There Will Be No Miracles Here

2 December 2021

I am almost completely finished with chapter 14 of _21st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide_, on the show _Hinterland_.  All that remains is one last run through the entire text to once more edit and proofread the whole.  [I am now done!] It has taken some time to write this chapter but I am determined to take the time it needs to do the job right with each chapter, as best I can, and not become distracted by focusing too much on target deadlines.  In the midst of writing this chapter I decided I needed to read through a 465 pages long history of Wales since 1939 and did so, and I did so in a day, which proved useful, as much discussion surrounding _Hinterland_ concentrates on how the show represents Wales, the Welsh, and Welshness, especially rural Welsh-speaking Wales and in particular in the Ceredigion region surrounding Aberystwyth.  The entire works cited listing as part of this chapter has ended up seven single space pages long.  I feel reasonably satisfied with where this chapter is now at and will be at when I am ready to move on to the next–starting tomorrow.  Although just two days ago, Tuesday, after working from 9 am to 6:15 on revising and editing this chapter draft I reached a point where what lay immediately ahead looked like such a rough mess that I could not figure out how best to reshape it, so I stopped.  After getting away from it for a short time by yesterday morning I was ready to take on and meet that challenge.  Next up is _The Fall_.  I greatly enjoy doing this work, including taking on and meeting the challenges it continually presents.  It feels like I am doing something that I can do well. which draws upon strengths I have, and which suits where I am at and what I have best to offer in this present period of time.

What else has been happening with me of late?  I will try to run through some of what I can readily call to mind.

1.  I am working through a reading list of over 100 books I am seeking to complete reading relatively soon.  Always so much more to learn, and always exciting to do so.  

2.  I am already beginning preliminary work in thinking through precisely what and how I will plan to teach the classes I will teach in 2022-2023.  Years ago a friend of mine offered me what was something of an unsettling compliment by describing what I do in preparing to teach as akin to preparing to go to war.  He meant it positively.  What this attests to, I think, is I like to learn as much as I can about subjects I will be teaching and to think through what students and I might be able to do together in engaging these subjects while anticipating challenges along with opportunities, all the while knowing as always what each class ends up as will depend upon what the students bring to bear as much if not more than me and that I will not determine how any precise class session will proceed until the preceding session has finished, while everything will always be open to change.  Being well-prepared and having thought through the issues we will be taking on enables me to be highly flexible and to allow students, and what they think, feel, have to say, and are able and ready to do to take top priority.

3.  Tomorrow Andy and I get our booster shot.  I hope my reaction is better than it was to the second shot earlier this year.  I am concerned about the omicron variant, yes, but I am not going to worry excessively about it; I will pay attention to what reputable scientists report, when and as they are ready to do so, and monitor how government leaders and leaders of other organizations and institutions respond.  It is. nonetheless, extremely sad what this pandemic has wrought, and for how long it has continued to do so.  I readily empathize with everyone who feels exhausted by it.  

4.  In terms of health, which is always a necessarily prominent focus of concern for me, I am doing reasonably well.  Approximately three weeks ago I think it was–whenever we last had 60 degrees plus weather on a Sunday–I experienced my first seizure in almost a year and one half, and unfortunately it was a bad one, with a substantial impact for much of that day and in ‘aftershocks' for days thereafter.  A little over a week or so following that I had a major digestive ‘attack' which caused a lot of pain and disruption for days.  But, all in all, none of that is the slightest bit unfamiliar and I carry on.  I am continuing to run and to do long distance and fast walking as well, regularly, although more often on a treadmill inside rather than outside with the temperatures dropping as far down as they have recently.  

5.  A couple weeks ago Andy and I attended a performance of _Rent_ at the Pablo Center here in Eau Claire, and that was most impressive, both the production and the Pablo Center.  It was only the second event we have attended at the Pablo Center which shows just how otherwise busy we have most often been, even after we anticipated doing much more than that, following our attendance at a special Arts and Sciences college meeting with a guided tour and then the grand opening shortly thereafter, now four years ago.  With _Rent_ the choreography particularly stood out for me, while the show focuses on themes and issues that continue very much relevant to this day, and it is good to see such an overtly and thoroughly ‘queer' show enthusiastically received here in Eau Claire.

6.  Yesterday we screened _Agents of Change_, as part of the Empowerment Through Solidarity film series on campus at UWEC.  This film focuses on past struggles for Black Studies and other varieties of Ethnic Studies courses and programs in the US, highlighting struggles at San Francisco State and Cornell.  It is an impressive film, overall, and it helps make clear how hard and continuously it is necessary to fight for the opportunity to teach and study the truth in the US, especially when this concerns issues of race and racism.  It was great to have Dr Selika Ducksworth-Lawton moderate the post-screening discussion and provide crucial context as well as raise pointed and urgent questions for consideration.  I always like discussions like this where we consider how is this relevant to where we are at, what we are facing, and what we can and need to do.   

7.  As usual Andy and I watch a variety of TV shows and movies, especially TV crime dramas, and probably the best and most interesting one we have been focused on recently is a Danish TV crime serial the English title of which is _Follow the Money_.  I appreciate crime dramas that engage crimes of the powerful, and in particular as this show does financial crimes committed by powerful legal businesses (as well as illegal businesses) and not just crimes committed by governments and states.  This show is available on the streaming service Topic; unfortunately I am not aware of any other means by which currently to access it.  But if you get the chance, ever, it is worthwhile:  https://foreigncrimedrama.com/follow-the-money-review/

8.  Other than that I can't think of much to report and share.  Our puppy, Aidan, is fun and funny, for sure, but he sheds an incredible amount for a small, very short-haired dog, and his hair seems to stick more readily to clothing than that of any previous dog I've ever had, so I spend a lot of time brushing this off and we are continuing to look into all the more effective brushes to use on him.  He does have an impressively high metabolism and I suspect this shedding is yet another sign of exactly that.  Once more, it is clear we are going to have a lean pug, as that is definitely the way he has been developing.  As an interesting point of continuity, he loves popcorn too, just like Casey.  Our cats are doing fine, including with Aidan, and I am still amazed that Jet likes to leap into pens or carriers to play and rest/sleep with Aidan.  Star and Jet have long refined an impressively spiraling swarming movement that the two do together when they want food, which almost appears as if they are trying to hypnotize me.  And of course, a cat will wake one up in the morning by jumping into the space in the headboard right behind  me as Star did this morning; even at over four years old they are always ready to move into any such space and continue to be highly alert and curious. 

9.  One final point.  Although I hadn't expected to offer any more comment concerning relations between capitalism and mental illness, the discussion that arose on my FB page Monday was nonetheless interesting and useful, suggesting to me this is a connection which people will be and are curious to learn more about and explore further.  Since I was a little busy and otherwise preoccupied then I didn't think to add at the time but those who engage this connection have focused on the following kinds of issues, in relation to how capitalism, and capitalist society and culture, is responsible: alienation, exploitation, commodification, commodity fetishism, dominance of exchange value over use value, reification, instrumentalization, precaritization, impoverishment,  inequality, immiseration, insecurity, marketization, privatization, divide and conquer, private profit/private interest over public good/human need, hyper-individualism, competition over cooperation, success defined/experienced in terms of income/wealth/material accumulation, and much more besides.  The focus is, in sum, on how these impacts of capitalism, how capitalism is organized/operates/works/is structured/shapes and influences/mediates the ways we think/feel/believe/communicate/act/interact/behave in turn affect mental health and can contribute to mental illness.

I have been a fan of Aaron Rodgers from virtually the beginning of his professional career, with his first taking over the role as the #1 quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, and in a show of support for him doing so, and being ready to do so, as well as a readiness to move beyond Brett Favre's repeated flirtations with retirement, I bought an Aaron Rodgers' jersey, even before his first exhibition game at the Packers' new #1 qb, my first ever player's jersey in my history, since a young boy, of being a devoted Green Bay Packers' fan.  And over the years since I've been most impressed with his extraordinary talent, accomplishment, and leadership, as a player, while respecting him as an often thoughtful and engaging person beyond what he directly contributed on the football field.  I've even supported him, in his side, vis-a-vis his recent dispute concerning the Packers' management and how he has been treated, as well as the criticisms he has offered concerning Packers' management's respect (or lack of respect) for the value of relationships and for conveying loyalty to and appreciation of players who have contributed notably and valuably to make the Packers all they have been.  However, I've been highly disappointed by his decision not to become vaccinated against COVID-19 and especially with the way he has responded,  explaining and defending this decision, since being placed on the COVID list after having tested positive for contracting the virus with the terms under which he has been designated as necessarily inactive making clear he has not been vaccinated.  I will elaborate here with some of what I shared in three successive Facebook posts.

***

I have been a long-time fan of Aaron Rodgers as a player and have long respected him as a person, including for many positions he has taken and how he has explained these, but I find it hard to disagree with this article (apologies if inaccessible behind a paywall but the headline sums it up [I'm not reposting a link here, on this blog, because it is behind a paywall yet it is titled “Aaron Rodgers' decision to go un-vaccinated is mindblowing and selfish for someone who is supposed to be a leader” from Pete Dougherty, writing for Packer News, and yes that title does well sum up the article]).  When you are in such a prominent public role your positions and practices do exercise considerably greater impact than those of most of the rest of us and you need to be ready to be responsible for the implications and consequences of your actions and inactions.  Too many prominent professional athletes do not seem to get this cannot be merely a matter of ‘personal choice’ because this is a terribly deadly pandemic caused by a highly contagious virus and its mutations which is neither spread nor contained according to ‘personal choice’.  I am not fully vaccinated and I do not wear masks in public places as a matter of personal choice (personal preference or taste) but rather out of a recognition and acceptance of social responsibility in the face of a state of emergency in relation to people’s health and well-being.  I would rather not have to do either if I did not need to do so but that’s the thing: I need to do so.  All the prominent objections to the safety of the vaccines have been thoroughly discredited.  Let’s all step up and do what we easily can do to be responsible to and to care for each other; getting vaccinated is easy, and free.  It’s not asking much.  By this point the devastating impact of COVID-19 should be overwhelmingly apparent, and we should all want to do what we readily can to help substantially reduce that devastating impact and slowly but surely bring the pandemic to an end. I hope Aaron Rodgers will be healthy and that no one will become seriously ill, or worse, from contracting the virus via contact with him or any unvaccinated highly publicly prominent professional athlete.  And I hope he will eventually get vaccinated.

*

I think unfortunately statements like the following reveal more of where he is coming from that he likely realizes.

Rodgers made references to the “woke mob” and a “witch hunt” and believes he's been portrayed negatively and falsely by the media. He opened with, “I realize I'm in the crosshairs of the woke mob right there, so before my final nail gets put in my cancel-culture casket, I think I'd like to set the record straight on so many of the blatant lies that are out there about myself.”

Using coded words and phrases such as ‘woke’ and ‘cancel culture’ [and ‘witch hunt' as well for that matter] insinuates a political alignment and not just a personal choice for a personal health condition.  And the same with arguing these vaccines are more dangerous for immunocompromised people than is not being vaccinated, that if the vaccines are so great why are vaccinated people still contracting and passing on COVID-19, that homeopathic treatments are equally if not more effective, and that those urging vaccination represent a ‘mob’ rather than an overwhelming consensus of expert scientific thinking.  Yes, ample reason exists to distrust Big Pharma but the answer is not to dispense altogether with what these corporations come up with; rather the answer should be to support the People’s Vaccine Alliance and making the development, production, and distribution of medications a non-profit public good owned and controlled by the people and managed through the state.  Certainly complementary medications and therapies are and can be highly beneficial but in relation to a virus and its mutations like this are woefully insufficient.

This reminds me of arguments against drug treatments for HIV/AIDS back years ago with some insisting those treatments could never be trusted, did far more damage than good, and that holistic, lifestyle, and complimentary homeopathic and herbal medications as well as therapies like color therapy would be sufficient and even much more effective and viable, with some in this camp even arguing ‘HIV’ was a myth and no such virus actually ever existed.  Finally, though, this is a major public issue and Rodgers needs to get over feeling victimized at needing to explain his position and practice given the stakes such as they are: well over 750,000 dead in this country and well over 3,000,000 around the world, as well as yet many more millions than have yet been adequately documented suffering permanent disability as a result of Long COVID.  As someone who wants to be respected as a serious, thoughtful, critical thinker Rodgers has got to be ready for conversation and debate.  This is once again not a mere matter of personal choice because it is a devastating collective health tragedy, one of the historical worst.  So to Rodgers and others like him I urge the following: argue for your choices and decisions and  for the quality of your research and analysis while if you know you are in a minority position expect and be prepared to do so.

Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers blasts ‘woke mob' over COVID-19 news on Pat McAfee show, rips NFL's ‘draconian' protocols

*

Rodgers makes lazily sweeping and inaccurate charges in his interview on the Pat McAfee show that everyone on the left was opposed to becoming vaccinated while Donald Trump was President but then once Joe Biden became President everything was suddenly newly fine with the vaccines.  That is a ridiculous charge, as  everyone I know planned to become vaccinated, fully, as soon as the vaccines were ready and were judged safe and effective by respected medical scientific authorities, regardless of who was President.  I certainly was so determined as was my husband and all my friends and family.   We recognized the COVID-19 pandemic as the tremendously devastating tragedy that it is, has been, and will long remain, and were committed to doing what we easily could to help in reducing the scope and scale of that tragedy and helping in bringing the pandemic slowly but surely closer to an end.   Rodgers' charges here are not the result of independent critical thinking but rather are standard talking points among right-wing anti-vaxxers who are also otherwise closely aligned with Donald Trump and Trumpism.

And I have to add Jerry Brewer's even more withering takedown of Rodgers, also in today's Washington Post, feels, sadly, deserved.

Aaron Rodgers, starting QB for the unvaccinated, is really just looking out for No. 12

As Brewer indicates, in relation to Rodgers' interview on the Pat McAfee show, “He should have kept his mouth shut.”  And, even more to the point, further:

Rodgers proceeded to paint himself as a victim. Instead of limiting his argument to a legitimate concern — he said he could not take either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines because he is allergic to an ingredient in them and also shared concerns that many have about the Johnson & Johnson shot — Rodgers drifted into conspiracy theories and tired, facile anti-vaccine opinions . . .

This interview is now forever a part of Rodgers’s tale. He’s now the defiant starting quarterback of the anti-vax squad, and even though there’s a large group that thinks like him, this is not good for his legacy. His stance illustrates the selfishness that will make his inevitable departure from Green Bay as much on him as on the franchise. Rodgers has always existed in his own world. This just reveals how deep he has retreated into himself . . . 

In a pandemic that has killed more than 750,000 Americans, Rodgers is unwilling to abandon his recalcitrance and think about the team. He didn’t care enough about the Packers to follow the NFL protocols for unvaccinated personnel because he didn’t believe in them. He doesn’t care enough about everyone else to trust facts because he doesn’t agree with them . . .

He comes across as so cool and unbothered. In reality, he’s as rigid as it gets . . .

Rodgers doesn’t fear being wrong, but he can’t stand someone else being right . . . 

***

Update, 10 November 2021.  In light of Rodgers' more recent comments, just this week, I'm willing to cut him some slack.  I appreciate that despite ‘standing behind his comments' from last week he nonetheless has apologized for potentially misleading people about his vaccination status and recognized that he is in both a highly privileged and influential position, that the COVID-19 vaccination has become a contentious political issue, and that he is not an activist but a football player who is not trying to advise anyone else what they should or should not do as far as the COVID-19 vaccination goes.  It seems he really did want to avoid being caught up in controversy over this issue but it also nonetheless continues to seem at the least short-sighted to imagine that his status would never come to light, especially if he contracted COVID-19 and had to follow the protocol which the NFLPA agreed upon for unvaccinated players, while also failing to imagine his earlier dodging the question concerning his vaccination status would create even more controversy if and when his status emerged.  And it doesn't strike me as all that smart either, given that goal of his, to avoid being caught up in contention, to go beyond indicating, in his interview last week, that he chose himself not to become vaccinated because of an allergy he maintains to the vaccines, after consulting with his own doctors and doing his own extensive research–i.e., why the need to go beyond that to offer so much further inaccurate, misleading, and otherwise preposterous kinds of statements concerning his own ‘victimization' and what this historically compares to.  I'm all for people enjoying maximum right of autonomous self-determination over their own bodies, and their own individual health, while at the same time also respecting and fully taking into account the impact of the choices and decisions they make, and the impact of their subsequent actions as well as inactions following these choices and decisions, on others' health and well-being.  I also do strongly believe that celebrities such as Aaron Rodgers, although not a medical scientific expert, do maintain considerable influence, and enjoy a platform, welcome or unwelcome, that means they can and do, however inadvertently and unintentionally, reach  many others who identify with and look up to them, whether this should be the case or not.   Unfortunately, it took no time at all for Rodgers to be touted as their latest hero and inspiration by many who have denied the COVID-19 vaccines' efficacy, who have shown no respect for scientific expertise or fact in so doing as well as in inventing all kinds of dangers from the vaccines that do not exist, and who have claimed that the vaccines and the drive to vaccinate against COVID-19 is a sinister conspiracy by some kind of authoritarian elite that has nothing to do with responding to a supremely grave global health crisis.  The dangers in Rodgers' carelessly and angrily overstating, in response to the news breaking about his vaccination status and he receiving criticism for this, are aptly summed up in this New York Times article from Monday November 8th:

Scientists Fight a New Source of Vaccine Misinformation: Aaron Rodgers The Green Bay Packers quarterback, one of the most visible athletes in the country, last week used anti-vaccination rhetoric as his reasoning for not getting vaccinated against Covid-19

The facts are that the vaccines greatly reduce the risk of dying or becoming seriously and protractedly ill from COVID-19 as well as substantially reduce the period of time during which one is likely to pass on the virus to someone else and also substantially reduce the intensity of what is passed on even if one does.  Also, the facts are that the vaccines cause very few side effects, and that includes in relation to fertility.  If globally we were all vaccinated at much higher rates than still now is the case we would be all that much closer to bringing this pandemic to an end, and not only ending all the restrictions on ‘normal life' we have all had to face, to one degree or another, but also, much more importantly, greatly reducing the amount of severe illness and death that this pandemic has caused and unfortunately continues to cause.  Especially in the face of ever more rapidly accelerating ecological emergency and not just climate crisis we need to be focused much more on collective and not just individual health and well-being, including collective and not just individual survival, than has too long been commonplace.

***

Update 9 January 2022

I want to be sure to stress that I continue to greatly admire Aaron Rodgers as a football player, and indeed as a leader of his team, in playing football.  Rodgers is the greatest football player I have enjoyed the privilege of following in over 50 years as a passionate American football fan.  And I continue to be a devoted follower of the Green Bay Packers (including owner of shares as well), long have, and imagine always will.  I do believe much more yet still needs to be done in taking care of player safety and protecting player health and well-being, including for the rest of players' lives long after retirement, that is a responsibility of the NFL and one it has not adequately fulfilled, while I also am critical of other disparities, inequities, and abuses in terms of how ‘business as usual' proceeds in big-time college as well as professional football.  I myself would support, and continue to enjoy, competitive football, at all levels, converting from tackle to flag football, in the interest of player safety and player health and well-being.  But my main point here is I can disagree, indeed strongly, with Aaron Rodgers, on this one issue while continuing to respect and admire him otherwise.  I do continue to find his position on this issue to be disappointing, and even worse than that in terms of its prospective implications, especially as he has cast himself as a victim of ‘cancel culture', when he has hardly been ‘cancelled at all' and ‘cancel culture' is largely exaggerated, if not mythical–used primarily by people with right-wing political leanings to protest others disagreeing with, arguing against, criticizing, and calling them to account for their positions and practices, while also taking steps to protect themselves from being subject to hateful online (and offline) abuse and attacks.  People should be able to disagree, and to argue against and criticize each other, but without any of the latter.  Celebrities should be ready to be held to account for the influence their celebrity status gives them, especially when they are intervening in a major global public health crisis in ways that are only likely to lead to greater harm.  They should expect it, and not be surprised at disagreement and criticism.  And yet of course I believe Aaron Rodgers deserves to be voted Most Valuable Player in the NFL again this year; the vote is for his value as a player and to his team.

In conclusion, I would like to credit Minnesota Vikings co-defensive coordinator Andre Patterson for his comments on his experience recently with COVID-19 and the importance of being fully vaccinated, as reported early this past week in the Minneapolis _Star-Tribune_:

“Vikings co-defensive coordinator Andre Patterson said he's bounced back from a tough bout with COVID-19, as the 61-year-old coach continued to conduct virtual meetings during an eight-day quarantine despite battling a cough and other symptoms that required medication.

‘I'm feeling a lot better now', Patterson said Wednesday in his first comments since returning last week. ‘It wasn't a lot of fun. It hit me pretty good'. 

Patterson, the longtime defensive line coach and confidant of coach Mike Zimmer, said the Dec. 26 loss against the Rams was the first game he'd ever missed in 40 straight years of coaching at the college and NFL levels. He wanted to send a message Wednesday about the potential dangers of COVID-19.

‘People need to understand how serious this deal is', Patterson said. ‘It's not about you personally – it's about the people around you: your children, your parents, your grandparents. You don't want them to go through this and have to deal with the effects that come with it once you even get rid of it'.

‘A lot of times in life', he added, ‘we've got to make sacrifices for the people we love and for our community and surroundings. So, to be protected from this deal, I think it's very important; I'm vaccinated, I had the booster, the whole 9 yards, and I still got it. And it still knocked me down pretty good. It's scary for me to even think what would have happened to me if I hadn't been vaccinated'.

