40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty Seven

I have a friend who's ill and I'm worried he's not going to get better. I have another friend who's leaving town this weekend and I suspect tonight was the last time I'll see him. But despite being a middle-aged man, when I look at these images I feel a little less sad.

Thank you, Chuck Jones.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty Six

Deep In The Heart of Texas

The entire article from The Huffington Post is worth reading, but I thought I would quote the first sentence because I can't summarize it any better:

"A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade."

There is a slideshow with the article detailing some of the changes that were pushed through. It's the standard ultra-conservative party line: Reagan was The Greatest President Ever, minorities didn't play much a part in this nation's development, free enterprise is the best system every time everywhere. My favorite change, which is simultaneously the pettiest and most Orwellian: the US government will be described as a "constitutional republic" rather than "democratic." Amazing.

This reminds me of what George Carlin said about school: "They're only teaching you what they want you know."

Here come the new Dark Ages!

40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty Five

Closing Time
Joe Queenan

Joe Queenan’s memoir Closing Time begins with what could be the start of an amusing affectionate anecdote about the time his father got stuck on the roof of their house and had to stay there all day. But because his father was a raging alcoholic who terrorized his children, the day is remembered as less humorous than peaceful, one of the few afternoons of peace the Queenan children got to experience.

I’ve read Queenan’s work before (he’s contributed to Spy, Esquire, and The Wall Street Journal among others) and while I can appreciate his wit, I don’t like the accompanying nastiness of his writing. Queenan sees this as part of his job as a satirist and while I certainly have a mean bone or two in my body, this tone has always kept me from being an enthusiast. In addition, his satire picks on easy prey and I disagree with his politics. On the other hand, I can’t be too hard on someone whose book of celebrity interviews is entitled If You’re Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble. Full disclosure: He is also a supportive friend and mentor to one of my friends. I’ve met him a couple of times and he couldn’t have been nicer. The first time he mentioned he was working on a book about his father but it wasn’t easy. The book is Closing Time.

Queenan grew up poor in Philadelphia in the 1950s and 60s, the son of an alcoholic who could not hold a job for long and a woman who had children but didn’t have much interest in them.

…he had simply suffered through so many calamities that the only way he knew how to respond to adversity was to brutalize those closest to him. Happily, his preference for victims shorter than forty-eight inches kept my mother out of the line of fire. Like many Irish-Catholic men of his generation, he would never dream of raising his hand to his wife, not only because he feared that it would have brought down the curtain on their marriage, but because men like him had an unwholesome reverence for their spouses, viewing them as domestic stand-ins for the Virgin Mary, with the one notable difference that, unlike the Madonna, they also cooked and cleaned. My mother was not a Madonna; she was an emotionally inert woman who had injudiciously brought four children into the world with no clear idea of how henceforth to proceed. While my father was skinning us alive with his trusty old belt, she would entomb herself in her bedroom, surrounded by newspapers she never seem to learn anything from, pretending not to hear what was going on downstairs. But the walls were not thick and the sound must have carried, if not in her conscience, at least into her cochleae.

Understandably, Queenan was motivated by escape: from his father’s beatings, from his neighborhood, from his class. He doesn’t want to be rich, he simply wants to stop being poor. A combination of luck, self-determination and the influence of a few kind souls saves Queenan, but this memoir is neither self-aggrandizing nor sentimental. There is no reconciliation with the father, no forgiveness, no moment that puts all the abuse into perspective. The book is a meditation on urban entropy, poverty, class differences and how culture and education can, but not necessarily will, help. (“Marguerite, a product of the slums, knew that if you were standing in front of a Brancusi and the light hit it just right, you could briefly forget you were poor.”) It is also funny and compulsively readable. When looking for passages to include in this essay, I found myself reading pages at a time until forcing myself to stop. Queenan is a master of smart conversational prose that always pulls you forward because you want to see what the next sharp detail, funny line or larger insight will be, as in this section describing he and his sisters riding in the back of his father’s delivery truck:

If I was not careful, I could have easily tumbled out into the street and been flattened by oncoming cars. But I was careful – I was born careful – and these outings were rollicking good fun. Anyway, back in the Paleocene 1950s, when being fond of one’s children had not yet come into vogue, poor people didn’t seem to mind all that much if one of their offspring when flying out into traffic, as everyone had spares.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty Four

My cousin Katie commented in response to this post:

It's driving that causes you to miss the beautiful. Wilkes-Barre is a beautiful city and you've seen it and photographed it because you've always walked it, John. When you drive, the run-down seems to stand out. When you walk (or bike-ride as my Dad loved to do) you get to see the beauty in the details. I always try to get out and walk when I'm home. It reminds me why I was so happy growing up there. And that snow storm, on that particular day, was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

Well, there's so much to respond to here. While I will always prefer walking to driving, I do love the blur of the landscape passing by when you are in motion, whether on a train, bus or in the passenger's seat. It's one of the reasons why I don't often read on buses. I prefer looking at the landscape in motion. When I walk, it's more like I'm looking at still photographs, whereas in a car or train, it's more like watching a movie. But yes, walking or biking gives you the time to appreciate the details.

