I am an anti-establishmentarian, a Christian who prefers to see the church and the state kept separate. One reason for this is my view of the state as illegitimate and unfit for association with the church. Another is that no good purpose can be served by the state’s meddling in religion. As I see it, politicians and bureaucrats like to align themselves with God so as to imply that they have God’s endorsement. God certainly does not need the endorsement of politicians and bureaucrats, and the main reason for endorsing religion is to control the masses, something I do not regard as desirable.
Another reason is that, although I live in a supposed Christian nation, only about half of us claim to go to church regularly and only about 25% actually do go to church regularly. We hardly have a consensus about what it means to be a Christian, and even we churchgoers have such significant differences that any established form of Christianity is bound to offend most of us. I strongly reject any Arminianist or Darbyite version of Christianity, and Protestants and Catholics traditionally have all they can handle in not killing one another.
But, my conspecifics may be heard to argue, what is the harm of having school children sing carols? In my view, having a teacher, an agent of the state, require children to sing religious hymns smacks of establishment. Certainly, children should be permitted to sing hymns if they so choose on a voluntary basis, but the official government agency ought not to compel it or to endorse it. Certainly, it will be the rare case in which any child is directly harmed by hymn singing, but the example of a government entity attached to religion may well inspire in children a notion that the government is legitimate and that its authority is God given. And once one gives in on hymn singing, official prayers will not be far behind. Parents who want their children to sing hymns ought by all means to set up a choir of some sort for their little cherubs, and I am unaware of any obstacle to their doing so other than sloth or disinterest.
What harm can come of a Nativity Scene on the grounds of the Town Hall? Again, it is blasphemous for the town to claim the imprimatur of the Divine, and no proper purpose is served by such a display. A private person might erect such a display provided that the opportunity to use grounds of the Town Hall is afforded to everyone on an equal footing.
I do not want government, which is nothing but force and fraud, used to foist some statists’ misguided notions of Christianity on the rest of us.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Why is Bush Surrounded by Military so Often?
Is George "Not as Bad as Pol Pot" Bush surrounding himself with military personnel during so many public appearances in order to give the impression that the military supports him?
Didn't Caligula try the same thing?
Didn't Caligula try the same thing?
Better Than Philately
I am an amateur genealogist and the unofficial family historian. I spend a lot of time researching family history and in contact with other folks who are doing the same. It is quite rewarding. There are some aspects of family history research itself that are quite amusing.
Lots of people want to establish American Indian ancestry, not to gain tribal membership or to open a casino or anything, but just for bragging rights. It has become a point of pride to have Cherokee or other Indian heritage whereas it used to be something folks concealed. In my own family, the quantum of Cherokee ancestry was greatly exaggerated, although I do have Cherokee ancestors. I do not know anything about my Cherokee ancestors or whether they were decent people, but I am interested in this heritage and am not ashamed of it. I reject the idea that all of my Indian ancestors were “noble savages” with an abiding respect for the Earth. In fact, it was common practice for some Cherokee men to raid other tribes and murder people for sport or in vendettas, and there were so few Cherokees that their impact on the environment was minimal. There was simply no need for much stewardship of resources.
Lots of people are keen to establish that their ancestors were “people of quality”, a term that is sometimes used to describe anyone in America before the Revolution. Part of this is because records for the wealthier 18th and even the 17th century settlers can be documented fairly well. Such folks were apt to own land and make wills and transfer slaves and other property, and these transactions were memorialized. It is quite satisfying to be able to connect to such families because you get to go back several generations further than you might otherwise do if your ancestors were poor mountaineers who left few records of their existence. It is also desirable for some to be connected to the colonial elites, although I confess that I am not as proud of my land grabbing, politically connected ancestors as I perhaps ought to be. Some of my ancestors were in the House of Burgesses, were officers of militia, were vestrymen, were landlords; however, I am prouder of the poor sods that eked out a living in the backwoods on land that they cleared and tamed and improved by the sweat of their brows.
One prominent researcher of the Morrow family was so keen to establish that my ancestor William Morrow was descended from an English family of quality that he argued that the tombstone inscription that claimed birth in Northern Ireland was a mistake. Surely his own children were in a better position to know where he was born, and it was hardly likely in 1830 for a family of English extraction to pretend to Scots-Irish heritage.
Finding ancestors in military service is also prized, partly for the sake of the record and partly for the sake of the connection to history that this affords. But I cannot be proud of some of the campaigns of my ancestors, especially those against the Indians or in evicting Loyalists, and I have come to regard my ancestors in military service as hapless pawns.
Ancestral slave owning is embarrassing as far as I am concerned, but some folks take pride that their ancestors had plantations and were among elites. Relatively few of my ancestors had any slaves at all, fortunately, and I am satisfied that any legacy earned from slave labor went to other members of these families and not to my ancestors in the next generation. In any event, nothing that I ever inherited can be traced directly to the exploitation of slaves.
The holy grail of ancestral research is connection to famous people, or, best of all, nobility or royalty. I am proud to count as a kinsman Audie Murphy, soldier and movie actor. The Morrow researcher mentioned above took pains to connect my family with Ann Morrow Lindbergh, but I am not convinced of the connection. I would love to be the cousin of the Lindbergh Baby, but it probably isn’t so.
Most of the supposed royal connections claimed by people appear to be mythical, but I can claim one connection to the English monarchy through the bastard child of a Bishop, himself a scion of a royal bastard. Having one’s royal connection mitigated thus by bastardy takes some of the sting out of it. My Scottish royal connection is not so mitigated but is so ancient that I feel no particular remorse for having descended from racketeers.
One of the most exciting finds in my research related to the Stone family where my great grandmother’s nieces and nephews were listed as mulattos in the 1900 census. Alas, my brief hope of an African-American heritage was dashed when I learned that this was apparently an error corrected in later census records.
My Edwards heritage has led me to become aware of the Edwards Fortune. The story is that a Mr Edwards owned most of mid-town Manhattan and let it on a long term lease. His heirs were defrauded of title, and the matter has been in litigation for almost two centuries. I cannot figure out whether this is an old con that is now moving to the arena of spam or whether I am, in fact, one of the rightful owners of the Chrysler Building. I prefer the latter and to look at that edifice with the pride of ownership.
In any event, genealogy on the web is becoming easier than ever, and it is quite diverting. It has piqued my interest in history and has formed the basis for some of the most interesting vacations I have ever taken. And I am proud to say that most of my ancestors were not so called people of quality.
Lots of people want to establish American Indian ancestry, not to gain tribal membership or to open a casino or anything, but just for bragging rights. It has become a point of pride to have Cherokee or other Indian heritage whereas it used to be something folks concealed. In my own family, the quantum of Cherokee ancestry was greatly exaggerated, although I do have Cherokee ancestors. I do not know anything about my Cherokee ancestors or whether they were decent people, but I am interested in this heritage and am not ashamed of it. I reject the idea that all of my Indian ancestors were “noble savages” with an abiding respect for the Earth. In fact, it was common practice for some Cherokee men to raid other tribes and murder people for sport or in vendettas, and there were so few Cherokees that their impact on the environment was minimal. There was simply no need for much stewardship of resources.
Lots of people are keen to establish that their ancestors were “people of quality”, a term that is sometimes used to describe anyone in America before the Revolution. Part of this is because records for the wealthier 18th and even the 17th century settlers can be documented fairly well. Such folks were apt to own land and make wills and transfer slaves and other property, and these transactions were memorialized. It is quite satisfying to be able to connect to such families because you get to go back several generations further than you might otherwise do if your ancestors were poor mountaineers who left few records of their existence. It is also desirable for some to be connected to the colonial elites, although I confess that I am not as proud of my land grabbing, politically connected ancestors as I perhaps ought to be. Some of my ancestors were in the House of Burgesses, were officers of militia, were vestrymen, were landlords; however, I am prouder of the poor sods that eked out a living in the backwoods on land that they cleared and tamed and improved by the sweat of their brows.
One prominent researcher of the Morrow family was so keen to establish that my ancestor William Morrow was descended from an English family of quality that he argued that the tombstone inscription that claimed birth in Northern Ireland was a mistake. Surely his own children were in a better position to know where he was born, and it was hardly likely in 1830 for a family of English extraction to pretend to Scots-Irish heritage.
Finding ancestors in military service is also prized, partly for the sake of the record and partly for the sake of the connection to history that this affords. But I cannot be proud of some of the campaigns of my ancestors, especially those against the Indians or in evicting Loyalists, and I have come to regard my ancestors in military service as hapless pawns.
