Vince Guaraldi, one of the leading figures in the 1960s San Francisco jazz movement, was chosen by the 1960s Charlie Brown animators to write music for their cartoons.
You know “Linus and Lucy”: it’s a classic. You also probably know some of his other music.
But this is a lovely pre-Peanuts piece. It takes me back to my childhood when I hear it. It won the Grammy for Best Original Jazz Composition in 1963. It’s gentle and winsome and very freeing.
Enjoy.
I was diagnosed with kidney stones back about eight months ago. They were described by my general practitioner as “small.” He recommended that I drink a lot of water to help flush them out, and told me to let him know if I had any recurrences of pain or other symptoms.
I was a very good boy after that. I stopped drinking coffee after my first two cups in the morning. I stopped drinking cola drinks altogether, both naturally and artificially sweetened. I tried to drink as much extra water as I could.
After a month or so, the pain went away.
Then, a few months later, very surreptitiously, it came back.
(Note: I have never had the falling-down-dead kind of pain that’s associated with kidney stones. Mine is more of a mild ache, but it’s very localized; I know exactly where the stones are. I visualized them, after my December doctor’s visit, as something like aquarium gravel, or maybe tiny lemon seeds.)
The pain came back in earnest about three month ago, along with a couple of other more-or-less alarming symptoms. So I presented myself to my G.P., who (with some alarm) referred me to a specialist.
If you’ve never been in a urologist’s office, you’ve never lived. I (at my advanced age!) was easily the youngest patient there. There was an aquarium with two suicidal-looking fish mooching around the bottom of the tank; if I see the same two fish there when I go back for my next appointment, I’ll be shocked. Everyone in the waiting room was running to the restroom every five minutes, and we all knew why.
The urologist (when I finally got in to see him) was a funny redhead who said funny things. When I told him I’d been reading WebMD, he said, in a Scooby-Doo voice, “Ruh-roh!”
And when he looked at my X-rays, he said, soberly: “Wow!”
My stones, kids, are not so small after all: one is 11 millimeters, and another is 5 millimeters. In short: I have a handful of driveway gravel inside my left kidney.
I’ve started carrying around a couple of small stones in a box in my pocket. Whenever anyone starts complaining to me – about anything! – I pull out the little box and show them the two objects. “I have kidney stones,” I say. “They are this size. I can feel them inside me right now. Now: what were you saying?”
It sobers people when they realize that you have a handful of driveway gravel inside your abdominal cavity.
(The next step, of course, is getting this handful of driveway gravel out out OUT of my body. There are several methods. All are more or less painful.)
(As the Rolling Stones said: “What a drag it is, getting old!”)
There was an wonderful piece in the Financial Times recently, all about Iceland.
What? You don’t know about Iceland?
Iceland was very hard-hit by the recession of 2008-9. It had a couple of banks which were offering miraculous rates of interest back in the mid-2000s, and people from all over Europe (especially the UK) were putting their money there. Then the crash hit, and Iceland was hit hard, and those banks died.
What happened then?
The Icelandic government, out of necessity (it’s a small country) went on an austerity kick. It sought to increase revenue and decrease expenditures.
It’s a small country – did I say that before? – so its defense budget was not enormous. It made cuts across the board, but it cut social welfare programs less than other programs. Also: it increased taxes on wealthier individuals, but sheltered people who made less money.
Are you getting this?
Four years later, Iceland is doing very well. It’s almost completely recovered. Another thing: all the depositors who lost money in those failed Icelandic banks will (over time) get their money back. Not the investors in the banks, but the depositors. See?
There’s a lesson in here somewhere.
I wish I could figure out what it was.
Time for civics class!
Please read these excerpts from a recent article in the Chicago Examiner. I’ve added some essay-type questions, at the end. Please feel free to write on both sides of the paper, if necessary.
At a round table discussion on "This Week with George Stephanapoulos," Ann Coulter, conservative commentator, made the provocative claim, "Democrats are dropping the blacks and moving on to the Hispanics," and added that immigration rights are not civil rights.
Univision anchor, Jorge Ramos criticized President Obama for not aggressively pursuing immigration reform and said that "if Republicans don't do something with immigration . . . they're going to lose not only this election, they might lose the White House for a generation."
This is when Coulter interjected, "That's why the Democrats are dropping the blacks and moving on to the Hispanics." She was saying that Democrats are aggressively pursuing the Latino vote more aggressively than the African America vote, which polls show is definitely behind President Obama.
