I'm trying to replace the Lucas Portrait file with one that isn't twice as long as it needs to be.

That may result in this episode getting re-published, in which case, enjoy an episode that will be redone in a month again, but at least will be four minutes long instead of eight....

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Been on my mind for a bit, for two reasons: First, the movies in the sequel trilogy were released in December, so events around them are showing up as anniversaries in various social media. Second, someone I know recently was doing a school assignment on George Lucas. So here it is again.

Yes, I know, there's a cricket in there. I keep meaning to re-record it, but haven't gotten to it yet.

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This is just for fun, with no real generational connection except that both Abraham Lincoln and George Lucas are from Prophet generations. (Boom for Lucas, Transcendental for Lincoln.) And, as such, it's not surprising that a similar arrangement works for both of them.

If you like Star Wars and Aaron Copland, you may enjoy it.

Fun fact: George Lucas' birthday is May 14, 1944, which was the two-year anniversary of the premiere of Lincoln Portrait.

Here's where I found the quotations:

The first two are from different sections of a look back at The Phantom Menace:

https://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-episode-i-the-phantom-menace-oral-history)

The "barbarians" quote is from testimony before the Senate in March 1988 - here’s the text I used, from Wikisource: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1988_George_Lucas_testimony_before_United_States_Senate

It’s not clear that Lucas every actually said the thing about the sledgehammer, but it turns out the fourth section in Lincoln Portrait isn’t well sourced either. And in both cases, it's certainly something they might have said.

I originally found the last bit here:

https://www.biography.com/news/george-lucas-star-wars-facts

But it turns out it was from a New York Times interview of George Lucas while he was FILMING Star Wars in 1976.

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/09/12/archives/from-american-graffiti-to-outer-space.html

It's well worth the read.

Going deep into the archives for a not-previously-reduxed discussion with my wife on a matter important to any generation: What's funny, what's not, and why?

We are Gen X-ers who think Quick Change is brilliant and funny. My mother-in-law thought Where's Poppa was brilliant and funny. You'll have to make up your own mind on which of us was right.

As mentioned, it's one of the first recordings I did, and it's ... rough. But understandable.

Quick Change, with Bill Murray, Geena Davis, Randy Quaid, and Jason Robards, is one of my favorite comedy films.

Where's Poppa, with George Segal and Ruth Gordon, was one of my mother-in-law's favorite comedy films.

My wife and I discuss possibilities for why what we find funny and what our parents find funny is often so different.

Silent and Gen X on Lifecourse

http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/def/silent-gen.html

http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/def/13th-gen.html

Quick Change and Where’s Poppa? on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100449/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066563/

Carl Reiner - born 1922 (G.I.)

Drafted in October 1942, served in the Pacific theater (despite initially learning to be a French interpreter), ending up in Special Services (i.e. entertainment).

Mel Brooks - born 1926 (Silent)

Brooks served in World War II in the European theater starting in 1944, which is very unusual for Silent generation members. (One reason he seems like he should be G.I.)

Quick Change - Floras para los muertos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGj9QkslyE0

Quick Change - Joust

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQNI7q6ABnc

Where’s Poppa - We didn’t discuss this scene, but it fits in a lot of ways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzT27N2F45Q

If you search for Campfire Scene - with or without “Blazing Saddles” - this comes up early:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPIP9KXdmO0

Which I'd noticed before, in this post about another offensive western

http://crisis.generationalize.com/2014/06/runaway.html

What my wife is doing instead of podcasts: Gift of Music Foundation

http://agiftofmusic.org

You can still find me on Twitter: @generationalize and blogging at http://crisis.generationalize.com, but also on bluesky and sometimes on Post, also as @generationalize

Prompt the First: The Crazy World of 2nd Turning Music

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_Twins - doesn't mention the shaved eyebrow thing,
• SNL: Devo, B-52s, David Bowie
• • It wasn’t uncontrollable urge; it was Satisfaction and then Jocko Homo
  • And it was between their first two albums - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_Now_for_the_Future came out in 1979
  • And during Jocko Homo, they stripped off the radiation suits
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/LiveFromNewYork/comments/zf4vwz/devo_performing_jocko_homo_on_snl_in_1978/
  • That video excerpt from SNL does NOT include the really amazingly even wierder original lead-in, an clip from In The Beginning Was The End, with Booji Boy and his father, General Boy, discussing The Truth About De-Evolution.
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdlU8e9wBIE - Martin Sheen introduces Bowie
• Elvis Costello and Meatloaf commercials in 1977
• • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Out_of_Hell
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Aim_Is_True
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_Sharp!_(Joe_Jackson_album)(1978) - the shoes!

