Happy Hillbilly New Year

It's going on midnight and we're watching and listening to Emmylou Harris on a live show from Nashville, Tennessee on PBS, hosted by Gary Keillor. She sings beautifully and she is beautiful.

We're trying to make it to midnight. Not that it's all that important. Tomorrow is just another day.

There was a group earlier that I liked best: they had a banjo player who was about as unanimated as I could imagine, still as a statue, deadpan, holding the banjo in one position only -- except if you looked closely you could see that all his fingers, both on the frets and the strings, were moving rapidly and deftly -- and as for the banjo! It just talked, sang, danced!

It will be good to wake up in the morning and be able to eat breakfast. Lord willing.

Happy New Year.

We're in the Wrong War!

The government prescription drug uninsurance program and I just tangled: it was a draw for now. Figuring out what Lobby-gov would cost versus what drugs from Canada would cost for 2007 was a challenge, something like doing my own income tax, and I might have made a big error, as I often have done with taxes. But if I was reasonably accurate in my calculations, I'm better off to ride with the Canadian Mounties on this one. In either case, my drug bill is now thousands of dollars annually; but if I stick with the Texas Rangers instead of the Mounties, the difference will be more than twice as much.

I left a message with the insurance agent that I am canceling the uncoverage. He soon called back, warning me of the cumulative penalty I'd incur if I left the program and decided to come back, and telling me the horror story of customs people seizing Canadian drugs at the border.

The penalty is peanuts compared with the price difference, in my case. But, true, there's a risk of having my legitimate drugs "confiscated" by "jackbooted government thugs." (Ha! Stole that inflammatory epithet from ya, NRA psychotics!)

I'm going to get Canada drugs anyway.

Here is how I calculate the risk: the crowd who brought on this giveaway to the drug-"health" insurance-government complex is on its way out.

At least the government portion of it. There is cause for a not entirely irrational belief that the government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations might not always get its way on this one. The pendulum might just swing back to the people's side -- after it tipped over the whole clock on big business's side.

There has already been word from above to the customs agents to cool it on stopping drugs from Canadian pharmacies. And that was before we threw the elected rascals out! I think the new regime might make some humane adjustments to the regulations now in effect. I'm willing to bank on it.

This was just this joker's skirmish with the Big Boys, the Fat Cats. I guess we're a little like guerrillas, the underground, fighting the Wehrmacht in the war, the Class War. It's us vs. the likes of Dick Cheney and Tom DeLay and Ken Lay, way I see it.

We're going to win.

Xmas Eve with Family

It's been a good day. While Rosie went to look in on her old parents I washed dishes, Hoovered the carpets, and showered and dressed in a red T-shirt, khaki slacks, and a long-sleeved green plaid shirt, consciously trying to look Yuley. Found out that Amanda was free for a few hours this afternoon and so drove to Louisville to visit her. Our reunions are always good and this one was no exception. This kid always cheers me up and makes me laugh. One thing she is good at is anthropomorphizing pets, attributing human words and behaviors to them. Parker, a neighborhood dog (got a glimpse of him dashing across his yard, guessing from his animation and white coat that he is yet a pup), had walked into a school as if he was going to put his lunchbox down and learn to spell. Mandy gave me a button which I pinned proudly to my shirt; it states "Happy Hollandaise." (That's a sauce, and it's less offensive, I hope, than "Happy Holidays," which Bill Orally and John Gobson have made fightin' words to distract people from more important things Christ would have us fight for.) We got some cheese and crackers and ginger beer and vegan "meat"-balls and went back to the apartment where we ate them and watched Christmas Vacation. I laughed harder at it than I ever have, I think. Clark, Cousin Eddie, Aunt Bethany, Uncle Lewis, the scene at the department store, the home movie in the attic, the speeches, Todd and Margo, Snots and the squirrel -- everything was better than ever. I came home and David and Karletta were here and we visited a little while and then Rosie and I watched It's a Wonderful Life. Great Xmas Eve.

A Modest Proposal: Leap Xmas

This was not my idea but it's something I think about every year at this time. By the 1970s, we had shifted several federal holidays to be observed whenever possible on Fridays or Mondays, for the convenience and pleasure of all the citizens.

Christmas was excluded. It had to be on December 25th. It had been observed on that date as early as the fourth century, and from long before the time that North America became a British colony. Independence Day had been observed on July 4th for only a few hundred years and its observation had to remain on that date. Both dates were too sacred to be messed with, I suppose you could say.

An early church father, Origen, denounced "as sinful the very idea of keeping the birthday of Jesus 'as if he were a king Pharaoh.' Thus it was important to the early Christians not to have indecorous parties on that day, but to keep it a time of devotion, reflection, and communion." (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, author of the article unknown)

But Christmas became a Christian feast day in the early church, and it was convenient that the date fixed upon by church authorities coincided with the "pagan" winter solstice celebration, "Yule," in cold northern Europe.

Before any fundamentalists who might read this holler -- or cluck their tongues with sanctimonious scorn, which seems to be more in keeping with their erstwhile behavior -- let me state that nowhere in the Bible, Old or New Testament, is the date of the birth of Jesus explicitly given. So it would not be "unbiblical" for the government to choose another date.

For that matter, it would be in accord with separation of church and state if the government chose another date without consulting with Christians at all. It might hurt some feelings of some church people who like to call the shots. In fact, you might say that you can make book on their raising holy hell, saying to hell with separation of church and state, if the official date were changed for the convenience and pleasure of all the citizens.

But I think it would be worth it.

Which gets me to the proposal a writer made (in The New Yorker magazine) in circa 1970-something: change the date of "Christmas" to February 29th. That date (which the Current Occupant, Yale and Harvard alum that he is, has indicated he does not know) comes once only every four years.

Before you gasp at this modest proposal, let me quickly remind you that the First Amendment protects your right to worship the birth of Jesus the Messiah (translated: Christ) on December 25th. That holiday (holy day) would do what we have been lamenting for as long as I can remember: "Put Christ back in Christmas."

Which means we would have to go through this commercial catastrofreak only one-fourth as often as we now do!

That Toddlin' Town

Zipped up to Chicago to visit Natalie and Jerry in the quarter-million-mile wonder wheels. Started Monday morning, returned this (Wednesday) afternoon. From Madison you traverse the state from south to north, going through farm fields and woodlands, passing through North Vernon on Indiana Road 7, Columbus on US 31, and Indianapolis and Lafayette on I-65. I always get there as quickly as I can, then return in no hurry. The weather was drizzly starting from Madison but was fine when I got to Chicago. I defied the standing warning from N & J and came via the toll-free road, and traffic was dicey with the wall of trucks on either side but it kept moving and I was soon in town. It is always worth it.

Coming up the Dan Ryan, I never fail to marvel that there's a rapid transit system that works, serving the needs of people many of whom have sense enough to use it, running right through the median of the freeway, and I'm always wishing that I could park my crappy car somewhere outside the city and use public transportation. My children in Shy are devoted to riding their bicycles as much as they can and that is a sensible form of getting from A to B too. But even when they can't, they can walk two blocks or so, get on an el train, and go just about wherever they want.

I got off the freeway at 22nd (I think they call that Cermak Road, named after a mayor; I used to give directions to natives when I lived there at age 19, but I've begun to slip a little on remembering all the street names). I went over to Lake Shore Drive and north to Fullerton. As I say, it had become an excellent day and Lake Michigan on my right was showing off that beautiful shade of blue-green under the sun and the sky was a bluer blue above. Of course there were all the magnificent buildings on my left.

Natalie and Monty were at home and we had a sweet meeting. We chatted with Jerry on the computer and then we went to get Monty some kibbles and ourselves some tacos. Come to think of it, ate Mexican the whole time. We all talked Macs Monday evening and watched a DVD of Reno 9-1-1, a spoof on Cops and then some. I'd seen it on Comedy Central and didn't like it but this time I watched it with the kids and enjoyed it. I told J that I always get "high" when I am around them, i.e. elated. Everything we do together is more fun than doing it alone.

Natalie and I went downtown on Tuesday. She had a meeting on research she'll be doing and showed me her building where she works then I went to the Tribune Tower and visited Jerry in his office overlooking the lake. He intro'd me to his congenial colleagues. We fooled around and shot the bull and then Natalie came back and we went to lunch at Frontera, having mucho bueno Mexican food there. Then we walked my legs off in the downtown. We went to Shedd Aquarium and decided it was kind of pricey so we came back home. I took a nap and I think Natalie had a little one too, certainly being entitled. I woke to the smell of roasting garlic. We had Mexican again. We had homemade cornbread in there somewhere. I forgot to say the night before we had white chili that was delicioso. In the evening we watched the rest of the Reno cops spoof and then most of The Last of the Mohicans. Natalie provided me with a cozy blanket, which I slept under in the cool room. Love to sleep in a cool room.

We parted as sweetly as we met. Traffic was great all the way home too. I just came directly back the way I'd gone. It was a nice little outing. I love my kids. Amen.

Sunday, Sweet Sunday

In Flower Drum Song, a number I liked was "Sunday."
"Sunday, sweet Sunday,
With nothing to do,
Lazy and lovely,
My one day with you.
...
While all the funny papers lie or fly around the place
I will try my kisses on your funny face."
(I especially liked those lyrics for some reason.)

As I write, a musical by a duo other than Rodgers and Hammerstein, namely Lerner and Loewe, is on Turner Classic Movies. It's the big one, My Fair Lady. My brother Bill loved Alf Doolittle, as played by Stanley Holloway. He got to see Stanley live at the Schubert in Chicago in the fifties and was thrilled with his numbers "I'm Gettin' Married in the Mornin'" and "With a Little Bit o' Luck." Bill especially liked the latter because of the good-natured rascality Alfie embraces, in the tradition of his namesake as played by Michael Caine in the movie of that name, and of Andy Capp, the cartoon character (what I didn't like about Andy was that he was mean to his wife, but...). Bill loved a rogue. So do I. Have a good Sunday.

Footnote: Probably more movie trivia than you wanted to know: I wondered if "Freddie," played by Jeremy Brett in My Fair Lady, did his own singing. (I knew long ago that Marni Nixon dubbed the sainted Audrey Hepburn's songs whereas Julie Andrews, who sang quite well and who had played Eliza on Broadway, was aced out of the movie part by Audrey for petty reasons).

