Plain tales from the Aurora Hills

2004-10-25T03:24:00.000-07:00

Thinking about the future

Here we are once more in the run-up to another presidential election and for the first time since 1988 I am actually in the country to experience it. This is not something which fills me with joy given that the sheer tedium is overwhelming and added to that is the volume of the talking heads who seek to mask with noise what they lack in thought. This would not be so worrying if all this blather were just for our entertainment value, but it is not and so we head to the polls with an electorate (and more frighteningly a leadership) motivated by platitudes as if simple aphorisms can lead us successfully into the future.

For the past few years and all the more so as the election has gotten underway there has been a strong push on the right to rally America (or at least enough of America to carry the day) behind what is essentially nothing more than a call to patriotism: Support the Troops; Fight the Evildoers; Strength and Resolution in the face of those who wish to destroy us. The problem with this is that none of it seems to explain why we should do any of this or what it is that is under attack and why we should support it. There is of course the simple desire to hold onto lifestyles and standards of living which we enjoy and wish to continue to enjoy, but as cynical as some may be about this there is an actual ideal greater than this in which we all believe, founded in ideas of freedom and liberty and encapsulated in the words of men like Jefferson and Lincoln. These ideals are good ones and their defense is a highly potent means of motivation for the American people. The problem is that we seem to be trying less to understand them than to use them as a blanket justification: since our ideals are good, so are we and by extension all that we do, at least in the broad view. This of course is the sort of shoddy thinking and logical fallacy which would make Lincoln and Jefferson cringe. But we are not being encouraged to think of what exactly we are being asked to fight and struggle to defend; of how our treatment of certain persons and peoples in this country and around the world might not be in keeping with these ideals; and the best way to live up to these ideals and to help carry them to others so that they too might enjoy these truths which we hold self-evident, which truths do not stop at any national border or any other kind of line.

To be fair though it is not just the right which seems happy to leave behind thought, though the right's dereliction of duty in this regard is more obvious as they have been in power these past four years. The left also operates on its own lazy tropes, though their's tend to be less of a knee-jerk praise of America than a knee-jerk denunciation. It can still be seen in places and was brought to my own sight the other day by catching part of a recent animated movie taking place in the Wild West. The horses and the American Indians were the good guys, the cavalry the bad guys, an inversion of the films which disappeared a long time ago and probably no worse than they were. But it is indicative of a desire on the left which waxes and wanes and which seeks to condemn Western Civilization as hopelessly corrupt and evil and destructive and instead embraces other civilizations. The problem with this is that these civilizations tend to exist solely in the minds of those leftist products of Western Civilization. The noble savages whom we have created out of the American Indians are no more real than the brutal savages as which they were once portrayed, and both seriously underestimate that people in ways which can be quite insulting. The left often feels very disappointed and in fact betrayed by Western Civilization and by America as a product thereof and the inclination is to throw it aside. But this is as lazy and unhelpful as merely declaring ourselves to be the good guys and doing as we please. If we take as the basic foundation of Western Civilization the development of concepts such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness or of libery, equality and fraternity, then we must admit that there is something great and wonderful about that civilization, something whose benefits do not stop with our fellow countrymen but which apply to all humanity; but these ideals are as much a responsibility, a charge given to us by our predecessors and not an easy one. These are ideals up to which we must live if we are to bequeath to this planet and this human race a better world than the one we have been bequeathed. And we cannot do so if we want to do things the easy way - the lazy way - and condemn this civilization because it is imperfect or cheer for it because it says nice things. Now is the time to meet our responsibilities; now is the time to think, to reason, to talk and to do our best that we might be worthy of this charge and leave the lazy ways of acting behind.

2004-10-17T17:37:00.000-07:00

The idea of education

There has always been great debate over the role of universities in society and possibly nowhere more than in the US, where education is supposed to be the key to one's success in the society which was freed from the constraints of the Old World. All things considered there is more than a grain of truth in this belief and consequently education is the scene of some of the greatest debates in America: it is worth noting that the first big prime-time battle over segregation came at a school in Little Rock. An education, which since the Second World War includes university, is the crucial first step in achieving the American Dream in the lives of most Americans. When something this big is involved, how can conflict be avoided? Over the past thirty years the most notable eruption has been over affirmative action, which has seemed to threaten the chances of whites making that first step. How true and broad this threat has been is open to interpretation and it also involves other issues including that other key component of the American Dream, of success without fear or favor. It can also be seen to have struck at feelings of entitlement among the populace. These feelings had been in aristocratic society limited to the elites and one of the ironies of democratisation and the end of such elites is that such feelings of entitlement can be spread more deeply into society. Especially in a nation in which success is supposed to be so open, such feelings can push the average person to expect it: that is the point of equality, it would seem.

Lost in this can be the fact that success is something far more malleable and diverse than what we attempt to set in stone at the age of eighteen. The triumph of western democracy is not to make success assured in whatever we desire but to make the possibilities for success as broad and open as can be. There is no way that each and every one of us can have all that we desire when we desire it. Even the great and good in times past could not have that. It is not only unrealistic, it would rob us of all the opportunities and twists which life has to offer which might seem unnerving and even unwelcome, but which can make our lives more enjoyable or at the very least more interesting and possibly more rewarding. Life follows few scripts and one of the keys to it is to play the hand as it is dealt and to see where we can go with the cards. Some people get a low hand and that is predetermined by their socio-economic status: even in modern democracy, we are not all born to the same benefits. But the possibilities are quite good for most of us and to offer a helping hand to others hardly means that we cannot have a good life ourselves. In fact it would seem that we can have a much richer and more rewarding life if we give as many people as possible the chance to live the sorts of lives we do. We tear down walls which keep us from others and we get the chance to meet people who can take us to places we might never have gone before. This is not a zero sum game.

Finally there is the skeleton at the feast. School and university is not a game of getting the right names and the right numbers: it is a matter of educating ourselves. A person can go to the finest school and the best college, get the right grades and make the whole thing look perfect on paper; but if he or she is not educated, then it was all wasted time. That person might as well have been shooting pool or going to work. The point of school is not to get into the right university. The point of school is to get the best education possible; to expand one's mind; to learn and grow. The more one does that, the more one gets and will continue to get out of life. And if he or she does that, he or she can get into a good university, even if it is not this one or that one in particular. In the end, there will be many universities which will be a good fit for any given person and that person can and will get into at least one of them. And there he or she can continue this process of learning and growth and make it a way of life: the best way of life. This is the point of education and it is why education is important. And it more than anything else in life is not a zero sum game: the more of us who can take part, the richer each and every one of us shall be in our lives.

2004-10-01T21:27:00.000-07:00

Returning to well-trod ground

Within the world of readers there arises a sharp divide over the matter of returning to books which one has already read. Some find it wasteful to keep going back to old books when so many new ones are out there waiting to be discovered. Others find it equally incomprehensible that, having found a treasure in the form of a particular book, one could help but return to it. No matter which side a reader falls on, it is difficult to understand truly the thinking of those with the opposing viewpoint.

It is, of course, useful and worthwhile to try to work through a mindset not one's own. I am a confirmed re-reader myself, but know many fellow bibliovores who are committed to avoiding re-reading books, at least for the most part. They certainly have a point; with a limited amount of time in which to read (three score years and ten or at best little more than five score, not counting the time spent sleeping, working, etc.) and with such a plethora of books out there, there is a strong impetus once one has finished a book to charge on in search of another which might be as good in some way or other or even better. It is fairly well certain that even the most voracious of bibliovore can only begin to tap the wells of good books which lie in wait for us. As much tripe as does exist, there are enough diamonds in the rough to keep the devoted reader busy until doomsday. Naturally this calls for ambition and a sense of adventure. Re-reading books reduces even the limited yield a person can get from the published word.

Yet as much as I know this, there is no chance that I could give up re-reading books (though I have trained myself to abandon books which I find myself disliking heartily as I read them). Certain books simply beg to be re-read, in part or cover-to-cover. Some have ideas which need to be re-read; some have stories which fail to lose their thrill; others have writing which is so wonderful that giving them up would be like giving up a favorite sweet. In all these cases, the key fact is that these books which I have read have had some element which I have liked: why on earth would I not return to such wonderful finds? It would be like abandoning an old friend whose company I shall always find pleasure in simply because there are others out there whom I have yet to meet and whose company I might enjoy as much or even more. It's good to meet new friends, but to leave behind old ones?

At its heart, perhaps the crucial difference between readers and re-readers lies in their aims in reading. Both groups look to be entertained, informed, pleased by reading a book. But for re-readers there might be more to it; at least that would be the case for this one re-reader. Books are more than a way to learn or to amuse oneself: they can be a way to leave the world behind and to absorb oneself in another. For people of this ilk, a good book is more than a treasure, it is an essential companion in life, a companion through all that life offers. I have just finished re-reading The Secret History for the umpteenth time. The first time I read it, I finished it in two days and immediatelly read it cover-to-cover once more. It is still as appealing and engrossing as ever; possibly more so as it has its own place in my personal history, as evocative of things in my own life as of the events the story tells. Most books we re-read for certain pleasures which they brought us when we first read them and because the pleasures are as fresh and delightful every time we pick up the book. But some books become part of who we are in a sense, part of that conception of ourselves by which we live our lives. For the committed re-reader, to abandon such books would be to abandon a part of oneself. It is just this sort of passion which books can evoke in people which undoubtedly makes the differing views on the issue of re-reading them quite so mutually incomprehensible.

2004-08-10T03:23:00.000-07:00

Locked in a cell (phone)

Back when I was in the UK, I attended the Last Night of the Proms in Hyde Park with friends on a couple of occasions. The park was packed and it was difficult to get in and out and to find the group again if I strayed off for any reason. But somehow everyone there seemed to overcome all these pitfalls and a good time was had by all. The other night I attended a similar but much, much smaller event, a showing of The Thin Man at the Screen on the Green on the Mall. The crowd was not particularly large (which was nice), making the problems of meeting and separation less difficult. But what was different was the fact that the majority of those who were trying to meet were talking on their cell phones in order to arrange their meeting.

Cell phones have long been a butt of jokes (Hello dear - I'm still on the train, just like every night at this time) but their prevalence also makes them an unavoidable reality and very nearly a necessity. They can be handy tools in communicating, in arranging to meet others and in freeing one of the home or office phone. But this should not lead us to somehow think that they are a necessity in and of themselves or that they mark some great forward stride in human progress. Cell phones seem to be one of those developments which happened largely because they could and whose success has depended on salesmanship and the reality that nothing does succeed like success.

The appeal of cell phones is that they make certain aspects of life easier. Having a cell phone means that the owner does not have to make solid plans at a distance or even at all if the communication with others is always available. For people who hate to plan, this is an undoubted boon. Likewise it is a way to prevent any lost down time, such as commutes, largely to the benefit of one's work. This is, of course, more of a benefit to one's place of employ rather than to oneself. For all this brings ideas of being able to work on one's own schedule, i.e. taking time off and away from the office as the lines of communication are still open, it is far more likely that it means that one works all day and cannot even escape it when one has punched out for the day. In this sense, the cell phone is exactly that, a cell.

But it is the handiness and ease with which they allow communication which really seems to have spurred their use, aided in no small way by the fact that as more people have them, more people need them to keep in contact with the people who already have them. But if they were all to disappear, the results would be negligable. Making plans and arrangements to do things, be places, meet people have been and still are simple enough. It has always been possible to do this without cell phones and continues to be so. It merely means thinking and using a little foresight and native wit. It is reducing the need to rely upon these attributes which is the ease which cell phones have brought into our life. But these are not particularly bad things to have. Given the current state of affairs with regard to the environment, the budget, social security and foreign policy, it is hard to say that, in the US at least, foresight and careful thought and planning are our strong suits in any case. We already have televisions upon which to waste our money and lower our brain activity. It is hard to see that we need another gizmo to help in that.

2004-07-20T03:22:00.000-07:00

School Days

It is difficult not to take the experiences of one's own life and to attempt to extrapolate them into broader theories of various aspects of human existence. Since none of us have the time or the inclination to do the full research which would be required for this, we might as well accept this tendency on our part and see where it might lead us. This is all by way of disclaimer to some thoughts on education which came to mind on a trip home recently. Having grown up in a small town, I spent my education through the age of fourteen at the local school, which was necessarily very small as well. There was only one class of students per year and in first grade (age six), there were only seven of us. This number did bounce up to twelve shortly thereafter, but that was about the size of class which seemed natural to us. The benefits were of course that it was a good student-teacher ratio, ensuring that we had teachers who were there for us as we needed them. The drawbacks to such a situation are equally evident. We were very much without any options should we have problems with our fellow students or our teacher for the year. With one class, there is nowhere to move to avoid anyone else. I was extremely lucky in my classmates and in my teachers, liking them all very well and having a very enjoyable experience in school in those years.

The real drawback which I began to feel as the years progressed and as I reached high school was not so much from unhappiness with the company in a small school, but with the lack of opportunity and I went to a nearby independent school which had much more to offer, both in courses, teachers, student body and extracurricular activities. I am very glad to have had the opportunity to go there for high school. But I can still appreciate the advantages of the small school in which I spent so many years. This past weekend I was told that three of the graduating class at the local school would be attending the college which I had first attended before transferring to St. Andrews. This rather surprised me insofar as of the twelve members of the class which graduated the year I graduated from my high school, only three attended college at all. That more students would wish to pursue further education is hardly something I oppose (obviously), but in this case it is apparently the result of the changing demographics in the town, as it becomes less of a farming community and more of a bedroom community for the state capital. I can hardly complain about this as that is essentially what my parents have used it as since they moved there before I was born. The worry which arises, in my mind if nowhere else, is that the students are missing out on something as there fellows are simply those with similar backgrounds to their own. I am of course looking at this from the perspective of the child of the office-working college-educated, but I do think for those like me to meet and interact with people from other backgrounds, especially at a young age, has its advantages. Growing up with kids whose parents had different experiences from those of my own, as well as with some kids whose parents had more similar ones, offered a chance to see from different perspectives at an age before the hardening of one's views becomes too great. One of the great problems which I see with many of my fellow well-educated peers (and I include myself as having this problem too) is that it is far too easy to look from the heights of our learning and knowledge and to view those who see things from a different vantage as fundamentally different and to treat them in some sense as lesser, whether we do that with the best of (condescending) intentions or not. It may be difficult to open young children to the sorts of experiences which give them access to multiple viewpoints. Perhaps I was just lucky and it hardly cured me of all the prejudices and mental warps which so inform our thoughts and judgments. But I still think that it is something to be wished for all children, for all people.

2004-07-07T03:21:00.000-07:00

In search of the magic bullet

Patience has never been a particularly strong characteristic of the United States or its people and when viewed more generally one could say the same about Western Civilization in general. The development of the West, an amorphous term but it is hard to think of a better, has been driven largely by the need to push forward in thought or act. One can call this progress or one can call it heedless ambition; both are probably applicable. It is not so much a thing of good or bad but can have either of these effects. Most recently in the field of international relations, this lack of patience, this desire to move forward has been evident in the war in Iraq. When all is said and done the war was an attempt to cut the Gordian knot with regard to Iraq, which was a nightmare in international affairs and had been for years. Under Saddam Hussein it had shown itself willing to attack whichever neighboring countries it might prefer, while at the same time Saddam operated a police state which was predicated on inflicting suffering on all who might challenge his power within Iraq. Attempts to pry him out without the full use of force were failing. Saddam was a nasty piece of work, but he had his ace in the hole: his firm leadership of the sovereign nation state of Iraq. As the international order is based upon the nation state, this was a strong hand to hold.

Thus the delight of Saddam's opponents in the West with the changed international circumstances after the September 11, 2001 attacks. With the development of this threat on such a global scale, the use of force became a more plausible instrument in international relations. Force as a legitimate means of foreign relations achieved a certain justification, whether on the lines of self defense, as conservatives have seen it, or as the vanguard of the march of liberal ideals across the world, as neoconservatives prefer. It is undoubtedly of great satisfaction to those on the left that these groups are now being made to realize that force has not proven as effective as they had hoped. But the left should not crow too loudly, for they are as prone to searching for magic bullets themselves as are those on the right. It has been forgotten in the changed focus of the past few years, but before 2001, it was the left's magic bullet which was most in evidence: not force, but law, the idea that international laws and conventions and organizations could establish the order which the right has been hoping force would do.

Even before September 11, 2001 these agreements, conventions and treaties were suffering from the opposition of the right, especially in the United States. Treaties on nuclear arms, on the environment, on the International Criminal Court were all running aground on opposition here. But this reflected a wider problem with the entire concept behind this movement. Without force to back it up, law will have only the mildest of effects, just as without law to back it up, force lacks the meaning to give it any deeper meaning. Both sides realize this, but cannot seem to come together and see that each must work with the other in true partnership. Neither can accomplish what its proponents wish unless it is firmly married to the other. Both give lip service to this, but neither seems willing to address what this must mean in reality. Even then proponents on both sides must realize that even together they might form no magic bullet. For neither of these can accomplish anything worthwhile without an established legitimacy in the eyes of the international community at large - real legitimacy not just diplomatic acceptance. Until that happens, there is little to hope from either of these avenues. But unless they work together that little hope disappears altogether.

2004-07-01T03:42:00.000-07:00

The idea of service

One of the recent incidental effects of the ongoing war in Iraq has been the opportunity for proponents of a military draft to present the issue to the public once more. They have a new argument in that the military seems quite obviously to be stretched to the limits of their capabilities as the war drags on and the troop numbers hold steady. Of course the fact that the armed forces are much smaller than they were ten or fifteen years ago suggests that a draft is not exactly a necessity, though should the US continue to take such an active role in fighting around the world, it might prove that volunteering does really dry up. But since the key effect of this war seems likely to be that the US is very, very reluctant to engage in any other such conflicts in the foreseeable future, the argument that we need the draft to face meet these wars seems less persuasive.

But the current military and political situation is not the real reason people are either in favor or are opposed to the draft. When it comes to opposition to the draft, it relies heavily on a traditional American support for liberty and opposition to forced service. The draft has been a very rare occurence in this country, for the most part. It was used in the Civil War (though rather indirectly) and in World War I, but that was it before 1940. The draft only really held on after that, first because of the Second World War and then the Cold War, thirty years of the draft, a stark contrast to previous history. This does not mean that it is some betrayal of this country or its history. In times of crisis, the US had come to rely upon the draft and so the forties, fifties and sixties can be seen as part of that history.

However, these decades of the draft were different, for never before had the draft been in commission for so long. It became not a temporary wartime necessity, but a part of American society as it had never been before. It was cast out for good reasons under Nixon, reasons which were broadly supported. But as time has passed, the generations for whom it was part of their life, even if they personally did not serve, have begun to see the good aspects to it and to feel that we all are missing something with its departure. This is driven to a large extent by the knowledge that there are generations for whom the draft is part of the history they study - men and women in their thirties and even forties upon whom the draft really never existed. As with so many attitudes and social mores which are held by younger generations, this view has the power of time behind it, its numbers growing as those of the generations for whom the draft was part of America decline. The debate over the draft is, as much as anything, a debate between the generations.

