The King, the Living Dead, the Secaucus Seven, the Native, the Prodigal Son, Martin Guerre, the Jedi, and the Grievous Angel all had theirs, and now here's mine. Return, that is.
It's hard to believe that it's been more than 6 months since my last post, since my last show on WOOL, but it has. Work, illnesses (Alice's, not mine), life in general have all conspired to keep me from doing these avocational things which I really like, and which do renew me. So, I'm'a try again to find and make time for these pursuits. As my 60th b'day looms shockingly near, I'm tryna remember that Thomas Hobbes, that happy-go-lucky 16th century philosopher, characterized life, in Leviathan, as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Bet he was a blast at parties, huh? All his other characterizations aside, life is certainly too short to miss any enjoyments. So, for better or worse, I'm back.
Which is one of the two organizing principles around which I'm basing this week's show: "Back" and "Return." And since I've been away for so long, it's gonna be longer than 2 hrs, probably closer to 3. Much of the time will be spent re-familiarizing myself with the equipment and routines at the station and fixing my screw-ups, but, I think, there'll be lots of music, too. Herewith, a playlist, not necessarily in order:
Cheap Day Return Jethro Tull
Dream of the Return Pat Metheny Group
Hello, I've Returned Buffalo Springfield
I Always Return Mark Erelli
I Shall Return Gov't Mule
Joint of No Return John Gorka
The Kiss of No Return John Coltrane
Lover's Return Dolly, Linda, Emmylou
The Return Sally Fingerett
The Return of the Blues Cowboy Joe Strummer
Return of the Grievous Angel Counting Crows
Return of the Grievous Angel Lucinda Williams/David Crosby
Return of the Grievous Angel Gram Parsons
Return of the Mack Mark Morrison
Ritorna-Me Dean Martin
Return to Sender Elvis Presley
Return to Sender Mojave 3
Returning Jennifer Berezan
River Of No Return Marilyn Monroe
The Spirit Returns Rory Block
Back Home Eric Clapton
Back Home Gil Scott-Heron
Back Home Again John Denver
Back Home War
Back In The High Life Warren Zevon
Back In The Saddle Aerosmith
Back In Your Life Jonathan Richman
Back Into Your World Son Volt
I Want You Back (Alive) Graham Parker
It All Comes Back Paul Butterfield/Better Days
Sing Me Back Home Flying Burrito Bros.
I'll Be Back Beatles
Goin' Back Nils Lofgren
Goin' Back Neil Young
Get Back Beatles
Get Way Back Amos Garrett
Ease Back Grant Green
Coming Back Darol Anger/Mike Marshall
Lots of stuff, lots of variety, I think. That's what WOOL is about. Just to remind you, we are a community radio station, all-volunteer, even more dependent than Public Radio on "the kindness of strangers." We are in somewhat dire financial straits, so I'm asking you all, even those who can't or don't make time to actually listen, to support the Arts and community radio. If you go to our website (wool.fm), you'll find out how to join, and how easy it is. For a mere (tax-deductible) $25, you can help support an interesting, interested endeavor, and keep the airwaves a little more free-form--not totally dominated by Clear Channel, nasty talk-radio, and the like. Plus, you'll get, in addition to our enduring thanks, a cool bumper sticker. Please think about joining, and then do it. And if you're somehow connected to a group or organization which would benefit from it, you could become an underwriter, which would be extremely cool and helpful....
Anyway, my show's gonna start this week at 11:30 AM on Tuesday, June 18, and go till around 3 PM. I hope you can join me for some or all, at 100.1 FM, or streamed live at wool.fm on the webs. And in case you didn't recognize, the title of this post, and the coda, are from George's lovely song on the "white album", which is actually just called "The Beatles."
"How could I ever have lost you?"
I hope I didn't.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Love Is Still god
I've been doing this blog for less than a year (seems lots longer, doesn't it?), and already I'm repeating and referencing myself. If any of us needed evidence (I know I didn't) that I'm a man of few ideas, there it is. On February 12 I wrote a post about Love. I'm here to talk about it again, with not much new to say.
Like the rest of you, I'm sure, I was sickened by what happened in Connecticut yesterday. I cried my way home from work, called my son Sam who was 2 cars (or trucks, to be honest: we're carpenters, after all) ahead of me 'cause I needed to tell him I love him. The shooting was a horrible, heinous, unthinkable-until-it-happened event. And I'm sure that we're, as a sick society and species, going to endure many more that are just as unthinkable. Until they happen.
The governor of Connecticut, Daniel Malloy, said Friday that "Evil came to this town today." With all due respect, that's just a good sound bite. It's far too simplistic and shortsighted to address the fundamental human need that led to this shooting, though I assume he meant well. If it was evil that led to Friday's tragedy, then evil is all around us, in every town, every day. And here's where it gets hard to say, and all fuzzy-headed Liberal: Evil, or something like it, entered Adam Lanza's life long ago. He was as much victim as killer.
Although I can understand it, I was, somewhat surprisingly even to me, saddened to hear that at gatherings and memorials last night there were 27 candles lit, to commemorate those who were killed. The fact is, of course, that there were 28 people who died in that massacre; the one not remembered, not mentioned, the one we'll all think of for all time as a monster, was the perpetrator of the horror, who was himself once a little boy looking for love and affirmation, looking to know that he was okay. That assurance was apparently not forthcoming.