On Bill Shirley: Singer and actor who appeared in second-string Republic Pictures musicals during the wartime 40s. His career went nowhere and he became a better behind-the-scenes singing double.

Best remembered for providing Prince Phillip's singing voice in the animated classic "Sleeping Beauty," Bill also sang Freddy Eynsford-Hill's vocals ("On the Street Where You Live") in the film version of "My Fair Lady." Actor Jeremy Brett, who played the role of Freddy in the film, long claimed that he himself sang the role but that Bill merely "sweetened the high tones." Brett finally admitted years later in the 1994 documentary "More Loverly Than Ever: The Making of My Fair Lady Then & Now" that Bill indeed supplied the singing voice.

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Bill attended Shortridge High School. (Yay, Shortridge! A high school that published a daily newspaper! Alma mater of Kurt Vonnegut, Dan Wakefield, and Dick Lugar, among others.) Buried in Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis.

My comment on Bill's rendition of "On the Street Where You Live": stirring, almost to tears. (It's that time of year.) When I was a pimply-faced adolescent, I liked the single-hit version by Vic Damone, the guy who sounded a lot like Sinatra but was a nice guy, unlike Sinatra. (I forgive Sinatra his sins: somebitch could sing.) I imitated Vic's version while I sang it loud as Freddy, while I was alone, out on the deserted streets of little old Forlorn River (freezing in my suede jacket with no hat on my flat-topped head).

On Jeremy Brett: played Sherlock Holmes in a TV series on, I seem to recall, HBO, when I had that luxury. I thought he was the quintessential Holmes, equal to Basil Rathbone. He was a decent chap, born and died in England, schooled at Eton, did Shakespeare. Concerned that kids who watched the TV series might be misled by Holmes' coke habit, got the writers to have Sherlock kick in one episode. And according to IMDB, "he was dubbed [as I said above], in spite of the fact that his singing was actually remarkably good."

Saturday Sermon

I’m perturbed by the goings-on of today. There's a domestic situation close to me that is a disaster slowly dragging itself out and it will happen as sure as the earth will turn on its axis. And I have to just stand by. I have to watch this played out.

There’s a parallel between the man in question and his family, and between Little George Bush and his administration. Absolute disaster must occur to the villains in each case, taking every innocent person in their universe down with them. I have to watch the Bush catastrophe play out, just as I have to watch the other catastrophe play out. In each case, to the bitter, god, damned, end.

After the first of the year, Bush will send 50,000 troops to Baghdad to try to occupy it. Many of them will die. Many Iraqis will die. It's all about this little Texas frat-boy's ego. He doesn't want to "lose."

And we can't do a damned thing about it. We have a military dictator who is not a bit better than Kim Jong Il. This man is a monster. His vice president is a monster.

Lord? Will You please do something? But why should I ask you to do something on our behalf? On my behalf? You are God -- which means “good” -- and yet You let evil triumph over good every day, all over this tear-stained, grief-stricken, atrocity-laden ball.

What do You have to say for Yourself? How can the evil not come from You? Preachers say that evil comes from people -- or from Satan -- "the evil one," as Jesus calls him in the modern translations. Jesus says that only God is good.

But You, God, are the author of all, aren’t You? So didn’t You create evil? Whether in the form of people -- a more “parsimonious” explanation -- or Satan? You let Idi Amin and Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler and the butchers of the Sudan and Papa Doc Duvalier and Slobodan Milosevich and yes, Saddam Hussein, and God knows how many other monsters come to power: why then should I be surprised that You have let George W. Bush and Dick Cheney come to power?

As Bob of God, the Devil and Bob cries out, looking up into the sky from a rainy, rubble-filled field in Detroit, “What kind of God are You? You’re a deadbeat dad!” Why do You allow all the misery and injustice and murder and mayhem to just go on and on and on and ON?

I know there are people, good people -- some of whom believe in You and some of whom do not -- and they keep on trying to do the good and decent and just and merciful thing at every turn and with every person they come in touch with, and I admire them, and sometimes I even try to emulate them to the best of my sorry ability. It is enough to try to emulate good people -- there are many good ones in this world; even some who are not born-again, Bible-bopping, church-chained Christians.

I am not amoral. I believe in doing always the good, just, kind, loving action. Even if I don't always do it myself. I believe in love.

But what of You, God? What of You?

The Straight Story: Beautiful Film

Watched the story of Alvin Straight (1920-1996), who as a poor-sighted, lame old man, goes to visit his brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton) who has had a stroke. His mode of transportation is an old riding lawnmower, which he uses to pull a trailer with his camping needs. "Alvin" is one of my favorite actors, Richard Farnsworth. (You girls will remember him as Matthew Cuthbert of Anne of Green Gables. We had the pleasure of seeing that wonderful movie set on Prince Edward Island, surely one of the most enchanted places on this earth. I loved it all over again. Rosie loved it: who wouldn't?)

The Straight Story couldn't have a simpler "plot." An old man wants to make up with his brother before they die and goes on a heroic odyssey to meet him. Does he make it? It's a bittersweet, poignant movie. I can hardly believe that the director is David Lynch, he of Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks. Nothing surreal or outre about this movie that I could detect. Lynch teamed up with composer Angelo Badalamenti; they'd collaborated on Twin Peaks. Angelo included a song by Jo Stafford, a favorite artist of mine, an apropos jukebox tune while Alvin and another WWII vet reminisce over a beer.

Everything in this movie pleases. I'll have to file Alvin and Lyle along with Amarante Cordova and the Senile Brigade of The Milagro Beanfield War, Garth and Hub of The Secondhand Lions, and Burt Munro of The World's Fastest Indian in my pholder of all-time phavorites of phellow olde pharts!

Countdown

You really must see Countdown with Keith Olbermann, kids. It's on MSNBC at 8 p.m. Even if you don't care for the more or less serious political stuff -- lefty Keith is wicked in his scathing criticism of Bush and the more vicious elements of the radical right -- his "Oddball" and "Worst Person in the World" are fun. He starts out at the beginning of the hour with gravity or outrage over the political or military developments of the day and the levity gradually rises to the top over the hour, ending with a spoof, usually with Mo Rocca or Michael Mesto. On Oddball, Keith's always recounting the capers of people committing crimes and getting caught for their incredible stupidity; their fiascoes are told while a cartoon guy in prison stripes, a ball and chain on his leg, and a glum emoticon face :-( is displayed on the screen. "COPS 1, DOPES 0." Strong recommend: George Clooney makes sure to TiVo (sp?) the program every day.

Pet Peeves

A. Please don't take this too seriously.
B. These are in no order. Here we go.

1. Not giving turn signals. Especially when the drivers are coming at me from the opposite direction and we're at a stoplight or stop street. And then turning left, nearly colliding with me as I try to go forward.

2. Smoking in the air I breathe. (I'm a recovering alcoholic but I am a reformed smoker. Oh do I wax sanctimonious about the kind of thoughtless behavior that I indulged in all those years.)

3. Caviling about no-smoking laws as an infringement of the "right" of people to smoke in the air others breathe.

4. Yawning without covering one's mouth.

5. Drinking beer from a bottle. We've got the Europeans doing it now. (We've got the English saying "ass" instead of "arse" and the French eating Big Macs and the Germans listening to atrocious music. That last is OK just as long as they don't listen to and sing along with the "Horst Wessel Song" (atrocious and a pretext for genocide).

6. TV commercials for prescription drugs, ranging from those for ED (look it up) to urinary incontinence to the little cartoon gremlins representing foot fungus, mucus, and migraine pain. (The cartoon characters are at least an improvement upon the actors reciting side-effects of the drugs. Give me more of the elephant dancing to "Singin' in the Rain"!)

7. Talking on cell phones in cars (especially SUVs) and public buildings.

8. SUVs.

9. Blog comments full of grammatical, spelling, and typographical errors. (Nothing said about errors of fact.)

10. Buzz words and catch phrases as substitution for clear thinking, reasoned argument, and fresh speech. Here are a few (again, in no order):
a. "It's right out of ...'s playbook."
b. "...on a slippery slope"
c. "...within the parameters" (especially when the speaker means "perimeter," i.e. boundaries)
d. "arguably (the best, etc.)" (You can make a cogent argument that it's the best? Or that it's easily disputed?")
e. "That's history"
f. "That's a no-brainer"
g. "That's a slam-dunk"
h. "win in Iraq" = "stay the course" = "don't cut and run"
i. "No problem."

11. People sitting in their recliners pontificating about everything and using the internet for broadcasting their bulls.*

Have a nice day! Be adequite! (This was written with my blackbury jam while I was tird and in a hurry to meat my fans.)

This list was not meant to be exhaustive.

J-5-8

We kinda wanted to watch some crime dramas on WAVE3-TV this evening but were frustrated because the Louisville NBC affiliate is dedicated to telecasting all University of Kentucky basketball games and tonight a UK game ruled. Go 'Cats.

It passed through my mind the other day that I might watch more basketball this year. Five minutes would do it. I'd been disillusioned with the sport since Kareem was Lew Alcindor and John Wooden was coach at UCLA. And Indiana had a single class state tournament.

I do recall a world series or whatever you call it when the Celtics (Larry Bird, Robert Parrish, Kevin McHale, Tiny Archibald) beat the Lakers (Kareem, Magic). Seems I watched that in the basement of our house at 2564 Tyler in Ogden, Utah, so that's been a while.

Basketball hasn't always been a spectator sport for me. Although I wasn't good enough to make the varsity and the varsity wasn't good enough to make it out of the sectional, I played in a lot of pickup games on outdoor courts up to when I went in the Peace Corps. The thing I did best was pass the ball to the open man.

I was pretty sneaky about it. But I wasn't very graceful. Anyone remember "Ollie" of Hoosiers who dribbled the ball off his foot and out of bounds? Ich bin Ollie, Schatze. Then there was the time I nearly croaked after playing a full-court game with a bunch of old Logansport jocks and my kids on Thanksgiving.

But I liked watching the game when I was a kid. The year we won state, I had a season ticket in the Brown Gym behind the press box. The seat was in Section J, Row 5, Seat 8. I was ten, in the sixth grade. Always a fat little nerd, I made up my own spiral-bound scorebooks and kept score with a Scripto mechanical pencil. I did well for the first quarter or so but I'd get excited and forget to put down O's and X's for baskets and foul shots attempted and made. Then there were the fouls. Boy, could I have used a cam-corder!

