With autumn upon us, it seems about time for the annual paranormal post.
I don't know why it is when summer turns to fall my mind turns to spooky stuff. It's darker, and longer? Maybe. Anyway, I am a fan - I admit it - of Ghost Hunters. I'm neither gullible nor stupid. I watch with an open mind, but I refuse to accept everything. It's fun, though, and the reality is I've had enough experiences, and heard so many others, that I accept the reality of what, for lack of a better word, could be called ghostly, haunting activity.
On the other hand, the whole "demon" thing? Not so much. Why do they constantly "possess" prepubescent children? I mean, c'mon, possess the CEO of Bank of America, or the President of the United States. That would wreak some pretty cool damage. But, instead, we get 12 year olds puking and floating. More messy than scary.
I much prefer TAPS to Paranormal State and Ghost Adventures. At the very least, the guys at TAPS are more low-key. They have nothing to prove, and seem to be level-headed (for guys who seem to believe in ghosties and ghoulies and wee-scary beasties). The kids at Paranormal State are just that. Plus, a psychic? C'mon. Ghost Adventures are three guys who want to add an element of "fear", which should be something they no longer feel. Footsteps, some banging, maybe a whisper here and there, and these guys scream like a bunch of little girls. Too funny.
My favorite places on YouTube are the sites with all sorts of "poltergeist" activity. Easy to fake, all sorts of stuff flying around, banging walls and floors, two in particular are awesome. Mellowbird, this guy in England, has put up with his home - in particular, his kitchen - being trashed far longer than any sane person would. For example:
Another, who calls himself "NQGHOSTHUNTER" is, surprise surprise, a professional photographer. Like Mellowbird, he has put up with what most would have left behind far longer than should be considered normal, and is now planning a full-length, self-produced documentary on what is "happening" in his house.
I love this one, especially the guy being thrown against the wall. Truly awesome.
There are, of course, the occasional videos from people who insist they are actually filming stuff that is happening in their house. I caught one the other day, and the whole back-story, plus the various videos, made me laugh. If I were the husband in this house, I would be applauding the following, not acting like a ten-year-old at the annual Rotary Haunted House.
I love the ingenuity of stuff like this. It takes some real effort to put together a piece like this, and to be convincingly "scared" by what happens.
By and large, this stuff doesn't scare me nearly as much as, say, the prospect of a Romney or Perry Presidency does; as persistent 9% unemployment; as our stupid, crazy public discourse. That scares me. Stuff that goes bump in the night? It might catch me off guard. But, scared as in truly afraid for my own safety or that of my family?
Not so much.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
30 Day Photo Challenge, Day 11
Am I blue? Not really, but there is an awful lot of blue in our house.
We bought a blue love seat/sofa combination seven years ago, when we moved to Poplar Grove. Which didn't have any blue in the living room. We moved to Plato Center last year, and we had a wonderful dining room with blue wallpaper/wall-to-wall and it was transformed to a TV room. Which is very, very blue. Put one of our blue plastic plates on a piece of furniture, with the blue cloth placemats - used as arm-covers because we are messy people - and the effect is . . . blue.
When we were leaving Jarratt, VA 12 years ago, we were offered the opportunity to cherry-pick some furniture from the house of a church member. Along with two bedroom sets and a piano, we found this beautiful barrel-back chair, upon which sits a couple blue binders, backed with blue curtains in a room with blue carpeting.
Yes, that's our fire-proof safe that holds all our important documents.
I honestly wish I was a better photographer, or had a better camera. This is fun, though.
Simple. Elegant. Earrings. Billie Holliday. Lisa covers the best bases.
We bought a blue love seat/sofa combination seven years ago, when we moved to Poplar Grove. Which didn't have any blue in the living room. We moved to Plato Center last year, and we had a wonderful dining room with blue wallpaper/wall-to-wall and it was transformed to a TV room. Which is very, very blue. Put one of our blue plastic plates on a piece of furniture, with the blue cloth placemats - used as arm-covers because we are messy people - and the effect is . . . blue.
When we were leaving Jarratt, VA 12 years ago, we were offered the opportunity to cherry-pick some furniture from the house of a church member. Along with two bedroom sets and a piano, we found this beautiful barrel-back chair, upon which sits a couple blue binders, backed with blue curtains in a room with blue carpeting.
Yes, that's our fire-proof safe that holds all our important documents.
I honestly wish I was a better photographer, or had a better camera. This is fun, though.
Simple. Elegant. Earrings. Billie Holliday. Lisa covers the best bases.
Friday, September 23, 2011
30 Day Photo Challenge, Day 10
Photographs and memories . . .
Waverly, NY is like a thousand other small towns in the USA. It, and the surrounding communities collectively known as "The Valley" was, in my childhood, the world, for all intents and purposes. Then, in my youth, it became too constricting, stultifying, stagnant. I escaped for good in 1990 and for years would only shake my head at the thought of actually living there, not so much regretting my childhood as holding in earnest disdain my provincial ways. In our final conversation, minutes before I left for good, my father told me that Waverly was like the Secret Elephant Burial Ground. If you returned there, it could swallow you up. I know he was telling me - 25, poised to enter the nation's capital, graduate school, a whole new life I could not, then, just two months out, even imagine - that this was my chance not only to get out, but to stay out.
Then, something happened. Age offered wisdom as a free gift. With marriage, then parenthood, came the realization that I could not escape the place and time of my raising. Furthermore, the memories crowded around, reminding me of this or that place, this or that person, this or that incident. Facebook reconnected me with men and women I last knew as not-quite adults, not-quite-youth, yet people with whom I had grown up, gone to school, drunk some beers, laughed, occasionally fought, and generally experienced all my life between the ages of 5 and not-quite-18.
Finally, someone on Facebook created an open group for folks from the Valley to share memories, pictures, reminisce about things that were. You know what I learned?
It wasn't so bad, after all.
This is the old Clock Tower, the heart of Waverly's business district. An errant cigarette butt in a bar trash can took out the whole block marching from the front-and-center of the photo off to the left. A furniture store, a couple bars, and the Village Library - gone.
An image taken through the windshield of a car on a quiet morning in the 1960's, the building on the left was Dean Phipps National Auto. Along with teaching, my father worked there part-time as a cashier/clerk, usually on weekends. When he wasn't working at Kobacker's Furniture store on the ground floor of the Clock Tower.
Before my family moved to Waverly in 1970, we lived just four miles away, across the border in Sayre, PA. Around the corner from our now-demolished house on Chemung St. sat Fourth Ward School. I am the only member of my family who didn't attend this school because we moved from Sayre just as I was entering kindergarten. My sisters and brother would walk the couple blocks home each day for lunch. Like so much else - even the house on Chemung St. - Fourth Ward School is only known now in photographs and memories and a small plaque on the grounds where the building sat for decades.
This is the front of my home church, First United Methodist, Sayre, PA. It, too, has gone the way of the dodo, the Edsel, and John McCain's chances at the Presidency. The building still sits on that corner of Lockhart St. and Elmer Ave. It is no longer a United Methodist Church, however.
On the west end of Waverly is a village park, The Glen. At the top of that park, a narrow gash through the hills descending to the Village, cut by the last glacier to move through, there is this waterfall.
That's my brother in the foreground, my youngest sister's face popping up just below me. This picture, taken in the living room of that demolished house, is from Christmastime, 1968. I had just turned three.
Nah. I didn't have such a bad childhood, after all.
Lisa composes the best horror story of all - because it doesn't seem like one until the end.
Waverly, NY is like a thousand other small towns in the USA. It, and the surrounding communities collectively known as "The Valley" was, in my childhood, the world, for all intents and purposes. Then, in my youth, it became too constricting, stultifying, stagnant. I escaped for good in 1990 and for years would only shake my head at the thought of actually living there, not so much regretting my childhood as holding in earnest disdain my provincial ways. In our final conversation, minutes before I left for good, my father told me that Waverly was like the Secret Elephant Burial Ground. If you returned there, it could swallow you up. I know he was telling me - 25, poised to enter the nation's capital, graduate school, a whole new life I could not, then, just two months out, even imagine - that this was my chance not only to get out, but to stay out.
Then, something happened. Age offered wisdom as a free gift. With marriage, then parenthood, came the realization that I could not escape the place and time of my raising. Furthermore, the memories crowded around, reminding me of this or that place, this or that person, this or that incident. Facebook reconnected me with men and women I last knew as not-quite adults, not-quite-youth, yet people with whom I had grown up, gone to school, drunk some beers, laughed, occasionally fought, and generally experienced all my life between the ages of 5 and not-quite-18.
