This is a terrible incident in France.

It is illustrative of what happens when there is intolerance of different points of view.  Extremist dogmatism infects religious and political institutions. It is not limited to France. It is happening all over the world.

America is no exception. In this country intolerance is directed most often in the form of  racism and attacks on people of color.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 10.16.2020

A suspect has been shot dead after a knife attack on the outskirts of Paris. The victim was a teacher who had reportedly recently shown caricatures of Muhammad in class.

French police shot a man dead on Friday after he allegedly decapitated a teacher near Paris.

The suspect allegedly beheaded a man at about 5 p.m. in Conflans Sainte-Honorine, northwest of Paris.

Officers were called to the area after reports of a suspicious man loitering near the victim’s school. They found the dead victim and saw the alleged perpetrator nearby. He was then shot dead after allegedly threatening officers.

Four people, including a minor, have been detained over the incident, according to judicial sources cited by Agence France-Presse.

French President Emmanuel Macron described the incident as an “Islamist terror attack” and urged the nation to unite.

He said the victim was murdered because he was a teacher and taught freedom of expression.

“The whole country stands behind its teachers. Terrorists will not divide France, obscurantism will not win,” Macron said after visiting the scene.

Police earlier told reporters that the victim was a middle school teacher who had recently held a class on freedom of speech in which he showed caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

Police officials told the Associated Press that the victim had received threats after opening a discussion “for a debate” about the caricatures about 10 days ago. An official told the news agency that the parent of a student had filed a complaint against the teacher.

French anti-terror prosecutors said they were treating the incident as “a murder linked to a terrorist organization” and related to a “criminal association with terrorists.”

https://www.dw.com/en/france-teacher-decapitated-in-gruesome-islamist-terror-attack-near-paris/a-55304870

 

Ben Sasse is a super conversative Republican Senator from Nebraska. He must feel that Trump is going down and has decided to jettison the sinking Ship of State.

Tonight on MSNBC in a sitdown with Trump the moderator got right to the point. After pushing Trump on his retweet of a QAnon-linked conspiracy theory, Savannah Guthrie (pictured above) of MSNBC told Trump, “I don’t get that. You’re the president. You’re not like someone’s crazy uncle who can just retweet whatever.”

Four years later the power structure in America finally realizes what a bloviating phony is Trump.

Escerpted from the Washington Post 10.15.2020

 

 

 

It may not be news in the United States.

But, everywhere else the fact soccer mega star Cristiano Ronaldo has tested positive for Covid-19 is a BIG DEAL.

Deutsche Welle 10.13.2020

The Portuguese forward will miss his country’s international clash with Sweden on Wednesday, as well as Juventus’ upcoming Serie A and Champions League football fixtures.

Soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo has tested positive for the coronavirus, the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) said in a statement on Tuesday.

As a result, the 35-year-old will miss his country’s UEFA Nations League match against Sweden on Wednesday, the federation said on its official website.

The former Real Madrid and Manchester United forward is “well, has no symptoms and is in isolation,” the FPF added.

Ronaldo played in the 0-0 draw against France in the Nations League on Sunday, prior to testing positive for COVID-19.

The FPF said Ronaldo’s result prompted another round of tests for the rest of the Portuguese national squad, who all subsequently tested negative.

Due to usual quarantine practices, the positive test will almost certainly rule Ronaldo out of Juventus’ upcoming Serie A clash away at Crotone, as well as next week’s opening Champions League fixture against Dynamo Kiev in the Ukrainian capital.

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-soccer-star-cristiano-ronaldo-tests-positive/a-55257319

So many baseball greats have passed away in the past couple of weeks.

Bob Gibson the Hall of Fame Pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals

Whitey Ford the Hall of Fame Pitcher for the New York Yankees

And today Joe Morgan. He was born in Texas, spent much of his career in Cincinnati but ended up playing for both the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A’s.

Joe’s most famous moment with the Giants occurred when he hit a home run on the final day of the 1982 season and knocked the hated Los Angeles Dodgers out of playoff contention.

A link to the 1982 moment follows.

Rest in Peace Joe.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 10.12.2020

Though Joe Morgan’s time with the San Francisco Giants was relatively short, he is responsible for one of the most memorable moments in the team’s West Coast history. In the final game of the 1982 regular season — one day after the Dodgers had eliminated the upstart Giants from playoff contention — Morgan’s three-run homer in the seventh put the Giants ahead to stay and knocked the Dodgers out of the postseason.

Joe Morgan, who rose from the baseball-rich playgrounds of Oakland to the Hall of Fame, died Sunday night at his home in Danville at the age of 77. The cause of death was non-specified polyneuropathy.

Morgan had dealt with a number of health issues in recent years.

Joe Morgan and daughter Ashley after Gymnasium competition at Stanford – 2010

The two-time National League MVP, a second baseman and key cog in Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine of the 1970s, got his start playing at Brookfield Elementary in Oakland, ultimately taking his place at Cooperstown in 1990 with a first-ballot election.

