09/07/2006

 Charlie's Blog

What's a "BLOG" ? As I found out a couple of months ago, a "blog" is a web log, a kind of daily journal of what one has been up to. It seems to be a kind of public journal or diary. Since keeping a proper website was more trouble than I was prepared to take, I've decided to give myself a chance at a blog. It'll be more personal, certainly, and some of you will likely recognize (or believe you recognize) yourselves in my notes. Please don't be insulted since, most likely, only you and I will know to whom I've referred.

Anyway, every day or two, at the least, I will try to add to it.

If you'd care to let me know what you think of something you've found here, click here.

I happened to surf into Tom Bauerle's call in show at a time when a caller was making the point that assault weapons were not necessary or reasonable for hunting. Tom cut him off, suggested the caller was a gun nut and then gave the "slippery slope" argument that if you ban assault weapons, then it will be 38s and then 22s.

Why does the slope have to be downward ? Couldn't it be upward ? If 38 cal. revolvers are legal, why not rifles, assault rifles, machine guns ? Why not keep going and legalize bazookas, flame throwers and mortars ? How about grenade launchers ?

If grenade launchers were legal (and for all I know, they might be) the slippery slope argument to criminalize their possession would make as much sense and be as logical as Bauerle's ideas about gun control.

The usefulness of the slipper slope argument appears to depends on where on the slope it starts.

Consider some of the prohibited material you can't take on an airplane these days and we see the slippery slope argument gone nuts.

Back in the days when I was still teaching , it was not unusual during football season for one or two of my fellow teachers to come into the faculty room to announce, depending on the circumstances, "We won" or "we lost." I, having read, but was un-influenced by How to Win Friends and Influence People, would comment: "I didn't know you were on the team."

Once in a while, not often, there'd be a "newbie" who would ask me what I meant. "Well," I'd say, "You said 'we'."

I didn't score a lot of points.

Listening to Washington Week on the radio this evening is what brought all that back to mind. Just as some of us identify with various teams so we can say "we won" or "we lost," so it seemed to me, that's how much of our politics is now played. Probably there was always that "we" and "they" dichotomy but somehow, these days, it's been hardened. Just listen to Rush Limbaugh talk about "those" Democrats or Al Frankin tell you about "those" Republicans. In a sense, it seems less and less important what the various teams stand for or even achieve as much as whether "our" team wins or loses. And, if it is "our" team that is losing it's only because the opposing team cheats more and better, or spends more.

Come to think of it, we (United Statesians) seem to play politics as if it were some kind of football conference. (Think of George Carlin's comparison of baseball and football.) Does our team have the proper offensive and defensive strategy ? Was our team owner committed enough to buy the best quarterback ? (Why don't we ask about the "owners" of our political parties and question the way they spend for the best "quarterbacks" ?) The game is complex and there are so many variables on any day that it is easy to explain away failure or justify success. And in both cases, the majority of the population doesn't give a damn.

An election is coming up, not all that difference from the first real game to face the Bills. In both cases the day after the election or the game the world will look the same, our lives will go on, and some of us will argue about who really played the game, us or them. Only months or years later will we see, if we choose to look, that whether "we" or "they" won the political game will make a difference in our taxes, our health care, our very status in the world community.

Not like the Bills winning or losing, is it ?

The only reality is the one between our ears. Or, to take a more popular position: perception is reality. One example is our almost pathological fear of marijuana use in particular and our drug laws in general. Something like half our 2+ million prison population is supposed to be made up of non-violent druggies, many of whom were probably holding down jobs and supporting their families before they got arrested. But, in order to protect our children from "reefer madness" we are prepared to bear the cost of a huge prison industry.

So, I'm reading my Economist (Aug.26-Sep.1) and, in the piece about the John Mark Karr get to the closing paragraph:

The evidence that such laws [determining where convicted sex offenders can live] protect children is thin. Most children are harmed by family members or acquaintances. The last time the Justice Department looked in detail at the matter, in the late 1990s, it found that just 3% of child molesters were re-arrested for a similar crime within three years of being released from prison. Seven “ordinary” ex-convicts—robbers, burglars and the like—were arrested for molesting children for every one convicted child sex offender who was collared for the same offence. So much for history being destiny.

Now, to even suggest that such laws are an over-reaction to the problem of child molestation is to open one’s self to such responses as: "What if it were your son or daughter who was molested ?" and the ever popular "If this law prevents just one child from being molested, it's worth it." To suggest a less punitive response to the problem, perhaps some kind of treatment for the offender (who, of course, is considered beyond salvation) or even some support for the victim and his family, well, that's pollyannaish and encourages further offenses.

