New York Times Editorial
The Road Home
Published: July 8, 2007
It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.
Like many Americans, we have put off that conclusion, waiting for a sign that President Bush was seriously trying to dig the United States out of the disaster he created by invading Iraq without sufficient cause, in the face of global opposition, and without a plan to stabilize the country afterward.
At first, we believed that after destroying Iraq’s government, army, police and economic structures, the United States was obliged to try to accomplish some of the goals Mr. Bush claimed to be pursuing, chiefly building a stable, unified Iraq. When it became clear that the president had neither the vision nor the means to do that, we argued against setting a withdrawal date while there was still some chance to mitigate the chaos that would most likely follow.
While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs — after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.
The political leaders Washington has backed are incapable of putting national interests ahead of sectarian score settling. The security forces Washington has trained behave more like partisan militias. Additional military forces poured into the Baghdad region have failed to change anything.
Continuing to sacrifice the lives and limbs of American soldiers is wrong. The war is sapping the strength of the nation’s alliances and its military forces. It is a dangerous diversion from the life-and-death struggle against terrorists. It is an increasing burden on American taxpayers, and it is a betrayal of a world that needs the wise application of American power and principles.
A majority of Americans reached these conclusions months ago. Even in politically polarized Washington, positions on the war no longer divide entirely on party lines. When Congress returns this week, extricating American troops from the war should be at the top of its agenda.
That conversation must be candid and focused. Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power grabs. Perhaps most important, the invasion has created a new stronghold from which terrorist activity could proliferate.
The administration, the Democratic-controlled Congress, the United Nations and America’s allies must try to mitigate those outcomes — and they may fail. But Americans must be equally honest about the fact that keeping troops in Iraq will only make things worse. The nation needs a serious discussion, now, about how to accomplish a withdrawal and meet some of the big challenges that will arise.
The Mechanics of Withdrawal
The United States has about 160,000 troops and millions of tons of military gear inside Iraq. Getting that force out safely will be a formidable challenge. The main road south to Kuwait is notoriously vulnerable to roadside bomb attacks. Soldiers, weapons and vehicles will need to be deployed to secure bases while airlift and sealift operations are organized. Withdrawal routes will have to be guarded. The exit must be everything the invasion was not: based on reality and backed by adequate resources.
The United States should explore using Kurdish territory in the north of Iraq as a secure staging area. Being able to use bases and ports in Turkey would also make withdrawal faster and safer. Turkey has been an inconsistent ally in this war, but like other nations, it should realize that shouldering part of the burden of the aftermath is in its own interest.
Accomplishing all of this in less than six months is probably unrealistic. The political decision should be made, and the target date set, now.
The Fight Against Terrorists
Despite President Bush’s repeated claims, Al Qaeda had no significant foothold in Iraq before the invasion, which gave it new base camps, new recruits and new prestige.
This war diverted Pentagon resources from Afghanistan, where the military had a real chance to hunt down Al Qaeda’s leaders. It alienated essential allies in the war against terrorism. It drained the strength and readiness of American troops.
And it created a new front where the United States will have to continue to battle terrorist forces and enlist local allies who reject the idea of an Iraq hijacked by international terrorists. The military will need resources and bases to stanch this self- inflicted wound for the foreseeable future.
The Question of Bases
The United States could strike an agreement with the Kurds to create those bases in northeastern Iraq. Or, the Pentagon could use its bases in countries like Kuwait and Qatar, and its large naval presence in the Persian Gulf, as staging points.
There are arguments for, and against, both options. Leaving troops in Iraq might make it too easy — and too tempting — to get drawn back into the civil war and confirm suspicions that Washington’s real goal was to secure permanent bases in Iraq. Mounting attacks from other countries could endanger those nations’ governments.
The White House should make this choice after consultation with Congress and the other countries in the region, whose opinions the Bush administration has essentially ignored. The bottom line: the Pentagon needs enough force to stage effective raids and airstrikes against terrorist forces in Iraq, but not enough to resume large-scale combat.
The Civil War
One of Mr. Bush’s arguments against withdrawal is that it would lead to civil war. That war is raging, right now, and it may take years to burn out. Iraq may fragment into separate Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite republics, and American troops are not going to stop that from happening.
It is possible, we suppose, that announcing a firm withdrawal date might finally focus Iraq’s political leaders and neighboring governments on reality. Ideally, it could spur Iraqi politicians to take the steps toward national reconciliation that they have endlessly discussed but refused to act on.
But it is foolish to count on that, as some Democratic proponents of withdrawal have done. The administration should use whatever leverage it gains from withdrawing to press its allies and Iraq’s neighbors to help achieve a negotiated solution.
Iraq’s leaders — knowing that they can no longer rely on the Americans to guarantee their survival — might be more open to compromise, perhaps to a Bosnian-style partition, with economic resources fairly shared but with millions of Iraqis forced to relocate. That would be better than the slow-motion ethnic and religious cleansing that has contributed to driving one in seven Iraqis from their homes.
The United States military cannot solve the problem. Congress and the White House must lead an international attempt at a negotiated outcome. To start, Washington must turn to the United Nations, which Mr. Bush spurned and ridiculed as a preface to war.
The Human Crisis
There are already nearly two million Iraqi refugees, mostly in Syria and Jordan, and nearly two million more Iraqis who have been displaced within their country. Without the active cooperation of all six countries bordering Iraq — Turkey, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria — and the help of other nations, this disaster could get worse. Beyond the suffering, massive flows of refugees — some with ethnic and political resentments — could spread Iraq’s conflict far beyond Iraq’s borders.
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia must share the burden of hosting refugees. Jordan and Syria, now nearly overwhelmed with refugees, need more international help. That, of course, means money. The nations of Europe and Asia have a stake and should contribute. The United States will have to pay a large share of the costs, but should also lead international efforts, perhaps a donors’ conference, to raise money for the refugee crisis.
Washington also has to mend fences with allies. There are new governments in Britain, France and Germany that did not participate in the fight over starting this war and are eager to get beyond it. But that will still require a measure of humility and a commitment to multilateral action that this administration has never shown. And, however angry they were with President Bush for creating this mess, those nations should see that they cannot walk away from the consequences. To put it baldly, terrorism and oil make it impossible to ignore.
The United States has the greatest responsibilities, including the admission of many more refugees for permanent resettlement. The most compelling obligation is to the tens of thousands of Iraqis of courage and good will — translators, embassy employees, reconstruction workers — whose lives will be in danger because they believed the promises and cooperated with the Americans.
The Neighbors
One of the trickiest tasks will be avoiding excessive meddling in Iraq by its neighbors — America’s friends as well as its adversaries.
Just as Iran should come under international pressure to allow Shiites in southern Iraq to develop their own independent future, Washington must help persuade Sunni powers like Syria not to intervene on behalf of Sunni Iraqis. Turkey must be kept from sending troops into Kurdish territories.
For this effort to have any remote chance, Mr. Bush must drop his resistance to talking with both Iran and Syria. Britain, France, Russia, China and other nations with influence have a responsibility to help. Civil war in Iraq is a threat to everyone, especially if it spills across Iraq’s borders.
•
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans’ demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened — the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war.
This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage — with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading.
***
I know that this eminently sensible solution will be trashed by Faux News, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and Tony Snow. Among others. But here it is. By editorial writers, not government employees. I pray God these people who are holding us hostage will read this and heed the wisdom it contains. although I have no hope whatever they will.
The answer to this nightmare, I believe, is in partition: three new states based on ethnic divisions: Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. We need to help them get on with it. Whoever is the next president will have to do it, of course. Bush-Cheney & Co. will just continue to do what they have done until they are out of office. It will be up to the next president, whoever that might be, to get us and the world out of this mess. God help us do it. Amen.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Bashing Illegal Immigrants
+++++
On Jun 26, 2007, at 5:45 PM, a friend forwarded this, which is making the rounds:
Subject: FW: Alien rights???
***
Here is the transcript of an INTERVIEW with an illegal Mexican at a protest march in Texas. Trying to reason with an Illegal Mexican, a good example of a discussion with a master of circular logic who makes a new case when the previous argument gets too difficult to defend
On the streets of downtown Houston, May 1, 2007 -- Jim Moore reporting for a Houston TV station:
-Jim: Juan, I see that you and thousands of other protesters are marching in the streets to demonstrate for your cause. Exactly what is your cause and what do you expect to accomplish by this protest?
-Juan: We want our rights. We will show you how powerful we are. We will bring Houston to its knees!
-Jim: What rights?
-Juan: Our right to live here..legally. Our right to get all the benefits you get.
-Jim: When did you come to the United States?
- Juan: Six years ago. I crossed over the border at night with seven other friends. - Jim: Why did you come?
- Juan: For work. I can earn as much in a month as I could in a year in Mexico. Besides, I get free health care, our Mexican children can go to school free, if I lose my job I will get Welfare, and someday I will have the Social Security. Nothing like that in Mexico!
- Jim: Did you feel badly about breaking our immigration laws when you came?
-Juan: No! Why should I feel bad? I have a right to be here. I have a right to amnesty. I paid lots of money for my Social Security and Green Cards.
-Jim: How did you acquire those documents?
- Juan: From a guy in Dallas. He charged me a lot of money too.
- Jim: Did you know that those documents were forged?
- Juan: It is of no matter. I have a right to be here and to work.
- Jim: What is the "right" you speak of?
- Juan: The right of all Aliens. It is found in your Constitution. Read it!
-Jim: I have read it, but I do not remember it saying anything about rights for Aliens.
- Juan: It is in that part where it says that all men have Alien rights, like the right to pursue happiness. I wasn't happy in Mexico, so I came here.
-Jim: I think you are referring to the Declaration of Independence and that document speaks to unalienable rights .. Not Alien rights.
-Juan: Whatever.
- Jim: Since you are demanding to become an American citizen, why then are you carrying a Mexican Flag?
- Juan: Because I am Mexican.
- Jim: But you said you want to be given amnesty ... to become a US citizen.
-Juan: No. This is not what we want. This is our country, a part of Mexico that you Gringos stole from us. We want it returned to its rightful owner.
- Jim: Juan, you are standing in Texas. After wining the war with Mexico, Texas became a Republic, and later Texans voted to join the USA. It was not stolen from Mexico.
- Juan: That is a Gringo lie. Texas was stolen. So was California, New Mexico and Arizona. It is just like all the other stuff you Gringos steal, like oil and babies. You are a country of thieves.
- Jim: Babies? You think we steal babies?
-Juan: Sure. Like from Korea and Vietnam and China. I see them all over the place. You let all these foreigners in, but try to keep us Mexicans out. How is this fair?
-Jim: So, you really don't want to become an American citizen then.
- Juan: I just want my rights! Everyone has a right to live & work, and speak their native language wherever and whenever they please. That's another thing we demand. All signs and official documents should be in Spanish. Teachers must teach in Spanish. Soon, more people here in Houston will speak Spanish than English. It is our right!
- Jim: If I were to cross over the border into Mexico without proper documentation, what rights would I have there?
-Juan: None. You would probably go to jail, but that's different.
- Jim: How is it different? You said everyone has the right to live wherever they please.
- Juan: You Gringos are a bunch of land grabbing thieves. Now you want Mexico too? Mexico has its rights. You Gringos have no rights in Mexico. Why would you want to go there anyway? There is no free medical service, schools, or welfare there for foreigners such as you. You cannot even own land in my country. Stay in the country of your birth.
- Jim: I can see that there is no way that we can agree on this issue. Thank you for your comments.
- Juan: Viva Mexico!
Pass this along to every American citizen in your address books and to every representative in the state and federal government. If you choose to remain uninvolved, do not be amazed when you no longer have a nation to call your own nor anything you have worked for left since it will be "redistributed" to the activists while you are so peacefully staying out of the "fray". Check history, it is full of nations/empires that disappeared when their citizens no longer held their core beliefs and values. One person CAN make a difference. One plus one plus one plus one plus one plus one....... The battle for our secure borders and immigration laws that actually mean something, however, hasn't even begun. If this ticks YOU off...PASS IT ON!
***
I replied:
Thanks, Barb, for including me in your forward. My feeling about illegal immigrants is sort of like my feeling about those of our kind who are out there still suffering instead of in our fellowship: "BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD THERE GO I."
Here is another point of view about illegal immigrants.
Oh, by the way, this is what snopes.com, which investigates "urban legends," had to say on the authenticity of the "interview."
[Editor's Note: I questioned the authenticity of this "transcript" because it sounded about as authentic as a sendup skit starring Carlos Mencia posing as "Juan" and Steven Colbert posing as Bill O'Reilly posing as Charlie Rose posing as "Jim." So I looked it up. As for "Juan," I would have caught on a nanosecond sooner if Juan had referred to himself not as a Mexican but as a "beaner." Looks like it falls in the category of an immigrant-basher who is making shit up.]
Continuing with my reply:
"Oh," as Lieutenant Columbo says, "just one more thing": I'm more concerned about the "redistribution" of our wealth not by brown, Spanish-speaking people but by white, English-speaking men who pay themselves billions to export our jobs to poor countries for dirt-cheap labor.
+++++
Postscript: In reality, I replied to my friend only with a link to the Snopes urban legend site. I hoped I might at least disabuse her of the phoniness of what she was no doubt unwittingly passing on. I hope that we will remain on good terms. This is a small town and I am not Eudora Welty.
On Jun 26, 2007, at 5:45 PM, a friend forwarded this, which is making the rounds:
Subject: FW: Alien rights???
***
Here is the transcript of an INTERVIEW with an illegal Mexican at a protest march in Texas. Trying to reason with an Illegal Mexican, a good example of a discussion with a master of circular logic who makes a new case when the previous argument gets too difficult to defend
On the streets of downtown Houston, May 1, 2007 -- Jim Moore reporting for a Houston TV station:
-Jim: Juan, I see that you and thousands of other protesters are marching in the streets to demonstrate for your cause. Exactly what is your cause and what do you expect to accomplish by this protest?
-Juan: We want our rights. We will show you how powerful we are. We will bring Houston to its knees!
-Jim: What rights?
-Juan: Our right to live here..legally. Our right to get all the benefits you get.
-Jim: When did you come to the United States?
- Juan: Six years ago. I crossed over the border at night with seven other friends. - Jim: Why did you come?
- Juan: For work. I can earn as much in a month as I could in a year in Mexico. Besides, I get free health care, our Mexican children can go to school free, if I lose my job I will get Welfare, and someday I will have the Social Security. Nothing like that in Mexico!
- Jim: Did you feel badly about breaking our immigration laws when you came?
-Juan: No! Why should I feel bad? I have a right to be here. I have a right to amnesty. I paid lots of money for my Social Security and Green Cards.
-Jim: How did you acquire those documents?
- Juan: From a guy in Dallas. He charged me a lot of money too.
- Jim: Did you know that those documents were forged?
- Juan: It is of no matter. I have a right to be here and to work.
- Jim: What is the "right" you speak of?
- Juan: The right of all Aliens. It is found in your Constitution. Read it!
-Jim: I have read it, but I do not remember it saying anything about rights for Aliens.
- Juan: It is in that part where it says that all men have Alien rights, like the right to pursue happiness. I wasn't happy in Mexico, so I came here.
-Jim: I think you are referring to the Declaration of Independence and that document speaks to unalienable rights .. Not Alien rights.
-Juan: Whatever.
- Jim: Since you are demanding to become an American citizen, why then are you carrying a Mexican Flag?
- Juan: Because I am Mexican.
- Jim: But you said you want to be given amnesty ... to become a US citizen.
-Juan: No. This is not what we want. This is our country, a part of Mexico that you Gringos stole from us. We want it returned to its rightful owner.
- Jim: Juan, you are standing in Texas. After wining the war with Mexico, Texas became a Republic, and later Texans voted to join the USA. It was not stolen from Mexico.
- Juan: That is a Gringo lie. Texas was stolen. So was California, New Mexico and Arizona. It is just like all the other stuff you Gringos steal, like oil and babies. You are a country of thieves.
- Jim: Babies? You think we steal babies?
-Juan: Sure. Like from Korea and Vietnam and China. I see them all over the place. You let all these foreigners in, but try to keep us Mexicans out. How is this fair?
-Jim: So, you really don't want to become an American citizen then.
- Juan: I just want my rights! Everyone has a right to live & work, and speak their native language wherever and whenever they please. That's another thing we demand. All signs and official documents should be in Spanish. Teachers must teach in Spanish. Soon, more people here in Houston will speak Spanish than English. It is our right!
- Jim: If I were to cross over the border into Mexico without proper documentation, what rights would I have there?