Yes, what he did was sickening, was horrifying, unthinkable, unexplainable. Or was it? No one comes here thinking "Someday I'm going to slaughter tens or hundreds or millions of innocent people." We all come here with certain immutable physical needs: food, shelter, and clothing, and one enormous psychological need that may in fact outweigh the physical. We Need Love. We need to know that we are needed, wanted, respected for Who We Are, for what we brought to this strange and foreign place. We can't go back whence we came, much as we might long to, so we have to know that where we're going, we're going to be okay. And some of us who don't get that reassurance, who don't get enough love, or the kind of love we need, become sick and twisted and erupt in horrifying ways. Something happened to Adam Lanza along his journey; could he, at 7 or 8 or 10, when he himself was trying to find his way, have even contemplated being in the torment he had to have been in when he committed his inhuman deed? I can't imagine it.
Until we all learn how to give each other the kind of love we all need--which is to say "never"--we will go through horrors such as occurred in Newtown, or worse, again, and again, and again.
As I was writing this post Saturday evening, an extraordinary thing happened. I received a phone call from a man in North Carolina who met Alice B. Fogel last spring when she was in residence at the Carl Sandburg house, heard her do a reading, and bought her books. He called, filled with emotion, to tell her that he had sent her poem "Grief" to his daughters, who have school-age children, and to many friends, as a way for them all to cope with the Newtown tragedy. He wanted her to know how important her words had been to so many people, and how her poem was helping them to carry on. It was an incredibly kind and thoughtful act for him to call, and further evidence, I think, of our innate need for connection.
I have secured the author's permission (by virtue of walking from my office to the living room--some of us are just lucky, I guess) and herewith reprint the poem, which appeared originally in I Love This Dark World (whose title came from our son Jake, then aged 3; his Facebook page from yesterday is surely worth a read) and subsequently in Strange Terrain:
Grief
I am ashamed as I try to sleep,
counting the wounded and the dead
in this old day's news
the grieving ones they leave behind. Counting stones and bullets, averted needs,
the pretty breaths of my family beside me,
counting on a world that I don't trust
to keep my children safe.
What was I thinking? Did I forget those others,
the rubble of their troubled worlds
and mine? Does it fill their days--
their remembering? Or do they remember too
to choose their favorite breakfast bowls,
that red dress, the time to step out of doors?
When I lean my body over the fragile forms
of my husband and children, I am afraid
I am not strong enough to bear
the grief of so much loving, the burden
of our survival from day to day,
or of what we can't live without, but will.
How each of us fends off despair--
that is what we are made of
when all else is dust or luck.
Each stranger's grief is not my grief
but it lies under everything, like ice.
Sometimes I fall through it.
Sometimes I walk achingly.
I am not saying their voices rise
above the hum of comfort here and now.
I'm saying I believe that even sweet blue skies
will break away, leaving nothing
between my eyes and the face of a god
who says, Look down into that dark place,
meet your own shadow there.
Go on, take it, take it on. Grieve:
Go down into the dirt.
I want to have already known its taste.
I want to have swallowed it alive.
If I fall asleep tonight,
If I do not die before I wake,
what will have lifted me back to perfect
that other thing that we call hope
is more love: the leaven of all sorrow.
That was written in the early '90s. It'll be true forever.
It may not be true, as The Fabs had it, that "All You Need Is Love," but it's surely most of it.
We need to love each other, and love each other right. Now.
Like the rest of you, I'm sure, I was sickened by what happened in Connecticut yesterday. I cried my way home from work, called my son Sam who was 2 cars (or trucks, to be honest: we're carpenters, after all) ahead of me 'cause I needed to tell him I love him. The shooting was a horrible, heinous, unthinkable-until-it-happened event. And I'm sure that we're, as a sick society and species, going to endure many more that are just as unthinkable. Until they happen.
The governor of Connecticut, Daniel Malloy, said Friday that "Evil came to this town today." With all due respect, that's just a good sound bite. It's far too simplistic and shortsighted to address the fundamental human need that led to this shooting, though I assume he meant well. If it was evil that led to Friday's tragedy, then evil is all around us, in every town, every day. And here's where it gets hard to say, and all fuzzy-headed Liberal: Evil, or something like it, entered Adam Lanza's life long ago. He was as much victim as killer.
Although I can understand it, I was, somewhat surprisingly even to me, saddened to hear that at gatherings and memorials last night there were 27 candles lit, to commemorate those who were killed. The fact is, of course, that there were 28 people who died in that massacre; the one not remembered, not mentioned, the one we'll all think of for all time as a monster, was the perpetrator of the horror, who was himself once a little boy looking for love and affirmation, looking to know that he was okay. That assurance was apparently not forthcoming.
Yes, what he did was sickening, was horrifying, unthinkable, unexplainable. Or was it? No one comes here thinking "Someday I'm going to slaughter tens or hundreds or millions of innocent people." We all come here with certain immutable physical needs: food, shelter, and clothing, and one enormous psychological need that may in fact outweigh the physical. We Need Love. We need to know that we are needed, wanted, respected for Who We Are, for what we brought to this strange and foreign place. We can't go back whence we came, much as we might long to, so we have to know that where we're going, we're going to be okay. And some of us who don't get that reassurance, who don't get enough love, or the kind of love we need, become sick and twisted and erupt in horrifying ways. Something happened to Adam Lanza along his journey; could he, at 7 or 8 or 10, when he himself was trying to find his way, have even contemplated being in the torment he had to have been in when he committed his inhuman deed? I can't imagine it.
Until we all learn how to give each other the kind of love we all need--which is to say "never"--we will go through horrors such as occurred in Newtown, or worse, again, and again, and again.
