THE EPHEMERAL JOURNAL HAS A NEW HOME:
Handmade in Salem, Massachusetts. Now updated at the speed of dsl.
NOW SORT OF AVAILABLE ON GOOGLE!
Is Tony's dinghy a simple rowboat? Or is it the result of a diabolical Norwegian plot to plant floating plywood bombs all over the English Speaking world? Why would an explosives manufacturer make thousands of cute little wooden sailboats?
Entry No 25
Winner take Nothing
Posted this at the NYTimes.com today in response to an article by Charles M. Blow, although I also was put to these thoughts by news of the day and Gail Collins article.
Doesn't this remind anyone of 1993? The situation is much more dire, of course. But the expectations (almost millenial) are quite similar. Republicans may have felt the same way in early 2005, I suppose. "We've won the whole shooting match" think the voters (and office-holders) of the victorious parties. Like W. in 2005, they believe that "political capital" has been won, fair and square, and can be spent like cash.
But as Clinton, W., and probably any president with working majorities in Congress has found, the system is way more complex than that. Both parties have ridiculously large tents, and party discipline is never something that can be counted on... especially in the majority party. This is only natural, given that the majority party, at least theoretically, the bigger tent at any given moment, and cannot possibly please all of the occupants simultaneously.
Happily, unlike most of his predecessors, and because his prior experience is legislative, not executive, Obama seems to understand this. Blow is quite correct to warn him against getting sucked into the same old game; instead, it is time to give some serious love Senators Collins, Specter, Snowe, and even Lieberman... and also to the moderate democrats who dropped their sense of Victor's entitlement to work with them. Thanks be to God. Let's hope it works.
7 February, 2009
Entry No 24
Did John McCain kill David Foster Wallace?
Obviously, the answer is "no." DFW, who committed the felo de se in September of 2008, was plagued by a depression so crippling that, in retrospect, all his witty and humor-laden writing comes to look as if it was written in an ink composed of his own blood and tears. But why would it even occur to me, or to anyone, to pose this particular question re: John McCain III, U.S. Senator, and two time presidential candidate?
After Wallace's death, as I wallowed around on the internet looking for answers to the impossible questions, I found out two things of immediate interest to me. The first was that there was a whole volume of Wallace's collected journalism that I had not yet read. Entitled Consider the Lobster, after a piece written for Gourmet magazine (which piece, dwelling extensively on the morality of boiling lobsters alive, cannot possibly have been what the editors of Gourmet had in mind when they sent DFW and his entourage to Rockland, ME), the book contained several pieces I
had already read, and even more that I had not.
One of these was a piece that Wallace had done for Rolling Stone back in February of 2000, where he spent a week with the insurgent McCain campaign, just before the critical South Caroline primary. Wallace was smitten with McCain (as were many of us at that time—admit it), not so much with his policy ideas (which DFW often characterizes as "frightening"), as with his honesty and apparent lack of cynicism. Rolling Stone had to cut the piece dramatically in order to print it, but made it available, full length, on its website. Presumably it was the full length version which appeared, under the title "Up, Simba," in Consider the Lobster.
Bring yourself back, if you can, to the early days of October of this year, and try to imagine comfortably reading a piece whose theme was the apparent honesty, integrity, and un-cynical nature of John S. McCain III. As a reader, the dissonance between what I was seeing on the news, and what I was reading about from almost nine years ago was too great to bear, and I laid "Up, Simba" aside.
After the election was over, I was able to pick it up again, and appreciate the article for its extraordinary merits, and glimpse the ironic tragedy of John McCain, whose very aspirations to the presidency were undone by a candidate who was able to wield McCain's old tools of non-cynicism, integrity, and honesty (together with profound oratorical gifts—something McCain has never had) much more effectively than the man who had first brought them back into national politics.
This brings me to the second thing I noticed online in the hours after learning of DFW's death: this Rolling Stone piece had been brought out last spring as its own book, entitled McCain's Promise. Published in June of this year, Wallace knew by the time it hit the shelves that the McCain of '08 was no longer the McCain of '00 (see a slate article w/ reference to a DFW June comment on the change). But the process of preparing the article for reprinting had almost
certainly begun months earlier, when the change in McCain was less apparent, and Wallace must have struggled over the summer with the reality of having just brought out a book that appeared to endorse a candidate that he did not really support. He probably struggled even more with the responses he must have gotten to bringing out McCain's Promise at all.
In his McCain piece, Wallace wrote that, with all their apparatus of spin, hypocrisy, and cynicism "modern politicians make us sad, hurt us deep down in ways that are hard even to name, much less talk about." Like a canary in a coal mine, Wallace was horribly alive to this kind of pain, and able to articulate and describe it in ways that this reader found deeply salutary; but for DFW it must have been excruciating. In the weeks following the Republican Convention, the deep-down hurt of McCain's transformation must have piled uncomfortably onto the miseries and sensitivities that Wallace had always carried with him.
Entry No 23
With the next shift of the Tide...
Deleted in the interests of universal peace and understanding. Since Election Day, I feel expansive and forgiving.
