My new baby

Posted on February 8, 2010
Filed Under me and my brain, nostalgia, the written word | 1 Comment

I’d like to introduce you to my new baby. This baby is new to me, but it’s actually older than I am. And it’s probably a little older than I thought it was when I bought it.

Here’s a 1967 ad for my new baby.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4045/4342637910_35c1f65c04_o.jpg

And here’s a picture from the adoption agency:
ADOPTION PHOTO

It works great so far… came with a correction ribbon, the manual, and the case. I suspect that I will be spending less time doddering around on facebook and more time writing useful things for myself and other people. Maybe that will even inspire me to write more here. These are all good possible outcomes, I’m thinkin’.

More Political Gib-Gab

Posted on September 16, 2008
Filed Under Blather, politics, the written word | Leave a Comment

Thank (or blame) our old neighbor Ed for directing me to this Op-Ed piece by Frank Rich from the New York Times.

[...] Aligning herself with “a young farmer and a haberdasher from Missouri” who “followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency,” [Palin] read a quote from an unidentified writer who, she claimed, had praised Truman: “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.” Then Palin added a snide observation of her own: Such small-town Americans, she said, “run our factories” and “fight our wars” and are “always proud” of their country. As opposed to those lazy, shiftless, unproud Americans — she didn’t have to name names — who are none of the above.

You know… the lazy, shiftless, unproud Americans in so-called Blue states who actually provide the lion’s share of the tax revenues to pay for government policies? And what happened to that basic tenet of American democracy that says you can and should criticize your government when it goes astray–that, in fact, it’s your responsibility to do so?

While I am hesitant to get into the issue of racism with regard to the election, this bit from the Op-Ed is worth noting:

[At the Republican convention in St. Paul,] Americans saw a virtually all-white audience yuk it up when Giuliani ridiculed Barack Obama’s “only in America” success as an affirmative-action fairy tale — and when he and Palin mocked Obama’s history as a community organizer in Chicago. Neither party has had so few black delegates (1.5 percent) in the 40 years since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies started keeping a record.

And…

Byron York of National Review, a [...] conservative who acknowledges the double standard, captured it best: “If the Obamas had a 17-year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant by a tough-talking black kid, my guess is if they all appeared onstage at a Democratic convention and the delegates were cheering wildly, a number of conservatives might be discussing the issue of dysfunctional black families.”

Rich addresses Obama’s response to the recent surge of activity from the McCain-Palin camp, and this is maybe the most important part.

Obama’s one break last week was the McCain camp’s indication that it’s likely to minimize its candidate’s solo appearances by joining him at the hip with Palin. There’s a political price to be paid for this blatant admission that he needs her to draw crowds.

And finally…

This election is still about the fierce urgency of change before it’s too late. But in framing this debate, it isn’t enough for Obama to keep presenting McCain as simply a third Bush term. Any invocation of the despised president — like Iraq — invites voters to stop listening. Meanwhile, before our eyes, McCain is turning over the keys to his administration to ideologues and a running mate to Bush’s right.

What a Community Organizer Does–From Time Online

Posted on September 8, 2008
Filed Under Blather, politics, the written word | 4 Comments

There have been loads of pieces worth reading since the presidential conventions. Here’s one of the many: What a Community Organizer Does.

here is what Giuliani and Palin didn’t know: Obama was working for a group of churches that were concerned about their parishioners, many of whom had been laid off when the steel mills closed on the south side of Chicago. They hired Obama to help those stunned people recover and get the services they needed–job training, help with housing and so forth–from the local government. It was, dare I say it, the Lord’s work–the sort of mission Jesus preached (as opposed to the war in Iraq, which Palin described as a “task from God.”)

After reading the Time piece, you might want to check out Community Organizers Fight Back.

“I have ‘actual responsibilities,’” said Jacqueline del Valle, a community organizer in the Bronx. “If Mayor Giuliani and President Bush cared more about working people instead of just people who can hire high-powered lobbyists, maybe I wouldn’t have so much responsibility. Maybe working people would have an easier time in America today. But that’s not our reality, and they don’t have to mock us while we’re trying to clean up their mess.”

But don’t miss the comments section at the bottom of the Time article. It’s full of tidbits like this:

What Cindy McCain wore last night - from the rings on her fingers to the dress to the shoes on her feet - cost $300,000 according to Vanity Fair.

Now that is elitism you can believe in, my friends!

How many of you reading this put down a fraction of that (or are saving up to do so) to buy your (one and only) home? How many Americans won’t see that much money in a decade?

And this:

Giuliani’s idea of community organizing is starting the wave at a Yankees game.

