13 February 2020

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 13 February 12020 is World Radio Day, observed since 2012. It is also Bindy Gonzer’s birthday according to calendar expert Churchy LaFemme. (Yes, Friday the Thirteenth comes on Thursday this month.) Apparently the Silent Sam deal has come unstuck (I read in the news) and it is no longer clear what will happen to John A. Wilson’s tribute to those students who put down their books to take arms in defense of the indefensible. Personally I rather like the statue, divorced of its historical and political context, but it is difficult to read Julian Carr’s dedication speech, with all its bigotry and the sadistic pleasure he took in recalling beating a young woman with a whip apparently for the crime of being black, without wanting to smash the statue flat, Carr himself being unavailable for that treatment.