Chris Walton ❌👑

Rev. Jesse Jackson and other civil rights leaders prepare for the commemorative march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 8, 2015. (© Christopher L. Walton)

Another photo from the March 8, 2015, commemoration of the Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery. Here you can see Rev. Jesse Jackson and other leaders joining the march.

Rev. Jesse Jackson greets people outside Brown Chapel in Selma, Alabama, on March 8, 2015, before the start of a service commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery. (Photo © Christopher L. Walton)

Here's a handful of the photos I took at the 2015 commemoration of the Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, where I saw Rev. Jesse Jackson among members and leaders of countless Black community groups, religious groups, HBCU groups, labor unions, political organizations, and others.

I saw Jesse Jackson in person only during the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday and the Voting Rights March in Selma, Alabama, which I was covering for UU World magazine. Tonight I'll see if I can find my mediocre photos from that truly amazing weekend. RIP, Rev. Jackson.

I tripped three circuits at once in my family with that comment—breaking from the professed superiority of our religion, our politics, and (let’s be frank) our race. Jesse Jackson’s vision and eloquence helped me do that. (I did not win over the rest of the family with my teenage advocacy.)

I didn’t mean to start an argument, but my frustration with the worldview I’d been given was growing. Grandpa mused aloud at one family gathering that no one was a better public speaker than the always alliterative LDS apostle Neal A. Maxwell. I said I thought Jesse Jackson was much better.

My formative memory of Rev. Jesse Jackson, from my Utah Mormon childhood, was watching his DNC speeches and thinking, now *that’s* the way to preach! (We didn’t even use the word “preach”: just “deliver a talk.”) I got in quite the argument with my Idaho farmer grandpa about it.

Public Comment Period Open: White House Ballroom Proposal | National Trust for Historic Preservation The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) has opened the public comment period on the East Wing Modernization Project, including the proposed construction of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom additi...

Time for all of us to weigh in on the monumentally corrupt process the president is using to bulldoze the East Wing of the White House and build a garish ballroom in its place with private "donations" (bribes).

No, my evenings this week are packed! (Tonight and tomorrow night feature Esa Pekka Salonen, tonight at Tufts and then at the BSO tomorrow.)

Boston’s Symphony Hall at night, with interior lights, street lights, and car lights shining through falling snow

Symphony Hall in the snow

That magical time of year when all vehicles in Boston put on their natural camouflage of road salt to blend in with the dirty mounds of snow

Don’t Let The Machines Do The Living | Culture Study Get more from Culture Study on Patreon

These tools promise productivity, but it’s a devil’s bargain. They don't always allow us to do better or smarter work. Whatever time they save will never become "our own." Because more efficiency doesn't mean less work. It means more of it — for the same pay.

www.patreon.com/posts/149942...

Tonight at the Boston Symphony Orchestra: Looking forward to hearing Gabriella Smith's "Bioluminescence Chaconne" (her works astonish me every time), Mozart's "Sonfonia concertante" (which I love), and Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" suite.

(around the No Kings logo, images of megaphones, and a photo of protesters holding signs that read “ICE OUT”) MARCH 28 NO KINGS NO THRONES. NO CROWNS.

The date for the next No Kings Day is set.

But this is a save the date, not a “sit back and wait.” 🧵

The heart of Lang’s “poor hymnal”: “who we are / to the least if us / is who we are.” Amen.

On the program: David Lang’s “poor hymnal,” which I greatly admire, and Carlos Simon’s “Good News Mass.”

Made it!

Fingers crossed that my MBTA route to Symphony Hall is viable tonight! On the Green Line now.

"French toast alert" seems to have popped up in a few other places, but we do love it here.

Snow shoveling on a unicycle? Boston Globe subscribers get a great article about peak Somerville. “There’s some more efficient ways” to shovel a driveway, [the video maker] joked, “but there’s also a lot of less efficient ways, such as the pogo stick. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

The execution of Alex Pretti is playing so badly because you can look at his actions and life story - his last act was helping, boy scout, athlete, health care worker to veterans - and compare those to the men who killed him and know which you would want to be your son, brother, father, uncle.

Keep a pipe in the upper pocket of your blazer

Maxim of the day, from Iris Murdoch (1959): “Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”

(Found in Katy Waldman’s New Yorker review of two books by influencers on “fawning.”)

Anti-fascism is a set of methods which to resist fascism. What's happening in Minnesota seems bigger than that: resisting fascism, yes, and real democracy in action, the world we want to live in. Not the terror! The care, the courage.

Event graphic: "Benefit Concert" in cursive letters and an illustration of a trumpet on a green background, with a "Tufts Youth Philharmonic" logo and white text: "A concert benefiting the students of the Tufts Youth Philharmonic"

🎶 Music news! 🎵 Next Friday's benefit concert by the Tufts Youth Philharmonic will include the debut performance of two of my compositions, which began as duets for violin and cello that I have expanded and arranged for the orchestra's violin section. 1/30, 6:30 pm EST as.tufts.edu/music/news-e...

Another friend put it to me like this: "ICE has made the classic Nazi mistake. They've invaded a winter people in the winter."

What else did teenage me pick from Columbia House? Some Air Supply, Lionel Richie, The Cars, Phil Collins, can't remember what else. But the mall record store had 2-for-$10 bins of classical cassettes (from Soviet label Melodiya), which is how I'd already found my true love: Bach toccatas & fugues!

Detail of ice patterns on a window, with a blue tinted region at top and a yellow tinted region below

Detail of ice on glass, 8 degrees F outside

I bought “Hooked on Classics” in my first Columbia Records Club cassette order! No way I could pretend to be a start-them-on-Mahler purist.

Opinion | Stop Mutilating Classical Music to Sell It to Kids

On the one hand, this essay introduced me to a podcast I’ll probably enjoy a lot. On the other, I don’t think the argument holds up. Arrangements & excerpts have always been popular ways to engage classical music.

Program concluded with a hearty performance of Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1, with Seong-Jin Cho, Nathan Cole, Steven Ansell, and Blaise Déjardin.