First Day of Quest

 

The Sports Desk is all excited today because the No. 1 University of Georgia Bulldogs won their season opening football game today against the No. 14 Clemson Tigers, 34-3. Clemson hasn't scored a TD on Georgia since 2014, while the Bulldogs now have 40 straight regular season wins (the NCAA record is 45) and are 43-2 overall in the last three seasons. 

Georgia opened their 2021 season with a 10-3 win over Clemson and went on to win back-to-back National Championships. Let's see what they do with this season's opening ass-whupping of Clemson.

Georgia QB and Heisman candidate Carson Beck went 23 for 33 (69.7%) for 278 yards and 2 TDs, but the big news today was freshman running back Nate Frazier, who got 83 yards and one TD on 11 carries. Junior back Cash Jones got a 15-yard TD on his only carry and kicker Peyton Woodring made two field goals, one a career long of 55 yards.

Schadenfreude: the top-ranked team in the Atlantic Coast Conference, No. 10 Florida State, lost last weekend to unranked Georgia Tech, 24-21. No. 14 Clemson lost to Georgia today, and unranked Virginia Tech lost to Vanderbilt in OT, 34-27. At this point, No. 19  Miami is the pride and joy of the ACC, as they're leading unranked Florida, 24-10, at the Half as I write.   

Day of the Western Islands

After several weeks with few or no storms, three separate waves of activity have formed in the Atlantic. One is a low-pressure trough just off the coast of Texas producing a large area of disorganized showers and thunderstorms.  This system is expected to meander near the coast through much of next week, and some slow development is possible if it remains offshore. Regardless of development, heavy rains could cause some flash flooding across portions of the upper Texas coast and coastal Louisiana during the next few days.

A separate tropical wave over the central Atlantic is also producing showers and thunderstorms. Gradual development of this system is possible during the next few days, and a tropical depression could form some time next week while it moves westward, reaching the Lesser Antilles on Monday and continuing across the Caribbean through the middle to latter part of the week.

A third tropical wave off the west coast of Africa is producing minimal shower and thunderstorm activity. Some slow development of this system is possible through late next week while it moves slowly to the northwest over the eastern and central tropical Atlantic.

Any one of these waves could form a hurricane. Any one of those hurricanes could travel to Atlanta. Any hurricane in Atlanta could drop more trees in my neighborhood, possibly even on me. Impermanence is swift.  

 

Listening

Another tree fell in the neighborhood, this one just a few minutes ago. Two doors down, a young couple with two pre-school children. No one was hurt, but it fell across their back porch while they were outside. The sound alone scared the hell out of them.

For the record, it was a calm and sunny day. No rain for the past week, no wind today. The tree just decided to drop in for a visit.

Scary times in The City in a Forest. Impermanence is swift. 

 

Way Marks of the Otherland

 

Today's date in the Universal Solar Calendar, Way Marks of the Otherland, sounds like the title of a 1960s science-fiction story. I should know - not only did I read a lot of science fiction in the '60s, I just finished reading Harlan Ellison's 1967 Dangerous Visions anthology.   

Around 1973, I randomly checked out Ellison's sequel, Again, Dangerous Visions, from the library. I hadn't read the original collection, but I had heard Ellison was an "edgy" sci-fi writer. I had graduated from Ray Bradbury and was into Robert Heinlein at the time (I hadn't yet discovered Philip K. Dick), and was looking for science fiction even more "far out" than Stranger in a Strange Land.

So, apparently, was Harlan Ellison. The premise of his Dangerous Visions collections was that science fiction had become somewhat juvenile and safe, a sexless and non-offensive genre geared toward protecting the tender sensibilities of young readers (as if teens weren't the horniest readers in the world). Religion and politics were also taboo in sci fi, and Ellison invited the best science- and speculative-fiction writers to submit material for his collection, stories they felt would never get published elsewhere.  

He compiled the results in 1967s Dangerous Visions anthology. The book was well received, so he put out another call for submissions which resulted in 1972's Again, Dangerous Visions. The '72 anthology blew my mind when I read it in 1973 (or so), but I eventually had to return it to the library. To this day, I can't remember any of the stories or any of the specifics, other than Ellison saying in the introduction that the only submission he rejected as "too extreme" was a story about a snot vampire that was too nauseating even for him.

A third anthology, The Last Dangerous Visons, was supposed to complete the trilogy but  never got published. Rumors abound about why it was never released - it was critical of Nixon in an election year and he had it suppressed, it  contained deep, metaphysical secrets that the human race wasn't yet ready to receive, and so on.  The book remained unpublished for decades, and then earlier this summer, it was announced that The Last Dangerous Visions will finally be released this month (August 2024).

This was exciting news, so earlier this summer I bought Dangerous Visions and it's sequel to catch back up before the third volume was finally published. 

I finished Dangerous Visions early this week. God, I was disappointed. A lot has changed between 1972 and now; I've changed a lot since 1972. What may have seemed daring and edgy then frankly seems kind of lame now.   

The first couple of stories in the collection take on the taboo subject of religion, or to be specific, Christianity. The opening tale, Evensong by Lester del Rey, is an account of a desperate individual being pursued across the galaxy by vengeful hunters. In the last few lines, it's revealed (spoiler alert) that the refugee is God, and the hunter is modern Man. Lamely, the story ends "And the evening and the morning were the eighth day." Oooh, so edgy!

The next story is just as trite. A strange, otherworldly person upsets the status quo. Some people are attracted to his presence and others find him deeply disturbing. The last line finds the fellow "nailed to his cross" (italics as in the original). Oh, I get it! The person wasn't an alien from outer space but the Christ! That may have seen shocking then, but now I just ask, "and?" 

The worst story is Riders of the Purple Wage, an 80-page novella by Philip Jose Farmer. The title is taken form Zane Grey's classic western, Riders of the Purple Sage, although to those of my generation, it recalls the psychedelic country-rock band, New Riders of the Purple Sage. The story is full of puns and stylistic conceits, used more to show "there, I did it," than to convey any meaning or art. For example, the main character, Winnegan, is a pun on the words "win again" (he wins the purple wage lottery) but also so that he can later be exposed as a charlatan and let Farmer decry, in bold, capital letters, "Winnegan's Fake!," as if the reader hadn't already realized the whole novella is a poor knockoff of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. The story is written stream-of-consciousness style, and alternates between Joyce's dense, pun- and language-garbled works and surreal Dylanesque imagery of historical figures:

Socrates, Ben Johnson, Cellini, Swedenborg, Li Po, and Hiawatha are roistering in the Mermaid Tavern. Through a window, Daedalus is seen on top of the battlements of Cnossis (sic) . . . Through another window is a lake on the surface of which a man is walking, a green-tarnished halo over his head. Behind him, a periscope sticks out of the water.     

