Pure Schmaltz

They don't return your phone call. They don't acknowledge receiving your resume. It's as if the profession you crawled to the top of no longer exists. Imagine the legal profession suddenly evaporating, leaving exactly no demand for attorneys of any stripe and you'll come close to imagining the size of the community who surprisingly find themselves on the front lines of our first white collar recession.

Note from Vienna: "We started noticing it in December 2007." Note from NYC: "My wife and I are living off home equity lines of credit." Note from Seattle: "We feel lucky because my wife was chosen to be one of the transition team and is guaranteed double pay for the next year, then she'll lose her job." A note from Brooklyn: "I've stopped contributing to my 401(k), investing in freeze dried food and cases of booze, which will be liquid currency when the dollar gets revalued."

Five years ago, these people were at the top of their professional lives. Earning the big bucks. Contributing members of society. Today they're filing for bankruptcy, flunking food stamp tests, and falling back on survival tricks they learned twenty, thirty, or more years ago as undergraduates. The social safety net was constructed to see blue collar workers through a down season or a temporary transition, not to support a flood of white-collar service professionals who's skills are as indistinct as their future.

What, exactly, did they do? Well, they planned. Some coordinated. Others tracked. Quite a few controlled. Many managed. A few led. Some played strictly by the rules others shaved. None of them were responsible for their security slipping out from under them. Those who planned for their future were little better positioned than those who did not, because their future did not occur as planned. No retirement saving left now. No savings at all. No income, either. One by one the necessities of life distill into a startling few: Two meals a day. Park the second car, no need to license it that way. Coffee and wine, optional luxuries. Bread, a daily necessity, baked at home. Meat, as Jefferson suggested, better served as flavoring than main course. Maintaining spirit grows increasingly difficult when the work you relied upon to provide confirmation of your competence just isn't there anymore.

What will you do? What will you do?

You'll try to sell the house in a down market. You might borrow from family, perhaps old friends. You'll start selling your possessions. That second set of china. Some of your treasured books? You'll hold your breath, scream at the top of your lungs, and sometimes whimper, hoping no one else in the world will hear you.

You'll try to paint a bright face on it, but others will smell the stink of desperation on you. The kindest will offer introductions. The clueless will offer free advice on how to prosper, worth every damned cent they charged for it. While the government sends billions to bumbling banks and promises tax cuts to people who only dream they could once again make enough income to qualify to pay taxes.

And even the strongest wonder sometimes if anyone understands what's really going on out here.

Happy New Year!

Forty years ago, I spent every Monday night at one or another Open Mike Night. These were invariably hosted by some geeky guy in an untucked blue, long-sleeved oxford cloth shirt (sleeves half-rolled); a scraggly, half-long hair with a box filled with cables. He was stage manager, sound technician, and unflagging acoustic enthusiast in a hard rock world, otherwise unemployable. We were all otherwise unemployable then, in between dream and realization, fueled by the inertia of talent, inspiration, and pure delusion. God Bless Us.

"There's a show going down tonight
It's the hottest show in town
Down to that Gypsy Cafe
Where the freeway turns around
Once a week or so you know
These people show up to play
And they're gonna be stars someday
They're gonna be stars someday!"

This morning I heard this guy on the radio who's music evoked those days. Amos Lee says he used to drive an hour to perform at an Open Mike venue in suburban Philly before Blue Note, a jazz label, signed him. Amos is no rookie. He carries his own polish that smells faintly of the stale beer and cigarette smoke-infused shag carpeting that decorates every Open Mike venue and sticks to more than the lining of the performer's guitar case.

Those of us who performed there mostly performed for each other. Some of us mugged for the mike, affecting Dylan, Donovan, Baez, or Buffy Saint Marie. Others closed our eyes to make ourselves invisible and invulnerable. Some had practiced long and hard while still others borrowed a guitar to perform. Someone always revived All Along The Watchtower. One crowd pleaser suffered from what I labeled John Fahey poisoning, finger-picking double time. There were dubious duets, sacrificial solos, soft rock, hard folk, and most everything inbetween.

I was a 'single acoustic artist,' or so my agent labeled me. A click above most in dedication and in skill AND I performed exclusively my own stuff. Never a cover. Rarely a stumble. I practiced a lot, long into the long evenings between.

I was, as Amos Lee labeled them, a jotter. I walked late night streets looking for inspiration, moving to the cadence of my boots, trusting my eyes, returning to try something by ear, then building up the story, the melody, and the hook. Eventually the tune would become performable or not, my inept transcription never withstanding. Never could, never did figure out notation.

Amos Lee reminded me of those sweet, tough days, the days before I learned to play this different-shaped guitar I play for you today. No Gypsy Cafe now. No enthusiastic scraggly half long hair setting the stage. They've outlawed stale cigarette smoke in public places and stale beer has become India Stale Ale. Those old men in short-sleeved dress shirts and straw dress hats no longer smoke sullenly in the back of the bar invaded once each week by kids seeking stars. And those world-weary kids we were, who in the hell even knows where we are now?

Here's to The Last Exit on Brooklyn and the Little Red Rooster, to Clinkerdagger's, The Mordor, and that place they tore down (what was its name?) to build that medical office building. All gone now. Everyone gone.

Here's a link to the sound we were all trying to make back then.

Here

So pleased and inspired to be transported back home again. Thank you Amos Lee!

Last Tuesday, Amy and I convened a conversation. Sponsored by the local Chamber of Commerce to bring the business community together to consider: Surviving the downturn.

To our surprise, most reported no loss of lift, no panic. No one wore a barrel.

How does one take the temperature of a town? I'd spent the morning waiting with my dad while my mother was injected, inspected, reflected, and ultimately rejected for now: no obvious cause. Scheduled for continuing tests. Conclusions inconclusive.

Life, being holographic, presents herself in various equivalent disguises. Where ever I go, there she is. The phantom hitchhiker. "Say, isn't that the same woman we passed a hundred miles back?" Rod Serling authors every life.

So we convened, listening more than facilitating. Prepared to be changed by what we heard. What DID we hear? The conclusions inconclusive. More tests coming.

How to represent what we heard? One way is a word cloud- see above graphic. Another is word jazz, where the sound and shape and meter carry as much meaning as the words: see below-

I sat on the bar while Amy roamed. Almost twice the expected number arrived for con-ver-sa-tion. In a room unsuited to our purpose, we listened.

We convened. They did the talking.

How’s your business been impacted? Most said not at all. A couple claimed to call their clients, rather than drive to reach them now. One does her rounds on a Harley claiming that improves relationships. We’re all in the relationship business. How will we stay connected now? Here’s a tip: Fewer trips.

Real Estate professionals crowing: lots of inventory, prices fairly steady, though it is a buyer’s market now.

Tim Larkin reported that, when bank stocks went south, $100 million evaporated from this valley. This was mostly investment money, so no one’s missing meals except, perhaps those who rely upon donations from the better heeled and the restaurants might feel the pinch of people pinching penny stocks—so recently, real equity—and suddenly feeling poor.

On the other hand, fat commodity prices offset the markets here. The farmers haven’t made this much cash in a generation.

Then there’s the wine. Fine, we agreed, but not an economy.

Investors from West of the mountains are turning homes into “properties.” (That’s not much of an economy, either.)

And the construction workers at the Mall renovation left town until their payroll starts again. Where’d it go? No one knows.

Is the wolf at the door? 