Patterson said defensive linemen would reach out after virtual meetings to check in on their position coach.

‘They could hear the difference in my voice,' he said. ‘They could hear the coughing, they knew I was struggling with it, so after meetings were over and after practice was over, I'd get constant texts from all of them. I think they saw the seriousness of it'.”

It continues to be important, for everyone: make sure to get fully vaccinated, including with the booster, and otherwise observe sensible and important precautions during an ongoing pandemic, including face masks indoors in public spaces and social distancing where and as possible.  I am hopeful Andy is right and omicron is the last major wave of COVID-19 and it will soon run its course.  

We have recently begun wearing KN-95 masks which we are pleased with other than the fact they are not recyclable.  They even are somewhat easier to breathe with and don't as readily cause eyeglasses to fog up as do a number of others.  

I have of course been full vaccinated, including with the booster, as soon as possible, and taken all the aforementioned precautions.  I suspect, though, like with Andre Patterson, when and if I do contract it, even in the ‘milder' omicron variant, it will be nasty, for me, because, sadly, I do tend to get hit hard by viruses like this,  and this tendency has unfortunately increased as I've got older (and I'm just about Patterson's age).  I hope it turns out I am wrong.  

Stay safe and take care everyone.

Our beloved Casey ended his struggle with cancer today and now is resting in peace.  We did everything we could to try to save his life but Casey’s cancer was too powerful and it spread too rapidly and too far so we recognized it was time to say goodbye one last time and take Casey for his final appointment at Oakwood Hills Animal Hospital, which we did earlier today.  Casey has been a truly wonderful best friend and devoted companion.  He has brought immense joy, comfort, support, and love to us.  He has been the best pet I have ever had, and I have had many great pets.  We will always treasure the memory of our ten and one-half years with Casey.

I will recall so much about Casey.  From the moment when we first picked him up and he immediately adopted me with incredible serenity, resting peacefully on my lap the entire one and one-half hours’ drive home through the bitter end of his last few days, and our last shared moments together, sharing the few pleasures Casey could continue to appreciate–eating popcorn and sleeping at the foot of our bed.  Casey was (until he became mortally ill) fearless in his readiness to embrace anything and everything, anyone and everyone, as a potential dear friend.  He loved to play all the way until he became seriously ill and he always greeted both of us with enormous enthusiasm.  He loved sitting on laps as well as directly between us or cozied up to one or both of us.  He loved taking long walks, until he was all tired out, and always pulling ahead if he could (until he became blind, and then had to become much more cautious, and could only walk short distances).  When younger he loved to run, including with sticks in his mouth much longer than him.  He loved fleece pet blankets and he carried these all about the house with him, continually playing with them in a vast number of games he created to amuse himself–and us.  He loved bully sticks, especially bully springs, and his inability to take delight in these all that often as well as the lapse in his tail, so that it rarely stood full up and rarely wagged anymore, indicated quite clearly his life was near an end–because Casey was a dog whose tail has almost always been up and wagging, just about all the time, while he often was so happy and so excited that he wagged his whole body back and forth.  I will well remember how Casey continued, up until he became blind, to frequently initiate the famous dog play signal with us, and found a plethora of objects and games we played with him to represent opportunities for thrilling adventure. 

Casey was a smart dog, who learned the whole ensemble of basic commands quickly, and starred at doing agility work, even if at times he could be stubborn about when and if he would obey commands.  Casey also developed an uncanny ability not only to anticipate virtually every one of our routines but also variations from routines–including anticipating trips we would take  days before our departure even if we had tried deliberately not to signal this was approaching to Casey.  Casey loved spending his time directly, and immediately, with us, close to us, in our respective studies/home offices, in our basement watching movies and TV, close by while we were exercising on machines or I was playing the drums we also keep in our basement, while we were reading in our living room, and while we were spending time in our kitchen and foyer.  He could become extremely hyper, when he was excited but not able immediately to explore the prospective source of this excitement–such as when repair workers visited our house–but people delighted in him everywhere he ventured, and at places we took him for various forms of treatment, and to stay during trips, people always told us he was tremendous fun–exceptionally lively, interactive, and friendly.  Casey comforted us too whenever we were down, as he could sense that this was the case, again uncannily so, and he conveyed many ways of expressing to us his feelings of contentment, satisfaction, and appreciation for us, and for what we were sharing with him.  Casey was there for me, always, again and again and again, without fail, day in and day out, and I needed him, often a lot.  I don’t know what I will do without him, it feels so heartbreaking, but I will do my best to carry on.

Casey experienced a hard life, but a good one.  He needed to have his gall bladder removed at age three, and he ended up going through ultimately three rounds of mast cell tumors as well as in his last four months of his life going blind.  But Casey put up with a lot, and was remarkably agreeable and cooperative, even when facing discomfort and pain, because he trusted us.  Casey readily assumed the role of family dog, immediately upon arrival, with great panache, and made himself a forceful, central presence in our family life from the moment he first arrived to the end, while he got along remarkably well with our previous cat Brendan, as well as with our two current cats, Star and Jet.  Casey vaguely acknowledged Aidan, our new puppy, but sadly was far too old and ill to do much more than that, but Aidan, sweetly, licked Casey’s face several times, which Casey readily accepted.  

Casey was a long, tall, large pug, my and our first ever black pug.  Ironically, he suffered none of the problems that pugs are prone toward.  But tendencies to develop mast cell cancer can be inherited by dogs of virtually all breeds, and it is difficult to know if and when this is the case when they are puppies.  We know a lot more about cancer and blindness in dogs than we did not that long ago, and I pay tribute not only to the team of veterinarians and technicians and everyone else at Oakwood Hills that helped take care of Casey’s health throughout his life, but also to the same at U of Minnesota Veterinary Oncology–Dr. Jack O’Day, whom I only met by phone, was most impressively precise, thorough, caring, compassionate, and empathetic.  Casey got to know lots of people at Oakwood Hills, but Dr. Sarah Watson likely spend the most time with Casey, and us, when Casey was experiencing the greatest challenges, and we also deeply appreciate her and all she does.

It’s been exceedingly tough to go through the process of a beloved friend and companion dying throughout this past summer, and even from the late spring into summer, attempting to do all we possibly could to help out and prolong his life as well as at least reduce if not eliminate pain and discomfort, in effect saying goodbye to Casey, over and over again, throughout this time.  And the final goodbye has been exceedingly tough as well.  But we know it is right, it is time, and it is for the best.  Last night he enjoyed popcorn with us one last time, and lay contentedly on my lap for several hours as well as slept right up between us over night, again for the last time.  I wish I possessed the eloquence of my friend and colleague BJ Hollars or my father and stepmother in being able adequately to do justice to what a great dog has meant to me, but I have done my best here.  I will end by just adding that it indeed would be fantastic if we could meet again across the rainbow bridge.  Goodbye Casey; we will love you, tremendously, absolutely, always.  

1 July 2021

Tonight on Insurgence #833, show #51 of year #16 of Insurgence, I will be playing music from Snapped Ankles, Dancing on Tables, Swim School, The Ninth Wave, Mark Sharp and the Bicycle Thieves, Pleasure Heads, The Roly Mo, Retro Video Club, Dead Pony, Chris Greig & The Merchants, Spyres, IDLES, Tom Morello and Serj Tankian, Hotel, Gary Numan, Gail Ann Dorsey, Herbert Gronemeyer, LoneLady, The Dandy Warhols, Gang of Four, and Fontaines D.C.  As always, Thursdays, 10 pm to midnight US Central Time, on WHYS Community Radio, 96.3 FM Eau Claire and also via the web at: www.whysradio.org

The playlist for that show:

July 1, 2021

1.

Snapped Ankles–“The Evidence”

Snapped Ankles–“Shifting Basslines of the Cornucopians”

Snapped Ankles–“Rhythm is Our Business”

2.

Dancing on Tables–“Tell Me”

Swim School–“Take You There”

The Ninth Wave–“I’m Only Going to Hurt You”

Mark Sharp and the Bicycle Thieves–“Tippy Toes”

Pleasure Heads–“War & Orange Juice”

The Roly Mo–“I’ll Be Happy When You Die”

Retro Video Club–“Addicted”

Dead Pony–“23, Never Me”

Chris Greig & The Merchants–“Glue”

Spyres–“Fake ID”

3.

IDLES–“Damaged Goods”

Tom Morello–“Natural’s Not In It (Featuring Serj Tankian)”

Hotel–“To Hell With Poverty”

Gary Numan–“Love Like Anthrax”

Gail Ann Dorsey–“We Live As We Dream, Alone”

Herbert Gronemeyer–“I Love a Man in Uniform (Featuring Alex Silva)”

LoneLady–“Not Great Men”

The Dandy Warhols–“What We All Want”

Gang of Four–“Forever Starts Now (Killing Joke Dub)”

4.

Fontaines D.C.–“A Lucid Dream (Apple Music at Home With Session)”

Fontaines D.C.–“You Said (A Night at Montrose–Live)”

Fontaines D.C.–“I Was Not Born (A Night at Montrose–Live)”

Fontaines D.C.–“Too Real”

Fontaines D.C.–“Televised Mind”

Fontaines D.C.–“Chequeless Reckless”

Fontaines D.C.–“A Hero’s Death”

Fontaines D.C.–“Boys in the Better Land”

*

Since last week, my primary work focus has been drafting chapter three of _Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory_.  I've written the introductory section of the chapter, and sections identifying and summarily explaining key ideas from Marx's _Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844_, Durkheim's _Suicide: a Study in Sociology_, and Freud's _Civilization and Its Discontents.  I'm also about half-way through writing a series of concrete illustrations of these key ideas, making use of a number of hypothetical individuals (a technique I make use of periodically in teaching) as well as personal connections.  I still need to finish this last piece of writing, write a section that brings all three books of critical theory together and identifies major lines of connection among them, and then write six further sections, involving encounters and dialogues between these three books and Ian Curtis and Joy Division as represented, in turn, by the songs “Shadowplay,” “I Remember Nothing,” “Isolation,” “A Means to an End,” “Heart and Soul,” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”  

The illustrations take considerable work, and care, as they are meant just to suggest, somewhat more concretely, what these ideas might appear like, in helping make sense of people's life experiences, and I have to remind myself I am not writing short stories about each of these ‘imaginary characters', just offering illustrative sketches.  Also,  this past Sunday afternoon I decided to re-read through the entirety of chapters one and two of this same book, for continuity purposes, but had to stop because I found myself, oddly enough, feeling somewhat intimidated by the Bob Nowlan who wrote chapter two 

 I am amazed at all of what I did in that chapter, so much of it unlike anything I've ever written before.  But I don't want to put too much pressure on myself in writing chapter three, as it is a different chapter and doing different work than chapter two, and than chapter one.  It's too easy for me to start doubting myself, and I don't want ‘me' to be the one who causes that to happen.

*

Otherwise, this week I can't say I've done anything particularly unusual or exceptional versus what I, and we (Andy and I together), have been doing for much of the past nearly a year and one-half now.  

Andy and I took a 10+ miles walk Sunday and were happy in the course of so doing to encounter first John Stupak and second Bruce Taylor, both retired colleagues of ours.  It's always a pleasure to meet someone we know on these walks, and sometimes I am sure because I've taught so many thousands upon thousands of different students, and these people can change in appearance quite dramatically from when they were students, and even in the years that they are students, that I might not recognize a good number of them at first.  But I welcome students simply re-introducing themselves, and reminding me when we worked together, because I am always happy to meet up with former students as well.  I've taught so many wonderful, outstanding, amazing people I sincerely wish it were easier to maintain ties with a great many more of them than I do.  

I ran Saturday, Tuesday, and today, and my current rate is 4-5 miles per run, 3-4 times a week, with two times a week doing long walks instead.  I continue to appreciate and enjoy running regularly once again, and I even appreciate and enjoy it when I can feel it has proven fairly exhausting by the end, as it readily can running in high heat and humidity outdoors, in the middle of the day, like I did today.  Over the course of the time since I resumed running, in January of this year, I have gained weight for the first time in longer than I can remember, and now weigh between 145 and 150 pounds whereas previously, for many years and decades at that, I always weighed between 140 and 145 pounds.  I am pretty confident this is just additional muscle weight, especially since by body fat measurements continue to oscillate between 10.5 and 12.5 per cent.  I suspect I might have been slightly underweight.

I don't have anything to report as of yet concerning movies or TV shows we have been screening lately or books I have been reading, as we have been trying out a number of different TV series this past week to see what we like and will sustain our interest, and I've just begun reading seven recently acquired books.  I did greatly enjoy the England-Germany Euro Cup match and didn't as much enjoy the earlier Denmark-Wales match.  I will be watching additional matches in the days ahead, and I am excited about doing so.

Other than that I don't know if I have too much to report or worth sharing at the present moment.  Andy and I are taking Casey into meet with our local vet tomorrow morning, which is supposedly for a dental cleaning but we are primarily interested in removing and biopsying a number of bumps Casey has recently developed on his body.  They could be just skin tags, but then again Casey has had cancerous mast cell tumors previously and its possible he might be experiencing cancer once again.  We hope not, but we will be prepared to do the best for and by him, whatever comes.

All best regards everyone!

Bob

***

3 July 2021

I really like this band and their music.  They are clever, insightful, and fun.  Their new album is as impressive as their first two.

SNAPPED ANKLES

July 2 at 5:35 AM

Good morning friends. It’s a proud day in the forest as we finally get to reveal what we’ve been hard at work on for the last year, through leafy lockdowns and woodwose pandemic woes. Our third full album Forest Of Your Problems is out everywhere, and we’re really excited for you to hear it. 

Our plans to see the world and tell them about the Stunning Luxury available to all were abruptly curtailed and like you all we’ve been hunkering down and trying to deal with tangible apocalyptic threats to the modern world. We spent some time in solitude in the forest with the woodwose community and we’re sad to report that there’s been some cracks forming and competing doctrines have emerged.

Some might say that Forest Of Your Problems explores the anxiety and guilt towards the relentless destruction of the planet’s ecosystems. Others might tell you that it’s just us asking which tribe you’re in. The Business Imp, The Nemophile, The Cornucopian and The Protester all want to save you, take you to the moon, smother you in wellness or just sell you a tree to hug. It’s all valid, we can’t tell you what’s right or wrong. Everyone needs a tribe. It’s a dark, fearful world out there. Take care on the path through the forest of your problems.

https://snappedankles.ffm.to/forestofyourproblems.ofp

*

We are concerned again but even much more than ever about our beloved dog and dear friend and vital family member, member of our pack, Casey.   He has cancer once again, at least one mast cell tumor and possibly multiple more.  We pick him up today after he spent the full day prepping for surgery, in surgery, and recovering from surgery yesterday.  We await results from oncology late next week on how widespread the cancer appears to be and what are viable and realistic treatments options if it is not localized. 

But yesterday for the first time it hit me, and hard, that our days together yet ahead may be few and coming to an end, and much sooner than we would like we need to pursue getting a new dog. 

Casey has been so much a presence in our lives in so many ways, and all that much more during these pandemic and slow recovery times as well as working full-time entirely, and by myself, from home that it will definitely hurt a lot if and when he passes on, but with time I will be able fondly to recall beautiful memories of what a fun, funny, silly, playful, affectionate, loving, friendly, smart, and uniquely special dog Casey has been and how fantastic it has been to spend his life with him. 

But I am not ready for that yet, and we hope we still have at least a little while together with Casey yet ahead. 

We also decided since Casey has always been enthusiastically hyper-friendly to all living beings that he would want us to adopt another dog to help us move forward, never forgetting him but not being held back all too much and all too hard by grief over the emptiness his passing will leave in our lives.

***

5 July 2018

Republican bill brings National Anthem to youth sports fields across Wisconsin

I have long found it absurd and even insidious that the Star Spangled Banner is already played as routinely as it is before the start of so many sporting contests.  There’s got to be a great many more concrete, substantial, and impactful ways for people to manifest love of and pride in their country.  Commemorating specific examples of doing so and providing invitations and instructions for how those gathered in attendance as sports spectators could themselves do the same, as engaged citizens, instead of playing the Star Spangled Banner all the time would be a worthwhile change.  

I think we would start to witness more of a retreat from these ridiculous legislative overreach proposals if every public meeting or event of every kind, in any way or degree dependent on public support, required the playing of the Star Spangled Banner before it started. 

After all, why just sporting events?  But then again too many people might actually want to do this.

Imagine, at my job, for instance, if every class, every department/program/committee/senate/administrative/student organization/etc. meeting began with the mandated playing of this song. 

I would hope it would be experienced as an oppressively excessive and unnecessary imposition.  But perhaps, disturbingly, it would become so familiar as to seem natural, normal, inevitable, and beyond question.

***

8 July 2021

Tonight, Thursday 8 July 2021, I will be hosting the 834th consecutive weekly run of Insurgence, show #52 of year #16 of Insurgence.  Next week will mark the beginning of my 17th year producing and hosting Insurgence, with my 835th consecutive weekly show.  Tonight I will play music from Snapped Ankles, Sault, Gang of Four & 3D, JJ Sterry, La Roux, Everything Everything, Dado Villa-Lobos, The Sounds, and Sekar Melati.  As always, 10 pm to midnight US Central Time on WHYS, Eau Claire Community Radio; 96.3 FM and streaming at www.whysradio.org

https://snappedankles.com

https://www.sault.global

https://theproblemofleisure.com

*

Andy and I picked up Casey this past Saturday morning from Oakwood Hills Animal Hospital after his surgery Friday.  Casey was recovering reasonably well from the anesthesia, although coughing more than normal for the first few days as undoubtedly the tube caused some throat irritation for him as it did for me this past January, the last time I underwent generalized anesthesia.  

Gradually he has returned to the state he was right before this most recent surgery, which unfortunately is still quite far from what he was like up until April of this year, when his Rapid Acquired Retinal Degeneration hit.  

Casey used to love chewing on bully sticks of various kinds and carrying fleece pet blankets all about, while playing with them in numerous ways, and he also used to love to race around the house, playing diverse games with us and with the cats, running back and forth greeting us excitedly with his whole back end wagging, and he used to like to follow us everywhere about the house as well as to take long walks and do so quite briskly, usually pulling into the lead.  Casey doesn’t do almost any of that anymore, and he hasn’t even barked once in several months now.  

He does meander about the house, attempting to navigate the territory as best he can without seeing any of it, and he does greatly appreciate being touched, sharing popcorn with us, and sleeping at the foot of our bed.  He does require considerable reassurance these days, entirely understandably, and we are happy to do our best to try to give this, although it makes for somewhat more restless nights, as he prefers to be touching one of us throughout the night just to make sure we are there, and periodically needs to be petted and stroked over the course of the night.  Casey has long been a dog who unusually loves being held and even hugged, so we continue to do that as often as we can.  

All in all, though, the proliferation of bumps near the surface of his fur strikes both of us as indicative the end may well be near for Casey.  We are still awaiting word from oncology on the biopses they took last Friday, but we are ready to start discussing end of life decisions as need be, while wanting to get a better sense not only of what these bumps are, but also to what extent they are causing him pain, along with what kinds of treatment options are possible, with what side effects, and with what prognosis for significant improvement–especially if this is spreading skin cancer, and if the recommendation in response, for treatment, involves some combination of radiation and chemotherapy.  

It’s very sad and difficult, for sure, but Casey’s quality of life is crucial to us, and will play a key role in our decisions to come.

*

This past week I’ve mostly been working on the song “Shadowplay” and connections between that song and Marx’s _Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844_, Durkheim’s _Suicide: a Study in Sociolog_, and Freud’s _Civilization & Its Discontents_, for chapter three of _Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory_ but have also begun with each of the further five Joy Division songs I am dealing with in this chapter: “I Remember Nothing,” “Isolation,” “A Means to an End,” “Heart and Soul,” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”  It’s a slow, careful process but I am pleased that it continues to feel exciting as even after all of these years of devotion to this music I listen to a song like “Shadowplay” and right away think “what a brilliant song” and want to applaud, even in my study, all by myself.

*

Among the many books I am currently reading, and have recently read, I completed the posthumously just released Richard Wright novel, _The Man Who Lived Underground_, which I found powerfully compelling, and, as Wright himself suggests, in a long essay reflecting on sources and influences for this novel, as well as his process in writing it, this is a strikingly surrealistic novel.  I have long greatly appreciated Wright’s work, frequently years ago teaching _Native Son_, and am happy the full novel, only previously released in a severely truncated version as a short story is now finally available. 

Richard Wright: The Man Who Lived Underground

*

I am also finding _The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together_ by Heather McGhee most compelling as well.  McGhee challenges and critiques zero-sum assumptions linked with divide and conquer strategies and tactics, and while showing Black and Brown Americans tend across the board most often to suffer the worst deprivations, White Americans in large numbers do as well–on account of racism being effectively deployed for decades now to undermine support among White Americans for social welfare, public spending, the social safety net, and government involvement in and assistance dealing with education, health care, housing, rate of pay and provision of additional benefits directed associated with the job, working conditions, unionization, civic and community resources, and so much more.  

White people, McGhee convincingly demonstrates, have been hurting themselves over and over again, in serious and significant ways, by way of suspicion and hostility directed toward investment of economic and social resources that can and do help Black and Brown poor and working class, and middle class, individuals and communities–but also can and do help White poor and working class, and middle class, individuals and communities.  McGhee has done a considerable work reaching out and listening to White people, including those who contend Black and Brown people are being given and have been given unfair advantages over White people.  

As Penguin Books indicates:

“Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out?  

McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm—the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country—from parks and pools to functioning schools—have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare. 

But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: gains that come when people come together across race, to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our own. 

_The Sum of Us_ is a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here: divided and self-destructing, materially rich but spiritually starved and vastly unequal. McGhee marshals economic and sociological research to paint an irrefutable story of racism’s costs, but at the heart of the book are the humble stories of people yearning to be part of a better America, including white supremacy’s collateral victims: white people themselves. With startling empathy, this heartfelt message from a Black woman to a multiracial America leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game.”

The Sum of Us WHAT RACISM COSTS EVERYONE AND HOW WE CAN PROSPER TOGETHER By HEATHER MCGHEE

*

Among many TV shows and films Andy and I have recently screened, we recently completed season one of _Pagan Peak_ (_Der Pass_), inspired, like _The Tunnel_, by _The Bridge_, this time involving a collaboration between German and Austrian police confronting a diabolical killer who operates principally in a snowy mountainous region at and across the border between these two nations.  

Like with its predecessors the two principal detectives in _Pagan Peak_ maintain many strikingly opposite characteristics but both learn and benefit from, and change in relation to, each other, as they closely collaborate; the killer is multi-tech super-savvy, cloaks his vicious and brutal killings in a grandiose mystical apocalyptic philosophical cum political attempt at explanation/justification, and takes advantage of a leading news reporter to help publicize his murderous campaign.  And as with its predecessors the opening murdered body is found across the border and is staged in a mysteriously symbolic as well as gruesomely disturbing way.  

Yet Pagan Peak makes ‘The Bridge formula’ very much its own, with many distinctive features and plenty of suspense and intrigue even if it is, like its predecessors, a quite brutal show.  

Pagan Peak

*

Otherwise Andy and I took two excellent long walks this past weekend, and it was great to encounter Blake Westerlund and his son Sam at Olson’s Ice Cream Shop on Saturday.  Blake always proves amazingly and exceptionally effective in every encounter I ever have with him of making me feel all the better about myself–an extraordinary and vitally necessary talent.  

I’ve also gone for runs Monday and Wednesday, and although on Monday I needed to stop and walk somewhat short of my ultimate goal, because it was so incredibly hot and humid, yesterday in the much cooler and gently drizzling conditions I ran five miles with ease–the easiest run I’ve yet done.  Running regularly in high heat and humidity as I have been doing so often this spring/summer is going to make running in cooler (although not cold) conditions all that much easier.  I’m happy about that and pleased I ran five miles last Friday as well.  

I met up with Peter Hart-Brinson yesterday and that was definitely great as well, talking about our prospective upcoming 2020-2021 Empowerment Through Solidarity Progressive Film Series and Festival and many other matters.  

Tomorrow I have my latest PSA test to check on whether I might have prostate cancer; I am hopeful this will turn out well.  

And I’ve been following England’s push to the Euro 2020 final with considerable relish and enthusiasm as well.  

That’s about it, for what I can think of sharing, other than noting Andy continues to do many household repair jobs as well as create useful household devices with his 3D printer, to workout regularly at Planet Fitness, and do a significant amount of reading himself, both science fiction and for a campus reading/discussion group dealing with an important book encompassing perspectives on the history of mathematics outside of and beyond familiar Western sources.  

I wish everyone out there all the best.  

Bob

***

Many have commended this but I also do as well–English Manager Gareth Southgate's “Dear England” letter/essay published in _The Players' Tribune_ at the start of the Euro 2020 Cup competition earlier this June 2021:

Dear England by Gareth Southgate

“Our players are role models. And, beyond the confines of the pitch, we must recognise the impact they can have on society. We must give them the confidence to stand up for their teammates and the things that matter to them as people.

I have never believed that we should just stick to football.

I know my voice carries weight, not because of who I am but because of the position that I hold. At home, I’m below the kids and the dogs in the pecking order but publicly I am the England men’s football team manager. I have a responsibility to the wider community to use my voice, and so do the players.

It’s their duty to continue to interact with the public on matters such as equality, inclusivity and racial injustice, while using the power of their voices to help put debates on the table, raise awareness and educate.”

*

“Why would you tag someone in on a conversation that is abusive?

Why would you choose to insult somebody for something as ridiculous as the colour of their skin?

Why?

Unfortunately for those people that engage in that kind of behaviour, I have some bad news. You’re on the losing side. It’s clear to me that we are heading for a much more tolerant and understanding society, and I know our lads will be a big part of that.

It might not feel like it at times, but it’s true. The awareness around inequality and the discussions on race have gone to a different level in the last 12 months alone.

I am confident that young kids of today will grow up baffled by old attitudes and ways of thinking.”

Tonight on Insurgence, Insurgence #832, the 50th show of year 16 of Insurgence I will be playing music from Adrian Crowley, FACS, The Cramps, and Squid.  Insurgence, Thursdays 10 pm to midnight US Central Time, on WHYS Community Radio, 96.3 FM Eau Claire, and streaming, via the web, at: www.whysradio.org  

It is remarkable, even though I often don’t take time to reflect on it as such, that I have now nearly completed sixteen years of weekly Insurgence shows, without missing a single week, and will soon start on year seventeen.  I have loved doing this show and continue to love doing it; I aim to continue for a long time yet to come.

*

Since returning from our brief venture to the Twin Cities metro area last week Andy and I walked over 13 miles Saturday, while stopping twice to spend time at the Eau Claire Juneteenth commemoration and celebration at Carson Park, where it was great to meet up in person with a number of friends I and we have sorely missed all these many months of pandemic-necessitated physical social distancing, and I appreciate the large turnout, all the tabling, the many diverse musical performers, and the organizers, especially the amazing and incomparable Selika Ducksworth-Lawton. 

I’ve also ran four miles last Friday, five miles this Monday, four miles Wednesday (yesterday), and plan to run again tomorrow, this Friday, while I hope rain will permit Andy and I to take long walks once more this Saturday and Sunday.  

Andy has been working out regularly at Planet Fitness while I’ve also been doing a lot of stretching, although it always seems to me, that at my age, and especially as I am running again regularly, that I can and should do even more.  I am contemplating transforming my campus office space by the time I return from extended scholarly leave not only to accommodate a sit-stand desktop but also a variety of stretching devices and places to do stretching in my office.

*

This week’s principal work so far has involved taking detailed notes from and on Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Emile Durkheim’s Suicide: a Study in Sociology, and Sigmund Freud’s Civilization & Its Discontents as I proceed in work on chapter three of Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory in which I am staging an encounter and a dialogue between these three books and Ian Curtis and Joy Division, with the latter represented by six songs: “Shadowplay,” “I Remember Nothing,” “Isolation,” “A Means to an End,” “Heart and Soul,” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” 

I am taking my time, working slowly and carefully on this chapter, because it marks a departure from what I have yet done so far, in the first two chapters of this book, and encompasses a host of different engagements, including the always daunting challenge I have accepted with this book, of writing it as a part-memoir, but this chapter will serve as a model for what I will then do in the next and final three chapters of the book where what will change, principally, each time, will be the three books of critical theory and the six Joy Division songs serving as the focus of the encounter and dialogue. 

Yet again, as I have shared before in commenting on this writing in process, I never know what kinds of connections I will make until I am in the midst of drafting, and I try to set up each chapter, in both of the books I am currently writing, as a challenge to me to attempt to do what I have never done, or even tried to do, previously–in terms of thinking, feeling, experiencing, and writing.

*

Otherwise, among notable books I have read and am reading, I finished Elizabeth Hinton’s America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s, a most important book, which certainly accomplishes Hinton’s foremost aims of convincingly demonstrating that what have commonly been dismissed as ‘riots’ are actually better, more usefully conceived as ‘rebellions’, that these rebellions have been extensive and persistent, that ‘reform’ is insufficient to address the problem of systemic racism in policing and has been tried over and over again without substantially changing let alone improving all that much, and that the roots of these rebellions lie in socio-economic deprivation and disparity that must be addressed by way of massive reparative investment in poor Black communities while empowering the people of these communities to manage and control what is done and how with this investment.  

Unearthing the Roots of Black Rebellion In “America on Fire,” the historian Elizabeth Hinton offers a sweeping reconsideration of the racial unrest that shook American cities in the 1960s and 70s.

*

And I have read through much of Parm Sindu’s Black and Blue: One Woman’s Story of Policing and Prejudice, which offers a searing indictment of racism and sexism within the British police–and in particular the London Metropolitan Police Service–as well as within British society at large, in a powerful and inspiring memoir of someone who fought through considerable obstacles to reach rare pinnacles of success, for an Asian woman in the MPS, before being brought down by charges of misconduct and tabloid media sensationalism that Sandu convincingly argues would not have led to the same result if she had been a white man. 

Sandhu collaborates with journalist, producer, and writer Stuart Prebble, former head of ITV, in writing this book, but to me at least it feels very personal while also attempting to convey something of the hardened attitude that someone from Sandhu’s background, suffering and struggling versus the multiple kinds of abuse she has faced as well as all the harsh situations that police routinely encounter, must adopt in order to be able to sustain themselves and carry forward.  

I’ve read a substantial number of memoirs recently from Black and Black-Asian-and Other Minority Ethnic Britons recently, including a significant number who have held prominent positions within policing and criminal justice, and I will just add this comprises a most impressive and often riveting if rightly disturbing, challenging, humbling, and yet inspiring array of writing.  When I teach a class on Contemporary Black British Experience, which I aim soon to do, the heart of the reading we will do will be drawn from memoirs and similar non-fictional, including creative non-fictional accounts/collections of essays.

*

Among the TV shows we have recently been screening I will just, for now, highlight Money Murder Zurich, a Swiss crime drama, which focuses on disgraced lawyer Thomas Borchert, who has to fight off criminal charges for offenses far greater than those for which he is responsible, during eight years of work for a telecommunications multinational based in Frankfurt, but soon readapts to his native Zurich and becomes a partner to attorney Dominique Kuster who prefers to take on cases of people who are in serious need and don’t have substantial accumulated resources to support them.  

Borchert acts as a classic noir protagonist, often getting himself (and others immediately around him) into lots of trouble and ample danger, while engaging primarily as a free-wheeling rogue investigator who is certainly willing to push hard, and beyond normative boundaries distinguishing acceptable and legitimate investigative practices from those that are not, in order to get at the truth and to secure justice for his and Kuster’s clients.  

The series is compelling and we have enjoyed proceeding from episode to episode; it needs be so since each episode is 90 minutes and if we didn’t find it so compelling we would be reluctant to devote that much time to it.  

I do appreciate streaming services like MHz and Topic for making many more Continental European dramas available to us, supplementing what we can find through sites like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Acorn TV, BritBox, etc.  I am on the lookout for more TV series of the kinds we enjoy from Africa, South America, and Asia as well.  

Money Murder Zurich Season 1

Money Murder Zurich Season 2

*

I’ve read a number of other books as well, Andy is in a reading group focused on an intriguing book that connects EDI issues with mathematics and he is continuing to make useful devices for us and our household with his 3-D printer while also figuring out how to run the online portion of the UW-Eau Claire Math Lab without Collaborate Ultra, and Casey is at least walking and stumbling about more extensively and more frequently than not too long ago (although he still is often confused and can still readily become frightened and upset).  

In addition, I’ve watched at least portions of a number of Euro 2020 matches and looking forward to more.  

I’ve been trying to keep up with and clear through the massive amounts of email I receive every day, especially from people, organizations, causes, interests, publications, and venues alerting me to issues along one or another avenue of social and political concern, but this can be quite exhausting to do.  

I also had a routine dental appointment Tuesday afternoon and am pleased both the hygienist and dentist suggested everything looks great, other than some stains the hygienist had to help me get at around my wisdom teeth, which yes I still have.  

As a final comment, for this week, I’ve read a number of pieces lately that have stressed the importance, which the authors believe has become increasingly endangered, of being able to listen to, read, and engage not only with positions with which you disagree, even find disturbing and offensive, but also with doubt and uncertainty about complex issues where it can make sense to suggest the truth of what is best, or what is right, is likely actually to be muddier than many are willing or able to acknowledge.  

My thought about this is to stress we are all, always, limited, in many and significant ways, and if we can foreground recognition and acknowledgment of this, while nevertheless being honest and as seems apt and necessary firm in our alignment with, support for, and advocacy of strong positions, on matters of principle, it might help–as will recognizing and respecting all people as multiple, complex, contradictory, and dynamic, while striving to be highly self-critically self-aware and making sure we distinguish sharply and clearly between critique of positions and practices on the one hand versus criticism of persons on the other hand.  And at the same time being open to continually learning and changing as a result of what we learn.  

I think one of the great gains for me of being a teacher, for over thirty-five years now, has been how much I continually learn, and grow and change, as a result of this work, and from what my students share, contribute, and accomplish.  This is an exciting process, and yes sometimes it is scary, but it is immensely rewarding, and this is one of many reasons why I do look forward to returning, full-time, to teaching with the start of the Fall 2022 semester, and am unwilling to speculate for how many years I might well yet continue doing so before finally retiring.

All best regards everyone!

Bob

***

I was happy and moved when Carl Nassib came out publicly as the first openly gay player while actively playing in the National Football League.   It continues to mean a great deal, this kind of representation in arenas which have for so long seemed to exclude people like me, and to be hostile versus people like me, despite my immense love of sports, including American football, since I was a very young boy.

Carl Nassib becomes first active NFL player to come out as gay

Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib becomes first active NFL player to come out as gay He made the announcement in an Instagram post and said he hoped coming out as gay would help increase “visibility.”

***

As I shared on Facebook last Sunday,

I especially recommend this series.   I understand why critics suggest it imagines a French Obama but I think it is more distinctive than that characterization might suggest and President Idder Chaouch, of Algerian descent, played by Roschdy Zem, is ultimately a more radical figure than Obama, while the series does a good job respecting the position that France will never be a nation in which Arab people, of Algerian descent or otherwise, will be fully accepted and equitably included although the series supports President Chaouch’s position that even if most of French history is shameful, and French racism and imperialism have done incredible damage, it is worth striving to create a much better nation, to try to bring that about.  As I was following this series I felt I really would like to find a way to share this with students in classes I will teach to come and that’s usually a sign that a series is especially worthwhile.  

Rebecca Zlotowski, Sabri Louatah Talk ‘Savages,’ Canal Plus’ First Big Fall Series

In indirect connection with Juneteenth here in the US this  show reminds us of how much work yet needs to be done and how much needs to be made up for as well as it is our collective responsibility to take this on but reason for hope, paired with determination, does exist. 

I did appreciate the size of the turnout at the Juneteenth commemoration and celebration at Carson Park here in Eau Claire this afternoon and at the least I think this is a hopeful sign that many people want to do their part to carry on coming to grips with the deep and continuing impact of slavery in defining and staining this nation, as well as the same with systemic racism even more broadly conceived.  And to contribute toward striving to make this nation closer to what it has frequently promised but all too often failed to be.

16 June 2021

This afternoon Andy and I are traveling with Casey to Ham Lake, Minnesota.  Casey's appointment with a veterinary ophthalmologist is tomorrow morning and we hope they will be able to do cataract surgery on Casey to restore his eyesight, which they will unless they discover other as of yet undiagnosed serious problems that prevent it.

We will stay over two nights.  Tomorrow June 17 is Andy's any my 21st wedding anniversary so we will find some ways to celebrate even as Casey is with the vet, having surgery (we hope), and recovering.  We will likely explore some of the area around where we are staying, in Ham Lake, which we have never been to before.

This might well be our only trip out of Eau Claire this summer.  Not only are we awaiting more full and widespread recovery from COVID-19 in destinations to which we would like to travel, but with Casey's health issues we are reluctant to not be with him, taking care of him, and I certainly have lots of ambitious and difficult work, especially writing, I aim to accomplish by September 1.

Tomorrow night my pre-recorded Insurgence show will feature all newly and recently released music from Cabaret Voltaire. 

I ran each of these past two days, and enjoyed that a lot, as I did doing so as well last Thursday, not long after the last time I posted here.  Andy and I took our regular long walks Saturday and Sunday and that was great fun, as always, while we caught the tail end of Pride at Phoenix Park, and were pleased to witness the size and enthusiasm of the crowd, as well as to overhear a great many young people talking afterward about how much they loved their time at this Pride celebration and that it was their ‘biggest' activity since the pandemic hit.  I hope we all can enjoy many more of these big events, with happy, enthusiastic crowds of people sharing together.  We all need it.  

Since last Thursday we finished screening season four of _Unforgotten_ and I'll just comment that it was a devastating conclusion, but as always a most impressive show even at its  most painfully difficult moments. 

Unforgotten Series (Season) Four

Among other shows we have tried out recently not too many of them have yet prompted us to want to continue on from episode to episode but one that has done so is a French TV serial titled _Les Sauvages_ (or ‘The Savages') which is most compelling and includes multiple intriguing intersecting plotlines as part of an innovative yet topical political thriller:

https://www.topic.com/les-sauvages

I will add since I initially posted this recommendation we have finished _Les Sauvages_ and I most definitely highly recommend this series: it is a powerful statement about history, nationality, inclusion/exclusion, hope/despair, race and racism.  If only France did have a President like Idder Chaouch (played by Roschidy Zem).  No president in our country has yet come close to frankly admitting how much this country has done wrong and with what damaging effect while pressing foreword nonetheless in the effort to create a far different and far better future.

We also watched the German feature-length film _Mario_ about challenges gay footballers face, and thought this was also well done.  Preview comments suggested virtually all gay men will find themselves identifying with either Mario or Leon, or both, and I certainly did, although especially with Leon.  I am strongly interested in films about gay people involved in sports, and about lgbtq+ people involved in sports, including fictional and documentary films. 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSqLoAYbUmk

I've done some more reading the last few days, knowing we would be away later this week, and not wanting to have to break up the flow of my work in writing chapter three of my book on Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and critical theory.  One book I read which I definitely strongly appreciated is by Dan Goodley, and is the second edition of _Disability Studies: an Interdiciplinary Introduction_.  Goodley advocates for the importance and value of theory, which I always do as well, and also connects theory with activism and with support of the need for radical social change.  Goodley aligns with critical disability studies, and is well versed across multiple different approaches in critical disability studies.  The book also makes a compelling case for how starting with and foregrounding disability can usefully transform understandings of what it can and should mean to be human.  My own work has intersected with disability studies here and there, and increasingly so, as has my experience, but I hadn't yet read a comprehensive introduction and overview of this vast and steadiy burgeoning field–before reading Goodley's book.  I am interested in the prospect of teaching a class on disability theory/disability studies, and might combine this with teaching critical studies in mental health as the two areas do extensively intersect and overlap.  Disability Studies is an exciting field and critical theory as part of this field usefully challenges commonsensical, dominant, conventional, and traditional understandings of what disability can and should mean, as well as how to engage, in practice, with disability matters.  

https://us.sagepub.com/…/nam/disability-studies/book241927

Actually, most of my teaching interests upon return are in the areas of what we within our department identify as courses in theory and criticism but as need be I will find ways to accommodate what I can as part of course in English literature and culture post-1790; critical studies in film, television, and moving-image culture; and studies in popular texts/popular culture.  I look forward to that time, and I am sure I will be hyper-enthused and hyper-energized to teach classes and work with students again, after two years break, and I hope I can sustain my health and well-being, and my strength and stamina, for multiple years ahead of yet doing so.  

Finally, I did have another six-months' follow-up with my retinologist, which I need to do given the retinal surgeries I have now had in both eyes, and I am pleased everything looked great, while my eyesight has even improved since the last time we met.  Now I just need to hope all turns out well when I'm tested for prostate cancer in early July.  I am optimistic, cautiously so, but certainly optimistic nonetheless.

All best regards everyone!

*

A big adventure for all three of us.  On our way to Ham Lake, Minnesota and for Casey’s specialist eye appointment and we hope surgery tomorrow.

*

*

Critical Race Theory is a deservingly well-respected and well-established mode of critical theory that I have taught often and is no more ‘radical’ than a great many modes of critical theory.  CRT advances compelling arguments concerning vital issues and offers concepts and methods that are highly and widely useful.  CRT does not deserve its demonization from right-wing demagogues, especially since few have taken virtually any time or made virtually any effort to seriously understand it.  This campaign is in itself symptomatic and revealing of the reach and power of systemic racism.  I likely will teach CRT all the more in response and would happily do the same if I lived and worked in any of the states where right-wing officials have been attempting to ban it.  After all I maintain a long history of teaching critical theories that question and challenge cultural and political positions and interests that work to maintain and reproduce the existing social status quo, or to make things much worse—much less free, just, democratic, equitable, and inclusive.

Joint Statement on Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism in American History (June 2021) The American Association of University Professors, the American Historical Association, the Association of American Colleges & Universities, and PEN America have authored a joint statement stating their “firm opposition” to legislation, introduced in at least 20 states, that would restrict the discussion of “divisive concepts” in public education institutions. It is not possible to address divisions that exist, however, without an honest reckoning with their histories. “The clear goal of these efforts is to suppress teaching and learning about the role of racism in the history of the United States,” the letter explains. Education proceeds from exploration, facts, and civil debate. “These legislative efforts,” on the other hand, “seek to substitute political mandates for the considered judgment of professional educators, hindering students’ ability to learn and engage in critical thinking across differences and disagreements. . . . Americans of all ages deserve nothing less than a free and open exchange about history and the forces that shape our world today.” In total, 105 organizations have signed onto the statement.

