History’s Pyrotechnics (my 2nd annual 4th of July blog)

As I stopped my motorcycle at the intersection of Lake Geneva Road and 1st Street this morning on my way to work, I noticed the space shuttle coming towards me. It was southbound on 1st street. The words of Bill Murray as Dr. Peter Venkman (confronted with the spectacle of the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man rampaging through downtown New York) came to mind: "now there's something you don't see every day."

It was, I almost immediately realized, one of the parade floats that would be, um, well, parading down 1st street in a couple of hours.  The rural village of Geneva, Florida hosts its own local Fourth of July festival / parade / barbecue / yard sale / relay race / the former guitarist from Guns 'n' Roses / fireworks display / memorial celebration every year. I have always missed it, because I am always working. Today, for example, I have a list of six important but boring office-related things that I have to get done before hopping on a plane to Nashville, where I have four recurrent checkrides scheduled for tomorrow.

Anyway, since yesterday was the third and tomorrow is the fifth, this is as good a time as any to take a moment to consider what Independence Day is really all about.

Starring Will Smith, Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum, Independence Day is a 1996 movie about an alien invasion of Earth which . . . what? Really? Oh. OK, sorry. Never mind.

Instead, let's talk about a document formally titled, The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, often referred to simply as the Declaration of Independence.

A few points about this piece of paper:

1. It did not form the United States of America that we know today. That was created with the adoption, ratification and implementation of the Constitution during the period from 1787 through 1789, more than a decade after the Declaration was signed.

2. It did not actually sever ties with Great Britain. The Lee Resolution, proposed by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia and passed by Congress on July 2nd, 1776, did that. The Declaration of Independence explained the Lee Resolution to the world.

3. It was not signed by all the delegates of the 13 colonies on the fourth of July. Most of the delegates actually signed it on August 2nd, 1776, nearly a month later.

4. Obviously, Great Britain did not recognize the Lee Resolution any more than the United States government would recognize the legitimacy of the Confederate States of America in 1861. Only after the Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolutionary War in 1783 were the colonies truly independent.

. . . Not that I don't enjoy the fireworks.

Everybody have a great holiday! Take advantage of your inalienable right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness by drinking a cold imported beer, dipping your feet in the pool (or the ocean) and reflecting for just a moment on how utterly (and literally) revolutionary the idea of a democratic republic for the people, of the people and by the people really was near the end of the eighteenth century.

8:28 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

For All Current Flight Express Line Pilots Who Read This Blog

To: All Current Flight Express Line Pilots

From: Austin Collins, Chief Pilot

Subject: Op Specs Revision/Update

Be advised that the FAA has issued a revision to our Part 135 Operations Specifications ("Op Specs") affecting approach and landing minima.  As a practical matter, impact on our normal daily operations will be negligible; this is largely an administrative/semantic change.

You will soon be receiving a memo along with the update.  The update consists of five new pages: two pages of the Section C Table of Contents (reflecting Amendment 2 to C74, dated 05/27/08) and three pages of C74 – C74-1, C74-2 and C74-3.

In the old version of C74, for precision instrument approach procedures with a runway/approach light configuration of either:

• MALSR with TDZ and CL or SSALR with TDZ and Cl or ALSF-1/ALSF-2 with TDZ and CL

                or

• MALS or MALSR or SSALR or ALSF-1/ALSF-2 or REILs and HIRL or RAIL and HIRL

. . . We (as an operator) were not authorized to use a HAT lower than 200 feet or an RVR value of less than 1800.  Visibility in statute miles was not authorized, period.  (This didn't really matter, however, since for MALSR, SSALR or ALSF-1/ALSF-2 we could still use ½ statute mile, and besides, many airports with ILS approaches also have RVR.)

Under the new version, we are authorized to use a visibility of no less than ½ statute mile for all precision instrument approaches and light configurations listed above.

This brings our Op Specs more in line with Paragraph 5-4-20 of the FAA's Aeronautical Information Manual, "Approach and Landing Minimums," which states (in relevant part), "when converting 1800 RVR, use 2400 RVR with the resultant visibility of ½ statute mile."