Entry No 22lkj
Death of the Lyred Man
I posted this review of Brian Hall's novel Fall of Frost on Goodreads.com earlier today.
For the second time since I began reading his work, Brian Hall has taken on a subject that sounded woefully unpromising to mew, and made a great novel out of it. I was enormously impressed by The Saskiad and by Hall's non-fiction, so much so that I wrote to him. He sent me back a charming letter and mentioned that his next book was to about the Lewis and Clark expedition. I inwardly groaned. Then, a few years later, I read I Should be Extremely Happy in Your Company, and was completely blown away both the imagination of the novel, and its fidelity to its sources. The moments that seemed most novelistic, turned out to be the most well-documented.
So when I heard about the Frost project, I was a little more hopeful than I had originally been about the Lewis and Clark project; yet on the whole it sounded rather dreary. In one sense I was right; Frost's life was one which had many dreary times, which I had not been especially well aware of, though it might be inferred easily enough from the poetry. But other people's misery can make for interesting reading, and Hall tries to show how Frost invested his heartaches and failures with meaning through his poetry.
Other readers have objected to the leaping about of the narrative, as a source of confusion and irritation, but I did not find it so. The timing and location of events is very carefully provided, and movements through time are not at all as haphazard as they seem. For instance, very early in the novel we learn that Frost's son, Carol, shoots himself in about 1940. This lends Carol's subsequent appearances as a child, a young man, a father, a farmer, a poet, dramatic irony and a kind of pathos.
The book both throws Frost's poetry in very flattering relief, and humanizes him, removing the grandfatherly homespun aura that surrounds and obscures him and his work, showing the nervy, sad, funny, witty, sidelong, angry, loving, tricky aspects of his character.
As a side note, Hall mentions at the end of the book that he was not able to quote much of Frost's poetry that remains under copyright. I hope that he might consider revisiting the novel when the rest of Frost's poetry enters the public domain.
Entry No 21
Lord of the Rotoscopes
Campbell came home from the Library today with a VHS tape of Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings. We have been reading the book together, very slowly, for the last six months or so, and Campbell was excited to find it. He immediately invited me to watch it with him, and for once I agreed.
I had seen it once before, I confess, probably sometime in the eighties, but I didn't remember it very well. But I remember that, although it had some interesting features, it confirmed what I had heard about it, which was that it was pretty terrible. Twenty years later or more, I didn't see anything to change my views on the movie's quality, but I feel like I have lot more to say about it's strengths and weaknesses. For one thing, Peter Jackson's really brilliant adaptations have since been made, and for another, I have seen a lot more animation than I had in the eighties.
Here is what the movie does well: scary Black Riders (see picture above). On a broader level, the techniques of rotoscoping and posterizing and otherwise messing with live-action footage to create animated material is often really visually arresting. The dialogue is often tediously close to Tolkien's original (I love Tolkien's original, of course, but it was a novel, not a screenplay).
But even within its qualities, the movie fails miserably. You can find a lot online about how and why—and much of it is very funny reading. More than any other single thing, though, the movie is a victim of its own slow pacing. The pauses between lines spread out like those of the late Robert J. Lurtsema. Really, it is the film editor, more than Bakshi himself, who deserves to take the heat on this film. The voice acting is mostly OK (John Hurt makes an especially fine Aragorn; too bad they drew him as a kind of Native American Charles Bronson). The other enormous problem is that, innovative and laborious as Bakshi's techniques were,
they were not yet ready for a project of this scale. Characters veer from the sometimes frenetic seeming motion that comes from roto-scoping (one of Bakshi's trademarks), to being completely frozen, sometimes even when there are only two characters onscreen. In another scene, a heavily posterized and backlit photograph of an orcish host is presented as animated because there are two spears waving back and forth in the otherwise motionless frame. Mind you, I could not have done any better for $4 million in 1978. But it is sad to think what I could do with that same material now, by myself, with Photoshop Elements.
Entry No 20
This is not an "Episode"
I took my sons to see Clone Wars, and although the animation sometimes bothered me (Why must the beards of Obi-Wan and Dooku look like some sort of bony growth on their faces?), on the whole I found myself brought back to what Star Wars (and movies in general) meant to me as child: escape, excitement, explosions, some humor and all around fun. It was funny to see how scenes that featured only hardware (droids, spaceships, the clonetroopers in their armor) were indistinguishable from their (digitally animated) analogues in the live action films; the contrast with the more "cartoony" flesh and bone characters was odd. The comic tension between the sly clonetroopers and the moronic battle-droids was lots of fun, though it made me wonder how the clones' successors, the Stormtroopers, could themselves be
so hapless.
We had a great time. The boys (7 and 5) want to see it again. I wouldn't mind either.
Entry No 19
Know-Nothing
Here I am for the first time in many months, writing on my blog. Woohoo. We have another son, Peter, who is sleeping on my shoulder, while I drink my coffee and read the New York Times. There I found this article on a book called The Age of American Unreason.
