (courtesy PT Leader)</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Frit: the mixture of silica and fluxes which is fused at </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">high temperature to make glass.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>Holy Frit</i> (2020)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Justin Monroe, Director</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Screening at the Port Townsend Film Festival through October 3</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">120 min.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Construction projects are inherently dramatic. Conceived on paper, sixty or so companies that collectively employ thousands attempt to figure out how much it might cost; risks are allocated, promises are made; and then all these people come together in a cooperative effort to get it built. Will the end product meet expectations? Can the work be completed, without mishaps, without accident and with a minimum of unexpected costs, within the time promised? </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Every major construction project has colorful personalities and construction of the new United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, a roughly $100 million project, was no exception. The project included a 3,400 seat sanctuary built around the world’s largest stained glass window: a 37 feet high and 93 feet wide stained glass panorama depicting more than 70 religious and historical figures across 161 4’ x 5’ panels. <i>Holy Frit</i> focuses on Judson Studios of Los Angeles who won a $3.5 million subcontract to construct the stained-glass wall based on the artistic conception of Tim Carey. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Carey was an artist with a background in oil painting, but his ambitious scene was not compatible with traditional stained glass construction. So the team brought in Narcissus Quagliata, considered one of the foremost contemporary artists working in glass. Significantly Quagliata had developed new techniques for working with glass panels that fused multiple colors within single panels of glass, a process perfected by Bullseye Glass in Portland, Oregon.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Monroe embedded himself in the project with the Judson team and documented the intimate mentor--mentee relationship that developed between Quagliata and Carey, the bonding and teamwork around this project, the tensions that come from great pressure, long hours, and risk of failure. The film is blessed by several very interesting and charismatic personalities. We are there to witness the dynamics of fundraising, we experience the universal challenge of pleasing clients on any artistic project. But above all this project is blessed by some great film-making by Justin Monroe. <i>Holy Frit</i> is a great character study, an interesting story, instructive, and beautiful. And next time you’re in Kansas City, check out the stained glass at the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Laewood. </div><div><br /></div></div>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-10414417352484986232021-09-28T12:54:00.001-07:002021-09-28T12:54:58.187-07:00Youth v. Gov: Ipse Dixit Form of Social Protest <div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG7bBX3SMmV0kghgct_JP-OITuOLQ9YTRnX8Mz2BiGxSfoMIQKWoJLW2r87oNzM45Tb-qsDSTUvPJxkKGAWg-ffu84cY0BnaKGfdtuKz8Vzd7QUbELzTcdx9hqpZuwRecIHKaS4NSO8p_Z/s300/Yout+v+Gov.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG7bBX3SMmV0kghgct_JP-OITuOLQ9YTRnX8Mz2BiGxSfoMIQKWoJLW2r87oNzM45Tb-qsDSTUvPJxkKGAWg-ffu84cY0BnaKGfdtuKz8Vzd7QUbELzTcdx9hqpZuwRecIHKaS4NSO8p_Z/w381-h190/Yout+v+Gov.jpeg" width="381" /></a></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">image from movie trailer</span></i></div></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Youth v. Gov </i>(2020)<br />Christi Cooper, director<br />Streaming at the Port Townsend Film Festival through October 3<br />107 minutes</div><p>Christy Cooper’s <i>Youth v. Gov</i> has won the jury prize for Best Feature Length Documentary at the Port Townsend Film Festival. The film reflects our new social media fueled era of social protest. Different strategies from the street-centered protests of the 1960's. The film documents six young plaintiffs suing the U.S. government to force action on climate change. It’s part of a world-wide trend of lawsuits seeking to force governments to act on climate change. It’s part of an environmental movement that has generated teenage superstars like Greta Thunberg who began lobbying her parents to reduce their carbon footprint, went on to lobby the Swedish government with weekly protests, and broke through to world-wide attention at a UN Climate Conference where she attempted to shame the world’s governments to action. </p><p><i>Youth v. Gov</i> introduces us to six young plaintiffs and follows them through four and-one-half years of proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Oregon, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. The lawsuit was filed on August 10, 2015 and was dismissed in summary judgment by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on January 17, 2020. Over the course of those four-and-one-half years we get to know some of the plaintiffs, we see them grow and mature, become more articulate, and we see a movement of support grow up around them. Like Greta Thunberg, their enthusiasm and innocence is infectious and inspiring. </p><p>It’s a major accomplishment that the lawyers working on this case have managed to get the case as far as they have. [The case is not yet dead; an amended complaint has been filed, resetting and reframing some of the issues; the court has requested the government to engage in settlement discussions; and several states have intervened] But the film does not adequately convey just how quixotic this action is. To that extent the lawsuit and the film is misleading. </p><p>Here is how the 9th Circuit framed the legal issue in its decision to dismiss the action: </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;">“The plaintiffs in this case have presented compelling evidence that climate change has brought [catastrophe] ever nearer. A substantial evidentiary record documents that the federal government has long promoted fossil fuel use despite knowing that it can cause catastrophic climate change, and that failure to change existing policy may hasten an environmental apocalypse.</p><p style="text-align: left;">“The plaintiffs claim that the government has violated their constitutional rights, including a claimed right under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to a "climate system capable of sustaining human life." The central issue before us is whether, even assuming such a broad constitutional right exists, an Article III court can provide the plaintiffs the redress they seek—an order requiring the government to develop a plan to 'phase out fossil fuel emissions and draw down excess atmospheric CO2.' Reluctantly, we conclude that such relief is beyond our constitutional power. Rather, the plaintiffs' impressive case for redress must be presented to the political branches of government.” </p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">This conclusion is legally correct in our separation of powers constitutional system. It's not a close case. Moreover, there is zero chance that the current Supreme Court would entertain reading constitutional rights for a “climate system capable of sustaining life” into our constitution. For anyone interested in learning more about the legal issues involved, you can read the 9th Circuit decision of dismissal <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571d109b04426270152febe0/t/5e22101b7a850a06acdff1bc/1579290663460/2020.01.17+JULIANA+OPINION.pdf">HERE</a>; and you can read Jonathan Adler’s analysis <a href="https://reason.com/volokh/2020/01/17/ninth-circuit-dismisses-kids-climate-case-for-lack-of-standing/">HERE</a>. </p><p>The youth in fact do have the power of change in their hands. But not through this lawsuit by a handful of plaintiffs. To effect change all the youth need do is vote in the same percentage that 65-year-olds do. In 2020, a high turn-out year, with 67% of citizens over 18 turning out to vote, 74% of citizens 65 and older voted, but only 50% of those in the 18- 29 age group voted; 32% in North Dakota. If younger voters turned out in the same percentage as older voters, Democrats would have more than 50 senators and more than a slim four seat majority in the House. Filing quixotic lawsuits may garner support and help mobilize wider engagement of the youth, but it won’t in itself cause change. Suing the government is all well and good, but ultimately we are the government and we need to mobilize to elect politicians that will make a change.</p><p>Here is what the Festival jury said in awarding the prize to this suspenseful and well-crafted film: “Youth v. Gov wins the prize for best documentary feature, it’s a compelling film with timely, relevant, beautifully realized and inspiring material. The story unfolds as we follow a carefully constructed lawsuit, outlining violations of constitutional rights caused by government inaction on climate crisis, and the plaintiffs are young climate activists, ages six to sixteen, who take on the awesome power of the fossil fuel industry, enabled by government’s preferential treatment, formulating terrible policy.” </p><div><br /></div>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-88672449844252431592021-09-28T11:10:00.003-07:002021-09-28T11:16:21.016-07:00The Berrigans: a Vision in Radical Empathy and Uncompromising Moral Clarity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTXLfRyzmwnSDiK6rT7aAg3mkiWSZaPSX6g9Vab-bYaX7quYLw8rFfylB3ndX3w8zqX9lulY_5JIiw57gcP-SQRIzN8WVzIGy6bP3oySz3OFi-pa9FDIH3olo16L5VGbkJLC5qn2OXH8i6/s2048/01berrigan-superJumbo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1353" data-original-width="2048" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTXLfRyzmwnSDiK6rT7aAg3mkiWSZaPSX6g9Vab-bYaX7quYLw8rFfylB3ndX3w8zqX9lulY_5JIiw57gcP-SQRIzN8WVzIGy6bP3oySz3OFi-pa9FDIH3olo16L5VGbkJLC5qn2OXH8i6/s320/01berrigan-superJumbo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Rev. Daniel J. Berrigan, anti-war sermon at St. Patrick’s Cathedral </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">in New York, 1972/William E. Sauro/The New York Times</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;">The apparition of these faces in the crowd</div><div style="text-align: center;">Petals on a wet, black bough</div></div><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>--Ezra Pound</p><div style="text-align: left;"><i>The Berrigans: Devout and Dangerous</i> (2020) <span style="white-space: pre;"> <br /></span>Susan Hagedorn, director<br />Streaming at the Port Townsend Film Festival<br />84 minutes</div><p>Susan Hagedorn says she reviewed more than 500 hours of archival footage in creating her biography of the Berrigans, and it shows. She has crafted a loving, inspiring, and convincing portrait of Daniel Berrigan (a Jesuit priest), his brother Philip Berrigan (a Josephite priest) and their family. The Berrigans are protest royalty from the anti-Vietnam war movement, the Civil Rights movement in the 60’s and 70’s, the anti-nuclear movement, the Aids movement in the 80’s, and the gay rights movement in the 90’s. </p><p>The brothers helped steer an increasing radicalization of anti-Vietnam protests through their raids on draft board offices. Here is Daniel Lewis’s description in the New York Times of one such incident: “six weeks after the murder of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., nine Catholic activists, led by Daniel and Philip Berrigan, entered a Knights of Columbus building in Catonsville and went up to the second floor, where the local draft board had offices. In front of astonished clerks, they seized hundreds of draft records, carried them down to the parking lot and set them on fire with homemade napalm.” </p><p>It placed the Berrigans on J. Edgar Hoover’s most wanted list. It made them fugitives. It landed them in jail. But they were not deterrable. “They made it very clear,” says the actor Martin Sheen, who protested along with them on occasion, “you have to accept the consequences of your actions.” Jail was part of the deal. They believed that if protest was to be of value, it would cost you something. And if it did not cost you anything, you had to question its value.</p><p>Their impact was magnified by the fact that they were articulate and charismatic orators and educators. Daniel Berrigan wrote 50 books over his career, including 15 books of poetry. The authentic feel of the film is helped by the fact that the director of this film was herself active in the radical left-wing militant Weather Underground. She served time in jail for arson. She knows the price of civil disobedience.</p><p>But whereas some in the 60’s lost their way in violence, or in the fog of drugs, or in hate of the other, not the Berrigans. At Daniel Berrigan’s funeral, May 6, 2016, one eulogy relayed an insight he had shared: “he said, all these faces that I walk by every day, I hold them and meditate on them like beads of the rosary, to see each person as valuable, as treasure, as a world to know.” And if we take that lesson to heart, this applies to people walking down the street, to the person aggressively not wearing a mask, to Brett Kavanaugh when his face contorted at his confirmation hearing, and to Donald Trump. It applies to Stephen Miller. And then we go out and act in accordance with what we believe, and we accept the consequences of our actions. </p><p><br /></p>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-27866536315419831152021-09-27T10:47:00.000-07:002021-09-27T10:47:22.621-07:00"Give or Take:" Winner of Port Townsend Film Festival Best Narrative Feature<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ2vfhwmTIu_87M45GC2J-wV3iDUuYkZkNa9IQjzxSsDhQ7CCSfUJvpMp6ClwrBRpjNgsLbHsGS1CopI0rWccvD467GpvMrotFAaHUCtVaLVZGMPBf1HvnfFhxiuKodR5UJkYkbonGqSCq/s300/Give+or+Take.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ2vfhwmTIu_87M45GC2J-wV3iDUuYkZkNa9IQjzxSsDhQ7CCSfUJvpMp6ClwrBRpjNgsLbHsGS1CopI0rWccvD467GpvMrotFAaHUCtVaLVZGMPBf1HvnfFhxiuKodR5UJkYkbonGqSCq/s0/Give+or+Take.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Give or Take</i> (2020)<br />Paul Riccio, director<br />Paul Riccio, Jamie Effros, writers<br />starring Jamie Effros, Norbert Leo Butz, Joanne Tucker et al<br />103 minutes</div><p>Martin, a young man who works in tall buildings in New York City and whose girlfriend attends galas, returns to Orleans in Cape Cod where he grew up to attend his father’s funeral (Ken). After the mother died, Ken took up a romantic relationship with Ted, his charming, beer swilling, Red-Sox-fan-gardener (Norbert Leo Butz). The son had a fraught relationship with his lawyer father growing up, and they have been estranged since Ken took up his relationship with Ted. Although Ken has lived in the house with Ted for six years, a very happy six years report the townspeople, Ted was left out of the will. </p><p>The title of the film alludes to a moral challenge that confronts Martin: sell the house for a tidy sum or make some accommodation with his dad’s lover. The film is peopled with droll and likeable characters: Emma (Martin’s high school sweetheart), Colin (an eccentric neighbor boy), Terrence (a pot-smoking-pool-maintenance-philosopher-king), and Patty King (an over-the-top caricature of a pushy real estate agent). </p><p>Here’s how the filmmakers describe their project: “When Kenneth dies, Martin goes home to sell the house while sharing it with Ted. Grieving, they circle each other, butt heads, and negotiate how to remember the different man they both loved, and the significance of what he left behind.” To my eyes, the film is more situation comedy than drama. The humor is deadpan and sweet. The film is likeable and entertaining and there is growth in the relationship between Martin and Ted. Martin makes headway in his life over the three or four days in which this drama takes place. We don’t really learn much about Ken, the father: not who he was while married, nor who he was in his life with Ted. But on its own terms, moment by moment, the circling around each other of this film is a delight. </p><p>The Festival jury awarded the film the prize for Best Feature Narrative. Here is what they said: “Best Narrative Feature goes to Give or Take, directed by Paul Riccio, it is the definition of a comedy with heart, telling the story of a son returning to his hometown to put his deceased father’s affairs in order. In doing so a detailed and authentic narrative unfolds, affording real depth to the regret, resentment, and misunderstandings that can take place around a loved one’s death. Led by the heart wrenching performance by Norbert Leo Butz as the partner of the deceased, Give or Take paints a compelling journey to understand and accept the complexities of his father.” </p><p><br /></p>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-63284464810954629252021-09-26T20:22:00.001-07:002021-09-29T20:14:50.610-07:00Will Steger: A Life of Polar Explorations Explored<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrJDVFdx03HXrT0521u7ru1bvc5tu0Ha-jjYzP5wElyCi32_mYH3V59ijDN327o5Vd-GluvaVs3r1B2-qUf4Cj7Cf-ro2e-aD9Z_yZvoZmrjrlcTb4aD8J7Ek2M07PKJBqmd18TSXfZUUr/s788/Steger+expedition.