U.S., Russia make progress toward resolving diplomats spat -State Dept
Saturday, 04 Dec 2021
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FILE PHOTO: Vehicles drive past the embassy of the U.S. in Moscow, Russia August 21, 2017. REUTERS/Grigory Dukor//File Photo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and Russia have made progress toward resolving a stand-off over staffing at their respective embassies, resulting in Washington ending a policy that allowed family members of embassy staff in Moscow to leave Russia, a State Department spokesperson said on Friday.
The progress, first reported by the Washington Post, came during a meeting with Russian officials in Vienna by a U.S. delegation led by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs Christopher Robinson.
The policy known as authorized departure had been implemented by the U.S. embassy in Moscow in August to allow family members to leave the country voluntary, amid a diplomatic row between the two nations over how long diplomats can remain at their bilateral missions.
Following the Vienna meeting, authorized departure has been ended, a State Department spokesperson said in an email on Friday. "These are ongoing issues, which we continue to engage on. We have made progress in recent days on bilateral issues and hope to continue to move in that direction."
The tussle over diplomats comes as tensions are heightened over what Washington and its allies say are provocative troop movements by Russia near its border with Ukraine.
Russia said on Wednesday it was ordering U.S. Embassy staff who have been in Moscow for more than three years to fly home by Jan. 31, a retaliatory move for a U.S. decision to limit the terms of Russian diplomats.
The step came after Russia's ambassador to the United States said last week that 27 Russian diplomats and their families were being expelled from the United States and would leave on Jan. 30. Washington said the diplomats were not expelled but had been in the country for longer than a new three-year limit.
"We need to have open channels of communication particularly during times of heightened tension. A functioning Embassy is critical to diplomacy and why we continue the hard work of addressing this issue," the State Department spokesperson added.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis)


Mercy Me to make stop at Evansville's Ford Center
Nathan Cohran was playing guitar and singing in a band in his Missouri hometown when a friend called to say a band he was in was looking for a bass player.
"I said, 'I think I know how to do that,' and hopped in a car with Robby (Shaffer), drove to Texas and never came back," the Mercy Me bassist said. "There was a need and I filled it. All these years later, here I am, still playing bass."
That decision is one Cochran has never regretted as he's spent the last 23 years with the contemporary Christian band making a stop at the Ford Center Oct. 12.
The group will be leaning heavily on their new album, "Lifer," released at the end of March but will play their older hits as well including, "I Can Only Imagine," which helped their debut album reach double platinum status. Other classics include “Flawless” and “Greater.”
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"We want to welcome people to our new stuff," Cochran said. "We're having too much fun to backtrack. We want to keep moving forward with our new stuff, of course still playing the older stuff people want to hear."
The band's never shied away from being honest about why they are writing thing things they are writing about.
"For the band, our life has always revolved around and been consumed with our relationship with Christ," Cochran said. "We want to be honest with fans that sometimes we are writing about great things and other times writing about how we deal with tragedies or things we don’t understand or enjoy. We've actually written about that quite a bit -- 'I Can Only Imagine' was about wondering about loss. There are songs about being homesick, written specifically after losing a loved one -- we are honest and real about that."
But don't expect the band to have the answers. Like everyone else, Cochran says they are all trying to figure it out too.
"That's a rare form of piety everyone needs to see," he said. "We are trying to be honest about it. And people have responded to that over the years. Our songs mean a lot to a lot of people. That’s rare today as so often people listen to music to be entertained. Our songs have a deep meaning for people; we take that seriously. We don't want to take that flippantly."
While they take their responsibility to their fans seriously, Cochran said that family wins every time for the band when it comes to finding balance, it has to, he said.
"We've tried to be smart about what we do as a band," he said. "Four years ago we cut our shows in half. We used to do anywhere from 130 to170 a year; now we do 60 to 70 a year. Our families are growing, our kids are getting older. We didn't want to be absent husbands and fathers. It's been the best decision I've ever made."
Band members have 16 kids, five of them Cochran's ranging from 15 to 1 1/2. His older sons have toured with him in the past, but he joked if all the kids came along they'd need three other busses on tour.
"They love coming out; they don't know any different since they've grown up doing this," Cochran said.
In many ways, he doesn't know any different either.
"I've been doing this, being a part of Mercy Me, longer than I haven't been, which is weird," Cochran joked. "But its still exciting. I still love it. There's always something -- anew record, new tour, something we are new and excited about.
"But standing in front of an audience showcasing something that meant something truly deep to us, even night after night, never gets old. If there comes a day where I feel like what I'm doing, the songs I'm writing aren't connecting and don't mean something to people anymore then I'll stop."
The sacrifice, Cochran explained, isn't worth it if he isn't impacting audiences.
"Evansville's show is going to be a fun one," he said. "We had a blast getting songs ready over the course of the year for this tour. I'm feeling settled in with everything. It'll be a great show and people can expect a great time."
What: Mercy Me
When: 7 p.m. Oct. 12
Where: Ford Center, tickets start at $23 with additional fees.Avaialble at all Ticketmaster locations and the Ford Center box office.


In the coming decades, India's economic growth, if it wants to maintain the current level of development, will have to deal with the shortage of trained people, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. The solution, says a recent study by the Center for Work Life Policy in New York, is to be found in the thing that the Country (most of the time) tends to overlook and overshadow: the female potential.
Each year, about five million Indian instructed women enter into the world of work, but the problem is to make sure that them remain into, because of gender discrimination and traditional family culture. A survey about 1000 women showed that 51% of them have given up their jobs after marriage and 52% once them have children.
Promote education and female employment will have a catalytic effect in all fields of development and will lead to raise the female figure giving dignity and respect. The Indian government is encouraging these types of intervention, the goal is to promote an active role of women, through the work as an instrument of social emancipation.


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Activists rally to support the U.S. Postal Service
Matt Rourke/AP
In this Wednesday, May 6, 2020, photo, United States Postal Service carrier Henrietta Dixon gets into her truck to deliver mail in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
SAN DIEGO (CNS) - A coalition of activists led by MoveOn.org held a "day of action" Saturday aimed at saving the U.S. Postal system, with nearly 700 nationwide rallies -- including many in the San Diego area.
The rallies were held outside various postal facilities.
"... we will show up at local post offices across the country for "Save the Post Office Saturday" to save the post office from (President Donald) Trump and declare that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy must resign," said a statement on the MoveOn.org website.
San Diego County rallies included Oceanside, Carlsbad, Vista, Encinitas, Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach, Hillcrest, Normal Heights, Carmel Mountain, Lakeside, University City, College Grove, Otay Mesa, San Ysidro, El Cajon and Escondido.
DeJoy, who became postmaster general June 16, has been accused of tampering with the nation's postal service by banning overtime, removing mail sorting equipment and prohibiting extra trips by postal workers to collect mail and parcels that arrive later in the day under the auspices of cutting costs.
The U.S. Postal Service lost $8.8 billion in the 2019 fiscal year, more than twice the amount of the previous year, and DeJoy has said the changes are necessary to save money.
Critics have said the changes have slowed mail delivery at a time when more people are relying on the service amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and to vote by mail ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
DeJoy attempted to defend his leadership during a hearing Friday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and said operational changes would be put on hold until after the election. He also vowed post offices will be able to handle mail-in ballots.
He is expected to testify Monday before the Democrat-led House Oversight Committee.
Trump described DeJoy last Saturday as "a very talented man" and "a brilliant business person." He was chairman and CEO of the North Carolina- based contract logistics firm New Breed Logistics from 1983 until 2014.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said at a briefing Wednesday that the Postal Service "does have sufficient funding through 2021, and they do currently have cash on hand. They've been given that $10 billion line of credit through the CARES Act," referring to the federal coronavirus relief bill.
McEnany said the Trump administration is "certainly open to" increased Postal Service funding.
On Tuesday, Trump called for Amazon to pay more for shipping packages through the Postal Service.
"Amazon is paying an ancient price, and they shouldn't be," Trump said. "And they shouldn't be allowed to pass it on to their customer."
Trump also said "we shouldn't get rid of any of our postal workers."
Ruth Y. Goldway, a commissioner of the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission from 1998-2015 and its chair from 2009-14, urged "everyone to be calm," in an op-ed published Tuesday by The New York Times.
"Don't fall prey to the alarmists on both sides of this debate," wrote Goldway, a Democrat appointed to the commission by then-President Bill Clinton and reappointed in 2002 and 2008 by then-President George W. Bush. "The Postal Service is not incapacitated. It is still fully capable of delivering the mail."
Goldway wrote that "while the agency indeed has financial problems, as a result of a huge increase in packages being sent through the system and a credit line through the CARES Act, it has access to about $25 billion in cash. Its own forecasts predict that it will have enough money to operate into 2021."
Goldway attributed the Postal Service's "shaky financial situation" largely to the approximately 30% drop in first-class mail, typically used for letters, from 10 years ago.
"The service's expensive, overbuilt infrastructure can absorb the addition of more mail in 2020, including election mail that is mailed to and sent back by every voter in every state," Goldway wrote.
The U.S. House of Representatives, in a rare Saturday evening vote, passed a bill that would provide $25 billion in funding for the Postal Service and requires the agency to return to prior operations levels.