-Juan: None. You would probably go to jail, but that's different.
- Jim: How is it different? You said everyone has the right to live wherever they please.
- Juan: You Gringos are a bunch of land grabbing thieves. Now you want Mexico too? Mexico has its rights. You Gringos have no rights in Mexico. Why would you want to go there anyway? There is no free medical service, schools, or welfare there for foreigners such as you. You cannot even own land in my country. Stay in the country of your birth.
- Jim: I can see that there is no way that we can agree on this issue. Thank you for your comments.
- Juan: Viva Mexico!
Pass this along to every American citizen in your address books and to every representative in the state and federal government. If you choose to remain uninvolved, do not be amazed when you no longer have a nation to call your own nor anything you have worked for left since it will be "redistributed" to the activists while you are so peacefully staying out of the "fray". Check history, it is full of nations/empires that disappeared when their citizens no longer held their core beliefs and values. One person CAN make a difference. One plus one plus one plus one plus one plus one....... The battle for our secure borders and immigration laws that actually mean something, however, hasn't even begun. If this ticks YOU off...PASS IT ON!
***
I replied:
Thanks, Barb, for including me in your forward. My feeling about illegal immigrants is sort of like my feeling about those of our kind who are out there still suffering instead of in our fellowship: "BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD THERE GO I."
Here is another point of view about illegal immigrants.
Oh, by the way, this is what snopes.com, which investigates "urban legends," had to say on the authenticity of the "interview."
[Editor's Note: I questioned the authenticity of this "transcript" because it sounded about as authentic as a sendup skit starring Carlos Mencia posing as "Juan" and Steven Colbert posing as Bill O'Reilly posing as Charlie Rose posing as "Jim." So I looked it up. As for "Juan," I would have caught on a nanosecond sooner if Juan had referred to himself not as a Mexican but as a "beaner." Looks like it falls in the category of an immigrant-basher who is making shit up.]
Continuing with my reply:
"Oh," as Lieutenant Columbo says, "just one more thing": I'm more concerned about the "redistribution" of our wealth not by brown, Spanish-speaking people but by white, English-speaking men who pay themselves billions to export our jobs to poor countries for dirt-cheap labor.
+++++
Postscript: In reality, I replied to my friend only with a link to the Snopes urban legend site. I hoped I might at least disabuse her of the phoniness of what she was no doubt unwittingly passing on. I hope that we will remain on good terms. This is a small town and I am not Eudora Welty.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Bad News, Good News: Unrestrained Power and Small-Town Courage
I've been reading in the Washington Post about the Dick (you know, as in "the" Donald), our vice president, who really runs the country, and it made me sick. Whatever jokes Cheney affords entertainers such as Jon Stewart ("Waa!") and Keith Olbermann ("Thanks a lot, Dick"), Almighty Number Two Dick is, lamentably, the most powerful man in the world. He does have a brain, like it or not, and he is extremely effective at getting the America he wants. And, like it or not, he is not encumbered by a heart that considers what Americans (the tired, poor, defenseless) really need as well as want.
The good news: I liked this story about a small town newspaper's exposing a pedophile scandal in a Boy Scout troop. I'd like to see it made into a movie.
The good news: I liked this story about a small town newspaper's exposing a pedophile scandal in a Boy Scout troop. I'd like to see it made into a movie.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Kill Your TV: Airings of a BOOF
Listening to "Exploring Music" with Bill McGlaughlin, on WUOL. Bill is the heir of the Karl Haas "Adventures in Good Music" legacy, which ended when Karl died and classical music stations finally retired the reruns. McGlaughlin originates from the same station as Peter Van De Graaff in Chicago, whom I've mentioned earlier.
Rarely do I listen to non-commercial radio in lieu of watching TV and I am not proud to admit it. I have a friend who stated once that she did not watch TV and she and her husband, both Ph.D. faculty members at the University of Utah, did not own a TV. (That was before they had a son. I wonder if they gave in and let the boy watch Sesame Street, etc., who then "progressed" to TV Land and finally MTV.)
In any case, Frances and Joel had computers long before I did and used them as tools and, I bet, as toys. I know I certainly envied Frances because she had a word processor to write with while I still struggled with a typewriter. I am a wretched typist but a good proofreader, and upon becoming able to amend, cut, and paste text with ease because of technology, I thought I had (as Chance the bulldog pup did when he spied the chickens) "died and gone to Kentucky!"
Which brings us to Wendell Berry, the renowned poet-essayist-fiction writer who lives near me, who does not own a TV. Neither does he own a computer, and he wrote a manifesto declaring that he has no intention of ever owning a computer.
Now I would never have the character to forgo the modern "amenities." I proved that to be the case long ago when I was in the Peace Corps in Nigeria. I was an idealist who was very hard on himself because he did not live up to his ideals, and I rued that I did not live under true hardship as I imagined most PCVs did. I now wish I had sought an assignment in Lagos, then the capital of Nigeria, which was the closest facsimile there to a community in a developed nation, with a proper water and sewage system and heck, even things like movies, and unabashedly stated that I wanted the cushiest assignment I could land.
But that's the old man in me talking. At 23, I thought I should, as Jack Kennedy had said in his inaugural, "pay any price, bear any burden, oppose any foe..." So I didn't dare let anyone know I was a closet wuss who loved creature comforts. What does it say about me that one of the happiest recollections of my teens was visiting my sister in Indianapolis and Memphis during summers, where she and I would stay in the air-conditioning and lie on sofas, read books, drink cola, eat ice cream, smoke cigarettes, and talk about ideals and ha-ha funny things in politics and society? What the deuce was wrong with that? the old man in me asks.
But the idealist in me kept trying to emerge and in any case I was always a sucker for pretty sermons and vaunted ideals.
I decided in my twenties that I wanted to be a writer of some kind and started reading what writers wrote about their writing, as well as a good deal of their writing. Two people I became highly interested in were Kurt Vonnegut, a fellow Hoosier, and Wendell Berry, nearby in Kentucky.
Wendell is an ardent advocate of his causes, chief of which is saving the physical environment by preserving, actually returning to a way of life he finds superior, physically and spiritually, to the current one. Wendell sounds very much like a Luddite to me, one who opposes technological progress, favoring reversing it by destroying or otherwise doing away with the latest advances.
I first read the term in Vonnegut's 1952 novel, Player Piano, in which Luddites smash -- the author ruefully notes -- flush-toilets. Other than his concern for reasonable -- as in not stupidly self-defeating -- measures, Vonnegut's views are somewhat like Wendell's, as both are somewhat like the views of Aldous Huxley in Brave New World and George Orwell in 1984. (For a liberal, I have read a slew of books denouncing "progress.")
The question might occur: "Mr. Berry, in your zeal to turn back the clock, would you be willing to do away with flush-toilets?" The answer to that is yep. Wendell has written -- nay, published -- that he has equipped his residence with a "compost-privy" -- not merely a ghost-of-the-past outdoor biffy but a repository the contents of which he periodically opens and mixes with straw and puts on the compost-heap for his organic farming. (He stated, in his description of that procedure, that it is not pleasant -- I'll take his word for that -- but that he does it for a higher cause.)
So this guy -- perhaps I should not say, "puts his money where his mouth is," especially in this case -- but this chap practices what he preaches; he takes heroic measures to prove, among other things, that he is not a hypocrite. (I have wondered what Wendell's family have thought of that sanitary arrangement, but he would be angry with me if I wondered it aloud to him, I'm pretty sure.)
Ergo, I wasn't surprised when Wendell wrote in literary magazines of his scorn for computers. He is a fine writer -- did I say that I revere him for his ability? -- and he has stated his case far better than I ever could, so I urge you to read him in his own words. If you do not agree wholeheartedly with him, you will have nonetheless read some exemplary writing.
He said that he writes with pencil (or pen) and paper, and his wife types his work on a 1956 typewriter, adding comments in the margins. There being no use of electric power because the two work in daylight, he does not patronize companies that depend on strip-mined coal to fuel them. He finds the companies, with their ad campaigns to get people to buy things they don't need and can't afford, to be odious. He wrote this in 1987, so I wonder what he would think of cell phones in the ears of odious SUV-drivers now.
He writes, "I do not see that computers are bringing us one step nearer to anything that does matter to me: peace, economic justice, ecological health, political honesty, family and community stability, good work." Well told!
Wendell's "standards for technological innovation" are admirable: a new tool that replaces an older one should be cheaper and smaller; it should do better work using less energy, preferably solar energy; it should be repairable by a person of normal intelligence, offered by a small store close to home, and "should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships."
Admirable.
But please go on to read the comments by people at the same link who do write with computers (and probably use modern plumbing too, dagnab it, not having the character -- or insane, dogged fanaticism! -- to employ a compost privy). Then read Wendell's last words to them. I was disappointed. I thought I detected a good-natured charity -- and not taking oneself too seriously -- in at least some of the remarks to him. Gibes. You know, raillery. But Wendell did not see them in that spirit. He was in high dudgeon. I thought he might actually be amused by some of the teasing about using his wife in lieu of a computer. But that was what he was the most offended about.
He was painstaking -- for he is painstaking about everything, it seems -- in rebutting every last one of the remarks. And Jee-zus! was he ever righteous. I've been wanting to say this for a long time, about him, whom I once idealized and with whom I am now disillusioned. His conceding not one iota of merit to any of his critics makes me now think of -- God help us! -- the commander guy, who to this day can find not one fault in himself.
My disenchantment began with my one encounter of Wendell, at a lecture he gave at Hanover College. A kid was trying to get a picture of him for the school's coverage of his visit. Wendell stopped talking and after a tense moment of silence, bawled the young man out. The young man, not being a dumb farm animal, and being red-faced in the center of the audience's attention, verbally defended himself as merely doing his assigned job. "Well, you're keeping me from doing my job. So have at it and get it over with," Wendell snapped. Then he went on with his lecture. Gracious and eloquent and good-humored, mind you. He said some very good things on behalf of the environment and good government and God and recited a poem about a man standing by an outdoor bonfire that was awesome.
But I did not forget how he treated the youngster.
Afterwards at a reception I was still carried by the momentum of my erstwhile starstruck attitude toward him and chatted with him. I wanted to talk with him about his writing and he steered away from that. He told me he taught writing at UK, and I was surprised at his saying it was not aimed at aspiring writers (His "Oh no" was an "Of course not") but instead a course in more or less remedial English for secretaries?
He still piques my interest and I admire him, in the same way I admire Frank Sinatra only for his surreal pipes and the Duke only for his enormous ouvre of harmless fluff consisting of oaters with Elmer Bernstein scores. I read or heard Wendell confess, in comparing himself to Ed McClanahan -- read Ed's killingly funny The Natural Man -- that he (Wendell) has no sense of humor. He's right. Prophets are not funny. The only laugh I can recall in all of Wendell's fiction is Burley Coulter's observation at a funeral that Big Ellis's wife, Annie May, has a "voice on her like a bitch hound." That was in about a thousand pages.
Just before my 4-way CABG, I was attending a creative writing course taught by Gary Devon, a published novelist, and when I mentioned Wendell Berry, Gary said that the guy must bear a burden, being known as such a saint in these parts.
OK. I got that off my chest. It was a digression of sorts but something I wanted very much to say: Wendell Berry, like other idols, has feet of clay.
Oh. What is a BOOF, you ask? (Rhymes with "oof!") Stands for Burned Out Old Fart.
Say Good Night, Dick.
Rarely do I listen to non-commercial radio in lieu of watching TV and I am not proud to admit it. I have a friend who stated once that she did not watch TV and she and her husband, both Ph.D. faculty members at the University of Utah, did not own a TV. (That was before they had a son. I wonder if they gave in and let the boy watch Sesame Street, etc., who then "progressed" to TV Land and finally MTV.)
In any case, Frances and Joel had computers long before I did and used them as tools and, I bet, as toys. I know I certainly envied Frances because she had a word processor to write with while I still struggled with a typewriter. I am a wretched typist but a good proofreader, and upon becoming able to amend, cut, and paste text with ease because of technology, I thought I had (as Chance the bulldog pup did when he spied the chickens) "died and gone to Kentucky!"
Which brings us to Wendell Berry, the renowned poet-essayist-fiction writer who lives near me, who does not own a TV. Neither does he own a computer, and he wrote a manifesto declaring that he has no intention of ever owning a computer.
Now I would never have the character to forgo the modern "amenities." I proved that to be the case long ago when I was in the Peace Corps in Nigeria. I was an idealist who was very hard on himself because he did not live up to his ideals, and I rued that I did not live under true hardship as I imagined most PCVs did. I now wish I had sought an assignment in Lagos, then the capital of Nigeria, which was the closest facsimile there to a community in a developed nation, with a proper water and sewage system and heck, even things like movies, and unabashedly stated that I wanted the cushiest assignment I could land.
But that's the old man in me talking. At 23, I thought I should, as Jack Kennedy had said in his inaugural, "pay any price, bear any burden, oppose any foe..." So I didn't dare let anyone know I was a closet wuss who loved creature comforts. What does it say about me that one of the happiest recollections of my teens was visiting my sister in Indianapolis and Memphis during summers, where she and I would stay in the air-conditioning and lie on sofas, read books, drink cola, eat ice cream, smoke cigarettes, and talk about ideals and ha-ha funny things in politics and society? What the deuce was wrong with that? the old man in me asks.
But the idealist in me kept trying to emerge and in any case I was always a sucker for pretty sermons and vaunted ideals.
I decided in my twenties that I wanted to be a writer of some kind and started reading what writers wrote about their writing, as well as a good deal of their writing. Two people I became highly interested in were Kurt Vonnegut, a fellow Hoosier, and Wendell Berry, nearby in Kentucky.
Wendell is an ardent advocate of his causes, chief of which is saving the physical environment by preserving, actually returning to a way of life he finds superior, physically and spiritually, to the current one. Wendell sounds very much like a Luddite to me, one who opposes technological progress, favoring reversing it by destroying or otherwise doing away with the latest advances.
I first read the term in Vonnegut's 1952 novel, Player Piano, in which Luddites smash -- the author ruefully notes -- flush-toilets. Other than his concern for reasonable -- as in not stupidly self-defeating -- measures, Vonnegut's views are somewhat like Wendell's, as both are somewhat like the views of Aldous Huxley in Brave New World and George Orwell in 1984. (For a liberal, I have read a slew of books denouncing "progress.")
The question might occur: "Mr. Berry, in your zeal to turn back the clock, would you be willing to do away with flush-toilets?" The answer to that is yep. Wendell has written -- nay, published -- that he has equipped his residence with a "compost-privy" -- not merely a ghost-of-the-past outdoor biffy but a repository the contents of which he periodically opens and mixes with straw and puts on the compost-heap for his organic farming. (He stated, in his description of that procedure, that it is not pleasant -- I'll take his word for that -- but that he does it for a higher cause.)
So this guy -- perhaps I should not say, "puts his money where his mouth is," especially in this case -- but this chap practices what he preaches; he takes heroic measures to prove, among other things, that he is not a hypocrite. (I have wondered what Wendell's family have thought of that sanitary arrangement, but he would be angry with me if I wondered it aloud to him, I'm pretty sure.)
Ergo, I wasn't surprised when Wendell wrote in literary magazines of his scorn for computers. He is a fine writer -- did I say that I revere him for his ability? -- and he has stated his case far better than I ever could, so I urge you to read him in his own words. If you do not agree wholeheartedly with him, you will have nonetheless read some exemplary writing.
He said that he writes with pencil (or pen) and paper, and his wife types his work on a 1956 typewriter, adding comments in the margins. There being no use of electric power because the two work in daylight, he does not patronize companies that depend on strip-mined coal to fuel them. He finds the companies, with their ad campaigns to get people to buy things they don't need and can't afford, to be odious. He wrote this in 1987, so I wonder what he would think of cell phones in the ears of odious SUV-drivers now.
He writes, "I do not see that computers are bringing us one step nearer to anything that does matter to me: peace, economic justice, ecological health, political honesty, family and community stability, good work." Well told!
Wendell's "standards for technological innovation" are admirable: a new tool that replaces an older one should be cheaper and smaller; it should do better work using less energy, preferably solar energy; it should be repairable by a person of normal intelligence, offered by a small store close to home, and "should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships."
Admirable.
But please go on to read the comments by people at the same link who do write with computers (and probably use modern plumbing too, dagnab it, not having the character -- or insane, dogged fanaticism! -- to employ a compost privy). Then read Wendell's last words to them. I was disappointed. I thought I detected a good-natured charity -- and not taking oneself too seriously -- in at least some of the remarks to him. Gibes. You know, raillery. But Wendell did not see them in that spirit. He was in high dudgeon. I thought he might actually be amused by some of the teasing about using his wife in lieu of a computer. But that was what he was the most offended about.
