OK, now it’s what… not quite 10 a.m…. and I’m running out of steam. Feel the need for a nap. Stopped myself at two mugs of real coffee this morning, figuring I’ll need some later and not wanting to overdo, peak too soon with the caffeine, but now that I’m finally ready to really get started on the day — breakfast, meetings, etc., out of the way… here comes the drowsiness.
Got up this morning in the dark. Shaved, showered, dressed, headed out to the truck to drive to work. Still dark. Took a seat by the window at breakfast downtown, overlooking the city… still dark. Could hardly read the paper. I was halfway done eating before the sun had completely popped above the horizon.
Part of it’s my fault. Decided to give up sleep for Lent. That is to say, decided instead of beer or whatever this time, I would finally start getting up about an hour earlier. Yeah, I know, you’re thinking that Lent isn’t really for self-improvement, New-Year’s-resolution, been-meaning-to-do-that kinds of things, but at Ash Wednesday mass I thought it through, got all the theology worked out in my head (don’t ask me to explain it all; just trust me — it made sense at the time), and this is what I’m doing. Too late to do beer instead at this point.
But the REAL culprit, the one I’m choosing to blame, is my old nemesis Daylight Savings Time.
I’ve always hated it. Sure, I suppose it’s great for people who live for several hours’ yard work after getting home from the office, but I am NOT one of those people. I wish I were. My wife would think more of me if I were, and no one’s opinion of me matters more, but I’m not. Not that fond of sunshine at all, in fact, which is not something I want to admit, what with all that “They that do evil fear the light” propaganda, but it’s true. Sun comes out, my wife looks for sunny spot in the yard and gets to work. I say, “I have to go out in THIS? Where are my flip-up shades?” Me, I love English weather; I think it’s encoded into my gene structure. Clouds, light mist. And it’s good for the crops.
Speaking of crops, it occurs to me that if we were all farmers, we wouldn’t have Daylight Savings Time. What would be the use of it? You have to get up and milk the cows in the dark anyway, and the sooner the sun rises after that, the better. You work the same number of hours regardless, so what does it matter what the clock says? No, DST is a manifestation of this modern economy, a perversion of the natural order. And I, for one, do not have enough generations of evolution behind me to adjust to it.
The thing is, it divorces clock time from any tenuous connection it has to the natural world. Clock time is a fiction, an imposition of false order on reality. Unlike the year, the day, and in some cases the month, clock time — hours, minutes, seconds — have NO basis in reality, aside from the rough relationship between a second and a heartbeat.
There’s only one way it makes sense, and that’s if noon is at the moment that the sun reaches its zenith. We should do like on the old sailing ships. The captain should assemble his midshipmen on the quarterdeck, have them all shoot the sun with their sextants, and when someone says “I make it noon,” and others confirm, the officer of the deck tells the quartermaster “Make it so,” and your day is based in something real. Turn the glass and strike the bell.
Without that, it’s just a lie, every time we allow our lives to be governed by the clock in any way, shape or form while we are in this unnatural state. A lie I can actually FEEL in my bones. And we’ll all be living this lie until the autumn.
The quixotic demonstration at the State House yesterday by citizens sick of seeing our state’s infrastructure rapidly eroding under the stewardship of shortsighted politicians was of course an exercise in futility.
But I’m no stranger to that. A few minutes ago, looking for a link for a previous post that needed one, I went back to the last week of posts on my old blog I had at the paper, and ran across this forgotten item — which, as it happens, was day after the post in which I announced that I had been laid off:
Good job rejecting the tuition caps
This might sound strange coming from a guy who was already counting pennies (or quarters, anyway — I miscounted how many I had this morning in my truck, and ended up with a parking ticket because I didn’t have enough for the meter), with my two youngest daughters still in college. And now I’m about to be unemployed.
But I’m glad the House rejected tuition caps at S.C. colleges and universities. I have an anecdote to share about that.
Remember the recent day when college students wandered the State House lobbying lawmakers on behalf of their institutions. They wanted the state to invest in higher education the way North Carolina and Georgia have. Either that day, or the day after, I had lunch with Clemson President James Barker, and he told me an anecdote he had witnessed: He said the students were pressing a lawmaker NOT to support the tuition caps, because they were worried about their institutions being even more underfunded — they hardly get anything from the state — some are down below 20 percent funding by the state, and the rest has to come from such sources as tuition, federal research grants and private gifts. Eliminate the ability to raise tuition, and the institution’s ability to provide an excellent education is significantly curtailed. If we want lower tuitions, the state should go back to funding higher percentages of the schools’ budgets, the way our neighboring states with better higher ed systems do.
The lawmaker listened to the kids, and then said with great condescension, maybe you kids don’t care if tuition goes up, but I’ll bet your parents would like a cap. He thought he had them there, but the kids set him straight: None of their parents were paying the bills. These kids were working their way through schools and paying for it all themselves. And they didn’t want to see the quality of what they were working so hard to pay for be degraded by an artificial cap on tuition. The lawmaker had not counted on getting that answer.
I wish I had been there to see it, because I’ve been in a similar place before. Back in 95 or 96, Speaker Wilkins had brought his committee chairs to see us, and I started challenging the wisdom of their massive rollback of property taxes paid for school.One of them allowed as how he bet I was glad to get that couple of hundred dollars I didn’t have to pay. And I answered him that I was ashamed that I was paying so little through my property tax to support schools that I knew needed more resources. He said smugly that he was sure I wouldn’t want to give it back. I told him I didn’t see as how there was any channel for doing that, but if he could point me to the right person who would take my money and see it gets to the right place, I would pay the difference. He didn’t have a good answer for that.
It would be great if our lawmakers would stop assuming that all of us in South Carolina are so greedily shortsighted that we can’t see past our personal desire to pay less money, and that we are corruptible by a scheme to starve colleges of reasonable support.
Reading that now, with all that’s happened since — the rise of the Tea Party, the eagerness of Republicans, demoralized after their 2008 defeat, to embrace destructive extremism (and of course, what happens to the Republican Party as happens to South Carolina, which it dominates), the election of Nikki Haley over more experienced, less extreme candidates of both parties — it reads like thoughts from another century. And, of course, another place.
Imagine, even dreaming of our state caring enough about education to invest in it the way our neighboring states have, much less suggesting that we do so. How anachronistic can one get? All that’s happened since then is that South Carolina has run, faster every day, in the opposite direction — with out elected leaders firmly convinced that that is not only the right direction in which to run, but the only one.
Hey, folks, go check out the latest addition to my “links” rail at right, hunterherring.com. It’s not only your portal for engaging the DJ services of Hunter Herring Mobile Music, but it’s a great site to listen to while you’re blogging, or doing whatever else you do sitting in front of this screen. (You might have to download RealPlayer, as I did, to hear it, although it might work for you on another application. The sound is great.)
Boomers will find it particularly gratifying. At the moment, he’s playing LaVern Baker’s Tweedle Dee from 1955. Younger folks might tend to dismiss it as “Dance Music for Old People” — but you know, when Nick Hornby coined that phrase, he meant it in a good way. Just turn it on and pay attention, kids; you might learn something.
By way of full disclosure, Hunter is family. His daughter is married to my elder son, and we share a granddaughter. (He is her favorite grandfather — he’s her caretaker during part of the week, splitting the duty with my wife, and she just thinks he’s way cooler.) And his wife, Ginny, works with me at ADCO.
If you’ve ever listened to radio in Columbia, of course, you don’t need me to tell you who Hunter Herring is. From his site:
Hunter is a longtime Columbia/Charlotte radio personality who has spent his 40 year career at great radio stations like WCOS, WNOK, WZLD, WEZC, WMIX, WWMG, and WOMG.
His career in broadcasting has given him experience in music formats ranging from beach to boogie, rock to disco, and top 40 to country, all of which are available for your party.
