Editor’s Note: I originally posted this on Aug. 28, 2017, the 54th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech.
“And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.”
2021 was a rough year, given a pandemic that kept many of us at home for much of the year. There were also public conflicts over people refusing masks and vaccinations. In my home, we wondered:
Could we go out to eat?
Could I teach classes in person?
How could we keep the vulnerable around us safe?
Could we still go to the movies?
For my family, 2021 really started in December of 2020. Many of you may know that my wonderful mum-in-law lived with Dear Wife and me for the last 22 years. MIL’s taste in movies for much of that time matched mine much more closely than my wife’s does, and so until hear health deteriorated several years ago, MIL was my frequent movie-theater-going companion.
I say that 2021 started in December of 2020 because that was when MIL started her final decline with multiple ambulance rides to the ER that would end with her moving into nursing care in April and dying in July.
This is where we watched most of the 236 movies we viewed between the beginning of December 2020 and Dec. 31, 2021
Because we had an invalid at home, and because I’m vulnerable as a diabetic, most our time for the pandemic years has been either at the office or at home. So in December of 2020, when it became clear we were not going to returning to normal life anything soon, we purchased a big honking 55-inch 4K TV and settled in for a year of watching movies at home. By Dec. 31, 2021, we had watched 236 movies either together or separately.
Some of these movies were repeat viewings (I watched Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical In The Heights four times last summer. It was my favorite movie of the year.), a few of them were watched in movie theaters (mostly our wonderful community The World Theatre), but most were older movies we watched at home (close to half of the movies we watched were on the classic movie cable-channel/streaming service Turner Classic Movies).
I’m a big fan of the little Field Notes notebooks, and so I decided to start keeping a record of every movie we watched last year. Over the next several weeks, I plan to talk about all these films and how this year of movie-watching transformed our lives in so many ways.
Our movies for December 2020 started out with a couple of old favorites of my mum-in-law:
1982 – Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun,directed by Guy Hamilton and starring Peter Ustinov as detective Hercule Poirot, along with Maggie Smith and Diana Rigg. We are all Christie fans in the house, but DW and MIL much prefer David Suchet’s version from the BBC to that of Ustinov. (Watched by MIL and DW.)
1973 – The Sting, directed by George Roy Hill and starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Robert Shaw. This was quite possibly MIL’s favorite film starring her favorite actor – Paul Newman. She would watch anything with Newman in it, but this timeless caper film with the Scott Joplin ragtime piano soundtrack was her go-to movie when nothing else would make her happy. As you will see, we watched a number of other Newman films during the year, almost always at the behest of MIL. (Watched by DW and MIL.)Little known fact: Bob Seeger wrote his piano ballad “We’ve Got Tonight” right after watching The Sting.He saw a scene in the film where Redford puts the moves on a waitress, who says, “I don’t even know you.” Redford replies: “You know me. I’m the same as you. It’s two in the morning and I don’t know nobody.”
“That just hit me real hard,” Seger told during his 1994 interview with the Detroit Free Press. “The next day I wrote ‘We’ve Got Tonight,’ this song about two people who say ‘I’m tired. It’s late at night. I know you don’t really dig me, and I don’t really dig you, but this is all we’ve got, so let’s do it.’ The sexual revolution was still going strong then.”
Up next: A pair of 1980s movies and modern Christmas film
One year ago today an angry mob assaulted the United Staters Capitol Building in an attempt to stop the counting of electoral votes and overturn the results of a free an fair presidential election. Here are links to a series of posts I wrote at the time.
Taking a look at how a variety of news media responded to these events.
I survived a murderous newsroom shooting in 2018, losing five of my Capital Gazette family. their families destroyed. My head was nearly shot off, multiple slugs missing by a fraction of an inch. This stuff makes me sick. We're your neighbors, family and friends doing our best. https://t.co/oeLPuwMisC
Discussion about how social media companies have freedom to control what they publish that is not limited by the First Amendment. The day Former President Trump got banned for life from Twitter.
For those saying Twitter is violating the First Amendment by limiting speech, a gentle reminder that 1A keeps the government from silencing you.
A private company can do whatever it wants.
Whether or not it should, that’s another matter (and I’m not getting into it right now)
Headlines and editorials about the January 6 riots. Perhaps the most surprising of these was the über-conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page’s take that Former President Trump should have resigned. (Note – Trump did not resign.)
