The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Let's go tell the LA Times!

Japanese-American Lillian Nakano writes in today's Los Angeles Times that "1942-Style Bigotry targets Muslims in the U.S. Today."

Of her 700-word column, she spends about 550 on her experience in the Japanese internment of World War II -- appropriately enough, since Feb. 19, 1942, is the day Pres. Franklin Roosevelt signed the order to move people out of certain "military areas" and into U.S. internment camps.

Unfortunately, after that 550 words, she doesn't leave much space to back up her assertions that American Muslims have had a similar experience.

Some of my fellow Americans are now being targeted because they are Muslim, Arab or Middle Eastern. When the attacks of Sept. 11 happened, I mourned for the innocent lives that were lost. But I also began to identify and sympathize with the innocent Muslim Americans who immediately became victims of the same kind of stereotyping and scapegoating we faced 63 years ago. They too have become targets of suspicion, hate crimes, vandalism and violence, all in the name of patriotism and national security.

Maybe the central sentence in that quote is explanation -- it's more about her identity and sympathy than about anything outside herself, but there's precious little outside herself in this column.

So what are the crimes aginst Muslims?

Suspicion -- There's been some of that, though the poor-victim-me stance of CAIR does more to create suspicion that Muslims are trying to assert more than their demographic control over American life than allay it.

Hate crimes -- CAIR encourages its members to report any small slight -- a discussion not entirely favorable to Muslim beliefs, asking a woman to remove her hijab for a school photo, an ordinary annoying prank that has nothing to do with religion -- as a hate crime, not to mention the hoax at Arizona State University. My own observation, though, is that in the name of diversity and "we're not hateful, not us," more outreach has been done and more air time has been given to Muslims since 9/11 than before.

Vandalism and violence -- the murder of a Sikh (not Muslim) in Arizona is the only actual hate crime I'm aware of -- though there's some indication that the recent murder of an Egyption Coptic Christian family in New Jersey might be a hate crime perpetrated by Muslims. Every act of violence is to be deplored, but I don't see "1942-style bigotry."

The next mention of today's Muslim victims falls several paragraphs later:

Yet today there are renewed attacks on civil liberties in the name of the "war on terrorism." Legislation such as the Patriot Act and the government's willingness to arrest and charge innocent people contribute to an atmosphere that could lead to future internment camps.

So the Patriot Act is like Executive Order 9066. Here's Roosevelt:

I hereby authorized and direct the Secretary of War . . . to prescribe military areas . . . from which any or all persons may be excluded, . . . .

Here's Section 102 of the Patriot Act:

(b) SENSE OF CONGRESS -- It is the sense of Congress that--

(1) the civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans, including Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, and Americans from South Asia, must be protected, and that every effort must be taken to preserve their safety;

(2) any acts of violence or discrimination against any Americans be condemned; and

(3) the Nation is called upon to recognize the patriotism of fellow citizens from all ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds.

Executive Order 9066 is short, and there is nothing in it about the "civil rights and liberties" of the Japanese (just food, shelter and medical care).

"And the government's willingness to arrest and charge innocent people contribute to an atmosphere that could lead to future internment camps." Let's parse this sentence: "the government's willingness to arrest and charge innocent people": innocent people are often charged with crimes; that's why there is a provision for trials in the case of criminal matters and military tribunals in the case of acts of war. Do we cease investigation because justice isn't perfect? But Nakano's verbs reveal that even she has no grounds for complaint: ". . . contribute to . . . could lead to . . . future internment camps." Is it any wonder that Michelle Malkin compares these people to Chicken Little?

Speaking of Michelle Malkin, she is the final piece of evidence that the Muslim internment is on its way. Malkin, the child of Filipino immigrants, wrote a book reexamining the Japananese internment.

I haven't read In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror, but the Amazon product description is not "Those *#&$ Japs had it coming," but "This diligently documented book shows that neither the internment of ethnic Japanese--not to mention ethnic Germans and Italians--nor the relocation and evacuation of Japanese Americans from the West Coast were the result of war hysteria or race prejudice as historians have taught us."

Agree or disagree. Argue Malkin's documentation or quarrel with her premise. If she's incorrect, point it out and point out your sources. It's called debate. What Nokano and a lot of others do is to scream, "The sky is falling!" and call it dissent.

Nakano closes: "There is no justification for racism or denial of civil liberties -- not in 1942 and not in 2005."

OK, but you still haven't made your case that anyone says there is.

And Chicken Little? Pay close attention to the end of the story.

Note to commenter

Right. And the little boy who cried, "Wolf!" was just trying to "draw attention to the changing atmosphere in the pasture before it gets to wolf proportions."

The problem is that the standard of what makes for impending Stalinism has shifted drastically over the past 10 years. When Janet Reno sent AFT troops in with guns blazing to kill 70-something children in order to save them, it merited a collective yawn from the Left. If Congress decides it may theoretically be necessary to look at public library records in search for people who may be trying to blow up our cities, it's the shadow of Stalinism.

I have a blog burbling on the back burner about American apocalypticism, both Left and Right. As the song goes, "I've seen the world from both sides now, from Left and Right, and still somehow, it's paranoia's delusions I recall. I really don't know Stalinism at all."

Bill Maher's upset again

Bill Maher, recently heard from telling Joe Scarborough that "flying planes into buildings is a faith-based initiative," is upset about that survey of high-school kids.

Or maybe he's not really upset, but just in need of grist for a column lambasting people of religious values. It's too bad he didn't actually read the survey; I wonder what he would have said about the comparison between the adults' answers in the survey and the kids'.

He calls the kids Stalinists because, he said, "almost one in five said that Americans should be prohibited from expressing unpopular opinions. Actually, the numbers are that 7 percent disagreed with the premise "People should be allowed to express unpopular opinions," and 10 percent said, "Don't know." Which amounts to fewer than 1 in 10 saying that Americans should be prohibited from expressing unpopular opinions, and if the question had been worded that way, the answer might have been entirely different.

But he's not going to be detained from a good rant by mere facts. Here's the bone in his teeth:

And what's so frightening is that we're seeing the beginnings of the first post-9/11 generation -- the kids who first became aware of the news under an 'Americans need to watch what they say' administration, the kids who've been told that dissent is un-American and therefore justifiably punished by a fine, imprisonment -- or the loss of your show on ABC.

Like most of his kind, he doesn't make any distinction among a fine, imprisonment or losing his show on TV. He thinks there's something strange about having to watch what he says, even though most of us in the real world have to do it every day -- to keep from hurting our families, disgusting our friends, getting fired, deceiving people, lowering the level of discourse for everyone, and so forth. Some of us are even told in our faith-based terrorism manual that the tongue is capable of great harm, and we should keep it bridled at all times. Of course, that doesn't apply to satirists on TV.

But the younger generation is supposed to rage against the machine, not for it; they're supposed to question authority, not question those who question authority.

In other words, it's only "authority" who's supposed to be questioned--those enlightened few who have ascended to the heights of ABC TV shouldn't have to be accountable to anyone, not their stockholders, managers or viewers. And if they fall into the "anti-authority" camp, then those pesky kids should look at them in wide-eyed wonder, saying ony, "Gee, Mr. Maher! I want to be just like you someday!"

In the meantime, though fearing for his "unpopular opinions," he still gets a show on HBO and a column in the LA Times.

NOTE TO MR. MAHER: Stalin's dissidents didn't get shows on cable TV or columns in major metropolitan daily newspapers.

If this column is any indication, he might have lost his TV show because it was empty and stupid.

You have just stepped into . . .

. . . the Twilight Zone.

So I was at class the other night, and we finished our speed drills about 6:45 or so, and I went to the break room for a cup of tea and came back and started writing sentences, and all of a sudden I felt bad. Headache, upset stomach, chills, malaise. Was I coming down with the flu? Food poisoning? SARS? The effects of skipping dinner? I ended up leaving early.

At home, my daughter was upset after talking to her sister's husband. Troubling news, great sorrow. We talked together, and I went to sleep to strange dreams and woke feeling only a little better. But it was the next day, and I had work to do, so I did it.

This morning I asked younger daughter about what time she'd heard from older daughter's husband. She said it was between 7 and 7:30 p.m. She'd been crying and tried to call me, but my phone was on silent during class.

I'm skeptical about ESP, not because I don't believe it happens, but because I don't believe it happens to me. But one of the truths in the novel Life of Pi is that sometimes several stories will fit the events, and in that case you have to pick one.

Valleys of Mariner

Photos from Mars continue to astound, this one looking for all the world like water used to pour through those gullies.

This would have been where Ransom found the hrossa.

The Senate moves on the Oil for Saddam scandal

The Telegraph reports that the Senate investigation is not playing nice patty cake with the crooks and frauds who perpetrated the UN Oil for Food scam.

Sen. Norm Coleman, chairman of the investigating committee, has demanded that Secty-Gen. Kofi Annan strip Benon Sevan, who led the program, of his diplomatic immunity, opening the Cypriot up for prosecution.

Do you think Annan will agree?

If he does, Sevan may not like accepting the whole responsibility for a fraud that obviously had Annan's blessing, since Kofi's son Kojo was one of the beneficiaries. So if he's charged with this beyond-Enron crime, he might just look around to see whom he can take with him. Would Kofi make a good roommate in Leavenworth?

