trapped

Bathtubs as Communist Propaganda.

So I've been on the road again, and for the past two nights I've been staying with some friends in Salt Lake City, UT. Thing is, they're just moving into their new house and the shower isn't up and running yet. So the only option other than hanging out in the reliable summer afternoon deluges is to use the bathtub.

Now besides soaking it up at hot springs, I haven't taken a proper bath in over a decade. So I tried to remember how to do it as I slipped into the aqua colored water in their newly installed whirlpool and reached quickly for the Dr. Bronners. But then I was confused. As I lathered up the unsubmerged parts of my body, I began to wonder- now what? Do I rinse them off in the tub? That would be kind of gross, because then everything I was trying to wash away would then disperse itself all over my body (like it did in the unfortunate Ben-Gay-in-the-tub fiasco of '95 - probably the last time I had been in a bathtub). So what then? I could stand up, lather up and then sit down again, but very quickly the schmutz would disperse and I'd be in the same conundrum. The dirt from the dirtiest parts (feet, mind) would spread to the previously less dirty parts, creating a thin film of dirtiness everywhere.

I did not want this.

But perhaps it explains something about my reluctance to clean in general. I've never enjoyed the process, but more insistantly, I've always been perplexed by the condition of mopping. To me it seemed like you took dirt from the floor, put it in the water and then swished the dirty water back onto the floor. It just didn't make sense, and yet people do it every day.

As for bathing, it makes me realize the inherent superiority of the shower as a cleaning method. It is a more capitalist method of cleaning, more thorough, more choiceful, more efficient, but perhaps a little less luxurious and definitely more American. The radical redistribution of dirt that accompanies the bathtub bath is, to me, reminiscent of the socialist systems that spread the filthy lucre of the rest in a thin film throughout the land, depriving the powerful of their power and spreading wealth to those who have neither earned it nor know how to wield it. It creates an egalitarian average that is satisfying to most but about which none can be genuinely enthusiastic.

Showering on the other hand allows for all sorts of possibilities. You can turn the water off (conserve) while lathering and make use of the barest amount of water. You can spend hours letting the massaging shower head relax your sore back muscles. Or you can simply do the conventional simultaneous lather and rinse, then let the dirt run down the drain to be recyled and re-appropriated as toilet water, ice cubes, or radiator fluid. Outstanding.

So I have to say that my preference for the shower remains unabated. If someone could tell me how to make a bath more like a shower, I would appreciate the education. But for now, I don't see how it could possibly happen. It does tell me a good deal about the European model - both economically and odorifically - and I supposed compared to the filthy habits of middle aged Europe, a dirty bath is better than no bath at all. But just barely. And of course, the American innovation, as usual, takes the cake.

Comments

So. It has come to my attention that some of you have been trying to comment on my blogs, but the bureaucratic red tape of signing in/registering dissuaded you. You have my deepest sympathies and understanding.

Now that the problem has come to my attention, I have taken steps to correct it, and now anyone - anyone - can comment on these blogs. Have at, go to, but please try to have no less tact than I display here on a day to day basis- which should give you plenty of latitude in your commentary.

I will look forward to reading it.

D-Blog

Raper Van

So it's been a while since I've checked in with Home for Now. That's mainly cause I've been home most of these past months.

But recently things have changed. . .so much in fact that I haven't been able to keep up with them and - what's worse - keep my patient readers aware of them.

So let's go back a ways, shall we, and get back into this slowly.


Some months back, I was bemoaning the fate of a raw food rambler who was so affected by the nasty "cleaning" chemicals they use in motel rooms that he spent half his motel nights in his rental car, cramped, numb, and uncomfortable, but at least able to breath. Yes, if I put a towel roll behind my lower back another one behind my neck, I could more or less sleep peacefully in a seated position in my rental sedan. But this was hardly ideal.

What's that, you say? Rental sedan? What happened, you might be asking, to your beloved Jeep (Sally, as CoKo used to call her)? Well that's a sad story - and a digression - but I think I can wrap it altogether for nice continuity - let's see.

Sally was essentially donated to CoKo who needed wheels to get around Los Angeles. I had mostly given Sally up for dead at this point- having reached around 200k miles, I was well satisfied with her life performance. But CoKo was able to make use of her in Sally's sunset years with only the occasional breakdown. Then there was the stall out on Sepulveda pass on the 405 - that was rough. And then there were several more near misses that made it clear that Sally's time was nigh.

But CoKo insisted that Sally had another life left in her and if we could just figure out why she would just stop working in the middle of the road some time, she would live another 50,000 years (car years). So on one trip out to Los Angeles, I brought her around to different mechanics to see what could be done. Many hundreds of dollars later, the mystery was unsolved, and I was, myself, stuck in more than one place while Sally refused to run.

We got her as far as CoKo's suburban driveway where she could rest largely undisturbed, as long as Sally and CoKo would muster the will to move across the street every once in a while to baffle the wily development board and keep her from being towed. After we landed her on her side street, I got myself a rental car and took to the road. Somehow believing I would never see Sally again, I cleaned her mostly out and moved the essentials to storage. Then I headed north.

There were lovely days of camping all over the Golden State. From San Diego county to Shasta county, I began to fall in love with the less well trodden corners of California and even found myself shunning my sleeping mat and lying directly on the California dirt to make my bed in. It was a marvelous and beautifully contemplative trip.


Sally wasn't much on my mind at the time (by the way, when I asked CoKo why she was so sure my Jeep was a girl, she told me only a girl would work this hard. I didn't argue.). But when I got to the hot springs outside Weed, CA near Mt. Shasta, I was giving the woman at the counter my money when she paused to take a phone call. "Jack?" she said, "The Car Whisperer. . .? Fantastic." My ears perked up, of course. A car whisperer? But of course! That was what I needed. Why didn't I think of that sooner? I was in California, after all, land of pet-psychics and God knows what else. Why settle for a mechanic when I could just get someone to ask my car itself what was wrong?

Well I called Jack some time later (530.859.8937, if you're interested), and while our connection was bad and eventually died, I did make out that it seemed like it just might be time for Sally to move on.

I had to agree with him somewhat, but endings are never easy. After all, animate or not, I'd probably spent more time with Sally than with any other single "person" in the preceding 6 or 7 years, so it would be a sad, if understandable, loss.

Eventually I got back to New York, releasing the whole stream of thought from my mind. And then one day I got the call. . .Sally had gone missing. 'Run off?' I thought, 'Stolen?' But these seemed hardly likely, what with her not starting and everything. Also, it is usually part of my anti-theft stratagem to keep my vehicles in sufficient disarray that most criminals would likely deem it not worth the effort.

No, Sally had been towed. Not by the development board, but by the fuzz. Expired registration stickers. A fair charge, since she had not been home to be reregistered in several years, but somehow I thought that California's finest only looked after their own and not their visitors' registration.

Wrong.

