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The lines on the road were straight. As always. Running into oblivion. Carl stretched out in his chair, looked at the ceiling briefly. He let his eyes bulge, giving over for one precious second to the forces that made him thankful his truck didn’t come equipped with an eject button.
-Someday I’ll get to stop driving. Someday I’ll drive this thing into a cemetery, and I’ll leave it there. With my father. And it can all go back where it came from.
He forced his head against the back of the seat again. A minute later, the truck was on the side of the road and he was out of it. Stretching out before him was only the sky. It stretched on into gray. Black was too final. The stars splattered like silkworms.
Carl ran back and forth a couple times. He jumped up and down twice, and kicked the air. Then he yelled.
“Focccaaacccciiiiaaaaaa”
He had a bad habit of yelling words that were altogether foreign to him. The only way he knew them was from commercials. But they sounded good, much like the food in the ads. He knew that no one could hear him yell these big words. That gave him pleasure. That no one could tell him he was trying too hard, or ask him what the word meant.
“Gooooooooooooorganzooooooooooooooooooola”
Items from The Olive Garden had a special release. Perhaps because he’d never been there. He took pleasure in that, too.
He got back in his truck. Started it on the second try. Yellow lines stretched on. He tried to follow them as the big rigs passed him by. Country music became boring after the fifth Alan Jackson tune about being down home.
-He never says nothing about how trapped that huge stretch of land can make you feel. That’s what country music should be about. But they don’t like to admit the bad in it.
The public access station in Deming replaced it Tonight there was some crank mumbling about aliens and Roswell and secret cities under the desert.
-At least he believes what he’s saying. More than you can say, right Alan?
He wished for a turn. Just a little shrug in the road to make him feel like putting his hands on the wheel was necessary. That there was some skill in driving. He saw the flask in the corner of his eye.
-Leave it alone, Carl.
The wind picked up, and some of the hay in the bed started to blow away. He followed it in the rearview mirror, piece by piece. He could count the money he was losing, piece by piece. To the cent. The radio piped in.
“There’s a recession on, and they know it, too. It makes them happy to see us fail.”
The flask looked a little better.
-Leave it alone.
The truck crashed through a fence, and a headlight was out. Dust was streaking behind the truck, and soon he couldn‘t even tell the hay from the cloud. Four bails dropped off the top of the load. He watched them float away, in the rearview mirror.
As morning approached, he ran through herds of cattle. For the most part they moved out of his way. He yelled out the window as he approached the herds, relishing in the role he‘d dreamed of himself in since birth.
“I’m the KIIIIIIIIIIIING OF BEEEEEF”
Most of the herd scattered away, afraid for their life. A few others looked back at him, stern and somber. Daring him to run them over. He remembered that they were alive. How many he’d raised and slaughtered over the years by his own hand.
“I’M THE KING!”
In the rearview mirror a piece of hay was floating. He ran square into a bull.
Carl thought about driving on. That cattle could take care of themselves.
But he got out, probably because he knew cattle. Their slow movements carried with them the weight of thought and grace. Something seemed right about that.
That was a thought he had years ago. Now he and the bull stared each other straight in the eyes.
“I’M. THE. KING.”
The bull grunted. Its breath was thick in the vague morning light. It fell to its knees, laid there. Carl could sense it probably wouldn’t die, but he didn’t want to see anymore of it.
He looked away from the bull long enough to eye his flask. He unscrewed the top. Emptied the whole thing on the bull. Lit a match. The thing went up in flames.
Jumping from side to side, he waved his arms and clicked his heel. He seemed to fan the fire with each swipe of his arms.
“HOOOLLLLLLLLLAAANNNNNNDDDDDDDAIIIIIIIIISSSSSE”
As the dawn broke, the blazed scorched the same color as the sun.
Carl noticed half his hay was gone. He was happy to be off the road
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
General Interest Review 00020
Travels in Georgia
"Travels in Georgia" is a magazine profile of Atlanta-based ecologist Carol Ruckdeschel, written by John McPhee. The New Yorker first published the piece in 1973. The piece simultaneously makes time stand still and seems to speed it mercilessly forward at breakneck pace.
The main narrative freezes time in its tracks, forcing the modern reader to look back and ponder what it might've been like. In following Ruckdeschel and her colleague, Sam Candler, McPhee provides an account of a final moment when parts of the area surrounding Atlanta, and even the city itself, remained wild. This was a time before most wetlands were drained to make way for Sun Belt expansion. Ruckdeschel and Candler filter the transition through their own lens. Roadkill is for dinner, and the shack-like house is full of wild animals. The swamp is hallowed ground. Perhaps the wetlands and wild areas will be a shadow of their former selves, but somehow nature and the people who are intertwined with it will remain as they ever were.
All the while, the story pushes quickly forward, having no trouble keeping the reader's eyes locked into the page. McPhee employs a masterful voice throughout that illuminates what makes the subject matter so dynamic without elevating it to mythic proportions. In his prose, there is room for both the morbid details of cooking up roadkill, and the philosophical points of the struggle to balance development with preservation of thriving ecosystems. Pine trees and birds speak, and so does Jimmy Carter's missed jump shot. McPhee spent countless hours traveling for the piece, and he seems to have left nothing out. And all of it is symbolic, telling, or at the very least elegantly described. If only the rest of life was so interesting, all of the stinking time.
"Travels in Georgia" is a magazine profile of Atlanta-based ecologist Carol Ruckdeschel, written by John McPhee. The New Yorker first published the piece in 1973. The piece simultaneously makes time stand still and seems to speed it mercilessly forward at breakneck pace.
The main narrative freezes time in its tracks, forcing the modern reader to look back and ponder what it might've been like. In following Ruckdeschel and her colleague, Sam Candler, McPhee provides an account of a final moment when parts of the area surrounding Atlanta, and even the city itself, remained wild. This was a time before most wetlands were drained to make way for Sun Belt expansion. Ruckdeschel and Candler filter the transition through their own lens. Roadkill is for dinner, and the shack-like house is full of wild animals. The swamp is hallowed ground. Perhaps the wetlands and wild areas will be a shadow of their former selves, but somehow nature and the people who are intertwined with it will remain as they ever were.
All the while, the story pushes quickly forward, having no trouble keeping the reader's eyes locked into the page. McPhee employs a masterful voice throughout that illuminates what makes the subject matter so dynamic without elevating it to mythic proportions. In his prose, there is room for both the morbid details of cooking up roadkill, and the philosophical points of the struggle to balance development with preservation of thriving ecosystems. Pine trees and birds speak, and so does Jimmy Carter's missed jump shot. McPhee spent countless hours traveling for the piece, and he seems to have left nothing out. And all of it is symbolic, telling, or at the very least elegantly described. If only the rest of life was so interesting, all of the stinking time.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
General Interest Review 00019
Realism (international relations)
In the foreign policy realm, realism is a strand of thinking that leads states to act with only their own country in mind, even though the action is taking place outside their country. In the U.S., realist (so-called) policymakers have favored specific military initiatives that they claim will make the people living in the borders of the United States safer, and directly benefit the big picture foreign policy goals. Typically the realists have favored short-lived military offensives that have specific goals, but lead to miniscule gains in the abstract realm of security.
Under George H.W. Bush, realists Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell collaborated to kick the Iraqi military out of Kuwait. Few American casualties were recorded, Americans witnessed video of missiles and tanks, and virtually nothing changed in the Middle East in the Americans' favor save the protection of a substantial oil investment the U.S. had in the Kuwaiti emirate.
The realists also claimed a policy victory in the debate over what to do in the Iraq War under George W. Bush when the president opted for a surge strategy. The objective was to send a limited number of troops, wipe out the places where anti-American militants were operating, and get out. In practice, the strategy allegedly worked. But rather than being a pure product of American ingenuity, it was helped along by things that Iraqis did. Not least of these was the declaration of a cease fire by Shiite leader Moqtadh al-Sadr just as the troop increase occurred. American troops no doubt found it easier to clear anti-American forces from the slums of Baghdad when they weren't being fired on.
The security gains were again negligible. An opposition force created solely by the presence of American troops that fought solely on Iraqi soil and posed a civil security threat only because the huge military base outside Baghdad is technically American soil will eventually be stamped out when there are no American troops for them to oppose. There was little sign of the need for increased military action -- with all the attendant casualties, civilian and military.
Two years later, the realists appear to have struck a cord with their first non-Bush -- Barack Obama. The recent escalation of the American war in Afghanistan has all the realist hallmarks -- increased troop levels (30,000) for a specific amount of time (roughly 18 months) with a clear objective (to kick the Taliban and al Qaida out of Afghanistan). Like the Iraq surge, the success of the Afghanistan escalation depends on the Afghans virtually alone. In order to stamp out the Taliban and al Qaida, the U.S. expects the Afghan people to help oppose the Taliban through violence and viewpoint. Also expected is that the people will look for leadership in Kabul, distinct as one of the most corrupt governments in the world.
It is of course ironic that a realist strategy does not require the policymaker to be realistic. Before an audience of people all dressed exactly the same, Obama claimed that the Afghan election was marred by fraud, but went off in accordance with Afghan law. This is likely false, unless fraud is permitted in the Afghan constitution. Obama claimed the Taliban must be stamped out because they harbored al Qaida. In fact, al Qaida and the Taliban had a dicey relationship shaped mostly by proximity. Afghanistan's moon-like frontier makes it easy to hide, and the Taliban were too busy trying to control Afghanistan to worry about a bunch of crackpots hiding in their midst attempting to control the entire world.
Perhaps these are small corrections when so much human life is on the line. But once they are inserted, the argument for the necessity of this escalation crumbles. Armed with the facts, it would be obvious that the Taliban poses no threat to the people within the borders of the United States. They only want to be left alone. Even the threat posed from al Qaida is unlikely to be completely stamped out. They can simply run to the strikingly similar moonlike frontier in Pakistan, or, as they did in the late 90s when Sudan kicked them out, move their base of operations to another barren country with an unstable central government incapable of opposing their presence, or indifferent to it.
Realism is simply a moniker that interprets reality. If an academic never proposed that certain players act according to the realist model, Scowcroft and Gates would be called something else. Remaining would be the limited effects of their so-called restraint and the high human cost attached. It seems plenty of thinkers could end at a strategy that fills caskets while achieving zilch.
In the foreign policy realm, realism is a strand of thinking that leads states to act with only their own country in mind, even though the action is taking place outside their country. In the U.S., realist (so-called) policymakers have favored specific military initiatives that they claim will make the people living in the borders of the United States safer, and directly benefit the big picture foreign policy goals. Typically the realists have favored short-lived military offensives that have specific goals, but lead to miniscule gains in the abstract realm of security.
Under George H.W. Bush, realists Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell collaborated to kick the Iraqi military out of Kuwait. Few American casualties were recorded, Americans witnessed video of missiles and tanks, and virtually nothing changed in the Middle East in the Americans' favor save the protection of a substantial oil investment the U.S. had in the Kuwaiti emirate.
The realists also claimed a policy victory in the debate over what to do in the Iraq War under George W. Bush when the president opted for a surge strategy. The objective was to send a limited number of troops, wipe out the places where anti-American militants were operating, and get out. In practice, the strategy allegedly worked. But rather than being a pure product of American ingenuity, it was helped along by things that Iraqis did. Not least of these was the declaration of a cease fire by Shiite leader Moqtadh al-Sadr just as the troop increase occurred. American troops no doubt found it easier to clear anti-American forces from the slums of Baghdad when they weren't being fired on.
The security gains were again negligible. An opposition force created solely by the presence of American troops that fought solely on Iraqi soil and posed a civil security threat only because the huge military base outside Baghdad is technically American soil will eventually be stamped out when there are no American troops for them to oppose. There was little sign of the need for increased military action -- with all the attendant casualties, civilian and military.
Two years later, the realists appear to have struck a cord with their first non-Bush -- Barack Obama. The recent escalation of the American war in Afghanistan has all the realist hallmarks -- increased troop levels (30,000) for a specific amount of time (roughly 18 months) with a clear objective (to kick the Taliban and al Qaida out of Afghanistan). Like the Iraq surge, the success of the Afghanistan escalation depends on the Afghans virtually alone. In order to stamp out the Taliban and al Qaida, the U.S. expects the Afghan people to help oppose the Taliban through violence and viewpoint. Also expected is that the people will look for leadership in Kabul, distinct as one of the most corrupt governments in the world.
It is of course ironic that a realist strategy does not require the policymaker to be realistic. Before an audience of people all dressed exactly the same, Obama claimed that the Afghan election was marred by fraud, but went off in accordance with Afghan law. This is likely false, unless fraud is permitted in the Afghan constitution. Obama claimed the Taliban must be stamped out because they harbored al Qaida. In fact, al Qaida and the Taliban had a dicey relationship shaped mostly by proximity. Afghanistan's moon-like frontier makes it easy to hide, and the Taliban were too busy trying to control Afghanistan to worry about a bunch of crackpots hiding in their midst attempting to control the entire world.
Perhaps these are small corrections when so much human life is on the line. But once they are inserted, the argument for the necessity of this escalation crumbles. Armed with the facts, it would be obvious that the Taliban poses no threat to the people within the borders of the United States. They only want to be left alone. Even the threat posed from al Qaida is unlikely to be completely stamped out. They can simply run to the strikingly similar moonlike frontier in Pakistan, or, as they did in the late 90s when Sudan kicked them out, move their base of operations to another barren country with an unstable central government incapable of opposing their presence, or indifferent to it.
Realism is simply a moniker that interprets reality. If an academic never proposed that certain players act according to the realist model, Scowcroft and Gates would be called something else. Remaining would be the limited effects of their so-called restraint and the high human cost attached. It seems plenty of thinkers could end at a strategy that fills caskets while achieving zilch.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
General Interest Review 00018
Music from Big Pink
"Music from Big Pink" is a rock album released in 1968 by The Band. Alternately well-plotted, shambolic, uplifting and a downer, this set picks up and runs with the great contradictions in Dylan (sound like an accident, plan like it's the shuttle liftoff), and to some extent The Beatles (so arty, yet so popular). The music and simplistic ensemble moniker is made to conjure a back to basics feel, to a time when even the facial hair felt a little more organic. In the great tradition of Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, Ray Charles, ad naus., the listening public is supposed to believe that they just ambled down off the mountain to see what all the hollerin' was about. The inside jacket photo on the original LP features the quintet mixed in with the local townsfolk -- as if they hadn't just blown into a town a few months earlier. In reality they'd been struggling to get to this point all along. Still, at the height of psychedelia, it's easy to see how anything that didn't sound druggy, orchestrated and conceited was a nice change of pace.
The Band was content to be that simple pivot to a hazeless time during the sessions in Big Pink, with tempos that don't really get above a shuffle, and that deceiving flat production that makes all those interwoven flourishes sound like they're being played by five guys just standing around smoking and looking at their watches. Their next record, which bordered on bloated in a few spots, would pull back the curtain and show all the thought they put into their music, but as is the case for most beloved first albums, the low expectations of obscurity and technical nascency leave room to add a little bit of the swagger at the heart of what makes rock so appealing in the first place.
The Band was content to be that simple pivot to a hazeless time during the sessions in Big Pink, with tempos that don't really get above a shuffle, and that deceiving flat production that makes all those interwoven flourishes sound like they're being played by five guys just standing around smoking and looking at their watches. Their next record, which bordered on bloated in a few spots, would pull back the curtain and show all the thought they put into their music, but as is the case for most beloved first albums, the low expectations of obscurity and technical nascency leave room to add a little bit of the swagger at the heart of what makes rock so appealing in the first place.
Monday, November 16, 2009
General Interest Review 00017
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Reading as the recollections of a writer wounded on safari, lying on his deathbed, the story treats mortality as a tightrope walk. For once in his life, with nothing better to do, he turns inward and looks back at a life lived in full but all-too-often not recorded. As the man is a writer, he laments his inability to properly record all the thoughts he's had, the people he's observed, and what great copy it all would've produced.
It's easy to assume the writer is a shade of Hemingway himself. Living for the moment, on safari, memories of the Great War, memories of Paris, the trappings of the upper classes he's fallen in with. And, really, so be it. To get too caught up in reading into Hemingway's own thoughts is to show that Hemingway is an interesting character. But we already knew that.