Focus now on value. Maybe the recession is only headline news. Stop watching the news and maybe we can choose to let the downturn pass our valley by. 

Afterwards, quiet words: 

“I think these people are delusional! In denial!” 

“It’s early in the cycle yet.” 

“This is all Jimmy Carter’s fault!” 

“Pleased to meet you.” 

“Charmed, I’m sure.”

Years ago now, more than a decade ago, I sat with JR Clark in a conference room one long, long, very long Santa Clara afternoon. We were in deep dialogue about the nature of prescriptions, recipes, and process descriptions. We shifted through what Betty Crocker could teach us in her test kitchens, and concluded that the best we'd get there would be replication. We considered what might happen if we were to go looking for a recipe for innovation --- and what we might find if we found it, and found little opportunity for replication there. And we also pondered what might happen if we mistook a Betty Crocker-quality recipe (one thoroughly proven in her test kitchens) for something useful in a situation demanding innovation. This produced The Recipe For Not Doing The Impossible, complete with manic cycles of hopefulness and despair.

We found The Recipe for Doing the Impossible, though Betty would certainly find it wanting. This recipe is of an entirely different order than any recipe Betty might publish. Its main ingredients, as summarized above, are ignorance of what to do, meticulous attention to the way things are, and clarity about what in the world you want to end up with. Finding the ability to act (to wrest the inertia of motion from the inertia of rest) completes the ingredients. Unlikely. Betty should be disappointed in our work.

JR's gone now. So, I suspect, is that conference room. The recipe lives on. Unbelieved by many. Unlikely as it seems. It remains the stuff that stands between aspiration and the seen.

Cryptic enough?

Amy and I attended an Association of University Women pot luck where we were the only non-retired people. I learned that I was also the only non-veteran there as well. One of the attendees is a semi-retired colonel with the Corps of Engineers, and over dinner, war stories started floating around the table. These weren't stories of heroics or high ideals, but the dumb crap that every soldier in the history of the world has experienced. The Colonel mentioned that when City Councilwoman Barbara Clark complained about the scale and size of the flagpole the local VFW planned to erect on Main Street, her criticism attracted more than enough money to erect the abomination. (Not, obviously, his word.) My word, which accurately describes a flagpole (and it's flag) which are so out of scale to the space. Tinkertoy in a Lego landscape. Grossly outsized and, because of that, obscene in its context.

I commented that I agreed with Commissioner Clark, the flagpole IS out of scale and that it should not have been allowed to be built for aesthetic reasons. That the sponsors seemed to have mistaken size of the monument for the size of the feelings it represents. (A common male problem for which no handy blue pill has been devised.) I said that I preferred to keep my patriotism in my pocket. The Colonel looked up at me from across the table, as if I just didn't get it. (You see, to his mind erecting the grossly out of scale flagpole was a win for the forces of the right. To my mind it was the equivalent of someone painting their house bright purple to show that they are free to paint their house purple. Most people who pass by will not celebrate the painter's freedom, but question his sanity---or at least his taste). The Colonel asked, "So, you didn't serve?" To which I answered, as I slipped out to the kitchen to help Amy dish up the mango and sticky rice dessert, "No."

The conversation swerved back into less controversial territory when we returned, but my response bothered me then and has been poking at me since. Did I serve? I thought then, and still think today, that service is an important part of citizenship. I shovel my neighbor's walk. When I was drafted, I refused to appear because I had been denied my due process under the law, an oversight the local draft board acknowledged by inviting me to appear before them and plead my case. My case for being designated a non-military conscientious objector. A case I apparently successfully argued, since I was designated 1-CO, or whatever the military designation was at the time. (Thanks in no small part to a raft of patriots who wrote letters supporting my case, including Federal District Court Judge Dale Green --- one reason I attended his memorial last year).

My service was to be two years of service changing bed pans in an approved military hospital at less than minimum wage. The regulation governing my service required me to move at least sixty miles from my designated home, Walla Walla, to work in an approved military facility. The rub was that I had to find such a facility that was willing to hire me.

The following three years were my service. They included writing letters to approved facilities seeking employment and proving to the draft board that I was diligently seeking such work. It was kinda like being on unemployment except it didn't pay anything and it prevented me from actually being employed or going to school, because I could at any time be selected to move myself somewhere to change bed pans. I worked casual labor, day jobs like shoveling out horse stalls (a job for which I had to wear a friend's short hair wig because the labor contractor wouldn't hire long hairs.) I learned a lot about holding unpopular convictions.

No one ever responded to any of my requests for employment. Finally, Ford did away with the draft and my obligation evaporated. Did I serve? Well, I managed to prevent one person from getting ground up in that senseless folly called the Vietnam War. I proved that this is a country sometimes ruled by law and not jingoism. I proved that a man could stand on principles, and learned that if he did, he might well have to stand alone.

Even today, when a veteran asks if I served, I usually opt for the short answer, and just say, "No." I wonder why I do that.

I served to show that our might can be found in something other than our readiness to fight. To give peace a real chance, an alternative we forfeit whenever we decide to wage war. Whomever the adversary. Whatever the situation. Mine was not an uncourageous choice. It brought with it uncataloged inconvenience. It was my choice, choice being the principle democracy thrives upon.

I wonder in my lucid moments how military service would have worked had others who served been offered the same terms I'd been offered. Compelled to serve, but also compelled to find an outfit willing to have you serve with them. Pay your own transportation to get there.

Find your own housing and pay for it, along with food et al, out of a salary, a fraction of the minimum wage. I wonder how many other's service would have been spent failing to find anyplace to serve. It's an interesting idea.

So, I conclude that I did serve. To demonstrate that the ideals this country was founded to preserve have been preserved. No medals to line the bottom of my sock drawer (I like that) and no public recognition of the dedication to principle (I like that, too), and, importantly for me, no bragging rights. I keep my patriotism in my pocket. It fits comfortably there. I don't wave red (or even red, white, and blue) flags because they incite bullies, offend friends, and misrepresent the quiet confidence that anyone living in a representative democracy really should have. I believe that our public square now overwhelmed by that Tinkertoy flagpole was better without it, when the citizens used to gather there to dance on summer evenings. And that service is a principle one must choose to satisfy.

God Bless Us, everyone. Especially those who disagree with us. Pray that we learn to love our enemies as ourselves, for the alternative seems to insist that we hate ourselves so that we might hate our enemies.

What about WWII? A time of insanity, induced, perhaps by the Peace To End All Peace armistice "ending" WWI, which was fought to defend honor, but sacrificed all honor. WWII rose out of a sort of payback. Cut off the opposition, squeeze the loser. Before the Germans chose evil, they were desperate, hopeless, rendered powerless. Had we treated them with respect following the mutual humiliation in the trenches, what reason would they have had to militarize? The French, between the wars, saw the whole thing coming. The British pacifists insisted upon getting their pound of emaciated flesh by collecting reparations. WWII stands as a testament to the ultimate cost of humiliation. Everyone loses.

The war itself was neither masterfully planned nor competently executed. It was a mud wrestle, the outcome more ruled by chance and brutality than clever strategy. More innocents died than designated combatants. A lot of unnecessary engagements occurred simply because armed forces were available to fight. Many of the South Pacific battles were unnecessary and terribly costly, but they made good PR at the time.