The Editorial Board: If Trump wants to avoid a second impeachment, his best path would be to take personal responsibility and resign. https://t.co/x13Ngb8WZV
Front pages from across the country on the day after the January 6th Insurrection.
Stories of Hope from the Insurrection, Part 6
While there have been endless dark stories coming out of the January 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington, D.C., there have also been some positive signs coming forward as well. People standing up for what is right, companies trying to uphold public civility, moments of grace
“I’ve spent a lot of time in Afghanistan and Iraq, I’ve been in war zones where I’ve had to shelter in place, but I never would have imagined that this would happen here.” — Rep. Andy Kim https://t.co/uroyFsB9fm
And finally – Why Rep. Andy Kim is always awesome!
On an unrelated note – Here is a a brief collection of tweets showing how awesome New Jersey Representative Andy Kim is. If only all our representatives could be this great!
Glad you enjoyed my Lego adventures with my kids! Thought you might enjoy seeing the full thread with the finished product and the arduous journey getting there. https://t.co/HWYE0pvpuO
Michael Nesmith, the contemplative, wool-cap-wearing member of the Monkees, has died at 78. He made one of the rock era's first music videos and won the first Grammy Award for video. https://t.co/Ed2OuEMfqrpic.twitter.com/8PssCI3xfu
I just saw this afternoon that singer/songwriter/music video pioneer Michael Nesmith had died of natural causes today at age 78. Here’s what I wrote about him back in 2003 for what I think must have been the first edition of my textbook. I’ve made a couple of corrections to the text to account for the passage of time.
Music trivia fans know that the Buggles’s song “Video Killed the Radio Star” was the first video to be played on MTV when the cable service was launched on August 1, 1981. But few know that the idea of MTV and music videos has its roots in the work of a musician and video visionary named Michael Nesmith in the 1960s and 1970s.
Nesmith, along with Davy Jones, Peter Tork, and Mickey Dolenz, made up The Monkees, the world’s first “manufactured” rock band. At the time, Nesmith was generally considered to be the only “real” musician, something Nesmith later disputed. Be that as it may, the four performers were primarily picked as actors for a television show about a rock bank from out of the 440 who appeared for an audition in 1965.
The idea that rock music could be the basis not only of movies but of popular television programming was firmly established by The Monkees, but in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Nesmith took the concept a giant step further.
Following his stint with The Monkees, he wrote songs for a number of stars, including Linda Ronstadt, produced the cult classic film Repo Man, won a Grammy award, started a successful home video company, and wrote at least one novel.
https://youtu.be/SMkiZ9tO-Zs
Nesmith performing his song Different Drum that was an early hit for a very young Linda Ronstadt.
But his biggest contribution to popular culture was the development of the modern music video.
“In the mid-‘70s, I had been asked to do a promotional film for a record that I had done called Rio, to be distributed in Europe,” Nesmith told a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. “I made something very lavish, not understanding that what they wanted me to do is stand in front of a camera and just play my guitar and sing the song. And it met with great approval in Europe. One of the ways European records were promoted at the time was to play these clips on state television…. What I said was, ‘Gee, you mean to tell me they’re using television to promote hit records?’ That sounded like a pretty good idea to me.”
https://youtu.be/WnpcTsy10dE
While Nesmith’s Rio wasn’t the first music video, it did establish that videos could be surreal, stylish, and more important than the song itself. Just as recording technology would make the record more important than the live performance, so did the video take on more importance in many cases than the record.
Nesmith’s work on music videos was financed by his $47 million inheritance (his mother was the inventor of Liquid Paper). It was this money that allowed him to create his long-form video Elephant Parts, which won the first video Grammy Award.
https://youtu.be/L951UPDh_CU
My favorite part of Nesmith’s hour-long video album Elephant Parts wasn’t actually a music video but rather the biting comic sketch “Neighborhood Nukes.”
Following the success of Rio, Nesmith thought he could put together a good youth-oriented television show using music videos. He created the program Popclips for the then-new cable channel Nickleodeon. Nesmith produced 56 episodes of the program, and it was successful enough to become the model for an entire cable channel – MTV – which was created by Nickelodeon’s then owner, Warner-Amex, in 1981.
A history of the music video and MTV, with their debt to Michael Nesmith and his show Popclips from the series Nick Knacks – a retrospective show about the cable channel Nickelodeon.