The story's real strength is the sensitivity of his tenuous thoughts knowing it will all be over soon. Trivial arguments with his wife somehow fit seamlessly along what-does-it-all-mean yearnings of a life that could've held more. And the whole array of sorrow, resignation and instant humility is conveyed in a single sentence: "So this is how you died, in whispers that you did not hear."
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Reading as the recollections of a writer wounded on safari, lying on his deathbed, the story treats mortality as a tightrope walk. For once in his life, with nothing better to do, he turns inward and looks back at a life lived in full but all-too-often not recorded. As the man is a writer, he laments his inability to properly record all the thoughts he's had, the people he's observed, and what great copy it all would've produced.
It's easy to assume the writer is a shade of Hemingway himself. Living for the moment, on safari, memories of the Great War, memories of Paris, the trappings of the upper classes he's fallen in with. And, really, so be it. To get too caught up in reading into Hemingway's own thoughts is to show that Hemingway is an interesting character. But we already knew that.
The story's real strength is the sensitivity of his tenuous thoughts knowing it will all be over soon. Trivial arguments with his wife somehow fit seamlessly along what-does-it-all-mean yearnings of a life that could've held more. And the whole array of sorrow, resignation and instant humility is conveyed in a single sentence: "So this is how you died, in whispers that you did not hear."
Thursday, November 12, 2009
General Interest Review 00016
Nadal Malik Hasan
Nadal Malik Hasan is an Army psychiatrist accused of opening fire on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Tex., last week. The shooting spree killed more than a dozen and left scores more injured. Consensus appears to be forming around a group of common indicators that led to his behavior. His behavior was erratic, he was a Muslim fanatic, he was borderline psychotic. All of these elements add up to tell a familiar tale. A tragic event divorced from the norm in our culture is caused by behavior that is practically unknowable to so-called normal people.
But little mention has been made about the conditions within the system in which Hasan was operating. He entered the military by his own choosing, but existing within an extremely rigid, top-down system that has little tolerance for diversity doesn't seem a cakewalk. Add to that the military's policy in recent years and its conflict with his Muslim faith. Wars are of course fought against governments, but the people that bear the effects of war are the citizens. And religion is an outlet to interpret those effects, especially in the Muslim world, where religion is deeply intertwined with everyday life, and where the United States' wars are currently waged. After the death of an innocent relative, where else would someone go to get answers about a situation that seems to have none? The U.S. military wages intense propaganda campaigns in its current warzones of Iraq and Afghanistan to try to stamp out the influence of these clerics. But how is a heavily armored action figure a better alternative to a sensitive, non-foreign human being?
Faced with confusion and increasing isolation, Hasan likely found himself in a similar situation to the victims of military wrath. It is not irrational to feel mentally squeezed by watching death and destruction on a huge scale perpetuated by a force that is supposed to be doing good. Faced with destruction of people's livelihoods he felt intertwined with, he needed answers. So he sought out a cleric to get those answers. He likely wanted a human perspective from an increasingly mechanical structure that demanded he fall in line. This is hardly unknowable behavior to a population that wants answers about lesser matters from faith leaders.
Hasan's full-out snap was indeed a horrific act, and obviously rare in the U.S. military. (Despite the rise in post-traumatic stress-related killings - another new reality in this new warfare). But equally commonplace for that mighty military is broad destruction and devastation, an inescapable condition for people who happen to live where we choose to bomb. Within a system capable of propagating neverending hell, the effects are bound to leave a mark on those charged with carrying out these murderous machinations.
Nadal Malik Hasan is an Army psychiatrist accused of opening fire on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Tex., last week. The shooting spree killed more than a dozen and left scores more injured. Consensus appears to be forming around a group of common indicators that led to his behavior. His behavior was erratic, he was a Muslim fanatic, he was borderline psychotic. All of these elements add up to tell a familiar tale. A tragic event divorced from the norm in our culture is caused by behavior that is practically unknowable to so-called normal people.
But little mention has been made about the conditions within the system in which Hasan was operating. He entered the military by his own choosing, but existing within an extremely rigid, top-down system that has little tolerance for diversity doesn't seem a cakewalk. Add to that the military's policy in recent years and its conflict with his Muslim faith. Wars are of course fought against governments, but the people that bear the effects of war are the citizens. And religion is an outlet to interpret those effects, especially in the Muslim world, where religion is deeply intertwined with everyday life, and where the United States' wars are currently waged. After the death of an innocent relative, where else would someone go to get answers about a situation that seems to have none? The U.S. military wages intense propaganda campaigns in its current warzones of Iraq and Afghanistan to try to stamp out the influence of these clerics. But how is a heavily armored action figure a better alternative to a sensitive, non-foreign human being?
Faced with confusion and increasing isolation, Hasan likely found himself in a similar situation to the victims of military wrath. It is not irrational to feel mentally squeezed by watching death and destruction on a huge scale perpetuated by a force that is supposed to be doing good. Faced with destruction of people's livelihoods he felt intertwined with, he needed answers. So he sought out a cleric to get those answers. He likely wanted a human perspective from an increasingly mechanical structure that demanded he fall in line. This is hardly unknowable behavior to a population that wants answers about lesser matters from faith leaders.
Hasan's full-out snap was indeed a horrific act, and obviously rare in the U.S. military. (Despite the rise in post-traumatic stress-related killings - another new reality in this new warfare). But equally commonplace for that mighty military is broad destruction and devastation, an inescapable condition for people who happen to live where we choose to bomb. Within a system capable of propagating neverending hell, the effects are bound to leave a mark on those charged with carrying out these murderous machinations.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
General Interest Review 00015
Reality (political)
Political reality is the collection of outside forces that exist around a specific policy proposal, pushing toward demise, or, in a few unlikely examples, acceptance. In American politics, the environment is normally characterized by factors like public sentiment (and, by extension, re-election prospects), the opinions of interest groups, and seemingly unrelated issues that appear sporadically to either bolster or defeat the larger issue. This reality is normally observed by people involved in pushing or defeating the policy proposal. Crucial to this conception is the idea that there is only one way of acting within the political system, even though that same system is often characterized as dynamic, and even complex.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel crystallized the sentiment in today's New York Times surrounding the health care debate:
“I’m sure there are a lot of people sitting in the shade at the Aspen Institute — my brother being one of them — who will tell you what the ideal plan is. Great, fascinating. You have the art of the possible measured against the ideal.”
Within the debate surrounding health care, this political reality has been observed repeatedly both by opponents and realists like Emmanuel. The main guts of the proposal, which would mandate health care for everyone and institute checks on the current system overrun completely by private insurance companies, have been called too radical a reform for the public. This hinges on the public option, which has already been Reviewed, but also on the general sentiment that the public at large will not tolerate a system with increased government involvement.
But it turns out there are other realities to contend with, they simply don't get mentioned. There is the reality of polling. In almost every poll conducted about health care reform, there is an overwhelming consensus that the current system must be changed. The facts are pretty basic -- the system leaves millions without health care, and costs far too much. The change could take the form of one of two options in a general sense. One is the eradication of the current private insurance companies, and speedy replacement by a more fragmented market. This is unthinkable given the power of the current insurance companies and health providers, their control vested in one fifth of the entire economy. So the other choice is to attempt to offset the private companies with another kind of health care provider in another sector, namely the public one. Given the reality of the entrenched industry that is supposed to be reformed, a public-based change is the only remotely feasible choice for reform, which, given the reality of public sentiment, should be overwhelmingly popular.
Yet even a policy that has been watered down from what most people who truly want change desire (and falls far short of the guarantees on health care delivered by the rest of the so-called industrialized world) is considered unfeasible due to outside circumstances beyond anyone's control. There is a breakdown of government to respond to the will of the people. This breakdown is the political reality, though it is rarely characterized that way.
Instead, we are told fringe issues like abortion threaten to topple the bill. A proposal that might allow public health plans to pay for abortion occupies a minuscule fraction of the bill. Additionally, this proposal is scarcely change. Health care plans already available in the private market allow for abortion coverage. The health care bill is a tome of data and proposals, with entire sections that would be thought capable of arousing more venom than a solitary proposal about an issue having little to do with the stated focus -- health care costs and access to coverage.
But this is political reality, accepted without question, acknowledged only with resignation, pedaled in service of only those who benefit directly from inaction. The health care bill is likely to pass only after a legislative group is assembled to move around the political reality and make a deal. The last resort of an antidemocratic group. Undoubtedly, they'll be sitting in the shade.
Political reality is the collection of outside forces that exist around a specific policy proposal, pushing toward demise, or, in a few unlikely examples, acceptance. In American politics, the environment is normally characterized by factors like public sentiment (and, by extension, re-election prospects), the opinions of interest groups, and seemingly unrelated issues that appear sporadically to either bolster or defeat the larger issue. This reality is normally observed by people involved in pushing or defeating the policy proposal. Crucial to this conception is the idea that there is only one way of acting within the political system, even though that same system is often characterized as dynamic, and even complex.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel crystallized the sentiment in today's New York Times surrounding the health care debate:
“I’m sure there are a lot of people sitting in the shade at the Aspen Institute — my brother being one of them — who will tell you what the ideal plan is. Great, fascinating. You have the art of the possible measured against the ideal.”
Within the debate surrounding health care, this political reality has been observed repeatedly both by opponents and realists like Emmanuel. The main guts of the proposal, which would mandate health care for everyone and institute checks on the current system overrun completely by private insurance companies, have been called too radical a reform for the public. This hinges on the public option, which has already been Reviewed, but also on the general sentiment that the public at large will not tolerate a system with increased government involvement.
But it turns out there are other realities to contend with, they simply don't get mentioned. There is the reality of polling. In almost every poll conducted about health care reform, there is an overwhelming consensus that the current system must be changed. The facts are pretty basic -- the system leaves millions without health care, and costs far too much. The change could take the form of one of two options in a general sense. One is the eradication of the current private insurance companies, and speedy replacement by a more fragmented market. This is unthinkable given the power of the current insurance companies and health providers, their control vested in one fifth of the entire economy. So the other choice is to attempt to offset the private companies with another kind of health care provider in another sector, namely the public one. Given the reality of the entrenched industry that is supposed to be reformed, a public-based change is the only remotely feasible choice for reform, which, given the reality of public sentiment, should be overwhelmingly popular.
Yet even a policy that has been watered down from what most people who truly want change desire (and falls far short of the guarantees on health care delivered by the rest of the so-called industrialized world) is considered unfeasible due to outside circumstances beyond anyone's control. There is a breakdown of government to respond to the will of the people. This breakdown is the political reality, though it is rarely characterized that way.
Instead, we are told fringe issues like abortion threaten to topple the bill. A proposal that might allow public health plans to pay for abortion occupies a minuscule fraction of the bill. Additionally, this proposal is scarcely change. Health care plans already available in the private market allow for abortion coverage. The health care bill is a tome of data and proposals, with entire sections that would be thought capable of arousing more venom than a solitary proposal about an issue having little to do with the stated focus -- health care costs and access to coverage.
But this is political reality, accepted without question, acknowledged only with resignation, pedaled in service of only those who benefit directly from inaction. The health care bill is likely to pass only after a legislative group is assembled to move around the political reality and make a deal. The last resort of an antidemocratic group. Undoubtedly, they'll be sitting in the shade.
Friday, November 6, 2009
General Interest Review 000014
$100 million
$100,000,000 is a lot of money. There is not much outside of government programs with that kind of price tag. A private voyage to space from Russia is one of them. A large country estate recently put on the market in Charlottesville, Va., called Albemarle is another. Recently, Michael Bloomberg added the New York City mayoralty to the list.
Bloomberg, the billionaire founder of ubiquitous business media behemoth Bloomberg, Inc., was elected to New York's highest office for the third time this week on the back of this enormous sum. New Yorkers were treated to an astoundingly ubiquitous campaign. There were negative ads. And there was the kind of personalized targeting that makes you, and only you, feel completely anonymous. ('So I am a middle-income single mother who takes the subway to work and cares deeply about the environment after all,' a New Yorker might think when reading a Bloomberg mailing. 'How nice to be reduced to a sentence.')
The mayor - as people get to be known when they hang around that office long enough - ran straight through a couple hurdles to get to his third term. First, there was New York City law. The law said mayors are supposed to serve two terms. Bloomberg wanted to serve a third. So he got support from the city council, and changed the law. The public didn't get to vote.
Next, there was Bill Thompson, the largely unknown city comptroller. That's where the money came in. A negative ad blitz, it turns out, can cost about as much as you want if you have the money. Bloomberg attacked Thompson, suggesting he felt threatened. This included starting a web site dedicated to Thompson's alleged fiscal policy, Thompsontaxhike.com. Usually the point of political advertising is to reinforce your own name so voters will remember it when they go to the polls. That's apparently not necessary when you're the two-time mayor and the richest man in New York all at the same time. The idea apparently is to get them thinking about Bloomberg even when they're thinking about Thompson.
Thanks mostly to his sizable investment, Bloomberg was expected to trounce Thompson in this week's election. He didn't. He won with 50.6 percent. Thompson received 46 percent. Only half the people were convinced. Many interviewed mentioned the term limit change. Others sounded like usual schmos about local politics -- they didn't wanna vote for either SOB, but they voted for the guy who would at least get this guy outta there.
But what Bloomberg's third term represents had to be in the subconscious of at least some who rejected him. As the richest man in New York and a shaper of opinion at the head of his media company, Bloomberg is one of the makers of the universe. These people are typically not out in public. They pull strings through money they disperse to foundations and political campaigns. They whisper in politicians' ears at charity cocktail receptions. They get their way quietly, but no one realizes it until they're dead. Legends are concocted, public squares named after them. And all are left to marvel at what they achieved, even though they didn't realize it at the time.
Typically politicians are not in this realm. They make the decisions, but only based on who can twist their arm the most effectively. By nature of their debt to the public for votes, politicians are forced to pull hair and poke eyes in the sandbox of governing day-to-day. And they make public enemies in doing so. With his relatively popular mayoral stint thus far, Bloomberg brought the masters' subtle ways into the public sphere. If eight years had been enough, perhaps he would've been looked on as an effective broker, and ultimately a genuinely benevolent billionaire, as opposed to the haughty ones who give money but can't be bothered to do any real work. He would've been seen as a man of legendary mettle who could bridge the gap between the two worlds -even when he had the kind of money that allowed him the luxury of not having to worry about it. Now, he's remade the world to his liking by yanking the strings of influence in the public light. The voters, recognizing what has transpired, were reminded all too directly that those strings are out of their grasp. Maybe Bloomberg thought he was sealing his fate. But even after $100 million, only half the voters agreed with him at the ballot box, and that feels a little more ambivalent than a grand narrative ought to.
$100,000,000 is a lot of money. There is not much outside of government programs with that kind of price tag. A private voyage to space from Russia is one of them. A large country estate recently put on the market in Charlottesville, Va., called Albemarle is another. Recently, Michael Bloomberg added the New York City mayoralty to the list.
Bloomberg, the billionaire founder of ubiquitous business media behemoth Bloomberg, Inc., was elected to New York's highest office for the third time this week on the back of this enormous sum. New Yorkers were treated to an astoundingly ubiquitous campaign. There were negative ads. And there was the kind of personalized targeting that makes you, and only you, feel completely anonymous. ('So I am a middle-income single mother who takes the subway to work and cares deeply about the environment after all,' a New Yorker might think when reading a Bloomberg mailing. 'How nice to be reduced to a sentence.')
The mayor - as people get to be known when they hang around that office long enough - ran straight through a couple hurdles to get to his third term. First, there was New York City law. The law said mayors are supposed to serve two terms. Bloomberg wanted to serve a third. So he got support from the city council, and changed the law. The public didn't get to vote.
Next, there was Bill Thompson, the largely unknown city comptroller. That's where the money came in. A negative ad blitz, it turns out, can cost about as much as you want if you have the money. Bloomberg attacked Thompson, suggesting he felt threatened. This included starting a web site dedicated to Thompson's alleged fiscal policy, Thompsontaxhike.com. Usually the point of political advertising is to reinforce your own name so voters will remember it when they go to the polls. That's apparently not necessary when you're the two-time mayor and the richest man in New York all at the same time. The idea apparently is to get them thinking about Bloomberg even when they're thinking about Thompson.