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="788" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrJDVFdx03HXrT0521u7ru1bvc5tu0Ha-jjYzP5wElyCi32_mYH3V59ijDN327o5Vd-GluvaVs3r1B2-qUf4Cj7Cf-ro2e-aD9Z_yZvoZmrjrlcTb4aD8J7Ek2M07PKJBqmd18TSXfZUUr/w254-h400/Steger+expedition.jpg" width="254" /></a></div><p><br /></p><div style="text-align: left;">After Antarctica (2021)<br />Tasha Van Zandt, Director<br />Don Bernier, Tasha Van Zandt, Sebastian Zeck, writers <br />105 minutes</div><p>As a young man, Will Steger felt destined to become a world class mountain climber. But then he found himself on an expedition in the Andes that lost two climbers. It sent him into a tailspin of depression. “If I keep climbing, I’ll be dead by 40,” he thought. He sought solace in a Zen monastery in California and came out a polar explorer with his most notable achievements starting at 40. </p><p>In 1986 Steger led a dogsled journey to the North Pole without re-supply, two years later he traversed Greenland from north to south, a 1,600-mile unsupported dogsled expedition, and in 1989-90 he led a team of six in a seven-month, 3,741-mile International Trans-Antarctica Expedition. This latter expedition left behind a wealth of film and Steger’s journal. It’s a lot of material to work with because Steger is a very introspective and expressive individual. </p><p>Will Steger lives in a cabin off the grid in Northern Minnesota. “North of here there isn’t any civilization at all, all the way to the North Pole,” he notes. Tasha Van Zandt grew up in Minnesota and has followed Steger’s exploits since she was six. She has volunteered at Steger’s foundation, Climate Generation. And now she has made this very special tribute to Will Steger and his polar explorations: After Antarctica. </p><p>The film is Steger’s retelling of the 1989-90 Trans-Antarctica expedition in his own voice, juxtaposed with “one last expedition” in the Arctic-a 2019 1,000 mile 80 day journey on a pair of skis pulling a canoe. It’s beautiful, suspenseful, and gripping. “I’d like to be able to explain to people why you do this; that’s really my goal,” says Steger. “In reality, exploring is exploring your mind, or exploring yourself.” Van Zandt’s film helps him get as near to perfecting that goal as it’s possible for one man with a soothing voice to achieve. We are all beneficiaries. </p><p>I am looking forward to Tasha Van Zandt’s next feature length project. </p><div><br /></div>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-39502610842340310352021-09-25T22:10:00.000-07:002021-09-25T22:10:16.058-07:00Hevesh 5: American Enterprise through the World of Dominoes<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hl80RRfh2jI" width="320" youtube-src-id="Hl80RRfh2jI"></iframe></div><br /><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Lily Topples the World</i><br />Jeremy Workman, director<br />Documentary 90 min. (2021) </div><p>Friday night the Port Townsend Film Festival hosted its first of three outdoor events this year: a free public screening of Lily Topples the World, the Jeremy Workman documentary about a young domino prodigy. It was a glorious balmy September evening. More Scottsdale than late September Pacific Northwest. A generous crowd of ~250, young and old, brought chairs and blankets and enjoyed some early evening food from the restaurants along Taylor Street and popcorn from the iconic Rose Theater. </p><p>The festival brought in the star of the film, Lily Hevesh, as well as her father for us to meet. Hevesh revealed herself as a remarkably self-assured and charming 22-year old woman. She spent her teenage years in the basement building elaborate domino displays, and starting a YouTube channel that has garnered a billion views. That’s no typo. As Janette Force noted in the post film interview, people love to watch dominoes topple. There is something mesmerizing about it. It’s more popular than cat videos. </p><p>Someone on stage, or in the film, noted that dominoes at this level of seriousness is like a sport. It’s an apt metaphor. Sacrificing your childhood to a singular obsession, depending on path taken and aptitude, might turn you into a world class gymnast, a tennis champion, or a professional soccer player. Or it might turn you into the world’s foremost domino artist. </p><p>It may explain some of the appeal. Who doesn’t like sports? We have our sports idols. We are inspired by their dedication, endless hours of training, their skill, but perhaps (above all) their success. We idolize the gold medal winners, not so much the bronze medalists. And Lily Hevesh is a winner. She studied martial arts as a kid and treated it as cross-training for dominoes. Seriously. It helped her concentration, her stamina. Three days of painstakingly stacking and arranging thousands of dominoes requires lots of concentration and stamina: one misstep can make it come crashing down prematurely; unintentionally; not as planned; unphotographed. </p><p>Success makes all the difference. Lily Hevesh projects the confidence and assuredness of a young millionaire, which she is. Who would fault her for her decision to leave college in her first year? But without those YouTube clicks, without the path to riches, dedicating one’s life entirely to building and toppling dominoes would be what? Plain weird? Odd? Eccentric at the very least. Useless. And it would be nothing any parent would want their child to emulate. </p><p>But here we are. Children look up to Lily Hevesh as an idol. Just like young girls are inspired by Megan Rapinoe, or Sue Bird, or young boys by Novak Djokovic. It gives them a vision of success, even though none of them will follow that same path. Lily Hevesh is inspiring, even though there is nothing inherently worthwhile about stacking dominoes for three days just to see them topple in two minutes. </p><p>And this film touches people. It won the audience award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. It touched the crowd on Taylor Street in Port Townsend. The questions were enthusiastic from the youngest viewers to the oldest. And it’s all a bit of a mystery. </p><p>There is nothing special about the art in the dominoes displayed. Many of them shown are corporate logos. Elaborate Rube Goldberg designs. Novelties. Not particularly beautiful. The photography of the topplings is unremarkable. Like an ESPN highlight reel. Not meaningful. The You Tube “personality” Casey Neistat, a crass attention seeker, hired Hevesh to create an elaborate design just so he could irreverently destroy it. But really, what’s the difference? There is the building of a domino display and there is the toppling. Without the clicks it means nothing. </p><p>Lily Hevesh is in full marketing mode. “Do you think these dominos can have educational value?” asked an audience member. Lily didn’t miss a beat: we’re on that, building product to get into the schools. Maybe next year…. She’s marketing her own line of dominos. She's working on a dictionary of domino terms. Someone asked her about instruction for domino art. “Email me at info@hevesh5.com: we’ll talk,” she said.</p><p>We think of other obsessives and university drop-outs who found uncommon success: Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison. These people changed the world. Dominos won’t change the world. But all of these tycoons would recognize Lily’s path to success: obsession, dedication, hard work, extreme confidence, and some luck. </p><p>It’s an apt selection for free viewing on the street, this film. Lily Hevesh is a spectacle and people respond to spectacle. For art and meaning, you’re in good hands with the 80 plus films showing in the virtual festival. </p><p>See you on line. <br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-67373947589527747262021-09-24T18:20:00.041-07:002021-09-27T08:27:00.687-07:00The Bernie Maddoff Story Like You’ve not Heard it Before<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1In2-8LqhMCKmT6ZCqezz0WME72bGayJoP2ByjfXaazyz7kcr7NnDaRUFXc15lUy0W3H2f63b235819d4eCF6PP98gYefuoyS2j10dD9gRD0x-YfCg5eaomz-K2Yf8BhF4dOpqL45pl4M/s279/Rabins.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="181" data-original-width="279" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1In2-8LqhMCKmT6ZCqezz0WME72bGayJoP2ByjfXaazyz7kcr7NnDaRUFXc15lUy0W3H2f63b235819d4eCF6PP98gYefuoyS2j10dD9gRD0x-YfCg5eaomz-K2Yf8BhF4dOpqL45pl4M/w299-h194/Rabins.jpeg" title="Alicia Jo Rabins" width="299" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Alicia Jo Rabins</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>A Kaddish for Bernie Maddoff</i><br />Alicia J. Rose, director<br />Starring Alicia Jo Rabins <br />(2021) 75 minutes<br />Streaming at the Port Townsend Film Festival</div><p>Portland based Alicia Jo Rabins is a poet, musician, writer, Torah teacher, mother, and actress. But at the height of the 2007-2010 financial crisis she was in New York City. The economy lost 9 million jobs, the stock market lost 50% of its value, U.S. households lost $13 trillion in wealth, and one building owner opted to make the 9th floor of his building available to a group of artists, free, for one year. So Alicia Rabins found herself in a cavernous office looking for a project.</p><p>Like the rest of us, she was intrigued when the Maddoff Ponzi Scheme unraveled with his arrest on December 11, 2008. She papered her empty office wall with news clippings and she was struck by Maddoff’s eyes. “He has kind eyes,” she thought; “he looks like my dad.” Obsessed, she read everything she could find on the Maddoff story. She interviewed victims. And she thought: “rock opera!” That turned out be too ambitious for her budget, so her project turned into a one woman show, or a solo chamber rock-opera if you will, with song, story-telling, and readings from sacred texts. The show premiered at <a href="https://publictheater.org/programs/joes-pub/">Joe’s Pub</a> in New York City in 2012, and was then further developed in Portland (and named one of Portland’s best theater productions by the Willamette Week in 2014). <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Kaddish-Bernie-Madoff-Explicit/dp/B00JV16QI4">An album </a>followed with 14 songs from the show. </p><p>Before letting go of the project, Rabins hoped to produce a documentary about making the show. But once she teamed up with photographer, musician, and music video director Alicia J. Rose, the project turned into the feature film that is <i>Kaddish for Bernie Maddoff</i>. </p><p>And wow! What a film. Part one woman show, part rock opera, part exposition, part art-song, part discursive reflection and education on the Jewish Kaddish prayer, part Borscht belt schtick, this multi-media extravaganza is joyful, fun, and sublime all at once. The film makes widespread use of wonderfully whimsical drawings, and origami like computer graphics. It’s so fresh and inventive you’ll smile from beginning to end. </p><p>“The Kaddish is one of the holiest Jewish prayers,” says Rabins. “We use it as a prayer for the dead, although there is no mention of death in it at all…. You don’t say Kaddish for someone who’se alive; except in one extremely rare case: excommunication.” And the film plays with this idea for the better part of an hour. And all of this reflection and playfulness and whimsey gained another layer when Bernie Maddoff died in jail as this film was about to be released. </p><p>Don’t miss this film. </p><p>[Update: The film was awarded the Jim Ewing Award by the jury. The Jim Ewing Award is given each year to the film that best expresses that Jim Ewing "Yes, that's what we're doing....!" spirit to a first time director. This year there were 18 films in the competition. Here is what the jurors said: "Jim's spirit of creative risk taking, curiosity, and light and dark complexities of human nature, and the use of artistic process to grapple with and express our own complexities are so beautifully present in this film. The creative genre bending of psalm, memoir, documentary narrative and animated storytelling is impressive and it makes for a refreshing, utterly charming, and vibrant fantasy, all of which is grounded in serious, heartfelt, and poignant reality. Not to mention the unique challenge of adapting a screenplay into film, and maneuvering in a global pandemic. This is an extraordinary, impressive first feature film. Alicia, you should be proud of your marvelous work."]</p><p> </p><div><br /></div>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-89876173568128037702021-09-23T20:23:00.000-07:002021-09-23T20:23:46.385-07:00Los Hermanos/The Brothers: Not Enough Politics; Not Enough Music<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgscHFmDKgAKxnI1RhfFmOkJ0wcSDfDTfRHH4FFOLsyKajHqA-Z9m3zXMYkNewaNNwttiWAjJeQXgkCFeX4nsHiswckCYftKvbhRsGAlBDtRTNwYVO_UoDdJJSU6kHFKY49JsFLgjw09YIC/s1000/20_ilmar_aldo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="678" data-original-width="1000" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgscHFmDKgAKxnI1RhfFmOkJ0wcSDfDTfRHH4FFOLsyKajHqA-Z9m3zXMYkNewaNNwttiWAjJeQXgkCFeX4nsHiswckCYftKvbhRsGAlBDtRTNwYVO_UoDdJJSU6kHFKY49JsFLgjw09YIC/s320/20_ilmar_aldo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Ilmar and Aldo Lopez-Gavilan</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">a documentary by </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Marcia Jarmel & Ken Schneider</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">84 min. (2020)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Sixty years of American economic sanctions and travel restrictions against our Cuban neighbors is criminal. It’s a human rights violation. We American voters don’t give a damn because we are used to outsourcing our foreign policy to political elites who often impose poor policy choices for half-baked ideological reasons, or for selfish domestic political reasons. We voters should start paying more attention. I know I’m preaching to the choir.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But sixty years of sanctions has not stopped Cubans from excelling culturally. Cuba has produced world class athletes across many sports, and world class musicians. State support of the arts and athletics will do that. The brothers Aldo and Ilmar Lopez-Gavilán are an example. They are virtuoso Cuban musicians from a very musical family who have succeeded on the world stage. Their mother was a concert pianist who travelled the Soviet bloc countries, and their father is a prominent classical music performer and conductor. The talented Ilmar outgrew his teachers in Cuba at age 14 and was sent to the Soviet Union to further his studies in classical violin. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he made his way to New York where he taught at Julliard School of music, toured the world as a soloist with major classical orchestras, and played chamber music in world class ensembles. Aldo, his younger brother, studied piano in London and returned to Cuba to live. He is a virtuoso pianist in the classical genre as well as in the jazz improvisation realm; he also has performed with major orchestras all over the world. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The husband and wife documentarians of this film, Ken Schneider and Marcia Jarmel, made an earlier documentary (Cuban Curveball) about their son’s efforts to donate baseball equipment to Cuba as a Bar Mitzvah project. While in Cuba, they heard of and heard the wonderful piano virtuoso, Aldo Lopez-Gavilán. “But where’s the story,” asked Ken Schneider. Upon their return to the U.S., the directors learned of Ilmar, the brother in the United States. And voila, they thought they had their story on a platter: brothers separated at a young age, who both become giants in the music world, kept apart by politics but now reunited in making an album together. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Well, yes and no. Truth is the brothers were/are not kept apart by politics. They would be free to live together in Cuba or anywhere in Europe, or Canada, or Venezuela, or the United States to collaborate to their hearts' content. It’s not politics that is keeping them apart: it’s a more mundane personal choice. Ilmar has pursued his career in the United States, following opportunities, and Aldo has chosen to remain in Cuba, because he likes it there, it’s home, his father and family are there. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So the advertised story arc of this film is a fraud. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But not the film. There are great musical snippets. It makes for a compelling sound-track. There is original music from the brothers, which is great. There is Joshua Bell. Havana is a little less novel than when Ry Cooder produced <i>Buena Vista Social Club</i>. The scenery here is not as vivid, the streets are watered down with newer cars. But the brothers are charming and their music is more than enough to carry this film and to make it worth watching. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-7233309919755690402021-09-23T13:42:00.001-07:002021-09-23T13:42:46.163-07:00Tom Skerritt's "East of the Mountains"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb-ntFUDoanpjelFoZU5_jxq-AmiXwUVNCNU8VGEzm-P_90m2HqtDDUcLLWEkd9x0lvq_CjkK5l9wlYP1Iw21wUiKyQooz0Fq-mazjVrGIwiqL4TM3UizixH_X6tQzRjjjRNIJQW1LYyIT/s2040/122208.jpg.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="851" data-original-width="2040" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb-ntFUDoanpjelFoZU5_jxq-AmiXwUVNCNU8VGEzm-P_90m2HqtDDUcLLWEkd9x0lvq_CjkK5l9wlYP1Iw21wUiKyQooz0Fq-mazjVrGIwiqL4TM3UizixH_X6tQzRjjjRNIJQW1LYyIT/w445-h133/122208.jpg.webp" width="445" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">“When your life is a leaf</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">That the season tear off and condemn</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">They will bind you with love</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">That is graceful and green as a stem….”