The vote was 257-150, with 26 Republicans joining all House Democrats voting in favor.
Senate Republicans have said that they would not pass the bill, and President Trump has said he would veto it anyway.


Pageants to Pars
"My father-in-law calls me a natural at golf. There's nothing better to me."
About a year before I got married, my soon-to-be father-in-law, Steve Leslie, invited me to play golf. He plays all the time, but I had only been playing for a couple of years so I was a little nervous about it. I learned how to swing while working as an office manager at Ipswich (Mass.) Country Club, but I never seemed to hit the ball solidly or very far.
So now we're on the course and he's giving me all kinds of tips like keeping my knees bent and my eyes on the ball. Some people don't like to get pointers when they're playing, but there was something really nurturing about it. He never had a daughter and I never really had a father so we clicked, and it helped me relax. Next thing I know, I'm making the perfect swing and the ball is going where I want it to. It was the first time I actually felt what it was like to hit good shots—I was hooked. And after that day, he was, too. I'd be shocked if he didn't tell my husband, "Matt, you have to go marry this girl."
ABOUT SUSIE CASTILLO
The 34-year-old from Methuen, Mass., is the face of the Oxygen Network, appearing on many of its programs. She lives in Los Angeles and has been on Tyler Perry's "House of Payne" and MTV's "Total Request Live." Her golf claim to fame? "At a pro-am, Andy Garcia once told me 'Nice shot,' after seeing me hit one out of the rough. Now that's pretty cool."


Stretch & Bobbito: Now All the Hot Rappers Are Hooks & No Lyricism
The legendary radio duo say current hip-hop is almost a different genre from "classic hip-hop," are they right?
Nathan Slavik
The Combat Jack show has grown from a podcast to something more like a hip-hop Rosetta Stone, a catalog of hip-hop culture that future generations will be able to use as a guide to the past. And so of course I listened to Combat's new episode with the legendary hip-hop radio duo Stretch and Bobbito, and in the course of their conversation it was this quote that really struck me:
"When you think of classic hip-hop, which is made from sampled beats and mining old records, that is really almost a different genre from what they call hip-hop now. Stylistically, it's so different. Right now, all of the hot rappers -- their records are four minutes of hooks. That's it, there's no lyricism." - The Combat Jack Show, The Stretch & Bobbito Episode
I have no real interest in playing the old guys vs. young guys game, that's more tired than ScHoolboy Q listening to Kendrick freestyle. Stretch, Bob and Combat are making an observation more than a judgement, they address much of this in the full interview, but regardless, it's every teenager's job to create a new culture their parents don't understand and don't like. That's the cultural circle of life that's been in place for centuries and that life cycle's working just fine. Far beyond this conversation, in the age of the internet some young folks will go out of their way to provoke older heads, some older heads will go out of their way to smack down younger folks, but the vast majority of us are perfectly capable of taking the good with the bad without over-reacting either way.
No, I'm far more interested in asking questions here than pointing fingers. Are they right? If so, why?
First, it is true that in terms of song structure, songs have far more hooks than ever before. And as always, we can blame the internet. When most music is being consumed via YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify, etc., you just have a few seconds to capture someone's attention before they click away. We're living in an attention based economy, where songs aren't just competing with other songs, they're competing with viral Vine videos and memes.
So now successful songs start with the hook; the first "verse" on "Panda" doesn't even come until two minutes into the song. Before that, it's all hook, and the more hooks, pre-hooks and post hooks you can build into a song, the better chance you have. That's true in hip-hop, and it's true in indie folk rock. I see that less as any statement on the music getting better or worse and more of an evolution in the literal definition of that word, an adaption to a new environment.
Similarly, it's just flat our harder for producers to sample than in the "classic hip-hop" days. The Grand Upright decision in 1991 opened the door for the music industry to treat sampling more like a crime than the art it is, and so of course a lot of producers decided they'd rather just hunker down with some 808s than try to navigate the extraordinarily complex, convoluted and expensive sample clearance system.
Add those two forces together, throw in the explosion of festivals that reward artists with big hooks thousands of people can sing along to, mix in a bunch of other cultural factors and what do you get? You get four minute songs packed with hooks over sample-free beats.
In that sense Stretch and Bobbito are absolutely right, stylistically the times have changed, but it's that "all" word in "all of the hot rappers" that rings false to me. A lot of artists are making music like I've described above, but certainly not all, and in fact you could more accurately say that "all of the most popular rappers" are actually making heavily sampled, heavily lyrical hip-hop. The best selling albums of the last two years from younger artists have come from the likes of J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Meek Mill and Big Sean, all of whom rely heavily on samples and writing. And while Drake's certainly no stranger to hooks, even his albums are packed with samples and four-minute, hook free songs. While the big singles may be more "shallow" and grab the most attention, overall I think hip-hop's actually going through one of the more lyrically-driven periods of the last few years.
Cultural changes, music changes, hip-hop changes. Change is the only constant. So it was, so it is, and so it always will be.
By Nathan S, the managing editor of DJBooth and a hip-hop writer. His beard is awesome. This is his Twitter. Photo Credit to Jonathan Mena.
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KABC Anchor Heads to FOX 11 as Morning Anchor
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Anchors | FOX Affiliates
By Stephanie Tsoflias Siegel on Jan. 11, 2018 - 4:03 PM
KABC reporter Elex Michaelson is heading to KTTV, the Fox affiliate in Los Angeles.
Michaelson will be the newest anchor on FOX 11’s early morning show, FOX 11 Morning News, alongside Araksya Karapetyan, at 4:30a.m. every morning.
“Since Elex was born and raised in Southern California, we are excited for the extensive knowledge and perspective that he will bring on the issues and communities we cover,” said Kristine Kruntsen, vice president of news for FOX 11.
Prior to his time as a reporter and fill-in anchor at KABC, he was an anchor and reporter at XETV in San Diego. He has held internship positions in D.C., New York and Los Angeles including a stint at KTTV.
Michaelson is a graduate of University of Southern California. He hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in broadcast journalism and political science.
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What Audacity Looks Like
by Ilse Munro
The Voina Group
The other day, I came across photographs of the audacious Russian street-art group Voina. What struck me most was how ordinary the members looked. They could have easily been any undergrads from any American campus. Yet, the Russian government has brought more than a dozen criminal cases against them. The same government that also saw fit to grant them the Ministry of Culture Innovation 2011 award for modern visual arts. Though perhaps not precisely for the giant phallus that they had painted on the Liteyny drawbridge leading to the Bolshoy Dom headquarters of the Federal Security Service in Saint Petersburg.
I took these photos as further evidence for a hypothesis first formed at my father’s knee: that there is no necessary correlation between audacious appearance and audacious acts. The seemingly unremarkable people sitting around my family’s kitchen table, all war refugees, had routinely done things that you and I wouldn’t dream of doing. The others that I later encountered, either directly or indirectly. Rosa Parks, the small woman with the rimless glasses whose singular act sparked the US civil rights movement. The girls in shirtwaist dresses and guys in plaid shirts who adopted the Port Huron Statement, written by the curly-haired Tom Hayden, that launched 50 years of student protest and mass action for a more democratic society. The controversial authors that I read–James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, Henry Miller, George Orwell, JD Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut— who, on looks alone, would have been welcomed at any of the libraries where their books had been banned. The more flamboyant forming the remainder of my world–the Hippies and their successors–seemed to be mere eiphenomena, not the driving force of audacity.
But what about visual artists, who are–well–more visually oriented? Is it easier to spot the most audacious of that sort? Look at a list of the 10 most controversial artists of our time that I located online and judge for yourself. They’re presented below by birth order, together with a brief description, and shown in a slide show with a representative work:
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Picasso repeatedly outraged the public as well as his associates, but no more so than with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. At that time, the work was deemed crude, unfinished and unusually unsettling. Today, it is considered to be seminal in the development of both cubism and modern art.
Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). In Paris, Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 raised a ruckus. Among the objections was that nudes never descend stairs: they recline. In New York, reactions were no more favorable. It was called “an explosion in a shingle factory” and spawned satirizations for decades. Today, Duchamp is seen as a key player in the surrealist, futurist and Dada movements.
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986). The abstract imagery of O’Keeffe’s oversized, sensual flowers and similar depictions such as Blue and Green Music caused a stir because they called to mind female genitalia. Even as she was celebrated by feminists, she denied painting private parts. Today, she is credited with revolutionizing modern art through her portrayal of the emotional impact of nature and man-made entities.
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956). With his huge Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), Pollock abandoned the convention of central motif and established process as paramount. The resulting action painting genre caused considerable disagreement among critics. His wife, Lee Krasner, may well have been the real innovator. Her Cobalt Night is larger than Lavender Mist and exhibits the same heroic ambition.
Christo Javachev (1935-present). Javachev and his late wife were at the forefront of environmental art. The first version of Valley Curtain, a 400 meter length of vivid orange material stretched across Rifle Gap, was torn to shreds by wind and rock while being hung. A second version was successfully erected, only to be torn apart by gale-force winds 28 hours later. While critics searched for meaning in such massive, temporary installations, the two expanded the definition of what constitutes art.