As I was writing this post Saturday evening, an extraordinary thing happened. I received a phone call from a man in North Carolina who met Alice B. Fogel last spring when she was in residence at the Carl Sandburg house, heard her do a reading, and bought her books. He called, filled with emotion, to tell her that he had sent her poem "Grief" to his daughters, who have school-age children, and to many friends, as a way for them all to cope with the Newtown tragedy. He wanted her to know how important her words had been to so many people, and how her poem was helping them to carry on. It was an incredibly kind and thoughtful act for him to call, and further evidence, I think, of our innate need for connection.
I have secured the author's permission (by virtue of walking from my office to the living room--some of us are just lucky, I guess) and herewith reprint the poem, which appeared originally in I Love This Dark World (whose title came from our son Jake, then aged 3; his Facebook page from yesterday is surely worth a read) and subsequently in Strange Terrain:
Grief
I am ashamed as I try to sleep,
counting the wounded and the dead
in this old day's news
the grieving ones they leave behind. Counting stones and bullets, averted needs,
the pretty breaths of my family beside me,
counting on a world that I don't trust
to keep my children safe.
What was I thinking? Did I forget those others,
the rubble of their troubled worlds
and mine? Does it fill their days--
their remembering? Or do they remember too
to choose their favorite breakfast bowls,
that red dress, the time to step out of doors?
When I lean my body over the fragile forms
of my husband and children, I am afraid
I am not strong enough to bear
the grief of so much loving, the burden
of our survival from day to day,
or of what we can't live without, but will.
How each of us fends off despair--
that is what we are made of
when all else is dust or luck.
Each stranger's grief is not my grief
but it lies under everything, like ice.
Sometimes I fall through it.
Sometimes I walk achingly.
I am not saying their voices rise
above the hum of comfort here and now.
I'm saying I believe that even sweet blue skies
will break away, leaving nothing
between my eyes and the face of a god
who says, Look down into that dark place,
meet your own shadow there.
Go on, take it, take it on. Grieve:
Go down into the dirt.
I want to have already known its taste.
I want to have swallowed it alive.
If I fall asleep tonight,
If I do not die before I wake,
what will have lifted me back to perfect
that other thing that we call hope
is more love: the leaven of all sorrow.
That was written in the early '90s. It'll be true forever.
It may not be true, as The Fabs had it, that "All You Need Is Love," but it's surely most of it.
We need to love each other, and love each other right. Now.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
"Fiscal Cliff"'s Notes
And a bunch of other stuff. Hi again, gang, and welcome back. Or am I not supposed to be the one saying that? When I realized that Tom had more posts on my blog than I did in recent weeks, I figured I'd better weigh in some, too.Thanks for writing, Tom; your responses have triggered many thoughts in me; I was actually going to write about Rudman, f'rinstance, even before you brought him up.
While it is certainly true, as Tom notes, that this is "their" country, too (see the Nov 4 post, and Tom's response), I think that "they" see it as, literally, their country. Or want to see it that way, at least; as Don points out in his response, "we, the people" didn't allow that to be true, much to Republican insiders' shock. But I think very strongly that we delude ourselves if we see the one percent as somehow having the same wishes, hopes, and views of the country as the "great unwashed" do. And here I must go off on one of those digressions to which I am prone, and which will probably blow the whole point and tone of this piece, but what the hell, I'm'a do it anyway.
The phrase "the great unwashed," used to describe the lower classes, whatever that may mean to anyone in particular, was coined by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, a British (obviously, what-ho?) novelist of the mid-nineteenth century. He is also the coiner of "pursuit of the almighty dollar," "the pen is mightier than the sword" and, perhaps most famously, "It was a dark and stormy night," which last has led to much derision (Snoopy always used it to start his novels in the "Peanuts" strip) and has given rise to an annual contest to write the best opening line for the worst (prospective) novel ever written ( This year's winner: "As he told her that he loved her she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, the tiny deodicids burrowing into his follicles to eat the greasy sebum therein, each female laying up to 25 eggs in a single follicle, causing inflammation, whether the eyes are truly the windows of the soul; and, if so, his soul needed regrouting.") . So the poor guy gets made fun of for the one thing, but doesn't get recognition for the other great lines that become standard parts of the lexicon. Jeez, wonder if that's true for everyone--they've got shit we can deride, but they've also got lots of wonderful things to offer ...? Nah, can't be. Never mind.
Where was I? Oh yeah, "their country." I believe that their country and mine are geographically the same, or at least similar, but emotionally or attitudinally worlds apart. I believe that my country is open, welcoming, ready to accept and aid people of every race, gender, creed, persuasion and stripe, while theirs is reactionary, exclusionary, all about consolidating and amplifying what they have, repressing, oppressing and suppressing The Other, because, of course, The Other can eventually threaten them. In spite of Romney's "47%" comments, I, sap that I am, thought that he was basically a decent guy who, unfortunately, would say or do anything, or the opposite of anything if necessary, to get elected. Then, in his post-election comments he revealed himself for the self-aggrandizing and -accreting greedhead (thank you, Hunter S. Thompson) he is and longed to represent. Obama won by giving "gifts" of aid and food and support to those in need? That's called being a leader, a President, Mitt; those aren't gifts or bribes, as your type might see them; they are the way that a responsible and compassionate leader carries out his or her (and there are women leaders, Mitt: who the hell knew that New Hampshire was so progressive that we'd have 5 of them?) responsibilities and obligations. Maybe a conversation with that traitor Chris Christie is in order. Jesus, what would Jesus do?
