The Old Vet Goes Home

Melvin Rudolph Sexton, September 29, 1923, June 6, 2017

The picture is from September, 2016, perhaps one of the last moments when Rudy looked "like himself." By his birthday celebration at the end of September he was noticeable thinner, fading. But it was a slow, slow march to yesterday, the 73rd anniversary of D-Day. Rudy was a sergeant in the 35th Infantry Division, known as the wagon-wheel division. He walked on to the beach in early July, '44, then walked all the way to liberating a German concentration camp in April of '45. He was at the Battle of the Bulge, and in many other engagements. He wasn't one to talk about that year much, in the thirty plus years I knew him. He told a couple of stories that affected him deeply. In one, he was the last man on a deuce and a half going out on some patrol or errand, and was shoved off--"we don't need you this time" someone told him. And that truck was hit by a shell and all of the guys were killed. Another time he was dug in for a night, perhaps this was in Belgium in December or January, but he never said. There was a barn door nearby and he pulled that over his foxhole for more cover. A shell went off on top of it. He was close to the men. For many years after the war he visited the parents of a good friend who'd been killed. They lived up in Pennsylvania. He made it back, and probably always questioned why. He met his wife, a beautiful, feisty girl who'd been very briefly married to a tail-gunner who'd flown off and gotten blown up in the air. They found his body in the Alps years later, then decided it wasn't his body, then found him again. Lucile was buffeted by all this, as was Rudy. She got breast cancer in the '50s and survived. She and Rudy became very devout Southern Baptists. He worked for the Rural Electric in eastern North Carolina, rising to be its director. She worked at the Court House in Tarboro. They were life-long Democrats, and Rudy was fond of saying that he'd rather give the tax money directly to the poor folks that needed it, rather than to Republicans who would just keep it for themselves. The Civil Rights Movement turned Tarboro Republican by the late '60s. It didn't change Rudy's party. He and Lucile remembered Roosevelt, just like my folks did.

I met Rudy in the winter '83-'84, and told him I wanted to marry his daughter. He was just 63 then, ten years younger than I am as I write. We were always friends, and he was pleased I'd "joined the family." That was probably one of the very last things he said to me, in the last dwindling weeks. It was a long march, this last year. Rudy was from start to finish a man who could take care of business. As his body and mind failed, he held on to the basic principle of his life until the very last--and so was tormented by the sense that he had to "fix" things, but couldn't exactly figure out where to start, what to do to get things back on the right track. He became so anguished by this feeling of just not being able to make things better that he couldn't drift off to sleep at night. He'd always taken good care of himself, never smoked, jogged, played golf. After he retired he learned how to play guitar. His heart was the very last thing to go. Except for the part that he lost when Lucile died in 2000, a delayed casualty of the stress of Hurricane Floyd passing over Tarboro the fall previously. Lucile and Rudy made a great team. He was unable to find some effective way to cope with her loss. He grieved until his memory faded.

We're left with the irony that his passing is a great blessing to him, and nonetheless leaves in all of us a great hole. I'm so glad to have known him all these years, and to have been a part of the Sexton family.

https://youtu.be/6jOkHrAlt0M

From Wiki entry on the 35th Division in World War II:

Actions during World War II

The 35th Infantry Division arrived in England on 25 May 1944 and received further training. It landed on Omaha Beach, Normandy July 5–7, 1944 and entered combat on 11 July, fighting in the Normandy hedgerows, north of St. Lo. The division beat off twelve German counterattacks at Emelie before entering St. Lo on 18 July. After mopping up in the St. Lo area, it took part in the offensive action southwest of St. Lo, pushing the Germans across the Vire on 2 August, and breaking out of the Cotentin Peninsula. While en route to an assembly area, the division was "flagged off the road," to secure the Mortain-Avranches corridor and to rescue the 30th Division's "Lost Battalion" August 7–13, 1944.[8]

Then racing across France through Orleans and Sens, the division attacked across the Moselle on 13 September, captured Nancy on 15 September, secured Chambrey on 1 October, and drove on to the German border, taking Sarreguemines and crossing the Saar on 8 December. After crossing the Blies River on 12 December, the division moved to Metz for rest and rehabilitation on 19 December. The 35th moved to Arlon, Belgium December 25–26, and took part in the fighting to relieve Bastogne, throwing off the attacks of four German divisions, taking Villers-laBonne-Eau on 10 January, after a 13-day fight and Lutrebois in a 5-day engagement. On 18 January 1945, the division returned to Metz to resume its interrupted rest.[8]

In late January, the division was defending the Foret de Domaniale area. Moving to the Netherlands to hold a defensive line along the Roer on 22 February, the division attacked across the Roer on 23 February, pierced the Siegfried Line, reached the Rhine at Wesel on 10 March, and crossed 25–26 March. It smashed across the Herne Canal and reached the Ruhr River early in April, when it was ordered to move to the Elbe April 12. Making the 295-mile dash in two days, the 35th mopped up in the vicinity of Colbitz and Angern, until 26 April 1945 when it moved to Hanover for occupational and mopping-up duty, continuing occupation beyond VE-day. The division left Southampton, England, on 5 September, and arrived in New York City on 10 September 1945.[8]
Casualties

Total battle casualties: 15,822[11]
Killed in action: 2,485[11]
Wounded in action: 11,526[11]
Missing in action: 340[11]
Prisoner of war: 1,471[11]

Alan Jabbour

I'd been riding over to the house where this photo was taken on my BSA, fiddle strapped across my back. Every Friday night Tommy Thompson, the banjo player, and Bobbie, his wife and the guitar player, threw a big music party. Tommy and I were in grad school at the UNC philosophy department at the time. Probably the first time I went to one of those parties was 1966. It was before Tommy met Alan. The parties at that time were sort of bluegrassy and centered around a singer from down the road named Tom Turner, who played everything in G or C. I was just starting to relearn the fiddle and I remembered just enough to be able to play in the open keys of A and D, so I would tune my fiddle down a notch and mess around in the chords Turner was circling. He played stuff from the '40s and '50s. I particularly remember "Take Me In Your Life Boat," and "No Vacancy." I'm sure I remember these because the music was my lifeboat, and because there was most definitely room for me at Tommy's inn.

Probably after a year or so Tommy and Bobbie met Alan, through the auspices of Bertram Levy, who knew Alan from Duke University. That's Bertram on the mandolin. After Alan came into the circle, the music changed pretty quickly to focus much more on fiddle tunes, and the four Hollow Rockers started having closed practices, getting tighter, and Tommy switched to a claw-hammer style and not long after, an amazing Fairbanks banjo with an open back, ivory friction pegs, and ornate inlay on the finger board. Then their LP came out, and I got a copy and started trying to learn the wonderful tunes Alan had collected, mostly from an old man named Henry Reed who lived up in Glen Lyn, Virginia, and was said to be 85 or so. The tunes were not easy, but not impossible. Alan played with a remarkable clarity not typical of most fiddlers. He was in fact a master teacher of the art of fiddling. He wanted people to hear the tunes clearly. As he often said, he was rescuing the old tunes from oblivion, he was the last grain in the hour glass. Sometimes a tune would pop into my head whole after I'd been working on it over and over, suddenly some missing phrase or notes was there, and it made sense. Along about then Tommy and Bobbie split up. I rode up one Friday night on the bike and Bobbie said they'd broken up and she wasn't doing the parties any more. By about then I'd learned enough to make up a little band called The Smoky Grass String Band, with Nowell Creadick on banjo and Rosie Reddick on guitar, both of them Friday session regulars. We went to fiddler's conventions in the summer, which was 1969, and at Galax I saw from a distance a band called the New Tranquility String Band, which included Mac Benford on banjo and the beautiful Sue Draheim on fiddle.