On the other hand, if Annan refuses to revoke Sevan's immunity, it will be tantamount to admitting his complicity.

Nice.

They're both probably banking on being able to brazen it out.

Are Dems starting to get the message on abortion?

If so, it's scaring some of them into a frenzy.

The New York Times takes on the "A" word in a story about Democrats re-examining their abortion politices. A couple of nuggets:

Congressional Democrats named a professed opponent of abortion rights, Harry Reid of Nevada, as the leader in the Senate. Some Democrats supported another abortion opponent, Timothy J. Roemer, for the party's chairmanship. [emphasis added]

(Democrats also elected a former Planned Parenthood board member, Howard Dean, to be the chairman of the party.)

Ann Stone, a leader of a group of pro-abortion Republicans points out that money could be a factor: "The Democrats have to be very careful about this because they could end up undercutting themselves with the donor base. The pro-choice donors in both parties tend to be the more wealthy."

Pro-aborts are starting to bend slightly on issues that can't get them anywhere:

Another large abortion rights group, Naral Pro-Choice, is reversing course, saying it will drop its opposition to the proposed Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, a bill that would require doctors to offer anesthetic for the fetuses of women seeking abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

It's a good plan -- better for the child that's about to be killed, a strong message to the mother about what's going on, and a lose-lose for the abortion proponents -- but it's a little creepy, like demanding that child abusers use anaesthetic before burning their kids with cigarettes or drowning them in the bathtub. Still, Naral doesn't lose much (except maybe their hardened abortion base) by accepting this moderate little Roe-proof legislation, and, as they say, not fighting this bill leaves more resources to fight judicial nominees.

Are the Dems starting to soften their stance? Rhetoric is easy; actions are harder. But even the change in rhetoric could have an effect. Single-issue proabortion groups gave more than twice as much to candidates for national office in 2004 than did abortion opponents. Polls say that the pros and cons are pretty close to even, but money shouts. The hard-line abortion supporters are already threatening to start a third party--political suicide, if you ask me.

Still, any departure from Democrats' harsh and adamant rigidity on abortion is a good thing, as long as people aren't fooled into believing it means more than it does. Pres. Bill Clinton's dictum that he wanted to keep abortion "safe, legal and rare," is a reminder of how hollow rhetoric can be.

Benefits of being at kicking level

I know a woman, not a bad woman, but difficult, whose communication style is such that she engenders wailing and gnashing of teeth wherever she goes. She has a manner that pokes wounds and punctures buoyancy. People dread hearing her voice.

I don't believe she's aware of it. I think she sees herself as witty, compassionate, an old softy, and that part of her abrasiveness comes from her defense against her perceived softness. Another part comes from her growing up in a part of the country with a different communication style from where she ended up.

Unfortunately, she has climbed so far in her corporate stratosphere that no one, no matter how kindly or with any amount of well-meaning concern, can take her aside and tell her that she makes enemies for herself.

Those of us who can still get the withering phone call, the insult, the humiliation of our errors, miscalculations and self-delusions are lucky, though it never occurred to me before. It's easier to learn from your mistakes if people aren't afraid to tell you about them.

This is a principle that has far-reaching consequences--in politics, the media, religion, corporate life--about the use of power for self-defense and the dangers of that kind of self-protection. I suspect that some of our high-profile failures in recent years missed this little lesson from life at dog-level.

The Blogroll, please! Belief Seeking Understanding

I've been at this blogroll stuff for a couple of months and have gotten well into the B's. At this rate, I'll get through the alphabet in time for my blogcentennial -- and then I'll have to start over for all the links I left out.

Nevertheless, an apple a day and all that.

Douglas from Belief Seeking Understanding admits to having achieved an 82 on a recent nerd test. I've learned some very cool stuff about the technix of blogging from this assistant professor in the graduate programs in software at the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota.

I've exchanged a few e-mails with him and would genuinely like having him and his family for next-door neighbors -- unless I had to move to Minnesota for it.

Never mind.

So I read his blog. All the best things about being neighbors without having to live in minus-30-degree temperatures, except you can't borrow a cup of sugar.

What about 'pro-choice'?

My friend Cathy brought up a sidelight on my Name-calling and perceptions post that I didn't have a good answer for: "What about the power of a term to soften or hide what's behind an idea? Such as 'pro-choice.'"

After further cogitation, I think the principle still applies. Over the long term, it's the connotation of the word that changes, not the perception of the reality behind it.

For example, "states' rights." Federalism is the principal that decisions happen as close to the people as is practical. Unfortunately, the South used "states' rights" to justify the unjustifiable before the Civil War, and now anytime someone uses the term for something like zoning or education, it raises the spectre of the KKK.

We haven't seen that happen with "pro-choice" yet, maybe. But the reality of abortion has been hidden for these 30 years -- in doctors' offices, in people's unspoken history, and kept from public view by a complacent media. And now opinion is beginning to turn on the abortion issue -- thanks to scientific developments, ultrasound, population reversals, overreaching abortion proponents (consider the fight to the death over partial-birth abortion and the Unborn Infants Protection Act), the traumatic experience of many women who aborted their children and men who lost theirs to abortion, and the tireless and undaunted efforts of all stripes of pro-lifers.

I predict -- and I could be wrong, but let's see what happens -- that within 20 years, "pro-choice" will mean "arrogant, thoughtless, selfish to the point of not caring the outcome of one's choice." I don't think all pro-choice people are like that -- many are simply uninformed or whatever. (I also don't think all homosexuals fit the new derogatory meaning of "gay.") But sometimes the language-makers (all of us in some mysterious mix) don't care about the fine points of generalization and specificity, and sarcasm usually trumps nuance.

But there, I've gone on record. If anybody (including me) remembers this prediction in 20 years, we can have fun revisiting it.

Name-calling and perceptions

Huw Raphael Richardson and Father Joseph Hunneycutt have written thought-provoking essay about Sponge Bob, Tinky Winky, "gay"-ness and the sexualizing of children.

I recommend reading the whole thing, but it sends me off in another direction --

"Gay," even when I was a kid, meant "light-hearted" or "cheerful." It was later appropriated by the homosexual community, to the point that it was impossible to use the word for "light-hearted" or "cheerful," and even 19th-century writers drew sniggers for their anachronistic faux pas.

Now, among teen-agers, "gay" has come to be a term of derision, meaning "stupid," "moody," or "lame," and divorced from sexual content.

By contrast, the Society of Friends, or, as they frequently call themselves, "Quakers." The word "Quaker" started as a term of derision, but the people accepted the term, and the derision part of it is simply a historical curiosity. That's what a reputation for pacifism and freeing slaves will do for you.

Similarly, the word "Christian" probably started as a term of mockery. It's had its ups and downs over the centuries -- sometimes as a generic term for an ethical person, other times meaning an imbecile, but the early Christians adopted the term proudly.

The point? Changing the language doesn't change perceptions. It's easier to change perceptions and watch the meaning of the words change.

Cue music

Another one bites the dust!

Note to corporate journalists: your in-house fact-checkers may be toadies, but that no longer preserves you from consequences. Other people have begun to pay attention, and there's enough of a community out there that it has some effect.

ScrappleFace is asking who's next?

Why sorry?

The visitor is a swarthy Spaniard who lives in our area, originally from the southern tip of Spain. He's tall and robust, in his 30s or 40s, with a full beard.

When he came in, two of my co-workers said, independently of each other, "I heard they thought you were a terrorist on the way into the country from Mexico. On behalf of my country, I apologize."

I said that they thought my dad was a terrorist, too, when his artificial knee set off the metal detector.

My question is why should this guy immune from being searched, just because he happens to look like a member of the Taliban.

UPDATE: I posed that politically incorrect question to my co-worker, who replied, "Well, he's from Spain, and he's got a Spanish passport, and he's been working in this country for years, and . . . ."

Right. Spain doesn't have any trouble with terrorists.

Understand: the man in our office is not a terrorist, of that I'm confident. But he wasn't beaten up, he didn't miss his plane, he wasn't arrested. He said they didn't even do a very good job checking his baggage -- they missed a couple of cameras he had. In exchange for some of the time he'd have spent in the waiting area reading a newspaper, he received a story to tell his friends when he got home.

Of course, I suppose, in the structure of the story itself, being taken aside to have your baggage checked would be the belly of the whale, and seeing that the security people missed something would be the return with the elixir.

Or maybe not

I want to start a blog for techies and call it "Geek-seeking missals."

Too bad I don't know squat about technology.

You can have the title.

Whoa, it's like, just shut up, you know?

A lot of people are rending their garments over a new study released last week showing that high-school students think the First Amendment is, like, really overrated.

I first heard about it in the lunch room at work, where a very nice lady from another department thought that I, being in the news business, would be shocked and horrified. My first question was, are these the same students who don't know what century the Civil War was fought? Oh, wait, those were college students.

My second question was what were the questions. If you're as curious as I was, here's the survey.

