Pervious:

Jody Bilyeu, Editor

2010-05-10T17:43:00.002-05:00

Looking for me, Jody Bilyeu? I have a new blog where I hope to share some thoughts about editing and writing. Come see me, won't you?

Barack Obama for President

2008-11-03T15:06:00.000-06:00

I should be honest and say I still like and have some respect for John McCain, despite all the crap he's done to try to get elected, and I think he would make a decent-to-good president. But he would not be as good a president as Barack Obama, not by many orders of magnitude. And if McCain is elected and doesn't survive his term, may the dear sweet Lord please, please help us all.

Obama will be a better president than McCain would, not just because his policies would be better for the country, and not just because his approach to politics would be better, but because he's on the right side of the most important issue, which surrounds the most important crisis, that this country now faces. One reason, which kicked in pretty early in the campaign, why I couldn't seriously consider McCain as a candidate for president, and why I hope you stop considering him too, if you haven't already, is that he went against his better lights, against his former practice, and probably against his personality and considerable sense of honor, and sold out on this issue during the campaign. It's an issue you won't find on the platforms or in the press, but it's still the most important.

The issue is how narrowly we envision both the battle we're in as Americans, and who gets to be on our side in that battle. Another way of putting it is this: Who gets to be an American?

Americans make a mistake if they draw the boundaries of their philosophical country in any other way than these:

First, Americans believe in the rule of law, that it both prohibits and protects everyone equally, from the homeless dude to the CEO, from the basest sinner to the basest preacher, from the most disenfranchised hippie to the most engaged politician, from the CIA agent to the detainee.

Second, Americans believe in equality of opportunity, and the freedom to pursue the opportunities one chooses, within the rule of law, obviously, and believe that this opportunity, the American dream, must be continually extended in order for it to survive.

Therefore the only truly American battle is against anyone who holds himself, or his tribe, however he envisions it, above the rule of law, or who seeks to inhibit someone else's opportunities and freedoms to advance his own. A cop, or politician, or CEO, or radical student, or activist, who thinks it's okay when he or his fellows trample on the law, while condemning people from other tribes for doing so, is less than American, by that definition. Terrorists--well, they are the anti-Americans, in that larger sense, even if they're pro-American. Bin Laden to McVeigh. Follow me?

There are un-American laws, by the way, by this definition, which we Americans have, by creed and tradition, often been duty-bound to try to change, resist, or disobey. And there's fifty miles of elbow room for disagreeing about which laws and policies can make America more American.

But, by way of example, some things that by definition don't make you un-American, that don't merit turning you from an "us" into a "them," when we're thinking about what it means to be an American:

How rich or poor you are.
Who your parents were.
What color you are.
Whether you think there's a reason to go to war or not.
Whether you think guns are ginchy-cool or the worst thing ever.
Whether you're as straight as Rock Hudson or as gay as Rip Taylor. Yes, I know. It's a joke.
What your religion is.
Who your momma was. Yes, I'm talking about your momma. I happen to like her. Say hello for me.
How liberal or conservative you are, whatever the hell that means anymore.
Whether you are artsy-fartsy or nascar.
Whether you're a Republican or Democrat (see below).
Where you were born.
Whether you speak English well, or at all.

I'll also point out that you can be fully American by philosophy and allegiance and live in some whole other country. I have no doubt that there are people around the world not born within the bubble of our abundance and freedom who understand it and appreciate it better than people who have lived their whole lives here.

Do you have to be a Democrat to embrace this vision of what it means to be an American? Of course not. Does being or supporting a Republican mean you don't embrace this vision? I know some great Americans who are Republicans. I call them Danforth Republicans. They are Republicans because they're fiscal conservatives, or because they like some policy or other that Republicans usually like, or used to like in the 70s.

However. It happens to be some influential people within or at the fringes of the Republican party, and a certain kind of conservative--the "core," or the "base," some people call them--who are the ones right now launching the most serious and insidious attack on American ideals and beliefs, who are drawing the reddest lines between "us" and "them" where no lines, apart from those of accident or personal preference, should be drawn--people who take their ideals, issues, and style of discourse from talk radio instead of from the founding fathers, or somewhere higher. If you, as a Republican, want my support, you'll have to do a heck of a lot better job telling those very angry, extremely certain people to buzz off. You sure as shootin' shouldn't choose someone to be the vice president of this country in order to appease that set. I hope it will soon be true that candidates will have to do a better job of telling the few, the angry, the certain, to fly a kite, not just to get my vote, or yours, but in order to win a national election. I hope the people who have a narrow vision of us, of America, become ridiculous and passe, as they deserve. I thought maybe McCain was the kind of Republican who could make that happen, but instead, he pandered. I hope, pray, and trust, for the sake of the future of my country, that it was a losing bet.

After the September 11 attacks, before our soon-to-be-former president had started drawing the battle-lines his way, there were billions of people around the world who extended their compassion toward us, and were ready, if even in a small, probably temporary way, to be Americans. A lot of people were jarred by the disaster out of that silly, easy way much of the world had at that time of blaming and judging America and Americans, and were reminded again by those terrorist cowards what a bright hope this country represents, and how beautiful our ideals are.

The incompetence and lack of moral vision with which George Bush surrendered his American-ness and trampled this opportunity is the worst thing he did as president. We had to go to war, sure. But if we had had a truly American president, one who respected the rule of law and the equality it protects, there was a very real possibility that we could have gone to war as part of a coalition that included European nations, Arab nations, and Israel, a coalition that included former enemies and fence-sitters, a coalition the very existence of which could have changed the world--a coalition that could have made the world more American, in the best sense.

Instead, Bush chose to cave to his dark side and lead many of our countrymen back to a point in our cultural history right around Beowulf, stomping off with his chest out, pretending to be humble, to avenge himself on the King who disrespected his father and his tribe.

That's a comfortable place to sit, strangely enough, with your tribe drawn out for you by the superfluities of culture like color, dress, and religion, and all clinging together, uttering throaty cries.

Appealing to such fears and such ties in an election for the presidency of this country is wrong, and that's why McCain deserves to lose, even if he would make a decent-to-good president.

But Barack Obama wouldn't just be decent-to-good, he would be one of the best presidents this country has ever had. Bold words, I know, but I'm feeling it and seeing it so I'm saying it. Right now I'm convinced you are looking at the sort of intersection of moment and man you get maybe once a century. It's an opportunity we can't afford to waste on fear, or party allegiance, or any other of our many smallnesses.

Barack Obama gets it, and he has articulated the best, brightest, most real and most durable vision of who gets to be an American, and perhaps more importantly, what things don't matter in that calculation, better than any politician has for a few generations. That vision alone lays the ground for better decisions and management. He has the temperament, knowledge, and experience to be President, but most importantly, he believes in America in a way few presidential hopefuls have. And when he says he'll fight for you, and for America, he's talking about the big battle--the real battle.

Vote for Barack Obama, friend, do. And as to my friends and yours who are accepting their vision of things from talk radio or from populist politicians, or from somewhere deep in the fight and flight centers of their limbic system, don't hate on 'em. Just root for them to become more fully American.

voting Republican

2008-07-01T19:59:00.000-05:00

I am them? Are I them?

2008-03-22T06:52:00.002-05:00

I've been thinking about Them intermittently since William F. Buckley died. It all started with Bill Kristol's column in the New York Times about Buckely.
Here's how Kristol's column started:

In my high school yearbook (Collegiate School, class of 1970), there’s a photo of me wearing a political button. (Everyone did in those days. I wasn’t that much dorkier than everyone else.) The button said, “Don’t let THEM immanentize the Eschaton.”

There you see an example of the influence of Bill Buckley, who died last week at age 82. For it was Buckley who had promulgated this slogan, as an amusing distillation of the thinking of the very difficult historian of political philosophy Eric Voegelin. I’d of course not read Voegelin then (there’s a lot of him I still haven’t read, to tell the truth). But the basic thought was: Don’t let ideologues try to create heaven on earth, because they’ll deprive us of freedom and make things a lot worse.

I are them. (I suppose it's grammatically correct to say, "I am them," but I prefer the incongruence of are.)

But the point becomes this really makes me think somewhat about my own motivations and the motivations of those people I find insufferable. Or perhaps I should refer to the people that everyone finds insufferable. THEM.

Perhaps I am not Them. But I may have been them from time to time and find myself in danger constantly of becoming them.

I feel at risk of blathering on. A separate story.

I was talking to a friend about the Peace Corps recently. She said the people who had the toughest time of things were the people who felt like they had to make the biggest difference. The people who felt everything depended on them.

I fear I am rambling on. But I want to discuss this. We can't immanentize the eschaton. But that doesn't mean we can't do good. But how to do good?

The world must be watching

2008-03-05T23:45:00.001-06:00

Breathing a sigh of relief

2008-02-28T16:24:00.003-06:00

Ralph Nader is irrelevant.

Michael R. Bloomberg is not.

Thus, Democrats - and supporters of both Obama and McCain should be thankful - that Bloomberg is not running for president.

That's because, in my eyes, all three men at a core would have offered the same vision - independent political thinking that crosses boundaries.

Over the past year, I have been working to raise issues that are important to New Yorkers and all Americans — and to speak plainly about common sense solutions. Some of these solutions have traditionally been seen as Republican, while others have been seen as Democratic. As a businessman, I never believed that either party had all the answers and, as mayor, I have seen just how true that is.

In every city I have visited — from Baltimore to New Orleans to Seattle — the message of an independent approach has resonated strongly, and so has the need for a new urban agenda. More than 65 percent of Americans now live in urban areas — our nation’s economic engines. But you would never know that listening to the presidential candidates. At a time when our national economy is sputtering, to say the least, what are we doing to fuel job growth in our cities, and to revive cities that have never fully recovered from the manufacturing losses of recent decades?

More of the same won’t do, on the economy or any other issue. We need innovative ideas, bold action and courageous leadership. That’s not just empty rhetoric, and the idea that we have the ability to solve our toughest problems isn’t some pie-in-the-sky dream.

Hmm. What we need is not some pie-in-the-sky dream. Sounds like he's leaning towards Obama. Bloomberg says he will endorse in the race and I look forward to seeing who he chooses.

B. Hussein Obama and mucus

2008-02-28T10:45:00.003-06:00

Eric Zorn is my favorite Chicago Tribune columnist. It might just be the way that the Tribune organizes it's daily e-mail with headlines.

But I had to chuckle today when reading his column about people using Barack Obama's middle name and whether it's over the line. He went all the way back to Alan Keyes' doomed-from-the-start Senate campaign against Obama.

Keyes, the banty Republican imported from Maryland to heap invective on Obama, seemed to have few limits. He called his opponent a "hard-line Marxist" and a supporter of infanticide. He said Obama was "absolutely determined to make the world safe for criminals" and openly doubted Obama's Christian faith. But he never publicly snarled the words "Barack Hussein Obama."

"We warned him away from using the middle name," replied Bill Pascoe, Keyes' former campaign manager, when I checked with him to see if my colleagues and I had missed something when coming up empty after plumbing our memories and the news archives.

Pascoe told me he and former top Keyes consultant Dan Proft had steered him away with the admonishment that such a gambit would be "rude, uncivil, needlessly provocative and incendiary."

The most salient point though is that it's irrelevant. A person's name is always irrelevant to their policies, personality and beliefs.

Also, today in the Chicago Tribune, columnist John Kass uses one of my favorite phrases: "Lewis is right."

Does context even matter? It was a column about crowds applauding when Obama blew his nose and Lewis, some Clinton campaign functionary complaining about the debate.

Just some thoughts this morning, while it's still morning.

Early morning thoughts on Hillary and McCain

2008-01-30T08:08:00.000-06:00

Somebody told me a rumor the other day. It had to do with me. Somebody said I'm running, as a Republican, against state rep. Charlie Norr.

That was funny.

Then I realized, I am a Republican.

Eight years ago in Kansas I registered as a Republican because I wanted to vote for John McCain.

I don't think the primary even happened because by the time it was Kansas' turn to vote, everything was over. Well, this year I'm in Missouri, but I'm not voting in the Republican primary.

I'm voting for Barack Obama.

In some ways, Obama's approach to politics reminds me of McCain. Maybe this is silly, but that's just the way I see it.

Can you see where this is going?

If I were forced to pick a political party I identify with, Democrat without a doubt.

However, if I were forced to pick between Hillary Clinton and John McCain, I couldn't do it right now. I'd have to do a lot more research. And if I just went with my gut, I'd vote for McCain.

I expect Hillary to win the Democratic nomination, even though I don't want that to happen. I'm also hopeful McCain would win on the Republican side because, in my mind, he's the best Republican running.

I'd like to vote for a Democrat for president, but I'm not sure Hillary is the one.

Wow factor???

2008-01-25T17:49:00.001-06:00

So I was looking over classified ads just now when one caught my eye: High-profile talent agency needs five-star Receptionist with the wow factor!

Wow factor? Looks like another way of saying ugly women need not apply. Is that sexist? Or is it just how things are done in their countries?

Here's the rest of the ad ---
Receptionist is needed to be the face of the company at this high-profile talent agency. The agency represents actors and actresses, and so you need to deal with the odd celeb coming in and out!

They need someone exceptionally capable as it gets very busy, and you will also be covering agents' assistants from time to time so you need the flexibility to step into other people's shoes. This will start off as holiday cover and ad hoc support but could really grow! The Reception side will cover all the front of house, meeting and greeting, administration, and generally being a fantastic multi-tasker!

If you can offer commitment there is the chance to move up further down the line, and its a great buzzy place to work with lovely offices! You will need to be articulate, have perfect spoken English and a stylish manner wouldn't go amiss!

Salary is starting at £17K apply now for this great opportunity.

Preliminary thoughts on Barack

2008-01-18T07:36:00.000-06:00

I really don't think Barack Obama wants to be the first black president. I don't think that's a priority for him.

The mountain he's trying to climb isn't the one of race. It's the one of partisan bickering and division and yesterday's slash and burn politics.

To talk about his candidacy in terms of race may resonate for a small segment of the population, but that's not what he's really about.

He's about a new way of doing things. Neither black nor white, but both and better.

These are some things I've been thinking about. A headline on a Charles Krauthammer column, Black Dreams, White Liberals prompted me to write this. I don't even know what Krauthammer is writing about yet.

But we'll see.

To be continued (perhaps)...

Updated --- I read the first few paragraphs of Krauthammer's column and had no desire to continue on to the end.

Quote of the day

2008-01-09T20:11:00.001-06:00

"You should write it down because if you dont write it down they will come along and tell the future that we did not exist. You should write it down and hide it under a rock. You should write down the past and you should write down the present and in what in the future you should write it down. It will be of us but you should bmention them from time to time so that in the future when they come along and know that they exist. You should hide it all under a rock so that in the future when they come along they will say that the rock did not exist." Suzan Lori Parks

50 books

2008-01-04T21:54:00.000-06:00

So, I made a New Year's Resolution to read 50 books. The first week of 2008 isn't over and I've finished 2. I guess finish is a better word because I've started several books in 2007 that I think I'll try and finish.
And since one of those books is Ayn Rand's 500-plus page magnum opus Atlas Shrugged, it's good that I've got this head start.
In years past, I wrote a newspaper column about all the books I read in the past year. In 2003, I read 33 books. The first book I read was Pat Conroy's "My Losing Season." And then I read so many more books on top of that. 33 books in all. Mystery novels. Poetry. Non-fiction books about food and running. Books on leadership and coaching.
A little bit of everything.
Like I said, so far this year, two books. Wicked was the first. I picked it up while in Indiana for the holidays. I like the concept of taking a story and telling it from someone else's perspective. Like Grendel, for example - a retelling of the Beowulf myth. I enjoyed Wicked but don't know if I would recommend it.
I do however strongly recommend the second book I read: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. It's the first book in a long-time that I've read that had illustrations. Ostensibly a book for teenagers or something, it moved me. It was powerful. Yes, it made me laugh and it made me cry.
But being an under-employed person who views reading as work... where is that sentence going?
It's a book about being a freshman in high school. It was very similar to My Losing Season because it's also a book about pain. And although written for teens, young adults, whatever, it also showed a great depth of feeling, emotion and literary knowledge and range.
I feel like I'm just spewing bullshit here.
But it also kind of confirmed my decision to quit my job.
And it reminded me too of one of the reasons I left. When people always tell you that you're not very good and you're not going to be very good and when they treat you like you're opinion ain't worth shit, then those are people you don't want to be around.
It's not that they caused me to doubt myself. It's that they caused me to doubt whether I should be around them.
Well that's enough bitching and moaning. I struggle with answering the question why did you quit your job? I struggle with that with friends and with people I barely know.
But I'm excited. I feel hungry for work that matters and I know I'm moving in the right direction.
As those guys in the Bartles and James commercials used to say, Thank you for your support. I miss those old guys.

Why are you here?

2008-01-04T16:40:00.000-06:00

"Why are you here?"
I remember it like it was 2002. Because it was.
I was wearing my one suit. My job interview suit.
It was obvious why I was there.
I told the editor of the paper that I was there to interview for his religion reporter position.
He said, "No. Why are you really here?"
The editor was a philosophy major as an undergraduate. I had a master's degree in journalism and a bachelor's degree in theology. I always preferred theology to philosophy because I thought philosophy wasn't rooted in anything. I may have been wrong.
Anyway, why was I really there?
I thought about it for a second.
I said I was there because Nashville was a diverse and interesting city. It had several black colleges and it was larger than Wichita.
And then the editor's eyes lit up. He started talking about the city he loved. How music city first referred to the Fisk Jubilee Singers.
I think the interview was basically over at that point. I was all right.

I always thought that was a strange question though. Why was I there? Didn't he have a secretary to brief him on why people were meeting in his office?
But I've been thinking a lot lately about ethics and basics and mission statements.
If you can't express that most basic question - why am I here - then you've got problems. If you lose focus of that most basic question - why am I here - then all sorts of other questions start popping up.
Did I go to college for this? That is another question that pops up.

Now, I'm working on making sure I've got better answers for that question. At every moment of every day. Even if the answer is "being here makes me happy."

sometimes

2007-12-28T10:37:00.001-06:00

The days will now likely grow colder although at the same time they slowly, almost imperceptibly grow longer. Night is ending in Alaska.
We think it's a good time to share this poem that came in the mail.

Sometimes -
Sheenagh Pugh

Sometiems things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a main aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

night fog

2007-12-20T11:37:00.000-06:00

I haven't seen cornfields covered in snow in a long time. I still haven't really.
Although last night I drove through miles and miles of cornfields covered in snow. If I were on a bus or a train I could have turned my head to look at them for more than a second. As it was, looking straight ahead felt dangerous enough.
I can't remember the last time I was as scared driving as I was last night. I suppose if it's your time to go in a horrific accident on an Indiana highway in the middle of the night, it's just your time to go. But with having recent quit my job, who knows what people would say. Hell, who cares what people would say?
It was dark and crazy. Wait. It wasn't that dark. It was strange. There was this eerie kind of light.
Moonlight reflecting off cornfields covered in snow. Headlights to the left of me coming my way. When I was lucky I could see red car tail lights ahead of me in the distance. When I wasn't lucky, I couldn't see more than two inches ahead of me.
Night fog. Strange, I thought. Then I thought, no not strange. This is why there are lighthouses.
For nights just like this.
But in the middle of northern Indiana there weren't any lighthouses, not even many houses with Christmas lights. And a rolling fog that kept things interesting.