The news that Americans are wilfully anti-intellectual—not merely ignorant, but sometimes actively proud of that fact—is hardly news worth printing. Another book on the subject is unlikely to remedy matters much, since the ignorant don't tend to be big readers of books, let alone books that slam them for their own ignorance. [I mean, would you?] What is strange about us is how deep-seated this tendency is, not only our psyches but in our history. After all, what other nation ever had a major "Know Nothing" political party?
Speaking as a teacher, and a guy who "knows" a great deal, I'd like to say something respectful about the impulse from which our distrust of knowledge might arise. In part it is the flip-side of our commitment to democracy: if we grant that intellectual gifts are not one of the ways in which "all men are created equal," and yet all men are equally fit to participate as voters in a republic (not an idea that the first generation of Founding Fathers would have readily bought into by the way), then it follows intuitively that good citizenship cannot be based on any kind of intellectual ability or accomplishments. Those things can, in fact, be seen as red herrings or sophistry, false bases for authority (some other Times article I was reading this morning, as if to confirm this, cited
Max Weber on the three types of authority. Intellectual authority was not one of the options), something to be suspicious of. So, more often than not, American leaders and celebrities actively work to suppress public knowledge of any intellectual activity or accomplishments. Harry Truman suppressed his piano playing. Bill Clinton campaigned on his Bubba-ness, not his Rhodes scholarship.
As if to confirm the sterility of mere "knowledge" we need look no further than the Iraq war. Bush may be merely posing as a numbskull, or he may be the genuine article, but the real architects of the war were "The best and the brightest," intellectually speaking. They know where Iraq is, and that Hungary is a country, and that Pearl Harbor did not kick off the Vietnam War, and a great deal more (these are things that, according to the article above, many of us do not know). But it hasn't done them any good. It isn't their knowledge that is lacking; it is more intangible gifts of understanding and insight. One of things they don't seem to feel or intuit are the limits of their own knowledge. If there is a sensible basis to our anti-intellectual
tendencies, surely it lies here. And if we admit to knowing nothing for certain, to distrusting "facts" and "theories" we are actually in some pretty distinguished company, even if most of us have never actually heard of Socrates.
Entry No 18
Rotten Dock Movie Trailer
Rotten Dock Trailer.mov
Entry No 17
The Man with Two Invisible Boats
This is a topic that I am hoping to spin off into a separate webpage, as soon as I figure out how to create one without erasing this one. Anyway, we have a lot of boats in our family. Between my mother and her four siblings, we have fifteen boats currently in the family. Most of these (eight, to be exact) belong to my uncle Campbell. But two of them are mine.
One is forty-four year old sailing dinghy, called The Peanut. This sounds like a cute and clever little name for a sailing dinghy, but in fact it is not really a name at all. It is called "The Peanut" because it is a Peanut-Class dinghy. It has a blue sail with a peanut-in-the-shell logo on it. My grandfather bought it, quite spontaneously, at Jordan Marsh in 1962. It cost $99. He told me once that it was the only boat he had ever paid for with a charge card. I will post a picture as soon as I can scan one.
The other boat is a 14-foot open catboat named Lady. Lady is a Brutal Beast, a design of the great W. Starling Burgess for his children to learn to sail in. They were the preferred training vessel for Marblehead children of the 20's and 30's. Compared to a more modern boat, like an Optimist Pram, or Dyer Dhow, this is kind of a frightening thought. We haven't actually sailed Lady yet (she is still undergoing some restoration), but her sail and spars are huge for a boat her size, so it will be interesting to see what happens.
Anyway, none of that is the point. The point is that can't find anything about either boat on Google. And, in this, I find the sinking feeling that without some Googly recognition it really is as if the boats did not exist. So part of the point of making the webpage, will be to help them exist in more real (that is to say, a more virtual) way.
AMB 8/4/2006
Entry No. 16
Requiem for an Unfinished Treehouse
We have been working on a treehouse, on and off, since March (see Entry No. 15). Campbell wanted one very badly, and even though I was skeptical about our tree, and about our condo regulations, you just can't explain that kind of thing to an eager four-year old dreaming of a treehouse. So we went ahead and built something. This is what it looked like at easter. Since then it had improved somewhat, but it was a long way from what Campbell and I had envisioned for it.
Today we got the call, not altogether unexpected, that it has to come down. It is a "liability issue" and there have been "several complaints." Only one of our neighbors actually expressed concerns about it to my face, and rather obliquely at that (the concerns were really those of another neighbor; everyone sues everyone nowadays, you know, so you can't be too careful; and so forth). As far as these neighbors go, in the words of Herodotus, "I know their names, but I will not write them down." So I will probably dismantle the offending structure this weekend, as loudly as possible.
This spectral notion of "Liability" and the dreadful lawsuits that might ensue, is (I believe) a symptom of the powerful cancer of fear that gnaws on the heart of society and on our hearts as individuals. Accidents happen, of course, and Lawsuits sometimes ensue, just as people win the lottery or get struck by lightning. Moreover, this cancer has been growing for a long time: most of us were taught as children that every stranger was some sort of predator until proven otherwise, that communists were eagerly waiting to nuke us in our beds. But at the same time, I walked to school by myself when I was only six, and ranged all over my hometown solo by the time I was ten (on a bike. without a helmet). Nowadays I know six-year-olds who still sit in car seats.