Coulter added, "I think what - the way liberals have treated blacks like children and many of their policies have been harmful to blacks, at least they got the beneficiary group right . . . there is the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws. We don't owe the homeless. We don't owe feminists. We don't owe women who are desirous of having abortions, but that's - or - or gays who want to get married to one another. That's what civil rights has become for much of the left."
When questioned as to whether immigration rights were not civil rights, Coulter responded, "No. I think civil rights are for blacks . . . What have we done to the immigrants? We owe black people something. We have a legacy of slavery. Immigrants haven't even been in this country."
Questions:
1) Ann Coulter seems to regard “civil rights” as something earned. Do you feel that you have civil rights? If so, at what point did you earn them?
2) As a member of the United Nations (which Ann Coulter abominates), the United States acknowledges that everyone partakes of something called “human rights.” Do you agree with this? Shouldn’t people earn their rights?
3) According to Ann Coulter, an aggrieved group (like post-slavery black Americans) can be given “civil rights.” These “civil rights” are presumably given to them by some central authority. Some groups (like feminists and gay activists), however, don’t deserve “civil rights.” Question: What the hell is Ann Coulter talking about here? Please tell me, because frankly I have no idea.
4) According to Ann Coulter, immigrants either aren’t here legally, or haven’t been here for very long. Therefore, they haven’t earned their rights. Ergo: civil rights accrue over time. Question: my father’s family came to America in the 1600s, but my mother’s family didn’t arrive until the turn of the 20th century. Did my mother have less civil rights than my father? And what about me? Discuss.
5) Ann Coulter implies that helping disadvantaged people makes them dependent and helpless. In Ann Coulter’s world, it’s every man for himself, and government shouldn’t be helping people, because it just creates a lot of whiny needy people. (Actually, this is kind of what Mitt Romney said in that pesky video). How do you feel about that? Did you ever need help? If so, where did you turn? Be honest.
6) Who paid for your education?
7) Did you know that Ann Coulter thinks that Joseph McCarthy is a misunderstood man, and a forgotten American hero? Isn’t that nice? Doesn’t it make you feel better about Ann Coulter?
And finally:
8) Don’t you wish the election were today?
I wrote in July and August about Chick-fil-A and gay marriage. I thought it was a passing trifle. Lo and behold, the story continues to evolve!
Let me tell it from the start, in stages:
2) The backlash. The Henson company pulled out of a marketing deal with them. Boycotts were called.
3) The backlash to the backlash. Various conservatives, led by those two intellectual giants Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, declared their solidarity with Chick-fil-A, and invited their fellow True Believers to come eat a chicken sandwich on the first of August. Thousands responded. (It turns out that it’s easier to get people to get involved in politics if there’s food involved. I think we should start letting people vote at McDonalds and Burger King and KFC; participation would go through the roof.)
4) The backlash to the backlash to the backlash. Gay activists had kiss-a-thons at Chick-fil-A. These were less well attended and not much covered by the media.
6) Now it’s a freedom-of-speech issue! “They can say and believe anything they want,” one side said. “You can’t forbid them to do business just because you don’t like what they believe.” “Oh yes we can,” the other side said. “They have the right to freedom of belief and freedom of speech, but they have no right to open a store in this or that place. We’ll see about that.”
The whole thing simmered for a while, and was almost forgotten, except that a few people realized that eating a chicken sandwich isn’t quite the same thing as making a political statement.
Then suddenly:
7) Chick-fil-A redefines its policies: “’The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect – regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender,’ Chick-fil-A spokeswoman Tracey Micit said in the statement. ‘Going forward, our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena.’” They also say they are reevaluating the contributions being given to anti-gay-marriage groups. (Why? Because they want to expand their business beyond their traditional Southern base, and they’ve suddenly discovered that it might not be good for business to be known as “the chicken place run by bigots and homophobes.”)
8) Chick-fil-A’s conservative / Christian supporters suddenly don’t like them so much.
9) Da capo. Dan Cathy (see #1) says nothing has changed since this summer.
And so forth.
Sometimes it’s a good idea to sneak over into the enemy camp and hear what they’re plotting. It’s dangerous, of course; if they catch you, they will kill you.
So, on Sunday night, while on the treadmill, I tuned into Fox News for about ten minutes. The danger, in this case, was that I might lose my temper and my grip, and go flying backward off the machine.
But I survived.
And oh the things I heard!