For those of you who are confused, let me sum it up like this: WE ARE ALLOWED TO USE ANY MINIMUM HAT AND MINIMUM VISIBILITY THAT IS PUBLISHED IN CONJUNCTION WITH ANY AUTHORIZED* AND AVAILABLE** CATEGORY I INSTRUMENT APPROACH PROCEDURE (taking into consideration NOTAMs, inoperative components and all the other usual variables).

* "Authorized" means that it is one of the approved IAP types listed on page C52 of our Op Specs.

** "Available" means that it is in service, winds are favorable, the runway is open etc.

Please install this update, sign the memo and send it back to us.  FAA SAFETY INSPECTORS MAY BE CONDUCTING RAMP CHECKS IN THE NEAR FUTURE TO VERIFY THAT THIS UPDATE HAS BEEN INSTALLED.

Thank you!  Please do not hesitate to call or e-mail me if you have any further questions.

Glossary of Abbreviations:....

MALSR – Medium Intensity Approach Lighting System

TDZ – Runway Touchdown Zone Lighting System

CL – Runway Centerline Lighting System

SSALR – Simplified Short Approach Lighting System

ALSF – Approach Lighting System (Note: ALSF-1 and ALSF-2 are the two most common at air carrier airports, with ALSF-2 having the more extensive red terminating bars.)

REIL – Runway End Identifier Lights

HIRL – High Intensity Runway Lights

RAIL – Runway Alignment Indicator Lights

(This notice is available as a downloadable Adobe Acrobat document on the Flight Express Pilot Information Page. Please feel free to print it out and share it with your co-workers who do not have Internet access and/or post it at your domicile. Have a great day and please fly safely.)

1:00 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Gonna Rock This Town, Gonna Rock it Inside Out
Category: Parties and Nightlife

Trish and I actually celebrate two anniversaries: our "soft" anniversary (which also happens to be her birthday) and our "hard" anniversary, which is (by an interesting coincidence) close to my own birthday, slightly less than six months later.

Our "soft" anniversary is the day we "met" on MySpace. (I commented on one of her blogs, and the rest, as they say, is history.)

Our "hard" anniversary was the day we met in person out there in the scary real world for the first time, at the Rockabilly Rebel Weekend in Indianapolis. (It was also the first time I met our good friends Heather and Zack.)

Sadly, the Rockabilly Rebel Weekend was cancelled this year, but luckily for us and Indy's many other rockabilly fans, Radio Radio came to the rescue, providing a venue for a smaller, more intimate version of the event. There were five bands, and they were all fabulous. It was great to see H and Z again, too -- those kids are fun!

8:37 AM - 6 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Rain

Wow, an actual weekend off! On Saturday morning I put my gear bag on the back seat of Pancho and headed for The Jump Shack in DeLand to drop my rig off for a reserve repack (something I'd been meaning to do for weeks). After leaving my rig in the capable hands of the loft's production manager, I rode over to the DZ (Skydive DeLand) for lunch at The Perfect Spot. I ordered an avocado wrap with swiss cheese and a fruit cup and sat and watched as the last couple of loads landed just outside the restaurant's huge, east-facing windows.

Clouds began to gather and thicken. Soon jumping ceased and I started to hear ominous rumbles. I checked outside and a black wall of thunderstorms had formed just north of the field. Uh-oh.

I paid my bill and hit the highway as fast as I could.

It was too late.

The weather closed in from all sides at once. The rain poured down in sheets. It was like getting blasted with a fire hose. Visibility was so bad that traffic on I-4 was slowed down to 35 MPH. An inch of water was flowing sideways across the pavement. Vicious, gusty crosswinds battered at me as I struggled to maintain control of the bike. The lightning was bright and almost continuous. It went on like that for 30 miles. I was shivering, but there was no sense in stopping -- it wasn't going to get any better.

When I made it home, I trudged wearily inside, squishing with every step. I was completely soaked. I dumped what seemed like half a quart of rainwater out of each of my boots.

I relaxed and warmed up and then settled down for a long nap while the rain continued to come down steadily and heavily outside all afternoon and well into the evening.