***

17 June 2021

21 years ago today was one of the greatest, most fantastic moments of my life.  For a long time I never expected I would ever get married or even meet someone with whom I would feel I wanted to do so, even though I long wanted a life-partner, a long-term companion, and a lover who was also my best friend.  Well I found all of that and more with Andy Swanson. If I had to imagine the ideal life-partner for me it would be Andy, always Andy.  I love Andy in so many, many ways for so many, many reasons but I will just mention here he is the kindest, most generous, most gentle, most patient, most caring, most humble, smartest, and most fun person to be with I have ever had the great good fortune to meet and get to know.

*

Mixed results at Casey’s veterinary eye care appointment. It’s not cataracts that are the problem but rather Sudden Acquired Retinal Degeneration (SARD) which at present is untreatable and thereby irreversible. But at least it is not a problem with the optic nerve or the brain which might well have turned out to be due to a major spreading cancer. So Casey will remain a blind dog yet he is doing steadily better at adapting to and accepting this condition; the sudden acute onset was clearly most traumatic. We did what we could and we will continue to adapt to and accept Casey’s blindness with him.

*

Our 21st anniversary was a fine day despite the disappointment over Casey’s vision. But the doctor, technician, and receptionist were most kind and clearly keenly disappointed as well that they couldn’t do surgery to restore Casey’s vision. Casey seemed to enjoy exploring our small hotel room and moving, carefully, up and down stairs as well as in an adjacent field. The car ride—not so much. Andy and I walked around at Ham Lake Park and at Bunker Hills Park and we enjoyed that, especially the latter although it was extremely hot and sticky. We went to Invictus Brewery right near the National Sports Center for lunch and I had a beer for the first time in a long, long time (perhaps in honor of the fact our marriage is now legally old enough to drink alcohol). We drove into Downtown Minneapolis for dinner where the staff at the restaurant surprised us by decorating our table with glitter stars, and giving us each free glasses of champagne as well as a free dessert plate in honor of our anniversary. I didn’t expect that at all and I can’t recall any occasion where I ever experienced anything quite like that before. Andy and I tried to remember the last time we have traveled to do anything in Minneapolis other than go to the airport and it seems like that was November 2014. Quite stunning how long it has been given how often we used to visit for films, plays, concerts, gigs, festivals, walking about, and much more in the now increasingly distant past. But that reinforces what a hectic and demanding last six and one-half years this has been for us and how much changed for us once we determined I couldn’t drive (night blindness and epileptic seizures) so Andy has to do all the driving. If this is our only venture out of the Chippewa Valley this summer I am happy with it. I am glad we tried specialized help for Casey. And at least now I have actually seen some of Ham Lake, Blaine, Andover, Arden Hills, Fridley, Coon Rapids, and Brooklyn Center. It’s good to be home, I am happy that Eau Claire is my home city, and I think it is amazing that I have now lived more years in Eau Claire—24 going on 25–by far than I have lived in any other city or town, more than twice as many years at that versus any other location. I will be easing myself back into full-time work within the next few days but today, beyond unpacking and welcoming back our lovely cats Star and Jet I enjoyed watching England versus Scotland as part of Euro 2020 (I had a hard time deciding who to root for and fittingly, for me at least, it ended 0-0), and I took a four mile run including hills in the 88 degrees Fahrenheit heat and felt fine all the way through while increasing my pace as well. And Andy has the chance to workout at Planet Fitness which he loves to do so we are doing fine. Casey too—he now truly does seem to wander about and remap the territory in our house by means of smell, touch, and sound. All the best everyone. Thanks everyone for their recognition of our anniversary and for their care about Casey.

15 April 2021

Unfortunately I don't have the time today to share an elaborate report/reflection on what I have been up to in the last seven days, but I will mention quickly that tonight is Insurgence #822, the 40th show of year 16 of Insurgence, and I will be playing music from The Underground Youth, I Have a Love, and Alan Vega.  As always, Thursdays 10 pm to midnight US Central Time on WHYS Community Radio, 96.3 FM Eau Claire and streaming, via the web, at: www.whysradio.org 

One other quick comment: meeting with a physical therapist this morning for the tendinitis in my right shoulder (I am confident I/we will take care of this and are already doing so), he told me, as a 41 year old who has long enjoyed running regularly but has worried about being able to continue as he grows older, ‘I am his inspiration'.  That's flattering, I appreciate it, but somewhat startling as I have hardly expected I would become anyone's inspiration by resuming running regularly as I near my 60th birthday (in less than a month now).  I suppose it makes sense though.  The slight complication: I am an inspiration because I am doing this even though I am old 

 Best regards everyone.

Here's the playlist for the 15 April 2021 edition of Insurgence:

April 15, 2021

1.

The Underground Youth–“Sins”

The Underground Youth–“Last Exit to Nowhere”

The Underground Youth–“The Death of the Author”

The Underground Youth–“Blind II”

The Underground Youth–“I Can’t Resist”

2.

The Underground Youth–“Vergiss Mich Nicht”

The Underground Youth–“The Falling”

The Underground Youth–“Egyptian Queen”

The Underground Youth–“And I . . .”

The Underground Youth–“A Sorrowful Race”

The Underground Youth–“For You Are the One”

The Underground Youth–“Cabinet of Curiosities”

The Underground Youth–“Letter from a Young Lover”

3.

For Those I Love–“I Have a Love”

For Those I Love–“You Stayed/To Live”

For Those I Love–“To Have You”

For Those I Love–“Top Scheme”

For Those I Love–“The Myth/I Don’t”

For Those I Love–“The Shape of You”

For Those I Love–“Birthday/The Pain”

For Those I Love–“You Live/No One Like You”

For Those I Love–“Leave Me Not Love”

4.

Alan Vega–“Stars”

Alan Vega–“Prayer”

Alan Vega–“Je T’Adore”

Alan Vega–“Every 1's a Winner”

***

16 April 2021

All right, a little about me, since last week: I finished writing my chapter on _Chasing Shadows_ for _21st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide_.  It turned out 48 single-spaced pages in length.  I certainly am using this series to explore and engage a considerable array of topical issues, particularly concerning matters of health, ability, difference, wellness, and especially precarity.  I am now well underway in work on the next chapter, on _Close to the Enemy_, where I am testing the elasticity of ‘crime drama’ as a useful framework for interpretation with a series more readily identifiable as historical (espionage and spy) thriller.  It’s been taking me awhile in my work so far on _Close to the Enemy_ but I expect to finish the synopsis before the end of the day today.  I’ve found with this latest series I’ve wanted to draft each section of the synopsis, on each individual episode, following an introductory section, and then go back to revise and edit that section before proceeding to draft the next section so the whole task is taking longer than otherwise would be the case.  With every one of these chapter essays I also find myself compelled to do considerable research into issues I previously knew little about, as well as need to figure out my interpretations as I proceed, in the course of writing–an exciting yet daunting challenge for sure.  With _Close to the Enemy_ I am exploring and engaging conversations and debates concerning how far it is possible to stretch the conceptual category ‘crime’ as well as when and where discourses of crime and criminality–and even critical criminology–become problematically limiting and deficient, as advocates and practitioners of zemiology tend to argue.  I have just finished reading Steve Tombs and Victoria Channing’s _From Social Harm to Zemiology: a Critical Introduction_, one of multiple zemiology books I have read during this sabbatical leave.  I find zemiology, which focuses on social and ecological harms beyond those readily definable as crimes, and which tend to be  systemic, to be an intriguing new intellectual (and activist) field of praxis.

*

The killing of Daunte Wright and Cam Toledo, as well as far too many other all too persistently outrageous racist actions committed by police against Black Americans and other BIPOC in America that I have also been following, underscore the continuing urgent need for radical transformation of policing in America, and I certainly can well understand why the Black Lives Matter movement calls for police abolition.  I sympathize with this position.  I am definitely bringing that perspective to bear in the work I am doing, in writing _21st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide_.  But I do offer a more modest yet nonetheless significant proposal, short of more far-reaching changes that will still prove necessary even beyond what I propose, and that is to change police practice throughout the US so police never routinely carry guns, and only access firearms in exceptional emergency situations where they need top-level pre-authorization to do so, and that means those in charge of police forces are always fully responsible, and fully accountable, for all of what happens on the rare occasions when police do use firearms.  Police do not need to carry guns to do the vast amount of work police are ostensibly supposed to be doing, to protect and serve, and certainly not if police forces are serious about shifting from a ‘warrior’ to a ‘guardian’ mentality as well as practical model of what policing should aspire to be and do.  After all, in other nations police do not routinely carry guns, and need top-level pre-authorization to do so in emergency situations; the US can–and should–follow those other countries’ examples.  Yes, too many guns are all too readily available everywhere to too many Americans, far beyond police officers alone, with a great many of these guns maintaining no practical purpose other than to enable someone rapidly to kill a great many other people, and we do urgently need to transform this situation, but if police are supposed to protect and serve, not kill and destroy, it is entirely reasonable to demand they set a useful example by practicing peaceful means of engaging with harms and disputes as well as peaceful means of fostering and contributing to community safety and protection.  It is sickening, the police murder of all too many Black and Brown boys and young men.  Yes, I think of what this would be like if those murdered were family members, close friends, neighbors, co-workers, and fellow community residents–and often enough indeed they are–but I also think about what if this were me, and what if my life was violently cut off by those ostensibly empowered to protect and serve me, entirely inexcusably, at a tragically young age.  In my own life-experience I have once found a sustained personal encounter with police to be positively helpful, and in fact it was considerably so, but other than that one instance every other such sustained encounter has left me at best unsettled and at worst outraged.  And I write this as someone who well recognizes I am privileged as a white person not to be at constant risk of police harassment, abuse, and violence on account of the color of my skin.  Change must happen.

*

I played the entire eponymous debut album of For Those I Love, aka David Balfe, last night.  It is a stunningly moving expression of tremendous love for a best friend, a mate, Paul Curran, who died by suicide in his 20s in 2018, using enormous grief and passionate love as a basis for a searching reflection on David's, Paul's, family's, friends', neighbors', and community members' lives and loves, all from working class North Dublin, exploring and commenting on the ups and downs, joys and sorrows, indelible memories and searing impacts of what they have experienced that has shaped them to be who they are.

For Those I Love: I Have a Love

*

Some good news for the day: the bladder cancer for which I had surgery to remove a tumor in January has not returned, and the doctor tells me we don't need to check on this again until next January, from which point forward, if all turns out well then too, as he predicts will be the case, we will then check again, once each following year.  

A blood test from last Friday suggested I might have prostate cancer, but multiple other possibilities are just as viable, and since I am asymptomatic the nurse practitioner proposed we will retest this once every three months.  

I am feeling good so I am optimistic I am at present entirely cancer-free and will proceed forward with the assumption this is the case.  

Life immediately ahead is full of exciting things to do, especially my two writing projects, but also with lots of reading, screening, listening, preparing prospective future classes, preparing a prospective future film series and festival, walking and running, and I am enthusiastic about taking all of this on.

*

I am saddened she has died so young.  She was most impressive as the principal protagonist, Emma Banville, in the recent British TV crime drama _Fearless_.

Helen McCrory, star of Peaky Blinders and Harry Potter, dies aged 52

***

17 April 2021

A great article about one of my all-time favorite musicians. I always loved the music of Alan Vega, Martin Rev, and Suicide even when a great many others found it altogether baffling or off-putting.

Alan Vega Left a Robust Vault. The Excavation Begins With a New Album.

*

Tonight is the fourth night of celebration of Andy’s birthday (why not make it a week :)). A tremendous human being, the love of my life.

***

22 April 2021

Just to check-in quickly, for this week, tonight on Insurgence #823 I will be playing music from For Those I Love, Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, Citizen, and The Underground Youth.  

 I have been immersed in work writing a chapter on the TV series _Close to the Enemy_ for my book in progress, _21st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide_.  I have completed the draft for the first reading in the critique section of this chapter, and next need to draft the second reading and the conclusion for the same critique section, revise/edit/proofread the whole chapter draft, and prepare and append a works cited listing.  

 My reaction to the jury verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial for the killing of George Floyd was, like that of many, relief that the verdict went the way it did, on all three charges.  I hope this verdict will represent the beginning of real accountability and substantial reform of police practices, but that has yet to be determined and I expect it will continue to prove a long and difficult struggle to work in those directions.  Yes, the jury in this trial did agree that Chauvin must be held accountable for what he did, and as a cartoonist for the _Minneapolis Star-Tribune_ indicated, that Black Lives (Do) Matter.  However, this jury verdict is only a bare beginning in realizing justice, especially in any kind of genuinely restorative and transformative sense.  And it does not take away from the fact that George Floyd was tragically unnecessarily killed–or that the same has happened and continues to happen to all too many especially people of color, and in particular Black boys and men, in this country, at the hands of police officers.  Passing and implementing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would certainly be of positive value, yet so much more also needs to be done, and urgently so.  These kinds of killings should not be happening; they should be intolerable–and ultimately inconceivable.

 I agree with the vast majority of those who have responded critically versus the proposed European Super League, for European football (soccer), but I also believe problematic tendencies exemplified by this prospective league have already been developing, and building, for a long time now, while European football all too often is not what a great many fans would like to believe it continues to be.  Following the German model, requiring that all football teams be majority fan-owned, would be a valuable start toward bringing about more far-reaching positive change.

 Last week I didn’t have the time to mention Andy and I had recently screened _The Sound of Metal_, which we appreciated, and thought was well-done, not just Riz Ahmed’s performance, as impressive as that was, but also Paul Raci as Joe and the entire conceit of the camp Joe runs and the work he and others do within this camp in advocating that deafness not be engaged as a disability that renders those who are deaf lesser and deficient, such that any deaf person would do anything they possibly could to overcome their deafness, but rather an alternative way of being in the world and relating to other people.  The sound design was compelling in helping audiences gain some appreciation for what Ahmed’s character Ruben Stone, and other deaf characters in the film, are experiencing, and the film, we found, moved quickly, while we also appreciated the portrayal of two characters who needed each other, when they were both struggling, Ruben and Lou, yet were able to recognize this is what their relationship enabled for each of them and that they each can and should move on, in different directions, by the end of the film.

 We also around the same time watched the 2015 film _Life_ directed by Anton Corbijn, focused on the relationship that developed between _Life Magazine_ photographer Dennis Stock and James Dean as Stock pursued a photo shoot for the magazine on the actor, seemingly prompted largely by an impression, or a hunch, that Dean represented a strikingly novel kind of actor, with the resulting photo shoot contributing significantly to the star image surrounding James Dean.  This was a quiet film that demonstrated a photographer’s appreciation for a photographer’s story, and prompted me to think about what I never knew or had long forgot I knew about James Dean.

 As far as TV shows are concerned, of late we have been screening _The Court_, an Icelandic crime drama; _Wolfland_, a German crime drama; and several other longer running crime dramas, as well as a crime documentary, a number of gay short films, _Bannan_ (which I’ve mentioned previously, a Scottish Gaelic-language TV drama set on the Isle of Skye), and several TV quiz and design shows.  I am thinking I am forgetting some of what we have viewed recently, because we have been exploring widely, but this is a sample.

 Among a large number of books I am currently reading, or have just finished reading, I’ll mention Sathnam Sanghera’s _Empireland: How Imperialism Shaped Modern Britain_.  I found this book most compelling, and I think Sanghera writes this book in such an accessible and engaging way that he might well be able to convince at least some apologists for the empire, or some others who are blithely content to remain largely ignorant about the empire or who believe the empire was unremarkably positive for all involved.  Sanghera certainly does an excellent job showing the shaping impact of the empire pervading British culture to this day.  

 I have been keeping reasonably active with long walks, running, and lots of stretching, including as recommended by the physical therapist I recently met due to tendinitis in my right shoulder.  Andy is doing well in slowly but surely running a little more day by day, which is all new for him, but I am confident he will continue to make good progress.

 Our ten-years-old dog Casey it turns out has multiple eye problems, including cataracts in both eyes, but also irritation to the corneas which we are treating, and this has explained why he relatively suddenly seems to have been acting much older, notably slower in moving about as well as bumping into things periodically.  We are doing our best to help him.   

 If I think of other things worth sharing I will do so within the next few days.  But, all in all, we are doing well, and I hope those of you reading this are also.

*

The playlist for the 22 April 2021 edition of Insurgence

April 22, 2021

1.

For Those I Love–“I Have a Love”

For Those I Love–“To Have You”

For Those I Love–“Top Scheme”

For Those I Love–“Birthday/The Pain”

For Those I Love–“Leave Me Not Love”

2.

Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School of Medicine–“Satan’s Combover”

Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School of Medicine–“People With Too Much Time on Their Hands”

Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School of Medicine–“A Boring Day is What I Need”

Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School of Medicine–“We Created Putin”

Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School of Medicine–“The Ghost of Vince Lombardi”

Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School of Medicine–“No More Selfies”

Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School of Medicine–“The Last Big Gulp”

Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School of Medicine–“Taliban USA”

Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School of Medicine–“Let’s Go Stare at Bloody Dead People”

Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School of Medicine–“Tea Party Revenge Porn”

3.

Citizen–“Death Dance Approximately”

Citizen–“I Want to Kill You”

Citizen–“Blue Sunday”

Citizen–“Thin Air”

Citizen–“Call Your Bluff”

Citizen–“Pedestal”

Citizen–“Fight Beat”

Citizen–“Black and Red”

Citizen–“Glass World”

Citizen–“Writer Buds”

Citizen–“Edge of the World”

4.

The Underground Youth–“Cabinet of Curiosities”

The Underground Youth–“Letter from a Young Lover”

The Underground Youth–“I Can’t Resist”

***

3 May 2021

The last couple of weeks I have fallen short of my goal to share once a week some of what I have been up to, over the course of the preceding week.  I'll share a little now.  I've been working hard to write a chapter on _Close to the Enemy_ for _21st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide_, which I finally finished yesterday evening.  The chapter is 69 single-spaced typed pages long; I've used it to address a host of issues, exploring and engaging many diverse connections.  As I work on these two books that I am writing they continue to move further from what I initially envisioned they would be like, but that is to be expected.  I am discovering as I am writing.  I will mention here the books address an audience that I suggest is closer to a cross between a scholarly audience and a general audience than the latter.  But that's about all I will share for now concerning changes since I began writing last August.  I will however add I have now written a total of 410 single-spaced typed pages since this January, adding to the 450 such pages I wrote from August through December last year.  After writing about one more series, _The Bodyguard_, I will take a short break, as I feel about as tired as I ever do by the end of a semester, or an academic year, despite the entirely different focus and range of activity I have been pursuing.  By the time I complete that chapter on _The Bodyguard_ Andy should have finished his Spring 2021 semester and we can take a short break together (staying here in Eau Claire) before I move on to yet further writing of yet additional chapters.  

*

As far as the situation that has developed between Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers is concerned I will only comment it makes me sad.  I don't want to make any judgments or cast any aspersions in any direction.  I just feel sad.  I still hope reconciliation is possible.  Despite being a devoted Packers' fan for a great many years Aaron Rodgers remains the only Packers' player whose jersey I have ever purchased and worn; I've acquired a considerable amount of other Packers' gear, including two shares in the franchise, but never another player's jersey.  It's been incredible to follow his career and achievements with the Packers.  I am grateful for that.

*

Our dog Casey is experiencing significant new challenges, and we are with him, as his eyesight is now so poor that, as Andy says, if he were a human we would likely describe him as legally blind.  Casey can't see as well as either Andy or I can when not wearing our eyeglasses, and that's definitely pretty bad.  So we are learning and adapting.  I feel a cringing sense of unease about some of the items that are available to help dogs like Casey because they boldly declare ‘blind dog' on them but I suppose it is just as well everyone knows, and if these devices help then that will be good.  We want him to enjoy a high quality life, as far as possible, even with seriously impaired vision, and we will aim to make that happen.

*

Here's the playlist from last Thursday's playlist for Insurgence #824:

April 29, 2021

1.

Citizen–“I Want to Kill You”

Citizen–“Blue Sunday”

Citizen–“Thin Air”

Citizen–“Call Your Bluff”

Citizen–“Edge of the World”

2.

Alan Vega–“Trinity”

Alan Vega–“Fist”

Alan Vega–“Muscles”

Alan Vega–“Samurai”

Alan Vega–“Filthy”

Alan Vega–“Nike Soldier”

Alan Vega–“Psalm 68″

Alan Vega–“Breathe”

3.

Chris Pierce–“American Silence”

Chris Pierce–“Sound All the Bells”

Chris Pierce–“Chain Gang Fourth of July”

Chris Pierce–“Bring the Old Man Home”

Chris Pierce–“San Francisco Bay”

Chris Pierce–“How Can Anyone Be Okay With This”

Chris Pierce–“It’s Been Burning for a While”

Chris Pierce–“Residential School”

Chris Pierce–“The Bridge of John”

Chris Pierce–“Young Black and Beautiful”

4.

Suicide–“Juke Box Baby”

Revolutionary Corps of Teenage Jesus–“American”

Suicide–“Harlem II”

Suicide–“Cheree”

Revolutionary Corps of Teenage Jesus–“Who Cares Who Dies”

Suicide–“Dream Baby Dream”

Alan Vega–“Every 1's a Winner”

Suicide–“Ghost Rider”

*

I have been continuing active with running, walking, and stretching.  Andy and I enjoyed two excellent long walks the last two days, with the warm (on Saturday hot and sunny) weather, and with the rest of the activity I have been doing the last four to five months long walks now feel very easy. but no less enjoyable.  I do need to attend to more routine aches and pains surrounding physical activity, especially running, than I did when younger, and that has required some effort and patience, but I'm doing OK with that.  Also, I'm struck by how seriously Mayo Clinic Health Systems Eau Claire has taken physical therapy, as I've now had three consecutive weekly sessions for tendinitis in my right shoulder, received two series of dry needle treatments, and each week received a new batch of stretching exercises I am instructed to do.  I'm almost at the point of wishing these appointments would end just so I'm not asked to add even more stretching exercises onto the list I've already accumulated that I'm supposed to do in a series of reps twice each day.  Adding these stretching exercises to learning how to do dynamic stretches for running, as opposed to static stretches (which is what I learned long ago), I'm trying to do a lot of stretching these days.  I hope it helps me, long-term.

