Kat's "Kat's Korner: Yusuf/Cat Stevens has still got it and then some" went up today. I loved Cat Stevens when I was in high school. He was my biggest musical crush. And I love Yusef/Cat Stevens' new album King Of A Land. I called Kat to congratulate her and tell her how much I enjoyed it.
She said she went over to C.I.'s to show it to Betty to see if it made sense. C.I. happened to wake up (Betty, Ty and his husband and Wally live at C.I.'s) and come downstairs to the kitchen to make some hot tea. C.I. sat at the table, drank her tea and took some medicine while she helped Kat edit it. And Ava stopped in (she lives next door) to check on C.I. and the two ended up writing.
C.I. has been so sick all last week. And I know from Betty and Kat that even though she was, she helped a professional writer she doesn't know personally who e-mailed the public e-mail account for The Common Ills. She had to open a zip drive and pull up websites and paste them into an e-mail for him for an article he may be working on.
She was also speaking last week, every day, multiple times and Kat had to grab her arm one time on Friday because she almost passed out.
So no one was surprised when she told us in a text -- and wrote at the site -- that she probably was taking off this week from Third. Jim advised us to all take off and we'd just regroup next weekend. But Kat says, while she was up helping edit Kat's piece, Ava came over and they started talking and she and C.I. ended up writing a piece. The only question now is does it go up by itself or are we supposed to all regroup tonight or tomorrow night to do a whole edition?
I have no idea. But Kat says it's a very powerful piece about racism.
She said C.I. started hacking real bad at the end but stayed until she and Ava had fine tuned their rough draft before going back upstairs to sleep.
Anyway, Yusuf/Cat turned 75 Friday. I did not know that. NME reports on it and notes:
Dolly Parton
“I have loved Cat Stevens from the first time I heard his voice, heard him play the guitar, and heard his wonderful, touching, deep lyrics. I also thought he was the most beautiful and mysterious man I had ever seen. I loved how his music touched my very soul…and still does. ‘Tea For The Tillerman’ is still my favorite album ever. I have recorded his ‘Peace Train’, one of the greatest songs ever written. I was also blessed to have him sing a duet with me on ‘Where Do The Children Play’, another one of my all time favorites. And I was proud to get to sing with him on his ‘Boots and Sand’ album. I love his music, but I also love his good heart and soul.”
Peter Gabriel
“I was a big fan of Yusuf or Cat as he was. It was his song writing and then his singing that drew me in. The unconventional way he would use rhythm, melody and song structure was fascinating to me. He found it so easy to break the convention of song writing without losing any heart or soulfulness.”
“I was very excited when Paul Samwell-Smith invited me to play flute on the ‘Mona Bone Jakon’ session [on “Katmandu”]. I was never much of a flute player and was very nervous. In fact, I believe they played my track back in solo and had a good laugh at the anxious breathing of a nineteen year old would-be flute player.”
Nile Rodgers, CHIC
“Yusuf and I spent some time together recently at Abbey Road and it reminded me that we share something in common which is that our primary purpose is to bring joy. These are joyful albums and he’s a deep joyous man. He’s a very special Cat indeed”
Carly Simon
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that if it wasn’t for Cat Stevens (as most of us knew his name as that) I would probably never have performed. When my first album came out, it was presented to me that Cat Stevens had asked me to open for him at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. I balked and I put up barriers, but the lure of being a part of that week was too attractive.”
“The first time I heard his voice which was on the radio earlier that year (1971) I had such an unusual reaction to it. It was brand new in every way except for one: it stirred my soul (up from the many) but like very few voices ever had. I had to hear it in person. Skip to the Troubadour and during the two days of rehearsal there, I got to hear him practice and it brought me out of the overly excited nervous system that may have usurped me, made me more self-preoccupied than would have been helpful.”
“He did transport me and grip me. The songs coming from that warm, dark, fierce place. The child like quality which he had in addition to the powerful adult male sexiness was so interesting, so charismatic. He had that quality that you couldn’t name. You had to go searching.”
