Latest news with #GordonLightfoot
Epoch Times
08-08-2025
- Epoch Times
Where Wind and Waves Call You Home: Memories of Lake Ontario
Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings, In the rooms of her ice-water mansion. Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams; The islands and bays are for sportsmen. And farther below Lake Ontario Takes in what Lake Erie can send her From 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,' 1976, by Gordon Lightfoot There's a road that meanders through the cottonwoods and wild apple orchards so sweetly that one might think that it is the apex of her journey instead of a prelude to a greater attraction.
Newsweek
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
The 1600: Is Trump Losing a Step?
The Insider's Track Good morning, 🎶Thursday Listening: Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown Let's start this disgustingly hot and humid day off with a little thought experiment. The 79-year-old president of the United States is asked in the Oval Office if he has plans to fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve. He responds, "I was surprised he was appointed" and then goes on to blame his predecessor for something he did in his first term. Would you be asking questions about the president's mental acuity after that exchange? Because that exact sequence of events happened yesterday—on camera—and nobody in the room corrected Trump or gently reminded him that it was he who appointed Jerome Powell in 2017, and that Biden merely reappointed him in the middle of Covid in the name of stability. Trump's misremembering of this relatively important piece of information didn't really get picked up in the press. Would that have been the case if it was anyone else? If Joe Biden threatened to fire someone he appointed, and then when asked about it blamed Trump for appointing him, people would rightly be asking questions about whether ol' Joe was still with the ballgame. One of the many contradictions of the Trump era is that he is both pilloried in the media, but also given a pass and graded on a curve at the same time. He gets away with 10 things a day that would have sunk other presidencies. It's always been his political superpower. That back-and-forth in the Oval yesterday didn't happen in isolation. There's a handful of recent examples that raise the legitimate question of whether Trump is losing a bit of his fastball. His messaging on the Smeffrey Smepstein saga has been nothing short of a disaster. Like, I've never actually seen him so ill-equipped to spin a story that's bad for him. He is the king of that! Literally nobody on earth is better at shifting the national conversation by sheer force of their own personality. But look at how he's been handling this growing crisis, which has now jumped containment from the world of politics to pop culture with Shane Gillis' (very funny) monologue at the ESPYs last night. It started with the lame attempt to change the conversation by attacking Rosie O'Donnell. That didn't work and now he can't seem to stop tweeting about it, yesterday referring to his own supporters who have questions about the case... questions members of his own administration have been fanning... as "weaklings" and disowning their support. That came after he said he didn't "understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody. It's pretty boring stuff. I think really only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going." This is new for him. I've covered this man for a decade now, and he has never been so dismissive toward his own base before. It's worth asking why this story has taken him so off kilter. And I haven't even mentioned Trump's recent bizarre off-hand remark about how his uncle taught the Unabomber at MIT, which did not happen, or that Obama and Hillary "made up" the Epstein files, despite the fact that Epstein "killed himself" while in the custody of Trump's DOJ! There have also been a number of instances lately of Trump just appearing to be completely out of the loop with major aspects of his own admin. Not once, but three times this year the Pentagon has paused military aid to Ukraine, only to have to restart it once Trump got wind. A couple weeks ago, the president seemed to have no idea what a reporter was talking about when they asked him whether the new tariff deadline was July 9 or August 1. On the Big, Beautiful Bill negotiations, Trump was by all accounts unaware of the extent of the Medicaid cuts, which came after he told GOP lawmakers they could not cut Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security if they wanted to win their next election. Look, Trump has always governed in a chaotic way and he's never been known to be a micro-manager. No POTUS can be abreast of everything happening in the federal government in realtime, and to Trump's credit he is 100x more available than Biden ever was, so that creates more opportunities for him to misspeak or appear out of the loop. And he also has this crazy lifeforce that, combined with the