Music videos were a way of promoting records, and in some respects they have more in common with a commercial than with a Hollywood film. The music often takes second place to the stunning visuals included in these short films, which have little to do with the actual narrative of the song.
Nesmith saw music videos as a development that is something more than “radio with pictures”:
“[It’s] a whole new art from – the natural marriage of music and visuals. If you put them together you have supercharged the medium. . . .
“The long-term vision, I think, is when the musicians and the filmmaker come together as a team, or in one individual, and begin to marry the grammar of the two forms…. Then we’ll see something really spectacular.”
Memories of Michael Nesmith on Twitter:
Michael Nesmith, the Monkees singer-guitarist and pop visionary who penned many of the group’s most enduring songs before laying the groundwork for country-rock, has died at the age of 78. https://t.co/3bgbihlH9O
The PBS lawsuit was because PBS contracted w/ Pacific Arts to manufacture & distribute the "Civil War" documentary (Burns) on videotape, giving Nesmith's company a cut. The doc turned into such a massive hit, PBS just stopped paying him. He won, but was sad about "suing Big Bird" https://t.co/bbwnQ6wOAH
There are a lot of of journal articles out there that cover a very narrow theoretical discipline that develop important knowledge for people in that exact area of scholarship. But occasionally there come articles that can actually be used by people in the same general field in our classroom teaching. I’ve come across two of these in the last few weeks and thought I would share them with you.
Shugofa Dastgeer (@ShugofaD) and Daxton Stewart (@MediaLawProf) have a new article in The International Journal of Communication on how Muslim-majority countries handle free speech and free press issues in their constitutions. This is something Westerners don’t know nearly enough about.
Perry Parks (@perryrparks) has an article out in Journalism Practice that examines how CNN’s CNN 10 program for school children pushes a narrative of “balance” as being the highest journalistic value.
New: Media critics rightfully point out journalists' frequent priority of "balancing" opposing viewpoints instead of favoring true assertions over false ones. But why is the ideology of balance so strong among journalists, and so expected by publics? https://t.co/xLMmIkOYs4
This last one is not a journal article but an interesting opinion piece from Michael Socolow (@MichaelSocolow) that analyzes the media’s obsession with the importance of Fox News.
Fox News execs love the media's Fox News obsession, despite the fact that it has a tiny audience [about 99.3% of Americans *aren't* watching on it on a given night]. It validates their paranoia while positioning them as champions for the "patriot" cause.https://t.co/SG5aWwghT4
Editor’s Note: It has been a long year dealing with COVID-19 and its long-term fallout. Here is a collection of blog entries about getting through the last year from my commentary and blogging students. Really impressed with what these young people have to say.
Alexis is a student who works full-time along with going to school. Having to be isolated due to COVID-19 made life tough for her.
Grace McDonald works at answering the question of “Why are you in choir” through the voice of one of her classmates.
I've interviewed a lot of people about their COVID-19 experience, but the story told by my fellow choir member, Tyler Clay, has my heart broken and hopeful at the same time. Music truly can make a difference.https://t.co/cC3ukaIVkG#JMC406
Makenzie Krumland tells the story of a young woman and her family dealing with COVID-19 while stranded in another country.
When visiting family for the holidays, the trip is typically spent in the company of your loved ones, making memories and catching up with one another. But this was not how Vanessa Ortiz and her family spent their Christmas during the COVID-19 pandemic. https://t.co/TaupdEqNgj
Ryan Range looks at how his school life changed when everyone was sent home from school in March of 2020. The events of that spring and summer led to him creating an award-winning short film about The World Theatre.
Ashely Hopkins is another of my students who turns to making soup (in this case, chili) when the weather turns cold and there’s not really anywhere to go.
I love to eat chili on any cold day in the fall or in the winter. So I wrote about it, go check it out! #JMC406https://t.co/uzhPJ6OC4j
Caity VanDeWalle takes an almost short story approach to telling the story of how her friend Abby dealt with having to go home during the early stages of the pandemic.
And finally… During the summer of 2020 I broke out of isolation for a week or so of motorcycling in Arkansas with an old friend. During that trip I discovered that Bass Reeves, Black lawman, from the HBO series Watchmen was a real person.