Then he shifts gears to faux-Joyce: 

Oh, delectation tabu and sickersacrosanct! There's a baby in there, ectoplasm beginning to form in eager preanticipation of actuality. Drop egg, and shoot the chuteychutes of flesh, hastening to gulp the lucky Micromoby Dick, outwriggling its million million brothers, survival of the fightingest.

It goes on and on like this, for 80 pages, lurching between A Clockwork Orange, Ulysses, and Desolation Row. I never finished the story, and moved on to the next.

The stories try to shock but in their earnestness, they try too hard. There's sex, but it's usually more alluded too than erotically described. A Toy for Juliette by Robert Bloch (Psycho) tells the story of a time-travelling grandfather who brings back "toys" for his favorite granddaughter - men and women from other ages with whom she can have sex before killing them. It's all fun and games, at least for Juliette, until Grandfather brings home Jack the Ripper, who has the last laugh. It's actually one of the better stories in the collection, and Ellison himself follows it with a companion tale of the Ripper's abduction as told from Jack's point of view.

My reaction to most of the rest of the stories was "Hmmph" as I moved on to the next. Philip K. Dick's Faith of Our Fathers, one of the better stories, is a typical Dick tale of a person who thinks he's been given LSD, but actually took a hallucination suppressor and discovers that the government has secretly been putting hallucinogens in the tap water for mind control. I'm not tripping - you are! Gonna Roll Them Bones by Fritz Leiber is a fun tale and his writing picks up a momentum to carry the reader to its conclusion, but other than that the stories were all pretty forgettable.

My disappointment made me question my reaction in the 70s to Again, Dangerous Visons. Was it really that mind-blowing, or were those just simpler, more naïve times? But I bought the latter volume too and began reading in Monday night. 

The first two stories in Again, Dangerous Visions are much better than 90% of the first volume, and by "much better" I mean more interesting and better written. Then the third story, a 120-page novella by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World Is Forest, is a flat-out masterpiece. It's as if Richard Powers had written the script for Avatar, only better. I loved it.

Maybe I wasn't as gullible and impressionable in 1973 as I had feared. I'm now looking forward again to finally reading The Last Dangerous Visions as soon as I finish the 1,141 pages of Again.

Day of the Iron Gate

According to my model of Punctuated Aggregational Destruction, our bodies decay not in a linear fashion as we age, but in a series of abrupt downward steps. For many old people, those downward steps are triggered by falls.

My mother recently took a fall in the Day Room of the Nursing Home she's in. About half of her forehead is now black and blue, but the good news is there was no bleeding in the brain. She had a small, non-surgical fracture of one spinal vertebrae, but that could have been from some other, older trauma. She's now back in the Nursing Home.

Gravity's a killer, man. If cancer and heart disease don't get you, if you survive sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, a fall's gonna get you.

The other day, I was walking back to the house after taking out the trash. As I was climbing the brick steps to the brick porch of my brick house, my foot tripped on a lower step sending my falling, face first, toward the brick stairs. Reflexively, my hands reached out and broke my fall with my face mere inches from the edge of  step. If my reflexes were just a tad bit slower, or my hands were busy carrying something, I probably would have broken my nose, or chipped some teeth, or otherwise injured my face in some manner. I'd have survived, probably, and the complications from recovery wouldn't have killed me either, but it would have been one more step in the downward cycle of PAD.

Gotta watch my step.      

Day of the North Sea

 Last Sunday, when I tried to stretch my weekend neighborhood walk from 5 to 5½ miles, I vacillated between calling it a "walk" and a "hike."  Today, I extended my weekday walk in the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area from 5 to 6 miles by finally taking on the connected Sope Creek Trails, and it most definitely felt more like hiking than mere walking.

It's not that I hadn't noticed the Sope Creek trailheads off my walking route. I just that I thought they were mountain bike trails not suitable for hikers. I was wrong. The trails are narrow, not even two persons wide for the most part, and hilly and rugged, and are very similar in look and feel to some of the hiking trails one would find in the North Georgia mountains. In other words, they're ideal hiking trails.

The trails run the length of the unlovely, shadeless mile of the main trail, where it runs along the easement of the Plantation Pipeline. But as it climb up out of the Chattahoochee River floodplain, the trail snakes around as it switchbacks up the hills and around hollows formed by small streams. With all the twists and turns, you walk at least 1½ miles along the 1-mile run of the pipeline easement. The trails are surrounded by trees so they're shady (unlike the easement) and the hills contribute a degree of cardio workout missing from the flat, lower trails.           

Oh, how I rue all the time I had spent prior to now down in the floodplain, when I could have been up hiking the side slopes!

The Brother Heart

 

A noise. A sound. Not a buzz or a hum, but a sort of crinkly sound, like that of a sheet of paper being balled up. 

I was sitting in zazen when I first noticed the sound, one I had never noticed before in my house. It was a very quiet sound, easily drowned out by any noise at all - the AC, outside traffic, etc. But the weather is such that the AC's not running and my street is blessedly little traffic on my street. The only distracting noise I usually have to deal with is the sound of a distant leaf-blower as the maintenance crew is doing the yardwork for someone in the neighborhood, but it's Sunday and even the leaf blowers take the day off.  

I had no idea what the sound was. The closest thing I could think of was the sound my laptop was making earlier this summer. I took it to the shop and they told me the speaker had a small hole and was making the noise. I asked them to order me a new one and let me know when it arrived at the shop. It's been six weeks now and I haven't heard back from them.

But anyway, here and now (or at least earlier today) - I'm sitting in meditation, and I hear a sound similar to the one my laptop was making. I have a very old, barely functioning laptop in my home zendo, and I figured it was the same thing - I was hearing the crackling sound of a blown speaker.

I had thought the laptop was turned off, but it was possible that it was only in "sleep" mode. A blown-out speaker could still make noise in sleep mode, couldn't it? I wanted to get up immediately and check the power mode; turn it "off" if necessary. 

But part of my practice is to sit still through the meditation period regardless of distractions and temptations. Don't give in to the urge to scratch my nose just because I feel an itch, don't check the timer to see how much time has passed. Don't get up to investigate strange noises - there will be plenty of time for that later after the meditation period is over. Part of mindfulness practice is to practice putting your attention where you want it for as long as you want it, and not to give in to the restless "monkey mind" that's always looking for some distraction, some entertainment, something - anything - other than just sitting.

So I continued to sit, and did my best to ignore the noise.

The timer finally signaled the end of the first sitting period and I got up and checked the laptop. Putting my ear next to it, I could tell that it wasn't the culprit - the sound wasn't coming from there. Just to be sure, I pressed the  power button and turned it "on" and then back "off" again, and sat down from my second sitting period (I do two 30-minute sittings).