That was a fabulous year for basketball. The MHS Cubs were a really strong team (there is no I in team, yada, yada, yada, but in this case it was really true). The teams in the sectional tournament, the first of the four competitions (sectional, regional, semifinal, final) that eliminated all but one team, were nowhere near a match for the big guys. We beat one team 103-39. The basketball was smokin'.

That sectional was spectacular. In 1950 there were 757 teams to start and most of them were in the Madison sectional. All the rural one-room schoolhouses had high schools and some kind of gym. North Madison, "Central" (Ryker's Ridge), Dupont, Deputy, Saluda, and Hanover comprised the schools of Jefferson County, and schools from other counties competed too -- Paris Crossing, Cross Plains, Lexington, Moorefield, Brooksburg, Foltz -- hell I don't know. Everybody. And what the players lacked in skill they made up for in the color of their uniforms -- one I recall had highway yellow underwear with crimson trim. And their nicknames. Well, those weren't all that inspired: Lions and Tigers and Bears and Wolves and Snakes and ... No. No snakes. Just kidding. None of the other, either. I liked the Paris Crossing Pirates. You have to go north to get some really good names: the Frankfort Hot Dogs, the Logansport Berries, the Rochester Zebras. I love that! Zebras.

The games started on Wednesday afternoon and we were out of school (!) from then through Friday. I don't remember that occurrence before or after. I think the expectation we'd win state this year was high: we'd lost in the final game last year 62-61 to Anderson and nearly all the guys from last year were back. Deadeye Dee was gone but he was well supplanted by five excellent players -- even the bench was strong. We were dismissed from school and told to go to the games to support our troops.

Freedom of speech is exciting when it's exhibited in a sweaty gym where Hoosiers are practicing the state religion. A teacher once had us imitate a crowd by half of us repeating "hubbub" over and over while the other half said "soda water bottle." That's what it sounded like there between plays and when the plays got exciting the crowd sounded like three choirs singing in round with three 32-stop organs with all stops pulled out, playing Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, Widor's Toccata, and Bach's Toccata and Fugue in d. The spectacle of all the people made it worthwhile even if you couldn't see the game. The place would get hot and they'd open the big transom windows at the tops of the bleachers. The litter of popcorn boxes and Coke cups would abuild and it was OK as long as it didn't get on the playing floor. A morose janitor with a 4' -wide fleece dustmop would go around the edges of the floor at the half.

We went on to win that year. We had another squeaker with Anderson, in the afternoon of the final four weeks after that sectional. That night we romped over Lafayette Jefferson, 67-44.

I recite these numbers from memory. My M-1 rifle's serial number (1958) was 5735825. I kid you not.

Max Clooney R.I.P.

George Clooney's pet potbellied pig, Max, passed away. As Kurt Vonnegut used to say, So it goes.

Noah Wyle and Reminiscing

Sort of watching The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines on TNT, starring Noah Wyle, Gabrielle Anwar, Jane Curtin, Bob Newhart, and Olympia Dukakis. It's a kind of Indiana Jones adventure on Xanax. Wyle is pronounced "wily," as in coyote. Noah was born in 1971 -- a glorious year for people to be born. His month is June, so he's just a little older than my two fine offspring born on that blessed unseasonably warm November night in Columbus, Indiana -- the night I felt lightheaded when David Ryan, M.D. said, "Get the other warmer ready. There's another one coming." Earlier we'd heard Doc Ryan on the floor underneath us practicing "Would You Like to Fly in My Beautiful Balloon?" on his clarinet. Best Xmas presents I ever had.

The Alcoholic Card -- It Worked for Mel G. and Mark F.

A friend who happens to be a member of AA called this to my attention:

News Item: Lindsay Lohan [movie star] has been attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, HER PUBLICIST SAID Friday... She said Lohan, 20, made the decision on her own to attend meetings, although Sloane [the publicist] added: "And, by the way, she's not saying ... she'll STOP DRINKING TOMORROW." [my screaming letters!]

"It's a place to go and feel safe," she said. "No one judges her, and it's going to be a slow process. But, to me, the fact that she's seeing that there's something not right makes her smarter than the next person." ...

Sloane said she thinks the press was unfair to Lohan by ridiculing a statement the actress wrote following last week's death of Robert Altman, who directed her in "A Prairie Home Companion."

A sad Lohan wrote the rambling letter "on the fly" on her Blackberry, Sloane said.

The letter, in which Lohan signs off with "BE ADEQUITE," has been criticized by a number of media observers for its grammatical errors and misspellings, among other things — including exploiting Altman's death for her own publicity purposes.

"I want everyone to leave her the hell alone," Sloane said. "I'm so bored of this with her. No matter what she does, it's never good enough for everybody."

[Her publicist tells the media that Miss Lohan is attending Alcoholics Anonymous so people will leave her the hell alone?]

My friend says the approach to a drinking problem in AA is generally to try to abstain -- NOT drink -- TODAY. "Tomorrow" never comes.

Tradition 12 of AA: "Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities."

(Come to think of it, I'm bored of this with her too.)

Dubya Library!

I would never try to top this.

The Elephant in the Living Room

While I've been indulging in frivolity here, all the while I'm thinking: the war, the war, what can we do about the war? We the people of Rock Ridge have spoken, and it just goes to show that you are the leading ...

No, no, no, I must be serious. We the electorate by somewhat of a majority have told this president that we do not want him to stay the course or stay until the mission is complete or however he chooses to put it. We want out, one way or another. How? In God's name, how?

I've ranted enough about how these people will not listen to reason and how all they care about is saving face and looking tough and PR hype and they truly don't care about human life -- compassion my ass. This man is sleeping like a baby at night, planning his presidential library funded with 500 million dollars, while Iraqis and his countrymen and women are dying daily in droves.

We learned before W. ever got to Washington (or Austin for that matter) that his pattern was to get involved in some enterprise, mess it up, and have friends of his daddy bail him out. Molly Ivins told us all about him and some of us were wise and voted against him -- good that it did us.

Jim Baker,who bailed him out with dirty tricks in Florida when he lost the election in 2000, hurting us in the process, is back to bail him out of this war. Why am I apprehensive over what this Baker commission will come up with? I know that the redoubtable Lee Hamilton is co-chair but somehow that doesn't reassure me as much as I would like it to.

In any case, I believe that whatever they come up with, particularly if it is anything other than "stay the course" or some verbal variation of I'm the decider and I'll do as I please because I can and because you have to know that fact, regardless of what it costs in life and resources to you. I don't know you and I don't care about you. I won't listen to you if you differ from what I have already made up my mind to do.

Senator Joe Biden of Delaware is talking about encouraging partition, i.e. three separate states, one for the Sunnis, one for the Shia, and one for the Kurds. Pundits are curling up their lips in scorn, but why not explore it? Put each warring faction in its own zone with demilitarized zones in between and enforce those DMZs with the UN and of course -- since we have to atone for the sins of Junior and clean up his shit, as people have always had to do -- include a large proportion of US military forces in the peacekeeping force. The critics will say you can't manipulate these people like puppets and make them go where you want them to go and do what you want to do. They are speaking from bitter experience, given that their misadventure in the first place did not turn out to be a "cakewalk" and our troops were not "greeted as liberators." And the Iraqis they encountered were not puppets and the "liberators" could not make them go where they wanted and do what they wanted the Iraqis to do.

We should announce how long we will continue with our military presence of foreign troops in the crossfire of a civil war -- hell, calling it a "civil war" is a euphemism for what it really is -- total anarchy. Chaos. Bedlam. Pandemonium. Hell on earth. We should announce how long we are going to stay and then promptly get out. Take French leave. Just hop on a bus, Gus. Then let go and let Allah.

Since Junior won't go along with that, since he would have to admit he was wrong, which he has never done in his life, and that he has been defeated by the terrorists -- he really believes this is what it would mean -- we shall just have to impeach Junior and try -- try -- to get him out of office before he breaks any more toys. Because his toys are the people of the United States and the people of Iraq.

God -- Allah, Yahweh, HP, Whoever -- help us. I ask this as an earnest prayer. God deliver us from this insanity. Amen.

Basil Poledouris, 1945-2006

I just found this out. Basil Poledouris, movie composer, died November 8th. He did the kind of stuff I like, e.g. Lonesome Dove and the movie that first caught my attention, Quigley Down Under. I loved the scoring that combined banjo and trombone, two of my favorites, with a big orchestra in the Quigley themesong. When I was in show business -- so I was foolishly deluded at the time -- I downloaded a CD of Basil's music in a certain radio station's library, and I'm glad I did. Other great stuff Basil did was for Conan the Barbarian, Free Willy, The Blue Lagoon, and The Hunt for Red October. Basil was from Kansas City, Mo. He was 61.

Nostalgic about Sidekicks

"Fuzzy pants!" Saw that on my son's girl's blog and it brought up one of my "clang associations" (see schizophrenia) from the past -- from the last century, from the medieval ages. My dad (who Johnnie is a lot alike in temperament and character -- that's a compliment -- take my word for it) used to tease me about going to B-grade westerns on Saturdays. The formula for those included a funny "sidekick" for the hero. (Johnnie has a photo of Rudy and his sidekick, Xena.) Lee "Lasses" White (slow as molasses --in January, as I think the cliche goes) was the sidekick of Jimmy Wakely, a troubadour (who really sang quite well and wrote some nice old country standards, including "Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes"). My dad would refer to "Lasses White and his fuzzy pants" and I would crawl under the couch with embarrassment. I didn't like Jimmy Wakely because he sang. I liked the cowboys who were no-nonsense, always winning fistfights, always shooting the gun out of the villain's hand, who didn't sing, and who never kissed girls. Nowadays I like kissing at least as well as fighting. My favorite sidekick now (at least in retrospect) was Smiley Burnette, who split his sidekicking between Gene Autry and the Durango Kid. Smiley sang well, played violin (OK, fiddle, he wasn't Nathan Millstein), and wrote a lot of songs. And he was really funny. I miss him and his gentle kind. I think he might have been the composer of the song that has the chorus:

"Oh what a face! It's a disgrace! To be showing it in any public place!"