It was a little panel discussion – Chris Wallace, Brit Hume, Juan Williams, Bill Kristol, and a couple of others I didn’t recognize – talking about the Romney campaign, and the recently-released Romney video. A gloomier bunch of mopes you have never seen. Chris Wallace turned somberly to Hume and asked: “Was this video fatal to the Romney campaign?”
Hume looked sour (well, sourer than usual). “Not fatal. But it sure wasn’t good.”
This, from the loathsome Bill Kristol: “I’ve been working for twenty-five or thirty years to put forward conservative ideas, and then something like this happens, and it completely muddles the message we’re trying to put forward.”
(Translation: “For thirty years I’ve been putting forward a strategy to put our people into power, and then this idiot goes and actually spills the beans in front of a camera!”)
Slowly, and with great schadenfreude, I realized that I was hearing the formulation of Plan B: what to do if the GOP loses the election. If the Republicans go down to defeat, you can be sure that it will be entirely and completely credited to Mitt Romney’s weakness as a candidate, and his terrible campaign.
Well, all kinds of things can happen between now and November.
And, as Ann Romney whined the other day: “This is hard!”
(Not nearly so hard as listening to Chris Wallace and Brit Hume and Bill Kristol, though.)
And now, drag queen Mimi Imfurst doing a dramatic interpretation of Ann Romney’s statement:
I subscribe to a Tunisian news service – one of those things that just gives you the headline and the first sentence – and, last Thursday, it was “Le film qui tue!” (Translation: “The killer movie!”)
Oh no, I thought.
You see, this whole manifestation in the Arab world was brought about – supposedly – by the release of a movie mocking the Prophet Mohammed. This movie was – supposedly – made by a Jewish American.
More than that, though; the idea that the movie was the impetus behind the killing irritated me. Aristotle teaches us that, while guns may be the material causes of death, the real causes are the people who pull the trigger.
But then I read the article in webdo.tn.
I was much reassured. True to my experience of Tunisia and Tunisians – thoughtful and intelligent – the author weighed the tension behind Islamists (who are spoiling for a fight with the West) and Islamophobes (who would like to spark a fight, and then create as much havoc as possible).
Both are to blame for the general situation.
Chris Stevens’s death is certainly the fault of the Islamists. I wonder if the simultaneity of the riots in the Muslim world has been very carefully planned (you’ll notice that it took place in September, not long after the commemoration of 9/11).
And the Egyptian / Copt / American provocateur, who produced the “movie,” also appears to have known what he was doing, provoking Muslim reaction at a very key time.
Partner and I are going to France in a few weeks. France (and especially Paris) is inhabited by a lot of North African Muslims.
We will let you know what we find out.
This is one of those bizarre 1980s songs that we thought (in those days) were ultra-hip: Gary Numan paces around like a mad scientist wearing heavy mascara, under unflattering neon lighting, delivering nasal paranoid lyrics, while the rest of the band members stare at him without emotion.
I think maybe it is ultra-hip.
Enjoy.
Oma, one of my favorite Wordpress bloggers, recently presented me with the “Beautiful Blogger Award.” It’s one of those blog-specific awards that encourages you to pass the award along to blogs you read and admire, so that your own readers can read them and try them out.
Today I’d like to give you three blogs, all of which are favorites of mine, and all of which are about gardening, one way or another.
(Why gardening? Because I love it, and I have nowhere to garden. I had a little plot in the local community garden for a couple of years, but the snobbery became so intense that I had to drop it. Now I live vicariously through other people’s gardens. Like these.)
First of all: Oma’s own blog, “Cottage Life in England.” Oma lives in a completely enchanting cottage in Luton, and takes wonderful photos of everything – her garden, her house, food, her grandson – and is very good at documenting everything. She and I write about some of the same things: getting older, food, plants – and write little notes back and forth sometimes. (We’re kindred souls, in that both of us generally know the scientific names of the plants we’re discussing.) She also writes very well. I recommend her highly.
Second: “The Soulsby Farm.” This is a couple in Ohio who run a real honest-to-God farm, and take photos, and document their experiences. They’re a lot of fun, and very down-to-earth. They write about things that are of interest to all gardeners: insect control, weed control, fertilizer. They recently ran an Ugly Tomato contest. I like them; I always get a smile out of their posts, and sometimes I actually learn something. Again: high recommendation.
