Hearing Kristin Kobes Du Mez

On Nov. 18, 2020, it was my pleasure to hear author/historian/professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez speak about her poignant, pivotal book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation via Zoom for Calvin University's history department colloquium, "Jesus and John Wayne."

Quote of the Day

(Artists) have a mission to go out there and be an antidote to war, and all of the dark side of what happens on Planet Earth.  We're the ones that go in and remind people about their creativity.

-- Chick Corea

Quote of the Day

Learning never exhausts the mind.

-- Leonardo da Vinci

Quote of the Day

Socialism is a scare world they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.  Socialism is what they called public power.  Socialism is what they called social security.  Socialism is what they called farm price supports.  Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.  Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.  Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

-- Harry Truman, Oct. 10, 1952

Hearing Michael Eric Dyson

I attended Grand Rapids Community College's Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Diversity Lecture Series featuring keynote speaker Michael Eric Dyson virtually, via Zoom, last night.  I have read two of Dyson's powerful, poignant books, Tears We Cannot Stop and What Truth Sounds Like, and am currently reading his latest release, Long Time Coming.

Quote of the Day

You can't use reason to convince anyone out of an argument that they didn't use reason to get into.

-- Neil deGrasse Tyson

Quote of the Day

If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.

-- Ulysses S. Grant

Bookin' It in 2020

Sadly, I only finished reading a mere total of five books in 2020.  They are as follows. 

1.  A Wild and Precious Life: A Memoir by Edie Winsor with Joshua Lyon
2. Hatch Show Print: Letterpress Print and Design Since 1879 by Jim Sherraden with Celene Aubry
3. This Living by Reka Jellema
4. Save Yourself by Cameron Esposito
5. Logical Family by Armistead Maupin

Quote of the Day

... we would like very much to mention the four major freedoms that my friend and writing-and-arranging composer, Billy Strayhorn, lived by and enjoyed.  That was freedom from hate, unconditionally; freedom from self-pity; freedom from fear of possibly doing something that may help someone else more than it would him; and freedom from the kind of pride that could make a man feel that he is better than his brother.

-- Duke Ellington, upon receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Quote of the Day

Jazz is America's own.  It is played and listened to by all peoples -- in harmony together.  Pigmentation differences have no place...as in genuine democracy, only performance counts.

-- Norman Granz

Quote of the Day

Jazz is music; swing is business.

-- Duke Ellington

Quote of the Day

Jazz washes away the dust of everyday life.

-- Art Blakey