Ancestral slave owning is embarrassing as far as I am concerned, but some folks take pride that their ancestors had plantations and were among elites. Relatively few of my ancestors had any slaves at all, fortunately, and I am satisfied that any legacy earned from slave labor went to other members of these families and not to my ancestors in the next generation. In any event, nothing that I ever inherited can be traced directly to the exploitation of slaves.
The holy grail of ancestral research is connection to famous people, or, best of all, nobility or royalty. I am proud to count as a kinsman Audie Murphy, soldier and movie actor. The Morrow researcher mentioned above took pains to connect my family with Ann Morrow Lindbergh, but I am not convinced of the connection. I would love to be the cousin of the Lindbergh Baby, but it probably isn’t so.
Most of the supposed royal connections claimed by people appear to be mythical, but I can claim one connection to the English monarchy through the bastard child of a Bishop, himself a scion of a royal bastard. Having one’s royal connection mitigated thus by bastardy takes some of the sting out of it. My Scottish royal connection is not so mitigated but is so ancient that I feel no particular remorse for having descended from racketeers.
One of the most exciting finds in my research related to the Stone family where my great grandmother’s nieces and nephews were listed as mulattos in the 1900 census. Alas, my brief hope of an African-American heritage was dashed when I learned that this was apparently an error corrected in later census records.
My Edwards heritage has led me to become aware of the Edwards Fortune. The story is that a Mr Edwards owned most of mid-town Manhattan and let it on a long term lease. His heirs were defrauded of title, and the matter has been in litigation for almost two centuries. I cannot figure out whether this is an old con that is now moving to the arena of spam or whether I am, in fact, one of the rightful owners of the Chrysler Building. I prefer the latter and to look at that edifice with the pride of ownership.
In any event, genealogy on the web is becoming easier than ever, and it is quite diverting. It has piqued my interest in history and has formed the basis for some of the most interesting vacations I have ever taken. And I am proud to say that most of my ancestors were not so called people of quality.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Is Soccer Destroying America?
My Barbadian friends in the cricket club tell me that soccer, or football as they charmingly call it, is a game for anti-social youth and that soccer players are socially and morally inferior to cricket players by just about any standard. The soccer players think cricket is an “old man’s game” and unexciting. I did note that the proportion of anti-social dreadlock hairstyles was much higher among soccer players than cricket players. Moreover, cricket players were on average older than soccer players, something I attribute to the excessive demands of soccer on the human cardiovascular system.
I confess that I am biased toward cricket and find soccer to be little more than random movement in a meadow. Cricket is a much more complex game and requires a great deal of intelligence and discipline and awareness of the situation to play or even to enjoy as a spectator. It is a gentleman’s game.
Apparently anyone can play soccer, even little girls.
The Central American immigrants that played soccer in the park in Yonkers left the place a wreck, complete with human waste and tons of garbage. The youth soccer teams left the playing fields strewn with litter as well.
In contrast, West Indian and South Asian cricket teams left the parks cleaner than when they arrived.
Cricket fans are by and large a civilized lot, with the exception of a few riots in the West Indies in former days. I have never felt the least bit uncomfortable at a cricket match. I am given to understand that soccer fans are prone to hooliganism, although I have never attended a soccer game (what with not wanting to encounter hooligans and all).
It is disturbing to see the proliferation of soccer playing in America, and I fear that soccer is taking young people away from time that might be better spent practicing baseball. It is too much to hope that cricket will take off in this country, and baseball is the closest thing to a true character building sport that we have at present.
Perhaps I am too much of an alarmist. Youth with character will probably always be drawn to respectable sports.
I confess that I am biased toward cricket and find soccer to be little more than random movement in a meadow. Cricket is a much more complex game and requires a great deal of intelligence and discipline and awareness of the situation to play or even to enjoy as a spectator. It is a gentleman’s game.
Apparently anyone can play soccer, even little girls.
The Central American immigrants that played soccer in the park in Yonkers left the place a wreck, complete with human waste and tons of garbage. The youth soccer teams left the playing fields strewn with litter as well.
In contrast, West Indian and South Asian cricket teams left the parks cleaner than when they arrived.
Cricket fans are by and large a civilized lot, with the exception of a few riots in the West Indies in former days. I have never felt the least bit uncomfortable at a cricket match. I am given to understand that soccer fans are prone to hooliganism, although I have never attended a soccer game (what with not wanting to encounter hooligans and all).
It is disturbing to see the proliferation of soccer playing in America, and I fear that soccer is taking young people away from time that might be better spent practicing baseball. It is too much to hope that cricket will take off in this country, and baseball is the closest thing to a true character building sport that we have at present.
Perhaps I am too much of an alarmist. Youth with character will probably always be drawn to respectable sports.
Another Plank in My School Board Platform
My cousin is a pastor whose wife home schooled their five children. Meeting them represented a turning point in my attitudes and beliefs about home schooling. Until then, I had always assumed that home-schoolers were nut cases or folks with an ax to grind with their local school officials. They were very patient with us when we asked whether there were issues with “socialization”, and they pointed out that their children were far more amiable and socially adept than most children of their age despite, or indeed because, they had not been institutionalized from an early age. We had to confess that this is so, and we came to respect and admire their courage in undertaking to home school.
The objections to home schooling that I had always taken for granted as valid (I have no children and never really gave the issue much thought) appear on closer examination to be unsupported.
1. Lack of socialization. If by “socialization”, one means regimentation, then home schooled children are not as “socialized”. There is no reason, however, to imagine that home schooled children will be deprived of meaningful social interaction, eg in the neighborhood or at church, just because they are not forced to attend school with other children. I recall having very little opportunity to socialize significantly at school, and my principal social interactions with other children were outside of school.
2. Poor quality of education. Children in schools actually get very little personal attention, sharing their teachers with a score or more of others, whereas home schooled children get more intensive instruction by someone who loves them and knows them intimately. I have seen no evidence that home schooled children are stupider than children who attend school.
3. Lack of government surveillance. It is certainly true that home schooled children are less often examined and interrogated by officials to determine whether they have been abused or neglected, but I have come to regard this as advantageous. It is a slanderous leap to correlate home schooling with abusive or neglectful parents, and I have seen no evidence that home schoolers are particularly abusive or neglectful.
Families that home school are less of a burden on their neighbors than families who send their offspring to government schools. Home schooling is cost effective and requires little, if any, coerced contribution from people outside the family.
Let me add to my platform as a school board candidate the encouragement of and support for home schooling within the district. Some things that the district might do in this regard:
1.Home schooled children should be permitted to engage in any extracurricular activities sponsored by the schools and to utilize school resources such as libraries and athletic facilities on an equal footing with matriculated students.
2. The option of home schooling should be publicized and promoted, and instructional support should be provided to parents on request. If they wish, parents should be provided with the same textbooks that matriculated students receive free of charge.
3. The district might facilitate or at least cooperate with the pooling of resources by home schooling parents where the need to work prevents some parents from staying at home full time.
4. Home schooled children might be permitted to participate in particular school programs and classes on an “a la carte” basis, eg physical education or foreign language courses or other courses requiring any special equipment or expertise.
I have no doubt that this plank in my platform will be anathema to educators who will accuse me of trying to undermine the public schools. However, in my view, working with home schoolers would improve the schools by decreasing costs and increasing flexibility and choice.
The objections to home schooling that I had always taken for granted as valid (I have no children and never really gave the issue much thought) appear on closer examination to be unsupported.
1. Lack of socialization. If by “socialization”, one means regimentation, then home schooled children are not as “socialized”. There is no reason, however, to imagine that home schooled children will be deprived of meaningful social interaction, eg in the neighborhood or at church, just because they are not forced to attend school with other children. I recall having very little opportunity to socialize significantly at school, and my principal social interactions with other children were outside of school.
2. Poor quality of education. Children in schools actually get very little personal attention, sharing their teachers with a score or more of others, whereas home schooled children get more intensive instruction by someone who loves them and knows them intimately. I have seen no evidence that home schooled children are stupider than children who attend school.
3. Lack of government surveillance. It is certainly true that home schooled children are less often examined and interrogated by officials to determine whether they have been abused or neglected, but I have come to regard this as advantageous. It is a slanderous leap to correlate home schooling with abusive or neglectful parents, and I have seen no evidence that home schoolers are particularly abusive or neglectful.
Families that home school are less of a burden on their neighbors than families who send their offspring to government schools. Home schooling is cost effective and requires little, if any, coerced contribution from people outside the family.
