Scholars and Rogues

Heartland’s president distorts polls, surveys, and studies in support of the Unabomber billboard

Brian Angliss — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:32:22 +0000

Heartland Institute president Joe Bast distorts polls, surveys, petitions, and studies in an essay supporting Heartland's failed Unabomber/climate disruption billboard.

U.S. sides with Israel’s nukes over Iran’s lack thereof

Russ Wellen — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:34:20 +0000

The United States sides with a state with an illegal nuclear weapons program over one without one.

With zombie movies like these, who needs video games?

Chris Mackowski — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:38:32 +0000

After spending a little time video-gaming last week, I decided to hit up the great grand-daddy of zombie video games: Resident Evil. First booted up in 1996, the franchise has spawned more sequels than I can literally keep track of, including the newest installment released in March: Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City.

Except that I don’t play video games. So I decided to watch the movies.

…which, it turns out, works just fine because the movies unspool like video games: There are plenty of zombies as low-level villains, there are monsters of greater ferocity that pose special threats, and there’s a big badass badguy at the end, like the “boss” at the end of a level.

The heroine of the franchise is Alice, a genetically altered woman who spends much of the franchise trying to discover secrets of her past while killing zombies the entire time.

Milla Jovovich, who plays Alice, first came on my radar screen for her 1999 portrayal of Joan of Arc in The Messenger. (Well, I guess she was in The Fifth Element, but she wasn’t on my radar screen.) She has done some odds and ends over the years, including a sword-slashing Resident Evil kind of thing called Ultraviolet, but really she’s made the Resident Evil franchise into her cinematic bread and butter.

The entire franchise leans heavily toward sci-fi action/adventurism over horror. Here’s the rundown.

Resident Evil—Spawned from the video games, the movie offers a classic depiction of science gone wrong. The evil Umbrella Corporation, working on bioweapons in a secret underground complex beneath Raccoon City, creates the T-virus, which rejuvenates dead skin—and reanimates dead bodies. A lab accident sets the virus free, the complex seals itself shut, and a special-forces unit has to go in to sanitize the place. They don’t know what to expect, so the zombies are a big surprise—but they aren’t the only bioweapons loose in the complex. Great mix of sci-fi and horror. The gore’s not too bad; in fact, director Paul W.S. Anderson does an effective job ratcheting up tension by knowing what to show and what to hide. My imagination did a lot of the work—and it freaked me out.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse—The T-virus has jumped to the surface, turning Raccoon City into a zombie-filled nightmare world. Groups of survivors try to find a way out. Zombie mayhem everywhere. It’s like Escape from New York but with less plot and more zombies and some ham-fisted directing.

Resident Evil: Extinction—This is Resident Evil a la Mad Max. The zombie plague has spread beyond Raccoon City and wiped out the world and, in doing so, has somehow caused water to dry up and plant life to die. There’s lots of driving around through deserts in beaten-up vehicles, scavenging for food and fuel. And trying to avoid zombies, of course. It also has an attack of zombie crows—a scene that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, but looks cool because it has a flamethrower. The last remnants of the evil Umbrella Corporation, hunkered in an underground bunker and running out of resources, are trying to domesticate zombies. The treatment turns them into fast, rage-filled attack monsters, although the development isn’t used to particularly good effect beyond run-around pandemonium (see 28 Days Later or Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake for harrowing fast-zombie creepiness).

Resident Evil: Afterlife—Nothing says Kill Bill quite like a bad-ass woman using katana swords to slash up some Japanese guys. That’s how Afterlife gets started. The opening sequence is slick and action-packed, and it’s full of Alice clones; by the end of the intro, the clones are all dead and Alice has lost her superpowers. The tone takes a significant shift after that, getting more stark with a washed-out color palette, like Alien 3 meets a Zack Snyder film. Anderson, at the helm for the first time since Resident Evil, makes this the best outing of the series. The zombies run. Other monsters have faces that split open like face-grabbing squid mandibles. There’s a giant axe-wielding zombie monster than doesn’t die when shot in the head. There’s some black trenchcoat, black sunglasses Matrix-ism in the movie, too. Chris Redfield, a character from the video games, finally makes an appearance in the film franchise.

Afterlife ended with an obvious opening for a sequel, and considering that the movie was the highest-grossing installment of the franchise, it’s no surprise that Resident Evil: Retribution is slated for a September 2012 release.

TunesDay: Ryan Shaw is in the house

Samuel Smith — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:58:02 +0000

The new Ryan Shaw CD dropped today and I’m giddy as a schoolgirl at her first sock hop. Shaw has one of the absolute best pure voices in the entire neo-Soul genre – maybe the best. It’s like listening to Otis or Marvin or Wilson Pickett or, in more recent days, the criminally underappreciated Malford Milligan.

Still on my first listen, but in the meantime how about I share the wonderfulness with the S&R community? Here’s ”Karina.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

And the slightly smokier “Evermore.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

This one isn’t on the CD, but let’s listen to it anyway. (If you want to skip the intro and go straight to the song, that happens around 1:30 in.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s remarkable to find yourself in the presence of something special, isn’t it?

The CD, entitled, Real Love, is available at eMusic, iTunes, Amazon and Spotify.

Coming of age in the games industry: The Collective Agreement

Guest Scrogue — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:00:18 +0000

by Michael Smith

It’s no secret that the video games industry likes to compare its successes to those of the film industry. For several years now, game sales have surpassed the box office. The recent Avengers film set an opening weekend record, grossing $200 million in its first three days. Compare that to last November’s hit game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which did $400 million of business on day one. And that doesn’t even get into the recent revolutions in social gaming and the ironically named free-to-play games.

In spite of this, the film industry continues to lead the games industry in one important way — a sustainable business environment. The games industry is rife with horror stories of long work hours, inequitable profit distribution, burnout, divorce, and worse. Over the last couple of decades, a culture of twisted bravado has become entrenched as developers wear their “crunch time” like medals of bravery. There have even been rumors of producers quietly bragging about the number of divorces they’ve caused on their most recent projects. It got so bad at EA Games a few years ago that the employees’ spouses banded together and sued the firm.

Not content to sit back and let litigation steer the industry into responsible business practices, an organization of veteran game developers called The Collective Agreement has formed in Austin, Texas. I recently had the opportunity to talk with founder Shawn Lord about the group. As he describes it:

The Collective Agreement is a nonprofit organization focused on providing technology workers with the concepts and tools needed to improve their quality of life … we plan to create a web-based community portal, (providing) tools and services to help developers meet and create new projects, and work with existing companies to improve their processes.

MS: Shawn, what prompted you to form the Collective Agreement?

SL: Since joining the games industry in 2000, I’ve not only read articles and research concerning issues with quality of life and fairness, but I’ve seen the problems firsthand. These issues were here when I joined the industry and are still widely discussed today. This extends beyond some people bitching about life not being fair or disliking work. I’ve watched an unconscionable number of people burn out, get seriously ill, miss out on seeing their kids grow up, and in some cases have their relationships dissolve / implode.

MS: How long has this concept been brewing? Is it strictly your brainchild or was it the result of conversations you’ve had with others?

SL: The need for change has been apparent from the moment I got past the initial honeymoon of entering into the industry. In talking to my peers and more senior mentors early on, there was a realization that things needed to change. I often heard the excuses, “it’s a young industry” or, “it’s an industry based on creativity and innovation” – implying that we can’t address these issues due to the dynamic or highly iterative nature of our projects … we make cutting edge multi-million dollar games and services of enormous scale. Creating a web portal, consolidating tools and knowledge, and creating a few new services are far from impossible for a community like ours.

MS: You say that your work caters to technology workers, with a focus towards game developers within that group. Given your background, I can understand your focus on the latter, but why cast your net more widely on the former?

SL: Trying to go broader has some really positive implications. Game developers, traditional software developers, web designers and devs, customer service, quality assurance, even some guy managing a movie animation outsource house based offshore – they all have valid insight into different facets of the issues being discussed here.

Also, we’re seeing a convergence of these technologies that is already creating new generations of consumer products. It seems counter-productive, if not isolationist, not to leverage the experience found in other sectors.

MS: Would you say that a game development company has more in common with a productivity software developer or a film production company?

SL: No matter which sector or industry we discuss, they’re all generating billions of dollars – with a single project capable of generating hundreds of millions of dollars. When you consider the production costs involved, a small percentage increase in productivity and efficiency can save very serious amounts of cash. There’s no reason not to improve our methodologies. There’s also absolutely no excuse for not treating everyone involved more equitably.

MS: Have you been surprised by how candid developers have been in sharing their concerns and priorities in response to your Facebook poll questions? Have you been surprised by the responses?

SL: I’m excited by the number of people participating openly in the polls. We’re all fairly tech savvy and know that anything posted online (like this interview) is open game. Also, with this starting on Facebook, there’s a lot of employee / employer cross-pollination. Yet, a good percentage of the people invited have popped over and participated on our page.

Some people have expressed concern in private about pissing off their employers, potentially being blacklisted from future employment, etc. I can’t, in good faith, tell people that those concerns are invalid. I can, however, promote new approaches, forums, and tools that help give them a voice, while protecting their identities.

One of the tools we’ve discussed is a type of social petitioning system (think Change.org), which provides the ability to trigger and create a detailed post-mortem. This would allow employees to provide feedback to their employers at any time, while protecting their anonymity (if they choose).

Even simple statistical data can have an impact on a company’s management, owner, or stockholders if it’s provided in the right manner. You don’t have to stage a strike to get results. As feedback tools such as this become more common, I think you’ll see business take notice.

MS: You talk about employing post-mortem reviews as a means of improving methods. Don’t most game developers already employ post-mortems? Would it be fair to say that most developers use them more as means to let their employees blow off steam rather than look for actionable improvements?

SL: Most game developers talk about post-mortems, but aside from the occasional Gamasutra article, which is really just an outward facing PR move of sorts, I don’t see a lot of internal After Action Review.

Yes, the internal post-mortems that I’ve seen have either been an intentional move to have people voice their concerns into the ether, or have been initiated with the best intent in mind, and ultimately dissolve into the feedback loop that is middle management. In either case, they rarely affect change.