Thanks mostly to his sizable investment, Bloomberg was expected to trounce Thompson in this week's election. He didn't. He won with 50.6 percent. Thompson received 46 percent. Only half the people were convinced. Many interviewed mentioned the term limit change. Others sounded like usual schmos about local politics -- they didn't wanna vote for either SOB, but they voted for the guy who would at least get this guy outta there.
But what Bloomberg's third term represents had to be in the subconscious of at least some who rejected him. As the richest man in New York and a shaper of opinion at the head of his media company, Bloomberg is one of the makers of the universe. These people are typically not out in public. They pull strings through money they disperse to foundations and political campaigns. They whisper in politicians' ears at charity cocktail receptions. They get their way quietly, but no one realizes it until they're dead. Legends are concocted, public squares named after them. And all are left to marvel at what they achieved, even though they didn't realize it at the time.
Typically politicians are not in this realm. They make the decisions, but only based on who can twist their arm the most effectively. By nature of their debt to the public for votes, politicians are forced to pull hair and poke eyes in the sandbox of governing day-to-day. And they make public enemies in doing so. With his relatively popular mayoral stint thus far, Bloomberg brought the masters' subtle ways into the public sphere. If eight years had been enough, perhaps he would've been looked on as an effective broker, and ultimately a genuinely benevolent billionaire, as opposed to the haughty ones who give money but can't be bothered to do any real work. He would've been seen as a man of legendary mettle who could bridge the gap between the two worlds -even when he had the kind of money that allowed him the luxury of not having to worry about it. Now, he's remade the world to his liking by yanking the strings of influence in the public light. The voters, recognizing what has transpired, were reminded all too directly that those strings are out of their grasp. Maybe Bloomberg thought he was sealing his fate. But even after $100 million, only half the voters agreed with him at the ballot box, and that feels a little more ambivalent than a grand narrative ought to.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
General Interest Review 000013
The War on Drugs (band)
The War on Drugs are a Philadelphia-based rock band with one album under their belt on the independent record label Secretly Canadian. That means they have okay distribution, and that their record is available at that cool record store in town where all the snobs work. The War on Drugs' sound is sort of like the political war on drugs. Two disparate elements that were never really thought as working together coalesce to make a relatively fresh sound. Instead of war and drugs -- never thought to be paralleled because it would be hard for a human army with tanks and bombs to systematically dismantle opiates and narcotics -- the band synthesizes that transporting, dreamy sound created with a lot of organs and effects pedals, and terse, tart, over-it lyrics and vocals in the vein of one Bob Dylan circa mid-60s. The rambling vocal thing has been done over noise before, but never with such a blatant Dylan impression and floating-in-an-ocean sound so closely intertwined.
It's a good idea given the ancestral connection between the 80s noizies and Dylan. And, on wax, it works out about right. The howling blues-rock-honky-tonk band that backed Dylan's trochaic tirades during that period was the obvious choice at the time. The expressive power of the music alone conveys respect for the past, and a willingness to kick it all to the curb somehow at the same time. But the feeling of the music matches up with the words part pretty well here too. Seething. Adrift. Trying to lull the chip on your shoulder like a snake charmer. That kind of thing. And the ambling nature of the lyrics means nothing seems out of place when a little reverb forces a note to trail off the beat. The whole thing makes me ready to see Spacemen 3 back Dylan, but for now I'll take what I can get from these inspired guys.
The War on Drugs are a Philadelphia-based rock band with one album under their belt on the independent record label Secretly Canadian. That means they have okay distribution, and that their record is available at that cool record store in town where all the snobs work. The War on Drugs' sound is sort of like the political war on drugs. Two disparate elements that were never really thought as working together coalesce to make a relatively fresh sound. Instead of war and drugs -- never thought to be paralleled because it would be hard for a human army with tanks and bombs to systematically dismantle opiates and narcotics -- the band synthesizes that transporting, dreamy sound created with a lot of organs and effects pedals, and terse, tart, over-it lyrics and vocals in the vein of one Bob Dylan circa mid-60s. The rambling vocal thing has been done over noise before, but never with such a blatant Dylan impression and floating-in-an-ocean sound so closely intertwined.
It's a good idea given the ancestral connection between the 80s noizies and Dylan. And, on wax, it works out about right. The howling blues-rock-honky-tonk band that backed Dylan's trochaic tirades during that period was the obvious choice at the time. The expressive power of the music alone conveys respect for the past, and a willingness to kick it all to the curb somehow at the same time. But the feeling of the music matches up with the words part pretty well here too. Seething. Adrift. Trying to lull the chip on your shoulder like a snake charmer. That kind of thing. And the ambling nature of the lyrics means nothing seems out of place when a little reverb forces a note to trail off the beat. The whole thing makes me ready to see Spacemen 3 back Dylan, but for now I'll take what I can get from these inspired guys.
Monday, November 2, 2009
General Interest Review 00012
Legitimacy (political)
Political legitimacy in the classical sense is the act of a public giving consent to a leader to govern them. By extension, the public also gives consent to the system of government in place. For a functioning democracy, legitimacy is one of the most basic requirements. The public votes for their leadership, and the leadership carries out the work of governing with a mind toward the people.
But this year the eyes of the world were transfixed on two cases that batted around legitimacy like it was an easily discarded ideal. A hurdle that merely had to be leapt over on the way to more pressing matters. Following elections in Iran and Afghanistan, outside parties declared elections legitimate, but there was much turmoil in the public itself as to whether the elections were legitimate. Without the consent of a majority of the public, the game changes when these so-called leaders claim to speak for such amorphous entities as "Afghanistan" and "Iran."
Iran was the more clear-cut example of the complete refusal to acknowledge any public interest in governing. In an election with a huge turnout, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the reigning regional instigator and total crackpot, was said to have defeated Mir Hussein Mousavi, a member of Iran's more-centrist-than-the-hard-liners political establishment. Mousavi was shown to be gaining significant ground in polling, but the lead evaporated literally into thin air with the actual
election, leaving Ahmadinejad with more than 60% of the vote. This is a landslide in most political systems, and is especially huge given what followed. With charges of fraud unrefuted by the ruling establishment (controlled by the Supreme Leader) Mousavi's supporters -- and anyone else who found themselves offended by the lobsided tally that was released -- took to the streets, and were forced to confront police despite the peaceful nature of most the protest.. Immediately, Ahmadinejad's legitimacy was called into question. But the Supreme Leader, who backed Ahmadinejad in the election, wouldn't even entertain remotely the notion of a smeared election. The Supreme Leader rules on the basis that he is entrusted with the government by Allah, making it rather difficult for a devout Muslin to rationally argue something he says. But so many in Iran seemed to see through this thin veil of reasoning that it's difficult to see how the Supreme Leader could entrust the practical side of running his government to a President that was forced to watch as police beat back his opponents' supporters in increasingly bloody streets. Ahmadinejad obtained legitimacy not from the people, but from a force sent to overrule the people.
In Afghanistan, the situation was even more uphauling to democratic principles -- and slightly more tedious. Afghans braved threats of violence spread far and wide by the Taliban to vote for a new leader, only to find that the vote had been declared overwhelmingly fraudulent in many areas. Unlike in Iran, the crimes were laid out specifically. Ballots were invented for voters that did not exist, ballot boxes were not even delivered to some locales, and thousands of claims of fraud were filed with the government. A UN commission, after much delay, publicly acknowledged findings that there was widespread fraud. The U.S. eventually encouraged now-tainted president re-elect Hamid Karzai to accept a runoff with challenger Abdullah Abdullah -- the least he could do to let the public weigh in again given the Tora Bora-sized cave the allegations put him in.
But then Abdullah pulled out. And the U.S. found itself conferring legitimacy on Karzai. Obama said the result corresponded with Afghan law. Whether there is a provision calling for fraudulent claims to be completely discarded in the Afghan Consituation is not even the point. With American involvement, it is apparent that Afghan law need not exist.
First the U.S. openly encouraged Karzai to submit to a challenge that had a remote poppy field of a chance of bringing some form of legitimacy to his new term. But with Abdullah's candidacy the allegations of fraud apparently evaporate as well. You could make the argument that Abdullah Abdullah conferred legitimacy, but he didn't sound like he was too resigned about things when he said this is only the beginning of change in Afghanistan.
Obama's reasoning is semi-clear. In order to speed the decision about how many more troops to send to Afghanistan, he needs a clear Afghan government to broker with. Absent from that sentence is the word legitimate government. The people's voice has still yet to be heard resoundingly, but apparently that is beside the point when the so-called security of the region is at stake.
This forces the Americans into a parallel with the Supreme Leader -- a place either side probably doesn't want to find themselves. By ignoring legitimacy in the service of supposed higher means, democracy has been cast off in both cases. Calling a system democracy because there is an election does not make it so, no matter how great the strength of the power that says it.
So what of the will of the Afghans? They are worse off than the Iranians in many ways -- empowered to vote only to see their hopes evaporate with fraud. They cannot even take to the streets because they know they will meet violence from the Taliban. At least in Iran there was the hope that a large enough crowd and enough Western media presence would keep the fighting to a minimum. Maybe the best place to look for that is among the rubble in the villages recently bombed by both the Americans and the Taliban. To the average Afghan, it must be gratuitously clear that the political tightrope the U.S. is trying to walk matters nil in the face of more destruction and devastation.
And in both cases, of course, the vanquished election results leave a certain conclusion. The collective public will never even know who they truly voted in.
Political legitimacy in the classical sense is the act of a public giving consent to a leader to govern them. By extension, the public also gives consent to the system of government in place. For a functioning democracy, legitimacy is one of the most basic requirements. The public votes for their leadership, and the leadership carries out the work of governing with a mind toward the people.
But this year the eyes of the world were transfixed on two cases that batted around legitimacy like it was an easily discarded ideal. A hurdle that merely had to be leapt over on the way to more pressing matters. Following elections in Iran and Afghanistan, outside parties declared elections legitimate, but there was much turmoil in the public itself as to whether the elections were legitimate. Without the consent of a majority of the public, the game changes when these so-called leaders claim to speak for such amorphous entities as "Afghanistan" and "Iran."
Iran was the more clear-cut example of the complete refusal to acknowledge any public interest in governing. In an election with a huge turnout, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the reigning regional instigator and total crackpot, was said to have defeated Mir Hussein Mousavi, a member of Iran's more-centrist-than-the-hard-liners political establishment. Mousavi was shown to be gaining significant ground in polling, but the lead evaporated literally into thin air with the actual
election, leaving Ahmadinejad with more than 60% of the vote. This is a landslide in most political systems, and is especially huge given what followed. With charges of fraud unrefuted by the ruling establishment (controlled by the Supreme Leader) Mousavi's supporters -- and anyone else who found themselves offended by the lobsided tally that was released -- took to the streets, and were forced to confront police despite the peaceful nature of most the protest.. Immediately, Ahmadinejad's legitimacy was called into question. But the Supreme Leader, who backed Ahmadinejad in the election, wouldn't even entertain remotely the notion of a smeared election. The Supreme Leader rules on the basis that he is entrusted with the government by Allah, making it rather difficult for a devout Muslin to rationally argue something he says. But so many in Iran seemed to see through this thin veil of reasoning that it's difficult to see how the Supreme Leader could entrust the practical side of running his government to a President that was forced to watch as police beat back his opponents' supporters in increasingly bloody streets. Ahmadinejad obtained legitimacy not from the people, but from a force sent to overrule the people.
In Afghanistan, the situation was even more uphauling to democratic principles -- and slightly more tedious. Afghans braved threats of violence spread far and wide by the Taliban to vote for a new leader, only to find that the vote had been declared overwhelmingly fraudulent in many areas. Unlike in Iran, the crimes were laid out specifically. Ballots were invented for voters that did not exist, ballot boxes were not even delivered to some locales, and thousands of claims of fraud were filed with the government. A UN commission, after much delay, publicly acknowledged findings that there was widespread fraud. The U.S. eventually encouraged now-tainted president re-elect Hamid Karzai to accept a runoff with challenger Abdullah Abdullah -- the least he could do to let the public weigh in again given the Tora Bora-sized cave the allegations put him in.
But then Abdullah pulled out. And the U.S. found itself conferring legitimacy on Karzai. Obama said the result corresponded with Afghan law. Whether there is a provision calling for fraudulent claims to be completely discarded in the Afghan Consituation is not even the point. With American involvement, it is apparent that Afghan law need not exist.
First the U.S. openly encouraged Karzai to submit to a challenge that had a remote poppy field of a chance of bringing some form of legitimacy to his new term. But with Abdullah's candidacy the allegations of fraud apparently evaporate as well. You could make the argument that Abdullah Abdullah conferred legitimacy, but he didn't sound like he was too resigned about things when he said this is only the beginning of change in Afghanistan.
Obama's reasoning is semi-clear. In order to speed the decision about how many more troops to send to Afghanistan, he needs a clear Afghan government to broker with. Absent from that sentence is the word legitimate government. The people's voice has still yet to be heard resoundingly, but apparently that is beside the point when the so-called security of the region is at stake.
This forces the Americans into a parallel with the Supreme Leader -- a place either side probably doesn't want to find themselves. By ignoring legitimacy in the service of supposed higher means, democracy has been cast off in both cases. Calling a system democracy because there is an election does not make it so, no matter how great the strength of the power that says it.
So what of the will of the Afghans? They are worse off than the Iranians in many ways -- empowered to vote only to see their hopes evaporate with fraud. They cannot even take to the streets because they know they will meet violence from the Taliban. At least in Iran there was the hope that a large enough crowd and enough Western media presence would keep the fighting to a minimum. Maybe the best place to look for that is among the rubble in the villages recently bombed by both the Americans and the Taliban. To the average Afghan, it must be gratuitously clear that the political tightrope the U.S. is trying to walk matters nil in the face of more destruction and devastation.
And in both cases, of course, the vanquished election results leave a certain conclusion. The collective public will never even know who they truly voted in.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
General Interest Review 00011
Great Expectations (film)
Great Expectations, a film based on the Charles Dickens novel of the same title, was released in 1998. It benefits from glorious acting by Anne Bancroft playing the Miss Havisham character, and wonderful cinematography under the direction of Alfonso Cuaron. Ethan Hawke and Gwynteth Paltrow also star, with both turning in acceptable but not dazzling performances.
The film is basically an "update" of the novel, grafting the basic story -- about a boy who has an encounter with a convict, meets an old, embittered rich woman and her daughter, receives riches from an anonymous benefactor, and becomes unknowingly entangled with all of them -- into modern day America as opposed to 19th century England. It is an understatement that much has changed in the years since Dickens wrote the novel. The world has become faster, and more spread out, we are constantly told. There is more social mobility and opportunity. Oddly, though, the update of the movie shrinks the world presented in the book to five or six people and a lot of flat characters hovering around them.
The movie strikes gold turning the Pip character into an artist. There is no better a place to showcase the quick mobility and tumultuous turn of fortune than through a high stakes world like art. But the film allows itself to slip into a pastiche about the treacherously superficial art world during these scenes. To be sure, this has a Dickensian ring of social commentary, but missing are the complex web of relationships that moves the Pip character toward his final revelation. In the book, Jaggers -- who handles Pip's affairs via his anonymous benefactor -- is a much more consequential character than the lawyer encountered in the movie. Herbert, Pip's friend in London who helps him through the years of longing for Estella and development from pauper to gentleman, is also absent.
The subplot involving the convict, Magwitch, who is eventually revealed to be Pip's benefactor is also glossed over. In the book, Pip struggles with his embarrassment of Magwitch, and comes to see the good in him later -- when it is too late. This is crucial to the framework of the story, which is based around the ideas, and, yes, expectations, that are cast by social station. In the movie, we get a rather tidy death of Fin's benefactor by mob men. It never turns out that there is any connection between the convict and Miss Havisham and Estella, giving a vacant feeling to their story entirely. It makes the ending feel a bit like an afternoon thunderstorm on a hot summer day. It was a bit violent there for a moment, but now it's all over and, hey! the weather's even a little nicer now. Since Fin never has time to consider his relationship to his benefactor, he doesn't have to think about the unexpected turns of his life, and how they indicate that expectations mean virtually nothing compared to qualities like honor and loyalty.