Finally, someone on Facebook created an open group for folks from the Valley to share memories, pictures, reminisce about things that were. You know what I learned?
It wasn't so bad, after all.
This is the old Clock Tower, the heart of Waverly's business district. An errant cigarette butt in a bar trash can took out the whole block marching from the front-and-center of the photo off to the left. A furniture store, a couple bars, and the Village Library - gone.
An image taken through the windshield of a car on a quiet morning in the 1960's, the building on the left was Dean Phipps National Auto. Along with teaching, my father worked there part-time as a cashier/clerk, usually on weekends. When he wasn't working at Kobacker's Furniture store on the ground floor of the Clock Tower.
Before my family moved to Waverly in 1970, we lived just four miles away, across the border in Sayre, PA. Around the corner from our now-demolished house on Chemung St. sat Fourth Ward School. I am the only member of my family who didn't attend this school because we moved from Sayre just as I was entering kindergarten. My sisters and brother would walk the couple blocks home each day for lunch. Like so much else - even the house on Chemung St. - Fourth Ward School is only known now in photographs and memories and a small plaque on the grounds where the building sat for decades.
This is the front of my home church, First United Methodist, Sayre, PA. It, too, has gone the way of the dodo, the Edsel, and John McCain's chances at the Presidency. The building still sits on that corner of Lockhart St. and Elmer Ave. It is no longer a United Methodist Church, however.
On the west end of Waverly is a village park, The Glen. At the top of that park, a narrow gash through the hills descending to the Village, cut by the last glacier to move through, there is this waterfall.
That's my brother in the foreground, my youngest sister's face popping up just below me. This picture, taken in the living room of that demolished house, is from Christmastime, 1968. I had just turned three.
Nah. I didn't have such a bad childhood, after all.
Lisa composes the best horror story of all - because it doesn't seem like one until the end.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
30 Day Photo Challenge, Day 9
Today's challenge is both easy and difficult. I have decided that while this
. . . and this
are images of those I love, I figured that I'd go with their Mom.
On her wedding day
Just this past summer (that's Moriah's ear, by the way).
The camera has always been a friend to her, but she is even more beautiful in person.
Lisa makes the same choices, and the results are pretty special.
. . . and this
are images of those I love, I figured that I'd go with their Mom.
On her wedding day
Just this past summer (that's Moriah's ear, by the way).
The camera has always been a friend to her, but she is even more beautiful in person.
Lisa makes the same choices, and the results are pretty special.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Christian Believer Week 1
I'm both leading and taking Christian Believer. I just completed my readings and reflections for Week 1, on Believing. I don't permit comments there, but I do provide links both to the scriptures I read each day as well as the extra-biblical sources.
Day 6 is unique, however, because the reflections are actually answers to questions posed in the Study Manual.
I would be interested in reactions, in a general sense. If you absolutely feel the need to claim I am some kind of crazy heretic, a loony who just doesn't understand Christianity, the Bible, doctrine, yadda-yadda, I guess I would prefer you keep that opinion to yourself, because, frankly, the folks who tend to say that kind of thing are those whose views just carry no weight with me.
This is a thirty-week class, covering some pretty deep stuff - Christian doctrine, reading primary source material, reflecting on what it means "to believe" as in "to live" the faith. It's a long journey I am on, and while the members of the class will be sharing with me, any input that is honest and faithful is more than welcome.
Day 6 is unique, however, because the reflections are actually answers to questions posed in the Study Manual.
I would be interested in reactions, in a general sense. If you absolutely feel the need to claim I am some kind of crazy heretic, a loony who just doesn't understand Christianity, the Bible, doctrine, yadda-yadda, I guess I would prefer you keep that opinion to yourself, because, frankly, the folks who tend to say that kind of thing are those whose views just carry no weight with me.
This is a thirty-week class, covering some pretty deep stuff - Christian doctrine, reading primary source material, reflecting on what it means "to believe" as in "to live" the faith. It's a long journey I am on, and while the members of the class will be sharing with me, any input that is honest and faithful is more than welcome.
30 Day Photo Challenge, Day 8
Bad habits? I think we can all agree that men are pigs.
We leave the toilet seat up.
We sit around, our hands firmly clenched on our nether regions, apparently terrified our balls may take a hike or something.
C'mon. Who hasn't spent a minute or two making sure one's nares are clear of obstructions? Since you can't pick your friend's nose . . .
If I could have taken a picture of farting, I probably would have. It's tasteless, but I think it has aesthetic and social value. . .
I think Lisa's choice isn't "bad" at all. He types defensively . . .
We leave the toilet seat up.
We sit around, our hands firmly clenched on our nether regions, apparently terrified our balls may take a hike or something.
C'mon. Who hasn't spent a minute or two making sure one's nares are clear of obstructions? Since you can't pick your friend's nose . . .
If I could have taken a picture of farting, I probably would have. It's tasteless, but I think it has aesthetic and social value. . .
I think Lisa's choice isn't "bad" at all. He types defensively . . .
A Much Needed Musical Fix
On the mend from whatever-it-was that dragged me down . . .
This past weekend, I managed to cure a moment of musical nostalgia by reminding myself what was "popular" thirty years ago. Forgiveness beforehand.
And who could not wish to forget this?
Ah, Leah! Ah, crap . . .
I've said for several years that the breakdown in the current music-business business plan has been a Godsend for fans of music. It is so easy to find so much really, really fantastic music because we no longer have to rely on such limited sources - radio, in particular - to give us the skinny. While radio did provide a platform for so much great music in the past, now that it has been captured by commercial interests, it either feeds flash-in-the-pan in to the hopper of the woodchipper of pop culture, or continuously reminds us of our youth spent drunk, stoned, playing air-guitar to the same five songs over and over again. With a little ingenuity, and hard work, and determination, we can move past the crap and find jewels and nuggets and even whole veins to be mined, if we wish.
I have little sense of yearning for music from my youth, because what is out there, new and exciting, right now, is so much better.
Eyeball Kid - Tom Waits
War Inside My Head - Dream Theater
Journey On The Waves Of Time - Ayreon
Symphony #9, Movement 3, Adagio Molto E Cantabile - Ludwig von Beethoven
Least Complicated - Indigo Girls
Cabbage Head - Dr. John
Lady Sings the Blues - Billie Holliday
Solitary Soul - Spock's Beard
Love The One You're With/You Can't Always Get What You Want(Live) - The Neville Brothers
Get All You Deserve - Steven Wilson
For an example of that great new music, you cannot beat The Joy Formidable. I just love this particular version.
This past weekend, I managed to cure a moment of musical nostalgia by reminding myself what was "popular" thirty years ago. Forgiveness beforehand.
And who could not wish to forget this?
Ah, Leah! Ah, crap . . .
I've said for several years that the breakdown in the current music-business business plan has been a Godsend for fans of music. It is so easy to find so much really, really fantastic music because we no longer have to rely on such limited sources - radio, in particular - to give us the skinny. While radio did provide a platform for so much great music in the past, now that it has been captured by commercial interests, it either feeds flash-in-the-pan in to the hopper of the woodchipper of pop culture, or continuously reminds us of our youth spent drunk, stoned, playing air-guitar to the same five songs over and over again. With a little ingenuity, and hard work, and determination, we can move past the crap and find jewels and nuggets and even whole veins to be mined, if we wish.
I have little sense of yearning for music from my youth, because what is out there, new and exciting, right now, is so much better.
Eyeball Kid - Tom Waits
War Inside My Head - Dream Theater
Journey On The Waves Of Time - Ayreon
Symphony #9, Movement 3, Adagio Molto E Cantabile - Ludwig von Beethoven
Least Complicated - Indigo Girls
Cabbage Head - Dr. John
Lady Sings the Blues - Billie Holliday
Solitary Soul - Spock's Beard
Love The One You're With/You Can't Always Get What You Want(Live) - The Neville Brothers
Get All You Deserve - Steven Wilson
For an example of that great new music, you cannot beat The Joy Formidable. I just love this particular version.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
30 Day Photo Challenge, Day 7
I am glad I took pictures yesterday afternoon, when I felt like crap. Today, that feeling continues, compounded by a large dollop of self-pity and frustration. I was going to do a still-life, but still-life is played. So, let's see a happy face on this day of bone-weary illness, shall we?
