After Tony Soprano was shot in the season six opener by Uncle Junior, he lapsed into a two-episode coma. Over the past seasons, Tony's dreams would have given his psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi, much to interpret, as he conferred with whacked family members on the deteriorating Asbury Park boardwalk and went driving with dead mistresses. And the coma was a rich vein of material to assess Tony's character.
But hovering at the comatose edge of his own death, Tony was first robbed of his own identity then found his wallet and suitcase full of the evidence of someone else's life. His driver's license and credit cards said he was Kevin Finnerty. He looked like Kevin Finnerty; even the Buddhist monks whose monastery Finnerty had outfitted with a shoddy heating system recognized him. They were ready to sue Tony, er Kevin, for the crappy work he had stiffed them with. He was even invited to the Finnerty family reunion, and the fellow who greeted him out front knew him. Of course the guy just happened to look like the cousin Tony had blown away at the end of season five. On the threshold of infinity, Tony/Kevin doesn't take that final walk up the steps to reunion mansion. He wakes up, heeding the bedside calls of Carmela and Meadow.
Kevin Finnerty seems to be an alternative Tony, the ordinary guy he might have been if he had gone into the heating and cooling business instead of the family business. Finnerty, too, is successful and maybe just as ruthless as Tony Soprano; he's a shrewd businessman in his own right. He seems well off, and probably lives in a nice suburb with his own family; maybe he has a boy like AJ who is a bit of a ne'er-do-well. And like Tony he's probably sent him to a good school and would bail him out of trouble, if it came to that.
As a matter of fact, he's about to do just that.
As coincidence would have it, this week's papers carried the news of three Duke University La Crosse players arrested for the rape of a black stripper. When two of the Duke players turned themselves in and sat soberly at their court arraignment, I couldn't help but notice that one of the two, Collin H. Finnerty, was accompanied by his dad, Kevin Finnerty. Collin isn't so far from AJ. Both are just teetering there at the edge of serious criminality. AJ has been in trouble for petty crimes, including vandalizing his school, and has just been caught by the "family " buying a handgun to use on Uncle Junior. As for Collin, the rape charges mark the second legal trouble for him in the past six months. A man in Washington, D.C. said he was punched repeatedly by Finnerty and two of his high school lacrosse teammates as they spouted anti-gay insults.
Kevin sits next to his son in court, looking stunned, wishing he were somewhere else, maybe even someone else. Maybe he's wishing it were all a dream. Come to think of it, this all seems to be the American Dream gone bad. The dad has made a success of himself, at least in a monetary way, and can afford private school, and the sort of lifestyle where young white boys play la crosse on wide lawns, and develop a keen sense of privilege and prejudice. It is not an isolated incident. The trio of white college boys from Alabama who torched ten rural churches this past year would feel right at home with Collin Finnerty.
Do you think David Chase knows Kevin Finnerty? Maybe not. But he certainly knows the difficulties and rot at the center of the American family and the American Dream.
The Sopranos is an unfolding great American novel. It's fiction, but fact as well. Art and real life.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Law and Order
As our nation's gut churns with a sort of cultural indigestion over the issue of immigration, I can't help referencing the discussion to a Springsteen song, "Matamoras Banks," from his 2005 solo acoustic album Devils and Dust. Matamoras is a town in Mexico just across the river from Brownsville, TX, and the song, which Bruce did in all but one of the 71 shows of the D&D tour last year, is about a border crosser's harrowing experience and his devotion to a woman back home. It starts with this grim image of the character's dead body and works backward from there:
For two days the river keeps you down
Then you rise to the light without a sound
Past the playgrounds and empty switching yards
The turtles eat the skin from your eyes, so they lay open to the stars
Each night, from April through November, Bruce would introduce the song with a simple declaration that what this country desperately needs is a "humane immigration policy." It took another four months to show up on cable news and in the morning papers, but the discussion over just what such a policy should entail has finally arrived. And almost everyone--regardless of political stance--feels it's about time.
Great masses have taken to the streets with nothing specific in way of policy provisions, but rather a desire for recognition and respect. Without clumping together so visibly, but perhaps in even greater numbers, constituents of heartland districts across mid-America have made it known that for them strict enforcement of immigration laws trumps sympathy and economic reality. Naturally, the folks we pay to thrash these matters out in Congress are deadlocked.