</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">--Leonard Cohen</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I started my 2021 Port Townsend Film Festival with East of the Mountains, a star vehicle for Tom Skerritt (M*a*s*h, Alien, The Dead Zone, Top Gun, A River Runs Through it, 40 films in all and over 200 television episodes). “I could have done this movie for a lot more money in Hollywood,”* said Skerritt to Janette Force in the interview that accompanies the screening of this film. But Skerritt wants to support film in the Northwest. He wants to develop an economic model to nurture local talent and create an industry here. This film should help. Set to be released tomorrow (September 24) on Video on Demand the film deserves a very wide viewership. It’s excellent and we are very honored to be able to preview it at PTFF. </div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The film is based on the novel (1999) by Bainbridge Island writer David Guterson. Filmed around the community of Gold Bar on the Skykomish river on the western slope of the Cascades, and in the grasslands near the Columbia river east of Ellensburg and Yakima, the action plays out in a golden Big Sky country, as wide and large as the Indian Ocean of Robert Redford’s <i><a href="https://rolandnikles.blogspot.com/2013/11/old-man-word-robert-redfords-all-is-lost.html?q=Robert+Redford">All is Lost</a></i>, a film dealing with this same end-of-life subject matter. </div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Ben Givens, widower, sees the end before him. “You don’t know what’s gonna happen,” challenges a new friend he meets, a Latina veterinarian who patched up his dog mauled out in the desert night. “But I do,” he says: “bed sores and bone fractures, bacterial infections, fluid in my lungs, vomiting, dehydration, cracked lips, dry mouth, pneumonia, a sensation of being strangled at the end, and a final drip of morphine; that’s what’s gonna happen.” With a 50-year medical career behind him he knows whereof he speaks. It’s enough to make a man long for the desert of his childhood and hasten the end. It’s enough to make a man depressed. But it turns out Givens’ determination to end his life gives him a kind of superpower. He meets a vicious coyote-hunter and he encounters several acts of kindness. He receives a kind of Grace, and at the end finds a moment of joy and happiness. Like the Sisters of Mercy in Leonard Cohen’s song, there are beautiful characters, well written and acted that bind Givens with love that is graceful and green as a stem. It is a redemption for Ben Givens, even if it’s only for a moment. And what more can we ask of life? </div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Janette Force awarded a Port Townsend Film Festival lifetime achievement award to Tom Skerritt. It’s well deserved, and there is not a more appropriate occasion than upon the release of this film. Directed by S.J. Chiro, co-starring Mira Sorvino, Annie Gonzalez, Victoria Summer Felix, Wally Dalton, John Paulson, and others. </div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> *I’m paraphrasing from memory. </div></div></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-72531803834777946282021-09-19T14:10:00.000-07:002021-09-19T14:10:14.025-07:00An Invitation to the 22nd Annual Port Townsend Film Festival<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZPvtLcNVmWWkMLEt97R-zbw-MVU0YAge4D5K_3-Bjeoos4e44AmBmF1afvWkYs0htMbwBjEw0soD3jcTLfiC_96H7g0zlSMuvEP4mELjg5CjSyEKdL50IB2fG1_vAwfteqimjhGm51bey/s800/2021Poster-FullBleed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="419" data-original-width="800" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZPvtLcNVmWWkMLEt97R-zbw-MVU0YAge4D5K_3-Bjeoos4e44AmBmF1afvWkYs0htMbwBjEw0soD3jcTLfiC_96H7g0zlSMuvEP4mELjg5CjSyEKdL50IB2fG1_vAwfteqimjhGm51bey/s320/2021Poster-FullBleed.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Dear All:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The 22nd Annual Port Townsend Film Festival commences this Thursday! The festival streams on-demand, 24/7 for ten days, <b>September 23-October 3, 2021</b>! </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">This year's virtual festival features over 80 films from inspiring filmmakers, including documentaries, narratives, and short films spanning across many genres. You’ll find exclusive interviews with directors, screenwriters, actors and documentary subjects, providing you with a unique perspective and memorable experience. [Note: Some films are restricted geographically or with limited seating due to filmmaker and distributor agreements; the full list of restricted films can be found on the <a href="https://ptff2021.eventive.org/HowtoFest">How to Fest</a> page]</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://watch.eventive.org/ptff2021">Browse</a> the catalog now to preview the films and watch trailers. In looking through this, I’ve flagged 10 documentaries and eight narrative features I don’t want to miss. Wish me luck! There’s <i>After Antarctica,</i> a documentary about Will Steger’s 1989 Antarctica expedition (I’ve still got a commemorative expedition jacket) and the deterioration of the Antarctic ice sheet since then. There is a documentary about the Berrigan brothers, <i>End of the Line</i> about the women of Standing Rock, <i>Storm Lake</i> about a small Iowa town newspaper, and <i>The Story Won’t Die</i> about artists from Syria. There are feature dramas: <i>Give or Take</i> about a father and son and gay politics in Cape Cod; <i>Jasmine Road</i> about Syrian refugees; <i>A Kaddish for Bernie Maddoff</i> and many others. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">So set aside aimlessly clicking through unknown titles on Netflix or Amazon or Hulu or Apple+, wondering what to watch these upcoming 10 days! Give murder and sex a break. Come join us at the Port Townsend Film Festival for some fresh and uplifting fare. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Unlimited Passes are <a href="https://ptff2021.eventive.org/passes/buy">for sale now.</a> A $120 Unlimited Pass grants your entire household access to pre-order all films and watch all the curated screenings, interviews, and special events. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">As a board member of the organization, I'm thrilled that we're able to share these important films with our community. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Prefer your festival 'a la carte'? Single tickets for every film go on sale September 23 at 8am via the virtual catalog.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I'm looking forward to ten days of film and I hope you'll join me. I'd love to hear what films you loved, learned from, and everything in between. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Best,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Roland </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><p></p>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-66467033038052654272021-04-27T12:23:00.001-07:002021-04-27T15:09:26.445-07:00Kinsukori : on Art and Imperfection<p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><i>More Beautiful for Having Been Broken</i></div><div style="text-align: left;">a film by Nicole Conn (2019)</div><div style="text-align: left;">starring Cale Ferrin, Kayla Radomski, and Zoe Ventura</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go66RrzCeo4">Trailer</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFO9hfIRy4XkiyklFEPOGRxkvcz9NN42BAofb4m0carn40KbTGvZJhPr8tUglPtZQQJrQBVhJL9lRcdtDzBuHnvnboK2fVISLbC64H9ucdQ739a7It4b7XkNvMuZIEqjGg0tUnr2xKuzTm/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="1280" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFO9hfIRy4XkiyklFEPOGRxkvcz9NN42BAofb4m0carn40KbTGvZJhPr8tUglPtZQQJrQBVhJL9lRcdtDzBuHnvnboK2fVISLbC64H9ucdQ739a7It4b7XkNvMuZIEqjGg0tUnr2xKuzTm/" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Cale Ferrin</div>Photo: Christopher Tierney <br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: start;">We grieve over the loss of favorite objects. A lovely vase purchased long ago, a slip, a fall and it lies broken on the floor. The Japanese have a technique of repairing such objects with gold filament, making them more beautiful for having been broken. When we write a novel or make a film we are engaging in a similar process: we take some gold and some damaged and imperfect elements and weave them into a new whole. It’s a kind of alchemy. And the beauty of alchemy lies in the effort, not the result. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: start;">Nicole Conn’s film <i>More Beautiful for Having Been Broken</i>, now streaming at the Port Townsend “Women and Film” festival, is a flawed film carried by a luminous Cale Ferrin as Freddie. Ferrin is a precocious 10-11 year old suffering from Fanconi Anemia, a rare blood disease that, among other things, affects the proper formation of limbs. Ferrin may indeed be one of those rare beings more beautiful for having been broken. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: start;">If we are being uncharitable, savaging the film for sport, like Peter Bradshaw does in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/may/07/more-beautiful-for-having-been-broken-review-worst-film-ever-contender" style="color: #954f72;">The Guardian</a>, we might say “it’s a bizarre, monumentally inept erotic thriller featuring a risible plot and jaw-droppingly bad acting.” But then Bradshaw doesn’t mention Ferrin (something akin to reviewing malpractice), and clearly doesn’t get the role and place of this movie—or movies like it shown in film festivals like “Women and Film” in general. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: start;">Cale Ferrin aside, there <i>is</i> flawed acting. If it weren’t for the fact that this film is part of the Port Townsend film festival, and the trust that implies, I would not have stayed with it for more than five minutes. There is way too much make-up and the opening scenes are wooden and unconvincing. The setting is Pine Mountain, a resort area north of Los Angeles, but the scenery is not a larger than life character—like Chloe Zhou manages to evoke in <i>Nomadland</i>, for example. The music score is not memorable. An overly long erotic dance scene is not up to Pina Bausch standards…. But it would have been a mistake not to trust. Not to give this film a chance. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: start;">I am blessed to be surrounded by friends and family who are musicians, poets, writers, and artists. I mainly review novels written by friends, listen to music played by friends, and appreciate art drawn by friends. None of them are Mozart, Ashbury, Tolstoy, or Monet. But my connection with them, their proximity, their ordinariness, and my ability to relate to their struggles more than makes up for the lack of perfection. Comparing art to what I can’t do is ultimately much more rewarding than comparing art to what Leonardo Da Vinci can do. And having a friend point me in the right direction can make all the difference. It is in no small part the role of a film festival like “Women and Film:” the festival whispers “Here, look at this. Engage, stick with it, and behold you will find some merit.” <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: start;">For all its flaws in <i>More Beautiful for Having Been Broken</i> there is the heart and beauty of earnest artistic effort. The mystery of the somewhat overwrought plot is teased out nicely. It keeps our interest. Identifying and understanding and appreciating shortcomings can be as instructive and entertaining as watching polished perfection. Can we really appreciate Monet in the museum if we cannot appreciate our talented friends’ imperfect Plein Aire renderings. To be an artist is to strive and to appreciate art is to appreciate the striving, the intention, the flaws, as much as the product. We judge success by effort, we look for gold veins holding together flawed work. If we cannot find and appreciate those gold veins amongst imperfection, why bother with art at all. In this case Cale Ferrin provides more than enough gold filament to hold the shards of imperfection in this film together and to render the end result beautiful. <o:p></o:p></p></div><p></p>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-27132818335368816022020-12-07T23:39:00.002-08:002020-12-07T23:58:29.150-08:00Tales of Lust and Ghostly Longings<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitpqK-kJM4YktZGP9tR0tEsva9HK_h-6Oh1WLV1f0nWSxDSekwvLDvPlR6AKjn8bbcis4XGeyGyM0j9JMX74Zy33uL8ncHUwelOWL3TWY2GKPtB7cE0IYFsVoGZcwsQiorzK0DxhvbcSbW/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="663" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitpqK-kJM4YktZGP9tR0tEsva9HK_h-6Oh1WLV1f0nWSxDSekwvLDvPlR6AKjn8bbcis4XGeyGyM0j9JMX74Zy33uL8ncHUwelOWL3TWY2GKPtB7cE0IYFsVoGZcwsQiorzK0DxhvbcSbW/w207-h320/image.png" width="207" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Red Hen Press (2020) 266 pp.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">“The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.”</div></div></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span>--James Joyce, <i>The Dead</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>The Dead</i>, the final brilliant short story in James Joyce’s Dubliners, describes a Christmas dance party at the Morkan sisters. They are society ladies, music teachers, not wealthy, but they like to eat and drink and entertain well. Family show up from near and far for this annual event; students, old friends of the family. “Never once had it fallen flat,” and this year was no exception. We learn about the hosts and guests by eavesdropping on conversations throughout the evening. Gabriel Conroy, the sisters’ favorite nephew, and his wife arrive fashionably late. And it’s a gay evening, full of lively conversation about Irish politics, women’s liberation, topics of the day, capped by a much anticipated tribute by Gabriel to his aunts. A stout young man, says Joyce. But truth be told, he feels older than his years. He throws a melancholy air over the story, even as he is admiring and solicitous of his wife. On the way back to their hotel, through the snow, in the early morning hours, Gabriel is happy, caught up in the success of his speech, the good cheer, the alcohol, and he is feeling amorous. Looking forward to grab his wife by the shoulders, whisper something foolish and affectionate in her ears. And his wife too is affected by the evening. Caught up by her emotions about a long ago first love, dredged up by a song at the party. Seventeen year old Michael Fuery who died of love for her, or so she fancied. She falls asleep distraught. Gabriel is left with his thoughts, and Joyce reaches for that magnificent metaphor of the snow falling all over Ireland, upon all the living and the dead. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Where Joyce reached for poetic metaphor, Amy Shearn in her new novel reaches for the stars. A quantum physical state where the past, present, and future mingle. A Hugh Everett multi-parallel universe world. And how better to tell such a story than through the medium of ghosts. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The protagonist (the Gabriel Conroy of this story, if we will) is a spinster librarian in the throes of an infatuation. Meg Rhys, is a diligent Jewish bookworm who grew up in an apartment in the Upper West side of Manhattan, but now lives with her sister’s ghost in a Brooklyn apartment. It makes her receptive to the research efforts of a Black Chicago engineer widower doing research in the library about his own ghostly presence in a rental house his parents owned in Brooklyn. Together, as their paths intertwine, their lives also intersect with an orphanage for colored girls in Civil War Manhattan, the draft riots of 1863, the fortunes of a bright young lady taken in by the family of a Black medical doctor in Weeksville, and an ever changing New York. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Sketched in ghostly palimpsest outline, the ghost stories in this book are overshadowed by the story of growing infatuation between Meg Rhys and Ellis Williams, which is developed entirely through the imaginings, speculations, fears, hopes, perceptions, hesitations, doubts and thrills of Meg. The careful development of this growing entanglement between Meg and Ellis, told entirely through Meg’s interior perceptions, is a fine achievement and the strongest part of this book. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Would this were a short story, but don’t let that dissuade you. This book has the power and punch in parts of a Virginia Woolf, a John Banville. The final chapters reach for Joycean heights. It is no criticism to say that when we reach for the stars we are bound to fall short. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Consider here, the final paragraph: </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>And Meg, who didn’t care about love, who didn’t even believe in it; Meg, whose chest was opening like a birdcage, like a book, like a door; Meg whose spine was pressed against the doorframe, Meg wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, and Ellis kissed Meg, and they stood there that way for a long, long time, as Ellis rebuilt his house and moved in, as Meg made 2E her own home, as they went their separate ways, as they made a life together, as they spent the rest of their lives together, as they never saw each other again, as Iris settled back into her home and Ellis made sure her story was told, as all of these things happened at once and none of them happened at all, they stood that way for the rest of time, as the house eventually crumbled around them, as the city disappeared into the sea, as everything else ceased, and they are standing there still. </i></div></div></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Follow me on <a href="https://twitter.com/rolandnikles">@rolandnikles</a></div></div><p></p>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-43986186625254231562020-10-23T11:14:00.000-07:002020-10-23T11:14:53.251-07:00Slim in the Time of Covid<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="688" data-original-width="459" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggANab98kWBS1Rk58LJGZqyaqI1UKloM8RqOy8nBuEqmBI7aIg4MQNObeGL3oLr1MhLHMRqqT3bY5a1LHg5gola1dZ3RAP7nkL01-zD4rzhXeXvB5gqMpGGIxR1ul0jcA9jgkw_j1IGiHY/s320/images.jpeg" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 238); color: #0000ee; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; text-decoration: underline;" /></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Slim-Novel-Ruth-Linnea-Whitney/dp/087074478X" style="color: #954f72;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Slim</span></a></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">a novel by Ruth Linnea Whitney<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">SMU Press (2003) <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">240 pp. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My neighbors, Ruth and David Whitney spent two years in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the mid 1970’s. David, an orthopedic surgeon, had just completed his medical training and volunteered to work in a new hospital in Zaire. He was one of just two orthopedic surgeons in a city of two million; when he left there was no one to replace him. It was heart wrenching to leave. <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the mid-seventies Zaire was just a decade and a half into its independence from Belgium and it was in the grip of a one-party authoritarian dictatorship stained with cronyism, corruption, and economic mismanagement. The country is rich in resources and boom cities had built up around copper mines, the diamond trade, cobalt, and zinc. Leopoldville/Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire, started as a trading post on the river Congo in 1881, had grown to a town of 24,000 by 1924 and has exploded since into a mega city of 14 million. The population of the country has increased more than five-fold since 1960: from 15 million to 86 million. No one knew it when the Whitneys were there, but in this teeming fervor of humanity, the Congo was also ground zero for the emerging world-wide AIDS crisis. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Researchers have concluded that the virus that inhibits the immune system in chimpanzees and Gorillas made the jump to humans sometime early in the 20<sup>th</sup> century. Human hunters caught the virus from the blood of butchered monkeys deep in the jungle of southeastern Cameroon. From there this human form of the immunology virus traveled down the Sangha and Congo rivers and gained a foothold in Leopoldville. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The construction of railroads in the first half of the 20<sup>th</sup> century helped to disseminate the virus in Africa. In the 1960’s Haitian professionals working in the Congo carried the HIV-1 strain of the virus to Haiti, and from there it made its way to the United States and Europe. The earliest American infected with HIV may have been Robert Rayford, a black teenager who died on May 15, 1969 in St. Louis. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Thirty-nine years have passed since we named the virus (HIV-1) and its syndrome (AIDS). Since then approximately 75 million people have been infected world-wide, and 32 million have died of AIDS related illnesses—a mortality rate of 42 percent. Although we have developed no cure, and no vaccine, in the developed world we have learned to manage AIDS. The epidemic has washed over us and faded into the background noise of diseases we live and die with. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Not in Africa. Africa continues to be in the grip of the AIDS crisis. 26 million in sub-Saharan Africa live with HIV infection today. More than eight million are receiving no treatment. There were more than a million new infections in sub-Saharan Africa in 2018, with 80 percent of these infections occurring in girls 15-19 years of age. Of 770,000 who died of AIDS related illnesses worldwide in 2018, down from 1.7 million at the peak in 2004, most deaths occurred in Africa.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As the AIDS epidemic spread in the 1980’s, Africans, too, took note. <i>“The African way is to use a descriptive term—in this case what happens when people are languishing and melting away,” </i>said Ruth Whitney in an interview. <i>Slim </i>is a lovingly crafted tribute to the people of the Congo trying to make sense of a disease they did not understand, that its president denied, and that took—and is taking—such a terrible toll. Whitney skillfully and economically sketches out eight compelling characters. There’s Alinofe, an artistic young boy struggling in school; his beautiful and strong mother Lydia, abused by a handsome, bright, charismatic, philandering, drunkard of a husband—Chester Banda; Tarishi, The Old One, a traditional healer of considerable skill and wisdom who is stumped by this new presence of Slim; Pia—the fat <i>mamsahib, </i>a Scottish gynecologist working in the local hospital, who has been in the country long enough to acquire a local nickname, but who still takes solace in the writings of St. Augustine; she has become native even if she hasn’t gone native; there is Suzanne, an American doctor in her prime come to work at the hospital to forget a recent divorce, and her lover, a son of the revolution and a fated newspaper editor; and there is His Excellency the narcissistic, self-absorbed, corrupt, and dangerous president of the country.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The novel is set in the fictitious city of Kivwe, Zandu and the village of Lufira. But there is a real river named Lufira in the Congo; His Excellency, H.E., the president of Zandu brings to mind the dictator of Zaire, Mobuto Sese Seko; and the description of the doctors and staff of Queen Victoria Hospital in this Kivwe, Zandu, bear the conviction of memoir. The ambiguous setting seems appropriate for a novel about an ephemeral disease like Slim, in a contingent, short lived, and changing country like Zaire. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The character sketches and scenes that cover the first 60 percent of this book are skillfully done. They are not all essential, but they are each interesting and a pleasure to read. Whitney compellingly brings these characters to life. She writes perceptively and true about sexual desire, cooking, village life, and politics. The story moves forward compellingly and accelerates into a great crescendo by the end of the book. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Slim</i> is not yesterday’s news. Reading it 17 years after its first publication, the parallels to our current Covid epidemic are thought provoking. Our President has alluded to countries like the Zandu of this novel as “shithole” countries. But we look at our own government’s denial of the Covid epidemic, and we are struck by the parallels: the hubris, the denial, the corruption, and the confusion caused by our political divide. When we look in the mirror of this book, what do we see?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As of October 2020 there are 42 million cases of Covid-19 cases world-wide, and 1.1 million deaths. In the U.S. as of late-October, 8.6 million have been infected and more than 228,000 have died. Ignorant behavior is exacerbating the epidemic. As with AIDS, disadvantaged populations are affected disproportionately. Yet super-spreader events can happen on the White House lawn. Ruth Linnea Whitney’s fine novel sheds light on the complexities, and the humanity, that surround a pandemic like AIDS in a dysfunctional African country. And it holds a mirror to our present moment. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">1. <a href="https://www.avert.org/global-hiv-and-aids-statistics" style="color: #954f72;">Avert</a> Global HIV and AIDS statistics. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">2. <a href="https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/081101_hivorigins" style="color: #954f72;">Berkeley.edu</a> Understanding Evolution.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">3. Ruth Whitney <a href="https://www.pugetsound.edu/about/offices-services/office-of-communications/arches/archive/back-issues/arches-archive/autumn-2003/matters-of-life-and-death/" style="color: #954f72;">interview</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">4. Zaire, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaire" style="color: #954f72;">Wikipedia</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">5. <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cg.html" style="color: #954f72;">CIA World Factbook</a>, Democratic Republic of the Congo<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">6. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-referred-haiti-african-countries-shithole-nations-n836946" style="color: #954f72;">NBC News</a>, January 11, 2018 (“shithole countries”)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><br /></div>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-91675159998518591242019-12-08T14:07:00.000-08:002019-12-08T15:08:23.333-08:00Seeking Happiness on Christmas Eve in a Dysfunctional Hospital Ward<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioBsWTGP0jD1QHyZKo3Fici2UZHhA3Gy1djAMSrBvrDGQ7q_3ZDwDFT3ewL2kNSz1aga1pbSjv3wbLYHoPlCafsjmhoan8c6vauSDX3bSz24_6Dz6LlclU6XfZCsD2Gwm-ySG1tjn4yY_A/s1600/19566035_web1_web-mercy-falls-spot-1-pdn-191129.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="851" data-original-width="1280" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioBsWTGP0jD1QHyZKo3Fici2UZHhA3Gy1djAMSrBvrDGQ7q_3ZDwDFT3ewL2kNSz1aga1pbSjv3wbLYHoPlCafsjmhoan8c6vauSDX3bSz24_6Dz6LlclU6XfZCsD2Gwm-ySG1tjn4yY_A/s320/19566035_web1_web-mercy-falls-spot-1-pdn-191129.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">l-r, Michelle Hensel, Consuelo Aduviso, and Jennifer True</td></tr>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mercy Falls<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">a play by Jeni Mahoney<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">directed by Denise Winter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Key City Public Theater <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jeni Mahoney is currently teaching an introductory course to theater at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire. She knows whereof she speaks. Her <a href="https://www.jenimahoney.com/bio.html" style="color: #954f72;">biography</a> boasts productions of a dozen of her plays from New York, to Chicago, to Port Townsend. She is active around the country in the production of new theater pieces. Port Townsend’s Key City Public Theater is privileged to host the world premiere of her <i>Mercy Falls, </i>a play she’s been working on for a decade<i>. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">With its ludicrous questioning of the purpose of life, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Mercy Falls </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">dips into the tradition of the theater of the absurd. It takes place on Christmas eve in a hospital room occupied by a malingering successful self-help author, Wanda Moore. The room is elaborately decorated with Christmas trees, ornaments, wrapping paper: Wanda’s props of </span><i>faux</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> admiration from a reading audience that seems large and real. She receives a visit from a young admirer, Marcy </span>Wuggleson<span style="font-family: inherit;">, who seeks inspiration from the famous self-help author. The nurses, patient advocates, and doctor are absent minded; dressed up by turn as Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer, a black-veiled ghost of Christmas Future, a </span>dixiecup<span style="font-family: inherit;">-hoofed reindeer struggling to pick up a dropped thermometer, and a troubled doctor </span>Smitwhistle<span style="font-family: inherit;"> dressed up as Santa. It’s a slapstick send-up of hospital culture and ways. Wanda and Marcy prance across the set with I-V drip pole in tow. It’s irreverent, lighthearted </span>vaudevillian<span style="font-family: inherit;"> fun, and as KCPT’S </span><a href="https://keycitypublictheatre.org/2019/mercy-falls/" style="color: #954f72; font-family: inherit;">notes suggest</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> on its website, a small Christmas miracle at the same time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Wanda seeks inspiration for her next book. She appropriates the misfortune of others and turns them into uplifting tales of redemption, in first-person singular. Will Marcy be next? Marcy looks for the meaning of life behind her serial jinxes, bringing violent death and misfortune to loved ones. All seek relief from the existential cries of Dr. Smitwhistle’s demented mother who shouts out Martin Heidegger slogans from the wings: “Mit Reifness vollfüllt sich die Frucht!” (With ripeness the fruit fulfills itself). “For years she’s been going on, and on,” laments Dr. Smitwhistle. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In this renewed age of demented populism and political falsehoods, the play is no <i>Rhinoceros</i>—Eugene Ionesco’s metaphor for the success of 1930’s fascism in Romania. Indeed, it is not a political play at all. It is too innocent for that. Wanda may be a fraud, but she genuinely seeks to inspire, to do good. Marcy may be a lost soul, but perhaps a bit of absurdity will set her free. And the demented Mrs. Smitwhistle in the wings lives on to rant and wonder for another day…. a small Christmas miracle after all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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New plays are really hard. KCPT’s production of <i>Mercy Falls</i> is a success: multi-faceted, well written, acted, and directed; it's funny, and entirely in keeping with Christmas in this crazy time. It’s playing in Port Townsend through December 29. Tickets are $24 to $29. You can call the theater at 360-385-5278.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Follow me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/rolandnikles" style="color: #954f72;">@RolandNikles</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-26246273483748649112019-10-16T22:50:00.000-07:002019-10-16T22:50:55.908-07:00What We're Voting on in Washington State on November 5, 2019<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On Tuesday November 5, 2019 Washington voters will be asked to decide whether they want to permit some affirmative action measures, whether to reduce license fees for vehicles, and whether to permit legislators to circumvent the constitution in certain emergencies.<br />
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<b>Referendum Measure 88: Affirmative Action</b><br />
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In 1998 Washington DC was in an impeachment frenzy, and voters in Washington state passed an initiative (I-200) aimed at eliminating WA state affirmative action programs in public education, public contracting, and public employment. Twenty years on, the WA legislature has decided that some affirmative action would be desirable and beneficial to increase diversity in public education, public employment, and public contracting (I-1000). I-1000 would also establish a Governor’s commission on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Voters are being asked to approve or veto this legislation.<br />
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I will vote to approve I-1000. This legislation, seeking to promote fairness and opportunity for historically disadvantaged groups, is consistent with the laws in 42 other states. A commission that focuses on discrimination and issues periodic reports, and implements some minor affirmative action to promote diversity in public education and public contracting strikes me as worthwhile. I approve.<br />
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<b>Initiative Measure 976: Reduction of License Fees</b><br />
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Washington relies predominantly on its sales tax to raise revenue. According to a Wiki tabulation, 78.7% of Washington state’s revenue comes from sales tax. Another 6.8% of revenue is raised from various licensing fees, including motor vehicle, trailer, boating fees. Washingtonians are taxed $2,883 annually per capita—inclusive of sales taxes, license fees, property taxes, and other taxes. This is similar to many states; Washington is not “one of the highest taxed states in the nation” as the pro-argument misleadingly claims in our voter pamphlet. Twenty-eight states have higher tax rates than Washington. Californians are taxed at the rate of $3,876/capita. Wyoming taxes its citizens at the rate of $4,017/capita. Vermonters are taxed at $4,861/capita. Alaska ($1,170/capita), Florida ($1,838/capita), and New Hampshire ($1,870/capita) tax the least.<br />
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This initiative measure aims to reduce revenue from vehicle license fees by $4.2 billion over the next six years. Licensing your new $40,000 (or $100,000 car) would cost just $30/year. The loss of revenue if this initiative is passed would sow chaos in how Washington finances infrastructure and public transportation.<br />
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I’m voting NO. We can’t willy-nilly eliminate revenue sources in the abstract without a discussion of the merits of the programs that are funded with the revenue, and without identifying alternate sources of revenue if we want to keep funding some of those programs. <br />
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<b>A Bunch of Advisory Votes</b><br />
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In 2007 voters in Washington passed an initiative that would have required all tax increases to be approved by a supermajority of the legislature or a vote of the people. A similar initiative passed in 2010 by a 64/36% margin. In 2013 the Washington Supreme court <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Supermajority_Vote_Required_in_State_Legislature_to_Raise_Taxes,_Initiative_1053_(2010)">struck down these initiatives</a> as unconstitutional, leaving in place just an advisory exercise. This appears to be a waste of time because the legislature does not in fact consider the advice given in these votes. There have been 19 previous such advisory votes. Seven times the voter’s advised to maintain the law, and 13 times the voters advised to repeal the law. It made no difference. I’ve looked at the Secretary of state’s information, where they dutifully record the vote, but there is no information regarding any action taken in response to the voters advice. I then called both the office of the Secretary of State, and the office of the Legislative assistant, and they informed me that the legislature does not consider the advisory votes, does not review passed legislation in light of the “advice” received. With that, I will read these advisory votes like the newspaper, for information. I will not bother to study each one, or to vote on any of these.<br />
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If you have feelings about any of these tax measures, call your legislator. Your voter pamphlet tracks how each legislator voted on these various tax bills.<br />
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<b>Proposed Constitutional Amendment--Senate Joint Resolution 8200</b><br />
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We are asked to approve or reject a joint resolution of the legislature to amend the state constitution by expanding the extraordinary legislative powers that take effect in the event of an invasion by a foreign enemy. The proposed amendment was passed by more than two-thirds vote in each house (37/11 in the Washington Senate and 91/7 in the House). In order to become law, the joint resolution must also be approved by a majority of the electorate in this election.<br />
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Washington voters enacted constitution Article II, Section 42 (governmental continuity during an emergency caused by a foreign enemy) in November 1962, i.e. on the heels of the Cuban missile crisis. There was a general paranoia about nuclear war in the U.S., marked by duck-and-cover drills in schools and the wide-spread construction of nuclear fall-out shelters. The emergency contemplated by Section 42 was an “enemy attack.” A majority of our legislators would now like us to expand these powers to cover any “catastrophic incident.” The example given is a rupture on the Cascadia fault.