So we live in a culture of fear, and nearly every institution in our lives has an interest in promoting this: our leaders pander to our fears and use them to gain votes; corporations use our fears to sell us products to make us feel more secure; the media thrives on tales of things that are scary. We don't need a War on Terror; we need a war on fear. I am not fearful. I am often anxious, but I am not fearful. I leave my car unlocked and my house unlocked. I know this is a risk; but I refuse to live in fear, and act out of fear, especially for the sake of mere stuff. I prefer to trust in God and my neighbor, to take a chance on the world being good. I would rather believe this, and act on this, and be proven wrong, 100 times over, than not build a treehouse because
someone might fall, and that person might be injured, after which their insurance company might force them to sue. That's not just fear; that's cowardice.
So the lesson we learn from this is: be brave, build the treehouse. Don't live in fear. Then at least you can tell yourself (or tell your son or daughter) that there may be cowardice in the world, and it may tear down treehouses, but it needn't tear down you.
AMB 13 June 2006
Entry No 15
Springtime in Massachusetts
Well the magical season of spring is upon us. Magical in that it is unpredictable and cannot be reproduced under lab conditions, at least as it exists around here. But this week, thus far has been lovely, and a classic illustration of the saying about March: in like a lion and out like a ram.
Where have we been since Christmas? Mostly at home, I am afraid, feeling thankful for the mild winter. Now I am building a treehouse, under the demanding eyes of my four-year-old son. His plans are complex, but up to a point we are in agreement: the house should have a floor, walls, a roof, and a ladder. Where we disagree is over plans for a kitchen, living room, and bedroom.
I have also discovered a new band. Those of you who know me, know that I am pretty selective about new music, but I have been quite struck by a new band called Gloria Deluxe. G.D. seems to be a loose group of musicians, surrounding and supporting the remarkable Miss Cynthia Hopkins (pictured above), who does almost all the singing and almost all the vocals. She reminds me a little bit of a more urban sounding Gillian Welch, who happens to play the accordion and the musical saw. Three albums (out of five overall, and four that I have purchased) seem deserving of special recommendation: Devotionals (Songs for Shunkin) was recorded as Cynthia Hopkins; Alas Alack [probably the most listenable of the lot]; and the deep and amazing operetta, Accidental Nostalgia. There are free
downloads for the curious at www.gloriadeluxe.com.
That's all for tonight.
AMB 30 March 2006
Entry No 14
Merry Christmas
Hi everybody. Merry Christmas. We made this cool card, but haven't sent it out yet. Now I am not sure where they are.
Everyone seems especially worked up about the word "Christmas" this year. Whatever. The one that bums me out is "Thanksgiving." When people are afraid to say "Happy Thanksgiving," you have to ask yourself what's up. Here is a totally secular holiday, and still I have checkout girls cagily telling me to have "a nice holiday" on the fourth Wednesday in November. Who on earth are they worried about offending? Unpatriotic, unthankful, radical atheists? I've also gotten "Have a nice holiday" for July 4. What other holidays might they be celebrating? At least at Christmas there's a group of contenders. "Happy Holidays" doesn't really bug me anymore. Merry Christmas, though.
Entry No 13
A Day in the Life
It has been over a month now since my last entry. The realities of being 35 are much the same as those of being 34. Lately, pretty much every spare cognitive moment has been preoccupied with the Beatles. For starters, the lovely and talented Melanie MacFarlane gave me a copy of Bob Spitz's new book, The Beatles:A Biography. I finished reading it just a couple of nights ago. A few years ago, a friend asked me what book she could read about the Beatles. After a good deal of thought, I had to tell her that the book she had in mind really had not been written yet. Now I think perhaps it has.
Spitz's book is far from perfect, but first let me dwell on its strengths. Unlike many admirable books (especially Mark Lewisohn's Session Notes) this one is primarily not about the music, but about the men. Unlike innumerable books, this is not another hagiography of the Fabs, the lovable moptops who changed a generation. Unlike the massive Anthology, hostile sources and controversial topics are not avoided here. Unlike Albert Goldman's nasty Lives of John Lennon, this book is not a character assassination. Spitz is fair (though this bodes ill for both McCartney and Lennon), and (perhaps more importantly) has an engaging way of telling a story and evoking a moment. This is the serious biography that many fans have been wanting.
Now the weaknesses. Apparently some Beatles websites are up in arms about factual errors in the text. I was able to spot a few of these unaided. However most of these were either in the photo captions (clearly edited in haste, by an idiot), or dealt with such picayune details of the recording process that it seems peevish and petty to take issue with them. This does connect to the larger question of editing. At 800+ pages of text, there is no way to consider The Beatles, a short book. Yet when Spitz confesses that his original manuscript was somewhere in the neighborhood of 2500 pages, I almost wish he had kept it that way. At times the book feels as if it had been pared down ruthlessly, and in a bit of a rush. For example: The Beatles come home from a trip abroad eager
to find out about a new band called The Animals, who have a single in the number one spot. Presumably they never do. Yet I suspect that in Spitz's earlier drafts they did, and the scene ended up on the cutting room floor. I don't like overlong biographies, but cutting any work down to a third of its original length carries some risks.