Ai Weiwei (1957-present). Ai was the artistic consultant for the Beijing National Stadium and a dissident arrested by the Chinese government. His 10 tons of hand-painted porcelain sculptures, Sunflower Seeds, reference a staple of the Cultural Revolution and the resulting homogenization. Placing Ai first in the 2011 Power 100, ArtReview noted that his “activities have allowed artists to move away from the idea that they work within a privileged zone limited by the walls of a gallery or museum.”
Damien Hirst (1965-present). Hirst is famous for formaldehyde-fixed animals displayed in glass tanks. His Virgin Mother, a 35 foot tall statue recalling Edgar Degas’s Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, reveals the insides of a pregnant woman. Critics have variously called him one of few late 20th Century artists who will remain more than a footnote and someone responsible for the decline of contemporary art.
David Černý (1967-present). Černý gained international recognition by getting arrested for painting a Soviet tank pink. While he claims that he merely creates art for his friends and to piss people off, he doubtless has something more serious in mind. His Brownnosers allows visitors to climb a 20-foot ladder and peer into a white rear end to view a video of impersonators of President Václav Klaus and art critic Milan Knížák feeding each other slop while “We Are the Champions” plays.
Chris Ofili (1968-present). Ofili gained notoriety when questions were raised regarding his The Holy Virgin Mary and Tate Gallery’s purchase of The Upper Room containing his 13 paintings of macaques. No Woman No Cry, referencing his Nigerian heritage and the Bob Marley song, has been called a modern Pietà but has also raised hackles since it stands on two dried, varnished lumps of elephant dung–a material favored by Ofili–and a third serves as the Virgin’s pendant.
Banksy (1974?-present). “Banksy” is the pseudonym of an anonymous street artist, painter and political activist who may or may not be Robin Gunningham. Known for his contempt of the government in labelling graffiti as vandalism, he displays his art on public surfaces such as walls and sometimes goes as far as building prop pieces. His stencil of the image of Death on the waterline of an entertainment boat in Bristol is based on a 19th Century etching illustrating the pestilence of the Great Stink.
When I consider these artists, I see nothing that makes me think that there is any way to identify the truly audacious other than through their work. So more power to those who don’t want to look bland or boring. But if they want to be genuinely daring, they’ll have to come up with more than a startling appearance. And put more of themselves on the line. Personally, I’d place my money on one of those inconspicuous commuters sitting near me on the subway. Chances are better that the makings of the next fearless [literary, artistic, social, cultural, political] work is stashed in his or her plain portfolio or briefcase.
Note: For more on audacity, see the “Audacious Ideas” series on this site. And join us for the launch of the Summer 2012 Audacity print issue in late June.
EssayArt Exhibits, Audacity, Blogs, Essays, Literary Journals, Social Justice, Visual Art, WritingIlse Munro8 comments
Meet the Neighbors: Atticus Review
Set Alight by the Short Story
8 thoughts on “What Audacity Looks Like”
Clarinda Harriss
Wow, this piece is a keeper. It should be in the e-reference-libary of every student. Nay, every reader and writer. I love the premise: it’s the toilers in the vineyard in their non-fancy work clothes, so to speak, who are responsible for the great wine.
Ilse Munro
Or those willing to go elbow-deep in the, well, you know. Can’t say more since it’ll spoil the essay I’ll post next Monday: “Self-Interview: Clarinda Harriss.”
Lynn Weber
A wonderful article, and an important distinction between appearance and reality.
Thanks, Lynn. Thought you’d appreciate the distinction. (See Lynn’s piece, “The Art of Identification: The Heart of Social Justice,” posted on this site.)
Andy Strakna
Interesting article. I’ve always found the disconnection between appearence and personality. My own family looks from the outside to be very conservative and stoid, but are really rebels.
Eva Q Tennant
The cliche, “You can never tell a book by its cover,” couldn’t be more true when it comes to these audacious artists who all had an outward visage that belied the heart and mind of a controversial truth teller. Bravo!
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Pingback: Audacity, 50s Style: Part 1 | Little Patuxent Review


Black Cultural Center Office, Black Ink, 1 May 2001, Page 4.
“That Fishbowl—as frustrating as it was, as small as it was, you were always feeling a sense of surveillance—it was a magical space,” Renee Alexander Craft, a graduate of 1994, remembered, describing the University’s first Black Cultural Center (BCC).1 The Fishbowl or the BCC (students used the terms interchangeably) was located on the first floor of the Frank Porter Graham Student Union and enclosed in glass, giving the space its nickname. The space itself was small, roughly eight hundred square feet, and located in a renovated snack bar and vending machine area, a supposedly “temporary” location the Fishbowl occupied for almost two decades.2 Despite the many limitations of the physical space of the Fishbowl, it operated as one of the only campus spaces—along with Upendo Lounge and the South Campus dorms—in which Black students could find respite from the University’s whiteness and create a sense of community through the 1990s and early 2000s.
This essay argues that after the colonization of Upendo Lounge and its elimination as the main counter-space for Black students in the 1980s, the Black Cultural Center served as the foremost counter-space for Black students, combining for the first time the social and academic needs of Black students within the space and drawing condemnation from white administrators. The Fishbowl also served as the nexus of a movement that sought to create a free-standing version of the BCC in honor of one of the faculty members who had fought the hardest for its creation. The history of the campus movements that operated for and within the space of the Fishbowl illustrates the ways in which the institution sought to control, contain, and exclude Black life from the dominant cultural landscape of the University.
The idea for a BCC began to take form in 1983, after administrators changed the reservation policy for Upendo Lounge. Black students, along with Black faculty and staff, petitioned the administration for a space separate from Upendo Lounge in which to hold Black cultural performances and academic programs. By the time this conversation had begun at the University, most of its peer institutions of public predominantly white universities across the United States had already built Black culture (or cultural) centers. Most centers had been built in the early 1970s, the result of Black student-led demonstrations in the wake of the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., protests which also brought Black studies programs and increased numbers of Black faculty to the white campuses.
Sonja Haynes Stone, Black Ink, 26 August 1991, Page 8.
Through the remainder of the decade, dozens of white universities built BCCs, centers which included not only social spaces for Black students (like Upendo Lounge), but dedicated space in which to hold Black academic and cultural programs.3 During this period in Chapel Hill, a small number of Black faculty members presented a concept paper to Chancellor Nelson Ferebee Taylor outlining the creation of an “Institute for Minority Studies,” which they explained, could “serve as a unique or special resource center for minority students and faculty,” and “assist the university in its efforts to be more responsive to the needs of minority communities.”4 Taylor did not pursue their proposed institute, but among Black faculty in particular, there was a growing recognition that the University needed a Black Cultural Center to serve all Black people within the institution and Chapel Hill.
One of the most active participants in the national Black culture center movement was Dr. Sonja Haynes Stone, a professor in the Department of Afro-American Studies.5 Partially at Stone’s insistence, in 1984, Dean of Student Affairs Donald Boulton convened a committee to develop a proposal for a Black Cultural Center which would “promote learning, self awareness, self determination and broadened world perspectives.” The BCC planning committee (a group comprised largely of Black faculty and administrators) issued their final report in February 1986. They determined that a new Black Cultural Center would need a space of at least 8,548 square feet, an estimate which included space for a library, a large meeting room, an art gallery, a music room rehearsal hall, offices for staff members, and a lounge for socializing.6
In their report, the committee included a minimum of 2,500 square feet that could be used as a temporary space, a concession given with the understanding that it would take both time and financial resources to fully develop the larger proposed 8,548 square foot facility.7 But before the BCC planning committee submitted their final report, Boulton set aside a temporary eight hundred square foot space in the front of the Frank Porter Graham Student Union, and funds were raised to hire a director for the University’s new Black Cultural Center.8 Black students were dissatisfied with the space that had been set aside for the BCC. “No, we’re not happy with the vending machine area,” Black Student Movement (BSM) President from 1986 to 1987, Camille Roddy, said to Campus Profile. “This is due to the fact that the proposal that we have in mind encompasses much more spacing than what the vending machine area would allow. And by stifling us with that area, you’re stifling the ideas and the plans for the cultural center.”9
The Black Cultural Center Opens
https://uncofthepeople.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/88nov14_permanentbccupdate_racerelations_campusprofile_stv_bcc.mp4
Campus Profile, Episode 77. UNC Student Television. 14 November 1988. Accessed April 23, 2018.
Despite objections from students, on July 1, 1988, the University’s Black Cultural Center officially opened in the temporary space in the Frank Porter Graham Student Union with Margo Crawford, a university professor and administrator from Chicago, as its first director.10 Donyell Roseboro, in her dissertation on the movement for a free-standing Black Cultural Center, points to the decision to create even the temporary BCC as monumental. “By officially assigning the Black cultural center temporary space in 1988,” she explained, “university administrators publicly announced their belief in the importance of such a facility; it represented a social and academic coalescence of learning, a safe space for Black students, and a tribute to the struggles of Black people on the University campus and beyond.”11 Although the BCC’s opening was indeed significant, the precarity of its status within the Division of Student Affairs and the inadequate resources it received always kept open the possibility that the BCC would be forced into a similar dismantling of power that Upendo Lounge had undergone over the last decade.
