Today I am 52 years old. There’s something odd about that even number. There are fifty two weeks in a year and fifty two cards in a deck (without the jokers). There are fifty two states, counting DC and Israel.

On the day I was born in the rainy state of Hawai’i, the dry state of New Mexico experienced its greatest rainfall ever recorded (11.28 inches in 24 hours at Lake Maloya). That’s a good rain, even by Hawai’ian standards.

At sunset tonight, Venus sidles up to the moon, not quite close enough for a kiss (“Not ’till 2031”), but less than 1 degree apart.

Free Will Astrology : Taurus Horoscope (April 20-May 20)

It’s about time you got the chance to be knocked on your ass by a flood of positive surprises and good feelings. I hope you’re trusting enough to go with the tidal flow, even if it does temporarily render you a bit woozy. Naturally you’d like to know if this giddy surrender will land you in trouble. Is there any chance that you’ll have to endure some karmic adjustment at a later date because of the fun you’re having now? Here’s my prediction: absolutely not. If anything, your enthusiastic cooperation with the free-form dazzle will shield you from any negative repercussions.

How did the astrologer know about my concern for the righting of the karmic scale. I can’t promise surrender, but I will cooperate. mjh

To paraphrase the Beatles,

You say it’s your birthday
It’s my birthday too–yeah
They say it’s your birthday
We’re gonna have a good time
I’m glad it’s my birthday
Happy birthday to me.

Last week cellist Mstislav Rostropovich died. Rostropovich was the conductor of the National Symphony when I worked there about 25 years ago (and long after I left). I was the Data Processing Manager for the National Symphony, hired to set up an IBM System/34 minicomputer donated to the Symphony. My office was a former broom closet — albeit a very large one — on the edge of the suite of Symphony offices deep backstage and upstairs in the Kennedy Center. The glamor and grandeur of the Kennedy Center largely stopped at the backstage elevator.

The interview for that job was the most grueling of my life. My soon-to-be boss, John Berg, was — probably, still is — a mild-mannered, good-natured gentle man. For the interview, he was joined by Mr X, whose name I suppress. X worked for the donor and took it upon himself to test me during the interview. So, as John asked the usual questions, X kept interjecting rapid-fire questions and comments, often interrupting me mid-sentence, seeming not to care at all about my actual response. After the interview, I walked numbly along the huge exterior balcony with its magnificent view of Memorial Bridge. I’d been through the ringer. Later, John confided that after I left, X said, “there’s your man,” believing I was even-keeled and unflappable. While no one who knows me would call me unflappable, I am mostly steady, a trait that has served me repeatedly in the classroom. I know for a fact I flapped more than once at the Symphony.

Conductors have longer lifespans than any other profession. It helps to be rich and pampered, but there is no question that the physical and mental exertion — and the adulation — keep one strong.

Though I saw Rostropovich conduct the Symphony many times and play cello a few times, I only met him once. I don’t recall the occasion, but staffers gathered in an office with him. We each downed a shot of vodka and greeted Rostropovich one at a time. I can imagine he kissed everyone on both cheeks. mjh

P.C. Kabuki Theater, By Jonah Goldberg

The reality is that much of political correctness — the successful part — is a necessary attempt to redefine good manners in a sexually and racially integrated society. Good manners are simply those things you do to demonstrate respect to others and contribute to social decorum. Aren’t conservatives the natural defenders of proper manners? …

There’s remarkable overlap between conservative and liberal complaints about the culture. But when traditionalists talk the language of decency and morality, the Left hears bigotry and theocracy. And when liberals talk about sensitivity and white privilege, the Right hears something totalitarian. The result is that the two sides hold separate conversations. And when they do talk to each other, each side is listening for hidden agendas.

Kurt Vonnegut is dead. That doesn’t have the same impact on me as Frank Zappa’s death, though they were contemporaries in my mind and in the influence they had on my life. Zappa got screwed. Vonnegut got more time. It’s all dust in the end.

I’m interested in how many different people reacted to Vonnegut’s death. My buddy, Kris. My Droogie, Fred (et al.). Margaret Montoya, whose ‘uh … uh’ drives me from the room and TJ Trout, about whom I could hardly care less. Vonnegut touched us all almost 40 years ago.