The fees were astonishing. $300 towing fee. $30 per day parking fee. After 45 days they would simply repo the vehicle and send me a bill. All for poor little Sally, whose bluebook value was probably just over $200. But what was I to do? I couldn't take her back, since she wouldn't start (plus I was in New York). I didn't want to wait for her parking bill to add up, so the only option was to "sell" the car to her kidnappers for the cost of the parking and towing fees. Not much of a deal for me, but it would save me the heartbreak of having to abandon Sally of my own volition.

So I red-eyed out to California (really just a morning flight, but my eyes were pretty red) and took care of business. Jet-lagged and sleepless, I cleaned out the remains of my belongings and turned Sally over to the ghetto-towing company in Santa Clarita county, and that was that.

Now while I was out on one of those trips, I was driving around with CoKo and her boyfriend, Al. Al is himself a policeman, and was a big help in fighting one of my (admittedly, many) speeding traffic tickets.

While we were driving along I spotted what I believed might be my next vehicle- a hi-top Ford Econoline Conversion Van. This would be the ideal fix for my rambling and allergic ways, giving me the freedom of the open road and the freedom from the slow death of chemical poisoning by Motel 6 and company.

Al looked over at the sturdy van and said, "Oh, you mean the van that all the rapists use." Not realizing this tidbit of cop trivia, I mulled it over for a second and then declared, "Yup, that kind."


And that would be that. Having spent some time in Hamburg, in their notorious red light district, I was well acquainted with the infamous "Reeperbahn," the forbidden street allowed only for men and whores. No women or children were allowed down this street - presumably for their own good.

I was there with my friend Matt some years ago, and after taking in a quick strip show, we headed back for wholesomer ground elsewhere.

Anyway, while saddened to be associated with violent criminals, I wasn't nearly so upset to be associated with a cultural landmark of people who would only be criminals in America - and non-violent ones at that. So my future van would be known as the "Raper Van," a lovely homophone to its German inspiration. Raper Van also has the added perk of being able to be shortened to RV, which is exactly what my little econoline is.


After much wrangling, some false leads, and many miles of searching, I bought my little RV. I'm very happy with her and am adjusting to a nightlife with a comforter on top and a muffler underneath. Once it sinks in just how free you really are in your RV, you wonder if you'll ever go back to immovable homes. I've been on the road just over a month now, and I'm honestly not sure I'll ever go back. . . Raper Vahn. That's right. D

And a Wee bit more. . .

I wasn't able to download this picture for some reason, but here is a link to see it online.
Oh, and here's the original post.
Enjoy.
D-Blog

Weehawken - a little deeper

Well I've gotten myself intrigued.

Here is a little write-up about my new favorite street (the 4 of the last 7 entries or so). Here's another.

Interesting. The city never ceases to amaze.

How to ride a bike - Addendum

So, upon further experimentation, the easiest way to implement the shoulder release technique is to simply roll the shoulders forward - not up, but forward. This removes them from their sockets enough that they are properly relaxed for the shock absorber effect to work. And it's easier than just trying to relax them.

Good luck

D-Blog

Weehawken

There used to be a magic store on 18th St. Or was it 19th St.?

Not the kind of magic store you're thinking of with fart pillows and vampire's teeth. Magick with a "k." The kind for real honest-to-goodness Crowleian occultists. It was, in its way, the Wal-Mart of magick stores. Whether you needed a robe, a dagger, a pentacle, or any manner of rues, candles, or incenses you could find them within 5 minutes of exiting the 9 train at 18th St. (as was).

Where did it go? The space was amazing- huge, in that way that Chelsea could be, that New York could be before it was divvied up for profit and exploitation of the poor or the trendy.

Well that all seems to be gone now. The way of Urban Archeology on Lafayette, or even Ernie's on Boradway. Any grand space in the city seems to have been appropriated by the big box monstrosities. They either supplant the old guard outright or price them out surreptitiously by turning the neighborhood into a suburban development retrofit. Sad, really.

It is the source of my prayer against the 2nd Avenue subway - and the possibility of there ever being a 9th Avenue one.

Remoteness is important. Conquering every inch of a territory is an affront against the Gods, and in a circumscribed space, like the island of Manhattan, a certain amount of self-restraint is required. Fortunately, when we push too hard, the Gods usually push back, and we have been spared from hosting Jets games on the vast, wild city-prairie along 11th Avenue. If it were me, I'd declare West-Central Manhattan as a national park, preserving its industrial heritage and wide open spaces. Perhaps we could even throw some buffalo on the land to give it that North Dakota feel.

It's why I was so happy with my discovery today: Weehawken Street.

But before we go into that, let me recount one of the happiest cab rides I've had in the City. I was staying at my friend Steve's house on Horatio St. and had a suitcase of stuff with me. I went down to the sidewalk to hail a cab to go back home. Across the street, a hot, meat-packing girl was stumbling onto the sidewalk trying to flag him down, but the guy passed her by and pulled up beside me and got out to help me with my suitcase.

"I'm sorry, man, I'm not going to the airport, only uptown." I told him.

He said, "It's ok, I saw you first, so that's how it goes."

This was off to a good start.

On the way uptown, the driver told me that this was his shift, the night shift, and that each night - for over 10 years - he always saw something that he'd never seen before. Some street, some building, some congregation of weirdos - something that surprised him.

Let me say that nothing warms a New Yorker's heart more than hearing this kind of thing. Our love for New York is something we wish everyone could feel- probably the way the Jesus people feel about, well, Jesus, in Kentucky. It's just awesome.

It turned out this guy was from New York himself, so it made his constant reacquaintance with the city that much more inspiring. We spent the whole ride chatting about how things had changed, where he goes to pick up late night fares - no longer in China town or the UWS but Chelsea, K-Town, and the Lower East. We talked about our favorite restaurants and about how all of the crazies had not been driven out by Giuliani - a point I had to take his word for outside of Zabar's.

It was one of those joyous experiences that I did not want to end. I remember being grateful for each red light to prolong the ride. One of the greatest trips I'd ever had- and the kind that I don't remember having had since I was a boy.

Well last week when I discovered Weehawken Street, I thought of the old cab driver and wondered if he knew about it. Weehawken Street- named, I imagined for the part of New Jersey that it was closer to than it was to Time Square - is nary a block long. An afterthought, or maybe a favor to a friend of a city planner. It is a street of no real consequence and one whose absence would never have been noticed if it had not been put there at all. And that, to me, is what makes art art- the luxury of superfluousness and unnecessariness. But that's for another post and another blog.

The most notable thing about Weehawken Street was the one house that was in the middle of it. It was an old, wood shingle house with a stairway running parallel to the street. It looked like somebody's random home out in Queens, only it was a total one-off, not part of a tract the way so many of the lower middle class places are out there. Maybe it was the only house on the block at one time. Or maybe just on that side of the block, since it faced a lovely older structure that had fantastic, peeling gold leaf letters atop the door that tastefully - but pridefully - proclaimed the address.