The Black Cultural Center, although small and exposed, immediately became a space for congregation and conversation for all members of the University’s Black community. In describing the Fishbowl, Renee Alexander Craft referred to the structural, social, and emotional resonances of the space:
“In the middle of the space there were the same kind of chairs, but they formed a circle so that the seat part was facing out so it was like a flower in the middle, and then seats lining the side. So you’d have plenty of places to sit and plenty of floor space if you just wanted to plop down. So even if you didn’t come in for a meeting, you just came in to get something, there’s someone’s TA over there having a conversation with their students, there’s students talking about politics on campus and what needs to be done, there’s students talking about the environment and what needs to be done about that. So there’s all that energy and movement and you can fall in and fall out of those conversations as you’re going about your mundane life.”12
Although the BCC held programs and lectures, organized by its director Margo Crawford and its staff of students, the center also functioned for Black students as a space for debate, mentoring, organizing, and relaxation. “I would literally walk in sometimes – I didn’t go all the time – to sit down, not say anything to anyone, and just exhale, and then ten minutes later I would get up,” remembered former BSM President from 1999 to 2000, Chris Faison. “We didn’t even have to say anything. It was just the acknowledgement of the fact that you just needed a break from being the only one in your class, right? And then you would get up and you would walk out.”13
Renee Alexander Craft, Creator of Sauti M’pya, Photo in The Daily Tar Heel, 24 August 1992, Page 3.
The BCC operated not just as a social space for Black students, but also as a space of incubation for student created programs and initiatives. In 1991, Renee Alexander Craft established Sauti M’pya, the literary journal for the BCC and the first Black literary publication created by Black students in Chapel Hill, which gave many Black student writers and artists their first opportunity to publish their work.14 In 1992, Michelle Thomas and Denise Matthewson founded the Communiversity Program, which continues to serves Black students in local elementary and middle schools through a variety of cultural and educational activities in Chapel Hill.15 Many Black students in the 1990s participated in a program called Around the Circle, weekly graduate student-led discussions of political and social issues happening across the University which “sharpened [their] teeth” for public discourse.16 Each of these initiatives was created by and for Black students, faculty, and staff within the eight hundred square feet of the Fishbowl.
Despite its limitations, the Fishbowl engendered a remarkable social dynamism infused with a progressive political orientation that marked it as distinct from Upendo Lounge as a social and academic counter-space. It was crucial for Black students’ identity development that the BCC served as an academic counter-space as well as a social space, because, as critical race theorists Daniel Solórzano and Octavio Villalpando have determined, academic counter-spaces allow Black students to stimulate their own learning in a nurturing environment where their experiences are considered important in teaching and learning.17 As the University struggled to recruit Black faculty (in 1988, there were only fifty Black faculty members out of a total of more than two thousand), the Fishbowl served as a critical space for Black students to access Black academic programs through peer mentorship.18
White students viewed the Fishbowl, as they had Upendo Lounge, as a threat on their claims to the campus landscape. Unlike Upendo, which had been located on South Campus, the accepted space for Black students on campus, the Fishbowl was located on North Campus, in the main student union, a critical social space for white students. Speaking to Campus Profile in front of the Fishbowl in the fall of 1988, only months after its opening, a white student explained that “in some cases I think the Black students take it too far in that they have so many organizations for minority rights and minority counsels…I feel that Black students are pampered.”19 In 1992, the Carolina Alumni Review explained that many white students and faculty believed that “black students seem to be claiming that their race entitles them to be treated differently…well-meaning programs have often encouraged minorities to be dependent on special help and to think of themselves as victims with special rights.”20
Black students and faculty rejected the idea that the Fishbowl’s eight hundred square feet somehow afforded them special status on campus. “Everybody asks about a white cultural center, but the whole University is a white cultural center,” Lee Greene, a professor of English, argued.21 Because the Fishbowl was enclosed in glass and faced the Pit— a sunken plaza in front of Lenoir Hall and the Frank Porter Graham Student Union through which hundreds of people passed daily—the space could be surveilled at all times. “You did have a feeling of surveillance, and that’s both good and bad,” explained Craft. “You felt surveilled at times by people you didn’t feel like looking in on you, but you also could always find the people you were looking for, because all you had to do was peek in.”22 Simone Browne, a scholar of Blackness and surveillance studies, explains that “blackness [is] a key site through which surveillance is practiced, narrated, and enacted.”23 Even if the Fishbowl site was not chosen specifically for its increased capacities for surveillance, within the cultural landscape of white supremacy, this was an added benefit for administrators.
https://uncofthepeople.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/90feb26_bccupdate_campusprofile_stv_bcc.mp4
Campus Profile, Episode 120. UNC Student Television. 26 February 1990. Accessed April 23, 2018.
Even before the opening of the BCC in the summer of 1988, the center’s students and staff sought a commitment from administrators for a permanent location for the center. “If we accept the space that the University has given us then it will become permanent,” Lee Greene explained.24 In the spring of 1990, Campus Profile reported that the planning committee for the BCC was eyeing the soon to be emptied Howell Hall, then the location for the School of Journalism, which was moving to Carroll Hall. Chancellor Paul Hardin met with the BCC planning committee in early February, but made no promises about the future of Howell Hall. For the students and administrators who had been working for seven years on the creation of a permanent BCC, the timeline was stagnant. “From their perspective,” Margo Crawford explained, “this is very slow and they’ve seen other programs blossom to life or be prioritized over the BCC facility.” Speaking rather presciently about the lack of movement on Howell Hall, the BSM president from 1990 to 1991, Tonya Perry told Campus Profile: “It’s a student building. If students want it, they’re going to have to push for it.”25
Legacy of the Fishbowl
On August 10, 1991, Dr. Sonja Haynes Stone, the much-admired faculty member in the Department of Afro-American Studies and mentor to many students, passed away suddenly. Students immediately began to gather in the Fishbowl to comfort and support one another, reeling in their collective loss. From meetings in August 1991 held in the Fishbowl, students began to build a movement to create a permanent and free-standing Black Cultural Center, an ambition that had been deeply held by the late Dr. Stone (detailed in the essay on The Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History). As the movement to construct a free-standing building for the BCC continued to grow, the Fishbowl remained a site of incubation, energy, and renewal for Black students engaged in the struggle. The Fishbowl, which was designed to be a temporary space to be occupied for no longer than two years, was not closed until 2004, when the Stone Center building officially opened.26
Interior of the Black Cultural Center, Carolina Alumni Review, Winter 1992, Page 26.
Many alumni who remember the communal nature of the Fishbowl have been surprised and even dismayed to learn that its free-standing successor, the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, does not always play the same role as a community gathering space for Black students, faculty, and staff. “I am so proud to have the free-standing Sonja Haynes Stone Center…But there’s something we took for granted that we had in the Fishbowl that does not currently exist, which is again, a space for multiple generations and multiple ranks to come together just to be,” Renee Alexander Craft, now a faculty membr in the Department of Communication Studies, explained.27 This belief that the contemporary Stone Center suffers from the absence of social spaces is repeated throughout other interviews with Black alumni who remember the collective energy of the Fishbowl.28 The loss of a social space within the Stone Center confirms that part of the dynamism that marked the Fishbowl as a counter-space separate in significance from either the Stone Center or Upendo Lounge was the remarkable way in which it melded the academic and social needs of Black students.
The Fishbowl, though no longer in existence, operated for close to two decades in a temporary space defined in part by its physical shortcomings and uncertainty regarding its future. Despite this precarity, the history of the Fishbowl stands as a testament to the students, faculty, and staff who created a counter-space that supported Black students’ experiences and identity development, despite the University’s consistent undervaluing of the importance of the BCC. By blending the social and academic interests of Black students, the BCC became a vigorous force within the institution for progressive energies, intellectual activities, and passionate discourse. And in creating a space in which to both challenge the prevailing cultural practices of the University and support one another, Black students also developed the BCC into a powerful space from which to build and sustain a major movement for racial justice. But the physical space of the Fishbowl exposed the University’s anti-Black institutional policies, which sought to contain Black life within a space which could be surveilled at all times. Thus, the Fishbowl, like Upendo Lounge, carries a dual legacy of both the insurgent power of Black counter-space creation and the institutional policies utilized to suppress the capacity for Black students to exercise their power.
Download Chapter 4: The Fishbowl as a PDF.


-3°C Bucharest, RO
Iulian Ernst
Iulian studied physics at the University of Bucharest, and he sees himself as a physicist in the broadest sense of the word. He also studied economics at Charles University in Prague and Central European University in Budapest, after a master’s program in business administration at Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies. Since recently, he’s been exploring coding and data analysis for business and economics. As a freelancer, he worked for nearly two decades as an analyst for ISI Emerging Markets, Euromonitor International, Business New Europe, but also as a consultant for OMV Petrom and UkrAgroConsult. Iulian was part of the founding team of Ziarul Financiar. At Romania Insider, which he joined in 2018, he is reviewing the latest economic developments for the premium bulletins and newsletters. He would gladly discuss topics such as macroeconomics, emerging markets, Prague, energy sector including renewable, Led Zeppelin, financial services, as well as tech start-ups and innovative technologies. Email him at iulian@romania-insider.com.