Mention of Christie brings me to Warren Rudman, who Tom referred to in another post (and yeah, I know I'm the one who mentioned Christie, but if I had to wait for you guys...). Christie was entirely partisan, it seemed, one of Romney's biggest (in many senses of the word) and most-noticed cheerleaders. Then Sandy hit, and Christie put leadership and compassion above partisanship; to his great credit, he recognized and praised what Obama and the Federal government, that conservative boogeyman, were actually all about and could do. Warren Rudman, former senator from NH who died last week, was like that, too. He was a Republican insider who became an outsider when he became more open-minded, fair and bi-partisan, working for the best interests of the people, rather than hewing to the party line. He was most instrumental, for instance, in slipping David Souter past the GOP Guardians Of Morality and onto the Supreme Court. As NH attorney general he was pretty reactionary and oppressive (see Mayflowers, when Abbie and Jerry, et al came to UNH--right, Carolyn B.?), but he grew and became a mensch (a Jew from NH in power? Oy vey.).
Unlike, for instance, a still-living relic of that era, John Sununu. He was governor of NH in the '70s, went on to be chief of staff for Bush 1, and delivered the official nomination speech for Romney at this year's Convention. He was always an arrogant, combative, mean-spirited little prick, and has not changed an iota. I heard him being interviewed by Brooke Gladstone on NPR's On the Media in August, on the subject of fact checkers and truthfulness in political advertising. In the course of the interview he went from testy to full-out angry as Ms. Gladstone pursued her line of questioning. Just before he hung up on her on air he said something about the elite liberal media, especially NPR, always covering the President's butt, and "you're going to lose in November." You should listen to it. Good to see that he's every bit as good a political prognosticator as he is a human being. There's a reason the GOP presidential nominee has won the popular vote once--yes, that's "once"--since 1988. Dinosaurs like Sununu could ensure that it stays that way. While part of me-- not my higher self, but the immature, self-serving, venal part which, admittedly, is about 90%--wishes that would be the case, most of me knows it shouldn't--we face an overriding issue which needs all of us working together to fix.
And I don't mean the stupid "Fiscal Cliff" although, like the real problem, it too is manmade. Obama and the Dems actually stand to benefit from this so-called cliff: let the Bush tax cuts expire, then enact new legislation which raises taxes on the rich while lowering those of the middle class. Let there be huge cuts in defense spending-- and it's about fucking time-- and then fund according to priorities, although Obama would want far more killer drones than I'm comfortable with, which is about zero. Let the GOP vote against these measures and then see how they do in 2014 or against Hillary in 2016. However: We can discuss all of these financial minutiae, but Rome is burning--and melting.
Sorry, gang, to keep on about this, but we're killing the climate, and that's going to kill us. We want to see events like Irene and Sandy, droughts in Africa and Kansas, as anomalies. They were, once; now they're commonplace, exacting huge human (hear that, Dems?) and financial (hear that, Reps?) tolls, which are only going to grow. But when was the last time you heard any of our "leaders" raise the issue of climate change in public discourse, other than to to downplay or outright dismiss and disparage it? Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert, among many other smart, brave and informed people, are there, but elected officials? Nope--the Force-10 winds aren't blowing in that direction yet, and when they finally do it'll probly be too late.
Turns out you didn't really miss this shit, did ya?
While it is certainly true, as Tom notes, that this is "their" country, too (see the Nov 4 post, and Tom's response), I think that "they" see it as, literally, their country. Or want to see it that way, at least; as Don points out in his response, "we, the people" didn't allow that to be true, much to Republican insiders' shock. But I think very strongly that we delude ourselves if we see the one percent as somehow having the same wishes, hopes, and views of the country as the "great unwashed" do. And here I must go off on one of those digressions to which I am prone, and which will probably blow the whole point and tone of this piece, but what the hell, I'm'a do it anyway.
The phrase "the great unwashed," used to describe the lower classes, whatever that may mean to anyone in particular, was coined by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, a British (obviously, what-ho?) novelist of the mid-nineteenth century. He is also the coiner of "pursuit of the almighty dollar," "the pen is mightier than the sword" and, perhaps most famously, "It was a dark and stormy night," which last has led to much derision (Snoopy always used it to start his novels in the "Peanuts" strip) and has given rise to an annual contest to write the best opening line for the worst (prospective) novel ever written ( This year's winner: "As he told her that he loved her she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, the tiny deodicids burrowing into his follicles to eat the greasy sebum therein, each female laying up to 25 eggs in a single follicle, causing inflammation, whether the eyes are truly the windows of the soul; and, if so, his soul needed regrouting.") . So the poor guy gets made fun of for the one thing, but doesn't get recognition for the other great lines that become standard parts of the lexicon. Jeez, wonder if that's true for everyone--they've got shit we can deride, but they've also got lots of wonderful things to offer ...? Nah, can't be. Never mind.
Where was I? Oh yeah, "their country." I believe that their country and mine are geographically the same, or at least similar, but emotionally or attitudinally worlds apart. I believe that my country is open, welcoming, ready to accept and aid people of every race, gender, creed, persuasion and stripe, while theirs is reactionary, exclusionary, all about consolidating and amplifying what they have, repressing, oppressing and suppressing The Other, because, of course, The Other can eventually threaten them. In spite of Romney's "47%" comments, I, sap that I am, thought that he was basically a decent guy who, unfortunately, would say or do anything, or the opposite of anything if necessary, to get elected. Then, in his post-election comments he revealed himself for the self-aggrandizing and -accreting greedhead (thank you, Hunter S. Thompson) he is and longed to represent. Obama won by giving "gifts" of aid and food and support to those in need? That's called being a leader, a President, Mitt; those aren't gifts or bribes, as your type might see them; they are the way that a responsible and compassionate leader carries out his or her (and there are women leaders, Mitt: who the hell knew that New Hampshire was so progressive that we'd have 5 of them?) responsibilities and obligations. Maybe a conversation with that traitor Chris Christie is in order. Jesus, what would Jesus do?
