RIP Maya Angelou

The New Neo Posted on by

The news that Maya Angelou has died at the age of 86 reminds me of how deeply impressed I was when I read her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings when it first came out in 1969.

Those who read it now probably can’t quite imagine how fresh and powerful it was at that time. In the interim, coming-of-age memoirs by women—including by black or other minority women—have become far more commonplace, as have descriptions of childhood sexual abuse. Those things were part of Angelou’s book back in a time when they were unusual to read about, and that was arresting. But a lot of other things about her book remain extraordinary, and they are the reason I read it and found it memorable.

The first is the power of her unique and lyric voice, which was (and remains) utterly arresting and utterly engaging. The reader is drawn at once into the world of Angelou’s childhood, where black children are sent on trains halfway across the country with notes pinned on their clothing as to where they’re going, and met by grandmothers who take them in and raise them with strength and religion and firmness in a world that is entirely black, including the schools and the teachers. The portrait in the book of Angelou’s grandmother Annie Henderson is one of the great ones of memoir. Nor is it sugar-coated and touchy-feely; her grandmother was deeply loving but extremely formidable.

The rape that occurs later, at the hands of Angelou’s mother’s live-in boyfriend when 8-year-old Maya and her brother have been sent back to St. Louis to live with her, is heartbreakingly rendered. Described from the child’s viewpoint, it somehow manages to depict something that has rarely been conveyed so well: how the child’s starvation for paternal affection can set up the neediness that makes him/her vulnerable, how wily and then how brutal the rapist can be, and how a sensitive child might react. In Angelou’s case, when her uncles took revenge and murdered the rapist, she felt that her talking about the rape had caused his death, and so she decided to stop talking entirely:

“I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, because I told his name. And then I thought I would never speak again, because my voice would kill anyone …”

It took a long time for Angelou to find her voice again—five years of silence. Initially she was sent back to Stamps, Arkansas to live with her grandmother in a more stable environment, and that helped a bit. But it was literature and a wonderful teacher that convinced her to return to the world and its people.

Angelou wrote many more memoirs besides Caged, and over the years I’ve read quite a few of them. They’re of interest to anyone interested in Angelou’s life, and they constitute a story of overcoming great odds. But none of them even remotely touches the heights of her first book. I’ve often thought that many writers have one book in them that they must write, are driven to write, and that for Angelou that book was Caged. The rest was commentary.

The same for her poems, which I don’t much care for. But Caged was a masterpiece when it was first written. I don’t know how it holds up today because I haven’t read it in many years. But I bet it holds up just fine.

Angelou gained fame as a writer, but she was not only a writer. If you read about her life you may be struck, as I’ve been for years, by how varied and accomplished it was. Hers was a life lived fully. Of how many people can you say that?

RIP, Maya Angelou.

[NOTE: There’s not all that much in Angelou’s obits or even her Wiki entry about her politics. She was very active in the civil rights movement as a young woman, and Wiki mentions an early pro-Castro period, but it is my impression (including the indications in this article, as well) that she was a liberal Democrat. She seems to have been especially close to the Clintons, and supported Hillary’s bid over Obama’s in 2008. Her ties to Arkansas probably at least partially explain that fact.)

100 years is a lot of years…

The New Neo Posted on by

…but Dorothy Custer seems to sail right through it:

I missed it when she became a sensation on the Leno show in 2011. I just came across the above video recently, and I thought I’d check to see how she’s doing today. Still alive and kicking, and about to celebrate birthday #103. I also learned that her sense of humor isn’t just a case of being amiable and fun; she’s been a comedian (an amateur, but performing) for much of her life.

There’s a set of the very old who seem to be impervious to many of the ravages of age, keeping their mental abilities and vigorous life force till the day they die. They look old, but not as old as they actually are. It’s as though the aging process goes only so far in them and then it stops, or remains on hold for a while.

[NOTE: In an odd coincidence, the subject she talks about at the beginning of her interview resonates with this post I wrote earlier today.]

Obamacare and employment-based health insurance

The New Neo Posted on by

The Obama administration and the IRS act to ensure that employers don’t just dump people onto the exchanges:

When employers provide coverage, their contributions, averaging more than $5,000 a year per employee, are not counted as taxable income to workers. But the Internal Revenue Service said employers could not meet their obligations under the health care law by simply reimbursing employees for some or all of their premium costs.

Christopher E. Condeluci, a former tax and benefits counsel to the Senate Finance Committee, said the ruling was significant because it made clear that “an employee cannot use tax-free contributions from an employer to purchase an insurance policy sold in the individual health insurance market, inside or outside an exchange.”