Let Hunter help you plan the music for your party to ensure a perfect mix for your event.
So give it a listen. (Right now, it’s Chuck Jackson, with “Beg Me.”… No, wait, now it’s Wilson Pickett with “I’m in Love”…) And if you want to listen the old-fashioned way, he’ll be on Magic 98.5 this afternoon at 3, after Shakin’ Dave Aiken.
Oh, wait — now it’s Mary Wells with “The One Who Really Loves You”…
I think I have it straight, now: if you disagree with Brad’s position, you are guilty of being over-emotional. If you agree, you are being rational. Brad, you really need to let this one go. You like to talk about “left and right” and position yourself as someone in a calm, unemotional, rational center, but the truth that you have opinions on various issues just like anybody else. They tend not to divide in a partisanly-predictable way, which indicates that you think for yourself on each issue, and that’s certainly admirable. But we are all human, and every considered opinion by every truly thinking citizen (and you certainly are that, as are almost all the commenters here) is a combination of emotion and reason, at least as that individual sees it. You’re not immune from that combination of factors, and it’s argumentatively lazy to just dismiss someone’s disagreement as saying, in effect, “well you’re just emotional and I’m rational, so the argument’s over.” You were off base on the other thread on jfx’s comment, which was no less a combination of emotion and reason than your own reasons for endorsing our invasion of Iraq. Most conservatives who criticize Obama are NOT nutty “birthers” and practitioners of Obama-Derangement-Syndrome; and most who think Blair was a slick prevaricator on the war can’t be dismissed as purely emotional BDS-ers. (That would be at least half the planet in that case.)
I certainly don’t pretend that my opinions are devoid of an emotional basis: and for the record, going back to Mr. Schiller, my point was not that the right wing or the left wing is more prone to emotionalism or even rhetorical over-the-top-ness; but that anti-intellectualism per se is (at least at this moment in American history) a cudgel wielded in particular by the right. It’s inexact for you to say that Mr. Schiller was equally guilty of “the worst kind of anti-intellectualism”: that would mean he would be doing such things as criticizing Tea Party leaders for “sounding like a professor,” just one of the gibes (meant to be an insult, I guess) directed at our current President. Schiller was guilty of a lot of things, stereotyping and overgeneralization among them, but anti-intellectualism is a very different and very specific thing.
I’ve been running from meeting to meeting today, which is why I hadn’t posted anything until a few minutes ago. But I was here for about 15 minutes right after Phillip posted that, so I wrote a medium-length reply, and just as I was about to save it and run out… Google Chrome shut down. Then Firefox shut down. Then EVERYTHING ELSE I had open shut down, spontaneously. And my laptop started restarted itself, and just as I ran out the door screaming, I saw it was adding insult to injury by running CHKDSK.
When I get back, ol’ Hal calmly informed me that he had taken it upon himself to download the following::
– Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems
– Security Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems
– Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter
– Security Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems
I’m betting none of it was necessary. And I don’t see why the blasted machine couldn’t give me heads-up first.
Of course, everyone here at ADCO will tell me that’s what I get for insisting upon being the only person in the office who doesn’t use a Mac. On that subject, and having just mentioned HAL, you might enjoy this Apple ad.
Anyway… if I can remember, here’s what I was going to say to Phillip… But first, I’m going to “Save Draft”…
OK, here goes…
Phillip, your initial observation — “if you disagree with Brad’s position, you are guilty of being over-emotional. If you agree, you are being rational” — is slightly off the mark. That’s not a hard-and-fast law of the universe. It’s more like a useful rule of thumb.
Insert smiley-face emoticon.
But you were dead-on when you said, “you have opinions on various issues just like anybody else. They tend not to divide in a partisanly-predictable way, which indicates that you think for yourself on each issue, and that’s certainly admirable.”
Absolutely! Thank you for getting that! Of COURSE I have opinions! This is an opinion blog!
And thanks particularly for the “admirable” thing.
But to elaborate… as I try over and over to explain here, I am repulsed by the left and the right, Democratic and Republican, as they are currently constituted — because I DO think hard about each issue, which means I don’t accept the pat, off-the-shelf packages that the two predominant ideologies offer.
It’s like cable TV. The thing I’ve always hated about cable TV is that they won’t let me choose, and pay for, only the channels I want. Not because it’s technologically difficult, but because it doesn’t fit the cable companies’, or the networks’ and channels’, business model. They force me to take channels I don’t want in order to get the channels I DO want, because they make more money that way (I think; if that’s not the motivation, someone please explain it to me).
Same deal with the political parties, or the two main competing ideologies. Both Column A and Column B offer some ideas I like. But each of them also offers ideas I utterly reject. There’s no way I can buy either package and be honest with you, or with myself.
The problem is, our shared marketplace of ideas lacks a vocabulary for speaking of the way I think. I try hard to come up with a vocabulary of my own, using ordinary English words, but they so often run up against the problem that certain definitions and delineations are now assumed to be true by everyone, and my ideas don’t connect, even with very smart people. That’s because 24/7 we are bombarded with the political equivalent of Newspeak. If you’ll recall, the way Orwell conceived it, the goal was to reduce language so that it was impossible to express (and therefore, to a great extent, impossible to think of) ideas that were incompatible with IngSoc.
Well, today, the terms that most of us use for expressing political ideas are very limited terms handed to us by the two parties, their attendant interest groups, and increasingly simplistic news media, led by 24/7 TV “news” and the Blogosphere — all of whom find it in their interests to boil everything down to two choices — actually, two SETS of predetermined choices, so that once you pick one, everyone else knows what you think about everything.
I find this appalling. And I continue to resist it. And even though I’m not bad with words, I find it hard, like Winston trying to write half-formed heretical concepts into his diary, just out of sight of the telescreen. Only I’m publishing mine.
But it’s sometimes hard to express. And even when my friends and regular readers UNDERSTAND it, it’s hard for them to describe, because of our lack of that common vocabulary. So when Phillip says I “position yourself as someone in a calm, unemotional, rational center,” I know what he means, and he’s right to say it. But the fact is, I’m not in the center at all, although you’ll occasionally see me acquiesce to being called a “centrist,” just as a convenient shorthand.
But the problem with that term is that it implies that one MUST be on that one-dimensional line between left and right, and that if you ARE neither left nor right, you must be in the “center.” But I’m not. Sometimes I agree more or less with the left, and sometimes with the right. And sometimes neither the left nor the right is far enough out on its own wing to suit me. To paraphrase Billy Ray Valentine, when it comes to the political spectrum, I’m all over that place, baby.
I’m made this point before, such as on this post, and even back in my initial UnParty column. And in a variation on that theme, the Energy Party is all about taking the best ideas from left and right to do all we can to attain energy independence.
OK, I just went on at far greater length than I did on my failed comment earlier — perhaps out of frustration. And as I’ve written every word, I’ve been cognizant that if anyone is patient enough to read it all, he or she is likely to say, That Brad Warthen just thinks his thoughts are so far above everyone else’s that no one else is smart enough to understand him.
But that’s not it. If I were smart enough, I’d be able to explain it better, I suppose. I just get frustrated, because our common vocabulary HAS been reduced by people who have found it to their political advantage to do so, just like Big Brother, so I struggle to express what I truly think. Most people who are as uncomfortable as I am with the either-or paradigm just give up, curse politics, and walk away from it all. I don’t feel like I can do that as a citizen. I have to keep trying, whether I succeed or not. (And whether I get paid a salary to do it or not.) Which is why I’ve written all these millions of words over the years.
As you know, I strenuously resist any attempt to place me along America’s left-right political spectrum, even to the extent of being in the middle. Personally, I just don’t feel comfortable anywhere on that line, and “middle” suggests always being somewhere between the two extremes (or, to use another paradigm I reject, between the two parties), which I most certainly am not. Depending on the issue, sometimes I’m in the middle, sometimes I agree with Democrats, sometimes with Republicans, and sometimes I’m out beyond either of them on their respective “wings.”