I’m resurrecting a blog entry from May 2002 (perhaps I should wait 3 days). It was my last exposure to Vonnegut. mjh

Good News, Bad News

Months ago, when I heard that Kurt Vonnegut would be speaking at UNM, I thought, “of course, I’ll be there.” I soaked up Vonnegut’s satire in high school, lo, 30 years ago. But, for no reason, I never got around to buying a ticket. Little did I realize the ironies to come when Merri said, “I have good news and bad news.”

The bad news was that Vonnegut was sold out. The good news was that I could join a couple of guys from the Daily Lobo in the Media Booth. After all, I have had a number of letters printed in the Lobo — I have written for the Lobo. When I heard “Media Room,” I envisioned a bright, high-tech space with laptop ports and phones and recording equipment. Happy with my good fortune, I jotted down “sometimes good things happen to OK people.”

To my surprise, the Media Room was more like a wide, dark closet in the far back of the auditorium. The only light came through sliding glass windows facing the hall that can only be opened so far, in an alternating arrangement of glass, opening, glass, opening. And it wasn’t just me and my Lobo colleagues — there were 3, sometimes 6, other people in the booth with us. As more people crowded into the booth, I ended up seated behind glass. Most shocking of all, there was no amplified sound, just whatever sound that could drift to the back of the hall and through the half-open windows, one of which was eventually blocked by the Lobo photographer, partly to photograph but mostly so he could lean out and actually hear something.

As Vonnegut began to speak, people in the booth shifted uncomfortably and asked each other if they could hear. One woman had very good hearing and occasionally repeated a bon mot. Now & then the photographer leaned back into the booth and repeated something, too. Several people behind us just left.

For the next hour, while 2000 people listened to one of the wittiest men alive, I strained with all my might to pick out every other word. It was like listening to a foreign language, me straining for the gist, grasping a word here and there, using the end of the sentence to infer the beginning, while the native speakers were laughing their asses off.

I did get the gist. I was particularly surprised that Vonnegut is a self-professed Luddite. A sci-fi writing Luddite? I heard enough to laugh when he said “human beings are here to fart-around.” (Me, “I love to work at nothing all day.”) I missed a couple of manipulations of the doting crowd. I followed much of the chalkboard presentation on good story lines, ending with the analysis that nothing really happens in Hamlet. (As Merri points out, Bart Simpson reached a similar conclusion).

In the end I was exhausted from all my effort, like an ungifted student of Wit as a Second Language. Much was lost in the translation. I think I endured it for much the same reason people revere the Buddha’s nail clippings — even a fragment of greatness is better than our ordinary lives.

It was, indeed, a night of irony. As I left my deaf booth, I saw & heard the TV, carrying a live broadcast just outside the Media Room door. I saw the patron with the headset for amplified assistance. Would a Luddite begrudge us this much technology? I practically slapped my forehead when Merri said, “maybe there was a switch for speakers.” I remembered Vonnegut’s last words, sharp echoes of Merri’s: “tell me, which was the good news and which was the bad.” I believe we’re here to get the irony. mjh

New Drive Afoot to Pass Equal Rights Amendment By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Staff Writer

Federal and state lawmakers have launched a new drive to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, reviving a feminist goal that faltered a quarter-century ago when the measure did not gain the approval of three-quarters of the state legislatures.

The amendment, which came three states short of enactment in 1982, has been introduced in five state legislatures since January. Yesterday, House and Senate Democrats reintroduced the measure under a new name — the Women’s Equality Amendment — and vowed to bring it to a vote in both chambers by the end of the session. …

The amendment consists of 52 words and has one key line: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” That sentence would subject legal claims of gender discrimination to the same strict scrutiny given by courts to allegations of racial discrimination.

Although more states are considering ratifying the ERA now than at any other time in the past 25 years, activists still face serious hurdles. Every statewide officeholder in Arkansas endorsed the amendment this year, but the bill stalled in committee last week after Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly came to Little Rock to testify against the measure. [mjh: Schlafly is proof the good die young.]

In the 1970s, Schlafly and others argued that the ERA would lead to women being drafted by the military and to public unisex bathrooms. Today, she warns lawmakers that its passage would compel courts to approve same-sex marriages and deny Social Security benefits for housewives and widows. …

The ERA, originally introduced in Congress in 1923, gained popularity in the mid-1960s. In March 1972, it cleared the first of two hurdles: passing both chambers of Congress by the required two-thirds vote.

