Showing posts with label Baton Rouge Magnet High. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baton Rouge Magnet High. Show all posts

Monday, April 06, 2020

The records that made me (some of 'em):
Never Mind the Bollocks



OK, back to the coal mine -- with my ghetto blaster.

The weekend intruded upon my recounting of 10 influential albums in my life. We resume the recounting with No. 6 in the series . . . the Sex Pistols' 1977 bombshell, "Never Mind the Bollocks."

I got stories about the Sex Pistols. I'll draw upon a 2006 blog entry to tell you about that anew.


But that story starts in the summer of 1977, when my Aunt Ailsa, an English war bride, flew home to Southampton to visit family. By that time, befuddled American foreign correspondents were sending back dispatches about this British phenomenon called "punk rock" and its antihero leaders, the Sex Pistols.

The current single by Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Paul Cook and Steve Jones was "God Save the Queen." It had been banned by the BBC. I was 16. Naturally, I had to have it.

And when Aunt Ailsa got back to Baton Rouge, I did. As far as I knew, I had the only Sex Pistols record in town. Maybe one of the few in the United States. You certainly didn't hear the Sex Pistols anywhere on local radio.

I preferred to think my aunt had to go in the back door of a Southhampton record shop and ask a cannabis-toking clerk "I say, do you have the stuff?" And then, in my teenage imagination, the clerk put down his bag of chips, slipped the 45 into a brown paper bag, and handed it to her. She then would have put a pound note into his resin- and grease-tainted hand, immediately lit a cigarette to mask the smell of second-hand marijuana smoke clinging to her clothes and slipped back out the back door.



MORE LIKE IT, she went in the front door of HMV, grabbed "God Save the Queen" off the rack and paid the teenage clerk at the front counter.

I like my 16-year-old imagination's version better.

Anyway . . . the fine folks in Red Stick thought the Beatles were dangerous and the Rolling Stones were spawns of Satan. Little did they know.

For example:
God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
A potential H-bomb

God save the queen
She's not a human being
and There's no future
And England's dreaming

Don't be told what you want
Don't be told what you need
There's no future
No future
No future for you

God save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves

God save the queen
'Cause tourists are money
And our figurehead
Is not what she seems

Oh God save history
God save your mad parade
Oh Lord God have mercy
All crimes are paid
Oh when there's no future
How can there be sin
We're the flowers
In the dustbin
We're the poison
In your human machine
We're the future. . . .
MAN, I WAS a blue-collar kid in the Deep South. I was, for the first time in my life, at a school where ideas mattered and, like, thinking was encouraged and not reason to label you a weirdo or a "n****r-lover" -- or maybe "queer."

I mean, in the redneck corners of Louisiana, one did not lightly refer to thespians while among people who thought a thespian was other than what he or she actually was.


No, being at Baton Rouge Magnet High School blew a blue-collar kid's mind wide open in a Technicolor frenzy of Dreaming Big. Such was life at the Maggot School.

"The Maggot School" is what White Trash Nation called Baton Rouge High throughout my tenure there -- 1976-79. It was the place where all the geeks, brainiacs, musicians and thespians could be weirdos together in relative harmony and contentment. Hey, at BRHS, it was good to be a thespian.

If Student X had admitted to being a thespian at Broadmoor Junior High, I garon-damn-tee you someone would have beat him (or her) up and administered an enthusiastic version of the Toilet Water Taste Test. And the boys would have been even more vicious.

 
You just as well had put on an ascot and admitted to being a Homo sapiens. Or, better yet, called Junior Martinez (pronounced MART'un-ez) a Homo sapiens.

Anyway, Baton Rouge High, by the 1975-76 school year, was a struggling inner-city school whose halcyon days had gone the way of poodle skirts, B-52s (the hairdo, not the band) and "separate but equal." Then someone had an idea -- a magnet school for academics and the performing arts.

My parents were leery of this thing (I'll bet you can guess why), but I got to go. Miracle of miracles!

Well, Baton Rouge High had -- and still has -- a radio station. A real, honest-to-God, student-operated, over-the-air FM radio station -- WBRH. And thus, in high school, your Mighty Favog learned everything he needed to know.