That’s because I think about each issue and the various factors bearing upon it, rather than buying a prefab set of values selected by someone else to appeal to some variation on the lowest common denominator. I passionately believe that that’s an inadequate, and intellectually dishonest, way to approach important public issues.
Considering all of that, I was intrigued by a chart Herb Brasher shared with me, which was compiled by his son, a teaching fellow in political science at Indiana University.
Here’s the description. The chart itself is above:
I’ve been thinking about messing around with a 3-dimensional model of partisan ideology for a while. Usually we only talk of right vs. left, although some political science literature works with two dimensions. While somewhat difficult to display for an artistically challenged person like me, I make a rough shot at placing European, Canadian, and American parties in a more complex political spectrum. Any thoughts, suggestions?
1) Parties / Party Families
a) SOC: European socialists
b) SOD: European Social Democrats and some socialists; British labour; Canadian NDP;
c) Green: Greens/environmental parties
d) CD: European Christian Democrats
e) DEM: American Democrats
f) CON: European and Canadian conservatives
g) LIB: European liberals
h) CLIB: Canadian Liberals
i) REP: American Republicans
j) TEA: American Tea-party
2) Partisan Ideology Dimensions:
a) Some assumptions:
i. Instead of the common left-right model, or even two-dimensional one in some political science literature, a three-dimensional one; added complexity, but also better representation of reality?
ii. Note: all parties fit within the liberal democratic framework – I’m not including parties that want to get rid of democratic regime form
b) Dimensions
i. Free vs. social market – degree to which party advocates government involvement in the economy, and social welfare policies
ii. Environment vs. Growth – degree to which party advocates environmental protection, quality of life vs. growth of economy (particularly jobs) – this is separate from the
above issue – strong interventionist parties, like the social democrats, are not traditionally known as pro-environment (blue-collar jobs, etc.)
iii. Secular-Religious – degree to which party/party family either rhetorically or programmatically promotes traditional vs. progressive values; or situates itself as a secularizing force, or protective of religion, etc.
3) Interpreting Party Position
a) Position: I place the parties in the figure based on a quick and dirty assessment of its ideological positioning vis-à-vis each of these dimensions
b) Size: I’m assuming that each party ‘box’ is the same size; however, in order to get a 3D effect, the bigger the box appears in the figure (and the bigger the font), the closer it is to the front, and the smaller, the further back it is. In this case, since the secular-religious dimension is the third dimension, the more secular a given party/party family is, the further up front it is, the further back, the more religious.
Unfortunately, this did not help place me, really — except, if you assume that these are the three axes that must be considered, to put me right in the middle, even in three dimensions. Here’s why:
Free vs. Social Market — This just doesn’t cause a flutter in my heart either way. The libertarians on the blog will cry, “He’s a statist!,” but I’m not. I sound like it sometime because the prevailing wind in South Carolina is radically libertarian, libertarian to a harmful degree, and I resist it strenuously in an effort to pull the conversation toward a neutral middle ground. I believe there is nothing inherently superior about either the public or the private sector (which is why I’m always arguing with people who believe, ideologically, that the private is inherently better — I never run into anyone on the opposite side of that equation to argue with). There are simply issues that are better solved one way, and others that are better solved another.
Environment vs. Growth — I’ve cared deeply about the Earth since before the first Earth Day, when I was in high school. But I think some people take some really ridiculous, harmful positions in the name of love of the Earth. I reject those who reflexively reject nuclear power, for instance. And of course we should drill in the ANWR and offshore — taking care to do so safely. In fact, my whole Energy Party Manifesto sits squarely along the center of this axis. Or perhaps I should say, borrows from various points along it. And one of the reasons why is that I think the country’s strategic position in the world is tied up with, and just as important as, the two issues on this axis. That affects the way I look at both.
Secular-Religious — No question that I endorse the First Amendment and the liberal democracy it makes possible. I also think secularists are off their trolleys with their oversensitivity about religion in public life, seeing every small expression — a nativity, a blue law, a public prayer — as some sort of establishment of a theocracy. So again, I can’t be comfortable in either camp.
The thing is, I think a lot more than those three factors are involved, and I try to take all the other factors into account as well. So does the UnParty, bless them.
I could go on a tirade here about why I don’t follow the Oscars, and revisit the fiasco of 1998… Actually, I will revisit it, just to this extent:
Why I don’t watch the Oscars.
There was a time when I did, avidly. I love movies, to a degree indicative of really messed-up priorities. As in, a man with priorities so far out of whack doesn’t deserve such a fine automobile. For instance, you’ll hear me quoting movies irrelevantly, seemingly at random. I love to read, have loved reading good fiction all of my life. But I think maybe movies are my very favorite art form. And yes, I know that’s kind of lowbrow, but it’s true. So be it.
Once, I used to go out of my way to at least see all of the movies nominated for Best Picture, and take an inordinate interest in which one won.
Not that “Shakespeare” wasn’t fun. It was. As much fun as fluff can be. And that’s what it was. Worse, it was self-referential fluff. That was a movie for and about movie stars, transported to the 16th century. It made actors look cool, and fun, and clever, and way historical, meaning we should take them seriously. They adored it, because it made them feel great about themselves.
Which, come to think of it, is what the Oscars are about. Which is why I don’t watch anymore.
And “The King’s Speech,” to my own admittedly limited knowledge, clearly deserved “Best Picture.”
I say “admittedly limited,” because, well, I had only seen four of the nominees. (Of which there appear to have been 10 — didn’t it used to be just 5? This is what happens when you stop following these things…)
Also, one more disclaimer. “The King’s Speech” is probably elevated a bit in my estimation because, well, I saw it in England. On my last night in the country, which happened to be the opening night in that country (oddly, this quintessentially British flick had opened in the States first). We saw it at the Odeon on Magdalen Street in Oxford. J and my granddaughter had had high tea at the Ashmolean, while I ducked over for another quick glimpse of the Pitt Rivers and then grabbed a quick bite at the McDonald’s on Cornmarket (just to prove that not everything I did was all touristy). Odd thing about ketchup in Britain, by the way — it’s much sweeter and less tangy; I don’t know why.
Bottom line, it was the best film I’d seen in the past year, and I suspect better than the nominees I haven’t seen, from what I’ve heard (and frankly, you’d have to pay me to get me to see, for instance, “127 Hours”). Perhaps I should provide a quick comparison to the few I have seen:
Inception — Biggest movie disappointment of the year for me. The trailers had done a good job of selling it to me, and it was one of the few that I meant to actually see in the theater, but didn’t make it in time. So I waited anxiously for its appearance on Netflix (and what is it with Netflix’ inability to get movies as soon as they’re available at WalMart, huh?), and then was disappointed. I mean, it was basically a play on the bad plot device of “and then the little boy woke up,” only taken to an exponentially greater point. I’m at the point of really wanting it to be over, and then… what? yet another dream level? gimme a break? It was like watching Twain’s “The Great Dark” translated to film — the years at the end that he skims over in the story.
The Kids are All Right — This was pretty good, and it has Julianne Moore naked (I say that not so much because it was significant to me, you understand, but in case lesbians are thinking about seeing it, which they may be), but in the end, I was disappointed. Actually, more specifically, I found the ending disappointing. I hated to see Mark Ruffalo’s character shut out at the end. My wife explained that I wasn’t supposed to feel that way, that he was a ne’er-do-well, etc. (in fact he was, technically and literally, a wanker — that was his importance to the plot), but I was still disappointed for him. Perhaps because he was the only character in the film with whom I could remotely identify. In any case, not the best of the year.
