Big Star

I good piece by Ed Ward of "Fresh Air" (NPR) on the great and nearly forgotten band Big Star. Done a while back, I guess, but so what.

Canada in the 50s

Here are my parents, somewhere in eastern Canada, circa 1952. Jobs were hard to come by and, during some periods, they didn't eat much. They don't look very happy either.

Things soon improved. My folks were married in 1953—they had to wait for my Grandmother (Oma) to arrive from Germany. Then it was off to the other coast—British Columbia—where there was more work for an electrician. Annie came along in 1954 and I arrived fourteen months later.

This picture was likely taken in 1957.

By 1958, we were living in a home on a street overlooking Vancouver. Here are Annie, Prince, and I in our backyard. I recall the endless gloom and rain and the spectacular views of the blustery weather and the beautiful city and ocean.  And the music on the radio: "Volare," doo-wop, etc. And "fish and chips" down at the harbor. You have no idea!

Annie, looking deceptively innocent.

This is a scene from my second or third birthday (hence 1957 or 1958).

My dad got a mention in this 1957 trade paper (in Kitimat, BC, near Alaska).
Herb Frey was another German immigrant.
This morning, I gave my dad a ride to town to pick up his truck from the shop. I mentioned these pictures. He said that he had lots of great Canadian (i.e., English-speaking, et al.) friends back in 
Canada (including Bill Lee above), but it seemed clear that immigrants were frozen out of significant positions of leadership or authority. And educational opportunities were lacking. Everything pointed to moving to the U.S., he said, and to California in particular.
That, of course, was my parents' dream all along.

I still thrill to the cheesy organ, the cool tempo change, and all the rest.

I don't know what this guy's sayin', but the song speaks to me, man.
I'm a big fan of the cult fave Alex Chilton, who died not long ago. I was amazed to discover years ago that Chilton actually did a cover of this song, complete with Italian lyrics!

Back in the sixties, I was a huge Turtles fan. Still love 'em. It seemed odd to me that I always loved their (and the Mothers') versions of old doo-wop songs, such as this one, "Tear Drops." Only later did I realize that I had grown to love this music when I was three or four years old, listening to my parents' records and to the radio on the endless drives we took, seemingly to nowhere.

• The original recording, by Lee Andrews and the Hearts (1957).
• "Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder," Frank Zappa (and the Mothers of Invention), 1966.
• "Later that Night," Frank Zappa (and the Mothers of Invention), 1968.
• "Only You," the Platters, 1955.

No textation without representation!

     The Stupid People are feeling their oats again. Evidently fired up by the demagogic right-wing author Brigitte Gabriel, they caused a ruckus at last night's meeting of the Fountain Valley School Board.   
     Read all about it in today’s OC Reg:

Trustees decline to change portrayal of Islam (OC Reg)

     The gist of the story is that Gabriel’s group, “ACT! For America,” has read the text used in Fountain Valley to teach “social studies” to 7th graders—namely, Houghton-Mifflin Harcourts' "World History: Medieval to Early Modern Times.” The book includes a 55-page section about Islamic history.
     Uh-oh.
     ACT!'s complaint is that the book’s treatment of Islam portrays it too dang positively.
     The solution, proposed by an ACT!ual resident: just add some “supplemental materials,” provided by ACT!
     You can just imagine what that stuff is like. ACT! is really down on Islam and A-răbs. More on that in a moment.
     According to the Reg, about one hundred people filled the board room and many spoke passionately in favor of the “supplement” proposal. In the end, however, the board unanimously declined to take action, owing to a lack of authority. After all, the state must authorize all texts, trustees said.
     Yes, the State! Damn them, anyway! No textation without representation! Kill the bastards! Let's start with that guy! String 'im up! Garrrrrrrrrrh!
     Naturally, the board's inevitable decision not to take any action pissed off the ACT!-inspired people in the room, who, um, wanted some kind of action. Is this not a democracy? People groaned and grumbled. Someone farted loudly. Cops had to be brought in to restore order.
     Not all of the speakers were clueless right-wing Neanderthals. One guy reminded the crowd that some of the district’s students are Muslims and that “Muslims have died fighting for this country.”
     Hey yeah! What about that?
     On the other hand, another guy used part of his speaking time to suddenly put hand on heart and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Many in the audience dutifully stood up and followed his goofy example. I guess nobody laughed or snickered when they all got to the “liberty and justice for all” part. I woulda snorted.
     Toward the end of the meeting, the district Superintendent spanked the crowd a bit, suggesting that they had forgotten the “tenets of the … constitution” and our system’s reliance on law and “the appropriate process by which to resolve differences of opinion.”