Submitted by iuliane on Fri, 01/14/2022 - 08:05
Romania’s CA gap up 56 YoY to 6.8% of GDP in 12 months to November
Romania’s current account (CA) deficit reached EUR 16.5 bln or 6.8% of the GDP estimated for 2021, in the 12 months to November, according to calculations based on data released by the National Bank of Romania (BNR).
The 12-month trade gap thus increased by 56% in nominal terms compared to November 2020. The gap-to-GDP ratio advanced some 2pp from 4.8%-4.9% in 2019-2020.
In a country update on October 24, rating agency Fitch said it expected relatively large current account deficits in 2021-2023, averaging 6% of GDP as a recovery in exports is offset by solid import demand. Under its November Autumn Forecast, the European Commission projected the country’s GDP within the 6%-6.5% range for 2021 and the coming years.
On the upside, the rating agency forecasts non-debt-creating inflows to cover an increasingly large share of the current account deficit (close to 80% by 2023) as EU transfers accelerate.
As of November 2021, the debt-creating inflows are still predominantly covering the current account deficit. Specifically, the EUR 37.2 bln cumulated CA gap in 2019-2020 and the first eleven months in 2021 was 76% financed by the rise in the long-term debt (EUR 28.2 bln). The EUR 23.1 bln rise in the public debt accounted for 62% of the CA gap over the period. The balance is hopefully expected to shift toward more non-debt-generating flows in the coming years, though.
The European Commission already disbursed some EUR 3.8 bln in December-January as advance payments under the Resilience Facility, likely to bring EUR 14 bln of grants and EUR 15 bln of soft loans by 2026. Furthermore, under the multiannual financial framework (EU budget), Romania is expected to receive EUR 28 bln cohesion funds and EUR 19 bln for agricultural and fisheries policy. All in all, nearly EUR 80 bln would be disbursed in 2022-2027, most of which are non-debt-generating.
iulian@romania-insider.com
(Photo source: Robbiverte/Dreamstime.com)
Submitted by iuliane on Thu, 12/30/2021 - 17:25


Home / Posts tagged 'A Different Kind of Tension'
Buzzcocks to play ‘Another Music,’ ‘Love Bites’ on 22-date North American tour
Classic punk outfit Buzzcocks today announced a 22-date North American tour later this spring that will find the band tearing through its first two albums — ‘Another Music in a Different Kitchen’ and ‘Love Bites’ — in their entirety each night, plus ‘other hits.’
New releases: Buzzcocks reissues, Pretenders ‘Live in London,’ UB40’s ‘Labour of Love IV’
This week’s new releases include a trio of expanded 2CD reissues from the Buzzcocks — ‘Another Music in a Different Kitchen,’ ‘Love Bites,’ ‘A Different Kind of Tension’ — plus ‘Live in London’ from The Pretenders and UB40’s latest covers album, ‘Labour of Love IV.’
Expanded reissues of Buzzcocks’ first three albums to be released in U.S. next month
Reissues, Tracklist
Tweet The expanded 2CD reissues of the Buzzcocks’ first three albums — Another Music in a Different Kitchen (1978), Love Bites (1978) and A Different […]


Tag Archives: Myles Dungan
The Daniel Cassidy Memorial Lecture
On the 9th of November, in San Francisco, as part of a festival called Hinterland, the Irish broadcaster and historian Myles Dungan will give the inaugural Daniel Cassidy Memorial Lecture. The Hinterland festival has two independent parts, one in County Meath and the other (HinterlandWest) in California. The Irish festival is also linked to the Hay Festival on the border between England and Wales.
Anyone who has read this blog carefully will realise that there is something very strange about the idea of commemorating Daniel Cassidy or celebrating his life.
The HinterlandWest Festival describes Cassidy thus:
Daniel Cassidy was a much-loved musician, and academic who ran the Irish Studies programme at New College, San Francisco up to the time of his death in 2008.
The comma is interesting. Did they originally have a comment about his skills as a writer and linguist but decided to remove it because they realise that the boat sailed on that one a long time ago? Or do they simply have problems with punctuation?
The facts in relation to Daniel Cassidy are clear. He was certainly a musician, though an indifferent one.
With regard to his status as an academic, there is no doubt that Cassidy worked as a lecturer at New College of California for around twelve years. Cassidy himself claimed (under a rather obvious sock puppet identity) that he had worked before that at San Francisco State but I have no confirmation of this claim.
What is very clear is that he was not entitled to be a lecturer in any university because he had no qualifications. Some sources, such as Wikipedia, claimed for a long time that he graduated from Cornell. Cassidy himself claimed to have been educated at or studied at Cornell and then at Columbia. The SF Irish American Crossroads Festival website says that Cassidy studied first at Columbia and then at Cornell, but this is contradicted by accounts of his life given by Cassidy in interviews.
The fact is that Cassidy attended Cornell for about four years on a scholarship, but left the university in 1965 without receiving a degree. He never attended Columbia University and he never got a primary degree or a postgraduate degree.
In other words, the reality is that Cassidy was just some unqualified guy who had wandered in off the street with an attitude and the gift of the gab and had no right to even apply for a job as a teacher. This is confirmed again and again in his book and in the numerous articles that appeared in newspapers around the time of its publication. In his book, Cassidy demonstrates time and time again that he didn’t care about facts or telling the truth. He knew nothing about the methods used by genuine academics. The book is weak and badly argued, with its fake phonetics, ludicrously bad referencing, a tendency to dishonestly miss out anything that conflicted with his theories and an even more disturbing tendency to simply invent phrases in ‘Irish’ that never existed and in many cases could never exist, phrases like fo-luach and sách úr and béal ónna and teas ioma and uath-anchor. The book really is a complete mess and anyone who thinks that How The Irish Invented Slang is going to make a genuine contribution to the world of etymology is delusional.
It has also been suggested that Cassidy used his unearned status as a lecturer to sexually harass young women who were unlucky enough to be studying under his guidance. This claim came from a person who left a message here and who studied at New College. I have no idea whether it’s true or not but knowing Cassidy’s arrogance and self-obsession and lack of boundaries, I don’t consider it at all unlikely.
Myles Dungan, who is delivering this inaugural Daniel Cassidy Memorial Lecture (let’s hope it’s also the last), interviewed Cassidy just after his book was published. I have already dealt with this elsewhere on this blog. It was a fairly feeble interview and a poor piece of journalism, which gave Cassidy an easy ride and failed to ask any difficult (and obvious) questions. It is strange to find Myles Dungan, who gave this toxic fraud a platform to sell his garbage to unsuspecting people back then, once again stepping up to support this liar more than a decade later. It’s doubly strange in that Myles Dungan is well-known for a blog that debunks fake news stories from history.
I don’t know who was responsible for establishing this Daniel Cassidy Memorial Lecture and damaging the reputation of the HinterlandWest Festival by associating it with a man who is universally despised by all right-thinking people. I suspect that Elizabeth Creely, one of the most vociferous Cassidy loyalists, had a hand in this bizarre decision. Whoever is responsible, the fact is that Cassidy was not a person deserving of commemoration or celebration. He was a criminal, a liar, a narcissist, a hypocrite and a total waste of space. No decent human being would knowingly associate themselves with this man and his deceptions.
This entry was posted in The Cassidy Scandal and tagged academic with no qualifications, Cornell, Daniel Cassidy, Daniel Cassidy Memorial Lecture, Elizabeth Creely, Hay on Wye, Hinterland Festival, HinterlandWest, How The Irish Invented Slang, Meath, Mechanics' Institute, Myles Dungan, professor with no degree, San Francisco, San Francisco festivals, sockpuppets, Trim Hinterland Festival on November 9, 2019 by Danielomastix.
An open letter to the advisory board of the San Francisco Irish-American Crossroads Festival
Charles Fanning
Katherine Hastings
Caledonia Kearns
Daniele Maraviglia
Linda Norton
Miriam Nyhan
Nancy Quinn
James Silas Rogers
Tim Sullivan
Sometimes, our heroes turn out to have feet of clay and even when they were responsible for establishing valid and worthwhile institutions, it can be difficult for those institutions to avoid being contaminated with the scandal associated with a toxic founder.
In the case of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, it rebranded itself as the Livestrong Foundation when Armstrong was exposed as a drugs cheat. It continues to raise money but it is not as successful as it was. Its new name suggests a link to Armstrong (L – strong) but the information on its website gives no indication of the organisation’s history or Armstrong’s role in it.
In the case of the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust, when the shit hit the fan, it initially considered rebranding itself to remove all links to the serial rapist and paedophile who founded it but a few weeks later, it declared that it was shutting up shop. The scandal and the stigma were just too great.
As for the New College of California, the exposure of its founder as a predatory paedophile came shortly before the wheels came off the institution itself. The exposure of John Leary as a sexual predator was not responsible for the collapse of the institution but it probably didn’t help. Had the college survived, it would have been necessary to remove or rewrite material like this about its founder to reflect the fact that Leary was kicked out of Gonzaga for a sexual assault on a young boy: “Jack, a Jesuit priest and teacher of philosophy, had recently resigned as president of Gonzaga University in Washington state because of his dissatisfaction with the current American model of undergraduate education. He wanted to start over. And so New College of California began as a handful of students and teachers meeting in Jack’s Sausalito living room.”
