I cannot believe I haven't done this before.

Photos, that is.

This is Calhoun County, Illinois. A genuinely amazing place, reachable mostly by ferry. With flat riverlands, and hills like a Midwest version of the Cotswalds, orchards, high hedgerows, views of the Mississippi and the Illinois.

Big Boys

I am still trying to puzzle out what happened with this Great Credit Meltdown of 2008, and have a long way to go. As this point I'm skeptical. There is a problem for me in that smaller, well-run banks here in the Midwest would be surviving without all the government intervention, and smaller, well-run companies seem to be doing OK - reducing headcount, yes, but meeting payroll with those who are left.

And we are going to provide over $100 billion to keep AIG intact.

What gives? I think there are just too many big institutions that are creditors of AIG, and they just don't want to lose big money. There was a commentator on the tube today saying that if AIG liquidated, it'd be a fire sale. Buyers would get AIG assets for 20 cents on the dollar.

A. So what?
B. 20 cents on what dollar? A dollar based on 2007 valuations?

I hate it when left-wing slogans turn out to be right. But man, as of today, it really looks to me like we are nationalizing losses. And the really big boys - AIG's creditors - can't face a true, market-clearing, bottom-finding liquidation.

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Whew.

At last, it's over, and back to things that matter. Like listening to music, and playing it.

I'm listening to Chet Baker, even though I guess he's regarded as a lightweight and I found about him through a Starbuck's ad. Or maybe it was Volkwagen. Who cares - this ocean of media can toss off flotsam and if I pick some up and make it into, say, a coffee table - great.

I'm playing what I've always called blues runs. There may be a hipper term. They are the flourishes that blues pianists use to (a) show off and (b) fill in between melody lines, whether a singer's or player's. Makes them sound shallow, but they're not. They're cool.

This would be the perfect place to paste an example, but I don't want to slow down, and this is all for me anyway. (Good God, I hope I know what I'm referring to.) The vaguely interesting aspect of the project is how to get comfortable with these babies outside the key of C. I've been using C runs for years, even in tunes in G, but that's about it. Time to go to another level (to use an expression that is awfully current but nonetheless fits) and hence work on this standard run - trying to make it second nature in C, D, E, G, and A. I love F, but it and B don't work, they'd require completely different fingering.

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Money Voting

It's odd that there seems to be so much emphasis on the voting process and so little on campaign finance in America. They are both integral parts of how we elect people.

For me it is the slam-dunk factor in the upcoming election. I would have voted for John McCain in any event, for many reasons discussed below, but what puts it way over the top is how Barack Obama has trashed the campaign finance reform movement, by breaking a well-documented pledge to use public financing and, as a consenquence, by outspending McCain by, what, 200 percent?

How sad, and how short-sighted. The right wing in this country never liked campaign finance reform much anyway. After Senator Obama's sucker punch they never will. And do the Democrats think they can beat the Republicans on fundraising? This one time. Next time, and the time after that, and the time after that, campaigns will be all about money and not much else.

You do not see much about this in the media. Could it be because most of those dollars go to media buys? D'ya think?

Written Early Enough to Look Ridiculous Later

The next paragraphs are taken from an email to a couple of great old friends. I post them knowing full well that this kind of topical stuff usually looks ridiculous in hindsight. But that's one of the reasons for the post - indeed, for the whole project - maybe it can help with the twin problems of humility and short-sightedness.

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I am going to vote for John McCain enthusiastically. Mrs. Palin knows who she is and has a firm grasp of fundamental values - reminding me, at this point in the candidacy, of Harry Truman when he ran with FDR in 1944. For them to win at this point, however, would take a miracle.

The miracles have been running in the opposite direction, especially the fact that this final liquidation stage of the 90-year Kondratieff wave is breaking between nomination and election. No Republican could survive that, absent a miracle.

Obama has done one thing - run a brilliant, ruthless campaign. Look at the choices he has made with impunity - breaking his pledge on public financing, going 180 degrees on gun ownership, refusing to reveal any records of his history while at Occidental, Columbia, and very little about Harvard, among many examples. I can predict with some confidence that the information he has concealed would have made a difference in the election.

I am reminded of the revelations that Kennedy had Addison's disease, or that Sorenson and others wrote Profiles in Courage, for which Kennedy received a Pulitzer prize. I am still very curious about the connection between William Ayers and Dreams From My Father.

