To convict the parents of involuntary manslaughter, the state will have to prove that the parents were “grossly negligent” in allowing their son access to a firearm, and that their gross negligence caused the deaths of the students.
Gross negligence means more than just carelessness. It means willfully disregarding the results to others from the failure to act.
Thursday night in the NFL, the Dallas Cowboys beat the New Orleans Saints without their head coach due to Covid 19 Protocols.
Defensive Coach and one time Atlanta Falcons Head Coach Dan Quinn took over for the game.
Asked about the win, Coach Quinn said this.
“I think it’s really an example of leadership from Mike and to say what happens when the leader is not here.”
“Everybody had to chip it in and say, ‘No job is not your job right now. By any means necessary, we’ve got to get this job done.'”
Thinking back to the legal analyst and the sentence, It means willfully disregarding the results to others from the failure to act.
Thinking hard about the failure to act.
Thinking hard about the failure to act, I want to say, “No job is not your job right now. By any means necessary, we’ve got to get this job done.”
tireless pointillist people often say show me picture with the dots
I opened up my computer this morning and my mind went back in time.
This was weird because I went back to a time before everyone had a computer.
I had opened the Google and the google logo was all in dots.
Small points of color.
I knew it had to have something to do with Georges Seurat and when I hovered over the logo the embedded alt information for the graphic displayed the text, “Georges Seurat’s 162nd Birthday.”
If you grew up in the midwest at some time in your life you visited Chicago.
If you visited Chicago at some time in your life you had a good chance of going to the Art Institue.
If you went to the Art Institute of Chicago, you most likely saw La Grande Jatte or A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat.
Sometimes known as Sunday Afternoon in the Park and maybe the inspiration for the song, “Saturday in the Park” by the band, Chicago.
Sometime known as the painting with the dots.
I hear two general reactions from folks who see this painting.
One is HOW BRIGHT IT IS.
Colors just cannot be captured in any form of reproduction.
I remember walking down the main hall of the National Gallery of Art in Washington and through an open entry way, I was faced, unexpectedly, with A Girl with a Watering Can by Renoir.
The color flared out from the painting so bright that I tripped.
No, I am not kidding, fell flat out on the marble floor.
Guard looked at me and shrugged like this happened a lot.
The second thing I hear from folks is HOW BIG IT IS.
Neither, here nor there, but look at this photgraph.
I feel it could have been painted by any one the great impressionists and entitled, ‘A visit to Chicago’.
This is what took me back in time when I thought of Seurat.
For me, I cannot think of this painting without thinking of a documentary on the City of Chicago by Studs Terkel.
Mr. Terkel was the American version of Alistair Cooke.
Where Mr. Cooke wrote and later, read, a weekly column, ‘Letter from America’ for the Manchester Guardian and later the BBC, tried to explain America to Brits, Studs Terkel tried to explain America to Americans.
In my mind was a quote of Mr. Terkel from that documentary on La Grande Jatte and I plugged Studs Terkel Suerat into the Google to try and find it.
It is in this documentary that Mr. Terkel talks about La Grande Jatte and says, “people often say, show me the picture with the dots.“
The bit about La Grande Jatte is at 30:00 into the but go to about 28:00 into the video to catch Mr. Terkel’s comments about Night Hawks as well.
Or, if you have the time, watch the whole show.
Overwhelming in nostalgia for a city and a place that no longer exists.
This is the Chicago I grew up with.
Still a city close to the city of Carl Sandburg.
Still the city of Daley.
You remember the old story.
Richard Daley and two guys are in boat that is sinking and there are only two life jackets.
Daley says they should vote on who got a life jacket and Daley won 9 to 2.
This is the Chicago I loved to visit.
One memorable visit, I had talked my Friend Doug into an overnight trip to the city.
The plan was to drive to Comiskey Park and see the Thursday night baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers.
Then drive to my sister’s apartment on the northside and stay overnight.
Spend the next day in the Chicago museums, back to the ball park for another baseball game and drive home after the game finished out the plan.
I was going through a period of being a Chicago White Sox fan when I was really following their owner, Bill Veeck.
How many people today will say they were fans of an owner?
The deal got a little sweeter when it was announced that the first game was going to be a double header due to an earlier rained out game.