The other night, in response to a friend's comment that he could see himself living in Los Angeles (a city that I profess to "hate" even though every time I'm there I enjoy myself a great deal), I instinctively said "I couldn't live in a city where you had to drive everywhere and had no public transportation." My friend pointed out that LA had fine public transportation and he in fact had friends who lived there who didn't know how to drive and got around just fine. I suppose I was thinking I could never live in a city that was not conducive to walking. A common characteristic of everywhere I've lived is that the were all pedestrian-friendly: cities that not only invited but also rewarded walking with the little surprises and treasures that Katie refers to. (Another characteristic of the places I've lived; they've all been near and partially defined by bodies of water, whether the Susquehanna, Thames or Hudson Rivers, the San Francisco Bay or the Potomac. I suppose i don't ever want to feel completely landlocked.) I've lived in Brooklyn for almost six years now and I still miss being able to walk to work.

In America, cities founded before the invention of the automobile were based on a 19th Century European model: a central downtown area with a mix of commercial and residential buildings, designed with the idea that people would walk to their destinations. I was lucky enough to grow up in such a town. However, much of this country is now based on a Los Angeles model: urban sprawl connected by roads with the assumption that people will drive everywhere, and that driving is somehow inherently better than walking. Even Wilkes-Barre, where I grew up, now seems more of a sprawl of malls, industrial parks and suburban developments than a town.

All of which is fine if you love driving or are a real estate developer, but having grown up in a town where everything you needed was within walking distance, I find it a frustrating way to live. I have friends I have not seen in years and I believe one of the reasons is because I don't like being in their house. They live in a suburban development and there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, unless you drive. I feel trapped inside their house. (Full disclosure: it's possible I haven't seen these friends in years because they grew tired of me, but I really prefer to blame their house.)

Driving is for efficiency, but this efficiency is linked to economic concerns not necessarily in the driver's best interest. A number of years ago, I imagined people whose entire lives seemed to consists of driving an endless triangle between the industrial park where they worked, the suburban development where they live and the shopping/strip malls where they shopped. If you legally declared that those could be the only three places they could go, almost anyone would protest. Yet many people do spend their lives shuttling between these destinations.

Walking brings contemplation. It's also not as goal-oriented as driving, though God knows there is much pleasure to be had in cruising around in a car or driving on a dark highway at night. But one of the things that I feel so grateful to have experienced is growing up in an area in which I could walk anywhere. This brought an early sense of autonomy and self-determination, as opposed to having to ask my parents to drive me any time I wanted to do somewhere. This probably explains why I've lived where I have and why my life has had the shape it has: because I am determined to live in cities where the element of chance that accompanies walking as opposed to driving is primary. This lack of efficiency, this importance of contemplation and belief in significant chance happenings has a great deal to explain my mindset and life.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a town that had its economic peak during the early 20th century, when people could still afford to build beautiful buildings of stone and brick. We can't afford to build such buildings now. That's another feature of shopping malls and most suburban developments: they're ugly at worst, boring at best. Even if you did walk among them, you'd be bored.

Yes, Katie. The snowstorm the day of your father's funeral was beautiful. He deserved no less. Snow makes everything beautiful but I had forgotten how ethereal and glowing it makes my, and his, hometown.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty Three

Karma

The other night I was having dinner at my favorite bar and got into a conversation with Scott, the bartender. Scott's one of those bartenders who, if he recognizes you, reaches over the bar to shake your hand and tell you how good it is to see you again. He's going to be going to Europe soon, visiting London, Paris, Prague and Berlin. I told him what I remembered of London and Paris, paid my bill eventually and said goodnight.

Once outside I recalled I had a great photobook/traveler's guide to Paris that was invaluable when I was there five years ago. I had lent it to a co-worker for vacation, and she loved it too. So I turned around to go back in and ask Scott if he wanted to borrow the book when two girls who were heading in said "You know, you're going in the wrong direction. You were just in here."

"Yeah, I know" I said "but someone said something that made me mad, so I'm going back in to fight him."

"Oh, no! You have great bone structure - I'd hate to see it get ruined in a fight."

So there you go. You go to do something nice and the universe throws a nice compliment your way.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty Two

What happens when it's midnight and you haven't written anything for your online journal yet and you don't have any ideas that you can finish by the self-imposed deadline and your friend Jeff's comment from yesterday has brought up all sorts of old Lampoon nostalgia not only for the individual issues themselves but for the times (early 1970's) when they were published and the times (your teen years) when you began buying them, though it should be said that Bob's suggestion that you write about the current Vatican sex scandal in which a choirista was apparently soliciting male prostitutes isn't a bad idea either:



You just post a National Lampoon cover you found online.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty One

Nazi Literature in the Americas
Roberto Bolano

Roberto's Bolano's experimental novel is a catalogue of imaginary extreme right wing literature that somehow took root in North and Latin America. In tone, it recalls Jorge Borges and Stanislaw Lem's imagined fictions along with the pieces Woody Allen wrote for The New Yorker in the early 1970's, such as "If Impressionists Were Dentists" which imagined the letters Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo, but substituting dental procedures for art-making.