Let me add to my platform as a school board candidate the encouragement of and support for home schooling within the district. Some things that the district might do in this regard:
1.Home schooled children should be permitted to engage in any extracurricular activities sponsored by the schools and to utilize school resources such as libraries and athletic facilities on an equal footing with matriculated students.
2. The option of home schooling should be publicized and promoted, and instructional support should be provided to parents on request. If they wish, parents should be provided with the same textbooks that matriculated students receive free of charge.
3. The district might facilitate or at least cooperate with the pooling of resources by home schooling parents where the need to work prevents some parents from staying at home full time.
4. Home schooled children might be permitted to participate in particular school programs and classes on an “a la carte” basis, eg physical education or foreign language courses or other courses requiring any special equipment or expertise.
I have no doubt that this plank in my platform will be anathema to educators who will accuse me of trying to undermine the public schools. However, in my view, working with home schoolers would improve the schools by decreasing costs and increasing flexibility and choice.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Beware of black squirrels!
This report http://www.allspinzone.com/blog/?itemid=1769 is disturbing. I was informed once at a party by someone I figured was crazy that black squirrels were carnivores. Now it appears that they attack en masse, at least in Russia.
I have lived around black squirrels for years in DC and New York and never observed any behavior that differed from the gray variety. I don't know how to account for my failure to see the real danger that the black squirrels posed. I shudder to think of all the times I walked by black squirrels with my dogs completely unaware that I was being stalked.
I have lived around black squirrels for years in DC and New York and never observed any behavior that differed from the gray variety. I don't know how to account for my failure to see the real danger that the black squirrels posed. I shudder to think of all the times I walked by black squirrels with my dogs completely unaware that I was being stalked.
Doldrums
The leaves are all down now, and the wind has conveniently pushed them into piles. All that’s left is to drag them over to the designated leaf disposal area, a low swampy spot I am trying to fill up. We had snow on the holiday weekend, so I couldn’t get the visiting nephews to rake to earn arcade money.
The cold spell meant that the Pond was frozen as well, and we were unable to do any Pond maintenance. At the very least, I want to get this year’s leaves out of the Pond and to make a dent in the silt deposits where the streams enter. We had a massive drenching in the fall with 9 straight days of torrential rain leaving a bothersome deposit of silt and sand in the shallows. The water hyacinths were buried or washed away, so I didn’t get to bring any in to save them for next spring.
I bought a pair of waders for Pond work. We’ve been wading in and lifting leaves from the bottom with a rake. We put them on a tarp and drag them away. It is a very inefficient process and hard on the back, but I don’t know how else to get the leaves out without killing the critters that live in and hibernate in the silt under the leaves. We have several species of frogs, salamanders, crayfish, a water snake, and some reclusive turtles as well as a plethora of unidentified aquatic arthropods and small snails.
Last fall, 2005, when we converted dismal to Pond, we had so much more energy. I estimate that we mined over 25 tons of stone from the mountain with only a wheelbarrow with a flat tire. This year, I feel tired all the time and just can’t get into the swing of home improvement. Some of it is a sense of futility. Creating the Pond was fun, but maintaining it is just plain work. The battle against leaves and silt will never be won, just fought to a stalemate.
A really discouraging thing has been the failure of our project to remedy a very swampy low area of the back yard. For 18 months, we filled it with spoil from various projects to a depth of some 18 inches. This summer, we bought a truckload of dirt and moved it wheelbarrow at a time to the project area (I at least inflated the tire this year) and added another 6 inches. We planted grass and watered it until it took hold. It seemed so promising, but now the same area is a swamp again despite all the backbreaking labor! Mrs Vache Folle is thinking French drains. I (to whom the digging of the drains would fall) am thinking that we should just embrace the seasonal swampiness of the spot and plant it with moisture loving foliage and traverse it with a boardwalk or some such thing.
Perhaps if I threw in some creative projects with the maintenance, I would regain some of my enthusiasm. Maybe there’s a Despair Squid in the Pond.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Bush Is Expendable
As my imaginary readers know, my conspecifics at work include a number of folks who get all their news from Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and right wing rant radio. They have begun to recognize Bush’s incompetence, but they still believe in the policies of the administration. “We can’t cut and run, but Bush is not the right man to be in charge of the war,” quoth one. The war, it is said, is necessary now even if it was a mistake in the first place because a) Iraq will become a terrorist breeding ground if we leave, and b) we have to “fight them over there to keep from fighting them here”, whatever that means. Even some of the Democrats claim that the war must be waged to a victorious conclusion but feel that a Democrat would do it better. Of course, my conspecifics have no more idea of how we will know we have “won” the war than Bush has.
If my conspecifics can be taken as evidence of what the right wing media wants them to believe, it appears that Bush has become expendable. It is the war that must be preserved and, with it, the idea that there is a huge threat from “Islamofascism” that cries out for a military solution and requires bigger and more intrusive government. A lot of phoney-baloney government jobs and defense contracts depend on keeping the war machine revved up. A lot of power is at stake.
It was pretty touch and go for the political-military-industrial complex after the Soviet Union collapsed. People were even talking about a “peace dividend” for a while. It was vitally important to find a replacement enemy, and “terror” fit the bill nicely. It even has the advantage of being an abstraction and all but nonexistent so there is no chance that the threat will ever be neutralized. There won’t be any talk about a peace dividend any time soon.
I do not know what is more breathtaking, the brilliance of concocting the big lie or the idiocy of the electorate in believing it.
If my conspecifics can be taken as evidence of what the right wing media wants them to believe, it appears that Bush has become expendable. It is the war that must be preserved and, with it, the idea that there is a huge threat from “Islamofascism” that cries out for a military solution and requires bigger and more intrusive government. A lot of phoney-baloney government jobs and defense contracts depend on keeping the war machine revved up. A lot of power is at stake.
It was pretty touch and go for the political-military-industrial complex after the Soviet Union collapsed. People were even talking about a “peace dividend” for a while. It was vitally important to find a replacement enemy, and “terror” fit the bill nicely. It even has the advantage of being an abstraction and all but nonexistent so there is no chance that the threat will ever be neutralized. There won’t be any talk about a peace dividend any time soon.
I do not know what is more breathtaking, the brilliance of concocting the big lie or the idiocy of the electorate in believing it.
My "Blog Against Racism Day" Post
Racism is troubling for me, and I am sometimes challenged to confront my own unconscious prejudices. It is hard to admit it, but I was infected in my youth with some racist notions that I have had to work at to overcome.
When I was very young, the schools in my community were still segregated. The town schools were integrated when I was in grammar school, but the county schools were practically all white even after integration because black people lived for the most part in one particular area in the city. I didn’t know any black kids until the 5th grade when there were a couple of them in my class. Black and white kids did not play together in the schoolyard, and the black kids ate together in the cafeteria. We didn’t socialize at all outside of school. This continued into high school, and the only chance you might have to socialize with black people was in team sports. Even then, contact was largely limited to team activities. I did not know why this was so, and I never questioned it. It was just the way things were.
There were churches for black folks and churches for white folks. Our church had a separate chapel where we allowed black kids that were bussed in to attend “Children’s Church”. We weren’t interested in having their parents in the main sanctuary, and the children of regular members certainly did not go to Children’s Church. Looking back, I realize how patronizing the whole Children’s Church program was, but at the time I volunteered to work in it and thought I was doing good by setting an example for black youth. I never questioned that blacks and whites would worship apart from one another. It was just the way it was.
I had some casual acquaintances among black students and was liked my many. I earned the nickname “John Boy” due to a supposed resemblance to the character on the Waltons. This, and my family’s insistence that black folks were not to be hated because they could not help it that they were born black, allowed me to believe that I was not a racist.
I carried this conviction with me to college in Washington, DC, the population of which is mostly black, where I found, to my consternation that, in fact, I harbored some racist attitudes. I found that I was a little frightened at being surrounded by black people who were not especially deferential to me. I found myself avoiding neighborhoods as dangerous solely because black folks lived there. I had a negative visceral reaction to interracial couples that I had to work hard to conceal. It was a painful but enlightening experience, and I think that recognizing my own racist streak was the first step in recovery.
I think of myself as a recovering racist. In a way, awareness of racism in myself has been advantageous in that I have never been one to labor under the illusion that racism is not real or that black folks make too much of a big deal about race. I realize that it sometimes makes little sense to be “color blind” in a society that clearly is not. Race is a big deal, especially if you are on the receiving end of discrimination.