The San Francisco Irish-American Crossroads Festival was founded by Daniel Cassidy, a ‘professor’ at New College in 2004. After Cassidy’s book was published, Cassidy was criticised immediately by genuine scholars for his poor research but it is only in the last few years that the full extent of Cassidy’s dishonesty and criminality has come to light.
As I have said before on this blog, the In Memoriam section of the Festival’s website gives a fictional and sanitised account of the founder’s life. According to this account, Cassidy had degrees from Columbia and Cornell. In a radio interview with Myles Dungan, Cassidy talks about his Bachelor’s degree from Cornell and taking some ‘graduate’ classes at Columbia. Cornell University has stated that Cassidy was removed from Cornell without gaining a degree and his sister has stated here that he never went to Columbia. This in itself is clear evidence that Cassidy was a fraudster. Cassidy had no degrees or qualifications at all. He was not a real professor.
His book, How The Irish Invented Slang, is one of the most dishonest, ignorant and badly-researched books ever written. Far from being a revelatory work of etymology, it is an insult to the world of scholarship, to the Irish people and to anyone who cares about basic standards of honesty and fair play. This dim-witted collection of disinformation is totally antithetical to the mission statement of the Festival: “Founded in 2004, the Crossroads Irish-American Festival promotes the discovery and understanding of the Irish experience in the Americas to ensure that the richness of the arts, culture, history and traditions of this heritage are both held in great esteem and preserved for generations to come.”
I cannot force the people at the Irish-American Crossroads Festival to tell the truth about Cassidy. All I can do is to point out once again that Cassidy should be held to account for his fraud and criminality, not held up as an inspiration and a good example. Anyone who allows lies like this to be associated with their name is not a decent human being. If you wish to protect your reputation, demand that those responsible for the website remove the lies about Cassidy. If you support Daniel Cassidy and his insane theories, directly or indirectly, you are a willing accessory to this puerile, dishonest nonsense which has been used to swindle tens of thousands of people out of their hard-earned money.
This entry was posted in The Cassidy Scandal and tagged Advisory Board, Caledonia Kearns, Charles Fanning, Daniel Cassidy, Daniele Maraviglia, How The Irish Invented Slang, Jack Leary, James Silas Rogers, Katherine Hastings, Linda Norton, Miriam Nyhan, Myles Dungan, Myles Dungan interview, Myles Dungan RTÉ, Nancy Quinn, New College of California, Peter Quinn, San Francisco Irish-American Crossroads Festival, Tim Sullivan on December 16, 2017 by Danielomastix.
In a recent post (The Day JFK Was Shot) I mentioned an interview on RTÉ radio (Highway 101) in August 2007, in which Myles Dungan talks to Daniel Cassidy, fake scholar and fake etymologist, about his life and works. In that post, I pointed to several factual inconsistencies. However, they weren’t the only problems with Cassidy’s account of his life, so I decided to listen to the podcast again and make a few notes.
First off, it is amazing what Cassidy leaves out. He makes no mention of his association with Andy Warhol, one of the few genuinely impressive parts of his CV. He talks about ‘when I got out of Cornell’, but makes no mention of the fact that he flunked his degree. Indeed, he even says ‘I was reasonably good at academics … you know … I just took to it …’ Really?
Later, he talks about being in ‘graduate school’ in Columbia. Obviously, as a non-graduate, he couldn’t have been in graduate school, though he may well have taken some evening classes.
One of the most dishonest bits is in relation to his career as a merchant seaman. In some descriptions of Cassidy, this is almost used to define him – he is ‘the former merchant marine’. I have expressed doubt before about this episode of his life, which I think didn’t happen, or was very short, or took place later, in the late seventies. This interview confirms that there is something very suspect about his claim to have been a merchant seaman in the 1960s. When Dungan says, ‘you became a seaman’, you would expect a natural storyteller like Cassidy to really give it his all. However, you would be disappointed. There are no tall tales about being lashed to the wheel with a marlin spike pondering the nature of the stars, or doing the horizontal hornpipe in a cathouse in Surabaya, or listening to the mermaids and merrows singing songs to the dog-headed men at the edge of the world where cartographers fear to tread. Cassidy simply says ‘I hit the road’ and tells an anecdote about hitching a ride to California in 1967, the Summer of Love. Then he talks about playing in a bar in the Mission District in San Francisco. Then the narrative moves on to getting in with musicians and releasing an album. His career as a salty seadog is ignored and forgotten, as is the 23 months he spent in rehab in New York, at some time between 1967 and 1972. In other words, he might have spent slightly longer as a seaman than Malcolm Lowry, but he was no Joseph Conrad.
There is also a problem with the idea that he played R and B in bars in the Mission District. According to other sources, he learned guitar in Phoenix House, the rehab centre, at the end of the sixties or in the early seventies. Before that, he played the saxophone. Now, the guitar is an R and B instrument. One person can be a modern troubadour, singing songs of love and protest and accompanying themselves on the guitar. But it’s hard to imagine anyone doing solo gigs on the saxophone. So did this happen? And if it did, when? Was it later, after his music career was on the skids, when his album failed to sell?
Dungan seems to regard Cassidy as a harmless crank, and gives him an easy ride, even when it becomes obvious that Cassidy can’t pronounce Irish and knows nothing about the language. Dungan challenges him over spiel, which he rightly says is German or Yiddish, but he doesn’t challenge Cassidy when he claims that speal (which he mispronounces to make it sound more like spiel) is Scottish Gaelic and Irish for a hoe. (It’s a scythe, or course.) However, Dungan does say: ‘Are you not letting your imagination run away with you and claiming far too much for the Irish language?’ Cassidy blethers his way round this one, claiming that in fact he is being conservative and that the Irish influence is even greater than he claims.
However, the thing that really shocked me was his spiel about how New College of California was founded by a Jesuit called Father Jack Leary, who came from Gonzaga University. The thing he doesn’t mention at all is that Leary had already been exposed as a predatory paedophile by (amongst others) Matt Smith in SF Weekly in October 2006 (http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/the-double-life-of-john-leary/Content?oid=2161211).
This entry was posted in An Ghaeilge, The Cassidy Scandal and tagged an Ghaeilge, Andy Warhol, Columbia, Cornell, Daniel Cassidy, Father John Leary, Gonzaga University, Highway 101, How The Irish Invented Slang, Jack Leary, Matt Smith, Myles Dungan, New College of California, paedophile priest, RTÉ, SF Weekly, slang on May 14, 2016 by Danielomastix.
Damp Squid
Daniel Cassidy did no original research at all. His idea of research was to abstract information from dictionaries, then sneer at the people who had done the work for him. His main targets were the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster, who he misrepresented as a clique of WASP bigots. Cassidy called these bastions of the linguistic establishment ‘the dictionary dudes’. In reality, of course, there is more of an implied criticism of the main dictionary-makers in the Irish language in Cassidy’s work, as none of Cassidy’s insane phrases like pá lae sámh and béal ónna are mentioned in any of the Irish dictionaries. It is also interesting that when Cassidy was confronted with a real Irish person who knew some Irish and could clearly see that Cassidy knew nothing about the subject, Cassidy was quite happy to hide behind the authority of the OED. This happened in an RTÉ radio programme, Highway 101 with Myles Dungan, now available as a podcast, where Cassidy, having been pulled up on his pronunciation, talks about the origins of phoney in Irish fáinne. Cassidy says: Your audience must be saying, this guy Cassidy’s a real crackpot, [TRUE!!] but that’s not my etymology, that’s the etymology in the Oxford English Dictionary … Strange that he both sneers at the OED and then appeals to its authority when it suits him. But then, Cassidy was what we call a teanga liom leat (a tongue with-me with-you, a hypocrite) or a coileach gaoithe (a weather vane). Or in the English of Ireland, a gobshite.
However, most of Cassidy’s sheeple have never heard this podcast and don’t know anything about Irish, and they continue to spout nonsense about how the OED and Merriam-Webster are full of anti-Irish bigots. Just recently I quoted the Boston writer Michael Patrick MacDonald, who talks about the ‘racist OED lapdogs!’ What an idiot!
I have been reading a book recently by one of these ‘racist OED lapdogs’, Jeremy Butterfield, who has commented here. I do not know Jeremy personally. I’ve never met him outside of the virtual realm of language blogs and I’ve never even been to Oxford.
However, I loved the book, and I am giving a brief review here, mainly because it’s a good book and worth reading, but also because it exemplifies very clearly how stupid and paranoid the criticisms of the ‘dictionary dudes’ by the Cassidy Cargo Cult are.
Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare is a very witty, informative and well-written account of lexicography and its history and the way that corpus linguistics and computing have changed the way that dictionaries like the OED are compiled. I have read a lot of books on linguistics, so much of the material was familiar to me, but there were plenty of interesting facts which were new to me. For example, the term dictionary was quite late in arriving on the scene. The first English dictionary was Latin-English. The second was apparently Welsh-English (1547)!
There are fascinating discussions of metaphor, register and eggcorns (phrases like damp squid, which was originally damp squib, but most people don’t know what a squib is these days, so they reinterpret it). I was particularly struck by his observations about how society is always metaphorically a building, while the state is often a ship. (‘foundations of a just society’, ‘Captain, My Captain…’) Obvious, when you think about it, but I had never thought about it.