(I know the tune. I can still hear Smiley and his country swing band, decked out in ten-gallon hats, western shirts, and string ties, singing it with big grins. The supposed hatchet-faced lady was mercifully absent, in fact nonexistent. Those guys weren't mean. Not a mean bone in all of their bodies.)

Bear with me. Just an old coot with his memories...

Nuck Fewt

Regarding the speech by Newt Gingrich on abridging FREE SPEECH: You can't save the Constitution by destroying it. You're a bigger terrorist than Osama, you little butterball. It gives me great comfort to know that you are close to the bottom of the list of public figures who have presidential pretensions, right down there with John Kerry and Bill Frist (another comfort). I'd be really comforted if you were in jail where you belong. I know I'm subtle but maybe you'll get the point. Just hope you get it in Uranus. That would be a good place for the rest of you, along with your head.

Love Feast

Our House is a movie on TV this afternoon starring Doris Roberts in a role slightly different from Ray Romano's mom. She is a filthy rich old lady who takes a bunch of homeless people into her Beverly Hills residence after one of them rescues her from suicide.

It's fantastic, of course, and by now formulaic, as such movies are, but it's a kind of parable. Its based on Jesus' parable about the wedding feast that the king first offers to the "respectable people" and when they spurn it, tells his lieutenants, " 'Go therefore to the thoroughfares, and invite to the marriage feast as many as you find.' And those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good; so the wedding hall was filled with guests." (Mt. 22:9-10)

The Book of Bebb by Frederick Buechner is about the life of a weirdo preacher who, among other things, holds a "Love Feast" for the poor and homeless. It's an intriguing idea.

I'm not preaching any sermons. I confess that I don't minister much to the poor and homeless. I contribute a little to Salvation Army and of course, as those of you who read this, I try to afflict the comfortable more than comfort the afflicted with my harangues about tax cuts for the rich and all of that.

But literally feeding and housing and providing medical care to the less fortunate -- it's an intriguing idea.

Happy Thanksgiving and go with God.

Letter to Mo on "Squeaker of the House" (11/18/2006)

Letter to Maureen Dowd re. her New York Times column on Saturday 11/18/2006)

Mo (May I call you Mo? Call me JT.)

I got a comment on my blog from a frequent anonymous poster, one who feeds daily on Rush and Bill-o and Sean and Ann. Following? He said that "Pelosi" and the "demo-craps" would louse things up, starting with her endorsement of "that crook Murtha."

My dear Mo, and you really are dear to me -- because you are, as you said your detractors call you, a "liberal slut" (your words, I forget which interview) -- Mo, Mo, Mo, why did you have to trash Ms Pelosi for the first mistake she makes? One week after lauding her as a liberating Valkyrie?

Do you know what she and the Democrats are trying to liberate us from? Do you know you aid and abet "Anonymous" and his dreadful mob when you attack the good guys? Yes, Nancy messed up. I hope she learned from it. Your writing in high dudgeon about "throwing like a girl" and "Playskool telephones" and petty motives and catfights between her and Jane Harman (about which you know no more than I, an old fart from a small town in Indiana) is, as you like to say, kerfuffle.

I know, dear Mo, you are at the top of your game when you are trashing somebody, but for God's sake, pick your battles. I remember all the silly crap you were writing about Al Gore's "earth tones." Sorry now? (No, I guess not. You'll say your ridiculing him along with the rest of the morons (you're not a moron) wasn't the deciding factor.)

Choose your battles, Mo. We're at war. And I'm not talking about the godforsaken misadventure in Iraq. While you're devastating Nancy Pelosi, Bush-Cheney-Rove-Gonzales et al. continue to mock us and drag us down in the muck. Pick your battles, girl. And stay focused. I love your work when you're trashing the bad guys. I also like it when you write lovingly of your mother and your Catholic upbringing. (I don't know why, I'm not Catholic, not even a very good Christian.)

Affectionately but pissed, J.T. Evans

Anonymous Comments on This Blog

To those few "Dear Hearts and Gentle People" who read my blog:

I just changed the "comments" feature of Window on JT's World so that only "registered users" may comment. This is pending further communication and deliberation and I may change it back.

For now, if people who read the blog have trouble commenting, please send me an email.

Thanks.

JT

More on David Kuo's Book, "Tempting Faith"

People who are looking for the confessions of an outright defector from the religious right in this book will be disappointed. I would deem it less valuable in exposing the Bush administration if Mr. Kuo had renounced his beliefs entirely and went into a Kitty Kelly type of smear from a newly adopted "liberal" viewpoint. But this guy worked for Bill Bennett and John Ashcroft and thought Chuck Colson was the cat's meow at one time. All three of those folks have an emetic effect on this observer, but that is beside the point -- which is, I have inferred thus far, that you cannot serve God and Caesar any more than you can serve God and Mammon. He quotes from C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, in which "Screwtape" tells his subordinate tempter (whose goal is, of course, to lure the Christian into hell) the following (the quotation comes directly from Kuo's book):

"Let him begin by treating patriotism ... as part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. [My italics] Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely a part of the 'cause,' in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce ... [O]nce he's made the world an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing."

Seems that Jesus put this point more succinctly with the words: "What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?"

More to come. I haven't read all of the book. It's quite thought-provoking. And enlightening.

More on the Peace Corps

We did a lot of partying when we were training for the Peace Corps and after we arrived in Nigeria. This was before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and during the continuing hateful resistance of whites to integration, particularly in the South, but also in states like Indiana -- especially Indiana. Martin Luther King Jr. was leading the movement, and his approach was modeled on the non-violent resistance of Ghandi. When demonstrators sat in at lunch counters and so forth, they would often sing. I regret that I was not one of the Freedom Riders of the early 1960s. One of the songs they sang was "We Shall Overcome." We sang it in the Peace Corps, though. I am very fond of that song and believe fervently in what it stands for. We still need that song and our non-violent resistance that the song symbolizes, resistance to the hatred and bigotry which is dying but still resides in the hearts of cowards who hide their identity. "Black and white together, black and white together / For deep in my heart / I do believe / that we shall overcome some day..."

See, Sah! I Tink You Are One of de Peace Corpse

A pleasant interlude this evening: I had a date with a Hanover coed! Her name is Casey, and she is writing a paper on the Peace Corps for her senior sociology class. She is from a small northern Indiana town, where her father is an elected public official. Casey has brown hair and green eyes, and yes, for the record, she is quite cute. She was attentive to her personal appearance but not fixy -- which I guess is my way of saying that her shoulder-length hair was squeaky-clean and combed but not fussed with, she wore casual but not slouchy clothes, and if she used makeup it was not detectable. She rode off on a bicycle after our interview. I didn't ask her if she has a Greek affiliation. I hope she doesn't. (Natalie will appreciate my sentiment on that.)

I met Casey at the library and she asked me lots of questions about my experience as a PCV in Nigeria and took down more than a page of densely written notes. One of her motives is to find out if she might like to volunteer herself. She majors in sociology and minors in Spanish, and she obviously has poise and sociability, so she might be a very good candidate indeed for one of the Central or South America countries.

She had met Emeka K. and Julie B., two other returned PCVs in our area. Emeka (pronounced Eh-MEK-ah: he was given an Ibo name by his RPCV parents, whose tour of duty in Nigeria overlapped mine a little) went to Guinea, and Julie served in Panama. Casey also interviewed a Hanover professor, Daryl K., who was a member in, I believe, a sub-Saharan African country. She asked me for names of other RPCVs in the area and I promised her I would try to get them to her. She is going to have more than enough material for her paper.

I told her that I am very proud and grateful to have been one of the earliest Peace Corps Volunteers. And so I am. I wear a cap from UCLA, the place where I had my training in 1962. I taught physics and math at a girls' secondary school in what was then the Western Region of Nigeria, and which is still the land of the great Yoruba people. When I went out of the school "compound," I would hear calls of "Oyibo!" (European) and bold young men who would walk up to me and say, "See, Sah! I tink you are one of the Peace Corpse." Then we would have a conversation about world politics, in which they were disappointed when they found out I was no expert. (I was never asked if I was a CIA agent, although some of my colleagues got that question from time to time.)

Let's just say that events that occurred there led to my life vocation. Casey asked me if I was glad I joined the Peace Corps and if I thought that the Peace Corps was a good thing. My answers to both were an unqualified "Yes."

Bumper sticker to be read by Bush and the Bushies

BISPARTISAN THIS!

THIS JUST IN!

Baron Hill recaptured his seat in Indiana's 9th District! John Yarmuth defeated Ann Northrup! The Democrats have taken back the House of Representatives! After six years of unopposed power leading us into the horrible mess we are in, the executive branch is for the first time at the least going to have some checks on it. Thank God for that. Amen.

Die-Hard Yellow Dog, Yours Truly

This morning I went to the home of my good friend John Collins, who is running for the Madison school board, to get another yard sign. Then I went to Democratic headquarters and got a slew more of signs for my candidates. Then I went to the library and got two books, Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--and How We Can Take It Back, by David Sirota, and Conservatives Without Conscience, by John Dean. Then I went home and put my signs out in the yard. There are more than there were before. Brian, here to get his firefighter's uniform pants that his mother had hemmed, asked me how it was going as he left. I said, "I'm just exercising my right as a United States citizen to campaign for the people I believe should be in office." I didn't have to defend my action to Brian, but I was feeling paranoid at the moment. That saying about defending to the death my right to say what my opponents don't want to hear seems kind of remote in the current political climate. I think we're going to win a few this time. I feel it.

Southpaw Stew

An old whiskered sidekick in a B-oater of yesteryear (think Gabby, Hayes or Johnson, or Fuzzy St. John -- he was the sidekick of Lash LaRue) was cooking a pot of something in one of the comic relief scenes where Roy or Bart or Lash wasn't chasing or shooting or fistfighting. Roy-Lash asked him what he was cooking. He said, "Southpaw stew." (Why do you call it that?) "Cause it's made of whatever's left." (Yuk yuk yuk!)