The movie people probably saw these changes as tweaks. Necessary ruffles in the plot in order to make the whole thing a bit more commercially acceptable. After all, people don't want to watch anything where they have to use their brain. Those movies are such downers. But without the depth of the plot, it's impossible to get the whole picture. In the end, we're left with the two would-be lovers looking on each other as equals. They think nothing of what has happened to them in the past, letting it fall away like a dream. This is a far cry from the book, where Pip and Estella are only able to get together after their experience heals them of their worry over expectation.
The two works are obviously different, but one was popular with a mass audience in the 19th century, and one was marketed to a mass audience at the end of the 20th century. As expectations for time periods go, the film would likely have been a deeper work. Its audience was probably more educated, and certainly more used to grasping the kind of ideas that the novel put forth. But like all expectations, it appears they were a bit too high to live up to.
Great Expectations, a film based on the Charles Dickens novel of the same title, was released in 1998. It benefits from glorious acting by Anne Bancroft playing the Miss Havisham character, and wonderful cinematography under the direction of Alfonso Cuaron. Ethan Hawke and Gwynteth Paltrow also star, with both turning in acceptable but not dazzling performances.
The film is basically an "update" of the novel, grafting the basic story -- about a boy who has an encounter with a convict, meets an old, embittered rich woman and her daughter, receives riches from an anonymous benefactor, and becomes unknowingly entangled with all of them -- into modern day America as opposed to 19th century England. It is an understatement that much has changed in the years since Dickens wrote the novel. The world has become faster, and more spread out, we are constantly told. There is more social mobility and opportunity. Oddly, though, the update of the movie shrinks the world presented in the book to five or six people and a lot of flat characters hovering around them.
The movie strikes gold turning the Pip character into an artist. There is no better a place to showcase the quick mobility and tumultuous turn of fortune than through a high stakes world like art. But the film allows itself to slip into a pastiche about the treacherously superficial art world during these scenes. To be sure, this has a Dickensian ring of social commentary, but missing are the complex web of relationships that moves the Pip character toward his final revelation. In the book, Jaggers -- who handles Pip's affairs via his anonymous benefactor -- is a much more consequential character than the lawyer encountered in the movie. Herbert, Pip's friend in London who helps him through the years of longing for Estella and development from pauper to gentleman, is also absent.
The subplot involving the convict, Magwitch, who is eventually revealed to be Pip's benefactor is also glossed over. In the book, Pip struggles with his embarrassment of Magwitch, and comes to see the good in him later -- when it is too late. This is crucial to the framework of the story, which is based around the ideas, and, yes, expectations, that are cast by social station. In the movie, we get a rather tidy death of Fin's benefactor by mob men. It never turns out that there is any connection between the convict and Miss Havisham and Estella, giving a vacant feeling to their story entirely. It makes the ending feel a bit like an afternoon thunderstorm on a hot summer day. It was a bit violent there for a moment, but now it's all over and, hey! the weather's even a little nicer now. Since Fin never has time to consider his relationship to his benefactor, he doesn't have to think about the unexpected turns of his life, and how they indicate that expectations mean virtually nothing compared to qualities like honor and loyalty.
The movie people probably saw these changes as tweaks. Necessary ruffles in the plot in order to make the whole thing a bit more commercially acceptable. After all, people don't want to watch anything where they have to use their brain. Those movies are such downers. But without the depth of the plot, it's impossible to get the whole picture. In the end, we're left with the two would-be lovers looking on each other as equals. They think nothing of what has happened to them in the past, letting it fall away like a dream. This is a far cry from the book, where Pip and Estella are only able to get together after their experience heals them of their worry over expectation.
The two works are obviously different, but one was popular with a mass audience in the 19th century, and one was marketed to a mass audience at the end of the 20th century. As expectations for time periods go, the film would likely have been a deeper work. Its audience was probably more educated, and certainly more used to grasping the kind of ideas that the novel put forth. But like all expectations, it appears they were a bit too high to live up to.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
General Interest Review 00010
Investigative Reporting
Investigative reporting is a variety of journalism that uncovers facts that official sources refuse to disclose, or purposefully cover up to protect reputations, folly, and the illusion that governments work primarily for average citizens. Though many "media" "outlets" claim to practice this type of reporting through a variety of different methods, the hallmark of these great stories -- which represent the very reason most blue-blooded journalists go into the business in the first place -- is the official response.
This week's story in the New York Times about the CIA making payments to the allegedly corrupt brother of Afghan Puppet-in-Chief Hamid Karzai drew such a response from the administration of President Barack Obama. It should be noted that members of this administration takes pains to share with anyone who will stick a camera near them that they are the most transparent administration in history.
"Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, declined to comment on Mr. Karzai’s financial relationship with the C.I.A., referring questions to the spy agency."
Perhaps The New York Times should've taken a lesson from Lawrence Lessig, and withheld disclosing this information until they thought about what type of a response they could get from the government.
Investigative reporting is a variety of journalism that uncovers facts that official sources refuse to disclose, or purposefully cover up to protect reputations, folly, and the illusion that governments work primarily for average citizens. Though many "media" "outlets" claim to practice this type of reporting through a variety of different methods, the hallmark of these great stories -- which represent the very reason most blue-blooded journalists go into the business in the first place -- is the official response.
This week's story in the New York Times about the CIA making payments to the allegedly corrupt brother of Afghan Puppet-in-Chief Hamid Karzai drew such a response from the administration of President Barack Obama. It should be noted that members of this administration takes pains to share with anyone who will stick a camera near them that they are the most transparent administration in history.
"Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, declined to comment on Mr. Karzai’s financial relationship with the C.I.A., referring questions to the spy agency."
Perhaps The New York Times should've taken a lesson from Lawrence Lessig, and withheld disclosing this information until they thought about what type of a response they could get from the government.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
General Interest Review 00009
The Public Option
The public option (or 'so-called public option' in New York Timespeak) is a provision being kicked around by Congresspeople in the midst of the current debate over health care reform that would create a government-mandated health insurance entity. The idea is to introduce another stakeholder into the health insurance market that will offer competitive rates, and can provide health insurance for people that don't have it under the current system. Implicit in the new entity's creation is that the government would also require people to have health insurance, or they would pay a penalty. This option, however, would still not guarantee that everyone could get coverage when they need it. The only way to do this would be to set up a single payer system, in which private insurance is done away with and everyone receives access to health care provided by the government.
That option -- more public than the so-called public option -- has scarcely been mentioned throughout the debate, except as an example of an idea that shows how far to the center Democrats have come.
During the debate so far, Republicans have withdrawn their support completely from any bill that includes a public option. The Senate Democrats as a whole previously did not support a public option, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid turned on the more conservative wing of his party and said this week that a public option would be included in final legislation.
Understanding why this provision -- which would improve the health care system dramatically while basically keeping the current framework intact (and, again, is not all that radical, or anything close to what the best-functioning health care systems in the world offer) -- is not supported resoundingly requires an understanding of what many term 'the ways of Washington.' That is to say, practical ideas that can be defended with logic are immaterial. The idea that a health care system should work does not have political support, even though a vast majority of the country indicates their desire for change. What is so often not stated among countless hours of videotape spent debating health care is that the health insurance industry is not considered in this sample of the country. The industry is an amorphous force in this case, wholly dependent to pass legislation but never mentioned in debate. Much like the will of the country.
And the economy in general. Key to the provision's detractors are the arguments that the public option would drive the insurance industry toward the brink. But Blue Cross/Blue Shield is not a mom and pop shop. It is a multibillion dollar corporation with a huge impetus to keep things as they are. What these opponents rail against is competition in an industry that profits from untold sums of waste every year. But it is essential, we are told, that this industry survives, because it is a linchpin of the economy. In this alternate universe dictated by the ways of Washington, the people serve the interests of businesses instead of the businesses serving people. What the detractors are generally for -- a robust marketplace that leads to general well-being -- is not a part of the debate. The industry does not support change, so there cannot be change.
In this debate, the industry -- through interest groups and the pharmaceutical industry -- have said they are working for change. But the deals cut by the Obama administration have not led to support from any Republicans. Even Senator Olympia Snowe, who claimed she was strongly considering supporting the bill, withdrew once the public option was introduced. It is a sure sign that support can be twisted a number of ways, and that the subtle difference between "not oppose" and "support" is glaring here.
When the bill is passed, health costs are still likely to be out of control. And, still, Europe's system will be better. So, perhaps, the industry will get what it wants anyway. Looking back in a legacy interview at the end of his presidency, Barack Obama will likely chalk one more up to the ways of Washington -- the result scarcely conceived by the well-intentioned, the idea made to look foolish for an attempt to meddle in an effectively propagated illusion -- that government, on the most basic level of the need for medical care to stay alive and participate in society -- serves the people it purports to sustain.
The public option (or 'so-called public option' in New York Timespeak) is a provision being kicked around by Congresspeople in the midst of the current debate over health care reform that would create a government-mandated health insurance entity. The idea is to introduce another stakeholder into the health insurance market that will offer competitive rates, and can provide health insurance for people that don't have it under the current system. Implicit in the new entity's creation is that the government would also require people to have health insurance, or they would pay a penalty. This option, however, would still not guarantee that everyone could get coverage when they need it. The only way to do this would be to set up a single payer system, in which private insurance is done away with and everyone receives access to health care provided by the government.
That option -- more public than the so-called public option -- has scarcely been mentioned throughout the debate, except as an example of an idea that shows how far to the center Democrats have come.
During the debate so far, Republicans have withdrawn their support completely from any bill that includes a public option. The Senate Democrats as a whole previously did not support a public option, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid turned on the more conservative wing of his party and said this week that a public option would be included in final legislation.
Understanding why this provision -- which would improve the health care system dramatically while basically keeping the current framework intact (and, again, is not all that radical, or anything close to what the best-functioning health care systems in the world offer) -- is not supported resoundingly requires an understanding of what many term 'the ways of Washington.' That is to say, practical ideas that can be defended with logic are immaterial. The idea that a health care system should work does not have political support, even though a vast majority of the country indicates their desire for change. What is so often not stated among countless hours of videotape spent debating health care is that the health insurance industry is not considered in this sample of the country. The industry is an amorphous force in this case, wholly dependent to pass legislation but never mentioned in debate. Much like the will of the country.
And the economy in general. Key to the provision's detractors are the arguments that the public option would drive the insurance industry toward the brink. But Blue Cross/Blue Shield is not a mom and pop shop. It is a multibillion dollar corporation with a huge impetus to keep things as they are. What these opponents rail against is competition in an industry that profits from untold sums of waste every year. But it is essential, we are told, that this industry survives, because it is a linchpin of the economy. In this alternate universe dictated by the ways of Washington, the people serve the interests of businesses instead of the businesses serving people. What the detractors are generally for -- a robust marketplace that leads to general well-being -- is not a part of the debate. The industry does not support change, so there cannot be change.
In this debate, the industry -- through interest groups and the pharmaceutical industry -- have said they are working for change. But the deals cut by the Obama administration have not led to support from any Republicans. Even Senator Olympia Snowe, who claimed she was strongly considering supporting the bill, withdrew once the public option was introduced. It is a sure sign that support can be twisted a number of ways, and that the subtle difference between "not oppose" and "support" is glaring here.
When the bill is passed, health costs are still likely to be out of control. And, still, Europe's system will be better. So, perhaps, the industry will get what it wants anyway. Looking back in a legacy interview at the end of his presidency, Barack Obama will likely chalk one more up to the ways of Washington -- the result scarcely conceived by the well-intentioned, the idea made to look foolish for an attempt to meddle in an effectively propagated illusion -- that government, on the most basic level of the need for medical care to stay alive and participate in society -- serves the people it purports to sustain.
Monday, October 26, 2009
General Interest Review 00008
Symphony No. 8 in C minor, "Stalingrad"
Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich's eighth symphony was premiered in 1943. It is a challenging work. The symphony begins with a 25-minute section that never moves beyond a crawl. Beginning at the end of the second movement, the work takes a dynamic turn that eventually leads to showy bombast. A bridge-like fourth movement gives way to a slow and somber ending.
As with everything in Shostakovich's career at this period, the cat-and-mouse game with the Stalinist-era censors colors many interpretations of the piece, especially the first movement. The censors let the piece stand despite its rich expression, rangy meandering and the decidedly thinking-man's feel present throughout. It's not hard to picture a little smirk and and a rise of the bushy eyebrows above the frames of those inimical round glasses as this one was performed freely. He must've figured he got away with it. The only thing the censors turned out not to like was the broad canvas that left things open for personal interpretation. They appended the Stalingrad subtitle to fit the piece as a remembrance of the war dead at that battle with the Nazis.
World War II, which was then taking place inside Russia, also figures heavily into many interepretations. The bombastic section is thought to take place on the battlefield, with the finale perhaps expressing resurgence, exhausted survival, or a grief-stricken farewell.
Shostakovich's music and biography are so closely associated by scholars that it remains difficult to forget all of this background noise and allow a reaction to emerge from within. If Shostakovich's only mission was to rail against censors, then why didn't he write political treatises under a pen name? The first movement is supposed to be an expression of only oppression, but it causes me to feel free of the small, nagging worries of life. The third movement mimics the battlefield, but by the end it makes me want to dance.
From the front row of the Boston Symphony Orchestra a couple years back, the huge dynamic range of the piece was the most obvious feature. The volume of the loudest sections were more tenacious than classical music has always seemed to be able to handle, while the quieter sections were as gentle as all those pieces that were made to shift the mind toward water lilies. The conductor at the performance was a sturdy man, but needed to be helped onto the podium. Once he arrived, the piece thrust him to life. He sang along audibly to some of the most lyrical sections, cued the horns lovingly, precisely counted in the violas to begin the third movement. Even his posture perked up. When the ovation was over, he looked tired, and hunched over a little more as he walked to exit the stage.
Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich's eighth symphony was premiered in 1943. It is a challenging work. The symphony begins with a 25-minute section that never moves beyond a crawl. Beginning at the end of the second movement, the work takes a dynamic turn that eventually leads to showy bombast. A bridge-like fourth movement gives way to a slow and somber ending.
As with everything in Shostakovich's career at this period, the cat-and-mouse game with the Stalinist-era censors colors many interpretations of the piece, especially the first movement. The censors let the piece stand despite its rich expression, rangy meandering and the decidedly thinking-man's feel present throughout. It's not hard to picture a little smirk and and a rise of the bushy eyebrows above the frames of those inimical round glasses as this one was performed freely. He must've figured he got away with it. The only thing the censors turned out not to like was the broad canvas that left things open for personal interpretation. They appended the Stalingrad subtitle to fit the piece as a remembrance of the war dead at that battle with the Nazis.
World War II, which was then taking place inside Russia, also figures heavily into many interepretations. The bombastic section is thought to take place on the battlefield, with the finale perhaps expressing resurgence, exhausted survival, or a grief-stricken farewell.
Shostakovich's music and biography are so closely associated by scholars that it remains difficult to forget all of this background noise and allow a reaction to emerge from within. If Shostakovich's only mission was to rail against censors, then why didn't he write political treatises under a pen name? The first movement is supposed to be an expression of only oppression, but it causes me to feel free of the small, nagging worries of life. The third movement mimics the battlefield, but by the end it makes me want to dance.
From the front row of the Boston Symphony Orchestra a couple years back, the huge dynamic range of the piece was the most obvious feature. The volume of the loudest sections were more tenacious than classical music has always seemed to be able to handle, while the quieter sections were as gentle as all those pieces that were made to shift the mind toward water lilies. The conductor at the performance was a sturdy man, but needed to be helped onto the podium. Once he arrived, the piece thrust him to life. He sang along audibly to some of the most lyrical sections, cued the horns lovingly, precisely counted in the violas to begin the third movement. Even his posture perked up. When the ovation was over, he looked tired, and hunched over a little more as he walked to exit the stage.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
General Interest Review 00007
The Trees They Do Grow High
"The Trees They Do Grow High" is an English folk ballad that first appeared in the 1700s. With the folk music resurgence in the 60s the song was reawakened, and is now available widely mainly because of recordings by Joan Baez and Martin Carthy.