*

I will just close for now by mentioning as my 60th birthday is due this Thursday I find it hard to believe I am that old, and I'm amazed all that time has passed.  Even if I certainly do experience the physical wear and tear of aging, in multiple ways and to multiple degrees, I often still think about and feel myself to be a young person, or at least not an old person.  Nevertheless, I do find myself experiencing more of a personal sense of antipathy towards instances of ageism, whenever and wherever I encounter these, such as versus those Republican critics of President Biden who can't seem to find anything else to focus their criticism on other than he looks, sounds, and acts ‘old', while falsely imagining this necessarily means he is incapable.  I watched and listened to his address to Congress last week and I found it neither ‘boring' nor at all like ‘watching and listening to a corpse'.  Absurd.  As for the lazy all-purpose charge of ‘socialism': Biden's proposals at best are ‘social democratic', not ‘socialist', as they don't encompass collective ownership (worker/community/public ownership) of social wealth.  And besides which, why shouldn't government, and the larger state, do more than facilitate capital profit and accumulation as well as provide for military and closely related kinds of expenses–why not tackle major social problems that private interests, and market forces, cannot alone effectively even begin to address (and if anything for which they are often chiefly responsible).  That doesn't even require socialism, per se.  

*  

Happy Monday and a belated May Day greetings everyone!

***

6 May 2021

60 years old today.  Hard to believe.  I am doing well.

***

7 May 2021

I want to thank everyone for all your fantastic happy birthday wishes and greetings.  I am sincerely grateful for you taking the time to recognize me, on this occasion, and wish me well.  I most definitely appreciate my connections with all of you.  

Yesterday I prepared my radio show which I dj-ed later that night featuring music from Cabaret Voltaire, Snapped Ankles, and Fontaines D.C.  825 consecutive weeks running now, and 43 weeks through year sixteen!  

I also began reading each of seven different books.  I do this to get an initial good sense of what they will each be like, and what I am likely to experience, and discover, as I proceed; then I zero in to focus on finishing one to three at a time.  

I brainstormed how I will approach the sections of the chapter I will be shortly drafting on the 2018 British TV political thriller/crime drama _The Bodyguard_ (written by Jed Mercurio and starring Richard Madden and Keeley Hawes), which is where I presently am at in ongoing work writing two books.  

Andy and I went to lunch at the Acoustic Cafe and had dinner at home.  We watched an episode of _Dresden Detectives_.  We also are continuing to work to adjust, and help Casey adjust, to Casey now being, for all ostensible purposes, a blind dog.  Quite a change, and quite a challenge. 

And I did some physical therapy stretching exercises.  Today I hope to run this afternoon.  I try to run 3-5 miles every other day, and at least a couple times a week walk at least 6-9 miles.  

Those are the highlights from yesterday.  Andy suggests we will continue to celebrate my 60th birthday this weekend.  

I look forward to continuing to be actively engaged, productive, contributing, and of use, as well as to continuing to explore and discover, for many years yet to come.  I don't have any particular ‘wisdom' to share on what it means to reach the age of 60 because I doubt it makes sense to generalize widely from my own experience.  But life does feel like it goes very fast, and I think I am all the more aware of this of late than in the past, even though this pace of life's passing was hardly something I ever previously ignored, and I want to make the best of my life for as long as I can.  

I wish everyone health and happiness and peace and love.

Bob

***

8 May 2021

Casey wearing the halo and wings device for blind and visually impaired dogs we have recently acquired. We are working on a number of techniques and with a number of devices to help him, and us, adapt as best we can.  With this device, with increased familiarity, he should become more confident resuming greater mobility as he won’t hit his head against obstacles he can’t see but the ‘halo’ will do so instead.  I wish we didn’t have to resort to these kinds of measures but we want him to feel more comfortable once again to move about more widely.  He always used to love to move about, to walk and run.  We hope he will get back to that before too long ahead.

***

13 May 2021

Tonight on Insurgence, Insurgence #826, the 44th show of year 16 of Insurgence, DJ Sean Murphy will play music from Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Dry Cleaning, and Viagra Boys.  As always, you can listen to Insurgence from 10 pm to midnight US Central Time, on WHYS Community Radio, 96.3 FM Eau Claire, and also, streaming, at: www.whysradio.org

*

Since it has been several weeks since I provided a summary overview of what I have been doing I will do so again now.  

My major focus of attention has been work on writing chapters for _21st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide_.  The most recent two have chapters have taken, and are taking, three weeks.  

With _Close to the Enemy_ I needed to work harder to figure out what to do with that show because it is an unconventional choice to include in a book focused on ‘crime drama’ and also because with each chapter I am striving to make connections and engage issues, as well as illustrate concepts and methods, I have not yet previously dealt with in preceding chapters.  

Each chapter requires doing a lot of reading and research to determine what those connections, and issues, will be, along with how best to address them in connection with the TV show in question.  

I also feel a sense of ‘end of the semester fatigue’ even though I am on full-time scholarly leave, and after completing work on the show I am currently writing about, _The Bodyguard_, I will take a short break to rejuvenate.  

With that last chapter on _The Bodyguard_ I will have written a total of 14 chapters since August 1, 2020, on my two books, _21st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide_ and_ Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory_.  The total I need to complete is 30 chapters between the two books, which means it is certainly possible that I can finish by the end of my next year of scholarly leave, even though, once again, this will require I devote the overwhelming majority of my working time and energy to these projects.  

_21st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide_ has changed more than _Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory_ since I began writing last August 1st as each chapter centered on a specific crime drama involves me making so many connections and engaging so many issues that these chapters have become lengthy and elaborately detailed, meaning I only need address a total of 23 shows in this way to have more than amply demonstrated and illustrated all of what I set out to accomplish with this book.  

This summer I hope to write four chapters, two for each book: on the shows _New Blood_ and _Hinterland_ for _21st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide_ and with _Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory_ one chapter will stage an encounter and dialogue between Ian Curtis and Joy Division as artistic and cultural phenomenon and Karl Marx’s _The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844_, Émile Durkheim’s _Suicide: a Study in Sociology_, and Sigmund Freud’s _Civilization and Its Discontents_ while a second chapter  will stage an encounter and dialogue between Ian Curtis and Joy Division as artistic and cultural phenomenon and Max Weber’s _Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism_, Louis Althusser’s _On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses_, and Michel Foucault’s _Discipline and Punish_.  

The last two chapters of  _Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory_ will involve, on the one hand, Aimé Césaire’s _Discourse on Colonialism_, Edward Said’s _Representations of the Intellectual_, and Trinh T Minh-ha’s _Woman, Native, Other: Writing, Postcoloniality, and Feminism_, and on the other hand, Avery Gordon’s _Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination_, Robert McRuer’s _Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability_, and Ann Cvetkovich’s _Depression: A Public Feeling_.  

Other TV shows I will address in future chapters of _21st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide_ are _Unforgotten_, _Life on Mars_, _Broadchurch_, _The Fall_, _Inspector George Gently_, _Shetland_, _Suspects_, _Happy Valley_, _Line of Duty_, and _Sherlock_.

*

As I mentioned recently to my friend and colleague Joel Pace, this ‘sabbatical’ has been highly productive for me, and I am doing well, but I nevertheless greatly miss working closely with students and I sincerely miss my many wonderful colleagues as well.

But, as I also mentioned just the other day to my mother, absolutely no way could I have possibly done the work I am doing while otherwise working even part-time teaching and attending to institutional service.

Away from that kind of work this past year I recognize how many daily stresses and strains the job includes that I often don’t even think about as such, which include all the miscellaneous forms, surveys, other responses, meetings, discussions, and attempts to make sense of and figure how best to address and work with ever-changing plans, goals, processes, and so on that administrations are always developing, proposing, and implementing–as well as frequent challenges with technology, hardware and software, in the physical classroom and in the virtual classroom, along with a vast extent of questions and concerns students always bring to bear, along with a real need to invest a considerable effort to be sensitive and responsive to difficulties and challenges students always are experiencing in their lives.

It is extremely difficult to ‘turn all of that off’, even during evenings and on weekends, although I had been doing better in recent years, mostly just accepting it had become too exhausting not to set and adhere to necessary limits.

When I return to full-time teaching and institutional service I am confident I will do all that much better at setting and adhering to even more necessary limits because I now most definitely highly value the opportunity to read, write, and think in relationship to scholarship and scholarly projects, as well as to attend to my physical and mental health proactively and not just reactively, along with saving time, as we used to say back in grad school, ‘just to be human once again’.

*

I am reading many books, but three I recently completed are particularly worthy of mention, and recommendation, here and now:

1.  Guy Standing, _A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens_ a follow-up to his earlier book _The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class_.   As publisher Bloomsbury aptly describes this book:

 Guy Standing's immensely influential 2011 book introduced the Precariat as an emerging mass class, characterized by inequality and insecurity. Standing outlined the increasingly global nature of the Precariat as a social phenomenon, especially in the light of the social unrest characterized by the Occupy movements. He outlined the political risks they might pose, and at what might be done to diminish inequality and allow such workers to find a more stable labour identity. His concept and his conclusions have been widely taken up by thinkers from Noam Chomsky to Zygmunt Bauman, by political activists and by policy-makers.  This new book takes the debate a stage further, looking in more detail at the kind of progressive politics that might form the vision of a Good Society in which such inequality, and the instability it produces, is reduced.  _A Precariat Charter_ discusses how rights – political, civil, social and economic – have been denied to the Precariat, and argues for the importance of redefining our social contract around notions of associational freedom, agency and the commons.

I like Standing’s work, his ideas, and his arguments; he offers many most compelling radical yet practical proposals in his charter and I think all of them–all 29 articles–are fully worthy of support, and adoption.

2.  David Scott, _For Abolition: Essays on Prisons and Socialist Ethics_.  As publisher Waterside aptly describes this book: 

 According to Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) ‘Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.’ Connecting the politics of abolition to wider emancipatory struggles for liberation and social justice, this book argues that penal abolitionism should be understood as an important public critical pedagogy and philosophy of hope that can help to reinvigorate democracy and set society on a pathway towards living in a world without prisons.  _For Abolition_ draws upon the socialist ethics of dignity, empathy, freedom and paradigm of life to systematically critique imprisonment as a state institution characterised by ‘social death’.  A systematic critique of imprisonment which challenges established views and myths. Examines why there still exists so much political and other misguided support for a long failing institution.

I was already supportive of penal abolition before reading this book but Scott adds considerably to the case that can and must be made that prisons and imprisonment are unethical.  Scott’s elaboration of a libertarian socialist ethics is as interesting as are his reports and discussions of reflections from prisoners and prison guards about what prison is like, and how it results in ‘social death’.

3. Mark Neocleous, _A Critical Theory of Police Power_.  As publisher Verso aptly describes this book:

 Neocleous argues for an expanded concept of police, able to account for the range of institutions through which policing takes place. These institutions are concerned not just with the maintenance and reproduction of order, but with its very fabrication, especially the fabrication of a social order founded on wage labour. By situating the police power in relation to both capital and the state and at the heart of the politics of security, the book opens up into an understanding of the ways in which the state administers civil society and fabricates order through law and the ideology of crime. The discretionary violence of the police on the street is thereby connected to the wider administrative powers of the state, and the thud of the truncheon to the dull compulsion of economic relations.

Of these three books this is probably my favorite because it is the most stunningly and usefully provocative.  Neocleous offers a rigorous Marxist critical theory of police and policing that shows how intrinsic police power is, and always has been, to the capitalist state.  This book, like the best of books, challenged my preconceptions and forced me to rethink how I understand police and policing and why.

*

We continue to screen many TV shows late at night, often a significant number of series at any one time, and I undoubtedly won’t recall all of those worth mentioning here but I’ll cite a few:

_Man in Room 301_, a Finnish crime and family drama that does an excellent job of maintaining suspense: 

https://watch.mhzchoice.com/man-in-room-301; 

_The Typist_, a German crime and again family drama, that involves a principal protagonist who compellingly defies perception of what kinds of character she is, and of what she is capable of and willing to do: https://watch.mhzchoice.com/the-typist; and 

_Grace_, starring John Simm as the title character, who I always like, playing a police detective based in Brighton, and based on a series from writer Peter James: https://deadline.com/…/britbox-grace-john-simm-itv…/

*

Otherwise, too many social and political issues ‘in the news’ are engaging my current attention, and are matters of my active concern, for me at present to even begin to address in this space, here and now.  

But I am continuing to do my best to stay healthy–long walks last weekend, on both Saturday and Sunday, and continuing regular running, including a 5-mile run late this morning/early this afternoon.  

The online trainer I have been working most closely with, who himself is an ultramarathon runner, running 100 mile races, advises always setting goals in running, including with every individual run one does, which seems somewhat more serious than where I am at in my life, at present, although entirely understandable for him, but I’ve been thinking a goal I might reasonably aspire toward is to be able to run 10K races (i.e., 6.2 miles).  We’ll see.  

This summer Andy and I will probably pick up the pace by doing biking and hiking as well as walking and running.  I look forward to it. 

Beyond that, our dog Casey’s blindness, which did come on disturbingly fast, and although not complete is close to it, provides us and him with plenty of new challenges.  

We have now arranged an appointment with a dog ophthalmologist in the Twin Cities in June, at which time, if it makes sense to do, Casey will have eye surgery.  

I know for some that might seem as if we going to an extreme ‘for a dog’, but Casey’s been an important member of our family since we first adopted him and we both feel when we adopt a pet we make an effective promise to do everything we possibly can (afford to) do to take care of that pet, and for as long as we can; pugs tend to live longer than larger dogs, so if Casey’s eyesight can be improved even somewhat while he also grows more comfortable with being visually impaired, he could easily live five or more (good) years yet.  

I’ve joked with Andy recently about wanting eventually to adopt a German Shepherd puppy, who we could train to do all kinds of things, and who could go on extended runs, walks, and hikes with me, but Andy’s not so sure about such a big dog, entirely understandably.  

That’s about it for this week.  Once more I greatly appreciate everyone who wished me a happy 60th birthday on and around the 6th of May, and who shared comments on that occasion or otherwise shared thumbs up, and love, responses to the photos I shared of me on that day.  

That’s truly fantastic of you all, especially as I don’t normally these days gain a great many opportunities to interact extensively with many people so it makes me feel good to know many other people out there like, care about, and appreciate me.  

All the best to all of you!

***

20 May 2021

*

The playlist for my 20 May 2021 Insurgence show:

May 20, 2021

1.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor–“Fire at Static Valley”

Godspeed You! Black Emperor–“OUR SIDE HAS TO WIN (for D.H.)”

2.

Squid–“Resolution Square”

Squid–“G.S.K.”

Squid–“Narrator (featuring Martha Skye Murphy)”

Squid–“Boy Racers”

Squid–“Paddling”

Squid–“Documentary Filmmaker”

Squid–“2010”

Squid–“The Flyover”

Squid–“Peel St.”

Squid–“Global Groove”

Squid–“Pamphlets”

3.

Tom Morello & Pussy Riot–“Weather Strike”

Mary Bleeds–“Mary”

Mary Bleeds–“Riddle”

Burning Flag–“Thrown Out”

Burning Flag–“All the While”

Rudimentary Peni–“Anthem for Doomed Youth”

Rudimentary Peni–“The Old Lie”

4.

Viagra Boys–“Into the Sun”

Dry Cleaning–“Her Hippo”

Viagra Boys–“Ain’t Nice”

Dry Cleaning–“New Long Leg”

Viagra Boys–“I Feel Alive”

***

27 May 2021

Last night Andy and I celebrated the effective end, for both of us, of the spring 2021 semester and the entire 2020-2021 academic year. 

       Andy completed a full-year of teaching and running the Math Lab under pandemic conditions, facing up to all of the challenges and difficulties this involved, and even through one of the most arduous years he made it and is doing well, already enjoying the freedom that follows from submitting final grades as well as the assessment report for all of the Math 112 classes.  

       I completed my first full year of 100% scholarly leave, finally by late afternoon yesterday finishing writing my chapter on _The Bodyguard_ as part of _21st Century British TV Crime Drama_, and as of this past year now finished writing 14 of the 30 chapters that will comprise the two books I am writing: _21st Century British TV Crime Drama_ and _Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory_.  During this time I have now written over 1000 single-spaced typed pages, which I estimate is almost four times the total number of pages I wrote for my PhD dissertation, read well over 100 books related to what I am writing, as well as also read numerous articles of a great many different kinds also relevant to what I am writing.  For example, the most recent chapter I wrote contains five single-spaced pages of works cited at the end.

       In this last chapter I just wrote I have engaged connections with many issues, including counter-terrorism and the counter-terrorism state, police power and state power, trauma and PTSD, the war in Afghanistan, ‘the war on terrorism’, ‘collateral damage’, Islamophobia, structural issues and systemic problems versus conspiracy theories, the classic and contemporary noir hero, changing masculinities, suicide bombers and suicide bombing, mental distress and social crisis, security and insecurity, neo-liberalism and precaritization, austerity, pandemic and post-pandemic capitalism, state surveillance and spying, erosion of civil liberties and human rights, threats to the right to public protest, people as multiple/complex/and contradictory versus difficulty and refusal to recognize and respect this, finding commonalities and forging connections across different backgrounds/experiences/political identifications and affiliations, police reform versus police abolition, qualities and characteristics that make jobs appealing and fulfilling, alienation and anomie, libertarian and democratic socialist ethics and the paradigm of life–and more.  

        I am listing the preceding here in part to explain why I’m finding little time left over to offer quick comments on a host of new and continuing issues of social and political concern, that I in fact do care about and following closely, at least in placing like Facebook–because I am spending so much effort engaging connections with similar issues in the writing I am doing.  

        I am going to take a few days break, a brief vacation (or holiday as they put it in Britain), before resuming work toward writing yet further chapters.  Much more to come.  But I feel like I’ve done well in getting to where I presently am at, and I am impressed and proud as always of how well Andy has done in his work.  It is important to be able to stop now and then and celebrate arriving at a point like we at present both have.

The Bodyguard

*

Tonight on Insurgence #828, episode #46 of year #16 of Insurgence Sean Murphy will be sharing music from Squid, Brodka, Jessica Winter, DRAG, Honey I'm Home, Hector Who Lived and Immy Oak, Dunayev, Sylvia Baudelaire, Lynks, Arek Klusowski, Rozazani, Muffintops, Biped featuring TLK, Bendy Wendy, Fixed Lens, Rudimentary Peni, Viagra Boys, and Dry Cleaning.  10 pm to midnight US Central Time on WHYS Community Radio, 96.3 FM Eau Claire and also streaming via the web at www.whysradio.org 

https://phatbristol.squarespace.com/pro…/poland-has-a-task

*

Andy and I have enjoyed the opportunities recently to take some enjoyable long walks about Eau Claire while I have also continued running regularly 3-5 miles at a time and Andy is working on running steadily more as well which I am very happy to be doing, including running multiple days in a row. I still have a ways to go before reaching the point where I regularly and comfortably run 5-7 miles at a time, every time I do, which is my ultimate target but I feel optimistic I will get there. I can’t easily take a photo of myself running though . Maybe at some point Andy will and I will share that.

*

The playlist for the 27 May 2021 edition of Insurgence:

May 27, 2021

1.

Squid–“Narrator (Featuring Martha Skye Murphy)”

Squid–“Boy Racers”

Squid–“Paddling”

Squid–“Global Groove”

Squid–“Pamphlets”

2.

Brodka–“Holy Holes”

Jessica Winter–“Sleep Forever”

DRAG–“The Package (or Derek the Sex Robot)”

Honey, I’m Home–“Mind”

Hector Who Lived/Immy Oak–“Friend to Friend”

Dunayev–“Madam Kusz” 

Sylvia Baudelaire–“Bratz”

Lynks-“Don’t Take it Persnal (Apocalypse Version)”

Arek Klusowksi–“Antarktyda”

Rozazani–“Changing My Mind”

Muffintops–“Not a Girl”

Biped featuring TLK–“SODOMIZED NO MORE”

Bendy Wendy–“We Love You” 

4.

Rudimentary Peni–“Anthem for Doomed Youth”

Fixed Lens–“Extinction”

Rudimentary Peni–“Crimson Son”

Rudimentary Peni–“Path of Glory”

Rudimentary Peni–“Mental Cases”

Rudimentary Peni–“Asleep”

5.

Rudimentary Peni–“Blood for Seed”

Rudimentary Peni–“A Soldier’s Dream”

Rudimentary Peni–“Strange Meeting”

Rudimentary Peni–“Witness”

Rudimentary Peni–“The Old Lie”

***

29 May 2021

For those on the lookout for books to read you might find this list of books that notable writers identify as inspiring them of interest.

Dreaming of a better future? Ali Smith, Malcolm Gladwell and more on books to inspire change

***

31 May 2021

This book has rightly received considerable attention upon its recent publication, including for example a (highly positive) lead review in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review section.  I also highly recommend America on Fire.  I am reading it currently, slowly and carefully.  Elizabeth Hinton’s offers a relentlessly devastating chronicle and critique of systemic racism in the US, after and continuously after, the more well-known rebellions of the 1960s.  These are not riots Hinton argues, but rather rebellions against systemic racism.