Besides, we have this wonderful idea that the more severe the punishment for a crime the greater its deterrence. Does it work ? Doesn't matter.

And, as if we didn't have enough crimes, we invent them. It's a crime, punishable by a huge fine, to show a woman's breast (Remember Janet Jackson.) on network television. Is the fine doubled if both breasts are exposed ? You have to wonder how much of our law is to protect the sensitivities of some active minority which are inflicted on the rest of us. and how much actually protects or benefits the broader society.

Montaigne comes to mind (Essays III:13):

Now laws remain in credit not because they are just, but because the are laws. That is the mystic foundation of their foundation; they have no other. And that is a good thing for them. They are often made by fools, more often by people who, in their hatred of equality, are wanting in equity; but always by men, vain and irresolute authors.

A more attractive (to me) quote: “Lack of punishment is not sufficient pay for a man who does better than not doing wrong. Our justice offers us only one of her hands, and the left at that. Whoever he is, he comes out of it with a loss.” And that in 1588 !

My thought for the day is how, when we are young, big changes produce little thought or concern, and then, when we are old, little changes make for a lot of thought. What brought this to mind ?

I was at the laundromat this morning doing what one does there and noticed a stack of ads for the "Grand Opening" of a local oriental restaurant. "The Best Chinese Food You Ever Tasted." "Mmm," I thought, " Why don't I try that for dinner tonight ?" That was not a small thought for me. The only prepared food I can ever remember buying out and bringing home is something called a "personal pizza." What I eat at home, I prepare at home.

Once home I have my lunch (a left-over sautéed chicken breast from yesterday, mayonnaise, my bread, Chablis) and read over the menu. The Moo Goo Gai Pan looked interesting - chicken and mushrooms - and it came with rice and an egg roll. How could that be bad ?

For the rest of day, whenever I thought about dinner - every fifteen minutes - I couldn't decide whether to drive over to TOPS for a chicken chest, maybe a small steak, even a frozen macaroni and cheese, or try the Chinese place. I decided to give the Chinese place a try. I'd pick up my moo goo gai pan, bring it home, transfer it to a real plate, heat it up in the microwave...and all would be well.

As I'm driving down to the restaurant - how the mind works this way I will never understand - I remember when,. biking in England, I had a dinner of fish and chips. If I had "eat in" there would be a large tax and a tip but, if I "take away" it would just be the cost of the meal. If you know me, you know what I did. I got the "take away" and enjoyed what I remember to be a fine piece of fried fish and French fries which I ate sitting in front of the place with a couple of other cheapskates like me. That must have been, at least, twenty years ago.

Will I "take away" Chinese food again ? Not likely. I like the stir fried vegetables but that's about it. The fortune cookies aren't bad either. And yes, I have read that traditional Chinese cooking is among the most sophisticated in the world, but not the world I know. For me, in order of what turns on my taste buds, it's Greek, Italian and French. How the Greeks have escaped the reputation of first class cooking, I will never know.

I now think I know that as long as I am home and able, I will prefer to make my own dinner. If I decide to dine out it will be all out, no take away. It may be a matter of sauces. When I prepare my meals at home, by the time it's time to eat, I am pretty well into the sauce.

After hearing Rush Limbaugh's blurb on WBEN's morning show the words of a 60s song kept coming back to me: "When will they ever learn ? When will they ever learn "

Rush's hobgoblin, of course is "liberals" and the "drive by media" (whatever that means.) He's popular and his ideas are popular. He illustrates the ideas of Richard Hofstadter in his The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Now it's liberals who are threatening "Our American Way of Life." Before that it was the communists, a "Fifth Column," before that it was anarchists or, if not that, then "outside agitators.” As these threats appear there is never a shortage of demagogues who believe we can only protect ourselves by first attacking The Bill of Rights.

It's not just in politics. How about popular music ? Every time some new innovative popular singer or group comes along we have to go through that period when they are accused of somehow corrupting our youth. Remember Elvis with his hips ? The Beatles with their hair ? Somehow every new dance from the waltz, to the Charleston, the Black Bottom, the Lindy, the Frug is an outrage to public taste. And the same for the music itself, starting with jazz right up to Hip-Hop. Each one, in it's time, is condemned as perverse and degenerate.

Every couple of years a game becomes popular and it too has this terrible effect on kids. I remember when pinball machines were the threat. Then it was Dungeon and Dragons. I'm not sure what it is today. Just chat rooms on the Internet, I guess.

And since the development of public elementary and secondary education has there ever been a ten year period without some new finding of its shortcomings and predictions of the collapse of our economy because of the superiority of Russian, Japanese, German and, now, Indian systems of schools ? You'd think we'd be bored with this stuff by now.