2004-06-29T03:22:00.000-07:00

Fictional problems

It is always difficult to know how much one's own experience in any given particular reflects some wider reality or how much it is more specific and essentially anecdotal. Reviewing books I have found it easier to recommend non-fiction than fiction. Any number of factors may be at play in this: personal preference, a skewing in the books which we receive against the better works of fiction, the fact that non-fiction is more easily judged on objective as opposed to subjective grounds. But it is also hard not to wonder if there are certain more fundamental problems with contemporary fiction. Not that this would be unique to our time. We tend to read only the classics which have stood the test fo time and we have no idea about the pulp which was churned out simultaneously. Still one cannot help but ponder the trends in fiction after seeing what appears to be similarities in their strengths or weaknesses.

I am not sure how much my own experience in reading current novels has given me insight into the deeper questions of their aim and purpose and what in fact defines a good novel over a bad one. But reading fiction these days, I am struck by the degree to which the author often seems to take center stage. This is not entirely new or unwelcome. All authors bring something of themselves and their experiences to their work. It would be impossible not to do so and their work would be the lesser for it. But currently it can seem that the authors are bulking even larger in their works, to the extent that it can crowd out the other elements. Current fiction seems to be driven by a deep desire to express the innermost feelings of the author on his/her life. It might be expressed through other characters, but there is a trend which seems to take a sort of psychological self-analysis as the genesis for one's novels these days.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. The better authors can use these feelings to develop stories which grab the reader and can connect on levels which have probably not been so easily reached in the past. But for many, the novel's focus has merely narrowed, from the reading public at large to the author and people more closely like him or her. It has become in fact a sort of confessional/catharsis whose real purpose is the betterment of the author, though undoubtedly he or she sees this as a way of connecting with others, which it might be. But the emphasis is on the self, in this case that of the author. In this age in which the self is the key element of human existence, this is not a surprising development and we can hardly wish it away - it is as ingrained in each of us as it is in our contemporary authors. It has also produced some excellent works of fiction as well.

If we are to learn anything from this, we should merely try to realize, both as readers and writers, that self-confession alone does not make good writing. Structure, story and possibly most importantly well-written characters are essential. They cannot be used as wooden props to illustrate how the protagonist (author) feels. This is when modern fiction leaves the reader feeling cheated and counting the cost in trees felled to make the paper for the book. Good fiction is created at all times and will always require some searching to find it. But authors and prospective authors would do well for this reading public if they would just keep in mind that a novel is more than a blank canvas on which to express themselves.

2004-06-28T06:52:00.000-07:00

Looking back at the death of Liberty Valance

One of the great pleasures of watching old films is first seeing how they play in the environment in which we each of us now lives and then to try to cast our minds back and try to imagine the impression which they gave when they were first released. Westerns are a good genre for this. They might have declined from their glory days, but they provide a rich vein to mine and writers and directors keep going back to them. High Noon is the western for a nation under threat, from communists or from a red scare, depending on who you talk to; The Outlaw Josey Wales is the western for post-Vietam America.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is especially interesting because it was made by the great director of westerns, John Ford. More enjoyable than the relationship between Liberty and either John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart is the relationship between those latter two. It is the differing views which they bring to the film - two different ways they see to get to the same end. The conflict of these two determined men is supposedly heightened by their rivalry for the affections of Hallie, but she is rather a cipher, merely a physical symbol for what they are fighting over and Ford hardly does more than hit some of the key points, never filling and developing the background. It is not a struggle to get the girl - it is a struggle between rival views of the way to live one's life and of the best means to provide the best for the community. Jimmy Stewart seeks to use the law; John Wayne seeks to defend the farmers himself; and it is hard not to be interested by the duelling concepts which they embody.

Just as intriguing is trying to figure out where John Ford's sympathies lie in this. Obviously he sees Wayne as a heroic figure. Wayne stands up to and stares down Valance and later shoots him in order to save the life of his rival. He gives up his dreams and allows Stewart to have Hallie and credit for the shooting of Liberty Valance, giving up everything and dying a pauper and alone. He is meant as a noble figure who does right no matter how much he himself suffers. Naturally one could imagine that Stewart is being set up as his antithesis, though one could say the same for Valance. In fact, together Stewart and Valance are the antithesis of Wayne, the first in means, the second in ends.

But where Valance is most certainly a bad guy, for whom Ford has no sympathy, it is harder to tell with Stewart. Simply by casting Jimmy Stewart, Ford would seem to be showing some sympathy with his character, Ransom Stoddart. And Stoddart is a productive and worthwhile member of the community, encouraging the newspaper, teaching children and adults in reading and civics, trying to instill an appreciation for the ways in which democracy can give the people of the town power over their own lives and futures, something for which Wayne is less impressed. Stewart is also not a coward, a key element in Ford's idea of heroism. He faces Valance gun-to-gun in the street and doesn't flinch and by the end of the film he is shown to have been a great and important man in the history of his state and his nation. Yet still, at the end, it is the man who shot Liberty Valance who most impresses the people and even Hallie, now Stoddart's wife. One can view this in any number of ways and will be, depending upon the audience and depending on the time in which it is viewed. And the question always remains: what did John Ford think of Stoddart? That is probably the key element to this movie and why it will continue to be watched.

2004-06-24T03:18:00.000-07:00

The Cornish Jazz Scene

Months ago, as my summer travel plans came to focus on a trip to Cornwall, I began to think with a certain sense of amusement about coming across the Cornish Jazz Scene while there. I am a great fan of jazz and recently have begun to follow some of the local jazz spots in Washington. This is hardly an involved investigation of the local jazz scene, but it has given me the feeling that such a thing exists and can be found. Moving around small clubs, issuing CDs sold primarily after the gigs; jazz which is not just a paean to the past but carries the old styles into the present day and on. So I begin to think about where else one might find such evidence of jazz beneath the surface. And indeed there does appear to be a Cornish Jazz Scene. In fact every August there is a jazz festival held in the town of Bude there. And there is a Bude Jazz Club which keeps the music playing with an emphasis on the Dixieland style. It is a wonderful image to hold in one's mind: in a windswept corner of England, where the Channel and the Irish Sea meet the Atlantic, the sounds of New Orleans can be heard along the surf. It is immensely gratifying and heartening to learn of such vitality in a treasured art form.

2004-06-21T03:22:00.000-07:00

The politics of amorality

For the weekend, I escaped Washington and got away to the peace and pleasure of the seaside, lounging on the sand and playing in the surf and generally enjoying myself. As a result I was able to leave the world outside pretty much firmly behind; but yesterday I returned and began to hear about the administration's response to the findings of the 9/11 commission, that Iraq and Al Qaeda were not working together, a charge which they have been making for years now. But, as one commentator noted, the administration has never been put off from continuing to claim this in the face of refutation before and they aren't now. They still keep beating the drum on this issue. Having committed themselves to a worldview in which this connection exists, they cannot allow any other to supersede it. Their own faith in themselves and their vision of how the world exists is so strong that they are protected to some degree from charges of hypocrisy and outright lying. But not entirely. For they know as well as anyone that if they keep repeating this lie long enough and loud enough it will sound like the truth. In this case they have managed to sway a sizeable part of the American public to support this completely unsubstantiated assertion. They offer no evidence, merely the weight of the office of the President, which is quite a powerful force. And this is why they can be charged with a willful amorality. They might believe they know the truth, but all they can do is lie and so they will, now and on as long as need be. It is a fine example of the Orwellian mindset which seems to be operating in the White House and it does underline the importance of this election: shall we the American people see that this administration pays the price of its hubris or shall we join them in it and share the blow of nemesis with them?

2004-06-18T03:22:00.000-07:00

Betrayal

I am not sure exactly what has thrown the investigation of the torture inquiry off the front pages in the past couple of weeks. Hopefully it was shifted into the back pages by the Reagan funeral, much as most of the news has been. Less charitably, it could be that we the American people have become bored with something which has become an abstraction once more. Besides which, we are the good guys and it is impossible for us to square torture with our self image, so we ignore it. Which is of course the very reason we cannot let it slide. Perhaps I have been lax in my attention to the news of late, but to the best of my knowledge, the only place where information seems to be coming out is in the Washington Post, whose editorials are trying to remind us of the gravity of the situation. And the more we learn the graver it becomes. As the post has rightly said, this is not a case of a few bad apples, but of a decision approved all the way down the line that torture was basically acceptable. They don't call it that, for we are the good guys. But it is torture nonetheless and the administration and the civilian leadership at the Pentagon, being such 'realists' actively decided that we would take the gloves off in the fight for good over evil.

These are the same 'realists' whose reality included WMDs which no one else could find any positive evidence for and whose reality of the aftermath of war was the spontaneous creation of a western liberal democracy in the cradle of civilisation (mea culpa - I allowed myself to be beguiled by the same myth), as if we were liberating Narnia. Their sense of reality is no less skewed in this case. The United States is indeed founded upon great and admirable principles to which peoples all over the world might and do aspire. But unless we live by these words, they have no meaning. The administration seeks to evade them, using lawyers to rejig and reinterpret until we can say that oppression is the road to peace and freedom. But it isn't and the rest of the world knows that, as well as we do. If America has any greatness in it, it comes from the great principles on which it was founded and which have grown, if tortuously, over the centuries since. By embodying these ideals, we can be a beacon to others, albeit a flickering and uncertain one. But how else might we succeed in the hope that these ideals will free all humanity than through living them? Torture makes us less than that; in fact it makes us no better than the other powers which have sought to enforce their will on the world. This won't work. It can't. And by pursuing this course, we help to snuff out the ideals which we ostensibly embody. For the good of the country and the good of the world, we have no choice. There must be no torture and we must atone for having committed it.

2004-06-16T03:23:00.000-07:00

The play is the thing

Last night I went to a play reading by a local group. It sounded intriguing and as a fan of the theatre, it seemed like a good idea, which it did turn out to be. The group was fun and pleasant and the actors giving the reading were excellent. What really struck me though was the nature of the play they read. I am more used to older plays, the classics or at least pieces which were written no later than the 60s. The play I heard last night was written in the past few years and the difference was evident most noticeably in the tone. Most plays which I have seen or heard or read, from Shakespeare on, have had an undeniable tone of being a drama. The words and the patterns of speech are developed in such a way to remove them to one degree or other from the normal run of human speech, to lift them up somewhat. We hear them and we know that they have a greater meaning than the words we use everyday, something beyond the fact that they are being spoken on a raised stage before us.

Last night though there was none of this. The lines could not be declaimed; they were not created to be savored, for us to catch and take and roll in our mouths. It was a conversation, much like any which we might have in our everyday lives. The two leads could have been people we had come across in a gallery, chatting about a painting. This was still a play and their conversation lacked the fillers and banalities of which our own everyday speech largely consists. But the words were natural and subtle and less interested in impressing upon you anything other than a tone and a feeling, to set the audience up for the denoument. It was a pleasure to watch. Not so much to show up plays which are more self-consciously plays or to exalt one type over the other. It was simply enjoyable to experience the variety which is available, to see the range which one can obtain in play writing.

2004-06-15T03:22:00.000-07:00

Vox populi

It is hard to know whether to be surprised by the results of the elections to the European Parliament held in Britain last Thursday. It certainly doesn't help to have been away from the ins and outs of politics there for a few years now, though this might actually offer some perspective. The big news was, of course, that UKIP (the United Kingdom Independence Party) had done very well, managing to win a number of seats and driving Labour into third place in some regions. Glancing at some news articles since the election, one gets the impression that this has rather shaken a number of people back in Britain which, given the unusual nature of this, is not surprising. Farther away though, the impact seems far less disturbing. Partially this is because it took me a few guesses before I could work out exactly what UKIP was (first thinking that it was some offshoot of the BNP and then that it had something to do with the late Sir James Goldsmith). It is hard to be worried by a political party which has failed to impress itself and its ideals on one's memory.

The arena in which UKIP won its seats also seems to lessen the impact. There are few bodies (outside the General Assembly of the UN) which have less purpose or effect than the European Parliament. Not that its members are not for the most part hardworking or dedicated. But the way the EU is organized is to keep the parliament from having any real power. The Parliament is there to give the impression that the EU is a democratic institution, but it actually far more a republican one. Power is wielded through the elected leaders of the individual nations who comprise the EU and the representatives whom they choose, which includes the bureaucrats who run the EU day-to-day. And it is hard to see how this could change so radically that the parliament might become the key element, or at least the primary element, of the EU. The sheer size and diversity of the EU requires a strongly federal system in which it is important that the individual peoples can guide the system instead of a European people, who have yet to appear and might never do so. And until they do, elections to the European Parliament are not going to be a big deal.

Finally, the upset which UKIP might cause by its victories the other day are lessened by the basic question of What are they for? Presumably they are against British participation in the EU - but to what extent? Getting out completely? Rewriting certain treaties? Merely keeping the pound? And in the end, how many Britons really list the EU as their primary concern? How much does it really impact their lives, at least in ways they find unacceptable? How much do they actually benefit from it without thinking about it? UKIP is really a one-trick pony and as such is on a dead-end road. Its election success might mean a tougher time when the referendum on the euro comes up, but when it does then proponents of the euro will be making a counter-argument, something UKIP (and Eurosceptics in general) have not had to face as yet. There are lessons to be drawn from this election and facts which need to be faced. I am rather fond of following the logic that the success of UKIP at the expense of both Labour and the Tories means that the British public wants the UK to move further away from the EU and presumably closer to the US as led by our current president, the mad bomber captain from Dr. Strangelove. Really though, for all of Kilroy-Silk's mugging in the paper, this was a simple protest, like all midterm elections and we can only wait to see how things play out next year or the year after.

2004-06-14T03:21:00.000-07:00

Merely saying goodbye

The death and extended funeral of Ronlad Reagan has led to a deluge of commentary on the man, his presidency and his legacy, from which it has been almost impossible to escape. It was to be expected, I suppose, but it is still more than faintly bizarre that sixteen years on from the man's presidency many people somehow believe that enough time has passed for a clear and proper judgment to be made on it. The reality is that even after centuries no historical event or period has the sort of clarity which partisans on both sides have been claiming about the Reagan presidency. Anything created by or dealing with humans is bound to be far too complex to avoid having multiple interpretations, though we come closer to reality with some than with others. As far as Reagan is concerned though there is little chance that there will be any proper analysis until all of us who lived through his presidency are dead and buried ourselves.

The grand national funeral of Ronald Reagan was worthwhile not for the chance to have people gas on about his legacy or even so that federal workers would get a day off (though that was nice), but for people to say goodbye to someone with whom they felt an attachment at some level or other. This was represented in the willingness of people to travel from across the country and then to stand in line for seven hours so that they could pay their respects. It was in the heartfelt words of George Bush the elder as he described a man whose personal touch left such an impression upon Bush. And Margaret Thatcher's message, all the more poignant as she was unable to give it in person though she sat there in the audience, having lost the prop of her personal life with the death of her husband and now losing the ally and friend who had so helped her develop her political self. This was not a time to engage in pointless and facile political posturing; it was a time for people to mourn a loss which they felt.

2004-06-10T03:25:00.000-07:00

Unknown country

When I first moved to the Washington area, a friend warned me against traveling to certain parts of the District. Given the barrage of news stories about Washington as the murder capital of the country, I was well set to receive her advice. Even when I learned of interesting and appealing places within these parts, my first instinct was to curse the ill fortune which put them in unsafe parts. It was not until other friends took me up to U Street that I realized that the counsel I had received had been that of fear with little relation to reality. Yet there are still parts which naturally raise red flags in my mind, all the more so as I do not know of anything they have such as the clubs and bars on U Street to entice me there.

One such part is the Anacostia section of DC, so called because it is separated from the rest of the District by the Anacostia River. Once upon a time Theodore Roosevelt would go swimming in the Anacostia, but for all that the word itself had a pleasant ring to it, it is associated in many minds with the worst: grim, crime-ridden, poor and decaying. And this reputation is not entirely unearned. The area suffered badly from the 1968 riots and there are some houses and buildings there which have never been repaired or rebuilt. Yesterday though I went there with friends, to attend the memorial service for the son of a co-worker and I found that it was not what I had imagined in my mind. The part which I saw was not the sort of gray and lifeless inner city in which people cower in their decaying buildings for fear of the gangs and the lawlessness. I did see a couple of apartment complexes, small ones, which were boarded over. But what struck me most was how green the area was. Perhaps the trees are moving in as the people moved out. That may be, but it was a far prettier place than my mind had made it. The houses were not expensive, but they were no more decayed than the ones in my neighborhood. It would be easy to draw all sorts of lessons from this experience, many of them good and correct. But mostly I prefer to think about that quiet and green neighborhood, such a pleasant one, and how one's imagination can never capture reality properly.

2004-06-08T03:22:00.000-07:00

The Personal Element

It is said that even the ugliest or most unappealing of creatures will still be loved by its mother and I suppose that this is merely the most obvious example of the importance of perspective on one's reaction to anyone or anything else. No two people are going to have the same perspective on any given thing and in fact no one person is going to have simply one point of view. I am very cool towards the World War II Memorial from a number of angles. Aesthetically I find that it apes neo-classicism without understanding the purpose or beauty of the style. As a monument, I think that it speaks merely of victory and not of the importance of that victory or its meaning. I still prefer the Iwo Jima Memorial, which says so much more, so much more simply.

Last night though I obtained another perspective. For I learned from home that the bronze eagles which fly in the two stands marking the Atlantic and Pacific theaters were sculpted by Walt Celley, a man from my hometown. More than that, he and his family are well known to us personally - when I was young and my mother was working, I stayed with him and his wife while my mother was at work. It opened a new perspective to me. Partially it was sheer pride and pleasure that a good and decent chap like Walt had been chosen to do this. But in the larger view, it made me realize something about the Memorial as a whole: that it is the result of a lot of talented and decent people; salt of the earth types, who wanted to give something to the country. The Memorial does have a greater meaning. It is a monument to the many people who want to offer something to not just the veterans and victims of World War II, but to their fellow countrymen. I still worry that it comes off as simply a paean to victory, but there are other tales for the Memorial to tell and I am glad to have been told them.

2004-06-07T03:21:00.000-07:00

Magic of the movies

Once upon a time, when I was beginning to think about how the movies and shows which I watched were created, I wondered about the actual importance of the director. Surely the key people were the writers, who wrote the story, and the actors, who played it. With one leading and the other following, what exactly was the point of the director? It did not take long for me to realize that the director is absolutely crucial to the success of a film, at least in artistic terms. Before long one can come to appreciate the ways directors create the story which they have been given on paper, in all the many aspects which make up a film.

