madgeneral

How Can I Help?

2006-03-23T09:57:00.000-08:00

Music makes the people come together.

2006-03-22T23:42:00.000-08:00

Where are you Mad General? What are your loyal throngs of readers supposed to do in this long and unexplained absence? I want to fill the space with something… something… anything,,, what?!? Random songs. What a lovely concept for listing. Today on my way to (and from) work, my ipod on shuffle, I got (in this order):

Girl from the North Country—Bob Dylan
Sexy M.F. –Prince
One Evening—Feist
Wild Wild Life—Talking Heads
You’ve got Her in Your Pocket—White Stripes
Neighborhood #2 –Arcade Fire
To Love Somebody—Nina Simone
Family Bible—Willie Nelson & Johnny Cash
From the Morning—Nike Drake
Dead Man’s Hill—Indigo Girls
He Never Got Enough Love—Lucinda Williams

Music. God, I love it. I don’t claim to understand it, have no idea what makes a song “good”, or what level of complexity I am listening too. It grabs hold of me though, sometimes so strangely, and makes me cry. The other day, for example, I started crying in my car as I attempted to sing along with Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)”. I was on my way to eat delicious Thai food for lunch, it’s a sunny day in the city, I am in love, and I am getting embarrassingly emotional about young girls giving it up too easily, and not respecting themselves.
I get that it is absurd. This is what I love. Give me lyric or a note and have it hit me the right way in the right moment, and suddenly I am feeling so much that I am crying—out of joy, painful memories, melancholy, despair, hilarity, whatever. This is what I want out of life.
I don’t know who is possibly reading this, but when was the last time (if ever) you smoked a little pot, cracked open a beer, turned the lights way down, and put on your headphones? Maybe danced around a little bit? Do it! I ended up doing it the other night, quite by accident, and it was seriously So Much Fun. Also, when you do it, I suggest throwing in Michael Jackson’s (the other MJ, the one we love) Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’. You remember: mammasay mammasa mamakusa, mammasay mammasa mamakusa, mammasay mammasa mamakusa…
You might be pleasantly surprised by how completely into it you are. The key might be to be a non-regular pot smoker, like myself, so that the altered state of appreciation is intensified.

“Here on this mountain top, oh oh oh, I got some wild wild life.
I’ve got some news to tell, oh oh oh, about some wild wild life.”

All you need is...

2006-03-08T11:22:00.000-08:00

I am having so much trouble concentrating. My life right now is whittled down to a single point of fantastic, blinding light. Who I am, what I am doing, what my point is, I can so easily forget. I am in love. I just started thinking that maybe this is what it is all about. Love is everything. Not necessarily the drunken, intense kind of romantic love I am now feeling, but just love. Any opportunity to have it distilled like this is fantastic, of course, but it is everywhere, all over the place. This is like a magic carpet ride or a concentration of wildflowers, poppies in every color. I am tripping over things. I am smiling wistfully on park benches.
What we give our attention to will thrive. There is so much to love.

Friday Random 10

2006-03-03T22:09:00.000-08:00

Have a look at these gals. Their sound is absorbing. I find that, when listening to the songs of The Be Good Tanyas, I must listen closely though I've heard them often. And I'm not listening for any musical or lyrical nuance -- just to enjoy the life that's there and is always fresh. My daughter, who's five months old, sometimes seems to be as rapt as I am. And she already knows how to shake a leg. I wonder when will she ask me, "daddy, can I have my own guitar?" When will she begin to chirp like a Nashville Warbler? Well, if/when she does, it may be because she's heard Blue Horse one too many times. Ah, these impressionable children.

1) Bishop Danced -- Bruce Springsteen (Tracks)
2) I Am a Cinematographer -- Bonnie Prince Billy (Greatest Palace Music)
3) Black Train Blues -- Bukka White (Complete Bukka White)
4) Young James -- Kate Rusby (Underneath the Stars)
5) I Don't Want To Be With Me -- Conway Twitty (Silver Anniversary)
6) Here Comes My Baby -- Yo La Tengo (Fakebook)
7) Crepuscule With Nellie -- Thelonious Monk (Monk's Music)
8) Green Eyes -- Nick Cave (Boatman's Call)
9) Release Me -- Junior Kimbrough (You Better Run)
10) Only In the Past -- Be Good Tanyas (Blue Horse)

Colors streak the sky,
we laugh and we cry,
and we dance in the cool grass
with the fireflies.
And we dance in the cool grass,
sunset birds and
sweet sweet music
swallow our words.

From "Only In the Past" by The Be Good Tanyas

Dear Mr. Landlord

2006-02-28T23:33:00.000-08:00

Don Knotts died last Thursday. I read about it on Saturday. I thought: well, even endearingly funny people die. I went on with what I was doing. But I soon found that I couldn't shake it off. I guess that when a great television actor passes, one that you admire -- it can seem on some level that you just lost someone you knew well. At first, I understood that it was only the death of a famous stranger -- another actor, three-time husband, father, voter, golfer, lover of prawns, of burlesque, of whatever, someone I didn't know at all, and someone who didn't know me. But, as happened when John Ritter of Three's Company died a couple years ago, it eventually struck me that this man who is gone forever was, in fact, someone who had managed to bring a lot of laughter and happiness to my life. He was someone who in the course of his work had often made me smile ear to ear; someone who I really had come to know through his great talent. It's funny -- now I'm feeling so forlorn when at first his death hadn't struck me as very momentous a departure. Now I want to thank him. I want him to come back.

I think I will never forget Mr. Furley: Don Knotts' goofy and loveable landlord from Three's Company. Like any great character in any great play, motion picture, or television series -- or any story for that matter -- Mr. Furley's every note was properly struck. He truly and completely existed for five years (and for my brother and I long after in reruns). I doubt anyone else interpreting, acting those lines could have made my brother and I laugh so hard and wish so much that he would never leave the scene. Don Knotts supplied his character with ample, wacky, and vivid humanity -- so much so, that I kind of wished he would meet a nice lady to keep him company in his golden years. Someone who would see through the absurd posturing and accidental hijinx to the real Mr. Furley.

Of course, Knotts will be remembered for many things, things having to do with his career on its various stages, and for things I cannot even imagine not knowing anything about his day to day life. To me, he's the cavalier and clumsy landlord with the secret heart of gold that confounded Jack and Janet with his sudden investigative check-ins which were really a naked search for companionship. Aw, I miss you, Don! My personal thanks for leaving so much behind to remember you by, and particularly your Mr. Furley, who was that rarest of breeds -- the groovy, good-hearted landlord.

The Picture for Rick

2006-02-28T17:12:00.000-08:00

If you hadn't heard, Rick Santorum -- the GOP Senator from Pennsylvania -- perhaps the apotheosis of a politician who is at once demonstrably corrupt and morally dogmatic, is having one hell of an uphill crawl toward securing his third term in office. His challenger, Bob Casey Jr., has had a comfortable lead in the polls that seems to be widening as the race matures. Although Casey, a self-proclaimed "moderate," is not my ideal Democrat, I cannot help but be impressed by the inroads he's made against someone who, three or four years ago, must have been considered a lock to remain a fixture in Pennsylvanian as well as national politics for the foreseeable future. Casey has a good step on the poster-boy for conservative politics in America. There's a long way to go. But if you knock Santorum out of elected office then you've knocked an anterior tooth from the GOP's wicked grin. And you've earned this voter's heartfelt thanks.

Casey/Santorum is a race that, as a native Pennsylvanian, I'll be following closely. I tend to be rather unexcited by the various key campaigns going on around the country until June at the earliest, but this year I'm already feeling the pangs of hope -- especially with regard to this one. So I'm attempting to educate myself. And I'll be weighing in at intervals here about the progress of the race as it gets on track.

Mining for information, I recently found a remarkable site that seems to be about elucidating Santorum's record and keeping track of local and national journalism as it's written about him. It's point of view is critical, but hey -- I'm sure they'd love to say something nice about the guy. It's just that it ain't that easy. For instance, of all US Senators that hold office in a "blue" state, Rick Santorum has the lowest rating from the League of Conservation voters, at ten percent. That statistic says he's adamently anti-environment and pro-auctioning America and its natural resources to the highest corporate bidder -- in a state with environmental values that tilt progressive. But frankly, his disagreement with PA voters is pretty much across-the-board. And as Operation Iraqi Turd Blossom continues to sow shame and sadness at home and virulent anti-Americanism abroad, he's all but lost his ability to play the terror card.

Of course, this is a familiar theme in high-profile races across the country: America is simply wising up to the great scam that is the conservative platform, the conservative vision. When they talk about cutting spending, watch the deficit explode. When they talk about keeping America safe -- watch the ports, think of Katrina, think of Iraq, think of our country -- it's hard to believe -- currently losing a tactical war to a crippled Saudi crime boss who's administering from a hideout somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan. I certainly believe that voters are starting to piece together the picture, and for Republicans, it's worse than "The Scream." It looks a lot like Santorum and his kind -- no longer grinning.

Nothing in Common

2006-02-26T15:52:00.000-08:00

I’ve been meaning to write, I really have. I found this picture and wanted to use it to accompany some comments on a blurb I read in The Week. It was about how a 25 year-old American soldier who was wounded by a bomb in Iraq was made to pay for his body armor which was discarded because it was covered in blood and had to be “peeled off his twitching body”. The Army had “no record” of the armor being discarded. The young soldier, William Rebrook, who has lost full use of his right arm, had to borrow the $700 dollars to pay the American Government what it cost to replace it.

I thought it would be challenging to link this photo with this story. What I have realized is how much more challenging it is to even comment on this story. I can say I am appalled. I can say I had no idea that our military was in such dire financial straits that it must be reimbursed by its wounded soldiers for damaged equipment. If I had known I would have lobbied for more tax dollars to go to the military. I would have hand written a sign and marched down Market Street, putting my controversial message out there in this peaceful little hippie town. We are obviously spending too much money on education or some other useless thing in this country. Obviously.

It is a beautiful photograph, isn’t it? It was in an acquaintance’s online album of her trip to India. The angle is good, the colors are brilliant: energizing and calming at the same time. The bench looks well-used and welcoming. The photograph itself, like its subject, is a tiny sanctuary in a bustling world. It looks like a place where you might go to clear your mind and then think, or try not to think, whatever was demanded by the moment.

So what this photo has to do with the story above is, I suppose, absolutely nothing. When a person has put up his life and his limbs, in earnest, to serve his country in an unjust war, and that country happens to be the most wealthy and powerful nation in the world, and that nation makes as ridiculous a demand of him as told in the above story -- there is no clarity, no thinking, no sanctuary, or sanity, no peace, no tranquility, no welcoming in that.

I do hope you enjoy the picture.

Late Friday Random Ten Plus Annie's Song

2006-02-25T23:55:00.000-08:00

It was almost ten thirty when I finally got around to relaxin' just me, my girl, the lamplight, some hot chocolate, and the Friday random ten. Plus Annie's Song.

I had to throw it in there because I woke up this morning singing it. This happens to all of us from time to time. A song seems to hatch from nowhere in your head (where you been Lionel?) and evolve there until you end up in front of the bathroom mirror with tousled hair, tears streaming down, belting the one verse you actually know the lyrics to. It happens to all of us.

Anyway, today I woke up singing Annie's Song, perhaps because of a dream I had. I was playing the sixties folk circuit with Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. (aka John Denver). The year was '66, and we were sharing a campfire at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. We were sitting there after that day's performances, just he and I, and I decided to play a few things -- some blues stuff I'd picked up in an earlier dream with Son House in it. John was very receptive; I have to say, he was just the nicest guy you'd ever want to have in a dream with you. He even clapped when I finished playing "You Just Know Me Too Damn Well" an original blues that I swear I never heard, and I never played, and that doesn't even exist, yet that somehow I was playing in a dream. Weird. Well, when I finished, John said he'd like to show me some chords he had put together with lyrics that he thought may still be rough. He figured if he could get the song done he would put it in his set the next day. Then he tuned up that 12 string of his and played Annie's Song, a love hymn of ridiculous beauty.

I must have awakened from my dream during the song, because I don't remember telling him what I thought about it. And I don't remember asking him who Annie was to deserve such a sweet number. Turns out, Annie was his first wife and the muse for most of his best work. They separated in 1983 and eventually divorced. Those were Denver's moderately troubled "Behind the Music" years. It occurred to me, even while sitting next to him at the campfire of my dream in 1966, that he would one day achieve immense fame with his singing and songwriting; that he would become the Bob Dylan of the happy, fresh air set. But I also knew, though I don't think I had the notion to express any of it, that he was going to do some really bad acting in some unbelievably bad movies in the late '70's and early '80's; that he was going to get way too involved with the Muppets; and that his cheery, all-natural folk music would get body-slammed by the synthetic schlock that seemed to dominate the recording industry by the year 1984. But worst -- on top of it all, I might have let him know that he would one day plunge to his death in a homemade plane at the age of 53. I might have said something like: "For God Sake don't build your own plane and fly in it! If you do, I'm telling you you're not going to be pleased with the result!"

No -- in my dream, at that campfire with John, it was all about the music, pure and simple. And John had just played the perfect song to wake up to. Here's this week's list plus Annie's Song.

1) Missing The War -- Ben Folds Five (Whatever & Ever Amen)
2) Oh Sister -- Bob Dylan (Desire)
3) The Maids of Cadiz -- Miles Davis (Miles Ahead)
4) Going Down The Road Feeling Bad -- Woody Guthrie (Asch Recordings Vol. 1)
5) From A Buick 6 -- Bob Dylan (Highway 61 Revisited)
6) Junkie Chase -- Curtis Mayfield (Superfly)
7) He Never Got Enough Love -- Lucinda Williams (Sweet Old World)
8) Oj Talasi -- Trebevic Choir (The Planet Sleeps)
9) Six White Horses -- Michael Masley (All Songs Considered Vol. 1)
10) Open All Night -- Bruce Springsteen (Nebraska)
11) Annie's Song -- John Denver (An Evening With John Denver)

You fill up my senses/ Like a night in the forest,
Like a mountain in springtime/ Like a walk in the rain,
Like a storm in the desert/ Like a sleepy blue ocean,
You fill up my senses/ Come fill me again.

From "Annie's Song" by John Denver

Al Gore, Citizen Version

2006-02-20T00:02:00.000-08:00

Six years later, mustering nostalgia for Al Gore's semi-failed 2000 presidential campaign is a bit like saying "sorry" to a man who's wheeled around and filled your upper body full of shotgun pellets: it's tough but doable. For me -- for the most part -- the 2000 campaign is a horror to look back on. It's when I first got to know George and Danger Dick, Ari, Karl, Karen, and the entire ensemble that spun and prevaricated their way to a disputed victory then, only to since govern this country into a position of a comparative weakness that is indisputable. Nonetheless, If I strain real hard, I can muster a couple fond memories of those days. I can feel some nostalgia for the final few weeks of that ill-fated race, and for one of the politicians running it.

It was mid-October of 2000, and Gore had dropped about five or six points back in the polls. The fastidious, faintly wonkish, offend-no-human and for-God-sake-stop-sighing strategy he had hitherto employed was clearly failing to ignite the imagination of the electorate. In the meantime, George Bush had been travelling around the midwest saying inspired things like: "Yeah, that's so and so from the Times: he's a major-league asshole," and "my favorite philosopher is Jesus." He was running away with it.

As the campaign approached the finish-line, Bush swaggered through the "battleground" states, beginning to feel the comfort of political momentum and the cheer of an enraptured press, saying pretty much anything he chose so long as it was carefully scripted and rehearsed and he'd already said it about a hundred times before. He became, with the help of some mighty credulous reporting, the conservative candidate with the achy-breaky heart. You could almost hear Americans slowly figuring it all out: "Well, he may be a conservative. But that's one compassionate sumbitch right there." As the campaign was winding down, he looked and behaved like someone who thought the thing was his.

But then Gore saw the writing on the polls. One night, five points down with a few weeks to go, he went to bed a guppy and woke up a tiger shark. What followed thereafter was our first meeting with Al Gore, rabble-rousing street preacher. All of a sudden, he was the Randy "Macho-Man" Savage of politics. He talked, red in the face, about Bush's proposals, why they were so misleading and what they meant for American families. He flexed his muscular know-how, preaching about what it really took to have a strong middle class in America, and how with his help, in the last eight years people were moving out of poverty in a mass exodus of Biblical proportions. He took to directly criticizing George Bush and his record as governor, remarking again and again how -- for a guy running on a platform of education -- his own state's schools were in marked disarray, with high-school graduation rates scraping the very bottom of the US barrel. I think I remember him once comparing schools in Texas to those in Guatemala -- unfavorably.

Where did this man come from, I wondered? Who was this assertive political force that appeared to at least physically resemble Al Gore? I said to my waiter, "Yo. I'll have what he's having," and held up a photo of Al working the crowd in Pennsylvania.

I'm convinced that this enlivened, seemingly desperate Al Gore was Gore the citizen, the one with little to lose, and not the politician so deeply afraid of losing it all to a creepy bunch of Texans. It was the citizen candidate who realized that he wouldn't win if he continued to play it safe, that America is righteously slow to elect lukewarm suits. His previous tactic of letting the Clinton/Gore record of increased prosperity speak for itself, of asking voters to rely on his qualifications and encyclopaedic knowledge of the universe and to please-please avoid tying him in with President Clinton's penchant for Oval Office blowjobs, had netted him a clear and increasing deficit in the polls. So he switched, almost overnight, to a campaign run on "populist" principles that spoke to the core of the country where its deepest values and its deepest fears are held (George Bush's true talent is in his ability to emote these deeper values and fears, values he's at odds with and fears he seeks to enhance, to serve his own political ends).

You win, Gore must have finally recognized, when you take the chance that your passion and your vision for America will inspire more people than it will rankle. And in the last few weeks of the campaign, Al Gore literally rolled up his sleeves and set about to undo a year's worth of campaigning by the DLC's time-honored playbook of treating voters like the profound dipshits they are.

Yeah, but it was too late.

Six years later, with America walking into a crucial mid-term and a presidential election of apocalyptic proportions two years down the road, Neil, over at Blue Voice, is asking some good questions about how it's gonna be: "What do we want to change? How can we make change happen? Who do we want to lead?"

I don't have great answers to these questions, but I think Al Gore, the citizen version, does.

Reading the right-wing political blogosphere as I'm wont to do, I'm always intrigued to know how certain politicians are represented. Al Gore is handled there with a tone of bemused dismissal. Reading further, it's clear the right would like its readers to believe that Al Gore's post-election rendezvous with private-sector American citizenship goes something like this: Gore loses election, Gore abandons razor, Gore drifts in and out of hallucinatory delirium, Gore briefly recovers to land teaching gig at Columbia school for Leftist Rebels, Gore is fired and moves to undisclosed mountainous hermitage to "find his center," Gore finally descends with his true message and life's calling which is to be a dedicated "Bush-basher." Thenceforward, Gore gives a few keynote speeches that are nothing but "personal attacks" on George Bush and that contain, "no real ideas or vision for America." Gore is a nutcase Bush-hater and no longer relevant.