And Hollywood ! Well, that is the very well spring and cesspool of every social evil from divorce to smoking, from promiscuous sex to naughty language. If the apparently stupid, easily led, malleable, impressionable American Public isn't being led down some primrose path by liberals, some music or musician, a new game, or a destructive public school system, there is always Hollywood to blame.

And I haven't even touched on the quarterly parade of weight-loss schemes, wars on drugs and gangs. Really, when will we ever learn  ?

For the most part this has been a dreary day. The sun is coming later and later - winter is coming - and most of the day has been cloudy and drizzly. I didn't have much to do though I think I solved the problem of my air conditioner condenser sending its condensate across my basement floor. And then I finally got to preparing my vegetable broth for the freezer. Now I’m waiting to enjoy a couple of hours of music, played by a friend. In the meantime, to match my mood, I put on the CD "Lady in Autumn." My first thought was: Could she read music ?

I could have put on another favorite of mine for this mood, Edith Piaf, but I picked Lady Day because, to use a phrase "she talks to me." Just as in a previous blog I wondered why certain instruments sound better to me, I got to thinking about why certain kinds of music appeal to me. Without naming names - not that anyone who knows me cares what I think about these things - there aren't too many local artists I try to get to. What makes them different to my ear ?

And then I wonder about other listeners. There are those who are deep into "the blues" who, like me, have no idea of the life from which many of the old bluesmen came ? I can only guess that it must be something like being interested in Old English and spending hours learning about Beowulf and Grendel. I am particularly fond of Bach's Goldberg Variations, particularly as played by Glenn Gould, while knowing next to nothing (make that nothing) about Bach's world or Gould's peculiar psychology. (Bach had many sons which suggests that he didn't spend all his time at the keyboard. He must have been a player in more than one sense of the world.

I know it's not merely virtuosity that appeals to me, why one musician playing the same tune as another is somehow more interesting and appealing. I've had the opportunity to hear a number of guitarists and while it is apparent to me (and I'm probably wrong) I sometimes prefer the one who is less technically trained (How many lessons at some music school did Robert Johnson ever take ?)

And I am not impressed with lists of the artists with whom they have played in the past. In that sense I'm beginning to believe that I am something like the artists themselves: every performance is a test, a demonstration of one's competence and understanding (‘chops ?”) with no more sensitive critics than other musicians.

Regardless of my particular tastes, I've begun to think that to make one's living in the arts, particularly music, you have to have some kind of a fixation and a bit masochism as well. We'll see where this takes me as I learn more. Certainly these are just tentative cogitations, the immediate output of my cogitator.

Sing it Lady: “That long, long road.”

It has occurred to me that my relation to the world would be so much simpler if I were what passes as today's conservative. What, you might ask, is my idea of a conservative and I would answer: George Bush and his supporters; commentators like O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity and Coulter: editorialists like Fund, Noonan and Will.

Were I such a conservative things would be so much simpler. I would have no problem with government agents picking up suspected terrorists and holding them, without charge, for as long as they liked. If The New York Times were charged with treason for publishing classified documents, I'd think that justified since "we are at war." In order to protect "our children," I would applaud large fines on TV stations that showed "obscenity" and "vulgarity." I would support fences and armed guards along both our north and south borders to “secure our borders.“ I would be very suspicious of critics of the administration, concerned that they were "giving aid and comfort to our enemies." I would understand that the United Nations and France were, at best, subversive and I certainly wouldn't eat French cheeses. (Except for Camembert. Some things are too good to boycott.)

And, moral and ethical issues seem so much less a problem for today's conservatives. If we torture suspected terrorists, that's OK because they, unlike us, are fundamentally immoral. Religions should be free to post their symbols and principles in public spaces at public expense because that makes us a better society. Well, not all religious, just ours. There would be no particular concern for privacy rights since, if you weren't doing anything wrong, privacy would be irrelevant. And, of course, as a good conservative, I would understand that the right to life starts at conception and ends at birth.

Sadly, though, I do not see myself as a conservative, at least as it is presently understood. And so I have all these ill defined ideas about the responsibilities of our government, my obligations to my fellow humans, even if they're homosexual. I have this peculiar idea that government is supposed to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare.

But I am certainly not a conservative, I am supposed to be a “tax-raising, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak.” So what do I know ?

Last November I decided to celebrate my then current prime number birthday by renting a flat in Paris. While the various terrorism threats make air travel less and less attractive, I thought I might do the same thing this year even though I'm running out of prime number birthdays; birthdays in general now that I think about it.