Will it be pursuit and punishment or amnesty and atonement? Walls or Welcomes? Will we sort out the problem into three tiers under a system that regards recent transgressions as more heinous than ancient ones-- or to view it more pragmatically, a sort of union seniority among scofflaws? It looks like there may be substantial fines and back taxes to be collected, lessons in language and civics to be mastered, and even then years of penance to be endured in a vast Immigration and Naturalization purgatory. Then again, there may simply be truckloads of invited guests who are time-stamped on entry, employed for specific jobs, but never allowed to move into the neighborhood.
Right now it's impossible to tell how things will shake out, but no doubt they'll work something out that makes no one happy, yet allows everyone to go back to business as usual. And there's where the sincerity of Bruce's wonderful song is eclipsed by the reality of the situation: no matter what policies are forged from this national debate, no matter what rules are written or laws enacted, no matter what compromises struck, no matter which side claims victory, the poor and desperate from Mexico and Central America will continue flooding across the border at exactly the same clip as ever.
Whether we build more fences or just levy fines, the problem will persist without significant change, because it is a matter--almost like gravity itself--of physics and mathematics. The pressure of inestimable numbers of poor but determined humans on one side of this very permeable membrane called the Mexican border will surely tend toward equalizing into the land of relative opportunity and privilege where there isn't quite sufficient numbers to fuel the economic machinery.
We've got the demand; they've got the supply. The price is right and the bargain is struck 250,000 times a day in just Southern California alone. How can any piece of legislation break apart two consenting parties interested in maintaining or bettering their circumstances of existence? If a society that wants to spend minimally on the necessities of life--such as meals in trendy restaurants, such as neatly manicured Arcadian landscapes, or reliable housecleaning and childcare--can find a willing workforce prepared to face even death to provide those services, what criminal code has the power to stay the transaction?
But it's not just raw economic forces at work here. We all have to be honest with ourselves, whichever side of the border we originate on, whatever our political sympathies; there are decided issues of national character to be reckoned with. Our culture here in the states is by nature and tradition one attuned to (if not obsessed with) rules and regulations. When we say "we are a nation of laws," we are making a statement of profound self-recognition. American culture has always regarded the rule of law and the principle of fair play as supreme values.
The British, French, German, and Scandinavian ancestry in this country has created a population that treats legal codes and constitutions--written or not--as the foundation of a workable society. The laws may need judicial interpretation and are frequently revised or abandoned to the point that criminal, civil, and tax codes fill law libraries to bursting. And for better or worse we are by tradition the most litigious society on Earth.
In this setting the term "illegal immigrant" is a precise and potent description, but the word that rankles and alarms is not, as protesters would have us believe, the noun "immigrant," but rather the adjective "illegal." When they use the term, generally, Americans are not questioning the legitimacy of a person's humanity, but rather of their immigration status. There is a difference.
A few details for people who value legal specifications: The last major change in U.S. immigration policy occurred with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. That law replaced a quota system based on national origins with a system of preferences to determine who would gain entry. The most important preference was given to relatives of U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens. Preferences were also given to professionals, scientists, artists, and workers in short supply. Total immigration from Eastern Hemisphere countries was limited to 170,000 with no more than 20,000 individuals from any single country.
For the first time the law also limited the number of immigrants from Western Hemisphere countries, with the original overall quota set at 120,000. Actually, neither quota is binding because immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, such as spouses, parents, and minor children, are exempt from the quota, and the U.S. has admitted large numbers of refugees at different times from Vietnam, Cuba, and other countries. Finally, many individuals enter the United States on student visas, enroll in colleges and universities, and eventually get companies to sponsor them for a work visa. Thus, the total number of legal immigrants to the United States since 1965 has always been larger than the combined quotas. And then there's also the Diversity Visa lottery program, mandated by Congress in 1990, which makes available 50,000 permanent resident visas annually to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. Of course, Mexico and Guatamala, to name a couple, are not on that list at this time.
