Missing Links

Time to clean up bookmarked links that for one reason or another I didn't blog about:

A persuasive piece on getting rid of the filibuster at Boston.com.

Fellow boomers take note: how psychedelic drugs can help face death.  (Or you can just keep drinking a lot of coffee.)

Also for boomers as well as others: an interview with Harold Reingold on his book about Internet literacies.

An intriguing poll finding: "independent" voters want President Obama to keep pressure on the big banks. 

A sharp look into today's higher education, with particular interest to fellow English majors in American Scholar.  

The possible--and sadly believable--truth about the fate of Amelia Earhart.

Some expert opinion that today's total polarization is not only politically and socially damaging but also psychologically.

Possibly the strangest political story of a typically insanely strange week: the Romney campaign is criticized as being financed by foreign money--by John McCain.

Plus two stories I probably will write about, though probably on another blog:

The Justice Department is investigating the cable television industry, and it's about time.

Movie theaters are still getting away with dimly projecting the images on their screens--one of the main reasons I seldom go to movies anymore.  At last I find I'm not the only one who notices. Roger Ebert for one.

Finally a link to the most brilliant essay I've read this year on several topics, which I do hope to write about soon. (Ignore the pedestrian beginning.) (Note: the top illustration is from this article in The Baffler.)

Frances Perkins Revisited

The portrait on the left is of Frances Perkins, who 76 years ago today was nominated to be the first woman in the U.S. Cabinet--FDR nominated her to be Secretary of Labor, and she was confirmed. Here's what we owe to her leadership: "the first minimum wage, massive programs to put people back to work and enhance our infrastructure, standardized hours for workers, and the expanded right to organize a union." And something called Social Security. Frances Perkins was a mainstay of the FDR government for 12 years, long enough to become a legend in her own time, as evidenced by the panel above right--it's a detail of a mural by Edward Millman of Outstanding American Women, painted as part of the Public Arts Work Project of the 1930s--this is called the Frances Perkins panel, and can still be seen at Flowers Vocational High School in Chicago. There are many murals like this in public buildings all over the country, a lasting legacy to this FDR program--and to Frances Perkins. Her example is one to remember, especially right now.