A few of the questions were pertinent to the students' views and attitudes:

40. The First Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution more than 200 years ago. This is what it says:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Based on your own feelings about the First Amendment, please tell me whether you agree or disagree with the following statement: The First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.
12% Strongly agree
23 Mildly agree
19 Mildly disagree
25 Strongly disagree
21 Don’t know

(Don't get me started on the phrase "Based on your feelings about the First Amendment . . . .") A quick pass with my trusty calculator tells me that 35% agree with that statement, and 44% disagree; 21% "don't know," and they're probably at least being honest (or they didn't want to take the survey).

Now let's look at that question from another direction: 35% agree that it "goes too far . . . ." Of the other 65% are a certain number, uncounted, who think it goes not far enough and some who think it's OK the way it is. It's a loaded question, loaded for the press release.

But what's the "right" answer ("based on your feelings")? Of the high-school principals, 24% thinks it goes too far, and 29% of high-school faculty agreed. They're not substantially below the students, and that glass is either a quarter full or three-quarters empty.

41. Overall, do you think the press in America has too much freedom to do what it wants, too little freedom to do what it wants, or is the amount of freedom the press has about right?
32% Too much freedom
10 Too little freedom
37 About right
21 Don’t know

This question is so vague that I'd have to go with the 21% who didn't know (I wonder if it's the same 21% from the prior question). "Too much freedom to do what it wants": and what, pray tell, does "it" want? "The press" is hardly a monolithic enterprise. It includes Dan Rather and the Wall Street Journal; the National Enquirer and the blogosphere; the paparazzi and Simon and Schuster. Should the press have the freedom to invade the privacy of a private citizen? Commit libel? Change the outcome of an election by promulgating forged documents? Certainly, there are elements of "the press" that "want" to do these things. Ought they be covered in the First Amendment?

For each of the following statements, please circle if you agree or disagree that someone should be allowed to do it...

42. People should be allowed to express unpopular opinions.
51% Strongly agree
32 Mildly agree
5 Mildly disagree
2 Strongly disagree
10 Don’t know

There's what the First Amendment guarantees, and 83% agree, and the "don't know's" have dropped to 10%. Somebody tell the political correctness police.

43. People should be allowed to burn or deface the American flag as a political statement.
8% Strongly agree
8 Mildly agree
11 Mildly disagree
63 Strongly disagree
10 Don’t know

We have 74% of these students saying that burning or defacing the flag is not OK. You can certainly carry on a lot of First Amendment-guaranteed speech without setting fire to the symbol of the guarantor of that freedom, and there has been much discussion about the issue over the past couple of decades. Even though there's a strong majority here, and even though I think Elvis has already left the building, I don't see this attitude as evidence of the rise of the Third Reich.

44. Musicians should be allowed to sing songs with lyrics that others might find offensive.
40% Strongly agree
30 Mildly agree
14 Mildly disagree
7 Strongly disagree
9 Don’t know

Looks like we're back to a strong majority -- 70% -- supporting free expression. The principals don't quite agree with their charges on this question -- with 43% in favor and 56% against. Faculty fall between them -- at 58% for and 41% against.

45. Newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of a story.
24% Strongly agree
27 Mildly agree
22 Mildly disagree
14 Strongly disagree
13 Don’t know

Again, it's an ambiguous question, but a plurality came down on the pro-press side. Still, if the kids are thinking about wartime, that might be an explanation for the close count. Would Ernie Pyle have revealed secret U.S. operations during WWII? Is that prior restraint or self-censorship?

Predictably, 80% of faculty and principals agreed that newspapers should be free of government censorship.

46. High school students should be allowed to report controversial issues in their student newspapers without the approval of school authorities.
30% Strongly agree
28 Mildly agree
18 Mildly disagree
11 Strongly disagree
13 Don’t know

Here 58% think they should, doubling the "disagree's" and tripling the "don't know's." The faculty are a tighter split, at 60% opposing administration censorship and 39% in favor of it (fewer of the faculty didn't know).

But the principals (the ones who get the calls from school boards, attorneys and parents) came down firmly on the side of prior restraint, with 78% of principals favoring censorship.

There's your survey in a nutshell: people of all ages are guided more by their own interests than by exalted principles (or principals either).

For my part, I still don't think the question is specific enough. Should student newspapers have the right to print controversial stories guaranteed by the First Amendment? Yes. Should they have the right to publish insufficiently researched or unnecessarily inflammatory pieces or libel? No. Does the question make any sort of distinction between journalism and using the press as a club to beat up your enemies? No.

After that the questions go into matters of opinion about other people's attitudes or facts of law, which vary from state to state and from year to year, and about their own connections with the journalism profession. These are high-school kids, and frankly, I can hardly keep up with the legal status of flag-burning and Internet pornography laws.

So, no, I don't think the sky is falling. They're teen-agers. If you teach them something, they'll learn it.

Second Life

OK, here's the creepiest trend I've heard about in a long time.

I caught the promo on NPR on the radio this evening. Apparently, it's a chance for middle-aged ladies who are unhappy with their lives to go back and get a virtual do-over--not a make-over but a do-over.

One more piece of evidence that Snow Crash has elements that are not just science fiction but prophecy.

Update: Somehow I got the wrong URL in the promo link above and sent people off to Sheepcrib. By all means, check out Sheepcrib, but it doesn't have anything relating to Second Life.

Error fixed, and I'm feeling sheepish.

Fear and rage in South America

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez shows what a pathetic loser he is.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice issued some substantive charges against Chavez's regime:

She called Mr. Chavez a "negative force" in Latin America and accused him of meddling in the affairs of his neighboring states. Colombia, for example, has complained that Mr. Chavez is sheltering Colombian Marxist rebels.

"We are very concerned about a democratically elected leader who governs in an illiberal way," Miss Rice said of Mr. Chavez.

I could understand anger, outrage, condemnations against the "Cowboy in Chief" Bush and his meddling secretary of state (whether justified or unjustified), but Chavez dips into his adolescence for a reservoir of spleen that reveals more about him than about Rice:

In his Jan. 23 speech, Mr. Chavez said Miss Rice "keeps demonstrating complete illiteracy."

"It seems that she dreams about me. I can invite her on a date with me to see what happens to her with me. She said that she was sad and depressed because of Chavez. Oh, daddy! She should forget me. What bad luck this lady has. I don't want to make that sacrifice for my nation," he said, according to Venezuelan reports.

For what it's worth, the women of Venezuela are angry, too. Unlike American feminists, for whom the Democratic Party alone confers victim status.

State of the Union address

I caught part of the SofU on the radio last night and wondered how much I missed. Fortunately, Grace did one of the finest jobs of live-blogging I've ever seen, right down to the utterances of the Opposition afterward. I nearly fell off my chair laughing.

Must have been the influence of Clemmie the Wonderdog.

Why we get so mad at our kids

I've discovered that it's at least partly because they put me in touch with myself.

Oldest daughter, the one I'm worried about, very nearly missed an opportunity to take a trip she really wanted to take. Some people had made great sacrifices to make this possible, and through her own folly, she almost missed it.

I got a phone call at 3:30 a.m., asking where she was (she was supposed to be catching a ride to the airport). When I went to bed last night, I thought she was going to be in a predictable place at that time. She wasn't. If she didn't arrive soon, her ride would have to depart to the airport, and she would miss the trip.

Her clothes for the trip were sitting on her bed, and her suitcase was sitting empty on the floor.

What to do?

If I were a "good" parent, I would go back to sleep and let her take the consequences of her folly. If I were a "good" parent, I would pack her suitcase for her and go out looking for her. If I were a "good" parent, this never would have happened to begin with. If I were a "good" parent, I wouldn't be having these questions; I would just know what to do and do it.

Let her miss the opportunity? Suddenly, like an actor rehearsing for a role, I'm experiencing every possibility I've blown through my own folly. Like the traffic crash I caused in high school. Like the time my un-backed-up hard drive died, losing all my fiction in progress. Like the time I missed my plane and had to take a later flight, inconveniencing the people who were going to pick me up at the airport. In fact, all of those moments when I've realized that there was no command-Z undo available (how I wished for a command-Z, even back in the '70s, when Apple hadn't been invented, much less the Macintosh) come rushing back as one huge "Oh, sh*t," that I project onto my daughter. I "know" how she'll feel, because I know how I feel.

I'm angry at her for her folly, and for reminding me of mine.

Well, she scraped herself together. My 3:30 a.m. phone calls served only to wake up the parents of her friends and eventually to let me know she was scrambling for home. I did get to call the woman who is taking her to the airport to let her know that the girl would be there just in the nick of time.

I never had a chance to talk to my daughter. She slipped in, tumbled her clothes into the suitcase and slipped out, without ever knowing her near miss. Now she's on a plane (I hope) on her way to her destination. What she's left behind is not as important as what she took along.

Does she know how close she came? I hope so, and I hope not.

I'm like a rat in a cage, who doesn't want to touch that electrified wire any more. I want her to touch the electrified wire so that she'll learn from it, and because -- if I'm honest -- it's not fair that I have to touch it and she doesn't. I want there not to be an electrified wire, but I know that while this one was just a jolt, the next might be deadly.