If rules and regulations matter to you, the best place to check them is at the State Department web site
On the other hand, can we admit that Mexican, Central American, and South American cultures are NOT noted for being particularly obsessed with legal exactitude? These are societies that--I'll try to be polite here--function more on a practical recognition of individual interests and a looser rein of authority than we are used to in this country. Not that Americans are paragons of virtue and obedience to the law, but there is a level of official corruption and widespread cutting of corners that goes on south of the U.S. border that would just feel, shall we say, alien to us here. We are far more prone to find underhanded, sneaky, conniving means of evading the laws. But we know those laws have teeth, and we fear the repercussions. This is not a universal truth in the Western Hemisphere.
The point is...I don't think the people who disregarded the rules about applying for a visa or legal residency, who instead paid their life savings to a coyote to sneak them across the border, risking life and limb to get here, are now suddenly going to queue up as if for the #19 bus up Shaftsbury Ave. for their INS paperwork and lectures on the three branches of the federal government. Nor will the hordes amassing tonight along the Rio Grande really care what sort of compromise is struck in Congress to satisfy the folks back home in Indiana and Oklahoma. Some people will pursue their compulsion to make regulations and others will blithely continue to indulge their inclination to ignore such falderal.
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks
For two days the river keeps you down
Then you rise to the light without a sound
Past the playgrounds and empty switching yards
The turtles eat the skin from your eyes, so they lay open to the stars
Each night, from April through November, Bruce would introduce the song with a simple declaration that what this country desperately needs is a "humane immigration policy." It took another four months to show up on cable news and in the morning papers, but the discussion over just what such a policy should entail has finally arrived. And almost everyone--regardless of political stance--feels it's about time.
Great masses have taken to the streets with nothing specific in way of policy provisions, but rather a desire for recognition and respect. Without clumping together so visibly, but perhaps in even greater numbers, constituents of heartland districts across mid-America have made it known that for them strict enforcement of immigration laws trumps sympathy and economic reality. Naturally, the folks we pay to thrash these matters out in Congress are deadlocked.
Will it be pursuit and punishment or amnesty and atonement? Walls or Welcomes? Will we sort out the problem into three tiers under a system that regards recent transgressions as more heinous than ancient ones-- or to view it more pragmatically, a sort of union seniority among scofflaws? It looks like there may be substantial fines and back taxes to be collected, lessons in language and civics to be mastered, and even then years of penance to be endured in a vast Immigration and Naturalization purgatory. Then again, there may simply be truckloads of invited guests who are time-stamped on entry, employed for specific jobs, but never allowed to move into the neighborhood.
Right now it's impossible to tell how things will shake out, but no doubt they'll work something out that makes no one happy, yet allows everyone to go back to business as usual. And there's where the sincerity of Bruce's wonderful song is eclipsed by the reality of the situation: no matter what policies are forged from this national debate, no matter what rules are written or laws enacted, no matter what compromises struck, no matter which side claims victory, the poor and desperate from Mexico and Central America will continue flooding across the border at exactly the same clip as ever.
Whether we build more fences or just levy fines, the problem will persist without significant change, because it is a matter--almost like gravity itself--of physics and mathematics. The pressure of inestimable numbers of poor but determined humans on one side of this very permeable membrane called the Mexican border will surely tend toward equalizing into the land of relative opportunity and privilege where there isn't quite sufficient numbers to fuel the economic machinery.
We've got the demand; they've got the supply. The price is right and the bargain is struck 250,000 times a day in just Southern California alone. How can any piece of legislation break apart two consenting parties interested in maintaining or bettering their circumstances of existence? If a society that wants to spend minimally on the necessities of life--such as meals in trendy restaurants, such as neatly manicured Arcadian landscapes, or reliable housecleaning and childcare--can find a willing workforce prepared to face even death to provide those services, what criminal code has the power to stay the transaction?
But it's not just raw economic forces at work here. We all have to be honest with ourselves, whichever side of the border we originate on, whatever our political sympathies; there are decided issues of national character to be reckoned with. Our culture here in the states is by nature and tradition one attuned to (if not obsessed with) rules and regulations. When we say "we are a nation of laws," we are making a statement of profound self-recognition. American culture has always regarded the rule of law and the principle of fair play as supreme values.
The British, French, German, and Scandinavian ancestry in this country has created a population that treats legal codes and constitutions--written or not--as the foundation of a workable society. The laws may need judicial interpretation and are frequently revised or abandoned to the point that criminal, civil, and tax codes fill law libraries to bursting. And for better or worse we are by tradition the most litigious society on Earth.