The song is a genuine example of why English ballads cast such a long, ominous shadow on people who are willing to give them some attention. In the lyrics and aching movement of the melody is conveyed the simultaneous pull of longing and powerlessness that takes up so much of a life lived in a culture that oppresses personal liberty. The ballad is told from the point of view of a 24-year-old girl married off by her father to a 14-year-old boy. She frets about how young he is, expressing anger at her father, who has "married me to a boy who is too young." Her father retorts, in the next verse, that the boy is of noble blood, revealing the true reason for the match. In the refrain she states that "He's young but he's daily growing," showing in a burst of lyrical brilliance that she has submitted some form of resignation that her own life is out of her control. From there, it is suggested that she made amends by taking him as a lover, only to see him go off to battle and die.
Like the refrain, the story is delivered in a taut poetic narrative, that asks the listener to interpret the lines, and, at the same time, feel fully the emotions the narrator lays bare. With each listen it is possible to come away on the side of a different character -- whether it be the narrator and the way her life has been pre-ordained for her, the father and his hope that his daughter will be looked after, or the boy himself, who probably has little idea of the weight of any of this at 14.
So often stories from the times of kings and courts are about the rise or fall (or rise and fall) of ambitious people. They are the epic tails of people who either tried to define their own age (Henry VIII, Elizabeth I) or deviate from the norms of that era with revolutionary abandon (Napoleon, any period character Mel Gibson has played). This story reminds us that a faceless woman possessed of little courage can tell us just as much about history as anyone who was so lucky as to have been written about in a book.
"The Trees They Do Grow High" is an English folk ballad that first appeared in the 1700s. With the folk music resurgence in the 60s the song was reawakened, and is now available widely mainly because of recordings by Joan Baez and Martin Carthy.
The song is a genuine example of why English ballads cast such a long, ominous shadow on people who are willing to give them some attention. In the lyrics and aching movement of the melody is conveyed the simultaneous pull of longing and powerlessness that takes up so much of a life lived in a culture that oppresses personal liberty. The ballad is told from the point of view of a 24-year-old girl married off by her father to a 14-year-old boy. She frets about how young he is, expressing anger at her father, who has "married me to a boy who is too young." Her father retorts, in the next verse, that the boy is of noble blood, revealing the true reason for the match. In the refrain she states that "He's young but he's daily growing," showing in a burst of lyrical brilliance that she has submitted some form of resignation that her own life is out of her control. From there, it is suggested that she made amends by taking him as a lover, only to see him go off to battle and die.
Like the refrain, the story is delivered in a taut poetic narrative, that asks the listener to interpret the lines, and, at the same time, feel fully the emotions the narrator lays bare. With each listen it is possible to come away on the side of a different character -- whether it be the narrator and the way her life has been pre-ordained for her, the father and his hope that his daughter will be looked after, or the boy himself, who probably has little idea of the weight of any of this at 14.
So often stories from the times of kings and courts are about the rise or fall (or rise and fall) of ambitious people. They are the epic tails of people who either tried to define their own age (Henry VIII, Elizabeth I) or deviate from the norms of that era with revolutionary abandon (Napoleon, any period character Mel Gibson has played). This story reminds us that a faceless woman possessed of little courage can tell us just as much about history as anyone who was so lucky as to have been written about in a book.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
General Interest Review 00006
Predator Drones
Predator Drones are small military aircraft with the capability to fire missiles. They are unique in that they do not require a pilot to operate. Instead they can be flown remotely from a faraway location via satellite. Effectively, this takes the human equation out of warfare for the side that has drones. For the receiving end, people are still highly at risk of casualty and subjected to death should the drone's missile, known unrepentantly as the Hellfire, connect with them. Currently the United States is the only country using drones. The U.S. military acknowledges using drones in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has used them in Yemen and the Balkan region of Eastern Europe in the past. Reports recently have all but confirmed that the CIA is using the drones in the remote, tribal areas of Pakistan where the Taliban is hiding. Reports have also been slipping out that they drones are also in use in Somalia, both to protect cargo ships from attacks by pirates and against Al Shabbab, the al Qaida-linked militant arm in Somalia.
Though leaders are likely to never acknowledge it, the drones drive another stake into the heart of the official U.S. policy that says it won't have anything to do with assassinations. This seems to be the product of a lessening of degree over history. The CIA has been accused on a number of occasions of aiding assassination plots in other countries. though it has never admitted to it. Now, with a clear, ill-defined enemy (that is, any terrorist organization that can be linked to al Qaida), the rules apparently need not be followed, and the plans are laid out for the public under the guise that the program is top secret. While it doesn't help enemies, this chastens the program against criticism from outside the government.
The end goal is to rid the world of the heads of these terrorists organizations that can be located, and hope that no others flourish in their wake. But the drones set up the conditions for new terrorists to flourish in their wake. One of the most high profile drone attacks against a supposed Usama bin Laden hideout, during the Clinton administration, killed civillians. A drone attack in October, 2006, against a religious school in Pakistan, also killed civillians. When missiles are fired into a place where people are located, civillians will die. Thinking that their family, friends (and they themselves, if they happen to survive) will not be radicalized by such an event, flies in the face of most logic, not to mention human nature. The U.S. is hoping for a reasoned, humane response to an assault that is unreasonable when looked at from both sides and grotesque (not to mention terrorist, considering the indiscriminate nature and assault on personal liberty).
For those interested in divorcing themselves from reality and considering the matter on a military strategic level, using the drones in Pakistan -- where al Qaida number 2 Ayman al Zawahiri and Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud were targeted (Mehsud was killed) -- even flies in the face of sound planning. To allow the drones into Pakistan, the U.S. had to let the government there pick most of the targets. This effectively takes the U.S. out of the part of the process which is the whole point of the process. To kill someone, you must identify who you are going to kill. Maybe the sought after Taliban are common enemies of the Pakistani government and the CIA right now, but what happens when Pakistan becomes impatient that their targets aren't being executed? That's anyone's guess -- because the program isn't even officially acknowledged.
On either level, and especially with the program's expansion to Somalia rumored over the past week, the playing field envisioned currently seems to be an idealistic one -- where there is no American or Pakistani military suffering, and where targets are dispatched that will fully disrupt the terrorist network in Southwest Asia. But because there is no accountability, and no way to know what the exact rubric is for the targets being selected, the future looks a lot murkier. (In fact, it is already murky. Mehsud alone took more than a dozen tries to execute. How many civillians died in the process is not known. They did not die, according to the CIA, because the program does not exist). Right now, the alleged high value of the targets justifies the use of the drones. But it's not hard to see a future where the use of the drones justifies the high value of the targets.
Predator Drones are small military aircraft with the capability to fire missiles. They are unique in that they do not require a pilot to operate. Instead they can be flown remotely from a faraway location via satellite. Effectively, this takes the human equation out of warfare for the side that has drones. For the receiving end, people are still highly at risk of casualty and subjected to death should the drone's missile, known unrepentantly as the Hellfire, connect with them. Currently the United States is the only country using drones. The U.S. military acknowledges using drones in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has used them in Yemen and the Balkan region of Eastern Europe in the past. Reports recently have all but confirmed that the CIA is using the drones in the remote, tribal areas of Pakistan where the Taliban is hiding. Reports have also been slipping out that they drones are also in use in Somalia, both to protect cargo ships from attacks by pirates and against Al Shabbab, the al Qaida-linked militant arm in Somalia.
Though leaders are likely to never acknowledge it, the drones drive another stake into the heart of the official U.S. policy that says it won't have anything to do with assassinations. This seems to be the product of a lessening of degree over history. The CIA has been accused on a number of occasions of aiding assassination plots in other countries. though it has never admitted to it. Now, with a clear, ill-defined enemy (that is, any terrorist organization that can be linked to al Qaida), the rules apparently need not be followed, and the plans are laid out for the public under the guise that the program is top secret. While it doesn't help enemies, this chastens the program against criticism from outside the government.
The end goal is to rid the world of the heads of these terrorists organizations that can be located, and hope that no others flourish in their wake. But the drones set up the conditions for new terrorists to flourish in their wake. One of the most high profile drone attacks against a supposed Usama bin Laden hideout, during the Clinton administration, killed civillians. A drone attack in October, 2006, against a religious school in Pakistan, also killed civillians. When missiles are fired into a place where people are located, civillians will die. Thinking that their family, friends (and they themselves, if they happen to survive) will not be radicalized by such an event, flies in the face of most logic, not to mention human nature. The U.S. is hoping for a reasoned, humane response to an assault that is unreasonable when looked at from both sides and grotesque (not to mention terrorist, considering the indiscriminate nature and assault on personal liberty).
For those interested in divorcing themselves from reality and considering the matter on a military strategic level, using the drones in Pakistan -- where al Qaida number 2 Ayman al Zawahiri and Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud were targeted (Mehsud was killed) -- even flies in the face of sound planning. To allow the drones into Pakistan, the U.S. had to let the government there pick most of the targets. This effectively takes the U.S. out of the part of the process which is the whole point of the process. To kill someone, you must identify who you are going to kill. Maybe the sought after Taliban are common enemies of the Pakistani government and the CIA right now, but what happens when Pakistan becomes impatient that their targets aren't being executed? That's anyone's guess -- because the program isn't even officially acknowledged.
On either level, and especially with the program's expansion to Somalia rumored over the past week, the playing field envisioned currently seems to be an idealistic one -- where there is no American or Pakistani military suffering, and where targets are dispatched that will fully disrupt the terrorist network in Southwest Asia. But because there is no accountability, and no way to know what the exact rubric is for the targets being selected, the future looks a lot murkier. (In fact, it is already murky. Mehsud alone took more than a dozen tries to execute. How many civillians died in the process is not known. They did not die, according to the CIA, because the program does not exist). Right now, the alleged high value of the targets justifies the use of the drones. But it's not hard to see a future where the use of the drones justifies the high value of the targets.
Friday, October 23, 2009
General Interest Review 00005
Where The Wild Things Are (film)
Where The Wild Things Are (film) is the cinematic expansion of Maurice Sendak's 1960s children's book. The book has all of ten lines, a score of pages and a fairly simple plot. Kids throws tantrum. Kid gets punished. Kid entertains himself while in room being punished. Kid's punishment ends.
The movie winds that bare chicken bone of a plot around a Max who has to shoulder more than he can bare at his age. His mother is single and sort of ignores him, and his sister's friends pick on him without her stepping in to call them bullies. Max gets all bent out of shape one night and runs away from home, at which point his imagination takes him to the titular locale. Instead of conquering the wild things like he does in the book, he lies to them and gets appointed king. From that point, the movie divorces itself from the book completely, spinning an allegorical yarn about human interaction, being sort of a loner, the selfish tendencies of interpersonal behavior and their effects on others, building sweet forts, and sleeping together in a big, furry pile.
The web of relationships Max conjures up for the wild things in his head points to his own life at with a temperamental alpha at the center capable of bringing his buds to his knees when he decides he wants to be upset. But along for the ride are a host of other teetering personalities that points this movie's genre away from the kid set.
Which makes for an interesting time in itself. On a base reading of the plot, we'd see Max represented in the alpha character, making sense of a situation where he has to temper personalities beyond his control, learning the lessons of it, and going home. But on a broader level the plot arc is really about relationships at any age. When do we let our own interest and selfishness fall away and heed the appeal of the better side of our conscience to let people be what they are? When is it time to call a spade a spade and think you can make things right and when is it time to just go home? Obviously there are no clear cut answers to this in life, and the movie treads lightly on making a concrete statement about how to deal with a screwed up entanglement of people. But watching the plot unfold through the McSweeney's-era archetypes will at least call to mind enough real life situations to keep things relevant.
And the cinematography and costumes are boss.
Where The Wild Things Are (film) is the cinematic expansion of Maurice Sendak's 1960s children's book. The book has all of ten lines, a score of pages and a fairly simple plot. Kids throws tantrum. Kid gets punished. Kid entertains himself while in room being punished. Kid's punishment ends.
The movie winds that bare chicken bone of a plot around a Max who has to shoulder more than he can bare at his age. His mother is single and sort of ignores him, and his sister's friends pick on him without her stepping in to call them bullies. Max gets all bent out of shape one night and runs away from home, at which point his imagination takes him to the titular locale. Instead of conquering the wild things like he does in the book, he lies to them and gets appointed king. From that point, the movie divorces itself from the book completely, spinning an allegorical yarn about human interaction, being sort of a loner, the selfish tendencies of interpersonal behavior and their effects on others, building sweet forts, and sleeping together in a big, furry pile.
The web of relationships Max conjures up for the wild things in his head points to his own life at with a temperamental alpha at the center capable of bringing his buds to his knees when he decides he wants to be upset. But along for the ride are a host of other teetering personalities that points this movie's genre away from the kid set.
Which makes for an interesting time in itself. On a base reading of the plot, we'd see Max represented in the alpha character, making sense of a situation where he has to temper personalities beyond his control, learning the lessons of it, and going home. But on a broader level the plot arc is really about relationships at any age. When do we let our own interest and selfishness fall away and heed the appeal of the better side of our conscience to let people be what they are? When is it time to call a spade a spade and think you can make things right and when is it time to just go home? Obviously there are no clear cut answers to this in life, and the movie treads lightly on making a concrete statement about how to deal with a screwed up entanglement of people. But watching the plot unfold through the McSweeney's-era archetypes will at least call to mind enough real life situations to keep things relevant.
And the cinematography and costumes are boss.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
General Interest Review 00004
Against Transparency
Against Transparency is an essay by Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig appearing in the October 21, 2009, issue of the The New Republic. Lessig argues that the newly expanded availability of government data on the Internet-- specifically campaign contributions -- merely enables and reinforces cynicism about government. The intended goal, he says, should be to move beyond cynicism to actual government reform. He refers primarily to a project that will map campaign contributions distributed to members of Congress from special interests and corporations directly to votes that these parties would want to influence. Lessig argues that the gray area between the act of contributing to a campaign and allowing that money to influence the vote is too indecipherable to show in data without explanation.
He even goes so far as to suggest that the cynicism yoked to the overwhelming amount of corruption the data appears to reveal creates a "tyranny of transparency." That is to say, because the public will automatically link a vote that aligns with a campaign contribution to the campaign contribution no matter the truth of the Congressperson's motivation, cynicism will burden the public's view of the political process to the point of...well, he never really posits where it might take us. The idea is that if data releasers think about the effect their product will have, they can re-tool it to have a more positive effect on the public process of making laws and governing in general.
Lessig's consideration is crucial in the current media environment. The transparency that President Obama has promised has allowed full access to the location of his dates, the movement of his dog, and, this week, his devotion to his daughters' sports teams. Despite all this transparency, the New York Times still had to do a bit of digging this summer to discover the White House had inked a deal with former La. Rep. Billy Tauzin and the major pharmaceutical companies to hold back that industry's losses in the upcoming health care bill in exchange for support. That is to say, if the White House wants to suppress information, the age of transparency can suddenly become opaque. Simultaneously, a wave of corruption convictions have gripped Congress across party lines, lining up the makings for a repeat of the Nixon-era disillusionment (if we even ever really got over that one...). Lessig's worry about public cynicism reigning over are clearly based in reality.
But like the gray area between a campaign contribution and a vote, the gray area between the release of public data and the public's view of said data is equally vast. Much more vast than Lessig is willing to admit. Lessig is an academic, operating in the world of the abstract and theoretical. The data releasers he is discussing are involved in mundane work not vested with the creativity and intellectual rigor Lessig puts in, but it concerns collecting and organizing data -- not figuring out the story behind that data. The idea that a new system is required to release this data is laughable. This country has had a mechanism for releasing key government data and, shockingly, the story behind it, for some time now. This mechanism is often broadly referred to as the press, or the media.
It is true that the facts reported in the press often lead to public cynicism. Virtually all media outlets that pursue the types of stories that rely on documents and government data are accused of being too negative or trying to blow up a story that isn't there to gain viewers or readers. Journalists are forced to pursue documents because information is not readily provided to them about topics like corruption and conflict of interest. It would seem reasonable for Lessig or his colleagues to suggest that the new vehicles to release data take an approach geared more toward spotlighting positive developments as well as negative ones. But that, too, would require reading between the lines of the volumes of data. The data could also be organized in a way that does not directly connect campaign contributions and votes -- but then what is the point of releasing the data in the first place? The public interest becomes far lower if the data doesn't show anything interesting in the end.