This weekend I was able to get an excellent look at the importance od the director when I went to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The director of the first two Harry Potter films was more of a workman than a craftsman in the director's chair. His idea of directing these two films was to make a check list of all the parts which had to be in it and to work his way through his list, hitting each point until finally it was over. Essentially he abdicated control to the writers and actors, trusting them to create the film through their work as opposed to any overriding vision or creative control on his part. For the first film this worked to a degree, laregly because we all went to see it simply to see all these individual points portrayed on the big screen, from the characters to the scenes. By the second film though we had come to expect a proper film, which is all the more important when they are based on books which tell such good stories as the Harry Potter books. But we got the same point by point direction and the hours dragged.

And so a new director was chosen for the third film. Moreover they chose a director with a proven ability to exercise the sort of directorial control and vision which is required and it has made all the difference in the world. Instead of cramming in every single possible point from the books, no matter how it drags or how clumsily it fits together on the big screen, the director concentrated on the fundamental story and worked in the ephemera as they could best convey the atmosphere of the tale, which is exactly their point in the book as well. He had a tale to tell and through the tone and pace he was able to do so, while keeping the story as true to the book as one might hope. And he engaged with his actors as well. This is all the more important since his leads are young and untrained. In the second film the director let them flail about on their own and it was hard not to hope that they would be replaced with professionals at some point soon. In this film, some ability is shown by all of them, though in some more than others. At the very least though we no longer have to hope that they will be replaced, which is a big step for which the director is most likely responsible. And it is all something to keep in mind when they award the Oscar for Best Director - now that is an honor not to be given or taken lightly.

2004-06-04T03:23:00.000-07:00

Time to depart

And so the whirlwinds which have been threatening the great and good in Washington have taken one of the stars out of the firmament and cast him out. It has been hard to tell if George Tenet would go or not. In the broad view, the balance lay between the President's appreciation of him and the fact that he had been there for seven years, which is about as long as these guys last. In the more immediate view, it was the struggle between two opposing impressions of the man as head of the CIA. On the one hand he could appear as the able head who had helped to revitalize a service and who was willing to stand by it. On the other he was the man who was willing to stick to the administration and help them even when prudence might have dictated otherwise. And if anything this is probably what gave him the final impetus to go.

There is a certain black humor in his departure; a humor which will grow even more sharp should the President be re-elected. Tenet's resignation comes at this moment because he was so determined to work with the administration that he was willing to go through the looking glass with them, into that alternate universe which they inhabit in which Saddam was a clear and present danger to the US, a mindset which is impervious to logic, reason and reality. Which seems to be the key strength which might get them through this mess. The absolute belief of the President and his acolytes in the rightness of their vision gives them that slightly awesome strength which goes with the fanatical. We all tend to take people at their word and when they are so strongly sure of themselves, in a way so few of us ever are, it makes it more difficult to blame them. We are more outraged by lies and prevarications than by error, especially if that error is based on strong belief.

Tenet was not baptised in that special pool and therefore lacks the special grace we find more easy to give to the born-again Bushies. He was a capable administrator who acted in a clear way to help his organization, without any of the faith of the administration. He turned out to be mistaken: there has been no 'slam dunk' in Iraq. And so he must go. It will be interesting to see who else goes as a result of this mess, with eyes fixed on the two biggest possible victims of Nemesis (which is the natural result, as we know, of Hubris, which has been pretty prominent here these past few years): Bush and Tony Blair. But for right now, we just say goodbye to George Tenet. Perhaps he will be succeeded by a born-again Bushie. But he himself appears to have been a solid, old-time political administrator and he fell victim to the Lady Bracknell rule: to screw up once (9/11) might be considered a misfortune; to screw up twice (9/11 and Iraq) seems more like carelessness.

2004-06-03T05:12:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the upcoming election

It is always difficult to achieve the sort of perspective over the events of one's own time which we can come to have over times past. This strikes me these days as we approach the November election and the passions continue to rise. This is not always quite so apparent in the papers or on the news in general, but it is hard not to get that sense in talking with people of all political persuasions; the sheer intensity which they are coming to feel about the the election. And it is hard not to wonder what will happen afterwards, no matter which of the two men win, for in either case it will leave a lot of people on the other side with their passion merely stoked by defeat. This is not something I can remember seeing from any of the previous elections which I have followed, at least beyond the hard core on either end, which have ended up reviling the president, but they have been rather comical figures for doing so. In this case though, how far have those cores grown and what will it mean come the third of November?

Parallels, which are dangerous things to make in any case, do not come so easily. The closest seems to be that of 1896, which is rather appropriate given the Bush camp's identification with William McKinley. The passions ran high in that camp and there was a sharp distinction between the platforms of the two parties which most likely made the two sides both fearful and determined. I do not know how the supporters of William Jennings Bryan reacted to the election results and given the passage of time and the failure of any great disaster obvious from this election, such as a complete political or social breakdown, it is hard not to feel that the country can weather even the most turbulent of election campaigns. It does give us hope for the current one. But we should also keep in mind that five years after this election, Theodore Roosevelt was president and he guided the country back to the middle once more and this course would be followed for the next twenty years. We cannot know that we are so lucky as to have a TR waiting in the wings to help us. We can only see what happens on November 2 and hope.

2004-06-02T03:21:00.000-07:00

Silver lining

The great disadvantage of a three-day weekend is that it makes one all the more reluctant to get back to work and all that much harder to get back into the routine. After three days of waking up without the alarm, its shrill cry is all the more jarring and unpleasant and it is hard to haul oneself around at that fast clip when one has just had days in which to prepare oneself at a leisurely and relaxed pace. But there are some advantages to getting up early and tearing off to work at an early hour, especially at this time of year. For now as I take myself to the metro and for the part of the ride which carries me above ground, I can take in all the beauty of the sunrise and that is something to enjoy. As I walked the last stretch of pavement to the metro, the pink of the sunrise on the coulds beckoned me on, as if I could have walked right on and into it. Then as I rode the train and it rose out of the ground to cross the Potomac, I was greeted with a vision, of grey clouds almost glowing with golden sunlight reflected off the edges. The clouds made me think of Constable, but the vibrance which the light gave them was pure El Greco. It was gorgeous, a wonderful sight to behold and to carry with me through the day. It was enough to allow me a certain grudging respect for my alarm clock.

2004-05-29T05:16:00.000-07:00

The Last Good War

This is the big weekend here in Washington, the one which has brought in all the surviving veterans of World War II and all of those fascinated by that war. Today the memorial is officially dedicated and opened and on the Mall and in books, radio and television, we are all revisiting what is commonly refered to as the Last Good War. This is an understandable appellation given the messiness and uncertainties of Korea and Vietnam. In World War II, the US went to war to fight evil dictatorships which were trying to enslave the world. Rarely are we given such clear cut and obvious enemies and even in that case there was strong support for staying out of the war until Pearl Harbor took away that possibility. But it was the last time the US went to war and at the end of it could say that it was in fact making a better world through winning it and not only be believed by others, but be believe this itself.

Reading about the war recently though does make one aware that for all this might have been the Last Good War, war itself is hell and nothing can make this untrue. War is a bad thing and it is something to be avoided as best one can. There actually is no such thing as a Good War, merely good results though this is not always the case as we well know. And even in the case of the Last Good War, we have learned more lessons from it than the standard (and true) tale of democratic people pulling together and throwing themselves into a fight to help others against evil, though we had to make a pact with a devil of our own in the form of Stalin to accomplish this. We saw the horrors which were perpetrated by the Nazis and by the Japanese and we recoiled at the depths of immorality and evil to which humans can reach. But we also took a look into our own souls and flinched. In fighting the Second World War, we incinerated cities in Germany and Japan with fervor. We slaughtered the citizens, the old, the young, the weak. We pretended we were not doing it, we blinded ourselves to the death we, the good guys, were wreaking on so many civilians. We had a war to win, a fight to the death, and there is a strong case that we would not have been able to do so without taking the gloves off like this (at least with regard to Japan).

But while we were able to do this in World War II and have never addressed the morality of it, these are exactly the sorts of actions which we have since sought to avoid. The use of the atomic bomb and the strategic bombing of non-military sites have been increasingly laid aside in the past sixty years. In part this is because they have proven ineffective in the wars we have fought since then. But also we have developed a deep moral aversion to such tactics. We use bombing and always will in war. But we demand that it be focused as closely as possible on military targets alone and anything which strikes elsewhere elicits a storm of protest. We look back on the Last Good War and we praise the valiant warriors who did so much to save democracy for the world. But we look back and tell ourselves that this Last Good War is not a type we ever wish to see again.

2004-05-28T03:22:00.000-07:00

Scandal

There are few things which are so dry and often serious as politics, which is why a good sex scandal is always pounced upon when it turns up here in Washington; even if it is not really a scandal. The current story which is causing a pleasurable frisson of excitement amongst Washingtonians, especially those on the Hill, is that of Washingtonienne, a young congressional staffer who kept a blog about her social life which included her sexual encounters. She was fired for using her work computer to post her blog entries, at least ostensibly. She named no names, though she did refer to a married official who is fairly important in some department or other and who would give her money after sleeping with her. There is nothing particularly shocking or disturbing about all this, though it is not hard to sympathise with the senator who really would not want to have his office associated with the sex lives of the young.

The real problem with Washingtonienne seems not to have been about sex, but about money. In one blog she complains about the low salary as a Staff Assistant and how she feels that others too must augment their incomes through relationships like the one she had with the married government official. And while she may or may not be right about the added income on the side, she has a point about the pay. For college graduates with the grades and the references to get these jobs, the pay is pretty mediocre, especially given the long days and the cost of living in Washington. To make up for this, congressional offices rely upon a mixture of ambition and fervor in their employees which will make them willing to put up with the lack of money. This is undoubtedly not the only field in which calls for loyalty and adherence to higher principles are used to replace money. But in all such jobs, the last thing they can have is someone who is willing to make a point that the great cause might not be quite worth the price. Washingtonienne did this and that is why she had to go.

2004-05-26T03:22:00.000-07:00

Struggling with the soul

The United States has some conflicted feelings about its role in the world. On the one hand, it feels itself to be the beacon of freedom in the world, offering hope in the future to all others. This is deeply ingrained in American ideology and has been for all its history, influenced heavily by its creation and development as a nation of immigrants. But the same development has engendered a desire to be free of the world around us. Our ancestors were looking to take part in this great experiment, but at the same time they were also looking to shake the dust of the outside world off their feet. From the very start of the republic, there has been a strong and stated desire on the part of the US that it be left alone by the outside world. This is further complicated by differing definitions of what the outside world consists (does it include the rest of the Americas) and by the fact that we feel that to carry on adventuring in commerce into foreign lands is natural and right. But the key conflict is between our vision of ourselves as a beacon and our vision of ourselves as an island.

This did not lead to any fundamental schizophrenic activity on the part of the US until the twentieth century. Until thenthe US was able to indulge in an active role as a beacon within the confines of the western hemisphere through the spirit of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine and its Roosevelt Corollary. But in the past hundred years we reached the point at which the US had grown so large that it could no longer escape the world around it and its differing impulses in its attitude to the rest of the world could no longer be dodged. The nation's leaders were able to resolve this to some degree through the use of outside threats to encourage the people of the US to become involved. The unprecedented involvement of the US in the world at large in the second half of the twentieth century was largely the result of the Cold War; the idea that we were facing a terrible threat to our nation and its ideals and that we had to take a more active role to protect them.

There was a moment at the very end of the Cold War during which it seemed possible that the US would continue to take an active role in the world at large without the duress of an external threat. The concept of the New World Order which George Bush the elder proclaimed and put into play in Iraq and to a lesser degree Somalia was based on the idea that the US, having seen the fall of Soviet totalitarianism and being a model for the world it seemed, would with its allies establish a spirit of international cooperation towards the spread of liberty and peaceful coexistence throughout the world. When the thrill of victory in the Cold War evaporated though this faded and the conflicting desires had to be managed once more. Under pressure from other countries and foreign leaders the US was willing to become involved in foreign conflicts, but in general the 1990s saw the development of a feeling that the US could escape the rest of the world and let the power of capitalism do the dirty work.

Now the emphasis has shifted once more and we have returned to the concept of the great external threat to ourselves and our way of life to get us to engage in the world around us. It does seem possible that the US might find some way to involve itself in the world in a productive way without having to be coerced by force. Britain under the current Labour government has taken an active role in the affairs of other countries in order to advance order and peace in them, without feeling threated by them. It will be a great shame should the fiasco in Iraq lead the US to disengage from the rest of the world. But it would be even more unfortunate should it lead to the collapse of this spirit of liberal interventionism which Tony Blair has propounded these past seven years. The world is too small for us to ignore it and being bullied to do so by threats is not the best way to be motivated either. Our internal conflict needs a resolution.

2004-05-25T03:21:00.000-07:00

In memoriam of yesterday or today?

The new World War II Memorial is now all but complete and ready for the grand dedication this coming weekend, though it is open already to the public. This past weekend I was able to visit it as I showed a friend around the city and we made the tour of the memorials, those to the presidents and those to the wars. It was miserably hot and at times I felt I should be whistling Colonel Bogey's Theme. Still, it is always worth visiting these sites on occasion in order that one feel the message which is in each of them, each of which seem to offer different aspects of our history and of the meaning of this nation. Walk into the Lincoln Memorial and the words, the look, the design, it all conveys the demands which Lincoln and the country had to bear in order to secure this last, best hope. Or stand beside the statue of Jefferson under the rotunda and feel as certain sense of exhilaration of the words and the setting, open to all the world and feeling that all is possible. Or, away from these lofty ideals, stand by the memorials to the wars in Vietnam and Korea and get the feeling of the cost and the loss and pain which the men and women suffered. Touring the memorials is one of the best aspects of Washington.

Which makes the World War II Memorial all the more unfortunate. From the start it was the subject of some controversy, with its placement and the fear that it would have the effect of cluttering the Mall. Happily, this is not the case and it fits nicely against the end of the reflecting pool. But that is honestly about all one can say in its favor. The Memorial is an odd hybrid of imperial grandeur and the blandest of civics textbooks. With its grand sweeping walks and its podia literally wreathed with metal garlands held by eagles, it would be as much at home in Nazi Nuremburg as it is here. Standing at a podium there one does not think of FDR or Ike or even the average GI but of Il Duce or Eva Peron. And amidst this is something for everyone. First are marked the theaters of combat and the major battles fought there, along with the name of all the states and territories which provided troops for the combat, as if the troops were fighting for their home states. And scattered liberally everywhere are banal quotes which apply to any and every war and some note of any sacrifice made by anyone in any way during the war. With this monument we mark our triumph, the beginning of our imperial age, but at the same time we pander to the audience as much as possible, so that they will feel some personal reason to connect with this glory.

Compare this with the Iwo Jima Memorial. This Memorial is small. It is modeled on a picture from one battle, on one island, in one theater and uses only one of the branches of the military. It is not about pomp or ceremony and it does not blast the trumpets to the Greatest Generation. Instead it tells a simple tale of average men, who came together when called and did their best and by working together were able to overcome appalling obstacles to advance ideas of liberty and humanity that bit farther. This is what the Second World War was about - not triumph and military glory and not finding others exactly like us with whom we can sympathize more easily. It was about coming together to preserve and expand the freedom and common humanity which we all share and to which we all aspire. At the Iwo Jima Memorial, we can remember that World War II was more than an war which we and our allies won; it was a victory for all humanity, at the very least giving us all greater possibilities and hope whether we pursued them fully or not. This is why we honor the veterans of World War II. And this is why the new World War II Memorial is so appalling.

2004-05-20T03:22:00.000-07:00

History as a historian

To discuss in full the price of academic study would take a long, long time. It would be like attempting to take a thorough look at any sort of life-absorbing and life-changing element. But one result of having done a PhD in history that strikes me quite often these days is my attitude towards historical works which I read today. Once upon a time I simply devoured them, as long as the story was engaging, and I would happily immerse myself in some long ago time and place with little thought as to the validity or bias of the piece. Those days are long since gone and I cannot read a history without noticing the gaps and the assumptions and the strengths and weaknesses. This only begins to become something to ponder when I am reviewing these books for others in the general public. Then I have to try to step back and take both views. These works should have a basic adherence to fact and proper reasoning. But at the same time, they can probably cross the lines there and still be perfectly fine for the general reader, especially if they are engaging reads. It requires a merging of views, both pre- and post-PhD, rather like putting on bifocals and quite dizzying overall.

I just finished reading a book on the history of New Amsterdam which highlights this situation in some aspects. From the historian's perspective, it is more than a bit ramshackle. It mixes some factual errors with sweeping generalisations and a heavy-handed drumbeat of a thesis which it seeks to impart through repetition than through reasoned analysis (though in fact it might easily be true). But at the same time, it is a story which is rarely told at length anywhere else and has some very gripping elements to it. Interestingly for a book which trumpets the importance of using newly released records to paint a picture of social life there, it is written very much in the 'great men of history' style, which tends to be far more readable for the general public. It is a struggle between the historian who sees a book which lacks any sort of rigorous analysis and the reader of histories who enjoys the tales of struggle between the various characters and can imagine that others will as well. So I suppose that I am fortunate that the writing is so flabby and meandering, thus limiting its appeal. But I shall not always be so lucky (if that is the correct word).

2004-05-19T03:22:00.000-07:00

Chasm

Watching the news as they report the increasing turmoil and the continuing evidence that things are getting worse there, the reaction from viewers range across the spectrum of their political and personal views. But at heart, each and every one must feel that the real problem is that we just aren't speaking the same language, figuratively more than literally. It is not something which we often examine in our daily lives, but we all live with certain rules and expectations, governing not only the way in which we live but the way in which others live and how we interact together. Everything we do is governed by these expectations. Around the edges they can be frayed or moved a bit in one direction or another; for example in the way people will sometimes jump ahead in a queue or in the reception one gets at the Department of Motor Vehicles. But on the other hand for the most part and in the basics of a person's life, he or she can go through the day without thinking about what he or she is doing. The people with whom one lives and has dealing with tend to have the same view of the fundamentals.

Yet even among the people in one's own life this is not always the case. It is entirely possible to run into a person and to be forced to deal with a person who operates by certain rules of behavior which are greatly at variance to one's own. While they are probably going to be within a greater framework of the same culture, it is still possible to run into a person whose actions simply seem to defy comprehension. The shock which this engenders in us and the difficulty with which we have dealing with this are hard to forget. And it is good not to do so. For if we can have such problems working with the people in our own lives, how much more difficult must it be to deal with those with whom we share even fewer common points of cultural understanding?

