Friday, December 28, 2018

By the time we get to Woodstock ..





The 1960’s were one of the most tumultuous decades of our country’s history.

The first big event of the decade was the Greensboro lunch counter sit-in, which started on February 1, 1960. By the end of the summer of 1960, Woolworth’s lunch counters were fully integrated. 



From May of 1961 until December of 1961, Freedom Riders rode interstate busses into the segregated south to protest racial segregation. 



In 1962, James Meredith (inspired by JFK’s inaugural speech) applied to became the first African-American to be admitted to the University of Mississippi. It took federal intervention to get him in, but he eventually graduated in August of 1963 with a degree in political science.

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald.



In 1964, Barry Goldwater was the Republican nominee in the 1964 presidential race. Due to his extreme views, he only carried 6 states in the general election, and lost to LBJ 486 to 52 in the electoral college. Obviously, America still was not ready for a crazy man to occupy the Oval Office (that happened much later).

1964 was also the year when the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was passed by Congress, which ultimately led to 11 more years of war and almost 58,000 deaths.

In 1965, race riots in  Watts started on August 11.



By 1966, the United States had increased the number or troops in Vietnam to 500,000.

1967 was the year that the “summer of love” occurred. In spite of that theme, race riots started in Detroit in July. Significantly, 1967 was also the year that the Beatles released the “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band” album. To add a little more excitement to the year, Arab forces attacked Israel on Yom Kippur day in October.




1968 was the year that started out with the Tet offensive, moved to the MLK assassination in April, the Bobby Kennedy assassination in June, and the disastrous Democratic convention in Chicago in August.

After all of those events, what American REALLY needed was 3 days of peace and music, and it finally happened in August of 1969.



Woodstock was initiated through the efforts of Michael LangArtie KornfeldJoel Rosenman, and John P. Roberts. Roberts and Rosenman financed the project. Lang had some experience as a promoter, having co-organized a festival on the East Coast the prior year, the Miami Pop Festival, where an estimated 25,000 people attended the two-day event.

The music festival was originally intended to be a profit making venture to finance a sound studio, but the event turned out much differently than planned.

Woodstock was designed as a profit-making venture. It famously became a "free concert" only after the event drew hundreds of thousands more people than the organizers had prepared for. Tickets for the three-day event cost $18 in advance and $24 at the gate (equivalent to about $120 and $160 today). Ticket sales were limited to record stores in the greater New York City area, or by mail via a post office box at the Radio City Station Post Office located in Midtown Manhattan. Around 186,000 advance tickets were sold, and the organizers anticipated approximately 200,000 festival-goers would turn up. Eventually, of course, the number of attendees blossomed to 500,000.  

After several changes of venue, the festival finally wound up at Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, New York. At the time of the festival in 1969, Yasgur was married and had a son and daughter. On January 7, 1970, he was sued by his neighbors for property damage caused by the concert attendees.In 1971, Yasgur sold the 600-acre farm, and moved to Marathon, Florida, where, a year and a half later, he died of a heart attack at the age of 53.





The promoters originally offered Yasgur $50 a day to rent his farm, but the farmer knew that amount was absurdly low. Ultimately, the promoters agree to pay $75,000 to rent his land. When his neighbors objected, it strengthened his resolve, and he decided to go ahead with his plan to rent his land. 

https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/1973-woodstock-s-unlikely-host-dies-1.5401698

The late change in venue did not give the festival organizers enough time to prepare. At a meeting three days before the event, organizers felt they had two options: one was to complete the fencing and ticket booths, without which the promoters would lose any profit or go into debt; the other option involved putting their remaining available resources into building the stage, without which the promoters feared they would have a disappointed and disgruntled audience. When the audience began arriving by the tens of thousands the next day, the Wednesday before the weekend, the decision was made for them. Those without tickets simply walked through gaps in the fences, and the organizers were forced to make the event free of charge. Though the festival left its promoters nearly bankrupt, their ownership of the film and recording rights more than compensated for the losses after the release of the hit documentary film in 1970.


