The New Remembrance

Pink Pig Story

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 02:58:00 +0000

Fresh snow on the ground and a sunny day, warm enough to get the runoff from the roof hitting the deck and splashing you when you open the door. Time to get the cross country skis out. We convince the two girls with some effort to come along with us to Carter Hill Orchards. Michael is tired from a night of snowboarding with his pals and a day at work yesterday at the Tilton Farmer's Market, so he stays home. And he misses all the fun. We are driving the back road where Pine Hill Road loops one way to French's Farm and the other way down into Contoocook. We come around the bend and slow at the sight of a truck stopped in the middle of the road, two men standing at both ends of the truck, and a large pink pig with big ears wandering the road and circling. We pull around the loop and Susan says, stop and help them. Be a good neighbor.
So I get out and the two guys are from Hillsboro, dressed in old jeans and flannel shirts and road crew jackets and knit caps. One is about six five and the other is about my height. The tall guy is the owner of the pig. I can't believe this is happening to me, he is saying. By gosh something like this has never happened to me. That pig just jumped clear out of the back of the trailah. I never would have believed it.
I don't know whetheh I'd believe it if you'd a told me, says his friend.
They are waiting for a friend, Gamiel who is bringing a rope with him. The pig is very tame, is hanging around the truck. A lady runs by, a jogger, she shoos the pig as she runs by. Then Gamiel comes up behind us in another truck. He is French or Italian or possibly Arab, with a coil of greasy, knotted rope he is trying to untangle as he walks over. The men are overjoyed. Charlie, here take the rope says Gamiel, unknotting several feet of it and throwing it at the tall man. The two friends begin to stalk the pig. We'll tie 'is legs if we haffta, Charlie. Know what I mean? says the short man. Charlie aproaches the pig slowly and lifts a coil of rope and tosses it hesitantly. The pig catches it on her snout and decides it is not right for her and snuffs it off. Just throw it Charlie, says Gamiel. She wants to be caught. You haffta not be so nice.
I don't know if I like this, says Charlie. I'm not liking this one little bit. Then he tries again and this time he's got her head in the loop. The pig gives a mighty grunt and then she is tackled by Charlie into the snowbank. She is screaming bloody murder. At this point I go around the truck. The pig is back up and the two men are trying to restrain her with the rope by choking her. You'll kill her that way, I say. I grab the pig by the two front legs and lift. Charlie gets the idea and lifts the two back legs and she flips onto her back and we carry her around the truck down to the back of the trailer. Charlie loses his grip and I pat the pig's neck and loosen the rope from around her bruised skin. We'll get you home, buddy, I say. She relaxes on her side in the snow as we wait for Gamiel and Charlie's friend to lower the trailer's gate. Then we lift her onto the gate and she slides in, grunting with delight to be back with the other pig, which is her sister. Let's go I say to Susan. Good luck guys.
You left the door open, say the girls. It was cold.

We're driving through Hopkinton to get to the orchard. I'm stinking the car up wth the smell of the pig on my sweat pants. When we get to the orchard I get out of the car, what a beautiful sight of the mountains. And the snow is perfect, not too wet. The skis glide in the tracks and the girls are not too bad for the first time out on the skis they got for Christmas.

Martin Luther King Day 2012

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:54:00 +0000

Today is passing. You could make a list and tally all the things accomplished and all the things yet to do. Sum it up with an aphorism about Sisyphus and call it in. Or you can step back and assume the perspective of the distant observer and call it honorable and grand that on such a day it was decreed to honor such a man. And what is diversity that it should assume such an honorable position in our pantheon of national virtues? Because it's not enough any more to say that all men are created equal. We must acknowledge the evolution of this judgement and now decree all differences allowed to prosper in their own time and manner. Because diversity is the new unity. Some day perhaps the color of one's skin will be the lowest, menial ranking of divergent traits, nor will it correlate at all with the diversity of spirit, diversity of conscience and diversity of heart that befall us.

Bah Humbug said the Gingrich

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:59:00 +0000

Right now politics leaves me unexcited. There is no fire in the race. The Republican primary is interesting as spectacle, not serious politics. The people who are weighing their votes tonight in New Hampshire seem sadly deluded, and the partisanship, a mirror image of the fervor I admittedly felt the last electoral cycle, almost infantile. With all the hope Obama generated, he has been impotent to move the debate forward on any issue that matters to me. At great cost and in the face of undying ideological opposition he managed to pass his health care reform. But the Obama health care package, as far as I'm concerned, is papering over the fact that our health care costs are sky high because we are the most unhealthy people on the planet. Until our lifestyle changes, nothing else matters. At least Obama might be cognizant of that. These Republicans are too tied to barbecue and white bread to move the dial on anything of substance. Except maybe Ron Paul who wants to take us back to the days before the Civil War, when slaves were raising all our food not mechanized agriculture. But I don't know, that seems a little scary to me.
So Obama does not generate much loyalty. His world view resonates with the college educated because it is generally rational and based on science and accepted social theories and not just on the works of Ayn Rand or the Spanish Inquisition. But I think his failure to overcome the Washington gridlock and his caving in on climate change policy have left me feeling that his feet are made of clay. I think David Brooks is right in his analysis in his latest NY Times column that the root problem Obama faces is that although Americans may agree with his premises and even his instincts, they generally are distrustful of the ability of government to deliver. And Washington's gridlock is a key component of that distrust. Hence the appeal of Ron Paul, who knows one true thing and sticks to it like a hedgehog, namely that the government must shrink. I agree with his premises but don't trust his single-minded reliance on the conspiratorial lens through which he views the world. However, Paul, not Romney, is the man of the hour, in my opinion, whatever the results tonight. Even if he doesn't win the nomination he will heavily influence the policy positions of both parties come November and beyond.