And then there’s a comment from a member of an Elks lodge in San Jose that has a membership larger than the population of the town of which Palin was mayor.

Maybe one of the most important points of all comes in this:

I hate to harp on this (not really) but this sad state of American politics has been brought to us, in part, by your friend, Frank Luntz. Luntz taught a generation of Republicans how to lie with impunity. It is quite easy, really. Say whatever you need to say to win elections, i.e. refer to the Estate Tax as the Death Tax (which Palin did last night). When anyone in the media questions you, just say “there goes that liberal media again.” When Democrats call you on it, well, now you’ve got Democrats talking about taxes. Everyone hates taxes. Republicans win!

So, be careful what you get talked into.

Psychoanalyzing Bush

Posted on March 1, 2008
Filed Under Blather, politics, the written word | Leave a Comment

Alan Brinkley reviews Slate editor Jacob Weisberg’s The Bush Tragedy in tomorrow’s NYT Sunday Book Review. The book considers Bush and his presidency from a somewhat psychological perspective. Curious stuff.

Unfriendly reminder

Posted on February 24, 2008
Filed Under Blather, me and my brain, rant, the written word | Leave a Comment

Flipping through the Boston Sunday Globe this morning, I was reminded once again of some of the things I hate about this place. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate where I am, but there’s a certain Boston vibe that I have never accepted as my own. I’ve come to terms with it… anyway, here’s how it struck me this morning. I don’t like the tone of the Boston Globe. The Sunday Globe magazine is reliably terrible. The whole tenor of the paper falls in line with the part of Boston that states the obvious as if it were brilliant and the snobby as if it were obvious. I hope that, as Corey (Lily Taylor) says in the film Say Anything, “That’ll never be me.”

I know I should cite some examples here… it’s painful. Pick up a copy of the paper (maybe just borrow one) or better yet… try to get through an issue of Boston Magazine. Ugh.

Recent Reads and New Picks for the Overflowing Bookshelf

Posted on September 21, 2006
Filed Under Blather, the written word, wide world of vacation | Leave a Comment

I recently finished Francine Prose’s Blue Angel. I enjoyed it, though my feelings about the ending are a bit mixed. I can’t disagree with how she skewers the academic system and all of its politics, but I can’t help feeling that somehow she lets the protagonist off too easy (despite what happens to him). No one really comes out smelling too good.

I’m currently reading I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Inteviews: 1962-1987 and I’m really loving it. I’ve read a few of them before, but some have been pulled from unpublished goodies at the Warhol museum, and they’re all pretty well presented so far. Beyond just getting more Andy, I think it’s really interesting to look at the interview process and the struggle between Andy and the interviewer as he often tries to subvert–or invert–the whole thing. Good stuff, especially if you have a little background to begin with.

And even though I have so many books to read that I’ll never get through them all, I picked up a few others that I couldn’t resist, as is my wont. At Skylight Books in Los Angeles, home of a pleasant orange cat who put up with my rubbing and petting for a good five minutes, I found a copy of Olive Higgins Prouty’s Now, Voyager. Those of you who have read my blog consistently (all 3 of you!) will recall how much I love the movie. So I’m going sort of backwards on that one… movie to book instead of the other way around. Last night Ez and I were talking about another movie to book journey I’d like to take–with Jim Thompson’s The Grifters. But I digress.

At City Lights in San Fran, I was lured in by The Last Masquerade. Nice book cover, I thought, and then I read the back cover and the first few pages, and the book was mine.

Something that has always bugged me

Posted on September 1, 2006
Filed Under Blather, me and my brain, rant, the written word | Leave a Comment

The idea of “reverse discrimination” has always annoyed me. Now hear me out. Discrimination is discrimination. “Reverse discrimination” is in itself a sort of discriminatory term. It assumes that one or more groups, generally minorities, are discriminated against. They might be, or they might not be–but that’s not the point. If you want to treat everyone as being on a truly even plane, just call it all discrimination, independent of its target–no special term needed. One is not more or less nasty than the other.

The Little Friend

Posted on July 25, 2006
Filed Under Blather, me and my brain, the written word | 3 Comments

I recently finished Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend, and I love it (that’s present tense) so much that it’s high time I wrote about it. (When I loaned it to Ezra–who gobbled it up–I told him to be especially kind to it, as I plan to tie it with a ribbon and keep it my prized possession.)