Overall, the festival featured performances by 32 bands and 51 hours of almost interrupted music, starting at 5 p.m. on Friday, and ending at 11 a.m. Monday morning. Individual band performances ranged from 25  minutes to 1 hour and 40 minutes (by Jefferson Airplane). The Who actually performed the most number of songs (23) in their hour on the stage.

Crosby Stills Nash & Young did not perform until Sunday at 3 a.m., but their song, “Woodstock” (written by Joni Mitchell) perfectly captured the event:

I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
When I asked him where are you going
This he told me.

I'm going down to Yasgur's farm
Think I’ll join a rock and roll band
I'll camp out on the land
I'll try and set my soul free.

We are stardust, we are golden
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel just like a cog in something turning.
Well maybe it’s the time of year
Or maybe it’s the time of man
And I don't know who I am

But life’s for learning. 

We are stardust, we are golden
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden. 

By the time I got to Woodstock
They were half a million strong
Everywhere there were songs and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation. 


We are stardust, we are golden
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

We are stardust, we are golden
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden. 


We are stardust, we are golden
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.


The link below lists the performers who were at the festival:


The list below provides additional bio data on all of them:

1.1 – Richie Havens -died in 1973 – age 72

1.2 – Swami Satchidananda - died in 2002 – age 87

1.3 – Sweetwater - reunited in 1994 – all gone now

1.4 – Bert Sommer - died in 1990 – age 41

1.5-  Tim Hardin - died 1980 – age 39 – heroin overdose

1.6 – Ravi Shankar - died 2012 – age 92

1.7 – Melanie Shafka - still living – age 71

1.8 – Arlo Guthrie - still living – age 71

1.9 – Joan Baez - still living – age 77


2.1 – Quill - disbanded – one member still performing

2.2 – Country Joe McDonald - age 76 – still performing

2.3 – Santana - age 71 – still performing

2.4 – John B. Sebastian - age 74 – still performing

2.5 – Keef Hartley band - still performing in 1980 - current status unknown

2.6 – The Incredible String band - active until 2006

2.7 – Canned Heat - still active

2.8 – Mountain - active until 2010

2.9 – Grateful Dead - disbanded in 1995 – some still active until 2015

2.10 – Creedence Clearwater revival - active until 1972

2.11 -  Janis Joplin - died in 1970 – age 27 – heroin overdose

2.12 – Sly and the Family Stone - active until 1987

2.13 – The Who - some members still active

2.14 – Jefferson Airplane - active until 1996 – some members still performing



3.1 – Joe Cocker - died 2014 – age 70

3.2 – Country Joe and the Fish - disbanded in 1970 -  some members still perform

3.3 – Ten Years After - still active

3.4 – The Band - disbanded 1999

3.5 – Johnny Winter - died 2014 – age 70

3.6 – Blood, Sweat and Tears - still active

3.7 – Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - active until 2016

3.8 – Paul Butterfield Blues band - died 1987 – age 44 – heroin overdose

3.9 – Sha Na Na - still active

3.10 – Jimi Hendrix - died 1970 – age 27 – overdosed on sleeping tablets 

Rain made a mess of the festival, but it didn’t cause many people to leave early:



The late Joe Cocker (who was quite obviously inebriated) captured the spirit of the event with his song “ I get high with the help of my friends”:


Since we were smack dab in the middle of our involvement in Vietnam, a few of the bands swerved into anti-war themes. The classic, of course, is the song by Country Joe and the Fish, titled “ I feel like I’m fixin’ to die”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qPUJhy0Dz4 

After 1969, anniversary events were held in 1994 and 1999, but the BIG news is that the 50th anniversary concert will be held at the same site as the original, starting on August 16, 2019. 



Yes, I know that nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be, but if you had the chance, why in the world would you NOT go to the 2019 Woodstock festival?

Just sayin’

Saturday, December 15, 2018

The Christmas that never came







The presents are all wrapped under our cute little tree, many of our neighbors have strung bright lights on the outside of their houses, and the mail box takes in a handful of Christmas cards every day of the week.

However, there WAS a time in America, not long ago, when Christmas never came (at least for some people), and we just passed the anniversary of an event that caused that to happen.

