Southern Bookman

Massive bird deaths sound alarm about disappearing plant, animal species

Birds dying by the thousands in the American Southwest give tragic confirmation to the latest UN alarm that biodiversity is collapsing.

For centuries, birds have migrated from Alaska and Canada to Central and South America at the end of summer in the northern hemisphere. Now, large numbers of flycatchers, swallows and warblers are falling out of the sky in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Nebraska, dying far short of their destinations, according to the Guardian.

That distressing news follows a United Nations report warning that the world is failing to halt the extinction of plant and animal species. Out of 20 goals set in 2010 to reverse humans' destruction of wildlife by 2020, only six have been met, and those partially, according to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The new findings follow an earlier UN report that 1 million plant and animal species are in danger of extinction.

The rapid decline in species since 1970 threaten  human existence, the UN says. Urbanization, the growth of agriculture, the loss of forests, plastic pollution, carbon emissions, climate change and invasive alien species have disrupted natural habitats. Overfishing and industrial wastes spewing into waterways have distressed the earth's oceans.

Climate change, and the wildfires in the Western United States, appear the main cause of the birds' deaths. The fires forced the birds away from pathways where food is plentiful, leaving them too undernourished to complete their journey.

Bird species are also threatened by climate change in Canada and the loss of their South American habitats to deforestation. A similar process is reducing the number of monarch butterflies.

New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert's Pulitzer Prize winning "The Sixth Extinction" warned in 2015 about the threat to humanity from the loss of plants and animals. But even as awareness of climate change grows, the loss of diversity receives little attention.

The UN report contained some good news: deforestation has lessened, more ocean and natural areas have received protection, and progress was made to halt invasive species. But lately, fires have spread across Brazil's Amazon jungle and Pantanal wetlands, as the western United States burns.

As with the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions, the world is running out of time to protect species that share the earth with us.

 

 

More and more wealthy Americans dodge taxes

Many wealthy Americans no longer bother to file tax returns, knowing the IRS is too depleted to nab them.

Rich tax cheats cost the United States $45.7 billion from 2013-16, reporter David Cay Johnston found in an analysis of tax data.

The wealthy are doing great in the Trump era, but other Americans are sinking.

The United States has fallen to 28th among 163 countries on the social progress index, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reports. The index's ratings are based on 50 metrics of well-being such as nutrition, safety, freedom, the environment, health and education.

Only the United States, Hungary and Brazil, all ruled by autocratic clowns, have declined since the first index in 2011. America then ranked a not so robust 19th.

Norway ranked first on the index, followed by countries like Finland and New Zealand. At the bottom were poor African nations.

"The index now puts the United States behind significantly poorer countries, including Estonia, Czech Republic, Cyprus and Greece," Kristof said.

Amid the drumbeat of apocalyptic news: wildfire smoke blots out the sun in San Francisco, Covid 19 deaths still soaring, species extinction, rich Americans retreat into their castles and pull up the drawbridge.

They have no concern about the suffering of poorer Americans.

The Trump tax cut bestowed huge benefits on the wealthy, but gave little or nothing to middle class Americans, Johnston found.

But the working class still supports the big orange fraud.

 

New York Times special section gives dramatic new perspectives on World War II

The Sunday New York Times' special section commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II was truly overwhelming.

Reading "lesser known stories" about the war that illuminated larger themes moved me emotionally the way movies or music do.

Tom Hanks' excellent introduction emphasized the sacrifices average Americans made to win the war. During the Depression and war years, U.S. citizens coped with diminished prosperity and limited consumer goods.

Countering nostalgia about "the good war," Hanks also evokes the horror of battle. One of our finest actors, Hanks shows that he's also an outstanding writer.

The section looked at the liberation of the Nazis' concentration camps, the firebombing of Tokyo, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan's colonization of Korea, the heroism of Indian and Nepalese soldiers in Britain's war effort, the horrible racism that black U.S. soldiers encountered when returning home, and the sickening internment of Japanese-American citizens.

Wonderful photos accompany the stories, and document the war's end and other major events.

My favorite stories were two uplifting ones: Ace Times sportswriter Jere Longman's profile of the Dutch track star Fanny Blankers-Koen, who won four gold medals at the 1948 Olympics in war-ravaged London, and writer Christina Brown Fisher's story about the Six Triple Eight, an American battalion of black women who diligently performed the duty of sorting mail for troops on the battle lines.

