newquaker.com weblog

2009-07-05T23:45:00.002-04:00

A Queen Palm Blooms

I was out on the bike again today and I just couldn't resist this, especially since you don't witness it very often (well, maybe not often enough) and only in a climate like Florida's. This is a bloom of the Cocos Plumosa. First it's encased in a long shell and then—bloom.

I also took this photo with my Helio Drift cellphone and its 2-megapixel camera and then resized and optimized it with Xatio Image Optimizer v5.1.

2009-06-28T23:35:00.003-04:00

Why We Do It

From Louisiana Quaker eLetter, vol 1:8-9 (2004):

There was a time when I thought that the most important question on earth was: Why is there something rather than nothing? Now I think the most chilling of questions has to be this: Why do we bother getting up in the morning?

It is not enough, surely, that there be a world and that we live in it. It must have meaning for us. Some of us go about with the many small purposes given to us; some of us make our own meaning—we literally create a reason to get up in the morning. To serve someone, to make things, to work, to eat, to play, to spend, to frolic, to enjoy. Rarely do we not have a choice. We could go further and say, too, that we can get meaning from several natural sources: biology and culture. We can get purpose from biology by merely heeding our animal nature: hunger, thirst, sexual desire, all the pleasurables that are presented to us by sense experience. We get purpose from culture by heeding the pleasurables that our social nature prescribes: television, music, cars, houses, money, clothes, gadgets, rituals, laws, etc., etc. From one standpoint, one could construct a perfectly natural human being from biological parts and from social parts. This is what humanism states.

A critical flaw of humanism, though, is that it never leads to any purpose beyond either the biological or the social, for within humanism there really is nothing beyond the merely human. We exist, we have purposes, and we can create for ourselves—individually and collectively—sundry other purposes. But we can never legitimately fashion for ourselves any plausible purpose beyond the merely human; the attempt to do this yields only more psychological phenomena. Thus spirituality, religiosity, higher moral aims—these are mere natural expressions of psychic needs and wants. From one perspective, then, one might argue that the logical consequence of humanism is always a type of existentialism: Life is absurd; we exist, but there is no reason for it.

I wish I could claim credit for having discovered this, but, curiously, such is the very point made by the author of Ecclesiastes. From a humanist perspective, absolutely everything is inevitably meaningless: Real estate and wealth [Ecc 2, 4, 5:8-20, 6], secular wisdom and folly [Ecc 2, 7], the natural order of things [Ecc 3:1-8], inductive science [Ecc 7:27], occupational labor [Ecc 2,4], pleasure in accomplishments [Ecc 2], perfunctory religious behavior [Ecc 5:1-7], positions of power [Ecc 5:8-9], honor and prosperity [Ecc 6], success [Ecc 9:11-12]. So, too, oppression, loneliness, hard work [Ecc 4]. Death, the ultimate fate of human life after the fall, also fails to give our life meaning [Ecc 6, 9].

In a fallen world, separated from God, we will always be frustrated in our search for genuine meaning in anything—for it is not there. As humanists, what we find instead are mere facts, pointing to nothing beyond themselves. Only as a gift from God does our life derive its meaning. Indeed, we have as a gift God's revelation, giving us a stalwart tradition of his presence in our lives. We have as a gift the resurrected Jesus Christ, for through Christ we are released from the meaninglessness of the fall. We have as a gift the Holy Spirit, by means of which we are sanctified [John 17:17; Rom 15:16; 2 Thess 2:13; 1 Peter 1:2], taught, and reminded of Christ's teachings [John 14:26]. And, as a gift, we have meaning for every aspect of our life.

This, says Paul, was a part of the great plan: "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God." [Rom 8:19-21]

In the end, whether from an Old Testament or from a New Testament perspective, our duty as Christians is to do as the author of Ecclesiastes himself advises [Ecc 12:13-14]:

Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.
For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil.

In other words, we are to fear God, obey his commandments, and look for the coming judgment. But how do we escape the humanist charge that this is religion, arising out of a bio-psychological need for meaning in an absurd world, pointing inevitably to nothing beyond a natural impulse to create meaning where there is none? We escape this because we have not created God. He has created us, and revealed himself to us—through Adam, the patriarchs and Prophets, and Jesus Christ—and continues to reveal himself through the Holy Spirit. We are not of this world, and neither is the meaning of our lives.

[ MORE ]

2009-06-21T23:00:00.000-04:00

The Way of All Florida Hotels

I was out on my bike this afternoon (105 degrees!) and decided to snap this picture of a beachside hotel at 251 South Atlantic Avenue in Ormond Beach. It's looked this way for several years, and it's one of several such hotels along the beachside. Some have been torn down to make the sand dunes of my youth, only now the dunes are surrounded by low concrete walls, chain-link fences, and no-trespassing signs. Once these hotels were very busy.

I read in the news today that Walmart is delaying its construction of 24 acres (at Nova Road and Mason Avenue in Daytona Beach) which used to be Father Lopez High School. Slower economy and tighter credit, they say.

I took this photo with my Helio Drift cellphone and its 2-megapixel camera and then resized and optimized it with Xatio Image Optimizer v5.1.

2009-06-17T23:45:00.002-04:00

Whither the American Empire?

This article by Chris Hedges charts and references what may be the end of the American Empire, built on money and military might, both of which we are about to lose. And we aren't going to like the outcome.

The American Empire Is Bankrupt
Truthdig
June 14, 2009

This week marks the end of the dollar's reign as the world's reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That's over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful.

Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America's imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze.

There are meetings being held Monday and Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia, (formerly Sverdlovsk) among Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance. Watch what happens there carefully. The gathering is, in the words of economist Michael Hudson, "the most important meeting of the 21st century so far."

