Big Picture, Small Minds

The recent, long-overdue death of Jerry Falwell reminded me of how worthless are the contributions of the religious right to our national discourse. If you're kicking around any of the important issues facing our society today and hoping to grope toward deeper understanding and enlightened public policy, you can be certain to hear utter rubbish from TV evangelicals.

The dots were further connected last night when we attended a very engrossing and entertaining lecture on the nature of the Universe at the SB Museum of Natural History. The real attraction that got us out of the house on a week night was not the subject matter, but rather the speaker--Professor Alex Filippenko from the astronomy department at Cal. Berkeley. We knew Alex when he was a high school student at Dos Pueblos, and Jan was one of his favorite instructors, but last night we were on the other side of the lectern, sitting in a crowd of a few hundred scientists and amateur astronomers, hoping to glean a few bits of cutting-edge cosmology from the words of the master.

Alex is eminent both for his brilliant research and scholarship--documented, his Web site says, in about 500 published papers--but also for his ebullient and effective teaching. He is not only one of the world's most highly cited astronomers, but Berkeley undergrads have voted him the "Best Professor" on campus five times. In 2006, he was selected as the Carnegie/CASE Professor of the Year among doctoral institutions. His specialty is supernovae and the expansion of the Universe.

There was a lot of mathematical and scientific explanation that--even put in layman's terms--went way over our heads, but we did come away with the some pretty interesting basic information about the cosmos: The Universe has been with us for about 13.7 billion years. After the Big Bang the Universe expanded very rapidly, but as would be expected by the laws of physics, the rate of expansion slowed down over time. Then at some point about 9 billion years back, something curious happened--the rate of expansion started picking up speed. We know this by clocking the exploding stars (supernovae) in distant galaxies. The mechanism of this perplexing behavior is theorized to be an abundance of a weird anti-gravitational force that astronomers have come to call "dark energy." Existence as we know it here on earth--even as we know it in our entire solar system--is governed predominantly by gravity, but in the Universe as a whole--comprising billions upon billions of galaxies much larger than our own Milky Way--dark energy calls the tune. Alex says that 73% of the Universe is dark energy, 23% is "dark matter" (Don't ask! I thought THAT was cutting edge.), and only 4% is atoms.

So here we are trying to get our minds around the nature of existence...the cosmos..."all there is," as Alex puts it, and most of what we thought we knew just ain't so. Everything we see, touch, or taste is made of atoms. Everything we know about on or around this planet has an atomic structure. Everything we can imagine out in the deepest corners of outer space is still atomic in nature--except for the vast expanses of vacuum, which are apparently packed with anti-matter and anti-gravity. What we know and almost understand is only 4% of the Universe. This other stuff that we can only postulate through mathematics and verify with indirect observation of its powers accounts for the other 96% of "all there is."

Okay, I can accept my humble status in the cosmos. But here's where I lose patience with the Bible thumpers. The guy sitting next to me in Fleischman Auditorium has fallen asleep in the middle of this brilliant lecture. While Alex has the rest of us totally rapt by the power of supernovae and the mystery of dark energy, this fellow next to me is literally snoring away the evening. People around me are looking at him and, I'm sure, wondering why someone would come to this event, pay his $10 and then sleep through these slides, the foam balls on the expanding cord, and the apple that Alex keeps tossing upward and catching as it falls earthward, a slave to gravity--unlike all those stars billions of light-years away.

But despite the intrinsic excitement of the lesson, this guy sleeps and snores through class. Then it's time for Q&A. And, sure enough, this guy wakes up and asks his question. It's an inarticulate jumble, but the essence of it is this: how do you square what you've been talking about with the Book of Genesis? How does the Bible fit in here?

Alex is a practiced public speaker and he accepted the question with equanimity and offered a logical answer that indicated that he and all other serious scientists have no trouble separating religious faith from scientific investigation. But it was a more rational and polite response than the moron deserved. These people are as poisonous to the pursuit of knowledge as they are destructive to rational political dialogue. Their contribution to mankind's progress is what I'd call "anti-knowledge." Man's progress has always had to struggle against this enormous force of ignorance and inattention.

And if we are unable to strangle this tendency we'll be headed for the Dark Ages. Right now the rate of descent in that direction seems to be accelerating.

There's Another National Anthem

For anyone who has seen the early 90's Sondheim musical Assassins--and there can't be that many of us considering how seldom it's staged--this week's events have to bring to mind that work's dark, but undeniable insights. What Sondheim dares to point out is the inscrutable connection between America's bipolar national character--cockeyed optimism one moment, insecurity, paranoia the next--and our near-religious devotion to expressing ourselves with guns.

Not far into an evening spent with the American Pantheon of presidential assassins and wannabes--from John Wilkes Booth to Squeaky Fromme, we hear "The Gun Song." Booth tells us how simple it is to make your mark with a gun:
"And all you have to do
Is move your little finger,
Move your little finger and--
You can change the world.
Why should you be blue
When you've your little finger?
Prove how just a little finger
Can change the world."

Picking up the theme is Charlie Guiteau, who in 1881 shot President James Garfield:
"What a wonder is a gun,
What a versatile invention.
First of all, when you've a gun--
Everybody pays attention."

In a brilliant piece of staging, that last sentence is divided with an ample pause during which the actor playing a weirdly elated Guiteau points a pistol directly into the audience and loudly cocks the trigger. Point made.

In America guns aren't just tools of a trade or pieces of recreational equipment. They are the props of our dignity, the instrument for asserting control over our environment, and in no small way a means of self-realization. And you don't take that feeling of power and presence in the world away from a man without unleashing deep-seated resentments.

So anyone who thinks that one demented college kid out on a Monday morning exercising his constitutional rights is going to queer our national addiction to gunpowder, might as well come back to the flock before Sunday. The pious reflections on brotherhood and community will be ringing out this Sabbath, but there will be no time for politics after prayers. The Democrats won't risk their toe-hold on power for moral disputation with the gun lobby. So it's settled, the problem right now in this country is not too many guns, but too few. The homily of the week goes like this: It's better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have one. Consider how many fewer grieving families there would be if students and professors at Virginia Tech had been allowed to carry guns in their backpacks and briefcases. Imagine.

Near the end of Assassins, Sondheim places a complex song that weaves together several themes of the evening--he titles it "Another National Anthem"--but it boils down to admitting we are a divided country, a country of two disassociated populations on two tracks in the pursuit of salvation. One group is squared away, competitive, comfortable with its advantages and accomplishments. That group sings the praises of our nation at every opportunity--at school assemblies, at ball games, at booster breakfasts. Then there's the other crowd. They're struggling with failure, with their own insignificance, with disembodied voices in their heads. They have another national anthem to sing and, as Sondheim says, it's "not the one you cheer at the ball park." This anthem says, "Bullshit!" It says, "Never!" It says, "Sorry!" It says, "Listen!" It's for "the ones that can't get into the ball park."

"There's another national anthem, folks,
For those who never win,
For the suckers, for the pikers,
For the one who might have been...
There are those who love regretting,
There are those who like extremes,
There are those who thrive on chaos
And despair.
There are those who keep forgetting
How the country's built on dreams."

Those guys have Second Amendment rights, too. And that's the song we heard this week.

Low Tech, Old Media, Out the Door?

