Dear Librarian

Dear Librarian:

I've noticed Multnomah County Library has circulating copies (and one in Reference) of my book "The Children of Vaughn: The Story of Professional Baseball in Portland, Oregon (1901-2010)." Since you've taken this decent step on my behalf, and more importantly on behalf of Portlanders who like good books that reference Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, I am curious why you don't have the rest of the Round Bend Press Books (founded in Portland in 2010) catalog available? 

Here is our website: http://roundbendpressbooks.blogspot.com/.  All of the writers and artists represented by RBPB are local or regional and have much to offer discerning readers in the fields of fiction, poetry, autobiography, jazz, photography, art, history and much else. 

Here is my suggestion then. Take a closer look at Round Bend Press Books, read our catalog and make a decision beneficial to our community by stocking these editions on your shelves. By doing so I think you'll discover you're doing your patrons a real service.  I can guarantee you they will enjoy all of our titles, not just "The Children of Vaughn."

Terry Simons
Founder/Publisher
Round Bend Press Books
Portland, Oregon

This has been a bug up my ass for years now, so I wrote my friendly librarian.  It would be nice if the literary crowd would start paying attention, beginning with the local library.


TS

Sacrifice for the Dead

My pal Chris who lives in Houston wants to go to the Grateful Dead's "Fare Thee Well" show(s) in Chicago.

He's one of the many who have been aced out in the primary market for tickets to the concert, which sold out Soldiers' Field in a heartbeat.

I was never a huge fan myself, but Dead Heads are in heat, it seems, and this final tour for the old geezers, band and fans alike, is must-see programming.

If he goes, Chris will have to pay big.  He is a lifelong fan, having followed the band around the U.S. and Europe in the past.

The Dead aren't what they used to be without Garcia, of course, but the times have changed as well.

Where do hippies get their money these days?  Wow...


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...and furthermore...

Wages for most Americans are rising only very slowly right now and have been stagnant in real terms for most of the last four decades -- not least because most of the better floors in the U.S. economic building are currently being gutted by deindustrialization. You can't get everyone out of poverty while simultaneously outsourcing to Asia the well-paying jobs on which the general prosperity of middle-class America still depends. And you do not solve poverty -- for the society as a whole -- by focusing policy on routes out of poverty by a hard-working few. You solve poverty by raising the base of the ladder for everyone. No matter what Republicans claim, you cannot make the American dream a reality for the mass and generality of Americans by simply creating more ladders that reach up to the privileged few. You can only make the American dream a reality for the mass and generality of Americans by raising the floor on which the ladders are actually set. Poverty is not something to be escaped from. Poverty is something to end.

Wake Forest University's David Coates hits all of the right notes here.


TS

Another View

The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism, whose Nazi iconography is embedded in our consciousness. Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies, whose war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism.

“To initiate a war of aggression…,” said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, “is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened.  Had the United States and its satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have us in thrall to its savagery. They are the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are the surreal theatre known as news.

The great Aussie John Pilger gets on his high horse and rides it into your brain.

Here's a companion piece that balances Pilger while largely bearing out his argument.

Enjoy.


TS

Que Paso en Pasco?

But unlike Ferguson, the Pasco story is also uniquely Latino. It’s about an agricultural city where more than half of the population is Hispanic, in a state with a rich civil rights history. A community where some have deep roots, and others, like Zambrano-Montes, are newer immigrants. Where shops and restaurants and churches cater specifically to city residents, and Spanish is the first language for many. A place where an important number of residents—up to 20 percent, according to a Fusion report—are undocumented. And if Pasco is anything like the dozens of cities across the United States where Latinos are a majority, chances are it feels like home to them and they wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

Where is the outrage?

Are we as a culture becoming immune to the follies of the police state?  Like war, if it doesn't touch us it isn't very important?


TS

Patriotic Fiction

There it is, readers. You have your lumpen rightists, who have acquired more power than seemed possible a few years ago but still face the knotty problem of stupidity. You have your mainstream rightists, polished and clever, intent on staying the expansionist course and persuading us it is best for all. On the foreign policy side, these people remain the right’s true center of gravity.

And you have your neoliberals, ever dressing up the rightists’ agenda as the progressive thing to pursue. This, the Williams-Sonoma crowd, is possessed of an egregious righteousness. They are the heirs of the Cold War liberals, those gutless many who assumed whatever shape necessary to avoid confronting American paranoia, reaction and aggression, usually out of sheer self-interest.