But what has Al Gore really been up to? For one thing, he's been popping up from time to time to deliver seering frontal assaults on Bush's latest ill-advised policy du jour, getting some nods in the process from experts, fellow skeptics, and John Stewart; getting ignored in the meantime by all Republican and many Dem politicians; all while being proven accurate, if not downright clairvoyant, somewhere down the line. His speeches on Iraq, on the media, and on the executive branch and the rule of law, are enough to make you quiver with a case of the what-might-have-beens, or to wonder what might still be if Democrats in office could muster half the conviction and fierce eloquence of Gore. In these speeches, there's no mistaking the sharpness of his words, nor the urgency -- if you recall -- of their delivery. The Al Gore speaking here is citizen Gore, the one that came into being in mid-October of 2000, the one with little to lose and plenty to give, the one who lost. And he can still be found, every so often, swinging the political hammer with passion, hitting the nail on the head each time.

I'm not saying that Al Gore is the liberal's Moses. But he's a guy who's no longer afraid to shout his principles to anyone who happens to be listening. He's someone who feels deeply betrayed, as I do, by this president's criminal exploitation of America's shared trauma from 9/11 and its shared goal of ensuring safety at home and retribution for those who attacked us, abroad. As a citizen -- a person who in the years since his failed presidential run has taught journalism, has started an innovative and promising (though perhaps, currently lame) television network, has toured the four corners preaching to anyone who will listen about the dangers of global warming and the degradation of our environment, and has delivered a number of effective speeches further exposing the grievous nature of the current administration's faults and miscalculations -- he's worth emulating. As a politician, he may be just the type of citizen this country needs.

One morning not long ago, I flipped on one of the news programs in hopes of seeing information about an important world event that had happened earlier that day. But the lead story was about a young man who had been hiccupping for three years. And I must say, it was interesting; he had trouble getting dates. But what I didn't see was news. -- Al Gore

Preach, citizen Gore, preach!

Friday Random 10

2006-02-17T11:30:00.000-08:00

This weeks list includes a song "Mulberry Row," from a record that I'm very happy to have found. It's Vu Du Menz, a collaboration between the youngish folk/blues guitarist, Corey Harris, and a New Orleans style blues pianist, Henry Butler. It's a great record, mostly interpretations of older blues, with a few very nice originals. I just happened to hear some of it played on Nick Spitzer's American Routes radio program which airs locally. Having long forgotten the encounter, I checked out Martin Scorcese's documentary The Blues, and came across Harris again -- he narrates a segment of the film. Taking it as a sign sent by Professor Longhair, or someone, I struck out for the local music store where I was overjoyed to see they had it in stock. It's darn good if you like your music down home.

1) Mulberry Row -- Corey Harris/Henry Butler (Vu Du Menz)
2) Owensboro -- Natalie Merchant (The House Carpenter's Daughter)
3) Star of Bethlehem -- Neil Young (Decade)
4) Down At the Mill -- Greg Brown (Slant 6 Mind)
5) Cypress Avenue -- Van Morrison (Astral Weeks)
6) Sleeper -- Eliza Gilkyson (Going Driftless: Artist's Tribute to Greg Brown)
7) Jesse James -- Woody Guthrie (Asch Recordings, Vol. 1)
8) Moira -- Poets of Rhythm (Discern/Define)
9) I Can't Dance -- Gram Parsons (Greivous Angel)
10 Rosemary Lane -- Bert Jansch (Dazzling Stranger)

Well, I lived in a town/ way down South/by the Name of Owensboro.
And I worked in a mill/with the rest of the "trash"/As we're often called, you know.

Well, we rise up early/in the morning/and we work all day real hard
To buy our little meat and bread/buy sugar, tea, and lard.

Well, our children/grow up unlearned/with no time to go to school.
Almost before they learn to walk/they learn to spin and spoon.

Well, the folks in town/they dress so fine/and spend their money free.
But they would hardly look/at a factory hand/who dresses like you or me.

Would you let them wear/their watches fine/let them wear their gems/and pearly strings?
But when that day/of judgement comes/they'll have to share/their pretty things.

Traditional Lyrics from Natalie Merchant's "Owensboro."

She's My Hometown

2006-02-14T16:15:00.000-08:00

It's Valentine's Day, and I find that I'm thinking of the only time I've been apart from my wife and true love for any real length of time in the last eight years. It was a long time ago, and I was in Albuquerque for reasons that are mostly inexpressible now and were even more so then. I was there with the saddest, soggiest heart. I suppose I was there to write and to meander the desert which I did with the help and company of a few friends, some cousins, and a pink mountain bike I called Barbie. I guess I was also there to listen.

One of my cousins and I had a ritual. We'd buy two six-packs of Bud pounders, ride across town and up onto a golf course in The Heights, and sit on the sixth green hanging our legs off a ledge that fell into sand. We'd show up near dusk, certain to be alone, and talk into the night finishing the beer. He always wanted to talk about growing up. He wanted to make sense of his alienation from his father, of all the difficulty they'd had that resulted in his being sent off to military school. He thought he would never comprehend it. I only wanted to talk about my girlfriend, Lauren. Any time I thought about home, about growing up -- it was as though the subject involuntarily changed to this incredible woman who had stayed behind in Boston to finish school -- who I'd promised so much to, and who I loved so deeply. I wanted to make sense of why I was away from her, what had brought me out here, and what it really meant for her and I. My cousin sat there and took it on the chin. He is a generous soul.

Over the course of these talks, I began to realize that my thoughts jumping from my hometown childhood to my life with Lauren up in Boston was no change of subject. For the first time, that old homesick feeling I was used to wasn't churning for the home and stomping grounds of my youth. I was homesick for her, and when I thought about growing up, it was her I was thinking of.

It wasn't long thereafter that I finally knew being apart from her was just wasting time. Six years later, I can see that I began to change while sitting on that golf green with my drunk cousin. And even now, thinking of the old hometown -- she's still what springs to mind.

Happy Valentine's day, Lauren.

Disarm Dick

2006-02-13T17:34:00.000-08:00

I must confess to finding very little humor in the story of Dick Cheney shooting his hunting partner in the face with a 28 gauge at a distance of about thirty feet. His friend, a seventy-eight year old man, took pellets to the face, neck, and upper chest and was taken into intensive care. Katherine Armstrong, the owner of the ranch where the shooting occurred, has dismissed the seriousness of the injuries, saying things like "he got peppered," or "it knocked him silly," or "it's common." But there's nothing silly about taking rifle-shot at that close a range. And there's nothing common about the level of firearm mismanagement and lack of hunting prudence exhibited by Cheney. The victim, Whittington, will be very fortunate if his wounds indeed are not life threatening. But I don't take for granted, hearing it from Katherine Armstrong and the political handlers around the White House, that it's necessarily so.

It strikes me from time to time, when I happen to think of Dick Cheney or of any number of the very dubious politicians and bureaucrats we've placed in charge to safeguard our country's well-being, just how vulnerable we are to another great emergency. This emergency, should it arise, would no doubt be labeled "unexpected" or "accidental" or "unimaginable" by some. Of course it would be none of those things. It would be a direct result of the irresponsibility of our leaders. As a nation, we have handed this man and all of his cronies a loaded gun and he's decided to take us on a little hunting trip. And since I, as an American, must by necessity go along for the ride, I will at least keep my head up at all times.

I happened across another story in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette about Dick's special brand of hunting. This fella needs to be disarmed.

Picture of Ring-Necked Pheasant by Patricia Velte, www.backyardbirdcam.com

Go, Sustainable!

2006-02-13T16:11:00.000-08:00

In a wonderful post written some time ago, "Children, Growth, and Extinction," Sustainable Girl ponders the vulnerability of our children to the market's ubiquitous snares, the rarely questioned idea that business "growth" is inevitable, and the increasing likelihood of quiet extinctions upcoming for many species of plant and animal due to global warming.

She follows this piece with one called "Little Consumers," a nice review of a book that details the surreal plot of giant corporations to capture our children's imaginations by marketing the group-think of stuff-lust. No kidding, have a look.

Friday Random 10

2006-02-10T10:57:00.000-08:00

This week's list had a little swing in it.

1. Everlovin' Woman -- JJ Cale (Anyway the Wind Blows: Anthology)
2. To A Child -- Laura Nyro (Live From the Mountain Stage)
3. I'll Take You There -- Staples Singers (Greatest Hits)
4. Forever My Friend -- Ray LaMontagne (Trouble)
5. The Drum Thing -- John Coltrane (Crescent)
6. Old Jerome -- Kate Wolf (Weaver of Visions)
7. If Love Was A Train -- Michelle Shocked (Short, Sharp, Shocked)
8. Zero And Blind Terry -- Bruce Springsteen (Tracks: Unreleased)
9. I Know There's An Answer -- Beach Boys (Pet Sounds)
10.A Few Old Memories -- Dolly Parton (The Grass is Blue)

Kiss the sun hello,
Child in the park --
Make your life a loving thing.

Laura Nyro, from "To A Child"

Photo by Doug Macy

Following Northbird

2006-02-08T16:42:00.000-08:00

Shin-pei at Northbird posted on Country Boys, a Frontline special that ran a while back about life for two boys growing up in Appalachian Kentucky. She links to the program if you have the time. I confess: to this point, I have not had the time to sit down and watch it. I hope to. Nevertheless, what she says in her post seems poignant enough to me -- I get the sense that, in her few paragraphs, she kind of covers it. The weariness, boredom, and dissociation of a lonely kid; the groping for faith in isolation and redemption in community.

Shin-pei touches on her own experience as an immigrant to this country and relates to the steep price that can be asked of an adolescent by a set of difficult family circumstances. It struck me reading her description of the two boys and from what she expressed about her own life that my own experience may be the exact opposite -- being someone who was basically sheltered and, out of all well meaning, not asked too soon to face much that was threatening. Yes, there was the neighborhood terrorist. And of course there was much else that was troublesome, that was carefully hidden from my view and experience. But what's a neighborhood bully when you've got protection, or a damaging secret when you haven't got a clue? For many who are not so well protected the lessons come early and hard and it's sink or swim.

Shin-pei says that "The... thing I pay close attention to when I get a chance to get close to another life is how people live their days - how they get to work or school, what they do in their free time, how they get their groceries, run everyday errands, how they choose to get together and meet other."

Something that I try to figure out when I get to know someone is where they are coming from; what shaped them -- what have they witnessed and what they have had to do. I have a profound interest in people's childhood years, how they feel and talk about it. This can be difficult to know. For one thing, I'm not the type to conduct probing interviews and, for another, these are things that people, often for good reason, will take pains to suppress. But -- if you're paying attention to those that you're close to, you will usually come to know these things about them. And when you know these things, you may feel as though you understand them for the first time. And in my experience it's been for the better.

It's easy to forget, while pushing through the usual crowds, the wildly varying circumstances that have created each one of us, even those of us who are in the same family, or group. We push into our categories and begin the difficult work to conform, to fit into it something somehow, into someone else's potential satisfaction with us, perhaps. We may at first ignore our different histories -- we may have to -- not out of open-mindedness, but so we (so we think) can begin afresh, as though the time before we met could have been anything at all, so it's not a hinderance. But the time before is too crucial to be ignored long. And when the ignorance persists, there is the greater potential for sudden and deep divisions, mistakes that are misunderstood, seemingly arisen from nowhere and unfathomable. We are used to not knowing, not asking, not telling, not really caring about or wanting to investigate our real differences -- this may even be so that we can get along. But origin is the best trail-head to the current reality. It seems it's always ignored at the longer-term peril of a relationship -- or a society.

I say all this, not necessarily because it's on point, but just because Northbird's post got me thinking about it. I know there's a lot more to it.

Shin-pei also talks about moving to the big city, and how she felt less lonely being unknown there within its clamor, then she did in the suburban community of her youth. This is interesting. I always remark to anyone I happen to be travelling with through the Bronx on route 95 how incredibly anonymous and dejected it can make you feel from the vantage of passer-by. How all of those hulking, sprawling, apartment buildings and projects seem so nameless, so lost and desperate. When you look into the distance and perceive Manhattan in all its daunting complexity, it too seems like something that could never really know you, and that you could never really know.

But then you live there for awhile, experience it from street level. There is little sense of isolation -- you're crowded in close with so many going through the same motions, seeing the same things. It's incredibly comforting to know that you're alive with all of these other people in the same moment, the same city, the same neighborhood, the same block, the same building. I've lived in other big cities, and I've never stayed in NYC for too long a stretch of time. But -- and maybe this gets into all of those "New York State of Mind" cliches -- there's no other city I know that's as comforting to the individual, and yet as collective-identity crazed. There's no other city that is as entertaining when you're solo. And it's not just a "hey what was that, isn't that kind of weird?" type of novelty entertainment. The city's geography is an everyday poetic landscape on par with a great wilderness or abiding myth and its everyday people seem presented -- as though on a stage -- exclusively for prolonged and often provocative character study. Relating to others, and connecting with others, becomes easier the more you observe them. In New York, the community quickly becomes a part of you.

But then I think of those gloomy, massive, anonymous-seeming buildings that loom and surround Manhattan. How that eery weight must be a part of everyone who lives there. I think of those "Country Boys" whose backwood isolation seems a curse to them. And I have a question. If solitude can be a healthy and necessary thing and if isolation is a given, no matter who you are or what you do, when does solitude and fleeting isolation become exile? And exactly how much of it are we willing to allow in our midst?

"Exile," a collage by Paula Rego

Ouch, Uh-oh, Meme of Four

2006-02-04T17:16:00.000-08:00

Tagged by Andrea, who sheds light every day right here.

Four Jobs I've Had (the first four, the glory days)

1. Lawnboy
2. Deli-hand
3. Camp Counselor
4. Waiter

Four Movies I'd See Over and Over

1. Tender Mercies
2. Teen Wolf
3. Last Waltz
4. Stealing Home

Four Places I've Lived

1. Crossville, TN
2. Lewisburg, PA
3. Albuquerque, NM
4. Cambridge, MA

TV Shows I Like To Watch

1. Rockford Files (on dvd)
2. Curb Your Enthusiasm (on dvd)
3. The Office
4. Lost

Four Websites I Visit Every Day

1. Huffington
2. CrooksandLiars
3. Grist
4. Ample Sanity

Four Places I'd Rather Be

1. Ocracoke Island, NC -- barefoot lunch with family at the Trolley Stop.
2. Isla Mujeres, Mexico -- fish tacos and dollar beers.
3. Popham Beach, Maine -- striper fishing the Kennebec mouth with cousin Bird.
4. On our own Pennsylvania farmland with my lovely wife and daughter.

Friday Random 10

2006-02-03T15:00:00.000-08:00

Here's my ten songs for the week. Do you wanna dance?

1) Pass You By -- Gillian Welch (Revival)
2) Little One -- Herbie Hancock (Maiden Voyage)
3) Once -- Richard Buckner (Since)
4) I Was Drunk -- Minus Five (Por Vida: Tribute to Alejandro Escovedo)
5) All The Wild Horses -- Ray LaMontagne (Trouble)
6) The Little Birds -- Be Good Tanyas (Blue Horse)
7) Underneath The Harlem Moon -- Randy Newman (12 Songs)
8) Calistan -- Frank Black (Black Sessions -- Live in Paris)
9) Foggy Mountain Special -- Flatt & Scruggs (Tis Sweet To Be Remembered)
10) In Spite Of Me -- Morphine (Cure For Pain)

Once, I was dug, up I was sinking,
I was longing to be saved.
I lapped up to the bay bar,
And I saw her bobbing like a wave,
And I slowed down.

Just six months this summer since
I've known her, that she's been away.
And sometimes, I still answer
To the gone ghosts that only suckers make.
Slow down and hold on.

Even my heroes are almost gone,
Almost folding from the flame.
But how low can your fuse glow and
Warm you until your torch begins to fade?

I dreamed of a couple dancing close and drunk
In the spray of lights they made.
And once I was dug up, I was sinking,
But now I'm longing to be saved.

Richard Buckner's "Once."

Picture by John A. Murray

Let's Knock The Grin Off

2006-02-02T17:26:00.000-08:00

Twice in the last two days I found myself trying to write some kind of detailed response to Bush's SOTU address. But each time I was forced to pause and ask myself the same question: are you effing kidding? There's no good way for me to contradict this soaring patriotic horseshit and these transcendingly dishonest platitudes with an argument otherwise. You spend hour upon hour dealing with the hated nuance of crucial qualifications and real statistics to debunk a single paragraph of his sentimental and misleading rhetoric.

Of course the Dems, just ten seconds after the speech was done, set about to do just that -- as they should. But America must know by now what they're dealing with. They must see that Bush's game is to express admiration and belief in the very thing he seeks to subvert. If the subject is foreign policy and freedom, and the action in question is using military force on a beleaguered nation to the tune of hundreds of thousands maimed or killed and hundreds of billions (so far) of American taxpayer dollars spent, and the motive is strategic access to oil through regime change and to foment general chaos in Arabia hoping to see something good when the dust settles, then the rationale becomes one of altruism and hope -- freedom's march. But this is nihilism's march, my friends. It's the politics of the shit-eating grin: taking ideals like freedom and civil rights into the latrine of a "preemptive" war bloodbath and attempting to walk out with clean hands.

The people that are out there in America who still support this president and have faith in his judgment do so in the face of a convincing presentation (much of it made by former allies) of damning proof against him; against his judgment, against his motives, against his administration's competence outside the realm of public relations, and yes, against his speechifying.

At this point, you are either with him or against him. If you are with him, then I finally believe that you are against America's best future -- and I am against you.

Yet the destination of history is determined by human action, and every great movement of history comes to a point of choosing. Lincoln could have accepted peace at the cost of disunity and continued slavery. Martin Luther King could have stopped at Birmingham or at Selma, and achieved only half a victory over segregation. The United States could have accepted the permanent division of Europe, and been complicit in the oppression of others. Today, having come far in our own historical journey, we must decide: Will we turn back, or finish well?

At the end of Bush's speech, he compares our actions in Iraq (and his agenda's vision, in general) to Lincoln's emancipation of the slaves, to the civil-rights struggle, and to our intervention in Europe in WW2. This, on the very day that MLK's wife, Corretta Scott King, passed away. Any questions?

Let's take this huckster and anyone that looks, acts, thinks, walks, talks, jogs, smirks, stutters, blinks, or swings a golf club like him DOWN. Let's save America one greedy shit-eating grinner at a time. We may not want to, BUT WE MUST! Because we're running out of choices, and these people are taking America for everything it's got.

**Already, some have taken the previous paragraph to mean that I believe we should arm ourselves and shoot anybody that we perceive to be wearing a "shit-eating grin" including our president. NO! I was thinking more along the lines of electoral politics -- taking them down from the" soap box" or at the ballot box. Okay, bye. Peace and goodwill toward men!