America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s

***

2 June 2021

I feel saddened that Naomi Osaka has had to put up with what she has but it is promising that steadily more prominent younger women athletes are pushing back and insisting that their health and well-being be treated with serious respect.

Naomi Osaka and the Power of ‘Nope’

*

This continues to be a most important message. I will never fully overcome the impact of a great many years in which being openly gay meant meeting suspicion, fear, distrust, ignorance, scorn, condemnation, hostility, and indeed hatred every day. At my first Pride marches and rallies (and that’s what they were back then) I couldn’t help but cry when various family members and friends got up and told all of us assembled that they were proud of and loved their lgbtq family member or friend. And they didn’t need say much more. At the time it stood out in such stark but vitally necessary contrast with what so many of us experienced so often every day. And versus what we had marched through and past on the way to these rallies. People need friends and family to let them know they are proud of them, and love them, for whom they are. And lgbtq people have often needed this a great meal because we have experienced and frequently enough long experienced so much of the opposite.

*

I am going to share, in a series of short posts, which are easier to take that way, an update on what I have been doing, in a little more detail, than I have had a chance to share here recently, as I was working hard to meet my target in writing chapters for my two books in progress, by the 27th of May–which I did make, and I am pleased by that.  I figure anyone stopping by my Facebook page, or catching my posts in their feeds, are likely to be at least potentially interested in what I am up to and how I am doing, while I figure if I’ve come across something, in the way of reading, music, or TV shows/films I’ve appreciated others might as well so no harm in sharing in the event that might prove the case.

*

After Andy and I celebrated, last Wednesday night, the end of both of our Spring 2021 semesters and the 2020-2021 academic year, even though my version of each of these terms was unusual, spent on 100% scholarly leave writing two books, I experienced a short-term flare-up of my chronic digestive health disorder, but that didn’t cause too much distress for too long and wasn’t all that surprising as I often do tend to feel a bit sick at the end of a term, as if I have been unconsciously postponing doing so until I could take the time for it.  The flare-up was gone by the start of this week, and we nevertheless managed two long walks this past weekend, one Saturday and one Sunday, along now familiar routes we take here in Eau Claire, and which we both continue to enjoy and eagerly anticipate.

*

Tomorrow night on Insurgence, #829, the 47th show of year 16 of Insurgence I will be playing music from Squid, Fixed Lens, black midi, Mustafa, Dry Cleaning, and Viagra Boys.  As always Thursdays 10 pm to midnight US Central Time, on WHYS Community Radio, 96.3 FM Eau Claire, and streaming, via the web, at: www.whysradio.org  I have also just acquired a significant amount of exciting new music that I look forward to sharing on future Insurgence shows in the weeks ahead, and am greatly enjoying becoming familiar with all of it.  I especially like Squid as their debut full-length album is so far one of my favorites of 2021 yet all the others I will be playing tomorrow night are well worthwhile too.

https://squidband.uk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FALVm8ruHlI

https://bmblackmidi.com

https://nowtoronto.com/…/mustafa-when-smoke-rises-album…

https://drycleaning.bandcamp.com

https://www.vboysstockholm.com

*

I start up work in earnest once again next Monday the 7th on writing more (further chapters) of my two books in progress, but in the meantime I’ve read a couple of crime and thriller fiction novels: _Water Like a Stone_, the 11th in Deborah Crombie’s Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Detective Inspector Gemma James series.  I also read Tom Rob Smith’s _The Farm_.   I especially liked the latter; it’s his first novel I’ve read although the TV show for which he wrote the screenplay, _London Spy_, is definitely a major personal favorite.

Water Like a Stone

The Farm

Story Behind Tom Rob Smith's The Farm

*

Among other books I’ve read recently are _Biracial Britain: a Different Way of Looking at Race_, written by Remi Adexoya, a Polish-Nigerian writers and politics faculty member at the University of York.  

Adexoya here has collected and shared 25+ stories from biracial and multiracial Britains, representative of a considerable diversity of perspectives and experiences.  These individuals manifest many divergent takes on what being biracial, or multiracial, in Britain, has meant and does mean to and for them, but in every single case this identity has proven significantly shaping of their life-experience in myriad directions, and these Britons, especially younger Britons, are increasingly openly and proudly preferring to identify as biracial, multiracial, or, as is widely acceptable in Britain where it is conceived to denote a neutral or positive conception of identity, versus here in the US where it it not, as ‘mixed race’.  

At times I wished the book offered a more elaborate theoretical framing as well as more elaborate historical and cultural contextualization, but I respect Adexoya’s reasons for deliberately not wanting to do that, and for concentrating on sharing people’s stories instead.  

I did find these stories compelling, and was struck by how important it is to take carefully into account a wide intersection of social identities and experiences in understanding what being biracial or multiracial can and does mean.  

Likewise it matters a great deal which specific racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural constituents contribute to this identity as well as how people grew up and connected with, or didn’t grow up and connect with, these various particular elements of their biracial or multiracial identity, along with how this varied at different times and in different places. 

In other words, it can be problematic to generalize about what their ethnic inheritances mean to people who maintain different kinds of Indian or Nigerian ethnic inheritances, just as it can be problematic to do so about people maintaining Jamaican versus Trinidadian versus Ghanian versus Ugandan versus Kenyan versus Iranian versus Lebanese versus Pakistani versus Polish versus Swedish versus Jewish versus Scottish versus German versus Welsh versus Irish etc. ethnic inheritances, and it is important to take into account not only how constituent elements of biracial or multiracial identity precisely intersect but also how these are shaped by growing up and living the vast majority of life in Britain.  

I did find it interesting that many of the younger contributors sharing their stories in this book prefer to identify themselves as, for example, a Lebanese-Jamaican Londoner, and not as British, or, especially, not as English even as British citizens who were born and who have lived most if not all of their lives in England.   

Remi Adexoya

Biracial Britain: A Different Way of Looking at Race

*

Another book I am currently reading, _Englishness: the Political Force Transforming Britain_ by Alisa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones, results from an intricate array of in-depth  surveys, as well as statistical analyses of the data generated from these surveys, in sketching out what constitute principal constituent features of Englishness, or English nationalism, today, and contribute toward explaining its current political power.  

Much of this contemporary English nationalism is largely politically and culturally conservative, and is closely linked with a sense of grievance, and resentment, that Englishness has, supposedly, not been given its due respect and appreciation, within the UK as a whole and especially as part of the European Union, but it is not entirely conservative, while increased decentralization of real political power and authority to English regions and communities would I believe present a significant progressive opportunity–‘municipal socialism’ of the kind that the town of Preston in particular has attracted a lot of attention and acclaim for, as well as the rising appeal, across the political spectrum in many areas of the UK today, for a universal basic income are promising trends.  

https://global.oup.com/…/englishness-9780198870784…

*

I also recently completed reading _Critical Issues in Policing: Contemporary Readings, edited by Roger G. Dunham, Geoffrey P. Albert, and Kyle D. McLean, 8th edition, an over 700 pages long textbook, for upper level courses in criminal justice and closely related fields, which is focused on the US, and does concentrate on problems with policing, as well as responses to these problems, along with how policing has changed and is changing.  

The authors by and large, while consistently supportive of the value of reforms, believe police and policing are not only vital and necessary but also ultimately forces for right and good.  

Nevertheless, despite leaving out more radical critiques and calls for transformation and supersession, this book is useful in surveying and analyzing a considerable range of social scientific research into theories and practices of policing in the US, as well as into how policing has adapted and responded to criticism–and to crisis.  

The collection also contains a number of influential major statements in the recent history of ‘police science’, and it is unfortunate timing for the editors that they sent off the text to the publishers after the COVID-19 pandemic had developed and led to lockdowns and closedowns, but before they were able to take into account the police murder of George Floyd and the widespread protests against systemic racism, with a frequent preeminent focus on problems with police and policing, throughout last summer.  

I am sure the editors would have addressed all of that, as they do take pains to reference the most recent issues and controversies throughout their book.  

Critical Issues in Policing Contemporary Readings Eighth Edition

*

Today I also just received copies of four books I look forward to reading soon:

1. _Coronavirus, Psychoanalysis, and Philosophy: Conversations on Pandemics, Politics, and Society_, edited by Fernando Castrillón and Thomas Marchevsky

Coronavirus, Psychoanalysis, and Philosophy Conversations on Pandemics, Politics and Society

2. _Revisiting Crimes of the Powerful: Marxism, Crime and Deviance_, edited by Steven Bittle, Laureen Snider, Steve Tombs, and David Whyte

Revisiting Crimes of the Powerful Marxism, Crime and Deviance

3. _Marxism and Criminology: a History of Criminal Selectivity_, by Valeria Vegh Weis

Marxism and Criminology: A History of Criminal Selectivity A History of Criminal Selectivity

4. _The Politics of the Police_, 5th edition, by Benjamin Bowling, Robert Reiner, and James Sheptycki

https://global.oup.com/…/the-politics-of-the-police…

*

Andy and I have been watching great many TV shows/series, so it would be hard to remember let alone recount and comment on them all but a few I would recommend are: 

_The Wall_, a Quebecois crime drama

_Capitani_, a Luxembourgian crime drama

and

_Crimes of Passion_, a Swedish crime drama

The first takes place in one of the most bizarre settings I have encountered in a TV crime drama, a far Northern Quebec mining community, the second in small-town Northern Luxembourg, and the third in a variety of small-town to rural settings in 1950s Sweden.

The Wall – Cover Your Tracks (La Faille)

CAPITANI | Trailer | Luxembourgish crime TV series

Crimes of Passion: Stylish and Steamy Swedish Mystery Series

*

Last comment for this ‘weekly update': I am continuing to enjoy and appreciate life, relishing the pleasures of little moments as well as large accomplishments, doing what I am doing, and spending quality time with Andy and our pets.  It continues sad how challenging being blind is for Casey, and how much he has had to adjust, along with us as well, but we are cautiously hopeful that come eye surgery on the 17th of this month he will be able to see once again, and that will make him happier, and inclined to move about and enjoy the world around him more freely and easily.

Best regards everyone.

*

Playlist for 3 June 2021 Insurgence show:

June 3, 2021

1.

Squid–“Paddling”

Squid–“Global Groove”

Squid–“Pamphlets”

2.

Fixed Lens–“Written in Red”

Fixed Lens–“Extinction”

Fixed Lens–“Recognition”

Fixed Lens–“Put Your Hand Through the Plastic”

Fixed Lens–“The Attic of My Heart”

Fixed Lens–“Concrete and Glass”

3.

black midi–“John L”

black midi–“Marlene Dietrich”

black midi–“Chondromalacia Patella”

black midi–“Slow”

black midi–“Diamond Stuff”

black midi–“Dethroned”

black midi–“Hogwash and Balderdash”

black midi–“Ascending Forth”

4.

Mustafa–“Stay Alive”

Mustafa–“Air Forces”

Mustafa–“Separate”

Mustafa–“The Hearse”

Mustafa–“Capo (Featuring Sampha)”

Mustafa–“Ali”

Mustafa–“What About Heaven”

Mustafa–“Come Back”

5.

Squid–“Boy Racers”

Dry Cleaning–“Strong Feelings”

Viagra Boys–“To the Country”

Viagra Boys–“In Spite of Ourselves (Featuring Amy Taylor)”

The Kinks–“Lola”

***

6 June 2021

It was an extremely hot day yesterday but I felt good being outside even so, as with proper sunblock protection and bringing fluids along with us Andy and I nevertheless took our nearly three-hours’ long nine miles plus walk with a stop for ice cream 2/3 of the way through and another shortly after to put Andy’s radio show (This Week Out in the Chippewa Valley) into the system at the station to run later that night.  Thursday I mentioned maybe I’d share some photos of me running so I did a little running for Andy to snap photos of me doing so while in Carson Park.  I recently developed my first injury from running again regularly since this January other than delayed onset muscle soreness, a lower inner calf muscle strain/sprain, but I have been taking care of it, and long walks are good cross training.   I am learning about more and more stretches as I proceed with running regularly (and responding to/preventing running injuries).  Running at my age requires a lot more of that than when I was a younger.  It was an excellent day.  I finished reading a fourth novel for the week and started a fifth, we made one of our favorite dinners together, and we watched two new crime fiction TV series as well as a reality TV cooking competition show.  And earlier we shopped for the week’s groceries, still feeling a bit strange not wearing masks while doing so.   Also I read some more of Elizabeth Hinton’s America on Fire as well as selected music for this coming Thursday’s show as well as spent time just enjoying our cats, time together with Andy, and time together with Casey who is becoming more accepting of being blind.  Glancing through FB posts and noting Jon Loomis mentioning the cocktail he prepared and was having while asking others about what they were drinking, I’ll just close by adding I still like to close out a fine day with nothing but a small glass of single malt Scottish whisky while Andy prefers port (red, ruby or LBV, not tawny).  Cheers everyone.

***

10 June 2021

This week on Insurgence Sean Murphy is playing music from Mustafa, Adrian Crowley, Soft Kill, FACS, The Linda Lindas, Tom Morello & Pussy Riot, Lula Wiles, Femi Kuti & Made Kuti, The Supremes, black midi, and Squid.  10 pm to midnight US Central Time, this Thursday and every Thursday, on WHYS Community Radio, Eau Claire: 96.3 FM, Eau Claire, and streaming, via the web, at: www.whysradio.org  Insurgence #830, show #48 of year #16 of Insurgence.

https://www.nytimes.com/…/mustafa-when-smoke-rises.html

https://www.adriancrowley.com

https://anopendoor.bandcamp.com/…/not-quite-dracula-music

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/facs-mn0003718618/biography

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5AhU5Q7vH0

https://www.nme.com/…/tom-morello-and-pussy-riot-team…

http://www.lulawiles.com

https://www.pri.org/…/femi-kuti-and-made-kuti-continue…

https://classic.motown.com/artist/the-supremes/

https://bmblackmidi.com

https://squidband.uk

Here's the playlist for what I actually played last night on this show:

June 10, 2021

1.

Mustafa–“Stay Alive”

Mustafa–“The Hearse”

Mustafa–“Capo (Featuring Sampha)”

Mustafa–“Ali”

Mustafa–“Come Back”

2.

Adrian Crowley–“Northbound Stowaway”

Adrian Crowley–“I Still See You Among Strangers”

Adrian Crowley–“Underwater Song”

Adrian Crowley–“Bread and Wine”

Adrian Crowley–“A Shut-In’s Lament”

Adrian Crowley–“The Colours of the Night”

Adrian Crowley–“The Singalong”

Adrian Crowley–“Ships on the Water”

Adrian Crowley–“Crow Song”

Adrian Crowley–“Take Me Driving”

3.

Soft Kill–“Mourning Dove (Demo)”

Soft Kill–“Looking at You (Demo)”

Soft Kill–“Basement (Demo)”

Soft Kill–“Always Running (Demo)”

Soft Kill–“Tugahs (Demo)”

Soft Kill–“Top to Bottom (Demo)”

4.

The Linda Lindas–“Racist, Sexist Boy (Live at the LA Public Library)”

Tom Morello & Pussy Riot–“Weather Strike”

Lula Wiles–“Television”

Femi Kuti & Made Kuti–“Different Streets”

The Supremes–“Stoned Love”

5.

black midi–“Dethroned”

black midi–“Bmbmbm”

Squid–“G.S.K.”

Squid–“Peel St.”

Squid–“Pamphlets”

*

This week I transitioned from a brief holiday at home to resume working once again, assiduously, on the two books I am writing.  I began by making small changes across the array of chapters I have written to date as part of 21st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide.  Here is the complete chapter listing; I have completed writing the first half of the book to date:

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Introduction

A. Single Series (Single Season) Shows

Chapter 2: Fearless

Chapter 3: The Shadow Line

Chapter 4: Collateral

Chapter 5: Black Work

Chapter 6: The Informer

Chapter 7: London Spy

Chapter 8: Undercover

Chapter 9: Code of a Killer

Chapter 10: Chasing Shadows

Chapter 11: Close to the Enemy

Chapter 12: The Bodyguard

B. Multiple Series (Multiple Season) Shows

Chapter 13: New Blood

Chapter 14: Hinterland

Chapter 15: Unforgotten

Chapter 16: Life on Mars

Chapter 17: The Fall

Chapter 18: Broadchurch

Chapter 19: Suspects

Chapter 20: Inspector George Gently

Chapter 21: Shetland

Chapter 22: Happy Valley

Chapter 23: Line of Duty

Chapter 24: Sherlock

Because the introduction is thorough and I include works cited listings at the end of every chapter as well as credits listings and substantial synopses at the beginning of chapters 2 through 24 I don’t expect I will need any further sections–no preface, no postface, no recommended reading, no index, and no videography.

*

Next I began work on chapter three of Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory.  My major accomplishment so far has been to carefully re-read Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844; Emile Durkheim’s Suicide: a Study in Sociology; and Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents.  In this chapter I am staging an encounter, and a dialogue, among these three books and Ian Curtis and Joy Division.

*

Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 is most famous for its contribution to critical theory of alienation, or estrangement, but the book is considerably more far-reaching than that, as ambitious and important as a critical theorization of alienation, or estrangment, is on its own.  

A significant number of subsequent Marxists have argued this book exemplifies the limitations of the ‘Early Marx’ or the ‘Humanist Marx’ that are then superseded in the more ‘Mature Marx’–and even that the latter work amounts to a decisive rupture with the former–but I don’t interpret Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 in this way.  

I find this early work anticipates much of what Marx focuses on throughout his subsequent critical theoretical work, as well as much about the way in which he pursues and carries out this work.  Marx continues to develop, revise, refine, and transform his thinking but the continuities I find as striking as many others find the discontinuities. 

 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 focuses a great deal of attention on a critique of classical economics, or in other words bourgeois political economy, as represented by founding figures such as Adam Smith, as well as on coming to grips with Hegel and the Hegelian dialectic and working out what can be useful derived from Feuerbach’s materialism.  But the book also encompasses contributions toward theorizing the wages of labor, the profit of capital, the rent of land, relations between landed property and commercial and industrial capital, the antithesis of capital and labor, relations between private property and labor, the history of the rise to dominance of capitalism, the power of money in capitalist society, and how to make sense of socialism and communism including in relation to transformation of and transition from capitalism as well to each other.  

And Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 is also rightly renowned as a significant contribution toward a Marxist theory of nature, the value of nature, and the interrelation between nature and culture and nature and the human.  

Nevertheless, yes I will undoubtedly be focusing primarily on matters of alienation and estrangement in my engagement with this book in chapter three of Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory.

Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

*

Emile Durkheim’s Suicide: a Study in Sociology continues to be an impressive contribution to the founding of sociology as a distinct intellectual field, with its own distinct methods, focuses, emphases, and concerns, as well as a still provocative and compelling theorization of the social causes of suicide or more precisely the social causes of rates of suicide, as well as of how different distinct types of suicide, explained in social terms and on social bases as reflecting and responding to social causes, are distinct from as well as related to each other.  

The book likewise continues useful in contributing toward critical theoretical engagement with complexities and contradictions concerning matters of social integration and cohesion more broadly and diversely conceived.  

As is well-known, Durkheim theorizes the social types of suicide as egoistic suicide, altruistic suicide, anomic suicide, and, briefly in a footnote, fatalistic suicide, along with multiple subtypes and combined or hybrid types.  

Significant elements of his theorization are, of course, reflective of dominant social norms, in his time (the late 1890s), which have been superseded, or at least strongly challenged and substantially undermined, especially when he focuses on differences between men and women, but also in his discussions of race.  

Yet for all of his focus on the preeminent importance of society as moral force, Durkheim carefully avoids moralistic theorizing and is often impressively critically self-reflexive, as well as highly deliberate in working through refutations of a wide panoply of other explanations for suicide, sucidality, and trends as well as differences in instances and rates of suicide, that he finds unsatisfactory, because these efforts are unable adequately and effectively to explain what they purport to explain.  

Although tempting, of course, my engagement with this book will _not_ focus on making use of Durkheim to try to explain Ian Curtis’s suicide, by attempting to classify it in terms of Durkheimian types, but rather to engage with how the _art_ of Ian Curtis and Joy Division engages with matters of suicide, suicidality, social integration and cohesion versus social disintegration and ‘dishesion’, egoism, altruism, anomie, fatalism, and more–as itself a contribution toward a critical theoretical understanding of the same.

Suicide A Study in Sociology

*

Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents is the shortest of the three famous book-length works of critical theory I will engage with in a sustained way in chapter three of  Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory.  

Written late in Freud’s life and career it illustrates Freud writing in a strikingly breezy vein, as well as oscillating between the assertive and the speculative and between the insistent and the hesitant.  

In this book Freud’s attempts to explain how and why human beings will always experience considerable unease as part of ‘civilized’ societies and cultures, even as valuable and necessary as the latter undeniably are, and what are some of the actual and potential consequences of these array of discontents.  

In this book Freud theorizes how aggression is as fundamental to human nature as he has long argued is ‘the pleasure principle’, and continues work he began in Beyond the Pleasure Principle in theorizing relation between eros and thanatos, or life and death drives, while suggesting how these drives might play out as part of societies and other social groups and not just within individuals’ psychic lives.  

The consequences of internalized aggression directed inward and that is essentially incessant and unstoppable are especially striking dimensions of what Freud here engages.