The central idea seems to be a play on the way that most people in the arts lean left or at are at least liberal. It is written in the same dry, deadpan language of most literary surveys. What if someone paid serious attention to more right-wing authors? It leads to laugh out-loud lines like these:

She took to drinking in dives and having affairs with some of the most unsavory individuals in Buenos Aires. Her well-known poem 'I Was Happy with Hitler,' misunderstood by the Right and Left alike, dates from this period.

In 1958 she fell in love again. This time the object of her affections was a twenty-five-year-old painter. He was blond, blue-eyed and disarmingly stupid.

As a young man Salcvatico advocated, among other things, the re-establishment of the Inquisition; corporal punishment in public; a permanent war against the Chlieans, the Paraguayans, or the Bolivians as a kind of gymnastics for the nation...
He was a soccer player and a flutist.

He is against monopolies, especially cultural monopolies. He believes in the family, but also in a man's "natural right to have a bit of fun on the side."

It is the pacing, the mix of the straightforward with the absurd, that recalls Woody Allen's influential early work.

But there is also something else here. All of Bolano's authors end up sad failures. Part of you wants to say "thank God" as they are horrible people and their beliefs are destructive. Yet there is also a remarkable melancholy that creeps in as you read yet another case study of someone whose passions and hard work ultimately lead to nothing. It reminds me of Thomas Pynchon's Mason and Dixon, in which all the conspiracies of those in power (the Dutch East India Company, the Jesuits, the British Crown) ultimately came to nothing as those organizations passed into irrelevance. As one who lived through the Bush years, it can give you hope.

On a personal note, apropo of nothing, I have the nice surprise of realizing that the photo on the cover of Nazi Literature in the Americas, like many of Bolano's other early novels, was taken by my downstairs neighbor Allen. The cover seemed familiar without my ever realizing why. I like the idea that the book was in my apartment while the man who created the cover image was just one story down.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty

Barbie and Ken Pieta
One of kind craft/sculpture available for purchase here.






Very special thank you to my friend Carol for telling me about this.

40 Days of Lent: Day Nineteen

The Summer Book
Tove Jansson

It was the cover of NYRB’s republication of The Summer Book that initially interested me. Like all their books, it is a simple, elegant design, using a pleasing mix of colors and an image that seems perfect. It was perfect: it was a watercolor of an island silhouetted against a light sky by author Tove Jansson used for the novel’s first edition. Unlike DVD companies that forgo a film’s original iconic poster in favor of a mundane picture of its stars when designing their discs, NYRB knew better than tamper with perfection. The DVD comparison isn’t far-fetched. NYRB reminds me of the Criterion Collection in the way they republish lost classics in handsome editions, usually with insightful introductions by contemporary authors. I have a number of their books; I haven’t read them all, but they are all beautiful objects.

Admiring the cover, I thought “Tove Jansson? I know that name – how do I know that name?” The explanation was on the back. Jansson was the creator of Moomin, a delightful comic strip that began publishing in the 1950’s. Finding out she also wrote books is like discovered an unknown novel by Charles Schulz or Walt Kelly.

The Summer Book is the story of Sophia, a young girl who bonds with her grandmother while they spend the summer together on a small island in the Gulf of Finland. Despite this set-up, the book is not sentimental or even overtly emotional. Sophia behaves much like a child, alternately charming and frustrating, and the grandmother can be moody, swinging from wise and sharing to irascible in the space of a few sentences. They’re two women, one young enough that she hasn’t fully learned how to “be nice” so people will like her and one who is old enough to gratefully let go of such social pretence. On this isolated island, they’re just themselves.

They’re themselves, surrounded by a natural world of old vegetation, unexpected storms, and debris that washes up on the beach. The vignettes of the book are described in a language that’s restrained but filled with a sly humor wise to the characters’ traits. Jansson’s description of a sometimes harsh landscape and the people who chose to live there reminds me of Annie Proulx and the episodic nature of the novel recalls comic strips. It is a sensuous book, passages written to appeal to the senses as to how things smell, feel, taste as well as look and sound. A passage I particularly like:

Grandmother snorted. “We sowed our own tents,” she said, remembering what they had looked like – huge, sturdy, grayish-brown. This was a toy, a bright yellow plaything for veranda guests, and not worth having.

“Isn’t it a Scout tent?” asked Sophia anxiously.