Article II, Section 42 seems to contemplate that a natural catastrophe could prevent so many legislators, executives, and other government officials from attending to their duties so as to incapacitate government from acting. The amendment would permit hypothetical remnants of government to act contrary to law, e.g. without a specified quorum, to move the seat of government, or to change the rules regarding governor succession, without a vote of the people.<br />
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For any constitutional amendment, especially one that short-circuits fundamental checks and balances of government, the proponents bear a heavy burden that the change is sensible and necessary. I don't think the legislature has met its burden of proof. I am voting NO.<br />
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Notwithstanding the hysterical 2015 New Yorker article about a hypothetical fallout from a 9.0 Richter scale earthquake along a 700 mile rupture, our best geological assessments are that the precise effects of a tsunami from a rupture on the Cascadia fault: a) is very difficult to predict; and b) will be much reduced by the time it reaches Puget Sound. See e.g. <a href="https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/gisresources/SEA/RiskMAP/Jefferson/Jefferson_Project_Docs/Draft_JeffersonCounty_RiskReport_052016.pdf">here</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=129&v=e5PJQW_6k6M">here</a>, and <a href="https://www.washington.edu/news/2015/08/17/uw-researchers-model-tsunami-hazards-on-the-northwest-coast/">here</a>. Our governor and legislators don’t live in tsunami zones. The capitol in Olympia is not in a tsunami zone. The legislature here has not borne its burden that government might be incapacitated from an earthquake along the Cascadia fault, as it might be in a nuclear strike on Olympia and Seattle. I see no reason to formally grant discretion to legislature to short-circuit the constitution. They have not carried their burden of persuasion.<br />
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Follow me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/rolandnikles">@RolandNikles</a>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-60945728056377629182019-09-24T22:24:00.002-07:002019-09-24T22:24:37.081-07:00My Port Townsend (2019) Film Festival Experience: Stories and Sacred Space <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Free Outdoor Venue at PTFF</td></tr>
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The 20th annual <a href="https://www.ptfilmfest.com/Festivals/Annual-Festival/Current-Program.html">Port Townsend Film Festival</a> kicked off on Thursday evening, September 19, 2019 with a showing of the feature documentary <i>Gordon Lightfoot: If you Could Read my Mind </i>in the newly refurbished American Legion Hall. Directors Martha Kehoe and Joan Tosoni cobbled together a pleasing amount of Lightfoot film footage: from childhood choir days, singing in a big band, working in a bank--where he did well enough to be "kicked upstairs" to work in tall buildings--to quitting to take a job on a television hoe-down variety program, singing solo in clubs, and ultimately selling out stadium venues with full rock group light show ensembles. We see Lightfoot transform from cherubic young troubadour with a mellifluous voice, to a hard-drinking womanizing divorcee, to a long haired, wizened, and wounded old warrior, still singing, still striving for perfection. Lightfoot's many excellent songs are given their due, with context from Lightfoot's life and interview with friends, lovers, and admirers. It's a story primarily of Lightfoot's songs, his energy, his charisma, less so of his life.<br />
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Yet stories of life is what this film festival is all about. More than 100 films. Short documentaries, long documentaries, short dramas, feature dramas. A mix of old and new. "A diverse array of films about dogs, horses, drag queens, refugees, salmon, a blind kayaker, troubled teens, cowboys of color, First Nations people, mental health, artists, trans high school athletes, citizen investigative journalists and rhinos, just to mention a few!" says Jane Julian, the Festival's program director. Stories of life in a myriad of formats. We managed to see 17 films over four days.<br />
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Stephen Tobolowsky's one man show <i>The Primary Instinct </i>(2015), shown Friday evening, raises the question head on: why do we tell stories? Tobolowsky comes at the question by telling several stories of his youth, his parents, his family.... as well he might, because he is a first rate story-teller. Stories are like a core sample from a glacier, he suggests. They contain our histories; where we won and where we lost; what mattered and what didn't. But there is something more. Stories have a timeless quality to them. They are not bound by the normal laws of past, present, and future. They ambush and surprise us with what is lost and gone, or by what remains. More than survival, more than happiness, more than anything, says Tobolowsky, it is our drive for meaning and transcendence to something beyond ourselves that is our primary instinct. It's what drives us to become great runners, great musicians, great artists, or suicide bombers. It's what makes us tell stories. It's what makes stories holy. If the realm of pure invention is what we like to call God, says Tobolowsky, then the world of reinvention (storytelling) is what we call man. And the bridge between the two is what we call prayer. Stories are kodesh (other and holy) and they are our prayers for meaning and transcendence. In this sense stories are holy and they make us holy. [You can stream <i>The Primary Instinct </i>on Amazon prime]<br />
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Friday morning we started with Irene Taylor Brodsky's loving documentary portrait of her deaf parents and deaf oldest son, <i>Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in 3 Movements. </i>The first movement (<i>largo</i> and <i>pianissimo</i>) focuses on Brodsky discovering her first born, Jonah, has inherited his grandmother's gene "typo" of deafness. He completely loses his hearing by the age of four. Lucky for him medicine is now able to offer him cochlear implants, a privilege his grandparents did not enjoy until late in life. Jonah forges a special bond with his grandparents over their shared condition, especially with his grandfather, Paul. The second movement (<i>allegro </i>and <i>forte</i> if we take the cue from Jonah's piano teacher) is about Jonah's determination to learn Beethoven's <i>Moonlight Sonata </i>on the piano. The film explores the connection between this piece composed by Beethoven as he was going deaf, and the deafness of Jonah learning to play even as his hearing is artificially restored. He and his teacher focus on the feelings evoked by the music, the artistic expression. Does Jonah gain something when he exercises his superpower of turning off the sound on his implant as he plays the piece? The third movement, (<i>largo/pianissimo</i>) focuses on the grandfather and his advancing dementia. Love, loss, gain, and the bittersweet beauty of life find many expressions in this film about a close and beautiful family. <br />
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Friday noon found us at <i>The Bowmakers </i>(2019)<i> </i>a film of particular interest to my violin playing wife. This documentary collaboration by Ward Serrill and Rocky Friedman features five world-class violin and viola bow-makers with deep connections to Port Townsend. Most prominent among them is Charles Espey, described by one "as the most prominent bow maker of his generation." Espey has made Port Townsend his home for the past 30 years during which time Port Townsend has become known as a Mecca of bow making. Noel Burke, Robert Morrow, Ole Kanestrom, and Cody Kowalsky all apprenticed with Espey at different times and have become prominent makers. Paul Siefried moved to Port Townsend from Los Angeles in 1991 and is a sought-after bow maker and restoration expert. The filmmakers trace the origins of the modern bow to France and visit the Amazon rainforest to explore the origins of the pernambuco wood that is desired by bow-makers everywhere. Standing in line with Ward Serrill later in the festival he offered that he and Rocky Friedman plan to make three documentary films focused on Port Townsend makers. On the Tobolowsky scale, this film is informative but firmly planted in the secular. But I look forward to the next one.<br />
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By three o'clock we moved on to the Key City Theater stage for a screening of <i>Adrift </i>(2018)<i>, </i>a film by Caleb Burdeau. The film won an award for top drama at the Tripoli film festival in Lebanon in June. Burdeau was born in Seattle, grew up in Southeast Alaska, but traveled continuously between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres before settling in Italy with his father and two brothers when he was 15 years old, say the "Director's notes" at the Rome Independent Film Festival. Burdeau, it seems, has continued to drift as an adult. His film has a slow-moving aimless quality to it. Shot in Venice, Rome, and Apulia the screen is chronically dark: the light is flat; it is perpetually night, early dawn, or dusk. Bright sunshine is rendered like a dreary Moscow day in January. The action follows two drifters, one escaping the war in Sarajevo, one stuck on his parents farm in Apulia without a job or hope for the future. These characters have reason to be depressed and they share their bleak outlook on life. If this film is a prayer in Tobolowsky's sense, the prayer goes unanswered.<br />
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<i>The Silent Revolution </i>(2018)<i> </i>is a gripping drama set in an East German high school classroom in November 1956, by director Lars Krause. Two boys visit West Berlin and catch a newsreel of the Hungarian uprising. Back at school they convince the class to observe a one minute silent protest in support of the Hungarians. Their "professor" feels humiliated and defied--and one does not defy German "professors" easily, much less so in a would be totalitarian state. The state decides to crack down hard on this class. Several of the student characters are nicely developed, and along the way they learn some secrets about their parents' struggle during the Nazi era and the subsequent Russian occupation. A caption at the end of the film tells us that all but three of the students successfully defected to the West. The True always trumps the Clever, says Tobolowsky in his film. It raises the question whether this type of story is "holier" as fictionalized drama, or would it be more successfully told as a documentary, or as a combination between these genres. The happy ending in this film, pleasing in its way, rings hollow because of the questions that remain: what happened to the classmates who left for the West; what happened to those that didn't? What insights, if any, have the villainous school administrators gained 30 years after the reunification of Germany?<br />
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Saturday noon found us in the iconic Starlight room, comfortably nestled in a Victorian era couch, next to a coffee table, enjoying high quality food service, a quality screen, sound system, and a sweet and satisfying story, <i>Saint Frances </i>(2019). It's the story of a six year old girl with mixed-race same sex parents and her 34-year old nanny, Bridget. A romantic comedy. Sweet and harmless, unless you're a prude in the park that objects to breast-feeding in public, a racist opposed to miscegenation, opposed to same sex marriage, or a parent concerned about daughters making poor mate choices.<br />
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Barely enough time for a beer, and we're off to see <i>Runner </i>(2018) directed by Bill Gallagher. It's a documentary about a South Sudanese refugee, Guor Marial/Maker, who had to run for his life to escape the <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/07/who-are-the-janjaweed.html">Janjaweed</a> as a nine-year old boy in 1994. Twenty-eight of his family members were killed in the conflict in South Sudan, including eight of his siblings. Maker was granted refugee status in the United States from Egypt in 2001, and wound up as a high school track star in Concord New Hampshire. Another era, when the George Bush administration was open to refugees from Africa and offered aid there. Guor ran for Iowa State University in college, and ran an impressive 2 hr 12 min 55 second marathon in San Diego in June 2012. He competed in the London and Rio de Janeiro Olympics under the Olympic flag in 2012 and in 2016 under the flag of South Sudan. The film demonstrates a difficulty encountered by many documentary films. Gallagher read about Maker during the London Olympics and started a kick-starter campaign to tell Maker's story. The story arc of this film is refugee comes to America, becomes a great runner and wants to run in the Olympics for his country. If Maker had become Olympic champion in Rio, this film could win an Oscar. But the odds of this happening were long. As it turned out, Maker never reached the top tier of marathoners. He was allowed to enter the Rio Olympics as an afterthought, without having made the Olympic qualifying time. The story arc of refugee to marathon star fizzled. There were other possible story arcs for this film: U.S. refugee policy, the world refugee crisis, and how Maker fits into that picture. But that's not what this film is about. The film committed to the "runner" story arc, and that didn't pan out. It's a matter of luck.<br />
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Contrast <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4wlC1Qex8A">The Flight of the Gossamer Condor</a> </i>(1978), which was reprised at the festival in a gloriously remastered format. Ben Shedd directed this story of how aeronautic engineer Paul MacCready and his family won the Kremer (monetary and honorific) Prize in 1978. The prize was established in 1959 by British industrialist Henry Kremer to be awarded to the first team to master human-powered flight at a prescribed height over a one mile figure eight course. The MacCready effort was a shoestring operation featuring colorful characters. There was a late challenge from a Japanese team. There was a quest for the prize 20 years unclaimed, adversity, and success. There were bicycle racers. Crashes. Humor. Spunk. The magic formula for an Oscar. Had the Gossamer Condor failed to make its turns, or failed to clear the 10' hurdle at the end, or had the Japanese team won: no Oscar, and no reprise at the 20th annual Port Townsend film festival. It's a matter of luck. Director Shedd was present at the screening. He is a charming and energetic fellow, but without some luck his documentary might have been (just? hardly seems fair) another <i>Runner</i>.<br />
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Gillian Armstrong's <i>My Brilliant Career </i>(1979) is another reprise, this one selected by Cheryl Strayed (author of the memoir <i><a href="http://www.cherylstrayed.com/wild_108676.htm">Wild</a></i>) as one of the most influential films on her development as a writer. The film is based on the "thinly disguised" autobiography of the Australian feminist <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/miles-franklin">Miles Franklin</a> (1879-1954), said Streyed during the Q&A. Poet Peter G. Quinn summarized the movie in the festival program as follows: "It is set in 1899, the Australian outback north of Queensland.... A young woman (is) living with her hard-scrabbling family in very harsh country. Life is difficult and unrelenting.... One day her mother tells her they are sending her away because they can't afford to keep her, that she is too plain to marry well. Initially she is to work as a maid, but fate intervenes. She is sent to live with her grandparents and aunt in their very fine home. [Think Downton Abbey] All appears to be moving in positive direction. Soon, choices that might otherwise seem magnificent and perfect, do not mesh with her plan to be a writer. She has to decide. The movie's lasting theme--what it means to be female, remains as pertinent today as in 1899." That seems a bit too pat. To my eyes, this movie is a garden variety romantic comedy, complete with extended flirty pillow fight. For most of this film we see our would be writer-heroine (Judy Davis) flirtatiously reject (and humiliate) the dweeby Frank Harbon (Robert Grubb), who aims to cart her off to his lair in Scotland as his bride, and flirtatiously romancing, but rejecting, the attractive Harry Beecham (Sam Neill). We see Sybill writing in her journal here and there, but its not what drives her. This movie is not about the struggles of a writer. It's not about having to choose between marrying the gallant (but likely philandering) Harry Beecham and a writing career. The film doesn't present that dilemma. The Sybill of <i>My Brilliant Career </i>would be very much up to the task of managing a writing career and a husband like Harry Beecham. And then there is the suspicion, when we look at Franklin's life, that she was gay. If so, the fact that she rejected Beecham is no mystery. It's the natural thing to do, and it has nothing to do with a Sophie's choice between marriage and writing.<br />
