https://tuppenceforthebirds.com tuppenceforthebirds Tue, 11 Jan 2022 18:32:18 +0000 https://tuppenceforthebirds.com en https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/2021-HEADER Thu, 18 Nov 2021 15:23:25 +0000 tuppenceforthebirds https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/2021-HEADER 2021 https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20211228_Headline-of-the-season Wed, 29 Dec 2021 20:54:56 +0000 tuppenceforthebirds https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20211228_Headline-of-the-season <img width="535" height="208" width_o="535" height_o="208" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/198dae458c7cde5cb98d731ed9ea9f888a6387737a493100d193fdb4ff1f59e4/Screenshot-2021-12-29-155651.png" data-mid="128504311" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/535/i/198dae458c7cde5cb98d731ed9ea9f888a6387737a493100d193fdb4ff1f59e4/Screenshot-2021-12-29-155651.png" /> A headline for this holiday season Tara Bahrampour, The Washington Post 2021.12.29 https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20211114_Belfast Thu, 18 Nov 2021 23:01:47 +0000 tuppenceforthebirds https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20211114_Belfast <img width="1024" height="674" width_o="1024" height_o="674" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9b218071cc14bc1858cb9e07e02b84883cfaec3b2c20f65677b70fc4b0b6e92b/2021_BELFAST-JAMIE-DORNAN-CAITRIONA-BALFE.jpg" data-mid="128517486" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9b218071cc14bc1858cb9e07e02b84883cfaec3b2c20f65677b70fc4b0b6e92b/2021_BELFAST-JAMIE-DORNAN-CAITRIONA-BALFE.jpg" /> Belfast2021.11.14 You don’t need to have grown up in, let alone escaped The Troubles in Northern Ireland to embrace the rose-colored sentiment of Belfast, Kenneth Branaugh’s pseudo-autobiographical feature. To get a bit wistful you only need to have been raised, as I was, in a household committed to Van Morrison. As a tenet of parental responsibility, a generation of fathers encoded Morrison’s whiskey-soaked, folk-jazz grovel onto their children’s memories. This subtext — for a specific set of Millennials — is reaching full nostalgic expression as the succesor generation ascends into middle age. “VanMo could really rock,” my father once told me as the singer spoken-worded harmonic throat syrup over “Have I Told You Lately.” My disgust was visceral. The sentiment was almost as off-putting as the nickname, “Van the Man.” No one rocked in the late-90s, if they ever did, and anyway he had said the same thing about Elton John when I’d pantomimed gagging in response to the ubiquity of “Candle in the Wind.” That song had carried the radio waves for almost year after Lady Di’s death, as inscribed into my memory as the firm bench seats of the Volvo we carpooled to middle school in. Upon hearing my father defend that saccharine posh, I’d silently prayed for Diana’s fate. I was still getting acquainted with my early-teens, and in no state to abandon the sanctuary of punk-grunge realness. That was an angry safe space, mostly for kids whose parentally supplied comforts afforded them discontent as a hobby. We’d inherited the voice of our elder siblings era, an off-standish snark who screeched lines like “hey, wait, I’ve got a new complaint.” We’d nodded ours heads, sometimes violently, to indulgent pop angst. And then, once we’d mined that aggressive diffidence for all its rebellious currency, we cut our hair and postured about excesses of money and problems, of which we had neither. It was an appropriate response to suburban ennui; Boredom and trees were our generational strife, our martyrs all handed down. Which is to say that Van Morrisons’s “Jackie Wilson Said,” predates any cultural awakening I can claim to remember. It was force-fed like whole milk at the dinner table, or quiche, or any other inscrutinable existence that fades into memory with consciousness. It was there from the start, along with my father’s bad dancing, which can only be described as a mustachioed flamingo doing The Twist. It holds all the familiarity of a childhood basement—an evolving, musty constant with occasional surprises. In Belfast, Branaugh deploys “Jackie Wilson Said,” along with most of the Morrison catalog, liberally.&nbsp;JWS appears midway through the film, hoisting aloft the soon-to-be reciprocated pinings of Buddy, the film’s boy protagonist (and Branaugh stand-in). The “da-da-da dah…” intro crescendos out of a scene change, part-rallying cry, part-palette cleanser, its mutable non-wordness simultaneously nostalgic and optimistic. On first listen, you only hear the intonnations of Morrison’s voice, the “blabbity-blab” that seems more child banter than coherent speech. To that end, “Jackie Wilson Said” is about meaningless phonetic contrivances as much as any words Jackie Wilson purportedly spoke. The whole thing spins on the precipice of unspooling, the saxophone riffs propelling it off a course that Morrison recharts with indecipherable proclamations. He drops the bottom out of hea-von and passes through the pearly gates. He sings “smile” in definance of any combination of letters. He dances through strings of syllabic detritus that cohere into affective meaning. His heart goes “boom boom boom,” and he let’s it all hang out. Throughout the song, licentious horns blare overtop lyrics. As a child it was hard to discern the words from sounds, and I certainly wasn’t reading the liner notes. As an adult, I’ve extracted meaning from the Morrisonian babel, with some disappointment. The words are not necessarily cloying, just disambiguated. They hint at fresh love, but not first love. They’re giddy for a “brand new smile.” Yet, they’re also ladden with the presumption that the audience is familiar enough with early stage love to know that it may not be their last. The lyrics aren’t jaded. Morrison’s voice, and his audience, are.