Summer Preview

What's this?---Half of Arcata's population has suddenly disappeared!

Taken by aliens? The rapture? Health care and cheap gasoline in Canada?

Not exactly. School is out.

The university students who comprise half of Arcata's population are mostly gone for summer vacation. As are the ones who won't be back, the graduates. Last weekend their families gladdened the hearts of the local restaurants with their traditional biggest weekend. Now some of the local eating establishments will shut down completely for weeks or months, while others shrink their hours.

This was as close to an alien invasion as we get, though. I remember several years ago sitting in a local establishment called Los Bagels (yes, it is a Mexican bagel bakery and café) near a table of invaders from the Planet New York. Having spent some time there, I recognized the accent. But then, so would everyone else here. I've learned that here in far northern California, "the East" (which begins just past Las Vegas) is essentially defined as "New York," and everyone who lives there is Jewish. But the provincialism of the cultural capital of New York is also justifiably famous. From that table I heard one older woman exclaim, "I can't believe we're eating bagels here, on the edge of the oith!"

So now summer begins. Despite the increased quiet, the decreased traffic on the streets, it's shaping up to be a busy one. I'm doing three, maybe four writing jobs for the university, plus an article for a magazine. All of them will be due in July. As an elected Kerry delegate alternate, I could attend the Democratic National Convention in Boston in late July, if I scrape up the money to do so.

Counting the reviews and articles I just finished, I haven't had so much paying work at the same time in several years. Last summer's highlight though was the time I spent writing a play. As regular readers may recall, my goal was to finish it in time to enter it in a contest, which I did. It turned out to be a strange sort of contest. I didn't win, and I didn't lose. As far as I know, no one did. The theatre involved seems to have run into financial problems, and never chose a winner, perhaps because they were obligated to mount two productions of the winning play in two different cities, and pay out some prize money.

This spring I entered this play, a full length called "Dance of Souls," in another competition. Though it is for a festival to be held locally, the judging is "blind" (no names on the scripts), and the final choices are made by judges far away. The theme is ecological theatre. This spring I also wrote another play for this contest, a one-act comedy called "That Human Comedy." I suppose I could find out, but at the moment I have no idea whether either or both of these plays made the final cut and got sent to the distinguished outside judges.

Writing and entering the comedy may have been a mistake, since it's easier to like comedies and I'm more interested in the success of the full length. Still, even if they didn't make the cut and/or don't win, I have high hopes for future productions or at least readings.

Writing these plays was a blissful experience both times. Follow my bliss? I'm tempted. I do have the itch to do another this summer. I've had a basic idea for one for at least a decade but every time I wrote a little dialogue for it, it didn't work. If I get enough good dialogue to get started, I may have to. There are other projects of my own that it would be smarter to work on, after this blitz of paying work. The chapters I wrote (also this spring) for the nonfiction "Soul of the Future" finally worked, after several attempts over way too many years. I have a really good plan for the rest of the book, and I'm confident that I can write it, and that I will write it, eventually, and publish it, even if I have to self-publish. And there's my young adult novel, which an agent in the field encouraged me to rewrite. After many false starts, I think I've come up with a way to do it. It would make more sense to work on either or both of those.

I enjoy writing on both of these projects. But plays somehow are the best. Realistically, what I should be concentrating on is getting productions or readings of the ones I've already written-the abovementioned two, plus my antismoking musical for middle school age. But realistic is a relative word when you are my age, without credits or credentials in the field, up here at the edge of the oith.

Fish

Political comment, and plenty of it, has been relegated to the (clickable) American Samizat blog lately. But by Thursday I’d hit the emotional wall. Five of the last six books I read were on terrorism and war: four for a review already published in the San Francisco Chronicle, and one I’ve reviewed for a future issue. In the midst of this, the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal hit, followed by the beheading of an American civilian, both of them weird stories as well as doubly horrific because of how seamlessly they fit into my reading. And of course the war in Iraq continued, as the prisoner photos played endlessly, illustrating every even marginally relevant comment made by anybody on TV.

The moment I couldn’t get past was when one news show dropped Iraq for a few minutes to finally report on the Sudan, and the immense “humanitarian crisis” as we so blithely have to call it, caused by war there: refugees starving in border camps, having fled from the slaughter of ethnic cleansing. It was the kind of scene we’ve grown too accustomed to out of Africa for decades, the flies on starving babies. But what got to me most was the incredibly beautiful clothing the women wore—the brilliant colors and patterns of their everyday life. It was just too much to bear.

So I opted out of the newstream for all of Thursday. How about a nice relaxing basketball game instead? Fortunately for my blood pressure, I couldn’t watch the Lakers-Spurs Game 5 live, but had to do a tape delay. I turned it on just in time to see Phil Jackson’s half-smile, see the score (Lakers by one point) and hear the announcer sign off saying, “one of the most dramatic games in NBA history.”

This second round series has been billed as the one that will likely decide the championship. The Spurs won the first two games at home, over the Lakers who looked disorganized and slow, especially in 4th quarters (when in previous championship years, they systematically dismantled the Spurs) after their 5 game first round over Houston. But then the Lakers won game 3 by 20+ points at home, and held off the Spurs to win the fourth quarter (finally) in game 4. These were classic Kobe and Shaq games, the kind that seemed gone forever.

I learned that the Lakers had held a lead through most of game 5 in San Antonio, where they have never yet won a playoff game. Apparently with ferocious defense and a lot of Kobe Bryant offense, and an unusually active Deavon George. But by the 4th quarter they were just hanging on, their shots weren’t falling, and the Spurs were desperately attacking and scoring. A 16 point third quarter lead turned into the Spurs ahead by one point. The rest can only be recited:

At 11+ seconds, Kobe gets a screen from Malone, elevates on a jump shot and scores. Lakers by one.

With 5+ seconds the Spurs inbound to Tim Duncan, their veteran MVP star. The Lakers defense is stifling. He can do nothing with the ball, and Shaq has come out to stop him beyond the foul line. He throws the ball towards the hoop without being able to see it, as he falls down. The ball goes in. It’s a miracle finish. The Spurs go wild, as do their fans.

It’s all over except for the formality of a Lakers inbound, because there is less than a half second on the clock. Four tenths of a second, to be exact. After a couple of time outs, the Spurs cover Shaq, they cover Kobe, and Gary Payton throws a perfect pass to Derek Fisher. Payton has replaced Fisher as a starter. There are few players better liked or respected by his teammates and the media than Fisher. When murmurs were becoming open dissatisfaction with Kobe’s game, Fisher spoke up for him. He plays tenacious defense and in earlier years was known for his dagger three point shots when they meant something. This year he wasn’t playing all that well off the bench, until the playoffs. He'd never made a game winning shot. They call him Fish.

He’s left handed, he was on the left side of the basket, open. As he caught the ball he started to twist for his shot. Through replay after replay, the ball was maybe a foot out of his hands when the lights around the backboard flashed on, signaling end of the game---and so the shot was legal. And the shot went in.

While the commentators search the record books for anything like this—3 changes of lead in the last twelve seconds, two miracle shots, the last with less than .5 seconds on the clock—they also cited history: that in a 2-2 series, the team that wins game 5 wins the series more than 80% of the time, including last year’s Lakers-Spurs series, almost a mirror image of this one: the Spurs led by more than 20 points, the Lakers fought back and could have won the game on a Robert Horry 3 pointer that went in---and came out, at the buzzer.

But as usual they’re a bit too quick to proclaim the Lakers as champions yet. The odds are in their favor for game 6 in L.A., and they do seem to have jelled as a team more than ever before. Payton to Fish could turn out to be the glue that will hold this team together and take it to its destiny. But the Spurs have lost 3 in a row and face elimination, as the reigning NBA champs. They've shown they can come back. The Lakers are going to have to be intense, and they can’t suffer another 4th quarter letdown. (Kobe was so exhausted he had to receive intravenous fluids for dehydration after the game. Even on the bench in the last seconds it was clear he was having trouble catching his breath. He appeared to meditate for a moment, and when the horn sounded to resume play he jumped up to join his teammates.)

But the Lakers do get better as a series goes on, which credits their court smarts and their coaching. The problem is fatigue in the fourth, and energy and concentration throughout, which has been inconsistent. After a first round and early second round with lots of days between games, these last four games have come with just a day between. It's good for concentration, but not for aging legs. Still, they're at home and the crowd should boost their energy. In a inconsistent year, they've done pretty well in big games, and Phil Jackson teams do well in closeout games.

Even if the Lakers get past the Spurs it’s not over. Though it’s doubtful Sacramento can win 4 out of 7 from them, if Minnesota wins that series, they could pose problems. The Minnesota Timberwolves are the team of the near future, but this could be their year to emerge. They're young, fast and hungry, with this year's MVP Kevin Garnett. Still, you have to like the Lakers chances a lot better than when the playoffs started.

Even if they can’t maintain, they’ve played some memorable games already this postseason. None more so than Game 5, which I have securely on tape, and the ending doesn’t change whenever I watch it. There’s the shot, Fisher running down the court towards the dressing room, grabbed by the exhausted Kobe, who apparently just kept repeating, Fish, Fish, Fish. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Earth Day Essay: The Forgotten Apocalypse

by William S. Kowinski

Anybody here remember global warming? It's been more than a decade since a few horrendously hot summers in parts of the U.S. inspired a flood of books, articles and television reports on the grave dangers of climate change caused by fossil fuels and other "greenhouse gases." But now, despite continued rising temperatures, and increasing certainty among scientists that the climate change already underway will cause or at least exacerbate ruinous problems that may threaten humanity and the world as we know it for centuries, global warming has become the forgotten apocalypse.