It was the house that struck me, though. Every neighborhood now has a hold-out from the 80s- some barber shop, diner, or supermarket that didn't get heaved up in the 90s to be replaced by banks and Starbucks. But this house on Weehawken looked like it had skipped that cycle and was a holdout from the one before. Or maybe even the one before that, so off the beaten trail was it that it seemed impervious, oblivious even, to the passage of time and the constant turning over that is the lifeblood of real estate in New York City.

Obviously I love obstinacy. And usually the obstinate ones who truly succeed are not the willful ones, fighting against progress, but the ones who simply refuse to progress themselves and live seemingly unawares that anything at all has changed since their own personal high period.


I didn't knock on the door. I half expected some old shotgun granny would be waiting on the other side in a rocking chair like they do in Carolina or New Mexico. Truth is, it would almost be worth getting shot for, just to see what was inside.

But I'll save that for next time.

I biked along Weehawken Street, doubled back to get a second look at the old house, and pedaled on.

And then it was done.

I had moved back into contemporariness and the West Village, and my journey outside of time had come to an end.


Still, I remembered Weehawken Street for the rest of that glorious day, as I biked past the old magick shop that hadn't been as fortunate (or perhaps as obstinate) as the Weehawkeners. If I was at the right place, it was now some martial arts center called Tiger Jewish-something. An appropriate use of the space, but definitely an affront to the spirit of the old magick shop.

The new tenants were well-meaning self-defense nerds, upstanding, teaching sportsmanship and self-esteem to neighborhood kids, fighting obesity, teaching character, and all that. And it could have been worse (Chase, Duane Reade), but it still stank to me of the sterilization the city underwent during the Giuliani era. These were not generally the wholesome, pasty, soulless midwesterners who flocked to the city during the Seinfeld years. But they were the ones teaching those people's kids karate.

So maybe this was the Chelsea version, slightly hipper, but still sanitary. The old-schooler in me knows that any of these kung fu Stuyvesant students is going to catch a bullet in the brain if he ever tries to use any of that stuff against a mugger or a street gang- if he ever encounters one, that is. Genuine fear, though harder on the self-esteem, is superior to blind confidence- particularly in the face of the arsenal employed by the kids that couldn't afford to go take karate lessons after school- or who just had better things to do with the money they made selling coke to the kids at Collegiate.

Anyway. . .we're getting off track here, but I somehow relate the tenants and customers of my old magick shop more to the scary hoodlums than to the skinless chicken breast babies that tenant the place now. There was an immediacy that has been lost as the stability and comfort that the Central timezone people have inflicted on our once tumultuous entropy settles in. And I still don't like it.

But on a beautiful day in October, I tasted a bit of the thrill of discovery my old cabbie inspired me with. And for that, I can certainly be grateful.

How to ride a bike

Wow, gentle reader, it's been a while, hasn't it? I hope my other blogs have been keeping you entertained while this one has been on the bench. The truth is, there has been much travel in recent months- some of it very eventful but my thoughts have been elsewhere, and it was not until now that I have something pressing to write about.

And I'll get right to it.

I'm in New York. Have been for a while really. And while traveling out of New York is sometimes a pain, traveling within New York can be every bit as adventurous as a trek through the Sierras.

What I'm talking about here is biking. The life and death video game of NYC survival and recreation. I love my bike, and i love taking it around Manhattan and the boroughs almost as much as I love anything.

People often worry out loud about the dangers of biking in NYC- semis, cabbies, horse draw carriages, and regular old pedestrians are constant threats to your fun and safety. But perched a good foot above most car height, you are mostly safe from these wayward obstacles, provided you are paying attention. The real danger, as far as I can tell, is the semi-ubiquious pothole. Especially if you are tailing a vehicle or riding at night you may not see one of these road gashes until it's too late. Then boom. Even going slowly a pothole can dethrone you (I recently spilled while sliding up against an electrical wire going 0 miles an hour. Painful to both body and soul).

But there are potholes and there are potholes. The deep trenched that can throw you no matter what are actually somewhat rare, but the medium grade dips that can interrupt the inattentive are almost everywhere- 9th ave., the Village, and all over Brooklyn.

I ride a hybrid now, and there are no shocks. I've never ridden with shocks, really, so I can't say whether they would help with these. But in the past I have taken the approach to loosen my grip around the handle bars and let the bike slide around my hands as it bounces over the road pocks. But recently (after a spill) I found that there could be a better way to do this- and that would be to create your own shocks.

The Beta version of the technique went like this: grab the handlebars firmly. Firmly. Then relax your elbows, as much as possible, thus creating your own arm-shocks. Thus, if the bike was severely tossed by the turbulence, it would still not slip out of your hands. And you would get the shock absorption from the loose elbows.

This was a distinct improvement over the original loose grip technique which, in severe bumpage, could lose you the bike and much else with it, all the while reflecting why it is the girls' bikes with the low cross tube.

As I thought about teaching this new method, I realized that the real trick would be isolating the wrists from the elbows. After all, the arms like to work as a whole unit, and tightening the fingers while relaxing the elbows can be a bit of a mindfuck, even for yogis and drummers who are used to isolating their different muscle sets.

So today, a newer version dawned on me: forget the elbows. Relax the shoulders.

And this worked. You get the shock absorption you want from loose elbows, the tight grip on the handlebar, but somehow the isolation is less scratch-your-head-rub-your-tummy than the Beta version.

So go forth and experiment for yourself.

Run over some railroad tracks if you live in the sticks, or, better yet, go to the other side of them where the roads aren't maintained. If you've got an improvement on the shoulder technique, I'd love to hear it. But for now, I am set on my survival tactic for dealing with the mean streets and shallow craters that make New York City biking some of the most exciting in the world.

Nice

"The person who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign place. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong person has extended his love to all places; the perfect man extinguished his."

-Hugo St. Victor, 12th Century.

Old Guys

An excellent salute to Old Guys. For those of us born as Capricorns, this is, sadly, how we feel even when we are young, so aging is really a process of watching everybody else catch up, while we've already changed two or three pairs of laces on our waders.

This is just too fabulous

Occasionally I have my faith restored in the good ol' US of A.

Click here for a wonderful story.

Airports

I've taken the LAX-JFK flight at least a dozen times by now, and it's getting that I no longer need to look at my gate assignment. If I'm going from LA to New York, all the people are dressed like they're in Sex and the City. If I'm going to LA, everyone looks like they're on American Idol. It's almost foolproof- also going to LA they're always a little pudgier. . .
D-Blog

omg

Staff of Life - Santa Cruz
Raw Spinach Hummus. Like nothing else.

So Dear Friends. . .

For those of you who are old time readers of this blog and are looking to catch up on some half-read agenda piece from 2008, I have an announcement.

In order to better serve my loyal readership, I have split Home for Now into 3 different blogs, arranged by general subject matter.

Home for Now will remain as it is, as it was always meant to be, a travelogue.

Poli-Blog will be for all things Political and Policy-Oriented.

Sci-Cult-Blog will be for Science, Culture, and the Arts

In the works will be a blog dedicated to the many strange people I know.

Stay tuned. . .