&nbsp;In the retroactive assessment of Branaugh’s childhood, The Troubles are a matter of historical and biograpahical convenience as much as they are a plot device. The backward gaze isn’t set in the sepia tones, or the quant Irish streetlife. Its the soundtrack — much of it comprised of songs a half-century old — that soften edges. Van Morrison is the context. https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20210110_DC-Statehood Mon, 11 Jan 2021 02:10:34 +0000 tuppenceforthebirds https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20210110_DC-Statehood https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/2020-HEADLINE Thu, 18 Nov 2021 01:17:08 +0000 tuppenceforthebirds https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/2020-HEADLINE 2020 https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20200701-Links-Army-Corps Sun, 29 Nov 2020 18:58:59 +0000 tuppenceforthebirds https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20200701-Links-Army-Corps From the Sea-Level Rise Desk 2020.07.01 <img width="977" height="514" width_o="977" height_o="514" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9d14aba4d344d30364431c8b2fbbaaa349856a0677c1a7cf35cc52d3c29437e1/Army-Corps_Sea-Wall-Brickell.png" data-mid="90685952" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/977/i/9d14aba4d344d30364431c8b2fbbaaa349856a0677c1a7cf35cc52d3c29437e1/Army-Corps_Sea-Wall-Brickell.png" /> Feds have $4.6 billion plan to protect Miami-Dade from hurricanes: walls and elevationAlex Harris, Miami HeraldJune 6, 2020 The Army Corps of Engineers released a plan proposing six (6) miles of sea walls along the Biscayne Bay coastline. The walls will range from one (1) to thirteen (13) feet high and are intended to protect three (3) key risk management areas at the Miami River, Little River, and the Biscayne Canal&nbsp;outfalls. Designed to block storm surge from a 1-in-100 year event in the year 2079, factoring in the additional surge anticipated from three (3) feet of sea riseEstimated cost: $4.6 billion. The federal government will pay 65 percent, leaving Miami-Dade County responsible for the balanceThe plan projects $9 billion benefits in avoided lossesReduces number of properties in Edgewater requiring acquisition through eminent domain Offer little protect against seasonal tidal flooding On the technical merits, this sounds like a perfectly rational plan. It is, in fact, profoundly stupid—a quintessential example of the Army Corps’ ability to engineer the humanity out of a project (if tasked to address skin cancer, the Army Corps would blot out the sun). For once, I hope South Florida’s apathy toward climate change overrides the imperative to address it. https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20200624_Losing-Daylight Tue, 11 Jan 2022 18:32:18 +0000 tuppenceforthebirds https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20200624_Losing-Daylight <img width="3352" height="2394" width_o="3352" height_o="2394" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d72c6b0224aea3a8c6c280ab87616ea2b62118286fed5c20b1ddcac09518f563/IMG_3378.JPEG" data-mid="129807100" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d72c6b0224aea3a8c6c280ab87616ea2b62118286fed5c20b1ddcac09518f563/IMG_3378.JPEG" /> On the Bike: Losing Daylight Homestead, FL 2020.06.24 <img width="2069" height="2897" width_o="2069" height_o="2897" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/771a7724176a73b322083e180751e031db5be8bc48438c2bb466e9929852fc17/IMG_3387.JPEG" data-mid="129807103" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/771a7724176a73b322083e180751e031db5be8bc48438c2bb466e9929852fc17/IMG_3387.JPEG" /> No, those aren’t freckles. Definitely gnats. https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20200608-Links-Riots Wed, 10 Jun 2020 03:08:41 +0000 tuppenceforthebirds https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20200608-Links-Riots Notes on Riots 2020.06.08 The Videos That Rocked America. The Song That Knows Our Rage. Wesley Morris, The New York TimesJune 3, 2020The most urgent filmmaking anybody’s doing in this country right now is by black people with camera phones. Their work comprises a ghastly visual mosaic of mistreatment, at best, and whose victims are international symbols of mourning: Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland. Art is not the intent. These videos are the stone truth. Quaking proof of insult, seasick funerals. Livestreamed or uploaded, or suppressed then suspiciously unearthed as found footage. Last week, the archive grew by two, and now the nation’s roiling. The Double Standard of the American Riot Kellie Carter Jackson, The Atlantic June 1, 2020 John Adams, demonstrative of the duality in white American liberalism, is noted historically as a staunch abolitionist, but ungirds the notion of white supremacy through political and legal argumentation: Since the beginning of this country, riots and violent rhetoric have been markers of patriotism… Force and violence have always been used as weapons to defend liberty, because—as John Adams once said in reference to the colonists’ treatment by the British—“We won’t be their Negroes.” Black rebellion and protest, though, have historically never been coupled with allegiance to American democracy… [Cripus] Attucks was one of a handful of protesters killed by British forces during the Boston Massacre. The lawyer tasked with defending the British soldiers in their American criminal trial was none other than Adams. When presenting his case, Adams described the men those soldiers killed as “a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and molattoes [sic], Irish teagues and outlandish jack tarrs.” He built his defense of the British soldiers on the charge that Attucks struck the first blow and led the “dreadful carnage.” A somber assessment of the role of violence in affecting social change: If violence is a political language, white Americans are native speakers. But black people are also fluent in the act of resistance… Throughout history, black people have employed violence, nonviolence, marches, and boycotts. Only one thing is clear—there is no form of black protest that white supremacy will sanction. Still, black people understand the utility of riotous rebellion: Violence compels a response. Violence disrupts the status quo and the possibility of returning to business as usual. So often the watershed moments of historical record are stamped by violence—it is the engine that propels society along from funerals to fury and from moments to movements. In December 1866, the famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass… reflected on the benefits of rebellion: “There is cause to be thankful even for rebellion. It is an impressive teacher, though a stern and terrible one.” He then concluded, “The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.” Many people are asking if violence is a valid means of producing social change. The hard and historical answer is yes. https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20200531-China Fri, 29 May 2020 13:03:47 +0000 tuppenceforthebirds https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20200531-China U.S. Businesses Brace for Damage as Tensions Grow Over Hong Kong Newley Purnell, The Wall Street Journal 2020.05.31 Pro-business advocates note that the elimination of special treatment will be detrimental for Hong Kong, but will also impact U.S. companies U.S. Interests in Hong Kong “About 85,000 U.S. citizens work in [Hong Kong] with more than 1,300 U.S. companies operating [sic], some with regional headquarters… The U.S. is Hong Kong’s second-largest trading partner, after China, accounting for 6.2% of trade last year.” “The U.S. has maintained a trade surplus that Hong Kong officials say ‘amounted to $297 billion between 2009 to 2018,’ in order to show how U.S. interests are also at risk.” “Controls on exports may hurt the U.S. economically more than Hong Kong, which has a minimal manufacturing sector and doesn’t export” Capital and Talent Flight Anecdotal inquiries indicate that the number of “residents in the city seeking to emigrate had risen from about 10 per day before the new security law was revealed to about 100 per day now.” “Businesses in Europe have depended on Hong Kong’s support for principles such as individual liberties and the rule of law, and that without them, ‘the allure of this important city will be greatly diminished.’” Many companies will choose to stay as they are in Hong Kong for gateway access to China, as well as for its low tax regime and free flow of capital. Page, Jeremy, and Wong, Han Chan, “Beyond Hong Kong, an Emboldened Xi Jinping Pushes the Boundaries.” The Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2020. More aggressive posture on Taiwan: “In references to dealing with and assimilating the island in an annual policy speech, [Premier Li Keqiang] dropped China’s usual calls for a “peaceful” approach—a departure from nearly 30 years of precedent. “ Increased military spending: “last Friday it announced a 6.6% rise in defense spending. That’s lower than its increase of 7.5% for 2019 but still a substantial amount given this year’s projected 0.2% drop in total government expenditure.” Increasing activity in South China Sea: “Beijing has further upset the status quo in the South China Sea in recent weeks. It created two new administrative districts in contested areas, named 80 geographical features there—the first such Chinese move since 1983—and sent ships into waters off Vietnam and Malaysia.” https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20200528-Place-Based-Asylum Thu, 28 May 2020 17:08:55 +0000 tuppenceforthebirds https://tuppenceforthebirds.com/20200528-Place-Based-Asylum Notes on Place-Based Asylum for Hong Kong 2020.05.28 The State Department’s move to rescind recongition of Hong Kong’s autonomy may be a reasonable response to new national security laws proposed by the Chinese government, but it is unlikely to deter the China’s to assert greater control in policing Hong Kong’s affairs. Vox’s Matthew Yglesias argues that the United States should offer greater assistance to Hong Kong residents, and could do so in the form of a place-based immigration system. Proposal: Benefits: Skilled work force: “An influx of skilled migrants from Hong Kong would benefit many American communities.” (Yglesias, Vox) Propaganda and competition: “The specter of tens of thousands of people fleeing Chinese rule for American shores… would be a proof of concept for what should be a key tool in Sino-American competition — that huge numbers of foreigners may welcome the opportunity to move to the US.” (Yglesias, Vox) Revitalization: The Cuba Comparison: “Relatively liberal immigration from Cuba has been an enormous success… demonstrating very clearly that the social welfare accomplishments of the Castro regime pale beside the freedom and prosperity of the United States. A similar model for Hong Kong residents, properly structured, could… stage for a constructive approach to a harsher period in the US-China relationship.” (Yglesias, Vox) a little arbitrariness here and there has long been a hallmark of American immigration policy.”&nbsp; (Yglesias, Vox) Articles Yglesias, Matthew, “Let Hong Kong move to America.” Vox, May 28, 2020.