It will undoubtedly be mentioned in various Earth Day perorations, and it is the subject of at least one new television documentary, "The Great Warming," which will be aired on April 22 (but only in Canada. A 90 minute version made by the same Canadian company---Stonehaven Productions---is tentatively scheduled for PBS in October.)

The real resonance test will come at the end of May when the world's first major global warming disaster movie, "The Day After Tomorrow," kicks off the summer season. Director Roland Emmerich has exchanged climate change for the alien threat of his blockbuster "Independence Day" (and the radiation monster of his unsuccessful remake of "Godzilla".) Though most scientific speculation on possible effects of climate change have evidently not limited the film's special effects, its web site includes some reference to the real problem. The film's ambition to raise awareness is suggested in the title's echo of the landmark 1983 television film, "The Day After," which changed public perceptions with its dramatization of nuclear holocaust.

But even big screen catastrophe may not be enough. The recent release of a Pentagon-sponsored scenario that described geopolitical as well as environmental effects of abrupt climate change---a few nuclear exchanges over water shortages, for example-- barely made a ripple in the news cycle. Nor has the growing concern beyond North America, which reached a telling apotheosis in the recent statement by Sir David King, chief science adviser to the British government: "Climate change is a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism."

So why are we so determined to be oblivious? The list of possibilities might include:

Monstrous message: Torrid temperatures for decades, abandoned coastal cities, food and water shortages, diseases, resource wars, not to mention no more SUVs---it's too big, too terrible, too far ahead in time; it's too extreme to believe, and if true, too awful to think about. Denial conceals despair: with no apparent easy solutions, we lack faith in our creativity or character, and probably in each other. Besides, after the Cold War's thermonuclear threat, and while trying to cope with international terrorism, we're suffering from apocalypse fatigue.

Dueling Experts: It's comforting as well as apparently sensible to buy the line favored by the Bush administration that if all scientists don't agree, it doesn't get on the agenda. Chronically indifferent media reporting on science adds to the impression that this is another case of experts saying coffee is good for you on Tuesday and bad for you on Wednesday. In fact, given the incredible complexity of what's involved in a number of scientific disciplines taken to their current limits, it's remarkable that a hefty consensus exists on the basic notions that climate change is real, that our fossil fuel use is largely responsible, and that consequences will be profound and possibly catastrophic.

The Usual Suspects: On the assumption that if Americans believed in global warming they might expect their government to do something about it, major elements of fossil fuel industries have conducted a skilled and relentless p.r.campaign of denial, while pressuring politicians to remember who is buying them. So a question of real economic as well as basic ecological consequence becomes part of the ideological and political shouting show, and America is either entertained or wearily tunes out.

Numbing nomenclature: In a world of warm and fuzzies, and "happiness is a warm puppy," it's hard to get upset about something that sounds so moderate and nice as "global warming." Even the old "greenhouse effect" sounds decidedly unthreatening. Who's afraid of a greenhouse? It sounds green, and warm. The currently popular "climate change" is similarly gentle and bland. People eagerly travel long distances for a change in climate. Various attempts have been made to heat up the nomenclature: "the climate crisis," "Thermageddon," but nothing has caught on.

No Rachel Carson: Books continue to be published that contribute solid information, but none has had the simple eloquence or impact of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," which got DDT banned and jump-started a new kind of environmental awareness.

Failed focus: Are increasingly bureaucratic environmental organizations dissipate their energies on their separate brand-name issues, refusing to set priorities and work together? So far it seems they've failed to focus on global warming as the keystone issue that not only is the most crucial, but addresses virtually every other significant environmental issue, from deforestation and pollution to species extinction.

What is newest and most challenging about global warming is that once its effects are clearly apparent, it's too late to stop them. This is where the fashionable concept of "the tipping point" transcends its usual trivial application. Once the tipping point of global warming is reached, nothing will stop it, and it will only get worse. We will then be forced to cope with it, and maybe slow down its progress. It is not the kind of crisis we're used to, that we can just wait until it gets bad, then fix it and go back to normal. It will change normal, probably for generations.

That's what makes leadership on this issue so dangerous, and so crucial. The basic tasks are easy to state but not to contemplate: first, face the problem. Then take the actions we can to slow down the warming, prepare for possible consequences, and foster the creativity and innovation that might blunt this crisis in ways now unforeseen. Not since Jimmy Carter challenged Americans to become more energy efficient during the last oil crisis has a president dared to risk the political consequences of suggesting such efforts and limits. Just how much this contributed to his failure to be re-elected is debatable, but in fact the combination of his leadership and the perspicacity of many American businesses resulted in a decade of substantial economic growth without using more energy. Now we're told this is impossible.

Now energy efficiency is no longer fashionable, excess is considered patriotic, and leaders avoid moral leadership by denying the dangers. Instead of building resolve and an emotional consensus, we are left with bewilderment. But not to engage, to inquire and do what we can, is to deny and damage the civic soul of America, long before we face the worst physical consequences.

Our failure so far to confront this threat exposes all our flaws, and so may begin our most profound tragedy. But here and there, some Americans are starting to notice changes---New Englanders who see the maple trees and the maple syrup industry dying, or Pennsylvanians who notice that the deer ticks are more active and virulent because of longer and warmer summers. If they begin to connect the dots on their own, will they demand leadership, or at least be ready to follow it? If so, they have in John Kerry someone who understands the issue and is ready to act on it.

This is an issue that more than any other tests our ability and willingness to think about and care about the future. The challenges are to think big, think ahead and take responsibility now. We have some tradition of taking responsibility for the future, in the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee: "In every deliberation we must consider the impact on the seventh generation to come." Thinking ahead together, and thinking for the welfare of the whole planet, are new to us. But we know what the future means when we look into the eyes of children, and the climate crisis will likely be felt by those who are children now.

"If I were a young person being handed this problem by indulgent predecessors, I would be angry," writes James Speth, co-founder of the National Resource Defense Council, in his new book, "Red Sky at Morning." Perhaps that's why the aforementioned new documentaries on global warming are being hosted by young singer Alanis Morissette, and actors Keanu Reeves and Leonardo DiCaprio.

In what remains for me the most cogent media treatment of the subject, the 1990 international television production, "After the Warming," host and writer James Burke examines the crucial role of climate in western civilization and presents a plausible history of global warming from the perspective of a citizen in 2050. (It would be plausible, that is, if humanity had delayed action until only the year 2000, as he supposed it would.) Burke's future self compares us today to the man who falls from the top of a tall building. As he passes the 17th floor, someone asks him how he's doing. "So far, so good," he replies.

Playoffs

It's been a hard year to follow the Lakers, or even to like much about the NBA. The Lakers have been crazy: brilliant in stretches, and dispiriting in others. They've also been beset by an almost unbelievable series of injuries. Literally no starter or even regular player has avoided getting hurt, some for long periods of time (Karl Malone, Horace Grant, Rick Fox) and some with multiple injuries (Kobe Bryant) and chronic ones (Shaq.) And the psychodrama has been pretty unattractive.

It seems that major players on many teams had serious injuries this year, perhaps due to the increasingly "physical" play. Both the injuries (which throw teams into unbecoming chaos) and the trend towards hockey or football style of play have made NBA games less fun to watch.

Soon the playoffs start, and I feel more conflicted than usual about spending the time watching them. When they got Karl Malone and Gary Paton, the Lakers thought they had a dream team but so far it's been more like a nightmare. At times when they jelled, they seemed unbeatable, but most of the time their team flaws were very evident. Other teams know their vulnerabilities. They can be outplayed with speed and intensity.

Which Lakers team will show up? That's often been the question, not only because of the lineups changed by injuries, but by attitude. Shaq is having trouble focusing, even when he apparently wants to. Or so it seems.

Their first round series with Houston may tell the tale. The teams match up well, and the Lakers can't lose focus or intensity, but must use their experience. If they play hard and well, they could dominate. If they fool around and try to win games in the fourth quarter, they could lose the series, or even win the series but lose the war---the next round.

It will be too bad if it's decided by injuries. For a brief moment towards the end of the season, the Lakers had their starting five playing. But then Rick Fox got hurt again, and in the last game of the regular season, they lost Karl Malone again, as well as their two main remaining bench players (Derek Fisher and Deavon George), both of whom have been starters. All of them are expected to be back, but when, and how effective will they be? Horace Grant's injuries are keeping him out of the playoffs altogether, and several other players are hurt.

The Lakers could win the championship, but right now they'd do it as underdogs. Minnesota has the hottest team, and defending champion San Antonio the strongest combination of playoff experience and playing well at the end of the season. But anything could happen. The Lakers could struggle every round, and win them all. Or they could totally dominate certain teams, or all of them. Or they could be gone after six games.

It seems the drama will be Kobe. With his dashing from court room to court, and the mercurial moments he has and the Lakers have surrounding him, together with his immense talent at the top of his game---he just won the Lakers last game, and the Pacific conference championship, with two impossible shots, an off-balance long three pointer to tie the game at the end of the fourth quarter, and a touch-and-shoot three pointer at the end of second overtime with one second on the clock to win the game.

But with that expectation, odds are it will be someone else who makes the difference. Someone unexpected. Besides to see the residual beauty of the game, I guess that's why I'll watch. Starting Saturday.