So her grandmother said maybe it was, after all, but a very modern one, and they crawled in and lay down side by side.

“Now you’re not allowed to go to sleep,” Sophia said. “You have to tell me what it was like to be a Scout and all the things you did.”

A very long time ago, Grandmother had wanted to tell about all the things they did, but no one had bothered to ask. And now she had lost the urge.

“We had campfires,” she answered briefly, and suddenly she felt sad.

“And what else?”

“There was a log that burned for a long time. We sat around the fire. It was cold out. We ate soup.”

That’s strange, Grandmother thought. I can’t describe things any more. I can’t find the words, or maybe it’s just that I’m not trying hard enough. It was such a long time ago. No one here was even born. And unless I tell it because I want to, it’s as if it never happened; it gets closed off and then it’s lost. She sat up and said, “Some days I can’t remember very well. But sometime you ought to try and sleep in a tent all night.”

40 Days of Lent: Day Eighteen

40 Days of Lent: Day Seventeen

25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom
Alan Moore

I’m disappointed by 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom. Perhaps I should rephrase that. I was disappointed by Alan Moore’s book of that title. When I heard that writer Alan Moore was going to be writing a book about erotica and pornography, I expected a fresh perspective on these controversial topics. One thing that Moore’s work has never suffered from was a lack of ideas.

But while Abrams has done their customary exemplary job with the book’s design and production -- it is a handsome book to look through and the illustrations are well-chosen -- the essay within is a little lacking. The more sexually open a culture is, the better it is. There’s good pornography and bad pornography, aesthetically speaking, so we should strive to make good pornography. The social or political reasons people have against pornography are either repressive or disingenuous. Whether you agree with those statements or not, there’s not much here to argue with. The text is more manifesto than essay, so the reader is left with little more than what Mr. Moore thinks. Historical proof or logical arguments aren’t really part of this book. That’s a shame because I would be interested in reading a serious scholarly work that used historical precedence and logical arguments as a justification for erotica.

40 Days of Lent: Day Sixteen

Drawings by Carl Jung






Granted, he's not as good as my friends Andrea or Cindy, but I think these drawings done by psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung are still mighty impressive. Which is to say that when I saw them in person, all I could think was "Wow"" as I felt my head buzz.

I don't know if I accept any of Jung's theories as anything more than myth, but the fact that he sought to express his ideas in visual terms apart from analytic theory makes me think that he understood exactly how these things work and makes me want to cut him some slack.

All of these drawings come from Jung's Red Book, a work in which he struggled to reconcile his ideas of myth and individual consciousness. I may write more about this book and Jung later on, but for now...wow.

40 Days of Lent: Day Fifteen

Ghostly Hands Wave Arian Christianity Good-Bye

Arian Christianity was a branch in the first few hundred years of Christianity that argued that Christ, while important, was not the equal of the God that created the universe.

Many of the barbarians that sacked the Roman empire were, in fact, Arian Christians, which, in addition to their destructive tendencies, put them at odds with Roman Catholic Christianity. In fact, this argument over the precise nature of Christ's divinity was one of the reasons for the Council of Nicea, which determined the belief structure of Catholicism for almost 2000 years.

Once Arian Christianity was defeated, traces of it were wiped out even from churches built to practice the faith, which leads to the interesting moment in the second episode of the BBC's History of Christianity when Diarmaid MacCulloch visits a form Arian Christian church. The barbarian king Theodoric has been replace in the church mosaics by a gold field and his courtiers have been replaced by curtains.



But whoever did the censoring didn't do a perfect job, because as MacCulloch points out, you can still see their hands on the columns in the mosaics.



I love these ghostly hands, reaching out of the darkness. They're like something from a surrealist painting, or, had they been in black and white drawings rather than multi-color mosaics, like something you'd see in an Edward Gorey story.



I love how they beckon us into the darkness, into the past. "Step into the dark" they say "and we'll tell you what we believed before we were erased from our own church." Join us.

40 Days of Lent: Day Fourteen

The Chilean earthquake was so powerful that it has shifted the Earth's axis and shortened the day.

Read that sentence again, and here's the article from which I got my info:

Chile earthquake: Earth axis shifted, day shortened
March 02, 2010 04:17 PM EST

The earthquake that rocked Chile has apparently shifted the Earth axis, according to a report by Ker Than of National Geographic news.

The magnitude 8.8 quake is the fifth strongest ever recorded, according to the USGS, and apparently caused the axis of the Earth to shift by about three inches.

Calculations done by geophysicist Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory say that, by speeding up the Earth's rotation, the quake could have shortened an Earth day by 1.26 millionths of a second.

Scientists explained the phenomenon by drawing comparisons to a figure skater. Keith Sverdrup said that as a skater spins and pulls her arms in, she starts rotation faster. During the quake, a portion of Earth's mass pulled in, speeding the planet's rotation ever so slightly.