On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza burst into Sandy Hook elementary school and started shooting. By the time he was done, he had killed 20 children and six adult staff members before he turned the gun on himself. You may have forgotten some of the details, but the link below will help you remember:


If you would like even MORE information, the link below can help you:


Lanza suffered from depression, anxiety, and obsessive compulsive disorder, as well as Asperger’s syndrome. Asperger’s is a form of autism, and people who are afflicted from  it feel a strong need for a rigid daily structure, which Jodi Picoult explains very well in her book, “House Rules”.

His mental instability would not have been enough to prevent the purchase of the Bushmaster rifle that he carried, but he was not old enough to purchase the Glock pistol that was owned by his mother. Shortly before the shooting, his mother announced that she was thinking of moving to another town, which would be devastating news to a person with Asperger’s, and probably was enough to lead to his last desperate act.

After the shooting, people from around the country clamored for tougher gun laws, but Connecticut (where the shooting occurred) was one of the few that did. States around the country continued to loosen, rather than tighten, their gun laws, but that all changed early in 2018, and for one reason:

Parkland.


After the shooting in Parkland, Florida, Congress STILL took no action, but state legislatures did. State legislatures passed 69 gun control measures this year, more than three times the number that were passed in 2017. In addition, legislators rejected nearly 90% of the state-level laws backed by the NRA. Although the Parkland shooting was part of  the reason for the increase in gun control laws, the national school walkout on April 20 (the anniversary of the Columbine shooting) also got the attention of lawmakers across the country.







Parkland became different due to the fact that the student survivors themselves took action, and it wasn’t long before most of the people in the country knew who Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg were. In March 2018, González was on the cover of Time magazine along with fellow activists Jaclyn CorinDavid HoggCameron Kasky, and Alex Wind. That same month she was profiled by France 24.




Not surprisingly, Gonzalez has come under attack from right wing conspiracy theories and hoaxes since the shooting – but she got results.

In March 2018, the Florida Legislature passed a bill titled the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act. It raises the minimum age for buying firearms to 21, establishes waiting periods and background checks, provides a program for the arming of some teachers and the hiring of school police, bans bump stocks, and bars potentially violent or mentally unhealthy people arrested under certain laws from possessing guns. In all, the law allocates around $400 million for implementation. Rick Scott signed the bill into law on March 9. The governor commented, "To the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, you made your voices heard. You didn't let up and you fought until there was change.

In 2017, the U.S. gun death rate hit a 20 year high, when nearly 40,000 people lost their lives due to firearms. Included in that total are the 58 people who were killed in Las Vegas in November. As the charts below show, the gun death rate has been on a steady climb since at least 2000.


Fortunately, gun deaths appear to have gone down in 2018, even though the decrease appears to be modest.


The response to the Parkland shooting was one of the reasons for the decrease, but there are THREE factors that are going to lead to further declines:
1)    The House of Representatives will be controlled by the Democrats after the 1st of the year, and one of the items that will be discussed is universal background checks for ALL gun purchases
2)   The NRA itself had a tough year financially in 2018. The organization lost $55 million, and a large part deficit was due to a large decline in membership dues.


3)   The NRA spent $30 million to help Donald Trump to get elected – but that is  about to backfire on them in a huge way, due to the actions of a red-headed Russian named Maria Butina. Some of that money, you see, apparently came from Russia, which is highly illegal.