And this morning I walked around the campus of Notre Dame just a little bit. More thoughts kept coming to me.
Part of me wants to get an MFA. Teach writing, write books. Motivate and inspire people.
Part of me wants to get an MBA. Make lots of money. Perhaps I'd do good things with the money. Perhaps I'd simply please myself. God knows there aren't enough people dedicated to pleasing me. And when I'm pleased, does not that pleasure spread to others.

Are there any programs where I can get both an MBA and an MFA? I don't know.

Perhaps I need a lighthouse to help out a little bit more with this. But I feel like somehow on this crazy ocean I'm making some positive, forward motion and things are going to work out. Right?

Tears your heart out

2007-12-18T19:35:00.000-06:00

My 2008 new year's resolution is easy. I want a job. I had a job and I quit.

I got an e-mail from a friend at an old paper that kind of encapsulated well why I left. Chris just left. Joy left a while back. R is leaving for a California paper at the end of this month. Everyone at the paper is just miserable. I'm sure it's the same in many, many newsrooms. It is sad. We all got into the work because we love what we do. But newsrooms kind of tear your heart out these days. And when I pick up the paper and find nothing important or interesting or amusing to read, it makes me even sadder.

It tears your heart out. It's weird not having a job and not busting my butt to find a new one. But do I want another job that tears my heart out. And what if I was new to the English language and read that in another way. What if it was tears (rhmyes with ears) your heart cries so much it falls out of your body.

But I digress. Speaking of jobs, here's an excerpt from an interview with one of my favorite poets, Stephen Dunn:

No, I never wrote advertisements for a living. I wrote in-house brochures that went to the sales force of a corporation. Even with that kind of writing, my soul was in danger, which was why many years ago I quit, and tried to see if I was good enough to take a chance at becoming the kind of writer I wished to be. What I hate about most commercials is what I hate about society-speak and political cant. The debasement of language.

So, number two, I don't want a job that puts my soul in danger. That's scary just to think about. And we're all on some level poets here so I don't have to clarify that when I reference my soul being in danger, I'm not saying the same thing that someone more Baptist than I might say. Aarrgh. And that's pretty inelegant as well.

But besides the soul comment, there's something else speaking to me in that Dunn quote. Could I be the writer I wish to be?

I used to think of myself as a journalist, a reporter, a company man more or less.

Jody once encouraged me to submit some poems to be published. I had little desire to do that. Now, however, I'm starting to change my views on that.

I don't know why though. It's hard to explain. But I want to be a writer, I want to do something special. Something only I can do.

Here's one way of saying it. I took my car to get the oil changed today and I went to the dealership. Being unemployed, I thought to myself, perhaps I could sell cars. And I'm sure I can sell cars. I have the skills and it's not particularly at odds with my personality.

But anybody can sell cars. What about writing? I can write in ways that other people just can't. I can write in ways that other people only dream about. But the bottom line is I've got to actually do it and not jus talk about it.

This Post is Now Entitled

2007-12-11T12:26:00.000-06:00

This blog post finds me having experienced many changes, none of which I feel inclined to blog about. I do need to say this to the people I love who check here to see if I’ve written anything. Everything’s okay, or going to be okay. The kids are wonderful. I know I’ve got a lot of much-appreciated but unreturned phone calls out there, and I mean to return them every day, and then don’t. I’ll get there.

Music.

I enjoy music very much. Listening to it, playing it, watching it being played. I like wondering about how it works and why, or how it doesn’t work and why, and then talking about such questions with people who wonder the same things.

Music is dear to me as a key to memory and emotion, personal or communal. It says simple things sometimes, and sometimes things words can’t say, and at such times it communicates things beyond our capacity to articulate, but within our capacity to understand, with parts of our brain and body that don’t normally get to do enough understanding.

I believe music has the power to make us better people, more loving, more engaged, and more real. It has the capacity to collapse and dissolve the self, at least for a moment, into the mysteries of the heart of another, or of a whole room of people. It has the capacity to bring great joy, and break the heart in such a way as to leave it open to be filled with love and truth.

I also think music has the power to pass on and intensify our many baleful pathologies, such as violence, hopelessness, and greed, any of which are only aspects of humanity’s one evil: a devotion to self.

Musicians are prone to self-devotion, as we all are, but sometimes it seems to me exceptionally so. I try to monitor myself to see which team I’m working for, and I have to say that I don’t always know. In every way I’m aware of, I try to work for and root for the love team, musically and otherwise.

My hope is that musicians will choose to be on the love team, and then monitor themselves continually to see whether they’ve betrayed their team. It’s a vain hope, but you have to believe in something.

I wrote that, “the love team,” and now have become aware that lots of people are going to have in their mind’s ear a cushy, floppy, bland brown banana of a sappy sweet music. Nuh-uh. True love has for its backbone truth, which it seems to me is always at least half hard, sometimes almost unbearably hard. But we can take it, with practice. It’s an acquired taste, musically and otherwise.

I’m listening to Auset and Brad right now off their myspace page. You get the impression they’ll never jump teams, and I know they’re on the right one.

Now I’m going to go try to match my work habits to my aspirations, forget about what’s troubling me, and go work on music. No, not forget about what’s troubling me. Forget I said that. Instead I'll go see if I can’t make some kind of sense of the trouble that my fingers and strings and body can understand, even if the brain that’s writing to you now doesn’t quite get it yet.

Props

2007-10-22T09:48:00.000-05:00

More Madeline L'Engle

2007-09-11T19:59:00.000-05:00

It's so interesting how I got started reading more Madeline L'Engle just before she died. I was reading Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life earlier today, my birthday, and found a great passage near the start of the book.
I share it with you here.

In art we are once again able to do all the things we have forgotten; we are able to walk on water; we speak to the angels who call us; we move, unfettered, among the stars.

Madeline L'Engle

2007-09-08T06:46:00.001-05:00

Madeline L'Engle, mentioned in this recent post, has died at 88.

A nice exceprt from the Times obit:

“Why does anybody tell a story?” Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.

“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

Thought for the day

2007-08-30T13:41:00.000-05:00

"To write for children is usually synonymous
with writing down to children,
and that's an insult to children.
Children are far better believers than adults;
they are aware of what most adults have forgotten."

That's Madeline L'Engle. Although it sounds a hell of a lot like something Jody said. Maybe he was quoting her. Or she was quoting him. Or perhaps they were both echoing someone else.

The Avett Brothers

2007-08-27T08:47:00.000-05:00

We played at two great places this past weekend, Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa and Crossroads in Kansas City.

Friday night was the Kansas City gig where we shared a bill with the Avett Brothers and Will Hoge. Will Hoge rocked, closing the bill. We played fine, I reckon, opening it. But it's lucky I didn't know how much I should have been intimidated by the meat of the evening's musical sandwich, because the Avett brothers were...an inspiration. Just fantastic.

The energy is what strikes you first, sort of a hillbilly punk look and vibe, just three pieces, but tons of sound...and then comes the singing! and then you start listening to the songwriting! My God. Just excellent. True, well-crafted, insightful, clever-but-not-too-clever--let's strike that and go with "intelligent"--American songs, sung with conviction and energy. Moreover, and maybe most importantly, they have soul and grace and love and wisdom. I was just blown away.

Also an inspiration was the fact that their stuff kept coming unplugged and fwamping out and going out of tune and absolutely no one anywhere, including the gentlemen onstage, gave a crap. Fixed it and moved on. That's a dose of perspective I could use every now and then. Thank you, Avetts!

Saturday night at Cain's we played with our good friend Travis Linville whom you might know from the Burtschi Brothers, or whom you might know because he, like the Avetts, works so flippin hard. He'll be coming to a town near you soon, you can bet, and you should go see him. Another beautiful songwriter, and also a guitar hero, and not of the video game variety. He'll impress you as a guitarist, but he'll also sing to you as a guitarist, which is an all-too-rare combination. Love you, Travis.

The road was kind this weekend, no major incidents or foulups, although we had to take more cars than we'd have liked. Mother Maybelle, my E350 15-passenger van, was at less than full capacity and consequently less than full joy. But we enjoyed our time, had good fellowship, and got to have lots of conversations several times for the benefit of the absent. That way, we really got to digest what we talked about.

We'll have the full boat going to George's in Fayetteville for a football weekend next week. Join us, won't you? If you've never seen a Big Smith show in Fayetteville...well, I presume to suggest it's worth a road trip.

Radio Free Santa Fe

2007-08-02T22:51:00.000-05:00

I'm at running camp here in New Mexico and I'm driving a van around ferrying fellow campers to the mountain trails where we're running.
As I drive this van, I try to search for a little music to help me stay alert. Let me tell you about this wonderful radio station I found - Radio Free Santa Fe. It's great. They play blues, folk, world. Everything.
If only there was a Radio Free Springfield.

Where Are My Manners?

2007-07-31T15:21:00.000-05:00

All wrapped up in detailing the strange trip home from Legfest, I formed an intention to mention at a later time a musical pair at the festival who really impressed me. I'm finally doing so. Auset, comprised of Auset and Brad, make some really interesting, different, compelling music, which you can hear a generous sampling of on the website.

But, to paraphrase Miller Williams: here--here is the story I wanted to tell you. After an uproarious good-timing jam-band finale, while we were still schlepping our gear up the stairs and into place for our set, I heard a voice come on the P.A., speaking very calmly and quietly, saying a few words, and then asking if everyone were having a good time.

The words were those you'd speak if you wanted an audience to scream "yeeeeew" and hold up their mind-altering substance of choice in a salute to this party and parties everywhere and the partying partiers who party at them. PAAARTTTY! But the voice and delivery were that of a very sweet, calm mom telling a bedtime story, or asking if you want a drink of water.

"How very curious, this dichotomy of form and content!" I thought. I actually probably did think those exact words. In many ways, apart from the heterosexuality, I'm very gay. I still didn't know where the voice was coming from, or what it was for. A festival organizer? Someone in the smoky crowd grabbing a stray microphone and expressing herself? And then the music started, so low at first as to make one almost uncertain as to whether music were being played--a moody pad played by an unidentifiable, as yet, instrument. I think it turned out to be a lap steel played through some very interesting equipment.

I finally located the pair, on a little dimly-lit side stage, and thought, "Ah. The voice was that of a musician, she's playing music softer than which none is to a party crowd--she's clearly crazy or high."

But you know what? For a long time, the music stayed at that level, as the crowd slowly stopped their yeeeewing--which hadn't been objected to, mind you, only encouraged--and as the crowd subsided, at the perfect point on that energy curve, the music began to grow, divert and separate, and the voice began to sing--enchantment, it was, cool and quiet--And that hootin' hollerin' crowd? They were right there. Back pocket. They listened, they grooved, they might have even forgotten their mind-altering substances for a moment listening to good music. She wasn't mad! She wasn't high! She was a genius!

They could've tried to come on with a really loud tune, tried to compete with the jam band. Instead, I figured out later, they had followed what may well have been the loudest music of the night with what may have been the quietest song in their repertoire. I found that choice--intelligent, and even courageous. I think I learned a lesson. Something about the power of music to defy expectations, and the value, even the necessity, of doing so. That is, I have learned another lesson that I will likely later forget.

One lesson I won't forget is that Auset is well worth your time and attention.

If It Keeps On Rainin'...

2007-07-30T01:22:00.000-05:00

Friday night we played the Branson Landing. My word. This is the cool part of Branson, if I may say it, where they have, for instance, bricks, democrats, and actual alcohol.

We were treated so well by the staff, including and headed by Mr. Bill Lennon, one of the 457 Lennons who came from California a while back to class up the Branson scene.

Moreover, we got to play a few songs in front of an exploding fountain! While it exploded!

If you have never had this pleasure, I suggest you go out and find an exploding fountain and play your favorite hillbilly songs in front of it today.

I thought, and this is just me, that we played very well. But it could have been all the propane going to my head.

The next day we were in Springdale, Arkansas, at the Jones Center. Here, too, we were treated well. But the Big Smith luck with outdoor venues held: we brought much-needed rain to the area. (Do you suppose the fountain of the evening before--water forced skyward--counteracted the natural tendency that evening for water to fall during one of our outdoor shows?)

At a show scheduled to start at 7:00, we made it rain at 6:50. It kept raining at an increasing pace as the people fled the region for higher ground, until the decision was made to move the show indoors to the chapel.

By "the show" I mean the band and its core instruments; 4 microphones (2 for vocals, 2 for instruments); a talking badger; and the remaining die-hard concert-goers, some 300-350 in all.

It should have been a raging cf, but Roger Koenigseder, the redoubtable, the indomitable, lord love him, pulled it together, including diagnosing and replacing a bad mic cable from 250 feet, and a good time was had by all.

And then Roger had the opportunity to show how a Fort Smith gentleman behaves toward a lady he finds in an awkward situation, and yet he did not show--he was discreet. Even better. A gentleman's gentleman. Allow me to be blunt: Roger, seeing nothing else to be done, and no one else willing to do it, walked from the soundboard at the back of the room to the area immediately in front of the stage, pulled aside a dear lady, dancing there at the head of the center aisle for all she was worth, and informed her as gently as he could that her skirt was not in the least bit opaque to the stage lighting.

I had another bad hair day, but the music and my companions pulled me through. May everyone have such fortune in their work and in the people who love them.

"Quotation" Marks

2007-07-25T10:34:00.001-05:00

I simultaneously like and object to the use of quotation marks to provide emphasis, as in a sign I saw on a drive-up restaurant:

--We Use Only "Fresh" Ingredients!

To be specific, I like the potential for humor, and object to what I see as yet another species of decay in the practices and conventions which could be helping us with the huge problem of mutual intelligibility.

I'm no stickler for rules and conventions for their own sake. Generally speaking, for instance, I don't see how capitalization or the lack thereof either helps or hurts mutual intelligibility, assuming we use punctuation to show where sentences begin and end.

But mutual intelligibility isn't just a communication goal, it's a spiritual goal. Inasmuch as the conventions of style aid it, I think we should cling to them.

So, anyway. I think this quotations-as-emphasis practice may have descended from another questionable practice, one that reached its peak a few decades ago, which is that of putting cliches in quotes, as in

--That fellow was certainly "hoist by his own petard."

Maybe, post-Orwell, writers thought they could distance themselves from their cliches, or at least acknowledge that they were cliches, by these quotes--and still get to use the cliches--simultaneously acknowledging Orwell and missing his point entirely.

But I think some readers, not prepared for this convention, and not having been in on the discussions that produced it, must have thought the writers were calling attention to what they thought was a particularly zippy phrase, almost the opposite of these writers' intentions.

--His boss gave him "the boot"!

See how easily it happens?

I think this misinterpretation gave rise to its own green-grocers' practice, of using quotes to call attention to the most important word or phrase, a practice which is now so established as to perpetuate itself.

Even on such simple levels, it seems so difficult for people to communicate. Does the author really like the phrase, or does he think it's trite and overused? Is this a joke? Such questions can actually be pretty important to determine, and they can hinge on the little nicety of a punctuation choice--a style choice, really--and obviously they can hang on a reader's preparation to decode the conventions of style.

There are a multitude of like choices, not all of them having to do with old conventions: in the Internet age, for instance, a lot can hang on the absence or presence of a smiley.

But here's what I really wanted to talk about, or ask about. What is the rationale behind this quotation convention on children's prescription bottles:

Shake well and give "Joel" 6 ml (cc) by mouth...

I mean, wtf? I'm blanking. I've got theories, everything from someone considering my children fictitious or at least dubious in some way; to the pharmacist or regulator who designed the label protocols disapproving of but grudgingly following an instruction he didn't like that he should use first names, and using quotations to lash out passive aggressively at the boss who made him do it; to some sort of database-merge glitch. Your guesses are as good as mine.

The kids have "bronchitis." Poor sweet babies. But they're doing much better thanks to their "medicine."

Where They Sleep Out Every Night. Lord, Lord.

2007-07-21T13:42:00.000-05:00

5:17 p.m., PT, 7/21/2007. Here we are in California. I'm sitting in the balcony of the Great American Music Hall here in downtown Frisco. Dear Lord, what a place. A former brothel, I'm told, gilded and figured to the hilt. Excuse me. Gotta go greet the recently-arrived members of Red Meat.

5:32 p.m. I've greeted all the members of Red Meat and the Red Meat auxiliary. Someone, probably a member of the band, has left out a big box of mini Slim-Jims. I'm really hungry, so I ate one. Here's a link to the website of the Hall. Check it out.

6:08 p.m. Changed all the strings on the Collings--changed any string with a hint of rust on the Epiphone. Feeling good about having avoided one form of equipment failure.

Red Meat is sound-checking. Mr. Dave Alvin sitting in on the baritone Dano! They sound awesome already, with no adjustments. It's already getting sweaty and music-y up in here, and it's only us bands and co.

The bar is mainly colored medium-rare, almost not a square foot of it hasn't got some sort of plaster molding, gold paint, or mirrors. I think all this surface divagation probably helps with the sound. So complicated as to be clean, but nice and rich.

6:15 Red Meat doing another tune. Smelly's down to jeans and a wife-beater, 13 tattoo in sharp contrast to his red-neck white skin. Looking and sounding good.

Rik's having a sody, and says howdy.

*****Jay here****** I've figured out the mystery of the Slim Jims. Smelly has procured 200 mini sticks of "meat" that he plans to pass out to people waiting in line on the sidewalk outside the club tonight. I imagine that will go over like gangbusters. *******Jay out!*******

6:24 A nice lady in cowboy boots is making me nervous by standing on the balcony rail adjusting the lights.

7:30 Done with sound check. Tyler, our monitor engineer, put up with each other asking for things by band members' names he didn't know, and we got dialed in fine. Then we spent our meal tickets on a fine meal of meat loaf, salad, some kind of vegetable medley and rice. Now we're in our dressing room, where we're hanging until showtime.

7:3? bil here. recently discovered I share my name with the actor who portrayed Buckwheat on little rascals. Itchy in my special place.

yo I could not be happier I love me some big smith this here is my dream bill
I love youall smelley kelley

Hi--it's Jill from Red Meat. It's great to be with Big Smith--I pretend that they are my first cousins, too, not just Scott's. My fantasy is that we form a family band called the Red Smith Goodtime Singers.

8:09: Show starts at 9:15 with our new friend, W. Elliot Whitmore, whom we call Will. Having a nice visit with him and Red Meat in the basement of the hall, which contains the spacious and lovely dressing rooms. Avoiding looking in mirrors. Am I a vampire? This remains to be seen.

Roger loves Peggy.

8:53: Jay just walked outside and ran into a homeless man who was walking down the sidewalk carrying the new Harry Potter novel. Likely the man was hoping to sell the book. Jay was tempted to buy it.

9:15: Showtime. Going upstairs to watch Will.

Our part is over. It went--okay. If by "okay" you mean I tried to break my friend Jill Olsen's amplifier by standing on it. I'm all shame. All repentance. But let others tell you about the rest of the evening.

Rik say, "san francisco: fuck yeah!"

Not only did Jody stand on the amp...he toppled the amp and landed on his feet rather ummmmmmm...gracefully! -J

11;25 Dave Alvin, that's GRAMMY AWARD WINNING Dave Alvin, came to our dressing room to give us effusive praise. That feels good. You should see how he's dressed. That's one sharp looking fellow. Come to think of it, all of Red Meat are very smartly dressed tonight. Puts us hillbillies to shame, fashion-wise. It's time to go upstairs and listen to Red Meat + Dave Alvin!
~Mark

1:10 oh, my god. it was so fun. we're still down here after-glowing. we wish you were here. the people felt that it was real. jill's hair looked awesome. there was much human stuff communicated to other humans. the evening was a success. is what i would say.