D-Blog

Israel

There is something deeply humiliating about Israel- its very existence as such. It is this humiliation, I believe, that is at the root of the state's hyper-militarism which is unabated after nearly 60 years of statehood.

To draw a parallel as to why the Israeli consciousness is anchored in humiliation, let us turn today to Iraq. Thomas Friedman, myself, and others have argued that part of the motivation for the civil strife and anti-Americanism in Iraq is simply a response to the humiliation the Iraqis feel at the fact of being liberated at all. What an embarrassment. To live in fear for 30 years and then to have some external power walk in and in a couple of weeks have plucked out the great terror of your lives? What were you so afraid of if the US can just roll in and do what you, the Iraqi people, wish you could have done for so long. It is a concrete symbol of your impotence.

So. To combat that feeling within, one must turn on the liberators to make them feel your pain, to show them that you are a force to be reckoned with and not some weak, backwards nation. So you fight and lash out against the very people who "saved" you for the very reason that your needing to be "saved" was so insulting.

To feel one's power as a nation one wants to *earn* nationhood. Through warfare, through exploration, through revolution- whatever. It is not something to be bestowed if it is to have its grounding in virility. The Iraqis are now - and have been for 5 years - earning their country by driving out the tyrant-savior. The war will go on until the humiliation is expunged.

Israel, then. Israel was formed by a charter, not by war. It was granted. In the Jewish religion it is Yahweh who will grant us our nation- not the British. This arbitrary land grant, in response to collective European embarrassment at the holocaust (which could have happened in any European country experiencing the kind of recession Germany experienced in the 30's), feels sketchy under the feet. After all, if land can be granted it can be un-granted too, right? No one would think of revoking the British charter to England. They earned it through settlement and warfare over centuries. The American charter was won largely through measles and smallpox but it was won nonetheless. Greece, China, Japan, Mexico- these countries all have proud traditions of manly conquest to settle their territories. But Israel was a gift out of the goodness of the world's heart. Not convincing.

In fact it would appear to be another plank in the long line of Jewish complicity with the going master-power. Jews made deals with the Romans for political protection in exchange for subservience and compliance. Similar deals were made throughout history as an exchange for being guests in others' lands. The feeling is not so disimilar today, at heart. It is a permeating humiliation.

That Israel continues to rely today on support from the US and England, the current global master and its lapdog, reeks of history. And Israel will never feel like a true home so long as Jews are still entangled in this traditional role as serf- or really worse, "guest."

So how to overcome this feeling of emasculation? Well obviously through warfare. And like the Iraqis, it is not a matter of winning, but of venting, of raging until the manhood is restored, until one effectively can tell oneself, "If I had fought this hard, I would have won the land for myself in the first place." That is what Jews, Iraqis, and all "liberated" people (including, I would say blacks and women in the US) are fighting for- to feel as if they have the power to do for themselves what others have patronizingly done for them.

This struggle can last a lifetime. It can last forever. Ultimately, history can not be unwritten in this way, and so the wound of liberation is ongoing. Perhaps over time the memory will diminish, or perhaps, as in Iraq, the continuing pressure of Israel on the US will turn US opinion against the tiny nation. Perhaps this is what Israel really wants after all, a confrontation with the master. And the pushing, like a spoiled child, for every allowance and concession is unconsciously designed to push away the smothering parent. Would Israel want war with the US? Absurd. But to be freed from US protection, it would be free to test its own strength in the world as a truly independent nation, no longer an obsequious guest of the going king-state.

The Iraqis are ahead on this one. Jews haven't resorted to terrorism since the Maccabees in Greece, but perhaps they can learn something from their Arab cousins about how to stick up for yourself. It is a tricky situation, no doubt, but the stakes are real. The land grant was won some 60 years ago, but at huge cost. But that cost, that holocaust, was the anchoring on which the state's claim to be was laid.

But mass murder and victimhood do not form a stable basis for a nation. All other peoples who suffered such a fate gave up their nationhood and were absorbed by those who won. The German war crimes were horrifying but, sadly, only really by modern standards. Such barbarity was the daily practice for pre-modern cultures, many of whom, it should be pointed out, were barbarians. The scale and perversity of the crimes was new, commensurate with the technology and population of the time. But cultures have always killed their enemies (and their scapegoats), but those enemies are never given land in exchange for losing.

And this is the strange predicament of the Jews, the cultural anachronism that did not die but waited to receive its land from Yahweh as promised in the Covenant with Abraham. Have we lived to see that covenant fulfilled? I do not know.

But to me it doesn't feel right. The restoration of power was not granted by divine exaltation but by surviving holy hell. There is a strong connection between land, territorialism, and virility. To defend land you have been given is not the same as to defend land you have fought for. It simply isn't. And I feel sad that the Israelis will spend a good deal more time thrashing around on their gift before they can really call it their home. We shall see what happens.

Of Menonites and Meteorites - a Flashback and a Detour

So something about me is that I'm a bit of a misanthrope. I love humanity, but I hate people. So I have found a good compromise for myself in being something of an anthropologist, looking at people through the lens of their groups and cultures and trying not to deal with them too personally if I can help it. Of course this is a pretty good definition of a racist, but I believe my intentions are slightly less self-interested than those of racists. I crave diversity and take the same dispassionate view of my own people as I do of 'others.' And that's just the way I am. So in my travels I have taken a peculiar interest in, though always at a distance from, American religion.

American religion scares the hell out of most people, and there's no reason it shouldn't out of me too. But for some reason, I feel good humored enough to engage my heterodoxical peers without feeling like I will wind up bound and ass-fucked on the river side like that guy in the Burt Reynolds Movie.

Nonetheless, I have a couple of stories that I usually like sharing about my experiences in America regarding the foibles of provincialism in middle USA.

The first is a simple conversation I had on one of my first visits to Salt Lake City. As many of you will know, the Mormons have a thing about genealogy. it's got something to do with knowing everybody's bloodline for the hereafter and so forth, so they do their best to track down all the birth records and match them up with folks and put it all onto the computer.

Well I have a thing for genealogy too, and while I was in the shopping mall in town I noticed they had a little darkened room with a bunch of computer terminals in the back. Standing out front was this tight little old lady who looked remarkably like Dana Carvey. I decided i would like to go in there and do my little search to get more info on my ancestors, so I approached the little old lady.

Now I was cautious. My dad had warned me as a kid that most folks don't take too kindly to Jews, so I decided to keep it on the down-low as I walked over to the woman.

"So," I said, in my most gentile-like voice, "You guys have genealogy records here, huh?"

"Yes, we do."

"Well, I'd be interested in looking up my ancestors. Is there a fee?" Damn! Blew my cover. . . But no, she didn't notice.

"No there isn't. Our software is open to the public."

"What if. . ." here goes, "What if you're not, you know, Christian?"

"Oh we have records for Catholics too."

That was it for me.

"Thank you, ma'am. I'll check back a little later." The flashbacks to Hebrew School came in a wave. . .kicked out of Sumer, kicked out of Babylon, kicked out of Greece, kicked out of Syria, kicked out of Persia, kicked out of Utah. . . Wait a minute. This was America. The Mormons are an oppressed minority, surely there's some simpatico there.