Don't expect to notice a significant change to your day, or any change at all, for that matter. Apparently scientists can measure Earth days only with an accuracy within 20 millionths of a second, meaning the recent changes can be estimated but not scientifically proven.

I have two thoughts about this. One: "Cool." The other: "Uh-oh."

40 Days of Lent: Day Thirteen

Naked Lunch
William S. Burroughs

So I finally got around to reading Naked Lunch on its 51st birthday. Unlike other literary touchstones, it’s half-century mark passed fairly unnoticed, apart from a hardcover facsimile edition put out by its publisher. However, the copy I read was (improbably as it may seem) the movie tie-in edition meant to capitalize on the David Cronenberg film of almost twenty years ago. Yes, that’s how long I’ve been buying and holding on to books without actually reading them. Disgraceful, isn’t it? Oddly enough, it feels like yesterday when I bought the book. In defense of the book, it has not dated at all in those 20 or even 50 years. There are contemporary writers who wish there work was this fresh and inventive.

So it is a black humor fantasmagoria mix of pulp detective and science fiction, addiction memoir, perverse sex, Mid-Eastern travelogue, and beat poetry. It’s also funny and the closest to a Hieronymus Bosch painting in print as you’re likely to find. Oy. Look, anything I have to say about Naked Lunch has already been said by better writers than I, so there’s not much point in trying to describe a book as ludicrous and impressionist as this.

Naked Lunch, like most of Burrough’s work, seems to fall in the “Grandfather” category. Not meaning things that are allowed to slide despite laws passed afterwards, but things that influenced people who influenced me. Cronenberg and Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow and the Firesign Theatre: all of them were influenced by Burroughs and all of them influenced me, but did Burroughs himself? Reading this book, as much as I liked it, it’s hard to find a line of heritage.

However, it did make me laugh. That’s something, in the face of the horror of human existence, n’est-ce pas?

40 Days of Lent: Day Twelve

The City and The City
China Mieville

There is a city, Beszel, and another distinct city, Ul Qoma, that exists in the same space and time, as if one city is superimposed on or interweaven with the other. Residents in each city ignore the other, having learned how to not see or interact with them, even as they walk together, inches apart. It is a serious offence to travel between the two cities without permission. When it happens either intentionally or by accident, it is called “breach” and investigated by a creepy corps of the same name.

When the body of a resident of Ul Qoma turns up in Beszel, there’s nothing inspector Tyador Borlu would like more than to turn it over to Breach. But it is discovered to not be a case of breach, and Borlu, in the best tradition of detective fiction, has to solve a crime by moving in circles he doesn’t understand.

China Mieville’s novel exists within the genres of detective and speculative fiction just as the characters exist in two city-states. There is something appealing about a police procedural taking place in an initially unfamiliar world. With his superimposed cities, Mieville has found a metaphor for what living in urban areas is like, how you move without really seeing the other people around you. It’s also a meditation on how different cultures can exist side by side without understanding each other, whether western capitalist vs. communist or Judeo/Christian vs. Moslem.

40 Days of Lent: Day Eleven

A History of Christianity - Episode Two: Catholicism

If the first episode was history of Christianity as travelogue, then Diarmaid MacCulloch traces the rise to power of the Roman Catholic Church in the second episode by touring a number of great cathedrals.





It still seems incredible that what began as a small Jewish sect would ultimately become a world powerhouse religion. It did this becoming adopted by the powerful, most famously by the general Constantine “as he hacked his way to power” and established a Roman empire, and later by the aristocracy as that empire began to fall. Men of privilege, power and wealth kept all three by becoming high ranking members of the church when they began to lose political power.





When he became emperor in 306, Constantine made Christianity the state religion, focusing on St. Peter, perhaps because Christ says that Peter is “the rock on which I will build my church.” In Greek “Peter” means “rock” so it’s one of Christ’s rare play on words. “The power of Christian Rome” notes MacCulloch “founded on a Greek pun.” If this is true, then personally, I love it.

40 Days of Lent: Day Ten

Now The Trees Are Attacking Us*

Following up on yesterday's post about the animal kingdom's revenge when a killer whale lived up to its name, I wanted to note that a man was killed yesterday when a snow-laden tree branch fell on him in Central Park.

Perhaps instead of "40 Days of Lent" this feature should be "Countdown to The End."



------------------------------------
*Which sounds like it could be song idea for Rush.

40 Days of Lent: Day Nine

Neko Case, Modern Day Nostradamus

I saw the below article online this morning:

Whale drags trainer off platform in fatal attack

By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press

ORLANDO, Fla. – A veteran SeaWorld trainer was rubbing a killer whale from a poolside platform when the 12,000-pound creature reached up, grabbed her ponytail in its mouth and dragged her underwater. Despite workers rushing to help, the trainer was killed.

Horrified visitors who had stuck around after a noontime show watched the animal charge through the pool with the trainer in its jaws. Workers used nets as an alarm sounded, but it was too late. Dawn Brancheau had drowned. It marked the third time the animal had been involved in a human death.