Motorcycling in the Time of COVID19: Riding with Bass Reeves and the Watchmen. Sometimes truth is more amazing than fiction.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to my friend Dr. Michael Socolow, University of Maine, for letting me reprint his article from The Conversation. Dr. Socolow takes a look at China’s repression and human rights abuses and asks whether cheerful media coverage of the Beijing Olympics in February 2022 signals complicity with Chinese propaganda. He does so by looking back at Hitler’s 1936 Olympics.
On the morning of Aug. 14, 1936, two NBC employees met for breakfast at a café in Berlin. Max Jordan and Bill Slater were discussing the Olympic Games they were broadcasting back to the United States – and the Nazi propaganda machine that had made their work, and their visit to Germany, somewhat unpleasant.
Slater complained about all the staged regimentation and the obviously forced smiles everywhere.
“Why don’t they revolt? We wouldn’t stand for all this browbeating and bullying in America. I know that. Why do they stand for it here?” Slater asked Jordan.
As they were talking, three armed Nazi guards sat down at the next table. The whole café quieted. “It was as though a chill had come over those present,” Jordan later recalled. “In a nutshell, there was the answer to Bill’s question.”
I included the story Max Jordan recounted in his memoir in my book on the Nazi origins of Olympic broadcasting because it perfectly encapsulated the quandary facing American sports journalists whenever the International Olympic Committee pushes them to broadcast happy images provided by repressive regimes.
It’s now less than 100 days from the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and therefore it’s time for an honest discussion about the ethics of sport journalism and the morality of American media’s complicity with authoritarian regimes that hide the active repression of their citizens.
A sign reading ‘Juden Zutritt verboten!’ forbidding entry by Jewish people to the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Photo FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images
Thus, the Chinese government now wants good press in the West. And its efforts to ensure favorable coverage have prompted new concerns about media control and censorship during the Games, with a U.S. government spokesman recently urging Chinese government officials “not to limit freedom of movement and access for journalists and to ensure that they remain safe and able to report freely, including at the Olympic and the Paralympic Games.”
But, as was clear from the experience during the 1936 Olympics, if U.S. journalists go to Beijing and emphasize the beauty of its landscape, the happiness of its citizenry and its futuristic infrastructure, and fail to cover the more controversial realities in China, that would signal compliance with – and promotion of – Chinese propaganda.
This is American sports journalism’s Red Smith moment.
Politics, meet sports
On Jan. 4, 1980, Walter “Red” Smith, the veteran New York Times sports columnist, surprised his readership with his endorsement of the boycott movement against that summer’s Moscow Olympic Games. Boycott advocates were protesting the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
Smith’s stance was unexpected, as he had carefully sidestepped – or even ignored – many other moments he considered unhealthy political intrusion into international athletic competition. But Smith wrote that history had proved that America’s participation in the Nazi Games was a mistake – even if the great Black American runner Jesse Owens redeemed the event in public memory.
“When Americans look back to the 1936 Olympics,” Smith wrote in his famous column, “they take pleasure only in the memory of Jesse Owens’ four gold medals.” Outside of that, he admitted, “we are ashamed at having been guests at Adolf Hitler’s big party.”
Smith was an old-school sports reporter, already an old-timer in 1980 – he died in 1982. His reporting and columns reflected the influence of Grantland Rice and Paul Gallico, the giants who invented modern American sports writing in the 1920s. But there had always existed another group of sports reporters less afraid to point out obvious political unpleasantness.
For example, the great Jimmy Cannon had no problem freely peppering political references and acerbic commentary throughout his columns. Westbrook Pegler detested the Nazis and criticized them relentlessly throughout the 1936 Games. And Howard Cosell’s sharp commentaries, on such issues as Muhammad Ali’s boxing suspension in the 1960s and the political activism that erupted in 1968 in Mexico City, remain a credit to his legacy.
That Red Smith had spent decades remaining largely apolitical in public made his support for the boycott surprising. That he was only the second sports columnist to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and that his opinions were widely respected, gave his endorsement significant clout.
‘The one lever we have’
Smith opened the gates for others to point out the incongruity and obvious hypocrisy of celebrating the Soviet Union’s peaceful intentions while the Soviet army was invading and occupying Afghanistan. In his column, Smith quoted British Member of Parliament Neville Trotter, who led the boycott movement in Great Britain.
“This is the one lever we have to show our outrage at this naked aggression by Russia,” Trotter told Smith. “We should do all we can to reduce the Moscow Olympics to a shambles.”