When I visit a foreign country I try to learn certain basic words and phrases: please, thank you, may a have the check, where is the men's room ? Even at this late date I would like to learn some French. Question: What does it mean to "learn" French ? I've been taken with the ads for RosettaStone, a language learning company. Their ad states: "Guaranteed to teach faster and easier than any other language product or your money back. No questions asked."

What the hell does that mean ? If I buy their Level 1 Program for $175.50 and in three months don't feel I have been taught faster and easier, will they give me money back ? And how can I justify my claim that I haven't be taught faster and easier without having tried any number of other products ?

Would you take a $175.50 chance with that kind of "guarantee" ? I suspect I'd have better odds at the casino.

More to the point: What does it mean to "learn" a language ? While I don't qualify as a world traveler, one of things I have finally learned is that my problem in a foreign country is not my ability to handle a phrase book and make myself fairly understood, it is understanding what is said to me. Using my best phrase book French I ask a native "Where is the Louvre ?" He understands perfectly the question and answers it. I just don't know what he said. Unfortunately, most of the language courses with which I'm familiar concentrate on how to speak, not to hear and understand. (This brings to mind a number of friends whose immigrant grandparents had lived with them and how they could understand Italian or Greek but couldn't speak or write it. Speaking and understanding are, obviously, two different skills.)

RosettaStone instructs in the skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing. That's what the ad claims. I wonder if could just order the listening part of the program for $43.88 and pass on the guarantee.

The older I get the more I understand that I not only march to a different drummer, I listen for a different drummer. That is to say, I have some strange ideas about the way things should go. For example, when I got out to dinner with a friend I would like two things: good conversation. and good food, in that order. And when I go to a tavern to hear some band I no more expect extended conversations with my neighbor than I would if I were in Kleinhans listening to the BPO.

So anyway... I and an old buddy decide to go to a local eatery for lunch yesterday. There is some kind of music blaring out of speakers in the ceiling, not even what one would consider good music. O.K. so we're not in La tour d'argent but shouldn't we be able to hear one another without having to repeat every other sentence ? Why, you ask, didn't I complain ? I assume the people who run the place either know what they are doing or their customers have let them know what they like. I won't be back.

Go to a local tavern to hear some of our really first class local musicians. Don't go unless you do what I do: take ear plugs. Regardless, what do I know ? I go to said tavern to (a) hear the artists and (b) drink my beer or wine. I don't go to hear if I can out shout the sound system producing hundreds of pots of wowwer.

Now I don't really know who's at fault, the band that wants to be heard come hell or high water or the patrons who are there to pick up some guy or gal for the night or those on their cell phones apparently setting up something to come later. But why there ? In the meantime as the sound level of the band goes up the audience shouts louder and louder. The band must feel frustrated and those who want to hear the music (like me, an apparent minority) are also frustrated.

I wonder what would happen if a band, after each tune, very slowly turned down their amplifiers.

(That reminds me of a story. Years ago I was stationed at Fort Monmouth. Many of the draftees were graduate engineers working in the Signal Labs. Once in a while they participated in exhibits, demonstrating some of the equipment. At some point, one of them noticed that as they lowered their voices, the visitors would lean in toward them, many moving closer. It became a joke to see how low they the could talk and how close their audience would push toward them. Lesson: it's not always a good idea to draft graduate engineers and use them as demonstrators.)

All in all I really shouldn't be complaining. After all, it's my own fault: I forgot my ear plugs.

Every once a while and old friend and I get together not so much to solve the problems of the world as to just understand them. After commiserating about our now need to have some idea of the location of restrooms before we venture out into that world, he suggested that Eastern cultures tend to be tribe oriented, even before one's religion or country. Perhaps the apparent lack of understanding of this on the part of the United States helps explain our - how shall our phrase it ? - lack of success in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's a family thing. I can beat up on my brother or call him names but, should you try it, look out. So while one Arabic group may attack another group, nothing will unite them more than some common enemy: Israel or, the liberator, the United States. That said, it seems successful negotiations in that part of the world takes place, not by some kind of democratic relation with the general population but, through the tribal or family leader. Saudi Arabia seems a good example.

This certainly is no great insight but it does seem worth considering.

My second thought for the day is how much like the Christianity of the days of Inquisition and the gift of the gospel to the Incas and Aztecs is the gospel of democracy the Bush Administration is bringing to the Middle East. It is, in a sense probably not understood by Dubyah himself, a "crusade." And, on the other side, not too different from what we get from the Islamic true believers.