The Times They Are a Changin'

2006-01-31T10:09:00.000-08:00

Coretta Scott King, widow of MLK and doyenne of his legacy, passes on the day of Samuel Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. I hope the bruise from this irony does not go as deep as I fear. We'll soon know, will we not?

Farewell, Corretta. I marvel at you and all that you witnessed.

Photo by Joyce Tenneson, www.frasergallery.com

Pay Attention

2006-01-30T23:51:00.001-08:00

I haven’t contributed in a while, and I have to admit to being distracted. I may have (finally) met the love of my life and, as many of you know, this can occupy a ridiculous amount of mind-space. In addition to this deluge of intensity, emotion, and hope, one of my very best friends recently gifted me with the computer game “Mahjongg”. If you have never played Mahjongg, you will just have to take my word that it is one of the most addictive pastimes known to man (especially if you mix it with other addictive pastimes—my favorite combo: mahjongg, martini, and hot foot soak). When I go to my computer these days, throngs of Mad General fans be damned (yo, MG), I end up playing Mahjongg.

I’ll tell you more about the love of my life once that title is confirmed (give me until next Tuesday).

I want to share two events of this particular, unremarkable in most other ways, day in my life. It was raining in San Francisco this morning and when I left the house to walk up the hill to my car I was juggling quite a few things: purse, yoga mat, giant notebook for my writing group, umbrella, keys, and a full cup of coffee. The coffee was in a regular household mug, none of that fancy lidded stainless steel crap, I like to have my car feel a little like a living room for these rare early morning drives. So, about five blocks into my journey, which had already included one or two quick (and adept I’ll have you know) maneuvers, a steep downhill, and a u-turn, I go to reach for my cup of coffee. I always keep it on my dashboard, right next to my tiny Yoda action figure that is held in place with velcro. It wasn’t there. In all of the juggling confusion, I had left it on top of the car. Suddenly almost sure that I had heard it hit the ground a few blocks back (that must be what that sound was), I pull over just in case. I get out of the car and, it must have looked like this, as though I had meant to keep it there for a few blocks, as though I hadn’t been quite ready before to have my coffee with me inside the car, and now I was, I pick my mug up off the top of my car, still over three-fourths full, take a sip, and continue my commute. I thought it must be my lucky day. And it was.

Two hours later I am sitting in a café chatting with my friend Rosemary about the Secret to Life. This was one of those rare conversations that can sustain you for days, months, decades to come. Rosemary, the only other member of my writing group, and someone who is turning out to be one of the great romances of my past year, is radiant and so willing to be there with me in this kind of astonishing conversation, in fact, ready to raise the bar and ask the difficult questions: “Can you imagine Nothing? Wrap your brain around infinite space with nothing in it, no stars, no dust, no light, nothing for light to reflect on, no molecules.” Okay?

Shall I let you in on what we uncovered in our razor-edged and doe-eyed musings? I guess I shall since that is actually my point. The secret to life is…wait for it…the secret to life is JOY. The secret to joy is PAYING ATTENTION. More on this in a minute.

Okay, so when you think about it, life is kind of miserable, right? We all either die young and terribly or we get old and get sick or get old and watch all of our friends die. We get our hearts broken all the time, we are terrible to each other, we are insecure and vulnerable. We live our meaningless lives in constant fear of dying alone as useless failures. Life is disappointing and sad and we never get what we really really want. And, just to drive the point home, it is an Absolute Fact that you will lose every person you have ever loved or will ever love. So what the fuck? What do we do to live and live with pep and vigor in the face of the shit heap that is life?

We decided, Rosemary and I , that if you pay attention, really pay attention, in those moments that you are paying attention, there is only joy. Try it. Spend a few moments noticing something. I can be the way that light hits your kitchen floor in the morning or rain running down the trunk of a tree. It can be the way your wife laughs or the way she doesn’t change the toilet paper roll when it is out or what she puts in her coffee. It can be the way that paper smells or the way your father’s ears keep growing. It can be the dust collected in the folds of your curtains. It doesn’t matter what it is, give something your real and full attention and you will fall in love with it and this, right there, is your access to joy, in any moment.

Giving yourself this joy, letting yourself experience it on a regular basis, is the secret to being fully alive, radiant, inspired, and a channel for love and bliss. Life is hard and consciousness is the greatest gift a thing can be given. And if you can give yourself Joy in this life, at any turn, then why wouldn’t you?

In Our Name

2006-01-27T22:31:00.000-08:00

I'm sure most everyone has seen this story by now. And I'm sure the proper outrage has been registered through all the usual channels. Nor do I doubt that those who must defend this war and its consequences for America at all costs have long since rationalized this latest revelation -- and have set about to disguise its hideous meaning.

I know the reasons for this effort; I've heard them all. I know that in war, perhaps to a degree peculiar to it, the ends seek to justify the means. And I know that as Americans, we seem to let them -- believing as we desperately feel we must, in the integrity and good intentions of our leaders and our military and ourselves. But I guess I've stopped believing in that. I've reached a point, I don't know when -- well after September 11th -- where I just could not defend such a belief any longer.

In this war, atrocities are made out to be relative. We hear what's being done by our military compares favorably to the acts of suicide fanatics or to the worst fascist dictators, or even to our own actions in previous wars. During and since Vietnam, we've heard that our government has sought to minimize "collateral damage" in war, and we believe these assurances. We're led to believe that our bombs are smart and that our methods are smarter. But why do we believe this?

I don't know. And I fear not knowing, because as we stand by and listen and watch as our military rips itself apart and our nation's integrity with it simply by following, as it will, the orders of nihilistic men in suits, so few of whom having personally experienced the toils and trauma of war; as we stand by and listen and watch, we all participate in these atrocities. They are, every one of them, being done in our name. Even when we don't know; when the torture and mayhem never comes to light -- it's in our name, and we look on numbly.

Looking through the fraud of a presidential speech, or a casualty claim made by our military, or a green-zone special report on the network news, or the inspired incantation that no matter what our troops happen to do or be-- no matter what their mission -- that they deserve our unflinching support, I see one sad truth standing out among so many. It's we who must suffer for the kidnapping of these women. Because what our government and its military have done is ignominious. And it's all being done in our name.

Friday Random 10

2006-01-27T14:26:00.000-08:00

Here's my first addition to the meme, "Friday Random 10." I noticed it going on over at Andrea's blog, and was quite taken. She's always one to shine some light on the relevance of good music to our lives and our ideas. Thanks in part to her, I've dusted off some of my old touchstones, the music that backed up some of my very best days. I've also decided to abandon my gathering complacency about and disillusionment toward most current music. The old bards may be dead or going, but there's some good sound and vision around to replace them. Perhaps popular music these days is just a more eclectic, though less authentic, elaboration of a world that's gaining speed, complexity, and momentum. It's the soundtrack to a growth that's not always comforting to me personally, that itself doesn't seem much rooted in the earth. And it ain't hard travellin' like Woody Guthrie, either.

But I'll listen to it nonetheless -- or try. If for no better reason than so the same fifteen artists don't show up again and again week after week. How boring! So anyway, here goes ten songs, played randomly on the old 200 disc shuffle.

1) I Get Around -- Beach Boys (Greatest Hits)
2) San Quentin -- Johnny Cash (Live at Folsom Prison and San Quentin)
3) Dogsong 2 -- Be Good Tanyas (Chinatown)
4) Honey, Allow Me One More Chance -- Bob Dylan (Freewheelin Bob Dylan)
5) That's Where It's At -- Sam Cooke (The Man and His Music)
6) Strawberry Jam -- Michelle Shocked (Short, Sharp, Shocked)
7) Something About What Happens When We Talk -- Lucinda Williams (LucindaWilliams)
8) Winterlong -- Neil Young (Decade)
9) Cripple Creek Ferry -- Neil Young (After The Goldrush)
10) Our Love Is Here To Stay -- Shirley Horn (George Gershwin Songbook)

Since we have an infant daughter, I've basically been listening to Baby Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven for the last few months. If you've never heard this, think "Goldberg Variations" as done by the Barney and Friends Philharmonic. So it was great to hear ten good songs that I hadn't listened to in a while. I'm also someone who, when I do buy a new CD, tends to listen to it 598 consecutive times, forgetting about the rest of my music, until I've memorized every note and have decided whether or not it belongs with the 200 albums that I return to again and again. Often, it doesn't -- so I stick it in a dark cabinet and mourn the loss of my seventeen some odd dollars. If I'm in love with it, then I leave it in the changer and something else that may have once been a favorite gets bumped out. It's just a very flawed process and strongly argues for the purchase of an ipod. There's too much good music that I've just stopped listening to because it somehow found its way to the cabinet. Of course, as you can tell by my initial list, Neil Young is one old-timer whose place in the 200 disc rotation is pretty secure.

"Half the time has passed away/Things we thought of yesterday/Come back now, Come back now, oh-oh!" Neil Young "Winterlong"

Let's Get Distorted!

2006-01-23T19:30:00.000-08:00

The past few days I've been exploring right-wing blogsites mining for beauty, poetry, fair debate and clean humor -- just anything to keep me going through the dismal blue Northeastern grind. I wanted, if possible, to perceive Bush's policies as I'd never done before: through the objective lens of a war junkie or a counter-evolutionary Deuteronomite. If all went well, I could finally figure out what it was about liberals, with their obnoxious clamoring for equal rights, worker-safety protections, environmental safeguards, sound foreign policy decision-making, health insurance for all, funding for education, etc, etc, etc, (try not to hurl!), that I found so galling.

On the course of my travels, I met with many wonderful minds. There was Tom D. who thought that 98% of African-Americans identified as Democrats simply out of the power of lore and propoganda. There was Armand who makes the following trenchant point on race in America: Don't suppose for a second that I suspect African-Americans (what the hell is that, anyway? Dave Matthews is African - born in Johannesburg. Is he "African-American"?). I met up with the inimitable Teaparty, a man who claims he was once a liberal until he realized he was running with rubes, and made the switch to the party of intellectual supremacy, led by George W. Bush. Or sweet Jenn who truly believes that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is a terrorist organization, and who warns: try telling my dog to go vegan, punks! In short, I formed many relationships and digested many nuggets of wisdom that I will go on savoring long after the toilet has flushed. So thank you right-wing bloggers for reminding me of what is at stake politically in our country. And for providing me, in a world so short of good, contemporary Romantic poetry, a lyrical vision of America that virtually soars with the exhilaration of loathing and the promise of an unregulated marketplace. Oh, if I had a hammer, indeed!

I recommend to anyone who considers themselves progressive or who actually believes that all things are interconnected or who is stubbornly opposed to blanketing Arab towns with White Phosphorous, that you give yourself some much-needed immersion therapy at a right-wing blog of your choice. Close your eyes, read along, and exorcise those world-changing demons! Here are a couple fine places to start. Enjoy, and you can thank me for your soul rash later.

Also, check out this trademark Hilary-bash and the conversation that ensued. Pretty funny!

painting by Julia Cunningham, www.foolswisdom.com

Mindful Chili

2006-01-18T17:41:00.000-08:00

As usual, image has very little to do with content of post.

Downpatter has clearly upped the stakes at madgeneral by mentioning soup in combination with skullduggery. The contrast between soup, with its essence of warmth, aroma, and the predictable good taste of pleasing ingredients, and that of skullduggery, with its connotation of tricksterism run amok, made for something interesting to chew on. What if in forming our relationships with people, as with making soup, we always knew what ingredients we were dealing with? What if we could actually choose the ingredients and reasonably expect something comforting and pleasurable to result? Let's see, toss in a childhood in a caring environment, and a late teen near-death experience. Add some crucial lessons learned about the value of life, a decent amount of self-confidence, dark eyes and musical skills. and VOILA! What if we could actually see the ingredients of a stranger through their eyes, mouth, or general bearing?

This, as downpatter implies, is just what we do when we first see people or when we try to get to know them, but often without the predictable results of say, making a cauliflower and curry bisque. Human beings have caught on. Many have figured out a way to disguise the ingredients that make them who they are. If they're corn chowder, they can easily show up as beef barley any given day. In our lives and in our politics, it can be damn hard to understand what we're trying to digest. True understanding calls for true mindfulness, paying attention not just to the ingredients our senses take in, but to the ingredients that we use in our everyday lives.

The other day, I had an idea. Dinnertime was approaching, but there were a few things besides cooking that needed to get done. Sleep had been an unreachable dream the night before, and I'd spent much of the day dozing off while sitting upright. I might have been back in physics class. I knew I had to rally and do some laundry, take apart my daughter's bassinet (this would require a screwdriver!), and make the rounds with the vacuum cleaner. But then the idea hit me. There was no way I could effectively operate a screwdriver, a vacuum, or a washing machine in the shape I was in; instead, I would volunteer to cook dinner. And not just any dinner. I would make "Mindful Chili."

Mindful chili is a special kind of chili. It's called "mindful" as much for the process of cooking it, as it is for the mix of ingredients that, when carefully combined, create something close to nirvana with gas. Mindful chili takes a little over an hour to make. And to make it one must simply clear out their schedule. "Mindfulness" implies paying attention to details, being aware --while in the process -- of the process, and only upon the completion of the process, becoming aware of the result. Here, if you give up trying to discern the meaning of that sentence, is my recipe for "Mindful Chili."

First, clear out your schedule. If there is something to be done, be it vacuuming, laundry, or using a screwdriver, push it back or dish it off to someone else entirely. Mindful chili conveniently demands every ounce of your attention.

Assemble ingredients. More on ingredients later. Just make sure they are all out and placed in a pile on the counter or table so you don't have to tromp around trying to locate them in the middle of a process that should be all about the chili and your own mindfulness. Briefly think ahead. Troubleshoot preemptively for any issues that may suddenly arise: a phone call, an unsatisfactory album chosen and played by a roommate or loved one, a question -- more like a riddle! -- posed that would probably be unanswerable even if you weren't preoccupied with making chili; make a plan to contend with these possibilities. The next hour and fifteen minutes is about you and chili. Assemble knives. Choose large pan (nothing chintzy!). Assemble bowls to store chopped ingredients. Assemble, assemble, assemble. Already, your kitchen is a mess. Perhaps be aware of this, but nevertheless move forward.

Start with two large sweet or spanish onions and one large green pepper, or one and a half or two of the smaller ones. Dice rather finely, taking your time. You may suffer greatly from the pyruvic acid in the onion. DO NOT allow the suffering to cause reckless or hasty dicing! Rather be mindful of it, and see it through, through the tears. Combine the diced pepper and onions in pot and turn heat on medium. In two or three minutes, you will hear a low sizzle and you will smell the savory juices of the onion. Let the dance begin! But don't get carried away, stay mindful. Stir in a little salt and olive oil and let saute for about three to four minutes.

During the process of the onions and peppers sauteing, you were involved in another process that, while connected to the first as two parts of the whole, is nevertheless its own distinct process. You were using a can opener to open one 28oz can of diced tomatoes and two 16oz cans of tomato sauce. When three or four minutes has passed, dump all tomato products into the pot. "Dump" is not a word that is entirely mindful. But being aware of its inappropriateness and then allowing for it is surely the essence of mindfulness. Next: mix onions, peppers, and assorted tomato products and let stand for ten minutes. It should boil for at least five of those.

Have cumin, chili powder, Simply Organic Vegetarian Chili packet at the ready.

During the ten minutes that the tomatoes are boiling with the onions and peppers, it will be tempting to run a vacuum or perhaps engage in conversation with someone around you. Can you do that and still remain mindful? This is a question I cannot answer for you. But I suspect that the answer is "no."

How does one remain mindful for ten minutes while the pot is boiling and life is going on around you as though you weren't cooking chili at all? At this time, take two medium-size yukon gold potatoes, or perhaps russets -- frankly as long as it's a potato -- and chop them finely, storing them in a single bowl. Also chop a three to five oz piece of a sweet potato, storing in a separate bowl. Locate French Lentils and measuring cup. If that is unavailable, use Bulgur. Also, chop up one-half of a poblano pepper, and one whole serrano pepper. You see, you were glad that you had those ten minutes, after all! Exalt, but remain very mindful.

When ten minutes is up, it is time to add potatoes, 1/3 cup lentils or bulgur (perhaps both?), poblano and serrano pepper, and about ten shakes of cumin and half the chili seasoning packet. The sweet potatoes will come later, as will the chili powder and the remaining seasonings. Stir, and perhaps revel in the intensifying aroma. But don't let your senses overwhelm you! This will boil together for approximately seven minutes.

During this time, you will have opened your canned beans and strained them -- a can of pintos and a can of black beans -- and you will have located your pearl barley and measured 1/3 cup. At this point, you may be getting sick and tired of being mindful. But consider the options. Many times, having lost the patience necessary to be present in the process of making mindful chili, I have forgotten both myself and my chili, with the result of eating a final product without the right texture or taste, and of having a fragmented awareness of myself, of certain tenets of buddhism, and of food in general. It's a recipe for disaster!

After seven minutes, add beans, sweet potatoes, and barley. Stir in a few more shakes of cumin, eight strong shakes of chili-powder, and the rest of the seasoning packet. Stir, cover, and let boil -- stirring occasionally -- for fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of relative inaction is a long time to stay mindful. Some of those around may understand this and demand that you fulfill certain other duties that you may have around the house, or even out in the yard. But is this going to be mindful chili or is it not? If not, then by all means go! Have a nice time taking out the trash, or playing with your children, or watching television, or talking to a friend or loved one. But is it reasonable to expect that, in the end, the chili can legitimately be called "mindful?" Is it reasonable to believe that the texture will not have been adversely affected without frequent stirring and a devoted awareness of time and time's process? Oh, but that's right. You've already thrown mindfulness out the window and into a neighbor's beloved juniper bush! If you haven't yet given up, there are steps one can take -- in the fifteen minute interlude -- to stay the mindful course.

Assemble chili accoutrements. Not only bowls and spoons, but sour cream (or plain yogurt), shredded cheddar or feta cheese, and your favorite tortilla chip. I personally prefer Bearitos. Also, dice the following and put in separate bowls: One and a half carrots and one yellow bell pepper. If there is extra time, perhaps clean up some of the mess left over from the earlier steps. DO NOT LEAVE THE KITCHEN! Now is the time, remaining mindful, to clean up the space in anticipation of the final product. This may seem like dirty work. But remember that Buddhist Monks apparently engage in menial tasks every day for some reason.