It’s possible that I’m wrong here, but if employers (or the people holding the purse strings) started getting feedback from a broader group, then change may actually start to occur.

So, if we created a system that people actually felt safe using, we might see more participation, which in-turn might result in more direct action on the part of the businesses. Also, this data could also result in a form of Yelp for companies. Something that Glassdoor.com didn’t get traction on – in our industry at least.

MS: Do you ultimately see the group focusing more on improving life for the individual developer or on standardizing processes that will create a less stressful, more efficient working environment?

SL: I think they’re two aspects of the same thing, but a lot of this starts with the individual. People that feel valued, empowered, and accountable within a fair and transparent work environment are going to [do] a better job and make better products. But, it’s not just up to the businesses involved to empower these individuals.

People need to understand their value and work to ensure that value is acknowledged. Communicating and acting as a community will make this more feasible. As this value becomes more broadly acknowledged, we’ll see working conditions improve, which ultimately improves the lives of everyone involved.

MS: In spite of the fact that game development has become a more regular line of work over the last 30 years or so, the vast majority of developers are in their 20s and 30s. What happens to those over 40?

SL: The International Game Developers Association publishes an excellent white paper on quality of life issues. In it, they address burnout and longevity in this industry. Our retention rates suck at the moment, but if conditions improve for developers, more of them will stick around.

Companies will benefit on several levels from investing and preserving that experience. It’s actually a selling point for many entry-level folks to get a chance to work with some of the people who made the games that got them into the industry. The transfer of knowledge is something that’s also underrated. .. There need to be more wizened oracles and battle-hardened first sergeants in this industry.

MS: Functionally, depending on the way the Collective Agreement goes, one could almost view the group as either a format standardization group for how developers do business or possibly even the beginning of a labor union. Thoughts?

SL: At the end of the day, everything tends to follow the path of least resistance. The issue has been that there really hasn’t been much resistance in the employee / employer relationship. We go to work each day thinking, “I’m lucky to have a job.” In too many cases, this common belief has led to stagnation or even systematic abuses from companies and their management.

Chris Rock said, “a man is only as faithful as his options.” I don’t want to create a union. If anything, I’d like the Collective Agreement to exemplify the concepts we promote, while being careful to avoid bureaucracy. Politics and bureaucracy have turned unions and trade associations into a nonstarter for a lot of people. I don’t blame those individuals for being wary. I’d rather find new ways to provide people with the information necessary to give them options.

MS: Recently, Kickstarter has become a popular means of crowdsourcing capital for independent game development. Do you see this as a fad or a potential game changer? Do you see it improving the quality of life for the average game developer? Improving the quality or selection of products for the consumer?

SL: Crowdfunding sounds buzzy and fadish, but it’s definitely a game changer. Crowdfunding, especially given the JOBS Act, has the potential to empower a lot of really creative people and projects.

In 1970, Alvin Toffler wrote about the merging of consumers and producers into something he called a “prosumer.” We’ve seen that evolution in everything from blogs and YouTube to Etsy, and it has definitely impacted traditional industries. People are getting more comfortable with creating their own content or getting it outside of the traditional commercial channels.

Social media, open source resources, online collaboration, digital distribution, along with dozens of other advancements, can now be easily combined with crowdfunding to remove the need for a large corporate structure that handles traditional logistics and overhead.

If all this sounds pie in the sky, look at it this way – there’s already discussion going on in major business publications and sites with regards to how to mitigate the impact these changes are making.

MS: Do you fear that Kickstarter has the potential to create a ‘race to the bottom’ as fledgling game developers buy their way on to development teams by donating large portions of the capital?

SL: It’s already the case that most games either don’t ship or launch into obscurity. I think once crowdfunding gets its footing, we’re actually liable to see the opposite effect. A game that’s crowdfunded inherently demonstrates the existence of a core audience. This is different from the current model, in that many times a person or group of people decide they know what people want and then pay some other people to try and convince those people that they do, in fact, want the thing in question. I’m not saying either one is the better model. I just don’t think that either is going away anytime soon.

MS: In an industry that changes as rapidly as the games industry does, what role do you envision for the Collective Agreement in five or 10 years?

Honestly, I’d love to think that five to 10 years from now, people are using the Collective Agreement as a normal part of their lives. Whether it’s a means to identify people they’d like to work with or projects that interest them, or as a common tool for getting feedback to companies or legislators, or maybe as a way to get help when needed – anything from a bit of crowdsourced code / art, to a loan for an emergency situation.

There’s no point predicting too far ahead. I’d like to see if we can begin to value ourselves more as workers and then go from there.

Our Miss Brooks prepares for a visit to the woodshed

wufnik — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:32:24 +0000

So at last one shoe dropped today, and it’s a pretty meaningful one. Rebekah Brooks, former editor of both the News of the World and The Sun, and the former CEO of News International here in the UK, is being charged today with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Along with her husband Charlie, who is usually referred to as “racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks.” Oh, and along with several other News International employees, including the Chief of Security. Specifically, they’ll be charged with attempting to prevent the police from finding a batch of evidence—trying to hide it, essentially. As Sandra Laville over at The Guardian succinctly puts it:

Brooks, one of the most high-profile figures in the newspaper industry, will be charged later on Tuesday with three counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in July last year at the height of the police investigation, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced.

She is accused of conspiring with others, including her husband, Charlie Brooks, the racehorse trainer and friend of the prime minister, and her personal assistant, to conceal material from detectives.

Brooks and her husband were informed of the charging decision – the first since the start of the Operation Weeting phone-hacking investigation last January – when they answered their bail at a police station in London on Tuesday morning.

They are among six individuals from News International, along with the company’s head of security, Mark Hanna, to be charged over allegations that they removed material, documents and computers to hide them from officers investigating phone hacking. The charge carries a maximum penalty of life, although the average term served in prison is 10 months.

You will undoubtedly remember we mentioned the computer thing earlier—this relates to that, as well as some other stuff that Brooks and gang tried to conceal from the police. Not very effectively, as it has turned out.

“Perverting the course of justice.” I like that. It has a nice ring to it, a touch of empire, perhaps. It’s so much more elegant than “obstructing justice,” which is the US equivalent. The net effect is the same, though—you attempted to prevent the police from finding stuff out in relation to a criminal inquiry. And it brings up some interesting points.

First, will Brooks try to make a deal? This is an obvious question, but a good one all the same. She clearly knows stuff. She also has a young child at home (not hers—a surrogate, but still.) For that matter, will any of the other six people try to make a deal as well? Or instead? Will we see some version of Prisoner’s Dilemma here? It’s probably the case that no one knows as much as Brooks does. There are actually a number of police investigations currently going on—focusing on either the phone hacking exploits of the media (mostly, but not entirely, News Corp personnel), on email hacking, on unauthorized police leaks, on bribery of the police, and heaven knows what else. I suspect Brooks knows a fair amount about much of this. And if she does make a deal, will it be at the expense of Rupert and/or James? Hard to say. One of the interesting aspects of this whole affair is that so much was done without anyone actually telling anyone what to do. So there’s not much of a paper trail, and what there is has been disputed. Did James see the incriminating memo that his senior executives and lawyers said they showed him? He says no, they say yes, but there’s no hard evidence one way or the other. A lot of this is on that level. But if Brooks starts feeling pressure to make a deal, I imagine all hell will break loose.

Then there are the political implications, because there are some, particularly for David Cameron, who it turns out has been a lot chummier with Brooks than many of us had believed. Whether some of this shows just bad judgment, which would be bad enough, or something of the sense of entitlement Cameron has frequently been accused of, which would be worse, remains unclear. But it’s one thing to have occasional meetings between senior politicians and senior members of the media. That’s sort of normal, and is probably, all things considered, a net contribution to the total sum of human understanding. The loathsome Alistair Campbell yesterday cheerfully admitted to all sorts of contacts between Tony Blair’s government and Murdoch—“Of course we did this,” he said. “Don’t be an idiot,” he implied. It’s another thing entirely to text messages offering support during a criminal inquiry after you’ve become Prime Minister and your good friend Rebekah has just been arrested. This shows no signs of going away as a political embarrassment, and Cameron already has enough on his plate—an economy that refuses to recover, a very restive Conservative back bench, and a startling drop in support at the polls. This is the last thing he needs—but to some extent it’s a self-inflicted wound. As Alex Massie pointed out last week, all of this makes Cameron look, well, weak. Not good.

Then there’s the issue of how this will play in the US, where there are already interested parties attempting to use this, if possible, to get the FCC to make a move on the Murdoch empire under the Foreign Corrupt Businesses Practices act, which has some interesting implications for media ownership. The Brooks story, as I write, is the lead in “The Paper of Record ™,” which is showing some signs of actually paying attention. Now, as we said last time, there are already some US federal agencies looking into this whole affair, including the FBI. But, you know, it’s all been sort of vague, and it’s over here, and it’s not clear whether the story has legs, and so on. Today’s announcement changes that dynamic quite dramatically, I would think. Should Brooks be convicted, it’s very plausible to surmise that the interest level in the various provisions and potential penalties of the Foreign Corrupt Businesses Act would rise dramatically. It’s likely that the Justice Department and the SEC would find themselves being dragged into this, although it might be unwillingly.

Because it has to be said that the current administration has yet to bring a single case against anyone involved in the massive fraud that nearly crashed the financial system back in 2008, as Glenn Greenwald pointed out just the other day. So maybe we shouldn’t get our hopes up here. But even the Obama people, who usually act afraid of their own shadows, may detect the glimmer of an opportunity here. We’re talking about the institutional obstruction of justice, carried out by senior management—the CEO, in fact—of a firm fully controlled by a US company, News Corp, which remains controlled by the family of its major shareholder and owner, Rupert Murdoch. Along with his Chinese secret agent wife. It may reach a point that the Justice Department will feel compelled to act. I imagine that the Obama people are hoping that whatever comes out of this, its implications aren’t clear until we’re past an election year.