Morgan became an active member, backing election reforms to allow inductees more involvement in the election process and also advocating for a steroid-free Hall.

Morgan’s 22-year big-league career ended with the A’s in 1984 and included a brief but memorable stint with the Giants. On the final day of the 1982 season, his second and last with the Giants, he hit a three-run homer off Terry Forster at Candlestick Park to beat the Dodgers and cost them the NL West title.

After retirement, Morgan launched a decades-long broadcasting career, with one season in Cincinnati. The Giants then hired him for what became an eight-year run doing play-by-play and analysis on TV.

“He had a seemingly endless supply of energy, of life, like a force of nature,” said Jon Miller, Morgan’s partner for 21 seasons on ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball.”

“I’m sort of in a state of disbelief right now.”

Retired Giants manager Bruce Bochy called the news of Morgan’s death “horrible.” Bochy was a Reds fan growing up because that was his father’s team and said he idolized players like Morgan and Johnny Bench.

In 1980, Bochy and Morgan were teammates on the division-winning Astros team that fell to the Phillies in the NLCS.

“He took me under his wing and really told me not just great stories about Cincinnati, but he taught me the game of baseball,” Bochy said. “What a great man. He was involved in so many charities and things. I felt lucky and honored to spend some time with him.”

Morgan, who was born in Bonham, Texas, on Sept. 19, 1943, got his first glove when he was 4 months old, courtesy of his father, Leonard, who had played semi-pro ball. Leonard Morgan moved the family to Oakland when Joe was 8, and he was a baseball standout as a youth, a three-time Babe Ruth League All-Star.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/article/Hall-of-Famer-Joe-Morgan-one-of-Oakland-s-15639236.php#photo-20098719

This is the Wall Street Journal reporting.  Things are not looking good for Trump 23 days before Election Day November 3.

Wall Street Journal 10.11.2020

Have no worries about scandals in the news after Trump is tossed from office. They will just be of a different variety.

The media will be hard at work as the Ghislaine Maxwell trial draws closer in July 2021.  She, Ghislaine, was what many call the power behind Jeffrey Epstein.

People thought that when Epstein died under mysterious circumstances in the New York Correctional Facility last year the scandal would die down.  No way.

The arrest and charging of Ghislaine Maxwell earlier this year insured that the horrific story of Jeffrey Epstein will continue to lurch onward.

To have a more detailed look at this story watch the Netflix documentary Filthy Rich.

Vanity Fair 10.10.2020

While being held without bail at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, Ghislaine Maxwell has been preparing for her trial, currently scheduled for July 2021.

The socialite, who has denied all charges in relation to the case, including trafficking girls to the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, has now enlisted a new lawyer, as Insider reported on Wednesday. Maxwell’s hiring of Bobbi Sternheim quickly drew attention for the attorney’s previous clients, most notably the Osama bin Laden aide Khalid al-Fawwaz, who was convicted in 2015 in connection to two 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people. Sternheim’s firm, Fasulo, Braverman & Di Maggio, didn’t immediately return Vanity Fair’s request for comment.

Alan Dershowitz and his client Jeffrey Epstein

The news came just before federal prosecutors in Maxwell’s case asked a judge to let them delay disclosing the evidence they’ve obtained, including “school photographs” of alleged Epstein victims, as NBC News reported. The outlet pointed out that the court filings demonstrate that the Epstein trafficking investigation is still underway and that prosecutors think providing Maxwell’s lawyers with the evidence could undermine the effort. The prosecutors said that the documents in question contain identifying information for victims who aren’t expected to testify and that they would “tend to reveal to [Maxwell] the scope of and evidence gathered” in the investigation, “the details of which are not currently public.”

Trump, Melania, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell

Outside court proceedings, new allegations of Maxwell’s abuse and grooming have continued to emerge. Last week Molly Skye Brown told The Sun that Maxwell tried to groom her for sexual abuse when she was a 14-year-old in Palm Beach in 1992. (One of Maxwell’s lawyers, Mark Cohen, didn’t return V.F.’s request for comment at the time.) A woman who asked the tabloid to refer to her as Samantha said in a new story published on Sunday that Maxwell sexually assaulted her and that the socialite is “the real monster” in the Epstein ring.

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/10/ghislaine-maxwell-new-legal-hurdles

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, is the racist clown Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This ignoramous will preside over the Supreme Court hearing for Amy “Handmaid” Coney Barrett

Graham vows to push through the nomination of this, make no mistake, extreme right wing nominee.

No wonder America is coming apart at the seams.

Fasciscts, racists and ignorant clowns are running the asylum.

Excerpted from The Guardian 10.10.2020

In a televised campaign event US senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said African Americans and immigrants can “go anywhere” in his home state but they “ just need to be conservative”.

South Carolina was a Confederate state during the civil war, and later institutionalized racism during the Jim Crow era, enforcing the second-class status of African Americans.

Graham made the comment in a televised “conversation” with his political rival, former South Carolina Democratic party chair Jaime Harrison, the first African American to serve in the role.