It is also quite clear that Jeremy Butterfield is not the bigoted WASP Cassidy and his friends liked to denigrate. His views on language are very democratic. In the culture war between people like Simon Heffer and David Crystal, there is no doubt that he is on the Crystal side. He does not believe that dictionary definitions are set in stone, and he mocks the approach of a long-dead generation of language mavens who disliked the use of French words because you can apparently say all kinds of morally suspect things in French which English simply can’t express!
The open-mindedness of his approach demonstrates beautifully that comments like MacDonald’s ‘racist OED lapdogs’ are just childish displays of ignorance and bigotry.
In other words, Damp Squid is a fascinating book. It is full of information, but it is also fun and very readable. In short, it is everything that Cassidy’s rubbishy book is not. And even more gratifying, it is much higher on the Amazon Bestsellers Rank than How The Irish Invented Slang. Yay!!
You can (and should) buy the book at Amazon here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Damp-Squid-English-Language-Laid/dp/019957409X
This entry was posted in The Cassidy Scandal and tagged Damp Squid, Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare, David Crystal, Highway 101, Jeremy Butterfield, Michael Patrick MacDonald, Myles Dungan, OED, Oxford English Dictionary, review, RTÉ, Simon Heffer on March 28, 2016 by Danielomastix.
The Day JFK Was Shot
I noticed something interesting the other day in the description of Cassidy’s contribution to an oral history project at the Tamiment Library, curated by New York University. You can find the description here: http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/aia_030/dscref56.html
In general, the oral history project looks interesting. There are plenty of names I’ve never heard of, along with some which will be familiar to most Irish people and even one or two who are familiar faces around Belfast, like Frank Costello.
Cassidy was interviewed by his old crony Peter Quinn. One particular detail caught my eye. It says that “Cassidy provides an insider’s perspective on the day JFK was assassinated as a rookie journalist in the newsroom of the New York Times.”
This is interesting, because it throws up the same problems of chronology and accuracy that bedevil every attempt to work out the details of Cassidy’s life. The problem is that Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963. We have sporadic references to Cassidy in the Cornell Daily Sun from February 1961, when he was applying for admittance to the Chi Psi fraternity, right through February 1963 when he was made co-editor of a literary mag at Cornell called the Trojan Horse, right up to May 1965, a month before he was withdrawn from the University, when he won a university award for his poetry.
In other words, I am very sceptical about his ‘insider’s perspective on the day JFK was assassinated as a rookie journalist in the newsroom of the New York Times.’ Not that I’m calling Cassidy a liar or anything – I’m sure we’ve all invented a degree or two to get that plum job or written a book full of fake nonsense in a language we don’t speak at some time in our lives.
Of course, I suppose he could have been working part-time in the New York Times while studying, or done a year’s work experience in between two years at college. It’s just that that isn’t the way Cassidy himself told it. In a radio interview with Myles Dungan broadcast on RTÉ 1 on the 11th of February 2007 (now available as a podcast), Cassidy states that he took a job with the New York Times after he finished at Cornell. Notice that he doesn’t say that he graduated (he knew, and we know, that he didn’t graduate.) Perhaps he just forgot where he was. I mean, who remembers where they were when JFK was shot?
I must say, I know where I was. I was in my high chair eating a rusk. As the car glided on and the president crumpled, I pointed at the screen, the rusk momentarily forgotten, dripping milk and crumbs into the bowl. I was unable to speak. Well, to be honest, I only knew about four words at the time: mummy, daddy, doggie, horsey, and somehow none of them seemed quite appropriate to the gravity of the situation …
(If anyone at the Tamiment Library would like to interview me about my traumatic experience of JFK’s death for posterity, you know where to find me.)
So, if Cassidy was still a student in 1963, why did he tell Peter Quinn he was in the newsroom of the New York Times? I’ll take a wee punt here. Cassidy was probably chatting to Peter Quinn one day about JFK, and in keeping with his personal philosophy that a lie is simply a fact with ambition, Cassidy probably told him about his imaginary experience in the newsroom when the news of JFK’s death came through. After all, he was in the newsroom at the New York Times just a couple of short years later, so he was well-placed to take a guess. All well and good, until Peter Quinn turns up with a tape recorder and asks him about that particular occasion. And at that point, Cassidy has the choice to do the right thing and say, Actually, Peter, that was just a humungous crock of shite, like nearly everything I’ve ever told you, or do the wrong thing and carry on lying as if his life depended on it.
Not much of a choice if you’re Daniel Cassidy, who would sooner have stopped breathing than stop lying!
By the way, there’s another interesting inconsistency in the Dungan interview and the Tamiment description. In the Dungan interview, Cassidy states that he sold a script called South of Market to F.F. Coppola, who was a few years senior to him in the New York Military Academy and was nicknamed Ichabod (thank God Cassidy didn’t try to find an Irish origin for that! Ith an bod, which sounds very similar, means ‘eat the penis!’). In the Tamiment description, it says that it was a script called The Volunteer. So maybe the details are wrong. Or … maybe he never really sold any scripts to F.F Coppola at all?
This entry was posted in The Cassidy Scandal and tagged an Ghaeilge, Cornell Daily Sun, Cornell University, Daniel Cassidy, Francis Ford Coppola, Frank Costello, How The Irish Invented Slang, JFK, lying nonsense, Myles Dungan, New York Military Academy, NYU, oral history, RTÉ, Tamiment Library, The New York Times, Trojan Horse on February 13, 2016 by Danielomastix.


Fefe Dobson's Current Mood: Joy
Leave a Comment	/ Reviews / By Joy / May 5, 2010 May 5, 2010
I’m usually quick to turn down teeny-bopping, soda popping, lollipop-sucking music. This is one of the exceptions, and it’s not because she’s a fellow Pisces and have named her second releasing album after my name (not entirely anyway). Joy, Fefe Dobson’s official sophomore studio album (produced by both 21 Music, as well as her previous record label Island Records) is scheduled to release this month.
This comeback single “I Want You” is currently available on . It’s fun, it’s pop, it’s chorus repetition and everything you would expect along with a punk rock school girl video. Close your eyes and listen, she could fairly easily be mistaken for Avril Lavigne, without the skateboard. There are more tracks on the album that better showcase Dobson’s spunkiness. “U Bitch” is your typical don’t mess with my man’ anthem, with the popish chorus. But something about the versus makes you yearn for more. This time around, Dobson also slows it down and takes us on an emotional ride – whether it’s trying to fight the fear of falling for the wrong person again in “In Your Touch,” or the fear of losing the one you love in “Can’t Breathe,” which is one of my personal favorites.
Give this Canadian girl a chance. She is pop with a twist, edgy with an attitude. And there is every reason to celebrate with Joy.


‘This is what happens when you are pregnant’: Midwives give birth to baby in rural New Mexico
In rural New York State, midwives are trying to save the lives of newborns by delivering their babies in a remote and dangerous environment.
They are trying desperately to save lives.
The midwives in this small New Mexico town say their first-time baby was born in mid-April, and they’ve been delivering babies since then.
They’re not sure if the baby survived the delivery, but their hope is that it will be OK.
Midwives are an integral part of New Mexico’s healthcare system.
“I don’t want to be a mother anymore,” says Valerie Williams, a midwife at the El Centro Midwife Training Center.
Williams was a nurse for 30 years before she joined the Midwives of New York, a group of midwives that has been rescuing babies and delivering babies in remote and mountainous New Mexico.
“It’s not only about us, it’s about the babies and the moms.
And when they’re not there, they’re our babies,” she says.
Williams says she has had to rescue two children.
The first was born on March 5th and died shortly after birth.
Williams says that when the baby was in her arms, the baby didn’t look like a baby.
This is why she and the other midwives were so determined to save their babies.
As Williams and other midwifery students were giving birth to the baby on March 9th, she was driving through a rural area near a small town in New Mexico where she had a rural clinic and a maternity hospital.
Williams was delivering her own baby when she noticed a baby with severe birth defects.
“They were not the typical ones that we see in the clinic, the small ones that are more like the size of a small baby, that were born prematurely.
It’s a very serious condition,” she told ABC News.
She called a midwife and the midwife immediately came to the hospital and treated the newborns.
But when the midwives got home, they were not able to find the baby.
They called the police, and the police said they couldn’t find the newborn.
The police told them that the midwives were trying to rescue their baby.
They had to go back to the clinic to have the baby and it was already late in the day, the police told ABCNews.
They couldn’t locate the newborn and they couldn`t find any information about where the baby had been born, so they called a hotline that was set up in New York City, but it wasn`t working.
They also couldn` t find any pictures of the baby, so Williams and the others were forced to go to the police department to find a photo of the newborn they could send to the midawomen, but they didn`t have a picture to send.
Williams and the Midwifers were so desperate to save this baby that they called the Midwife of the Year Awards, a New York-based organization that supports midwives who are in crisis.
They were able to identify a photo that showed the baby being delivered, and then they were able help save the baby from being in a worse condition.
Now the Mid Womens of New England is planning to start an online petition to ask New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to provide funds to help Midwives rescue babies and deliver babies.
“I`m just doing what I can do.
I have a great support network, and I`m trying to make sure that I`ve been in a position where I can be a hero to other midwife and midwife communities around the country,” Williams said.