It is the first formal step by our major trading partners to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency. If they succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value, the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket, interest rates will climb and jobs will hemorrhage at a rate that will make the last few months look like boom times. State and federal services will be reduced or shut down for lack of funds. The United States will begin to resemble the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe. Obama, endowed by many with the qualities of a savior, will suddenly look pitiful, inept and weak. And the rage that has kindled a handful of shootings and hate crimes in the past few weeks will engulf vast segments of a disenfranchised and bewildered working and middle class. The people of this class will demand vengeance, radical change, order and moral renewal, which an array of proto-fascists, from the Christian right to the goons who disseminate hate talk on Fox News, will assure the country they will impose.

[ READ MORE » ]

Don't expect the corporate media to devote resources to discussing this with the American public—at least not until we're already swimming in the deep end.

2009-05-26T23:30:00.007-04:00

Fiction: In the Family Way

The wealthy man opens his wallet and sees a fat wad of money; when the poor man opens his, he sees only a deep black hole. And yet the real difference between these two men is this: whether the wallets contain anything at all is entirely irrelevant. I know this now, and wish I had known it then; I could have saved myself a lot of grief.

The grief began when my new company developed "cash flow problems," which is corporation talk for the time when more money goes out than is coming in. There are of course innumerable ways this can happen, but it usually starts when not enough money comes in, because no matter how much you cut expenses, trim the overhead, bite the bullet, step back from the challenge, etc., you cannot in the end spend what you do not have. Credit, as I learned, only extends the period of grief. But I was ever hopeful that my business would pick up and the coffers would be full, and my two feet would be firmly planted on the golden road to Rich City. When my Visa card reached its limit, I knew I was in trouble. When my MasterCard hit the max, I was in trouble. I started scraping bottom when I began using my gas card to by milk, eggs, and bread.

Christine was worried and carried bags under her eyes, but I was ever optimistic. God would take care of us. I was so optimistic, in fact, that I started walking around with a special look on my face; it was not quite a smile, not quite a simper, but it was the smile a man makes when he knows something no one else knows; it was also the kind of look that is commonly seen on the faces of morons.

But I am getting ahead of the story here. Much happened between the time I had money and the time my wallet showed me its lining.

It was about the middle of January when a friend of mine, Paul Smythe, called me on the phone. I was in the kitchen at the time. I had known Paul for about two years, but not extremely well; most of my contact with him was at the hospital where I used to work. He was a medical practice administrator for a large clinic in the area. Since leaving the hospital, I had not been in touch with him. Now, he told me, he and his live-in girlfriend, Collette, had just gone into a marketing business for themselves; it was something they were very excited about, and they were looking for two or three sharp people who are looking to make some extra money, but who need to keep doing what they are doing.

"Marc, are you looking to make some extra money?"

"Sure," I said. "But I can't say I've got a lot of time to devote to outside activities—I mean, this computer business of mine just about consumes all of my time. But I'm open to listening. What have you got?"

"Since this is a business opportunity, it's not something I can really go into in depth on the phone. Besides, I need a paper and pencil to go over the numbers with you. I think you understand that."

"I do. But I don't want to waste your time. Are you looking for investors? If you are, I can tell you right now I'm neither in a position to do that nor interested in any expenditure of money on something outside my own business."

"The company we are doing business with is fully capitalized. We're not looking for investors."

"Well, how much time would I have to devote to this venture of yours?"

"About six to eight hours a week."

"Does it involve selling?"

"Do you like to sell?"

"Not particularly."

"Then you'll like what I've got to show you."

"You said it was a marketing business. What are the products, and how do you market them without selling?"

"Those are good questions, Marc. But again the telephone is not the place to answer them, and I'm a little pressed for time right now. What I'd like to do is set aside about ten to fifteen minutes with you and go over some of the basics of the business, answer a few of your questions, and see if this would interest you and see whether you are the right person to involve in my business. How about tomorrow evening—Monday—say about seven o'clock?"

"Let me get my schedule book," I said. I put the phone on hold and left the kitchen for the study, looking for my schedule for the week. "Monday night's free," I said, picking up the phone and poking my finger on my next day's schedule.

"How about seven o'clock?"

"That's okay."

"Good. I'll see you at your house at seven. Now, I'm not going to be in a position to answer all of your questions, Marc. I'm only going to be there about fifteen minutes. I'm really just checking interest."

"No problem," I said, adding a few pleasantries before hanging up.

"Who was that?" asked Christine.

[ MORE ]

2009-05-21T23:55:00.001-04:00

Cheney and the Endless Lie

Tonight Jay Leno joked that we've seen Dick Cheney more in the past eight days than we got to see him during his entire eight years in office. Of course Cheney's been out and about making speeches, typically critical of the Obama administration.

His latest speech, presented today at the American Enterprise Institute, continued the Bushevik's clever use of language to cloak the real meaning of what can be easily conveyed in simple English for the nondelusional. For example, he says:

"The administration has found that it's easy to receive applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo. But it's tricky to come up with an alternative that will serve the interests of justice and America's national security. Keep in mind that these are hardened terrorists picked up overseas since 9/11. The ones that were considered low-risk were released a long time ago. And among these, we learned yesterday, many were treated too leniently, because 1 in 7 cut a straight path back to their prior line of work and have conducted murderous attacks in the Middle East. I think the President will find, upon reflection, that to bring the worst of the worst terrorists inside the United States would be cause for great danger and regret in the years to come."

We keep letting him and his cohorts get away with this abuse of language. It is easier to talk about the detainess at Guantánamo as "terrorists" than to state the facts of their status. Perhaps they are terrorists, but this is neither obvious nor proved. Putting aside the issue of Cheney's credibility (we know that most of the detainees never posed any threat to the US), the remaining detainees have not been convicted of any crime and the evidence against them (possibly gathered through torture or, in the parlance of the euphemism du jour, "enhanced interrogation techniques") has not been properly examined by impartial judicial bodies. So to call them the "the worst of the worst terrorists," as Cheney does here and as Donald Rumsfeld did before him, is to state and, under these circumstances, to perpetuate what is in fact a lie.