I've been a fan of fellow Louisianian and LSU alum Longman's work for years, especially when he's returned to his native state for stories.

A veteran of covering the Olympics, he displays his historical grasp of the Games in his piece on Koen, who dominated the first Olympics held since the 1936 Games in Hitler's Berlin. She competed in those Games too, drawing inspiration from U.S. star Jesse Owens, who also won four gold medals.

After the deprivations of the German-occupied  Netherlands during the war, the 30-year-old Koen, the mother of two children, won the 100-meter and 200-meter sprints, the 80-meter hurdles and anchored the Netherlands' gold-medal-winning 4x100 relay team.

Fisher's story focuses on the Six Triple Eight's dynamic leader, Charity Adams, and her skill in organizing the battalion's mail-sorting mission. The article highlights Adams' successful battles against racism and sexism. She truly is one of the war's unsung American heroes.

Another of my favorite Times writers, Tokyo bureau chief Motoko Rich, contributed a moving story about the 88-year-old  Katsumoto Saotome, a survivor of the Tokyo firebombing.

Saotome, who has devoted his life to documenting the horror of the bombings, carries no bitterness toward Americans. Rich's profile is a testament to the human spirit.

Rich, like Longman, is one of the veteran Times writers who have distinguished the newspaper's coverage for years. I first enjoyed Rich's stories when she covered the New York publishing industry before she moved on to general news. Rich is one of those rare reporters who can cover a range of stories, with outstanding writing ability as well as in-depth reporting.

The editor's introduction to the section says "these are tales that debunk the myths that have usurped the conflict's history, stories that haven't yet been enshrined in our collective memories."

That's overstated; the articles don't so much debunk myths as give deeper perspectives. And while stories like Koen's and the Six Triple Eight's are new, others re-examine well-known events, such as the fire-bombing of Tokyo.

While the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have received more attention, the fire bombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities has received extensive coverage through the years.

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks have been castigated as morally questionable, but the bombing of Tokyo hasn't received the same moral scrutiny, even seen as heroic.

Serious moral questions are raised in the Times' re-examination of the bombings, particularly the American strategy of incinerating civilian areas.

Gen. Curtis LeMay's "Operation Meetinghouse" campaign shifted from the previous strategy of dropping high-altitude bombs targeting war-production facilities. 

In the revised campaign, American bombers dropped low-level devices loaded with napalm on residential neighborhoods of mainly wooden residences. LeMay later led America's bombing of Vietnam, an echo of the campaign against Japan. 

Another myth undermined is that American soldiers gave beneficial treatment to Jewish Holocaust victims. An article by Jennifer Orth-Veillon documents mistreatment of Jewish concentration camp survivors by U.S. troops.

The most heart-rending articles uncover the terrible abuses of Japanese-American citizens not only during their wartime internment, but after the war's end.

With the "Unsung History" section, the Times fulfills its promise to show how lesser-known stories give greater understanding of the war. The dramatic photos and typography demonstrate that print can have dramatic power unmatched by an online screen.

The section proves the validity of Hanks' message, "We are still living the legacy of World War II."

 

 

Farewell, Tom Seaver

Among the momentous events of 1969, Tom Seaver leading the "miracle Mets" to an unexpected World Series championship showed that sports could still unite a fractured nation.

The stocky, photogenic 24-year-old pitcher won 25 games to lead the Mets to the title, upsetting the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles in the 1969 World Series. Seaver sparked the Mets' late season surge to win the pennant, and their victory over Henry Aaron and Phil Niekro's Atlanta Braves in the National League championship series.

In the World Series, Seaver lost a pitching duel to the Orioles' Mike Cuellar, but bounced back to throw a 10-inning complete game for a 2-1 win over the American League champions, led by Frank and Brooks Robinson, Boog Powell, Paul Blair and Jim Palmer. The Mets took the series four games to one, and Seaver was named the national sportsman of the year.

Seaver died Monday at age 75 from Lewy body dementia, the same disease that led to Robin Williams' suicide, and Covid-19. The Hall of Famer and three-time Cy Young winner withdrew from public appearances in 2019. It was not reported how he contracted Covid-19.