I will argue that there are more effective ways to defeat terrorism than send armies out to fight it. Many of our allies concur. They are not fighting it with overwhelming military might because in their calculation, military might has little effect in such conflicts. One might co-opt insurgencies, but never in the history of the world so far, militarily defeat one. This humbling fact might well encourage a less militaristic, more strategic response, though it might encourage criticism from people so used to hammering every opponent that every one automatically looks like a nail.

The Missile Defense (aka Star Wars) Agency holds the dubious distinction of spending the most while producing the least of any procurement program in American history. The entire Manhattan Project cost about $22 billion in today's dollars. Missile defense—so far— has cost more than $100 billion. Our Congressional Budget Office estimates missile defense will be costing us nearly $19 billion a year by 2013, about half the current budget for the entire homeland security department.

Detractors dismissed this Regan-era notion as a physical impossibility: like shooting a bullet with a bullet. In recent years, their argument has changed. Any enemy firing an ICBM would camouflage the warhead with decoys, making the challenge more like stopping a shotgun blast with a shotgun blast. 

Fine, but couldn’t we zap them during the boost phase, before they deploy decoys? In 2003, a study group of top scientists from MIT, Cornell, Stanford, Sandia Labs, and Los Alamos were convened by the American Physical Society to examine the physical reality of shooting down an ICBM during that most vulnerable boost phase. They concluded that our interceptors are not fast enough to reach boosting ICBMs from either international waters or neighboring countries. Further, any enemy merely shifting from liquid to shorter burn-time solid fuels would render any boost-phase interception unlikely, no matter where or how interceptors are based. 

What about airborne lasers? “Ineffective against solid-propellant ICBMs." Sea-launched missiles would have to be "positioned within a few tens of kilometers of the launch location of the attacking missile." They concluded that, with technology available within the next fifteen years, defending against a single ICBM would require a thousand or more interceptors. A shotgun blast to hit a bullet. We have twenty one interceptors left after shooting down that errant spy satellite.

What did we prove when we zapped that tumbling satellite? Given a few weeks for planning and a few additional off-budget millions, we can nail a bus-sized bit of defenseless space junk. 

Why do such follies exist? Check the map of congressional districts blessed with contracts to build components. 

Then ask, "Who will defend us against ourselves?"

For a century following the Civil War, Southern voters with lingering resentments against Mr. Lincoln’s Republicans claimed that they would vote for the Democrat, even if the party nominated a yellow dog as their candidate. Many of these Yellow Dog Democrats shifted allegiance during the sixties’ Civil Rights struggles, becoming born-again, Pit Bull Republicans. Now, after nearly thirty years piddling on the Congressional carpets, shredding the White House furniture, and sometimes both, the old yellow Republican attack dog no longer seems able to hunt.

The Republican Party will be moving from the White House to take up long-term residence in a well-deserved dog house. Unlike Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Mark-My-Territory Bush could not be accused of conducting anything like a civil war during his tenure, and it might well be two hundred years before any Republican, regardless of pedigree, has a prayer of being elected President again.

Against this backdrop, it’s distressing to watch pit bull conservatives nip the heels of their lead sled dog, Mr. McCain, for not being yellow enough! It doesn’t matter how yellow he is now. If he’s running as a Republican, he can’t win!

A few of the more feral Republicans are rooting for Hillary’s nomination, reasoning that she’s one unelectable, um, mother. But under the Yellow Dog Rule, it doesn’t matter who the Dems nominate this time around. The leash has been passed.

While it might well be that Mr. Bush’s enduring legacy will be to ensure the electability of any yellow dog running in the Dems’ pack, there are no dogs running under that label this cycle. While most of us would vote for a yellow dog rather than any Republican, we won’t have to this time.

Whomever the candidate, whomever the running mate, there will be no fleas joyriding on the Dems’ ticket this year. Let’s fumi-gate the infested halls of Congress, liberate the soiled copies of the Constitution from the floor of the West Wing, and get on with the business of the people for the next century or two.

“There are so many,” she whined, standing knee-deep in the snow.
“I haven’t a chance to make a difference, unless it’s falling slow.”

“Just keep trying!” I hear d a voice encouraging her on,
“One never knows until it snows, ‘though your chances DO seem long
That anyone as small as you could ever slow the storm.
But unless you try, I can’t say why, you know you’ll never know.”

“But it just seems so hopeless!!” the child’s small voice replied.
“They’re stinging my nose and biting my toes,” that young one almost cried.
And I felt her frustration and thought I’d intervene,
“Who is this toad who likes to goad an innocent, unseen?”

Then in a spark of wisdom, I glimpsed the human fate
To stand against impossible odds, convinced it’s not too late
to catch enough from far too much and find a foothold there.
Even there! Even thin air could prove essential stuff.

So I held my tongue and stood my ground and furtively glanced around
Wondering if she would catch the drift of the wonder I had found.
Her chore was surely hopeless, like everyone’s it seems,
And yet under just such impossible odds, wonder’s usually seen .

12/25/07

I came across this video this morning, while cruising through the links in Phil proctor's latest Planet Proctor dispatch. It describes my sentiments exactly. Thanks to Randy Newman for his usual terrific composing.

Let’s say you have a government that doesn’t serve your personal agenda. You have a grievance. You’d like to make some changes to better serve your interests. What do you do?

One popular local strategy undermines. Rather than helping officials leverage their power to serve your interests or taking their power for yourself, this approach diffuses their power by defaming it. No need to painstakingly work through issues or risk personal injury.

This scenario is a seductive alternative for anyone feeling disenfranchised. But it requires some skill, lest the slinger end up with more mud on themselves than on their target. 

First, create yourself a “special interest group.” 

Next, claim to speak for the community.  Name it something like “Citizens for Good Grievances.” (Stay anonymous! Termites work invisibly!)

Next, assume the worst. Firmly believe their perspective isn’t just different, but evil. 

Then, start peppering them with double binds. If you simply ask answerable questions, you’ll make no headway at all. The questions must elicit guilty responses. Not “How do you care for your dog,” but “When will you stop beating your dog?” See the difference?

If they respond that they’re not beating their dog, it’s evidence of a deeper denial than even you could have imagined (or so your next letter to the editor will say.) If they respond that they’ve already stopped, they indict themselves for having beaten. If they do not respond, their silence will become your gold! However they respond, they’re guilty as you’ve charged! 

You’re best advised to keep them focused on fixing the past. Lawsuits can help here. No one can actually fix the past, but keeping government focused upon fixing the past helps demonstrate their incompetence and prevents you from having to propose anything.

Keep your distance as you sling. Do not get to know those people as fellow humans, for this will surely undermine your efforts. Remember, you can sling forever if you insist that their opinions are evil, not just different.

Properly done, you’ll create a pit where government cannot make a move without clogging its cleats with your anonymous mud. You might not get what you want, but you’ll disable their ability to do anything. Decent payback for such a small investment.

The result won’t be good government, but great grievances.

Is this good enough for us?

You might not have noticed. Not much media coverage of this latest erosion of freedom.

But last Tuesday, the President asserted, in rather broad language, the right of the US Government to freeze "all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,

(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or

(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;"

Why is this particular proclamation so chilling? Well, "violence" isn't defined, but to be determined by the Secretary of the Treasury in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense. I could see an interpretation where the Congress, in attempting to cut funding for the war, might well seem to be threatening the peace or stability of Iraq and/or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction.

As near as I can determine, The White House is satisfying both (A) and (B) above.