The Social Network — Ballyhooed by many as the best film of the year, my own estimation was only slightly higher than that of my younger son, who said “I’d heard it was a movie about inventing Facebook. And that’s what it was.” Yes, I appreciated it as social commentary on the way technology is changing our world and even our brains, but most of that had to be inferred. It was a good flick, just not as awesome as I had been led to expect.
And yes, it’s presumptuous to say I wouldn’t have liked the ones I didn’t see (and I still DO look forward to “True Grit” coming out on DVD — not because I liked the John Wayne one, which I didn’t, but because I continue to hold out hope for the Coen Brothers, in spite of “Burn Before Reading”). But hey, all I can do is go with what I have.
Oh, one last political observation on “The King’s Speech.” On the morning of the day I saw it, I read this review in The Guardian over my traditional English breakfast at the B&B, and uttered a Toryesque “harrumph” over this line: “Not everyone’s going to like this film: some may find it excessively royalist…” (There was also this online “poll” asking, “Is The King’s Speech royalist propaganda?” A slight majority said no.)
One thing I disliked when I ran across it during my brief sojourn in that country was when Brits apologized for anything touching upon their essential British identity. Fortunately, I didn’t run across it nearly as much as I expected. There was a museum exhibit about the brouhaha over “Britannia” as a symbol on the coinage, and that line. But I still harrumphed.
I mean, if you’re the sort who gets offended by such, don’t see the bleedin’ film. The rest of you, if you haven’t already, see it as soon as you can.
It’s quite a hoot, and I thought that with everyone talking about the “Tiger Mom” book these days, y’all might appreciate having your attention drawn to it with a separate post.
Mind you, by posting this, I’m not just totally making fun of the blonde Mommy character, as it might seem. We started having kids in the mid-70s, and we lived across a tiny side street from a natural food store (“The Pumpkin Seed”) and we were totally into natural. My wife was a member of the La Leche League, so of course our kids were all breast-fed for as long as possible. And yes, we used real diapers, not disposables, for the sake of the Earth. And no soda or anything junky like that. And we ground our own baby food from fresh cooked (but alas, unseasoned) food. I say “we” — but the truth is that my wife did almost all of it. She was at home, I was at the newspaper.
Of course, we relaxed a bit on some things with our later kids, as the older ones will complain — although not on the breast-feeding or the real diapers. By the late 80s, we really stood out on the diaper thing.
But on most other things, we were pretty cool. And the intensity of middle-class parents today toward their kids is scary, which is why I like Lenore Skenazy’s work.
It’s not just scary, though. It can also be funny.
Over lunch, I got my 1,000th follower on Twitter. Unfortunately, it was @TargetCardz, rather than some regular local person to whom I could offer a Nice Prize. Such as breakfast at the Cap City Club. Or a beer, or two, at Yesterday’s. Or anyplace else where I, personally, like to hang out — allowing that lucky follower a taste of the bradwarthen.com lifestyle, which I know is what all my followers yearn for. (Hey, the bradwarthen.com prize budget is modest, but I’ll stack those up against any other 1,000th-follower prizes in the metropolitan area…)
Well, the first 1,000 wasn’t so hard. Let’s see where it goes from here…
Thanks so much for y’all’s last-minute help with my Health & Happiness routine today. I used a lot of it, as you will see if you peruse my script I threw together… Note that the parts that I struck through were the bits that I cut when President Robin said I needed to keep it short. She’s always telling me to keep it short; don’t know why.
Anyway, here you go:
HEALTH AND HAPPINESS, 2/14/2011
OK, so now it’s time for my prepared material…
I use “prepared” loosely. I’m a last-minute replacement for Ann Marie Stieritz. Yeah, I know, I’m sorry – this is what you get. Not the same, I know.Ann Marie found out over the weekend that she was doing double-duty at Rotary today, and asked if I’d swap with her at the last minute. And I just couldn’t say no to her. Well, INITIALLY I DID say no to her, but then she threatened to beat me up…
What? You don’t think she’d do that? Well, she convinced ME, so here I am…
So I cheated. I appealed to folks on my blog – that’s BRADWARTHEN.COM – begging them for some material. And they came through with stuff like this:
A PORK CHOP goes into a bar. The bartender takes one look and says, “Sorry, we don’t serve food here.”
You don’t like that? Well, it could be worse. I did come up with one REALLY SHORT joke on my own. Here goes:
“State Senator Robert Ford…”
… what? Do I need to get a drummer to go BA-DA-BOOMP-CHICK! so you’ll know when the joke’s over?
Did you see that news story? Quoting from The Associated Press:
An African-American lawmaker in South Carolina said Tuesday that stricter illegal immigration laws would hurt the state because blacks and whites don’t work as hard as Hispanics.
State Sen. Robert Ford made his remarks during a Senate committee debate over an Arizona-style immigration law, eliciting a smattering of nervous laughter in the chamber after he said “brothers” don’t work as hard as Mexicans. He continued that his “blue-eyed brothers” don’t either.
Way I look at it, illegal immigrants already have enough political enemies in South Carolina. They really don’t need any friends like Senator Ford.
But enough about Democrats. I want to take a moment to stick up for Sarah Palin.
Do you remember all the trouble she got into when misused the term “blood libel,” a phrase describing one of the nastiest lies invented by antiSemites? The former Alaska governor defended herself by pleading ignorance about the significance of what she said.
Hey, when Sarah Palin pleads ignorance, I believer her. Absolutely.
OK, here’s another one from my blog readers:
What did the cow say to the near-sighted farmer?
You’re pulling my leg.
These, I must attribute to my regular reader Doug, because they do NOT reflect my views. At least, not all of them:
— Well, it’s Valentines Day today and that’s a special day for most couples. But for Nikki and Michael Haley, it’s even more special. It’s the day they pay their income taxes for 2009.
–When Mick Zais took over as Secretary of Education, he called Jim Rex to get some information. “How many people work at the Department of Education, Jim?” Rex thought for a moment and replied, “About half of them.”
–Ken Ard would have liked to have been here this morning but he is busy at his office with a bag full of receipts and a “Dummy’s Guide to Photoshop”.
— What’s the difference between Hosni Mubarek and Mark Sanford? One of them ruled over a bunch of wild eyed zealots who want to tear down the government and the other one was President of Egypt.
OK, that’s meaner than MY political gags. So let me take a moment to say something nice. Really. It’s about Joe Wilson.
There was a movement to get Democrats and Republicans to sit together at the State of the Union. Some members of the SC delegation reacted negatively. Newly minted congressman Mick Mulvaney said: “If you’re looking for empty symbolism, where one sits at the State of the Union (address) might be at the top of the list.”
You know what tops MY list of the most pointless, negative symbolism that Congress engages in, the thing that’s most insulting to the American people? The fact that the REST of the time, they only SIT with, and TALK to, and LISTEN to, members of their own party. They act like they think they’re there to serve a party instead of this country.
And that’s why I appreciate Joe Wilson for sitting with Democrats Susan Davis from California and Madeleine Bordallo from Guam. Both are HASC members. Yes, it’s a silly little gesture that doesn’t accomplish much by itself. But a few thousand more such little gestures of common courtesy could to a long way toward reducing the pointless nastiness of politics in Washington.
So thank you, Joe Wilson.
I’ll finish up with some stuff from my old friend Burl Burlingame. Burl, I should explain, is a newspaperman out in Hawaii, where he and I graduated from high school together. That helps explain his attitude. Here are Burl’s WORDS TO LIVE BY:
— Eagles may soar high, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
— There may be no ‘I’ in team, but there’s a ‘ME’ if you look hard enough.
— Never do today that which will become someone else’s responsibility tomorrow.
Put the key of despair into the lock of apathy. Turn the knob of mediocrity slowly and open the gates of despondency – welcome to a day in the average office.
— If your boss is getting you down, look at him through the prongs of a fork and imagine him in jail.
