User-Whee!

The state legislature has finally lanced a pustule on the ass of the Oregon body politic. By a vote of 18 to 11, the state senate voted to cap interest rates on consumer loans at 36 percent. The bill goes into effect July 1st.

I sure wish I could make 36 percent on anything, but for a decade now, Oregon’s payday loan sharks have been charging—but wait, you really have to take a guess on this.

How much do payday loan businesses need to charge to be able to stay in business: 100 percent? 200 percent? 300 percent?

Mais, non! Payday loan sharks need to charge 500 percent(!) interest just to stay in business. At 500 percent, they seem to be just getting by, which is why we now have more payday loan shops in Oregon than McDonalds.

A typical loan is about $300 and is made to a poor person who also happens to be stupid. They would use the money for discretionary items such as food and rent or to fix their car so they could get to work at their minimum wage job.

Some of them were Oregon lottery addicts, so in a way the PD loan industry was subsidizing state government, and I guess my pension, for that matter. Thanks!

Thing is, the loan would be due in a few weeks, and since Citizen Stupid doesn't have any more money now than he did then, he would pay a big fee to roll it over for another few weeks.

Where’d he get the money for the big fee? Why, right next door at another PD loan shop! You can see how poor money management skills, crap jobs, and a low IQ could combine to produce what people in the PD loan industry refer to as “clients.”

This has been an issue in Oregon for several years now as the newspapers have picked up on how the scam works and how many families and individuals it has forced into bankruptcy. It all started in the late 90s when the legislature lifted the cap on legal interest rates to adjust to the quickly rising loan rates. Instead of adjusting the usury definition upward, though, they just eliminated it.

Within minutes, signs went out on shop fronts, and loan sharks who used to work from street corners got to move indoors.

This detestable practice was allowed to continue for a decade because the sharks quickly formed a professional association and started lobbying and because Oregon Republicans have become so ideology-driven they don’t know a turd from a truffle anymore. “Let the market work,” one of them said in arguing against the new bill. There would also be a market for contract murder if we legalized it, but fortunately, that one hasn’t come up this session. No question it would have Republican support.

“Industry” spokesperson Steven Hanson said “These politicians don’t care about the small Oregon business owners who are going to be on the street. They ought to care about the consumers.”

Poor babies!

Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Toast the troops!

My friend Ed Robinson passes along a link to this website.

http://www.sixpacksforsoldiers.com/

I’m never quite sure what “support the troops” means, but this seems as good a way as any.

One of the small but telling ironies of this nasty little war is that our troops on the ground are not allowed to consume alcohol. No stopping by the enlisted men’s club for a cold one after a tough day of routing out terrorists. There is no Miller time in Iraq, this out of sensitivity to the Muslim prohibition against alcohol.

So as we’re over there fighting for their freedom and ours here at home—so it is hoped we will believe—our own troops are forced to conform to the tenets of a faith not their own. I think that’s wrong. I think commanders should have the balls to say to the locals, “Hey, we’re infidels! We’re drinking us some beer! Get used to it!”

Wanna bet those suits in the embassy find a way to smuggle in some liquid refreshment?

Dog Trouble

I posted a few months ago about a run-in Mary and I had in a campground when walking our dogs. That incident involved two pit bulls, but these encounters aren't uncommon, and I'd say I have some kind of incident maybe one in five times I go for a walk.

I took my two Jack Russells for our short, neighborhood loop today and got rushed once again by three big ones up on Loma Linda. One of them is very aggressive, though I think it’s a bluff charge. Still, it scares the hell out of me. I swing my walking stick and yell at them, and they circle and try to make rushes back in. All the time I’m holding my own two on leashes in one hand and trying to keep them out of it. Jack Russells would attack a grizzly, but they wouldn’t last a few seconds, even as tough as they are, against bigger dogs.

So I told the guy who finally came out it wasn’t the first time and would he please keep his dogs under control, and he said “I didn’t even know they were out here.” There are too many good comebacks to that, and I just kept walking.

I looked at cattle prods at a farm supply store once and decided against it because they’re big and I’d feel stupid carrying one around. Still, I wish I could think of a way to drop a dog in its tracks when this happens, leave it twitching and stunned for a few minutes.

I might have another look at cattle prods.

You Can't Make This Shit Up

I don't do bumper stickers for the most part. Last one I had, that I recall, was in 1964 and it said "Dizzy Gillespie for President." Wish I still had it.

But I was in Hood River last weekend and found a very cool little alt.bookstore that had a lot of bumper stickers I liked. I bought a few and so far have only put one on my scooter. It says "Earth" in green letters, and you'd have to live in Klamath Falls to understand why that could be risky.

I got a good laugh out of one that said "You can't make this shit up" because every day I think that as I read the paper.

Here's a link to a Washington Post editorial by Dana Milbank.

You really can't make this shit up.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/23/AR2007052301446.html?referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=email

Happy Anniversary To Us

Yesterday, Mary and I celebrated our 32nd Anniversary.