In November '69 I passed my oral for an MA in philosophy, got a very high draft lottery number which guaranteed that I would not get drafted to Vietnam, and climbed into a '59 Chevy pickup with a couple of friends and rode out to San Francisco. My sister was living in Oakland, and only a couple of blocks from Mac Benford and the Tranquility folks as it turned out. You could hitch back and forth between San Francisco and Oakland by just standing on a particular corner and waiting for someone to stop. Usually when you got in the driver handed you a joint. It was the same deal when you went to a movie out there. A joint would come down the aisle, you'd take a hit and pass it on. One night I went to a free flick at U. Cal in Berkley and got to hear Fritz Lang lecture on Goddard's film Contempt, starring Bridget Bardot and Jack Palance. I didn't spend much time thinking about philosophy out there. I listened a lot to The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, practiced fiddle, wandered the winter streets and watched the daffodils emerge in early February. I ran out of money, got a job as a guard at the annual San Francisco Boat and Gun Show at the Cow Palace, worked 14 hours a day for ten days, plus rode an hour each way from the Mission to the show on a city bus, surviving on hot dogs and hot Doctor Pepper. My pay check bounced at the end, since I was working for crooks, but they replaced it and I got on a bus back to NC in early March. When Union Grove came around I went, and the folks who were the Fuzzy Mountain String Band, including Bobbie Thompson, invited me to join. We practiced Wednesdays and Sundays, Wednesdays at Bobbie's house, Sunday's at Malcolm and Vickie Owens' place over in Calvander, NC near Chapel Hill. I applied for a job in social work in Durham County, but was told I was "over qualified" and should not wear "curious shoes" to job interviews. I got a job selling motorcycles, then a somewhat better job at Duke University Press through the auspices of Bobbie, who worked there.

Alan had moved to a teaching gig at UCLA by then, and the Hollow Rock band had pretty much broken up. (Tommy, Alan, and Jim Watson revived the band for a nice Rounder record in '74.) Much of the Hollow Rock tune repertoire, recorded and unrecorded, was already known by Malcolm, Eric Olson, and Bobbie. I got various tapes from them to study, including a tape of a second Hollow Rock record they'd been working on when Tommy and Bobbie broke up. The Fuzzy Mountain band, or portions of it, went to a lot of fiddle contests and festivals in 1970 and 1971. Along the way we were approached by Rounder Records, and made the first Fuzzy Mountain String Band LP in the fall of '71 on some very amateur equipment in the parlor at Bobbie's house. Before it could be cut and released in the spring of '72, Bobbie had been killed in a car wreck driving to a new book designing job at Princeton University Press.

That was as big a bomb as ever went off in my life. There was a musical wake at my house. Alan was there. Some very intense tune playing went on. Alan and I kept in touch, talked about fiddling and more generally music as I was helping to form the Red Clay Ramblers with Jim Watson, Tommy Thompson and Mike Craver in the fall of '72 and on into the spring of '73. Now and then through the decades Alan I would find ourselves in the same place and get down to some fiddling together. Many of the tunes he'd learned from Reed and others were also part of my core repertoire of tunes. Still are! This coming weekend Libby and I will play a contra dance down in Morehead City, and I'll probably play Quince Dillion's High D tune, and Green Willis, and maybe some others. A number of Alan's tunes were "crooked," in the manner of the Appalachian way. The contra folks don't take to that.

The old circle is dwindling away. A lot has happened since 1966. But I can say, for sure, that had I not encountered Alan Jabbour, I would never have gone far down the fiddler's path. As he was such a peaceful man, I'm sure he'll rest in peace forever. Or if he's of a mind, kick up a tune, with Bobbie on the guitar and Tommy on the old five string. Maybe that'll happen around when the daffodils pop up here, which is a sure sign that Union Grove is coming up again on the calendar. Maybe Kenny Baker and Tommy Jarrell will sit in on that session. I might go sit up on the hill behind the cabin here, and take a chair and a bottle of Dewar's, and watch the sun set and listen carefully deep into the night. I'd hate to miss one of those tunes.

Small Engine Repair

[the author on the Deere, some years back, mowing the orchard]


The week started out with one of the recurring chores, mowing the field that abuts the driveway and the flower garden. We used to call this the orchard. There were once three apple trees. Below the orchard there was once a pasture which even fed some young cows. Back when Anna was little she named the herd: there was Leon and there was Kathy. I kept them for about a year and a half, then sent them back to the stock market. It was a way of keeping the pasture up. I didn't want to butcher them myself. We always said, well they probably went to a good home. It always turned out that the hauling fees plus the sweet feed and the supplemental hay in the winter turned out to equal the weight gain. Funny how that works. Buy high, sell low. The pasture grew back to woods during a couple of years when I was too busy to run the bush hog over the whole thing, after I'd dropped the idea of keeping it mowed with livestock. It doesn't take long. The tractor's more or less deceased now, and I'm running an old MD mower my father-in-law, the old vet, used to drive down in Tarboro where he was born and lived most of his life. One of the last things he did with it was accidentally run it over a pretty good sized cliff, which was his property boundary and the bank of a little stream. He got distracted somehow. The plastic hood on the machine was busted up pretty good, but he survived ok, some bruises and aches. Not too long after that he decided to move into assisted living at the Albemarle, a nice facility in Tarboro, and sold his home. We ended up with the mower, which his brother-in-law, a small engine genius, had fixed up after the accident.

It keeps on running. It started out this spring sputtering and I figured out with the help of the Western Auto folks in Siler and Mr. Google that there was gas getting into the oil, so I put an on-off valve in the gas line, changed out the air filter and the oil and the spark plug, and she started being dependable again, for the duration of the summer. But this week I ran through some higher than usual grass and weeds and that choked up one of the blades, which then caused the pulley to burn the blade belt. I have had this happen before. I disengaged the mower deck and drove the mower out of the way and cut it off. But then it wouldn't start. The grass kept growing.

Later on Monday I went into town and even looked at a couple of used mowers a guy who repairs them had sitting out near highway 64, two olive green Craftsman mowers, made I think by Poulan. The guy was actually riding one of them, proving to any and all that it definitely ran. He had a decent price on them, and they looked a lot less beat up than the MD that went over the cliff, so I was tempted. But Libby quite correctly pointed out that getting the MD fixed still might be a lot cheaper. So yesterday, Tuesday, I drove down the road a couple of miles to a neighbor's, who has a sign out at his driveway for small engine repairs and chain sharpening. He's been there for many years. With the chain sharpening deal, you can just put a chain in his mailbox and leave your phone number, he'll run it sharp on a jig and give you a holler.

He's a guy who's had time—decades--to set up a good shop for lawn mowers and other such stuff. You can see the shop from the road, which is a good distance but still a nice clear view. He has an asphalt driveway, which is worth appreciating as much as you want. If he's there the shop door's open and usually he's sitting down and working on something or other. He also enjoys keeping a kind of humorous display, yard art you might say, or even outsider art if you're a curator, up by his pond. The art has become more elaborate over time. It features these days a big fan that moves, suggesting mobility if there's a breeze, and some sort of wagon with creatures aboard. Often there's a sign with a wry comment about the times and the political scene. At one time a few years back he had a space ship, which is actually still there, but now somewhat eclipsed by the other more elaborate features.

I drove down the asphalt and said howdy. He turned out to have time for my poor machine. He was in the process of building a “cannon,” using 4 inch plastic drain pipe and some old steel wagon wheels. It was headed for the pond display once it got a coat of flat black. I went back and got the MD and Libby and I pushed it up some planks onto the truck. When I got back to the shop the small engine guy came up with some spiffy aluminum ramps—far better than my over long treated-wood scaffold boards—and we rolled the mower over to the shop. Once situated, he reached up and hit a switch, and from the ceiling here comes a little chain hoist. Quickly the hoist stood the MD up vertical on its back wheels, and we could look at the underside without lying on the ground with the dust and the ticks. As I said earlier, the blades were choked with weeds. Out came a power socket wrench, and off came the blades. Hell of a lot nicer than trying to pull the grass out a stem at a time, or busting loose a bolt with a hand wrench and a hammer. While the blades were off I asked him to sharpen them, something that hadn't happened since I loaded the mower on the truck in Tarboro five or six years ago, or maybe it's been ten by now. He also looked at the mower belt. It was frayed from the pulley, so he sent me off to town to get a new one. He was also able to jump start the mower with a jump machine, which proved it wasn't seized up at least. The option of buying that used Craftsman was receding over the event horizon.

I picked up the belt. The things have gotten dear. Last one was, I think I recall, about $18.00. This one was $40. Stuff wears out. The small engine guy told me later that he'd just replaced a starter on a Deere. The part cost $400. When I got back with the belt he had the battery out and was working under the back fender. The thing needed a solenoid and he fortunately had one on hand, so I didn't have to go right back to town. This explained the no start situation. The jump showed the engine wasn't seized, but had bypassed the battery and ignition, which includes a solenoid. When he'd finished installing the new solenoid she cranked right up. My mower was back in business, and he even gave me a little lesson on how to jump a mower using just a car battery. No extra charge for that. I told him about replacing the solenoid on the old F-150 this spring. This was just to establish to him that I knew something or other about internal combustion engines.

