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September 17, 2024

— Aaron Sorkin

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Blind Willie Johnson

When Willie Johnson was about 7 years old, near the start of the last century, he endured something horrible.

The son of a Texas sharecropper, Willie's father confronted his stepmother for supposedly cheating on him; in revenge, she threw a solution of lye in Willie's face, which left him blind.

I can only imagine how horrific this was. Willie grew up, and he found solace in church and music. He grew up to be a preacher and a street musician, meeting other blind musicians who inspired and taught him.

By the time he was in his 20s, he was a well-known guitar player and gospel singer on the local circuit. He recorded some albums but never made much money. By the time of the Great Depression, he was living in Beaumont, Texas, but in 1945, his house burned down.

With nowhere else to go, he camped in the ruins for several days, sleeping on a rain-soaked mattress with the stars he could not see directly overhead. He got sick quickly, was turned away from a local hospital, and returned home to die.

About 15 years later, the music of Blind Willie Johnson saw a bit of a revival, during which a young writer named Timothy Ferris (not the Four Hour Work Week guy; this was earlier) first heard it.

Then, about 15 more years later, Ferris was working as a Rolling Stone editor and was recruited to help Carl Sagan select photographs, writing, and music to include on the Golden Record, which would go along with the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft missions.

That record, intended to give a glimpse of human life to any intelligent extraterrestrial life, includes sounds and scenes of how we live, along with 27 pieces of music.

Among the pieces: Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground, by Blind Willie Johnson.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the day in 1977 on which Voyager 1 looked back, took the first-ever photograph of the Earth and the moon together, and transmitted it back to us.

By the way, if any of this story sounds familiar to you, one reason might be that it was included in an episode of the fifth season of The West Wing.

I only found that toward the very end of writing today's newsletter, but Aaron Sorkin described it as well as anyone could. So let's give him the quote:

Nothing is ever over, and art sometimes endures.

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Did you see ...

• Ryan Wesley Routh, suspected of an assassination attempt on former President Trump, smiled and laughed about three to four times ahead of his first court appeance as he spoke with his court-appointed attorney before the hearing began, Fox News observed. Routh is charged currently with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. (Fox News)
• Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is deploying the Ohio State Highway Patrol to monitor schools in the city of Springfield after they received 33 bomb threats since late last week, he said at a news conference. DeWine, a Republican, said separately that there is no evidence to support the idea that immigrants in Springfield have been eating pets and called the conspiracy theories "garbage that was simply not true." (CNN)
• A growing number of U.S. adults are hesitant to get recommended vaccines this fall, a new survey found. Only 43% of respondents have gotten or plan to get the COVID vaccine, and just 56% said they have gotten or plan to get the flu shot. This year’s flu season will be similar to last year’s, which was "moderate," with 25,000 deaths and 400,000 hospitalizations. (Yahoo News)
• Another iconic brand might disappear: Tupperware stock plummeted 57% as it said it plans to file for bankruptcy. In June, the home goods company said it would close its last U.S. facility by January 2025, and lay off over 140 employees. (Quartz)
• Dr. Carl Allamby, 53, is an emergency medicine doctor at the Cleveland Clinic, which is especially inspiring once you learn that he only became a doctor when he was 51, after a full career as an automotive technician and a small business owner. "I had always wanted to go into medicine as a child, it’s just that where I grew up, there were a lot of things that were missing for people who want to become doctors." (People)
• Unpopular opinion in 2024: Skip the lemonade stand, and let kids be kids (not mini-entrepreneurs). (The Guardian)
• I had great expectations when it came to our years as empty nesters. Then, my husband discovered pickleball. (Today)