This week we watched several episodes of Ken Burns' film documentary "Country Music." I find each episode interesting. The way that fame and money and constant touring and adulation can wear on people is a kind of country music trope, but seems to have a foundation in fact. I remember going to the barbershop in my south Arkansas home towns, and hearing middle-age tell stories of having been to the "Louisiana Hayride" in their youth, when Elvis Presley and other new celebrities performed. My own country music experiences were more limited--I recall seeing Tennessee Ernie Ford at the Arkansas State Fair as a child and to hear him perform "Sixteen Tons." I never saw Elvis. One of my dear friends from college was the daughter of her town's mayor. There is a great picture of Elvis visiting her Louisiana town when she was 11 or 12, and of her standing by Elvis, more or less unimpressed.
I found myself a bit intrigued by the extent to which the film "Walk the Line" white-washed the complex story of June Carter Cash, and to a lesser extent of the Carter family members in general. The mythos of the Carter and Cash families sold a lot of records, and Mr. Burns' documentary film, though a bit more factual, could not resist buying into that mythos.
I thought of another concert that I saw, this time in the rock/electric blues genre, when Stevie Ray Vaughan opened for the call. I enjoyed that show, held during the off-season at the Arkansas state fairground. I looked up on the internet when the show took place, and worked out that it fell just before Mr. Vaughan's
Thursday night i did volunteer work for the Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program at the Garland Salvation Army location. We had 45 clients but only 3 volunteers, so my work on this project started at 6.30 p.m. and continued until 11:20 p.m.
During the Noon hour on Thursday I walked in Breckinridge Park. I saw a juvenile Mississippi Kite with its streaky brown color, atop a tree. I thought at first it might be a juvenile Osprey, but it soon resolved itself, with the help of the Cornell website, to be a Kite. This has been a good year for me to see a lot of this species.
I found myself pleased that Richard Stallman resigned as the president of the Free Software Foundation. I feel bored by "celebrity genius" fellows whose inappropriate behavior gets coddled by acolytes. Mr. Stallman, who posted an email that argued that victims of sex trafficking may have "presented as" wiling participants, brought an avalanche of reaction which, in my view properly, drove Mr. Stallman from the stage.
I never saw his view of proprietary software as "immoral" to be a useful position, though I do believe that the liberal licenses he and this organization promoted were and are a positive virtue. I am a fan of voluntary sharing, but not a fan of the word games that try to eliminate "intellectual property" from the lexicon or try to insist that the term "GNU" always precede the term "Linux." I hope that new leaders are chosen to put the Free Software Foundation on a less hero-centric track.
Friday and Saturday I have busy days ahead. Rains are moving in this weekend as well, the aftermath of a storm that flooded Houston but will merely bring us cooling precipitation.
from Dreamwidth, because two posts of the same text are twice as nice