The whale, named Tilikum, apparently grabbed Brancheau by her long ponytail, according to the head of animal training at all SeaWorld parks, Chuck Tompkins. He told ABC's "Good Morning America" that her ponytail swung out in front of the whale.

"That's when the trainer next to him (Tilikum) said that he grabbed the hair, pulled her under water. And of course, held her under water," Tompkins said...

[A witness] said he heard that during an earlier show the whale was not responding to directions. Others who attended the earlier show said the whale was behaving like an ornery child.

No, the whale was behaving like what it was: a wild animal. While reading the story, all I could think of was Neko Case's remarkably prescient song People Got A Lotta Nerve, released in 2008:

You know they call them "killer" whales?!
But you seem surprised when it pinned you down
To the bottom of the tank
Where you can't turn around
It took half your leg and both your lungs
"When I craved I ate hearts of sharks, I know you know it!"

40 Days of Lent: Day Eight

Long gone graffiti murals once seen in my neighborhood.

40 Days of Lent: Day Seven

Shop Class As Soulcraft
Matthew Crawford

Even though it was several years ago, it’s a conversation I remember well: talking with my friend Scott about how bored we with our office jobs (I had quit mine earlier that year) and how much we preferred making things with our hands. I was surprised how much I liked making stained glass windows and rudimentary furniture, particularly thinking my way around any unexpected problems. Scott grew up in a garage and built his own Volkswagon convertible in high school but had spent much of his adult life as a manager.

It’s a feeling Matthew Crawford knows well. After getting his Ph.D. in political philosophy, Crawford landed a high paying job at a Washington think tank…and quit ten months later to repair motorcycles. Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work is his explanation of why he quit and an examination of how the emphasis on white-collar jobs has affected people. It’s ultimately a contemplation of what makes work meaningful to the individual doing it.

Crawford argues that even as office jobs are being outsourced overseas, the work of mechanics and craftsman has to stay local. Things always break and you will need someone to fix them. If your car is broken, you’re not going to ship it to India to have it fixed.

I think the rise of office work had a lot to do with class snobbery. Middle-class people had jobs in which they didn’t get dirty. Lower class people got dirty. Working in an office with your mind was seen as more civilized, more dignified, than working on machines with your hands. Despite how our economy has changed and the decline in office work, it still seems uncommon for someone with an education to willingly chose blue collar work. But Crawford writes how thinking is involved in such work. It’s a different kind of thinking, more intuitive, more self-reliant.

When I was in school, we rotated between three different shop classes: woodshop, mechanical drawing, and print shop. I don’t recall getting much in the way of instruction in mechanical drawing. I think our teacher, an egg-shaped man, probably thought “why bother?” It was obvious our college-bound class (this was only eighth grade but the kids destined for college were already separated from those who were not) were never going to pursue mechanical drawing. The only thing for the teacher to do was the bare minimum until kids in class fulfilled their requirement, hit them when they got out of line and then never see them again. I didn’t have much aptitude for woodshop and I was convinced I was going to lose a finger in one of the machines. But it was in print shop that I finally understood the concept of having to work and being graded.

The assignment was to make notepads, a process that involved creating a design (which had to include “From The Desk Of,” your name, some sort of border and a picture, which could either be chosen from design books or made with a Photostat), making a metal plate of your design, then printing a number of pads. I made two pad designs: one had the Yellow Submarine on it (in black and white, of course) and the other had an Apple Bonker. Because thought what I was doing was so cool and because of what I was like at 13, I didn’t pay much (read “any”) attention to quality control. I made a pad with the Yellow Submarine on it! It was the only one like it in the world. No-one else had one. Our teacher graded our work surrounded by everyone in the class, not to humiliate but to demonstrate mistakes to watch out for. He took out a pen and mercilessly circled each imperfection, every mark made by a dirt on the metal plate, every flaw accentuated by the printing process. Each mark cost a third of a grade. If I remember correctly, I got a low B on the assignment. But as he ticked my grade down and down, I had, for the first time, the realization that I would have to work, that I wasn’t going to get a pass just because I had come up with the coolest thing. More than a mediocre grade on any test, those circles on my notepads demonstrated the idea of standards that I would have to measure up to or fail. It was the first time I “got” it; it was the first time I cared.

However, lowered grade because I didn’t understand work notwithstanding, I had made something unique in the world and was always proud that my father, who had the same name as I, used the pads in his classroom at school.

I initially began this paragraph with the sentence “It’s hard to think of anything I’ve done in my office job that has made me proud” but that’s not true. I’m proud of the annual reports that we’ve done. Not because they’re outstanding in any way (they're not) but because I spend a lot of time making sure they are free of mistakes, even if they’re mistakes other people would never notice. When we finally send them to print, I’m usually exhausted but feel a sense of accomplishment. This example is part of Crawford’s argument: that work has more meaning when you are creating a physical product, particularly if it is from start to finish. Dealing with products that exist to you only as theoretical concepts robs your job of meaning and introduces a certain nihilism, similar to my mechanical drawing teacher who couldn’t see the point of teaching students who existed only as names in his gradebook rather than as people who might be interested.