“‘Peace Train’, ‘Moonshadow’, ‘The Wind’, ‘If I Laugh’ and all the songs I recognized from ‘Tea for the Tillerman’ were brilliant and of the same various emotional resonances each in their different way, but then he played: ‘How Can I Tell You’ and it became the song that is one of the songs of my life.”
“My son sang it at my daughter’s wedding, he (Ben) sang it everywhere. Even, in 2010 when as if by magic, Yusuf appeared at my hotel door in London when Ben and I were there performing. The concierge called from the lobby and announced him unexpectedly. Ben sang ‘How Can I Tell You’ for Yusuf and I am pretty sure it was one of the high points of my life. If I sound ecstatic I am. I’m not exaggerating.”
I love the new album. I think my favorite song on it is "Take The World Apart"
Or maybe it's "How Good It Feels"
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Friday:
Iraq has expelled Sweden's ambassador and recalled its top diplomatic representative from Sweden over the desecration of the Quran in the Nordic country.
The move came hours after protesters attacked the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad earlier Thursday, setting fire to part of the building.
The tensions between Iraq and Sweden began when an Iraqi national set fire to a copy of the Quran in the Swedish capital of Stockholm last month.
Eyewitnesses told CNN that the protesters withdrew from the perimeter of the Swedish Embassy after setting part of it on fire “after delivering their message of protest against the act of burning the Holy Book of God.”
Several journalists covering the protests were detained by security forces, and at least one was beaten, according to multiple organizations.
“Journalists should be free to report the news without fear of harassment or harm, wherever they are,” Reuters Iraq Bureau Chief Timour Azhari tweeted Thursday. Two detained Reuters journalists were released after several hours, the agency said.
Ziyad Al-Ajili, the head of the Iraq-based Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO) told CNN that three photojournalists working with international news agencies were arrested and another was beaten by security forces and his camera destroyed.
Lebanon's Shiite militant group Hezbollah also called for a demonstration Friday afternoon. Khamenei and Iran's theocracy serve as Hezbollah's main sponsor.
In Pakistan, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif strongly condemned the events in Sweden. He called on the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation to play a “historic role in expressing the sentiments of Muslims and stopping this demonization.” Meanwhile, Islamists in his country have been pushing Sharif, who faces an upcoming election, to cut diplomatic ties with Sweden.
"Raise your right hand, and repeat after me," an authoritative voice commanded.
I was 17 years old, in a room beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, and my parents had agreed to support my unwavering commitment to serve as a fresh recruit in the United States Army.
While a gleaming sense of honor enveloped me, there was an undeniable fear lingering in my eyes, stemming from the daunting task of standing tall as a queer soldier.
This fear was not new, but from past trauma from the experiences I had growing up. During my childhood, I was constantly reminded that being queer was not something to be proud of.
Being overcome with feelings of loneliness and abandonment was normal, especially when I heard the quiet whispers behind my back. I didn't feel like a man, but rather a complete outcast for one simple reason: I liked boys. I never could comprehend how something that seemed so small led to so much hate.
That was until I saw hate turn to murder.
I enlisted in the Army in 2017, shortly after the devastating Pulse nightclub shooting. During this moment, I couldn't help but be consumed by its harrowing aftermath. The thought relentlessly played over and over again in my mind.
A profound realization struck me: Love should be inconsequential, for we all wear the same uniform.
As a proud Army Officer, I have dedicated years of my life serving to protect the precious freedoms we hold so dear. But as a gay man, I have been fighting my whole life to enjoy the very privileges I am entitled to as both a beholder and protector of them.
According to CBS News, figures reveal there were 35,801 individuals discharged due to their sexual orientation from 1980 to 2011, and 81 percent of these soldiers were denied honorable discharges.
These soldiers were stripped of support systems that should have helped reintegrate them into society. Instead, these LGBTQ+ veterans have been abandoned by the very institutions they swore to protect.
Hensley responded by suing the commission for burdening her free exercise of religion and asking for $10,000 in damages. After the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Lorrie Smith in late June, Hensley’s lawyer submitted a letter brief that argued his client should prevail just as Smith had.
Hensley’s attorney, Jonathan Mitchell, acknowledged in the letter that the Court’s holding in 303 Creative v. Elenis had been grounded in First Amendment law, but argued that the ruling should still be “instructive,” because it stands for the idea that wedding vendors should not be compelled to participate in “same-sex and opposite-sex marriage ceremonies on equal terms.”