— If you’re gonna be late, then BE late and not just 2 minutes – make it an hour and enjoy your breakfast.
— If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven’t understood the seriousness of the situation.
I killed — with the stuff y’all contributed. My own stuff I threw in… not so much. I think they liked Doug’s and Burl’s material the best.
Biggest laugh? The one about the Haleys and their taxes. I think the extra laughter was prompted by relief. The setup made a lot of people cringe, expecting an entirely different sort of punchline.
By contrast… I had thrown in the bit about Ann Marie Stieritz (for whom I was substituting) threatening to beat me up because I thought it would be an easy laugh that would get them in the mood to keep laughing. (You see, Ann Marie is a very bright, classy, charming and delightful lady of the sort that no one could possibly imagine uttering harsh words, much less taking a swing at anybody. Also, I’m WAY bigger than she is, so the idea of my being physically intimidated is totally… oh, never mind.) But it totally failed. Not even a suppressed snort from anybody. At that point, I began to worry that the audience wanted to beat me up.
Then, the “pork chop goes into a bar” gag ALSO failed, to the point that I blamed it on Kathryn Fenner by name, and pointed her out in the crowd.
Fortunately, the line, “State Senator Robert Ford…,” spoken in a tone as though those were the opening lines of a broadcast news report, broke them up so successfully that I got back on track. Thank you, senator…
When people came up to me after, I was fully prepared with an all-purpose response that either deflected criticism (if they DIDN’T like it) or made for a becoming display of false modesty (if they DID): “Hey, I just get up there and use the stuff the writers give me…”
I never did see either of my appearances on WACH last night, but Lora was kind enough to shoot video with her iPhone, which she shared with me. Unfortunately, when I converted it, the sound was gone, so I’m just giving you a screenshot above. You’re seeing that as the announcer says, “His attorney, Butch Bowers, says the letters are routine inquiry, and nothing more than routine paperwork and filing matters.”
Viewers were hearing that, while seeing the above footage from the lieutenant governor debate I moderated back during the fall — leaving them to assume, not without reasons, that I am Butch Bowers.
Rep. Christopher Lee of western New York abruptly resigned with only a vague explanation of regret after a gossip website reported that the married congressman had sent a shirtless photo of himself flexing his muscles to a woman whose Craigslist ad he answered.
“I regret the harm that my actions have caused my family, my staff and my constituents,” Lee posted in a surprise announcement Wednesday night on his congressional website. “I deeply and sincerely apologize to them all. I have made profound mistakes and I promise to work as hard as I can to seek their forgiveness.”
A woman described as a 34-year-old Maryland resident and government employee provided the Gawker website with e-mails she said were an exchange between her and Lee in response to an ad she placed last month in the “Women Seeking Men” section of Craigslist.
This guy Lee sent a shirtless picture of himself to one woman, and he’s ruined. I posted the picture above on Facebook last night — that’s me with my board in late 1970 or early 1971 (we were vague about time in Hawaii), back when Burl and I were in school together — for that woman and every other woman in the world to see (so far, only one of them has made a saucy remark). Burl, by the way, had nothing to do with this photograph (I can prove it: this was obviously taken on a Kodak Instamatic, and Burl had a way better camera than that). These scandals have a way of pulling people in like black holes, and I don’t want him getting in trouble, too.
Oh, yeah, let me hasten to add: Barack Obama was on the island at the time, too, but he had nothing to do with it, either. I promise. I never even spoke to the guy until 2007.
I started my career in a state with a real Sunshine Law… Tennessee.
The expectation was clear there, back in the heady post-Watergate 1970s, that the people’s business would be done in public, and that government documents belonged to the people as well.
This led to a lot of awkwardness. For instance… I well remember a school board meeting I attended in Humboldt when I was covering several rural counties for The Jackson Sun. Humboldt was the closest sizable town to Jackson, and I knew my predecessor (who was now my editor) had regularly covered that body’s meetings. Trouble was, they were regularly scheduled on the same night as several other important public bodies’ meetings in my coverage area, and for the first few months I was on that beat, they always had something going on that demanded my attention.
Mondays were brutal. There were regularly several meetings I needed to go to across two or three counties, plus other breaking news. It was not unusual for me to start work early Monday morning, work through regular day hours, cover two or three meetings that night, spend the whole night writing five or six or more stories, get some final questions answered in the morning, make calls on another breaking story or two, and then file my copy at midmorning. Actually, I had a secretary in my Trenton office who laboriously transmitted each of my stories, a character at a time, on an ancient teletype machine while I finished the next story. If I was lucky, I could grab a nap in the afternoon. But Tuesdays were often busy as well.
I think the Humboldt school board meetings were on a Monday, but perhaps my memory fails me.
Anyway, I finally managed to make it to one of their meetings — and almost felt apologetic for not having been before. I sort of hated for the good folks of Humboldt to think the Gibson County Bureau Chief didn’t think them important. I didn’t know what was on the agenda; I had just been meaning to come, and finally, here I was.
Often, when I’d show up to cover meetings in these small towns, the chair would recognize me in a gracious manner, which tended to embarrass me. I mean, I wasn’t their house guest, I was a hard-bitten newspaper reporter there to keep a jaded eye on them. Of course, this graciousness was also a handy way of the chair warning all present that there was a reporter in the room.
But at this one, it would have been nicer to be formally welcomed than to experience what happened.
It was a singularly boring meeting — I kept wanting to kick myself for having chosen THIS one to finally make an appearance. They were approving annual contracts for teachers (you know, the kind of thing reporters would be excluded from in SC, as a “personnel matter”), one at a time, and it went on and on and on. There was NOTHING at the meeting worth reporting, and as I rose to leave I was regretting the waste of time.
Then this one member comes up to me with a swagger, and I smiled and started to introduce myself, and with a tone dripping vitriol, he sneered, “Bet you’re sorry you came to this meeting. We didn’t give you any controversy for you to splash all over the paper.” I mean, I’d never met this guy, and he frickin’ HATED me for some reason I could not imagine. What the hell? I thought: I come to your stupid boring meeting, sit all the way through it, and this is the reward I get? I didn’t know what to say to the guy.
It took me a day or so to figure out that the year before, my predecessor had covered a nasty fight over a teacher’s contract — one I had either not focused on or forgotten, since that wasn’t my turf then. It had been a HUGE deal in that town, and left a lot of raw feelings — many of them caused by board members’ deep resentment of having to have personnel discussions in public. This bitter guy assumed that the only reason I had come to the meeting, when I usually didn’t, was because teacher contracts were being discussed. When, in actuality, if I’d known it, I’d have found something to do that night in another county.
But I digress.
All that is to say, I came up with certain expectations of openness in government. Which means I was in for a shock when I came home to South Carolina to lead the governmental affairs team at The State. Barriers everywhere. An FOI law full of exceptions. A Legislature that cherished its right to go into executive session at will. Anything but a culture of openness.
I’m afraid I was rather insufferable toward Jay Bender — the newspaper’s lawyer and advocate for press issues before the Legislature — the first time he met me back in 1987. He had come to brief editors on the improvements he had helped get in state law in the recent session. My reaction to his presentation was “WHAT? You call that an Open Meetings law? You settled for THAT?” I was like that.
And I saw it as my job to fight all that, and crack things open at every opportunity. I was sometimes a bit insufferable about it. One day, I went to the State House (I was an unusual sort of assigning editor in that I escaped from my desk into the field as often as possible) to check on things, and learned that there was a committee meeting going on somewhere that wasn’t being covered (there are a LOT of those these days). I thought it was behind a closed door leading off the lobby. I charged, ostentatiously (I was going to show these complacent folks how a real newspaper ripped aside the veil of secrecy), with a photographer in tow, and reached resolutely for the doorknob.