Big Smith's Texas Swing

2007-07-19T11:20:00.000-05:00

First leg of the swing, a Thursday gig, was to Grapevine, Texas, where I had no idea what to expect--partly because I've never been there, and partly because I either don't pay enough attention to the things people say to me, or I've forgotten how or lost the capacity to file the information, so that the things people say to me about, for instance, Grapevine, Texas, while securely in the noggin somewhere, might be equally, randomly, and uselessly applied by my brain to--Lincoln, Nebraska, for example. Or Sevastapol.

I'll never misfile the information now, not with regard to this place. Pleasure masters memory. It was a fantabulous resort, the Gaylord Texan, where we played a club called The Glass Cactus. We were embarrasingly well-treated by the staff there, including the sound engineers--Jeff and Greg were the ones on the stage--but most especially Lori, apparently in charge of treating us nice, who did everything from bring us cool drinks, get us where we needed to be, catch us a delicious bass, and sell merch for us during the show.

While we were in the lobby of the hotel checking in, our dear friend and impeccable sound engineer, Roger Koenigseder, about whom it would be impossible to say too many good things, whether discussing him as a human being or as a fader-pusher, looked out the door at the spacious, sunlit veranda and beyond that the acres of paths, gardens, trees, buildings and fountains, and asked Lori if he could step outside there to smoke. "That's not outside," was her reply. And indeed, it was not. Amazingly big-ass climate-controlled atrium, make a long story short.

The crowd that night at the Cactus--who by and large had come to listen to the ass-kicking headliner, Jason Boland and the Stragglers, to whom I'm listening right now, a band which is as if Waylon Jennings and Wilco had a baby (Wilcon Jennings?)--that crowd wasn't quite sure what to do with us at first. But they warmed up, the buzz after the show was good, and we met some wonderful people: those mentioned so far, plus Bridget from Milam & Co., a talent agency, and the good people from Twister radio.

Your present correspondent, while generally speaking well-meaning and affable during the show, didn't serve the music world or my traveling companions well that evening. The very first note I struck on the very first song, a D string exploded on my mandolin, detuning me by a quarter-tone, and forcing me to switch mandolins in the middle of the first tune. That set the stage for a bad equipment night. Broke two more strings, and semi-blew up my compressor pedal, which I use to boost solos. Better if I had totally blown it up, because then I'd have stopped using it, totally, instead of continually and with much frustration using it to suck.

I knew well the place we were headed next, this was Friday night. Austin, Texas, a town in which 60% of the band has at one time or another lived and pretended to work, a city of music, and home to one of my favorites, The Continental Club.

Sold the fucker out. People screamed and hollered. People requested songs. Sang along. The replacement equipment--a used but pristine Boss CS-3 I finally found after several stops at a cool store called South Austin Music, and a new needful thing that Roger gave me a hug for getting, an MXR 108 e.q. pedal I picked up at a really cool vintage store called Austin Vintage Guitars--worked really, really well, and moreover I did not break a string and did not suck. I think the Collings was happy to be back in its birthplace.

For some reason I felt weird that weekend--weird was my word--sort of dislocated and alone, but the cousins and brother and sister and Roger were there, we watched Mavis Staples on youtube at the hotel room, thought of the humor there can be in a dropped guitar, and by the end I was feeling much better. Juliana's right--all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

Ain't Nothin' Like the Real Thing, Baby

2007-07-10T14:19:00.000-05:00

We had the pleasure of playing two of the finer original music venues in Missouri this past weekend. One an old friend, one a new pleasure.

First, Friday night, it was Richard King's baby, the famous Blue Note in Columbia, a club which recently celebrated 25 years of kicking the ass. This was designed to be a new deal, an early, non-smoking show, starting around nine, but word hadn't got round to the people. There were a couple dozen prompt souls there at nine. We pitched in anyway around nine-fifteen, with a set we hadn't planned to play, sort of opening for ourselves, with the plan of playing late for the people who were more set in their late-reveling ways. And we had a ball. The evening would hold two more longer sets. We wound up playing to round about 1 a.m., nigh onto 4 and a half hours of music, about 40 songs. It was a blast. Great crowd, lots of energy.

Thence to the Soulard district of St. Louis, where Saturday night we played the Lucas School House. Man alive. You have got to go see music in this place. A beautifully restored facility, with lots of thought given to music-lovers and bands alike. Ah, me. Forgive the passive construction. I ought to know better. The people thinking these careful and caring thoughts are Dan and Mia, owners of the place. Wonderful people, who put up the whole Hee-Haw gang in a lovely 12-sleeping condo right across the way from the gig, and gave us a good deal on the restaurant's fine food.

I didn't get lost much driving this past weekend. No journeys into alternate dimensions. Just wonderful times with family and friends and some great musical moments.

Home Again Home Again, Jiggedy Jig

2007-07-02T10:49:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure which of several nightmarish dimensions I drove the band & co. through late Saturday night/early Sunday morning on the way home from the weekend's gigs. I think it might have been the dimension in which a curvy country road rolls, spins, dives, and even spirals in upon itself indeterminately until such time as the driver has thoroughly annoyed, or sickened, or both, all the occupants of his van, at which time the serpent-road spits them out inexplicably onto a highway that lies in the opposite direction of the one they thought they were headed toward, and with no gas and no gas stations in sight.

If you enter this dimension, be prepared: it's also the dimension which allows you to drive onward on this highway you never asked for with no gas until the occupants of the van, especially one's sister-in-law, believe that you will all surely perish in the night.

Then when against all hope you see the lights of an open gas station and pull up...you will be amazed to find that it will be the size of the biggest hotel conference hall you've ever been in. It will have no more merchandise than your average convenience store, but you'll be able to march a platoon of soldiers, if you have one handy, five-wide down the aisles and still not nudge the people browsing for, say, a package of crackers and peanut butter, which is what you'll wind up purchasing.

The package of crackers and peanut butter will advertise "NEW peanut butter flavor," a claim which you'll find at first difficult to accept, and then somehow a little frightening.

Furthermore, this...convenience store...can we still call it that? Will be partially lined on the inside, especially next to the bathrooms, in cedar.

It will sell large, unfinished cedar furniture.

It will have several full-sized pool tables, and an enormous dry-erase board with a meticulous and impossibly-many-branched nine-ball tournament bracket on it. The land will have been deserted for miles. Where have all these serious nine-ballers come from? Maybe from the curvy highway dimensional vortex. Maybe that's what it's for--to get together a real bitchin pool tournament.

But in the midst of this malfunctioning, yet miraculously self-correcting dimension (no realm, however vile, has the power to block grace), in the smell of the cedar and the buzz of the fluorescents, and in the company of family and friends, who are now in a post-surly relief that almost amounts to joy, and with the crackers and--thank God--perfectly normal peanut butter flavor in your mouth, somehow you will know that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

When Springfields Collide

2007-06-28T11:25:00.001-05:00

The band & co. are heading north toward Chicago today, stopping in the other Springfield tonight for a bluegrass jam (wish I knew how to play bluegrass) and to enjoy Brian Reilly's hospitality at the Underground City Tavern, another great music club managing to flourish in a hotel (snortyhorse is in the Budget Lodge).

Could my brand of music help, if in nothing else, then in the redemption of hotel bars? Could there please be fewer and fewer places where poonhound businessmen feel comfortable swilling their self-consciously expensive drinks and leering at their young waitresses? Instead may there not be more and more places to hear music about the human heart, from the human heart, music to bring you joy or break your heart, or in the best case, both? Let it be so, dear Lord, in some small measure. Maranatha!

At any rate, Underground City is another club that passes what I call the Wanda Jackson test. I have a good feeling about how big smith will do in a club if there's any Wanda memorabilia, let's call it wandabilia, on the walls. Of course there's a wide variety of paraphernalia or memorabilia of artists or combination of artists that will let a club pass the Wanda test, but Wanda deserves to have her name applied to this sort of measuring device. UCT passes the Wanda Jackson test both literally and in the larger sense.

But this is special--not only does the club pass the Wanda test--the actual Wanda Jackson has played the actual Underground City Tavern.

Looking forward to the weekend.

The Great Frying Pan

2007-06-27T17:12:00.000-05:00

Ruby had a prophetic nightmare last night that woke her up. For those of you who don't know, Ruby is my 5-year-old.

I don't know how else to break it to you, so here it is. Probably already you had expected that something like this was true.

A frying pan there is, which, if turned upside down, makes the world opposite, which is to say, bad.

Are you sitting down?

The great frying pan has been turned upside down. You had sensed this, hadn't you, somewhere, in the depths of your own most painful dreams? If you hadn't yet admitted it fully to yourself, there it is.

But that's not all. After the pan was turned upside down--hold onto something--it became invisible--and now can't be found for righting.

No wonder we're all full of dread. We are, aren't we? I don't want to speak for you.

But I do, don't I?

The Snortyhorse: An Appreciation

2007-06-26T07:31:00.000-05:00

I told this story to my new friend Steve Greene, owner/operator of the Snortyhorse Saloon, when we played there last weekend:

I had a rare Saturday evening off not long ago, and even more rarely, had the opportunity to decide how to spend it.

"Let's go see a band that can write songs and can musically speaking kick the ass!" said I, and off I went to the computer to check what was happening in town, sort of licking my lips and rubbing my hands together.

Absolutely nothing happening whatsoever except at one place: the Snortyhorse Saloon.

Rather than describing the Snorty, I'll just refer you to that link up there in the title. Steve's got web presence.

Anyway, after I told that story I shared with Steve my growing appreciation of the fact that a music scene in a town is less about culture or environment or tradition or whatever, as it is about one, two, maybe three people in a town who love original music enough to do what it takes to make it happen. That's a short list, even in the region. Plenty of people want to open a bar and make money--few, few, few care about the music. A slight handful, more or less, is about how many we now have in Springfield, since Steve moved the Snorty to Springfield from Mount Vernon, where people kept staging crucifixions in his driveway, since beer is from the devil.

Anyway, plenty of people willing to sit on their hands and bitch about not having culture, damn few willing to do anything about it. Thank you, Steve.

By the way, the night we played was a blast. We had written the songs, and the people seemed to think we kicked the ass.

Thanks, Steve!

The Snortyhorse: Because Nashville Sucks.

Not That Bad. Could Always Be Worse.

2007-06-22T08:48:00.000-05:00

You might not have predicted this, as I did not, but saying that granny cuts her tomato stakes on a bias and insists on using cedar for those stakes is funny--it kills, in fact--if ad-libbed under the right conditions in front of the right people. Turns out.

In this case the conditions were a skit about a perhaps incestuous and certainly indigent urban hillbilly who may or may not have been guilty of the crime of which he was once convicted, in this case cooking meth, or as I decided to put it for some reason, "scorching the nun." The right people were the lawyers and judges mentioned below.

I was divided at first as to the moral implications of playing a stereotype of the least fortunate among my people, almost insisted on a rewrite, but two things swayed me. First, the jokes were generally speaking from life, and based on a family that the judges and lawyers were all familiar with, who have at some point crossed the line into that range where one's sympathy can be leavened with ridicule. Second, I thought I could de-rube him, if you will, after the example of Andy Griffith ca. 2nd season--make the guy sympathetic by making him human. Can't speak to how well I did at that, since I wasn't among those who needed convincing on that point.

At any rate, the evening was not the soak in hell's jacuzzi I thought it would be. There were lots of kids there my age I could play with. Everyone I spoke to, with the exception of one guy, had a soul.

I was told my performance as the hapless, feckless, doofus hillbilly, Mr. M., was very "natural." Not sure how to take that.

The true stars of the evening, however, were my friends Eric and Lisa Engel, along with their redoubtable staff there at the Riverside Inn. The place was under 3-4 feet of water just a few days ago, and you would never have known it. Simply amazing.

Habeas My Corpus, for the Love of Pete

2007-06-21T09:17:00.000-05:00

Tonight I have the honor of helping my wife in a series of skits to be performed for an audience composed exclusively of judges and lawyers.

Generally speaking, I'll be playing the piano for show-tune spoofs containing lawyer jokes, but I'm actually performing in one skit.

In that skit, I'm to play a hapless hillbilly being hauled onto the carpet for being a feckless doofus.

It'll be a stretch, but I think I can manage.

In Which I Post a Staple Singers Video.

2007-06-20T16:52:00.000-05:00

Viva Mavis!

Man Alive

2007-06-04T00:07:00.000-05:00

Thanks to bl for holding down the blog for me since Billy Preston died.

Was I grieving to a sufficient extent for Billy that it plum drove me off the worldwide web? No, I guess not.

Knowing less about it than I ought by way of saying such a thing, I will say that Billy Preston was a tortured man. I felt for him as he lay dying--I feel for him now. I did some digging back then, but I elect not to say why I feel that Billy Preston was a man in pain (I speak not, of course, of the pain, considerable as it may be, of kidney failure or of coronary sac inflammation) and therefore must decline to say why I may or may not have participated emotionally in any pain Billy may or may not have experienced, and therefore must further decline to say how his departure from this sad, soulless world may or may not have occasioned and/or encouraged my own departure from this similarly sad and soulless internet.

Billy Preston is never beside the point, yet Billy Preston is beside the point. I was fixing to explain my absence from this blog to whatever audience happens across this post.

Upon further reflection, I decline to do so.

I decline to answer the question as posed, supported in this decision by the fact that the question was never actually posed.

And yet here I am, quasi-explaining.

More, perhaps, later.

What were you expecting?

2007-05-15T22:28:00.000-05:00

I unexpectedly came across this here on the you tube today and thought it would be of interest to pervious fans.

Peyton Manning is not a role model

2007-04-18T14:15:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine sent this to me. Good thing I had my headphones on when I watched it.

\

The moral of the story is that Peyton Manning, just like Charles Barkley, is not a role model. You are a role model.

Hillary on Sanjaya

2007-04-17T10:09:00.000-05:00

I thought about Pervious readers this morning as I read a story in the Miami Herald.

Hillary Clinton was on a radio call-in show and got what she called the best question she'd been asked in a long time.

What question was that?

What can the citizens of this great land do to stamp out Sanjaya Malakar?

And Hillary's answer: "Well, you know, people can vote for whomever they want. That's true in my election, and it's true on American Idol."

Gosh. What has this country come to? What has our culture come to?

Becoming the Buddha

2007-04-15T14:21:00.000-05:00

Kenneth looks Kenyan. His skin is dark, his nose is long and thin, and yet his features are soft, almost delicate, like a child's. He's six feet tall, but it's only in the past two years, since he got his job, that he's ever weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds. When he's drunk he lifts up his shirt, blows out his stomach, and pats his protruding belly proudly. "God bless America," he says with each pat. "Only here can someone become the Buddha."

That's from page three of a book I just started reading, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu. Already I'm captivated by the writing and the motivating storyline: the desire for a better life in America fleeing the turmoil and instability of home in Africa, despite a great love for your home continent.

They play a game, naming a dictator and then trying to remember the year and country that he was overthrown. Memories of sadness and joy.

Faking the funk

2007-04-15T10:15:00.000-05:00

Here's a story I found recently I thought would be relevant to the Pervious blog.

Expressing truth is hard work. There's a story, probably apocryphal, about Pablo Picasso visiting the home of a wealthy art collector. The collector proudly displays to the artist a Picasso painting he purchased at great cost some years before. Picasso scrutinizes the painting for a moment and then pronounces: "It's a fake."

"You mean, you never painted it?" the collector sputters.

"No, I painted it," Picasso answers. "But it's a fake. I often paint fakes."

It's from Slate, a column about Katie Couric and plagiarism.

That Irish preacher

2007-03-18T11:14:00.000-05:00

So, as the spirit of St. Patrick's Day lingers for you, I'll post a little of everyone's favorite Irish rocker/preacher - it is such a small category.

Party Time

2007-03-17T07:25:00.000-05:00

First post in a while--thanks, Ocho, for keeping up the place.

The party is proceeding, as planned, up to the house. The forecast keeps getting warmer, so I'm hoping the sun'll burn through the clouds and we'll be able to catch some rays along with some good cheer.

If it gets too cold or wet, remember, there is a house right next to our yard.

Next year in the emerald isle

2007-03-17T02:34:00.000-05:00

I can't imagine anywhere I'd rather be on St. Patrick's Day than Weller Streeet.
But then, there's Dublin.
The AP presents a fascinating story about the St. Patrick's Day parade in the heart of Ireland.
Here's the lede:

DUBLIN, Ireland - Lithuanian musicians, drum-beating Punjabis and West African dancers used Dublin's St. Patrick's Day parade on Saturday to celebrate their place in a booming Ireland that has become a land of immigrants.

Who, indeed?

2007-03-10T10:24:00.000-06:00

I just got back from the Y where I put in a pretty hard workout on the treadmill.

I was trying to follow my routine and work off stress. But it doesn't help when the tvs are turned to a news station and people are discussing the question: Would Jesus raise taxes on the rich?

I hate politics and political pundits.

Slam countdown

2007-02-26T21:47:00.000-06:00

The slam is rapidly approaching and I, of course, want to win. But I want to do something more than win.

I want to be true to my poems. I want to forget all thoughts of winning anyway. I tend to get too caught up in that.

I want to present my poems as gifts to the audience. I want the performance to be an act of love, an act of giving of myself.

And if that comes together right, than everybody wins.

But I should come out on top regardless if I prepare right.

A race

2007-02-20T22:50:00.000-06:00

With all the writing in our local paper about child abuse, I've decided on my next 5K race.

It's a fundraiser for the Junior League of Springfield's new crisis daycare, an effort to help prevent child abuse. I can't think of a more worthy cause.

Maybe other Pervious contributors will commit to meeting me on March 17. This should be fun. A great way to start the day.

Never confused

2007-01-25T14:34:00.000-06:00

I drove down Weller Street today for the first time since the ice storm. It almost seemed like there were more tree branches on the ground than on the sky.

I was also reminded though of this beautiful phrase: A tree is never confused.

Sometimes I wish the same could be said for me.

Not that I'm bragging or anything

2007-01-23T21:48:00.003-06:00

Er, uh, just thought you should know this.

You know the Bible 100%!

Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!

Ultimate Bible Quiz
Create MySpace Quizzes

So, there you go.

I came, I saw, I rocked

2007-01-15T11:03:00.000-06:00

Well, I've finished my second marathon. In chilly Arizona. I have to smile everytime I hear the Arizonans bemoan their cold weather. I seem to have somehow escaped the ice in Springfield.

The best thing about marathons - everyone is beautiful, especially the women.

Funny story. I hear a woman during the race say we did it just for you. I look over and notice that this woman along with the woman running next to her are wearing t-shirts that say, "my running partner has great boobs."

I couldn't quite pass these woman to look back. Well, I could have but that would have been a waste of energy. I also heard them say they were carrying around a couple of extra pounds. Shortly after they pulled away, I started talking briefly with a woman who commented on how it wasn't fair that my legs are so long. I mentioned that her short legs had better turnover and she conceded that it probably evened out.

Interesting to run a race and continually be passed by people of all shapes and sizes. Lots with grey hair.

But the best thing - the absolute best thing about marathons - is finishing and getting the finisher's medal.

thanks for your support.

