It's a Bull Roaring Monday!

At last, more of my answers to questions submitted anonymously by readers of this blog! If you don't like how long it took for your question to get answered, ask more questions. In case you hadn't noticed, I don't post one of these until I get at least 3.
And remember, comrades, if you would like me to answer your questions, throw a question at me (gently) through this link! Ask early and ask often. http://www.formspring.com/forms/?805682-tVpvj8P8KQ


I'm wondering why every TV set, DVD and VCR, remote, and anything remotely connected (no pun intended) to video entertainment has to be constructed of black material with tiny black buttons. What's with all the black? And what about those of us who need glasses and bright light to read an ordinary book! How in the world can we remotely (again, none intended) connect with the TV news/movies if we can't see what we are doing! Aaargh!


There are a number of sources to blame. You could blame Stanley Kubrick and certainly every time I walk past our entertainment center I feel a strong inclination to evolve (which is largely achieved by not turning it on.) You could blame Tim Burton, specifically the stylistic sensibility that infected our culture through his awful Batman films, and you'll get little argument from me. In fact, I remember our family's old VHS players from the 1980s being boxy and grey. If one claimed that it was post Tim Burton's Batman that everything went black, shiny and inscrutable, I would probably believe them without question. My own beloved Karl Lagerfeld may have his hat in this circle of stylistic blame. But you might even trace it back to Franz Kafka who we just finished reading in our Reading the Classics Reading Group. So, you see, the sexy and hip association with things that look like cockroaches goes back a long way.
My advice: be one vote for breaking the cycle. Wear tie-dye.



What is your current read, your last read and the book you’ll read next?

In retrospect, I'm surprised it took this long for someone to ask this. I am currently reading a lot of Quakers for some reason. Specifically, I've found myself drawn heavily into the Journal of John Woolman which also includes his pamphlet "A Plea for the Poor." I am finding it edifying and it may very well change the course of my life. More on that soon, I'm sure.
I'm reading Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, which also is very edifying and may very well change the course of my life.
I haven't started Crazy Like Us by Ethan Watters yet, but it was at the top of my reading list before I fell in with John Woolman. I imagine I'll start it very soon and then I'll be reading, what, like five books at one time. And I've started Homer's Odyssey for our reading group.
Just before this I read The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, as you well know.
Next on the Reading the Classics I think is Jane Eyre.



Who is your favorite president?

Ooo, someone asking a question specific to the holiday. Well done! Also someone is drawing me out politically on my blog which is both exhilarating and frightening to me.
I'm assuming this is a historical question about presidents of the United States and not "who is my favorite president of a nation today." Because I'm not entirely sure how I would answer that.
Possibly not surprisingly, Franklin Roosevelt is up there. I like elements of the direction he was trying to steer the country's domestic economic policy. I love his idea for a Second Bill of Rights and feel cheated every time I think about how it didn't happen.
I also like elements of his cousin Theodore Roosevelt. I agree with Ken Burns that the national parks may very well have been one of America's best ideas. I'm not so sure about Teddy's foreign policy or his raging nationalism or what John Muir called (to his face) his infantile need to shoot the animals he saw in the wild. Incidentally, I like John Muir more than I like any US President. I wouldn't call either of the Roosevelts my favorite for a number of reasons, but Teddy might very well be one of my favorite presidents to read about or hear about.

For example:
When Teddy Roosevelt was campaigning for a 3rd term in 1912, he was having dinner at a hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin before a speech. A local saloon owner, who was apparently anti-Roosevelt, went into the hotel and shot Roosevelt in the chest. The bullet passed through Roosevelt's eyeglass case and his folded up copy of his 50 page speech before lodging into his chest. Roosevelt knew from his biology education that since he was not coughing blood, his lungs were not pierced and his wound was probably not life-threatening. SO HE WENT ON TO GIVE HIS 90 MINUTE SPEECH WHILE BLEEDING FROM THE BULLET WOUND IN HIS CHEST! He started his speech "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." The bullet stayed in Roosevelt's chest for the rest of his life. Later in life he was asked about the bullet in his chest and said "I do not mind it anymore than if it were in my waistcoat pocket."

This is just one story in a life I am absolutely fascinated with.

Abraham Lincoln is also very high on my list of favorite presidents. I know it's the obvious answer, the easy answer. He was the president who finally had the good sense to emancipate the slaves (albeit late into the administration.) I have a picture of him up in our dining room, actually. I think he's also the only president I have books by and about in my personal library (although I guess that's not entirely true, glancing over at my bookshelf, I guess Hunter Thompson wrote about both Nixon and Clinton. But the nature of Thompson's books and the nature of the books I own by and about Lincoln are VASTLY different in tone and message.)
I must say, I don't so much hold them up to heroic status as I find the ones I'm mentioning fascinating stories. On the other hand, I also find Richard Nixon fascinating while at the same time I think he was one of the most wicked presidents we've ever had and an absolute failure. But a fascinating one.
So "fascinating" is not placing a moral value on the individual. I guess I'm not entirely sure how to define "favorite" here in reference to a US President. And I guess I'm avoiding the question too.
Part of the problem is that FDR and Lincoln were war-time presidents and I find war morally repugnant. Also, I'm a member of the Peace and Freedom party which pretty much means I'm never going to vote for someone who gets to be president of the United States.

But I think I'm going to go with Lincoln. Or Teddy Roosevelt. I don't know. You pick.

Hm. Reading over this I notice that there was a lot of name-dropping this time. Sorry about that.

Book Review- Essays by Wallace Shawn

First of all, Wallace Shawn is one of my favorite playwrights, very likely my favorite living one. I've appreciated everything I've ever read or watched by him, not always exactly enjoying it, but enjoying is not always the chief end of art. Certainly I've always come away from a work of his engaged with ideas. I think he's written a few scripts that will survive for a very long time and continue to challenge people (The Fever, The Designated Mourner, certainly My Dinner with Andre.) He is a very serious and challenging writer. I looked forward to this book with great anticipation. I was not disappointed. As usual, Shawn writes very intelligently but conversationally and his work questions many aspects of our daily consensus reality that many may have never questioned (including several that I take for granted as well.) His work never lets the reader/watcher off the hook. His work is always challenging in a way I like very much.

The book is split into two sections: Reality and Dream-World. The former deals with current events, things like American Foreign Policy, the wars, patriotism, Israel, the desire in one to be a responsible, compassionate global citizen and the inability to properly do so on account of the actions of the people who represent us to the rest of the world, all with Shawn's challenging eye. I appreciate in Shawn how we meet with worldviews in common and then he causes me to re-evaluate everything I think. This section includes an interview with Noam Chomsky.

I should probably mention that I come pre-equipped with what is largely an inclination in the direction of Shawn's political and economic worldview. Which is to say, yes, it's me reading something I agree with and Shawn to a large extent preaching to the choir in my case. Unfortunately I do think there is a danger of that being the case with this book, that the progressive pedigree being used to sell the book (endorsements by Howard Zinn and Michael Moore, being printed by a socialist leaning publisher, and even Shawn's own reputation) might keep it from being read by people who might most need to read it. But really the leftist political view isn't specifically why I think people would do well to read this book (and clocking in at 150 pages, one could probably do it in an afternoon or two) but rather that the book challenges our worldviews which I think is always a good thing (although I would add that Shawn seems, at least in the first section, to largely be speaking to Americans, I think that people elsewhere might find a good deal of what he's saying encouraging.) I think we should constantly be striving to understand and defend why we believe what we believe and, more importantly, if we find a good reason why we can no longer do so, we need to be able to mutate.

