Eric The Blue

Fox poll: public supports vax mandates

I saw the news item about the Texas tourists who assaulted the hostess of a Manhattan restaurant when she asked to see proof they'd been vaccinated before seating them. The ugly incident could have been avoided if you needed a vaccine passport to fly. And, according to a Fox News poll, such a requirement would likely be a political winner (to say nothing of the public health dividend):

One odd thing: there is even more support for mask wearing than for vax mandates. Yet it's less trouble, and more protective, to get vaccinated. The below maps show pretty clearly that being a current coronavirus "hot spot" tracks closely with a low vaccination rate. 

More than 2000 deaths per day over the past week! Is it possible for a "tragedy" to be "pathetic"? Just completely unnecessary. 

The Kunin Collection at MIA

Myron Kunin was the Twin Cities businessman who founded the Regis Corporation. From the Star Tribune obit, published on Saturday, November 2, 2013:

Kunin, Myron "Mike" of Minneapolis, age 85, died peacefully on Wednesday morning. . . . Myron, a lifetime Minneapolis resident, grew up near Lake of the Isles, and lived for the last 30 years in a house less than six blocks away from his childhood home (where his mother, Florence, lived until her death, at 102, in 2007). His father, Paul, was a Russian immigrant, a barber and beautician, who owned a beauty salon in Minneapolis, and met Florence when he styled her hair. Myron was born in 1928. He attended Kenwood elementary, West High School, and then the University of Minnesota. Mike married Anita Hochfeld, of Portland Oregon, whom he met when she was visiting her cousins in Minneapolis. They recently celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary. Mike had several different jobs after college, but he eventually purchased his father's salon business in 1958, renamed it Regis Corporation, and over time he transformed it entirely. Throughout the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s, Regis grew rapidly and continuously, as Myron foresaw the changing American marketplace and adapted Regis accordingly. When he stepped down from the Board of Directors, after 50 years at the helm, the Regis corporate group had more than 13,500 salons and more than 65,000 employees.

I quote the parts of the obit concerning his business career as it was to me something of a revelation—not that he was a successful businessman, I knew that, but the scope and specific endeavor were to me unknown, for I knew him mainly as an art collector. I had no understanding of how much money he spent to acquire his collection, which was in two main areas: African statuary art, and contemporary American painting, especially portraiture, "contemporary" in the sense that Kunin was alive when most of it was created. The year after he died, Sotheby's auctioned his collection of African art for over $40 million. Part of the American collection is on loan to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. It's not hard, from the Kunin collection at the MIA, to come toward some conclusions about what interested him, and it's not what I anyway would expect from a beauty salon magnate. He put it this way in a 2005 interview:

I try to buy things that are an extension of the Renaissance, the Old Master artists, and that have some kick to them. I like a painting that reaches in and grabs your heart and stomps on it. . . .

To get a taste of what he meant, you can go here, the blog post of a recent visitor to Minneapolis who feels as I do about the Kunin collection at the MIA—it's the best thing in the museum. She has a lot of pictures of the portraits in the "portrait room," which is just one of the rooms holding the collection. Here's a picture I took of a painting in another room:

It's by John Wilde, a Wisconsin artist who died, age 86, in 2006. I could be wrong, but I think Wilde had in mind the famous painting by the Renaissance master Pieter Breughel the Elder, "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," which is the subject of possibly Auden's most famous poem. If Kunin had the same thought, it might explain part of what he liked about this picture, since he was attracted to works that seemed "an extension of the Renaissance, the Old Masters." Here, female Icarus comes to the rural Midwest and jumps out the top of a barn. As in Breughel's painting, every detail is carefully wrought and adds to the total effect. The birds flit about the nude falling figure who, though her hands are spread like wings, will soon land on the concrete below. The fence visible at the lower right is of barbed wire. Through the window at the far left the head of a man with a clown face is visible. The abandoned wagon is in the role of what Auden, in the closing lines of his poem about the Breughel picture, described as

the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

In my photo, it's almost as hard to see as clown man, but the abandoned wagon holds an abandoned doll lying prone and splayed, like the main exhibit is about to be. 

Politics and covid in the golden state

It's a dog-bites-man headline: "In a landslide, Democrat wins statewide election in California." But let me try to say something controversial about the result of the Republicans' failed attempt to recall Democratic governor Gavin Newsom.

Here is a map showing, by county, the result of the recall election that wrapped up Tuesday.

The brownish colored counties voted to retain the governor. The bluish green ones voted to replace him.

Here is a map showing current covid infection rates in California—cases per 100,000 residents. The darker the color, the higher the incidence of covid.