The college education was for my liver.
 


ANYWAY . . . let me tell you about when WBRH introduced Baton Rouge to punk rock in 1977.

I found out about the Sex Pistols on Weekend, the NBC newsmagazine that preempted Saturday Night Live once a month back in the day. In this case, "back in the day" was, I reckon, spring 1977. Anyway, it seemed that the Pistols were about as pissed at the world as my teenage self, they could rock and -- best of all -- they terrified polite society as much as anything I had seen in my young life.

The fall of '77, I was enrolled in Radio I. I wasn't allowed an air shift yet; back then you first had to get a federal license -- by passing an exam. But I knew bunches of people in Radio II who had their third tickets (radio operator's licenses). Soon, the Sex Pistols were on the Baton Rouge airwaves, via the 20-watt blowtorch signal at 90.1 FM.

One fall afternoon, I was sitting in with Charles, a junior, during the afternoon rock show. He was skeptical of the Sex Pistols, but played it and asked for listener feedback. What feedback you get from a high-school FM blowtorch (that is, not a bunch) was decidedly mixed.

AFTER A WEEK or so of playing Baton Rouge's one copy of a Sex Pistols record, we did get some strong feedback. It was from the licensee of WBRH, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board. And it went something like this: We don't know what the hell that is you've been playing on the radio station, but we want you to cut it out. NOW!

The radio instructor and general manager, John Dobbs, liked his teaching gig. The 45 was confiscated, and the Sex Pistols faced the same fate at WBRH that the lads did at the BBC. Banned.

I did retrieve my record from The Iron Fist of the Oppressor, but only after I agreed never to bring it back. It sits, carefully preserved in its famous picture sleeve, in a plastic file box, along with all my other 45s from Back in the Day.

Now, Charles was -- is? -- an interesting guy. Think of Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties a good five years before there was a Family Ties. Only African-American.


It probably was in the spring of '78 that I was again hanging out with Charles in the radio control room, playing the likes of David Gilmour, The Fabulous Poodles, Toto, the Cars, Journey and Queen. Maybe some Commodores -- Brick House, baby! -- and Parliament/Funkadelic.

Well, that day, obviously not enough "Brick House" or "P-Funk."

(Flash. Flash. Flash. Hey, radio-studio phones flash; they don't ring. OK?)

Charles: WBRH!

Caller: Hey, man, why don't you play some n****r music, man! ("N****r" = Not Polite, Racist and Offensive Term for African-American -- then, now or ever.)

Charles: Uhhhhh, excuse me, but I happen to be black.

Caller: Oh, uhhh, oh . . . oh, I'm sorry, man! How about playin' some BLACK music for me, man!

Charles: I'll see what I can do. (Slams phone down.) Redneck son of a bitch!
I DON'T THINK the guy got his "n****r music" played, man.

Now, I think there was a point to this post when I started it. I'll see whether I can get back to it.

When the Sex Pistols' first LP, "Never Mind the Bollocks" -- you know, the point of this whole missive -- came out in November 1977, I made it to the Musicland at Cortana Mall in the manner of someone whose head was on fire and his ass was catchin'.


Is what I'm sayin'.

And it did not disappoint when I got it on the stereo. I was dangerous, too -- in both 45 and 33⅓.

I'd like to think I still am at age 59. My wife of almost 37 years might disagree.

Thursday, April 02, 2020

The records that made me (some of 'em):
Darkness on the Edge of Town


If I somehow had never heard of John Prine, this would be No. 1 in my (actually) no-particular-order list of record albums that had the most influence on me: "Darkness on the Edge of Town" by Bruce Springsteen -- channeler of the young man's angst in 1978.

I was turned on to The Boss by Loose Radio (God rest its amazing FM soul) and an old friend back at Baton Rouge High School. I was a megafan on contact, and "Badlands" became my personal anthem for a long, long time.

John Prine was the consummate chronicler of the universal human condition, but Scooter and the Big Man had the key to my restless teenage American heart and gut (which I had a hell of a lot less of back in the day). In short order after buying "Darkness," I acquired "Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J." and "The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle" and "Born to Run."