We got it back on the truck and I got the “orchard” mowed before supper. There's a little area I'll finish up in a few minutes, where I needed to rake out some long weed tendrils so they wouldn't gum up the works again. Then it's on to the next thing. It's starting to feel like fall a little. There's a new tropical storm down in Georgia that might or might not meander up here for the weekend. If we get some rain it'd be a good thing at this point.

It's a nice thing to spend a few decades working on small engines. Do that and you know small engines, and all sorts of things come to mind in a helpful sequence, and you end up figuring out that, for example, a solenoid needs replacing. I replaced the solenoid on my old F-150 back in May. It's the second time I've done that. The first time I learned the symptoms, and where the thing is. It's an easy job on the Ford. You can see it and get to the bolts that hold it onto the fender. I didn't even know the mower had a solenoid, and to pull it you kind of have to do it blind, feeling for the nuts and using a long socket wrench extender. The small engine man had the extender, and the right socket, and knew where the part was located. He'd checked other possibilities for why the engine wouldn't crank while I was buying the belt. It came down to the solenoid, and he was already putting the new one back on when I drove up with the belt. Plus—as I said—he even had the part on hand! Sweet.

They used to write songs about this, with titles like you don't miss your water till the well runs dry. Until a couple of years ago there was a great auto mechanic just down the road, even closer than the small engine man. When he finished up he'd drive the vehicle back to my house, then I'd ride him back. His motto was, “you can probably fix this yourself.” He'd had some heart trouble after working a lifetime in the shop. He'd done decades with his dad, who probably started as a kid with his dad. I always meant to take photos of all the old signs and cans of stuff he had on the walls. One day last year I drove down there to get the truck inspected and he was closed. I see him now and then on his tractor. We wave. There are still some ok mechanics around, but they're farther, and mostly Spanish is their first language.

After I got the mowing done I went to the Food Lion. If you looked around there you'd think tomato season was over and done. You can still buy sort of ok tomatoes, particularly if you're tossing them into a stir-fry. This year we had about six weeks where people were giving anyone they saw a handful of garden tomatoes worthy of a mater sandwich, just mayo, pepper, and all the slices that will fit. The last bag of those I got from another small engine guy, who tested my chain saw and agreed with the dealer that it had no compression. He's got a fantastic garden of tomatoes growing beside his backyard shop every summer, way more than he can eat or even can. He's a very generous guy. “Take you some of those,” he'll say without fail. “No, get some more.” He adjusted my weed eater one time after it'd stopped. Gave me some maters, no charge. I gave him a CD, which I think he liked. He definitely likes bluegrass music, and the CD could be mistaken for bluegrass.

You'd think that with all the great garden maters growing around here every summer, the Food Lion would always have some in the store. Hit don't work that way. Supply Chains. Logistics. Computers. Stock holders for that matter. There's probably somebody who'll pull the lever for Trump because their chainsaw broke, and they couldn't buy a real tomato any more. They blame it all on Obama. But I tell you what, if they deport all the Mescans ain't nobody left to fix your old truck. The Trumps of the world wouldn't know about that part of reality if it was a rattler coiled up and rattling next to their shiny Gucci's.

On the Cusp of the 4th of July

This piece by Mr. Coates should be read and probably printed out. Stick it on your Christmas cards too:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/

We are actually witnessing a bit of national progress this week, with two great Supreme Court decisions and Mr. Obama's Pinkney Eulogy to close out the work week. I watched the whole service when I got home from work, then Rachel Maddow ran the actual Obama speech as a part of her show. Later in the night, thunderstorms came through and although the power went off, it got cooler and we could let the little window airconditioner which has been toiling all week have a little Saturday respite. The, to make matters even nicer, the power came back on just in time to get up.

My old friend Ben Jones has decided to take a big stand against removing the Confederate Flag from public places, or at least so would seem the implication of his maintaining that he will "nevah" stop selling the flag at his various Cooter Stores. Why he's felt the need to take such a public position I'm not entirely sure of. Possibly he feels the hot breath of a business issue breathing down his neck. But he might have just said nothing. It seems unlikely that anyone is going to tell him to stop selling the flags. I think even the hoped for removal of the flag from the grounds of the Columbia, SC capitol is not a sure thing. There are quite a number of SC legislators who've been vocal in their support for the presence of the flag. Ms Haley's light touch of oblique criticism was countered in her usual sledge-hammer way by Ann Coulter: "she ain't from around here."

Meanwhile, the two Duke boys lived in a Hazzard in no state, and just down the road from Mayberry. There was, as Ben says, no racism in this Hazzard Never Never Land. Also, the boys never got killed in their Charger as they lept it around the countryside as though it was Traveler himself. These days the elderly dudes might lose their current car commercial, or maybe not. None of that has much to do with anything. We already knew Ben's show was a sit-com from a by-gone era. Nobody this side of Saturday Night Live ever thought to question the politics of the show. It had no politics at all. Which one could say is the magic of white privilege, but that magic is so much more in evidence every night on Fox News, where it is proclaimed to be the gawd's no spin truth ad nauseum to the angry and fearful rubes who keep up the ratings. (I should note, here, that the musical life of Jesse James, "Diamond Studs," that put the Red Clay Ramblers on the national map in 1975, suffered from the same privileged magic. Jesse James was a racist irregular who continued his depredations for fifteen years after the end of the Civil War until he was assassinated by a government agent. He wasn't a fun lovin' good-ole boy, never meanin' no harm. That's how he was played, to full houses.)

But as you can read in Mr. Coates' piece, the Confederate Flag was always about slavery and white supremacy. It stood for that American tragedy when the war was started by South Carolina. It stood for resistance when Bedford Forrest mounted the terrorist Klan after the war. And it stood for resistance yet again when it was rehung in 1962 from the Capitol flagpole in Columbia, by the old Southern Democratic politicians who fought the Civil Rights Movement tooth and nail and who, after the various Civil Rights laws were passed in the mid-'60s, switched pretty much en masse to the Republican Party as a measure of the success of Nixon's "Southern Strategy."

You can take your pick of eras with regard to ending at a minimum the publicly sanctioned display of the damned old rag. It's all of a piece. Here's an image that puts the lie to Mr. Jones:

And cudos to the Alabama Governor who, Thursday, decided on his own and with no particular pressure, to voluntarily remove the four rebel flags from the Montgomery State grounds. Equal cudos to Dale Earnhardt Junior, by the way. It certainly is necessary and sufficient reason enough that the flag offends millions of our fellow citizens. We ought to all be offended by that. But historical amnesia is never a good idea, and in the case of the Civil War, it's really embarassing. Yes, the foot soldiers on the Southern side in that conflict mostly had not even the "hope" of owning slaves, and were probably fighting for their friends in arms and their sense of place. Same as it ever was, in all wars. But Stonewall Jackson shot deserters, which will give a man impetus to charge up the hill.

Like our recent two-week scorcher, perhaps a fever has broken.

_____________________

Wednesday Update: Ben Jones' has chosen to pursue a "southern strategy," expanding the shelves at his Cooter Stores to include a vast new array of confederate flag gear. You can click over there for a look:

http://www.cootersplace.com/general-store/category/confederate-merch/

This is exactly Nixon's original southern strategy: you don't want the racist vote, well we'll take it. But as with the Republican Party, there are consequences. When you next drive past the lil country store that time forgot, expect to see a parking lot full of choppers and gun racked pickups. As I suggested elsewhere, Ben could expand his merchandise to include replicas of Lester Maddox axe handles, which can no doubt be produced for next to nothing in any third world sweatshop. As for the flag flip flops, you'd think there's a modicum of disrespect in there somewheres or other. One of my wife's ancestors walked home from Appomattox, and ate a dog along the way to survive. He didn't wear no confederate flag flip flops I don't think.