Known for ineptitude since their start in 1962, the Mets won the 1969 title under manager Gil Hodges with old-fashioned teamwork, strategic baseball, defense and pitching.

Along with the dominant Seaver, they won with good but not great players like Tommy Agee, Ed Kranepool, Jerry Grote, Bud Harrelson and Cleon Jones. Their pitching was stellar, with Jerry Koosman, Tug McGraw and a raw Nolan Ryan supporting Seaver.

Baseball still held the top spot in American sports over rising pro football, and a star pitcher like Seaver was nationally admired. Over the years, baseball has declined in popularity, and even standout players are relatively unknown outside of their local fan bases.

The Mets' triumph matched the New York Jets' unexpected win over the Baltimore Colts in the 1969 Super Bowl. Seaver, along with his attractive wife, Nancy, was a New York celebrity on the same level as Jets quarterback Joe Namath.

A former member of the Marine Reserve and a committed family man, Seaver presented a wholesome image in contrast to the hedonistic Namath, who relished his swinging bachelor life, frequenting New York clubs and bragging about his sexual exploits. Despite his all-American image, Seaver generated headlines opposing the Vietnam War.

Those sports miracles came in the same year that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and the Woodstock Music Festival brought thousands of counterculture youth to groove in the mud at Yasgur's Farm in upstate New York.

It was the year Richard Nixon began his presidency, the Beatles broke up, the Charles Manson murders shocked the nation, the Vietnam War dragged on and violence marred the Rolling Stones' Altramont Festival. The Knicks would continue New York's sports dominance by winning the NBA title in the spring of 1970.

Newspapers remained powerful; Bruce Weber's obituary of Seaver in The New York Times related how the malevolent New York Daily News sportswriter Dick Young's derogatory columns so upset Seaver that he rejected a contract extension offer from the Mets, bringing his 1977 trade to the Cincinnati Reds, outraging Mets fans.

Seaver's autobiography was co-written by another New York City newspaper legend: Dick Schapp, who moved on to TV fame.

A power pitcher when young, the right-handed Seaver was known for his strategic pitching, extending his career when he lost speed on his fastball in his later years.

He was also a late bloomer; Weber's obituary noted that Seaver was not an overpowering pitcher in high school. He was not even considered a college prospect until success in an Alaskan independent league brought a scholarship from USC. Rather than following a scientific weight-lifting regimen, Seaver strengthened his body slinging crates for his father's food distribution company.

After signing with the Mets at a relatively old age, he advanced to the Mets fully formed after one year in the minors. He was not a teenage phenom like the Mets' later sensation Dwight Gooden, but he built a more durable career.

Seaver gave the Mets New York baseball glamour, stealing the spotlight from the lordly Yankees, then in a period of decline.  In an era when starting pitchers are lauded for going six innings, his endurance is amazing, although not that out of the ordinary in his day.

During the 1969 pennant chase, Seaver's record was 10-1 in August and September. He pitched eight complete games in a row in the closing weeks of the season. During September, he compiled a 6-0 record with an 0.83 earned run average, allowing five earned runs and throwing two shutouts.

As a non-playing member of the Boston Red Sox, Seaver witnessed the Mets' World Series win in 1986. With Seaver on the mound, the Sox might have overcome Bill Buckner's infamous error.

Seaver was an old-time baseball hero, tossing thunderbolts when kids still listened to the World Series on transistor radios brought to school and the games were played in the darkening shadows of daylight.

 

 

 

Epix's "Laurel Canyon" looks back at creative music scene of late 1960s

The rock musicians who wrote songs, smoked dope and had sex with other in Los Angeles' Laurel Canyon lived in a bubble during the late 1960s and early '70s, photographer Nurit Wilde says in the Epix's "Laurel Canyon"

The two-part, three and a-half hour documentary looks back on the rock idols' gilded hippie lifestyle, which flourished from 1966 through 1972.

Directed by Alison Ellwood, the film uses home movies, interviews, vintage concert film and photos to evoke the era in which guitars rang from the hills in a continuous party.

Along with Wilde, photographer and musician Henry Diltz is the primary storyteller, the keeper of the flame. Their photos of the young stars 50 years ago drip with baby-boomer nostalgia.