Third: “Tangly Cottage Journal.” These are professional gardeners blogging from the Long Beach Peninsula in Washington state, where my parents used to take us for summer vacations. I love the area – it’s wild and very beautiful. This blog will give you a very precise image of the area, and the vegetation (which is all over the map – it rains constantly, and is very warm), and the challenges of creating a garden in a place where Nature wants to do everything at once. These are professional gardeners, so they hold everyone and everything to high standards. I love them, and I love their posts, and their photos.
If you love flowers and gardens and good writing, follow all three of these, please.
If you don’t: what’s wrong with you?
Pretty much everyone in the universe has seen or heard of Mitt Romney’s magic video by now. I’m not a pundit, but, as Chris Matthews said on Tuesday evening, I find the whole thing “delicious,” and just want to underline the following points:
1. Mitt was comfortable with his audience. One of his sticking points throughout this campaign, and his abortive 2008 campaign, has been his awkwardness with audiences. Well, now we know why: he hasn’t felt comfortable. The video was taken at a $50K/plate dinner, and Mitt was in his element, and speaking to his peers.
2. Explaining the video later, he said something like he hadn’t expressed himself elegantly. I disagree. He was very elegant. He believes, very frankly, that many poor Americans are moochers, and said so straightforwardly.
3. Mitt has not been very forthcoming about his plan to shrink the government budget. From this video, I think we can extrapolate some of the areas he’d shrink: anything benefiting the less affluent classes. They really need to work harder, don’t they? We don’t want to empower them. They need to be put in their place.
4. Mitt said that he didn’t rise from privilege, he didn’t inherit money, he earned everything he has. Is he deluded, or is he just telling the same lie that all wealthy heirs tell themselves? Of course he inherited money from his CEO/governor father. He’s turned it into billions, of course, and good for him. But, Mitt, don’t tell us that you were born in a log cabin, okay?
5. There was some garbled nonsense about being born a Mexican. I will leave that alone. He said he was joking, but then again, he took it back and said (very seriously) he’d have a better chance for the Presidency if he were Latino. Meaning: “Stupid people just love voting for those damned minorities.”
6. I haven’t even read the whole transcript yet. (I can’t stand to watch the video; his voice is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.) It is, however, the gift that keeps on giving. Today it was noticed that he said (a few months ago) that, if there were any foreign-policy difficulties overseas, he’d try to capitalize on the opportunity. Remember last week, when he ranted about how the Obama administration “sympathized with the attackers” rather than condemning the attacks in Egypt and Libya? Huh.
7. Rarely have I seen such cynicism freely expressed. The whole video boils down to Mitt saying to his wealthy audience: “Between you and me, I’ll say and do whatever I have to say and do to get elected. And once I’m in there, I’ll do what’s necessary to advance our agenda.”
8. Vote for Obama.
9. Vote for Obama.
10. Vote for Obama.
I have begun, once in a while, to feature other bloggers I enjoy. I will feature Oma, one of my very favorites, in a future column: she’s a gardener (which is +100 points on my scorecard) who lives in an English cottage (“Can we visit her? Can we stay with her?” Partner wants to know), and she takes wonderful photos, and she writes nice fiction too, and you should follow her.
And I recently featured another of my favorites, Attila Ovari. He’s an Australian husband/father who writes about management, and family, and many other topics; he’s also wonderful, and you should follow him.
Today I want to feature whoknowswhereorwhen.
He is on Tumblr. His name is Scott Gatty (he’s like me, he uses his full name on his website). He is a gardener and photographer and all kinds of other things. He also writes very well. This is from his Tumblr profile:
The thing that has fascinated me most in life is Time, the passage of it and my relationship to it as I age.
I was born in 1957, and as each year goes by, I find out more events that took place in that splendiferous year: the first artificial satellite was put into orbit by the Commies and set off a panic here; the first Pink Flamingo lawn ornament rolled off the assembly line; "The Cat in the Hat" was first published, by Dr. Seuss; Burt Bacharach joined with lyricist Hal David to create some wonderful songs; and, five days after I was born, John Lennon was introduced to Paul McCartney. Kinda neat, eh? . . .
I love the plant world – sometimes, I think, as if I actually were part of it. They're the other major form of life with which we share this planet, but very few people treat plants with the dignity and respect they deserve. I remind people: we need them, they don't need us.
I think we’re the same person in alternate universes; he got to be a gardener (which, because I live in an apartment, is forbidden to me) and I want to be a photographer and he is a photographer, and we’re both very aware of time, and we were both born in 1957, and . . .
But anyway.
Follow his blog.
More recommendations soon.
I hate the last two months of a presidential election.