Like the man said to the horse, why the long face?
The apple of my eye and all that . . .
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to curl up in the fetal position, cry, and feel better in a day or so or die.
Lisa explores what happens when the BBC and Agatha Christie meet the produce department. Plus le chat, of course.
Like the man said to the horse, why the long face?
The apple of my eye and all that . . .
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to curl up in the fetal position, cry, and feel better in a day or so or die.
Lisa explores what happens when the BBC and Agatha Christie meet the produce department. Plus le chat, of course.
Monday, September 19, 2011
30 Day Photo Challenge, Day 6
Even the slightest change of perspective makes everything look different. When the dog opens his eyes from his usual day-long nap, here is what he sees:
When Miriam is walking to the dining area/kitchen, this is what she sees:
When Buddy turns to see Casper about to jump off a chair and engage in a game of cat-tag, here is what he sees:
It's good to be reminded that the same world can look very different, depending on where in space your eyes tend to sit. Except the really messy TV room shot. I bet Dreyfus thinks it needs cleaning, too.
Lisa goes to ground. Literally.
When Miriam is walking to the dining area/kitchen, this is what she sees:
When Buddy turns to see Casper about to jump off a chair and engage in a game of cat-tag, here is what he sees:
It's good to be reminded that the same world can look very different, depending on where in space your eyes tend to sit. Except the really messy TV room shot. I bet Dreyfus thinks it needs cleaning, too.
Lisa goes to ground. Literally.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
30 Day Photo Challenge, Day 5
I was tempted to do some herb then snap pictures, but I don't think it would have been appreciated.
From a high angle. Ahem.
Looking down on the Chemung River Valley on the border of Pennsylvania and New York, as the river turns almost due south. Taken from the balcony of our room, perched on the side of Waverly Hill. Last weekend, I remembered how beautiful it was back at the old homestead.
My favorite room, my favorite spot, in our house. The chair on the right is the spot I find myself those mornings I awake in bed, rather than drive home from work. It's comfy, it's open. It's home.
Lisa contemplates escape. Even the most velvety smooth prison, even those we make for ourselves, is still a prison.
From a high angle. Ahem.
Looking down on the Chemung River Valley on the border of Pennsylvania and New York, as the river turns almost due south. Taken from the balcony of our room, perched on the side of Waverly Hill. Last weekend, I remembered how beautiful it was back at the old homestead.
My favorite room, my favorite spot, in our house. The chair on the right is the spot I find myself those mornings I awake in bed, rather than drive home from work. It's comfy, it's open. It's home.
Lisa contemplates escape. Even the most velvety smooth prison, even those we make for ourselves, is still a prison.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
30 Day Photo Challenge, Day 4
Green is an equivocal color. It is green that lightens our hearts as winter gives way to spring. It is also the color of sickness. It is the lush, vibrant color of life. It is the dark, foreboding color of the deadliest of the seven deadly sins.
My original thought was to compose a couple shots that hinted at it. Because that is the insidiousness of envy. It eats away at us, gnaws at our sense of ourselves, destroys families, communities, drives a wall between populations in entire nations.
Yet, it is rarely named. We stare at the world through the green-tinged eyes of envy, without ever realizing that, like all monsters, it becomes smaller, more manageable, once it is named.
It is, also, empty - it convinces us we are empty when, in fact, it is a hollow shell, a bottomless pit into which we cast our lives and fortunes, only to discover they have failed to fill it.
So, a somewhat adequate representation on our dry-erase board of something green. With a tedious, pedantic explanation.
My original thought was to compose a couple shots that hinted at it. Because that is the insidiousness of envy. It eats away at us, gnaws at our sense of ourselves, destroys families, communities, drives a wall between populations in entire nations.
Yet, it is rarely named. We stare at the world through the green-tinged eyes of envy, without ever realizing that, like all monsters, it becomes smaller, more manageable, once it is named.
It is, also, empty - it convinces us we are empty when, in fact, it is a hollow shell, a bottomless pit into which we cast our lives and fortunes, only to discover they have failed to fill it.
So, a somewhat adequate representation on our dry-erase board of something green. With a tedious, pedantic explanation.
Friday, September 16, 2011
30 Day Photo Challenge, Day 3
I guess I really don't know those strato-cumulo-nimbal things at all. Clouds? Sure.
I was thinking yesterday afternoon I should go out and snap a photo or two of the beautiful little white puffy things floating in an otherwise clear blue sky. I awoke this morning and the sky is . . . overcast.
On the one hand, it does make it easier to take a picture of clouds. All I have to do is point the camera up and click.
Hazarding a guess, this isn't exactly what the folks who designed this had in mind. Or, maybe it is. I went back and cropped a picture I took last weekend from the balcony of my hotel room over looking the Chemung River Valley, to highlight a couple small clouds on the southwestern horizon.
I'm a lousy cloud-picture-taker because when I look at clouds I see . . . water vapor in the sky. I don't see shapes. I don't think poetic thoughts. I don't have whimsical notions. Clouds are just clouds. So, these photos, especially the final dim one, are kind of fitting. As much as I'd like the photos to be something more, they are, in the end, just clouds.
Lisa's clouds are more diverse, tinkered with, and yet . . . condensed water vapor. I'm so boring.
I was thinking yesterday afternoon I should go out and snap a photo or two of the beautiful little white puffy things floating in an otherwise clear blue sky. I awoke this morning and the sky is . . . overcast.
On the one hand, it does make it easier to take a picture of clouds. All I have to do is point the camera up and click.
Hazarding a guess, this isn't exactly what the folks who designed this had in mind. Or, maybe it is. I went back and cropped a picture I took last weekend from the balcony of my hotel room over looking the Chemung River Valley, to highlight a couple small clouds on the southwestern horizon.
I'm a lousy cloud-picture-taker because when I look at clouds I see . . . water vapor in the sky. I don't see shapes. I don't think poetic thoughts. I don't have whimsical notions. Clouds are just clouds. So, these photos, especially the final dim one, are kind of fitting. As much as I'd like the photos to be something more, they are, in the end, just clouds.
Lisa's clouds are more diverse, tinkered with, and yet . . . condensed water vapor. I'm so boring.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
30 Day Photo Challenge, Day 2
The subject for today is "what I wore". Since it is prior to me wearing anything at all (well, you know what I mean; or do you . . .), I thought I capture them "before" - set out on our unmade bed - and "after" - what they will look like heaped on the floor right before I climb in to that unmade bed some time tonight.
Setting is everything, I think. A messy bed, rumpled clothes both before and after - complete with holes! - say much about me. Or maybe they say little more than I was in a hurry and haven't yet got around to pulling the comforter up. Who knows?
UPDATE: Lisa is wearing stuff, too.
Setting is everything, I think. A messy bed, rumpled clothes both before and after - complete with holes! - say much about me. Or maybe they say little more than I was in a hurry and haven't yet got around to pulling the comforter up. Who knows?
UPDATE: Lisa is wearing stuff, too.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Something Completely Different, & I Mean It This Time
I am so freaking bored with politics. Tired to the bone. My theology posts generally feel like I'm going through the motions. So, in lieu of anything better to do, I'm taking the 30 Day Photography Challenge. You have Mrs. Golden to blame, or thank, for this. I'm no one's idea of a great photographer, but I thought, "What can I lose?" So, here are the rules for the next month:
Because I can't decide, I thought I'd post the least worst of the several shots I took sitting here at my desk right before I started this post:
See what I mean by "least worst"? So, over the coming days, it'll be clouds and hands and close-ups and animals and someone I love and the clothes I'm wearing. It doesn't say I have to be in them when I take the picture, though.
Because I can't decide, I thought I'd post the least worst of the several shots I took sitting here at my desk right before I started this post:
See what I mean by "least worst"? So, over the coming days, it'll be clouds and hands and close-ups and animals and someone I love and the clothes I'm wearing. It doesn't say I have to be in them when I take the picture, though.
Before, During, And After The Flood
So we left last Thursday evening, heading to the latest natural disaster.
The last exit open on Interstate 86 was for my hometown. Just a few miles east, from Nichols all the way past Binghamton, the highway was swamped as it snakes its way beside and over the Susquehanna, which hasn't flooded like this in 40 years. They were helicoptering families out of the Cannon Hole area of Barton. The Tioga County seat, Owego, saw its historic courthouse square under several feet of water, along with much of the rest of the town. Athens, PA, which suffered so much 39 years ago during the Hurricane Agnes flooding saw much of it, again, inundated, along with various stretches of US 220, particularly between Milan and Ulster. Bridges were washed away, roads undermined, houses floated away. In Owego, several homes burned because fire crews couldn't get through several feet of rushing flood waters to stop them.