As Vietnam War protests raged and the civil rights movement progressed, the musicians turned their attention to the outside world, with songs like Stephen Stills' "For What It's Worth." But the documentary depicts a group of self-entitled, hedonistic young people adored by fans and despised by "the Silent Majority."

Revered Mothers of Invention leader Frank Zappa began the rock musicians' migration to Laurel Canyon.

The easy-going rustic scene close to Los Angeles' entertainment district attracted David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman, Stills, Neil Young, Richie Furay, John Phillips, Cass Elliot, John Phillips, Michelle Phillips, Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Jim Morrison, Peter York, Micky  Dolenz, and Arthur Lee. A second wave brought Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Glenn Frey, J.D. Souther, Lowell George, Bonnie Raitt and Don Henley.

The documentary traces the changing fortunes of the Byrds, the Buffalo Springfield, the Doors, Love, the Mamas and Papas, Little Feat, the Monkees and the Eagles. Moving freely among each other's houses, the doors never locked, the young stars wrote songs and performed together.

Clubs like the Troubadour launched the performers' careers. As the musicians' success grew, they pursued more opulent lifestyles. Professional and personal jealousies rose.

Prominent stories include the formation of Crosby, Stills and Nash, later joined by Young, and the creatively fertile relationship of Nash and Mitchell. The good vibes are belied by conflicts roiling the Mamas and the Papas, especially the volatile marriage of Michelle and John Phillips.

After John Phillips discovers Michelle's affair with the Byrds' Gene Clark, he kicks her out of the band.

To rejoin the group, Michelle has to humiliate herself before Phillips, bringing a tortured reconciliation. As she reflects, male rock stars didn't believe free love encompassed women.

While Stills, Young and Furay's Buffalo Springfield fall apart, the Byrds survive the exit of Crosby by turning toward country, led by Gram Parsons. While the addition of Clarence White is not mentioned, the virtuouso guitarist also fueled the success of the Byrds' "Sweetheart of the Rodeo."

The documentary details Parsons' later success with Hillman in the Flying Burrito Brothers, but ignores his solo albums with Emmylou Harris.

Nor is Parsons' death by a drug overdose mentioned, although Morrison and Elliot's deaths are fully examined.

Elliot is remembered as the prime den mother of the Laurel Canyon bacchanal. Morrison's rise and fall as the leader of the Doors is the documentary's most tragic story.

In the second segment, the young Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt take center stage, along with the rise of the Eagles. The band's founders, Glenn Frey and Don Henley, got their start playing in Ronstadt's band, and she encouraged them to form the group. Browne and Frey co-wrote one of the band's early hits, "Take It Easy."

The popularity of the Eagles, who along with Crosby, Stills and Nash and Ronstadt began playing in stadiums, marks the end of Laurel Canyon's cozy scene.

A facile marketing scheme for the band’s “Desperadoes” album in which they pose as Old West gunfighters reflects the rise of contrived self-indulgence and decline of spontaneity.

Manager David Geffen and his partner Elliot Roberts are shown at the start of their careers, which brought them immense wealth. When established companies refuse to give their clients contracts, they form Asylum Records.

"Laurel Canyon" strikingly contrasts with Epix's other summer documentary, the six-part "Helter Skelter: An American Myth," which revisits the Charles Manson Family's murderous rampage in the summer of 1969.

Manson failed to achieve the rock star lifestyle carried out in Laurel Canyon, and the ebullient musicians fostered the family spirit that he defiled.

The Manson Family makes an appearance in "Laurel Canyon," with Love's Arthur Lee describing a visit from Manson follower Bobby Beausoleil, a  former bandmate.

Beausoleil, given a life sentence for the murder of Gary Hinman under Manson's direction, tells Lee about living at the Spahn Ranch. When Lee expresses an interest in visiting, Beausoleil warns him not to because of Manson's racism.

The murders ended Laurel Canyon's free-spirited way of life, putting a pin into the bubble, one resident recalls. Crosby remembers buying a shotgun after hearing about the crimes.

Other pressures closed in. The music's soaring popularity and big money made groups unwilling to share their songs. Cocaine was a destructive force after marijuana and LSD, which the film sees as benign. Soon after Woodstock, the peace and love ethos crashed with the violence at Altramont inflicted by the Hells Angels, hired by the Rolling Stones to provide "security" for the rock festival.

