Blind but Now I See

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

An Anglican clergyman named John Newton wrote the hymn titled “Faith’s Review and Expectation” late in 1772, and he introduced the hymn in a New Year’s Day service in his parish in Olney, Buckinghamshire, on that date in 1773.

Many years later, the hymn became best known by the two-word exclamation that opens it: “Amazing grace!”
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For Shawkan: One More Month

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A journalist’s job is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

* * * *
Although Shawkan is approaching his forty-fourth month in jail, a court in Egypt today postponed the continuing trial of Mahmoud Abu Zeid, the Egyptian photojournalist who goes by the name “Shawkan,” until Tuesday, May 9. One more month.

Shawkan’s ongoing story, with its staggered month-by-month steps, is one of the denial of basic human rights by a nation allied with Western governments, but it also has been a story of many citizens stepping up and making certain that Shawkan’s story is heard. Both stories are worth knowing.

Shawkan is one of twenty-five journalists jailed in Egypt, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

For those unaware of Shawkan’s story, I recently wrote the following background article:
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Goodnight, Sweet Prince

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Even in his later years, hunched over a cane, age did not appear to de-fang him. Don Rickles was still quick with his quips, even if the quips came quickly to him because he shot them out every day for six decades, quick with his many facial expressions of disgust and disappointment.

His reactions to audience reactions often brought his jokes from the barely memorable to the legendary. Rarely has a performer conveyed so much with the mere flicker of a expression change.

Don Rickles died today. The stand-up comic was 90, a month shy of his 91st birthday, but he was rarely shy. (I’ll be here all night folks, thanks.)

His stand-up act, till his last days, was remarkable, for someone past age 90 or not even 19, really: it was always unscripted. Yes, he knew what “insults” he was most likely going to deploy “against” audience members, and he knew that somehow he was going to convey that he was on the audience member’s side and not punching down at them. That was the extent of the notes he carried on stage with him. It was a tightrope act.

“If I were to insult people and mean it, that wouldn’t be funny. There is a difference between an actual insult” and doing that, he often stated.
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