This Will Cheer You Up

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 02:12:00 +0000

This is the time of year for lists, and so here are my best and worst possible outcomes for 2012. We'll start with the worst:

Top 5 Worst Scenarios for 2012

1. The Mayans are right. Well actually not the Mayans. According to pessimists, 2012 marks the end of existence as predicted in the cycle of Mayan astronomy known as the Long Count calendar. This prognostication has been the source of some controversy, with some experts saying that it was never intended by Mayan astronomers to be the end of the Universe, but rather the transition to a new epoch. In any case, December 21, the winter solstice of this year, will be a busy time in the Guatemalan and southern Mexican highlands, as tourists of a ghoulish ilk look to be at the ground zero of a catastrophe which may end all catastrophes. Or not.
2. President Ron Paul. You heard me right. We haven't had a genuine populist uprising in this country in a long time, (the Bushes were faux populists and Reagan was a Hollywood artifice), and if it's going to happen, Ron Paul will be the man to lead it. However, what kind of world would a Ron Paul presidency tip us into? An isolationist, inward-looking America, at just the time Europe is sinking into a long depression, China is gobbling up Africa and Latin America, and the wolves of the Islamic world are circling as ever. Sounds like 1932 minus Franklin D. Roosevelt.
3. Nuclear Iran. This is potentially less scary than the pre-emptive strike to avoid nuclear Iran. But a nuclear-armed, fanatically led Iran has got to frighten the pants off anybody who thinks about it. Lots of people will not want to. As in the days of the Cold War, if Iran succeeds in arming itself with a nuclear weapon, and this is looking increasingly likely, we will be counting on the Iranian leadership's attachments to common sense and love of life to spare the world an unprecedented body count.
4. The Russian Phobos ground probe lands on my house or your house. This is a Russian satellite weighing almost 19 tons and carrying a load of toxic rocket fuel and radioactive cobalt-57. It was intended to land on one of the moons of Mars, but after difficulties at launch, the Russian space authorities are now saying it will crash back down somewhere on Earth in the first two weeks of the new year. How nice. Although they say it will be impossible to predict where it will make its re-entry, it is likely to be somewhere in the northern latitudes where most of the planet's population resides. How charming.
5. Snooki wins Academy Award. Okay, this is my high minded stand-in for everything that's wrong with popular culture. I don't know Snooki from a hole in the ground. But you have to admit that would be a bad scenario.

Next up 5 Best Scenarios for 2012...

Out of Condition

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 03:01:00 +0000

I look for heavy bag with stand and there it is on Craig's List. I call the number and the guy says yeah. He's got it. Somebody talking in the background and he's trying to carry on two conversations at once, but yeah, yeah. I say I'd like to have a look, what kind of shape is it in? You'll love it. Mint, he says. Mint. He's on Somerville Street. Just come down the Goffstown Road and cross onto the Amoskeag.
So I drive down. I've got the day off. Why not?
It's a beautiful day, for the first time I see the falls under the bridge the way it might have looked during the days of the salmon runs when the Abenaki called it the place to be. Then I'm going down past the stadium and the houses are looking deserted, vacant. The people on the street have that hunted look, like vermin, that you get when you're down on your luck and you've been living on concrete for too long. I turn the corner. There's a police cruiser parked, the cop looking into nowhere and the cars parked along the street like they haven't moved in a couple of decades. I park and call the number again. He'll be down in a minute, he's getting his shoes on. I wait, leaning against the car. It's an unusually mild winter day. The street is empty, and then he bangs out the door. He's about thirty, large, with the kind of face that would fit a truck driver or jail guard. But he's nervous, squinting in the sun, as he directs me around the corner and down an alley into the back of the house.
There are other cars parked in the lot. It must be a rental. He comes around and shakes my hand in a strong man's grip. He walks over to the walk out and takes the lock off the door handle. I follow him down the stairs into the cellar. It's dark, I need to duck to avoid the lagging and ductwork. His movements are quick, angry, a man whose got many things to do and little time to do them. I'm thinking he could drop me right here with a quick sucker punch and nobody would ever find me. Then he's pulling pipes and things out of the dust. Here it is. It even has this big chain, he says. I want to take a look in the light, I say. I take one of the poles and he follows me, handing the bag out into the daylight.
The leather has tears along the seams. The chain is all rusted. He's back in the dirt pulling out the speed bag and some other pipe legs. I'll stop you right there, I say. Save your time. What the fuck, he says. What kind of moron are you what do you expect for 100 bucks? He's ranting as he exits the cellar into the daylight. I can see spittle flying out of his mouth. I look him in the eye to see how crazy he really is and he smiles a sick grin. Is he trying to scare me or what?
You said it was mint, I say. Mint. I enunciate.
What do you fucking expect on Craig's List, what kind of a fucking moron are you? You're wasting my fucking time. I'm sorry I made a mistake, I say.
You people make me sick, here it is Christmas and I'm trying to get some money together and... Listen, it was nice talking to you, I say, and begin to walk back to the car.
Fuck yourself you fucking moron. You wasted my time, he's yelling at me as I drive away.
Then the cell phone rings, I pull over thinking maybe it's important. I've got a text message. I get out of the car and breathe deep.
View Now:
Ur a fuckn idiot.thanx 4 waisting my fukn time u fukn moron.if u wanted something brand new u shudv gone 2 a fukn store. thanx again 4 waisting my fukn time.
I look around and put the phone back in my pocket. A cold wind rips along the alley and there's a guy in a doorway looking at me. Then I'm back in the car, and stop to pull out behind a Corolla and a girl with brown eyes and brown hair. No Farms No Food bumper sticker. The Amoskeag bridge and the river are just a few blocks ahead.