At the end of fifteen minutes you'll look into the chili pot and wonder if there is room for anything else in there. Don't be ridiculous! Add the carrots and the pepper and mix thoroughly. The fact that the lentils, bulgur, and barley are taking on moisture from the chili in order to expand may mean that the broth is getting a little thick. Normally, the liquids being drawn from the vegetables are enough to provide the proper balance, but go ahead and add a quarter to a half cup of water if you feel you need to. Let boil for another seven or eight minutes. By now, you've lost track of time and have heard the words, "Is the chili going to be ready sometime tonight?" repeated over and over. It is yet another challenge to mindfulness! Concentrate, instead, on stirring the chili to prevent any ingredients from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Then focus on the final ingredient: white corn. Corn in my chili, you say? It is mindful to ask hard questions about the ingredients that we use, just as it is mindful to ask so much of the ingredients, in the way of taste, that we finally choose. White corn, in addition to adding a subtle, sweet taste, will also add a nice crispy textural component to the final product. I'll go on record as saying that the corn is crucial. I'll go even further than that: the corn is a delight!

After seven or eight, possibly ten minutes, add strained corn -- stir -- turn off heat and let stand for another five to ten. At this point friends, family members, or relative strangers from off the street may be circling in like vultures. Assuming that you've prepared the chili accoutrements and they're ready to go, it may be wise to stand guard over your chili while it sits cooling, marinating together its many ingredients into a pleasing whole. In a perfect world, this process would be allowed to last much longer than ten minutes. But at some point hunger, if allowed to fester, will obliterate mindfulness and prod you into eating so much so fast that you may experience "acid reflux" and swear off chili for three months at least as a result while in the process saying "to hell with mindfulness." So ten minutes, no longer.

Serve and enjoy just one of the many edible fruits of being mindful: Mindful Chili!

Mindful Chili

2 large onions
1 large green pepper
1 yellow bell pepper
1/2 poblano pepper
1 serrano pepper
2 medium gold potatoes
1 small sweet potato (3-5oz)
1 1/2 carrots
1/3 cup french lentils
1/3 cup pearl barley
2 16oz cans tomato sauce
1 28oz can diced tomatos
1 16oz can pinto beans
1 16oz can black beans
1 16oz can white corn
salt, cumin, chili pepper, Simply Organic
Veggie Chili seasoning packet

1 and some odd hours worth of pure yogi mindfulness. Namaste!

King's Strength to Love

2006-01-16T00:01:00.000-08:00

Good God, it's a quarter past 10 and I've got 1:45 to get something off about MLK. But I've been shying away. I sincerely do not think that I'm fit to write about this man (in fact, my wife thinks I should leave it right here). His eloquence, courage, and leadership are, to me, the standard of all American History. I truly believe that no single person's death has cost our country more than his did. In that window of awakening consciousness in America, he was the most passionate, most effective of all visionaries of societal change. And, though some would consider his job to have been done by the time of his murder, and would glory in the great civil rights movement he helped to spark and would come to symbolize so well, I lament that his work had hardly begun; that much of it was left unfinished in his tomb. I lament that here was a man with the strength and love to pursue all of his dreams for humanity, working toward them with the fierceness of divine inspiration and the intelligence of a philosopher. His was a fierceness of vision and power of comprehension that would frighten his adversaries enough to take his life, and with it, a large measure of America's promise.

In chapter four of MLK's book Strength to Love, which is really a collection of his sermons, he examines the words of Jesus dying on the cross as they are written in the Bible. "Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," Luke 23:24. He speaks of what strength of love it must have taken a man who was being tortured on a cross alongside murderers and thieves to utter those words of forgiveness to his killers and to those who jeered, spit, and threw rocks at him. He talks about what was possible if that same adherence to the principle of compassion and forgiveness were practiced in America, a country where -- unfortunately -- the principle of retaliation and the pride in militant patriotism was something like a religion. And he sought to infuse this strength to forgive, and to love, into the marrow of the civil rights movement, giving it a moral momentum that no lynching or bomb could throw off course. Who can argue that this compassionate direction of nonviolence did not ultimately lead to the fulfillment of the immediate goals of the civil rights movement? Who can argue that it was not the "Strength to Love," as much as anything, that awakened the conscience of America into demanding change from her government?

He goes on to examine what else these words from Jesus meant. "They know not what they do." It wasn't that the people who jeered, and spit, and threw rocks at him were evil. They simply saw Jesus as a vagrant in need of punishment. They saw him this way because the state did; and because the state had deemed it necessary that he should die for his crimes, then his crimes must have been worthy of death. King applies this meaning -- that we will often commit the most heinous crimes and enact the most wicked plots while thinking that we're in the right, acting with integrity -- to the plight of the black man in America.

"Slavery in America was perpetuated not merely by human badness, but by human blindness. True, the causal basis for the system of slavery must to a large extent be traced back to the economic factor. Men convinced themselves that a system which was so economically profitable must be morally justifiable. They formulated elaborate theories of racial superiority. Their rationalization clothed obvious wrongs in the beautiful garments of righteousness. This tragic attempt to give moral sanction to an economically profitable system gave birth to the doctrine of white supremacy. Religion and the Bible were cited to crystallize the status quo. Science was commandeered to prove the biological inferiority of the Negro. Even philosophical logic was manipulated to give credence to the system of slavery...So men conveniently twisted the insights of religion, science, and philosophy to give sanction to the doctrine of white supremacy. Soon this idea was imbedded in every textbook and preached in practically every pulpit. It became a structured part of the culture. And men then embraced this philosophy, not as the rationalization
of a lie, but as the expression of a final truth. They sincerely came to believe that the Negro was inferior by nature and that slavery was ordained by God. In 1857, the system of slavery was given its greatest legal support by the deliberations of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott decision. The Court affirmed that the Negro had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. The justices who rendered this decision were not wicked men. On the contrary, they were decent and dedicated men. But they were victims of spiritual and intellectual blindness. They knew not what they did. The whole system of slavery was largely perpetuated by sincere though spiritually ignorant persons."

I'm not trying to convey a theological lesson, exactly, but to show the kind of empathy that Martin Luther King practiced and taught -- even as he peered into the heart of bigotry -- and how it was grounded in the example of the man he considered his guide, Jesus. He was able to clearly understand how a debased scheme such as the slave industry could evolve over time into the widespread moral conviction of the supremacy of whites, inciting behavior that would make the devil's best assassins smile, just as Jesus could no doubt understand that the complicity of his fellow citizens in his crucifixion was more a product of societal convention and institutional fear than it was the evil of hatred. And King's understanding and compassion allowed him to forgive those involved, especially those who "knew not," in the conspiracy to suppress the rights and dignity of their fellow humans for so many years. It was in large measure this forgiveness that allowed America to again deal with its guilt and change course.

Yet he died, perhaps like his teacher, because his strength and love could not be controlled, nor undermined. His courage always went hand in hand with his greatest ideals. And it was only a matter of time before the principles that helped pull America out of segregation and allow African-Americans to have a chance in our democracy were applied elsewhere, to some other institutional source of grave injustice, to the war in Vietnam perhaps.

Even as King helped to fulfill the hopes and promise of an entire race within America, his death left a scar on the womb of our future that's slow to heal. There just hasn't been anyone else remotely like him. With strength of heart to match his imposing intellect, and a gift of expression that did justice to each, he was perhaps the last authentic American prophet. So as we celebrate the accomplishments of this great leader and teacher, I will mourn his untimely murder, and be chilled by the sense I have that in America, we still know not what we do.

Skullduggery and Soup

2006-01-13T13:56:00.000-08:00

Today I am making a Lemony Chickpea and Kale Soup. Doesn’t that sound so good? Last week, I rocked a Curry Cauliflower Soup: onions, garlic, cauliflower, salt, pepper, curry powder. It was so perfect with a piece of sourdough walnut toast, and glass of white wine. Sometimes life can be really simple.

After reading the Generals posting on Alito, and commencing to simmer my chicken stock and chickpeas, I started thinking about the human face. Do you think that you can really tell something about the character of a person by just looking at their face? Or do our preconceived notions affect what we see about their face? If you were told you were looking at the photo of a compassionate pediatrician, for example, would the face of that dirty trickster Karl Rove be so sinister or off-putting? What kind of man has a face like George Bush? Why do I feel uneasy when I see Alito’s picture?

I wish this was simple. I have been right so many times about my initial split second impressions of a person. I have been wrong too. I am so sick of all the lying. Everywhere you look in politics and news about politics and news about news, there is duplicity. How is it that we have gotten nonchalant about all this subterfuge? How is it that being political has become somehow linked with being deceitful and manipulating information to be seen with your chosen slant? And why are we so ready for the twisting of language to explain why some huge fucking lie was somehow not a lie at all, but actually an innocent mis-remembering, or mis-understanding, or mis-speaking? Have we resigned ourselves to living in a world where we never quite know what the truth is, who is lying, who we can trust? Why are integrity, honesty and fairness so surprising in our elected officials? Maybe we have decided that the wisest thing is to just give up on trusting anybody, that way, when we do get duped, we at least were expecting to get duped and thus are somehow less duped. This makes me feel so crazy, because nothing should be easier that telling the truth. Right? When you think about it, it is so much harder to lie. The problem is that for that last, exceedingly and perhaps overly simple statement to be true, the liar or teller of the truth must be motivated by something that is real. Something like joy or love or connection or understanding. Is there any room for these motivations in our modern world? Or have ego and accumulation left us choking on chicanery?

Hang In There, Sammyboy!

2006-01-12T21:15:00.000-08:00

I urge all of my readers (whassup downpatter?) to check out the following snippet from the Alito Senate comfirmation hearings on MSNBC: Click on "Conservative Politcal Group." There you will notice at least two very interesting things. First, notice how Mrs. Scalito's tears (she's the one in blue, smirking) are already beginning to form during Biden's happy-go-lucky "grilling" of her husband on the subject of his membership in a heinous Princeton organization, Concerned Alumni of Princeton. It's no wonder that the type of ruthless insinuations being levied by Biden toward good Judge Alito just became too much for her to bear. What's incredible is that she didn't break down sooner. Christ, Biden's performance broke me down in about eleven seconds. I say to Mrs. Sam Alito, "the sun will come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar, there's tomorrow." The pain that you're feeling is only temporary. Be strong.

Also fascinating in this video, is the degree to which Joe Biden is an ass sandwich. What a preening clown! This guy wants to run for president? You believe Judge Alito when he says he doesn't recall being a part of the Princeton organization? Even though he boasted about it on a 1985 resume? Then why the hell are you wasting our time with this yammering on the subject? I mean -- yeah, your Grandpa Finnegan's anti-Ivy-League prejudice is need-to-know and all, but we're sort of trying to figure out if this guy Alito was Judge Smails' prize law clerk or not.

By the way, the original MSNBC headline for the Alito coverage (since changed) that led me to check out the video was: "Alito Hangs Tough." Alito Hangs Tough? Why not: "Alito Cuts Gallant Figure In Senate Chamber?" This is the guy that will do everything he can to overturn Roe. This the guy who disdains the rights of citizens to do anything other than be conservative and die. Who are we kidding? We know that this guy represents an ultra-corporate ultra-conservative catholic view of America that's not anything close to being mainstream. And he'll be a justice for thirty years! We're tossing him softballs, talking about his to-die-for "judicial temperament?" We're worried about the emotional state of his sneering wife whose acting skills are not fit for "Saved by the Bell?" These are some troubled times in America! Here's the NYT editorial for a quick reflection on Samuel Alito, jurist.

Where the Treasure Is

2006-01-11T19:10:00.000-08:00

"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Matthew 7:21

The picture to the left is David Brower climbing Shiprock Peak in New Mexico, one of his seventy "first ascents." This is John McPhee , the prolific nature-writer, quoting David Brower, environmental defender of Action Comic proportions: "He reminds his audiences that buffalo were shot for their tongues alone, and he says that we still have a buffalo-tongue economy. 'We're hooked on growth, we're addicted to it.' he says, 'In my time, man has used more resources than in all previous history...We've got to kick this addiction. It won't work on a finite planet. When rampant growth happens in an individual, we call it cancer."

I met David Brower for the first time in McPhee's book, Encounters with the Archdruid, and knowing what I now do, that's a little embarrassing to say. It so happens that he, along with a few others, Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson among them, was the near-incarnation of John Muir's legacy -- deep naturalist, legendary climber and outdoorsman, writer, firebrand conservationist, first executive-director of Muir's Sierra Club -- and perhaps the most effective environmental advocate of the 20th century.

The book is a gem, amazing not only for McPhee's porcelain prose, but for its premise: Brower, matchless fighter for untrammelled ecosystems together on three separate journeys into three threatened wilderness areas with the very individuals who threaten them most, one an expert geologist and copper prospector, another an upstart coastal real-estate developer, and the last a hydro-electric giant and long-time commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, United States Department of the Interior. The brilliance of the book is in its tone. Instead of portraying a cut and dry grudge-match between wilderness guy and industry whore, it's a sensitive and wry examination of the clash between human culture and, in Brower's mind, the shrinking cathedrals of unspoiled land. Brower and his cause are not overly glorified, nor are the others made to be villains. There is logic and principle enough to go around. And the vivid grandeur of Brower's "cathedral" is lovingly painted by McPhee, from floor to ceiling, with precision on nearly every page.

Interestingly, all three of Brower's antagonists identify in some way as nature lovers or "lovers of the outdoors." In their view they are -- in their jobs -- simply doing what needs to be done to satisfy the needs of a growing population. And, they argue, they're doing what needs to be done the right way -- something like, "if not for me, Brower, someone else would come along and you'd really have some pollution to whine about!" The book is a patient sojourn on the spectrum of naturalist concern -- from Brower's lament that the only way to protect wilderness is to limit or restrict human use, to the commissioner, for instance -- who says that wilderness is good and fine, but not worth a damn if people are left out. What results in the book, for me, is a better appreciation of the sheer weight of our culture, raised and driven as it was at such frightening speed by the generosity of the earth; and also, something like a sibling compassion for Brower, who calls to mind a field surgeon who dies along with each of his gored patients, yet who somehow perserveres, saving the ones he can.

I wonder, and not just when I've finished reading a book such as this one: is the earth's generosity indeed stretching paper-thin? Is it time that our society gave something back, or at least, stopped taking so totally? Is it maybe a little late? Brower, for the most part, and perhaps in an effort to responsibly manage his own resources, chose to focus his enormous energy on protecting our remaining wilderness from plunder, to demarcate one pristine mountain range from the other with its ski trails and hoppin' burger joints and make the line stick. He wanted, in 1972, the ten percent of land in America that had not been carved by civilization to remain whole in perpetuity; he was less concerned with the rest. There was a reason for his focus on guarding our deepest wilderness from the machines of man, and I don't believe it was because he was "anti-human" as pro-industry extremists often charge in their ridiculous hatchet-jobs on the environmental movement. It was because he saw early on that nature was the treasury of every living thing; that for millions of years organisms and creatures took what they had needed, returning the rest to the soil, the air, and the water, as nutrition necessary for its continued existence. And then only recently as human civilization developed were means created to carry off much more of our treasure than was truly needed (although the justification for pillage is often a claim of dire necessity)-- and still more and more -- spending maniacally, unwisely, until in Brower's time the treasury itself -- a healthy ecosystem with biodiversity of species and purity of air and water, was all but gone. So be it. But far from being anti-human, perhaps he knew that if he could help save a few of our most life-giving wellsprings from the plunder of greed then there would always be the possibility of renewal, or rescue when we found ourselves chin deep in debt from the profligate expenditure of our natural resources.

Thankfully, in my view, there are fierce advocates, like Brower, for the need to establish wilderness protection, but there are others in the fight to protect for our ecosystems whose focus is on restoration, attempting to breathe back into a place some small part of what was extracted. The term "restoration ecology," when I first heard it, gave me something wonderful to imagine. It registered right away. It had the sense of bounce that all exciting ideas, concepts, and solutions have. You want to go somewhere with them -- not just digest them -- you want to celebrate them, spring from them into thought, action. I had just read a piece in Sierra Club Magazine; it was the story of a Rutger's professor who was conducting research with the aim of restoring the native ecosystem on and around a major landfill in New Jersey; I had read it just before a trip to Philadelphia. I recall that drive vividly because I can remember imagining all of the possibilities alive in the concept, all the ecological slums and urban ruins that could use a polish, all of the faintly hazardous parcels left in industry's wake. It had the feeling of something too miraculous to be true. Was it possible to reinvigorate a wasteland? Was it possible to even care? Good God, were there people that were hopeful enough to try? Did nature require our assistance in the matter?

Since that drive, I've thought of our communities and the way they're developed -- even those where the land is shaved close and planted with grass, or layered and riven with pavement and sprawling mega-stores -- not only as grim modern realities or the products of prevailing ecological ignorance, but as places of promise. Perhaps a measure of what's lost can be regained. I've always thought it strange that municipalites and the citizens within them were so forgiving of their landscape's ravishing. I've wondered what was so alluring about grass and lawnmowers; car dealerships and massive shopping-centers; what caused people to idealize a paved or manicured and half-synthetic natural environment for their one-half acre, or think it safe to coat their lawns and plants with powerful chemicals. Without exploring that fully loaded question in depth here, I decided that people did not desperately want or need a synthetic environment, but rather that, like hot dogs and Pepsi-cola, it's what they were being sold, for generations what they were sold, until it became, house by house, office by office, what was normal; normal to see, normal to hear, smell, take nourishment from -- and it's this normality that has furnished its great, conventional value. So perhaps it's only a matter of seeking, struggling if need be, to normalize other ways of experiencing life and finding nourishment. Some would consider living consciously and making more responsible decisions with regard to our environment an evolved, progressive way of being. But perhaps it would only be the restoration of something that was lost and forgotten in the glare of civilization. Maybe damaged ecosystems can be revived to a degree. Maybe we just need to think that its possible.

I'm feeling inspired by what I've been reading the last few days. I've got a good buzz. If we can wage a devastating modern war in a hapless foreign country to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, then we surely have the means to restore some of our country's natural health for the benefit of everybody and everything therein. We need to demand that money be spent by our leaders on keeping us safe not just from principled dissent, but from poisoned air and water. I believe that our nation would get behind a well-publicized, national movement to restore, where possible, its environment -- even on private land. For instance, I came across an article on the Pennsylvania Game Commission's website where private owners are volunteering to have their land managed by ecologists for threatened wildlife. But the idea needs to get off the back pages to grab enough people's attention. It needs to be known that we can live well without ruining our greatest treasure, the ecosystem.

Here are a few more interesting links I encountered that have to do with conservation and restoration. The first is the Aldo Leopold Foundation, where they foster his idea of "land ethics." Next, is a good article from Salon about David Brower. Last is a website, wilderness.net, which carries the text of 1964's Wilderness Act establishing the National Wilderness Preservation System, responsible for millions of acres protected in the United States. It's a fine sight to peruse, but notice how little land in America is designated as wilderness and how much of that land is in California, the cherished state of John Muir and David Brower. Hey, those boys won some battles, eh? Enjoy!

We have given up the understanding -- dropped it out of our language and so out of our thought -- that we and our country create one another, depend on one another, are literally part of one another; that our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of the land; that as we and our land are part of one another, so all who are living as neighbors here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another, and so cannot possibly flourish alone: that, therefore our culture must be our response to our place, our culture and our place are images of each other and inseparable from each other, and so neither can be better than the other."

