The Democrats are in a real bind, losing a solidly Democratic district in Queens to a political unknown, Bob Turner. The district is heavily Jewish, and most speculation is that the Democrats lost the seat because American Jews are displeased with Obama's stance on Israel.
Which, if nothing else, should show the Democrats the foolishness of taking lukewarm stances in theory and doing absolutely nothing on the ground.
Contrary to popular belief, Obama has not abandoned Israel. He has steadfastly refused to lend any sort of actual support to humanitarian relief efforts in the Palestinian territories (occupied territory, Gaza, West Bank, Greater Israel...whatever your preferred nomenclature) and the US continues to work in the UN to block any resolutions or activities that would harm Israel.
What he has done, and this of course is his great crime, is suggest that Israel is not as pure as the driven snow.
For some, this position is tantamount to declaring that Hamas is full of goody-two shoes whose main objective is to make streets safe for the elderly to cross.
Some otherwise educated people have difficulty distinguishing these two positions.
Israel bills itself as a democracy, and it pretty much is. There's no question Israel is a freer society than its neighbors. That's a red herring. Criticism of Israel does not amount to support for the criminal regimes of Syria's Assad and Egypt's (recently deposed) Mubarak, or the relatively more legitimately elected Iranian government (let's face it: Ahmadinejad isn't the real power in Iran, so the "legitimate" part is only relative).
Israel is not alone in its inability to face its own abuses. The "land of the free" long into the 20th century saw no problem with billing itself as a champion of democracy and liberty, which of course it was...so long as you weren't Black (and to a lesser extent so long as you weren't Jewish, Asian, Indian, Catholic, etc.). Those who worked for justice and pointed out US hypocrisy were reviled by the power structure and significant chunks of the US population.
The Democrats lost the South when they decided to support equality for all American citizens, regardless of race or ethnicity. To even declare that white supremacy wasn't the natural order of things, that the white racial power structure wasn't pure as the driven snow, was grounds for landslide defeat in most regions of the South. So these politicians and activists who were called enemies of the South and enemies of America and enemies of Christianity figured there was no use in going half way...you weren't going to win the bigot vote by suggesting that bigotry was wrong anymore than you would by taking a strong stand and enacting legislation guaranteeing full citizenship to Blacks.
What the Democrats have lacked since the early 1970's is the backbone to take those stands domestically or internationally.
14 September 2011
12 September 2011
9/12/2011
Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of 9/11/2001. It was certainly a significant day in our history, and it was horrible. However, I remember more the damage of what came after, when the Democrats lost all backbone and caved into every ridiculous assertion that the Bush Administration made in curtailing civil liberties and pursuing personal family vendettas that embroiled us in a costly war against Saddam Hussein's regime.
I do not agree with those who find 9/11 to be the worst day in our nation's history. I'd say the outbreak of the Civil War probably beats it. Pearl Harbor is undoubtedly a contender for the title, but at least in the wake of that attack, we had a clear enemy. The tragedy of 9/11 didn't stop when the towers fell; it continued through years of mismanagement, as Bush first squandered the world's good will prosecuting an illegal war against an essentially powerless target unrelated to the 9/11 attacks and as he continued to bankrupt our nation fighting two wars while ignoring the economic crises at home.
Our greater tragedy is that Barack Obama, elected to remove us from these wars and restore economic stability, has refused to make the hard choices to do either. True, we have left Iraq, but we have escalated Afghanistan, propping up a hopelessly corrupt regime that has as much chance of standing as any of the South Vietnamese puppet governments we supported in Viet Nam.
In one sense, we have won the war on terror: Al Qaeda is a shell of itself, its leader dead and its leadership decimated. So for the first time, we mark the anniversary of 9/11 with a sense that some measure of justice has been done to the perpetrator. However, we have allowed this pursuit of external enemies blind us to the ongoing and accelerating damage done by domestic policies inimical to our nation's long-term interests. Most of these principles are on display in the Republican primary fights, but Obama has offered only moderate resistance to the continued assault on the American middle class and working poor, and our nation faces the prospect of extended recession.
The result of the Great Depression was a system of government regulation and labor activism that saw the United States become the most prosperous nation in the world, with a solid middle class. Capital has chipped away at those gains, beginning in the 1970's, and in a time of terror we need to look not only at the enemies who build the bombs and point the guns, but also at those who seek to gut government oversight, consumer protection, and labor power.
Both these enemies seek the collapse of the American ideal.