After the phone call, I lay back on my pillow and felt my heart pounding as hard as if it had all happened to me, not just second hand, not just a near miss, but really happened. Really missed the plane. Really missed the trip I, as if I were she, so urgently wanted to take. Really blew the plane ticket and the kindness of these people. It was 4 a.m., and I had to get up in another two hours, and I had at least two hours of stress to lose before I could sleep.

I put some quiet music in my headphones and tuned in and dropped out.

Why am I telling you all this, when there are GI Joe dolls to rescue and controversies brewing and important events happening?

Well, for three reasons. 1) This is my blog, and for whatever it's worth or not worth, this is what's spinning around my tiny little mind. 2) If anybody reading this has experienced something similar, maybe it will be a comfort not to be alone. 3) I'm going to write a book about this someday, and I want to store the memory on something more permanent than my hard disk.

To the people of Iraq

I wish you a long and prosperous democracy. I hope you will quickly become comfortable enough in your freedom that you take the vote for granted. I hope you are able to laugh at your adversaries and vigorously advocate for your allies.

I hope that one day a statue of a woman with a purple finger will replace the statue of Saddam fallen from the pedestal in Baghdad.

You are an inspiration to free people everywhere (though some may not yet have noticed it).

Great point, Basil

Basil makes such a good point in answer to yesterday's Shameless Plug that I want to pull it out and answer it here.

A great discussion aired several years ago on Mars Hill Radio about sentimentality. The Bridges of Madison County was preparing to open in theaters, and the book had already been selling like hotcakes on Fat Tuesday. The host and his guest (a literature professor, probably from Wheaton or one of the other members of CCCU) discussed Bridges in comparison to A Love Story from twenty or so years earlier. As I recall, the main point was essentially that sentimentality is manipulation of the reader's emotions, sweeping them away like a river overflowing its banks, without forcing the reader to ask, 'Is this the way life really is? Can people really do that without any consequences?'

I was just wondering if you had any thoughts relating your understanding of sentimentaility to the focus of this workshop?

The difference between melodrama and drama is not the amount of emotion, but whether the emotions are sufficiently grounded in the story.

When Snidely Whiplash ties Pauline to the railroad track while the train is coming, it's laughable, because that's not how a rational landlord would respond to recalcitrant renters. (Comedy, in fact, can consist of just this kind of disjuncture between cause and effect.) If the writer had made Whiplash a psychopath, it might have come closer, but, of course, by now, fictional psychopaths are a so common that their copy-of-a-copy conventions have become themselves laughable.

A dramatic story (leaving out the experimental fictional forms, to which this may or may not apply) requires emotion for the characters' (and thus the readers') investment in the outcome. If the character doesn't care what will happen, the reader or viewer has no reason to, either. It can be a matter of a glass necklace or a life-or-death struggle with a tiger against the sea, but it's emotion that makes the story compelling.

Almost anything can be well enough told to overcome objections to its reality. Don't believe that a virtuous woman with consumption would bow down in homage to a prostitute? Once Dostoevsky tells you how they get there, it's inevitable.

That's craft.

But beyond craft is the theme -- the place where artists have the responsibility to tell the truth as best they know it. Any theme -- evil or good, right triumphs or murder has no consequences, the universe is oriented on an axis of right and wrong or ruled by chaos -- can be presented with enough craft to persuade.

I didn't read The Bridges of Madison County, so I can't say anything first-hand about it, but it does seem useful to distinguish between discussing theme and discussing craft.

The workshop is about craft.

Shameless Plug

If you're in the Portland, Ore., area and interested in writing, you might like an upcoming workshop:

Saturday, March 5, in Portland, "Emotion-Driven Fiction" by Eric Witchey. This award-winning short-story writer will teach participants to make emotion drive the plot and to display emotion in text. He will also teach a tool called ED ACE for emotional, dramatic action and character transformation.

The workshop happens at the American Plaza Towers on SW First Avenue in Portland. Convenient parking available.

The fee for the workshop is $80 for members, $115 for non-members. (The non-member price includes a one-year membership in Oregon Writers Colony.) Witchey is a popular teacher, and space is limited. For information, contact Martha Miller. Registration forms are available on the OWC website.

I met Eric at a workshop a few months ago, and he struck me as someone who would be a good teacher, which was why I was excited to sign up to coordinate this workshop. It runs from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with an hour off for lunch.

And just for my own curiosity, if you decide to attend and read about it first on my blog, please let me know. I hope to see you there.

Parody Ad

OK. I'm evil. But I thought this was funny.

Especially since VW is hopping mad about it.

h/t: Jeff Jarvis, who draws some useful conclusions about Cluetrain marketing from the kerfluffle.

He's got the right idea, but he missed his own point

In an op-ed in the New York Times, Paul Starr shows that he at least partly understands the cause of the recent Democratic train wreck:

And liberal Democrats, in particular, have been inviting political oblivion -- not by advocating the wrong causes, but by letting their political instincts atrophy and relying on the legal system.

In other words, by using the judiciary to get their policies enacted instead of going through the legislatures or Congress, they have bypassed the dialogue and compromise that would promote their case and make it stronger. Of course, when you go the route of debate and leglislation, you have the possibility of losing -- or waiting 32 years before you begin to see the payoff of your efforts.

But in the next paragraph, Starr shows that he doesn't quite get it at all:

To be sure, Democrats were right to challenge segregation and racism, support the revolution in women's roles in society, to protect rights to abortion and to back the civil rights of gays.

Segregation was upheld by the Supreme Court, then only later struck down by the Court and by the 1964 Civil Rights Act (legislation, supported more by Republicans than Democrats); the "revolution in women's roles in society" happened partly because of social changes outside the realm of any courts -- reduced rates of infant mortality, urbanization, the trend toward work that doesn't depend on sex characteristics -- and "support" for that revolution has brought its own set of issues and discrimination, the "right" to abortion was invented from the "emanations of the penumbra" of the shadows Supreme Court's mind, and the "civil rights" of gays have never been overturned (voting, freedom of speech and assembly, etc. Having everyone approve of your lifestyle is not a civil right). Presuming that he is speaking to a sympathetic audience of the Enlightened, he glides over these points ("to be sure") as if the arguments have been made and won.

They haven't.

In fact, the old media, such as the New York Times itself, are part of the crippling of the Democratic Party. Not knowing any Republicans and rarely hearing arguments against their unquestioned stances, they don't even know that their arguments haven't persuaded. When they do find someone from "the other side" to quote as "balance," it's frequently some looney who only "proves" how slack-jawed and uncultured we are. Our arguments may not persuade either, but often our opponents don't even know what they are.

Then their protesters tell us that Republicans are simply ignorant of the arguments in favor of Democrats' agenda. Their arguments assail us from every media outlet, and we have to dig a little deeper to get the other side.

That, too, teaches us something.

I think 50 years ago the situation was reversed: it was those with an affinity for tradition who fell into complacency. They didn't have to make the arguments, because "everyone knew" they were correct. I think they largely were correct, but my point is ultimately the same as Paul Starr's: If you don't have to make your case, then you may lose by default.

There's nothing, except laziness perhaps, to prevent both sides from making a vigorous argument, which is not the same as presuming one's moral and intellectual superiority.

How are the kids?

We've all heard the complaints about the perfunctory How-are-you?s, the What-do-you-think-about-the-weather?s, the How-about-them-Yanks?es.

Well, give me the meaningless inquiries about my health (which is fine, thanks), the weather (which I never quite know how to answer), or sports (which I don't follow) over the bright, cheery, quick and indifferent "How are the kids?"

The requisite answer is "Fine. How are yours?" But what if the true answer is, "Breaking my heart, thank you very much"? If all the asker wants to do is show that she remembers that I have kids, then she might just point and wink and say, "Kids." I'll point and wink back, and we'll be on our way.

But if we're in the midst of a crowd and someone looks at me with bright, expectant eyes and says, "How are the girls?" what am I supposed to answer. (One is fine, thank God.) The other night I came up with a glib, slick short version for someone I had just met and with whom I was exchanging the requisite family structure pleasantries, but the short, slick version doesn't get past that initial acquaintance.

But the long version has pain on many sides, fear, sadness, love and lies, anger and guilt, and tears embedded in it. I don't know how long it is, because I haven't told it. I don't know how it ends. I don't know if this is the belly of the whale or merely a pinch point. I don't know where the inciting incident's change of paradigm fell. It's a story to explore with one person, such as the matushka at my church, who is one of the best listeners I've ever met, but it's not a story to dump carelessly on anyone.

Maybe it's a story best written, so that only those prepared for the journey take it.

But the writer herself must prepare for the journey.

But don't ask me when you're on the way out one door, and I'm on the way out the other.

(I must be the most difficult conversationalist in the world.)

A daring question from Lawrence Summers

Andrew Sullivan puts into the context the flap over Harvard President Larry Summers' improvident remarks about the differences between men and women.

Summers had the temerity to ask whether proclivities to subject matter might be genetic.

Then he made the mistake of pointing to some interesting research by the University of Michigan sociologist Yu Xie and his University of California-Davis colleague Kimberlee A Shauman. Their hypothesis was that in science tests the median score for men and women was roughly the same. But for some reason men were disproportionately represented at the very bottom and the very top of the table.

Or, as the Harvard Crimson reported: “There are more men who are at the top and more men who are utter failures.”