I try not to discriminate irrationally and to advocate against such discrimination by others. I probably fail all too often. I live where I would probably have to go quite a way to find a black neighbor. I have no black friends, just acquaintances at work with whom I never socialize outside of the office (of course, that’s true of my white co-workers as well). There is sometimes a single black person or perhaps two at my church, but there are usually none, and I don’t know the black parishioners at all (of course, I know only a few of the white members as well, having been attending for just a little over a year). I don’t think I consciously avoided black people in my choice of housing or in developing a social circle, but the society in which I live is structured in such a way that I would have to make a conscious effort to cultivate black acquaintances or to live among black neighbors. I should perhaps make an effort at church to be more welcoming to black fellow parishioners, but it is difficult to decide how else to overcome the obstacles that keep me away from black folks. It would feel artificial and unseemly to cultivate a friendship just as a social experiment, and I am far too antisocial and lazy to make any kind of effort.
Racism as a social fact has made it possible for me and my white neighbors to avoid black people almost entirely without any of us personally engaging in any direct discrimination. The discrimination of others has done the job for us.
When I was very young, the schools in my community were still segregated. The town schools were integrated when I was in grammar school, but the county schools were practically all white even after integration because black people lived for the most part in one particular area in the city. I didn’t know any black kids until the 5th grade when there were a couple of them in my class. Black and white kids did not play together in the schoolyard, and the black kids ate together in the cafeteria. We didn’t socialize at all outside of school. This continued into high school, and the only chance you might have to socialize with black people was in team sports. Even then, contact was largely limited to team activities. I did not know why this was so, and I never questioned it. It was just the way things were.
There were churches for black folks and churches for white folks. Our church had a separate chapel where we allowed black kids that were bussed in to attend “Children’s Church”. We weren’t interested in having their parents in the main sanctuary, and the children of regular members certainly did not go to Children’s Church. Looking back, I realize how patronizing the whole Children’s Church program was, but at the time I volunteered to work in it and thought I was doing good by setting an example for black youth. I never questioned that blacks and whites would worship apart from one another. It was just the way it was.
I had some casual acquaintances among black students and was liked my many. I earned the nickname “John Boy” due to a supposed resemblance to the character on the Waltons. This, and my family’s insistence that black folks were not to be hated because they could not help it that they were born black, allowed me to believe that I was not a racist.
I carried this conviction with me to college in Washington, DC, the population of which is mostly black, where I found, to my consternation that, in fact, I harbored some racist attitudes. I found that I was a little frightened at being surrounded by black people who were not especially deferential to me. I found myself avoiding neighborhoods as dangerous solely because black folks lived there. I had a negative visceral reaction to interracial couples that I had to work hard to conceal. It was a painful but enlightening experience, and I think that recognizing my own racist streak was the first step in recovery.
I think of myself as a recovering racist. In a way, awareness of racism in myself has been advantageous in that I have never been one to labor under the illusion that racism is not real or that black folks make too much of a big deal about race. I realize that it sometimes makes little sense to be “color blind” in a society that clearly is not. Race is a big deal, especially if you are on the receiving end of discrimination.
I try not to discriminate irrationally and to advocate against such discrimination by others. I probably fail all too often. I live where I would probably have to go quite a way to find a black neighbor. I have no black friends, just acquaintances at work with whom I never socialize outside of the office (of course, that’s true of my white co-workers as well). There is sometimes a single black person or perhaps two at my church, but there are usually none, and I don’t know the black parishioners at all (of course, I know only a few of the white members as well, having been attending for just a little over a year). I don’t think I consciously avoided black people in my choice of housing or in developing a social circle, but the society in which I live is structured in such a way that I would have to make a conscious effort to cultivate black acquaintances or to live among black neighbors. I should perhaps make an effort at church to be more welcoming to black fellow parishioners, but it is difficult to decide how else to overcome the obstacles that keep me away from black folks. It would feel artificial and unseemly to cultivate a friendship just as a social experiment, and I am far too antisocial and lazy to make any kind of effort.
Racism as a social fact has made it possible for me and my white neighbors to avoid black people almost entirely without any of us personally engaging in any direct discrimination. The discrimination of others has done the job for us.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Federal Lands
Several years ago, I worked under a contract with the Park Service on the issue of treaty rights of American Indians to enter and use public lands. In the course of my research, I learned some interesting things about the history of public lands in the US and the colonies. In the first instance, there has always been a divide between the New England model where the authorities held title to land and distributed it and the Southern model in which homestead rights might be acknowledged. In any case, much of the tidewater and piedmont real estate in the Southern colonies was owned by a few wealthy families such as the Granvilles of North Carolina and Lord Fairfax and George Washington and their ilk in Virginia. Most of my ancestors were left to homestead less productive and more dangerous mountainous land, and even then they ran the risk that some tidewater aristocrat had surveyed it and already held legal title to it.
After Independence, the states ceded their claims to western lands to the United States which held title. The US wasn’t giving away land in those days, and land sales represented the second largest source of revenue for the federal government after tariffs. Land sold for $2 an acre but could only be bought in large tracts of at least a square mile. This meant that the land was picked up mainly by speculators and that settlement by folks who would occupy and work the land was significantly retarded. Homesteaders on public lands were routinely rounded up by the Army and their improvements destroyed.
The public land holdings also permitted the US to engage in massive public works projects through a Constitutional back door. It was believed in those days that the US had no authority to engage directly in public works, but the US could and did grant public lands to states and institutions and companies for educational institutions, roads, canals and the like. The railroad companies were beneficiaries of a massive giveaway of public land far beyond the rights needed for rail rights of way.
In 1863, the Homestead Act provided for settlers to obtain title to public land that they occupied and worked under certain conditions. This continued for a hundred years and permitted many families to get title to land that they worked and occupied. It is no longer permissible to homestead, and vast tracts of land are held by the US for the benefit of ranchers, loggers, mining interests and the like. These are administered by a congeries of agencies: National Park Service (Interior), Forest Service (Agriculture), Corps of Engineers (DoD), Bureau of Land Management, etc.
My home state of Georgia engaged in a land giveaway scheme to encourage white settlement in the Cherokee and Creek lands in the first half of the 19th Century. Each time the Indians were divested of a large tract, the state held a land lottery and granted parcels to fortunate drawers. Some of my ancestors acquired land by this process, and I suppose that their title was morally defective, being predicated on the theft of the land from the Indians. It is strange to think that Northwest Georgia where I grew up was the “frontier” as late as 1840.
Even now we are left with huge tracts of federal land, the use and management of which are politically determined and directed by central planning rather than market forces. Ranchers who graze stock on federal land pay less than a quarter of what is paid for private grazing rights, and the availability of subsidized public grazing distorts private pricing downward. Federal timber sales come at a loss of some $1 billion a year and distort prices for privately held timber. The patent and claim mineral extraction system is another giveaway of government assets to private interests. Of course, we can also consider much of the public land system and policy as a massive subsidy for outdoor sports enthusiasts.
Should users of public lands pay market rates for the privilege of using resources? Shouldn’t we expect the public lands subject to commercial exploitation to support themselves rather than being a drain on the Treasury? Or should users be considered homesteaders and granted appropriate titles and left with responsibility for further management and stewardship?
After Independence, the states ceded their claims to western lands to the United States which held title. The US wasn’t giving away land in those days, and land sales represented the second largest source of revenue for the federal government after tariffs. Land sold for $2 an acre but could only be bought in large tracts of at least a square mile. This meant that the land was picked up mainly by speculators and that settlement by folks who would occupy and work the land was significantly retarded. Homesteaders on public lands were routinely rounded up by the Army and their improvements destroyed.
The public land holdings also permitted the US to engage in massive public works projects through a Constitutional back door. It was believed in those days that the US had no authority to engage directly in public works, but the US could and did grant public lands to states and institutions and companies for educational institutions, roads, canals and the like. The railroad companies were beneficiaries of a massive giveaway of public land far beyond the rights needed for rail rights of way.
In 1863, the Homestead Act provided for settlers to obtain title to public land that they occupied and worked under certain conditions. This continued for a hundred years and permitted many families to get title to land that they worked and occupied. It is no longer permissible to homestead, and vast tracts of land are held by the US for the benefit of ranchers, loggers, mining interests and the like. These are administered by a congeries of agencies: National Park Service (Interior), Forest Service (Agriculture), Corps of Engineers (DoD), Bureau of Land Management, etc.
