Ummagumma

The Age of Social Catastrophe

2012-02-08T11:45:00.028-05:00

I have posted several times on my interest in the Eastern Front of World War II. There was never anything like it in terms of sheer numbers of dead and prevalence of destruction in human history. But, Robert Gellately succeeds in placing this appalling war unto itself in a larger context with his work Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler.

Originally published in 2007, the book just now came around in my reading queue. Much of what it contains I already knew from other readings through the years. But, particularly where Lenin is concerned, the book taught me some new things and certainly it transforms the Eastern Front from a thing upon itself into something within wider social forces at work in Russia and Germany since the end of World War I, leaving the East Front tragedy as the horrific exclamation point at the end of a long, atrocious sentence in the twisted narrative of human history.

There is very little in my personal library about Vladimir Lenin. His political life is examined with a fair amount of detail throughout the first 150 or so pages of Gellately’s work. Lenin was living in exhile at the start of the Russian Revolution. But, through a turn of events I won’t get in to here, he became the leader of the Bolshevik movement which (I learned from the book) competed early on with the Mensheviks for control of the Communist Party.

When Lenin finally attained power toward the end of 1917 he authorized and established (as head of a committee) the Cheka (secret police) and concentration camps. Lenin and his lieutenants, including Joseph Stalin, advocated allowing the Cheka to run amok among supporters of the old tsarist regime. Thousands were killed or imprisoned as enemies of the state.

As Communism proceeded it ran to the heaviest resistance not from the tsarist regime, however, but from the vast numbers of peasant farmers in southern Russia, the Ukraine, and the Crimea. The average peasant did not want to give up his land to collective farming. He wanted to keep his land. Resistance occurred.

In September 1918, Lenin authorized the Red Terror and treatment of enemies of the regime was radicalized. Almost immediately, 15,000 were executed. By 1919, as many as half a million Cossacks were killed or imprisoned. In the Crimea “…at the end of 1920, somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 were shot or hanged. The witch-hunt continued afterward, stoked by Lenin, who talked about how up to 300,000 more ‘spies and secret agents’ in the Crimea be tracked down and ‘punished’.” (page 72)

In the 1920’s Lenin solidified power. It was during that decade that Stalin became his right-hand man and virtually unchallenged successor. Stalin began his rule with an expansion of public trials in Moscow that Lenin began years before. “Like Lenin he believed in the educative value of such rituals which, to be successful, had to reveal a credible threat by providing a story line plausible to ordinary people.” (page 161) Mass fake trials resulted in continued executions and deportation to concentration camps.

But the trouble with the peasants remained for Stalin. As late as 1930 there were 14,000 protests throughout the southern region involving 2.5 million peasants. (page 174) As more arrests were made and the Gulag system grew in numbers, Stalin began to shift prisoners into labor camps and he used forced labor for a number of massive construction projects such as the Belomor Canal. Unknown hundreds of thousands had died by the time Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933.

Adolf Hitler’s reign of terror is better known than is Stalin’s or Lenin’s. Gellately devotes fully half his book’s 600 pages to the rise of the Nazi’s, their fundamental racism against Jews and vehement opposition to Bolshevism. Sufficient to say that the Nazi’s were no more committed to imprisoning and killing people as they saw fit, but, were far more systematic in their murder methods.

Nevertheless, Hitler did not start out by imprisoning and killing the Jews. To begin with he wanted to make life miserable for them so that would simply leave Germany. Of course, many were beaten and killed. Hitler was far bloodier with his purge of the Nazi’s party’s own paramilitary branch, the SA, than he was on the population as a whole. Hitler’s first mass execution was of members of his own party.

Meanwhile, Stalin purged his own military and citizenry throughout the 1930’s. affecting some 3.5 million people. “In 1937 alone, 936,750 people were arrested, of whom 790,665 were ‘convicted.’ Astoundingly, 353,074 of these were shot, and 429,311 were sent to the Gulag or prison. In 1938, the numbers fell to 638,509, bet the executions, at 328,618, did not decrease significantly.” (page 281) Long before Hitler, first Lenin then Stalin racked up millions of deaths in the name of the Marxist dictum of social evolution.

The Nazi’s started their more radicalized treatment of the Jews when they invaded Poland in September 1939. After that, the concentration camp population, which contained only a few hundred thousand people up to that time, swelled considerably. In Poland, the Nazi’s directly murdered tens of thousands of people. The German Army objected to the often undisciplined nature of the killings but did not object to the ruthlessness itself.

By the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 the SS and the Wehrmacht worked out an arrangement that guaranteed there would not be chaotic operations conducted in its immediate logistical rear area. The book makes it clear, however, that often the army assisted in “anti-partisan and Jewish Bolshevik” efforts. The ordinary German soldier knew all about these mass murders.

German precision was almost unimaginable. “…in March 1942 75 to 80 percent of the victims of the Holocaust were still alive. The greatest killing was in the year from March 1942 to March 1943, by the end of which only 20 to 25 percent of those who were to be murdered in the Holocaust were still living.” (page 460) Lenin and Stalin may have collectively accounted for millions of murders, but it was over a period roughly from 1917 to 1953, roughly 36 years. The bulk of Hitler’s genocide happened in a couple of years.

Perhaps the best example is found in what happened late in the war with the Hungarian Jews. “This deportation of the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz was compressed within seven weeks and became the single greatest massacre of the Second World War. Auschwitz was revamped to receive and kill large contingents, and beginning in May the schedule was for three or four trains a day, each carrying 3,000 to 3,500. In total 438,000 were sent to Auschwitz between May 15 and July 9, 1944.” (page 468) All but a handful of tragic, starved and disease-ridden survivors, were murdered in a matter of weeks.

Even during the war Stalin continued his ruthless treatment of his citizenry. About 175,000 naturalized Germans were sent to the Gulag and died. Killings in the Caucasus and the Crimea numbered about 100,000. “In just five years, from 1941 to 1945, official records show that 621,637 died in Gulag camps.” (page 521)

After the war Stalin continued to imprison and murder his own citizenry up to his death in 1953. “More recent estimations of Soviet-on-Soviet killing have been more ‘modest’ and range between ten and twenty million. In the penal system alone, according to one scholar, 2,749,163 died between 1929 and 1953. Those numbers are still incomplete, not only because they do not cover every year since 1917 but also because they exclude labor colonies completely. The total makes no mention of the deaths in transit or the hundreds of thousands executed by quota during the Great Terror or done to death during wartime ethnic cleansings and in countless other ways.” (page 584)

Altogether it amounts to a killing of humanity by humanity surpassing our contemporary abilities for a full accounting. Long and seemingly forever is the list of dead bodies who no one knows, their names uncounted, beyond the scope of even the Holocaust itself. It would be unbelievable that any human ideology could hold such power upon mass human behavior if it were not an undeniable historic, physical fact.

I see similar atrocities around the world today. The murderous regime in Syria is the obvious current example. Libya is another recent one. You can go back a few years to Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milošević. Genocide is certainly still with us. But, fortunately, we know nothing on the massive scale of "The Age of Social Catastrophe."

For their crimes against humanity, Hitler and most of his lieutenants either committed suicide or were hanged or imprisoned. Meanwhile, Stalin, the victor of the Eastern Front, continued his reign of terror until his death in 1953. No criminal charges were ever brought against Stalin in his lifetime. In some ways, the horrific crimes of the Nazis legitimized the much larger (in terms of numbers) genocide during the Stalin regime. Either way, however, Lenin, Hitler and Stalin collectively make today’s mass murder look like child’s play.

While we are counting such things, however, it should be mentioned that the worst mass murderer in recent history was someone outside the scope of Gellately's book. That title goes to Mao Zedong, who was probably responsible for the deaths of more than 50,000,000 human beings. But, the true number may never be known as they don't really keep track of that in China.

We Are Hosed

2012-02-02T11:00:00.030-05:00

Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke spoke before House Budget Committee today regarding our fragile economic recovery and its relationship to the growing US debt situation. While he sees an improving economy, Bernanke is simultaneously worried about the growth of public debt and the role of the government in guiding the economic recovery.

What Bernanke is recommending is a classic Keynesian approach to economically sluggish times. Unfortunately, there are signs that the Keynesian model could be wrong and even harmful. Fundamentally, in a high-debt environment Keynesian economics, the dominant economic theory at work in the world today, inevitably leads to one economic bubble after another.

Reading my iPad last night I came across a couple of current pieces on various economic issues. The best one is written by respected investment analyst Bill Gross. He does not mince words.

“A 30-50 year virtuous cycle of credit expansion which has produced outsize paranormal returns for financial assets – bonds, stocks, real estate and commodities alike – is now delevering because of excessive “risk” and the “price” of money at the zero-bound. We are witnessing the death of abundance and the borning of austerity, for what may be a long, long time.”

What is at stake here is something more profound than keeping new jobless claims under 400,000. The Gross commentary points out that keeping interest-rates low can negatively affect the risk-taking that is usually necessary to pull out of a recession. This is due to the fact that low-rates often reflect a fear of the return of money rather than a return on money.

But, more importantly according to Gross, “When all yields approach the zero-bound, however, as in Japan for the past 10 years, and now in the U.S. and selected ‘clean dirty shirt’ sovereigns, then the dynamics may change. Money can become less liquid and frozen by ‘price’ in addition to the classic liquidity trap explained by ‘risk.’”

Thus, banks are not lending cash. Investors want to remain in cash. The reward is not worth the risk. At best, this leads to stagnation. But, it is also a Catch-22. The US will refinance almost $3 trillion in public debt in 2012, about 20% of our ridiculously high total public debt. It is great that we can refinance the amounts at such low interest rates. However, what happens if rates were to rise? It would only increase the weight of the debt as it becomes refinanced.

Richard Russell has argued for the past year about “the effects of negative compounding.” It is a well known axiom of investing that the compounding of interest earned or profits taken, i.e. the re-investing of money made on investments, is the secret to exponential growth in personal wealth. You take everything you ever make off savings or investments and you put it right back in to your savings or investments and allow that new money to compound into more new money which gets re-invested and so on. That is how you turn $1,000 into $1,000,000 over a few decades.

Well, the reverse is also true on the debt side. If the debt grows and just gets refinanced, particularly at higher rates, then the amount of debt compounds and weighs more heavily on the economy over time. Where interest rates are concerned, it would seem we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t in terms of keeping rates low.

Of course, I realize that in a democracy such as ours it is impossible to burden the voters with metaphysical truths when so many of them are struggling just to make ends meet. I understand that the urgency of the moment seems to trump any meta-considerations. This is part of the problem we face. There is no genuine incentive for politicians to address the real problems because the only solution to those problems means pain for their constituents. This is borne out in a current article on The Atlantic website.

“The ten year cost of the Bush tax cuts is $2.8 trillion, but only about a quarter of that is for the taxes on high earners; the rest is for tax breaks affecting those making less than $250,000 a year. Moreover, 'extend tax policies' also assumes that we fix the AMT to prevent it from hitting middle-income voters. That costs another $800 billion over 10 years--about the same as the 'tax cuts for the rich'.

“In other words, the lion's share of that money is going to the middle class, not the rich. To close the deficit, we're going to have to soak them.”

That article goes on to examine the consequences of cutting spending to balance things out. But the two primary drivers of current spending (outside of defense) are temporary programs for the unemployed and the weight of retiring baby boomers on the cost of entitlement benefits. Will any politician attempt to cut Social Security and Medicare to reduce the deficit? Not one that is likely to get re-elected.

The Atlantic continues: “In other words, none of the possible changes is going to be popular… Deficits are a drag on future growth whether they are spent on supply-side tax cuts, or whizzy infrastructure. If you believe that one is a problem, you should also worry about the other.

“Of course, like most commentators on the deficit, I doubt the politicians who asked these questions were actually worried about the effect on their future. Rather, this was a proxy for the argument they wanted to make: for or against lower taxes, for or against higher spending.

“But the rest of us should care. Our deteriorating fiscal condition is going to have far-reaching and rather unpleasant effects. And our Congressmen are mostly focused on scoring ideological points.”

Everybody seems to be interested in “decoupling” the US economy from the Euro Zone. Indeed, so far in 2012 we have seen modest economic growth in the US and some consider the immediate future bright. It is hard to argue against what has been realized so far this year. But, as I have said before, the debt is only getting bigger and the problem is only magnifying, slowly perhaps, like global warming; a gradual worsening that does not cause general alarm but ultimately has consequences for everyone.

Another respected analyst, John Mauldin, wrote at the end of 2011 that “You Can’t Solve A Debt Problem With More Debt.” In that article he examined the various options out of the current situation. In a nutshell they are: savings, faster economic growth, and/or inflation. But, each of these alternatives is difficult or impossible to achieve in the current environment. That is why every central banker on Earth is pushing more debt. It is the most workable alternative.

Bernanke’s statement before congress today reflects all the internal contradictions of this truly ominous situation. We need to find a “sustainable debt trajectory” without “threatening the uncertain recovery.” Bernanke believes we can do both, but he was pretty short on specifics as to how to achieve this apparently delicate balance.

It is a tight-rope act, for sure. But, in the end, here’s what will probably happen: Politicians will do everything to avoid pain and get re-elected. The debt will continue to grow. Interest rates will remain low for the next few years and this will solidify stagnation. The weight of the debt will grow modestly until it reaches some sort of tipping point in the not-too-distant future. At the point of crisis, matters will be dealt with abruptly and, mostly likely, painfully.

Or some variation of these things. Uncertainty prevails any way you want to cut it. My guess is that this uncertainty will continue to be good for gold. There is even talk today of bringing back the gold standard. I don't expect that to happen. Long-time readers know gold is where I have most of my money. I could be wrong, of course. But, that is what “risk” is all about - you take your chances and place your bets.

Some First Feast Optimum Awesomeness

2012-01-29T21:14:00.016-05:00

Not all the Armadillos present made it into this pic of 2012 First Feast participants. Old concert t-shirts was this year's theme.

This year’s First Feast gala featured ancient rock and roll t-shirts, comfort food munchies (as opposed to hors d'oeuvres), followed by a course of two hearty salads, before a course of dueling meat loafs, with the usual decadent assortment of sides. Great rock music was enjoyed throughout as the conversations ran the gambit from musical trivia to secret cooking recipes to vacation travel fantasies to the Republican Party presidential race to where we all “earned” our various concert t-shirts. Every t-shirt has its story to tell. But it is up to the human to tell it. So there were several good stories of great memories. Plenty of beers and wines and, of course, port helped sustain the evening.

Jennifer and I arrived at Mark and Eileen’s a little before 4. We got to enjoy about an hour of couple-to-couple time before Clint arrived next. Both Clint and Mark showed off their new digital cameras. Mark got a nice Nikon for Christmas from E, as she is known, his wife. Clint also had a great looking light-weight tripod for his camera. Jennifer wants one for our heavy-duty Nikon D300, so there was a detailed examination of this device, in fine 'Dillo fashion naturally.

In fact, Jennifer and I planned to buy camping supplies at REI and check out the tripods at Wolf Camera on our way into Atlanta. The locations were in the midst of a gigantic metro-shopping complex that included a large mall and numerous mini-malls, shopping centers, restaurants and movie theaters all densely populated near a major intersection of two interstates. It was 3 pm on Saturday afternoon. I don’t know what we were thinking. The economy might remain slow in most of America but in this small few miles of land traffic was packed. You crawled along from stoplight to stoplight. It was difficult to change lanes in the congestion.

Now, we had just commented about how nice the drive was a few minutes before exiting the interstate and inserting ourselves of our own free will into this seething cauldron of consumerism. Yesterday was a beautiful, mild sunny day. It was comfortable enough for me to go there in just my two t-shirts with my CSNY military style Concert Jacket from 2006 as backup. My t-shirts were a Tonight’s the Night shirt that I got at Neil Young’s 2010 Fox concert which fitted kinda loose over a tight fitting, very faded Pink Floyd The Wall t-shirt I bought around 1982 after seeing the movie version.

Some ‘Dillos had no concert-related t-shirt that survived their current bodily state. Some, like me, technically had no genuine “old” strictly concert t-shirts. So, also like me on one shirt but not the other, they wore newer ones. Billy had a “Revelator” t-shirt from the Tedeschi Trucks Band concert he went to last year.

The older t-shirts included Jennifer’s Atlanta Rhythm Section shirt from the early 1980’s. It fits her body fine. Mark saw the Rolling Stones in 1981 and he can still wear the t-shirt with ease. Clint wore a King Crimson Discipline t-shirt but it was a more recent vintage than the original, great album. But, he brought a fine looking t-shirt he can no longer wear featuring Pink Floyd circa 1977 on the Animals Tour. I offered him $50 bucks for it. We laughed.

Justin wore a Grateful Dead t-shirt that required an undershirt since it was extremely tattered with some fairly large holes in places. That shirt could tell waaaay more than just one story. It practically wreaked of almost boundless hedonism. Eileen’s hot muscle style rock t-shirt was from Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA Tour.

Ron wore his college fraternity t-shirt. Technically, the shirt was not t-shirt bought at a concert but, rather, in utterly supreme ‘Dillo style, it came to us from several different band parties and small concerts to which it had been worn. So, it was a t-shirt taken to concerts. In 'Dillo-mind, that variation counts. Justin’s Jennifer wore a baseball style t-shirt that said Say You Will. I never got around to asking her about her shirt but my guess is that it was from a Fleetwood Mac Tour in 2003.

Brian and Diane wore Coldplay shirts from when that band played at Music Midtown last September. I really have to start paying more attention to the Atlanta music scene. We’ve missed Coldplay at least three times through Atlanta now. Kinda inexcusable being a self-claimed fan. Diane said she thoroughly enjoyed the concert. I love the new Coldplay album, as I’ve posted. They are coming back in July. Hopefully, Jennifer and I can make it.

Will wore a Magnolia Fest t-shirt from last year. I had a nice conversation with him about how fun this festival is every year. Back when he first started going only about 3,000 showed up for the multi-day, multi-band outdoor event. Now, it is more like 8,000. He told me that the Allman Brothers performed there a couple of years ago. I didn’t even know they still played together, though, like Will, I enjoy listening to good Allman Brothers music. I had never heard of the festival so it was cool to learn about it. Like I said, every t-shirt has its story.

It was the usual immensely fun evening. Only on this special First Feast night it was Mark who bestowed his generosity upon us not only by opening up his wonderful home to us for a marvelous dinner party but also with the gift of customized bandannas. He designed a cool Cumberland Island Armadillos collection of sayings in a variety of colors. A lot of old ‘Dillo philosophy was on there combined with stuff of newer vintage from the past three years of the Great ‘Dillo Return to the Island. "Optimum Awesomeness" is a new term. Great concept. I totally get it. Thank you Mark…and E.

Brian, myself, and Jennifer sport our new 'Dillo bandannas at the dinner party. Justin is in the background.

Awesome Art Books

2012-01-23T16:03:00.030-05:00

The Art Museum is a huge book, filled with art from all time periods and all over the world. The artwork is featured in very large images on pages about the size of a standard (in today's terms) newspaper.

Jennifer and I both enjoy a nicely published book. For Christmas I gave her the most exquisite book we’ve ever owned, aptly entitled The Art Museum. Instead of chapters, the newspaper-sized thick book is organized by “rooms”. It covers art as would any world-class museum, beginning with sections on ancient pottery, engravings, carvings, and sculpture from all over the world.

The over-large format of the book and the splendidly published photographs taken from works of art from all time periods and places affords the reader a high degree of visual clarity so that you can appreciate many subtleties of the works as if you in an actual museum viewing these objects from different angles. Most of the images are of such clarity it is as if you can actually touch whatever art work you are appreciating on a given page.

In all there are over 450 “rooms” arranged in 25 “galleries” (Ancient Egypt, Central Asia, Medieval Europe, Islamic Art, Africa, etc.). The book contains over 3,000 works of art to enjoy. To be honest, I haven’t had time to look through even most of the book. I have skimmed it and skipped around here and there. Like an actual museum, it is far too much to take in all at once. It is a reference work to enjoy and discover new things over time.

The Art Museum is a feast for the art lover's eye and mind. It begins with ancient art and moves comprehensively throughout the history of art worldwide. These pages deal with findings from The Caves of a Thousand Buddhas in China.

My personal interest in art, particularly painting, begins around the time of Johannes Vermeer, who is featured in this two-page spread. The painting on the left page is his famour View of Delft that I have blogged about before.

The first exhibition of impressionistic painting took place in Paris in 1874. The entire exhibition has been gathered and collected in The Art Museum. A special treat for me.

Of course some of Pablo Picasso's works are featured.

As is the work of Jackson Pollock.

The Art Museum also features a great deal of contemporary art. These pages feature "installation art" from around the years 2002-2003. The dark space in the upper left is by a Japanese artist filling a small dark room with 150 LED lights and carefully arranging them with mirrors to create a gallactic effect.

The book is fully indexed by art type and by artist and includes a section of maps of the world for each of the time periods and galleries presented as well as a comprehensive glossary of terms used throughout its text. The descriptions of individual art pieces are brief but informative, usually containing five or six sentences of facts about a given work.

As I mentioned before, Jennifer’s parents gave me a splendid book on Pierre Renoir, my favorite painter, for Christmas. I did take time to look at it thoroughly and read large portions of the biographical text in the book. Once again, unlike some art books in our collection, this one has very detailed, well published photographs of the paintings. You can often see the individual brush strokes and the colors are as bright and vibrant as the original works.

After Christmas, I usually take a portion of my annual bonus and devote it to my own frivolous attentions. I ordered two other art books, one on Claude Monet and a special publication on the collected research of Stanley Kubrick for his Napoleon movie, “The Greatest Movie Never Made.” Both of these are sheer aesthetic joys of publication.

It was only after they arrived, however, that I realized that the publisher for the Renoir, Monet, and Kubrick books is the same – Taschen in Kolin, Germany. A quick look at their website will reveal that they take publishing very seriously, producing high-quality books on a wide range of (mostly artistic) subjects and (except for a few limited editions) at accessible prices.

The Monet book is part of their 25th anniversary series, as is the book on Renoir I got for Christmas. It contains a great biographical narrative and many photographs of Monet, often while he is painting. The Kubrick book is an affordable replica of a limited edition that came out three years ago and now sells for thousands of dollars. A small work of art in and of itself.

The Renoir book on top, featuring one of his most famous works, which I saw in Boston back in 2009. On bottom is the Monet book filled with his numerous, wonderful paintings.

Like The Art Museum, the Kubrick book is solidly produced. The gold embossed green leather cover and binding is genuine and richly detailed. Inside are 1100 pages that represent the several individual books of the collected limited edition that were nested inside the same binding only hollowed out to serve as a casing for the other books.

In my edition, all the books are published on oversized lightly gray printed pages. The different sizes of the different books originally published can then be appreciated and you can read their contents exactly as they were originally printed and bound individually. Most pages present two of the other books simultaneously.

Here the publisher chose the size of the gray pages to be enough to run the pages of one book along the lower two-thirds of the page. In the upper third of the page runs a smaller book, published separately from the larger book in the original limited editions. It is very cleverly presented and still retains much of its grandeur even if it isn’t the glorious limited edition itself.

A section of the Kubrick book showing how two books are represented on the same page. On top is a smaller book of various photographs he took of models in all sorts of poses and all sorts of authentic Napoleonic uniforms and costumes. The lower two-thirds is a seperate book of personal correspondences regarding the never-made film.

The book contains the original complete-draft script, hundreds of photographs, original correspondences, details on costumes, locations scouting, and hundreds of individual notes. Yet, the book still contains only a fraction of the total mass of Kubrick’s research.

It comes with a key card that gives you “exclusive access to a searchable/downloadable online research database of Kubrick’s picture file of nearly 17,000 Napoleonic images.” Obviously, this opens up opportunities to discover new things in the future, as I will probably never see all there is left behind from Kubrick’s research, when I periodically take a dip through the years in to this incredible collection of photographs mostly shot by Kubrick himself.

I am thankful and look forward to enjoying all these books off and on for the rest of my life. They are satisfying references in all their diverse ways. The fact that three of them are by Taschen led me to discover this quality book publisher whose online catalog I will view regularly. So many interesting choices can be found there.

Mending Barbwire Fences

2012-01-16T13:26:00.022-05:00

Since the tornado hit my parent’s property just before Christmas, I have spent much of my weekend time helping my dad with the slow, arduous task of cleaning things up. As of today he still has no storage building to speak of. The two tractors and all the mowers and four-wheelers and various other equipment are just sitting out in the open rain and wind and cold weather we have gotten lately. Last week we had continuous 15-20 MPH winds with frequent 30 MPH gusts for a period of about 36-hours. No wonder he is having trouble getting some equipment to run.

By now, the barn has fallen in completely. Initially, the main support structure of hand-hewn 8 x 8’s nailed together with large wooden pins was leaning severely but still standing. Three of the giant hand-made beams were, in fact, largely unmoved and still upright. We were able to walk hunched over into the barn and pull most everything of value (damaged or not) out where it now sits in the weather with everything else there is no space for but the great outdoors.

A young, local fireman, when off-duty, has been coming and taking loads of the barn wood away. Now only about half the wood remains. But the nine 8 x 8’s are still there, a couple buried in the rubble as the whole collection of nine that once supported the barn finally twisted and fell to Earth.

My grandparent’s entire lot, old trees and house, has been completely bulldozed into a flat dirt acre opening to my dad’s many acres of pasture that are still littered with the tops of twisted trees and whole oaks of great age lying with their roots exposed, unmoved on the ground. The fall of the barn along with the original complete destruction of a house between my parent’s and the road maybe a quarter mile away that heads back into town means my dad can now sit in his living room recliner and look across through a door, out the windows of a adjoining sun room and see the lights of traffic at night. He has never had such an open view in his life and he has commented about it several times to me.

For the most part, other than the barn being slowly hauled away and the general cleaning up of debris, the farm itself looks exactly as it did the day after the tornado. The shed behind my parent’s house (see pic in original post) is now completely removed and the concrete pads underneath are now fully exposed and ready for a badly needed 20 x 12 storage building to be delivered and set up soon.

Most of the many fences with which my dad manages his small herd of cattle are still down in numerous places from fallen trees that no one has had time to address. Once recently with a team of volunteers and again last week with hired workers, large sections where the fence was completely missing were rebuilt. So, now my dad can keep the herd pinned-up in one 20-acre section of the pasture with a pond until he has time to repair all the damage throughout the other 100-plus fenced-in acres.

So, when I showed up Saturday for another weekend of helping out, my dad for the first time didn’t want me to help him haul stuff over to a giant dumpster that sits behind his house now. Instead, we went to a section of the farm where the fence was unaddressed as of yet and spent much of the sunny, winter afternoon repairing it using existing posts and supports.

It has been probably 20 years since I last worked on a fence, something that was common in my youth growing up on the farm. Back then it was just my dad and I, working weekends as now, building new fences for cattle my dad had not even bought yet. All his life my dad simply wanted to be a farmer but, of course, it has been ages since small-time farming could support a family.

So, my dad was a wage slave all his life and only dabbled in farming as subsidiary income and a desired way-of-life. When he retired 12 years ago he finally got to do what he had always wanted with his life. He became a farmer on a scale only possible with regular social security checks. Through these recent years, his ability to farm has been emotionally and psychologically meaningful to him. He has been (and remains today) living the agrarian way of life and expressing those values.

We worked on a section of fence crossing the middle of this vast and fairly open 70-plus acre pasture. This is the heart of my dad’s farm. One fence runs essentially north-south dividing the space into two equal halves. To the east side there are three sections of pasture fenced-in. The outer fencing is down with many fallen trees. Most of the inner fencing remains untouched, however. My dad and I worked Saturday afternoon on the single mid-fence that splits the west side of the farm into two large pastures.

Altogether it is a space of about 120 acres, though we could not see the entirety from where we worked due to the gently rolling lay of the land. But I felt the basic grounded gentle ease of Being in the middle of this damaged openness. About half the trees that dot the pastures are still standing. A few birds were chirping in them even though it is winter. The sun shone bright and slightly warm. There was only a wisp of cool wind.

Working out in the open like that, surrounded not just by our farm but hundreds of acres from adjoining farms, gives you a holsom sense of seculsion. I took a moment to breath in the space and I was remembering my childhood in the open pasture world. I ran these fields with several different dogs at different points of my youth. I played “army” with friends and sat against some of these fallen trees to read Thoreau and Emerson and even some Zen Buddhist teachers. I read many books in the solitude of this space. I was a frequent hiker on this farm and the others nearby.

Farm work is such that you get to enjoy nature in this subtle way while you work. This is something almost completely lost in today's manufacturing and service-driven consumerist reality. I even found myself humming some of Shostakovich’s Great Tenth, it was such a perfect day for it. Though it is often physically demanding, working on a farm does afford a luxury of pace, time for conversation and even contemplation, as you address whatever job needs to be done. Dad and I pretty much worked silently as we always did, except when some planning was needed or there was a certain obstacle that we had to work together to overcome.

Barbwire fence mending is not brain surgery. You untangle the layered strains of existing fence wire, you figure out where to reconnect them, usually at an existing post, then you use special tools to pull them together, splicing them by weaving short strands of new barbwire around each side until they are secure. Sometimes you have to walk down to a section of fence that is fine and loosen the stapled nails from that post so the fence can stretch in at the broken section. Then you nail each of the four lines of wire back to the various posts.

Dad had everything needed, of course, in the back of his big diesel truck (where else was he going to put it?), which survived the storm with only minor paint damage though being parked at the time down at the barn. One of the “posts” for the fence was a very old pine tree too broad for me to reach around. It was scarred from years of wear but its roots must be sound as they held it in the ground amidst all this other tree destruction. Its top didn’t even break out of it. So here it stood in the middle of this open space, mighty against the nature's fury, helping us hold up this section of cross-fence.

Of course, I have done a great deal of work on my own land through the years - cutting limbs, piling and burning brush, planting, mowing, but dealing with barbed wire was something with which I had lost contact. So, it was nice working out of doors like this with my dad again; touching childhood memories, still somewhat shocked at the magnitude of the destruction and the amount of fence work still to do eventually.

Eventually. When the storm first struck my dad worked himself into complete exhaustion over the course of about a week. Then the weather turned too wet and cold to work in much. Now, with so much debris either hauled away or piled up and with the barn slowly disappearing and with the new storage shed arriving soon, there is not such a frenzy of activity in his mind. He knows it will take time. He has accepted that. He knows he is too old to do it all. He has accepted that too. So, now it is just a matter of moving from one thing to the next and knowing it will all improve, eventually.

My mom is a different story. She is a depressed crying wreck much of the time. She cannot escape the destruction of everything around her. She has no sense of appreciation of the present and has become largely disconnected from it. This is partly because it is natural for many people to become “shell-shocked” when faced with such utter ruin. But, though she often puts up a good front, on a deeper level she doesn’t seem to be pulling out of it. Her grief continues too long and unrelenting, in my opinion. She might have a touch of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. I’ll have to keep a close watch on her.

On Sunday Jennifer, my daughter, and I spent a good chuck of the afternoon over there, around the barn again. Like scavengers, bringing things of value over to our place. Two truckloads of nicely weathered old siding from the barn for some possible future art project. Another truck load of odds and ends like an old bench swing and four gates that once opened and closed the four stalls that were in the barn. I have no clue what we are going to do with a lot of it.

The stuff was added to our collection of random tools and assorted paraphernalia from my dad’s former sheds. Stuff we wanted to keep out of the rain so it wouldn’t rust, now sitting in my carport and pole barn. We’ll be loading those pieces back up sometime soon and returning them to the farm. To the new storage building, more specifically. Then, at last, like the section of fence we worked on this weekend, things will start finding a place and an order again. The fence work will last for several weeks to come. But, all this disorder that saddens everyone’s heart and threatens my mom’s sanity to some degree will slowly start to give way to the many details of a reconstructed life. Eventually.

Beyond Nine: Shostakovich and Hovhaness

2012-01-09T09:15:00.008-05:00

Note: This is Part 11 of my series on the greatest classical symphonies ever composed, begun two years ago. Click the keyword “Classical Music” at the end of this post to see the entire series and other writings on music. I’ll conclude with Part 12 sometime in the future.

The competition among Great Tenth Symphonies is rather sparse. Gustav Mahler did not live long enough to complete his Tenth, though a substantially finished opening movement along with four fragmentary movements remain for admirers to ponder. The 23-minute opening Adagio movement is wonderful to enjoy by itself and is occasionally performed today. Both Haydn and Mozart wrote Tenths, of course, but these were early efforts in far more extensive catalogs of work and are simply not very notable in and of themselves.

But, comparative lack of competition does not diminish the power and splendor of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Great Tenth (1953). It is, in fact, one of Shostakovich’s greatest symphonic achievements and certainly one of the masterworks of 20th century classical music.

For some reason I can’t grasp, I enjoy listening to this symphony best on a cold, clear sunny day and I generally experience it on such days in mid-winter. It begins with a slow, solemn, approaching melody of strings. It feels like a thunderstorm far away but moving closer. For now things are peaceful and open. This opening string section of the first movement is an inspiring piece despite (because of?) the brooding undertones that make it so utterly modern.

In the first crescendo the entire orchestra slowly erupts, repeating the melody the strings introduced but now harshly, as if the thunderstorm arrives, then passes. This enormous, rich and bold 25-minute opening continues to develop with the most delicate pieces for winds supported by minimalist string pucks transforming into a rather complex period where various winds and horns are featured supported by subtle percussion. Very interesting music in which to listen. A gradual build up again leads to a more violent orchestra, less melodic but more textured and occasionally outright loud. This loud period extends for several minutes and transforms into a complex, almost triumphant procession. The build-up is gradually repeated, but on the last repetition there is no eruption and the movement ends quietly with a flute, calling.

The second movement is more stately, formal, and somewhat dance-like. The entire orchestra is used to drive the symphony forward with a short, stirring 4-minute movement. Horns roar near the conclusion. The third movement returns to calm and contemplative interplay of strings. An oboe then softly introduces a stronger string section sharply punctuated by a five-note french horn which proclaims a melancholy yet promising theme.

Further into this movement the orchestra becomes a dance band reminiscent of the music of Rimsky-Korsakov. This is a delightfully light and romantic moment that ultimate works itself into a frenzy before coming back to the five-note french horn (this time accompanied by several horns) towering over everything. Heroic. It is truly one of my personal favorite moments among many favorite moments of symphonic music.

The fourth movement is a very complex piece, beginning, again, with confident, brooding strings before an oboe introduces a wonderful extended period where Shostakovich presents and examines a variety of consecutive pensive orchestrated moments. This is sustained for five minutes until the pace quickens and a spritely episode is presented for several minutes. At about 8 and half minutes the final theme begins to establish itself. A crescendo of powerful orchestration which leads to two climaxes over five and half minutes, the second ending the symphony on a high note.

Admittedly, this is not a very technical examination. But, long-time readers will know that I am a musical amateur, completely untrained. My description of Shostakovich’s Great Tenth is a naïve appreciation of it and is chiefly emotional. It is one of my most treasured symphonies and, as I mentioned in the beginning, I usually listen to it at least once every year.

Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15 (1971) is also worthy of note. The first movement is child-like with chimes and flute. It is very light, if at times authoritative. Shostakovich freely mixes the basic theme from the William Tell Overture in with the lighthearted composition. The second movement is heavier, opening with brass before moving slowly onward, almost adrift at times, through various sections of the orchestra. A solo trombone is nicely featured at one point. Following a brief crescendo by the entire orchestra there is a wonderful interplay of vibraphone and bass. That movement ends quietly and is taken up by an absurdist, playful and brief third movement. A distinct heaviness returns in the fourth movement. This final part of Shostakovich’s final symphony strikes me as a wonderful summation of his life’s work. Halfway through the almost 16-minute movement, there is a magnificent struggle expressed in full orchestration. Yet the symphony ends in subdued fashion with an extended, very melodic tone, fading with accompanied chimes and percussion similar to how it began.

Alan Hovhaness is perhaps one of the lesser known composers in this series. But, he enjoyed a long and very successful career up until his death in 2000. He is noted in this “Beyond Nine” post primarily due to his prodigious output. He created an astonishing 67 numbered symphonies. Highly unusual in this modern time when most composers explore symphonic music outside the strict “symphony” definition.

An interesting side-note. The quantitative record for the most symphonies ever composed, surpassing even Haydn, belongs to the still-living composer Lief Segerstam. To date he has written some 253(!) symphonies. That is almost mind-blowing in itself. Most of these symphonies are of extremely short duration, of course, coming in at less that 20-minutes total, like much of Mozart’s early works. What I have heard I haven’t particularly cared for, but perhaps more research is needed on my part. If nothing else, Segestam’s work is another indication that classical music is anything but stagnant or dead.

I find much of Hovhaness to be highly satisfying, however. Of the symphonies I own by him many I cannot compare in this series. From the beginning, I have only considered symphonies that are composed with “full orchestration.” This disqualifies many works. Another living composer I enjoy, John Corigliano, created a wonderful Symphony No. 1 (1991). But, it did not make the short list of the Great Firsts with which I began this series. Corigliano’s Second (2000) and Third (2004) symphonies are even better and are highly recommended as fine examples of modern composition. They do not fit this series, however, because the former is written for “string orchestra” and the latter for “large wind ensemble.” In other words, they are symphonies that do not use the entire orchestra.

For this same reason, many of Hovhaness’ works cannot be mentioned. He composed a number of highly accessible and entertaining symphonies that do not fit the mold of full orchestration. Nevertheless, there are still plenty of interesting “full” compositions worthy of the listener’s attention. I will mention some of them in chronological order.

Hovhaness is probably considered a mediocre composer by the classical elite. I am guessing this is the case, in part, because he tends to use the orchestra as a “big band” when introducing primary themes and melodies. That is, instead of creating rich textures with the differing orchestral sections or of pitting the orchestra against itself as is so common with, say, Shostakovich, the entire orchestra often plays the same notes in unison. I don’t mean to imply this is boring, however. The orchestration is just not very sophisticated even if the music itself is. Where Hovhaness shines is with his variations and explorations of his themes by many solo instruments usually supported by strings. In this regard, there are numerous memorable moments through his works.

One of his most famous symphonies is No. 2 (1955) subtitled “Mysterious Mountain.” Hovhaness expressed a life-long love of nature in general and in mountains in particular, composing many symphonic pieces basking in the inspiration of the green Earth and its heights. The Second is a splendid example of this and it remains one of his most performed symphonies.

His most “experimental” piece is the Symphony No. 19 “Vishnu” (1960). This 30-minute single-movement score explores the familiar contemporary territory of dissonance. It reminds me somewhat of Lutoslawski’s Great Third with all sorts of interesting and bizarre sounds ranging from blaring absurdity to buzzing stings to echoing chimes, harp, and Asian-sounding winds. The symphony is presented in various episodes. At one point it is a slow eastern dance. I say eastern because Hovhaness freely mixes original themes with traditional ones from India. At another point the symphony becomes a fantastic collection of winds playing alone in seemingly spontaneous, orchestrated improvisation, almost without structure. But, we are grounded when Hovhaness returns to his “movie score” style and the orchestra again plays as a band, repeating the earlier dance theme. Another episode features more buzzing string-play supported, again, by the winds and percussion playing notes all together. This gives way to the final episode (the last 6 minutes of the piece) where the strings are greatly muted and a bassoon with chimes, slow, deep percussion and other winds and horns allow the whole thing to just ease away in dream-like fashion. A really interesting and rewarding symphony.

Hovhaness continued to show progress in Symphony No. 22 “City of Light” commissioned by the City of Birmingham, Alabama in 1970. The liner notes of my CD summarize it as: “Music evocative of light and space, nature and spirituality, penetrates the heart with a directness and clarity unique to Hovhaness, although it is possible to detect his influences in the music of younger composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and John Adams.” Not a bad legacy to bestow upon us.

Hovhaness seems to have accelerated his devotion to the symphony as a form of musical expression in the later portion of his life. Before then he composed a variety of other musical forms including an excellent Cello Concerto (1936). But only ten years separates No. 22 and his Great No. 50 inspired by the Mount St. Helens volcanic event in 1980. I’d say completing twenty-eight symphonies in the span of a decade is indicative of a prolific concentration on the symphonic form.

The Great No. 50 (1982) begins in traditional Hovahness style. A simple orchestration, at times stating textured solo melodies, but always as a band with the entire orchestra, particularly the strings will all play the same notes most of the time. Still, there are many interesting solo juxtapositions against the movement’s band-like nature. The second movement begins magically with rapid chimes, xylophone, and slow percussion. A bassoon solo is passed along to several other flowing solo instruments that carry the theme through a steady bed of rarely leading strings. Its energy completely dissipates in the end into a comfortable silence.

The third movement of No. 50 is worthy of comparison with many other great symphonic moments I have written about in this series. It is Hovhanees’ crowning achievement. It begins with comfortable band-like strings supported by a restful, occasional solo chimes and a pleasing flute solo until, abruptly about 1 and a half minutes in, the percussion literally explodes with a loud pounding rage. Then the Horns erupt, the percussion continues to burst forth, the strings are frenzied. Horns and percussion offer crashing, absurd sounds. At about 3:15 the percussion takes over completely with a regimented pounding in an African style, filling the musical space completely.

This proceeds back to the full horns and percussion playing in a more organized fashion though still grand and crashing. The string section is a series of ripped repeated ribbons of sound creating a spherical effect. The percussion triumphs again and transitions to some splendid strings playing in a swinging, rhythmic fashion along with the beat. The Horns play their own vociferous tone as the strings continue to provide the nesting and the percussion pounds the original eruption. This carries on deep into the almost 14-minute movement. At about 8:30, more band-like string music segues to several horns and trumpets echoing a heroic theme. The trumpet, so symbolic of American classical composition, announces the final 4-minutes of the symphony which are surprisingly complex and rich, not band-like at all, in full orchestration leading to a satisfying conclusion.

Of his late work, Symphony Nos. 60 and 63 are also wonderfully entertaining pieces of music. No. 60 “To the Appalachian Mountains” (1985) is a 33-minute examination of themes previously developed by another American composer, Aaron Copland, though it certainly contains much that is distinctly Hovhaness. No. 63 “Loon Lake” (1988) is a two-movement work lasting slightly over 26-minutes. A short preamble, band-like of course, gives way to a beautiful bassoon theme, a calm in the mist. The extended second movement is carried dreamily along by lightly plucked strings and melodic flute. The movement then proceeds through numerous richly varied expressions ending with a triumphant trumpet.

I do not mean to imply that Hovhaness was a modern Haydn or Beethoven. He certainly cannot stand up in direct comparison with Mahler or even Shostakovich for that matter. But, Hovhaness created a remarkably large number of symphonies in a time when the traditional symphony was out of favor with most composers, who preferred numerous other forms for orchestral expression. A significant number of his symphonies are a great listen.

Odds and Ends: Stuff I'm Following

2011-12-28T09:08:00.025-05:00

"May you live in interesting times" is a well-known English phrase of undetermined origin. Probably every lifetime is filled with interesting times. At any rate, 2011 is certainly no exception. Here are a few loose ends of things I continue to follow (in no particular order, for the most part)...

Cyber Monday was indicative of the good holiday season for retailers, possibly indicating a stronger US economic recovery even as Europe teeters toward recession. It was not a positive season, however, for the former retail giant Sears, which plans to close over 100 stores next year.

The Chinese, with typical Maoist zeal, see the "excess" of the US to be its inevitable downfall. Whether that is true or not, 2011 was one crazy year economically. Just look at these numbers. As the "lost decades" begin to stack up, ever-growing pressure is placed on the viability of democracy itself. Nevertheless, initial jobless claims are at a 44-month low. That certainly won't hurt Obama's dicey chances for re-election.

The Euro-zone crisis has led to a stronger US dollar which has driven the price of gold down considerably. I am still way ahead with my gold investments overall, but the recent correction has wiped-out a large percentage of my gains since the all-time peak gold price in August. Ouch.

Here are the best space pics of 2011 as chosen by National Geographic.

The music of The Doors is proving to be as relevant as ever. I've been listening to them off and on for the past few weeks.

The whole concept of "Personhood" is part of the zeitgeist. In Mississippi, voters decided not to apply the term to the fetus. In Los Angeles, voters decided to buck last year's ridiculous ruling by the Supreme Court regarding freedom of speech. Perhaps sanity will eventually prevail on this issue.

On a different note regarding the idea of "Personhood", 2011 was the year of protests. From the Arab Spring to the "Occupy" Movement to Moscow to Kazakhstan, the whole world seems pretty pissed off. So much so that Time Magazine's Person of the Year isn't even a person.

I downloaded Flipboard several weeks ago and it has literally changed the way (and the efficiency with which) I scan the internet for news and information. Just a fabulous app.

Ron Paul is threatening to shake up the GOP primary process with a possible win in Iowa. Currently, he is running neck-and-neck with a fading Newt Gingrich and GOP mainstream favorite Mitt Romney. Although charges of racism have recently surfaced against him, these seem to me to be more indicative of his strength as a candidate rather than anything else. The political crap rarely rises to the top unless someone is a true threat. It is absurd to believe Paul, whose campaign spokesman is black, is racist even though he did vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. I think Paul's success goes beyond his Libertarian leanings and quite probably exposes the frustration American voters have not just with the President and Congress, but with the political parties themselves. I still think Ron Paul is the most interesting politician in America today and I intend to post more about him in 2012.

Arab observers have been allowed into Syria. Apparently, the shooting of civilians continues despite the presence of outside monitors. Estimates of civilian deaths in that troubled state run as high as 5,000. Reports of massacres have become common. This is an unprecedented expression of fascist brutality with minimal worldwide response so far. A stark contrast to the response by the West to Libya earlier this year.

On a happier note, I am very much looking forward to Christopher Nolan's final Batman film in 2012. Reports so far are that it will be a feast for the eye and the brain. I expect nothing less from Nolan. The six-minute "prologue' to the film is appearing during the previews of the IMAX version (only) of the latest Mission Impossible film. It is slightly tempting to go see that but I doubt I will.

Scientists claim they are close to discovering the so-called "God Particle". I'm not sure what we will do with that knowledge if and when we attain it. Quantum physics and cosmology largely remain a mystery to my feeble brain. The search for the Higgs boson has taken many years and at considerable expense. Maybe we can build a world of peace with it after it is found??? Meanwhile, astronomers are getting better and better at discovering Earth is probably not all that unique in the universe.

A Dutch architecture firm has apologized for designing a portion of a South Korean high-rise development that, to many people including myself, looks a lot like the Twin Towers exploding. An interesting design meant to connect the two buildings. But, what were they thinking?

The Iraq War (a pointless war started, in part, by misleading information regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction) officially came to an end this month. Even as the fragile "shotgun" democracy we leave behind seems to be unraveling. The last of our troops left the country a few days ago.

Somehow, Iran seems to have managed to capture an intact US Drone. As Iran apparently continues to attempt to develop a nuclear weapon, their emerging worldwide influence is a cause for concern in the US. Iran's navy is starting to flex its comparatively trivial muscles in a display of power. The threat here is that Iran might try to close the Strait of Hormuz and disrupt the shipment of oil out of the Persian Gulf. This does not bode well for future peace in the region.

US relations with Pakistan (always an iffy proposition as shown in this excellent article in The Atlantic) have worsened recently due to what was apparently a miscommunication between US forces patrolling the border with Afghanistan resulting in the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers. It is tragic and it makes Pakistan more likely to become the "Cambodia" of the Afghan War. Of course, Pakistan is disputing the findings of a US military investigation into the incident. Events like this are always big news while the constant, daily drip of insurgents from Pakistan back into Afghanistan (with assistance from Pakistani radical groups) goes relatively unreported.

One of baseball's most disgraceful players, Barry Bonds, got off with two-years of probation for obstructing justice. My wish is that he never makes it into the Hall of Fame. Wussy.

Kim Jong Il died. The last Stalinist state on Earth now mourns for the man as if he were a god.

Archaeologists have discovered an 1,100 year-old Mayan site in North Georgia, within two hours drive of my house. Fascinating and indicative of the power and reach of Maya civilization.

My current reading material includes: Patrick Alexander's reader's guide to Proust, Milan Kundera's Immortality (Kundera is my favorite contemporary writer - though he hasn't written any fiction in more than a decade), Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness, and Albert Seaton's classic Russo-German War. Jennifer's parents gave me a wonderful book on the art of Renior for Christmas which I am enjoying. As usual, my reading habits take me in all sorts of different directions.

What Christmas Is All About

2011-12-25T09:04:00.001-05:00

Stormy Christmas

2011-12-23T17:35:00.039-05:00

The view today of my parent's yard, the rubble of my dad's barn, various sheds and outbuildings, and what's left of my grandparent's house. Taken by me from on top of my parent's house as I assisted in getting some tarps down over their exposed roof.

A little after 5pm yesterday afternoon we were hit by a large red cell in a line of storms moving through the southeast. The wind blew very hard for about 15 minutes and then it was all suddenly over. The wind, the rain, everything. But, during that brief period our power went out. Jennifer and I sat around the house, enjoy some beers and in a fairly relaxed holiday spirit.

The power didn't come back on so after awhile Jennifer decided to call my parents to see if they had power. They live about 5 miles away to the north of our land. All I could hear was my mother screaming into the phone and Jennifer saying "Oh no! Oh my gosh!"

Without knowing anything, I was already scrambling for some proper clothes to go out. "Your mom said all their trees are down and the house has been hit!" I raced out the door. It was already getting dark, near the end of the rainy, cloudy day.

I got my brother on the cell phone. He had already tried to get over to my parents but all the roads from his direction were blocked by downed trees and power lines. I took a back road over the the main road toward their house but the police shut down that road a few minutes before I could get there and would not allow me through. I went through a subdivision, knowing where I was in relation to the house but not knowing the roads exactly. After several dead end cul-de-sacs I managed to find a side road over to where my mom and dad live.

All this time my brother remained on his cell phone with me. He arrived a few minutes before me, as I was still negotiating the subdivision. "This is pretty bad. It's just really bad," he kept saying. When I finally arrived I had to swing over into a neighbor's yard to dodge a fallen tree in the road. It was completely dark when I got there but I could see plain enough that things were chaotic.

My dad was walking around trying to do what little he could. He was wearing a Christmas t-shirt with red and black plaid pajama pants tucked into shin-high waterproof boots. My mom was in the back bedroom of the house. She was fairly hysterical but I sat with her awhile to help calm her down.

Virtually all the trees around the house were down. About 20% of the metal roofing was missing off the house. It was hard to tell with just flashlights. Inside there were towels and pans and buckets everywhere on the living room and dining room floors catching about a dozen places the ceiling was leaking.

Outside, there were trees down on neighbor's houses, cars had been crushed, one house was completely blown away. My parents carport had been lifted briefly by the force of updraft wind, twisting the entire roof about an inch or so, causing some minor buckling. The carport itself was hanging with all but one of its pillars tilted or missing.

But no one was injured.

I walked around the area with my flashlight. Our barn was a pile of rubble. My grandparents house - abandoned for years since their death - had the roof ripped off it. It had been there for about 130 years, a testament to how much time had passed since anything this severe had hit this little spot on the good Earth. All my dad's storage sheds were gone. The small building we always called "the smoke house" was completely missing with hardly a trace but for the gray sodden footprint of where it stood.

This is the toughest time of the event for me personally. The realization and weight of the moment hit me hard. Of course, people die, places change, but the life memories you have from childhood are ever-treasured about the people and places of your youth. We made home-made peach ice cream under that downed tree. We had family gatherings in this now trashed room. I hauled so much hay up into that barn loft. And so on.

The weight of it came crashing on me. The past moves away from you, it becomes an echo to you, but in this case the past had been stomped on and ripped from me forever. The past had not faded, it had been suddenly, mercilessly blown away. Everything changed. My mom was crying over it. My aunt, dad's sister, who had been, like him, born in my grandparent's house, was emotionally heart-broken. I took measure of it all.

Then I was over it. Matters had to be delt with. I sat with my parents until things settled down. The ceiling started to become more stained, the leaks worse, the walls apparently having taken some water damage as well. But, gradually things settled down.

The power was still out. In fact, it was out over the entire eastern half of the county. We didn't get power at my house until today, almost 18 hours later. Anyway, I looked over mom and dad's house as best I could. Inside and outside. There was no damage on the west side where all the bedrooms and bathrooms are. The seeping water was isolated to the east side, the living room mostly. The kitchen was fine.

I couldn't do anything more so I left and got back over there early this morning. Before the circus started. The mass assault of contractors and restoration specialists. The news media in trucks and flying in helicopters. My mom and dad made both the Atlanta and Chattanooga TV news.

Meanwhile, my brother, his father-in-law, myself and a handyman that Jennifer and I rely on for odd jobs around our house got some tarps and nailed things down securely over my parent's roof. We got a jack and shored up the sagging carport, putting the pillars back where they were originally. They brought dehumidifiers and massive fans into my mom and dad's house. All the Christmas presents had to be removed, some of them soaked. We will not be having Christmas in this house this year.

My brother's Sunday School class brought a huge tray of Chick-fil-A with all the fixings. Which was a wonderful gesture. We spent part of the afternoon sawing tree limbs and helping dad get over into his pasture to check on his small herd of cattle. They were all fine but the fence is destroyed in dozens of places over the 120-acre pasture. That is an issue yet to be resolved; along with all the damage to his sheds and barn. None of his tractors or mowers or his four-wheeler were damaged. As Jennifer put it: "Everything on wheels made it fine."

The coming weeks will be tough for my parents. Their house might be structurally unsound to the point that they will need a completely new roof. At a minimum all the carpet and ceiling will have to be replaced in their living-dining area. That is the stuff that is fixable. They are retired and really have nothing better to do. My brother and I are here to help.

Tragedy breeds closeness. Human behavior in the face of natural disaster might be the best case for human goodness. It just seems to come from everywhere, a ground-swell of compassion and cooperation and concern that we just don't seem to get in the political or economic arenas of life.

At any rate, it is an exhausting and humbling experience. Especially, at this time of year. But, we will get through it. And we will learn to let go of everything that has been blown away. We will haul it off and burn or bury its remnants. And something new and promising and deserving of our most ardent hope and appreciation (like the acts in childhood that slowly became memories in adulthood) will grow in its place.

This old ash tree made a direct hit on my dad's primary shed. Splat! Other tree and fence damage is visible. My family owns the view and there are dozens of trees down across fences and everywhere else. It will be a long clean-up.

A news helicopter broadcast this shot of a home about 1/3 of a mile from my parent's house. Obviously, it was completely destroyed and blown far off its concrete pad. Three people were in the house at the time. But, they managed to get into the bathroom and survived.

Another news helicopter shot, this one of my grandparents house. It has stood here since the 1880s. Plans are to bulldoze everything now.

A local, reliable handyman, myself, and my brother get ready to start putting down tarps. At the moment we are trying to figure out what is best to do about a two-foot hole in the roof and all that wet insulation that is underneath weighing down on the living room ceiling. Some experts will have to handle that. Fortunately, we know a good one.

From Clovis to Tebow

2011-12-15T10:14:00.020-05:00

Recently, a high school football coach from my area won a state championship game. The first words out of his mouth after he won the game were: “I’d like to thank my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Without Him we would not have won today.” Seems his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ (LSJC) didn’t care much for the efforts and aspirations of the losing team.

A few days ago, there was a very lengthy article in the Wall Street Journal on the Tim Tebow phenomenon entitled “God’s Quarterback”. It was an in-depth analysis not just of the ever-lucky, talented Tebow but of the entire scope of Christianity versus Secularism in sports, as well as the history of religious motivation in sporting activities. For the record, it makes clear that even though Tebow publicly offers prayer to LSJC on the sidelines, God’s quarterback admits God doesn’t play favorites in football games.

Apparently, what motivates Tebow to pray like that is not to seek cosmic favoritism but, rather, to grant him as an individual the ability and focus necessary for peak performance. Even though I do not believe in the LSJC and I think that high school coach is full of shit, I respect the rights of these individuals (and any person of religious faith, for that matter) to express their faith as they see fit, publicly or otherwise. Just don't try to drag the world along behind you.

It has always been a part of our humanity to seek more control in the haphazard nature of existence or to “please the gods” for various reasons. Grant us a good harvest. Heal the sick. Forgive us for our disfavor so clearly demonstrated by recent calamities of storms and floods or whatever. Most of us are no different today than we were many millennia ago, perhaps in the Neolithic period, when apparently religious practices grew beyond mere green shoots. Religion is a biological part of our humanity and a mainstay of cultural cohesion, which – of course – is why religious people have such a problem with all the implications of secularism. Secularism often seems to threaten the fundamental paradigm of biology and culture.

At any rate, reading about Tim Tebow and considering what a prominent role Christianity plays in sports today got me to thinking about ways this has manifested itself throughout history. Perhaps the best examples of this sort of thing are the conversions of Constantine the Great and Clovis I in connection with great battles, the metaphorical equivalent to today’s combat on the gridiron.

Constantine converted to Christianity after his victory in the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312. Clovis did the same at the beseeching of his wife, Clotilde, following his victory in the Battle of Tolbiac somewhere between 496 and 506. Without these conversions as a result of victory of the battlefield (as opposed to deep spiritual conviction) Christianity as we know it would have been completely different.

This is especially true of Clovis I. At the time of his great victory, he favored the form of Christianity, widely adhered to throughout Europe at the time, known as Arianism. Arian Christianity denied the holy trinity and was fundamentally at odds with Catholicism. What attracted Clovis toward conversion was not the love of LSJC but the power of the Old Testament God of Wrath. Victory proved the power of God and Clovis definitely wanted to align himself with the force that would expand his empire. Ditto Constantine. Ditto a slew of commanders and leaders before and since.

The Wrath of God, not the love of LSJC, made modern Christianity possible. Even today, it is the power and fear of the God of Wrath more than the Love of LSJC that motivates simpleton Judeo-Christian believers. For the wrath-led it is "Mercy" more than "Love" that is the divine manifestation of LSJC. Believers motivated by more modern and contemporary influences transcend these traditions by stressing love over power, perhaps a reflection of the Age of Enlightenment within postmodern culture.

The burden of the Judeo-Christian heritage is that god reveals himself in history. From the perspective of Christianity, that means how history plays out in terms of empires and wealth and progress is all a manifestation of god on earth. If things are going well for a particular culture or society then it is a reward from either God the Father and/or LSJC. If things don’t go so well then it is a sign of punishment or disfavor on society. This sort of thinking is prevalent in the news. Everything from the events of September 11, 2001 to the AIDS virus is interpreted as almighty judgment.

Not all Christians believe this way, of course. It is, as I said, a fundamental discourse between believers stemming from the burden of god’s revelation through history and whether that entails mostly wrath or mostly love.

To come full circle, this same thinking is at work today with Tim Tebow and that high school coach that won the state championship. LSJC is a force in the world and, therefore, a force in football games and such. A force in individual performance in sports, business, relationships, etc.

While I respect the rights of these individuals to express their beliefs (I do not oppose public prayer even in schools for that matter, it bothers me not), I nevertheless submit that the “truth” of all this does not lie in any specific belief but, rather, in the interplay of belief systems. Human Being is a dynamic, quite chaotic, thing really. Like the cosmos as a whole. There is projected order within a vast spectrum of scattered random events.

One of the very few basic tenets I personally hold to be true is that human truth is a competition of metaphysical value judgments. What that means is that the manifested contentiousness between Christianity (religion) vs. Secularism (humanism) on the football field is the truth. So, I guess I believe the truth is revealed in history as well, just not the way in which the Reverends Robertson and Falwell intend.

The dynamic nature of humanity is such that it is unhealthy for any one belief system to dictate the behavior and expression of humanity. To me, looking at the world multiple ways is at its core a good thing and is a natural (even logical) extension of our genetic diversity. There is a high survival value embedded in our differences in everything from disease to politics. It is also natural that each of us holds that our perspective is more exacting and clearer than opposing or diverse perspectives. Thus, each truth claim on this good Earth is part of a meta-competitive nature of truth claims.

Whether it be Tebow the First or Clovis the First, the use of LSJC as a motivator for strength or as a revelation of power is part of who we are as a whole. For my part, let Tebow pray all he wants. My guess is, in the long run, it will be more about the nature of professional football than the nature of god that will show us how great or mediocre he really is. And then we can debate over whether LSJC had anything to do with it at all.

Kubrick's Barry Lyndon

2011-12-06T19:38:00.084-05:00

A delicious, slightly erotic moment whilst gambling with cards in one of the now-famous candlelight scenes from this Kubrick masterpiece. Watching these scenes seems particularly appropriate for this holiday time of year. Click for larger images. These screenshots are not, of course, of Blu-ray quality and don't do justice to the actual experience of viewing the film.

Stanley Kubrick is my favor all-time director, as I have mentioned before. Though he only made a dozen commercial films, many of these are cinematic masterpieces. It is true that his films are more rationally constructed than emotional. But, the overall effect he achieves with each success is fundamentally emotional for me. I have no idea why this is so.

After his string of critically acclaimed, controversial, and (to varying degrees) commercially profitable films, Paths to Glory (1957), Spartacus (1960), Lolita (1962), Dr. Stangelove (1964), 2001 (1968), and A Clockwork Orange (1971), Kubrick had by 1972 established himself as a unique and powerful independent director. But, the film he had always wanted to make, a film about Napoleon Bonaparte, remained unrealized for various reasons (mostly financial). Kubrick eventually collected a library of some 1500 books on Napoleon and the Napoleonic Period. He wanted authenticity in his drama.

Instead, Kubrick’s next effort resulted in the most beautiful movie ever shot on film. More exquisite than even a visual feast like Avatar, the entire experience of Barry Lyndon (1975) is one of almost gorgeous rapture. The story is thoroughly slow and (almost) devoid of action; the unconventional winding rise and fall of a common man up to aristocracy only to lose everything including his left leg. A few skirmish battles, a fist-fight, a whipping, three duels, some sharp fencing, there are some tense scenes but the pacing is extended between them by an authentic slowness that represents the sense of Time of the society depicted. Barry is lucky and also very good at fist-fighting and fencing, which help him along before his fall.

For all his faults, Barry was a superb swordsman.

Barry's troubles really started when he began to deal harshly with his step-son, who jealously hated him from the beginning.

This shot is composed in the style of classic rococo painters like Jean-Antoine Watteau.

Ever since I shifted my new DVD purchases to mostly new Blu-ray purchases and enjoyed watching films in outstanding high-definition, I have wanted to watch Barry Lyndon in high-def. But, for years it was not available in that format. Finally, this past summer, a Blu-ray rendering of the film was made available – exclusively by amazon.com as it turned out.

I purchased the Blu-ray a few weeks back and have not been disappointed; though with Barry Lyndon you have to remember that Kubrick intentionally shot almost the entire film in soft focus, with natural light and candlelight, like a painting. For that reason, even in high-def many scenes in the film are not as sharp as a typical Blu-ray. Nevertheless, the differences between the DVD and the Blu-ray are obvious. The film is much more vivid and, therefore, ever more breathtaking in many of its cinematic moments.

Kubrick moved from New York to England in 1972 with the idea that he was going to make his Napoleon film. But, for various reasons I won’t go in to here, he instead rechanneled all his research and acquired knowledge into making Barry Lyndon, which is based on a novel written in 1843 by William Makepeace Thackeray taking place roughly 50 years before Napoleon’s time. Kubrick would live in England the rest of his life.

Kubrick had attained a level in his career where he could make a film on almost any subject and receive some guaranteed distribution by a major movie company. There were hundreds of thousands of movie-goers world-wide that would automatically see any film he made. With Barry Lyndon he maintained so much secrecy about the film’s subject matter that he got Warner Brothers to back the film with only the knowledge that it would star Ryan O’Neal and Marisa Berenson, where it would be shot, and dates on which shooting would occur. The story and nature of the film was undisclosed. The secrecy was soon spoiled by Variety Magazine just before filming began in January 1974. Kubrick’s agreement with Warner Brothers entitled him to 40% of the profits of the film.

Ryan O'Neal as Redmond Barry, later Barry Lyndon.

Marisa Berenson as Lady Honoria Lyndon.

By then Kubrick had resolved many problems with doing his authentic period piece. Not the smallest of them was how to use completely natural lighting throughout the film, especially nighttime candlelit scenes. For those wonderful, now somewhat iconic, parlor scenes Kubrick used special lenses recently developed by the Zeiss Company for NASA’s Apollo Program.

Authentic costumes and interiors play a major role in the effect of the film.

But, working in complete candlelight also created the problem of being unable to see what the director was shooting through the eyepiece of the camera. So, Kubrick retrofitted the viewfinder to an older Technicolor technology that allowed him to see faces and expressions of detail in low light. This was pushing the limits of cinematography at the time.

The results are stunning. “Kubrick remained adamant about shooting on location and became more and more obsessed with the concept of acquiring what he called the patina of the period interiors. The candlelight would create a purity of image, combined with actual period architecture and texture. The eighteenth century could be rendered in a painterly documentary reality.” (LoBrutto, page 380)

Much of the film has a soft glow to it. Often exquisite.

At just over 3 hours, the film’s notoriously slow pacing is the chief complaint of most who can’t endure it. But, this pacing has fundamental purpose and it affects the viewer who accepts the film for what it is. “Barry Lyndon doesn’t breathe history – for history is something in airtight cabinets and varnished paintings. Rather, it exhales historical life. We are encouraged to ‘look around,’ take our time, find felicity in a draped curtain or awe an army’s battle formation. The camera continuously strikes up an observer’s attitude; takes are long, allowing the manners of the period to describe a way of life, not just make a plot point.” (Ruchti, etc., page 246)

A British regiment (actually Irish) parades before a local gathering. Kubrick set it all against a giant breast complete with nipple.

The regiment later makes a very bloody charge in a realistic skirmish scene from the Seven Years' War.

It was in this film that Kubrick first pushed the number of takes in a given shot to the extreme. 20 to 50 retakes of every shot was not uncommon. Kubrick experimented more fully with the effects of prolonged repeated takes on a scene. How actors would subtly vary their performances out of sheer boredom or frustration. He would let the camera run and run in what amounted to filmed rehearsals of scenes just to capture something small but spontaneous to include in the final version of the film.

While the scenes in Barry Lyndon were rehearsed to death, Kubrick nevertheless allowed his actors a great deal of latitude in developing their own interpretations of their characters. Rather than dictate everything, he consistently guided in small details. “Now, let’s try it this way” or “more of this and less of that” were frequent reasons for further shooting but the first takes were given by each actor mostly working on a self-interpration. Constant tweaks with specific direction based upon rather self-searched acting was his modus operandi with the intent of capturing not acting but behavior.

Kubrick succeeds at every artistic level. Musically rich, as with all Kubrick works where he enjoyed complete control, Barry Lyndon is rewarding. Kubrick’s musical choices for his films are dazzling in almost every case. Kubrick’s ear was every bit as brilliant as his eye and mind. “The extraordinary sequence when Barry duels Lord Bullingdon was just one line in Kubrick’s screenplay reading, “Barry duels with Lord Bullingdon.” The sequence took forty-two working days to edit. Kubrick had listened to every available recording of seventh- and eighteenth-century music, acquiring thousands of records to find Handel’s sarabande used to score the scene.” (LeBrutto, page 405)

The final duel in between Barry and his step-son. Barry is shot in the leg.

The iconic opening shot. The duel where Barry's father is killed.

Barry duels a British officer. He wins the slow, tense encounter.

Unfortunately for Stanley this film would not be very profitable. It made money throughout Europe, in France particularly. But, it was blandly received in the US. By Hollywood accounting standards, it never turned a profit domestically. Kubrick made very little money on the film. This lack of financial success was a highly motivating factor for him to make his next film more lucrative for his personal finances. He made a horror film based on a pop genre writer’s best-seller novel starring the best actor of that time, Jack Nicholson. The Shining would be his highest domestic grossing film and a great money-maker worldwide.

Watching Barry Lyndon is a wonderful experience even if on DVD. But, I am very pleased with my Blu-ray upgrade of this film’s unique and supreme visual experience. Barry Lyndon is the ultimate period film. Nothing like it surpasses it. You can get a small sampling of what the film is like by watching this youtube tribute here.

These screenshots attempt to convey Kubrick's knack for achieving scenes of painting-like quality. Click to enlarge. Though they are only web pics they are glimpses of the visual experience of the film.

No studio lighting was used throughout the film. It is all natural - or candlelight. Simply gorgeous.

Not for Sale: 20 years, One Owner

2011-12-02T08:53:00.045-05:00

My 1991 Subaru Loyale. This was the first new car I ever purchased. It has an old-fashioned family stationwagon design.

I bought my Subaru Loyale in 1991. That makes it an antique this year. I have a little over 177,000 miles on that car. Not that many miles really for a car I’ve owned for 20 years.

It was originally Jennifer’s primary car in the early 90’s until we bought the Lumina we still own in 1995. Then it became a hand-me-down / camping vacation mobile. The Subaru has been an outstanding car. It still gets 33 MPH on the highway and about 29 around town. I usually can drive around for two weeks on one tank of gas. It handles great and has a very smooth ride. It rattles a lot and is a noisy car but, hey, it’s an antique.

My Subaru leaks a little oil and has a small brake fluid leak no one can seem to locate. I add about a half quart of oil to it every two months and some small amount of brake fluid in that time as well. The radio hasn’t worked in it for years. I drive silent wherever I go in it. If alone, I often sing to myself while driving. It is enjoyable. There is a small pop crack where the windshield (my second windshield, the first replaced about ten years back because of a perpetually running crack on it right through the center of the driver's vision) hit some flying gravel about a year or so ago, but it seems stable and is the size of a quarter.

The passenger front headlight is tilted slightly away from the center of the Subaru. In recent years it has been backed in to three times in the exact same spot. The first time I repaired everything. The next two times I left it. Notice the slightly bent front tag of the flag honoring the Cherokee Braves regiment.

Several scrapes and scratches ornament the vehicle. A couple of dents from some near-misses, a slightly bummed out passenger-side front bumper from being hit three times through the years by various vehicles backing into exactly the same spot. Last summer I made my biggest mistake in it by backing in a thick fog into a large SUV, putting a heavy dent near the middle of my hatch. Now, the Loyale’s hatch can’t open and close, though the rear lights and even the rear window wiper still works perfectly.

One of the lowest moments in my driving career was backing into a SUV and putting this dent in the hatch. So what if it no longer opens! I rarely used the trunk anyway. For awhile I thought about buying a used hatch and having it put on but...nah.

Needless to say, I have a lot of personal history with this car. It took Clint, Mark, Jennifer and I on a backpacking trip down to Cumberland Island with all our stuff one year. It has made several trips to Cumberland and to Florida beaches. It took Jennifer and me to the Atlanta airport when we flew to Cancun in 1993. I went to a ton of Braves games in this car.

This was the car in which I drove Jennifer to the hospital when she was having birthing contractions. She was threatening at one point to push and I coached, “No no no! We’re not going to push we’re going to breath!" And we both breathed deeply and rapidly together, me in the front driving on the interstate at over 80 miles per hour, she laid out across the back seat in labor, drifting between pain and ecstasy. My daughter was born 45 minutes after we got to the hospital. An exciting evening.

The Subaru took us to Swain Cabin to meet up with the ‘Dillios the first few times we went there. On roads clearly marked as “not suitable for passenger vehicles.” Of course, it is a perfect vehicle for driving around in the snow and sleet we get on occasion here. Particularly now, since the car itself is not really worth much in terms of resale or trade-in value. If it skids off the road or is hit by someone else driving in rough winter conditions I will probably just junk it. Though it no longer serves as a “family vehicle” for any kind of trips or fun, it has been my primary mode of transportation for the last 15 years. I put about 25 miles a workday on it plus a bit more on the occasional foray when I drive it 20-30 miles to a nearby large town.

Many of my extended family members and most of the people I work with snicker at the Subaru. While they respect its longevity, they think it is silly for me to drive such an old, leaking, rattling car with the painted surfaces starting to oxidize. But, I like the weathered look and the “character traits” of my car.

The oxidized look gives the vehicle a healthy, hippie feel don't you think?

They are also trapped in the American cultural mind-set that old cars are for hobbies and poor people. They consider it odd that we don’t trade our cars in for new ones. But, I am a “free spirit” in the Nietzschean sense about cars. I am not chained to the consumer prejudices that drive most people about cars. I like to buy something new, keep it maintained, and drive it forever. It is pretty much proven that this is the far more practical and inexpensive way to own passenger vehicles. Buying and trading in every few years might create a jolt of excitement and (in my view) twisted entertainment for the consumer but it is a waste of money.

Of course he never wrote about the automobile, but Thoreau cautioned against “a life of quiet desperation” fueled by human beings becoming enslaved to the things they own. “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” He advocated living more simply, proclaiming the value to keeping things, of wearing – for example – old clothes. “Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however, ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping wine in old bottles.” (all quotes from Walden, the first chapter “Economy”)

So, here’s my Subaru 20 years later still chugging along. Though I have all the belts and hoses replaced periodically and I have been proactive in its maintenance with things like changing the water pump before the old one gave me any trouble, I do not plan to have it repainted or even have the dent in the hatch fixed. Except for the radio and such, everything works. All that is essential to get me to and from work is operating fine. I am the same person when I arrive somewhere in it as I was before I got there. The car doesn’t make the man, nor does it even entertain me.

Of course, I know how counter cultural all this is. Antique cars evoke a different state of mind than what I am expressing here. They are for fixing up and polishing and showing off. That is the implied nuance of being “antique.” But, strictly speaking, “antique” is a state-of-mind and, being a (mostly) free spirit, my state of mind is my own. Let the world snicker at my antique car. It is more than paid for, costs almost nothing in taxes and insurance, I keep it cleaned and vacuumed on the inside.

True, it requires some degree of major maintenance every 4-5 years but this still works out to be far less than making regular car payments or – even worse (a sin in my book) – going the lease rout where money is traded for nothing because you end up never owning anything. That is the essence of Thoreau’s plea for freedom from enslavement and of Nietzsche’s desire to transcend cultural norms to be your own person. Not part of the TV-driven herd lusting for ever larger vehicles that talk to you and have hemi’s and parallel park all by themselves. That is all kinda cool. But, so is not owing anything on it.

I do need a new set of tires though.

Just to be clear, however, I want to stress that I am not completely immune to the whole automobile in American culture thing. My wife has a 2008 Cadillac SRX and my daughter drives a 2008 Honda Accord. Both are pretty cool vehicles. And I plan to buy a new car sometime in the near future when local dealerships get a little more desperate for consumers. Right now sales have picked up. Not as much reason to give me a real deal on price. But, I still won’t sell either my Subaru or our Lumina. Everything works and they are cheap to own. Besides, when you have to have a car in the shop it is nice having a backup.

I guess it is safe to say I am pleased with my purchase.

Goodbye to the "Hobnail Boot"

2011-11-21T09:59:00.013-05:00

When I was in my early and mid-teens, my dad and I spent most every Saturday during the winter months cutting trees on our farm and clearing land for more pasture. We hauled most of what we cut off one truck load at a time, selling it for pulp wood. During the infrequent rest periods when dad had to re-sharpen his chain saws or we took a water break, he let me turn on the fiddly radio in the truck and I got to listen to the Georgia Bulldogs play football. It was my first contact with the legendary Larry Munson.

At that time, Munson had already been announcing Georgia football for about ten years. His distinctive style of delivery, his sense of excitement and attention to detail, his willingness to get inside the Georgia fan’s head and seem to express exactly what everyone was thinking at a given point in a given game, made him incomparable to me.

Whenever I got a chance to watch a Georgia game on TV, I always turned the sound down (as did most other Georgia football fans) and listened to Larry Munson announce the game on the radio. It just didn’t feel like the game had started until Munson barked out “Alright, get the picture…”

Munson died last night at age 89. I had listened to him as recently as his last broadcast year when his eyesight had deteriorated to the point where he could no longer announce a play until after the crowd had already reacted to it. Even though the voice was still there, it was time for him to retire and he knew it.

You can find Larry Munson all over the internet. All his greatest calls are available both online and on DVD. In fact, as the college football season started this year I played his great “Lindsey Scott!” call for Jennifer, who is a Georgia Tech graduate. She didn’t particularly care for the nature of the call but she could appreciate the extras Munson added after the play was over. “Man, is there going to be some property destroyed tonight!”

Larry always had something to add to an exciting situation. How 'bout "We just stepped on their face with a hobnail boot and broke their nose!" Or... "My god almighty he ran right through two men!" Or... "We saved ourselves! No we didn't, Old Lady Luck saved us!" Or... "So, we'll try to kick one 100,000 miles..." You can see youtube tributes here and here.

Larry's style went beyond the actual fact of the great play and placed it in a higher football context. It was a declaration of the significance of the play and what it would mean to football fans after the game. For Munson, especially in his prime, it was always about verbally capturing the essence of moments throughout a game and placing them in the context of the spirit of the entire football season. That is why Munson always seemed to get better to listen to as each season rolled along. Even during the years Georgia didn’t play so well.

I only met Larry Munson twice and he never saw me either time, as they were both public events. The first was during the UGA homecoming parade in 1977, when I was a freshman. He was sitting on the back of large luxury convertible with a simple PBR in his hand, smiling, waving.

The second time was in 1981 when they decided to enclose the eastern end of Sanford stadium. This would completely block “the tracks”, a traditional gathering place for football fans to party and watch the game. You could see the entire field except for the last ten yards of the east end zone. Before the last game ever viewable from the tracks, Munson came over and visited with the large crowd of several hundred students there. He never particularly cared for the fact the tracks offered the game to “freeloaders” but he could respect the off-beat tradition of the thing. This particular farewell was the first of many changes coming to the Georgia football program.

At any rate, I continued to listen to Georgia football games through my life, always in anticipation of how Munson would call the plays and what he might say next. But, with his retirement, football on the radio has become a thing of the past for me.

Now, Munson himself is a thing of the past. He was a unique voice in sports. As unique as Skip Caray, another broadcaster I admired that is no longer with us. With his passing the era of imagining how it all looks in your head while only being able to listen to it on the radio grows more distant. In today’s cable and pay-per-view reality, you can see everything in high-definition and super slow-motion, but you can’t be a kid again picturing it all in your mind the way Larry encouraged you to at the beginning of his every broadcast.

The Reality of Tahrir Square

2011-11-20T13:12:00.021-05:00

The Egyptian military attacked protesters in Tahir Square today. Some 1100 civilians have been injured through weeks of violence all over Egypt as thousands of people attempt to protest the way the Egyptian military wants to handle the new Egyptian constitution. This crisis has been going on for months and has perhaps reached the boiling point. The military has promised elections within a week but their original deadline has already past.

The military wants its budget and operations to be autonomous of the new government. Many Egyptians fear a state-within-a-state would exist. So they protest. Al Jazeera has excellent coverage. Unlike the birth of the Arab Spring, however, the poetry of protest is gone. This is about the interim military government ceasing power long enough to protect its infrastructure and capabilities. This conflicts with the democratic ideals and the situation seems to be escalating. In Egypt today it seems democracy itself might be up for grabs. Protestors do not want the kind of government that will be up for election soon.

Meanwhile, in Syria a bloodbath rages. Is there a better example of Western political hypocrisy in the world today than the response to the crisis in Libya versus the crisis in Syria? Somehow the Arabs get to handle this far more deadly situation for themselves. Why? Because there's more oil in Libya. It is as simple as that. Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, seems to enjoy more popular support than Gaddafi ever did, however. Syrians rally by the thousands for him though, in truth, much of it is probably staged.

Watching all this unfold over my iPad I did laundry, looked at contemporary works of art in Art Authority, wrote some, went for a couple of walks in the woods, drank a couple of Foster's beers, listened to classical piano music. Jennifer made a wonderful chicken pot pie. My daughter enjoyed it as much as I did. We laughed during dinner and spoke of holiday plans to come. It was gray outside. Most of the leaves have fallen.

11/11/11

2011-11-11T07:47:00.011-05:00

The War to End All Wars, also known as the Great War, also known as World War One ended 93 years ago today. The document ending the war went into effect famously (at the time) at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Until 1954 this was referred to in the US as Armistice Day. But, as time passed by, that phrasing began to mean less and less to anyone. All things pass.

So, now this is Veterans Day; certainly a worthy holiday to honor those who have served our country in all wars. But, today I am not thinking of all veterans. I am thinking of those who once walked this Earth that experienced the great battles of the Somme and Verdun and Gallipoli. These were battles of almost unimaginable magnitude during that war.

The military art of war adapted very slowly to the technological achievements of that time. Supreme among innovations here was the use of massed, large-caliber artillery pieces and the widespread use of mounted machine guns. As World War One settled into a classic war of attrition fought in well-prepared trenches separated by “no man’s land”, generals continued to order massive artillery barrages to “soften up” enemy positions before waves of infantrymen charged toward the bombarded territory only to be ravaged by a hail of machinegun fire.

It was a horrible, hopeless, and horrendously bloody slaughter of hundreds of thousands of humans tossed away by the tide of events guided by the antiquated thinking of their leaders. If an attack failed it was obviously because the position was not “softened up” enough. So, artillery barrages grew ever larger and longer, the charges ever bigger, but the machineguns were brought back into position in time for most assaults to be made of the face of more bullets than had ever been concentrated a given area up to that time.

Armistice Day was to commemorate that specific kind of human suffering. Our destructive potential would grow to monstrous proportions by the time of the Second World War but the interesting thing is that suffering is equally horrible in all wars, no matter if you are talking about spears or rifled muskets or rapid-fire weapons or atomic bombs. The difference is only a matter of numbers. The wounded all cry out with equal despair, the dead are equally tragic.

I will have to live to be 152 if I am going to accurately entitle another blog post what this one is dubbed. Not a likely scenario, but there’s hope. So, my mind is more focused on the expanse of Time today than simply on the forgotten name of a changed holiday honoring human bravery under fire. I am thinking back 100 years, to before the Great War, to 1911, the last time this date was routinely written on bank checks. Just out of curiosity, I am wondering what the world was like then in those years just before the automobile and the telephone and the airplane became so common as to change collective human experience.

The last time anyone was able to date something on 11/11/11 the average life expectancy for men in the United States was 47 years. Only 14% of American homes had bath tubs. Only 8% of households had a telephone. There were a total of 8,000 automobiles in use and what little fuel there was available for them was sold in drug stores. These same stores also legally sold heroin, marijuana, and morphine. Gives a whole new meaning to the term “drug store” doesn’t it?

Not a tremendous number of historic events took place in 1911. Superconnectivity was discovered. The Mexican Revolution and the Italo-Turkish War were the bloodiest conflicts going. The latter war featured the first aerial bombings in history. The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre. An airplane successfully landed on a ship for the first time. The 11th edition (fittingly enough) of the Encyclopedia Britannica was published. Explorers stood at the South Pole for the first time in human history.

Just for fun, I looked up 1911 World Series. It went seven games that year. It featured the Philadelphia Athletics managed by the great Connie Mack against the New York Giants managed by the great John McGraw. The two winningest managers in baseball history, right ahead of the now retired Tony LaRussa and Bobby Cox.

In addition to being a well-played, close series much like the 2011 Series I posted about a few days ago, it also has the distinction of being one of the longest Series’ to play from start to finish. Games Three and Four were separated by six consecutive days of rain. One of baseball’s greatest all-time pitchers started three games in that series. Christy Mathewson lost twice and won once as the Athletics took the Giants in no small part due on two timely home runs hit by Frank Baker.

Ronald Reagan was born in 1911. So was Jean Harlow, Lucille Ball, Gypsy Rose Lee, Vo Nguyen Giap, and Jack Ruby. The fading of all these personalities and public figures from the zeitgeist of the perpetual Now is a good way to judge Time as distance. It is a long way back to 1911 and the remaining karma from that Time is trivial and largely dissipated. No one I know about nor likely any of my readers have ever heard of died in 1911. There’s no fame in that regard.

Turning back to the original reason for this post, few famous persons died as during World War One. Manfred von Richtofen (the Red Baron) is the only one I know of. The few other names that can be mentioned like Mata Hari and Lord Herbert Kitchener mean nothing to us these days.

True baseball fans remember who Christy Mathewson was, however. To that extent, he might be the most famous casualty of World War One. He volunteered for the army in 1918 and served in the “Chemical Unit” overseas with Ty Cobb. Mathewson was accidentally exposed to poison gas during a training exercise and developed tuberculosis. His lungs never recovered and he never pitched another game of ball. He died in 1925. Both teams honored him in the 1925 World Series by wearing black arm bands.

At the time of the First World War, untold numbers of human beings suffered as a result of death and destruction and the effects it had on extended family and friends. The war was the greatest single shock Europe had ever experienced since perhaps the Black Plague. It led to the founding of the League of Nations and the hope that there would be no more wars. That proved too idealistic, however.

Today, suffering on such a scale is unimaginable. Thank goodness. We certainly have our share of worldwide problems. For one thing we just recently added our 7 billionth person to the planet. This will be the root cause of many difficulties ahead.

Nevertheless, by and large, the lives of most human beings today are far better now than they were then. So, for me, November 11 is not such much about remembrance as it is about appreciation. And hope that in the unlikely event I make it to 152 our experiences today will seem as silly to me in that future time as does the fact that automobile gasoline used to be sold in drug stores.

The journey from 1911 newspapers to the 2011 internet might lead to virtual realities by 2111. This, too, is a way of viewing Time as distance. Consider the change from 1811 to 1911 to today. Sure, there’s room for improvement on the specifics. But, you have to admit, the general flow of things is going along pretty well. I am not one who happens to believe we will wake up 100 years from now and find ourselves in a new dark age.

The Biggest Dodge-Ball Game of All

2011-11-08T08:00:00.017-05:00

We think of space as this vast, empty void when, in fact, it is filled with all sorts of things. Dark matter. Small solar system bodies like comets and asteroids. The solar wind. Cosmic dust. Other stuff. There's all kinds of debris in an almost endless variety of trajectories out there.

The Earth, as with the other planets, is nested in a fairly stable orbit around our Sun. But, that doesn't mean our orbit is free from all the possible collisions with debris of various sizes. In fact, the Earth is hit by about 40,000 tons of various types of space debris every year. This is not counting all the space junk launched by humans in the past that periodically falls back to Earth.

So, our planet's collision with tiny particles of star dust is a routine, every day occurrence. But, if you widen your perspective beyond the stretch of your life span you will see that every few million years something far larger than interstellar dust strikes.

A large asteroid came within 202,000 miles of the Earth today at about 6:28pm EST. That's closer than Earth's distance from the Moon and the closest any object of this size has come near Earth since 1976. This asteroid was about the size of a city block. Another will pass fairly close in the year 2028. But it will not hit us.

The asteroid is dubbed 2005 YU55. We discovered it about six years before it passed out way today.

This is just another day of gravity at play in the universe. A near-Earth object came close to hitting the Earth back in 1883. One actually exploded above Siberia in 1908. There have been other impact events as recently as 1979, 2002, and 2008. All minor incidents, of course. We know the Earth has been hit several times by major interstellar objects in the past. Our technology is sophisticated enough to see them a few years or decades in advance. But, all we can do is watch and wait.

Large chunks of space debris hit the Earth every few million years. It is an inevitability that such objects will hit the Earth before our Sun begins to become a Red Giant in about one billion years. Obviously, anything that happens over millions of years can happen many times when the timeframe is in the billions.

With this in mind, many people are thinking in terms of deflecting through a variety of means potential near-Earth impact objects. There is a planetary defense special interest devoted to this.

But, the science for all this in inexact at best. In 2003, there was a brief flurry of news about a giant asteroid that could hit Earth in 2014. Only it turns out this object will now pass us safely.

It begs the question, though, if we could be so wrong about a near-miss can we also be wrong about future objects that we currently consider no threat at all to us. One such piece of space debris is 99942 Apophis. As of today there appears to be only a small chance it could hit the Earth. Let's hope they're spot on with that prediction.

We are groping in the darkness of space and we are, in fact, near-blind. We have cataloged hundreds of potential near-Earth objects, but we still have no idea what might come our way in the debris of space a century from now. Maybe another global impact. Probably not. But...one day...

Mylo Xyloto

2011-11-06T10:07:00.010-05:00

Coldplay always makes me feel good. As I have posted before, Coldplay is my favorite contemporary band. Essentially, they have evolved into a nice blend of indie spunk with enough pop undertones to make them a mega-band. But, that’s not why I like them. I like them because their music always makes me feel good.

Coldplay began with a powerful and popular debut album in 2000 and continued through the turn of the century and a great follow-up in 2002 which, in turn, was followed by a really great live CD/DVD combo. They are formula-matic in their own style, which blends many influences. Mostly, however, Coldplay’s music is filled with teen/young-adult angst and dreams and desires and melancholia, ensconced with an energetic, young at heart passion for living.

After giant-selling albums in 2005 and 2008 and strong, sold-out worldwide tours, the band had difficulty giving birth to Mylo Xyloto, only their fifth studio album. Coldplay is not a very prolific band but their music is always top quality even if it doesn’t quite reach the lofty high hopes created with band’s first CD releases.

Whenever I get any new album I often like to listen to it repeatedly. Alone and listening intently. Or while doing chores as background music. Or playing certain songs for Jennifer or my friends. I usually research the artist and the production values that went into creating the album. My latest Coldplay CD immersion is no different.

Coldplay is composed of guys who are really interested in exploring music artistically. While they are not diverse enough to ‘recreate’ themselves with every effort, they have settled into their own unique sound and feel. With Mylo Xyloto they wanted to do something different. They wanted it to be a “concept” album.

I am really appreciative of concept albums. The work of Pink Floyd (of course), my all-time favorite rock band, produced a string of awesome concept albums throughout the 1970’s. But, that said, the concept on Mylo Xyloto is not very sophisticated nor it is put together well from that perspective.

To be successful a concept album has to have some repeating patterns, lyrics or musical fragments or repeated studio effects to help ground the theme of the concept with the listener’s enjoyment. Mylo Xyloto has no such grounding. For that reason it feels like any other Coldplay album’s decent collection and mix of songs. The central story of the album has to be gathered through lyrics that can only be found online. Lyrics are not included with the CD’s booklet or packaging.

Regardless, Mylo Xyloto is still a worthy effort featuring many very entertaining and highly listenable songs. Hurts Like Heaven sets the pace for some of the album’s passion and force, though it is not a particularly extraordinary song. Just very comfortable Coldplay. This is followed by Paradise which features some classical strings before transforming itself into heavily synthesized club music piece. One of the album's best tunes. Charlie Brown chases this, again a solid, authoritatively authentic song.

Us Against the World is a fairly typical teenage-mind view of innocent love. It’s you and me babe, alone together in the moment. Definitely been there several times before, but – as is the case throughout this album – the Coldplay sound is that great combination of a poetic, polished, and emotionally evocative music. A ballad in this case. Slow it down. A very nice piece to listen to. Wonderful lyrics.

Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall turns out to be the most commercial, most manufactured-in-the-studio-like piece on this "more electronic" Coldplay album. Which is not a bad thing at all. Neither is it a surprise, being the pre-released single off the album. It has a great rolling wave and beat that shifts up and up, the positive energy of Coldplay. A dance tune with a great, towering guitar rift and whole-band intensity. Four guys jamming.

Major Minus is my favorite song on the album. While it is distinctly in the Coldplay style (heavily influenced by U2, among others) it steps out a bit more than the other tunes. It features a techno-rock twang combined nicely with rhythm acoustic guitar and a touch of piano. Definitely a tune firmly established in alt-rock roots. Thumbing, vibing, punkish at times. Totally acoustical guitar and piano alternating with a raucous electric guitar leading a heavy bass-driving beat. Very nice.

UFO is another acoustical piece featuring the lyrics and lyrical voice of the brilliantly talented Chris Martin. But, this short song gives way to the electro-pop Princess of China. This is a more grooving dance song, featuring a superb female vocal accompaniment by Rhianna. I just wish that when Rhianna and Martin sing together at the end of the song you could hear them harmonize better together. Instead, the vocals are largely overwhelmed by the band’s loud forceful playing, which sounds great but crowds the vocals too much.

I really get in to Rhianna’s vocals as this mildly hip-hop tune cranks up the album again only to quickly shift back down with Up in Flames. This is a good example of where the “concept” nature of the album doesn’t work so well. The album feels too disjointed throughout this stretch of three or four tunes. Still highly listenable just not well connected.

Things come together again nicely with Don’t Let It Break Your Heart. We are back to a familiar wall of Coldplay sound, pressing relentlessly, somewhat carefree and open, forward. This is followed by Up with the Birds. Not a strong finish for the album, but perhaps fitting it that it is a nice song to listen to. A kind of optimistic anthem with a nice, free and open acoustic piano conclusion.

Released just three weeks ago, this is fresh, new, exciting music by one of the world’s most recognized bands. I am not ashamed that so many enjoy their music. I am definitely one of them and feel lucky to be alive when such music is new and first heard. My life is filled with hundreds of such musical experiences and I hope there are hundreds more to come. New Coldplay is one reason for that hope.

Let's Play Go To Mars

2011-11-05T07:35:00.011-04:00

Late yesterday one of my employees emailed me a link asking: "Would you volunteer for this?"

Friday marked the end of a somewhat absurd yet scientifically important (I guess) experiment costing $15 million dollars and involving six men who pretended to be astronaunts (technically "cosmonauts", which is an interesting contrast in terms when you think about it) going to, exploring, and returning from Mars. The experiment lasted 520 days and involved a "fake" landing on Mars where two of the "crew members" donned 70-pound suits and marched around in a dark sand-filled room designed to simulate the surface of Mars.

That image struck me as incredibly funny and my employee and I enjoyed a good laugh. A closer reading of the story revealed that this was not the first time this experiement had been attempted.

Back in 2000, a different mix of "crew" involved at least one woman. The "mission" had to be interrupted when two male crew members got into a fistfight over one male trying to "forceably" kiss a female co-astronaut on about day 400 of that mission. I laughed hard at that.

I noticed there were no women in the crew for this experiment. Science learns and marches on.

Still, science looks pretty silly sometimes, and completely human.

The experiment took place in Moscow. The misson was named Mars 500.

We Can't Win It Long Enough

2011-11-04T11:00:00.011-04:00

Upon further reflection, my post of October 24 on America’s war in Afghanistan was somewhat confused and unpolished. It is reflective of too much happening in my life right now, too many work and family things to remember, too many different thoughts and facts about the war to sift through, and simply not thinking coherently. To simplify and be more precise, my overall view of the war is that, like Vietnam but unlike Korea, this is not a conventional war. In military terms it is a guerrilla war.

This is my perspective. The more conventional the war, the more important the purely military considerations are over other important factors like politics and culture. By contrast, in a guerrilla war the military aspects are diminished, though not to the point of unimportance. Politics and culture matter more and often trump the military reality. At the same time, economics theoretically trumps everything but America can afford a drastically scaled-back scenario in Afghanistan.

I have no clue how President Obama (or whoever) will choose to continue in Afghanistan after the draw-down date in 2014. But, here’s something feasible, if indeed the war needs to last another decade as McChrystal says. A brigade of regular infantry (4,000-5,000 troops) remains in three or four remote areas of Afghanistan protecting a handful of bases out of which an additional 1,000 or so special forces troops are deployed on continued kill-capture missions. An Afghan force of 200,000 troops (advised by teams of American military staff with modest American security forces – 1,000 more officers and instructors with a few good fire teams alongside to protect them) patrols the country and prevents organized insurgents from massing and controlling provinces as they did as recently as 2009.

That may be wishful thinking. The uncertain component here, of course, is can the Afghan’s do their part? We are militarily winning the war as of this post. though the press is doing all it can to misinform otherwise. The price-tag of America's continuing its presence in Afghanistan after 2014 along the lines of what I mention above is affordable. So, we can economically afford to remain there. But, the Afghan’s have to become a significant military force for this scaled back approach to work. Right now, there are many challenges to training the Afghan security forces anything beyond the basics in self-defense. They have no true offensive, striking capability.

But, where I become truly conflicted (which muddles my articulation) is that this still results in a "shotgun democracy". I just don’t think such democracies last. Eventually, Afghanistan will most likely revert to some sort of central, tribal power. This has been the case for centuries there. So, while America might continue to fight the war, I do not think it can lessen the karmic weight of cultural history. In that sense Afghanistan is a winnable but ultimately unsustainable war. We simply can’t keep winning it long enough.

In this way Afghanistan is most like Vietnam. But, in the sense of a possible lasting presence it is more like Korea. America has maintained an usually large military presence in South Korea (as well as in Germany since 1945) since that war’s cease-fire. (The Korean War has never officially ended. Both nations are still, diplomatically speaking, at war 60 years later.) But, for decades deployment to Korea has meant a peaceful tour whereas deployment to Afghanistan would be to initiate and support kill/capture missions. A different thing indeed. So, we rationally snake our way back to a similarity with Vietnam. Even when American troops were used “defensively” they were harassed and attacked by enemy fire (think the 1968 TET offensive, simultaneously a decisive American military victory, yet political and cultural defeat).

Our operations in Afghanistan since Obama's Surge have been successful. But, in the end, it is probably the kind of success the American people will not support.

To the Dark Side of Saturn

2011-11-02T08:55:00.014-04:00

A 2006 photo taken by the Cassini-Huygens space probe. I found it earlier this year at this site. The planet is back lit with our Sun just barely peeking over the lower left edge of the planet, about a billion miles away.

I remember sitting in my office in my former life as a marketing and training officer of a small financial institution holding company in October of 1997 watching a video online of the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft launch. It had occurred very early on the morning of October 15. Too early for me to catch it live on the internet. So, I saw the replay on the NASA website.

It was exciting to me. Our first serious space mission to Saturn. It would take 7 years for the spacecraft to reach Saturn’s orbit. I wondered where I would be in 7 years. Little did I suspect that halfway through that time-frame the holding company would be sold to a major regional player and I would be forced to switch career paths for the fifth time in my life.

It was the heyday of the Clinton years. The economy was booming; growing so fast that Alan Greenspan was warning about all the “irrational exuberance” that pervaded the business world. That certainly seems like another lifetime ago today.

Yet between then and now, Cassini trekked closer to its destination, eventually arriving in orbit sometime in the year 2004. I don’t recall much else about the mission. Having an interest in space exploration, I checked on the mission now and then, paying particular attention to the news that came to me mid-way through the first decade of this century.

Somehow, however, I must have gotten distracted with other things and I completely missed the photo captured above when it was released in 2006. Taken from the side of Saturn opposite the Sun, it shimmers with interstellar brilliance. I found it recently while, as usual, looking for something completely unrelated. “Wow,” was all I could say and I emailed the pic to a couple of friends mutually interested in space stuff. How could this stunning image have escaped my knowledge for so long?

Cassini (named after an early Italian astronomer) is an enormous scientific achievement. Equally as important as the research aspects of the mission, in my mind, is the international cooperation involved that got the spacecraft to Saturn to begin with. In addition to the United States, 16 other nations were involved in its design and production. To that extent, the mission serves as one of many space symbols for what can be achieved when humanity works together instead of the typical bickering and practice the fine art of one-upsmanship that pervades most of human endeavor.

Cassini represents where we need to go as a species. We need to go to into space, yes. But, we also need to reach for greater degrees of commonality and collaboration. In that sense, accomplishments like this serve as a guiding light for what if humanity sees itself as a "whole" instead of the increasingly antiquated tribal-nation mentality that permeates our behavior.

At a total cost of about $3.26 billion (80% of which was appropriated by the United States, of course) Cassini has traveled to a planet roughly 10 times the distance from the Sun as our Earth. Saturn’s distance from the Earth depends on the respective elliptical orbits of the two planets. It can be anywhere from as “close” as 794,000,000 miles or as “far” as 979,000,000.

Earlier this year, it was announced that the Cassini mission will be extended through 2017, making it yet another in a series of space probes that has lasted far beyond its operational expectancy. (Voyager 1 and Pioneer 10 top this list.) To date, Cassini has logged more than 2,600,000,000 miles traveled. That’s a lot of mileage out of what was originally a comparatively small amount of fuel at launch.

The pic I just discovered this year is breathtaking to me. There is something powerful about the fact that the spacecraft didn’t just make it to Saturn but routinely explores out beyond the other side of Saturn. The Sun, rather than being the guiding light for the venture becomes the back light or accentuating light for this photo. This provides a small opportunity for me to shift perspective. I am no longer on Earth looking out, I am in space looking back toward this “pale blue dot.”

With a combination of vicarious wonder, rational understanding, and spiritual appreciation, Cassini orients me to the proper place of our planet in the cosmos. And, to a certain extent, this allows me to orient my sense of self to everything else. Far from swallowing up or devouring who I am in the vast sea of teeming infinity, I find this a beautiful thing and it gives me some measure of internal peace and inspiration and...an appreciation for broader perspectives.

A Series Worthy of Note

2011-10-30T12:45:00.028-04:00

I can’t let this October go by without a post on the 2011 World Series. There have been about 36 Game Sevens played in major league baseball history. 20 of those have been during my lifetime though I have only watched a dozen or so of them. The first I recall was the final game of the 1968 World Series which I remember watching on a black and white TV. I have seen many Series and 2011 was an entertaining one.

Stories involving "Game Seven of the World Series" are the mountaintop of imaginary baseball moments. I’m a kid playing with a stick and my dog, bare feet in the cool evening grass, and it is Game Seven. I’m up to bat with the game on the line. Or I am the pitcher, seeking the final out in a close Game Seven. Here comes my fastball. That kind of stuff. That’s what makes a “real” Game Seven special. It puts you in a position to be playing for everything.

In truth the 2011 Game Seven was an almost inevitable let-down. It had a lot of drama in the early innings but it soon became apparent that “Texas ain’t got no pitching left. They are all worn out,” as I kept telling my wife and daughter over and over to their utter irritation before CJ Wilson hit a batter in the bottom of the fifth and allowed the second unearned run of the inning to score. You just knew the night belonged to the Cardinals.

Not so in the previous game. Game Six is hard to top, by almost any standard. In my experience, it rivals the outstanding Game Six of the 1975 World Series. For my money, Game Six of the 1991 World Series also deserves comparison. Certainly, plenty of writers compare the David Freese home run to Kirby Puckett's against Atlanta in that Series. Some say this year's version is the greatest Game Six of all time. A bit of an overstatement due to proximity of events in Time and the fact that most baseball fans prefer offensive-style games with lots of run-scoring. I'm more of a pitching and defense type fan.

Nevertheless, it is certainly one of the best games of all time. Texas was on the verge of winning the World Championship…twice…and the Cardinals came through with a two-out, two-strike triple in the bottom of the 9th inning by David Freese that drove in two runs to knot the game 7-7. Then Lance Berkman came through with a two-out, two-strike single in the bottom of the 10th inning to tie the game again at 9-9.

Earlier in the game the Cardinal infield turned a rare 5-6-4 double-play on a bunt attempt. I enjoy watching a well-played defensive game and saw several great defensive plays made by both teams throughout the series. But, five errors were made in Game Six and many other “should have been made” plays were botched. Nelson Cruz did not play that Freese triple very well. Some better outfielder might have caught that ball and then the Texas Rangers are world champs.

I briefly mentioned Game Two a couple of posts back. It did not have the electrifying effect of Game Six but it was still a very tense and well-played game. It was probably the best played game overall of the Series. Game One was also highly competitive with great starting pitching by Chris Carpenter and Wilson and fine plays throughout the game.

Game Three was the most lop-sided but, in retrospect, that might be where the Cardinals won the series. Their pounding of the ball helped wear down the Texas bullpen which ultimately ran out of gas before the Cardinals bullpen did. But then in Game Four and Game Five the Texas Ranger line-up of hitters looked impossible to solve. So solid, so relentless with its offensive potential. Tony LaRussa, baseball's third all-time winningest manager, got things fouled up with his bullpen in Game Five. It was beginning to look like the Cardinals could not manage these Texas hitters. Heading back up to St. Louis for the final game(s) I thought there was no way the Cardinals could win Game Six.

But, they did, much to the delight of my wife and daughter and me. We all watched the celebration following the Freese two-strike home run to send us to Game Seven with broad smiles and laughter. I knew that Chris Carpenter suddenly tilted matters in favor of the Cardinals. Carpenter was the best pitcher in baseball by late-September. He pitched a complete game against Houston to put the Cardinals in the LDS to start with. Then, throwing another complete game, he out dueled Roy Halladay 1-0 in Philadelphia to put the Cardinals in the NLCS.

Carpenter had a great postseason. It just goes to show you how important having the best starting pitcher in baseball (not overall, just the best at when it really counts) is in the final seven-game Championship series of season. They started him three times against the Rangers. He got two wins and a no decision in starting Game Five. He was not overpowering by any means in starting Game Seven on short rest. But, he was effective by showing his experience in the early innings before the Texas pitchers fell apart. Texas scored two runs off Carpenter in the first inning. They threatened again in the next couple of innings before their pitchers completely lost it. At one point the game was very close.

Carpenter held Texas at just two runs when things could have easily gotten out of hand. As the Cardinals began to pull away, being pushed along as well by poor Texas pitching, the Texas batters became more desperate and their efforts ended in frustration. They had been within one strike of winning the World Series twice the night before and they let the game be tied both times instead. The baseball gods are not forgiving to those that have victory in their grasp and let it fall away.

Strangely, the player that made the biggest impression on me was the Texas Rangers' second-baseman Ian Kinsler. Kinsler is my kind of player. Good defense at 2B, lots of speed, smart, great effort, makes contact, has some power to the gaps, and - most of all - because of the way he wears his pants. He wears them with the elastic ends tucked up around his knees and the trousers then "draped" back down to hang there. It is unusual and old-fashioned compared with the way most players wear their trousers these days. It is also exactly the way I wore my pants during many seasons of intramural and corporate-league softball. I really like this scrappy kid.

Kinsler shows more socks than most players these days. I like that. These other guys seem to prefer tucking their trousers under the back of their cleats.

This makes the 11th time the Cardinals have won the World Series. That is tops in the National League. The DamnYankees are tops overall with 27 championships. Only the Cardinals and Yankees are in double-digits in terms of number of World Series wins. The Braves have only three in their long franchise history dating back to their first one as the Boston Braves in the 1914 World Series. So, congrats to the Cards for leading the National League in the most important category of all.

Late note: Tony LaRussa announced his retirement from baseball on Monday following this post. He has enjoyed a brilliant career with over 2700 wins. His last few victories were probably the sweetest.

Forever War

2011-10-24T12:47:00.012-04:00

This month marks the tenth anniversary of America’s attack upon united Taliban-factions and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan. Last year, many in the media mistakenly reported that the war in Afghanistan was the longest war in US history. This is an anniversary almost no one wants to recognize. The triumphant energy that inspired the endeavor initially in retaliation for the al Qaeda attacks upon symbolic targets in the United States has given way to the usual disillusionment and conflicted emotions and rationale that accompanies any seemingly endless war.

We Americans like our wars fast and decisive. Historically, the majority of Americans will tolerate a war for 3-4 years but anything after that leads to a growth of anti-war sentiment. Consider the Vietnam War, a comparison I will use in some fashion throughout this post. The involvement of "regular" US ground infantry started in 1965. By 1968, there were large riots in streets.

As of today, there are no anti-war protests worthy of note. Some feel this is because the protesters don't want to appear critical of President Obama. But, I think this is primarily because there is no draft. Therefore, the vast majority of American families are not directly affected by the military efforts in Afghanistan (or in Iraq beforehand for that matter). You need most of the middle class to be invested with the dead and wounded for there to be a genuine groundswell of anti-war sentiment.

Anyway, on this tenth anniversary it is clear that the majority of (largely unaffected) Americans are opposed to a continuation of operations in Afghanistan. President Obama is under a great deal of pressure to draw-down the number of US troops. It is a time to try to untangle the complicated mess of the war.

About 1,650 Americans have died in Afghanistan. Has it been worth it? That’s sort of a trick question. It certainly calls for something more than a simple yes/no response. There is nothing simple about Afghanistan. You have to really break the war down into its military, diplomatic, cultural, and economic aspects.

Long-time readers know that I have been a supporter of the war in Afghanistan. I thought the Iraqi War (in which Obama promises the US to be out by the end of this year) was unnecessary and a distraction to our efforts in Afghanistan. To split our focus and to shift emphasis from one country to the other to such a degree that the Afghanistan effort was neglected for years was a major failing of the Bush Administration’s overly-aggressive foreign policy. It violated some basic military principles.

But, Iraq is largely out of the picture now. Obama can say he got us out by Christmas in his 2012 campaign for re-election. What’s done is done. Let’s make the best of it. And that seems to be the story here. Let’s make the best of all the mistakes we’ve made with Afghanistan. The Iraq War being only one of them.

According to former General Stanley McChrystal, once in command in the Afghanistan (and someone I supported), we did not know enough when we went into the region. We still do not know enough and according to McChrystal, our mission there is only half-way accomplished. But, there we are so let’s make the best of it. Then, we dismissed McChrystal, which was a mistake in my mind even though his replacement, General David Petraeus, in route to becoming chief of the CIA, was more than capable in his own right.

Most people don’t understand the fundamental shift in American operations that occurred as a result of the McChrystal-Petraeus transition. Both commanders supported special ops as the key to victory in Afghanistan. But, McChrystal put more emphasis on the Afghan population component of operations. The rules of engagement under his tenor were very strict, particularly with respect to artillery and airpower support, in an attempt to minimize civilian casualties. This resulted, however, in a morale issue with American forces as they felt they were being inadequately supported in firefights with the enemy.

Upon taking over, Petraeus loosened the rules of engagement so that our ground forces could call in air strikes under a broader range of circumstances. This came at a cost of increasing deaths among the Afghan population due to “friendly-fire”. This strengthened our military punch at the expense of somewhat alienating the local Afghan people. Which approach is preferred is an evaluation that goes beyond the periphery of this post.

Still, Petraeus made only minor adjustments to our overall approach. McChrystal’s special ops against the al Qaeda and the Taliban, known as “Kill-Capture,” (originally developed under McChrystal for Petraeus when the latter was in command in Iraq), was actually expanded by Petraeus three-fold. To date, Kill-Capture has netted hundreds of insurgents killed and more than 12,000 captured. It really took the wind out of the capacity of the Taliban to recover and make meaningful counter-operations so far in 2011.

It was a Kill-Capture mission that killed Osama bin Laden. For many Americans, that marked the perfect time to start withdrawing from the country. After all, the whole reason for operations in Afghanistan to begin with was due to the organization that bin Laden put in place there. This "eye-for-an-eye" approach to defining the parameters of the war is understandable. But, though bin Laden’s death was certainly a major blow to al Qaeda, it was not a "death blow", so to speak. The organization is far too decentralized to disintegrate at the death of its moral leader.

Though there have been numerous minor incidents throughout the country, some more deadly than others, signs of still haunting instability and uncertainty, signs that the Afghan Forces are not sufficiently trained to keep the Taliban from taking the country back, the major fighting so far in 2011 has been where it was expected to be – in and around Kandahar. That particular Taliban offensive failed but both sides have recently claimed the other is losing the war.

It is interesting to note that the nature of the war in recent months has changed radically from what it was a few years ago. As recently as 2009, for example, bands of Taliban roamed at will through the countryside and some cities wrecking havoc, harassing civilians and attacking military personnel. At one point during the Iraq War the Taliban had, in fact, won control of most of Afghanistan. Since the Battle of Kandahar ended in May 2011 the Taliban and al Qaeda have been unable to sustain any kind military or covert operation.

If you scan for news you will find the usual assorted accounts of a bombing here or an incident there but you will find nothing closely approaching the type of activity common to the Taliban a few years ago. Clearly, the Taliban have been severely disrupted and can only resort to guerrilla tactics. Take away the bombings, take away the killing and maiming of largely innocent people, and the Taliban would not be mentioned in the media at all. While the number of suicide bombings has steadily increased in the region since 9/11, the conflict in Afghanistan has been reduced to just that, the traditional, pathetic al Qaeda “I-blow-me-up” strategy.

This is the clearest possible indication that the efforts of the US-led coalition are working. We might not be winning the war but neither are we losing. To compare a collection of region-wide suicide bombings with the mayhem that existed in 2007 while we were more focused on the war in Iraq is to give the Taliban far too much credit. Their ability to control large regions of the country does not exist anymore.

This is the critical point most Americans don’t understand. Yes, there is instability. That is the dirty nature of the war. While large areas of the country remain insecure from a terror tactics perspective, the ability of bands of terrorists to extract ransom and control local village leaders in their once typical strong-arm, mafia style is gone.

It seems to me that while we probably can never eliminate the threat of radical elements in this part of the world, we have successfully forced them to disband into cells of activity as opposed to a somewhat unified military force. It isn’t quite a victory but we are hardly defeated either. A stalemate has ensued in which the al Qaeda has been marginalized, the Taliban forced out of country, and the US-led coalition is forced to maintain a fragile security.

Is our experience in Afghanistan going to turn out the way our Vietnam experience did? Is the slow progress in developing the Afghan forces necessary to maintain security in the country an indication of ultimate failure on the magnitude of the ill-fated South Vietnamese Army?

More to the point, are we any closer to winning the war or, at least, bringing it to a successful conclusion? Opinions differ. It all depends on how you define “victory” or even if you want to achieve victory. Many would prefer just to have an honorable exit strategy and leave all notions of victory to the historians. President Nixon called this “Peace with Honor.”

It is beginning to feel more and more like we are in a stalemate situation. General McChrystal is right. We are ten years in and the war is probably only “halfway over”. Does America have what it takes to see the war through to completion? What?! Another ten years in Afghanistan? You gotta be kidding me. There’s no way America has that much resolve.

Or do we? With the success of our special ops perhaps we can protect Afghan operations even as our traditional forces are withdrawn. Afghanistan might become the proving ground for a small number of US troops for many years to come.

I have often considered whether or not Pakistan is Obama’s Cambodia. In the Vietnam War, Cambodia was a vast sanctuary for recovery and resupply of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. The famous Ho Chi Minh Trail snaked through Laos and Cambodia and essentially meant that forces opposed to the United States and South Vietnam could attack whenever and wherever they wanted, then run away to safety when the US choppered in reinforcements.

Pakistan today has many similarities to Cambodia back then. The Taliban and al Qaeda retreated into that region when coalition forces got appropriately aggressive with them. Of course, Osama bin Laden was killed just a few miles from Islamabad. It is out of Pakistan that the Taliban emerged this spring to attack Kandahar. Lately, we have determined that Pakistan, through its ISI and perhaps other organizations, has been connected with Taliban activity.

Naturally diplomatic relations with Pakistan are tense. We are constantly invading their air space with a highly effective Drone War strategy and committing tactical incursions (such as the bin Laden raid) in what is supposed to be their sovereign territory. I applaud our boldness to disregard Pakistan’s sovereignty and attack targets as necessary. There is bountiful evidence that artillery attacks are taking place from Pakistan into Afghanistan. Again, it is becoming increasingly obvious that elements in Pakistan are supporting the Taliban terror operations in Afghanistan. We have plenty of justification to “violate” their international rights.

Perhaps there is no better example of the complexity of our military operations in the region than in the US-led coalition attacks on the so-called Haqqani Network, operating on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Haqqani are Afghani in origin but were forced across the border into Pakistan a couple of years ago by US operations against them. Since, the beginning of the Drone Wars and the US covert ops into the Pakistan side of the border, the Haqqani now claim to feel safer in Afghanistan.

But, recent ops such as Operation Knife Edge would indicate that the Haqqani are still seeking sanctuary in Pakistan and that the Pakistani military is in some ways cooperating with Coalition forces on “limited incursions” into Pakistan. These operations are apparently having effect. Though the Haqqani continue to harass civilian and military targets in Afghanistan, they are off-balance due to the persistent counter-harassment tactics of US-led forces.

Clearly, we have what it takes to assault the adversarial forces (Taliban, Haqqani, al Qaeda) seeking safe haven in Pakistan. War is about killing the enemy, particularly when that enemy has a region of sanctuary. Take the war to them. That is what we have been doing – to greater success than the "We-Are-Losing" crowd wants to admit. Of course, our diplomatic initiatives might mean a halt to future incursions. But, not until Pakistan begins to deal directly with the Afghani Taliban inside its borders. The covert nature of our approach mirrors the covert nature of the Taliban’s approach with the suicide bombings.

This is one instance when our operational resolve matches the threat presented by the opposing forces. This is rare in military history, particularly where guerrilla tactics are concerned, dating back to Napoleon’s Peninsula War in Spain. Conventional warfare tactics employed against irregular forces often ends up a mismatch, as Napoleon discovered in 1808 and as the US learned in Vietnam. There are few, if any, historical precedents where regular combat tactics work effectively against guerrillas. To that end, we have attained in Afghanistan what I would term a symmetical approach to the operations of the adversary. If not a sign of victory, this is at least a sign of appropriate commitment of assets. A historic rarity.

There are diplomatic signs, however, that Pakistan fears not only our continued violation of their sovereign space but also close ties being facilitated by the US between the Afghan government and India, Pakistan’s long-time adversary in the area. So, as you shift away from the military to the diplomatic perspective you can see the war in a larger, regional context.

Our diplomatic strategy against Pakistan seems to be highly effective. If Islamabad wants to avoid possibly being sandwiched between India and an India-allied Afghanistan, then it needs to cooperate more with coalition forces (primarily the US). On the other hand, if we continue to attack targets inside Pakistan with our bold, non-Cambodian-like strategy of taking the war to the Taliban, we risk further alienation with a nuclear power, an Islamic democracy where the vast majority hates the United States. Moreover, the Karzai government in Afghanistan has attempted to align itself with Pakistan in any future conflict that might result from the US continuing to disregard Pakistani sovereignty.

Can things be any more complicated? As with the military effort, diplomacy seems to be another stalemate at this point. We are not winning. We are not losing. And the road ahead seems to stretch on toward another decade of commitment that American is losing the willpower to make. Apparently, nothing saps American resolve faster than a confused and unclear situation.

It is interesting how so often in war the government and the people of the land where most of the fighting takes place tend to take a back seat. Any assessment of America’s Longest War needs to remember the Afghanis themselves. The Karzai government is not the most stable and reliable entity with which to form a partnership. Again, this begs the comparison between the Afghan government today and the South Vietnamese government we attempted to prop up several decades ago.

An excellent article in the latest issue of The Atlantic gives an instructive example of the quandary the US often faces with the very people it is trying to secure and stabilize. The Afghanis are a complex mix of people, including many “friendly” Taliban tribes. Historically, those who have attained power in Afghanistan have done so through brutality and vice. Not exactly cultural traits that inspire our own internal mythology of “bringing democracy to the oppressed peoples of the world.”

Then there is the simple economic weight of the war. Can we afford Afghanistan? The answer to that from an economic perspective is "no." The war costs certainly seem exorbitant when we are wrestling with our current debt situation. It seems excessive to spend money in a land fighting people that no longer directly threaten the United States protecting people who don't want our protection.

The bottom line is that, all things considered, we can win this war in Afghanistan from a military perspective. The elements are all in place to not repeat another Vietnam. But, the central questions are always more cultural and political than military. The willpower of the American people doesn’t shine so bright as the days grow long. We have cultural ADD and, for all our boasting, our motivational strength diminishes quickly in our consumer, creature-comfort frame of time. By contrast, the Taliban are very patient.

The most recent issue of Time Magazine calls it "The Unwinnable War." Maybe it is. The odds of the US truly stablizing Afghanistan after centuries of strive and decades of civil war are really a long shot. Afghanistan will never be politically stable enough for democracy to thrive there. There has never been a succesful "shotgun democracy" that I know of in history.

Winning, losing, stalemate. Willpower, covert ops, suicide bombings. Government corruption, a violent culture, no human rights. We got to this stage because of the national trauma of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The symbolic castration of American power. But, we've stayed so long now we can't remember what we are in it for anymore.

Still, you cannot dismiss into the thin air the fact we are in a war, a difficult but winnable war, as long as winning doesn't mean everything has to be stablized. The Taliban are a complex collection of tribes and only a large minority of those tribes actually ruled Afghanistan and actually protected al Qaeda back in 2001. There are Taliban we can negotiate with, though many consider this a myth. Maybe the brother of our enemies can talk them into letting us go, letting the election process decide who rules, not the gun, not the beatings, not the fear they master so well to make the people cower before them.

It might be too much to ask. Why should a people, a violent tribal culture, leave matters of power to the chance of democracy? This is a cultural question that I cannot answer, though there is some answer, some obscure way the Taliban see their methods as being sound and reasonable in their native land.

With all these different levels of this conflict swimming round and round in my head I am reminded of the closing scene in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket where Private Joker says: "I'm in a world of shit, yes. But, I am alive and I am not afraid." Yes, Afghanistan is a world of shit. But, that is precisely where we are. We can adandon the country as quickly as possible or we can be more fearless in our approach. If we choose to leave, then what's done is done. If we choose to stay, then we must be willing to co-exist with all the massive uncertainty.

There is nothing clear here, other than the fact that (mostly likely) our original job in Afghanistan is only half-finished and the other half of the journey already feels like it will take forever.

Gaddafi, Bloody Gaddafi

2011-10-20T20:14:00.014-04:00

Muammar Gaddafi was violently killed today, along with one of his sons. The other son was wounded and taken to a hospital. An air-strike by French jets stopped Gaddafi from fleeing his last stronghold in Sirte, Libya.

Today was NATO's finest moment in a long time. The Lybian Revolt ended, the revolution was won. It is another victory for the Arab Spring. Now comes the hard part.

Meanwhile, US diplomacy in Pakistan continued at a critical stage for the war in Afghanistan.

I read all this on my iPad while watching the Cardinals play the Rangers in Game Two of the World Series on TV. The Rangers beat the Cardinals 2-1 in an outstanding baseball game.

Taking an Afternoon Off

2011-10-14T19:48:00.022-04:00

I took a half-day of vacation today. It was a bright, sunny day with early autumn color on leaves resting in a breeze, the ground damp from recent rain, though the air itself was clear and free of humidity. I worked until lunch, then I drove by Pak-Mail and dropped off 40 Fed Ex small boxes. It is part of our latest marketing efforts at work.

Before I left the office I sarcastically told my boss (the company prez) that I had no interest in working this afternoon. He laughed and said if he didn’t have a demo he needed to see he’d be gone too. He and I are surprisingly close after 10+ years of working together. That’s my longest period with one boss in my career. Work has been extremely demanding for me lately, the brain-drain kind of demanding, and I need to take more time off. I still have eight days of vacation left and the year isn't getting any younger.

I stopped by my usual package store and picked up a 12-pack of beer for later in the day. It was lunch time and people were already bustling about in preparation for the weekend. I drove home with my windows down, enjoying the 50 mile per hour wind stream my Subaru created.

Jennifer would be home later. She was in Atlanta on business. When I got home, one of her assistants was in Jennifer's office (The upstairs of my house is split into quarters. One quarter is open space above my living room, giving it a full two-story openess with windows high above. One quarter is my personal space filled with my PC, my library, my gaming table, my reading chair and lamp, my other possessions of interest to me. One quarter is Jennifer’s office. One quarter is my only closet in the whole house, our upstairs bath, and our small bedroom.) shuffling a lot of papers.

I exchanged small talk with her. I changed into a fresh t-shirt, kept my jeans on, took my shoes off and wore flip-flops out with Charlie, our english setter mix, on a walk in our woods. Being almost three, Charlie was all over the place, running, dashing, on high alert, possessing lots of energy for not being given a proper walk yet today. He ran and explored the woods and the field up behind our house, our piece of property that sort of looks out over the 10-acre space, the view partially blocked with woods. The noise of the breeze was so great today you couldn’t hear any traffic at all in the distance, mostly what you heard was early-fall leaves dragging through the wind.

Before I wore my flip-flops into the woods I saw Nala, our 13-year old border collie mix, lying in our carport. I rubbed her a long time and talked sweet to her. She has this spot on her woolly, smelly back and another spot on the underside of her tummy that when you rub it or scratch it her hind-leg begins to run in place rapidly. It must be a wonderful sensation for her because she whines at me if I don’t do that enough with her. Often she whines in vain, I am too busy and simply can’t. But, today I was in no hurry and she got a good, long rubbing. She followed Charlie and me part-way into the woods.

A new wargame came in the mail today. Good timing. No Retreat! 2 from a great little low-volume game company called Victory Point Games. The system intrigues me as it simulates a more strategic view of the North African Campaign from 1940-1942. After I came back in from the woods I spent some time reviewing the game components and rules, piddling with the first few turns of the campaign game on its VASSAL module a couple of times just to get a feel for the thing. The British can easily handle the Italians in the game's first scenario, the opening of the campaign game. This was historically the case. I really like the design.

Mid-afternoon I checked the markets. A great day for stocks and everybody. Over what? Is economic growth suddenly going to skyrocket? All this debt go poof!? Come on, guys. This is a trader’s market. Almost the same as going to Vegas. I think gold has found a support level. It gave a buy signal September 26. I didn’t buy. Richard Russell and this other guy I follow at goldprice.org were both obviously expecting a big correction, even beyond what gold lost recently. So, I hesitated and did not trust my buy signal system.

But, I have come to agree with Jennifer about dollar cost averaging. I should be putting some amount every month in to this market. Gold might go down to say, $1400, but then we’ll just buy some that month at that price. Keep the faith. On his website yesterday, Russell said “accumulate” gold and that is what I propose to do and have been doing since 2003. When it comes to my position on gold, everybody thinks I’m either a fundamentalist Christian or that I'm too obsessive about the collective economic reality of America’s and Europe’s and Japan’s debt. Gold is in a bubble, they say, or it is just not a "real" investment. No matter that I've made around 60% on my total gold position to date. I think gold and possibly silver will outperform the US stock marketing over the next 3 to 5 years.

Shortly after this, my daughter came home from school. We didn’t chat much. She is a teenager and discussions are generally viewed (by her teen self) as ordeals so I keep them to a minimum, striving to be meaningful to her when they do occur.

Jennifer arrived only a few minutes later. She was very keyed-up from being in Atlanta. Then she started raving about her assistant, who had left at 3 pm, until she found three folders that she was looking for, prepared by the assistant. “Now you are less mad,” I said out loud. My daughter laughed. “Yep,” Jennifer admitted, zipping back a forth from the bedroom to her office.

But she wasn’t. She raged into our woods, shouting until she felt herself more satisfied. Tranquil as they are, our woods are big enough to yell into if you are pissed off. Jennifer is having a tough time with her business right now. Not because things aren't going well but, rather, because she is overly busy with details and can't do the selling she wants to do and is unhappy with the patch-work of three part-time assistants that are not getting the job done. We are coming up on Jennifer's busiest time of year. It is a good problem to have but today it is nothing but frustrating for her.

I tried to calm her down, unwind her from that Atlanta haste she was in earlier today. We spent some time in our woods talking as Charlie prowled around some more. We sat out in our carport in the breeze and listened to some of the "Healing Mix" of softer, easier Neil Young music I made for her when she was recovering from surgery in late-July. We sat and talked and had a couple of beers. I had had a couple of others earlier in the afternoon while sitting in the shade amongst tall fescue and clover on the new bench in our back yard. It has a big sky view along with the edge of our woods about 100 feet away and the pole barn in the foreground. A vast blueness overhead.

My daughter left to go see the remake of The Thing with her boyfriend and some friends. She and I spoke briefly about when I first saw John Carpenter’s brilliant version of the original classic 1950’s sci-fi flick. We discussed how when Carpenter made it before computers, when there were no CGI effects. And we figured this version would have a lot more and "cooler" special effects. I told her I’d watch it with her when it came out on DVD. She smiled and said “OK.” She waved as she backed the car we bought her down to the turnaround area. Since she was driving to her boyfriend's house and leaving for the film from there (it was closer to the theater), I told her to be home by 11PM.

With the beer and the music and the beautiful day, Jennifer finally shifted gears and was going on and on about the art exhibit she saw in Atlanta this morning before her business meetings. She saw a preview of the High Museum’s Picasso to Warhol exhibit. She accentuated her admiration for Henri Matisse, who was prominent in this exhibition.

She got a special invitation to attend a pre-opening event of the exhibit at 8:30 this morning. It was a rather intimate gathering, with about 50 people attending before the museum's doors opened to the public at 10am. Jennifer got the invitation because she is a member of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She goes to NYC once a year to service a major client she has there. She went on and on about the exhibit, parts of which (not especially the Picasso or the Warhol) really moved her. She and I will go together sometime in the future to see the exhibit again. I look forward to doing that with her.

For dinner we had leftover lasagna and homemade chicken pot pie warmed up in the microwave. It was clean-out-the-refrigerator night. Afterwards we sat in the post-sunset light and listen to crickets and frogs and dogs in the distance. Now and then a car went by. The wind died down and everything was bathed in a golden tinge.

As the twilight deepened and the baying of a few cows across the road receeded, we listened to the radio for awhile; a program on WSMC we enjoy on Friday evenings for its wonderfully relaxing and contemplative chamber music as well as often-poetic, sometimes naturalistic monologues from the soothing voice of Bruce Ashton.

Later, we watched Fringe, a show in its third season with absolutely terrible ratings but to which we are nevertheless addicted. We call Friday's "Fringe Friday" when the show is in season. My daughter and I watched most of the first season without Jennifer. My wife joined us regularly about half-way through the second season. Now, my daughter watches it less and less with us because it has gotten very complicated for her and, apparently, for most everyone else in boob tube land. Only about 3 million Americans "tune in" (an antiquated term) each week. Still, it is a cult series and, other than Modern Family (which we three watch as a family on Wednesday evenings), it is the only series I watch regularly on TV.

Jennifer went to bed after the TV show. I went upstairs and listened to some classical music while reading. My daughter came home before her curfew. She is a great kid, really. She and I talked a bit about the movie and I quizzed her on what it was like, trying the get beyond the non-descriptive summary of "it was really good" and "it was so scary" into how the effects were and how the story might have changed since the 1982 version I have in my film collection. I asked her if she might want to watch the older version sometime. She shrugged, "Maybe."

Then she was off to bed, or rather off to lie in bed and yack on the phone with her friends. Jennifer was asleep when I finally turned out all the lights, closing out a relaxing half-day off from work and an otherwise fairly typical Friday evening. All rather simple really.

Help Wanted: The Next "Steve Jobs"

2011-10-06T19:22:00.020-04:00

I have no memory of Steve Jobs. Until very recently, as far as I was concerned he might have never existed. Today I feel almost utterly alone (and certainly quite selfish) in my assessment of the passing of this great innovator.

Until today I have never researched Steve Jobs. I have never particularly followed him in the news. I have never owned an Apple Computer, never owned an iPod, never owned an iPhone, and never bought music through iTunes. I am, in fact, an MP3 man. When one of the partners I work for scoffed at my boast some time ago of being "tuned-out" of Apple's little music monopoly (which is modeled after Microsoft's near-monopoly over PC operating and office productivity systems) I simply pointed out to him that MP3's are what someplace called amazon.com sells. Google that sometime.

Then, my daughter and wife (both iPhone fanatics - technology really does have a strangely alluring quality to human beings) bought me an iPad2 for my birthday. Suddenly, I got it. I got what made Steve Jobs into this worshipped corporate guru, this technology wizard, this re-inventor of the way people communicate and interact with each other and - more fundamentally - with media.

iPads are the coolest gadgets I have come across in recent memory. And just think, Steve did that. With a lot of help from his friends, I'm sure, but it was his vision that drove the endeavor. My iPad connected me to Jobs. But, it turns out we had at least one other thing in common.

Like me, Jobs once ventured to India. He followed a spiritual path. From what I read today, I believe it was this spiritual basis that drove his life and his innovations.

All over the internet today, it was easy to find a speech given by Jobs at a graduation commencement in 2005 at Stanford University. This portion struck me as particularly worthy.

"When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: 'If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.' It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?'"

"And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose."

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life."

"It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true."

"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

They gave me an iPad on my 52nd birthday. Jobs died yesterday at age 56. Though he had battled cancer for a long time and I am - as far as I know - a healthy man, anything can happen in four years. Or sooner. So, when I researched Steve Jobs and read those words for the first time today, I saw him and myself in a different light.

I know that what I do is not who I am and I also know that Steve probably lived a more authentic life than I have because he was lucky enough to meld his work and his passion. I use the word "lucky" because, best I can tell, it is a matter of luck as much as skill. Steve was brilliant and had exceptional vision but his timing was pure luck. After all, the PC was already invented and the world was ready for it. Steve had nothing to do with any of that. To listen and read some of the stuff online today you'd think Jobs created the micro-chip. Come on guys.

But, hey, luck (karma?) counts more than most things, and Steve Jobs was exactly the kind of innovator that we need to rescue us from the Fog of Growth in which our economy is currently shrouded. His innovations can not save us, however. The man's legacy is - or should be - about his innovative spirit and not the consumer products that made him rich and fed into our pathetic consumer culture.

It will take far more than a better phone or tablet PC to save our economy. We need the next "Steve Jobs" and whatever that person envisions. We need something no one has thought of that will make people economically necessary again.

And it will take a lot of luck for that person to come along soon. But, for today, the first day I ever googled "Steve Jobs", let me just say...

Thanks for the iPad, Steve.

Two Big Chokes

2011-09-29T21:05:00.012-04:00

As I posted back in the summer, history is made almost every day in baseball. Sometimes it is the “bad” kind of history. The kind of history that makes baseball fans like me suffer. Lord knows the Atlanta Braves made me suffer aplenty in 1970’s and 1980’s. But, they didn’t make me suffer in a classic choking kind of way. They waited until the 2011 season to do that.

Along with the storied Boston Red Sox, the Atlanta Braves are the only two teams in baseball history to hold such a massive lead in a play-off race only to see it squandered in a September swoon. Nothing like this has ever happened before and now it has happened to two teams in the same season. Truly historic twin chokes.

If I disassociate myself (briefly) from the trauma of the demise, last night’s action was pretty incredible from a pure baseball perspective. The St. Louis – Houston game was an 8-0 blow out. So, it doesn’t count except to cap a terrific hard charge by the Cardinals when it matters most. So, my hat’s off to them for besting the Braves in a tight National League wild-card race.

But, the other three games played, all with critical play-off implications, all decided in either last at-bats and/or in extra-innings, all making history on the last game of the regular season, were simply terrific games of baseball. Baltimore eliminated the once American League wild-card commanding Red Sox with two runs in the bottom of the ninth. The Tampa Bay Rays made an almost unbelievable comeback against the DamnYankees and beat them 8-7 in 12 innings.

Evan Longoria's walk-off home-run was the first to send a team into the play-offs since Bobby Thomson's historic "the shot heard 'round the world" in 1951. 60 years ago.

Then there was the Braves' collapse to this year’s most dominant team, the Philadelphia Phillies. Taking a slim 3-2 lead into the ninth inning, after another great outing by Tim Hudson with help from Eric O’Flaherty (the lowest ERA in the majors this year among pitchers that qualified – 0.98) and Jonny Venters, possible rookie-of-the-year Craig Kimbrel got wild and allowed the game to be tied. The Braves dropped the game in 13 innings 4-3. Choke city.

It was the 26th extra inning game played by the Braves in 2011. An Atlanta-era record. See? All kinds of baseball history being made here.

Now, I have to live with this lump in my throat all winter long. “We’ll get ‘em next year” ain’t gonna cut it. Leading the wild card race by 8 ½ games at the end of August the Braves went 9-18 in September to lose the race to the Cardinals on the last day of the season.

Last year I was at the final game of the season. It was Bobby Cox’s last regular season game. The Braves were tied for the National League wild card with the San Diego Padres. The Braves edged the dominant Philadelphia Phillies 8-7 while the Padres lost on the west coast. So, we made it into the play-offs by the slimmest of margins on the season's final game.

This year it was a very similar story. Only with different results.

It is easy to get into apologetics. You can talk about the injuries to arguably the Braves’ two best starters, Jair Jurrjens and Tommy Hansen. You can talk about the horrible year Derek Lowe had (he lost 17 games and we owe this guy $15 million next year?!). Or the terrible first half of the season Dan Uggla experienced at the plate. Or Jason Hayward’s awful season. Or nagging injuries to Brian McCann and Martin Prado. You can talk about a lot of little things but the bottom line is that the Braves did not play well in September. They ended the season undeserving of the post-season berth that looked so promising just a few weeks ago.

This is what it is like to be a baseball fan. Success and failure is usually a persistent, grinding thing. The Braves spiraling out of control didn’t happen overnight or even in over the course of a few games. It was a slow train wreck over the course of some 27 games.

If I had to pick a moment that defined the choke it would the three-game series earlier this month in St. Louis. More specifically, I can point to a single half-inning. It was September 9, the Braves were leading by a score of 3-1. Their star rookie closer came in to end the game. And he blew a save. Before blowing that game Kimbrel had pitched 37 2/3 scoreless innings. The longest stretch by any pitcher in the majors this year. Guess he just peaked too early.

I can’t fault possible rookie-of-the-year Kimbrel with the weight of the whole sucking collapse. He has certainly pitched outstanding as a reliever in his first full season with the Braves. But, he’s not perfect. No one is. And his greatest moment of imperfection so far in his young career came at worst possible time. If he saves that particular game, all else being equal, we have an extra game lead in the wild card. But, as Don Meredith used to say, “if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a Merry Christmas.”

Being swept in St. Louis seemed to establish the indisputable momentum. And it wasn’t just the Braves giving it away. The Cardinals, to their credit, took care of business and finished strong down the stretch. In the end, they are a more deserving wild-card team, as are the Rays.

After 162-games, luck doesn't get you in or keep you out of the play-offs. Baseball is unforgiving that way. In the end, everybody gets what they deserve.

And usually history is made.

The Other Fragonard

2011-09-21T09:24:00.009-04:00

Honoré Fragonard's "Horseman", circa 1768

One thing leads to another. While rummaging around the internet in search of information on Jean-Honoré Fragonard (see previous post), I inadvertently came across a three-part documentary on youtube concerning his younger cousin, Honoré Fragonard. Initially, I took the younger Fragonard to be an artist as well, only he seemed to devote his creative talents toward sculpture. But, I quickly discovered that he was a sculptor of the strangest sort. He sculpted cadavers in the 18th-century.

Apparently, this is a little-known part of intellectual France at that time. Many educated persons of medicine and of certain prestige desired to own a sculpted cadaver for their personal art collection. While Fragonard was certainly not the only anatomist/artist to cater to such demand, he was one of the most sought after and most prolific, with more than 3,000 specimens to his credit. Most of these were various animals and parts of humans created of purposes of scientific study but many other pieces were composed for pure artistic reasons.

Fragonard used a method which left the various tissues of the skinned body essentially mummified. He never revealed how he preserved his cadavers. The result was an almost bronzing effect. Many of these “works” appear to be layered pieces of leather, treated and formed as a kind of collage or mache in human form. But, this appearance is merely the human mind trying to deny what it is beholding. These are all real people, mostly criminals, who died for various reasons, whose bodies were chosen to be preserved in order to accommodate various aesthetic tastes of the period.

At first it seems ghastly and macabre, yet, you can see many of Fragonard’s efforts today in a special Parisian museum. The French, obviously, had a rather twisted, if somewhat progressive, fringe taste for art. Officially, Parisian society frowned upon the apparently lively cadaver trade of the time. They also considered anatomists to be a base sort of scientist. So, while Fragonard made a decent living for many years with his mummified works thanks to his robust patronage, everything had to be kept quiet and out of the public eye.

Honoré Fragonard got his start in equine and animal practice at the world’s first veterinary school at Lyon in 1762. He was hired by and worked closely with the renowned Claude Bourgelat. Soon, Fragonard was producing anatomical specimens for academic study. These preserved not just the flesh and bone of the given animal but the organs and other tissues as well. Essentially, everything Fragonard did preserved the subject in its natural complexity in order to assist the scientific community in better understanding the workings of any given body.

Eventually, Fragonard came to preserve entire human bodies, going so far as to place them in various poses for presentation. There is one of a man offered as Samson, holding the jawbone of an ass. More infamous, however, was his preservation of another human figure atop an entire horse; an immortal rider.

This led to Fragonard’s temporary downfall. It seems that Bourgelat was less than impressed with Fragonard’s artistic pursuits and his catering to the tastes of certain French intellectuals with interests in the cadaver trade. The rumor circulated that Fragonard’s “horseman” was, in fact, a woman (something that seems rather obviously false to use today but remember little was known of human anatomy at the time) who Honoré had once loved but had died.

In his grief, so the rumor went, he had the body exhumed so that he could preserve his loved one forever. Whether through rivalry or morality or some personal dispute (we do not know) Bourgelat despised Fragonard’s so-called art and had him dismissed from the school on concerns regarding his sanity – or lack thereof.

For about a dozen years little is known about the whereabouts and doings of Honoré. He resurfaces in the public record indicate that he continued his work with animals and cadavers which were now prepared for displays in private intellectual and aristocratic residences. Apparently, it was through the influence of such contacts that he was able to attain a couple of memberships in lesser assemblies of the arts in France. He died, falling into utter obscurity, in 1799.

Any morbidity about what Honoré Fragonard created in his lifetime is tempered today by Bodies, a wildly successful of the artist/scientific exhibition that has circled through various museums of art for the past several years, and Body Worlds, a preceding exhibit. My personal surprise (a better word than “shock” in this case) was in the fact that, while researching a prominent artist of the frolicsome Rococo period, I came across a somewhat secretive and bizarre artistic world previously unknown to me occurring at precisely the same time as a well-known movement of lightness and sensuality.

This might be called the “dark art” of the time. It was certainly not widely accepted but it, nevertheless, offers a glimpse of what can be considered postmodern art – some 300 years ago. Often, it is the obscure that heralds the innovative form of the human imagination. For me, Honoré Fragonard, like his cousin, has proven to be a pioneer of certain aspects of artistic expression. And he indicates how vast the scope of Art, that highest expression of our humanity, can be; a terrific contrast to the work and sentimentalities of his cousin, the more famous, other Fragonard.

Was Honoré actually insane? It is doubtful. Perhaps he was just "weird." He gravitated toward a niche of artistic expression in his time that many people would still find objectionable today. But, provocation is certainly no excuse to impinge upon the freedom of artistic endeavor. It is all a matter of taste, is it not?

Discovering Fragonard

2011-09-18T11:18:00.040-04:00

The Swing, 1767

The fashioned slipper flings into the air from the force of the aristocratic lady’s body swinging in mid-air over the desiring gaze of her hidden lover. This was my surprised and pleasing introduction to the paintings of Jean-Honoré Fragonard. I am sensual and erotic by nature and so I am attracted to many of the preromantic works in Fragonard. The Swing (1767) is arguably not only his most famous painting but also a superb and exemplary representation of the Rococo art period.

One of the karmic ripples of Jennifer’s recovery from surgery recently was her mother loaned us a 48-lecture DVD series from The Teaching Company entitled A History of European Art. Delivered by Professor William Kloss, these lectures offer a detailed chronology of Art in Europe, primarily through painting but also including sculpture and architecture. Each lecture lasts between 30-45 minutes and is delivered in an objective, insightful, and often humorous flair. Dr. Kloss' style of presentation is so entertaining that it inspired Jennifer and me to dub him with the affectionate nickname of "Mr. Prissy Pants."

Lecture 38 concerns “French Art in the 18th Century” and deals predominantly with Fragonard, Jean-Antoine Watteau, and Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. I have always appreciated Chardin as a great ambassador of the transition from the Baroque period to the Romantic period of Art. But, Fragonard is new to me and that flying slipper perked my curiosity about his work so I decided to go beyond the lecture and do some discovery of my own.

The Rococo Movement has long been viewed as unsophisticated and second-rate in the history of Art. As a transition from the aristocratic Baroque to the more democratic Romantic and Revolutionary Art periods, it is considered “…one of the most puny styles in the brood spawned by art-historians.” (Levey, page 15) As a reaction to Baroque, Rococo often expressed frivolity and fanciful subjects. But, because of the strength of the political movements in America and France in the late 18th-century and the emphasis of the Enlightenment upon factual knowledge and liberation from the mythic and religious considerations that dominated the Renaissance, Rococo was soon deemed to be decadent and what my college art history professor called kitsch.

So, taking my professor at his word, I never focused much on the period until Professor Kloss explored Fragonard in some detail. The Rococo might not have been serious enough for the democratic times in the late-1700’s but it certainly offers much in terms of a bolder expression of Eros than I previously appreciated. Many of Fragonard’s works are filled with passion in what is depicted upon the canvass and how it is created in terms of color and light even down to the individual brush strokes. That is its primary attraction for me.

An self-portrait of Jean-Honoré Fragonard circa 1785 in the Louvre Collection.

In The Swing, Fragonard makes a representative, semi-mythic statement about romance and sexuality. Set within a womb of detailed leaves of natural vegetation, the quintessential beauty in period attire opens and exhibits herself, allowing a foot to go bare with the flinging of the slipper. She is the central focal point of the painting. She is propelled with the assistance of an aged male servant who sits in the shadows ready to pull her back for the next swing motion.

But, before he can do that, the lady’s lover enjoys a splendid view up her dress. The elderly man in the shadows cannot see the lover thanks to the shrubbery that shields him. He reaches for her in dreamy need. Their eyes are directed into one another. She is at the point of weightlessness, yet there is an energy about her dress that surpasses any other detail in the painting. This is a wonderful, carefree moment of love and desire.

The Bolt, 1778

Whereas The Swing expresses the Rococo in its attention to natural detail and human playfulness, The Bolt (1778) is an example of Fragonard’s intense and erotic energy. A man is pressing a woman against a wall with his upper body and hips. He is pressing so hard that he is on his toes, his calf muscles pronounced and presented. It is a highly provocative pose for its time.

The woman presents us with an enigma, however. Fragonard depicts her in both resistance and haste. Which is dominant in her? Both figures are reaching for the bolt on the door that will ensure their lustful privacy. But, is she reaching to stop him or to urge him on? Is he forcing himself upon her against her will or aided by her? The painting purposefully asks these questions.

Once again, Fragonard makes the woman’s dress the central and most vibrant and energetic part of the painting. The bed sheets are tossed about with an opening to large pillows in the middle. There is a fruit of some kind on a clothed stand next to the bed. Opposite that, on the floor, is a small floral arrangement. All this suggests love and romance. But, we cannot know for certain. Her hand is definitely covering the man's chin and pushing against him there. That would suggest denying him.

For me, The Bolt is more of a Romantic painting than Rococo and for that reason I see Fragonard as being fundamentally influential in art at least into the French Impressionist period. Perhaps, the best way to appreciate Fragonard’s influence is to see a detail of his brush strokes in a painting entitled Young Girl Kissing a Cat (undated). Notice the many subtle ways he uses the brush in this detail from that work. The lips and nostrils of the bare-breasted girl and the furry lump of cat are the same color, the girl’s cheek is brush-stroked so that it is not smooth but, rather, the brush thrusts toward the face of the cat which is a luscious, casual series of creamy blobs. The cat’s face possesses the same energy as the dresses of the women in the previous two paintings. Delicious.

Young Girl Kissing a Cat, undated

A clear contrast to what I consider to be two different Fragonard’s can be found in comparing his more traditional style as seen in the mythic but richly and rigidly detailed Coresus Sacrificing Himself to Save Callirhoe (1765) with a less rigid piece, Renaud in the Garden of Armida (1761) . Renaud is brushed in blobs and lingering strokes that blur many details yet create an emotional effect all its own. Coresus is Baroque and high Rococo while Renaud is pre-impressionistic.

Coresus, 1765

Renaud, 1761

Fragonard was passionate and erotic but he was also highly sensual, even in an innocent sense. No work depicts this better than Girl with Dog (1765). It is obvious from the way the girl is clothed (or unclothed, rather) and the way she playfully holds the dog between her knees that this is an innocent, almost sweet, yet highly sensual moment. The dog’s body is supported by the girl’s legs slightly above her ankles. The dog’s tail dangles in a rather provoking way. This seems sexual even by today’s standards. A sensually remarkable work for its time.

Girl with Dog, 1765

With a prodigious output of over 550 paintings, Fragonard outlived his own fame. The Rococo, and all associated with it, was rejected by art connoisseurs and historians as a relic of the aristocratic past. Revolution was in the air. The change was rapid. The Age of Reason was coming to fruition and there was little respect for the Baroque style and its frivolous though passionate prodigy. Most of Fragonard’s patrons were either guillotined or went into exile. At the time of his death in 1806 he lived in relative poverty, was considered passé, part of the frowned upon Ancien Régime, and his work was strictly criticized in the press.

But Fragonard was much more than austere Rococo. He infused many of his works with a rich emotional character that prefaced the Romantic Era of Art. A work of his decorated Jennifer’s bedroom in her teens. She recalls seeing it on her wall in that time of her life. A Young Girl Reading (1772) is one of Fragonard’s most famous works and is clearly as pre-impressionistic and it is pre-romantic. An influential work of art even if it was poo-pooed by “discerning minds” of the revolutions for liberty and freedom.

A Young Girl Reading, 1772

"Under the patronage of King Louis XV, he became the great artist of pleasure, desire and carefree enjoyment of life. He missed the connection with the classical trend that arrived after the Revolution. He died, as reported, alnoe and forgotten in 1806 in a cafe where, despite his poverty, he was treating himself to and ice cream as a means of recuperating from the wear and tear of the day." (Charles & Carl, page 55)

How lucky I am to live in the new discovery of previously unexplored artistic expression! It is true, I think, that Art is the highest and purest manifestation of our humanity. More so than religion or ethics or philosophy, Art attempts to express some perceived essence of its cultural world and, therefore, reveals much about humanity. Exploring this new ground for the first time is a small example of my continuing sense of wonder in life.

Karma: A Word Doodle

2011-09-11T10:55:00.017-04:00

A new kind of post. Let’s call it a “word doodle.” By this I wish to suggest a certain lightness toward the subjects covered. But, this lightness should not be taken humorously, even though I find humor in many places. The word “frame” is a better substitute for “doodle” than “humor.”

My word doodles are rationally and emotionally articulated frameworks of ideas and experiences about what I consider to be central and fundamental to my intimate life. Whether they are universally applicable or not is beyond my intimacy or (anyone else’s for that matter) to proclaim with certainty. My word doodles are not presented in any particular order. I will simply post a doodle, and perhaps revisions to it upon further contemplation later, as I find a sufficient voice within myself to take a coherent stab at it.

I have mentioned several of these word doodles in previous posts. “Being” is perhaps the most prevalent frame mentioned thus far in this blog. But, I have yet to articulate what I mean by that word and this is not the time to do so now. Instead, I want to articulate something about “Karma,” another doodle I have mentioned sporadically in previous posts. Presently, I am experiencing an intense karmic period. Normally, I live a more contemplative life and karma happens slower to me. I want to share it with you and hopefully give some indication as to what I mean by the word “karma.”

Karma is a concept I have experienced and pondered for decades. I was exposed to the various expressions of people beholding to the karma belief construct (a cultural word frame) when I spent six months in India. Karma has specific meanings and distinctions in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and other systems of belief. These are woven into the fabric of their traditions. The biblical word doodle of “you will reap what you sow” is a Judeo-Christian example of believing that human actions affect what happens to the life of the actor.

My take on all traditions of any kind is my own. No culture is inherently superior in its expression and I freely cherry-pick aspects of various cultures that seem most applicable to my intimacy. Your mileage may (and probably will) vary. For me, karma is best articulated as any expenditure of physical, emotional, or instinctual energy, an adhesion of intimate indifferences and mundane happenings punctuated by extraordinary moments.

So, what the hell does that mean? Some examples might shed some light.

Several months ago, the company I work for hired a new sales manager. A real sales manager oozes karma. He came in with a lot of ideas on how things should change and many of his ideas affect my marketing department. One of the many ways my department was affected was the creation of a new and rather sophisticated marketing plan for lead generation involving a wide variety of traditional marketing methods including direct mail, telemarketing, email blasts, among other techniques. All of this needs to be coordinated and executed in conjunction with various sales calling activities. The budgeting, planning, creation, tracking, analytical methods, and all other aspects of marketing have to be planned out and accounted for before anything starts. In marketing, the planning stage is the most important, though most activity occurs after the plan is set in motion.

There is nothing earth-shattering here, just that all this activity is a direct result of the new sales manager. Activities beget activities that beget other activities which are largely unpredictable, though certainly measureable and demanding further changes in activities as the response to the original plan becomes clearer. There is a ripple effect as one thing leads to another and matters play out according how participants respond to results. In this way, karma has a “sticky” quality. One thing leads to another, revealing a trail of cause and effect. This is a traditional sense of karma.

Now, let’s add to this something mundane. Two years ago, being a wargame hobbyist, I pre-ordered a couple of large, fairly complex wargames that require a lot of time to learn, setup, and play. I enjoy playing games of this sort and this enjoyment turns out to have a karmic effect on me right now because, just as all this other stuff is kicking off at work, I don’t have time to play with my new toys. As mentioned in a recent post, I ordered these two games separately but they arrived two years later within a few days of one another and more or less simultaneously with everything else I mention in this post.

This is admittedly frustrating at a certain level but, understanding karma as I do, I know that this frustration will, in turn, have further effects and ripple through my life intimately and in my connection with work and significant others if I allow it. I am, in fact, guilty of having expressed myself in existential frustration at times in my past. So, I pay particular attention to this delayed enjoyment and try not to permit it to build up within in such a way that the frustration becomes anger. I don’t deny the frustration, however, because this is who I am as a person. So, I accept the frustration and attempt to fashion it as simple disappointment. For me, writing things out in this blog often helps with stuff like this.

I believe human beings struggle in exactly this way with their lives all the time, often in much more complex situations than I have articulated so far.

But, let’s take things out of the mundane world of work and play for a moment. Simultaneously with the hiring of the new sales manager and the two great wargames that arrived almost at the same time though I pre-ordered them separately years ago, my wife, Jennifer, was dealing with some fairly serious health issues. Fortunately, they were not life threatening or anything but they did require some highly invasive surgery. As a family, we dealt with the emotional weight of this along with the extreme irritation of dealing with our bureaucratic and inefficient health system.

For about three weeks, my daughter and I were basically taking care of my wife and the household as she recovered from surgery. Even today there is much she can’t do that I do in her place. Take the recyclables to the sorting bends. Carrying hoses around the yard for irrigation. Carrying a basket of laundry upstairs. Lots of carrying things. Things that normally she handles with ease. In fact, Jennifer normally handles many things, she is a wheel of activity. Being a highly karmic person, Jennifer emits karma and I receive much of its consequences. This is one of many ways that joins us as husband and wife.

Jennifer’s surgery meant I had to take time off from work, which I certainly don’t mind. Family always should come first. In this case, I’ve known and loved my wife for 24 years. There was no question about showing her all the compassion I could muster. There is the karma of that intimacy which I won’t elaborate upon here. I would be dishonest with myself, however, if I pretended that the time away from work and the now more clearly established general mix of emotional frustration did not impact me intimately. This, too, is the stuff of karma.

Let’s add a further karmic event. Back in May my mother experienced an emotional episode that requires medical attention. She is getting up in her years and I can’t trust her (or my dad) to simply take care of this matter herself. I needed to be personally involved to make sure certain questions are asked and certain understandings are attained by both my mother and her physician. This appointment happened three days after Jennifer’s surgery. It could have been canceled but Jennifer was doing well enough at home to be entrusted to her work assistant for a few hours. Suddenly, I have heavy karma dominating me.

Now, we are at the stage where I think I can articulate a trajectory between my work activity, my wargame activity, and activities resulting from the actual workings of my wife’s body and my mother’s body (which scientifically have nothing whatsoever to do with my work and my hobbies). The demands of their bodies and the demands of my work and my personal desires to direct my attention elsewhere, to contemplate, are all real and they are all interconnected not just in my intimate experience, but to some degree with each other.

Being away from work meant a few key phone calls were not returned as promptly. Communications with the sales manager, my boss, and my team members were affected. I simply did not have the gusto that is typically at my disposal to deal with things. Meanwhile, my mother’s body and my wife’s body have nothing to do with each other yet they are intimately bound as I cannot be in two places at once and each requires a certain, large degree of my attention.

Now, one danger with karma playing out like this is that there is a tendency to want to control everything. I want to “make” time for everything. This, also, produces frustration to the extent that I get more and more attached to every aspect of all the activities I have described. Karma is sticky. So, I try to be cognizant of these frustrating elements in my intimacy and deal with them through writing or jogging or in my yoga sessions. Treat myself to a movie or book or something; things of that sort.

But, this post is not about how to handle karma; that is up to each of us individually. There is no universal fix, in my opinion. People who teach universal fixes are silly people. They don’t understand anything if they don’t understand the fundamentals of human diversity at the rational, emotional, and instinctual level.

Be that as it may, I hope by now I have articulated how all sorts of levels of human experience and activity are interrelated and how the energy of seemingly disconnected events or activities can be connected. It is the connection of all things great and small, important and mundane that most clearly reveals the stuff of karma.

Now compare these past weeks with that first wonderful day when Jennifer and I visited Boston back in 2009. The street walk signs were all changing in good time on a bright, cloudless day, and I was in tune with the positive energy of the city. Everything was going my way. Jennifer was having fun too. I’m not so arrogant as to believe that any of this easy, effortless experience of fun was happening because of me. I had no control over the smooth flow of the day. Nevertheless, that day as it occurred was perfect in its karmic manifestation.

That karma has this sticky or magnetic quality can be shown in another mundane example. A couple of weeks ago, my friend Clint celebrated his 50th birthday at our house. Naturally, there was a lot of bustle associated with having about 18 people over for dinner one night. Jennifer probably overdid her activity during this event, but that is another story.

What I wish to share has to do with birthday cakes. My wife made Clint her grandmother’s chocolate cake and a German-chocolate cake to boot. She hasn’t baked two cakes at one time in years. But, karma being a magnetic, this-sticks-to-that, sort of thing, there was another cake involved which wasn’t planned for nor anticipated. In fact, we didn’t even present it at Clint’s party.

My great aunt lives near us and she makes the best pound cake in the universe. She is much older these days and my great uncle is not in the best of health, so she doesn’t bake and get out as much as she used to. At any rate, it has been several years since she visited us with any of her good baking. Of course, out of blue as Jennifer was baking Clint’s cakes, my great aunt calls on the phone and tells us she has half a pound cake baked for us. She’d like to come over a visit.

Jennifer has always liked my great aunt and naturally was thrilled she wanted to visit. The couple of pieces of pound cake that we ate were delicious, but we ended up freezing the rest before Clint’s party. We’ll enjoy it with peaches or something a few weeks from now. Still, the point here is that Jennifer rarely makes two cakes and, suddenly, we are inundated with a wonderful but heavy and filling traditional southern pound cake as well. Behold the magnetic, sometimes tasty, stickiness of karma.

Let's take another concrete example: My daughter recently asked to go to a friend’s house after she visited my parents. I instructed her to call me when she left my parents.

Well, she failed to call so about 3 hours later I called her cell. No answer. I called my parents. She had left a couple of hours ago. After repeated texting and voicemails left on her cell we started calling her friends. No one knew where she was. My concern heightened. She has never done anything like this before, but she is at the age when boundaries are usually tested.

We made contact with two of her friends and tried two other friends. One friend phoned Jennifer back on her cell but she inadvertently hit 'ignore'. A few seconds later my daughter finally called but we had poor cell reception and we told her to call the home number. The phone rang but it turned out to be one of her other friends retuning our call from earlier. Of course, my daughter tried to call us exactly as her friend did, so she got a busy signal. This is karma we created. Everyone experiences what might be called episodic hiccups. It is the mediocrity of karma that makes it so easily understandable.

Karma is mostly neutral. It just happens. It can come in bulk, bad, good, indifferent, or meander in slowness. Parts of it are due to my actions, such as how frustrated I allow myself to become over not being able to devote attention to things of personal interest that I would rather be doing. Certainly, how I respond to my wife's operation can lead to all sorts of marital issues if I abandon her and/or resent her for her needs. More to the point, I love her and can give her more of myself during her recovery to good health.

These are examples of how my activity shapes the karma of events, my contemplative life, my life as needed by others. But, most of what is happening is not the result of me at all. So, while specific human actions play a role in karma, it is often a trivial role. Activity in the world happens and affects me regardless of what type of participant I am.

The larger workings of karma as physical forces and phenomena is more complex. Will the thunderstorm hit your house? Will you be caught in ten miles of backed up traffic on the interstate due to an accident that blocks all lanes? Random earthquakes shiver the globe. In grand schemes of time there are possible collisions with chucks of inter-stellar space that wipe out the earth completely. It has already happened a couple of times.

On this date ten years ago BIG karma happened, affecting millions of lives on the planet here ten years later beyond their control, like a cosmic reverb.

There are large karmic forces at work that are completely disconnected from your intimate karma and only trivially affected by it. Then again, there are collective intimacies that affect things. The human contribution to global warming possibly resulting in stronger hurricanes is one example. The accumulation of public debt and its weight on the economy is another larger connection of collective intimacies on BIG karma.

If you perform an action that might be interpreted as meritorious or condemnatory, the engines of the universe do not care. Tornadoes and earthquakes kill people regardless of their karma. However, the engines of human experience and particularly the very karmic engines of human interaction do tend to reward and punish, celebrate and educate human behavior. Individual acts certainly resonate with cause and effect. Collective patterns of human behavior exhibit magnetic or conductive tendencies toward certain results.

The karma of smoking, for example, could lead to your own cancer or no cancer at all or, perhaps worse, the cancer of a loved one through your second-hand smoke. The karma of hugging generally leads to smiles and openness, a release of stress and feeling of comfortable ease. The karma of a hugging smoker would tend toward all of these traits.

Despite common perception, there is no “good” karma or “bad” karma. There are simply cultural tendencies of the effects of human interaction. Karma is neutral. But, so is clay to the potter and so is marble to the sculpture. The medium of earth and stone can be molded by skilled hands into a creation. The best or worst of intentions is no guarantee of either success or failure. But, there are ways of molding karma as the human medium of activity into the most hopeful results.

So, we have the impersonal and indifferent aspects of karma. The weather, the trajectory of comets through millennia, even the workings of the stock market are beyond specific personal accountability or control. Though you and I are clearly affected by the experience of the genetic make-up of our bodies, genetics itself involves biological interactions beyond our choice. To that extent, much of our intimate experience is, in fact, due to indifferent karmic forces of biology. Intimacy has an impersonal foundation.

Nevertheless, I do love my wife. That is a karmic manifestation by me and is a personal intimacy proclaimed in action for all the world to see. A great deal of karmic intimacy is by choice, as I hope the examination of my recent life and other examples given in this post attest. Just don’t try to stretch these moments of intimate choice into a connection with some asteroid that might obliterate the earth in another 1,000 years. No such connection exists and it is what I call subtle-arrogance to think our intimacy is connected to the universe in any significant way. The meaning and significance we each find in life is our own invention. The karma of the universe is hazard.

In this context, karma is an essential word frame for understanding my daily life and my relationship to others and to the understanding of extra-intimate events and the mechanics of BIG karma. Obviously, it is primarily a matter of belief but I find karma to be substantial as a guiding principle in my intimate days.

A final note. I do not believe in reincarnation. I do not place karma in the traditional context of what you do in this life will affect your next life (Hinduism) nor do I see it as the medium to which you are fashioned by or liberated from samsara (Buddhism). For me, it is more than enough to contextualize karma as a way of understanding how things happen in both the intimate and indifferent milieu of human experience.

There is an intimacy within indifference. Things can be interrelated but that doesn’t make them less random. That is enough.

This is the Glory

2011-08-19T22:47:00.007-04:00

Photo by Jennifer near sunset this evening. The title is her's, meaning the shining solar glory of rays revealed in clouds. It was 98 degrees today. We haven't had more than a passing shower of rain in over two weeks. Often the heat index is over 100 degrees. Everything is wilting. Our grass is mostly brown and crunchy.

Call Me Skywalker

2011-08-16T09:44:00.019-04:00

A pic of me standing at Guano Point on the western rim of the Grand Canyon last week. The vista is about 20 miles wide from here to the furtherest viewable ridge.

From cruising altitude on a bright, mostly cloudless summer morning the landscape of our nation turns from green across the southeast gradually to tan about central Texas and then to reddish-brown somewhere over New Mexico. I flew into Phoenix last week with my boss and the other managers where I work for a meeting with a Utah-based corporation we represent throughout the south. A direct flight to Salt Lake City from Atlanta was three times as expensive as a stop-over in Arizona. So, that was the route we took.

It was the first time I’ve flown since my pleasure trip to Boston two years ago. I am a complete, unashamed tourist when it comes to flying. I prefer a window seat and I thoroughly enjoy gawking like a child at whatever might be below. I saw three rather large wind-farms along the way. The dry region of west Texas and New Mexico were speckled with numerous crop circles decorating the land like green polka dots.

We had time for a little site-seeing after we finally arrived in Salt Lake. I think the country is gorgeous up there. My previous trips to Utah have all been in winter. The snow-capped mountains set against the typically jet-blue sky is something I always find inspiring. This time virtually all the snow was gone except within some deeper crevasses near the peaks. But, the snow-melt was bountiful this year. The rivers were raging and the trees were in bright green hues set against the rocky ridgelines and blue sky.

The next day was taken up with a five-hour strategy meeting with the top corporate executives. It went smoothly enough. I had about a 20-minute presentation that turned into over an hour due to some really good interaction and discussion with all the big “wheels” of the firm. Our president was the master of ceremonies, of course. The support manager and sales manager followed me with their sections. Sales have been disappointing for everyone this year but the executives were impressed with our plans for the fall and the high probability that we will close some major business deals by year-end.

The meeting lasted so long we almost missed our flight out of Salt Lake. My boss wanted to mix a little “team-building” in with the business trip. So, it was his idea to fly us all into Las Vegas after the meeting. In my mind, of all the places I want to visit in my life, Vegas was not high on the list. Of course, it is a unique place so I was curious about it. But, my curiosity did not necessarily translate into a genuine excitement about going there. I don’t gamble. My previous experience with casinos along the Mississippi River was a depressing one. All those people mindlessly blowing all that money in one of the crassest forms of material nothingness. That’s how it all seemed to me.

It turned out that none of the guys I traveled with were into gambling. So, while we were going to Vegas and certainly intended on sampling the lively culture of the “sin city,” our broader plan was to use it as a staging area for a visit to the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. Don’t think the possibilities of The Hangover (four guys headed to Vegas for entertainment purposes) was lost on me. I jokingly told Jennifer and my daughter, who both – like myself - thought that movie was hilarious, that I wanted to be the guy who was lost up on the roof. All he got out of the experience was a bad sunburn, after all.

It didn’t turn out exactly like that. Though we did celebrate the way the meeting in Utah went with a great dinner and plenty of draft beer that night in Vegas. We all got a nice buzz and one of the managers and I spent a couple of hours walking through different casinos until the wee hours. I was particularly fascinated by the craps tables and watched them with interest, trying to figure out the rules. Each casino had the same buzzing vibe and excitement.

But, before all that there was the experience of exiting the airport at Vegas and experiencing 100-plus degree heat of the day. They all say it is a “dry heat,” of course. Well, the heat in my oven at home is pretty dry too; and it cooks stuff. It was way too hot to be enjoyable. Whose idea was it to come to the desert in August anyway? Not mine I assure you.

Vegas is nothing like the Mississippi River gambling culture. In fact, Vegas is not like anything. Vegas is Vegas. It was clean, pristine, big, bold, flashy, vibrant, exciting, and surreal. We pulled in to the Luxor Hotel which was a great surprise for me. I’ve never stayed in a gigantic pyramid before. At night the pyramid is illuminated from inside the very tip, shooting a beam of bright, white light seemingly forever upward into the desert darkness. Meanwhile, the each corner of the pyramid pulsates with short beams of light that throb upward toward the peak. Not your normal hotel for sure.

Nothing normal about the interior either. It is all done in an ancient Egyptian motif. As we initially walked along the breezeway into the hotel from the parking deck, the sun was at an acute angle, bathing the off-white walkway in a deep orange hue. From the breezeway we saw hundreds of people enjoying a gigantic pool complex. Some were splashing in the water, some lounging with drinks; all like water nymphs accentuating the larger-than-life nature of the space in that particular moment. It was all so clean and positive and beautiful. Perhaps it was simple jet lag but I suddenly felt invigorated by the moment, as if I were part of some dreamscape. I tapped one of my companions on the shoulder and jokingly inquired: “Are we in heaven? Or maybe some den of iniquity?” We laughed.

They made a mistake on booking our rooms. They only had us down for one room instead of two. For the “inconvenience” we were upgraded to two enormous rooms. (Here comes The Hangover connection again.) My boss and I shared a room that was larger than my first house…1700 square feet. It was absurdly decadent and only added to the energy I was already experiencing in the moment.

We didn’t get to linger in everything that the Hotel and Vegas had to offer, however. The next morning we were enjoying a hearty breakfast at 8AM at a local IHOP before venturing out into the Nevada and Arizona desert to visit the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. The drive through the desert was interesting at first. Eventually, it became rather monotonous for me. Scrubby land, obscure towns in the distance, lots of weathered ridges. Quite a contrast to the Salt Lake area with its greenery and abundance of snowmelt fresh water.

Before monotony had a chance to set in, however, we reached the Hoover Dam, which is a short drive from Vegas. It is an impressive site, a fairly huge human footprint in the midst of the Colorado River. The enormous construction is matched by the massive man-made Lake Mead which formed after the dam was completed. We took a complete tour of the dam which is one of the most complex engineering achievements I’ve ever witnessed. I could appreciate its historic, political, and economic value.

Also appreciated was the fact that it was 108 degrees when we came out of the tour. One of the observation decks for photo taking featured a nice, wide brass hand rail. It burned my hand slightly as I thoughtlessly leaned into it a bit while positioning myself for a pic. Dumb move on my part. I wasn’t perspiring much in the arid conditions but I certainly was far from comfortable.

After admiring the achievement of the Hoover Dam we were back in our rented van headed two more hours east through Arizona to the western rim of the Grand Canyon. The National Park would have taken us almost another two hours by van. This was the much more practical solution as we had to catch a flight out of Vegas later that evening.

We didn’t realize we were headed into the middle of nowhere, however. This part of Arizona does not impress me. It is miles and miles of sameness. From past experiences, Washington state, Colorado, and Utah are more interesting to travel through.

At any rate we arrived at the turn-off for the west rim, located about 49 miles away. The road took us through the mysterious town of Dolan Springs. I say mysterious because it seems to be a collection of trailers and small houses scattered amongst the dirty brush and Joshua trees that are so prevalent in this area. We have no idea what these people do for a living. There is no business in Dolan Springs except for a few localized eating establishments, a gas station, and a Family Dollar Store. It is an hour to the nearest grocer. Why these people are there and what they do befuddled us. Perhaps they are all a bunch of very cold-natured retirees that prefer 100-plus degree days without any shade. Who knows?

There were several scattered groups of long-horned cattle roaming freely out beyond Dolan Springs. You had to watch for them as they have a tendency to wander into the road. Then, about halfway to the Grand Canyon, the pavement ended. We ventured onward through the dust of on-coming traffic and the teeth rattling, uneven, wash-board dirt road surface for another 14 miles. In the middle of all this there was a sign advertising 180 acres for sale – zoned commercial. It was so bizarre we could help but laugh. But, we managed to rumble through it all until the road became paved again and we finally arrived at the western rim of the canyon.

This is Havasupai Indian land and the native-Americans run the tours for this section of the canyon. We took a bus tour out to two viewing locations for taking the panoramic view of this incredible natural wonder. The highlight of the tour was a new attraction called the Skywalk. The building for the Skywalk, intended to be a museum and gift shop, is still under construction but the Skywalk itself was fully complete.

It was unlike anything I have ever experienced. The magnificence of the Grand Canyon was pretty mind-blowing in itself. But, to walk out onto a glass floor in the shape of a large horseshoe hanging out over a cliff hundreds of feet high is not something everyone can handle. It was a bit intimidating at first. But soon I was shuffling along in the special footie’s you must slip on over your shoes.

There we were out in the hot sun looking down at the valley sloping deep toward the Colorado River underneath our feet. My boss felt a bit uneasy about the whole thing and preferred to walk along the railings on the sides which are covered with about 18 inches of concrete flooring so you at least have something besides clear glass under your feet. I have plenty of anxiety about certain things but a fear of heights is not one of them. It was truly an extraordinary experience to literally walk the sky. Worth the whole trip by itself. Unfortunately, cameras were not allowed on the viewing platform but you can see what it was like in the Skywalk links provided above.

Afterwards, we took in some native-American exhibits, watched some visiting Navajo Indians do a few of their traditional dances and enjoyed some good barbeque at the third stop on our canyon tour – a rustic looking, recreation of a old western town complete with horse rides, gunfights, and other ways that white men managed to screw up the cultural heritage of the western native peoples. Good food though. And water. I drank like a fish the whole time.

Back over the unpaved road and through mysterious Dolan Springs and through the, by now, unimpressive Arizona desert. Back to Vegas just at sunset. The city stretches on in the darkness in all directions with light provided by the giant turbines of Hoover Dam. It was 100 degrees in the twilight of evening. We boarded the red-eye flight out of Vegas back to Atlanta. I slept about 3 and a half hours before landing at Hartsfield at about 6:30 Saturday morning, blurry minded and trying to appreciate the whirlwind tour of three western states in about 72 hours.

I’m glad we made the journey and walked in the sky; both over the canyon by foot and over the country by plane. The American West is big. Big sky, big space, big dams, big canyons, big casinos. It draws people from all over the world. I saw and heard Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Italians, Germans, Brazilians, and who knows what all. Vegas is a huge magnet for people looking for a unique experience and the trip was certainly that; for me, even bigger than Vegas itself. Vegas is all glitz and glitter and energized activity. Walking the sky is not so commercial, though it is certainly a thrill surpassing in my mind the collective neon in all those signs powered by a concrete monstrosity mastered by engineers many decades ago.

Into the Fog of Growth

2011-08-07T11:18:00.031-04:00

In February of this year, Professor John Van Reenen, a leading British economist, addressed an audience in Hong Kong on the future of economic growth. In that lecture he highlighted areas from which growth was most likely to emerge. Among other things Professor Van Reenen stated growth would best manifest itself via: "...trade policies, relaxed planning, less distortionary taxation, proper subsidization of research and development, and improved management...”

The point that struck me as I pondered this lecture and other readings online about growth from a macroeconomic perspective was that there was no mention of emerging opportunities or a novel transition from service-based economies to whatever might come next, if anything. If the service-economy is the summit of economic evolution then we are in big trouble, no matter how optimistic many trendy economists might wish to frame things. Professor Van Reener was using the old accounting trick of simply moving numbers and agreements around without anything new actually being produced.

Presently, there is a huge (and healthy, if dysfunctional, in my opinion) debate going on in America and around the world on the role of government in an economic downturn. Most economists follow some variation of Keynesian theory, in which governments relax intervention policy during times of economic growth and step in with an infusion of debt during times of recession. That has certainly guided economic policy in the US (and most of Europe) through every presidential administration regardless of political affiliation for the past three generations.

The Keynesian approach is not the only economic theory, of course. There is an Austrian Economic School which I personally find more appealing. And there are many others, including the largely (though not completely) discredited Marxist alternative.

Here in the US we just went through the most fierce Debt Ceiling debate in our history. The results will likely to affect domestic policy in our country for many years to come, possibly changing the prevailing Keynesian landscape itself. Long-time readers will know that I consider public debt to be the worst kind of economic sin and I also believe that years ago we reached an unsustainable trajectory of public debt that could destabilize the US economy.

If 40 cents of every dollar goes toward servicing our debt then this is a most inefficient means of generating wealth. It fundamentally means you have to grow the economy by roughly 40% in order to balance out the weight of the debt. Forty-percent growth is simply not in the cards. As the percentage rises it makes a dollar earned through the marketing of goods and services worth less than a dollar earned without the weight of the debt. It is a built-in drag on valuation and simple buying or capital investment power.

Add to this the interconnected nature of globalization and you can see that the weight of our debt is tied to the (for now) far worse European Debt Crisis involving Greece, Italy, and Spain along with the threat of systemic contagion of that crisis. The US credit rating was recently downgraded from AAA credit rating to AA for the first time in its history. This will not be something to turn-around overnight. Meanwhile, we are experiencing a degree of political polarization in the United States that has not been seen since the 1920’s and the 1850’s before that. The American consumer, the world’s most potent driving force of economics has recently cut back on spending, increased savings, in reaction to times of uncertainty. These are all the necessary ingredients for what Jurgen Habermas aptly terms a “legitimation crisis.”

The semi-holy concept of “the American People” constantly mentioned in the routine rhetoric of our politicans is largely dissatisfied with the politics of paralysis so superbly exemplified by the current Congress and the Obama Administration. Traditional American compromise has so far eluded us in the historic, ugly polarization that is a direct result of the 2010 mid-term elections.

The Tea Party, for example, refuses to bargain even within their own party. They are ideologues and have thusly exposed all the many cracks in the Republican Party making matters very difficult for the party’s leadership to accomplish anything short of the theoretical utopia so naively believed in. Nothing exemplifies this better than their staunch advocacy of a balanced budget amendment. That idea, coming as it did during the brinksmanship of the US debt default deadline, had no time for serious debate let alone actual passage.

But, from my point of view, the fundamental problem is going unexpressed by any political party or media source. Perhaps they just can’t see the forest for the trees. Simply put, there is presently no alternative to service-based/information economic growth and, to that extent, this represents a very thick fog of uncertainty. In service-oriented economies such as the United States, for years now no business sector has emerged that requires or demands mass employment. Until such a business sector emerges, all the tax breaks to businesses advocated by neocons and the would-be continuing government stimulus advocated by liberals is absolutely irrelevant.

There exists no boom industry to hire enough human beings to significantly lower unemployment. If historically 5% unemployment has been an acceptable figure of a dynamic developed society then 9% or 10% is probably the new 5%.

To understand why we have look at the way economies actually evolved through time. History teaches us that virtually all genuine economic growth has been a progression from agriculture to industrialization to consumer services. Beginning in the 1980’s, the personal computer launched an explosive industry that sustained terrific growth in the United States from the end of the Bush senior political era through the Clinton era to the beginning to the Bush junior era.

Broadly speaking, the wheel, the plow, and fertilizers led to tremendous growth in agrarian economies. These then either languished or evolved into industrial economies due to the discovery of coal and advanced engines of steam and oil. Each of these stages created massive new demand for employment and the opportunity for capitalism to replace centuries of feudalism as the driving force of prosperity. The next phase was reached by retailing and marketing to the consumer class that eventually developed as a by-product of a manufacturing economy.

More recently, however, outside of the growth of the silicon economy and various services made possible through the invention of the PC there has been nothing but decline in manufacturing and private agricultural aspects of the US economy. Meanwhile, second-world countries such as China and, more recently, Brazil, experienced strong manufacturing growth. Today these nations are poised where Britain and the US were over the last two centuries.

So, it doesn't matter what the US government might try to do to "stimulate" the economy. If there are no new opportunities for growth comparable to the industrial revolution and the computer revolution then the US cannot possibly experience the growth of the 1990's or the 1920's. It is a physical impossibility to grow economically without some specific sector demands for employees. Various retread industries like transportation infrastructure and outsourcing opportunities for businesses to improve productivity can fill some of the gaps but they will not bring long-term demand for more jobs.

What we need is whatever comes after the service economy. Human innovation will be our only way out. Until something like our understanding of the human genome or nanotechnology or some other fringe industry matures (the plow, the internal combustion engine and the microprocessor were all on the fringe of their times initially) every nation that moves from manufacturing to service-based economies will face the murky fog of no market to grow exponentially.

It will take exponential growth to get America back to 5% unemployment. Of course, the fact that human innovation is the primary requirement for such future growth is in itself uncertain. Innovation cannot be planned for or tangibly forced. It is an art not a science, spontaneous not regimented. Innovation is an inspired flipping of a switch. You never know when, or to what extent, it will happen.

This is the 800-pound-gorilla no one will talk about because they don’t even conceive it. It will not enter into any politician’s thinking because there is absolutely nothing they can do about it. It will not be part of the traditional Keynesian paradigms of growth because, to my knowledge, no economic theory presently considers the fact that every economic model eventually requires human innovation and transcendence to a new model of growth (farming to industry to services to {?}) or otherwise face stagnation.

Stagnation is precisely what Japan has experienced for the past two decades. It is precisely what the United States and Europe have entered. We have been in stagnation for the past decade. “The Lost Decade” in the American economy is due to the fact we have improved upon efficiency and productivity of the service economy to the point where there is no demand for employment. That is the bottom line. Period.

In researching various books about our current situation I found that most authors on the subject want to address economic growth in terms of the transfer of knowledge and/or capital and/or technology. Many wish to frame the economic discussion in terms of "wealth" and "poverty". These perspectives, in varying degrees of validity, all miss the mark. The greatest poverty facing us today is the poverty of novel growth opportunities. Consumer services and information technology no longer produce the demand for jobs.

The much-vaunted Green Economy sounds like a possible paradigm shift. It has produced about 2.7 million jobs in the US. Perhaps there is the potential for more growth here. But, once again, this isn't really "growth" in the historical sense of what we saw in the new agrarian and new industrial economic paradigm shifts. It is merely a further diversification of the goods and services economy. It is nothing new and it cannot produce what we need to genuinely revolutionize the need for more employees.

The fact is that the Green Economy is growing even slower than the rest of the economy. This might just the birthing pains of a new way of doing business. But, it is not the kind of new business model that will generate the demand for jobs that the steam engine and the microprocessor created.

So, here we are. Massive debt in America and Europe following the bursting of bubbles in housing and stocks and other things. China and Brazil are actually raising interest rates to slow their red hot manufacturing economies down. The US is in a politically “dysfunctional” mode. Unemployment remains high. Consumer spending is not increasing. There is no momentum to drive anything and “steroid money” has created a false bull market that will eventually be fully corrected, possibly to levels beyond the 2008 financial crisis.

But, I want to make clear that nothing currently would point to a stock market meltdown or even a double-dip recession. Despite the recent wipe-out of all gains in stocks YTD in 2011, the severity of events is nowhere near what it was back in 2008. Yet. It is just that we are moving into a Fog where Growth in any sector is uncertain and nothing is leading the way. Well, perhaps Japan is our leading indicator but not toward a way out of this, paradoxically deeper into it.

“The world has seen this before. Two decades ago, Japan’s economic bubble popped; since then its leaders have procrastinated and postured. The years of political paralysis have done Japan more harm than the economic excesses of the 1980s. Its economy has barely grown and it regional influence has withered, As a proporation of GDP, its gross public debt is the highest in the world, twice that of America’s and nearly twice Italy’s. If something similar were to happen to its fellow democracies in Europe and America, the consequences would be far larger.” (The Economist, July 30, 2011, page 9)

Most experts agree there is currently not much in the way of hope for the dramatic change to avoid the debt levels experienced by Japan. I disagree. I think there is hope but that hope lies in the allowing the weight of debt and the natural ebb and flow of the markets to express itself. That entails pain, however. Pain to the tune of perhaps even higher levels of unemployment and an extended period of recession/stagnation.
I hope we will find the political the leadership to withstand the pain. I hope human innovation will lead to something beyond the current completely consumer-oriented economy.

Is it not a prejudice to think that “Audacity of Hope” can only be upbeat? Can’t Hope also reside in what is natural and necessary (the cleansing of debt from the market space) however difficult? I hope so. Because, sooner or later, neocons and liberals be damned, that is what is going to happen.

The Japanese economy has been out in the Fog of Growth for 20 years. This can happen to you. America may yet know the Fog of Growth across half a generation of time. We have already been in the fog for ten years now and in a further decade the Japanese still might not have come out of their malaise in the thick gray mist. They call back to us from ten years ahead of us and say they see no sign of the fog breaking. Nevertheless, we drift with them deeper into the fog.

To date my GLD buy in January (and all the rest of my rather large position in gold) has returned 24.4% (38% over the past 12 months). GLD closed Friday at $161.75. Gold is overbought, stocks are way, way oversold. There should be some kind of rally soon and gold will be pressured. Hopefully setting up another buying opportunity. Why not profit off all this uncertainty instead of getting your investment for the year wiped-out in a couple of weeks?

Jen's smart call on silver doubled our money. We sold half on the recent correction but missed the first buy opportunity to reinvest our original money at a lower price. Waiting on another buy opp here. Gold will pull Silver upward.

PMD and GB2 Arrive

2011-08-01T07:46:00.025-04:00

The newest wargames in my collection with their original versions from 1992 and 1994 respectively.

Roughly two years ago I placed separate pre-orders for reprints of two board (as opposed to computer) wargames I initially bought back in the early 1990’s. They were being independently re-published by different designers, companies, ideas, and production schedules. I enjoyed both original versions of these wargames and played each for years in times of hobby. Their recent reappearance in my life was coincidentally and spontaneously simultaneous.

That’s the way karma works, or, better, that is the stuff of karma. I want to blog about karma soon but it is slippery territory and you must be able to articulate your meaning well; very tough to do with all those preconceptions out there among other people as well as within yourself.

Both wargames arrived within three or four days of each other about three weeks ago after all those many months of foreign separateness. One game is the second printing of Guderian’s Blitzkreg II (GB2), the other game is the “deluxe edition” of two magazine games I own called Proud Monster and Death and Destruction. Both editions feature various rules tweaks and considerable graphical, aesthetic upgrades over their original versions.

Proud Monster Deluxe (PMD) is a visual feast, featuring a superbly rendered map of the Soviet Union at the time Adolf Hitler invaded in 1941. The map is very useful and informative, yet colorful, pleasing to the eye, one of the best representations of the Soviet Union at this historic time that I’ve ever seen in a wargame.

Meanwhile, GB2 is a huge expansion over the original 1992 game with its absurd, obsessive logistics rules now revitalized into what is actually a great model for how logistics work in modern military planning. GB2 is part of the Operational Combat Series (OCS) of games. OCS is the best modern operational model wargame I’ve ever played. I own five games in that series and no game better simulates how an actual “blitzkrieg” attack works upon a defended area or how the oozing breakthroughs of the Soviet forces can drive the German army back.

Although I own wargames simulating all historical periods (from ancient battles like Kadesh through games on recent operations like Desert Storm), the vast majority of my attention to the hobby over the years has been devoted to the Eastern Front of World War Two and to the American Civil War. That matches the robust military history section of my library, by far the largest section with dozens and dozens of books to choose from.

Most of my wargame life I have played Civil War battles particularly Gettysburg, of course, and Shiloh - which I hold in particular importance. But all my ponderings of southern or northern military prowess when chivalry was not quite gone and when we fought ourselves as a nation are dwarfed by the amount of time I have committed to playing various games on the Eastern Front in my life.

As a teen Avalon Hill’s Stalingrad introduced me to wargames. I played PanzerBlitz and PanzerGruppe Guderian when they were new designs. More recent Eastern Front games include Ukraine ’43, Red Star Rising, Hube’s Pocket, Baltic Gap, and Red Storm Over the Reich. I have always enjoyed playing Eastern Front games and reading about this great, tragic total war unto itself. It is also known as the Russo-German War and as the Great Patriotic War. The Eastern Front of World War Two was a mindboggling, primitive war fought with modern weapons. There was little difference between the savage methods of Hitler and Joseph Stalin and Genghis Khan, for example. The enemy village or town or city was to be wiped out. Surviving prisoners were treated as slaves, forcibly displaced hundreds of miles to industrial regions as labor. Millions were literally worked to death.

The Eastern Front between 1941-1945 featured the most horrific war, mass genocide, and human enslavement in history. By a large margin, more human beings were killed in combat, wounded, and outright murdered on the Eastern Front than in all the rest of the World War Two put together. About 30 million died on the Soviet side. About 5 million Germans died with another 6 million wounded and captured. One-third of the captured died to brutal Soviet imprisonment. These figures do not count the millions who died in enslavement and genocide committed or condoned by virtually every German fighting in the East. That total is guesswork but, altogether, the East Front probably saw a grand total of around 40 million total human dead. The largest total of human dead in a single war in history. (see Weinberg, page 264; Glantz, page 284; Duffy, page 3; Megargee, page xi, Glantz, pp.10-12, Mosier, page 338)

There has never been anything like its size on this Earth. From our tribal days, battles and wars have always been savage. Though today such savagery seems unimaginable, it has never manifested on this colossal scale before or since. At stake, of course, was the complete domination and cultural replacement of the eastern lands by the German race. The Eastern Front was true clash of civilizations in the classic historic sense, full of racial and ideological levels of conflict. Base human killing the size of Armageddon itself. This fascinates me.

So I have both read and wargamed a great deal on this subject in my life. GB and PM were among my favorites, which is why I wanted to own them in their final, “definitive” forms. Both games are large in scale and presentation. So large, in fact, that I can’t even set either one up on my modest gaming table space. They are far too big. So, I will play them either in smaller scenarios that require only a partial setup of the game or, more likely, in digital versions of them on my PC if and when they become available. I’ve already started creating a Cyberboard gamebox of PMD but it will take me months to actually get it into a playable fashion. Though I already have the large game map scanned and placed into a playable digital format, it takes a lot of work to finish a project of that size and I don’t have that much free time right now.

GB2 covers operations near Moscow from late-September 1941 up to May 1943. It is linkable with the even more massive Case Blue game (CB – itself a reprint and expansion of another favorite game in my collection, OCS Enemy at the Gates, which features “Manstein’s Backhand Blow”, my favorite all-time wargame scenario to play) that I purchased in 2007. I have only played CB in bits and pieces, and even then only in a digital program called VASSAL, focusing mainly on the post-Stalingrad time period of operations in the southern Soviet Union. If I were to setup GB2 and CB in its entirety I would need my entire living room floor to do it. Not very practical but it does afford some sense of the immense scope of the Eastern Front.

Moscow and environs as depicted in GB2. Each hex represents 5 miles.

The heart of GB2 is one of the greatest battles of all time, the Battle for Moscow in late 1941, the Wehrmacht’s first major defeat of the war, which most historians consider Hitler’s best chance to achieve his diabolical (and out-of-fashion imperialism, World War Two essentially marking the end of the Colonial period of western civilization) goals of lebensraum. The Battle of Moscow beginning in October 1941 was a result of the Wehrmacht’s and the Nazi Party’s inherent prejudices against Soviet capabilities. The Soviet people rallied and formed a bigger, better army than Hitler ever conceived. Though most Soviet units are weak and mediocre there are some good troops from Siberia (and better trained Guards divisions) helped make a difference. As such, GB2 is an entertaining aid to experiencing and understanding the military challenges for both sides during this historically critical period. The game also covers the Soviet offensive known as Operation Mars, which occurred in late 1942 simultaneously with Operation Uranus, the Red army’s counteroffensive at Stalingrad. Unlike that major victory for the Stalin in the south, however, Operation Mars was probably the very capable commanding Soviet marshal Georgy Zhukov’s greatest defeat.

The same area on the 20 mile-per-hex scale of PMD. What was arguably the largest battle of World War Two happened here in late 1941 and early 1942.

PMD is much smaller in terms of scale (20 miles per hex versus 5 miles per hex for OCS games) and it consists of four oversized maps that have a smaller footprint than the seven maps of GB2 which can be linked to the ten maps of CB, even though PMD still won’t fit my game table. PMD is an ambitious attempt to capture the war from Operation Barbarossa in 1941to the end of the various Soviet winter offensives in April 1944. Historically, the Eastern Front became even more gruesome from May 1944 to May 1945 and ended with the capture of Berlin, Budapest, and Vienna by Soviet forces. A decisive strategic victory. But, PMD covers only the most competitive part of the war. Extending it further would entail, of course, more maps and playing pieces.

I have not played PMD yet. When have I had the time? But, after reading the rules a couple of times, I know that probably 80% of the game stands as it did in 1994 when the original version came out. I played that game probably a dozen times over three or four years. It was highly entertaining. I’m sure many of the differences are improvements over the previous design. If nothing else the revised game’s developer could draw on over 15 years of playing experience in the previous version. The basic mechanics are the same with some additional “chrome” as we say in the wargming hobby. Chrome is little rules that add historic flavor and, generally, more realism and depth to a game.

PMD is an interesting design in the way it depicts the German and Soviet armies. At first, the German units are of a consistently superior nature. The Soviets are variable, but usually mediocre. Over time, the Soviets can start massing stacks of units against the German. Some of these mass of units during the course of the game will become much improved fighting units, Guards units usually. When these begin to stack the Soviets suddenly start bringing more firepower, particularly in the form of artillery support, onto the map and the complexion of the game changes. The Germans will never counter this mass of artillery, though they will deploy some highly destructive artillery of their own. You reach a point when the Soviets can overwhelm the German line at any given weakness. By 1943, the German infantry is greatly reduced and it becomes impossible for the German player to be strong everywhere. And that is, pretty much in my opinion, the way the war historically played out from a strategic perspective.

As in history, Germany’s only real chance of winning the War in the East is early on before the full potential of the Soviet army is realized. After that point only a stalemate is militarily possible for Germany and the chance for victory swings to the Soviets. Politically speaking, a strategic stalemate was never a prospect. The war was far too ruthless, racial, and cultural for that. The Germans attacked with the intent to perform ethnic cleaning beyond all human reason. It is simply human nature not to compromise with an enemy like that. But, Stalin was no compromiser in any case.

The game shows the military aspects of all this very clearly to the player. As the Germans slowly start running out of replacements it becomes more difficult to concentrate their forces while the Soviets can stack many hexes to the max in any given area of the map. When these stacks strike, if the player knows what he is doing, it should create a small, secured breakthrough enlarged with deep penetration. The Germans did this primarily in 1941 and 1942. By mid-1943 the Soviets started doing it; over minor areas to begin with, then over large swaths like they managed at Stalingrad. Historically, the Germans chose strategic retreat in spite of Hitler’s reducing it to incremental steps at the expense of many German lives.

The Soviets are highly replaceable and upgradeable whereas the German side is of deteriorating quality but for their Panzer divisions and Waffen SS. PMD sports a rule that, in 1943, limits the replacement of German infantry division and the slow attrition and bloody combat eventually tilt things toward the numerically superior Soviets. Though I have played the Barbarossa Scenario of War of the Motherland (predecessor of Red Star Rising) numerous times, my recollection of PM and now PMD is that it reflects the sheer “bulk” of the Soviet army better than any game I’ve seen. Its RVGK (Soviet High Command) rules, from a strategic perspective, represent Soviet maskirovka better than any game I’ve ever played. So, I am looking forward to getting back into this one sometime in the next year or so.

GB2 is more of an investment than a serious game to play. Although I can (and probably will) play some of the “small scenarios” in VASSAL as well as admire the glory of the full GB2-CB setup in VASSAL, as I said, OCS is my favorite operational representation of the modern art of war. But, attempting to consider the war strategically takes forever to play in an operational game system. So, beyond the admiration of the OCS mechanics and the short scenarios, I lean toward PMD rather than GB2 to ultimately provide me with some great East Front wargaming in the true game sense of playing over time into the “deep war” where winning and losing take on a strategic rather than operational context.