The sound. It's back. I know it's not the laptop, that convenient explanation during my first period, and now it's a mystery. My mind desperately wanted to get up and further explore the room to find the source of the noise, but I was adamant about sitting still, and didn't move for the duration of the second period, despite that annoying sound.

I later found what it was - the seal for the toilet in the adjacent bathroom hadn't properly seated the last time it was flushed, and a small trickle of water was constantly flowing over the outlet. I nudged the seal, the water stopped, and the noise was gone. End of story.

The point here isn't about home plumbing solutions. I bring this up as a reminder to myself that part of practice is practicing self-control and self-discipline. It's the practice of sitting meditation that gives me the discipline to keep at my walking/hiking exercise routine and to stick to a diet of the same food every day, and not much of it at that. Lack of discipline would have me stay at home all day if the weather looks dodgy, or to splurge out on a pizza or some ice cream to "reward" myself for dieting. I can thank my meditation practice for my improved health in 2024.

The Deserted Garden

 I hate to be that guy who blogs about the weather all the time, but today's the 18th day of the Universal Solar Calendar's fall season and lately we're been experiencing what we call "False Fall" here in the South, when the temperatures and humidity first drop to tolerable levels but we know the sticky heat's coming back eventually.

It's been making my every-other-day hikes much more tolerable. Today, I even improvised a little and added an additional ½ mile to my usual route (I was hoping for an additional mile, but the side trail turned back to my normal path sooner than I had expected).

The National Hurricane Center doesn't expect any tropical storms to form in the next 48 hours, and weather.com doesn't forecast any rain for at least another week. Happy days!   

The Volga Delta

“My name is Ruwa Romman,” Ruwa Romman had wanted to say, “and I’m honored to be the first Palestinian elected to public office in the great state of Georgia and the first Palestinian to ever speak at the Democratic National Convention.”

Romman is a vocal and prominent activist for Uncommitted, the movement that led a sit-in protest at the conference for a chance to speak. Initially, the movement pushed for Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive-care doctor who volunteered in Gaza, to speak although she is not Palestinian. After this request was denied, the movement sent a list of more names for potential speakers, including Rep. Romman. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office was reportedly pushing for a speech from Romman.

In an interview, Romman called herself a safe, last resort. “If an elected official in a swing state who is Palestinian cannot make it on that stage, nobody else can,” she said. 

Since the convention denied her the chance to express herself, here are the words she wanted to say:

“My story begins in a small village near Jerusalem, called Suba, where my dad’s family is from. My mom’s roots trace back to Al Khalil, or Hebron. My parents, born in Jordan, brought us to Georgia when I was eight, where I now live with my wonderful husband and our sweet pets.

“Growing up, my grandfather and I shared a special bond. He was my partner in mischief—whether it was sneaking me sweets from the bodega or slipping a $20 into my pocket with that familiar wink and smile. He was my rock, but he passed away a few years ago, never seeing Suba or any part of Palestine again. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss him.

“This past year has been especially hard. As we’ve been moral witnesses to the massacres in Gaza, I’ve thought of him, wondering if this was the pain he knew too well. When we watched Palestinians displaced from one end of the Gaza Strip to the other. I wanted to ask him how he found the strength to walk all those miles decades ago and leave everything behind. 

“But in this pain, I’ve also witnessed something profound—a beautiful, multifaith, multiracial, and multigenerational coalition rising from despair within our Democratic Party. For 320 days, we’ve stood together, demanding to enforce our laws on friend and foe alike to reach a ceasefire, end the killing of Palestinians, free all the Israeli and Palestinian hostages, and to begin the difficult work of building a path to collective peace and safety. That’s why we are here—members of this Democratic Party committed to equal rights and dignity for all. What we do here echoes around the world.

“They’ll say this is how it’s always been, that nothing can change. But remember Fannie Lou Hamer—shunned for her courage, yet she paved the way for an integrated Democratic Party. Her legacy lives on, and it’s her example we follow.

“But we can’t do it alone. This historic moment is full of promise, but only if we stand together. Our party’s greatest strength has always been our ability to unite. Some see that as a weakness, but it’s time we flex that strength. 

“Let’s commit to each other, to electing Vice President Harris and defeating Donald Trump who uses my identity as a Palestinian as a slur. Let’s fight for the policies long overdue—from restoring access to abortions to ensuring a living wage, to demanding an end to reckless war and a ceasefire in Gaza. To those who doubt us, to the cynics and the naysayers, I say, yes we can—yes we can be a Democratic Party that prioritizes funding our schools and hospitals, not for endless wars. That fights for an America that belongs to all of us—Black, brown, and white, Jews and Palestinians, all of us, like my grandfather taught me, together.”

Rep. Romman never was given the chance to say those words. Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for President and the convention ended with barely a mention of Gaza or the Palestinians. However, Harris did say during her acceptance speech: 

 “Let me be clear: I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself. Because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that the terrorist organization Hamas caused on October 7th. Including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.

“At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.

President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity. Security. Freedom. And self-determination.” 

Meanwhile, it was reported today that a Palestinian baby in Gaza has been partly paralyzed from polio in the first case there in 25 years. Although preparations for a difficult and dangerous vaccination campaign have begun in the midst of the war, an outbreak of polio amidst all of the other suffering is unimaginably terrible.

A polio outbreak in Gaza won’t necessarily  be confined to Palestinians. The nature of infectious diseases is such that they don’t recognize ethnicity, nationality, or religion. Israel and Israeli citizens are just as much at risk from a polio outbreak as are the Palestinians. If for no other reason than near-term self-preservation , this is a good reason for a ceasefire to begin immediately.

For the vaccination coverage to be sufficient, 95% of the children must receive two doses of the vaccine. Vials of the vaccine are expected to arrive in by air in Tel Aviv and then be driven to the Gaza Strip where they will be stored in a warehouse. The refrigeration equipment required to keep the vaccine at the right temperature has entered Gaza today.

Lion of the Virgin

Yesterday morning, delegates at the Democratic National Convention delegates from Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Missouri and South Dakota staying at the Fairmont hotel awoke to find maggots in their breakfast buffet. 

Multiple suspects had allegedly entered the building and contaminated the food before fleeing. The insects appeared to be maggots but some reports said that they were crickets. Last month, during his visit to the Capitol, maggots and other insects were dumped on the table of Benjamin Netanyahu at the Watergate hotel in Washington. Some of those, too, appeared to be crickets.