Which is my way of segueing into a potpourri, olio, olla podrida, slumgullion of this and that about everything and nothing. Mostly nothing. This week we visited friends at their home in Bay Village, Ohio, which is on Lake Erie. They are dear people and three of the four of us go back to MHS Class of '56 so we had plenty to reminisce about. They lost an adult daughter to cancer earlier this year and we talked about it and it was good and I hoped it helped them -- it helped us. We took a walk in a beautiful little park beside the lake and other than freezing our asses loved it. We went to Kohl's, which had a sale of 50% off on some items and 15% more off for seniors and we didn't buy a thing. (We can get the same thing at a much lesser "full" price elsewhere with no "discounts," way I see it.) We went to an Italian restaurant and had delicious chicken entrees. We dipped real bread in herbed olive oil, etc. The music was Sinatra, Dean Martin, etc. I expected Al Pacino to pop in. The atmosphere and service were great. It was an honest-to-god restaurant, for a change. We wandered through Ohio and Indiana on the way home.

I'd started to write a couple of other things for the blog and decided not to finish or post them. I wanted to comment on The Grapes of Wrath, which we finished reading and followed up by watching the 1941 movie with Henry Fonda, and I was writing a treatise on economics,which I know nothing about. It is a beautiful, elegiac book and I think its views of socioeconomics are still essentially true today. I also started to discuss an article by Paul Krugman in which he urged Democrats "not to make nice" with the opposition, as the Dixie Chicks sang in their first album after they'd been accused of treason for simply saying they are ashamed of the man who happens to be the president and then being subjected to a Krystallnacht of burning their CDs (incited by rightwing media owners, for the most part).

When we got back from Ohio we discovered that our candidates' yard signs were gone. I did a little Sipowicz work this morning and have some of the Franks Drive Irregulars on my short list of suspects. Nobody will 'fess up even though I don't want to get any kids in trouble. Yet I don't approve of that kind of vandalism. Bottom line: I'd rather it would be the kids with no political agenda than a Republican dirty trick.

Rosie's son, Brian, who is a volunteer firefighter, had a close friend die in a fire this past week. Firefighters from all around are going to attend the young man's funeral and Brian will be among them on Sunday. He obtained a pair of black firefighter's uniform trousers for the occasion and Rosie hemmed them for him.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could have campaigns in which the candidates seriously debated the issues and didn't have multimillion-dollar TV ads that distort the truth and smear their opponents -- because the big bucks were truly forbidden to pay for them?

Campaign finance reform, anyone?

Film Music Revisited

This evening Turner Classic Movies is showing The Heiress, directed by Willie Wyler, starring Olivia de Havilland and Montgomery Clift, with the musical score by Aaron Copland. I wish I had learned enough about music -- wish I hadn't run away from Laura Bach (her real name) and Becky King, piano teachers, when I was a spoiled little brat (as opposed to the big spoiled brat I am now) -- so I knew and could talk intelligently about keys and scales and arpeggios and diminished chords and stuff. And "bitonality" (the characteristic of the music of Bernard Herrmann, I read, as used in, among other movies, North by Northwest). I sort of remembered that Copland was the composer for The Heiress but I knew he was after two minutes of listening. (I've never seen this 1949 film and happen to be taping the rest of it at this moment so I can watch The Colbert Report). But I don't know how to describe intelligently what I am hearing to pedants, who will be listening to my show (it's comin', folks, it's comin', soon's I can figure out all this iPod stuff). But I listened to an Adventures in Good Music show in which Karl Haas featured film music, and I was not a bit intimidated at the prospect of having a show along the lines of this one episode by the master of the genre of music shows. And who knew enough about music that he could play piano. No, what I will have to bring to such a show is my enthusiasm and love and listening ear, however untrained, and my willingness to learn and share what I've learned with others and perhaps open up a new world to them.

(1) Kuo on Xns and GOP; (2) Sweeney on Clean Campaigns

(1) Except from Richard Wolffe's Newsweek interview with former Bush White House aide David Kuo, who has written a book critiquing the Bush administration's emphasis on faith-based initiatives. The book is called Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction.

Wolffe: Are Christian leaders being naïve in their dealings with the White House or do they understand the nature of the exchange?

Kuo: It's a little bit of both. In some ways White House power is like [J.R.R.] Tolkien's ring of power. When you put it on, it feels good and it's dazzling. But after a while it begins to consume you in ways you don't realize. That's the nature of White House power. I have no doubt that Christian political leaders have gotten involved for all the right reasons. I just think over time it becomes harder and harder to stand up against that ring of power and the White House, to say no and walk away.

The Christian political leaders have been seduced. If you look at their comments that they know what they're doing, I'm not quite sure how to read that--is it wonderful or a little troubling? That's one of the reasons I call for this fast from politics. I'm not saying that Christians shouldn't vote, which is going around on Christian talk radio. But for a period--I personally think it should take two years from after this election to the presidential election--evangelical Christians should take a fast from giving their money to political causes and from giving much of their time as well. Take that money that is currently fueling all those wonderful hate-filled ads, the hundreds of millions being spent, and spend that money on the poor and inner-city kids. Instead of spending time lobbying, spend your time with your neighbor, saying love your neighbor as yourself.

(2) "Running with Blinders" by Kevin Sweeney about abstinence from negative campaigning is worth a look:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/16/opinion/16sweeney

More Politickin'

Posting an email from fellow Bridgebuilders:

Dear Friends,

Somehow I sense we made a difference yesterday at the library. A pretty good showing of folk for the documentary. Thanks, J.T., for arranging the film and for the newspaper notice. While Ken and I both came away with a sense that there was definitely hyperbole involved in the way the points were presented, it gave me a new appreciation of how the desire for profit can cloud over completely why and how you do your work. I've been thinking about encouraging everyone to withhold $5 from their federal income taxes for 2006 in protest.

Have you heard of the ONE campaign? We heard about it through church today. At www.ONE.org you can learn about how you as ONE person can help support the Millenium Goals of 9/2000. (Remember, we looked at these while reading Wallis' God's Politics.) A related movement is STAND UP. I only know of the Episcopal Church's connection with this campaign but it's a worldwide effort. The cool thing is you can buy white ONE bracelets to show your support. I got one today understand they are available at the ONE website.

SEE YOU ALL ON NOV. 14. and GOOD LUCK TO JOHN!

Best, Dianne & Ken

And before November 14th, get out the vote on November 7th. Let's take the nation back!

Politickin' etc.

Today at the Madison library our discussion group showed the film, Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers. After it, Baron Hill, the Democratic candidate for Congress for the Indiana Ninth District, joined us and we had a nice little love-in. (Spence Schnaitter, the Speaker of the Indiana General Assembly in the seventies, was there and livened the discussion. Spence and I go way back. He was the center for the 1950 Madison state champs in basketball and Main Street neighbors, the year I was in sixth grade and had a season ticket in a great seat. He went to Yale Law School, was in state politics, and has been a Madison lawyer for decades.)

Baron is a "Blue Dog Democrat," whose forte is fiscal responsibility, that concern having devolved to Democrats, the old balanced-budget folks on the other side of the aisle having abandoned their frugality for the "deficits don't matter", trillions-for-war and tax-cuts-for-the-rich GOP. Baron's platform makes a lot of sense following upon our viewing of the film that exposed the billion dollars in no-bid contracts to KBR/Halliburton and the partisan defeats of amendments to oversee private contractors in Iraq.

I said it was a love-in. Everybody present, pretty much, felt warmly toward Baron and plans on voting for him in November. Nevertheless, no one was at the door screening people to ensure they were all loyal, as is the case with you-know-who's public appearances.

It was a gorgeous October Saturday and besides our modest little gathering the town had an event called "Soup, Stew, Chili and Brew." Rosie picked up sandwiches from the Milton Elementary School Fish Fry for us, which we ate hungrily after the meeting.

Installed Norton antivirus software on both computers. It's serving them well.

We're watching the pilots of 21 Jump Street. I didn't know Johnny Depp was in that! Also this evening watched In the Heat of the Night for the fifteenth (thirtieth?) time. I can see it about every six months and enjoy it. I remember the first time I saw it, in southern California in 1967. When Larry Gates slaps Sidney Poitier and "Mister Tibbs" slaps him right back, the kids in the theater cheered.

Another exciting Saturday night in Madison, Indiana. Where all the kids are above average ... zzzzz

How Firm a Foundation

Watching Countdown. It just gets better and better (worse and worse). A tell-all book, Tempting Faith, is coming out exposing the Bushies’ covert contempt for the RELIGIOUS RIGHT, referring to them as “nuts” and “goofy,” fawning over them in public, laughing at them behind their back, and giving them nothing -- zilch, zip, squat, nada -- for their fanatical loyalty. Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman are bashed. (Thank You, Lord!) The author professes to be a Christian himself. As we say, I’m not making this up.

The show is now over and I’ve had enough of politics and switched to KET, hoping to get Mystery! starring Helen Mirren as "Inspector Jane Tennyson," or that guy who looks every bit the part of a hard-boiled Yank cop until he starts spouting his musical Cockney, as "Inspector Lewis," who has moved into the job of inspector Morse and whose gravitas has increased for his new job (as the Senator from Pendergast did when the moon and stars fell on him in 1945).

I got instead the show, Jubilee, a KET production, which tonight features "The Lonesome Pine," a bluegrass group, singing “Look What the Lord Has Done.” It has blown away the stink of politics for the moment, leaving a windswept, rain-washed, star-filled landscape of music and holiness, which I think are related in some way we have yet to learn to appreciate. Good music is eloquent in a way that no preachers can be. Hymns are the strength of Protestant Christianity. Just hearing Virgil Thomson’s use of the old hymns in his symphonic works evokes a reverence in me that no sermon or Bible study has ever been able to do.

Hot damn! And now they're playing a breakdown, the kind that John and Natalie danced to when they were tots. Praise God!

Oh, By the Way, Clinton Got Us In This Mess. Everybody Knows That.

On Joe Scarborough's 10/4/06 show, Al Franken and David Bossie. (Whoever the latter is. A conservative Republican spokesman. That about says it all. Speaking for the Right, not to be confused with speaking for the right).

Al: “Republicans are no longer conservative. They’re radical. Democrats are the true conservatives."

Bossie: (Disagrees.)

Al: We left you with a budget surplus --

Bossie: You left us with a war on terror.

(Joe cuts them off. Had to cut to commercial.)

“YOU LEFT US WITH A WAR ON TERROR.” That is an outrageous lie!