This feels like a huge step over the line. I imagine that this proclamation will allow foreign funds in banks with US subsidiaries to be frozen in retaliation. When the military tactics draw a stalemate, bring on the economic sanctions.

It all started innocently enough.
Me, being four and feeling tough.
Decided, if just to assert my best,.
To challenge old Santa to a little contest.

I’d heard he was “a right jolly old elf,”.
and chose to confirm this my own little self..
Please note that I am no slouch with a joke,.
‘Least I always am endlessly ‘musing my folks.

So I crept down the stairway when they’d gone to bed.
And hid between presents, saying nary a word..
I dozed intermittently, though I had not intended.
To miss the bright moment when Santa descended.

In the wee little hours, I’d drooled down my front.
but hadn’t been dreaming when I first heard a bump,.
Followed by a rustle, a shuffle, and a “dang!”.
As Santa untangled himself from the screen.

Mommy says to always close the fire up tight.
So sparks won’t jump out and commence to ignite.
The stockings we’d hung by the chimney, I care.
And don’t want to burn the place down unaware.

So Santa seemed sour as he set to his work,.
Severe concentration like some kind of jerk..
He would never, ever have seen me there.
If I hadn’t decided to give him a scare.

“Boo!”, I exclaimed as I hopped into sight.
“Good Lord!” he replied, “You just gave me a fright!.
What’s a small boy like you doing downstairs.
On this cold Christmas morning,” he sternly stared.

“I have to see just how jolly you are,”.
I said as I peeked into his bag standing there..
“I’m a little bit hassled, a little behind.
And I’d chat more with you if I felt I had time.”

“A-Ha!” I rebuked as I stood up quite tall,.
“You’re not a little bit jolly at all..
You look like a grown-up and sound like one, too..
I was pretty sure I was going to be jollier than you.”

“Jollier than me?” Santa considered..
He had to admit that his focus had frittered.
Most of his jollyness out of his soul.
and replaced it with nothing but responsible goals.

He rose to the challenge and stuck out his belly.
And began to distend it till it did shake like jelly!.
Never one to lie down in the face of a challenge.
I hopped up two stairs and took careful balance

Then pooched out my tummy as far as it went.
And wobbled mine back and forth, back bent..
Santa’s old face lit up like a spark.
And he started laughing at me in the dark.

“You’re jolly,” he praised, as he looked down at my gut.
“And you’ve reminded me I’d fallen into a rut..
My real job isn’t about meeting deadlines for toys..
It’s supposed to be focused on delivering joy!”

“You’ve helped me, my lad,” Santa said with a grin.
“And you’ve won this year, but next year I’ll win.”.
Then he quietly opened the fireplace screen.
And rose up the chimney, jollier it seemed.

By the following Christmas, I’d lost some of my joy.
And forgot to remember to challenge that boy.
But when I came down on that next Christmas morn,.
The living room seemed most uncommonly warm.

I never saw Santa again in my life.
Though I’m sure he’s appearing each Christmas Eve night.
.
There’s this warmth in the living room, fresh and clean
In spite of the fireplace’s not-quite-closed screen.

12/20/06.
david

As sure as that first hint of winter turns my breath to clouds, some pundit or another starts encouraging surly crowds. The heathens, see, (or so they say) are hell-bent to do us wrong by threatening legal action should our lil’ angels sing a song. So school pageants, which used to gush with Christian themes, have turned anthropological, and wishing the wrong one “Merry Christmas” could send you off to jail.

So fools Rush in where no self-respecting Angel would stoop to tread and proclaim that if we stay this course, Christmas will be dead.

Dead?

If solstice is a time of peace and Hanukkah a time of joy, and Christmas a time of wonderment, what weapon could its enemies deploy? Proclaiming a war on Christmas, Christ, this just doesn’t qualify. ‘Cause Christmas can’t be lost or won unless we accept a lie: That Christmas lives in ritual, in trees and songs and toys, instead of in the beating heart of every girl and boy.

The war on the war on Christmas seems the sorriest campaign, with nothing much to win or lose, meant only to inflame. So peace on Rush, O’Reilly, too, and any other one who fears that the threat of legal action might somehow singe their goose.

There is no war on Christmas! This war is a swindler’s lie. Intended, I guess, to steal the best this season might imply. So, should you feel mistreated, belittled, or behind, chase the Devil whispering in your ear back to the cold outside. Then warm yourself with whatever faith fuels your flaming Tao and have yourself a merry little whatever-you-wanna-call-it now.

May the spirit of this season dissolve this battle line. ‘Cause no one can steal the holiday you’re holding safe inside.

Happy Holy Days.

I appreciate Congress for appropriating a million bucks to fund the Iraq Study Group, distressed that Congress needed to, and concerned that the resulting bi-partisan consensus could be wasted.

The November 30 Washington Post reported, “The [Iraq Study Group] findings dovetail with recommendations being considered by the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, who are conducting their own review of Iraq policy.”

The Post continues, “President Bush said earlier this fall that he looked forward to receiving the study group's report to bring fresh perspective to the Iraq crisis. But as some of the options under consideration began to leak out, the White House also ordered its own crash policy review, which began two weeks ago. The administration does not want to be in the position of having to adapt all of the Iraq Study Group report's recommendations, U.S. officials say, and its own review will provide an opportunity to pick and choose options.”

Mr. Bush decided to go it alone in Iraq, without engineering broad, bi-partisan support. He ignored rather than integrated conflicting military and political advice. A lock-step majority said he could. His prior crash policy options bought us Iraq. Now we own it together.

Leadership might mean fixing the fiasco together without anyone claiming credit. Does “we fixed it” sound so politically untenable?

After three and a half years frittering away one opportunity after another, we’re out of options—and patience. Does creating a few eleventh-hour crash policy options from which to “pick and choose” mean that Mr. Bush still doesn’t care about consensus? Rather than cede a precious political position, he chooses to pick and choose?

This administration has worked harder digging in behind misguided strategies than building up bi-partisan consensus. I know building consensus is hard. Reconstructing crashed societies is infinitely harder. He’s lied, lectured, and everything but capably lead. Now that we’re down in this hole together, we could perhaps escape by standing on each other’s shoulders instead of going all picky and choosy. We are down to just about the last choice we’ll get to make in Iraq.

It might be too late, but I still say we should give Democracy a chance. A fresh experience of it here might teach us something important about exporting it over there.

This might become a bit of a rant, but I won't apologize.

Last year, I got to spend a little time in Flanders. Near where the trenches were. Where a generation of English and French and German  kids were sacrificed to an ancient folly, War. I asked my Flemmish friend how Belgium survived the wars. He replied that his country was very good at rolling over and playing dead. The enemies just pass through. Have for centuries, he said.

I decided a long time ago that I was a pacifist. Not because I was particularly averse to violence, but because I couldn't find evidence that war ever fixed anything. No evidence that killing individuals changes how a society thinks. My crude understanding concluded that War is what psychologists call an error of logical leveling. Mistaking killing a person for destroying an idea.

There are many ways to kill an idea. During the French Revolution, a captain called to his sergeant, "Tell that rabble to leave this plaza in five minutes or I'll fire on them with grapeshot." The sergeant climbed to the top of a barricade and yelled into the crowd, "My captain says that if the rabble isn't out of this plaza in five minutes, he'll kill them with grapeshot. But from up here, I cannot see the rabble through all of the fine citizens of the republic. Would you fine citizens be so good as to leave the plaza so my captain can shoot the rabble?" Of course, the crowd left without a shot being fired.

