Cairo, Illinois
They have blown levees that protected Mississippi County in Missouri in order to save Cairo, Illinois. The good farmers whose land and homes are being inundated think the proposition is absurd. Let that city go, they say.
Cairo sits at the confluence of the Mississippi and the Ohio. It was once a prosperous place, Grant's first major command headquarters, where Civil War troops were assembled and gunships were built, launched and anchored, and, as shown in a famous incident involving Grant, a center for the telegraph that revolutionized the conduct of war. It was a commercial crossroads, exemplified by the Custom House, built in 1872.
But mostly it's a ruined ghost town now, with or without a flood, fewer than 3000 desperate souls, with a very troubled racial history.
I'm not sure about the trade-off. If saving what's left of Cairo means that there will be a new effort to make it into a place people might actually want to live... well OK, I will listen to that. But if it leaves a lot of still-rotting buildings, instead of letting them wash away - I'd be in favor of the washing away. The river has taken islands, land, even towns before. Maybe we should have given Cairo back.
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Bin Laden
Hard to watch this go by and not comment. The reactions here seem to range from celebration, to reproach for celebrating the death of a man, to fear of reprisal.
Me, I think a guy who is responsible for and exults in the slaughter by stealth of 3000 innocent men, women, and children has a special place in the annals of evil. He deserved much worse than he got.
As to the politics, I note my previously-blogged position - that this creates a fine time to declare victory in Afghanistan, assemble and issue green cards to the people who helped us, and bring them and our people home. That point of view is not heard much, and when it is, it's regarded as craven.
I guess it was also craven when Reagan pulled us out of Lebanon after hundreds of Marines were killed in their barracks in 1983. But I bet it saved a lot of American lives, and avoided taking sides in a fight where there wasn't a good side to take.
Hard to watch this go by and not comment. The reactions here seem to range from celebration, to reproach for celebrating the death of a man, to fear of reprisal.
Me, I think a guy who is responsible for and exults in the slaughter by stealth of 3000 innocent men, women, and children has a special place in the annals of evil. He deserved much worse than he got.
As to the politics, I note my previously-blogged position - that this creates a fine time to declare victory in Afghanistan, assemble and issue green cards to the people who helped us, and bring them and our people home. That point of view is not heard much, and when it is, it's regarded as craven.
I guess it was also craven when Reagan pulled us out of Lebanon after hundreds of Marines were killed in their barracks in 1983. But I bet it saved a lot of American lives, and avoided taking sides in a fight where there wasn't a good side to take.
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Lucky Enough To Be Asked
I am lucky. Lucky lucky lucky. And I do like people, and being with them, and seeing those I don't usually see. And I'd be churlish to whine about being asked to dress up and hang out at charity events with eats and drinks in abundance and occasionally a good band.
But whine I must, a little. I just can't help thinking this is another way we are back to the 1930's - think of My Man Godfrey - only these things today are both more politically corrent and more tacky.
It's the auctions, most of all. Fun like a trip to a stockyard. Some earnest husband - or worse, some minor celebrity - trying to extract money from people who are already feeling taken or, way worse, who want to show how prosperous they are. The latest I've seen is handing everyone a little iPhonish unit that allows you to keep bidding from the bar.
OK call me jealous. And cheap. And ungrateful for all the hours that very decent people put into organizing these events, and the good causes they support. Call me all of them, then please call me early for the coffee and a graceful exit.
I am lucky. Lucky lucky lucky. And I do like people, and being with them, and seeing those I don't usually see. And I'd be churlish to whine about being asked to dress up and hang out at charity events with eats and drinks in abundance and occasionally a good band.
But whine I must, a little. I just can't help thinking this is another way we are back to the 1930's - think of My Man Godfrey - only these things today are both more politically corrent and more tacky.
It's the auctions, most of all. Fun like a trip to a stockyard. Some earnest husband - or worse, some minor celebrity - trying to extract money from people who are already feeling taken or, way worse, who want to show how prosperous they are. The latest I've seen is handing everyone a little iPhonish unit that allows you to keep bidding from the bar.
OK call me jealous. And cheap. And ungrateful for all the hours that very decent people put into organizing these events, and the good causes they support. Call me all of them, then please call me early for the coffee and a graceful exit.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Guy Noir Wrecks My Plans
The idea is to come up with 15- or 30-minute radio-of-the-air pieces that we can produce here with a local theater company, peddle them to Sirius or via the iStore, but we need scripts. Which I've been trying to write in my head as I drive to and from work.
All I can think of is cases handled by a kind of uber-me, a lawyer/fixer who carries a gun, does more than way more than contracts, takes on beautiful women and dangerous men, but how to I get around the cliches? It all sounds like Guy Noir, Garrison Keillor's detective from St. Paul.