Meanwhile, Congress dithers over providing disaster relief. What was a routine part of law-making life - providing assistance to people who need it - has now become part of the larger nonsensical game of politics. Which is not to make a blanket condemnation of "politics" or "politicians". Rather, it is to make the far more pointed argument that, at least for the moment, we should all probably pick up a phone and make a call to our US Representative (the Senate passed disaster relief last night) and urge a "Yea" vote on disaster relief. Send a message to the nutjobs in Congress that it might be nice to have them act less like sociopaths.
If you are reading this and are on Facebook, even if you aren't a "friend", go find the page for Henry Dunn Inc. and click "like". For every "Like" they get, they will donate a dollar to flood relief. This is very real, and you can "unlike" in a few days if you have no desire to get updates from an insurance company. Every little bit helps, right?
Help On The Way (Live, Boston, 1991) - The Grateful Dead
Love's Recovery (Live) - The Indigo Girls
Loose Heart - Riverside
Deutsche Messe - Franz Schubert
After the Ordeal - Genesis
Still - The Commodores
Giants Under The Sun - Yes
Revelation - Symphony X
Cosmic Fusion - Ayreon
GOUDEAMUS (All Saints Day) - Gregorian Chorale of Eglise Querin
This is where folks from Binghamton, NY to Harrisburg, PA are right now, living after the ordeal. Do what you can to help 'em out. It might even make you feel a little better.
The last exit open on Interstate 86 was for my hometown. Just a few miles east, from Nichols all the way past Binghamton, the highway was swamped as it snakes its way beside and over the Susquehanna, which hasn't flooded like this in 40 years. They were helicoptering families out of the Cannon Hole area of Barton. The Tioga County seat, Owego, saw its historic courthouse square under several feet of water, along with much of the rest of the town. Athens, PA, which suffered so much 39 years ago during the Hurricane Agnes flooding saw much of it, again, inundated, along with various stretches of US 220, particularly between Milan and Ulster. Bridges were washed away, roads undermined, houses floated away. In Owego, several homes burned because fire crews couldn't get through several feet of rushing flood waters to stop them.
Meanwhile, Congress dithers over providing disaster relief. What was a routine part of law-making life - providing assistance to people who need it - has now become part of the larger nonsensical game of politics. Which is not to make a blanket condemnation of "politics" or "politicians". Rather, it is to make the far more pointed argument that, at least for the moment, we should all probably pick up a phone and make a call to our US Representative (the Senate passed disaster relief last night) and urge a "Yea" vote on disaster relief. Send a message to the nutjobs in Congress that it might be nice to have them act less like sociopaths.
If you are reading this and are on Facebook, even if you aren't a "friend", go find the page for Henry Dunn Inc. and click "like". For every "Like" they get, they will donate a dollar to flood relief. This is very real, and you can "unlike" in a few days if you have no desire to get updates from an insurance company. Every little bit helps, right?
Help On The Way (Live, Boston, 1991) - The Grateful Dead
Love's Recovery (Live) - The Indigo Girls
Loose Heart - Riverside
Deutsche Messe - Franz Schubert
After the Ordeal - Genesis
Still - The Commodores
Giants Under The Sun - Yes
Revelation - Symphony X
Cosmic Fusion - Ayreon
GOUDEAMUS (All Saints Day) - Gregorian Chorale of Eglise Querin
This is where folks from Binghamton, NY to Harrisburg, PA are right now, living after the ordeal. Do what you can to help 'em out. It might even make you feel a little better.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
The Military, Part I - Supporting The Troops
A few months back, commenter Edwin Drood yelled at me to stop pretending to support American military personnel because, being a liberal, I obviously didn't care about them. This came in response to a post I had written which was all about supporting the troops. In other words, he seemed to be insisting the entire post was a fabrication, questioning the integrity of my stated positions as a facade, a public ruse. Why he did this I do not know, except perhaps out of the knee-jerk conservative idea that we liberals and lefties hate the US military.
With all the folderol surrounding the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks in 2001, one part that has been strangely absent has been commentary about the wars that flowed from that event. One, the invasion of Afghanistan, heated up yesterday with a Taliban attack on the US embassy in Kabul. The other, our war of choice in Iraq, while winding down, still sees 43,000 American service personnel stationed in-country, with debates over whether the December deadline for final withdrawal could be modified to leave behind as many as 3,000 American troops - too small to be really effective, just large enough to be a nice target for the on-going, low-level insurgency.
In the intervening years, the stories of the official neglect of our armed forces have been legion. From former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's choice to do the Iraq invasion on the cheap - too few troops, too little ammunition, thin supply lines susceptible to interruption, too little body armor, too little armor on personnel carriers - to the stage-managed stories of heroism that turned out to be false, to the lack of adequate troop presence in the wake of the fall of Saddam Hussein to prevent both massive looting (including Iraq's world-important museum of antiquities) and a rise in sectarian and sectional violence, creating a state of de facto civil war for nearly a decade. In the intervening years, the parsimony toward the troops has included lack of adequate training in local customs, lack of support for troops facing the psychological strains of low-level combat, and, of course, the horrendous conditions facing troops who muster out of the service only to find the Department of Veterans Affairs to be insouciant toward everything from nagging battle wounds to PTSD. Even the physical plant of DVA hospitals has been found wanting, crumbling, peeling paint, to go along with a lack of adequate care for everything from the psychological toll of battle on young men and women to making snap judgments that deny care to vets.
All of these, and more, have been on-going under both Republican and Democratic Administrations and Congresses, so it isn't partisan. While we can listen to silly people who spout slogans, the fact remains that this has been done under what can only be termed moderately to extremely conservative ideological conditions.
Just before the Iraq invasion, I attended one of those silly, pointless "debates" on the issue, this one at Illinois Valley Community College. One of the people at the debate, who claimed to be a philosophy professor, insisted we who oppose the war cannot claim, simultaneously, to support the troops, as he put it, "qua troops", because as soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen, their job was to do the very thing we opposed. Thus, it is intellectually inconsistent to insist that we both oppose the war and support the troops. I found this position to be one of the funniest, most infuriating things I have ever heard.
The wars we are still fighting are not the fault of our military personnel. Despite what far too many ignorant folks on the left believe, the military does not make policy. Sure, they recommend various policies, including military contingencies - that is their job, after all - but they do not make the decision to go to war, nor do they, in the final analysis, determine either strategy or overall battle plan. Because the military is under civilian control, responsibility for that lies solely with the Executive Branch. When the President, the Secretary of Defense and various civilian underlings make a decision, the uniformed service chiefs and their staffs do the only thing they can do - they carry out their orders, to the best of their abilities, with their eyes on doing so in such a way as to ensure minimal casualties, and bring about as swift a conclusion as possible. That is their duty.
Furthermore, the US military, for all the Defense budget really is a bloated, unmanageable blister - it is literally impossible, even for all the accountants and auditors in the Department of Defense, to keep track of all that money - since the end of the Cold War, the amount spent on actual service personnel has declined, and continues to do so even in a time of war. Our current fiscal situation is a reflection of our national refusal to support our troops, to set the nastiness and ugliness of war to one side and carry on our national affairs as if we were a nation at peace, rather than one which has committed hundreds of thousands of our young men and women to combat in far-flung places, risking their lives with inadequate funding, inadequate equipment, and inadequate official support (not including the lack of either a strategy or, as the saying goes, an end-game, particularly in Afghanistan). No amount of repetition of these realities seems able to change this situation. Our politics is just too warped, too entrenched in multiple unrealities.
In 2003, weeks before the Iraq invasion, I gave a talk to a group of folks in a church setting in which I spoke against the impending invasion, and in which I declared that the stated reasons for the invasion - the presence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - were a lie. One person came up to me after and was quite visibly enraged. As he spoke of his son's presence in Kuwait, preparing for the invasion, and how my words had "dishonored" him, I asked him, "Why is a speech insisting that our troops should not be risked on a lie a dishonor? Isn't it a greater dishonor to risk one's life for a lie?"