Anyway, Spitz deserves high marks for his handling of the story, especially the groups earlier years, the fascinating and surprisingly dark figure of Brian Epstein, and the long descent into ill-will and recrimination, when even the nice Beatles, Ringo and George, got grouchy.
Happy reading!
AMB 10/11/05
Entry No 12
Me and My Needle
Today I will attend my first faculty meeting since the beginning of the school year. I admit this with some embarrassment. Much as I dislike faculty meetings, the fault lies in me, not in the meetings, and I have missed a good deal by not attending them. But today I am prepared; I am going to go. My sedative, my tranquilizer is prepared. I am referring, of course to my needle...
...and thread. I get restless in meetings. I think of how little time I have in my life to myself. I think of the high cost of daycare, and the new concrete value that it gives my time (about $13/hour). Every moment of faculty meeting that is not pertinent to me is painful on this account, and yet it would be unforgivably selfish to expect otherwise. Faculty meeting is not "about me," as the current phrasing has it.
So I sew. In this way the restless part of my mind is focused on something positive: the project at hand. Sewing is something I could never do at home, and that I cannot justify taking the time to do anywhere else. It leaves my thinking mind free to listen and consider, without resentment, the concerns and words of my colleagues. If I speak, it is less likely to be rancorous. And I get restored and renewed clothing out of it. I am not a very good seamster, but it doesn't matter. I am almost looking forward to meeting today.
AMB 6/10/2005
Entry No 11
Dig an Obsession
If you know me at all well, then you know that I am a devoted Beatles fan. For many years now I have been fascinated by the notorious "Get Back" sessions: three weeks of hell-on-camera, in January 1969, culminating in the famous rooftop gig at the Apple offices in Savile Row. Critics and fans have always pretty much agreed that the resulting album is among the weakest of the Beatles catalogue. I love it. Recently I have been compiling an iTunes playlist of all the music I have collected from the sessions: fourteen different performances of "Get Back" (including a xenophobic version and a German-language version); eight versions each of "Don't Let Me Down" and "I've got a Feeling"; nine versions of "I Me Mine"; and six renditions each of
"One after 909" and "Two of Us." Out of 127 tracks, there are actually only 45 different songs represented. Many of the recordings are exceedingly rough. One of the treasures included in the playlist are the contents of a two LP bootleg, which consisted of the Beatles teaching each other the songs they wanted to record, many of which had only been partially composed. There is something incredible about hearing the chord structure for "I Me Mine" first laid out, especially since it was first imagined in a radically different style from what ended up being recorded a year later for the "Let it Be," album. How else could one hope to hear George Harrison, in a quiet moment, playing and singing a medley of three Bob Dylan tunes, accompanied only by his own acoustic guitar? The fact that the recording quality is poor and Harrison is difficult to hear almost doesn't matter. I guess
part of why I love this stuff so much, is that the Beatles were always so keen to control all the minutiae of their sound, and these sessions represented an attempt to move away from all that, towards something less refined and more spontaneous. Even Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" couldn't efface that rawness. And if the Beatles were as miserable as everyone says they were at the time, then perhaps it is true that suffering can be a midwife to art.
AMB 22/9/2005 1:28pm
Entry No 10
Light Reading
When I was a kid growing up, there were many hierarchies in my life, presented to me by the adults around me. There was a food hierarchy, with fresh vegetables and whole grains at the top and pop-tarts at or near the bottom. There was a clothing hierarchy, with cotton and wool at the top and acrylic and polyester at the bottom. And there was a fiction hierarchy, with novels my elders had loved at the top, and at the bottom, comics. Comics were so low that I think they were even somewhere beneath pornography, because at least porn was the unfortunate by-product of good old natural human sexuality. Comics were just unspeakable. My mother and grandmother had a united opinions in this respect, as they did regarding animation of all kinds. I have more or less adopted some of these
hierarchies as my own, regarding food or clothing for instance, but I have always nurtured a furtive love of comics.
I don't think I ever really read a comic book (except, of course, for the Giant Sized Star Wars Comics of the original movie) until I was in sixth grade. Then I went to visit my friend, Michael Perlow, and he had a huge comics collection. I disdained it, more or less openly I think, and then I read one. It was a DC comic, involving a bizarre Leviathan called "The Composite Superman." He was a large and very unhappy fusion of Batman and Superman, and a villain. I forget who was tasked with fighting him, but I had the immediate sense of entering another world, with a detailed past, and a doubtful future. It was the same feeling I enjoyed so much in works of Tolkien, LeGuin, and other fantasists.
[This charming little guy is a googled image of the Composite Superman.]
I have rarely indulged this whim until quite recently. But now you will find at the library weekly, withdrawing graphic novels (usually from the Marvel universe), and finishing them long before they are due. More on this anon.