2004-05-18T03:21:00.000-07:00

Overseas elections

There is a large gap in the perception of the politics of a place depending on whether one lives there or not; that is, whether it is domestic politics or whether it is foreign politics. Even when one is out of one's home country, living overseas and watching developments from there, the view cannot be the same as it would be if one were back home at that time. One's view of any political situation depends in part at least on the perspective of the sources of information and the social milieu in which one exists. American politics between 1996 and 2001 was entirely different for me living in Britain than they would have been had I been living in the states. It took some time to overcome the basic disjunction with the local perspective on American politics and I would imagine that others have felt the same.

These different and often clashing perspectives must be all the greater when the country one is watching is entirely foreign to that person. We as foreigners are baffled time and again by election results which seem to have no relation to sense or logic or the necessary action for the time. But we can only see the election as it will affect internation relations. The voters themselves need to deal with the various local factors, of culture and history and social and economic demands which might be unique to that place. We cannot demand that voters in other parts see things from our own perspective, for how willing are we to do the same in our own elections? This is why diplomacy is quite so important, so that no matter the government elected, we can make a strong and persuasive case that we (whoever we are) can be worked with and that doing so is the best way to achieve the goals which we all want.

Beyond that we can only watch from the sidelines and hope for the best, which is as much a game of chance for the people who elected the new government as it is for us. The voters of India threw out the old government and have elected a new one for many different reasons reflecting different types and degrees of disappointment and hope. And we outside rooted for one side or the other for our own reasons and interests. I for one am rather happy with the results, which give me hope that the people of India are willing to look beyond communalism and to view their nation as more than a people of one religious heritage. That is the key from my perspective and like all others of the myriad other perspectives I wait to see if my hope will be realised.

2004-05-17T03:21:00.000-07:00

Good night Seattle

This weekend I watched the series finale of Frasier which had been videotaped from last Thursday. It had been a couple of years since I have last seen an episode and many years since I last watched regularly. As with many sitcoms, after a number of years and after watching a certain amount of episodes week to week, it had begun to seem tired or at least predictable. There seemed to be only so many variations upon a certain number of themes which could be tried. Which is undoubtedly true and if a show is producing over twenty episodes a year, after a few years it cannot help but make the viewer feel that he or she has seen it all before. We all enjoy the familiarity of the characters and their foibles, but at the same time if we are going to take time and plan to sit down and watch a show, we do not want to feel that we are getting the exact same thing we saw so many times before. It would seem this is why sitcoms work so well in syndication. The rotation of the shows is much quicker and they are more easily dipped into. A person can just turn it on when they feel in the mood and if they happen to miss it one day or catch an episode which does not seem up to par, they can always try again tomorrow.

As far as Frasier is concerned, watching the final episode yesterday made me look forward to catching it in syndication. As is so easy to do, I had forgotten just how funny it could be, both the writing and the acting. At times the snappy patter and the pacing can edge into the manic, but when it is on form, I doubt there is any other show around which can match it. Watching Niles slowly topple over while breathing with Daphne as she goes into labor was simply wonderful. It would be all too easy for him to have taken a real pratfall; but instead he is breathing and tilting slowly to his left, then slips right on over. It was a cast which delighted in doing these sorts of scenes and in using words as well as actions to highlight their foibles. Frasier was not the last sane man in a world gone mad. He was as mad as everyone else - he just looked like we all imagine a successful and well-adjusted grown-up would. Perhaps the secret of the success of this series was the way it showed that behind even the most staid and solid of figures was the sort of insanity which seems to be the lot of our existences. Frasier was listening for the same reason we watched: it is a crazy old world.

2004-05-15T04:37:00.000-07:00

The measure of civilization

Years ago in a class in college I read A Clockwork Orange. Given the power and the graphic nature of the story, it has unsurprisingly left an impression which has never gone away fully. Early on in the book, the narrator, who is pretty much a monster, and his fellow thugs break into a house and rape the woman who lives there. I can still remember the sheer anger and hatred which I felt for the narrator as I read that section. My fists were clenched and I wanted nothing less than for him to suffer torments and agonies unending, to pay for what he had done. And later on in the book that is exactly what happens. He is captured and tortured in a way which is as vividly rendered on the page as was his crime. And through this scene I kept thinking the same thing: Stop it! His pain did not atone for the pain he had caused. It was just more suffering endured by yet another human being and the suffering which he endured sickened and repelled me as much as the suffering he had caused.

This memory has risen in my consciousness once more as the news of the torture at Abu Ghraib continues to lay out. That the first natural reaction of most people to this is horror and a feeling of revulsion is the only welcome thing about this business. But with time we are seeing people trying to brush it off. The most notable case is of course Rush Limbaugh's bizarre justification that this was merely a way for our hardworking soldiers to blow off steam. Apparently once our military rounds up any people who might or might not be our opponents of some type or other (without any sort of due process of course), these prisoners are no longer human beings but merely toys for the amusement of our troops. This is a fascinating insight into a world view of an alternate universe in which the Nazis won the Second World War.

Beyond this bit of insanity, there is a more pervasive feeling which is growing, that since we are fighting bad guys who do not fight properly that therefore we have justification to act as these certain soldiers did at Abu Ghraib. There is a certain grim humor in this feeling of outrage that we are fighting enemies who are not playing by the rules as America is a nation which fought for its independence by acting outside normal military practice. Countries and peoples who cannot match their opponents in normal warfare and cannot work with them diplomatically will turn to irregular warfare as their only chance to have some influence. But we need not stick merely to the practical realities of fighting a war like this one in Iraq, one in which our main goal is to win the support of the Iraqis.

No matter how bad our enemies are in any given case, that does not give us license to betray our own principles. There is the danger, as Gregory Peck says in The Guns of Navarone, that one day we will wake up and find out we are as bad as the other guy. At times in our history, we have put aside certain elements of the freedom and justice which we hold so dear. Sometimes, as with Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, we have felt that its brief loss to us was an acceptable price, one which we all had to bear as part of the burden of saving the country. Other times, as with the internment of the Japanese-Americans in World War II, we shall forever feel a sense of shame and hopefully carry a lesson with us into the future. That lesson is that our nation and, more than that, the very concepts of civilization and humanity which we adhere to throughout the liberal democracies, require that we aim for something more than victory. If we fight, we fight for these ideals. And if we do not, we have no more right or justice on our side than does any particular group of people who want to order the rest of the world to its liking. If we are to be true to ourselves and to our ideals, there can be no place for the torture of others.

2004-05-14T03:22:00.000-07:00

Strong or hard

Yesterday during Mr. Rumsfeld's trip to Iraq to pick up his spirits, he compared himself and the administration with that of Lincoln and his generals during the Civil War, as Lincoln kept to the course in spite of heavy pressure and opposition from others. It is natural for each of us to see parallels in others, especially in those for whom we have some admiration and who have left a mark on history and in this Donald Rumsfeld is no different. But just because we see these similarities does not mean that they exist. If we are to gain anything from making these sorts of comparisons, then it must be from the contrasts as well.

There can be a good deal of debate over whether the current administration was forced into war in Iraq the way Lincoln was forced to war in 1861. The evidence as it stands suggests not, but one can at least make a case that they were under the strong impression that the US was forced into war a year ago by what seemed to be a real threat of WMDs in Iraq. But in the conduct of the war, the differences become unavoidable. During the Civil War, Lincoln called the nation to arms as one and kept calling on them, for the future of their country was at stake. If this were the case today, we would be seeing that sort of mass mobilization of the US. If anything gives us pause as to the assertion that this war was and is a necessity to the safety and survival of this nation, it is the fact that the administration will not call on the country to dedicate itself to the struggle. When America does feel a real threat, from the Civil War to World War I to the Cold War, its people tend to take action of one sort or the other. Real threats do not lead to us trying to do things on the cheap.

Yet the most fundamental difference between this administration and the previous ones which have made their mark on the country seems to be the fact that this one cannot learn and grow. When Lincoln wrestled with the demands of the Civil War, with the death and the misery and the sheer change and disturbance which it caused, he was forced to change with it. Not merely in his tactics or strategies, but in his thinking, his understanding and his conception of what this nation is, what it should be and what it would stand for. The great presidents and the great administrations have all felt this and have all had the strength of mind and character to meet the challenges of their times and to learn from them. This is what this adminstration seems to lack, an ability to learn from the challenges of the day. They will not yield, they will not change their minds, they will not admit to the needs and nuances of reality. Rumsfeld knows what he wants - to change the military and to use it to change the world. He will not be swayed from this, even when it runs into problems, even when it leads to disasters. He has no flexibility to his mind, merely determination and a sense that he must be right. This sort of mentality pervades the administration and is its fatal weakness. They have mistaken being hard for being strong and it will be their undoing.

2004-05-13T03:20:00.000-07:00

Small world

The news of the execution of the young American Nick Berg in Iraq was a shock which elicited many feelings, first and foremost a mixture of horror and sadness at this terrible crime. But not far behind that was a sense of sheer bewilderment as how this fellow ended up in Iraq. He just went out there on his own, with no associations with any organization, military or otherwise, looking to get a job in Iraq. This statement is so completely bizarre that it is hard to feel that he was entirely sane. Iraq is a drain of men and money and it hardly seems the place to go to strike it rich. The concept that someone is so desperate to fill his or her coffers that he or she would go to such a dangerous and currently unpleasant place is one I personally cannot comprehend. As such, it does make no sense. There are other places where he could have put his skills to better and more profitable use. But if the adventure of it all is added to the equation, then it begins to make more sense, or at least I can begin to sympathise.

It might be the fact of being young or possibly a certain wanderlust passed down by our immigrant forebears which we are more likely to have as Americans, but the appeal of travel to new and distant lands, to see and experience the unknown, is one which I and I would guess many others including Nick Berg have felt palpably. I personally have pretty well stuck to Europe, and the states to a lesser extent, but I still daydream about traveling from Cairo to the Cape by train. And when reading the other day I came across lines by Kipling, which I could alter somewhat to fit my own case: For the wind is in the palm trees, and the temple bells they say, Come you back you British scholar, come you back to Mandalay. The temptation to dash off and see these far off lands with one's own eyes is a powerful one, kept largely in check by the realities of day-to-day life.

These days though it is kept in check as well by the realities of the places themselves. Nick Berg might have been going to the most dangerous place for an American to be off gallivanting on his own, but it seems that there are many others in which we would not feel safe traveling. The interesting thing is that this is in part the result of the world growing smaller, which is generally held to be something which will bring people together and knit them closer. But the immediate effect is that if we choose to travel, there are few places in which we can go where we do not at the very least represent something which might get us in trouble and in some cases killed. My grandmother is a world traveler and has been for many years. She epsecially loves going to Asia. She has been to the Baghdad of the Hashemite kings and the Tehran of the Shahs. She has sat in on a session of the Indian parliament and has wandered through Kabul when it was a dusty, quiet little town. The world is too small for that anymore. We cannot just be ourselves when we go these places. We are Americans and this carries more and more baggage every day. With luck the world will become so small that we cannot do anything but learn to live at peace with each other and can travel as ourselves, not as parts of our nation. But now we can only look back with a certain wistfulness at the days in which an American could wander the byways and backroads of the world and simply enjoy the adventure.

2004-05-12T03:21:00.000-07:00

Iconoclasm

A friend once told me a story about how during the English Civil War, some of the Parliamentary soldiers went into a cathedral and used their muskets to shoot apart statues to saints which stood up in the loftiest parts of the church. Being a good Catholic, he was appalled by this behavior. Not being one, any feelings of loss I have come from the artisitic destruction. Iconoclasm, the opposition to and destruction of, religious images has a long history and the artistic loss is undoubtedly great. But there is something to be said for a willingness to take on the saints and icons of one's culture, though perhaps without resorting to shooting. But even in this day and age in which religious saints do not loom large in our collective consciousness, we still have figures from our past who do take their role, outsize figures in our minds who act as secular saints.

One example of the modern secular saint is Winston Churchill. In Britain and America, people still thrill to his leadership, his commitment and his words in some very dark hours. He has become a sort of ideal in the minds of many of what a democractic leader in war should be. But all it takes is to pick up a book on Indian history to realize that this icon has serious flaws. The champion of democracy and freedom believed in and fought for the continued subjugation of India to the British Empire. It is a very human example of hypocrisy, but it is hypocrisy nonetheless and shows that even a saint is often flawed. This does not mean that Churchill should be reviled our of hand. His championship of freedom against the tyrannies of Hitler and later Stalin is fully worthy of our respect and admiration. His legacy in that regard is something from which we all benefit. But we cannot forget that even great people can be terribly wrong. There is something to be said for bringing saints down to earth.

2004-05-11T03:21:00.000-07:00

The sons of Father Abraham

Over the past two and a half years the similarities and differences between Christianity and Islam (and Judaism as well) have loomed rather more largely in public discourse than they had previously, for obvious reasons. There has been discussion of the similarity of their roots and in the basics of their teachings, while at the same time there has been debate over the differences. Can jihad be equated with crusade? What has tolerance come to mean today in each of these religions? Both Christianity and Islam are great proselytizing religions - does than make them similar? Does each spread its message in ways which the other would understand? All of these are valid and interesting questions whose answers can only help us to understand the two great divisions in a monotheism which worships the same God.

But at the same time, attempts to look at the three religions in this way can cause us to overlook the fact that they do not exist completely cut off from one another and not just in the fact that jihads and crusades have been and will be declared. The three religions developed in the same region and for all that one can draw lines between Muslim and Christian lands, that line has been a lot more porous than maps might make us think. Christians and Jews have lived in lands predominantly Muslim. Jews and, increasingly these days, Muslims have lived in lands which are predominantly Christian. Contact such as the commerce in trade and ideas has been a constant of the history of these three religions. Their histories, much like their futures, cannot be separated from each other, at least in any complete way.

This could be most interesting with regard to the development of the three religions themselves. This is most evident in the ways in which any group will gain some definition by having another group against which they can develop some part of their own identity. But there are more subtle elements as well. Christianity, Judaism and Islam have all, at some time and in some place, existed in lands in which another religion was the dominant one. The practical elements of religiosity within those lands would have been defined by another. How much did that affect the ways in which the minority religion celebrated its own religious beliefs, even if just subconsciously? We know that Christmas and Easter were placed in the calendar to fit with prior Roman and pagan festivals. How much does the practice of Judaism in Muslim countries differ from that practiced in Christian countries, as they develop in lands which think differently about the place and role of religion, in practical and theoretical terms? How much was the Spanish Catholicism of the Catholic Kings influenced by the Islamic history and traditions which imprinted themselves on the Iberian peninsula? And how much do the growing Islamic communities in the US, Britain and the other western democracies find their practice and understanding of the meaning of Islam different from that which exists in the Middle East? The three houses are distinct structures, but each has had a part in building the others and the paths between the three are rather well worn.

2004-05-10T03:22:00.000-07:00

A Man for All Seasons

As unlikely as it might seem, there exists a rather well-known and popular short novel written about fifty years ago which investigates the mystery of the Princes in the Tower, the disappearance and death of Edward V and his brother Richard. It is a quick and enjoyable read and while it is bad history, it has a way of sticking in one's head in certain ways. One of these is its rather dismissive attitude towards Sir Thomas More's history of Richard III, best seen by the repeated sarcastic references by the characters to the 'sainted More'. It is the one point on which modern historiography and this short novel have come into closest agreement. For all that historians might appreciate the role which Sir Thomas played in the reign of Henry VIII, his history of that king's great-uncle is not history as we know it.

Which is not to say that it is without worth. Most any document of the past has something to say, mostly about the time in which it was written but also about its subject. When we look at history written more than a hundred and fifty years ago however we have to realise that the aims and standards of the writers of history at that time were not the same as our own. Especially in the past century, history has developed the same ethos which has arisen in most other academic subjects; one in which we understand it on our own terms, we do not seek to pick bits out for their applicability to the questions which face us immediately. Sir Thomas More's history of Richard III did not operate under this thinking and did not have the standards of historical research and analysis which we have today. It can be used, but it must be used with care by historians today who do operate in our current historical climate.

I have therefore been rather surprised to find not one but three recent books on Yorkist England which all look to Sir Thomas More for support in parts of their theses. As mentioned, there is probably some benefit to be had from his work, as there is from closer examination of other records of that time. But any research requires careful and thoughtful analysis of the sources used and not only does it appear that none of these three have done that with regard to More, but none of them seem to have even looked at the work of Alison Hanham, who is the last person I know it have looked at More with a critical eye and that was thirty years ago. Instead, these historians have gone to More with their preconceived ideas and picked out the bits which support them, then offered some ex post facto justification. It is hard to divest ourselves of our idees fixes and impossible to rid ourselves of them entirely. But this sort of behavior is appropriate to middling undergraduate essays and not proper history. Ironic that this sort of behavior should be attached to the work of Sir Thomas More, given the rectitude which we associate with him, courtesy of Paul Scofield and Robert Bolt. As with much history written today, it is well to keep in mind the thought, what doth is profit any man...

2004-05-07T03:20:00.000-07:00

The price of being good

It is not something which I enjoy doing and not something of which I am particularly proud, but a few times I have found myself yelling at the TV screen, pointlessly expressing my anger with what someone or other is saying on it. Last night was one of those occasions. There was a piece on the soldiers who are being charged with torturing the prisoners in Iraq. I was appalled to hear that at least one of them actually had a restraining order placed against him by his ex-wife. This seems to be a rather good sign that this might not be someone we want in the army, let alone on the outside of the bars in a military prison. But I was flabbergasted and horrified when they talked with the families of the accused soldiers and the families said that it wasn't the fault of the individual soldiers, as they were just following orders.

This is, of course, the famous defense of the individual Nazi guards at death camps and it has been understood to be morally indefensible since the Nuremburg trials. There are no orders which can allow the torture or the inhumane treatment of others. It is utterly and completely unacceptable. To hear people, my fellow countrymen, repeat this bit of insidious and immoral trash appalls me to the very core. It is sometimes possible for those of us in these enlightened days to look back to the dark days of the terrors of Hitler and Stalin and to think that perhaps the people who took part in their crimes, at least at the lower levels, at least those people were in societies in which evil was the order of the day. We cannot forgive, but we can try to understand what lead them to such awful deeds. But what does that say to hear these things said now, at a time in which we should all know how wrong it is?

It seems sometimes these days that we have come to assume that since we are the 'good guys', that whatever we do is good as a result of our innate goodness. The fact is though that Hitler's society and Stalin's and Mao's and those of many other peoples and nations have all seen themselves as good or as being right in any case. There is a real difference between these societies and ours today. Our societies in what we can loosely call the liberal democracies are based on individual freedom and human equality and for all that we might veer from this in reality, it is still the basis of our thinking and our social and political behavior. This is far better than the utopias which the various megalomaniacs of the past century have attempted to foist upon the human race.