I never mind cleaning house of stuff that's been hanging around in closets, the attic, the garage or basement for unseemly numbers of years. It's usually just a matter of getting Jan's permission--she's not exactly a pack rat, but she is much more the optimist about how likely we are to find a use for an item--and out it goes.

Now, I have of late been contemplating the incredible evolution of media technology as it impacts the upper reaches and back corners of a coat closet in the central hall (hell, the only hall!) of the house. While I am quick to embrace the new, I find myself oddly reluctant to just chuck out the old. I have no attachment whatsoever to most of the consumer electronics I've accumulated in my adult life, nor am I sentimental about musical selections just because I remember owning the vinyl or the cassette tape. But I do hesitate to banish some particular devices and "software" that seem basic to my sense of hearth and home.

Of course, I'd be a fool to send my childhood View Master and all those stereoptical discs to the charity thrift store, when someone who owns an antiques and collectables shop will just nab them up and put them out for sale. That's just logic. More curious, though, is why I'm still hanging onto a perfectly operable Bell & Howell 8-mm movie projector, a Kodak Carousel slide projector, and a classic Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder.

My first line of defense here would be that these are the devices one would need to play (or display) the accumulated home movies, slides, and audio tapes of the Clouse Family Archives. The collection, though, is not vast and not really irreplaceable. I long ago culled out the important gems among the home movies and had them professionally transferred to video tape--first Beta format, then VHS, and finally to DVD. Those that remain solely on 8-mm film--safely stored at a constant temperature in metal boxes--are, alas, painfully boring and amateurish records of So Cal mountain scenery, fields of wildflowers, and tedious Pasadena Rose Parades past. It was torture to watch these as a child, and I can't imagine plaguing myself with them in my old age.

The Carousel slide projector, of course, has only more recently been made obsolete. I've always believed a collection of transparencies--great photos or not--were rather useless if stored in the little boxes they arrived in from the photo processors. I kept them, instead, sorted and carefully labeled in ready-to-go carousel trays, neatly lined up in chronological order on the shelf of our guest coat closet, with the projector and screen nearby. We looked at several trays worth of camping trips from the 60s, just before we took a summer trip there a few years ago. I should scan, digitize, and label the whole mess--er, collection--but something tells me that would be the last time I ever bother to look at these pictures. Do I really want to spend the time alloted to me on this planet with this sort of endeavor?

And the audio tapes are an even easier call. I've long since re-recorded or replaced any music on them that I have an attachment to--even the few records of dorm-room guitar and vocal sessions with a friend at UCSB from an era when Bob Dylan had only a couple albums of his own to his name. Unfortunately, I never got around to transferring the rare snippets of my parents' and grandparents' voices on those tapes, but otherwise, I'd have a hard time explaining why I'm hanging on to all those spools of magnetized acetate.

I won't even get into the VHS recorder boxed up under our bed, or the brilliantly designed Bang & Olufsen stereo receiver and tangential tracking turntable in the attic. I've come to realize that it's not a matter of how cool or remarkable the technology was to begin with, how much good I'll get out of it in the future, or even how much I could get for it on Ebay (the $600 turnable, pictured right, can be had for $9.99, I see). I just have to decide how much I choose to be ruled by nostalgia or feelings perhaps best defined as the "Rosebud factor." I really do feel closer to my father--who died 40 years ago this winter--when I thread-up that old Bell & Howell and curse its complexity as he did when I was a child. And every once in a while in those washed-out movies of Red Rock Canyon I can catch a glimpse of our family's dark blue ’50 Ford--our first "new car" ever--and I almost want to cry.

But wallowing in memories works only every 25 years or so. The second or third annual stroll down memory lane tends to be quite unmoving. For the most part, this stuff is just taking up space. We have no intention of moving up to some larger abode at this point, so every square foot of storage space is at a premium. We either make room for new arrivals or curtail the urge to collect. Fortunately, the blessing of the digital age is that any future accumulation of music, family snapshots, and treasured correspondence can be stored on hard drives and other high density media (present-day or yet-to-be-developed). The very concept of storage space has changed in a revolutionary way.

I just don't know if I can summarily dump the stuff that will forever take up three-dimensional space in the house and carry emtional weight in my heart.

It's not as you think

We're just about finished with reading UCSB admissions applications. By the end of the week we should be enjoying retirement again--sleeping past 6 a.m., reading for pleasure, morning gym workouts, the ritual Thursday morning visit to Starbucks (perhaps shifting to Peet's), and the exhilarating sense of the loosely structured weekday.

Still, we'll miss the people we work with and the sense of camaraderie in a shared, deadline-driven endeavor. As we were driving off campus yesterday, we agreed that, oddly, we feel more connected or even committed to the university now than we did throughout the past several decades of living in town, and more so even than when we were students there in the sixties. The campus is vastly changed--both physically and as an institution--but working there each day, helping to create the population mix that will be educated there, binds us closer than when we were limited to the student perspective.

We are also acutely aware that this formerly impersonal institution has over the years transformed itself into a consumer-friendly place where student needs and tastes are at the center of the operation. Whether it's the Wells-Fargo ATMs scattered about campus, the variety of fast food choices available in the UCEN, or the more than 200 different majors to choose from. it's obvious that like any large, competitive service enterprise, the customer must be kept satisfied.

When we out-to-pasture former teachers were students, it was quite the opposite. Our job was to figure out the arcane standards and procedures set by what often seemed to us inscrutable, perhaps willful, or simply arbitrary authority figures and then do our best to please--or at least not displease--them. I don't remember any first-generation-to-attempt-college (which we both were) "outreach" efforts or newcomer receptions, and if we had needed tutoring in the fundamentals of academic discourse, well, we would have probably been informed we didn't belong there.

For all the talk of how college admission has become so brutally competitive, the institution has become a much friendlier, more welcoming place. Until we started working there, I had no idea how complex the process of choosing a freshman class could be, but we've also discovered that the people doing that job are genuinely interested in helping each candidate get his or her best shot at acceptance. There are no gruff cynics or dour guardians of the academic bastion here. Our job is not perceived as holding back unworthy hordes.

Quite the opposite; the goal is to look broadly and deeply for merit, seek out subtle or unappreciated indicators of future success, and advocate for those who haven't had the advantages of a family legacy in higher education.

And with that being said, perhaps we can retire again and for a time avoid the stream of questions and requests for advice from parents shepherding their offspring toward this mysterious adventure.

Back to the Future

We've been back at the University since the start of December, plowing through those admissions applications again, and, as last year, enjoying ourselves in all sorts of little ways. It's not like we're involved in some great creative endeavor that satisfies the soul in ways that retirement just can't accomplish. It's simply a pleasant change of pace for a couple months or so, and it puts us in daily association with some interesting people who we've enjoyed getting to know.

For the next two weeks, though, we are getting major reinforcements from various offices on campus that provide staffers who've pledged blocks of hours to Admissions so we can pick up the pace and make significant progress on our task. All of us gather in one big room for this process, and this year that will be in the large formal lounge at Anacapa Hall, one of the original on-campus dorms built in the mid-1950s.

It so happens that I lived in Anacapa Hall for my freshman and sophomore years at UCSB, and I'm just a little bit curious about what will seem familiar and what has changed. I'm not one to wallow in nostalgia, but I imagine some essence of those formative years will come flooding back when I take a stroll down the hall of Modoc, where I began dorm life in the fall of 1964.