Mention of Christie brings me to Warren Rudman, who Tom referred to in another post (and yeah, I know I'm the one who mentioned Christie, but if I had to wait for you guys...). Christie was entirely partisan, it seemed, one of Romney's biggest (in many senses of the word) and most-noticed cheerleaders. Then Sandy hit, and Christie put leadership and compassion above partisanship; to his great credit, he recognized and praised what Obama and the Federal government, that conservative boogeyman, were actually all about and could do. Warren Rudman, former senator from NH who died last week, was like that, too. He was a Republican insider who became an outsider when he became more open-minded, fair and bi-partisan, working for the best interests of the people, rather than hewing to the party line. He was most instrumental, for instance, in slipping David Souter past the GOP Guardians Of Morality and onto the Supreme Court. As NH attorney general he was pretty reactionary and oppressive (see Mayflowers, when Abbie and Jerry, et al came to UNH--right, Carolyn B.?), but he grew and became a mensch (a Jew from NH in power? Oy vey.).
Unlike, for instance, a still-living relic of that era, John Sununu. He was governor of NH in the '70s, went on to be chief of staff for Bush 1, and delivered the official nomination speech for Romney at this year's Convention. He was always an arrogant, combative, mean-spirited little prick, and has not changed an iota. I heard him being interviewed by Brooke Gladstone on NPR's On the Media in August, on the subject of fact checkers and truthfulness in political advertising. In the course of the interview he went from testy to full-out angry as Ms. Gladstone pursued her line of questioning. Just before he hung up on her on air he said something about the elite liberal media, especially NPR, always covering the President's butt, and "you're going to lose in November." You should listen to it. Good to see that he's every bit as good a political prognosticator as he is a human being. There's a reason the GOP presidential nominee has won the popular vote once--yes, that's "once"--since 1988. Dinosaurs like Sununu could ensure that it stays that way. While part of me-- not my higher self, but the immature, self-serving, venal part which, admittedly, is about 90%--wishes that would be the case, most of me knows it shouldn't--we face an overriding issue which needs all of us working together to fix.
And I don't mean the stupid "Fiscal Cliff" although, like the real problem, it too is manmade. Obama and the Dems actually stand to benefit from this so-called cliff: let the Bush tax cuts expire, then enact new legislation which raises taxes on the rich while lowering those of the middle class. Let there be huge cuts in defense spending-- and it's about fucking time-- and then fund according to priorities, although Obama would want far more killer drones than I'm comfortable with, which is about zero. Let the GOP vote against these measures and then see how they do in 2014 or against Hillary in 2016. However: We can discuss all of these financial minutiae, but Rome is burning--and melting.
Sorry, gang, to keep on about this, but we're killing the climate, and that's going to kill us. We want to see events like Irene and Sandy, droughts in Africa and Kansas, as anomalies. They were, once; now they're commonplace, exacting huge human (hear that, Dems?) and financial (hear that, Reps?) tolls, which are only going to grow. But when was the last time you heard any of our "leaders" raise the issue of climate change in public discourse, other than to to downplay or outright dismiss and disparage it? Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert, among many other smart, brave and informed people, are there, but elected officials? Nope--the Force-10 winds aren't blowing in that direction yet, and when they finally do it'll probly be too late.
Turns out you didn't really miss this shit, did ya?
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Forward...Into The Past?
Earl Weaver, longtime manager of the Baltimore Orioles, Hall-of-Famer, inarguably one of the greatest managers in baseball history, was shrewd, smart, and eminently quotable. His Orioles teams were invariably in the thick of the pennant race every September, and Earl used every tactic he could to psych out his opponents. In September, 1975, as the O's were in Boston trying to catch the Sox, and all of Red Sox Nation held its breath anticipating another collapse, Weaver said "We've climbed out of more coffins than Bela Lugosi."
In 1966, the US Supreme Court struck down, once and for all, we thought, the poll tax, perhaps the last of the Jim Crow laws, clearly intended to suppress the ability of poor and minority, especially black, voters to exercise their right to vote. In 1973, the Court's decision in Roe v. Wade finally, once and for all, we thought, gave women the right to control their bodies and to make their own decisions regarding fundamental human rights. In 2008, we elected a black man (well, half-black; why is it that we characterize such mixed-race people as "black?" They're equally white. But I guess it's better than two alternatives that come to mind: ""blite" or "whack," and oh shit I've just given those "non-racists" fodder) to be President of the US, an act that was unthinkable when I was a kid and, we told ourselves, was clear evidence that the country had finally, once and for all, overcome its heinous past and was no longer virulently and institutionally racist.
Comes now Election 2012, and so many of the issues we thought were buried and behind us are being pulled back out of their coffins by the Grand Old Party. Jim Crow, meet Voter ID, a straw man used by Repugnicants countrywide in an attempt to disenfranchise generally Democratic demographics, in the name of preventing voter fraud. That there is no evidence anywhere of significant voter fraud (except for, in one of life's grand ironies, a voter-registration firm hired by Repugs in FLA to increase their voter registration, and which was found to be fabricating names on their rolls) matters no more to the Right-Wing Elites than the overwhelming evidence that there is climate change happening. Women's right to choose, meet "Life begins whenever one man thinks lustful thoughts about one woman, and rape is just God's way of saying 'Um, are you sure?'" Barack Obama, meet the New America, same, in way too many respects, as the Old America. I heard recently from a resident of Houston that the local PD there refers to African Americans as "Mondays" because "everyone hates..."--yup.