My home state of Georgia engaged in a land giveaway scheme to encourage white settlement in the Cherokee and Creek lands in the first half of the 19th Century. Each time the Indians were divested of a large tract, the state held a land lottery and granted parcels to fortunate drawers. Some of my ancestors acquired land by this process, and I suppose that their title was morally defective, being predicated on the theft of the land from the Indians. It is strange to think that Northwest Georgia where I grew up was the “frontier” as late as 1840.
Even now we are left with huge tracts of federal land, the use and management of which are politically determined and directed by central planning rather than market forces. Ranchers who graze stock on federal land pay less than a quarter of what is paid for private grazing rights, and the availability of subsidized public grazing distorts private pricing downward. Federal timber sales come at a loss of some $1 billion a year and distort prices for privately held timber. The patent and claim mineral extraction system is another giveaway of government assets to private interests. Of course, we can also consider much of the public land system and policy as a massive subsidy for outdoor sports enthusiasts.
Should users of public lands pay market rates for the privilege of using resources? Shouldn’t we expect the public lands subject to commercial exploitation to support themselves rather than being a drain on the Treasury? Or should users be considered homesteaders and granted appropriate titles and left with responsibility for further management and stewardship?
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
New Word Coined by Me
Neopaleoethnopsychopharmacologically: adverb, in a neopaleoethnopsychopharmacological manner.
Neopaleoethnopsychopharmacological: adjective, pertaining to neoethnopsychopharmacology.
Neopaleoethnopsychopharmacology: noun, the current study of how various societies in prehistoric times utilized substances to alter mental states.
I am going to try to work this into conversation this week. Feel free to use it.
Neopaleoethnopsychopharmacological: adjective, pertaining to neoethnopsychopharmacology.
Neopaleoethnopsychopharmacology: noun, the current study of how various societies in prehistoric times utilized substances to alter mental states.
I am going to try to work this into conversation this week. Feel free to use it.
Propaganda
Iceberg has posted some great propaganda posters from WW2 http://iceberg18.blogspot.com/2005/11/propaganda-redux.html and has posted quite a few anti- blackmarketeering posters in the past.
When I was a kid, I found a box of WW2 era papers in the loft of the barn. The family had kept just about all its ration stamps and had approached near self sufficiency during the war. My four uncles were all in the Army and weren't consuming anything back home, so it was just Ma and Pa and my preschool aged mom.
One pamphlet I found still sticks in my memory. It showed a caricature of Hitler with a big x over it and a cartoonish apelike Japanese soldier with spectacles and an outsized malocclusion. The message was "One Down, One to Go". The Japanese were clearly to be regarded as subhuman. I recall a number of war films that depicted the Japanese in this light. Life was cheap to them, so the propaganda went, so they were all but invincible. By the 1960s, however, films began to portray the Japanese in a more favorable light, and we were no longer encouraged to harbor any race hatred for them as an enemy. (Now it was the Viet Cong for whom life was cheap.) I could not easily reconcile the propaganda materials with my 1960s image of the Japanese as hard working, polite, deferential people. Perhaps that is why it made such an impression on me.
In just 20 years or so, we had gone from Germans and Japanese as inhuman monsters deserving extermination to Hogan's Heroes and McHale's Navy. Apparently, WW2 was one of those things you couldn't laugh about at the time, but 20 years later was hilarious.
In any event, the posters at Iceberg's site seem pretty silly at first blush, but the propositions that they contain can be found repeated even now in the wingnut blogosphere and on Fox News.
When I was a kid, I found a box of WW2 era papers in the loft of the barn. The family had kept just about all its ration stamps and had approached near self sufficiency during the war. My four uncles were all in the Army and weren't consuming anything back home, so it was just Ma and Pa and my preschool aged mom.
One pamphlet I found still sticks in my memory. It showed a caricature of Hitler with a big x over it and a cartoonish apelike Japanese soldier with spectacles and an outsized malocclusion. The message was "One Down, One to Go". The Japanese were clearly to be regarded as subhuman. I recall a number of war films that depicted the Japanese in this light. Life was cheap to them, so the propaganda went, so they were all but invincible. By the 1960s, however, films began to portray the Japanese in a more favorable light, and we were no longer encouraged to harbor any race hatred for them as an enemy. (Now it was the Viet Cong for whom life was cheap.) I could not easily reconcile the propaganda materials with my 1960s image of the Japanese as hard working, polite, deferential people. Perhaps that is why it made such an impression on me.
In just 20 years or so, we had gone from Germans and Japanese as inhuman monsters deserving extermination to Hogan's Heroes and McHale's Navy. Apparently, WW2 was one of those things you couldn't laugh about at the time, but 20 years later was hilarious.
In any event, the posters at Iceberg's site seem pretty silly at first blush, but the propositions that they contain can be found repeated even now in the wingnut blogosphere and on Fox News.
Mentally Ill and Proud of It
There is a streak of depression in my genes, and my family is by and large a melancholy lot. My ancestors were longsuffering farmers that slogged through life and prayed for the blessings of sweet, sweet death. Some treated themselves with alcohol, a losing proposition if there ever was one. I battled depression and anxiety for years without understanding what I was going through. Every moment of every day was filled with dread and foreboding, like the evening before a big exam for which you have not prepared. Joy was unknown to me. I sought to attribute my anxiety to my circumstances, my job, my friends, my neighborhood. I would make changes, but the anxiety followed me and threatened to destroy me.
At long last, I went on antidepressants and, for the first time ever, experienced what it felt like to have a normal mood, to be anxious only in the face of anxiety provoking situations, and to take pleasure in life. I even experience joy.
Life seems quite different when you are depressed. Things you ordinarily enjoy become dreaded chores. Happy social occasions become dreaded and much to be avoided. The universe seems designed to torment you. God seems to have hidden Himself away from you. Nothing signifies.
I am thankful for antidepressants. I wish all the suffering minds would discover them and that the stigma attached to mental illness would not prevent anyone from seeking treatment. You don’t have to live with anxiety and depression.
Now when I am sad or anxious, I can accurately attribute my mood to particular stimuli and, where appropriate, take steps to improve my circumstances. Moreover, I can keep an open heart and experience loss and heartbreak at the injustice and hurt in the world. What a boon this is. Being overwhelmed by anxiety and depression is like having no feelings at all since the feelings you have are of no use to you.
I have resolved to share with all and sundry that I use antidepressants in order to do my part to eliminate the stigma associated with mental illness. That I live a normal life and am "productive" is, in view of my condition, a considerable accomplishment.
At long last, I went on antidepressants and, for the first time ever, experienced what it felt like to have a normal mood, to be anxious only in the face of anxiety provoking situations, and to take pleasure in life. I even experience joy.
Life seems quite different when you are depressed. Things you ordinarily enjoy become dreaded chores. Happy social occasions become dreaded and much to be avoided. The universe seems designed to torment you. God seems to have hidden Himself away from you. Nothing signifies.
I am thankful for antidepressants. I wish all the suffering minds would discover them and that the stigma attached to mental illness would not prevent anyone from seeking treatment. You don’t have to live with anxiety and depression.
Now when I am sad or anxious, I can accurately attribute my mood to particular stimuli and, where appropriate, take steps to improve my circumstances. Moreover, I can keep an open heart and experience loss and heartbreak at the injustice and hurt in the world. What a boon this is. Being overwhelmed by anxiety and depression is like having no feelings at all since the feelings you have are of no use to you.
I have resolved to share with all and sundry that I use antidepressants in order to do my part to eliminate the stigma associated with mental illness. That I live a normal life and am "productive" is, in view of my condition, a considerable accomplishment.
Monday, November 28, 2005
Family Size
Iwas at the movies twice this weekend where I saw posters for Yours, Mine and Ours and Cheaper by the Dozen 2, films about multiparous women and their husbands and offspring. I reckon the idea is that having a house full of children is like having a barrel of monkeys, in which case I wonder why more families don’t have more children.
The optimum family size in America today seems to be two, a boy and a girl, and three if your first two were the same sex. Few people continue past three to get the desired mix of male and female offspring. I don’t entirely know why this is the appropriate family size, but there is apparently considerable social disapproval of larger families, especially if the parents are relatively poor.
I have queried a good number of people over the years about family size, and most folks explain that they had all the children they thought they could afford. (Some admit that their last child was a “stopper”, a child so horrible that they would not consider going through such parenting hell again.) For many families I have queried, it is anticipated that the mother will eventually return to work; therefore, it is necessary to stop having children at some point to permit the last child to reach school age. Family size is determined in large part by the opportunity costs associated with having the mother out of work.