Time to Shut Up And Do Things Differently

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 02:52:00 +0000

Tis the season, but it's late for me. It might not happen this year. Maybe it's that there's no snow on the ground. By now usually I'm singing along to Alvin and the Chipmunks doing Jingle Bells and Aretha Franklin singing Silent Night, but not this year. Is it just me? The quiet spot hasn't hit me yet when all the world is chilling and waiting. I'm waiting to find that place within, to make room for the transcendent in the busyness of my life. Like Father Thom said in his sermon, to learn from Mary and her ability to open herself to possibility. I'm still in the mode of finding the right gifts, the ones that will really make a difference, send life reeling in a different direction. Isn't that what we all want, to make an impact on another life, to show that we get it with that knockout punch gift wrapped and all. I so clearly don't. And yet, life goes on around and despite me sometimes and it's just the way it was meant to be. My children surprise me with their intelligence and humanity. Where did they get it? It seems to happen when you're not looking. It's the grace of God, the spirit that is always descending when we most need it, always and forever. The gift that counts is knowing when to just shut up and listen.

The House Bustling with Activity, but Gutted

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 01:39:00 +0000

Here's a little taste of Latitudes, the story of Will Kogan's youth and teenage years. I wanted to tell a coming of age tale that ends with the realization that life is largely shaped by one's self-perception. Most teenagers see themselves as in the grip of larger forces than they can understand, at least that's the sense I get from my job as a teacher. Becoming a functioning adult is getting that first inkling that the direction you take your life in is up to you. Mostly the rest depends on getting better at steering.

Will played on the tiled living room floor and ran through the kitchen, terrorizing the maid and the two sisters with a plastic shield and sword, a roundtable knight from the book about Arthur and Guinevere. Another book about Greek mythology had pictures of the Medusa with her snaky hair. But the backyard and the swaying sea of dried elephant grass beyond the fence, the ominous and mysterious tower like the ramparts of some castle, formed some pole star of fatal attraction. He had a plastic yellow car, which you could pedal. He liked to position it at the top of the hill and careen down it, pedals screaming, bouncing off the rocks and rutted earth towards the region of myth.

Mother and a female friend stood at some distance.

"Watch me," he yelled, and flew down the hill, landing at the bottom in one piece, dragging the car back from the edge of the fence.

"Bravo," her friend said and clapped. Mother turned with a vague sort of pride, and they walked back to the house across the paving stones.

Will played by himself, exploring the territory around the house. The street was forbidden and the fence was too high to scale. The ants, however, could get around any of these restrictions with their small size and formidable will. He admired them. You could attract one with a fingertip, have it climb on, carry it a distance away and set it down on a blade of grass and it would resolutely set off down the blade of grass and back in the direction of its original destination. They seemed to be attending to important matters, and the hole they disappeared down sucked him down along with them. Will forgot himself. Hours later, in the rapidly descending tropical twilight, the maid's voice called him home. Without pleasure he complied, returning to his childhood and assuming the role of the son in that strange, lonely house, bustling with activity, but gutted, caving in on itself out of some unknown physical force in its routines and orbits.

(photo by Joe Jusko deviantart.com)

Blogging in the Blood

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 02:20:00 +0000

Sorry, I've been too long away. At first I thought I'd give it a couple of months to finish up a writing project that took me through the summer. But now that's done, and I need to get back to my blog. I've updated the look and am ready to ramble. I've missed out on a busy few months: Wall Street was occupied, the Republican candidates have been competing to see who can be the biggest ignoramus out there, the US soccer team has a new German coach, Obama has taken to the heartland to defend the middle class and the legacy of Teddy Roosevelt, and celebrities everywhere continue to make a mockery of themselves.

At home, I turned 51 and finished a second draft of a novel. It's called Latitudes - A Story of Coming Home, and I'll probably excerpt some of it here in the next few months.

The kids are growing up fast. School actually seems to have a salutary affect on them. They complain but then talk about their classes and projects and want to show off what they've learned. It's not perfect, but their public school education seems to be doing its job. At my school, the kids get nicer every year. As a language teacher i get to channel their social energy and instinct for fun. It's all about communication in the classroom.