And I pounced on "The River" as soon as it hit Kadair's (or was it Leisure Landing?) in 1980, my sophomore year at Louisiana State. Then I was in the crowd when The Boss played the LSU Assembly Center on Nov. 11, 1980. Still have the ticket stub somewhere.



I SAW The Who earlier that year (they blew up the stage, and I still have the tinnitus to prove it -- I had great seats), but Bruce and the band was better. That's saying something.

Another thing I have to say: Another high-school friend somehow got onto the stage -- and to Bruce. Or, as (God rest its newspaper soul) the State-Times' Laurie Smith reported in the next day's review "one girl got through to Springsteen before she was pulled away."

My friend obviously had somewhat better seats than my girlfriend and I did.

It was the best concert I'd ever seen . . . until I saw John Prine a couple of years later at the LSU Union Theater. It was a damned close concert competition -- maybe it was the Union Theater's relative intimacy that gave Prine the edge.

Who cares? It was all GREAT.

I cannot remember if I cried when Springsteen sang "Independence Day" at the show. Probably not -- I was with a date, don't you know?

I sure as shit cried when I first heard that song on "The River," in the privacy of my bedroom. Bruce had the same relationship with his old man that I had with mine -- complicated. Real complicated.

I SUPPOSE it says something about LSU and the Gret Stet that the Springsteen lyric I set in headline type and posted on my bulletin-board space at The Daily Reveille kept getting taken down:

I wanna find one place, I wanna spit in the face of these
Badlands you gotta live it every day
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you've gotta pay
Well keep pushin' till it's understood
And these badlands start treating us good
Well, if Bruce taught us all anything, it's that shit happens. Often.


The records that made me (some of 'em): Bruised Orange


A Facebook friend (also a non-online one of decades) tagged me on one of these Facebooky things the other day -- this one to post a picture each day of 10 record albums that have influenced your life. Well, I can do that.

The reason for my social-media tagging seemed to be the crap ton of vinyl and CDs engulfing the house) to post a cover a day of 10 albums that shaped my musical consciousness. Oy. Just 10? Just post the picture and not gas on about the choice? Not a chance.


Will I forget to keep doing it after No. 3?

Stay tuned. Here's No. 1.


Gris-Gris, Feb. 9, 1977
I BOUGHT this LP in the fall of 1978 from the record bin at the LSU Union Bookstore during a break from the state high-school journalism conference -- I was a senior at Baton Rouge High. I'd heard much about this John Prine guy (and seen all the ads in the local alt-weekly, Gris Gris, for his NORML benefit concerts), and I was officially intrigued.

After I got home and ensconced myself in my room (and my pride-and-joy stereo setup that I still have and use . . . the Marantz 2226 receiver, at least), I dropped the needle on this record and had my horizons radically expanded by one of the greatest songwriters this country ever produced.

Frankly, I think he edges out Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, the man who gave words to my townie angst and desire to get the F out of "these Badlands."

When I had finished listening to "Bruised Orange," I understood the meaning of "transcendent" a little bit better. I had just lived it, and I was filled with a desire to get all the Prine that I could manage.

I had been eclecticized, and I hope one day to tell Mr. Prine in person what he's meant to so many of us. He damn well better get well from this damnable COVID-19 thing.

Please, God? OK?


Thursday, October 05, 2017

Fear and loathing in high-school radio


Who's the leader of the station that's made for you and me?

N-O-T  Y-O-U,  teen-age disc joc-key.

And when it comes to our public schools and the people who run them, the exercise of authority over the inmates students can, indeed, quickly become a real Mickey Mouse operation. This usually comes down to raw politics . . . and the sad reality that once they turn 18, the kids who sat in the back of the classroom are eligible to vote for school board.

Another other sad reality -- and this is one teenagers generally learn long before graduation -- is that what you learn in civics class is 75 percent aspiration and only 25 percent actual execution.

Take your constitutional rights as public-school students, for example. Despite the case law on, say, high-schoolers' First Amendment rights being pretty well settled since the early 1970s -- and since 1943 in the case of those choosing to not stand for the Pledge of Allegiance or the national anthem -- every year, some principal or some school board will try to show some dissident somewhere who the real boss is.

I think you can get the right answer to this question even without the benefit of a multiple-choice exam.