2:31 PM - 10 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

It’s Amazing How Fast the Brain Recalibrates "Normal." (10 NEW PICTURES!)
Category: Travel and Places

The tree frogs in Jamaica sound just like car alarms, only louder. And be careful where you step: tiny hermit crabs are scuttling everywhere. What did Trish and I do on the island? I'll tell you: absolutely NOTHING, and it was wonderful! The Superclubs hotels offer all kinds of activities, from windsurfing and rock climbing to SCUBA diving and trampoline lessons, but we did not partake of any of that -- we mainly just took long naps and raided the free, unlimited buffet for breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight snacks. We also made extensive use of the hammocks, the hot tub and the swim-up bar. People were incredibly approachable and polite, we made new friends, everybody was in a happy, relaxed mood pretty much all the time and we didn't ever want to leave.

From the moment you board the shuttle bus it's obvious that you aren't in Daytona Beach or Miami. Everyone drives on the left side of the road and the driver sits on the right side of the vehicle. All the speed limits are in "kilometres" per hour. British spelling is everywhere: tyre, cheque, centre etc. Ubiquitous signs advertise Red Stripe beer and Ting soda. Fancy mansions and luxury spas closely coexist with shacks and shantys among the jungle-covered hillsides.

So here I am back in Florida and Trish is back in Indianapolis. Life goes on, and we must re-adjust to reality. (The trouble is, now I can't sleep without the cacophanous clamor of tree frogs!)

9:21 AM - 12 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

A Wednesday Contemplation

History doesn't just repeat itself; it recycles itself in a kind of perpetual autocannibalism.

A bloody battlefield soon becomes just another patch of empty ground when the war is over.  And eventually, as the veterans die off and the conflict disappears from living memory, the issues that begat the carnage resolved and forgotten, it becomes just another street with gas stations and fast-food restaurants.

The only thing that keeps this from happening is the dedicated efforts of preservationists, who might struggle to have the acreage designated as an Official Historic Site -- artificially frozen in time, maintained in a kind of weird, sterilized stasis, a stone marker with a brass plaque announcing the significance of the place.

And thus it remains, like a dead butterly on display in a glass case in a museum for bored schoolchildren and the occasional interested or curious adult to visit.

I wonder if soldiers in the midst of a horrific clash ever think about how the muddy, greusome, firey, ravaged spot over which they are slugging it out -- this wretched wound upon the face of the earth endowed by virtue of its location or topography with some tactical value -- will look in a hundred years, when it is a park, ghostly echoes of artillery and agonized screams undetectable in the sighing of the wind and the rustling of the leaves.

8:08 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

This Weekend (TWO NEW PICTURES!)
Category: Travel and Places

I left work early on Friday to fly up to Indy to join Trish at her brother Rob's wedding. Despite mechanical delays in Atlanta, I made it in time for the rehearsal and the subsesquent rehearsal dinner -- just barely.

On saturday Rob married a lovely girl named Beth and they are positively adorable together. The reception that followed was fun, and as that part of the evening began to wind down Trish and I took a cab to Fountain Square and met up with Heather and Zack to catch Bigger Than Elvis performing live at Radio Radio.

Then, on Sunday morning, we took a road trip through the farm country and rolling, wooded hills of rural southern Indiana all the way down to the charming burg of Milltown, where we did a lovely half-day expendition along the inaccurately named Blue River through an outfitter called Cave Country Canoes, with whom Trish had made all the arrangements. (I love this woman!) The weather was magnificent and the water level was just right -- not high enough to be scary, not low enough to force us to portage any sections. It was surprisingly, delightfully wild and undeveloped, with the banks alternating between rocky bluffs and cool, shady forest. We brought along a couple of bags of cherries and spit the pits into the water as we paddled along. Someday, the Blue River will be flanked by cherry trees.

After returning to shore we had a wonderful lunch at the quaint and authentically rustic Blue River Cafe, which I enthusiastically recommend to anyone and everyone who happens to find himself or herself in that part of the country. Trish had the vegetable risotto and I had an artichoke, lettuce and tomato sandwich on toasted wheat bread. Then, in a moment that was supremely, stupendously retro, we shared a chocolate milkshake -- yes, with two straws, and yes, with two cherries and a dollop of whipped cream on top.

"Gee, Trish -- it sure is swell hanging out with a dynamite girl like you," I said, and she gave me an "aw, shucks" look, hopeful that I might summon the courage to invite her to the sock hop.

I got up at 4 A.M. today in order to make it to the airport in time to catch my flight back to Orlando. I have a new ground school that just started today.

2:16 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Adding my Own Voice to the Chorus
Category: News and Politics

The interview was posted on CNN.com. I saw it last night before I rode home from work.