She walked in and at first all I saw was legs, down to 4-inch heels, down to toenails painted chocolate brown. I'm thinking, "Not too early for dessert" but all that came out was "May I help you?"
Stuff like that.
I need to get from funny to cool...
The idea is to come up with 15- or 30-minute radio-of-the-air pieces that we can produce here with a local theater company, peddle them to Sirius or via the iStore, but we need scripts. Which I've been trying to write in my head as I drive to and from work.
All I can think of is cases handled by a kind of uber-me, a lawyer/fixer who carries a gun, does more than way more than contracts, takes on beautiful women and dangerous men, but how to I get around the cliches? It all sounds like Guy Noir, Garrison Keillor's detective from St. Paul.
She walked in and at first all I saw was legs, down to 4-inch heels, down to toenails painted chocolate brown. I'm thinking, "Not too early for dessert" but all that came out was "May I help you?"
Stuff like that.
I need to get from funny to cool...
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
The Threshold Theory
Here's as far as I go on this whole life-after-death thing.
Your whole life you've been telling yourself stories about yourself, often deceptive or at least non-factual. The best example being dreams, where you show yourself in a narrative and you wander through, as though awake, taking in the world you've created. At some level you - the deep you - must know that the dream world you've created isn't "real". But the dreamer in you believes the whole story, until you wake up.
And as you grow older and wiser you learn that telling these stories to yourself doesn't only happen while you are asleep.
OK so far. Basic stuff, I guess, but I was no psych major so this wasn't taught to me, and neither was what's next.
The threshold theory is that at the moment of death - at the threshold - a final narrative unfolds. Deep-you shows dreamer-you what's next. Who knows what it will show you, any more than you know any night what dreams you will dream.
So, you're at the moment of death, at the threshold. Maybe you will look out at the afterlife you believe in. If you believe you're going to hell (a proposition I find utterly ridiculous, by the way - take that, Satan!), well then maybe you're looking at brimstone and pitchforks. If you believe you're going to heaven, maybe you're at a really well-appointed hotel, and all the dogs who preceded you to the hereafter are running towards you, tails wagging.
If you're a lights-out guy, maybe you're looking into black.
Or maybe what dreamer-you believes has no bearing on what deep-you serves up at the last moment.
In any case I'm pretty sure that deep-you knows what is going down. All the circuit breakers are being tripped, the fire curtain is coming down, and it's time to trot out the last big dream.
Whatever it is, whatever the final story you tell yourself, at the threshold, that's it, that's eternity. The frame freezes at one last blink, the lids stay closed, you don't wake up.
Here's as far as I go on this whole life-after-death thing.
Your whole life you've been telling yourself stories about yourself, often deceptive or at least non-factual. The best example being dreams, where you show yourself in a narrative and you wander through, as though awake, taking in the world you've created. At some level you - the deep you - must know that the dream world you've created isn't "real". But the dreamer in you believes the whole story, until you wake up.
And as you grow older and wiser you learn that telling these stories to yourself doesn't only happen while you are asleep.
OK so far. Basic stuff, I guess, but I was no psych major so this wasn't taught to me, and neither was what's next.
The threshold theory is that at the moment of death - at the threshold - a final narrative unfolds. Deep-you shows dreamer-you what's next. Who knows what it will show you, any more than you know any night what dreams you will dream.
So, you're at the moment of death, at the threshold. Maybe you will look out at the afterlife you believe in. If you believe you're going to hell (a proposition I find utterly ridiculous, by the way - take that, Satan!), well then maybe you're looking at brimstone and pitchforks. If you believe you're going to heaven, maybe you're at a really well-appointed hotel, and all the dogs who preceded you to the hereafter are running towards you, tails wagging.
If you're a lights-out guy, maybe you're looking into black.
Or maybe what dreamer-you believes has no bearing on what deep-you serves up at the last moment.
In any case I'm pretty sure that deep-you knows what is going down. All the circuit breakers are being tripped, the fire curtain is coming down, and it's time to trot out the last big dream.
Whatever it is, whatever the final story you tell yourself, at the threshold, that's it, that's eternity. The frame freezes at one last blink, the lids stay closed, you don't wake up.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Rabbit Rabbit
OK that was a mixed thing.
Giving up the Internet for 40 days was a great conversation piece but otherwise, for the most part, irritating. It was like giving up the phone book, the dictionary, the atlas. You can do it, and you can find the paper alternatives, but the process takes longer and the results are less complete.