Plus, the scene got old. In the film, Michelle Phillips recalls how happy she was to leave Laurel Canyon for Bel Air with her husband, John Phillips, despite their volatile marriage. Michelle says they were still hippies, but rich hippies. She adds they were now part of the establishment.

 

 

Epix series "Helter Skelter" revisits Charles Manson Family murders

Did Charles Manson's murders presage today's racial turmoil?

The six-episode "Helter Skelter: An American Myth," which ended Sunday on Epix, avoids drawing parallels between the Manson Family's killing spree in the summer of 1969 and today's conflicts.

But Manson's racist theories, white supremacist views, conspiracy fantasies and total psychological control over his followers, predominantly young women, eerily echo in the age of QAnon and Donald Trump's racially divided America.

Manson planned the murders of nine people, including the pregnant young actress Sharon Tate, to incite a race war, according to prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, who won convictions against Manson and several members of his family in a 10-month trial. 

The song "Helter Skelter" on the Beatles' White Album sent messages to Manson, Bugliosi claimed, as outlined in his best-seller, "Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders."

Lesley Chilcott, the director of the revealing series, challenges the "Helter Skelter" thesis. The Academy Award-winning producer of "An Inconvenient Truth" disputes the idea of Manson as a criminal mastermind, seeing him as an impaired conman who ordered the murders to assuage his ego, crushed by his failed dreams of rock stardom.

The series doesn't fully make its case that the "Helter Skelter" theory was a myth. But it does puncture any notions of Manson as a romantic revolutionary criminal genius. He comes off as a grubby, pathological grifter.

At times meandering, confusing and repetitive, the series presents an in-depth account of the Manson Family saga. Interviews with journalists and former family members, audiotapes of Bugliosi and others, archival film and staged re-creations bring fascinating new information to well-covered ground.

Chilcott gives new attention to the murder of  Gary Hinman, which preceded those of Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent on Aug. 9, 1969 at 10050 Cielo Drive. She also gives an in-depth examination of the murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca the night after the Tate killings.

Bugliosi convicted Manson of the murders, although the cult leader didn't actually carry out the killings. Along with the murders, Manson was convicted of conspiracy. The Tate slayings were committed by Charles “Tex” Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian

The series gives a sympathetic portrait of Tate's grief-stricken husband, Roman Polanski, who strangely wondered if Bruce Lee or Mamas and Papas leader John Phillips could be involved, out of revenge for Polanski carrying out a one-night stand with Phillips' wife, Mama Michelle Phillips. We also get glimpses of Polanski and Tate's glittery wedding.

Another strange vignette is how Manson ingratiated himself with the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson. After Wilson picked up two of the Manson women hitchhiking, the family invited themselves to move into Wilson's home, which he eventually abandoned.

Charles Manson also sought a recording contract from producer Terry Melcher, Doris Day's son. Melcher once lived at the home where Tate and the others were slaughtered. The series doesn't adequately explore the theory that Manson believed Melcher still lived at the house and sought retribution for not receiving a deal.

The last episode gives amazing footage from the trial that began July 15, 1970. The trial turned into a carnival, with reporters interviewing Manson as he walked to the courtroom, and his supporters, led by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, carrying out demonstrations and threatening witnesses and reporters. Manson also made an effort to attack the judge.

A major mystery is why young women found the scrawny, 5-foot-2 Manson so attractive. He had an uncanny ability to manipulate their deepest insecurities, with some techniques taken from Dale Carnegie.

The series' second episode details Manson's tortured childhood, most of which he spent in juvenile detention before graduating to prison. At times intriguing, the biographical episode grows tedious.

More compelling is the story of the Manson Family's beginnings in San Francisco during the Summer of Love. In pursuit of his musical career, Manson uprooted the family to Los Angeles, where they lived on the Spahn Ranch movie set. As Manson's mental state deteriorated, he led the family to an abandoned ranch in Death Valley, where their living situation worsened.

Journalist Steve Oney, who wrote an exhaustive oral history of the Manson murders for Los Angeles magazine on the 40th anniversary of the killings, gives insightful commentary in the last two episodes of the series. Audiotapes of his interviews with the late Bugliosi and others are used frequently.