The ads are everywhere. I only thank Ganesha that I live in a non-swing state, where they’re not spending tons of money on ads. In Ohio and Florida, people must be committing suicide because of the political ads on TV.
Naturally the Romney ads, and statements, drive me bonkers. Only the other evening, on “Hardball,” I saw a Romney ad showing a white middle-class couple clucking in disapproval over Obama’s support of gay marriage. “That’s not the kind of change I had in mind,” they said, judgmentally.
Well, go f*** yourselves, imaginary political-ad married couple.
And then, the other day, Romney said, in advance of the debates, that Obama will lie. Isn’t it lovely to call your opponent a liar in advance of anything he’s said?
(Also – just a word about Paul Ryan. He is the male Sarah Palin, isn’t he? A younger, cuter Mitt Romney. His ideas amount to approximately nada; economists – real economists, that is – have looked at his “budget plan” and shown it to be completely unrealistic and naïve. We’re supposed to take him seriously? Check out Paul Krugman – a Nobel Prize-winning economist – on the subject.)
(But I digress.)
Let’s talk about Mitt Romney, the business candidate.
Where I work, we do background checks on prospective employees. The higher-level they are, the more we want to know. If they’re being hired into positions with financial authority, we want to know as much as possible about their background, and often run a credit check.
(Did Mitt Romney’s various companies do the same? I will wager that they did. It’s silly not to, isn’t it?)
Well, not if they’re honest. Because, if they’re honest, how could they be a problem?
Unless there are some problems. Or inconsistencies. Or . . .
Hm.
Oh Mitt Mitt Mitt.
Vote Obama, kids.
Scott Brown, the loathsome incumbent junior Senator from Massachusetts, is now running for reelection. He (horribly enough) won Ted Kennedy’s seat two years ago, when the Democratic Party in Massachusetts was too lazy to run a campaign, figuring that they’d win in any case.
The Massachusetts Democratic party was wrong.
Scott Brown won by being cute (he was a Playgirl model) and riding around in a pickup truck (which he’s doing again currently) and being ingenuous, and pretending to be very much a man of the people.
Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate in 2010, did absolutely nothing to campaign for herself. She was smug enough to believe that the legacy of Ted Kennedy was enough to win the seat for her, even if she did diddlysquat to earn it.
The Democratic Senatorial candidate this time, Elizabeth Warren, is not making that mistake. She is strong and smart and capable. She’s made a few missteps, but she’s a good person.
(I’m a Rhode Islander, so I’m not voting in that election. Our two Senators are firm and fervent Democrats. But we Rhode Islanders are deluged with Massachusetts political advertisements, so I speak from knowledge.)
In his adverts, Scott’s usually driving around (yet again!) in his pickup truck, talking to “regular folks.” He even shows images of himself with President Obama, portraying himself as a Republican who can compromise with the Democrats.
(Don’t you believe it. He voted with his party most of the time over the last two years.)
But here’s the thing that irritates me the most: he’s been running ads about the local fisheries industry, about how “government regulation” has been destroying the Massachusetts fishing industry, and that he’s been fighting to protect the fishermen.
Fact: the fisheries outlook in the North Atlantic is bleak at the moment, because the North Atlantic has been entirely overfished. The trademark fish of Massachusetts – including the sacred cod – are now endangered. There is now officially a fisheries “disaster” in the North Atlantic.
If you like cod and haddock and suchlike, prepare to pay a lot more for them, or switch to salmon and tilapia.
And if you’re a Scott Brown admirer, remember that things are never as simple as they seem in a political advertisement.
And for you Massachusetts readers: vote for Elizabeth Warren, kids. You’ll regret it if you don’t.
Here's nine minutes' worth of very good music: Chopin’s Scherzo #2 in B-flat minor, played with elan by Nikita Magaloff.
Franz Liszt, who generally loved Chopin’s music, hated this piece. He called it the “Governess Scherzo,” because (he said) “every governess can play it,” and he forbade his own students to perform it.
Liszt was a snob.
Enjoy.
A fellow in Australia named Attila Ovari began following my blog a while back. I thought his name was remarkable, and decided to give his blog a read in return.
He is a management consultant, and a husband and father, and involved in a hundred projects at once. He is very interesting, and you should give his blog a look.
In it, he tells a story about leading a bunch of people (in automobiles) to a destination. He’d given them directions in advance. To his surprise, instead of following him, they took the lead. They made mistakes a couple of times, but he paused when they did, and they came back to him, and then they resumed their course.