AMB 3:52 pm 14/9/2005
Entry No. 9
Wired for Sound
A reader (the enigmatic Mr. Justin Harris) has requested an article on a notable achievement of mine, which was that, in my old apartment, every room was wired to the stereo for sound, including the bathroom. Given that there were six separate rooms in the apartment, I suppose this something of an accomplishment. It actually developed somewhat organically. Two lengths of heavy duty speaker wire had been run behind the walls when my uncle was renovating the space for himself and his family. All I had to do to take advantage of these was simply to keep my stereo where he had kept his. It then seemed only sensible to place an additional speaker in the room with the stereo itself. In those days (this was 1994, and I was living alone) I often played music while falling asleep, and so I also
wanted a speaker in my bedroom. I found that I could thread some speaker wire from the stereo room into my bedroom using the hole that already existed to accommodate the baseboard heating pipe.
So far so good, but I also wanted sound in my office and (of course) in the bathroom. In these places, there was no way to lay wire through the walls (or at least no way that lay open to me) so I laid them under a strategically placed rug, and then tucked them in under the baseboards. At first most of the rooms had only one speaker, but over time the system evolved to the point where most of the rooms had stereo.
When we became homeowners, Cathy made it clear that there would be no more wires running along the baseboards, and I too felt ready to move beyond that stage of my life. However we do have a basement and heating ducts, and I have used these to run wire from the living room to the kitchen. Right now, I use two sets of Cambridge Soundworks PC Works speakers, attached to the headphone output of my receiver. These have an annoying tendency to hum, however, sometimes so loudly that it can be heard through the music, and I am contemplating a shift to more traditional speaker units [UPDATE: I have taken steps to ameliorate the hum; nonetheless I am still tempted by traditional speakers].
I also have a beautiful KLH Model Eight table radio pictured above, which needs repair. If any reader knows someone who can work with vaccum tubes let me know.
Entry No 8
Designing Intelligence
Those of you following the fascinating and enlightening debate on teaching evolution in the schools may enjoy checking out this site, which proposes an engaging compromise on the subject. Thanks to the serene Ms. Elizabeth Spetnagel for the tip.
AMB 30/8/05 2:59
Our Story So Far....
PREAMBLE: Time to Air Out the Fish
I heard on the radio today that there is a new blog established something like every second. I did some quick math (as soon as I could find a calculator) and figured out that although this might seem fast, at the current rate, it will take over 250 years for every man woman and child on the planet to have a blog—and that doesn’t even allow for population growth.
So, all appearances to the contrary, I am still on the leading edge of this demographic phenomenon, and I can’t just sit idly by and let my one second of fame pass unnoticed. I have a lot to say: about the Iraq war, about toddlers, about books, about ancient Rome, about cooking, about the judiciary, about music, about relationships, about mythology, and about whatever I just read a few minutes ago.
While I get my feet wet at the intertidal zone of the blogosphere (horrid word), I’d like to thank the Waring School, my generous employer, for allowing me to use my allotted server space for this little venture (I must admit that I didn’t ask if I could). If I like doing this, and it seems like anyone cares, I will try to find some fancier digs. I am sorry about the extremely lame borders; I can't seem to get rid of them. In the meantime, I will try not to use swear words on a family server.
AMB 2/7/2005
Entry No. 1
Don't Drink Coffee after 5:00 PM
By now I imagine that you are wondering what possessed me take on so great a responsibility as to offer my wisdom on such a range of subjects to so vast an audience. Well. I had this Latté, at about six last night. Because I was so exhausted from an afternoon of sailing, I underestimated its powers to keep me up. While lying in bed, I figured out where John Kerry had gone wrong in his campaign approach to the Iraq War. Now I realize that this insight comes too late to do anyone any good, but since I have a gloomy suspicion that we will still be in Iraq in 2008, maybe it will prove useful.
Leaving aside the mistakes of the Kerry campaign (to say nothing of the vainglorious lies of the Bush administration), here is the problem as I laid it out on my bedroom ceiling last night. We have engaged in a war which, notwithstanding the removal of Saddam Hussein, was pre-emptive and justified neither by threats to national or international security. But whether or not the invasion was a mistake, it cannot be undone. We have a moral obligation to leave the Iraqis at least as well off as we found them. The evil dictator is in prison, but at least the dictator was predictable (everyone knew who to fear) and his "regime" was able to provide basic services to the Iraqi people, in spite of a massive trade embargo. The most powerful nation on earth has not been able to do as
much, nor has its fledgling protege.
So however much I might think that starting the war was wrong, however I much I distrust the presidents motives and words on the subject, I feel that as Americans we have to commit more to this cause rather than less.
By way of illustration: We have some neighbors whose children come and play at our house on a fairly regular basis. Our kids and their kids tend to set each other off, and the next thing we know the bedrooms, the living room, and the backyard have all been turned completely upside-down. Then their mother calls them home, and they drop everything and leave. My kids resent being asked to pick up the mess by themselves, and I resent having to help them. The net result is ill-feeling, instead of gratitude that these neighbors kept my kids amused for a time so that I didn't have to.