After the Prussians captured Paris in the Franco-Prussian war, the conquering general commanded that a bridge, the pride of Paris, be destroyed. A junior officer had the bridge renamed in honor of the general and the bridge was preserved.

Of course history can't tell us how it might have been had our predecessors decided not to wage war but to wage peace. What might have happened had Lincoln decided that the Union, which seems fragmented to this day with red state/blue state controversies, might be better off splitting off into two? Like a natural cell division. Instead of enforcing a contested restatement of the original vows? The vanquished never forget.

WWI was particularly tragic. A recent book reframed the conflict not as the war to end all wars but the peace to end all peace. If we were as skilled in waging peace as we were at waging war, how would our world be different?

 Someone suggested after the 9/11 attacks that we build the most wonderful mosque ever built in Kabul. Spend tens of billions of dollars and wage a peace that would be difficult to interpret as anything but peace. Co-opt the poison ideas rather than go after some people merely holding those ideas. The leverage seems obvious later. But we are a society with a really big hammer, so almost everything resembles a nail.

I always bought a poppy or two or three when Veterans day came around. The poppies represent the poppies which grow in the fields in Flanders. All of the veterans of that conflict are gone now. Not one remains with us. Those who didn't die there eventually merged with those who did, separated by a few years and a lifetime of experience. No one who survived the trenches failed to understand the absurdity. We haven't fought a trench war since.

 And with each war since, we've fought to a point of futility, where the gains seemed to pale compared to the losses. We are engaged in another one now. Spending what, ten billion dollars a week? For what? Another peace to end all peace?

I say God bless the vets, who understand better than I ever will what sacrifice really means. I pray that we will learn that our sacrifices are only evidence of our righteousness if given not for gain, but for the glory of the God within each of us.

Reliable Washington officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, report a plan by the Bush Administration to consolidate all three branches of the Federal Government under a new Department of Defensiveness. “We find ourselves in the awkward position of needing to comply with truth in government statutes,” one source confided, “And the truth is, we are on the defensive. Under present law, we could either tell the people the truth or more accurately label our actions, and we’ve chosen to more accurately label our actions.”

Washington insiders report that former Representative Tom DeLay (R-TX), who has deftly exhibited the greatest defensiveness of anyone in government over recent years, will be named to the powerful new post of Secretary of Defensiveness, or “Spin Czar”, beating out by a narrow margin the current, masterly defensive Defense Department Secretary Rumsfeld. DeLay’s responsibilities will include overseeing a consolidated bureaucracy of double speak consultants, most of whom will be secretly outsourced to experienced firms in former Soviet Bloc countries, with the ultimate goal of teaching every Federal employee and contractor how to consistently obfuscate the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

As a long time observer of Federal Government operations, I feel a deep sense of gratitude toward the public servants behind this plan. For years, we have been asking government straightforward questions, expecting straightforward responses. Now, with the creation of the Department of Defensiveness, we can ask any question, without the burden of expecting anything even remotely resembling a straightforward response.

Should this radical restructuring succeed at the Federal level, citizens should expect to see the denial model replicated at state, county, and even city levels. Insiders expect Florida, who tested an early prototype in 2000, to begin consolidation following the 2006 mid-term election cycle. Ohio won’t be far behind.

Most delighted by this change are those who expected dramatic efficiencies in government when control of both the Legislative and Executive Branches passed to a single political party. With the Department of Defensiveness in charge, we will never again be bothered by reports of unexpected cost over-runs on government projects. Other benefits will reportedly include the declaration of a balanced Federal budget and, ultimately, victory in the war on terrorism. In short, an ever more perfect-seeming Union.

So say reliable government sources.

A few years ago, I was driving across Eastern Utah looking for a radio station. I found two, but they were both playing Rush Limbaugh. Okay, I might disagree with Rush's politics, but I find his form of discourse even less agreeable. He's a blowhard. A riot inciter. A tiny mind hiding behind a big mouth.

For years, radio seemed to be the medium for tiny minds to hide out behind big mouths. Air America started a few years ago, and I found their minds just as tiny and the mouths just as big. Disagreeable discourse. Really no different than Rush.

I rarely listen to music when I drive. I find it distracting. And I really hate having other people choose my music for me. Also, my radio distorts music into squawks and squeaks, making most music sound like a Tourettes performance. So, I usually listen to books on tape.

For radio, and with the advent of podcasting I don't need a radio to listen to the radio, some terrific alternatives to tiny minds and big mouths are available.

I daily download Tom Asbrook's On Point program from WBUR in Boston. Tom employs a conversational style, invites a great mix of guests-ranging from the most frustrating conservatives to the most inspiring progressives. He takes calls and engages in lively discourse on really important issues.

I never miss Diane Rehm's Friday News Roundup program. She invites three top journalists in to dissect the prior week's news. Always at least one conservative voice. She also takes calls. The rest of the week, she invites authors and others to discuss their work and take calls. A warm and refreshing listen. Always.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge (to the BOOK, get it?) is an interview program specifically focused on discussing books. Short segments with thoughtful themes, always centered around some common topic. This program, too, is always inspiring.

To find your own favorite big minds with small mouths, I recommend Public Radio Fan. It lists virtually every public radio on the planet. Wanna know what's on in Australia this hour? Here's the place to look. It features RealPlayer (and that wannabe lightweight Windows Media Player) links. Also podcast links. I like to listen to the morning news from London before going to bed at night.

These are my top three talk radio programs. I download them to iTunes and listen at my convenience. If you're like me and insist upon civil discourse, these programs will reassure you that radio is a lot more than tiny minds and big mouths.

Our society seems stuck in remembrances. We almost celebrate the anniversaries of bad things that have happened in the past. 9/11, of course, but also Oklahoma City, which I remember because that was the day my sister Susan died in a car accident. I don't grieve Susan's passing like I did the day it occurred. I think it's evidence of a healthy human to move beyond grief and integrate losses rather than celebrate them by picking at the healing scab.

Rearview Blinders

While the world remembers
Please let me forget
All the misbegotten deeds
We could only regret.
I'd rather focus forward
And see what ever I find
Than move my sight behind myself
And miss this sacred sign.

A world impelled to ignorance
A future filled with past
A wisdom weakened by wanderlust
The moment slipping fast.
Our future stands before us
With no thing left behind
Except illusory remembrance,
A moment out of mind.

Imagine, then, this moment
pristine and freely born
Imagine another moment, then,
And ditch the fearful frown.
Nothing sticks and nothing stays
And nothing gets left behind
As moment moves into moment
in endless, streaming rhyme.

The Quad, University of Washington campus
9/11/06

Over the last year or so, ever more groups of concerned citizens have assumed the role of Jiminy Cricket conscience for me. I see the stories and think, “Well, here’s another dedicated group of concerned citizens,” even though I can’t always see what they’re dedicated to and their tactics sometimes seem unconscionable.

Hindsight

Over the last year or so, ever more groups of concerned citizens have assumed the role of Jiminy Cricket conscience for me. I see the stories and think, “Well, here’s another dedicated group of concerned citizens,” even though I can’t always see what they’re dedicated to and their tactics sometimes seem unconscionable.