A good book I read recently was Moonwalking with Einstein by Jonathan Foer. It's about a lot of things, but mainly memory, the way it functions neurologically, collectively and individually. The part i found most memorable was the description of how books were originally written and read as an aid to oral memorization and only slowly, with the advent of the printing press and the need to read widely and quickly, did books become seen as a repository of our collective knowledge, an offloading of our memory banks into texts. The process is accelerating today with the proliferation of blogs and digital photography and with the storage capacity of the Internet and rapidly moving advances integrating our nervous systems with computer controls, the day is moving quickly closer when we will theoretically be able to remember everything and have access instantly to the collective information of the entire world. Our notions of what it means to be human will have to change. But something tells me this brave new world will not materialize in quite such a promising way.

Just Do It

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Sun, 22 May 2011 13:50:00 +0000

Just do it. I love that phrase, a cultural icon taken from the advertising world. It's become short hand for an attitude towards the world, not necessarily new, that used to be summed up as "can do." As any child knows from playing, the key is to trust in yourself and in your powers to make the leap, and come down on the right side of the equation.

In the master's program I am doing, the textbook on educational reform references this with the maxim that "the effectiveness of educational reform is inversely proportional to the length and polish of the reform document." The key is that people are motivated through the heart, not the mind, and effective action leads by example.

In the world of geopolitics, and I'm taking a big leap here, (but what's a blog for?) I think this is what Obama has done in regards to coming down on the side of explicitly stating the lines of a settlement between Palestine and Israel. Although he has ruffled feathers in Israel by seeming to preempt the Israeli negotiating position, what he has done is try to unstick the peace process and move it forward. I think he has done Israel a tremendous favor at this precarious moment, and that's what friends are for.

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Sun, 15 May 2011 15:38:00 +0000

Another Emerson quote: "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by statesmen, philosophers and divines." Here are two chickens, seeming to follow Emerson's admonition not to live inside the fence of preconceived limits, especially set up by someone as foolish as me. The riches of the compost pile are too much of a temptation. On the upside is the eggs they lay: large, deep yellow yolks, tastier and more nutritious than anything you'll find in a supermarket. The free range life suits them well. If only they'd stay out of the recently planted pea beds.

Here's the problem. The cat is in charge, and obviously has left the gate to the chicken yard wide open. We need to tighten up the process here.

May Day and Night

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Thu, 05 May 2011 01:17:00 +0000

At home the season turns with lambs and tulips. Abroad, blood-soaked earth and rotting corpses. John Paul II is beatified on the day Osama Bin Laden is hunted down. The whirlwind seems to be gaining strength, but the beauty of the spring makes me feel that there is a sweetness in the wind also.
But I don't see what there is to celebrate in the death of Bin Laden. The ideas he spawned are still out there, ready for the next hate-filled maniac to pick up and run with. The solace we have, the sense of closure, is just an illusion. Violence is never done, and this act of violence will only add oxygen to the flames of vengeance simmering in the hearts of the millions of his followers and admirers. On the other hand, I don't get anyone who condemns the way the US Navy Seals took him out either. What other end could there be for a man who lived not by the sword but by a mantra of mass murder and the use of suffering and destruction on an unprecedented scale to further his political goals?
We live in a dark world. The news of Bin Laden's death, and the photographs that inevitably will come, heighten the disconnect between the placid surface of things and the underlying hell that we skirt around. Thank God for the men and women who choose a life of service, ready to carry out mayhem in our name. I think Obama is right not to release the photographs. Let the story die as quickly as the flight of helicopters that carried Team Six into battle.

Thought is Devout

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 12:16:00 +0000

It's Good Friday, and Earth Day. A quarter of Americans believe Barack Obama is an alien. The rate of natural disasters due to global warming has increased 400 percent. Obviously we are not doing well, afflicted, you could say.

Here is some sorely needed balm for our afflictions, some home-grown wisdom from the most eminent of American thinkers, Ralph Waldo Emerson. It's about prayer, about the ties between the seemingly disparate and divided, about redemption, and it is a discouragement to the proud who think they have all the answers. Emerson was a Platonist in that he regarded the ultimate ground of reality to be the world of ideas, and he was way ahead of his time in identifying the ways science is ultimately about faith.

"The problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty is solved by the redemption of the soul. The ruin or the blank that we see when we look at nature, is in our own eye. The axis of vision is not coincident with the axis of things, and so they appear not transparent but opaque. The reason why the world lacks unity and lies broken and in heaps, is because man is disunited with himself. He cannot be a naturalist until he satisfies all the demands of the spirit. Love is as much its demand as perception. Indeed, neither can be perfect without the other. In the uttermost meaning of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought. Deep calls unto deep. But in actual life, the marriage is not celebrated. There are innocent men who worship God after the tradition of their fathers, but their sense of duty has not yet extended to the use of all their faculties. And there are patient naturalists, but they freeze their subject under the wintry light of their understanding. Is not prayer also a study of truth - a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite?"