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We closed out Saturday night with a showing of <i>From Shock to Awe </i>(2019) and the short documentary <i>Constant Thought </i>(2019). <i>Shock </i>was directed by Luc Côté, who was present along with a researcher for a question and answer session that lasted until near midnight. The film follows the progress of two combat veterans whose lives were upended by post traumatic stress disorder. Years of therapy and a cabinet full of prescriptions from the VA did not seem to help. But they were transformed through the experience of taking <a href="https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/ayahuasca#what-it-is">ayahuasca</a> at a supervised retreat for veterans. Ayahuasca is a tea brewed up from the leaves of the <i>Psychotria viridis</i> shrub (found in Hawaii and South America) and the stalks of the <i>Banisteriopsis caapi </i>vine. The brew was used for spiritual purposes by ancient Amazon tribes. The brew contains <i>dimethyltryptamine,</i> a strong hallucinogenic. There are studies indicating that therapies using hallucinogenics are reporting an 80% success ratio (I assume meaning significant, observable improvement) in patients suffering from PTSD. This compares to a much lower (15%?) success rate for traditional therapies and drugs used by the VA and others. The researcher (I apologize for not recalling her name) reports that she is heading a study that has received federal funding to study the effects of ayahuasca and other psychedelic drugs on PTSD. Shooting the documentary has made a believer of Luc Côté, and he seems like a sober guy and nobody's fool. The companion short <i>Constant Thought </i>was a portrait of another veteran looking to heal without the use of drugs: hiking in nature. Two thought provoking and illuminating documentaries. <br />
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On the other end of the credibility spectrum we saw <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/videoplayer/vi777172505">Toxic Puzzle</a> </i>(2017) directed by Bo Landin and narrated in dramatic tones by Harrison Ford. The film is a puff piece for Dr. Paul Alan Cox, the director of Brain Chemistry Labs in Jackson Wyoming. The film focuses on the prevalence of algae blooms in lakes and oceans around the world, and the neurotoxins contained in such blooms that might account for an increase in neurological disorders like ALS, Alzheimers, and Parkinson's disease. I have no doubt this is an important area to be studied, but to my eyes this film is offensively non-objective and non-scientific, and it struck me first and foremost as a fundraising vehicle for Cox and his institute. I should say that this opinion is my own and not that of the PTFF. <i>Toxic Puzzle </i>was shown together with <i>Grateful </i>(2018). <i>Grateful </i>is a mother's tribute to her brave and spirited daughter (Jenni Berebitsky) who suffered and survived nine years with ALS until three weeks ago. The film was directed by Paul W. Netherson. Jenni Berebitsky wrote a book about her life with ALS, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/ALS-Saved-Life-until-didnt/dp/0692066691"><i>ALS Saved My Life... until it didn't.</i> </a><br />
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Sunday morning early found us at <i>Bellingcat: Truth in a Post Truth World </i>(2018). This documentary directed by Hans Pool focuses on Elliot Higgins, a journalist and former blogger, who started a collaborative website and formed a team of citizen journalists who together investigate current events using open source materials. "'Bellingcat' as in pinning the bell on the cat," explains Higgins. The film documents how Higgins and his team, for example, successfully identified the mobile missile launcher used to shoot down Malaysia airlines flight 17 over Eastern Ukraine in July 2014, proved that this was a Russian vehicle, and later identified the man giving the order. The film raises important questions about the role of the media, citizen journalists, bloggers, and fake news in our modern, hyper-connected world. It's hopeful and inspiring.<br />
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Equally inspiring is the documentary <i>Ernie & Joe </i>(2019) directed by Jennifer McShane. This film, which won the jury award for best documentary feature at the festival, is about two police officers in the San Antonio Texas police department's Mental Health Unit. They are skilled at talking suicides off the ledge. They care. They follow up. They teach police officers around the country how to defuse tense situations, how to handle stress, how to get help, how not to wind up on the front page of newspapers. How to care. This uplifting portrait of two police officers, who have their own demons, in a police department "that get's it" gives us hope for the future.<br />
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Finally, there was the perfect little play of a movie, <i>Twelve Conversations </i>(2018). Italian director Emanuele Valla has been collaborating with singer song-writer Joshua W. Scott for years. Scott has written songs for Valla's movies. So naturally, when Scott decided to write a screenplay himself, he turned to Valla to direct the movie. They hired local actors Laurie Getchell and Gabe Smith (husband and wife in real life) as the romantic leads. There is the loveliness of Port Townsend, although the twelve conversations all take place underground in a record store. The writing is smart, funny, and moving. This little film is like a perfect love song. It cost less than $5,000 to produce, but it should go platinum. <br />
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Collectively these films provide many handholds for us to reach beyond ourselves, to see ourselves in a new light, as Tobolowsky would say. I can hardly wait for next year's festival. <br />
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Follow me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/rolandnikles">@RolandNikles</a><br />
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<br />Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-38035801286886116732019-08-02T12:29:00.000-07:002019-08-02T13:00:18.214-07:00Bertram Levy’s Murrelet:The Wooden Boat Tradition is Alive and Well in Port Townsend<br />
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<br />Port Townsend, Washington, is proud of its wooden boat tradition. At the twilight of the commercial sailing era it was a bustling seaport, strategically located at the entrance to Puget Sound. Shipyards, boatwrights, foundries, shipping agents, a majestic customs house on the hill, and a busy waterfront have left their mark. Today Port Townsend identifies as a Victorian sea-port and arts community. The wooden boat tradition has shifted from the utilitarian to the aesthetic. <br /><br />On June 20, 2019, at 4:00 p.m., four or five dozen people gathered at the Point Hudson boat yard to witness the launch of Bertram Levy’s new 19’ spittsgatter, a small aesthetic wonder. “Spittsgatter” is a Danish word meaning “double-ender.” The varnish glistened on the Honduras mahogany planking and Douglas fir spars in the afternoon light. There was a reverential murmur in the crowd, there to witness the launch of a work of art. The work of a decade. The result of perhaps 9,000 hours of loving labor: $783,000 at shop rates. If we account for the value added by friends, consultants, and the cost of materials, the crowd was witnessing the launch of a $1 million dollar 19’ yacht. “I name thee Murrelet,” said Bobbie Butler, Bertram’s loyal spouse and muse, smashing a bottle of champagne on the brass strip protecting the bow.<div>
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The writer E.B. White (“Charlotte’s Web”, The New Yorker, Strunk & White’s “The Elements of Style”) commissioned a version of this boat in 1955 from the Danish naval architect K. Aage Nielsen (1894-1984). Nielsen moved to the U.S. in his twenties to become a major designer for the famed John G. Alden Company and Sparkman & Stephens, Inc. After World War II, he struck out on his own, designing and overseeing the construction of custom yachts to exacting standards for customers who could pay. E.B. White, a perfectionist in crafting sentences and paragraphs, was drawn to Aage Nielsen and the perfection of his spittsgatter. “When I think of Aage,” said Olin Stephens in the introduction to Maynard Bray and Tom Jackson’s <a href="https://www.proboat.com/2014/07/afterlife-achieved/">biography/portfolio</a> of Nielsen (Worthy of the Sea(2006)), “the one word that describes him completely is integrity. He … took no shortcuts. His drawings, (were) complete and attractive.” <br /><br />Like E.B. White, who ran across a description of Nielsen’s spittsgatter in the November 1948 issue of The Rudder, Bertram Levy could not resist Nielsens’s no-shortcuts aesthetic. In 2009 Levy was exploring designs for a new boat-building project. He wanted to down-size. He wanted a boat he could trailer for possible solo trips to Barkley Sound, or to the Chesapeake. A boat he could work on in his shop. A boat to winter at home. A day sailor for Port Townsend Bay. A boat to race around the buoys on occasion. A boat that would be beautiful. A boat worthy of the Honduras mahogany he had stored for planking, the locust for framing, the Oroford cedar, the fir for the spars. He spoke with Peter Christiansen, “a great Danish boat builder on Lopez Island,” about possible boat designs. He looked at the designs of Emmanuel Campos and liked his Lehg II made famous by Vito Dumas’ single-handed circumnavigation of the Southern Ocean in the depths of World War II, but he did not care for Campos’s small boats. Frank Schattauer, the Seattle sailmaker, suggested Bertram look at Bray and Jackson’s Worthy of the Sea—a project Schattauer helped support—and there on page 50 was a picture of E.B. White’s Fern together with basic dimensions, sail area, displacement, ballast, and sail area/displacement ratio. There was one problem: no design. <br /><br />Nielsen’s original plans, papers and related files are preserved at the Peabody Essex Museum in Boston, but in accord with Nielsen’s desires, a condition of the donation was that no further boats should be built from his plans. Aage Nielsen, it turned out, was perfectionist to a fault: he had the conceit that if he was not there to supervise construction, the result would not be “worthy of the sea,” in Bray and Jackson’s phrase. By the time he died, say Bray and Jackson, Nielsen believed that boatbuilding had lost its heart and that the skills needed to build his exquisite designs were rapidly becoming a thing of the past. But then Nielsen had never met Bertram Levy, or the Port Townsend wooden boat scene. The death of wooden boat-building to exacting standards has been exaggerated. The aesthetic of expressing beauty in wooden boats remains very much alive in Port Townsend. <br /><br />Bertram Levy found a graphic depiction of Nielsen’s design lines in Wooden Boat magazine along with a construction and one photograph of a completed boat in Worthy of the Sea. Peter Christiansen re-drew the lines stretched from 18’3” to 19’ on a 3x5 index card. Bertram then lofted the design in his shop. This entails tracing full size drawings on plywood in three views. All three views must line up with 1/16” tolerance. From the lofting views, Levy made full size patterns and cut the planking. Peter Christiansen visited him in his shop and showed Levy how to make the bevels for building the foundation and helped set up the back-bone for this new spittsgatter. From there, Levy steamed the frame members. “This was about 2011,” says Levy. In 2012 he set up the frame and backbone for the boat. In 2013 -14 he completed the planking using tight seam construction. This means individual planks are set next to each other without caulking. It requires extremely accurate board dimensions to be successful. <br /><br />Bertram Levy built the mast, the boom, the wood patterns sufficient for Port Townsend foundry to sandcast the bronze fittings on the boat. Barry Stephens provided a jig to bend the bronze to be used in creating all the blocks. Ed Louchard made the sheaves. When all was ready, Randy Cherrier helped move the boat from the shop and onto a trailer procured from Tuff (Ferndale, WA). <br /><br />Although friends may lend support and encouragement, building a boat single-handed is a marathon effort, like sailing a boat around the world single-handed. Twice. Bertram Levy is also a musician. While building this boat, he spent up to six months a year in Argentina studying the Bandoneon, and while in Port Townsend he practiced his music in the mornings and worked on the boat for six hours in the afternoon. It requires more focus, energy, skill, and endurance than most of us can muster in the eighth decade of life. Bertram Levy has graced our port with another beautiful work of art in wood construction. <br /><br />Aage Nielsen would have gladly sold a set of plans for Murreletto Bertram Levy had he known. <br /><br />No matter how beautiful, boats are not museum pieces, so the ultimate question is “how does she sail?” Nielsen designed his boat for a 15.43 sail area to displacement ratio with a sail plan of 199 square feet. In order to accommodate the oft light winds in Port Townsend Bay, Jim Franken of Tim Nolan Marine Design provided a more performance-oriented sail area to displacement ratio of 18.0. “From that reference point, Kit Africa designed the center of effort and sail area,” said Bertram. The result was a mast two feet higher than Nielsen’s design, and a sail plan of 239 square feet, twenty percent larger than Nielsen’s original design. Frank Schattauer designed the mainsail with full battens and a large roach and so there was much anticipation of how the boat would stand up to its canvass. Like a dream is the answer.</div>
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I was honored to accompany Bertram on Murrelet’s maiden sail. A warm 7-9 knot breeze blew from the NW and the boat comfortably stiffened to a close-hauled course moving through the water at five knots past the City Front. The helm was balanced, pulling to weather just the right amount in the gusts. The clew and leach of the small jib are even with the mast and the sail sheets inside the shrouds to traveler cars on the cabin top. From there the jib-sheets can be led directly to the halyard winches on the cabin top, or to small brass snubbing winches on the cockpit coaming. The small (69 sq. ft) jib makes tacking the boat very easy.</div>
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The large mainsail easily overpowers the rudder. Bearing off under main alone, as in maneuvering out of a slip, can be tricky. Bertram has added a yuloh sculling oar, which easily drives the boat at 2+ knots in still air and flat water. It is not quite enough to maneuver the boat in a breeze in tight quarters in the marina. For those occasions, Bertram has added a Torquee 3 hp electric motor, complete with solar panels to charge the battery. </div>
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Murrelet is a worthy addition to the sea and to Port Townsend's collection of wooden boats. </div>
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Watch this 14 minute visit to Bertram’s shop at <a href="https://www.offcenterharbor.com/videos/boat-shop-visit-no-1-bertram-levy/" style="color: #954f72;">OffCenterHarbor.com</a>.<br />
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Follow me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/rolandnikles">@RolandNikles</a></div>