costume makeup, makes him seem younger than his 79 years. But the president is old, and he's getting older. Not even Donald J. Trump can win a battle against Father Time. My suggestion is that we pass a constitutional amendment so Trump can run again in 2028, and then convince the Dems to run Biden against him. I just want to see that debate rematch with both of these guys well into their 80s. The matchup America deserves. The Rundown It was Donald Trump who, back in 2017, stood in the White House Rose Garden and introduced his pick for Federal Reserve chair as a "wise steward of the economy." But the relationship between Trump and Jerome Powell quickly soured, culminating this week with Trump floating the idea of firing Powell—before saying on Wednesday that he was unlikely to do so. Read more. Also happening: Senate vote: The Senate has approved a Trump administration request to cut $9 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting funding in a victory for the president. The vote, early Thursday morning, was passed 51 to 48 following 12 hours of amendment votes, despite two Republicans objecting to the surrender of congressional control over federal funding. Here's the latest. The Senate has approved a Trump administration request to cut $9 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting funding in a victory for the president. The vote, early Thursday morning, was passed 51 to 48 following 12 hours of amendment votes, despite two Republicans objecting to the surrender of congressional control over federal funding. Trump allies split over Epstein: A number of President Donald Trump's biggest allies in the House of Representatives have split with him and called for the complete release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert co-sponsored a discharge petition announced by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna to force a vote in the House to release the complete files. Read more. This is a preview of The 1600—Tap here to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.
CBC
14-07-2025
- General
- CBC
Ridgetown woman to swim in Great Lakes relay marking 50 years since Edmund Fitzgerald wreck
A Ridgetown woman is one of 68 people taking part in a swimming relay this summer that will symbolically complete the voyage of the Edmund Fitzgerald — to mark the 50th anniversary of its sinking. Jane Baldwin-Marvell will be part of a four-person team that covers the 31-kilometre stretch of water from Lexington to Port Huron, Mich. The prospect is both exciting and daunting, she told CBC's Windsor Morning. "The closer it gets, it's getting more and more real and more and more exciting," Baldwin-Marvell said. "I've had so much support from all my friends and family. It's been wonderful." The Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a raging storm on Nov. 10, 1975, 27 kilometres (17 miles) north-northwest of Whitefish Point, Mich. All 29 crew members perished. Singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot immortalized the incident in his 1976 song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," which went to number one on the Canadian charts and number two on the Billboard Hot 100. Organizers of the swim have called the disaster "the world's most famous shipwreck not named Titanic." 'Symbolically, we're going to finish that journey' The ship was carrying 26,000 tons of iron ore bound for Detroit when it went down. Relay swimmers will honour the vessel by carrying iron ore pellets with them and delivering them to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, said event director Jim Dreyer. "So symbolically, we're going to finish that journey, and 50 years later," Dreyer said. "It's just a great way to memorialize the 29 men who died … and we're all honoured to be a part of it." Dreyer swam Lake Superior in 2005 for the 30th anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald tragedy and delivered the bell from the boat to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum on Whitefish Point, he said. He says he got the idea for the upcoming swim in 2023 when reminiscing about the previous swim with a former museum executive director. The relay begins July 26 at the spot in Lake Superior immediately above the wreck, where swimmers will take part in a ceremony to remember the crew lost at sea. 'Something I need to be a part of' It then covers the freighter's planned 661-kilometre route to Detroit, where another memorial service will take place at Mariners' Church of Detroit. It's expected to wrap up at the end of August. Teams of four will each swim one of 17 stages, taking turns swimming for 30 minutes each while the other team members recuperate aboard a support boat. Baldwin-Marvell, who regularly swims a kilometre a day, said she chose the stretch from Lexington to Port Huron because she wanted to be reasonably close to home and felt daunted by the prospect of swimming in Lake Superior. But she said she had no hesitation about registering for the event. "I grew up hearing the song," she said.