After a quick walk around the bookstore I came back to the little old lady who had not moved or changed expression for the intervening 15 minutes. It was a little like the gatekeepers and wizards in the Legend of Zelda who never seem to recognize you no matter how many times you enter their lair asking for magic.

"So do you have records for everybody?" I asked.

"We try to get records for as many people as we can."

"What if you're like. . .I don't know, Buddhist or Hindu or something, do you have records for them?"

"Well yes, everybody."

Phew, so maybe she would think I was a Hindu.

I walked in and sat down at the computer, typed in my parents' names and shazam, up came the names of my maternal grandparents- birthdays and death days with location. I was impressed. . .what else did they know about me?

Not much, apparently, just that I was some stray Hindu who walked into their shopping mall on a cool Autumn afternoon. . .



Well years before that I was driving around Arizona on highway 10. That's a pretty lonely road once you're outside Phoenix and Tucson. But somewhere out there, there's a road marker that says, "Meteor Crater site, 40 Miles." That comes to about an hour round trip off the freeway, but I wanted to see the thing, so I took the turn-off and drove along an even lonelier desert road until I got to the crater museum.

It's actually pretty spectacular there. Once you navigate past all the RVs and find a parking spot, you walk into the museum part that leads onto a deck that surrounds most of the crater. It's impressive.

The idea is that a rock came flying out of the sky at incredible speed and struck the earth, leaving this huge, well, crater in the ground. And it was still there. I was looking right at it.

Part of the museum was a little movie theater where every 15 minutes they would show a movie about how the crater was formed- a rock flew out of the sky, hit the earth and bounced a few miles in one direction. Scientists recovered the rock and it is now sitting in the middle of the museum on a pedestal for you to look at.

Well I was no fool. I knew how craters were formed. What I found most interesting about the movie was the people sitting in front of me. There was a husband in his late thirties perhaps, a wife, four sons and about five daughters, all sitting next to each other - the boys first, then the girls, in order of height (and presumably age). The father wore one of those beards like the Amish that made us pancakes at Reading Terminal Market in Philly- full beard but with the moustache shaved off. The women all wore little bonnets and aprons like little house on the prairie, each one identical.

I was mesmerized. What a country, that these people can live like this, that I can live the way I do, and that the German tourists seated across the aisle could be there too- three different centuries of culture under one roof watching a movie, and nobody was killing each other. I was proud.

The movie ended and we all wandered out into the main room of the museum to see the big meteorite that had hit the ground out here in Arizona. The thing was mounted on its pedestal by a steel rod, and the helpful museum curator informed us that even though the rock was only about the size of a terrier, it weighed something like 4,000 pounds (I may be making that up, but it was especially dense).

At this point, the man with the beard looked over to the curator.

"This thing came from outer space?" he asked, almost scoffing.

"Yes it did," came the answer, "In 1936 at over 400 miles per hour."

The man looked back at the curator, the scoff now fully realized.

"Well, I don't believe that." And he walked away with his wife and children.


I was beside myself. I had never seen such assurance in someone's faith before, standing up to a multi-million dollar science exhibit complete with grad student curator. It's hard to describe, but I was almost in love. The sheer stubbornness to flat out reject science like that without any counterargument or discussion. I was beyond envious. I was adoring.


When I used to read books about homeschooling, I was very careful to separate the "true" homeschoolers who let their children unfold in a natural, self-directed way, from the religious nuts who brainwashed their children even worse than the schools would have. I used to read about homeschooling families that wouldn't register their children as citizens when they were born so they wouldn't have to pay taxes and could live free on the land. They wouldn't need vaccines and they would never be drafted to fight in some God-forsaken country overseas.

At the time I was convinced these people were nuts. But the more I read, the more I realized- there were a lot of people like this. And the more I read, the more I realized that they're really a lot like me. I have no faith in government, vaccines, or school. I am not interested in having my children fight in Iraq or Afghanistan. And while I don't believe the earth was created in 6 days 6000 years ago, I find the scientific explanations utterly inadequate. (With a margin of error of half a billion years, they are hardly ones to be casting stones.)

So perhaps this American, from so far away- both culturally and geographically - was really more my brother than I would have suspected him to be, perched on my 4th floor apartment on Columbus Avenue. That different people could have such different beliefs and still, in this day and age of standardized knowledge and culture, maintain their loyalty to themselves- I find miraculous. And while I'm glad I will never have a real conversation with this man, for him and his people I am still most grateful.

After all I'm a bit of a misanthrope. Hate people, love humanity. . .

On the Road again, again. . .

No sleep.

It’s going on 10 days now that I haven’t had a real night’s sleep. Two nights out late with Ingrun/Mikey – then up early. Two nights on the couch at TR's. Comfortable but hot. One night on Oliver’s couch at Wonder Hut, then two on his couch ad Judy’s. Then, as if by demotion, two nights on the floor at Jeb’s house in Cleveland – on my comfortable stretching mat, but the floor none the less, sleeplessness compounded by treadmill being on the floor, pound pound pound early in the morning. Finally, I thought, Motel 6, West Des Moines. Home sweet home. But alas, my room had the smell of fat housekeeper B.O. with that body powder type of fat woman smell. Not so bad except in the bathroom. Kept the window open at night to air it out, but that was the freak, early Fall day, 49 degrees, freezing, fasting, couldn’t sleep, almost got sick, body does not want to contract that much that quickly from the summer to handle the cold, especially probably won’t last too much longer, don’t hunker down for winter season yet. So didn’t sleep too well in Iowa.

It’s now 6:45 AM in Cheyenne. Motel 6 here located right by the railroad tracks. RIGHT by the railroad tracks. Don’t know how it happens that the trains never go by until after you’ve checked into your room. Maybe they’ve got some kind of system worked out with Pacific Rail or maybe it’s just the lost Murphy’s Law or in the Dead Sea Scrolls or something. By 9pm it was going every hour, whistle pressed into my stomach like the guy on the Maxell commercial. Then I found that they go the other way too and it was every half hour. By 5 thus morning it was every 20 minutes, don’t know how they have room for all those trains, but again I got no sleep.

As it turns out, I don’t need that much sleep, really- raw foodists can get by with a lot less than normal people. But for me, sleep is where I integrate what I’ve learned from the day. My brain waves can slow so that things connect more quickly without the interference of the mind, preoccupied during the day with survival and navigation. It is said that for those of us with our Suns in the 12th house that sleep time can be more real than awake time. I’m not sure if I feel that way, but I would say that it’s at least equally as productive in terms of what’s important to me now. It’s as if I can make just so many connections in my brain that need to be digested that without a full night’s sleep there’s an annoying, frustrating backlog, and I can’t get on with the day. So going without sleep is no fun, and any inherent grouchiness I have is amplified manifold without it.

