I haven’t had a musical post lately, so here we are.
I’ve listened to this Andrew Burnap version of “Camelot” at least two dozen times. Partly, I think, it’s because it’s some of most flawless singing I’ve heard lately, and partly because it’s good therapy for those of us who are doing out best to keep our heads while living under MAGA fascism.
I confess that I watched the first 15 minutes or so of “Snow White” on Disney+ to hear more of Burnap’s singing. It was disappointing — not because of Burnap’s singing, but because the songs and the production weren’t all that great. I can see why the movie bombed. What Andrew Burnap chiefly needs is a revival of a show such as “Kismet.”
Summer is winding down in not-Camelot
We’re arriving at the end of the drama of the tomato cycle. In the spring, the first stage of the cycle is preparing the spot. Then, when it’s warm enough, in go the skinny little tomato plants. Next, for what seems like months, one nurses them along and dreams of tomato sandwiches. Then there is the first tomato sandwich. And then two or three tomatoes a week. And then, come early August, all at once there are so many tomatoes that they have to be made into sauce. After that, the tomatoes peter out.
Today I need to make my second batch of tomato sauce of the season. Fortunately one can’t have too much of that stuff. Come to think of it, I think I’ll make vegetable soup, even though it’s August.
The Age of Improvement: 1783-1867, by Asa Briggs. Second edition 2000. First edition 1959.
The Endarkenment
This is not a review, because I’ve just started reading this book. Asa Briggs begins by describing the lay of the land in Britain in the late 18th Century, as an era of progress was beginning. The Enlightenment had introduced an enormous amount of new light into the world. Briggs wants to show, though, how many people resisted the light.
The church, unsurprisingly, put up some of the strongest resistance. The poor, some argued, were poor because it was the will of God. Struggling with poverty was a divine trial that improved the soul. To rebel against one’s place in the social order was to rebel against God. Should the poor even be educated? Hierarchy was God’s design, and those at the top of the hierarchy were put there by God.
Cruelty didn’t much bother such people. In An Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Robert Malthus wrote that a man born poor, whose family cannot feed him, “has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is.” There were those who argued that poor relief or concerns about the health of the poor interfered with nature’s beneficial weeding out of the weak.
The parallel I am reacting too, of course, is how similar this is to where we find ourselves today. Few of our lords and betters are unguarded enough to say these things outright. It’s what they do that reveals what they think and the kind of government they want. Education, health care, and whether children have enough to eat isn’t as important to them as that the rich have the freedom and low enough taxes to get richer.
That such people are now in control of the American government, in spite of our Enlightenment Constitution, is constantly astonishing and constantly horrifying.
People have brought back the light before, though, so surely we can do it again, especially now that the American ignorati are ever so slowly figuring out that they were bamboozled by con men who don’t give a rat’s foot about the little people.
How much retro can you handle?
Regular readers here know that all communications technology fascinates me, the old as well as the new. In my first job as a newspaper copy boy, I took care of a room full of Teletype machines and used a Teletype terminal to send local stories out to the Associated Press. Back in the 1980s, I ran a quite popular and literate bulletin board system named Science Fiction Writers Network.
Several months ago, just because I love playing with computers, I set up another bulletin board system (BBS). It has been sitting idle, waiting for people to find it. In the old days, people dialed into BBS systems using modems and phone lines. My new BBS does in fact have a modem connected to it, but these days one connects to a BBS over the Internet. And yes, there are still a great many BBS systems still in operation, though hardly anybody uses them (or even knows about them) anymore.
My new BBS is named The Last Telegraph Office. To connect, you will need to use the terminal program that comes with your computer. Whether you use Windows, Linux, or a Macintosh, you will have a terminal program. In the terminal program, you should find an app named “ssh.” That stands for “secure shell.”
The exact command may vary according to the type of computer you have and how your ssh app behaves. On my Macintosh, the command looks like this, and as far as I know the same command should work on Windows:
ssh -p2222 bbs.acornabbey.us
At “Select Terminal Codepage,” enter a 1.
From there the prompts should be familiar if you’ve used a BBS in the past. Poke around and see what you find. If you go to the [M]essage area, in the “Local” message groups (as opposed to the “Fidonet” message groups), you’ll find a new discussion area for the Into the Woods blog.
[P]ost a message there and let us know you’ve arrived!
Image by ChatGPT. Click here for high-resolution version.
AI: The new scapegoat?
Something I’ve been thinking about lately…
While corporations, the military, and all things wicked in the world are pushing hell for leather to maximize the use of AI, the rest of us are being flooded with commentary (I might even say propaganda) on how and why not to use it. The implication is that AI is just too powerful to be safe in the hands of those of us lower in the social order.
If I were conspiratorially minded, I might wonder whether someone doesn’t want us to be empowered, because they like keeping power to themselves. Surely, as a part of the question of who uses AI for what, there are some democratic values to be defended.
My attitude is: If we come into the possession of a powerful new tool, then let’s explore how that tool can be used to defend ourselves from those who want all the power and all the money for themselves.
I suggest this as a topic for the “Into the Woods” message board at The Last Telegraph Office BBS. See above for how to get there.