Being moderate in my views, I would never suggest that voting Republican can kill you. But it would appear that "voting Republican" correlates strongly with "presence of disease." Maybe people living in counties awash with covid are unhappy with the status quo and so voted to get rid of the current governor. But maybe a better explanation is that high vaccination rates in Democratic counties have suppressed covid, whereas in the more conservative parts of the state too many people decline to be vaxxed—because it's not enough to vote against the libz, you have to risk illness and death in order to own them. 

Say more about your "religious convictions"

 

Something one often hears nowadays is that American society, thanks to Obama or someone, has become antagonistic toward religion. Bigotry aimed at Christians, for example, is regarded as a grave problem requiring redress. What is the evidence for this view? I am not aware of candidates for office touting their atheism. On the contrary, someone like Trump—whose 70-some years on Earth haven't dented his ignorance of everything outside of the con & hustle, the void certainly encompassing Christianity and the Bible—is obliged suddenly to feign reverence when seeking the presidency: see above clip.

During this season of covid, there have been bans on public worship—but for good reason, since hardly  anything is more likely to result in a super-spreader event than people crowding into an indoor space where they then preach, sing, recite aloud a liturgy, share with one another "the peace of the Lord," successively receive communion in a face-to-face manner: all high-risk, from a public health perspective. After a choir practice last spring at a church outside Seattle, 45 of 60 singers became ill with covid; three were hospitalized and two died. Nevertheless, there has been a hue and cry about "closed churches," and the proof of the prejudicial intent was supposed to be the enterprises that remained open, such as big-box retailers. But the kinds of enterprises and activities that most nearly resemble public worship—concert halls, playhouses, movie theaters, comedy clubs, schools of all kinds—were shut, too. I do not perceive the animus toward religion, but there's a lot of evidence that something like the opposite is true.

Billy Ray Stutzmann was an assistant football coach at the US Naval Academy until he was fired this week after refusing to be vaccinated against covid. He put out a statement on Twitter attributing his refusal to unspecified "religious convictions" augmented, naturally, by "much thought and prayer." People say stuff like this all the time and apparently it's considered a breach of etiquette to seek more information about the "religious convictions" requiring adherents to remain unprotected against a highly contagious disease that's killed around 685,000 Americans. What is the theological principle? Is there a Biblical instruction? Something in the writings of Aquinas or Luther or in the sermon of a megachurch preacher who flies around the country in his private jet?

Attributing opinions and actions to your "religious convictions" gives them a status they may not deserve. Once invoked, further inquiry is shut down. It's forbidden to express curiosity, let alone skepticism, about convictions so vague that all one can know about them is that the subscriber deems them "religious." Violators of the code are anti-religious bigots. Generally, the highest card wins the trick, but Coach Stutzmann exercised every American's right to cry "Religion!" while playing one face down. At least in this one instance, the other players told him to leave the table. Progress!

Beckett and the German convict

Chapter 20 of Deirdre Bair’s Beckett biography begins:

In the fall of 1954, Beckett received a letter from the warden of Luttringhausen Penitentiary in Germany, telling him that a convict had done a German translation of Waiting for Godot and was in the process of casting and performing the play. The warden said the play had changed one of the most troublesome prisoners into a cooperative, scholarly individual, and he asked if Beckett would be willing to correspond with the prisoner to answer some questions raised by the translation. Beckett agreed immediately. Several letters passed between them, and Beckett was impressed with the convict’s intelligence and sensitivity. When the play was performed, both the warden and the convict wrote detailed accounts to Beckett, telling him how it had affected all the prisoners, and how it stirred much discussion and comment, as each man found a personal meaning in the play. They invited Beckett to visit, and he wrote a sincere letter in reply, stating that he would if ever he were in Germany again, but he thought the possibility an unlikely one. In his reply, he returned the courtesy and invited them to Paris, should they ever have the opportunity. Little did he dream anything would come of it.

Intriguing, and I was looking forward to “Beckett Meets Some Cons,” but the story peters out amusingly and somewhat in the manner of an absurdist drama such as Beckett himself might have written. The following winter one of the inmates violated the terms of his parole and walked, hitchhiked, and rode in freight cars to Paris to meet with Samuel Beckett. It was the very fellow who had translated and staged Waiting for Godot at the prison. He wasn’t dressed for winter weather and arrived in Paris half-starved in addition to half-frozen. He didn’t know how to contact Beckett so went to the theater of Roger Blin, the actor and director who had first staged Waiting for Godot a couple years earlier. Bair then writes, deadpan though I think it’s quite funny:

Blin took him backstage while he tried to contact Beckett by calling several bars in Montparnasse, as there was still no phone at the rue des Favorites [the street on which Beckett lived]. When he failed to reach Beckett, he borrowed a heavy jacket and took the convict out for dinner. He wanted to give him money for a hotel room, but the man had no identity papers and was afraid to try to register without them, so Blin took him to his apartment.