I’ll sleep in the car this afternoon when I’m away from the tracks. Remind me to tell you the story of the train tracks in Flagstaff. Don’t know why but wasn’t up to a repeat of that experience, good as it was. Maybe I’ve just caught a wave of sleeplessness and I’m just riding it til it’s over and I can catch up for the whole month.

So much has happened, really, it’s a shame just to talk about sleep. Let’s see if I can hit some of the highlights.

Wonder Hut. Oliver has been going out to Long Island for some 25 years now and has invited me out to come see his cabin for the past several. Well I finally made it out and I’m thoroughly glad I did. He and Judy have found this spot in Amagansett that must be the last remaining plot of forresty wilderness on Long Island. Being there you would have no idea that just down the road, the ueber-yuppies would be chowing down at cittanuova or paying 14 dollars for a carton of blackberries at the farmer’s market. No, tucked away in a little corner of a dirt road is their little hut, decorated perfectly, the way the prissiest Bed & Breakfasts night decorate if only they weren’t so prissy. Oliver treated me to some of his famous oatmeal al dente as I sat in marvel of the many trinkets and decorations that gave Wonder Hut its indescribably charming décor. Amazing.

My Wonder Hut visit was at the tail end of a longer trip to Long Island which started at TR's place in East Hampton. Right on the Bay, quiet and tucked away from the socialites (it felt), TR's place is the perfect getaway for the slightly less rugged. We had an excellent sailing (floating, mostly) trip in the Bay in which we discovered new lands, learned about pirates, and decided it would be better to be Mayor of a small town in Northern California than to settle the new lands and become Emperor of Daveland- at least that was my conclusion. The highlight of the trip was the discussion we had at TR's apartment two days later in Greenwich Village about Southern women and tying up loose ends. Oh, and Kill Bill. More later.

So the trip out west was sort of a trip out East first, kind of like how they launched the Mars probe towards Venus first so that they can use its gravitational field to propel it towards the outer solar system. Nothing can propel you faster towards California than four days in the Hamptons (just kidding). The drive to Cleveland was pleasant. During my two days there I must have sucked down a dozen green juices from Wild Oats. Delicious. Jeb had made these freezer brownies and different raw ice creams to try. Very yummy, but they definitely increase the yeast in your system. That may be the cause of the gassiness, JB.

Met Jeb’s father, who is a remarkably kind man. He’s from New Ulm Minnesota, which is maybe a 6 point type on the map rather than a 4 point, to give you an idea of its population. We watched the President presiding and the rest of the chatterers chattering about how there’s nothing to do in Iraq, like everybody said would happen 5 years ago, except so what? Vindication is not that rewarding, and it must be hard to be Paul Krugman.

In Omaha I had a too short tea with K. at the tea place near Wild Oats (more juice there too). We had quite the time selecting from the dozens of teas at the shop. The lady there was very tolerant of our prolonged deliberating and she actually gave me a free cup of Pu-Er tea to go. Sweet. Seeing K. was wonderful. It’s been a few years, but it’s funny and pleasantly disconcerting how some things don’t change.

The rest of the drive to Cheyenne was good. Lots of mulling and fantastic insights and realizations. I don’t know if they’re hidden in the road somewhere and you collect them along the way or if the road is just the fertile soil that generates imaginal life as the ground generates all the trees and the flowers.

Fuck that train is loud. I gotta go.

I’ve been fasting for about two days now, but I’ll be passing through Salt Lake again, and I don’t know if I can resist a helping of Omar’s Taboulueh. Think I’ll make an exception. . .

Ok, Murphy, but just this once. . .

“Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference.” – Murphy’s Law

Saeran St. Christopher's "a posse ad esse"

The first point I’d make is about politics, not science. The current round of Creationism debate is primarily political. There hasn’t been a national debate on evolution of this scope since Scopes. Why has it resurfaced now- along with the other red herring issue of the day- gay marriage? These are political hooks meant to solidify Republican hegemony. All of the serious intellectuals (and most of the adult homosexuals) in this country are stocked in the solidly Blue states of NY, CA, MA, and IL. These states have been lost to the Republicans forever, so there is no harm in letting the blowhards (pundits & professors, etc.) blow as hard as they like. Those of us on the Upper West Side will never pull the R lever no matter the candidate. However, in the 50/50 states that we now call Red States, the surest fire way to get the angry proles out to the voting booths to create that 51% majority is to wave around pictures of arrogant scientists from New York and Cambridge claiming that the middle-American religious lifestyle is bunk.

In other words, you’ve taken the bait, seeing an opportunity for self-aggrandizement and self-promotion. There really is no debate on this subject except with fairly narrow, provincial minds. You’ve fallen into the intellectual trap of believing that reason is the causal actor in life, that reason alone shall set you free. The emotional response elicited by threatening (intellectual) ideas is what moves people’s passions and moves them to act. And while the intellectuals pat their own backs for being “right” they watch the world go to hell around them with nothing but their own self-satisfaction to comfort them. The most recent result of this farce was the victory of Bush/Cheney in 2004.

You took the bait in the typically stupid manner to which most smart people are prone – an idiotic question was posed and you couldn’t resist showing everybody how smart you were by refuting it. But the people who posed the question have no concern for intellectual rigor or who comes out on top of the debate. It’s basically a give away. What they’re concerned with is raising emotions which cause people to act and override their reason. And my friend, it is working splendidly.

No intelligent person likes being condescended to. And no one who would take your points on faith I would consider to be an intelligent person. As for the rest, you’re just fanning the flames of their resentment of intellectualism in general, further widening the (unnecessary) rift in the social fabric.

“There is no conflict between Science and Religion, however there is conflict between stupid science and stupid religion” – Abraham Maslow

My second point would be religious. The assumptions you make about the nature and intent of the universe are profoundly arrogant and at the same time revealingly simplistic. I can empathize to a point, as I remember myself as a young scientist puzzled that any fool would spend his time majoring in Theology since we had already proved that God did not exist, so what was the point? Of course I was only fourteen at the time and had never seriously investigated faith, myth, religious history, or any kind of practical numinosity. But as I matured I began doing my own research into the more sophisticated spiritual worldviews and learned of their richness, depth, wisdom, and indeed, practicality.

In hearing what I could tolerate of your lecture I was taken aback by the wideness of the assumptions you make about what religion has to offer us – that somehow the primary religious tenets are that we are “meant” to live in a perfectly harmonious world where creativity is “efficient” and hostility to life is the exception and not the rule. Ignoring the fact that serious scientists ought to examine their own assumptions exhaustively, a step which you do not seem to approach in this segment, I would condemn the emotional weakness such assumptions imply:

It is a typical intellectual conceit (and in general a male prejudice as well) that there be some kind of fixed, harmonious, Euclidian order to the world. The intellectual’s feeling of superiority over the emotionally-driven population leads him (generally) to discount the emotional experience as irrelevant, or at best primitive and unworthy of very much respect. But if one takes the emotional person’s point of view, it is the imperfections, the vicissitudes of life that create the challenge, the drama, and the experience of life itself. While the intellectual spends his time breaking life down into meaningless bits, all the while searching for “meaning,” the life experience - which may be the meaning itself - passes him by. From a psychological standpoint this tends to be due to a weakened emotional stance in the individual forcing him to use reason to attempt to control-by-making-sense-of something which is not inherently reasonable. This tail chasing is evident in the current creationist debate.