One of the many folks loitering in the lobby — many of whom had turned to watch my bold assault on that door — said, “There’s a meeting going on in there,” in an admonitory tone. I said, right out loud for all to hear, “I know there is. That’s why I’m going in there.”
And I threw open the door, and there were two people sitting having a quiet conversation, suddenly staring at me in considerable surprise. No meeting. No quorum of anything. I murmured something like “excuse me; I thought this was something else” and backed out — to the considerable enjoyment of the small crowd outside.
Anyway, I take a backseat to no one when it comes to championing open government, and so it is that I say that Nikki Haley should not have met with two fellow members of the Budget and Control Board without the participation or knowledge of the other two officials. Curtis Loftis was right to protest, and Nikki’s chief of staff was entirely out of line to scoff at his protest.
That said, I had to nod my head when my colleagues at The State said this about the breach:
But here’s the thing: This was a meeting, and a conversation, that we want Ms. Haley to have with Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman and House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Cooper. After what we’ve been through for the past eight years, having these three officials even on speaking terms, much less meeting to talk through our budget problems, is a breath of fresh air.
Amen. That was indeed my first reaction: Nikki’s having a heart-to-heart with some key lawmakers? Good. At least, it offers me hope.
Maybe it wasn’t kosher. OK, it wasn’t, period. Totally against the rules as I understand them. And yeah, it’s easy to characterize it as hypocritical for Ms. Transparency to do something like this. But hey, Nikki persuaded me some time ago that she wasn’t serious about transparency when applied to her. That was a huge part of my discomfort with her as a candidate, and no shock now. But… at least MAYBE she made some progress toward overcoming another serious deficit in her qualifications to lead our state — her penchant for going out of her way not to get along with the leadership.
Maybe. I don’t know; I wasn’t in the room — which brings us back to the problem with closed meetings. Which is why I oppose them. But you know, the older I get, the more certain I am that stuff like that is way more complicated than it seemed when I was a young reporter.
Alas! poor Blackberry. I knew it, Horatio; a device of infinite usefulness, of most excellent fancy; it hath borne me on its back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! ... Where be your emails now? your Tweets? your texts? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the Blogosphere on a roar?
To switch or not to switch, that is the question…
Get thee to a Verizon, go!…
Something is rotten in the state of 3G…
Neither a Twitterer nor a blogger be…
My hour is almost come
When I to sulphrous and tormenting flames
Must render up my PDA…
OK, so none of those work as well as I’d like. But the thing is, my Hamlet-like indecision caused me to miss out on the first wave of iPhones being offered by Verizon, so I will not be one of the cool kids (I’m sure this amazes you). I was thinking about making the move today, but then I see that they’re all gone. There will be more next week, but that’ll be like being the 27th man in space, instead of the first. And now that the first rush of lust for the new gadget has been disappointed… I’m wondering if I should wait a bit longer than that.
Here are the facts, which I’m sure Shakespeare could render more beautifully, but I will stick to plain prose:
I work in an office full of Apple people. All the computers in the office are Macs. For my part, I bring my laptop PC into the office every day, and work from that. Yeah, I get it; Macs are cool. But my fingers do all the PC commands so automatically that I find the Mac functions awkward, laborious.
Some of these people I work with are fanatical about their iPhones (and their iPads, etc., but that’s not what this is about). And over time I’ve seen what their iPhones can do that my Blackberry Curve can’t, and how beautifully they do those things, and I’ve thought that if I could have one, I might want to.
My entire extended family (and I have a large family), except for one of my sons, is on Verizon. Several of us are on the same family plan, which is economical. I just couldn’t see getting an AT&T device. So for the last year or so, I seized upon every rumor that Verizon would get the iPhone.
My Blackberry has been acting up for months — losing the data signal and having to be reset (by turning it off, taking the battery out, putting it back in, and waiting a long time while the hourglass spins before it works again) several times a day. Lately, it’s started turning itself off completely, and refusing to come back on unless I go through the whole reset routine.
I was due for an upgrade as of January. Miracle of miracles, that’s when Verizon and Apple made the announcement that the longed-for day had come.
I figured I could spring for an iPhone at the upgrade price ($199) from my blog account. I would need to, because it would not fit into our new, super-tight, post-England household budget. Besides, Mamanem, who pays the household bills, does not believe anyone needs such a gadget, even though I do. (I’ve tried to explain the critical importance of having constant, excellent connection to my blog readers, Twitter followers and Facebook friends, but she looks at me like I’m babbling in Sanskrit. She thinks of me as being the Dad in the commercial, Tweeting “I’m… sitting… on… the… patio…“)
I started worrying that another barrier could lie in my way: What if the monthly cost of data access was greater than with the Blackberry? No way I’d get that through the family Ways and Means committee.
Last week, I went by Verizon (that is to say, made the trek out to Harbison at the end of a long day) to ask some questions about the upcoming iPhone, asking specifically whether it would cost more per month, and no one knew. All they knew was that I could order one starting Feb. 3. So I left, figuring they’d know more then.
Meanwhile, asking around, I learned to my shock that my friends with AT&T iPhones were only paying $25 a month. This kind of ticked me off, because I was paying $45 a month (part of a family plan account costing well over $200 a month). They had a better device and were paying less for it, which seemed to me outrageous. I began to wonder whether I should secede from the family plan and go with AT&T after all. AT&T had been tempting me with an offer for a TV/internet/landline deal that sounded better than what I had with TimeWarner; maybe I could save even more by adding mobile…
Then someone told my wife that I was probably paying more than the usual because when I got the Blackberry originally, in January 2009, it was on a corporate server (you know, “Corporate Server” is on my list of potential names for my band). This hassle sort of ticked me off at the time, because up until that time I had had a company phone, but now the paper was making people go buy their own phones, and then be reimbursed a set amount that, of course, would not match the full monthly cost of the device. Two months later, I promptly forget that enormous injustice when I learned of another innovative cost-saving measure — I was laid off. No one at Verizon ever told me that I was paying $45 a month because I was initially connected to a corporate server. Nobody at Verizon noticed that I was no longer connected to anything of the kind. So for almost two more years, I paid $15 too much a month.
Last night, it being Feb. 3, I went back to Verizon, hoping for some answers. I was happy to learn that an iPhone would NOT cost any more a month for the data. Then I told the guy that I suspected I was paying too much a month already, and he looked it up, and said yes, I was. So he fixed it, and said from then on I would only have to pay $30 a month for data. I asked him whether I would be reimbursed for all those overpayments. He said no, quite flatly. This was one of those techie sales people who makes you feel like all your questions are stupid and an imposition on his valuable time (every question I asked, he answered with a tone and a look that said, “Are you quite done bothering me?”), so the cold look in his eyes as he let me know what a stupid question the one about reimbursement was was in no way a departure from the rest of our conversation.
He said if I wanted an iPhone, I’d have to order it online, and that the first day they’d have them at the actual store would be Feb. 10, but that if I weren’t in line by about 5 a.m., I probably wouldn’t get one.
I had thought that the new iPhone would work on the new 4G network when that rolled out, but he said no, it wouldn’t.
Then he raised a new problem… he mentioned, in passing, that in moving to an iPhone I’d lose some data — such as old voicemails. Well, I didn’t care about that, but it made me wonder: Would I lose any of my 2,044 contacts I’d accumulated over the years, starting in my Palm Pilot days (and when I say “contacts,” I mean several phone numbers and email addresses each, street addresses, extraneous notes about each person — the crown jewels to me, and quite irreplaceable) or my calendar, and would it still sync with my data on my laptop? (As you may know, I lost access to it all on my computer for several months after a disastrous Outlook crash.) My stuff was all on Google now, connected to my gmail account (which is what brad@bradwarthen.com is), so surely it would work, right? He said he didn’t know. When I insisted upon knowing, he wearily passed the question on to another Verizon employee. She didn’t know either. So I asked the clerk whether he thought I should get a Droid instead, since it is built on Google. He shrugged. I asked him what he would do. He said he had a Droid, and showed it to me. I asked whether he was thinking at all of getting an iPhone instead, and he said, no, not unless they gave him one. Which they wouldn’t.