Part Two deals with art, the theater mainly, writing and poetry. It would be far too reductionist to say that there is a suggestion that Part Two contains a few solutions to Part One, but certainly there are nudges in that direction. Part Two also includes an interview with poet Mark Strand.

This second part I thought would be more problematic for me... and I guess in a way it was. The only major ideological difference I retained with Shawn after finishing his book was the part where, unless I completely misunderstood, he argues that there is not good and bad art, merely art that appeals to some and not to others. I could not disagree more. There are bad plays, poems, films, paintings, novels and any other form you can come up with. Thus spake Paul and so mote it be. No, but seriously, it's not just a matter of taste. Even if Shawn is talking about "in art of a fine skill," which is a distinction he doesn't make, certainly there is art that is not helpful or even destructive.

But that's just one idea in a sea of very valuable concepts. This is one of those books where, if I were a rich man I would buy a case of it and pass it out to everyone I know. But then, there are very good reasons why I am never going to be a rich man. This book talks a little about that as well.

We hiked this afternoon

Today we went to one of my favorite places on Earth: Upper Bidwell Park. It's much more of a nature reserve than Lower Park. Lower Park is paved with playgrounds and pools. Which is nice if you're in that sort of a humor, but Upper Park is much more wild. The paths are unpaved, muddy and really easy to roll an ankle on. There are parts, if you hike a bit, where the trails are the only sign of human life.

Click on the pictures to make them HUGE!



When you arrive you have a choice of two paths. The lower one, the Maidu Trail (named for one of the local Native American tribes who, um, aren't there anymore. So I imagine it's a bit like calling a city Thousand Oaks where they cut down 1,000 oak trees to build the city), winds down the bottom of that ridge there by a small lake (which you can't see in the picture because I think the lake is actually higher than us in this picture. It's down around that white building toward the right which is actually the Chico Observatory where one can go on certain nights to look at stars through a huge telescope!) The upper trail is the North Rim Trail. The slope is fantastic and difficult. I used to practically live on that trail a few years ago. You can go down it for days and sometimes I would go around sunrise and return to my car at sunset. About an hour or so in, when you're in good shape, you stop seeing people or signs of civilization and can then indulge yourself in all kinds of "last human on Earth" fantasies if you are so inclined. I am so inclined, but we're hardly in shape to go on the North Rim Trail yet. Maybe by summer we'll be back in form enough for that.

Here's a picture of me at the lake.


















And what it looked like from where I sat.












The lake has ducks.













Part of what we like about this area is how open it is as you can see from the other photos. But the few trees that are around are amazing. Especially in winter.
















For size, here's Laurie next to that same tree.

Reading Group Reminder! The Odyssey by Homer

This week our Reading the Classics with Paul Reading Group begins our reading of The Odyssey by Homer. I am reading the Samuel Butler translation but you're welcome to read whatever version you'd like.
If you'd like to join the group in this reading, get a copy of Homer's Odyssey (which should be very easy to do) and read through Book V this week (the V stands for Vendetta for those of you who have forgotten your elementary school class on Roman Numerals.) In my edition, that's through page 58.

In my experience so far this is a very easy read and very enjoyable. I really think that everyone is going to like this one an awful lot (and maybe we can finally put Walden behind us, please?), so I highly encourage everyone to read along with this. I think we're going to break it up into 5 or 6 weeks so we aren't rushed in our weekly reading but, as always, you're welcome to read ahead. Next week, everyone in the reading group will post our thoughts on this week's reading here, on their own blogs, on Google Wave, and in various cross postings of all three.

As always with these reminder posts, I like to add a little fun or interesting song or video related to the work. This time I'm reaching a bit. The Odyssey has had a very long time to work its way into our culture. Film, song, poem, and play are all saturated in the work. It is the posterboy for a classic work of literature.
In the 1950s there was a Broadway musical, which didn't exactly survive or, at the very least, awaits a revival as of the time of my writing this. It was called The Golden Apple and it featured music by Jerome Moross and lyrics by John Treville Latouche, whose work I am sure you are all intimately familiar with. As far as I can tell, only one song from the show went on to have a life of its own as a hit separate from the original musical, which if I understand correctly was an adaptation of The Iliad and The Odyssey set in the turn of the 20th century. The song "Lazy Afternoon" came from the show which, yes, you know was made very famous by Barbara Streisand. No, I'm not posting the Streisand version on my blog.
Grant Green did a fantastic jazz version of Lazy Afternoon. So enjoy this and we'll see all of you next week for our thoughts on the first section of The Odyssey!

Crazy Like Us: the lecture

So, I was walking by Lyon Books on my way to the post office the other day and they had a poster in the window advertising a lecture and signing by author Ethan Watters for his new book "Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche." Readers of Laurie's blog know that she's recently posted about the book. She heard the author interviewed on Talk of the Nation and we'd both been looking forward to reading the book. We've had several great conversations about the topic in the days that followed. Little did we know that Ethan Watters (@ethanwatters1 on Twitter) came from Chico and was doing a signing here until Providence sent me by the bookstore window (and habit and predisposition had me looking in the window like the child in the candy store.)

Laurie and I are also eager to have breaks from the recent tragedy, so we were both very excited for this event. Now, I don't have a book review to give on it yet because we just bought it about 2 hours ago. The evening started with a lot of people filing into Lyon Books, all of whom seemed to know each other except for us. There were probably a couple dozen people there.

The topic of the book, as I understand it (again, I haven't read it yet) is that America seems to be exporting the manifestations of our versions of mental illness. For example there's a case in China of a girl who died from anorexia, but the Chinese version of the disorder did not include fat obsession or a few other things which I'm not remembering off the top of my head. China, in dealing with the rather dramatic news story which involved a 14 year old girl dropping dead in a public square, turned to the available information on the disorder which was studied most extensively in America. Chinese newspapers printed information of the illness and after that not only did anorexia skyrocket in China, but for the first time the manifestations included fat obsession and the other symptoms I'm not remembering off the top of my head.

There are stories in the book, I'm told, of drug companies referring to other nations as "10 year behind America" or "15 years behind America" as in how their mental illnesses are evolving toward our manifestations of those mental illnesses. Also there are accounts of importing illness in times of great tragedies like the tsunami and the Haitian earthquake (the latter was mentioned tonight but happened while the book was already at press.) Watters encouraged us to imagine a reversal and how bizarre that would seem to most Americans: if, for example, a shaman came to New York after 9/11, knocking on doors and telling people that they need to do a certain ritual to release the spirits of the dead. Another phenomenon mentioned was, how in Victorian England, hysterics manifested in women in a very specific (and dramatic) way.

Also in the book is mentioned the different grades and recovery rates of schizophrenics in other cultures, which I guess there are some in which schizophrenics do a lot better (the waggish cynic in me thought "Boy, you'd think schizophrenics would do best in a schizophrenic culture like ours.") But that got me wondering if it worked in reverse, if someone with, say, hysterical misery in America went to another culture and integrated, would that person then find their hysterical misery manifesting in the way that happens in that culture. Because, in the manner of the brutish capitalist culture I sprung forth from, I could instantly imagine a whole industry of relocating people with mental illness to places where the illness manifests differently, much like asthmatics moving to Arizona. Watters said he didn't know of many examples aside from a psychotic breakdown a lady from America had in a Mexican jungle where her hallucinations were distinctly religious in Mexican themes. Which suggests to me, my kneejerk diagnosis, that it may not work the other way. Which is a manifestation of our imperialistic culture. A rather ugly one at that.

