Odds & Ends: News/Humor (with a "Who Lost the Week?" poll)

I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".

OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.

CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Laramie, Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.

ART NOTES— an exhibition entitled Edward Hopper and the American Hotel will be at the Indianapolis, Indiana Museum of Art through October 25th.

HAIL and FAREWELL to the English-born (of Scottish parents) singer Annie Ross—  who had been the last surviving member of the groundbreaking vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, whose famous song Twisted involved “vocalese” by adding saucy lyrics (about one’s analyst) to an existing instrumental song, later covered by Joni Mitchell and Bette Midler — who has died four days short of her ninetieth birthday.

YOUR WEEKEND READ #1 is this essay on the secret police situation in Portland, Oregon: written by someone who has worked as a conflict journalist in Iraq and Ukraine and reported extensively on far-right extremist groups in the US.

THURSDAY's CHILD is named Mocha the Cat— a Utah kitteh who went missing over ten years ago, was located and reunited due to … a microchip.

FOR MANY YEARS in France, a Parisian accent has been the norm for public figures (even more than ‘BBC English’) — but perhaps now Emmanuel Macron’s new prime minister Jean Castex— from the southwestern part of the nation — may help change that, along with the backlash against the ‘globalizing elite’.

NEW ZEALAND will be holding parliamentary elections on September 19th, with Jacinda Ardern hoping to remain in office. The main opposition (the conservative National Party) saw its most recent leader Todd Muller only lasting two months in the job, and this week they elected a new leader …. Judith “Crusher” Collins.

A former wrestler, perhaps Jesse Ventura’s equivalent? Nah ... turns out that as a member of Parliament she proposed legislation to “crush” the cars of persistent illegal street racers. It also turns out that in supporting a bill that would ban female genital mutilation … she had to delete a … rather indelicate Tweet.

FRIDAY's CHILD is named Winter the Cat— a North Carolina kitteh who went missing five years ago, was located and reunited due to … a microchip.

YOUR WEEKEND READ #2 is this essay by the business writer (and former NY Time columnist) Joe Nocera, admitting that he gave far too much credit (in print) to Florida’s governor …. and what he now understands that he got wrong.

BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the easier, less UK-centered NY Times quiz. (A break: some questions overlap).

BROTHER — SISTER?— Canadian film star Ryan Reynolds and English film star Kate Beckinsale (the resemblance of which she has spoken of publicly).

...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… the other night, I couldn’t handle the news on my car radio ... so I tuned to the classical station of Vermont Public Radio (not my usual choice of music). Mighty  glad I did: because during a choral hour, I heard a work that was so powerful, it made me stay inside my vehicle five minutes after I arrived home, that I might never have discovered otherwise. (And I don’t seem to find a diary about it on DK via a search, either).

For this was a chorale work entitled The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed— seven examples of unarmed African-Americans being killed (often, though not always) by the police.

The lyrics (such as they are) are simple … yet with classical music that emphasizes the nature of these horrific events and (in many of its early presentations these past few years) feature all male voices. And while it was composed by an African-American (and based upon news events): its inspiration also came from both … an Iranian-American woman, and an Austrian classical composer who died in 1809. 

Shirin Barghi is a multimedia journalist and filmmaker based in New York, and she did a 2014 Last Words project: what fifteen men said last before they were slain. "I came of age in a country where police violence and state repression was pervasive. While the shape and color of that violence changes from place to place, its fundamental characteristics are sadly predictable and universal."

Her images were seen by an award-winning composer named Joel Thompson— born in the Bahamas to Jamaican parents — with a bachelors in music and a masters in choral conducting from Emory University in Atlanta, where he has lived since age thirteen (although presently pursuing a doctorate in music at Yale University). He chose seven of those fifteen slain men to feature in a composition.

As a classical music composer, Joel Thompson went back to the Classical period in music for a guide. Specifically, Austrian composer Joseph Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ (leading up to the Crucifixion) that was commissioned in 1786 for a Good Friday services oratorio at an underground church in Cádiz, Spain.

Thompson used a variety of musical styles in each movement of the work, utilizing influences of musical theater, Brahms and even allowing some improvisation. The one constant: a medieval French melody L’homme armé— The Armed Man.

Joel Thompson wrote the piece in 2014 (after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner) …. and put it away, never expecting to retrieve it (as is the case with other writings of his). And then …. Freddie Gray died in the back of a Baltimore police van … and felt he had to revive the work. But how to release it?

Part of the problem, of course, is releasing such a choral work in the world of classical/opera music …. where diversity is not exactly prevalent. Joel Thompson experienced the institutional biases, saying he almost gave up composing after being laughed at on-stage by a white conductor during a music festival. Not appearing on-stage for this work helped him avoid that sort of rancor.

Yet he did sense that some felt classical music was not the proper forum for a political message. Historically that has not been true, as a CNN analyst noted:

From a defiant Holocaust-era production of Verdi's Requiem in the ghetto of Terezín, to Russian composers persecuted and forced into exile for their commentary on Stalin's reign, all the way back to subversive lutenists in the courts of Europe: there has never been a time when some composer, somewhere, wasn't challenging power or upending the status quo.

Still, as would be true for many young modern composers: finding a way to get it to the public takes time, money, a patron and someone able to present it. That someone turned out to be Dr. Eugene Rogers, the director of choirs and an associate professor at the University of Michigan — who had previously conducted works on the lives of both Harriet Tubman and Matthew Shepard. Yet he did not immediately act upon it:

An acquaintance sent him the piece, and at first, Rogers tried to ignore it. The subject matter was too raw, and since some people could see it as divisive, he knew it would be a hard sell. One listen changed his mind.

"It moved me so personally, as an African-American man," said Rogers, who was the director of the legendary U-M Men's Glee Club at the time. "I knew I had to present this piece."

He spoke to the students in the Glee Club and they agreed to sing this in October, 2015. And it did indeed result in many objections in 2015 (as Eugene Rogers had feared) with some attendees ripping-up their programs and walking out. Today in 2020, with the change in the public mood: it is finding more receptive audiences.

After the (approx) fifteen-minute rendition, Rogers felt the sobering message needed to end on a positive note: and decided to add the song Glory (from the 2014 film Selma) written by John Legend and two others, the winner of the 2015 Academy Award for Best Original Song. Joel Thompson (hearing it later) agreed with this: and he has asked future performances to include it, as well.

And there have been other performances … with numerous university glee clubs, the Boston Children’s Choir, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, the Chicago Sinfonettia …. and Carnegie Hall has shown videos of the work. The University of Michigan has produced a short documentary on the work … and its notoriety has only grown in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Below is a rendition (of just the original work) by the Glee Club of the University of Michigan.