A World of Hurt

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:30:00 +0000

I've got other things I should be doing. There are a couple of lambs who need some bottle help to survive, about an acre of vegetable beds to dig. I'm on my spring vacation. I should be sleeping, by all rights, but Michael is off this morning to D.C. with the school trip and was up at 3:00 am banging around like a little elephant downstairs. Did I say elephant? I'm sorry Michael. No offense.
The people in charge are an insult to elephants, actually. Elephants would never do to their own kind what the current batch of legislators in the NH House want to do to this state. Taking lowball revenue estimates, adding cuts to tobacco taxes, gambling taxes and others, they are now proposing a budget half a billion dollars below the governor's already austere plans. The idea, in essence is to take us back to the 1950s by way of meeting a ginned up so-called fiscal emergency. Gone is the pretense that this is about job creation or economic recovery, or even living within our means, although that is the line they will continue to hammer to the uninformed. This is all about unraveling a social fabric that was largely built, ironically, by Republicans.
Democrats have only been in the majority for four years in New Hampshire in the last 150, and this is the reaction we get. Twenty five percent cut out of the state's Department of Health and Human Services for poor families, children, disabled and mental health services. When asked about what kind of burden this would place on towns, who are the social safety net of last reserve and always have been, this is what Kenneth Wyler, R-Kingston, chair of the House Finance Committee and chief architect of the House budget had to say. "You just stop taking in the door everybody who is a little worried." (NH Business Review, April 8, 2011)
Talk about setting them on an ice floe. It brings to mind the crucial difference between Republicans and Democrats voiced in 1984 by Mario Cuomo, and I believe it is worth repeating, in the interests of finding our long repressed Democratic gonads. Yes, Barack, I'm talking to you. What's the difference between Democrats and Republicans?

"It's an old story. It's as old as our history. The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans -- The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail. "The strong" -- "The strong," they tell us, "will inherit the land."

We Democrats believe in something else. We Democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt lifted himself from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees -- wagon train after wagon train -- to new frontiers of education, housing, peace; the whole family aboard, constantly reaching out to extend and enlarge that family; lifting them up into the wagon on the way; blacks and Hispanics, and people of every ethnic group, and native Americans -- all those struggling to build their families and claim some small share of America. For nearly 50 years we carried them all to new levels of comfort, and security, and dignity, even affluence. And remember this, some of us in this room today are here only because this nation had that kind of confidence. And it would be wrong to forget that."

The foolhardy elements in the Republican budget are many and noteworthy and have sparked wide-spread outrage. even among business leaders, although falling on mostly deaf ears, it seems. But here is one example - cuts to vocational and training centers across the state, which concerns me in my workplace, not that I teach those proud, unruly kids who ride the bus to learn auto tech and cooking and drafting and hair styling. I don't, but I see them in the halls. Those kids in their Carharts and work boots and the faces of a long distant agricultural heritage, they don't take Spanish, they don't take AP History. But I can recognize a people when I see them and that's who they are. They are New Hampshire, and cutting the vocational programs is cannibalism, preying on our own children. Not even elephants.

It's Here At Last

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 02:24:00 +0000

The spring finally seems to have gotten the best of the snow. It's all melting just in time as we are down to the last of the wood. The first crocuses are coming up, and the first lambs are being born. But not all is well, the lambs are weak, and the first two, to Snow White's daughter, died. Our dominant ewe, Bully, seems to be preventing the others from getting enough grain. The animal kingdom's cruelty is made worse by the stupidity of its subjects. Kind of like the Republicans. The prefrontal cortex is not their strong suit, consequently they don't see complexity and sometimes they make bad mistakes. For instance, when I lock Bully in the barn to let the others feed, they wander over to see what's wrong with their fearless leader instead of eating what's in the grain bins. Easily manipulated by the elites. Oh, well. We may have to balance things out by culling the older ewes including Bully. But not for now; we'll let November be the cruelest month, at least on the farm. Don't get me started on events at the state capital. The cull there will come in 2012, hopefully.

Today I finished manuring the blueberries and apple trees with chicken poop. And I made up a mix of bone meal and wood ash as a soil amendment for the apple trees. I planted out a few trees from the nursery to fill in some gaps, leaving last year's grafts for another year in the bed. I took out some rotten planks from the picnic table to be replaced soon, and oh, yeah, and I put up another trampoline we bought at Dicks for $170. We are set for warmer weather. And my old muscles are sore. But so much happier. Never mind the bad news for now. Spring is here and the sap is running.
PNYZTYTHFY2Z

(Photo by Michael Caplan)

Live, Freeze and Die

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 02:16:00 +0000

Media attention, fickle as ever, has moved on from the labor movement's struggles in Wisconsin, but the battle has flared here in New Hampshire. The state's legislature, dominated by newly elected Republicans, has made its impact so far with ideologically driven bills so extreme that cooler heads in the state Republican party have managed to squelch most of them before they even get out of committee. Proposals to do away with oppressive state mandated kindergarten, and to remove New Hampshire from the rolls of the regional green house gas initiative that is driving such socialist boondoggles as weatherization for low income housing, among other energy saving measures, have sounded the opening salvos of this wacky Republican agenda. But the one that got away and may come back to haunt the GOP is the amendment tacked on the budget last week without any public hearing or comment, known as the Kurk amendment for its sponsor, Republican state senator Neal Kurk, who is all set now to join the Glenn Beck Hall of Fame along with Scott Warner of Wisconsin. This bill, if passed, will effectively strip public sector employees of any job security and respect by mandating that in the event of failed negotiations, all teachers, policemen, firefighters and other state workers in New Hampshire would lose any due process rights and become "at will" employees, subject to dismissal without cause, stripping of pension and health benefit packages at the employers discretion, barred from collective bargaining, and basically relegated to serf status. Very few fair minded observers could say with a straight face that such a move would have the effect of leveling the negotiating playing field for municipalities, school boards and the state. As it stands now for teachers, when contract negotiations fail, which they often do, particularly because the final say is given to the towns at public meetings to vote in favor of or against the contract, we continue to operate under the protection of the previous contract. This bill would do away with that common sense solution and return us to 19th century working conditions, which, as we are resembling the Gilded Age more and more in our income disparities and bare-fanged, law of the jungle approach to solving social problems, makes some kind of barbaric sense.
Long gone are the days when the "New Hampshire advantage" meant people pulling together to solve budget shortfalls at the state level. This draconian solution of punishing entire segments of the working population with long term harm has all the earmarks of the nationwide robber baron ideology funded and sponsored by the likes of the Koch brothers and others of their ilk.
(Photo - Women textile workers arrested by policemen for picketing the Jackson mill in Nashua, NH, Sept. 7, 1934)