The dilemma presented is not one of how to present information, but how that information is viewed. Since newspapers are dying and migrating to the Internet, the Internet generation assumes that the media can be remade on their principles. Organization of voluminous information, open and free access, and clearly focused intentions, and, ultimately, utility, will produce the best product, they say.
But to find the truth amongst all that data requires a willingness to wade into the sludge of human interaction and, occasionally, get caught up in the deceit, self-interest, and general gamesmanship that results when trying to publicize unethical or illegal actions by a person. This job has often been called reporting. It is undertaken by this press. The innovations of the digital revolution are a welcome help in this job, but ultimately represent no replacement for a capable fact finder that is willing to talk to actual human beings with a stake in the outcome in the course of doing their job.
Against Transparency is an essay by Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig appearing in the October 21, 2009, issue of the The New Republic. Lessig argues that the newly expanded availability of government data on the Internet-- specifically campaign contributions -- merely enables and reinforces cynicism about government. The intended goal, he says, should be to move beyond cynicism to actual government reform. He refers primarily to a project that will map campaign contributions distributed to members of Congress from special interests and corporations directly to votes that these parties would want to influence. Lessig argues that the gray area between the act of contributing to a campaign and allowing that money to influence the vote is too indecipherable to show in data without explanation.
He even goes so far as to suggest that the cynicism yoked to the overwhelming amount of corruption the data appears to reveal creates a "tyranny of transparency." That is to say, because the public will automatically link a vote that aligns with a campaign contribution to the campaign contribution no matter the truth of the Congressperson's motivation, cynicism will burden the public's view of the political process to the point of...well, he never really posits where it might take us. The idea is that if data releasers think about the effect their product will have, they can re-tool it to have a more positive effect on the public process of making laws and governing in general.
Lessig's consideration is crucial in the current media environment. The transparency that President Obama has promised has allowed full access to the location of his dates, the movement of his dog, and, this week, his devotion to his daughters' sports teams. Despite all this transparency, the New York Times still had to do a bit of digging this summer to discover the White House had inked a deal with former La. Rep. Billy Tauzin and the major pharmaceutical companies to hold back that industry's losses in the upcoming health care bill in exchange for support. That is to say, if the White House wants to suppress information, the age of transparency can suddenly become opaque. Simultaneously, a wave of corruption convictions have gripped Congress across party lines, lining up the makings for a repeat of the Nixon-era disillusionment (if we even ever really got over that one...). Lessig's worry about public cynicism reigning over are clearly based in reality.
But like the gray area between a campaign contribution and a vote, the gray area between the release of public data and the public's view of said data is equally vast. Much more vast than Lessig is willing to admit. Lessig is an academic, operating in the world of the abstract and theoretical. The data releasers he is discussing are involved in mundane work not vested with the creativity and intellectual rigor Lessig puts in, but it concerns collecting and organizing data -- not figuring out the story behind that data. The idea that a new system is required to release this data is laughable. This country has had a mechanism for releasing key government data and, shockingly, the story behind it, for some time now. This mechanism is often broadly referred to as the press, or the media.
It is true that the facts reported in the press often lead to public cynicism. Virtually all media outlets that pursue the types of stories that rely on documents and government data are accused of being too negative or trying to blow up a story that isn't there to gain viewers or readers. Journalists are forced to pursue documents because information is not readily provided to them about topics like corruption and conflict of interest. It would seem reasonable for Lessig or his colleagues to suggest that the new vehicles to release data take an approach geared more toward spotlighting positive developments as well as negative ones. But that, too, would require reading between the lines of the volumes of data. The data could also be organized in a way that does not directly connect campaign contributions and votes -- but then what is the point of releasing the data in the first place? The public interest becomes far lower if the data doesn't show anything interesting in the end.
The dilemma presented is not one of how to present information, but how that information is viewed. Since newspapers are dying and migrating to the Internet, the Internet generation assumes that the media can be remade on their principles. Organization of voluminous information, open and free access, and clearly focused intentions, and, ultimately, utility, will produce the best product, they say.
But to find the truth amongst all that data requires a willingness to wade into the sludge of human interaction and, occasionally, get caught up in the deceit, self-interest, and general gamesmanship that results when trying to publicize unethical or illegal actions by a person. This job has often been called reporting. It is undertaken by this press. The innovations of the digital revolution are a welcome help in this job, but ultimately represent no replacement for a capable fact finder that is willing to talk to actual human beings with a stake in the outcome in the course of doing their job.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Generaly Interest Review 00003
Second Lines
Second Lines are a variety of parade originating in the historically black neighborhoods of New Orleans. They often roll on Sunday afternoons (after church and, if possible, before the Saints game), and are striking for the amount of fun they bring with some very limited resources. This ain't Mardi Gras by any stretch of the imagination. The total parade is usually one float, a brass band, and a gaggle of people dressed up in their finest dancing like absolutely everyone is watching. Second Lines originate through organizations known as Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs. Back when, people in black communities formed the clubs so they could pool their resources to ensure a proper burial for all. That's where the popular New Orleans jazz funeral came from. Now 'days, the clubs host parades through the neighborhood on a given Sunday. The idea, ostensibly, is to celebrate themselves. But no one thinks too hard. The members of the club dress in matching suits and march in front of the brass band, fully getting down throughout and literally stepping out for their club. The name second line refers to the onlookers, who in this case actually walk with the parade and, of course, get the heck down. Since the parades are so small, the street talk has just left the second line as the name of the parade, but actually you're not going to a second line...you're going to second line a parade.
Grammar matters little when you're in the thick of it. The drums and tuba are in lockstep driving the parade onward, and all that's really left to do when the horns kick in is, well, get down. The author went to check one out yesterday, intending on standing as it passed due to dreary conditions. As the parade was upon, he couldn't help but get swept up and walk with the thing for a little less than a mile. The closest comparison to what it feels like to be in the middle is any large dance number from a musical where normal people are moved to join in the song. People run up on porches to show off their moves, dance in unison, and make sure they are with drink. And the matching suits. And the whole neighborhood comes out.
It's really hard to overstate how these simple, fairly small parades breathe life into some of the roughest streets in our fine country. They bring a color to the streets that isn't seen now like it was in the days of yore. The economic troubles in these areas are probably unmatched, but organizers know they need this to somehow keep the city from fully getting away from them. Sure, New Orleans kids have always been all about picking up a horn. But what do they have to look forward to if they haven't got anywhere to play it on Sunday. And to thnk about this as ingrained culture makes it even wilder. It's expected that it'll happen here. Sure as the buck moth catepillars will fall out of the tree every spring.
As the author was walking home from yesterday's parade he encountered another non-native of the area. They talked about how second lines are what church should be. On Sunday afternoon, everyone forgets their problems, dances together on the street, and makes a big old commotion. Just for the heck of it.
Second Lines are a variety of parade originating in the historically black neighborhoods of New Orleans. They often roll on Sunday afternoons (after church and, if possible, before the Saints game), and are striking for the amount of fun they bring with some very limited resources. This ain't Mardi Gras by any stretch of the imagination. The total parade is usually one float, a brass band, and a gaggle of people dressed up in their finest dancing like absolutely everyone is watching. Second Lines originate through organizations known as Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs. Back when, people in black communities formed the clubs so they could pool their resources to ensure a proper burial for all. That's where the popular New Orleans jazz funeral came from. Now 'days, the clubs host parades through the neighborhood on a given Sunday. The idea, ostensibly, is to celebrate themselves. But no one thinks too hard. The members of the club dress in matching suits and march in front of the brass band, fully getting down throughout and literally stepping out for their club. The name second line refers to the onlookers, who in this case actually walk with the parade and, of course, get the heck down. Since the parades are so small, the street talk has just left the second line as the name of the parade, but actually you're not going to a second line...you're going to second line a parade.
Grammar matters little when you're in the thick of it. The drums and tuba are in lockstep driving the parade onward, and all that's really left to do when the horns kick in is, well, get down. The author went to check one out yesterday, intending on standing as it passed due to dreary conditions. As the parade was upon, he couldn't help but get swept up and walk with the thing for a little less than a mile. The closest comparison to what it feels like to be in the middle is any large dance number from a musical where normal people are moved to join in the song. People run up on porches to show off their moves, dance in unison, and make sure they are with drink. And the matching suits. And the whole neighborhood comes out.
It's really hard to overstate how these simple, fairly small parades breathe life into some of the roughest streets in our fine country. They bring a color to the streets that isn't seen now like it was in the days of yore. The economic troubles in these areas are probably unmatched, but organizers know they need this to somehow keep the city from fully getting away from them. Sure, New Orleans kids have always been all about picking up a horn. But what do they have to look forward to if they haven't got anywhere to play it on Sunday. And to thnk about this as ingrained culture makes it even wilder. It's expected that it'll happen here. Sure as the buck moth catepillars will fall out of the tree every spring.
As the author was walking home from yesterday's parade he encountered another non-native of the area. They talked about how second lines are what church should be. On Sunday afternoon, everyone forgets their problems, dances together on the street, and makes a big old commotion. Just for the heck of it.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
General Interest Review 00002
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro is a city in South America's pre-eminent natural-resource-and-poor-people-flush megacountry, Brazil. The International Olympic Committee voted this week to let the city host the Summer Olympic Games there in 2016, a mere seven years from now. South America has never hosted an Olympic Games. Coincidentally, Rio de Janeiro will also host the football/soccer World Cup in 2014 -- a notably larger event to anyone inhabiting the area nether regions outside the Universe-balancing axis of the United States of America.
Rio, as it is known in party travel vernacular, is a provocative choice to host the Olympics, just as Beijing, China, was a unique choice for the 2008 Games. Largely known for Carnival (also known as Mardi Gras without the residual racism) and that slightly ominous Christ Redeemer statue, Rio has also entered the cultural canon by way of the reductionist (to tears, because it's so brilliant) "City of God" of earlier this decade. Portrayed in that film (and in this week's New Yorker magazine), is the reality on the ground. A huge swath of the city's poorest areas overtaken in crippling fashion by crime, gangs, and the drug trade. These portraits do not only expose life in Rio, they expose the desperation many slums face throughout the world. Rio is not the first city with these problems to host the Olympics. The 1980 Games were hosted by Los Angeles. Though an American city of the First World, LA faces the same types of issues in its poor neighborhoods.
Casual media consumers will note that the final decision to award the Olympic Games to Rio were was the result of endless internal politicking and, perhaps, the sympathy for a continent that is home to a vast swath of the world's people but has never hosted an Olympics. But what will emerge from that back room process is a look at a country and its cultural center that are still in the midst of its growing pains. Brazil is not yet China -- kicking around regional counterparts and pulling the puppet strings of the U.S. But crucially for the Olympics, it is also not EuroAmerica. In fact, it was once an outpost and colonized portion of EuroAmerica -- unlike any other city to host the games before.
After centuries of bending to pressure from the North Americans and Europeans even after they stopped directly controlling the place, and struggling to fill the power vacuum with anyone respectable in the meantime, the gracious Centers of the Universe have bestowed one of their own jewels of relevance onto the former outer provinces in the form of the Olympics. While it's unlikely that Brazil will be eager to throw any of their gang leaders, or even poor people (d.b.a. the vast majority of the population) into the direct glare of the limelight, the mere fact that the Olympics are willing to pack up their things and move the show to a city that was previously a mere pawn on the chess board of world supremacy is a step that reflects the increasingly crowded world stage. Fittingly, at the close of the 2012 Olympics the flag will pass from London -- home of the crown that once sought the prize of outright global dominance and all that was supposedly civilized -- to Rio. The message: There's finally more about the place to nail down than exotic Ipanemans.
Rio de Janeiro is a city in South America's pre-eminent natural-resource-and-poor-people-flush megacountry, Brazil. The International Olympic Committee voted this week to let the city host the Summer Olympic Games there in 2016, a mere seven years from now. South America has never hosted an Olympic Games. Coincidentally, Rio de Janeiro will also host the football/soccer World Cup in 2014 -- a notably larger event to anyone inhabiting the area nether regions outside the Universe-balancing axis of the United States of America.
Rio, as it is known in party travel vernacular, is a provocative choice to host the Olympics, just as Beijing, China, was a unique choice for the 2008 Games. Largely known for Carnival (also known as Mardi Gras without the residual racism) and that slightly ominous Christ Redeemer statue, Rio has also entered the cultural canon by way of the reductionist (to tears, because it's so brilliant) "City of God" of earlier this decade. Portrayed in that film (and in this week's New Yorker magazine), is the reality on the ground. A huge swath of the city's poorest areas overtaken in crippling fashion by crime, gangs, and the drug trade. These portraits do not only expose life in Rio, they expose the desperation many slums face throughout the world. Rio is not the first city with these problems to host the Olympics. The 1980 Games were hosted by Los Angeles. Though an American city of the First World, LA faces the same types of issues in its poor neighborhoods.
Casual media consumers will note that the final decision to award the Olympic Games to Rio were was the result of endless internal politicking and, perhaps, the sympathy for a continent that is home to a vast swath of the world's people but has never hosted an Olympics. But what will emerge from that back room process is a look at a country and its cultural center that are still in the midst of its growing pains. Brazil is not yet China -- kicking around regional counterparts and pulling the puppet strings of the U.S. But crucially for the Olympics, it is also not EuroAmerica. In fact, it was once an outpost and colonized portion of EuroAmerica -- unlike any other city to host the games before.
After centuries of bending to pressure from the North Americans and Europeans even after they stopped directly controlling the place, and struggling to fill the power vacuum with anyone respectable in the meantime, the gracious Centers of the Universe have bestowed one of their own jewels of relevance onto the former outer provinces in the form of the Olympics. While it's unlikely that Brazil will be eager to throw any of their gang leaders, or even poor people (d.b.a. the vast majority of the population) into the direct glare of the limelight, the mere fact that the Olympics are willing to pack up their things and move the show to a city that was previously a mere pawn on the chess board of world supremacy is a step that reflects the increasingly crowded world stage. Fittingly, at the close of the 2012 Olympics the flag will pass from London -- home of the crown that once sought the prize of outright global dominance and all that was supposedly civilized -- to Rio. The message: There's finally more about the place to nail down than exotic Ipanemans.
Monday, September 28, 2009
General Interest Review 00001
Rouse's
Rouse's is a supermarket (not mega saver gigando zone) with at least three locations in New Orleans proper. One is in the French Quarter and one is Uptown. The final installation, located on Carrollton Avenue in the Mid-City section of New Orleans. Anthony Rouse, the proprietor, started his first grocery store down the bayou in Houma, La., in 1960. But at the tail end of his career (he died earlier this year) he was heralded for reinvesting in New Orleans when he bought up the shuttered Sav A Center and A & P stores that dotted the metro area. The move doubled the size of the Rouse's franchise, and it gave that oft-unheralded, much stigmatized area known as The Rest of New Orleans Where Most of the Regular People Live a grocery store. Shockingly, the Mid-City location is the only supermarket from, and this is a conservative estimate, the Orleans Parish limits near the Lower 9th Ward through to Lakeview. That's a sizable chunk right through the heart of the city. (As you may have guessed, since the lower 9 is involved, that's also where a lot of poor people live -- but it's a huge land area, so it would be ignorant to only chalk it up to an issue of economic disparity). The Uptown Rouse's is nary a stone's throw from Winn Dixie and Wal-Mart, just to put things into a little perspective.
Though grocery stores are maligned as one of the many institutions taking on a more homogeneous, corporate (read: boring and lifeless) sort of feel over the last 30 years, there are still enough local grocers hanging around in most parts of the country to give credence to the idea that they're one of the only retailers left that still offers some regional diversity. And in New Orleans, there's no more showy piece of the Old Weird America vibe reeking from the streets like a Katrina fridge that hasn't been opened yet than the food. French or Creole or Cajun or Carribean or somewhere in between, they couldn't come up with some of this stuff again even if the French stumbled upon the Baratarians all over again. (The part about the Acadians getting kicked out of Canada is far too implausible a wrinkle). It's rare that you'll find shrimp remoulade mix displayed prominently in your local Seattle grocery store. And no one can touch the olive selection.