Running and winning a brilliant, ruthless campaign for President ain't chopped liver. I don't think it outweighs McCain's achievements and record, but oddly I am left where I began. I am going to vote for JMcC, and hope he wins, but I am not terrified of the probability that Obama will win. Pretty much for the reason that the pendulum always swings, and usually in proportion to the previous swing.

The only thing that worries me, a little, is the idea that we are in Russia and about to elect Kerensky - that we are about to get into a period of extreme instability and that Obama will not be able to stand up to truly radical voices that will emerge. I would much rather we had John McCain at that point. But I think it's a long shot.

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The Long March Through the Institutions

For years I have toyed with a plot for a novel, I guess, that would be along the following lines: three or four radicals in the early '70's, realizing that they were not going to accomplish radical change through Weather-style activity, sat down and made a pact. They would go back to the educational worlds they came from, and work their way up through institutions. (This long march through the institutions idea did not originate at all with me - I heard a lot about it at the time.)

Fade to the early 21st century. One of them, say, is a university president; one a CIA manager; one an appellate-level judge, and one has made his way through politics, and now is up and running for Vice President.

OK that's the gist...

I never worked out whether the next step would be a collaboration sparked by post-hypnotic suggestion - or maybe led by one of them, a real Svengali, the judge? - or just based on their adherence to their original pact. And would it be interesting to explore the possibility that some would have second thoughts, based on the decades they had led straight lives?

All this came back to me recently, with the emergence of William Ayers, a very famous Weather Underground fugitive, in the presidential campaign. A plot twist I hadn't imagined: the Svengali would recruit a brilliant, but desperately-seeking-father-figure young politician, and achieve his agenda through a national political campaign that is almost a coup d'etat.

Ahhh.... time for a cocktail. This election is getting to me.

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Golden Choice (2)

Back in July I wrote that maybe, with these two much-better-than-average candidates, we could look forward to an intelligent policy debate.

Wrong.

All the ad hominem crap, all the over-simplification, all the sloganeering that afflict this system are back, just as ever.

There is only one glimmer of light in this democratic darkness - I do not think it is pulled by the media, mainstream or other from the candidates. I think it originates, as much as anything, from the candidates themselves. Why is this a glimmer of light? Because the problem seems less systematic and more a function of bad conventional wisdom about the ways campaigns are conducted. Better behavior could be learned. Next time.

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At my center

In another context I was reminded of this, from J.D. Salinger's "Zooey" (copied from Wikiquote):

Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again — all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don't think I missed more than just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my mind. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and — I don't know. Anyway, it seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on the air. It made sense.
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I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret — Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.


The passage guided me for years. I hope it still does.

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Labels

In truth, without the capitalization, we are all pretty much conservative republican liberal democrats. With the capital letters - the labels - we sort out our remaining differences and begin a process of oversimplification that may be necessary - because discourse can only bear so much nuance - but also damaging - because oversimplification begins a road to deception.

I was reminded of this in a historical context as I read Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" and Peter Fritzsche's "Life and Death in the Third Reich." Goldberg makes a convincing case that the term "Fascism" has its origins as much in the left as in the right. That's fine, but if it's just a book about the history of a word, it should have been only a magazine article. The important question is whether ideas from the left led to Fascism as much as ideas from the right. Not sure he answers this.

I come across a similar dichotomy in "Life and Death." (It may be similar, or it may arise merely from the fact that I happen to have both books out from the St. Louis County Public Library at the same time.) That is, Fritzsche makes a good case that the Germans bought into Nazism wholesale and willingly, not grudgingly and not at the point of a gun. OK. But to me, the interesting question is whether National Socialism inevitably would have arisen sooner or later; or whether the Nazis breathed life into something that, without their skill in the manipulation of the masses, never would have come to pass. Do we just slap the "Nazi" label on something that was already there?

Or worse: was the Holocaust the manifestation of something always there. Would the Germans have got to this, sooner or later. And to jam this together with the first book: was Fascism also something that led inevitably to the Holocaust.

I think the answer is no to these last questions, but I also think that vigilance includes asking them. The biggest thing we have to avoid - bigger than another Cold War, bigger than another Pearl Harbor or 9/11, bigger even than civil war - is another Holocaust. And what makes these books worth reading and these questions worth asking, is to sift the evidence and make sure that if there is something there that might lead us again down that path, we identify and crush it. It won't just be a label.
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No Horizon

Whether it be the Singularity, or the Christogenesis, or any other formulation, I have long thought that we were looking ahead to a complete transformation of human society and we would not recognize, and probably cannot understand, what will be on the other side. That future is as hard for us to grasp as for homo erectus, say, to grasp the 21 century.