It seems unfortunately appropriate that the election comes so soon after we've turned back the clock; Romney/Ryan, Inc. and their assorted partners, puppetmasters, sycophants and toadies are trying to turn the calendar back to, say, 1957, when white men ruled, as god intended, and if you didn't like the way they did things it was too bad, because they couldn't really see or hear you anyway. And it almost wouldn't be quite so bad if that's all it was; after all, we survived Nixon, Reagan, and W.cheney, Inc. But the GOP now is venal, virulent, and vehement in its outlooks and proposed policies. They're turning their backs on infrastructure, healthcare, education, science, for chrissakes, the poor, the downtrodden, the elderly, their very own citizens and constituents. If the French had any balls (sorry--stooping to a stereotype for a cheap laugh) they'd ask for the Statue of Liberty back, or at least to have its motto sandblasted off: it will no longer pertain even to natives, let alone immigrants. "Something there is that doesn't love a wall" need not apply.
We are told that every election is (imagine the stentorian tones of John Facenda, the voice of NFL Films, the new Voice of God) "The Most Important Election Of Our Lifetime," but damn, this one might be. I dimly remember a Paul Simon quote about rap from the ('80s?)--and this surely says something about his and my biases-- to the effect that " Rap is like dropping an atomic bomb on the history and evolution of popular music--I mean, how long will it take us to get back to Charlie Parker?" If RomRyan, Inc. gets elected, how long will it take us to get back to basic humanity, to the fundamental responsibilities and trust intrinsic to government and civilized society, to pull ourselves, if not out of the coffin, at least back out of the subprimordial slime?
What The Fuck is happening to my country? Please make it stop.
BTW: the titular (I obviously love that word) quote comes from Catherwood, the duplicitous butler in Firesign Theater's "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger (Third Eye)."
In 1966, the US Supreme Court struck down, once and for all, we thought, the poll tax, perhaps the last of the Jim Crow laws, clearly intended to suppress the ability of poor and minority, especially black, voters to exercise their right to vote. In 1973, the Court's decision in Roe v. Wade finally, once and for all, we thought, gave women the right to control their bodies and to make their own decisions regarding fundamental human rights. In 2008, we elected a black man (well, half-black; why is it that we characterize such mixed-race people as "black?" They're equally white. But I guess it's better than two alternatives that come to mind: ""blite" or "whack," and oh shit I've just given those "non-racists" fodder) to be President of the US, an act that was unthinkable when I was a kid and, we told ourselves, was clear evidence that the country had finally, once and for all, overcome its heinous past and was no longer virulently and institutionally racist.
Comes now Election 2012, and so many of the issues we thought were buried and behind us are being pulled back out of their coffins by the Grand Old Party. Jim Crow, meet Voter ID, a straw man used by Repugnicants countrywide in an attempt to disenfranchise generally Democratic demographics, in the name of preventing voter fraud. That there is no evidence anywhere of significant voter fraud (except for, in one of life's grand ironies, a voter-registration firm hired by Repugs in FLA to increase their voter registration, and which was found to be fabricating names on their rolls) matters no more to the Right-Wing Elites than the overwhelming evidence that there is climate change happening. Women's right to choose, meet "Life begins whenever one man thinks lustful thoughts about one woman, and rape is just God's way of saying 'Um, are you sure?'" Barack Obama, meet the New America, same, in way too many respects, as the Old America. I heard recently from a resident of Houston that the local PD there refers to African Americans as "Mondays" because "everyone hates..."--yup.
It seems unfortunately appropriate that the election comes so soon after we've turned back the clock; Romney/Ryan, Inc. and their assorted partners, puppetmasters, sycophants and toadies are trying to turn the calendar back to, say, 1957, when white men ruled, as god intended, and if you didn't like the way they did things it was too bad, because they couldn't really see or hear you anyway. And it almost wouldn't be quite so bad if that's all it was; after all, we survived Nixon, Reagan, and W.cheney, Inc. But the GOP now is venal, virulent, and vehement in its outlooks and proposed policies. They're turning their backs on infrastructure, healthcare, education, science, for chrissakes, the poor, the downtrodden, the elderly, their very own citizens and constituents. If the French had any balls (sorry--stooping to a stereotype for a cheap laugh) they'd ask for the Statue of Liberty back, or at least to have its motto sandblasted off: it will no longer pertain even to natives, let alone immigrants. "Something there is that doesn't love a wall" need not apply.
We are told that every election is (imagine the stentorian tones of John Facenda, the voice of NFL Films, the new Voice of God) "The Most Important Election Of Our Lifetime," but damn, this one might be. I dimly remember a Paul Simon quote about rap from the ('80s?)--and this surely says something about his and my biases-- to the effect that " Rap is like dropping an atomic bomb on the history and evolution of popular music--I mean, how long will it take us to get back to Charlie Parker?" If RomRyan, Inc. gets elected, how long will it take us to get back to basic humanity, to the fundamental responsibilities and trust intrinsic to government and civilized society, to pull ourselves, if not out of the coffin, at least back out of the subprimordial slime?
What The Fuck is happening to my country? Please make it stop.
BTW: the titular (I obviously love that word) quote comes from Catherwood, the duplicitous butler in Firesign Theater's "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger (Third Eye)."