A Pause to Honor the Dead

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 13:14:00 +0000

I hate to fall prey to the ridicule of more enlightened sorts, but I can't help but feel that the Earth is alive and, well, taking action. You can only judge by the lights of your own experience, of course, but how many near misses before we get her hint? An earthquake that shifts the length of day and wobbles us on our axis and a tsunami that kills thousands and nearly causes a meltdown of Chernobyl proportions, poisoning the Land of the Rising Sun for generations, just might be the cause for some reflection on everyone's part.
This is a moment when concerns for our planetary health have come to the fore. Many would have us believe that nuclear power is integral to our energy future, but there are other choices. Renewable energy: the wind, sun, geothermal and hydro, can provide all of our needs with existing technologies and the necessary upgrades to our grid infrastructure.
Here is a video from the Post Carbon Institute that puts it all into perspective. The take-away is that we will have to live within our means and plan for the future in an intelligent, (ie equitable) manner. As a people, I think we get that, whether Republican or Democrat in basic political disposition.

It will be a struggle, but justice will prevail in the end. It always does. Here is another video I showed Friday in my honors Spanish class. It is based on Neruda's epic poem Nuevo Canto a Stalingrado, in honor of the Russian heroes of the battle of Stalingrad and the Allied forces and partisans who rose to the rescue of civilization.

On Wisconsin

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 13:49:00 +0000

In the wake of the Ash Wednesday ambush on working families, Wisconsin progressives fight on, with a large rally today bringing in farmers from the western part of the state who see the link between teacher's unions and rural economic health. Energized activists also promise a political pushback against the bill outlawing collective bargaining rights for public employees, starting with an election April 5th, where they vow to replace a self-identified conservative judicial activist in favor of an independent on the state's supreme court. With these initial steps, progresssives are harking back to the salad days of Wisconsin Gov. "Fighting Bob" LaFollette and his nation-wide Progressive Party, with its alliance of labor and farmer movements, as they swing into action to mobilize an energized Democratic base.
Many analysts see the Walker bill as a long term boost for those who prefer not to balance the nation's deficits on the backs of working people. They see polls showing Americans in favor of collective bargaining rights, and in favor of teachers, as a sign that the bill may be an example of over-reaching on behalf of right wing ideology that will ultimately come back to haunt the Republicans in the next electoral cycle.

In Like a Lion

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 20:41:00 +0000

March swept in on clouds of winter storms and sub-zro weather. But winter seems to finally be loosening its grip. Here are some pix of late winter on the farm!

On another tack, some notes on the current turmoil re teacher's unions in Wisconsin. I loved Jon Stewart's sketches contrasting the treatment of corporate excess on outlets like Fox and the argument that state spending needs to be balanced by reining in teacher's salaries and benefits. The jester plays such an important role, speaking truth to power and reminding us of the foibles of the proud. Here is Stewart:

The Daily Show - Crisis in Dairyland - For Richer and Poorer - Teachers and Wall Street
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Where's the Revolution? Who are the Class Warriors?

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 02:25:00 +0000

Reading the news it's uncanny to see how the winds of change wash back up on these shores. We create a social network, and despots fall. Future historians will have a job trying to untangle the weave of influence that is washing across the Middle East. But let's say for argument's sake that the rise of Facebook, coinciding with the Obama presidency, has given a de facto impetus to democratic impulses across the globe in acknowledgement of the continuing power and sway of the American Revolution. It is ironic and somehow fitting that at the same time things are heating up back home, but in reverse, as lawmakers in Wisconsin of the capital D persuasion seek to forestall a democratically elected legislature from implementing reactionary policies that would curtail basic freedoms, some of the bulwarks of American democracy. I'm talking about the hard won rights to collective bargaining that took working men and women many years of struggle to gain, sometimes in the face of oppressive power that would make Gaddafi grimace in recognition. That's where we are in today's America, looking through a glass darkly as state legislatures try to dig out from the wreckage created by a financial corporate elite, nay oligarchy, by reneging on promises to humble teachers and public sector workers, and attempting to gut the remaining power of organized labor. As a public school teacher, I can tell you that the protection of a union, in ensuring all kinds of workplace equity, not just fair wages, is an essential if not the most crucial factor making this a tenable career. Anybody who would believe that the people who negotiate with teacher's unions have a vested interest in caving in to union demands because they are elected officials, as David Brooks states in his most recent NY Times opinion piece, is not living in my world. On the contrary, teachers make handy scapegoats for all sorts of ills, and are left holding the bag because the rest of the working class has already been gutted.
Republicans like to point to the work of community organizers and union organizers and wave their finger and accuse them of inciting hatred and class warfare as if there were no such thing as class and therefore no reason for organizing beyond the evil attempts at world domination of Marx and Lenin. But with Scott Walker of Wisconsin, it couldn't be clearer that the power grab has already happened and we're just now waking up.

