John Brown's Notes and Essays

She was a respected translator from French and a writer on astrology, but her magnum opus was a memoir of her time with Kerouac and the Beats.   image from article: Helen Weaver with Jack Kerouac in an undated photo. She spent nearly 20 years writing “The Awakener,” an evocative memoir about their brief relationship. Credit...via Weaver family  By Alex Traub , The New York Times , April 26, 2021, 10:00 a.m. ET [original article contains additional photographs and links] Helen Weaver [jb see ] , who fell in love with Jack Kerouac months before “On the Road” rocketed him into the literary stratosphere, and who 53 years later made a record of their romance in an enduring book of her own, died on April 13 at her home in Woodstock, N.Y. She was 89. Her niece Sally Weaver confirmed the death. Ms. Weaver, who by profession was a translator from French and a writer on astrology, spent nearly 20 years on her memoir, “The Awakener: A Memoir of Kerouac and the Fifties” (2009).   “...

Comment to an article by  Emma Bubola , "Italy’s Problem With School Dropouts Goes From Bad to Worse in Pandemic,"  The New York Times , April 26, 2021, Updated 7:07 a.m. ET  Comment by: Doug Tarnopol, Cranston, RI, 2h ago    image (not from article/comment) from A good article, but I don't get one thing -- and this is beyond Italy or this article or obvious issues with access to tech for remote learning. I have made online courses. I tutor, I am an instructional designer. I've done live teaching. Etc. Almost always, and without a doubt, online courses just aren't that great. It's true. But they're not horrible or awful -- usually. Many textbooks are not that great. Many live teachers are not that great. Many professors at college can't teach very well. So? You learn on your own...if you want to. The "want to" is the key. What needs to be taught and modeled by parents and the whole society is that as soon as possible -- and that is literally ...

Image from Breaking Point: How Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook Became Foes [--] The chief executives of Facebook and Apple have opposing visions for the future of the internet. Their differences are set to escalate this week. Image from article:   Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, left, and Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook. Credit...Mel Haasch   By Mike Isaac and Jack Nicas , The New York Times ,  April 26, 2021 Updated 8:02 a.m. ET; see also, which notes, "It’s difficult for Apple to block all tracking and fingerprinting happening on iPhones, privacy researchers said. That would require knowing about or predicting every new tracking method that an ad-tech firm comes up with. " SAN FRANCISCO — At a confab for tech and media moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho, in July 2019, Timothy D. Cook of Apple and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook sat down to repair their fraying relationship. For years, the chief executives had met annually at the conference, which was held by the ...

Reflections on time spent working for the late Mondale at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. By Ken Moskowitz , The Diplomat , April 21, 2021 Ken Moskowitz image (not from article)  from  [original article contains  a photo of Mr. Mondale] When Walter Mondale passed away on April 19, the many obituaries reminded us all of his illustrious career as an attorney, Minnesota attorney general, a liberal Democratic Party senator from the same state, and then vice president to Jimmy Carter. But reading these articles also reminded me of our two years working together at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, from 1993-95, where I was a press officer and he was Ambassador Mondale. My job, as we used to say, was to make him look good.   That was the easy part , because it was hard to make this good-natured, unpretentious, bright and articulate gentleman look anything but good. He had no enemies that I knew of, even after many years in the cauldron of American national politics. I was one of three...

Howard University’s board of trustees approved the decision to scrap the program, the only such department at a historically Black university. An online petition seeking to save Howard University’s classics department has been signed over 5,000 times. Credit...Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times By Allyson Waller , The New York Times , April 25, 2021, 9:14 a.m. ET  As an alumna of Howard University, Anika Prather remembers feeling that the classics were everywhere during her years as a student. No matter your major or field of study, she recalled, it was practically a given that classics would be woven into your educational experience.  “My brother was a pre-med student — we both went to Howard — and I remember sitting there seeing him read all types of classics, like we all had to, classics or some work of the canon, but then you’re reading it from a Black perspective,” Dr. Prather said. “It’s really incredible.” At Howard, the classics department is as old as the unive...

  The Future of Soft Power and Public Diplomacy: Report Launch CPD CONVERSATIONS UPCOMING EVENTS PAST EVENTS CONFERENCES CPD IN DC THE FUTURE OF SOFT POWER AND PUBLIC DIPLOMACY: REPORT LAUNCH Co-organized with Sanctuary Counsel In recent years the dynamics of global geopolitics have been wracked with uncertainty. Over the last year of the COVID-19 pandemic, a rising China, a revanchist Russia and a struggling West have added to this, with potential implications for the balance of global soft power. The pandemic itself has had significant implications for the operating context of foreign policy and public diplomacy practitioners. A new critical issues report published by  Sanctuary Counsel  and CPD: "The Future of Soft Power and Public Diplomacy" seeks to shed light on the emerging challenges and opportunities as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and a major reset in U.S. foreign policy under a new administration. Drawing on the insights of a global series of roundtables w...

In 1970, an image of a dead protester immediately became iconic. But what happened to the 14-year-old kneeling next to him?  (John Filo/Getty Images from )  By Patricia McCormick , The Washington Post ,  April 19, 2021 Excerpt: [jb: from a well-researched (but perhaps a bit too long) article] :  Last May, when Mary Ann Vecchio watched the video of George Floyd’s dying moments, she felt herself plummet through time and space — to a day almost exactly 50 years earlier. On that afternoon in 1970, the world was just as riveted by an image that showed the life draining out of a young man on the ground, this one a black-and-white still photo. Mary Ann was at the center of that photo, her arms raised in anguish, begging for help. That photo, of her kneeling over the body of Kent State University student Jeffrey Miller, is one of the most important images of the 20th century. Taken by student photographer John Filo, it captures Mary Ann’s raw grief and disbelief at the rea...