Mountains and cactus

2007-01-13T18:03:00.000-06:00

I've been driving around a bit today and this place is just amazing. The cactuses. The palm trees. The mountains. The views. Hopefully those views will be inspiring tomorrow.

Amazing. I've haven't said, "Wow" so much since, well, New Mexico. Clearly similarities about between Santa Fe and Phoenix.

Anyhow, this is most likely the last post before the race.

I'm excited. I'm nervous. I'm ready to go.

As good as I once was

2007-01-13T12:05:00.000-06:00

I've got a prediction.
Based on recent personal experience, if your airline pilot stands in front of the plane and stats quoting Toby Keith, well get ready.
Yesterday, our pilot, a great man, said "We may not go." Then he proceeded to quote Mr. Keith: "I ain't as good as I once was."

He explained that if it wasn't safe, we weren't taking off. We'd been de-iced and we'd get de-iced again.

Now, I'm going to make this long story short. After four hours in the plane and three times taxiing down the runway we took off.

Up in the air we hit some turbulence. The pilot said, "Normally I'd apologize, but I'm happy to be up here bouncing along."

I've got to find a way to use that phrase. "Normally I'd apologize, but you were asking for a butt whupping."

I digress. I can't remember the last time I heard and participated in some much applause on a place. Applause on take-off. Applause on landing. Applause on pulling up to the gate.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go prepare to run 26.2 miles.

How's your spiritual character?

2006-12-20T11:04:00.000-06:00

So, the dominos continue to fall at the New Life Church in Colorado.

The AP reports that another pastor has resigned.

Why? Vaguely described sexual misconduct. As we all know sexual misconduct at some churches could be normal sexual behavior for most Americans. Take, for example, this story published in the Washington Post. If you believe the research, Americans have been having premarital sex for decades.

This resignation was a result of an examination of the spiritual character of all 200 members of the church's staff prompted by Ted Haggard's fall.

Who can withstand this scrutiny? Sigh. This is, however, what the church is supposed to do right. Hunt down the people with mistakes in their past and push them out. Only the morally pure.

Or am I missing something? Are we all missing something?

Where is the grace?

I'm struggling I tell you, with the need for the church to do what St. Francis said: "Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary." Something like that. Frustratingly, just like Jesus, Francesco did not speak English. And I know neither Italian or Aramaic. So let me paraphrase what I think Francis said again: "Shut up and quit moralizing. Treat people right." I'm not sure if Francis would have been more or less polite than what I just wrote.

Aargh. I want to be a Christian, but I don't want people to think that I'm a Christian. And I'm not sure anymore what a Christian is supposed to be.

I see a lot of moralizing and finger pointing and the assumption that we know the way better than other people. But I don't know how much I ever see people getting lost in joy. Drunk with joy, know what I mean?

I'm really getting sick and tired of people not associating with others on the basis of beliefs. Not even taking the time to ask other people what it is that they believe.

What about Virginia

2006-11-27T21:56:00.000-06:00

I was leafing through the fall issue of the Syracuse University Magazine and found a fascinating article about John D. Caputo, a philosopher of religion who teaches at my alma mater. Caputo is the author of a popular book called On Religion.

The story starts with a quote from Caputo from the book:

Religion is for lovers, for men and women of passion, for real people with a passion for something other than taking profits, people who believe in something, who hope like mad in something, who love something with a love that surpasses understanding.

Religion, eh? All this time I thought it was Virginia.

Vote No/Yes on 2/3!

2006-11-07T08:39:00.000-06:00

Hello, this is a message from the man you helped elect mandolin player in 1996, Jody Bilyeu. With the dawning tide of the country hinging on the cusp of a new millennium, won't you join me in opposing and supporting the forces that threaten to weaken and strengthen the very basis and pinnacle of the true values and corruption on which this country was based? Let those self-appointed arbiters of so-called values and good taste and the slide toward destruction in Washington and Hollywood hear your voice...es. Let them know that you stand firmly behind and against the movement to make this country great and weak again. Vote no and yes on 2 and 3. Paid for by friends of the Sancho Enchilada Style.

Trying to trust

2006-11-07T08:38:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking I need to simplify my life. The first step would be selling 50 books to the used book store. Fifty books would be a deep cut into my library, but sometimes deep cuts are needed.

So I came across a book today called The Day Awaits: The Notre Dame Book of Prayers. It seemed like a prime candidate to be sold or given away to someone else. Notre Dame is, after all, the source of more bad memories than good ones.
But maybe I can focus on the good. And then I'll just change the bad memories. Memory is a funny thing anyhow. Eyewitnesses are unreliable. Isn't that what lawyers say?

So anyway, I was flipping through this Notre Dame prayer book, confirming my decision to take it down to the Well Fed Head until I saw the last prayer in the book. I read it and realized it could be a marathon training prayer. It could be a songwriter's prayer. It could be a prayer for any moment when you wonder if you're making the right decision.

Thus I share it with you.

From Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Jody, I know you'll want to click there and read that article from Wired magazine.)

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are all, quite naturally, impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that is made by passing through
some stages of instability-
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually –
let them grow.
Let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today
what time (that is to say, grace and
circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

Big Smith weekend

2006-11-05T00:44:00.000-06:00

Well, I guess this was just a Big Smith weekend for me.

I saw Big Smith last night at the Outland Ballroom. Tonight I was at a bar a hop skip and a jump away talkin about the lyrics to one of their songs. I think I heard it for the first time last night.

Actually, I said I wasn't sure what the song was about. The girl I was with said she really liked the song, Bareback Ridin', and she was certain that it's not nasty. It's not a metaphor for sex. It's just a really beautiful song.

I'm still not sure what the song is about.

Latin for the weekend

2006-10-27T21:11:00.000-05:00

A little something for the weekend, words from St. Irenaeus - Gloria Dei; homo vivens.

The glory of God is man fully alive.

Feeling slammed

2006-10-27T15:03:00.000-05:00

Well, I lost at the Well Fed Head Slam last night. I get so emotionally invested in winning, sometimes I wonder if it's worth it. Who are these judges to give one of my poems a 4 anyhow? I repeat, a 4?

On top of that, I sometimes question if I'm really creative at all. Or is it just that I know a few writing tricks and I can paint by numbers reasonably well. Should I stop writing, stop pretending to write? Leave the poetry to people who actually are really good at it?

I'm sure I'll keep writing though I may sit out the next slam. I have other goals that I'm focusing on.

Anyhow, all these thoughts remind me of something someone posted over on my other blog. I thought I'd share that comment here:

Well, it is not up to you to judge your creativity. It is up to you write. Here is a quote that I find so compelling and instructive...

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open...No artist is pleased...There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is on a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
MARTHA GRAHAM to AGNES DeMILLE

Picking scabs in public

2006-10-26T08:07:00.000-05:00

I'm competing in a poetry slam tonight. I'm not sure what other people think when they hear the words poetry slam. Especially the word poetry. There's this whole societal undercurrent of "I don't understand poetry." "Poetry just isn't for me." "I don't know much about poetry."

Personally, I don't get it. What is there to know? Are there people out there who say this about music? Well, yes in respect to genres, I know. "Bluegrass just ain't my thing." "I like just about all music except country." I can't remember the last time I heard someone say that, but I'd like to respond with, "Everything except country? What about Tibetan New Age? How about Dadawa? I think she's got a really good sound."

But I digress. Poetry slam tonight. For me, the slam is really about winning. I mean, self-expression - what's that? You express yourself walking down the street. You express yourself picking out your clothes in the morning. But how many forums do we have to actually compete and win? I like to support creative people in other venues - open mike nights and that sort of thing.

Thus how do I win? How do I put myself in the best position to win? There are basically three steps in the process. The first step is to create good raw material. To be uncensored in the writing of the poem. To subjugate as much as possible any sense of shame. I don't know if that sounds easy, but it isn't. (I also try to create new poems for each slam because it adds to the excitement for me.)

The second step is to edit and practice, edit and practice. It would be nice, I know to memorize more poems, but I've only got so many hours in the day. And I've got a day job.

Lastly, I try to get mentally focused. That's the stage I'll be in today. I often say to friends at the slam, Hit me. Hit me. It might be easier if it were football. They sometimes seem a little shocked. But physical contact does help.

I believe in the power of conflict. Oh wait, this isn't my This I Believe essay.

My favorite poems are those that tell a story. This can lead to my favorite question: "Did that really happen?" Similar to "Is that really true?"

Oh, another note about the judging. Five judges are randomly selected from the audience. I was watching the DVD Slamnation yesterday and a poet said he considered that a representative democracy. I don't always care what the judges say. I mean, I want to win and perform at my best. But I can't get into someone else's head.

For me, sometimes the best poems come from playing with wounds, picking at scabs. That's especially the case when I find yourself remembering things I'd rather forget. One of the poems I'm planning on doing tonight falls into that category. Sometimes I think it would be better if I didn't remember things like that. Does writing about it make it better? Maybe a little bit. But we're not supposed to pick at scabs, are we?

Welcome, BL!

2006-10-25T16:32:00.000-05:00

The roll of Pervious contributors continues to swell. Burgeon. We're fecund with regard to contributorship. BL will bring to the line-up some much-needed speed and consistency--and let's not forget he'll be bringing a poet's soft hands to the middle infield. Nothing gets by this guy.

Oh, I get it...

2006-10-24T16:50:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning I heard Steve Inskeep on NPR make a little fun of the "Animal Compassionate" label that's to go on meat raised on farms where they treat animals a little better. It didn't get an article, just one of those little quips before they go to music, wherein Inskeep noted the label was for farms that followed certain rules "like the one that you can't use an electric prod except in an emergency."

I had to pause. Why was that supposed to be funny? Moreover, I sensed some punking of journalistic objectivity, and reliability, for that matter, for the sake of a joke: All the rules are "like" that one, really?

Here are my guesses: first, Inskeep thinks it's funny that there might be such a thing as an animal emergency, thereby betraying a deep farm-ignorance. A bull that weighs upwards of a ton is a walking emergency.

But I think mainly Inskeep just thinks it's funny that we would be compassionate towards animals we're about to eat.

The quips in this article in the New York Times were aimed more directly at that point. The article's author, Andrew Martin, thinks it's funny that the label will denote that "the animals were raised in a humane manner until they were slaughtered." The title is similarly cutesy: "Meat Labels Hope to Lure the Sensitive Carnivore."

I thought in this post I would pretend to be confused by this spate of journalistic attraction to easy, false irony, but--nah. There's a clear, ugly inference: the reason "Meat Labels Hope to Lure the Sensitive Carnivore" is supposed to be funny is that there's no such thing! As a Sensitive Carnivore! Isn't that a riot? But the false irony betrays a double failure of compassion: not only toward the people who raise and eat meat, but also toward the animals they raise and eat.

What I am genuinely confused about is how this attitude would get translated into policy. Does the risibility of the idea of treating animals well until it's time to eat them mean that we shouldn't give a crap about how we treat animals that are to be slaughtered? That efforts to improve the lot of meat animals are intrinsically giggle-worthy? Or is the conclusion meant to be that the only real answer to the problem of inhumanely-treated livestock is to stop eating them altogether?

Maybe another way of asking this is, do Inskeep and Martin think they're making fun of animal-compassion sensibilities, or that they're poking fun of animal lovers' evil robot doubles, the meat-eaters, or both?

Either way, not funny, not ironic, but a good way of playing into the hands of those who would have us think that blue-state liberals don't get it, especially when blue-state liberals think they're the only ones who do.

Welcome, Elmer Scheid!

2006-10-24T15:18:00.000-05:00

We have a new author on the blog, one Elmer Scheid. I have always depended upon the kindness of Elmer. Look for more additions in the coming days.

Pervious Again

2006-10-23T10:07:00.000-05:00

Here's the blog where I, Jody Bilyeu, say things I'd like to say publicly. I hope it'll continue to be mildly useful, as when someone googles on "Removing Dead Squirrel from Crawl Space," "Craig Ferguson," or "Napoleon's Death Mask."

I'm doing this to engage, to reach out, to chip in, and to put in my two cents, because I think to do these things is better than to not, and not because I think I have any special gifts or insights. I like the web because nobody's compelled to read, but nobody's barred, either. So take it, leave it, or pitch in yourself by way of response, rejoinder, or even redoubled retort.

In moving away from any theme, I'm rededicating this blog to its original theme, which is themelessness. I have no idea what, if anything, is going to go on here. Maybe I'll bring in a new author or two on the blog to open it up even more. Mono-authorial blogs are fascist. A little heteroglossia, someone, please, for the love of God!

Now here's another picture of the late, great Billy Preston, dressed in what I take to be a gold velvet suit, wailing on a B3 and a Steinway at the same time.

Billy Preston's Right to Live

2006-04-10T00:42:00.000-05:00

I love that picture.

This is to give those of you who have joined me in worrying about Billy Preston's failing health something else to worry about.

Party Day

2006-04-01T07:00:00.000-06:00

7:00 a.m. Weather looks good. A slight chance of isolated thunderstorms later in the afternoon, but we believe we'll chaince it. Outdoors, at the house, with a guitar.

My Children or My Shows?...I'm Thinking It Over!

2006-01-31T09:19:00.000-06:00

Back to children and media, inspired by this article by Jane E. Brody.

Here on Pervious we’re (journalistic/royal we) against censorship, and for supervision. But it appears we’re in the minority in espousing what appears to be a sensible prescription for raising children who are not, on the one hand, depraved, media-crazed/dulled/perverted idiots, but on the other hand are also not unplugged, sheltered naifs ripe for the gleaning the first time they manage to shake loose from the apple tree. Prescription in a minute.

What with the fallen fruit and the article and all it sounds like among the gleaners I’m just talking about sex or sexual predators. I’m not. I’m talking about neo-Nazis, unscrupulous army recruiters, Pharisee/fundamentalist evangelators, various adolescent cults of belonging centered around leisure activities, and other unhealthy absorbers of America’s youth. You may also insert into that list the name of whichever political party you think is the most evil.

The article itself doesn't advocate censorship or much else. If we allow Brody and The Times to represent Blue America, it appears the course they’ll chart will start with more studying to determine whether children's watching sex makes them want to have sex. As far as they can tell (the matter needs lots more study!), it sort of appears that it does. The next step, it seems clear, will be legislation.

It’s so unfortunate we think that way. “My kids are watching all this trash on cable! Whatever shall I do?” “She’s been spending three hours a day in online chat rooms! I’ve no idea with whom! Something must be done!”

(It’s clear from the article, also, that Blue America Media totally ignores the many people out there in the heartland who are ardent censors of their children’s media consumption—it pretends they don’t exist. I think the strategy of those parents is a big mistake, too, but that’s a subject for another day.)

Nowhere is American underparenting more apparent than as regards our children and our media.

Prescription time. The formula is simple. T.V. is a family activity. Watch it together and talk about it, or don’t watch at all. Simple enough.

We do this at our house, more or less, and we’ve found those family times watching kids’ shows to be not only enjoyable--there are lots of good movies and shows out there--but to have other beneficial effects, as well. Family T.V. time has begun many ongoing discussions about the various stupidities of our culture, many of which, as seen in kids' shows, center around violence, ironically. Those times have also begun a series of family discussions about what media does and how.

But under that system, if cable T.V. or a private set for your kid means she’s watching lots of T.V. without you, it’s simply time to drop the cable and/or the private set. Duh. Same goes for private broadband access.

Ay, there would be the rub, but it wouldn't be primarily the children it would rub the wrong way. In what I fear will be a continuing theme in the culture and on this blog, many parents will opt for unsupervised media for their children because a kid with cable or internet in her bedroom isn’t up in your face, interrupting your viewing of SportsCenter, or of the Paula Dean cooking shows you’ve TiVoed, begging to watch Backyardigans or one of those Disney-goes-to-high-school shows instead. Parents will be reluctant to drop cable, even though they know quite well that doing so is best for the children, because they themselves want to whack off to Cinemax, in all the various senses of that expression. They have "entertainment needs."

The leisure choices of the parents, not the children, begin the family division. If kids had their way, you’d be watching with them. Remember? Parents with teenagers, remember that window you closed, choosing instead of watching the Little Bear Movie with your child—again—to watch your Matlock reruns?

Watch Backyardigans, dammit. It won’t kill you. It’s actually a pretty cool show.

The process of choosing what to watch as a family will tend to make media consumption a matter of intention, rather than of chance or of habit. If you can't bear to watch more than an hour of kids' T.V., that's a fair indication that they shouldn't be watching more than that, either. But then, no fair sending the kids off to do, be, and create outside the mind-sucking glow of media so you can sit on your fat ass and watch football for three hours. If they can't stand more than a half-hour of adult T.V., that's a fair indication that you should get up and go dance with them in front of the stereo, or step outside and move and breathe, or do your chores...

Finally, the very act of making media a matter of intention makes censorship unnecessary. The vast majority of us, adults and kids alike, wouldn't be watching things we shouldn't watch if our media consumption were a family decision rather than a surreptitious happenstance.

At any rate, I’m convinced that many or most of those parents now opting for peace, quiet, and me-time over their duty to provide continuous parental engagement are in for a horrible interruption of their cherished peace and quiet as soon as baby grows her wings.

Better start, not just being the court taster, parents, but sitting down for the whole meal. While they’re under your roof consign yourself to consuming whatever media you allow your kids to consume, and as an operation of the golden rule, allowing them to consume whatever media you consume, rarely or never choosing to watch anything you wouldn't want them to see, obviously. Be nice; take turns. Best start with Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street. They actually teach some lessons lots of American parents could really stand to learn.

Bored?

2006-01-30T11:15:00.000-06:00

I wanted to leave the previous post up for a good long while. It's unique in having generated both a lot of traffic, and a lot of silence, and that surprises me not at all, sadly.

But I've kept my hand in the blogosphere in the meantime, primarily here and here. If you get terribly bored, you can amuse, or horrify yourself, or deepen your boredom to a sublime intensity, with those comment threads.

Or, for something completely different, I recommend this account of one man's medical triumph.

Introducing: Southwest Baptist Bible College

2006-01-10T22:42:00.002-06:00

The Missouri Baptist Pathway recently published this article in which staff writer Brian Koonce does us the favor of being perfectly frank about why Senior Professor of Biology Dr. Carl Huser is being dismissed from Southwest Baptist University.

That's because the executive board of the Missouri Baptist Convention instructed president Pat Taylor "to stop the teaching of evolution" at SBU.

In the past, the university has reportedly sought to characterize Dr. Huser's dismissal as his "accepting a retirement offer" while assuring the academic community at SBU that there is no threat being offered to their academic freedom, and that Dr. Huser himself, far from being pushed out, is loved and valued by the university.

By contrast, however, with the university administration's account, the news that Taylor had taken "all appropriate measures" to remove Dr. Huser was met by the board with a round of amens and applause.

Though the board was hungry for them, more details weren't possible from Taylor and board president Gary Barkley because "legally, they could say very little," but Barkley assured the board that Taylor had "shown [the executive session of the inter-agency committee] the documents."

But by way of consolation for this lack of reassuring details, Taylor assured the board that all science classes at the university are now being taught with the premise that "the word of God is true," which obviously means "true" as it is interpreted by the men in that board room.

Taylor, understandably, is double-talking, trying on the one hand to convince the academic community at SBU of their freedoms, both religious and academic--and on the other hand to assure the MoBaptist executive board that he's taking stern measures to make sure that those freedoms will be strictly bounded by the one, official, current institutional interpretation of certain hot-button segments of the bible. In the brief text of the article you can sense how the poor man is trying not to tell a lie, even as he is forced to live one, in his professional capacity.