A Glimpse of the Beautiful Game

I got home from work and a couple of stops (coffee place, Post Office) with the last game in the 58th minute, still 0-0. I cracked a beer, got my shoes off and put my tired feet up on one of the cat pedestals. The game surged back and forth, but mostly forth. I read later that our magnificent goal keeper had 16 saves, some sort of near record, whilst their Carolina-blue bedecked stopper had only four. That implies the obvious--Belgium had way more offense than did Ou-Ess-Ay. Eventually, as the overtime ground on, we finally ran out of gas. Belgium got one goal, then a second. I flipped the channel and watched "Roustabout," a rather nifty Elvis movie from 1964 which co-stars Barbara Stanwyck, which was probably pretty neat for the King if he was much aware of movie history. Elvis, "Charlie Rogers" in the flick, rode around on a great looking Honda 350, painted a red I don't recall on Hondas ever, but maybe they were only made for the CA market. He's a masher who thinks one kiss will cause any woman he wants to sample to immediately swoon. I would have liked to have seen Charlie take on Lana Turner, but it would have been a different story. The Colonel didn't allow Elvis to do tragedy.

So I read this morning that we did score one goal before the blessed end. So we were just one goal away from a tie, which could have led to a shoot out, which could have resulted in an American victory over Belgium, a country the size of South Carolina, with a population the size of Ohio. That would have led to America playing Argentina (most likely), a team with the best player in the world, Massi. Or maybe we'd have managed to get all the way to the finals, where we might eventually win over Costa Rica, a country with a population same as West Virginia, and a rain forest to die for. Whatever.

What I got out of watching futbol because the US was playing was learning how to watch futbol. It is a beautiful game, just like its nickname says. It features athletes of remarkable endurance and condition, who must run constantly for over 90 minutes with one break at half-time of about fifteen minutes. Substitutions are only one way--you're in and you're out, and you can't go back in. People play through injuries if they can. Subs are very limited. Penalties can lead to a team being one or two men down! On Sunday Costa Rica defeated Greece on post-play penalty kicks, 5-4, after playing nearly a whole half one man down. It was a remarkable viewing experience.

Futbol is not about scoring, except tangentially. Some critics seem to find this fact disconcerting, which they then defensively translate into derision, which only reflects back on them. It's like the ad for something running these days, where two guys are playing chess and one of 'em finally makes the last move and "takes" the other guy's king. It makes visual sense, except it's not a move in chess. The king is never taken. So they made an ad using chess as a McGuffin.

The beautiful game is a battle of endurance and movement. The winner often is the team which has the capacity to move faster after over 90 minutes of running full tilt, sometimes when it's above 90 degrees, as was the case Sunday in Brazil. And even then it's possible that victory can be withheld.

I'm hoping that ESPN will soldier on, running the FIFA tournament until all the games play out. I'm picking Argentina. I'm also going to watch some European league play, which pops up on this or that channel now and then. I'd like to give up American football altogether, or at least the NFL. I don't like being part of the motivation for steroids and brain injuries, but maybe that's too myopic a point of view. Maybe sport is just sui genris, and there's no point in trying to jam that world into the world of common sense and good judgment.

Perhaps the best plan is just to leave a little room for a good game of futbol now and then, when it is available. One thing I really like is, the US doesn't have to be the Dream Team, proving yet again to the rest of the world just how exceptional we are. This has been such a terrible burden for us. The truth is, like the rest of the world, we're just primates muddling through. It's hard to score a goal because we have to use our feet. Only the goal keeper can use his hands.

Mexico’s goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa dives for the ball. (XAVIER MARIT/AFP/Getty Images) Mexico also lost. It is a beautiful game this futbol, in a way a living Utopia:

In the real world: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/No_Excuses

Mr. Pierce brings up the bottom line. Schwerner, Chaney and Goodwin died for your right to vote. It's that simple. While we watch the beautiful game we can forget briefly that even the United State Supreme Court is now teetering on the brink of disaster. A Court with, allegedly five "liberal" justices, has just gutted the ability of unions to collect dues, without which unions will be unable to function as bargaining agents for their members and for those who benefit from the bargains made but who still choose not to be members. The same court already broke the Voting Rights Act which Schwerner, Chaney and Goodwin died to achieve. And there's the Hobby Lobby fiasco. With a Congress entirely in the hands of the GOP, there will be no more "liberal" justices appointed, period.

Drummin'

I've always believed that fiddling was a whole lot about rhythm, pace, beat, pulse, drive, all those characteristics which form the ocean on which melody bobs and rocks. Tommy Jarrell taught me that bowing was in this sense more fundamental than melodic details: you could miss some sixteenth-note glissando (pretty though it might be, and with it all the better for the porridge), but you'd better not lose the beat, or forget that "and" is at least as important as "one." Back in the day the band I used to be in, back when it was alive and interested in seeing what was around the next corner, tried out a drummer. He was a guy who was around those parts, had worked with us in Diamond Studs, and was basically a jazz guy, influenced by fifties and sixties jazz, a lot about the cymbal and brush and various other things people like Coltrane and Miles Davis wanted in their rhythm sections. We had some nice conversations about jazz, as I'd really listened to a lot of that stuff too, and loved it. But boy oh boy did he not work in our band. Maybe his problem was not hearing where the pulse was, but just trying to impose it. Anyways, we gave up that experiment after a couple of tries at the home club, the Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill.

Two decades later I was playing in a cajun-zydeco band called Unknown Tongues. They'd had another jazz oriented drummer when Libby and I were invited to their dance, and he certainly did listen to what was going on (plus he would sing now and again). When he left they tried out a couple of rock guys, and because the band leader, Bryan Blake, could tell a drummer what he wanted and get him to do it, things went pretty well. Then along came Tom Parker, a guy who'd played behind touring blues players and had washed up in New Bern, NC, tired of the road, but with a soul as brimming with music as anyone I've ever met. Tom connected with Tongues immediately, and with the zydeco rhythms Bryan was aiming to harness. Some of the best musical nights of my life were passing rhythmic figures back and forth with Tom, full blasting volume, the joint literally jumping to a point that floor joists in ancient structures might have been just a little sprung permanently. I was the second fiddler so to speak, not much in front where Bryan held the focus with his accordion and singing, but standing back and not too far from Tom's central location, so Tom and me could share a glance. What I could tell right away was, Tom was all the time listening! I'd play some rhythmic phrase and damn if he wouldn't shoot it back at me in the next measure. It was fantastic. The shows built and built to great explosions of sweat-drenched, 20-minute medleys of zydeco classics, Chavis, Delafos, Congo Square, Talk to Your Daughter exuberance.

Over the years, before and after Libby and I left The Tongues, Tom maintained that great rhythmic center, and Tongues just got tighter and tighter. It's been fifteen years already since he walked into Bryan's parlor down in Gloucester, NC. Mighty good times.

So's I get this email today from the Tongues, which I'll share with you:

Friends - our beloved Tom Parker, drummer for the Unknown Tongues for the past 15 years, is recovering from a motorcycle accident in which he suffered a brain injury. After a month in the hospital he is now home and making remarkable progress. But his hospital bills will be staggering and as a self-employed musician and carpenter, he will be out of work for many weeks to come as he continues to heal. His New Bern community has organized a fundraiser June 14 at Isaac Taylor Garden [in New Bern, NC] and Tom's Unknown Tongue family will be playing around 5pm. Please come and show your support for Tom! If you can't make it, you can contribute online or we will gladly collect donations at any of our upcoming shows and pass them on to this remarkable human being we love so much. Much appreciation and love!!

You can send some dough via http://www.gofundme.com/9ke4ps

You should make the show if you can, or any of the upcoming Tongues' shows, where they will pass donations on, or hunt up the Tongues' web page.

And by the way. We give a lot of lip service in this great land of ours to people who give a shit, who live honestly and with integrity. But when it comes right down to it, a straight-up guy like Tom is left financially exposed because of an accident, because this country basically has no universally available medical system, because the Romney one-percenters hold tight to their billions until the eagles grin. That's why the VA situation is messed up: no one was willing to pay to fix it. But it's not just the VA. It's everyone who couldn't afford insurance.

I'm praying that however the money side goes, Tom will recover and be back to playing. If you were ever at a Tongues gig, Tom lifted you up whether you know it or not. You owe him. We all do.

Of course Tom's other instrument would be the bass.



The community--you can spot Tom here and there in the shots. Bryan and Barbara Blake are doing most of the talking, about their tradition of Gloucester, NC Mardi Gras.

