If you think that Mexico is sending drug dealers and rapists, but also think that Mexicans are taking Americans’ jobs: what exactly is it that you do for a living?
And by the way, the majority of asylum seekers are not Mexicans: they are from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras – countries where our CIA encouraged dictatorships. No one is coming from Costa Rica, the one real democracy in Central America and a nation that has no military.
Jared Kushner sat next to Nikki Haley on the floor of the United Nations, with him talking and her listening. His father is a convicted felon who served time in prison, and he is under investigation. Do you think that if a UN ambassador appointed by Hillary Clinton allowed someone like that to advise her, we all would have heard about it?
And the United States withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council! Protecting human rights is why we created the UN after World II! Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, Marshall, and all the great heroes of that fight against fascism must be turning in their graves.
Colorado has a vote-by-mail primary system in which registered voters who are not affiliated with a party get both the Democratic and Republican ballots, and they can choose which one (but only one) to return. In last week’s election, many more voted for Democrats than for Republicans. This is unusual for primaries anywhere and particularly so in this generally red state. Given the Tea Party takeover of the Republican Party, it bodes well for both Democrats and democracy.
And in another red state, the Oklahoma Education Association reported that nearly four dozen educators either won their primaries or moved to a run-off. Teachers there could give lessons on how to organize!
Cabin in the Sky
No, I’m not on the payroll of Turner Classic Movies, but I do want to advocate again for that television channel. Free, with no commercials except for themselves, what’s not to like? Moreover, regular viewing gives you a painless education in film history. Moving pictures entered into American culture during the Roaring Twenties, and TCM apparently doesn’t consider much beyond the 1970s to be classic, so we have 50 years of mostly American scenes that provide a deeper view of our past. Even a history hound like me finds something new and worthy of reflection in almost every movie that Hubby and I watch. We make much use of the pause button to discuss the issues and settings.
I thought I knew American literature pretty well, including African American literature, but I have to admit that I had never heard of Cabin in the Sky. The 1943 black-and-white musical was based on a 1940 Broadway play. World War II happened in between, and perhaps that is why the movie never got the attention it deserved. With a completely African American cast, it was truly cutting edge – probably too much so for many people of both races. Whites were unlikely to go to any movie without characters who looked like them, and some African Americans thought that it portrayed a low-life culture and was too akin to a minstrel show.
We stumbled onto it on TCM because of the unique voice of Eddie Anderson. You know him as Rochester, the butler we preferred to the boss on the Jack Benny Show. He plays the protagonist, “Little Joe,” opposite famed jazz singer Ethel Waters; Lena Horne is a sexy temptress; and Tampa native Butterfly McQueen of Gone with the Wind fame also has a role. The show’s best-known song is “Taking a Chance on Love,” but although I’ve known that song all of my life, I’d never heard of the musical that originated it. Nor did I know of Lena Horne’s role as Georgia Brown, although the song “Sweet Georgia Brown” has been famous since its 1925 composition, when Ethel Waters recorded it. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington also contribute to the movie. How could I not know this?
The plot is very much a morality play, as Little Joe is a gambler and philanderer who lives off of the meager earnings of a washerwoman, Petunia; she loves him and repeatedly loses him to the temptations offered by a visible Lucifer. But while the storyline may be predictable, the dancing is anything but trite: George Balanchine, a Russian immigrant who was beginning his path to fame as a great choreographer, did the Broadway production. Other Russians also were involved, and rehearsals were said to have been turbulent with conflict between the imperial ballet culture and that of the African American cast. Ethel frequently smoothed the waters.
But here’s my main point: the story and libretto was written by someone named Lynn Root, who is merely mentioned in online discussions of the movie. Wikipedia and other articles have cross-references to any number of obscure actors, producers, songwriters, etc. – but none for the person who provided the Big Idea. After a good deal of hacking around, I found that “Lynn” was a man born in 1905 in an unspecified Minnesota town who died in 1997 in LA. Appreciably further down, I found “Lynn and Helen Root,” which repeated information about him, but said little about her. It was ever thus. Petunia would understand.