Suffering, death, the ferocity of nature, the process of creativity - these are all the subject of serious religious thought, discussion, and philosophy. In Saeran's video post, you seem to be refuting an assumption about how these subjects are understood by religious persons. Making such assumptions, of course, makes your case seem all the more obvious and yourself all the more superior. But you have chosen those assumptions just for that purpose, ignoring the rich history and exploration into the deeper psycho-spiritual underpinnings of the human experience. It is an argument against Maslow's "stupid" religion, invoking Murphy's directive to stop arguing with those people!

I am aware that the typical Creationist point of view is moronic- from a scientific point of view. And if Saeran had posted one of their rants on her site, I would be telling them that their simplistic and shallow view of religion was provoking this inflated reaction in the scientific community and that they would do well to seek out the deeper truths in their faiths rather than the fatuous "Thou Shalts" that make them all sound like Philistines. The people that promote these simplistic religious ideas are just as guilty of opportunism and self-promotion as you are, only on the other side – none of which is to the public benefit. The “sensible” Christians and the “sensitive” scientists don’t get air time on Bill O’Reilly – or even Charlie Rose. It’s only the sophomoric fringe that get the play in the public forum – and it’s for exactly the same reasons – they stir emotions, get people to act (i.e. tune in) and boost ratings – again to no great public benefit.

Just to iterate, the cleverness of this tactic politically is that while there is indeed an emotional reaction in the intellectual elite to the silliness of the creationist rhetoric, it is a reaction that is impotent to effect change, due of our political landscape. No matter how angry the folks get in Harvard Square or at Northwestern, the political outcome will not be any different than if they had all been asleep- whereas in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, those few angry rednecks are just enough to push the conservatives over the top. And you are the one luring them on. “Stupid Design.” What better way to get a redneck out of bed on a cold Tuesday in November than calling Jesus stupid. And here we are today. "Four more years!"

A third point is this: Have you ever been to Kansas? Have you ever seriously opened your mind to what you consider to be the ridiculous? As a middle-class, prep-schooled New Yorker myself, I had what must be a similar aversion to life beyond the Hudson. But in a recent bout of courage I made my way to Kentucky – or was it Ohio? – to the new Creationist museum. I had heard the blurb on NPR which declared it to be an anti-abortion, anti-homosexual political tool and decided to see for myself – a little scientific inquiry, eh? I’ll spare you the story of my entire adventure (unless you’d like me to elaborate) and say the whole thing was really quite civilized. From a technological view it made the Museum of Natural History on the West Side look like something my uncle threw together in his basement. They used (perhaps ironically) the full power of modern scientific technology to make their case. It was indeed an impressive display.

But as for substance, when I tried to suss out exactly what they were getting at, it turned out to be a very simple point, and one that I find wholly worthy of discussion. They chose the medium of film to show a young girl asking questions about her life, who she was, what was her purpose, and why was she here – questions that most thoughtful people ask in their lives. During the film, the hipster-looking angels sweep down (accompanied by vibrating seats and surround-sound speakers) and attempt to assuage her concerns that she was here only as an accident of random genetic mutation and that her life had no meaning, purpose, or significance whatsoever.

Now this is a fair point, I’d say. Highly intelligent people have criticized the idea of random mutation as the driving force of evolution – and the nihilism that logically follows from it. In their plain little film, the creationists suggest that there are holes in much of the scientific evidence (points I’m sure you’ve addressed in your many public engagements) and that therefore the world must have been created in the way the Bible says it was. This is certainly an enormous leap in logic. But by failing to adequately address the underlying concerns of the Creationists – not the self-serving explanation of weak-minded theologians - the scientific community is missing an important issue that will never go away. This is not surprising since science has never been able to adequately address such issues of purpose and meaning, so it behooves scientists to ignore them and fight on grounds for which they are better equipped, carbon dating for instance.

It has always been my feeling that scientists have handled the question of Darwinian purposelessness by assuming for themselves the purpose of bringing reason to the ignorant. This is a sort of intellectual sleight of hand that allows them to feel a sense of purpose while at the same time denigrating the concept of purpose (as espoused by traditional religions) through reductionism and, in this case, the concept of random mutation.

By the way, I got through about 3/4 of the exhibits and didn’t see anything about abortion or ”gay marriage.”



So getting back to you, Mr. Tyson, I am not really arguing with your science. I am not really interested in your science. Science will go round and round as it always has, oblivious to what it chooses to ignore- that is irrational, unquantifiable forces that act in reality but which are excluded from scientific inquiry. I am suggesting that science is by and large besides the point. I am taking issue with your tone, your manner, and the other aspects of your presentation that deteriorate the public good to the benefit of your personal career. Science is not the only force in the universe. It is but one perspective, even though it is the dominant one in our culture. So, as a fish in water, it is hard for an intelligent person to realize that there is anything else besides it, yet there most certainly is. And that which we ignore will always come back to haunt us – in ways that not even science can predict.


I have further thoughts on this topic, but I'll leave it here for now. Would be happy to discuss further at your pleasure.

All best,
David Goodman

Hagelberg, nice to visit, but. . .

Please Read:

Bloomberg and Hagel for 2008?
by David Broder



David Broder is generally a big dork. His columns are uninspired and his sense of the national “pulse” is generally misplaced. He comes off as an old guy who’s been in Washington too long and is grasping at stories. So when he took to writing about a possible political union between Chuck Hagel and Michael Bloomberg, I was pretty certain that the union would never happen.

There’s something intriguing about this kind of powerhouse third party ticket. But for me at least, the intrigue is short lived. Why would I think that? They are, after all, both highly accomplished politicians, one the technocrat business executive, one the congressional stalwart and war hero. Bloomberg’s appeal deficit in ‘the sticks’ would be balanced by Hagel’s homeliness – and vice versa. The Bloomberg fortune – as it did in New York City – would raise his candidacy largely above the fray of patronage and back-scratching that plagues the integrity of contribution-dependent candidates. He could, in other words, afford to tell the truth and act in the best interests of the people. And what better time for a third party ticket to enter the arena? We are more democratically wired than ever – between 24 hour “news” channels and the Internet. The two major parties are rife with corruption and mired in pettiness, torpor, and inertia. Wouldn’t a breath of fresh air by this quintessentially American duumvirate be just what the country needs?

You’d think, wouldn’t you?

So how come I don’t see it? How come I still see Hillary, Barack, or even Fred Thompson in the Oval before either of these two (and it’s not yet clear who would be the top and who the bottom – unless some sort of consulship might be established – a de facto version we seem to have been putting up with for the past 7 years.)?

But why?