2009-05-20T00:45:00.000-04:00

Frog and Rain

It's been raining steadily for two days straight. Today was especially bleak with only a few minutes of bright sky. Before turning in for the night, I noticed a tree frog sitting casually on the porch rail in the carport, possibly to escape the rain. It looks like it might be a Cuban Tree Frog, but I didn't handle it and have only this photo to use in identifying it. I thought it was a toad at first, but the adhesive pads clearly suggest otherwise. It moved on after a half hour of this attention.

I snapped this photo using my Nikon P50 digital camera and reduced it for web presentation with Xatio Image Optimizer v5.1.

2009-05-14T23:35:00.002-04:00

The Way of All Steel

While walking Pepe the chihuahua this evening, we happened upon this tree that was in the process of growing around an old chain-link fence post. I noticed that it's also starting to grow over the wooden post on the right. That might take a while.

I should make sure to bring my digital camera with me when I walk around, but maybe it's not a necessity. My reliable Helio Drift cellphone with its 2-megapixel camera did the job, I think.

2009-05-10T01:45:00.001-04:00

New Quaker Site, Blog Updated

The newquaker.com site has been updated and, well, surgically revised. I've decided to dissolve most of the original site and keep only the blog. Gone specifically are Selected Links and the Quaker Books for Friends newsletter pages. The "search" button on the navbar can be used to trawl for extant pages of the full site, but at some point even that will change. The main index page now redirects here, and I'm using "canonical links" in the code so as not to deceive search engines.

I need to consolidate my time, liberating me for more experimental writing and less site maintenance. I'll be placing more publications and works-in-progress onto merleharton.com. I'm keeping the blog to preserve this outlet for new writing and outrage. Really, that was the point of the site when I created it 1998 (as in ten years ago): the blog was added in 2002.

My new short-fiction collection, Twelve Stories from New Orleans, is forthcoming from De Signis Press. This project pulls together some of my older New Orleans fiction, some previously published in small presses, including a few naughty pieces I wrote during a time when I still thought in bawdy terms. The new book will be available for purchase in a few weeks.

Thanks to all for keeping up with me.

2009-03-18T00:15:00.007-04:00

Stepping Lively in America

With the American economy undergoing continuous disruptive changes, we ought not to be surprised to encounter also changes that are not economic in nature. In fact, many of the more fragile aspects of life in the US are going to be falling apart, leaving us with a changing demographic and a different social face.

Last Thursday, CBC News reported on what is going on in the giant Ponzi scheme that is Florida, with reference to the clever system of taxation and growth that owes its vitality to continuous real estate development and a constant influx of new people. Oops. Like all systems built on a bad foundation, the "Ponzi state" now has more residents leaving than arriving, and tourism is down and the stupid scheme is decomposing. On Tuesday of this week, Britain's Independent reported on what's left of Wilmington, Ohio, after its single large employer, DHL, left town, leaving behind in its tumultuous wake a kind of ghost town. This is happening to other "company towns" that became the preeminent stakeholders in corporations that function very much like a feudal system; when the lord dies, or takes his castle and leaves, so goes the estate. Never mind that the Canadian and British presses can see this, but we can't.

Skilled immigrants are leaving the US and going back to China and India, where there are now more lucrative opportunities than they found in America. Even illegal immigrants are leaving, due predominantly to lack of available work.

The ridiculous but lively two-step dance now going on between our federal government and AIG and the bankers (with music provided by the Federal Reserve's printing presses) may turn out to be a mere historical distraction.¹

1. Especially the preposterous outrage over the AIG bonuses, which both the White House and Congress knew were going to happen. Never mind that President Obama, Sen Chris Dodd, and Sen Max Baucus are among the top recipients of AIC political contributions. Last month, Sen Ron Wyden and Sen Olympia Snowe amended the bailout bill to prevent huge executive bonuses. Alas, that amendment was not to be. According to an AP report: "In February, the Senate voted to add such a proposal to the economic recovery bill that cleared Congress, but in final closed-door talks on the measure, that provision was dropped in favor of limits that affect only future payments."

2009-03-14T23:50:00.004-04:00

More Hurt by Protest in Palestine

The US media routinely ignore news about Palestinian protests, whether against home demolitions or the separation fences. Here is another that may also flicker only briefly.

US citizens critically hurt at West Bank protest
Haaretz
March 13, 2009

Palestinian sources said that an American citizen, in his thirties, had sustained critical wounds during an anti-separation fence protest in the West Bank on Friday, Army Radio reported.

Peace activists with the International Solidarity Movement said Tristan Anderson, of the Oakland, Calif. area, was struck in the head with a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops. The military and the Tel Aviv hospital where Anderson was taken had no details on how he was hurt.

Protesters who were at the scene said that Anderson was standing by the side of the road when soldiers fired at him, and not near the hub of the clash. They added that there was no one in his vicinity that could have been perceived as a threat to the soldiers.

"He's in critical condition, anesthetized and on a ventilator and undergoing imaging tests," said Orly Levi, a spokeswoman at the Tel Hashomer hospital. She described Anderson's condition as life-threatening.

The protest took place in the West Bank town of Na'alin, where Palestinians and international backers frequently gather to demonstrate against the barrier. Israel says the barrier is necessary to keep Palestinian attackers from infiltrating into Israel. But Palestinians view it as a thinly veiled land grab because it juts into the West Bank at multiple points.

[ READ MORE » ]

We should not forget that in 2003 the 23-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie was killed in the Gaza strip, crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in the Rafah refugee camp, during a protest by the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement to End the Occupation of Palestine (ISM) against Israeli government demolitions of Palestinian homes. The anniversary of Rachel's death will be Monday, March 16.