Shelley Winters

In the photo, James Stewart is giving Shelley's character in "Winchester 73" a pistol. The Indians are about to attack, and he tells her to save a round, just in case. She nods. "I understand," she says.

There was always something funny and wry and honest about the characters Shelley Winters played. I wonder if she ever had the opportunity to sit and have a beer with Barbara Stanwyck, another wry, honest actor. It's hard to get behind the facade actors have to put up, though Shelley did write an autobiography. I'll bet it's pretty honest too.

Here's how she summed up her life:

One New York apartment, two Oscars, three California houses, four hit plays, five Impressionist paintings, six mink coats, and 99 films.

She might be my favorite actor, on the distaff side at least. She didn't get enough great roles, but in that she was also realistic. "Ya gotta play the mother to keep your career going," she said.

Update: I've started reading "Shelley, Also Known as Shirley," the first part of her autobiography. About "Winchester 73" she says, "I was the co-star, with James Stewart but the real star of the movie was the goddam rifle." The book is delightful reading, with many hilarious anecdotes: imagine Marlon Brando hiding on the roof of her apartment building, with one shoe missing, while Burt Lancaster searches her apartment for a suitor he suspects is hiding somewhere. And as I just recall--this very scene is depicted in "One Eyed Jacks" a decade later. "Jacks" was Brando's only directorial effort, and stars himself and Carl Malden, with the great Ben Johnson in a supporting role. Peckinpah was a writer on "Jacks." But surely Brando added the missing shoe detail in the opening scene, and must have smiled at the inside humor of it.

Heroes and Others

The Boston Marathon bombing brings America that much closer to life lived in much of the world, if we weren't already there. It's not like there haven't been these sordid, cruel, stupid events before. Maybe this one just feels a little more like something that happened yesterday in Madrid, or London, or Mumbai. Here's a clear picture of reality:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/firsthand-account-of-boston-bombing-041613

I particularly liked the moment when some credentials zealot is brushed aside by the doctor. It's heartening that in real moments of life and death, at least now and then the bureaucratic impulse is defeated. May it always be so.

There are some deep similarities between the various firearms generated massacres and this bombing--all terroristic bombings. We have allowed "terrorism" to become a technical term, when in fact it is a concept with a clear, human meaning. We all know this, just as the doctor knew to brush aside the bureaucrat. The slaughter of a sweet eight-year-old boy in Boston is exactly like the slaughter of the twenty children in Connecticut.

And this should be made clear to all of us when in the presence of the lying dissembler, Wayne LaPierre. Some journalist worthy of the name should take Mr. LaPierre by the lapels at the next opportunity and ask just what his "good guys with guns" will bring to the Boston Marathon bombing. "It is an asymmetric situation, you lying cynical sack of offal," some David Gregory should scream at LaPierre, close up, where the spit flecks LaPierre's glasses. Because if Mr. LaPierre knows anything at all, it is surely exactly this obvious fact. The bombing just makes it plainer, not different. There were hundreds of "good guys with guns" at the bombing, instantly ready to defend the civilians.

The utter cynicism of the NRA is to be entirely willing to muddy these waters with obviously false "solutions," which in fact only sell more weapons. Thus proffered like a plate of canapes, politicians searching for a way out of a hard choice like drowning victims of a submarine attack can reach for these life rafts and say, later, from dry land, why yes, I did something. We looked into putting armed veterans in all the schools in America, just like the experts at the NRA suggested. Case closed.



"Good guys with guns"

Friday Morning Update: It appears that the police have caught and killed one suspect, and are chasing the others. This is what good guys with guns do. It does not speak to the fundamental asymmetry of unexpected attacks on civilians or even on military personnel. We can all hope the second suspect is captured alive so further information can be obtained on the reasons for their actions.

Tony Scott

I've been watching Tony Scott movies lately. This movie, by his brother, was shot in 1965. Tony is the actor in the movie.



Found the link at http://brightlightsfilm.com/blog/

This past week I watched The Last Boy Scout. I've also seen Domino, and of course True Romance, which is wonderful. I've not found a klinker yet. I'm expecting Deja Vu shortly from the Netflixs. Mr. Scott's suicide must have been a symptom of clinical depression. I'm sorry he couldn't find an answer. He was having so much fun, it's very hard to imagine there wasn't one available.

News or Entertainment, You Be the Judge

There's endless analysis of the first debate last night. It'll go on for the next few days. Driftglass has a good post up. So does Edroso. You can click my links to see what each of them says. No doubt all the networks will be talking about it starting last night. I have little to add, except a few personal observations, including one Libby made just before she turned the thing off and starting a solitaire game on her computer.

For some reason the national media tends to analysis the debate process as if it were performance art, or at least performance. In some ways this is true. Events in the political process generally--all of which, added together, amount to a kind of running "debate" which is ended with an election, which usually provides a victor and a loser--events have an enormous performance aspect when viewed against the whole voting population. A good example might be Ed Muskie's tears.

This is the "zinger" factor. Mr. Romney tossed at least one into the blah last night. Zingers are not usually decisive points in a conversation. They are memorable lines in a play. The American media is much more focused on the play than on the conversation. It's a long term trend. The stated Republican view about this trend is that conflating the two things is actually correct. Delphic one might say. As has been true way too much over my lifetime, Democrats tend to go along, but drag their heels.

What happened last night was that a well-coached Romney performed. I'll bet he watched a lot of film of Reagan in action. I thought his accent even changed a bit towards Reagan's. Mr. Obama seemed to walk on stage believing that he could easily win on facts. His "zingers" were the rather stale ones he's used for a number of years. They included "I'm a good husband and family man," and "my grandmother and grandfather, who raised me, were lower middle class." Mr. Obama was not mentally prepared to deal directly and confrontationally with Mr. Romney's obvious distortions. He also allowed Mr. Romney to essentially shout him and the moderator down a few times.

As a result, in the realm of "performance," Romney probably "won." Whether that matters in the least is unknowable, or at best poll-able over the next week or so. At which pint the bright and shiny Veep debate will obscure our memories. Mr. Obama could have been much much clearer. He still has all the facts on his side. For one small example, when Mr. Romney said that people over 60 could stop listening as the two of them discussed the future of Medicare and Social Security, Mr. Obama might well have strenuously objected. I know I did. Morally, those of us on the north side of that line had better be concerned about our fellow citizens on the south side of it. As King Lear demonstrated, we all get older.

Libby said she thought Mr. Obama was tired. She said she bet he'd been worrying about the Syria/Turkey thing that's about to blow up. She was probably right. Mr. Obama has some other stuff to do every day besides practice lines for the school play. We ought to all keep that in mind. That's on the side of reality, not performance.

Mr. Pierce has some excellent points re the sport of it all. He's a sports writer, so he would know:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/presidential-debate-obama-2012-13353709

Also:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/presidential-debate-denver-preview-13336160

At the same time, qua performance, Mr. Obama does have a competent staff. If Mr. Pierce could think up these points all on his own, then Mr. Obama could have had some of them written on his hand if necessary. The overarching point about the First Debate qua performance is, Mr. Romney was able to avoid all mention of the gigantic negative features of this past year's Republican activities, including his own. Qua performance, what Mr. Obama had better do from now on in is stop trying to communicate with a person who isn't interesting in conversation. This has, in a sense, been Mr. Obama's issue from Day One of his Presidency.

While You Were Looking at TV

This happened in Pakistan this past week:

http://bustednuckles.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/history-indeed-repeats-itself/

I'd just repost the whole thing, as it is dead on right. But I will leave you to go to Mr. Knuckles' joint, and encourage you with just a tidbit:

This is why OSHA exists.

This [is] where we were a hundred fucking years ago and it happened again yesterday in Pakistan.

300 people burned to death because of greed.

Because some fucking “Job Creator” decided he could make more money selling goods produced by paying near slave wages to non people working in a shithole instead of paying decent wages in a safe workplace.

We used to make those products right here in the good old United States of America.

But we cost too much.

They don’t want to pay us a living wage.

They make more money this way.

Tomorrow they will start building another shithole exactly like the one that just burned down and there will be people lined up to get in it and work for shit wages in unsafe conditions because that’s all there is and there isn’t a fucking thing you can do to change that.