But just because our ideals are good does not mean that everything we do is good. In fact it means that we must adhere to higher standards of thought and deed, if we are truly to live up to these ideals. But that is not what we are doing as a nation at the present moment. We strike out in fear and need, acting not on thought but on instinct. We shall have our way and topple a dictator whose existence seems to offend our leaders with never a thought as to the consequences. We shall continue to suck the resources from the earth with heedless abandon and to hell with the rest of the world and with future generations. The president then goes on TV and says what good people we are, how we want the best for everyone, how we are the good guys. And he believes it and he is actually correct in a broad sense. We are the good guys - but why should anyone believe us? Our words are good, but our actions contradict them time and again. To hell with the world, we say - but why don't they like us?

Lionel Trilling once wrote of the moral obligation to be intelligent, a sentiment which also appears in the writing of Martin Luther King, Jr. We seem to have forgotten the fact that morality requires thought and judgment. Goodness is harder than that. It is not some birthright we have inherited from Washington and Lincoln which gives us carte blanche to remake the world as we desire. It is a responsibility, a demand, a duty and it requires that we think about our actions. We have a president who takes great pride and strength from his morality; but what depth can it have when it leads him to do exactly what he wants every time? In this he is a fine example of us all. We all see ourselves as a good and moral people, who attend church and cheer for Jefferson's fine words. But we then go and do exactly what we want. Being good and being moral is a hard load to bear, but one which will benefit us all, individually and as humanity. We just need to accept the responsibility of thinking.

2004-05-05T03:20:00.000-07:00

Biography

There is something faintly unnerving about the unexpected reappearance of a work which one wrote quite a while ago and which had pretty much passed from one's thoughts quite quickly. Back at the beginning of my time in Cambridge, I did the one-year M.Phil. course, which resulted in a short dissertation, but in the intervening four years, that slipped farther and farther into the recesses of my mind as the overwhelming weight and pressure of the PhD exerted itself on my mind. As far as I was (and am) concerned the M.Phil. was largely an exercise in finding my feet, beginning to learn about research and the study of history as a postgraduate, primarily through trial and error. Besides, it had really been an in-house sort of piece and besides the copy which I have myself, the only other ones are in the Seeley history library at Cambridge and one which I gave to the Richard III Society in thanks for their financial support.

Apparently that was enough, for I have just discovered that someone has written a biography of Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV's queen, and not only has he cited my M.Phil. in his bibliography, he appears to have incorporated some of my analysis in his book. I am torn between a certain pride at having had something to say in which others are interested and a certain embarrassment that it is something which seems somewhat lacking to me now. Of course, it is probably for the best that I find work done that long ago to be rough and misguided in parts. If we can't look back and see the mistakes we make in the past, it suggests that we are not learning at which point we have little left to teach anyone else.

Reading the book through I am also struck by the problem of biography, which really seems to be that a person makes a bad central theme for a book. An aspect of a person or a particular role which a person played might work. But a person him-or-herself is far too varied a character and actor to maintain a stable and cohesive narrative flow. For all that we might think we are simple in ourselves and our actions, each of us is far more varied and often at odds in our separate parts than we might assume. Even novels which are driven by their characters have to focus on certain aspects and ignore others. People are simply too unwieldy to suit the needs of narrative that way. Biography is no easy task and should be undertaken both to write and to read with that in mind. And I suppose that the same should be said of M.Phil. dissertations.

2004-05-04T03:23:00.000-07:00

Democracy

There seems to be a natural human instinct to ascribe the finest possible interpretation to a one's actions, which is undoubtedly what helps us live with the compromises we must make. It also allows us to accept the compromises which we must make as part of a group. For example, America being a democratic republic, we Americans tend to assume the best of intentions in our actions in and interactions with the rest of the world. The ethos of the human experiment here is that of a people who live by the ideals of freedom and equality which we hold to be the right of all humans. But as America is also a great power and we its people have our own wants and needs beyond these high ideals, our country can, has and will take part in less than noble affairs with regard to the rest of the planet. This does not mean that the high ideals are worthless or that America is not to be trusted. It means simply that just because our overall aims are ones which are genuinely beneficial for humanity at large, that all our actions are consistent with that spirit.

The same is true when looking within the country. A columnist in the Wasington Post wrote about the protest the other weekend and in discussing the appeal of participation, he mentioned the fun aspects of it, especially as they tapped into something primitive in the democratic spirit. But there is nothing particularly democratic about a rally like the protests which come to Washington. It is a natural feeling to assume that since they take place in the US, which is a democracy, that they must represent a democratic feeling. And certainly the participants are full and firm believers in the democratic system we have here, with the universal franchise and the rights which go with that. But a protest or a march or demonstration is not something which is exclusive to democracy. In fact, it is more than likely to take place in a non-democratic or incompletely democratic system, where the franchise is limited and where political pressure can only be exerted through noise and numbers.

Modern democracy's strength has been to take the will of the people and to form a system which, for all we might carp, seeks to represent that will as best is possible through an orderly and structured political process. Looking back over history, we should acknowledge that this has been no mean feat. But we should also accept that it does not mean that all basic political activities here in the US are by nature democratic. If nothing else, to make this assumption is to thereby assume that democracy is innate in some societies and impossible in others. It also means that we devalue democracy by assigning it to all aspects of the politics of our society. Democracy is not so easy as all that and its freedom has its requirements of us. The cornerstone of modern democracy is not merely that each of us has the right to speak; but that we listen to what others have to say as well. Democracy is a great gift and offers hope for the world, but for it to survive, succeed and work, we must all take heed of the better angels of our nature.

2004-05-03T03:21:00.000-07:00

Such, such were the days

There is something spiritually dampening about awakening on a Monday morning and facing the reality of five days of the tyranny of the alarm. It can only be heightened when one looks out the window and sees the rain and then steps outside and feels a chill which seems entirely out of keeping with the weather when one went to sleep (but not entirely bad if one's air conditioning has broken down). It is this sort of morning which makes a person yearn to be independently wealthy or perhaps to have the old schedule of childhood, with those long and wonderful summers.

Not that any of these daydreams for a rainy Monday morning would be quite what we want. Wealth merely exchanges one set of problems and dissatisfactions for another. People talk about the beauty of a teacher's schedule, with the summer holidays. But having been in academia, I know that vacations are when the real work often begins and the tyranny of the alarm clock can be nothing next to the tyranny of research and writing. And the freedom of childhood brings with it the sorts of constraints that had us all so madly desirous of each succeeding birthday. Still, when it is raining and Monday and chilly, we all need to have something more pleasant about which to think as we make our way back to work.

2004-05-01T21:35:00.000-07:00

Ars gratia artis

The other weekend I went to see the exhibition of cubist paintings by Diego Rivera which is currently being shown at the National Gallery in Washington. Cubism is an acquired taste certainly and it is one which I only first came to appreciate a few years back at a gallery in Pasadena. Before then I would have most likely have skipped out on the exhibition altogether. But that Saturday I lingered, painting by painting, marveling at the ways in which Rivera was able to use the lines and shapes in such a way to give new layers of meaning to his pictures. It is fairly obvious but can always bear repeating that works which stray from realism do lose some impact, but can gain in the new worlds which they open by doing so. Rivera's cubist paintings were such doors into other worlds, the sort of creations upon which the mind could dwell for a good long time.

Thinking about it afterwards, I am struck once more by the benefit which we have here in Washington in the fact that the major art galleries do not charge for admission. This is also in my mind one of the great selling points of London, but elsewhere seems to be the exception as opposed to the rule. And what we lose by that. Whenever I visit an exhibition or the permanent holdings of a gallery, I always find myself wishing at some point that I could have some painting or other in my home. This is obviously utterly impossible and impractical, from standpoints of finance and common sense. And it would also mean keeping it hidden away from many others who might like to enjoy it as well. And if it is in the National Gallery in DC or one of the other Smithsonian galleries, I know that I can pop in and see it without too much fuss. This is less true for pieces in a visiting exhibition, but still I have that window of opportunity for a few months at least. But if it were not free to enter these galleries...in all honesty, it would be a one time only affair. I would pay my money and queue up with the others and march through and have that bit of time. But who can afford to keep stumping up the cash, especially if all one wants to see is a handful of paintings, old favorites, the ones which always enchant and inspire.

And what a loss it would be to lose them. I never leave the National Gallery, either in Washington or London, without feeling a thrill and a boost from some painting in there. This is what great art is meant to do; it is what the artist wanted when he or she created it. And I can think of little more worthwhile than that we have national galleries in which we can each of us enjoy these treasures unimpeded by the demands and constrictions of filthy lucre.

2004-04-30T03:20:00.000-07:00

Second Acts

Back in 1999, shortly after the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered in the UK, a columnist in one of the major national Sunday papers there wrote a column on the show in which he slighted it for being an escapist fantasy. He wrote that it was pure make-believe with its world of vampires and monsters and the teenagers who had to deal with them. All this struck him as being especially worthy of his contempt as he read about the spate of school shootings in the US which kept cropping up in the news. He ended with the impression that he felt it was rather irresponsible to peddle this sort of fantasy of adolescents facing dangers from supernatural forces when they actually had to deal with more natural threats to their lives.

Now there is a natural tendency for the British to take a rather jaundiced view of the United States and its inhabitants (though very few British will do so on a personal basis - and those who do tend to be the sorts of people that most of their fellow countrymen avoid as well). And as with most national tendencies or biases, this is only amplified by those who are opining to the public at large. But in this case, the columnist in question completely missed the point; something which large numbers of his fellow Britons seem to have realised as evidenced by the popularity of Buffy the Vampire Slayer there. The show's appeal was not in its escapism, but in its connection to the world.

Joss Whedon, its creator, had a strong vision of what he was trying to do with his show; something which was tied directly into the world of teenagers, and of growing up, especially as the years progressed and the characters grew older. What he was doing was in part playing with old stereotypes and with cultural customs, while at the same time showing their potency in our lives. The characters were people who faced many of the same problems which we all have faced or are facing now. At the same time, they were dealing with larger problems, obviously beyond our world, but ones with which the viewer could make parallels in his or her own life; and their connection with us made it possible for us to imagine ourselves in those situations with them.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the result of a deep interest and even love in the concepts and possibilities inherent in the premise, developed and adapted over time in the fertile mind of Joss Whedon. And the dynamic which he was able to create seems to have encouraged others - writers, directors and cast members - to contribute more to it, continuing to develop the show, all within the framework of Whedon's grand ideas which had made it so vital from the start. Like all shows, it had its weak moments, the individual shows which were less enjoyable than others. But they never took away from the sheer quality and genius of the program which makes it stand out among so many other shows of the past ten years or more.

The very strength of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as being more than mere escapism or fantasy is all the more apparent when it is compared to its spin-off Angel, which is completing its fifth and final season. I have personally seen far fewer episodes of Angel than I have of Buffy. But I have seen enough to be intrigued by the differences. Both are tales of a hero who must face down forces of evil and in fact much of the cast of Angel originated on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But the creative spark, the great idea and thought behind Buffy seems missing from Angel, at least in the episodes of the third and fourth seasons, which are the ones I have seen the most of.

On the face of it, there should be no reason that the two shows are that much different. Many of the same minds are behind both and the casts are both strong. But in Angel, they seem to be little more than the stereotypical band of do-gooders in a bad town. The action moves forward by two means only: fighting against an evil worse than the one before it and fairly melodramatic love triangles and family relationships. Episodes seem to revolve around long and bloody fight scenes, interspersed with dramatic conversations and often an episode will end on a cliff-hanger, an almost tacit admission that it is a soap opera. Ironically, it at times seems that it could not possibly be that much different from the ludicrous soap opera Passions, which show provides a running gag on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

A good show, or for that matter a good movie, book, poem, painting or any other creative piece, requires something more than merely a formula which has worked for others in the past. It requires that development within a creative mind (or minds) which give it a natural life and drive of its own. Without this, it is merely an assembly-line product whose details are merely gimmicks. Being the creation of someone who has proven his or her genius before will not do it and we cannot take one success as proof that all succedding works by that artist will be as good. What we should do is appreciate the quality of the successes he or she has created. Works of creative genius, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer can rightly be considered, should be enjoyed for the uncommon pleasures they are.

2004-04-29T03:26:00.000-07:00

O how the mind plays tricks

Whoever came up with the slogan for the United Negro College Fund - A mind is a terrible thing to waste - definitely hit upon something which would resonate with people. Our very identity as human beings is very strongly tied into our ability to think, this thing which, to us, separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. We appreciate that it allows us to communicate so diversely and at such great distances and to know and understand so many things about ourselves and about the world. It enables us to do so many things which our other attributes would never make possible on their own.

But let us not forget that our minds are not always our friends. Whenever we see athletes who are most obviously injured but who will continue to play on and strive to win, that is an example of the mind playing its part in what we might consider a less than helpful way. The body at that point is probably sending all sorts of basic messages to tell us, for God's sakes stop whatever it is you are doing and deal with this problem. But the mind sees what we like to call the bigger picture, the glory of victory and all that and can mask the immediate pain and get a person to push on nonetheless. But the body is not just looking for attention. It is letting us know of a need it has and the end result in this might be a victory, but it is also more likely that it means the victor will have many more long-term problems with his or her body than he or she might otherwise have had, because that person listened a bit too closely to his or her mind.

There are other less dramatic but more widespread examples of this. The executive who has a heart attack at the office might have had many warning signs that he or she was pushing too hard with work, but still felt that the need to succeed there even in the face of advice from one's body. And sometimes the body simply takes charge of the situation and when the mind has set up a schedule which is requiring too much activity on too little sleep, it simply overrides the higher thought processes and keeps on sleeping as long as it can. Which is why I ran from the house this morning, a la Bilbo Baggins, without a hat or a coat or even a pocket handkerchief, to the metro station in order to catch my train to work. In the end, we should all pay attention to what our bodies tell us.

2004-04-28T03:20:00.000-07:00

This sun of York

One of the great ironies of studying history is that the more one studies a subject, the more one feels that their topic of study is important, even vital. But at the same time, this increased study and understanding also makes a person more aware of the ambiguities and nuances which make ti more difficult to take a strong and simple line about that very importance in which one comes to believe so strongly. There have been more than a few occasions on which I have spoken up for the subjects of my own study in late medieval England. And each time I have been kept from pushing the case too strongly by a sense that the truth is too complex for simple certainties.

Today however is the five hundred and sixty-second anniversary of the birth of Edward IV, king of England, and having studied him and his reign for many years, I think that it is perfectly fitting to take a look at an important king and an important time in the history of England.

Edward was a teenager when the political structure of England began to collapse through the inability of the king, Henry VI, to fulfill his duties. Edward's father, Richard duke of York, was a leading political figure who, as the search for a peaceful solution failed, turned to force of arms and finally claimed the crown as the rightful king in place of his cousin Henry. Richard was killed in battle when Edward was eighteen at which point it was upon Edward's head to take up his father's charge and within a few months he had been declared king and had defeated Henry's forces.

Edward would spend the first ten years of his reign bedeviled by the existence of a rival king, even after he captured Henry and put him in the Tower of London. When Edward's cousin and close adviser the earl of Warwick abandoned Edward and joined Henry, Edward was forced to flee the country, but returned a few months later to retake the crown and in the process kill first Warwick and and then Henry VI's only son in two battles, after which he had Henry VI killed, thereby ending the rival line. Edward IV died in his bed at the age of forty; young, but older than any of his other three brothers.

The bare outline of his life is a testament to the strength and ability which Edward IV could marshal. To seize the throne at such a young age, then to come back from the betrayal of one's own family and retake it and thereafter to rule a country at peace and to die in one's own bed an honored and respected king is no mean feat. There is a certain dramatic quality to his life, though it is his brother Richard III who tends to get centre stage when it comes to drama.

The real importance of Edward IV is not so much in the dramatic events of his life as much as in the type of king he was; for in this there is something new. Following the incompetence of Henry VI, Edward IV was exactly what the historian K.B. McFarlane saw as being necessary - he was a strong leader. But more than that, he brought with him a new ethos to the role and to the way of ruling England. Edward IV ruled England and all his subjects, as any number of them would attest, some with their lives, including his brother the duke of Clarence. But the complete collapse of the political system in the face of royal incapacity in the previous reign meant that new answers had to be found.

The answer which Edward IV brought to the throne with him was a crown in which he included others in the exercise of his rule. It was in effect the creation of a corporate crown. The king was still the king and his authority remained the same. But Edward IV gathered to himself trusted and capable advisers in whose judgment and ability he had such trust that they could act on his behalf. By expanding the physical presence of the crown in this way, the crown was able to connect more directly into the realm at large and to take a greater immediate presence there. This was a far cry from the way in which king and realm operated in reigns past. Instead it was a template from which future monarchs would take the basis of their own patterns of rule.

Nothing is ever so revoultionary in human history as we might like to imagine and in this case, what Edward IV did was influenced by the men he had around him and by the desires of political society at large. But nonetheless he did make a dramatic change in how kings ruled in England, marking a notable step in the development of governance in that realm. And so today, on his birthday, I feel that there is no harm in remembering this one of the England's many kings. Edward IV might not be as famous as his grandson Henry VIII, but what he did was important, not least for that famous grandson of his.

2004-04-27T03:29:00.000-07:00

Trahison des clercs

Reading the Washington Post this Sunday, I came across an article about a professor who had submitted an op-ed piece for a local paper which, it turned out, he had not written. Instead it had been written by an advocate from outside academia with whom the professor agreed and who was therefore willing to put his name on it as the author of the piece. As someone who dedicated years of his life to academia in the form of a PhD, I could not help but be repelled by this sort of action, which seems to be little more than prostituting oneself even if for a cause in which one believes as opposed to monetary gain.

But all fields of human endeavor require compromise and none is as pure as we would like it, especially those into which we have given so much of ourselves. Academia suffers from many of the demands upon it which seem to dilute the work of other fields as well. The desperate need to quantify results and progress, the bane of most types of work, has infected academia as well. The pressure to produce books and articles encourage shoddy and mediocre pieces to come flooding out of the publishers, to the point that this sort of embarrassing pulp seems to predominate at times. There is damned little to be gained by this as scholarship is hardly advanced by shallow insights and pages of information thrown together to little deeper purpose than to have one's name in front of it. In fact this drive to publish encourages sloppy and slapdash thinking instead of the sort of careful and reasoned thought which might actually be of actual advantage to other scholars.

This should not be overstated of course. It is similar to the drive for statistics in most offices which leads people to do their work with the aim of filling numbers on a sheet, which often is far less efficient and productive than how they would do it otherwise. But the job gets done and this holds true for academia as well. Good work continues to be done, even among the stuff which is forced through in an untimely and hurried manner.