“Celebrated” is maybe not the best term. She worked late because of a parents’ night at school. I went over to a friend’s house and watched motorcycle races he had recorded from the weekend.

Great races! Le Mans in the rain.

I consider myself to be a very lucky guy to be married to such a wonderful person, still in love and more in love every year. Lots of marriages don’t last. Some that do aren’t so great.

What did we do to be so lucky? I’ve reflected on occasion that when we met, I was far from emotionally mature. I could have easily ended up in a terrible relationship. But it wasn’t just luck, either. We’ve both done a lot of work on ourselves and on our relationship. Somehow we managed to stay together long enough to begin to get it right.

We’ll probably do something special this weekend, but I did remember to buy flowers and a card for the day.

I also filled her car with gas. What a guy I am!

Venus, not de Milo

Mary and I enjoyed the film Venus last night at home. If for no other reasons, it’s a delightful portrayal of three aging actors, good friends and sometime enemies, in the final weeks and months of life. It illustrates beautifully why old age can be a wonderful thing, not in spite of the aches, pains, disabilities, impotence, and organ failure, but because of them. When a good bowel movement becomes the best thing that happens today, life has truly been reduced to the simple pleasures. It helps if you’ve learned a few lessons along the way.

I’m not nearly so old yet, but I can begin to see it from here.

Peter O’Toole is wonderful as the aging, lecherous actor, equal parts charming and creepy. Together with his two friends, played always with either bawdy or subtle comic undertones by Leslie Phillips and the laughably rotund Richard Griffiths, the film could have stood its ground on just that one theme. But it quickly develops into yet another variation on Pygmalion when Phillips takes in the young and rather coarse daughter of his niece as a nurse/caretaker. O’Toole goes to work immediately, but it’s lechery and not transformation that motivates him.
The plot thickens when the girl, called Venus by O’Toole, turns out to be as much a predator as he is. In the end, they’re all equal parts repellent, charming, and even lovable. More lessons get learned.

Splendid acting around and an interesting if disturbing moral ambiguity combined to keep us up past bedtime.

In real life, Richard Griffiths is quoted as saying, "If I had my way, all actors over 55 would be issued a 3-lb. wet salmon with which to slap the face of every young, beautiful, successful upstart. 'That's for being so lucky, you bastard!' I would shout. And then, hit them again, if you can." In part, that could serve as a summary of the film if you keep in mind that comedy is a fine tool for suggesting paradox.

The New Know Nothings

Stupid Republicans: The National Journal reports in its recent poll of Republicans in the House of Representatives that only thirteen percent believe that global warming is real.

It’s too bad that George Tenet neutralized the expression slam dunk. We need to send a few thousand climate scientists up to Capital Hill to explain to these yahoos that the case for human caused global warming is “irrefutable,” as resoundingly affirmed in the latest UN report, which followed similar conclusions from our own National Academy of Sciences and pretty much every one else who bothers to read the newspaper once or twice a week.

The number of climate reports with similar findings and dire warnings seems to grow every day. What we should do about global warming might remain a matter of discussion and controversy, but that it’s happening and human caused has been settled science for at least a decade.

Apparently, the only way to get a majority of Republicans to accept this is if we could find a link to Al-Qaeda. If Al-Qaeda were building a series of massive coal-fired power plants in the Iraqi outback, Republicans might agree to a surge of engineers to the region to install scrubbers or force them to change over to wind or solar, two things they have more of than oil. Arguably, the whole thing would demonstrate that Al-Qaeda is more crafty and dangerous than even the Bush administration imagined.

I’ve never agreed with much of conservative doctrine, but at least there seemed to be a doctrine there that was based on some kind of vision of reality. If you don’t approve of race mixing, you’re going to be opposed to racial integration. If you believe life begins at conception, I can understand your opposition to abortion. But when studies show that abstinence-only sex education has absolutely no effect on sexual activity among teens, what do Republicans want to do? Increase funding for abstinence-only sex education.

It’s too bad that “know nothings” has already been taken as a party name. Contemporary Republicans seem to be staying in office, albeit in fewer numbers, on a slam-dunk policy of “I don’t know nothing.”

Alvin Batiste Dies

One of my favorite jazz musicians has died. Alvin Batiste was perhaps better known as a teacher, but his album Late is absolutely terrific. It's one of those of the many hundred I own that gets played regularly.

He was a master on the clarinet, an instrument which was out of fashion for many years. And his music, though mostly in the mainstream, could move decidedly outside without leaving me behind. I hear a strong influence of Coltrane, but he always had his own voice.

He was 74 and died of an apparent heart attack just hours before a scheduled concert at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Think I'll rip Late tonight so I'll have it on my computer. I'm close to doing the iPod thing and will definitely want his tunes in my shuffle.