The Little Friend

I was completely enthralled by it from start to finish. The descriptions of characters and their surroundings are so rich and she includes just the right details; for example, the foods they prepare for a Mother’s Day celebration–all appropriate to where they live, their social standing, and their personalities–with the important note that these foods are a departure from their usual Mother’s Day fare. The author draws the characters through funny little stories that add too much to the book to be considered ancillary. I love the characters so much, and the events of the book unfold to draw the reader ever deeper into understanding them and their relationships. As I read the book, I thought that it was not so much what happened that mattered to me–though of course that is very important, and it is a great story–but the way it is written, who the characters are, and what they do.

In particular, I identify with the main character, Harriet. Tartt begins her introduction of Harriet with the following sentence (which I’ve now repeated often), “Harriet, the baby, was neither pretty nor sweet. Harriet was smart.” When I first read them, those eleven words in all their simplicity shot right into me in their to-the-point (much like Harriet) perfection. I always admire authors who can have that effect on me with language–not using the biggest or most impressive words, but the right ones. I don’t know–that sentence probably doesn’t mean a damn thing to most people who read it, but I love it.

If you don’t want to hear a word more about the book until you read it yourself, stop here. If you don’t mind some minor character points that probably don’t have a whole lot of significance plot-wise but that mean something to me, read on.

Harriet is wonderfully real. I see myself in little things she says and does, and her daring is an inspiration. Early in the book, she makes her small friends–all younger boys, all sort of her minions–act out biblical scenes in costume in the yard (which reminds me of Ez). She makes lists. Lots of people do, but her lists sound like my lists–lists that I still make. I guess some of these kinds of details are supposed to be a part of showing her as an adolescent female, beginning to form a more adult identity. Maybe I am just still living in that adolescent world, but I do that stuff. I reach back for those instinctual tools. Harriet and I make plans.

I could discuss The Little Friend further, and I probablly will. I feel that my connection with this book is somehow very personal. Though I can’t stop talking about it, I’m not sure that my experience is typical. Ezra really liked it though, so I’ll go ahead and make this an official recommendation.

Not just the books, but the place where I live with them

Posted on June 22, 2006
Filed Under Blather, Pennsylvania, me and my brain, the written word, this old house | 2 Comments

Some of my fondest memories from childhood–in fact, from adolescence, too–are of spending time at Schlow Memorial Library in State College.  As a kid, I loved going there and scanning through the rows and rows of butter yellow, blue, and dark green bound picture books.  The Lonely Doll, A is for Annabelle, and A Dolls’ Christmas were early favorites. Later I found The Finch’s Fabulous Furnace, and, later still, Chronicles of Avonlea.  But it isn’t just the books that I loved then or that I hold in my memory, but the place itself… It’s the reading tables and bean bag chairs from the old children’s room, the hard shiny floor at the entrance by the circulation desk, the old winding staircase up to the adult section, the record albums with their dog-eared sleeves (we practically wore out that Mary Poppins read-along record, and years later I taped XTC’s Skylarking from the Schlow copy), the recent periodicals in red-edged plastic sleeves.  It’s the hushed echo of the outer vestibule and the weird isolation in the narrow adult stacks. 

Schlow 2003 

The library has just been expanded–for the second time in my lifetime (and I’m only 31).  There’s both a lot to love and a lot to hate about State College.  That the public library is so busy and so valued in the community–now as it was when I was a kid–is one of the things to love and hang on to.

Why this might get pretty boring sometimes

Posted on June 9, 2006
Filed Under Blather, me and my brain, the written word | Leave a Comment

Though I like to write and want to have contact with friends and “the world,” I am actually a pretty private person.  I’ve seen people blog about sex, the details of their family relationships, their personal aspirations, and the like.  I know I rant on here at times, but whether because I have been burned or because I am just a shy turnip, I don’t see myself exposing any inner secrets (if I have any) here. 

I hope that’s not too disappointing.  I guess it gets back to the whole purpose of a blog–not that there is a right or wrong purpose.  It’s weird, though.  I mean, I don’t have one set way of communicating with all the people I know.  My relationships with people differ, so it’s weird to try to communicate via the blog (especially if it’s just me blabbing into the vortex, with little back and forth) when I’m most comfortable in a particular, unique relationsihp–one on one or at least in a small group.

I think I have always been like this.  I’ve never been one to gather together huge groups of people (my wedding would I suppose be the one exception), and I tend to disappear in such groups unless I have a sort of advocate there pulling me in.  Some of my best friends in life, incidentally, have been the people who have played the advocate for me in those situations.  I don’t know if any of them would be reading this, but if so–maybe you know who you are.

Is that self-deprecating?  I don’t really see it that way and I hope I haven’t leaned too heavily or been too much of a burden.  I hope I can give enough in small groups or one on one to make up for it.

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