He was painstaking -- for he is painstaking about everything, it seems -- in rebutting every last one of the remarks. And Jee-zus! was he ever righteous. I've been wanting to say this for a long time, about him, whom I once idealized and with whom I am now disillusioned. His conceding not one iota of merit to any of his critics makes me now think of -- God help us! -- the commander guy, who to this day can find not one fault in himself.
My disenchantment began with my one encounter of Wendell, at a lecture he gave at Hanover College. A kid was trying to get a picture of him for the school's coverage of his visit. Wendell stopped talking and after a tense moment of silence, bawled the young man out. The young man, not being a dumb farm animal, and being red-faced in the center of the audience's attention, verbally defended himself as merely doing his assigned job. "Well, you're keeping me from doing my job. So have at it and get it over with," Wendell snapped. Then he went on with his lecture. Gracious and eloquent and good-humored, mind you. He said some very good things on behalf of the environment and good government and God and recited a poem about a man standing by an outdoor bonfire that was awesome.
But I did not forget how he treated the youngster.
Afterwards at a reception I was still carried by the momentum of my erstwhile starstruck attitude toward him and chatted with him. I wanted to talk with him about his writing and he steered away from that. He told me he taught writing at UK, and I was surprised at his saying it was not aimed at aspiring writers (His "Oh no" was an "Of course not") but instead a course in more or less remedial English for secretaries?
He still piques my interest and I admire him, in the same way I admire Frank Sinatra only for his surreal pipes and the Duke only for his enormous ouvre of harmless fluff consisting of oaters with Elmer Bernstein scores. I read or heard Wendell confess, in comparing himself to Ed McClanahan -- read Ed's killingly funny The Natural Man -- that he (Wendell) has no sense of humor. He's right. Prophets are not funny. The only laugh I can recall in all of Wendell's fiction is Burley Coulter's observation at a funeral that Big Ellis's wife, Annie May, has a "voice on her like a bitch hound." That was in about a thousand pages.
Just before my 4-way CABG, I was attending a creative writing course taught by Gary Devon, a published novelist, and when I mentioned Wendell Berry, Gary said that the guy must bear a burden, being known as such a saint in these parts.
OK. I got that off my chest. It was a digression of sorts but something I wanted very much to say: Wendell Berry, like other idols, has feet of clay.
Oh. What is a BOOF, you ask? (Rhymes with "oof!") Stands for Burned Out Old Fart.
Say Good Night, Dick.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
The Calf Path
A wise friend sent me this poem. It was on the NPR Writer's Almanac, which is featured daily by G. Keillor.
Poem: "The Calf-Path" by Sam Walter Foss. Public Domain
The Calf-Path
One day through the primeval wood
A calf walked home as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And I infer the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bell–wether sheep
Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bell–wethers always do.
And from that day, o'er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made.
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because 'twas such a crooked path;
But still they followed – do not laugh -
The first migrations of that calf,
And though this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.
This forest path became a lane
That bent and turned and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city's crowded thoroughfare.
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.
Each day a hundred thousand route
Followed this zigzag calf about
And o'er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way.
And lost one hundred years a day,
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.
A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move;
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf.
Ah, many things this tale might teach —
But I am not ordained to preach.
"Insanity is doing the same thing the same way over and over and every time expecting different results." -- Saying
Moo.
Poem: "The Calf-Path" by Sam Walter Foss. Public Domain
The Calf-Path
One day through the primeval wood
A calf walked home as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And I infer the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bell–wether sheep
Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bell–wethers always do.
And from that day, o'er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made.
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because 'twas such a crooked path;
But still they followed – do not laugh -
The first migrations of that calf,
And though this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.
This forest path became a lane
That bent and turned and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city's crowded thoroughfare.
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.
Each day a hundred thousand route
Followed this zigzag calf about
And o'er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way.
And lost one hundred years a day,
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.
A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move;
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf.
Ah, many things this tale might teach —
But I am not ordained to preach.
"Insanity is doing the same thing the same way over and over and every time expecting different results." -- Saying
Moo.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
See the New Post on Johnstown (April 25, 2007)
See the new post on Johnstown, Indiana, "Memoir of Uncle Bill."
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Ties That Bind
Family Reunion today: my very excellent sister and I and not more than ten other first cousins on my mother's side are now the oldest generation. Some of us older ones swapped memories of our elders and some of our departed siblings and cousins. Gail, from Tucson, recalled a tour of Madison conducted by the late Bud. Sherry, from Henryville, produced a list of our parents and aunts and uncles and that was grist for the mill.
Freeman recalled going with Uncle Mac for a couple of beers in a Seymour tavern and extricated the old World War I ambulance driver (he and Ernest Hemingway, I recall, although I don't believe anyone ever said they were acquainted, Uncle Sarge being a Yank and Ernest having driven for the Italians -- oh wait, I get confused, Uncle Mac was a doughboy and later on drove an ambulance for the Marion VA hospital -- whatever) from an altercation with a man much younger and larger than Mac. Of course there were the excursions to Circle K for six-packs ("Pull in here, Billy.") Norma Clarine said she still lives on Uncle Link and Auntie's old homestead and i asked her if the 24-bottle wooden Coke-cases were still there on the backporch and she said Yep and I went into my routine of Auntie greeting us from her game of cards, sipping her brew, chewing her Juicy Fruit, and toking on her Camel (one of the short ones that knock you on your ass when you inhale).
Gail wanted to know how close together the births of the offspring of Grand-dad John and Grand-Mom Sarah (m. 4/2/1895) were: Eli Harvey ("Mac, Sarge"), b. 7/6/1896; Milton Sales, 1/25/1898; Viola, 4/15/1901; Phillip Naper, 9/21/1903; Clara Virginia, 10/15/1905; Bertha Agnes, 7/21/1908; Harry Thomas (fr. Jim K.), 2/4/1918. Gail said, Well, they were pretty well spread out. This caused us to wonder about birth control in those days before drugs, IUDs, etc., since the births seemed sensibly spaced.
I had an impulse to crack wise and so I prefaced it with, "Well, now Bill would have probably said," so it made it all right to say what I did: "I suppose back then, what they relied on was the birth control drug, Noacitol." Gail laughed merrily.
It's a good family. We keep on keeping on, dying off but reproducing (two of the young women were PG, showing, at this reunion) and meeting every year at the reunion, which has been in continuous existence since 1950. Not bad, Hulio, not bad.
Freeman recalled going with Uncle Mac for a couple of beers in a Seymour tavern and extricated the old World War I ambulance driver (he and Ernest Hemingway, I recall, although I don't believe anyone ever said they were acquainted, Uncle Sarge being a Yank and Ernest having driven for the Italians -- oh wait, I get confused, Uncle Mac was a doughboy and later on drove an ambulance for the Marion VA hospital -- whatever) from an altercation with a man much younger and larger than Mac. Of course there were the excursions to Circle K for six-packs ("Pull in here, Billy.") Norma Clarine said she still lives on Uncle Link and Auntie's old homestead and i asked her if the 24-bottle wooden Coke-cases were still there on the backporch and she said Yep and I went into my routine of Auntie greeting us from her game of cards, sipping her brew, chewing her Juicy Fruit, and toking on her Camel (one of the short ones that knock you on your ass when you inhale).
Gail wanted to know how close together the births of the offspring of Grand-dad John and Grand-Mom Sarah (m. 4/2/1895) were: Eli Harvey ("Mac, Sarge"), b. 7/6/1896; Milton Sales, 1/25/1898; Viola, 4/15/1901; Phillip Naper, 9/21/1903; Clara Virginia, 10/15/1905; Bertha Agnes, 7/21/1908; Harry Thomas (fr. Jim K.), 2/4/1918. Gail said, Well, they were pretty well spread out. This caused us to wonder about birth control in those days before drugs, IUDs, etc., since the births seemed sensibly spaced.
I had an impulse to crack wise and so I prefaced it with, "Well, now Bill would have probably said," so it made it all right to say what I did: "I suppose back then, what they relied on was the birth control drug, Noacitol." Gail laughed merrily.
It's a good family. We keep on keeping on, dying off but reproducing (two of the young women were PG, showing, at this reunion) and meeting every year at the reunion, which has been in continuous existence since 1950. Not bad, Hulio, not bad.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Ah, That Politics and Religion
I love my doctor.
This afternoon I took the book I'm reading to the doctor's visit. It's Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama. I wasn't trying to make a statement, it's just that I was in the middle of an excellent book and I knew I'd have time to kill before seeing the doctor. Although making a statement doesn't seem like a bad idea.
Anyhow, I had a chance to make one, wasted as it was on a -- you guessed it -- total fucking moron. I wasn't expecting to be confronted about my choice of author by the nurse who took my BP, etc. She said, "He's running for president, isn't he?"
"Yes," I said.
"People who are running for president always have to write a book, don't they?"
I started to say that he wrote the book ten years before he became a candidate for president, but before I got it out her next question was, "He's a Muslim, isn't he?"
"No he isn't," I said, emphatically. This chick wants to pick a fight. "If you got your information from Fox News --"
"He doesn't have much qualifications for president."
"Could he be any worse than what we've got?" I said softly.
She said, "Well, I support Bush. He stands up for what is right. He's --"
"A born-again Christian?"
"Well, he's against things that are wrong."
"Abortion?"
"Yes, abortion and other things."
"Gay marriage?"
"Yes, gay marriage."
"Prayer in schools?"
"Yes."
I said, "Is there any consideration you would make about a candidate other than where he stands on one or two issues? Would you vote for Hitler if he was against abortion and his opponent was for it?"
"Bush is not Hitler." She went out the door and closed it.
And Barack Obama is not a Muslim. There is so much outright fucking lying that never even gets challenged. The likes of John Gibson and Britt Hume and Sean Hannity and those "Fox and Friends" twits (Teutonic or otherwise) on Fox "News" were chatting it up that Barack attended a Muslim school as a child in which, of course, he was taught to hate and kill the infidel. Right?
Wrong. Just for the record, since I'm reading his book, this is a little bit he wrote about the elementary schools he attended:
"In Indonesia, I had spent two years at a Muslim school, two years at a Catholic school. In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made faces during Koranic studies. My mother wasn't overly concerned. 'Be respectful,' she'd said." (Chapter 8, "Chicago") Little Barack was equally indifferent, some would say irreverent, in the Catholic school he also went to in Djakarta. As an adult in Chicago, he still didn't know what a "catechism" was, he said.
Probably still doesn't! He finally ended up joining a United Church of Christ (cf. Presbyterian) congregation in Chicago. He is not a fundamentalist (thank God! neither Muslim nor Christian!). He said he didn't experience an "epiphany" when he decided to join the church but made a conscious, rational decision with all his doubts about himself and the universe we live in.
Please read his Chapter Six, "Faith," in The Audacity of Hope. It's the only kind of discussion of religion that I can take seriously: honest-to-God honest, and thoughtful. He says that he "must be continually open to new revelations." Then: "This is not to say that I'm unanchored in my faith. There are some things that I'm absolutely sure about -- the Golden Rule, the need to battle cruelty in all its forms, the value of love and charity, humility and grace."
From there he goes right into discussing the 1963 racist bombing of a church in Alabama in which four little girls were killed -- while they were attending Sunday school. He thought, "How could [the parents] endure the anguish unless they were certain that some purpose lay behind their children's murders, that some meaning could be found in immeasurable loss?" Although that tragedy caused revulsion in many Americans even in Alabama, that "friends and strangers alike would have assured them that their daughters had not died in vain -- that they had awakened the conscience of a nation and helped liberate a people; that the bomb had burst a dam that allowed justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream. And yet would even that knowledge be enough to console your grief, to keep you from madness and eternal rage -- unless you also knew that your child had gone on to a better place?"
I'm sorry, I can't stop, this is so vital to me. Barack then reflects on his mother's death to cancer and his knowledge that because of her atheism she is alone and afraid. Then, while putting his own daughter to bed, she tells him she doesn't want to die and he says, "You've got a long, long way before you have to worry about that," and she seems satisfied.
But he says then, "I wondered whether I should have told her the truth, that I wasn't sure what happens when we die, any more than I was sure of where the soul resides or what existed before the Big Bang. Walking up the stairs, though, I knew what I hoped for -- that my mother was together in some way with those four little girls, capable in some fashion of embracing them, of finding joy in their spirits."
Oh by the way, to finally get around to why I love the doctor. He came into the examining room a few minutes later and I told him that his nurse had expressed her adoration of Bush because of his stands on her pet issues and didn't seem to know jack about anything else. The doctor said, "Bush is an idiot." He added, "A six-year-old child could stand up before an audience and say he is opposed to abortion and gay marriage." He paused and then smiled. "Of course that's what Bush is!"
Too old. I'd say more like about 18 months (I'll hold my breath until I get my way). "How annoying to find out that I'm not the center of the universe" is a thought and feeling that hasn't occurred to him yet. I remember reading in the hagiography, The Faith of George W. Bush (yeah, I read it), that the author said W wasn't narcissistic. Right. And I'm Donald Duck.
This afternoon I took the book I'm reading to the doctor's visit. It's Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama. I wasn't trying to make a statement, it's just that I was in the middle of an excellent book and I knew I'd have time to kill before seeing the doctor. Although making a statement doesn't seem like a bad idea.
Anyhow, I had a chance to make one, wasted as it was on a -- you guessed it -- total fucking moron. I wasn't expecting to be confronted about my choice of author by the nurse who took my BP, etc. She said, "He's running for president, isn't he?"
"Yes," I said.
"People who are running for president always have to write a book, don't they?"
I started to say that he wrote the book ten years before he became a candidate for president, but before I got it out her next question was, "He's a Muslim, isn't he?"
"No he isn't," I said, emphatically. This chick wants to pick a fight. "If you got your information from Fox News --"
"He doesn't have much qualifications for president."
"Could he be any worse than what we've got?" I said softly.
She said, "Well, I support Bush. He stands up for what is right. He's --"
"A born-again Christian?"
"Well, he's against things that are wrong."
"Abortion?"
"Yes, abortion and other things."
"Gay marriage?"
"Yes, gay marriage."
"Prayer in schools?"
"Yes."
I said, "Is there any consideration you would make about a candidate other than where he stands on one or two issues? Would you vote for Hitler if he was against abortion and his opponent was for it?"
"Bush is not Hitler." She went out the door and closed it.
And Barack Obama is not a Muslim. There is so much outright fucking lying that never even gets challenged. The likes of John Gibson and Britt Hume and Sean Hannity and those "Fox and Friends" twits (Teutonic or otherwise) on Fox "News" were chatting it up that Barack attended a Muslim school as a child in which, of course, he was taught to hate and kill the infidel. Right?
Wrong. Just for the record, since I'm reading his book, this is a little bit he wrote about the elementary schools he attended:
"In Indonesia, I had spent two years at a Muslim school, two years at a Catholic school. In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made faces during Koranic studies. My mother wasn't overly concerned. 'Be respectful,' she'd said." (Chapter 8, "Chicago") Little Barack was equally indifferent, some would say irreverent, in the Catholic school he also went to in Djakarta. As an adult in Chicago, he still didn't know what a "catechism" was, he said.
Probably still doesn't! He finally ended up joining a United Church of Christ (cf. Presbyterian) congregation in Chicago. He is not a fundamentalist (thank God! neither Muslim nor Christian!). He said he didn't experience an "epiphany" when he decided to join the church but made a conscious, rational decision with all his doubts about himself and the universe we live in.
Please read his Chapter Six, "Faith," in The Audacity of Hope. It's the only kind of discussion of religion that I can take seriously: honest-to-God honest, and thoughtful. He says that he "must be continually open to new revelations." Then: "This is not to say that I'm unanchored in my faith. There are some things that I'm absolutely sure about -- the Golden Rule, the need to battle cruelty in all its forms, the value of love and charity, humility and grace."
From there he goes right into discussing the 1963 racist bombing of a church in Alabama in which four little girls were killed -- while they were attending Sunday school. He thought, "How could [the parents] endure the anguish unless they were certain that some purpose lay behind their children's murders, that some meaning could be found in immeasurable loss?" Although that tragedy caused revulsion in many Americans even in Alabama, that "friends and strangers alike would have assured them that their daughters had not died in vain -- that they had awakened the conscience of a nation and helped liberate a people; that the bomb had burst a dam that allowed justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream. And yet would even that knowledge be enough to console your grief, to keep you from madness and eternal rage -- unless you also knew that your child had gone on to a better place?"