Tyranny of the majority happens whenever the public process appears to ignore the minority’s concerns. Inclusive public dialogue to discover minority perspectives can reveal widely divergent opinions, not a single majority one. Representative democracy dissatisfies all of the people some of the time.

Tyranny of the minority happens whenever someone unable to garner public support decides to make their opponents pay dearly for victory. Unsuccessful at building a coalition to influence the public process, they raise private money to create roadblocks, scouring the statutes to entangle the bureaucracy in its own red tape, hopeful that the resulting bother will force capitulation. These shenanigans get expensive for the majority, which has little recourse but to defend against these bushwhacks or relent to the preferences of a few.

I’m concerned whenever the actions of a small group forces diversion of public money. I’m equally concerned when a public official’s actions conflict with my aspirations. Gratefully, most of Walla Walla’s concerned citizens resolve their concerns through dialogue—gaining friends to influence people—though anyone is free to threaten our already inadequate public coffers.

Only lawyers thrive on the fact that anyone can challenge but no one can fix the past, no matter how much treasure another might be forced to forfeit. Perfect hindsight is no replacement for wise foresight. And wise foresight is hard.

We’re all poking sticks into darkness as we probe together into our future. None of us can credibly claim superior visual acuity for what we will find there. What we choose to do when we find different from what we wanted determines how our future reveals itself.

No one finds common ground when small groups of concerned, disenfranchised-feeling wallas attack the ones they’ve cast as BIG, UNCONCERNED, DISENFRANCHISING WALLAS. Shouldn’t we be talking together as if we had a future together instead of asking judges to second-guess every step?

Good future vision requires that we conscientiously acknowledge peering forward through imperfect lenses, not rear-view polarizing ones.

I received word earlier this week that Kasha LynnMarie, a young and dear friend, died. Kasha epitomized the Silicon Valley professional. She trained as an engineer later in life than most. She raised two darling daughters on her own. She survived Dilbert-quality working conditions with healthy injections of Zen wisdom, humor, and sincere dedication.

She introduced me to her daughters' piano teacher, a Julliard-trained concert pianist who confirmed that I was a hell of a songwriter, capable of schmoozing with the big dogs, and couldn't afford not to visit Italy with my kids.

Kasha was my first blogger, sending enlivening emails back when most of us were still using the text version of Compuserve. She called them Emeals. Tasty!

I last saw her when she, her daughters, and her long-time friend Karl Lindstrom stopped by for dinner while on a hiking vacation to the Northwest. I made celeric soup. We giggled a lot.

Kasha's was an old soul in a frisky body. She was, and will always remain for me, the very embodiment of brash. Cheers, old soul. On to the next assignment.

She succumbed to the effects of pancreatic cancer, a disease which is startlingly common in Silicon Valley. Something about silicon manufacture that pancreases don't like.

Sleep well, dear one.

One of Kasha's earliest Emeals (I have a complete archive) follows:

Down, Down in the Tao

A Grand Unnameable
inaudibly speaks
from endless here,
else could speak we not
nor be.

Feathers, we,
on a deep bird
unseen between
two night skies,
flying because
feathers can.

Listening are we, with
our universe held to one ear,
to keeps-playing scuffles
between Isn't and Is, boisterous
in their muffled playroom.

To dance is the rule
in our This-That school
excepting that sleep
too is a rule
and quite more deep.

End of the world?
Peace after that?
Perhaps--but from within
the Night of All Nights
some eventually tickled
divine sleeper may
dreamingly laugh aloud,
stirring breathing into the mist--
and back soon will be we,
guns, and daily newspapers.

Call this if you wish
"The Little Laugh Theory"
although nameable is the Is
no more than is the Isn't,
down, down in the Tao.

from The Wheel of Yes
Poems and Reflections by Alan Harris 1995

"Anyone in possession of a major truth that he can’t get others to accept begins to feel that he’s losing his mind. The skepticism he meets turns him into a soreheaded obsessive. After a while, he becomes “pedantic,” and then, inevitably, “condescending” and “humorless.” Al Gore has been in possession of a major truth about global warming for more than thirty years, and he has suffered the insults of political opponents, the boredom of ironists, and, perhaps most grievously, the routine taunts of a media society which dictates that if you believe in anything too passionately there must be something wrong with you." DAVID DENBY New Yorker Current Cinema column "TUNING IN" 6/12/06

Ouch! Sounds too familiar.

I've been cranky the last few days. Feeling misunderstood, as if I possessed a truth, but couldn't articulate it to anyone else's understanding. This experience might put me in good company, but that is little consolation.

... Now, maybe if I could just articulate whatever this is to myself. ... ... ...

On a related topic... How accurate are the frequently published pundits? Someone's finally watching. A scientist has plotted the accuracy of some popular prognosticators and found that the ones who create flashy stories continue to get published, even though their predictions are almost never correct. Those who consider the complexities are not a whole lot more accurate, but they are less frequently published.

Here's a link to the story:

My webmeister was talking me through a technical difficulty yesterday when I heard him say, "Right click on the upper left-hand box."

"Huh?", I responded.

"Right click on the box."

Silence. I thought, "Am I clicking wrong?" but I said, "I don't understand what you just said."

My webmeister repeated, a little louder and a little slower, "Right click on the upper left-hand box."

More silence. "I'm wrong clicking?" I thought. But I said, again, a little slower and a little louder, "I don't understand what you just said. I can click or not click. Clicking on that box doesn't do anything."

I heard my webmeister clicking keys, "I'll look up on Google to find the right click equivalent for a Mac." A minute later he said, "Hold down the control key and click in the upper left-hand box." An undocumented, hidden menu appeared.

Those of you well experienced with Wintel computers (like my Webmeister) would probably have instantly understood the instruction. I very rarely have anything to do with those machines, which seem unusably crude to me. I always wondered why anyone would design two adjacent buttons when one would do. Right and left are two categories outside my keyboard experience.

Later, Amy asked me if I'd ever had to rely upon a Wintel machine to do real work. I reflected and realized that I had not. I moved from mainframe, where I used a text-based interface, directly to an early Mac. I was supposed to create performance appraisals and do salary budgeting on a WinTel PC, but I quickly learned to create them on the Mac and copy them over.

I'm not saying Macs are superior to WinTel machines, but they certainly are superior for me. I realize that I might be at a severe disadvantage in the job market because I don't know how to launch Windows, access Outlook Express, or shut down a "real" PC. I occasionally use one when I need to look at my email from an internet cafe, but it always feels like I'm wearing size 58 clunky boots whenever I do.

So I speak a curious dialect. I cannot understand some common idioms. I've always said that I took up with Macs because I wasn't smart enough to use a Wintel PC. I probably could learn how to use one if I really had to. Fortunately, I can write without even remembering my right from my left.

(The following is a letter to the editor of my local paper, the Walla Walla Union Bulletin. Walla Walla, having been recently discovered as the "next Napa" is suffering from some familial squabbling... )

After a month out of the country, I returned to find the kitchen table piled high with Union Bulletins. Most of the news lacked fresh impact, but pouring through those pages brought one thing into clearer focus than daily reading could have. Walla Walla is having a family feud.

I characterize this as a family feud because, like in a family, the arguments are nasty, drawn from a long memory, and most often indirect. We might sue a stranger, but we reserve disinheritance for family. Nothing ever cuts as close to bone as criticism from someone you’ll see at every future family “celebration.”