If the United States picks up and leaves from Iraq tomorrow, or next month, or next year, or anytime before the Iraqi standard of living and personal security has returned to where it was before the invasion, then we are those neighbor kids. At the end of the last Great War, we stayed for at least ten years in Germany and Japan, cleaning up the mess. We didn't expect them to be glad that we had relieved them of their dictatorships. We expected that we would have to prove our affection with words and deeds and money and promises.
So why couldn't, why can't, any Democrat (or any Republican) come out and say that? The war was a mistake, but we have a moral obligation to clean up the mess, so we can't expect to be finished any time soon. Is it too moderate or something?
We also need to be prepared (down the road, when Iraq is some sort of Republic) for the fact that democracies don't always agree with each other.... but that sounds like a topic for a later entry. Next time, I promise something lighter. E-mail me your suggestions: amboisvert@yahoo.com.
AMB 2/7/2005
Entry No 2
Ex Cathedra
Rereading what I wrote last night, I have the unpleasantly familiar feeling that I used to get from writing letters to the editor of my college newspaper. Without disavowing any of my opinions, I think: how could anyone be so pompous and so naive at the same time? Apparently it is easy: I seem to do it every time I venture into print.
In any case, I am thinking a lot today about the words elitist and elitism. I think that they are odd words. What do they really mean? What does a person really mean when they call someone an elitist? I have considered this before, but I was drawn back to the question by a letter to the editor in Sunday's NY Times. The writer was complaining about an opinion piece that had suggested that buying produce at farmer's markets and farmstands was an "elitist" behavior. The correspondent countered that, by global standards, supermarket shopping was the "elitist" behavior.
So what did either of them really mean by this word? It sounds like a sort of ideological insult, along the lines of racist or extremist. But what on earth is the ideology of elitism? Do they just mean "snobbish" or "pretentious"? That might fit the initial articles charges against conspicuous organiphilia, but seems like the wrong word for the sins of the supermarket. "Priveliged" might be the word we are looking for, but somehow I am not satisfied with it. More on this to come.
AMB 3/8/05 11:20 pm
Entry No 3
Reconsidering the Elite in order to Beat the Heat
A friend and reader (the esteemed Edward J. Naughton) writes:
As I see it, it's the right wing version of "bourgeois" [cf. Bobos in Paradise, by David Brooks, an editor of the conservative Weekly Standard], and its antonym is "populist." It's a heavily-loaded word that resonates powerfully with the Reagan Democrat demographic -- rural, Western, and lower-income social conservatives -- and it's used to disparage educated liberals from the East and West Coasts...Because you and I are not in that language community, we don't understand the word in the same way.
I think Edward has an excellent point. He goes on to say that in this sense of the word that he and I (and probably you, if you are reading this) are the elite, in terms of our education, habits and opinions. I can't disagree with that either. A couple of other thoughts have struck me, however. One was the remark about Reagan Democrats, which made me consider the bi-partisan nature of the insult. The Democrats still speak of having a "populist wing," and Howard Dean seems to be trying to remake the party in a more populist image. By the same token David Brooks (whom I have come to loathe, although I found Bobos a highly entertaining book) despite being featured as " a conservative" on the PBS News Hour and in the New York Times, is clearly very comfortable with the idea
of an elite and with his own place in it. So both words seem to be used as a tool in our political discourse for dividing the enemy.
What strikes me as interesting about all this (and what sets the "elitist" apart from "populist" somewhat) is that in normal American discourse, the word only has meaning domestically. The shocking thing about the original letter to the editor that set me off was the suggestion that American "populists" might in fact be "elitist" vis-à-vis the rest of the world. That was a novel use of language. We do not speak of "elitist" Canada or "elitist" France, although Canadian life right now bears all the hallmarks of Bicoastal Liberalism, and both countries are in the doghouse with our conservative masters. I am fascinated by the rich meanings seemingly simple words can carry, yet also the limitations of those meanings. Sometime soon I
will tackle the word "freedom."
Entry No 4
Recipe for a Heat Wave
My sister has asked when I am going to include a recipe... wait a minute, my son wants me to go look for Eeyore with him...
OK. So we have had some hot weather lately, and the idea of cooking anything has not been very appealing. I have been making some things that require little or no application of heat. Mostly these are salads, and then I arrange them all on a plate as a meal.
Fennel Salad: Take one fennel bulb and slice thin. Toss in a bowl with kosher salt, olive oil, lemon and/or lime juice, and shaved parmesan (optional). I also included a little lemon zest the other night.
Calamari: I bought a one lb package of cleaned frozen calamari at the supermarket, sliced it while still mostly frozen and braised it ever so briefly with white wine and water (these I confess were the directions on the package). Be careful not to overdo it. Drain and run cold water over it. There are so many ways to dress this well. The other night I grated a clove of garlic on it, sprinkled in some hot pepper flakes, and added olive oil, lime juice, fresh basil and salt.
