Meanderings, 4 November 2023

Good morning!

Photo by Florian Wehde on Unsplash

Louie, Louie:

"Louie Louie," recorded by the Kingsmen, began climbing the pop charts 60 years ago. It's a song almost everybody can recognize, but almost nobody understands the words to. And even fewer people know the story of the song's evolution – how it went from West Coast dance hit, to party anthem, with an FBI investigation and Supreme Court case along the way.

The first recording of the song dates back to 1957. Richard Berry, an L.A. musician, recorded a song about a sailor who has to ship out, and leave his girl behind. While the words – written in a fake-Jamaican patois – were an attempt to tap into the calypso music popular at the time (Harry Belafonte was topping the charts), the melodic riff came from a song called El Loco Cha Cha, recorded by Cuban-American band leader René Touzet.

According to music writer Peter Blecha, author of Stomp and Shout: R&B and the Origins of Northwest Rock and Roll, the song found popularity in the L.A. area first. But then Berry took it on tour up and down the West Coast, and its popularity spread.

The song's rhythm made it a favorite on jukeboxes and at teenage dances. Rather than featuring free-form dancing, says Blecha, dances at that time would often require specific steps to specific songs or beats – the mashed potato, the stroll, the watusi. The cha-cha was on the list as well, and "Louie Louie" had a great cha-cha beat.

"It became the required song that every Northwest teenage band had to play at every dance every week," says Blecha.

One of those teenage bands was the Kingsmen….

That's a pretty big story for a pretty simple song. But music writer Peter Blecha says that simplicity – in addition to all the drama – is part of why it's been so enduring. He quotes the musician Paul Revere, who recorded another popular early version with his band Paul Revere and The Raiders.

"He said the reason for the popularity is because of its simpleness, its stupidness," quotes Blecha. "He goes, 'three chords and the most mundane beat possible.' He goes, 'any idiot could learn it, and they all did.'"

60 years later, they're still playing it. Because music isn't always about complexity, or even skill. Sometimes it's just about a song that makes you feel good. Even if you can't understand the words.

Aikikiki

The ‘akikiki, a small, gray bird native to Hawaii, may not look remarkable, but its rarity is. Only five are thought to remain in the wild and, according to the state’s Department of Land and Natural Resources, the species could go extinct within months.

The biggest threat to the tiny birds is from malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Living in the cool and lush mountains of the island of Kauaʻi, for many years this honeycreeper species was out of the range of non-native mosquitoes, but rising temperatures from climate change have enabled the biting insects to find their way up to these peaks – with terrible consequences.

“The populations have basically taken a nosedive over the last 15 to 20 years as the climate has changed and mosquitoes are going higher and higher in elevation,” says Hannah Bailey, wildlife care manager of the Hawaii Endangered Forest Bird Conservation Program for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. With no resistance to mosquito-borne diseases, the birds are falling victim to avian malaria, which “is almost always fatal to most of the small honeyeater adults,” she explains.

Guns and Us:

SMcK: Why are not more speaking up, speaking out, and speaking against this?!

The deadly shooting this month in Maine has once again shone a spotlight on how frequent this type of violence is in the United States compared with other wealthy countries.

The U.S. has the 28th-highest rate of deaths from gun violence in the world: 4.31 deaths per 100,000 people in 2021. That was more than seven times as high as the rate in Canada, which had 0.57 deaths per 100,000 people — and about 340 times higher than in the United Kingdom, which had 0.013 deaths per 100,000.

On a state-by-state calculation, the rates can be even higher. In the District of Columbia, the rate is 13.93 per 100,000 — the highest in the United States. The second-highest is in Louisiana: 10.91 per 100,000. In Maine — scene of the deadliest recent mass shootings — the rates are much lower than the national average: 1.15 per 100,000. But five other states that were the site of mass shootings over Halloween weekend – Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana and Texas – have rates that are higher than the national average.

The numbers come from a massive database maintained by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which tracks lives lost in every country, in every year, by every possible cause of death.

Gen Z is using libraries, and more!

Gen Z and millennials are using public libraries, both in person and digitally, at higher rates compared to older generations, according to a new report released today by the American Library Association. Gen Z and Millennials: How They Use Public Libraries and Identify Through Media Use draws on a nationally representative survey to reveal the attitudes and behaviors young Americans have regarding library use and media consumption.  