Having only one child is considered problematic, although it is increasingly accepted. When I was a child, it was thought that only children would necessarily be “spoiled” and lonely. Having no children is frowned upon, although less so than in the past. Parents seem to find childlessness inexplicable.
Is the popularity of movies and TV shows about big families an aspect of resistance to the two children norm? The norm probably comes from the dominant culture, as elites have smaller families as a rule and would prefer that the masses curb the growth in their numbers. Large families would take parents out of the labor pool much longer with a potential for increased labor costs. Larger families would leave folks with less disposable income to spend on consumer goods and amusements. Larger families would mean higher costs for medical benefits. Larger families would entail more spending on schools and social programs.
Mainly, larger families would mean that the popular culture isn't buying into the dominant ethos of atomization and hyperindividualism.
The optimum family size in America today seems to be two, a boy and a girl, and three if your first two were the same sex. Few people continue past three to get the desired mix of male and female offspring. I don’t entirely know why this is the appropriate family size, but there is apparently considerable social disapproval of larger families, especially if the parents are relatively poor.
I have queried a good number of people over the years about family size, and most folks explain that they had all the children they thought they could afford. (Some admit that their last child was a “stopper”, a child so horrible that they would not consider going through such parenting hell again.) For many families I have queried, it is anticipated that the mother will eventually return to work; therefore, it is necessary to stop having children at some point to permit the last child to reach school age. Family size is determined in large part by the opportunity costs associated with having the mother out of work.
Having only one child is considered problematic, although it is increasingly accepted. When I was a child, it was thought that only children would necessarily be “spoiled” and lonely. Having no children is frowned upon, although less so than in the past. Parents seem to find childlessness inexplicable.
Is the popularity of movies and TV shows about big families an aspect of resistance to the two children norm? The norm probably comes from the dominant culture, as elites have smaller families as a rule and would prefer that the masses curb the growth in their numbers. Large families would take parents out of the labor pool much longer with a potential for increased labor costs. Larger families would leave folks with less disposable income to spend on consumer goods and amusements. Larger families would mean higher costs for medical benefits. Larger families would entail more spending on schools and social programs.
Mainly, larger families would mean that the popular culture isn't buying into the dominant ethos of atomization and hyperindividualism.
Pride and Prejudice
Mrs Vache Folle and I have a tradition of going to the movies on holidays. We saw all the Lord of the Ring films on Christmas. This Thanksgiving, we took in Pride and Prejudice.
I fully expected and intended to hate it, being a rabid fan of the 1995 miniseries (I own the DVDs and have watched it at least 20 times). I have to say that it was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, although it is much inferior to the 1995 Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle production. It is better than the 1940 version by a long shot.
The 2005 film is grittier and portrays the Bennetts as barely respectable. Mr Bennett takes a keen interest in his pigs and the workings of his estate. The hogs and poultry are maintained right in the yard. The house is a wreck. None of the Bennett girls is at all accomplished or even very charming, and they are simply physically attractive. It is hard to imagine that Bingley or Darcy would be much attracted to them, let alone fall in love with them. The social chasm between the Bennetts and the Darcy and Bingly families is, in my view, much too wide for any connection with the Bennetts to be plausible. In the book, the main objection to the Bennetts is that they have near relatives in trade (Phillips and Gardner, the uncles, are both attorneys) and that they have no independent fortune (the Bennett estate's being entailed away). Moreover, Mrs Bennett is quite silly and crass, and the younger girls are a bit wild. This is enough to make them poor prospects for good marriages.
To fit the story into a little over two hours, some of the ancillary characters are left out. There is no Louisa Bingley Hearst (and no drunken Mr Hearst), and Charlottle Lucas has no younger sister. This is understandable and detracts little from the story, but some other critical story lines were abandoned and this renders much of the overall story nonsensical. George Wickham barely appears. Mrs Bennett is not nearly as ridiculous as she ought to be, and the imperious Lady Catherine de Burgh is largely defanged (Dame Judi Dench was wasted in the part, I think, since Lady Catherine has only brief appearances). All in all, the film has the feeling of a Cliff Notes treatment.
Mr Darcy lives in what appears to be a museum and never displays anything but the sourest expression. The 2005 film’s Darcy is a complete social retard, and the only thing to recommend him is his fantastic wealth. Keira Knightly’s performance was quite good, and she has to endure and pull off a lot of close ups and to tell much of the story by her facial expressions and body language.
If you are a Jane Austen fan, you are going to see this movie. You won't be able to help yourself. Enjoy it for what it is, and don't expect it to be better than the 1995 version.
I fully expected and intended to hate it, being a rabid fan of the 1995 miniseries (I own the DVDs and have watched it at least 20 times). I have to say that it was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, although it is much inferior to the 1995 Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle production. It is better than the 1940 version by a long shot.
The 2005 film is grittier and portrays the Bennetts as barely respectable. Mr Bennett takes a keen interest in his pigs and the workings of his estate. The hogs and poultry are maintained right in the yard. The house is a wreck. None of the Bennett girls is at all accomplished or even very charming, and they are simply physically attractive. It is hard to imagine that Bingley or Darcy would be much attracted to them, let alone fall in love with them. The social chasm between the Bennetts and the Darcy and Bingly families is, in my view, much too wide for any connection with the Bennetts to be plausible. In the book, the main objection to the Bennetts is that they have near relatives in trade (Phillips and Gardner, the uncles, are both attorneys) and that they have no independent fortune (the Bennett estate's being entailed away). Moreover, Mrs Bennett is quite silly and crass, and the younger girls are a bit wild. This is enough to make them poor prospects for good marriages.
To fit the story into a little over two hours, some of the ancillary characters are left out. There is no Louisa Bingley Hearst (and no drunken Mr Hearst), and Charlottle Lucas has no younger sister. This is understandable and detracts little from the story, but some other critical story lines were abandoned and this renders much of the overall story nonsensical. George Wickham barely appears. Mrs Bennett is not nearly as ridiculous as she ought to be, and the imperious Lady Catherine de Burgh is largely defanged (Dame Judi Dench was wasted in the part, I think, since Lady Catherine has only brief appearances). All in all, the film has the feeling of a Cliff Notes treatment.
Mr Darcy lives in what appears to be a museum and never displays anything but the sourest expression. The 2005 film’s Darcy is a complete social retard, and the only thing to recommend him is his fantastic wealth. Keira Knightly’s performance was quite good, and she has to endure and pull off a lot of close ups and to tell much of the story by her facial expressions and body language.
If you are a Jane Austen fan, you are going to see this movie. You won't be able to help yourself. Enjoy it for what it is, and don't expect it to be better than the 1995 version.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
It's Not Too Early to Plan for the Best Groundhog Day Ever
My favorite holiday is Groundhog Day. Groundhog Day is smack dab in the middle of winter, and it is a reminder that it won’t be winter forever. This is an especially important message in February, that cold, hideous month.
It seems, however, that there has been a War on Groundhog Day, an insidious conspiracy to render it ridiculous and trivial. You don’t get the day off. There are no sales in the stores, no exchanges of gifts, no Charlie Brown Specials, no songs, no inflatable lawn statuary, no greeting cards. All you get is a condescending “And on a lighter note, today is Groundhog Day, and old Phil saw his shadow. Ha Ha!”
People just don’t get the real meaning of the holiday. The Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day came closest to showing the spirit of the day. In that film, the character relives the same day, February 2, over and over until he gets it right. Get it? We are all in perpetual midwinter of the soul, and the Groundhog comes to remind us that there will be Spring. We still have to slog through 6 more weeks of winter to get to it, but there will be Spring. Despair not.
Let’s reclaim Groundhog Day and celebrate it properly. Call your mom and wish her a Glorious Groundhog Day. Greet everyone with well wishes for the season. Take the day off as your personal holiday. Send cards. Decorate your door with a festive groundhog wreath and sing songs about the beloved marmot.
I bring this up now so we will have time to get ready. After Chrismahannakwanzika, we tend to have a little holiday fatigue and might not think to prepare for February 2 until it’s too late to do it right.
I can’t decide what the traditional feast should be. I am leaning toward terducken (turkey stuffed with duck stuffed with chicken) but am open to suggestions.
It seems, however, that there has been a War on Groundhog Day, an insidious conspiracy to render it ridiculous and trivial. You don’t get the day off. There are no sales in the stores, no exchanges of gifts, no Charlie Brown Specials, no songs, no inflatable lawn statuary, no greeting cards. All you get is a condescending “And on a lighter note, today is Groundhog Day, and old Phil saw his shadow. Ha Ha!”