Riding to school last night

Yesterday evening I had a rather unsettling experience when I was riding the scooter to school for my 5:30 class. When I stopped for the light at the bypass, I noticed a woman in the crosswalk who was obviously very drunk. After a few stumbling steps she collapsed in the middle of the road. It took a few seconds to register that this had really happened, then I put the scooter on the side stand and ran over to her. I took my helmet off and was starting to call 911 when I could hear a driver in a nearby car already calling it in.

By this time, the woman had begun to seizure. I took off my jacket and put it under her head and just knelt with her. When she stopped, I stood up and made a feeble attempt to direct traffic around her.

While all of this was happening, two other people came over with a dog on a leash and said the woman had dropped the dog off with them and said she was going to commit suicide by taking an overdose of pills. It wasn’t clear if she’d taken the pills already or if she had passed out from drinking. The seizure could also have been from hitting her head when she fell.

The cops and then EMTs arrived in only a few minutes and took charge of the scene. I just stood around and waited for them to get her on a gurney so I could get my jacket and go to class.

As I thought about it later that evening, I felt good that I’d gone over to help. No one else got out of a car. But as I thought about it, I realized that the first thing the EMT did when he came over was check for a pulse. When I looked at her again, I realized she could have been dead. In the confusion of the moment and the concern about traffic starting to move around her, I hadn’t even thought to see if she was alive and consider starting CPR.

I briefly felt ashamed that I’d done a bad job of it but soon realized I have no training for emergencies like this. In a crisis, people fall back on their training, and without training, all I could think to do was stand there next to her.

When I talked with Mary about it, she said she gets to think about these things fairly often teaching junior high and has pretty much decided not to give CPR because of the risks of AIDS, hepatitis, and various other highly contagious diseases which are not all that uncommon.

I might make the same decision if it happens again, but I expect considerations like this are part of the training people receive. I noticed none of the cops tried to assess the woman’s condition before the EMTs arrived.

So, all of this has led me to think that I’d like to take a first aid class. They offer them at the community college, even up to EMT certification. Since I’m one who has never done well around blood or pain, I doubt I’d ever want to do anything like this for a living, but I’d like to have that kind of training to fall back on if it happens again. I might need it for someone I know.

I have no idea how the woman fared. They loaded her in the ambulance, one of the cops called out “Let’s clear the intersection,” and they were all gone in seconds. Other than the traffic snarl, it was as if nothing had happened.

I was glad she hadn’t puked on my vintage leather jacket. It’s my favorite.

Dennis Kucinich for President!

Here are a few excerpts from a Washington Post editorial today by Richard Cohen. It’s interesting both in that it takes seriously Dennis Kucinich’s articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney and Kucinich himself as a Democratic candidate for president:

“The resolution offered by the gentleman from Ohio reads sensibly. It alleges crimes high and low, misdemeanors galore -- all of them representing an effort to mislead the American people and take them into war. It is Dennis Kucinich's articles of impeachment directed at Dick Cheney. The vice president will, of course, deny being a liar. As long as Kucinich is at it, add that to the articles. . . .
“Kucinich also alleges that Cheney `purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress.’" That, as the expression goes, is the gravamen of the charge. Kucinich doesn't stand a ghost of a chance of making it stick because Congress is not about to vote impeachment. But no one who reads Kucinich's case against Cheney can fail to conclude that this is a rational, serious accusation. It's possible that each individual charge can be rebutted, but the essence of it is shockingly apparent: We were being manipulated. . . .
“Kucinich is an odd guy for whom the killer appellation "perennial presidential candidate" is lethally applied. But he is on to something here. It is easy enough to ad hominize him to the margins -- ya know, the skinny guy among the `real’ presidential candidates -- but at a given moment, and this is one, he's the only one on that stage who articulates a genuine sense of betrayal. He is not out merely to win the nomination but to hold the Bush administration -- particularly Cheney -- accountable. In this he will fail. What Cheney has done is not impeachable. It is merely unforgivable.”

Back in ’04, I ran for the Oregon Senate as a Democrat in our heavily Republican district. I got creamed, as expected, but I ran a serious campaign and got three out of four endorsements from newspapers in our district. The one I didn’t get, of course, was written by an idiot!

One of the few high points of the campaign was when I twice got to introduce Dennis Kucinich, who back then was again a candidate for president. I introduced him once in Klamath Falls to an audience of several hundred. I got to meet and talk to him at some length later the same week at a meeting of progressive rural activists in Portland.

He struck me at the time and still does as the best of the Democratic candidates. He is a passionate and inspiring speaker, and he goes directly to the truth without trying to find the middle ground that might best mobilize the base and also woo the moderates of both parties. Of course, he got creamed as badly as I did, but I’ve since felt a strong affinity for him. And we’re both skinny, short guys.

He won’t do any better this time. As one of my editorial endorsements said, “that’s a shame, because he’s clearly the best candidate.”

Here's a picture of me impersonating a politician.

The Patriot Guard Riders

I’ve been suspicious of the group called the Patriot Guard Riders who show up in the news about funeral services for fallen American soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. They ride mostly Harley Davidsons, wear the usual do-rags and sleeveless denim vests, and fly gigantic American flags from the backs of their bikes.