I do not agree with those who find 9/11 to be the worst day in our nation's history. I'd say the outbreak of the Civil War probably beats it. Pearl Harbor is undoubtedly a contender for the title, but at least in the wake of that attack, we had a clear enemy. The tragedy of 9/11 didn't stop when the towers fell; it continued through years of mismanagement, as Bush first squandered the world's good will prosecuting an illegal war against an essentially powerless target unrelated to the 9/11 attacks and as he continued to bankrupt our nation fighting two wars while ignoring the economic crises at home.
Our greater tragedy is that Barack Obama, elected to remove us from these wars and restore economic stability, has refused to make the hard choices to do either. True, we have left Iraq, but we have escalated Afghanistan, propping up a hopelessly corrupt regime that has as much chance of standing as any of the South Vietnamese puppet governments we supported in Viet Nam.
In one sense, we have won the war on terror: Al Qaeda is a shell of itself, its leader dead and its leadership decimated. So for the first time, we mark the anniversary of 9/11 with a sense that some measure of justice has been done to the perpetrator. However, we have allowed this pursuit of external enemies blind us to the ongoing and accelerating damage done by domestic policies inimical to our nation's long-term interests. Most of these principles are on display in the Republican primary fights, but Obama has offered only moderate resistance to the continued assault on the American middle class and working poor, and our nation faces the prospect of extended recession.
The result of the Great Depression was a system of government regulation and labor activism that saw the United States become the most prosperous nation in the world, with a solid middle class. Capital has chipped away at those gains, beginning in the 1970's, and in a time of terror we need to look not only at the enemies who build the bombs and point the guns, but also at those who seek to gut government oversight, consumer protection, and labor power.
Both these enemies seek the collapse of the American ideal.
11 September 2011
Reading Report: The Conjure-Man Dies
I just finished reading Rudolph Fisher's The Conjure-Man Dies. It's subtitled "a mystery tale of dark Harlem," and Fisher wrote it in 1932. Fisher had two short stories collected in Alain Locke's The New Negro, which was essentially a who's who of Harlem Renaissance writers published in 1925. Fisher was also a trained physician, and the central character of The Conjure-Man Dies is John Archer, a physician who lives across the street from the conjure man's place of business.
The novel is notable in being the first known mystery novel written by an African American. The writing style is very engaging, although the central mystery of how the conjure man, N. Frimbo, is capable of seeing into the future rather accurately is not dealt with. Frimbo is a former African king, educated at Harvard, who collects sex glands, although where they all came from isn't very well explained. At least one comes from a fellow tribesman, an assistant who dies an untimely death. Frimbo explains to Archer the necessity of the removal of the sex glands for proper tribal ritual, but the several jars he keeps in his office seem a tad too numerous for the number of fellow tribesmen likely to live and die in NYC in the early 1930's.
The story is very much in the style of the parlor mystery, a bit of a twist on the locked-room plot: the suspects are for the most part assembled in the place of business when the doctor arrives on the scene, and he along with the police detective, Perry Dart, sort through the events and the evidence trying to figure out who did it.
My overall impression was that Fisher's novel is not nearly so well-crafted as his short stories, but it has several factors that make it an attractive text for study, not least of which is its status as the first example of African American mystery writing. Fisher perhaps doesn't resolve the mystery of Frimbo's prognostication because Fisher is reserving a bit of mystery that the doctor, who is very much a believer in reason, can't resolve. Therefore, you have a nice rational/irrational or science/magic dichotomy to explore. Further, there's the question of class. Against Dr. Archer and N. Frimbo's patrician bearing and speech you have the unpolished but professional Perry Dart and a cast of working class and low-life buffoons, one of whom, Bubber Brown, supplies a good deal of comic relief.
The novel was reprinted in 1992 by Ann Arbor Press, and I think that's the only version available, which could make it dicey for course adoptions, unless A-A Press still has it in print. I picked my copy up from abebooks.com.
The novel is notable in being the first known mystery novel written by an African American. The writing style is very engaging, although the central mystery of how the conjure man, N. Frimbo, is capable of seeing into the future rather accurately is not dealt with. Frimbo is a former African king, educated at Harvard, who collects sex glands, although where they all came from isn't very well explained. At least one comes from a fellow tribesman, an assistant who dies an untimely death. Frimbo explains to Archer the necessity of the removal of the sex glands for proper tribal ritual, but the several jars he keeps in his office seem a tad too numerous for the number of fellow tribesmen likely to live and die in NYC in the early 1930's.