Even the Republicans, now and again, give lip service to the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence, such as that human beings have some rights simply qua being human. These rights are not rights of American citizens--they are human rights. Work place rules and safety regulations, and even unions, exist to further the actual existence of these human rights. Otherwise, such human rights are just scratches on paper which, when combined with oily rags discarded after being used to clean the knitting machines, can spontaneously combust. It's not magic. It's physics. Mr. Romney spouts his platitudes, but supports the rationalizations that lead to events such as those described.

The photo is from another industrial plant fire with heavy loss of life. The fire occurred in Hamlet, NC, in 1991. Here's some information about the photo:

Joel Sternfeld
American, born 1944

Imperial Food Products Plant, Hamlet, North Carolina, June 1994

Chromogenic print
18 1/2 x 23 in. (unframed); 28 x 32 in. (framed)
Twenty-five employees died and fifty-six were injured in a fire that swept through this chicken processing plant on September 3, 1991. Nearly all of the victims died of smoke inhalation while trying to escape through exits that were illegally blocked or padlocked. The plant had no fire alarm, no automatic sprinklers, and one fire extinguisher. Emmett J. Roe, owner of Imperial Food Products, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to almost twenty years in prison. Loretta Goodwin, a worker who survived the fire, claimed that the company kept the doors locked to prevent employees from stealing chickens.

From the series, On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam
Acquired from the Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, through an Anonymous Gift, 1997.287

It might reasonably be noted that North Carolina is a pioneer in the field of "Right to Work" legislation, having passed such laws in the late 1950s, with the result that in North Carolina unions are close to nonexistent. Our laws are the model for the current crop of union-busting legislation cropping up in states which went "tea party right" in 2010. I'm certain that one of these days some one will write a book about the ALEC tutorials which gave rise to the coincidence of so many states passing new legislation on this "front."

For more on the Hamlet fire, see Lawrence Naumoff's fine book, A Southern Tragedy, in Crimson and Yellow (2005).

If You Haven't Seen 'Em

I was laying up stone veneer for a living room chimney in a lawyer's country house on September 11, 2001. There was a nice guy upstairs doing tile in the new bathroom. We were listening to the radio. Every few minutes we'd say, to each other, "Goddam!" After the fourth plane went down in PA, we decided to just go home and watch the teevee. The most remarkable thing, here in central NC, about the week of 9/11, 2001, was how amazingly quiet the skies became. I mean as concerning actual reality, and not what was on the teevee. The sky was blue, clear, empty. The weather is almost identical this year, the first wonderful week of fall by the light and sky, if not by the calendar.

Here's what Charles Pierce wrote about the event yesterday, on it's anniversary:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/9-11-anniversary-2012-12604849

Of course for people who were there, that day was not serene, as it was for me and my tile-setting co-worker. For people who were there it was a singular hell. Some survived and told about it:

http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/ESQ0102-JAN_WTC_rev#ixzz26Bu1J5NO

The mistake of electing leaders without any wisdom echos down through the years and decades, yet one of the parties now seems intent on only short-term victory. Republican "pundits" yesterday said that the GOP should simply disband if they cannot win the Presidency this year. Well, while I'd like to see that, such a statement is really just another indication of how myopic the GOP leadership has become. It is possible that the shrill has actually become so intense as to be noticed by even the typical GOP voter, or at least some of the ones not blinded by pure racism and prejudice.

Where I work they come in talking about the Chicago teacher strike as though it was insane, yet typical of "them." Where I work they come in and talk about how the country is "broke." But where I work we mostly deal with white, middle aged, southern men. So far, they have not restored the voting rules to enable only that smallish subset of the voting citizenry.

Update: I wrote the above knowing nothing of events in Egypt and Libya, much less Mr. Romney's remarkably un-Presidential remarks about them. He now stands squarely with Jim DeMint and no doubt Mr. Limbaugh. The rest of us watch the Gorgon's Knot of the Middle East with sadness and concern. A President Romney seems to portend, from his half-baked comments on the crisis, George W. Bush cubed. Now that's a plan from hell.

1911-A

[image from http://forums.1911forum.com/showthread.php?t=2324&page=2 ]

Digby puts up the following post:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/nra-to-america-nice-little-country-you.html

The thing is, the actual business of being a legislator involves rational analysis of the conditions that pertain for reelection. This analysis is done in a scientific-ish fashion, using various poling techniques together with a serious and detailed attempt to understand the meaning of election outcomes. Thus, when a candidate is defeated, his defeat is eventually "understood" by the professionals who must run campaigns as reflecting truths, at least of the moment, about the views of the electorate. And once those truths are accepted, the sort of situation described by the professional in Digby's post pertains. This is simply logical--sensible. And of course now and then someone decides to test the pertaining theory, and if they succeed then the theory is shaken. And if they fail, the theory is even more "confirmed."

One faint hope is to start out by trying to reframe the conversation, as Mr. Obama did last night at the Urban League's conference, where he simply stated some things that, indeed, most people, including gun owners, surely would agree with--such as that "most gun owners think AK-47s are weapons for soldiers on a battlefield, not people on the street" (I paraphrase). Mr. Obama's argument last night was so commonsensical that were it restated again and again, it might eventually turn the body of public opinion enough to undercut the current common wisdom which Digby reports.

But this happy turn of events leaves out--of course--the fact that there is an ongoing, relentless, full-tilt propaganda campaign aimed at raising the fear-level of at least all "gun lovin' voters" to the degree that they will be certain to vote against anyone who might suggest any sort of gun legislation. The NRA, for example, has already suggested that the Aurora shooter was actually a hypnotized operative of gun control forces who want to get new international gun treaties ok-ed--"the timing is rather convenient," one apologist suggested yesterday, raising his eyebrows and winking at his listeners.

The world must indeed cringe at the spectacle of us'n. Mr. Romney's pathetic response to Aurora was remarkable--a 16th century astronomer who'd seen the rings of Saturn could surely have done no better when questioned by the red-robed Vatican authorities, assuming he wished to save his head.

And as a tangential note appros of nothing much beyond my continuing homage to Mr. Peckinpah, of course Bishop Pike carries a 1911-A on his hip, as is noted with interest by the German military advisor aiding Mapatche in his campaign against Villa. Just sayin'. It's a fact merely historically accurate, even if the movie is "really" about Vietnam. And what is Vietnam "about," if not, in the end, us.


Sunday Update: From the Rude Pundit no less:

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2012/07/an-older-aurora-story-might-help-us.html

He do have a point.

Bravo

Lance Mannion is always on the money, as in the following:

http://lancemannion.typepad.com/lance_mannion/2012/02/devout-ricky.html

While it's not the very most important point, I'm delighted to read the last paragraph. I have no idea why all reports regarding Santorum, including even those coming out of MSNBC, refer to his "workingclass roots." It is, indeed, bull. Santorum's grandfather was an Italian communist who immigrated to the Pennsylvania coal fields, where he probably stood up for worker's rights and John L. Lewis. We don't know much about him, because Mr. Santorum granfils only mentions (as is his wont and style) the very tiny bits about gramps that serve his particular needs right now. Santorum also fails to mention with great regularity that his father was a practicing psychiatrist boasting a handsome income, or that he (little Ricky) grew up in the bosom of middle-class America. Santorum of course fails to mention any number of relevant facts about himself and his way of life. Mr. Santorum is a practiced liar of the first order, and has perfected the vague lie, such as the one of most immediate note, wherein he compares Mr. Obama to Hitler, but leaves himself just enough room to also lie that really he was just using a World War II metaphor with, actually, no subject at all.

Anyways, Mr. Mannion offers another good post, and if you can afford to send him a bit of scratch, he can use it and deserves it greatly, for shedding light where it's needed.

Meanwhile, Franklin Graham, now there's a piece of work. Lawrence O'Donnell did us a service last night by not mincing words about Mr. Graham. He is a religious demagogue making huge amounts of money and serving nothing and no one but himself and his family. And perhaps the Koch Brothers. I'm sure you can find Mr. O'Donnell's take-down of Graham's amazing public hypocrisy with ease via the google. Needless to say, it speaks to the contempt in which Mr. Graham holds all ordinary Americans that he can say, straight to the camera, that while he can't tell what's in Mr. Obama's heart concerning whether he is a Christian, he can at the same time say with certainty that Mr. Santorum is indeed a Christian. What an amazing load. I am sorry to tell you that the Grahams, father and son, call North Carolina home. They make John Edwards look like a mere miscreant, and that takes some doing. And the worst thing Franklin Graham pulls off is the continuous modelling of the behavior of denial: he shows to the gullible and judgmental-tending "flock" that all one has to do to be a Christian is to incant a few words--there is no real price, and once the incantation is complete, one can join those who feel free to despise the hard working, intelligent man in the White House who's actually doing a decent job of the fundamentally impossible. Graham joins Limbaugh and the rest of the right wing ranters in spell-binding the gullible public.