If an employer wants to help employees buy insurance on their own, Mr. Condeluci said, it can give them higher pay, in the form of taxable wages. But in such cases, he said, the employer and the employee would owe payroll taxes on those wages, and the change could be viewed by workers as reducing a valuable benefit.

Andrew R. Biebl, a tax partner at CliftonLarsonAllen, a large accounting firm based in Minneapolis, said the ruling could disrupt arrangements used in many industries.

“For decades,” Mr. Biebl said, “employers have been assisting employees by reimbursing them for health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs. The new federal ruling eliminates many of those arrangements by imposing an unusually punitive penalty.”

When an employer reimburses employees for premiums, the arrangement is known as an employer payment plan. “These employer payment plans are considered to be group health plans,” the I.R.S. said, but they do not satisfy requirements of the Affordable Care Act.

These “unusually punitive penalties” are to the tune of $100 a day per employee, bringing it to a grand total of $36,500 per year per employee.

The administration was faced with an interesting dilemma. Which was worst of all its options? Forego all those extra tax dollars and allow employers to assist employees as in the past? Run the risk of letting employers dump people into the horror of the exchanges, which could cause widespread dissatisfaction not just for those who use the individual insurance market (which has already occurred) but for the much larger number of people who previously had been helped out by employers? Many of these people would not qualify for subsidies and the coverage for them would be both more expensive and far worse than what they were probably used to.

None of this would seem to bode well for the all-important election, but apparently the powers that be decided that getting the tax dollars and forcing the employers to provide Obamacare-compliant insurance off the exchanges was the best combination for their purposes.

There’s other Obamacare news, too, although I’m not at all sure that this is actually “new.” I seem to recall reading and writing about something very much like it quite some time ago (see also this):

In a new [sic?] regulation, the Department of Health and Human Services said it would provide financial assistance to certain insurers that experience unexpected financial losses this year. Administration officials hope the payments will stabilize premiums and prevent rate increases that could embarrass Democrats in this year’s midterm elections.

Republicans want to block the payments, which they see as a bailout for insurance companies that supported the president’s health care law.

I can’t imagine that it’s only Republicans who “see” it that way. What else could it possibly be?

Skirt, wind, underwear, solution?

The New Neo Posted on by

“Oldflyer” has a question:

I presume everyone saw the picture of the lovely Duchess of Cambridge’s dress blowing up and revealing her perfectly formed posterior. Now, I am quite old and not up to date, but someone please elighten me. Is it fashionable for fashionable women not to wear underwear these days? Have I missed something, I should not have? Is there a thong which is not visible?

I am probably not all that much younger than Oldflyer, but I can offer an answer to his final burning question in that paragraph:

Yes, there is almost certainly a thong which is not visible.

And for Oldflyer’s earlier questions: yes, you are missing something. And yes, lack of underwear is more common than it used to be. Of course, many many years ago (we’re talking several centuries here), lack of underwear used to be common as well, at least in the sense of underpants. Women wore corsets and petticoats and all sorts of undergarments, but not what you would call panties with a crotch (for those historically inclined, see this) until relatively recently:

Crotchless panties are not a new thing. They are only a salacious version of what had been the style of women’s underwear for centuries. Whatever form of pantalets, pantalettes, drawers, or pantaloons a woman wore, they were usually open from the thigh up. This was for a variety of reasons. Bunching up all the yardage in even the humblest dress of centuries past to try and get a comfortable position over the chamber pot left no hands to pull (or “draw,” thus the term “drawers”) down underwear. Plus it was considered healthy and hygienic; a lady’s bits needed proper ventilation. It wasn’t until the mid-19th century buttons began to appear on the crotch of drawers, giving ladies the option to close up shop if they wished.

There’s a host of information at that website, including the fact that what you might call briefs for women were invented some time around the 1930s. And if you’ve always wondered what a dimity pocket is (and who among us hasn’t?), that’s the site for you as well.

The thong is of fairly recent origin in terms of being popularly used as women’s underwear (1990s?), but of ancient origin as a piece of clothing, usually for men. Women seem to wear it in order to reduce panty lines and to feel sexy and trendy, although some claim it is more comfortable than regular underpants, be they bikini or briefs. I am here to say that they are sadly mistaken, IMHO.

Which brings us to the Duchess and her recent wardrobe malfunction at the hands of the capricious Australian breeze (that link rather discreetly covers what was indiscreetly revealed, but you can find the full picture quite easily if you use Google; I’m going to make you work for it).

The following would seem to be a solution for her problem; I wonder why she hasn’t done it. Maybe the clothes don’t hang quite right when you do this?

But despite a string of such incidents, Kate has yet to take a leaf out of the Queen’s book.