I wonder if the Bush Administration had been more like the missionaries who come in with medical care, schools, better farming practices and then handed out the holy books of our democracy; The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution that we might have had a higher conversion rate. What Bin Laden and his ilk might have done to be more attractive is beyond my limited comprehension.

One must always keep in mind a simple observation: Beyond an almost unlimited ability to find a reason for anything he wants to do, Homo sappy is not a rational animal.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/frmdth.htm) in 2001 there were 29,573 deaths by firearms, 802 unintentional, 16,869 suicides, 11,671 homicides and 231 undetermined. Just consider the homicides.

On 9/11/01 about 3,000 people were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, about a third of those killed with guns. What was the national response to the World Trade Center Deaths ? Well, one response was that people who fly couldn't carry on knives, nail clippers, even corkscrews. (I lost two myself.)

Later that year the "shoe bomber" was caught and disarmed on a plane carrying about 200 people. One response to that was now airline passengers have to have their shoes checked before getting on a plane.

Review: the first highjackers used box cutters and so, now, various bladed objects can no longer be carried on to a place. The second terrorist had explosives in his shoes and so airline passengers now have their shoes inspected before they can board the plane.

The terrorists arrested in England today were, apparently, going to assemble a bomb aboard the plane using liquid components. And now water bottles, toothpaste, even deodorants can no longer be carried into the cabin of an airplane.

What's next ? If the next terrorist has the making of an explosive in his under shorts or her bra, will those have to be checked for the rest of us ? And what happens if three or four terrorists decide to assemble a bomb on the plane with components carried in what are euphemistically called "body cavities" ? Will that be the next level of inspection before I can get on an airplane ? And will those lucky enough to be able to fly private airlines escape such indignities ?

Now keep in mind that we kill one another at a rate of about 30,000 a year with firearms, and it's not even considered an act of terrorism. What is it ? One by one life is cheap; hundreds at a time is a disaster. Guess so.

Anyway, I believe the prevention of terrorist acts will result from diligent police work, not some kind of "war on terror" that gives us the shadow of protection without the reality. (Today's criminals never got on the plane.) Indeed, I would like to believe and hope events prove that the arrest of the British terrorists or alleged terrorists was the result of keen police work. Should that prove the case perhaps there might be some consideration to framing the danger not as a "war" but as a response to some kind of "organized crime," which it is.

Just a thought. In the meantime I am considering spending a week in Paris later in the year and, until then, I am hoping some inventive terrorist doesn't attempt to smuggle explosives onto a plane in plastic, explosive filled, testicles before I go. What would that inspection be like ?

As the months and years slip by I find myself increasingly saying "For every thing there is a season." (Ecclesiastes 3:1) (The Bible is almost as good as Shakespeare when it comes to finding a quotation that meets one's needs.) The season of my cycling 40 or 50 miles on a hot summer day seems to have past. Going even further back, the season when I would eat and drink with friends and we would debate the questions of day standing on our chairs and screaming at one another, has past. Now, tell me you believe George Bush will rank among our great presidents and I will sip my wine unable to waste my ever decreasing energy arguing. What difference would it make ?

The longer I live here in Western New York the more I appreciate its seasons. It is a great place in which to cycle, sometimes even in winter. We enjoy the changes of seasons that, for me, are an assurance that I have another chance.

What brings these sentimental thoughts to mind at this time, this season ? you might ask. It is my dinner, the two most important constituents (not counting my own bread): tomatoes and peaches. I picked up said fruit at our local farmers market this past Saturday. I expect to return regularly until the homegrown apples make an appearance. Indeed, I may pedal my buns up tomorrow to pick up some homegrown broccoli.

These delicacies deserve to be treated simply. My tomatoes are skinned, seeded, cut into bite sized chunks and dressed with only an Italian dressing. Not even salt. No more than that, some of my bread and a cheap white wine...Ahh, the gods could not ask for more. And knowing that the season will end in a mere couple of weeks only adds to my appreciation.

Peaches are a different matter. I like to de-fuzz them with a wash and then slice them and eat them plain. Halve them, take out the pit, put a spoon of brown sugar and a hunk of butter in the cavity and broil them. The fruit and the sauce is the sort of thing you would like to rub on yourself to make your whole body feel as good as that taste.

But not every season brings me tomatoes and peaches and apples. There are also the seasons of the deaths of friends and family, the creeping disabilities of age, the eventual recycling of my atoms and molecules of those who brought me to this. Pretty good, all in all, when you think of it.

I'm sitting here at my computer, a glass of Chablis at hand, Billie singing " Yesterdays" in the background. The temperature is supposed to go into the 60s tonight so I will be opening the windows and enjoying "real" air, instead of the air conditioned stuff I've had for the last week or so.

What a great season !