The rest of the story from Salon.


TS

1 of 3

Oregon plays the first of its final three in league tonight in Berkeley, and it's pretty much a must-win game for the basketball Ducks to keep their hopes alive for the big dance.

I think Oregon needs to win two of the three to get off the March Madness "bubble" and into the thick of things.

Cal tonight, Stanford on Sunday (a game Oregon won't win in my opinion), and the closer with Oregon State in Corn Valley, which will also be very tough because the Beavs play so damn well at home.

Starts tonight at 8.  Hope the stream works; if not, there is radio.

My evening is thus planned.

Later:  Yes!  Oregon by 11.


TS

Dance

That's what happened when we went to America's "music schools" starting in the '50s. It was a crushing blow that has only recently begun to change. However, in my opinion, that was nothing compared to what we got at "dinnertime." When white restaurateurs finally decided to bring jazz out of Harlem, in a misguided, albeit successful, attempt to get the big tourist money downtown, things really changed. See, jazz was not meant for the dinner table, or in many ways, not even the concert stage. It was meant for dance. Black folk danced to jazz -- all kinds of jazz. As a result we were all over the radio, and all over the movies. But that came to a halt with the advent of television. Television is all presentation. I don't think anyone realized it at the time, but closing the dance floors was the kiss of death for jazz in terms of its big-time entertainment value.--T.S. Monk

The rest of Monk's essay.


TS

Borowitz

Easy marks.


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Crime

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Cowboys and Indians

The story.


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It's Official

This is the latest non-news debate.

We are officially condemned to hell, and we deserve to be.


TS

Feelin' Old/Poem of the Day

You poisoned my sweet water.
You cut down my green trees.
The food you fed my children
Was the cause of their disease.

My world is slowly fallin' down
And the airs not good to breathe.
And those of us who care enough,
We have to do something.......

[Chorus]
Oh... oh What you gonna do about me?
Oh... oh What you gonna do about me?

Your newspapers,
They just put you on.
They never tell you
The whole story.

They just put your
Young ideas down.
I was wonderin' could this be the end
Of your pride and glory?

[Chorus]

I work in your factory.
I study in your schools.
I fill your penitentiaries.
And your military too!

And I feel the future trembling,
As the word is passed around.
"If you stand up for what you do believe,
Be prepared to be shot down."

[Chorus]

And I feel like a stranger
In the land where I was born
And I live like an outlaw.
An' I'm always on the run...

An I'm always getting busted
And I got to take a stand....
I believe the revolution
Must be mighty close at hand...

[Chorus]

I smoke marijuana
But I can't get behind your wars.
And most of what I do believe
Is against most of your laws

I'm a fugitive from injustice
But I'm goin' to be free.
Cause your rules and regulations
They don't do the thing for me

[Chorus]

And I feel like a stranger
In the land where I was born
And I live just like an outlaw.
An' I'm always on the run.


TS

Faked Out

Came across what I thought at first glance was a crime scene this afternoon. Turned out to be Grimm filming a scene in O'Bryant Square, a noted Portland trouble spot in real life.

Didn't see the crew trucks on the other side of the park until I walked past. I should have also noticed that a lot of people were standing around in costume, which happens more in filmmaking than it does in real life.

Ostensibly.


TS

New Gov

And so Oregon has a new governor.  I don't expect much to change.

The futures of Kitz and his girlfriend will be interesting to watch unfold, if nothing else. Could get jail time, but likely won't.

High school graduations will remain at the bottom of the scale, poverty will grow worse, corporate giveaways will be unfazed--hello tax abatements!

The wingnuts are saying we should have voted the Republican into office, even though Dennis Richardson is a bible-thumping hack--Oregon's equivalent of Huckabee, with a similar worldview.

I don't like any of them of course, Dems or Repubs.  The Dems for their neoliberal bullshit, the Repubs for their insane social agenda and peddling of religious dogma.

It is a real mess over here, however I'm glad Kate Brown is in office now rather than Richardson. It's a matter of degrees of ineptitude. I'm happy Kitz quit, and wish he'd had more sense about the company he keeps.

That's love and politics in the Upper Left Coast of the good ol' USA.


TS