Global Warming in My Backyard
Come August, Hubby and I will have lived on the same piece of property for 46 years. I’ve always been a flower gardener, even when we were in frigid Massachusetts, and with that naturally comes a habit of climate observation. The unambiguous science aside, it is clear to me that Something is Going On.
Except for one brief and disastrous frost, this last winter was so warm that plants needing a dormant period did not go dormant and thus did not bloom. On a May trip north, we saw big beautiful hydrangeas, but mine still are only a foot tall and show no signs of flowering. Ditto with daylilies, which should have bloomed in April but instead are just taking up space.
Fruit trees are especially confused. Our lychee bloomed back in spring as it should have, and then dropped its budding fruit for reasons unknown. Now, in July, it is putting out new leaves and renewing my hope for a second chance. The mango lost almost all of its leaves in the freeze and also is slowly renewing itself, but there’s no sign of fruit yet. Ditto with the guava and bananas.
Most citrus also bloomed inadequately and then dropped what little fruit was growing. I’m not alone, as newspapers report that this year’s citrus crop is the smallest since World War II. Meanwhile, Governor Rick Scott forbids the state’s scientists from using terms such as “climate change,” and spineless Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam says nothing.
Two Educators Who Will Be Missed
You doubtless read about the recent deaths of Sylvia Carley and Yvonne McKitrick, but I want to add a few words. I met Sylvia back in the 1970s when relatively few African Americans were in higher ed, and she was just beginning her career as an HCC administrator. A mutual friend who was an HCC professor wanted me to tutor some of her students, and I had to go to Sylvia for the paperwork on this. Our friendship resumed in the 1990s, when I was a trustee for the long troubled college. With her ever-present smile and constant courtesy, Sylvia was one of the few administrators who kept her reputation intact during that turbulent time. She was the very definition of Kipling’s line: “If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you…”
I didn’t know Yvonne as well, although we were political allies for better education. More important, I quoted her in Real Women of Tampa and Hillsborough County, and I’d like to renew that here. In the chapter on World War II, I said: “Yvonne McKitrick, who would be a popular school board member at the end of the century, was then living a completely different life. She was in Italy with her mother, while her father worked as a dishwasher in New Jersey. ‘I remember when I went to school in Italy,’ she said much later, ‘I had to wear a Fascist uniform because only Fascists could go to school. I remember the Fascist signs everywhere and having to raise my hand to Mussolini.’ Foreseeing the war, her father hurried to bring his family to the United States. Her name was Tomei then, and she went to school speaking only Italian.” Remember that, please, when you think about asylum seekers.
Back in the Day…
Historian Gary Mormino continues to send me odd bits and pieces by old-fashioned postal mail, which I truly appreciate. So here’s this from the Tampa Morning Tribune of Wednesday, April 30, 1958:
“Florida U. Coeds Win Right to Bermuda Shorts
“The Women’s Student’s Association announced today that beginning May 15 university coeds can wear Bermuda shorts… Individual faculty members may bar them from their classrooms, however… The new regulations…place the girls on equal footing with the Bermuda-clad male students, who are not under restrictive clothing limitations.
“The new regulations continue to prohibit the wearing of Jamaica shorts or short shorts…and rules out knit or elastic sports clothes… Bermuda shorts cannot be worn with high heels and dressy blouses, T-shirts or jerseys. Other taboo items for general campus wear are slim jims, pedal pushers, and slacks… The regulations describe…plunging necklines as ‘poor taste.’ The wearing of sports clothes in downtown Gainesville is also considered poor taste.
“First offenders under the new ordinance will be confined to the dormitory Saturday nights. Second offenders must stay in both Friday and Saturday nights. Third offenders will be tried at the discretion of the hall councils.”
doris@dweatherford.com
Doris Weatherford writes a weekly column for La Gaceta, the nation's only trilingual newspaper. With pages in Spanish, Italian, and English, it has been published in Tampa since 1922.