One possible explanation for this is genetics. Summers raised the possibility that this might have something to do with male preponderance at the very top of research science. And he immediately added: “I’d like to be proven wrong on this one.”

Proving that women academics are always rational and professional in their bearing and demeanor, Prof. Nancy Hopkins had to leave the meeting. “When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn’t breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill.” Get the woman some smelling salts. I think she has the vapors.

Even Christian bloggers, though, such as John Mark Reynolds have piled on, as if Summers had used the "N" word or something. Reynolds is right that there's a double standard; Summers may escape the lynching because he is not a conservative or traditionalist Christian, but that doesn't mean he deserves to be lynched any more than the next person who has a thought that gives the world's Prof. Hopkinses the vapors.

Sullivan's conclusion is that in an academic or scientific setting, it ought to be possible to float and test a hypothesis without being slapped with a fish. And so it should. Many in academia have become afraid of questions, and the world of scholarship is the poorer for it.

An Olympic prankster defrocked

An Irish priest who changed the outcome of the 2004 Olympic marathon was defrocked. At first I was going to blog this little gem of a quote for its overwhelming clericalism:

I now cannot preach, I cannot give out communion -- I am little more than a pagan.

After all, if not being able to preach or give out Communion makes him a pagan, what does that do to the 99.95 percent of Christians around the world, whatever our faith expression?

But then there was this:

The Roman Catholic priest claimed that he was highlighting the "second coming" of Jesus Christ.

I can't speak for his bishop(s), naturally, but if this is accurate, he's got bigger problems than being an "Olympic prankster."

Update: Where I've been

I haven't forgotten my blog, but my regular computer is in the shop (I'm using my irregular computer now), and I've been running from work to school and back, and . . . . Isn't that enough? Can I say my dog ate my blog?

Guess not.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who's added advice about outing myself as a Republican--both the comfort and the challenges have been much appreciated and have helped put the situation into context. I've got a couple of weeks before I see those folks again, so I've got time to cogitate on it.

In the meantime, it's bedtime, and the puppy is tired. (Me, too.)

A Daring Daylight Rescue, Not

It was a quiet day in the Appalachians (?) when our intrepid hero, attorney/seminarian/cassock wearer, came upon a roadside disturbance:

In any event, I was moseying along when I noticed a crowd -- 10 or 12 people -- standing on the side of the road looking into the river. Among the on-lookers were at least two sheriff's deputies and a Highway Patrolman. Hmmmm, I thought, must be a jail break.

It's thrilling, it's heroic (or at least it offers thoughts about heroism), it's educational, and it'll have you laughing your boots off.

Go there right now.

An ethical dilemma

I mentioned the other day that most of my fellow writers are on the left of me. Well, I was with a group the other evening and am wondering if I violated some standards of civility or courage. Here's what's happened.

We finished our meeting, and the talk turned to other topics, namely politics. Stupid Bush. Not stupid but flawed. Bad Republicans, except one (unnamed, probably RINO). No bad Democrats. Republicans hateful. Democrats good. Etc. You know the drill.

My bad? I didn't say anything. I smiled politely and thought of it as an opportunity to gain a perspective I wouldn't get otherwise. I felt like a spy. If anyone had asked my opinion, I'd have answered the question honestly, but no one did, and everyone presumed that we were all at the same end of the political spectrum.

The teams were six on one side, one (me) on the other. I couldn't out-argue them, even if I were good at arguing. I made my case for Pres. Bush in this space in the run-up to the election, and I still think he's a decent man and possibly a great president, but I don't have any illusion that I could change anyone's political opinions, especially not those so deeply entrenched. I'd like to keep up a relationship with these people, something I'm not sure would happen if they knew my dirty little secret.

So tell me, my friends and fellow wanderers in the blogosphere, do I owe it to my friendly acquaintances to correct their presumption? In honest discourse, is one required to correct every (perceived) "error" of political analysis, especially when that's only a side topic -- or even to announce "I'm one of Them"?

The Blogroll is back: Bastet's Lair

Just about all the writers I know are to my left -- people who prove that political agreement is not necessarily the only or even best basis for friendship, people who are smart, funny, generous with their time and talent. A mixed bag like everyone else, but people who enrich my life.

Lynn from Chicago is like that. She's a journalist who frequently blogs about her fiction writing, and she also adds a different perspective on my political comments. Check her out within the next day or two, because she's promised a political post of her own.

Terrorists and 'torture'

Heather Mac Donald puts the Gonzales hearings into context with a long piece about U.S. post-9/11 interrogation techniques.

The bottom line is what should have been expected: U.S. military policy never countenanced what any of us would qualify as "torture." On the other hand, Islamofascist terrorists do not respect or respond to polite requests for information.

I'm reminded of the classic movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, in which, in an attempt to gain information from murderous revolutionaries, government agents take a blindfolded captive up into a helicopter. It rises a few feet off the ground and hangs there for a little while, as officers interrogate the captive. When he refuses to talk, they push him out of the helicopter. He falls only a few feet and lands uninjured, but the push brings him face to face with his mortality, and he tells everything. Cruel and inhumane person that I am, I thought it was funny. The Red Cross would beg to differ, and apparently such techniques are no longer permitted to U.S. military in use with people who would fly airliners into office buildings.

Sec. Rumsfeld even has to give personal approval for the terrifying chocolate torture.

I'm glad somebody's civilized on this mad planet.

Google Search: Dan Rather nose

OK, so what's the deal with Dan Rather's nose?

Over the past few days, I've gotten hits from three Google searches on "Dan Rather nose."

It's not me they're looking for -- my "nose" post and "Rather" post are a couple of days apart, but there are 331,000 to choose from.

Is a meme developing out there?

Don't do it!

A woman I know (and respect) has a teen-aged daughter in her senior year of high school.

The girl is beautiful in ways that only a 17-year-old can be. She's also smart, thoughtful and a delight to be around. And she inherited her nose from her father, a Jew.

Now I've heard that the mother wants to give her daughter a nose job for a graduation present.

Well, it's none of my business, and nobody asked me, but they don't read the blogs, and so I'm going to tell everybody in my little corner of the world (who also haven't asked), what I would tell this girl if she asked me.

Don't do it! Take the money to buy a car, travel to Europe -- or Israel, for that matter, put a down payment on real estate, invest it to start a business when you get out of college.

You've got a great nose. It's not a little Barbie nose; it's a nose with strength, character. Your new cookie-cutter nose may serve you through your twenties, but you won't be in your twenties very long. Later, you'll want respect, rather than cuteness, but you'll have sacrificed your face to the whims of a decade. Look at the majestic women of history and today: do they have cute little noses? No, they do not.

And don't cut off this link to your father's people, who have given so much to the world and probably contributed to your genetic disposition to a powerful intellect.

You don't need a button nose. The world needs you as you are: beautiful as a young girl today, beautiful as an indomitable matriarch tomorrow.

CBS tries to be No. 4

Sorry, but all my preposterous belief slots are taken.

CBS News President Andrew Heyward has told the White House that "neither CBS News nor Rather had a vendetta against the White House [in using forged documents during the runup to the election], and from here on out would do everything it could to be fair and balanced."

I might argue with the order . . .

but here's why '04 could go into the record books as having some of the looniest quotes of all time.

U.S. adoption trauma

Like Jeff Jacoby, we adopted our daughters from overseas, and at least partly for the same reason he points out: that it would be a lot harder for the biological mother to come back and reclaim them if she changed her mind later.

Jacoby relates another travesty of U.S. justice, as a court removes a three-year old child from her adoptive parents and gives her back to the unstable mother, with liberal visitation from her drug-abusing, anger-challenged convict of a sperm donor.

Jacoby says, "This is what comes of attaching more importance to DNA than to years of devoted parenting."

But I wonder if it might be more the result of the concept of mother's ownership of the child. She, after all, has entire say over the child's fate up until the day it is declared a "baby" by a shifting legal definition. After that, she can do just about anything she wants with it, provided that it doesn't lead to the child's actual death.

Obviously, that's not the whole story, and events like the judicial betrayal of Evan Parker Scott are more an exception than a rule, but the fact that they happen at all, the fact that the judge is so concerned about mother's "rights" and so indifferent to the child's welfare, says a lot about our society and the way we view children.

Mostly as chattel, apparently.

A Modest Resolution

I already quit smoking and my other bad habits I still like too much to quit, but my friend inspired me to a higher goal.

I vow to believe three preposterous things this year. I don't want to overestimate my abilities and try for the White Queen's six before breakfast. A simple three for 2005 seems like a sufficiently ambitious goal. Here they are, with thanks to my friend Geri for the suggestion of the third:

1. Dan Rather is a journalist.


2. Michael Moore is a documentary filmmaker.


3. Dan Brown is a writer.

There. That should keep me occupied through 2005, and if Dan Rather actually retires, then one will open up.

Blame Cathy

She asked for it.

to Emily Dickinson

a gap yawns sudden wide --
open breaks the world --
the blue air floods inside
the silk-spun dam -- and hurls
the Wind the timbred songs
of leaves -- wings still furled
now twitch, begin to long
to stretch out, ride the light --
breathe, O Wind -- wide-flung
kindred ride the light,
from isles of brilliance call --
drying wings taste flight
in Sun-Wind -- rise and fall,
flutter -- rhythm more
than magic -- Lord of all
breathes again -- soar!