Last night I was reading the conclusion of Shop Class As Soulcraft while having dinner at a local bar. While I was there, the man who fixes their pinball machine came in and I got to watch him work, which was fascinating in the way that competence in a field you know nothing about always is. I had never seen the insides of a pinball machine before and loved its mix of the mechanical and the electronic. The man had trouble walking, even with a cane; it was as if his legs were at the wrong angle to his body. But he was able to move quickly around the pinball machine and had it fixed in less than twenty minutes. I’m aware he sounds like a fictional character and a clichéd one at that, but there he was. I asked how he had learned to fix pinball machines. He said that he just started playing around with them, trying to figure out how they worked, and began fixing them, so that now everyone calls him if there is a problem. Watching him figure out what was wrong with the machine, test his idea, repeat to make sure he was right, I saw someone who was less at work and more at play.

40 Days of Lent: Day Six

Number One In Heaven

Below is a list of the ten best rock/pop albums as picked by the official newspaper of Vatican City L’Osservatore Romano.

1. Revolver by the Beatles

2. If I Could Only Remember My Name by David Crosby

3. The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd

4. Rumours by Fleetwood Mac

5. The Nightfly by Donald Fagen

6. Thriller by Michael Jackson

7. Graceland by Paul Simon

8. Achtung Baby by U2

9. (What’s the Story) Morning Glory by Oasis

10. Supernatural by Carlos Santana

The opportunities for jokes and cheap shots are too easy, particularly with Michael Jackson's Thriller on the list. "Pretty Young Thing" is certainly something priests and Michael Jackson can agree on. You know they didn't pick Rubber Soul because the Vatican wouldn't like an album with a song called "Think For Yourself" on it. Etc, etc.

In addition to the "huh?" factor (downer stoner classic Dark Side of The Moon is included?), what I like is that the list shows personal taste, rather than just big albums by the usual big stars. David Crosby at number 2? It truly is a miracle.

40 Days of Lent: Day Five

A History of Christianity - Episode One: The First Christianity




American television has produced similar overviews of Christianity, but none I have seen can compare with the lush visuals and clear language of this BBC production. It’s as much a travelogue as it is a history lesson, one whose images remind you of how visually beautiful Christianity is at its best. Oxford professor Diarmaid MacCulloch visits the locations of important historical events, sometimes to ironic effect. The palace where the Council of Nicea was held is now underwater, so MacCulloch sits beside a calm shore while discussing this first attempt to unify Christianity. Later he travels to China to interview a historian who deduced that an ancient Taoist temple was originally a Christian church based on the feng shui of its design – an impressive piece of detective work. However, irate villagers resentful of interest in Christianity overshadowing Buddhism prevent them from entering the temple.

Perhaps my favorite moment occurs when Professor MacCulloch approaches the site in Syria where St. Simeon stood atop a pillar for almost 40 years. Clutching his little digital camera, MacCulloch tells us how excited he is, having first heard about St. Simeon when he was eight. “I never thought I’d get to come here, and now here I am.” Anyone who has traveled knows that giddy enthusiasm.

Much of this first episode is structured around the church’s divisions (or diversity, if you want to be more positive about it). Leaving Jerusalem, some Christians headed west, a branch eventually adopted by the Emperor Constantine and made into the state religion of the Roman Empire. This is the story of Christianity I know well. However, other Christians headed east to Turkey, Syria and ultimately Asia. The stereotypes: western churches are more theological, eastern churches more mystical. The Council of Nicea was Constantine’s attempt to unify the faith and quell the endless theological arguments threatening to split his empire. The decision that Christ is “of one substance with the father” i.e. divine, worked for about 100 years, until some bishops began asking the damaging question “How?”

Nestorias, the Bishop of Constantinople, argued that Christ’s human and divine natures were like oil and water in the same glass. Even though they were in the same container, they were quite separate. Cyrill, the Bishop of Alexandria, on the other hand, argued that Christ’s human and divine natures were like water and wine in the same glass, mixed together.

There’s something I find both funny and deeply sad about this situation. The phrase “number of angels dancing on the head of a pin” comes to mind. The fact that people spent so much time arguing about something that either doesn’t exist or can never be proven astonishes me. This isn’t like a zen koan, something to be contemplated as way of spiritually training the mind. These were arguments as an attempt to “prove” something supernatural or transcendent. MacCulloch puts it in a historical context, saying “Understanding exactly how Jesus was God explained how He was powerful enough to save you from Hell,” but they might as well have been arguing over exactly how Santa Claus makes all those deliveries in one night.