So: he was like a cattle dog, staying behind the herd, just giving them guidance when they got off course, but letting them figure out most of it by themselves.
It’s an interesting concept. I’m not much usually for management theory, but I like this, and I liked the way he described it, and I wondered about its applicability in the everyday work environment. Does it work? Can you let your staff just stray out into the wilderness (even with instructions), only giving them guidance when they get off-course?
Well, of course you can.
But it takes a full-time hard-working manager to do that.
And most managers aren’t full-time. (A number of them aren’t hard-working either, for that matter, but let’s not go there.) Most of the managers in my office are doing the same work (more or less) as their subordinates; the “management” portion is a (usually) unwelcome portion of their job.
Some of them are actually mentoring their subordinates. This is wonderful, but, as I said, very time-consuming.
Is there a happy medium?
I’m not sure.
Because those cattle dogs, you know, they work awfully hard.
I have been prowling through the quiet recesses of the Providence Public Library, and have found some amazing things. Among them: collections of radio scripts from the late 1930s / early 1940s.
This period was the heyday of radio: comedy, news, music, variety, politics. It was like network TV when I was a kid in the 1960s: it was the world, brought into your house.
But I have made some melancholy discoveries too.
There was, for example, a program called “The People’s Platform.” A transcript was included in a collection I read recently. There were five participants: the host (presumably neutral); a conservative/right wing commentator; a government representative; a carpenter; and an unemployed (woman) teacher. The discussion was about the 1930s depression, and the government’s response to it.
The rightist’s argument was that the government had failed, failed, failed. Nine years had passed since 1929, and unemployment was still the same.
Well, the others pointed out, the government had helped out in the interim, but the National Relief Act had been found unconstitutional for various reasons, and unemployment had popped back up.
Exactly! the rightist crowed. Governments can’t fix unemployment! Only employers (read: job creators) can!
Not so fast, said the carpenter and the unemployed teacher. Industry did precious little to help during the early 1930s. Government needs (if necessary) to make them create jobs.
That’s fascism, rightist says.
No it’s not, the rest of the panel says.
They argue about the difference between government regulation and government control. (The former is okay; the latter is fascist. The former is negative – you mustn’t sell poison food; the latter is positive – you must create jobs. Some of the panelists demur on this point.)
The program was fascinating, and very sad.
There was another script in the same book: a history of the Depression and the recovery. It listed programs I knew (the NRA, the CCC, the WPA) and others I didn’t (the Federal Emergency Relief Act, the Civil Works Act). It mentioned that, even during the Hoover administration, relief was being enacted by Congress – but Hoover vetoed it, because it “unbalanced the Federal budget.”
Does any of this sound familiar to you?
Jesus! Everything old is new again. No one learns any lessons. It’s right there in front of us, and we don’t learn.
(I remember what I was taught in seventh and eight grade: the Depression didn’t really end until World War II, when industry was forced to reboot by the Federal government. True? I don’t know. I hope not.)
(But I’m sure the next few years will tell us everything.)
(And we (as a nation) still won’t learn a damned thing.)
Such a crop of weeds we’ve had this year!
There’s a yard down on Cooke Street, a few blocks from our house, with weeds like nothing I’ve ever seen. Some of them are eight feet tall. There’s dwarf dandelion (it seems silly to call it “dwarf” when it’s that tall, although “dwarf” refers to the flowers, not the plant), and some pokeweed, and other things I don’t know the names of. I actually own a copy of the “Golden Guide to Weeds,” and I still cannot figure out what some of them are. They are like props in a horror movie, or background scenery in an episode of “Lost in Space.” They tower over me. (Fine. They’ll be dead in a few months, and I’ll (probably) still be here. So let them tower.)
I love weeds. I love the way they sprawl and occupy the space they’re given. I know they can be parasites, but they’re often lovely. (My father, a farmer at heart, hated weeds, and hated it when he saw me playing with things like quackgrass and cheat. I had no idea that I was doing anything wrong.) I love the resilience of weeds, and their vigor. Many of them are annuals: they grow from seed in a single season, and die. Imagine that! All that growth in a single year!
And they are common, and friendly, and green. They mean no harm. (Most of them, anyway.)
And why do you suppose we’re getting such a nice crop of them this year?
We’re getting warmer hereabouts; we’re getting a climate that’s more like the mid-Atlantic states. Climate change, you know. And the landscape, and the greenery, are responding with gladness
Lovely weather, if you’re a weed.