On Deceber 12, Maria Butina pleaded guilty to conspiracy to act illegally as an unregistered Russian foreign agent. Since 2011, she has worked for Alexsandr Torshin, who was a former member of Vladimir Putin's United Russian Party.
Torshin started attending NRA meetings in 2011, and then-president David Keene attended a meeting of the Russian group "Right to Bear Arms" in Moscow in 2013.
In 2013, Butina met Republican political operative Paul Erickson in Russia. The two became close, started dating, and eventually moved in together. In 2015 she emailed him a description of her plan to help the Republicans win the 2016 elections through the National Rifle Association (NRA).
In 2015, a number of NRA officials attended Right to Bear Arms's annual gun conference in Russia. Among them were Keene, gun manufacturer and NRA first vice president Pete Brownell, conservative American political operative Paul Erickson, and Milwaukee County sheriff David Clarke. One of their hosts was Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who in 2014 was sanctioned by the White House following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Clarke's trip cost $40,000, with all expenses paid by the NRA, Pete Brownell (an NRA board member and CEO of a gun-parts supply company) and Right to Bear Arms. According to a disclosure Clarke filed, Right to Bear Arms paid $6,000 to cover his meals, lodging, transportation and other expenses. During the meeting, Clarke met the Russian foreign minister and attended a conference at which Torshin spoke. In November 2016, Torshin tweeted that he and Butina were lifetime NRA members.
In a June 2015 article published in The National Interest, a conservative American international affairs magazine, just before Trump announced his candidacy for president, Butina urged better relations between the United States and Russia, saying, "It may take the election of a Republican to the White House in 2016 to improve relations between the Russian Federation and the United States." 
Her biography on the article did not mention that she worked for the Russian government. The next month, Butina attended FreedomFest, where Trump gave a speech, and asked him from the audience about ending U.S. sanctions against Russia, to which he replied, "I don't think you'd need the sanctions." Butina hosted a birthday party attended by Erickson and Trump campaign aides shortly after the 2016 election
To paraphrase one of Trump's tweets, the connection between the NRA and the Trump campaign is a "smocking gun"
To bring a sense of closure to the tragedy, the city of Sandy Hook razed both the elementary school where the shooting occurred, as well as the home where Adam Lanza lived with his mother – but that apparently was not enough.

On the morning of December 14, 2018, a bomb threat was called into the new Sandy Hook school, forcing the evacuation of the school.


It appears that our country is FINALLY moving in the right direction on gun control, but yesterday’s bomb threat is a reminder that there are far too many crazy people that live in the United States, and it will take continued vigilance to minimize that damage that they can do.

Having said that, though, it’s time to set the nonsense aside, and focus on the fact that Christmas IS supposed to be a time of joy and sharing. On that note, all I can say is this:

Merry Christmas !







Saturday, December 8, 2018

The marketing genius of Marlboro cigarettes






You would probably be surprised at the fact that Marlboro was originally introduced (in 1926) as a woman’s cigarette. The advertising theme for the cigarette was the less than inspiring “mild as May”campaign, and the brand faltered repeatedly for the next 30 years.

What saved the brand, ironically enough, was lung cancer.

During the early 1950’s, the first studies linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer were released. As a result, smokers started to switch from the favored brands of Camels, Lucky Strikes, and Chesterfields to the “safer” filtered cigarettes, like Marlboro.

Logic would tell you that an advertising agency would focus on these new-found health concerns, but the Leo Burnett agency took an entirely different approach, focusing instead on the
Masculine Image of the New Marlboro.




When the campaign started in 1954, Marlboro sales were $5 billion a year. Two years later, Marlboro sales were an astonishing $20 billion a year, an increase of 300%. As a result, the Marlboro Man advertising campaign is considered to be one of the most brilliant advertising campaigns of all time. Marlboro ads were used in America until 1999, but were used up until recently in both Germany and the Czech Republic.

Three of the men who portrayed the Marlboro Man (Wayne McLaren, David McLean, and Dick Hammer) all died from lung cancer. Strangely enough, their passing hasn’t put much of a dent in the popularity of smoking overseas.  China consumes about 40% of the world's cigarettes, predominantly by men. Overall, 54% of the adults in China smoke cigarettes, but the percentage in rural areas is even higher, at 64%.


Most of the cigarettes smoked in China are produced in the country. The People’s Republic of China (China) is the largest tobacco producer in the world. In 1999, production of leaf tobacco was about 2.4 million tons, or nearly one-third of world output. Most tobacco was processed into cigarettes for domestic consumption. In 1998, total output of cigarettes reached about 83 billion packs (20 pieces/pack), representing more than 30 percent of world cigarette production. It was estimated that over 320 million Chinese were smoking and nearly 500 million Chinese were second-hand or passive smokers, which made China the world largest cigarette consuming country and hence most vulnerable to smoking health hazards.


Cigarette smoking among U.S. adults has been reduced by more than half since 1964, yet remains the leading preventable cause of disease and death in the United States. Overall, cigarette smoking among U.S. adults (aged ≥18 years) declined from 20.9 percent in 2005 to 15.5 percent in 2016. Yet, nearly 38 million American adults smoked cigarettes (“every day” or “some days”) in 2016, according to data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).


