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Arrgh! The damn Interlink Hawaii DSL is giving me only 1/2 of the Internet now! What a mess. Dialup still works, but it's SO SLOW. T. is on the phone trying to get the situation straightened out, but we are probably going to have to get cable. Such a mess.
But I have been doing more reading and have written an essay here that some of you might be interested in looking at. We have entered a new era without quite knowing what's happened.
My parents were Christmas phobes, and for good reason. It was the time of year when they reflected on all the losses in their lives and their thwarted hopes for the future. Their chief complaint was that they had married and had children, so of course this did not make for a very jolly Christmas for the children involved.
But ever since I got married, and especially since I had kids of my own, I have enjoyed Christmas, even the tacky stuff. And Christmas with my grandkids is great. I'm missing being with them this Christmas, but they are arriving here in February and we'll have a late celebration of some sort.
My griping is sort of a tribute to my late mother and father, I suppose.
The nostalgic draw of the season has me in its thrall. Bach, Handel, the greatest story ever told, cookies.
So to cure my mood, I will watch this, and I suggest you do too.
Bernard Henri Levy, sexy older guy.
HIllary Clinton, old bag.
From the Huff Post:
Liberal fascism comes to life. I've posted this video before, but it is the all time funniest video ever. I saw it in Europe. It was too raunchy to be shown in the U.S.
Lux Land, from the Huffington Post:
"Never in my life have I felt so diminutive in this Universe but so filled with the world as when I was standing at the base of the Sawtooth Mountain range. Both inspired and terrified, I made my home in a tiny mountain community northwest of Boise, Idaho. Severe both in its appearance and its climate, the seasons controlled our lives completely. When the sharp teeth of the mountains began casting ominous shadows over our homes we knew it was time to draw in, depending on one another for basic needs - including human companionship.
"If you can imagine a town populated by community-oriented recluses you would understand McCall. I suppose most of us only shunned our previous lives, whether we were graphic designers from L.A. or musicians from New Orleans. We were bonded by our strong desire to keep the rest of the world out. I began to write music for my first album, which I made while living in Idaho. However, it wasn't until I left that beautiful and lonesome place that I realized how truly changed I was by living there. My current album, Summer Hours, was created because of my time in Idaho.
Just thought some of my lurkers might enjoy this crapola. The ones who have a place in McCall.
Doesn't this just cry out "Trust Fund Kid?"
Gary Younge has written the best article ever on Barack Obama and the race question. He coherently recapitulates the highlights of the Civil Rights movement and firmly situates Obama in the context of American racism. The article is full of quotables. The one that sticks in my mind is this: "Race is, among other things, a performance." Certainly this is now true, since traditional communities have fallen apart, leaving poor young urban blacks with nothing but the representation of blackness, a style.
I am now halfway through watching the HBO series, "The Wire," season 4, which is portraying rather breathlessly the attempt to save Baltimore, a "black" city. In the first three seasons the picture in "The Wire" was of a desperate city on its way to hell. Well now the cleanup is beginning. The city is too valuable to be allowed to fall apart. The turnaround is underway, but it is a race between reform and disaster, and it isn't easy to tell who will win.
An Italian American has been elected Mayor with a little help from his "friends." It is hard to know whether he will succumb to corruption or become a real reformer, but he has rebuffed an attempted seduction by a campaign worker, so things look hopeful. He wants to be honest. Can he be? Will he be?
I am fascinated by "The Wire's" dramatization of the everyday doings in a Baltimore City school. I have had several students in my prison classes who were like the tough customers depicted here, unable to sit still, cursing constantly, full of contempt, impulsive, lashing out.
In a pilot program, several of these problem kids are removed from class and intensively supervised and educated, mostly against their will. They are not suspended or allowed to drop out. Removing them from regular classes allows the teachers to make headway with the less disruptive kids. The principal, a direct, quiet and very hard-headed woman, emerges as the heroine of her school. I've known women like her. I may have more to say when I've finished all the programs.
And to wind this up: I was initially disappointed in a book I'm reading now: Global Transformations by Michel-Rolph Trouillot. Part of it was his unusual writing style: another was that he was saying new things and I had to get familiar with his ideas. His critique of the use of the word "culture" as if it were more than a word is something I need to think about. The most egregious example is, of course, black culture. He takes on the notion of "The West" as an entity too in a very sophisticated argument. What he is attempting, I think, is to break down dichotomies. More later, maybe.