To me, there is little point to a PDA — Twitter and email and all aside — if the contacts and calendar don’t sync smoothly with something also accessible via laptop. Might as well have an ol’ dumb phone as that.
Lose all my contacts, or even not be able to sync them smoothly? Must give us pause: There’s the respect that makes technological indecision of so long life. I was 99 percent sure that there was no way Steve Jobs would make something that wouldn’t connect smoothly with gmail data. But that wasn’t good enough. Sure, I could go home and order an iPhone online, but I wouldn’t be able to get my questions answered first. Even if I could chat with a person online, to what extent could I trust their assurances? Wouldn’t I need it in writing? And no online salesperson would have time for that — there were millions of others who wanted to buy the thing without asking stupid questions and making demands.
So I began to wonder whether I should do the equivalent of what I do with movies — not rush out and see them in the theater, but wait for Netflix. Patience is, after all, a virtue. Maybe I should even wait until 4G was out, and the rumored iPhone 5, which (maybe) would run on the new 4G network. Maybe, after a few million people actually start using Verizon iPhones, I could find out from some of them whether they sync well with Google. Or I could just go with a Droid. But I’ve looked at both, and like the iPhone SO much better.
I had also learned that a new Blackberry Curve would only cost me $29. So if my old Curve was dying (and it seems to be), maybe I could get one of those now, and wait for more info on how the iPhones actually work. Except that that would use up my upgrade. And without the upgrade, the iPhone would cost more than $700. Which might as well be 7 million. So that’s out.
What to do, what to do? I was too tired to figure it out last night. Today, I had a busy morning of meetings with clients and such. Twice during the morning, I had to reboot my device to check my email or the web. Once, it did that thing where it dies completely, and has to be force-reset. So I’m going to have to do something.
Walking into Seawell’s yesterday for Rotary, I ran into Hal Stevenson, who was complimenting me on my newfound marketing savvy as I have transitioned into a new career, and I was modestly brushing the praise aside, saying “Tut-tut,” or “My dear fellow, how you do go on…” or some such (between my recent trip to England, too much BBC-America, episodes of “Inspector Lewis” on Netflix and the fact that I’m reading Three Men in a Boat, a copy of which I bought at Blackwell’s, my diction has been somewhat altered lately).
At that moment, we stepped up to the sign-in table, and there was a hard copy of this picture from my blog, blown up, mounted, and standing in front of a display urging Rotarians to sign up for the upcoming Red Cross blood drive. This, of course, only impressed Hal the more. I shrugged — whaddyagonnado?
So we went in, and the meeting began, and then Lanier Jones (president of ADCO, former president of Rotary) got up to urge folks to give in the upcoming Columbia Lifesavers Blood Drive.
And then he called on me to come up to be recognized as the club’s ideal, the very model of the heroic donor, the Single Combat Warrior whom all should emulate, the guy who willingly laid down his life’s blood (some of it, anyway) even before the actual drive — sort of like those heroic aviators who went to Canada to join the RAF before Pearl Harbor. OK, so some of those analogies are mine, but Lanier was pretty laudatory. He even, at Kathryn Fenner’s urging (in preparing these “effects,” I carefully place allies in key positions — Kathryn was at the head table because she had given the invocation, and a fine blessing it was, and didn’t cool the food off none the way I seen some of them interruptions do), mentioned the blog: “that’s bradwarthen.com…”
And then the lovely Kelly Moore from Red Cross came up and gave me a T-shirt — not one of those cheap white ones, either, but a nice deep blue with “LIFESAVER” on it in big letters, a play on the shirt being designed like a lifeguard’s, and Kelly told me that’s what I was, a real lifesaver, and I grinned maniacally, and Bob Ford took our picture.
Just tons of glory.
Now, I’m not saying that all this will happen to YOU if you give, but you never know. And here’s one chance to be a hero like Brad. See the details below, or at this link. Of course, you can make an appointment at the Red Cross ANY time.
Here I am trying to look casual while I do something that used to terrify me. See the snacks on the table in the background? They're free, to donors.
There’s always a bit of suspense for me when I go to give blood. My otherwise stunningly magnificent body has a problem storing iron, and you have to have a certain iron level to give double red cells (higher than the requirement for whole blood), and once or twice my levels haven’t been up to snuff. So I toss back iron pills daily, especially when I’ve got a date to donate coming up.
But today, I blew the socks off that iron-measuring device. Or would have, had it been wearing socks. I had to have a score of 13.3, and my blood hit 15.5. Yeah, baby! That’s what I’m talking ’bout! Just call me Iron Man 3. Somebody call Jon Favreau; I’m ready for my close-up.
As always, this experience fills me with cocky self-righteousness, seeing as how I used to be so terrified to give (I once described it as my “Room 101” in a column). So I tend to show off. Just before this picture was taken, I Tweeted this with my left hand:
I’m @ Red Cross, typing w/ left hand while I give blood. Double red cells. Feeling self-righteous: You should be here, too, you know. #adco
Then, I asked the tech to take my picture. I’m just insufferable when filled with the idea that I’m bravely doing the right thing.
More people should feel this way. Especially in the Midlands, where we have a constant challenge meeting the demand for blood, and have to import it.
You, too, can be an insufferably smug, self-promoting prig. Give blood.
For months, I’ve been hearing that there’s another guy, who is also a regular at Yesterday’s, who looks just like me. I’ve heard he’s my Doppelgänger, that the resemblance is uncanny.
I’ve heard this from friends; I’ve even heard it from a couple of my own daughters. Several people who know me well have started talking to this handsome gentleman in the mistaken impression that he IS me, only to realize their mistake a moment after. There have been so many incidents of this, which have gotten back to me, that I was both in a sweat to meet this guy, but also sort of dreading it. You know how it is — people will say you look just like somebody, and then you see that somebody, and you realize that’s how people see me, and then you’re depressed all day.
But faint hearts never solve mysteries, so today, when I got a tip he was there — being hungry, and in the mood for a Yuengling, anyway — I grabbed my camera and went over to Yesterday’s. And accosted him, and introduced myself.
His first name is Donald, and so is mine, but let’s not make too much of that. At some point, a coincidence is no more than that.
I have to say that I don’t think the resemblance is all THAT great. I, for one, would not mistake him for me. I know me when I see me. But there is no doubt that there is a fine, manly strength in his features, which radiate intelligence and excellence of character. So I can understand casual observers making the mistake.
Such as the young woman I had never met who was sitting at the bar as we got out picture taken together. She asked, incredulously, “You mean, they’re NOT brothers?”
OK, so technically it would actually be my first album. And of course, I first have to have a band, and learn some songs, and other details. It’s a project that’s been in the works for about 40 years. But don’t make like I’m procrastinating or anything. As you well know, I’ve been working on band names, and a playlist, and other essentials. (As a former managing editor I knew who was famous for his malaprops used to say, there I go again, putting the horse before the cart.)
And now, my cover art. Never mind that cover art is a passé art form, because people don’t put covers on their MP3s. I don’t care. I love album covers. Art for art’s sake, and all that. Let the Philistines sneer. Or the modernists. Or whoever is inclined to sneer, let them.
Bottom line, today is another really busy day, and I have two or three little ADCO projects I have yet to start, and finish, by the end of the day. So just to say I posted something, here ya go.
The backstory: This VERY out-of-tune piano was in the hallway outside our room at the bed-and-breakfast where we stayed in Oxford (that’s the exterior below). No one but me touched the piano while we were there. I would have known; immediately on the other side of the wall it’s up against is the head of the bed I slept in.