I'm sorry, I can't stop, this is so vital to me. Barack then reflects on his mother's death to cancer and his knowledge that because of her atheism she is alone and afraid. Then, while putting his own daughter to bed, she tells him she doesn't want to die and he says, "You've got a long, long way before you have to worry about that," and she seems satisfied.
But he says then, "I wondered whether I should have told her the truth, that I wasn't sure what happens when we die, any more than I was sure of where the soul resides or what existed before the Big Bang. Walking up the stairs, though, I knew what I hoped for -- that my mother was together in some way with those four little girls, capable in some fashion of embracing them, of finding joy in their spirits."
Oh by the way, to finally get around to why I love the doctor. He came into the examining room a few minutes later and I told him that his nurse had expressed her adoration of Bush because of his stands on her pet issues and didn't seem to know jack about anything else. The doctor said, "Bush is an idiot." He added, "A six-year-old child could stand up before an audience and say he is opposed to abortion and gay marriage." He paused and then smiled. "Of course that's what Bush is!"
Too old. I'd say more like about 18 months (I'll hold my breath until I get my way). "How annoying to find out that I'm not the center of the universe" is a thought and feeling that hasn't occurred to him yet. I remember reading in the hagiography, The Faith of George W. Bush (yeah, I read it), that the author said W wasn't narcissistic. Right. And I'm Donald Duck.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
His Eye Is On the Sparrow
ABC News Item this afternoon:
An outdoor news conference in perfect spring weather, with birds chirping loudly in the magnolia trees, is not without its hazards.
As President Bush took a question Thursday in the White House Rose Garden about scandals involving his Attorney General, he remarked, "I've got confidence in Al Gonzales doin' the job."
Simultaneously, a sparrow flew overhead and left a splash on the President's sleeve, which Bush tried several times to wipe off.
Deputy White House Press Secretary Dana Perino promptly put the incident through the proper spin cycle, telling ABC News, "It was his lucky day...everyone knows that's a sign of good luck."
***
"Can you not buy two sparrows for a penny? And yet not one falls to the ground without your Father knowing."
(Mt. 10:29)
"The gypsies say, and I know why,
A falling blossom only touches lips that lie."
("A Blossom Fell," 1955, popular song by Barnes, Cornelius, and John, sung by Nat King Cole)
An outdoor news conference in perfect spring weather, with birds chirping loudly in the magnolia trees, is not without its hazards.
As President Bush took a question Thursday in the White House Rose Garden about scandals involving his Attorney General, he remarked, "I've got confidence in Al Gonzales doin' the job."
Simultaneously, a sparrow flew overhead and left a splash on the President's sleeve, which Bush tried several times to wipe off.
Deputy White House Press Secretary Dana Perino promptly put the incident through the proper spin cycle, telling ABC News, "It was his lucky day...everyone knows that's a sign of good luck."
***
"Can you not buy two sparrows for a penny? And yet not one falls to the ground without your Father knowing."
(Mt. 10:29)
"The gypsies say, and I know why,
A falling blossom only touches lips that lie."
("A Blossom Fell," 1955, popular song by Barnes, Cornelius, and John, sung by Nat King Cole)
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Beautiful Weather, Rachel McAdams, and Barack Obama
We've had a run of sunny, dry (not humid) days: cloudless blue skies and clear air such that you can see the features of the terrain from a distance without the blue haze we are accustomed to in these parts.
I remember a letter from one brother's friend (who was a gun-totin' cowboy in Arizona -- an editor for some kind of NRA organ) in which he said that the summer weather here was "sticky, foggy..." (He'd been born and raised here and loved to lord it over us Easterners that he'd escaped from. Hoosiers transplanted to Arizona can be obnoxious.)
I think that was before my family and I moved to the West (Utah) for an eight-year sojourn where it was usually not sticky or foggy. I remember the time I was amazed when it started to rain there, complete with lightning and thunder, amazed because the air seemed so dry. I remarked to myself that the air between the raindrops was dry.
And I loved the dry air. It was marvelous. When the air is not saturated with water vapor, it can dry the sweat on you more quickly than wet air can. Sweat drying on your skin cools your body. One summer I worked in a junkyard and the temperature reached 95 one day. When somebody told me I said, "Really?" When the air is not so humid it heats up in the sun but is markedly cooler in the shade and especially at night. Our kids were sleeping in winter pajamas in June, I noted.
If Indiana had not been sticky and foggy as it is, as a rule, we might have been overrun by transplanted Arizonans and Utahans here. Indiana could be Californicated -- what the Oregonians don't want. We are infested, to a small degree. People come to Indiana and particularly to bucolic little towns like Madison as "urban refugees." Even the Hoosier capital, Nap Town, has freeways in and around it that are easy to travel on in contrast with the likes of the Santa Ana Freeway. In recent years the immigrants have been able to live luxuriously here because of the difference in real estate prices, trading a modest ranch somewhere for a "historic" house on tree-lined streets here.
I concluded long ago that Indiana, especially rural southern Indiana, is a kinder, gentler place to live. When we came back here from Utah several people said, "Welcome back to God's country." I don't know about that, but I recall that I liked some things: we didn't have a sales tax on food; righteous people drank coffee and thought nothing of it; and although a lot of people thought their religion was the one true one, their belief was contested by others (who of course thought their religion as the true one) and, most important, it did not have the force of law. And a lot of us liked David Letterman, worldly and irreverent as he was, because he was, like us, a Hoosier. It was a good life, and we soon enough acclimated once again to the humidity. And, the first summer back, the fleas! At least Amanda and I did (!) -- poor old Sophie, our dog, suffered terribly. And people here, I concluded were friendlier and not just plain mean, as too many of them are out West.
Saw a thriller the other night, Red Eye, starring Rachel McAdams. I hope I'm not being a spoiler by saying that the thing I liked about it best is that Rachel turns out not to be too big a wuss in dealing with the villain.
I'm reading The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama. As you know, Senator Obama is running for president. At first I thought that wasn't a good idea because he has so little experience. I thought he should wait until he is more seasoned. But why? Being "unqualified" didn't stop a number of people. It certainly didn't stop the commander guy who a little over half of us glibly reelected even though the disaster under his command had already happened.
Anyhow, I'm learning from the book, because this guy knows what is going on and has a way of communicating it so that reading him, I think I know what is going on a little better. I'll vote for him if he's nominated. I trust him. As it stands right now, I wish we could have a triumvirate consisting of Barack, Hillary, and John Edwards. I think all three of them are presidential material. Compare these top three on the Democratic side to the top three contenders on the Republican side: Giuliani (give me a break!), Mitt Romney ("I think we should double Guantanamo"), and John McCain the Iraq shopper. But you never know what you're getting until the inauguration and the first days of celebration are over: every time we elect a president it's like buying a pig in a poke.
Anyhow, I like Barack. From his knowledge, intelligence, and ability to communicate, I think he would make a good president. So be it.
I remember a letter from one brother's friend (who was a gun-totin' cowboy in Arizona -- an editor for some kind of NRA organ) in which he said that the summer weather here was "sticky, foggy..." (He'd been born and raised here and loved to lord it over us Easterners that he'd escaped from. Hoosiers transplanted to Arizona can be obnoxious.)
I think that was before my family and I moved to the West (Utah) for an eight-year sojourn where it was usually not sticky or foggy. I remember the time I was amazed when it started to rain there, complete with lightning and thunder, amazed because the air seemed so dry. I remarked to myself that the air between the raindrops was dry.
And I loved the dry air. It was marvelous. When the air is not saturated with water vapor, it can dry the sweat on you more quickly than wet air can. Sweat drying on your skin cools your body. One summer I worked in a junkyard and the temperature reached 95 one day. When somebody told me I said, "Really?" When the air is not so humid it heats up in the sun but is markedly cooler in the shade and especially at night. Our kids were sleeping in winter pajamas in June, I noted.
If Indiana had not been sticky and foggy as it is, as a rule, we might have been overrun by transplanted Arizonans and Utahans here. Indiana could be Californicated -- what the Oregonians don't want. We are infested, to a small degree. People come to Indiana and particularly to bucolic little towns like Madison as "urban refugees." Even the Hoosier capital, Nap Town, has freeways in and around it that are easy to travel on in contrast with the likes of the Santa Ana Freeway. In recent years the immigrants have been able to live luxuriously here because of the difference in real estate prices, trading a modest ranch somewhere for a "historic" house on tree-lined streets here.
I concluded long ago that Indiana, especially rural southern Indiana, is a kinder, gentler place to live. When we came back here from Utah several people said, "Welcome back to God's country." I don't know about that, but I recall that I liked some things: we didn't have a sales tax on food; righteous people drank coffee and thought nothing of it; and although a lot of people thought their religion was the one true one, their belief was contested by others (who of course thought their religion as the true one) and, most important, it did not have the force of law. And a lot of us liked David Letterman, worldly and irreverent as he was, because he was, like us, a Hoosier. It was a good life, and we soon enough acclimated once again to the humidity. And, the first summer back, the fleas! At least Amanda and I did (!) -- poor old Sophie, our dog, suffered terribly. And people here, I concluded were friendlier and not just plain mean, as too many of them are out West.
Saw a thriller the other night, Red Eye, starring Rachel McAdams. I hope I'm not being a spoiler by saying that the thing I liked about it best is that Rachel turns out not to be too big a wuss in dealing with the villain.
I'm reading The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama. As you know, Senator Obama is running for president. At first I thought that wasn't a good idea because he has so little experience. I thought he should wait until he is more seasoned. But why? Being "unqualified" didn't stop a number of people. It certainly didn't stop the commander guy who a little over half of us glibly reelected even though the disaster under his command had already happened.
Anyhow, I'm learning from the book, because this guy knows what is going on and has a way of communicating it so that reading him, I think I know what is going on a little better. I'll vote for him if he's nominated. I trust him. As it stands right now, I wish we could have a triumvirate consisting of Barack, Hillary, and John Edwards. I think all three of them are presidential material. Compare these top three on the Democratic side to the top three contenders on the Republican side: Giuliani (give me a break!), Mitt Romney ("I think we should double Guantanamo"), and John McCain the Iraq shopper. But you never know what you're getting until the inauguration and the first days of celebration are over: every time we elect a president it's like buying a pig in a poke.
Anyhow, I like Barack. From his knowledge, intelligence, and ability to communicate, I think he would make a good president. So be it.
Monday, May 14, 2007
God Is Reconciliation?
This post by Stacy Parker Aab, titled "Obama's Way," caught my attention and I would like to pass it on to those who might care to read it. It seems to be about reconciliation, about resolving our differences and first trying to understand what is vital to the other person and looking for ways of connecting with him or her.
I want to quote the whole thing here, and I will quote liberally (Forgive me, conservatives!). For example, this:
"Every time I've heard the Senator speak, or have read his work, there seems to be food for everyone. I read Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope back-to-back, and I noticed a certain pattern emerge. [Senator Obama] would take a tough subject, such as immigration (as he does in the "Race" chapter in The Audacity of Hope), and allow all parties to sit at the table. He states one case, tells us why they have a point, moves on to the next party, tells us why they have a point, until he gets all the way around the table, without taking a stand that excludes or shames anyone seated.
"He does not say everybody is right. He lays out their arguments, giving validation in the process, so that hotheads can cool down and common ground can be sought.
...
"For those of us who feel passionately about one principle over the other, this can be maddening. We want someone to say that we're right and they're wrong. This may be soothing for the ego. But is this good for progress?
"Sen. Obama's way is how conflict gets diffused and consensus gets built. Sen. Obama was clear to say this morning on This Week that he is not naïve to think that he's going to get the whole country to hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya'. Instead, these are the skills he needs if and when he brings warring DC parties to the table -- a table that, as things stand now, is practically burnt to the ground.
"I would argue that Sen. Obama's desire to damp-down difference is part of the peacemaker's way. The leader who brings adversaries to the negotiation table is smart to validate points of each argument, to give confidence that she or he knows opposing concerns are legitimate and worthy of discussion. The leader instills confidence that everyone will get a fair hearing. We've had six years of my-way-or-the-highway. A strong peacemaker stands the best chance of creating progress at home and salvaging what's left of our good name abroad."
Then I was caught unawares when I read these very personal disclosures:
"I am from Detroit, a northerner by birth. I remember my first trip to Mississippi two years ago. I spent a weekend in Jackson, often at tables of people I've never met before, people of deep religious faith and conservative belief. We told personal stories. The workings of God's love and spirit came into conversation often. I felt common ground, for I believe in a loving God and a sweetly responsive universe. When we talked like that, the best of our hearts was in communion. But the minute someone asked us to define our politics -- "yes, I'm a Democrat...yes, I'm a Catholic" -- then poof, there it went. I became "this" and they became "that" and suddenly our differences loomed larger than our commonalities and inside I could feel us retreating to our corners. (my italics)
"I've experienced this in my churchgoing as well. I think of myself as deeply spiritual, but I am not committed to any organized religion. I was raised Catholic, and I sometimes go to Mass. But if given the choice, I'd often prefer to spend Sunday in a loving Baptist or Pentecostal service, because among those worshipers I feel the Holy Spirit in a vibrant, passionate way that I don't often do at Mass. Now, if the pastor decided to use the sermon to go political, chances are I would grow anxious or angry. And I know if I sat down and talked belief structures with the worshipers, and we started talking about "I believe this but I don't believe that," -- well, the "don't believe that" is going to get us in trouble. But for that hour+ we were focused on love, on cooperation, on opening our hearts to something greater than ourselves, we were all connected. (my italics) We were all capable of working in concert. It is in that space -- the space a great leader can summon -- that we can make great changes in our own life and in the lives of others."
Two years ago, when Ken and I co-founded a group to discuss God's Politics by Jim Wallis of Sojourners, I had that "space" -- common ground, higher ground -- in mind. Although we ended up with a group of folks with common views who were a lot of fun, I was disappointed that we were not truly diverse, that the other end of the spectrum was not represented. (I give us credit for "going out into the highways and hedges and compelling them to come in," but they were not willing. They were afraid, I think.)
I am still disappointed. The forces of division are still reigning. Some might say that Satan is reigning. Have I allowed my opponents to drive me away, or have they retreated to their corners too? I know it's both. Bitterness and acrimony (I used that word a long time ago on this blog) prevail. May God dispel it. (If God is not "the booger man," as some of my ancestors seemed by their actions to believe.)
I've never remotely been able to practice what the dearest and best of the preachers (Bill Laws, David Smook et al.) have preached, but I know that the ideal still hangs there. Nancy Pelosi, our first "Madam Speaker," quoted the Sunday school song, "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me." Francis of Assisi's prayer:
"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred -- let me sow love,
Where there is injury -- pardon,
Where there is doubt -- faith,
Where there is despair -- hope,
Where there is darkness -- light,
Where there is sadness -- joy.
"Divine Master,
grant that i may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life."
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God." -- Mt.5:9
Amen.
I want to quote the whole thing here, and I will quote liberally (Forgive me, conservatives!). For example, this:
"Every time I've heard the Senator speak, or have read his work, there seems to be food for everyone. I read Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope back-to-back, and I noticed a certain pattern emerge. [Senator Obama] would take a tough subject, such as immigration (as he does in the "Race" chapter in The Audacity of Hope), and allow all parties to sit at the table. He states one case, tells us why they have a point, moves on to the next party, tells us why they have a point, until he gets all the way around the table, without taking a stand that excludes or shames anyone seated.
"He does not say everybody is right. He lays out their arguments, giving validation in the process, so that hotheads can cool down and common ground can be sought.
...
"For those of us who feel passionately about one principle over the other, this can be maddening. We want someone to say that we're right and they're wrong. This may be soothing for the ego. But is this good for progress?
"Sen. Obama's way is how conflict gets diffused and consensus gets built. Sen. Obama was clear to say this morning on This Week that he is not naïve to think that he's going to get the whole country to hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya'. Instead, these are the skills he needs if and when he brings warring DC parties to the table -- a table that, as things stand now, is practically burnt to the ground.
"I would argue that Sen. Obama's desire to damp-down difference is part of the peacemaker's way. The leader who brings adversaries to the negotiation table is smart to validate points of each argument, to give confidence that she or he knows opposing concerns are legitimate and worthy of discussion. The leader instills confidence that everyone will get a fair hearing. We've had six years of my-way-or-the-highway. A strong peacemaker stands the best chance of creating progress at home and salvaging what's left of our good name abroad."
