Harper’s Index

I read this in the new December Harper’s Magazine:

Percentage of Americans and Chinese, respectively, who think action on warming is worth it even if prices rise as a result: 41, 88

What conclusions can you draw from that?  Maybe this: we have our priorities wrong.  They don’t.

October Day

Sometimes life is hard work, like sharpening a rough pencil that won’t take a point.  Then, something lets up as you turn the crank and you’re done: smooth sailing.  Went for a walk yesterday.  Here’s what I saw:

Looking North

Blue Rock and Crashing Wave

Falling Away

Sand and Lake

In the Channel

The Steps Down

Chabon again

From his essay, The Kingdom of Snow and Ghosts, Michael Chabon writes this:

“It’s a cliché act of contemporary parenthood to inform one’s children—in our endless parental quest to engender in them that nameless emotion, the inverse of awe, whose purest expression is embodied by the four timeless words Who gives a shit?—that when one was a boy there were only three channels, or four, or at most five. Five channels! Can you imagine?”

Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say!  God preserve us all from Andyrooneyitis. Or, as the inimitable Monty Python team would have it:

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:

I was happier then and I had nothin’. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:

House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, ‘alf the floor was missing, and we were all ‘uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:

Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t’ corridor!

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

Oh, we used to dream of livin’ in a corridor! Would ha’ been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh….

….

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

And you try and tell the young people of today that ….. they won’t believe you.

ALL:

They won’t!

Oral Histories

It’s both heartwarming and troubling to hear the stories old people tell about their youth. It’s heartwarming to hear that what endures in that swiss cheese we call memory includes stories about making a fort out of pine needles (“which lasted fifteen years, because it was left alone”), playing cops and robbers in the woods, playing sand lot softball after school with “whoever showed up,” and swimming every day “from springtime to  fall.”  There is a sense of timelessness in those memories, a sense that the unstructured halcyon days of youthful play have been important events, when all is said and done.  I am glad to hear these memories, but also convinced that those days are pretty much over.

Studs Terkel

Michael Chabon writes eloquently about the loss of childhood freedom in his wonderful essay, Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood:

“The thing that strikes me now when I think about the Wilderness of Childhood is the incredible degree of freedom my parents gave me to adventure there. A very grave, very significant shift in our idea of childhood has occurred since then. The Wilderness of Childhood is gone; the days of adventure are past. The land ruled by children, to which a kid might exile himself for at least some portion of every day from the neighboring kingdom of adulthood, has in large part been taken over, co-opted, colonized, and finally absorbed by the neighbors.”

And that’s the troubling part.  As I sat and listened to an encore presentation of a wonderful oral history project last night, I could not help but be troubled by the knowledge that our present day children have been largely robbed of the experience of being alone, fending for themselves, “killing time” outside, quietly (or noisily) being kids amongst other kids.  I remember those days, the days when mom said “go outside and play” and so we did.  Was my mom a lesser mom than these modern day moms who smooth everything over for their kids?  I don’t know.  No.  I don’t buy it.  Kids need less structure to their lives.  They need to find out who they are … when we are not orchestrating everything they do.  And if that works out for mom … it’s a bonus.  No guilt.  “Go outside and play,” is still some of the best advice my mom ever gave me, and it’s not something you’ll generally hear moms say that much any more.

So, heartwarming as it is to know that pleasant childhood memories of vast empty days endure into old age, it’s sad to reflect on how we have structured our present day lives to deprive kids of time alone, away from moms, dads, organized sports, play dates, and other mediated events.  Maybe it’s guilt on the parents’ parts.  Maybe they think they are doing a better job then their parents.  I don’t think so.  It didn’t hurt me to be sent outside to play, and it didn’t hurt me to be told to sit still in church …. for an hour.   Why must everything be convenient for kids?  I hated sitting still, but I did.  It was probably good for me, but certainly not traumatic.