Leaving only one packed grocery store for normal New Orleanians looking to whip up some dinner sends them a message..they don't want us to eat. It's already bad enough, what with the 'We don't want you to live in a good house' vibe already being put across here. Investors may be shaky about setting up shop, but it's not like they wouldn't have business.
So while unheralded nationally on the level of Kanye West and formeldahyde, Rouse's occupies a critical place in that black albatross around the neck of this place known as the post-K landscape. They came and set up shop when no one else would. And unlike their counterparts Robert Fresh Market in the Marigny, they found a way to reopen despite all the insurance and legal hurdles that were thrown down in front of them. Judging by the business over there on Carrollton when I stopped by today, business seems to be alright.
Rouse's is a supermarket (not mega saver gigando zone) with at least three locations in New Orleans proper. One is in the French Quarter and one is Uptown. The final installation, located on Carrollton Avenue in the Mid-City section of New Orleans. Anthony Rouse, the proprietor, started his first grocery store down the bayou in Houma, La., in 1960. But at the tail end of his career (he died earlier this year) he was heralded for reinvesting in New Orleans when he bought up the shuttered Sav A Center and A & P stores that dotted the metro area. The move doubled the size of the Rouse's franchise, and it gave that oft-unheralded, much stigmatized area known as The Rest of New Orleans Where Most of the Regular People Live a grocery store. Shockingly, the Mid-City location is the only supermarket from, and this is a conservative estimate, the Orleans Parish limits near the Lower 9th Ward through to Lakeview. That's a sizable chunk right through the heart of the city. (As you may have guessed, since the lower 9 is involved, that's also where a lot of poor people live -- but it's a huge land area, so it would be ignorant to only chalk it up to an issue of economic disparity). The Uptown Rouse's is nary a stone's throw from Winn Dixie and Wal-Mart, just to put things into a little perspective.
Though grocery stores are maligned as one of the many institutions taking on a more homogeneous, corporate (read: boring and lifeless) sort of feel over the last 30 years, there are still enough local grocers hanging around in most parts of the country to give credence to the idea that they're one of the only retailers left that still offers some regional diversity. And in New Orleans, there's no more showy piece of the Old Weird America vibe reeking from the streets like a Katrina fridge that hasn't been opened yet than the food. French or Creole or Cajun or Carribean or somewhere in between, they couldn't come up with some of this stuff again even if the French stumbled upon the Baratarians all over again. (The part about the Acadians getting kicked out of Canada is far too implausible a wrinkle). It's rare that you'll find shrimp remoulade mix displayed prominently in your local Seattle grocery store. And no one can touch the olive selection.
Leaving only one packed grocery store for normal New Orleanians looking to whip up some dinner sends them a message..they don't want us to eat. It's already bad enough, what with the 'We don't want you to live in a good house' vibe already being put across here. Investors may be shaky about setting up shop, but it's not like they wouldn't have business.
So while unheralded nationally on the level of Kanye West and formeldahyde, Rouse's occupies a critical place in that black albatross around the neck of this place known as the post-K landscape. They came and set up shop when no one else would. And unlike their counterparts Robert Fresh Market in the Marigny, they found a way to reopen despite all the insurance and legal hurdles that were thrown down in front of them. Judging by the business over there on Carrollton when I stopped by today, business seems to be alright.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
General Interest Review 00000
William Safire
William Safire died today. I learned this from the website of one of those pesky newspapers that still seem to be hanging around. Safire wrote for The New York Times. He was also a speechwriter for Richard Milhaus Nixon, and coined some of the phrases that made Nixon's hatchet man and vice president Spiro T. Agnew look like a creep to people with whom I would've agreed had I been around 40 years ago. Nattering nabobs of negativism. That stands alone for me. It crosses my mind when I least expect. And with some regularity. You know what doesn't? Anything Bob Herbert writes...
When Safire was hired by The Times, conceivably The Enemy as he was on the PR side of things, he turned himself into a nattering nabob as he withstood the brunt of rancor that comes from holding the whipping post known as "The Conservative On The Times' op-ed page." Along the way, he also instituted On Language, one of the most delightful columns to read that has ever been in print.
The Times op-ed columnists seem to be selected to reflect the sort of ideals of society that that great self-identified beacon of society, The Times Reader, can identify with. For people who are aware that there are poor people in other countries, we now have Nicholas Kristof. For generic Times readers who think that these countries are filled only with people like themselves, we have Tom Friedman. For people who reduce everything to meaningless, gimmicky gook, we have Maureen Dowd. And of course Herbert, who represents the mainstream Democratic Party's line of failing to say anything that everyone doesn't already know. Safire's space is designed to prove that there are a few conservative Times readers -- or at least that those other imes readers were intellectually honest enough to read about what the other side thought. But Safire wasn't just an ideological stenographer. He won the Times readership over anyway because he brought provocative ideas, my personal favorite being his crusade to abolish the penny, that had little to do with sucking up to the party o restating what Irving Kristol thought about something in column size. (The latter job was filled by Kristol's son, William, during his short stint on the whipping post). Safire's views were nuanced enough to support the Iraq War but oppose the USA Patriot Act.
That is to say, he was an old-fashioned Republican that didn't mind rolling up his sleeves and disagreeing with his party's standard bearers. The amount of arrogance and self aggrandizement required to carve out this sort of reputation over decades is not yet even measurable. One only need look at the sudden spotlight foisted on Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine as she fights to hold onto roughly the same reputation within the Establishment to see how much power you can accrue by being a lone inconsistent voice among a chorus of hard-line party-liners. But, hey, when is the point of anything in Washington something other than "look at me?" Safire stood out even beyond the Snowes of the world because he actually put forth ideas that you could agree or disagree with, and the man could turn a phrase. That means...he wasn't a moderate. And that's the point. The landscape that Safire departed forces anyone wishing to expose their spine to hide beyond ideology ("You lie!"), or, worse, self-serving delusion (anything Tom Delay and Rod Blagojevich have ever done in public). But Safire was just pounding out what he thought might be interesting. That's the imperative that the conversation shapers seemed to have decided the public would rather do without. Reading and thinking...you mean it's possible to both at the same time?
William Safire died today. I learned this from the website of one of those pesky newspapers that still seem to be hanging around. Safire wrote for The New York Times. He was also a speechwriter for Richard Milhaus Nixon, and coined some of the phrases that made Nixon's hatchet man and vice president Spiro T. Agnew look like a creep to people with whom I would've agreed had I been around 40 years ago. Nattering nabobs of negativism. That stands alone for me. It crosses my mind when I least expect. And with some regularity. You know what doesn't? Anything Bob Herbert writes...
When Safire was hired by The Times, conceivably The Enemy as he was on the PR side of things, he turned himself into a nattering nabob as he withstood the brunt of rancor that comes from holding the whipping post known as "The Conservative On The Times' op-ed page." Along the way, he also instituted On Language, one of the most delightful columns to read that has ever been in print.
The Times op-ed columnists seem to be selected to reflect the sort of ideals of society that that great self-identified beacon of society, The Times Reader, can identify with. For people who are aware that there are poor people in other countries, we now have Nicholas Kristof. For generic Times readers who think that these countries are filled only with people like themselves, we have Tom Friedman. For people who reduce everything to meaningless, gimmicky gook, we have Maureen Dowd. And of course Herbert, who represents the mainstream Democratic Party's line of failing to say anything that everyone doesn't already know. Safire's space is designed to prove that there are a few conservative Times readers -- or at least that those other imes readers were intellectually honest enough to read about what the other side thought. But Safire wasn't just an ideological stenographer. He won the Times readership over anyway because he brought provocative ideas, my personal favorite being his crusade to abolish the penny, that had little to do with sucking up to the party o restating what Irving Kristol thought about something in column size. (The latter job was filled by Kristol's son, William, during his short stint on the whipping post). Safire's views were nuanced enough to support the Iraq War but oppose the USA Patriot Act.
That is to say, he was an old-fashioned Republican that didn't mind rolling up his sleeves and disagreeing with his party's standard bearers. The amount of arrogance and self aggrandizement required to carve out this sort of reputation over decades is not yet even measurable. One only need look at the sudden spotlight foisted on Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine as she fights to hold onto roughly the same reputation within the Establishment to see how much power you can accrue by being a lone inconsistent voice among a chorus of hard-line party-liners. But, hey, when is the point of anything in Washington something other than "look at me?" Safire stood out even beyond the Snowes of the world because he actually put forth ideas that you could agree or disagree with, and the man could turn a phrase. That means...he wasn't a moderate. And that's the point. The landscape that Safire departed forces anyone wishing to expose their spine to hide beyond ideology ("You lie!"), or, worse, self-serving delusion (anything Tom Delay and Rod Blagojevich have ever done in public). But Safire was just pounding out what he thought might be interesting. That's the imperative that the conversation shapers seemed to have decided the public would rather do without. Reading and thinking...you mean it's possible to both at the same time?
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Locas
The branch snapped without breaking, like a fire fueled by dry wood. Some leaves tumbled to the ground, lacking their usual weightlessness. Anthony lost count.
He lost his place more than usual today. He remembered he had reached at 63 at the end of the last branch, so he could start at the beginning of that one. Usually, the count of loquats was all that was in his head, but today something distracted him. How slippery it is, the solace of a daily routine.
Since yesterday, there were four more of the green fruits in this branch. Some days, that mattered. Today, he wanted only to finish the count, and begin picking. He could not think why.
On the second branch from the top, the yellowy sheen of the loquats dulled a little, and the tree started to pour out water, just like the sweat that poured from Anthony’s skin all through his counting. Wet one way, or soaked another. It was all just water. His right foot moved a little to get a better grip on the branch. His white sneaker squeaked a little on the wet wood, but it wasn’t enough to stop the count.
When Anthony was done counting, he noticed the water had risen under the tree. The loquats reflected off the undisturbed water. They shined like coins against the gray sky, seeming to stave off the sullen feeling that belies rainfall. Anthony couldn’t get down, so he began to pick the fruit. He rustled the branches when he moved, and looked off-balance, but the tree held him.
The sun came out, and Anthony found himself wet again. The tree jostled a little, as if something had hit it. Anthony thought nothing of it. The air was heavy, and the fruit was slippery. He dropped three, and watched as they plummeted earthward.
He was so focused on the fruit falling down that he didn’t see the brown mane of hair that had walked below the tree. One of the loquats plummeted straight into it, and bounced off sideways toward the street.
“Watch out, mister!” His warning came only as the loquat was bouncing on the ground, misshapen and softened after its fall.
Water sprayed as the man shook his head. Anthony only heard him grumble.
As he reached to grab a fruit on the branch below, Anthony saw the man’s bare feet, splayed before him. He wasn’t used to company at the tree. The man stank of rain and sweat. He knew the odor well, from his father, overpowering the smell of one of Mama’s meals. Now, it overtook the smell of the blooming loquats -- the only thing he ever had to bring home. He called them his locas.
The smell didn’t go away as he kept picking. He climbed down to talk to his visitor.
“Why you here?” he asked as he stood on the bottom branch above the man. Anthony noticed he was eating a loquat.
“Fruit’s good,” the man said to him.
Anthony wanted to look at him. He jumped down with the loquats wrapped in his shirt.
“Gonna be better in Mama’s jelly.”
As he looked up, starting to think of his return climb, Anthony was holding the loquats tight in his shirt. A jolt sent them flying toward the ground. Some were smashed, and some were soggy. The work of the day lying in a mess around him.
He started to pick them up, and noticed that the man was doing the same.
“I picked ‘em all!” he yelled.
The man put a handful in his pocket. The next time Anthony looked up, his visitor was a dot on the the sidewalk, crossing the street.
The man walked toward a group on the other side of the street.
He saw the man point in his direction and give one of the fruits to a lady in a worn hat. The wind blew just right so he could hear:
“Everyone here is so generous.”
He lost his place more than usual today. He remembered he had reached at 63 at the end of the last branch, so he could start at the beginning of that one. Usually, the count of loquats was all that was in his head, but today something distracted him. How slippery it is, the solace of a daily routine.
Since yesterday, there were four more of the green fruits in this branch. Some days, that mattered. Today, he wanted only to finish the count, and begin picking. He could not think why.
On the second branch from the top, the yellowy sheen of the loquats dulled a little, and the tree started to pour out water, just like the sweat that poured from Anthony’s skin all through his counting. Wet one way, or soaked another. It was all just water. His right foot moved a little to get a better grip on the branch. His white sneaker squeaked a little on the wet wood, but it wasn’t enough to stop the count.
When Anthony was done counting, he noticed the water had risen under the tree. The loquats reflected off the undisturbed water. They shined like coins against the gray sky, seeming to stave off the sullen feeling that belies rainfall. Anthony couldn’t get down, so he began to pick the fruit. He rustled the branches when he moved, and looked off-balance, but the tree held him.
The sun came out, and Anthony found himself wet again. The tree jostled a little, as if something had hit it. Anthony thought nothing of it. The air was heavy, and the fruit was slippery. He dropped three, and watched as they plummeted earthward.
He was so focused on the fruit falling down that he didn’t see the brown mane of hair that had walked below the tree. One of the loquats plummeted straight into it, and bounced off sideways toward the street.
“Watch out, mister!” His warning came only as the loquat was bouncing on the ground, misshapen and softened after its fall.
Water sprayed as the man shook his head. Anthony only heard him grumble.
As he reached to grab a fruit on the branch below, Anthony saw the man’s bare feet, splayed before him. He wasn’t used to company at the tree. The man stank of rain and sweat. He knew the odor well, from his father, overpowering the smell of one of Mama’s meals. Now, it overtook the smell of the blooming loquats -- the only thing he ever had to bring home. He called them his locas.
The smell didn’t go away as he kept picking. He climbed down to talk to his visitor.
“Why you here?” he asked as he stood on the bottom branch above the man. Anthony noticed he was eating a loquat.
“Fruit’s good,” the man said to him.
Anthony wanted to look at him. He jumped down with the loquats wrapped in his shirt.
“Gonna be better in Mama’s jelly.”
As he looked up, starting to think of his return climb, Anthony was holding the loquats tight in his shirt. A jolt sent them flying toward the ground. Some were smashed, and some were soggy. The work of the day lying in a mess around him.
He started to pick them up, and noticed that the man was doing the same.
“I picked ‘em all!” he yelled.
The man put a handful in his pocket. The next time Anthony looked up, his visitor was a dot on the the sidewalk, crossing the street.
The man walked toward a group on the other side of the street.
He saw the man point in his direction and give one of the fruits to a lady in a worn hat. The wind blew just right so he could hear:
“Everyone here is so generous.”
Monday, March 30, 2009
untitled
Strands of dry, evening breeze approached the steel of the highway underpass. Once underneath, the air in motion was halted in its tracks, and cast by the cold metal in a spiral downward toward the concrete, like the last bit of water running out of a sink into the drain. An unknowing passerby did not notice the stymieing effect of the bridge on the pleasant breeze, but those who took time to stand under the bridge caught a faint twist of wind baring down, introducing a measure of uncertainty into an otherwise unflappable scene of giant, immovable pillars and, above, the road that bustles always.
Months of walking alongside the pillars, and under the road, left Long John comfortable in the still air. Even as the days became sweatier, he drew strength from the flat baritone of the place. The squeak of brakes. The dogged siren from a police car. The thump of bass. Any sound that broke the quiet was swallowed by the steel beams, and spit down toward the pavement. A hint of fried chicken and the colorful row houses brought some life in around the edges.
Long John was the only motion in this stillness as he walked. Head up. Eyes fixed slightly to the right and off to the purple paint and loud colors of the lounge at the end of the block. Bob-and-weave strut. He accepted the bridge’s bid for dominance over his neighborhood. Most days, he profited from its long shadow. The ignorant self-guided tourist blathering away on his cell phone. The unlucky driver with a flat tire. All he had to do was remove his piece from under his thigh-length T-shirt, and he was richer for it.