By the way, in speaking of the religious freedoms of the SBU academic community, I'm not talking about the freedom to be a Buddhist or anything. I'm talking about the freedom to be a Baptist. In my day, once you started letting a board tell you how to read the bible, you weren't a baptist anymore. More than that, many baptists argued that once you let anyone but the Holy Spirit tell you how to read the bible, you weren't a Christian anymore. What we have today, by contrast, is institutional control politics. The sound you're hearing is from the other side of Jordan: the denomination's founders beseeching God to spin their corpses in their graves.

There can be no question that the Missouri Baptist leaders have the right to believe as they wish, and to run their institutions as they please (they've taken great pains, and spent a great deal of money, to insure that they have such control, though there is some question, currently being litigated, as to which institutions are theirs, exactly). But there is also no question that they should not be allowed to run an institution this way and still be allowed to call it a "university." The pretense that it's still a university is what's causing all the lying about academic freedom and so forth. I'm sure President Taylor and the rest are no more comfortable with all the dishonesty than I am, so:

New name suggestion: Southwest Baptist Bible College.

At any rate, if you care about whether that place should earn back full rights to its current name, or whether it is to become the other thing, a perfect reflection of the MoBaptist board's sectarian line, don't just sit on your hands. Let somebody know about it. And next time SBU's accreditation comes up, let the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools know about it, too, when they ask for third party comments. (You Baptists might want to let Nashville know about it, too. I have a feeling the MoBaptists and SBU are getting beyond themselves here, treading ground that the national convention might find untenable--even immoral and un-Christian.)

Intelligent Designs

2006-01-04T16:10:00.000-06:00

Halibut swim the storm sewers of this town,
browsing washed-out street-discarded foodstuffs,
eyeing the roots of parking meters,
dodging occasional sudden sweeps of sunlight:
chance reflections from car wheels
blazing through the windows
of the gutters.

The halibut are everywhere. They are
taking over. Not that you’d know this
what with their being strictly
an underground fish here locally.
Yet they are not the force you feel
watching you. They are merely
its sustenance.

Halibut-swollen miscreant, it prowls
dark conduits of paved-over creeks
and sub-pavement concrete sluice-ways;
it has no heart but what it gets
from sub-woofer-transmitted rumblings
of daytime television talk shows;
it has no flesh but what it flays
from roadkill, fresh or not, or retrieves
and reconstitutes from the sweepings
of manicurists’ shops.

Does it fear you as you fear it?
No. Lying in its den at the corner
of Florence and Delmar, it hears you coming,
padding your careful sidewalks, and laughs
--a sound you have generally mistaken
for a neighbor’s car never quite starting.
It makes fun of the way you dress, especially
your turtlenecks.

It will never stop until it finishes this level,
turns this corner, digs to the bottom
of this last plastic trash bin to carefully collect
the stubs of your credit card statements,
the torn bits of the notes from your illicit
and ill-advised and poorly consummated love affair,
which it will then piece and piece together
at its immense leisure.

Children, Pain, Power, War

2005-12-28T13:29:00.000-06:00

It has to happen eventually: flesh a red flower or pink egg where torn or burned, your child cries, goes silent to cry, stops breathing to cry, as if she needs to weep more than breathe, as if she is trying to pass out, to relieve herself of this unbearable consciousness. But you are there to perform the old trick: blow in her face, and then she starts to breathe.

Ruby throws back her head and screams at ceiling or sky--Joel looks me dead in the eye and asks me why I did this, or let it happen, even when I didn’t—it was just him and the vaporizer, the candle, the nail—as he blames me when weather turns cold to his inconvenience, or every time it fails to snow.

I understand. For such pain, it cannot be that nothing is responsible—the wound sheds blood; the mind sheds blame, a pathogen which cannot leave its host unless communicated. Where better to put our blame than where we also brook our blood and tears: upon one who loves us and is near at hand? When there is pain, how formal and cold, how inhuman, how beside the point, is the question of mere causality.

When my child is hurt, if my wife isn’t there yet, I take it out on the toys. Maybe I even choose to sit to hold the screaming child where the toy is in my way just so I can fling it aside. When a child is suffering, what is stupider than a teddy bear?

In Eureka Springs a hippy woman I didn’t know who was at the table next to ours in an “authentic” Mexican restaurant which had no Mexicans, one side of which had no wall but opened into a cave, told me it’s a mistake to deny children their pain, that is, to tell them they’re not hurt (I hadn’t even spoken—I was just holding and rocking, and Joel, who wasn’t walking yet, was just sad, not hurt—maybe it was a thing she thought she’d learned and enjoyed having the chance to say)—and yes, in poetry part of the mission is to face unpleasant facts, such as the one that the dearest, most clever child is seconds, steps away from being merest meat—but in this you’ll see my Genesis delusions from the very top as I blow the life back in—as I toss mortality aside, that plastic stegosaur—as I deny, deny, deny.

Holiday Reading Recommendation

2005-12-23T10:37:00.000-06:00

When we contemplate this most joyous of seasons, certain associations--images, memories, yearnings--dwell at the peripheries of thought, sweetening the whole without intruding, like the quiet company of a dear friend. Among these we number such things as that smell of cold which, more than smell, is the oddly distinct impression of the absence of smell; the feeling of flesh warmed by clothing warmed by fire; and when happening upon certain images from childhood, that combination of crying and laughter occasioned by the memory of holy love, which comes now only when we're caught by surprise, unguarded, childish and meek. And of course, when we think about the light of such spiritual joy together with its surrounding darkness, we can't help but think of that great literary lion, whose work we so closely associate with the holidays. I'm speaking, of course, of Nabokov.

Oh, and oneiric is "of or relating to dreams," and syncope is "the loss of one or more sounds or letters in the interior of a word (as in fo'c'sle for forecastle)" (m-w.com). The latter is a word that has metaphorical potential.

Equal Time

2005-12-19T02:08:00.000-06:00

The person I offended by linking an essay of hers in this post, where I'm afraid I characterized her as an "I'm-about-me" type, has responded here. If you followed that discussion I hope you'll do her the courtesy of catching her side.

Pervious Forum I

2005-12-17T07:57:00.000-06:00

It's all you, baby. This is your forum on this site. Questions, comments, suggestions, promptings, screeds? Platitudes, bromides, battle-cries, sermons, pleas? Say what you will, strike up what conversations you wish, or even get a start on your manifesto, all by posting a comment here.

Speaking of the Rich Young Ruler...

2005-12-06T09:59:00.000-06:00

Here's a link to an excellent rundown of the life and times of St. Nicholas over on Get Religion as a follow-up to our discussion of abundance, poverty, and the Christian way. How does jolly old St. Nicholas strike you as a symbol for giving oneself into poverty?

When Charity Isn't

2005-11-30T11:22:00.000-06:00

A slightly edited version of this article has been published here in the News-Leader. An early, bad draft (thank you, loyal readers, for putting up with my assays and restarts) appears below.

Charitable giving to the poor is falling out of vogue, having dropped to a record low of 8% of total philanthropic giving, according to a recent New York Times article, “What Is Charity?” by Stephanie Strom.

Most “charity” giving goes to health and education, institutions staffed by us, the middle-class and wealthy, and benefiting us, too. Giving to help cure cancer might someday help cure me, or someone I love. Giving to my alma mater benefits me and my people in many ways.

Of the federal budget, more than half goes to Entitlements. But the huge majority of that, almost half the budget, is spent on Social Security and Medicare, the two entitlements that middle-class and wealthy citizens stand to benefit from (and therefore the budget lines you daren’t touch.) A tiny chunk of the budget actually goes to help the poor, and of course a good portion of that goes to middle-class and wealthy program administrators.

A similarly tiny slice of church resources actually goes to human services. The Strom article cites a 1998 study headed by Mark Chaves which found, stunningly, that on average, less than 3% of a given congregation’s annual budget goes to help the poor. The rest is spent on facilities and on outreach, the vast majority of which is very often targeted to us, the middle-class and wealthy.

There’s a trend here, and with sadness I see my place in it. I have used such paltry giving to salve my conscience as to my conduct to the poor. But for all such giving I have in hand a substantial benefit, sometimes to me personally, sometimes to my family and people like me, but it all has had a sense of payment for services rendered: I live in the greatest country in the world, with the best healthcare, resplendent with a great many very well-equipped and well-publicized churches.

Living thus, replete with options, I have complained about being overwhelmed with options, about running out of room to put all my stuff—and about having too much to eat. It’s difficult for me to understand, let alone explain, such sin. I’ve even believed everyone has similar options; that if only they’d shape up, they wouldn’t suffer—even that I was doing the poor a favor by not giving, that their lack would prompt them to do for themselves.

But I claim to be a Christian, and Jesus makes it exceedingly clear, in Matthew 25, for instance, that he judges me in large part precisely by what I've done for the poor. He takes the matter personally. I feel sure he wasn’t impressed by the $10 I shelled out here and there when someone asked, or the money I paid to get into a show, part of which went to some charity.

What we do for the poor in America tends to be visible and impressive (500 turkeys! 1,000 baskets!), but also intermittent, paltry, and diminishing, expressed as a portion of our budget, and especially as a portion of our blessings, and of the overwhelming, heartbreaking need.

There are many ministries and charities that are run with miraculous responsibility and accountability, and which serve the poor, not just by throwing money at them, but by feeding, educating, and doctoring them—even gearing them up for business. Rainbow Network is one such ministry, the one my family has made the commitment of a portion of our income to support. I invite you to consider your own options and obligations. I regret my capacity to miss mine in the blinding light of such wonderful abundance.

Children, Manners, and the B Pretense

2005-11-28T16:29:00.000-06:00

The way the problem is usually laid out is not wrong: parents, particularly affluent ones, solicitous of their children’s whims and desires and apparently heedless of any social obligation with regard to making sure their children behave decently, have created an epidemic of ruined restaurant dinners and art openings, which has led to a growing conviction that the nation is entering a new era of bad manners.

Two recent articles from the New York Times, "Kids Gone Wild", and "Party Gone Bad: Blame the Parents", serve both as further evidence that what we've got here is a full-fledged thing, and that there's a nation-wide cultural and moral deficit being blamed on a segment of the culture, namely certain parents. And on parents, no doubt about it, rests the responsibility for turning things around. But blame and responsibility are two different questions, and there's plenty of blame to go around.

As I’ve observed before, it’s a subject fraught with irony. In the writing on the subject I've seen so far, the irony aimed at whatever camp an author doesn’t happen to be in is right there on the surface, not borne out of sophistication on the subject, but bobbing merrily along on the rising tide of strong feelings. In the “Party Gone Bad” article, for instance, Joyce Wadler has a great time making fun of inconsiderate parents, and she has some disgusting pictures of children eating, such as this one attributed to Getty Images, to show you where she stands on the subject.

The deeper irony, however, appears to escape her completely. I liked this passage quoting a writer/lawyer couple:

"The wife of a partner had a newborn, something like 3 months, and she said, 'Do you think I could bring the baby? I am sure Mr. and Mrs. So and So would like to see her,' " said Ms. Muhlstein, who has five grown children and five grandchildren. "I said I don't think it's acceptable. I felt bad she couldn't quite see it. In this generation mothers think they can't leave their children with a baby sitter."

"I think they are much more protective, much less selfish," Mr. Begley says. "I was quite selfish when I had my children and quite happy to leave them at home. Couldn't wait."

This is clearly not a discussion about the incivility of children, or their parents, at this point. There’s no potential for a 3-month-old to be ill-behaved, for instance. There are lots of good reasons not to want to leave your 3-month-old at home, and to assume, at the very least, that people won't mind that she's at the party. The concern of Ms. Wadler, and of this couple, is not manners, but aesthetics. Babies don’t go with black ties. Or maybe it’s with organdy.

The irony, in case you still need it spelled out, is that all this anxiety about how children might ruin our parties has a very childish air.

What we've really got, maybe, is an epidemic of over-indulged children, now adults, objecting to the presence of over-indulged actual children, as a symptom of their own over-indulgence, no more sophisticated than the 8-year-old who throws a screaming fit when her 4-year-old sibling wants to watch her play Barbies.

That's why in many cases, the objection is not to over-indulged children, but to any children whatsoever, including, sometimes, one's own. It also appears to be blue-state kitsch, to be frank. You'll see a lot of body-effluent-aversion in these articles, whether the effluent is drool, pee, or mother's milk.

Parents can be just as clueless, obviously, and along substantially the same lines. When it comes to the parents, it’s not as simple, of course, as “parents are too selfish,” or as Mr. Begley would have it, “parents aren’t selfish enough.” These contrasting views of what’s wrong with parents today seem inimical, but in fact it seems they coexist quite easily, even in the minds of parents.

Two boxes into which we tuck parents: A. Parents don’t teach their children to behave because doing so is too much trouble, and B. Parents don’t make their children mind because they’re afraid doing so will ruin their children. The truth is, though, that there are plenty of us parents who are secretly A and publicly B. It could be that B exists primarily as the public face of A.

My wife and I have noticed since we became parents and started reading the parenting rules, both the written kind and the implied kind, that many of the rules for how to deal with children are nominally justified by the child’s well-being, but carry a secret, leisure windfall for parents whose main guideline for whether they’re being good parents is how quickly they can get their lifestyle to return to its pre-child state.

Routines, for instance. As far as I’m aware, there’s absolutely no hard evidence at all that having times for everything is any better for children than not having times for everything. I’m positive there’s a ton of “literature,” because I’ve read a great deal of it, but no evidence that I’m aware of. And of course, routines, especially early bedtimes, are great for parents, some of whom are forced into routine because they're trying to put bread on the table, but some of whom merely begrudge the dent in their “me-time” that having a child brings.

That brings us to Ferberizing, the practice of incrementally allowing your child to scream himself to sleep to make bedtime easier, a practice which I won’t go into here: different strokes, and all that. I will say, however, that Ferber himself recanted the oft-repeated rationale behind Ferberizing, which is that singing or rocking your children to sleep keeps them from being independent and strong: Learning to "self-comfort" at bedtime is a first, vital lesson about being yourself. There's absolutely no evidence of that, according to Ferber. It was about parental sanity, in Ferber's day. Sometimes, I'm sure, it still is. But very often it's about parental comfort, convenience, or Sportscenter time; thus the guilt-mitigating rationale, which has somehow been transmogrified by repetition into medical advice, that it's also good for children.

I think it’s our immense capacity for self-justifying pretense, not the merits of Ferber, or restaurant discipline, or party ethics, that’s nailing us, and is going to continue to do so. The B Pretense. If the real problem is that parents place their “me time” and their, uh, aesthetic destiny in front of the well-being of their children, it’s going to be bad if the message comes to be that what’s wrong with America today is a lack of deference to the national values of me-time and personal aesthetics.

Already, I'm sure there are plenty of parents with tons of zeal, energy, and love to invest in the well-being of their children who are parenting by the B pretense because that's what's in the literature, and wondering why their kids are so screwed up despite all their efforts.

Another irony, and the more important one, is that no one seems terribly concerned if these over-indulged or under-parented children are going to wind up cooking meth, or burglarizing old women, or torturing and humiliating each other. What we appear to be worried about, even obsessed with, evidently, is whether we are to continue to get the pleasant restaurant and party experiences we so richly deserve. Something must be done! (The total omission in these discussions of less-affluent children, who are no problem in parties or restaurants because they've never been to either, is something I find totally predictable, and immensely troubling.)

Speaking of overlooked issues, there is bound to be a substantial minority of parents, devoted to their own leisure in that American way, who unfortunately combine the anti-child fervor with the will to train, whose dedication to having quiet children will have them spare no technique to bring their children into line. The very quiet, very disturbed children for whom those techniques included torture of various kinds will be another strange fruit of this new zeal for decorum.

This ugly devotion to what we'll call "leisure rights" is exactly where both the non-parents’ “Let Children Be Better Behaved, or Preferably, Absent” movement, and the parents’ "Parenting for Independence" rationale are coming from. It's thus the origin both of poorly-behaved children and of the people who object to them. The following sentence might be the creed of both the parents who have better things to do than manage their bratty kids and the party-throwers who hate them:

I have my rights, primary among which is the right to enjoy myself. What gives you the right to violate my rights? Not only that, but my leisure is who I am. Asking me to accomodate you not only encroaches on my rights, but upon my identity.

But having good manners means, at its very core, being willing to abrogate my rights in deference to the comfort, convenience, and well-being of others, and embracing this deference as part of my identity. What matters more than my right to this chair is the fact that you might need it more than I do. Merely articulating this simple, golden rule foundation of manners, one sees the impossibility of having manners in America anytime soon. The "Kids Gone Wild" article does a nice job of pointing out the threat that equipping children to win constitutes to our national civility. How likely is it that we'll put any value ahead of winning--the best chair, the most converts, the war--any time soon?

Until then, you won't see a rebirth of manners, but you'll see many rules! In this era of incivility you’ll see a movement to make manners about a return to rules, and you'll also immediately see that this is done not to invite people to become more empathetic and considerate, but to shore up rights, as of partygoers, or parents. The Wadler article is not about manners; it's a battle of the rights, a satire of a parent's view of her rights, and an implicit endorsement of the rights of party-throwers.

But if the real problem is our insistence on our rights, which we see as an extension of that sacred identity--O Holy Me--then these attempts are symptoms of the problem, not solutions. In the current climate, if someone hands you a list of rules, the probability is high that their concern is the prerogatives of Me, and their agenda is control. In truth, any such campaigns are not an endorsement of manners, but another erosion of them.

The merits of any given set of house rules (which everyone has a right to have), and the issue of whether we should obey them or go somewhere else (of course, we should), are a separate matter. But my advice is not to look to anyone for moral guidance, parent or non-parent, preacher, pundit, or panelist, who leads with the rules.

Next time you see a kid roller-skating around a restaurant screaming at his Game-boy, remember that what you're observing is an embodiment of who we are as a culture: dedicated to, defined by, furious in the defense of, our leisure rights. He's just following the creed. His parents hesitate to bring him into line, in part, because they're dedicated to the same proposition, and they don't want to be hypocritical. They live by the same proposition that leads that lady over there to the conviction that the horrid, crying baby has completely ruined this afternoon's Latte experience.

Meanwhile, even though we'd be bucking the tide in several respects, we could all stand to brush up on those distinctly un-American attributes: respect, deference, consideration of others, especially those weaker than ourselves, including our children.

This doesn't seem like nuance to me: teaching children to shut up because mommy's trying to watch the Barefoot Contessa and teaching them to speak nicely because they wouldn't like it if someone screamed at them may have similar results in the short term, but only the latter way is able to provide for a reproducibly civil culture. The first way produces what we have: a culture of people who don't see anything wrong with screaming in defense of peace and quiet.

If, on the other hand, some brave souls manage not merely to endorse the letter of some list of rules, but to train themselves in the spirit of manners, which is simply that we ought to consider others first--eventually, perhaps, some of them might have the joy of watching the self, that paltry thing, dissolve in love. How un-American is that?

The Charity Dilemma

2005-11-18T07:48:00.000-06:00

It may come as a surprise to you, it did to me, that giving for the poor in America has recently hit a record low, having fallen to roughly 8% of total philanthropic giving, according to a recent New York Times article, “What Is Charity?” by Stephanie Strom. The bulk of our giving goes to health and education.