Wendell Berry

Believe Away: Our Harebrained Universe

2006-01-08T21:35:00.000-08:00

Absurdism, according to the Mad General’s elucidating link is the doctrine that we live in an irrational universe. I never knew this word, ABSURDISM, even existed. I am, come to find out, and have been, a firm, ecstatic and avid adherent to this particular “ism”. Lets get clear on the definition of absurd. My new computer’s built in dictionary gives us: “wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate”.

Lets talk about belief (“something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion or conviction”) for a moment. I went to church this morning. If you ever visit San Francisco, time it so that you can be here on a Sunday and make the time to visit Glide Memorial Methodist Church. Holy Shit! It will make a believer out of the staunchest of unbelievers. At least it will make this staunch unbeliever WANT to believe, which is the whole point. I think that every belief that we hold is a choice. If you want to believe that there is a God that knows everything and loves you and can walk on water and smiles on same sex marriage and relishes the occasional sacrifice of a lamb, then why in the hell wouldn’t you? “Believe away,” I say. All of it is a choice. What belief could make your life the most interesting, satisfying, joyful? If you can find it then you might as well believe it. Everything you believe is only what you have chosen out of Infinite Possibility to believe.

Okay, so Glide Church. I can’t go too often because it can be a tad too cathartic for me. I cry the whole time I am there and I can’t explain it or control it. I am generally a happy, fairly reasonable person. But Glide is always packed with people, and there is a remarkable diversity among the faces in all the ways you can imagine, and everyone is so…so…so earnest. So, I promise I won’t do this to you every time but, while we are playing dictionary, lets look at earnest: “resulting from or showing sincere and intense conviction”. Okay? And then the choir comes out, forty or so people clapping their hands and singing “God’s been good to me” and everyone in the place is dancing and clapping and singing and the tiny 90 year old black woman dancing in the pew in front of me is holding up her skinny old arms and opening her wrinkled old palms to the ceiling and belting this shit out: “God has been good to me!” And I am crying, pathetically unable to keep the beat with my clapping hands, thinking “what kind of shit has this woman seen in her life?” and she’s singing about how good God has been to her and I can barely handle it. I am white, educated, and reasonably attractive and have been welcome in almost every place I have ever attempted to enter, but for me to feel it, to really get what it is to feel welcome, I had to step into a place where everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, is welcome. At Glide Church they say they don’t care about your sexual orientation, your color, your language or even your religious beliefs, they say “If God made you, we want you!” This is what it is about. What is the point of organized religion? Of pulling the concept of “God” out of our asses and holding on for dear life? I think it is to belong to something, to feel connected and accepted. If having a God makes you feel that, then make a God. If having a community gives you that, then create a community.

It is possible that we live in an absurd and irrational universe. To me this is the most joyful news. It means that you can believe anything you want, anything that gives you spirit and pure experience. For some people this is the old “everything happens for a reason”, for others there is freedom in “life is meaningless”. Some people like to think they will come back here again and again, some want to go to a place where there is only dancing and singing and never death or rejection, some want the decomposition of their bodies to contribute to the lushness of a patch of forest. I say: go! Do it! Who cares?

P.S. Wouldn’t you have thought it was “HAIRbrained” (and not “harebrained”) as in your brain is getting crowded out by your hair, therefore your thinking capacity is compromised and you only come up with ridiculous ideas? I did. I welcome any explanation as to why it would be “harebrained”.

P.P.S. Mad General, please tell me if I am making no sense and this is not at all what you hoped I would add to this endeavor.

United We Stand, Downpatter!

2006-01-06T21:50:00.000-08:00

photo by James Henry Wilson

Downpatter has accepted my offer --as may now be obvious to loyal followers of this blog (yo mom) - to be a contributor to Mad General, a site where sipping port in a tent-like structure well out of danger from the proverbial scrum is not only un-frowned upon, but -- far from it -- is stridently endorsed and encouraged by none other the than the Mad General himself. Disclosure: I've never actually sipped port in a tent-like structure but it sounds sort of nice. Nonetheless, Downpatter is now officially on board and together we will wage our rhetorical battle against nasty stuff like racism, nihilism, sexism, anti-environmentalism, egoism, conservatism, corporatism, fatalism, determinism, industrialism, materialism, accidentalism, nominalism, solipsism, triumphalism, geocentrism, sacerdotalism, and many more distasteful isms, some of which are listed here. Let's do this, Downpatter!

In all seriousness, I'm so pleased to have her on this site. She's been a friend of mine and my wife's for many years. We've seen the good times and the bad. We've talked on many, many subjects; and "like birds on a wire, like drunks in a midnight choir, we've tried in our way to be free." After all of this, we find that we're on opposite sides of the country and alas, the shared beers and late-night guitar strummings seem but a kind glimmer from the past. But join me loyal readers in toasting to a future of good times and fine memories with the occasional post from Downpatter, like a knowing smile from the sun, gleaming in your eyes.

The Cost of Junk Freedom: Part 2

2006-01-06T14:35:00.000-08:00

A little while ago, I did a spiel about the rather cynically-named mission "Operation Iraqi Freedom" -- or "Enduring Freedom" or "Shining Freedom" or "Double Back-Flip, Half-Twisting Freedom" or whatever they're calling the operation these days -- and what I thought it was costing our country in terms of good will and other kinds of political capital. I call it a spiel because that's really what it was; it was hardly analytical or comprehensive. I had thought of continuing the "Cost of Junk Freedom" concept with a post about its human toll, about all of the soldiers turned to charred chunks, all of the helpless Iraqis imprisoned or slaughtered by the mechanics of fear and loathing. But I couldn't really find a voice with which to write it. Spinning sympathy and outrage, mixing deeply held feelings of human concern with political rhetoric, attempting to untangle soaring ideals like "courage" and "patriotism" from the spider's web of propaganda only to find them cold within me, in need of a spiritual CPR I'm in no way qualified to give -- it was too much. Besides, stories already exist that are heartbreaking and true -- and deeply authentic. Nothing I could say would further their meaning.

Some of the stories about the human toll of this war are easy to find, but most are buried in the dust in unmarked graves hardly told, hardly heard, over with. It occurs to me that it's one of the most obvious costs of war: extraordinary human suffering and injustice become all the more nameless. As the bombs increase in size and frequency the pestilence and horror all around them turn mundane. Life's horizons dim to darkness and finally, oblivion. But no problem, it's far away, it's someone else.

Of course, sometimes the stories are so close and painful that Americans must take notice. Take Cindy Sheehan, a loving mother whose beloved son was killed in action; her story resonated because her maternal loss had earned her not only the right to mourn her son's death but the right to question why he died and what he died for. The passion of her grief and indignation was authentic, unassailable -- and supremely threatening to those who disagreed with her tortured conclusions. She was soon smeared; her story's meaning was hacked and tarnished until it, too, seemed like something political, something debatable. One more cost of this war is that the very heart of authenticity -- motherhood, loss, pain, mourning -- becomes little more than a low hurdle to spin over toward political insult. The most insidious policy of power is such that its engineers and their ideological drones must be that much more energetic and ruthless in defending it. Propogators of war and injustice have no better forum then war in its midst, because somewhere far beyond the guns and bombs are the ripe conditions for another, bigger war. It's a war against hope, against truth, against freedom -- and it's where their most ruthless and divisive weapons are trained on the human spirit.

But I don't believe they'll win because, if nothing else, these stories are endless. When the appointed talking heads have bombed one story to obsolescence, another similar narrative emerges with a similarly compelling theme. In Blue Voice, there's a story picked up from the Washington Post about the death of a young marine who was filled with humor and promise and who was killed while on his fifth mission to clear the same town of insurgents. Was he a hero? I don't know. Was he a patriot? Very probably. What I do know was that he was a man who brought joy and comfort to his parents and many others. He was someone capable of brightening the days on this earth who perished on a mission that was dark and apparently without reasonable military purpose.

Downpatter, in her post, addresses the cost of this war well when she says, "I want our soldiers, while they are willing to lay down their young lives, to have something worthwhile to lay them down for. I know it's out there. Hell, I want something worth laying down my own life for. If we were actually the benevolent police of the world, I'd enlist. I'd even shave my head, though I don't think I'd have to." The cost of this war is that when we begin to sense that what these kids are dying for, being ordered to kill for, is not something transcendently human -- that it's something crude and Macchiavellian -- we are all the more demoralized and disgusted. By degrees, we lose faith in our country and in some way, ourselves. We begin to feel the soaring ideals we've cherished and drawn strength and hope from as Americans are themselves utterly corruptible and possibly meaningless.

I recently heard the oft-used political idiom, "a rising tide lifts all ships" employed to describe the supposedly improving conditions in Iraq and elsewhere after the most recent elections. But no ship will ever rise that has so much rotten wood. Right now in war and in peace our nation's ship is taking on water, to say the least, despite proclamations that democracy is "on the march," and that the economy is flourishing at home. The only rising tide is a crimson one. Our own freedom and the democratic government of checks and balances that ensures it are in danger, and the idea that America conducts its foreign policy with integrity and good intentions has lost any buoyancy it may have once possessed.

Graciously Accepting

2006-01-04T22:24:00.000-08:00

Mr. Madgeneral, in his profound port sipping wisdom, has invited me to add, on rare occasion, to his illuminating blog. But I don’t know the first thing about anything (and I hate the word "blog"). Really. Fuck. What do I know? I know that I have a very deep suspicion that what is happening with Good Old America is not going to be okay. We have leader who preys (and prays, supposedly, but I'm not buying it) upon our deepest insecurities. I know very little about where we stand as a country, what atrocities we are guilty of, what kind of irreversible poverty we are marching towards, I simply order fancy drinks on this train speeding out of control towards the edge of a cliff, delicious sugar rimmed sidecars. But I live in San Francisco, for God’s sake. You can get away with the unspoken claim of being highly political here without knowing the first thing about what is actually happening in the world. Everyone just agrees with you. Half of the stop signs in this city have a sticker on them right under the word “stop” that says “Bush”. Everyone from the dread-locked baby boomer on a raw foods diet next door to the white-haired Barbara Bush look-alike that I am serving dinner to is a liberal. I can take it for granted here, it’s quite a luxury.

I have decided that it is only fair given that most of America is voting and ranting based on their emotions anyway, that I should be able to contribute an emotional political rant. Let me say first that when I see a young man stand up to defend his country and believe, I mean really believe, that he is aligning himself with the forces of “good” it doesn’t just make me want to cry, it actually makes me cry. My sweet grandfather, who is resting in peace, was in Normandy in World War II. I get it. Sort of. I want our soldiers, while they are willing to lay down their young lives, to have something worthwhile to lay them down for. I know it’s out there. Hell, I want something worth laying my own life down for. Fuck cynicism. If we were actually the benevolent police of the world, I’d enlist. I’d even shave my damn head, though I don’t think I would have to.

Almost three years ago when we started this war in Iraq, I was headed to a peace rally near city hall downtown San Francisco when my Midwestern brother called me. It was a Saturday, he put both of his kids on the phone before we actually got a chance to speak. When I told him what I was doing he said “I hope you think about it.”
“Think about what?”
”About how difficult a decision this was for the president.”
This was the first I had heard of my brother’s political leanings. Usually we talk about his family or about our mother or science and astrology or something. George Bush has made us all political.
“What? are you kidding me?”
“No, we have to go get this guy.”
“What guy?”
”Saddam Hussein.”
“But…this is a war on terror, right? and an answer to 911? what did Saddam Hussein have to do with that?”
“Time will tell. I’m just saying. What is happening over there is not okay, we have to do something.”
“We? what is happening over there? who?”
“We need to stick together right now, that’s all”

I told him that I was against war in general and that was why I was going and that I didn’t actually believe that this particular war had anything to do with anything other that our president’s and our country’s greed for oil. He told me that if I enjoyed living with the freedom and luxury that I had grown accustomed to as an American than I should bother to feel grateful for it. I said I had to go. He said that he hoped I would think about it. I said that I would. I went to the anti-war rally with certain squint that came less from any need I had to “think about it” and more of a desire to just fucking let go and believe in the simple promise of My Country being a fierce and faithful watchdog of the world-- vicious against the threatening forces of evil out in the world and yet eager to roll over lovingly under my hand in my safe and luxurious living room and let me scratch its belly and laugh at it’s less than completely and irrevocably destructive folly.

P.S. Madgeneral, don’t lower expectations yet!! I’ve personally pushed the start date for 2006 back one week…in 2006, um, 2006 starts on January 8th. I had to make this revolutionary call due to the simple fact that I need to quit the cigarettes once and for all and, frankly, am not quite, this week, ready for it. Wish me luck for a smoke free New Year!! And I am going to figure out, in 2006, how to make really good soup. Luckily I can just chill on that one for the next few days as well. Oh, and try buying real estate in Northern California. Any parcel of land less than ten times what you are talking about sounds like such a bargain I’m ready to try to jump on it myself.

Prospects for 2006 Downgraded: My Kingdom For An Acre

2006-01-04T16:33:00.000-08:00

Uh yeah, Mike Chertoff called, and he basically said it was time. All of this wistful optimism that things were improving was scaring the H out of Bush and his sordid constituency. Chertoff wondered, frankly, if I wasn't keeping expectations high only to demoralize those whose livelihoods depend so much on America's feeling insecure -- keep them from scaring out the vote in 2006. At first, he asked me nicely to lower expectations, but when I refused he informed me that he'd installed little spy cameras in the mirror where I do most of my facial exercises. He threatened public exposure. The thought of my carefully devised facial calisthenics program going public before it's perfected was enough for me to comply -- I'm downgrading expectations. So my trademark chiseled-cheek jaw crunches are safe from premature public awareness for now. Look for the whole program to be out on dvd in 2008, though.

But there are other reasons, besides Chertoff, for the downgrade -- have you seen the $$$$ing housing market recently? For instance, this little charmer is $385,000. And it's not built atop a diamond preserve, either. Notice how the light seems to retreat from the camera. It's quite clear this person wants us to notice all the minutae that taken together make this property perfect! Oh, and look at the hot tub. When was the last time you just felt like screaming "LUXURY!" at the top of your lungs with only the sky to listen? Try it -- it's quite cathartic -- no kidding. But this beauty is not some extreme example of the bad deals awaiting the value shopper out there -- it's indicative of the market in general. In most of southeastern Pennsylvania, $300,000 used to buy you something grand. These days, you get the fixer-upper next to the scrap yard.

I realize it is a little more than bourgeois to complain about a huge chunk of cash not going as far as it used to, especially when a good chunk of humanity gets by with a few Ben Franklins per annum. This realization even threatened to capsize this post. The following are minutes from a two minute internal dialogue on the topic of whether or not this post should continue or even exist at all.

The first speaker basically came out swinging: "You arrogant jackdaw! Once again, you've been caught wallowing like a hog in the nectar of your enviable lot! Wah, where's my mansion on the hill, I want my mansion on the hill!" The accused wallower replied, "I don't want a mansion, I simply want value. Being somewhat conservative with money, I'd rather not spend it unwisely because a fraternity of real estate analysts have orchestrated a property gold rush that has America convinced an outhouse is worth their nest-egg." The accusatory speaker took offense: "These are not outhouses, they're not shanties! These are Cape/Colonials with hardwood floors! Anyway, just be glad you don't have typhoid fever you megalomaniac!" The accused megalomaniac replied, "You know what? I've just decided to continue with this post. Because I don't want a mansion! I want land to raise a family, grow organic food for the community, and create a small natural oasis for four or five outlaw birds on, hopefully a Yellow Warbler included among them. In short, I want to live lightly and do my part for my family, the community, and the environment, but I don't want to go deep into debt for the chance!" At which, he signalled an end to the discussion and headed for the door. But not to be outdone, his accuser called after him: "you're the worst kind of anti-market hypocrite." he said, "you're pro-market when your mutual funds are soaring and you're against the market when you can't afford to purchase your private eco-fantasies!" By this time, the accused anti-market hypocrite was running full speed with his fingers in his ears singing Dylan's "Times they are a Changin."

Apart from Homeland Security and the real estate market, still another factor is dampening the outlook for 2006. It's that I'm buying into the doomsday analysis of those predicting a massive shortfall of the natural resources that fuel our modern devil-may-care lifestyles. Taken with our failure as a nation to commit to researching and developing the use of alternative sources of energy on a scale that would soften the shock waiting on the other side of "peak oil," for instance -- not to mention our government's corporate-friendly reluctance to regulate standards for conserving the supply we do have -- our American way of life seems patently unsustainable and our blue chip economy seems ever so vulnerable to recession. Thus, one is left with the feeling that, unless you're the type that can blithely write out increasingly large checks for things of diminishing value, you have few other options than to get ahead by living small, smart, and sustainable. Living more sustainably is something that many, including myself, will gladly do -- but in my family's case, it seems we'll be forced to make a bad financial investment in order to make sound environmental ones (or, to carry out our eco-fantasies). Especially if we continue with our plans to move away from a large population center to buy land in the more distant suburbs.

2006 Is Another Word For AWESOME!

2005-12-31T21:10:00.000-08:00

Has anyone ever told you that your cerebral cortex must be made of pocket fuzz? No one's ever told me that, but if they did, I would have had to at least consider the possibility until today. Today, my right leg started doing that Little Richard jiggle, the one that Elvis hijacked and attacked our mothers with. Today, my shoulders began to dip, making my backbone flip. Today, I didn't need a nap after my second cup of coffee. It's not that I'm financially clear all of a sudden, or that all of my insecurities and unfathomable quandaries have broken like fog. It's just that I can feel it. Really feel it. 2006 is upon us.

Yes, 2006 feels quite right. I've had some good years, one or two that were outstanding, and some others that were gear-whacked by presidential malfeasance, incompetent palm-readers, untimely discoveries, deep and direct tragedy, and all the rest. But I've never seen the kind of potential in a calendar year that I see in this one ahead. The best case scenarios seem close, on this side of the Great Divide. Of course, the worst happening is always a possibility. Poisonous ironies like undead mutants will come alive, knocking like a thousand Mormon preachers on a single door. But not this time -- don't think so. This is 2006. And 2006 is another word for awesome.

The following is a retrospective, beginning in the seventh grade. An expectation level (low, fair, pretty good, grandiose) is followed by the actual outcome level, followed by a couple of details that made that year what it turned out to be. Maybe a pattern will develop. Maybe I'll know more about my life. Maybe 2006 will lose some of its prospective sheen. Maybe the endeavor will suck to high heaven. Maybe it'll be gold. Here goes.

