Confluence and Heart

We talk a lot about confluence here in St. Louis, because here the country's two mightiest rivers meet and flow together.  The Mississippi flows down from the North, from Minnesota,  and the Missouri flows in from the West, from Montana, and they converge in river bottoms, and as they start their journey to the heart of the South the first high ground, on the west bank, is St. Louis. 

Tonight this town rings with another kind of confluence, and beats with a tremendous heart.  It's a baseball town, likes to think of itself as the baseball town, and it's the capital of a huge region, seven or eight states, surrounding the tradition of its baseball teams.  It used to have two, a National and an American League team, the Cardinals and the Browns.  The Browns have long moved on, but what remains is this fine ball club, the center of what we call, proudly but not too seriously,  Cardinal Nation:  the St. Louis Cardinals.

"Go Cards."  I've heard it ever since I moved here.  At times like this it replaces "good-bye" or "see ya" in our conversations.

Tonight this tradition converged with a team, and the team won the World Series.

This 2011 team is a miracle.  For the last week I, and many others, have said "Cards in Seven", and it's not just municipal pride.  I'd make this prediction - before Game Six - because  this team plays with its back to the wall like no other.  It has come back from the brink literally dozens of times since August.   But I didn't really know how  true and deep their heart was, until Game Six, when the team was down to its last out, last strike, two runs down  - twice - and came back and won.  The gamest, biggest-hearted team ever.

Game Seven, tonight, was kind of a victory lap.  Not the firestorm of Game Six.  Just a steady, confident final act, eliminating any lingering doubt. This is one of the greatest sports teams America has ever seen.

Faith

From someplace on the Internet:

"In the 17th century, the people that we would now call atheists were called nullfidians. The state of insufficient faith was also of common enough interest to be given a name - petty fidianism.

"John Trapp, in his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, 1647, recorded the term:

" 'O ye of little faith. Ye petty fidians; He calleth them not nullifidians.' "

I'm afraid I'm a petty fidian.  Never knew it before.  Always thought I had doubt, and that was okay because everyone does from time to time. 

At least I'm not a nullifidian.  What faith I have, I keep, and guard carefully.

Jubilee

Just when I was ranting about my inability to find anything insightful, I stumbled onto this in the Guardian.  It's George Monboit discussing a book by  Steve Keen, Debunking Economics:

"President Obama justified the bank bailout on the grounds that "a dollar of capital in a bank can actually result in eight or 10 dollars of loans to families and businesses. So that's a multiplier effect." But the money multiplier didn't happen. The $1.3 trillion that Bernanke injected scarcely raised the amount of money in circulation: the 110% increase in M0 money led not to the 800% or 1,000% increase in M1 money that Obama predicted, but a rise of just 20%. The bail-outs failed because M0 was not the cause of the crisis. The money would have achieved far more had it simply been given to the public. But, as Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy demonstrated over the weekend, governments have learnt nothing from this failure, and seek only to repeat it.

"Instead, Keen says, the key to averting or curtailing a second Great Depression is to reduce the levels of private debt, through a unilateral write-off, or jubilee. The irresponsible loans the banks made should not be honoured. This will mean taking many banks into receivership. Otherwise private debt will sort itself out by traditional means: mass bankruptcy, which will generate an even greater crisis."

Like they say, read the whole thing.  http://bit.ly/na6WnQ

There really is something going on here to which we should pay attention.

So What Planet Is This, Anyway

I've been hanging back, lurking really, to see if I can shake this impression that almost everything I hear lately is trite, half-baked, the opposite of insightful - outsightful?   - inblindful?   And it's not like I'm not looking.  I read the Times, listen to NPR and the BBC, watch CNN and both C-SPAN's - but it all seems like they all  - pols, journalists, pundits - are starting the day reading the same playbook and then come out spouting the same utterly conventional wisdom.  To mix a metaphor or two.

Not that I'm a bundle of insight, but I think I know it when I see it and I ain't seeing it.

More than ever, it seems to me the most intelligent things to do are listen to music, tend the garden, read history, and keep the day job.  Plus, in my own case, hit the keyboards and try to sound different every time.  Plus, I would say, look for simplicity without trusting it, but the thought isn't my own.   Alfred North Whitehead - now there's a guy with insight.