There are many reasons not to give to the poor, most of which come very easily to my mind. In the first place, I count on the government to fulfill my monetary obligation to the greater good through my taxes, which I find to be quite sufficiently high, don’t know about you.

While this is my favorite excuse for not helping the poor, it strikes me as funny the second I say it. I count on the government! To act for the greater good! With my tax money! Isn’t that hilarious?

It’s also misplaced. I drink Greene County water, after all, so it’s deep in my system to understand that my taxes are generally being wasted, so that I expect that such money as may be actually designated to help the poor is mainly blown.

Besides, it would be dishonest of me to simultaneously trust the government to help the poor on my behalf and yet hope that they cut their darned spending, and therefore my taxes.

That’s why I may decide to allow my church giving to do my bit. The problem is, I’ve become increasingly aware that such service as churches do for the poor is primarily of the lip variety. It's astounding how little a slice of church resources actually goes to human services. The Strom article cites a 1998 study by Mark Chaves which found, stunningly, that on average, less than 3% of a church’s annual budget goes to help the poor.

I guess that leaves it up to me to provide for the poor, which is scary, because I’m at my very root a supremely self-indulgent person who has more personal plans for his sweet money than he actually has sweet, sweet money.

At this point, I’m tempted to rationalize, to say that I’ll be doing the poor a favor through my inaction by helping them learn to help themselves.

Except I claim to be a Christian, and Jesus makes it annoyingly clear, in Matthew 25, for instance, that he judges me in large part precisely by what I've done for the poor. He even appears to take it, like, personally, and I have an idea he hasn't been impressed by the $5 I shelled out during the intensely unpleasant United Way drive, or the buck I slipped that bum, or the 39-cent can of baked beans that I didn't even like which I dropped into a box for a discount into a concert.

Now what did I do with that flyer from Rainbow Network?

I'm Coming Out

2005-11-17T10:21:00.000-06:00

There are a number of good reasons to be anonymous on the internet, and a number of good reasons not to be. Suffice it to say that one of the big reasons to be anonymous, namely the ruckus, offense, and other harm your blogging etc. might cause at your workplace, is about to go by the wayside for me, since I'm leaving my comfy state job for the perils of self-employment soon. That's right, I'm taking the economics version of the red pill. Besides, there are academic freedom issues to think about, since for the next few months I teach at Missouri State University.

I enjoy being called Pervious, because it makes me feel like a character in The Matrix, but from now on out it'll cut in half the number of characters you have to type if you just call me Jody. Or Bilyeu. Or Jody Bilyeu. Or Dr. Bilyeu (that one makes me giggle). Or "Hey, fathead." But you doesn't has to call me Pervious.

A Brief Interlude

2005-11-11T15:47:00.000-06:00

For a while I’ve been interested in a brewing debate--no, it's not a debate--centering on children. Yesterday, this article, which is about restaurant owners handling the problem of loud and otherwise unruly children in their places, was the most e-mailed from the New York Times website.

That article prompted a look around the internet. On one hand, it appears that there are plenty of people who just don’t like children, per se, others who simply say that children aren’t for them, or to say it a different way, that having children is morally wrong. There are plenty of childless people who feel discriminated against because they think it's not fair that a new mother should get leave to pursue her hobby, and they're not entitled to get leave to pursue theirs. Or maybe it's because they're mad that they don't get a coloring page when they go to TGIFriday.

On the other hand, I consider distinct from the foregoing groups the many, many people, parents and non-parents alike, who object to what they see as a loss of civility and an inappropriate sense of entitlement from a certain kind of parent, whose children not only tend to go apeshit in restaurants, but show every evidence of growing a lack of regard for others so deep as to be destructive and even deadly, once they're old enough to slip out of screaming range of their inattentive parents.

The--not a debate--the "thing," let's call it, butts in to a lot of issues: there are people who suspect that people who advocate abortion rights do so because they don’t like children. Meanwhile, there are plenty of abortion rights advocates who suspect that pro-lifers are really just natalists.

It would be easy to say that people who bother themselves to advocate or defend a child-free lifestyle are self-centered. Google on “I don’t like children” and you’ll call up a number of artsy-fartsy, goth, and I’m-about-me types who appear to enjoy the reaction they get when they say “I don’t like children,” which they apparently seek out the opportunity to do on a regular basis. If the idea that such people are selfish is a mistake, it’s one that’s based on such remarks as this from a member of No Kidding!, a San Francisco-based support group for the child-free, or “CF”:

My husband and I are selfish with our time," said Roberts-Ohr of San Francisco No Kidding! "We like to spend our time together. Is there anything wrong with that? I think it's kind of a waste of time for us to have to defend ourselves.

The full article can be found here.

All these issues seem to come together when a kid screams in a restaurant and her parents talk louder so as not to interrupt their conversation. It’s a thing, as I've so eloquently said, and I suspect you’ll be hearing more about it soon in a forum near you.

My purpose is to bring this thing to you as such (I almost called it a debate again), and to offer the following observation of a certain paradox: gross self-indulgence is at the root of both the radical child-free mindset and the middle-class under-parenting tradition that helps fan the anti-child flames. Both groups put their lifestyle preferences ahead of the well-being of the culture and its future, and both opt not to parent, and to avoid the company of children, because it and they are too much trouble. Maybe that's why it's no debate: both sides agree on the core issue.

Shrek as Phantasy, Part I

2005-11-09T13:55:00.000-06:00

In many ways, Shrek is an excellent piece of entertainment for the whole family. I appreciate its irreverence, its difference, the credit it implicitly gives the intelligence of children, and its anti-kitsch stance. I appreciate its ostensible message, which has been almost universally praised among people who take time to discuss the movie, a message which has been summarized by one reviewer as “beauty comes from within.” The movie also has a rocking soundtrack. I enjoy hearing my six-year-old boy singing the operative line from a piece of classic Joan Jett: “I don’t give a damn ‘bout my bad reputation.”

But Shrek will work well as a phantasy übertext precisely because it’s so good in some respects, and because its ostensible message is so different from its phantasy content. What I’m concerned with, then, is not what the movie is supposed to be about, but how it really works. But in this post we’ll begin by reviewing the surface content of the film.

The ostensible Shrek itself is interesting. The movie announces itself in its opening sequence as not just an anti-fairytale, but an anti-Disney, i.e. anti-corporate, film. It first appears that the movie will open with a storybook montage a la Cinderella. But thanks to advance publicity, we know we’re not to be convinced by this ploy, and we wait for the Mike Myers voiceover to spring the trap. He does: we hear him break the reverent voiceover patois with a mighty laugh, and see a green hand rip pages from the book. As our new ogre friend emerges from the outhouse we adults understand that he has wiped his ass with the pages of the book, thereby setting the subversive tone of the movie and announcing its antiestablishment content. This is to be an animated film which rejects convention and embraces the real, which endorses the world-wise, even unto the scatological, and rejects fairytale delusion. We’re entering a fairytale set, sure enough, but one upon which some brilliant soul has unleashed a rock and roll icon-buster.

It is this rejection of the false and otherworldly and engagement of the real and now which Shrek the ogre is to be an emblem of. We understand that we are watching a fairytale told from the point of view of the traditional villain, who, as we’ve already anticipated, isn’t such a bad guy after all. He’s ugly and scary, but in a lovable, accessible way, such that the people who fear him are never anything for us but an object of ridicule. Thus, we’re also watching a critique of our beauty culture and of our body image obsession. In the first five minutes of the movie, we’ll be able to favorably compare our antihero with the beautiful yet vapid and ineffectual—in some cases even comatose—heroes and heroines of traditional fairy tales.

Shrek realigns fairytale landscape to simultaneously reflect and comment upon our own. The people in charge here are not regal and noble; they’re ridiculous, egocentric, delusional power-grubbers who are messing with the good people, namely Shrek himself, but also, curiously, other denizens of the fairytale universe, who we eventually come to see as representing those of us who are unique and “other” vis à vis the norms set down by the idiots in power. The followers of these idiots are the normal people of the film, rendered almost indistinguishably from one another in CGI terms as timid, nondescript ciphers who ineffectually and unenthusiastically enact the will of the power elite, in this case a dimunitive, demonic, dishonest noble named Farquaad (voiced by John Lithgow). But these normal, corporate minions nonetheless share responsibility for the alienation and isolation of us, the unique, the ones who are unafraid of their gifts, the ones who are self-actualized. We have been ghettoized into a swamp. Shrek's ambition to empty his swamp of us is also, then, an ambition to free us.

At first we had thought that Shrek’s isolation was something in which he, and we, were to delight, but we are eventually led to understand that this was bravado, that he’s actually been deeply hurt by his isolation—this discrimination. His tenderness on that score is one of his “layers." The fact that the people by whom he feels rejected are intrinsically unattractive and morally reprehensible does not raise itself as a contradiction: to be rejected, even for difference that amounts to superiority, hurts.

When Shrek finds love he does so in a rousing endorsement of the power of love to transcend appearances, and when we discover that the true self of Fiona, his beloved, is to be her ogre alter ego, we are thrilled. Ogres are an emblem of authenticity, of genuine people. Normalcy, even beauty itself, is a symptom of having been co-opted into a corrupt system and world view. The ending of Shrek is a triumph of the genuine, in praise of which the good-hearted sidekick Donkey reprises a gospel-ized version of “I’m a Believer.” The fact that this anti-fairytale has such a typically fairytale ending, the text of which, "I believe," is taken straight out of Peter Pan (we're even invited to chant along), may be our first clue that something else is going on here.

To be continued…

Phantasy

2005-11-02T08:48:00.000-06:00

There are fantastic elements in many sorts of media; there are entire genres of media devoted to fantasy forms; there are internal fantasies of our own making that have nothing to do with media; there's a certain interplay between personal fantasies and media. Each of these categories is entirely distinct from the others, but they all pass under the name of "fantasy." We need a new terminology.

For fantastic elements in media, as elves, unicorns, flying folks, women who want their men to watch more sports, I think we can safely use "fantasy." For personal fantasies, I think "delusion" will cover us, though for many personal fantasies that's a bit strong. But for the final thing, the one I want to talk about, I'm at a loss. So I've done as I said I wouldn't, and resorted to respelling to make this final distinction. Phantasy, as opposed to fantasy, springs from an interplay between consumer and medium. It is the use by consumers of certain media to foster delusion; it is the exploitation of our delusions (and, I think, of their own) by makers of media. Phantasy is a sort of media pharmaceutical for our perceived deficiencies.

I don't think simple wish fulfillment rises to the level of phantasy. For instance, me personally? I think it would be great to be able to talk to animals, and I'm gratified in some sense by the many dozens of instances of media fulfillments of that fantasy: Eliza Thornberry, Dr. Doolittle, Aquaman, and so on. But I don't have any serious belief that I can chat with the beasts. Perhaps there are those who do have such a belief; but that would be different. The other night I heard my brother call himself "the cat whisperer," but he was just being funny.

I don't see any reason why there couldn't be escapist fantasies that weren't phantastic, but I'd be surprised not to see some phantastic elements creeping in to most instances of escapist fiction.

As opposed, however, to my desire to fulfill harmless or whimsical wishes, or to get away from reality for a couple hours, I am genuinely and deeply frustrated by my lack of power and control over almost everything. The idea that I should have power and control over almost everything is obviously a grandiose, self-centered delusion that I should get a handle on. But if I were inclined to use media as a place to indulge and build upon my Pervious-centric universe--man, I'd sure have plenty to pick from, though maybe I wouldn't go to fantasy genre for my phantasy fix. See? And yes, in case you were wondering, I think children are plenty prone to phantasy.

Power, control, even dominion. Romance, sex, conquest. The immense intrinsic value of me, once it manages to shake free of the fetters imposed by the many stupidities of my many detractors. All of these are delusions which I've indulged through media at some point in my life. But it ain't just me. My original statement should have been that phantasy, not fantasy, appears to me to account for the great popularity of our most lucrative media forms, and especially of the most popular instances of those forms.

I should also say from the outset that I think phantasy is almost always unacknowledged. In that sense, I'm glad that it's a portmanteau of "phantom" and "fantasy." I believe it to be subverbal in origin, even limbic. I think both the makers and consumers of phantastic media are only dimly aware, if at all, of the source of their phantasy gratifications.

I've compared it to a pharmaceutical, but it's no opiate, no preserver of any status quo. It's a player, a mover, a shaker, a destroyer of lives.

But this use of media is a complicated thing, as I see it, in its origins, forms and consequences. I want to keep these posts short and wait for feedback, so I'll know where I'm being unclear. I'm aware that these are thesis statements that haven't been supported yet, but I hope to get there. In the unlikely event that I've been clear so far, I'm hoping my friends with expertise in communications theory will tell me if I'm just reiterating something everybody knows. That not being the case, more later.

Fantasyland

2005-10-29T08:38:00.000-05:00

In preparation for this series of reviews of children’s media, I thought it might be a good idea to come clean as to certain parts of my perspective on the enterprise. It’s impossible for me to think about any sort of mass media without thinking about fantasy. To sum up, there is a core group of fantasies that drives the most popular media forms, all the more so in the most popular instances of those forms. While the media fantasies of adults and of children have some distinct features, all, at least by my definition, are intrinsically attractive, and a great many are dangerous, either inherently or as applied.

I'm not suggesting that we should do away with fantasy. For one thing, it may be impossible to make a children’s television program that doesn’t contain some sort of fantasy component. Even if it were possible, it would be immensely unprofitable. It appears that children like programs in direct proportion to how much fantasy (of a certain sort) that they contain. Whether children should watch television at all is a question we could take up. But if you concede that certain kinds of television (or books, or feature films) are good for kids, and if you concede that keeping children’s attention is a necessary condition of any good such programs do, then it appears you’ve entered a sort of devil’s bargain, in which you balance the utility of fantasy as an attention-getting device to further children's education, and on its own merits as entertainment, over against its potential for harm, including intentional exploitation. Then, too, perhaps some sorts of fantasy are perfectly benign.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. What is fantasy? The desirable impossible.

There are many examples of children’s fantasy that it’s hard to see as anything but perfectly benign. The one that leaps to mind is "Sesame Street." There’s a great deal of education that goes on in a given hour of "Sesame Street," and of course a great deal of fantasy as well. The fantasy of "Sesame Street" is something along these lines: Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world populated by furry, lovable monsters whose sole purpose in life is to love and entertain me? What few grownups there be in this world, let them be gentle, amusingly incompetent, bemused, and musical!

Yet even Sesame Street isn’t completely benign. And then there’s Power Rangers. But that’s enough for now. This is a time for preview, not for treatment. I hope to give Sesame Street and Power Rangers a fuller going over later, and to keep these remarks in brief installments so as to not ask too much of your time—though I hope to ask for a great deal of your thought.

In C.S. Lewis’s novel The Great Divorce the common attribute of all the visitors to the plain of heaven who choose not to go to the mountain, toward the dawn, which is Reality, is that they have fantasies about themselves, their jobs, their families, their religion, their art, which make Reality, gorgeous as it is, unbearable to them. As a consequence they are lost in an untenable world of their own making. They themselves are not real; they are mere phantoms, awash in despair, mourning the continual thwarting of their impossible expectations, to which they cling as such a comfortable, defining part of themselves. Sound like anyone you know?

Lewis, whose imagined afterworld is much more a parable for this life than conjecture about the next, suggests that the main reason people don't go to heaven is that they find their hell, miserable as it is, preferable. It's theirs. It's in their control. It's amenable. And it's about them. This conundrum seems apt to me as applied to mass media. Why else would "Freaks and Geeks" be off the air and "That 70s Show" still going strong?

I consider our capacity for fantasy—for occupying a world of our own making rather than the one that is—to be the great nemesis of growth and of joy. Public fantasies such as those found in mass media can be accompanied by a vast range of harm including the horrible deaths of a great many people. Fantasy may have its uses. But given that we're going to be keeping fantasy around our children, we should handle it like the powerful thing it is--sort of like rods of charged uranium.

Finally, and this may seem strange given what I've said above, I won't be advocating censorship, protectionism, or even vague fussiness as regards determining what children watch. (I'm not for abolishing nuclear power, either.) One feature of fantasy that I feel strongly about is that it's not going anywhere, because it's a part of us. As such, it needs to be not denied (might as well deny your limbic system) nor abolished (the idea that we can do so has itself been a damaging fantasy) but continually engaged, examined, understood, and hopefully, controlled.

In Which I Find What My Special Purpose Is For

2005-10-25T02:32:00.000-05:00

In place of the old quote from The Jerk under the main web title above you'll find new fine print describing this blog, announcing that it is now "a review for adults of children's media, and of mainstream media with children in mind."

This decision came as a surprise to me, which is strange considering I'm the one who made it, but it came upon me with the sort of necessity I'm trying to learn not to resist.

Without giving the history of this decision, I'd like to offer a brief justification, as if one was looked for or needed.

In the first place, I consume a great deal of children's media, and appear to think about it a great deal more than most people--certainly a great deal more than much of it will bear. This is a job I've already gone to school for merely by being an intellectually inquisitive, culturally open, morally invested, and extremely involved parent, and for which it appears I'll be in training for at least the next half-dozen years or so, at which point presumably I'll be ready to take on "juvenile" and "teen" media. Also in terms of my qualifications there's the Ph.D., which I feel some vague societal pressure to put to good use.

In the second place, as a writer I'd like to think I'm filling a need, rather than being just another American blowhard expressing himself. Of course there's room for more thoughtful, moral explorations of the world around us, but there are plenty of capable people already doing that along all the lines I care about, including one or two straight out of my spiritual gene pool, and who, as far as the world around us goes, appear to me to have a better handle on it and better means of expressing their take on it than I. But according to a blogger search, there are exactly zero people offering critiques of children's media (please check me on this), a subject which seems to me to be too important to ignore. I'm aware that not all, perhaps very few, non-psycho parents have the time, or the inclination, to watch what their children watch. Maybe I'll have something to offer.

Finally, and this is just me personally (I love that phrase), for many reasons I need a focus outside myself to keep my head on straight, even here in the blogosphere. I think I'll write better and be more useful if the ostensible focus of whatever I'm doing is set down before me, and apart from me, even somewhat arbitrarily.

As for the second part of the description claiming that this is also a review of "mainstream media with children in mind"--I could say that becoming a parent gave me a new perspective on popular culture that amounted to a watershed moment for me; that this parental perspective, offered by someone who's not scared or socially conservative for its own sake, might be something we could stand a little more of; that keeping children somewhere in one's mind as one consumes media for adults is a way of remembering the true stakes of things, and therefore of tuning one's b.s. meter that much more finely. However that may be, I'm pretty sure I'm going to want to review some grown-up stuff from time to time.

If you've made it this far, you might want to help me consider the question of whether to rename this here blog, or leave this one alone and migrate the media stuff to a new one with a catchy yet self-descriptive title that you can help me come up with. Any thoughts?

Who Would Jesus Bomb?

2005-10-18T10:02:00.000-05:00

A blogger friend has quoted some favorite columnists on the general subject of politics and the justice, morality, and Christianity of the war. See that post here. Typically, my response outgrew the polite limits of a comment window. My patience-taxing reply follows.

"Who Would Jesus Bomb?" is as fair a question as, say, "Who Would Jesus Picket?" or "About Whom Would Jesus Make a Michael Moore Documentary?" But the answer to all these questions, it seems clear to me, is "Not a soul."