Meanwhile, the Leveson Inquiry is proceeding apace, churning up lots of dirt. It may be too early to set the minute hands on the Murdoch Doomsday Clock. But we can probably at least put it up on the wall and get ready.

Pick ‘em: Romney, Romney-bot or Vampire

Robert Becker — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:00:19 +0000

Is Romney truly a vampire politician or merely another robot-puppet doing rightwing billionaire bidding? Inquiring minds want to know as we prefer humanized robots to fiendish ghouls -- and we wrote two verse satires to support this prudent perspective.

Heartland Institute billboard continues a long pattern of dishonesty

Brian Angliss — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:00:00 +0000

The Heartland Institute's recent Unabomber billboard and accompanying essay was filled with false allegations and errors, continuing Heartland's long history of dishonesty.

S&R Fiction: “Wanderlust” by P. Garrett Weiler

Fiction — Sun, 13 May 2012 18:23:51 +0000

Vern Harmon’s pipe had been carved from blood-red soapstone by a Missouri River Mandan. To Beth it was a menacing totem. When spring squabbled with winter on the Cumberland Plateau she’d wait for the siren winds. It was then that her husband would take the pipe from its beaded case. He’d just sit quietly and study the pipe, his eyes distant and vacant.

Her restless sleep had been disturbed last night when he’d slipped from the Skinners Creek cabin. Loons called mournfully, and soon the wind had brought her the wild odor of his hoarded kinnickinnick tobacco. She’d stared up into the darkness as the winds whispered darkly that they’d come for him yet again, and that this time they’d not be denied.

In the morning, Beth stepped from the cabin and strode towards the creek for water. A tall, full-bodied woman, the bend of her leg and spring of knee revealed a step accustomed to the faint paths of rough valley and rocky slope. She was a hill woman. She might stumble on Mt. Pleasant’s boardwalk, yet she could unerringly follow the trails of her mountain home, or step along briskly with Vern on a hunt in the Kentucky hills. Large hazel eyes softened a determined line of mouth.

The crippled old hound that had followed Vern home from Mt. Pleasant watched her passage with a flicker of watery eyes. It snuffled at an early fly near its nose then went back to sleep. Black and white speckled chickens cackled and flapped down from saplings where dark-green spring buds swelled. Freshness rich with a moist scent of verdant newness had settled along the creek. Young ducks quarreled in the deep eddy downstream where fat trout would laze in slow green depths through summer. Tethered in tall grass along the creek, two bays perked their ears forward and nickered hopefully at her.

The bright morning should have brought happiness and contentment, but instead she felt threatened. The wind came with a fitful rush. It tugged at her hair, taunting and mocking.

She knelt at the creek and plunged the bucket into its iciness, then rose, lifting the heavy pail easily. A figure stood in the path.

“Cain McToon!” she gasped. “You surely gave me a start.”

He’d simply materialized, as though swept up from some secret place by the wind and dropped over the valley to float silently down like a brown and withered autumn leaf. The wind, its task completed, swirled happily around him.

For a long moment he just stood there, silent and grey-bearded. He leaned casually on a long rifle propped butt down. Smoky eyes studied her from beneath flaring eyebrows. A chill fluttered up her spine. Then he turned without a word and walked off towards the cabin.

Vern stood in the doorway. A broad smile of welcome for the old trapper creased the lines of his weathered face. He reached to take the bucket from Beth and stood aside to let McToon enter.

“Well I’ll be dogged, Cain. For sure you’re a sight. Spring must be close to stir you out of hibernation.”

McToon nimbly dodged a playful kick aimed at his rump. “Ain’t so sure about that, Harmon. This chile felt right poorly crossin’ your freezin’ creek just now. Or else I just ain’t thawed out from them beaver ponds we used to wade.”

The deep voice was edged with a muted raspiness that put an edge on Beth’s nerves. She managed a smile, though, and pushed back errant strands of hair while setting a steaming mug of coffee in front of him. “This’ll take the chill off,” she said. “You’ll stay to breakfast won’t you?”

He looked up at her, a cold light in his eyes. She felt it seek out and find the hidden worry and resentment his presence brought. A thin smile touched the corners of his mouth. “Obliged,” he said.

Beth busied herself at the big stone fireplace, determined not to let the old man make what had already begun as a bad day even worse. Bacon sizzled and spat next to a half-dozen sputtering eggs in a smoke-blackened skillet.

“Now, ain’t this here prime fixin’s?” Vern asked McToon and leaned back in his chair. “This here’s the way to live, Cain. . .roof over your head, dry floor for your feet of a mornin’, good woman fussin’ over a hot meal. Better’n wet snow down your back, the coffee made from week-old leavin’s and punier than some pilgrim’s shootin’ eye. Pemmican froze so hard a body can’t even chop it with a hatchet. . .moccasins half gone, and what’s left wet clean through and lookin’ to be a sorry supper that night.”

McToon slurped his coffee and looked around the rough-hewn room with scant regard. “Well now, reckon what you say’s right enough, least for some.”

“Know it for certain,” Vern said. “Took me ten years out there before I saw the best of havin’ a wife and a settled home.”

McToon’s eyes steadied on Vern. “Well, this chile’s had his fill of your civ’lization. I come close to starvin’ this winter for some true meat.” His eyes narrowed. “I’m up for headin’ back.”

Beth cracked a sudden stillness with another egg, then carefully picked white bits of shell from the skillet. Outside, the wind exulted.

Vern slowly lowered his coffee mug. “For the mountains? You’re headin’ back to the mountains?”

“New mountains, hoss,” McToon answered. “I run into ole Bob Grant over to Lexington the other day. You recollect Bob don’t you. . .spent a season with him and some others up on the Siskidee? Well, he tole me about these here mountains down south of our ole stompin’ grounds. . .over in southwest of Santa Fe, says Bob. Good trappin’, says he, up on some river called the Gilly or Heely or some such with a Mex name.”

Neither of them noticed her quietly set plates on the table. Careful not to make a sound that would intrude on these moments filled with peril, she took her place. She fought an urge to look at Vern, afraid to see again the distant look that in the past glazed his eyes when he thought she wasn’t looking.

“New country. . ,” he whispered to himself, then seemed to shake the thought away. A hollow laugh rumbled in his chest. He cast a furtive look at her and reached over to lift a hand from her lap. He squeezed it in his rough paw. “Them days is gone and done for good, Cain. . . gone and done I say. You and me saw the beaver go, even from way up in the back country. Buffalo’s goin’ now, and who’d a thought that would ever be? People movin’ out there by the wagon load, like they owned it all. Injuns pullin’ out, or just givin’ up all together, except for a few of the old fighters, the Bad Hearts.

“Always some feller around to say it ain’t so. Your new country will be the same too, Cain, someday after it’s been tamed. We both saw it all comin’ three seasons ago when we come back here to the States. The old days is gone, hoss. . .or quick dyin’ out.”

McToon snorted. His tone sharpened. “They can’t ruin the whole country, Harmon. . .not the whole blasted and total-for-all country.” He slapped the scrubbed table. A fork clattered to the floor. After a quiet moment, McToon said, “I’ll be needin’ the Hawkens worked over.” He nodded at the rifle he’d leaned in a corner. “Take care of it for me?”

“You betcha, pard. Gunsmith I was in the mountains, and can still turn a bore with the best of ‘em.”

After eating, they went out. She heard the whoosh-sah-whoosh of the bellows heating Vern’s forge. Hammer rang on steel and a file rasped. What was McToon saying, now that he had Vern alone?

She felt so helpless and alone now. For the first time in her life she was pitted against a rival that had dug itself into another soul.

As the sun touched shadowed hills westward she heated water in a porcelain basin and sat it outside along with a slab of lye soap. Soon she’d hear him washing for supper. His voice would be pleasant and deep in tuneless humming, then sputtering as he rinsed his face. Then he’d step into the cabin and look around with pride.

He’d built it himself while they lived in a lean to. It had been good to lie down at night on fragrant cedar boughs with the wet, rich smell of clean earth all around. It was even better after the cabin was finished. Often, when she first awoke on some cold morning, she’d sift slowing through memories of their life together, sampling the best and most cherished. Then, with a squeal and a rush, she’d hurl herself at his broad back as he bent to the morning fire and bite through his man-smell of sun and linseed and old work sweat, dust and leather, exulting with his laughter at the new day to be shared.

Steps at the door interrupted her reveries. She turned to greet him with a smile. It froze in place when she saw McToon. Vern followed him in.

“I twisted Cain’s arm to stay the night,” he said and sniffed the air. “What’s for supper, darlin’?”

She forced a smile. “Ain’t much, but you’re welcome of course, Cain.”

McToon glanced at her and a subtle expression flickered across his face, a vague blend of scorn and satisfaction. Anger, sudden and hot, spoke words in her ear that she must not speak.

McToon scraped a chair up to the table. “I hear tell them ‘Paches out where I’m headin’ is some true whoopin’ hoss Injuns,” he said. “A man would need a good pardner to watch the back trail.” He swabbed a crust of thick bread around in his gravy, then leaned closer to Vern.

“’Member the prairie, Vern?” he asked. “Far as a body could see the grass was. . . belly up to a tall mule, wavin’ and whisperin’ soft-like in the wind.” His bony fingers moved as though casting a spell. Vern’s eyes narrowed as McToon continued. “And the wind always a-soughin’ gentle like. Or maybe a-howlin’ and a-screechin’ with the first cold of winter comin’ down from the north. What was it the Injuns called winter?” He cocked his head and squinted at Vern.

“Ghost face,” Vern answered distantly, eyes now narrowed and shadowed.

“That’s it, hoss. Ghost face. And do you ‘member how alone a body felt out there on that big open? Made no difference who you was with, you just kind of went to lookin in on yourself to maybe find some grain of comfort to guard against all that emptiness.”