The photo opening this post comes from
http://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/franklin-graham-clean-up-your-own-back-yard/
The article which it accompanies there is a fine read.

Pay No Attention To...

Just a couple of comments on the week's political flow:

1. According to a CBS Poll, 91% of Americans approved of Obama's speech Tuesday night, while 8% disapproved.

2. Last night the Rev. Al tried to discuss with some Republican Congressman from Kansas whether they could at least agree that the so-called "Buffett Rule" (asserting that millionaires should pay more taxes than their secretaries) addressed a question of "fairness." While Al wasn't entirely prepared for the Congressman's response: a retort that it's not fair that millions of Americans pay no taxes, it remained remarkable that the Congressman would never directly address a clear question, eventually looking like a 3-year-old just saying "no" over and over again. Surely any reasonable person can evaluate what amounts to a hypothetical and come up with a direct response. I wish Al had dealt with the canned response though. He might have pointed out that most of those millions of Americans don't pay taxes because they don't make enough money to qualify for taxes, since presumably the Congressman wasn't talking about millionaires who find enough loopholes not to pay anything, versus those who simply find enough loopholes to pay less than their secretaries. The whole conversation was instructive, nonetheless.

3. Mr. Daniels' response to the Obama speech featured an important if pernicious suggestion--that the government means-test social security. Should this idea gain legal status, it would be the book-end to Reagan's pernicious law capping social security taxes, which also serves to define social security as in some sense "welfare" for those who didn't manage to climb atop the bloody pile of scrabblers in life's game of business success and failure. Mr. Daniels proposition seems oh so reasonable--rich folk don't "need" social security. So let's let rich folk decide who does need social security. And while they're at it, let's let rich folk decide how much the check will be. Social security was designed to be a program which reflected the fact that we're all Americans. It bound us together. Everyone paid in, and everyone got a pay-out. This has galled the Right from the get-go, and they've worked a long term strategy to destroy the program, and they continue on this path.

4. Chris Matthews made one prescient remark, prior to the speech. The Republicans have not been the "loyal opposition" during Obama's term. It was clear that this remains true. Apparently a good majority of Americans at least for the moment realize this--judging by that CBS poll. It will be the Democratic Party's job to keep reminding Americans about this, which will mean keeping the racist dog whistles emitting from the Gingrich camp at bay, not to mention the endless other prevarications and dissemulates. This job, unfortunately, is akin to the little Dutch Boy's. See, e.g.:
http://www.ginandtacos.com/2012/01/26/what-really-matters/

This Guy?

Then Mitt put his sons on notice: there would be pre-determined stops for gas, and that was it. Tagg was commandeering the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, when he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. “Dad!” he yelled. “Gross!” A brown liquid was dripping down the rear window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours. As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Mitt coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the road with the dog still on the roof. It was a preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management. But the story would trail him years later on the national political stage, where the name Seamus would become shorthand for Romney’s coldly clinical approach to problem solving. (From The Real Romney by Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, as quoted in Vanity Fair)

Dear God. This is the so-called moderate candidate, the alternative to the moderate President we now enjoy, a guy who has pulled the country back from a depression engendered by full-on Republicanism for eight years, a man who entered office during a job-loss event in full swing, and who has had about .001 support from the Republicans who were elected to help govern the country, not stymie every presidential initiative, act or suggestion from the get-go. Watching Romney's preening "acceptance" speech after his Iowa landslide of 8 votes, I told Libby it was like seeing George Bush over again--the arrogant frat-boy rich guy, so glib with his "failed President" talking phrase, so certain that he can roll over any and all opposition, hitting yet another of his life's grand slams from the perfect spot to be born standing--ten feet off third base towards home. Nice work if you can get it. I guess.

And Chris Matthews praises Romney because, unlike his most dangerous challenger, Rick Santorum, Romney isn't quite putting all out war with Iran right into his platform, but only hints at it with a wink and a nod, and perhaps with the nudge to the reluctant that, after all, the Romney is basically "speaking to the base" right now and all his turns of phrase must be taken with some digestively helpful sea salt by those in the non-base who are, for whatever reason, just bored with the guy who turned out not to be up to changing everything but the tide schedule, no matter what he promised in 2008.

After all, as far as we now know, Mr. Romney did not blow up frogs with firecrackers, like young Master Bush. I'll keep saying it here, from time to time. We just get the limited either/or choice in this here land of Liberty. There's the D. There's the R. If you don't turn out, that doesn't mean you can say it ain't your problem. And meanwhile, the selling and framing goes on at every level, all the live-long day, and don't you forget it. While Mitt will use the phrase "failed Presidency" so frequently that by the end of next week, if you watch enough teevee, you're going to be thinking maybe you don't really want to vote for a failure even if he does seem to be a nice Negro with a beautiful family and a great vocabulary, at the same moment you are also being sold quite a few other things. Who can pay conscious attention to all of it? Mostly, it all just goes to shape a point of view that feels entirely "objective", an ordinary 4-square picture of just what's "out there." Consider, for example:

http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2012/01/03/shoe-company-to-women-youre-deformed/

As usual, the deconstruction is brilliant, and even more so because we never even noticed it was there to deconstruct. So, I ask you, is there still a debt crisis? Do you actually want Chevy Chase for President?

In this Christmas Season

(from Bukowski.net)

http://www.emptywheel.net/2011/12/21/obama-apologists-ignoring-the-rotting-corpse-of-anwar-al-awlaki/

This is our reality. Mr. Obama has with this law reduced the choice of President to a vote based on which of two people is the more reasonable, fair-minded person. As an historical event, this bill probably represents a famous principle of Presidency--namely, that all Presidents want as much power as they can get. So, e.g., the Republicans opened the door, and as President Mr. Obama simply isn't going to close it. Indeed, with this bill he opens it wider. It's a matter of perceived practicality versus legal theorizing. Mr. Obama thinks, no doubt, "I'm the guy that has to stop this bastard." And in this clarity Mr. Obama proves decisively that he's a better President than Bush, who saw the world through muddled glasses first day to last, and for all his blather and all the killing, stopped nothing.

But the down side is Ms. Wheeler's point--what will Newt (say) do with this power. Because the track record looking back to 1980 is very very bad for American Democracy, as an invisible hand. And perhaps this is why polls are trending now for Mr. Obama. Maybe most Americans would still rather not give the keys to a guy in a clown suit who walks down the street talking to himself.

See, here's the thing. There is going to be a guy in the White House who has to deal with stuff that no one wants to deal with. The GOP can apparently convince their boys that this problem is really not much, that all that guy has to do is just say "ok" when it really comes down to it--the rest of it gets decided by "experts," and the prez is just the legal on/off switch, and how daunting can that be. The Dems, they tend to think their guy actually has to decide stuff more like we humans decide--thinking about consequences intended and otherwise, understanding that doing nothing is a decision, trying to balance interests, or ignoring interests, staying up late, getting up early, pretty much spending his whole life on the job. And all of us just have the little choice we can make, the little vote, and we'd best remember that any choice we make, including spending a November Tuesday at the movies, or checking some Nader off the list to make a "point," that has implications too, about who ends up with this crazy job of dealing with stuff that one one wants to deal with.

There's a nice Bukowski poem on this theme--the guy in the clown suit I mean. I'll hunt up for you sometime.

Fair Game

A brief movie review. I watched Fair Game last night, courtesy of Netflix. It stars Naomi Watts as Valerie Plame Wilson, supported by Sean Penn as her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson (not R, SC). It strikes me as an accurate account of the events it aims to portray, namely the two outstanding public servants who were nearly obliterated by the Bush Administration because Ambassador Wilson had credibility when he spoke out against the spurious claim by the Administration that Iraq was embarked on a nuclear weapons program.

