JU JU'S MESSAGE TO MUBAREK

An 8-year-old Saudi girl addresses the powerful Egyptian President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak. Meanwhile, more than 250,000 protesters have violated the curfew and are calling for Mubarek's resignation. The unpopular security forces have withdrawn to protect the palace; they've been replaced by the army, a drafted force that seems to support the revolt. They have refused to fire upon the people, and demonstrators chant, “The people and the army are one hand.”

According to the New York Times, "The Army’s announcement — delivered on state TV with no elaboration by its official spokesman — declared that 'freedom of expression through peaceful means is guaranteed to everybody,' and promised to recognize the 'legitimate demands' of the protesters."

This is a significant show of support, and indicates opposition forces are strengthening. Egypt, the strongest US ally in the region, is hardly a democracy, and Mubarek has run the country uninterrupted for the past thirty years. In case you think propping up America-friendly dictators is a thing of the past, dig a little deeper. Sure, the US would rather not lose an ally but it would seem grossly hypocritical to support the notion of democracy in the Middle East without supporting this peoples' movement for democratic reform. Traditionally, Mubarek has quelled protest with an iron fist, and torture is common in his jails. In the typical geopolitical devil's bargain, the US has ignored his violations of human rights in the name of US interests. This time around, Mubarek's first response to the civil unrest was to shut down the internet and meet protesters with bullets and water canons, but the protesters refused to be intimidated, and now with the army refusing to fire upon them, Mubarek is scrambling. He announced a "new government," and replaced Habib el-Adly, "who is widely despised by protesters for brutality shown by security forces," with a retired police general, Mahmoud Wagdi, but that wasn't enough, and even more people filled Cairo's Tahrir Square ("Liberation Square").

Tomorrow, organizers expect a "march of millions" and a general strike.

THE STATE OF THE UNION

1969. The zenith of US troops in Vietnam, with a conniving and paranoid Richard Nixon at the helm, and massive anti-war moratoriums in the streets. The My Lai Massacre is exposed, and Life Magazine runs a full-color spread of bloody bodies, shocking photographs of more than three hundred unarmed women and children killed by Lt. James Calley and the men of Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal Division, United States Army. The Chicago Eight conspiracy trial begins with Black Panther Bobby Seale chained to his chair, and across town fellow Panther Fred Hampton is murdered in his sleep by Chicago police.


1969. The Beatles give their last public performance, and are busted on the Apple rooftop by London police, but they manage to release Abbey Road, and "Come Together" and "Something" fill the the airwaves. James Earl Ray pleads guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King. The war rages on, and the The USA is divided between a liberal, anti-war peace camp of youth and minorities, and a flag-waving Republican "Silent Majority" who support the war, Nixon and "law and order." The conservatives see the civil rights movement as a threat, and Nixon speaks in code about "welfare mothers" abusing the system, infuriating his base, firing up the angry hardhats to bust some heads, stirring up his ground troops much in the way of today's Tea Party. Not to be outdone by the Black Power movement, AIM Indians occupy abandoned Alcatraz to draw attention to the plight of Native Americans. In another world, Joe Namath and the NY Jets win the Super Bowl after Broadway Joe's brazen prediction. "Easy Rider" is in the theaters, and "Midnight Cowboy" will win Best Picture. Apollo astronauts walk on the moon, and half a million people go to Woodstock to celebrate peace, love and music where Jimi Hendrix plays an incendiary "Star-Spangled Banner" replete with bomb blasts and feedback missiles.


1969. Pianist Les McCann and saxophonist Eddie Harris take the stage at the Montreux Jazz Festival and capture the turbulent times in a song that becomes a classic. The songs starts innocently enough with just a drummer and piano--and, as if tipping his hand, Less McCann quotes a little "Aquarius"--then launches into a fiery jazz diatribe expressing anger and militancy, loss and disillusionment, the war, the Movement, and a painfully divided nation. More than any phony speech from Tricky Dick that year, this is really the State of the Union Address.

HEY, IT'S SLIM HARPO

Well, I met a little girl in a country town. She said, "What do you know? There's Slim Harpo." Born in Louisiana, Slim recorded for the mighty Excello Records, the outfit that also recorded Lonnie Brooks, Lightnin' Slim, Charles Sheffield, Roscoe Shelton and Lazy Lester. Later on, Slim was "discovered" by the rock generation and his tunes were covered by The Yardbirds, Pink Floyd, Them, ZZ Top and the Rolling Stones, who played a killer "Hip Shake" on "Exile on Main Street." No matter. The best Slim was always Slim himself. Now throw out all your stupid records and get some Slim Harpo today!

Slim Harpo

BETWEEN THE LINES

In a fascinating interview at "Big Think," technology writer Nicholas Carr reminds us that writing has only been around for a couple millennia, and in that time we've jumped from papyrus to iPad (or in my case a Kindle 3G). Obviously, the experience of reading has changed over the years, and in more ways than might be immediately apparent. For example, the spaces between the words.

Carr says that the first writing, on slates and papyrus and even early handwritten books, was written in continuous script. No spaces. Readers used a lot of energy just to separate the words in order to read them. Finally, spaces between the words were "invented."