One well-known and nationally respected sports journalist has explicitly and unambiguously called for boycotting the 2022 Beijing Games: Sally Jenkins. The Washington Post’s veteran columnist – who last year was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for commentary – published a scorching column plainly stating that “ignorance is no longer an excuse.”
“It was a forgivable mistake to award an Olympics to Beijing in 2008,” she wrote. “It’s unforgivable to hold one there now.”
Red Smith’s boycott column remains one of his most important and lasting examples of public service. As a media historian, I believe that those who emulate his courage today, like Sally Jenkins, will likely be remembered in the same way tomorrow.
(NOTE: Pressed “Publish” instead of “Save.” There’s more to come.)
For the last six or seven years, every summer I do a national-scale motorcycle scavenger hunt run by a motorcycle club out of Minnesota known as Team Strange. Each year it has a theme. This year’s Grand Tour is made up of bonus locations that were intended to be a part of last year’s Butt Lite X motorcycle scavenger hunt rally. (See, it’s a shorter version of the 11-day, 11,000-mile Iron Butt Rally, so it’s Butt Lite…) And just to make it more fun, all of the bonus locations for Butt Lite IX are included as well. (You can read more about my various experiences on these tours here.)
It’s now November and it’s time for me to submit all my photos, and the easiest way is for me to just upload them all here. So you can all ride along. If you watch the photos carefully, you’ll see which of the bonus sites I collected riding my white Suzuki V-Strom and which I got on my bright red Honda Rally.
Getting Started
“In 1964, Dwight D. Eisenhower called Andrew Jackson Higgins “the man who won the war for us”. Higgins was born in Columbus, NE in 1886, and without his landing crafts the Allied strategy in World War II would have been different and winning the war more difficult.” This photo is from the Higgins memorial in Columbus, NE. (01 Higgins Boat, 6/9/21)
“George A. Wyman was the first person to cross America on a motorized vehicle. Wyman started in San Francisco, California on May 16 and arrived in New York City 50 days later on July 6, 1903. On June 14, 1903, Wyman stopped in Ogden, Iowa for repairs to his motorcycle.” (02 Wayman Waypoint, 6/9/21)
“According to this unusual monument topped with a giant boot, 25 men and one woman are buried on the hill, killed by cross fire in a range war between the cowboys and homesteaders.” NOTE – This is one of two different Boot Hills I will visit this year. This was also the first bonus I claimed on the new Honda CRF300L Rally as the bonus was located on a minimum maintenance road. (03 Boot Hill, 6/22/21)
From my trip to the Black Hills
My trip to the Black Hills was done with my friend Matt the Bishop.
“The Sandhills Heritage Museum is housed in the 100 year-old Home State Bank building and is part of a campaign by the residents of Dunning to ‘Make Blaine County Great Again.'” (04 Sandhills, 6/26/21)
“This arched cantilever truss bridge over the Niobrara River is connected in the center with a single pin and is the only one of its kind in the U.S. It was built in 1932 at a cost of $55,524.” (05 Bryan Bridge, 6/29/21)
Overlooking the Niobrara River.
“The Fossil Exhibit Trail in Badlands National Park tells the story of the link between many common modern-day animals and their prehistoric ancestors, including dogs.” (06 Badlands, 6/26/21)
One of the requirements of the grand tour is that I have to have my motorcycle in the photo at every stop. But sometimes, like with this spot on a boardwalk in a national park, I can’t take the bike to the site of the bonus, so I need an alternate photo to show that I rode there. (06a Badlands 6/26/21)
“Roughlock Falls Nature Area is located in Spearfish Canyon and is considered to be one of the most beautiful locations in the Black Hills. At one time, the Homestake Mining Company owned this area, but it was never mined. The Homestake mine closed in 2002.” (07 Roughlock Falls, 06/28/21)
You couldn’t see the sign from where I parked, so here’s my bike at Roughlock Falls (07a Roughlock Falls 6/28/21)
“This dam is named for the town of Pactola, now flooded under the reservoir. The town was named by miners during the Black Hills Gold Rush which led to the Great Sioux War of 1876, during which the U.S. Army drove the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne people from their land.” (08 E.C.W. 6/29/21)
Once again, the monument I needed to photograph couldn’t be seen from the parking lot, so here’s my Wee Strom at the site. (08a E.C.W 6/289/21)
“Visitors to downtown Rapid City are greeted by the City of Presidents, a series of life-size bronze statues of past presidents along the city’s streets and sidewalks. The project began in 2000 to honor the legacy of the American presidency. Each sculpture is privately funded and the pattern of placement is chosen to eliminate any sense of favoritism or political gain.” You can clearly tell that the sculpture is of Obama, but recognizing his daughter is a bit of a stretch. (09 Obama 6/29/21)
There’s also a statue of President G.W. Bush with his dog, Barney. W was not a very strong likeness, and it took Barney for me to be sure I had the right one. (11 GW Bush 7/1/21) I’m presenting W slightly out of order because I want to keep the two presidents together.