A female Army sergeant and a male Army specialist, both of them in their 20s, got married in a simple civil ceremony before a justice of the peace. Then they both shipped out to Iraq.

During their deployment, his older brother was killed in action. Then, about a month later, she lost both of her arms.

Now they are both back in the United States, planning a more formal, traditional wedding. She's shopping for a gown, trying to decide whether or not to wear prosthetics. While she was talking, she waved her stumps as if unconsciously attempting to gesture with her hands. It was upsetting and disturbing to watch.

I was horrified and heartbroken for the young couple. She now faces a lifetime as a double amputee; he now faces a lifetime of helping to care for his disabled wife. I was filled with anger and sorrow. I can't remember the last time I was so deeply affected by a news story. (I notice today that it seems to have been taken down.)

According to the most recent statistics I could find, 4,062 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq. 29,395 have been wounded -- she is one of them. It's hard to have any kind of meaningful emotional reaction when you read a piece of numerical data such as "33,457 total casualties," but that short, poignant video segment was gut-wrenching.

This has become a very unpopular war. Many people now seriously question whether it is possible to "win." What would be the definition of total victory, anyway? When the foreign insurgency is utterly obliterated? When the civil strife between Shia and Sunni is peacefully reconciled? When all militas lay down their weapons and disband? When Iraq has a free, open, pluralistic society and a democratic government that respects human rights? When Iraqi security forces are capable of maintaining law and order? In other words, what specific developments would clearly justify saying, "OK, mission accomplished! Our work here is finished. We can go now."? Does anyone actually believe that those things will happen in five years? In ten years? In fifteen years? Or ever? John McCain does, apparently. He speaks often of "victory in Iraq," an eerie echo of our presiding Commander-in-Chief. I am not happy with the prospect of four (or, heaven forbid, eight) more years of our current Middle East policy. (Although he predicted the war in Iraq will be over by 2013.)

On a much broader scale, when we talk about "winning the war against terrorism," what do we mean? Again, what would be the definition of total victory? When there is no more terrorism anywhere on Earth? When the threat to Americans at home and abroad is completely and permanently eliminated? When there is no more Islamic extremism, or indeed any form of violent military extremist ideology from any political or religious source? And regardless of how we define it, is invading and occupying other countries an effective way to achieve any of these lofty goals?

"We will never back down, never give in, and never accept anything less than complete victory." (President George W. Bush, in a speech before the National Endowment for Democracy at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, Washington, D.C., October 6, 2005.)

Sometimes it seems like those in power are shamelessly exploiting public fear to stretch the bounds of their authority. Terrorism is bad, but living in a police state is worse.

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety," goes the motto on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania, published in 1759 and originally attributed to Benjamin Franklin. He may or may not have written that -- there is some controversy -- but he definitely expressed a similar sentiment when he wrote "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power" in the Poor Richard's Almanack of 1738.

Do we really want to live in a world where the threat of terrorism and the promise of safety and security justifies draconian authoritarianism -- unwarranted wiretapping, secret military tribunals, the suspension of habeas corpus, the curtailing of free speech, even torture?

We are irrationally overreacting. Below are the top 15 causes of death in the United States according to the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The data are from 2003, but the report notes that generally, mortality patterns for that year were consistent with long-term trends. (I've whipped this list out before to make similar points.)

1. Heart disease.
2. Cancer.
3. Stroke.
4. Chronic lower respiratory diseases. (Such as emphysema.)
5. Accidents. (Primarily auto accidents, a disproportionate number of which involved alcohol or other drugs, speeding and/or talking .. phones)
6. Diabetes.
7. Influenza and pneumonia.
8. Alzheimer's disease.
9. Kidney disease.
10. Septicemia.
11. Suicide
12. Liver disease.
13. High blood pressure.
14. Parkinson's disease.
15. Homicide.

Between half a million and a million people die of heart disease annually. In fact, in every year since 1900 (except 1918, oddly) heart disease accounted for more deaths than any other single cause or group of causes of death in the United States. Nearly 2,400 Americans die of heart disease every day, an average of one death every 36 seconds. Heart disease claims more lives each year than cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, accidents and diabetes mellitus combined.