2009-03-02T23:15:00.003-05:00

Saint Andrew

My Uncle Andy was a good man, a "moral man," my mother said of her younger brother, who died last week. He was on the couch taking a nap in his Miami Lakes home and my Aunt Lucille went over to wake him up and his eyes were only half closed and she said, "Stop fooling around—you're scaring me!" He was a great kidder, with a unique sense of humor, but this wasn't funny. She touched him and he was cold: Andy was gone.

My uncle, Andrew J. Geranis, was a complex man. At least, I think so. I said that he was a kidder and I know this because during the mid-point of my college studies I went to work with him for a while in his General Contracting business. I stayed with him and Lucille in their south Miami house, which had an enclosed swimming pool right beside the back patio. One day he said to look at the bottom of the pool (I don't remember what I was supposed to look at) and as I did, he pushed me in, clothes and all. I think it took two days for my shoes and wallet to dry out. He thought it was funny; I think I sulked for a day or so.

He was born with a first name and a last name, but no middle name. Under normal cultural circumstances, he would have received a middle name upon baptism, but he refused to be baptized and later decided to take my grandfather's first name as his middle name. So he became Andrew John Geranis. He spent most of his life going back and forth between agnostic and atheist, and yet he gave substantial sums of money to the Greek Orthodox Church in Miami—so much, in fact, that the church renamed itself Saint Andrew Greek Orthodox Church. It's not clear whether the Saint was my Uncle Andy or the younger brother of Saint Peter, but the gesture is significant nonetheless. He liked being generous, and he used a tactic that I have since stolen. When he would go out to eat with other people, he would make sure that he paid the server after the meal but before the check ever made its way to the table.

He and Lucille never had children, but they kept an immortal dog, a salt-and-pepper Schnauzer named Ashes. Here's how the immortality part worked: When Ashes died, they would go to the kennel and buy another similarly-colored Schnauzer and name it Ashes—like Doctor Who, except that Ashes always looked like Ashes, and still does. Besides the immortal terrier, they also loved horses. He and Lucille raised thoroughbreds and traveled around the country racing them. Several were champions.

As a "moral man," my Uncle Andy was loved by many, and many of those were in attendance at his wake and his funeral last Friday. Before his burial at Vista Memorial Gardens, several of his friends spoke their memorials. We should all have such things told about us when we die. One couldn't speak and instead played a musical rendition of the Lord's Prayer on his harmonica. The funeral service itself was short. At least, I think so. It was too short, like his life.

2009-02-26T23:30:00.001-05:00

The French Quarter

(This is an another older fiction piece from my "New Orleans Memories" collection.)

The French Quarter. It wasn't the best of times; it wasn't the worst of times. It was June, and it was hot, as it always in New Orleans in the summer, and my live-in girlfriend, Christine, and I were down in the French Quarter for a day of jazz and drink and shopping for T-shirts. If you ever need a T-shirt, you just have to come to the French Quarter. Forget about art, Cajun music, historic architecture—the T-shirt is what it's come to, but we've got the best.

We had just walked out of a shop on Bourbon Street when I spotted a small crowd down Conti, near Royal; Christine and I hurried over to see what was up. It was a transvestite conked out on the sidewalk outside a greasy bar. One of the tourists, a guy from the Iowa wearing Bermuda shorts he'd taken out of mothballs just for this trip, was the most concerned of the crowd. "Do you think she's dead?" he asked me as I shoved my way through. I looked at him, and then again, making sure he knew I was doing a double take, and said: "That's not a woman. That's a man." He didn't believe me. "If you look real close," I said, "you'll see a five o'clock shadow under that makeup." So he bends down, looks real hard, and then comes back up scratching the bald part of his head. "Now I've seen everything," he said. "How long have you been in the Quarter?" I asked. "Oh, about a day," he answered. "Then you haven't seen anything yet," I quipped. I left him in a stupefied state and called the police from the corner T-shirt shop. When I got back, the transvestite was sitting up, moaning. The bald tourist from Iowa just stood there and stared at him, like he'd never seen a man in a dress before. Christine and I headed up Royal Street for more T-shirt shopping.

About an hour later, we were at Jackson Square. It was crowded with tourists and other T-shirt shoppers and clumps of street entertainers—jazz, tap dancing, mime, acrobatics—and a guy playing music on the rims of little glasses of water. For just a minute or two I stopped and watched a redhead with long legs and a short skirt, but in that brief time Christine disappeared. I thought I caught a glimpse of her walking down St. Ann, and hurried after her, but she vanished. This was exasperating me, and it was hot, and I wanted a drink of something cool. I slipped into a nearby bar. It was dark inside. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I hopped onto a bar stool and asked the bartender for a Coke. He looked at me like I didn't belong there, but I was too thirsty to care. I paid him for the soft drink and took two long drinks. Suddenly I sensed someone directly behind me. There was a moment of heavy breathing. [ MORE ]

2009-02-22T23:05:00.004-05:00

A Truth or Dare Commission

It is up in the air (floating like a lost party balloon) whether the Obama administration is going to sanction a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission," something proposed recently by Senator Patrick Leahy as a means toward a public dialogue on the Busheviks' illegal behavior.¹ Also floating around the airy skies is a real skepticism as to whether such a commission will lead to actual prosecutions, to a real list of their illegal deeds, or even to any meaningful dialogue about past practices of any American president's previous administration. The McClatchy Newspapers has a competent article on the several issues surrounding such a commission and its likelihood of success.²

So why not simply walk straight into the courts with evidence of war crimes (about which there is already much evidence)? We shouldn't have to rely on an International War Crimes Tribunal to do this for us. Creating a "truth commission" is like setting up a conference table outside the courthouse and having people talk about it, interviewing torture victims (or their mothers and families) and other aggrieved parties, until nobody wants to talk about it anymore, or listen to it anymore, and a Report of the Commission is published and gets put on library shelves and the whole issue gets replaced, in the short American attention span, with some other issue, such as the economy, the stock market, bailout money, automobiles, mass transit, poverty, climate change, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, South America—all of the things that effectively force us to go forward, allowing us (hey, these things are important!) to avoid having to face our own collective guilt about the crimes we therefore continue to sanction in our refusal to look backward again.