The Atlanta native and author of "And the Dead Shall Rise," the definitive book on the Leo Frank lynching, expresses a key theme of the series, that the Manson family was not a glamorous revolutionary band, as some believed, but a shabby group of destitute criminals.

Oney also points out that the Manson killings brought an end to Los Angeles' spirit of openness and "good vibrations," as the Beach Boys song said. The murders also marked a change in America.

When the slayings occurred, Richard Nixon had already been elected on a "law and order" theme. While Woodstock took place a week after the Tate murders, the peace and love era was over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Julia Reed

Like fellow Mississippian Willie Morris, Julia Reed came home after a career in New York City magazine journalism to give voice to a new South.

Reed, who died at age 59 Friday in Newport, R.I. after a long battle with cancer,  first gained fame at Newsweek and Vogue, where she wrote profiles of the Clintons, Bushes and a range of entertainment, fashion and social celebrities.

After moving to New Orleans and her hometown of Greenvillle, Miss., she expressed the viewpoint of an upper-class, successful Southern woman who still revered the region's traditions, a group that had been underrepresented in Southern literature.

Reed's columns in "Garden & Gun" set the tone for the glossy publication, which built a strong readership as other magazines declined with articles and photos on Southern exceptionalism and nostalgia, travel, opulent lifestyles, upper-class entitlement, and music, food, literature, art, film and theater.

Born in Greenville, Miss., a moderate enclave of the race-tortured state, Reed was the daughter of businessman Clarke Reed, chairman of the state's then marginal Republican party.

The town, devastated by the 1927 Mississippi River flood, was known as the home of Pulitzer Prize winning editor Hodding Carter Jr.'s Delta Democratic Times.

"Lanterns on the Levee" author William Alexander Percy, his nephew, novelist Walker Percy, and Civil War historian and novelist Shelby Foote also lived in the Delta city. Foote and Walker Percy grew up together in in Greenville and were lifelong friends.

The Delta Democrat Times announced Reed's death with a long appreciation by biographer, historian, TV commentator and former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, whose wife, Keith, was Reed's partner in an Internet-based business selling Southern-themed lifestyle products.

Meacham, who returned home to Nashville, Tenn., after his New York publishing years to write presidential biographies and other books, quoted novelist Jay McInerney, who called Reed Mississippi's answer to Dorothy Parker

Reed's personal essays for Garden & Gun and books on entertaining, food, drink, fashion and decorating also recalled Nora Ephron and the late Atlanta Constitution columnist Celestine Sibley. Like Rick Bragg, Reed built a loyal audience writing about Southerners clinging to their culture in a time of bewildering change.

But her voice was her own: distinctive, brassy, self-deprecating and rueful. She wrote with an authority that invited readership, no matter the subject. As with other writers of humor, her work was tinged with sadness.

Following other well-bred Southern girls in leaving home for her education, Reed attended prep school at the Madeira School for Girls in McClean, Va., before her college years at Georgetown and American University.

Reed's Madeira connection led to her first byline at age 19, when she was a university student working part-time at Newsweek. The magazine's editor sent her  to the campus to do an article after Madeira headmistress Jean Harris was accused of killing her lover, Dr. Herman Tarnover, the Scarsdale doctor.

A leading member of the Southern literary community, Reed expressed a post-racial Southern urbanism that flourishes in Greenville, Charleston and Birmingham as well as Atlanta, New Orleans, Charlotte, Houston and Dallas.

Along with books on New Orleans' hedonistic pursuit of food and drink, Reed wrote one of the best chronicles about the city's recovery from Hurricane Katrina, "The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story." She moved into the lavishly decorated Garden District home four weeks before the hurricane caused devastating flooding across the city.

Reed recently built a house that she called "the Folly" near her parents' home in Greenville. The house, featured in a recent photo spread in Garden & Gun, blended traditional Southern styles with modern luxury.

Her contributions to her native state included the Mississippi Delta Hot Tamale Festival, which raised money for education. Like Morris, she was honored by Mississippi's state government.

Among other great writers from the state, her work belongs to all of us.

 

 

 

W.H. Auden's "Sept. 1, 1939" speaks to present national emergency

After ignoring the Trump fog machine's malicious lies, I turned with hope and dread to September's arrival.

The foreboding and expectation recalled W.H. Auden's "Sept. 1, 1939," written as the world plunged toward World War II.

Auden's poem, which he disowned later in life, has the line "we must love one another or die," a pressing admonition for our times.

Writing about Hitler and Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland, the poet praised and reproached America's complacent democracy. Little did he know the White House would be desecrated 80 years later by an idiotic, egomaniac American fascist.

The poem references the dives on New York's 52nd Street. Those jazz clubs where Charlie Parker played - Saturday marks the 100th anniversary of his birth in Kansas City - no longer exist.

Auden talks about New York's soulless skyscrapers, "the strength of Collective Man." Now, buildings at a height unimagined in Auden's time cast giant shadows over blighted streets where bebop was born.

Covid-19 has shuttered Auden's bars and theaters. After last spring's raging emergency, New York is one of the few places in America that has subdued the virus. The museums are reopening, but Broadway's lights remain shrouded in darkness.

People turn to poems like Auden's in times of national emergency. The popularity of "Sept. 1, 1939" soared after Sept. 11, 2001.  As another fateful September looms, the poem's message remains urgent.

 

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 by W.H. Auden
	I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong. Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone. From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; 'I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work,' And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the dead, Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. Defenseless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.

William Styron's "The Confessions of Nat Turner" presaged today's cultural wars

Friday marks the 189th anniversary of the start of Nat Turner's rebellion, a four-day slave insurrection in 1831 that killed 60 white people in rural Southampton County, Va.

White novelist and Virginia native William Styron in 1967 published "The Confessions of Nat Turner," narrated by Turner, the revolt's leader.

Styron imagined much of Turner's character and the bloody events of the uprising, having little historical documentation beyond Turner's own confession in 1831 to prosecuting attorney Thomas Ruffin Gray, published a few years later as "The Confessions of Nat Turner: The Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va."

While Styron's book won the Pulitzer Prize and initially received acclaim from predominantly white critics, black intellectuals protested his depiction of Turner, the blacks who joined the rebellion and white slave owners. They claimed that Turner was a heroic black figure and that Styron reduced him to a cultural stereotype. Styron indignantly responded that Turner was virtually unknown, even among the black community, and that as a novelist he had the right to re-imagine historical events.

The black anger culminated in the 1968 book "William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond." In Styron's "This Quiet Dust," a 1982   collection of his non-fiction writing, the author said that his book "was the first novel in the long annals of American publishing to evoke such an immediate, entirely hostile attack."

Such attacks have become more frequent in recent years, with authors accused of cultural expropriation if they imagine characters of a different race, gender or sexual orientation. Styron's daughter, Alexandra, in a recent Atlantic essay compared the outrage over her father's book with that engendered recently by the publication of Jeanine Cummins' "American Dirt." 

In the essay, Alexandra Styron wondered if her father's book would even be published in today's cultural climate. She concluded that it would be, if written by a major author such as her father. But a little-known writer likely would be censored.

She points out that William Styron's close friend James Baldwin encouraged him to write the book and assume the voice of Nat Turner. Ralph Ellison also praised the book, as did black historian John Hope Franklin in a review in the Chicago Tribune, the only one written by a black writer in the thousands of newspapers that then existed.

Historian Eugene D. Genovese's defense of "The Confessions of Nat Turner" in The New York Review of Books ended the attacks on "The Confessions of Nat Turner."  The Marxist historian was known for his examination of slave life, "Roll Jordan Roll, The World the Slaves Made."

It must be admitted that the defense of Styron in a review revered among his intellectual circle looks like a closing of the ranks. While leftist, The New York Review was an organ of mostly white New York intellectuals who despite their liberal views on race closed their doors to many black writers.

Alexandra Styron admits her father' lack of humility in battling his critics. He felt the need to justify "The Confessions of Nat Turner" 15 years later in "This Quiet Dust." The title article, first published in Harper's magazine in 1965, tells about his visiting Southampton County in an effort to retrace Nat Turner's path. He republished the essay to counter black claims that he did insufficient historical research for the book.

The essay, which captures Southern whites' condescension toward blacks, shows Styron at his best.