Since cigarette smoking is down in America, logic would tell you that the company would be hurt financially, but that is not the case at all. Marlboro has been the world's No. 1 cigarette brand since 1972. Altria holds the rights to the Marlboro brand in the U.S., while Philip Morris International handles the brand overseas. Marlboro commanded 43.3% of the U.S. cigarette market in 2017, bigger than the next 10 brands combined. Marlboro volume was down 5% in the U.S. in 2017 with an increased excise tax in California  impacting sales, but higher pricing pushed profits up. Volume was off 4% outside the U.S.

According to Forbes, Marlboro is one of the most valuable brands in America, with an estimated brand value of $26.6 billion – and it is about to get a lot bigger.


Earlier this year, recreational marijuana use was legalized in Canada As a result, the familiar maple leaf flag may need to be redesigned to look like this:





If didn’t take Marlboro long to capitalize on a new source of revenue. After Constellation Brands (the manufacturer of Corona and other beverages) spent $4 billion in August to acquire shares of Canopy Growth Corp, a Canadian pot producer, Altria (Marlboro’s domestic parent company) took a 45% share in Cronos Group, another Canadian medical and recreational marijuana producer. After the purchase, U.S. traded shares of Cronos jumped 22%.




Consumers are expected to spend $57 billion per year worldwide on legal cannabis by 2027, according to Arcview Market Research, a cannabis-focused investment firm. In North America, that spending is expected to grow from $9.2 billion in 2017 to $47.3 billion in 2027.

By now, most people have figured out that the “war on drugs” has been a disaster, since our prison population has exploded since the early 1980’s. The vast majority of the people in prison (46%) are there due to drug offenses. The next largest category (weapons) makes up 18% of those incarcerated.


As Michelle Alexander points out in her book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, African-Americans make up a disproportionate percentage of all inmates. Although this group comprises 12% of regular drug users, they make up almost 40% of drug arrests. The vast majority of those arrested with a drug offense are not charged with serious offenses. In 2005, 4 out of 5 drug arrests were for possession, not sales.  

As of March, 2018, there were 2.3 million people in state prisons, local jails, federal prisons, and youth detention centers. Roughly 400,000 of this total is for a variety of drug offenses, but 320,000 of the total is for simple possession of drugs (primarily marijuana).


In 2010, the annual cost to house an inmate in prison was $28, 284. If you do the math, our country is spending a touch over $9 billion a year on incarceration for drugs, which brings up an interesting idea.

In 2017, medical and recreational sales of marijuana in Colorado totaled $1.51 billion.


Tax revenue from marijuana for that year for the state was $247 million. If recreational and medicinal revenue was legalized nationwide, total tax revenue would be roughly $12,350,000,000.


If all of the people incarcerated for drug offenses were all released on January 1, 2019, and marijuana of all types were legalized at the same time, our country would be better off financially by more than $20 billion a year, which would be used for infrastructure repair or increases in funding for education or medical expenses.

So ..

The next time somebody buys a Marlboro product, the world could be a lot more mellower. 








Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Those old Kentucky blues …







A wise man once said, “ When you don’t grow, you die. When you don’t learn, you forget. It is that simple. Therefore each day you don’t learn something new, is a wasted day”. The author could have been Aristotle or Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin, but the words were actually printed by a young blogger named Thomas Mondel. Here is “the rest of the story”:


One of the advantages of being a substitute teacher is that I frequently learn something new on most days of the week, which is how I learned about the blue people of Kentucky.

We’re all familiar with the green skin of Shrek and the Incredible Hulk, but there actually were people in Kentucky who had BLUE skin. Here’s the details:


Not long after the blue people first started appearing in Kentucky, a music genre called “the blues” started in the South, and its inventors were slaves, ex-slaves, and descendants of slave.


Numerous artists have played the blues in the last 100 years, but here is one of my favorite songs that fit into the mold:


If you would like something with a little more zip, you may want to consider, “They’re Red Hot”.


If you aren’t careful, though, you could get all tangled up in blue: