Ballad of a Thin Man

Punching through writer's block. Baby steps...

2012-01-08T17:19:00.000-08:00

Back?

2011-08-21T17:27:00.000-07:00

Newly written:

Sarah Palin's excellent adventure on speed.

2009-04-17T14:50:00.000-07:00

The lawyer who vetted Sarah Palin spoke out at the National Press Club today. I think most of what he said is bullshit. But a couple of revelations are interesting. First, apparently campaign spokespeople seemed caught off-guard when asked about Bristol's pregnancy because they really were caught off-guard.

But far more intriguing (and scary) are the three questions that the McCain campaign thought ultimately determine a person's capacity to serve as Vice President:

* Why do you want to be vice president?
* Are you prepared to use Nuclear [sic] weapons in the defense of the homeland?
* Osama bin Laden is identified in the FATA, the CIA is ready to take a shot, but if they take a shot there will be multiple civilian causalities, will you take the shot?

Homeland? For real?

And, I don't know about anyone else, but when I read that third question I hear it in Dennis Hopper's voice (who of course adds a "hotshot" at the end). And I keep expecting Keanu Reeves to say "Shoot the hostage."

Excellent.

Today's Awesome Quote of the Day (and no, these aren't the only things I'm posting from now on)

2009-02-24T13:21:00.000-08:00

Jason Linkins at Huff Post:

During an appearance on Your World with Neil Cavuto yesterday, [RNC Chair] Michael Steele told the host that he was "open to" punishing Senators Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter for their votes on the stimulus package, by withholding RNC monies for their re-election bids. He then said he was "open to everything, baby," because that's his bold schtick: inserting the word "baby" into everything.

Awesome Quote of the Day

2009-02-21T14:46:00.000-08:00

Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana (on Gov. Sarah Palin dropping out of an energy policy talk she was supposed to co-lead):

"I don't know where she's going to be. You'll be stuck with me. There will be no glamour, certainly no snappy dressing. I brought my best two pairs of jeans. There's a little bit of a horse shit stain by the knee. But I've been washing that stuff out."

Stuff you should think about for a few minutes. But not a whole lot longer than that.

2009-02-16T23:48:00.000-08:00

I saw a version of this a couple years ago, I think. But it's still cool. And updated.

(Hat tip: Michael Scherer at Swampland)

Closing Guantanamo.

2009-01-25T19:00:00.000-08:00

This article by Dahlia Lithwick at Slate does important work in cutting through the bullshit enveloping the Guantanamo debate, and re-focusing the public on the facts.

Her main point:

"[W]hether we are looking to answer questions about where to repatriate the last Guantanamo detainees, where to hold them until we try them, or how to try them, let's attempt to get past the undifferentiated orange jumpsuits, which tell us what they have always told us: virtually nothing at all."

The money quote for me, though, is:

We also know that among the remaining prisoners at Guantanamo there are several who clearly come under the definition of child soldiers, including Canadian Omar Khadr, who allegedly threw a grenade at an American soldier and was first taken to Guantanamo when he was 15. Khadr, we learned this week, allegedly identified, under abusive interrogation, another Canadian, Maher Arar, as a visitor to an al-Qaida safe house in Afghanistan. The problem here is that there is no dispute that Arar was in Canada at the time. Mohammed Jawad is another prisoner at Gitmo, and like Khadr he was also a child soldier (between 15 and 17; his birth date is unknown) when he threw a grenade and injured U.S. soldiers. As Glenn Greenwald chronicles here, Jawad allegedly suffered such brutal abuse and torture, his chief prosecutor resigned and is now a witness for Jawad in his habeas corpus proceeding. As Greenwald writes, the centerpiece of the government case against Jawad is a confession he " 'signed' (with his fingerprint, since he can't write his name) … and yet, it was written in a language Jawad did not speak or read and was given to him after several days of beatings, druggings, and threats—all while he was likely 15 or 16 years old."

Amen.

2009-01-20T23:08:00.000-08:00

I'll admit it: Alone in my room, watching on tv, I found myself mouthing the word when he called for it.

The Reverend Lowery may not have stolen the show (don't think that was possible), but he sure brought it home. I'm not with his lord, but I'm sure with his message. Let's have at it, people. Yes we can.

(See here for a transcript. But please ignore the comments at the bottom of the page.)

On this new morning, new morning...

2009-01-19T21:49:00.000-08:00

I can't wait to go to sleep...so I can wake up tomorrow morning.

It feels like Christmas Eve.

If I were 5.

And.

You know.

Cared about Christmas a lot.

And for your musical enjoyment, some under-rated Dylan:

[MUSIC] Honky Tonk blues.

2009-01-06T11:06:00.000-08:00

My current music obsession:

(And yeah, if you think you recognize it, the song played at the end of an episode of House.)

[UPDATED] The Children of Hamas.

2009-01-01T10:24:00.000-08:00

Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."

This was the lead in a story I came across this morning:

Israel dropped a one-ton bomb on the home of a Hamas strongman Thursday, killing him along with two [actually, 4] wives and four [actually 9] children in the first attack on the top leadership of Gaza's rulers.

Really hard to read. Euphemisms are a wonderful thing, and "collateral damage" is a great one, but the wrenching specificity of assassinating a leader in such a way that you take 9 of his children with him is terrible to contemplate. And I am so certain it must be condemned.

And then I read further in the same article, and I learned:

[The assassinated Hamas leader] was closely tied to Hamas' military wing and was respected in Gaza for donning combat fatigues and personally participating in clashes against Israeli forces. He sent one of his sons on an October 2001 suicide mission that killed two Israeli settlers in Gaza.

And in a world where that is possible, the need for euphemisms (not just "collateral damage," but "suicide mission," "settlers," and especially "sent") starts to overwhelm. Starts to seem like the rules I live by (consciously recognized or not) are...well...quaint.

Starts to. But then: I just cannot believe that son would have killed himself to murder others without the encouragement of his father (understood broadly). I don't like writing children off as delinquents, much less as terrorists. And so I'm left struggling to find the rationalization for their innocent deaths.

In various philosophy courses, I've always been troubled by the doctrine of double effect -- that is, essentially, judging an act not based on the results of the act but based on the intent (on "the risk posed," as Alan Dershowitz argues in today's WSJ). My tendencies toward consequentialist ethics rearing up, I suppose. I closed a poem once: "the doctrine of double effect is/ no venial sin, it is/ an abattoir of lifetimes." I still believe that -- despite my sympathies for its various expediencies. The lack of particular intent to murder the 9 children (in exchange for 1 Hamas leader) just isn't enough.

I am generous with abstract sympathy -- I feel it, at various times, for all sides in this interminable conflict. I suppose, in the end, all I'm saying is that I find the strategic choice Israel made in this instance to be deeply awful and readily condemnable -- as is, I understand, the fact that it was faced with such a choice. But, here, I think, the decision was worse than the choice (if language holds up that far).

Fittingly, I'm not sure how to end this post. So bookends will have to suffice:

Now the rovin' gambler he was very bored
He was tryin' to create a next world war
He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor
He said I never engaged in this kind of thing before
But yes I think it can be very easily done
We'll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on Highway 61.

[UPDATE: Apparently, the final death toll was 4 wives and 9 of 12 children. I've changed the numbers throughout.]

[NOTE: Various other updates/changes were made throughout since the original posting, and are not marked.]

WWJD? I'm betting: Join the orgy.

2008-12-24T14:49:00.001-08:00

No, not a Christmas post. Maybe later.

This one's about International Orgasm Day (which, until now, I didn't know existed). I know what you're thinking: How does one celebrate such a titillating holiday? Well, with a 250-person-strong mass orgasm in Israel, of course. For world peace. Of course. Organized by Raelians -- you know, the people who believe in aliens and free love, but paradoxically abstain from recreational drugs and alcohol. Of course.

The event was canceled. Of course.

Justice on the cheap.

2008-12-22T07:37:00.000-08:00

To save money (not that much money, really, in the scheme of things), the Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court plans to suspend all jury trials--civil and criminal--for one month early next year.

Robert J. Lynn, chief justice of the superior courts, which conduct all New Hampshire jury trials, said he fears the delays inevitably will cause damage. "There is some element of 'justice delayed, justice denied,' no doubt about it," he said.

Christopher Keating, executive director of the New Hampshire Public Defender program, said his chief concern now is "people in custody who will endure delays in getting their day in court."

The state Supreme Court threw out two criminal cases this year because trials did not begin within six months of arraignment, the legal limit. Prosecutors fear more cases may be dismissed...

The delays may encourage some defendants to seek plea deals, or litigants to settle out of court...

"You're talking about erosion of our fundamental civic fabric," said Ellen J. Shemitz, executive director of the New Hampshire Assn. for Justice, which represents civil trial attorneys.

James J. Tenn Jr., incoming president of the state's bar association, said that as the crisis has grown, New Hampshire courts have been slow to process orders, respond to lawyers' requests and "do the daily work."

"We've just seen delay after delay after delay," said David Slawsky, a civil lawyer in Manchester. "The court process is breaking down."

Chief Justice Broderick also intends to purposely leave vacant over 10% of the state's trial court judgeships, as well as possibly 1 of the state's 5 Supreme Court slots (notably, the NHSC is the small state's sole appellate court).

Aren't the "tween" years awkward enough?

2008-12-21T13:37:00.001-08:00

Now, in Saudi Arabia, tween-age girls can be married off to old men by their fathers, but can't file for divorce until they reach the age of majority.

A Saudi court has rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man who is 58, saying the case should wait until the girl reaches puberty.

The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl's divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 135 miles north of Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom.

Lawyer Abdullar Jtili said:"The judge has dismissed the plea, filed by the mother, because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty."

I suppose it's somehow internally logical that the girl is young enough that she has to follow her father's wishes to get married, and so is not old enough to file for divorce -- and even, though of course sexist, that her father can sign her marriage contract, but her mother cannot file her divorce.

But taking a step out of the rabbithole, and setting aside the "creepy 50-years-her-senior groom" thing: Doesn't it seem like if she's too young to sign the marriage contract, she's too young to get married?

"Shake and Shoot" Coca-Cola douches, and Other weird science.

2008-12-20T08:26:00.000-08:00

There are several strange items in this article about funny little scientific studies -- actually makes me want to read an issue of the British Medical Journal.

Highlights:

"Studies showed that children who consume large amounts of sugar are no more hyperactive than those who don't. But parents who think their kids have eaten sugar, even when they haven't, tend to rate them as being hyperactive.

The ill-mannered behavior, the authors wrote, was 'all in the parents' minds.'"

"Coca-Cola douches for pregnancy prevention were a part of folklore in the 1950s and 1960s, before the contraceptive pill. People thought that the acidity of the soda would kill sperm and that the classic Coke bottle provided a convenient 'shake and shoot' applicator.

Dr. Deborah Anderson of Boston University School of Medicine had previously reported that Coke can impede the mobility of sperm in a test tube. But further study, she said, shows that sperm get to the cervical canal so quickly that postcoital spritzing is ineffective.

For it to work, she wrote, the soda would have to be put in the vagina before sex, 'but that would undoubtedly be messy.'"

"Drs. Christopher J. Boos and Howard Marshall, cardiologists at University Hospital Birmingham, treated a 25-year-old woman who suffered repeated fainting episodes, particularly when eating a sandwich or drinking a fizzy drink.

A full medical work-up showed her to be healthy overall, but the team ultimately diagnosed a condition called swallow syncope, which caused her heart to stop beating for as long as three seconds after some types of swallowing -- especially sandwiches, for no clear reason.

The woman was fitted with a pacemaker and has had no fainting episodes since, Boos and Marshall reported in the Lancet. They suspect that many other patients suffer the problem without being diagnosed."

Ok. So sandwich-fainting is weird. But these doctors think there are many other people who faint when they swallow, and don't notice? Really?

Once a juvenile, always a sex offender?

2008-12-19T15:02:00.001-08:00

I don't know anything about the details of this particular case, but it seems to me generally good news that a high court somewhere recognizes that an 11-year-old who commits a crime might not be destined to a life of such crimes.

Money quote:

"Hugh Southey, appearing for ['Teenager F'], pointed out that -- because there was no review process -- [F] could still be on the register 'aged 70 or 80,' even if he committed no further offence.
The impact of the notification regulations on young children, who were in the process of change and development, could be 'significant and dispiriting.'

He said: 'Children have to have the chance to mature and change.

'It is important that the state does what it can to encourage the development of children who have committed serious offences in a positive way, rather than a negative way.'"

We can argue about adults another time.

[UPDATED] Bristol Meth.

2008-12-19T14:45:00.001-08:00

UPDATE: Apparently the drug was Oxycontin.

Bristol Palin's soon-to-be mother-in-law might not be able to attend the wedding -- 'cause she'll be in jail. Only relatively sketchy info at this point, but it's 6 felony drug counts -- and not just possession.

These people didn't ask to be thrown into the public eye. But still, there they are.

[NOTE: Bristol is not implicated in these charges. Nor have there been any reports (that I've seen) as to what drug was involved, meth or otherwise. But once I came up with it, I was too enchanted by the post title not to use it.]

Bailout University.

2008-12-16T18:40:00.000-08:00

Yale joins Harvard.

Finals week wrap-up: animals and religion (and politics and porn).

2008-12-13T23:07:00.000-08:00

A guy who lost an eye (no, not a Dr. Seuss character...more like a Philip K. Dick character) is having a replacement fashioned with a miniature camera inside. It won't be connected to his brain, because it's not for seeing. It's just for recording. Raises lots of interesting privacy questions. The creepy factor is high (though not this high), but--as the would-be cyborg himself notes--we're all on camera quite often as we move through our days, and we barely notice. Perhaps we should.

The Bidens throw down -- they're apparently prepared to go puppy for puppy in a cuteness battle with the Obamas. Exhibit A:

Apparently Youporn.com is (maybe?) owned by a semi-creepy, mostly-mysterious Stanford business school grad living in Lake Tahoe. A (seriously) fascinating article about him and how Web 2.0 is affecting the porn industry.

On Blagojevich...I read this NY Times article today and was surprised how much it hit home. Money quote: "'There is this attitude among politicians, and frankly among citizens, that this is the way things are,' said Kent Redfield, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Springfield. 'Politics is for professionals.' The surprise for many Illinoisans last week was not that their governor was arrested, but that he could be brazen enough to try to sell a Senate seat when he was already under federal investigation." I really did react that way. I'm not sure how much of that reaction was actually some sort of deep Chicagoan/Illinoisan conception of the world that I hadn't fully realized I'd cultivated, since I think a lot of non-Illinoisans reacted similarly, but the Gray Lady definitely made me think.

Weird things happen when science and religion mix: now astronomers tell us Jesus was probably born in June. This theory is based on the Bible story about the "Christmas star" appearing in the night sky and leading the three wise men to the manger -- and new research showing that in June of 2 BCE, Jupiter and Venus overlapped in the sky and would have appeared as one very bright starry light. Of course, the Christmas star is only mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew -- and everyone knows Matthew was such a kidder.

Veterinarians in Boston reattached a cat's face last week after it was torn off by the fan belt of a car. Money quote: "Bonnie Beaver [yes, that's apparently her real name], a professor of small animal clinical services at Texas A&M University, said such animal injuries are extremely rare since cats are usually killed instantly from car fan belts." The fact that there are apparently enough such incidents that Professor Beaver was able to make that sort of generalization has to be the weirdest part of this story -- you know, aside from the whole reattaching-the-dangling-face thing.

Playboy USA (Chicago, really) apologized for Playboy Mexico using a cover that made the Virgin Mary sorta hot. Apparently that sort of thing is disrespectful. (Can we agree that the hand-cupping thing just looks weird since she's not, you know, holding Jesus?)

And finally, in case you missed it, Jon Stewart took Mike Huckabee to task for his anti-same-sex-marriage views. Stewart makes some good points, and does a fair job -- though I think he could have done better, since Huckabee says some pretty ridiculous things (is it just me, or does Huckabee pretty much say that a man marrying a man would be the equivalent of burning someone at the stake?):

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c
Mike Huckabee Pt. 2
Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview
Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Math teacher tests advertising.

2008-12-08T11:24:00.000-08:00

A math teacher in a California school district has taken to placing ads on his tests in order to raise money for newly-introduced photocopying fees. This is simultaneously hilarious and troubling.

Not troubling because ads on tests are inherently wrong somehow (though some might argue they are). At least not so simply.

No, it's troubling because teachers in poorer districts have long faced the prospect of shelling out their own cash for photocopies and school supplies. Would a teacher in such a school be able to raise $1000 by asking parents to pay to put inspirational quotes on their kids' exams? Not likely.

Now, I'm not blaming the teacher. He found a creative solution to a difficult problem. But his solution, as he recognizes, simply emphasizes the dismal state of public education funding in this country. And moreover, as might be less apparent, it is a jerry-rigged extension of our public schools' property tax-driven, sociological crisis.

Poor Harvard.

2008-12-03T14:21:00.000-08:00

In 4 months, Harvard has lost more money (at least $8 billion) from its endowment than most other universities had to begin with. (Only Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT have endowments over $8 billion.)

Context from about 15 months ago, for those interested: a one-year gain of about $5.5 billion.

(Image: A Harvard University money clip, plated in gold...on sale.)

Ocean power.

2008-11-29T21:47:00.000-08:00

I know next to nothing about this sort of thing.

But this seems exciting:

The technology can generate electricity in water flowing at a rate of less than one knot - about one mile an hour - meaning it could operate on most waterways and sea beds around the globe.
Existing technologies which use water power, relying on the action of waves, tides or faster currents created by dams, are far more limited in where they can be used, and also cause greater obstructions when they are built in rivers or the sea. Turbines and water mills need an average current of five or six knots to operate efficiently, while most of the earth's currents are slower than three knots...
A "field" of cylinders built on the sea bed over a 1km by 1.5km area, and the height of a two-storey house, with a flow of just three knots, could generate enough power for around 100,000 homes. Just a few of the cylinders, stacked in a short ladder, could power an anchored ship or a lighthouse.

Rx heroin?

2008-11-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

A glimpse of rational drug policy?

In Switzerland:

Dr. Daniele Zullino keeps glass bottles full of white powder in a safe in a locked room of his office.
Patients show up each day to receive their treatment in small doses handed through a small window.

Then they gather around a table to shoot up, part of a pioneering Swiss program to curb drug abuse by providing addicts a clean, safe place to take heroin produced by a government-approved laboratory...
Patients among the nearly 1,300 addicts whom other therapies have failed to help take doses carefully measured to satisfy their cravings but not enough to cause a big high. Four at a time inject themselves as a nurse watches.

In a few minutes most get up and leave. Those who have jobs go back to work.

"Heroin prescription is not an end in itself," said Zullino, adding that the 47 addicts who come to his office receive a series of additional treatments, such as therapy with a psychiatrist and counseling by social workers.

"The aim is that the patients learn how to function in society," he said, adding that after two to three years in the program, one-third of the patients start abstinence-programs and one-third change to methadone treatment...
Crimes committed by heroin addicts have dropped 60 percent since the program began in 1994, according to the Federal Office of Public Health says.

Money spent on the Swiss program annually? 22 million dollars.

Money spent on the U.S. war on drugs annually? About 40 billion dollars.

"They kept shopping."

2008-11-28T11:53:00.000-08:00

Well...this was terribly foreseeable, wasn't it?

Bargain-hungry shoppers stepped on a fallen Wal-Mart worker, who died Friday morning, after the crowd knocked down the store's front doors -- and the worker -- during the "utter chaos" of a Black Friday shopping melee, Nassau County police said...

[Nassau Police Det. Lt. Michael] Fleming said an estimated 2,000 people had gathered in line around 5 a.m. as the store was preparing to open...

People in the rear of the line began pushing, cascading the people in the front into the doors, which were knocked off their hinges, Fleming said.

Hundreds of shoppers who then streamed in literally stepped on the worker who later died, Fleming said...

Shoppers who surged past the fallen Wal-Mart worker into the store were asked to leave by other store workers, some of them crying and visibly upset, said one shopper, Kimberly Cribbs, of Far Rockaway.

Though rumors circulated among the shoppers that someone had been badly injured, people ignored the Wal-Mart workers' requests that they stop shopping, move to the front of the store and exit, Cribbs said.

"They kept shopping. It's not right. They're savages," Cribbs said.

What is happening to us?

Young Women of Hollywood: Tabloid Edition

2008-11-26T16:56:00.000-08:00

Just some quick updates...a sort of "thanksgiving," as it were:

Evan Rachel Wood is no longer dating Marilyn Manson (I'm going out now to buy eyeliner and mascara).

Natalie Portman doesn't understand 'not having sex' (I'm relatively certain she meant something more profound).

Kristen Stewart smokes pot on her front steps (that's really all there is to that).

Palling around.

2008-11-20T22:20:00.000-08:00

Salon has up a good interview with Bill Ayers.

Money quotes:

On Hyde Park in Chicago--

[It] is a very close-knit, very friendly, very politically diverse, very racially diverse. You have all kinds of poles there. You have [conservative] Judge Richard Posner on one pole and Louis Farrakhan on the other. And everything in between. It's an interesting neighborhood, a college town [the University of Chicago]. It's close-knit. It's kind of like Wasilla, Alaska, except that it's different.

On the Weather Underground--

I think we were off the tracks, definitely. And I think we were jacking ourselves to do something that was unthinkable and that none of us could ever imagine ourselves getting into. We were driven, I think, by a combination of hope and despair. And in one chapter [of his memoir, Fugitive Days], I imagine two groups of Americans. One slightly off the tracks and despairing of how to end this war and penetrating the Pentagon and putting a small charge in a bathroom that disables an Air Force computer. An act of extreme vandalism, but hard to call, in my view, terrorism.
Meanwhile, another group of Americans -- also despairing, also off the tracks -- walks into a Vietnamese village and kills everyone there. Children, women, old men. They kill every living thing, even livestock, and burn the place to the ground.
And the question is, What is terrorism? And what is violence?

On election night--

One of the delicious ironies of being in Grant Park on Nov. 4, 2008, was that I was weeping for a lot of reasons. But one of them was that I couldn't help remembering 40 years earlier I was beaten bloody in that same park. And there's something sweet about 40 years later, something unimaginable happening...
We [Ayers and Dohrn] got there around 10:00. We were so glad that we had because it was a moment that we wanted to share. We didn't want to be by ourselves. It was just too sweet. It felt like a page of history was being turned. And, of course, there are going to be challenges, obstacles, setbacks, disappointments, reversals up ahead. But who doesn't want to savor that? Who doesn't want to wish this young man and his beautiful young family all the best in the world because it's their moment. We invest a lot of hope in them. Let's not lose hope in ourselves. But let's wish them all the best.

This is the story of how we begin to remember.

2008-11-16T20:11:00.000-08:00

Well. We did it. Yes we did.

I still can't quite believe it.

Last Wednesday, my dad gushed that I'd gotten to cast this vote in my third presidential election. He'd been waiting 40 years, he said.

After (only) eight years, I got to cast an aspirational vote -- and win.

A President who reads newspapers. Who reads poetry.

More.

A President who recognizes the times that try men's souls; a President who seeks new thinking and better angels; a President who trusts democracy. A President who engages the world; who engages ideas; who engages dissenters.

Last week, I was accused--amusingly but seriously--by a colleague of being drunk on Obama Kool-aid when I expressed approval of the Rahm Emanuel pick. I still like the pick. But I don't think I've drunk the Kool-aid...all right, I may have sipped it. But that's not the point.

The point is that my colleague's larger accusation was that I was rationalizing a disappointing decision. I was, in his view, actively avoiding my first disappointment with my preferred (and trumpeted) President-Elect. I wasn't. I couldn't have been.

I'm already disappointed. No praising of Rahmbo will postpone Obama's first failure. He has already failed me.

His stance on same-sex marriage is a deep disappointment and a shameful failure. His stance is, in fact, the same stance ratified by Californians with Prop 8 last Tuesday -- even as they elected him President by the biggest margin since FDR. Ok, so he didn't support Prop 8 because he doesn't support amending the state's constitution to deny a right to same-sex marriage. His stance is for full civil unions, full civil rights -- everything except that word, "marriage." And that's, essentially, what Prop 8 has left for gay Californians. That is to say: not nearly enough.

It's difficult to express how enormously inadequate that answer is. How enormously not enough.

Maybe Obama's opposition to same-sex marriage is more tactical than principled (like his opposition to health insurance mandates might be). Maybe coming out more strongly against Prop 8--doing ads, say--would have lost him votes, in California or elsewhere. It seems all but certain that coming out strongly for same-sex marriage would have lost him votes -- maybe enough to lose him the election.

So if it was tactics, it was understandable; if it was principles, it was wrong. But either way, President-Elect Obama is already, by this measure, a disappointment and a failure.

I, of course, knew that when I voted for him. And I wanted him elected despite it. And I phone-banked for him and canvassed for him and got out his vote. And if someone asked me about his opposition to same-sex marriage--which happened only twice--I rationalized it away (the lesser of possible evils, which I still believe) and worked the vote anyway. And in that way, I disappointed myself. And his failure became my own.

And our failure hurt people I love, even as I (and they) celebrated on November 4. Yes we did.

That night, just as Obama was about to speak to the crowd gathered in Grant Park, I finally got the overwhelmed California Secretary of State website to load. And I announced the percentages to my friends. Disbelief. Holding out hope for remaining precincts (which would not, in the end, help), we settled into silence as our candidate and his family took to the stage.

He told us that night, that he would be the whole country's President. That he needed all of our help.

And we will do our part. Gladly. Proudly. Fired up.

But we needed his help, too. And he let us down.

And so this victory, like too many victories, is bittersweet. Too many of us blackened our neighbors' eyes, as we blackened our historic ovals. Too many of us--our President-Elect, included--shut our ears to the howling, and turned our heads against the wind. In this way, as in so many others, the coming moment on January 20, 2009, is not enough.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger.

A more perfect union? A just and lasting peace among ourselves? Not yet. But some day, soon I hope, we will, all of us, get there.

The mystic chords of memory will yet swell the chorus of the Union.
And the morning will be breaking.

And don't cry, baby, don't cry. Don't cry.

(Image: David Stubbart, Some rights reserved)

Now...Tomorrow...Forever. Rethought.

2008-11-02T21:58:00.000-08:00

My grandparents were George Wallace supporters. Yeah. I know. I know.

But they were. My mom's parents. Standing in the schoolhouse door. Segregation now, tomorrow, forever.

My dad says they had a framed picture of Wallace on their mantle.

And he tells this story. He was very involved in Robert Kennedy's campaign in '68. College campus and youth organizer. RFK's assassination was devastating for him. Sometime around June 7th or 8th, he and my mom went to her parents' house for dinner. They ate in the kitchen. Over the kitchen table, there was a vent that poured cold air down onto whoever was seated at that end of the table. The usual practice was to use Scotch tape to cover the vent with a piece of newspaper. That night, with my dad seated at the opposite head of the table, my grandparents had taped up the front page from a couple days before. Robert Kennedy's face--along with the banner headline announcing his death--stared down at my dad throughout the meal. He could barely eat. He swears they did it on purpose.

I remember eating with my mom, my sister, and my grandparents at a now-closed Chili's in the affluent suburb I grew up in. I couldn't have been more than 6 or 7. My grandmother said something to my mom that I either couldn't hear or couldn't comprehend. I asked what she'd said. She glanced at my mom, who looked away. "I just don't like when people mix coffee and tea," she said, looking over my left shoulder. This didn't make any sense to me either. I looked around -- didn't see anyone doing that. I can't remember if my mom explained it to me afterward, or if I just figured it out for myself: my grandmother wasn't talking about mixed hot beverages, but about mixed race couples.

Several years back--I was about 14, I think--I was at my grandparents' apartment, sifting through a bowl of mixed nuts. "I don't like these ones," I remember saying. "What are they called?" "Brazil nuts," my mom said -- quickly, I remember thinking. "We used to call them something you can't say anymore," my grandmother said. My mom sighed. "What?" I asked. My mom shook her head. "Tell me," I said. "We used to call them nigger toes," my grandmother said.

My dad has claimed for as long as I can remember that my grandparents "mellowed" over the years. That they changed. My grandfather started unbuttoning his collar occasionally. Et cetera. My dad claims it was his influence.

Maybe. I think it may just have been time.

This past month, my grandfather turned 95. My grandmother is 85. I got a voicemail from my mom a couple weeks ago. Between telling me about her most recent lunch with my sister, and reminding me to call her more often, she mentioned this: "Your grandparents voted early yesterday. Absentee. For Obama. Both of them."

I was fairly stunned. I hadn't thought to try to persuade them. I realize now that I had, I'm fairly ashamed to say, written off their votes. But my grandparents voted for Barack Obama. A black man. With a white mother and an African father. Who's running against a white war hero. Barack Obama.

I'm not sure why. They know I've been volunteering for the campaign. Maybe they were thinking of my preference when deciding on theirs. But I hope it was more than that. More than resignation. I hope it was progress.

Something's astir in America. Come Wednesday: Now, Tomorrow, and Forever might just have a whole new meaning.

Win one for Studs.

2008-11-01T21:54:00.000-07:00

The inimitable--though forever imitated--Studs Terkel passed away yesterday.

From an interview one week before his death:

Community organizers like Obama know what's going on. If they remember. The important thing is memory. You know in this country, we all have Alzheimer's. Obama has got to remember his days as an organizer. It all comes back to the neighborhood. Well I hope the election is a landslide for Obama.

In the words of David Plouffe:

LET'S GO WIN THIS FUCKING THING.

Yeah, there's still poetry.

2008-10-31T00:39:00.000-07:00

6 days to go...

2008-10-29T20:57:00.000-07:00

You can vote however you like.

But you ought to vote for Obama-Biden.

Feinstein says No on Prop 8.

2008-10-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

Finally, a bigshot politician makes an ad.

A Tale of Three Ashleys.

2008-10-27T23:19:00.000-07:00

A great post by Sean Quinn over at 538 -- that is, FiveThirtyEight.com, which you should all check out.

Money quote, actually from Obama's speech on race in America:

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

And the video of that speech, "A More Perfect Union," which is definitely worth watching again:

The liberal media?

2008-10-25T16:55:00.000-07:00

Watch Joe Biden handle himself well (I think) during a local Florida TV reporter's ridiculous interview.

Oh, and to answer Biden's question about who wrote the questions: I'm fairly certain it was Stephen Colbert.

Dylan the Evangelical.

2008-10-25T01:42:00.001-07:00

This Washington Times article is about a new movie coming out (straight to DVD, it seems) that explores Bob Dylan's "evangelical" years -- 1979-1981. Basically asking: Really? Why?

Money quote:

"Jesus Years" surmises that the inspiration factor was crucial but the conversion was real. Mr. Gilbert unearths broadcast TV footage of Mr. Dylan answering critics befuddled by what appeared, for a time, to be a wholesale abandonment of secular music. "The old songs won't save you," Mr. Dylan said.

Now, I haven't seen the film yet. These are just thoughts off the top of my head. But I rather doubt Dylan meant to imply that his new songs (the evangelical ones) could save people. I expect he was more reacting to other people's confused reactions -- responding, dismissively, to their pleas to keep writing the old songs that had saved and inspired them. But maybe not. Obviously, we need to hear the whole exchange -- though I'll say from the start that even a clear, face-value implication wouldn't convince me of Dylan's sincerity on the point.

Which, I expect, exposes my biases. But I'm inclined to think Dylan was just reinventing himself as completely as he could -- not exactly a concept that has been foreign to his nature during his 4+ decades in the public eye. The Washington Times writer, and presumably the movie-maker, suggests that there is something nefarious in Dylan fans' tendency to puzzle over or ignore or disdain those years and their music. I think he/they might have it backwards -- not that there's something incongruous with paying little attention to those years, but that there's something incongruous about paying special attention to that particular transformation. Why not the transformation from Minnesota fraternity boy to the hillbilly who wrote lines like "That light I never knowed" and "They'll be drownded in the tide"? Knowed? Drownded? Or his recent transformation into a lingerie ad-man and entirely conventional disc jockey on satellite radio?

It seems to me that Dylan's singular magic over almost 50 years now has been his uncanny ability to keep an audience, generally by ignoring what they assume to be their own desires. He was never the voice of a generation. That implies that he spoke the words they wanted to speak. No. When he seemed their voice, it was only by coincidence. He was out in front of them all along, moving on to something new. Not leading them, so much as out-running them. Not a pied piper. Just a song-and-dance man. Puzzlement, ignorance, and disdain are part of the show. To focus on whether Dylan was actually born-again for the 3 years straddling 1980 misses the point. The point was then--as it has always been--reinvention.

(Image: BobDylan.com)

11 more days...

2008-10-23T17:20:00.000-07:00

Yes we can.

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.

[UPDATED] Either terrorists are dumb, or they aren't very committed to their causes.

2008-10-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

I've been saying this, somewhat jokingly, for years.

But apparently the TSA actually thinks it's the former. Or, at least, they've set up security procedures on the assumption of terrorists' inferior intellects.

Not entirely certain that's the right tack, guys.

UPDATE: By the way, Jeffrey Goldberg's Atlantic article about TSA "security theater" is hilarious and-- I almost wrote "frightening," but actually it's really not. And that's sorta the point.

[UPDATED] I know this is old, but...

2008-10-22T22:55:00.000-07:00

...how much do you want little kids in the White House? Adorable.

Apologies for the annoying Maria Menounos (especially the veiled Spiderman reference).

Oh, and the video is making the rounds again because of the news about Sarah Palin's rather expensive campaign wardrobe. If you missed Jon Stewart's take on the story tonight--including his brief rendition of "Small Town"--you should find the video. I'll post it when it's up.

UPDATE: Daily Show clip below.

Abandon your kids while you can...

2008-10-21T22:43:00.001-07:00

Nebraska's ridiculous safe-haven law--which allows parents to abandon children up to age 18 at hospitals without fear of prosecution--will soon be changed. Gotta keep your teenagers now, folks. No more seventeen-year-olds. In fact, no more seventeen-day-olds. Looks like the new age limit is going to be 3 days.

Talk about switching extremes. I say give 'em a month or so, like most states. Someone should remind those Nebraskans not to throw out the month-old babies with the seventeen-year-old bathwater.

McCain accidentally calls Western Pennsylvania racist...in Western Pennsylvania.

2008-10-21T22:18:00.000-07:00

This clip can be summed up as follows: Booo...Oops...Oh god...Huh?

Oh. And how much do I love Cindy McCain's smiling nod as McCain drums up the boos about Obama? Soooooo much.

Poetry from a California September.

2008-09-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

Poetry. Making a comeback.

2008-07-06T10:29:00.000-07:00

This is what I like to call a 'moody moment poem.' Enjoy.

(Oh. And. I played with the format a bit. Thoughts?)

Written five minutes ago.

2008-06-28T01:24:00.000-07:00

Not sure yet if this is really one poem in three parts, or three poems that need their own titles. Thoughts?

Striking a little close to home.

2008-05-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

This is basically a short essay I've been meaning to write for some time now. Complete with Gilmore Girls references. Just never got around to it.

Still might write mine though. There's one point in Stevenson's piece that I think I disagree with: that procrastination precludes certain forms of success. I'd like to probe that a bit deeper yet. We'll see. For now, I've got other things not to do.

Philly vs. Filly

2008-05-03T16:09:00.000-07:00

Ok. So please understand: I'm not literally equating the fates of these two beings.

But. Hillary Clinton recently drew a line of comparison between herself and Eight Belles, the lone filly in the Kentucky Derby this year.

Today. (Tragically.) Eight Belles finished second place in the Derby. That's not the tragedy. The tragedy is she ran all the way through to the finish line, finished second, then collapsed with two broken ankles, and had to be euthanized right then and there.

So a little quip comes back to bite Hillary in the ass. Someone should point this out to her, though I'd be at least a little surprised if anyone in the MSM did (because of the "literally equating" problem mentioned above). But that's what the blogosphere is for.

(I'm not even gonna mention the name of the stallion that won the race.)

Mentos fountains. Too cool.

2008-04-28T19:36:00.000-07:00

I expect this works with Diet Coke, too. And not just Coca-Cola Light.

(Thanks to Andrew Sullivan.)

Get your electric kool-aid while you can.

2008-04-27T15:23:00.000-07:00

Salvia needs a Ken Kesey.

Or. You know. Not. Doesn't sound like much fun to me.

Flirting your way to sex offender registration.

2008-04-24T15:21:00.000-07:00

Ok. So I admit: Sending naked pictures of yourself to someone you like (like, like-like; not just like) goes a bit beyond an extended hug after class or sitting on someone's lap during study hall.

But it's not felonious. And it's definitely not worthy of sex offender status.

With all the talk in the last decade of pushing various technological boundaries (web 2.0, nanotechnology, genomics, and yes, cell phones) we still rarely get to talking about the secondary boundaries affected by such technological innovation. Unless, of course, a hot-button social issue (read: political wedge issue) is involved, in which case let the ill-informed adventures in spin begin. As in: "Genomics sounds like cloning!" (No. It doesn't. You don't know what you're talking about.) Or, the less common refrain: "Nanotechnology is the birth of Big Brother!" (Well. Yeah. Ok. Mayyyyybe.)

Along these lines, I've recently come across several articles and stories referencing the notion that today's young people are less concerned with privacy than previous generations (privacy is trying so hard to become hot-button, it's cute -- like a puppy trying desperately to climb a staircase), and placing the blame for such lowered fences on Facebook, MySpace, and other such sites. To me, this seems either just plain wrong, or misleadingly incomplete. Facebook, for example, faced an uproar from its "millennial generation" users when it opened the site first to non-college-affiliated users, and then again when it opened the site to anyone. In response, it instituted significant user-directed privacy controls over who can see which elements of your profile. I suppose it's an unanswered (to my knowledge) empirical question to what extent these controls are put to use. But in my anecdotal experience, almost everyone uses them to some extent.

So the younger generation, it seems to me, is not less concerned with privacy than previous generations -- today's youth just have more opportunity to be more open to more people. This doesn't mean they don't value their privacy. Had their parents (who, let's face it, were pretty damn open with their opinions, feelings, and sexuality) been able to share an hour-by-hour "status" accounting with hundreds of friends, I expect they would have. They just couldn't.

But now the constraints of technology have retreated: Hundreds of people now know my favorite books. Boy, do I feel invaded. No. Wait. I don't. But not because I'm not concerned with my privacy. I never cared who knew my favorite books. I'd have gladly told anyone who asked. (People rarely did, for the record -- in fact, I can count on one hand (maybe one finger) the number of people who have commented on my Facebook favorite-books list, which suggests that the level of narcissism involved in maintaining, say, a Facebook profile is disturbingly staggering. But that's another post for another day).

And I fully believe my parents would have too. The difference is not in the level of personal willingness to be open with various aspects of oneself. The difference is in the technological ability to be open. There's no new conception of something-like-the-thing-called-privacy-we-once-cared-so-much-about being cultivated by Facebook. It's the same old conception (the same old ethical bounds) being construed via newly-relaxed technological boundaries.

Which brings me to my point, finally: It's wrong to label naked-picture cell-phone swapping among consenting teenagers as "criminal behavior." It's no more criminal than that "trust me?" game where one person in a group slowly moves a hand up another's thigh while asking the two-word query until the second person responds, if ever, with a "no." (No one else played that? Really? Oh.) You might not want your kids doing either of those things. I get that. All I'm saying is, the cell-phone thing isn't a behavior of a radically different sort than anything we've seen before. It's on the same spectrum. If Polaroids weren't so clumsy and expensive, this would have been happening long ago. (And, really, claiming it's child porn is just silly. I understand why society doesn't want 50-year-olds looking at naked 15-year-olds. But it's not clear to me why other 15-year-olds shouldn't be.)

Whether you, as a parent or school administrator or Congressperson, likes that it's happening, it's just flirtation. Maybe teens shouldn't sit on each other in study hall. Maybe they shouldn't play spin the bottle. And maybe they shouldn't exchange naked pictures of themselves. But criminalizing the first two seems nuts right off the bat. And criminalizing the third is just as insane. It's wrong. And it won't work anyway (see: abstinence-only sex education).

Prose again. Or, Giving the parents equal time.

2008-03-23T23:31:00.000-07:00

Pizza, with my mother.

It is a Saturday night, I think, or a Friday, around 6 (which is well toward the night in Chicago’s cold November). I walk downstairs, wondering at the quiet, finding only my mother, in the kitchen. I open the refrigerator, looking for a quick dinner before I have to leave to pick up my friends – who, at 17, were not all lucky enough to have their own cars at their disposal. Finding nothing fresh appealing, I turn to the freezer. I take out a microwave pizza, and my mother—whose apparent sadness had been peripheral until now—says, “Jordan, I have to tell you something.” I say, “Ok,” wondering at her “have to,” and start to open the pizza box as she begins to ramble something or other about not intending to tell me this way, and she’s not really supposed to tell me, and he’ll be angry, but he’s going to do it tomorrow and that’s not right. At this point, though I wasn’t sure at first, I know she’s talking about my father, who had earlier asked me to go to breakfast with him the following morning so we could discuss something he refused to specify to me but apparently had to her. I remove the plastic shrink-wrap and place the pizza on its box, atop its silver paper heating disc, and then reapply the frozen cheese that fell off in the plastic, careful to fill any obvious distribution holes. I set the microwave to 3 minutes and 45 seconds. She’s still talking, and as I hit START, she gets to: “He says he’s not going to, but he won’t say what, and I know he’s going to.” So, I think, apparently he didn’t specify the future conversation with her either. I open the cabinet over the microwave and take out a dinner plate – solid black, except for white painted swirls in a ring around the edge, a choice of my mother’s that I didn’t realize was unusual until college. I search the utensil drawer for the pizza cutter, and say, my profile to her, “Mom, what’s going on?”

She starts to cry as she lets out what, she tells me, has been eating at her for weeks, months, years even. It’s been so hard, she tells me, and—because of the microwave’s timer, and my memory of burning my mouth on the pizza’s first slice—I know it takes her a bit over 3 minutes to tell me, in really no detail at all, just how hard it’s been. I stand, leaning on the counter, my elbows on either side of the pizza cutter resting on the plate, facing her, as she sits at one end of the rounded-corner rectangular table, askew a bit, her left side against the table’s edge, facing me, her left arm resting on the table’s corner and her right forearm resting on her thigh. This position allows only sharp movements as she speaks, jaggedly matching the stops and starts of her words: the motion of her right arm limited, as though by a puppeteer’s rod, to the upturning of her palm by a twist of her wrist as her forearm remains on her thigh, and her left arm, constantly moving, as by the strings of a marionette, in a sort of pulling forth motion as her elbow brings her hand forward toward me and then returns it to her chest or her mouth. The combined effect of her tears and the hum of the microwave forces her voice to a higher register than normal, and that, along with what she is saying and the fact of her crying, somehow makes it hard for me to look at her for more than brief intervals. I intersperse my glances at her with long gazes at the pizza in the microwave, spinning and warming and cooking. She is telling me—in multiple and synonymous and repetitious sets of phrases—that “things” haven’t been right for a long time, that “we” still love “you” and “your sister” very much of course, that “that” will never change, that none of “this” is “your” fault at all. The pizza is making noise in the microwave, drops of sauce spurting from beneath the covering of now melted cheese. Looking at the microwave, I think, I tell her, “It’s ok, Mom,” and, turning to look at her—and lying, really—“I guess I knew something was up.”

The microwave beeps the pizza’s completion, startling us both: I turn too quickly to it and knock the pizza cutter to the ground; my mother lets out a gasp that frees a loud sob. I interrupt the microwave before its third beep and remove the pizza as my mother tries to calm her lungs. She wipes tears, careful not of preserving her makeup but of getting it in her eyes, and says, raising her voice above the sound of the sink as I rinse invisible dirt from the floored cutter, “It’s just gotten too hard, and we all need something to change.” I start to cut the pizza into slices—it’s only an 8-inch circle, but I have a habit of cutting it into 16 bite-size slices, quartering it, and then quartering the quarters—and she gets to the point. It’s difficult (in the way small things are sometimes difficult) to cut a soft-crusted, microwave pizza into so many small pieces—the slices stick to the cutter as it runs back and forth, they curl up and want to somersault over each other, and you need your other hand to keep them in place—and so I’m concentrating mostly on the cutting as my mother says, “Your father’s going to move out soon, I think, as soon as possible.” It must appear as though I don’t react at all—though this is, somehow, amidst what seems now obvious family turmoil, an enormous surprise—because I simply continue to make my cuts, looking down. Then, finished slicing, I bring my fingers to my lips and raise my eyes, as my mother stands and walks toward me, crying still, or again, as she reaches for a hug. Still holding the cutter, with pizza entrails still on its blade, I hug her, careful not to stain the back of her shirt. It’s a brief embrace—though longer than the hellos and goodbyes that would become common in my college years to come—and as we pull away, her wiping her face, and me licking the blade of the cutter before I put it in the sink, I tell her, “It’s going to be ok.” “Yeah,” she says under her breath, still trying to sigh away sobs, and I pick up the plate, grab a paper napkin, and walk to the family room to eat.

Some prose, for a change.

2007-11-29T22:33:00.000-08:00

Flicking It.

My dad tells stories of being thirteen years old, sitting at the family dinner table, after eating, his parents and his sisters and him, all smoking, all flicking the butts into the kitchen sink to burn out. There are pictures of him from the early seventies, outdoors or indoors, outside the middle school he taught at, inside the law school he went to, arm around my then-twenty-something mother or not – but always with a cigarette dangling from his lips, a too-skinny, Jewish, afroed, hippie James Dean wearing too-tight corduroy pants. A decade later, he sometimes appears in home movies, my infant sister in one arm, the other draped over the side of a couch or a chair, index and middle fingers straddling a lit cigarette; more often, though, he’s behind the camera, revealed only by his voice awkwardly commanding the action in front of him (Open the one with the green bow now. Wait. Now give your brother a hug. Ok, now blow them out.) and the wafts of smoke that occasionally drift into the shot.

It wasn’t until my middle school years that his smoking became a problem. He’d fallen ill, had left his office downtown, and was home almost all the time, spending much of the day and night in the home office that for so long had been so under-used. After a few months, the carpet and fabric-covered desk chair and wood desk—none expensive, but previously like-new—all had their own small, sort-of-circular burns. (The strands of earth-toned Berber carpet melted down into rounded pellets the size and shape of the smallest kernels of corn at the narrow end of the cob. Desk burns were the most intriguing: the burn would begin as a circle, but then would follow the grain of the wood, giving it tendrils, like an artist’s rendition of a live flame, inching onward. Burns on the chair just became holes in the fabric, revealing the yellow foam padding beneath. On the weekends, late at night, when I used the computer in his office to chat online with my friends, I’d poke at the holes in the chair, and rub my toes on the now-massaging Berber kernels, and stare at the smoky shapes inscribed on the desk.) But the burns weren’t the problem. It was all the smoking. All the additional smoking in the house. Aside from a few early morning and before-bed smokes, his two-and-a-half-packs-a-day habit had always been satisfied elsewhere. Now yellow tar flavored and colored our lives. Our clothes smelled—his office was next to the laundry room—and wallpaper, heating vents, and electrical outlets were various shades of nicotined ocher, and ashtrays and half-smoked butts floating in glasses of flat, watery Coke became fixtures in the kitchen and family room. My sister, no longer an infant in his arms but a defiant 16-year-old we all somewhat-lovingly called “The Queen,” demanded changes. The door to his office had to remain closed even when he wasn’t smoking, the window had to remain open when he was; when she was home, he had to smoke outside; and even when she wasn’t, he could only smoke in two rooms. So it was that my dad, just when he started spending time at home, was confined to his office and his bathroom.

As middle school turned to high school for me, my dad’s health finally improved – despite his smoking, as his doctors still chronically inform him. With his new lease on life, he embraced the cliché. Freed from home, he was unconfined, and he became a fixture at every somewhat local restaurant with a bar where smoking was allowed. He rarely ate alone (His being a regular, his being friendly with restaurant owners and bartenders and waitresses—though I’m a regular nowhere, my friends tell me now that I am similarly flirtatious with waitresses—is something I associate with other women. I’ve been to suburban bars with him where waiters, who apparently have never seen my dad without a female companion, assume we have a third who is yet to arrive – where my dad can order “the usual,” and actually get his meat cooked extra well done like he likes it. Recently, during one of my breaks from law school, he took me and my mother to one of these mostly-nighttime places for lunch. “Al, how you doin?” the bartender called out, as my dad—who was only ever “Al” with archetypal Chicagoans—directed the hostess to the table he wanted. I winced a bit at his ease, wondering whether anyone could tell that this one was my mother.), he sometimes didn’t come home, and eventually he moved out of the house.

But once, I must have been about thirteen, I remember sitting with him in that old office, as I occasionally did, reading on the couch, fingering the thinning brown fabric with its once-white, yellowed flowers when I wasn’t turning pages. My sister must have been home because he asked me to go out on the porch with him while he smoked. I did, and as we stood there, watching our neighbors play with their kids in the cul-de-sac, he gave me a cigarette and told me to put it in my mouth and let it hang there. “Just for kicks,” he said. I took it between my two first fingers and brought it to my lips, licking them first in hesitation. How the outer paper of the filter stuck to my lower lip surprised me, and I finally understood the magic behind my dad’s ability to talk with a cigarette in his mouth, the lit end flapping up and down with his words. As air came through the filter, I tasted the tobacco – sharp and a bit sweet, it somehow tasted like it needed to be burned. Not liking its rawness, I took it from my mouth, again between two fingers, as he always did. “How do you flick them?” I asked him. He brought his cigarette to his mouth and left it there, and then took the unlit one from my hand. He started to show me how to position it with my forefinger and thumb, but “You really need to do it with a butt,” he said, handing it back to me. I took it, thinking at first that he was actually going to have me smoke it, but he didn’t want me to light it; he wouldn’t have let me had I wanted to. He took a long drag from his, and then stubbed it out on the underside of the porch railing and handed me the butt. He showed me again how to hold it, figuring out how to translate his righty orientation to my left-handedness. With the butt in place, he let go, as though it were a bicycle seat and I was ready to pedal on my own. I flicked it. Down at my shoes. “Pick it up,” he laughed, “You’ll get it. Like this,” he said, flicking the air.

(When he left home, his office was once again unused for a year or so, until the house sold to a divorcee with four kids, who no doubt covered the Berber kernels with furniture when his office became the fourth bedroom we had never needed. His desk chair, with its holes, remained with my mother for years, until I took it from her for a new apartment post-college, and subsequently left it with my roommate, who has since thrown it out – because of the holes. The desk is now in my dad’s new home office—his business was disrupted too badly by his illness to ever allow a move back to the city—and it has fresh burns, from his same old Winston Ultra-Lights, and his girlfriend's Marlboros (the two of them quit together occasionally, and they start up again in equal measure), reaching out through the wood’s grain and cracks in the varnish. Out of habit, I suppose, he still opens the window in the office when he’s smoking, and, out of forgetfulness, I suppose, he leaves it perpetually open – so, like his old office in our old house, though the warm smell of cigarettes is always present, the room is forever either too hot or too cold.)

With something similar in mind, I think, after the last exam of my first semester of law school, standing in the still unfamiliar sun of a California December, I bummed a smoke from a classmate. He was surprised that I asked, and again when I didn’t cough as the smoke flooded my lungs and tickled through my nasal passages. Looking at me, a shot glass of whiskey (provided by the sympathetic second-year students) in my right hand and a lit cigarette dangling between the forefingers of my left, he joked, “Not a very California image.” Still expecting a cough, he paused. And, filling his otherwise unfulfilled pause, as I let the smoke leak back out through my mouth and nose, and rolled the cigarette slowly between my thumb and forefinger, I said, “I have my father to thank.”

A lil poem. From me to you.

2007-11-09T21:03:00.000-08:00

This is from last April, though I added a line tonight. Any guesses which one?

Extra Sents.

2007-11-07T23:36:00.001-08:00

When I write--more frequently with essays, but also with poems--I often have leftovers. Phrases and sentences that I can't find a place for, but which I don't want to delete forever. So the Documents folder of my computer is riddled with files containing the abbreviated phrase "extra sents" -- words that remain, useless. What follows is a sampling, connected.

The novel is a collection of tales that, as a whole, tells a story of upheaval.
Truth exists only in the present; the past cannot speak for itself. This, at first, seems rather trite and the reader rushes past it in search of a more inventive thought. She wants to bring the two ends of the dichotomy together and tie them in a knot, but this does not take seriously the distinctions between persons -- in the “Occasional Strings Attached” way. (An admonition just vague enough to make me think.) This self-interrogation turned supplication is a last-ditch effort to follow a path set out for him by prescriptions from a childhood that has literally fragmented into tangents in a classroom: What starts a wildfire but a single burning bush? (But with this question, he asks not of his classroom but of his neck. (That’s not a confession. Just something I’ve been told.))

Brand spanking new (what a weird phrase).

2007-09-13T22:56:00.000-07:00

So I was playing with old pictures. Then came this. Took a while to finish-- wasn't sure where it was going. But I think I like where it ended up. Enjoy or not!

* * * * *

Circa early- to mid-2004.

2007-08-10T21:48:00.000-07:00

Venting.

2007-07-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

The people at the Tribune seem to have wanted to give my blogalogue adversary the final word over there: They have yet to post the response I sent in a week ago. But I shall not be defeated. I have other ways of reaching the mas...well...the seven of you, anyway.

Here is the blogalogue as it stands.

And. Here is what the Tribune should have posted last week:

Laurie,

Once again, you have twisted my words and offered nothing substantive in response. It's clear at this point that this discussion is going nowhere. At every turn it seems I have to untangle my words from the spinning you've put them through.

So, one last time: My concern is not that you don't offer "reasoned" argument; my concern is that your reasoning is punctuated with alarmist analogies and all the rest of the devices I mentioned previously.

I am left to assume that you offer such things in place of substance -- like, say, the first principles you still apparently refuse to reveal. I appreciate your suggestions for relevant reading (charitably, I'll assume away your condescension), and I'll add those books and authors to my ever-growing list.

But, though I understand it might take a book to describe and support a first principle in detail, I must say I'd find it odd if you couldn't also simply state yours succinctly -- so odd, in fact, that I must assume you could, but won't.

So whether I find your ideas intellectually and ethically bankrupt is for now, to my dismay (and despite the words you've put in my mouth), an open question.

And apparently, by your design, it will remain so until other authors explain you for you.

Until then, then,

Peace.

Jordan Blumenthal
Chicago, IL

UPDATE: Apparently sending the response in again did the trick. It is now posted on the Tribune blog. Same link as above.

Linking.

2007-06-29T09:32:00.000-07:00

Confession: I've recently been blogging elsewhere. I thought, in the interest of consolidation (sort of), I should link here to that blog. It's the Chicago Tribune "Voice of the People" blog that exists, as far as I can tell, for the purpose of responding to letters to the editor. Which is what my posts were. Responses. Essays, you might say. So do not expect poetry (though I like to think they have a certain flare).

About two weeks ago, a woman from my hometown wrote a letter to the editor in response to an op-ed piece that denounced our military's "Don't ask, Don't tell" policy regarding gay soldiers. You'll find her letter if you scroll to the top of the page. Then, to read the responses in order, scroll all the way to the bottom and read upward. Scattered throughout, you'll find three back-and-forth response rounds between me and her (if you care to look, that is).

A change of pace from what I generally offer here, but I thought it might be of interest. It is to me, anyway.

Here's the link.

Enjoy. (Or not.) And feel free to comment -- there or here.

UPDATE: My blogalogue adversary fired another volley (though the ammunition seemed to be blanks). I've sent in my response, but judging from past experience I don't think it will be posted until sometime Monday. Keep checking there or here for updates (if you care) (if you really care, I'll email you my response) (if I know you) (or if I don't, actually).

Short, but sweet.

2007-06-26T13:50:00.001-07:00

Finally.

2007-06-07T13:20:00.000-07:00

The deodorant thing isn't working. Something's not right. It keeps getting detoured and sidetracked and broken down and then chased around by maniacal cannibals in the woods (anyone see Wrong Turn? Eliza Dushku? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler?). But I'll keep at it.

To tide you over. Since I know I've had oh so many of you at the edges of your seats for so long. Something old. From sophomore spring. But with a new title.

Enjoy. (Or not. Up to you.)

An aperitif.

2007-04-21T01:06:00.000-07:00

Something about deodorant will be forthcoming soon.

But in the meantime: something old. Circa 2002. And revisited a bit since then.

And. As the style is not entirely my own. I should note: This stems from a writing prompt -- an imitation of the short shorts of Thomas Bernhard's Voice Imitator.

As commissioned, but untitled.

2007-04-17T01:33:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how to present this.

Except to say. I'm pretty certain this will not be its final draft. But I'm also pretty certain its final draft won't come anytime soon. Its roots are too many, I'm too attached to its petals, and its metaphors got mixed up and missed the boat.

Feel free to comment.

Feel free to suggest titles, too -- I'm leaning toward "Upon imagining several lived moments, and others."

A tribute [, which takes precedence].

2007-04-14T01:20:00.000-07:00

Thanks to those who responded to the last post. The highest vote-getter was number 6. And whatever comes of those words will be here next. But for now...

I took a fiction workshop in college. We did writing exercises in class. For one session, the instructor had us bring in our favorite book. The exercise that week was simply to copy out, word for word, its opening page. And then to continue on our own, to see where that took us.

What follows is the first page of a favorite book from a favorite author. It also happens to be the entire first chapter. See where it takes you.

*****

THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED

Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.

Jonah--John--if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still--not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided. And, according to plan, at each appointed second, at each appointed place this Jonah was there.

Listen:

When I was a younger man--two wives ago, 250,000 cigarettes ago, 3,000 quarts of booze ago...

When I was a much younger man, I began to collect material for a book to be called The Day the World Ended.

The book was to be factual.

The book was to be an account of what important Americans had done on the day when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

It was to be a Christian book. I was a Christian then.

I am a Bokononist now.

I would have been a Bokononist then, if there had been anyone to teach me the bittersweet lies of Bokonon. But Bokononism was unknown beyond the gravel beaches and coral knives that ring this little island in the Caribbean Sea, the Republic of San Lorenzo.

We Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon, and the instrument, the kan-kan, that brought me into my own particular karass was the book I never finished, the book to be called The Day the World Ended.

*****

So it goes.

And.

If the accident will, freethinker.

Audience participation.

2007-03-31T14:44:00.000-07:00

So. I have this list. It's a list of things I want to write about. Briefly. Like blog posts. Some of them fit together and some of them don't.

I also have another list of sorts. It's more like a collection. A collection of fragments. Bits worth revisiting.

I've included some items from both lists below.

I know there are only a few of you out there who read this blog at all regularly. But I wonder if you might comment on which you'd like to see expanded. And then I'll do my best to oblige.

So, here, then, is my offering.

(1) Deoderant.
(2) The number '9.'
(3) I dream, on occasion, of tragedy. [a beginning to something, i think]
(4) The concept of 'play.'
(5) The word 'interesting.'
(6) we sat with a crossword and/ she inked words i was unsure of--/ soon, i took the pen from her and/ as my correction marred the puzzle/ she said: you can still make me cry sometimes. [an ending to something, i think]
(7) The letter 'e.'
(8) Milk.

And with that, I await responses. Do your damnedest.

New and, I think, improved.

2007-03-08T14:48:00.000-08:00

I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not.

2007-02-11T21:57:00.000-08:00

Getting this out there.

2007-01-24T02:02:00.001-08:00

I'm interested in religion. I think it's important to try to understand religious worldviews -- philosophically, because they purport to solve conundrums; psychologically, because they so often seem to satisfy a deep human need; and pragmatically, because so many people subscribe to them.

I find discussions of religion thought-provoking and exciting. Sometimes to the point of my friends' nausea. Or their irritation, depending on the friend. Because during those conversations, I tend to criticize modern, monotheistic religion.

But on occasion, the conversation continues until I reveal myself to be not entirely dismissive of modern monotheism. And it is, inevitably, at that point that my friend will sit back and say: Wait...Explain to me what you think. And though I try, I never satisfy myself; so I imagine there is no way my friend could be satisfied.

So. Here. I try to explain my thoughts on religion. Some of them at least. A very few of them, really. But here it is.

I find modern, monotheistic religion to be too unreasonable. I find it to be too unchanging. I find it to be too dogmatic. I find it to be too often intolerant.

I realize I'm painting with enormously broad strokes at the moment. I realize there are modern monotheistic religions that are more and less tolerant, more and less flexible, more and less adaptive, more and less self-critical.

Still, I'm not sure even the best modern monotheism has to offer is enough.

I realize, too, the virtues of many modern monotheistic religions. I acknowledge their positive moral teachings. I acknowledge the good work many people do in the names of their gods and their faiths.

Still, I'm not sure even the aggregate of the good produced is enough.

Enough, of course, to tip the balance away from the bad. And that is not a cheap shot. I'm not only referring to the Crusades, or the asinine hatred of gay people, or the horror of so-called honor killings. Those things were and are terrible.

But I mean to implicate something deeper. Something prior. Worldview. Think: What precipitates these terrible ends?

It is, it seems to me, a question of first principles. But, surprisingly, not so much what they are (because, to an important degree, that reality seems a function of what follows this next semicolon); rather, where we set out to look for them. Where we should look for them.

So. Where? Well. I am unwilling to submit to a single book; a single tradition; a single set of normative statements written millenia ago; the edicts of a single set of ordained anybodies; or the fiats of any one man, no matter how infallible he claims to be. I will not be colonized by the conquistadors of any "one true god."

But if monotheism is imperialism in religion, as has been said, then is polytheism liberation? An open polytheistic system, maybe? Paganism? It seems somewhat appealing. Wicca? Attractive in some respects. Hinduism? Buddhism? They have their moments as well.

Perhaps liberation is pantheism. It seems nice in many ways.

Perhaps an adamant agnosticism -- not doubt incorporated into faith, as is sometimes prescribed for monotheists with desires to be tolerant; but doubt as faith, faith in doubt.

Perhaps simple atheism.

Ultimately, I'm drawn to deontology, but not deities. Not for belief. For guidance, perhaps. But from all of them, every one, everyone's.

Religious teachings, moral philosophy and ethics, psychology and history, politics and friends, sight and conversation, novels and poems and paintings -- these can provide me my first principles. I will do my best to hash them out -- right and wrong, duty and responsibility and justice, interpersonal values. I will do my best to resolve my conflicts. And if occasionally, momentarily, I contradict myself -- then very well. I am large, as it's been said: I contain multitudes.

And for the "why are we here, and what happens when we aren't anymore" questions that seem of such importance to modern monotheists: I suppose I just don't much care about the answers. Or, more accurately, I think the questions are silly.

As I meet more and more people who truly enjoy working with numbers, the idea that there is one fundamental meaning of life seems less and less probable. Why are we here? The answer has to be limitless. If the governing metaphor of first principles is a common foundation, then the meaning of my life is what I build upon that base, and what I want to build but do not. And the meaning of your life is what you choose to build.

Our individual piles of bricks take shape over time. And while each hopefully gains a clarity of design and a desirable uniqueness, it cannot but be true that our edifices are strengthened and enhanced through interconnection.

And finally, then, it is interconnection that makes the second question silly, its answer obvious. What happens when we are no longer here? Other people remember us -- what we did, what we didn't do, what we said, what we never told, and how we made them feel.

A brief throwback post.

2007-01-21T21:09:00.000-08:00

Apparently the porn industry, innovative as always, is dealing with high definition issues sooner than is Hollywood. And HDTV is proving to be something of a mixed blessing for these leviathans of lust (giants of the jerkoff? pharaohs of facials? titans of tinsel tassles?).

Opponents suggest high definition porn might not be what the doctor ordered (presumably on pay-per-view). Regular definition might be more flattering, these people suggest. (These are, I would think, the same pooh-poohers of authenticity who insist on turning the lights off.)

Proponents argue the high definition images allow viewers to feel even more a part of the action. (Notably, this is really the same argument made for HD Hollywood movies and HD sports broadcasts. Has a bit of a different feel to it here though.)

Still, even the champions of HD don't want pure reality. Using makeup, plastic surgery, new camera angles, and editing software (as well as the occasional switching of positions), these forward-looking (there's a joke there somewhere) porn magnates are taking regular purchasers of hard-core pornography closer to sex than they've ever been before (or, for many of them, ever will be), without losing the desired idealism to reality's highly-defined imperfections.

But as technology continues to improve, the cellulite and pimple problems will get worse. It will be up to these pioneers of...let's just leave it at pioneers...it will be up to them to make sure society's porn remains palatable.

In other news, a Cambodian woman has been reunited with her father after getting lost in the jungle at age eight and living as a wild animal for nineteen years. He identified her by her scars. And a man in Minneapolis has for the moment survived a sixteen-story fall out of a hotel window that ended with what I must assume was a hard landing on a first-floor overhang.

I suppose we all have our little problems.

All right stop, collaborate, and listen.

2007-01-12T16:30:00.000-08:00

Written in class one day in 2003.

2006-11-19T17:50:00.000-08:00

See, folks. Religion was bouncing around even before CJHS.

Stultifying suburbia, or, Stuck in the middle with you.

2006-11-12T22:06:00.000-08:00

I like the Gilmore girls.

I discovered them last year on ABC Family. They were on every day. Twice. 10am and 4pm. The 10am show was the same as the previous day's 4pm show. (Or the 4pm show was a preview of the next day's 10am show. But then the glass would be half-full of distinction without any difference.) It didn't matter much -- I was at work during both showings. But I had a dvr last year. So I taped the 4pm episodes and watched them each night. (Or in mini-marathons on the weekends.) I caught up rather quickly that way. I think I've seen most every episode at this point.

I don't watch the current season. The original writers are gone now. And the dialogue is less quick and witty, the drama less biting and more sappy, the characters less tortured, more lovestruck, and seemingly stupider.

All that is to say: I don't defend the current season. I would, in the past, if pressed, defend the previous seasons. Not in that I would argue it wasn't a ridiculous, soap opera-y, Dawson's Creek reincarnate. I would just suggest that the dialogue was quick and witty, the drama was biting, and the characters were smart, rational, and tortured.

And then. Given that squinty-eyed, eyebrow-lowering quizzical look in response. I would shrug and wander away, either with my feet or with a change in topic.

But the shrug was never just a shrug. (No shrug is. Much like cigars. Despite what you may have heard.) The shrug hid what no one quite understood. The shrug disguised what you noticed when you first started reading this, but passed off as a missed shift key and a miscued pronoun:

I like the Gilmore girls. I like them.

Their show, I think, is (was) worth defending. Somewhat meekly. But I like them. I like their lives.

Lorelai struck out on her own and didn't give a damn what people wanted from her. What people expected of her. She raised an intelligent, funny, sarcastic daughter. They have best friends and movie nights. They live in a small town. They meet in the gazebo in the town square. They eat all their meals in a diner. They play their roles.

There's still something romantic about small town life. The closeness of individuals. The acceptance of anonymity in the face of the world. The drawing in of boundaries. Knowledge of next moves.

I expect my borders will continue to expand. And my next moves will never be so clear. City life is different. And I like it. I like it better, I think. More gritty and thought-provoking.

But the refreshing and thoughtful gets me sometimes. So I love Jeff Daniels and Charlize Theron in Trial and Error. I daydream occasionally about the witness protection program. I spend a week or two when I can in the various East Coast halcyon homesteads of a best friend raised with rural sagacity. I dreamt of two idyllic years writing at Sarah Lawrence.

And I picture myself in Stars Hollow. A troubadour for our romantic inclinations.

There is a passage through the darkness and the mist.

2006-11-05T00:53:00.000-08:00

I found myself thinking about time.

I'd awoken with no idea of the hour. But I didn't know that at the time. So I wasn't thinking yet. The thinking (despite the limitations of our past tense) came later.

But. Then. (Upon awaking.) There was only wondering.

The immediate reaction to such wondering (in fact, really, the concurrent reaction) is to ask yourself (without ever, of course, actually asking yourself) what you can intuit.

My intuition was confused. The way I felt (so often so accurate) was no help at all. Truth be told, the way I felt was part of the problem. I was (warning: understatement approaching) hung over, and quite possibly still a bit drunk.

So it was. So be it. Plan B. I struggled to open my eyes, struggled against the contacts that had turned to double-sided suction cups (if you can imagine that) in the night.

I looked at the VCR display.

But. My VCR--the only clock I can see from my bed--was fucking with me.

Of course, I didn't know that at the time. No. At the time, I assumed it was right.

6:55 AM it blinked. (Looking at it now, the time doesn't blink. It must have been me that was blinking. It also doesn't say 'AM.' But that, at least, it seemed safe to assume.)

6:55. (More accurate.)

Anyway. I had no clue when exactly I'd put myself to bed, but I knew I wasn't ready to wake up. So I rolled over and fell back asleep. I believe I also moaned aloud. And clutched a pillow to my chest. (Those may seem unimportant details. They seem so to me. But there's no telling, really, what a reader might read into. Or. I suppose. There is only the telling.)

Then I woke up. (Again. It wasn't a dream. This isn't one of those.)

This time, I didn't attempt to feel the hour. I did, however, feel less full of tequila and beer, and more full of urine. I looked at the VCR clock (which was, of course, still fucking with me).

8:15. I stood up slowly, giving my head ample time to follow. It came less begrudgingly than I'd thought it would. On the way to the bathroom, I noted the clock on the stove.

10:15. I peed. As I stood in front of the toilet, I noted the clock next to the sink.

10:15. This time it surprised me. I took a double take and almost peed on the floor. (Almost.)

I washed my hands (two hours was only so surprising). I re-checked the stove. Checked the microwave. (10:15.) Lay back down in bed and turned to the TV Guide channel.

9:15. And I remembered. Daylight Savings Time. And somehow the VCR got confused. (I understood. We can only expect so much from each other.)

So it was 9:15. Despite the 8:15 and 10:15s surrounding me.

I'd awoken into involuntary uncertainty, between two points on an artificial human spectrum. Like a corpse forced to weigh the pros and cons of heaven and hell.

I rolled over, moaned aloud, clutched a pillow to my chest. And then I got up.

I spent 5 minutes resetting all my clocks. Tv. VCR. Stove. Microwave. Bathroom.

My phone and computer had reset themselves. Lucky bastards, I thought.

And then. I shut off the tv. I opened the windowshades. I turned on music. James Taylor's "Shed a Little Light" came on. (Actually, Jimmy Buffet's "Get Drunk and Screw" came on. And then Bon Jovi's "Bad Medicine." And then "Shed a Little Light." But it was still shuffle's doing.)

I listened. And heard.

And. I found myself thinking: about time.

Cropping something old. And then changing it completely.

2006-10-29T17:54:00.000-08:00

I have no lid upon my head, but if I did, you could look inside and see what's on my mind.

2006-10-20T21:41:00.000-07:00

The title of the last post was an orphan. A bit without a form. Without development.

So I tried to start with it.

But I've been having trouble writing here. (Hence the posting of old stuff.) So it didn't go anywhere. Or. Anywhere lengthy.

So. I now have more orphans. More bits for development. Mostly, because of the prophecy, about religion.

These are them. As I wrote them.

*****

In place of leaves/ we should burn/ pages and pages of prophecy.

2006-10-14T21:12:00.000-07:00

Written around the time a friend of mine killed himself. The end of 2004.

From 2003.

2006-10-11T21:30:00.000-07:00

I wrote this for a rally I didn't attend. Or. As it's been said. I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

[Clicking on it should bring it up larger. Apologies. But it being small was the only simple way to keep its formal integrity.]

This is me, without my hair.

2006-10-08T16:53:00.000-07:00

It has been a relatively recent revelation for me that I tend, perhaps more than others (perhaps only because I do it on paper), to romanticize my past. I re-present it. I create characters. For myself and for others. The truth is in it all somewhere, more or less buried. And that is the essay I will always be writing.

This is something recent. It's an excerpt of something unfinished. And it is, itself, unfinished. It's probably in need of revision. I can't tell yet. Though, I should note, melodrama is part of the topic -- so at least some of the melodrama you find will probably remain.

*****

I’d tried desperately to avoid falling in love with this girl. I’d refused to say it aloud. I would find myself thinking it, almost verbalizing, with my mouth in her hair and my leg thrown over hers in a way that seemed utterly unique to the harmonizing contours of our bodies. And I would stop myself. I would not let myself speak the words. I’d thought (it seems so silly now) that would be enough. Enough of a wall.

It wasn’t.

And then because of that—because of all the willful stoppage—when I finally let the words emerge (and still, it was only in writing, at first, that I allowed myself to do it then), it was, for me, a culmination. It was a climax. This was, I was thinking, consciously or not, the zenith of something.

(Despite the break-up we’d rationally made official two weeks earlier.)

(Despite the outward awareness that this was a redundant ending (emphasis to no avail, in the end), and not the holding pattern of sorts I somewhere deeply imagined it to be.)

(Despite the rest of the words I’d written, listing the reasons I was glad for her sake she was leaving – not lies at all, but truths impugned.)

Then, for me, finally: Here was the moment.

Her tears—the suddenly sad kind (though due to nostalgia, I now recognize)—told me her eyes had immediately scrolled to the final line. Those three words. But she read, too, my listed reasons. And then, “I love you too.” She said it back. And then my tears came. And it was exactly as, I thought, it should have been. Two star-crossed lovers, I was thinking, torn apart by circumstance. How unbelievably sad. Forget the months of repressing feeling, attempting not to feel. How unbelievably sad. Forget the supposed indiscretion. How unbelievably sad. These two people were losing each other and neither of them wanted it that way. How unbelievably sad. I thought.

How unbelievably sad.

Because if my “I love you” was a peak finally crested, hers was a valley. Mine was a “Look! See what I can say to you after all this time!” And hers was simply an “Of course.” Of course she loved me. We’d known each other five years, spent countless hours lying in each other’s arms, finally dated for eight months, living together most weekends. Of course she loved me.

But her love for me was, then, unexceptional. While my love for her had grown extraordinary.

So what I heard from her then was what fit with my own feelings – the same love despite tragedy I’d finally acknowledged myself. When what she’d spoken was truly love despite failure. For her, she still loved me, but we’d failed.

Rescuing the cliche: A love poem becomes something else. Perhaps.

2006-10-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

Both are untitled. Due, mostly, to laziness. (But I'll take suggestions, if you like.)

Now then, Version 1:
And, post-revision, Version 2:

An excerpt from something I can't help but like, despite Vivian Gornick thinking it sucks.

2006-09-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

I have this picture framed next to my bed. For six years now it’s been framed and next to my bed. I took it when I was twelve – I was into photography then. It’s of Venice Beach in L.A. Not the commercial areas. The beach. Sand and the ocean and the hills. I have no idea why, but there was only one person on the beach besides my family and I, and the family friend showing us around. Maybe he’d taken us to a private beach. I don’t know.

Anyway. I like the picture because in the foreground there are these tracks. Three tracks, like a wheelbarrow would make. They start, real heavy and thick, at the bottom of the picture. And they sort of trail off right where the foreground turns to the background – there’s a word for that place, but I don’t know it.

One night, junior year, while studying history, I caught Becca staring at it. The picture. The tracks. They’re pitiable, she said.

Pitiable? You mean pitiful?

No, I don’t. And she went back to her book.

And I wrote, “Ours is a history of self-defined triumphs.”

Anyway. I like the picture because I don’t understand it. Either the wagon—or whatever made the tracks—started in the middle of the frame, where the tracks stop, and moved downward – in which case it’s not at all clear how the wagon got there to begin with. Or, the wagon started somewhere below and moved upward and stopped where the tracks stop – but then it’s not clear how the wagon was taken away.

People generally like the picture. They like the tracks, they say usually.

It’s not the tracks that intrigue me. It’s where the wagon’s gone.

Posting this for lack of anything else to do with it at this point.

2006-09-29T13:35:00.000-07:00

I wrote this I guess probably about a year and a half ago. It's a speech/lecture/presentation I created to give to one of my classes. I never gave it. Because, in part, it over-does the drama and under-does the truth. But I think it has something to offer. And there's a line in there about an epidemiology of ideas that I like.

I was reminded of this speech by something I said a few days ago. Over-dramatic and under-truthed advice to med students: 50% of what you learn here will be wrong in 4 years...The trouble is, no one knows which 50%.

I'm not in med school. But that advice seems more true, somehow, out and about. If only because this piece extends that advice beyond med school, I like it.

******

Several of you have asked me recently why you’ve been learning for two years that the “so what” of your papers should come in the conclusion, only now to be taught that it should be introduced from the outset and incorporated throughout.

Well. The answer is simple: it’s complicated.

Each of us, in many ways and each of us in our own ways, are resistant to growth. Which does not make us unmotivated or apathetic, or even at all abnormal. Although it does make us somewhat obstinate.

But it makes sense, I think. Growth is difficult. Especially when it feels like it’s happening quickly, or when it feels forced upon you. Both of which are feelings that abound during high school. I remember that. I get that.

But let me tell you, as one who is just enough more experienced than you, it doesn’t get easier. It continues to feel forced sometimes, and it seems to happen more quickly, if you can imagine. In that way it gets more difficult. Though you come to expect it, and eventually, to accept it. And more slowly, usually, to embrace it.

And so your obstinacy, our obstinacy, is understandable. But still regrettable. And ultimately it cannot, it will not, hold up.

We have to grow. It’s not a choice. Especially not in today’s world, where what you learned yesterday often no longer holds true tomorrow.

A professor of mine at Brown, Professor Beiser, was fond of telling us, a large but discussion-based philosophy class, that students are often told on their first day of medical school, “Fifty percent of everything you learn here will be completely wrong when you graduate in 4 years…the trouble is, no one knows which fifty percent.”

He was right. He is right. No one knows which fifty percent. No one knows what will be obsolete tomorrow or next week or next year or 5 years from now when you graduate college and enter that elusive arena known only as “the real world.”

He often ended class with that statement. No one knows which fifty percent.

The message was clear. It didn’t just apply to med school, where the application was obvious and often physical.

Viruses mutate. New medicines are developed. Vaccines are created. New methods of surgery are invented and put into practice. And all of this can be traced via epidemiology.

But Professor Beiser was talking about something more. The mutation of problems. The development of new methods of action. The creation of new solutions. An epidemiology of ideas.

Albert Einstein once said, “The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.” This from a man, let us remember, whose theories and advocacy were instrumental in the development of the atomic bomb, the use of which Einstein always condemned.

What level of thinking brought us the atomic bomb?

E = mc2. The idea that energy and mass are relatively equivalent. The notion that an enormous amount of energy could be produced by, could be harnessed from, a tiny bit of mass. The imaginative theorizing it took to conceive of a chain reaction caused by splitting an atom, an iota of the universe, splitting that, a chain reaction that could destroy a modern city.

“The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.”

Change is constantly upon us. Yesterday’s means are forgotten. And yesterday’s ends are merely our starting point.

E = mc2. Discovery led to the opportunity for destruction. Which led to the opportunity for power and for warmth. Which led to the opportunity for terrorism. Which has led to the opportunity for a global response.

A response that no one really knew how to initiate.

A response that has begun to fall flat.

Or which has simply stripped off its global colors and reverted into yesteryear’s provincialism.

When E equaled mc2. And that was enough.

A global response. Which no one knows how to reinvigorate.

Because our leaders have reverted to yesterday’s means. Repackaged, perhaps. Our bombs apparently have greater intelligence now. Which means, I suppose, that they know when they destroy innocent lives.

“The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.”

“The release of atomic power,” Einstein also said, “has changed everything except our way of thinking.”

At the risk of sounding trite, it’s not our bombs that need greater intelligence to encounter the problems of today and tomorrow. It’s us. We must grow. Beyond E = mc2. Up and upward. Outward and together. We must grow forward as time moves forward.

We must continue to learn as quickly as we discover we are wrong. Life today is, it must be, a continual process of acceptance and adaptation and discovery.

Answers are inherently elusive and essentially transitory. Life today must be fueled by questions. How? Why? So what?

And so, in the interest of such eternal cycles, we too have in this space today come full circle. The question we started with: Why, it’s been asked, are we learning to incorporate our “so whats” throughout our papers?

Because you must grow as the world around you grows.

Because your writing should mirror life. The time has come and gone for the process of offering an idea, offering evidence in support, and then explaining why it was important at the end.

Discovery is no longer slow enough to allow you to hint at significance in conclusion.

Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, proposing that the creatures currently inhabiting Earth had descended from the first life on the planet in a continuous process of variation and natural selection. The third to last paragraph of this groundbreaking work ends with the simple line, “Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.”

Almost 150 years later, there is no longer time for such understatement.

James Watson and Francis Crick published an unassuming one-page paper in Nature magazine in April of 1953. The paper was titled, “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid.” The structure of DNA, the biochemical backbone of Darwin’s theory, had been exposed. The paper concludes, “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."

Over 50 years later, there is no longer time for such modesty.

Discovery is no longer slow enough to allow you to hint at significance in conclusion. You must have a good grasp, and your reader must have a good grasp, on the significance of what you’re saying as you are saying it.

Because by the time you get to the end, you’ll need to be asking new questions.

Darwin took twelve years before he published The Descent of Man in 1871, in which he applied the theories from On the Origin of Species directly to the question of human evolution. Twelve years.

You can’t wait twelve years. “So what” has become day by day. And so it must, to make it concrete, become paragraph by paragraph. You can’t wait twelve paragraphs to suggest the significance of what you’re saying.

Conclusions are where you pound home the “so what” that you have worked to describe and to demonstrate gradually. And then, today, the conclusion is where you ask, “what’s next?”

Darwin ended On the Origin of Species with a passage that seems fitting as an ending here as well, though I will shorten it and must acknowledge twisting it for my own devices.

“Judging from the past,” Darwin writes, “we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And of the species now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity; for…the greater number of species…have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct.”

There’s a bit more, but, first, in a slanted take on “what’s next,” I offer you here Professor Beiser’s reminder: No one knows which fifty percent.

“There is grandeur in this view of life,” Darwin continues, and I offer as a more hopeful outlook, “…whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Because I don't want to write, I'm posting something old.

2006-09-22T20:17:00.000-07:00

Love notes make great epitaphs/ when excerpted, we could fill boxes/ labeled lifetimes with misplaced nametags.

2006-09-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

I have now, after almost a month, almost fully moved in to Studio 5, Room 307.

My clothes are in drawers, my books are on shelves, my tv and dvd player are hooked up, and I have three different ways to fill the room with music. (Five, I suppose, if you count the dvd player and the PS2.) My fans are strategically placed. I have groceries. Empty boxes worth saving are stashed under the bed. My Dylan blanket is spread across the couch, as it should be. And the monkey has found a place to hang.

Of course, there are still broken down boxes waiting in the middle of the kitchen floor to be taken outside to the dumpster. Dirty clothes--in two piles, one in my closet, one in the bathroom--wait for me to buy a hamper. Most of my shoes still remain in the white plastic trash bags in which I brought them out here. The ironing board is still in the plastic it came in, and the majority of the pots and pans are still in their original bubble wrap. I still need to buy a lamp.

Framed and unframed pictures and posters still lean against the walls, waiting to be arranged more permanently. Those are, in fact, the same framed and unframed pictures and posters that spent fourteen months in Chicago leaning against the walls of that apartment. I didn't hang them up when I moved in. And the weeks and months passed. And eventually it seemed silly to hang them up when I would be taking them down again fairly soon.

In that apartment--the one in Chicago--I still had boxes left to be unpacked when I was moving out after over a year. I just brought them to my car and moved them to the next place.

Well, one of the next places. The lease on the place in Old Town was up on June 30th, and I wasn't supposed to be here in California until August 22nd. So I had nowhere to live. I spent a week or so with a friend in the city, living out of a suitcase. Then I went to Europe with that friend for almost three weeks, living out of a suitcase. Then, upon returning to Chicago, I lived (out of a suitcase) on my mom's living room couch in the suburbs for about four weeks.

Living on that couch was a peculiar experience. It was the same couch I'd napped on most days after getting home from middle school and high school. That was in what my family now refers to as 'the old house.' The house I lived in from age two until my sophomore year of college.

Making the nostalgia ring more loudly during my nights in my mom's new living room was the work I was supposed to be doing. Her house was filled with boxes of my things. Boxes from Old Town. Boxes still packed from Brown two years earlier. Boxes that had been in a storage unit for years.

Those were the worst. Boxes of things from infancy onward. My baby book and the report on corn I wrote in the third grade and the fabricated family tree my dad provided me in the sixth grade and the Bulls championship game from 1996 on VHS and all my graded work from high school. I threw much of it out. That was the endgame of the project. Downsizing. There just isn't room for it all anymore.

Everything I didn't want (or couldn't bring) with me out here had to stay in boxes at my mom's place.

My mom's place is her third since moving out of 'the old house' at the end of 2001. They've gotten progressively smaller. My sophomore year at Brown, I went home for Thanksgiving to a home I'd never seen before. It was a two-story condo in Buffalo Grove. It had a master bedroom and smaller bedrooms for me and my sister. I lived there on school breaks that year and during the following summer. Then she moved to a two-bedroom in Lincolnshire. My sister took the second bedroom. I never lived there.

I don't remember when during my junior year she moved to that second place, so I can't recall where I lived on school breaks that year, but I know I spent the summer before senior year at my dad's place.

My dad's place was his second since moving out of 'the old house' in December of my senior year of high school. (The first was a small, one-bedroom apartment whose temporary nature, after a year or so, haunted him as an apparition of permanence. He had to move. So he found a new place.) It was a two-story condo in Deerfield -- two bedrooms, one of which became mine. I lived there during breaks my senior year as well.

And the summer after my senior year, and for eight months after that, I continued to live at my dad's place. (Somewhere in that time--I believe, though I can't really remember--my mom moved to her current place in Wheeling. Still two bedrooms. One still my sister's.)

At the end of eleven months, I packed up that which wasn't still packed (Over school breaks and summers for the previous couple of years, I'd essentially lived out of my suitcase and a laundry basket. I never brought home much beyond clothes, some books, my computer, cds, and video games. And living with my dad for those months after college, I guess I just didn't get out of the habit.) and moved to the place in Old Town.

My sister moved out of my mom's place sometime after that, leaving my mom with a second bedroom cum den.

Somewhere in there then my dad moved to his current place, a block away in a two-story condo that is almost entirely identical to the previous one -- but with a larger master bedroom and the second bedroom set up as his office.

And sometime in there (rather immediately, I think), I enjoyed the city, enjoyed Old Town, enjoyed the place there. But, in small part because I was living well beyond my means, it never ceased to feel like a hotel.

And fourteen months and a trip to Europe later, and I was living on my mom's living room couch -- because the couch in the den was less comfortable (it's the one I used to read on in our 'library' in 'the old house'). And besides, my boxes filled the room.

There are far fewer of those boxes now. Somewhere among them, stashed in the closet of my mom's new den, are two rather small ones marked 'memorabilia' and a couple of shoeboxes marked 'pictures.' Among my many books and old trading cards and warmest clothes, they wait.

And now I'm in California. Almost moved in. With my framed and unframed pictures and posters leaning against the walls.

Wondering where I'll go to when I go home for school breaks.

One more, and then I promise something else.

2006-09-08T02:52:00.000-07:00

From the margins of a college notebook.

2006-09-06T21:50:00.000-07:00

A poem from June.

2006-09-05T19:55:00.000-07:00

Article 1, section 6.

2006-09-04T22:15:00.000-07:00

[Temporarily removed for revision.]

Confessional: an unspecified moment.

2006-09-03T16:53:00.000-07:00

I recently had this moment. This moment in which I realized the extent of my self-absorption. This moment in which I realized I'd spent several months of my life not paying enough attention to the uniqueness of my personal lens. (Would be "too much attention," but my concerted attention is unfailingly skeptical.)

So the moment took place in the midst of a meal. And, more specifically, in the midst of a lie. Ironically. The lie was somewhat innocent. (Meant to stave off tears -- the innocence. But the tears were my own -- the somewhat.)

The lie was about timing. I was acknowledging knowledge. I said I'd known something for a while, whereas I was really realizing it as I said it. (Though the while was unspecified, I think it would be a stretch for a few seconds to constitute a while.)

And it worked. In terms of staving off tears. Though the knowledge itself, as opposed to the timing of its acknowledgement, caused some as well. But not my own.

The substance of the knowledge in question is not really the issue. (In fact, its relative insignificance only underscores the real issue.) Suffice it to say that it explained any number of things that had seemed, up to the point of acknowledgement, utterly unexplainable. The inexplicable aspects of those things (happenings, statements, views) had diminished over the course of the previous months, but only in so far as time refocuses the mind. With focused effort (whether wallowing in self-pity or anger), those actions and remarks and opinions remained unbelievably incoherent.

And then this moment. A lie between bites. And everything started to make sense.

Over the course of the next couple of days, more and more elements of my recent past began to fall into place. I found myself considering them as I daydreamed away from my reading. But not obsessively. I could still shut them off and go back to the text in my hands.

I smiled as the pieces fit together. I grinned at my lack of self-awareness. (I pride myself on my observant nature. And I can't help but think this was a semi-conscious effort. What that means ought to be another entry here.)

And. It's ok now.

(I can't help, too, but wonder whether this moment could have come months ago. Or whether the months without it somehow allowed it to take hold in a way that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.

I don't know. But. It's ok now.)

That's the real issue.

This is not from Article I.

2006-05-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

In the ambivalent light of the gas station—bright as day under the roof over the pumps, but dark alongside the garage where I’d parked—his five o’clock shadow may be an actual shadow. I reach in the driver’s door and pop the hood.

“How long you been driving it?”

“Tonight, you mean? Only about twenty minutes.” I let him lift the hood. Even after you hit the button, there’s a latch in front that always gives me trouble.

He seems surprised when it won’t just lift up. I don’t say anything. He struggles with it for a moment and then figures it out.

“Yeah,” I say, “there’s a latch there in front too.”

He sets the hood lift into place (I always call it the kickstand, but I’ve learned) and starts unscrewing the coolant cap.

“You sure you want to open that so soon? Can spray up into your face, can’t it? If it’s too hot?”

“Should be fine.” I take a step back.

I wince as he removes the cap. But nothing sprays out. He fools with a couple things under the hood and goes inside without saying anything.

I step closer and look at my car’s inner workings. I see where the washer fluid goes.

The five o’clock shadow (it’s real, I notice, as he steps out of the light beyond the door) comes back out with a flashlight and fools with what seem to be the same things again.

It’s warm for December but I keep my hands in my pockets (I hadn’t dressed for being outside) and try to appear as though I could disassemble and reassemble a carburetor if I should so desire.

“Coolant level’s fine. Not full, but not low at all. I could put in some more if you want, but I don’t have the same stuff as in there.” He looks at me for a decision.

“You don’t have it?” I stall.

“You’ve got pink stuff in there. I’ve got the blue. Should be fine.”

“Well I wouldn’t want to mix colors.” I smile. He looks back at the car. I try to dispel the air of homosexuality I had created. “I guess if it’s not low, might as well not chance mixing coolant types.” No reaction. I continue. “If you don’t think it’s really necessary, I guess we should just leave the pink alone.” Too far. So much for hetero. He screws the cap back on.

I step up, remove the hood lift, and drop the hood into place. He’d stepped to the door. “Well thanks,” I offer. He nods, and disappears into the light.

I fall into the driver’s seat with a shrug. “You have a good night too.” I speed out of the parking lot. I’d been late already.

Article I, section 5.

2006-05-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

About a year ago I had a conversation with one of my best friends that went something like this:

“You don’t really believe Jesus Christ was the son of God, do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like you don’t actually believe he died and was resurrected and was actually God’s son, do you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m just asking. Do you actually believe all that stuff? That all that really happened?”

“Well. I guess so. I don’t know.”

“Jesus was the son of God. You believe that.”

“Well. Yeah. That’s one of the main points of my religion. So I guess so.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I guess. I think so. Why?”

“Just wondering. I’ve been thinking about this religion stuff a lot recently.”

And then I asked her: “What denomination are you, again?”

She laughed. “I’m not sure. Once we moved here— I think we’re Presbyterian now. But I don’t really know what that means.”

Article I, sections 3 & 4.

2006-05-20T18:05:00.000-07:00

When I was five, maybe six years old and my sister was seven or eight, my parents asked us if we wanted to continue going to Sunday school. Both of us said no. So we stopped. That’s all there was.

A few years later, I quit little league after being hit by the ball three times in one inning (while batting, while running, and while pitching) – despite what it sounds like, I was actually quite a good baseball player. Anyway. I remember that being disappointing to my father.

***

In seventh grade, my best friend and I climbed into my mom’s car after the first of what would be many bar mitzvah services that year. My mom asked how it was and my friend replied, “It was okay. It was mostly in some weird language.”

“That’s Hebrew,” my mom said. I’m pretty sure I knew that, because I remember thinking how stupid my friend was. But I’m not certain.

My other best friend in middle school had her bat mitzvah at a Reconstructionist Jewish temple in Deerfield. At least I think it was Reconstructionist. Whatever it was, the point is they never used the word God. Through the whole service. No God. Though there was some Hebrew, so I can’t be entirely sure.

Another of my friends was jealous that so many of our classmates were having big parties that year, so her parents threw her a huge thirteenth birthday party in their enormous backyard – complete with DJ, dance floor (yes, outside, they had one assembled on the lawn), lunch, and thirteen birthday cakes. She invited everyone in our class, as was the custom.

My parents asked if I wanted a big party also. I said no. I didn’t need one. Besides, I wouldn’t be thirteen until eighth grade. I’d be last. And it would just make me feel different.

So I spent my thirteenth birthday in my basement with my close friends. We ordered pizza and played strip Twister and watched “Mallrats” and “Empire Records,” and I fell asleep with a girl in my arms for the first time.

Article I, section 2.

2006-05-07T19:09:00.000-07:00

I have an older sister. She lives in the city and I see her a bit, but not much. I have parents, divorced, living in different suburbs. I see them every couple of weeks. I have grandparents – two of them, my mom’s parents. I see them for holidays usually, either for dinner or for dessert. Beyond that, my family has never extended very far.

I have three aunts and two uncles. My mom’s sister, Laurie, who lives in Baton Rouge now, I think, and whom I haven’t seen in years. She’s married to my Uncle Elliot, whom my dad recently and succinctly described as a “lying, cheating, criminal piece of shit.” They have two kids, both adopted, both living in Texas, but not in Houston where they grew up. In a few months those two will have had three weddings between them, none of which I’ll have attended.

And then there’s my dad’s two sisters: Janice, whom we not very affectionately call crazy; and Deborah, who’s married to my second uncle, Howard. They live in Highland Park and have three kids who live in nearby suburbs. Those three kids—average age about thirty-five—have ten kids between them, all at or under the age of six. I see them on holidays too, either for dessert or for dinner.

Three aunts, two uncles, five first cousins, and now ten little kids. There are, of course, others. But that’s the extent of the family I’ve ever really known. I can call up bits of recollections of Fourth of July parties at someone’s house – a great aunt’s, if I’m not mistaken. Probably the same one I used to get twenty-five dollar checks from every birthday (the cards still arrive, but the cash flow stopped at twenty-one). She lives in Florida, but I couldn’t tell you where. There were other kids now and again, I know – Matt, and maybe a Danny. I assume they’re cousins of some degree or another, but really I have no idea.

Beyond those original sixteen (who barely go back two generations)—now twenty-six (the little kids pushing forward one generation)—I don’t have much concept of what families usually call the family.

Now. Sure. There’s some stories I know about the people who came before me. Mostly from my dad’s side. They were the interesting ones. My great-grandmother, Rose B___, went to Birmingham one spring and came back in the fall with my infant grandfather. No one knows who his father was, though people say his name may have been Carl. My grandfather died young, before I was born. But while he was alive he claimed old Carl B___ – that’s another thing, actually. No one’s sure where the name B___ came from. That is, whether it was Rose’s maiden name or her married name, or, for that matter, if she was ever married to my grandfather’s father at all. Anyway, my grandfather – his nickname was Weasel, and even my mom would call him Papa Wease. Papa Wease would say his father, Carl, was hung in Denver for stealing horses.

Rose was an interesting character, even beyond the mysteries of my grandfather’s conception. She owned a delicatessen on Maxwell Street for years. Actually, she owned the whole building. Her deli was on the first floor, there was a restaurant on the second floor, and she lived (with her kids and a man named Jack) on the third floor. A wealthy woman. But my grandfather was a spendthrift and a gambler.

My favorite story about the two of them comes from the late 1920s. Back then, companies used to sponsor baseball teams – and other sports teams. The Chicago Bears were once the Decatur Staleys, named for the company that ran the team, the A.E. Staley Manufacturing Company.

But anyway. You had to work for the company to play on the team. My grandfather, Weasel, wanted to play for the baseball team of some bank or other where Rose had all her money. So Rose, a significant customer, arranged for the bank to give her son a job. But he didn’t want a job, he wanted to play baseball. So he played, but he never went to work. And the bank fired him. Rose stormed in and demanded he be reinstated. She promised he would show up to work. So they did. And he didn’t. And they fired him again. And Rose stormed in again. This time the bank firmly said no, so Rose withdrew all her money in cash. A few days later, so the story goes, the stock market crashed, the banks closed, and people lost everything. But not Rose.

A new series of as yet indeterminable length.

2006-04-30T21:12:00.000-07:00

So. It's been a few months since I've written. In public. Since I've self-published. I have been writing. Not all pieces I'd want you all to see. At least not with my name attached to them. But I thought it was time to share something. So. A couple months back I assigned my juniors a personal essay with the following prompt: What does it mean to you to be a young, American Jew today? One particularly cheeky student suggested that were I to write such an essay it would be quite short (since I have occasionally vocalized my disinterest in and lack of conscious affiliation with Judaism). I laughed. Then I thought about it. And I decided to try to write the essay as well. It came out in fits and starts, bits and pieces, phrases and scenes. As per the usual. I usually write in chunks. And I didn't finish by the due date. But I read to them what I had (after some of them shared theirs). And now I offer it to you. In fits and starts. A series. So. Without further ado. Section 1.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Growing up, religion played no part in my friendships. As a kid, I’m sure I couldn’t have told you which of my friends were Jewish and which were Christian and which were anything else. I guess it never seemed important to them, so it was never important to me. My family belonged to a temple for about six months, I think, when I was about five. And then not. I never went to services, not on holidays, not on any days. As far as I know, none of my friends went to temple or church either – though I realize they must have, if many eventually had bar and bat mitzvahs. Actually, the first time I remember going to services at a synagogue it was for a classmate’s bar mitzvah in seventh grade. Now that I think about it, I never went to a confirmation – until high school, when I went to my girlfriend’s brother’s confirmation. It felt just like a bar mitzvah, but without the extravagant party.

But anyway. I never paid attention to my friends’ religions. And it seemed like they didn’t either. Even when I got older, and I could tell you who was Jewish, for example, I couldn’t tell you at all who was Reform or Conservative or Orthodox. And I’m just as far from knowing who amongst my friends is Presbyterian or Episcopalian or Unitarian or Catholic. In high school I had an acquaintance named Mohammed. Only recently, when I ran into him at another friend’s house while he was discussing the similarities between Islam and Unitarianism, did I consciously put together that he was Muslim.

Mohammed was in Political Science with me sophomore year of high school. He sat next to the door. There was no seating chart; that’s just where he sat. The teacher used him as an example all the time. The death penalty. Abortion. Torture. Whenever we discussed something bad happening to somebody, Mohammed was the somebody our teacher used to make the example personal. He would say something like, “Imagine that we just killed Mohammed by lethal injection,” and for physical emphasis he would send Mohammed out into the hall and make us look in silence at Mohammed’s empty seat. To pound home that we were killing someone. That capital punishment wasn’t just theory. People died. People were lost. We killed Mohammed quite a few times that semester. Now, with my, and the world’s, current sensibilities, Mohammed seems like a bad choice. But he wasn’t a Muslim then. He was Mohammed. He just sat closest to the door. And maybe that’s the point.

An open(ed) letter.

2006-02-05T21:49:00.000-08:00

What follows below is an email I sent to a student in response to a conversation he initiated with me this past Friday. The conversation concerned a quotation that has been posted on my classroom bulletin board since August, but which has only recently been noticed by most students. The quotation is as follows, attributed to Noam Chomsky: "If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all." The recent spate of attention was prompted by an anonymous student's covering the quotation with a piece of paper reading "CENSORED." The piece of paper was moved from elsewhere on the bulletin board -- a board denouncing censorship, which includes a handful of other quotations in addition to the one in question.

I left the board in its modified state, and pointed out the obvious irony of the anonymous act to my classes. One student approached me to discuss the issue further. We did so; and upon further reflection, I sent this email.

*****
~~~~~, Our conversation on Friday morning remained in the back of my mind through this weekend, until this afternoon when it erupted once more into my conscious and deliberate thoughts. What troubled me was twofold: one, your characterization of Chomsky and his views; and two, your assertion that his very name in attribution has no place on the wall of a Jewish school with a mission that explicitly supports the state of Israel. You characterized Chomsky as a man who supported an outspoken Holocaust denier and who denies that the state of Israel should exist. As I suspected at the time (but did not vocalize, for lack of readily available evidence), I think both your claims about Chomsky's opinions are false. With regard to your first claim about Chomsky, the affair to which I assume you were referring (and if I'm wrong, please tell me) is that in which Chomsky (in 1979) signed a petition supporting Robert Faurisson's rights of freedom of speech and expression. Faurisson is, you would very fairly say, in compiling his views, a Holocaust denier. Chomsky, however, is not. As Chomsky wrote in 1981, in response to this affair: Faurisson's conclusions are diametrically opposed to views I hold and have frequently expressed in print (for example, in my book Peace in the Middle East?, where I describe the holocaust as ‘the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in human history’). [1] To say that Chomsky “supports a Holocaust denier” suggests that he supports the content of that denier’s denial. But that is simply to skew the facts — or, more accurately and more semantically, to stop too soon. That is, Chomsky does not support a Holocaust denier. Rather, Chomsky supports a Holocaust denier’s right to deny the Holocaust — and to do so vocally and in the public sphere. Chomsky does not support the content of the denial; he supports the existence of denial as a form. He supports the existence of speech, and specifically of dissent, even when he vehemently disapproves of what is being said. As he wrote (the sentence that follows the quoted sentence above): [I]t is elementary that freedom of expression (including academic freedom) is not to be restricted to views of which one approves, and that it is precisely in the case of views that are almost universally despised and condemned that this right must be most vigorously defended. [2] Similarly, in response to your second claim about Chomsky (that he asserts the state of Israel should not exist), I urge you to look more closely at Chomsky’s views. His views are quite nuanced, and both practical and theoretical. He wrote in 2003 (a statement that seems, in my admittedly brief research, to be representative): On the matter of legitimacy and recognition, once the State of Israel was established in 1948, my feeling has been that it should have the rights of any state in the international system: no more, no less. [3] Granted, he qualifies this view with specific opinions on the particulars of international border recognition. But with respect to Israel’s existence as a state, he does not hem or haw. That said (to head off a possible objection), Chomsky does not acknowledge the state of Israel’s “right to exist.” But that is an objection stemming from political theory: he does not acknowledge that any state has a right to exist. That right, he suggests, is limited to human beings. All that is to say: I think your characterization of Chomsky is erroneous. But ultimately that is not what most troubled me about our conversation. What has kept our conversation in my mind these last few days was your suggestion that Chomsky’s name has no place on the wall of a classroom in a Jewish school. Chomsky, though, is one of the most well-known Jews in the world today. His work has revolutionized thinking (and spawned counter-revolutions) in the fields of linguistics and psychology. He is an outspoken and important political, social, and cultural critic. And yes, he says some things and holds some views you disagree with (though perhaps, as described above, fewer than you may have thought). But we need to acknowledge people we disagree with; we need to confront their ideas, not ignore them. And we need to accept—and further, we need to embrace—their right to shout their ideas from streetcorners and op-ed pages. The quote on the wall of our classroom does not support the content of any of Chomsky’s views (whether you agree with them or not) except his re-formulation of Voltaire’s famous aphorism: “I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.” With that in mind, you’ll note the parallel between the wall of quotes in our classroom and the list of signatures on the petition signed by Chomsky in support of Robert Faurisson’s rights. But beyond the abstract reasoning for allowing the quote to adorn the wall of our classroom, note the practical consequences. Are you not taught in our Jewish school to question dogma, to investigate meaning, to parse texts, to converse with peers and teachers and the writings of your ancestors? Well, Chomsky’s name on the wall of our classroom has created conversation. It has led to discussion and argument. It has led people to speak and act in support of their values and opinions (some anonymously, and some—more courageously—in person). And that is the value I support most vigorously: the preservation of the marketplace of ideas, through which civil discourse will travel slowly but surely toward something like Truth. That, to me, is education. If that is not Jewish education, I say to you that that is a shame. So, should Chomsky’s quotation be on the wall in a classroom of a Jewish school? I should hope so. --------------------------------------------- [1] http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19810228.htm [2] Ibid. [3] http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/200309--.htm **Another, uncited, reference on the “Faurisson Affair”: http://www.chomsky.info/letters/1989----.htm **You will, no doubt, notice that these references are articles cited on Chomsky’s official homepage. Still, in my admittedly limited research, these articles seem to be reliable artifacts of Chomsky’s words and views.

Isn't "Black (insert day of the week here)" supposed to denote catastrophe, chaos, and confusion.

2005-12-29T16:00:00.000-08:00

[This post has been a long time coming. And is now, I suppose, a bit belated. But perhaps now--when we all turn a hesitant, noncommittal eye toward the new year and its inevitable resolutions--is as appropriate a time as any for some holiday excoriation.]

My last post--though, granted, it was a while ago--was about Thanksgiving. The novel notion of taking one day out of the year to simply give thanks. For what we have. And even, I suggested, to embrace that which we have but rarely acknowledge.

A national day of thanksgiving. A great idea, I said. And I still think so.

A day on which even the Native Americans got along with the Pilgrims (or so says the national myth). A day on which families come together (for better or for worse). A day that we all look forward to (though most of us just for the food).

A day followed by its indebted opposite: Black Friday.

Black Friday!? Is this the day when the Native Americans came back to slaughter the Pilgrims in their tryptophan-induced stupor? Or (heaven forbid) when the Pilgrims slaughtered the noble savages? Or, more likely yet, when the Native Americans succumbed to the blight of the disease-ridden food served by the Pilgrims?

No. no. no. Black Friday, we are told, is merely the day--traditionally, and however morbidly named--on which retail establishments start to turn a profit for the year. The huge number of sales on the day after Thanksgiving here in the kindly old U.S. of A. finally puts stores into "the black" in their accounting manifests.

Now. As a teacher of literature, I ask my students to look for the arc of a story. To look for change in a character, progress or regress. To consider order (or disorder), why one event follows another. To consider whether it has to.

Thanksgiving. Black Friday. National holiday of offering thanks and remembering what we have. Day off from work to kick off the holiday shopping "season" during which we all spend a month on an old white man's lap (metaphorically or not) spouting off lists of what we want, what we want to upgrade, or what we want two more of.

This season is not marked by changing weather or the gradual (but always seemingly sudden) blossoming of flora. This season is kicked off by gluttony and marked by greed. And often sloth. And always envy. And it ends with either wrath or pride (depending on Santa's whim or your parents' bosses' reluctant generosity). And, no doubt, lust is in there somewhere.

Those Catholics were (are?) on to something. And yet. Wait a second. Isn't this holiday season (a quick nod and a shuffle of the feet to you 'War on Christmas' folks on both sides of that aisle) ostensibly a celebration of Christ? I can't seem to recall the Beatitude that goes, "Blessed are those who get everything they desire year in and year out, for they are just that deserving dammit."

Now. I can smell your knee-jerk, accusatory defensiveness. And yes, the gifts I got a few days ago are nothing to sneer at. And I will enjoy them. And I'm not returning them all and donating the proceeds (though, as Peter Singer's moral compass kicks in, perhaps I should). And I'm not in money trouble by any but the most perverted North Shore-ian stretch of the imagination.

I'm just saying it's ironic. The juxtaposition. And we don't ever notice the irony. A day of thanksgiving. And then a day of getting out of bed at 4:30am to trample people (literally) at the front door of Best Buy to get the last DVD player that's free after instant savings and instant rebates and mail-in rebates and a coupon from the paper before the guy down the street can get there because he can't get out of the house before 5:15am because he has to walk his dog and the dog won't go before 5 o'clock.

It just seems so wrong. Shouldn't the thanksgiving last a month and the gift-buying and -giving last a day? (And maybe be price-capped at a card?)

Practical? Perhaps not. Not with our current "it's-the-thought-that-counts-(but-only-when-I-don't-like-it)" socialized mentality. But it could be.

It should be the thought that counts, really. Still, I always complain when people plant trees for me in Israel because, well, because I think that's stupid. But I wouldn't mind donations made in my name to charities I support in theory or in reality. And that could be done in one day. And it wouldn't have that seven deadly sin thing hanging around its personified neck.

Am I disallowing holiday gifts for me from now on? I'm not sure. Maybe I am. I like gifts. But there are always others more in need.

Perhaps I'll personalize my altruistic utilitarianism, Professor Singer. Perhaps I'll take a cue from my calendar. (11/7) Accept birthday gifts. (11/25) Offer thanks. (12/25) Request donations/gifts for others more in need.

I'll give it some more thought. And I'll let you know.

But the current order of things has to change.

Thanks for that.

2005-11-27T00:24:00.000-08:00

A national day of thanksgiving. Proclaimed as such by the President. Each year. As per tradition.

And each year this nation of ours is--or at least should be--thankful for different things. And, as per a different sort of tradition, each year--from January to November--too many of us do our best to forget to be thankful. We criticize the abundance of chaff (however rightly), and don't stop to recognize the wheat in our midst.

We offer reprobation for slow governmental response to disaster without recognizing the good fortune of having a government that can respond at all. Or of living in a society that expects help from its government, rather than expecting neglect.

We yearn for new national leaders but do little to support local leaders we agree with who may just be the next crop of national leaders.

We complain about the high price of gas without really realizing that we're still able to afford it.

We lament the futility of the "peace process" in the Middle East from the quite-a-bit-more-than-relative safety of water coolers in Morton Grove, IL.

We protest a war without acknowledging the majestic fireworks of our nation's pre-emptive first-strike capable...

Ok...so not that last one. That damned war will be the death of us in one way or another. But the rest of them. I was serious. Too often we criticize without taking time to be thankful.

Thanksgiving. Giving thanks. All at once. In unison. What a concept. It's nice of President Bush to offer us a day to do so.

A national day of peacegiving would be nice too, but...ok...sorry...I'm biting my tongue (or my fingers, as the case may be).

The revolution will not be televised.

2005-11-20T20:02:00.000-08:00

[Disclaimer: "Yesterday" no longer actually refers to yesterday. But it took me a while to figure out where this was headed. But now it looks as though it's here to stay. Oh I believe in...]

Yesterday. My grandfather turned 92. So first: happy birthday, Papa! (Not that you'll ever read this...being 92 and all.)

But moving on.

92 years old. Two years into his tenth decade. Even without the constant clicking of the oxygen tank brazenly announcing the passing of every few seconds, it's enough to get me thinking about time. About time.

He was born in 1913. Born into a world that would erupt--in the first year of his life--into what would come to be known as the First World War (the first of many as it turns out, though only the first of two by name).

Less than a year earlier, the additions of Arizona and New Mexico brought the United States up up to 48 stars on its flag. (Numbers 49 and 50 wouldn't make an appearance for almost 50 more years, until my father was nearing teenager-dom...which is also disconcerting time-wise.)

My grandfather was a teenager during Prohibition and the Roarin' Twenties.

He was in his late twenties when FDR spoke of a day that would live in infamy.

And he was in his late eighties when that sort of language was finally used again. And again. And again. In disingenuous, propagandistic syndication.

He was in his late forties during the Cuban Missile Crisis -- middle-aged when Charles de Gaulle waved away evidentiary photos of missiles in Cuba, saying, "The word of the President of the United States is good enough for me."

Forty-five years later, who would do that today? Who would say that?

He was born with the assembly line; I was born with the personal computer. He was raised amid influenza; I was raised amid AIDS. He was told penicillin would be his life's cure-all; I am told genomics will be mine. He was born ten years after the Wright brothers' first flight; I have already seen the first outer space tourists return from their travels.

He was barely five years old when the following words were heard from the President:

"What we demand in this war...is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression."

His first President, Woodrow Wilson, set out this "program of the world's peace" while at home he set up the U.S. Committee on Public Information which ordered the Palmer Raids in 1919, he had Eugene V. Debs arrested, he supported the American Protective League, and he pushed the Espionage and Sedition Acts through Congress.

Who would say that today? Who would do that?

He was barely five years old. I am now twenty-three.

92 years. He has seen radios turn to TVs turn to color TVs turn to VCRs turn to DVDs turn to Tivos turn to video iPods.

The Birth of a Nation to Fahrenheit 9/11.

And the more things change.

Digital audiobooks and other divine gadgetry.

2005-10-13T15:19:00.000-07:00

First of all, apologies for what may seem to be shameless plugs throughout this post. But. I don't stand to gain anything from said plugs. So perhaps that takes some of the shame away. Or adds it back in. My cliches are leaving me defenseless -- I hate when that happens.

That said.

First.

I've come across this website called Audible.com that offers digital audiobooks for download. You can stream the files from the internet, listen to them on your computer, transfer them to an iPod, or burn them to cds. Full, unabridged books. Popular books. Fiction, Non-fiction, and everything in between. The service is marketed mostly, much like the books on tape of old, to commuters -- a group I have enthusiastically joined, as it was a requirement of leaving the suburbs. So I'm considering joining up (a proposition made all the more enticing by the free iPod Shuffle offered with a six-month registration). I haven't been able to read much recently--outside of the books I assign for class--and I figure the just under two hours I spend each day driving back and forth to the city could perhaps be better used than they currently are (morning: Howard Stern; afternoon: music).

I foresee only two problems. One: perhaps I need this driving time more than I think I do -- to relax and let my mind wander. In fact, perhaps the fact that I think I might need that time for such reasons means that I definitely do. And two: I'm not sure how I feel about audiobooks. I blame my father for this hesitancy. He has a huge book collection. If I like a book, I like to own it. I love pages. Dust covers. And I don't want to be in a position of feeling obligated (as irrational as it may seem to some of you) to buy a book in hard copy that I've already paid for in digital form. But. Then I think: maybe ethereal pages would be ok for certain books -- especially books my father already owns (a train of thought that comes to its morbid conclusion when, as per his occasional promises, I'll still eventually own the hard copies).

Second.

You can now text message Google. You've been able to do it for a while. Again, like Audible.com, this isn't news in the "new" sense of the word. But I've only recently discovered it. You can use the service for any number of things -- telephone numbers, driving directions, product pricing comparisons, stock quotes. But I've only ever used it for one thing: movie showtimes. So that's all I can speak to. And this is all I'm going to say about it. It's perfect. I can't think of a way to improve it. You text the name of the movie and a zip code, and within a minute or so you get a response with the closest movie theaters showing that movie (including addresses and phone numbers) and their respective showtimes. Simple. Elegant. Google.

Third.

Again, not news. Public bathrooms have become havens of cleanliness in recent years. Ok. Not really. But they're trying. Especially in nice places. Automatically flushing toilets and urinals. Sensor faucets and hand-dryers. And even, most recently, sensor paper towel dispensers. You still have to touch the soap dispensers, but that's ok with me -- because the soap is still clean, and cleaning. And all that is great. But here's the thing. Why do so many doors to so many public bathrooms open in? When they open in, as though this isn't obvious, you have to touch the door with your hands on the way out. After having, presumably, cleaned your hands. And that's where the problem is. Lots of people (mostly men, but women too, as sophomore year and coed bathrooms taught me firsthand, so to speak) don't wash their hands. And then they leave the bathroom -- touching the same door handle I have to touch with my freshly cleansed hands. All I'm saying is. If you can wave your hand and make the sink turn on, why can't we get those automatic doors they have at the supermarket? Or a garbage can behind the door to throw away the paper towel through which I touch the door handle? Or at least--at the very least--have the door open out?

Finally.

God. These last couple days--as I've been sitting at home, since work is closed for Yom Kippur (no work allowed, of any kind)--I've begun to think that people (some people, mind you, not all people) sort of use god as a gadget. An atonement gadget. Once a year. (Note: I'm writing of Jews here, obviously--and again, some Jews, mind you, not all Jews--but much of this is easily adaptable to other major religions.) The synagogues set up extra chairs. They dust off the extra prayer books. They put a person at the door. And they peddle their wares. And what is it they peddle? Atonement. In the name of god. You pay your money, they check your ticket (no ripping, ripping would be work, work isn't allowed), you go up the stairs into the theater straight ahead, you watch the show, and at the end of the night you leave your year's worth of sins with the indentation of your ass in your rented collective confessional chair. Or with the sweat under your chin, where it gathered beneath your hanging head. Or the scuff marks on the floor left behind by your shuffling feet. Buyer's remorse? God has become another gadget you need to buy an update for each year. It's the spiritual equivalent of Windows XP. Each Yom Kippur is a new "security pack." Put out by Bill Gates to stop the hackers of the world. Uh huh. Caveat emptor.

Peeling potatoes for god's sake.

2005-09-18T20:04:00.000-07:00

[Aside: I haven't posted in a couple weeks in part because I wanted to let my last post sit for a while. I wanted it to be my statement to the world for a bit of time. But also, I wasn't sure how to follow it. Not because it was so great or anything, but because of its subject. It seemed too serious to follow with another silly extended observation about Tivo. So, a compromise. I'll jump back into it. But I'll write about something important. Here goes.]

I cut my thumb today. I was peeling potatoes and I went to wipe an errant bit of potato skin from the paring knife. And instead I sliced through the skin of my thumb. The tip. Right on the pad. A vertical cut, as though my thumb were my wrist and I was trying to kill myself.

So. It hurts a little. And it's difficult to get a bandaid to stay on the tip of your thumb. But that's not why this cut is so important.

Its significance lies in the reminder of how important thumbs really are. The opposable kind. Not just the silly fifth-of-five-index-fingers kind, like the hands on the "people" I used to draw in kindergarten. When moving your thumb and pressing it against anything offers you a sharp pain, when you're trying not to get the bandaid on your thumb wet, when you begin to avoid using your thumb on your dominant hand -- you really start to realize how useful the opposable thumb is. Someday, if you think of it, count how many times a day you do something you simply couldn't do (or, at least, not in the way you normally do it) without the ability to grip something tightly in one hand. You'll lose count. I promise. Some of you more quickly than others.

And if and when you do that little experiment (even if it's just a thought experiment), some of you will begin to think the following innocuous little thought: The opposable thumb is an amazing creation.

And then you'll come to a starkly defined fork in the road of logic. The first path is studded with randomly sprouting flora and punctuated by streams snaking back and forth asymmetrically. The second path is guarded by free-floating fiery swords, lit by burning bushes, and passes unceasing through split seas.

Science and religion, folks. Evolution and creationism. Natural selection and intelligent design. More similar than some of you may think (a nod to Blake, and a paper she seemed to always be writing for four years). But, ultimately, different.

Now. I'm not going to run through all the tired arguments. Ok. I am. But quickly.

Yes, the opposable thumb is awesome. That's why it's still around. And that's why it's around on the hands of the dominant species on the planet. The wondrous utility of the opposable thumb is a testament to millenia devoted to weeding out those without them. And the fossil record, along with the so-called living fossil record, offers plenty of evidence in that regard.

Or maybe god sat down (that's a funny image to me), took out a pencil, sharpened it (another funny image), and drew up a schematic for the human hand. And it had five index fingers. He set it down on a cloud and floated around it in a circle (again, funny), considering it from all angles. And he was about ready to go ahead and say, "Let there be hands with five index fingers!" when he had a second thought: How about an opposable thumb? He weighed the various pros against the obvious con of increased masturbation, and decided to go ahead with it. And thus came about the opposable thumb.

Well. Maybe. But there's no fossil record of that (no doubt because god, in his infinite wisdom, threw that original schematic into a burning bush). And like I said above -- it's a series of funny images to me.

But. Here's the main point.

Those of you who see the opposable thumb and exclaim, "Perfection! See! How could that be random!" You're the same sort of people who long ago saw a burning bush and exclaimed, "God is here!" rather than, "Lightning was here!"

And that's great. Whatever. I don't care. You're free to find god in whatever you like. The Bible, the Koran, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (another nod to Blake). I don't care.

But at least have the decency to acknowledge that it's belief.

And it's your belief. Not mine. So don't force it on my kids.

Keep your god in your special schools on Saturdays and Sundays.

During the school week--as I'm constantly telling my students--you need evidence for your arguments.

The Sound of a Clown Who Cried in the Alley.

2005-09-04T11:29:00.000-07:00

Politics is important. The downward cycles of morality, of truth, of integrity, of true patriotism, and of true freedom spiralled fatally out of control this week and descended on the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast. Lack of preparedness, negligent planning, insufficient troop strength, communication breakdowns, inability to keep order -- this same dirty laundry we've all heard listed ad nauseum since March of 2003 has finally erupted violently out of our hamper here at home.

What is perhaps most interesting to me intellectually about this disaster is the quickness with which Americans--anonymous individuals, celebrities, journalists, politicians--have begun to criticize our government's response to this disaster. I remember writing, in September of 2001, the following byline for a column I titled "Another Side of a Devastating Coin":

by J_____ B_________ ’04 who has only now begun to be able to go beyond pure feeling and to intellectualize about this tragedy.
I wrote that on 9.19.01. And it wasn't a criticism of the government. It was a column mourning the global community I feared would lose several significant ties in the months to follow. The spirits of patriotism and unity overwhelmed criticism in the weeks immediately following 9/11. But in the wake of Katrina, Americans were beginning to place blame while the winds could still be felt. And no doubt something more could have been done. No doubt too much money was diverted away from the Army Corps of Engineers to support wars and tax cuts. No doubt there was a now-starkly-apparent underlying racism (and classism) that allowed those too poor to evacuate to be forgotten or ignored. No doubt our government failed us this last week.

And eventually we will have to address these monumental government failures. That time is now for some among us. Campaigns to effect changes in the bigger picture are ultimately perhaps even more important than monetary, in-kind, or volunteer contributions to the relief efforts.

But for most of us, the immediate picture won't get much bigger than New Orleans, Biloxi, Gulfport, and now Houston and other cities that have accepted evacuees. And so, for now, we must do what we can.

In 1971 Peter Singer--now Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at the University Center for Human Values of Princeton University--wrote an essay, entitled "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" (widely available on the web), in which he set forth the following argument:

"[I]f it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it. An application of this principle would be as follows: if I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing."

It's time we all got our clothes muddy.

If you've read a newspaper, watched cable news, or checked google news in the last six days, you've heard the stories. Young girls raped in the Superdome. Corpses floating down Canal Street. An elderly woman in a wheelchair, draped with a sheet, in the sun, dead. A child screaming until he vomited as he was forced to leave behind his cherished dog. Two New Orleans police officers taking their own lives.

You've seen the airlift rescues and the helicopters dropping bottled water into flooded streets for those now homeless to collect. You've seen local officials breaking down during press conferences. And federal officials, as stoic as possible, providing what information they have.

You've also seen cities and states, schools and universities, individuals and corporations and foreign nations opening their doors and wallets. You've heard people placing blame and people pleading for assistance. You've heard the estimated death toll gradually rise into the thousands.

All manner of people and organizations have offered aid. In a matter of hours a few days ago, I received three emails: one from the iTunes Music Store requesting donations to the Red Cross; one from the Dave Matthews Band about a benefit concert in Colorado; and one from the people at MoveOn.org about the grassroots temporary housing program they're facilitating.

It's time we all got our clothes muddy.

One in five evacuees left their homes without shoes on their feet. People now housed in the Houston Astrodome are wearing pajamas and hospital gowns because they have no clean clothes. Children who have been promised placement in Texas schools will quickly deplete the supplies of those districts. Diabetics are without insulin; asthmatics are without inhalers. Employees are without jobs. Students are without teachers. Parishes are without priests. Children are without parents. And they are all without their homes.

These people need everything.

It's time we all got our clothes muddy.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin',
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
-Bob Dylan

(Hot times.) Oprah is a fish. (Summer in the city.)

2005-08-27T15:10:00.000-07:00

(I've encountered a blogging dilemma: I have three things to write about, but there's not much of a connection between them. Actually. There's a connection between two of them. But not the third. I've decided to solve this dilemma very simply -- with the elegant use of parentheses. Now. Stop. Don't judge what you can't understand.)

(So the other night, I was making something to eat in the kitchen when I heard, from the street below outside my seventh story window, I heard a noise. A noise that could only be described as a scuffle. A bit of shrieking. A yelp or two. I hear my roommate get up from the couch and walk to the window. "Oh my god," she exclaims, "you've got to come over here. There's girls fighting in the street down there." Not uninterested, but not that interested, I finish what I'm doing and then casually approach the viewing post. The scene: directly below our balcony, but across the street, there are two groups of girls moving in packs eastward down Division. They are yelling at each other, things I can imagine quite clearly, but couldn't actually hear. They are each individually gesticulating quite wildly. But the strangest thing, from my god's-eye vantage point, was the seemingly choreographed staging. The girls periodically lunged at one another -- but not each on their own terms. The groups appeared to lunge, each girl a mere limb of a larger menace. On occasion this ballet would break down and a fist (or an open hand, or a two-handed shove) would breach the approximately two-foot gap regularly separating the groups. This went on for what was probably only about 25 seconds or so. At which point, my roommate (not me, I was watching the show, and waiting for them to break into song) thought aloud, "Maybe we should call the police?" And just then, Officer Krupke showed up and arrested one of the girls, which effectively shut up the rest of them. The show over, I went back to my food. Nothing like dinner theater. A true experience in this cosmopolitan city.)

I'm having this dilemma. I've always had a healthy disdain for Oprah's Book Club -- a disdain nurtured through the early years of contemporary novels-turned-bestsellers, and cultivated into a disgust with the Club's more recent reincarnation as a pusher of classics onto the unsuspecting hordes. In its original form, the Book Club annoyed me because She always seemed to point her all-powerful Midas finger at what appeared (judging by their covers, at least) to be romantic novels focused on strong central heroines -- books that would encourage battered (or bored) wives to leave their husbands and "find themselves." Silliness. And now, my disgust stems from the fact that all these wonderful classics of literature can no longer be found without an obnoxious "Oprah's Book Club" seal on it -- as though the author has posthumously won a Fulitzer Prize (yeah, the F is on purpose...think about it...little more...ok...good...now you get it).

So, most recently, She assigned the world "summer reading" -- three Faulkner novels (which come in a repulsively convenient OBC set now): As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and Light In August. Now. Setting aside the fact that these happen to be some of my all-time favorite novels, including at least one top-fiver, that She has branded as the Israel of the summer of 2005 (chosen people and all...get it?). Setting that aside. She has also created a rather disturbing dilemma for me.

To guide the masses through Faulkner's masterful tangles of language, She has set up a website (or, more accurately, her people called some people who did lunch with other people, who paid some other people to set it up). Included on this website are several quite helpful and interesting items. Including: video lectures for each novel from various distinguished professors from various prestigious universities, interactive questions and answers with said professors (and not just short replies, but quite thoughtful responses), character descriptions, glossaries, biographical information on Faulkner...and the list goes on. There is, quite honestly, a wealth of information.

And. To further compound my dilemma. One of the professors featured (for Light in August) is one of my favorite professors from Brown, Professor Arnold Weinstein. This is awesome for two reasons: (1) he's wildly amazing, and I relish the opportunity to read more of his thoughts on literature; and (2) I took his class on Faulkner at Brown--the first time he ever taught it--and we read Light In August, and it's very cool to see lectures on the web that pretty clearly grew out of lectures I experienced in person (you know, cool in the "I knew him way back when..." kind of way).

Finally. Necessary background information. Last spring I taught As I Lay Dying to my junior English class. And this coming spring I will teach it again.

So now you understand my dilemma. You don't? Well, you should, but I'll spell it out. I really really want to use some of the resources on this website for my class. But it's Oprah's! Can I? Do I dare? Am I selling out? (A question that implies its own answer, and my already-made decision on the dilemma at hand.)

A good friend, when I accepted my current job over a year ago, suggested that I was selling out. My thoughts on religion. To Judaism. For money. I agreed.

So. If Adonai, for cash. Why not Oprah, for the education of my students. Seems fair.

(As my "life in the big city" bookend, I wanted to mention the following. Today, on a relatively innocuous trip to Osco for Polysporin and de-wrinkle laundry spray, I passed an equally innocuous Dunkin' Donuts. I paused for a red light outside said Dunkin' Donuts, and during this respite from walking I was approached by a shuffling man in a White Sox hat. He hadn't been speaking to anyone else, and after he said his bit to me, he went back to the wall of the Dunkin' Donuts, still without talking to anyone else. Meanwhile, there were plenty of people walking by, and plenty of people waiting with me for the light to change. Plenty of people, I should add, who were much the same age as me and with much the same look as I offer to the world. This is what he said to me, and only to me: "Hey man...want some weed? I got some good weed." To which I replied: "No thanks."

Now. I've been told by several people that there is nothing about me that proclaims: HE SMOKES WEED. And I've believed them -- not without a little sadness, I'll be honest, as I harbor a certain romanticism in my heart for hippies. So I ask you. All of you. And please comment. Was this just a random occurrence? Or is there something about me after all -- something that whispers some coded language leftover from the 1960s and adapted to this new millenium? I ask you.)

Update: Perhaps this is the year.

2005-08-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

Going to that party with the colleagues after all.

But I'm bringing a book, god dammit.

Inside a dog, it's too dark to read.

2005-08-21T13:13:00.000-07:00

First of all, a special prize to anyone who knows the first line that completes the quotation I've used for my witty quip of a post title. And an extra special something to anyone who knows where I first came across this lovely little witticism.

Now then. This post should be read in conjunction with the previous post about Tivo. (Actually, you really should be reading all of them in order. I know it's a complicated scroll-bar process, but it's worth it. Trust me.) Because I ended that post saying that while I should have been reading, I was clearly going to watch the Gilmore Girls. (By the way -- interestingly, to me at least, the aspect of this blog that has gotten the most attention has by far been the references to the Gilmore Girls.) That statement, though true, was -- unbeknownst to you all, which isn't your fault, but mine -- slightly ironic. Because over the last few weeks I have gradually rediscovered my love for reading. I have been able, on several occasions during these weeks, to sit down and read for several hours at a time -- something my relatively-addled mind has prohibited for quite some time. And all without the added comfort of Adderall! (Disclaimer: I've never actually used Adderall or other such drugs, though I have considered it, and at times it has been suggested -- not by anyone with letters after their name though.)

I've rediscovered the worlds you can enter through the pages of a book! I've even found myself thinking, while watching -- on separate occasions -- tv and a movie (in a theater, no less!), and I quote, "Books are so much better than this." Books! Better than movies! Just imagine. If you can. All the people. Living for today! Now. You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one! People are still reading! (Mostly self-help books, books for Dummies and Idiots, and the latest installment of "when will the little wizard get body hair in new places?" -- but still!) And I have re-entered this brotherhood of man. And I hope someday you'll join us.

Now. While this may not seem earth-shattering to you -- the huddled masses avoiding the storms of your lives beneath the rain-soaked pages of my humble blog -- there's another layer of this onion yet to be peeled away. The reading I have been so diligently set upon completing has been (drumroll?)...for work! Now then. Talk about earth-shattering! This revelation may mark a new epoch of light in an otherwise procrastination-darkened worldview. Perhaps this will be the year that I don't fall behind in my work. (Or at least not more than most people.) Perhaps this will be the year that work comes first. (Or at least close to the top of the list.) Perhaps this is the year.

I gotta say. It would be most excellent timing. What with work. And applying to school. And then school. And such.

Perhaps this is the year.

And with that, I'm going to go read. To avoid going to a school year kickoff party with colleagues that I really don't feel like attending. It doesn't start till Tuesday. You can't cheat and start it on Sunday just because it's a party. That's not fair. Give me a break. I've got reading to do.