I haven't walked through those doors since the spring of 1966. Considering how rough the typical undergrad is on the tiny rooms alloted them--the current locution "crib" fits in more ways than one--I'd be surprised if there's anything left that I'd remember.

In those 42 years since I moved in to Anacapa, I've picked up a B.A., an M.A., and a California Standard Secondary Teaching Credential valid for a lifetime. (They literally don't make 'em like that anymore!) I've married a beautiful, wealthy woman (well, at least beautiful), pursued a teaching career for 35 years, and lucked into a very satisfying life-after-the-classroom, which has brought me full-circle to UCSB, where I'm part of the process that selects the freshman class of 2007--some of which will fill those same old rooms in Anacapa. Life goes 'round and 'round.

Contemplating the re-location to Anacapa, I recently dug out my UCSB yearbook from my freshman year. The first thing that smacks you between the eyes, of course, is the incredible uniformity of the student body. There seems to be only three hairstyles for the girls--the bubble, the flip, and the modified beehive--and fewer than that for the guys. And for all those group shots of clubs and residence halls, everyone is dressed for church: every boy in a suit or sports coat, white shirt and narrow tie; every girl in a black skirt and white blouse (some add a dark cardigan sweater, but only if every girl in the picture has one on).

This was the mid-sixties, mind you, the era of youth rebellion and individual exploration, but my personal recollection is that the shit didn't hit the fan until 1966. I remember returning to campus that fall, moving to digs in Isla Vista for the first time, and noticing that overnight--actually it was over the summer--nobody looked the same. We dressed (or undressed) as we pleased, cut our hair (or not) as we pleased, said what we really thought, and cursed conformity as the universal evil.

But it doesn't take more than a few minutes flipping through the 1965 yearbook to notice the most obvious way we were all the same: we all belonged to a club that was rigorously white and middle class. Clearly, whatever the admissions process had been in those days, there was no mandate for diversity. Looking through photos of the 400 young men of Anacapa Hall and the 400 young women of our sister hall, Santa Cruz, I can't find a single African American student, nor any Latinos or Latinas either, judging by surnames and complexions.

What sort of world--what kind of future?-- were we being prepared for, one might wonder. To tell the truth, I don't think the Revolution hit UCSB in 1966, or even with the so-called Summer of Love a year later. The Revolution was already taking place in the streets of Detroit and South Central Los Angeles, in Newark and Miami. And it certainly was televised.

Even UC got the picture, just a couple decades late. Now at the start of a new century, one of our priorities in the comprehensive review process is to make sure Anacapa Hall isn't confused with the Jonathan Club. I've been there and can tell the difference.

Not Blinking

As we wait uneasily to see what the next futile tactics will be in the war we can't admit we've lost, there is much speculation and argument over which direction troop levels should move. Up or down? In or out? Surge or withdraw? Even the Pentagon brass know it's a giant game of Texas hold 'em, so why not be frank with the terminology? The options are basic: raise or fold.

Tony Snow, the White House's chief propagandist, got pissed off the other day at senators who were criticizing Bush's "way forward" before it had even been announced. But if you're into the gambling mode, honestly, which way are you going to bet? Is anybody willing to put money on this president taking a sensible course?

It's clear Bush is still in denial about what has happened in Iraq and why. Making strategic use of the wounds inflicted to our national pride by the events of 9/11, Bush and his neocon Power Rangers pushed us into a war that cooler heads--most of our long-standing NATO allies, and (now we know) four living U.S. ex-presidents would have counseled against. Despite what looked like early successes, we began immediately laying the foundation for the unmitigated disaster that has ensued: fired the general who told truth to power and said we'd need more troops to occupy a country this size, disbanded entirely the Iraqi military and police, discarding every ounce of military and law enforcement expertise they contained, and failed to recognize or admit that things were turning sour until it was too late. (Rumsfeld quibbled over words like "insurgency," "guerrilla war" and "quagmire" instead of dealing with problems they represented.)

And now Bush is still touting the need to achieve "victory" in this misbegotten escapade. The path to resolution, though, has to start with facing the truth. We have already lost this war. We can toss more American lives on the heap if we choose, but if we refuse to admit we've gone beyond the point of redeeming or recovering our loses, it will make no more sense than tossing more black chips on the poker table as the winner rakes in his winnings.

But if that's so, where do we go from here? We are warned that forthright, rapid withdrawal of forces from Iraq would lead to unimaginable bloodshed. There seems to be general agreement that since U.S. action brought about this grisly civil war, it's our duty to find and foster a solution.

But we can't accomplish that by pursuing the illusion that we can reverse time and shove the toothpaste back in the tube. The all-out sectarian battle has already begun, and one side or the other is going to win. We can continue to stand in the middle and draw out the bloodshed over more months and more years, but we can't--no matter how generous, constructive or diplomatic we may feature ourselves--make a unified nation out of the tribal factions who have so many reasons to hate each other.

If there is any hope for this disjointed nation that exists despite itself, it will arrive on the wings of hard work and difficult compromises among the contending factions of Iraqis. If Sunnis, Shi'ites, and Kurds cannot bring themselves ever to cooperate for the sake of a functional state and civil well-being, then there is nothing further for the U.S. to accomplish with troops and tanks. We acted with quixotic impulse, but we did manage to lift the Baathist boot from these people's throats. And the argument that we can't leave now for fear of sectarian bloodletting obviously begs the question of why can't this supposed "unity government" that our president keeps touting make some tough decisions to avoid the same bloodletting that American soldiers are supposed to prevent.

The bets are down. If we blink now, those guys across the table won't even have to show their cards.

Like minds

Jan and I have gotten around to a lot of art museums and galleries over the years, but rarely have we come away as impressed and excited as when we drove to San Francisco just after Thanksgiving to see the Quilts of Gee's Bend exhibit at the new de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park.

No, we weren't much interested in the folk craft of quilt-making either. That is, before we came upon some mainstream media coverage of the phenomenal work of a few dozen very humble women living and working--for several generations now--in rural Alabama. The artists are all the descendants of freed slaves, who after the Civil War took the surname of their former master, became tenant farmers, and founded an all-black community nearly isolated from the surrounding world.

Needing bedcovers for warmth and lacking any fabric beyond scraps of worn-out work clothes and the like, the town’s women developed a sophisticated quilting style that seems to intuitively echo--and parallel chronologically--some of the most characteristic developments of modern painting. They emphatically belie the notion that modern art springs most naturally from the ferment and stimulation of urban centers, and that art school is the likeliest launching pad for artistic talent.

In 2002, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presented an exhibition of seventy quilt masterpieces from the Bend. From there to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and a twelve-city American tour, the work has become a major crowd-pleaser and has even shown up on U.S. postage stamps.

After thumbing through an exhibit catalog at friends' house, we knew we had to see this work for ourselves. It was clear something very special was going on in the art world that was far more exciting than the exhausted, minimalist/conceptual gallery product that's occupied the art world for decades.