"And it was only in around the year 800 or 900 that we saw the introduction of word spaces. And suddenly reading became, in a sense, easier and suddenly you had the arrival of silent reading, which changed the act of reading from just transcription of speech to something that every individual did on their own. And suddenly you had this whole deal of the silent solitary reader who was improving their mind, expanding their horizons, and so forth. And when Guttenberg invented the printing press around 1450, what that served to do was take this new very attentive, very deep form of reading, which had been limited to just, you know, monasteries and universities, and by making books much cheaper and much more available, spread that way of reading out to a much larger mass of audience. And so we saw, for the last 500 years or so, one of the central facts of culture was deep solitary reading. The immersion of ourselves in books, in long articles, and so forth."

One could argue that the spaces between the words, which allowed for a private experience, helped create the individual. People were suddenly separate, grappling with deep personal thoughts, experiencing cognition as individuals. People had private experiences before this, of course, but not in such a dedicated and deliberate fashion. The intimacy of the book allowed people safety to think alone, unhindered by social cues, free from groupthink.

TV, on the other hand, might carry us back to olden times. Media expert Marshall McLuhan may have been the first to suggest that television, being once again a shared, group experience, may destroy the private space created in the Age of Print. That age was waning, he said, and soon we would become global villagers.

Carr agrees technology may turning us into neo-primitives. "With the arrival – with the transfer now of text more and more onto screens, we see, I think, a new and in some ways more primitive way of reading. In order to take in information off a screen, when you are also being bombarded with all sort of other information and when there links in the text where you have to think even for just a fraction of a second, you know, do I click on this link or not. Suddenly reading again becomes a more cognitively intensive act, the way it was back when there were no spaces between words. And as a result, I think we begin to lose the ability to read in the deepest, most interpretive ways because were not kind of calming our mind and just focusing on the argument or the story."

But don't fret. You can still read. There are plenty of wonderful books out there to challenge and boggle the mind, brilliant philosophies and histories and works of fiction. Fortunatelytherearestillafewspacesleftbetweenthewords...

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In case you don't have enough time to read books, slates or papyrus, "Cool Tools" has done an amazing job putting together a list of the greatest magazine articles EVER. Check out their list HERE.

The formidable Paris Review has recently posted all their interviews with writers online, a celebrated feature since the 1950s. From William Faulkner to Robert Crumb, the writers spill their guts and share their tricks, Check them out HERE.

Project Gutenberg has done an amazing job collecting 33,000 free books you can read on your Kindle, iPad, Nook, Android, iPhone, Sony Reader or any other electronic book reader. Visit their website HERE.

Then again, if you don't have an eReader (and even if you do) you can still visit a bookstore (we suggest a local, independent bookstore) or a public library, still one of the best ways your tax dollar is spent.

THE KING OF SOUL

Sam Cooke would have turned eighty this weekend if he hadn't been murdered back in 1964 at the age of thirty three.

Cooke had one of the greatest, most distinctive voices ever recorded and he became known as the King of Soul. He first gained attention in the Soul Stirrers, a gospel group, and then he crossed over to pop and had huge hits like "You Send Me," "Cupid," "Chain Gang," and "Bring it on Home to Me." After his murder at the Hacienda Motel, songs that had been on the shelf were finally released, including "A Change is Gonna Come," a soulful protest song that is regarded as his greatest composition. To hear this classic, click on a play button at the upper right of this blog page.

AN ALTERNATE HISTORY

The summer between fifth and sixth grade, our family moved to Corvallis. My father was working on his Master's Degree at Oregon State. It was a hot summer. I rode my bike all over campus and beyond into farmland, and when I wasn't riding my bike I was reading, pouring over the stacks at the public library on Monroe Street. I covered a wide swath. I worked my way through regular books from the adult stacks, history and social science, adventures and war stories, fiction and science fiction. Up till then, I'd experienced sci-fi in movies--generally cheesy late night creature features, but that summer I read the "classics" from Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury and Robert Silverberg, A. E. Van Vogt and Frank Herbert. That summer, I learned the unlimited possibilities of outer space. My infatuation with sci-fi didn't last much longer, but that season it was a perfect fit. I'd ride to the library, load up on books, and then hit the city park where I'd sprawl out on the grass and explore infinity, alien life, rockets and ray guns. In my nearly sixth grade brain, I'd sometimes miss the philosophical questions and morality plays the writers were exploring, but most of the time I'd get the general idea. Dressed in spacesuits, protagonists acted out questions of tolerance and militarism, segregation and the Cold War, peace and the possibility of nuclear inhalation. Sci-fi may be set on a distant planet, but of course it's really commenting on the here and now. Rod Serling's subversive "Twilight Zone" was also a big part of my mental make-up. If nothing else, it put me into the habit of asking "what if?" Those days are long gone but once in a while an interesting science fiction movie comes along that looks like fun. You have to suspend disbelief with science fiction--lot's of disbelief--but sometimes it's worth it. Here's a weird looking trailer for a movie coming out. It looks pretty far-fetched. What do you think? Want to go to the movies?

NICHOLAS BROTHERS

Something to wake you up: the amazing Nicholas Brothers dancing to music from Cab Calloway's band in the 1943 film, "Stormy Weather." Definitely caffeinated. Fred Astaire said this performance was "the greatest dance number ever filmed." Who can argue with Fred?