Total number of Americans who died in terrorist attacks in the United States last year: ZERO

Total number of Americans who died in terrorist attacks in the United States in the last five years: ZERO

Terrorism is a real and serious threat. But it is not NEARLY as serious as the 15 causes above!

Why are we so worried about terrorism when we are not even remotely as worried as we ought to be about much more grave and immediate dangers to our health and safety? Have you had a mammogram or a colonoscopy lately? Have you changed the batteries in your smoke alarm? Have you had your cholesterol checked? Do you always come to a complete stop for red lights and stop signs and then carefully look both ways before continuing? Do you wear a hat and sunblock when you're outside on a clear day?

The fiscal year 2007 gross discretionary budget for the Department of Homeland Security was 35.4 billion dollars. (My source for that figure was the Homeland Security Department's Web site.) And what have we spent on the war in Iraq? Depending on who you ask and how it's figured, it is roughly estimated at $4,500 per American household, or $1,700 per person or $340 million per day.

"The total costs of the war, including the budgetary, social and macroeconomic costs, are likely to exceed $2 trillion. As large as these costs are, an equally large set of costs have been omitted. We have not included the costs borne by other countries, either directly (as a result of military expenditures) or indirectly (as a result of the increase in the price of oil). Then there are the intangible costs – the cost of our reduced capability to respond to national security threats elsewhere in the world, and the cost of rising anti-American sentiment in Europe and the Middle East." (This is from an article originally published in the December 2006 issue of the Milken Institute Review, written by Linda Bilmes, who teaches public finance at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Joseph Stiglitz, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors and chief economist at the World Bank, who teaches at Columbia University and won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001.)

$2 trillion? Ouch.

Some would dispute the figure. OK, so maybe it's only $1 trillion. Maybe it's only $500 billion.

In any case, could we maybe spend some of that on affordable housing instead?

How about public education?

Or police, firefighting and emergency medical services?

Or maybe public safety policy initiatives, including awareness training such as advertising campaigns encouraging people to wear their seat belts, obey the posted speed limits, HANG UP THEIR CELL PHONES WHILE DRIVING, not drive while drunk or otherwise impaired and so forth?

Or what about subsidizing healthful foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains so that nutritious food becomes as affordable as junk food? How many lives would that save? Right now millions of Americans literally can't afford nutritious food. They eat crap because it's much cheaper. (If you had to live on a food budget of $20 a week, you wouldn't buy fresh produce, real fruit juice and organic, macrobiotic, whole wheat bread -- you'd buy ramen noodles, Kool-Aid mix and macaroni and cheese.)

Many who served in Iraq or Afghanistan as soldiers or who worked there as contractors return home to describe unbelieveable levels of corruption and incompetence, blatant bribery and the wanton, reckless misappropriation of funds. War profiteering businesses are suckling like piglets at the great sow of the Pentagon while our troops -- the majority of whom are either reservists or Guard members who never really expected to see combat duty, or regular personnel ordered by the Department of Defense to serve far beyond their scheduled length of deployment, either through tour extensions or multiple tours (or both) -- are being targeted with IEDs and RPGs for an average of $7.50 a day (or $225 a month).

The general feeling of outrage and disgust among the American population over the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is rising. But it will not rise high enough or soon enough to prevent more tragic stories like the one I described at the opening of this blog. That's why I decided to add my own voice to the chorus. If the war ends even one hour sooner, it might prevent one needless death or one pointless mutilation, and all the damaged lives each casualty carries with it.

Some military experts argue that to successfully fight a guerrilla war, you need ten or more combat troops on the ground for every insurgent. Consider that for a moment. We are neither "winning" nor "losing." We are merely prolonging and perpetuating an already agonizing conflict, with no end in sight.

If you need any further proof that our leadership has a major problem with its priorities, contemplate this -- the General Accounting Office reported that nearly 800 service members dismissed from the military for being gays or lesbians had abilities characterized as "critical." This included 300 with important language skills. Fifty-five of those were proficient in Arabic. Moreover, discharging and replacing them has cost the Pentagon nearly $369 million.

CONCLUSION . . .

Let's muster the collective political will to allocate our resources where they will do the most good for the most people. Let's pull all regular combat troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and instead focus on a six-pronged approach to fighting terror:

1. Conduct worldwide small-scale covert special operations against known terrorist groups instead of large-scale conventional attacks on entire areas.

