International Clash Day

Wednesday was International Clash Day. Thanks to Jen of WPRB's Running Redlights for letting me know. This is me catching up.

And I am a fan. Have been since 1978.

Work, the grocery, group therapy, buying RC Cola at the Village Pantry, and the bus ride home have been my activities so far.

The following items got me thinking about history; how unknowable the past can be because we do not want to know.

The Mysterious Madame Montour - JSTOR Daily

The cultural go-between in colonial settings is an important role for historians researching the power dynamics between different societies and individuals. In early America, there was a need for individuals who could not only serve as intermediaries between European and Indigenous groups, but between different languages—European and Native languages. One woman who filled this role in the early eighteenth century was known as Madame Montour, a uniquely talented interpreter living and working across the Great Lakes region. But her identity and life have been the subject of some debate, including in the archival collections at JSTOR.

The Murder Behind the George Polk Awards for Journalism - JSTOR Daily

Yet the murk of Cold War history means that it remains difficult to “distinguish between hard facts, plausible theories, and sheer fantasy.” Iatrides calls the best English-language book on the subject Edmund Keeley’s The Salonika Bay Murder: Cold War Politics and the Polk Affair (1989) precisely because it doesn’t offer a concrete solution. 

 History depends on the records kept. From the records come our interpretations. An incomplete record makes for awkward, even poor, interpretations. Poor interpretations being those that impose our current biases and prejudices on a past that operated on different biases and prejudices.

And we are still learning about ourselves and our world:

68 Million-Year-Old Antarctic Fossil Proves Existence Of Dinosaur-Era Ducks (IFLScience), but did they have orange sauce back then?

1.4-million-year-old jawbone reveals new human relative, rewriting evolutionary history (Archaeology News Online Magazine)

We had a brief discussion about conspiracy theories at group today. I have to do some looking into a couple of points, but the one being cited I do not think of as a conspiracy theory: COVID-19's origins. Whether if the outbreak originated in the Wuhan market or the lab, who is conspiring to do what?

This should be our anthem. Therefore, let's do it again.

2:38 pm

From COVID-19: How the search for the pandemic's origins turned poisonous (AP News), I think any conspiracy was on the Chinese side, and that looks like it was to save someone's ass job.

I still do not see an American conspiracy in CIA shifts assessment on Covid origins, saying lab leak likely caused outbreak (NBC News). The CIA is not confident of where it started, for what that's worth.

Nor did there appear to be any conspiracy between USA agencies to cover up the dangers of the disease in Live updates: Anthony Fauci goes before House Covid-19 panel over Coronavirus origins (CNN Politics.)

I am back where I started, but with a new question: what does it matter how the disease started when we do not seem ready for (concerned about?) the next pandemic?

Getting away from conspiracy theories, other items read this afternoon:

“I said, ‘The only way we can play 40 minutes is if we include Purple Haze.’ This guy grabbed me and said, ‘You got a lot of nerve!’” Billy Gibbons once covered Jimi Hendrix hits while supporting Hendrix on tour – and the guitar hero watched (Guitar World)

"It's Like You Shook the Universe and the Pieces Went in the Wrong Direction. Then Superman Enters" - Jason Aaron on Absolute Superman

3:27 pm

Why The Clash are still  The Only Band That Matters:

I do not see me going anywhere else today, except for a pack of smokes, so I leave you with this, a Clash cover:

That is for T2.

Now, I have some stuff to write and pork stew to taste.

sch