The old Czech joke asking if the Russians were friends or family concluded that they must be family, because you can choose your friends. I might have chosen my house, even this community, but I had no idea what neighbors I might end up with in the bargain. I chose my wife, but her family, my in-laws, came along unbidden.

Fortunately for me, I have tolerable in-laws and neighbors, made more tolerable by my own tolerance. Once I learned to interpret my neighbor’s penchant for filling up the loose spaces in my garbage can as their intent to improve the efficiency of garbage collection, I found them loving and caring and more than worthy of my loving care in response. Had I interpreted their acts as trespasses, the best we could have now would be a relationship rooted in my forgiveness of their trespasses against me.

Our weeks working in London confirmed what George Bernard Shaw once quipped. “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” The people of Walla Walla (the Wallas on one side and the completely different, wrong-headed Wallas on the other) are two perspectives separated by a common future. Whatever we decide together, we will get to live with together there.

Whatever decisions we make today might be less important than that we remember that we will have to live together with them there. The quality of those decisions might be improved if we remember that we are living here together now, too. We can always choose to interpret anything as a trespass, but when it comes to family and neighbors, we’re usually better off when we choose to maintain the relationships rather than the barricades between us.

©2006 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

The last few weeks have seen me computerless. A manufacturing problem, left unidentified, caused me to burn out four logic boards and make three 140 mile round trips to the nearest service center. They finally found and fixed the problem. My machine cought up with me in Wisconsin last this last week, and I'm finally clicking keys again.

In the mean time, I rediscovered the power of the pen. I relearned that I can actually write using paper, and write just about as fast and certainly as effectively. Were it not for the transcription time, I could probably create faster with a pen. Of course, the spelling would be wanting. And the transcription work is a useful edit all by itself.

I recommend going computerless occasionally. It' Lent, perhaps giving up computing for Lent would be a useful focusing tool for anyone dependent upon their computer, as dependent as I had become.

Vonnegut, in his latest book, remembers the delight in manually typing pages and sending off the resulting parcel to his typist. The human interaction demanded by this ritual was worth savoring.

Sylvia Beach up and died
And lost the lease where her business thrived.
Gone, where Joyce was well supported,
Gone but not entirely forgotted.
A man who claims to be
The grandson of Walt Whitman, he
Bought old Beach's library
and moved it to a Seine-side quay
And opened what you see today
with the original name and company.

Three times we set out for this place
And twice returned in sad disgrace.
The first search ended carefreely
The second, soaked and melancholy.
The third, a charm, on Metro train,
We found the place in spite of rain.
Both outside and inside the place
Sylvia's library's in disgrace
With water pouring over books
Written and signed by expatriates.

I bought a Joyce, a Blake or two
And spent less time than I'd planned to.
Yes, I was cold and slightly damp
and holding that dripping umbrella had given me a cramp,
But nothing like the cramp that time
leaves the library left behind.

In my life I admit that books
Have somehow given me friendly looks.
At Kilometer Zero I realized
That if my books are really alive,
Then they may keep me company
While I am here, then follow me.

The guide books all agreed that it is unwise to visit Roma in August. Not only is the heat oppressive, but many of the best restaurants and attractions are closed for the month as Romans escape to the countryside for their annual holiday. Our plane landed mid-morning on Saturday, August second, a day that promised both heat and humidity.

Our cab circled Trastevere for a half hour, seeming to end up in the same dead end alley way, retreating to a small piazza two or three times before the cab driver, after asking three different people, found himself pointed in the right direction to find the tiny opening to Vicolo Moroni. The cars parked on either side of the lane had their side rear view mirrors either pulled back against the side of the car or in some degree of being torn off. I saw a truck backing into this lane later in the week. A man on either side pulled rear view mirrors out of the way and guided the driver with barely millimeters to spare on either side. Our driver unloaded our luggage, heavy with the anticipation of a month's tour, and left, presumably to circle for another half hour searching for the way back out of this labyrinth.

After showers and a change of clothes, we emerged into this foreign place in search of a bakery and adventure. We found the bakery a few blocks away, along the Via del Moro. The bread was heavy and thick-crusted and had the consistency of an old boot sole, but we bought a Ciabatta anyway. We munched as we sauntered along the alleyways. It is a rare sight in Rome and indeed in all of Italy to see an Italian eating while walking. Our explanation of this phenomenon is that Italians revere their food too much to pay it so little attention. A munching walker is a sure sign of a non-Italian.

We found a small grocery just off the Via San Francesco a Ripa and ogled the cheese. Nancy was particularly taken with the fresh Ricotta, which was displayed in the window in little plastic draining baskets. We made note of the location so we could return on our way back to our apartment. We stopped in a little green grocery just off the Piazza di San Cosimato and ogled the zucchini blossoms and the fresh tomatoes. We annoyed the proprietor but promised to return to buy later, after we got the lay of the land. This street opened up into the piazza which on this Saturday morning was about half full of tents. It looked like a country circus or a hastily constructed revival meeting, but it was a farmer's market. We swooned.

This was our first encounter with a wonderful Italian tradition, the farmer's market. This one, we were to learn, was a minor example. Still, we were transfixed by the freshness and the variety of the soft white and violet eggplants, the peaches and plums, and the tomatoes; the tomatoes. We bought some tiny blackberries, some tomatoes, some peaches, and some wonderful grapes, but only after visiting every stand twice and learning the lineage and recent history of each fruit and every vegetable.

It was noon and the market was folding up its tents. Many stores and, as near as I could tell, all farmer's markets close at noon. The early afternoon is siesta time, a time to retreat from the high heat of the day and eat and talk and perhaps nap until three or four o'clock. No farmer's market is open after noon. The morning's the time to buy produce, the afternoon is when you prepare it.

We wandered laden out of the market plaza and began walking through a series of narrow lanes near the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere, a hot and foreboding place, with the heat of the day reflecting off the golden mosaic front of the ancient church, in spite of the fountain.

My eye was drawn into an alleyway shaded by an overhanging vine, and we entered. Down this lane was an arch and, on one side some tables were set, shaded by large umbrellas and a scruffy privet hedge. I noticed that the hedge's planter was full of bottle caps and cigarette butts and that no one was seated at the tables. It was, Nancy said, only just twelve, and the noon meal wouldn't start until more nearly one o'clock. We peeked into the door of the restaurant across the alleyway and saw that the staff was seated around a large table, finishing their lunch. A small man in a starched white coat got up from the table and came out to greet us.

We exchanged buon giornos. He then engaged in some Italian patter with Nancy, asking her to be sure and come back for lunch. He shook our hands and extracted another promise as we excused ourselves and headed back to the apartment to stash the morning's purchases and to take yet another cold shower before lunch. On our wayback, we encountered our first watermelon stand. If the guide books were wrong about anything, they were wrong about the livability of Rome in August. I forgive the gourmet restaurants their holidays and I can compensate for the daily heat and humidity with a half-dozen or more cold showers, but do not ask me to live in Roma in August without watermelon. Slices are artistically arrayed in these stands, and your slice is handed to you with the intent that you will eat it while standing there, and that you will extract the seeds with a one of the knifes thoughtfully provided. We, being newly arrived, walked away with ours, spitting seeds as is our tradition (an unconsciously sure sign of our not being Italian). We were made human and whole by the cool, sweet crispness. We sauntered along the Tevere, shaded by the enormous plane trees.