I understood, even then, that the emotional investment so many Americans have, once our troops have been committed to battle, is far too high to entertain questions about the motives and methods of our politicians. We are simply to remain silent and "support the troops". Since that time I have come to realize the phrase is empty as long as there is not a sustained commitment to think through what the commitment entails, the sacrifices we all must make to ensure their mission is carried through expeditiously, and that the civilians who control the military have done all they can to plan, provide, and protect our young men and women in uniform. They have volunteered to serve us, to set their lives and fortunes aside in order to make sure the United States is safe. The least they deserve is competent civilian management and the attention from the public to their sacrifices so that, before, during, and after the guns go off, they get what they need.
With all the folderol surrounding the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks in 2001, one part that has been strangely absent has been commentary about the wars that flowed from that event. One, the invasion of Afghanistan, heated up yesterday with a Taliban attack on the US embassy in Kabul. The other, our war of choice in Iraq, while winding down, still sees 43,000 American service personnel stationed in-country, with debates over whether the December deadline for final withdrawal could be modified to leave behind as many as 3,000 American troops - too small to be really effective, just large enough to be a nice target for the on-going, low-level insurgency.
In the intervening years, the stories of the official neglect of our armed forces have been legion. From former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's choice to do the Iraq invasion on the cheap - too few troops, too little ammunition, thin supply lines susceptible to interruption, too little body armor, too little armor on personnel carriers - to the stage-managed stories of heroism that turned out to be false, to the lack of adequate troop presence in the wake of the fall of Saddam Hussein to prevent both massive looting (including Iraq's world-important museum of antiquities) and a rise in sectarian and sectional violence, creating a state of de facto civil war for nearly a decade. In the intervening years, the parsimony toward the troops has included lack of adequate training in local customs, lack of support for troops facing the psychological strains of low-level combat, and, of course, the horrendous conditions facing troops who muster out of the service only to find the Department of Veterans Affairs to be insouciant toward everything from nagging battle wounds to PTSD. Even the physical plant of DVA hospitals has been found wanting, crumbling, peeling paint, to go along with a lack of adequate care for everything from the psychological toll of battle on young men and women to making snap judgments that deny care to vets.
All of these, and more, have been on-going under both Republican and Democratic Administrations and Congresses, so it isn't partisan. While we can listen to silly people who spout slogans, the fact remains that this has been done under what can only be termed moderately to extremely conservative ideological conditions.
Just before the Iraq invasion, I attended one of those silly, pointless "debates" on the issue, this one at Illinois Valley Community College. One of the people at the debate, who claimed to be a philosophy professor, insisted we who oppose the war cannot claim, simultaneously, to support the troops, as he put it, "qua troops", because as soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen, their job was to do the very thing we opposed. Thus, it is intellectually inconsistent to insist that we both oppose the war and support the troops. I found this position to be one of the funniest, most infuriating things I have ever heard.
The wars we are still fighting are not the fault of our military personnel. Despite what far too many ignorant folks on the left believe, the military does not make policy. Sure, they recommend various policies, including military contingencies - that is their job, after all - but they do not make the decision to go to war, nor do they, in the final analysis, determine either strategy or overall battle plan. Because the military is under civilian control, responsibility for that lies solely with the Executive Branch. When the President, the Secretary of Defense and various civilian underlings make a decision, the uniformed service chiefs and their staffs do the only thing they can do - they carry out their orders, to the best of their abilities, with their eyes on doing so in such a way as to ensure minimal casualties, and bring about as swift a conclusion as possible. That is their duty.
Furthermore, the US military, for all the Defense budget really is a bloated, unmanageable blister - it is literally impossible, even for all the accountants and auditors in the Department of Defense, to keep track of all that money - since the end of the Cold War, the amount spent on actual service personnel has declined, and continues to do so even in a time of war. Our current fiscal situation is a reflection of our national refusal to support our troops, to set the nastiness and ugliness of war to one side and carry on our national affairs as if we were a nation at peace, rather than one which has committed hundreds of thousands of our young men and women to combat in far-flung places, risking their lives with inadequate funding, inadequate equipment, and inadequate official support (not including the lack of either a strategy or, as the saying goes, an end-game, particularly in Afghanistan). No amount of repetition of these realities seems able to change this situation. Our politics is just too warped, too entrenched in multiple unrealities.
In 2003, weeks before the Iraq invasion, I gave a talk to a group of folks in a church setting in which I spoke against the impending invasion, and in which I declared that the stated reasons for the invasion - the presence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - were a lie. One person came up to me after and was quite visibly enraged. As he spoke of his son's presence in Kuwait, preparing for the invasion, and how my words had "dishonored" him, I asked him, "Why is a speech insisting that our troops should not be risked on a lie a dishonor? Isn't it a greater dishonor to risk one's life for a lie?"
I understood, even then, that the emotional investment so many Americans have, once our troops have been committed to battle, is far too high to entertain questions about the motives and methods of our politicians. We are simply to remain silent and "support the troops". Since that time I have come to realize the phrase is empty as long as there is not a sustained commitment to think through what the commitment entails, the sacrifices we all must make to ensure their mission is carried through expeditiously, and that the civilians who control the military have done all they can to plan, provide, and protect our young men and women in uniform. They have volunteered to serve us, to set their lives and fortunes aside in order to make sure the United States is safe. The least they deserve is competent civilian management and the attention from the public to their sacrifices so that, before, during, and after the guns go off, they get what they need.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Repairing The Damage From September 11, 2001
For reasons to be made clear later, I am writing now in lieu of Sunday's 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
The moments from that day will be remembered by everyone who was aware. The unreality of it. The horror. The anger and sorrow. The flood of stories, many of which turned out to be false - a car bomb in DC, what happened on Flight 93, the streams of people running for their lives from the collapsing buildings in lower Manhattan - seemed to bring us back, again and again, to those fateful moments captured forever as the giant passenger jets, turned in to loaded missiles, approached the World Trade Center.
It was commonplace, after the stunned, silent searching for reasons, to hear "everything changed on 9/11". I didn't want that to be the case. No one did. The last thing most people want is to have their lives, particularly their national lives, defined by a violent attack. Yet, ten years on and we define ourselves, for better and worse - largely for worse - by the events of that horrible day.
There has been little in the years since to celebrate. Two regional wars - Iraq and Afghanistan - with smaller conflicts in Yemen, Libya, the Philippines, Somalia seem to be never ending. A large swath of one of the major political parties seems determined to keep the fear brought about by the events of that day ever before us, reminding us of our vulnerability. As Newt Gingrich said last night in the Republican Presidential debate, there are folks out there who want to kill us.
'Twas ever thus. Which, for some reason, we never really admitted. Collapsing buildings, smoldering wreckage, the silence broken only by the beeping of buried cell phones whose owners would never answer them - this reality seemed to cover over the memory of half a century of Cold War in which the United States and the Soviet Union held the world nuclear hostage because each one feared the other "wanted to kill us".
There are always those who want to kill someone. The Indians and Pakistanis. The Israelis and various of their Arab and Persian and Turkish neighbors. The Protestant and Catholic Irish. White Americans and Black Americans. Intraspecies slaughter is a specialty of homo sapiens, and we kid ourselves too easily we have outgrown it. People who froth at the mouth over the barbaric practices of all those dangerous Muslims out there are blind to our own history, covered in blood, reeking of the mass grave our own history provides as a pedestal from which to look down on others. Forgive me if I refuse to listen to the preachments of bigots and fear-mongers who do not notice the trail of tears we in the west have left behind our religious and political and imperial wars. Few societies have less concern for the life of other human beings than the Euro/American west.
Over the past decade, one moment stands out for me as a single ray of light. In June, 2002, Lisa was ordained an Elder under the old rules of the United Methodist Church. The man who offered the benediction to the service said, among other things, that the only thing in human history that really changed everything was the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I felt like cheering. That was what we needed to hear. That was the message of hope, the word of truth, the promise of true victory over the forces of evil and death that seem, still, to swamp us.
There are abundant resources available to those who no longer wish to live in the shadow of those collapsed towers. Even The Washington Post, not known in recent years for its stellar opinion writing, offers up something worth mentioning from resident pseudo-liberal columnist E. J. Dionne:
Cliff Schecter:
Joseph Nye:
Robert Jensen:
Tarak Barkawi:
Joseph Stiglitz:
There are several others, all deserving an audience and further discussion. As we remember the events of that day, let us insist the victims did not die so that we would destroy ourselves through mindlessness. Let us honor those who cannot be here by starting the difficult task of repairing the damage done to our world not only by the terrorists on that fateful day, but by an America blinded by rage and fear in the decade since. They, and we, deserve nothing less.