Then I was caught unawares when I read these very personal disclosures:
"I am from Detroit, a northerner by birth. I remember my first trip to Mississippi two years ago. I spent a weekend in Jackson, often at tables of people I've never met before, people of deep religious faith and conservative belief. We told personal stories. The workings of God's love and spirit came into conversation often. I felt common ground, for I believe in a loving God and a sweetly responsive universe. When we talked like that, the best of our hearts was in communion. But the minute someone asked us to define our politics -- "yes, I'm a Democrat...yes, I'm a Catholic" -- then poof, there it went. I became "this" and they became "that" and suddenly our differences loomed larger than our commonalities and inside I could feel us retreating to our corners. (my italics)
"I've experienced this in my churchgoing as well. I think of myself as deeply spiritual, but I am not committed to any organized religion. I was raised Catholic, and I sometimes go to Mass. But if given the choice, I'd often prefer to spend Sunday in a loving Baptist or Pentecostal service, because among those worshipers I feel the Holy Spirit in a vibrant, passionate way that I don't often do at Mass. Now, if the pastor decided to use the sermon to go political, chances are I would grow anxious or angry. And I know if I sat down and talked belief structures with the worshipers, and we started talking about "I believe this but I don't believe that," -- well, the "don't believe that" is going to get us in trouble. But for that hour+ we were focused on love, on cooperation, on opening our hearts to something greater than ourselves, we were all connected. (my italics) We were all capable of working in concert. It is in that space -- the space a great leader can summon -- that we can make great changes in our own life and in the lives of others."
Two years ago, when Ken and I co-founded a group to discuss God's Politics by Jim Wallis of Sojourners, I had that "space" -- common ground, higher ground -- in mind. Although we ended up with a group of folks with common views who were a lot of fun, I was disappointed that we were not truly diverse, that the other end of the spectrum was not represented. (I give us credit for "going out into the highways and hedges and compelling them to come in," but they were not willing. They were afraid, I think.)
I am still disappointed. The forces of division are still reigning. Some might say that Satan is reigning. Have I allowed my opponents to drive me away, or have they retreated to their corners too? I know it's both. Bitterness and acrimony (I used that word a long time ago on this blog) prevail. May God dispel it. (If God is not "the booger man," as some of my ancestors seemed by their actions to believe.)
I've never remotely been able to practice what the dearest and best of the preachers (Bill Laws, David Smook et al.) have preached, but I know that the ideal still hangs there. Nancy Pelosi, our first "Madam Speaker," quoted the Sunday school song, "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me." Francis of Assisi's prayer:
"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred -- let me sow love,
Where there is injury -- pardon,
Where there is doubt -- faith,
Where there is despair -- hope,
Where there is darkness -- light,
Where there is sadness -- joy.
"Divine Master,
grant that i may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life."
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God." -- Mt.5:9
Amen.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Wow! We Could Have Had a V-8!
Today is the fourth anniversary of the "Mission Accomplished" speech by the Commander in Chief following his fighter jet landing on the USS Lincoln, way out there on the Pacific Ocean (uh, actually in the bay right next to San Diego -- just one of many staged illusions). The beginning of the end of innocence of even those enamored of the Noble Global War on Terror. Four years ago.
Keith Olbermann tonight did an excellent feature on the inconsistency of the statements on the "progress" of the war since then and concluded quite logically that we always seem to have made enough progress to warrant our staying the course, by whatever name you call it, but never enough to justify our coming home.
Visited friends Keith and Mary Ann in northern Indiana this weekend. One thing we always enjoy talking about is politics, at least in the misery-loves-company-enough-to- have-a-good-laugh-before-we-break-down-and-cry sort of way. I introduced them to the Stephen Colbert roast of the Commander in Chief (which, although the Washington press corps concluded it "fell flat," was popular enough with opponents that there have been over 4 million hits of it online). And they showed me an interview of Jon Stewart by Bill Moyers they'd taped.
I want to share some of that with folks. I guess I understood what was happening when Alberto Gonzales gave his disgraceful testimony before the Senate committee but Jon is brilliant and incisive in a way that I will never come close to being and I appreciate it when he cuts through the PR and BS and reveals to me what is going on.
From the Moyers-Stewart transcript:
JON: For instance, Alberto Gonzales, and you've been watching the hearings. He is either a perjurer, or a low-functioning pinhead. And he allowed himself to be portrayed in those hearings as a low-functioning pinhead, rather than give the Congressional Committee charged with oversight, any information as to his decision-making process at the Department of Justice.
And I used to think, "They're doing this based on a certain arrogance." And now, I realize that it's because they believe there is one accountability moment for a President, and that is the four year election. And once you get that election, you're done.
MOYERS: They're right, are they not?
STEWART: They're completely not right. The election moment is merely the American public saying, "We'd rather you be President than that guy." That's it. The next four years, though, you still have to abide by the oversight process that is there to prevent this kind of bizarre sort of cult-like atmosphere that falls along. I mean, I accept that kind of veil of secrecy around Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, but I don't accept that around our government.
BILL MOYERS: Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of words were written about Gonzales' testimony last week in Congress. And I still don't think a lot of people get it. And all of the sudden, there on THE DAILY SHOW that evening, you distilled the essence of it.
CLIP: THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART
JON STEWART: So there it was today, the big fight. Gonzalez v Senate. Are you ready to bumble!
SENATOR: Who's [whose] idea was this?
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: Senator, I don't recall specifically
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: I don't recall the-the contents.
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: Senator, I have no recollection.
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: I-I don't have any recollection.
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: I have searched my memory.
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: I don't recall remembering…
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: Senator, I can only testify as to what I recall.
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: Senator, I don't recall…
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: I don't recall…
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: I firmly believe that nothing improper occurred.
JON STEWART: After weeks of mock testimony, there you have it, Alberto Gonzales does not know what happened, but he assures you what he doesn't remember was handled properly.
END CLIP: THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART
JON STEWART: And by the way, that was all just — that was a game, and he knew it, and the guys on the committee knew it. And for the President to come out after that and say, "Everything I saw there gave me more confidence in him," that solidified my notion that, "Oh, it's because what he expected of Gonzalez was" it's sort of like, do you remember in GOODFELLAS? When Henry Hill got arrested for the first time and Robert DeNiro met him at the courthouse and Henry Hill was really upset, 'cause he thought Robert DeNiro would be really mad at him. And DeNiro comes up to him and he gives him a $100 and he goes, "You got pinched. We all get pinched, but you did it right, you didn't say nothing."
BILL MOYERS: Gonzales said nothing.
JON STEWART: Right. And "you went up there and said nothing. You gave them no legal recourse against you, and you made yourself, a smart man, a self-made man, look like an utter pinhead on national television, and you did it for me."
[My italics.]
Get it? Get the contempt? The utter contempt that this gang -- this cult, indeed -- these WISE GUYS!!! have for us the people?
An old saying: "There is honor among thieves." "Honor" meaning they have loyalty to one another: they don't rat one another out. And these particular thieves run this country; they rob us blind and we have no power to resist it.
Yet.
Deliver us, O Lord.
Keith Olbermann tonight did an excellent feature on the inconsistency of the statements on the "progress" of the war since then and concluded quite logically that we always seem to have made enough progress to warrant our staying the course, by whatever name you call it, but never enough to justify our coming home.
Visited friends Keith and Mary Ann in northern Indiana this weekend. One thing we always enjoy talking about is politics, at least in the misery-loves-company-enough-to- have-a-good-laugh-before-we-break-down-and-cry sort of way. I introduced them to the Stephen Colbert roast of the Commander in Chief (which, although the Washington press corps concluded it "fell flat," was popular enough with opponents that there have been over 4 million hits of it online). And they showed me an interview of Jon Stewart by Bill Moyers they'd taped.
I want to share some of that with folks. I guess I understood what was happening when Alberto Gonzales gave his disgraceful testimony before the Senate committee but Jon is brilliant and incisive in a way that I will never come close to being and I appreciate it when he cuts through the PR and BS and reveals to me what is going on.
From the Moyers-Stewart transcript:
JON: For instance, Alberto Gonzales, and you've been watching the hearings. He is either a perjurer, or a low-functioning pinhead. And he allowed himself to be portrayed in those hearings as a low-functioning pinhead, rather than give the Congressional Committee charged with oversight, any information as to his decision-making process at the Department of Justice.
And I used to think, "They're doing this based on a certain arrogance." And now, I realize that it's because they believe there is one accountability moment for a President, and that is the four year election. And once you get that election, you're done.
MOYERS: They're right, are they not?
STEWART: They're completely not right. The election moment is merely the American public saying, "We'd rather you be President than that guy." That's it. The next four years, though, you still have to abide by the oversight process that is there to prevent this kind of bizarre sort of cult-like atmosphere that falls along. I mean, I accept that kind of veil of secrecy around Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, but I don't accept that around our government.
BILL MOYERS: Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of words were written about Gonzales' testimony last week in Congress. And I still don't think a lot of people get it. And all of the sudden, there on THE DAILY SHOW that evening, you distilled the essence of it.
CLIP: THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART
JON STEWART: So there it was today, the big fight. Gonzalez v Senate. Are you ready to bumble!
SENATOR: Who's [whose] idea was this?
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: Senator, I don't recall specifically
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: I don't recall the-the contents.
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: Senator, I have no recollection.
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: I-I don't have any recollection.
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: I have searched my memory.
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: I don't recall remembering…
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: Senator, I can only testify as to what I recall.
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: Senator, I don't recall…
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: I don't recall…
ALBERTO GONZALEZ: I firmly believe that nothing improper occurred.
JON STEWART: After weeks of mock testimony, there you have it, Alberto Gonzales does not know what happened, but he assures you what he doesn't remember was handled properly.
END CLIP: THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART
JON STEWART: And by the way, that was all just — that was a game, and he knew it, and the guys on the committee knew it. And for the President to come out after that and say, "Everything I saw there gave me more confidence in him," that solidified my notion that, "Oh, it's because what he expected of Gonzalez was" it's sort of like, do you remember in GOODFELLAS? When Henry Hill got arrested for the first time and Robert DeNiro met him at the courthouse and Henry Hill was really upset, 'cause he thought Robert DeNiro would be really mad at him. And DeNiro comes up to him and he gives him a $100 and he goes, "You got pinched. We all get pinched, but you did it right, you didn't say nothing."
BILL MOYERS: Gonzales said nothing.
JON STEWART: Right. And "you went up there and said nothing. You gave them no legal recourse against you, and you made yourself, a smart man, a self-made man, look like an utter pinhead on national television, and you did it for me."
[My italics.]
Get it? Get the contempt? The utter contempt that this gang -- this cult, indeed -- these WISE GUYS!!! have for us the people?
An old saying: "There is honor among thieves." "Honor" meaning they have loyalty to one another: they don't rat one another out. And these particular thieves run this country; they rob us blind and we have no power to resist it.
Yet.
Deliver us, O Lord.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
The Hiding Place
Today is Wednesday, the 25th of April. We’re watching The Hiding Place, the movie based on the true book by Corrie ten Boom. She and her father and sister, devout Christians, decided to help Jews escape the persecution of the Nazis in the Dutch city of Haarlem.
The Ten Booms’ Christian behavior was exemplary.
Then the Nazis captured them and imprisoned them and they were persecuted -- just as Jesus said they would be if they followed Him to the letter. And furthermore, Jesus tells them not to hate those who persecute them. And they do their best.
I could never hope to practice the kind of Christianity that these people did. To counter evil with good, hate with love -- it is almost inconceivable. I know that Paul said, "I can do all things through him who strengthens me..."
Ms Ten Boom was released from the Ravensbruck concentration camp in 1944 owing to a "clerical error" and she spent the rest of her life preaching Christ's message.
The Ten Booms’ Christian behavior was exemplary.
Then the Nazis captured them and imprisoned them and they were persecuted -- just as Jesus said they would be if they followed Him to the letter. And furthermore, Jesus tells them not to hate those who persecute them. And they do their best.
I could never hope to practice the kind of Christianity that these people did. To counter evil with good, hate with love -- it is almost inconceivable. I know that Paul said, "I can do all things through him who strengthens me..."
Ms Ten Boom was released from the Ravensbruck concentration camp in 1944 owing to a "clerical error" and she spent the rest of her life preaching Christ's message.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Some Ravings, and A Prayer
Sheryl Crow, the popular singer who I once trashed for murdering “Begin the Beguine” in De-Lovely, the biopic of Cole Porter (she did, she did), tangled with Karl Rove at a White House correspondents’ dinner the other night and it was ugly. “Don’t touch me,” Rove said. I can see a couple of Secret Service agents rushing to Ms Crow and tackling her, throwing her roughly to the turf. It wouldn't be pretty. I'd hate to see it. This lady turns out to be a good kid, a patriot, like the Dixie Chicks.
We did it. We gave Karl his power and protection. We the people -- in the voting booth -- at least enough of us did -- empowered this guy by giving the man that he handles the illusion that he had a "mandate" after that man squeaked by in the last presidential election. "We have met the enemy and he is us," saith Albert Alligator. We're to blame for the quagmire we're in.
Here's one more comment about Kurt Vonnegut because it applies to what I've been writing about. David Hoppe, Associate/Arts Editor for NUVO in Vonnegut's hometown of Indianapolis (dear old Nap Town), said this in a tribute:
"Many people, even admirers, persist in calling Kurt Vonnegut cynical. I’ve never understood this. A cynic believes the truth doesn’t matter. If going to war suits him, he’ll make up reasons for doing it and to hell with the consequences. A cynic believes the only real crime is getting caught. (My italics.)
"Truth, or at least our efforts to try and figure out what that means, always mattered to Mr. V. What he’d seen of human behavior made him a pessimist about the future we’re making for ourselves. But this was also a man who, upon hearing of the almost inconceivably simultaneous deaths of his sister and her husband, responded by adopting three of their children.
“'There’s only one rule I know of babies,' he wrote. 'God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.'” Jesus could have said that, God damn it.
I saw a Hallmark movie last night that made me cry, God damn it. It was titled Crossroads: A Story of Forgiveness. Dean Cain (that's Clark Kent in Lois and Clark) is a husband and father who has his wife and daughter killed by a speeding teenager. He goes about getting the youngster prosecuted. Then he goes about forgiving the young man. It was really touching.
That forgiveness. Lord, we need more of it in this world, right now, like love, sweet love. "Go thou and sin no more." Oh if we could all just be confronted and then hear those words from the Big Guy. God have mercy on us. Amen.
We did it. We gave Karl his power and protection. We the people -- in the voting booth -- at least enough of us did -- empowered this guy by giving the man that he handles the illusion that he had a "mandate" after that man squeaked by in the last presidential election. "We have met the enemy and he is us," saith Albert Alligator. We're to blame for the quagmire we're in.
Here's one more comment about Kurt Vonnegut because it applies to what I've been writing about. David Hoppe, Associate/Arts Editor for NUVO in Vonnegut's hometown of Indianapolis (dear old Nap Town), said this in a tribute:
"Many people, even admirers, persist in calling Kurt Vonnegut cynical. I’ve never understood this. A cynic believes the truth doesn’t matter. If going to war suits him, he’ll make up reasons for doing it and to hell with the consequences. A cynic believes the only real crime is getting caught. (My italics.)
"Truth, or at least our efforts to try and figure out what that means, always mattered to Mr. V. What he’d seen of human behavior made him a pessimist about the future we’re making for ourselves. But this was also a man who, upon hearing of the almost inconceivably simultaneous deaths of his sister and her husband, responded by adopting three of their children.
“'There’s only one rule I know of babies,' he wrote. 'God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.'” Jesus could have said that, God damn it.
I saw a Hallmark movie last night that made me cry, God damn it. It was titled Crossroads: A Story of Forgiveness. Dean Cain (that's Clark Kent in Lois and Clark) is a husband and father who has his wife and daughter killed by a speeding teenager. He goes about getting the youngster prosecuted. Then he goes about forgiving the young man. It was really touching.
That forgiveness. Lord, we need more of it in this world, right now, like love, sweet love. "Go thou and sin no more." Oh if we could all just be confronted and then hear those words from the Big Guy. God have mercy on us. Amen.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The Cho Show
Harry Shearer wrote today in the Huffington Post:
"So Mr. Cho gets his fifteen minutes. The question bewildering journalism observers--why'd he send his goodie bag to NBC News?--has an easy answer: it was in gratitude for their firing of Imus.