She and the rest of the MidWomens are hoping that Cuomo will act to help the Midaws and midwives throughout the country.
“We`re hoping that he`ll step in and provide the funding to help us find the best way to save our baby,” Williams told ABC.
Williams is not the only midwife in need of help.
Midwives across the country are struggling to find ways to deliver babies safely.
In fact, a survey released earlier this year by the National Midwives Association shows that more than a third of midwife positions are being closed due to budget cuts.
Midwives in New England have been forced to make sacrifices in order to save a baby from the cruel conditions in which they work.
Williams says that she`ll continue to do what she can to save babies from these horrible conditions.
“When I look at my family and see my daughter, it`s just like my whole family.
We`re just trying to survive,” she said.
In an interview with ABC News, Williams said that her heart broke for her friends and family members who lost a baby in childbirth.
Williams has been working at the Mid Women`s Clinic for 25 years and has had the opportunity to help save babies since she was born.Williams
Posted in AboutTagged helen stockton midwife, lpn to midwife, midwife usa


Advertisers Go for the Gold at the 2016 Summer Olympics
Advertising / Culture / Marketing / Technology
Tags: digital, Olympics, Rio 2016, summer, television
Make sure you’re stretched and hydrated, because the biggest athletic competition in the world is just a week away. We’re talking about the Summer Olympics! This year, 206 countries will join together in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to compete in gymnastics, swimming, track and field, beach volleyball, and many more AWESOME games that promise to capture the world’s attention from August 5 to August 21.
But it’s not just the competition at the events that will be fierce: advertisers are also seeking gold. From Albania to Vietnam, 88 networks across the globe will broadcast the 2016 Summer Olympic Games to millions of people. That’s a pretty big target market…
With the growing cost of ads, the rise of digital, and the changing sponsorship rules, brands have quite a bit to take into consideration on their road to Rio.
There’s more money at stake.
And NBCUniversal knows it. The network has the exclusive media rights to all Olympic Games content on all platforms in the United States through 2032. This year, they’ve spent $1.28 billion dollars to secure the rights to Rio 2016, and are well on their way to recouping a week before the games have even begun, with $1 billion already made in national advertising sales (including broadcast, cable, and digital).
In order for brands to get their own piece of the action, they will need to put down over $1 million dollars for a 30-second spot. Sure, this doesn’t quite pack the same punch as a $5 million-dollar Super Bowl commercial, but it’s a far cry from the 1988 Games’ $155,000 cost.
Digital is in it to win it.
People are watching television and videos on their phones more than ever before and digital spending is on track to surpass TV spending as early as next year. To tap into this audience, the NBC Sports App will be live streaming 4,500 hours of Olympic content. However, if you want to even be eligible to buy digital on NBCU, you’ve got to spend more than $10 million.
All brands are invited to compete . . . sort of.
The biggest shake up in Olympic advertising is the adjustment to Rule 40 from the International Olympic Committee that allows brands that are not Olympic sponsors to advertise the events. But like any game, there are rules:
Brands can’t use any Olympic intellectual property (or “IP”). This means unless you’re one of the official sponsors (like Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, or McDonald’s), you can’t say things like “Olympic,” “Rio,” or “Gold.”
Athletes and non-sponsor brands had to submit an application including full advertising and social media campaigns by January 27 to the United States Olympic Committee, and your ads had to start running by March 27. This is tough, considering that athletes haven’t even qualified at this point and no one is really thinking about the Olympics yet…
But it can be done! See how Under Armor made it work:
It’s the content that counts.
So with big-time dollars at stake, more advertising platforms than ever, and non-sponsor brands joining the conversation, your content has to stand out.
>>You have to be creative:
Ads of the World: Bank of China, 2012 London Games, Beijing
Ads of the World: Bradesco Ad, Brazil
>>You have to tap into the human element:
Never Lose the Love, Gatorade
Ads of the World: Laundry Print Ad from Belgium
Olympic Swimmers When They Were Just Beginners, USA Swimming
>>You have to remind us why we love the Olympics – The Games bring a sense of global unity:
McDonald’s Rio 2016 Olympics: Friends Win!
Visa | The Carpool to Rio – featuring Team Visa Olympians
The 2016 Summer Olympics will air through NBCUniversal August 5 – 21. Learn more about who, what, and how to watch.
Cover Images: Visa, McDonalds, Burger King, John Lewis, Coca-Cola


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American Way: Why Barack Obama’s Support for Gay Marriage is a Huge Political Gamble by the President – The Telegraph
by John Avlon - May 13, 2012
It was a “profile in courage” moment from the American president, but one loaded with political risk.
Consider the fact that just the previous day the citizens of North Carolina voted to ban same-sex marriage and all forms of civil unions by a 20-point margin, enshrining unequal treatment in their state constitution.
This has not been an unusual result when it has been put to the voters — more than 30 states have taken the same step, while in the half a dozen states where marriage equality is legal it has been achieved via state legislatures or judicial decision.
In other words, gay marriage might be morally right, especially in the eyes of the progressive base, but it is a proven loser at the ballot box. And the Obama campaign has bet big on winning North Carolina in November, deciding to hold the Democratic convention there in August.
The president won the state by a razor-thin 14,000 vote margin in 2008. It is an evangelical state in transition, containing both the Bible Belt and the research triangle of Duke University and the University of North Carolina, and given its resounding rejection of gay marriage, it just became an even more difficult prize for the Obama campaign to claim.
The same might be true for the crucial battleground states of Virginia, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In fact, of the 12 key states that will decide the winner of the 2012 election, 10 have rejected gay marriage in statewide elections.
The president’s self-described “evolution” on this controversial issue does parallel an evolution that has been occurring nationally. Support for gay marriage has risen from 27 per cent in the mid-90s to just over 50 per cent today. The gay civil rights movement has accelerated in the wake of the Aids epidemic and with the rise of popular openly gay celebrities such as the comedian Ellen DeGeneres. There has been a sea change in public opinion since the 1960s, but the nation remains deeply divided, and opponents tend to be more motivated than supporters when it comes to time to vote.
And while 60 per cent of Americans say that the issue of gay marriage will not affect their vote this year, according to a new Gallup poll, nearly a quarter of independent voters say the president’s position makes them less likely to vote for his re-election, while only 11 per cent say it will encourage them to back him. This does not suggest the policy will be a political success. The president even risks alienating a core element of his base — African-American churchgoers, who overwhelmingly oppose gay marriage on religious grounds.
The Obama campaign hopes that an outpouring of support and cash from liberals will compensate for the political risks. The activist class on the professional Left has long criticised the president for being too centrist in his approach to Congress — now it has solid evidence of his leadership on a controversial issue.
In the days since the president’s decision, his campaign has continued to enjoy a fundraising bonanza, including a record-setting $15?million (£9.3? million) fundraiser at his friend George Clooney’s house in Hollywood.
However, the Romney camp can sense the edge this unprecedented policy position creates for it in swing states. Elements of the evangelical community, which has been slow to warm to Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith, might now be more inclined to rush to his defence. There will be associated Super PACs – supposedly independent campaign groups – to spread the message that Obama is dead-set on redefining the American family. It is a policy position his opponents can use as proof for the fantasy that he is a radical president.
But Team Romney also finds itself in a double-bind — because it does do not want to talk about social issues at this stage of the campaign. The Obama campaign has gone from calling Romney a flip-flopper on social issues to taking his own words from the primary that he is a “severe conservative”.
His camp would like to spend the campaign talking about the economy — the issue it believes can help its candidate win over centrist swing voters. Every day spent talking about social issues only compounds that negative “severe conservative” image.
President Obama’s best hope is that this moment of political courage is rewarded with revived respect for his leadership. Because moral leadership from the bully pulpit matters – it can help change hearts and minds. Liberal enthusiasm may be blind to the serious political risks this move might create. If the president loses the Southern and Midwestern swing states he won last time — possibly losing the White House in the process — this decision will be an important reason why.
But it recalls a moment recounted in the new volume of Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power. After the assassination of John F Kennedy, the new president was warned by advisers not to pursue a civil rights agenda, arguing that it might be morally right but politically unwise in advance of the 1964 election. “Well, what the hell is the presidency for?” Johnson replied.
He won in a landslide.
This entry was posted in Columns and tagged President Obama, The Telegraph. Bookmark the permalink.
←Gay Marriage’s Murky Constitutional Question – The Daily Beast
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Koala Crosses Highway, Causes Six-Car Pile Up
Why did the bear cross the road?
Society Sources WORLDCRUNCH 9NEWS Weird Australia Countries
A koala was blamed for a six-car crash in southern Australia, as reported by 9News Adelaide. Just after 7 a.m. Monday, a driver stopped to help a koala cross the South Eastern Freeway, around the city of Adelaide. The driver's vehicle was rear-ended, resulting in a chain of collisions. Though no serious injuries were reported, there were major traffic delays through the morning.
But did the koala get to the other side of the road? Luckily, the wandering marsupial (which national environmental laws include in a list of vulnerable species) was unharmed and taken back to safety in the wild — but not before taking the time to be filmed behind the wheel of its rescuer's car.
9News is the national news service of the Nine Network in Australia. Founded in 1956, it is headquartered in Sydney.