A week from the day I am writing this, on September 15, my father turns 90 years old. My family is getting together, opening the doors of our lives to friends, former students, colleagues, and anyone else who may want to stop by and wish him well. Lisa and the girls and I are leaving tonight for an overnight drive so that we can be there. We are returning on Sunday so the girls only miss one day of school. So, talk amongst yourselves, check out other stuff I've written, be excellent to one another, always be civil and on-topic, and most of all - no ad homs! Whoever uses them is stupid, and ugly.
The moments from that day will be remembered by everyone who was aware. The unreality of it. The horror. The anger and sorrow. The flood of stories, many of which turned out to be false - a car bomb in DC, what happened on Flight 93, the streams of people running for their lives from the collapsing buildings in lower Manhattan - seemed to bring us back, again and again, to those fateful moments captured forever as the giant passenger jets, turned in to loaded missiles, approached the World Trade Center.
It was commonplace, after the stunned, silent searching for reasons, to hear "everything changed on 9/11". I didn't want that to be the case. No one did. The last thing most people want is to have their lives, particularly their national lives, defined by a violent attack. Yet, ten years on and we define ourselves, for better and worse - largely for worse - by the events of that horrible day.
There has been little in the years since to celebrate. Two regional wars - Iraq and Afghanistan - with smaller conflicts in Yemen, Libya, the Philippines, Somalia seem to be never ending. A large swath of one of the major political parties seems determined to keep the fear brought about by the events of that day ever before us, reminding us of our vulnerability. As Newt Gingrich said last night in the Republican Presidential debate, there are folks out there who want to kill us.
'Twas ever thus. Which, for some reason, we never really admitted. Collapsing buildings, smoldering wreckage, the silence broken only by the beeping of buried cell phones whose owners would never answer them - this reality seemed to cover over the memory of half a century of Cold War in which the United States and the Soviet Union held the world nuclear hostage because each one feared the other "wanted to kill us".
There are always those who want to kill someone. The Indians and Pakistanis. The Israelis and various of their Arab and Persian and Turkish neighbors. The Protestant and Catholic Irish. White Americans and Black Americans. Intraspecies slaughter is a specialty of homo sapiens, and we kid ourselves too easily we have outgrown it. People who froth at the mouth over the barbaric practices of all those dangerous Muslims out there are blind to our own history, covered in blood, reeking of the mass grave our own history provides as a pedestal from which to look down on others. Forgive me if I refuse to listen to the preachments of bigots and fear-mongers who do not notice the trail of tears we in the west have left behind our religious and political and imperial wars. Few societies have less concern for the life of other human beings than the Euro/American west.
Over the past decade, one moment stands out for me as a single ray of light. In June, 2002, Lisa was ordained an Elder under the old rules of the United Methodist Church. The man who offered the benediction to the service said, among other things, that the only thing in human history that really changed everything was the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I felt like cheering. That was what we needed to hear. That was the message of hope, the word of truth, the promise of true victory over the forces of evil and death that seem, still, to swamp us.
There are abundant resources available to those who no longer wish to live in the shadow of those collapsed towers. Even The Washington Post, not known in recent years for its stellar opinion writing, offers up something worth mentioning from resident pseudo-liberal columnist E. J. Dionne:
After we honor the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we need to leave the day behind. As a nation we have looked back for too long. We learned lessons from the attacks, but so many of them were wrong. The last decade was a detour that left our nation weaker, more divided and less certain of itself.Al Jazeera on-line has a series of articles that are well worth reading and contemplating. Even if one does not agree with all of it, there is much wisdom in these essays.
Cliff Schecter:
Like many Americans, I find myself having followed a long and winding road over the last decade, ending up in places I truly never expected, only in recent years coming to terms with what I saw that day. Of course, for many people, the economic crash was like a second attack.
But it is where my country has gone over this past decade that is truly unfathomable. It’s important to remember as the 10-year anniversary approaches that we may have lost our way - but buried beneath many wrong turns is a national character that has been redeemed in the past.
Joseph Nye:
To the extent that the trillion or more dollars of unfunded war costs contributed to the budget deficit that plagues the US today, Bin Laden was able to damage American hard power. And the real price of 9/11 may be the opportunity costs: for most of the first decade of this century, as the world economy gradually shifted its centre of gravity toward Asia, the US was preoccupied with a mistaken war of choice in the Middle East.
A key lesson of 9/11 is that hard military power is essential in countering terrorism by the likes of Bin Laden, but that the soft power of ideas and legitimacy is essential for winning the hearts and minds of the mainstream Muslim populations from whom Al Qaeda would like to recruit. A “smart power” strategy does not ignore the tools of soft power.
Robert Jensen:
[I]t's tempting to argue that we should refrain from political debate on the 9/11 anniversary to honour those who died and to respect those who lost loved ones. I would be willing to do that if the cheerleaders for the US empire would refrain from using the day to justify the wars of aggression that followed 9/11. But given the events of the past decade, there is no way to take the politics out of the anniversary.
We should take time on 9/11 to remember the nearly 3,000 victims who died that day. But as responsible citizens, we also should face a harsh reality: While the terrorism of fanatical individuals and groups is a serious threat, much greater damage has been done by our nation-state caught up in its own fanatical notions of imperial greatness.
Tarak Barkawi:
Epoch-defining dates like 1989 or 9/11 invoke various imagined histories and geographies. But too often the dates with which we order world politics are curiously Eurocentric. It is European exploration, the French revolution, a Congress in Vienna, and German invasions, for example, which mark out the globe's historical eras: 1492, 1789, 1815, 1914, 1939.
We are thus singularly unable to grasp the global histories and social relations that delivered us to 9/11. Within the conventional terms of analysis of international relations, it is almost impossible to see the great social, political and economic struggles between the global North and South that have driven modern world politics. European imperialism and the prodigious efforts to incorporate ever more peoples and places, ever more domains of life, into the capitalist world system lie at the origins of these global histories.
Joseph Stiglitz:
Ironically, the wars have undermined the United States’ (and the world’s) security, again in ways that Bin Laden could not have imagined. An unpopular war would have made military recruitment difficult in any circumstances. But, as Bush tried to deceive the US about the wars’ costs, he underfunded the troops, refusing even basic expenditures - say, for armoured and mine-resistant vehicles needed to protect American lives, or for adequate health care for returning veterans. A US court recently ruled that veterans’ rights have been violated. (Remarkably, the Obama administration claims that veterans’ right to appeal to the courts should be restricted!)
Military overreach has predictably led to nervousness about using military power, and others’ knowledge of this threatens to weaken US security as well. But the United States’ real strength, more than its military and economic power, is its “soft power,” its moral authority. And this, too, was weakened: as the US violated basic human rights like habeas corpus and the right not to be tortured, its longstanding commitment to international law was called into question.
There are several others, all deserving an audience and further discussion. As we remember the events of that day, let us insist the victims did not die so that we would destroy ourselves through mindlessness. Let us honor those who cannot be here by starting the difficult task of repairing the damage done to our world not only by the terrorists on that fateful day, but by an America blinded by rage and fear in the decade since. They, and we, deserve nothing less.
A week from the day I am writing this, on September 15, my father turns 90 years old. My family is getting together, opening the doors of our lives to friends, former students, colleagues, and anyone else who may want to stop by and wish him well. Lisa and the girls and I are leaving tonight for an overnight drive so that we can be there. We are returning on Sunday so the girls only miss one day of school. So, talk amongst yourselves, check out other stuff I've written, be excellent to one another, always be civil and on-topic, and most of all - no ad homs! Whoever uses them is stupid, and ugly.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Various Musical Stuff
Over the weekend, I was checking out some stuff by The Meters, The Neville Brothers, mostly because I love it, and I stumbled across a song I have not heard in twenty years.
This bit of over-produced fluff has a certain something. That "something" is Ivan, another of the Neville's. What I was happy to find, and am happy to report, is Ivan has left this horrid LA-studio, Don-Henley-Wannabe sound behind.