Doug and I knew something was up when we drove up to Comiskey Park on 34th St., and everyone in the crowd seemed to be carrying 45rpm records or singles as they called.
We didn’t know.
Maybe that’s what you did in Chicago.
What it was was a promotion by the White Sox.
You got into the game for 99 cents if you brought a record to the game.
A DISCO record.
All the records where then going to be put into a big box and blown up between games.
This was the famous DISCO DEMOLITON PROMOTION and we had box seats.
The first game was played okay more or less.
Records starting be thrown out of the upper deck late in the game.
Both the left and right fielders were wearing batting helmets IN THE FIELD.
Between games the big box was trucked in and as planned, blown up.
Then, as wasn’t planned, all the fans ran out and took over the field.
In fairness, what else was going to happen when you get 57,000 people in a stadium designed to hold 47,000.
I mean they had to go somewhere.
So Doug and I had box seats for a riot.
In a goofy way, it was kinda cool.
Disco Demolition has gone down in baseball history as the worst thought out promotional stunt in history since the dedication fireworks of the New York City Hall set the new city hall on fire and burned it down back in 1852.
But, as the organizers say, how can it be a promotional failure if we are still talking about it?
But I digress.
In the video, Studs Terkel quotes french filmaker, René Clair as saying, “Everytime I go to America I must stop off at your city to see La Grande Jatte. It refreshes me. I need it.”
Mr. Terkel ends the little bit on with the words, “Hurrah Seurat.”
And, Happy Birthday.
Will you help him change the world? Can you dig it? (Yes, I can) And I’ve been waiting such a long time For today
*The first American Letter was broadcast on 24 March 1946 (Cooke said this was at the request of Lindsey Wellington, the BBC’s New York Controller); the series was initially commissioned for only 13 instalments. The series came to an end 58 years later in March 2004, after 2,869 instalments and less than a month before Cooke’s death. (wikipedia)
**His well-known radio program, titled The Studs Terkel Program, aired on 98.7 WFMT Chicago between 1952 and 1997. The one-hour program was broadcast each weekday during those forty-five years. (wikipedia)
testing that nation so conceived dedicated how long can endure?
Mr. Thomas Jefferson, explaining the reasoning behind the Declaration of Independence, wrote that all men are created equal.
I feel that Mr. Jefferson really meant what he said.
But I also feel that Mr. Jefferson accepted that all men are created equal in the abstract, he could not figure a way of how it might be achieved in reality.
Mr. Jefferson saw that the wieght of human history and the current lifestyle of most Americans was proving his statement that all men are created equal to be, if not wrong, at least wistful thinking.
A fire bell in the night, Mr. Jefferson called it.
When the bell rang and the United States was called on for an answer, their answer was to fight the Civil War.
Review the history of that war and you can understand why Mr. Jefferson was reluctant to even look for an answer of how to achieve a country where all men are created equal.
It was left to Abraham Lincoln to try and explain why the Civil War was being fought.
It was 158 years ago today that Mr. Lincoln, in a short, short, short 272 word speech explained, “. . . our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.“
Mr. Lincoln was speaking at the dedication ceremony of a vast cemetery on the battlefield of Gettysburg.
Mr. Lincoln recognized that great as the battle, the struggle that the country was in at that moment, that there was more to do.
Somehow back in 1863, Mr. Lincoln spoke to us.
Mr. Lincoln said, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work.“
The unfinished work.
This country is a work in progress.
No kidding.
The testing, every day, the testing goes on.
Here is the full text, all 272 words of Mr. Lincoln’s Remarks at Gettysburg.
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
our history’s parts only way can be lost is we choose to lose them
I am not sure when I became aware of the actor Stanley Tucci.
Much like Ward Bond and Thomas Mitchell, Mr. Tucci seems to have been in everything and nothing at the same time.
He is always there.
I am not sure when it was but I do recall looking him up to find out who he was, and I think this was back in the days of if you wanted to look up a movie you grabbed a paper back (possibly the thickest regularly sold paper book in the store) copy of ‘Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide’, a copy of which was always laying around the TV in my house, and you looked up the movie and hoped you could figure out who was who from the short cast listing.