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Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-89972261767434666132019-07-23T15:03:00.000-07:002019-07-23T15:03:25.180-07:00Skye<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The thrill of diving in the river on a hot day is not essential. Like strong biceps. Like leaning into a curve on a motorcycle with a firm yet relaxed grip on the handlebars. None of these things are essential to happiness. Surfing the jetty in Arcata is not essential although the surf there breaks in a perfect five-foot curl on good days. The water is cold and in October there are sharks. Our daughter was friends with <i>Shark Boy</i>, a minor celebrity lacerated by a Great White shark at the Arcata jetty. He survived, healing like a worm, all tendons inexplicably intact. But that was after. After Skye. Getting over Skye. Our daughter had been living with Skye for a year but they were unsure what would come after college. To us, it did not look like they would make it. Akrasiawe thought. They were a good match. A surfing trip to Mexico was planned. We bought them plane tickets. But they never figured out the logistics of passports, or of renting a car in Mexico as 21-year-olds. There was a Catch-22: they needed insurance and no one would sell insurance to 21-year-olds in Baja Sur. But happiness does not depend on a surfing trip to Mexico. It’s non-essential. They went on a California road trip instead. They shared video footage: Skye riding his skate board for miles down remote country roads, thrilling in the balance, turns, and freedom of athletic movement, beaming. None of it essential. They ended up on the South Fork of the Trinity river on a hot day—a favorite spot of the Humboldt State college crowd. July 13, 2011. An anniversary of the end of one type of life and the beginning of another. A hand waving from the river. A final rising on powerful, youthful, muscular, beautiful legs. A strong dive into that fateful cool pool of river water. We still keep in touch. “How are you, Skye?” we asked today. “Push- ups, balancing on a surf-board, going to the bathroom unassisted, these are non-essential,” he said. “That life is dead to me. I am happy.” <a name='more'></a>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-24964390205074771292019-07-18T12:43:00.000-07:002019-07-18T12:43:25.252-07:00Three Modes of Sailing in Port Townsend, WA<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Cruising</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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We will not speak of motoring from Point Wilson, past Partridge Bank, to the San Juan Channel in order to arrive at our destination in five hours. We leave this to trawlers. We will not speak of furling the genoa because we wish to go where the wind blows from. And we will not speak of starting the engine when the wind is fickle and light. These are not modes of sailing. In a warm breeze we stand on the high side and watch with wonder as the boat ploughs balanced to windward across whitecapped seas. We concentrate and adapt to ever-changing conditions. Patience is tried as the sea flattens and the boat ghosts along. Shins are bruised as the wind kicks up and we wrestle a reef into the mainsail and change jibs. We plan for currents, plot our progress on charts. The compass light glows red at night. We listen and peer as we navigate through fog. Arriving late at our anchorage we pirouette into the wind, drop anchor and back the mainsail. We clean up. Exhausted. Cook a meal. That is the cruising mode of sailing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Four o’clock Wednesday. Race day. There is a stir of activity on Thunderbird row on A-dock. Sail covers are folded away, genoa and spinnaker sheets are led through their blocks. Tiller extensions are clipped fast. A quick pass across the rudder with a long-handled brush puts the mind at ease. Nine boats and crews are readying to play tonight. A good showing. Marine forecasts, tide charts, Windexes are eagerly consulted. Heartbeats quicken. By 5:00 p.m. the race committee is on its way out of the harbor, inflatable yellow and red marks in tow. Tension rises ahead of the 6:00 p.m. warning signal, looming like a deadline, an examination. Boats sail up and down the line in close quarters, to check how the line is set, the oscillations of the wind, the favored end of the starting line. Four minutes before the start the racing rules take effect. “Up, up, up!” “Starboard!” “No room!” Everybody maneuvering in the chaotic start box to earn a spot on the line in clear air at the sound of the horn. Accelerating off the line to be in a good position upwind at the first cross requires experience and skill. Congestion at the windward mark. Crews are on high alert to avoid collision. To duck. To tack. One coordinated movement: the foredeck person sets the pole, the pit-person pulls on the guy, the trimmer lifts and tosses the spinnaker up and forward, the foredeck person leaps on the line, hoisting. Woosh! The spinnaker fills and the boat accelerates. It’s a game of inches among boats more or less equal in speed that can result in surprising variations. Mistakes are quickly exposed. It’s tense. It’s exhilarating. It’s sailboat racing. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Performance Handicap Racing Fleet provides a well established way to compare the relative speed of boats of diverse size, design, and features. It’s sufficient for bragging rights on the race course. Skippers must apply for a rating and pay a fee and the handicap is assigned based on the past performance of similar boats over time. Except this is Port Townsend. No one is turned away. Show up for the races on Wednesday and Friday evening and you will be assigned a number. Every boat is compared to a hypothetical very fast boat with a rating of zero. Most cruising racing boats on the water are slower than this hypothetical baseline boat by 50 seconds to 250 second/mile. In the Pacific Northwest, for example, most Thunderbirds have a PHRF rating of 195: three minutes and fifteen seconds slower than the baseline boat over a mile. More than 200 sailors love their boats enough to pay monthly moorage in excess of $200.00/month in Point Hudson Marina and Boat Haven. Those boats need exercise. Come exercise your boat in the PHRF fleet on Wednesday and/or Friday nights. It’s cross-training for cruising done right.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-2515310486556498102019-04-13T00:43:00.000-07:002019-04-13T07:47:08.852-07:00A Gender Inverted Adventure Down the Colorado River<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy2XAkPEqGfB6T6i40oSStotlAF_WK_2UEqs5I0GuyRwwNLDeOeB-xZB3fh2P2h7tA_59ulkPX3VONw1TnytK9gWPRf6QfrfvwhBjM5_zvmr4xQNkBSxwHpUDte6hVrOrF7C8-KUq9V5Qd/s1600/Men_on_Boats_720x295.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="314" data-original-width="738" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy2XAkPEqGfB6T6i40oSStotlAF_WK_2UEqs5I0GuyRwwNLDeOeB-xZB3fh2P2h7tA_59ulkPX3VONw1TnytK9gWPRf6QfrfvwhBjM5_zvmr4xQNkBSxwHpUDte6hVrOrF7C8-KUq9V5Qd/s320/Men_on_Boats_720x295.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From A.C.T. Production in San Francisco</td></tr>
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<i>Men on Boats</i><br />
written by Jaclyn Backhaus (2015)<br />
Key City Public Theater, Port Townsend, WA<br />
through April 27, 2019<br />
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To open their 2019 season, <a href="https://keycitypublictheatre.org/">Key City Public Theater</a> in Port Townsend present Jaclyn Backhaus's all women play about John Wesley Powell's expedition down the Green and Colorado rivers in 1869. It's top notch theater. <br />
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Jaclyn Backhaus knows about dissonant roles and identity. She was born in Wisconsin to a first generation Sikh mother and a German-Catholic father. Her mother was ostracized by her family for the intermarriage. She was affected by the racial murder of a Sikh gas station owner in Mesa shortly after the 9/11 attack, as well as by the racially motivated killing of six at a Sikh temple in Oak Ridge, reported the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/theater/jaclyn-backhaus-india-pale-ale.html">New York Times in a profile</a>. <br />
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Backhaus grew up in Phoenix Arizona, where the Colorado river must have been very much in consciousness. In 1869 John Wesley Powell recruited his older brother and eight other adventurers and mountain men for the exploratory journey. The trip was sanctioned and partly paid for by the U.S. Government and Powell was able to ship the four boats used by the expedition by train all the way from Chicago to the launch spot at Green River Station in Wyoming. The transcontinental railroad terminal had been completed there just two weeks before the Powell party arrived. <br />
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The 10 women cast communicates in 21st century banter. But the gender switched roles and snappy dialogue does not turn the play into a novelty. The women are tightly choreographed to convey the danger and force of the river. The loss of two boats and supplies, and dissension among the crew regarding the correct course of action, spearheaded by a mutinous William Dunn, a hunter and trapper, punctuates the action. Should they portage or float through a rapid? Should they abandon and attempt to reach the grand canyon's rim, or carry on? These are life and death decisions and the explorers had no way to compute the odds.<br />
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Although the play is closely based on Powell's notebooks from the journey, the all women cast and modern dialogue breaks any illusion of verisimilitude. These are not Powell's men. But the play's the thing, and by shunning pretense the play is successful in immersing us in the story on its own successful terms. <br />
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There are great sound-effects of wind, roaring cataracts, snakes, and the echoes of the canyon walls. The play could have benefitted from live music accompaniment. <br />
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Come and support live theater in Port Townsend. The season is off to a good start. <br />
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For more on the Grand Canyon, here is a report on <a href="https://rolandnikles.blogspot.com/2016/06/man-as-great-unconformity-of-grand.html">our own journey</a> a couple of years ago.<br />
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Follow me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/rolandnikles">@RolandNikles</a>Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-39154861744273420432019-04-07T01:12:00.000-07:002019-04-07T08:04:48.199-07:00Wolfgang Fisher's "Styx:" a lackluster film that does not make us care enough<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilo_Uir8_NvlrJ1nxV1M4H6hoR4dY4RTlKrIfvdm5bCTkpIikSQ2B-eBnp-foYiYNP5JaxmkxSzPHcWv_udvD9fVl5NWf4YsIc5gqrGnv-bokQzqbyomwRdsR6uCWgNrYB7Bdh1TKBFQ8L/s1600/Fishing+trawler.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="335" data-original-width="595" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilo_Uir8_NvlrJ1nxV1M4H6hoR4dY4RTlKrIfvdm5bCTkpIikSQ2B-eBnp-foYiYNP5JaxmkxSzPHcWv_udvD9fVl5NWf4YsIc5gqrGnv-bokQzqbyomwRdsR6uCWgNrYB7Bdh1TKBFQ8L/s320/Fishing+trawler.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mediterranean refugees/AP</td></tr>
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<i>Styx </i><br />
Written by Wolfgang Fisher and Ika Künzel<br />
Directed by Wolfgang Fisher<br />
Starring: Susanne Wolff and Gedion Oduor Wekesa<br />
94 min. (2018)<br />
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Rieke, an athletic young emergency room doctor in Germany, decides to sail solo from Gibraltar to Ascension Island. It's a long journey that would carry her 2,500 nautical miles along the North African Coast to Cape Verde in Senegal, and from there out into the middle of the South Atlantic to a volcanic man-made garden inspired by Darwin. It's more than a vacation. More like a six month sabbatical. <br />
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Rieke's craft is modern, with communications gear, radar alarms, self-tailing winches, seemingly ample battery power and electrical generation capacity. Still, it's an extreme activity: sailing a boat by yourself for weeks on end, with no-one keeping watch for hours at a time, and handling sails by yourself during storms and squalls; it is not for the faint of heart. <br />
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Only 40 sailboats stop at Ascension island in a given year <a href="https://www.noonsite.com/Countries/AscensionIsland/ascension-island-clearance-cruising-information">says one who did.</a><br />
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We don't know what motivates Rieke's trip. The opening scene suggests she's burnt out from dealing with the aftermath of violence, death and crime in a big European city. Does she have connections on shore? Family, friends who care? She outfits her craft in Gibraltar, silently by herself, amidst the ugliness of this commercial port, revealing nothing. High on the hills above, Barbary macaque monkeys climb down to the built environment. Nature mingling with civilization. The blue sea sparkles and beckons beyond. <br />
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I saw the film at the Rose Theater in Port Townsend, and during the introduction, seemingly by way of excuse, it was explained that the film was shot with six people crammed onboard with cameras and drones. The crew was challenged to frame each shot to maintain the illusion that Rieke was alone. Perhaps as a result, the filmmakers did not succeed in generating many artful shots. There's nothing compelling about the sailing footage.<br />
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The film is literal but geographically out of place. After a storm off the coast of Mauritania Rieke spots a fishing trawler overloaded with refugees. We think of the Mediterranean and the more than 17,000 refugees who have perished there in the last five years. The trawler is dead in the water and evidently in distress. Vague figures wave and yell for help in an undecipherable language. As Rieke approaches some of them jump overboard, even though they can't swim. We don't learn what the trouble is. Are they out of water? Are they diseased? How long have they been adrift? Rieke believes they are dying. But why? Why in the next 12 hours? A boy, perhaps fourteen, manages to reach a life line Rieke tosses to him. He is lifeless as she manages to wrest him onto the boat.<br />
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Rieke frantically calls for help on the radio. She raises an unidentified coast guard station. They give brusque orders to her not to approach the trawler. She will make matters worse by approaching; the desperate refugees will riot, they will overwhelm her and her small craft. Help is on the way, they assure her. But they offer no specifics. Ten hours pass, no help appears. A passing freighter refuses to lend assistance. "Company policy," says the master. Rieke begins to wonder if help will actually show up.<br />
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The main drama of the film is the interaction between Rieke and the young boy, who implausibly revives, and turns out to be ungrateful, surly, and irrational. These scenes are poorly written and unconvincingly acted. There's not enough humanity for us to hang onto.<br />
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We take our cue from the film's title, a reference to the river Styx in Greek mythology that separates the world of the living from the underworld. Rieke bears witness to the demise of these poor refugees, like some traveler on the river bank watching dead souls being ferried across. She is frozen in place, unable to leave the scene, and unable to approach to help. It torments her, but it's not clear what her moral dilemma is. We are not sure whether she is afraid to help, whether she fails to act because she believes there is nothing she can do, or whether she is simply following the orders of the disembodied voice of the unidentified coast guard. The film does not succeed in making us care. <br />
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Watching dead souls being ferried across the river to the underworld, after all, is not a moral dilemma. It's a novelty. <br />
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Could Rieke have approached the fishing trawler, tied up to it, and delivered water, food and ministered to the sick as best she could until help arrived from the coast guard--who were on the way? Maybe. The film makes no convincing case why not beyond fear and prejudice. If so, Rieke had a legal duty to assist. The 1982 UN Convention on law of the sea provides that "the master of a ship ... insofar as (s)he can do so without serious danger to the ship, .... (must) render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost, and (must) proceed with all possible speed to the rescue of persons in distress." See <a href="https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/closindx.htm">Part VII, Section 98.</a><br />
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The <a href="http://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/Facilitation/personsrescued/Documents/Resolution%20MSC.153(78)-MSC%2078.pdf">2004 Amendments </a>to the Convention further clarified that the owner of any ship, or a shipping company, may not hinder or prevent the master of a ship to proceed with any action (s)he deems necessary to safeguard the safety of life at sea. The refusal by a freighter to lend assistance, as portrayed in the movie, would be a crime. "Company policy" is no excuse. <br />
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Yet even if Rieke could have tied up and rendered some assistance, but did not because she was paralyzed by fear, we could understand it. In accordance with the law of the sea, her fear--and implicit judgment that she could not render help safely--would be respected. In this sense, she is in no different position than a couple witnessing a mugging on the way home from the theater. They avert their gaze and quickly walk on. It's understandable and excusable.<br />
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What's inexcusable is that this film, widely and favorably reviewed, does not succeed sufficiently in making us care about a real life human tragedy unfolding in our time.<br />
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Follow me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/RolandNikles">@RolandNikles</a><br />