Civilization and Its Discontents

*

Before ending my ‘staycation’ or brief ‘holiday at home’ this past Sunday, since I last posted here I read three more crime fiction novels: Deborah Crombie’s Where Memories Lie, John Harvey’s Last Rites, and Louise Hare’s This Lovely City.  

Crombie’s and Harvey’s are each part of long-running series, in the former case featuring detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James, and in the latter featuring detective Charlie Resnick.  

The former is a lighter series, overall, although some of the crimes do become quite harrowing, including in their affects upon the principals, with considerable attention focused on intra-familial relationships and complicated dynamics, while also evidencing the author’s and team’s concerted efforts to carefully research locations as well as historical and cultural associations with these locations.  The two detectives live, and work, together in London, where the series is often set but frequently enough the focus of the novel centers around other places within Britain to which they have traveled for various reasons–while the first novel in this series I read is set in Granchester, near Cambridge, and offers a most intriguing if often highly disturbing portrait of life and death in Grantchester.  

The latter series, by John Harvey, is more of a classically noir series, set in Nottingham, and with the principal detective’s love of jazz, his many cats that he lives with at his home, his Polish ethnicity, and his struggles maintaining long-term romantic/sexual relations constituting recurrent features–while the series devotes ample attention to gritty locations, circumstances, crimes, criminals, and consequences of crime, while significantly registering social and cultural shifts and trends, and paying respect to the impact of issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality.  Often enough these books wrestle with questions concerning challenges involved in seeking to live an ethical life, and to do the morally right thing, in circumstances that are extremely muddied.  

But of the three of these novels Louise Hare’s This Lovely City is my favorite–her first published novel, a brilliantly compelling evocation of what it quite plausibly could have been like, and especially felt like, in the initial years after the arrival of the Windrush in England as a Black Briton striving to live out one’s life as best possible in a country in which a great many (White) people  are considerably suspicious of if not frequently extremely hostile toward your presence in this country. The novel, set in London, does an impressive job at capturing the complexity and vitality of the relations among the Black characters, as Hare  depicts these characters as far more than mere victims, while also frankly showing how extremely vicious is the multi-faceted racism with which they have to contend.  I also appreciate the fact that Hare shows how even the most well-meaning, tolerant, accepting, welcoming, inclusive, and supportive of White characters act in problematic ways versus, and maintain problematic conceptions of, Black people–including of family members and best friends.  This Lovely City is beautifully written. 

https://deborahcrombie.com/…/the…/17-where-memories-lie

http://mysteriouspress.com/…/last-rites-by-john-harvey.asp

https://www.theguardian.com/…/this-lovely-city-louise…

*

Among TV crime series Andy and I have been screening of late we have begun working through series four (season four) of one of my top favorite British shows: Unforgotten, created by Chris Lang and starring Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar (among others).  The show focuses on ‘cold cases’ and, as its title suggests, focuses more precisely on transforming ‘forgotten’ lives into ‘unforgotten’ lives.  The series readily invites and encourages, on a socially symbolic level, us to identify with a commitment toward actively, conscientiously caring for those who have otherwise been pushed to the social margins–those who have been excluded, ignored, abandoned and forgotten.  The manifestation of caring this show conveys I’ve found impressively moving, and it has often enough made me feel an aching yearning for so many of us to live in substantially, persistently, deeply, and fundamentally caring kinds of social relations with each other–as well as to contribute to the work necessary to transform existing social relations so this kind and extent of caring becomes structurally embedded and systemically pervasive.

Unforgotten

*

Also recently, Andy and I have screened Dark Woods, a German TV crime drama, inspired by a real-life case–a series that grows in appeal as it proceeds, and as it becomes steadily more intense and suspenseful.  Here the quest to identify the real killer, and ascertain what happened to one of his principal victims, confronts incessantly daunting obstacles to the point where it feels virtually miraculous this quest ultimately succeeds–especially in the face of local prosecutorial and police malfeasance.  And Andy and I have also recently screened Charlotte Link, another German TV crime drama, with each of the three episodes offering a stand-alone story arc, each based on novels by German writer Charlotte Link.  The extended time each of these episodes encompasses (90 minutes) allows the crimes, and the pursuit of answers concerning who and what has been responsible or these crimes, to become intricately twisted and treacherously convoluted.  This series we also found interesting because the first two episodes are set in the UK, with British characters, but all of the actors speak German, while the third is set in France, with predominantly French but also a significant number of Bulgarian characters yet once again all of the actors speak German.  This reminds me of how often I have screened fictional films, or TV shows, ostensibly set in non-English speaking countries, or non-English speaking regions/locales, involving ostensibly non-English speaking characters, where all of the actors are nonetheless speaking English and we are expected to imagine they are speaking their native language–but I haven’t anywhere near as often experienced this situation in reverse.  Andy also appreciates us screening German TV shows because this gives him a chance to refresh his German, and he does often point out what he considers mistranslations or shares what he proposes are better translations than we encounter in the subtitles. 

https://theeurotvplace.com/…/euro-tv-to-watch…/

https://watch.mhzchoice.com/charlotte-link

*

We have screened many other TV shows recently as well, and I suppose as ‘guilty pleasures’ I will mention season two of Ragnarok, where we benefit from Andy’s considerable knowledge of Norse mythology, and The Big Family Cooking Showdown, a British series, which I appreciate because of how large a percentage of the contestants are people of color, and because the range of families involved consist of multiple combinations of people maintaining multiple different kinds of relations with each other.

https://www.netflix.com/title/80232926

https://www.netflix.com/title/80186090

*

Aside from the aforementioned, I’ve continued regular outdoor walking and running, despite the high heat–and humidity.  I do need to be careful because I tend to more readily stress various parts of my body exercising in high heat and humidity than when I was younger but I am fairly vigilant about that, and continue to study and practice multiple methods of improving strength and flexibility as well as preventing injury.  I am pleased that this week so far I ran four miles, on three separate days, in 90 degree–and humid–weather on pavement, and what I worried might be injuries to my right calf and right knee don’t seem to be, as I am getting steadily stronger and I simply am registering the transition.  I do hope that when I return to full-time teaching running regularly will be so much part of my weekly routine that it will be unthinkable for me not to insure that I make time to continue to do that no matter what else is happening with my work life.  I will be stronger, healthier, happier, and more thoroughly resilient if I do so.

*

Since this is Pride month I will share here, as I have in the past, one thing that has often troubled me as a gay man is how often many other people have imagined, or assumed, simply on account of the fact that I am gay that I could not possibly be someone who maintains a strong interest in sports–both as a spectator and as a participant, I could not be highly knowledgeable about sports, and I could not be any good at playing sports.  

I am pleased to recently have taught four classes focused on ‘Sports, Politics, and Society’, and all have been great classes–my three best Blugold Seminar in Critical Reading and Writing classes by far, and one of my best 200 level ever umbrella classes by far as well.  

I have been frustrated as well in the past when other gay, or queer, people have also disparaged interest in, knowledge of, and participation in sports–even as in and of itself ‘heteronormative’–but more often by straight people making heterosexist assumptions about me in relation to being gay and interested in/knowledgeable about/active in sports.  

Fortunately, students in all four of the aforementioned classes showed absolutely no sense of surprise that a gay man might maintain a passionate interest in and involvement with sports–and no sense that being gay should be in any way or degree incompatible with this kind of interest and involvement.  This is, for me, a most welcome generational change.

*

Andy and I are getting prepared soon to take our one anticipated short trip of the summer, for Casey to have his eyes examined by a specialist in the Twin Cities who will hopefully be able to perform surgery so he can see once more.  He is not as miserable as he first was, once his blindness hit, but he is certainly neither as happy nor as active as he was before then, and it is indeed often heartbreaking to observe him wander slowly about running into things, and us, repeatedly, even with the protection his ‘halo and wings’ device gives him.

*

I am going to try here quickly to think if I have anything else worth sharing.  I did recently think it would be interesting to share all the sources of news reporting, information, analysis, and commentary I regularly read–aside from all those principally connected to teaching and scholarly interests and concentrations and aside from all those principally connected to work I do on and for my radio show–but I quickly realized this would be a huge list.  

I thought about doing so because others might be curious about some of these that they don’t regularly turn to, or know about themselves, and also might recommend others to me.  

I may do that sometime but the sheer exercise of contemplating doing so was helpful enough in clarifying for me why I often don’t seem to have as much time left over each day as I think I should–because of the myriad array of newspapers, magazines, blogs, websites, broadcasts, videos, listserves, and regular mailings from numerous organizations and individuals I read on a regular basis.

*

But I’ll conclude this week’s sharing by shifting to how I answered a recent query about ‘why write’–i.e., why do I write, and why do I find writing valuable to do.

 Why write?  Excellent question.  Many reasons.  As a means of thinking and of feeling–and not just as a means of determining or clarifying what I think or feel.  As an experience in itself, as an event, and as an encounter–with limits as well as with possibilities, and not just ‘my own’ as some singular, solitary, supposedly unique individual.  As a manifestation that I, whomever that may be, continue to exist and persist.  With the hope, but no certainty, that someone else somewhere and at sometime will find what I write of some use to them.  Out of a sense of responsibility to give witness and testimony.  Out of a sense of social responsibility, a responsibility to contribute, to serve, to be of use.  Out of a sense of responsibility to make use of and to share what I can of the opportunities and advantages I have enjoyed, of the knowledge, experience, skill, talent, insight, and perhaps even a little wisdom I have developed as a result of those opportunities and advantages.  To create something that may maintain, and perhaps convey, even the slightest tinge of beauty.  To question, to challenge, to critique, to appreciate, to praise, to pay respect.  To empathize.  To imagine beyond.  To press against the boundaries of the conceivable.  To hope, to dream, to desire.  To worry, fear, and dread.  To share my complexity, multiplicity, contradictoriness, and dynamism to elicit others doing the same, and to invite and encourage genuine recognition of these features in, and of, all of us.  To share my own vulnerability in the hope this will encourage others to do the same, and that together we can make shared vulnerability a source of strength.  To communicate my love for life, for living, for people, and for our common world.  

Yesterday, meeting with a doctor at the Mayo Clinic Health Systems Eau Claire Luther/Hospital campus (to check out my shoulder, and yes I do have mild tendinitis in the supraspinatus muscle of my right shoulder, but I am already doing what needs to be done for this condition, while the doctor yesterday and physical therapy to come are sharing yet more exercises I can do to help), she told me ‘you don’t look anything at all like a 59 year-old person’.  Sensing, I suppose, a need to explain, I responded ‘I do try to stay in good shape.  I take long walks and I run regularly’.  To which the doctor replied, ‘So you are an active, athletic person’.  I was pleased to be able to respond ‘yes’. 

I expect I have long been fortunate that I often tend to appear younger, even sometimes considerably younger, than my actual age, although at times this has left others unlikely to suspect I might be experiencing any issues with growing older, with aging, or that I might be approaching retirement age.  I recall conversations only a few years ago with several colleagues who off-handedly referred to ‘when you retire in 15 to 20 or more years from now’ and ‘when you reach the age where I am at’ (when in fact I was already that age), and a surprisingly considerable number of instances in my more distant past where people were stunned when I told them I was a professor, including literally insisting I must be lying and outright refusing to believe  I could possibly be a professor. 

But it has been awhile since anyone has asked to see my ID before ordering an alcoholic drink, or buying alcohol.  That would be a shock if it were to happen at this point in time.  

*

With the remarkably, and most welcome, summery weather recently, I have not only taken several long walks with Andy, but also run outdoors on multiple successive days, which I have enjoyed.  On Monday I went running when the temperature was 84 degrees Fahrenheit, which may have been a bit too challenging for where I am currently at, as I ran the first half of the five-mile circuit I planned and then alternated intervals of walking and running in the second half because the heat felt just a tad too intense in its impact on my stamina.  On Tuesday I was able to complete my entire planned circuit without needing to incorporate any interval of walking, as the temperature was 73 Fahrenheit. 

I used to relish running in not only warm but also indeed hot weather, even experiencing little to no difficulty ever doing so, but I need to continue to remind myself that was 25 years ago, and I’m still gradually building back up my capacity, my stamina, and my endurance.  I also still do need to catch myself so I don’t push too hard, too fast, and too quickly when I am running, to take too large strides, and that, in terms used by trainers I am at present following, I don’t push my rate of perceived exertion up to a 7, 8, or 9 before I am ready to do so, or for longer than I can sustain. 

But I am getting there; I am patient with myself because I am just happy to be running regularly once again.  One trainer whose program I am following repeatedly emphasizes running eventually becomes a lifestyle, if one is patiently persistent, and I like that, because in my past that’s much what it felt like and I hope to be able to live this lifestyle yet again–into my 60s and beyond.

*

This week on Insurgence, Insurgence #821, show #39 of year #16 of Insurgence, I will be playing music from First Aid Kit and Annika Norlin, Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, Cathal Coughlan, Arab Strap, Citizen, The Underground Youth, William Doyle, No Master No Servant, For Those I Love, and Snapped Ankles.  It should be great fun.  As every Thursday, 10 pm to midnight US Central Time, on WHYS Community Radio, 96.3 FM Eau Claire, and streaming via the web, at: www.whysradio.org

*

I am making good progress in writing a chapter for _21^st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide_ on _Chasing Shadows_.  I now only need draft the conclusion to the critique section of the chapter; compile and append a works cited listing; and review, revise, edit, and proofread the whole.  I should meet my target of finishing all of this by the end of the day this coming Sunday April 11.  After that, the next show I will be writing about is _Close to the Enemy_.

*

I finished reading several compelling books this past week, including Alice Vinten’s _On the Line: Life–and Death–in the Metropolitan Police_, Darryl Leeworthy’s _A Little Gay History of Wales_, and Guy Standing’s _The Precariat: the New Dangerous Class_. 

All I found interesting, but of the three the one I expect will prove most valuable to me, overall, in multiple different ways, is the last, and I am looking forward to reading Standing’s follow-up, which I have just acquired: _A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens_. 

Other books I am reading include Sathham Sanghera, _Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain_; Victoria Canning and Steve Tombs, _From Social Harm to Zemiology: A Critical Introduction (New Directions in Critical Criminology)_; Roger G. Dunham, Geoffrey P. Alpert, and Kyle D. McLean, eds., _Critical Issues in Policing: Contemporary Issues, Eighth Edition_; Alisa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones, _Englishness: The Political Force Transforming Britain_; James D. Nolan, Frank Crispino, and Timothy Parsons, eds., _Policing in an Age of Reform: An Agenda for Research and Practice (Palgrave's Critical Policing Studies)_; Mark Neocleous, _A Critical Theory of Police Power: The Fabrication of the Social Order_; Nikesh Shukla, _Brown Baby: A Memoir of Race, Family and Home_; Remi Adekoya, _Biracial Britain: A Different Way of Looking at Race_; David Scott, _For Abolition: Essays on Prisons and Socialist Ethics_; and Robert Winder, _Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain_.   

*

Andy and I just finished screening all as yet available episodes of the German-Austrian TV crime drama _Murder by the Lake_, which we enjoyed, set by Lake Constance, involving complex and often brutal cases confronting the principal detectives as well as significant challenges and traumas in their personal lives. 

We also are continuing with _Bloodlands_, which in suggesting the impact of ‘The Troubles’ remains all too alive in Northern Ireland today appears sadly to be verified by the riots that have been taking place the last six days in unionist/loyalist working class neighborhoods of Belfast and Derry. 

And we are pleased that season 14 of one of our long-time favorites, the Canadian TV (steampunk) crime drama, _The Murdoch Mysteries_, has recently become available. 

Beyond that, we’ve found it entertaining to watch Aaron Rodgers as guest host of _Jeopardy_, which began this Monday and will last through the end of the next week, and Andy and I have also found it entertainingly diverting to watch episodes of _Celebrity Mastermind_ and _Grand Designs_. 

With the last of these shows it is striking how, yes, each episode features a genuinely ‘grand design’, usually of a residence for an individual or individual family or individual family plus extended family, but also so often these projects seem impossibly overly ambitious, while those taking them on often are heavily involved in doing much of the construction themselves, including of most difficult kinds they have no prior experience attempting.  With COVID-19 the latest projects have also faced another major challenge, and it is amazing these have been realized, nonetheless, even after taking far longer and costing far more than initially envisioned. 

In one of these episodes a young man who strikingly resembled BJ Hollars (which we watched, ironically, the night before BJ’s path and mine crossed the very next day), together with this man’s wife engaged in a most ambitious effort to transform a huge barn on her parents’ property in rural Kent into an innovative residence for themselves, despite the fact that both husband and wife are people who have dealt and continue to deal with cancer, while in the course of work on this project everything that could possibly go wrong did; nevertheless, miraculously enough, they made it through successfully. 

Besides those shows we are also continuing to watch the Scottish Gaelic language drama _Bannan_, in which I have become somewhat annoyed at how difficult it seems to be for many people on this fictional Isle of Skye to understand and forgive killing in self-defense, in response to the real likelihood that an extremely violently abusive man would have otherwise killed his wife, son, and as yet unborn child. 

Again, as in previous weeks, I expect I am forgetting some shows we are and have been watching, but this is at least a fair representation of the lot.    

*

Otherwise I enjoyed catching up with my mother in a phone conversation yesterday, Andy and I are continuing to pay extra attention to Casey who shows tendencies toward greater anxiety these days (we have even got him an animal relaxation training device that, supposedly at least, emits sound vibrations dogs can hear but we cannot at frequencies, and in sequences and other patterns, that tend to be calming), as a long-time Cincinnati Reds fans I am happy with the team’s 5-1 start to the new MLB season, I have been watching and following a variety of others sports, and I am hoping tests coming up tomorrow and then next Friday related to the bladder cancer I experienced and for which I had surgery in January show this has not returned.  

*

Last Friday morning I experienced a panic attack, which I maintain a long history with, for the first time in a considerable number of months.  I mention this here to be open about mental health challenges I experience, in the aim of reinforcing for others these are widely commonplace, and indeed ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ even if painful and frightening. 

As often as not I cannot distinguish any specific ‘trigger’ for a panic attack, when I experience one, and that’s something else I think it is important to share, as is the fact these are extreme events that are temporarily at least considerably debilitating (not necessarily the same as what it means for many people when they ‘feel panicky').  I felt unnerved for the rest of the day, and needed to take several hours immediately afterward just to begin to recover. 

What’s also worth sharing is that even though I have been exceedingly open for a good number of years now about the fact  I am a person who lives with persistently recurrent tendencies to experience serious to severe mental health challenges, and I have strived to be empathetically reassuring and otherwise helpful to many others, often, even long before I was this open about myself, in the immediate aftermath of last Friday’s panic attack I struggled with feeling guilty and ashamed I had this experience.  Even though it is wrong, and certainly unhelpful, to think so, I nevertheless contended with feelings that I ‘should’ be able to prevent this kind of thing from happening, and that it is my own fault, or indicative of my own ‘weakness’, that it did happen. 

Unhelpfully stigmatizing frames of understanding concerning mental health/mental illness continue to circulate and exert damaging impact, even for someone like me who well knows panic attacks are not convoluted efforts to call attention to one’s self, not manifestations of an excessively ‘dramatizing’ personality, and not even indicative of what is commonsensically often identified as ‘a cry for help’.  The truth is when I experience a panic attack I don’t want anyone’s attention, I want to get away from just about everyone else and be by myself until I recover, and I prefer not even touching let alone dwelling upon details of what has happened to me subsequently.  It's just too unsettling, and too scary, to do so.

But I am writing about this here because I recognize I am in a position usefully to contribute to improved understandings and engagements with mental illness, which I think is most important and can indeed prove critical in helping people with mental health challenges be able to live their best possible lives.   

*

I could readily write about a vast many issues ‘in the news’ at present, but in the interest of time, for the moment I will only comment on two others. 

I continue saddened and angered by the present state of hatred directed against people of Asian and Pacific Islander ethnic and racial identities in this country, as well as by the worry, fear, and other damage this causes to people’s lives and well-being.  I thought about how disturbing it was that one of the organizers of the rally, march, and vigil last Friday here in Eau Claire shared that despite long enjoying running, and finding it helpful to his health and well-being to do so, he feels uneasy running these days because he feels he needs to be on guard all the time against potential threats, and attacks. 

I also thought about how, besides numerous major notorious historical examples as well as many more recent examples here in the US of waves of racism directed against people of Asian and Pacific Islander ethnic and racial identities, early in my own life I recall the Vietnam War prompted this, as did the economic success of Japan, as did the seizing of the US embassy and the holding of hostages in Teheran at the time of the Iranian Revolution.  Anti-Asian and Pacific Islander hate maintain too long and continuous a history in this country. 

I also find it appalling and ridiculous so many state governments here in the US are targeting transgender people for abusive legal discrimination.  What too many of people behind these efforts seem not to grasp is no one decides to identify as transgender or gender non-binary on a whim, and in fact this is a most difficult and fraught process, with no one what's more choosing to do so simply in order that they can achieve any kind of advantage in playing a competitive sport. 

Unfortunately, transgender and gender non-binary people face considerable prejudice, discrimination, and abuse in the UK as well.  I found it disturbing to read about the hostility Torrey Peters received after her novel _Detransition, Baby_ was nominated for The Women’s Prize for Fiction but I am pleased many writers, publishers, and sponsors around the world have responded strongly in solidarity with Peters: “The letter was condemned by numerous authors around the world, including previous nominee Elif Shafak, who congratulated Peters on her nomination and said: ‘After seeing yesterday’s unacceptable, unethical open letter, we need to say, again and again, #TransWomenareWomen. Trans women writers are my sisters’.  Fellow 2021 nominee Naoise Dolan called the novel ‘a masterpiece that I’m incredibly proud to be on the longlist with, and that letter is a transphobic disgrace’” (_The Guardian_ 7 April 2021).  