* * *

     I checked into Ms. Gabriel and her crusade against Islam and Arabs. She’s tapped into the right-wing’s tendency to love Israel, right ‘r wrong, and to paint all Muslims (i.e., A-răbs) with one nasty stereotypicalating brush.
     I came across a couple of her most demagogic and clueless remarks:

“It is not politically correct to say that our Western societies are better than the Muslim Arab societies, but we are, we have been, and we always will be.”

“The difference, my friends, between Israel and the Arab world is the difference between civilization and barbarism.”

—Yeah, that sort of talk will be a big help in our efforts to get along with all those pissed off Muslims in the world.
     I looked up Ms. Gabby's books on Amazon. The blurb on one of ‘em sports this glowing remark from Publishers Weekly: “Her writing is eloquent and her passion tremendous."
     Sounds great!
     But no. It turns out that Ms. Gabriel isn’t into the “context” thing. Here’s what Publishers Weekly actually wrote about her:

With strident confidence, …Gabriel rebukes the American public for being "weak, asleep or careless" in the face of Muslim terrorism. A Christian survivor of the vicious civil war between Lebanese Christians and Muslims in the 1970s, Gabriel leans on her own terrifying experiences to condemn Muslims, without apparent regard for their ethnicity, ideology or historical role. Consistently using the words "Muslim" and "Arab" as if they were interchangeable, she concludes that the U.S. is "facing total destruction" at the hands of people who are uncultured and cruel, and prescribes such solutions as "profile, profile and profile," and banning "hate education" in Islamic institutions. Though her writing is eloquent and her passion tremendous, Gabriel's strict dichotomy between "evil versus goodness" is too extreme to be informative….

Gosh, I’d say that that was a negative review. Wouldn’t you?
     You can learn all you need to know about the woman by watching the following oddly edited chunk of video on YouTube, which includes Ms. Gabriel’s visit to Bill O’Reilly’s show. O’Reilly pits the always-yelling Ms. Gabriel against an always-purring Muslim apologist. The poor guy can hardly purr forth two words before the bullying bulldogging commences.
     Check it out. Or not.

From the Bauer family archives: 1920s-1940s

I have a motley assortment of photos for you tonight. This is one of my grandfather Otto's photos from the late 20s. My father tells me that people of his region (near Stuttgart) often visited these caves during their early adulthood. Supposedly, my grandfather and his future wife (Luise) are in this photo, but I sure can't spot 'em.

My father, Gunther, and his sister, Ruth, in about 1940. Don't know who the kid in the wagon is. It is likely that Otto (my father's father) made the wagon; he was a model maker (working with wood) for an aeronautics company named "Klemm." Otto's friend Herr Klemm's dream was to manufacture a kind of Volkswagen of the air, a people's plane. His (and Otto's) hatred for Naziism got them into a lot of trouble. It destroyed Klemm. Otto was quietly drafted into the Wehrmacht.

My mother's mother died in 1935, when mom was about a year old (the family lived in Stettin). At that point, mom's Tanta (aunt) Martha and her husband, Otto Haenfler, took her in and so she went to live in Barwalde, in the country, well to the east. 

Haenfler, who seemed to hail from Berlin, was a well-educated and wealthy Marxist, who had worked as a potter for the famous manufacturer of porcelain, Meissen, until the late twenties. Mom tells me that he was part of the group that designed and produced the famous Danish royal china of that period.

Mom's father, who owned a trucking business in Stettin, died in a work accident in 1939 (owing to a miscommunication between him and his Polish POW workers, a log rolled over him and crushed him). Herr Haenfler, who had been wounded during the Great War, died of TB in 1941.

Mom had been very close to him. She always refers to Martha and Otto as her "parents."

This is my father's father, also Otto—and also a Marxist!—in his uniform in about 1943. He had been wounded by shrapnel and pinned down in a skirmish with the British. A tank crew came by and pulled him to safety. At the end of his recuperation, he was able to visit his family briefly, and this photo was taken.

Otto was captured by the British in 1944 and was held in various POW camps until May of 1947. This is a picture of Otto and his colleagues in the miserable Egyptian POW camp, perhaps 1946.

My parents met on the boat that sailed from Germany to Canada. It was a leaky and dodgy old Liberty ship. My dad managed to get a job on the ship during the passage. He spent all of his free time with mom.

