Field Notes from a random walk through life

The Civil War is not over

I have not lost track of reality here, but I may have lost track of what is real - out there and  independent - and what is augmented by my projecting my interest in the Civil War; but it seems to me that we are going to celebrate the 150 year anniversary of the Civil War by re-fighting it. OK, re-arguing it.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The South's Secession Commemoration
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

There are people out there - probably nuttier about the Civil War than me - who will be following it on a day to day basis. The New York Times had an editorial yesterday on the start of the Civil War and then had another one today. There will be - shit, must be - websites set up to follow what is happening 150 years ago on any given day.

The 1960's were the 100 year anniversary. But this is also sort of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights movement and that will color everything.

Fifty years ago, on February 1, 1960 black people staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter.Two days from now - 150 years ago -South Carolina votes to secede from the Union. Next year , in March - 50 years ago - northern student volunteers  will invade the South to push new laws that prohibited segregation in interstate travel facilities.

Today, the Senate repealed DADT. This should be a very interesting next couple of years.

 

Jon Stewart at his best

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Parent Company Trap
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

This is fascinating

Not so much because it shows any totally new information, but because it shows it in such an interesting way.

International Human Rights Day

Yesterday was International Human Rights Day and it pretty much just swept by me.

I am so glad that I live in this country; where I can complain about living in this country. Out loud and in public! Yesterday I could say that my country is a liar and not be worried about being arrested today. (Well, at least not for that.) 

This wonderful country is not the only country where I can do that, but it was pretty much the first and has been a beacon of truth for the world. I am not sure who or What to say thanks to, but Thanks.

President Eisenhower and WikiLeaks

When I was a couple of months shy of turning twenty, I first lost my innocent belief that I could trust my government. I was young and pretty pissed at the world and almost everything in it. My mother used to call me an Angry Young Man after an movement in England at the time. But I also was confident that I could trust the government. The Federal government.

America was changing rapidly and the Feds were one of the changers. In 1954, then President Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne Division to force integration of schools in Little Rock Arkansas. The courts were working to make black Americans almost equal to white Americans. I had - I think we all had - a feeling that the government was on my side.

And, then, in 1960, the Soviets shot down one of our planes. They said it was a spy plane. Now, this was only twenty years after the US Secretary of State said Gentlemen don't read other Gentlemen's mail. and it was obviously not a spy plane because we didn't have spy planes; we were the good guys.  We were in a cold war, true, but only because the otherside was Godless and evil.

Some surrogate for the president - not the president, because, as it turned out, the president didn't want to be on record telling a lie - said that it was a weather plane that had strayed off course. We believed him for about three days. Then it became overwhelmingly obvious that we were lying and the Soviets were telling the truth¹.

Then it sort of dawned on me, dawned on us. The government was lying. Not lying to the Soviets... just us. The Soviets knew it was a spy plane: we had been flying these planes over the Soviet Union for a couple of years when this happened, always over areas where we wanted information, they had been tyring to shoot these planes down for years, now they had the plane and all its gear, and they had the pilot  and he was talking.

As I type this, it still rocks me. It is still incredulous. I think of Obama running on transparency and I think of how disappointed I have been that he hasn't governed with that transparency. How easy it is to run on giving up power and how hard it must be to actually give up that power once someone gets it. I can see why the government hates WikiLeaks and it reaffirms my love for it - them.

 

 

 

 

 

 1 Because I looked this up in Wikipedia, I now know that there is some question abvout whether the Ruskis actually shot the U2 Spy plane down or it managed to fall out of the sky on its own. 

"Saudi Arabia wants the US to attack Iran"....duh!

The more I read about and hear American diplomats - like Hillary - talk about how bad the Wikileaks leak is, the more I think it is good. Or, maybe, just ho hum. Maybe not in detail, but, in general, everything that I read about the leaks had already been leaked.

"The Hamid Karzai government is corrupt." "President Sargozy is thin skinned." "Saudi Arabia wants the US to attack Iran"....duh!

Take the last one. Here is a country that just made the largest arms buy ever made: it includes 84 Boeing F-15 fighter jets and more than 100 attack helicopters. Why? Not to take on Israel or protect itself from Iraq. It has to be to protect itself from Iran. Of course it would like us, or Israel, to take out Iran. And here is where it gets complex.

The rub is, suposidly, that the Saudi's can't publicly  say we are OK with Israel but not - fellow Muslim nation - Iran; because the citizen wouldn't stand for it.  But the citizens already do know. The arms deal was on the front page of Al Jazeera, after all and most people knew before that. Some Saudi citizens were probably pissed about the arms deal and up'ed their contributions to Al Qaeda, others agreed to continue to pretend they didn't know, still others didn't really give a shit.

We are outraged that this is now out in the public area. Outraged at how much harder it is to do doplomicy. Outraged, I guess, that it makes it harder to pretend the public doesn't know what the government is pretending not to do. Come on.

 

 

 

Watching McCain at the DADT hearings and thinking about getting old.

In listening to McCain posturing, fighting, bluffing?,  at the hearings to repeal DADT, I keep wondering Why?