As to the one example of a vaguely violent direct action on the part of Christ, the purging of the Temple: Jesus went there in person, looked people in the eye, discussed the problem, and took authoritative action. He neither killed nor harmed a single person. We have no evidence that he harmed so much as a pigeon, no evidence that he made any permanent change to the temple trade (it persists to this very day), and we have on the other hand the attestation of scripture that he was signing his own death warrant in the process. The fact that he was assuring his destruction and ending what appear to be the quite credible hopes of his apostles for a political victory seemed to dissuade him not at all. An Apostle Karl Rove would not have smiled upon that course of action. He would have been then, as he is now, a big old Peter.

Taking a tack that you're positive will lead to your own destruction would be a terrible idea for a government, or a radical political movement, (or a church?), but of course destruction of one's self is central to Christian redemption; surrendering one's life for others is the highest attainment of the faith. Thus we summarize the fundamental incompatibility between an individual's Christian faith and all political striving, whether of governance, movement, or propaganda. The goal of the first is surrender; of the second, to win.

Soldiers in battle obviously reach the heights of sacrifice, but not insofar as they're advancing some policy, not even the noble cause of freedom--they reach the pinnacle of love when they lay down their lives for their people, especially their comrades. In the same battle, charging the same sniper perch, one soldier could die senselessly, proving his manhood, for instance, right next to another soldier whose loving death will be sung in Glory. But this is a rough hypothetical. How each soldier dies is quite beyond our capacity to judge. Such a judgment, which is for the Almighty if he even cares to make one, is completely independent of the justice of the war in which the soldier fought. For this reason, soldiers who lay down their lives or even put their lives at hazard in even a bad cause on our behalf have no less claim to our unalloyed gratitude, veneration, pity, and love. Jesus sees them as people, not as the nub ends of some cause.

Because Jesus loves those people, and the people we bombed, to say that Jesus is opposed to war is to state the obvious--but I imagine Jesus has cause to be opposed to most government work and political movements for reasons we'd have trouble fathoming. "Which policy would Jesus endorse?" We can assume that Jesus is opposed to crucifying people. That doesn't mean, obviously, that he couldn't arrange a triumph thereby. It just wasn't a triumph that any human had the power to anticipate, and that few of us, even Christians, understand even now except occasionally and dimly.

What it boils down to is the hypocrisy levels your columnists are taking on such protesters, about which they're right on the money. These aren't people who, generally speaking, have any credibility as followers of Jesus or exponents of the Way. Their concern in this case is to ridicule Bush's hypocrisy, and in so doing, as things so often fall out, they make a better case for their own. But your columnists also appear to take the central questions, of the morality of violence and the spiritual disposition of enemies in combat, too lightly, if they even care to look at them at all beyond turning them back on their opponents. Maybe after all this is a lesson about the inaudibility of true words spoken in the wrong spirit.

Just my read, you understand: a Christian who wishes to discuss the President's spirituality needs to take that matter up with the President in person, having first established the sort of relationship with him that would make such an intrusion something other than a horribly presumptious waste of time; or the most grotesque sort of politics. It's the sort of game you lose by playing. The fact that even the idea of such a course of action is so politically and socially and in many other ways ludicrous supports, rather than belies, its Christianness.

What a Day

2005-10-17T07:46:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday: Bright blue October weather, many friends and family gathered and looking splendid whether they were decked out in their Sunday overalls or bridesmaid dresses, Uncle Dick's pasture looking like some rich person's lawn, miraculously free of cow-pies, a beautiful tented pavilion equipped with every necessity and festooned with much finery, grace and love in the very weather, and right in the middle of it all my dear brother married a most wonderful woman, supplying me with a new sister and the potential for new nieces and nephews. Later that evening, at the less-Baptist reception, we all got our freak on to the sweet sounds of the Bel Airs, who never sounded better thanks to our friend Roger Koenigseder donating his immaculate sound services. I'm not done yet, but hope this'll hold you for now. A photograph of this anonymous family was captured on their way to the chivaree. Spread the happy.

Poem of the Day:Bale Jumping

2005-10-11T15:18:00.000-05:00

One summer Sunday afternoon after the baler
had scooped the rows of dry fescue
and pounded and tied them into square bales
the size of a piano bench (not as tall)
my cousin Shawn and I got it in our heads
we should jump them all, two hundred or so,
hurdle-style, running the row around the field
as the baler had, a spiral turning in.
Maybe it was an Olympic year.
So off we went. We were maybe nine.

I don’t even remember sweating as a kid,
much less thinking, saying, “It’s too hot
to be outside.” Such a declaration
our energy was it couldn’t plausibly
become a question.
But don’t let me romanticize childhood.

For instance, with regard to heat:
the more you grow, the more insides you have
proportionally to your surface area,
since your surface—the expanding, sagging
expanse of your increasingly ratty
and strangely-haired flesh—

increases as the square of your diameter
(which you’ll measure how, you complex solid?)
while your volume, all the interior matter
your failing, flaking skin must try to cool,
increases as your diameter’s cube.

It doesn’t seem right, but there you see it before you,
the plain outcome of simple arithmetic:
a modest upward line of blue, for what’s without;
an exponential red ellipse, for what’s within;
the same growth of the same being over the same time,
but opening forever. The question is
on which track the soul runs.

Tell Me the Story of That

2005-10-09T22:45:00.000-05:00

My wife is obsessed with a bronze death mask of Napoleon that used to hang at the Art Institute in Chicago. We've been to this great museum three or four times, and every time, for a good quarter of an hour, she would stand in front of this mask, which used to hang in a little nook off an exhibit room, and remark, several times, how he was more handsome than she expected and that she could see how a man like that might take over Europe. I suspect she wasn't saying everything that was on her mind about the little feller, but what do I know? It turned out the mask was in storage on our last trip, after having been exhibited there for as long as the information person could remember. But at the time this story starts we didn't know it had been moth-balled; we were still in the process of looking for the mask when something caught my daughter's eye.

It's strange what stops you in a museum. To the left is a photograph of that painting, one of the two or three things that stopped the three-year-old on our last trip to the Art Institute. The Mrs. was holding the girl when the painting first hit its mark, but my dear wife quickly handed her off to me and said to the boy, the five-year-old Power Ranger maven: "Son, let's go look at the swords!" Chicken. That's when the girl's request became my responsibility: "Tell me the story of that."

I got one look at the painting and took the matter straight on: "They have some pretty dishes here. We'll go look at those."

But my baby girl has this thing she does when you're holding her and she wants to direct your attention. She grabs your face in both hands and steers it--she's really strong--to the thing she wants you to look at. Tired, maybe, of competing for our attention, and of being uncertain that she has it when we pretend to give it, she's devised a solution: the face goes, the attention follows. It's surprising what control of you a three-year old can have when she has you by the face. It must be something like what a horse feels when it's being reined hard. She won't settle for partial attention, either. If you move your face, even to address her, she steers it right back to the subject. She doesn't always point you absolutely accurately, so you wind up trying to examine the thing out of the corner of your eye to satisfy whatever her point is as you're listening to your neck tendons creak.

No, you can't turn your body toward the thing, because she's not that great at direction, like her mother, and she'll yank your face all the harder. Resist her, and the fingernails come into play. It's best just to hold still and let her finish.

It turns out the picture was by a guy named Guido Reni, Renaissance painter. I pretended I thought that's what she was asking and started that story. "Well, this guy got some paint and a big piece of stiff cloth called canvas..."

She gave my face a little extra muscle and hit the words a little harder. "No, tell me the story of that."

Well, there's a story in the bible about this good man named John the Baptist who was Jesus' cousin. When John was a baby in his mommy's tummy and his mommy went to see Jesus' mommy when Jesus was in her belly, John jumped around for joy in his mommy's tummy because he was so happy to be in the same room with Jesus. He just kicked and kicked.

No, the story of that. She's letting me feel the fingernails, kind of liking showing the horse the whip.

All right. So there's another story in the bible that when John grew up a beautiful woman named Salome had a kind of mean mom who wanted John dead because...she didn't like him. So when Salome danced in front of the king she did such a good job that the king swore he would give her anything up to half his kingdom. Salome asked her mom what to ask for, and the mom said, "the head of John the Baptist on a platter." So Salome said, "I want the head of John the Baptist on a platter, right now." This made the king sad but he had his men chop off John's head anyway, and there it is on that platter. That's Salome. That's probably her mom peeking from behind the curtain. A platter is just a big plate.

We sort of semi-decided a long time ago that we weren't going to lie to the children and so far it's worked okay. Will you think less of me when I say that "There's a story in the bible..." is something of a disclaimer? That, while I want the kids to know the bible stories, I'm trying not to press any claims on the children, even at this early stage, about the historicity of those stories?

Yes, I left out the part about Herodias having been doing his brother's wife. But there was already quite enough complication in the story, and that particular complication certainly didn't explain the scene we were looking at. Did the king want John dead or not? The Bible says he did, and that's why John was in prison; but then it says he liked listening to John when he hauled him up from the dungeon, and that it distressed him to give the order but he gave it anyway because he didn't want to look bad in front of his guests having sworn an oath and all.

Yes, we lie to the children about Santa Claus.

So when Ruby's inevitable second question came: "Why?" All I could come up with was:

"I don't know."

"Tell me the story of that again."

Power. Attraction. Ego. Delusion. Deception. Death. Yeah, okay: Regeneration. The story never gets old. Ruby had me tell the story of John's beheading (and prenatal meeting with Jesus) a dozen times or more that day, and if I tried to leave something out, she'd make me go back and fill in the missing parts.

It's funny what stops you in a museum. Even the pile of candy in the floor has a grim yet hopeful story. The death mask, which itself tells a story, had its own bizarre history--someone even wrote a book about it.

I still don't have any answers, but I do know this: the dishes don't stand a chance.

Poem of the Day:October 2005

2005-10-07T16:04:00.000-05:00

It’s finally cold.
The last live oak in City Park has surely died and
nobody reads anything good anymore
and the last time anybody saw Texas
it was drifting into Cuba.

This is another way of saying
help me, or help someone, or help
yourself to this inexhaustible selection of delectable
Hostess Bodies.

I will now go to the basement and
squat down with a beer
and one by one put each nail
exactly where the instructions say
it will draw the most
mercy.

We Don't Say That

2005-10-06T13:19:00.000-05:00

It's fair to object to the phrase "God damn" on any number of grounds. In the first place, it's a cliche, so it's to be avoided in careful writing for the same reason you might avoid "more than one way to skin a cat." "God damn" is automatic language, uttered without any more thought of calling down divine condemnation than you have of removing a feline pelt when you speak of skinning cats. It's a vague expression of anger, or mild annoyance, or whatever; in almost every use I can remember hearing, it seems to be used with no thought to its lexical content.

In that sense, the phrase is used "in vain," a fact that for many Christians calls to mind the third commandment (depending on how you count), about not taking Yahweh's name in vain.

This is quite different from the practice of still others who avoid any use of the divine name not explicitly religious based on their interpretation of that commandment.

But if "God damn you" is to be sanctioned as an empty expression containing the divine name, shouldn't the phrase "God bless you" be sanctioned on the same grounds? The fact that the former phrase is taboo and the latter is not argues that on some level, it is the negative content of the phrase that activates the taboo, rather than the empty or casual use per se. Value neutral uses, such as "Oh God" or "Dear Lord" appear not to receive the same sort of sanction as "God damn," even when the use of these also lexically empty phrases appears to be negative.

This leaves aside the question of whether automatic prayers, as for bedtime and meals, or prayers that one's heart isn't really in, aren't also instances of taking the name in vain.

Be that as it may, it appears to be the vestiges of its former content, "May God damn you/him/her/it/them," rather than the mere fact of invoking the name, that makes "God damn" taboo and "God bless you" or "Now I lay me down to sleep" permissable, though it might be argued that the third commandment draws no distinctions concerning the tenor of the use; depending on the beliefs of the taboo-holder, either the empty use or the mere use ought to be enough.

But what if "God damn it" or "God damn you" is considered with its lexical content restored? That is, as prayers that God may damn a person, place, or thing?

Are such scruples derived from scripture, or from some other place? The scriptural picture is mixed. Here is a sampling of some zesty biblical requests of the deity for the destruction or damnation of enemies:

Psalm 55:15
Let death take my enemies by surprise; let them go down alive to the grave, for evil finds lodging among them.

Psalm 68:2
As smoke is blown away by the wind, may you blow them away; as wax melts before the fire, may the wicked perish before God.

Jeremiah 17:18
Let my persecutors be put to shame, but keep me from shame; let them be terrified, but keep me from terror. Bring on them the day of disaster; destroy them with double destruction.

Jeremiah 18:23
But you know, O LORD, all their plots to kill me. Do not forgive their crimes or blot out their sins from your sight. Let them be overthrown before you; deal with them in the time of your anger.

Jeremiah 20:16
May that man be like the towns the LORD overthrew without pity. May he hear wailing in the morning, a battle cry at noon.

And lest we think it's only the old testament that violates the "God damn" taboo, here's Paul:

Galatians 1:9
As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!

But then there's the "bless, and do not curse" vein in the teachings of Jesus, also echoed in James (thanks, Benihana).

Could it be, then, that the use of "God damn" is scriptural, but unchristian?

A cyberfriend, Coreman, has suggested that such curse passages aren't didactic, perhaps instead normative. The simpler explanation, to me, is that the Bible is of two minds on the subject; there's the Jesus way and the Jeremiah way, and maybe the Jesus way and the Paul way. Based on my reading of the rest of Galatians, I think there's a good chance that the competitor preacher on whom Paul calls down eternal condemnation may be Peter.

It appears to me that the Bible trumps and contradicts itself on several quite important subjects, not accidentally or by a failure of design, but openly, sometimes even cheerfully. This is not to say that there's not a clear spiritual path to be derived from the Bible on this or any other subject; I believe there is. What it does say is that the Bible models spirited, even vituperative disagreement on important subjects, and thereby forces cultures or individuals to sort things out. That would be great, were it not for the existence of groups who pretend there's nothing to sort out, and thereby forego that process of discernment in favor of a delusion of unanimity and certainty.

At any rate, Jeremiah presumably knew the ten commandments, and unless we're prepared to say that one of the great books of biblical prophecy violates one of those commandments, it appears that our aversion to "God damn" isn't based on the commandments, but on some subsequent superstition. However, while there is a clear Old Testament and Pauline precedent for calling down destruction and damnation on the heads of our enemies, the activity also seems to be clearly unchristian. Biblical, but unchristian.

To my mind, it's a torturous, interesting, instructive path we navigate on the way to the conclusion: "We don't say that." Pretending the path is broad turns a sensible prohibition into a senseless superstition.

Reading Request

2005-10-05T11:00:00.000-05:00

Hey, would you please read this so we can talk about it?

Come on; I said "please."

If you don't want to comment online, we can meet after the thing by the deal where we saw that guy that one time.

How "Christian" Is My Church?

2005-10-02T07:57:00.000-05:00

Is your church not Christian enough? Too Christian? Just about right? Isn't it about time you had a way to find out? Well, now there's a clear, simple way. This easy formula for determining whether a given church is "Christian," and to what extent, was designed by a Christian, so it applies specifically to that faith, though I don't know why a person couldn't apply the principles here to other faiths, or civic organizations, or whatever. Just have fun, and good luck!

Here's the formula. You can use annual, monthly, or weekly budgets, but remember: compare apples to apples!

Take your church's current budget for building and grounds, utilities and maintenance, staff salaries, worship, preaching, entertainment, evangelism, and so forth (b),

Subtract from this the amount Jesus authorizes Christians to spend on such things: (0),

Subtract from this the amount of money your church gives to causes Jesus might recognize as Christian, such as meals, clothes, homes, medicine, and education for the poor; prison and hospital visits; and so on (y).

The result (!) is your church's raw aggregate evil.

b-0-y=!

(Why put the Jesus part in there if the amount is 0, and therefore doesn't affect the outcome? You should so totally not worry about this! Jesus often has that effect on church business! It's no biggie! If it bothers you to think about it, you can totally ignore this part of the formula!)

Take your church's Christian spending, y, and divide that by your church's raw aggregate evil, !. Expressed as a percentage, the quotient will tell you how Christian your church is (x).

y/!=x

If x is <10% your church is Evil (yeowch!);
If x is 11-50% your church is UnChristian (whoops!);
If x is 51-80% your church is Mildly Christian (congratulations!);
If x is >80% your church is Christian! (whoa, there!)

For fun, try the formula on your whole denomination! (Methodists: Good luck finding the salaries and infrastructure in the budget!)

At first glance, it may not seem like such a great idea to go to an Evil or UnChristian church. Remember, however, that these Evil and UnChristian churches are often sooo cool and neat! Lots of times, they're super great! They have lots of fun activities for the kids, to keep them out of your hair while you rock out to the worship band! They have a really great gym and workout equipment that's better than the health club's! They have, like, a Starbucks right there in the building!

Now, if you want to boost your membership rolls at church, it can't have escaped you that you're going to need to get that Christian quotient down! (Duh!) If you're worried about whether your church is too Christian, remember: work the formula. Churches make a big deal out of their "Christian" work, but that doesn't mean they devote a lot of resources to it!

All this raises the question: is Christianity really all that important to the life of a really great church? What about your needs? What about your church's ability to make you feel comfortable, secure, at home, wanted? To feed your soul? Isn't that what's important? You be the judge. Everyone's tolerance for self-indulgence and selflessness is different, so adapt the results to your needs, find your own balance, and we'll see you next Sunday!

A Proposal to Sanctify Marriage

2005-09-30T08:44:00.000-05:00

Let's suppose we make it so that civil unions may be obtained by any two people stupid enough to want to make a permanent commitment to each other; these unions could be a state's acknowledgment of a marriage, obviously, (the new, more sacred marriage, as explained below) but would also allow any other two people who want to throw their lots together to do so.

A sister and a brother holding out on the family farm; two really close but non-boinking business parters; couple-a gay guys: all candidates for civil unions.

Is there any particular reason sex, or the promise thereof, should be at the center of all unions the state ordains? Why should the state be in the business of making such judgments? Should the state be able to deny unions based on the impossibility of procreation? That is, centering "family" as the purpose of union?

If so, shouldn't the state bar unions not only of queers, but also of the impotent, frigid, and otherwise indisposed?

Shouldn't anybody be able to get a union who's willing to make a permanent commitment to another human being, sex be damned?

But what of the sanctity of marriage? The new non-marriage concept of a civil union would bolster it, big time, regardless of how a given group defines sanctity: We're kicking the state out of the marriage business altogether. Marriage is up to God, and the state doesn't get to do God.

If somebody wanted a marriage--which the state would now acknowledge as a sacred institution, and as such completely outside its purview or authority either to define, ordain, or deny--those somebodies would go to their church, whatever it is, for that marriage.

Each sect or denomination would decide who gets one of their marriages, and which marriages of other churches to acknowledge, and get their rocks off, we may presume, in being able to make and enforce such judgments.

But of course churches would have no authority to forbid or ordain civil unions. But why would they want to, if they got the exclusive right to define marriage?

People thus married in the eyes of their God would not be constrained to form a civil union, though it would be easy for them to do so.

Atheists, etc., could have a service in front of a judge to solemnize vows, but this would be a union, not a marriage. Unless the atheists formed a church.

Your thoughts?

Oh, and Peter Cook, Lord love you, R.I.P.

America, Clean Your Butts!