The hallmark of the change will be the ability to live indefinitely. When death becomes an election, everything will be transformed.

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Rhode Island Shoreline

There are moments here of such strong physical beauty that it's comical. Puffy rose clouds at dusk! Cue the geese and the swallows! The moonrise over the water! OK now add the lightning in clouds at the horizon! Bonfires along the shore!

Add people who seldom remember how lucky they are.

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Fat Kid


I was a fat kid. Second-fattest kid in the class - maybe first, Charlie and I were neck and neck - until a really, really fat kid showed up. He was what we called a load.


I fell into the wiseass fat kid subcategory. Compensating through sarcasm and occasionally bullying and an interior life that was strange for a kid. My father was proud that I listened to Beethoven. And I was not a slug - a so-so catcher in baseball, a swimmer - a diver, incredibly enough - and in football, I made it to fullback, and for little while they called me The Truck.

But as those of us who were fat kids in the 1950's know, it was painful. The hardest part is that you didn't know why you were fat. My own theory, which I didn't develop until years later, was that my tonsils were so bad that I had them removed at age four, and before that I couldn't taste anything. Then, suddenly, taste, and I went for it. Year after year, until I (and Charlie) were almost perfectly round.

A second-hardest part was the transition from I-hate-girls to wow-I-really don't-hate-girls. Girls were kind of amused by wiseass fat boys but that was certainly it. In that strange race that commences when we hit puberty - with some boys transformed, because they hit it sooner - we fatties ran way behind.

For me, it lasted until I was about 15, and I am still not sure what pulled me out. I remember becoming obsessive about food, and lifting weights a lot. I was in the midst of real turmoil, parents breaking up, my school ready to fire me, and maybe that helped. Somehow I became more svelte and girls were more interested.

I have struggled with weight the rest of my life. At one point I dropped many pounds, and attributed their loss as follows: 1/3 diet, 1/3 exercise, and 1/3 anxiety. Later, all gained back. Today down from my peak but I do need to eat better, exercise more, and probably be more anxious.

As are many cliches, this one is true: part of you stays the kid you were for the rest of your life. Part of me will always be a fat kid. And a little proud of it.

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98 Degrees in St. Louis

Lying still, waiting for a breath
of air or an intergalactic ice cube,
whichever first.
Each would be a miracle,
nothing less will break
the heat.

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Timing

Call me cynical, but if I were a Republican opposition researcher I would hold back the good stuff on Mr. Obama until after the Democratic convention. The last thing you'd want to do is damage the guy so badly that the superdelegates switch back to Mrs. Clinton. Which the Party could allow them to do.

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Frost Fix

Now close the windows and hush all the fields:
If the trees must, let them silently toss;
No bird is singing now, and if there is,
Be it my loss.

Robert Frost, "Now Close the Windows".

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Practice and Play

I admire musicians who practice by themselves for hours. I have not been one since my early teens, when I sat in practice rooms and willed myself past classical and show tunes and into boogie-woogie.

Not today, not even when I'm playing a great instrument and playing it well. The only way I can stick with it for hours is in a group - and then I do so happily. The size of the group doesn't really matter - some of the best times were me and a drummer in dark room, just jamming. But it has to be more than one. When we're playing together (what a perfectly suitable multiple meaning, "play") it's great.

Then, when it cooks, it is as good as it gets.

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Golden Choice

Even for those of us who are consitutionally adverse to positions on the American left, Obama is an impressive guy. His opponents seem to be lining up around the idea that he is not as smart as he seems. I think this is a mistake. I think he is smarter than Bill Clinton, for example, who is way smart. And obviously, as to principle and discipline, he's in a different and far better league. A league in which John McCain also plays.

So there is some kind of hope here on my street in St. Louis. I heard the other day a comment from a German commentator, translating an expression: we have a golden choice.

Absolutely there are huge policy differences. If only the sellers of media will allow those policy choices to matter, I think these candidates can elevate the discourse. The media - mainstream and other - will either be the lift under their wings or a weight on their backs.

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There is a huge difference between:

we've lost, let's pull the troops out, and

we've won, let's pull the troops out.

Isn't there?

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Hey why is this starting up five years later?

I have no idea.

Except that this is the answer to the question about writing for the drawer:

I don't.

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