We would say on one of these talk shows for entertainment (not for saving the republic), in our mindless stringing together of cliches, “This is a page right out of the Hitler playbook.” * What I mean by that is that the Nazi technique is to repeat the biggest lie you can, over and over, no matter how many times others debunk it with facts and logic, just keep repeating it, and it will prevail.

* [There really was a playbook. It was titled Mein Kampf. Would to God the Germans had read it before they let the monster who wrote it come to power.]

The “war on terror,” of course, is a "comma" named by the Nitwit-in-Chief and concocted by the neocons and chicken hawks -- vicious Cheney; condescending Condi; squinty, squirty, mouthy, homicidal Rummy; you know the cabal.

They are parroted by Bush, who is their Dupe-become-Dictator. Oh, a dupe, all right, but entirely and utterly responsible for all the slaughter and waste and grand larceny of these hoodlums. These people are making me insane with rage, to be explicit, in case I've been too subtle. I wish them in the prisons they have made for their enemies.

But no -- they are mostly rich white Republican males who will never see the inside of a jail or prison cell, not for one minute, not even one of them. The next war criminal in the White House -- who will be another white Republican male -- will pardon them all -- if indeed they are ever even remotely considered to be guilty of anything, anything at all.

It’s more likely that he’ll give them all Medals of Freedom.

Chicken hawks, every last one of them, sissies who let others do their fighting for them. And LIARS. All of them LIARS. You got that? LIARS.

And their so-called "War on Terror" was left to them by the Clinton administration!

Fox News planted this monstrous lie with Chris Wallace in his interview with Bill Clinton. And they have played the interview over and over. And spun it to their advantage, saying that Clinton was “out of control with rage” because he called their game and had the temerity to comment aloud on Chris’s smirk. (You would like to smack it off his face, wouldn't you?)

Of course, not a minute was devoted to investigating the content of Clinton's words, which were the truth. He wasn't talking about Monica Lewinski. He was talking about being a responsible, honest, humble Commander-in-Chief.

And already they’ve got it down to a sound bite, a bumper sticker. This disaster we are in (1,252 days now since the declaration of Mission Accomplished) is because of Bill Clinton!

Right. And the pedophile who actually headed a congressional committee to protect children, and the connivance of the so-called leadership, is the fault of the Democrats.

God help us. We are a sorry lot.

They Went Thataway! C'm'on, Boys! We'll Head 'em Off at the Pass!

The breaking-news boys and girls are screaming, "Could Foley's follies hurt the GOP?"

Nah. Nothing will hurt the GOP.

Certainly not a sex scandal generated by a pipsqueak who happens to be a Republican as low on the food chain as Mark Foley. Why would the peccadilloes of a pipsqueak hurt the GOP when the felonies and war crimes of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld -- pipsqueaks too but in places of power where giants once were -- e.g., Harry Truman, FDR, General George Marshall -- don't even raise an eyebrow?

Yep, the breaking news posse has jumped on Old Paint and galloped off to Foley. What morons.

Hell, it pleases Rove that they're focusing on Foley rather than the real scoundrels.

Good Movie

Por Sie No Te Vuelvo a Ver (If I Never See You Again). Five geezers run away from a nursing home and play in a band for a cantina dancer. Poignant. Funny. Mexican -- they really make a great movie.

Othello

We watched Othello, Moor of Venice today. Lawrence Fishburn plays Othello and Kenneth Branagh plays Iago, the villain. Then we read the preface to Othello from the Complete Works in one volume from a dusty old book left at 510 Jefferson Street by Jill Woodburn. The film was mentioned by Jon Smith, the Hanover College professor of Shakespeare.

We loved it. Rozz was struck by the dramatic qualities of Larry Fishburn in an action-adventure movie we saw recently and so I decided to get the movie.

The performances of Fishburn and Branagh knocked my socks off. I think Fishburn surely must be one of the most powerful and underrated actors in movies today.

I've been aware of Branagh's talent for a good while. (He, of course, proved he was a fool by letting his bride Emma Thompson go, but you can't win 'em all and what do I know?) Now I want to see Branagh's Hamlet, which Jon also uses in his HC course.

I recently revisited an American classic of the fifties, The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever, by reading it aloud to Rosie. It has humor, an upbeat look at life, and beautiful prose-poetry about seaside New England. We both liked it and tonight we started The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Rosie fell asleep on the first chapter, which describes the Dust Bowl in almost King James language, with the cadences of the Creation stories in Genesis. My hypnotic voice and her weariness did her in.

Today got a phone call from my M.D. (medical daughter). She's like the Wyoming Gov -- Work! Work! Work! Also got a call from Warnie. He and I, we house-hubbies, will make one of our field trips to a greasy spoon about next week, I hope.

Fixed the toilet yesterday. Couldn't thread a nut on a bolt and found out it was threaded in reverse (counterclockwise to tighten). Took a trip back to Lowe's to find it out in a chance meeting with a competent and very amiable plumber there in the store. Came back home and promptly assembled the mechanism and soon we were flush in proper plumbing. Look what I did, Daddy!

Donated the twelve CDs of Mozart symphonies to the library. Those were the ones Shane sold me many years ago. Made copies for myself, so it's not the kind of giving that hurts. But I do love that library and am willing to make sacrifices for it.

Love to all and to all a good night.

Olio

“I have seen the very bottom of life,” she said. “I was so afraid I wouldn’t be funny anymore. I just knew that I would lose my zaniness and my sense of humor. But I didn’t. Recovery turned out to be a wonderful thing.”

Ann Richards was a recovering alcoholic from 1980 on.

She died Wednesday, September 13, at the age of 73, of esophageal cancer.

“Poor George, he can’t help it,” Ms. Richards said at the 1988 Democratic convention in Atlanta, speaking about the current president’s father. “He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”

Them was the days.

"We support Sojourners and have read Jim Wallis (and not James Dobson) for many years. In terms of a national movement of spiritual progressives, I am most optimistic about TIkkun, the grassroots interfaith group headed by Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God. My own experience from working with motivational interviewing is that direct argumentation with the likes of Dobson only tends to reinforce and publicize their extremism. What is badly needed, and sorely lacking in the Democratic party at present, is an alternative vision of how we should be together. Perhaps God will find a way to use us both in that regard."

-- Private communciation with a distinguished fellow psychologist

"Courage"

"Courage," Dan Rather used to say.

Sometimes it takes courage just to write a post for a blog. I have a small readership but a vital one. "I love you guys," as Coach Norman Dale says to the Hickory Huskers just before the Indiana high school basketball final game in Hoosiers.

I'm grateful for The Daily Show, "Tonight's Word" on The Colbert Report, and the "Worst Person in the World" on Keith Olbermann's Countdown. It takes a village of comedians and people with a wry outlook on this bunch in charge.

My wife justifiably told me to quit ranting last night and I went for a walk in downtown Madison to give her a break. I recalled the time when the University of Utah was favored to win the NCAA and was upset by UK. (Ugh! Sheesh, with all the odium residing in Washington and Crawford these days I'd forgotten all about the fanatics of Lexington and everything within a 100-mile radius, including of course and more's the pity Madison, Indiana.)

I took a long, sad, lonely walk that night. The occasion of "9/11" and the way it has been bungled and the likelihood that the bums in charge then will continue to be in charge for God knows how long but probably until the River Styx is a solid ribbon of ice.

Lord deliver us. Take care. Courage.

Flix

Enjoyed Hardball, in which Keanu Reeves plays a ne'er-do-well down-on-his-luck gambler who coaches a team of baseball kids from the Cabrini Green project. For all you Siskel and Ebert types out there, it's a formula movie with no surprises in particular, and of course it's sentimental. We loved it. Another movie we enjoyed was Elling, a Norwegian movie about two ex-mental patients who rehabilitate themselves in Oslo. We loved it.

Is Anybody Out There?

Hello, readers of my blog. Are you there? Just checkin'.

HP* Rules

Went to a meeting (not at liberty to disclose what kind, of course, or for that matter, where -- don't worry, Alberto, if you're reading this, it's not a terrorist cell) this evening, the first I'd attended since receipt of my 25-year token. It was held at an inpatient treatment facility and there were many people, all younger than I, except for the manager of one of the halfway houses who has forty years. He passed out tokens after the lead (that's pronounced like the present tense of the verb "to lead", not the noun for the metallic element that has the symbol Pb -- I suppose we should spell it "leed," in California in 1967 they called it a "pitch") and there was one person who took a 24-hour token and two who took 30-day tokens. I went to the meeting to meet my young cousin, who is doing very well in the fellowship. I went to bolster his morale and of course mine. I think the objective was achieved. I keep encountering HP through one happenstance or another -- the most recent was the viewing of The Scarlet and the Black, about Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty of the Vatican during World War II. He smuggled people, including Jews and escaped prisoners, out of Rome when it was occupied by the Nazis; the commanding Colonel tried to thwart him and failed. The end titles stated that Monsignor was the only one to visit the colonel after the fall of Rome, while he was in life imprisonment for war crimes. Visiting people in prison keeps coming up in my conscience because of Jesus' words in Matthew 25: "I was in prison and you visited me..." My cousin is on probation, so going to the meeting with him was the same sort of thing, I hope. I'm going to pursue this thing, with HP's help.

*Higher Power

The Ebert of Forlorn River

I’ve just watched Match Point, written and directed by Woody Allen. I've been less than lukewarm about Woody Allen in my time and I suspect it’s because I’m stupid. I've missed the hilarity in most of his humor and I think he is a snob. It’s Dostoyevsky and Strindberg and La Traviata and of course Freud (whose technique of psychotherapy has been all but discredited and whose theories of "mind" have been hotly disputed by the majority of practitioners for decades except, of course, in Manhattan) and many esoteric allusions we unwashed don’t get.

As for this movie, (here I go again -- I did cross my fingers when I promised in the last post) I’m put off by the cigarette-smoking of Scarlet Johansson (I assume that the blonde who is obviously supposed to be the hot one is she), which is occurring in
scenes with the frequency it did with those containing Humphrey Bogart.*

*(One of my favorite actors, and Americans, ever, died of throat cancer in 1957, two years after the first Surgeon General's report on cigarette smoking and health. Bogie winced a lot on camera from another ailment but he never coughed because of the one ailment that claimed him, to my knowledge. He should have. As for the SG's report, the cig companies claimed for many years afterwards that a "causal relationship between smoking and cancer" (translate: cigarette smoking causes cancer) had never been proved, and we weren't even talking about emphysema then, but scientists have long since trounced the cig companies and put the lie to them.)