Her Majesty’s skirts are always fitted at the hem with small lead curtain weights, which cost just £1.50 for a pack of four, to prevent the royal hemline from flying away in a gust of wind.

Seems the queen has thought of everything.

There’s also another old-fashioned solution: slips that are not full, and cling to the body under the dress. Or my own favorite from the 60s and miniskirt era, petti-pants, which were slips in the form of pants rather than skirts. Women of a certain age might remember them; I had ultra-short ones that didn’t show under the mini, but protected me on the subway.

Or, if all else fails, wear non-thong underwear. Could that be so difficult?

Apparently.

For Memorial Day: on nationalism and patriotism

The New Neo Posted on by

The story “The Man Without a Country” used to be standard reading matter for seventh graders. In fact, it was the first “real” book—as opposed to those tedious Dick and Jane readers—that I ever was assigned to read in school. As such it was exciting, since it dealt with an actual story with some actual drama to it. It struck me as terribly sad—and unfair, too—that Philip Nolan was forced to wander the world, exiled, for one moment of cursing the United States. “The Man Without a Country” was the sort of paean to patriotism that I would guess is rarely or never assigned nowadays to students.

Patriotism has gotten a very bad name during the last few decades. I think part of this feeling began (at least in this country), like so many things, with the Vietnam era. But patriotism and nationalism seem to have been rejected by a large segment of Europeans even earlier, as a result of the devastation both sentiments were seen to have wrought during WWI and WWII. Of course, WWII in Europe was a result mainly of German nationalism run amok, but it seemed to have given nationalism as a whole a very bad name.

Here’s author Thomas Mann on the subject, writing in 1947 in the introduction to the American edition of Herman Hesse’s Demian:

If today, when national individualism lies dying, when no single problem can any longer be solved from a purely national point of view, when everything connected with the “fatherland” has become stifling provincialism and no spirit that does not represent the European tradition as a whole any longer merits consideration…

A strong statement of the post-WWII idea of nationalism as a dangerous force, mercifully dead or dying, to be replaced (hopefully) by a pan-national (or, rather, anational) Europeanism. Mann was a German exile from his own country, who had learned to his bitter regret the excesses to which unbridled and amoral nationalism can lead. His was an understandable and common response, one that helped lead to the formation of the EU. The nationalism of the US is seen by those who agree with him as a relic of those dangerous days of nationalism gone mad without any curb of morality or consideration for others.

But the pendulum is swinging back. The US is not Nazi Germany, however much the far left may try to make that analogy. And, in fact, that is one of the reasons they try so hard to make that particular analogy—because Nazi Germany was one of the very best examples of the dangers of unbridled and amoral nationalism.

But, on this Memorial Day, I want to say there’s a place for nationalism, and for love of country. Not a nationalism that ignores morality, but one that embraces it and strives for it, keeping in mind that—human nature being what it is—no nation on earth can be perfect or anywhere near perfect. The US is far from perfect, but it is a very good country nevertheless, striving to be better.

So, I’ll echo the verse that figured so prominently in “The Man Without a Country,” and say (corny, but true): …this is my own, my native land. And I’ll also echo Francis Scott Key and add: …the star-spangled banner, O long may it wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

flag

[NOTE: This is a slightly edited version of an older post. Note how it dovetails with today’s post on the recent European elections, even though this one was first written many years ago.]

This is a first for neo-neocon

The New Neo Posted on by

I thought it was high time for this blog to host its first picture ever of Kim Kardashian.

Apparently Kim and the father of her child got married over the weekend. This was what Kim and one of her sisters wore to a pre-wedding dinner. Kim looks like she was interrupted while getting ready for a Tae Kwon Do class and misplaced her belt, whereas sister Kourtney is very covered up, with an extra large ruffle on the posterior.

And is that Captain Hook in front and to the right, head hidden by shrubbery? He will not find the crocodile here:

kardgetup

For comparison:

taikwan

Making sense of the European elections

The New Neo Posted on by

Sunday was voting day across Europe, and the results have been commonly described as an “earthquake.”

But since groups referred to as “far-right” and groups called “hard left” seem to have won in different countries, it’s hard to generalize except to say that it was a rejection of the status quo (although that didn’t happen in Germany) and a rejection of European unity. I have long been puzzled by the designations of right and left in Europe, although “left” is easier, because it seems to be Communist and/or socialist. But “right”? Is that a synonym for “anti-immigrant”? Or “anti-EU?” Or for both? I doubt very much it stands for what we would call conservatism in the US.