From here, though, I'll curtail the commentary and merely make some visual comparisons. Decide for yourself where artistic genius comes from and how it is nourished:

Joseph Albers:
Annie Mae Young:

Ad Reinhart:
Annie Mae Young:

Joseph Albers:
Lola Pettway:

Barnett Newman:
Mary Lee Bendolph:

Yaacov Agam:
Louisiana Bendolph:

Mark Rothko:
Loretta Pettway:

Smart in Rome

Probably the first thing we noticed upon disembarking the jet that brought us from Paris to Rome--the last link of a three-leg/18-hour flight--was that the weather there in early October was pretty much the same as in Santa Barbara: clear, sunny, pleasantly warm days, with nights cooling off enough to make indoor and outdoor dining equally attractive depending on the neighborhood.

But it doesn't take long in Italy to notice one huge difference--the general size of vehicles on the streets and roads. They're tiny. More precisely, they're Smart! Besides the Vespas (literally wasps) buzzing in and around everywhere and the array of very minimal Fiats of all eras, the car of choice among Romans is the Smart Car by Daimler-Chrysler. They are clearly a hit with the Italians, who value style, convenience, and--obviously--economy.

The prevalence of these tiny beasts also seems to fit with a national character that recognizes the necessity to share precious public space among various uses. Romans are used to functioning in a city that exists on multiple levels and layers of time and history simultaneously: Etruscan, Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-Classical, and Modern Rome all share the same few, walkable square miles of urban development. Nothing and no one--not even Michelangelo--gets to hog more than a fair share of the space, so it stands to reason that these folks are not going to hand over their streets to the sexually insecure with their Hummers and Lincoln Navigators.

If fuel economy weren't enough to sell these cars, parking would be. The attraction here is that drivers can park head-in where larger vehicles need to parallel park; thus two or three Smart Cars can fit in a spot just vacated by one Volvo wagon. (No one drives Suburbans there, but if someone did, he'd be using the space for--and no doubt angering--a swarm of Smart drivers.)

I have a hard time imagining these cars catching on in the States for a variety of reasons, but one might be a reluctance to venture out among the American behemoths with so little protection. No one worries about this in Italy, though, because small, sensible transportation is the rule rather than the exception. Another factor that weighs in favor of our Über-vehicle mentality, of course, is cheap gas. Let me put it this way, if Americans paid full-boat, unsubsidized prices for petroleum and made even a half-hearted attempt to include all the social costs that accrue from our profligate fuel consumption, we'd be riding Vespas, driving Smart Cars, and shouting "Ciao, Bella!" at our friends, too. But as it is, we think gas at $3.50 per gallon is a national emergency, while Europeans would be stunned to see it at five again.

Our Lady of Costco

Hail Costco, full of goods.

At the wide door, the host greets us and checks that we are indeed members of the parish. Once inside the airy temple we wheel our shopping cart toward the nave of commerce. On our way we visit the vestibule of electronic goods, the digital cameras, iPods, and aisle of big flat screen TVs. Although we don't purchase, we always pay our respects and imagine the time when one of the plasma screens will grace our wall. It is a ritual of imagination and desire.

Our local Costco is the contemporary equivalent of a medieval cathedral, not only in its vastness and design, but as a gathering place for the community as well as an expression of our collective culture and values.

Down the middle of the building the high ceiling rises up over tables of current goods--the books, CDs and DVDs, the sea of seasonal clothing, the latest linens and shoes, as well as bulbs, houseplants, and furniture. At the apse is the holy of holies--fine wines and cheeses and rotisserie chickens. All the essentials of the good life, albeit a life of earthly delights.

Along the shadowy side aisles are the staples and household necessities. Small appliances, from Cuisinarts to hairdryers, and automotive goods, from motor oil to sheepskin seatcovers, even bicycles and golf clubs fill the shelves on the left side of the store. On the right, the shelves groan with foodstuffs in cans and boxes, from breakfast cereal to Hershey bars, and sundries like toothpaste and vitamins.

As we make our way up the eastern aisle, our shopping list in hand, we scan the tables and shelves along the nave, trying not to be distracted by the lavish displays of specials. No, don't look at those suede jackets or flannel sheets or outsized patio suites. Yet we always take communion from the various stands of proffered samples--the creamy spinach dip, the hot coconut shrimp and the oozy apple pie--the body of commerce. And the Naked Juice, Seattle Mountain Coffee and Joint Juice sampled along the western aisle are the lifeblood of the modern larder.

We make sure to fill our massive cart with the staples on our list, such as eggs, milk and salad greens as well as the nutritional supplements we faithfully swallow, adding in a sampling of wines and cheeses, fresh salmon and asparagus. Maybe even a bestseller and a CD.

Checkout is swift and cheerful as the clerk takes our membership card, boxes our goods and accepts our fortnightly tithe. At the door the attendant blesses our receipt with a swipe of his day-glo marker and we step out into the sunlight. Once we have stowed the stuff in our trunk, we drive away, our spirits lifted by the ecstasy of plenty and efficiency, as well as the haul of delectable treasures that we will enjoy at home.

Blessed art thou and blessed is the fruit of thy warehouse.

Non, je ne regrette rien!

"No! No regrets
No! I will have no regrets
For the grief doesn't last
It is gone
I've forgotten the past."
--Dummont/Vaucaire for Edith Piaf

We're in worse trouble in this country than we thought.

As the Bush administration strives mightily to shore up the badly crumbling image of its vanity war in Iraq, we expected the lies, excuses, contorted logic, and selective attention to factual detail, but the recent Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld appearances--ranging from the VFW convention in Salt Lake City to the Sunday morning TV circuit--have brought us something worse: the contention that as far as this war goes there are no regrets.

Typical of this unapologetic face-off with history was the Vice President's assertion yesterday on Meet the Press that the administration would have done "exactly the same thing" even if it knew before the war what he acknowledged knowing now--that Iraq did not have the arsenal of WMD that formed the foundation of the Bush sales pitch for preemptive war.

Equally irrelevant, we must suppose, is the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with the events of September 11, 2001, and the confirmed appraisal that Saddam Hussein despised and distrusted Osama bin Laden, refused to truck with al-Qaeda, and would have arrested Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had he attempted to operate in Iraq while Saddam was in power.

None of that matters, we are told now. Toppling Saddam--conceivably our only authentic accomplishment of this whole enterprise--in and of itself justifies the loss of untold thousands of Iraqi civilians, a still mounting total of dead and seriously wounded American soldiers, and a drain on the U.S. Treasury of over $300 billion and rising. Saddam was a bad man and the world is better off without him. That's their line of reasoning and they're sticking with it.

Now it seems to me that it certainly DOES matter. Imagine if between the fall of 2002 and the spring of 2003 the administration's argument for going to war went something like this: Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator who provides a generally peaceful society and rich rewards for his friends, but oppresses his enemies and once even lost his temper and killed many, many Kurds up in the northern region of his country. We fear that he intends to develop and stockpile very dangerous weapons, but we are unsure what progress he's making in that direction, though hundreds of expert UN weapons inspectors haven't uncovered a thing so far. We do know for certain that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were carried out mainly by people from Saudi Arabia who had no connection whatsoever to Iraq--the one country in the region that is intolerant of al-Qaeda operations within its borders.

That's the case for invading Iraq. Would you go for it? Would a majority of the American public and their congressional representatives have bought in and done "exactly the same thing" if that were the case being made?

Those are the questions Bush and his "no regrets" crowd should be addressing. It doesn't really matter that a few neocons in the Pentagon or the White House would have gone to war on those pretexts because you can be damn sure the rest of the country wouldn't. No sale on that one.