2. Emphasize tactical intelligence gathering to anticipate and prevent future attacks rather than trying to destroy all terrorist groups. The best way to do this is through the use of experienced field operatives who can form a network of deep, long-term personal connections and then funnel that information back to a an organized, properly managed and well coordinated high-level agency. (As the The 9-11 Commission Report reveals, this very likely could have prevented the attacks of September 11th.) Also, reinstate all of those gay Arabic-speaking intelligence analysts, for crying out loud!

3. Provide funding, special training, expert advisors and humanitarian aid to countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, as opposed to an invade-and-occupy strategy. Focus on reconstruction, basic services and low-interest loans. We need to eliminate the class of poor, uneducated, angry, restless, disenfranchised, unemployed people who are easily recruited by militias, terrorist groups, gangs, tribal warlords, insurgents and foreign jihadists. We need to promote and enhance social and economic stability.

4. In accordance with the suggestions published in The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward -- A New Approach, prepared by the Iraq Study Group (ISG)*, we should launch a comprehensive "New Diplomatic Offensive," engaging all regional players -- even Iran and Syria.

5. Also in accordance with that report, the United States must recognize that it will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East (including curbing Islamic extremism) unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict and acknowledges that there is no military solution. Specifically, we must be willing to work closely with moderates, offering support to those Muslim political and religious figures, including sheikhs, emirs, imams, mullahs and ayatollahs, who endorse, practice and openly advocate a more peaceful and liberalized form of Islam.

6. Follow the money. Disrupt the revenue streams for terrorists, even if it means alienating our supposed "allies." Saudi Arabia, I am looking directly at you.

* The ISG was a committee of five Republicans and five Democrats co-chaired by James A. Baker, III (a Republican) and Lee H. Hamilton (a Democrat). Their full list of 79 specific recommendations is available online. They were given permission by the current administration to proceed with their work with the agreement that they would not ask whether the invasion of Iraq was justified or a good idea, only consider options for more effectively dealing with the present situation. The members of the study group consulted with members of Congress and others, including four working groups of experts and a group of retired military officers. The four working groups were comprised of experts from private industry and leading policy and academic institutions. The ISG met with 136 people in and out of government before September 19th, and 170 people total as it prepared its final report. The ISG's recommendations, particularly the comprehensive "New Diplomatic Offensive," have largely been ignored.

6:30 PM - 12 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

THREE THURSDAY RUMINATIONS

Item 1.

What is interpersonal compatibility? What makes two people "click"? What makes them fit together perfectly, like puzzle pieces machined at the atomic level? What is "chemistry"?

I am beginning to think that it is much more the product of a kind of neurological quasi-isomorphism than the result of any particular combination of externally manifested traits or characteristics. That is to say, it is more internal than behavioral. As an evidentiary example, I'll bet you can easily think of two people you know who have a lengthy list of extraordinarily equivalent and parallel interests and/or activities who have nonetheless totally failed to strike up any kind of meaningful friendship and don't seek out each other's company. I'll bet you can also easily think of two people you know who seem to be inseparable, yet on paper don't seem to possess many obviously mutually attractive elements.

True compatibility, I am starting to believe, comes from two brains that are "wired" in a similar manner -- to use a computer analogy, two similar processors with similar operating systems, running similar programs at similar speeds and even having many of the same files stored in their respective memories. Such brains observe and understand the world the same way; they can interface fully and readily, without having to translate data from one format to another. They speak the same dialect of the same language and interpret the same symbols using the same code of values. If this really is the basis of compatibility, then it may truly be, as the poets have always staunchly maintained, almost impossible to define, quantify or predict.

Item 2.

Sometimes we slip into the intellectual trap of thinking that our society is on a slow, linear slide from what some would call "Traditional Family Values" into depravity. I.e., comparing what you are allowed to say or show on TV today (on Gossip Girl, for instance) to what you were allowed to say or show at some point in the past (on I Love Lucy or The Dick Van Dyke Show, perhaps) and extrapolating that into an overall historical trend.

This is not accurate, although it often seems accurate. In fact, the real trend, or rather trends, are more cyclical.