So, every year some principal tries to censor or shut down some high school newspaper or, this year, threaten prep football players with "fire and fury" if they take a knee against racial injustice during the Star-Spangled Banner on Friday night. And unless the student knows a really good lawyer. . . .

Because people are stupid, politicians feel the need to be even stupider. It's a matter of solidarity with the electorate. Mostly, though, it's a matter of getting re-elected.

WBRH bumper sticker, circa 1978
WHEN I was growing up in Louisiana, and on the student side of the power equation, things could get a little weird.  This had a lot to do with how politics pervade everything in Louisiana . . . and how politics in the Gret Stet tend to have this certain Venezuelan je ne sais quoi.

This is where the "fear, loathing and radio" part of the post kicks in.

In any banana republic, the first lesson one learns -- or else -- is not to piss off the Maximum Leader. This goes double for the party newspaper and state radio. When the party organ is your local high-school newspaper and state radio is, for instance, the student beacon of Hometown High, students may have their First Amendment rights, but the Maximum Leaders in the principal's office and on the school board still have leverage.

Like money, for instance. Like the power to hire or fire faculty, for another. Like just shutting this troublesome radio station the hell down. When push comes to shove, "freedom of the press" belongs to him who owns one.

Does the Maximum Leader have to threaten a thing? Nope. Sane employees with house notes to pay and kids to feed know who butters their toast. And Maximum Leader Is Watching YOU.

August 1977
IN THE CASE of WBRH, the radio voice of Baton Rouge Magnet High School, the licensee isn't the Autonomous Students of Baton Rouge High. It is the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board.

Can the state exercise prior restraint against students who staff official, publicly funded media? Theoretically, no, if Maximum Leader cares to pay lip service to the U.S. Constitution.

But does the constitution require the state to fund a radio station or any other official organ? As far as I know . . . no. There's always an angle.

Especially in Louisiana, a state filled with geometry savants.

In banana republics, the peasants always are seditious, Maximum Leader always has an itchy trigger finger, and the employees on the bottom of the government's food chain always are nervous.

WBRH radio now takes you to the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, where Smiley Anders' universally read local column has just rolled off the press. It is June 1, 1981.


IT IS DELUSIONAL to think that everybody who was anybody at the East Baton Rouge Parish schools central office didn't either read, hear about or field jokesters' telephone calls about Smiley Anders' column that day.

It likewise would be delusional to think that the WBRH general manager, radio broadcasting and electronics teacher John Dobbs, didn't quite reasonably think "Oh, shit . . ." when he saw Smiley's column. Or was told about it in no uncertain terms.


We again take you to the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, where Smiley Anders' universally read local column has just rolled off the press. It is June 3, 1981.


MY LAST airshift at WBRH came a couple of years before that -- I graduated in May 1979. And it's true: It was a tradition and, thus, a coincidence.

But there's no denying that it was an epic and happy coincidence. Well, not for Mr. Dobbs, but still . . . coincidence or not, in the world of student media, you take your shots when you're able, and you count your victories when you can.


In my student-media days, I counted a few victories. I also racked up some defeats and collected a couple of battle scars.

First, there was the time I helped introduce Baton Rouge to the Sex Pistols when I brought my British-import 45 of "God Save the Queen" to the studios of 90.1 FM. Maximum Leader was watching. Or listening, actually.

After a few spins during the fall of 1977, "God Save the Queen" was as banned in Baton Rouge as it was on the BBC. Mr. Dobbs even confiscated my 45. I got it back when I promised never to bring it back.


Then, maybe a couple of months later, there was the time we had Fannie Godwin on Teen Forum, the 20-watt, high-school FM radio version of Meet the Press. I'm sure it was indistinguishable from Bill Monroe's NBC program but for the acne.

Godwin was a local activist, vice-president of the Baton Rouge ACLU chapter and a "school board watcher," meaning "watchdog" in regular American English. In the fall of 1977, the organization had undertaken the controversial, nay, subversive practice of . . . passing out booklets to high-school students informing them about their constitutional rights.


IN 1977, this was a full-blown, red-alert controversy in Baton Rouge. I'm sure it would be today, too. 

