Holding myself to the commitment of at least one serious news article per day, I had to look beyond the New York Times and Washington Post, because am out of free articles on those, for this month. A glance at the Chicago Tribune produced a headline about a real estate person in the "windy city" having contractor problems;
...in other Tribune headlines, someone got shot; another headline -- someone else got shot; emergency responders had pulled sheet over the head of one victim, who then started to move and had bystanders calling out, "He ain't dead! He ain't dead!"
A car got stolen; police found it, parked it in front of a police station, and it disappeared again.
I got all those from Chicago Tribune headlines, without having to click and use up any free online articles.
The one I ended up clicking on, making a withdrawal from this month's Free Article Limit was in The New Yorker:
Larry Krasner's Campaign To End Mass Incarceration
------------------ Philadelphia's District Attorney reinvents the role of the modern prosecutor.
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MISSISSIPPI JOHN HURT- THE BEST OF
(FULL ALBUM)
is on You Tube, when we type it in.
It's uploaded by
Jim Blues Rock Channel.
(The channel name appears in ALL CAPS, with the first three words pushed together --
JIMBLUESROCK CHANNEL.)
Sound quality is excellent;
the first song on there is listed as
"Here Am I, Oh Lord, Send Me."
When Mississippi John introduces it, he calls it "Don't You Hear My Savior Calling," another phrase from the lyrics.
The song has the same, or very nearly the same, tune as "You Got To Walk That Lonesome Valley."
This first song on "The Best Of" album is the song to listen to, today -- in his vocal delivery is a clarity of meaning, melody, and memory that is unique.
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------------------- [excerpt, All The President's Men] -------------------------------
Since his return from Miami, Bernstein had become obsessed with the $89,000 in Mexican checks that had passed through Bernard Barker's bank account. Why Mexico? According to the GAO [General Accounting Office] investigator, Maurice Stans had said the money had come initially from Texas. But no one at the GAO had been able to understand why $89,000 in campaign contributions were routed through Mexico.
In mid-August, Bernstein had begun calling all the employees of the Texas Committee for the Re-election of the President. A secretary at the committee's offices in Houston said that the FBI had been there to interview Emmett Moore, the committee treasurer.
"They questioned me about how money was transmitted to Mexico," Moore said. "They said there had been allegations to that effect--that money was transferred to and from Mexico."
Moore immediately sought to make clear to Bernstein that the FBI agents were not interested in his own actions, but in those of the Texas committee's chairman, Robert H. Allen, who was also president of the Gulf Resources and Chemical Co. of Houston. The agents had expressed particular interest in Allen's relationship with a Mexico City lawyer, Manuel Ogarrio Daguerre, who represented Gulf Resources' interests in Mexico.
The Mexican connection. What did it mean?
Moore, who said he had been as unnerved by the FBI's visit as by Bernstein's call, knew nothing of the reasons for moving the money across the border.
Bernstein began leaving messages for Robert Allen at his home and office. They were not answered. Finally, on the morning that Maurice Stans summoned the GAO's auditor to Miami, Bernstein got up at 6:00 A.M. -- 5:00 A.M. in Texas -- and called Allen at his Houston home. Allen sleepily declined to discuss the matter, "because it's before the grand jury."
Using his primitive high-school Spanish, Bernstein intensified his telephone search for Ogarrio and for any information on the elusive Mexican lawyer. Gradually, the enterprise became the object of good-natured office ridicule.
Bernstein was unable to construct anything other than disjointed school-book phrases in the present tense. Ken Ringle, a reporter on the Virginia staff who sat next to Bernstein, would shout, "Bernstein's talking Spanish again," and reporters and editors would walk over to offer appropriate commentary.
The calls went to bankers, relatives of Ogarrio, his former law partners, his clients, Mexican banking commissioners, the police, law schools. Nada. The standing office joke had it that Bernstein heard the whole Watergate story and didn't understand it. ----------------------
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{All The President's Men. Written by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. Simon & Schuster -- 1974}
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