So, he signed our book and we came home. It was a lovely evening out. I think both Laurie and I agree it would be nice to do things like this more often.

In which the course of our lives appears to have changed

A really horrible event has happened over the past few days to a family who are dear friends of ours. Really a terrible nightmare of a situation. This is why I've been incommunicado for the past few days (and, given the direction of events, probably will be for several more days.) There's been a lot to deal with. I'm not going to go into specifics at the moment because 1) I don't think it's appropriate for me to at this point and 2) we really don't know most of the details yet so it's highly unhelpful to speculate based upon scraps of information.

However, I mention it in a blog entry here for a few reasons, first as an explanation as to why I owe a lot of people phone calls right now. If you're one of them, I have not forgotten you. Please forgive me. Second, to ask all readers who are inclined toward prayer in any manifestation to please keep us, our families, our church and especially our friends' family in prayer. Third, and most specifically, to throw out a few quick reflections while they're in the front of my head this evening so that they don't disappear into the ether in the days to come...

The first is, as Christians, we are supposed to be vessels of mercy, not vessels of wrath and judgment. A saying that is repeated often around our house are words to the effect of "How you know that God is still extending grace to a someone is that they are still alive."
Or, as Laurie has written elsewhere recently, "Do you truly believe Christ came to save the WORST of sinners? If you don't, you have no hope. If you do, extend his grace to the guiltiest."
We are recipients of completely undeserved grace and need to proceed accordingly, treat others accordingly.

Also on my mind is the passage I read in my studies the other morning from the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus instructs His disciples to be "wise as serpents and innocent as doves" (I think the version I was using said "harmless as doves.") This is a rough world and a rough life which, in my experience, can go from ecstatic joy to abysmal sorrow in moments without warning. One never knows when tragedy is going to come, so I think it's best to not be a person marked by levity, but one who is very much marked by tenderness. I know when the cotton is high people like to be around the joker, the mocker, the person who presents themselves as above others, but when everything goes wrong that is not the person you want to go to for comfort.

I'm reading a book by Martyn-Lloyd Jones where he talks about wearing despair as a Christian, being downcast and so forth. He is speaking against being like that. He mentions that when one does that it's a horrible testimony. It does not recommend the Gospel to anyone. I felt a little convicted by that, having indulged in my share of grim and depressed attitudes in the past. A Christian should be marked by grace and the joy that accompanies God's undeserved grace. There is a significant difference between crass levity and earnest joyfulness.

Finally, I want to encourage everyone to love one another. Be gracious and tender. Life is far too short to be contentious and certainly none of us are in a position to consider ourselves qualitatively better than anyone else. We never have a right to do that. We are all sinners and all of us are capable of anything.

So, whoever you are, I love you. Please pray for me for strength, wisdom and peace (as well as for Laurie and pretty much all of my family and peer group as well.) More soon.

Reading the Classics with Paul- The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

One of the first aspects of this story that struck both Laurie and I (and I think was most likely the aspect of the book we talked about most) was metaphor. One could look at the story about a man who literally turns into an insect. More likely, it's metaphor to some form of human dread and misery. With all of the talk about money, work and provision, I was certainly reminded of unemployment, the sudden apparently uselessness of who was up until recently a provider. There's also the possibility of looking at it through the lens of one who becomes injured, disfigured, handicapped, insane beyond the ability to function in society or otherwise incapacitated. There's also the possibility of there really was no Gregor. The insect was the family's paralysis and inability to function or provide for themselves (although, again I seem to be slouching toward yet another economics and social justice lesson.) When the insect dies, while they mourn a bit, they move on with their lives. Leading up to the insect dying, the father finds work, they take in boarders, etc.

So, Gregor wakes up as a giant insect. In an absurd first act, he spends a lot of time concerned about missing his train, getting to work, keeping his position and spends very little time thinking about how and why he is now a giant insect. Gregor's superior arrives and this heightens the exchange, especially while his door is closed and his superior speaks to him through it. He is cumbersome. He finds movement and control of his new body difficult.

Gregor does what he can to please his family by keeping out of sight. His sister makes some efforts to care for him while obviously being revolted at the same time. There's the wonderfully subtle section where Gregor is recalling his he was going to try to help her go to the music conservatory to study, but then he turned into a giant insect. The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley. So often dreams are dashed by unforseeable circumstances. There's a lesson in impermanence here.

The family continues to worry about money, missing what was formerly taken for granted. The family rises to the occasion as best they can, but still there is resentment. So much so that they lash out at Gregor, the only visible target although an innocent. Which brings remorse.
The third act brings in the charwoman. We hate the charwoman although she is all of us whenever we mock and scorn, seek to place ourselves higher than others, and gleefully take out our frustrations on the less fortunate. The charwoman is the embodiment of a very ugly side of humanity, although a seemingly ubiquitous one.

And the third act brings in the lodgers, yet another sign of the family's desperation and a vaguely sinister force both in their presence and even more so at the threat of the loss of them. Also there is the shame and dread of the thing in the room that one does not talk about. The unloved and neglected thing whose very presence brings misery, but what can they do? It's their son, maybe. The sister gives voice to the frustration"When one has to work as hard as we do, all of us, one can't stand this continual torment at home on top of it."

So, there's an element of human compassion and tenderness, how we're all alone, people don't reach out to one another and the consequences of a culture like that. Perhaps this is the real "wound" that kills Gregor or, at the very least, the actual wound is borne from this homelife.

This was one of my favorite pieces in this series so far. It's a very straightforward narrative, which I appreciate on some levels (although it brings to mind some other writers to come in the time after Kafka whose language, rhetoric and word choices are so stripped down as to make them bleak, surgically removing all poetry from language. Although, in this case, I think that the comparison would be unfair, a bit like blaming Walt Whitman for bad modern free verse slam poetry. Kafka is an amazing writer regardless of what trends are yet to come in the modern era.

Well, I hope that all of you enjoyed reading this as much as I did. I know I look forward to hearing all of your thoughts on it.

Remember, next time is Homer's Odyssey part 1. We will be reading through page 58 in my edition or up through Book V. Get a copy and start reading. We're going to stretch this one over 5 weeks to keep from having super-long passages each week.

Paul Mathers on foot

I walk a lot. There's something meditative or pacific about it for me. Moving at a human pace, seeing what's going on around me, being in touch with my body and the Earth, and exercising while I'm transporting myself. I've always loved walking. I resisted getting my driver's license in my teens, but, in the end, relented because it was hard to get my friendbase in Huntington Beach to come all the way to Garden Grove to pick me up. I spent a lot of my teenage years sitting on the curb outside my parents house waiting for people who said that they were coming to pick me up.

If I had my way, in my perfect world, I would not drive and I would ride in automobiles only minimally. I have a strong inclination to trade my truck to my step-son for a new bicycle with a helmet and lock, but two things hold me back from doing that quite yet. One is that the truck comes in handy when Laurie's at a job and needs me to bring something to her, usually our home vacuum cleaner (it's amazing how many people buy bad vacuums or do things with vacuums that ought not be done.) The other is trying to be wise about future work situations. If I get a full time job on the other side of town, well, let's just say my love of walking is the inverse of my dislike for riding a bus.

But as for now, I walk a lot on my own. I do walk for errands (I'm about to walk to the post office when I finish this post.) But if errands do not present themselves, I walk for pleasure. I try to take Schubert on a walk every day because, let's face it, both of us could stand to drop a few sizes.
There are two places I walk with Schubert. The first is Bidwell Park which looks like this.















































Very lovely and scenic as you can see. I've written about it before. Laurie prefers for me to walk in Lower Park because it's nicer, but more to the point, there's always someone in screaming distance. So I'm less likely to get mugged in Lower Park. There really isn't much in the way of cons about walking in Bidwell Park for walking except that 1) it's a place I have to drive to in order to walk there, which always seems a little absurd to me and 2) there are other people walking their dogs and Schubert isn't the best behaved little dog in the world.

So sometimes I will instead go walking down the bike path by our house. It's a horribly ugly walk. As you can see from the pictures, it's through an industrial area with chain linked lots with great stacks of broken pallets, battery stores, trucking yards, and power company towers flanked on one end by a greasy Asian buffet and on the other by an economy Mexican restaurant.





























Billboards everywhere. All the benches had graffiti although I'm hard pressed to imagine why a young person would want their name associated with that place.

I'm a little surprised by these pictures that it doesn't look as bad as it does in person. But the positive side of this is that no one else goes walking on this bike bath. Occasionally a vagrant will ride by on a bicycle, but otherwise it's fairly secluded. For a reason. It's a Purgatorial road. So, there are not other people walking dogs. Also it's a walk I can take just by walking out my front door. Laurie likes it less when I walk here because there is never anyone in shouting distance. But I also like this one because there are often small signs of the wild reminding me of the impermanence of all of this. Some finches, some moss growing between the cracks in the asphalt, some poisonous berries on the decorative trees.

Of course, walking and preferring to walk does not make me a better person. Unlike Thoreau I am not going to say that the way I am is better than everyone else and everyone would be better if they were more like me. I mean, I certainly wouldn't recommend walking in my neighborhood after sunset to a 16 year old waifish girl.

There was an old man who ran a Friends of the Library bookstore back in Orange County who used to say "My motto is: If someone loves books, they can't be all that bad." Which was nice and sweet and home-spun and made one smile when the charming old man said it. Also there's an opera radio show host I know of who said in an interview that he thought people would be better in general, more respectable, better behaved, more decent and reverent, if they listened to opera. Both of which I really want to agree with because I love both and think both are valuable resources hopefully pointing humankind toward higher aspirations. But that doesn't change the fact that there are many historical examples of people who loved books or opera or both and were complete monsters! You can love opera and books and still be a terrible human being (It would be so easy for me to play the Hitler card here on the subject of opera, of which he was an avid fan, although his love of books seems to have been entirely over how well they burned.) Of course, you can also be a saint and love books and opera. And walking for that matter. Or anywhere else on the scale of human decency.

I notice other pedestrians, I would even go so far as to say the bulk of them, who are walking because of poor lifestyle choices they've made in their past or present. They may have been caught driving under the influence. Certainly some of them seem to have chosen a life where methamphetamine abuse is a higher priority than owning anything else or doing anything else that doesn't lead to abusing more methamphetamines. John Wayne Gacy was just as capable of walking as St. Francis of Assisi.

You could live your whole life devoted to walking, reading and being a patron of the arts while every thought that rattles around your mind is saturated with hate and fear. Or, perhaps to make things a little more uncomfortable, you could live an entirely unremarkable life of walking, reading and being a patron of the arts while you are living in a nation which destroys civilizations, murders innocents, rapes and pillages. All while you passively indulge yourself in morally neutral behavior, helping no one. History in general will probably not be terribly kind to you. Or, to take it to a religious area, you can walk all the way to Hell. Your salvation has nothing to do with your works.

Of course, walking is a good thing to do in the sense that you are not contributing to pollution, you are probably saving a lot of money (in the present with car and gas. In the future with medical bills.)

I had an English teacher once whose entirely adult life and career sort of revolved around asking, examining and re-asking the question "Is it possible to have morality without God?" I have a theater director friend whose life's question is "What is an action?" So, here's the big question in this instance that I certainly ask and re-ask myself: What makes a person, place or thing good?

What I find is that good is an internal condition and a work of the Holy Spirit. Certainly Christopher Hitchens donating blood would fall under the heading of "common grace." But all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God as an aspect of the human condition. It's only by Christ's atonement and effectual calling that one can have Christ's imputed righteousness before the face of God. Of course, out of the abundance of the heart will then come good works; and faith without works is clearly dead. But the reprobate are capable of doing helpful and friendly actions. It's not about works. It's about the condition of one's heart and most people are walking around dead. Only God can remove the dead heart and replace it with a living one.

Huh. I didn't mean to end up here at all. I meant to just write about my favorite places to walk. I guess I've got a lot on my mind lately. Sorry for the rambling post.

Which is another good thing about walking. I can listen to lectures or music or radio shows. I can also legally talk on the cell phone. But more importantly, I can think.

But that's just me.

Laurie had a birthday today

I kept meaning to post this picture of Agnes right after we brought her home from the vet. She was still all drugged up, the poor little dear. She still hasn't quite forgiven us for the ordeal, but she is visibly healthier and she is beginning to forgive. Baby steps.
















But what I really wanted to post about was that today is the birthday of the love of my life, Laurie, my best friend and my wife. Here she is in her new hat.


















Gina bought Laurie a rooster magnet for her birthday. My mom got her Luther's commentary on Galatians. Laurie and I went out for dinner. I got her new earphones, Agnes' trip to the vet (which broke the bank, but was well worth it), and a frame for the poster of the Sutro bath house which we're going to put in our kitchen. I'll post pictures when we assemble the frame. Also Gina bought Laurie a card with a guy holding a possum on it in honor of the possum who lives in our wall. On the outside it says "You're how old?" And on the inside it says "That's Im-possum-ble!"

Mango looks on.

































Gina also brought over a cake.















I told Laurie I like this one because it looks like she's trying to yell the candles out.


















One of my favorite new photos of myself.

























Happy Birthday, Laurie.

A few thoughts on Wilberforce

My class this week was probably the most intense for me to prepare so far out of all of my classes. That was because the story was so convicting and so emotional. I cried more in preparation for this class than I have in preparation for any other, and probably prayed more.
A large part of that was because the question that kept going through my mind was "My gosh, what am I doing with my life?"

Laurie and I watched the wonderful bio pic that came out a few years ago about William Wilberforce called Amazing Grace. It plays a little fast and loose with dramatic license (coming up with a lot of scenes of things that are the sort of thing Wilberforce might have done if, for example, passing a man whipping a horse. Which surprised me as there are so may actual recorded historical stories of things Wilberforce did which reveal the abundance of his heart. Not sure why they felt the need to fictionalize a few bits, but I guess that's why I don't make movies) but it is an excellent movie. The scenes with John Newton alone are worth it, but the whole film, I thought, was very well done.

Of course, there's Wilberforce, played by a dashing and handsome actor (which always strikes me about bio pics. I guess no one would want to watch 2 hours of, say, a Martin Luther bio pic with an actor who actually looks like Martin Luther.) Even in history books, even in the most secular of history books, Wilberforce is a heroic figure. But then, there was a character in the film, played by Toby Jones, who was meant to be the encapsulation of the disgusting aristocracy, the selfish, greedy, amoral, pro-slavery scumbag (which he played remarkably well.) I just kept looking in my mirror at myself and seeing that wretched man. I mean, here I am, aside from the elderly lady who attends our church and lives mainly on government assistance, otherwise probably the poorest person I know monetarily. And I have a three bedroom house, two running cars, always a choice and surplus of food, electricity that I take for granted, water that I can drink right out of the tap without dying, the world library of literature, film, and music nearly literally at my fingertips for the asking. There are times when I look at every commodity, every product in sight and think that somewhere there are people scraping by with low pay producing these products and people getting rich off of their labor. There may be people suffering and dying, that I'm not even aware of, for my Lord Fauntleroy lifestyle, who don't even know I exist; and it makes no difference that I marched against the wars and want to alleviate their suffering. I mean, a simple act like making coffee in the morning may have paid for the oppression of hundreds.

People around me don't like it when I talk like this. But this is why I included the bit about the criticism over not caring about British "wage slaves" in my class. I know that must have cut Wilberforce deeply as it did me.

Dialing it back a few steps, I mentioned at the beginning of my notes "things it did not mean" and never really got around to elaborating on that. One of the side notes that struck me in preparing this class was that the Governor of India was in the Clapham Community in the early 1800s. Many of you will remember I've just recently read a book (Recalcitrance by Anurag Kumar. Highly recommended) about a revolt in India against the British in the 1850s, just about 25 years after Wilberforce died. During the revolt, there was horribly racist propaganda in England over the revolutionaries in India to keep the British public from sympathizing with the people of India. And it worked! India did not gain Independence for almost another century. So, I know that Wilberforce's story is not that he brought in an age of enlightened race relations vis a vis the rest of the world. This is not to diminish what he did accomplish, but in retrospect the contrast I find a little startling. Laurie and I recently watched Spalding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia and that one line keeps sticking with me also where the director says to Spalding, "I hope that working on this film has taught you that morality is not a movable feast." And Spalding says that he gets dizzy just watching how often people move it.

The lessons of Wilberforce are not left behind in the 19th century. I guess this whole experience has caused me to take a look at who I am, what I'm doing with my life, and maybe questioning if it's what I ought to be doing with my life.

William Wilberforce class notes

Here are my notes from my lecture this morning on William Wilberforce. My notes were largely compiled from A History of Great Britain by R.B. Mowat, Christianity by Roland H. Bainton, Church History in Plain Language by Bruce L. Shelley, the writings of William Wilberforce and the wonderful biography sermon on Wilberforce by John Piper. So, for those who might be interested, here are my notes:

This week we are mainly focusing on a man who ended the British practice of trading slaves kidnapped from Africa to the American Colonies or, less frequently, to Britain itself. A lot of you probably know that William Wilberforce was a Christian man in Parliament who fought bravely, ferociously and with great endurance to end the legal slave trade. But hopefully we'll also look a little bit at what that really meant, and what it really didn't mean.

The movement to abolish the slave trade actually began and built a bit of steam a few decades before. The Prime Minister at the time had proposed a Bill which would severely reduce the amount of slaves that could be packed onto a ship legally. William Pitt (a close friend of Wilberforce and later Prime Minister) wanted to go much further and called to abolish the slave trade all together which he thought an embarrassment to civilization. But can anyone guess what may have gone on in the world a few decades before the abolition of the slave trade in England that may have distracted and derailed that movement? Something that would be of much more interest to the British government? Something involving a massive loss of land and taxes overseas with a revolutionary war?

This actually put a strain on the friendship between Pitt and Wilberforce as Pitt, the Prime Minister, showed that he was willing to postpone talks of abolition in favor of paying more attention to broader plans for the British Empire. This would be a continuing frustration for Wilberforce in dealings with Pitt.

Interestingly, John Wesley was an early supporter of the cause, although never saw it through to its end due to his death in 1791. There was a loud argument from supporters of slavery over the ideal working conditions for slaves in the climate of the American South, even suggesting that slaves may have small farmlands of their own and live in better conditions than some in England. In fact, it was said in the cold, damp comfort of England that only Black men could work in the hot American south, that they were built for work in that sort of climate. Wesley, a prominent and well respected figure, loudly testified "You know what? I've been to Georgia and that's a lie! Conditions are terrible for the slaves."

Wesley wrote to William Wilberforce when Wesley was 87 years old to cast his vote of support for what Wilberforce was doing ""Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of man and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you. . . ."

Wilberforce was the head of a group of Evangelicals in London called The Clapham Community. It was a sort of a district, an group assembled in an area largely populated by wealthier and prominent Christians in London. They would meet for Bible studies and prayer. They would also have Councils where they would discuss what they felt were, in light of scripture, the wrongs and injustices perpetuated by their country. Far from "gripe sessions", bear in mind these were some of the wealthier and more powerful Christians in London in that day. They would discuss social problems and then they would then discuss who present would be best equipped to fight these injustices. Included in the group was a newspaper editor, several members of Parliament, and Lord Teignmouth who was the Governor of India at the time. Many social works groups of England, much like the ones we saw last week in America, came from the Clapham Community including The British and Foreign Bible Society, the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, the Church Missionary Society, and The Society for the Reformation of Prison Discipline.

James Stephen wrote of Wilberforce, "Factories did not spring up more rapidly in Leeds and Manchester than schemes of benevolence beneath his roof."

"No man," Wilberforce wrote, "has a right to be idle." "Where is it," he asked, "that in such a world as this, [that] health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate?"

Wilberforce's life was marked by the distinctives of the Reformed faith. Total human depravity, divine judgment, Christ's atonement for our sin on the cross, justification by faith alone in Christ alone, regeneration by the Holy Spirit, and the practical necessity of fruit in a life devoted to good deeds. He would contend that most of British Christians were nominal and had fallen back on a sort of Age of Reason ethics. "The fatal habit of considering Christian morals as distinct from Christian doctrines insensibly gained strength. Thus the peculiar doctrines of Christianity went more and more out of sight, and as might naturally have been expected, the moral system itself also began to wither and decay, being robbed of that which should have supplied it with life and nutriment."

It was through the Clapham group that Wilberforce came into contact with Thomas Clarkson who was a leader in the abolitionist movement. Clarkson and friends, including the former slave Olaudah Equiano whose biography on the slave trade was a key element to turn the public opinion on the slave trade, convinced Wilberforce to take up the cause of abolition. On October 28, 1787, Wilberforce wrote in his diary, "God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners [which is to say "morals" in modern terms]."

The slave trade started in England in 1562. Sir John Hawkins took a boat filled with slaves from Sierra Leone and sold them to slave traders in St. Domingo. In 1660, when Charles II was returned to the throne (people from the Puritan class will remember that whole mess) Charles chartered a company to take 3,000 slaves per year to trade to the West Indies, which, for those of you rusty on your geography, are the islands in the Caribbean. Don't worry, I had to look it up too.

The trade grew by leaps and bounds due to the high profitability and by 1770, British slave ships transported over 50,000 slaves a year. Which was around half of the slaves being imported. To give you an idea of what that means, that's 100,000 slaves a year from Africa where the total population of the continent was only around 100 million at the time. By the end of the 18th century, over 11 million slaves had been transported to America and the West Indies.

When Wilberforce was 25, he was traveling on vacation from Parliament and became converted after reading Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul by Philip Doddridge which was laying around the house where he was staying.

That summer Wilberforce traveled again with Isaac Milner, the friend at whose house he stumbled upon the Doddridge book, and discussed the Gospel at length. His "intellectual assent became profound conviction." The first outward manifestations of what he called "the great change" - which is to say, his conversion - was disgust he felt over the wealth and the luxury in which he lived, especially on these vacations between Parliamentary sessions which he happened to be on at the time. His passion to help the poor ignited as did his lifelong passion to transform his political position of clout and all of his inheritance into a way to bless the impoverished and the oppressed. He wrote "By careful management, I should be able to give at least one-quarter of my income to the poor."

Which is misleading according to one of his sons who later remarked that Wilberforce gave away far more than a fourth of his income and one year in particular gave away 3,000 pounds more than he had earned in that year.

Wilberforce agonized over the life he was leading versus the convictions of his faith at the beginning of his converted life. In fact, William Pitt encouraged him to give up Evangelical Christianity to better serve the government. There were tremendous pressures in Parliament to turn his back on his new found Christianity.

In seeking to resolve these issues he felt over what to do with his life as a Christian, he decided to risk seeking an audience with John Newton (who, you will remember, was both the author of the hymn Amazing Grace as well as a sincerely repentant former slave ship captain. Now he was a minister and a fervent abolitionist who was mortified over his past actions. I would add as a parenthetical that there is a fantastic film dramatizing the life of Wilberforce called Amazing Grace which I would highly recommend to everyone. The scenes with John Newton alone make it well worth it.) This was a risk because Newton was an Evangelical and not admired or esteemed by his colleagues in Parliament. Wilberforce said that he walked around the block twice before he worked up the courage to knock on Newton's door. To his joyful surprise, the sixty year old Newton implored Wilberforce not to cut himself off from public life and office, but to use it to God's glory. Newton later wrote him: "It is hoped and believed that the Lord has raised you up for the good of His church and for the good of the nation."

Wilberforce then threw himself into study of scripture and theology, studying up to 9 or 10 hours a day in hopes of making up for the wasted and lost time of laziness he'd had in college. I know that feeling well. He would eat meals alone with a book, usually the Bible.

He was a born leader. Some called Wilberforce "The Nightingale of the House of Commons." He was well respected, well education, an excellent public speaker, writer and communicator, a fine example of using the gift of education for God's kingdom.

He said of his life in politics "My walk is a public one: my business is in the world, and I must mix in the assemblies of men or quit the part which Providence seems to have assigned me."

Wilberforce fought for 30 years for the abolition of the slave trade, often seemingly making very little headway, but persevering all the same. He appealed to the conscience of England. Slavery, he told the House of Commons in 1789, "battens upon vices. When the surgeons tell you the slaves are stowed so close that there is not room to tread among them and the stench in intolerable. Death, at least, is a sure ground of proof. Upon the whole there is a mortality rate of about 50 percent. Many persons argue that if we relinquish the slave trade France will take it up. We cannot wish greater mischief to France. For the sake of France, however, and for the sake of humanity, I trust, nay, I am sure she will not."

The French Revolution had instilled England at that time with a sort of revulsion to any social innovations. As well as a revulsion for the French. Also, there was a revulsion at the idea of losing international clout, profits and trade to other nations who might take up the slack if Britain outlawed something that the US or France had not outlawed.

"I confess to you, so enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did its wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for Abolition. . . . Let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.

"I mean not to accuse anyone but to take the shame upon myself, in common indeed with the whole Parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on under their authority. We are all guilty - we ought to all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others."

Of course, needless to say Wilberforce knew that great public speaking alone was not going to sway the argument, especially as a lot of people were making a lot of money off of the abominable practice. He needed grass roots, public opinion to sway the tide which, fortunately, is something the church was very good at at the time. He also needed information to use to sway said tide, so he asked his Clapham community to help him prepare for his next presentation to Parliament.

Two years later, after two years of preparation, Wilberforce delivered another speech to the House of Commons to introduce a bill to end the importation of slaves into the West Indies. He said, "Never, never will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name, released ourselves from the load of guilt, and extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic."

He appealed to the British people saying "It is on the feeling of the nation we must rely, so let the flame be fanned."

He and his Clapham community were masterful at creating a public opinion and use that to pressure the opinion of the government. The Evangelical community in Britain flooded Parliament with petitions signed by unimaginable numbers of individuals to the point where the opposition insisted on examining the petitions. The petitions turned out to be entirely valid. They published abolitionist literature. They lectured from the pulpit and in town squares. They took sympathetic MPs (or those who were possibly swayed) on tours of slave ships so that they could smell the stench of blood, feces, and death and see and touch the chains for themselves. They even, in sort of a groundbreaking move, erected billboards for the abolitionist cause around England. Wilberforce himself was a very well known and widely read author. His book A Practical View of Christianity is considered a classic of the faith to this day.

Wilberforce suffered many threats to his life from several slave ship captains. Wilberforce lost many friends in his long battle including, to a large extent, his friendship with William Pitt. Also there were political ramifications. The West Indian colonial assemblies claimed that if Britain ever really outlawed the slave trade they too would declare independence and join with the United States. Also the slave trade pumped huge amounts of money into the British economy which Wilberforce was calling to end on the ground of human decency?!!? Such a thing would be unheard of today. Unthinkable that a nation would give up a profitable industry on the grounds of morality and accountability to God?!!?

Probably the harshest and deepest cutting criticism was from a slavery-defender named William Cobett, who turned Wilberforce's commitment to abolition into a liability in his cutting criticism. Cobett stated that Wilberforce pretended to care about slaves from Africa, but cared nothing about the "wage slaves" - which is to say the poor of England.

"You seem to have a great affection for the fat and lazy and laughing and singing and dancing Negroes. . . . [But] Never have you done one single act in favor of the laborers of this country [a statement Cobett knew to be false]. . . . You make your appeal in Picadilly, London, amongst those who are wallowing in luxuries, proceeding from the labor of the people. You should have gone to the gravel-pits, and made your appeal to the wretched creatures with bits of sacks around their shoulders, and with hay-bands round their legs; you should have gone to the roadside, and made your appeal to the emaciated, half-dead things who are there cracking stones to make the roads as level as a die for the tax eaters to ride on. What an insult it is, and what an unfeeling, what a cold-blooded hypocrite must he be that can send it forth; what an insult to call upon people under the name of free British laborers; to appeal to them in behalf of Black slaves, when these free British laborers; these poor, mocked, degraded wretches, would be happy to lick the dishes and bowls, out of which the Black slaves have breakfasted, dined, or supped."

On top of this, Wilberforce's daughter Barbara died of tuberculosis in 1821 right after Christmas.

Wilberforce wrote, "It is in such seasons as these that the value of the promises of the Word of God are ascertained both by the dying and the attendant relatives. . . . The assured persuasion of Barbara's happiness has taken away the sting of death." Soon after, Wilberforce wrote to his son that he had developed a "new malady - The Gout."

The word "new" highlights that Wilberforce suffered, labored and toiled with some severe physical ailments. He wrote in 1788 that his eyesight had declined so much that "[I can scarcely] see how to direct my pen." For the first few hours of the day he could not see well enough to read. "This was a symptom of a slow buildup of morphine poisoning."

You see, in 1788, doctors had prescribed daily opium pills and laudanum to Wilberforce to control his ulcerative colitis. It's a sign of the different times in that it never would have occurred to any of his enemies to impugn his character on the basis of his opium use. "Yet effects there must have been," Pollock observes. "Wilberforce certainly grew more untidy, indolent (as he often bemoaned) and absent-minded as his years went on though not yet in old age; it is proof of the strength of his will that he achieved so much under a burden which neither he nor his doctors understood."

Along with his colitis, his breathing problems, his degenerating sight, he developed a curvature of the spine. "One shoulder began to slope; and his head fell forward, a little more each year until it rested on his chest unless lifted by conscious movement: he could have looked grotesque were it not for the charm of his face and the smile which hovered about his mouth." Most people didn't know he wore a brace under his clothes for the rest of his life.

But one of Wilberforce's chief rivals in Parliament wrote of him "It is necessary to watch him as he is blessed with a very sufficient quantity of that Enthusiastic spirit, which so far from yielding that it grows more vigorous from blows."

The poet Robert Southey wrote, "I never saw any other man who seemed to enjoy such a perpetual serenity and sunshine of spirit. In conversing with him, you feel assured that there is no guile in him; that if ever there was a good man and happy man on earth, he was one."

Joseph John Gurney, a Quaker, visited for a week with Wilberforce and wrote, "As he walked about the house he was generally humming the tune of a hymn or Psalm as if he could not contain his pleasurable feelings of thankfulness and devotion."

Wilberforce himself wrote:

"My grand objection to the religious system still held by many who declare themselves orthodox Churchmen. . . is, that it tends to render Christianity so much a system of prohibitions rather than of privilege and hopes, and thus the injunction to rejoice, so strongly enforced in the New Testament, is practically neglected, and Religion is made to wear a forbidding and gloomy air and not one of peace and hope and joy.

"Joy . . . is enjoined on us as our bounden duty and commended to us as our acceptable worship. . . . A cold . . . unfeeling heart is represented as highly criminal."

The slave trade was not outlawed until 1807. The supporters of the slave trade finally had to relent to the wave of public opinion. When Charles Fox was speaking, he spoke of the contrast between warlike Napoleon who, upon his victory, would have parades and cheers while the great, good, peaceful, compassionate man Wilberforce would quietly go home to bed, and the entire House burst into spontaneous applause and cheers. Wilberforce was overcome with emotion and sat with his head in his hands, with tears streaming down his face. After the long assembly had ended, in the early morning hours Wilberforce turned to his friend and colleague, Henry Thornton, and said, "Well, Henry, what shall we abolish next?"

Next was to abolish slavery its self, but emancipation laws were not passed until 1833. Age and illness had since forced Wilberforce to retire, but he sort of appointed his successor in ideology in the evangelical Thomas Fowell Buxton. The act was passed four days before Wilberforce died. Wilberforce learned of this on his death bed and said, "Thank God" as one of his last words on this earth. He was buried in Westminster Abbey next to William Pitt.

Piper finishes, "What made Wilberforce tick was a profound Biblical allegiance to what he called the "peculiar doctrines" of Christianity. These, he said, give rise, in turn, to true affections - what we might call "passion" or "emotions" - for spiritual things, which, in turn, break the power of pride and greed and fear, and then lead to transformed morals which, in turn, lead to the political welfare of the nation. He said, "If . . . a principle of true Religion [i.e., true Christianity] should . . . gain ground, there is no estimating the effects on public morals, and the consequent influence on our political welfare."

Reading Group Reminded- The Metamorphosis

Next week at this time, people in the Reading the Classics with Paul reading group will post our comments on The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. This particular book is a favorite of mine and I think everyone will enjoy reading this one. Welcome to the birth of the modern, folks. It's a shorter work, shorter than most of our sections from our last book, so we are going to do the entire work in one week. It's a quick read, so I don't anticipate anyone having a problem with this.

The copy I have is the edition from the picture there at the beginning of the post. It's the same edition that I borrowed from the first girl I ever had a crush on. She was in my Freshman year high school drama class and while the other students were doing scenes from Saturday Night Live, she and I would do scenes from Ibsen, Strindberg, and Wallace Shawn. We never ended up in any sort of relationship. I doubt she even knew she was my first crush. Her and I traded books once. I let her borrow The Viking Portable Woollcott, she let me borrow Kafka. That was a long time ago.

So, get a copy, read it, and next week we will discuss The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Even if you've not been following along with the reading group thus far, this is a great time to start. Read the text and next week we will share our thoughts on it.

As usual, I like to put a little (hopefully) complementary side piece along with our reminder. One of my most overplayed albums is Philip Glass' Solo Piano album. It's in heavy rotation of "albums I'll throw on the stereo." Most of it is pieces of music from a theatrical production of The Metamorphosis from long ago. Also there's one piece that was written to accompany a poem by Allen Ginsberg. But here is the first piece, Metamorphosis One.

State of the State of the Union

Once a year we have a State of the Union address. This is when the President comes before, well, before the rest of the major figures of the federal government, although specifically to Congress, and gives a speech on "The State of the Union." It's in our constitution. I've been watching these for years with great fascination. I am far more compelled by a State of the Union address than I've ever been for a Super Bowl. Usually the State of the Union is highly optimistic, mainly because we have a legend in our country that if the President suggests that the Union is weak, Daniel Webster will come bursting out of his grave and the taxpayers will have to pay for his reburial.

Which translates to: every time, regardless of how much or little I like the Presidents, I really want to believe what they say in the State of the Union. What they say usually bears little resemblance to consensus reality in the present and the future (and sometimes even the past). What they say is more often than not a platform for political agendas and specific hobby horses they are trying to pass into reality at that given time (although, judging by the constant, predictable, petulant refusal of whatever the other political party is to clap, it gives you an idea of how effective it's going to be.) Usually one can get a glimpse into what the President is going to be focusing on and where he would like to steer the nation in spite of the opposing parties attempting to steer in the other direction simply out of spite and consequences be damned. Make no mistake, I'm not pointing specific fingers. Both major political parties do this.

This time our President focused largely on the economic crisis and jobless rates. It's nice to hear him speak so much about creating new jobs, doing right by big corporations and what not. I don't think much will come of it, but our economy has sort of a "clapping for Tinkerbell" aspect to it. If the President got up there and said "We're all doomed! DOOMED!" you can bet the stock market would tank the moment Darth Vader rings the starting bell.

By all indicators from economists on all sides of the political spectrum, I think I've become convinced that the worst is over and we are beginning to see growth. However, don't be fooled. It's growth like a bean planted in a kindergarten classroom on the day when you first see the tiniest sprig of green in the dirt. Bear in mind, the kindergartners are the people and the corporations who have a tendency to leave the fragile new plants in the sun or drown them in water or leave the class bunny out of its cage to eat all of the new growth. You see, this animal spirit manifests itself in, to use Freudian metaphors, the collective people who make up the economy, the people and the corporations, who are like a giant id. They feed their base desires and fly fully at whatever emotion they're feeling. The government acts as sort of an ego which comes in on occasion, very rarely (much like all of our own ids), to try to keep the unruly id from self-destructing. And hopefully the joint efforts of the two will, much like the science of emergence, create a super-ego which will guide the body (the economy in this metaphor). Unfortunately, the id rages to keep itself fat, drunk and happy, guzzling resources and getting away with whatever it can get away with, while the super-ego dithers over where and when to step in, how to step in, the right and left side turning on one another like an allergy until the body is so low on nutrients that it starts to devour itself from starvation.

Obama did not say any of this.

Obama talked about clean energy. The only clear dig I saw him take at the previous administration was mentioning climate change deniers in the face of staggering scientific evidence. He talked about leading the world in clean energy in one of the more jock-ish sections of the speech.

He spoke out about the need for the best education in the world. In one of my favorite moments, he said, "The best anti-poverty program around is a world-class education." For which I wanted to stand up and applaud, but we were in the car at that point. Although he then went on to say how a high school education no longer guarantees a job and how we need to reform colleges both inside and out. Which is nice and all well and good if a bit behind the times. My immediate thought was "A Bachelor's degree... Heck, a PHD no longer guarantees a job in this country much less a high school diploma!"

Then he talked about health care reform. I wasn't sure he was going to go there with as disgusting a turn that whole topic has taken. But he did. I still stand by what I've said before that I think given the direction it's going, when his administration is done, people like me will be in either exactly the same position with health care or worse. It's a nice thought, but I think it's going to end up in a one term president embarrassment. Our nation is horribly impatient and unforgiving; and leaders who inherit a load of headaches from the sins of their predecessors don't tend to fare well in America no matter how much headway they make. Again, I would love love love to see real health care reform that helps the people happen in America. I know this isn't the most civic minded things for me to say, but I'll believe it when I see it.

He talked about reform. Then he talked about the war and did a bit of sabre rattling at other nations we're nervous about, which I really wish he wouldn't. I had a friend who was of voting age in the 1960s who told me once that he didn't vote anymore. That was because he had voted for Lyndon Johnson who promised to be the anti-war president, the president who would scale back and stop the war. My friend felt so burned by it that he never voted again. I think about that every time Obama talks about the war.

Look, I would really, really like to like Obama. I really want to. As it's going, I think at best he'll be our generation's Carter, at worst our Johnson or Hoover.
He talked about the deficit of trust in the people toward their government which I yes and amen.
He ended with a touching bit about Haiti and that was that. You can read the full text of his speech here.

I am of so many minds about politics. I usually end up trying my best to be apolitical, especially on this blog, but it's one of those things that effect our lives so we must take an interest in it, although our power is so strangled and impotent, so it's kind of a big frustration. I want there to be a great leader, an amazing heroic figure who is going to march in and lead us all to a grand new future. But I don't think we have one; and I think we may have reached a point in our history where a person like that couldn't make it to any real point of power. Which leaves me with us, the people, who I think are the ones who could work for a better future. But we don't.
And I'm sure Obama's words about the "deficit of trust" will haunt me, one who naturally leans heavily to the Left, for years to come as I see myself acting out that very phrase. I guess it points to where my hope is and where it isn't.

And this is where I find myself at the end of January almost every year. It's a bit like having a favorite party holiday that every year ends up not living up to your expectations.

Sorry to end on such a downer note. See, this is why I don't talk politics very often but, like Michael Corleone, every time I think I'm out, they drag me back in.
As a coda, I would like to add that the gross inadequacies of our local television networks were such that we did not have the usual troupe of political nerds before the event discussing what may or may not be said in the speech. I decided to continue this happy serendipity and, at the time of writing this, I have not read a single analysis or reaction or even listened to the Republican rebuttal (because I decided that my time would be more pleasantly spent chewing a wad of aluminum foil and shoving sharpened bamboo shoots under my own fingernails.) I did this so that my reactions would be purely my own reactions to what was said.
And this is what I came up with!

It's A Bull Roaring Tuesday!

Wow! The questions came flooding in overnight, so here's another round of reader's questions answered.

AND remember people, if you'd like me to answer your questions, throw a question at me (gently) through this link! Ask early and ask often. http://www.formspring.com/forms/?805682-tVpvj8P8KQ


Beatles or Stones?

My short answer is the Stones, but, as you can probably well imagine, I also have a longer answer.

If I were stuck in a living situation where I was only allowed the complete library of either of those artists, I would 9 times out of 10 pick the Stones. However, I am very fond of the solo work of both John Lennon and George Harrison probably more than anything they did in the Beatles although, to give a little perspective, I own nothing by any of them including the Stones (except Beggar's Banquet.) I like some individual songs of the Beatles (Norwegian Wood, Something, A Day in the Life, Here Comes the Sun, In My Life, and many more), I love Laibach's Let It Be cover album, and, yes, I am one of those people who really likes the work of Yoko Ono. I also love Harry Nilsson probably more than the Stones or the Beatles.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that I strongly dislike Paul McCartney and "the Paul McCartney sound." And I love the Stones' complex, wild, rock-blues sort of sound. So, it's purely a matter of taste and not a hill I'm going to die on. I'm not much of a listener of either.


So an orange hypothetically explodes in your bag. You try your best to clean it out, but nevertheless, your entire bag now smells like orange (not in the good citrusy palmolive sort of way either!) do you a) go out and buy a new bag, even though this one has been so good to you in the past? or b) do you try to clean it more thoroughly (and with what?) or even c) get it professionally done, but at what cost!

Right, so I have two answers to provide for this question. The first is what I would do left to my own devices, the second is what my wife would do because she knows how to deal with these things better than I do.

First of all, it's a perfectly good bag aside from the smell. By no means would I immediately buy a new one or even pay someone else to clean it. I would try to clean it out more thoroughly maybe with a watered down TSP solution or something similar that I found around the house. Then I would take a small cereal bowl, fill it with coffee grounds, set it in the bag and close the bag overnight, by the heater in the winter or out in the open air if it's a little warmer out. Hopefully, this would cause my bag to smell strongly of coffee grounds (which I would find pleasant) and not some disgusting coffee-orange mixture. Although I kind of doubt it. But I probably wouldn't even get that far as Laurie would catch me putting a bowl of coffee grounds into my bag and trying to set it up by the heater in a way that the cats won't knock it over in the night. She would stop me and tell me what I should really do. I'll wait until she gets home and see what she says.

I was close. She said that she would clean it out again really good, dry it completely with heat (sun, heater, hair dryer), and then spray Febreeze or another odor neutralizer in there.


I never got an answer to my last one!

Don't yell at me!

Well, I have answered every question that has come to me, so either you've missed a few question answering entries (you might take a moment to scroll down and check out the previous entries on this blog to make sure you haven't missed a question answering post: http://ticklemebrahms.blogspot.com/ ).

Or, and please don't take offense as none is meant, we have a Code 18 problem here. Perhaps the question asking button wasn't pressed before the page was navigated away from. Perhaps you're operating on the secret government internet that runs parallel to this internet and forgot to switch over when you asked the question. In which case you'll have to file a 18714-H voucher before proceeding. Once you've ascertained that I have not already answered your question, follow the link and re-ask. I would be more than happy to answer your question so long as you keep it clean. My mom reads this blog.

Unless, of course, the comment is objecting to the quality of one of my responses. In which case I can't really help you. Like I said, I can't promise answers, but I can guarantee responses.


what did you turn to in college?

With all due respect, the wording of this question suggests two possible questions to me. I'll answer both!

The first is probably what I focused my studies upon. I majored in Theater at Chapman University with a focus on 1) playwriting 2) stage management and 3) technical theater (as in building sets, designing lights and costumes, etc.) My goal was to do monologues like Spalding Gray and to work in the theater in technical capacity to support myself. I minored in Religion.
Or, the question could be "turn to" as in religion, spiritual walk, coping mechanisms, and so on. In the Religion department at Chapman I studied under Marv Meyer who was one of the chief members of the Jesus Seminar, one of the translators of the Gospel of Thomas and the Nag Hammadi Library, and a man you will probably see if you see an ABC special or a history channel show on "The Historical Jesus." In other words, about as liberal as Christian theology gets. I was a Quaker and highly influenced by Albert Schweitzer's doctrine of Reverence for Life. I also turned to Transcendental Meditation and was a frequent visitor to the Hare Krishna temple in Laguna Beach. I was consumed with doctrine dictating a lifestyle focused on social justice and somewhere to the left of Leon Trotsky.

So, that was college aged Paul.