They say they attend to honor the fallen but also to protect families from vocal anti-war demonstrators. They shield the families with their giant flags, and if demonstrators get too loud, they fire up their bikes to drown out the noise.

What anti-war demonstrators?

All of this smells faintly of the persistent rumors over the years of Vietnam veterans who were spit on when they returned home. No one can say with certainty that this never happened, but I’ve looked into it a little and it seems to be an urban myth. I can say that I frequently flew in uniform on commercial airlines when I was in the Army from 1967 to 1970, and I never saw an anti-war demonstration at an airport. Personally, I was met with complete indifference, even when I flew into San Francisco airport after my tour in Vietnam.

But last night after reading about yet another funeral of an Oregon soldier, I tried to find out what I could about the Patriot Guard Riders. It turns out they’re an informal network of biker types and a lot of Vietnam vets with links to the American Legion. They offer to attend military funerals but only show up with an invitation.

What was amazing to me is that they did form up in response to outrageous demonstrations at funerals, but not by your typical anti-war activists. Here’s an excerpt from a Time magazine story:

“They formed as a response to the Rev. Fred Phelps, an attention-crazed fanatic based in Topeka, Kans., who has logged 15 years as a kind of paleo-fundamentalist, gay-baiting performance artist. Last spring Phelps grabbed the already troubling line, taken by preachers such as Pat Robertson, that disasters like 9/11 were God's punishment for American sins, and spun it past the boundary of the outrageous by having his followers crash military funerals with signs like GOD LOVES IEDS (improvised explosive devices) and scream to grieving parents that their children were in hell as divine punishment for what Phelps calls the nation's "enabling" and "harboring" of homosexuals.”

Phelps hates “fags,” and his congregation of under a hundred makes news by gay-bashing their way around the country blaming 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and even the war itself on American tolerance, such as it is, for gays. They even carry signs saying “God hates America.”

I guess in crazy times you’re going to hear a lot more from crazy people.

Here’s a link to the whole article:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1189333,00.html

Wild Hogs

Last night, Mary had dinner with a group of women friends, so, left to my own devices, I decided to go out to a movie, something I rarely do. I decided to see Wild Hogs, which I knew would be at best good for a few mindless chuckles. Actually, I enjoy mindless chuckles. Austin Powers movies, for example, crack me up. And Wild Hogs has motorcycles in it, even if they are Harley Davidsons.

I certainly had some good laughs, but overall, it’s a very poor comedy. I had hopes because John Travolta is, in my mind, best as a comic actor, and William Macy is always worth seeing. Still, the writing was mostly terrible and even the best of actors couldn’t do much with the material.

The funniest part of the movie for me was the ending, and I was surprised to find myself the only one laughing. Our four heroes, off on a middle-aged motorcycle odyssey to rediscover their lost youth and freedom, find themselves in a small New Mexico town being trashed by a gang of outlaw bikers. Just when it seems that all hope is lost, in rides the Shane character on his Harley.

We see only his boots and leathers as he steps off. And then, Peter Fonda walks into the fray and tells the bikers to leave the town alone; they have lost the meaning of freedom and what it means to be a biker.

The outlaws look like a playground full of chastised bullies, and I’m laughing my ass off because I know immediately that Peter Fonda is Easy Rider. It was a great visual allusion, and the film gets credit for not explaining it to the uninitiated.

When the lights go up, I look around and see that I’m the only person in the theater old enough to have seen Easy Rider and know what an icon it became for our generation. I felt like I sometimes do when I’m lecturing and my mind wanders off to some reference that’s not going to make sense to anybody under fifty. Most of the time, I don’t bother to try to explain.

My friend Broschat recently sent me a special edition DVD of Easy Rider, one of his unannounced and unexplained gifts that show up now and then. (Thanks, Michael!) I haven’t got around to watching it yet, and now that sounds like a great way to spend this rainy and cold Saturday afternoon.

Why We Teach

Join us as a mentor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUak4zPWHdE

Fun on yer bike

I endorse responsible riding.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHlcVSgu3m0&mode=related&search=

Spring ride

Spring has arrived in the Klamath Basin with its usual mix of cold weather, rain, wind, and an occasional snow. When the weather is like this and you love a good motorcycle ride, you have to jump on it when the sun comes out.

One day last week, my friend Jim Stewart called early in the morning and asked if I wanted to go for a ride somewhere. Absolutely!

Jim has a new BMW K1200 RS and we rode from Klamath Falls over to Medford together. The roads were clear of snow but dirty. I was taking it pretty easy, which was a good thing because a turkey flew across the road in front of me. It wasn’t even a close call, but we always have to be on the lookout for wildlife when we ride around here. Deer are the usual close call. I would not want my obit to read "killed by a turkey," though I suppose that could always happen. There are a lot of turkeys out there, though this is my first incident with one that had feathers.