In this setting the term "illegal immigrant" is a precise and potent description, but the word that rankles and alarms is not, as protesters would have us believe, the noun "immigrant," but rather the adjective "illegal." When they use the term, generally, Americans are not questioning the legitimacy of a person's humanity, but rather of their immigration status. There is a difference.
A few details for people who value legal specifications: The last major change in U.S. immigration policy occurred with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. That law replaced a quota system based on national origins with a system of preferences to determine who would gain entry. The most important preference was given to relatives of U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens. Preferences were also given to professionals, scientists, artists, and workers in short supply. Total immigration from Eastern Hemisphere countries was limited to 170,000 with no more than 20,000 individuals from any single country.
For the first time the law also limited the number of immigrants from Western Hemisphere countries, with the original overall quota set at 120,000. Actually, neither quota is binding because immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, such as spouses, parents, and minor children, are exempt from the quota, and the U.S. has admitted large numbers of refugees at different times from Vietnam, Cuba, and other countries. Finally, many individuals enter the United States on student visas, enroll in colleges and universities, and eventually get companies to sponsor them for a work visa. Thus, the total number of legal immigrants to the United States since 1965 has always been larger than the combined quotas. And then there's also the Diversity Visa lottery program, mandated by Congress in 1990, which makes available 50,000 permanent resident visas annually to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. Of course, Mexico and Guatamala, to name a couple, are not on that list at this time.
If rules and regulations matter to you, the best place to check them is at the State Department web site
On the other hand, can we admit that Mexican, Central American, and South American cultures are NOT noted for being particularly obsessed with legal exactitude? These are societies that--I'll try to be polite here--function more on a practical recognition of individual interests and a looser rein of authority than we are used to in this country. Not that Americans are paragons of virtue and obedience to the law, but there is a level of official corruption and widespread cutting of corners that goes on south of the U.S. border that would just feel, shall we say, alien to us here. We are far more prone to find underhanded, sneaky, conniving means of evading the laws. But we know those laws have teeth, and we fear the repercussions. This is not a universal truth in the Western Hemisphere.
The point is...I don't think the people who disregarded the rules about applying for a visa or legal residency, who instead paid their life savings to a coyote to sneak them across the border, risking life and limb to get here, are now suddenly going to queue up as if for the #19 bus up Shaftsbury Ave. for their INS paperwork and lectures on the three branches of the federal government. Nor will the hordes amassing tonight along the Rio Grande really care what sort of compromise is struck in Congress to satisfy the folks back home in Indiana and Oklahoma. Some people will pursue their compulsion to make regulations and others will blithely continue to indulge their inclination to ignore such falderal.
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Why worry?
"Deep greens and blues
Are the colors I choose..."
Late winter is the best time for my garden. The rain has awakened the flowers—not ones I have slaved to pull out of pony packs and plant throughout the garden beds; I gave up that routine years ago. These are flowers I can count on to be faithful beauties when the calendar says summer is still far away. Trailing periwinkle with its blue stars are the under-painting, along with blue-daisyed brachycome and magenta geranium and a wide swath of blue chalk stick. The grey arctotis blooms its fuschia flowers first, and then come purple and gold freesias, followed by blue Dutch iris.
Less than a decade ago, it dawned on me that I should luxuriate in the blues and grays of native foliage, and in a single stroke one afternoon the bed of a dozen roses was razed. Since then my "silver garden" has grown, more or less, like Topsy. I plant, prune and pull things that thrive or don't. During winter and spring the garden tends to itself with a verdant display sprinkled with blues and purples.
Our patio, framed by our exterior decorating, is driven by my plant and pottery collection. (If you have more than one of a thing you are on your way to being a collector.) And I am well on my way to a collection of blue pottery, with a larger oriental oil jar hidden in the dark green clivia, and two herb pots, one ultramarine and another pale-blue violet. Last fall I reclaimed a bench from our basement, completely restored it and gave it a coat of turquoise paint. I like the blues being at the far edge of the spectrum to the natural colors. Right now the blues are bright touches, later in summertime the silvers with be cool and restful.
Can life be any better?
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