The story is very much in the style of the parlor mystery, a bit of a twist on the locked-room plot: the suspects are for the most part assembled in the place of business when the doctor arrives on the scene, and he along with the police detective, Perry Dart, sort through the events and the evidence trying to figure out who did it.
My overall impression was that Fisher's novel is not nearly so well-crafted as his short stories, but it has several factors that make it an attractive text for study, not least of which is its status as the first example of African American mystery writing. Fisher perhaps doesn't resolve the mystery of Frimbo's prognostication because Fisher is reserving a bit of mystery that the doctor, who is very much a believer in reason, can't resolve. Therefore, you have a nice rational/irrational or science/magic dichotomy to explore. Further, there's the question of class. Against Dr. Archer and N. Frimbo's patrician bearing and speech you have the unpolished but professional Perry Dart and a cast of working class and low-life buffoons, one of whom, Bubber Brown, supplies a good deal of comic relief.
The novel was reprinted in 1992 by Ann Arbor Press, and I think that's the only version available, which could make it dicey for course adoptions, unless A-A Press still has it in print. I picked my copy up from abebooks.com.
06 September 2011
Brief impressions of the first weekend of college football.
Week 1 of the college football season brought a few sweet moments. Opening weekend is usually a wasteland of cupcakes being creamed, with embarrassing matchups like Penn State v. Indiana State, a non-division I -- or excuse me, a non FBS opponent. Honestly, scheduling FCS teams should count for automatic losses in the computer polls.
I didn't care much about the LSU v. Oregon game, given that neither of those teams should interest anyone who's even remotely human.
I was absolutely delighted to see the unranked University of South Florida knock of #16 Notre Dame (how'd they get that ranking?) in South Bend. There's a real possibility that ND can start the season 0-3, a plight that may keep them out of the BCS.
It was also very enjoyable to see the criminal program at Miami handed a defeat by Maryland, who are wearing perhaps the ugliest outfits I've ever seen outside of a Vegas show. They're so ugly they make the Oregon Ducks look traditional. However, I am nothing but glad that they sent the outlaws back to Miami 0-1.
Next week I may be more dour. I don't have high hopes for a Nittany Lion victory over the Alabama Crimson Bribe.
I didn't care much about the LSU v. Oregon game, given that neither of those teams should interest anyone who's even remotely human.
I was absolutely delighted to see the unranked University of South Florida knock of #16 Notre Dame (how'd they get that ranking?) in South Bend. There's a real possibility that ND can start the season 0-3, a plight that may keep them out of the BCS.
It was also very enjoyable to see the criminal program at Miami handed a defeat by Maryland, who are wearing perhaps the ugliest outfits I've ever seen outside of a Vegas show. They're so ugly they make the Oregon Ducks look traditional. However, I am nothing but glad that they sent the outlaws back to Miami 0-1.
Next week I may be more dour. I don't have high hopes for a Nittany Lion victory over the Alabama Crimson Bribe.
03 September 2011
Coaching.
I'm coaching my son's soccer team this year. It's the first time I've ever been head coach of anything my son's been involved in. I was assistant coach for a few years, sure, but that's very different. I ran a chess club in my son's school, but we didn't compete against other schools, so I was more a teacher than coach in that capacity. The only other time I was ever a coach for anything was in my first two years out of undergrad, when I was teaching in slower lower Delaware and I coached the middle school track and field team. You could tell it was a high pressure job, because my previous experience with track and field was that I had dated someone who ran track and cross country.
She didn't really like the way I coached, either.
However, I'm no longer 23 years old and I know more about soccer than I ever did about track and field, despite the fact that my own high school didn't have a soccer team until three years after I left and the first time outside of gym class I ever touched a soccer ball was to play intramural soccer in college. I do, however, understand how the game should be played. I can talk about defensive position and dribbling far more than I could ever tell someone about how to clear a hurdle.
Besides, it's recreational soccer.
The most difficult task I have is making the line-up to ensure equal playing time. I'm committed to giving the players equal time, no matter how much their skill levels differ, and playing them in every position so they can learn the game, unless of course they're absolutely averse to one position or another. For instance, I won't make everyone play keeper. I have a few players who only want to play in the backline. I have a few players who simply can't keep up with the running in midfield.
We're 3-2 or 4-2. I can't remember how many games we've played. Interestingly, I remember the losses.