It's an attempt to answer, but it's the wrong question

The friendly folks at the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement have attempted to answer a question that I've been wondering about for a long time.

Just for some background, I once saw a bumper sticker that said, "Save the planet. Kill yourself." It seemed like the end (telos) of the radical environmental movement, and I've found it alternatively amusing and disturbing, as well as memorable.

Well, today I ran across the VHEMT website (h/t: James Taranto), with its frequently asked questions.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION: Q: What good is a healthy biosphere if there are no humans around to enjoy it?

The same good it was before we furless beach apes came along.

A human-centered world view only values other species by what they can do for us, or for "our children's children." We're collectively so centered on our own species that nothing matters except in relation to ourselves.

It's like our ancient view of the universe with Earth at the center: it took a long time for people to accept that our planet is just one of many orbiting a star, which is also just one of many in a galaxy, which is also just one of many in the universe.

An Earth-centered world view sees Homo sapiens as one of tens of millions of species in Earth's biosphere. We are exceptional in many ways, and so are the other life forms we share this rare and wonderful place with.

By envisioning Earth's entire biosphere, acknowledging the intrinsic value of every life form, our voluntary extinction begins to make sense.

Unfortunately, the question that VHEMT still didn't answer is this: If there's no consciousness (they don't believe in God, obviously, and they've declared humans including the VHEMT FAQ answerers better extinguished), then what is the "intrinsic value of every life form"? Value to whom? or to what? Why is this place wonderful? On what basis is a biosphere superior to an empty rock floating in space, or, for that matter, no rock at all?

And if the VHEMT people don't have an answer to that question, then there's no reason not to try to solve our environmental problems instead of voluntarily extinguishing human life.

Which brings us back to the bumper sticker.

A brief note to American retailers

Dear Retailers --

For the past few weeks I've heard again and again that you've become afraid of Christmas. Lileks calls it "the holiday that dare not speak its name." Schools have outlawed red and green decorations; the Post Office issues stamps for Hannukah, Kwanzaa, and Eid and "Traditional Holiday" (h/t: Lileks), Target has chased off the Salvation Army bell-ringers, Macy's has forbidden its clerks to mention the dreaded "C" word, and the Nordstrom's Winter Holiday windows downtown look like something out of a 19th-century bordello.

You owe Christmas. When your " holiday shopping season" isn't stellar, then your bottom line sinks. The other winter holidays are not inherently gift-giving events, are only gift seasons in reaction to Christmas.

We've suffered through your three months of holly and greenery, two months of overplayed and irreverent "Winter Holiday" music, your clueless advertising and your advocacy of debt, debt, debt. We can even find meaning in the new clothes, the gifts, and even Santa Claus.

The truth is, you need Christmas, but Christmas doesn't need you.

A lot of what we buy during this the run-up to the "Winter Holiday" is stuff that we would buy anyway -- necessities that coincide with Christmas and end up under the tree. But a lot of it is crap that no one would ever miss--white elephant gifts, ties that the recipient doesn't like and never wears, that exotic little useless object for the person who has everything. When these things are given with true Christmas spirit, they are a physical incarnation of our love, and even useless objects can carry a great weight of love.

We get that from the story of Christmas -- about God becoming a helpless baby in a family needing shelter, by his birth uniting divinity and mortality and by his death uniting sinful man with holy God.

But your Winter Holiday carries no such story. It carries no consciously developed story at all, unless it's a fat jolly man borrowed from Christianity and put in charge of a toy factory. Divide that man from the Christmas story, and he becomes a marketing tool, one more long line to stand in with the kids, and finally just a Grumpy Santa.

The Winter Holiday story, as far as I can glean it from the advertisements, the "Winter Holiday" songs, the cultural paraphernalia that replaces Christmas, is this: "I am special. I deserve to have what I want. The Holidays are coming, a time when all the other people in my life want what they want. Also the office has a party that I have to attend. And my family gets together for the holidays, and we re-experience the trauma of growing up dysfunctionally. Other people have wonderful, meaningful holidays, but I never do. I have to send out Winter Holiday cards and attend Winter Holiday school pageants and decorate my home for Winter Holiday. And I have to buy stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. I have to drive to the mall and face the crowds and get what my friends and family want so they'll get what I want, or at least so I can take it back afterwards and get what I want. And afterward, I can shop the after-Winter Holiday sales and rest until next year."

There is nothing compelling about this story. All the elements, when contained within the Christmas story, are capable of profound depths. Divorced from Christmas, they are C.S. Lewis's X-mas rush without the "-mas." Rushing for the sake of rushing. How long till people say, "Fine, whatever. I think I'll skip the Winter Holidays."

In the meantime, people who celebrate Christmas don't need the retail "Holiday Season." We got along just fine without it for the better part of 2,000 years, We can give simple gifts, necessities, charitable donations, gift cards that support our local Christmas-celebrating schools. So cancel the office Winter Holiday party; that'll free up more time to focus on Advent. If the schools don't like red and green or the Christmas songs, then they have have a first-semester concert in late January. It will be more appropriate to sing about Frosty the Snowperson and Winter Wonderland later in the winter anyway.

You can throw out Christmas, but you have nothing to replace it. We Christmas-celebrators haven't lost anything.

But you have.

Oh, and by the way, Merry Christmas.

What element are you?

No, it's not one of those nifty quizzes. At a writers' workshop a while back, the leader, Cricket Pechstein, gave us an exercise, asking to classify ourselves accordiwg to the four elements--earth air, fire, and water. Well, different people took it different ways, and none were wrong, of course, but I landed on a scheme that made sense to me then and still does.

• Earth--concrete detail


• Water--"flow" of language, line, melody; what's aesthetically pleasing, easy on the eye or ear, pleasurable to behold


• Fire--emotion


• Air--philosophy, ideology--the "ethereal"

A successful work of art will contain these elenents in a balance appropriate to itself. Different artists will to emphasize one element or another.

James Joyce is water; Dostoevsky is fire; Faulkner is fire and water; Henry James is fire; Steinbeck is earth; Tolstoy is air. Feel free to argue this list or add to it. I am mostly earth. I have a deep hunch that truth shines through the details.

What brought this to mind was a chat with a woman the other day. She told me she was an artist. When I asked what kind of art, she said, "Feminist. I read a lot of philosophy, and my paintings are about the fragmentation of modern life." Earth, meet air. I was asking about the medium.

Reminds me of a poem I wrote once, "To emily dickinson." I showed it to an English professor. He read it and asked what it was about. It was about three feet wide and sixteen lines long.

Getting in touch with my inner geek

The New York Times has an article about how the Mozilla Firefox browser is eating into MS Explorer's market share. Scott Ott at Scrappleface has hit on the same theme.

From the NYT:

With Firefox, open-source software moves from back-office obscurity to your home, and to your parents', too. (Your children in college are already using it.) It is polished, as easy to use as Internet Explorer and, most compelling, much better defended against viruses, worms and snoops.

I even turned away from Safari, which comes loaded on the Mac OS X and whose brain is similar to Firefox's, for the extensions and add-ons that are available for Firefox.

Ironically, at the top of the NYT article in my Firefox window is the following message:

Firefox prevented this site from opening a popup window. Click here for options...

That's my doggie.

UPDATE: In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably tell you that I got Firefox for free.

H/T: Topic Drift

Random ramblings

War stories are the best part of learning a new job. We had our Christmas party at school last evening, and after a half-hour of jollity went back to our workstations to continue learning the theory of realtime transcription (it's hard to express that without any brand names). As frequently happens at such events, we had a hard time actually getting back to work, and some of the more advanced students sidetracked our teacher into the sort of job knowledge you don't get from books.

Like the time the reporter, an attorney and the witness in a phone-conferenced deposition were all named Dave, and so every time someone on the other end of the wire said, "Hey, Dave," three people answered.

Like the time a deposition question about the witness's adult beverage of choice veered into a social discussion of, "So, what do you like to drink?" After a couple of minutes of this, the reporter reminded them all that they were still on the record and wondered if that was OK with them. With the approval of both attorneys (either one could veto the decision), he backed up to the original question and answer and deleted the chitchat.

Like the fact that some court reporters have declared themselves offended by the language and subject matter that goes into depositions and refused to record it. To tell the truth, suspecting that I would be likely to be offended by the subject matter of TV is one reason that closed captioning is low on my list of applications for my new skill. What happens in court proceedings is real life. It somehow falls under the "I'm just repeating what so-and-so said" exclusion I learned in grade school.

One thing I was concerned about, going into this, was that a lot of depositions would be blah, blah, blah, 47%, $50,000, blah, blah, party of the first part, etc. But our teacher says that most depositions bring something new every day. Some people are jerks, he says, which, to my mind, makes them blog material. But by and large the conversations are educational and surprising ("Divorces are fun," he said, which makes me think he must be a writer at heart).

Highway people -- the hawk

The red-tailed hawk sits on a tall light pole overlooking I-84 in east Portland. Beneath him, a stream of cars creeps along a maze of over- and underpasses through a district of light industrial, warehouses and railroad tracks.