The old trapper crooned on. “And them mountains, Vern. . .oh, them mountains. ‘Member, hoss? The Lakotahs called ‘em the Backbone of the World, and they’s that for sure, runnin’ ‘cross them plains like the spine of some giant just a-waitin’ to come alive. Made a man step kind of quiet and careful sometimes. ‘Member that high park up on the Yellerstone we found, just you and me? Deer and elk and bear, even some buffalo. And beaver! Lord, didn’t we make ‘em come though! And the buffalo down on the Laramie Plains in the fall? Measured ‘em by the mile. ‘Member how we’d all sit ‘round a good fire of an evenin’, cold and dryin’ out after wadin’ the ponds all day? Course we kept the fire low,” he chuckled, “cause of the damned Blackfeet.”

Beth watched as Vern touched his leg where an arrow had found its mark long ago. Even she felt the touch of McToon’s spell.

“We’d maybe have ourselves some hump meat a-simmerin’ and sputterin’ in all that lonesomeness,” he droned on. “It was like we hadn’t a single care in the whole world. And we didn’t, neither! Even the nations got to be a part of it all, like the grizzlies and mountain cats.”

She was suddenly on her feet, McToon’s mood broken by her chair rattling backwards to the floor. “Damn your eyes to hell,” she shouted at McToon, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, voice edged with some cold menace. “I won’t stand for you tryin’. . . tryin’ to—“

“Beth, darlin’,” Vern stammered, eyes wide.

“Don’t you see what he’s tryin’ to do? Don’t you even care?” Her voice trembled, her eyes blazed, and she took a step towards McToon and snapped at him. “What right do you have tryin’ to steal my man away? Get out of my house and don’t never come back!”

Vern touched her shoulder lightly. “This is my house, too,” he said. “And Cain’s a friend.”

“No need for that, ol’ hoss,” McToon muttered. He rose slowly, took up his rifle, and padded from the cabin.

Later that night, while she lay motionless, Vern rose silently from their tense bed. She heard him rustling in the fireplace for an ember, then lay awake in the empty darkness and smelled the aroma of the Indian pipe. Loons called mournfully in the night as she recalled the spell of McToon’s words. For the first time she’d gotten a glimpse of that far away world Vern had loved, still loved surely, but how much?

Hours of tossing and turning brought no sleep. Finally she rose and picked her way through the dark cabin. He was gone from the bench outside. Even the smell of the pipe had drifted off into the night.

First light brought him back, along with a slow drizzle of cold rain.

“Mornin’,” she said.

“Mornin’,” he responded stiffly.

For the rest of the day they suffered while the foolish pride that wouldn’t let them talk burned itself out. By evening some of the tension had eased enough for her to sit next to him at the table with her head on his shoulder.

“You really miss the mountains, don’t you?”

“Now, Beth,” he scolded lightly.

She wouldn’t let herself nag and pester him, nor try to force from him words she longed to hear, that his love was stronger than his wanderlust. She sat quietly as he took her face in his hands.

“Have I ever said a word about goin’ back?” he asked. “A body’d be a fool to give you up, along with all we’ve built here. Choice land. . .plenty of smithin’ for me. . .and give it up for cold, heat, starvin, dyin’ of thirst, hunted and ambushed by Injuns? And all for what? Once a year gettin’ together with a pack of half-wild, evil-smellin’ renegades for a hoo-rah, then back out to freeze, starve and hide another year through?” He gathered a shuddering breath. “Ha! Not for this hoss, and thank you kindly ma’am.”

He’d pulled off his boots and she noticed a hole in the toe of one sock. She went to her darning basket while a thought flowered in her mind. Damp wood popped in the fireplace. While her needle and thimble clicked she nurtured the thought, turned it one way and another with careful scrutiny.

Vern put more wood on the fire. “Did I tell you that ol’ man Ellis is movin’ out to the Oregon country? Said he was plumb fed up with how fenced in it’s getting’ around here. Imagine. . .an ol’ bird like that wantin’ to pick up and start fresh somewheres else.”

“Sounds like lots of folks is headin’ west don’t it?” she asked.

“Well, I suppose there ain’t no need talkin’ ‘bout it,” he answered.

Carefully, slowly, needing time to think, she put the needle and yarn into the basket.

“Vern. . .dearest Vern,” she began. “I’ve never for one second tried to hold you to this place. Have I?”

“Easy enough for some folks to just pick up and leave. . .like Cain.” She could tell that he was more thinking out loud than responding to her. “I just can’t go traipsin’ off again like I ain’t got no ties.”

“Vern, I won’t be a stone around my husband’s neck,” she persisted.

“A body just can’t pick up and go, leavin’ his woman to fend for herself,” he insisted.

She reached out and turned his face to hers. “You can’t. . . we can’t go on this way.” Hot tears welled. “I’d a hundred times over rather lose you than see you gutted like this.”

His eyes focused steady and sharp on her. “But I love you, Beth”

A breathless puff of vagrant wind chugged down the chimney with the smell of wild growing things in its voice. It came again, stronger now, shuffling restlessly under the eaves with some declaration. A flight of wild geese winged overhead, the whistle of their wings distant, then lost in the night.

Beth listened closely.

Vern went to stand in the doorway, head bent, shoulders sagging. She went to him and his arms came around her. How much a part of him the smell of wood smoke and clean open air was.

“You never badgered me, Beth darlin’, but you stopped me just the same.” His voice was husky now. “Three years ago I woke up one mornin’ on the Popo Agee and felt somethin’ was missin’. It was peculiar, ‘cause ‘til then I’d never wanted anything more than I had.” He brushed hair back from her forehead. “But somethin’ was just missin’.” He sighed deeply. “Then I found you.” He held her at arms length. “But this thing in me ain’t never goin’ to let up naggin’, Beth, and I just don’t know what to do.”

She leaned back in his arms, tilted her head to one side, and smiled up at him.

***

Skinner’s Creek chuckled over polished stones, and the baby ducks gabbled in their deep pool. Tracks of a wagon went away from the clearing, pointed westward into the forest. No one was there to hear the last call of a loon in morning’s first light.

Even the wind had gone elsewhere.

Lakers/Nuggets post-mortem: I told you so, sorta

Samuel Smith — Sun, 13 May 2012 17:44:54 +0000

About last night. Here’s what I predicted. Here’s what happened. A few brief comments and then we’ll put it to bed.

First, the officials did indeed arrive in a clown car and, as expected, they spent a great deal of time hosing the guys in blue shirts down with seltzer. In the end, though, their performance probably wasn’t much worse than it is during any other game, so your final grades will reflect whether or not your gauges are calibrated to “basic competence” or “sucked about like they normally do.”

Second, the main reason that the refs were no more inept than usual is because they didn’t need to be. I predicted that the Nuggets would bring their A game. They didn’t. Denver didn’t do anything especially well, and there were areas of particular disappointment, like seasoned vet and captain of the Cave Man national squad Pau Gasol taking the Nugs’ wonder rook Kenneth “Manimal” Faried to the woodshed every time it mattered. If you can’t put LA on the ropes, then the refs don’t need to bail them out, and that is 100% on the Nuggets.

Third, a note on something I didn’t mention in yesterday’s preview. Consider this line: 44 minutes, 15 points (4-11 from the 3-point line), 5 boards, 2 assists, 2 swats, 4 steals, suffocating defense on key pieces of the Nugget offense. Not bad, huh? Those are the totals for Metta “DSM-V” World Peace, who just 20 days earlier nearly decapitated Oklahoma City’s James Harden with an elbow that ranks as one of the most appalling cheap shots in NBA history. (Yes, that’s right, MWP owns two of the top four. He’s like The Beatles of NBA thuggery.) Had he done the same thing on the street he’d have been penalized seven years. But since he’s important to the Lakers he only got seven… [sigh] So, here’s how I imagine that the disciplinary meeting went down in league HQ.

Stu Jackson: So, boss, what are we going to about last night’s aggravated assault?

David Stern: You know, Stu, Metta has an ugly history and that was the dirtiest thing I’ve ever seen in sports. We have no choice but to throw the book at him and suspend him for at least the rest of the season, plus a few games at the beginning of next year.

[uncomfortable silence]

Stu: [tears streaming down his cheeks] BWAAAAH!!! Boy, that was a good one, boss!

Toady #1: Yeah, you really had us going for a second there!

Toady #2: [trying to catch breath] …rest of the season…HAHAHAHAHA!!!

Stu: Hooh. Boy, can’t wait to tell that one to the wife!

Stern: Ha – I still got it! Remind me to tell you the one about the time Michael Jordan bought a Mexican whorehouse! … Hee. Okay, okay, settle down, everybody. So, let’s just suspend him through the first round and be done with it, what do you say?

Stu: But, wait a sec. What if Denver gets hot and forces a Game 7? Stranger things have happened.

Stern: Hmmm. Hadn’t thought about that. Good catch, Stu.

Toady #2: Yeah, good catch, Stu!

Stu: What if we do this? There’s one game left in the regular season. So let’s suspend him for seven games. That sounds kinda like a series if you aren’t paying attention, right? And then if the Nuggets somehow get a run on, Ron will be back for Game 7 at home, right? That plus we’ll put a couple stooges on the game – maybe Duke and that asstool Stafford? Just in case?

Stern: I like it, Stu. Let’s do that. Now, next item on the agenda is the year-end party. Which one of you idiots is in charge of the strippers this year?

Inspired by a true story, yo.

Anyhow, a pox on the Nuggets for not forcing the officiating crew’s hand last night. Now all I have to look forward to is seeing what the creative team comes up with for the LA/OKC series….

The Cool of a Generation: S&R honors Maurice Sendak

Guest Scrogue — Sun, 13 May 2012 16:36:26 +0000

by Deb Caponera

If there could be any one person responsible for the “cool” of my generation, and well, all those to follow, it would be Maurice Sendak. But his influence goes far beyond what hip, creative things he inspired in us 40-somethings with his array of stories and pictures. He wasn’t just a children’s writer; in fact, he despised being categorized that way.

Straight-talking, wild-eyed and honest, Maurice gave us “kids” a taste of truth, of beauty, of pain, and of love. He gave us permission to be ourselves, however uncomfortable that was, and a strength that most of our parents discounted or denied us, and he never looked back.

For that alone, we adored him.

From a very young age, I was fortunate enough to know this man and call him my friend. Cleverly sardonic, intelligent, humorous and warm, he became like family to me, never talking down as most adults do to children. With that, he raised the bar—not just for me, but for all who took the time to understand what he was giving us.