For Jewel Cave National Park, I had to buy something from the gift shop featuring a bat along with a receipt. (The cave is full of bats and Team Strange has had a bat fixation for some time.) (10 Jewel Cave 6/30/21)
The sticker on my motorcycle. (10a Jewel Cave 6/30/21)
“A family reunion in 1987 led to what has become America’s best known version of Stonehenge. Carhenge was a bonus on leg one of the first Butt Lite.” It is located near Alliance, NE. (12 Carhenge 7/1/21)
My parked motorcycle at Carhenge. RVs blocked the view of the main monument from where the bike was parked. (12a Carhenge 7/1/21)
Break-in Rides for the Rally:
My new CRF300L Rally needed break-in miles put in on it so I could get it in for its first service and to get its suspension redone. So the next couple of rides didn’t really call for a light dual sport, but that’s what they got.
“This original Pony Express Station was built in 1854 on the Oregon Trail four miles east of Fort McPherson and was used as a fur trading post and ranch house. From 1860-61 it was used as a Pony Express station, and then as an Overland Trail Stage station. It was later moved here and is ‘dedicated to all pioneers who passed this way to win and hold the west.'” (13 Pony Express 7/18/21)
A closeup of the plaque at the Pony Express station. (13a Pony Express 7/18/21)
“On January 18, 1874, Lakota Sioux passing through this area purportedly stole food, furs and a cow from some settlers. The next morning, a dozen men went in pursuit determined to recover the property or fight. They found the Lakota camped on Pebble Creek and after they refused to surrender anything of value, a fight ensued, leaving one settler and three Lakota dead.” Near Burwell, NE.(14 Pebble Creek 7/19/21)
Riding With Mike
The rest of these rides were with my friend Mike around Kansas and Nebraska.
“Nicodemus, founded in 1877, was the first western town built by and for black settlers. In September of that year 300 settlers recruited from Kentucky arrived at the newly platted town. This site represents the only remaining all black town established at the end of Reconstruction.” Nicodemus National Historic Site is frequently on the list of 10 Least Visited National Park units. I’ve been there several times, and it is well worth a visit. (15 Nicodemus 8/7/21)
“Voted the 2nd best restroom in the US (we’d love to see #1), Bowl Plaza almost certainly will be the nicest public restroom you’ll visit on this entire rally. Lucas, Kansas, gets about 15,000 visitors a year visiting several folk art attractions so they needed a public restroom. It took four years to build and has become an attraction on its own merits.” (16 Lucas Fancy Bathroom 8/7/21)
My motorcycle outside of the Lucas, KS fancy bathroom. (16a Lucas Fancy Bathroom 8/7/21)
“This Garden of Eden is the creation of S.P. Dinsmoor. He began constructing his vision in 1907 at the age of 64. The surreal sculptures and design of the house are meant to reflect Dinsmoor’s belief in the Populist movement and his religious convictions.” This is the second site of unusual public art in Lucas, KN. (17 Lucas Garden of Eden 8/7/21)
View that shows Garden of Eden entrance sign. (17a Lucas Garden of Eden 8/7/21)
“The Massacre Canyon battle took place on August 5, 1873 about half a mile west of here. A Pawnee hunting party of around 700 was surprised by a war party of 1,500 Sioux. It was the last great battle between Great Plains tribes. In the ensuing rout, 75-100 Pawnee were killed, men and mostly women and children, making this the bloodiest attack by the Sioux on the Pawnee.” This is near Trenton, NE. (18 Massacre Canyon 9/6/21)
Close up of the sad-faced warrior. (18a Massacre Canyon 9/6/21)
“Boot Hill was Ogallala’s only cemetery from 1874-1884. Over 100 people were buried there in that period, significant because the town had a population of less than 130 permanent residents at the time. A large statue of a cowboy sitting on horse titled The Trail Boss stands on the hill in the old cemetery. It pays tribute to the courageous men who came up the Texas Trail.” This is the second Boot Hill in Nebraska included in my scavenger hunt. (19 Boot Hill Ogalla 9/6/21)
“Pilgrim Holiness Church, built in 1928, was constructed of stacked and baled hay with walls 2 ft thick. The church is stuccoed on the outside and plastered on the inside. It’s the oldest hay bale church in North America and one of only three known to exist today.” (20 Hay Bale Church 9/6/21)
And with that, my 2021 Team Strange Grand Tour is done. As always, great fun!