(Not sure if it’s so good for us people, though.)
I like my student employees. They are very dedicated and hard-working and willing to prove themselves, and funny.
My current assistant, Jake, is very good at his job. He’s smart, and diligent. But he hasn’t really worked a job – a full-day, nine-to-five job – before.
On top of that, he’s working extra hours in the evening, at another campus job this summer. Also he recently let me know that he’s working some extra hours on weekends. (That's harder than I've ever worked in my life. I salute him.)
He said this to me last week (I paraphrase, lightly):
“This is weird. I come in here at eight-thirty, and it’s mostly sitting down all day, and I answer the phone a couple of times, and I go to lunch. And I work on stuff of my own, you know. And then it’s afternoon, and the day goes pretty quickly, and it’s five o’clock. And I go home. And I know I’ve been sitting down all day. But I’m exhausted.”
All of you out there: do you understand Jake’s situation? I do. I was there thirty years ago, when I entered the workforce. I’m still there, really.
I mostly sit down during the day (though I buzz around the building a lot). I go home, and I make dinner, or Partner and I make dinner together.
And I’m exhausted.
What is it? Is it ego depletion? That’s supposed to be cured by ingestion of glucose / sucrose, and I’m sucking on Starlight Mints all day long, so that can’t be it.
It’s psychological. Hell, it’s generational. I’ve been working for the same employer for almost twenty-five years. Jake was born after I started working there!
Every few years I get this impulse to rebel and do something else. And then I settle down and fall back into my (admittedly very comfortable and reasonably well-compensated) rut.
Ah well.
Nine to five isn’t so bad after all, is it?
(Sigh.)
I don’t like watching politics on television, even when I agree with the people I’m watching. It gives me a funny uncomfortable feeling in my stomach, and what with my whole kidney-stone situation, one more abdominal complaint is not what I need.
But Partner and I happened upon a good interview the other day: Bill Moyers (whom I respect immensely) interviewing Bernie Sanders, the Independent Senator from Vermont. (I capitalize “Independent” on purpose; that’s his political affiliation. He generally caucuses with the Democrats, but he’s very much his own person. He identifies himself with the Scandinavian Socialists, believing with them that the purpose of a government is to ensure quality of life for its citizens, including essential human services like health care and education.)
Bernie was passionate and brilliant in the interview, as he generally is. Along the way, he spoke of Wall Street and the various feeble attempts that have been made to regulate it, and said this: “Fraud is the new business model.”
Both Partner and I nearly leapt out of our chairs when he said this. It’s such a perfect description of the current situation in the business world. In a word: the wealthy are using every means necessary to maintain and increase their wealth. Taxes are not for them. (They’re “job creators,” so we mustn’t rile them up.) They don’t like government regulation either, which naturally drives up their expenses. They are not keen on paying benefits for their employees either, nor are they in love with the minimum wage.
It’s the regulation thing that drives me wild. Before the Bill Moyers program, we’d been watching a program about derivatives. These are elaborate exchanges of packages of debt, currencies, etc., so cunningly crafted and marketed that the buyers often don’t really know what they’re buying (and often the sellers aren’t quite sure what they’re selling.) The buying and selling of derivatives was one of the bombs that blew up in 2008, torpedoing the world economy.
One of the experts interviewed was a little defensive about this, however. I can’t quote him exactly, but I can paraphrase him: “I don’t think the sellers were entirely to blame for this. I blame the purchasers too. They needed to be more careful about what they bought. It’s an open market, after all; you can buy and sell what you want.”
So evidently you can sell fraudulent securities, so long as you can find a buyer. Or tainted meat, or poison baby formula. No one is forcing the buyers to purchase them, after all.
And that’s why government needs to be a policeman: because a significant number of businesspeople will not hesitate to use fraudulent means to make money. And that’s all kinds of business.
Sadly, Bernie Sanders is only a voice in the wilderness now.
I hope more and more people come to this realization.
Otherwise: well, go to Netflix and watch “Rollerball.” Because, America, that’s your bleak ol’ future right there.
Ms. J. K. Rowling has given us the the idea of the Patronus: the ghostly animal that comes jumping out to protect you when you’re in trouble.
I have never had any doubt about mine.
My spirit animal, my Patronus, is an angry greedy little black duck who often gets his beak shot off.
I grew up with Warner Brothers cartoons; I couldn’t get enough of them. Since many of them were made in the 1930s and 1940s, I was often puzzled by the cultural references (and still haven’t worked some of them out), but I could tell that they were smart and witty and clever – in an adult way – far more than their competitors at Disney or Hanna-Barbera or MGM.