1987 -- Expectations: fair. Outcome: pretty good. Details: Expectations were tempered by the fact that I was still working myself out of chubby phase, nothing major, but just kind of waiting for a growth spurt to straighten out the torso because, frankly, laying off the chili-cheese dogs, Mello-Yello, and microwave pizzas wasn't going to happen. Also, my science teacher convinced me I had Hepatitis C because, you see, I hadn't always washed my hands after peeing, and that's what caused the disease. Hypochondria 101 -- religion-based health class! The outcome was brighter than expected because the growth spurt arrived, and I managed to have a fledgling romance toward the latter part of the year. Really honed my having-her-friends-tell-her-I-really-liked-her skills.
1988-- Expectations: grandiose. Outcome: fair. Details: Expectations were huge what with my newfound lady skills and towering height. Also, went with a new "flat-top" haircut that I personally thought was the bomb. Outcome was so-so. The hairdo was widely mocked, but in kind of a behind the scenes way, which meant that I didn't even know it was considered a little lame so I continued to sport it. Also, it seems that I had a bit of a fuzz-stache before I shaved for the first time the next year. That shave was at least 9 months late, and its delay may have cost me.
1989 -- Expectations: fair. Outcome: pretty good. Details: Expectations took a beating from the disappointments of the year before. Also, new school with a strange country-boy vibe and subpar cafeteria. Outcome was on the good side mainly because the family scene just continued to be so solid. Living in that house in those years with those people and that cat was more than anyone deserved.

Okay, jumping Ahead

1993 -- Expectations: Grandiose. Outcome: Awesome. Details: Freshman year at college. Expectations were high due to sheer number of cuties walking the lawns. Also, had momentum from seeing the last of a high-school era deli job. Outcome was, quite frankly, awesome. Saw my future wife across a crowded auditorium on the first day. Pulled all-nighter preparing initial come-on line. Used it the following evening to good effect. Partied that night with her and friends. Found out she had a boyfriend. Said, "Everyone has a boyfriend." Remark's overtone sparked laughter. Forced to take a spot in line. Eventually -- though much, much later -- got in.
1996 -- Expectations: Grandiose. Outcome: Poor. Details: Looked to continue a positive three year run. Felt I had "world on a string." Was wrong. Love affair with the cheap wine, "Mad Dog," had reached a tipping point. Scenes of attempted drunken romance included climbing a tree at midnight that leaned out over a very big river and falling off a branch into deep, murky water -- could have died. My thinking was: she'll like me if she sees I can climb. Scenes of drunken lechery included angrily clearing out a bar's patio furniture after being told that the Grateful Dead cover band "Strawberry Jam" would not be making it to the gig through the snow -- demanding they be sent a car and eventually offering to pick them up myself, asking, "Where do they live?" Later wondering what patio furniture was doing out in the middle of a snowstorm. Basically, 1996 was a turning point.
2000 -- Expectations: Pretty Good. Outcome: Poor. Details: Expectations were running high, but crummy outcome was quickly presaged. Waylaid in Arkansas by freak blizzard on a trip to New Mexico. Hounded by snowmobiles on slow, all-night trip through the Ozarks. Message was clear. If you stop your car or slide off the road, you're done. I thought it possible they were just helping people, but was nevertheless scared witless. Albuquerque was thieves and drifters and, in my building anyway, Mexican whores. Soon, headed back east. Moved into new apartment against wife's better judgment. Battled deranged landlord to allow installation of cable in time for first presidential debate. It was the infamous Al Gore "sigh-fest." Beloved dog lept to her death from our third-story window. I continue to suspect foul play. Florida vote-counting debacle and its horrifying conclusion. I'll say no more.
2003 -- Expectations: Fair. Outcome: Pretty Good. Details: Adopted George Bush's strategy of attempting to outpace very modest expectations. Nice results. Having married the previous year, life began to take a more definite shape. Parents sold childhood home, moved to the Olympic bomber area of the Appalachian mountains. Watched and listened to, with dismay, "shock and awe." Lost remaining faith in America's ethics. Forged a couple lasting friendships. Rediscovered nature on the outskirts of the big city. Found a calling.
2004 -- Expectations: Poor. Outcome: Fair. Details: Sudden death of loved one early in the year cast a pall into the foreseeable future. No "But he would have wanted us to be happy" would really suffice. Search for greater meaning kicked into higher gear. That said, long-time infatuation with Red Sox continued, all the way to the World Series. But I'd have traded their impossible win for a decent campaign by John Kerry. "So, knowing what you know now, would you still have voted to authorize this war?" "Well, yes...." I know the politics of war and domestic security hinge on narrowness and fear but GOOD GOD, MAN! And I say to Hilary Clinton now, GOOD GOD, WOMAN! Is Karl Rove now running both parties while running from the law? It was the same political advisor -- the one telling you not to admit your mistake now that advised you to grant this con-man authority to make war then. Fire him!!!!!!!!!! And if that advisor was your own intellect, CALL IT A DAY, MY FRIEND! The year ended with a hard-fought game of 20 questions on New Year's Eve.
2005 -- Expectations: Fair. Outcome: Pretty good. Details: Although Bush was talking mandate and "political capital" very early in the year, a bright sun had already risen to melt the frozen tundra of my post-election soul. I found out my wife was pregnant in January. She gave birth to a healthy daughter in September. Her journey into being was a happy awakening for my wife and I, and her young life has been a miracle. Neverending props go to my wife -- anyone who's witnessed childbirth and early motherhood firsthand probably knows why. Some will say: "What? Your first child was born and the year was not 'awesome?" To them I would say that my daughter's birth most assuredly was "awesome." But on the whole, the year was dampened a little by the sheer odiousness of Bush's political maneuverings, the revelations of just how corrupt our government and its corporate benefactors are and how deeply entrenched are their interests in the education and thought-processes of most Americans. Also, the other side of the profound joy of childbirth and fatherhood, is the apprehension, confusion, and weariness that go hand and hand with it. It's the profound joy that makes the concomittant stress bearable. Not only bearable, but something to be borne gladly.
2006 -- Expectations: Grandiose, Awesome, This is the year. For what? It's always hard to say. Look, I'm tired. It's hard to see into the future when you're propping one eye open with duck tape. But our daughter is growing, gaining a personality and I'm excited as hell about her next year. My wife and I may very well own our first house with land enough to farm in earnest, although a lot will depend on the market and what's available. There's a plan soon to be written for a very feasible business, one that spawned directly from our collective shock at its current nonexistence and its happy relationship to our own interests and our nation's environment. In politics, there's a mid-term election on the horizon. And although I've come to distrust the ability of the American electorate to vote in its best interest, I see conditions turning fair for the punting of a whole bunch of scumbags from our nation's halls of power, beginning with that sniveling prick, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the cherished state of my birth.

This year has great potential! As always, so much will depend on our ability to handle the difficult details of our dearest aspirations. For ourselves, our family, our country, our earth. Sitting here on the near edge of next year's operable fate -- I'm feeling oddly confident. Here's to you having an awesome year too!

The Well-Thrown Pencil and Other Fond Yuletide Memories

2005-12-27T02:05:00.000-08:00

So this was Christmas. The most wonderful time of the year! Besides most of spring, all of summer, and early to mid autumn, perhaps. But nonetheless, it's always a good time to reflect on the importance of giving and to reach for the people in your life you want most to embrace -- maybe offer them a well-wrapped token of your love, bake them chocolate chip cookies, or just get them stone drunk. At its best, Christmas is about celebration.

But this year was a departure for me, for us. Due to difficult circumstances arising in the few weeks that led into the holidays, my wife, daughter, dog, and I were forced to spend Christmas by ourselves, in Boston, in our warm-lit, book-littered apartment that we cherish so much. So I thought I'd set down a few things that made this particular Christmas something special to us, despite our self-imposed group exile, hundreds of miles from our nearest kin.

Number one: we were able to toss together a good Christmas Eve dinner. When I say "we" I mean my wife, Lauren. Cabbage casserole, mushroom pie, cauliflower concoction, baked tofu (for her), maple-smoked ham (for me), and chocolate-chip almond biscotti with coffee afterward. Lauren's a devout vegetarian, so I had to plead for that ham. She made one or two gestures of disgust -- rather dramatic -- but not too bad. And ham's not really something that I often plead for. It's just that growing up, we always had a big juicy ham on Christmas Eve. I can see my dad slicing it right now. He would slice off a huge piece and it would flop neatly on the plate. He would slice another smaller piece that never made it to the plate. By the time he sliced enough ham to serve the gathering, he'd have eaten about a half-pound.

Lauren cooked a delicious meal that we ate as our baby daughter looked on and as our dog staked out the floor below, knowing that I almost always get careless with the fork, sooner or later. She eventually got her share and loped off to sleep. We opened our presents (thanks again!) with a glass of wine and some Bill Evans playing in the background. We toasted to our good fortune -- the baby had nodded off smoothly, and the rest of the night was ours to do with what we would. We were asleep in ten.

Christmas day began with a good breakfast -- Lauren's special oatmeal chocolate-chip pancakes
and an organic Anjou pear. We were rushing around to prepare for an outreach program we'd volunteered for. Lauren writes well about it on her site. During the ten-minute outreach orientation, the speaker mentioned that the oldest participant in the program (holiday visits to the elderly) was ninety-four years old. Lauren arched a brow and I thought "wow!" But when we received our package detailing who we'd be spending time with and where, it explained that her birth year was 1907. A little math later, we'd gathered that, if what we read were true, then she was ninety-eight and far and away the oldest participant in the program, perhaps in the history of the program. I felt adrenalized. Either this birth-date was an error, or we had ourselves a meeting with a ninety-eight year old diamond in the rough. The orientation speaker had made quite a stir when he mentioned that someone so old -- ninety-four -- took part in the program. He laughed as if to say: "Beat that! That's one old buzzard that one of you will be visiting today!" It was as though he were introducing the event's main attraction. So when I learned that we may have a visit in store with someone who made that ninety-four year old he spoke of look like Anne of Green Gables, I was obviously intoxicated. I thought of the call I would have to make informing the organizers of the program that, in fact, they were mistaken about the oldest living participant. That in fact, you're oldest living participant is closing in on triple digits, we're sitting right here next to her, and she would like to have a word with you -- uh, here you go.

Well, we arrived at the nursing home; she was definitely ninety-eight (miracle!) and we shared a nice time. It was amazing to imagine, from what she said about her past, all of the collected thoughts and all of the better moments that were alive behind her sightless eyes. May you fare well, Robena. You are amazing.

The day after Christmas, two things happened that are worthy of comment. In the morning, stationed as we so often are on different sides of the living room (one at the computer, one reading or writing on the couch), Lauren -- who was on the couch -- called for a pen to mark a book's phrase that had interested her. I suggested she used a pencil for I had purchased too many used-books that I'd opened later only to read something like "Nietzche needs to get laid!" scrawled on the margin somewhere. She agreed and I reached for a pencil. At well over six-feet tall with long, creaky legs, I would always rather toss something over than rise to deliver it by hand. I suppose it has something to do with my background in sports as well. I enjoy throwing things here and there, testing my accuracy. In this case, almost without thinking, I took the pencil with my left hand and lobbed it gently in her direction. Now, throwing a pencil with its sharp point and difficult aerodynamics is a tricky thing. Similar to a pair of scissors, it's not something that you should throw directly at someone; the possibility of the pointy side landing first is too great. The soft ricochet is called for, preferably from a pillow or cushion. And this is just the way I played it. The pencil bounced softly from a pillow to her right directly into her right hand in the perfect position with which to write. It was as though it had been there all along. It was a flawless throw -- probably one in a million. Neither of us could quite believe that it happened, and we had a good laugh. I only wished that my dad or my brother, two people who might have truly savored the improbability of such a moment, were here to witness it. As it was, my daughter hadn't the slightest inkling, and Lauren very soon hinted that it was time to move on.

The second thing worth mentioning has to do with holding one's tongue. Since Thanksgiving, when I used the word "ejaculate" in a conversation with Lauren's family at dinner, I've been working hard at self-censorship. It's not that I'm lewd or that I go around making people uncomfortable, but every once in a while I say something that, although I would be happy to hear it, is pretty darn inappropriate given a certain context. Today, we were a little bored and thought we'd take advantage of some post-Christmas bargains -- make exchanges, cash in a gift card, etc. When we pulled up on the entrance to the parking garage at "The Atrium", we noticed that there were two halted lines of traffic, coming from different directions, that converged on a single lane going in. It was a classic one and one situation. One car enters from one direction, the next car from the other -- systematic, democratic. So when it was my turn, I tried to pull in but the driver directly behind the last car headed me off and followed him in. That's strange. Hmm, must be a prick, I thought! The next guy would surely see that I had waited long enough and let me have my turn to enter. But no! He damn near glued himself on the bumper in front of him and tried to go in. I had had enough and I nudged up, making it clear that if he was going through, he'd have to go through my left headlight. Yet he inched forward again. I put my window down motioning for him to do the same. I kept saying, "Dude, it's one and one!" and when he finally lowered his window, I argued my case as strongly as I knew how. He agreed with my point, said he thought I had attempted to circumvent the line -- I said I had not -- and he waved me through. But Lauren was not totally pleased with the outcome. Apparently, when I thought I was saying, "Dude, it's one and one!" what I was actually saying was, "It's one and one, asshole!" He hadn't heard me say that because his window was down, but it's likely that had he heard me, he never would have waved me pleasantly through as he did, even flashing me the peace sign. So it was a message well-received. The difference between bombing the shit out of someone and calling them an asshole is only a matter of degree. Ultimately, both would seem to make a bad situation quite worse.

Thanks to my wonderful wife, our beautiful daughter, a fine meal, the oldest participant, a well tossed pencil, and a lesson in self-censorship, this truly was a Christmas to remember!

Failed Omnibus Schemes, Eskimos with Caviar Dreams...

2005-12-22T02:09:00.000-08:00

Looks like the drill-or-die-tryin' crowd could use a pacemaker.

Could someone please tell me how, in a battle between the oil industry with their manifold well-bribed minions and the conservationists with their scenic photographers and forest-green patagonia fleeces, the conservationist guys keep winning all the major battles? Nevermind, I'm not sure I need to know -- just keep bringing home the bacon. These are W's our nation can use.

Today's "no-nunca" vote on an omnibus defense-bill with ANWR drilling attached proved once again that there's at least one issue that Democratic Senators can get fired up about. Of course, despite its latest legislative defeat, drilling in the arctic refuge will most likely resurface before next year's mid-terms -- industry interests have simply fought for too long, and have invested too much money in the lobbying effort to abandon their quest -- but it looked like this was the best opportunity for its passage in a long while -- hitching, as it was, like a surly beatnick on the back of defense spending, border patrol, home heating, and Katrina relief.

I take heart in the latest show of resolve by the Senate Dems with regard to ANWR. But, having done just a little research on the issue, its origin and history, and the actors involved, I have the overwhelming feeling that we'll be talking about defending the refuge's 19,000,000 acres of undeveloped northern Alaskan wilderness for a long, long time. So I thought I'd include a few rather illuminating links that I came across, in the hope that it may start a discussion about the ANWR issue -- its history, the future of the debate, and the broader context of environmental defense verse industry/state interests.

First, here are the official websites of Alaska's three most powerful politicians -- all of whom flex most of their political muscle on the industry side of the ANWR issue. Note that in 2002, Frank Murkowski easily won the governorship of Alaska, and elected to appoint his daughter, Lisa, to fill his vacant Senate seat.

Here is information about Oliver Leavitt, a key lobbyist for drilling in ANWR, who also happens to be an Inupiat Eskimo. Linked also, is information about the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, a powerful natural resources group purporting to protect the business interests of northern slope Inupiats. Detailed here is an absurd press conference including, among others, Leavitt and Senator Ted Stevens.

Click here for a good overview of who's arguing what and from what perspective on this issue.

Here are a few more sites giving the ecological view. And another site with information about the Vuntut Gwich'in, a local indigenous tribe that opposes drilling.

Finally, I'll include a fairly funny little piece by Paul K. Driessen, an author who blames environmental catastrophe on environmentalists and writes on behalf of the Center For Defense of Free Enterprise.

There's a lot to chew on with regard to the debate about ANWR. I admit that I tend to see this issue as little more than a treasure hunt by the wealthiest interests on the planet in one of our few pristine American ecosystems. What's great about it is that I fully appreciate the level of frustration industry must feel being stonewalled by Porcupine Caribou and migratory birds, not to mention the environmental defense lobby and the will of most Americans. But I'm trying to understand other points of view. Not Exxon's point of view -- that's obvious -- but particularly the feelings of Alaskan citizens, a majority of whom support opening ANWR to drilling, and also native groups, some of which likewise support exploration.

A Picture From Life's Other Side

2005-12-18T12:02:00.000-08:00

I was on one of those rolls, the kind where in the end you hit a rock wall. It had snowed in Boston the day before; the snow had turned briefly to sleet and then to rain before turning back into snow after dusk. My three-month old daughter was in her crib, coughing like Uncle Ralph from a barbarian cold-bug she'd caught during her first visit with her relatives a week or so before. I was standing outside with my dog, waiting for her to squat -- I would be waiting a while. I calculated with vexation that the temperature had dropped in the fifteen minutes I'd been out, and I cursed the wind that had begun to freeze my inappropriately dressed arse. An SUV hurtled into the parking lot next to my building and although the windows were up, I could still enjoy the gangsta-rap they were playing inside. It was Jeff, the son of a volatile tenant who lived just behind us and whose pit-bull was canina-non-grata in the neighborhood due to a couple of ferocious attacks on a pair of snickerdoodles or cockapoodles -- cute, smaller dogs that lived across the street . Jeff was a budding hooligan who limped around with a posse of disaffected rich kids who seemed to think they were Public Enemy. But they were friendly for the most part. As a driver, Jeff was an accelerator/braker. You'd hear him coming from way off, not only from the "music," but because he would rev it to about forty and then slam the brakes each time he needed to slow down -- just a fun addition to any neighborhood, especially one with kids in it. Of course, this type of maneuver didn't work as well in the ice or snow. His SUV skidded and slid through the parking lot as it came in, nearly going sideways into a row of cars before gaining control. And although he almost bought his daddy the repair bills on a couple of fairly expensive cars, you could hear him as he turned his engine off and got out: "DAMN!" and one his friends with him, laughing: "OH, SHIT!" This crew was always having a great time. You kind of had to give it to them. But I had been in a sour mood, and was ready for once to play the role of outraged neighbor. I decided to confront them, but was rescued from that utter futility by a dog and her owner who had just come by. The dog was one of my dog's true favorites, and this meant I could add another five minutes to the arctic bathroom break. Normally, I would have been glad to see the pair who had walked up, but my mood was bad and worsening. It didn't help that I desperately needed to blow my nose from the cold that I could feel was coming on -- the box of tissues on my sleeve was all used up. I muttered something apologetic and got back in the house.

After a night of personal discomfort and intense worry for my daughter, I woke up to find things were a little better. Her smile had returned which told me she would be fine. There was coffee on, and although I couldn't smell it, I could at least know that "help was on the way." God, what a lame political slogan! Things were running along until I was informed that "if we didn't finish our holiday shopping today we'd never get the packages out on time." These words stung because I knew them to be true. What would I do without my wife's little pieces of crucial information? For one thing, a lot of nieces and nephews would be wondering why Santa chose to drop off certain Christmas presents on January 3rd. But I was soon ready to go. Although I dreaded almost any excursion that included boutique shopping, I had laced them up, strapped our girl in the bjorn, and was tossing around pillows and papers in a manic search for the keys.