The hawk sits tall and dignified, with his wings folded. Maybe he's watching for prey or maybe he's only gazing sleepily at the dirty metal river that flows beneath him.

I've seen him before--or one like him--a few miles south, hunting on the median strip of I-205. He hovered as if frozen in mid-air, talons extended. I didn't see his prey, but he saw it. Suddenly as I watched, he dropped like a stone. The river carried me away before I knew what he hunted or whether he caught it.

These creatures are a doorway into another world, where life and death are exchanged minute by minute. No wonder he watches us so smugly: we are encased in metallic bubbles, bobbing along the current, inured and blind to the predation and rapture around us. Does he know that we are dangerous, both for him and for each other? I fear the day I see him lying dead beside the road.

I don't think he nurses any such fear for me.

UPDATE: Maybe I should point out the irony that I did my first draft of this post on a Palm handheld, steering with my knee, as I negotiated the traffic.

The Real St. Nicholas

If scientists in Manchester, England, are correct, Arius may have hit back.

The reporter calls Nicholas, the fourth-century bishop of Myra in Lycia (now a pile of rubble in Turkey), "saint with a broken nose":

An anatomist was given access to his tomb by the Vatican half a century ago when repairs were being carried out to the crypt in the church at Bari, southern Italy, where his remains are kept.

Computer technology was used to build the image of the saint’s face. Experts then studied paintings of religious leaders on Orthodox icons and decided to add a white beard trimmed to 4th century fashion. What emerges is the face of a man aged 60, 5ft 6in tall and with a heavy jaw.

A very good read, but ignore the advice in the lead:

BEHOLD the olive-skinned man with the broken nose and shock of white hair. Find him in your front room at 4 am in 13 days’ time and you might be forgiven for hitting him over the head with the sherry bottle.

Don’t. It is Father Christmas as you have never seen him before.

Actually, go ahead and hit him with the sherry bottle. If he's in your house on Christmas morning, it's probably a heavy-jawed burglar. Everybody knows that St. Nicholas comes Dec. 5-6 (18-19).

Bus people 10, Singing with the Rainbow Man

It was a long ride in to work this morning; traffic was bumper to bumper, and my bus ride that normally takes an hour was more like an hour and a half. It was OK: I polished my weather post and started next week's Onion Dome piece as the skies cleared and the sun came out and the bus rumbled past cars that had overheated in the stop-and-go traffic.

Nonetheless, when I arrived downtown for the bus switch, my mind had turned to Songs about Schedules:

This old engine makes it on time,
Leaves central station ’bout a quarter to nine,
Hits river junction at seventeen to,
At a quarter to ten you know it’s travlin’ again.

Driving that train, high on cocaine,
Casey jones is ready, watch your speed.
Trouble ahead, trouble behind,
And you know that notion just crossed my mind.

At the last stop before leaving the downtown Fareless Square, a remarkably dressed man got on the bus -- 300 pounds or so, wearing rainbow-hued, tie-dyed T-shirt, leggings and Birkenstock clogs, with his modesty preserved by a pair of black shorts. He wore a gold necklace with a glass bauble around his forehead like Zona, Princess of Venus, and many rings on his fingers and the last two fingers of both hands painted metallic pink. His hair, dyed blond, had a pink forelock.

He saw me singing and advised me to sing louder. "You should always let your voice be heard," he said.

Nah. I'm not going to inflict the music flowing through my brain on a captive audience, who might be processing their own reality with their own tunes. But I have to hand it to the Rainbow Man that he practices what he preaches.

What we do when we're not up to politics

Everybody go over to StephenEsque right now. Baldwin is blogging the alphabet.

Weather

He got on the elevator wearing Oregon business casual, which is not the chinos and polo shirts of other places' business casual, but blue jeans, nice shirt, denim jacket. He had the tan face and wide jaw and high cheekbones of someone who might be an Indian, and his wavy hair, pure white, had been pulled back into a pony tail.

"How do you like this weather?" he asked.

Now most people consider that an easy question. It was a December evening, pitch black at 6 p.m., temperature in the mid-40s, and raining. Most people have an opinion about weather like that, and it's not positive.

But the question stumped me. I have trouble having opinions about weather. It's like having an opinion about gravity. It shapes me more than I can shape it, and whether it's at any given moment convenient or inconvenient for me is of no consequence in the grand scheme of things.

The other thing, and this is perhaps a dirty little secret, is that I like rain. Western Oregon is a green place, and the rains are the life-giving nurturers of our evergreens and spring flowers, the moss that grows on the trunks of trees and the roofs of houses, the ferns and lichens and ivy, the fruits and vegetables that we'll enjoy next summer. Against a gray sky, the greens are brilliant and many-hued.

I also don't mind being in rain. I don't like water splashing my face, but when my glasses are protected from the raindrops making little plock! sounds as they hit the brim of my rain hat, I notice how remarkable it is that water falls from the sky.

When my Southern California nephews (now adults) were small boys, they came to visit, and on a rainy day, they ran to a puddle and shouted, "Circles!" Those young men may have forgotten circles (I haven't asked them recently), but I still see the circle, because children pointed them out.

So the man got on the elevator and asked me my opinion of the weather, and I couldn't think of anything to say. He looked at me as if I'd driven an SUV into the building and said he'd been out in it all day. The door opened, and he got off.

I left class at 10 p.m. and drove through the rain-washed streets of downtown Portland, which reflected the Christmas lights as bright as day, ablaze with the promise of the Incarnation.

Highway people

A 1970s-vintage Honda Civic (they looked a little like Gremlins, only smaller) preceded me off the I-205 exit yesterday. As we slowed to the left turn, I noticed something odd about the car (yes, beyond its being 25 years old with an aluminum engine block). It had hay scattered on its bumper, hay that wasn't going anywhere, even though the car was just exiting a 55 MPH speed limit highway. You don't see hay on the backs of tiny hatchbacks, even in Oregon City -- pickups maybe, but hatchbacks no.

Looking closer, I saw a bale of hay stashed in the back.

I wonder about that. Why would someone carry a bale of hay in the back of a 1970s-vintage Honda Civic? Does he haul really tiny horses? Is he taking the hay from the farm to the house's house in Gladstone (local reference: Gladstone is a middle-class residential area, pretty tightly settled)? If not horses, then what?

I never saw the driver in more detail than a silhouette against the front windshield, but I have to admit now that highway people can be every bit as perplexing as bus people; we just can't see them as well.

Bus people 9

The Loud Family gets on at a bus stop in West Linn where we usually pick up zero to one person: 11 people with the gross mass of about 18 and with a combined IQ of about 900. They carry on their conversations, about Mom's shoes, Sis's socks, marriage regulations in Utah (whether or not Mormons are permitted polygamy), and other disconnected family concerns (Gasp! "We left the phone off the hook!"), while the other big sis sings "Silent Night " off-key to a babe in arms.

The two who sat further back in the bus carry on a loud conversation about the Star Trek multi-racial world.

Their garrulous volubility raises such an intrusive hubbub that I can focus on nothing but them.

The big sis with purple toe socks sitting in front of me lifts her arm to stretch it across the seat back, and I have to open a window to let in some fresh air.

Sometimes blogging is the best revenge.

UPDATE:

After finishing the post, I gladly and quickly got off my bus downtown to wait for my next ride out to work, and who should come lumbering up the street but the Loud family again.

Now I've learned about Mom's springy shoes and her diabetic condition and the gun and combination bow collection of the one who carries all the bus passes for the whole family. Also about their dolls and their early life in a cabin with no indoor plumbing and fire-powered irons.

When I got to work, I learned that a man had called from England, hopping mad because he gets wrongly addressed e-mail. My work website is one letter different from his website, and therefore, it's our fault if he gets mail addressed to him that is not intended for him.

He's been mad at us for two years about this, mad enough to phone from England.

I need a button that says, "I've had my daily allocation of crazies. You take the next one."

A psychiatrist explains BDS

Dr. Sanity explains Bush Derangement Syndrome:

This psychological defense mechanism is referred to as 'displacement'. One way you can usually tell that an individual is using displacement is that the emotion being displaced (e.g., anger) is all out of proportion to the reality of the situation. The purpose of displacement is to avoid having to cope with the actual reality. Instead, by using displacement, an individual is able to still experience his or her anger, but it is directed at a less threatening target than the real cause.

H/T: Blue Goldfish

Tracking the wily Evangelicals

Portland's alternative weekly ran a feature story on Evangelicals this week. Its slant was "They're here, they're having an effect, and we'd better get to know them."

The writer, Zach Dundas, came across like an anthropologist studying a strange and foreign race, but at least he accepted them as being of the same species as himself. (This is not entirely usual among practitioners of the "a secularist introduces the evangelicals" genre.) By and large, it was a good and fair piece of writing. The writer didn't claim to be exhaustive; he acknowledged the diversity within the Evangelical community and within the Christian community at large. He didn't demonize or marginalize or criticize or harmonize (sorry, I got to channeling Bob Dylan for a second). Anyway, he treated it as a foreign culture, which it is for many people, but as a culture worth considering. He kept the snark level to a minimum.