By contrast, Hensley’s objection is more closely analogous to the case of Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples even after the Supreme Court ruled that marriage equality was a constitutionally-protected right in 2015.
Like Hensley, Davis cited her personal religious objections to same-sex marriage as grounds for refusing to follow the law. When a federal court ordered Davis to start issuing marriage licenses, Davis appealed, lost, and was ultimately jailed for contempt of court.
According to the Texas judicial commission’s 2019 warning, Hensley referred gay couples who wanted her to preside over their marriage ceremony to other people who would officiate. The state’s judicial code requires judges to conduct “extra-judicial activities” in ways that don’t cast doubt on their impartiality on the bench. The commission issued a public warning, saying she cast doubt “on her capacity to act impartially to persons appearing before her as a judge due to the person’s sexual orientation.”
According to Dale Carpenter, chair of constitutional law at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law, the U.S. Supreme Court case has little to do with Hensley’s case, since one is dealing with private businesses, and Hensley is a government official acting in an official capacity.
Johnathan Gooch, a spokesperson for Equality Texas and a University of Texas at Austin School of Law graduate reiterated Carpenter’s points on the differences between the two cases, and pointed to Hensley’s position as a purveyor of the law.
“The law of the land is marriage equality. It’s as simple as that,” Gooch said. “If judges and justices of the peace were empowered to only enforce the laws that they agreed with, we would quickly descend into anarchy.”
With the Supreme Court decision on Creative LLC vs. Elenis, businesses could now be permitted to refuse service to same-sex couples.
In writing that "our Nation's answer" to "ideas we consider 'unattractive'" is "tolerance, not coercion" in the majority opinion, I believe Supreme Court Justice Niel Gorsuch essentially enables and empowers Jim-Crow-era systems of segregation against the LGBTQ+ community on the basis of the First Amendment.
We cannot sit idly as our hard-fought progress erodes and our fundamental rights are trampled upon. While exercising our right to vote holds profound significance, it alone is insufficient.
As a society, if we do not fight back and demand change, we will continue to move backward.
We must boldly challenge our leaders, celebrate queer jobs, and affirm to every American that inclusivity knows no bounds. This belief is what fuels the spirit of our soldiers, including myself, who fight to safeguard this very freedom that is entitled to all.
+ Under the Florida Board of Education’s newly approved Black history standards students will be taught that slavery was a kind of apprenticeship for Western Civilization, where enslaved Black people developed life and trade skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”
+ Jason Aldean–the country singer who was on-stage during the mass shooting at a 2017 Las Vegas concert that killed 60 people and wounded over 400 more–has recorded a song called “Try That In A Small Town” about how he and his friends will shoot you if you try to take their guns. The video for this tribute to the righteous vigilantism of Sundown towns features Aldean singing in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, where in 1927 a lynch mob of 300 white men strung up the body of Henry Coat from the second story window, after dragging his body through the streets of the town behind a car. According to historian Elizabeth Queene, around 20 Black men and boys were lynched, killed by other methods or “disappeared” by White mobs or the Ku Klux Klan in Maury County. In 1946, the town of Columbia was the site of a post-WW II “race riot,” where Thurgood Marshall, who was in town defending two of the black suspects, narrowly escaped being lynched himself.
+ Jason Aldean: “Try That in a Small Town, for me, refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up.” Aldean grew up in Macon, Georgia population 157,000.
+ This is something a reversal for Aldean, who just a couple of years ago released a song called “Rearview Town” about how he left a small town because it was so dull: “I could tough it out, but what’s the use? / A place that small, it’s hard to do.”
+ South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem: “I am shocked by what I’m seeing in this country, with people attempting to cancel the song and cancel Jason and his beliefs.” Uh, the Coup and the Dixie Chicks would like a word, Governor…
[. . .]
+ Aldean’s lynching “song” is now No. 1 on the charts. I wish someone would “cancel” one of my books.
+ Jason Isbell: “Dare Aldean to write his next single himself. That’s what we try in my small town.”
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