1. "Sen Leahy proposes truth panel on Bush era abuses," AP/Breitbart, February 9, 2009.
2. "President Obama back 'truth commission' to probe Bush practices?" McClatchy Newspapers, February 22, 2009. Also archived at Common Dreams.

2009-02-21T22:15:00.005-05:00

Dinner at Antoine's

(This is an older fiction piece from my "New Orleans Memories" collection.)

It was sometime in April, and a doctor friend of mine and his wife were in town for a conference, and he gave me a call and wanted me and my live-in girlfriend Christine to go out to dinner with them. "Sure," I said. The dinner was free, after all. Since they wanted to go down to the French Quarter, I suggested Galatoire's, on Bourbon Street. It's a great place to eat and, besides, with all the mirrors and tiles around the wall, it looks just like a men's washroom and I thought that would really help to convey the spirit of New Orleans to my visitors. But instead they wanted to go to Antoine's, I guess because they liked wood floors and dim lights and big expensive bills. "No problem," I said. Anyway, the dinner was free.

So we all met down at Antoine's at 8 o'clock and went inside. We were directed to a nice table upstairs and a waiter named Paul came by with his hand out and took our order. It was a big meal. We started with Oysters Rockefeller, and then Oysters Bienville and Oyster Soup, which came with two hefty oysters floating obscenely in the bottom of the bowl. Everybody else had something different to eat for the main course, but I ordered fried oysters. Obviously something was missing from my diet and I was having a craving. Besides it was an "R" month and that meant the oysters would be firm, not mushy. [ MORE ]

2009-02-01T13:50:00.004-05:00

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

This one freaked my mother out—and, well, me too. This from the January/February 2009 issue of Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club:

You can read the online piece here. What can we say, really, but "Thank you again, Mister Cheney."

2009-01-30T23:45:00.003-05:00

Toward This Unfamiliar Future

The current crisis is far more than an economic predicament, a global commerce disaster, or even a failure of recent political wills. As such, then, the current crisis won't find its solution in expensive economic stimuli, the mending of global levees, or through energetic regulatory structures. Yet we continue to look at it as if it's the broken mirror in the bathhouse where Wall Street and K Street boys came to fondle themselves. Not without surprise, we want them to cover themselves, express their shame, and get the place all cleaned up; with such hope that will erase their perversion and put them to task re-stoking the coals of the hot steam engine of our society.

Any repair of this crisis using the very techniques that caused it will surely give us the pretense of something new, but the aging structure, with its inherent malignancies, must reassert itself again and again, and the future will look like the past. If the stock market never rebounds, if it finally "hits bottom" but never recovers, then the investor will desire new models for financial growth; this in turn ought to necessitate new models to replace the stodgy, deadly publicly traded multinational corporation. If we cannot return to the global business model in which workers are off-shored, costs are externalized to the economy, and profits are the bright beacon guiding the corporate ships, then our attention will be diverted to the small company, the domestic company, the sole proprietor and the entrepreneur for essential products and services.

I am now one mind with Jacques Ellul on this issue:

If we want to make society livable, people will have to improve themselves. Moral progress is necessary. Political organization, economic change, or psychology will not do it. The actual situation shows us that contrary to what Marxism imagined, moral progress does not result from raising standards of living or bettering economic conditions or increasing the means placed at the disposal of all. On the contrary, these things simply trigger a frenzy of evil. The urgent need is not to establish a moral order, which cannot be done externally even by superior authority, but to find the way of self-mastery, of respect for others, of a moderate use of the powers at our disposal. This is the way of wisdom and morality. Such words are not greatly valued by our age-so much the worse for us! We have to consider that not taking this path will lead ineluctably to the impossibility of living in concert, a situation far worse than an economic crisis or war.¹

We have before us an opportunity—indeed a world-wide opportunity—to make systemic changes that will guide us toward an entirely new prospect. Instead of weeping, we ought to rejoice in the expectation of this new adventure.

1. What I Believe (Eerdmans, 1989), translated by Geoffrey Bromiley, p. 62.

2009-01-25T22:15:00.003-05:00

Green as Bile

For a long time now I've thought that Thomas L. Friedman, author of two best-selling books on globalization, The World Is Flat and The Lexus and the Olive Tree, is just full of it. Now he comes out with another best-seller, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—And How it Can Renew America. I haven't changed my mind.¹

Does anyone remember something similar, another green something-or-other, except that it was 40 years ago? How about Charles A. Reich and his best-selling book, The Greening of American (Bantam Books, 1970)? Reich wrote:

There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual and with culture, and it will change the political structure only as its final act. It will not require violence to succeed, and it cannot be successfully resisted by violence. It is now spreading with amazing rapidity, and already our laws, institutions and social structure are changing in consequence. It promises a higher reason, a more human community, and a new and liberated individual. Its ultimate creation will be a new and enduring wholeness and beauty—a renewed relationship of man to himself, to other men, to society, to nature, and to the land.

Yes, Reich was full of it, too. However, what Reich meant by "green" is not what Friedman, the new faux-futurist-in-training, calls "green." Reich meant something involving a new "consciousness" (his own highfalutin word for a new way of looking at something) which has, he says:

emerged out of the wasteland of the Corporate State, like flowers pushing up through the concrete pavement. Whatever it touches it beautifies and renews: a freeway entrance is festooned with happy hitchhikers, the sidewalk is decorated with street people, the humorless steps of an official building are given warmth by a group of musicians. And every barrier falls before it.