And for the rest of us there are major regrets: that we didn't insist on recounting ALL the votes in Florida, that we didn't hit the streets harder and louder before the Iraq-bound train left the station, that once in Iraq we immediately disbanded all remnants of a functioning civil government, pushed out anyone with experience in military affairs or police work, and turned the shop over to the repatriated hot-heads. We regret Abu Ghraib; we regret Fallujah; we regret "Bring 'em on" and "Mission Accomplished." And after all that, regrettably, we still gave this crowd four more years.

Bush says he's been reading Camus and Shakespeare. Reading, perhaps, but understanding...I doubt it. It seems more likely that he's in the thrall of something more accessible--perhaps the 2004 self-help classic No Regrets: A Ten Step Program for Living in the Present and Leaving the Past Behind by Hamilton Beazley, Ph.d. This is a "resource for people who want to let go of burdensome regrets and live richly in the present with all its promise and potentiality." Certainly this is a thread of existential philosophy that the President is more attracted to.

Dr. Beazley ("Hamilton" to his readers) tells us, "Regrets are always optional. Coming to terms with our regrets and releasing their power to harm us in the present is a learned process. This book will teach you how to do it."

What have we got to lose?

The Quality of Mercy

Unlike most people I've talked to lately, I'm feeling somewhat ambivalent about the crucifixion of Mel Gibson.

I have to admit that I'm no fan of Gibson's and have been not-so-secretly gratified to see him brought low. Actually, I liked the guy's early work--such as the Mad Max trilogy, the Indonesian thriller with that terrific cross-dressing dwarf, and that other low-budget film where he played a very sweet fellow with a low IQ. I even liked his troubled, out-of-control cop franchise, and have to admit Mel does the tortured soul on the edge of losing it quite well.

But when I learned he belonged to this weird sect of unreconstructed Catholics spawned of Holocaust deniers, and had become the hero to millions of religious fanatics by turning the Christ story into a slasher movie, I had to rethink my admiration. And it seems the futile debate over whether his Passion flick was anti-Semitic or not served only as a device to sell product. Why not just leave him be on that score and stay away from the movie because it's a weak film?

Now Mel gets a snoot-full and has hell to pay for letting his private demons loose for the world to see. Anti-Semitism, of course, like racism, misogyny, and cacophagy, is always ugly and despicable. I haven't nearly the generous soul of Shakespeare's great hypocrite, Angelo of Measure for Measure, who urges us to "Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it..." These faults are to be roundly condemned in act and actor. But, to muddle another Shakespearian anti-hero, here's the rub that gives me pause: Mel is being pilloried not so much for his heedless outburst or his anit-Semitism as for his prominence in the public eye.

Had anyone else--at least anyone of normal obscurity--rattled off the same rubbish, it would have died right there by the roadside or in the drunk tank. Mel Gibson's words live on, however, and will be known and memorized by generations to come, not because they were astonishingly original or uniquely articulated, but because they came from Mel Gibson. Obviously that's the price that must be paid for the public renown that's made him a rich and powerful man. But nonetheless, it's hard to argue that the nature of his current dilemma stems primarily from his thoughts and words rather than his position in society.

I think we all have an obscene or bigoted verbal outburst lurking in us somewhere. The objects of your insensitivity or bigotry may be somewhat different from mine, but don't waste my time trying to assert your immunity to racial, religious, cultural or sexual prejudices. If unplanned circumstances happen to conspire against us, we all should be entitled to at least one ugly diatribe without career-ending repercussions.

I don't mean I'm entitled to act upon or enforce my darker thoughts, nor would I expect a pass for such behavior if I were running for public office, but unless we want to start down a very slippery slope of self-righteous rigor in our social relations, human behavior has to be treated with a certain amount of unmerited tolerance.

So back to Shakespeare: The plot of The Merchant of Venice puts some smug, irritating, and anti-Semitic pillars of Venetian society at the mercy of a Jewish money-lender. who is told at one point that he has every lawful right to vent his anger at Christian bigotry with the blade of his knife against the chest of a rich, but troubled businessman.

When all legal paths to save the merchant's life are blocked, Portia tells Shylock, "Then must the Jew be merciful."

Shylock resentfully replies, "On what compulsion must I? tell me that."

Portia's answer is, thankfully, more famous than Mel Gibson's remarks will ever be:
"The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown...
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy."

Mel Gibson may be getting his just deserts, and we obscure nobodies may be entitled to gloat, but somehow I'd feel better if it were more a matter of principles and less of personalities. It leaves just a bit of a sour taste in the mouth when my prejudices are vindicated by condemnation of prejudice in someone else.

In short, I question whether I hate bigotry more than I hate Mel Gibson. Until I can resolve that honestly, I'm reluctant to pile on the poor bastard.

War--It's Good for Absolutely Nothing!

Predictably, reports of vast destruction and civilian misery along the Israel-Lebanon border have pushed news of vast destruction and civilian misery in Iraq off the front page and buried it further among the furniture ads on, perhaps, page five of most American newspapers.

Does that mean explosions and death in Iraq just aren't horrific or graphic enough anymore for space on page one--or for the lead slot on the evening news? Or are we more curious about a new hot spot in the general Middle East turmoil? Just as we'd scramble to read about a newly opened restaurant in town, even though it's no better (or worse) than the established one a block or two away?

Certainly Iraq's Shiite death squads and the Sunni insurgency are doing their best to keep us engaged and appalled. Yet Israel and Lebanon have the force of history and reputation to bolster their claims to the world's attention. Can editors and television producers ignore the utter devastation of Lebanese neighborhoods and the rocket craters of northern Israeli towns, just to remind us once again that life in Baghdad remains an absolutely intolerable nightmare of car bombs, self-exploding shoppers, and cold-blooded executions?

Of course not. And how can you weigh the importance of all-out civil war in one little country against the opening salvos of World War III? But still, we're talking American media here, and aren't we directly responsible--through willful executive blunders and overwhelming arrogance, not to mention congressional cowardice--for the mess in Iraq? In fact, isn't it obvious that if we had any diplomatic credibility left in the region, we might have had some chance of swaying both Israel and Hezbollah's patrons in Syria or Iran toward the logic of "any course but war"?

Worse yet, now that the rockets are flying and the sorties are adding up, the U.S. has taken an unequivocal stance of approval. The UN leadership and our NATO allies--other than Britain, of course--want to apply pressure on both sides for an immediate cease fire. We want none of it until Israel has taken its best shot and had ample opportunity to pursue its military objectives. It may turn out that Lebanon's civilian population, its recently rebuilt infrastructure, and its fragile democracy all are destroyed without bringing down--or even crippling--Hezbollah in the process.

Or Israel may indeed bring Hezbollah to its knees for an eight count before a "sustainable ceasefire" is worked out. But it will stagger to its feet again and morph into something even less tractable and more militant. One thing is for certain, though; Israel and Lebanon will still be neighbors. Israel, always insecure of its position among hostile neighbors, will still be supplied with warplanes and armaments from the U.S., and Hezbollah and Hamas, ever fueled by violent resentment over the indignities of occupation, will still be itching to use the thousands of Russian-made rockets in their Syrian/Iranian-backed arsenal.

