Welcome to the Sunday night $27 group open thread. I’ll be providing some quotes in cryptogram form again tonight, like I did last night, but for those of you who aren’t up for cryptograms tonight there’ll also be music, unencoded quotes, and some suggestions of good books, tv shows and movies. (Plus whatever else you’d like to talk about related to promoting social and economic fairness for all.)
Let’s start with some good music. (Don’t worry, this video is short — just a little over a minute — so you’ll have time to enjoy it and to continue reading.)
Good books…
Well, several come to mind. A whole series of them, in fact. But perhaps I should start with a trilogy instead.
John Lewis’ three volume account of his experiences in the civil rights movement has won widespread acclaim, volume 3 released last year won a National Book Award, and a slipcase edition of all 3 volumes has recently been released. This is an excellent book to recommend to your local library (or to buy copies of for friends or for yourself). I especially enjoyed it because it describes not just the protest actions which brought about major changes in our society but also the political struggles and differences of opinion among the people involved in the movement.
I have more good books to recommend tonight — but maybe some of you would enjoy a good Bernie Sanders quote first?
Anyaxn wrir urspcn areycmg mtn axconoy wriky dgiconon xyzg drsghcrir, ecmc onjnslyin biyuoc sgm'ol iymg er bgxxnsy kscpn xgbn tnsygil.
Ensign Oriknsol
Yes, it’s encrypted — but solving it is easy, since I already told you who the quote is from so you can probably make a pretty good guess what Ensign Oriknsol translates to...
Important word of warning, though! This is not a standard cryptogram. (You probably guessed that from the fact that Sanders has 7 letters and Oriknsol has 8.) It’s a crypto-gremlin — a special kind of cryptogram which can’t be solved by the online program which crack cryptograms by running through all the possible sets of letter substitutions but can be solved easily by human wits. Complete instructions on how these work (and an example of how to solve one) can be found in last night’s $27 Open Thread diary.
More good music:
This is a somewhat longer Holly Near song than the one at the opening of this diary, but one of my favorites and one I think is as appropriate to today’s times as it was when she first sang it.
More good books:
We’re going to need young people’s ideas and young people’s energy (and young people’s votes) if we hope to win back control of our country. So I'd like to recommend a series of excellent young adult books which old and young can enjoy: the Haruhi Suzumiya books by Nagaru Tanigawa.
(THere are also manga adaptations of the books, if you prefer illustrated literature, but the prose books are better.)
But there are also 2 seasons of Haruhi anime available, as well as a 2 ½ hour movie (“The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya”) — and as good as the books are, the anime are just as good if not better. Very much worth watching!
(I’m running late on getting this diary finished and posted so no time to relate it to Bernie Sanders but in my mind they do relate...) Here’s the opening music from one of the episodes.
More quotes, you say? (All right, no one said that, but I'd like to share a couple more anyway).
Here’s a quote from a very good Bernie-Sanders related diary which posted today:
Byddyfrelc Asters, no Qtyltsuurps fyey his gokyt'us mybbrxs, achy ireo '93 dyuhk iruc usxyewy ts-psdsxhryec arwk hy no Tsqcadrxoes. His gonytr xyehtypstuk four his Qtyltsuurps gokyt'us ucqqythc bytr isodhis asesbrhus bytr bcegottrswo qothestus mybr xrhk isgqdykssus. His esf Tsqcadrxoes gokyto dorgswy hy atrelc no gyts xyeustpohrps uoqqtyoxiy hy Xrhk Iodds. Lrhy wrwe'hy fytmc mychy uy fsddo, goewr yes bordcts hiohs irhs espstkyes four bcewsty-acwlshrelk bytr ueyf tsgypodo. (Fiy xycdwc iops qtswrxhswk ueyf uhytgus ireo Pstgyehs?)
If you have any trouble decoding this, you can find the full passage — in more readable form — here.
Another good Bernie Sanders quote? Sure — here’s a fairly recent one, well worth thinking about and discussing:
"Why swim pay gymowhon pampr Sgt. Pgrsky bwhw knor pampw by amzy sneenwhot swim kywkey baw amzy fnzyhw prky dwhr pay kwenpnumer kgwuyoow, baw cwh'pw dyenyzy pampw Uwhfgyoot knor enopyhnhft pw payngm kmnhw. Bampy pay Cyswugmpnum Kmgpt amon fwpw pw cw knor opmgpr enopyhnhfy"
And one last bit of good music to close the diary out:
NOTE: Drat! I discovered after posting the diary that the video I’d posted was subtitled in Japanese rather than English. And my browser is running so slowly at the moment I’ve spent half an hour trying to find English subtitled version and can’t locate one. I’m substituting in a different video, which also lacks subtitles, but I will try to find an English-subtitled version to post another week as the optimism expressed in the song matches well, I think, with the optimism in Bernie Sanders vision.
Sorry to be 20 minutes late in posting this! I'll try to do better next weekend. (And hopefully there aren't too many errors in tonight’s diary...)