An hour later, freshly showered and wearing our third shirts of the day, we found our way back to the restaurant in the shady side street. Mario, we learned, was the waiter's name, and the Arco de San Calisto was the restaurant. Mario asked if we wanted water with big bubbles or little bubbles, and we ordered our first of many big-bubbled bottles of acqua frizzante. A mezzoliter of drinkable vino rosso (red wine) was served in an Arco de San Calisto pitcher, and decent bread and tiny grassini appeared with a bow and a "Prego". Mario leveled our cobble-wobbly table with a few of the bottle caps from the privet hedge. So that's what they were there for! Mario guided us through the menu as a skilled horseman guides his team. We quietly surrendered our free will and let Mario suggest and nudge and lead us to our best choices. (Later in the week, we overhead an American at an adjacent table order olive oil for dipping bread, and Mario flatly refused to deliver it. "Bread," he told them, "is not for dipping into oil.") Nancy ordered grilled vegetables, asking Mario to select those best for her. I chose the pasta fagioli to echoes of "Molto Bene" and "Prego" from Mario, as if I had chosen for myself and I had chosen right.

The food was as wonderful as the atmosphere. A caged bird, perched on a windowsill down the alleyway near the Arch, sang sweetly. The ivy rustled occasionally by wandering breezes and the afternoon heat melted away into a fuzz of sweet conversation, semi sweet wine, and warm service. My pasta course was a linguini with shrimp and squash blossoms, hers the house special. She was jealous. My pasta fagioli had been perfection, with small, fresh pasta rectangles properly balanced with beans in a light, delicate broth. Nancy's grilled vegetables were not as beautiful. Now, with the first course, my pasta showed better than hers. We traded tastes and stories, punctuated by ruckus of the occasional passing scooter and the murmer of potential patrons making the wrong choice and passing this quiet corner by.

Nancy's veal was heavenly, as was my pesce, grilled whole then boned and reassembled with great theatrical style at our table by Mario. Nancy order baby biscotti, and Mario brought a platter full, explaining that these were usually only ordered for children. We crunched playfully. After two sweet hours, we emerged from this dream to accept heavy crystal glasses of liquor. Grappa for me, Sambuca for Nancy. We paid the bill after an appropriately lengthy wait, and floated toward the Church in piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere, then back to the apartment, where, after showering off the latest accumulations of sweat and grit, we retired for that nap we'd longed for the night before as we flew eastward across the Atlantic. We decided as we cozied in to the sounds of the neighborhood waking up, that August in Roma would be wonderful. And it was.

We ate lunch at the Arco de San Calisto almost every day of the week we spent in Roma. On our last day in Italy, we hopped the bullet train down from Firenze to lunch one last time at this most wonderful place. The heat had left and it felt strange eating the pasta fagioli without periodically wiping sweat from our foreheads. Mario was overjoyed to see us, and we drank grappa together, promising to return for Christmas in Roma.

What the Teacher Doesn’t Tell

They wouldn’t understand.
Who would want to burden the subject by including the depth of their own despair and their feeble attempts to counter it?
History shouldn’t be about me, or them, or anyone alive today,
Except it is and inescapably so.
The big black dog that trotted beside Lincoln trots today.
Galileo and Bruno and every one of true genius,
Their anxiety still floats free,
attaching itself intermittently to those so blessed with that curse.
We’ve stopped burning these people at the stake,
excusing them from the faculty instead.
The truly beautiful minds disgust us with their compulsion and their willful inability to be even a little bit normal.
They shock us with our own conventions, and that’s unfair.

We’re not St Francis.
We’re barely fool enough to draw a paycheck, sometimes.
And barely competent to teach the obvious,
understanding that the obvious gets under foot, in everybody’s way.

What the teacher doesn’t tell yells out from him anyway.
Most hear it clearly without acknowledging anything to themselves.
Most carry this knowledge like they carry their liver or their heart,
Unaware until some trouble arrives to bring attention where none could otherwise thrive.
And then the learning clicks.
We take a quiet moment and realize that our lives continue the lives before us,
And that those who follow after us will experience the same realization
When they become a part of the history they studied, and taught, and lived.

Call for the straight jacket now.
These acknowledgements are insanity to hold,
And insanity to disclose,
And yet an essential piece of every sane one.
How could the teacher ever tell?
How could the teacher help but tell?

What the teacher doesn’t tell doesn’t need telling.
It finds its own path into the future,
like it did with you
and me
and, will most certainly, pass to those sitting before you today.

David Schmaltz
2/09/03

Senator Sam Ervin once said, "Hanglish am ma mothur taung." I know that had I home schooled, I would have passed on so much of my mother tongue (the approaches which I quite unconsciously employ), I wonder how my kids would have ever gotten untangled. I gave them plenty of "my stuff" anyway! But then, so did their public schools.

Both of my kids struggled in public school at times, yet I really felt as though there were important social lessons occurring, even when (perhaps especially when) the distractions seemed most distressing. My theory (backed up by my personal experience -- mother tongue, again) was that school was not really about learning the subjects being taught. Certainly it never was for me, and I never really had the sense following any educational experience that I "knew" a subject after taking the course. Perhaps the purpose was to gain an introduction, to find a place for further inquiry. Maybe just to see if the subject interests enough to spark further inquiry. Or maybe to develop those muscles useful for coping with frustration and apparent meaninglessness.

The same muscles that come in handy when stuck in a traffic jam or failing to escape commentators revisiting a particularly forgetfull Presidential address!

Amy (my wife) says that I don't test well. She figured out early in her public schooling how to outsmart tests, and could usually ace anything because she recognized and understood their patterns. I barely pass my driver's license renewal exam, not because I don't know how to drive and drive well, but because half of the questions seem irrelevant, and most of the answers spark curious dilemmas for me. I could make up stories explaining why any of the answers could situationally be considered wrong. And the test is administered on a computer with a Jurrassic user interface. Put a test in front of me and a part of me goes away.

I learned and honed this skill in public school. Did we ever have a class in how to take tests? Knowing something is really different than knowing how to successfully test for that knowledge. I remember taking the day off work (without pay) to take the SAT exam. Not ever expecting to go to college because I couldn't learn a foreign language (silly me, I thought that I should be able to write and speak the language after two years, so I dropped when it became clear that I wouldn't, which felt like couldn't), but someone encouraged me to sit for the SAT. Like an extended driver's license renewal test. Meaningless questions with ambiguous choices. Maybe a perfect parallel to life! I understand that some kids (or their parents) spend thousands on SAT prep courses today. Maybe those teach how to take the exam.

Graduating from high school was easily as tramautic as either of my divorces. While I was glad to be rid of the burden of unending, apparently meaningless expectations, I deeply felt the absence of an extended family which I had not fully appreciated when they were near. Still do. If I learned anything in public school, it was subtle and preconscious at the time. I learned a social order, and found my place in it. I learned to be invisible when necessary. I learned to appreciate the arts, distrust the sciences, and disobey the administration.

Today's NYTimes speaks of the Struggle Against Majority Tyranny, of checks and balances and how they don't always work. Nice read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/opinion/23mon3.html

First, the rumble.
Then smoke and cinder.
No one slows
Until the signal man
Says they must.

Even level crossings
Mind this rule.
Blind turns,
With obstructed vision,
Are worse.

How many crossings
Do we hurry by
Never noticing the show?
The level ones,
Especially, should
Require no signal man.

These need us
To slow ourselves down
to see
Anything special
Rumbling into view.