While I was reading some stuff on-line Monday, I had iTunes playing. Their "Genius" app, part of a marketing gimmick, "recommends" songs similar to whatever you might be listening to. At one point, it recommended a song by a band whose name I knew, but about whom I knew nothing - Opeth. For those like me, I checked them out. A Swedish death metal outfit they have, over the years, morphed in to something melodic and progressive. Lead singer Michael Akerfeld, whom I have heard on other projects, has largely left deaths' grunt far behind. They are still dark, their videos creepy without being over the top, but I might have to set aside my personal refusal to purchase death metal because . . . well, give 'em a listen.
And now, for something completely different . . . I hope.
Undecided - James LaBrie
Love Street - The Doors
When Alpha and Omega Collide - Sieges Even
I Don't Miss You - Van Den Plas
Let My Love Open The Door - Pete Townshend
Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie (Live Acoustic) - The Grateful Dead
The Ballad of Villacamba - Bill Bruford with Ralph Towner and Eddie Gomez
Strange World - Spock's Beard
Overture, Cosi Fan Tutte - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Dazed and Confused - Led Zeppelin
"Something" by George Harrison has been called the best love song ever written during the rock era. I am sympathetic to this view, and the original is, quite simply, just about a textbook example of "perfection" when it comes to arrangement, production values, and keeping the balance between the beauty of the melody and letting the musicians stretch just enough to keep from getting bored. Like every other song the Beatles have done, it has been covered to death, but I discovered a version that has many of the same qualities, exemplifies the style of the musician doing the cover without burying the original beneath layers of alternate readings. Ladies and gentlemen - Isaac Hayes.
This bit of over-produced fluff has a certain something. That "something" is Ivan, another of the Neville's. What I was happy to find, and am happy to report, is Ivan has left this horrid LA-studio, Don-Henley-Wannabe sound behind.
While I was reading some stuff on-line Monday, I had iTunes playing. Their "Genius" app, part of a marketing gimmick, "recommends" songs similar to whatever you might be listening to. At one point, it recommended a song by a band whose name I knew, but about whom I knew nothing - Opeth. For those like me, I checked them out. A Swedish death metal outfit they have, over the years, morphed in to something melodic and progressive. Lead singer Michael Akerfeld, whom I have heard on other projects, has largely left deaths' grunt far behind. They are still dark, their videos creepy without being over the top, but I might have to set aside my personal refusal to purchase death metal because . . . well, give 'em a listen.
And now, for something completely different . . . I hope.
Undecided - James LaBrie
Love Street - The Doors
When Alpha and Omega Collide - Sieges Even
I Don't Miss You - Van Den Plas
Let My Love Open The Door - Pete Townshend
Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie (Live Acoustic) - The Grateful Dead
The Ballad of Villacamba - Bill Bruford with Ralph Towner and Eddie Gomez
Strange World - Spock's Beard
Overture, Cosi Fan Tutte - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Dazed and Confused - Led Zeppelin
"Something" by George Harrison has been called the best love song ever written during the rock era. I am sympathetic to this view, and the original is, quite simply, just about a textbook example of "perfection" when it comes to arrangement, production values, and keeping the balance between the beauty of the melody and letting the musicians stretch just enough to keep from getting bored. Like every other song the Beatles have done, it has been covered to death, but I discovered a version that has many of the same qualities, exemplifies the style of the musician doing the cover without burying the original beneath layers of alternate readings. Ladies and gentlemen - Isaac Hayes.
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
The Crooked Timber Of Isaiah Berlin
I find it more than bit amusing that John Quiggin has been posting at Crooked Timber for quite a while and only recently turned to the collection of essays under the same title and came away troubled by some of what he read.
I encountered Berlin's work the spring just before I married/graduated from seminary. Had I read it earlier, I might well have been able to have a more thoughtful conversation with it. As it happened, I read it - along with a few other works, like Rorty's Collected Papers; one of the first edited collections of the writings of Herder in English; and another of Berlin's favorite sources, the little-known Italian writer Giambattista Vico - at a time when my life was, needless to say, in a bit of an uproar. Trying to think through, in a critical way, all this new information, these alternative ways of seeing the world became a bit too much.
Which is not to say any of these works are devoid of positive content. On the contrary, even when Berlin is being snippy about Edmund Burke, or Rorty is insisting that we should live as if the things he claims to be the case are the case, heralding an age of lowered expectations but resigned acceptance which we can call happiness, there are things that need to be considered even as alarm bells are going off and red lights are flashing.
There is much to commend Berlin's view of a liberal pluralism as at least as descriptively accurate as a kind of philosophical realism that still hangs on to an undefined yet persistent idea of "human nature", to which our politics should be responsive. His largeness of moral vision - accepting difference, even incommensurability, as not denoting either some kind of ontological primitivism or moral viciousness - serves at the very least this function: It can keep us from believing, for even a moment, that we and we alone have stumbled upon the final theory, and are therefore obliged to impose it upon the world. Unlike Rorty's pessismistic, small-scale anti-realism - which is little more than acquiescence to an intolerable status quo because, well, things have always sucked, we just don't have the perspective to understand this, so suck it up and deal - Berlin at least have the virtue of understanding that human beings do, indeed, stake their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor for things and that this, too, is a positive moral stance.
At the end of the day, however, I am left with the feeling that Berlin got much more wrong than just Kant's intention in the line about crooked timber and humanity. Emerging from the corpse-strewn 20th century, it is too easy to surrender any commitment for which we should be willing to sacrifice because far too many human beings were sacrificed on the altars of various political and social ideas. Berlin is correct to write that the kind of liberal pluralism he advocates doesn't inspire people to do much; that is his intention. It is, in the end, a surrender to bare facts, without any sense that the other side of this same coin - about which he writes, but with far less passion - includes a willingness to sacrifice for certain social and political ends without ever pretending one has stumbled upon The One True Answer. One must face the reality that all answers are partial; one must also be willing to invest oneself because they are one's own answers to the on-going question, "How are we to live a fully human life, in a society that grants to all full access to the resources to achieve the same ends?"
Like far too many, including successive generations of the American ruling class, Berlin learned the wrong lesson from the midden heaps strewn across our recent history. One can mourn the dead, the uselessness of their loss, yet still believe and be willing to work and even fight for a world that is far better than what we have now. It is not at all "utopian" in the kind of derogatory way Berlin uses the word to believe that like-minded fellow human beings can and should be willing to work together, sacrifice together, to forward their vision of a better life for all. To acknowledge difference, and the full humanity of social and political visions far different, even antithetical to one's own, without insisting with equal vigor on the necessity to struggle against those one finds wanting in some moral way indeed does not inspire heroism. It inspires nothing more than a kind of dread acquiescence.
One can see the virtues of Berlin's exploration of the real human possibilities in other ways of living. One must also acknowledge not only how he, as George Scialabba wrote so well, made a "saw" of Kant's quip, but surrenders our very human birthright to make our world better than it is. In the face of giant steps backwards we in the west have made in recent decades, we should be seeking ways to struggle against a tide that will surely swamp us, a tide far more dangerous in its potential than any adherence to creed or vision that might inspire such a struggle. Our world deserves nothing less.
I encountered Berlin's work the spring just before I married/graduated from seminary. Had I read it earlier, I might well have been able to have a more thoughtful conversation with it. As it happened, I read it - along with a few other works, like Rorty's Collected Papers; one of the first edited collections of the writings of Herder in English; and another of Berlin's favorite sources, the little-known Italian writer Giambattista Vico - at a time when my life was, needless to say, in a bit of an uproar. Trying to think through, in a critical way, all this new information, these alternative ways of seeing the world became a bit too much.
Which is not to say any of these works are devoid of positive content. On the contrary, even when Berlin is being snippy about Edmund Burke, or Rorty is insisting that we should live as if the things he claims to be the case are the case, heralding an age of lowered expectations but resigned acceptance which we can call happiness, there are things that need to be considered even as alarm bells are going off and red lights are flashing.
There is much to commend Berlin's view of a liberal pluralism as at least as descriptively accurate as a kind of philosophical realism that still hangs on to an undefined yet persistent idea of "human nature", to which our politics should be responsive. His largeness of moral vision - accepting difference, even incommensurability, as not denoting either some kind of ontological primitivism or moral viciousness - serves at the very least this function: It can keep us from believing, for even a moment, that we and we alone have stumbled upon the final theory, and are therefore obliged to impose it upon the world. Unlike Rorty's pessismistic, small-scale anti-realism - which is little more than acquiescence to an intolerable status quo because, well, things have always sucked, we just don't have the perspective to understand this, so suck it up and deal - Berlin at least have the virtue of understanding that human beings do, indeed, stake their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor for things and that this, too, is a positive moral stance.