During the Victorian Era (1837-1901), the United States was in the grip of a rather straightlaced, uptight, prudish and Puritanical mindset. The Jazz Age, however (1918-1929) brought a wild, sexy, freewheeling, libertine spirit to America that began when World War I ended and came to an abrupt crash (pardon the pun) with the Great Depression. After World War II the 1950s and early 1960s saw a return to an extremely clean, conservative, button-down mentality and censorship was prevalent. That exploded with the Sexual Revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s, only to be replaced with the sobering sense of personal responsibility, moral obligation and political correctness that began to creep back into our national psyche in the 1980s and continues to this day. Here I offer just two quick examples of how the current cultural climate is actually less "corrupt," "decadent" and "perverted" (or whatever other negative adjectives you prefer to describe anything that's fun) than it used to be:

1. In the 1970s, the newly formed Southwest Airlines dressed its stewardesses (not flight attentdants, back then) in hot pants. Can you imagine an airline being able to get away with that today? Not even the now-defunct Hooters Air could do that! (Two Hooters Girls in restaurant uniforms were aboard each flight, but the flight attendants themselves were traditionally attired.)
   

2. The movie Deep Throat was a mainstream box office success in 1972. It was advertised in The New York Times. The film's amazing popularity launched a phase of openly acknowledged, middle-class fascination with explicit cinema that Ralph Blumenthal referred to as "porno chic." Johnny Carson talked about going to see it, for crying out loud! Can you even conceive of a blow job flick being shown at your local theater in today's repressed, reactionary political atmosphere?

Item 3.

Sam e-mailed me the following thought-provoking quotation* from author Sam Harris:

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by Him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in."

Couldn't have said it better myself, Mr. Harris!

*And it is a quotation, dammit, not a quote! The word "quote" is a verb. You can quote someone, or someone can quote you. It isn't a noun. I know, I know, I really ought to give up on this; like the whole lay/lie debacle, this lexicological battle has long ago been lost, as have so many other worthy syntactical and grammatical causes, in the wasteland of "popular usage." But I refuse to stop railing against the way people misdeploy quotation marks for emphasis, when they should be using italics, underlining or bold print. Such misuse implies a belief in the concept that to say something is not literally true or factually accurate is the same as saying that it is especially important, which (unless you mean it in a weird sort of ironic, post-modern, deconstructionist, existential Zen way) is very upsetting.

3:05 PM - 5 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Art Blog (Plus a Poem)
Category: Art and Photography

In many urban centers across America, an effort is underway to energize the local arts scene by providing venues for independent talent to mingle, providing spaces for artists to work, offering access to tools and techniques, encouraging an exchange of ideas and -- most visibly -- creating a location or network of locations for showcasing the artists' efforts.

Such places tend to inspire the use of adjectives such as "funky," "ecclectic," "Bohemian," "offbeat" and "avant garde."

The success of these ventures depends largely on three dynamic and unpredictable variables:

1. The pool of real artists* in the community.

2. The pool of art appreciators, consumers, aficionados and (most importantly) patrons in the community.

3. The level of tolerance within the current political/social milieu for artistic exploration and experimentation.

Ideally, a project like this results in a vibrant and energetic microculture in which art becomes Art and aesthetic philosophies are debated, boundaries are pushed back, history is rediscovered, creative energy is unleashed, tapped, redirected and trained or at least perspectives are broadened by a nanometer or two.

I love the idea of a dance studio, a theater, several galleries, a workshop, a darkroom** and a few co-ops scattered among lofts and coffeehouses where struggling purists labor to capture the essence of something greater than themselves, something timeless and important. Masters and apprentices and dabblers endeavor to express themselves through everything from textiles to pottery. I love the idea of an oasis of uniqeness and crooked, rough-edged authenticity amidst the typical bland clamor of homogonized, plastic, gentrified, mass-media-saturated, franchised materialistic downtown retail consumerism, which I find insufferably dull.

I love the idea of wandering among labyrinthine corridors in crumbling, musty old buildings, filled with amateur, independent and street art, some of it great, some of it peculiar, some of it absolute crap, but all of it coming straight from someone's heart. Even more, I love idea of lots of people wandering in those corridors, curious, questioning, fascinated, engaged, their horizons opening up. The ancient, uneven wooden floors creak underfoot. Pipes and ducting and conduit stick out of the ceiling. Raw brick is exposed everywhere. Dusty, shadowy spaces invite contemplation. Ladders lead to trapdoors, alluding symbolically, if unintentionally, to the mysteries of the psyche. Pithy graffiti adorns every surface, silently voicing the Zeitgeist. Hoary artifacts, tarnished and cracked, evoke images of times long gone in a way that the safe, sanitized "antiques" in upscale stores cannot.

