Travels And Tribulations: QUARANTINE BLOG # 113

July 21, 2020

After changing its usage rules last month to capitalize the word “Black” when used in the context of race and culture, The Associated Press on Monday said it would not do the same for “white.” The National Association of Black Journalists and some Black scholars have said white should be capitalized, too.

👉 The Canadian government has denied the Toronto Blue Jays approval to play in Toronto because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Unlike preseason training, regular-season games would require repeated cross-border travel of Blue Jays players and staff, as well as opponent teams into and out of Canada,” Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said. “Of particular concern, the Toronto Blue Jays would be required to play in locations where the risk of virus transmission remains high. Based on the best-available public health advice, we have concluded the cross-border travel required for MLB regular-season play would not adequately protect Canadians’ health and safety. As a result, Canada will not be issuing a National Interest Exemption for the MLB’s regular season at this time.”

With baseball’s abbreviated season set to start Friday, the Blue Jays do not, as of this writing, have a place to play their home games. Alternative sites for their home games include the team’s spring training facility in Dunedin, Florida and the team’s Triple-A affiliate in Buffalo.

👉 You know that the owner of the Washington Redskins, Daniel Snyder, has responded to financial pressure and has announced he is changing his football team’s name. In a poll conducted by Yahoo, the name favored with 28% of the votes, is the Red Tails, a nickname which comes from the Tuskegee Airmen, the famed all-Black Tuskegee Airmen in World War II, and the painted color of the tails of their planes.

Lt. Col. Harold Brown, one of America’s first African-American military pilots, and is one of the nine surviving Tuskegee pilots who flew in combat, says, “Thinking about it sort of selfishly in terms of our own legacy, we are running out of pilots. “Waiting a few years, that would be the end of us. I don’t know of a better way to keep that name alive than to put it on a name right behind ‘Washington.’”

Among the surviving Airmen, however, the renaming doesn’t enjoy universal support. “I am not sure they are worthy of the Red Tail name,” says Lt. Col. James Harvey, 97. “They don’t win that many games plus a lot of the players have a poor attitude.” Two other surviving Tuskegee Airmen – Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson, 98, and Lt. Col. George Hardy, 95 – said they were still forming their opinion on the matter. A third, Brigadier General Charles McGee, 100, declined to comment.

👉 Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced Friday that she would override local school districts and require students to spend at least half of their schooling in classrooms despite the threat to teachers, students and their families from the surge in coronavirus cases in the state. Reynolds’ proclamation drew immediate criticism from the state teachers union, which called it short-sighted. One Democratic state senator accused Reynolds of ignoring science and common sense.

Reynolds’ decision will invalidate plans implemented by some districts, including the state’s largest, Des Moines, which planned to limit in-person classes to one day a week for most students, with online learning on other days. Her order did make an exception for parents who want their children to shift completely to remote learning.

👉 Gary Larson wrote The Far Side from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995, when he retired as a cartoonist. The Far Side was carried by more than 1,900 daily newspapers, translated into 17 languages, and collected into calendars, greeting cards, and 23 compilation books, and reruns are still carried in many newspapers. After a 25-year hiatus, in July 2020, Larson began drawing new Far Side strips offered through the comic’s official website: https://www.thefarside.com/.

Trying to describe Larson’s sense of humor is difficult. It is variously described as surrealistic, bizarre, and twisted. When you learn that Larson’s early inspiration was drawn from (pun intended) from MAD Magazine

and the work of Don Martin, you begin to have an insight.

“Cow Tools” was published in October 1982. It depicts a cow standing in front of a table of bizarre, misshapen implements. The cartoon confused many readers, who wrote or phoned in seeking an explanation of the joke. In response to the controversy, Larson issued a press release clarifying that the thrust of the cartoon was simply that, if a cow were to make tools, they would “lack something in sophistication.” He further explained that he was inspired by the idea that tool use was the characteristic that separated mankind from the rest of the animal kingdom. A writer for the New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/magazine/lady-mondegreen-and-the-miracle-of-misheard-song-lyrics.html described “Cow Tools” as the most loathed Far Side strip ever.

Editorial comment: being called loathsome by the New York Times is like being called ugly by a one-eyed bull frog.

One The Far Side cartoon shows two chimpanzees grooming. One finds a blonde human hair on the other and inquires, “Conducting a little more ‘research’ with that Jane Goodall tramp?” Goodall herself was in Africa at the time, and the Jane Goodall Institute thought this was in bad taste, and had their lawyers draft a letter to Larson and his distribution syndicate, in which they described the cartoon as an “atrocity.” They were stymied by Goodall herself when she returned and saw the cartoon. She stated that she found the cartoon amusing.