After fruitless attempts to find surviving signs of the insurrection, Styron comes upon the ruins of the house he believes to be that of Margaret Whitehead, the only white directly killed by Turner. One of the black intellectuals' most heated criticisms of Styron was his imagined flirtation between Whitehead and Turner. 

In the novel, Turner reluctantly murders her at the instigation of another slave seeking to take over leadership of the revolt. Another violent black stereotype, the critics said.

Styron went on to write "Sophie's Choice." Although Harold Bloom accused Styron of antisemitism, the book escaped the controversy stirred by Nat Turner and gained widespread popularity, one of the last "literary" American novels that united the country's readership.

Supported by Henry Louis Gates and Spike Lee, and buoyed by Styron's enduring posthumous reputation, "The Confessions of Nat Turner" retains a strong readership, although it's generally avoided on high school and college curricula.

No doubt overly sensitive college students would object to its inclusion on class reading lists. Soon, no books will be acceptable, and English classes will be extinct.

"The Confessions of Nat Turner" drew the first shots in a cultural war that fully rages today.

 

New York Daily News says drop dead to newsroom

I felt a stab of sadness when I read that the New York Daily News is closing its newsroom, although the newspaper vowed to keep publishing with a cut-to-the-bone staff.

After an enjoyable one-week tryout at the Daily News in the 1990s, I consider myself an alum of the plucky tabloid, known for its photos and classic headlines like "Ford to City: Drop Dead" and "Headless Body in Topless Bar."

The News staffers showed much more generosity than the supercilious apparatchiks at The New York Times during a tryout at the haughty Sulzberger domain. While The Times rejected me, the Daily News offered me a job, which I reluctantly declined.

Newspapers and magazines have been soldiering on during the coronavirus pandemic, with staffers working from home. The Daily News, in cut-throat competition with the more conservative New York Post, concluded that it could save money by doing without its offices in downtown Manhattan. The melancholy announcement followed the death of Pete Hamill, the legendary former columnist for the paper who also briefly served as its editor.

The newsroom's demise brought a lament in The New Yorker from journalist Tom Robbins, who recalled the heady days of the Daily News in the 1950s, when its circulation was in the millions. The tabloid chased scoops with two airplanes and a fleet of radio-equipped cars. During the '20s and '30s, the Daily News was credited with helping immigrants learn English.

But the popularity of TV, New York City's loss of population to the suburbs and changing demographics beset the newspaper, before the Internet arrived like the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs.

Even as the Daily News went through changing owners, heavy losses and declining readership, the paper had columnists like Hamill and Jimmy Breslin, hard-hitting investigative reporters and engaging sportswriters.

Robbins nostalgically remembers the chaotic newsrooms of old, which remained noisy and pressure-packed even when computers replaced typewriters and news people quit smoking and hiding bottles of booze in their desks. But the Internet slashed staffs, bringing a funereal quiet before Covid-19 emptied newsrooms.

As a former Daily News reporter told Robbins, crowded newsrooms also fostered collaboration in the development of story ideas and the mentoring of young reporters by veterans. The newsrooms also gave a sense of family to the social misfits who found a place working for newspapers.

When I had my tryout, the Daily News was located at West 33rd Street and 10th Avenue, in a nondescript office building that also housed New York City's public TV channel. I stayed at a horrible Howard Johnson's Hotel near Macy's and walked to work each day. The streets remained full of people when I got off at midnight.

The copy desk chief, an intense, serious and highly professional young woman whom I found was the mother of two children, allowed me to work on several stories each night, and I loved writing tabloid-style headlines, with clever turns of phrase.

Unlike at The Times, my colleagues were very cordial and helpful. One older fellow, an Irishman, reminisced about the days when New York City had seven dailies, and an editor unhappy at one paper could find a job at another the very same night. I also marveled at the editor whose full-time job was to write the daily "wood," the front-page headline. He sat there for hours, staring at the screen, waiting for inspiration.

When I worked there, the Daily News was already suffering staggering losses, and would eventually declare bankruptcy. As Robbins notes, the newspaper kept rising from the dead, its staffers burnishing buttons that said "The Daily News: Too Tough to Die."

That was at the dawn of the Internet era. Since then, the tab has survived several deep newsroom cutbacks, plunging circulation and a troubled transition to online publishing. Perhaps the newspaper will keep going, but the Daily News without its newsroom is like the Tinman without his heart.