We stopped at Hanson’s Motorcycles in Medford, where I got to drool over several new bikes. I’m not seriously thinking about anything new. My VFR is a great motorcycle and still has low miles. Still, there are close to a dozen new bikes on the market that I can get excited about.

We had lunch in Ashland, then went down I-5 over the Siskiyous to the Klamath River Road. We rode in about fifty miles, then took a short break and rode back home. Probably about 250-mile day.

Jim with his new new K1200RS

The pace got brisk in places, breaking 100 on the straights and pretty fast through the turns. Then we got stuck behind a guy in a car, and I was just starting to get wizzy because he wouldn't pull over to let us pass when a CHP went by coming towards us. I figure God put that car there to spare me an expensive ticket. Thank you, Jesus!

Today, it's cold and rainy again, but that's spring in Oregon. I hang around motorcycle web forums and plan trips. I really should do some dusting.

Surge Update

Watched two disturbing programs on PBS last night: one on The Gangs of Iraq.

About all I can say is what a fucking mess. The more you know, the worse it gets. I felt personal humiliation watching an American contract trainer and self-described “inspirational speaker” in a session with Iraqi police recruits.

“Let me hear you say Freedom!” They say freedom.

He exhorts them to say it louder: “FREEDOM!” They do.

This goes on like a high school pep rally through about five iterations. At the end he makes them repeat an improvised pledge of allegiance to the Iraqi flag, which looks like it’s been crudely painted as a wall poster.

The rest of the program documented the infiltration of Iraqi police and army units by militias and the steady deterioration of security in Iraq since our invasion. It was gritty stuff. You won’t see footage like this on NBC or ABC. CBS I couldn’t say since even the sight of Katie Couric makes me gag.

But the scene that stands out in my mind most is not the mutilated bodies or the deserted Iraqi police stations. It’s the idiot cheer leader trying to get a roomful of Iraqi police to shout “freedom!” just a little bit louder.

The second program was an amazing film made by PBS but entirely produced by and about Richard Perle, one of the neocon architects of the war. (So much for the PBS “liberal bias.”) Perle was adamant that neocons still passionately believe we were right to invade Iraq. He rehashes the WMD evidence. He never quite acknowledges that we got that wrong, saying only that even the Germans and French agreed on the intelligence. Even Hillary agreed on the links to terrorists.

Who cares? The Germans and the French opposed the invasion. Hillary is not my role model and she doesn’t speak for me or all Democrats.

For what it's worth, I’m proud that all of Oregon’s congressional Democrats voted against the war: Senator Ron Wyden and four Representatives. Most Americans opposed the invasion until they were tricked into believing we were a multinational coalition. Now that the war grinds on into its fifth year, the situation still “grave and deteriorating,” most Americans have turned against Bush and his few remaining Congressional allies.

Who cares even about that? I feel terrible for the troops, now getting news their tours have been extended to 15 months. In Vietnam, we knew our DEROS: “Date Returned from Overseas.” Mine was May 2, 1969. Every day I blacked out one more date on my calendar. When you had a month or less, you were short. Shortimers didn’t take shit.

I feel even worse for the Iraqis, the vast majority of which want us to leave now. Fifty-thousand Iraqis a month leave Iraq, most of them from the more educated professional classes who have decided it’s time to DEROS themselves out of there while they still can. Soon, only the cannibals will be left.

I admit I stopped watching the Perle propaganda film half way through and went to bed to read a fluffy novel. I needed some time to get my mind back.

For someone who devours news,opinion, and analysis, I’m lately spending less and less time on anything related to current affairs. The war will go on just as it has until Bush leaves office. Someone else will have to seek for a way to disengage. Not redeploy. Get the fuck out. And then the fighting will go on for another century or so, and back here, everybody will be blaming somebody else for losing Iraq.

Any chance I could be wrong about all this? I can only say to myself that I’ve been right so far. I know I won’t live long enough to see it all play out.

How your mouse works

Click on the link below to learn how your mouse works.

http://www.1-click.jp/

Once there, move you mouse around and click.

March to the Sea

I’m finishing up the memoirs of Civil War General William T. Sherman. The book was recommended by Broschat (see link to Montlake Blog at the right), who discovered that Sherman began his career in California before and shortly after the start of the gold rush. Since we grew up in the Bay Area, much of Sherman’s early adventures took place on ground familiar to us.

I thought I’d only read until he went back East, but I found the book to be very compelling. There are lots of Sherman’s thoughts about the war itself and many fascinating incidents, some of them involving clashes of gigantic egos. Sherman, for example, was dispatched to Southern California to get Fremont to knock it off with the undeclared war on Mexico. The declared war came a little later, and Sherman lamented that he couldn’t be there for the action.

In addition to the events themselves, Sherman was a good writer, able to capture a lot of detail, and in a readable style at a time when rhetorical flourish was a virtue and more was generally considered better.