As for Scarlet Johansson, you only have to be a male, even an old decrepit one like me, to grant she is good-looking, sexy, and all that jazz. As for her smoking in all those scenes, I recall what it is to kiss and caress a girl whose hair and clothing smell of tobacco smoke, who tastes like an ashtray, who just plain stinks. Sorry, the sexiness goes up in smoke. I too smoked at the time I smooched it up with smoking chicks so I didn't mind as much. (Smoking kills your sense of smell generally before it kills you.)

I had a particularly hard time with the first scene in which she, "Nola," meets "Chris." He is obviously taken with her. But as they stand close she exhales smoke from her nostrils like an old veteran police detective of yesteryear. Is he turned on by that? (Perhaps Woody is.) As for acting, the fewer props the better.

All right. Bloody hell! Bugguh! This bloke is daft on the topic of smoking, eh what? (That little display of Brittania is by way of segueing back to the movie, which is set in London.)

Woody does not act in the movie and, for once, does an admirable job of not insinuating himself into it. (Did I say that in my opinon he has a big ego? But he's of course no worse than John Wayne. Being a narcissist goes with being the hero of your own movies, and if you are talented enough to make movies, I suppose you've a perfect right to make yourself a demigod.)

Allen has written a fine screenplay. It has what the writer and teacher of fiction, John Gardner, called "profluence," which means it's presented in such a way that you want to know what happens next. It's a "page-turner."

I read the review by Roger Ebert and he said that "everybody in it is rotten," and I think that's a little harsh, but I do agree that there aren't too many likable characters in it. What keeps your interest is your hope that the ones who indeed deserve retribution do get their just deserts. Dostoyevsky is invoked and Crime and Punishment definitely comes to mind, if you've read it. I read it decades ago and I still remember the wretch,
"Raskolnikov," and my sympathizing with him and loathing him at once. People are betrayed and crimes are committed in Match Point, and there are twists and turns such that you stick with it to see what finally happens.

One thing that occurred to me after seeing the movie was that there was little humor or attempt at it, and I for one was relieved, because I haven't cared for most of Allen's humor, which I've found to be extremely low-grade ore with few nuggets that evoke even a smile, much less laughter. Psychoanalysis and existentialism are good subjects for irony and spoofing hypocrisy, but Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have far surpassed Woody in irony and spoofing hypocrisy, and they provide belly laughs four nights a week.

Anyhow, I liked the movie and found it to be very entertaining. I still prefer Columbo and Sipowicz for crime drama, and for that matter even Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes -- philistine that I am -- but, Woody, ya done good.

It's worth a looksee, folks.

My LAST Word on Smoking (crossed fingers)

My friend's "serious response to a fun post..." (Thanks, mate, for calling the post "fun." I'm truly complimented. I'm not sure about my ability to satirize.)

"In general I've always believed that a person should have the freedom to drink, smoke or use other substances so long as you're not hurting someone else. For example, go out and get drunk, just don't get in a car or get rowdy and punch someone out.

"Unfortunately, many of these practices cannot be kept to the body that indulges.

"I think of my wife who, when she gets in the vicinity of cigarette smoke, gets awful migraines. At that point you might as well have punched my poor girl in the face and she'd have been in equal pain.

"So where does a smoker's freedom end and my wife's begin? How do you balance a smoker's right to smoke versus the health of those around?

"I think of this today because I made the mistake of telling the clerk at the Sunoco how much nicer it was to be in a smoke-free gas station and she growled 'have a nice day' at me. I should have guessed. My joy at her lack of freedom?"

My response:

Mate, you are just awash in schadenfreude! -- gloating over the suffering of nonsmokers in Madison right there in Fast Max's? How could you be so cruel?

Seriously: I get my gas at Wal-Mart (not because they pay fair wages but because it's nearest to home) and I've noticed that, since the enactment of the ordinance, the small space inside the building continues to reek with tobacco smoke.

I smell civil disobedience. (And insubordination toward the employer, if anyone cares about that. I'd like to see a strike myself.)

Perhaps I should say (with a straight face) to the Wal-Mart clerk the same thing that you said at the Sunoco. I suspect that she would accept the remark without knowing it is tongue-in-cheek, because, as a smoker, she doesn't know how loudly stinky cigarette smoke is. It amazes me how unaware smokers are of the stink it creates.

This lucky (in her value system, not mine) soul, however, has not suffered the fate of the other smoking employees: they must go outside now. Yet the employer -- who is party to a corporation that is notorious for its low wages and strategems for employing people "part-time" (35 hours a week and never two consecutive days off) in order to bilk them out of health insurance -- has provided them with two picnic tables and a shelter overhead.

I noticed a friend huddled in that small space with the other miserables, and I happen to know that this lovely woman has recently been stricken with breast cancer. She is a die-hard smoker -- who is neither stupid nor militantly and stridently against a common-sense law (as our letter-writing friends seem to be).

This noble lady happens to be a life-long practitioner of a merciful health-giving profession and knows the dangers of smoking. She is a die-hard because she is addicted. And in this absurd world, we severely punish anyone who is addicted to pot, cocaine, heroin, crystal meth, etc. Not only do we punish the "undesirables" of our society because of addictions to these substances, but we even take the licenses away of medical doctors if they recklessly prescribe suspect substances such as Xanax and Vicodin.

Yet we do this while we are hard-put to keep poison out of the air we breathe -- our infants breathe -- because it is expelled into that air by a minority (well, maybe not here) of curiously excepted and emboldened addicts.

I'm sure my family members, who are probably sick and tired of seeing still another blog-post on the evils of smoking, will glance at this without comment. Thank God, none of them now smoke tobacco, so far as I know. They'd better not, since they have so many smokers in their ancestry who suffered and died of emphysema or lung cancer or both.

But I am so passionate about this because, for one thing, I, who have succeeded at so few things in this world, managed to succeed at escaping from the addiction of smoking. And believe me, I was addicted. I couldn't go twenty waking minutes between cigarettes. I of all people wouldn't have been able to live with smoking
restrictions. I started and stopped and started again, hell though it was even to start as well as to stop.

I am passionate about this because, as a once-upon-a-time counselor of addicts and a recovering addict myself, I invested a lot of energy in trying to help others quit smoking. Most of the quit-smoking work I did was pro bono publico, when I was getting paid very well for my other work. I am as greedy as the next person but I was truly committed to helping people quit smoking.

Yet here in backwater Forlorn River (cf. Lake Wobegon) -- I speak of Madi-Tucky -- Madison, Indiana -- the city and state that I came back to against my will and the city and region that I at last love and will die and be buried in-- these privileged addicts continue to have the temerity to scream their abused lungs out that their rights are being violated. Enough!

Chit-Chat

I have two new diversions: cooking and sudoku. I read in Wikipedia that sudoku as it is done in the USA today was introduced in Indianapolis in 1976. Ha! Well, we are now manufacturing Japanese cars in Indiana. I've learned to do the "easy" puzzles. The first one took me a couple of days, off and on, but then my learning curve kicked in and now I do them in about a half-hour. The easy ones. Like the bunny runs in skiing, I'll probably be satisfied to stay with the easy ones for quite some time.

My cooking is pretty rudimentary: I concoct a mean vegetable soup without a recipe, and I assiduously follow the recipes in the American Heart Association cookbooks, which are great for anybody. I'm learning this and that by watching the Food Channel. "Good Eats" with Alton Brown is enlightening and the guy is funny.

One other thing: ta-daaa! I graduated from the first phase of rehab on Friday. I'd say overall I kicked ass. I lost 21 pounds, 2.1% body fat (they say that's good because it takes a long time), and my strength and stamina as measured by a treadmill test has improved by 106%. Not bad for a couch tater.

Enough for now. His Rudeness requires attention. Cheerio, lads and lasses.

Oh. And I guess you aforenamed lads and lasses weren't too impressed with my idee fixe on smoking. I thought the doc might put on her copy editor's green eyeshade and blue-pencil the Courier cub's letter to me, but God knows she has enough to read. As for the rest of you, been there done that, I guess. But I digress. His Rudeness awaits. Later.

Saint Herbert

Yes, dear friends and gentle readers, Herb Parker is a hero and a patriot. Not only that, he is a saint. We ought to submit him for canonization to Pope Benedict right away. And we should elect him Mayor of Madison. And boss of the City Council. We should also bestow upon him the honorifics of Sagamore of the Wabash and Kentucky Colonel.

Not only is Herb Parker a saint, he is a martyr. He has been sacrificed on the altar of greed – the greed of nonsmokers for every bit of unpolluted air they can possibly suck down in their lungs. Why do they want clean air so bad?

There is just no limit to what these inconsiderate nonsmokers will do! Why don’t they appreciate the truth? Which is, that the air – God’s plentiful air - belongs to everyone, and that those who choose to poison their fair share with carcinogens have the perfect right to do so. (And that God will not change his laws of physics: gases will still expand to fill the spaces in which they are enclosed and thus nonsmokers too will just have to breathe the smoke of smokers. Tough, you sissies. Get over it.)

Where will the nonsmokers’ greed for clean air end? Next, people will not be able to smoke in their cars. (Little children in them or not.) There will be roadblocks set up everywhere. Police will search for and seize tobacco. They will get smokers out of their cars and rough them up, and molest the women, and then throw the people in jail, where they will be held without bail until they suffer a terrible jones from nicotine withdrawal. Without patches! The corrupt Mayor and City Council will authorize it and enforce it, you just wait and see.

Next, smoking will not be allowed in our very homes. Mark my word, jackbooted city government thugs will crash our doors down and throw firebombs inside and we and our beloved cigarettes and our poor old emphysematous lungs will go up in smoke. (We will not get the joy of living out our lives gasping for breath and having everyone feel sorry for us.)

You think the people at Waco had it bad, wait till you see what Huntington and those traitors who voted for this unconstitutional, Communistic, terrorist no-smoking ordinance have up their sleeves next.

The next thing they will do, they will interfere with freedom of the press. That’s right, the guarantee of the First Amendment. They will force the Courier to print all this goody-two-shoes stuff put out by the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association and the United States Surgeon General and even the turncoat Philip Morris that secondhand smoke is harmful and the only way to protect nonsmokers in enclosed spaces is to make those spaces smoke-free. Period.