A Great Year for Fools

by William S. Kowinski

April Fool's Day is the Rodney Dangerfield of holidays: it gets no respect. But maybe it should this time, because it's been a great year for Fools.

For instance, best-selling author Al Franken, who inaugurated Air America Radio, a liberal talk radio network, on April Fool's Day Eve (March 31.)
Along with fellow best-sellers Michael Moore, Molly Ivins and Bill Maher, he made humor a political weapon, and his outspoken outrage towards the Bush administration helped to set the tone for the Democratic primary campaign. It's hard to imagine Howard Dean or even the later rhetoric of John Kerry would have been possible without these Fools paving the way.

(For the uninitiated, Al Franken's "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" was the second best-selling political book last year(to Hillary's), ranking 21st in sales overall. After leading the list in 2002, Michael Moore's "Stupid White Men (And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation)" remained in the top 100 last year, and has been followed by his current best-seller, "Dude, Where's My Country." Molly Ivins' "Bushwhacked" took up where "Shrub" left off as mordantly witty chronicles of George W. Bush (both books cowritten with Lou Dubose). Together with Bill Maher's best seller "When You Ride Alone You Ride with bin Laden", these books arguably dominated political reading lists for the past year or so ---the less deliberately comic works of self-righteous rightists Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage and Ann Coulter notwithstanding.)

Regardless of political orientation, this tactic of attacking power with laughter is in the tradition of the court jester and the official Fool that this day more or less celebrates. April Fool's Day harks back to the ancient festivals of spring where all kinds of bad behavior was allowed, including making fun of important people.

The Roman New Year's festival of Kalends (from which we get the word "calendar") featured music, masquerades and all imaginable definitions of fooling around, along with gluttony, drunkenness and gift-giving. A similar festival in ancient Greece was called the "komos," the origin of our word "comedy." We get "comedian" from "komidos," the festival's "chief singer," who was probably a lot like the master of ceremonies telling rude jokes between fan dancers at the burlesque.

Then in the A.D., village spring festivals throughout Europe eventually featured comic performances by a King or a Bishop of Fools, or a Lord of Misrule, often elected from among the common folk to poke fun at the established order for a day.

From ancient Egypt until the last Russian jester hung up his motley in the late l8th century, official Fools were found in royal courts throughout the world. The first court fools weren't kidding: they were authentically deranged, or simple-minded "holy fools" who were both feared and admired as God's chosen innocents. Or they were physically different, or they were considered funny just because they were foreigners. But fools were indulged and well-treated, so "playing the fool" became a prime show business gig.

The resulting "artificial fools" became wildly popular. Pope Leo X was reputed to be so fond of them that petitioners who wished to gain a Papal audience were advised to announce themselves as jesters. The French jester Brusquet was said to have come to the royal court to practice law, but realizing he could make more money in a day as a jester than in a lifetime as a lawyer, he made the modest switch of professions. Will Somers, jester to England's Henry VIII, was a national hero. (It's not clear, however, that Somers actually invented the joke, "Take my wife--please!")

By the 16th century, court jesters were doing just about everything that we now associate with comedy. They told jokes and funny stories (which in French is "geste", and therefore "jest" and "jester"), and performed slapstick in imitation of clumsy country bumpkins (the original meaning of "clown".) Some sang songs and passed on gossip like the troubadours, while others (such as L'Angely, jester to Louis XIV) prefigured the wits and political satirists of European society by whispering penetrating observations and sarcastic remarks in the king's ear.

Fools were hired not only by kings but by lesser officials (one of the annual duties of the Lord Mayor of London's fool was to jump into a tub of custard) as well as clergy and the first corporations. In the homes of the rich it was considered the height of good manners to employ a fool to insult the dinner guests.

Officially, the Fool's function was religious: he (and occasionally, she) was supposed to teach the king or queen humility, even if the royals were more interested in the dirty jokes about the cardinal. But this justification led to the most important legacy of the fool tradition: freedom of speech.

Because official court fools could fulfill their purpose only if they were permitted to speak freely, they had to be protected from punishment from those who were offended, including the king. So for centuries throughout Europe, while others could be beheaded, exiled, excommunicated or burnt at the stake for something they said, there were only two people in all the realm with the absolute right of free speech: the king (or queen), and the jester.

So when the idea of free speech for everyone began to spread, it was envisioned as an extension of the right of fools. In France, young men formed a kind of Free Speech Movement to criticize the government, while wearing traditional jester's clothes. Freedom of expression became so closely linked with the court fool that England's Magna Carta, the first great document challenging absolute royal power in the chain of history leading to the American and French revolutions, was decorated with the figure of the court jester.

American colonists used the jester's brand of free speech to parody and lampoon England's king. Their first revolutionary act was buffoonery: they dressed up, ran around, and dumped tea in the cold water of Boston Harbor.

The British aristocracy made fun of these colonists as backward clowns, which is what they meant by calling them "yankees"(meaning dumb Dutchmen.) But the early Americans relished the fool's image of impudence and transformed Yankee Doodle into a symbol of independence, though he remained a pretty goofy character. (What else can you say about a guy who sticks a feather in his cap and calls it macaroni?) A similar figure, a Yankee "wise fool" stock character popular in early American stage comedies, was a source for Uncle Sam.

American presidents haven't had official jesters (make up your own joke here), but they've often had to endure comedians who got away with saying what other people wouldn't dare. Their humor varied from the relatively gentle chidings of Will Rogers during FDR's presidency, to the excoriating mockery of Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce in the Eisenhower-McCarthy-Nixon years, to the cultural as well as political explosions of Richard Pryor and Lilly Tomlin, and the parodies of "Saturday Night Live," Canada's "SCTV" and England's "Spitting Image" during the Reagan reign.

These days we have so much mockery-from the nonpartisan laughs on Leno and Letterman to the stinging abuse from both right and left-that we risk a general cynicism towards political leaders and ideas: what playwright Michael Frayn calls the "permanent sneer."

Caustic political humor walks a fine line, easily falling into a universal cynicism and stereotyping, that can set the scornful tone for political reporting and general attitudes. Perhaps that's why some of today's jesters avoid nihilism, though they risk partisanship, by such political activities as Franken's liberal talk radio, or the Rolling Thunder Down Home Democracy Tour of political workshops folded into a roving country fair, organized by political humorist Jim Hightower, with appearances by Michael Moore and Molly Ivins.

Though the Fool remains dangerous, most societies (including various Native American cultures) provide roles for tricksters and "sacred clowns" who mock authority. These societies are willing to risk disorder so that the unspoken becomes part of the balance, that renews their common values. This may be why clowns are sometimes considered to be healers. Renewal through the self-recognition of laughter is also an ancient rite of spring.

As for April Fool's Day itself, the most plausible explanation is that when individual nations began replacing the Julian calendar from Roman times with the new Gregorian calendar, New Year's Day was moved from its usual spring spot to the first of January. (Even today, some indigenous cultures retain the tradition of celebrating the New Year in the spring.) One of the first countries to change was France in the 16th century. But old habits die hard, especially if they began in 45 B.C. When the change was made, pranksters greeted the forgetful with a "Happy New Year" on April 1, and if the mark fell for it, they cried, "April Fool!"

Actually, they cried, "April Fish!" Those wild and crazy French.

Concert for George

Finally got around to watching the tape of the PBS airing of the concert for George Harrison held at the Royal Albert Hall a year after his death. It was quite a moving experience. Musically, we tend to hear only the most familiar Beatles tunes on the radio and, all too often, as elevator music and mall Muzak. It's easy to forget what amazing music it is, which is evident when other musicians try to play it. They come close, they make something different with their own interpretations, but often they can't quite measure up. Harrison's songs---and not just the basic melody or chords---are deceptive in their apparent simplicity but actual complexity, especially how he and the Beatles built them as recorded songs. Everybody thinks they know “Here Comes the Sun” as a nice little tune, but the construction of it as a recorded song is amazing, as the struggles they had on stage made clear.

In some ways I'm glad that I let Lennon and McCartney overshadow Harrison's music---especially his post-Beatles work---in my experience, because now I have the privilege of discovering its depth and wisdom and musicality. Since there's been no one new who really gets to me for a long time, George's music is a real treasure. Not only is it "new" in this way for me, but I can follow a process of aging and maturing in his work, which is far more personal than, say, McCartney's (except for certain songs, like "Tug of War." And Lennon never made it past 40.) Again this music is so rich that it repays repeated exploration.

But George's music alone doesn't account for how affecting this concert was. It was at once an elegy for my generation and an affirmation of continuity to the next generations. Though Eric Clapton was the organizer and musical director of this multi-artist ensemble, and provided two of the best musical moments (his solos on the Ravi Shankar piece written especially for this event, and on "When My Guitar Gently Weeps") the show was centered on the appearance of the two surviving Beatles. Apparently this was the first time that Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney had appeared together on stage since the Beatles last performed in 1969, which is hard to believe. Ringo sang one of his two best songs he cut as a solo artist, which he wrote with George Harrison (the other was a song he wrote with John Lennon, "I Am the Greatest,") and as he noted, the song had specific new meaning to the event. With a photo of George high at the back of the stage, Ringo sang: "All I have is a photograph/I know you're not coming back, anymore..." Paul sang a song George wrote and recorded as a solo artist, which is a specific and meaningful tribute to him apart from the Beatles, and he began a ukelele version of "Something" (apparently George had become fond of the ukelele in recent years) which Clapton ended powerfully as a full bore rock song.