Now he passed Mouse -- so named for his penchant for causing his victims to squeak. Long John didn’t even break stride, and Mouse made an about-face. Each had his own distinct stride, but their movements were stitched together between Long John’s swooping shoulders and Mouse’s rightward-cocked head. They leaned perfectly into each other’s range of motion.
As they approached Esplanade Avenue, the ingratiating smell of fried chicken lurking, they spotted two red-nosed pedestrians, and the game was on.
“You got the time?”
“6:30.”
A minor break in stride for the nervous passer-through, to be sure, but just enough to allow Mouse and Long John to swerve smoothly beside them. Long John reached under his shirt, in the direction of his pocket but not quite.
“I can have your purse?”
“No.”
The hole from which the bullet would barrel out into her now faced her stomach, lilting toward the ground. A current of defeated breeze was pushing it further down.
“I can have your purse?”
“And anything else you got,” Mouse chimed in.
The woman squeaked, and her breath became heavier. Her entire face had now turned the color of her nose.
“Alright, we don’t want any trouble.”
“Then I can have whatever you got.”
The gun drooped a little more.
Mouse opened the purse. Long John’s back faced the road, and he stood over the woman so as to conceal what was going on. Mouse produced the requisite items from the purse in seconds. He had perfected his ability of weaving between tampons, notebooks, lipstick, and even the occasional camera that had no immediate street value. Thrusting himself into another life with details largely apart from his own was of little concern to him. He had created for himself the perfect position to look into other eyes, to see a life different from his own. But the contents of each purse were so similar, he hadn’t ever wondered.
Now the goods were coming out. Wallet. Cell phone. He noticed her license, but only saw that the state started with a W. The man pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his pale jeans.
“Just the cash.”
The man let out a sigh through his nostrils that forced his glasses from their perch atop the bridge of his nose. Two hundred dollar bills changed hands.
“Y’all have a nice time in New Orleans.”
Long John slipped behind the couple, and Mouse swooped with him behind the pillar.
The couple walked faster now. They could see the breeze blowing through the stately oaks on the other side of the road, and rushed across traffic before the signal turned to get there. The smell of fried chicken, at first inviting, now seemed suffocating to them with the unending tenacity of rot.
Mouse and Long John now wove the other direction, back toward Canal.
They passed the auto shop where Darrell, Long John’s uncle, fixed up cars.
As the pair traipsed by the neon green garage, the breeze was blowing faintly through the pages of the phonebook laid out on the steps beside his lawn chair. No one else might sense it, but Darrell knew their steps were tinged with rubber.
“Y’all pick me up some chicken?”
“We wasn’t up that far.”
“Bet you wasn’t. You best be telling everyone bout my shop, ya heard?”
“OT Auto and Detail. We goin’ overtime for you.”
Darrell slouched slightly in his lawn chair as we watched the boys go by. The sweat was beading off of him, but he did not look exhausted. He knew he should insert his own lines here. That as the role model figure, he was in charge of shouting advice, and letting the wind carry it across the street. He thought of his own line of vision ten years ago, fixed down the street. Looking for the next red noses. He pursed his lips, knowing the tailspin his advice would receive. That he had been in their position was of no consequence to the anger he felt boiling inside of him as the duo walked by. He long ago reconciled that the feeling was disappointment, but it did not change the discomfort that vibrated his cheeks as he saw them push on, stone-faced, and then out of view.
They passed Juice, ducking behind a 1999 silver Chevrolet with a battered hood. His bald head covered by his sweatshirt, eyes drooping and bloodshot. He stared straight ahead. That was acknowledgment enough of their presence. Finally, Mouse spoke.
“How you gonna spend the money.”
“Gotta pay back my mama. She bought my new shoes so I could march in the band. I wanna pay her back. She need the money. Said she tired of puttin‘ up for me when I‘m out all the time.”
“You in band? Please. Let’s get with Stitch and see if we can give the tourists something other than dat piece. You know it’s gonna go off one of these days, then we sunk like my cousin. Stitch said we movin’ up. He takin’ notice of what we doin’.”
“Don’t mean we can’t do both. I wanna be in band. Someday we gotta lead that parade. We be marchin‘ down this street blowin‘ dat groove to the wind.”
“Sound like you blowin’ smoke, boy. You know we gotta take what we can get out here.”
At Columbus, back to work. Another red nose with a lop of frayed, gray hair on top was looking around behind of the giant concrete columns. Long John noticed she did not have a purse. Her floral skirt wore unevenly, and her shirt was rumpled. As she turned toward them, her eyes appeared to be rubies casting a shimmer out toward them in the shade. Without a word, they picked up their pace and headed straight for her.
“’Scuse me, miss, you got the time?”
“Hey non, nonny nonny, hey nonny.”
She hid on the other side of the column, walking away from them.
“You got a dollar?”
She jumped to the next column.
“Young men will do’t, if they come to‘t. By Cock, they are to blame.”
Long John reached under his shirt, as though he were reaching toward his pocket. She jumped out from behind the column and faced them. Her eyes glazed over, she looked out at them and her head swung to the left. Her enlarged pupils stared out at them. If he looked closer, Long John likely could have seen her shrunken brain, purged of the rotund substance that gives it vitality. He could have seen the holes sunken from her cranial lobes, resembling giant eyeballs.
Long John and Mouse glanced at each other, officially breaking the ruse.
“That unmatched form and feature of blown youth, blasted with ecstasy!”
Mouse, still craving money, noticed she did not even look at them, and attempted to reach toward her pocket.
“O, woe is me. To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!”
Mouse backed off, but Long John was unfazed. He reached in for the other pocket, but the woman sat on the ground cross-legged before his hand got in, and she rocked back and forth.
Mouse, completely devoid of the posture that usually causes squeaks, sat down with her, and motioned toward Long John to do the same. Long John concealed his piece back under his shirt.
“You alright, miss?”
She reached into her shirt and brought out a handful of crumpled flower petals.
“Their perfume lost, take these again. For to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.”
A current of breeze blew through the curls of her rumpled hair. Long John and Mouse stood up, and wandered between the pillars, their paths diverging.
Months of walking alongside the pillars, and under the road, left Long John comfortable in the still air. Even as the days became sweatier, he drew strength from the flat baritone of the place. The squeak of brakes. The dogged siren from a police car. The thump of bass. Any sound that broke the quiet was swallowed by the steel beams, and spit down toward the pavement. A hint of fried chicken and the colorful row houses brought some life in around the edges.
Long John was the only motion in this stillness as he walked. Head up. Eyes fixed slightly to the right and off to the purple paint and loud colors of the lounge at the end of the block. Bob-and-weave strut. He accepted the bridge’s bid for dominance over his neighborhood. Most days, he profited from its long shadow. The ignorant self-guided tourist blathering away on his cell phone. The unlucky driver with a flat tire. All he had to do was remove his piece from under his thigh-length T-shirt, and he was richer for it.
Now he passed Mouse -- so named for his penchant for causing his victims to squeak. Long John didn’t even break stride, and Mouse made an about-face. Each had his own distinct stride, but their movements were stitched together between Long John’s swooping shoulders and Mouse’s rightward-cocked head. They leaned perfectly into each other’s range of motion.
As they approached Esplanade Avenue, the ingratiating smell of fried chicken lurking, they spotted two red-nosed pedestrians, and the game was on.
“You got the time?”
“6:30.”
A minor break in stride for the nervous passer-through, to be sure, but just enough to allow Mouse and Long John to swerve smoothly beside them. Long John reached under his shirt, in the direction of his pocket but not quite.
“I can have your purse?”
“No.”
The hole from which the bullet would barrel out into her now faced her stomach, lilting toward the ground. A current of defeated breeze was pushing it further down.
“I can have your purse?”
“And anything else you got,” Mouse chimed in.
The woman squeaked, and her breath became heavier. Her entire face had now turned the color of her nose.
“Alright, we don’t want any trouble.”
“Then I can have whatever you got.”
The gun drooped a little more.
Mouse opened the purse. Long John’s back faced the road, and he stood over the woman so as to conceal what was going on. Mouse produced the requisite items from the purse in seconds. He had perfected his ability of weaving between tampons, notebooks, lipstick, and even the occasional camera that had no immediate street value. Thrusting himself into another life with details largely apart from his own was of little concern to him. He had created for himself the perfect position to look into other eyes, to see a life different from his own. But the contents of each purse were so similar, he hadn’t ever wondered.
Now the goods were coming out. Wallet. Cell phone. He noticed her license, but only saw that the state started with a W. The man pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his pale jeans.
“Just the cash.”
The man let out a sigh through his nostrils that forced his glasses from their perch atop the bridge of his nose. Two hundred dollar bills changed hands.
“Y’all have a nice time in New Orleans.”
Long John slipped behind the couple, and Mouse swooped with him behind the pillar.
The couple walked faster now. They could see the breeze blowing through the stately oaks on the other side of the road, and rushed across traffic before the signal turned to get there. The smell of fried chicken, at first inviting, now seemed suffocating to them with the unending tenacity of rot.
Mouse and Long John now wove the other direction, back toward Canal.
They passed the auto shop where Darrell, Long John’s uncle, fixed up cars.
As the pair traipsed by the neon green garage, the breeze was blowing faintly through the pages of the phonebook laid out on the steps beside his lawn chair. No one else might sense it, but Darrell knew their steps were tinged with rubber.
“Y’all pick me up some chicken?”
“We wasn’t up that far.”
“Bet you wasn’t. You best be telling everyone bout my shop, ya heard?”
“OT Auto and Detail. We goin’ overtime for you.”
Darrell slouched slightly in his lawn chair as we watched the boys go by. The sweat was beading off of him, but he did not look exhausted. He knew he should insert his own lines here. That as the role model figure, he was in charge of shouting advice, and letting the wind carry it across the street. He thought of his own line of vision ten years ago, fixed down the street. Looking for the next red noses. He pursed his lips, knowing the tailspin his advice would receive. That he had been in their position was of no consequence to the anger he felt boiling inside of him as the duo walked by. He long ago reconciled that the feeling was disappointment, but it did not change the discomfort that vibrated his cheeks as he saw them push on, stone-faced, and then out of view.
They passed Juice, ducking behind a 1999 silver Chevrolet with a battered hood. His bald head covered by his sweatshirt, eyes drooping and bloodshot. He stared straight ahead. That was acknowledgment enough of their presence. Finally, Mouse spoke.
“How you gonna spend the money.”
“Gotta pay back my mama. She bought my new shoes so I could march in the band. I wanna pay her back. She need the money. Said she tired of puttin‘ up for me when I‘m out all the time.”
“You in band? Please. Let’s get with Stitch and see if we can give the tourists something other than dat piece. You know it’s gonna go off one of these days, then we sunk like my cousin. Stitch said we movin’ up. He takin’ notice of what we doin’.”
“Don’t mean we can’t do both. I wanna be in band. Someday we gotta lead that parade. We be marchin‘ down this street blowin‘ dat groove to the wind.”
“Sound like you blowin’ smoke, boy. You know we gotta take what we can get out here.”
At Columbus, back to work. Another red nose with a lop of frayed, gray hair on top was looking around behind of the giant concrete columns. Long John noticed she did not have a purse. Her floral skirt wore unevenly, and her shirt was rumpled. As she turned toward them, her eyes appeared to be rubies casting a shimmer out toward them in the shade. Without a word, they picked up their pace and headed straight for her.
“’Scuse me, miss, you got the time?”
“Hey non, nonny nonny, hey nonny.”
She hid on the other side of the column, walking away from them.
“You got a dollar?”
She jumped to the next column.
“Young men will do’t, if they come to‘t. By Cock, they are to blame.”
Long John reached under his shirt, as though he were reaching toward his pocket. She jumped out from behind the column and faced them. Her eyes glazed over, she looked out at them and her head swung to the left. Her enlarged pupils stared out at them. If he looked closer, Long John likely could have seen her shrunken brain, purged of the rotund substance that gives it vitality. He could have seen the holes sunken from her cranial lobes, resembling giant eyeballs.
Long John and Mouse glanced at each other, officially breaking the ruse.
“That unmatched form and feature of blown youth, blasted with ecstasy!”
Mouse, still craving money, noticed she did not even look at them, and attempted to reach toward her pocket.
“O, woe is me. To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!”
Mouse backed off, but Long John was unfazed. He reached in for the other pocket, but the woman sat on the ground cross-legged before his hand got in, and she rocked back and forth.
Mouse, completely devoid of the posture that usually causes squeaks, sat down with her, and motioned toward Long John to do the same. Long John concealed his piece back under his shirt.
“You alright, miss?”
She reached into her shirt and brought out a handful of crumpled flower petals.
“Their perfume lost, take these again. For to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.”
A current of breeze blew through the curls of her rumpled hair. Long John and Mouse stood up, and wandered between the pillars, their paths diverging.
Friday, March 20, 2009
from a lookout station on the flat ground is perched
a listless benchwarmer in the habit of mirth
talking down to dick diver
and pickin' the dirt
from the frayed edges of ayn rand's letters;
gazing out toward the grapefruits
he notices a tryst
at the corner of the ocean and the land where he sits
of the penny-thieves, beach combers and immigrants.
the greening of his oranges and arthritis of the lips
has given him a grunt that with rancor he can spit,
but he just winks at the union of fishermen.
having that day trapped a turtle,
they mercifully writhe
like the dancers behind Madonna,
and wring their hands with pride.
their stomachs grumble calypso,
but they make sure they don't deprive
a share of the booty to the pelicans.
just then did appear from the corner of their eye
a jalopy wheezing cornstarch
with jimmy carter at the wheel.
to his backseat passenger Pancho Villa he turned, shouting
"look, man, i'm only taking what was promised."
the sky's turning gray, dripping sweat from the brows
of the geese passing over
while flying northward, they look down,
but turn their necks away from the humble shrouds
of the onlookers at jackie robinson's funeral.
"his legacy lives on," says the mayor to the crowd
which includes the pedestrians, who outlived him with pride
"he was never a coward, but ran from high tide,"
the mayor waxed as he raised
a hand to his ear,
signalling the parade
of the little league,
who are sponsored
by the country club at the holding pond.
when the sky returned to blue, the sun dropped its course,
and exploded, dripping pink,
i looked out, but didn't feel the force.
then i looked to the paper for an explanation why.
the pastel lobby said it was just a test run,
it didn't interrupt the conversion of the train tracks
to a curtain.
but that blast did make me deaf in the left ear, i suppose,
because now all i can hear is the language of repose,
and there's no telling whether or not any of it's from the soul
i just hope i die happily ever afer.
a listless benchwarmer in the habit of mirth
talking down to dick diver
and pickin' the dirt
from the frayed edges of ayn rand's letters;
gazing out toward the grapefruits
he notices a tryst
at the corner of the ocean and the land where he sits
of the penny-thieves, beach combers and immigrants.
the greening of his oranges and arthritis of the lips
has given him a grunt that with rancor he can spit,
but he just winks at the union of fishermen.
having that day trapped a turtle,
they mercifully writhe
like the dancers behind Madonna,
and wring their hands with pride.
their stomachs grumble calypso,
but they make sure they don't deprive
a share of the booty to the pelicans.
just then did appear from the corner of their eye
a jalopy wheezing cornstarch
with jimmy carter at the wheel.
to his backseat passenger Pancho Villa he turned, shouting
"look, man, i'm only taking what was promised."
the sky's turning gray, dripping sweat from the brows
of the geese passing over
while flying northward, they look down,
but turn their necks away from the humble shrouds
of the onlookers at jackie robinson's funeral.
"his legacy lives on," says the mayor to the crowd
which includes the pedestrians, who outlived him with pride
"he was never a coward, but ran from high tide,"
the mayor waxed as he raised
a hand to his ear,
signalling the parade
of the little league,
who are sponsored
by the country club at the holding pond.
when the sky returned to blue, the sun dropped its course,
and exploded, dripping pink,
i looked out, but didn't feel the force.
then i looked to the paper for an explanation why.
the pastel lobby said it was just a test run,
it didn't interrupt the conversion of the train tracks
to a curtain.
but that blast did make me deaf in the left ear, i suppose,
because now all i can hear is the language of repose,
and there's no telling whether or not any of it's from the soul
i just hope i die happily ever afer.
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