You miss a lot of the pushed popular cultural references, the bad behavior of movie stars and politicians. But you don't lose track of weather killing people in Japan, or dictators killing people in Libya, or the mass US civics lesson that is playing out over federal budgeting and debt. As to these, maybe you've missed (how to know, since you've missed it) some of the nuance, and certainly you're missed a lot of punditry and chatter.
You do waste less time. Every second is precious and gone forever, so that is a good thing. The avoidance of lost time was most apparent when I strayed from the vow, because ten minutes into an Internet hunt for something (usually music) I would realize where I was and go back to where I belonged. So, better time management.
But, generally: kind of a yawn. Next year maybe I will give up something even more fundamental, like walking... ooh there's a thought. Conduct life at a run, a trot, or a crawl.
Which brings me, at this 40-day pace, mostly walking, to Easter. I find I'm becoming a practicing Christian - emphasizing "practicing" - but this holiday is still where I come up short. My father used to say that religion is about what happens when you die. Not for me. For me it's about what happens before you die. I do not believe that we maintain any kind of separate personality after we die, or will arise again as we were or want to be, whether we follow Jesus or not. I think, subject to the Threshold Theory, that when we die it's lights out. And I'm OK with that. How we get there, that's the hard part.
The Threshold Theory - next post.
OK that was a mixed thing.
Giving up the Internet for 40 days was a great conversation piece but otherwise, for the most part, irritating. It was like giving up the phone book, the dictionary, the atlas. You can do it, and you can find the paper alternatives, but the process takes longer and the results are less complete.
You miss a lot of the pushed popular cultural references, the bad behavior of movie stars and politicians. But you don't lose track of weather killing people in Japan, or dictators killing people in Libya, or the mass US civics lesson that is playing out over federal budgeting and debt. As to these, maybe you've missed (how to know, since you've missed it) some of the nuance, and certainly you're missed a lot of punditry and chatter.
You do waste less time. Every second is precious and gone forever, so that is a good thing. The avoidance of lost time was most apparent when I strayed from the vow, because ten minutes into an Internet hunt for something (usually music) I would realize where I was and go back to where I belonged. So, better time management.
But, generally: kind of a yawn. Next year maybe I will give up something even more fundamental, like walking... ooh there's a thought. Conduct life at a run, a trot, or a crawl.
Which brings me, at this 40-day pace, mostly walking, to Easter. I find I'm becoming a practicing Christian - emphasizing "practicing" - but this holiday is still where I come up short. My father used to say that religion is about what happens when you die. Not for me. For me it's about what happens before you die. I do not believe that we maintain any kind of separate personality after we die, or will arise again as we were or want to be, whether we follow Jesus or not. I think, subject to the Threshold Theory, that when we die it's lights out. And I'm OK with that. How we get there, that's the hard part.
The Threshold Theory - next post.
Monday, April 11, 2011
For Tom, I Suspend
An old friend, a classmate, a bandmate from many years ago, is dead. We only find out now, a year later. Just a death notice, no details.
I sent this to the class, and he deserves much more. At the suggestion of another classmate, I'll risk perdition and post at least this:
**********************************************************
Chambers was a front man. Had he been in the Rascals he would have been way better than Gene, and Eddie and Felix couldn't have stood the competition.
He introduced me to Winwood, Clapton, Hendrix. He loved hooking up his very impressive stereo at the beginning of a term and taking it down at the end. In the meantime he slept as much as possible because, he told me, it made time go by more quickly. He could not wait to get on with life.
He bedded great looking girls.
There was a tape of us playing the 25th. We all kind of showed our age, but Tom did at least one break that wiped me out. I found myself shouting.
Awful to find out this way, but he was hiding from us. I think - based on very little evidence - that he was ashamed that he did not live up to his potential. And he did not. Because if he had, he would have been a star.
An old friend, a classmate, a bandmate from many years ago, is dead. We only find out now, a year later. Just a death notice, no details.
I sent this to the class, and he deserves much more. At the suggestion of another classmate, I'll risk perdition and post at least this:
**********************************************************
Chambers was a front man. Had he been in the Rascals he would have been way better than Gene, and Eddie and Felix couldn't have stood the competition.
He introduced me to Winwood, Clapton, Hendrix. He loved hooking up his very impressive stereo at the beginning of a term and taking it down at the end. In the meantime he slept as much as possible because, he told me, it made time go by more quickly. He could not wait to get on with life.
He bedded great looking girls.
There was a tape of us playing the 25th. We all kind of showed our age, but Tom did at least one break that wiped me out. I found myself shouting.
Awful to find out this way, but he was hiding from us. I think - based on very little evidence - that he was ashamed that he did not live up to his potential. And he did not. Because if he had, he would have been a star.
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