As one reviewer noted, this was also probably the last time Paul and Ringo will appear together. Most of the musicians on stage had gray hair, and another story of the event referred to Bill Wyman, the former Rolling Stone, being present in the audience, a shriveled old man. Most of the musicians on the stage don't have many years of performing left, and probably many of them don't perform much anymore except as nostalgia acts. So it turned out to be an elegy by a generation of musicians for their generation of musicians, and for my generation that lived our lives by this music.

Ringo's son Zack was in the audience, as was one of Paul's daughters; John Lennon's musician sons by different mothers were nowhere to be found (I searched the Internet to find out why but they weren't mentioned in any account I found.) But on stage for the whole show was George Harrison's son Dhani, strumming a big acoustic guitar and singing backups. He looks almost exactly like George at his age of 21. At times it was eerie, as when Paul and Dhani did harmonies at the same microphone. It was seeing the past and the present alive at the same time.

Ravi Shankar did not play, but his son did, and his daughter, who is the first female sitar player in India, a beautiful young woman who also conducted the orchestra of Indian and western musicians performing Ravi's composition. And by coincidence, I watched this a day or so after seeing and hearing Sam Taylor, the son of James Taylor and Carly Simon, essentially playing a young James Taylor in the 1960s, on "American Dream." He played and sang a Beatles tune, "In My Life," and sounded exactly like James. He looks quite a bit like him, too. It's amazing how strong the genes of musical geniuses can be.

And this above all I celebrate-the continuity of accomplishment and talent at a very high level. As we leave the stage, it is good to know that our music and our work is renewed and continued by the capable next generation, carrying on, with all the beauty and strength of youth that we no longer have.

At times I regret not having had children, but frankly on the list of regrets it is so overwhelmed by others that would have made that possible, that it is not one of the unrealized fantaises I think about often---only sometimes when I feel a twinge as I pass a parent interacting beautifully with a child. I was so many levels removed from these possibilities being realized, that the conditions that would have made this desirable were never really there. But I'm glad that George Harrison had a son, that Ravi Shankar had a daughter. I've accomplished really nothing important in my life, so there is no legacy to continue. Their legacy is strong, and it is fulfilling to me that their legacy continues, their talent and temperament, etc. continues through their genes as part of the human mix. My regrets about children are only selfish, concerning the experiences I didn't have. I wouldn't have provided children with much to help them through this challenging world. (I suspect this is a legacy I got from my father, who I think did sometimes regret having children for just this reason.)

Arguably our fates at this age are more or less settled, no matter what illusions we need to keep going. That our youth is gone is inarguable, so as much as I fantasize George Harrison as a brother I can fantasize Dhani Harrison as a son, as a renewal of some of what I cherish. I hope he does great things for his generation and those that follow. One of the few benefits of getting older is that you can admit your guiding fantasies, since nothing you do can matter much anymore, and what are they going to do to you now for having them? Not much, compared to what you’re in for. All things must pass. But some things pass down, and if they’re good, it makes looking at the book of life a little easier.

Oscars

I had a little oped piece published in the L.A. Times recently, on the politics of gender-specific acting categories for the Academy Awards. I'd only seen it on-line until the Times sent me a tear sheet last week. It turns out that my Oscar piece was published right below another Oscar piece, by Kirk Douglas.

That's as close as I've come to the Oscars. Well, I did have a friend who was nominated once, in the Best Documentary category. It was years ago, when the audience and nominees still sat at tables, like they were just there for dinner. He told me that just before his award category winner was to be announced, his girlfriend at the time leaned over and told him not to kiss her if he wins, because she hadn't told her old boyfriend she was leaving him yet. It turned out not to be a problem, for that was as close as he got to an Oscar.

I have to confess to being a fool for awards shows in the arts, especially the Oscars, which is the only one I've watched in recent years (except the Kennedy Center and AFI Awards which are each a bit different.) I watched a good bit of this year's, even though I saw only a few of the movies nominated. I've watched in the past partly because I had a rooting interest, but except for Bill Murray I didn't much care this year. The last year I can remember being invested in outcomes was quite a good year, when "Shakespeare in Love" and some other good films split the awards.

But I always had two other reasons, and they remain. The one that remains strongest is the one that seems to be getting stronger in the awards' programs themselves: the celebration of the movies, and of the wonder of making them. I've been around moviemakers and moviemaking enough to know that, sure, it is a crazy business full of ego and envy, lies and betrayal, and dominated by arbitrary forces and money, but within that and through that is a wild, joyful and magical process, which also expresses bravery, honesty, integrity and intelligence.

There may be plenty of people to hate, and something in nearly everyone to stay away from, but there is also a lot to like. Technical people are often very smart and they have a lot of fun. Actors can be the greatest people to be around, as long as you can go home by yourself afterwards.

I don't like most movies these days but the ones I do like I really admire, and some I am in awe of. And that's how a lot of those people in the Oscar audience feel---you can see it. They may be self-absorbed stars but they are also in awe of the movies, and they are just as awestruck---maybe more awestruck---as the rest of us, watching Katherine Hepburn and Gregory Peck, two stars who died this past year and who were given tributes. I like to watch them look at each other, and celebrate the work they do.

Which relates to the longest-lasting reason, the vicarious experience. A lot of people put down the vicarious, but I don't. I know only too well that in many areas of life, if I didn't have vicarious experience I'd have no experience at all.

Part of the attraction of movies themselves is the vicarious experience, putting ourselves in the place of those people in those situations on the screen. I feel the same way about the people who make the movies. I vividly remember, so many years ago that it's embarrassing, watching Kirk's boy Michael Douglas, producer of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," with Jack and the cast and director, the first film to win the top 5 awards, saying how long a struggle it had been, how everybody had told them they were crazy, etc. etc. But they did it.

And there I was, looking up at a TV set in a small town bar, wanting desperately for my future to include such a moment. But I got to share the moment anyway, I felt really happy for them. I imagined what it would be like to have that moment---to feel fulfilled, lucky, vindicated and blessed.

I've felt that vicariously many times since, as the years have gone by, as that young upstart producer and his young upstart lead actor have become active elders of the Hollywood elite---as the upstart Francis Ford sweeps the Oscars, becomes vilified and obscured, but makes a life on the big stage, and his daughter becomes the first American woman nominated for Best Director--- while my life spirals in slow inconsequence, from improvisation and reinvention to denial and delusion and back again, and I remain a vicarious participant.

We used to talk about life being a movie. My life has been a movie, that only I have seen.

So when I watched this year, what I saw (for example) was a group of people who shared their lives and work for five or six or seven years on "The Lord of the Rings" project, together probably for the last time, at the end of an incredible adventure that probably has defined their lives. A fantastic gift, and a kind of curse they'll have to deal with for the rest of their lives. One of the producers I think it was who remarked that he had been working on this film for nearly all of his two children's lives. How amazing that is to even contemplate.

I can remember when I was younger actually trying to figure out how long it would take me to get my as-yet unfinished screenplay to the screen, and being in a panic because I couldn't figure out how I could possibly survive that long. So today, as far from Oscar as I've ever been, it's just as amazing to me that I somehow accidentally lived without one than it is to contemplate having one.

Maybe I'll read something different tomorrow, but to me, Bill Murray looked devastated when he didn't win. His first try at a serious part was in a movie I liked a lot, "The Razor's Edge," but which generally bombed. He played comedies forever after, and developed as a comic actor; from within his own personality he developed his unique colors and depths, so that by "Groundhog Day" he was a master---there will be a tribute to him someday as awestruck as the one for Gregory Peck. Then he seemed to fade away. But "Lost in Translation" was a unique part, in which he created a character from his own persona but not identical to it. I'll bet he was convinced he'd never get a better chance at the Oscar than this.

And what was with Diane Keaton, dressed as Annie Hall, the part she won for? Was it to acknowledge that she knew she wouldn't win this year, or was it for luck? Oscar is a strange thing, for everybody, I guess.

I can also remember when I first heard of Oscar parties. I went to one in New York, at somebody's apartment full of hip Village Voice media people, and hated it. People talked all through the show, they dished, they complained. I wanted to bask in it, feel it, do that vicarious thing, be happy for the winners I admired, feel bad for the deserving who lost.

This year I saw an ad for people who design Oscar parties, that's their job. No thank you. Margaret makes the best popcorn in the world. That's all I need.

Why I Support John Kerry

It's been awhile since I've written a political speech. It took some time to get back into the rhythm but eventually I had a good time doing it---and delivering it. The last line is adapted from a Kerry line that I first heard him use to end his Iowa acceptance speech. (I was interested to see that it wasn't in the prepared text.) He used it again in Virginia last Tuesday. The fact that "giving America back its future, and its soul" happens to echo the title of my long awaited project, Soul of the Future (well, I'm certainly awaiting it) has absolutely no bearing on my support for John Kerry. Almost absolutely.

Why I Support John Kerry

Delivered to Humboldt County Democrats
February 15, 2004

I am pleased to speak to you today about why I support John Kerry.

From Arizona to Maine, from New Mexico to North Dakota to Tennessee, from Michigan to Missouri, Democrats in record numbers have spoken in one clear voice.

They listened to the candidates, and they liked what they heard, but from the Iowa caucuses to the Virginia primary last Tuesday and the Nevada caucuses yesterday, they made their choice, and their choice is John Kerry. Over and over they said, we like these new ideas and all this passion, but we're choosing a candidate who has the ideas, who has the passion, but he also has the experience and the knowledge and the character to do what needs to be done. We choose John Kerry.