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Da Eiron-Ron-Ron, Da Eiron-Ron
In Classical Greek comedy, particularly in the plays of Aristophanes, there was a stock character called the eiron. He was a dissembler, often outwitting his foes by appearing to be less able or less smart than he actually was, and that they fancied themselves to be, thus lulling them into a false sense of security or superiority until it was revealed that they'd been toyed with and were themselves the fools. Yeah, okay, so I took Leo Rockas's "Satire" class at UHa in 1980, and some things stuck.
From "eiron" we get "irony," a term, a style, a genre, a pose which has perhaps become the predominant manner of expression in modern cultural discourse-- in novels, music, poetry, movies, TV, even "journalism," and especially in interpersonal relationships, to the dismay of many. Irony has become nearly synonymous with "sarcasm" in our daily speech and affect. Greg Brown calls it "One cool remove away." It allows the speaker/writer/performer to distance herself (a gender-neutral pronoun would be helpful there) from his (see what I mean?) words, thoughts, emotions. It can be infuriating or at least disheartening to the listener/recipient. It's hard to have a serious interaction when at least one of the principals can claim ironic distance. Or so I've been told frequently; I am an inveterate and habitual practitioner.
That's irony in discourse. There's also, of course, situational irony, when concurrent or at least linked events are at odds with each other: the young husband sells his watch to buy combs for his wife's gorgeous hair, which, it turns out, she has shorn in order to buy him a chain for the pocketwatch he no longer owns. I just made that scenario up, but someone should write a story based around that premise. What?
Due to circumstances at my real work, as most of you know, I haven't been able to do my radio show for three weeks. This week, though, there seems to be an opportunity for me to change that. Hurricane Sandy is gonna keep us from working until at least Wednesday, it seems, due to rain and very high winds, not particularly good conditions for framing and sheathing a roof system. So Tuesday noon-till-two seems available. In very windy conditions there is an enormously high likelihood that WOOL's antenna, perched shakily atop Fall Mountain, will be knocked out of commission, eliminating our already-limited capacity for over-the-airwaves reception. It's also quite likely that there will be power outages, perhaps extended ones; that will wipe out our internet connection and eliminate the possibility of anyone listening to the show on their computer.
Any chance I can fob some combs off on any of you?
From "eiron" we get "irony," a term, a style, a genre, a pose which has perhaps become the predominant manner of expression in modern cultural discourse-- in novels, music, poetry, movies, TV, even "journalism," and especially in interpersonal relationships, to the dismay of many. Irony has become nearly synonymous with "sarcasm" in our daily speech and affect. Greg Brown calls it "One cool remove away." It allows the speaker/writer/performer to distance herself (a gender-neutral pronoun would be helpful there) from his (see what I mean?) words, thoughts, emotions. It can be infuriating or at least disheartening to the listener/recipient. It's hard to have a serious interaction when at least one of the principals can claim ironic distance. Or so I've been told frequently; I am an inveterate and habitual practitioner.
That's irony in discourse. There's also, of course, situational irony, when concurrent or at least linked events are at odds with each other: the young husband sells his watch to buy combs for his wife's gorgeous hair, which, it turns out, she has shorn in order to buy him a chain for the pocketwatch he no longer owns. I just made that scenario up, but someone should write a story based around that premise. What?
Due to circumstances at my real work, as most of you know, I haven't been able to do my radio show for three weeks. This week, though, there seems to be an opportunity for me to change that. Hurricane Sandy is gonna keep us from working until at least Wednesday, it seems, due to rain and very high winds, not particularly good conditions for framing and sheathing a roof system. So Tuesday noon-till-two seems available. In very windy conditions there is an enormously high likelihood that WOOL's antenna, perched shakily atop Fall Mountain, will be knocked out of commission, eliminating our already-limited capacity for over-the-airwaves reception. It's also quite likely that there will be power outages, perhaps extended ones; that will wipe out our internet connection and eliminate the possibility of anyone listening to the show on their computer.
Any chance I can fob some combs off on any of you?
Monday, October 22, 2012
Beingness and Nothing
On Saturday past, a lovely autumn day, the sort of day that had to have prompted more than one person to inanely utter to some innocent bystander "this is why we live here," I spent the afternoon and evening with two longstanding (to say "old" seems to connote wrongly) and very dear friends. We talked about some old times and we drank ourselves some, er, wine, gin, and vodka, variously--whatever Simon Says, there were no beers this time. And then I had an hour-and-a-half-drive home, contemplating, following a gorgeous half moon hanging low in the sky, the ipod set to Van Morrison; I barely scratched the surface of the 735 songs by him on that machine. With all of that, the glow of close connection to people important in my life for decades, the beauty of the cosmos, my favorite singer pouring out his--and touching my--soul, what I was struck by was the void at the center of it all for me.
I have been a most fortunate man. My life has been, and continues to be, blessed by more love, kindness and support than any 5 people have a right to expect. I have been exposed to and immersed myself in music and literature of unsurpassed beauty and depth, the blood, sweat, toil and inspiration of some amazing minds. I have been given a wonderful family, both of origin and that which I had some small part in creating. I look out any window in my home and see nothing but the beauty of the natural world, colors, shapes, movement and flow of trees, flowers, leaves, mountains and sky, flora and fauna of great variety and breathtaking inspiration. At night, as when I arrived home and stepped out of the truck Saturday night, there's the immensity and wonder of the firmament hanging above me, a beauty and clarity that, alas, fewer and fewer people get to experience due to light pollution, maybe pollution in general, maybe general inability to see and wonder at. Stars uncountable, depths unseeable, size unimaginable, and all of it right...There. And yet it's not enough, it's never enough.