There is however a difference between the neccesary compromises which any human activity will entail and an acceptance of a betrayal of that activity. When that professor gave away his name to the author of that piece, he crossed a line. People enter academia not to change the current course of the world nor to make money (obviously). They enter academia because they appreciate the value of scholarship to humanity; the idea that we all gain from learning and from expanding our minds and our understanding; that we improve ourselves when we do so. Academics are entrusted with a noble and important task - to extend the boundaries of human knowledge and thought. As such they have a responsibility to be faithful to the rules which guide this search: that they apply themselves with the highest intellectual rigor and that what they present for the further learning of us all be forged and tempered by this rigor and effort. To do anything less is Trahison des Clercs - treason of thinkers. That professor is a traitor and deserves an academic death sentence. If he wants to be an advocate, there are many companies, lobbying firms and think tanks at which he can work. But he has no place in academia and he should be fired. Compromise can go only so far.

2004-04-26T03:22:00.000-07:00

Come, let us reason together

Washington is currently at its finest. The weather is warm without being humid and the trees have their leaves and some even hold onto their blossoms yet. It is a wonderful time to get outside and wander and enjoy the city and the whole area. But alas there is always a fly in the ointment it seems and that is no less true here and now. For the fine weather has brought with it the return of the protesters: clogging the metro, jamming the streets and generally inconveniencing the local inhabitants. Sometimes one can detour around them and sometimes one must simply avoid the city altogether. But no matter their cause, they are one of the pests of the season for those who live here.

Not that a person might not agree with their particular cause or even see why they are launching their large scale protest in the first place. This past weekend saw protests which opposed the role of the World Bank in globalization and which supported Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court decision of thirty years ago which declared it illegal to ban abortions in the US. In both cases, given the current make-up of both the executive and both house of the legislative branches, it can seem that protest is the only way to make one's point heard these days. There is a long and honored tradition for the disenfranchised to use such protests to highlight their causes.

The problem in both cases is that, in truth, neither of these groups is disenfranchised. The Civil Rights marches of the 60s were the result of disenfranchisement, as were the protests of women to get the vote before 1920. But today, there is no outright disenfranchisement of any group. Instead, there is merely the feeling - the fear, really - that those who hold opposing views are winning within the realm of political activity. This is a far different thing from the need of people to protest as they have no other means to influence the political system. Which, to be fair, most of the protesters would probably acknowledge, and would view their participation as more on the lines of a political rally, the likes of which are held throughout an election year.

Yet one can feel legitimately uneasy about large political protests of the sort which one sees if one lives in or around Washington. As individuals, the protesters were most likely intelligent, thoughtful, interesting and engaging. But put together, shoulder to shoulder in serried ranks, they were a mob; chanting the same vapid soundbite slogans, encouraged by the company of their fellows of the true faith, as is the case in all such protests by all groups, no matter their cause. There is nothing edifying about such a spectacle. It is merely the use of group-think and masses of bodies to present an image of brute force; essentially it is an attempt to overawe others through the threat of the mob.

Which seems like hyperbole and most certainly is at its most straightforward level. No one who participates (or very few at least) intends their actions to be more than a sign of their commitment and their determination to others. But by taking part in something like this, these individuals are surrendering their individuality - their sense of nuance and subtlety, their own doubts and their willingness to listen and discuss. What they are doing is chanting the same banal slogans as everyone else and creating a large mass of people, marching as a mob. And no matter what one's good intentions, a mob is nothing more than a way to threaten one's opponents. It is a supremely natural to fear a large mass of people moving as a group, especially one in which all are saying the same thing. Whatever our finer feelings and higher goals in participating, a mob is a method of intimidation.

It also encourages a lack of critical thought. One chants the same silly lines and from inside the mob it is easy to fall into the trap of seeing one's issue as a matter of black and white. This is never more or less than a mistake. It leads to a sense of combativeness and to a demonization of those one opposes, even though they are people just like we are, people who may see things differently. Few things are matters of strictly black and white. All things in which humans are involved are matters of varying shades of grey. This does not mean that a person cannot be right in his or her position or opinion and have every right and even responsibility to propound that point of view. In any number of specific instances, each and every one of us is correct and those who hold opposing views can and are mistaken. Perhaps they are very much mistaken. But in general, they are not evil and certainly not in the political issues of our day here in the US and in the western democracies as a whole. If we talk to those who hold opposing views from our own, we are more likely to come to real, lasting and worthwhile conclusions than if we shout at them and threaten them. And in restoring humanity to our opponents, we restore humanity to ourselves.

2004-04-24T06:01:00.000-07:00

The wide world of English

At the moment at work, the powers that be are tearing up one of the sections within the division, ripping out all the desks, fittings and carpets with plans to replace them with something more ergonomically designed. In the course of all this naturally, a lot of material which had been nesting and hiding in the section has been disrupted and brought to light once more. One piece caught my eye as I passed by the temporary location to which the members of the exiled section and their materials have been removed. It was a phrasebook for Americans traveling to Britain. Having lived there for quite a few years, I was interested to see what they listed as the important ones to be able to decipher.

What surprised me most as I glanced through this book was not that the phrases and use of the words were familiar to me - the years living there made that natural - but that I could hardly imagine how a native speaker of English could need a book to understand what was being said. None of the uses seemed particularly counterintuitive, but seemed quite natural especially when used in context, as any of their examples would be. But perhaps I was simply viewing my own appreciation of the varied uses of words in the English language and applying that to everyone.

One of the points which is always brought up when the strengths of the English language is discussed is that it is flexible and adaptive, welcoming new words and phrasings from many different sources. But does the average speaker of English see this as a useful way to expand his or her working vocabulary? We can admittedly only use a certain amount of the material which the language presents to us; only so much can be held readily accessible in our brains. But there is a great pleasure in the search for and the discovery of new words and expressions. We may already have a word/phrase which would apply to the same needs, but the new one/s might bring that extra nuance, subtle shift, greater evocative powers or even more pleasant cadence in our speech. From my own perspective, English is a wonderful source to mine, practically limitless and wonderfully rewarding to those who enjoy the use of language.

The results can be varied, of course. There are certain words and phrases about which I do not remember precisely how they entered my speech. When I am going to make a phone call, I say that I am going to give someone a ring. I think I picked this up in Britain, but I don't know. Perhaps it is American. Perhaps it is something I read in a book. I came across the phrase 'a fair suck of the pineapple' as something Aussies said in the 60s regarding something which was taking a lot more than was expected or seemed right. It strikes me as being a wonderful turn of phrase and I enjoy using it on the odd occasion. Literature is as good a source of language as is speech and increases the yield of one's linguistic mining. It might be that this love for the variations and idiosyncracies available in the English language are not prevalent among most native speakers. If so, what a shame; English is a broad language and what a pleasure it is to explore those vast expanses.

2004-04-23T03:20:00.000-07:00

Harry, England and St. George

Around the world on the 17th of March, the Irish (and others with a taste for a party) celebrate the day of their national saint, St. Patrick. The Scots celebrate St. Andrew's Day and the Welsh St. David's Day. But there is little sign of any celebration by the English on St. George's Day, the 23rd of April. This anomaly amongst the peoples of the British isles has generally been put down to the fact that as the English were (and to a large extent remain) the dominant group there, they have had little need to have a day to trumpet their nationhood. Instead, they advanced the idea of Britain, in which the different nations would be merged into one. This was hardly a threat to the English who to this day remain a larger group than the other three combined. What it offered was a way to bring the others into a larger union which could then aim at broader goals, such as the development of an empire.

The sun has now set on the British empire, but there is no sign of the proclaiming of a national spirit among the English in the way their counterparts have done and continue to do. In part this seems to reflect the fact that the English are still a large enough group that they can subsume themselves in the idea of being British without losing their own identity (compare this with their feelings over becoming part of 'Europe'). And they don't want to alienate their partners, the Welsh and Scots, by doing so. But without an empire, the idea of Britishness has lost its meaning and with the centuries of being shut away, the idea of Englishness has as well.

The result of this atrophying of Britishness and Englishness is not of course a sort of greater state of enlightenment about humanity at large. People simply do not work that way. With no sense of what they are, the English seem to define themselves more by what they are not. Partly this can be seen in a rejection on much of the left of the history of Britain in the past two centuries, especially its imperial past. But largely the English see themselves as people who are not foreigners. This is a natural distinction of any group, to see itself as distinct and generally better than other groups. But without any established vision of what is better about themselves, they are left with the simple option of looking down on others. The fundamental irrationality of this sort of behavior is understood by many, probably most English people, and in general it only comes out in full flower during international sporting events. But with nothing else upon which to attach their sense of self as a people, the English have lost the elements of patriotism and are left with simple chauvinism.

The misfortune and even tragedy of this is that as a people, the English could take some pride in their history and their achievements today. The British parliament is known as the mother of parliaments for very good reason today. Modern democracy as we know it was largely founded within England and its parliament and there is no doubt that the world is the better off on the whole for the spread of democracy as an idea and an ideal. And if colonialism is at best a muddied page in the history of humanity, we must not fall into the trap of attributing all good things to the vanquished and all evil things to the victors. The continued existence of the Commonwealth is testimony to the fact that the British were not complete monsters and that their continued involvement and engagement with their former colonies might be of use. Given the willingness of the UK to accept the emigration of people from its former colonies into Britain itself reminds us that the British understood that being a colonial power - a world power, really - is as much a responsibility as it is a chance for gain. And the ability of the English especially to include and absorb the people of different lands, races and creeds is worth noting. It is not as if there is nothing about which the English could be proud, if they are willing to try.

Many English (many who are friends of mine, I would imagine) will be sceptical about this. Patriotism has a poor rep on the left and to a large extent the Union Jack is viewed as having been hijacked by racist thugs. Patriotism suggests mindless enthusiasm to them, especially American patriotism with its seemingly endless flag waving, allegiance pledging and parade throwing. All of which can seem too much for even some of the most patriotic here as well. But all that hoop-la should not obscure the fact that it represents the popular appeal of those truths and rights of which Jefferson wrote and the idea that what happened in 1776 was the birth of something which might aid not just the people of the US, but offer something to the rest of the world. Patriotism is not just pride and love for one's own country or people; it is an appreciation of what that country or people might have to offer the rest of the world. All peoples feel a sense of pride and unity in themselves as a group; the English can and should accept this in themselves. Their patriotism could be a benefit both to themselves and to the world at large.

2004-04-22T03:23:00.000-07:00

Snapshot

There is something terribly wearying about hearing the alarm go off and hauling oneself out of bed, even if one has managed a full and peaceful night's sleep. The alarm not merely awakens a person, it puts him or her on the clock right from that very moment; if we did not have a schedule to which we had to adhere, we would not have set the alarm in the first place. So it makes no difference that it may be hours before we have to sign in at work or make an appearance somewhere. Already we are under the gun.

So it has been rather nice these past few mornings to step outside as I begin the trek to the metro and to have some other influences waiting for me there, things which can go some small part of the way towards counteracting the baneful influence of the alarm. Springtime in DC is the region at its very best, making up for the torpid summers and the dull autumns. For when I step outside in the mornings right now, the birds are singing and the scent of lilacs hang upon the sidewalks at various intervals. Admittedly neither of these are unique to the area and I have become used to both in the spring elsewhere I have lived. But this weekend the trees in the front yard blossomed and are covered in pink flowers. And so as I walk to the front gate, I pass underneath an arch of pale blossoms, which dapple the lawn to either side of me with their shadows against the streetlight. This is something to behold; something to carry with oneself over the course of the day. And it is a reminder that perhaps there are benefits to heeding the call of the alarm.

2004-04-21T03:21:00.000-07:00

The mists of history

There is an old line, possibly real, about the historian who was asked about the effects of the French Revolution, to which he replied it was too soon to tell. Most anyone who has studied history will nod his or her head at this statement. This might not be a verifiable quote, but it certainly seems true to historians. It may be the past but it informs the present and gives us the only clues we have to what might happen in the future. History is therefore highly contentious and highly uncertain. The past matters to anyone who cares about the future and the result is that it is hard to find anything about it which is cut and dried.

I am reminded by this upon hearing about an old friend from university, who has just written a book on Gene McCarthy and is on a book tour of the States. His book has given rise to a number of fairly high profile reviews and discussions and with it a lot of strong feelings. Pundits, thinkers and journalists from left and right are rushing it to attack and defend; not so much over the caliber of his work as a historian as over his portrayal of McCarthy and their own opinions of the man and his times. Gene McCarthy is still alive today, but he is definitely a figure of the past. His moment in the sun was thirty-six years ago and he left the Senate over thirty years ago. But the actions of that time and his part in them have affected the times in which we live and we think might help us explain where we might go next. We have a lot riding on this aged retiree.

History as it is taught may seem dull to many people, but one cannot say that it does not matter to everyone, though they might not think about it as such. We live in the shadow of the past and not just the immediate past of the 1960s. The term Munich, from the 30s, is still tossed around in political discourse. We still feel the effects of the Civil War, of the American Revolution and, yes, the French Revolution as well. Look at the hub-bub arising over Mel Gibson's tale of events of two millenia ago and say that we do not depend on a sense of the historical past to inform our lives and our futures. Perhaps if there is a problem with history in the minds of people in general, it is not that it is too dry and factual; dry and factual is easy to use. What is most off-putting about history is that it is too misty and complex. But then, it is the creation of humans.

2004-04-20T03:19:00.000-07:00

The times they are a-changing

Since the 1960s, when Dylan and others were singing this song and proclaiming a challange against the established powers of older generations, there has been less focus on political splits between different generations. Differences in wealth and class and race, perrenial favorites of politicians and pollsters, continue to exert a natural influence on our perceptions of political differences. Recently there has been much written about the cleavage between red and blue states, a geographical and even sociological divide as the big political divide of the day. Opposition between the generations seems a thing of the '60s or perhaps of market testing for the latest movies; not of politics today.

They do exist however and it is hard to imagine that they won't have some effect on the politics of coming years, blurring the lines of income and multi-coloring the states. Evidence suggests that the it is older generations who oppose gay marriage as opposed to specific social or economic groups. Time is therefore very much on the side of its approval. Likewise, at a discussion group with others in their twenties and thirties, when it came to the matter of Social Security not one of us even hesitated in our feeling that none of us will ever see a penny of that. When it comes time to retire, we had best have made our own plans, for the government certainly hasn't.

This seems at rather sharp odds from our parents' and grandparents' generations. For them, this is a birthright and one for which they feel they have paid over the years; which in truth they have. The expansion of the system with the prescription drug program is further evidence of this feeling that it is something which the government owes its citizens. And the timing, just as the baby boomers are on the verge of retirement, suggests that this belief runs not just in generations who weathered the Great Depression and World War II. But our parents were raised to believe in the government's promise of support in their old age. This is why they paid those Social Security taxes.

Of course, so do we of succeeding generations pay these taxes; but we do so with a more cynical twist to the lips. For us it is just another tax, like income and sales taxes. And we are more attuned to seeing the boondoggle aspects of the whole thing; the fact that these taxes have been used to help reduce other taxes, not to prepare for the future; that the baby boomers want big benefits at the same time they want big tax cuts. To us, Social Security is not a safety net or a benefit; it is a massive bill which we shall have to pay.

Which is not to say that generational warfare is going to be vicious. We are the obvious beneficiaries of our parents' and grandparents' choices in their use of money and taxes. By feeling that they could depend on government money on retirement, they had more for their children. And there are undoubtedly other benefits which younger generations get from the government. Nor do most children want to see their parents in want and need in their old age. The ties between generations are strong and durable. But they view things in a markedly different way, generations x and y from the older ones, especially when it comes to issues of Social Security. And these differing views cannot help but lead to clashes in policy in the coming years.

2004-04-19T03:20:00.000-07:00

How I found Freedom in Macy's Menswear

This past weekend I found myself doing something peculiar - shopping for clothes. All the more peculiar is the fact that I have actually done this a few times in the past couple of months. Normally I just get by on selective blindness towards the increasing shabbiness of my clothes and investing them with a certain sentimental attachment when their flaws are too large to be ignored. But there I was, entering stores of my own volition, with the express purpose of developing (or perhaps shoring up) my wardrobe. If it were just one occasion, it might be written off as one of those surreal moments we each of us have in our lives from time to time. Instead, this reflects a growing interest in my personal image, as evidenced by the fact that I was willing to spend time and money and not just idly wish that I had better clothes.

This is not all that drastic a position to take of course. Everyone is interested in presenting a good image of themselves to the world at large; of looking as good as possible to others. It not only makes us more attractive (at least in our own minds) but it is the most obvious way to make the world at large know our importance. The use of dress and appearance to denote success, achievement and worth has been around since before the color purple was limited in use to members of the imperial family in Rome. It is one of the most natural instincts within not only humans but most living creatures and it is nothing new.

What is new, at least relatively, is the removal of the limitations on the use of decoration and wardrobe and other elements of style. No longer must one be born to the purple to wear the purple. The general trend of the past few centuries especially, at least in the western democracies, has been towards the elimination of barriers and distinctions based on anything but ability and access to liquid capital (and even those have been assaulted quite vigorously at times). Class, race, religion, ethnicity, even sex have all been weakened over the course of the past two centuries as barriers in our lives. With this greater freedom has come the greater freedom in expression which has brought a heightened importance to style and appearance than perhaps existed in the past. With other means of distinction and differentiation waning, we find ourselves more reliant on appearance to show our worth and importance to the world.

This would appear to be one of the results of our espousal of freedom. Today in the US and in the liberal democracies of the world in general there is not only a general push to break down the barriers to individual freedom which have existed in the past; but it is largely unchallenged within the ethos of our societies. As slowly and haltingly as these barriers come down - and this can be painfully so for those who suffer most directly from these barriers - their collapse is visible, especially in the past fifty years. But freedom is not really an end in itself nor is it a means. Freedom opens all the doors to us and lays out a broad vista before us. It takes away the old maps and trails to which we were once restricted.

Therein lies the rub. As the barriers and limitations fade, to the point where we no longer base our paths through life on our opposition to old ones, how are we to choose? Where are we to go? Where should we be going? Freedom brings us face to face with these questions, but it provides no answers itself. We have less and less certainty these days about what we should be doing with our lives, how to lead them, how to succeed in them. We have the whole world before us, pioneers all and no ready guide to follow. A noted hater-of-shopping making actually working on his wardrobe - trying to establish some sense of his self and worth through clothing - is one sign of this. None of us want the old barriers back and most of us look to their further elimination. Barriers to one group limit us all. But there will always be a resonance to the line from Me and Bobby McGee - "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose". Freedom is a burden, though we bear it gladly.

2004-04-17T05:26:00.000-07:00

Mismatches

Often it seems that after seeing a movie or reading a book, we leave them with a feeling that we wished to have liked them more than we do. There was something in the premise or the plotting or the characters or the writing which made us expectant before starting or appealed to us over the course of our viewing or reading. Yet at the same time, there were elements which jarred against this, operating in an opposite way to undermine our enjoyment. And this can make the film or book even more upsetting than had we just disliked it without reservation. Instead we must wrestle with the fact that its wonderful form has feet of clay and so it preys upon our minds.