They said we want a candidate with a proven record of making hard choices, of fiscal responsibility, with practical ideas for growing a sustainable forward-looking economy that benefits all Americans. We want a candidate who has a record in the U.S. Senate of supporting small business, of fighting for American jobs, for social justice, international cooperation, the environment, equal rights and a woman's right to choose. We choose John Kerry.

They said we want a candidate who understands fairness and understands strength. So we choose John Kerry, who as a mill town county prosecutor put the #2 Mob Boss in New England behind bars, and as a defense attorney worked hard to prove the innocence of a man convicted for a crime he didn't commit.

They said the war in Iraq was a tragic mistake but we know we live in a dangerous world, so we choose John Kerry the war hero with the Silver Star and the Bronze Star who risked his life under fire to save others, and we choose John Kerry the anti-war hero who as spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans against the war was so feared by the Republican administration that he made it onto Nixon's enemies list, and whose leadership in the Senate against the shameful war in Nicaragua exposed Oliver North.

Voters looked at John Kerry and saw this combination of sanity and savvy and strength, and they chose him because they know it's all needed for a President to protect us and lead our foreign policy, to fight effectively against powerful corporations for jobs and health care and the environment. But they also saw that strength would be needed in the coming battle to defeat George W. Bush. For we all know what kind of campaigners these Republicans are. We know they're going to spends hundreds of millions on scurrilous attack ads, they're going to distort every Senate vote and policy conversation, they will be try to convince the American people there's a Willie Horton under every bed, and a Saddam Hussein in every closet. We all know the shameless lies and easy slander that pours out of the sewers of talk radio. This year the Democrats need a fighter, somebody who knows who he is and knows what he's doing, and won't back down.

But the voters in the primaries suggest the possibility that this year, all Americans will no longer be willing victims of the same old weapons of mass distraction. That they too will focus on the issues that really matter. We want a President we can trust, who will right this ship of state before it takes us all down.

In 1841 Emerson said humanity is divided between the party of hope and the party of memory. In the 2004 election, America must decide between the party of hope and the party of fear. And make no mistake-we will be hearing a lot from the other side in the coming months about what we must fear. But it is as true now as it was when Franklin Roosevelt said it---the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. We cannot allow fear to triumph, or hope will be a memory.

What has this administration of fear given us? Loss of constitutional freedoms that we've always fought to defend. A war born of arrogance, over the urgent threat of weapons that the UN and other international agencies warned did not exist, and a war begun with lies, when the president broke his promises to the U.S. Senate to let inspectors finish their work, and not to use force without the international community. Without a realistic plan, the Bush administration committed the United States to a horribly costly occupation of Iraq, which so far has only led to more violence, terrorism and death. America believed its president, and America was betrayed.

What else has the administration of fear given us? We saw a five trillion dollar federal surplus left to the nation by those free-spending Democrats turn into a five trillion dollar federal deficit in the blink of an eye, and what did we get for it? A health care system that covers all Americans? New infrastructure in our states and cities? New schools, better teacher pay, decent wages for the people we depend on most-nurses, childcare and eldercare workers, emergency medical personnel? New investments in creating jobs and helping families? Did we even get adequate funding for firefighters and police to carry out their new responsibilities for homeland security?

We got none of that. Instead we got a tax cut for the already obscenely wealthy, pork barrel for pharmaceutical industries, schools in Iraq but not in Ukiah, new jobs in Jakarta but not in Eureka, comfort for senior partners but not senior citizens, everything that Wall Street wants and nothing that Main Street needs.

In 2000, too many of us sat on the sidelines, or demanded purity and perfection, or succumbed to a folksy smile because it didn't really matter who won. Well, it did matter. Instead of joining the world to confront the climate crisis, we're back fighting to keep oil rigs out of the Alaskan wilderness. Instead of building the digital economy, America is bleeding jobs. Instead of securing Social Security and Medicare, and dealing with the health care crisis, this administration has pillaged the future, not just of those who will soon reach retirement age, but of those who have not yet reached pre-school age. Instead of getting at the roots of terrorism, we're off securing oil fields for Halliburton at the cost of American and Iraqi blood, and our future and our sacred honor.

Yes, the election of 2000 mattered. And that's why the election of 2004 matters even more.

And that's why the voters in the Democratic primaries -and 40% of them in New Hampshire were Independents---have spoken with that one strong voice. They've listened to good men and women with good ideas, candidates of great heart and great vision, including some who will be the future of the Democratic party. Perhaps they've also listened to the ideas and candidates of other progressive parties, who may also contribute to the future. But this year their voices were united in a great cry, that to save the future we must change the present, we can't afford to wait.

Back when Franklin Roosevelt was elected president, he gathered his advisors to figure out how to fight the Great Depression. Some of them called only for long-term measures to bolster the economy. But then FDR's chief advisor, Harry Hopkins spoke up. He said, "Mr. President, people don't eat in the long term. They eat every day."

And in 2004, 44 million Americans are without health insurance, 18,000 die every year because they have no health insurance-we don't need health care in the long term, we need health care as a right not a privilege for the wealthy few---we need it every day, we need it now. Eight million Americans who want to work can't find a job-we need jobs now. The richest nation in the history of the world has 35 million people in poverty---we need to deal with that now. Our cities and counties and our states are in crisis, we don't need to keep our schools open and our police on the street in the long term-we need to do it now.

And above all we can't wait to get rid of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld in four more years, we need to get rid of them this November. It's time to send this trigger-happy, photo-op-governing, double-talking, supreme court-appointed bush league president back to the ranch.

To defeat George W. Bush now, to begin a new era for America now, voters in the west, the east, the north and the south have chosen John Kerry, voters in Wisconsin will choose John Kerry on Tuesday, voters on March 2 will choose John Kerry in New York, Ohio, Minnesota, Maryland, Rhode Island and in California… This is our time, to join our voices to the one strong voice of these primaries that is already echoing around the world---it's our turn to join John Kerry's campaign to give America back its future, to give America back its soul.

The President of Projection

This column---mmm, blog I mean--- usually defers politics to the gonzo literati at American Samizat these days, but in the process of making myself available for a backstage role as I usually do at presidential campaign time, I find myself thrust a bit forward, though on a very small stage. Partly because John Kerry's surge in the Democratic pre-nominating contests has been so swift and so complete, he's has no organization in this isolated corner of California. So when I showed for a John Kerry meet-up, I became part of a small core group, and on two occasions (one past, one coming up) the only one available and foolhardy enough to speak for the candidate in public.

Today I found myself on a platform with an actual presidential candidate, though he was a local but prominent candidate for the Green Party nomination. A Democrat like Kerry is more likely to get attacked from the left than the right in this neck of the woods (unless such a candidate actually went into the woods where logging was occurring.) So my remarks and rejoinders took a different trajectory than they normally would elsewhere, especially in this election year. My central argument hasn't changed much since 2000, actually: that I believe in progressive causes, long-term thinking, new ideas, demonstrations and other non-violent actions to advocate and to keep officeholders accountable, and I love the openness and the give and take of the Primary process, but when it comes election time, I become a member of the hiring committee looking at two resumes. One of these two is going to get the job of President. More often than not, I've found the Democratic candidate to represent my beliefs sufficiently, and I've trusted that candidate to be a decent President, while I've found the Republican candidate to be a mortal threat to civilization and (as the Klingons would say) without honor. As they have so often turned out to be, I might add.

This year is different only in the number of candidates in the primaries I could have cheerfully supported (even apart from their supreme virtue in not being G.W. Bush) and the fact that the one of them who is going to be the nominee, John Kerry, is so utterly right for the moment. So my support is definitely not "lesser-of-two-evilism" (as the Green candidate dubbed it.) Kerry's presidency could transform this country at the moment it needs it the most, and I frankly am astonished at our good luck so far.

But the point of this column (and by that of course I mean blog) is not to praise John Kerry or recapitulate my remarks of today (nor rehearse my remarks for next Sunday's county Democratic convention) but to offer a few meandering thoughts about how people seem to view the presidency, and how that might influence their voting behavior.


It's said that George Washington fled the presidency because he was afraid people were going to try to make him king. The pomp and circumstance of royalty is powerful even in a democracy (powerful enough that our chief teenage rite of passage is the prom, and we insist on royal treatment for our major transitions of marriage and funeral.) But there is also the deep history of kings as mystical figures. The king as personification of the nation is only part of it. Their blood gives them the divine right to rule because kings had direct connection to God, the first proof of which was that the crops grew. If they didn't, the king was killed. Later that practice was amended so the king could substitute a fool, a kind of scapegoat, in his place for the ritual sacrifice.

Later the one King became identified with the one God. And so as Alan Watts said, "In the United States we are in a serious social and political conflict because we think we ought to be living in a republic when the great majority of citizens believe the universe is a monarchy."

Today pomp and circumstance has been augmented by celebrity, and the mystical identification enhanced by the enormous power the president of the U.S. represents. So mix all this together and you've got a powerful if bewildering and contradictory set of expectations, on all kinds of levels.

I began to see all this is a particular way during the first days of the Clinton administration. Partly that had to do with it being Clinton, a Democrat who came along not a moment too soon after 12 years of Republican destruction; and especially that he was almost exactly my age (In fact, I am six weeks older) and roughly the age of my contemporaries. And partly it had to do with some new conceptual tools I acquired or let's say adapted from C.G. Jung, at about the same time.

That Clinton was our age made identifying with him to some degree pretty natural. It was interesting to note how differently it played out. I think it made all of us reevaluate our lives, and not too cheerfully, since he was President and we weren't. But it really bothered some men my age, including some far more successful than I. Some of them realized it, but I think a lot did not. They were hostile to Clinton without quite knowing why. But if you listened to them, you knew why, basically.