Shout Out For A Little Sunshine

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 14:04:00 +0000

I saw a movie last night which inspired me to write something after a brief hiatus. There was a lot going on in the world, with seismic shifts in the Middle East and super storms and digging out from some of the karmic wreckage which occasionally accumulates in any life, I suppose. But Little Miss Sunshine, a 2006 gem which won an Oscar for best original screenplay that year, lifted me out of the funk I was in. It's about a family, the Hoovers, on a road trip to California to enter their daughter in a beauty pageant. The family is a take on average dysfunctional America, with a father who has sunk the family's savings into a self-improvement scam he has authored and fervently believes in, a teenage son alienated from humanity, a gay uncle who has just failed at suicide, and a crude, politically incorrect grandfather who snorts heroin. It's a satire on a hyper-competitive society which warps children, adults and families, and it made me laugh in self-recognition. That's the beauty of comedy when it's serious and well-intentioned in that it can treat of close-to-home truths that can be really so painful. It can also strike hammer blows for transcendent truths and this movie does, coming down emphatically on the side of genuine being, as opposed to the artifice of achievement that characterizes our neurotic culture.

A bit of honest disclosure would reveal that just hours before watching the movie, Susan and I had had a long conversation about the appropriate role of youth sports in our family life, with me taking the position that sports teach truths about winning and losing and learning to take a little of both, and Susan coming down on the side of "there's too much competition and not enough time for genuine personal growth in kid's lives." And even though she is undoubtedly right, we are way too competitive and it's way too much about achievements at earlier and earlier ages, I really do believe that in moderation, athletic competition can be a great educational benefit. I guess the key is the word moderation, which when lacking can give horrible results. And in general, moderation is passe. Little Miss Sunshine is about growing and living and coping as a moderate being in an immoderate world. If that describes you and your life, I recommend this movie. Also worth it are great performances by Steve Carrell of The Office as the gay uncle, and Alan Arkin as the crackpot grandfather.

Man Up, Sarah Palin

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 14:52:00 +0000

The shootings in Arizona, a tragic event that has brought the nation momentarily to its senses, has also stoked a new fight over who or what is to blame for the senseless act of a madman. There is no doubt that Loughner is a delusional young man in the grips of schizophrenia. The roots of his particular condition are hidden from casual commentators and beyond the scope of a blog post. Many reporters have pointed to the suburban ennui and decay of his Tucson neighborhood, his reclusive parents, his drift into drug use and conspiracy theories, as contributing factors. But the belligerent political rhetoric of the right, using visual images of gun fetishists in its propaganda, inciteful, accusatory and personally vilifying speech and actual gun toting protesters at political rallies, must have certainly added to Loughner's deranged plans of action. Sarah Palin's controversial crosshairs web page targeting Congresswoman Giffords, taken down in the hours after the shootings, are the smoking gun for irresponsible hate-mongering that led us to this moment.
Rhetoric on the right is now wriggling away from accepting responsibility. It is true that there is no direct link between Loughner and political groups, but it would be nice to hear centrists like David Brooks acknowledge the violent and undemocratic underpinnings of recent Republican and Tea Party imagery and speech that led a kook to act out the hate that has us in its grip.

In With The New

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 01:57:00 +0000

The old year is fading fast from memory, much like the last snow under the onslaught of a thawing Bermuda high. As the second decade of the new century gets underway, there's a chance for us to highlight the positive accomplishments, the steps we've made in the right direction, and underscore the persistent dilemmas that confront us as a nation and as individuals.
Americans are feeling better about themselves, according to polls, more secure about what the future brings this year than last, and for good reason. The economic deep freeze shows signs of thawing at last, and congressional moves to pass some laws moving us forward reflect the self-righting logic that makes this democracy work. But Republicans are about to take over the majority in Congress, vowing to repeal health care reforms, fight the EPA's ability to curb greenhouse gas pollution and in general do everything they can to ensure that Obama does not win re-election in 2012. The more things change, it seems the more they stay the same.
On a personal level, reaching the age of fifty means making peace with some of my own limitations, at the same time appreciating the gifts that I have. As the kids get older, the joys of family life seem to deepen even as the challenges of managing relationships get more complex. Personal goals remain as elusive as ever, but new ideas bring new inspiration and new hope.
Keep on keeping on, and remember the words of 1 John 4:7-8: "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love."
If that doesn't inspire you, think of the Christmas lesson of Play Doh. It started out as an industrial cleaner used to get soot off of wall paper. When the market went out from under it as people stopped burning coal in the 1950s, the inventors noticed that children liked to make Christmas decorations with it and re-invented the stuff as an educational aid.
It's never over until the spark of ingenuity and creation goes out. There's more than one way to skin the cat. Just ask the makers of Play Doh, or any kid you know.