"Not so easy is the answer to the question: what is the possible journalistic explanation for splashing Cho's self-dramatizing poses and self-justifying bullshit over network and cable air? Did we learn anything useful during the spate of interviews of Charlie Manson years ago, except that he was one crazy motherfucker? Cho's pathetic outpourings deserved to be put back where they came from -- in a small room, with FBI guys sentenced to read/see and parse them. Instead, a hundred thousand self-pitying mentally ill young men (and women?) have just been shown the road to glory one more time. A society in which it's easier to become famous for killing people than for doing something useful or constructive is one remarkable place in which to live."
In the 1970s, when I was a good tree-hugger and even the Nixon administration had founded the Environmental Protection Agency, I bought a bunch of beautiful, healthy trees and shrubs for next to nothing from a retired postal employee, a man named Elmer Job, last name pronounced the same way as his Biblical counterpart. An old saw is "to have the patience of Job," which means to have patience abounding long after others have given up.
This gentle man had the patience of his namesake. You have to be patient to grow trees, I thought, planting the seeds, watering, feeding, sheltering from wind and frost. And you must wait.
But it takes no patience whatever to cut trees down, not with a well-sharpened, gasoline-fueled chain saw. I planted those shrubs and trees at the house where we lived then and watched them grow over the next five or so years. (Then every last one of them was cut down by subsequent owners, but that's another story.)
Just up the street, a couple of old ladies moved into a house with seven beautiful, healthy young maples. They promptly hired men to cut down all seven. They had a couple of picture windows in that house and they hastened to cover those windows with shades to keep out the sun. Twenty years of God's work, some would say, destroyed in one day.
The young gunman at Virginia Tech has "earned" his infamy, as did the Texas tower sniper, the black-trenchcoat teens at Columbine, the three little boys who wanted their mommies and teddy bears in jail after the schoolyard killings in Arkansas, the ... well, you know, the list, as we say, goes on and on.
They all did their atrocities in minutes.
How long does it take to grow a human being?
How long does it take to grow a sane, just, merciful, caring society?
Harry Shearer understated it: "A society in which it's easier to become famous for killing people than for doing something useful or constructive is one remarkable place in which to live."
God have mercy on this world. Amen.
"So Mr. Cho gets his fifteen minutes. The question bewildering journalism observers--why'd he send his goodie bag to NBC News?--has an easy answer: it was in gratitude for their firing of Imus.
"Not so easy is the answer to the question: what is the possible journalistic explanation for splashing Cho's self-dramatizing poses and self-justifying bullshit over network and cable air? Did we learn anything useful during the spate of interviews of Charlie Manson years ago, except that he was one crazy motherfucker? Cho's pathetic outpourings deserved to be put back where they came from -- in a small room, with FBI guys sentenced to read/see and parse them. Instead, a hundred thousand self-pitying mentally ill young men (and women?) have just been shown the road to glory one more time. A society in which it's easier to become famous for killing people than for doing something useful or constructive is one remarkable place in which to live."
In the 1970s, when I was a good tree-hugger and even the Nixon administration had founded the Environmental Protection Agency, I bought a bunch of beautiful, healthy trees and shrubs for next to nothing from a retired postal employee, a man named Elmer Job, last name pronounced the same way as his Biblical counterpart. An old saw is "to have the patience of Job," which means to have patience abounding long after others have given up.
This gentle man had the patience of his namesake. You have to be patient to grow trees, I thought, planting the seeds, watering, feeding, sheltering from wind and frost. And you must wait.
But it takes no patience whatever to cut trees down, not with a well-sharpened, gasoline-fueled chain saw. I planted those shrubs and trees at the house where we lived then and watched them grow over the next five or so years. (Then every last one of them was cut down by subsequent owners, but that's another story.)
Just up the street, a couple of old ladies moved into a house with seven beautiful, healthy young maples. They promptly hired men to cut down all seven. They had a couple of picture windows in that house and they hastened to cover those windows with shades to keep out the sun. Twenty years of God's work, some would say, destroyed in one day.
The young gunman at Virginia Tech has "earned" his infamy, as did the Texas tower sniper, the black-trenchcoat teens at Columbine, the three little boys who wanted their mommies and teddy bears in jail after the schoolyard killings in Arkansas, the ... well, you know, the list, as we say, goes on and on.
They all did their atrocities in minutes.
How long does it take to grow a human being?
How long does it take to grow a sane, just, merciful, caring society?
Harry Shearer understated it: "A society in which it's easier to become famous for killing people than for doing something useful or constructive is one remarkable place in which to live."
God have mercy on this world. Amen.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut (and Mr. Carpenter)
Another wonderful eulogy of Kurt Vonnegut, this one by Dan Carpenter, columnist in the Indianapolis Star. Worth quoting:
"Crediting the Indianapolis Public Schools for 'my crazy ideas about socialism and pacifism,' Vonnegut said in 1973 on one of his many visits here: 'The most intelligent people in the city went into teaching then . . . I was taught to be proud that the generals were not listened to in our country. I did not get my crazy ideas on the Eastern seaboard or from crazy intellectuals in the East. I just remembered what I was told in Junior Civics.'...
"Vonnegut's essential moral grief, his atheist's yearning for God and good in a species that showered him with evidence to the contrary, lies at the heart of his literary stature.
"Among the most accessible of serious novels, Vonnegut's works are characterized by capricious evil, forlorn idealism, frenetic plots, frank autobiographical elements and cartoonish concepts meant to convey obvious messages -- the birth control pill that works by taking the fun out of sex, the secret weapon that freezes all the world's waterways, the space aliens who bring Earthlings a formula for peace that goes unheeded because they can communicate only by tap-dancing and passing gas. Immortal characters, such as the saintly Mr. Rosewater and the misanthropic science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, appear and reappear from book to book.
"Leery of being lionized as a secular prophet, Vonnegut once went so far as to say 'a writer is just a person who makes his living with his mental disease.'
"He also confided late in his career that he wrote 'intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a mountain with no time to think.
"'And as I look back on the marks my skis have left on the slope, I see that what I wrote again and again are stories of ordinary people who tried to behave decently in an indecent society.'"
Footnote: I admire Dan Carpenter for his courage and integrity, and obvious determination. I do not envy him his calling, which is to be a "lefty" columnist in a "righty" newspaper, city, and state. The vilification he receives from his opponents is almost universal, and mean-spirited and unrelenting. I suspect Dan has even received death threats, because we are talking about the kind of people who drag people they don't like behind trucks, who unapologetically pack the guns they worship along with Jesus, who bomb abortion clinics; I suspect he doesn't become too upset when someone merely curses him, telling him he is lost and damned to hell for all eternity. (Dan, by the way, gives every indication of being a devout Roman Catholic, and he is certainly thoroughly familiar with the teachings of Jesus.)
I also am grateful that the Indianapolis Star employs him and in no way tampers with his editorial integrity. There was a time when such an arrangement would have been unlikely.
"Crediting the Indianapolis Public Schools for 'my crazy ideas about socialism and pacifism,' Vonnegut said in 1973 on one of his many visits here: 'The most intelligent people in the city went into teaching then . . . I was taught to be proud that the generals were not listened to in our country. I did not get my crazy ideas on the Eastern seaboard or from crazy intellectuals in the East. I just remembered what I was told in Junior Civics.'...
"Vonnegut's essential moral grief, his atheist's yearning for God and good in a species that showered him with evidence to the contrary, lies at the heart of his literary stature.
"Among the most accessible of serious novels, Vonnegut's works are characterized by capricious evil, forlorn idealism, frenetic plots, frank autobiographical elements and cartoonish concepts meant to convey obvious messages -- the birth control pill that works by taking the fun out of sex, the secret weapon that freezes all the world's waterways, the space aliens who bring Earthlings a formula for peace that goes unheeded because they can communicate only by tap-dancing and passing gas. Immortal characters, such as the saintly Mr. Rosewater and the misanthropic science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, appear and reappear from book to book.
"Leery of being lionized as a secular prophet, Vonnegut once went so far as to say 'a writer is just a person who makes his living with his mental disease.'
"He also confided late in his career that he wrote 'intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a mountain with no time to think.
"'And as I look back on the marks my skis have left on the slope, I see that what I wrote again and again are stories of ordinary people who tried to behave decently in an indecent society.'"
Footnote: I admire Dan Carpenter for his courage and integrity, and obvious determination. I do not envy him his calling, which is to be a "lefty" columnist in a "righty" newspaper, city, and state. The vilification he receives from his opponents is almost universal, and mean-spirited and unrelenting. I suspect Dan has even received death threats, because we are talking about the kind of people who drag people they don't like behind trucks, who unapologetically pack the guns they worship along with Jesus, who bomb abortion clinics; I suspect he doesn't become too upset when someone merely curses him, telling him he is lost and damned to hell for all eternity. (Dan, by the way, gives every indication of being a devout Roman Catholic, and he is certainly thoroughly familiar with the teachings of Jesus.)
I also am grateful that the Indianapolis Star employs him and in no way tampers with his editorial integrity. There was a time when such an arrangement would have been unlikely.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
More Killing II
Keith Olbermann just pointed out that at least as many American military servicemen in Iraq died in the last ten days as those people who died yesterday at the hands of an enraged sicko kid named Cho Seung-Hui at Virginia Tech. Keith asked why we citizens are stunned, shocked, angered, and saddened by those deaths so much more than we seem to be by the three thousand deaths before them in Iraq and Afghanistan -- not in any way, of course, minimizing the enormity of the Virginia Tech tragedy. May God console the victims' families and friends and indeed all of us.
Many flags today are flying at half-mast because of the Virginia Tech killings, Keith said. He asked, Why aren't our flags flying at half-mast all the time?
Good question.
To me it looks like we are a nation whose Stars and Bars should fly only at half-mast from now until the monstrously unjust war we are in has ended.
God, Lord, please deliver us. Amen.
Many flags today are flying at half-mast because of the Virginia Tech killings, Keith said. He asked, Why aren't our flags flying at half-mast all the time?
Good question.
To me it looks like we are a nation whose Stars and Bars should fly only at half-mast from now until the monstrously unjust war we are in has ended.
God, Lord, please deliver us. Amen.
Monday, April 16, 2007
More Killing
At Virginia Tech, a college in Blacksburg, Virginia, a gunman massacred over thirty innocent people today. Then shot himself to death. Kurt Vonnegut would say, "So it goes." But he too is now dead. "Farther along ..."
Friday, April 13, 2007
Howard Redux
Early this morning I bought a 20-inch Magnavox and took it to Rosie's dad at Thornton Terrace. He told me he wanted a radio too. I said we'd take care of that. He said he wasn't going to the dining room today. I told him his daughter wouldn't be there until after lunch and would be upset with him if he missed a meal. I told him it was paid for and the seniors there would miss him.
So he agreed to go to lunch. Then the two of us walked to the lunch room, a good hike for him with his walker. I told him I was walking with him on his left, because military etiquette dictated that the person junior in rank walks on the left. Because of his trouble with hearing and a little with comprehension I'm not sure he understood what I was saying. But I meant it. I respect the old guy.
We waited a while for things to get going, the drinks served, the food served, etc. We sat alone at his table and that made him a little anxious because he is nothing if not a social person. Finally arriving at his table was a World War II vet, a heroic fighter pilot, who is one of my dearest friends and as a fellow retail merchant a man Howard has known all his days working in downtown Madison. Then Howard's grandson Brian showed up.
Anyhow, someone recently told us that it generally takes about two weeks for a senior newly placed in a nursing home to adjust to his or her new environment. Well, the old gentleman is ahead of the curve.
Good for him.
So he agreed to go to lunch. Then the two of us walked to the lunch room, a good hike for him with his walker. I told him I was walking with him on his left, because military etiquette dictated that the person junior in rank walks on the left. Because of his trouble with hearing and a little with comprehension I'm not sure he understood what I was saying. But I meant it. I respect the old guy.
We waited a while for things to get going, the drinks served, the food served, etc. We sat alone at his table and that made him a little anxious because he is nothing if not a social person. Finally arriving at his table was a World War II vet, a heroic fighter pilot, who is one of my dearest friends and as a fellow retail merchant a man Howard has known all his days working in downtown Madison. Then Howard's grandson Brian showed up.
Anyhow, someone recently told us that it generally takes about two weeks for a senior newly placed in a nursing home to adjust to his or her new environment. Well, the old gentleman is ahead of the curve.
Good for him.
Hackers, Redeem Yourselves
I have this dream that is forming in my mind. (Maybe it'll become a teleplay, but that's the other dream.) Anyhow, here's the dream: this geek kid -- perhaps looking a little like Michael Moore but not quite as fat and unkempt -- who at age 28 still lives with his mom, sleeps in his basement room, lives on pizza, doughnuts, and Buffalo wings, and has never, never had a date. His whole world is his Mac laptop and IBM desktop.
[Breaking News: Harry Shearer, one of the lovable voices on The Simpsons, said that First Amendment rights do not guarantee the constitutional right of somebody to have a nationally syndicated radio and TV show. Doh!]
Anyhow, this geek kid -- we'll call him Dylan, for the hell of it -- is a computer virtuoso and he has been responsible for about ten viruses and a worm or two, some of them really harmful and all of them obnoxious. He's just a pain in the ass. OK?
In April 2007, Dylan gets this knock on the door. He doesn't usually answer the door but he's upstairs, watching the MSNBC anchor Alison Stewart on Mom's TV (he has the hots for Alison Stewart but I digress) and commercials are on and he goes to the door and there's this blonde chick in a business suit, one with a skirt, and she's well hot.
So he says, what the hey and he can't see what kind of shoes she's wearing (toes in view?), she tosses her hair back and she's heck, pretty young, just a little older than he is. So he answers the door.
"Dylan?" she says. She doesn't say his last name. She smiles and looks into his eyes, right into his eyes. Oh God, does she smile! And the light catches her eyes and they are the most gorgeous shade of --
"Yes?" he says, with an upward inflection, like a question, and -- ooh! -- his voice cracks.
"Dylan, I'm Monica. I work for Representative Henry Waxman? You know, Congress?" She shows him ID. "We're looking into some missing e-mails that are of interest to the United States government."
He looks at her without comprehension.
"Dylan" -- here she says his last name -- "We know that you're responsible for" -- she rapidly rattles off two of the nicknames for his worms and four of his viruses. "There are more..."
Dylan mutters, "Oh shit. I'm busted."
"Maybe not," she says. "How would you like to use your computer skills to help us?" ... Have you ever heard of Karl Rove?"
"Y-yes. Bush's brain? Boy genius? T- ... T-Turd Blossom?"
"That's the one. He claims that all his emails over the last five years have been erased. We understand that it doesn't work that way. We think you might be able to help us."
***
The year is 2009. Karl Rove, in his prison cell, turns on the TV. His roomy is Rush Limbaugh. Karl hasn't been seen with his supercilious, shit-eating smirk for a year now. Nobody in the prison, guards or prisoners, pays a bit of attention to the little butterball in blue chambray shirt and denim pants like the rest of the losers.
On the TV he hears President Clinton say, "Dylan, we want to thank you for your patriotic service in helping us uncover the scandal which has shaken us for the past five years. Therefore I am pleased to award you the Medal of Freedom." The abashed Dylan, uncomfortable in a suit and tie and with a clean shave, doesn't look at the President but manages a sort of smile as she hands him the medal. Cheers and whoops from the young audience are enthusiastic and loud.
Rove snorts and reaches for the remote to turn to Judge Judy.
Ben Dover (of Fletch) comes in.
"Oh no! Me today?" Karl says.
Ben nods. "Remember? I did Rush yesterday. Drop 'em."
[Breaking News: Harry Shearer, one of the lovable voices on The Simpsons, said that First Amendment rights do not guarantee the constitutional right of somebody to have a nationally syndicated radio and TV show. Doh!]
Anyhow, this geek kid -- we'll call him Dylan, for the hell of it -- is a computer virtuoso and he has been responsible for about ten viruses and a worm or two, some of them really harmful and all of them obnoxious. He's just a pain in the ass. OK?
In April 2007, Dylan gets this knock on the door. He doesn't usually answer the door but he's upstairs, watching the MSNBC anchor Alison Stewart on Mom's TV (he has the hots for Alison Stewart but I digress) and commercials are on and he goes to the door and there's this blonde chick in a business suit, one with a skirt, and she's well hot.
So he says, what the hey and he can't see what kind of shoes she's wearing (toes in view?), she tosses her hair back and she's heck, pretty young, just a little older than he is. So he answers the door.
"Dylan?" she says. She doesn't say his last name. She smiles and looks into his eyes, right into his eyes. Oh God, does she smile! And the light catches her eyes and they are the most gorgeous shade of --
"Yes?" he says, with an upward inflection, like a question, and -- ooh! -- his voice cracks.