Outside, the situation was grim. Temperatures had hit record lows. Not for Boston where we were, but definitely for someplace like Chattanooga. Anyway, point is, it was 14 degrees with a stiff headwind -- very bad. Despite that, we managed to shop in five stores, all within reasonable walking distance, and got the job done. Frankly, I was amazed. There would have been a feeling of relief walking home were it not for the brutal wind and the fact that, since my own face was frozen red from the cold, it probably meant that our daughter, though well-insulated, still shouldn't be out here. We decided to double-time the last half-mile home, but it was hard going as the sidewalks were frozen over with mounds of rock snow and city grit. The gifts we were carrying were suddenly unbearably heavy and starting to seem like an unnecessary burden, something to be tossed overboard for the sake of the crew's survival. But we pushed on. I felt the tips of my toes going a little numb and panicked, suddenly recalling a historical documentary I had seen that detailed the Donner party's ill-fated sojourn across the Sierra Nevada in winter which eventually devolved into cannibalism. Though we were moving as fast as we could and were quite close to home, I actually wondered what price we would pay for being so arrogant in our youth to think that we could brave these conditions with bad colds and a baby attached.

Up ahead, I could see that something or someone was blocking the sidewalk and that there was nowhere to pass. Incredibly, there was street construction going on to the left and just a tiny avenue for cars to sneak through. To the right, there was a huge rock wall for the next fifty yards or so. The wind blew, and I could almost see Zeus grinning as he bent down to blow frigid air in our faces. As we approached what was obstructing the walk and as I tried to make out what it was and how it could be hustled along or cajoled to the side, a vision of desperation and sodden indignity seemed to slowly emerge from the color of the road, from the windswept trash and half-frozen dirt puddles, and from the sharp, sinking skies into perhaps the clearest picture of sadness I have ever seen.

It was a hunched man with a shopping cart and we stopped before him, no way to get by. We couldn't see his face, as his back was turned to us, but we could see enough. He was wearing old high-top sneakers, untied and loose, virtually treadless, that were soaked. The cart he was struggling to push down the unshoveled sidewalk -- with some success -- had wheels that looked as though they would soon come off. The cart was filled with metal scraps, a couple of small broken ladders and what looked like siding from a house. To us, there was nothing in that cart. Trash, stuff you could trip over in the city if you weren't careful. He had gathered it and it was his treasure. He pushed it slowly along over ridges of ice and dirt. I wanted to see his face. His hood blew back and was not replaced. His hair didn't even move in the wind. His pants, which were a mustard color, were frozen to the inside of his legs, presumably because he had relieved himself in the freezing air, inside them. His jacket was nothing in that weather. Yet he pushed on to nowhere, to no sanctuary. Eventually, the sidewalk broadened and we passed him. I saw his face but looked at it rather indirectly. It was as though he -- with all the determination of his struggle -- were asleep, somewhere beyond here and before oblivion.

I had already been thinking of Woody Guthrie thanks to a post from Andrea at SGTCC about topical music, and particularly his song, "A Picture From Life's Other Side." But thinking about that song hadn't kept me from wallowing in the discomfort of minor illness, unpleasant weather and come hell or highwater holiday shopping. Seeing this man push a battered shopping cart filled with junk into the teeth of a bitter wind to a destination I couldn't even imagine, did. It turned my self-pity into hard self-examination, and blew up my heart till I was groping for all the reasons why I couldn't look directly into the eyes of everything I saw. I heard the song again in my head but this time I was inside it. The man with the cart seemed beyond it, both on and somehow past the other side. He was showing me life as Woody had sought to portray it; as Woody had so often seen it in his rambles from coast to coast. His songs, even the comical ones, were mostly hung with these terrible pictures to the point that "life's other side" became the side we found ourselves on.

We should all have these pictures on the wall this holiday season. The carols and the twinkling time-honored symbols of mirth and plenty are so valuable. They give us strength and comfort in ourselves and each other, an easy bond with a feel-good tradition. We're fortunate to have them if we have them. But another picture needs to be remembered, even as we celebrate the things that bring us authentic joy. For me, it's a vision of a guy with nothing and no place to go, who's still struggling with all he's got to get there. It's a "picture from life's other side" -- a gift of perspective, and a clarion call for compassionate action.

It's a picture from life's other side,

Somebody has fell by the way.

And a light has gone out with the tide,

That might have been happy someday.

Some poor mother at home,

Is watching and waiting alone.

Longing to hear from her loved on so dear,

It's a picture from life's other side.

Woody Guthrie

Emissions Protection Agency

2005-12-15T22:34:00.000-08:00

Meet Jeffrey Holmstead. Jeffrey was former associate counsel for George H. W. Bush in charge of environmental policy and a partner, from 1993-2000 for the Washington law firm Latham & Watkins. While working for Bush, Jeff's job was to work with Congress to weaken the Clean Air Act by limiting regulation of the utility companies. At Latham, Jeff's job was to defend polluters like Montrose Chemical, and pollution-promoting organizations like the American Farm Bureau Federation, and the Alliance for Constructive Air Policy. Defend them from whom? From pesky little outfits like the Environmental Protection Agency.

When Bush Jr. took office in 2000, he wanted to reward Jeffrey for his lifetime of achievement in environmental debauchery by offering him a job in his administration. (The following is only a simulation of what Bush may have been thinking.) "Let's see: Secretary of Burying the Treasury? Got someone there. Hmm, Secretary of Missile Defense? Oh, that's Rummy. Uh, let's see...Secretary of Unskilled Labor? That's Elaine Cho, or Ellen Chow something. Gotta figure that one out. Secretary of Crawford Public Relations? Secretary of CPR. Hey, that's funny. That's one of those uh, double entandroids. Well anyway, that's Hughes. What about uh, Emissions Protection? Gotta be some openings up there. Oh, lookyhere. Worked for Latham. And my daddy. This Holmstead's great. God I love his name. Just love to say it. Holmstead. Kinda reminds me of the Homestead Act. That was some good legislation right there. Newt could sure get things done. Where the hell is Newt? Hey Cheney, what ever happened to Gingrich?"

At the end of the day, Holmstead was appointed Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation at the EPA. His title sounds weak: Assistant Administrator. But, a quick look at his official job description reveals the weight of his authority: "In charge of all activities at EPA's Office of Air and Radiation -- including programs addressing global climate change, industrial and vehicle pollution, acid rain, stratospheric ozone depletion, radiation protection, and indoor air quality." This guy was given a full plate. And he dumped it in the trash.

What Holmstead has done for the last five years is protect and promote the policies of the very industries he was put in charge to regulate. His job is one of oversight and enforcement -- making sure corporations comply with regulations set forth in the Clean Air Act, punishing corporations that choose to run afoul of those regulations, those laws. Instead, he has shepherded the biggest polluters, some of whom he worked closely with in his capacity as defense attorney at Latham & Watkins, through the political mine-fields of citizens preferring not to choke after a two mile jog. Beginning with the bogusly named Clear Skies Iniatitive, which, had it been implemented, would have significantly increased levels of toxic pollutants emitted into the atmostphere, the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation has been an eager accomplice to the worst environmental law-breakers. Following his attempt to replace the Clean Air Act with emission rubber-stamping, an ensuing attempt by Holmstead and the EPA to allow industry to pump more dangerous toxins into the American bread-basket is very well documented here and here. It would be considered absurd were it not shown to be true: Holmstead using language, in writing and defending EPA policy, that he may have personally written while defending big polluters against the EPA in his last job.

Here's the latest attempt to further corrode our children's lungs. A few excerpts:

The agency [EPA] said in September it wants to reduce its 'regulatory burden' on companies by allowing some to use a 'short-form' when they report their pollution to the GPA's Toxics Release Inventory.

Oh, so they just want to save a few trees by lessening the amount of paper-work for companies to fill out! Not entirely:

Changes would exempt companies from disclosing their toxic pollution if they claim to release fewer than 5,000 pounds of a specific chemical -- the current limit is 500 pounds -- or if they store it on site but claim to release 'zero' amounts of the worst pollutants.

Our EPA officials (hello Jeffrey!) are quick to console:

...communities will still know about the types of toxic releases, but not some of the details about how each chemical was managed or released.

Hmm, those unnecessary little details -- perhaps the type of details that would aid in a lawsuit filed by someone whose had their life sucked away by the criminal negligence of corporate polluters?

I suppose the day will come when the majority of Americans begin to understand how the hand's been dealt by the Bush administration. When it comes to our many federal agencies -- those benevolent bureaucracies ostensibly created to maintain law and order, and to safeguard the public trust from the runaway greed and exploitative thrust of industries governed only by profit -- there is less and less distinction between the men and women in the hallowed halls of our government and those behind the thick doors of the corporate boardroom. The Environmental Protection Agency, whose mission it is to protect our natural places, our air, our water, our remaining forests, etc, from negligent use for profit and thereby protect all of us from possible egregious harm, is now a corporate mouthpiece arguing for the rollback of status quo environmental protections in the face of an increasingly concerned public. Well, it seems that we're all just screwed.

Well, maybe not. There's a long list of fierce and effective advocates for our environment in lieu of crippled agencies like the EPA. And just so this post doesn't leave you with too noxious a taste of how things are and the direction they're headed, check out this debate between Robert Kennedy Jr. and that so-called moderate Republican former governor and head of the EPA during much of Bush's first term, Christine Todd Whitman. We all have an enormous stake in the battle over our planet's future. And we've got a couple of pretty strong warriors on our side. If enough of us join the skirmish, we've got a fighting chance.

Take Two Rummies and Call Me in the Morning

2005-12-14T18:14:00.000-08:00

My head is a fifty pound sand-bag; my sinuses are stuffed with cheese whiz; no, Natalie Merchant, these are not the days to remember; these are the days to meditate far, far away from. But in my misery it occurred to me that, even if I can't think well enough to write more than a few sickly sentences, I can still contribute in my small way to all those super- true "conspiracy theories" flying around about Bush, his staff, and their Orwellian plot to corner the market on everything in the frigging world. Did anyone else know about this?

The Cost of Junk Freedom: Part I

2005-12-10T00:19:00.000-08:00

Of the many sour visions I behold whenever the phrase "war on terror" comes plunging from the mouths of our elected officials, one is particularly constant and rueful. It is a vision of Osama Bin Laden wearing a star-spangled #43 jersey with "W" on the back watching a plasma screen perched on a cave wall, pumping his fists wildly during every Bush address on Iraq. He's on his way out, frail and fading -- in fact, the only thing keeping him alive, and so energized, is the deep satisfaction and almost guilty pleasure he derives from watching this administration carry his agenda forward like a proverbial pig-skin toward his end-zone of world-wide fundamentalist insurgency. He wanted us to "bring freedom" to the Middle East. He wanted an unwise move from our government in their "war on terror" and the Iraq Group gave him the foreign policy equivalent of a husband agreeing to go on Dr. Phil at the behest of his spouse.

Recently, I installed this counter on my blog after having seen it on another one. It's a way to be aware of the financial burden we've undertaken in order to, in my opinion, boost Bin Laden's agenda by drawing down in Afghanistan and elsewhere to invade Iraq. But it only hints at what it's cost America in terms of its reputation abroad and it's preparedness for unforeseen challenges at home and around the globe.

From the very first fireball of "shock and awe," Iraq became a dark alley of the American soul. As a nation, we had allowed the pre-war debate to skid by. In an atmosphere of ambivalence and confusion about Saddam's capacity to harm, many of us (politicians and dog-walkers alike) passively or actively condoned full-scale invasion and occupation. Now, under the interrogation of our own collective conscience, our nation is beginning to sing the blues. We're beginning to say: "We disapprove of the president's handling of this war." What we need to say is that we disapprove of this war. We (and our representatives) need to say we fucking hate this war and try to remove America's foot from the biggest pile of policy dung this side of Saigon. Our leaders would like us to think that getting off a dead horse mid-stream would show weakness. But Iraq is not a metaphorical stream. Iraq is a sand-storm blowing the scent of burnt flesh and reckless devastation worldwide. Of course, seeing the administration for the profiteering clan it is and demanding wiser leadership in a period of turmoil is not weakness. Much of the world, far from enjoying our spectacle of self-defeat, stands waiting for us to regain our footing by booting this egregious assemblage of legislators, party hacks, and lobbyists out the door of influence and into the "dustbin of history" -- otherwise known as the "sidewalk of silly think-tanks." Only then will our nation stop bleeding lives and dollars and self-respect.

Well before September 11th, Osama Bin Laden, from somewhere inside a bedraggled complex of Afghan huts, coordinated an attack on America that killed 3,000 people, threw our economy briefly off-stride, and nicked our infrastructure. Since 9/11, we've killed and maimed tens of thousands more, sunk our own economy deep into debt, and created conditions, by virtue of the administration's inattention (Katrina, port security, securing nuclear weapons abroad) or suddenly scarce resolve and resources (social security, education, healthcare) that are ripe for catastrophe. In a world that runs on capital both institutional and personal, America is suddenly short on both. And the loanshark's are quietly circling.

I believe that Osama Bin Laden is now choreographing his end-zone dance. And instead of "staying the course" and allowing him to jitterbug all over the American flag, we need to get the hell off the mine-field we're on.

I plan on following this post up, in time, with a series of pieces hinging on what I perceive to be the spiralling-up cost of our spiralling-down foreign policy. I'm particularly interested in how this episode has altered America's opinion of itself and what that means for us as a nation going forward. I'm not an expert on foreign or domestic policy. I'm just someone who's bewildered and somewhat sickened, attempting to keep score at home. I'm deeply concerned about our country's leadership, Democrat and Republican. Examining the motivations for an administration making bad policy or a Congress enacting bad legislation is a topic that fascinates me because I tend to believe that intelligent people make (what they believe are) intelligent decisions based on a rational assessment of their own or some affiliated party's interests. So what seems to just be run-of-the-mill crap decision-making by public officials is almost always the sober and deliberate deliverance of pay-back that, if deconstructed, points to the undue influence of a third party or parties -- and I'm not talkin about old Bob down at the Bait shop. I'm talking about Abramoff, Exxon, Halliburton, Blackwater, etc, etc, etc -- big money and their lobbyists who worry little about the lives of most Americans. What's unduly influencing our leaders helps to lead us, through their kick-back decision-making, wildly astray. So what am I saying? That corporate influence in Washington has run amok and is really bad for America? Sort of (look, I'm struggling to keep these internal dialogues to a minimum) What I'm saying is that corporate influence in Washington is sabotaging our democracy because it's actually managing much of the decision-making process of our elected leaders -- many of whom have been polished and peddled to us by a media largely governed by huge corporations. In effect, we're no longer electing popular representatives, we're electing corporate personnel. The market winners have usurped the democratic process to the detriment of non-shareholders, ie, a growing number of Americans. But more on this later.

Shooting in the Refuge

2005-12-08T17:44:00.000-08:00

The other day I saw something that amazed me: a father and his two children at a playground near Evansburg State Park in a distant suburb of Philadelphia dressed head to toe in bright "don't shoot me!" orange. I had been driving around the area, admiring the still somewhat rural country, looking for reasons to be enthusiastic about a possible move from Boston, my home for the last eight years, back to my old stomping grounds -- the Skippack Creek area of Montgomery County, PA. Driving down one slow, winding road after another, it seemed like every time I looked out into the fields that tumbled into the distance, that were separated by groves of trees or thick brush corridors, I saw orange men in groups of two or three fanning out across them, or sometimes crouching still near wood's edge as though they expected to surprise an animal. I even stopped the car to watch one group as they ran awkwardly through a two-acre plot of woods. Was hunting in suburbia simply a matter of flushing helpless animals out of their last hiding places? As I accelerated out of there, I was straddling the fence between the happiness I felt having seen only three new, sprawling sub-divisions in the last five miles and the unease brought on by having seen a good fifty or so hunters in that stretch. They were crowded in like Christmas shoppers.

It reminded me of a day-trip I recently took to the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island in Massachusetts. Plum Island is a well-known stop-over for migratory birds, some of which are rarely seen in the US. The single two-lane road that meanders to the tip of the island is often lined with the parked cars, especially near small, salty ponds called "salt pans", of bird enthusiasts eager to notch a glimpse of a "lifebird" or simply to appreciate birds in their relatively pristine environment. As I stood there, soulfully appreciating the diversity of bird species -- Grasshopper Sparrow, Oriole, Bluebird, Hooded Merganser, Lesser Scaup, etc -- I was distracted by the quick, repeating crack-crack of what I assumed was some kind of epic road construction miles off. The sound returned and returned again, rousing me from my thrall (a pair of Snowy Egrets had arrived!). I was soon informed that the sporadic repeat I heard in the distance was in fact gunfire. It turns out that this wildlife sanctuary doubled, a little further down the road, as a reserve for bird hunters. It seems that at Parker River, they have created a nice refuge for wildlife to have lunch and mingle before they face the firing squad.

Back in PA, at my brother's house sitting around with some old friends, I was told by one of them that he was thinking of getting his license to hunt deer for the following season in Bucks County. He'd never hunted before, but had been turned on to the good taste of venison and its many culinary uses by a friend of his. He was particularly fond of venison sausage. He told me about the over-abundance of deer in the area; how they were eating everyone's lettuce and shrubs and damaging too many fenders. It was a shame, but we had done away with their natural predators, he said, and someone had to fill that void. Yes, there were armed fops out there, some of whom disdain regulation and collect rifles for the dip-shit revolution and to shoot pheasants with, but there were many more who respected the laws of the land, who took their alotted share of game with reverance for their prey and left, thankful for the abundance of good, free-range meat. He'd done some thinking. And, although in the past he was in no hurry to fire a gun, much less try to kill a wild animal in full stride, he thought he'd give it a go.

No problem. Is it a problem? It's hard to say. As a personal matter, short of the necessity of my or my family's needing to kill our meat for our survival, I wouldn't think to shoot a wild animal. I tend to see them as gifts, as revelations of nature's grandeur, not as irksome pests -- even as they do crazy things like cross a highway in the middle of traffic (for the love of God, look both ways!). But that's my personal stance because I'm not sure where the line between our managing nature and our destroying it really is. And I'm not a farmer whose harvest and livelihood are threatened by a cascading deer population (for being so numerous they're still remarkably difficult to see). And I'm not one of those who bonded with their father or brother or scout-leader many cold mornings, sipping hot-chocolate in a raised look-out, exhilarated with anticipation and fear and the comfort of his guidance. I'm not any of that. I don't relate to it, yet I've come to understand hunting as a way of life for some people, as a vanishing refuge from or antidote for the impotence one may feel having to always depend on others for the essential provision of food. Or from having to abide in a society whose laws, for the most part, frown on aggression. It's hard.