It's a grim appraisal, I admit, but right now all concerned parties remain dedicated to the illusion that they can prevail and achieve their ultimate goals if the fighting just goes on long enough. Perhaps it's time to let them have their way. Mutual annihilation could be a terrific object lesson for our currently empowered neocon policy-makers.

It's either that or admit (with Edwin Starr),
"War! Huh Good God y'all
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Say it again."

Hear it. Say it again. Believe it. Or fuck it and just keep fighting.

Will The Circle Be Unbroken

Charlie will willingly admit that one of the first things he noticed about me was my record collection. I had quite an impressive array of Rock'n'Roll, including Beatles albums, as well as cult favorites such as Love and the Byrds. Charlie was a dedicated folkie, but I had already passed through that phase a few years before we first met.

In 1968, after Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" was released, Charlie and I drove to Los Angeles to see him at the Troubador. It was fun! Arlo's 18-minute talking blues stretched out to over a half-hour satiric riff on Thanksgiving dinner, his arrest and the Vietnam war.

It was our first shared music and one of the first of many concerts we have enjoyed together. From blues and folk, to jazz and punk, to new wave and rock we've developed quite a breadth of taste. We've always been thrilled by what's current, as well as moved by traditional music.

Arlo was steeped in many of those traditions, and, in fact, probably learned talking blues by osmosis from his father. He inherited the Guthrie voice in every sense of the word. Not only does he have his father's flat nasal sound, but he picked up the outlook, too. Woody Guthrie was a social commentator as much as he was a songwriter. His guitar might have proclaimed "this machine kills fascists," but his songs went after social injustice. From hard-hearted bankers to dust bowl devastation, from union workers to migrants, from vigilantes to working class heroes, Woody had a song for them all. He spread the news about hardships and injustice. He could just as easily be heartfelt and serious as he could be ironic. That's where Arlo gets his wry humor.

And "Alice's Restaurant" was a natural outgrowth. The song was a phenomenon, and unlike anything else of its era, it looks backwards and forwards at the same time. The cut took up the entire side of the album and was in regular radio rotation on college stations and alternative FM. It tells how Arlo tried to clean up the mess after a communal Thanksgiving dinner, but finding the local dump locked, he tossed the garbage by the roadside, was arrested, sentenced and fined for littering. The criminal record later precluded him from the draft. He was unfit to go to Vietnam and kill communists because he was a litterbug. This musical story took all the anti-war anger, outrage and shouting and converted it to deadpan absurdity. We loved it. The tune was catchy—I can still hear it and hum it after nearly 40 years—the refrain easy to sing, the narrative funny and it was scathingly anti-war. It was the graveyard laugh we all needed at the time.

Arlo went on to record other songs, and sing with other musicians, most notably, his father's friend Pete Seeger. Both of them lived east of the Hudson River, and spent plenty of time in each other's musical company. Just last fall when we were poking around an antique store in Beacon, New York, Pete's hometown, Charlie noticed a flier taped to a window advertising an Arlo and Pete concert at a local school that coming Saturday night. We thought we might be able to get back there in a couple of days, but it was just wishful thinking.

I have been reminded of all these people and all that great music, as well as the course of our musical tastes, these last few weeks as we have avidly followed the lastest twist in Bruce Springsteen's life. Pete has been on Bruce's mind lately, too. Out on tour now with the Seeger Sessions band, who backed him on an album full of songs made famous by Pete Seeger, he stopped by LA earlier this month. I couldn't help but think back on that first concert Charlie and I went to, and how much has changed in our lives, and how many things are the same all over again. Bruce's album, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions" and the show are chocked full of both overt and subtle protest songs. Sitting there in the Greek Theatre I was overcome by a mixture of moods and feelings. Bruce takes us back.

Back in the late 60's we were angry and anxious about a war halfway around the globe, that was increasingly deadly and unwinable. The casualties were mounting and the atrocities were just beginning to surface. It would be nearly a decade before the government would accept the mood of the nation and the inevitable futility of the war and decide to pull out after wasting over 58,000 lives. Once we pulled out of Vietnam, we had plenty of reconciliation work to do right here in the U.S. It was a brutal lesson, but we thought America wouldn't be bringing that grief on ourselves again very soon. Surely Vietnam had taught us not to be so cocksure that the American way was the only way, and not to put young lives on the line in a foreign land for some selfish cause.

But here we are in 2006, floundering in the chaos of Iraq for "the gleam in some fool's eyes." And all those old songs sound new and right again. Bruce is just as indignant at social inequalities and wartime jingoism as Arlo, Woody and Pete. The major social issues of the 60's—war and civil rights—are still with us. When Bruce sings "Pay me My Money Down" its dance tempo energizes us to belt out the message of a fair and living wage for hard work, and "We Shall Overcome," and "Eyes on the Prize," long standards of the 60's civil rights movement, could just as easily be adopted by the marchers at any current immigration rally. But the tunes that are the most chillingly relevant are two anti-war tunes. "Mrs. McGrath," an anti-recruiting Irish jig is over two centuries old, and the original Pete Seeger composition, "Bring 'Em Home (If You Love Your Uncle Sam)" was written in 1965 specifically as an anti-Vietnam war song. In concert, "Mrs. McGrath" is pointed commentary, that Bruce has updated with the verse where the mother bewails her maimed son, crying:
"All foreign wars I do proclaim
live on blood and a mother's pain
I'd rather have my son as he used to be
Than the King of America and his whole navy!"

I appreciate its history and its relevance, but I'm not gripped by it. However Bruce's updated version of Pete Seeger's "Bring 'Em Home" is passionate, poignant and simply soars, like the best Springsteen anthem. In concert, Bruce begins the song solo, a single voice filled with longing.
If you love this land of the free
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring them back from overseas
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

Now we'll give no more brave young lives
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
For the gleam in someone's eyes
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

But when the band joins him, the song swells with the power, urgency and determination of a whole chorus of voices. Bruce—and anyone who marched in those anti-war rallies—knows what it will take to "bring 'em home." Consistent, unified and massive resistance to the politicians.

The men will cheer and the boys will shout
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Yeah and we will all turn out
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

The church bells will ring with joy
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
To welcome our darling girls and boys
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

We know what we're in for. It's going to take a rising tide of public sentiment, massive marches and a change of administration before we admit Iraq is a quagmire. We know the gantlet we will have to endure. Politicians will denounce war protesters as traitors, lie to the public and erode civil liberties. But we've been here before. While Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld dodged the Vietnam war as only scions of the rich can do, many of us marched, shouted and sang.

We will lift our voice in song
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Yeah, when Johnny comes marching home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

If you love this land of the free
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring them back from overseas
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

We join voices with Bruce on this hymn in hope, determination and pride. It is a song filled with optimism and love and lifts our spirits with the best sort of patriotism. At the same time I'm filled with a deep and weary melancholy, that after all these decades we have only come round to the same place again. How much our lives have changed since 1968, and yet how little; forty years on Charlie and I are still sitting at a concert listening to anti-war songs. We deserve and wish for better in our leaders than that they simply blunder back into our worst American tragedy. I just want to find out what price we have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice.

Stimulation

Our juice of late is coming from the week we spent in the midwest in May and a couple recent trips to L.A. here in June. Not that Santa Barbara lacks for points and events of interest at this time of year, but festivals and parades don't always do the trick of lighting up the circuits for our peculiar passions.