"Dylan, I'm Monica. I work for Representative Henry Waxman? You know, Congress?" She shows him ID. "We're looking into some missing e-mails that are of interest to the United States government."
He looks at her without comprehension.
"Dylan" -- here she says his last name -- "We know that you're responsible for" -- she rapidly rattles off two of the nicknames for his worms and four of his viruses. "There are more..."
Dylan mutters, "Oh shit. I'm busted."
"Maybe not," she says. "How would you like to use your computer skills to help us?" ... Have you ever heard of Karl Rove?"
"Y-yes. Bush's brain? Boy genius? T- ... T-Turd Blossom?"
"That's the one. He claims that all his emails over the last five years have been erased. We understand that it doesn't work that way. We think you might be able to help us."
***
The year is 2009. Karl Rove, in his prison cell, turns on the TV. His roomy is Rush Limbaugh. Karl hasn't been seen with his supercilious, shit-eating smirk for a year now. Nobody in the prison, guards or prisoners, pays a bit of attention to the little butterball in blue chambray shirt and denim pants like the rest of the losers.
On the TV he hears President Clinton say, "Dylan, we want to thank you for your patriotic service in helping us uncover the scandal which has shaken us for the past five years. Therefore I am pleased to award you the Medal of Freedom." The abashed Dylan, uncomfortable in a suit and tie and with a clean shave, doesn't look at the President but manages a sort of smile as she hands him the medal. Cheers and whoops from the young audience are enthusiastic and loud.
Rove snorts and reaches for the remote to turn to Judge Judy.
Ben Dover (of Fletch) comes in.
"Oh no! Me today?" Karl says.
Ben nods. "Remember? I did Rush yesterday. Drop 'em."
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Milestones from Nap Town Natives and a "Shock Jock" Who Got his Just Deserts
Novelist, essayist, short story writer, playwright, lecturer, Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was at his peak in the 1970s when this writer discovered him and became star-struck. His big book is generally agreed to be Slaughterhouse Five: The Children's Crusade, about an autobiographical hapless infantryman who is taken prisoner of war by the Germans in World War II. He, "Billy Pilgrim," is imprisoned in Dresden, and is in a subterranean meat locker when the US Army Air Force fire-bombs the city, causing more casualties than occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The enormity of this disaster was not widely known up to that time. Kurt was one of seven American POW's who survived that holocaust. The irony of that dripped from Slaughterhouse Five. It is a fantastic novel.
Kurt didn't lose his edge right up to the end. In an interview he said this:
"I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities..."
Kurt was born in Nap Town and he was always charitable toward and affectionate of his hometown. Another Nap Towner was born there 60 years ago today -- David Letterman! I hope Dave appreciates being a SEXAGENARIAN. (What a lovely word! And truer than you know!)
Don Imus, NOT a Nap Town native (and I, as a not-so-closeted Hoosier chauvinist, am glad!), is unemployed. He deserves it. Bob Herbert in his column today recalled a 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace, who confronted Imus for saying that he kept his producer around to "make n----- jokes." Imus said he thought his conversation was off-the-record. "The hell it is!" Wallace came back.
Dick Cavett, of all people, defended Imus. He said that Don is a "real cowboy,"that he reads, and is one of few people who pronounces both c's in "arctic." God dog! Why, I bet he even doesn't say "nucular!" (Then why not be an English teacher?) I understand that he overcame an alcohol and cocaine problem, and that he has a ranch for disadvantaged kids.
He's a nice guy, right? He's just got a mouth that has been heard by millions every Monday through Friday for three decades and an attitude that insulting the innocent -- blacks, women, Jews -- for the amusement of the guilty is OK. As was the case with the obnoxious Bob Knight, Imus will be greeted enthusiastically in some other venue and carry on pretty much as he has all these years. And heck, he's not the only one. He said so himself. There's a whole damn network ... oh well.
But, ending on a sweet note, Kurt Vonnegut was a sweet man and he will be missed. So it goes. And so is Dave Letterman and I hope he will be with us a long time.
Amen.
Kurt didn't lose his edge right up to the end. In an interview he said this:
"I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities..."
Kurt was born in Nap Town and he was always charitable toward and affectionate of his hometown. Another Nap Towner was born there 60 years ago today -- David Letterman! I hope Dave appreciates being a SEXAGENARIAN. (What a lovely word! And truer than you know!)
Don Imus, NOT a Nap Town native (and I, as a not-so-closeted Hoosier chauvinist, am glad!), is unemployed. He deserves it. Bob Herbert in his column today recalled a 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace, who confronted Imus for saying that he kept his producer around to "make n----- jokes." Imus said he thought his conversation was off-the-record. "The hell it is!" Wallace came back.
Dick Cavett, of all people, defended Imus. He said that Don is a "real cowboy,"that he reads, and is one of few people who pronounces both c's in "arctic." God dog! Why, I bet he even doesn't say "nucular!" (Then why not be an English teacher?) I understand that he overcame an alcohol and cocaine problem, and that he has a ranch for disadvantaged kids.
He's a nice guy, right? He's just got a mouth that has been heard by millions every Monday through Friday for three decades and an attitude that insulting the innocent -- blacks, women, Jews -- for the amusement of the guilty is OK. As was the case with the obnoxious Bob Knight, Imus will be greeted enthusiastically in some other venue and carry on pretty much as he has all these years. And heck, he's not the only one. He said so himself. There's a whole damn network ... oh well.
But, ending on a sweet note, Kurt Vonnegut was a sweet man and he will be missed. So it goes. And so is Dave Letterman and I hope he will be with us a long time.
Amen.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
God's Language: Music
I read once (God knows where) that God's language is music. And if we could only understand it, we could understand all that God represents: love, joy, peace, all the good things. It's been an intriguing idea for many years. Oh Jesus, how I wish I had learned music. It's too late now. And of course I would have come no closer to understanding God almighty. Who ever does? But I think about all those wonderful works of Johann Sebastian Bach, all dedicated to "Soli Deo Gloria" -- to the glory of God. Would to God that I could write just one piece of music and dedicate it "To the Glory of God." Amen.
"Music Is My Rampart, and My Only One"
One of my favorite movies is The Milagro Beanfield War, and the music is by Dave Grusin. He won the Oscar in 1988 for the music for that movie! Of course, I don't think much of the judges who award Oscars, and I have no idea how they came up with their decision, but Grusin beat out Johnnie Williams for The Accidental Tourist, George Fenton (Dangerous Liaisons), Maurice Jarre (Gorillas in the Mist), and Hans Zimmer (Rain Man). I don't recall the music of any of those except that of Williams, but I would say from the names that Dave's winning -- I should certainly say the music he composed -- was a tour de force. George Fenton did Shadowlands, for example. Hans Zimmer did Driving Miss Daisy and many wonderful works. Of course you know I'm a nut for The Milagro Beanfield War. Play the music, if it's available, at my funeral.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Global Warming Needs to Be Given a Mustache
I thought this post by Daniel Gilbert was quite thoughtful, and cognizant of psychology, as well as amusing. Now I will tell you that the subject is global warming: if you decide not to read it, you will have proved Mr. Gilbert's point.
Friday, April 06, 2007
Also!
There is a BLIZZARD out there right now. Honestly, a white-out, of the sort we used to get in northern Indiana. Dude, does that suck or what? Fortunately it isn't sticking but I hope Rosie, who is on the road right now, can see where the heck she's going.
Howard, her daddy, went to Thornton Terrace this morning. He wasn't happy about it but he submitted to it like a man, Rosie said. "He's a hell of a man," she said. Indeed he is.
Rosie told me a touching story about him yesterday. She's told me many touching stories about him, how he would read the comics and the Bible and stories to her when she was a little girl, the only child. I can readily picture the two of them. But she discovered this one since her mother died a month ago. Clara was a "pack rat" and saved every bill and every piece of correspondence they'd received over seventy-plus years. Rosie found an anonymous letter.
Howard was twenty-nine when we entered World War II. He had a very bad case of stomach ulcers and when he tried to enlist, he was rejected as "4-F." He was a patriot and was dismayed and he tried again a number of times to enlist but was always rejected. "They also serve who stand and wait." If Howard had faced our enemies in combat, he would have acquitted himself as bravely and honorably as the next man, I do believe.
Rosie told me about the letter. Someone -- someone who didn't divulge their identity -- does anybody appreciate how repugnant, how vicious such ambushes from hiding are? -- wrote a letter to his home saying that he or she thought the Kroger store had good meats, but that the one who cut them and sold them was a "sissy" -- I think that's the term the anonymous writer used -- because he hadn't gone off to the war.
Clara saved that letter and I'm glad she did, because Rosie saw it, told me about it, and I'm writing about it on the "world wide web" to declare to all the world that Howard Lawrence Jones, father of my wife, was no "sissy," but a brave and good man, a man of Tom Brokaw's "greatest generation."
So, with lots of love and much great misgiving, Rosie deposited her ancient dad in the old folks' home today. He will be fine. He has always coped. He will abide until his time comes. Amen.
Howard, her daddy, went to Thornton Terrace this morning. He wasn't happy about it but he submitted to it like a man, Rosie said. "He's a hell of a man," she said. Indeed he is.
Rosie told me a touching story about him yesterday. She's told me many touching stories about him, how he would read the comics and the Bible and stories to her when she was a little girl, the only child. I can readily picture the two of them. But she discovered this one since her mother died a month ago. Clara was a "pack rat" and saved every bill and every piece of correspondence they'd received over seventy-plus years. Rosie found an anonymous letter.
Howard was twenty-nine when we entered World War II. He had a very bad case of stomach ulcers and when he tried to enlist, he was rejected as "4-F." He was a patriot and was dismayed and he tried again a number of times to enlist but was always rejected. "They also serve who stand and wait." If Howard had faced our enemies in combat, he would have acquitted himself as bravely and honorably as the next man, I do believe.
Rosie told me about the letter. Someone -- someone who didn't divulge their identity -- does anybody appreciate how repugnant, how vicious such ambushes from hiding are? -- wrote a letter to his home saying that he or she thought the Kroger store had good meats, but that the one who cut them and sold them was a "sissy" -- I think that's the term the anonymous writer used -- because he hadn't gone off to the war.
Clara saved that letter and I'm glad she did, because Rosie saw it, told me about it, and I'm writing about it on the "world wide web" to declare to all the world that Howard Lawrence Jones, father of my wife, was no "sissy," but a brave and good man, a man of Tom Brokaw's "greatest generation."
So, with lots of love and much great misgiving, Rosie deposited her ancient dad in the old folks' home today. He will be fine. He has always coped. He will abide until his time comes. Amen.
Tavis Smiley, Hoosier! And THE MAN
I read with delight in the Nap Town Star that Tavis Smiley is going to be the commencement speaker for Indiana University this year. Excellent choice! I wrote the following to the online edition:
"I had no idea Tavis Smiley was from (sic) small-town Indiana man! And I can claim pride in him as a fellow Hoosier along with the admiration I already feel. My daughter was in a swim meet at Maconaquah! I recognized Tavis's excellence instantly when I saw him moderate a discussion on PBS among four religious leaders of diverse backgrounds. Now there was a "fair and balanced," not to mention dignified and congenial, presentation of differing views. I know that Tavis helped to make it happen. This gentleman is a man for all seasons. I really like, respect, and admire Tavis Smiley and I am tickled pink that IU has chosen him for commencement. (Poor BYU! The administration there chose **** (sic) Cheney for their speaker! My family and I lived in Utah and I'm glad we moved back here.) I can't say enough good things about my Hoosier brother Tavis Smiley!"
I read with dismay the error I made in the first sentence but let it stand when I posted a second comment:
"I see the first name of Mr. Cheney was bleeped by the censor. He is pretty profane, isn't he?"
I wrote the above before I had seen prior comments on the story. I then read those and sure enough, Tavis took it in the shorts from some of the TFM's out there. One said he was a "nobody." (Boo.) But somebody countered with, if Tavis is a nobody, what does that make you? (Yay!) Another TFM said they got Tavis because Mr. McFeeley wasn't available. (Boo.) Mr McF's been coopted by BYU when even the rightwing students protested the choice of **** Cheney. (Yay!) Then there was the Star reader who said he watched Fox News "religiously" [I'll bet] and had never heard of Tavis. (Boo.) He was slammed by about four readers who questioned his presumption that he was "informed" by religiously watching Fox News. (Yay!) Then there was the TFI (two steps down on the intelligence scale from a TFM) who said that Tavis was "liberal" and "agenda-driven." (Boo.) As it is with whose ox is being gored, it depends on whose agenda is being driven. Joe McCarthy claimed Ed Murrow was "agenda-driven." (Yay!)
Tavis is in the same league as Ed Murrow. Good night, and good luck.
"I had no idea Tavis Smiley was from (sic) small-town Indiana man! And I can claim pride in him as a fellow Hoosier along with the admiration I already feel. My daughter was in a swim meet at Maconaquah! I recognized Tavis's excellence instantly when I saw him moderate a discussion on PBS among four religious leaders of diverse backgrounds. Now there was a "fair and balanced," not to mention dignified and congenial, presentation of differing views. I know that Tavis helped to make it happen. This gentleman is a man for all seasons. I really like, respect, and admire Tavis Smiley and I am tickled pink that IU has chosen him for commencement. (Poor BYU! The administration there chose **** (sic) Cheney for their speaker! My family and I lived in Utah and I'm glad we moved back here.) I can't say enough good things about my Hoosier brother Tavis Smiley!"
I read with dismay the error I made in the first sentence but let it stand when I posted a second comment:
"I see the first name of Mr. Cheney was bleeped by the censor. He is pretty profane, isn't he?"
I wrote the above before I had seen prior comments on the story. I then read those and sure enough, Tavis took it in the shorts from some of the TFM's out there. One said he was a "nobody." (Boo.) But somebody countered with, if Tavis is a nobody, what does that make you? (Yay!) Another TFM said they got Tavis because Mr. McFeeley wasn't available. (Boo.) Mr McF's been coopted by BYU when even the rightwing students protested the choice of **** Cheney. (Yay!) Then there was the Star reader who said he watched Fox News "religiously" [I'll bet] and had never heard of Tavis. (Boo.) He was slammed by about four readers who questioned his presumption that he was "informed" by religiously watching Fox News. (Yay!) Then there was the TFI (two steps down on the intelligence scale from a TFM) who said that Tavis was "liberal" and "agenda-driven." (Boo.) As it is with whose ox is being gored, it depends on whose agenda is being driven. Joe McCarthy claimed Ed Murrow was "agenda-driven." (Yay!)
Tavis is in the same league as Ed Murrow. Good night, and good luck.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Generic Title
Listening to a symphony by Charles Gounod -- for the readers who had German instead of French, it sounds like my friend Van De Graaff pronounces it "Sharl Goo-KNOW" -- and it sounds quite like a symphony by none other than Ludwig van Beethoven, a clean, elegant, less dramatic one, with less crescendo and descrescendo than Beethoven -- such that you don't have to constantly adjust the volume so that you can hear it without disturbing those around you.
Gounod's most famous work is the opera Faust. Perhaps his most well known work, at least to us oldsters, is "Funeral March of the Marionettes," which was the themesong for the ancient TV show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
I'm not saying that Gounod apes Beethoven, just that he uses some of the same classical/romantic techniques and phrasing and styles (don't know what I'm talking about, of course, having had no formal training (or discipline) in music, just have this ear for music and a lot of my life spent listening to it when I should have been doing something constructive -- e.g. learning to play a musical instrument). I still would like to be a classical DJ and that may happen yet. But I doubt it. Maybe a podcast or something.
Since Gounod's "dates" are 1818-1893, his orchestral composing sounds a little retrograde -- Beethoven's dates are 1770-1827, I seem to recall, and his music became increasingly more "romantic" and less "classical" in contrast with Gounod's -- at least in this symphony I'm listening to as I write. One parallel of the two is orchestration: whole orchestra here, horns or oboes there, both composers seem to use them in about the same way. Well, it's over now and the hearing was a delight. And I'm not left with a feeling of doom and death and so forth. In other words, Gounod's symphony sounds more light-hearted -- more fun -- than much of Beethoven's work. I guess I must add that I don't have the feeling of triumph that Beethoven evokes either, in such works as the mighty Eroica (Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major). This Second Symphony of Gounod is definitely "lighter" than the Eroica. Vive la difference.
Gounod was a Parisian, his pianist mother gave him his first lessons in music, he attended the Paris Conservatoire, and he studied 16th century sacred music, Palestrina in particular. Besides operas and symphonies, he wrote string quartets and oratorios. No mediocre composer. And we hardly ever hear him on "classical" radio.