For Friedman, "green" is something he wants to rename:

In the world of ideas, to name something is to own it. If you can name an issue, you can own the issue. One thing that always struck me about the term "green" was the degree to which, for so many years, it was defined
by its opponents—by the people who wanted to disparage it. And they defined it as "liberal," "tree-hugging," "sissy," "girlie-man," "unpatriotic," "vaguely French." Well, I want to rename "green." I want to rename it geostrategic, geoeconomic, capitalistic and patriotic. I want to do that because I think that living, working, designing, manufacturing and projecting America in a green way can be the basis of a new unifying political movement for the 21st century. A redefined, broader and more muscular green ideology is not meant to trump the traditional Republican and Democratic agendas but rather to bridge them when it comes to addressing the three major issues facing every American today: jobs, temperature and terrorism.

How do our kids compete in a flatter world? How do they thrive in a warmer world? How do they survive in a more dangerous world? Those are, in a nutshell, the big questions facing America at the dawn of the 21st century. But these problems are so large in scale that they can only be effectively addressed by an America with 50 green states—not an America divided between red and blue states.²

Getting America green (and saving the world in the process) requires "mobilizing free-market capitalism" to generate innovations that lower energy costs without increasing pollutants or global warming, at prices that are at least as cheap as the current, high-polluting alternatives. He says,"The only thing as powerful as Mother Nature is Father Greed." So there is really nothing moral in this endeavor. Getting these "innovations in energy-saving appliances, lights and building materials and in non-CO2-emitting power plants and fuels" is just another business opportunity. This new "Greening of America" is a return, so to speak, to the pre-revolutionary "consciousness" belonging to "the wasteland of the Corporate State" which Reich says was in the process of being replaced.

In all fairness to Reich, I would say that his prophecy was undone by his own success. As soon as his book made it to the best-seller list, its seminal idea became a business opportunity, and was (in a word also from the 1970s) "co-opted." As such, it ceased to function as prophecy and became a commodity that effectively undid what he thought was going to happen. Sharks are known to eat their own young. And so the Corporate State made movies out of it, promulgated feel-good Coke® ads, marketed colorful clothing—and then dropped it, like a stinking fish, for the next great idea.

I suspect that Friedman is going to get the upper hand in this, because the Corporate State will find the new Greening of America a real business opportunity, one that will satisfy its global lusts. Friedman is telling us that there is a money to be made out there, and there is. But renaming "green" has its own hazards. Just as Friedman wants to own the issue, so does the Corporation, and it will call "green" what it wants to call green—and it will own it. Oddly, it will also not be green.

We see this now in the ethanol business, and here one wants to use the more colorful language of Father Tiago, a Catholic monk from Scotland, who has spent 20 years helping the sugarcane cutters of Brazil, themselves an integral part of that nation's own effort at "greening" the world through the promise of ethanol.

"Bullshit," says Father Tiago. "The promise of biofuel is a lie. Anyone who buys ethanol is pumping blood into his tank. Ethanol is produced by slaves."³

Brazil's ethanol industry is thriving, but at a heavy human cost.

We will also see this in every industry that requires water for its manufacturing process. These are not the first of such warnings, but they are getting louder:

A swelling global population, changing diets and mankind's expanding "water footprint" could be bringing an end to the era of cheap water.

The warnings, in an annual report by the Pacific Institute in California, come as ecologists have begun adopting the term "peak ecological water"—the point where, like the concept of "peak oil," the world has to confront a natural limit on something once considered virtually infinite.

The world is in danger of running out of "sustainably managed water," according to Peter Gleick, the president of the Pacific Institute and a leading authority on global freshwater resources.

Humans—via agriculture, industry and other demands—use about half of the world's renewable and accessible fresh water. But even at those levels, billions of people live without the most basic water services, Dr Gleick said.

A key element to tackling the crisis, say experts, is to increase the public understanding of the individual water content of everyday items. A glass of orange juice, for example, needs 850 litres of fresh water to produce, according to the Pacific Institute and the Water Footprint Network, while the manufacture of a kilogram of microchips—requiring constant cleaning to remove chemicals—needs about 16,000 litres. A hamburger comes in at 2,400 litres of fresh water, depending on the origin and type of meat used.

The water will be returned in various forms to the system, although not necessarily in a location or at a quality that can be effectively reused. There are concerns that water will increasingly be the cause of violence and even war.⁴

If we wait for the Corporate State to solve these problems, our wait will be long. These are not its problems. It doesn't care. If it wants green, it will call green what it wants to call green. When water becomes the problem, it will, like oil, make sure that governments serve corporate interests first.

The solution is not going to be in embracing Friedman's "new green ideology," for this is just another commodity he's selling. Paradoxically, it means a new "consciousness" on our part, not unlike that which Reich thought was underway 40 years ago, but one which is not bought or sold. I won't name this new consciousness, because it's not mine to own.

1. Matt Taibbi does a very effective job of clipping Friedman's wings, so the rest of us won't have to. See "Flat N All That," New York Press, January 14, 2009. A sample: "This is Friedman's life: He flies around the world, eats pricey lunches with other rich people and draws conclusions about the future of humanity by looking out his hotel window and counting the Applebee's signs."
2. "The Power of Green," New York Times Magazine, April 15, 2007.
3. See "A 'Green Tsunami' in Brazil: The High Price of Clean, Cheap Ethanol," Spiegel Online, January 22, 2009.
4. "Ecologists warn the planet is running short of water," The Times, January 22, 2009.