Written by Kathi Inman Berens, Ph.D., and Rachel Noorda, Ph.D., both of Portland State University, the report and survey data show that 54% of Gen Z and millennials visited a physical library within the previous 12 months. Of the 2,075 Gen Z and millennials surveyed in 2022, more than half who self-reported visiting a physical library said they also borrow from a library's digital collection. The data also revealed younger Americans' distinct preference for physical versions of books: survey respondents read and bought on average twice as many print books per month as any other category.  

"Great news: Younger generations of people are reading books, buying books, and visiting libraries," said Noorda. "Not only are Gen Z and millennials engaging with books, but they are also engaging with other forms of media. They are gamers, readers, writers, and fans who are comfortable with malleability between media categories and forms." 

In addition, more than half of the 43% of Gen Z and millennials who don't self-identify as readers have been to their local library during the past 12 months. ALA president Emily Drabinski said, "These digitally-immersed generations make clear that libraries are about more than books. Programming relevant to teens and their parents--coding clubs, job application help, gaming--draws even non-readers to the library, as does the physical space to connect and collaborate." 

Aimee Byrd, Judges 19, and the SBC:

We cannot look at the account in Judges as ancient and barbaric when we have men in the highest positions of leadership in the biggest Protestant denomination in America inserting their lawyers into a case of a woman who was repeatedly raped by her father and his fellow officer, filing a brief in the Kentucky Supreme Court to block a law lifting the statute of limitations for survivors to sue third parties such as churches and schools. Such as them. Just like that, the horrific raping of one which cries for justice becomes the rape of six hundred…These men in the Southern Baptist Convention have dismembered the corporate body of women in their churches.

Weep over this. See these women. They need escape from such evil. Do we see what these men will not? Do we feel what they will not?

The SBC says, “Sacrifice her, not us.”

This is not the way of love. This is not of Christ. This is not church.

The unfolding message in Scripture presses us to see.

How we treat our women reveals our eschatological anticipation of joy.

Sad to read this about the Humanities — the future for universities?

The UNC System Board of Governors allocated $3.7 billion of operating expenses from the state budget. The two-year funding plan includes money for new university programs, rural healthcare partnerships and faculty salary increases.

The state budget also reduced funds in some areas, including an over $52 million decrease across the UNC System due to lower student enrollment.

Here’s a few of the budget’s big ticket items:

Personnel Funds (collective $431 million)

There are several faculty and staff-specific funds in the budget. The biggest is a 7% salary increase over two years for all university employees, totaling $381 million of recurring funds.

Nursing faculty at the system’s universities will get an additional salary increase. Over $8 million will be used to increase starting pay by a minimum of 10% and a maximum of 15%.

“Cumulatively, UNC System employees’ paychecks are nearly 14 percent higher than they were in 2021,” said UNC System President Peter Hans in a statement. “Faculty and staff work hard to serve our students and our mission, and we need to compensate them, particularly given inflationary pressures.

$10 million will go to the system’s Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust Fund. The endowment uses a combination of private and state funds to hire faculty.

The board approved new rules for which subjects can have distinguished professorships. They will now only be given in STEM-related (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.

Subjects outside of this category will keep the distinguished professorship positions they’ve already established, but are no longer allowed to create new ones.

The board also allocated funds to both increase and lessen faculty loads.

Birds, and their (changing) names:

Get ready to say goodbye to a lot of familiar bird names, like Anna's Hummingbird, Gambel's Quail, Lewis's Woodpecker, Bewick's Wren, Bullock's Oriole, and more.

That's because the American Ornithological Society has vowed to change the English names of all bird species currently named after people, along with any other bird names deemed offensive or exclusionary.

"Names have power and power can be for the good or it can be for the bad," says Colleen Handel, the society's president and a research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Alaska. "We want these names to be powerful in a really good way."

The move comes as part of a broader effort to diversify birding and make it more welcoming to people of all races and backgrounds.

"We've come to understand that there are certain names that have offensive or derogatory connotations that cause pain to people, and that it is important to change those, to remove those as barriers to their participation in the world of birds," she says.

The project will begin next year and initially focus on 70 to 80 bird species that occur primarily in the United States and Canada. That's about 6 or 7 percent of the total species in this geographic region.