This seems to be a good enough description of what happened this election cycle:

All across Europe, voters have lost faith in traditional parties in direct proportion to the collapse of economic growth. In countries with free-market growth policies ”” such as the Baltic states ”” ruling parties actually gained votes in Sunday’s vote. But in Spain, France, Greece, and other countries, the traditional major parties of the Left and Right won less than half the vote. Even in Germany, the large nation most clearly committed to European integration, an openly Euroskeptic party pulled in 7 percent of the vote and will enter the European Parliament for the first time.

The reason for all this ferment is clearly economic dissatisfaction…

Sadly, European Union leaders have in the past demonstrated a bullheaded refusal to listen to voters who are skeptical of European centralization.

In other words, Europe is a mess, and it doesn’t look like these elections will fix it.

Here’s another summary that seems to make sense of the trend the elections revealed despite the left/right contradictions:

To a greater or lesser extent, the story of this Euro-election has been the rise of the minor parties ”“ some of them bizarre, some of them downright potty, but all of them united by a visceral dislike of the EU bureaucracy: its arrogance, its remoteness, its expense, its endless condescension and its manic and messianic belief in its right to legislate for all 500 million people in the EU.

…From Dublin to Lublin, from Portugal to Pomerania, the pitchfork-wielding populists are converging on the Breydel building in Brussels ”“ drunk on local hooch and chanting nationalist slogans and preparing to give the federalist machinery a good old kicking with their authentically folkloric clogs…

…[T]here is a revolt going on ”“ and we know how Brussels generally reacts to such vulgar expressions of democratic feeling. When people have voted against the federalist impulse in the past ”“ like the populations of Denmark, or France ”“ they have been asked to have another go; to vote again until they get the right answer. This time, I expect the Eurocracy will try to ignore the election results; they will try to brush them aside. Men like Jean-Claude Juncker, the ex-prime minister of Luxembourg (pop. the same as Wolverhampton) will appear on global media to denounce the European electorate for being so tasteless and irrelevant as to ask for change…

They are wrong, wrong, wrong. This European election is an expression of revulsion and discontent and it is a mandate for reform.

But the hallmark of the EU is to not listen to mandates. It’s a little like Obama and the Democrats regarding the passage of Obamacare: we know better than you little people. If we keep doing what we want to, some day you’ll see our wisdom and you’ll like it too. And even if you never do, that’s tough. We really don’t care, because we have our own agenda.

Murder in Santa Barbara

The New Neo Posted on by

So far I haven’t written about the latest mass murder and the latest mass murderer, Elliot Rodger.

That’s because there is a certain repetitiveness to these horrific crimes and the reaction to them. A young and angry perpetrator. Blaming his crime on something else: the failure of the mental health care system, the parents, the police, the school, society. Propagation of his message by the internet, and then subsequently by the MSM. Speculation about whether he was on psychoactive drugs, and if so what role that might have played. The predicable cries for gun control—particularly far-fetched in this case because his first three murders were committed with knives, and some of his victims’ injuries were caused by him mowing them down with a car.

I repeat what I’ve often said before: it is easy to see, ex-post-facto, that something should have been done about this guy. There were certainly plenty of warning signs. But they only look unequivocal after the fact, not before, and everyone who presents with this kind of behavior cannot be locked up, and certainly can’t be locked up forever. Elliot Rodger looks to me (after seeing a couple of moments of the video he made, and reading about it) to have been a psychopath, and psychopaths cannot be deterred except by incarceration, and that can’t be done in the absence of a crime. It certainly can’t be done indefinitely in the absence of a heinous crime.

I only watched a couple of seconds of the Rodgers video; I stopped because it was almost unbearable to watch it. He emanated such pure evil I did not want to look on it any longer. But it’s a mistake to think Rodger seemed that way in his ordinary life prior to the killings. He probably had developed a false front, not entirely effective (many people seemed to sense he was deeply troubled) but effective enough to accomplish the goal of presenting himself as less dangerous than he actually was.

Unfortunately, I see no way to have prevented this.

[ADDENDUM: More here about the actions of the police in their prior interview with Rodger, and his parents frantic efforts to stop him in time. This is also of interest; it seems that one problem was that the parents’ intense concerns about earlier videos were not conveyed properly to the police who went to interview Rodger, and he was able to fool them. It also seems as though the suspicion at that time was that he was mostly suicidal rather than homicidal, and Rodger was very canny in dealing with them.]

Clogging: then and now

The New Neo Posted on by

Clogging fifty years ago (hat tip: “cornei”), from some baby boomers:

And here’s a much more recent manifestation. There are some interesting stylistic changes—and of course, this is more formal and regimented, perhaps because it’s a competition:

What do the two videos express about the changes in America? I bet you can still see scenes like the first one today, somewhere. But you didn’t see scenes like the second one fifty years ago.

Or maybe you did, and I just missed it. I can’t say my finger was on the pulse of clog dancing at the time.