At the convention itself, the parents of an American hostage held by Hamas took the stage and thanked Biden and Harris for their efforts to free their son, as the crowd chanted, “Bring them home.”  However, although the family of Israeli hostages got time to share their story, the convention denied a Palestinian-American delegate equal time – or any time - to speak. In protest, a couple dozen delegates began a sit-in outside of the convention. 

The protest was led by Abbas Alawieh, a leader of Uncommitted, a national movement that began in Michigan and won 30 delegates to the convention. “We didn’t come here to do a sit-in, we’re just sitting here waiting for a call,” Alawieh said. The protesters remained in place until Wednesday night's program ended around midnight. 

Some Democratic officials are supporting their demand, tweeting that after the family of Israeli hostages got time to share their story that evening, so too should a Palestinian.

Wednesday night’s proceedings  belonged to Tim Walz, but Georgia still made a big splash, even without Lil Jon. Georgia’s former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan took the stage and accused the Republican Party of being a “cult worshiping a felonious thug.” 

Duncan is a Georgia conservative and no woke Social-Justice Warrior. “You don’t have to agree with every policy position of Kamala Harris - I don’t,” he told the convention, “But you do have to recognize her prosecutor mind-set that understands right from wrong, good from evil.”

He argued that Trump poses a direct threat to democracy and champions values that are not aligned with mainstream conservatives. Duncan framed his support of the Democratic ticket as a matter of patriotism and got a standing ovation from the crowd. 

“I’m certain I don’t have to talk anybody out of voting for Donald Trump here, so I’m going to focus my attention on the millions of Republicans and independents that are at home, that are sick and tired of making excuses for Donald Trump,” he said. “If Republicans are being intellectually honest with ourselves, our party is not civil or conservative - it’s chaotic and crazy, and the only thing left to do is dump Trump.”

Duncan has received death threats for refusing to support Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.  During his speech, he held up a wooden coaster that he had shared with his son that had the words “Doing the right thing will never be the wrong thing” written on it. “To my fellow Republicans at home that want to pivot back towards policy, empathy and tone: You know the right thing to do,” he said. “Let’s have the courage to do it in November.”

Source of the Danube

 

At the Democratic National Convention last night, each state voted one by one in a ceremonial roll-call to nominate the Democratic candidate for President of the United States. For some reason, the roll call was accompanied by music for each state selected by someone called DJ Cassidy. 

The loud music and shouted nominations gave the vote a rock-concert feeling, and then my home state of Georgia, not to be outdone by the other states, amped up the energy when we broke out Lil Jon for our nomination. The rapper entered the arena screaming his trademark “Yeah!” and marched down the aisle waving his hand in the air while breaking into his song, Turn Down for What. His mini-concert continued as he led a chant of “We ain’t going back,” Kamala Harris' campaign slogan, and then cheers of "VP Harris to the Walz" (a tweak to the chorus of his Get Low). 

Finally, Lil Jon turned it over to Nikema Williams, my representative in Congress, who called out the Georgia Board of Elections shenanigans with voter registrations, while Raphael  Warnock, my Senator, stood beside her. Williams even managed to drop in a "good trouble" reference to the late, great John Lewis, her predecessor to my District's House seat.  

Oh Atlanta, you're never the shrinking violet at any party. It’s like the other states weren’t even trying. Someone on social media called it "the most Atlanta thing ever" and even MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow had to acknowledge that Georgia has become the cultural capital of America. 

As Axios Atlanta put it, we influence everything.

The Mississippi Delta

 

I didn't see Bill Clinton on the stage last night congratulating Hilary after her speech at the Democratic National Convention. Maybe they're saving him for a joint appearance with the Obamas? Maybe they're trying to keep their distance? 

Meanwhile, here in Atlanta yesterday, the Georgia State Election Board held yet another all-day meeting. At times heated, the meeting featured dozens of county election officials expressing concerns about many of the rule changes that have been proposed by a cabal of election deniers on the Board. After another contentious meeting earlier this month, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger issued a statement accusing the board of engaging in 11th-hour activist rule-making that would undermine voter confidence.  Meanwhile, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, also a Republican, has issued an opinion that more or less told the board to go drop dead over re-investigating the Fulton County Elections Office’s 2020 vote recount. 

Last weekend, Trump retweeted a fake, AI-generated clip of Taylor Swift endorsing him. Meanwhile, CNN reported totally unsubstantiated "rumors" that Swift and Beyoncé were going to make appearances at the Democratic National Convention to support Harris. In other words, they reported something just totally made up. As long as the nation's promoting unfounded, untrue rumors about Tay Tay and Bey, I'll add that they both have become committed Contemplative Stoics (my made-up religion), read WDW religiously, and are playing at my house. 

At my house.

The Endlong Ride

Behold the moon. A full moon will rise over Georgia at 8:38 pm tonight, The Endlong Ride according to the Universal Solar Calendar. The August Full Moon is called the Sturgeon Moon in North America because of the large number of sturgeon fish found in the Great Lakes this time of year. Anglo-Saxons called it the Grain Moon due to the abundance of crops at the start of the harvesting season, and the English called it the Corn Moon, or the Lightning Moon for the frequent thunderstorms in late summer. Considering the delicate balance of nature and harvest, the Celts called it the Dispute Moon.

August's full moon will be the first of four consecutive supermoons this year. Supermoons occur when the moon's orbit is closest to Earth at the same time as the moon is full. The full moon in September, known as the Harvest Moon, will also be a supermoon, as will October's Hunter's Moon and November's Beaver Moon.

Zen Master Dogen saw the whole world in a dewdrop. We can see the whole of the universe in the moon.

Day of the Great Roots

The latest polls show Harris leading Trump by a national average of 49 to 47%.  Polling in Georgia gives Trump anywhere from a 2% to 4% advantage over Harris, with the Cook Report finding the race even. That's a considerably smaller gap than a month ago when Biden was the presumptive candidate.

As you probably know, the Democratic National Convention starts tomorrow and should give Harris a bump in the polls. Meanwhile, as Trump's campaign is careening and his poll numbers slipping, he's due for several new confrontations in court. Trump is still awaiting sentencing in his New York hush-money case, with the judge planning to rule on his immunity appeal on September 16th, six days after the first Trump-Harris debate, and then to sentence Trump on September 18th.

We live in interesting times. 

Day of the High Cities

Three things you can do instead of spending four years and $40,000 getting a college education:

1. Go to the library and read, five days a week, eight hours a day. You'll learn a lot, be erudite and witty on a great many topics, and be the most-quoted person at every cocktail party you attend. There's no money to be made, however, but at least the ROI on a zero-sum investment will break even.


2. Find an open football field and practice place-kicking eight hours a day, five days a week. After four years, that would be 8,320  hours of practice, and you'll be goddamn good at it. Then go to the training camp of the NFL team of your choice and tell them you can kick a field goal from any place spot they want to spot the ball on the field. Knock it through and then say, "Guaranteed field goal instead of a punt on every possession." $10M/year, unless your agent can get you better.


3. Hire a different $500/night call girl on 80 different nights. Document everything - her name, her looks, the sex, the setting, your health, her health, your conversations, how you feel about yourself after Night 1, and how you feel about yourself after Night 80. Write a book, give a TED talk, make the talk-show circuit, start a life-coaching business. Play your cards right, and you'll make a fortune, be a guest rapper on every hip-hop mixtape, and get walk-on cameos in major motion pictures.       

Day of the Sledge

 

My cumulative walking distance (460 miles) hasn't quite gotten me to Cape Hatteras yet, but I have gotten past Cape Fear (lol, I've gotten past my fear of capes) and to North Carolina's Bare Sand Beach on the Cape Lookout National Seashore. Onward!

My vitals are doing great: my blood pressure has averaged 111/69 since late March and 104/67 the past three months. My weight's down from 220 to just a few tenths of a pound over 185 and I hope to break below that any day now.

I hadn't consciously set out to do it, but I've realized my diet now is almost strictly vegetarian, consisting mostly of nuts and berries, leafy greens, English muffins, yogurt, brown rice, lentils, and fruit. I say "almost" strictly vegetarian because occasionally - once or twice a week - I put some chicken tenders (baked, not fried) on  top of a Cobb salad for protein.  

A bunch of new music dropped today. Right now, I'm listening to John Zorn's Lamentations with Bill Frisell, Julian Lage, and Gyan Riley, Hannigan Songs Zorn, Volume 1 with Barbara Hannigan, Tomorrow Land by the Lux Quartet (Myra Melford, Allison Miller, Dayna Stephens, and Scott Colley), A Spontaneous Breaking of Symmetry III by Armen Nalbandian and Chris Corsano, SORCS 80 by Thee Oh Sees (Osees), In the Shadow of the Holy Mountain by Blind Pilot, and Palehound Live at First Congregational Church. All good stuff.

   

Day of the Antler

It has long been my opinion that we don't age linearly, that is, the gradual degradation of our bodies doesn't proceed at a constant rate from the peak of adult maturity to old age.  It seems to occur in sudden, random destructive spikes - a disease from which we never fully recover, a fall, or the catastrophic failure of one organ or the other. I call this conjecture "Punctuated Aggregational Destruction," and if we plotted our body's decline over the years, the line's not a steady downward slope but rather a flat line interrupted by the occasional downward step at each PAD event.

So it was with "told-you-so" interest that I saw an article in The Guardian today that reported on the results of an ageing-related study. The study tracked thousands of different molecules in people aged 25 to 75, and found two major waves of age-related changes at around ages 44 and again at 60. The findings could explain why spikes in certain health issues, including musculoskeletal problems and cardiovascular disease, occur at certain ages.

“We’re not just changing gradually over time. There are some really dramatic changes,” said Prof Michael Snyder, a geneticist and director of Stanford University's Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine.

The mid-40s PAD event was unexpected and initially assumed to be a result of perimenopausal changes in women skewing results for the whole group. But the data revealed similar shifts were happening in men in their mid-40s, too. This suggests that while menopause may contribute to the changes observed in women in their mid-40s, there are likely other, more significant factors influencing these changes in both men and women.

The second PAD event included molecules involved in immune regulation, carbohydrate metabolism, and kidney function. Molecules linked to skin and muscle ageing changed at both time points. Previous research suggested that a later PAD event may occur around the age of 78, but the recent study did not confirm this.

The evidence indicates that the risk of many age-related diseases does not increase incrementally, with Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular disease risk showing a steep uptick after 60. Some of the changes could be linked to lifestyle or behavioral factors. For instance, the change in alcohol metabolism could result from an uptick in consumption in people’s mid-40s, which can be a stressful period of life.

The Three Faces

 

Last night, The Daily Show played clips of failed presidential candidate Donald Trump's slurred and incoherent speech during his conversation with Elon Musk on Twitter. The Washington Post has compiled his most recent list of deranged and outright bizarre claims and lies, his recent "greatest hits" if you will, including:

1. Kamala Harris' rally crowds "don't exist" and "nobody was there."
2. Joe Biden planned to have the FBI assassinate Trump
3. Democrats' messaging is to blame for the assassination attempt against Trump
4. Biden faked having the covids
5. He went down in a helicopter with Willie Brown
6. Biden will try to reclaim the Democratic nomination
7. Harris only recently identified as "Black"
8. His Jan. 6 crowd was bigger that MLK's
9. Other countries are emptying their prisons and sending criminals to the U.S.
10. Democrats want to allow killing babies after birth 

None of these statements are true - they're all lies. I've heard each one of them before, but it's all the more stunning when they're assembled all together like that. So, one would think, The New York Times must be picking up on this too and reporting on Trump's mental and cognitive decline, right? 

But no, their headline reads, " (VP Candidate Tim) Walz Faces New Scrutiny Over 2020 Riots: Was He Too Slow to Send Troops?" (it was since replaced by the welcome news that "Inflation Falls Below 3% for First Time Since 2021"). But I'm starting to wonder if the online critics are correct, and the Times is in fact effectively becoming the new propaganda outlet for the Trump campaign.

Seriously, though, don't vote for Trump.

Ninth Ocean

Today, Ninth Ocean, is the 226th day of this leap year. If not for the leap-year day, yesterday would have been the 224th day. Earlier in the year, Ocean days in the Universal Solar Calendar followed multiples of 12 - First Ocean was on the 13th day, Second Ocean was on the 25th day, and so on. While 224 at first seems like a multiple of 12, it actually isn't and for a while now, Ocean days have turned up seemingly at random in the Universal Solar Calendar. 

Fun fact - writer H.G. Wells died on this day in 1946. The same day, however, economist and current U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen was born. If that's not proof of reincarnation right there, I don't know what is.

It's been our practice this year to commemorate each Ocean day with the corresponding composition in Elaine Radigue's Occam Ocean series. Laetitia Sonami originally studied with Radigue in France in 1976, although their music eventually took on very different forms - Radigue migrated from use of primarily electronic sounds to traditional acoustic instruments, while Sonami went on to explore use of unique electronic controllers in live-performance settings. In 2011, Sonami requested Radigue to create a piece for her new instrument, the Spring Spyre. Their meetings took place during the winter 2012 in France, after which Radigue gave her permission to premiere the piece in the fall of 2013. 

Three audio pick-ups on the Spring Spyre are analyzed and trained through neural networks to create subtle real time modulations of digital synthesis. The work mode is based on an individual image illustrated and evoked within each solo, where each musician is guided by his or her own personal image. This provides the essential sound, letting descriptive words and evocations establish a system of communication as the piece is being elaborated. This intuitive-instinctive process guides the performer to the very essence of the composition. Sonami describes the process as akin to oral transmission of ancient traditional music. The performance below was recorded in October 2017.

Rustle of the Prey

Sorry to keep talking about the weather here (and yes, I've seen that insurance ad on tv about the new homeowners obsessed about the weather), but with my exercise routine, I'm out in it a lot and as a result think about it a lot. Dog days have ended and today temperatures were only in the high 80s (as opposed to high 90s of the past month or so) and humidity was quite a bit lower. It still felt like summer in Georgia to be sure, but a whole lot more comfortable than even last week.

More good news: potential tropical cyclone five, the storm to be called "Ernesto," is now forecast to get turned away from the North American continent by the Gulf Stream (our hero and protector) and travel to the north far offshore. No other storms are currently on the horizon.

That's it for the WDW weather forecast.

Dog Days End

 According to the Universal Solar Calendar, Dog Days End on August 11. Or to be more precise, August 11 is Dog Days End. Whichever way you look at it, the calendar foretells cooler weather following this date. It's still hot here in Georgia (low to mid-90s), but the humidity dropped noticeably overnight. The sun is out in full force but the drier air makes the temperatures much more tolerable.  

I finally hit the saturation point on Horizon: Forbidden West and decided to move on to a new game. I was about four-fifths of the way through my second playthrough on Forbidden West and some 425 hours in, third most hours overall of any game according to my Steam statistics, more than Fallout 76 (345 hours) but not as much as Cyberpunk 2077 (563 hours). I'll probably never catch up to my playtime on Fallout 4 (1,034 hours).

I was going to play Deus Ex: Mankind Divided next, but the intelligentsia on the video game Subreddits convinced me that since I hadn't played a Deus Ex game before, I should start with Human Revolution first.  It's an older game (2011, the same year as Skyrim) and the graphics are poor by modern standards, but I can get past that. It took me a while to realize that it's basically a stealth game (at least the first mission that I completed last night) and I had to restart it from the beginning after repeatedly getting killed trying to play it first-person shooter style. My initial impression is that I can stick with this game as a prequel to Mankind Divided (2016), but I probably won't love it. I'm only about 5 hours in (I started Thursday night) and I may change my mind as the game progresses.

Day of High Happening

Hurricane Debby has passed, and the best thing we can say about her is that remnants of the storm rained out last night's Yankees game.  But now showers and thunderstorms associated with a tropical wave currently located in the mid-Atlantic pose the nest threat. Environmental conditions are conducive for gradual development of this system over the next several days while it moves westward to northwestward at 15 to 20 mph across the ocean. A tropical depression is likely to form by the early to middle part of next week while the system approaches and then moves over the Lesser Antilles. Then, the system is forecast to move generally west-northwestward and could approach portions of the Greater Antilles by the middle to latter part of next week. There's a near-certain, 80% chance the system can form into a tropical storm within the next 7 days. If it does, it will be named Ernesto.

The Deep Sea Alien

 

So, I had to rebuild my body.

Sometime around 2016, even before the dreadful Election Day that brought us you-know-who, I fell into a depression. Disillusioned with work, my job in particular but my whole career in general, I just sat at my desk doing as little as possible until I could finally retire in 2019. Then my grand retirement plans for travel and leisure were dashed by the realities of finances and loss of motivation due to depression, and then the covids hit, and for literally two years I barely left the house.

Watching cable tv from the sofa all day with feet propped up on the ottoman isn't a healthy lifestyle choice for anyone. I gained weight, my blood pressure skyrocketed, and my metabolism went prediabetic. A bladder infection eventually drove me to the E.R., which probably saved my life, as the doctors recognized all of the other symptoms - the hypertension and the prediabetes - and put me on some meds and encouraged me to diet and exercise.

Which I did, opting, given my age, to walk instead of run. At first, I could only walk a couple miles before leg cramps and soreness set in. But I kept at it and soon stretched it out to three, then four, and now five miles each outing.

This was a bit shocking to me, as in the 80s and 90s I was running 10 Ks routinely and was often on my feet all day. I had strong legs then and was actually quite proud of them. At the gym, I would sit at the leg-press machine and set the pin all the way at the bottom of the stack so as to lift the maximum amount of weight. Trainers on the floor would try to stop me, "Sir, that's too much, you'll hurt yourself," but I'd just turn and look them in the eye as I knocked off five reps. Women even complimented me on my muscular legs and I made sure to wear shorts when I wanted to be noticed. And then 20 years later, my legs looked like a stick-figure cartoon and I could barely walk two miles.

But as I said, I kept at it, and my strength gradually returned. The pounds dropped off (I've lost 35 pounds since last March) and my blood pressure went form Stage 1 hypertension to the lower end of normal. I could see the muscle definition returning to my legs, and noticed how much snugger my jeans felt around my calves. At this point, I have the strength and the stamina to walk much more than five miles - I'm limited more by how long I can take the Georgia mid-summer heat and humidity than anything else. 

But in all of that exercising and dieting, I had neglected my zazen, sitting meditation. It was only ten years ago I was participating in weekend-long meditation retreats, sitting cross-legged on the floor for hours on end. 

The other day, I decided to work meditation back into my routine. Since I do my walking every other day, I'd sit on the days in between, I figured. But when I sat back down on the cushion again, I was dismayed to find my legs wouldn't bend into a cross-legged posture. I had built the muscle mass back up, but forgot to allow for sinew elasticity. 

I've been meditating since then in a kneeling posture and slowly trying to stretch myself  out into a cross-legged position. I'm not talking full- or even half-lotus, just normal crossed legs. If I recall correctly, when I first stated Zen back in the distant year 2000, I couldn't sit cross legged at first but eventually forced my way into the posture, and I guess that if I did it then, I could repeat that slow process again now, despite my advanced age.           

So little by little, day by day, I'm getting better in every way.

The Moving Hand

How pleasant it would be to walk out alone,
First along by the river and then through the park.
- from The Dead by James Joyce. 

Despite temperatures up in the 90s, I took my walk along the Chattahoochee trail today, but my phone only credits me with 4.7 miles when I know I've done a full 5.0. I think that when I walk a certain distance and then turn around and head back, it doesn't always record the full length before the turn-around. And when my course has several about-faces as it did today, the short counts add up.

But enough about me. The news here in Georgia reports that the state elections board just passed a rule requiring all counties to perform an investigation of the results before they certify the vote.  The person who introduced this rule explained that it's just common sense - how can you certify something if you haven't investigated it? - and besides, it's not like they're requiring a full audit or a forensic investigation. But that person was also recently nominated to the board by Republicans, and during his rally last week here in Georgia, Trump called out the official by name, praising him for doing "a great job" and vowing that he was going to "keep on fighting." 

Electors are supposed to be neutral and non-partisan. But put yourself into that official's shoes for a moment - if you don't do everything in your power, both legal and not, to flip the election to Trump regardless of the outcome, you're going to be on his Mike Pence List of Enemies. And after the rally, you know that he knows who you are, and what he expects of you. Flip those votes to his favor, or face the wrath of Trump (and possibly mob violence, too).

There's a line in that old 1980s Psychedelic Furs song, Forever Now, that goes "He isn't very honest, but he's obvious at least." It wasn't written about Trump, but it could have been. If the press knows about the partisans on the electoral board, and if I know about it, then surely the Democrats and the Justice Department know about it as well. But I haven't heard anything about a counterstrategy in the likely event that local election boards in Georgia and across the country refuse to certify the results. Go to court and face the appeals until it winds up in the corrupt and partisan Supreme Court? That's not going to work - in fact, I suspect that's exactly what the Republicans want. 

It makes sense that they have a counter strategy - they must have some plan! - and it makes sense that they're not leaking the strategy to the press.  But all of this recent groundswell of enthusiasm for Harris and Walz and Trump's fall in the polls is meaningful only if there's fair elections, and all reporting indicates it will be anything but fair.

Day of the Mantle

For some reason, I watched the 1976 Robert Altman movie Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson today. It starred Paul Newman in the title role and that guy from Cuckoo's Nest as Sitting Bull's assistant, but it wasn't very good. I found it rather disappointing. If you want to see a satirical deconstruction of Custer and American West mythology, I would suggest instead Irving Penn's 1970 Little Big Man with Dustin Hoffman.

I also watched a 2010 documentary film called Eno: The Man Who Fell to Earth. An unauthorized biography, it focused solely of Eno's work during the groundbreaking years of 1971-1977. I'm quite familiar with that period and have at one point or another owned every one of the albums discussed in the film, but still found it an enjoyable and thoughtful film. At 2½ hours, it's arguably for fans only, but it ever seemed to drag for me. It made up for my disappointment in the first film.

How was your day?

 

Swept Into

Hurricane Debby has left the State of Georgia - and good riddance to it - and is expected to spend the next several days over South Carolina, where it is forecast to drop 16 to 20 inches of rain. God is obviously trying to wash the likes of Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott and Nancy Mace off the map and if there's collateral damage in the form of other human lives, God doesn't care - the Old Testament proves that he's a sociopath anyway. "Abraham, go kill your son to prove you love me" - who talks like that?

Anyhow, with a tropical cyclone beating down on us, it's hard to accept that today is the last day of summer, but that's exactly what today is according to the Universal Solar Calendar. Old Angus MacLise divided the year into five seasons - Childwinter, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Hagwinter - and Summer begins on what the Julian calendar calls May 26 and ends today, on its August 6. 

Tomorrow is officially the first day of the Fall (tadumpatrumpadrumphadump), and the public school systems seem to agree - classes for the 2024-2025 school year have already begun, and those cholesterol yellow school busses are clogging the arteries of our city streets once again. I see groups of parents waiting for for their children at the bus stops, because today's kids are apparently incapable of walking three or four houses from the stop to their homes alone, and when and how did that start?

With the changing of the season, this blog, WDW, is changing its avatar. The fertile, verdant spring season was represented by the young Earth Mother, and hot-girl summer (now officially "brat summer" as I understand it) was represented by the blonde Sun Girl. I need a new avatar for the autumnal Fall season. I'm tired of young girls as my avatars and wanted a male figure, and youth with its vigor and vitality seemed the wrong choice for a season poetically associated with death and decay. 

I experimented with wizardly old men but the images didn't scream "Autumn," and I tried for Fall colors with scarecrows and harvest festival figures but they seemed too "niche" for use on the broad range of names in the USC. I needed an avatar that looked like he was in the autumn years of his life but could also fit into a wide variety of situations.

That's when I got the idea of using myself. After all, what is this blog if not a celebration of my ego? I took a headshot, had an AI adapt it to a virtual image, ran it through some filters to bring out the browns, reds, and yellows of autumn, and came up with "Fall Guy," which is sort of me but also not quite me. The images above show Sun Girl morphing into Fall Guy, which seems appropriate for her last day, "Swept Into" (since it's my face, I found the middle, transitional picture particularly disturbing).

Anyhow, goodbye Sun Girl, hello Fall Guy, and welcome to the Fall (badonkadonkadinkadoink) of 2024.

Foundation of the House

 

Have you heard Athens (Georgia) based musician Shane Parish yet? A self-taught musician, Parish is known for his finger-style acoustic guitar work, as well as fronting the electric prog-rock band, Ahleuchatistas. I saw Parish doing his solo acoustic stuff at Big Ears 2023 and saw Ahleuchatistas at Big Ears last March, and enjoyed both sets.

The reason I bring him up is I just discovered his May 2024 LP,  Repertoire. The album is just Parish on acoustic guitar playing songs you'd never guess could be transcribed to a solo six-string. Specifically, I'm talking jazz classics Lonely Woman by Ornette Coleman and Out to Lunch by Eric Dolphy, Serenade to a Cuckoo by Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Journey in Satchidanada by Alice Coltrane, and  Pithecanthropus Erectus, Reincarnation of a Lovebird, and Better Get Hit in Your Soul by Charles Mingus. He even takes on Sun Ra's Lights on a Satellite. All on solo acoustic guitar.

But Repertoire isn't just an album of jazz covers. Parish also performs Avril 14th by Aphex Twin, Cohesion by D Boon and the Minutemen, Captain Beefheart's One Red Rose That I Mean and Europe Endless by Kraftwerk. And if all that's not eclectic enough for you, there's also renditions of It’s You I Like by Mr. Fred Rogers and Totem Ancestor by John Cage. To coin that old commercial, if you can find another album of jazz covers that also includes John Cage and Mr. Rogers, buy it!

But the real charm of the album is that unless you're intimately familiar with the songs, you probably won't recognize them. Parish's finger-picking makes the tracks sound like a collection of Appalachian folk songs. On a purely experiential level, it's a relaxing, pleasant trip, made all the richer upon recognition of the source material and the cleverness of Parish's transcriptions.

You can stream (and buy) Repertoire on Bandcamp. While you're at it, check out his 2022 Liverpool, an inventive collection of compositions based on old sea shanties, although, again, it doesn't sound anything like traditional sea shanties on listening.