But it’s Sherman himself who is so fascinating. A few years into the war when the South was on the run, some newspapers and politicians were arguing for a peace settlement. Sherman would settle for nothing short of complete defeat of the South and complete surrender:

“I would banish all minor questions, assert the broad doctrine that as a nation the United States has the right, and also the physical power, to penetrate to every part of our national domain, and that we will do it—that we will do it in our own time and in our own way; that it makes no difference whether it be in one year, or two, or ten, or twenty; that we will remove and destroy every obstacle, if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, every thing that to us seems proper; that we will not cease till the end is attained; that all who do not aid us are enemies, and that we will not account to them for our acts. If the people of the South oppose, they do so at their peril; and if they stand by, mere lookers-on in this domestic tragedy, they have no right to immunity, protection, or share in the final results.”

This was his advice to Grant and Lincoln, and this was the outcome. For his own part, after every battle Sherman dispassonately records his own army's deaths, wounded and missing, sometimes numbering in the thousands.

Paul deLay's Last Concert

Last Saturday night, Mary and I heard Portland blues giant Paul deLay in concert at the Ross Ragland Theater here in town. We had dinner with our new friends Ronda and Jim, then walked over to the show together. A great evening!

deLay played with a quartet featuring guitar, bass, and drums, plus himself singing and playing harmonica. He’s known as one of the best blues harmonica players with obvious jazz influences. He put on a great show doing exclusively Chicago style blues with a somewhat smaller group than it takes to do it right. Still, I was impressed with his musicianship and the group’s swing.

Overall, it was a great night of music, if not the best blues concert I’ve ever seen. Afterwards, Mary and I both said we enjoyed it, though it didn’t seem to take off in the way that can bring an audience to its feet. Mary said deLay seemed tired, a simple explanation that I hadn’t hit on. We both commented that his voice seemed damaged, maybe the inevitable result of a life of shouting the blues, maybe just a cold. He said the group had just returned from Mexico, so we thought maybe he was a little done-in from traveling.

So I was shocked to read this morning on the Oregonian front page that he died yesterday of leukemia. His guitar player said that he was tired after the show and suffering from bronchitis, but back in Portland, doctors said he was in an advanced stage of leukemia. His organs were shutting down, and he went into a coma, dying yesterday morning. No one knew he was sick.

I feel somehow honored and certainly fortunate to have been at his last concert sitting just three rows back. Despite the obvious fatigue, he joked with the audience, played two long sets, and came out for an encore. I bought a CD, Nice and Strong, which adds a Hammond B3 and tenor saxophone to the mix and which I highly recommend.

This leads, of course, to some thoughts on mortality. deLay was 55, four years younger than me. In 1990, he was heavily into alcohol and cocaine and was busted for dealing. He did four years in prison, but got straight before he did the sentence and seemed to stay clean the rest of his life. If he had to die young, this was a good life, full of music and working to the end.

May we all live so well and go out doing what we love.

RIP Paul deLay.

Three New Sites

I’m excited about three new Websites that were covered in the Oregonian yesterday and today. One is www.blip.tv. particularly www.thebicyclist.blip.tv. The O gave this a front-page story yesterday, and I have to say the real thing doesn’t measure up so well. It’s a site for filmmakers to post their work, and I’m not sure how it differs so much from YouTube. The bicyclist, though, aims to develop into a series. The first episode is only a few minutes long, but a promising start.

Then, there’s www.BikePortland.org. Portland, by all accounts, is the bikiest town around, despite the rain. I’ve tried to hook up with other electric bike enthusiasts through the Web and found surprisingly little going on out there. BikePortland is described as an “all-things-bicycle” blog, so it should be interesting. One of my intermediate goals is to write a guest column for the O on electric biking, and of course it will be written with my usual seriousness of demeanor and purpose. Also some fart jokes.

Maybe most promising is www.librarything.com . You can catalogue your entire personal library or start with just one book at a time. Enter the book and do a search and you can click on a link that will insert the cover, all the publishing information, and even the ISBN number. You can add a description and a review. Maybe best is that you can link up to others who are reading the same books as you and have a chat.

Remember: Do not offer to meet any underage girls in motel rooms!! You’ll probably be met by police detectives and a Fox news team and find yourself doing twenty years hard time, all because you thought you might want to learn a little more about Little Women.

Librarything is getting lots of good buzz. I’m getting a haircut, but not a buzz.

allaboutjazz

Some long time ago, I downloaded somewhere a free song titled “Circle Dance,” by a group called Conference Call. The album is Live at the Outpost Performance Space. This is great stuff, a little on the edgy, free jazz side that I tend to like.

But not too edgy, as I say in my profile.

I wanted to hear and maybe buy more, but I could never locate it. If I searched “Conference Call” at places like Amazon, I got a lot of telephone accessories. I couldn’t get any hits by artist, album or song on Napster or any of the other download sites I hang around at.

I finally connected by going to http://www.allaboutjazz.com/, where I found that the album title should be Live at the Outpost, and now I’ve ordered it from Amazon. The tenor player I like so well is one Gebhard Ullmann, a German musician who’s been around a long time. You can read his bio at www.gebhard-ullmann.com/frame.htm.