I loved Bugs Bunny, of course. I had a stuffed Bugs Bunny that talked when you pulled his string. He said things like “I like you!” and “I’m sleepy” and (naturally) “What’s up, doc?” I cherished him and took him to bed with me every night.
But my favorite cartoons were the ones with Daffy Duck.
Daffy is lazy, and not very honest. He is vindictive. He goes into futile rages. Sometimes he’s so angry that he’s speechless. He schemes, but his schemes aren’t very well constructed. He tries very hard to be sophisticated, and he fails every time. He almost always says the wrong thing. He is easily defeated.
But he always comes popping back up. He’s indefatigable. He might close his eyes for a moment and take a deep breath, but he always comes back for more. He fails, but he keeps trying.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is me in a nutshell.
I’m a greedy little coward, and I often fail, but I just keep going and going.
This tune (circa 1962) was part of my childhood. I get shivers when I listen to it now: that insouciant little piano motif going on underneath, and that lovely long arch of a string melody, and that wonderful brass interlude that comes in a couple of times, and that funny little trumpet/guitar jazz interlude.
It’s still the coolest, man.
You can still get your kicks on Route 66.
I’ve written about rediscovering the Providence Public Library. I go at least once a week, sometimes twice. It’s quiet and lovely, especially the book stacks (most people go to use the computers, which are right in front; there’s also a nice first-floor children’s section, and the librarians are universally cheerful and funny).
I check out at least a book a week.
And, almost by accident, I have learned to read again.
Funny: I have a room full of books, literally lined with books. I am always pulling them down, looking up things, lending them to people. But I am not adding new books to the mix. (I do, of course; it’s a lifetime habit. But I buy books and put them on the shelf without reading. That’s terrible.)
But now I am checking out books I do not own from the library, and there is a date stamped in them, and if I do not return them by that date, I will be charged – I don’t know – five cents a day.
I hate being late.
So I read. I read novels, and screenplays, and radio scripts, and short stories. I have put things aside because they’re not very good. I have reread things.
I’m beginning to fall into a routine: one weekend day (either Saturday or Sunday, whichever has the crappier weather), with a book and a glass of seltzer water. I lie down, and I read.
I’d forgotten how lovely this is. I can turn pages as quickly or as slowly as I please. If a book bores me, I can throw it aside. I can speed through a chapter or a section if it’s not wonderful. I can linger over things. I can reread things a few days later!
And I can lie down while doing it!
I find that I now (more than recently) have ideas in my head. Now, where could those have come from?
I have been more relaxed lately, too. To be fair, it might be my medication. But books are medication too. I’d forgotten how consoling they can be.
It’s good to be back.
Partner and I finally saw “The Bourne Legacy” last weekend.
First of all, there was this Jeremy Renner fellow, who has interesting eyes and a nice face and a very neato body. He’s Aaron Cross, a supersoldier / agent who’s caught in an elaborate doublecross / triplecross scheme, and who fights back.
Like so many modern action/adventures, it’s an extended chase scene. It is, however, an exceptionally well-done extended chase scene. It has the usual parkour stuff, but also mopeds and motorcycles and cars. Never for a moment do you lose focus, or forget the goal.
The thing that surprised me, however, is the cinematography.
There are a couple of scenes, in among the frantic chases, that are beautifully dreamlike:
- An opening sequence in the mountains of Alaska, including a scene with Renner diving (mostly naked) in a freezing river in front of a waterfall, like every Hawaiian idyll you’ve ever seen, but at forty degrees below;
- A violent shootout in a remote abandoned house, all white wood and long staircase and peaceful autumn foliage outside, that feels like something out of “Inception”;
- A panic in a Manila drug factory, with hundreds of workers in pink smocks and pink hairnets running for the exits;
- Manila itself, a Third World dreamscape of alleyways and broken rooftops and smoggy skylines;
- An Elysian archipelago of tropical islands, and a small boat running between them.
The supporting cast (Scott Glenn, Ed Norton, Joan Allen, Albert Finney, Stacy Keach) could have been replaced with nobodies, or cardboard cutouts. The movie’s all about Jeremy and his traveling companion / hostage / girlfriend, Rachel Weisz. You know it’s going to turn out okay for them (until the sequel, anyway).
Partner and I highly recommend this picture.
And we’re deeply committed to the sequel.