This comparison kind of identification is more broadly a kind of projection, which is one of those conceptual tools. Many people projected their expectations onto Clinton, not because he was our age but because he was our President. He was supposed to represent and fulfill our hopes and dreams, in every way, all the time. I began noticing it so much that I began calling him the President of Projection.

It seems true of any president. But why? Another tool came in handy to answer that. This part may be a bit offensive, though (if you aren't offended already.) I've been something of an amateur political junkie for many years. But I know that most people don't follow politics or statecraft, or what got to be called the "policy wonk" stuff (also in the Clinton years.) (In previous years we just called it "government" or "issues.") Yet everyone has opinions, and if they don't, they'll make one up when asked by an acquaintance or a pollster.

Jung's theory of functions says we each have predominant ways of perceiving things. Besides being more extraverted or more introverted, we primarily favor our thinking, feeling (or evaluating), sensation or intuition. During our lives we develop that function to be quite sophisticated and discriminating. Often we develop a second and sometimes a third function. But almost never the fourth. And that "inferior" function becomes our Achilles heel when it finally becomes activated, because we react very strongly, and even with great certainty, yet our perceptions aren't very sophisticated and we are prone to make huge errors. The classic example is the plot of "The Blue Angel." The professor (the thinking man) who falls in love with a beautiful woman (through his sensations) and makes a complete fool of himself, and destroys his life. Thanks to his powerful sensations, he can't think straight. He couldn't have been fooled by a weak argument, but he couldn't tell he was being used by a woman he felt was the love of his life. Another example is Daisy Buchanan's husband in The Great Gatsby, a former athlete, apparently a sensation type but definitely not a thinker, who talks enthusiastically about a book that "scientifically proves" the white race is superior. He is taken in through his inferior function of thinking.

How I applied this to politics is perhaps a little roundabout (since it doesn't apply to the functions directly) but it makes sense to me. The basic insight that does apply is that we're apt to get hooked and suddenly most strongly about subjects we aren't used to dealing with, that we aren't sophisticated about.

People feel very strongly, but their feelings lead them to indiscriminate conclusions, because they haven't developed their powers of perceiving the reality of political situations. Now that doesn't mean people who don't read political journals are therefore going to be wrong about a candidate or an issue. Nor does it mean that people who follow every Senate vote or blip in the polls are capable of seeing the forest for the trees. It just explains to me how people can have such strong feelings about things they admittedly don't know much about. It's a combination of this inferior function idea, and the idea of projection. The President is supposed to be perfect, and when he's not, we're devastated.

This possibly accounts for some of the predisposition of people to have the same knee-jerk reactions when their "hot buttons" are pushed. Republicans have made a living on this for over 20 years, by labeling every Democrat they don't like as liberal soft on crime perpetrators of class warfare, who hate America, don't share "our" values, and will leave America defenseless. Not to mention bleeding heart baby killers who won't let kids pray. Who want to raise your taxes (even though they say they just want to put back the taxes on the wealthy Bush took away.)

On the other side, at primary time some left of center voters in Democratic primaries have been ready to turn up their noses at anyone who doesn't emphasize the exact issue they care about the most, or who don't talk like Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader on the stump. I think it's possible to support a candidate you don't agree with 100%, and even if you believe Chomsky and Nader, maybe a candidate who has been a Senator or Governor or both for a few decades and has talked to professional pols, scholars and scientists, and voters from every walk of life and leaders from other nations and cultures, might know a thing or two they don't.

Then of course sometimes people react to knowing they don't know much about what's going on by throwing up their hands and saying I guess those people know what they're doing. Which can be even worse. But the problem that Democrats usually face at primary time is the nitpicking demand for perfection, and the projection. Picking a candidate is not a bloodless process, of course. It requires some sort of emotional commitment, bond, even identification. But when it becomes unconscious projection, it can become dangerous.

But the early Clinton years also evoked another response from some of my contemporaries. Because they had similar jobs by then---in some sort of executive capacity, say, perhaps even in government, though on a different level and different scale---they understood that just like them, the President had 24 hours in a day, at least some of which had to be devoted to sleep, rest and family. He could not do things by magic. Like them, he had to deal with impossible demands, deadlines, subordinates who screwed up, intrigues, betrayals, bureaucratic bungling, incompetence, vicious rivalries, and ordinary human problems. Not to mention competing priorities, mixed messages, competing and conflicting interests, head colds, and muscle strains from exercising because of sudden weight gain. In other words, they were more forgiving, and less liable to project king-like expectations, because they identified with what they imagined was a similar situation, though worse (and of course in some ways, a lot better.)

We don't have to study the Congressional Record to develop some sophistication in judging our leaders. We're going to hear a lot in the coming campaign about this Kerry vote or that Kerry vote in the Senate, and out of context some of them are going to sound bad. Most will be distortions and lies, but let's say some aren't: Could they be seen as mistakes? Or will people judge them out of proportion, as huge failings? And will they judge proportionately to the enormity of taking a nation to war on false pretenses, or decimating the lives of millions to make some rich people richer? I guess we'll find out. My own sense is that this country may be turning a corner on a lot of nonsense it used to swallow, at the same time that projection is not so severe to be blinding.

I don't know if George Bush is evil or a bad man, and I don't care. I care if he uses evil means to deceive the public. I care if he's wrong. I care if the reigning Republicans are so cynical that they have utter contempt for the voters, which I believe they do. But I'm not looking to marry any of them anyway. I'm looking to hire a President to lead this country in the right direction, and do some things that badly need to be done, or there won't be much of a future for Democrats or (most) Republicans, and especially if we're including the climate crisis, for Christians, French, bears, dogs and cats, and possibly wildflowers.

What is Success?

I seem to be in the rather odd position of not being famous enough to get a book contract, but too famous to get a job.

I don’t have a sufficient “platform” nor am I a prominent enough “brand”, but any job I am qualified for, I am apparently overqualified for. Or something.

When I mentioned this to someone on the phone, she suggested that I was “between trapezes.” Sounds about how I feel.




There's a chapter in The Malling of America called "Kids in the Mall: Growing Up Controlled." It's just five pages long in the hard cover edition, out of 400. (the chapter is longer in the paperback, with new material.) But it's been far and away the chapter reprinted most often. It's in literally dozens of anthologies and readers, mostly for college and high school students. It started getting reprinted right after the book was published in 1985, and has been in a couple of new volumes every year since. It will be in new anthologies through 2005.

It didn't occur to me when I wrote it that a chapter on kids in the mall would be a natural for classroom use. But I get a few hundred dollars a year because it is (one publisher called it one of the most teachable essays of the past 50 years), making it easily the most lucrative five pages I've ever written.

And it's why my name appears in anthologies that include Shakespeare, Chekhov, Thoreau and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In the collection I'm looking at, called "Legacies," it follows a poem by Margaret Atwood, and is a few pages in front of a story by William Faulkner.

Is it the best thing I ever wrote? I doubt it. Is it truly in a class with the work of those literary greats? Not really. Do I like it? Sure. It's flawed, but it's fun. And I remember being in a good mood when I wrote it---this draft of it anyway. I was on a roll then. I wrote several of the chapters in that section in just a few days, once I had the first one.

That chapter also happens to be one that my editor really hated. She thought it wasn't an accurate reflection of kids' experience, at least according to her resident expert, a young intern in her office. (To be fair, this was an earlier draft, but there's little substantive change.) If I had heeded her, I would have dropped it completely. Only my stubbornness kept me working on that book, after that particular set of meetings.

The Malling of America is the only book I've written---that is, that's been commissioned and/or published. It's a good book. I still like it. Now that Amazon has a new goggle-like system which, when you type in a name, gives you not only the author's book(s) but any references in other books, it occurred to me to look myself up. There are about 58 books in the amazon search that mention mine, and this doesn't include several more I know about. When I interviewed Michael McClure for my feature on Buddhism and the arts in San Francisco, I mentioned my book for some reason. "That's a famous book!" he said. "Well, it's a famous title," I heard myself replying. And that's true. More people know the title than the book. But I still get fan mail occasionally, from people who enjoyed reading it.

So why am I not more excited about this? For two reasons, that by the end of this bit of comment will be related. The first is a point that many people find difficult to understand. I like the writing in that book very much. But I feel exactly the same way about other pieces of my writing that have gotten far less praise, and some that have never gotten so much as a single word of praise. In a few cases, I feel the work that has been ignored (sometimes politely, by people who clearly don't like it) is better.

In a way this relates to the larger phenomenon of outsized praise, which is usually soon followed by outsized blame. This has been a feature of my work for clients in particular. The first work I do is not just satisfactory, it's genius. That very word has been used, more than once. These days when I hear it, I feel like running for the door. Because it is inevitably followed at some time by a piece of work that they don't like as much. And that is often enough the last job I get from them. The example I recall most vividly was one of the times the word "genius" was used, in conjunction with the words "perfect" and "just what I hoped for." This was a rewrite on a grant application for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was followed by similar praise for work on a grant for a couple of million dollars. Then I was called in to help on another project already in progress. There was a multi-national conference call involved. Unfortunately, the person who hired me left the room for part of the call, and when what I wrote responded in part to what he had not heard, he wasn't happy with it. And I was no longer a genius, and no longer called for other projects.