It's odd coaching my son, because I'm very cognizant of playing favorites. My son plays baseball, and it's not a big shock to see all the coaches' kids playing the infield and playing all game, while my son (among others) is relegated to the outfield and spending a few innings on the bench.
Sure, I could play my best players all game, putting two very good travel players in forward positions and two others in midfield and reserve two others for backs, then shuffle the weaker players in as need be, but let me repeat...it's recreational soccer. The travel players get their time on their travel teams. Even my son, who is not a travel player, would play more often than not, because he's quick and he clears the ball out decisively when he plays back.
It's been great watching some of the kids develop from the first practice. We have a game today and we'll be missing four of our top players. I think it'll be good for the other players to have to step up.
We'll see what happens.
She didn't really like the way I coached, either.
However, I'm no longer 23 years old and I know more about soccer than I ever did about track and field, despite the fact that my own high school didn't have a soccer team until three years after I left and the first time outside of gym class I ever touched a soccer ball was to play intramural soccer in college. I do, however, understand how the game should be played. I can talk about defensive position and dribbling far more than I could ever tell someone about how to clear a hurdle.
Besides, it's recreational soccer.
The most difficult task I have is making the line-up to ensure equal playing time. I'm committed to giving the players equal time, no matter how much their skill levels differ, and playing them in every position so they can learn the game, unless of course they're absolutely averse to one position or another. For instance, I won't make everyone play keeper. I have a few players who only want to play in the backline. I have a few players who simply can't keep up with the running in midfield.
We're 3-2 or 4-2. I can't remember how many games we've played. Interestingly, I remember the losses.
It's odd coaching my son, because I'm very cognizant of playing favorites. My son plays baseball, and it's not a big shock to see all the coaches' kids playing the infield and playing all game, while my son (among others) is relegated to the outfield and spending a few innings on the bench.
Sure, I could play my best players all game, putting two very good travel players in forward positions and two others in midfield and reserve two others for backs, then shuffle the weaker players in as need be, but let me repeat...it's recreational soccer. The travel players get their time on their travel teams. Even my son, who is not a travel player, would play more often than not, because he's quick and he clears the ball out decisively when he plays back.
It's been great watching some of the kids develop from the first practice. We have a game today and we'll be missing four of our top players. I think it'll be good for the other players to have to step up.
We'll see what happens.
02 September 2011
I wonder how many people have used the title "Goodnight, Irene" for blog posts this week?
Last weekend was the hurricane weekend, and I figured in NEPA there wouldn't be much of a problem. Some rain, sure. Lots of it, I thought. So Saturday night we rented a movie from Redbox and watched it, or more accurately our son watched it, while I put our daughter to bed and fell asleep doing so and my wife fell asleep supposedly watching the movie. When my wife and I woke up in the middle of the night, the wind was up. I remembered to tie down the patio umbrella and shuffled off to bed.
Sunday when we woke up, we had no power. Not the biggest deal, as we've been there before, but something of an inconvenience. Maybe more so than you'd think.
No power at our country abode means no water after a few flushes of toilets and brushes of teeth -- forget a shower -- because we're on well water. No electricity means no well pump. So we were quickly following the "if it's yellow..." rule.
One of the trees that had contributed to the power outage happened to be lying across our driveway, so that was impassable, which wasn't actually a problem for us. In fact, we didn't fret much over it, since we couldn't get to our cars anyway. They were in the detached garage that has no entry point except the automatic garage doors.
It was all so brilliant.
One of the doors has a keyhole that supposedly would detach the door from the automatic opener chain, but I'm not very confident in that device given how much slack is in the line and the force I know it requires to detach the doors from the chains. Anyway, I couldn't find the key. I know it was in a little dish, the sort of thing you're supposed to use to put peanuts or cashews in if you're having friends over for bridge, or maybe the sort of thing you throw hardly used keys, safety pins, random buttons, and pennies into.
Couldn't find it. Still haven't found it.
So the cars were trapped. All rechargeable devices were losing power, but luckily we still have a land line. We called the power company who weren't overly impressed with the fact that one of their lines was stretched tight under one of the downed trees in our yard, or that we weren't only without power but also without water and with no means to go out and get some. When they did finally show up Sunday night, after we'd used the land line to call Domino's Pizza (all other pizza establishments nearby having lost power as well), they restored power without checking the line to our house.