I hate to say it, but it comes down to a single word: celebrity. Maybe two words- add charisma. These boys, despite their strong competence and integrity just don’t have either.
Anyone who’s heard Bloomberg speak can’t wait for him to stop talking and just bring out the Harlem Boys Choir. His voice is an out of tune piano to (say) John Edwards’s soothing chalumeau. Chuck Hagel is boring and though a decent man seems not appallingly bright (based mainly on Esquire profile form last year). Despite his current “maverick” stance (only compared with John Warner) he is pretty much a box thinker and reluctant to look outside it – unless an interminable war happens to jar him out of his comfort zone.

But really, Dave. How important is celebrity to the presidency? If we’ve learned anything from president Bush it’s that you actually do need brains to run the world, and that a mere handshaker isn’t enough to do the job as it should be done- especially at this moment in history.

Well yes that’s true, but virtually none of the current candidates appear to be lacking in intelligence – at least not to the Bushic degree. And I really believe that almost all of them would make tolerable to excellent first citizens.

But these days Celebrity really is important. Because while some of us are wired to nytimes.com and CNN, more of us are wired to People Magazine and Entertainment News. Now that’s not the only reason celebrity is important, but it’s worth mentioning that Broder’s example of a successful “post-party” candidacy, reflecting America’s distaste for partisan politics, blah blah blah was none other than the Kindergarten Cop himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Arnold” ran a two week campaign during the Gray Davis recall and ran away with the vote despite anybody knowing anything about him. He cornered the bone-head vote as well as the “what’s a governor” vote and went straight to Sacramento before anybody realized that this wasn't the Oscars but a political event.

Now he’s been a great governor for the state and a great leader for the country. But he has relied primarily on Star-Power to get him going and to sway the voters. His competency is almost an afterthought- and it took a few years to catch on once he realized that he couldn’t run the entire state by ballot initiatives alone. (Early on, every policy initiative was followed by a threat that if Democrats obstruct, 'I'll bring the issue directly to the voters.' This stopped working after nobody voted for his initiatives. Perhaps the he had taken for granted that the bone head constituency payed any attention once the Best Actor award had been given out.)

Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, America desperately needs as its next Commander in Chief some kind of Symbol. There are enough people left in Washington (or they could be brought back to Washington) to run the country effectively. But the task of providing world leadership calls for charisma and celebrity as well as competence. The political road is actually fairly clear on the majority of issues – especially if you’re not a partisan ideologue. So the more important element is how s/he will connect to the world as a symbol of American regeneration after 8 years of darkness.

The Hagel-berg ticket just doesn’t reach that level of glamor. The Euros won’t warm to a whiny Jew and another redneck- to say nothing of how the Iranians might react.

The glamor issue is at the heart of the allure of the fantasy Gore-Obama ticket. In truth, Al Gore could walk into the race on Halloween, ‘08 on the “told ya so” platform and carry the whole thing. Obama too has the rock star cult organizing around him, and it’s what the people want and love. Politicians are no longer Gods incarnate (if they ever were), but celebrities are. If George Clooney ordered his fans to march on Manitoba to find Weapons of Mass Destruction, you’d better believe they would- and not just the ones living in North America.

What I’m saying is we need more than another guy in a suit right now. The packaging and future packaging of presidents is a foregone conclusion – even the human quirks Obama is so happy to exhibit streamline perfectly with his new politico ‘image.’ We can’t get away from it anymore, as long as there’s TV. So let’s go with it. Schwarzenegger has shown us that governing can be done pretty effectively and invisibly by competent guys behind the curtain. If they get out of line they can always be nudged a little by the opposition. But someone needs to be there with the million dollar smile. It may be the only thing that Americans believe in anymore.

The Girl from Ipanema

So I give myself credit for coming up with the idea and TR for exploiting it for financial gain. Way to go, us.

So we’re all out at a jazz club in the Village. I’m tired, it’s late, and I hate jazz, so the likelihood of me enjoying myself is low. They’re playing standards, and I’m drifting away, and then it hits me- Sander, I’ll give you one dollar if the next song they play is not Girl from Ipanema. But you have to give me ten dollars if it is. Quick, what do you say?

Well Sander sort of agreed, and we listened attentively as they fiddled around before the next song. The tension mounted as they counted out the next tune, and although the first two notes of the song were a descending minor third, the following notes bore no relationship to Girl from Ipanema, so I pushed a dollar bill across the table to TR, defeated but not outright dejected. After all, what were the odds?

I gave it a minute just to be sure they weren’t doing some kind of extended introduction before they broke into the song, and then after a few minutes I had given in to my loss.

A little bummed, and a little poorer, I sat there – again bored, the thrill of the bet having worn off. I looked over at TR and the words just fell out of my mouth- If they play Girl from Ipanema any time from now until the end of the night (we were at the end of the first set) he would have to give me twenty dollars. If not, I’d drop one more.

Well this made the whole thing more interesting, and I eagerly awaited the next song to earn back my money.

TR, feeling the same excitement (in fact, ten fold) leaned over and said- this is how you could fund your orchestra, Dave. Just don’t write up a program and have people place bets as to what pieces you’ll perform. It’s just like standards in jazz- everybody’s heard them, and they’re probably a little tired of them. But if you wait on the edge of your seat to see if you’ll profit from the opening measures of the Reformation Symphony, you might just get a little into it.

Now I should stop and say that with my orchestra, nobody was tired of the pieces when we played them. Even when we programmed Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, veteran musicians approached me saying they had heard stuff they’d never heard before in that performance. So that’s that.

But if I were to start an orchestra in Vegas, this is exactly what I’d do.

When the musicians walked on and there were four clarinets, the odds would go up that it was Mahler and not Monteverdi, for example, so there would be a little skill and knowledge involved. And it wouldn’t matter how boring the concert was, because people wouldn’t be listening anyway except for the first four measures (which maybe is all you’d get out of them anyway). But the concert could be as boring as you please, and there would still be the thrill of expectation in the air. ‘How much would I make?’

Ugly, TR, but I’ll betcha if somebody comes across this little blog, it will pop up out there in no time. Or maybe one could set up some kind of OTB and base the orchestra in Belarus or something and simulcast to dirty hovels across the world. The possibilities are endless. Clearly.


I left the club early that night, so I’m living a bit with Schroedinger’s bet, not knowing whether I’d lost or won. But the thrill carries on nonetheless.

D

Briefly. . .

So folks I won't lie to you.

The road trip part of this blog is winding down and what remains is not very interesting. Perhaps some day I will recount previous road adventures
from one of the dozen or more cross country excursions I've made over the past several years. But as for this one, Home for Now is now Home for Now, if you catch my drift, and the topics will move off the road a bit and more onto the bustling streets of New York City.

But have no fear, dear reader, there's lots more ahead. Mitt Romney is on his way, along with excursions into the world of mathematics, some of my favorite pictures, and trying to get my car inspection certificate from the guys out in Jamaica (no luck so far. . .).

So look forward to a change of scenery in the upcoming posts. It will be a pleasure to bring you all the latest updates from a fixed location. . .

. . .at least for now.