My Dad was a minor movie buff and he loved that book.
“4 stars for that?”, he would yell or “COME ON MIKE, it’s FOUR STARs with Clark Gable!”
He also loved to read the description of the 1962 remake of State Fair with Pat Boone, pause then yell, “BOMB.”
He would laugh and laugh.
It is amazing that back in the days of over the air three channel TV’s to remember how often movies were on TV.
TV shows cost money to make.
Movies were already made.
Television was flooded with movies.
The movies of the 40’s and 50’s.
The black and white era.
Every station had a block where an old movie could be run.
Bill Kennedy at the Movies from Detroit.
WGN’s Movie Night from Chicago.
My Dad also liked to listen to the CUBS on WGN radio from Chicago.
If there was a good movie on the night before, Lou Boudreau and Vince Lloyd would talk about it during the basbell game.
There wasn’t much else to watch and everybody watched the same thing.
Wait you say, if this is before cable TV, how did we watch WGN in Grand Rapids where we lived?
You caught me.
This didn’t happen in Grand Rapids.
We were one of those lucky family’s that had a summer place in Grand Haven, Michigan.
We lived right on the shore of Lake Michigan.
The first thing my Dad would do each spring was hook up a TV antenna high enough to pull in the stations from Chicago.
I watched the late movies from WGN all summer long.
If you watched old movies and you wanted more information the only source you had was that Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide.
And at some point, I looked up Stanley Tucci.
I remember doing this as I can see the book in my hands and hear myself saying ‘Stanly Tuckee – touchi – ha whaaa??’.
If I look Mr. Tucci up in the Wikipedia and read through his list of movies or his ‘Filmography’ nothing really pops out at me until you get to The Big Night in 1996.
If you haven’t seen, it is worth the effort to pirate to watch and enjoy and hear about the dish called timpano.
Since the Big Night, Mr. Tucci, for me, entered into that ‘Ward Bond, Thomas Mitchell’ phase I mentioned and now he seems to be in everything and everywhere.
And Mr. Tucci has published a book.
Actually he has a couple of books to his credit but a new one has just come out.
When I worked in a bookstore nothing, well, almost nothing, made me more angry that anytime a celebrity would bank on their name and publish anything but a bio.
Bill and HILARY Clinton have now published novels.
Sports figures who I would figure could not construct a basic English sentence to save their lives have published novels.
OH COME ON.
Quite a few celebrities can get around this by publishing cookbooks but again, oh come on.
Is that something the world needs?
After 20 years of working for a book seller, library and publisher let me tell you about cookbooks.
Any cookbook with ONE, that’s right, ONE good recipe in it is a good cookbook.
99% of the cookbooks in the world are BAD cookbooks.
Now Mr. Tucci has published Taste, My Life Through Food.
This way its a bio and a cookbook.
And it is a delight.
Mr. Tucci can turn a sentence or at least he can with his editors help.
But the book has a secret ingredient.
Readers all know that part of the mystery of reading is how did the author intend to have this read.
What sounds, what phrasing, what and where are the pauses.
For the most part, each reader makes up their own mind.
For example, take Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
I have never been able to listen to any audio version of the Lord of the Rings because of the way Gollum is re-created.
One, the voice is nothing like what I imagined and I won’t waste my time.
Or, two, the voice is spot on and that is just tooooooooo creepy to be listened to..
And you never know when that Gollum will show up.
Plow your way through the book, “The Long Season: The Classic Inside Account of a Baseball Year” which is known for being one of the first, inside the locker room – tell it like it is – baseball books written back in 1959 and all of sudden the author-player tells how he went through a phase driving everyone nuts in the St. Louis Cardinals locker room by talking like Gollum.
“Has he got handses?”
“Can he hits baseballses?”
I pass over those film adaptations of Lord of the Rings except to say I really wish the filmmaker had taken the time to read the books as I am not sure what the movies were based on.
Another example is Charlotte’s Web.
If you like this book please try, just for a gift for yourself (let me know if you need it emailed to you) to find the audio version.
The audio version read by EB White.
There is a lot of magic and poetry in the sound of White’s voice and to hear his phrasing and pronunciation is the purest form of this book you can imagine.