Thirty state legislatures ratified it the next year. Congress extended by three years its seven-year deadline for ratification, but the decade passed without approval by the required 38 states. ERA backers have since introduced the resolution in every Congress, but only now do they believe they have a realistic chance of success.

Legal scholars debate whether the 35 state votes to ratify the amendment are still valid.

In 1997, three professors argued in the William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law that the ERA remained viable because in 1992 the Madison Amendment — which affects congressional pay raises — became the 27th constitutional amendment 203 years after it first won congressional approval. Under that precedent, advocates say, the ERA should become part of the Constitution once three-quarters of the states ratify it, no matter how long that takes. …
– – –

The Amendment In Question

The text of the Equal Rights Amendment, as proposed in 1972 by the 92nd Congress, and as published in Volume 86 of U.S. Statutes at Large (Pages 1523-1524), reads as follows:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

I’ve supported the ERA from the beginning. People like Schlafly and Anita Bryant should be enough to discredit the opposition.

As an aside and a plate-of-shrimp, my longtime companion, MR, ‘discovered’ the 27th Amendment a couple of months ago — she who carries a well-thumbed copy of the Constitution with her much of the time (alá Senator Sam Irvin). MR was quizzing a young friend in preparation for a high school test on the Constitution and threw in what she thought would be a trick question: What’s the 27th Amendment? To which she received the unexpected but correct answer. I don’t know how we missed the passage of an amendment to the Constitution. We were probably busy celebrating the periodic downfall of the Republican Party. (Their success is always their undoing — note to Democrats.) mjh

Intolerable Darfur

Western leaders are again saying the slaughter is unacceptable. Will they again do nothing?

EUROPEAN UNION leaders spoke out strongly on Darfur at a summit in Berlin on Sunday. “The situation,” said British Prime Minister Tony Blair, “is intolerable. . . . The actions of the Sudanese government are completely unacceptable.” “The suffering is unbearable,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “I want to state frankly that we have to consider stronger sanctions.”

It took less than 24 hours for the backing down to start. “You have to make sure that you do not raise expectations that cannot be met,” an E.U. spokesman in Brussels told the Associated Press. Officials cited the usual obstacles: the resistance of U.N. Security Council member China to sanctions; the unwillingness of Arab and other Islamic governments to support steps against the regime of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir; the difficulty of military operations in an area the size of France.

Those are the excuses that Western governments — including the Bush administration, which labeled the killing in Darfur “genocide” in 2004 — have used for several years to explain the lack of effective action. Meanwhile, the slaughter goes on: According to the United Nations the death toll in Darfur exceeds 200,000, while more than 2 million have been driven from their homes — including 86,000 this year.

China’s inexcusable defense of the regime continues, as does that of Arab governments that portray themselves as partners of the West. On Saturday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak flatly rejected a request by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon that he do more to pressure Mr. Bashir. “The issue is not pressure,” said Mr. Mubarak’s foreign minister.

In fact, more pressure is exactly what is needed. In addition to overseeing a renewed rampage by government-backed militias in Darfur, Mr. Bashir has reneged on an agreement to allow U.N. peacekeepers to join a tiny African Union force in the province. That position won’t change unless either the regime’s supply of arms or its oil-fueled economic boom is threatened.

Britain is said to be preparing a new Security Council resolution. But if the European Union leaders mean what they say, they don’t need to wait for the Security Council. E.U. sanctions against Sudan are relatively light; they could be extended to cover trade and investment. Mr. Blair spoke of imposing a no-fly zone to impede air attacks in Darfur. That’s an operation that would necessarily be carried out by Western powers, which could undertake it without U.N. sanction, as they did in Kosovo. If the situation in Darfur is “intolerable” and “unbearable” — and it is — Western governments should stop delaying the remedies that lie in their hands.

I think there is a serious flaw in this piece of art (Uproar hits Fla. Confederate flag show – Yahoo! News). The formal gallows invokes a false image — who did the Confederates hang in such a way or by whom were they so executed? No, the proper way to hang a Confederate flag is from a tree limb. Perhaps it should be stretched over the bloody face of a dead man. There should be a crowd at his feet, half of whom are enraged and the other half of whom look like they are at the county fair. mjh

Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter cry.

http://www.boscarol.com/nina/html/where/strangefruit.html

Billie Holiday sings Strange Fruit