2005-09-29T13:59:00.000-05:00

Milan Kundera defined "kitsch" as "the denial of shit." I'll leave it to you to figure out who he is, why he said that, and where. For now, let me just say, he was right, and kitsch is bringing you down, and the nation with you.

Friend, is your butt clean? I mean really clean? Today after your morning b.m. as you endeavored to clean yourself, did you take time to satisfy yourself with the results? Or did you just shove your filthy can back in your undies, hoping you were clean? Pretending your posterior was fresh?

Why live in doubt any longer? Try this simple test at home. You'll need:

One or more flushable pre-moistened towelettes. Greens: a white washcloth will do!

Step 1. After your morning purge, clean yourself according to your custom.

Step 2. Clean yourself again with the flushable pre-moistened towelette or white washcloth and examine that cleaning implement of your choice to see all the manure you just almost sealed within the humectant confines of your pants.

Step 3. Pledge now to forevermore clean your behind truly and thoroughly before leaving your water-closet, bathroom, or craphole.

Step 4. Ask yourself: what other shit am I now holding close to me, speaking metaphorically now, because I refuse to admit its existence? Why must I persist in pretense any longer? Why do I delay cleansing my soul with the flushable premoistened towelette or clean white cloth of self-knowledge?

Oh, friend, having glimpsed the shitty truth, how can you then continue in the poop-drenched dark kitsch of your soul?

So what am I saying, that using Cottonelle flushable moist wipes is kitschy, or that not using them is? And why do I continually assume I'm saying something?

Profile Photo

2005-09-28T15:57:00.000-05:00

From what was once an inarticulate mass of lifeless tissues may I now present a cultured, sophisticated...man about town.

In exchange for his allowing me to use the following as my profile photo, I hereby pledge to Mel Brooks that no film not directed or written by, starring, or otherwise prominently featuring Mel Brooks will ever be listed in the "favorite movies" section of my profile page, so help me God.

[Update 10/23/2006]

Here's my new profile photo:

The Carcass in the Crawl Space

2005-09-27T15:22:00.000-05:00

We came home from a weekend trip with the kids late in the evening, travel-tired and ready for bed. I hit the lights as we walked in, and perceived somehow that everything was where we left it, in its customary chaos. I always find that sense of sameness to be a little bump of relief, post-trip. But something was off—the light was too yellow, or something—there was an unsettled, unpacked feel that must have seeped from the luggage into the house as we walked in. The kids were exhausted but you just knew they weren’t going down.

Now the Mrs. came up from the basement where she had dumped the trip laundry reporting a weirdness in the basement, and this time an objective one: there was “brown watery crap all over the washer” and things were knocked off the shelves. Great. But the kids had to be bathed and put to bed, and then kept there, and I was really tired.

The next evening after work was the first chance I got to check out what the Mrs. had seen. I stepped onto the first step of the basement stairs, closed the door behind me and heaved up on the knob to get the latch to engage—otherwise the door swings open with the slight pitch of the floor, the cat flies into the basement, hides out in the crawl space the basement opens into, and craps all over the place.

There it was—the Mrs. had left the crime scene for me: knocked over on the chrome wire shelves and strewn around on the concrete floor before them were bottles, jars and boxes of substantial enough size that what we were dealing with here was a much-bigger-than-mouse creature, or maybe a drunk human. Had we given any drunks keys to our house? Why would such a drunk come in, leave everything else in the house undisturbed, mess up a few things on our shelves, and leave quietly, locking the basement door behind him? At least I could rule that one out.

Then there was the brown watery crap all over the washer, which to my relief wasn’t all over, but was a trail of a half-dozen drops across the lid; and it wasn’t watery, but sticky.

I looked and looked at all the evidence, but couldn’t come up with any explanations. Some protruding rag insulation up in a corner next to an exterior wall behind the shelves struck me as maybe new, maybe not. I looked around for a while for tracks or traces, fingered and smelled the goo on the washer, and finally picked up the mess, including a couple slimy cans of Scott's Liquid Gold and a box of unused indoor electrical wire. But as I went back upstairs I knew that I wouldn't feel the mess was cleaned up as long as I didn't know what had happened. I was stuck.

Then over the next day or two came the smell. The Mrs. noticed it first. Initially I thought it was just basement smell ramped up a bit because of the recent rain. My next trip down to fetch up clothes to fold I conceded to my wife that something was dead somewhere. Maybe a mouse trapped in the wall. A couple weeks earlier I had traced mouse trails underneath cabinets and behind drawers to the openings they used, and squirted foam into the breaches until I was certain nothing would be coming in by those ways again. We hadn’t had any mouse sign since, and I knew it was possible that I had sealed the mouse or mice somewhere they couldn’t leave. My worst fear, that the laundry shelf mess represented a large animal that was now dead somewhere in the belly of my house, wasn't something I wanted to consider very deeply.

A week had passed; the smell had gotten bad enough that it hit you in the face when you walked in the door, especially the back door. I finally got a day at home when I wasn’t watching the kids, so that I could get serious and try to smell the smell back to its source, which I now was pretty sure was somewhere in the basement.

At first I thought it might be coming from the washer—maybe it wasn’t a dead thing at all, I tried to tell myself, maybe some trapped water, or a slime mold or the like. But I took enough panels off the washer to satisfy myself that it was just normal washer innards in there. As I put the last screw back in the last washer panel I stood and looked up. Behind the washer. Through the dark, dusty, spider-webbed crawl space up and behind, to a certain inside corner of the foundation.

This corner lay below what we call the side room, a former porch someone had long ago turned into a little back entryway or mud room. I was looking at the near wall of that room's own little foundation, cut off from the rest of the basement and crawl space except for a hole, one cinder blocks wide and two high, through which ran the drain pipe of the mud sink. I knew I could probably squeeze through this hole, but just barely. This opening wasn’t more than five feet from the back of the washer, where I thought the smell had been centered. Okay. I leaned into the crawl space and smelled toward this hole. Okay. The worst possible place for us to have a dead animal would of course be the place where we have a dead animal.

I went outside with the toolbox to pull off the one foundation vent of this isolated crawl space. I didn’t want to bring whatever it was back up the stairs and through the house. It turned out the vent wasn’t attached to the foundation at all; it was just held in place by the air-conditioner compression line that ran in front of it. Nice. I wiggled the vent all the way out and looked at it. It had been spray-painted over, but looking at it now in my hands I could see that the screen was practically non-existent, torn or decayed away before it was painted. The damper, the handle of which was gone, had been zip-tied shut so that it could no longer properly be called a vent. Since we've lived in our hundred-plus-year-old house I've had many such occasions to be mad twice over, both at the former owners of our old house who devised such “repairs” and at myself for having let them slide, or not noticed them. I had thought it was a working vent. If it had been…anyway, back to work. The vent, such as it was, was off. I peeked in, but in doing so blocked any light to the crawl space. I couldn’t see a thing.

I grabbed a trash bag and my work gloves from beneath the sink, went downstairs and tossed the bag and my work light through the net of water lines and electrical wiring toward the hole I would have to crawl through. I couldn't go in the closest way, behind the washer—the electrical/water net was too closely knit there. I'd have to climb in to the crawl space somewhere else and work my way back. There was a low opening beneath some water lines next to the stairs I figured I could limbo through, so I heaved myself up into the crawl space and in I went, down on all fours, splayed like a lizard to stay low.

When I had cleared the lines and began to rear up I heard the crack, then the spray, and then I found myself yelling “Oh, no! Oh, no!” like some jerk in a B movie. The water was hosing me down, coming straight at me for some reason. I turned and saw that I had cleared the two lines but had broken a T that came my direction out of what was now the nearest line. By some divine mercy, there was a valve immediately next to the break, and by some further mercy, it turned out to be upstream from the break. I closed the valve, took a breath, said "shit," and kept going, wet, my t-shirt sticking to my back, doing a nice job of swabbing up the filthy cobwebs with my drenched head and back as I went.

I was to the hole. I had my light, my bag near at hand. I stuck my head and the hand holding the light into the hole to size things up before I went in. The space was surprisingly free of the strange array of debris from former owners, plumbers, installers and repairmen that cluttered the big crawl space, so I had a relatively clear field of view. Nothing. Some bad repairs up around the sill plate from old termite damage, a coil of tv cable in one corner, the boot of an hvac vent the former owner was supposed to put in the side room before we moved in but never did. There was nothing even vaguely organic in there, not so much as a mouse. So much for that sense of certainty I get sometimes. But because it’s my way to be anally thorough with such things I knew I needed to shine the light along the base of the near wall, the one I was cramming my head and arm through. I had to shove my head and arm in a little further to get a look. I started looking in the far corner and worked the light to where I was.

The next thing I knew I was out of the hole, realizing that what I had seen was a dead squirrel. There, not two feet from my face, and directly beneath, had been the black hole that had been the squirrel’s eye staring my way—its body rotted to little more than a mound beneath the pelt—and what appeared then and appear to me now in memory to be maggots the size of mealy worms squirming their way through the pelt here and there. Clorox. I was going to need some Clorox.

I had left the Clorox spray I had intended to use on the washer innards sitting on the basement floor. I was going to use it on innards, all right. I called out to the Mrs., to ask her to hand me the spray, to confess to the water line breach, and maybe to get a little human commiseration before I set to work.

“Dead squirrel,” I told her when she asked, leaning through the wires and water lines to grab the Clorox. “I’m going in.” Maybe I could get some points out of this.

Once she was back up the stairs, I set to work. There was a bright side, in that the carcass was near enough that I wouldn’t have to cram my 6’2”, 200 pound body through that little hole. I’d be able to reach the squirrel and clean it up by reaching through. I could toss the bag to the outside vent and take it out from outside as I’d planned.

And so it was. Strangely enough, by another act of grace, my senses seemed to be suspended as I worked. I had wondered how this was going to go, but I was fine. There was the unforeseen decision, after the bulk of the body was in the bag, in two or three pieces, as to whether to pick up the maggots, nearly all of which stayed behind, along with whatever nondescript matter they were dining on. I did.

Back outside, I grabbed the bag out of the vent hole—it had a surprising heft—and as I was walking it to the dumpster noticed a small rip in the bag. I called to the Mrs. for another bag, and when she came out she gave a little scream. “You’re bleeding from your head, a lot.” Huh. Suspended senses.

It was over. The squirrel[1] was double-bagged, thoroughly gone, the house was already smelling better. My wife, who had been dissatisfied with my performance in the matter of the smell up to now, seemed to be in my camp again. Redeemed by the blood, I guess. In the bathroom, I carefully took off my wet shirt so as to avoid getting it bloody, and stepped into the shower, ready to wash the blood, the crawl space grime, the cobwebs, the uncertainty, the proximity to death, the entire experience, off of me. The shower knob turned strangely lightly in my hand; lightly, easily, freely, completely, and to absolutely no effect.

[1] Turbo’s Auntie, perhaps?

Media Review: "The Late Late Show" with Craig Ferguson

2005-09-23T16:14:00.000-05:00

I dislike late night talk TV as it's now practiced; I think it’s bad for discourse for reasons others have recently addressed, and I've been avoiding it like Shoney's breakfast bar for quite a while. But Craig Ferguson of CBS's "Late Late Show," while making every pretense that all he's doing is a good, funny show, is stealthily making a case that late night can be something more than mere pop for pop's sake.

Many of us must still have a soft spot for Letterman. But watching Ferguson might remind you former, disenchanted fans of Letterman and late night talk in general what's been missing for a long time from the late show lineup: a little real humanity.

I tuned in for the first time last night and after watching a while, holding out through several early impulses to switch, found myself surprised, then interested, then won over.

What initially hooked me in, I think, was that Ferguson was giving a monologue—on the afterlife!—that not only wasn’t, obviously, the standard set of rat-a-tat jokes off the joke-writer’s jokey-joke joke table, but actually had some continuity, some intrinsic interest, and even the tiniest hint of spirituality. I even got the impression Ferguson had written the thing. I've since discovered that he does a good bit of writing for the show.

Also, there was this: having apparently seriously engaged the crash-landed jet subject the night before, Ferguson had on at the top of the show an indie-actor friend who had been on the plane—no commercial or popstar value to her interview, or at least none that I knew enough to detect, but it was really interesting, it was really good, and it was really human. This was more like Charlie Rose than like Letterman, except that Ferguson doesn't interrupt all the time like Rose does. And Charlie's not funny, bless his heart, as I think he'd admit. Ferguson's funny.

As if it had happened to provide a foil, I had earlier that evening flipped across Jay Leno interviewing Jodie Foster, an A-list pop star and a heck of an actor to boot, one whose work I admire very much, and had the opportunity to watch how the late night idiom managed to produce nothing more from several minutes with this interesting woman than slickly standard, mildly amusing, completely safe pap.

To my mind, Ferguson even has one up on Jon Stewart, in that I sensed from Ferguson’s show an implicit argument that there are other things besides pop politics and pop culture that deserve both our humorous and serious attention. I've since discovered that Ferguson is a recovering addict, a fact which may explain that dose of knowing the stakes of real life, that hint of spirituality, that comes through in the show, without his making a big deal of it, or seeming to reach.

You realize, of course, that if what I'm saying is correct, Ferguson can’t last on network television. Watch him while you can. Let me know what you think.

The Inability to Read among the Highly Literate

2005-09-22T17:48:00.000-05:00

A few years back, this was probably in the nineties, I was teaching an essay writing class, and decided I’d stir up some discussion by assigning an essay by Shelby Steele in which he makes a case against affirmative action.

Relatively fresh out of grad school, that hotbed of liberalism… Excuse me. I now recall liberals were considered big wussies in grad school. We were a hotbed of Marxism. At any rate, I figured most of the controversy would originate among students who were for affirmative action, and that some anger might even come my way, since students often assume that if you assign an essay you must agree with it. I thought I might have to defend myself against charges of racism. I should say for those who don’t know that Shelby Steele is a black man. The students knew it too, since the essay began with a little bit of narrative about Steele’s black identity.

The day we were to discuss the essay, as I collected the reading quiz I always give, I noticed surly looks and crossed arms, and thought this might be an interesting day. I was right about the controversy. The students were steamed. I guess it was half of them, a dozen or so, who were clearly riled. The initial reactions were along these lines: They didn’t know why they were always forced to read things like this in college. They didn’t know where this guy got off. This essay was stupid.

Fine, I said, what did you disagree with? It was a few seconds before somebody would stoop to give me an answer. The student who spoke up said he had nothing against black people, but the civil war was a long time ago, everyone gets an equal chance in America, racial prejudice exists, but it isn’t what it used to be, and he was tired of hearing black people whine about needing their affirmative action.

I think I did a talking take, you know, like when Fred Astaire says something outrageous to Edward Everett Horton, and Horton automatically starts talking like he agrees with it, and partway into the sentence simultaneously realizes what’s been said and what he’s saying, does a take, and says Whaaa? Something like this: Yes, Steele certainly came down in favor of affirmative <take> Whaaa?

Among the dozen or so miffed students, that same almost complete misreading was universal. The remaining students and I had to text-proof them from the essay to get them to see that Steele was coming down against affirmative action, but a few were still skeptical at the end of the class. I should note that these students did well on the quiz, indicating that they had actually passed their eyes over the text with a fair degree of comprehension. But they still didn’t get it.

At that time, I remember people, particularly those we’d now refer to as red state people, being sick of talking about anything having to do with race, and shutting you down as soon as you pitched in on anything having to do with the subject. I hitched on that as the explanation at the time for what was to me a stunning and confusing experience. How are we going to get anywhere in discussions of race, I remember thinking, if we can’t even detect agreement?

So now that I’ve picked on red-staters, I feel I need to balance with a blue-state instance.

Early nineties, I’m taking modern poetry from a literature professor of good repute. We’re on Robert Frost. The professor’s thing about Robert Frost is how he always has these tidy little morals in his poems, and how these give the poem an old-fashioned, didactic tilt, a tilt which helped explain Frost’s popularity. Fair enough, I think. Make your case.

He has us turn to Mending Wall. “Mending Wall,” he says, “famous, popular poem, because it has a great example of one of Frost’s tidy messages in it: ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’” Well, of course, because Frost was firmly in favor of <take> Whaaa?

Now, this is not a difference of opinion thing. If you’re not already familiar with the poem, I invite you to click on the Academy of American Poets link, probably up and to your right somewhere, and in the “poems” search box type in “Mending Wall,” read the poem, and see for yourself what a misreading this was.

My professor was a sharp feller, in every sense. I don’t know what went wrong here. I remember that he had a sort of thesis about each of the poets we discussed, and maybe his thesis engine was disengaging his reading sprocket in this instance (and a few others that semester). I don’t know.

All I know, I’m living in a world where really smart people can look you in they eye, or read you on the page, and not only fail to get what you’re saying, but hear something else entirely, something based on their apprehensions, fears, desires, or whatever. You can speak a cherub, and they can hear a gargoyle. Maybe this comes as no surprise to you. It fills me with dread. Apart from the propensity of such missed connections to like, start wars and stuff, there’s the problem nearer at hand of the difficulty of knowing who and what you think you know. I’ve already confessed to at least one instance of not getting stuff. Who knows what else I didn’t get, and didn’t know I didn’t? Whaaa?

Pervious I'm Not

2005-09-19T17:00:00.000-05:00

There I was, about to post a comment on a buddy’s blog, and in the process, not in a frame of mind to read very carefully, I came to believe I had to start a blog before I could post a comment. Thinking that blew, I blew through the formwork and in the process tourettesed the name “pervious” for the blog I thought was never to be.

Later, given a moment for reflection over a cold beer, I realized that it probably hadn’t been the case that I had to start a blog in order to post a comment. Also, what the heck was a pervious? I'd tweaked to that from a favorite name, "Never Nervous" Pervis Ellison.

I decided pervious was the opposite of impervious, and then I decided I liked this word. Then I Googled it, found out that it was a brand-name of an alternative to traditional forms of pavement, and decided I liked it anyway. That’s three decisions, by the way, of very little consequence, decisions which likely came by way of denying that I had several important, pressing things, things of actual, maybe even critical, importance to my family and me, to contemplate, decide about, act upon.

Pervious: Open, receptive—by implication, perceptive, aware. Yet, as the perceptive reader will already have noted, the genesis of the blog and thus of my new handle was occasioned by a fit of imperviousness, namely a certain (chronic) immunity to simple, useful, time-saving instructions and an apparently related inability to set priorities in any kind of adult—or shall we say, non-monkey—way.

It would be easy to say that this dichotomy—between on the one hand my desire for openness, my belief in careful scrutiny, my admiration of the ability to shut out the many clamoring competitors for one’s attention to this moment, the one now at hand, and on the other hand, my considerably bunged-up, occasionally pus-filled, frequently misaligned excuses for moment-receptors—…well, crap. What I was fixing to suggest, maybe, was that it would be easy to say that the above-referenced dichotomy has spiked the important nodes of my timeline, and therefore has to a great extent made me who I am. And since it’s easy to say, I’ll say it.

The other thing is, it has been since I sort of started this sort of blog that I saw the latest Star Wars movie and became acquainted with the hideous Lord Grievous. For some reason, ever since seeing the attractively despicable Sith get their star-studded, action-packed Revenge, every time I’ve seen the word “Pervious” I’ve gotten that queasy feeling you get when you contemplate male action/adventure. I think it’s an –ous thing. I don’t know. But I’ll slide with Pervious for now.

--Pervious