I am … unhindered by talent

WeatherGirl and my parents and sister all conspired to get me a really cool Xmas prezzie, namely a turntable. I’ve got a ton of LPs that I’ve acquired since Millard Fillmore’s presidency, and WeatherGirl brought quite a few over with her from Britain. Yet I’ve never actually owned a turntable. I would buy LPs and then head to someone’s house (usually my folks) and tape my new acquisition, and then store the original records and just play the tapes.

I always figured I’d buy a turntable some day, but CDs had largely taken over by the time that I had a real job so it never actually happened, and the LPs just rotted gently in the corner. But no longer! I got a nifty turntable for Xmas :-). It’s been sitting in the living room since we got back because things have been so darn busy, but tonight we finally cleared some space and plugged it in. It was a total blast putting on Esteban Jordan and jamming to some fine tejano accordian on thin black round stuff.

Woot! Many thanks to everyone who pulled this together.

It’s actually a used turntable that can also play 78’s. Apparently you can’t buy new turntables anymore that can’t play 78’s, and everyone thought it would be nice to be able to play some of mom and dad’s cool old 78’s :-).

Now I’d like to set things up so we can use the laptop to rip LPs as MP3s, but I doubt I’ll get to that right away.

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Last night the three of us went to hear Minnijean Brown Trickey speak as part of Black History Month at UMM. She was one of the Little Rock Nine, nine black teenagers who had the courage (and naivete) to actually believe the desegregation orders handed down by the courts. They had the temerity to show up for classes at Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, despite Governor Orval Faubus’s decision to use the Arkansas National Guard to prevent them from entering the building.

It was very cool hearing from someone who had been part of those amazing events. She wasn’t a super structured speaker, instead letting stories happen as the mood struck. She has had so much remarkable experience, though, that the stories were great and it wasn’t that hard to connect the threads.

Despite several audience questions that pointed in this direction, I left not really having a solid sense of why they actually did it. It was an enormous challenge, risk, and sacrifice, and I’m afraid I didn’t find the “Well, it had to be done” answers very compelling. Obviously it did need doing, but only nine of them actually did it (and only four returned after Faubus re-opened the high schools). Choices were clearly made, and I’d love to better understand what lay behind those. That, of course, assumes that they themselves understand their motivations, and she gave the impression that in many ways it was still a bit of a mystery to her.

Some semi-random resources include the New York Times Learning Network site on the events in Little Rock and some recollections of Elizabeth Eckford (one of the nine).

Attendance at her talk was decent but not great (100-200?), which was a bit disappointing.

Currently listening to “Mean old world” by the Heavenly Gospel Singers from Anthology Of American Folk Music Volume 4 (Edited By Harry Smith). How appropriate.

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