The Other Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook informed East Baton Rouge Parish students, right there on the cover, that "You are not in the Army. You are not in prison. It only seems like it. . . ." This was because 40 years ago in my hometown, in most high schools, it seemed like you were in the Army. In a few, notably Zachary High School under Obergrüppenführer Jerry Boudreaux, some freethinkers swore it was a lot more like a prison.

This seems to be the part that got folks the most riled up. Naturally, it involved the First Amendment.
You can speak your mind, wear buttons, and arm bands, hand out literature, picket, form clubs and invite speakers, all on school grounds as long as you don't clearly interrupt the normal school process. It will be up to the administration to prove disruption. You do not need prior permission (even though the parish handbook says you do) to speak, wear buttons, hold meetings, and form clubs.
 
THE PARISH school board called the Zachary High administration, parents, students and good Christian townspeople of Zachary before it to mount a defense against the horrible allegations with which the American Civil Liberties Union was filling reporters' minds -- and stories.

Obergrüppenführer Boudreaux denied all. Parents decried the civil-liberties troublemakers. Students took the microphone to pull what we'd later come to recognize as total Tracy Flick moves.

"A former Zachary student, who did not give his name, said he was 'unlucky enough' to have also attended other high schools," State-Times reporter Linda Lightfoot wrote in the Sept. 16, 1977, edition of the evening paper. 
"Nobody makes us salute the flag," he said. "We are proud to be a Christian community.“

He added that the "ACLU is dead wrong if it is saying Jerry Boudreaux is running the school in a totalitarian manner."

Darwin Williams. a senior at Zachary, said a "glint of Communism" shows through in the ACLU literature.

Jill Wilson, editor at the Zachary High school paper, said that the ACLU leaflet seemed to imply that she could say anything she wanted to say in the school paper. “Well, I don't want it that way," she said.
State-Times, Sept. 16, 1977. Click for full-size version

IN ZACHARY, obviously there was no pravda in Izvestia and no izvestia in Pravda.

This was the milieu amid which WBRH had Fannie Godwin, second-ranking "commie" in all the parish, on Teen Forum. Charles Knighten was the moderator; I was one of the panelists.

We were keen to know about these constitutional rights students possessed. And we talked much about the ACLU's alternative student handbook.

A just-graduated friend -- a former WBRH staffer -- had dropped by the studio as we were about to tape the program. He told me of pre-performance prayers by the drama students and teacher, suggesting that would make for a good line of questioning.

It was a good topic to quiz the local ACLU vice-president about. If you were (1.) an independent journalist at (2.) a news-media outlet (3.) somewhere in the United States of America.

My journalism and civics teachers would have told me I was, WBRH was, and Louisiana was. Facts on the ground would come to indicate (1.) no, (2.) no, and (3.) "What have you been smoking?"


We thought the show went swimmingly and that Fannie was a great guest. After all, her needling of members during school board meetings surely was high performance art before anyone had heard of performance art.

Someone somewhere in the Maximum Leader ranks thought otherwise. Apparently, I had passed classified material to the enemy.

I was off the Teen Forum panel. And I don't think Teen Forum was back for a second season.


SO, what have I learned in these 40 years since my high-school radio days?

Well . . . I'll tell you.

I've learned that WBRH is made of sturdy stuff. Baton Rouge High's FM station has survived many Maximum Leaders in the school board central office, has endured the politics that infest every single damn thing in my home state, and has grown exponentially despite it all . . . by sticking to the music. Teen Forum still is dead as a door nail, though.

I've learned that digging through old hometown newspapers from one's salad days sure knocks the rose color off your glasses right quick. Ugliness in black and white beats the crap out of nostalgia and sentimentalism every time. (I also am reminded of why I got the hell out of Baton Rouge -- for the last time -- nearly 30 years ago. According to contemporary headlines, things there haven't much improved.)


I've learned that even though I disagree with the ACLU on some things, America damn well needs the ACLU.

Finally, I've learned from the latest effort by "good, Christian Americans" to vilify and intimidate those who, in protest of injustice, take a knee for the national anthem that some things never change. At all.

I have learned that, in this country, there is a wide gulf between the rights society tells people they possess and the rights society permits them to exercise in peace.
 