I do the best I can on every job I do, for clients or for naught. I don't let anything leave that I don't feel is good. I usually put far more work into what I write than is warranted by the money I make from it, on those occasions I make any.

Then there is work I feel pushes the envelope in more interesting ways, or expresses more, more than I had expressed before, more than I knew.
I have a special fondness for this work. I am often alone in this fondness. It's more often true of my non non-fiction (including music) but there's nonfiction, published and not, that qualifies.

So if I'm not going to jump off a cliff in despair because nobody is excited or inspired by something I really like---and I always want what I like to excite and inspire others (is there any greater bliss than having a melody you wrote hummed by children, and even to have it outlive you? A play performed by strangers? Not to my fantasy knowledge.) It's disappointing, I'm not happy about it, but finally it's my standards that count, in terms of my own feelings, and my own sense of my work, and my play. And so it's difficult to get too carried away by the responses I do get to other work.

I don't want to become like Conan Doyle, who hated Sherlock Holmes and valued most his metaphysical writing, which even in his own time was considered largely gibberish. Or like TV actors whose small screen success drives them to believe they should be movie stars. On the other hand, we aren't talking about living with the lavish rewards of success, but maybe living a little too deluded.

That's the other point. My mall book is known around the world. It's how I am identified, and probably will be in the first line of my obit wherever it happens to appear, if anywhere. But in commercial terms, in career terms, it was a failure. It was not enough of a success to propel me into a career writing books. I made plenty of naïve mistakes, mind you, leading up to publication and in the years immediately afterwards. But it is also true that one rather large factor in my ideas and proposals for books being all turned down after that, is that the mall book was perceived as a failure. It never even got a paperback edition, until I paid for one.

Had it been a big commercial success, I could have proposed a book on the influence of moonshine on white wall tires, and it would have been immediately hailed as a stroke of genius, and money thrown at it. Had it been perceived as at least a moderate commercial success, and especially a critical success, I would have had another couple of books to make a career. A success would have meant my screenplay would be looked at favorably, and I could add other forms to my legitimate repertoire.

But it wasn't. So it's a famous title. It's a semi-famous book. In paperback now, it sells a few copies each month. Around Christmas shopping season, I get emails from reporters (Hamilton, Ontario this year) and a phone call from NBC News with Tom Brokaw, asking me questions. Sometimes they are even questions I can reasonably answer.

Now when I propose a book idea, I'm told (by an agent) I don't have a "big enough platform." I'm not a star, a brand name. I'm not an expert, with a constituency. Of course, the only thing that made me a shopping mall expert was publishing the book. I keep getting called a sociologist. I've had exactly two sociology courses in my life. I may not be an expert on the skills of peace, or the soul of the future, but I am also no expert on sociology or retail, architecture or business. So what? What about what I actually wrote, and people read? That may matter to you and me (it certainly matters to me) but not to anybody I've met in publishing. (At least they aren't in publishing any more.)

But I have to factor this in, when I evaluate my work. Not what it's worth to me, not even what it might be worth to readers (or listeners), but what it's worth in money. Which ultimately becomes what I'm worth in money, and that's what I have to deal with now. For in this society, the ultimate measure of all things is money. There's no getting around it. Probably even monks are expected to do some telemarketing for the monastery these days.

Over the course of a lifetime, you realize all too well that your virtues and your flaws are the same. The stubbornness that kept me working on the mall book, that keeps me following my enthusiasms, has led me through decades in which I wrote a lot, published a good deal less, and missed a lot. Like having a family, a house, a nest-egg, or a real career. I got ridiculed the other night for not having money in a mutual fund. Instead I have had a series of assignments, a series of articles, a series of unpublished drafts of fictions, plays, screenplays, and songs that not very many voices shared. Maybe that's why I insist on re-publishing my old work, even if only on the Internet. So it adds up to something, something whole, and in the world now.

Now I am trying to be realistic about where I fit, not by my standards, but by the standards of those who control livelihoods. But as flawed as my judgment must be, I still find it difficult to believe that my rightful place is rote work for minimum wage with a few hours a week of dubious focus on writing unproduced plays. That may in fact be the scenario, although if that's the direction it goes, it could be a lot uglier than that peaceful sounding little scene suggests. And who knows, maybe it's for the best---to give up any pretense of a public role, of even a middle class life, and write in the literary forms I always wanted to the most, if I am so able.

But even in that case, I will still be stuck with my own evaluations of my work, as delusional as they might be. There are still going to be things that mean a lot to me and to no one else. And other things that mean something to a few others, some of which will mean less to me. And I'm still going to pine for the response of excitement and inspiration, and in the end when I don't get it, it won't change my opinion. I still like what I like. I see what I see around me, I have my evaluations about the work of others, and my opinion where I fit in (somewhere in the second tier, just below the quite thin top tier, if you must know.) And as long as I can, I will remain stubbornly involved in what I care about. For example, even after I sent out a few CDs of my accumulated music this Christmas, I listened to the selection, liked a lot of it, but decided there were a couple of vocals I could do better, so I re-recorded them. I will probably work on this CD off and on for years. In the final analysis, though I care if others like it, it doesn't really change how I feel about it, how I evaluate it. Or put it this way. The ideal situation would be if my work happened to be making me a living, and people---maybe even lots of people-liked it, were stimulated by it, got joy from it, and I liked it. The joy of others would definitely add to my joy in my work. If my work were making me a living and I liked it, but what I created didn't make much difference to anyone, I could accept that and go on, hoping to do better work that might catch on, or just hope that someone might discover it later on. The much harder cases would be if my work were making me a living and I didn't like it, or my current case, in which my work is not making me a living but I like it and some others do as well. In those cases it's difficult to know what to feel.

The trick is going to be to accept the consequences of how I am evaluated by others in the context of whatever present is current. Especially the others with power. I've been avoiding that while I've been fighting it. A lot of my self-image is internal, but a lot of it is also based on a fantasy of my relationship to the external world. I don't know how I will handle the violent separation of the internal and external. I've never felt equal to being able to compartmentalize enough to give eight or ten hours a day of energy and attention falsely, and then come home and be energetic and true. And these days, simply your body and your brain aren't enough. Employers want your heart and soul. And the worse job it is, the more they demand it.

That's if there is such a job. I am the right age to be at the apex of my writing career, and the wrong age to be looking for a job. I am also in the wrong region of the wrong state. With the wrong job history. And introverts don't cold call well, as a rule.

I've had something in the Sunday SF Chronicle four out of the last five weeks. Two book reviews, one a cover; the cover story in Sunday Datebook, and tomorrow, a long Insight piece. This writing has cost more than it pays, and so it can't go on this way. It only works if it leads to something else. So far, it hasn't. No interested book editor or agent on the phone. It still could happen, of course. This is a weird game, and getting stranger all the time, but the odds are also getting longer. It's getting to be more of a lottery.

I alternate panic and not panic. At the moment I’m feeling okay. There was a certain “closure” in finding out that, as I suspected, a particular door was definitely closed to me. There was an aha moment in the shower when the intro line I’ve been looking for to begin “Soul of the Future” came to me, and ideas starting falling into place. So I may be at the starting point of a familiar cycle, of generating a proposal that I hope will liberate me from this angst without requiring me to move my life again… all such hopes have been dashed in the recent past, and even in the not so recent past, but for the moment the creative excitement carries me forward into another day.

So what is success? There's mine, there's yours, and there's the big old world's. If we all aren't on the same page, it's very hard to say. Maybe there is honest work I'm suited for, that I can't even imagine. Maybe I will find it, or it will find me. And maybe my fate will be the same as so many before me, after me, and all around me: a fate that would be regarded as tragic were it not played by unknown actors on so small a stage, in the midst of so much noise, in the dark. We do the best we can, with as much grace as honors us.

" They ask what
the purpose of art is. Is that how
things are? Say there were a thousand
artists and one purpose, would one
artist be having it and all the nine hundred and ninety-nine others
be missing the point?"-- John Cage




"I don't think we should insist that the poet is normal or, for
that matter, that anybody is."-- Wallace Stevens



"Poetry is indispensible--if I only knew what for."--Jean
Cocteau


"There is a mystery in the universe. But what is it?"--
Magritte


"The thing that destroys artists more rapidly and consistently
than anything else is to be unwanted...The bottom line is that to be
wanted is a nurturing thing for an artist."--Eric Fischl



"You write better with all your problems resolved. You write
better in good health. You write better without preoccupations. You
write better when you have love in your life. There is a romantic
idea that suffering and adversity are very good, very useful for the
writer. I don't agree at all."--Gabriel Garcia Marquez



"Applause is the most potent of rejuvenators, the most certain
remedy for tired blood, the one true aphrodisiac. The human organism
needs it the way a plant needs water and light, and will have it even
if it must be drawn from the organism itself."--Donal Henahan



"Daring constitutes the true measure of discipline."--Apollinaire


"All you can do as an artist--for the kind of artist I am and
that I think artists should be--is to try to radicalize your own
impulses and strip away everything that isn't you, and make
everything that is you that much stronger."--Richard Foreman



"Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable
goals, far beyond all hope of achievement. Only if poets and writers
set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature
continue to have a function."--Italo Calvino



"If you stick to your soul, it will stick to you. The world has
a way of slipping through your fingers."--G.B. Shaw



"Art is not to decorate apartments. It is an offensive and
defensive weapon against the enemy."--Picasso



The only thing that is different from one time to another is
what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing
everything."--Gertrude Stein



"This is the time. And this is the record of the time." --
Laurie Anderson.