His art speaks so clearly and beautifully, wooing us to turn those pages over and over, again and again. As an ordinary person I sometimes imagine him as having lived a hundred years ago, someone I could know only by looking into the pages of his books, and dream of what it must’ve been like and what he might’ve been thinking when he was creating his masterpieces.

But I was there. I watched and listened to this man, and enjoyed his presence. We talked of life and death. We ate and drank. We watched trashy tv (he loved Cops). We told dirty jokes and laughed and laughed and laughed.

A lover—and hater—of life, he just told it like it is. But in that plainspeak was a beauty unmatched, an irreverence so inspiring, and a power that brought a nation, a world to its knees on that dark Tuesday morning.

Maurice, we thank you for every unashamed bit of it.

And we may never be the same without you.

Deb Caponera is a designer living in Brooklyn with her husband and her dogs.

Image credit: Vanity Fair

JPMorgan eats a little karma

wufnik — Sun, 13 May 2012 07:59:26 +0000

Normally I keep my work and the rest of my life separated, and therefore blog little about financial industry matters. There are lots of people out there better mentally equipped, and with more time, to do that. But the JP Morgan $2 billion trading loss story is too good to pass up, for any number of reasons. For one thing, it’s fun to see Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon with some egg on his face. Karma is usually a good thing. For another, it will almost certainly derail the impact of the massive lobbying effort the banks over the past several years have put into fighting any further regulation of what we call the financial services industry. I say “almost” because who would have thought three years ago that banks would still be free to put on ridiculous trades that have the capacity to lose billions, three years after similar cavalier actions nearly sank the global financial system?

Actually, this is a bit unfair, because as far as I can tell, it wasn’t a ridiculous trade. For details about what actually happened, if you care deeply, Lisa Pollock over at The Financial Times has probably the best summary and analysis of the logic of the trades themselves, and what most likely went wrong with them. Felix Salmon has a good take too, and Simon Johnson, Barry Ritholtz and Yves Smith have good discussions of what this tells us about the overall state of the financial system these days, and how pitiful the attempts to devise and enforce the Volker Rule have been. The problem wasn’t so much with the logic of the initial trade, which actually is a trade I would have agreed with—given what was known at the time, it made sense. The problem with the trade itself appears to be that when it became clear it wasn’t working, the trader doubled down, rather than cutting his losses. Well, that’s sort of human nature, we all do that sort of thing. Except banks are supposed to have systems in place to prevent the vagaries of human nature from winning out over actual risk management. And the broader JPMorgan failure here is one of risk management, which will be attended to, by both Morgan and by the regulators.

The broader issue for financial markets and the world they operate in, however, may not be. What issue is that? The fact that Morgan was able to pass off what is clearly some proprietary trading as a trade whose ostensible purpose was hedging risk. It’s a subtle but important difference, and it goes to the heart of many of the ills of the global financial system these days—that the banks are still one step ahead of the regulators in many areas. JPMorgan got a clean bill of health only a month ago when it passed its current round of Federal Reserve-mandated stress tests with flying colors. Johnson asks the appropriate question here—how could this possibly have happened, when the trade existed at the time—and it’s a trade that produced a $2 billion loss to the bank? The Obama administration has tried to deal with this issue by hiring a bunch of ex-bankers to deal with these sorts of issues. Well, that didn’t work out so well, except for the bankers themselves, who generally tend to return to the banks. We’re still not dealing with the critical issue that, as Morgan has just demonstrated, these are institutions that not only are too big to fail, they’re too big to manage. What this suggests is that JPMorgan and Jamie Dimon, who emerged from 2008 relatively unscathed, may have been as lucky as they were smart.

Politically, if the Obama administration were smart, which in financial matters it does not appear to be, they would seize the opportunity just presented and run with it. We already know, courtesy of the estimable Kevin Williamson, that Wall Street, which generally supported Obama in 2008, now can’t give Mitt Romney money fast enough. So Obama should just say “screw these guys, they’ve been fighting me every step of the way after I saved their butts,” and start developing a stronger attack on the current bank model, which clearly will sink us at some point unless it is brought under control. And this means bringing back Glass-Steagall to separate investment banking from other financial institutions, specifically commercial banks and asset managers. The push for this here in Europe is serious—even the coalition government here in the UK is pushing it. The banks have been fighting it, of course, but the optics have just moved against them pretty significantly, and, one hopes, permanently.

Oh, and that $2 billion loss that JPMorgan just took? Look, this was a series of trades. The people on the other side of these trades just made $2 billion. So in some respects the system worked the way it’s supposed to. And, you know, JPMorgan is good for it. The problem in 2008 was that it wasn’t clear if the person on the other side of your trade would be good for it at the end of the day. We’re not dealing with that issue now, at least—well, perhaps in the case of Bank of America we are, but other banks are probably ok. But it would be nice to think that this gives regulators a bit of a push towards moving to a global financial system that won’t crash and burn the next time, taking us all with it.

Stateless and fancy-free

Russ Wellen — Sat, 12 May 2012 22:49:05 +0000

Conservatives and Tea Partiers don't understand that the rich -- including U.S. corporations -- don't see themselves as Americans.

Lakers/Nuggets Game 7 preview: call your bookie because the #fix is in

Samuel Smith — Sat, 12 May 2012 18:58:09 +0000

Tonight, the Los Angeles Lakers will square off with the visiting Denver Nuggets in a first-round playoff Game 7 that promises to be crackling with intensity. I’m a big fan of my hometown Nugs and I expect them to bring their A games.

I also expect them to lose, no matter what, because however well prepared they are, however brilliant George Karl’s game planning, however incredibly they may shoot and rebound and defend, they’re playing 5-on-8.

Put simply, it is not in the league’s financial interest to have LA lose to Denver. And as I have noted here in the past, when it comes to questionable officiating, the NBA is rivaled only by the WWE. Disgraced former ref Tim Donaghy, who spent some time in the pokey for his role in an NBA gambling scandal, has written a book about his experiences with the Stern Crime Family, and you really should at least read this collection of excerpts at Deadspin. Oh my. Oh my oh my oh my.

But how can a guy get away with writing these things? I mean, he’s a convicted felon essentially arguing that the NBA is one great big fix and calling out his former colleagues by name. How is he not getting his ugly polyester britches sued off? Good question. As I explained back in 2009:

In these interviews, Donaghy claims that inside knowledge allowed him to bet effectively. Specifically, he says his track record of success in betting games in which he was not involved was between 70 and 80%. This is against the spread, remember, so we’re not talking about betting good teams against bad ones. This is 70-80% on a level playing field. If he knew who the teams were and who the refs were, his intimate knowledge of who hated who made it possible to predict outcomes with a ridiculous level of success.

The killing blow here? His claims are backed up by the lead FBI agent who investigated his case, which addresses the credibility issue we talked about above. We don’t have to take the word of a convicted felon – we have the word of Phillip Scala, a highly placed, experienced law enforcement professional who knows his away around corruption.

If I’m the NBA and its refs, I ain’t suing nobody because the last thing in hell I need is this shit show in a federal court and lots of people on the stand knowing what happens when you perjure yourself in that forum. No thank you. We’ll let the PR boys handle this one and leave the lawyers on the bench, shall we?

Which brings me back around to tonight’s game. My initial prediction for who’d be assigned to ref the game went like this:

Dick Bavetta
Tim Donaghy
Keith Harris, Lakers VP of Marketing
Also, maybe they’d let Kobe carry a whistle, just to formalize things

Hah. I’m a funny guy. The actual assignments are out, though, and they look like this:

Mike “Duke” Callahan
Bill Spooner
Derrick Stafford

Now, wait a second. A couple of those names are fresh in my mind. Why is that? Oh, right – from the aforelinked Donaghy excerpts:

Of course, [Derrick] Stafford had some friends in the league, too. I worked a Knicks game in Madison Square Garden with him on February 26, 2007. New York shot an astounding 39 free throws that night to Miami’s paltry eight. It seemed like Stafford was working for the Knicks, calling fouls on Miami like crazy. Isiah Thomas was coaching the Knicks, and after New York’s four-point victory, a guy from the Knicks came to our locker room looking for Stafford, who was in the shower. He told us that Thomas sent him to retrieve Stafford’s home address; apparently, Stafford had asked the coach before the game for some autographed sneakers and jerseys for his kids. Suddenly, it all made sense.

Referee Jess Kersey was another one of Isiah Thomas’ guys. They’d talk openly on the phone as if they had known each other since childhood. Thomas even told Kersey that he was pushing to get Ronnie Nunn removed from the supervisor’s job so that Kersey and Dick Bavetta could take over. This sort of thing happened all the time, and I kept waiting for a Knicks game when Stafford, Bavetta, and Kersey were working together. It was like knowing the winning lottery numbers before the drawing!

And then there’s Mike “Duke” Callahan:

We had another variation of this gag simply referred to as the “first foul of the game” bet. While still in the locker room before tip-off, we would make a wager on which of us would call the game’s first foul. That referee would either have to pay the ball boy or pick up the dinner tab for the other two referees. Sometimes, the ante would be $50 a guy. Like the technical foul bet, it was hilarious — only this time we were testing each other’s nerves to see who had the guts to hold out the longest before calling a personal foul. There were occasions when we would hold back for two or three minutes — an eternity in an NBA game — before blowing the whistle. It didn’t matter if bodies were flying all over the place; no fouls were called because no one wanted to lose the bet.

…

During one particular summer game, Duke Callahan, Mark Wunderlich, and I made it to the three-minute mark in the first quarter without calling a foul. We were running up and down the court, laughing our asses off as the players got hammered with no whistles. The players were exhausted from the nonstop running when Callahan finally called the first foul because Mikki Moore of the New Jersey Nets literally tackled an opposing player right in front of him. Too bad for Callahan — he lost the bet.

Well. This certainly sets my mind at ease. I actually liked my lineup better, I think.