BATON ROUGE HIGH,  God bless it, was not the Army and was not a prison. Despite the best malevolent efforts of Louisiana's various Maximum Leaders, my old school was a great old school . . . and still is. There, I learned pretty much everything I needed to know in life.

College was just for the advanced degree in drinking.

Saturday, July 01, 2017

3 Chords & the Truth: The spirit of '76


There's no percentage in the present, so let's try the past.

Does 1976 sound good? Sounds good to me -- '76 was a very good year to be young and in love with music.

So it's settled . . . and the spirit of '76 it is! And it's all goin' down on the Big Show.

Now fasten your seat belt for a journey to the center of the Seventies. Stay tuned for complimentary 8-track tapes and some really cool tunes.

Right on, man!

Next stop: Recaptured youth and another crack at high school.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.


Saturday, April 08, 2017

We're gonna party like it's . . . 1992


This is 90-something minutes of alternative rock 'n' roll greatness.

This is WBRH, 90.3 on your FM dial in Baton Rouge, La., almost a quarter century ago now. This also is a high-school radio station -- the broadcast voice of Baton Rouge Magnet High School.

I don't know who the DJ is . . . but she is on fire with the music she's choosing.

Likewise, I don't know when in September 1992 this aircheck was recorded, nor do I know the time of day. All I do know is this is my old station (1977-79) near the height of its musical powers.

I had been living in Omaha for more than four years by the time someone rolled tape on this bit of radio history . . . and there is no way the much larger city up Nawth had a rock station as good as this back then.

Or now, for that matter.


Friday, May 20, 2016

Remember, man, that you are dust


This cartoon comes from the 1928 edition of the Baton Rouge High School yearbook, the Fricassee.

I first saw it some 37 years ago, when I was layout editor of the 1979 edition of the Fricassee. Some of us were going through the yearbook archives, leafing through all the old editions of our school's annual that we could find in the cluttered old cabinets of our cluttered old classroom . . . and there it was.

Even back in 1978 or '79, even for those of us Baton Rouge public-school kids, who went to segregated schools -- legally segregated schools -- until just eight years before, the cartoon was striking. Stunning, actually.

Yes, it was the open racism -- the naked, unvarnished and unapologetic racism. But more than that, it was that kids our age -- a decade or more before our parents would be that age -- would be that ugly, that publicly and that casually. This was something powerful enough to give pause to a generation, black and white, raised in the midst of, then in the dark shadow of, Jim Crow.

We had grown up with the crazy aunt in the Southern attic. For many of us, the N-word was something we heard every day. For others of us, the N-word was something used to describe us every day.

"Humor" from the 1924 Fricassee (Click to enlarge)
FOR SOME OF US, rank hypocrisy was a virtue that our culture had developed in the years since 1928. Southerners of a certain age can explain to you . . . well, can try to explain to you how there are worse things than being a damned, two-faced hypocrite. For instance, one worse thing is not being one.

Another worse thing is white Baton Rouge, circa 1928 -- of living with a horror you cannot experience as horror at all.

Can you imagine the wretchedness of living with a  conscience that dead? Or, more charitably, a conscience that unformed and uninformed?

Is there much in this world worse than glib, cheerful and constant evil that one commits, thinking of it all the while as an obvious virtue?  

Oh, I imagine many people today could imagine that . . . if only they were self-aware enough to realize they're living it.

AT ABOUT the time we on the Fricassee staff were getting acquainted with just how far our forebears could let their racism and bigotry hang out, Kansas (the rock group, not the state) had a Top-40 hit, "Dust in the Wind."
I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone
All my dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind
All they are is dust in the wind

Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
ALL THE STAFF of the 1928 Fricassee were dust, and to dust they have returned, no doubt. All their hopes, all their dreams, most of their works . . . dust.

That cartoon? It endures. There it is, frozen in time to judge and be judged.

We see the thing today, and we proclaim judgment on that which now is dust. The thing itself, it emerges from nearly nine decades past to stand in yellowing witness to a creator and a culture. To dust . . . dust from the ash bin of history.
 