All of this interest in jazz is rekindled in part by the current Portland Jazz Festival, which I’m missing because I decided I couldn’t afford it, not even just a weekend of the ten-day affair. Also, I’m working two days a week, and I can’t just take off. Also, my repaired hernias still hurt, and I’m not thinking a lot about getting out of town yet. Also, I don’t know anybody to go with.

So I was wondering, do I really want to cram in say three days of intensive jazz concerts and then sit around trying to digest all that and not have anybody to talk it through with?
Well, yes.

What a lineup! It’s an ambitious and risk-taking series of concerts set in a mix of venues ranging from smallish clubs to the 2700-seat Schnitzer auditorium. Most performers have to be considered big names in jazz circles, but we’re talking small circles here. Gary Burton has been around forever and is always accessible if not easy-listening. I’d book him in the Schnitz. And jazz aficionados know that Branford is the right Marsalis to invite.

But one of my favorite pianists, Geri Allen, isn’t that big a name, and Don Byron and Dave Douglas may have a very high critical regard, but how big a draw could they count on? These guys fill clubs, not auditoriums. Their music can be difficult, though both Allen and Byron are about as exciting and creative as anybody who’s come along in the last few decades. Douglas for me, not so much.

For truly new voices, I’ll track down tenor saxophonist Sophie Faught, 19, who reportedly held her own with the likes of some of the above.

My friend Broschat will be interested to know that singer Gretta Matassa led a late-night jam. As I recall, he was trying to get people to pay attention to her some years ago when she was playing the Seattle club scene but hadn’t made a name yet. He gifted me a CD by her which I’ll have to sift out from my ramble of a collection.

Next year I’m going. Cross my heart.

I'm Back!

Hey, I need to log back in. It’s been a month. I’m better now, though I have to say my surgery and recovery have not been a breeze.

Just let me say this and get it off my chest: “The horror!!”

I’m not a John Wayne kind of guy. You’ll never hear me say, “It’s only a scratch.” I got sick from the pain meds and ended up in the emergency room. After that, it just hurt a lot. I was on drugs, and unlike, say, Hunter S. Thompson, I don’t do my best work when I’m loaded. I didn’t work at all, as a matter of fact. I just laid around and complained.

Still, it was a time to reconnect with my inner wimp and watch a lot of videos. I got the PBS complete history of England in about 20 DVDs. Here’s a summary: War! Unimaginable savagery! I’m only up to about 1300, disc three or four. I take this in small doses.

Also, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. Wonderful, but I’m not tracking all that well. Also in small doses.

Friends have been dear. Thank you all for the visits, the phone calls, and the chocolate. (Psss: I’m getting low on chocolate.)

Now, it’s time to get on with it, to merge with the traffic, give my students lots of homework so they’ll start complaining again, and take note of the important developments in the world around me: Astronauts are running amok. Berserking even. Anna Nicole is dead.

I’m back, though barely. My groin hurts.

Ice cream!

I support our president

Tonight, the President is going to surprise us all with his new plan for victory in Iraq. This major war policy address will probably run to twenty minutes or so, though with all the pre-released details, he could probably get by with announcing “What he said.” We’d all know pretty much what he meant.

I’m not sure I’ll watch the speech. I have to say watching George Bush speak has the same effect on me as listening to someone clip their fingernails. Granted, he’s made a lot of progress on the sneer. I’m sure he’s retained the best facial-expression coaches available. But still, his tone about drives me nuts, a mix of strained patience and condescending sermonizing that may have contributed to the twins’ decision to spend more time in Argentina.

Sending more troops to Iraq shouldn’t sound like cutting back my cell phone plan, but when the President speaks, my eyes do the involuntary roll thing that usually only a teenager can pull off.

More surprising to me than any details of the new plan is that I sort-of support the idea. I mean, isn’t this the plan we should have had in place before we invaded four years ago? Our goal, of course, is complete victory against the terrorists in Iraq, or at least a government that can sustain itself, defend itself, and, uh, amuse itself.

I’m not sure on that last point, but we all get the idea.

There are an easy dozen reasons why a troop surge won’t work and might make things worse, but I keep going back to Colin Powell’s pottery store doctrine: “You break it, you own it.” We broke it in Iraq. Pulling out will unquestionably make things worse. Staying the course won’t change anything. The only thing left to try is an escalation of troops, a new general with a Ph.D., and a few months of heavy pressure on the Iraqis themselves to knock it off with the bombs and bullets and electric drills long enough to at least get the electricity back up and running.

And this time we really mean it.

I give the whole thing a snowball’s chance in Baghdad, but I think we owe it to the Iraqis to make one last, great push to leave them with a little security. A mom should be able to send Ahmed to the grocery for some figs without all the time worrying about a call to get a box and come pick up her kid. This is fundamental.

How long? Six months. Benchmarks for success? A big drop in civilian casualties and a big drop in the number of insurgent-initiated attacks.