And by the way, the majority of asylum seekers are not Mexicans: they are from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras – countries where our CIA encouraged dictatorships. No one is coming from Costa Rica, the one real democracy in Central America and a nation that has no military.
Jared Kushner sat next to Nikki Haley on the floor of the United Nations, with him talking and her listening. His father is a convicted felon who served time in prison, and he is under investigation. Do you think that if a UN ambassador appointed by Hillary Clinton allowed someone like that to advise her, we all would have heard about it?
And the United States withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council! Protecting human rights is why we created the UN after World II! Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, Marshall, and all the great heroes of that fight against fascism must be turning in their graves.
Colorado has a vote-by-mail primary system in which registered voters who are not affiliated with a party get both the Democratic and Republican ballots, and they can choose which one (but only one) to return. In last week’s election, many more voted for Democrats than for Republicans. This is unusual for primaries anywhere and particularly so in this generally red state. Given the Tea Party takeover of the Republican Party, it bodes well for both Democrats and democracy.
And in another red state, the Oklahoma Education Association reported that nearly four dozen educators either won their primaries or moved to a run-off. Teachers there could give lessons on how to organize!
Cabin in the Sky
No, I’m not on the payroll of Turner Classic Movies, but I do want to advocate again for that television channel. Free, with no commercials except for themselves, what’s not to like? Moreover, regular viewing gives you a painless education in film history. Moving pictures entered into American culture during the Roaring Twenties, and TCM apparently doesn’t consider much beyond the 1970s to be classic, so we have 50 years of mostly American scenes that provide a deeper view of our past. Even a history hound like me finds something new and worthy of reflection in almost every movie that Hubby and I watch. We make much use of the pause button to discuss the issues and settings.
I thought I knew American literature pretty well, including African American literature, but I have to admit that I had never heard of Cabin in the Sky. The 1943 black-and-white musical was based on a 1940 Broadway play. World War II happened in between, and perhaps that is why the movie never got the attention it deserved. With a completely African American cast, it was truly cutting edge – probably too much so for many people of both races. Whites were unlikely to go to any movie without characters who looked like them, and some African Americans thought that it portrayed a low-life culture and was too akin to a minstrel show.
We stumbled onto it on TCM because of the unique voice of Eddie Anderson. You know him as Rochester, the butler we preferred to the boss on the Jack Benny Show. He plays the protagonist, “Little Joe,” opposite famed jazz singer Ethel Waters; Lena Horne is a sexy temptress; and Tampa native Butterfly McQueen of Gone with the Wind fame also has a role. The show’s best-known song is “Taking a Chance on Love,” but although I’ve known that song all of my life, I’d never heard of the musical that originated it. Nor did I know of Lena Horne’s role as Georgia Brown, although the song “Sweet Georgia Brown” has been famous since its 1925 composition, when Ethel Waters recorded it. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington also contribute to the movie. How could I not know this?
The plot is very much a morality play, as Little Joe is a gambler and philanderer who lives off of the meager earnings of a washerwoman, Petunia; she loves him and repeatedly loses him to the temptations offered by a visible Lucifer. But while the storyline may be predictable, the dancing is anything but trite: George Balanchine, a Russian immigrant who was beginning his path to fame as a great choreographer, did the Broadway production. Other Russians also were involved, and rehearsals were said to have been turbulent with conflict between the imperial ballet culture and that of the African American cast. Ethel frequently smoothed the waters.
But here’s my main point: the story and libretto was written by someone named Lynn Root, who is merely mentioned in online discussions of the movie. Wikipedia and other articles have cross-references to any number of obscure actors, producers, songwriters, etc. – but none for the person who provided the Big Idea. After a good deal of hacking around, I found that “Lynn” was a man born in 1905 in an unspecified Minnesota town who died in 1997 in LA. Appreciably further down, I found “Lynn and Helen Root,” which repeated information about him, but said little about her. It was ever thus. Petunia would understand.