I’ll still be rooting for my Nuggets, but it will be kinda the same way I rooted for CM Punk in that handicap match on Raw last week. It’s the eternal tale of good vs. evil, of the righteous individual hero battling the rigged system and knowing the deck is stacked against him no matter what he does. He has no hope, but for the viewer, merely participating in the ritual drama nonetheless reaffirms the essential morality of the noble warrior fighting for justice in a corrupt society.

If there’s a niche for professional wrestling in America, then there’s certainly no reason why the NBA can’t continue to thrive. I mean, hell, I’ve watched Caddyshack at least 25 times and I know it’s going to end, too. And if the Nuggets do somehow manage to win tonight, overcoming Kobe and Pau and DSM-V Metta World Peace and the refs and Vince McMahon David Stern running down to ringside and screaming “RING THE BELL! RING THE BELL!” just think of the money to be made off of the rematch in next year’s playoffs…

Online news: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette shows how to make paywalls just plain tacky

Frank Balsinger — Sat, 12 May 2012 17:19:47 +0000

So, here it is, Saturday morning, and I’m scanning the headlines through Google Reader while downing my second cup of java. There’s lots of news in which to be interested, of course. Most of it I can just click on and, voila, there it is. Now and again I’ll bump into a paywall. That’s okay (or maybe it isn’t?). The publishers need to make a buck somehow, right?

But what about this?

Washington Can’t Be Fixed
from Arkansas Online stories by Richard L. Hasen in Slate

I’m game. Let’s see how Mr. Hasen makes the case. Oh, but what’s this? It’s an article preview! Even better, “This is a great article available only to our subscribers.”

Oh, a paywall. Bummer. Next.

Hold on. Didn’t I just read that the article was by Richard L. Hasen in Slate? I did. I did, indeed.

I’m sure I could just go to Slate and search for it, but doing that for headlines is an iffy proposition at best. Changing the headline is all too often the only bit of editing an outlet does now. It’s hard to find a needle in a haystack when “Sharp Pointy Object Lurks in Hay.” Google to the rescue.

Wouldn’t you know it? It’s a Slate article entitled, “Why Washington Can’t Be Fixed.” Even better, the full text is available, and it’s right from the horse’s mouth.

As for you, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, I don’t know if you’re alone in this new strategy or not, but thus far, yours is the only online news source I’ve seen use this particularly ugly gimmick. Paywalls may or may not be the way to go. Using them to grant access to AP articles available from countless other sources may or may not make sense. But to lie to your readers with the statement that the article (published by another branded news outlet) is available only to your subscribers?

Forget tacky. It’s false advertising.

—-

Image credit: Adapted from image of brick wall by viZZZual.com, licensed under Creative Commons and image of vending machine by Phil Kalina, licensed under Creative Commons.

-errari for sale? That’s just -ucked up.

Patrick Vecchio — Fri, 11 May 2012 18:01:53 +0000

Over the past year, people in a house I drive by each day have been selling cars from their side yard. The most recent was an ’80s-era Chevrolet Monte Carlo in a color resembling electric lime slices. “Mean Green Machine” shouted a decal in green letters along the top of the windshield.

This house is a typical out-on-the-country-roads house in this poor corner of New York state. It is sided with rolled asphalt the color of pine needles. A dusty driveway leads down to the road. Grass grows thigh-high on the steep roadside bank. Across the road is a dirt lot where the people who live in the house chop tree carcasses into piles of firewood the size of two-car garages so they can sell it.

A few weeks ago, I spotted a blood-red car parked where the Mean Green Machine had been sitting. First, I noticed how the car looked like it was moving 100 mph just sitting there. With its low profile, it looked as if it could slice through the air with barely a wisp. The second thing I noticed were black letters stretching between the wheel wells. The letters said “errari.”

The car’s other side included the missing F. I am more than a bit of a motorhead, so Ferraris are objects of desire. I want no other car more. But a longer look revealed why the car was sitting in a dusty driveway on a country road. Most obvious were the black letters along each side. Ferraris don’t need to be labeled. People who know, know. For anyone else, it doesn’t matter.

Previous owners also had tried to make the car sexier—attempts that were as effective as the landing of the Hindenburg. The worst attempt was an after-market aerodynamic wing mounted across the tail, just above the bodyline. Putting a wing on a Ferrari is like using oil paints to touch up an orchid.

I have been tempted to stop and walk around the car because I have seen just two other Ferraris—one in Chicago, the other at a resort town about 45 minutes from my house, where wealthy vacationers build second homes that cost a half-million dollars and up. I’ve never been closer to the cars for more than the second it takes to pass by in traffic.

I have not stopped, though. During a rainy spring week, the Ferrari sat with a window open. In addition, the car’s glorious red is faded, as if the car had been baking in the sun since the odometer of years rolled over to 2000. And if I were to walk around to the back end of the car and see that wing bolted on, I’d probably be sick to my stomach.

For the briefest of moments, allure tempted me to buy the Ferrari to restore it, but practicality threw allure off the road and ran over it and then backed over the body to be sure it was dead. Restoration would easily run into six figures, and I’m not talking about numbers that begin with one or two or maybe even three. Even after restoration, the car would require yearly maintenance running into the five figures. It’s not enough to be able to afford buying a Ferrari; you also have to be able to afford to take care of it.

Elvis Costello once sang about “all this useless beauty,” a phrase that can apply to supercars, supermodels, superhouses in the Hollywood Hills, million-dollar second homes, private jets, and travel to the destinations of dreams. I see supermodels and Ferrari drivers and realize that although they breathe the same air as I do, they may as well inhabit a different planet. I wonder what that world is like.

North Carolina’s Amendment One and America’s youth: more on winning the battle and losing the war

Samuel Smith — Fri, 11 May 2012 16:49:45 +0000

Rachel Held Evans nails it:

When asked by The Barna Group what words or phrases best describe Christianity, the top response among Americans ages 16-29 was “antihomosexual.” For a staggering 91 percent of non-Christians, this was the first word that came to their mind when asked about the Christian faith. The same was true for 80 percent of young churchgoers. (The next most common negative images? : “judgmental,” “hypocritical,” and “too involved in politics.”)

…

My generation is tired of the culture wars.

We are tired of fighting, tired of vain efforts to advance the Kingdom through politics and power, tired of drawing lines in the sand, tired of being known for what we are against, not what we are for.

And when it comes to homosexuality, we no longer think in the black-at-white categories of the generations before ours. We know too many wonderful people from the LGBT community to consider homosexuality a mere “issue.” These are people, and they are our friends. When they tell us that something hurts them, we listen. And Amendment One hurts like hell.

…

Because young Christians are ready for peace.

We are ready to lay down our arms.

We are ready to start washing feet instead of waging war.

And if we cannot find that sort of peace within the Church, I fear we will look for it elsewhere.

Take a couple of minutes and read the whole article. It’s well worth it.

Missile defense: ever the fly in the ointment of U.S.-Russia relations

Russ Wellen — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:13:03 +0000

That NATO missile defense in Europe as protection from Iran, not Russia, is a tough sell.

Heartland Institute billboard continues a long pattern of hypocrisy (updated)

Brian Angliss — Fri, 11 May 2012 02:36:02 +0000

The Unabomber billboard continues a long and dark history of institutional hypocrisy by The Heartland Institute.

S&R Fiction: “Flynn” by Patty Somlo

Fiction — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:19:34 +0000

At ten minutes before ten o’clock on a morning absent of fog, a worn-out, wood-sided cottage began rolling down from close to Russian Hill’s top. The uncommon sight of a house moving down the street stopped the tourists who’d just stepped off the cable car. They leaned forward, their rectangular digital cameras raised, though they didn’t have a clue why this strange thing was happening. But they were in San Francisco after all, on vacation from cookie cutter suburbs in Ohio, Tennessee, New Jersey and Illinois, where nothing of much interest ever happened. Several women were already thinking that this little old house rolling down the hill on some sort of flatbed truck would make a great story, along with the cable car ride up a street so steep, it made their hearts throb in their throats.

Further down the hill, a crowd of a different sort had gathered. These were working men, mostly dressed in navy blue nylon windbreakers, with their union local stitched in white, over diagonally zippered pockets that carried half-smoked packs of cigarettes. These men knew about the cottage, why it was being moved and where the truck towing it was headed.

The cottage moved past and made its way to the bottom of the hill, where the road leveled off and the cottage rolled out onto busy Van Ness Avenue. A truck went slowly in front, carrying a bright yellow sign that read WIDE LOAD. A second truck and sign followed in back.

At the end of Van Ness, where a jumble of streets made it hard to know which way to go, the cottage on its flat-bed truck made a wide right turn, traveled under the overpass, and then headed onto the freeway going south.

**********

The owner of the cottage had been known by only one name, Flynn, and by the way he walked. Like a seesaw. No one knew if Flynn happened to be his first name or his last, and the answer didn’t matter to anyone. Some said he’d lost a leg in the war. No one could be sure which conflict. Others figured the leg had taken a beating in some labor unrest or another. Not a soul made the effort to find out.

You see, Flynn was a genuine character. A fixture of a former time. He seemed to be a guy some writer or movie director had made up. He had, as one woman close to his age liked to say, Paul Newman blue eyes. Besides the eyes, Flynn was tall and strong. His wide, often rosy round nose was shoved to the left and appeared to have been broken several times. He talked like someone from Boston’s rough South Side, with a raspiness cultivated by unfiltered cigarettes. When he told stories about his time in the Merchant Marine, stopping for adventures at exotic ports, or his work organizing the men who loaded ships along the waterfront to fight for better wages and working conditions and getting beat up on this or that picket line, more than a few people thought he sounded like Popeye.

Though Flynn never married, he rarely lacked for attractive feminine company. Women liked hanging around him because he seemed exciting and, when he wanted, could be a romantic guy. Of course, he didn’t let anything or anybody tie him down. Strangely enough, his lovers found this quality alluring. Still, the minute a lady friend pressed too hard, Flynn was gone.

Flynn liked to say that the working stiff had always gotten the short end of the stick and that’s why he had to keep poking it into the big shots. For a while, no one wanted to listen but Flynn kept on about it anyhow. He figured, eventually, folks would come around. Soon as things got hard.