I think now, in ways I never realized before, that that night's moon is the perfectly apt metaphor for my Being: Half full, yet half empty; half there, half absent; wholly half, half hole. Two halves and half not. It's yet another context for seeing, as Wallace Stevens had it, "nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is;" that definite article makes all the difference. Though the moon is sometimes only partly lit, the outline of the missing piece is miraculously still clearly visible, another "(thing) invisible to see." What lies beneath is for me illusion, pure and simple--though, of course, neither pure nor simple.
Some people seem to have managed to fill the void for themselves, or perhaps for them it never existed; they've been whole, contented and fulfilled from the start. Others find many paths to get them there: drugs, meditation, religion, yoga, hiking, painting, creation in many forms. I've tried many of those, and yet "the nothing that is" remains, and feels like it always will. I envy those who feel complete and filled full, even those who only think they do; the inability to feel thus feels like ingratitude, especially for one such as I who, as I say, has been blessed beyond all even unreasonable expectation. It also, though, may have given me more insight into those people, like Van, who seem to have it all, who seem to be enlightened, or at least on the path there, who seem to be living comfortably in the material world, and who yet present a curmudgeonly side: "leave me alone and just let me do my art in peace," even though, without us, their fame and fortune would be impossible. But if, after achieving those things most of us profess a great longing for, one is still hollow at the core, only half there, then what? It's not an easy place to stand, but a place I can understand, beneath the overarching foreverness, trying to feel whole.
"...it's only castles burning...."
__________________________________________________________________
On an unrelated subject, except that everything connects: a former student of mine at UNH/Manchester (I think), Lisa Carver, had a wonderful piece in the Times magazine on Sunday, an appreciation, of sorts, of Yoko Ono. You should check it out; it raises lots of cool issues worth thinking about.
I have been a most fortunate man. My life has been, and continues to be, blessed by more love, kindness and support than any 5 people have a right to expect. I have been exposed to and immersed myself in music and literature of unsurpassed beauty and depth, the blood, sweat, toil and inspiration of some amazing minds. I have been given a wonderful family, both of origin and that which I had some small part in creating. I look out any window in my home and see nothing but the beauty of the natural world, colors, shapes, movement and flow of trees, flowers, leaves, mountains and sky, flora and fauna of great variety and breathtaking inspiration. At night, as when I arrived home and stepped out of the truck Saturday night, there's the immensity and wonder of the firmament hanging above me, a beauty and clarity that, alas, fewer and fewer people get to experience due to light pollution, maybe pollution in general, maybe general inability to see and wonder at. Stars uncountable, depths unseeable, size unimaginable, and all of it right...There. And yet it's not enough, it's never enough.
I think now, in ways I never realized before, that that night's moon is the perfectly apt metaphor for my Being: Half full, yet half empty; half there, half absent; wholly half, half hole. Two halves and half not. It's yet another context for seeing, as Wallace Stevens had it, "nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is;" that definite article makes all the difference. Though the moon is sometimes only partly lit, the outline of the missing piece is miraculously still clearly visible, another "(thing) invisible to see." What lies beneath is for me illusion, pure and simple--though, of course, neither pure nor simple.
Some people seem to have managed to fill the void for themselves, or perhaps for them it never existed; they've been whole, contented and fulfilled from the start. Others find many paths to get them there: drugs, meditation, religion, yoga, hiking, painting, creation in many forms. I've tried many of those, and yet "the nothing that is" remains, and feels like it always will. I envy those who feel complete and filled full, even those who only think they do; the inability to feel thus feels like ingratitude, especially for one such as I who, as I say, has been blessed beyond all even unreasonable expectation. It also, though, may have given me more insight into those people, like Van, who seem to have it all, who seem to be enlightened, or at least on the path there, who seem to be living comfortably in the material world, and who yet present a curmudgeonly side: "leave me alone and just let me do my art in peace," even though, without us, their fame and fortune would be impossible. But if, after achieving those things most of us profess a great longing for, one is still hollow at the core, only half there, then what? It's not an easy place to stand, but a place I can understand, beneath the overarching foreverness, trying to feel whole.
"...it's only castles burning...."
__________________________________________________________________
On an unrelated subject, except that everything connects: a former student of mine at UNH/Manchester (I think), Lisa Carver, had a wonderful piece in the Times magazine on Sunday, an appreciation, of sorts, of Yoko Ono. You should check it out; it raises lots of cool issues worth thinking about.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Can't You See I'm Busy?
For which, I guess, I should be grateful. But I've just embarked on a house project that looks like it promises to be the most stressful of my career. Alice says that I say that about every job, but this time I mean it. Really. Thus, for the foreseeable future, which for me is usually about 15 minutes, I shan't be doing a radio programme, and only a sketchy blog post. I miss you guys, man, and hope to get back to the real stuff soon.
Meanwhile this, lifted in its entirety from The Week, Oct 19 edition: "A congressman who sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology has dismissed 'evolution, embryology (!--mine), and big bang theory' as 'lies from the pit of Hell.' Speaking to a church group, Rep. Paul Broun (R [there's a shock]-Ga. [and another] said that the earth is only 9,000 years old, and that science keeps people 'from understanding that they need a savior.'"
A-freakin'-men.
Meanwhile this, lifted in its entirety from The Week, Oct 19 edition: "A congressman who sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology has dismissed 'evolution, embryology (!--mine), and big bang theory' as 'lies from the pit of Hell.' Speaking to a church group, Rep. Paul Broun (R [there's a shock]-Ga. [and another] said that the earth is only 9,000 years old, and that science keeps people 'from understanding that they need a savior.'"
A-freakin'-men.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)