Prompt the second: Bay of Pigs

• https://www.netflix.com/title/81614129 - Turning Point: The Bomb and The Cold War
  • Yes, I somehow missed that The Bomb is right there in the title, so it's not a coincidence that it's focused on the nuclear part of The Cold War.
• https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

Prompt the third: Neutrality

• Neutrality as a very malleable concept: USSR/Japan in WWII, US / Germany, US/UKR/Russia,
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_country
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugal_during_World_War_II
  • Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373 - used by Churchill to confirm access to the Azores for aircraft.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_Acts_of_the_1930s
  • The Acts were largely repealed in 1941, in the face of the Lend-Lease Act.
• https://x.com/generationalize/status/1495959705616801795
• https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/trivia/?item=tr6049574
• https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/trivia/?item=tr368170

Prompt the First - Guadalcanal

But also: The Pacific (2010)- last time did Band of Brothers,

Taylor Swift — 1:12:50 in Long Pond sessions - association between Guadalcanal fighting and pandemic trauma. — Epiphany

Available on Disney+ And it was in fact released IN 2020 - before vaccines were available, while effectively lockdown was still ongoing.

And also - just barely related the Ahwanee was initially commissioned for the Navy in 1943. The official website said the the first men sent were veterans of Okinawa….which was two years later. Turns out the actual men sent there were from the naval hospital in Oakland CA - near San Francisco, that is - and were veterans of…Guadalcanal.

Prompt the Second - Waiting on that Welfare Check

From Bruce Springsteen's The River - Point Blank

The P.J. O'Rourke reference can be found in the "Poverty Policy" chapter of "Parliament of Whores." I misremembered a couple of items in it, so:

• It came from a visit to the "loathsome and terrifying" Newark project
• He refers to the idea of "buying" the apartment as "the current conservative wisdom," and "Jack Kemp-style privatization"
• Residents would purchase their apartments, no down payment, mortgage payment no more than what they paid for rent.
• In response to each of his arguments, the lady responds "I'm not going for any of that."
• The final response calls it not a toilet but "this seven-story sewer in the sky that she lived in" and was, again and finally "I'm not going for any of that."

Prompt the Third - Ruined Technology

Xz exploit inserted in open source code

https://twitter.com/nolman/status/1781400531745017966/photo/1

May be notable - perhaps a change in pov

https://x.com/ryxcommar/status/1773082844643934543?s=46&t=h3SDrddBzjyl2UOHr9Q3xA

That it’s becoming a choice (kinda again, kinda) that you ca pay 150K for a junior data engineer, or 200K for a senior, getting much more experience for a nominal increase in salary.

This is a bit of stretch for relevance but: It's Tax Day, and sometimes that's too busy a day to get anything else done. While composing Fanfare for the Common Man, Aaron Copland thought Tax Day was the most common sort of day for modern man, and that it would make a good day for a premiere.

Which this isn't, but it's a decent look at the music that opens this podcast.

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Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait, the music used for the introduction to this podcast, ties together two previous Fourth Turnings - commissioned after Pearl Harbor and including Civil War quotes from the 16th President - in a way which makes it feel even more relevant as this current Crisis unfolds.

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A few relevant Wikipedia links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Portrait

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Copland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Coral_Sea

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickett%27s_Charge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-water_mark_of_the_Confederacy

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein

This site has Kostelnetz commissioning it within 10 days - mid-December 1941- and that copland began writing in late February

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2007/julyaugust/feature/the-sound-freedom

The different excerpts are from

1) Address to congress 1862: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29503

2) Seventh and final Lincoln-Douglas debate October 15 1858 https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/debate7.htm

3) Collected works: https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/onslavery.htm

4) The Gettysburg Address 1863:

https://www.npr.org/programs/specials/copland/coplandstory.html

The NPS site says his slavery quote is from August 1, 1858 - 110 years before this recording.

https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/onslavery.htm

This site says the date is pure conjecture, is from a scrap of paper that Mary Todd Lincoln passed to archivists later, and is signed with a different piece of paper from another document.