And that’s what happened. The economy tanked, as Flynn figured it was bound to, because he’d studied Lenin and Karl Marx. Folks in Hollywood thought they’d better take advantage, make a movie to give the public’s anger a safe outlet. One famous director’s sister who lived in San Francisco told her brother he should make a film about this guy. An old union organizer, she said, who walked tourists up and down the waterfront, telling them stories about San Francisco’s wild old days, when working men were something to be afraid of.

The director decided to commission a script and see what he thought. But he first needed to secure the rights to Flynn’s life.

He called one morning, when Flynn was nursing a hangover.

“What d’ya mean, my story?” Flynn asked over the phone. He had uncharacteristically bought himself a cordless phone because, even at the age of ninety-four, he preferred moving around to staying put.

“Your life story,” the director said, his voice turned up too high. Flynn assumed the director imagined him hard of hearing. “A movie about you.”

“Well go ahead and do what ya’ please,” Flynn shouted back. “Idn’t that what you big shots always do? Ain’t nobody here stoppin’ ya’.”

The director tried offering Flynn more money than he’d originally planned to propose. Flynn said he couldn’t sell. It would be like prostituting himself. Money had never much mattered to Flynn, even though he’d spent his life fighting so the working man would get paid a living wage and overtime, plus benefits worth getting a busted rib for.

Flynn didn’t give in but that exchange got him thinking. Maybe he should write the story of his life.

**********

The freeway on that perfectly clear morning was jammed, as always, though the traffic moved, and that was something to be grateful for. Drivers were so busy cutting in and out and maneuvering to get into the right lane before the exit that they failed to notice a funny looking cottage heading down I-280 along with them. The drivers in the little caravan moving the cottage and accompanying it had a certain route they were required to take, which they followed to the letter. Oyster Bay Boulevard came up and the driver of the lead truck flicked on his signal.

Soon after the cottage had passed on its way down from Russian Hill, the working men on the sidewalk walked to their cars and headed toward the freeway. Because they could make better time than a flatbed truck carrying a small house, the men were already at the site next to a concrete foundation, waiting for the cottage to arrive.

**********

Not a week after hearing from the Hollywood director, Flynn got another unexpected call. This time from a local developer.

“I’d like to make you an offer on your property,” Bob Richardson, the developer, announced.

Without a second’s hesitation, Flynn informed him, “It ain’t for sale.”

This wasn’t the first time a guy with money to invest had made Flynn such a proposal.

Flynn pressed the phone’s red button with the fat pad of his gnarled thumb and set the instrument back in its plastic receiver. He didn’t comment, as he usually did, piece ‘a crap from China, because the call had gotten his dander up.

That didn’t happen to be the last he was to hear from the developer and Flynn had a pretty good idea it wouldn’t be. The developer had tried not to make too much of Flynn’s little piece of earth, since he wanted the place for a pile of money less than it was worth. Flynn had been fighting the big shots practically since he was old enough to walk. The old longshoreman, union organizer and rabble-rouser knew precisely what the developer was up to. The guy figured that at the age of ninety-four, Flynn had no doubt parted with his smarts. But as Flynn mumbled to himself after setting the phone down, a man would have had to go bonkers not to know how much that developer wanted his property.

To confirm the fact, Flynn walked across the old wood floor that moaned like an old dog in four separate spots and stepped out the front door. Unlike the other houses on all sides and up and down the block, Flynn’s did not have a front entrance that opened onto the sidewalk. Instead, when he stepped out, he found himself facing the side of the building next door. And that was the comical thing about this developer salivating over Flynn’s property. It wasn’t really so much.

That is, until Flynn walked down the path, which at this time of day was in shadow. Once he stepped beyond the building next door, the whole world came into focus. That million dollar view, Flynn had enjoyed bragging about. But, in fact, with the crazy climb of real estate prices in this city, it was now more like a ten million dollar view. And that’s what the developer was after.

Flynn couldn’t imagine giving this place up, even though he found it harder and harder to climb the three flights of steep steps up from the store or when he went to grab a cup of coffee down on Union. It was a completely fogless day and the bay shimmered blue all the way to the horizon. Flynn loved this town. Sometimes, as now, Tony Bennett’s old tune about leaving his heart here drifted through Flynn’s mind.

Still, he couldn’t help but get angry that this city, San Francisco, had turned on him as it had done. It was almost as if he’d been betrayed by one of his beautiful lovers. Seemed like everything now had been spiffed up for the folks who could afford it. All the old haunts where a working stiff could get a hot meal and a cup of coffee had closed, replaced by restaurants a guy like Flynn didn’t even have the wardrobe for. Every week, Flynn heard about old tenants getting tossed out of their apartments, so the slumlords could turn the buildings into condominiums and make a bundle.

Flynn wanted to hold onto the San Franciscohe had known. In the old days of strikes and marches, when the working men’s cottages, small square houses slapped together with found materials, climbed the steep slopes, all the way up here to the top of Russian Hill. Every one of those worn-out, much loved cottages had been bulldozed, to make room for the big, fancy houses that covered these hills. That is, all but one. All but Flynn’s cottage.

The developer had taken to sending his lackey over to bug Flynn, after Flynn quit answering his phone. Flynn hadn’t bothered to install a doorbell, since in the old days when working men used to come by, he just left the front door wide open. The developer’s guy in his brown leather jacket meant to look old pounded on the wooden door until Flynn figured his knuckles must have been stinging. Flynn sat inside at the tiny, two-person white enamel table, where he ate and didn’t bother to hide.

**********

Many of the men waiting there as the cottage came around the bend and into sight, remembered the days when cargo was lifted by hand, not machines, and loaded onto and off of the ships. A longshoreman prided himself then, on his strength, endurance and skill. As the lifts slid under the cottage and the motors hummed, the men couldn’t help but remember those days when they were young. The work was grueling and dirty, of course, but afterwards a man felt he had done something. That first cold beer at O’Reilly’s down at the pier tasted like nothing so much as heaven’s rain. On rare nights when the fog waited out by the Golden Gate and the water and sky were blue enough to cause heartbreak, a man couldn’t help but feeling that there was no better life than the one he was living.

As soon as they’d lifted the cottage onto the foundation, the assembled crowd erupted into applause. By that time, the group had grown to several hundred. There were even reporters and cameramen from two of the local T.V. stations, along with one from the national network.

A union construction crew proceeded to bolt the cottage down. The men joked with one another, smoked, and a few talked about the Giants’ season prospects.

An older woman with a long gray braid stood off to the side. She was holding onto the arm of a younger woman who resembled her. They watched as the crew finished bolting the cottage, waiting for the workers to step aside.

**********

Not a week after the director called, Flynn started writing his life story. Nobody had paid him a dime and he didn’t expect this. He just wanted to write. He liked to think the reason was to educate the masses. But in truth, he wanted to relive the past times.

What a tyme we had, Flynn wrote now, not caring if the spelling of his words was slightly off. He knew men had been killed and others roughed up but in the end it was all so glorious when they shut the entire city down. Flynn had been telling these stories for years in his talks, walking the tourists up and down the waterfront, pointing out spots. At those times, he had to pretend the restaurants on the piers, places so fancy he wouldn’t dare step a toe in, were the warehouses where men hoisted crates, by hand no less, and then hefted them out onto waiting ships.

That was the thing he tried to write and it made him sad and angry and a little confused at times. The world once had a place for the working stiff, he wrote down. And then he surprised himself by writing, I don’t want to be old.

He sat back, craving a slug or two of whiskey so much he could practically taste it on his tongue. That and a smoke. He couldn’t have either one now or he might have another stroke. He’d been lucky the last time, the doctor said. A second one’d kill him.

Before the stroke, Flynn used to hold court at DeNapoli’s, a dark bar on a side street in NorthBeach. Oh, sure, the tourists came in there to get a taste of old San Francisco, as the tour books promised, but a few of the old guys still hung around. Someone or other would set Flynn up with a whiskey and then keep it coming, so his mouth wouldn’t get dry. He’d tell about the general strike, how the cops had shot those boys, and the next day, they marched up Market Street, and there were marchers all the way from the waterfront through downtown. Then they called for the general strike. The next day, the entire city was shut down. Not a trolley car clanged up Market.

Some nights, Flynn had trouble making his way back up the hill to his cottage. He tripped over his size fourteen boots and wove from one side of the sidewalk to the other. Under the influence like that, he’d remember the great old days. What hurt to the point of making him cry was recalling how intensely he felt life then. The fish smells along the waterfront. The boys all standing out there in the fog. Pumping signs. ON STRIKE! Everyone singing union songs like Which Side Are You On? and moving on to the Communist anthem.

Those nights when Flynn was making his way home from the bar, fog had already settled in thick over the city. He liked to stop after the first set of steep stairs up from Union and turn around, listening to the foghorn bleating every couple of minutes out by the Golden Gate and watching the lights on the bridge give off their eerie yellow glow. He’d remember nights they stayed up drinking, the boys pooling their change, and then sending one of ‘em off to buy another bottle. Talking. Talking. Arguing about the world and politics and strategy. Those nights, Flynn sent his women home.

The developer took his time, digging through the county permit records. Richardson was delighted when he found that Flynn’s cottage, like the shacks that had been demolished, was built without a single permit and never brought up to code. Not only that. Even small as it was, Flynn’s cottage bled over the property line of the building next door. The structure – and this excited the developer most – was encroaching on its legitimately permitted and constructed neighbor.

The developer suspected that Flynn wasn’t going to go away without a fight. He couldn’t help being aware of the appeal the old guy still had. Richardson had lived in San Francisco his entire life, born and bred, as he liked to say, which made him special, since so many of the city’s residents had come from elsewhere. The newcomers loved the idea of San Francisco, the myth of its wild, rowdy past. The bawdiness of the waterfront and all of that. They liked having old guys like Flynn around, giving the place a certain character it had lost, when the housing prices took off.

Flynn didn’t bother to open the first notice when it came in the mail. He’d been having a bad week. What started with a sore throat had worsened into a hacking cough and terrible rattling chills and bone-wrenching aches.