I've been watching piecemeal Electric Horseman afternoons while sitting with Howard. That's the '80's movie shot in Utah when we were living there and Bob Redford and Jane Fonda were younger and prettier (Willie Nelson never ages!). The scene in which Bob and that magnificent horse escape from the St. George cops is still thrilling to me, and of course comic. There's something about a human being riding a horse at full gallop that evokes all kinds of powerful emotions in me. I know, I'm a big sappy sap, but I love the scene where Bob rides that horse -- and it's really him most of the time, although a stunt rider takes over some of the dicier leaps etc. (Greatest ride on film is that of Ben Johnson as a cavalry soldier in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, a Duke oater from way back when. It's Ben all the way. He was the best dang stunt rider ever was. You may remember him from The Last Picture Show or possibly the guy who fights in the saloon with the "sod-buster" Shane.) I also love the scene where Drew Barrymore and Andie McDowell are riding galloping horses in the admittedly awful movie Bad Girls. Which I loved. Forgive me. I have also loved other stinkers, like Havana and -- oh well, you get the picture.
And I can't keep these ravings apolitical. I just have to comment about some of the outrages of, as Gary Keillor calls him, the Current Occupant (of the "Oval Office"). Let's see how many peccadilloes I can get into one sentence: GWB chastised Congress for taking a "spring break" instead of giving him a bill for funding Iraq that does not impose any deadlines on a pullout, although it gives him every dollar the troops need, but he will veto it and keep them in harm's way longer because he can't have his way as he had it when the GOP was totally in control -- just before he himself takes off to clear brush and ride his mountain bike in Crawford for the umpteenth time -- he has taken more vacation than any president by far -- and before he took off, he made a recess appointment of one of his buddies, a guy whose nomination he had to withdraw when this guy, Fox, faced drilling from John Kerry the very guy who had been slimed by the Swiftboat/Rove clowns who this guy donated 50K to.
Well, let's all watch Law and Order -- Fred Thompson, who did one term as a senator from Tennessee, is being considered as a presidential candidate. Some people are "excited about him!" He did not disgrace himself during those six years. Might not even have broken the law! Desperation of the GOP for a candidate?
Gounod's most famous work is the opera Faust. Perhaps his most well known work, at least to us oldsters, is "Funeral March of the Marionettes," which was the themesong for the ancient TV show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
I'm not saying that Gounod apes Beethoven, just that he uses some of the same classical/romantic techniques and phrasing and styles (don't know what I'm talking about, of course, having had no formal training (or discipline) in music, just have this ear for music and a lot of my life spent listening to it when I should have been doing something constructive -- e.g. learning to play a musical instrument). I still would like to be a classical DJ and that may happen yet. But I doubt it. Maybe a podcast or something.
Since Gounod's "dates" are 1818-1893, his orchestral composing sounds a little retrograde -- Beethoven's dates are 1770-1827, I seem to recall, and his music became increasingly more "romantic" and less "classical" in contrast with Gounod's -- at least in this symphony I'm listening to as I write. One parallel of the two is orchestration: whole orchestra here, horns or oboes there, both composers seem to use them in about the same way. Well, it's over now and the hearing was a delight. And I'm not left with a feeling of doom and death and so forth. In other words, Gounod's symphony sounds more light-hearted -- more fun -- than much of Beethoven's work. I guess I must add that I don't have the feeling of triumph that Beethoven evokes either, in such works as the mighty Eroica (Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major). This Second Symphony of Gounod is definitely "lighter" than the Eroica. Vive la difference.
Gounod was a Parisian, his pianist mother gave him his first lessons in music, he attended the Paris Conservatoire, and he studied 16th century sacred music, Palestrina in particular. Besides operas and symphonies, he wrote string quartets and oratorios. No mediocre composer. And we hardly ever hear him on "classical" radio.
I've been watching piecemeal Electric Horseman afternoons while sitting with Howard. That's the '80's movie shot in Utah when we were living there and Bob Redford and Jane Fonda were younger and prettier (Willie Nelson never ages!). The scene in which Bob and that magnificent horse escape from the St. George cops is still thrilling to me, and of course comic. There's something about a human being riding a horse at full gallop that evokes all kinds of powerful emotions in me. I know, I'm a big sappy sap, but I love the scene where Bob rides that horse -- and it's really him most of the time, although a stunt rider takes over some of the dicier leaps etc. (Greatest ride on film is that of Ben Johnson as a cavalry soldier in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, a Duke oater from way back when. It's Ben all the way. He was the best dang stunt rider ever was. You may remember him from The Last Picture Show or possibly the guy who fights in the saloon with the "sod-buster" Shane.) I also love the scene where Drew Barrymore and Andie McDowell are riding galloping horses in the admittedly awful movie Bad Girls. Which I loved. Forgive me. I have also loved other stinkers, like Havana and -- oh well, you get the picture.
And I can't keep these ravings apolitical. I just have to comment about some of the outrages of, as Gary Keillor calls him, the Current Occupant (of the "Oval Office"). Let's see how many peccadilloes I can get into one sentence: GWB chastised Congress for taking a "spring break" instead of giving him a bill for funding Iraq that does not impose any deadlines on a pullout, although it gives him every dollar the troops need, but he will veto it and keep them in harm's way longer because he can't have his way as he had it when the GOP was totally in control -- just before he himself takes off to clear brush and ride his mountain bike in Crawford for the umpteenth time -- he has taken more vacation than any president by far -- and before he took off, he made a recess appointment of one of his buddies, a guy whose nomination he had to withdraw when this guy, Fox, faced drilling from John Kerry the very guy who had been slimed by the Swiftboat/Rove clowns who this guy donated 50K to.
Well, let's all watch Law and Order -- Fred Thompson, who did one term as a senator from Tennessee, is being considered as a presidential candidate. Some people are "excited about him!" He did not disgrace himself during those six years. Might not even have broken the law! Desperation of the GOP for a candidate?
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Plunder of the Sun: Adventure, Fun, Mexico, Music, Patricia Medina
Rodger Codger from Forlorn River sez:
Just got done watching Plunder of the Sun (1953), a surprisingly enjoyable movie. It was on Turner Classic Movies, which is a staple like bread and milk for me, of course. Black and white, it would have been gorgeous in Technicolor, on location in Mexico. The leads were Glenn Ford and Patricia Medina, and I do commend Joseph Cotten on his excellent taste in marrying that dazzlingly beautiful woman. She was a knockout!
I enjoyed the two buffoons who played the villains, namely Francis L. Sullivan, a Londoner, and Sean McClory, a Dubliner. They made the movie camp, whether it was supposed to be or not. Sullivan is the portly and in this case slovenly one (I was reminded of Sir Peter Ustinov in some roles), a quite familiar character actor, and McClory is the one with a college flattop cut for his platinum blond hair and wearing glasses with heavy black rims popular in the fifties. McClory is supposed to be a villain and he and Ford duke it out several times but I found the Irishman to be amusing and likable. (More than Ford!) And with his fifties-college do and specs, quite silly. In some scenes where he is running around in his summer ice cream suit he looks like some kind of kewpie doll, or a figure to be knocked down in a pinball machine or something. He's a very bad boy but you can't hate him! I hope to see him in other movies in which he plays the good guy because he's the kind of dude I would enjoy hoisting a few with. (Let him join my dream drinking buddies in heaven where all alcoholism is cured and drink only gladdeneth, never stingeth, along with Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, Tony Hopkins, Dave Letterman, Chevy Chase, John Larroquette, John Berryman, and a host of literati and gifted people and perhaps some of my own relatives who have been cursed by drink in this life: certainly Bud, above all Bud, of Jong Mea and the Hillside and Joe and Betty's. But I digress.)
Diana Lynn is in this too, the same girl who played Cornelia Otis Skinner in Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, a lighthearted memoir of that writer. She is a "tramp" in this movie but an unattractive one, which is the point, because good-guy Glenn confronts her about her loser status as a hooker and she takes his come-to-Jesus talk to heart and appears in the next scene, reformed, as the sweet girl-next-door she always played well because it was real-life wholesome Diana.
Patricia Medina is just drop-dead-gorgeous. Knowing what I do about Duke Wayne's (the ghost producer of this movie) predilection for raven-haired, sloe-eyed Latinas (he married three), I wonder if he hung around the set and pined for her.
The music is by Antonio Díaz Conde, and it is delightful. Besides Senor Conde's dramatic action scoring, which is exciting and the kind of stuff I could listen to all day, the action is in and out of cantinas with sultry guitar and castinets and marimbas and things and a mariachi band, supposedly an intrusion in one scene but they are perfect musicians and the music gladdens your heart: who cares what Ford and Patricia are plotting?
Conde has no biography available that I can find, not even dates of birth or death, but IMDB shows that he scored 258 movies, almost all of them Mexican. He was nominated for awards for about ten of them and won the Ariel award for best score in 1950. He scored movies from 1942-1974.
So much for the "review."
The sky to the south is beautiful. We've gone from cloudless to overcast, and we're now under a severe thunderstorm watch.
"Big wind a-comin'! I hear it hummin'!
"Sky turnin' yeller! Head for the cellar!"
I remember hearing that bluegrass sort of song one morning on WCSI in Columbus when the twins were little during the spring storm season. I believe the year was 1974. Which reminds me, today is April 3rd.
We did get a warning but it only rained and blew and I think we dodged the bullet. The daytime will go from 80 today to about 50 tomorrow, I think. We may get snow flurries one morning on the weekend, Tom said. We're still getting rumbles of thunder and those make Rudy nervous. Me too, just a little.
Just got done watching Plunder of the Sun (1953), a surprisingly enjoyable movie. It was on Turner Classic Movies, which is a staple like bread and milk for me, of course. Black and white, it would have been gorgeous in Technicolor, on location in Mexico. The leads were Glenn Ford and Patricia Medina, and I do commend Joseph Cotten on his excellent taste in marrying that dazzlingly beautiful woman. She was a knockout!
I enjoyed the two buffoons who played the villains, namely Francis L. Sullivan, a Londoner, and Sean McClory, a Dubliner. They made the movie camp, whether it was supposed to be or not. Sullivan is the portly and in this case slovenly one (I was reminded of Sir Peter Ustinov in some roles), a quite familiar character actor, and McClory is the one with a college flattop cut for his platinum blond hair and wearing glasses with heavy black rims popular in the fifties. McClory is supposed to be a villain and he and Ford duke it out several times but I found the Irishman to be amusing and likable. (More than Ford!) And with his fifties-college do and specs, quite silly. In some scenes where he is running around in his summer ice cream suit he looks like some kind of kewpie doll, or a figure to be knocked down in a pinball machine or something. He's a very bad boy but you can't hate him! I hope to see him in other movies in which he plays the good guy because he's the kind of dude I would enjoy hoisting a few with. (Let him join my dream drinking buddies in heaven where all alcoholism is cured and drink only gladdeneth, never stingeth, along with Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, Tony Hopkins, Dave Letterman, Chevy Chase, John Larroquette, John Berryman, and a host of literati and gifted people and perhaps some of my own relatives who have been cursed by drink in this life: certainly Bud, above all Bud, of Jong Mea and the Hillside and Joe and Betty's. But I digress.)
Diana Lynn is in this too, the same girl who played Cornelia Otis Skinner in Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, a lighthearted memoir of that writer. She is a "tramp" in this movie but an unattractive one, which is the point, because good-guy Glenn confronts her about her loser status as a hooker and she takes his come-to-Jesus talk to heart and appears in the next scene, reformed, as the sweet girl-next-door she always played well because it was real-life wholesome Diana.
Patricia Medina is just drop-dead-gorgeous. Knowing what I do about Duke Wayne's (the ghost producer of this movie) predilection for raven-haired, sloe-eyed Latinas (he married three), I wonder if he hung around the set and pined for her.
The music is by Antonio Díaz Conde, and it is delightful. Besides Senor Conde's dramatic action scoring, which is exciting and the kind of stuff I could listen to all day, the action is in and out of cantinas with sultry guitar and castinets and marimbas and things and a mariachi band, supposedly an intrusion in one scene but they are perfect musicians and the music gladdens your heart: who cares what Ford and Patricia are plotting?
Conde has no biography available that I can find, not even dates of birth or death, but IMDB shows that he scored 258 movies, almost all of them Mexican. He was nominated for awards for about ten of them and won the Ariel award for best score in 1950. He scored movies from 1942-1974.
So much for the "review."
The sky to the south is beautiful. We've gone from cloudless to overcast, and we're now under a severe thunderstorm watch.
"Big wind a-comin'! I hear it hummin'!
"Sky turnin' yeller! Head for the cellar!"
I remember hearing that bluegrass sort of song one morning on WCSI in Columbus when the twins were little during the spring storm season. I believe the year was 1974. Which reminds me, today is April 3rd.
We did get a warning but it only rained and blew and I think we dodged the bullet. The daytime will go from 80 today to about 50 tomorrow, I think. We may get snow flurries one morning on the weekend, Tom said. We're still getting rumbles of thunder and those make Rudy nervous. Me too, just a little.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
April Fool, Palm Sunday, Sun and Wind, Grass Mowing, and Family
I guess we have about an acre of lawn here. I mowed almost all of it this late morning and afternoon. The day has been beautiful, with sun, billowy clouds, and a brisk, cool wind. Die Alte and step-grandson Jacob have been here all day, and Rosie's Uncle Eddie, Aunt Rose and cousin Elise showed up, as did Jacob's mother, Suzy, and we all sat down to a supper of KFC. I gave Jacob my Dell laptop and he is happy as a clam at high tide with it. He certainly has no attention-deficit problem. He has been buried in the thing all day.
It's been a nice day.
It's been a nice day.
BSN: So Much Wonderful Music, So Little Time
One of the highlights of my week is that I received a personal email from Peter Van De Graaff, DJ and producer of the Beethoven Satellite Network (BSN), which can be heard overnight seven days a week on many public radio stations across the country. If you love classical music, this show is a national treasure.
Mr. Van De Graaff and I have covered some of the same ground: he grew up in Chicago, went to BYU in Utah and DJ'd at KBYU there, and then he went back to Chicago public radio, where BSN originates. Peter has the dream job, in my estimation: he chooses his own selections from an enormous, wide-ranging ouvre of music available to him, and airs them. He chooses from the "top fifty" (Beethoven's Fifth, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Pictures at an Exhibition, etc.) some of the time, and it's always good to hear those, newcomers listen for them, but much of his stuff is innovative to me, and I am ensorcelled by it. Last night he played “Nobilissima Visione,” a ballet by Paul Hindemith, the great German composer who fled Hitler because of another work, an opera, which opposed totalitarianism. The subject of the ballet is Francis of Assisi. Tonight he's playing one of the "Ancient Airs and Dances" by Respighi, a work I'm quite familiar with, but it sounds awfully good tonight.
I don't know if Peter actually works the graveyard shift; probably not. But I could sure handle that. (Worked the graveyard in Chicago five decades ago and I have fond memories of it. That time of day is so peaceful, big city or not.) Anyhow, if anyone is interested, BSN is on WUOL, 90.5 FM, which also has streaming audio at www.wuol.org, so you can get it there from 11 p.m.-6 a.m. EDT.
Thanks, HP, for music, one of Your Good and Perfect Gifts. Amen.
Mr. Van De Graaff and I have covered some of the same ground: he grew up in Chicago, went to BYU in Utah and DJ'd at KBYU there, and then he went back to Chicago public radio, where BSN originates. Peter has the dream job, in my estimation: he chooses his own selections from an enormous, wide-ranging ouvre of music available to him, and airs them. He chooses from the "top fifty" (Beethoven's Fifth, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Pictures at an Exhibition, etc.) some of the time, and it's always good to hear those, newcomers listen for them, but much of his stuff is innovative to me, and I am ensorcelled by it. Last night he played “Nobilissima Visione,” a ballet by Paul Hindemith, the great German composer who fled Hitler because of another work, an opera, which opposed totalitarianism. The subject of the ballet is Francis of Assisi. Tonight he's playing one of the "Ancient Airs and Dances" by Respighi, a work I'm quite familiar with, but it sounds awfully good tonight.
I don't know if Peter actually works the graveyard shift; probably not. But I could sure handle that. (Worked the graveyard in Chicago five decades ago and I have fond memories of it. That time of day is so peaceful, big city or not.) Anyhow, if anyone is interested, BSN is on WUOL, 90.5 FM, which also has streaming audio at www.wuol.org, so you can get it there from 11 p.m.-6 a.m. EDT.
Thanks, HP, for music, one of Your Good and Perfect Gifts. Amen.
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