At the end of the day, however, I am left with the feeling that Berlin got much more wrong than just Kant's intention in the line about crooked timber and humanity. Emerging from the corpse-strewn 20th century, it is too easy to surrender any commitment for which we should be willing to sacrifice because far too many human beings were sacrificed on the altars of various political and social ideas. Berlin is correct to write that the kind of liberal pluralism he advocates doesn't inspire people to do much; that is his intention. It is, in the end, a surrender to bare facts, without any sense that the other side of this same coin - about which he writes, but with far less passion - includes a willingness to sacrifice for certain social and political ends without ever pretending one has stumbled upon The One True Answer. One must face the reality that all answers are partial; one must also be willing to invest oneself because they are one's own answers to the on-going question, "How are we to live a fully human life, in a society that grants to all full access to the resources to achieve the same ends?"
Like far too many, including successive generations of the American ruling class, Berlin learned the wrong lesson from the midden heaps strewn across our recent history. One can mourn the dead, the uselessness of their loss, yet still believe and be willing to work and even fight for a world that is far better than what we have now. It is not at all "utopian" in the kind of derogatory way Berlin uses the word to believe that like-minded fellow human beings can and should be willing to work together, sacrifice together, to forward their vision of a better life for all. To acknowledge difference, and the full humanity of social and political visions far different, even antithetical to one's own, without insisting with equal vigor on the necessity to struggle against those one finds wanting in some moral way indeed does not inspire heroism. It inspires nothing more than a kind of dread acquiescence.
One can see the virtues of Berlin's exploration of the real human possibilities in other ways of living. One must also acknowledge not only how he, as George Scialabba wrote so well, made a "saw" of Kant's quip, but surrenders our very human birthright to make our world better than it is. In the face of giant steps backwards we in the west have made in recent decades, we should be seeking ways to struggle against a tide that will surely swamp us, a tide far more dangerous in its potential than any adherence to creed or vision that might inspire such a struggle. Our world deserves nothing less.
Saturday, September 03, 2011
A Biblical Theme
Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure* for the last days. Listen! The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts on a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.
James 5:1-6
One would be hard pressed to find a more persistent moral theme running through Scripture than the condemnation that follows upon the accumulation of wealth. While there is also the theme of the emptiness of so much religious observance - the prophets were eager to condemn the emptiness of ritual in ancient Israel and Judah - this was always in a context where the heart of the Covenant was already broken because of lack of justice, the absence of mercy, the oppression of the poor, the widow and orphan, and the dehumanization and enslavement of the foreigner in the land.
It would be a mistake, however, to limit this witness only to the prophetic tradition. The historic tradition, too, knows of the need for justice, for a social contract rooted in God's love for all people to be reflected in a society that lives it, rather than just laying out slaughtered animals and bunches of wheat on an altar only to let the people starve. For example, from 1 Kings, the story of the final division of the old Kingdom:
Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. When Jeroboam son of Nebat heard of it (for he was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), then Jeroboam returned from Egypt. And they sent and called him; and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke that he placed on us, and we will serve you.’ He said to them, ‘Go away for three days, then come again to me.’ So the people went away.Please note at least one passage here that made me chuckle. Rehoboam makes the boast that he little finger is greater than the loins of his father. Seems bragging about dick size is something that men have always done.
Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the older men who had attended his father Solomon while he was still alive, saying, ‘How do you advise me to answer this people?’ They answered him, ‘If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants for ever.’ But he disregarded the advice that the older men gave him, and consulted the young men who had grown up with him and now attended him. He said to them, ‘What do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, “Lighten the yoke that your father put on us”?’ The young men who had grown up with him said to him, ‘Thus you should say to this people who spoke to you, “Your father made our yoke heavy, but you must lighten it for us”; thus you should say to them, “My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins. Now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.” ’
So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day, as the king had said, ‘Come to me again on the third day.’ The king answered the people harshly. He disregarded the advice that the older men had given him and spoke to them according to the advice of the young men, ‘My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.’ So the king did not listen to the people, because it was a turn of affairs brought about by the Lord that he might fulfil his word, which the Lord had spoken by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam son of Nebat.
When all Israel saw that the king would not listen to them, the people answered the king,
‘What share do we have in David?
We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse.
To your tents, O Israel!
Look now to your own house, O David.’
So Israel went away to their tents. But Rehoboam reigned over the Israelites who were living in the towns of Judah. When King Rehoboam sent Adoram, who was taskmaster over the forced labour, all Israel stoned him to death. King Rehoboam then hurriedly mounted his chariot to flee to Jerusalem. So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day.
When all Israel heard that Jeroboam had returned, they sent and called him to the assembly and made him king over all Israel. There was no one who followed the house of David, except the tribe of Judah alone.
When people start whining about "liberal" Christians who "only" pay attention to verses and sections such as these, I honestly wonder if they have really read the Bible. It isn't like this stuff is hidden away in secret teachings only we read. It isn't as if we have invented the thread that runs through so much of Scripture that condemns the accumulation of wealth at the expense of other persons. It isn't as if "social justice" were something we moderns invented as a way of bastardizing the faith. Norman Cohn wrote a detailed account of revolutionary Christianity in the High and Late Middle Ages in central Europe, entitled The Pursuit Of The Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (it was reading this and another of Cohn's books that really got me started thinking about the depth and breadth of Christian teaching at a time when I had pretty much given it up as a bad business; realizing through reading history that ours is just a passing moment in a long and varied tradition was an eye-opening experience for me).
While it is indeed true that there are a variety of concerns within the traditions of Scripture, from personal hygiene and marriage and sexual relations to matters of civil law and even dietary codes, these, like all else must be considered against the backdrop of larger thematic content, as well as within a theological hermeneutic and contextualizing that keeps one eye always on this far more insistent, and persistent, and overarching theme: at the heart of the details of the Covenant between God and the people of Israel is that, as the chosen people of this God, of this one they call the living LORD, Elohim, they are to represent to the world who this God is by living not at other kingdoms and peoples live, but as those who embody God's love and justice for all. That is the heart of covenant itself, after all - God's mercy, love, and justice, amazing precisely because it is not rooted in any merit, but the free choice of this God. While ritual and a well-ordered polis are important, they are not at the heart of what this God calls the people to live out.
When Jesus says that the law can be summed up by loving God and loving others, it is this tradition to which he refers. When the writer of James condemns the wealthy who amass fortunes while enslaving and even murdering the poor, it is this tradition within which he writes. When liberation theologians insist that God has a preferential option for the poor, it is to this Scriptural theme they return, again and again. When John Wesley went out and preached to the workers in the mines and fields, it was this tradition out of which he lived and practiced his ministry.
Of course, it is important as Americans that we not get too caught up in condemning all those rich folk too easily. Even in the midst of the worst economic troubles in 80 years, we are far richer, far more comfortable than billions of our fellow human beings. We should never forget that our ease is bought at the price of the sufferings of our fellow humanity. Our drugs are tested on poor Africans, even as the final products are withheld from them because the cost the drug companies charge is too high even for their governments to afford. Our cars run on oil, the drilling and refining and burning of which is warming the planet at an exponential rate, bringing untold havoc to the whole planet. We wear clothes, buy shoes and toys for our children made in sweat shops, where people toil for pennies and dimes (comparatively speaking) so that we can ensure a steady supply of cheap products. We even distort and ignore our own laws to make sure our fellow Americans are not paid a living wage, cannot afford health care or higher education.
The word of justice, of condemnation here, is not for some others. This theme, this insistent Biblical demand that we live together, in justice, hearing the cries of our fellow human beings for food and shelter, for the simple recognition of their humanity, is a Word for us. A Word we must hear. These days, I think it is already too late, as the organs of our government make sure large banks and companies survive even as millions of my fellow citizens lose their jobs, their homes, their livelihoods, their hope.
This theme - that we are to live not as just run-of-the-mill human beings, but as a people called by God, this God, the living God who created the universe and loved us for no other reason than this God decided to do so, and therefore are obliged to love others in a living, breathing testimony to this free, joyful, bounteous love - runs throughout the Scriptures. It is the theme of the Bible, sung in Psalms, given in the rise and fall of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. It is embodied in the crucified and risen Jesus. It is the theme to which St. Paul and St. James, St. Peter and the author of the Revelation call us - to witness through our life together to God's love and justice.
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