Hark the Heralds or Singing the Global Interconnected

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 01:34:00 +0000

Here we are in the season of light, remembering a higher calling that draws us together. Last night we went over to our friends the Gages and I played along with Greg and Steve as part of their folk project, quite an honor. Something about music and collaborative creation that uses a part of the brain we never learned to use in school. That's the new dynamic of course that is celebrated on the Internet and is bursting forth new forms of expression that are impacting everything we do from education to commerce to global governance. We are moving from a pioneer species to a climax species and are learning to thrive via cooperation rather than competition, but that still threatens the powers that be. Wikileaks may be ahead of its time in its basically aggressive stance vis a vis government secrecy. But there is a basic friction between old school business and the new paradigm of rampant, fast-moving information sharing that is dependent on transparency. Julian Assange will be remembered for casting the first stone in this battle.
Yes, there are benefits to secrecy and traditional diplomacy, but the failure in my entire lifetime so far to secure a peace deal in the Middle East makes a mockery of diplomacy's claims. Justice is powerless in the shadows. I think that's the lesson that Wikileaks will try to teach us. And here last week the US Congress passed a resolution condemning the Palestinians for threatening to declare statehood unilaterally in the face of Israeli intransigence on the settlements. It seems that in this season of lights the powerless continue to face obliteration. Money talks. Merry Christmas.

The Dark Knight of the Moment

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 15:11:00 +0000

We need a Dark Knight moment in this country. I'm talking about my favorite scene in the Batman movie in which the black prisoner tears the detonator out of the warden's hands and throws it out of the window of the Staten Island ferry, thus averting the horrible intended outcome of the Joker's "social experiment", in which the passengers on two ferries can save themselves by blowing up the other boat. "I'm doing what you should a done ten minutes ago," he says to the Warden.
We are like those two ferries right now, red and blue camps, ideologically unable to avert the mutual destruction we seem to be inflicting on ourselves, at the mercy of some unknown joker power who seems to have robbed us of common sense and common decency. The truth of how low we have sunk is reflected in the tax debate in Washington and the corollary impact of denying an extension of unemployment benefits to the long term jobless in this season.
Here's my favorite Dark Knight of the moment. Any resemblance to the Joker is purely ironic. Al Franken and his Minnesota common sense cuts to the chase in these Senate floor musings. Some may call it political theater, but sometimes theatrics speak to the broader picture.

I guess we need two parties - the dialectic of left vs. right is what advances the common cause - and like the man said about democracy - it's the worst form of government except all the others, ( Winston Churchill). But it's downright embarrassing, disgraceful, unbelievable, what word would cover this? that we've elected these people who are prepared to go to the wall to preserve tax cuts for the wealthiest among us in a time of economic distress for the weakest among us. As Al said, what are we doing here? For me, it's unacceptable. I'm ready, like the prisoner in Batman, to say, look take my tax cuts and cancel them, too. Out the window with the detonator of this horrible social experiment in which everyone loses.

First Snow New Hampshire

anthonycatlin@gmail.com (Anthony Catlin) — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 22:01:00 +0000

Yesterday I was out cutting wood with my new electric chain saw when we got the first snow. The black clouds whipped overhead and the cover blew off the chicken house and the flurry drove down from that middle distance in the northwest sky.
The chain saw was working well, just as well as the gas-powered saws which have bedeviled me through the years. The guys at the saw shop always blame the ethanol in the gasoline. I finally decided to try an electric chain saw and so far so good. It runs quietly, dependably, and I can cut it off and rearrange the logs without fear that it will flood when I go to crank it up again. Internal combustion is on the way out, I hope, and not a moment too soon.
Last night the lights were on at the Peak. They have been for about a week; with cold enough nights to power up the snow-blowing guns, they've been busy, running the shifts of groomers from dusk to dawn. It looks like winter is here. What would the ski resorts do without snow-making? They are increasingly reliant on it to get in a full season of skiing. Life goes on, and it is good, without a doubt.
But anybody that has any doubts about the seriousness of the global warming threat ahead of our children should read the latest NY Times story on the melting of the Arctic. It is an even-handed, sober, scientific appraisal of the adaptations we will have to make to sea levels rising by the end of this century. Goodbye coastlines, in all probability. Futuristic scare tactics on the part of evil scientists intent on illicit fund-raising it is not. A reality check and a sober reminder of how derelict we have been, is what it is. Meanwhile, Obama is playing hoops. Good for him. Nero had a fiddle. We can always build seawalls around Manhattan to protect Wall Street and on the outer banks of the Chesapeake Delta to save that White House basketball court, but what about Bangladesh and Cairo and Indonesia? Those people will be relocating to a shelter near you Jim Boehner, and you, Sarah Palin, won't be seeing Russia from your kitchen because it's going to be under water.
Someone should declare this coming year, 2011, the year of climate change awareness. Maybe I will. People in Washington will be too busy doing the important things, like making sure they win reelection in two years, never mind the long view. That democracy thing, the free market? Doesn't seem to be working for us, I'm afraid. I love what George Carlin used to say about choices. We have two thousand brands of interchangeable toilet paper, but politics? We'll be looking and listening to Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dee, with only a short time to turn things around and get carbon in the atmosphere down to manageable levels. On all fronts we could use some immediate action, from the cars we drive to the homes we build and live in to the electricity we rely on to run civilization. We'll be lucky if we get anything but more hot air from our leaders in the foreseeable future.