2009-01-20T21:45:00.001-05:00

Ripped from the Headlines

A Farewell Salute ... From This Modern World, another pertinent cartoon by Tom Tomorrow:

2009-01-19T23:30:00.001-05:00

Dreams and Things and Persons Too

There is a presumption among Americans that the wonderful juxtaposition of MLK Day and Barack Obama's ascension to the presidential throne will usher in a new era of racial understanding. No longer will the noose of slavery leave us hanging on the rafters of American optimism. No more will the battle for equality be fought between shirts and skins. At last we have reached a plateau that effectively balances our hatred for the other person with an indomitable love for ourselves as good, decent Americans.

We need to leave Dr. King alone. Or if we're going to continue to pull him from the grave and parade his cold dead body around in parade floats, propping his head up as the marching bands twirl and dance by, before the speeches and the hot air which will not bring him back to life, if we want to cart him around rudely, not unlike the dead Bernie Lomax, well, we can better honor him by ceasing to cast his entire memory in his "I Have a Dream" speech.

As a Christian, what he wanted in the end to racism was not merely equality for all Americans, but equality for all people of color. He saw in corporate exploitation the seeds of this inequality, which was not exclusive to the African-American. War, at least the form stamped Made in America, is the bastard child of the ugly nuptial union of the large corporation and government. King knew this, and it's what stands in the background of his 1967 speech "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam," especially in these words:

I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.

The real challenge for President Obama, after all the expensive ceremonies and the happy speeches and the over-the-top optimism and the warnings about the steep road before us, will be to get King's real dream realized—by dismantling our largest corporations, revoking their charters if necessary; by making them agents of the public good, instead of self-interested profit centers; by returning to our country a real political democracy through radical electoral reforms that limit corporations' access to government decision-making; by rethinking the wide, global reach of neoliberalism, thereby giving to the developing countries a wider voice in their economic futures. A person-oriented society will vanquish much more than things.

2009-01-01T01:30:00.003-05:00

Wealth, Poverty, Perspective

As we go forward in this New Year (and well beyond that, too), we would do well to keep a proper perspective in our relationships with those who have less than we do. In an honest essay, written with a humble sincerity that all college professors should emulate, Thomas Phillips helps us to keep the proper Christian perspective:

Most people who reflect upon issues of wealth and poverty enjoy a similar position of relative privilege. Not surprisingly (but neither inevitably), when the affluent (like me) think about non-affluence, we tend to speak about what we ought to do in order to fulfill our calling as the people of God. Unfortunately, this discourse often degenerates into a discussion of what "we" must do in order to help "them." The poor become an object of our good will—and we begin thinking about how we can develop even greater virtue by helping "them." In this condescending system, "they" possess no virtue—and could not possibly develop any virtue—because virtue comes from helping "them" and they are in no position to help themselves. The rich exploit this system to develop virtue—but their virtue is completely self-regarding. They fight poverty, not the sake of helping the poor, but for the sake of their own virtue.¹

We should remember what Jesus taught in "The Parable of the Good Samaritan" (Luke 10:25-37).²

1. Thomas E. Phillips, "Global Poverty: Beyond Utopian Visions," in Christian Reflection [Global Wealth], 11-17. Available as a PDF document.
2. And we shouldn't think that this is really about Samaritans: it could be entitled "The Parable of the Whatever" and remain relevant.

2008-12-31T23:50:00.003-05:00

Part II: Stop the Circles! (Or, What Is the Sound of One Invisible Hand Clapping?)

There is a presumption among Christians that free market capitalism, while not a sufficient condition for it, is at least a necessary condition for democracy. The presumption is not without rational support.¹ But we ought not to let this lull us into quietly accepting the romantic notion that American democracy can only survive if the present economic structure remains intact, because the very opposite is true. If the present structure remains intact, we will continue to have more of the same samenesses: Same corporate control over federal, state, and local governments, within and outside of US borders. Same pressures to bend social policy to match the interests of large domestic, large multinational corporations, whose sole overriding interest is to increase company profits, more often than not at the expense of any social good. Same pressures to make foreign policy toe the line drawn in the sand by corporate decision-makers.

Whether Americans get a single-payer healthcare benefit, whether third-party political candidates get to debate during presidential elections, whether we are able to convert our infrastructure to environmentally clean, renewable energies, whether we are able to withdraw militarily from Iraq and Afghanistan, whether we can change our nation's moral direction from aggressive military might to thoughtful diplomatic solutions, whether all Americans realize their entitlement to meaningful work, and to a living wage—alas, such decisions are currently in the hands of politicians who will listen to whispers from moneyed corporate interests, and yet our loud voices are not heard. More important than this, however, are the voices of the poor in America. According to the Current Population Survey, 2008 Annual Social and Economic Supplement,² there were 37 million people living in poverty in the US. People who are hungry, broke, and without the basic necessities of life cannot participate fully in any democratic process.

The current crisis for capitalism may be a sign of systemic change. Perhaps we are witnessing the deterioration of free market capitalism; perhaps it is evolving, like an organism, into a new economic species; perhaps, like a chameleon, it is becoming another color, a form of camouflage, before changing back to to a color with which we are more familiar. It really doesn't matter. What matters is that we do not allow this transformation to occur by means of its own systemic mechanisms, for we may not recognize the creature that emerges from this transformation and, more importantly, we may not enjoy the affections of this new creature. Indeed, it may well be an uglier, more unfriendly, most unpleasant economic system, whether or not we can adequately classify it before being totally devoured by the thing.