*

As a final comment I am sure I will be most excited and happy to return to full-time teaching come the Fall 2022 semester, while undoubtedly experiencing some trepidation concerning the length of the gap between then and the last time I was teaching and doing institutional service full-time, but I have also begun to think about how I can aim to carry forward some of the benefits of this period of leave when I do return so I don’t become overwhelmingly absorbed in that work to the point I put my physical and mental health at risk, which I unfortunately have done in the past. 

If I can continue to walk and run regularly, as well as do other regular exercise, sustain regular time to read and write that is not just for classes I am teaching, and do enough other things that usefully divert and rejuvenate it will be a great accomplishment. 

But that’s a long ways off yet, and I try these days not to become too focused too far in the future so I can concentrate effectively on where I currently am at, and what I currently am about.

All best regards to everyone.  

I am excited about tonight’s Insurgence show–Insurgence #820, show #38 of year #16.  Tonight, besides opening and closing sets from Consolidated and 47SOUL, respectively, as well as a set focused on William Doyle’s new album, _Great Spans of Muddy Time_, I am featuring an extended set of selections from a broad array of newly and recently released as well as forthcoming albums–from Alan Vega, black midi, Snapped Ankles, The Underground Youth, Arab Strap, Quakers, Ink Project, No Master No Servant, Citizen, Xiu Xiu, For Those I Love, Joe Strummer, Cathal Coughlan, serpentwithfeet, and First Aid Kit.  10 pm to midnight, US Central Time, every Thursday on WHYS, Eau Claire Community Radio: 96.3 FM, Eau Claire, and also, streaming, via the web, at: www.whysradio.org

*

Last Saturday I finished writing about _Code of a Killer_ for _21^st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide_.  That means, as of the end of the day last Saturday, I have written eleven out of thirty-two total chapters, for my two books in progress, _Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory_ and _21^st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide_.  The total amount of pages I have written so far: 750 single-spaced typed pages. 

This represents at least one-third of the writing I will need to do in order to have prepared complete versions of the two books, and my aim is to finish writing all the remaining twenty-one chapters before I return to full-time teaching and institutional service at UW-Eau Claire in the Fall 2022 semester.  

It’s going to require considerable dedication and concentration but given what I have accomplished, so far, since the beginning of last August, I believe I can do it.  The pandemic, and the widespread forced physical social distancing, quarantining, and locking down, made doing the work I have done easier than would otherwise have been the case, given the lack of viable options to do much else, or to go just about anywhere else.  I am going to need to be even more disciplined to resist temptations, as conditions return close to a pre-pandemic ‘normal’ and as much more opens fully back up everywhere around, to become distracted and unfocused. 

Yet what I have achieved so far encourages me to believe I can and will succeed in meeting this goal.  It is certainly difficult, as I do often painfully miss my previous life and previous range of connections and interactions, but I also well recognize I am taking advantage at present of a rare opportunity, likely the one and only last opportunity for me to do this kind of work and to carry it successfully all the way through.  I also well recognize no way can I possibly manage to do the work involved drafting chapters for these kinds of books, from scratch, while also teaching and doing institutional service full-time.  Maybe when much younger I could do so, and maybe without the chronic health challenges I face I could.  But that’s not where I am at. 

When I return I want to have complete typescripts ready so all the work I subsequently need do is respond to publishers’ requests for revisions and edits; that I know I can do while otherwise engaged as a full-time professor of English at UW-Eau Claire.   

This is the most ambitious, challenging, and difficult scholarly work I have ever done, and also the most thoroughly absorbing and consuming.  It resembles yet simultaneously surpasses resemblance to writing two PhD dissertations at once.  I am truly enjoying doing this work, though, and definitely finding it fulfilling and rewarding.

*

Late last Thursday afternoon I attended a virtual (zoom) general membership meeting for our local campus faculty and academic staff union, United Faculty and Academic Staff at UW-Eau Claire, AFT Local 6481.  I appreciated the chance to see, hear, and talk with union members and friends about issues of concern. 

At the end of my current term (June 30, 2021) I am stepping down as Vice-President and member of the Executive Council after seven years as a member of the Executive Council, including six as Vice-President.  I have been happy to serve in these capacities, to do whatever I possibly can on behalf of faculty and academic staff colleagues, and it’s been a genuine privilege and honor to work together with wonderful people who have also been highly involved as part of the leadership of this local union. 

I will miss continuing to do so, from that kind of position, but since I have been on externally funded 100% scholarly leave I have become of necessity increasingly distanced from what is happening on campus, with both colleagues and students, and have needed to focus overwhelming attention on my scholarly work.  So it is best that someone else step up and become our new VP.  Since we are at our highest membership level since Act 10 many ready candidates exist, and I am indeed impressed with the talent, dedication, ingenuity, and care those actively involved in our local union at present display. 

I aim to continue involved with UFAS-UWEC as much as I can, principally (I hope) through renewing and ramping up the Empowerment through Solidarity Film Series and Festival next academic year (2021-2022). 

I thank all my union colleagues/comrades, past and present, for their empowering solidarity and friendship.  I’d like to especially commend our current and continuing President, Peter Hart-Brinson, who has done an absolutely fantastic job in this capacity.  

*

I have begun work on _Chasing Shadows_ for _21^st Century British TV Crime Drama_ this week, and have reached the point where I have finished drafting and editing my synopsis of the series. 

In the Fall 2018 semester in a graduate and upper undergraduate level class focused on a very similar topic as this book, students wrote similar entry essays on entire series, and I was somewhat surprised many found writing synopses much more difficult than writing critiques.  Writing a synopsis presents its own distinct challenges, certainly, including deciding what to include and exclude, but I find it primarily requires committing the time, and being patient because it will take time, including repeatedly rewinding and fast forwarding video to make sure I am getting details right.  I spent the entire day, from 9 to 6 yesterday, writing my synopsis of _Chasing Shadows_.

_Chasing Shadows_ provides ample source material to draw valuable connections with many important social issues, and I am doing so.  One topic I have been exploring in this connection, which I admit frankly here and now I have yet much more to learn about, is that of autism.  I have been intrigued by ongoing debates I am exploring concerning how to make sense of and define what distinguishes autism, as well as how to characterize autism, along with what kinds of neuroatypical experiences this can and should include, what do and do not constitute common characteristics autistic people manifest, what kinds of connections and disconnections exist between neuroatypical and neurotypical people, what words to use to describe autistic people and different types of autism, as well as myths and realities concerning autism and autistic people. 

I want to be as sensitive and indeed as humbly sensitive as I can in addressing this topic.  As I do also in addressing issues of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder that this series also raises for attention and consideration.

*

I am extremely disturbed by the restrictions on voting rights passed and signed into law in Georgia, and by many comparable initiatives underway throughout this country.  The US maintains a long, sad, sordid history of preventing or otherwise making it extremely difficult for too many substantial groups of people to be able vote, and this current wave of proposals is continuous with the worst of that history. 

I do support the American Jobs Plan, and hope somehow Congress will pass this, or something close to it, as it is about time, just as was the case with the American Recovery Plan, that our federal government ‘went big’, akin to the New Deal and the Great Society, in addressing huge problems in this country like those involved with ‘infrastructure’, broadly conceived.  Immigration, racial justice, climate change, and voting rights are other areas where similar plans are just as urgently necessary and right to take on, and to do so in ‘big’ ways. 

I am likewise most disturbed by the increasingly hostile environment Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders face in the US today.  Racism is all too real, all too widespread, all too multifold, and all too deadly.  Far more needs to be done in terms of developing genuine understanding of and respect for difference as well as genuine appreciation and support for diversity. 

In the UK, meanwhile, it is most frustrating, disappointing, and indeed outrageous that a recently concluded government inquiry into issues of race and racism determined that institutional, structural, and systemic racism no longer exist in the UK today, and that it is, supposedly according to this same report, harmful to claim they do, while, according to this same report, Black Lives Matter and other campaigners for racial justice in the UK are causing greater harm than racism itself!  I have read and studied these issues widely and deeply enough to know racism–including institutional, structural, and systemic racism–is every bit as much, every bit as serious, a problem in the UK, as in the US, even if forms and varieties as well as historical sources, roots, patterns, and trajectories differ.  I  hope this report will continue to receive the backlash and pushback it deserves.

*

Andy and I have continued to watch many of the ongoing TV series I mentioned in previous weeks.  We did finish _The Twelve_, a Flemish courtroom melodrama.  I didn’t previously mention _Bloodlands_, which is set in Northern Ireland, and stars James Nesbitt, which is intriguing for reasons I cannot describe here without giving away key surprises, twists and turns involved, but yes we do recommend this series for any and all potentially interested.  

I finished John Sutherland’s _Blue: Keeping the Peace and Falling Apart_, the second memoir I have now read by this former, now retired, high-ranking officer within the (London) Metropolitan Police Service.  Sutherland’s account of his own experience of severe depression and of how that has dramatically changed his life I found most compelling, and I did feel as if I could empathetically relate to this experience. 

Perhaps at some point I will write in greater detail about what Sutherland shares concerning his experience of depression.  I am thinking of doing so because Sutherland does an excellent job in helping explain what this is like, from the inside, which I do believe remains urgently necessary.  Even though it is much more readily and widely acceptable to talk about depression, and to acknowledge one’s own experience with depression, today than not that long ago, I still obtain the strong impression many people who have not experienced serious to severe depression themselves, or experienced this with someone extremely close to them, continue not to be able readily to understand what this kind of depression is actually like, what it feels like, and what it does to someone. 

And this appears often to be the case no matter how sympathetic these people otherwise tend to be.  I also continue to find many people still highly uncomfortable and ill at ease talking about depression openly, forthrightly, and honestly.  Sutherland’s account is one source, from someone who has dealt with this personally, that can help.  Serious to severe depression can be a qualitatively drastically difference kind of experience than mild to moderate depression.  

I have also begun reading _Critical Issues in Policing_, 8^th edition, written and published after the COVID-19 pandemic was underway but before George Floyd’s murder and this past summer’s protests, as well as _Routledge International Handbook of Restorative Justice_ and _Routledge International Handbook of Penal Abolition_.  I am also reading seven other books at present, a number of which I mentioned in previous weeks. 

I definitely hope when I return to teaching I will be able to teach a a class on ‘Critical Studies in Crime, Justice, and the Law’–as well as classes on ‘Critical Studies in Mental Health’ and ‘Contemporary Black British Experience’.  I love imagining and preparing to teach new classes on new subjects, and I am also doing work of this kind for those three classes while on my current extended scholarly leave.

*

Last Saturday Andy and I went out to dinner for the first time in nearly 13 months, to Houligans here in Eau Claire.  It was great to able to do so.  Houligans looked much as it did over a year ago, except for all the staff wearing masks and some steeper divides between booths.  We will be pushing out more as time proceeds and as more and more people are vaccinated.   

Besides taking long walks like the one I shared photos preceding from last Sunday, I’ve continued running, and that continues going well.  I’ve even found running helps with my tendencies toward painful digestive spasms and cramps, at least if these spasms and cramps are not too far gone before I start running.  And I may even have inspired Andy to start running, which he did yesterday.  

I am thankful that in my home study/office I now maintain the option to stand while reading and writing at the computer, as this helps with tendencies I otherwise all too easily get for hard knots to forms in shoulder and neck muscles on my right side.  I try to observe how I am sitting and maintain good posture but as someone who is right-handed and who is doing so much work day in and day out reading and writing it’s hard to prevent a certain amount of stress and strain developing, and accumulating, in the right side of my neck and in my right shoulder. 

I am seeing a doctor next Wednesday morning just to make sure I don’t have tendinitis or bursitis, and soon I will be undergoing tests to check on whether cancer has reappeared in my bladder, since my January surgery.  I feel good overall but we will see.  Health is all too often all too precarious.

I think that’s about it for now.  Andy and I did send in, this past Monday, absentee ballots for the upcoming April 6 state and local elections.  I’m unsure if I can come up with anything else concrete of interest to share.  It is remarkable remembering how my typical life until this extended scholarly leave was often so fragmented and fractured into so many disparate things going on and happening all at once that I often struggled as a result, including in compartmentalizing as well as in synthesizing, but now my life is much more narrowly and tightly focused and concentrated.  All in all, it’s a welcome and useful change, and it has proven beneficial to my mental and physical health and well-being.

My best to everyone reading this, and to all those others to whom you are close and whom are important in your lives.

Tonight on Insurgence #819, show #37 of year #16 of Insurgence I will be playing music from 47SOUL and from Consolidated.  10 pm to midnight US Central Time on WHYS Community Radio, 96.3 FM Eau Claire, and also, streaming, via the web, at: www.whysradio.org

47SOUL

Consolidated

***

Since last week I have been working on writing about Code of a Killer for 21^st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide, and after somewhat of a slow start I am doing well on this entry essay and expect to have it completely done by the end of the day this Sunday the 28^th so I can start work on Chasing Shadows beginning Monday the 29^th.  

Code of a Killer

Chasing Shadows

***

I am sensitive to how social media (and personal blogs too) can often appear to represent most people always doing well, always living their best possible lives, always experiencing and accomplishing positively and productively, and this can, however unintentionally, make many people attending to social media (and personal blogs) feel at least somewhat down, now and then, by at least unconsciously comparing and contrasting their experiences of their own lives with the representations social media offers of other people’s lives. 

So I will just share that, yes, even as I continue focused and productive,  I do feel the constraints of living a life largely confined to my house and having only traveled a relatively quite short distance and infrequently at that in well over a year now. 

Also, yes, I do routinely need to fight all of the following tendencies: 1. to feel tired of my own writing, of my own words and of my own characteristic tendencies in wording; 2. to feel frustrated by not being able to remember what I want when I want it, such as precise details from a book I have read not even that long ago, or with how messy my initial rough drafts feel to me as I am writing them as well as how uncertain I also feel in writing these drafts that I am expressing anything all that clearly or usefully; and 3. to worry whether I am doing enough of what is genuinely worthwhile as well as feeling frustrated by contending with chronic illness and the impact of aging. 

I just keep at it, and fight past those tendencies, doing the most and the best I can. 

These past nearly eight months concentrating on doing vast amounts of writing virtually every day verify for me the best response to anxiousness about a writing project is to just write, and keep writing, until I find my way and come up with something with which I am satisfied.  It simply requires persistent commitment and dogged effort to _try_, as well as a readiness to keep breaking down writing tasks into successively smaller steps and stages, as well as to strive as hard as I can not to get too caught up in worries about what I did or did not do in the past or what I will or will not do in the future but rather to zero in on what I am doing right now, in the immediate present. 

In fact, as much as I do respect the value of planning, I often wonder why professions like the one I have been a part of for over 36 years now, like so many others, stress–and demand–so much planning, because in my experience some of my most remarkable achievements have come when I did not plan for these, did not anticipate them, as they emerged in the process of immersion in the moment, and this has come with teaching, scholarship, and service. 

I generally do like to plan sufficiently to create structures in place that in turn maximize opportunities for spontaneity, for immediacy, for the unexpected, for give and take, for leaps and bounds, for epiphanies, for creative tangents and open explorations. 

In writing it is much like that too.  I start drafting with broad ideas of what I might do and then I sit down and set to it, to see what actually happens as I put ideas into words, and as I find ideas within and through words.  

***

Tuesday was our dog Casey’s 10^th birthday.  He’s been a wonderful dog for us, we love him dearly, and I hope he will continue to be part of our family for a good number of years to come.  Casey is fussier than when younger, but Andy and I agree getting older is not easy, for dogs or for people, so this increased fussiness is understandable and we will always strive to be as patient, accommodating, reassuring, and supportive of Casey as we possibly can.  Nevertheless, even so, Casey continues to be an exceedingly people-friendly and frequently most lively and happy dog.  We are grateful for the time we have had together and we are as well for what is yet to come.

***

Last Saturday I shared Andy’s and my response to the feature-length documentary film _White Riot_. 

White Riot

We currently, and recently, have been watching many different shows.  We recently finished the Irish-language political drama, _The Running Mate_, which was a lot of fun: https://watch.mhzchoice.com/the-running-mate  

As what likely counts as a ‘guilty pleasure’, we watched the TV reality show _Marriage or Mortgage_ all the way through, which I appreciated because it included ample representation of people of color as well as lesbian couples, couples of different races, elderly as well as young couples, and couples including people with disabilities: 

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/a35866190/marriage-or-mortgage-couples-now/

We have been watching the Scottish Gaelic-language family drama _Bannan_, which is interesting mostly so far because of its Isle of Skye setting and the use of Scottish Gaelic: https://watch.mhzchoice.com/bannan  

And we have been watching the Flemish legal/courtroom crime drama _The Twelve_ which is perhaps somewhat overly soap-operatic, but reasonably engaging, I can’t yet tell whether I believe the woman on trial for double murder is guilty or not, and I appreciate this is one of the few Flemish language shows I can ever recall watching. 

The Twelve Trailer

Also we have been continuing with the Danish family drama _The Legacy_ I have written about here previously: https://theeurotvplace.com/2015/05/the-legacy-megahit-danish-drama-premiering-in-the-us/

And we have been started watching the German crime drama _The Nordic Murders_: https://crimefictionlover.com/2020/11/the-nordic-murders-the-latest-german-crime-drama-on-walter-presents/ and the German-Austrian crime drama _Murder by the Lake_: https://watch.mhzchoice.com/murder-by-the-lake  The latter maintains a fascinating setting: Lake Constance, which overlaps with Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. 

As we have been continuing as well with _Comedians of the World_, which we have enjoyed performances so far by comedians from The Netherlands, Quebec, and the Middle East: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAJGOIs9pak 

Finally, another what likely counts as a ‘guilty pleasure’ is _The Flash_, now in season seven.  Andy has long been more of a superhero fan than me, but I agreed at the start of season two to share the experience of at least one such TV series with him, and that turned out to be _The Flash_, which can often be frustrating and silly, but I do at least appreciate the effort, even if somewhat overly simplistic, that the series invests in emphasizing friendship, family, love, caring, emotional vulnerability, multicultural diversity and representational inclusion, and a clear counter to at least traditional forms of hegemonic ruggedly taciturn masculinity: https://www.cwtv.com/shows/the-flash/central-city-strong/?play=821e545a-f7aa-4c6d-a45e-2ee5127be492

Again, as in previous weeks, I expect I am missing some shows we have been watching, and even some movies as well, because as pandemic conditions continue, despite gradual improvements, we still spend a lot of time indoors, and that gives us incentive to screen quite a lot, at least late at night.

***

I did enjoy the opportunity to take a long walk again last Saturday and I have been keeping up with running regularly, inside on the treadmill and outside when warmer and sunnier.  I am happy with how much progress I have made since resuming running after a long break from doing so, and continuing to enjoy adding this practice into my routine.  I like the fact that it is now quite easy to run three to four miles at a time.  Eventually, and I hope soon, Andy and I may go out and do a few more things, now that it has been just about two weeks since we received our 2^nd COVID-19 vaccine shot, and I seem to be well past any lingering side effects from that 2^nd shot.  Perhaps we might even take a trip somewhere this summer, although where to we have no idea, since we usually travel to the British Isles, and that’s still out of the question for at least this summer.  

***

I am continuing to do a whole lot of reading of various kinds.  This is so much that I’ll just highlight one book among many here and now, one book I read from start to finish since last week: _Guilty Until Proven Innocent_ by Jon Robins:

https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/guilty-until-proven-innocent

As indicated by the publisher, “Whenever a miscarriage of justice hits the headlines, it is tempting to dismiss it as an anomaly – a minor hiccup in an otherwise healthy judicial system. Yet the cases of injustice that feature in this book reveal that they are not just minor hiccups, but symptoms of a chronic illness plaguing the British legal system.  Massive underfunding, catastrophic failures in policing and shoddy legal representation have all contributed to a deepening crisis – one that the watchdog set up for the very purpose of investigating miscarriages of justice has done precious little to remedy. Indeed, little has changed since the ‘bad old days’ of the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six.  Award winning journalist Jon Robins lifts the lid on Britain’s legal scandals and exposes the disturbing complacency that has led to many innocent people being deemed guilty, either in the eyes of the law or in the court of public opinion.”  It’s a compelling and important book–captivating and disturbing.

***

I can’t think of much else of interest I’ve been doing since last week.  I’ve been largely completely preoccupied with my current and ongoing work, so much so I’ve fallen way behind in keeping up with email.  For some strange reason I suddenly have started to receive all kinds of traditional mail from innumerable causes seeking money, most of which I simply need to turn down and immediately recycle this mail, because I already give a lot.  I don’t know quite how or why that has happened.  All in all, I’m making it through well enough, and I wish the same, and better, to everyone out there.  It’s a bit lonely now and then, the life I’m currently leading, but I’m in much better shape than a great many, and I’m doing meaningful and satisfying work, and otherwise enjoying the activities and pursuits that my life involves so that is good.  

***

I just remembered one other thing to mention.  I watched the Syracuse men's basketball team make it into the sweet sixteen once again, last Sunday, and I enjoyed doing so even if it was somewhat harrowing, down to the wire at the end.  I was a big fan of the team back when I was at SU as a PhD student, and have continued to follow them ever since, but it's incredible that it has been over 27 years since I graduated, and I've been over 3 times as longer living and working in Eau Claire than I did in Syracuse–and that Jim Boeheim is still the head coach and now is son is one of their star players.  

The Son Shoots, the Father Shouts, and Syracuse Keeps Winning