Long Ago and …

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

If the photo above is not of the actual car that my family owned in 1979, it is the same model Chevy Malibu station wagon that my memory has chosen to remember as the actual car that my parents drove to cart my sister and ten-year-old me around that summer and every other summer, before 1979 and after. (My memory is not what it used to be: It is better!)

Our family road trips over about two decades included vacations in Vermont (to see family) and weekends on Cape Cod, in Pennsylvania, along the Connecticut shore. We were not a wealthy family, so our family vacations were always road trips to a destination that we could reach in one day or less of driving. My father was the only driver, so this was more than fair. The long(ish) car ride was simultaneously unendurable and somehow, maybe sometimes, the only part of the trip that was worth remembering.
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Today in History: April 6

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

3:00 p.m. EST: Music legend Merle Haggard, whose 79th birthday is noted below, died today, his management company just announced. A song suggestion, “Mama Tried,” is below, and here is another suggestion: type his name in your iTunes and enjoy the stories.
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Bahrain’s Brutality: The Story of Parweez Jawad

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

April 26, 2017: The artist Ai Weiwei attracted international headlines in 2015 when he went head-to-head with the Danish plastic brick maker Lego over that company’s refusal to sell him bricks in bulk for an art installation: because he had used the bricks to make portraits of political prisoners around the world, Lego felt the need to declare that it “cannot approve the use of Legos for political works” and it cut Ai off. Art lovers around the world stepped up and collected Legos for Ai and made enough noise that Lego relented and allowed him to purchase the bricks from Lego, as long as any work he produces includes a statement that Lego is not endorsing any political stances.

Ai’s portraits of 176 political prisoners took more than one million Legos to produce. Both numbers, one million and 176, make a similar point: there are many political prisoners around the world and each person’s story is intricate and takes time to tell.

Some of Ai’s faces are famous: Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning. Most of them are not. Mohammed Hassan Jawad of Bahrain (seen in Ai’s portrait at top) is not, but you ought to know about him.
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