Street Jazz

There often  seems to be a note of right-wing hysteria in the cartoons of political cartoonist John Deering, whose work is so often seen in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Today I got a hoot seeing his cartoon of Washington crossing the Delaware, mumbling under his breath, “Lose the Blackwater guy,” meaning the thuggish looking man with a machine gun right behind him.

Sort of interesting, in that it was the British who were infamous for using mercenaries in the Revolutionary War. So I’m not sure what point he is trying to make, other than he wasn’t paying much attention in school.

Nice artwork, though.

******

Next week on my show we are rerunning the program when I interview Dr. Claud Lacy, from the University of Arkansas. This came soon after Pluto was robbed - robbed, I say! - of its status as a planet. Dr. Lacy disagreed, and not only calmed me down, but explained why this was a good idea.

My intellectual inadequacies were never more sadly obvious, as Dr. Lacy succeeded in talking tighter and tighter circles around me. Still, the show was a lot of fun.

Show times:

Monday - 7pm

Tuesday - noon

Saturday - 6pm

Following the show is a program that some might find interesting. When I was just a young tadpole back in Junior High and High School, I followed the space program avidly. So much so that every day I would look in the newspaper and clip out any articles dealing with space travel.

This all began in 1967, the days when even satellite schedules were printed in the papers, so folks could look up in the sky and follow the path the moving bodies would take.  I collected articles from American and English newspapers, Life magazine, Newsweek and other publications from Apollo VII to Apollo XIII.

A few years ago I noticed that the scrapbooks wee starting to fall apart, so I took them down to C.A.T. and set them to music. The result, “The Race to the Moon,” might amuse some folk.

rsdrake@nwark.com