Global Warming in My Backyard
Come August, Hubby and I will have lived on the same piece of property for 46 years. I’ve always been a flower gardener, even when we were in frigid Massachusetts, and with that naturally comes a habit of climate observation. The unambiguous science aside, it is clear to me that Something is Going On.
Except for one brief and disastrous frost, this last winter was so warm that plants needing a dormant period did not go dormant and thus did not bloom. On a May trip north, we saw big beautiful hydrangeas, but mine still are only a foot tall and show no signs of flowering. Ditto with daylilies, which should have bloomed in April but instead are just taking up space.
Fruit trees are especially confused. Our lychee bloomed back in spring as it should have, and then dropped its budding fruit for reasons unknown. Now, in July, it is putting out new leaves and renewing my hope for a second chance. The mango lost almost all of its leaves in the freeze and also is slowly renewing itself, but there’s no sign of fruit yet. Ditto with the guava and bananas.
Most citrus also bloomed inadequately and then dropped what little fruit was growing. I’m not alone, as newspapers report that this year’s citrus crop is the smallest since World War II. Meanwhile, Governor Rick Scott forbids the state’s scientists from using terms such as “climate change,” and spineless Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam says nothing.
Two Educators Who Will Be Missed
You doubtless read about the recent deaths of Sylvia Carley and Yvonne McKitrick, but I want to add a few words. I met Sylvia back in the 1970s when relatively few African Americans were in higher ed, and she was just beginning her career as an HCC administrator. A mutual friend who was an HCC professor wanted me to tutor some of her students, and I had to go to Sylvia for the paperwork on this. Our friendship resumed in the 1990s, when I was a trustee for the long troubled college. With her ever-present smile and constant courtesy, Sylvia was one of the few administrators who kept her reputation intact during that turbulent time. She was the very definition of Kipling’s line: “If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you…”
I didn’t know Yvonne as well, although we were political allies for better education. More important, I quoted her in Real Women of Tampa and Hillsborough County, and I’d like to renew that here. In the chapter on World War II, I said: “Yvonne McKitrick, who would be a popular school board member at the end of the century, was then living a completely different life. She was in Italy with her mother, while her father worked as a dishwasher in New Jersey. ‘I remember when I went to school in Italy,’ she said much later, ‘I had to wear a Fascist uniform because only Fascists could go to school. I remember the Fascist signs everywhere and having to raise my hand to Mussolini.’ Foreseeing the war, her father hurried to bring his family to the United States. Her name was Tomei then, and she went to school speaking only Italian.” Remember that, please, when you think about asylum seekers.
Back in the Day…
Historian Gary Mormino continues to send me odd bits and pieces by old-fashioned postal mail, which I truly appreciate. So here’s this from the Tampa Morning Tribune of Wednesday, April 30, 1958:
“Florida U. Coeds Win Right to Bermuda Shorts
“The Women’s Student’s Association announced today that beginning May 15 university coeds can wear Bermuda shorts… Individual faculty members may bar them from their classrooms, however… The new regulations…place the girls on equal footing with the Bermuda-clad male students, who are not under restrictive clothing limitations.
“The new regulations continue to prohibit the wearing of Jamaica shorts or short shorts…and rules out knit or elastic sports clothes… Bermuda shorts cannot be worn with high heels and dressy blouses, T-shirts or jerseys. Other taboo items for general campus wear are slim jims, pedal pushers, and slacks… The regulations describe…plunging necklines as ‘poor taste.’ The wearing of sports clothes in downtown Gainesville is also considered poor taste.
“First offenders under the new ordinance will be confined to the dormitory Saturday nights. Second offenders must stay in both Friday and Saturday nights. Third offenders will be tried at the discretion of the hall councils.”
doris@dweatherford.com
Doris Weatherford writes a weekly column for La Gaceta, the nation's only trilingual newspaper. With pages in Spanish, Italian, and English, it has been published in Tampa since 1922.