I was going to write about a fun feature that MLB will be doing for the All Star game this year – having fans vote for the four greatest players of each individual franchise, in addition to the four greatest living players, four greatest old time stars, and four greatest Negro League players. It was set to be a fun column.
And then this happened…
Some of you may have heard of John Lewis, a U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 5th congressional district who—with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and four others—was one of six leaders within civil rights organizations during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. But a lot of younger people may not know his name. Along with Andrew Aydin, Lewis’s Congressional aide, the duo released a graphic novel in 2013 about his fight for racial equality, now stretching over 50 years. While I may not be the first to review this, I thought it relevant to touch upon the importance of John Lewis and his role in a movement that changed the country. [Read more…]
Let me begin by making the following statement:
The Addison Recorder is not a political blog. We talk about popular culture here, and how it affects us at large. We shy away from politics – it’s not our specialty by any means. With that being said, the recent events in Ferguson, MO, New York, Cleveland, etc. (too many to list, sadly) have transcended pure politics and instead have become a cultural movement, a moment of recognition of how people relate to one another in America. This is a national moment, a historical moment, and that’s what drove me to the streets of downtown Chicago on Thursday night (12/4/14) to protest the failure to indict the police officers responsible for the choke-hold death of Eric Garner. I was joined in this by Alex, Andrew, and over a thousand other outraged citizens. Surreal, exhilarating, at times terrifying, it was something that needed to be done.
FEAR THE BEARD
The older I get and the more life experience I obtain, the more life imitates art…in rare cases the stories I imagine telling come true (more on that fifty years from now or when some of the principals are dead), but more specifically I see the ideas, hopes, and fears of past generations manifest in our reality. Above all, the work of Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) seems to be the most prescient.
I had a violently angry article primed and ready to go for this afternoon here at the Recorder, one that discusses the eroding values of our culture that have been showcased over the last few weeks by the tragedies in Boston, one that snarls and might be the angriest thing I’ve ever written.
Then I went to work and turned on ESPN and heard about Jason Collins’ announcement that he is “a 34 year old center,[…] black, [and] gay.” In light of the significance of this announcement, yelling about Twitter, ignorance, and racial stereotyping in modern America seemed…well…petty.
I would like to lead off that we here at the Addison Recorder are proud of Jason Collins, that we respect and support him, and that we are especially glad to see that his decision to come out has been WIDELY EMBRACED by a litany of public figures, both within the sporting world and outside of with.
(I will also readily admit that I am not a big enough aficionado of the NBA to be able to identify who Jason Collins was. My first response when I heard that an athlete came out this morning was “Wow, that’s awesome!…..who does he play for?” Immediately followed by “What position? Center? Halfback? Are the Wizards even a team anymore?” Needless to say, I’m not proud of myself.)
The best thing about Collins’ coming out is that it was immediately usurped in the news by Tim Tebow being cut by the New York Jets.
According to our records, this will be the 100th post on the Addison Recorder. Hard to believe we’ve done so much since that night in Julius Meinl when Travis concocted this idea.
Speaking of “we,” I’m almost positive that we, like so many of our friends and loved ones in our age group, spent the past week glued to televisions, web sites, and above all a startlingly dynamic Twitter to mourn, follow, and ultimately rejoice over the tumultuous week in Boston. A piece on just how much Twitter replaced media as our major source of information and our shaper of reactions may be due once we have a little more time and distance. But during the entire week, as I was doing all of the above actions with tears and laughter alike, the most significant rush of memories came about what that city means to me.
I went to Emerson College to study film, with a bit of writing and philosophy, and lived in Boston from 2003 to the very end of 2006. For the last two of those years, including the summer of ’06, Boylston Street was actually my home; I lived at the beaux-arts Little Building, the main Emerson dormitory, on the corner of Boylston and Tremont, right next to Boston Common, the Green Line stop, a CVS and a 7-11, a Dunkin’ Donuts (though that’s not surprising since there’s one on every corner), a little Chinese restaurant which had the best Crab Rangoon you could ask for, a magnificent dive of a New York style pizza establishment, and a Loew’s multiplex.
Even on Newbury Street, the fanciest in town…they use how many Dunkin’ Donuts are here to stump people on tour buses.
In short, everything a college student needed. Especially a slightly withdrawn college student trying to absorb everything he could in terms of art and culture, trying to learn from the masters of every art.
Originally, this was a one part editorial, short, sweet, and to the point. Given recent events, it only seems proper to expand on the initial thesis.
On Friday, America was presented with the news that Lance Armstrong would no longer be pursuing his defense against the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s allegations that he used performance-enhancing drugs throughout his competitive cycling career. These charges, mostly leveled by accusations, are serious threats in a sport where it sometimes feels as though a new winner takes the stage only to be dethroned when it is revealed that they cheated (see Landis, Floyd).
Now, Lance Armstrong, winner of seven consecutive Tour de France championships, whom we can only picture wearing the yellow jersey given to the leader of the pack, has stopped fighting the claims that he cheated during all of those competitions.
The U.S.A.D.A., in like kind, has decided to strip him of those titles, all of his awards, and banned him from competitive cycling for life. (Never mind that they technically don’t have the power to strip him of the Tour de France titles, something governed by the I.O.C. But that’s besides the point.)
You’ve read all of these things before. [Read more…]
To begin, let me just say that, on behalf of all of us at the Addison Recorder, I would like to offer our condolences to all of the victims of the shooting that happened early this morning at the movie theatre in Aurora, CO. These murders are horrifying, a senseless act of violence that might seem like a vast impossibility, and because of the nature of this particular act, many of us around the nation, and the world, are in a deep state of mourning today.
There are many things to be said about this attack. I want to try and keep from politicizing the nature of the event, casting blame about, and making this into something more than it is. Lord knows that I want to rant about several things, and I’ve struggled with this in my mind as I sit down to write out my thoughts and feelings. Therefore, I apologize if this gets wordy, windy, or overly dramatic. If you wish to avoid such thoughts (though I’m trying to avoid getting preachy), close out now and you won’t have to suffer through my thoughts.