Nightly tabloid news

I need to learn to Just Say No. The next time I’m tempted to watch the evening news on commercial television, I will remind myself of the headlines that began last night’s ABC World News Tonight :

~ Multiple Fatalities in Fatal Plant “Rupture”
~ Pilot Declares Medical Emergency During Landing
~ Massive Home Blast Rocks Neighborhood
~ 30+M Under Dangerous Flood Threat
~ Trump Visits Doctor Amid Iran Tensions
~ CDC Seeking Volunteers for Ebola Screening
~ Critical Senate Race Runoff
~ Knicks Await Final Opponent
~ Urgent Search For Children
~ Bounce House Scare
~ Woman Killed by Umbrella
~ Teenager Bitten by Shark While Fishing
~ America Strong

And without a headline: “And we remember a jazz great tonight.”

I gave up after the bounce house. (No children were in the house.) I checked this morning and saw that the America Strong segment, about a kid who faltered while singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a softball game (and, surprise, the crowd helped him out) ran for 1:46. Sonny Rollins got seventeen seconds. And not much of “the world” in that news at all.

And events at the immigrant detention center Delaney Hall got nothing. (Is it a concentration camp yet?)

“We’re all still here”

The PBS NewsHour last night aired a segment about Sonny Rollins, with excerpts from a 2011 interview. Jeffrey Brown asked Rollins if being “one of the last ones” from an earlier time in music weighed on him. Rollins’s reply:

Well, it does. All my friends are gone, Miles, Coltrane, Monk. I mean, in a sense, they're gone, but not really.

I’m the last guy. But, in a way, I’m not, because, when I’m gone, the music, my music, is going to be here. So we’re all still here. We’re all still here.

Related reading
All OCA Sonny Rollins posts (Pinboard)

[Sonny Rollins was the last living musician from Art Kane’s celebrated 1958 photograph, known as A Great Day in Harlem .]

A simple game, a great game

A cooperative game, a six-year-old’s suggestion. For four players, or any number of players.

~ Arrange yourselves in a loose circle.

~ Toss a largish ball from person to person, clockwise or counterwise, your choice.

~ After ten consecutive catches, everyone takes a step back.

~ Repeat.

~ If someone drops the ball, move back in and start again.

No winning, no losing, just fun and mild suspense for all.

Penn Station, ugh

WNYC’s Gothamist reveals architectural renderings of a rebuilt Penn Station:

The winning plan to rebuild Penn Station features renderings of a new train hall with American flags at the entrance, gold-accented railings, columns and escalators — and a presidential seal featuring President Donald Trump’s name.

It’s not difficult to imagine the rebuilt station becoming a magnet for vandals and pranksters.

Related reading and viewing
The Rise and Fall of Penn Station (PBS)

Colbert in Monroe

For those who caught the joke on the electrical box in the last episode of The Late Show (or didn’t): Stephen Colbert has hosted another episode of Only in Monroe. We watched the other night and laughed helplessly. How musical director Jack White kept a straight face, I dunno.

There’s also Colbert’s 2015 guest-host spot.

Words from Democritus

[“Of practical wisdom these are the three fruits: to deliberate well, to speak to the point, to do what is right.” Rediscovered on a piece of cardboard tucked away on a bookshelf.]

My son Ben wrote out these words from Democritus of Abdera (circa 460-370 BCE) some years ago. I think they’re worth sharing. The English rendering is a standard one. I’d like to call Ben (a philosophy major) Democritus Jr., but that name was already claimed by Robert Burton.

Sonny Rollins (1930–2026)

The tenor saxophonist has died at the age of ninety-five. The New York Times has an obituary (gift link).

I was fortunate to see Sonny Rollins twice, unforgettably twice, in 1989 and 2006. And he showed up in a dream last year, about to perform with Mary Lou Williams on my university campus.

These are five of my favorite Rollins performances: “St. Thomas,” “Wagon Wheels,” “The Bridge,” “There Will Never Be Another You,” and “Without a Song.”

“One day in the future people will be saying ‘Yes I once saw Sonny Rollins.’ ” From The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins, ed. Sam V.H. Reese (New York Review Books, 2024).

Related reading
All OCA Sonny Rollins posts (Pinboard)

2026, 2028, 2027

I had to see it for myself to believe it.

Ask Google: is it 2027 this year .

The answer: “It is 2026 right now, and will be 2028 next year, followed by 2027.”

I’d thank AI, but Google minus AI (adding the “the disenshittification Konami code”) returns the same result. In AI mode, putting the question in quotation marks returns the correct year. Without AI, a search in quotation marks yields links for a funny mug, Instagram reels, and a piece of fiction: “I hurriedly stopped the two girls, ‘Excuse me, is it 2027 this year?’”

But we already know the answer: It is 2026 right now, and will be 2028 next year, followed by 2027.

250 to 250

“A series of one-minute stories of the many people, places, and events that have built our country and remind us of the power of each person to make history”: 250 to 250 is a new effort from Heather Cox Richardson and friends. Twelve stories so far.

Memorial Day 1926

[“Booing of Fascisti Stirs the Paraders: Blackshirts Near Blows with Taunters Who Tell Them They ‘Don't Belong’ in Line.” The New York Times, June 1, 1926.]

The article ends by quoting Dr. E.G. Citriolo, one of the leaders of the Fascist contingent:

“I understand that some protest was to have been made this morning at City Hall,” he said. “I understand from my informant that those opposed to us are anti-Fascisti. They are purely Communists. They have no country and no religion. Our three symbols are: Country, religion and family.”

And the past, as William Faulkner wrote, is never dead. It’s not even past.