Keep in mind that when the manuscript for Charlotte’s Web arrived at the publisher it needed NO editing of any kind.
So back to Mr. Tucci.
It must be because of his recent show on CNN that this works.
I watched that show with my wife and when I read his book, I can hear Mr. Tucci.
I can catch his phrashing and such.
Mr. Tucci also has one of those voices that is both distinct and yet doesn’t stand out except to say it is uncommonly common.
My reading of Taste: My Life Through Food is like listening to the audio version because I hear it in my head as I read.
Goofy I know but there it is.
I doubt I will try many of the recipes in the book at this time.
But I will read them.
I also will read about Mr. Tucci’s adventures growing up in America.
We are about the same age and I also can remember WANTING if not getting and eating a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich.
Also at this time I am spending a lot time thinking about food and families and culture and culture expressed through food and familys.
The Gullah Culture wants to presever its culture though food,
The SouthernFoodwaysAlliance documents, studies, and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the changing American South.
Mr. Tucci sums this up in an E PLURIBUS UNUM on food when he writes:
Losing a beloved family heirloom is a very real personal loss;
they’re things that cannot ever be replaced or re-created.
But perhaps the most precious heirlooms are family recipes.
Like a physical heirloom, they remind us from whom and where we came and give others, in a bite, the story of another people from another place and another time.
Yet unlike a lost physical heirloom, recipes are a part of our history that can be re-created over and over again.
The only way they can be lost is if we choose to lose them.”
I want to eat it all.
My Mom’s Thanksgiving Stuffing Recipe … how it reads…This is what the recipe says ….
Mr. Morey was a surfer who thought maybe surfing could be brought more into the world of the casual beach goer.
Sol Morey, Tom Morey’s oldest son is quoted as saying, “There’s this dynamic of toughness involved with surfing, but now you had grandads, kids, who could skim it.
They could stand up on it.
It was soft.
When you are able to go into the ocean and come out of it unscathed, unhurt, that really does something to you.
The ocean is something to be feared, but the Boogie Board took some of that fear out.“
I live on the ocean now.
I understand it is something to be respected and feared and I respect and, well, kind of fear the ocean.
I swim so far out that my wife calls me ‘first course’ as the sharks will get me first.
I love the water.
I love to see people in the water.
That some one had to invent the boogie board, I see so many of them on the beach, never occured to me in my brain.
I would have thought that, had I thought that, that they had been invented by a Walmart Marketing team tasked with ‘What can we create that everyone will buy when on vacation with a price coming in around $20.”
To learn that they had been ‘invented’ was kind of cool.
To learn that they had been invented with the goal to get more people in the water and to take some of the fear of the water out of the equation was kind of freaking cool.
I have to look around and look at all sorts of every day things for the beach as well as the home and every day life and think who came up with that?
Then to think ahead.
What is coming next?
Putting Tom Morey into the Google for more information I came across another obit.
Another one I found in the University of Southern California (the west coast USC, the Unbelievable Spoiled Children one) Alumni News, that quoted Mr. Morey as saying, “Almost everything has not been invented yet.“
Almost everything has not been invented yet.
As I seem to read everything I can lay my hands, I say that certain phrases and thoughts and combinations of words catch my eye and stop me for a second on that spot of text.
I have to say that, in my humble opinion, that phrase, almost everything has not been invented yet, is really kind of freaking pretty cool.
And when you add to the mix in your brain, that it was said by a guy who invented something with the purpose of making the ocean MORE fun, I again think, what is coming next.
I can look ahead.
It is not ALL bad.
Not all despair.
Not all covid.
Not all poltics.
There are boogie boards out there in all walks of life that are just waiting to be invented.
Maybe I’ll spray paint it on my wall.
Almost everything has not been invented yet.
I feel that I could be the next great inspirational speaker and deliver lectures at $100 a ticket and just tell the story of Mr. Morey and the boogie board.
I could wear shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and carry a boogie board on stage.
I would say, with dramatic pauses, “Almost everything … has NOT … been invented yet.”
I’d make millions.
Maybe I’ll come up with next boogie board.
Who knows who will?
I do know this.
Next time I am at the beach, I am bringing a couple of flowers or something and I am tossing them into the ocean.
No Haiku For You 