Film Music Revisited

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Politickin'

Posting an email from fellow Bridgebuilders:

Dear Friends,

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

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

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

Best, Dianne & Ken

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

Politickin' etc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Firm a Foundation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bossie: (Disagrees.)

Al: We left you with a budget surplus --

Bossie: You left us with a war on terror.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God help us. We are a sorry lot.

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

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

Nah. Nothing will hurt the GOP.

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

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

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

Good Movie

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

Othello

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love to all and to all a good night.

Olio

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

Ann Richards was a recovering alcoholic from 1980 on.

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

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

Them was the days.

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

-- Private communciation with a distinguished fellow psychologist

"Courage"

"Courage," Dan Rather used to say.

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

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

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

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

Lord deliver us. Take care. Courage.

Flix

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

Is Anybody Out There?

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

HP* Rules

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

*Higher Power

The Ebert of Forlorn River

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's worth a looksee, folks.

My LAST Word on Smoking (crossed fingers)

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

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

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

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

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

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

My response:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chit-Chat

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

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

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

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

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

Saint Herbert

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Blowing Smoke, and More Objection to It

Here's a letter to the Courier:

Upset with smoking ban

Thursday, August 03, 2006


To the editor:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sandi Pennington

Madison

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

And another letter to the editor:

He's No Hometown Hero

Friday, August 04, 2006


To the editor:

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

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

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

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

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

Melissa K. Enstrom

Hanover

Thanks, Melissa. I needed that.

More on T'backer

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

Our email exchange:

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

Mr. Estridge:

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

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

Sincerely,
John T. Evans

Here's my blog link: (etc.)

***

Mr. Estridge's reply:

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

***

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

Donovan:

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

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

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

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Keep FDA* Off the Farm

(*Freaking Dumb Asses)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

JT