Day of the Smoking Plain

 Four, now known as Debby, has turned into the real thing. It's now a full-fledged tropical storm, and is expected to become a hurricane any moment now, maybe even before I finish writing this post. She's still expected to miss Atlanta, thankfully.

While I was out on my walk today (425 total miles now, or here to New Orleans), the blue shy filled with clouds and I could feel the humidity creep up as the outermost bands of weather from Debby reached the Atlanta metro area. We'll be spared the torrential downpours and high winds, however, and we often experience some of the pleasantest weather of the summer on the days just after a hurricane-force storm passes.

Those 425 miles have taken their toll on my "new" walking shoes. I put the word in quotations, though, because even though I still think of them as "new," I actually bought them back in February 2022. Two-and-a-half years and 425 miles since last February hardly qualifies them as "new," regardless of my perceptions. And today I noticed that my big toe was wearing through the webbed outer shell of the shoe, and something inside of the sole was starting to feel like a pebble beneath my foot with every step. I ordered new shoes from Amazon today.

On reflection, I'm enjoying my every-other-day walks. Not only is the exercise good for my health, my blood pressure, and my weight, but I've been spending more time outdoors that I have since at least 2016.  It's gotten me acclimated to the weather, even the shitty, sweaty, ultra-humid month of last July. It's gotten this old introvert, this self-described urban monk, into contact with more people (overheard snippet of conversation today: "I don't want AI to do artwork for me so I'm free to do my laundry, I want AI to do the laundry so I'm free to do artwork"). I'm more in touch with nature: I've been witness to the seasonal changes in temperature and vegetation, I've seen deer, hawks, owls, squirrels, snakes, and turtles, and heard the songbirds serenade me as I walk. 

I'm thankful the conditions arose that got me to start doing this on a regular basis. 

Day of the Heart's Blood

 

My adult (37 years) daughter hates the New York Times. She thinks it's an irresponsible, partisan organ for Big Money interests. She prefers to get her news from blogs, podcasts and the Substacks of journalists and pundits she trusts.

My former conservative, Republican work colleagues also hated the New York Times. They thought the paper was just the publicity outlet of the Democratic Party and represented the biased, liberal media at its worst. They trusted Fox and only Fox for the news.

The two views cancel each other out. It can't be both an irresponsible, partisan organ for Big Money interests and the biased, liberal media at its worst. Personally, I think it's neither. I have my criticisms of mainstream journalism, but think the Times is really no better or worse than The Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, and MSNBC.  

But it's complete, I'll give it that. Complete as in it attempts to cover all the news, national, international, political, sports, and so on. Sure, some stories slip through the cracks and some stories don't get the headline treatment that some people might feel they deserve. But it tries to maintain journalistic standards, as in verifying sources, fact-checking, etc. Again, sometimes it errs and mistakes are made, but we usually learn about these errors and omissions from retractions and corrections made by the Times themselves. I don't blindly believe everything I read in the Times - I try not to blindly believe anything -  and usually triangulate the news by cross-checking among the Times, The Guardian, and MSNBC. I don't waste my time with Fox.

A few months ago, I saw comic and activist Russell Brand on some talk show or another ranting that there was no difference between the Times, MSNBC, and Fox News. This was shortly after Fox executives admitted in court to deliberately running stories they knew weren't true but believed that their viewers wanted to hear (election fraud, immigration trends, Dominion voting machines, etc). When pressed on the issue, Brand said his beef with all three outlets was that they weren't giving as much coverage to the Julian Assange story as he thought was appropriate. This was well before Assange's plea deal earlier this year, back when there was really was no news, as in day-to-day events, during his long sanctuary in an Ecuadorian embassy. But because every day's headlines weren't "Assange Is Still in Exile," Brand decided all media was biased and shilling propaganda.

I bring this up because today someone was ranting on social media that the Times' bias was showing in their reporting that Trump proposed to debate Harris on Fox News. "At this point, the Times might as well be the PR shop for the Trump campaign," they declared. Their complaint was that Trump had refused to appear at a previously scheduled debate hosted by ABC News, and would only appear on a friendly (to him) network with friendly (to him) hosts in front of a friendly (to him) partisan audience. The poster was angry that the Times headline made no mention of the cancelled debate, so it sounded like Trump had offered a reasonable request for a debate. "Trump Proposes to Debate Harris" doesn't describe the actual situation, and the poster was furious.

I went to the Times' website to see just how bad their tilted journalism was. The front-page headline actually read, "Trump Cancels a Debate With Harris on ABC News and Pitches One With Fox News Instead." Hardly, the one-sided POV that I was expecting. Sure, the headline and the accompanying article didn't use the words "coward" or "chickenshit" even once, but it did include several quotes criticizing Trump for demanding a friendly (to him) forum. And there wasn't one mention of Julian Assange in the entire article! (LOL)

Was the poster lying (imagine that, someone lying on social media!) or did the Times change the headline due to the post (not likely)? I found a link online to the original Times story, and the headline read, "Trump Agrees to a Fox News Debate with Harris on Sept. 4," which I agree is misleading, as it implies that there's a reciprocal agreement (Harris has not expressed any willingness to debate on Fox) and the passive tense ("Trump Agrees") makes it sound like someone other that Trump had proposed the Fox debate. 

But that original story was on the Times' 2024 Election Live Updates page and no writer was credited. It was likely a lightly edited feed from the AP or other wire service.  The front-page article that ran later in the day ("Trump Cancels a Debate With Harris on ABC News and Pitches One With Fox News Instead.") was written by respected journalists Neil Vigdor, Maggie Haberman, and Simon J. Levien. The headline on the 2024 Election Live Updates page, later also attributed to the same three journalists, was revised to read, "Trump Proposes a Fox News Debate with Harris on Sept. 4." Much better than the original headline, although even the earlier article's actual text provided more clarity than the confusing headline. 

I strongly suspect the poster was the same generation as my daughter and has gotten their news from online Internet sources all of their adult lives. They aren't used to seeing news that isn't biased, news that's not only telling you what happened but also what you're supposed to think and feel about it. News that isn't striving to be the most strident voice online about an issue just to get the clicks. They aren't used to neutral, "just the facts" reporting of the actual news without the moral outrage and editorialization. 

The front-page article in the Times quoted several Democratic sources saying, in so many words, that The Orange One's request was chickenshit and cowardly, such as: 

“Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out,” Michael Tyler, the communications director for the Harris campaign, said in a statement. “He needs to stop playing games and show up to the debate he already committed to on Sept 10.”

But you would have to actually read the article to see that quote, something the Millennials don't seem to have time for. 

So look, it's fair to criticize the Times along with all of mainstream journalism, but to single out the Times as the sole bad actor because your point of view isn't expressed vehemently enough is off base. 

And Trump IS a chickenshit coward.