The movie centers on Mrs. Wilson's situation. She was clearly and without doubt an utterly innocent victim of the Bush Administration, who leaked her identity to the press simply in an effort to discredit and pay back Mr. Wilson for objecting to the statements about Iraq's nuclear program that he was certain were false. There was collateral damage as well, including a number of persons Mrs. Wilson was connected with in her CIA work, who were exposed in various overseas locations including Iraq.

The movie portrays and centers on the Wilsons' personal trials--on the shock of having to battle with large political forces, on the sense of exposure and betrayal and even physical danger, and on the stresses to the Wilsons' personal relationship, which in the end does survive. It is a movie about character. Nothing gets blown up. No one gets shot.

When it was over I turned on the Republican "debate" for a couple of minutes, then played some chess on the computer. The movie reminded me that this next election turns on the question of whether the country wants these same people--the people who were just fine with starting a war on false pretenses and destroying two American patriots who objected--back in power yet again. That's as fair a way to look at the upcoming election as any.

(Photo from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/20/naomi-watts-valerie-plame_n_583713.html

& how do you like your blue eyed boy

Jimmy Roland

Way back when, I thought I ought to try out for the highschool baseball team.  I rode my bicycle over to the field near the highschool, and signed up.  They were doing batting tryouts, and pitching was Jimmy Roland.  He, together with a kid named Jimmy Hussey, were the two star pitchers of my youth.  Eventually I got my turn at the plate.  Jimmy threw me curve after curve.  They probably weren't the really serious curves he could throw by then, and certainly he wasn't the major league lefthander he became a few years later, pitching for the Twins and the Yankees and several other teams for a nice long major league career.  Jimmy wasn't quite Catfish Hunter--maybe Catfish is the most stellar NC pitcher in the firmament--but Jimmy, he was damn good.  You know how highschool is, maybe.  If you leave home, those people, who were your universe, mostly disappear on their various trajectories, never to be seen again, or at least not until way later (like now, dude), when your 50th Reunion is coming atcha.

Like one of Jimmy's curves.  So I kept jumping back from the plate, certain the ball was going to wack me between the shoulder blades, and then I'd watch it float over the plate.  This went on for several pitches.  Finally Jimmy relented, or probably the coach gave him the signal to let up, and he tossed a few straight, easy pitches to me, which I proceeded to hit well south of the third base line and out into the street, so excited to get one I could see that I couldn't wait.  And thus endth my highschool baseball career, which was probably as as-it-should-be as is conceivable--an apogee of fairness.  Plus, I got to bat that one time against the great Jimmy Roland, who ten or more years later I happened to see on the teevee, pitching for the Twins, and winning a game in the major leagues.

So we have this website featuring all our classmates, and some of them have put up little bios and pictures from their lives, and many others haven't been "found", and there's a departed section, which I was checking after I read one bio by one guy lamenting all the departed, too soon, too soon.  And there's Jimmy.  He died last year.  After his career he had a nice family, and worked in sporting goods, and was called to work in a hospice, and he'd gotten some kind of cancer, and died.  It looked from the little obituary like he'd found a fine, centered life, and had become a very commendable person with his head screwed on straight--which would probably be something of an achievement if you were in the Major Leagues for a long time, although it's happened before certainly, including to Catfish.  But damn if I'm not sorry I can't go up to him next month and ask him if he remembers ending my major league career.  That would have been really fun.  And that moment at the plate--it's as real as yesterday, and sparkles like the air after a hurricane.

And here's a footnote which I find simply breathtaking:
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1964/B05190NYA1964.htm
                                                              **

I found out about Jimmy's passing on Sunday, as late as I was for his curveball.  Last night a friend of mine called with the news that Bob Barrett, the guy who gave me the wonderful hook for my most notorious song, a song which when I first performed it with the Red Clay Ramblers in 1974, at the Cats Cradle in Chapel Hill, caused people to literally fall out of their chairs, that Bob had died of a heart attack Monday night while driving home from Chapel Hill.  He'd felt bad, pulled off to the side of the road, and his body was found later by police.  It was his 2nd heart attack, his first coming last winter.  I'd had dinner with him last week, and we'd had an enjoyable conversation, with much wry comment from him on the current political climate.  His wryness was renown--and was evident well before he gave me that hook at his wedding reception, where he married Margaret Ellen, back in 1973, when the Ramblers were just getting started on a marriage that did not last nearly so long as his.  I can report, however, that Bob did not expect Rick Perry to succeed in his presidential ambition.  Perhaps optimism was coming on in his older, wiser years, I don't know.

Bob was a noted residential contractor in these parts.  I have, through the years, built many a foundation for his very well built houses.  He was a man who believed in over-building.  His stuff stood up to weather, and falling trees.  When hurricane Fran came through in '96, he and I did some nice repairs on some good houses in the Chapel Hill area.  He said last week that at least he wasn't in debt, like a lot of the building community around here.  He'd gotten out at the right time.

Margaret Ellen had died of breast cancer three or so years ago.  Bob and Margaret Ellen were as sweet a couple as you could imagine.  Now there's just their 30-something daughter left, who went to school back when with my 30-something daughter.  I think when Margaret Ellen died, that's what broke Bobby's heart.  Eventually the old muscles just couldn't cope with the broken stuff.   There is in fact very little that isn't in the end ephemeral.  I think of Bob's nice, quirky, self-built house, full of his life, Margaret Ellen's, Sophie's.  The piano, which he and I moved in my old green F-150, which nearly fell plumb out of the truck on the sharp curve on his driveway.  The many books.  The wood stove sitting on a pedestal smack in the middle of the living room, the beautiful sun room past the kitchen, all those windows facing the steep hillside, which bloomed with bulbs each spring, the big shop building up on that hill, with Bob's tools, and a second floor to that, like a hayloft, with a pingpong table and an old refrigerator with beer, and windows looking out on the tree tops.

Now all of that, every bit of it, is memory.  What's there today is what's left.  I don't know what will happen to it all.  Sophie lives far away, with a sparkling life of her own.  Maybe she can rent the place out somehow, or there'll be a distress sale.  Otherwise, the desperate will eventually find it, and it won't take long in these times.  There ought to be a plaque or something though.  Maybe I'll have to have one made myself.  Sneak over there some night and drive it deep into the red clay up by that shop.


The man who conceived "You were only fucking, while I was making love" lived here.  A true country genius, who never went to Nashville and made it rich.  Not "Awww, too bad." though.  He lived as well as is possible, and grew wiser and kinder with every passing year.  He was uniformly generous.  He was a  good friend.

The Fake Budget Crisis

GOP retirement at the Wisconsin Dells

From the Daily Howler today:

"In the 1998 State of the Union, Clinton said the projected federal surpluses should be applied to Social Security’s long-range balance sheet. In this way, he blocked the House GOP’s proposal for a large tax cut. In 1999, he made his full proposal: 62 percent of those federal surpluses would be used to strengthen the program’s finances, thus extending the life of Social Security by some twenty years. Some of that money would be invested in the stock market—but it would be invested as a federal fund under federal direction, not as part of individual “private accounts.” Other funds would be used to help citizens establish savings accounts—savings accounts which would operate in addition to their regular Social Security benefits, which would not be cut.That was Clinton’s proposal for the use of those looming federal surpluses. After Chris Matthews sent George Bush to the White House, this new president had a different idea; he used those projected federal surpluses for his massive tax cuts. Whatever one thinks of Clinton’s proposal—Candidate Gore didn’t agree with several parts of the plan—the Clinton proposal was vastly different from anything Bush ever did."

There's quite a lot more at Howler, check it out. 

Now that Democrats have made the first baby step towards regaining majorities in 2012 with a flawed but still significant victory in upstate New York, their goal should be to totally demolish the false fantasy of looming budget disaster which the Republicans have fabricated and helped use to launch the Ryan Budget.  The Republican cards are on the table.  What's not on the table is the obvious solution: sensible progressive tax increases to adjust the budget shortfalls, plus (of course) some sensible cuts where they are needed--in military spending. Surely the Democratic Party is capable of convincing a majority of American voters of the intelligence of such a course of action.  Wouldn't it be just wonderful to see Paul Ryan where he belongs--running a cash register in some CVS in a strip mall in Chippewa Falls, or working the swing shift at the Dells Antique Mall.  He would in either case still only be a scant few miles from I-94, and could drive down to the entrance of a Sunday afternoon and watch the traffic.  

http://www.kalahariresorts.com/wi/
 
Don't let the music scare you.