Earlier in the spring, when we would mention to acquaintances that we were about to head for Milwaukee, we earned some very blank expressions and the inevitable question, "Why? You got family there?" No, not family, but friends--ones who we normally see only when they come west--and Frank Lloyd Wright. No one questions our good friends Julie and Jim, who've lived in Holland, Michigan and Racine, Wisconsin as well as Grafton (20 miles out of Milwaukee towards Green Bay), when they take the obvious holiday in Santa Barbara every few years, but we need the excuse of pursuing the work of the world's greatest architect to explain a trip in the opposite direction.

It turns out that Milwaukee is a very attractive city of an ideal size and scale, but for us the main gig is its centrality to so many important Wright structures that we wanted to visit and absorb. Wright began his career in architecture in Chicago and opened his first private practice in the suburb of Oak Park. So we made the two-hour drive and spent three days taking in the beginnings of truly modern architecture, not just in America, but in the world: Wright's turn-of-the-century home and studio, the soulful Unity Temple, and a couple dozen early commissions that essentially defined the Prairie Style--all within the modest boundaries of Oak Park, IL. And a short drive onward to South Chicago brought us to the landmark Robie House that's still yielding its secrets as restoration progresses.

Once personal scandal had driven Wright out of not only Oak Park, but also out of the country in 1909, he eventually settled his practice back into familiar territory in Spring Green, WI, a bit west of Madison, in a complex of buildings he called Taliesin. So we spent a day taking that in and trying to comprehend how the succession of structures there corresponded to the triumphs and tragedies of his very lengthy career. On the drive back to Milwaukee we stopped off at the awesomely situated new convention center he designed for Madison in the 1930s--something that wasn't built until the start of the 21st century.

Milwaukee happens to also be within a stone's throw of probably the most important building of the 20th century--the Johnson's Wax administration building in Racine. Though the Fridays-only tour schedule and the robotic tour guides provided by the company feel a bit airless, one cannot walk into that "Great Workroom" and not feel exhilarated and stimulated in a very profound way. This is why we traipse off to odd corners of the country--simply to walk into these brilliantly planned spaces, whether it's the elegant spread of a Prairie house, the curiously intimate public meeting hall of Unity Temple, or the soaring cathedral of commerce that is the Johnson building. The human spirit is always honored in the most simple and logical ways. The visitor is repeatedly taught what modernity can mean in its best sense.

This past Sunday, though, we found ourselves equally charged by an architectural vision of a very different sort: Simon Rodia's towers in Watts. Unlike Wright, Rodia clearly never planned a bit of his assemblage of iron, concrete, and wire. He had only basic hand tools, and employed the most elementary of building techniques. He simply built...and built some more as the spirit moved him. But there is an exuberance in the sheer gutsiness of these towers and arches and walls. We see the joy of building and a brazen courage to pursue an unconventional passion.

The Watts Towers, though, are not all about irrationality and goofy dreams of grandeur. There is a keen, if naive, aesthetic sense at work here that rewards detail examination. The expanses of broken tile, crockery, bottles, and seashells dazzle the eye and tap into a basic feel of what Southern California has always been--cheerful, spacious, and free.

Our motive for visiting the Watts Towers was that we had tickets that evening for performance artist Roger Guernveur Smith's one-person "show" called "The Watts Towers Project" at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. In it, Smith assembles a loose personal narrative as chaotic, emotive, and seemingly random as Simon Rodia's towers, but Smith keeps circling around that neighborhood landmark of his youth and building toward personal identification with the mysterious Italian artisan he calls that "multi-lingual illiterate." Having just been to see the towers that afternoon, and experiencing the ambient surface of Watts, we had no trouble catching Smith's allusions to Marco Polo, helicopters, barbecue, and fireworks.

The excursion to Watts came less than a week after the Springsteen concert at the Greek Theatre--in a very different neighborhood of L.A. The treat here was less visual, though equally invigorating. Springsteen is touring the material on his recent Seeger Sessions disc with a band of over twice the size of his E-Street compatriots, working together as a string band, a brass ensemble, and gospel choir all in one.

If it takes Bruce to get America listening once again to American folk, spiritual, and political protest, then we're in good hands, and the music is well represented when he takes it abroad in front of audiences that are apparently even more enthusiastic than at home. He's also reworking several of his rock standards into jazz, big band, and swing formats, just to celebrate all the modes of great indigenous music beyond the borders of rock 'n' roll. And Bruce hasn't missed several opportunities to update older music by seamlessly blending new and timely lyrics with the received text (see the blog post below this one for two wonderful examples).

Stimulated? Hell, best keep the defibrillator handy.

A Better National Anthem?

Here's the link to two bracing examples of what audiences are hearing at Springsteen shows these days besides those superb readings of the American folk classics on his Seeger Sessions disc and the total re-workings of some of Bruce's own songs. These gems should be all over the radio, and if the anti-war movement doesn't make "Bring 'Em Home" into a new National Anthem...well, they're missing the obvious gift of a way to crystalize their message into a phrase and a tune that will inspire more people than a thousand speeches or petitions. And "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?" comes here in a much better performance than elicited by the Leno show setting. Check them both out here:
Bruce Springsteen News: brucespringsteen.net

It's a Small World Afterall

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.

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

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?

Decadence

The word gets used loosely these days--often lightly or humorously, and even admiringly. But I think the term is becoming more and more relevant, worrisome, and applicable to contemporary American culture, which is to say--in acknowledging our global influence--nearly everywhere. We live our daily lives amidst all the signs and symbols of a society in decay. No point in denying it. It happens to the best; why assume it can't happen here?

It must be apparent to all who've read even a smidgen of history that all great cultures thrive and then decline in an arc that spans lifetimes, but allows appraisal from within for those who notice the details. Our nation's rise was marked and steady for about 350 years. That its fruitful fields were cleared by genocide and its crops propagated through involuntary servitude, that it suffered seismic economic shocks and close calls with extinction does not diminish its ultimate triumph among nations in the modern world. During and after World War II the United States became what it is today: an economic colossus and supreme cultural model.

Now, well, isn't it clear we are gleefully embracing the backward slide? The economic engine continues to fire with enough horsepower to create the illusion of progress, but the wheels are falling off the vehicle, and the venerable road atlas has been exchanged for a pirate's treasure map. Serious rust has set in on the undercarriage while we polish the cup holders, and like decay of all sorts, it starts small and nearly invisibly. But let's look at some of those insidious bits that, because our culture thinks them appealing or accepts them as inevitable, aren't likely to be reversed

• "Reality" Television: Where do we start? Perhaps the Survivor gambit has crested, but American Idol has reached new heights of popularity by encouraging greater acrimony among contestants, and recently treating its audience to the show's first genuine injury, as C-list actress Kristy Swanson got her chin slammed against the ice while being twirled by her partner. And wasn't it truly entertaining to see Barry Bonds in drag as Paula Abdul? And then there's Fear Factor. Can the thrill of watching people eat buffalo testicles be topped by busty Playboy Playmates eating bug-covered strawberries? The genre is limitless and my guess is that we ain't seen nothin' yet.