CTV News
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Gordon Lightfoot's Turning Back the Pages exhibit
Barrie Watch Gordon Lightfoot's Turning Back the Pages exhibit is on display at the Orillia Museum of Art & History
Forbes
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
The Wreck Of The Class Of 2025
50 years ago, Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot wrote and recorded the best artistic depiction of a disaster in progress. After learning of the loss of the iron ore freighter Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior and the deaths of all 29 crew members from Newsweek, Gord lifted passages from the article and put them to a dreamy dirge: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Sinking ship We're in the midst of another disaster in progress. It involves the employment prospects of new college graduates. While American higher education has been distracted, disaster has befallen the Class of 2025. Like the 29 men on the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Class of '25 was sailing in dangerous waters. But they kept on going. It was all they knew how to do. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate for the last five classes of college graduates has skyrocketed 40% in two years to 5.8%: a 30-year high and, for the first time ever, well above the national unemployment rate (4%). Last spring, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a stunning 12% unemployment rate for college graduates in their 20s. Oxford Economics estimates new grads account for 12% of the rise in the national unemployment rate since mid-2023. Due to widening skill and experience gaps, media outlets haven't had to sail the seven seas to find young men like Gabriel Nash who graduated last year from University of Central Florida and makes YouTube videos about gaming because none of his 450 job applications panned out. Or Peter Stuart, who graduated from Loyola and reports 'getting ghosted basically by everything I apply for.' A recent Yale psychology grad's Instagram account is the story of how his degree has not translated into a job: But college graduate unemployment pales in importance to underemployment. 94% of recent grads have landed paid work. But if they're working in jobs where most employees don't have degrees – jobs they should have been able to get without investing years of their life and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars – the main hatchway has caved in. While underemployment definitions and metrics vary, they're as high as Lake Superior's waves that fateful night. Last year Strada and Burning Glass measured underemployment for college grads one year out at 52%, up from 43% in 2018. In April the New York Fed had it at 41.2%, up from 40.6% last year. According to LinkedIn, entry-level hiring is down 23% in the past five years. In 2022, 79% of HR leaders told PwC they were hiring for entry-level roles. In 2023, it was 61%. PwC hasn't asked the question since then, perhaps because they fear the answer. Because neither governments nor accreditors require colleges and universities to track employment outcomes, no school has signaled SOS. But beginning with the Class of '23, search sea shanties have been growing grimmer. Seniors are applying to hundreds of jobs and not hearing anything from anyone. Searches are taking months longer than expected before starting work. Expectations are being lowered from analyst to assistant positions. Increasingly, internships are considered wins. All this was before a half-million new grads hit the job market last month. This spring the annual employer survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found that finance, insurance, and real estate companies – among the largest launching pads – were planning to hire 14.5% fewer new grads. The Bureau of Labor Statistics offers corroborating evidence: hiring in professional and business services at a 15-year low. A survey of major consulting firms found that nearly half would make fewer offers this year. All of which suggests that cases like Taylor de Sousa – a new UMass Amherst grad who applied to nearly 300 jobs, landed three interviews, and no offers – or Colleen Kane – a University of Maryland grad who applied to 40 jobs and by April had reset her sights on a summer internship – are no longer exceptional. The boat is taking on water. 