It's too bad, really, since the ground had snapped on the line to our house. The resulting power surge fried anything we had connected to 220 or 240 volt plugs: clothes dryer, wall oven, and range. It also fried all of our clock radios, several power strips, and oddly enough nearly every lamp we had purchased at Ikea.
We didn't find out these items were fried until an electrician came out on Monday to fix the line, and I won't go into the details of how the power company claimed they were killing the line and how the electrician found out the line wasn't dead at all, but needless to say even though power has been restored to the house, without an oven or a clothes dryer, you're still not in great shape. Also the refrigerator appears to have been damaged by the surge: it's cooling off the food that remains, but its exterior is extremely hot to the touch.
The garage, meanwhile, remains without power, since a tree had actually taken out the electrical mast. However, the electrician hooked a generator up to the panel long enough for us to operate the garage doors and get the cars out. I also took the opportunity to release a door from the chain so we can access the garage until electricity is restored. Another friend brought over a gas powered chainsaw (mine is electric), and it didn't take long to clear the driveway.
In one year I'm going to have plenty of firewood.
Sunday when we woke up, we had no power. Not the biggest deal, as we've been there before, but something of an inconvenience. Maybe more so than you'd think.
No power at our country abode means no water after a few flushes of toilets and brushes of teeth -- forget a shower -- because we're on well water. No electricity means no well pump. So we were quickly following the "if it's yellow..." rule.
One of the trees that had contributed to the power outage happened to be lying across our driveway, so that was impassable, which wasn't actually a problem for us. In fact, we didn't fret much over it, since we couldn't get to our cars anyway. They were in the detached garage that has no entry point except the automatic garage doors.
It was all so brilliant.
One of the doors has a keyhole that supposedly would detach the door from the automatic opener chain, but I'm not very confident in that device given how much slack is in the line and the force I know it requires to detach the doors from the chains. Anyway, I couldn't find the key. I know it was in a little dish, the sort of thing you're supposed to use to put peanuts or cashews in if you're having friends over for bridge, or maybe the sort of thing you throw hardly used keys, safety pins, random buttons, and pennies into.
Couldn't find it. Still haven't found it.
So the cars were trapped. All rechargeable devices were losing power, but luckily we still have a land line. We called the power company who weren't overly impressed with the fact that one of their lines was stretched tight under one of the downed trees in our yard, or that we weren't only without power but also without water and with no means to go out and get some. When they did finally show up Sunday night, after we'd used the land line to call Domino's Pizza (all other pizza establishments nearby having lost power as well), they restored power without checking the line to our house.
It's too bad, really, since the ground had snapped on the line to our house. The resulting power surge fried anything we had connected to 220 or 240 volt plugs: clothes dryer, wall oven, and range. It also fried all of our clock radios, several power strips, and oddly enough nearly every lamp we had purchased at Ikea.
We didn't find out these items were fried until an electrician came out on Monday to fix the line, and I won't go into the details of how the power company claimed they were killing the line and how the electrician found out the line wasn't dead at all, but needless to say even though power has been restored to the house, without an oven or a clothes dryer, you're still not in great shape. Also the refrigerator appears to have been damaged by the surge: it's cooling off the food that remains, but its exterior is extremely hot to the touch.
The garage, meanwhile, remains without power, since a tree had actually taken out the electrical mast. However, the electrician hooked a generator up to the panel long enough for us to operate the garage doors and get the cars out. I also took the opportunity to release a door from the chain so we can access the garage until electricity is restored. Another friend brought over a gas powered chainsaw (mine is electric), and it didn't take long to clear the driveway.
In one year I'm going to have plenty of firewood.
01 September 2011
A new semester brings new challenges.
I have a fairly big semester in front of me. I'm teaching a new class on modern and contemporary poetry. After a few preliminaries with background information on poetry and the modern era and some tales about steel cages in Pisa and epic poems about industrial cities in New Jersey, as well as a scheduled trip to the library next week, we will be ready to launch into Walt Whitman, the sturdy first poet of any anthology of modern poetry.
I love Whitman's encyclopedic lists, his complete commitment to inclusiveness. Of course, we follow him directly with Dickinson, who couldn't be more different in style. Two very different souls throwing open the gates of modern poetry.
Let's see what happens.
I love Whitman's encyclopedic lists, his complete commitment to inclusiveness. Of course, we follow him directly with Dickinson, who couldn't be more different in style. Two very different souls throwing open the gates of modern poetry.
Let's see what happens.
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