If any of his old pals or women were still around, one of them would have coaxed Flynn to the doctor. But everyone who’d ever meant anything to him had died. And so he got worse, the fever ripping through him, soaking the sheets and then chilling him, until he started shivering.

The second notice arrived in the afternoon, when Flynn’s temperature peaked at a hundred and five. It came from a bureaucrat in the county planning department, without a thought for its recipient. John Anderson was the bureaucrat’s name and he had written to inform the owner that his structure was illegally encroaching on the neighboring property and he needed to bring the home into compliance. Anderson gave Flynn thirty days to appeal, which Flynn would certainly have done if he’d been able.

By some miracle, Flynn recovered. He did not want to credit prayer, though he’d resorted to silent pleas to God at his lowest points, despite having sworn off Catholicism when hardly more than a boy. Any other man his age would have died. He was thinner now and looked more like the elderly man he’d become, stooped and shuffling. His legs were weak and felt like they might not hold him up, when he went back and forth to the bathroom. The truth was that Flynn could have used some assistance now, a cane or a walker. Something he would never have done.

The second notice sat on the table unopened, along with the first. Then a third and final notice slid through the mail slot to join them.

Flynn was able, finally, to eat some stale saltine crackers and canned tomato beef soup. Each day, he slept a bit less. He hated to admit what was becoming more apparent – that he might not make it another year.

In between naps that lasted an hour or more, Flynn sat down at his chipped enamel table to write. Even with his body giving up on him, as it appeared to have done, there was nothing wrong with his mind.

It became the happiest time of his day, when he sat down to write. In the mornings, he would brew a pot of coffee and pour himself a cup, take a sip or two or three, sit far back in his chair and wait for the memories to surface. The caffeine was like a fuel pumping through his veins, and then, suddenly, he’d see the boys, Harry and Mac and the Irishman, what was his name? Flynn would lean down over the table and tell about the time they were striking over on Pier 23 and the goons showed up in black trucks. Pulled up and hopped out and started bashing heads. Blood streaming down their faces and the boys refused to give up.

In between the times he wrote, Flynn slept and ate a little, though his appetite had shrunk. He wouldn’t have said that he thought his time was short but he felt an urgency to get down the best stories of his life. Of course, he had never been a patient guy or one to take his time. And maybe that was the toughest part of being old and as he’d decided, almost useless.

His left hand cramped up before he was ready to quit. He’d broken that hand, along with the right, several times in fights. Mornings when he woke up, the hand was curled, frozen like a claw. At night before he fell asleep, his fingers and palms ached and throbbed.

He didn’t let any of this stop him. The pages with his stories scribbled across piled up. The arrests. The trials. The nights in jail. And, oh, the blessed relief when he walked out.

The reporter from one of the local T.V. stations, a slim pretty Asian woman, stepped into the cottage first. She had her cameraman get way too much footage of the interior, though the reporter knew they would end up using very little of it. The inside looked as if nothing had been bothered, even with the lifting of the house off its foundation and moving it a good twenty miles.

No one paid any attention to the gray-braided woman, who waited for her turn to enter the cottage. She counted the years in her mind and then counted a second time, to make sure the number was right. Though she frequently acknowledged to her daughter that her life seemed to have flown by, she couldn’t help but be surprised that she hadn’t been inside that cottage for half a century.

Of course, Flynn didn’t leave the women out of his stories. And, yes, there had been a special one. Ann Marie. Half Mexican and half Irish, with long black hair and, what Flynn could never get over, emerald-colored eyes. She was a dancer, doing stuff Flynn couldn’t understand on a wooden stage in her bare feet. But he loved watching her body in those form-fitting costumes.

Flynn thought about her now, leaning over the railing and gazing out at the bay. She was like a woman you’d expect to see in the movies.

He wouldn’t have admitted it then but now he could say that, yes, he enjoyed showing her off. In fact, he wrote that she made him feel important, though after reading the words on the page he considered striking them out. His face grew warm as he recalled the way men looked at her and then over at Flynn, the men grateful for the chance to get a glimpse of her.

When they went out, she wore long swirling dresses and scarves. Flynn liked to think that she kept her body hidden just for his eyes. He pictured her lying naked beneath him, her small breasts and tiny waist. She’d take her clothes off, all those layers, one by one, while he watched.

I should have married her, Flynn wrote now, and quickly brushed the tears away from the corners of his eyes.

She’d moved some things in, a few dresses, a pair of boots. There’d been no place to hang her dresses because Flynn didn’t have a closet. Ann Marie ran a clothesline across the room and Flynn cursed, every time he ran into one of her dresses.

Little stuff like that, he wrote, got him hot. But mostly he felt that she was cramping his style. There wasn’t enough room in his life for her.

The afternoon she announced that she was pregnant with his child, he told Ann Marie, “I’m just not the type.”

**********

Flynn was fast asleep when the guy from the county tacked the condemnation notice on the cottage door. If he’d been awake, Flynn would have heard the tap-tap-tap as tacks were pounded into the wood with a hammer sized perfectly for the job. As is always the case with bureaucratic functions, the notice gave a date by which the county planned to tear the cottage down.

Three days passed before Flynn stepped outside. The fog was so thick, he couldn’t see a single building beyond the ones on each side.

He walked slowly, not thinking about anything except putting one foot in front of the other. For some reason his breathing felt hard. Each time he took in air, something stood in the way of the breath getting into his lungs.

About a block away from the market, which was his destination, he had a terrible craving for a clean shot of whiskey and some friendly company. The faded blue workshirt he had on was soiled but Flynn didn’t give this a second thought. He’d been living for so many days now in the world of his stories, where he was young and strong and even handsome, he believed anything was possible. So he shuffled past the market and down an entire extra block to reach DeNapoli’s bar.

He made it as far as the front door. His legs folded under him, right before he hit the ground.

The funeral procession stretched up and down Market, from the waterfront through the Financial District, past Nordstrom’s, almost to City Hall. Members of the longshoremen’s union Flynn helped create marched first behind the hearse carrying his coffin. The Mayor, wearing a wide-brimmed black fedora, and the Congresswoman, a black lace veil pinned back off her forehead, came after. Firefighters playing those mournful bagpipes followed, adding a solemn sound.

The Examiner reporter noted later that this was the largest funeral procession in thirty years, since the one for the mayor and supervisor, who’d been gunned down in their offices. And at a time when everyone thought the labor movement had died, the reporter wrote that union members were out in force – restaurant workers, longshoremen, teachers, custodians and cops.

When they reached the waterfront, the president of the longshoremen’s local got up on the temporary wooden stage. The bagpipes went silent.

“Flynn O’Halloran,” he said. Longshoremen at the front, who knew Flynn had fought Franco in Spain with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, responded with a rousing, “Presenté.”

Then, the president told the crowd, “Flynn would be happy to see all of you here today.”
After that, he made a pitch for money.

“The city is planning to tear down Flynn’s cottage,” he informed the crowd.

The longshoremen in front of the stage let out a resounding moan.

“Our union is leading an effort to save the cottage. This will take money. We’ll be passing the hat for your donations.”

Flynn had never spent much time wondering what death would be like. He’d come close too many times. Perhaps, he’d begun to believe he was invincible.

No one knew for sure if Flynn had foreseen his death. But that was the number one topic of discussion following the funeral, when mourners gathered at DeNapoli’s to pay Flynn their final respects.

You see, he left a will of sorts. Handwritten and signed. Left it sitting on the enamel table next to the four-inch stack of pages that contained, as he explained in the will, the best parts of his life story.

Flynn had not only dated the will but he noted the time. 12:30 p.m. It made sense, Harold Ryan, the head of the longshoremen’s local, said to a young union brother whose name he couldn’t recall.

“Flynn was a working man nearly all of his life,” he said, elaborating on his comment. “A working man lives and dies by the clock.”

Ryan held up his beer glass. With the end of a knife, he tapped it hard.

“Hey, quiet everybody,” he yelled, and then tapped the glass another couple of times.

“Let’s all raise our glasses for a toast,” Ryan said, his voice booming as if he were speaking through a bullhorn.

“To Flynn O’Halloran,” Ryan shouted.

The crowd echoed the dead man’s name several times.

**********

As eerie as it might sound, Flynn signed the will twenty minutes before his body was found. He gave himself just enough time to make it down the hill to his favorite bar.

The cottage, the balances in his checking and savings accounts, his worn-out table, chairs and bed, and souvenirs from his world travels were left to the local union officials, to do with as they saw fit. The four-inch stack of papers Flynn had faithfully filled with the memories of his life he gave to his favorite lover, Ann Marie. If Ann Marie was no longer around, the writings were to go to her oldest child. Flynn apologized for not knowing the child’s name or whether the child was a son or a daughter.

Ryan finished his beer and turned toward the bar. He noticed a woman standing next to him for the first time.

“I’m Harold Ryan,” he said and reached his right hand out. Though she was old, her hair gray and the skin on her face wrinkled and dry, Ryan noticed that she had astonishingly beautiful green eyes.

The woman nodded and smiled. She did not introduce herself to Ryan.

“Did you know Flynn?” Ryan asked her.

“Yes, I knew him,” she said and turned her head away to face the door.

Ryan took this as a hint that the conversation was over.

**********

The old woman waited until the crowd around the cottage thinned, and even then, hesitated to go inside. The woman’s daughter led her over to the water, which began only about a hundred yards from the back of the cottage. The woman could see how salt from the bay had dried and crusted over the ground, making it look ancient. When she gazed out toward the water, it made her glad to see the sunlight dancing on the small light waves.

Unbeknownst to the woman and her daughter, someone had opened the windows in the small cottage. With so many people and on such a sunny day, the tiny house had grown warm and the air inside stifling.

The breeze picked up over the water, as a bank of fog sitting further out began to roll in towards shore. A gust pushed through the window, grazing the white enamel tabletop and lifting a handful of pages up.

White papers blew out the window and dropped. The next time the breeze came up, the pages were carried out onto the water.

The old woman and her daughter did not go inside. They stood next to the bay and watched, as the pages of a life drifted out toward the horizon.