People just don’t get the real meaning of the holiday. The Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day came closest to showing the spirit of the day. In that film, the character relives the same day, February 2, over and over until he gets it right. Get it? We are all in perpetual midwinter of the soul, and the Groundhog comes to remind us that there will be Spring. We still have to slog through 6 more weeks of winter to get to it, but there will be Spring. Despair not.
Let’s reclaim Groundhog Day and celebrate it properly. Call your mom and wish her a Glorious Groundhog Day. Greet everyone with well wishes for the season. Take the day off as your personal holiday. Send cards. Decorate your door with a festive groundhog wreath and sing songs about the beloved marmot.
I bring this up now so we will have time to get ready. After Chrismahannakwanzika, we tend to have a little holiday fatigue and might not think to prepare for February 2 until it’s too late to do it right.
I can’t decide what the traditional feast should be. I am leaning toward terducken (turkey stuffed with duck stuffed with chicken) but am open to suggestions.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Deer Season
Deer season started last weekend. I don't hunt because I don't like to get up early and hang out in the cold in a forest full of armed drunks. Moreover, the whole thing smacks of effort, and I have never taken any pleasure in killing animals. I don't care if other people hunt as long as they don't do it near my house and as long as they stay off my property.
In West Virginia, I worked on some cases of "negligent shooting". It seems that accidentally killing your hunting companion in the woods is a petty offense punishable by a $25 fine. Never go hunting in West Virginia with anyone who has a bone to pick with you. "Let's bury the hatchet, Cletis. Tell you what, I'll take you deer huntin'."
In Maine about 15 years ago, I recall hearing about a case where a hunter shot a woman to death in her backyard. He claimed that he thought she was a deer, and he was deemed innocent of any crime. I think a standard of strict liability ought to apply. If you are hunting near a residence or a road, you should have to make sure that you are shooting at a deer and not a person or anyone's livestock.
I will kill anyone who shoots at or too near my house, my person, or my dogs.
In West Virginia, I worked on some cases of "negligent shooting". It seems that accidentally killing your hunting companion in the woods is a petty offense punishable by a $25 fine. Never go hunting in West Virginia with anyone who has a bone to pick with you. "Let's bury the hatchet, Cletis. Tell you what, I'll take you deer huntin'."
In Maine about 15 years ago, I recall hearing about a case where a hunter shot a woman to death in her backyard. He claimed that he thought she was a deer, and he was deemed innocent of any crime. I think a standard of strict liability ought to apply. If you are hunting near a residence or a road, you should have to make sure that you are shooting at a deer and not a person or anyone's livestock.
I will kill anyone who shoots at or too near my house, my person, or my dogs.
Brown Liquor
bkmarcus is on a roll at lowercase liberty http://www.bkmarcus.com/blog/2005/11/whiskey-patriotic-spirit.html#comments where, inter alia, he posts about whiskey. This is a subject close to my heart.
For me, autumn is the season for brown liquor. Dreary fall days lend themselves to sitting around and sipping Bourbon or Scotch. Actually, there is never a bad time for brown liquor, but the present season demands such libations more than the other seasons. Brown liquor is a contemplative beverage. You think deep thoughts and say profound things when you're holding a glass of the old water of life.
Scotch, single malt if you can afford it, is the king of whisk(e)ys. It is unparallelled in its complexity, and the potential for scotch snobbery is unlimited. We visited a distillery in Scotland, Royal Lochnagar by Balmoral, where we learned about the "flavor wheel", a chart that listed various characteristics of varieties of scotch in a circle. Some of the flavors were what one might expect- oaken, peaty, etc. Others were quite funny- scotch tape, manure. I doubt that the distillery that made the manure or tape tasting whiskey used the same chart. Some scotch from the seaside has a bid of an iodine taste from ancient seaweed in the peat used to distill the stuff.
Good single malt scotch is about the best gift one could ever give me. I rarely buy it, because the less expensive single malts are apt to be inferior, and I have trouble shelling out $50 for a bottle of booze even though it is worth it. (Mrs Vache Folle is parsimonious and would harangue me no end.)
Good bourbon is almost as wonderful as good scotch. And don't forget Tennessee sour mash. Tennessee whiskey isn't bourbon because bourbon has to be made in Kentucky in the confines of the former Bourbon County. In Seattle, check out FX McRory's and its bar of a zillion bourbons. Seriously, they have every kind of bourbon behind the bar, and it is a joy to sample them. I never made it through the whole inventory, but my favorite was "Booker Noe".
Brown liquor should be taken neat or, if you must, on the rocks. Water or seltzer is the only permissible mixer and should be used only with inferior product. Never mix the really good stuff with anything.
A woman who enjoys brown liquor is a catch.
Canadian whisky bites in my experience, and I have never learned to appreciate the Irish stuff. Southern Comfort is an abomination to be drunk only by children as cough medicine or by frat boys who are already drunk.
For me, autumn is the season for brown liquor. Dreary fall days lend themselves to sitting around and sipping Bourbon or Scotch. Actually, there is never a bad time for brown liquor, but the present season demands such libations more than the other seasons. Brown liquor is a contemplative beverage. You think deep thoughts and say profound things when you're holding a glass of the old water of life.
Scotch, single malt if you can afford it, is the king of whisk(e)ys. It is unparallelled in its complexity, and the potential for scotch snobbery is unlimited. We visited a distillery in Scotland, Royal Lochnagar by Balmoral, where we learned about the "flavor wheel", a chart that listed various characteristics of varieties of scotch in a circle. Some of the flavors were what one might expect- oaken, peaty, etc. Others were quite funny- scotch tape, manure. I doubt that the distillery that made the manure or tape tasting whiskey used the same chart. Some scotch from the seaside has a bid of an iodine taste from ancient seaweed in the peat used to distill the stuff.
Good single malt scotch is about the best gift one could ever give me. I rarely buy it, because the less expensive single malts are apt to be inferior, and I have trouble shelling out $50 for a bottle of booze even though it is worth it. (Mrs Vache Folle is parsimonious and would harangue me no end.)
Good bourbon is almost as wonderful as good scotch. And don't forget Tennessee sour mash. Tennessee whiskey isn't bourbon because bourbon has to be made in Kentucky in the confines of the former Bourbon County. In Seattle, check out FX McRory's and its bar of a zillion bourbons. Seriously, they have every kind of bourbon behind the bar, and it is a joy to sample them. I never made it through the whole inventory, but my favorite was "Booker Noe".
Brown liquor should be taken neat or, if you must, on the rocks. Water or seltzer is the only permissible mixer and should be used only with inferior product. Never mix the really good stuff with anything.
A woman who enjoys brown liquor is a catch.
Canadian whisky bites in my experience, and I have never learned to appreciate the Irish stuff. Southern Comfort is an abomination to be drunk only by children as cough medicine or by frat boys who are already drunk.
Monday, November 21, 2005
The Myth of Meritocracy as an Obstacle to Freedom
My preference for freedom is of relatively recent origin, and most of my life I was almost authoritarian in my ideology. I am generally happier now, although my ideal society is hardly realized, and I often wonder why so many people fail to embrace freedom and instead promote an increasingly powerful state. In looking back on my own conversion experience, I consider the biggest obstacle to happiness and right thinking in my life to be the “Cult of Respectability”. The craving for respectability let me align myself ideologically with the rich and powerful and to despise the poor and downtrodden. It enabled me to see the state as the driver of the civilizing process and to see service to the state as a higher calling. In short, I was a tool and a dupe (some would say a jackass in the bargain). I am grateful that I was never important enough to do much harm, although I have some things to atone for.
I am not sure what opened my eyes. The process was one of gradual disillusionment rather than sudden insight. A big part was experiencing the state in action and knowing some wealthier and more powerful people, although most of my acquaintances were hardly more than the petit bourgeois. In working in grossly ineffectual agencies, I learned that the state was just people acting in their own selfish interests while exercising power over others. And the wealthy and powerful weren’t morally superior to the poor and weak; they were mostly just luckier, and they operated within a system that happened to favor them. There was an unavoidable disconnect between my ideology and what I saw in practice.