He even started with a definition of Evangelicalism -- a good, if difficult place to start in such an effort. He failed to distinguish among Evangelicals, Fundamentalists and "born-agains," but I don't want to be like the guy in the Gary Larson cartoon who looks out at his dog, pushing the lawnmower in crazy lines around the grass, and shouts, "Bad dog, Rex! You call that mowing the lawn?"

An unfortunate association

What do you get when you drag $165 million through a trailer park?

A new presidential library that looks like an enormous single-wide mobile home on stilts.

Bus people 8

He climbed on the bus with a slow gait, walking with a cane, lumbering up the steps of the bus, which knelt for him at the stop. He was in his 70s, I think, quite fat, too heavy for his muscles to carry. He wore a black beret at a rakish angle, and carried a good-sized backpack. In the rainy chill, he wore a fluffy coat, also outdoorish.

It wasn't until he got off the bus, waiting at the door for it to kneel for him again, that I saw that he was also wearing Bermuda shorts, khaki colored, and knee-high socks with his hiking boots. He turned and walked backward out the bus, climbing down the steps as if it were a ladder. As he hobbled away down the street, he looked like a Swiss mountain guide who had been mugged by Time.

I'm back

I didn't know I was going to take a vacation when I pushed "Publish Post" last Monday, but that's what it turned out to be.

The odd thing is, the longer I stayed away from blogging, the less I had to say. It will be a few days before I work myself back into the illusion that I have anything worth blogging about.

In the meantime, there's a new Onion Dome up.

Kill Tinkerbell

Our dog Sadie has a thing about light. When the sun on a watch dial sends light glimmers dancing across the wall, Sadie jumps for it. We call the game "Kill Tinkerbell," and it has afforded us a lot of cheap entertainment.

Well, last week, our daughter hung the St. Nicholas stockings and plugged in flashing white lights across the mantle, giving a merry glow to the living room.

At 11:30 p.m., Sadie woke me up with her, Danger! Danger! Danger! bark. She can't sleep when there's Danger! and so she would come upstairs -- "Bark! Bark! Bark!"-- and try to lie down, but it was TOO DANGEROUS!, and so she would get up again. The only way to calm her down at times like this is to go and see what the problem is.

I followed her through the kitchen, and she looked around the doorway into the living room, every nerve trembling. "TINKERBELL IS BACK! AND SHE'S BROUGHT TINKERRAMBO!"

I had to unplug the lights so that Sadie could go to sleep.

'Wishing upon a star'

In a review of Finding Neverland, Frederica Mathewes-Green points out an insidious trend in children's literature:

When Sylvia dies, Barrie instructs her son Peter (Freddie Highmore), "She's on every page of your imagination. You'll always have her here. She went to Neverland and you can visit her there any time you like." Peter asks, "How?" and Barrie continues, "By believing, Peter. Just believe."

Well, this is pure, double-filtered, lemon-scented hogwash. No grieving child should be loaded up with such malarkey -- burdened with the obligation to materialize his own dead mother through mental exertion, burdened to think that the inevitably fading or fluctuating memory is his fault because he failed sufficiently to "believe." Contrary to popular opinion, believing don't make it so. There is a reality about life after death, a "so," that exists whether we believe in it or not. We don't know much about it and can prove even less, but that doesn't mean imaginary projections will constitute reality if we squeeze the sides of our head hard enough. Believing in belief is a useless, superficial exercise. Real human conviction and experience travel in less predictable patterns -- as real playwright J. M. Barrie knew.

Disney has been telling kids to believe in believing at least since "When you wish upon a star / Makes no difference who you are / Anything your heart desires will come to you" (in a film that distorted the message of an Italian children's novel about the Prodigal Son).

Neverland isn't Disney, though, and the message that you can do anything you dream has filtered through the culture as the only "faith" message allowed in the secular world. It's true that children can, with effort and diligence, do more than they think they can. It's also true that God can do anything, but the middle message, that children can do anything, with just a wish and a dream, is "pure, double-filtered, lemon-scented hogwash."

The Orthodox Church

The classic overview of Orthodox history and theology, by Bishop Kallistos (Timothy) Ware, is online.

I didn't know Dave Barry was Orthodox

But he must be if he has this intimate an acquaintance with tofu:

Of course not everybody is comfortable with the idea of eating turkeys, which are, let's face it, living organisms, like dogs or celery. You may wonder: Is there a more humanitarian option that you can serve for Thanksgiving dinner? There is. It's tofu, a semi-foodlike substance secreted by soybeans as a defense mechanism. Tofu can be used as a high-protein meat substitute, as well as a denture adhesive or tile grout. In its natural state, tofu is tasteless and odorless, but if you form it into a turkey-shaped lump, season it well, add gravy and bake for two hours in a shallow pan at 350 degrees, you can also use it for minor driveway repairs.

Funny or disturbing?

The Littlest Prisoner at Abu Ghraib
Your child will be the hit of the neighborhood costume parade in this recreation of the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal's most indelible image. As an added bonus this easy-to-make costume will remind everyone on your child's trick-or-treat route of our national shame! Simply roll a cone from a sheet of 24"x38" black cardstock, making sure to cut out a hole for the face. Drape with two yards of black felt, and add leftover wires from your last lamp-rewiring project. Voilà! So easy, so quick, and so terrifying!
Total cost: Under $20.
Total time: Under two hours.

And how do you explain the costume to inquisitive little Johnny? "Oh, that's our national shame!" Care to go into any more detail?

Don't these people realize that if they don't teach their kids idealism before cynicism, the kids will grow up thinking nothing is worth defending?

Another costume, made of garbage bags and milk jugs, was "Jenna Bush's liver." Part of the instructions: "Rifle through the help's recycling bin for an empty Bud can and bottoms up!" The help? Who's got help? John and Teresa? They're teaching you how to make Halloween costumes for, in this case, under $5, and they think you've got "help."

But what made it worth blogging was this: I was looking around the site to find out if it is satire, and found an editorial proving that the editors of the site have discovered federalism. You've got to read past the bile to the ideas. The piece advocates letting the Red States stew in their own juice. They want abortion illegal? Let them have it and die! They want less restrictive gun laws? Let them have them and die! They want to pay fewer taxes, change clean air and water laws, and so forth and so on . . . ?, well, you get the idea. (Never mind the fact that people supporting those ideas don't believe they would have those outcomes.)

The Blue-Staters have been using the courts to push their agenda onto the Red States for at least 30 years. Now that the situation looks like it might turn, the editors of theStranger.com have discovered the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. At this rate, they may be Republicans by 2008.

h/t to Seraphim, who came down on the side of "disturbing."

Bus people 7

The gaggle of women stand at the bus stop downtown, one of them yelling, her tone echoing down the canyon of the street, but her words lost in the roar of traffic. When the No. 19 arrives, my bus, they get on it.

There are five of them, finished with a Twelve Step meeting, and the one who had been shouting goes to the back of the bus, but the others stay up front. One is a mountain of a woman with a face like Jabba the Hut. Another is a rotund woman with wide-set eyes, holding a boy about a year old. The third never quite makes an impression on me, because the fourth is a woman in her thirties, whom a Jane Austen heroine might have called "lively." She's pretty in a way, though her skin shows the effects of tobacco.

She sits in one seat, then flings herself into another, then into yet another. She pulls from her pocket a lighter that someone gave her, with the word "love" on it. The others reply that the same man gave them things, too, but she keeps saying it's got the word "love" on the front, until the Jabba woman gets the point and says, "Oo, looovvve."

Then she flings herself into the seat in front of me and sings the old Tom Jones tune, "L-O-V-E," loudly and self-consciously with big gestures. She begins playing peek-a-boo with the baby, her loud "Peek!" echoing through the bus, her long dark hair flying.

The other women tell her how boring it was when she wasn't there.

She answers a question with the words "I don't like women," and continues to repeat, "I no like women," in some generic foreign accent until the bus comes to their stop, stopping only once to clarify, "I like men."

A woman not to be messed with

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will be nominated to replace Colin Powell as secretary of state.

Do you think we'll get to see her whup Kofi Annan? If anybody can do it, she's the one.

I guess the NFL will have to wait.

UPDATE: Lileks says he wants to see her go to Saudi Arabia, where the first words out of her mouth will be, "I'll drive." Yeah. Like that.

Is this a conflict of interest or what?

Pardon me for beating this dead horse, but I can't resist it.

In the midst of a long piece on what went wrong with the Kerry campaign (short answer, John and Teresa) Howard Kurtz about how the mainstream networks actually work:

In early September, CNN commentator James Carville said in a meeting with campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill and the newly hired Lockhart that if Cahill didn't give Lockhart effective control of the operation, the ragin' Cajun would go on "Meet the Press" the next day "and tell the truth about how bad it is."

OK, he's a commentator, not a reporter, and a Clintonista, and everybody who watches him will know where he butters his bread, BUT he's using his position in the media to direct the Kerry campaign.

Do the networks even realize how weird and out of touch they are?

The campaign is over, but CNN is still broadcasting, and the Democrats are planning for '08. We need to file this stuff in some accessible place in our memory, because it's going to be important again and again and again.