40 Days of Lent: Day Four

Great Images from BibliOdyssey

40 Days of Lent: Day Three

Sometimes I forget how pretty my hometown is.

40 Days of Lent: Day Two

If you have time, I highly recommend the article in the current Esquire about film critic Roger Ebert (available online here).

Warning: the picture that accompanies the article is rather startling. Ebert has been battling cancer in his mouth and salivary glands for years and the medical treatments have removed most of his jaw. Those who remember his rounded visage from "At The Movies" are in for a shock.

His surgeries have also left him without a voice. He communicates now by handwritten notes, improvised sign language and a computer that "speaks" for him. The article reads like the best short fiction: not in its narrative, but in the way little epiphanies are offered by otherwise mundane details. It is heartbreaking and hopeful, not because of Ebert's condition, but because life itself is heartbreaking and hopeful.

There are two outstanding passages quoted from Ebert's online journal that I want to quote:

(on death)

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting. My lifetime's memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

(later)

I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

I'm writing "40 Days of Lent" this year because I wanted to quote the second passage online. It should be printed on posters and hung in classrooms, incorporated into speeches, reprinted in anthologies. It should replace the story about the two sets of footprints in the sand. It should be repeated every day. Unfortunately, I'm all teary-eyed now and I'm writing this at work, so I'm going to go answer some emails and schedule some meetings.

40 Days of Lent: Day One

Schmutz Wednesday!

Always my favorite of holidays, getting some schmutz patshkened on your kop, though hopefully not all over your punim. That would be shreklekh.

I went to St. Patrick's Cathedral this morning for my ashes, a place so ploimdik you could plotz. I've written before how there's something about smearing dirt on your head as a religious ritual that appeals to me in a way that more mundane liturgical rituals do not. I don't understand try to understand why; only a shmendrik would try.

I have decided to am going to do my "40 Days of Lent" postings again this year, as you can no doubt tell. Yesterday an email from my friend Andrea reminded me that Lent was beginning, but I planned on not posting this year. Then last night I read something I liked so much that I decided I would post during Lent just so I could share that one passage, which I will do tomorrow or the next day.

As I don't have a lot to say today, I'll conclude with the below picture of some ducks pulling a cart of naked ladies, originally seen in the Chronicle of Saxony (1492).

L'chaim!

Oh Damn. The Telephone Bar Has Closed.

A thought that recurred fairly often: "If I can't think of anywhere else to go, I'll just stop in Telephone Bar." Perfectly located on Second Ave, around the corner from St. Mark's Place and St. Mark's Bookstore, a few block from my subway stop, I could always find a seat at the bar. This past Saturday, that thought was quickly replaced by "uh-oh" when I walked past and saw that the windows of the front door and the three red British phone booths that lent it its distinctive look were covered in brown paper.

At first I hoped they were just remodeling, though there was no sign on the door promising to reopen soon. Once home, I went online and discovered that, after 22 years, the Telephone Bar and Grill has closed. It has been sold to someone who owns other bars in the East Village, all of which sound, from their online descriptions, rather crappy. So another piece of "my" New York is gone. Unfortunately I missed their final night on January 31st. Apparently it was a "thank you" for their regulars.

It didn't quite capture the ambiance of pubs in Britain, which at their best, feel like auxillary living rooms, but it was a comfortable place just the same. Their chicken wings had the right blend of sweet and spicy and their portobello mushroom sandwich was wonderful. Nice mix of beers and whatever game was on tv was never too loud.

My friend Karl reminded me that when we first lived in New York, it was our "go to" place in the Village. I think I've taken everyone who ever visited me there at least once, although recently I didn't stop in as often as I once had. To be honest, I don't go to any bar as much as I once had. But four or five years ago I was a regular. I recall one particular couple I met at the bar: he was a researcher in neurology and she was born in Germany. They had met and married while he was stationed there in the army; her accent was still strong. They were at the bar having a drink before they went to see an off Broadway play. She liked experimental theater and he was a good sport. We had a great conversation, which was unexpectedly continued when I stopped in the bar the following Saturday...and there they were in the same seats, this time having a drink before dinner.

This was shortly before I traveled to Europe (which was the initial catalyst for this blog). She had traveled widely and gave me suggestions of places to see and what to avoid. Disappointed that I wasn't going to Germany, she kept making a case for the beauty of her homeland. He and I talked about conclusions drawn from neurological experiments, or rather, he replied to my naive questions with explanations on how the brain works and how this impacts our behavior. I understood a meager fraction of what he was saying but no matter. The conversation helped form a new way of thinking for me, moving the source of human behavior from personalities created by nature/nurture to synapses firing away in our mushy brains. In my completely undisciplined manner, it's become a subject of study for me. Just as her recommendations on travel influenced what I saw in Europe, his explanations on how I was experiencing "experience" influences me still.

I never saw them again after that day.




RIP, Telephone Bar and Grill.