Editor’s Note: Facebook and its various properties (Instagram, WhatsApp) have been in the news a lot lately, and not in a good way. Congress has been holding social media hearings where Facebook is the #1 bad guy, the Washington Post has had a host of stories, and the Wall Street Journal has a whole section devoted to covering the social media giant. I’m hoping to do several posts discussing these issues. Here’s the first one looking at the Wall Street Journal’s coverage. Will update as new articles get published.
Oct. 27, 2021
A slide show about Instagram produced internally at FB found:
“Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” the researchers said in a March 2020 slide presentation posted to Facebook’s internal message board, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves.”
Instagram brings in more than $100 billion a year in revenue and depends on young people engaging with them.
Publicly, IG plays down the risks it presents to teens and preteens, even while internal documents highlight problems.
Their research over several years found:
They came to the conclusion that some of the problems were specific to Instagram, and not social media more broadly. That is especially true concerning so-called social comparison, which is when people assess their own value in relation to the attractiveness, wealth and success of others.
The tendency to share only the best moments, a pressure to look perfect and an addictive product can send teens spiraling toward eating disorders, an unhealthy sense of their own bodies and depression, March 2020 internal research states.
FB bought IG in 2012 for $1 billion when it only had 13 employees.
Facebook’s Documents About Instagram and Teens, Published Sept. 29, 2021
Facebook (which owns Instagram) has studied how teen girls compared their own bodies to those they saw on Instagram. Here are the original documents of these studies.
How Many Users Does Facebook Have? The Company Struggles to Figure It Out
Oct. 21, 2021
Facebook has a problem with people with multiple accounts, even though this is supposedly forbidden. Study of recent signups showed that between 32 and 56 percent came from existing users.Facebook’s estimates of the number of US users in their 20s often exceeds the total population in that age range, suggesting problems with their estimations or problems with duplicate accounts. And those duplicate accounts are often used to amplify problematic messages. This also creates a problem for advertisers who are spending their money in hopes of reaching very specific audiences.
What do My Little Pony, Transformers, Battleship and G.I. Joe all have in common?
They are all toys from Hasbro that all became major media entertainment properties under the leadership of CEO Brian Goldner, who died Tuesday of cancer. Goldner had been with the toy giant in one position or another since 2000. Hasbro’s products include Monopoly, My Little Pony, Transformers, the board game Battleship and the early action figure G.I. Joe. Back in 2012, Goldner told the NY Times that turning toys into entertainment franchises was a “core-brand strategy. Our four movies made $3 billion at the box office, but we made $1.6 billion in sales of merchandise because we own the I.P. [intellectual property] and all the merchandising rights.”
CNN’s Brian Stelter asks: Why isn’t there a New York Times of the right?
On his media news show Sunday evening, CNN media news reporter Brian Stelter raised an interesting question:
“Why aren’t there massive American newsrooms dedicated to journalism from a conservative point of view, a reality-based conservative point of view? Why isn’t there a New York Times of the right?”
An excellent answer to this question comes from the Washington Post’s media critic Erik Wemple who says, “The ‘New York Times of the right’ is … The New York Times.”
Wemple points out how Fox News host Tucker Carlson continually trashes the NY Times on his show and then goes on to frequently reference stories in a positive light from the Times. And as is his usual practice, Wemple provides specific dates and stories. (Examples are from Aug. 134, Aug. 21, Sept. 17, Sept. 20, Sept. 28, and Oct. 4. All of these praised stories from the Times.) Wemple then goes on to give a long list of other NY Times stories referenced as positive examples by Fox News hosts.
So, Fox News likes to have it both ways – trashing the New York Times and other “mainstream” news outlets while simultaneously depending on these news outlets for important reporting.