And I'm intrigued by the idea that hunters and environmentalists, traditionally on opposite sides of the political fence, are at least like-minded in their zest for preserving the land from over-development. Of course, hunters and their organizations crave access to this undeveloped land. If the historical plight of wildlife in America shows us anything, it shows us that on those wild lands where hunters have had total access, most wildlife populations, particularly predators, suffer. Which begs another question. Are hunters looking to bond with nature in ceremony of reverance and harvest, or are they looking for the biggest thrill and kill yet possible short of joining the armed forces and packing for Fallujah. Let me be clear. I'm not against thrill-seeking! But should ecosystems be preserved so men can entertain themselves with blood-sport or should they be preserved so wildlife can be guarenteed survival in their native habitat? Both equally, perhaps? Perhaps I'm denigrating hunters. But someone needs to stand up for deer and waterfowl!

As I try to muster enthusiasm for a potential move to an area that is so well endowed with the kind of American beauty I see whenever I close my eyes: rolling hills for miles, flat or sloping wood-covered and plowed ground, with small streams running slowly through and old farms pushing wood-smoke into the pale evening sky -- I find I am frightened by visions of impending sub-divisions and ruminations of a kind of deep, rural provincialism mingled with a narrow suburban utopianism. I look ahead and wonder anew at our disregard for all that is non-human. I wonder that we just won't give way for all that was here so long before us, everything and everyone that had first claim to the land. And if some group of "nature-lovers" (insert your own somehow derogatory term) comes along, purchases the land and sets it aside, not for developers or hunters or even farmers, but for biodiversity, for the ensured future health of our planet, I wonder why there is so much opposition.

Like Wendell Berry, I believe that humans are a fundamental part of nature's web of life and that land set away from humans is land that has been, in a sense, taken from us (my words); that we, as natural beings, belong to it and it to us. But I also see that we have proven ourselves awesomely negligent stewards of the land we've been given. We, through fear of competition, a need for safety, naked arrogance, or just a bad reading of ancient religious texts, have extricated ourselves from that web and have commenced to pull it down. To me, it seems clear now that some ecosystems must be completely protected from human exploitation in order to ensure their pristine existence -- it's only a matter of which ones and where.

Thinking about the tension between human and animal, civilized and wild, hunter and environmentalist, conservationist and conservationist-with-rights-to-game, I am excited about where we can go from here. Many now share the sense that something is being stolen from us, that a fraction of our core, perhaps what's most wild within us, is vanishing. We need to have wilderness around us -- we are nature, we need space. That we want to participate in that wildnerness in different ways, some active, some passive, some more or less violent, maybe shouldn't be all that surprising. What's most important for land not yet cultivated or lost to strip-malls or the next big development, is that much of it stay that way.

So when that father must dress his children in orange at the swingset, or when that Lesser Scaup, after having stopped to rest and eat in the salt pan on the way to its southern destination, must dodge rifle-fire on its way back out, perhaps it's just as well. It's the way things are; and with passionate effort, steady debate, and renewed empathy, it will only get better from here.

Pretend You're Huck Finn

2005-12-06T23:23:00.000-08:00

Shin-Pei at birdtothenorth recently linked to an article in the Washington Post called, "Silent Streams." The article details the efforts by a few citizens of Arlington County to monitor and help clean up a neighborhood stream, Donaldson Run, that had been devastated by a toxic herbicide, Basamid G, used by a local Country Club to kill subpar blades of grass. It's a wonderful, informative article that supplies hope as its narrative follows the line, not from where we were in "the olden days" before we muffed things up -- good lawd have we muffed things up -- to where we are now, but from where we were when polluters were audacious or just plain stupid enough to do things like this, to where we are now. Where are we now? Well, it seems clear that we're still face-deep in toxic dookie, but what also seems clear is that we're gaining a better understanding of the negative long-term effects of our current and past irresponsibility with regard to our natural environment. We're beginning to see the connections between healthy crayfish under rocks in our local creek to healthy water for us and our children to drink. The article says: "There are now more than 5,000 watershed and stream-protection groups around the country, most of which have cropped up in the past decade." Say what? Hot diggity!

Imagine every tiny trickle, every bubbling brook, every small stream, everything spring-fed that flows downhill being persistently looked after by a group of citizens concerned for its health! Please take a few moments and imagine that. I may be naive, but it seems to me that this article points to a movement afoot. It's a movement to secure a future for our planet's circulatory system, its watersheds. It's a movement to secure a future for our planet's wildlife. And it's a chance, one of what will be many, for people to use their ingenuity for rescue and survival to rescue an ecosystem in threat for the sake of all who depend on it, whether they be golfers or crayfish.

Link here, here, here, and here, for a few organizations that are leading the effort to clean up our streams. And if you've ever walked next to a creek and marvelled at its beauty or its sound or its perfect direction, roll up your pants one day -- pretend you're Huck Finn! -- and step inside. Take the time to look closely. Notice how many creatures call it home -- or how few.

To Uncle M from Baby B

2005-12-06T18:50:00.000-08:00

Uncle,

My dad says I should thank you for being a bad card player. He says that when you play cards you're contributing mightily to my college savings and also giving him a few bucks to have fun with on the side. He told me that you called someone's bluff without so much as a pair in your own hand. Did you do that! If you did, I bet it's because you're setting my dad up for the next game. Between you and me, I'm afraid my dad is too cheap to spend much money on college. He talks about his own alma mater as though it were Abu Ghraib. Maybe you could just hand me the money in the future and I could see that it gets spent wisely. That way, you wouldn't have to sit there and hear my father saying things like: "Call" or "Well lookythere I got the straight," over and over again. I know already that he likes to say things not until you've heard it but until you never want to hear it again. It must be even worse when he's in the process of taking your hard-earned money like some kind of human alternative minimum tax. Well, it's nap-time for me. I hope everything's okay. Oh, dad said that America is running out of money to do things like have dumb wars. Should you just play some cards with Dick Cheney? See ya!

B.

Another Satisfied Customer?

2005-12-01T10:45:00.000-08:00

Toward the end of Washington Post columnist Sebastion Mallaby's op-ed piece, "Progressive Wal-Mart. Really," a piece which seems to say that, by virtue of its low prices on consumer goods, Wal-Mart is the only kind of good government that America's dirt-poor needs, he nonetheless allows that:

Companies like Wal-Mart are not run by saints. They can treat workers and competitors roughly. They may be poor Stewards of the environment...Wal-Mart is at the center of the globalized, technology-driven economy that's radically increased American inequality...

But he quickly rebounds:

...globalization and business innovation are nonetheless the engines of progress; and if that sounds too abstract, think of the $200 billion-plus that Wal-Mart consumers gain annually. If critics prevent the firm from opening new branches, they will prevent ordinary families from sharing those gains. Poor Americans will be chief among the casualties.

Mallaby's article coincides nicely with that of another right-wing opionionator, John Tierney of the New York Times, an author well-known for an op-ed piece he once wrote titled, "Recycling is Garbage;" in fact, both pieces, Mallaby's and Tierney's, were printed on the same day in their respective papers (for a telling, somewhat credulous, profile of John Tierney, look here). In his very similar collection of deep thoughts about Wal-Mart's beneficence to the lowly masses, Tierney likewise ends his piece with a note of sensitivity to Wal-Mart's critics followed by a plea for the poor:

It's easy to understand the motives of some of Wal-Mart's enemies. Local merchants don't want to match its prices. Labor leaders know that they'll lose members and dues if unionized stores suffer. But why would anyone who claims to be fighting for social justice be so determined to take money out of the pockets of the poor?

Both articles try to make the tough sell that Wal-Mart's policies, while death to competition and adamantly anti-worker, are actually quite progressive because even the least fortunate among us can afford the 59 cent can of pork and beans and the four-dollar "Honk if you Honky-Tonk" t-shirt found only at Wal-Mart. Honk-honk. They get some help from Jason Furman -- a typically well-traveled economist who argues that Wal-Mart's low wages are more than offset by the titanic savings, $800/head on food alone (!), that the average American saves by shopping at Wal-Mart. Furman, as neither piece fails to mention, was once an economic advisor to Kerry's failed presidential campaign (was it he who advised Kerry to purchase that ridiculous goose-hunter costume at Wal-Mart? If so, he probably saved him a boat-load of cash!). That these articles are in lockstep mentioning Furman and his golden days with Kerry may simply point to a measured effort by these writers to supply Wal-Mart with some liberal street-cred. But that these articles offer the same case, in nearly the same words, on the same day, in America's two biggest and most respected dailies, that Wal-Mart and its cheap wonderbread is manna for America's downtrodden and that to take this food away or limit its abundance would amount to, as Tierney puts it: "a regressive new sales tax," starving these people before they reach the promised land, is a sham -- and it's mighty transparent.

"Stop, breath!" I tell myself. Wal-Mart is taking it on all sides from people like this and this. Why would they not defend themselves? Why would they not activate a couple of professional corporate apologists, assign them their mission, and direct them saying "go ye forth and multiply?" Why would they not skew or completely distort figures to aid their argument? Why would they not seek to underplay, as Mallaby does, Wal-Mart's egregious effect on working conditions in unregulated foreign countries like China, by issuing talking points to the effect of:

But no study has shown whether Wal-Mart's tactics actually do suppress wages in China or elsewhere, and suppression seems unlikely in poor countries. The Chinese garment workers are mainly migrants from farms, where earnings are even worse than at Wal-Mart's subcontractors and where the labor is still more grueling.(?)

Forget the fact that studies have shown that Wal-Mart's tactics cause wages, even in America, pronounced shrinkage. Forget that Chinese workers, migrators from oppressive rural villages though they may be, lead lives of uncompensated misery in sweatshops so America's poor can continue to flourish. Forget that wage suppression in poor countries seems very, very likely! For a company such as Wal-Mart -- a company that prospers on the backs of, not just poor Americans with few options, but helpless humanity everywhere -- to mislead in defense of its policies, now under wide attack, is not a shock. But to be so bold as to launch a "We are the World, We are the Children, We are the Ones Who Make a Brighter Day" campaign is frankly beyond the pale.

For a good discussion of Wal-Mart's deleterious effect on America that goes beyond the pseudo-benefits of its low prices on marshmallows, try here. For a list of reasons to rally your community against this juggernaut grinding your small town into an under-paid, uninsured Wal-Mart staff, check here. For a good sense of what Wal-Mart's "progressive" business ethics do to the American countryside, simply get in your car and take a trip. Drive across America -- down into the Everglades, back up through the Ozarks or the Appalachians, out across what was once our Great American Prairie down into the scrub-land, deserts, and craggy hills of Texas, New-Mexico, and Arizona, or northwest into the Rocky Mountains and finally out to the Pacific. Mark what you see there. Do you perceive the blight of a once beautiful America pocked to the gills with its fifty acre parking lots and box-stores, its countless fast-food chains crowded next to its endlessly stretching, struggling communities on the outskirts of the gleaming Office-Parks, mc-mansions, and country-club meadows of the affluent? Or do you see the "innovation" of stores like Wal-Mart -- companies which are the "engines of progress" in our world today?

Few will argue in abstract terms, and least of all those who are at constant pains to make ends meet, that saving some money on everyday essentials is a bad thing. But is it good when the marginally lower prices of those essentials have helped to rip apart, not only the traditional way of life in small towns all around our country, but the very lives of workers at its garment-factory suppliers in China and elsewhere? Wal-Mart is progressive in a specific sense of the word. They sought and have found the forward momentum of a business giant whose rapacious greed and shameless policies always come at the long-term expense of its workers, its consumers, and -- given its keen participation in globalization's darker effects -- much of the world. Their super-sized hunger for market domination does not make them unique. But the effect of their wrecking-ball expansion through America and beyond on small businesses and small towns in America is unique. It would make all of us neighbors to a Wal-Mart Supercenter. And it would seek to make all of us into its poor, dependent customers.

Fireside Rant/ Healthy Bitching

2005-11-28T06:34:00.000-08:00

Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia thinks George Bush should host FDR-style fireside chats with the nation on the subject of Operation Iraqi Turd Blossom. Good call. Because what America eagerly awaits is a look at Bush prevaricating in his fuzzy slippers hearth-side. Efforts to communicate directly with the American living-room worked for FDR mainly because they weren't ploys, or half-baked damage control, but rather an effective means of explaining the crux of his administration's policies to the American people. America came to trust FDR's judgment because, among other reasons, he consistently proposed difficult legislation that made a positive difference in people's difficult lives. Most Americans distrust George Bush because, among other reasons, he has consistently proposed difficult legislation that has or would make most people's lives a tad less enjoyable. Of course, paid assassins of dead Democratic icons from certain intellectual brothels like this wanker argue otherwise.

The best Bush can do now is get out of the way of the American people. He's disgraced the deck of the USS Lincoln, he's disgraced the residents of Mississippi and Louisiana, and he's taken the gravitas of the Oval Office to the dumpster. He resents any American ideal not endorsed by Wall Street Journal's editorial board, and he's in the process, dismal for many Americans, of being considered as he truly is: the shifty CEO of a deeply malevolent natural resources conglomerate also known as the heart of the Republican Party. As his and his party's means to power and its desired ends of creating an invincible corporate/media trust become increasingly recognized, John Warner's suggestion of old-timey fireside chats seems less like sage advice from an honorable conservative statesman and more like a lousy PR pitch from an out-of-touch partisan recruited to help hold the line against his party's utter disintegration. But hey, who knows -- in lieu of any workable ideas on how to fix our horrific foreign policy blunders under Bush, it just may do the job.

I guess that's my little political rant for today. Incidentally, I don't feel any better. Focusing too much on the ominous political climate of our country is probably not the most therapeutic use of my time. Anyway, there are better lenses, here, here, and here, than my own through which to admire the gathering storm clouds.

Sometimes intricately entangled in, sometimes quite distant from, but always more important than the snake-pit of political warfare, are the choices that we choose to make as responsible citizens in managing our everyday lives. What's important to us and why? What are we willing to sacrifice and what are we most willing to sacrifice it for? What is our relationship to the verb form of the word, "sacrifice." Should I, in the spirit of linguistic treachery wiz Frank Luntz, use another word for sacrifice, something more pleasant like "horde"? Nah -- "sacrifice" is a word Americans should become more comfortable with. It's a word and an idea that, while it may cause slight temporary discomfort, is good for us in the end. And I'm not talking about Judgment Day. I mean that there are small choices we can make -- concessions to conscience let's call them -- in the day-to-day that will not only benefit our own health and quality of life, but the health of our planet for future generations -- and perhaps aid in your defense argument to the divine. As our world becomes more crowded and feisty and less endowed with the kind of abundant natural resources that allows for say, this kind of fun, much longer, we'll need to get creative about ways to live sustainably while forming the kind of relationships with our planet and our neighbors that will engender tranquility and trust. As for ideas about small sacrifices to yesterday that will lead to a richer tomorrow, look here and look here -- and search through the shelves of your own ideals and imagination. What is useful and necessary in order for you, your family, and the earth that sustains you, to truly prosper? And what is the snake-oil we've purchased at the big consumerist carnival -- that place with the blinking lights and the peppy jingles and the handsome men with the microphone -- the pulpit power our politicians and their corporate benefactors are struggling like hell to hold? Simply, what worthless waste can we sacrifice to increase the worth of our world? It's a question being looked into these days with the vision and vigor of people desperate for answers. The sense of the profound scope of potential environmental fallout as a result of our spend now pay later approach to our soil, water, and air is even trickling into the mainstream press. So here's to finding and sharing more and more practical answers to our global environmental dilemmas. But let's not call the effort "Saving the World." Rather, in the spirit of Frank Luntz, aforementioned inventor of benign titles for Bush's environmentally destructive policies (Healthy Forest Initiative, Clear Skies) let's just call it "healthy bitching."

Inspiration Information

2005-11-26T12:42:00.000-08:00

This blogsite is inspired in part by Walt Whitman, a poet who nursed beauty from a country at war with itself. It's inspired by the last few outposts of preserved wilderness in America, where ancient ecosystems progress unmolested, mostly protected from culture and extinction. It's inspired by the neighborhoods of our American youth -- all the backyards, bedrooms, and best friends that proved to us America was real. It's inspired by those among us who value truth and are reluctant to sign their conscience away to the highest bidders and the lowest hucksters. And it's inspired by one mad General; a warrior whose best tactics led to surrender, his one true victory.

Before I begin typing my way into the drunken, dreary heart of America, I want to acknowledge a few of what, for me, are the last murmurs of its greatness, its grand resolution, the once thriving pulse that pushed our nation forward wildly dreaming of good lives while we had them, filled with good moments. It was a greatness, perhaps peculiar to America, that gave my own family vision as birthright. My parents, their parents down the line, and me as a kid -- we all had faith in America, even as sickness blinked around its edges like a flickering glare, sometimes thrusting -- almost mistakenly -- into the plain sight of all. America, it seems to me, was founded on hope yet was always obsessed by its fear of having those hopes defeated. The desperate momentum of passage, the voyage of the settlers, with its full hope of success and rebirth very soon gave way to the dread of vicious threats in a foreign world and its new, omnipresent emblems of mortal struggle. Hope coated in fear is what fed America in its earliest years and what provides it now with its forced, manic ideals of material belonging and gross expansionism all leading to a righteous eternity of shared oblivion. I believe now that we, as Americans, sense in our wounded hearts that we have somehow come to destroy what we, throughout our history, had struggled so savagely to gain: the peace and comfort of arrival, of making it, of rebirth, optimism, redemption. The terror of the quiet forest, the terror of the indigenous tribe, of the eastern panther, of the African slave, of the unbound river, the terror of an eternity before us, all led us to make war with the peace and calm in ourselves. And after all our battles, what we could never conquer was the fear of the harsh unexpected that we felt so early on these shores.

And these wars against ourselves continue now. We may fight them differently. Our weapons of choice today are apathy, diffidence, disregard. We've found our peace by turning away from what we've allowed to happen. We struggle to ignore the sick machinations of our leaders and their (our) menacing underwriters even as we know, deep within, that the road this machine is taking is for most a trail of tears. Our founders' early quest for safety and meaning has evolved to become a pow-wow of false national pride, a foolish worship of market-place logic, the newest subdivision, and all the latest shortcuts to satisfying our worst impulses.

I have great respect for America, especially in the time of Emerson, Whitman, and later Twain. Theirs was a country in search of itself. With all of its injustice and deprivation, it was a country in fierce debate with its demons, a country that shared some of the vision and principles of its best minds and proudly wore this vision branded on its collective shoulder -- even as it eventually strode past freedom and into the bondage of someone else's greed.

In this blog, I hope to look as straight as I can at our country and see its "heroes" and its fools with clarity. I don't think I have anything new to say. But by reading the many blogs I admire and the authors who are so deeply interested in understanding our politics, our society, our culture, our environment, our future, I've already heard the story through the stethoscope. I guess I just want to figure out what I've heard.