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:547?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

Vin Scully, voice of the Dodgers, with the L.A. Philharmonic in 2017

https://www.ocregister.com/2017/07/14/see-vin-scully-narrate-the-words-of-abraham-lincoln-at-the-hollywood-bowl/

A direct link to a Youtube video of that performance https://youtu.be/6qpYwrla0GE

More on the quote about freedom and democracy

https://abrahamlincoln.quora.com/Close-Reading-2-Lincoln’s-Definition-of-Democracy-August-1-1858

The first item there is is a NYTimes piece from 1895 - that would be 30 years after the Civil War - that attributes it to Lincoln by the judge who ….attributes it to him.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1895/09/13/106068178.pdf

Last witness of the assassination of Lincoln, still alive in 1956, 14 years -after- the premiere of Lincoln Portrait

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RPoymt3Jx4

Prompt the First - Band of Brothers

September 9, 2001 - Sunday

~ nearly 23 years ago

~ 55-60 years after the events portrayed

WIth regards to people being comforted by the familiarity of battle movies, I was particularly thinking of the use of the Awahanee Hotel in Yosemite Valley as a treatment for shellshock, as PTSD was called at the time. It didn't work very well, because it was TOO quiet and peaceful, and left those affected with only their thoughts.

https://www.nps.gov/articles/yosemitehospitalwwii.htm

The previous episode where World War II items were discussed - such as The Producers - was The Latest for February 10.

(Note - related stuff in Prompt the 2nd from February 10)

Prompt the Second - The Cultural Revolution as 2nd Turning

Ref 3 body problem, and Mao being an older …nomad? No, probably prophet himself, if (as it appears) China is a bit ahead of the Anglo-American saeculum who gets more than he expected from the Prophet youth.

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/3-body-problem-the-chinese-cultural-revolution-explained-briefly/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session

https://bsky.app/profile/nicholasgrossman.bsky.social/post/3kpkdznvl3a25

Prompt the Third - free the anxious generation

Concerning a bill posted nearby, and a couple of kids sharing an electric scooter ... without a helmet. And hints to the possible endings of this Fourth Turning.

https://www.anxiousgeneration.com

https://www.freerangekids.com

The Ten Commandments was on, which is set completely in the 19th dynasty, but because it's soon after the 18th it seems relevant enough.

There are a number of candidates for the Pharoah of the Exodus. As the 1956 movie The Ten Commandments shows, one is Ramses II, the third pharaoh of the 19th dynasty. The 18th Dynasty has at least one or two as well, and that Akhenaten attempted to institute monotheism during his reign raises some questions in that regard.

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A look at the 18th dynasty of ancient Egypt, specifically considering whether we can effectively align it with the generational model.

A listing of the pharaohs of the 18th dynasty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighteenth_Dynasty_of_Egypt

On the historicity of the Exodus, including mentions of Akhenaten and other 18th Dynasty pharoahs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_and_parallels_of_the_Exodus

The breakdown described, moving backwards from 1292 BCE (end of Horemheb's reign, and end of the 18th dynasty).

Starts

Ends

Pharoah at start

Pharaoh at end

Complete

Second

1592

1573

Third

1572

1553

Fourth

1552

1533

Kamose (17th)

Ahmose I

First

1532

1513

Ahmose I

Amenhotep I

Second

1512

1493

Amenhotep I

Thutmose II

Thutmose I

Third

1492

1473

Thutmose II

Hatshepsut

Fourth

1472

1453

Hatshepsut

Thutmose III

First

1452

1433

Thutmose III

Thutmose III

Second

1432

1413

Thutmose III

Amenhotep II

Third

1412

1393

Amenhotep II

Thutmose IV

Fourth

1392

1373

Thutmose IV

Amenhotep III

First

1372

1353

Amenhotep III

Akhenaten

Second

1352

1333

Akhenaten

Tutankhamun

Smenkhkare Neferenefureaten

Third

1332

1313

Tutankhamun

Horemheb

Ay

Fourth

1312

1293

Horemheb

Horembeb

First

1292

Ramses I (19th)

Thoughts on the film Eternals, a Marvel Cinematic Universe film from 2021

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternals_(film)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9032400/ - on IMDB

Here's the Bluesky thread with my initial thoughts, most of which are in here.

https://bsky.app/profile/generationalize.bsky.social/post/3koba7n5kd526

As one of the Story Aside episodes, it begins from the Stories model:

http://stories.generationalize.com