“Do I believe our cops are systemically racist? No. Do I believe South Carolina is a racist state? No. Let me tell you why. To young people out there, young people of color, young immigrants, this is a great state, but one thing I can say without any doubt, you can be an African American and go to the Senate but you just have to share our values.”

He went on to say: “If you’re a young, African American or an immigrant, you can go anywhere in this state, you just need to be conservative, not liberal”.

The comment was in response to a question about civil unrest, and as America reckons with its long history of racism and ongoing police brutality, including the national revulsion following the killing of Black man George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/10/lindsey-graham-black-people-immigrants-south-carolina

Louise Glück was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Today I received the latest copy of the The New York Review of Books. This poem, obviously published prior to announcement of the award, is in the current edition.

 In 2020, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.”

To ad some musical accompaniment is a link to the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song 4 + 20 from their 1970 album Déjà Vu. There is definitely a symbiosis between the poetry and the song.

New York Review of Books – 10.22.2020 Issue

Louise Glück

Tired of rural life, the king and queen

return to the city,
all the little princesses
rattling in the back of the car
singing the song of being:
I am, you are, he, she, it is—
But there will be
no conjugation in the car, oh no.
Who can speak of the future? Nobody knows anything about the future,
even the planets do not know.
But the princesses will have to live in it.
What a sad day the day has become.
Outside the car, the cows and pastures are drifting away;
they look calm, but calm is not the truth.
Despair is the truth. This is what
mother and father know. All hope is lost.
We must return to where it was lost
if we want to find it again.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/10/22/childrens-story/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Gl%C3%BCck

 

In a time of non stop turmoil it is worthwhile to realize there is more to this world than the Audience of One. One day it will pass and we can engage in more peaceful pursuits.

Vanity Fair – Britt Hennemuth 10.8.2020

I’ve loved movies from day one,” says Gregory Crewdson during a phone call from his studio. “I loved movies probably more than any other art form, honestly.”

The Brooklyn-born photographer, who left New York 10 years ago for a new home in a converted church and neighboring studio in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, spent his childhood weekends visiting the Berkshires. “My family was very close friends with Pauline Kael and her daughter. At a very young age, she influenced me to understand the power of movies.” The power of Kael’s pen secured late-night private screenings at local theaters for Kael and her acolytes. “I still remember seeing [David] Lynch’s Wild at Heart and Blue Velvet.”

Since graduating from Yale Art School, Crewdson has made arresting images that suggest stories already in progress. “Even from early on, even from my first photographs, I was interested in bringing a narrative into the still image,” he says. “Then, it just grew from there. I consider myself a storyteller.”

Crewdson’s latest exhibit, “An Eclipse of Moths,” is presently running at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills until November 21. (Because of the pandemic, the gallery has made his new exhibit available virtually.) The artist is a favorite among some of Hollywood’s more esteemed collectors, including Cate Blanchett.

The empty streets and tired civilians in the photographer’s work bear an eerie similarity to America during the pandemic. However, the series was made in 2018. “I could never have predicted that the pictures would take on this meaning. I was very aware of, while I was making them, of certain themes of brokenness, dislocation, and alienation. All the pictures are these vast landscape images with lone figures wandering through them. All my pictures, in one way or another, have a theme of alienation.”

In creating each of his images, Crewdson writes what amounts to a screenplay with his partner, Juliane Hiam. Each piece is meticulously planned with a team of production designer–like assistants, achieving a cinematic patina that can evoke the nostalgic inner monologues of Edward Hopper’s paintings, all while challenging American audiences to reflect upon our nation’s thorniest issues. “I have been working in the same general areas for many, many years now,” says Crewdson, as we virtually scroll through his images together. “The locations are really meant to be everywhere but nowhere, a coming together between the truth and fiction.”

 

In this particular series, each portrait was created in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a suburban landscape on the outskirts of a run-down industrial city. “It’s about 45 minutes from my home,” says Crewdson. “Melville wrote Moby-Dick in Pittsfield, actually. Edith Wharton and [Nathaniel] Hawthorne lived in the area. That’s not directly important to the work, but I like building on certain traditions.” Crewdson admits he is inspired by the work of Norman Rockwell, an artist who worked in a neighboring town. “I almost see myself as connected to him, but it’s the opposite, you know? Where he would create a utopian world, mine is a darker, more alienated view of the same landscape.”

We stop on one image in particular, The Cobra. It depicts a carnival ride of the same name, which is run-down and tired in an abandoned field full of shipping containers and junk. A woman stands on The Cobra itself, almost suggestively, eying a younger man, who’s standing shyly in the doorframe of a container. “She’s performing for him. The Cobra. Then, there’s certain things that you couldn’t even imagine or plan.” He directs my eye to graffiti next to the boy. “The 69 was already written on the door. That’s all the things of reality coming together, you know?”

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/10/cate-blanchett-talks-with-photographer-gregory-crewdson

 

With each passing day Trump’s Audience of One final act is taking America on a trip to the Off World Colonies ...

Ridley Scott said so much with his 1982 film Blade Runner which takes place in 2019. He was predicting the future.