"I recognize only one motive for the act of painting: the desire
to paint an image one would like to look at."--Magritte



"My favorite definition of fiction is Cocteau's: 'Literature is
a force of memory that we have not yet understood.'' It seems that
in a book that one finds gratifying, the writer is able to present
the reader with a memory he has already possessed but has not
comprehended."--John Cheever



"He was ruined in every way, but a man possessed of passion is
not a bankrupt in life."-- Joseph Conrad



"Make mad the guilty and appal the free
Confound the ignorant and amaze indeed
the very faculties of eyes and ears."--Hamlet



"...curiosity in its turn is insubordination in its purest
form."--Nabokov



"Beauty is dangerous in narrow times. A knife in the slender
back of the rational man, and only those who live between the layers
of these strange days can know its name and shape."--Don DeLillo



"Both their truth and their madness are accepted, for we must
never forget that an artist imposes his madness on an audience less
mad, or at least unaware of its madness."--Francois Truffaut



"I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of
contradicting myself."--Tom Stoppard



"The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for
everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for
everything."--Milan Kundera



"Some say the novel is dead. But it is not the novel. It is
they who are dead."--Marquez


When nations grow old
The Arts grow cold
And commerce settles on
Every tree.--William Blake


"However tough the peasant in his heart, every writer needs
people who believe in him, give him a shoulder to cry on, and value
what he values. If the writer doesn't get it, he might try changing
friends."--John Gardner


"People cannot be expected to put aside even the meager comfort
of financial success and critical acclaim...unless they can be shown
something better. We must support each other concretely in the quest
for artistic knowledge, in the struggle to create."--David Mamet

"A terrorist is a product of our education that says that fantasy is not real, that says aesthetics is just for artists, that says soul is only for priests, imagination is trivial or dangerous and for crazies, and that reality, what we must adapt to, is the external world, and that world is dead."
James Hillman

"...but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness."
Jacques in Shakespeare's As You Like It

"The united personality will never quite lose the painful sense of innate discord. Complete redemption from the sufferings in this world is and must remain in illusion. The goal is important only as an idea; the essential thing is the opus which leads to the goal: that is the goal of a lifetime." Jung

Sunday

I awoke Sunday to see my article on Buddhism and the arts in San Francisco on the cover of the Sunday Datebook section in the San Francisco Chronicle. There was a note about me in the editor's introduction to the issue, and the piece was elegantly illustrated.

I noted all this as I also noticed that for the first time, Tess the cat had chosen my new meditation cushion (a Christmas gift from Margaret) for her sleeping spot.

We get the Sunday Chronicle delivered, so the Datebook was here when I got up. Then I noticed something else---there were two copies of the Datebook. Looking through the rest of the paper I realized that we were missing about half the sections, but of the sections we had, we had two of them all. So there had been some mistake in assembling our paper. But it resulted in two copies of the section my work was in, rather than one (or none.)

This is the rainy season here, and we've had a series of storms come through: lots of wind and rain, some hail, even a flash or two of lightning. But when the sun shines, it shines as warmly as in summer. When it comes out after rain, steam rises from the ground.

(This is specifically where we live, a couple of miles from the coast. Up in the nearby forested hills where friends of our live ---including a very new friend, born last month--- one of our rain storms was six inches of snow. )

Sunday was mixed clouds and sun, but dry and bright enough to warrant a walk on the beach. We drove the few minutes through flat farm land (a big flower nursery, dairy cows) to Mad River Beach. We parked in the lot, walked across the sand dunes to the beach, and north along the shore to the mouth of the Mad (which, like everything else on the beach, is never in the same place twice.) Some other people were there---students who returned early from home for the holidays---but as usual, not noticeably many for the size of the beach. A few birds, and some seals who seem to like to hang out where the river flows into the ocean.

On this beach you can find knarled logs and wood fragments, stones of many colors and shapes, shells and sand dollars. But generally you find one of those category dominates. Once on my birthday I walked on this beach and saw hundreds of sand dollars, many intact and bright white in the heavy fog. On Sunday the beach was dominated by stones. Red and yellow in adobe shades, marine green, blue to purple, granite gray, black and white. Many with stripes of another color, in thin regular patterns or large single swaths. A white stone with black patterns resembling calligraphy. Slightly wet, some were smooth and shiny. Others are singular bunched and twisted shapes. Smooth grainy granite like stones in perfect ovals and triangles.

It was sunset as we walked back down the beach from the river mouth. At one point we saw something we hadn't seen before: Margaret spotted a rainbow, faint but complete, a complete arch over the area where the sun was going down behind the cloud line at the horizon.

The whole sky was something. To the southeast, blue sky in shades of azure. Clouds above and to the north. Even a V line of birds (going north, though. Wondered about that.)

Now it's Monday, and I've gotten a few emails about the story, including one from Michael McClure, who I interviewed for the piece. It's not every day you get compliments from a distinguished, very well-read poet and playwright who knew both Keroauc and Jim Morrison.

And it's the first Monday after the holidays, and back to work. The work of finding work that pays. This piece was great in many ways, but financially it cost me more to write it than I was paid. I'd like to be able to still have these Sundays. The process continues, but so does the wonder.

A Christmas Carol

This Christmas has more than the usual mix of joy and dread. The terror alert is high, and I'm not just talking about the Bush administration and Homeland Security. I'm looking at the next month or so, when it seems likely there will be changes with profound personal impact, perhaps defining the rest of my life. There are one or two good possibilities, and of course there could be the unforeseen bit of luck. But prospects do not appear rosy. What little I have, in health and stability, may be tipped on a steep downward fall.

What seems certain is that I've lost my gamble, and what I believed I should be doing at this point in my life will not be happening, at least not in the way I’ve been working and planning for. The books I felt certain I was meant to be writing are fading into the land of lost possibilities. This could be a quite costly loss for me, in more ways than one.

That of course could turn out to be the overdramatising sometimes described as catastrophizing. Or not. The story of the boy who cried wolf ends with the wolf finally coming.

For awhile now I have worried that at my age, when I am still pretty strong yet have those years of experience and learning to make use of---in other words, when my life should be culminating---that I will instead be eliminated a decade or two too early. It wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened, of course. And for someone of my birth and background, it's more or less to be expected. "Who do you think you are?" always echoes in the soul of the working class hero. Who do you think you are, not to be coughing in the basement from a lifetime of coal dust. Who do you think you are, to expect a living if you didn't follow the prescribed path, which meant getting a job and staying there forever, or even following the route outlined in the chant of my college days: work, study, get ahead, kill.

Okay, it's Christmas. I spent too much time in the past few weeks working on old audio tapes, some of them from the middle 1960s, the early 70s, etc. every decade till, well, the vocals were finished on a couple of tracks last week. I'd transferred the oldest (originally recorded on reel to reel) to cassettes a few years ago, and this month I used a "cleaning" and enhancing program, and two computers, to transfer the contents to CDs. I put together personalized CDs from the masters for family and friends as Christmas presents. They should be getting them about now.

There's always something strange about giving gifts that are your own work: writing, or in this case, music. It seems egotistical as well as apparently (though not really) economical. And there is something of an ulterior motive. It's all part of my preservation project, as are certain of these blogs. As I began to suspect that the world was no longer interested in sustaining me, I sought to preserve and disseminate as much of my past work as I could. Maybe I'll disappear, but not without a trace.

I don't know, maybe this is all what Buddhists call Attachment. Or maybe it's just natural.

That's why I've been posting old articles with new commentaries on the Kowincidence blog. I had hoped to make a book out of many of these pieces. I had a title and all, and I expected I'd have to publish it myself, through xlibris again. But now I doubt that I'll have the time or money to accomplish this. Cyberspace will have to do.

The music is perhaps more personal, especially since I've never made much of an attempt to make a living by it. Reviewing old tapes, most of them done with a single microphone in one basement or another, some preserving the few but treasured moments when I got to play my songs with other people of terrific musical talent, I realized how important making these songs and making this music was to my internal survival. In some of them, done with great sincerity and seriousness, when no one in the world was listening or probably ever would, I could hear how they were keeping me alive.

So as some phantom alien in a Star Trek episode once said, they are not expressions of my superiority but testaments to my existence. Evidence not only that I did exist, but how I existed.

I also recorded new material, with my old Yamaha keyboard (anything electronic that's more than 2 years old is Old) and its choices of formerly fashionable beats and accompaniments, using two of the four tracks on a simple four track cassette recorder. (I actually wish I still had the old boom box that unaccountably had a sound-on-sound recording feature, which allowed me to do multiple tracks that didn't have to be re-mixed.) By the time I did the last vocal tracks I was finally producing music that met or exceeded what I heard in my head.

Then I used the computer program that doesn't quite live up to its claims but is better than nothing. I haven't figured it all out yet, so there are some floating fragments and so on, but all in all I'm pleased. Even when the music or the sound isn't great, there's usually something for me to be fond of.

I couldn't make and send CDs for everyone I wanted to, but maybe I'll get the chance to do more. I do intend to post more on Kowincidence and the other blogs of record in the next month or so. I don't intend to go quietly.

This Christmas I'll be caroling with Quakers at a hospital and a nursing home. That should be as least as interesting, and as novel, as having Thanksgiving dinner at the home of Native Americans who are also Quakers.

Otherwise I'll keep up my morale with Jumbalones (the confection I make from my grandmother's recipe), rented Beatles and Star Trek DVDs, coffee and chocolate. Meditating with Margaret, hanging out with Tess the cat. The good things in life.

May your holidays be happy and safe.