I have found that The Girl Next Door has done that to me. As I wrote last weekend, the film is well-geared to appeal to men's romantic fantasies. This is a powerful appeal, one of the great ones to which we succumb. To this can be added comedy and action, which help frame and carry the story along. But this makes the incongruencies of the film all the harder to take, especially the chief one, which is intended to provide the motor for the second half of the film. During this part, the hero Matthew must overcome the obstacles which arise when the villain of the piece, Kelly, shows up and tries to get Danielle to leave Matthew and return to working for him.

Kelly is a bully and a sadist. His entire morality is based on a sense that he is always the wronged party and has the right to take whatever actions necessary to rectify this. Even when he feels that things are going well for him, he is willing to indulge in petty cruelty towards Matthew and anyone else as they cross his path. When he feels threatened, he quickly turns to violence and blackmail. All of which fits him neatly for the role of villain and one whose defeat by the hero will prove his love more fully, as befits a romantic hero.

The problem is that this does not fit into the rest of the film or with its characters. Matthew and his friends are high school students living a nice suburban life. They show themselves capable of taking risks and meeting challenges within that framework, but not outside them. This is to be expected and adds to a feeling of realism in the characters. But when they have to deal with Kelly, Matthew perpetually tries to appease his foe with soft words of contrition and atonement. This is completely unbelievable; bullies cannot be bought off, it merely encourages them to keep up their behavior and so it does with Kelly throughout the film. Repeatedly, I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat, waiting for Matthew to finally feel the roll of the drums, to hear the blare of far-off trumpets and to take on Kelly in some way or other and take him down.

It never happens. Matthew manages to avoid or overcome the obstacles in his path, but the largest one, the direct opposition of Kelly, merely disappears at the end. Matthew dodges the latest bullet from his foe and Kelly laughs the whole thing off and quits the field. No amount of suspension of disbelief will carry this off and it is the element which leaves such doubts about an otherwise enjoyable film. It is not just a moment's lapse. It is the use of these particular two characters matched as protagonist and antagonist in this film. One might as well match Bertie Wooster with the narrator of A Clockwork Orange. It does not work.

2004-04-16T03:23:00.000-07:00

Changing of the guard

It is hard to tell exactly how much impact our childhoods have upon us. That the man is the son of the child seems fairly obvious in many respects, but few of them are entirely clearcut. It can lead to tortuous questions such as how far is the man, as son, rebelling against the child, his father, in his preferences and tastes and actions as years go on? Is this an act of rebellion against what might originally have been a rebellion of the actual child we once were against our parents? Is this not rebellion at all but a reversion to the true self now that rebellion no longer seems necessary? It is possible to wear the mind out at a fantastic rate chasing this sort of query. But it is hard not to wonder about certain feelings which we carry with us after childhood.

One such aspect is that feeling when autumn comes around of a renewed vigor, of a feeling that once more we are ready to get down to work and tackle business. Is this because deep down it will always be for us the beginning of the school year? Or is it merely the fact that the heat of the summer makes us less productive and more inclined to rest and play? There is something about the autumn and the spring which seem to invigorate. Perhaps being freed from heat or cold, we launch ourselves forth once more as the harsher seasons give way to the mild ones. There is something indescribably bracing about the crisp autumn air and about that spring breeze which we can almost taste. Somehow they both refresh and excite.

Of course I am not sure how much either of these feelings are particularly associated with childhood. Then our minds were focused more on winter, when we could go outside and play in the snow, and summer, when we could go outside and play in the dirt, and go swimming of course. Perhaps we begin by enjoying the sharp variety of the extreme seasons and then begin to see, and feel, the beauty of the milder variations. However it might have happened, today I no longer am in such a rush for summer to arrive. I am drinking in the spring breeze and enjoying watching the leaves slowly unfurl on the tree outside my window.

2004-04-15T03:24:00.000-07:00

Everybody wants to change the world

During the time of Augustus, after the end of the Republic and in the early days of the Empire, three legions under the command of Quintilius Varus were sent across the Rhine to deal with the barbarians on the other side. They were lured to their complete and utter destruction, fifteen thousand men and more slaughtered in the German forests. It was a disaster like none which Rome had faced within memory. The Rhine border was left open and the Emperor himself is said never to have gotten over the loss. For years he marked the anniversary of the disaster and is reported to have fallen into occasional depression over it, shouting for Varus to give him back his legions.

The Varian disaster though, as bad as it was, did not mark the collapse of Rome. Augustus' stepson Tiberius, who had just beaten the Pannonians to the east of Venice, was sent to the Rhine, where he established order once more and secured the border. The borders held and even expanded in some parts of the Empire and Rome itself carried on for centuries and for over a millenium in the east. This particular horror of the reign of Augustus was really just that - a horror of one reign, not of the course of the Empire.

What befell the United States in September 2001 seems to have been a tragedy of much the same order. The shock and horror are the same. The numbers are less but the fact that the dead were civilians heightens our horror at them. Yet it did not mark the end of this republic or of the ideals for which it stands. It was not the moment at which the world changed. It was a moment at which the world changed. And so were the fall of the Berlin Wall and the resignation of President Nixon and many other cases. Turning points in history are not quite so rare as we might think. The events of September 11. 2001 were a tragedy, primarily for those who lost loved ones on that day and for those who lived through the attacks. We can and do truly hope that such events are rare; but we should not fall into hyperbole over the stark differences between the world before and after that date.

The attacks of that day were first and foremost a reminder to us all that the world is not so small that we can ignore what happens elsewhere. And the US seems to have taken that message to heart and taken a more active line in its foreign relations. On the need to do this all are in general agreement, not only in the US, but in the world at large. The crucial point is the sort of active line which the US is taking. At the end of 2001, the US was rallying world support in an effort to strike back at the terrorists and their political patrons in Afghanistan. Whether because these groups threatened the idea of the sovereignty of nation states or greater liberal ideals or for any number of reasons, there was a general swell of support for the US in its actions.

But in the past year, a new tack has been taken. It is one which seeks to use US power unilaterally to clear up perceived threats and troubles as the American administration sees best, with a concomitant loss of support from the rest of the world. This was apparent in Iraq and is once more in the president's support for Israel's latest moves with regard to the Palestinians, an action in which even the British, our stalwart allies, cannot concur. The appeal of taking this sort of international role is very appealing, as we deal with our problems by simply cutting the Gordian Knot. It worked for Alexander and it might work for us.

The problem is that we have forgotten what happened to Alexander and his empire. The US, for all its power and wealth, is only a small part of the world, geographically and demographically. It cannot force the world to follow its lead. Attempts to do so will simply alienate those who would otherwise support us and will provide a greater impetus for others to unite against us. It would take some time for this opposition to reach a critical mass, but given no other option, it will. The ideals upon which the US is founded, the tenets for which it stands, are ones which can and should be a beacon to all people. It is hard not to believe that the concepts of liberty and equality if spread to all people would not be a boon to humanity, as individuals and as a whole. But this cannot be done by forcing others to accept it with the sword. We must hang together with the rest of the world or we shall indeed hang separately - and the great experiment quite possibly undone. And this would be a tragedy dwarfing that of September 2001.

2004-04-14T03:23:00.000-07:00

Jazz

There are few things more difficult to argue for convincingly and well than something for which we have a deep love. Our tastes and the things which appeal to us can be so strongly held that they seem incapable of being explained rationally. If we have a great passion, whether activity, thing or person, we tend to find ourselves arguing for it on the simple basis that it is good and how it makes us feel. The strength of the pleasure which it arouses in us makes it hard to imagine that others might not get this reaction and makes it difficult to discern exactly which elements bring about such feelings in ourselves. Yet this does not mean we do not try to both understand the basis of our own feelings, as incompletely as we may be able to, or to try to convince others of the rightness of them.

And so I cannot help but speak up in favor of Jazz. I have been a fan since childhood, hearing bits and pieces in various places, then finding an old LP of Glenn Miller and listening to that, which is as good a way to begin as any. Miller and his orchestra were not the most vibrant of jazz artists, but they made jazz very accessible which makes for a fine intro to the music. I doubt that I could properly unravel the threads of the appeal which this genre of music has for me. But having gone this weekend with some friends to a local jazz club (HR-57 - and it is well worth a visit) and discussing the appeal with them, I at least feel that it is worth beginning to describe what makes jazz special.

Jazz of course is a very broad term, covering a lot of musical variations and musicians of many different stripes, from Louis Armstrong to Benny Goodman to Dizzy Gillespie to Charles Mingus and so many others as well. But there seem to be certain elements to the music which hold true largely throughtout them all. If there is one aspect to the music which makes Jazz worth listening to, it is the way jazz aims at a broad audience without stooping to do so. Jazz musicians tend to be just that, musicians, people who love to create and develop and explore the music, to see where it might take them and to chase their dreams there. They apply themselves to their instruments and to their craft, while pushing further the possibilities of each. If you listen to Ellington or Basie or Teddy Wilson or Thelonius Monk, it is impressive how one instrument can be used so many ways within the genre, the versatility of the instrument depending on the artist using it, all within the overall jazz style. Then work in the other members of the band. Make it a trio and feel them play off one another. Make it a big band and feel the sweep and the power - or the finesse - which they can command. Jazz seems to embrace the near-infinite possibilities of musical expression and to run with them.

The danger with this of course is that it can become too exclusive, the preserve of trained musicians and not of music lovers. But Jazz just doesn't seem to allow that. If nothing else, it is just too exuberant, in the playing and in the sound to shut itself off from people at large. Jazz musicians who have tried to transcend this have tended to disappear to the fringes or to leave the music altogether. Jazz is simply too fun. It calls to people, letting them know that a party is going on and they are more than welcome to join in. In this Jazz is similar to a lot of popular music, much as its appreciation of musical artistry makes it similar to a lot of more formal music. If there is a particular genius to Jazz it would seem to be the merging of these two elements. It brings out genius and tells the world to join in and have fun with it. Given the seeming tendency of popular entertainment to seek to broaden its appeal by simplifying, this alone would make Jazz worth noticing. This probably doesn't do justice to Jazz, but I am afraid that I can't help that; I simply love it.

2004-04-13T03:23:00.000-07:00

Brave New World (or not)

Back in the middle of the nineteenth century, something dramatic happened to travel with the invention of the telegraph and the laying of the great transoceanic cables. The world was made smaller as news and information could be relayed from one part of the world to the other more quickly than by post. The location of people and of ships in various parts of the world became easier to discover. With the development of wireless around the end of the century, it became possible to find people and ships in transit. The possibility of disappearing upon the bounding main was still possible, but the concept of escaping the world behind you by merely leaving it and going somewhere new became rather more difficult.

This also brought about some changes in the way information was gathered and disseminated. It became a matter of the ear more than the eye. The size of this change occured to me this weekend as I felt the results of a similar change with the advent of cell phones. It has been hard for me not to be quite contemptuous of them, largely because I have never felt a real need for them. They have mostly brought themselves to my attention in ways which make them seem ridiculous: as a way for someone to announce that he/she is on the train and five minutes from home, as expected; in ads before movies telling the people in the audience not to be thoughtless and to please turn their phones off; and with the ones which consist of an earpiece and a small button into which to speak, which makes the talker appear to be another nutcase walking down the road rambling to himself/herself.

It is not as if they are entirely necessary either. I cannot think of any particular situation in which they would have saved the day or even improved things markedly. But as they become more and more prevalent, they become the more necessary to have. This weekend I arranged to meet a friend for the Easter service at the National Cathedral. We planned a time and place to meet. When I got there, I found that getting in would require some more work than any of us had anticipated. The plan seemed flexible enough though, so I took up a good position and kept my eyes peeled. But while I was using my eyes, as I have always done, he was using his ears, getting on his cell phone and adapting his plans on the fly with the others. Operating on different systems, we missed each other until the very last minute.

Had cell phones not been in play that morning, we would still have dealt with the situation in good fashion I am sure. I managed to sort things out even at the last minute and it all worked out quite well. But cell phones now seem to have become key to social planning and activities and so it is but a matter of time before I get one myself I suppose. But there is a certain sense of loss which this brings in me. On Sunday because I was working on the fly I ended up doing something entirely unexpected and all the more enjoyable for that, visiting another church and then exploring the neighborhood before meeting up with my friend after the service. And I have a very fine memory of a visit to southern California a few years back. I was staying in South Pasadena and had been dropped off in Pasadena to visit an art gallery there. I had thought about calling a cab to get back, but it was such a nice day and I had a decent idea of the general direction of where South Pasadena was, so I struck out on foot and walked back to the house. If I had had a cell phone at the time, would I have done so? Would it be such a pleasant memory had there been such a net under me as I set out into the (relative) unknown? Cell phones are here and have their uses and should not be rejected for any romantic reasons; but I begin to feel some empathy for those seafarers of the nineteenth century.

2004-04-12T03:22:00.000-07:00

A Broad Church

The term used as the title of this dispatch is actually a British one which has the same meaning as the big tent does in the US. Yet it is a good one to use in either country, for if one looks at Christianity as a whole, even just Protestantism as a whole, there can be no denying that the only way one could describe it is as being broad. Yesterday I went to church and my experience there helped bring that into focus and to make out at least some rough lines within the broad church of Protestantism, at least as they appear to me.

Protestantism, and indeed Christianity, seems to depend upon two key elements to its message, those of responsibility and obedience. All churches accept these basic premises; murder is a sin and love for one's fellow man is a duty. But as one gets closer to the center on these points and farther from the black and white extremities, the clarity understandably becomes blurred. As the questions become more nuanced, there begins to develop an antagonism between the two, a grey area in which a certain priority must be given to the struggle against sin or to the struggle to love one another. In these cases, there is no clear-cut answer and even ministers, priests and theologians must wrack their minds and consciences with them daily. For those in the congregation though, the need for a more focused perspective requires a decision to emphasize one aspect or the other, at least to some degree.

This would seem to be one of the great differentiating points within Protestantism, all the more so as it is not so stark a difference in the theology as it is in the practical application of the religion; which of course can make it all the more bitter. From my own experience, I can attest to feeling more at home in one type than in another, despite the fact that at the core there is less difference than might appear. What is further interesting is the fact that it is not necessarily as much the result of one's religious upbringing as it is the sense of moral behavior which one develops. Even at a young age I was shocked at some of the things which my Sunday School teachers told me, things which seemed entirely out of keeping with knowing right from wrong, even though they could indeed fall within accepted Protestant practice. But I had my feelings and I held to them despite the teachers.

If there is a notable difference in the practice of Protestantism whose effects on me seem more likely to be the result of upbringing, it would seem to the High Church/Low Church divide. Attending a small-town Congregational church in New England, I was brought up in a very Low Church environment, with a simple service with a sermon and hymns and once a month communion with little cubes of bread and grape juice (I still recoil slightly at the thought of wine in church). And to this day, this still seems to be what a church service should be. In part this is probably because it also fits with my own religious beliefs as worked out in my mind and my conscience. However, the church I attended yesterday was Anglican and High Church Anglican at that, with processions and extra readings and many more elements than the ones I grew up on. And while the sermon struck me as being well done - well spoken, light and humorous but with a good and clear message - I still felt uncomfortable with the ceremony of the whole thing which seemed excessive. Religion is a matter of the mind as well as the soul, but it is also something with which we prefer to find a certain familiar comfort and in that sense it would seem that the churchgoer is the child of the Sunday School student.

2004-04-10T07:43:00.000-07:00

What Women Want (and What Men Want Too)

Last weekend I went to see The Prince & Me. It is the story of a driven young woman who falls in love with the heir to the throne of Denmark and must deal with the challenges which this fact causes in the course of true love. Last night I went to see The Girl Next Door, which is the tale of an ambitious young man who falls in love with a former porn star and must deal with the challenges this causes him in the course of true love. The first is a female romantic fantasy. The second is a male romantic fantasy. Together they offer some interesting insight into romantic fantasy across the sexes.

Naturally enough, the main character in The Prince & Me is the heroine, Paige, a hard-working, good-hearted college senior with plans to go to medical school and do something to help the world. The prince is something of a lost soul, dissolute and purposeless until he goes incognito to her school to study. There he falls in love with her and this love transforms him. He forsakes his old ways and takes to wooing her in the traditional sense. But more than that, it makes him a better man overall, in his job and in his relations with others as well as in his love for her. He becomes a paragon and offers Paige his heart unconditionally, which includes both the freedom to do what she needs to do for her career and also the splendor and perks of being a queen.

It is the male lead of The Girl Next Door who takes center stage in that film. Matthew is a high school senior, driven by his determination to go to Georgetown and one day to become president. Then he meets the girl next door, who is housesitting for her aunt and they fall in love. She opens his eyes to a wider world, but she also poses challenges. He must come to terms with her past as a porn star and then he must prove to her that his love is undiminished. Finally he must deal with the threats to them and their love caused by her former producer/director who does not want to lose his star. In the end, with her help, he meets the challenges and they are able to begin a richer life together.

The most obvious difference between the two movies is that one protagonist is in love with a prince and the other is in the love with a porn star. However, the premise is fundamentally the same; in both the hero/heroine is in love with someone from far outside his/her own world and must deal with this fact. More interesting is the transformative effect of love in both these films and the fact that it both it transforms not the protagonist, but the male lead, whether he is the main character or not. Paige does feel some of the effects of love, but in the main remains the same character as she was at the start of the film. It is Prince Edvard who changes, just as Matthew changes in The Girl Next Door, becoming freed from the excessive constrictions of his ambitions, while Danielle, the Girl Next Door herself, is much the same character by the end as she was at the start.

It would appear that there is a general feeling that love has a powerful transformative effect, but on men as opposed to women. This can be seen as the result of a history in which the main effect which women could have in their lives was in the ways they influenced the men they knew, starting with their husbands. The need and desire to influence in this way runs from the women to their men, so it makes sense that men would be the ones changed and improved by love. For all the changes of the past century, it would seem that this sense remains deeply imbedded.

It is also apparent in what these films have to say about what women and men want from love, at least in their fantasies as portrayed by Hollywood. If we take Paige as an example, then it might be fair to say that women wish to be adored. Love does not change her and Edvard is not given the depth to show that it has made him a better person for his own sake or so that he might make her a better person. He changes in order to provide her with the unconditional love and support which is as good a working definition of adoration as exists.

At the start of The Girl Next Door, Matthew is already questioning the cost of his ambition. Danielle's arrival is therefore something of a dea ex machina, providing him with someone to help him escape the narrow confines of his dream and to dream more broadly. Her love challenges him repeatedly over the course of the film and he must meet these challenges in order to be with her. She provides him with both a wider world to inhabit and a challenge worthy of a modern day knight gallant. Old habits, hardwired into us, die hard it seems and I suppose that whichever scenario one finds the more romantic depends upon one's sex (I certainly found The Girl Next Door more romantic). It will be interesting to see how this changes, if at all, in an era in which equality and greater understanding and communication between the sexes seem to be among the larger goals of our society.