This is a photo of my father filming a fire in British Columbia in 1957.

Wise and necessary!

Education Department Takes Aim at For-Profits With Student-Debt Rule (Chronicle of Higher Education)

     After a five-week delay, the Education Department will release a rule Friday that would penalize for-profit colleges that saddle students with unmanageable amounts of debt.
     The proposed "gainful employment" rule, which has been anticipated by for-profit colleges and short-sellers alike, would cut off federal aid to programs whose students have the highest debt burdens and lowest loan-repayment rates, while limiting enrollment growth at hundreds of other programs. For-profit lobbyists are calling the rule "unwise and unnecessary."
     In a conference call with reporters, the Education Department said it was seeking to protect students and taxpayers from the high costs of student-loan defaults.
     "While career colleges play a vital role in training our work force to be globally competitive, some of them are saddling students with debt they cannot afford in exchange for degrees and certificates they cannot use," said Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a written statement.
. . .
     The share of borrowers defaulting on their student loans in the first two years of repayment has climbed steadily in recent years, reaching a 10-year high of 7.2 percent this year, according to the Education Department.
     For-profit colleges, which educate less than 10 percent of students but receive close to a quarter of federal-student-loan dollars, account for a disproportionate share of those defaults. Two years into repayment, roughly 12 percent of borrowers who attended for-profit colleges have defaulted on their federal loans, compared with 6 percent of those who attended public colleges and 4 percent who attended private colleges.
     When the government is unable to collect on defaulted loans, taxpayers are on the hook for the losses. Borrowers, meanwhile, face damaged credit histories, are ineligible for additional federal aid, and may have their wages and tax refunds seized by the government.... (Continued)

"Amicus" support for our "prayer" lawsuit against the SOCCCD

     Recently, three groups have filed amicus (friend of the court) letters in support of our “prayer” lawsuit against the South Orange County Community College District (aka Westphal v. Wagner).
     One of the organizations is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Here’s an excerpt from their letter:

     Another letter/brief was jointly filed by the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges and the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges.
     Here are some excerpts:

(Click on graphic to enlarge it)

(Click on graphic to enlarge it)

Pictured: Karla Westphal, speaking before the SOCCCD board of trustees

Competitive admissions in nursing programs

Vying for Limited Slots (Inside Higher Ed)

     Community colleges pride themselves on open admissions policies. But an increasing number are moving to competitive admissions in nursing programs.
     Officials at Southern State Community College, in Ohio, recently announced that the college would abandon the first-come-first-served approach of its associate degree nursing program next spring and adopt competitive admissions standards. Currently, all students who meet the program’s minimum requirements — mainly earning at least a 2.5 cumulative grade point average in college and completing a series of prerequisite math and science courses — are placed on a waiting list and admitted according to number. The 4.0 GPA student has no advantage over the 2.5 GPA student. Next spring, all qualified students will be ranked using an institution-developed equation, taking into equal consideration their overall GPA, grades in the required courses and entrance exam scores. Those with a higher rank will be given precedence in filling the program’s 100 slots.
. . .
     Like many nursing programs around the country, the one at Southern State has more qualified students than it can currently accommodate. [Julianne Krebs, director of nursing at Southern State] noted that its last waiting list had about 120 students. Given this, it is likely that Southern State's program, also like others with competitive entry, will turn away many qualified students.
     Elaine Tagliareni, chief program officer of the National League for Nursing and former community college nursing professor, noted that Southern State’s change is indicative of a larger trend of community college nursing programs adopting competitive admissions. She noted that the tremendous shortage of nurses in the field has pressured many community college programs to try to improve their passage rates by adopting these criteria….
. . .
     Two years ago…, the California Legislature passed a law setting competitive-admissions standards for all community college nursing programs in the state. Before the change, all qualified students were chosen for programs by a lottery system. The change has made a noticeable difference in California.
     “Community colleges with as high as 50-70 percent drop-out rates moved to accepting the students with the highest grades in prerequisites, or at least a minimal grade of B,” [ Patricia Benner, professor emerita at the University of California at San Francisco School of Nursing] explained. “This lowered the failure rates, repeat course rates, and the drop-out rates. … It is expensive to take students who are likely to fail and/or drop out. Saddleback Community College nursing program in Southern California near [Los Angeles] is my prime example of this policy. They have a high completion rate, and they also have 100 percent pass rates for the nursing licensing exams.”….