That casual racism, the glib reduction of those unlike themselves to objects of ridicule, belies the notion that for some, others are indeed The Other, and The Other is less human than oneself, or perhaps not human at all. And if a group is less human than oneself, or not human at all -- and certainly if they're less powerful -- you can do whatever you like to them.

That's human nature. That's our fallen condition, and it's as old as Adam. We, of course, don't recognize -- or refuse to admit -- that, because Baton Rouge High, 1928.


Because Selma, 1965.

Because Birmingham, 1963.

Because Montgomery, 1954.


Because Berlin, 1933.

Because Fort Sumter, 1861.

Because. Just because.

SO HERE we stand, Donald Trump, 2016. Many American whites have decided that old hatred is the new black, and we get to be as ugly, and bigoted, and in your face as we want because a rich, vulgarian scumbag of a real-estate tycoon and reality-TV star is "telling it like it is."

"Telling it like it is" isn't, of course. Instead, it's just more of those same old lies that we prefer to hear -- the stinking spiritual and mental garbage we find so much more palatable than the God's honest truth.

Today, "fighting political correctness" just means we no longer have to bother with the virtue of rank hypocrisy, that mechanism through which malefaction pays backhanded tribute to virtue. Nowadays, we prefer our evil straight up.

"Telling it like it is" brings us back to Fricassee 1928. "It pays to read the signs."

A bit of virtuous hypocrisy from the depths of Jim Crow . . .
an ad from the 1952 Pow-Wow, the yearbook of Baton Rouge's
Istrouma High School. Click on the ad to read.

Thursday, April 03, 2014

Louisiana: What doesn't kill you. . . .


If you are really good at something and really want to test yourself, move to Louisiana.

Anybody can be good at something if they have the right tools and institutional support. But only the
crème de la crème can be good at something in Louisiana, where you'll be looked upon with suspicion for your uppityness and be consigned to toil in decrepitude while officialdom spends taxpayer dollars on more important things than, say, education.

Like, say, graft.

Or, say, an archive in Franklinton dedicated to a former two-term Republican governor. Who happened to be the political mentor of the present two-term Republican governor, Bobby Brady Jindal.

I'm pretty sure of two things: First, that my home state has serious problems with priorities and, second, that the best ceramics artists in the universe are found at Louisiana State University. I know this about the LSU art school because its ceramics program is ranked ninth in the country, and the students and professors have managed to achieve that level of notoriety as they dodge falling concrete ceilings while fighting off rats, raccoons and fleas in the Studio Arts Building. That's no easy feat as you struggle not to inhale asbestos particles or ingest lead-paint chips.

And then there's the electrical wiring next to ceiling leaks.

And the broken windows, some of which won't lock.


And the flood-prone basement.

And the lack of climate control like, say, heating and air conditioning. Ever been to south Louisiana in  August and September? An art student fainted during class last fall -- the temperature inside was nearly 100 degrees, the (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reports:
Emily Seba/Facebook

Gleason said while she’s at the building she forces herself to take five-minute breaks outside. She spends about 26 hours a week there between class and work, and she worries the mold, asbestos and lead paint that LSU’s own facilities department confirmed is on most every surface might be harmful to her health. “It’s a concern,” she said.

When maintenance crews worked over the Christmas break to scrape asbestos off of steam pipes in the building, they removed some insulation, too. The steam got so hot, it ruined a student’s artwork nearby, Gleason said. These type of maintenance efforts occur regularly, costing a “couple hundred thousand dollars” a year, LSU Office of Facility Services Planning, Design and Construction Director Roger Husser estimated. His department, too, is eager to permanently solve the building’s problems rather than continue the Band-Aid method that’s driving up maintenance costs. But it’s not his call.
As the building’s conditions worsen, maintenance costs grow and students question their safety, renovation plans sit on the shelf, awaiting $15 million from the state needed for renovations. To show they won’t sit idly by as their needs get trumped by programs with big donors or lucrative ticket sales, students have planned protests on Thursday (April 3) at LSU’s campus and Tuesday (April 8) at the steps of the Capitol to ask for better working conditions and a safe environment.
But unless what’s sure to be creatively designed picket signs inspire a change in the political will of the Louisiana Legislature and Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration -- their protests this week and next, according to one lawmaker, will be in vain.