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<br />Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-33181463407877846232019-02-15T13:42:00.000-08:002019-02-16T08:10:39.636-08:00Ilhan Omar needs to Shape Up<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjXBuKdmC4rru3UKo9G9yWomsAWrEutQtU196i0cJRUJKzjyTrCxkGU95GW1CxRhKPTPX7SJFpB3e2-dxX-p0yFz-EGwIqo5fZaf8XB2TFwRcG8yTl0Mkn1Z3A1hwqc8EoZhFA2BhMVuyX/s1600/Omar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="685" data-original-width="1218" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjXBuKdmC4rru3UKo9G9yWomsAWrEutQtU196i0cJRUJKzjyTrCxkGU95GW1CxRhKPTPX7SJFpB3e2-dxX-p0yFz-EGwIqo5fZaf8XB2TFwRcG8yTl0Mkn1Z3A1hwqc8EoZhFA2BhMVuyX/s320/Omar.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ilhan Omar (D-MN) attacks Elliot Abrams/screenshot</td></tr>
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Among the many artistic and literary efforts blossoming in Port Townsend, Washington, is Bonnie Obremski's <a href="https://www.storyborne.com/">Storyborne</a> project. It kicked off at the Cotton Building on Water Street last night with Alex Dugdale and Dirk Anderson playing hot bass and saxophone, and a handful of locals coming forward to tell their heart stories: a sailor troubadour's tale of fatherhood, a mime's history, tales of #metoo, and our ex-mayor and still councilwoman (Michelle Sandoval, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mU0aTlmPhc">here boosting PT</a>) telling her story of not being tall enough, or blond enough, to break into 1970's Hollywood. The hook of the story was her realization that Mexican culture was cool. She attended a cultural event in Los Angeles and there was Paul Simon and David Byrne trying to learn from Latin culture. "Fuck assimilation," she concluded. <br />
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Assimilation is a tricky thing. Our prejudices are tapped when we watch <a href="http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4779974/representative-omar-clashes-elliott-abrams-us-military-role-central-america">Ilhan Omar’s exchange</a> with Elliot Abrams over U.S. policy in Venezuela earlier this week. Her English is not native. She’s not blond and blue-eyed. Born in 1981 in Mogadishu, Somalia, she's from a "shithole" country as Trump would have it. Yet the fact that this immigrant who arrived at age 14 from a refugee camp in Kenya can be elected to Congress from Minneapolis/St. Louis Park and environs at age 37, attests to something that is great about this country. Sandoval is correct: music, food, and ethnicity, don't need to be assimilated. Our multi-cultural society does not need to be homogenized.<br />
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So what kind of assimilation should we be looking for when we look at someone like Ilhan Omar? What brings us together as Americans is we have organized around a set of principles and ideals: individual liberty, separation of church and state, due process of law, equal protection, and freedoms of speech, assembly, the press, petition, and religion. These values come with responsibilities, let's call them political virtues. Virtues like integrity, honesty, empathy, a thirst for genuine solutions that are good for the country as a whole, learning, and political involvement with a dose of humility regarding our ability to know the correct course.<br />
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As a country these days, we are not very assimilated around these political virtues. Our commitment to our founding values is being tested. There is a gulf between rural America and urban America: red and blue for shorthand; Trump America and Obama America. We are wavering on our commitments to free speech, to equal protection. We are not taking politics seriously. On Facebook we share mean and outrageous fake news for giggles and kicks. At the highest levels of power our representatives are wavering in their commitment to democracy. Politicians are practicing power politics devoid of values.<br />
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Congress is populated with too many political hacks. We should expect every one of our representatives to assimilate towards higher political skills, more integrity, and a genuine interest in learning and policy. We should all take our responsibilities more seriously. We should not spread fake news on Facebook for kicks.<br />
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I had a negative reaction to Omar’s exchange with Abrams. It’s not because she’s a Somali immigrant, or Muslim, or dark skinned. It’s not that there aren’t serious points to made about Abrams’ impunity regarding previous lies to Congress, and his involvement in murderous Latin American policies in the 80’s and 90’s, or that this should make us skeptical about American policy in Venezuela today. See, e.g., the analysis by <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/2/15/18225109/elliott-abrams-ilhan-omar-venezuela">Zack Beauchamp at Vox</a>. What grates for me about Omar's questioning of Abrams is that she made those points in an <i>ad hominem</i> attack that lacked nuance, that lacked a commitment to understanding, that lacked humility, respect, and a genuine interest in learning about our Venezuelan policy, or what that policy should be. It was an attack that lacked political skill and political virtues.<br />
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Omar started her four minutes of questioning by calling Abrams a lier. "I fail to understand, why the members of this Committee or the American people should find the testimony you give today to be truthful," she said. And she would not let him respond.<br />
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She asked him about the El Mozote massacre of 750 villagers in El Salvador by government soldiers, some of whom were trained by the United States, and with a self-conscious "gotcha" smirk she asked: "Yes or no, do you think that massacre was a fabulous achievement?"<br />
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"Would you support ... war crimes ... and genocide... in Venezuela if you believed it advanced U.S. interests?" she asked.<br />
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This manner of questioning reflects entirely too much of the disingenuous partisan questioning we saw by Republican House members during the Benghazi hearings. It is not questioning that is aimed at the truth, or at advancing actual policy, or at persuading anyone. It is partisan grandstanding and bullying.<br />
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The U.S. policy in El Salvador and its effects should be brought up and we should be skeptical about our involvement in Venezuela. But we need to do so in light of our political virtues: we need to prioritize the values of integrity, respect, humility, and a genuine search for truth and what is best for the country. <br />
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Let's assimilate over that. Let's elect representatives who exhibit those values and apply them with skill. Ilhan Omar needs to shape up.<br />
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Follow me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/rolandnikles">@RolandNikles</a><br />
<br />Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4735835170009193143.post-63049777070523006832019-01-10T20:42:00.001-08:002019-01-10T20:56:43.219-08:00Is Trump About to Hit the Wall?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBVv-ePvHP0Uhk6pfRHEmL12lOygRXc3Kaf-1fdAmEGwtokg94KkKzFxit4sL-yb8hBzHcQc__CX_T0sq-d85vTv26BM6RegE0FoOkJifI54_xsY0FjI4w88suk0lKqCHgK45iy_qIDpGR/s1600/Pelosi+and+Schumer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="171" data-original-width="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBVv-ePvHP0Uhk6pfRHEmL12lOygRXc3Kaf-1fdAmEGwtokg94KkKzFxit4sL-yb8hBzHcQc__CX_T0sq-d85vTv26BM6RegE0FoOkJifI54_xsY0FjI4w88suk0lKqCHgK45iy_qIDpGR/s1600/Pelosi+and+Schumer.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sen Min. Leader Schumer and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi<br />
Feeling bullish/National Review photo</td></tr>
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It's nuts. President Trump is staking his presidency on securing $5 billion (and who knows how much more would be needed?) to extend the border wall <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/05/us/border-wall.html">an additional 1,000 miles</a> along the U.S.-Mexico border from San Diego to Brownsville. [1] In order to get his way Trump and his GOP enablers in Congress have shut down a portion of the government. Affected are 380,000 federal workers across the country who are furloughed and not being paid, and another 420,000 federal workers who are directed to work without receiving any paycheck until the shut-down ends. This includes correctional officers, customs and border patrol officers, and transportation security officers. In addition, science researchers and many tens of thousands of other federal contractors are not getting paid, and their payments may be at risk (i.e. they won't get paid when the shut-down ends). </div>
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Senator <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/01/03/lindsey-graham-trump-shutdown-fight/2470780002/">Lindsay Graham</a> has warned that if Trump doesn't win this game of chicken, it could mean the end of his presidency. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, seems to agree and he has vowed not to bring any legislation up for a vote unless it has Trump's blessing. In other words, McConnell has vowed not to bring a house bill that would fund the salaries of TSA employees and CBP employees to a vote in the Senate without Trump's approval, and Trump has said he won't approve unless the Democrats authorize funding for his wall. This morning, Jim Geraghty speculated at <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/democrats-may-crack-under-the-pressure-to-build-the-wall/">National Review</a> that Democrats may crack under the pressure. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who appears to me to be calling the shots, seems to agree with Lindsay Graham and McConnell, but seems to think she's got a winning hand. Frankly, it's hard to imagine how she does not. She can say "No" to border wall funding, and she knows the Senate will have to act on the House bills to re-open government sooner, rather than later. How long does McConnell think he can keep border agents and TSA agents working without receiving a paycheck? </div>
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<b>There is no Crisis at the Border</b></div>
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Pelosi and the Democrats have good reason not to give in to this blackmail--even without Lindsay Graham's encouragement. </div>
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Human migration is timeless. We've been doing it since we left Africa in numbers 50,000 years ago. At the same time, Hadrian's Wall and the Great Wall of China notwithstanding, people like to stay put. Absent some compelling reason, populations remain relatively unaffected by migration. The main drivers of migration are economic needs, droughts, wars, and political unrest. Whether borders are open or closed, that is not the determining factor. <br />
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California has open borders with the 49 other states in the Union and with the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. No matter how poor the conditions in Puerto Rico and the Rust Belt states, these open borders do not result in a flood of immigrants. During the decade from <a href="https://lao.ca.gov/laoecontax/article/detail/265">2007 to 2016</a>, for example, California experienced total migration (in and out) of 1.2 million per year. [2] The net change in population from migration is just 100,000 (or 0.2%) annually. Not much. And if we compare California's unencumbered open-border migration numbers with the migration numbers across the closed, non-open and militarized national borders of the United States, the numbers are about the same: in 2016, net immigration to the U.S. from all sources was ~<a href="http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/">900,000 </a> [3] ( or .27% of the population). In other words, open borders or closed, the rate of migration is about the same. </div>
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Undocumented immigration across the southern border fluctuates with the economy and the desperation of people living in dysfunctional Latin American states. Immigration reached a peak when the economy was booming in the first half decade of the 21st century, and it dropped off markedly following the greater recession, starting in 2008. </div>
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According to <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/03/what-we-know-about-illegal-immigration-from-mexico/">Pew</a>, as of 2016 there were 5.4 million undocumented immigrants from Mexico living in the United States. The number has declined by more than a million since 2007. Significantly more than 80 percent of undocumented workers from Mexico have been living and working in the United States for more than 10 years. Id. These immigrants are tightly integrated in our communities. They commit <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/19/two-charts-demolish-the-notion-that-immigrants-here-illegally-commit-more-crime/?utm_term=.6c8d0573e1e4">far fewer crimes</a> than the native born population. Contrary to the assertion of Trump and his enablers, there is no known, relevant, domestic terror attack from someone crossing the southern border illegally. </div>
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Which is to say, there is no "emergency" on the southern border. See, e.g., this <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44319094">BBC News </a>report. </div>
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<b>How Many Actually Cross the Southern Border Illegally?</b></div>
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There are no good numbers on how many successfully manage to cross the southern border illegally. In 2015, the Customs and Border Patrol claimed an <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-trump-mexico-wall/how-many-people-currently-cross/">85% apprehension rate.</a> Based on 397,000 apprehensions in fiscal 2018, that would indicate fewer than 60,000 managed to illegally cross the southern border in 2018 (~164/day along our 2000 mile border with Mexico). According to Bloomberg, the Institute of Defense Analysis estimated that 200,000 made it across in 2015 (or 548/day). Whether it is 60,000 or 200,000 undocumented immigrants, these are people intent on coming here to work hard and earn a living. They do not present a national emergency. And the numbers are small compared to people overstaying their visas--estimated to be <a href="https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/illegal-immigration-statistics/">607,000</a> for fiscal year 2017. </div>
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<b>Democrats Should Stay the Course</b></div>
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As James Hohmann pointed out in the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2019/01/10/daily-202-wall-fight-underscores-trump-s-weaknesses/5c36c6361b326b66fc5a1bfc/?utm_term=.9a4f2f32b993">Washington Post</a> this morning, Trump ran on building a wall (to be paid by Mexico) and he lost the popular vote. He ran on the wall in the mid-term election, and Republicans got trounced. They lost 40 seats in the House. Democrats won the House by 10 million votes, the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/06/politics/latest-house-vote-blue-wave/index.html">largest margin of victory ever.</a> Democrats received <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/08/democrats-republicans-senate-majority-minority-rule">12 million more votes</a> for Senate than Republicans. [They lost a net results of two seats because they were defending more seats, and there is the structural issue that California's population of 40 million gets two senators, and Wyoming's population of 600,000 also gets two senators] Lindsay Graham may be correct: Trump may be about to hit a wall. And the Mueller report has not even been released yet. </div>
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Nancy Pelosi is licking her chops.<br />
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Follow me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/rolandnikles">@RolandNikles</a></div>
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[1] The border is just short of 2,000 miles from San Diego, California to Brownsville, Texas, and some type of barrier already exists along about a third of this distance, especially in the West. </div>
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[2] For the decade 2007-2016 5 million people moved to California from other states, and 6 million left California for other states. </div>
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[2] Total immigration was <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states">1.49 million.</a> This includes foreign-born individuals (ages 1 and older) who resided abroad one year prior to the survey, including naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents, and others who might have lived in the United States for some time prior to 2016; as well as temporary nonimmigrants and unauthorized immigrants.</div>
Roland Nikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901484182608550735noreply@blogger.com0