The next day was very wintry. Blin left the convict alone in his apartment and set out to find Beckett. When he soon succeeded, and had explained to Beckett the situation, the renowned creator of theatrical vagabonds flatly refused to meet the criminal runaway. Bair suggests the refusal had little to do with the man’s social status—Beckett was famously reclusive and hated meeting anyone new. But it seems the “sincere” letter he’d written the prison was pro forma. He never expected to be taken up on the offer and directed Blin to tell the man that he (Beckett) had left Paris for an extended period. He also gave Blin a “substantial” sum of money to turn over to the man to get him on his way.

Perhaps not that surprisingly, the man had other ideas. He rather liked Paris, the more so since the most obvious alternative was returning to Germany, where he was wanted for violating parole. Moreover, he’d been given warm clothes, a place to stay, and a meal at a nice restaurant. These theater people might have been bohemian outsiders but they weren’t as outside as he was. Blin had a squatter and didn’t like it.

For a few days, he endured this arrangement. Somehow, though, he learned, while stewing over what to do, that the man’s criminal offense had been a violent one. Blin had been deprived of his ease and convenience and now he feared for his safety, too. With trepidation, he determined to evict his guest. But then, arriving home after his work day at the theater, intending to perform the unpleasant task, he discovered his apartment vacated. There was a note from the convict explaining that he could not abide the Paris cold and was headed to the south of France.

“He thanked Blin graciously for his hospitality,” concludes Bair, “but made no mention of Beckett.”

I click on high-brow click bait

 

Online subscribers to The New York Times receive a daily “newsletter” that a couple days ago included a link to “Quiz: If America Had Six Parties, Which Would You Belong To?” Maybe the quiz is intended as interactive fun, a bit of subscriber-friendly click bait—if so, it worked on me. You answer twenty questions and they assign you a place on their graphic together with the name of the political party closest to your views. My result is shown above.

I think the NYT has me pegged but there are things about the graphic that surprise me. For example, the party that brands itself “Christian” is all-in on economic conservatism but apparently a little squishy on social issues. Immigration? Race? Guns? If you take the quiz, you’ll see that the social issues probed are mainly those three plus abortion and gay rights, and I’m reasonably sure the “Christians” are with the “Patriots” on abortion and gay rights. But to be a perfect fit for the Christian Conservative Party you have to strongly agree that “[w]ealthy people spur innovation,” strongly disagree that “[i]t’s the responsibility of government to reduce income differences between people,” and be strongly opposed to:

—government regulation of business

—raising the minimum wage

—raising taxes on income north of $200,000.

More patriotic than the patriots!

It’s also interesting—or symptomatic?—that the upper-left quadrant of the Times’s graphic is empty, indicating perhaps  that there is no political home, even with six parties, for those who are “economically liberal” and “socially conservative.” This suggests that not many Americans (for example) think abortion should be illegal in all, or almost all, instances—and that government should generously support poorer citizens who are raising children. 

Still hittin it hard

Last night around 9 o’clock I made myself a cup of instant coffee and while stirring in a splash of milk thought to myself, “It’s 8 in the morning somewhere, damnit.” If you’ve ever wondered whether I’m the same hard-charging bad boy you may have known 30 or more years ago, I think you have your answer.

Just looking

Spent much of the afternoon at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Have long had an inkling, now confirmed, that I’m under appreciative of the kitchenware from the T’ang Dynasty. Same holds for most religious art. Regarding the above Madonna & Child, painted by the Italian Segna di Bonaventura in about 1325, the explanatory note visible at the lower right of my photo (click to fix the orientation) directs attention to how the artist indicates the humanity of the Christ child by having him play with his mother’s fingers—and, I thought, by how his head resembles that of the 40ish alcoholic who lived across the via from Segna.

It’s not a universal rule, but generally my interest rises as we approach current times. The below painting, which by pacing off its width I estimate to be 18 x 15 feet, is sharp and visually striking: you can’t make it out in my photo, but VICEROY is printed with photographic realism on the white paper of the cigarette extending farthest out from the pack. The museum’s explanatory placard in this case reads:

Jesse Trevino
American born, 1946

Mi Vida, 1971-73
Acrylic on drywall, mounted on aluminum

Jesse Trevino was drafted out of art school in 1966 and deployed to Vietnam as an infantryman. A few months later, he was seriously injured while on patrol, and doctors eventually amputated his right arm—the one he had used to paint. He painstakingly created Mi Vida with his left hand, marking his rebirth as an artist. It portrays his postwar life, from his new prosthetic to his daily coffee and pan dulce. Trevino painted Mi Vida in private, on the wall of his bedroom, when he was still struggling with chronic pain and the transition to civilian life. Before his rehabilitation, he had made art for assignments and had not painted from his life. With this ambitious work, he found a new direction for his art, rooted in his experiences and perspective as a Chicano. He went on to become a major public artist in Texas, making large-scale murals and mosaics for civic spaces.