2025 isn't helping. The federal hiring freeze has ruled out the country's single largest employer. According to Handshake, applications to federal jobs were down 40% for the Class of 2025. Trade and tariff uncertainty has prompted companies in numerous sectors to batten down the hatches. But the iceberg is the private sector's historically rapid adoption of AI. A new report from Oxford Economics concludes new grads are already seeing a 'displacement effect.' The report looks at recent computer science grads and finds that employment for 22-27-year-olds has declined 8% since the emergence of generative AI. New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose is certain we're only seeing the 'tip of the iceberg.' He's hearing all about businesses 'making rapid progress toward automating entry-level work, and that AI companies are racing to build 'virtual workers' that can replace junior employees at a fraction of the cost.' Roose cites Brookings' Molly Kinder who reports she's hearing from companies that 'these tools are so good that I no longer need marketing analysts, finance analysts and research assistants.' I've written previously about how AI is eliminating entry-level jobs by automating the busy work that new hires used to be tasked with while they learned the ropes and became productive. As a venture capital executive told Roose, 'nobody has patience or time for hand-holding in this new environment.' Anthropic's (misanthropic?) CEO Dario Amodei believes AI could replace half of all entry-level jobs. In his Notes on AI Readiness, Alex Kotran points out that much of this could happen as soon as the next downturn; historically, 88% of job displacement due to automation occurs within 12 months of the onset of recessions. And while far from the scariest prediction they make, the end-of-days-ers at AI 2027 recount a disaster in progress – albeit with less art than Gord – foretelling the first major anti-AI protest in DC in just over a year as AI job displacement becomes the next major social crisis. The Class of 2025 is well-versed in rejection. They were rejected from the extracurricular (and usually pre-professional) clubs they wanted to join. Then they were rejected from internships. Now they're being rejected from jobs. And fittingly, they're increasingly being rejected not by human hiring managers, but by the very technology that's displacing them. A remarkable 88% of companies say they're already using AI to screen candidates at the top of the hiring funnel. Even without purpose-built AI tools, small and mid-sized businesses are asking AI to produce a capabilities grid before uploading resumes to map applicants against the rubric. Only then will human hiring managers begin looking at candidates. And use of AI in hiring isn't limited to screening. One survey of 900 companies found 23% already using AI for interviews, resulting in some subpar candidate experiences. Like Ohio State's Kendiana Colin whose answered two standard questions, but couldn't figure out how to answer the next one: AI Interviewer: Vertical bar pilates. Vertical bar pilates. Vertical bar pilates. Vertical bar pilates. Vertical bar pilates. Vertical bar pilates. Vertical bar pilates. Due in part to AI, college grads are applying to more positions and not hearing back. The average senior applied to more than 21 jobs on Handshake last year up from 14 in 2023. One research firm found a 160% increase in the percentage of job applicants who don't hear anything after submitting an application. It's dispiriting for all, soul-crushing for some. Said one student: 'It's not so hard to send out maybe 100 or 200 job applications. But when you start getting to, like, 500, 800, 1,000 and you've been doing it for six-plus months, it can take a toll on you.' LinkedIn's May labor market report finds that Gen Z workers in the U.S. 'report the lowest confidence levels of any generation, recently hitting an all-time low.' It's also producing more lying on resumes. The longer term is even more worrisome. Unemployment or underemployment out of the gate is pernicious not only for lifetime earnings but also for second-order effects like criminality (not just lying on resumes). And because young people from wealthy, connected families are less likely to be rejected hundreds of times or interviewed by hallucinating bots, expect inequality to get worse. I'm fearful that if we don't move quickly to address the career launch disaster – if the classes of 2026, 2027, and 2028 find themselves in even stormier weather – it's not a freighter at risk, it's the ship of state. Because while trade and tariff uncertainty will abate and the federal government will hire new grads again at some point, secular trends will put more young Americans in peril with each passing year. Could we make it for 50 more years? Unfathomable. If we want to keep college graduate unemployment + underemployment from skyrocketing past 70 and 80%, it's all hands on deck. Accreditors must put an end to schools' willful ignorance of employment outcomes. Schools must equip young people with AI skills, not only in support of learning, but for actually doing the things businesses need them to do, which necessitates an epic shift from classroom to work-based learning. Governments must dramatically scale investment in the intermediaries needed to both make work-based learning work for companies, schools, and students and also build the earn-and-learn career pathways that are much more forgiving in terms of skills and experience. President Trump's goal of 1M apprentices is a good start, but not nearly enough. We can no longer afford to force high school grads to choose between College and Chipotle. Let's stop this disaster and save lives before some new folk singer writes and records an amazing and depressing song about it.