But how to manage this system, as it writhes in pain and suggests for us its new forms? I say, at least: Do not feed this animal! Instead, we ought really to starve it, effectively deprive it of the nourishment it demands, until it shrinks to a form that allows us to tame it, to make it behave in ways that benefit all of its caretakers, without gnawing on the hands that feed it. We can do this by refusing to bend to the siren call of the oligarchs, as they bid us to spend and buy. But this is needed in order for our oligarchs to maintain their wealth. They have to encourage real estate trading, regular buying, heavy borrowing, and a total lack of self control among the population. Consumption must take place in order for this machine to be fed. Not for nothing, therefore, did President Bush say, "I encourage you all to go shopping more."³

As Christians, we should remember to be content with what the Lord provides (see Phil 4:11; 1 Tim 6:6; Heb 13:5), to avoid giving ourselves over to the eagerness for money (1 Tim 3:3, 6:10), and to give generously, doing so willingly (2 Cor 8, 9). This is not our stuff. We are aliens, strangers, mere sojourners here (Heb 11:13; 1 Peter 2:11). As we remember our place in this world, we should heed also our biblical obligation to be good stewards of wealth, whether more or less. The open-ended process of spending and buying is inconsistent with that obligation. It transfers wealth from individuals to corporations, to entities which are legal persons but immoral monsters.

1. See specifically Reverend Richard John Neuhaus' Christianity and Democracy, his "Statement of the Institute on Religion and Democracy."
2. See summary in Poverty: 2007 Highlights.
3. Press Conference by the President, December 20, 2006. But see also "He Told Us to Go Shopping. Now the Bill Is Due," Washington Post, October 5, 2008.

2008-12-30T21:30:00.000-05:00

Don't Look Down

On the last Friday of every month (at least whenever I don't have class or a meeting or other obligation) I volunteer as a server at a homeless shelter and food bank in Daytona Beach. I do this as part of a local church group. On that special day, I go in about 9:30 in the morning and help set up; at 11:30 AM I help serve a small group of shelter families. At 12:00 noon, usually about four waves of homeless file in for what is probably their only meal for the day.

On this day, last Friday, we ran out of food twice and had to go back to the kitchen for a variety of available replacements. During the first wave, our guests got a meal of Chinese chicken (pan cooked chicken with peppers and sweet sauce) on mashed potatoes, a big spoon of apple cobbler, green mixed salad, fresh cut pineapple, and cake for dessert. For the second wave, we ran out of the apple cobbler and substituted that with small sweet potatoes baked in the skin. For the third wave, we ran out of mashed potatoes and then put the chicken on a bed of rice; we also ran out of green salad and replaced that with cole slaw. For the fourth wave, we ran out of Chinese chicken and replaced that with breaded chicken breast. At 1:30 PM, we ended the food service and started cleaning up. I washed dishes; I still find that very therapeutic. I was done at 2:30 PM and then headed home.

What stands out is that there wasn't an unusually large number of persons eating. I mean, no more than I've witnessed in the past. With the ongoing horror stories of Wall Street mischief, weird things done with TARP money, Madoff thievery, billions wasted in Iraq/Afghanistan, portents of a $10 trillion hangover, and with Congress shoveling out our tax money, itself borrowed from the future, to the very people whose incompetence has left us with this fetid holiday surprise—well, I thought I'd be seeing guys in three-piece suits lined up outside the shelter, for their only meal of the day.

Daytona Beach has a strange economy, built almost entirely on beach tourism, retirement gaiety, building construction and sales, auto and motorbike celebrations, and the small companies that support these endeavors. When any one of these economic hot spots declines, both skilled and unskilled workers get pushed right out the door. Unemployment benefits can pay some of the bills, but not much. There are formulas to follow in determining individual benefits and the actual benefit period, but still the maximum weekly benefit amount is only $275. The mainstream news is reporting mass layoffs, but I think we haven't even begun to see the pain. Wasn't that how last year's Asian tsunami happened? Something on the horizon and then ....

2008-12-20T23:45:00.005-05:00

Kicking with Shoes

Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi's farewell gift to George Bush last Sunday certainly went far beyond the old kicking metaphor championed by Richard Nixon in 1962.¹ Not only is al-Zaidi now a national hero in Arabic nations,² but his shoe-throwing skills (and Bush's ducking skills) have spawned some very interesting Internet games. Among the most popular of these is Sock and Awe, a Flash-based game that has already generated at least 46 million shoe tosses.³

Let's hope the US government doesn't start requiring us to take our shoes off before boarding at airport security.

1. See Nixon: The Vice President. After losing the California gubernatorial campaign to Edmund G "Pat" Brown, Sr, he told reporters: "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference."
2. "In Iraqi's Shoe-Hurling Protest, Arabs Find a Hero. (It's Not Bush)" in New York Times, December 15, 2008; "Iraq rally for Bush shoe attacker," BBC News, December 15, 2008. See also "Dodging shoes, Bush makes final Iraq visit," International Herald Tribune, December 15, 2008.
3. See "Iraq shoe-thrower inspires Bush-bashing Web games," Reuters, December 17, 2008; see also "Bush shoe throwing game sold on eBay," Reuters, December 19, 2008.

2008-12-20T02:15:00.000-05:00

Rapture and the Efficacy of Prayer

Now that the semester is over and I have some time for myself again, I was able to drive my mother to the optician to have her eyeglasses replaced. On the way back from the store, I had to slow down to look at a pile of clothes in the middle of the oncoming lane. It was a crumpled pair of pants and a shirt. I thought for a moment that the clothes had blown out of the back of a pickup truck, but I guess that wasn't what had happened at all. A motorist stopped on the other side of the road was gesturing out the window of his car and shouting, "Someone's been raptured! It's happened! It's really happened! It really works!"

So, too, with prayer. With news yesterday that the Cheney-Bush administration is going to make a portion of the TARP billions available specifically for the American automakers General Motors and Chrysler, it is apparent that those fervent prayers at Detroit's Greater Grace Temple last Sunday are really being answered.

Local car dealerships had dontated 3 hybrid SUVs for the Sunday service. Rev Charles Ellis said he and other Detroit ministers "would pray and fast until Congress voted on a bailout for Detroit's embattled automakers."¹

1. "SUVs at altar, Detroit church prays for a bailout," Reuters, December 8, 2008.