2004-04-09T03:25:00.000-07:00

Self evident truths

Today is the anniversary of an important day in American history, though one which is not celebrated. Today is the one hundred and thirty-ninth anniversary of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse. This was not the official end of the Civil War. There were other Confederate armies in the field and other Confederate military commanders at large. But Robert E. Lee and his army were the focal point of the Confederacy and its armies. Once the news of his surrender reached his fellow generals in other parts of the South, they immediately began initiating their own surrenders. When Lee met with Grant and disbanded the Army of Northern Virginia, the war was decided and the four bloodiest years in American history were over.

It is understandable that this date is not an anniversary which we celebrate. Clausewitz was correct in this case: the Civil war was politics carried on by other means and when it was over the two sides had to learn how to live in peace with one another and decide their differences by the ballot and not by the bullet. It took some time, but for all the rantings and shallow historical parallels which are cast about these days of an America of red states and blue states, the transition was a successful one. We honor Lincoln for seeing the nation through its greatest trial; and we remember the dead who died before their time. Beyond that though we consign the Civil War to the pages of history.

The importance of that day at Appomattox Courthouse should not be forgotten however. The Civil War has rightly been called the second American Revolution. In 1776, for various reasons, many involving personal feelngs and needs and demands, the leaders of the thirteen colonies declared their independence from the British crown. Yet when they struck out on this course, they were not merely trying to shore up their own power. Steeped in traditions and ideals of liberty which had been growing in Europe for the past century, they committed their fates and their future to what was then the culmination of this thinking, the premise that all men are created equal. It was a radical idea and one which in practice was not observed as we would understand it. But from these words they formed a system based on an ideology which could and would grow beyond the narrow confines of political reality in the eighteenth century; which would grow to embrace a fuller meaning of Jefferson's words than could be applied when he wrote them.

But the growth of the concept that all the men who are created equal actually were more than merely the leading figures of the later eighteenth century hit a wall when it came to blacks. The great anomaly of the great experiment in liberty was the formal denial of any liberty whatsoever to a large and distinct group of Americans. At the start, the new nation could manage to overlook this as its leaders concentrated on getting the experiment up and running. Besides which, liberty in practice was only beginning to percolate into the population at large. But as it did so in the early nineteenth century, this great and glaring abrogation of the Declaration of Independence had to be faced. And so it was, for four years, at a cost of over 600,000 lives and untold wealth.

On those fields was being fought a war to decide whether Jefferson's words would continue to grow and embrace a larger definition of mankind or whether they had gone as far as they would go. Lee's surrender one hundred and thirty-nine years ago today meant that Jefferson's words would live and grow. The road since then has not always been smooth or easy or fast. The sad history of segregation shows us that. But in its toughest trial, against opponents who were willing to fight and kill and die to stop its expansion, the premise of liberty won through and its survival has and will continue to give us hope in all future trials which we might face against those who seek to stop it. For that reason should we all remember the events of that day at Appomattox Courthouse and be thankful for the preservation of liberty which they ensured to the benefit of us all.

2004-04-08T03:37:00.000-07:00

Served cold

One disadvantage of having a TV (something I did without through graduate school) is that one is constantly bombarded with ads; and not simply ads, but the same specific ones over and over. After watching for a relatively little amount of time, I was able to rattle off large portions of the spiels for various prescription drugs. Not that this has encouraged me to think that I would ever try them - with the list of side effects, I am always left with the feeling that the cure is worse than the disease. But the ads I see, again and again, are adept at lodging in my brain.

The other type of advertisement which seems to stand out as a big user of saturation-style campaigns are those for movies. These seem to have a more productive effect, as far as the advertisers are concerned, for they manage to insinuate themselves into my brain in a more amenable way. I am going to see a movie this weekend which I would not have had I not seen the advertisement over and over. Most of the time though, these ads just make me think about the movies and their aim, purpose and probable worth artisitically, without going to see them, which is rather less useful for the people selling them, but has advantages for me.

For instance, in the past week or so I have seen an ad blitz for Mean Girls, a tale of teenage angst and the struggle between a plucky heroine and three of her shallow and vicious classmates. It is obviously pitched towards an audience which currently is dealing with the traumas of middle and high school; but it is still something with which those of us beyond those years can relate, having gone through high school ourselves. And since the tale is one of basic social dynamic and relations with others, it is easy for anyone to relate with the basic story.

This is where my problem with the film lies. In the first place, the perils with which the heroine must deal seem ludicrously overblown. Of all the traumas with which we must deal, those with which we are dealing at this very moment are always the worst (with a few exceptions, such as the loss of a loved one). And in five years time, these traumas will fade and it will be the traumas of that moment which are the crucial ones. This is an understandable aspect of human nature. But even at the time of being in school, I remember thinking that the sort of problems with which this film's heroine must deal were not particularly serious. For that matter, the rigid segregation of different cliques seems more the product of Hollywood than it does of real life, at least for most people. For the most part, school is simply not that traumatic an experience.

There is a larger issue which I would take with the film (as it appears in its ads): the course taken by the heroine against her rivals. She is made to appear as obviously good and they to appear shallow and mean and so her response to them is naturally the one which the audience is supposed to support. Yet, unless there is more nuance to this film than appears in the trailers, her response appears to be one of simple revenge. Since they have hurt her in a simple if malicious way, she decides to get back at them and do her best to make them miserable (or so it appears). And so the message of the film seems to be that hurting people who hurt you personally is the right way to go. Perhaps the film will end with them all being friends, the mean girls having learned their lesson and turning a new leaf. But if so this hardly seems to have any relation to the reality of human feelings. Hurting someone else rarely leads them to some sort of enlightened epiphany. And I wonder at the concept that hurting someone else makes the person who is hurting them feel better. If this is the only way a person can feel better, I feel very sorry for that person. How miserable and unhappy and twisted must his or her life be. Happiness does not come from pain, either given or received. How bizarre to pitch a film on the premise that the opposite is true. In the end, my sympathies are with the mean girls, who are so clueless and insecure that they can only be unpleasant. The heroine would seem to have her feet planted more firmly on the ground (heroines normally being the stronger characters) and therefore has less excuse for behaving in such a silly and destructive way. The tale this movie tells might be different than the one which its makers intended, both about themselves and about us all.

2004-04-07T03:36:00.000-07:00

Inside the echo chamber

In discussing the media and more importantly a person's response to what they read, see and hear in it, it would be very easy for me to launch into a screed against Fox News. It is certainly driven by a specific political agenda, more so than any other news source in the US and rather more so than Rupert Murdoch's news outlets in the UK, where this sort of partisanship is more accepted. But it is terribly easy to find fault with others and to shake one's head and sigh at their obvious blindness. It is more difficult to start with oneself, which is why it is most important to begin at home.

I consider myself faintly lucky that I have not found a news source with which I agree entirely. I read Salon and the Guardian, both of which are left of center, which does not describe me particularly well, or at least does not describe me entirely. I read them because they speak a language which I can understand, even if I disagree with their positions at various times. But even then, by addressing people who talk, linguistically and culturally, as I do, these papers are pitching a message towards my own innate preconceptions. And when I actually agree with their perspective on a story, they are preaching to the choir, which is not the best position in which to be.

It is far too easy to listen to people who speak the way we do and who hold similar positions. And we all have certain issues upon which we are certain that we are on the side of the angels and that at best others with opposing views are simply misguided, often perversely so. Yet how healthy can this be? The sure mind is the closed mind and what good is that? This does not mean that we each should go out and read or watch a news source from a completely different political perspectiveto our own. I do not intend to catch Fox News anytime soon. But I shall try not to shrug it off as merely unreconstructed prattle. And I shall try to keep questioning the sources upon which I do rely and to keep challenging my own preconceptions. The moment we stop learning and stop trying to learn is a moment of death for any human being. An ossified mind has nothing to offer ourselves or each other.

2004-04-06T06:51:00.000-07:00

In praise of great writing

Being between new books at the moment, I have been able to indulge in some old favorites as the mood has taken me over the past couple of days. And the mood has taken me straight to Raymond Chandler. He is one of the finest writers of the past century and possibly ever. It seems probable that he had an exceptional teacher back at Dulwich, his old school, for in many ways his writing is similar to P.G. Wodehouse, another Dulwich old boy, and the results are fantastic. I cannot think of any other author as Chandler who is so adept at creating people, places, things and entire worlds which are so vivid and in which a person can sink so easily and completely. And it is not so easy as it might seem when one is reading it. Chandler's style, especially the use of simile and the way he delves as broadly as possible into language and culture, have been imitated many times since and it normally sounds too corny for words (a good parody is the adventures of Tracer Bullet in Calvin & Hobbes). Yet with Chandler, his feel for the language and his use of it is so natural that instead of making us laugh, he creates a world which can be as real to us as the one in which we live. Philip Marlowe is no caricature and his Los Angeles never seems like a play on the real one. And he does this with some of the finest footwork in the actual use of words one can find. It is so good that it is easy to overlook how good the actual writing is - one is too caught up in the story. With Wodehouse, one is more likely to notice and enjoy his use of words, though that alone makes his books worth reading. If there was some particular teacher at Dulwich who taught Chandler and Wodehouse how to write, three cheers for him. And never let it be said that teachers can't have a great and worthwhile impact on literature.

2004-04-05T04:57:00.000-07:00

Neither oh so smart nor oh so pleasant

Yesterday while surfing through the movie channels, I came across Pleasantville and stopped to watch it for a bit before heading out. I have the seen the whole film through once and have watched bits and pieces on TV a number of times since. I rarely watch it all the way through anymore though, for the simple reason that I do not like it as much as I wish I did.

I can't help but really want to enjoy the movie. It has a good premise and a great cast. It appeals to the sense of adventure which the best movies have. But therein lies the problem, for it promises so much and then drops the ball entirely. There is a lot of promise in the meeting of two worlds, of the world of today and the fictionalized world of Pleasantville. And at the start, the makers of the film play this up, including the fact that Pleasantville is, of course, just a set and therefore it is only a partially complete world.

At this point however, the story lurches from one of comic adventure to one of social commentary. Bud and his friends become the proponents of freedom; the mayor and his cronies are the supporters of conformity. But if the director and writers want to send a message to the audience, they have chosen the wrong movie. The two sides are so ludicrously mismatched that it is hard to see any message of this film as being applicable to the real world. The mayor is a parody and, more than that, an out-of-date one which undermines any threat the audience might see in him.

This raises the most important point: Against what is this film supposed to rouse us? Totalitarianism? Hitler and Stalin already made that case quite well. Blatant and accepted discrimination on the basis of color (one of the film's more heavy-handed jokes)? That seems to be fighting the battle of a generation ago. Mindless conformity? A good point, but one hard to take seriously from such a group as the villains as in this film who would have seemed ridiculous forty years ago. There is a lot to be said for a movie which has something to tell its audience; but the movie has to be able to carry its message and the message fit the spirit of the movie. This being the case, Pleasantville must remain a disappointment.

2004-04-02T16:37:00.000-08:00

An eye for an eye, a mouth for a mouth

After weeks of trailers and the occasional article in the sympathetic press, it appears that the Air America Radio Network, the 'liberal' radio network, is up and running. I have not listened to it for the simple reason that I stopped listening to the radio since returning to the states. But from reports in the papers of its first day, it would appear that it is off to a bumpy start; which is not surprising. Most new enterprises begin this way and I have no predictions as to the success or failure of this new broadcaster. But I can say that it appears to be setting out to do exactly what its promoters have been saying it will, much to my dismay.

From the first reports, it sounds as if this response from the left to the talk radio figures on the right is seeking to meet the enemy on its own ground with a lot of anger, venom and self-certainty. Given that its public face is Al Franken, this is not the greatest surprise. But it seems fairly surreal that anyone would think that the answer to one group of shallow blowhards is another. Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and their colleagues-in-arms have the sort of limited reasoning ability which makes it so easy for them to opine with such confidence and superficiality on matters of depth and complexity. They add nothing to our understanding and the best one can say is that they might not be acting out of malice, but through a simple inability to understand the totality of the issues they discuss.

Naturally, their noise encourages the like on the other side of the political spectrum to rise up and take voice, which explains the rising profile of men like Franken and Michael Moore, who share the limited outlook and the supreme self-confidence of O'Reilly and Limbaugh. They all of them see themselves as the champions of the Truth, all the while having no regard for the truth as it impedes them in their quest to prevail. Undoubtedly they see this as merely distilling the Truth from the reality with which we all deal, as treacherous a task as exists. Maybe they do have qualms about this. Possibly these paladins of the Truth do ask themselves What Price Glory? Perhaps.

In reality, they make less difference than they would like to admit. Their bluster is hardly the sort of thing to rally popular opinion in any meaningful way and they certainly do not lead it. The success of men like O'Reilly and Limbaugh comes from the fact that they play to their audience as successfully as does Jerry Springer or Jerry Seinfeld. Their bombast entertains and never steps ahead of the opinion of their listeners. Their counterparts on the left know this and have no intention of varying from this path either. People are not so crudely manipulated by the media as the media might wish to believe which is why, as a move to create any real political change, this new radio broadcaster is unlikely to make any difference. The only thing which Air America is likely to produce is a further coarsening of political dialogue, though even that is no worse today than it was in the days of yellow journalism. Still, it would be nice to have had a better response to the blather which seems so prevalent on the airwaves these days. Instead of added volume, we might be better off with some eloquence.

2004-03-30T13:26:00.000-08:00

Farewell, Alistair

Anyone who heard Alistair Cooke or who read any of his writing will mourn his passing, but his loss is all the greater for those of us who enjoyed his Letters from America. It hardly says much for my social life at the time, but during the year I spent writing up my thesis in Cambridge, I looked forward to his Letter from America on a Friday night. It was a friendly voice with which to begin a weekend in which I would usually have little excuse not to spend writing and then writing some more. It was also pleasant to hear about America from someone who loved it as I do. It was not that he talked of things which were particular to my own memories. But his talks were ones with which I could naturally identify; they spoke of a great fondness for a loved if imperfect home. It was something far better than the sort of reliance on cheap symbolism which abounds these days and we in America are the poorer for it. But so, might I add, are the British and other non-Americans who listened to Alistair Cooke's letters with the openness which their respect for him engendered. I found precious little love for America in Britain and found it even more rarely in the media there. Alistair Cooke was able to bridge this natural skepticism, which can merge into antipathy, through his appreciation for both countries which never sank into mere boosterism. He was a rare bridge between the New World and the Old and without him those of us who love them both are at a greater loss than ever.

2004-03-29T15:45:00.000-08:00

Where have you gone, Teddy Roosevelt?

I have had the great good fortune to have been out of the country during the past three presidential elections and to have missed the entire 2000 campaign, for which I am truly grateful. News of these campaigns and of the elections came across the Atlantic to me, but far more weakly than had I been here and as I voted by absentee ballot as soon as the ballot arrived, I had even less reason to pay attention. It was, to be honest, far nicer than living in the path of an American presidential election, but it has had its drawbacks.

During the years abroad, I had no need to pay any particular attention to political developments at home. They came to me as news from abroad, news from the international desk, and therefore in a far different form than they would have had I been in the states. So I could avoid the political developments, in both detail and in ideology, through the course of the nineties and so my image of politics, politicians and political parties in the US remained the same as they had been when I first left at age nineteen.

I had always identified myself with the Republican party. This was because my two childhood heros, my grandfather and Theodore Roosevelt, were Republicans. I doubt that this is very different from how most people develop their political attachments, at least the lasting ones - it is the personal element. And in the US, the parties are so broad that it is possible to find comfortable ideologies and people within a party and to discount those which do not conform to your feelings as being aberrations or corruptions.

The Republican party has always been the party of Lincoln, the man who led the nation through its greatest trial since its foundation and kept the great experiment alive. I identified it with Theodore Roosevelt, who stood up to the untrammeled capitalism of the robber barons, and with generations of Republican local political leaders who pursued programs emphasisizing fiscal conservatism and social liberalism. There are Republicans who have little in common with any of this; but these sorts of men above represent a powerful tradition within the Republican party.

Unfortunately, it does not represent the national leadership of the Republican party today, which seems instead to be the bastard offspring of Jefferson Davis and Jay Gould. When George W. Bush ran for president, I heard 'compassionate conservatism' and associated it with the fiscal conservatism and social responsibility which seemed the cornerstone of the Republican party. I had never dreamed that it would mean fiscal irresponsibility and social repression. But so it has and so I have come to a crossroads.

There is a choice required at such a point as this; a choice which others have faced in the past and which others are facing with me right now, I am sure: to lock away the party affiliation with which one has been associated for so long or to take a stand, no matter how quixotic, for Republicanism as upholder of better ideals than its national leaders currently espouse. Few elected Republicans seem willing to stand up to the White House and its congressional allies. But waiting and hiding forces a person to be untrue to himself or herself. They have taken the name of the party, but they have betrayed its spirit. They cannot be allowed to do this unprotested.

2004-03-27T05:36:00.000-08:00

Some years ago, in a gymnasium quite a ways away...

I was taking one of those standardized tests of which the educational establishment is so enamored in the school gym with the rest of my classmates, dutifully filling in the dots with our regulations pencils. Before the test itself began we had pages of this to do, presumably for the aid of guidance counselors or merely to add to the vault of statistics. Naturally, we came to the section which asked us to indicate our future educational plans and with little thought I moved to mark the circle for four-year-college degree. But before I could do so, one of my teachers, walking amongst us on invigilation patrol, stopped and said surely I intended to do a higher degree than my BA. Being the good student, I filled in that circle instead, even though the thought of that much more time in the education filled me with a good deal of dread. Not so much because of a distaste for school itself, but because of all the writing I knew would be involved. I was sixteen at the time and found reaching the word limits for my writing assignments as daunting as crossing the Sahara with nothing to sustain me but a juice box. One thousand words seemed impossible to achieve - how would I ever deal with the scores of thousands that I would have to write over the course of all those years, especially the scores of thousands for that one thesis at the end of the graduate school road?

Yet my teacher was right (hard as that might be for me at age sixteen to fathom). Eventually I found that not only should I go on to graduate school, but part of me needed to do so. By the end I had written those scores of thousands and if it was not pure fun (writing a thesis is never that), it was not sheer torture and it was a worthwhile pursuit. And it finally has made me realize something; something which I had not realized after years of keeping a daily journal; after years of correspondence with friends and family, first by post and now mostly by e-mail: I like to write. And that is what has brought me to the point of starting this blog. With luck, it will provide enjoyable and stimulating reading and engender discussion with others. At the least, it might provide something people at work can use as an escape when they need a break. Here's hoping.