Last night, amidst the carefully orchestrated presentation which the adults had arranged, and students took part in, a steady stream of kids kept getting up and leaving the auditorium, opening the door, letting in light and generally making a nuisance of themselves, simply because they took a notion to stretch their legs, get a drink, go to the toilet … or whatever.  None of the old timers with weak bladders needed to get up, but kids… you know.  You can’t expect kids to sit still.  That’s how kids are, right?

For those of you with facebook accounts, there is apparently a link to a facebook event related to last night’s screening.  I say “apparently” because I do not have a facebook account.  Here’s what I can do for the rest of you, though.  Go here and listen to Rufus Wainwright’s song, Oh What a World

Why am I always on a plane or a fast train
Oh what a world my parents gave me
Always
Travelin’ but not in love

Simple, really

I used to do TM regularly for a number of years.  Not so much anymore.  Still, I get the emails, and today I got one which seemed so eminently sensible and simple (like TM), so obvious really.  They’re calling it “Maharishi Ayurveda”, but really, there’s absolutely nothing esoteric about it (like TM).  For someone like me

Me in the morning

who has been waking up, wracked with guilt about late night snacking, reluctant to even look in the mirror for fear of seeing that image of Nick Nolte looking back at me, somehow this makes perfect sense:

“Maharishi Ayurveda is a natural approach to calm the physiology, restore inner balance, and master the challenges of daily life. Try it for yourself by applying some of our easy tips to help regain health and fitness:

• Go to bed early; ideally before 10 PM.
• If your schedule allows, don’t use an alarm clock for one week. Allow your body to naturally sleep for as long as it needs.
• After your morning shower, practice Yoga or some easy exercises.
• Wait for 1½ hours after waking up before you have breakfast.
• Don’t eat between meals unless your stomach really starts growling.
• Make lunch the main meal of the day. Eat a lighter meal in the evening.
• End your meal when there’s still room to spare, before you feel completely full.
• Once a day, leave the car parked and go for a 30-minute walk in the fresh air.
• Avoid eating late at night. Try to have dinner between 5 and 7 PM.
• Favor a lighter diet and avoid foods which are heavy and difficult to digest, like meat, fish, cheese, and fried foods.
• For better sleep, let the day end in quietness. Instead of watching TV, read some pleasant literature or listen to relaxing music.”

Yes, by gum, I think I’ll try this out.  I already go to bed early, so that’s a given.  What about the beer though….?

Travis and Jonathan

At about 2:00 Dunlap does a clear, concise breakdown of the commidification of consumer culture, the effect of branding on class loyalty, and how our conditioned reactions cause us to immediately stop thinking clearly.  Foucault, eat your heart out.

Inherent Vice

My copy of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice arrived last week, and I have dipped into it and found it delightful.  Even more delightful is the trailer (above) which, by all reports, is read by Tom himself.  This is precisely the second time in over 50 years that Pynchon has lifted the veil on his very private life, the other time being a voice over for The Simpsons (yes, The Simpsons), in which he did a cameo of himself, with a bag over his head.  No public photos of Pynchon exist.

But here’s what’s even cooler: listen to the voice-over to the video trailer, and tell me he doesn’t sound like The Dude, from The Big Lebowski.  I picture him wandering into the supermarket in bedroom slippers and a bathrobe, sampling the milk and generally chillin’ through life.  I can’t get that voice out of my head, and the book reads better for it.

The Dude Abides

Another Palin Gem

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

Yes, dear, it would be downright evil, if in fact it existed.  But it doesn’t.  So, in the meantime, I would say what’s “downright evil” is your willful ignorance and your fearmongering.  Please go away.

More twitter

Kind of like saying “more cowbell” really.  As somebody said (don’t know who) it’s a way of communicating which seems specifically designed for 14 year old girls.  So, by way of response to tinjockey’s comment (below) I post this, one of my favorite Doonsbury cartoons on the subject, and there are many.  Enjoy:

Be here now, dude.

Packaged meat

“I often wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitised and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf.”

File the above quote under “great metaphors for our time.”  Spoken by Baroness Greenfield over at the Telegraph.