Green Salad: I use arugula or baby spinach as much as possible so that the salad acts as a vegetable instead of just ruffage. The only non-lettucy vegetable I will permit in a green salad is avocado. Smash a clove of garlic into the bottom of wooden bowl with a sprinkling of coarse salt, until you have a paste. Drizzle a little olive oil on this, and add clean dry greens. Toss and add more olive oil is necessary. Then finish with vinegar or lemon juice.
There is more if anyone is interested. Let me know.
AMB 7.8.2005 11:00 am
Entry No 5
Getting It All Wrong
One of my students (the unimpeachable Meg Woodman-Russell) wrote me the following:
You have a blog. YOU HAVE A BLOG?!?! Well, wow, how
celebrity/emo-high-school-kid of you! What you really
need, if you want to go all the way with it, is put a
link to your live journal in your info (on IM) with
something like, "Ok, if you're really bored I have
this lame blog... [link]" Then, you need a LOT more
entries, and they need more talkig to yourself/
insulting yourself : "I'm not making any sense
anyway..." "Who cares, I'm such a dork..." Then, you
need that kind where you put the music you're
listening to slash your mood at the top of every
entry, and they need to be mostly bands you've made up
to sound so alternative and underground. Also, allude
"sublty" to secret crushes, and address your crush in
the first person whenever possible.
It was a good reminder that I have no clue what I am doing here, in the "Blogosphere." I laughed out loud when I read it, because it reminded me of the kinds of things I used to do when I kept a journal in my teens and early twenties. When I mentioned to Cathy that I was thinking about starting on of these things, she looked revolted because she couldn't imagine posting something as personal as a journal on the web. Neither can I. Now I realize her notion of a blog is somewhat shaped by those of her students. Mine is shaped by my friend Justin's Blog. (Recently updated. exciting!). His seems to be a grab bag of whatever he is thinking about, often with photos he has taken. That's what this is: just a grab bag. Trust me—a real journal would be so tedious.
So... Time to vote for future topics. Choose from the following: more recipes; more word reflections (possible candidates: freedom, empire, satire, poop, love); things I have been reading; clocks; buying a car; refinancing your house; the best chocolate I ever tasted, and Other. I still haven't written about the Boys (I don't want to get all maudlin, but a few of you seem to want that).
Entry No 6
Owner's Manual
Cathy has this idea that we should write a baby and child-care book that would include all the bits of wisdom that ordinary baby books don't share. These are not so much on questions of doctrine or style, as they are things we have picked up by the wayside. I'd like to share some of the chapter or section headings that this book would have.
•To Tell the Truth: This would include advice on when and how to lie to any or all of the following persons regarding your child: your pediatrician, your in-laws, your friends with children, your friends without children, your daycare provider, or any other overly nosy parties. Things you may wish to lie about include (but are not limited to): where your child sleeps, what your child eats, what your child watches, what your child drinks, how your child drinks, where you or your spouse sleep, your child's artistic ability, your child's bathing habits, your own bathing habits. If your child asks for a bottle during a visit to the doctor, to whom you have maintained that said child is off the bottle, pretend that you do not understand
your child. Encouraging nicknames for items like bottles ("bot" or better yet "cup") can make this easier.
•Brand Names are for Suckers: The Target brand of almost anything is just fine, especially diapers and wipes.
•You Move Me!: It really is okay for babies not to poop for days and days and days. Paradoxically, it is also okay for them to poop constantly.
•The Wheels on the Bus Go Far Away: Kids like real music. They do not need sounds that have been all cuted up and bleached and re-dyed like a maraschino cherry. The Beatles made great kid music. My sons also like the Who, Willie Nelson, U2, and Talking Heads. If you must play music that is explicitly made for children, we highly recommend the work of Dan Zanes, formerly of the Del Fuegos.
•Would You Eat That?: Reasonable dietary restrictions aside, feed your kids real food as much as possible. If it makes you gag, then probably it will make them gag too. Be cautious about salt and fat, but in general let them try a lot of things, even if they have strong flavors. The more you do this when they are really little, the more flexible they will be when they get older. Campbell is still a big fan of oysters on the half shell.
Okay, so we have only been at this for four years, and we only have two kids. But I think we have the core of something here. Anybody have anything to add?
AMB 15/8/2005 4:50 pm
Entry No 7
Summer's End
So here we are at the end of the summer. Has it been fab? Why yes, yes it has. I haven't updated for a while, but I have been busy enjoying the last days of a great season. We have launched a boat, bought a car, paved part of the backyard with granite stones salvaged from the burnt down house behind us, painted the back bulkhead and fence. Other projects are in progress (kitchen shelving and cupboards doors; putting bookshelves on casters and rolling them around).
I'd like to thank everyone who helped make this such an extraordinary summer for me and my family. But there isn't room. In the meantime, I ought to stop writing this stuff during faculty meeting. I would like to thank the indefatigable Jan Lindsay, on whose computer these lines are being composed.
AMB 30/8/2005 1:33 PM
Moral Advisories
This website, whatever else it may be, is the sole responsibility of its author, Antoine M. Boisvert, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Waring School, its administration, trustees, founders, faculty, students, or indigenous wildlife. The moral right of the author to be free of unattributed and uncompensated copying is asserted.