Sen. Dan Claitor, R-Baton Rouge, a self-proclaimed cheerleader for the arts who toured conditions of the Studio Arts building last fall, said if it were up to him the project would get the needed funding, but “a handful of legislators are not going to be able to (get enough support) to fund it on their own.”

Without private funding matches, the arts building simply doesn’t rise to the priority level of other donor-backed projects, which tend to get bumped up the list much faster. Though Husser said the Studio Arts building has been in the capital outlay queue for “a very long time,” if the state sees an opportunity to take advantage of private match, it will usually take it. But that means projects without donor support will keep slipping down rungs of the ladder as privately aided ones climb up. “The pie is not unlimited,” Claitor said. “The budget is tapped out.”




I WOULDN'T say the budget is "tapped out," exactly. It's just that everything else in the budget -- from Medicaid to masking tape -- has been deemed more important than giving art students at Louisiana's flagship university facilities fit for human habitation . . . as opposed to that of rats, raccoons and fleas.

Still, LSU's School of Art is fielding nationally noted programs. It's rather like winning Olympic medals in the 100-meter dash while dragging a boat anchor.

For three straight Olympics.


Writes columnist Stephanie Riegel in the Baton Rouge Business Report:
Since the early 2000s, the building has been slated for renovation. Several times, the project was designated as Priority One in the state capital outlay bill, meaning it was at the top of the list to receive construction dollars. One spring, it appeared so imminent the faculty was told to pack up their offices.

But, as so often happens, other needs took priority. This year, the project—now estimated to cost $15.3 million—isn't even included in the capital outlay bill, much less specified as an item likely to see a single dime.

"It's depressing," says professor Kelli Scott Kelley, whose critically acclaimed paintings hang in galleries around the country. "It affects morale. It affects the ability to attract good faculty and good graduate students."

Which gets to the heart of why this matters beyond, of course, concern for the well-being of students and faculty. There is a connection between a thriving art school at the state's flagship university and the community in which that school is located.

Consider what the arts have done for the revitalization of downtown and the role the Shaw Center for the Arts has played in bringing about that renaissance.

Think, too, about the near-obsessive fixation in this community for all things purple and gold—about the glowing headlines that follow when graduation rates inch up to 69%, or about the time and energy the university spends trying to earn a spot in the top quadrant of U.S. News & World Report's rankings.

Do top-flight schools have chunks of concrete falling from the ceiling? Are students at Duke or Vanderbilt or even the University of Alabama forced to paint in sub-freezing studios? Do you attract the best and brightest students by building a lazy river at the rec center while ignoring critical capital needs?
THE ANSWERS to Riegel's questions are an obvious no, no and no. Yet. . . .

As I said at the outset, if you are really good at something and really want to test yourself, move to Louisiana. Compete against the best. Do it while dragging a boat anchor. Win anyway. Come home victorious to the non cheers of the non-existent hometown throng of non-existent well-wishers.

If it's acclaim you want in the Gret Stet, be an LSU football player. That or an 86-year-old, ex-con ex-governor with a granddaughterly trophy wife, a new baby and an ego overdue for its 2 o'clock feeding.



Baton Rouge High, 2007
Kelli Scott Kelley, the LSU art professor, was in my graduating class at Baton Rouge Magnet High. And where she finds herself now resembles, and eerily so,  our alma mater before the parish school board was left with just two choices: Tear down the whole school and rebuild it somewhere else . . . or tear down and rebuild most of the campus, renovate the main building and keep BRHS where it was.

Thankfully, the board chose the second option. Baton Rouge High, after 30-something years of abject neglect, now has facilities worthy of the world-class teachers and students within its rebuilt walls. Our old school has shed its boat anchor -- for now.

In Louisiana, sadly, there's always another boat anchor to weigh you down. In Louisiana, fortunately, some folks find a way to stay afloat regardless.

Unfortunately for the state that forgot to care, however, many of those survivors soon enough will weigh anchor one last time before setting sail for a distant shore.


Guess what. A state that cares so little for its children . . . for higher education . . . for the arts . . . for its future . . . deserves exactly what it's going to get. Or not get, as the case may be.

Ask not upon whom the anchor weighs.

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