In other words, they will force the Courier to become a tool of the pinko city government. (Instead of the tobacco farmers.)

So, smokers of Madison, unite. You have nothing to lose but your butts.

More Blowing Smoke, and More Objection to It

Here's a letter to the Courier:

Upset with smoking ban

Thursday, August 03, 2006


To the editor:

I commend Herb Parker on standing up for his customers. As a smoker, I will not patronize any non-smoking restaurants. I will not vote for any of the current council members that voted to make smokers law breakers in their own hometown.

This town was founded on their tobacco crops, and the taxes that have been levied on the smokers of Jefferson County are sure supporting a lot of roadwork for this county.Tobacco money from Milton, Carrollton, etc, surely augments the local groceries and stores.

How sad is it that Madison has chosen to abide by a tobacco study that even the World Health Organization says was severely flawed? Their basis for second-hand smoke is not correct and they can't show any evidence that smoking bans make any difference in the communities that have enacted them.

Yet smokers are persecuted and made to feel like second-class citizens or criminals. They are subjected to the stress of trying to work all day without being allowed a release through smoking in a job where smoking has been allowed since the beginning. The workers didn't vote for this ban, but they are the ones suffering.

Have you ever tried to keep a patch on in 100 degree weather? Simple answer is...you can't as the guys in our factories are learning.

I urge all smokers (or non-smokers who agree with this view for freedom of choice) to write their local government and complain. Withhold your patronage of businesses that ban smokers like criminals. I'll go to Carrollton, Milton and other close towns that will welcome my smoker's business.

Withhold your vote for the people that voted this smoking ban in, that limits the freedom of everyone, businesses and individuals alike. Today it's smoking, what will it be next time?

Sandi Pennington

Madison

(In speculating about the last question: masturbation? Doh! It is against the law --when done in public. Just like smoking, now. At last. (You can still pleasure yourself and poison yourself in private And the WHO -- part of the UN? -- dissing a study? Oh never mind. The assertion that there is no evidence that second-hand smoke is harmful is arrant poppycock.)

And another letter to the editor:

He's No Hometown Hero

Friday, August 04, 2006


To the editor:

I would like to respond to the article "Supporting Smokers" from the Wednesday, August 2 edition of The Madison Courier and my own personal experience at Frisch's Restaurant.

First I would like to state that I was disappointed in the bias of the article itself. While Mr. Parker was doing nothing but breaking the law, he was made out to be some sort of "hometown hero" who caters to smokers.

Also, I don't see how Mr. Parker expected his "employees to focus on their job and not breaking the law." He stated "I did this for them (employees)." It's more like you did this to them. I was a patron of Frisch's on Tuesday and was very disappointed to find smoking still in place. If it were not for the tight schedule of others in my party, I would have gone elsewhere for lunch. I approached the manager upon my departure. I was told that Mr. Parker was not there or I would have spoken to him directly.

I voiced my disappointment and concluded by stating I would not be back until it was a smoke-free environment.

Whether you agree with it or not, as of Tuesday Aug. 1, it is illegal to smoke indoors in a public building in Madison. The City Council voted on this months ago. I honestly think that this will help our community, not hinder.

Melissa K. Enstrom

Hanover

Thanks, Melissa. I needed that.

More on T'backer

I sent a copy of my recent post ("Die Hard in Burley T'backer Country") to the Madison Courier reporter who wrote the story about Frisch's civil disobedience. He replied to me and gave me permission to post his reply.

Our email exchange:

On Aug 3, 2006, at 1:20 PM, JT Evans wrote:

Mr. Estridge:

I put the following on my blog site. As you may deduce from this, my opinion of your coverage of the smoking ordinance is that you have been overly sympathetic with smokers' rights and neglectful of the rights of non-smokers. In your own poll, 46% of readers who responded disagree with the militant tactics Of Herb Parker as opposed to 27% who agree, whereas 25% endorse "More businesses should take a stand." That could be taken to mean that more should take a stand against smoking in public gatherings.

If you disagree, you are welcome to add your comment to the blog and rebut what I have to say. I don't try to get letters into the Courier anymore; the last one was ignored and the one before that was, worse, edited (partially censored). I have been friends with most of the Courier reporters, having been one myself in antiquity, and I wish you well.

Sincerely,
John T. Evans

Here's my blog link: (etc.)

***

Mr. Estridge's reply:

Thanks for your comments. On the issue of my coverage, I understand everyone has an opinion and is entitled to his or her own opinion but it bothers me when people accuse me of being overly sympathetic to one cause. Nothing can be farther from the truth. If you were to read my articles more closely you will see that I made organizers of the smokers march look dysfunctional and disorganized. There have been numerous publications where I have talked to the mayor and city council leaders who have refuted the claim that this is detromental to the economy. People who are blasting me now tend to forget those stories.
I don't make up comments from people. I just write them. People are so polarized on this issue and everyone has an opinion.
But to say that I am sympathetic towards the smokers is false, wrong and ignorant. The items that I wrote about have been strictly news items. You have the Broadway that is no longer the oldest family restaurant in the state. I am not making Ryan Shaw out to be a hero, I am merely talking about his business. Then on Herb Parker, I wasn't going to do a story, but when there is a restaurant that is in defiance, then it should be reported.
There are things that happen in news that we don't always agree with or want to write about but we have too. I have no problem with people saying that I am one way or another, at least they are reading what I write. On this issue, I have my opinions, but those don't matter in the public eye. I can never come forward because of items like this. I assure you that I go to great strides to be fair and balanced. Feel free to post this on your blog. Thanks again for the email.

***

My reply to Mr. Estridge's reply. (I get to have the last word. It's my blog.)

Donovan:

Thank you for your reply. I think you have defended yourself quite well, and I commend you for that. I will post your letter on my blog. That blog, by the way, is read by perhaps all of ten people: I say this to assure you that our exchange is a tempest in a teapot and you will not get your reputation sullied (or I should say neither of us will get our reputations sullied). I assure you that Elliott and Jane will never know that this sole reader has criticized your coverage! Nor, for that matter, Herb Parker. I do not want to hurt anybody who is trying to earn his living and get along with the people around and above him.

I am assured that you don't "make up comments by people" -- that you "just write them." I accept your beliefs that for someone to say you are "sympathetic towards the smokers is false, wrong, and ignorant" and that you "go to great strides to be fair and balanced." You have a lot more firsthand experience with the smokers of this area than I do -- I avoid them, partly because I am afraid I will commit the unpardonable gaffe, in this culture, of saying, "Yes, I do mind your smoking in the air I must breathe" -- but I concede that you are far more in touch with the people of this issue than I am. And I further confess that I have not read all of your coverage of the issue. And did not have all of them at hand to vet when I responded. Journalists have noted that we bloggers as a lot are loose cannons and that such is the dreadful state of affairs in these days of the internet. May I become more careful and thorough. May all of us become so.

Having made that mea culpa, I will say in my defense, and perhaps yours, that what I have seen missing in the Courier's coverage of tobacco are the inconvenient truths about smoking, and what those truths might portend for this town and the Kentucky counties nearby. The gist of the current blog post is by and large a lament that those truths seem to be missing in coverage anywhere in the Courier. I might be paranoid, but I suspect that offstage characters are the tobacco farmers of these parts who might be offended if they thought the Courier was not defending them with great vigor. Here's another blog post I made about the issue.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Keep FDA* Off the Farm

(*Freaking Dumb Asses)

Forlorn River (aka Madison, Indiana, USA) had a public hearing the other night on a proposed non-smoking ordinance. I didn't attend because I no longer have a dog in the fight: I quit smoking and drinking almost 25 years ago. I don't frequent bars or locally owned greasy spoons, and there is now a public transport service on which no smoking is allowed.

Well, there is one lunch counter where I occasionally eat, and often some inconsiderate person there lights up, poisoning others' air with second-hand smoke. I hate it but say nothing. No one says anything because we non-smokers don't want to have the effrontery to tell the smoker that his -- or her -- behavior is obnoxious. Our silence gives smokers the notion that we tolerate their smoking.

We put up with it but we don't welcome it. In this town, nobody who has the gall to smoke in an enclosed area such as a restaurant or a retail store or a taxicab says, "Mind if I light up?" But if they did, there'd be few who would say, "Matter of fact, I do." It wouldn't be nice. It would make a scene. It wouldn't be Christian. It wouldn't be patriotic. (The smoker might be a vet. Or a Republican.) So (sigh -- cough! cough!) -- live and let live. It's about "freedom," right?

There were people at this protest who objected to a smoking ban on libertarian grounds, i.e. governmental intervention is generally bad and we should have as little of it as possible. A lawyer said that the proposed ordinance would be "government interference in property rights," and added, "I will decide for myself whether I will ban smoking in my business." (I detected a militant tone there: will we see civil disobedience from the counselor? Perhaps a class action suit? Will she be joined by the owners of bars and pool halls, who appeared to be, along with their patrons, the chief protesters the other night?)

I remember a Madison teacher once saying, "My freedom to swing my fist ends where the other person's nose begins." Fair enough. And my freedom to poison my lungs ends where someone else's lungs begin. The analogy of restricting people's right to eat junk food, from Hinkle's or elsewhere, does not hold -- unless in doing so they throw it up on others.

Tobacco smoke is dangerous: "Public health officials have concluded that secondhand smoke from cigarettes causes disease, including lung cancer and heart disease, in non-smoking adults, as well as causes conditions in children such as asthma, respiratory infections, cough, wheeze, otitis media (middle ear infection) and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome." Source: www.philipmorrisusa.com/en/health_issues

And -- just in case you decide that discretion is the better part of valor and therefore to fight your own tobacco addiction instead of the rights of non-smokers to breathe clean air in public places, I quote from the same source:

"Philip Morris USA agrees with the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and other serious diseases in smokers. Smokers are far more likely to develop serious diseases, like lung cancer, than non-smokers."

Since (1) smoking is the leading preventable cause of ill health in the United States, claiming 400,000 premature deaths every year, and (2) ours is the only wealthy country in the world without affordable health care for all, then (3) it would make sense in terms of both health and wealth to quit smoking.

***

OK, Donovan. I'll leave you alone now. Good luck and have a good life.

JT