Three Good Links

Dharma Blues

Emilie Rose Jones at The Decision Lab. Constructive Memory

This is a really good 'explainer' about constructive memory theory. The connection between remembering past events and imagining future ones is helpful for understanding our curiosity about the past.

I'm certain that historians have a great deal of curiosity about the past, but their rigorous methods in gathering evidence about the past are different from how people use remembering. Particularly so when we are using our stories of the past to imagine futures. Academic standards about evidence are very important. But those standards aren't the same as ordinary people wondering "I wonder what it was like to be in those shoes?"

Adolph Reed and Kenneth Warren have a new book Black Studies, Cultural Politics, and the Evasion of Inequality: The Farce this Time. Reed and Warren argue against the "interpretive turn" in Black Studies. They're arguments are so important. And the arguments are far broader than simply opposing Saidiya Hartman. But I find it difficult to know where I stand in this general debate.

Here is an interview with Adolph Reed and Kenneth Warren in The Pittsburgh Review of Books. And here an interview with Saidiya Hartman in The White Review.

Os Ancestrias - Dom Salvador Live Session

Jazz Is Dead

Ron Carter is so generous in sharing his music and his vast experiences in making music.

This morning I watched a performance of Epistrophy from 1963 on Japanese TV. It's really engaging to watch Thelonious Monk play, and the cinematography of this performance is especially compelling. I wanted more of Charlie Rouse and stumbled on Cinnamon Flower, a album of Brazilan music released in 1977. It's part of Ron Carter's Universe!

Patrick Bruce (Pat) Oliphant

July 24, 1935 – July 13, 2026

D. D. Degg in The Daily Cartoonist. Pat Oliphant - RIP

Get Up, Stand Up

Hannes Bajor citing Judith N. Shklar in Journal of the History of Ideas Blog (2020). Strategies of Authority: The Distorting Think-Piece and the Case of Judith Shklar

Battle Hymn of the Republic (Live)

Justice Ketanji Jackson writing in concurrence with the majority in Trump v. Barbara (Pages 32-51)

Daniel Falcone in CounterPunch. America 250 and the Imperial Nation

Falcone's essay is supported with many links to many contemporary historical scholarship. He notes that [Thomas] "Paine was a rarity, as the lone progressive Founding Father in that he envisioned domestic liberty and not an empire." I'll confess to preferring Paine's vision. But I live near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and it's almost impossible to miss the imperial imperative.

I am not quite sure when I discovered that The French an Indian War was the North American theater of The Seven Years War. It was probably in high school, my history teacher was really good.

It's been a helpful connection. For example, deep in the forests of the Laurel Valley where I would hike was a huge stone iron forge from pre-Revolutionary time. I found out that the town closest to it in present day has barely 1000 in population was a center for nearly 50,000 in the days (I don't have a reference). One of the primary reasons for the forge was to make iron pans to evaporate salt for preserving meat.

When I drive near my home there are Indian names of places and roads. The first treated signed by The United States with Native American group was signed in 1778, The Fort Pitt Treaty. Fort Pitt is in downtown Pittsburgh.

I'm a naïf and so have been feeling a little excited about July 4th. Patriotic songs pop into mind like "It's a Grand Old Flag", and especially "America". I really do love that song.

But the cognitive dissonance is strong, the authoritarianism, the concentration camps, torture, renditions. How can we find joy in times of genocide?

There is a contradiction at the root of the country's founding. Surely we may take joy in the combined struggle for freedom, justice, equality and democracy. The struggle is not a national project alone.

In Atlanta on July 4th Spirit of Mandela is holding a National Mobilization Against Genocides. There's a full program with some events streamed.

Marcy Wheeler's headlines often make me crack a smile.

The reporting here is of the fraud and graft involved in the Great American State Fair.

I wonder if Donald Trump has ever been to a state fair?

My small community has a Grange Fair the week before Labor Day. What makes it so joyful are all the people. There are exhibits like prize vegetables, flower displays, woodworking, 4H education projects crafted by our talented neighbors. Bees, old tractors, and animals often cared for by teens. Everywhere you turn the presence of our neighbors is evident. The daily dinners are fantastic and inexpensive, planned and cooked by neighbors.

How Trump Hijacked America's 250th Birthday | Natural Resources Democrats

House Natural Resources Committee Democrats

Natural Resources Committee Democrats report: From Vanity to Insanity

Prinny Anderson in Coming to the Table. Gathering the Community at Monticello

Bridget Gillespie in The American Prospect. What Broke Monticello

When Did You Leave Heaven