The reality of these ventures is often bleaker, however, and slightly sad. The bicycles of college dropouts determined to challenge the status quo are soon replaced by the SUVs of real estate brokers determined to "develop" an "undervalued property," the sculptures and paintings and mixed-media exhibits soon replaced by a Starbucks and a Hard Rock Cafe.

The fault does not lie, as many seem to claim, with a lack of government support of the arts, at least not directly. The fault lies with an inadequate educational system. We do not seem to have the collective will to invest heavily in education the way we are eager to pour massive, staggering, incomprehensible amounts of money into, for example, foreign military occupations. Just imagine what life in a city whose population was well versed in the Western Humanities would be like.

* When I use word "real" here I mean really motivated and really interested, not necessarily really gifted or really well established or really widely accepted.

** For members of the YouTube / MySpace / cell phone / digital camera generation, a "darkroom" is a place where people used actual chemicals to make prints from "negatives" on something called "film," at least when they weren't too busy defending members of their clan from dinosaur attack.

"Evolution" (1895)

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
  In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the ebbing tide
  We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
  Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
  For I loved you even then.

Mindless we lived and mindless we loved
  And mindless at last we died;
And deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift
  We slumbered side by side.
The world turned on in the lathe of time,
  The hot lands heaved amain,
Till we caught our breath from the womb of death
  And crept into life again.

We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,
  And drab as a dead man's hand;
We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees
  Or trailed through the mud and sand.
Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet
  Writing a language dumb,
With never a spark in the empty dark
  To hint at a life to come.

Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,
  And happy we died once more;
Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold
  Of a Neocomian shore.
The eons came and the eons fled
  And the sleep that wrapped us fast
Was riven away in a newer day
  And the night of death was passed.

Then light and swift through the jungle trees
  We swung in our airy flights,
Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms
  In the hush of the moonless nights;
And oh! what beautiful years were there
  When our hearts clung each to each;
When life was filled and our senses thrilled
  In the first faint dawn of speech.

Thus life by life and love by love
  We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
  We followed the chain of change.
Till there came a time in the law of life
  When over the nursing sod
The shadows broke and the soul awoke
  In a strange, dim dream of God.

I was thewed like an Auroch bull
  And tusked like the great cave bear;
And you, my sweet, from head to feet
  Were gowned in your glorious hair.
Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,
  When the night fell o'er the plain
And the moon hung red o'er the river bed
  We mumbled the bones of the slain.

I flaked a flint to a cutting edge
  And shaped it with brutish craft;
I broke a shank from the woodland lank
  And fitted it, head and haft;
Than I hid me close to the reedy tarn,
  Where the mammoth came to drink;
Through the brawn and bone I drove the stone
  And slew him upon the brink.

Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,
  Loud answered our kith and kin;
From west to east to the crimson feast
  The clan came tramping in.
O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof
  We fought and clawed and tore,
And cheek by jowl with many a growl
  We talked the marvel o'er.

I carved that fight on a reindeer bone
  With rude and hairy hand;
I pictured his fall on the cavern wall
  That men might understand.
For we lived by blood and the right of might
  Ere human laws were drawn,
And the age of sin did not begin
  Til our brutal tusks were gone.

And that was a million years ago
  In a time that no man knows;
Yet here tonight in the mellow light
  We sit at Delmonico's.
Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,
  Your hair is dark as jet,
Your years are few, your life is new,
  Your soul untried, and yet --

Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay
  And the scarp of the Purbeck flags;
We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones
  And deep in the Coralline crags;
Our love is old, our lives are old,
  And death shall come amain;
Should it come today, what man may say
  We shall not live again?

God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds
  And furnish'd them wings to fly;
He sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn,
  And I know that it shall not die,
Though cities have sprung above the graves
  Where the crook-bone men made war
And the ox-wain creaks o'er the buried caves
  Where the mummied mammoths are.

Then as we linger at luncheon here
  O'er many a dainty dish,
Let us drink anew to the time when you
  Were a tadpole and I was a fish.

Langdon Smith (1858 - 1908)

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