It is embarrassing to me now that I, son of working class parents and having a negative net worth for most of my life, could identify with the rich and powerful and think for a moment that my interests were in line with theirs. I blame the lure of respectability and the myth of the meritocracy (you don’t expect me to implicate my lack of character, do you?). Meritocracy is a misnomer. Meritocracy does not reward the deserving; rather, it is nothing more than a system for selecting compliant servants of the ruling classes. Merit, in the sense of deserving, has nothing to do with anything except that one of the drivers of the system is the quest for status. Giving up this quest is one way to begin to be free.
To the extent that people conflate advancement in the system with merit, they are apt also to deem wealthier or more powerful people more meritorious than poorer or less powerful people. And it is the meritorious who deserve to rule and who perpetuate the system within which they succeeded. Even many people who fail within the system buy into its logic and deem themselves to blame rather than problematizing the system. How much more enticing is the system to those who enjoy some measure of success and experience some social mobility?
The dominant culture decrees that merit brings prosperity; therefore, the prosperous are by definition meritorious. Even many among the less prosperous seem to believe this and deem themselves superior to those who are even poorer than themselves. There are surely strains of resistance in the popular culture in depictions of the powerful as evil, as unsatisfied by their success, as insatiable, as mad with power, as inhuman. Working folks are ennobled, and outlaws are glorified. It is themes of resistance in popular culture that the libertarian intelligentsia might address to deliver its message about the blessings of liberty. The powerful aren’t going to give up power; the masses have to strip it from them. And one thing to attack might be the notion of the powerful and their servants as meritorious. The truth is quite the opposite, and it should be told.
.
I am not sure what opened my eyes. The process was one of gradual disillusionment rather than sudden insight. A big part was experiencing the state in action and knowing some wealthier and more powerful people, although most of my acquaintances were hardly more than the petit bourgeois. In working in grossly ineffectual agencies, I learned that the state was just people acting in their own selfish interests while exercising power over others. And the wealthy and powerful weren’t morally superior to the poor and weak; they were mostly just luckier, and they operated within a system that happened to favor them. There was an unavoidable disconnect between my ideology and what I saw in practice.
It is embarrassing to me now that I, son of working class parents and having a negative net worth for most of my life, could identify with the rich and powerful and think for a moment that my interests were in line with theirs. I blame the lure of respectability and the myth of the meritocracy (you don’t expect me to implicate my lack of character, do you?). Meritocracy is a misnomer. Meritocracy does not reward the deserving; rather, it is nothing more than a system for selecting compliant servants of the ruling classes. Merit, in the sense of deserving, has nothing to do with anything except that one of the drivers of the system is the quest for status. Giving up this quest is one way to begin to be free.
To the extent that people conflate advancement in the system with merit, they are apt also to deem wealthier or more powerful people more meritorious than poorer or less powerful people. And it is the meritorious who deserve to rule and who perpetuate the system within which they succeeded. Even many people who fail within the system buy into its logic and deem themselves to blame rather than problematizing the system. How much more enticing is the system to those who enjoy some measure of success and experience some social mobility?
The dominant culture decrees that merit brings prosperity; therefore, the prosperous are by definition meritorious. Even many among the less prosperous seem to believe this and deem themselves superior to those who are even poorer than themselves. There are surely strains of resistance in the popular culture in depictions of the powerful as evil, as unsatisfied by their success, as insatiable, as mad with power, as inhuman. Working folks are ennobled, and outlaws are glorified. It is themes of resistance in popular culture that the libertarian intelligentsia might address to deliver its message about the blessings of liberty. The powerful aren’t going to give up power; the masses have to strip it from them. And one thing to attack might be the notion of the powerful and their servants as meritorious. The truth is quite the opposite, and it should be told.
.
Friday, November 18, 2005
God Loves You, and He's Going to Kill You
I think the episodes of The Simpsons dealing with religion are among the best social commentary on that program. I recently watched (for the third time) the episode where Homer predicts the date of the “Rapture”. He tries to warn everyone: “God loves you, and He’s going to kill you!”
I was taught the whole Rapture and Tribulation spiel when I was a teenager. It was all the rage in those days in the Bible Belt, and I recall a number of times sitting in on sermons that dealt with the End Times and interpreting Revelations as describing current events. Remember The Late Great Planet Earth? Those predictions all turned out wrong, but the author is still prophesying on the TV. There was a one- woman play by an evangelist entitled The Quick and the Dead that dramatized the Tribulation. One guy I heard argued that Nelson Rockefeller was the Antichrist, and he was dead serious. I’m pretty sure he was wrong. We used to sing a song I Wish We’d All Been Ready that was a lamentation of someone going through the Tribulation. “Children died, the days grew cold, a piece of bread would buy a bag of gold…”
I never bought into the whole Rapture and Tribulation thing because it just didn’t seem to me to fit with the teachings of Jesus. The Biblical predicates for the doctrine were really shaky as far as I was concerned. The same preachers who insisted that the “days” in Genesis were 24 hour days had no problem stating that the “weeks” in Daniel were figurative and represented a longer time period that placed the Rapture within the next few years. That doctrine and lots of other things about Arminian fundamentalist Christianity led me to spend the next two decades in apostasy. I experimented with (gasp!) Unitarianism. As a joke, I listed Wicca on my dog tags in the army. Fortunately, I ultimately discovered a kind of Christianity that acknowledges the grace of God.
I am sad to see that the Left Behind series of books (now minor motion pictures starring Kirk Cameron) are so popular. This is such a perversion of Christianity. So many self-described Christians are looking forward to leaving the wicked world and have given up on making it any better. In fact, some of the most hateful people I know are “Christians” looking forward to the Rapture. For them, God is all about the smiting, and they extend little or no love to those unbelievers that God is going to torture in the seven years of Tribulation. Life in the world is meaningless for them. Their emphasis on God’s supposed vengefulness and the utter irrelevance of this kind of faith to life in the world are huge stumbling blocks to the acceptance of Christianity by many people. Their gospel is not exactly “Good News”. As the preacher in Cold Comfort Farm said, “They’re all going to hell, and someone has to tell them.”
On the other hand, it appears that the whole vengeful God/sinners get what they deserve in the end/get your ticket out of this hellhole is hugely popular and generates a lot of revenue for a lot of preachers. It is a lot easier than actually trying to live like Jesus. All you have to do is recite a formulaic prayer and wait for the end of the world.
I was taught the whole Rapture and Tribulation spiel when I was a teenager. It was all the rage in those days in the Bible Belt, and I recall a number of times sitting in on sermons that dealt with the End Times and interpreting Revelations as describing current events. Remember The Late Great Planet Earth? Those predictions all turned out wrong, but the author is still prophesying on the TV. There was a one- woman play by an evangelist entitled The Quick and the Dead that dramatized the Tribulation. One guy I heard argued that Nelson Rockefeller was the Antichrist, and he was dead serious. I’m pretty sure he was wrong. We used to sing a song I Wish We’d All Been Ready that was a lamentation of someone going through the Tribulation. “Children died, the days grew cold, a piece of bread would buy a bag of gold…”
I never bought into the whole Rapture and Tribulation thing because it just didn’t seem to me to fit with the teachings of Jesus. The Biblical predicates for the doctrine were really shaky as far as I was concerned. The same preachers who insisted that the “days” in Genesis were 24 hour days had no problem stating that the “weeks” in Daniel were figurative and represented a longer time period that placed the Rapture within the next few years. That doctrine and lots of other things about Arminian fundamentalist Christianity led me to spend the next two decades in apostasy. I experimented with (gasp!) Unitarianism. As a joke, I listed Wicca on my dog tags in the army. Fortunately, I ultimately discovered a kind of Christianity that acknowledges the grace of God.
I am sad to see that the Left Behind series of books (now minor motion pictures starring Kirk Cameron) are so popular. This is such a perversion of Christianity. So many self-described Christians are looking forward to leaving the wicked world and have given up on making it any better. In fact, some of the most hateful people I know are “Christians” looking forward to the Rapture. For them, God is all about the smiting, and they extend little or no love to those unbelievers that God is going to torture in the seven years of Tribulation. Life in the world is meaningless for them. Their emphasis on God’s supposed vengefulness and the utter irrelevance of this kind of faith to life in the world are huge stumbling blocks to the acceptance of Christianity by many people. Their gospel is not exactly “Good News”. As the preacher in Cold Comfort Farm said, “They’re all going to hell, and someone has to tell them.”
On the other hand, it appears that the whole vengeful God/sinners get what they deserve in the end/get your ticket out of this hellhole is hugely popular and generates a lot of revenue for a lot of preachers. It is a lot easier than actually trying to live like Jesus. All you have to do is recite a formulaic prayer and wait for the end of the world.
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