Is he just pissed at Obama and will be on the otherside of any issue?

McCain doesn't seem to be a man driven by deep religious convictions, so it is hard to believe that any biblical injunction is the reason. Surely he doesn't think that he is on the right side of history here. He can't believe that 30 years from now people will cheer him.

Maybe it is just because McCain is old and doesn't want any change. I'm old and I like to think that I love change - shit! I do love change, it is what makes life interesting - and I have found it very hard to relate to Rap. I mean, I have tried. OK, maybe not really, but I have sort of tried.

A couple of days ago, I read an article in the New Yorker, Jay-Z's "Decoded" and the language of hip-hop, that talked about the complexity of the rhyming schemes in Rap. It said, among other things, The best MCs - like Rakim, Jay-Z, Tupac, and many others - deserve consideration alongside the giants of  American poetry. We ignore them at our own expense. The article opened a world and showed a complity that I know nothing about and, after reading it, I can intellectually admire  Rap, but that doesn't make listening to Rap and easier. And I think it is just because I am too old.

In a fascinating  article in the NYTimes on why Oregon State is the number one collage football team in the country, is this paragraph This style has been easier for Kelly’s players to adjust to than for his coaches, most of whom have spent many more years than he has at the major college level. Aliotti, the defensive coordinator, is 56 and in his third stint on the Oregon staff. He has also coached in the N.F.L. “It’s insanity for a coach,” he said when we talked one morning after practice. “You’ve got the music blasting, you look around and your kids are dancing and you don’t want to stop the fun. But when you’re an old-school guy like me, it takes patience and change, because you want to make yourself heard. I want to correct a guy, but we’re already on to the next play. Don’t get me wrong. This has been good for us as a team. But I have to be real with you. It’s still hard for me.”

Maybe McCain is just too old to change. Maybe a kid, say somebody who is 50, should take his place in the Senate.

 

Skateistan

I think that this gives better - better meaning accurate and powerful - picture of Afghanistan, or, really, Kabul, than any article in the New York Times. It is about nine minutes long but - if you have nine minutes - really worth it.

http://vimeo.com/15841377

SKATEISTAN: TO LIVE AND SKATE KABUL from Diesel New Voices on Vimeo.

Watching Dexter and seeing The cat that farts and coughs at the same time.

Dexter is - in its strange way - an uplifting story of how we all feel alone and uniquely damaged but are all the same. The title character is a likable serial killer who only kills bad guys, but there are really four or five plots going on at once. It is one of my guilty pleasures.

Recently, in passing, Dexter snidely brushes off the computer as entertainment by suggesting its highpoint is showing a cat that farts and coughs at the same time. That the farting cat is all that is there.

I was reminded of movies dissing television at the dawn of the television era and realized that I may have lived through the complete cycle of television. If so, it is probably the only complete cycle I have lived through. After all, cars were here when I was born and will still be here for a long time. The same with planes.

But, when I was young, most people did not have television. As television grew, it went from television as the upstart, simple and primitive, to television as the dominant story teller. Now, as the dominant story teller,  the best television programs are longer, more complex, movies.

The Sopranos, or Mad Men, or The Wire, or, even, Dexter, tell better stories than any movie. And, like movies felt under siege by television, when when television was just starting; television now feels under siege by computers. Or, maybe, it is the internet, or maybe, just YouTube.  

Surgery as a Spiritual Expearance.

(This was started yesterday.)

I am back from my knee surgery, feelin' groovy and very Thankful, although I do have a numb knee - try saying that fast twenty times. I had a torn cartilage or meniscus which - I am told - will now be fine. Well fine except that I am getting old and a deteriorating meniscus just comes with age and will, apparently, keep coming.

This picture, part of a set given to us we left the hospital, is purported to be a picture of the inside of my knee joint taken by the doctor with an arthroscopic camera. How is this even possible? How do they get a camera and a light and all the tools required into this tiny little space?  

 

The operation was done at the Seton Medical Center because the doctor I wanted - Dr. Shabi Khan - operates there. So I get Shabi, who has operated on both of my shoulders¹ and who I think is terrific; and as a bonus, I get Seton. Seton is a Catholic Hospital and everywhere you look, there are crosses. I am slightly cross phobic, but, at Seton, I find it mildly comforting.

The preponderance of my spiritual experiences have been in nature and I think Thoreau was spot on when he said In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World.  But there have been a few people and a few places that just glow with their spirituality: an Irish, Catholic, priest that officiated a wedding in Alviso in both Spanish and English, The Taj Mahal, The David, a hyper alive Mosque in the otherwise dead city of Fathehpur Sikri in India.

And, to a lessor extent, Seton Hospital. I have had four operations at Seton, and, each time, I leave feeling blessed. It isn't that Seton is a high service boutique hospital, it isn't. It has a sort of production line vibe. It isn't that it is cutting edge high tech, although it might be. It is that everybody there seems to be aligned in Service; a soft, easy, greater, Purpose. 

So, given the circumstances, it was a great place to spend the day before the start of Hanukkah. I left feeling thankful.

  ¹ a bad fall skiing at Whistler.