• "Premium" Jeans: What harm is there, you may say, in paying $250 and up for a pair of blue jeans if you have the funds to do so? Here's where semiotics comes in: What does it signify when sturdy, utilitarian blue denim pants are subjected to industrial strength bleaches and other chemicals, abraded with gravel, and essentially torn to shreds with grinders and sanders to create a trendy "distressed" appearance--much as if they'd been worn and worked in for years--so as to merit a price tag that could be ten times that of a pair of new Levis and be discarded the next season for another pair of slightly different pocket design or with fewer (or more) belt loops?

To me it signifies an economy that generates paper profits rather than substantial wealth and a culture that believes in the principle of hard work but prefers not to do any. We are so removed from actual labor and so confused about the difference between authentic and simulated achievements in our day-to-day lives, that fashion must be forged with irony and status purchased with a debased currency.

• "Pre-emptive" Wars: Let's face it, we are mired in an unwholesome, failing military enterprise in the Middle East because our leaders thought we as a nation needed to vent our rage over recent humiliations at home. We figured that every once in a while we should pick up some smaller, poorer nation and slap it silly, just to bolster our street cred that we are not to be messed with. We knew quite well that Iraq had no means to threaten us in any way, that its leader was a contained regional menace, and that he had no connection whatsoever to the real threats to our security.

But the Bush inner circle felt confident that Iraq was "do-able" and would serve as an example to nations we didn't really want to tangle with, such as Iran or North Korea. Besides, W likes to see himself as a "war president" leading the unbaptized world to the salvation of western democratic capitalism. That his vanity becomes our nation's policy, says a lot about our sense and well-being. Given a choice, this seems to be what we prefer--arrogance, stupidity, stubbornness, and naiveté.

• Self-inflicted Malaise: Oddly, as our nation becomes more and more concerned about common health issues and talks endlessly about nutrition, fitness, and the need for exercise, we become more and more afflicted with diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Medical science and pharmaceutical companies offer better and better surgical techniques and patented medications to combat these ailments, but the fact is our society is tremendously over-fed and poorly nourished, that we bring metabolic diseases on ourselves in ever greater numbers, and have poisoned our environment so thoroughly that cancer of one sort or the other has become an odds-on bet for the average citizen, regardless of family history. How could that be?

Decadence is rooted in the ironic curse of abundance. We over-eat because there is so much food--most of it highly processed and adulterated with chemicals meant to preserve what should be consumed fresh and to enhance the flavors sacrificed in the processing plant. It's circular, it's unhealthy, but profitable and convenient for producers and consumers alike. It is the new economics of plenty.

The demands of our daily occupations squeeze out the time we previously allowed to meals, so we make do with huge quantities of "fast food" that is both over-priced and relatively inexpensive at the same time. Have you tried Hardee's Monster Thickburger--1,420 calories and 107 grams of fat? That's two one-third-pound slabs of Angus beef, four strips of bacon, three slices of cheese and mayonnaise on a buttered sesame seed bun. The sandwich alone sells for $5.49 or $7.09 with medium fries (520 calories) and soda (about 400 calories). And that's just lunch!

Is all this logically connected? Perhaps not, but then why wait for Dan Brown to put it all together into a singular conspiracy theory when Englophool has a perfectly reasonable theory of atrophy and decay?

Back to Work, sort of

Though we've had no complaints whatsoever about retirement, we've recently rejoined the working world for a couple months here in the mid-winter, and it certainly is a trip. About a year and a half ago when we were embarking on full-time leisure, we picked up definite vibrations from colleagues and the media that people in our position would, of course, be looking for ways to continue "working." The assumption was that we'd be bored and restless, and, naturally, want--if not need--additional income to supplement two teachers' pensions.

Well, we haven't been bored, not for a second, and we haven't been cutting back on food or anything else, for that matter, that we have a taste for. But here we are now getting up at 5:45 a.m. five days a week, putting in eight hours a day out at the University--carrying a lunch bag most days--and shuffling all the household "business" to the weekends. Even our gym hours have had to be re-arranged.

We're working stiffs again, but with a difference: It's entirely a matter of choice, and though we're committed to the task--methodically reviewing and scoring admissions applications from candidates desiring to make up next year's freshman class at UCSB--we are not embroiled in it or consumed with it or left sleepless by it in the way that a good teacher always is with teaching. It's a job; we try to do it well, but we don't take it home, nor do we need to. There's no outside preparation necessary, and when we leave campus at the end of the day, the work stays behind--both physically and mentally. The evenings and weekends are entirely our own. And if one of us is sick, we stay home and recuperate. No need for lesson plans or substitutes.

And, perhaps best of all, we work with and for some very competent and interesting people. We have learned much from these people who have greater experience in the field, and we have come to respect their wisdom about what may be seen generally as a very murky process. As teachers we were headstrong individualists and skeptics, if not malcontents, but in our second career as application readers our goal is to be malleable and conform to pre-established norms, and, you know, it's kind of soothing.

What we do by the hour is peruse UC admission applications--each an 8-page document filed online and printed in what looks to be 8 or 9 point Microsoft Verdana--to evaluate the student's "academic promise" and assign each a number from one to nine. That number totes in with a couple other numbers based on objective computations that consider grades, SAT scores, and socio-economic status and leaves the individual student somewhere on a vast continuum of students. At some point later on--before acceptance letters go out in early March--a cut off line is established along that continuum. To a great extent these students' fates are in our hands, but like the soldiers in the firing squad, no one really knows which rifle chambers the live bullet--in this case, when the score we give is ultimately decisive. The kid's fate may have been determined entirely by the strength or weakness of grades, or by test scores, or even by the challenges of a family background that has made the very eligibility for UC an impressive accomplishment. Anyway, we also have no idea whether the applicant really wants to come to UCSB in the first place. Fewer than one out of four who UCSB offers to accept will ultimately enroll.

But we play it straight with each application and try to find as much as we can of the qualities that the UCSB faculty has identified for us as desirable. Ironically, we must give a number to the whole panoply of factors in a student's academic record and personal experience that have not otherwise been boiled down to numbers. We work from definite guidelines and scoring rubrics, but in the end it is subjective, and we must make a judgment call that could be decisive for a student's future. Everyone who has earned eligibility to UC in general can attend some campus within the nine-campus system, but UCSB has within the last decade earned the reputation that allows it to be selective, and it wants to make the best use of that privilege which it shares with the big boys at Berkeley and UCLA.

It's an intellectually engaging process, especially when we break the silence and converse with one or several of our colleagues about a specific issue that has arisen with a particular application. The discussions are lively and necessary to keep us together as a team. We work as individuals, but our standards are necessarily shared. Large-group norming sessions are a required weekly affair, but the small group in our particular room--usually about five of us--are continually norming ourselves throughout a typical day. And the sheer diversity of human stories captured in the three personal essays that each student writes is astounding even to jaded former English teachers.

The only drawback seems to be the totally sedentary nature of the work. We've never before experienced the complete inertia of office work, and our tail bones and muscular-skeletal systems are about to register complaints with Cal-OSHA. And God knows what the constant supply of junk food means for our blood glucose levels.

But we'll survive through February and celebrate retirement again with a renewed appreciation. Of course, there will also be a 2007 freshman class to assemble. That batch will include the last students we taught as ninth graders at Dos Pueblos. It seems to have been a very gradual process of bowing out for us. Perhaps we're not destined to ever quite leave school behind.