What am I playing? Well, my right hand is playing the opening chords of “Let it Be.” My left hand is just posing. I never really even learned to play the piano with one hand, much less play with two at the same time.
Anyway, I’m the front man. I don’t need an actual talent.
As for my costume… there’s no costume; these are my real clothes. I liked wearing them for this because something about the ensemble made me think of the “Our House” video by Madness. (Watch the first 45 seconds to see what I mean.) And no, I didn’t get that hat to wear in England (although lots of guys there actually DO wear them, and by no means are they all tourists). I’ve been wearing that very hat for more than 30 years. Not every day, of course, but often on weekends.
And finally, the credit. My wife shot this picture, quite reluctantly (and hurriedly, lest another guest see her doing it), at my request. She’s very patient. And she’s always paying me compliments. For instance, when she caught me using my digital recorder to record the sounds of the coffee shop at Blackwell’s book store in Oxford, she said “You’re very different from traveling with Mary.” Mary being her friend that she backpacked around Europe with just before she met me and I started monopolizing her time.
For the longest time, I didn’t have a quotation on my Facebook profile. This didn’t seem right. I’m all about words. I’m all about pithy expressions of one’s world view, yadda, yadda. (Although I fear that now that I no longer have the discipline of writing a weekly column, I’ve gotten somewhat lazy about it, hence the “yadda, yadda.”)
Loads of other people — people who were not overly thoughtful students of rhetoric, judging by the quotations they chose — had multiple quotations. They had all sorts of things they wanted to say — or rather, things they wanted to let other people say for them.
But the thing is, I like so MANY things that I read — one of my problems in reading books is that, as I read them, I follow people around reading great passages aloud to them (and a well-written book will have at least one such passage per page), which is why people avoid me when I’m reading books — that the idea of singling out one, or two, or even 10 such quotes just seemed too restrictive. I thought, What is that good that I’m willing to have it almost as a personal epitaph? People will see that and think this sums me up. What quotation is there that I like that much?
It would need to be semi-original (obviously, if it were entirely original, it wouldn’t be a quotation). It couldn’t be trite. I couldn’t have seen anyone else use it. It needed to say something I believe. And it needed to be something that has truly stuck with me over time, as opposed to, say, the funniest recent thing I’ve read on Twitter.
So one day it struck me that I should post this:
“I wouldn’t want to live without strong misgivings. Right, Chaplain?”
— Yossarian, in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22
So I did.
And for the longest time, that stood alone, and I was satisfied to let it do so. I liked it on a number of levels. For instance, in a day when our politics are dominated by people who are SO DAMNED SURE they’re right and other people are wrong, it had a certain countercultural UnParty flavor to it. At the same time, it’s not an existential statement of doubt — the fact that he’s saying it to a chaplain, one who certainly believes in God (although in an unorthodox way, being an Anabaptist), anchors it in belief, but still expresses the idea that one should always be willing to question one’s assumptions.
It also said something I wanted others to know about me. Because I tend to argue whatever position I’m arguing rather tenaciously, even vociferously, people tend to think I’m inflexible. They’re wrong about this. I can usually think of all the reasons I might be wrong just as readily as they can, perhaps even more readily. (After all, one of the main steps in building an argument is imagining all the objections to it.) For instance, take our arguments over the Iraq War, or the debates I have with libertarians. My interlocutors think I’m a bloodthirsty war lover, and a rigid authoritarian. But I’m not, not really. I have a tendency to argue very insistently with your more radical libertarians because I think they go overboard, and that I have to pull REALLY HARD in the other direction to achieve any balance. And on the subject of the war, well… when you reach the conclusion that military action is necessary, and that action is initiated, I feel VERY strongly that you have to see it through, and that the time for debating whether to initiate it is long past. At least, that’s the way I saw the Iraq situation. That doesn’t mean I didn’t think there were viable arguments against it in the first place — I was just unpersuaded by them.
I suppose I could go on and on about why I like the quotation, but that’s not what this post is about.
This post is about the fact that I thought that quote was sort of lonesome, so I added another today:
I’ve always had a beef with people who constantly tear down the place where they live. You know, the whiners who always want to be someplace else. The people who seem to think that if it’s local, it’s no good. These people are destructive. They’re not good neighbors to have.
You know that I’m a born critic, and I’m constantly expressing dissatisfaction with aspects of Columbia, or South Carolina. But I do it from a love of my home, and from a determination to make it better. If there’s something you don’t like about your home, you should be trying with all your might to make it better.
To me, this is a fundamental moral obligation. And like most true believers, I can find Scripture to back it up. Remember the passage that Nathan Ballentine came up with to encourage me when I got laid off? It was Jeremiah 29:11:
For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full of hope.
Well, when I looked that up, I found that I liked what preceded that just as much, the passage in which the prophet told the people not to whine about being in exile, but to affirmatively embrace the place where they were, and get on with life in it:
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon:
Build houses to dwell in; plant gardens, and eat their fruits.
Take wives and beget sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters. There you must increase in number, not decrease.
Promote the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the LORD, for upon its welfare depends your own.
Let’s repeat that last:
Promote the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the LORD, for upon its welfare depends your own.
Amen, I say unto you. Stand in the place where you live.
This morning, when I went for a Grande Verona at the 5 Points Starbucks, I had the pleasure of flashing one of my favorite souvenirs from our trip to England: My official London Starbucks card. (Yes, it’s touristy, but I don’t care. I tend to like almost anything with a Union Jack on it.)
The effect was everything I could have hoped for. The barista was impressed, noting that he’d never before seen one like it. I basked in my elevated status… a Thorstein Veblen moment!
I bought it at a Starbucks in The City, one of two or three of the chain’s stores to which I gave my custom in London. The visits were generally satisfactory, which I took time to communicate to Mr. Darcy — that is to say, Darcy Willson-Rymer, the managing director of Starbucks in the UK and Ireland. He’s one of my followers on Twitter, you know — a fact which I could have mentioned to the baristas in England if I’d wanted to impress them, but one doesn’t want to top it the nob too much. Besides, it was unnecessary; the service was generally up to the usual high Starbucks standard. (Darcy was kind enough to write back to me, saying “Welcome to the UK. I hope we look after you. let me know how you get on.” I got on fine, as it happened.)
There were differences — for instance, they always ask you whether you want to drink your coffee on-premises or take away, which took me aback at first. (Or was that at the Caffe Nero shops I went to when Starbucks wasn’t handy? No, I think it was at both.) Also, some of the stores were huge, with far more seating capacity than I’m used to. Which was nice.
But now that I return home, I find all is not well in Starbucks land.
They’re changing the logo. I didn’t like the sound of that when I first saw the headline of the release a colleague had shared. Now that I’ve seen the new logo, I like it less.
How does it strike you? I think it looks naked. The poor siren is suspended in space, unanchored. She looks insecure. And now that it’s monochromatic, now that the “siren” is green and there’s no black to offset it, the whole lacks contrast, definition and character. Also, removing the words suggests a surrender to a post-literate world — and while I may have this wrong, I would have said that Starbucks’ constituency would tend to be more literate than the general population.
Moreover, it’s an unnecessary break with tradition, which on principle I abhor. (I’m not much on show tunes, but to the extent that I have a favorite, it’s “Tradition” from “Fiddler on the Roof.” The rest of the play, in which Tevye is forced to accept successively more jarring breaks with tradition, I like less.) It’s insupportable, as the original Darcy would have said. And then, when I read the reasoning — that it’s intended “to move the Seattle, Washington-based company beyond coffee” — I was nothing short of appalled. Beyond coffee? That’s like the church moving “beyond God” (which you might say some churches have done, but let’s not get off on a theological digression).
You ask me, I say if you must change, go back to the original brown logo (except that it had “and Tea,” which also distracted from the point). But, well, they didn’t ask me…