Everything else is bullshit, and bullshit walks.

Bipartisanship

Nancy Pelosi was sworn in today as the Democratic Speaker of the House, the first woman to hold that position. It’s a great day to be a Democrat. Let the hearings begin!

After the ceremony, Republican John Boehner (that’s pronounced “bayner,” not “boner”) called on the Democrats to embrace bipartisanship.

Now, I’m as bipartisan as the next guy, but it was Boehner who, a few weeks before the November election, said in a speech to the House, “I’m beginning to think Democrats care more about terrorists than they care about Americans.” I thought these comments made a good case for bringing caning back to House proceedings.

So my bipartisan reply to Mr. Boehner is, “Go to hell. Go directly to hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.”

This is far more polite than, say, Vice-President Cheney’s remark on the floor of the Senate to Patrick Leahy of Vermont when Cheney said “Go fuck yourself.”

But then we Democrats are more polite by disposition.

State of Denial

One advantage to a couple of good hernias is that they make you spend lots of time lounging around the house. For me, this means lots or reading and, lately, watching videos and even some TV.

One thing I finally did was read a book on the Bush administration. I hadn’t read any up to now because it seems like every week, some new catastrophe makes obsolete even the latest books in print. I routinely read the Oregonian, a reasonably good daily newspaper. I also read a lot of the Washington Post online. Most months, I enjoy a motorcycle trip over to Ashland and hit the bookstores for the magazines: favorites include The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Harpers.

I consider myself rather well-informed.

But with all the extra lounge time on my hands, I picked up Bob Woodward’s State of Denial, and I have to say I found it scandalous. I’m not easily shocked by much that happens around Washington, and especially not by the Bush administration, but there’s a lot of depth that just doesn’t get covered in newspapers or magazines.

The biggest insight gained from Woodward was the total lack of planning for Iraq after we won the war. Despite warnings from individuals and agencies before the invasion, the administration really did seem to believe we’d be welcomed as liberators. They had zero plans for what to do if we were not. Is it possible to imagine a more colossal mistake?

Donald Rumsfeld comes across as the biggest villain in Woodward’s book, though the two biggest mistakes—short of the invasion itself—go to Paul Bremer. Bremer was Rumsfield’s man, and he replaced Lieutenant General Jay Garner as the head of postwar operations in Iraq. While Garner was still in Iraq, and over his strong objections, Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army and purged all Baathists from government positions.

The result of the first error was that tens of thousands of officers and enlisted men who would have stayed in place and eventually taken over security operations were sent home mad as hell at the Americans, not to mention still heavily armed. They quickly became the heart of the Sunni insurgency.

The result of the second error was that government services such as water, sewer systems, and electricity collapsed. The Interior Ministry, which controlled all these vital services, lost all of its upper and mid-level functionaries, and there was no one to take their place.

Also interesting in the Woodward book is that Colin Powell actually had two doctrines: the first is the well-known doctrine of overwhelming force, which was not followed in our invasion. The second is what Powell called the “pottery store rule: 'You break it, you own it.'”

There’s no question that we own Iraq now. We sure would love to give it back, but we’ll still be making payments long after my little blog has fallen silent.

Even if you know a lot about how we got into Iraq and how we lost it, Woodward’s book is a compelling read.

"The Dark Side"

Along with reading, I’ve also been watching videos and television. Last night, Mary and I watched a rerun of a PBS Frontline program originally aired last June. Entitled “The Dark Side,” it’s a documentary made up of over forty interviews with high-level officials from the CIA, the State Department, and members of the Bush Administration. I can’t imagine a sixty-minute program which could be more riveting or more damning.

“The Dark Side” once and for all answers the question of whether the Bush administration cooked the intelligence on Saddam’s alleged WMD and ties to al-Qaeda or if it made an honest mistake. Rather surprisingly to me, the program paints Bush himself as being initially skeptical of any links. At one point, he asked “Is that all there is?” It was a good question, and the same one that Colin Powell asked before he went before the UN.

The villain is Dick Cheney. It’s clear in the film that Cheney leaned hard on the CIA to come up with support for the conclusions he’d already reached about Iraq. Worse, working with Rumsfeld, he effectively sidelined the CIA, which had got it right and “kicked ass” in Afghanistan, and brought intelligence gathering into the Defense Department and ultimately the White House itself. Even when the CIA warned him off of bad intelligence, he continued to make the rounds saying the case for WMD was a “slam dunk” and that Saddam had ties to terrorists. If we hesitated, even for a few months, he would hit the United States.

I reacted to these kinds of high-pressure tactics the same way I react to a car salesman who tells me I have to act today. I don’t believe a word of it.

It’s amazing to me that the release of these interviews hasn’t dominated the news, both print and television, for the last year. Again, I think ongoing news trumps even recent history, and image trumps text every time. When there’s lots of good footage of today’s suicide bomber, it’s hard to get air time for interviews that were given months ago.

The death and multiple funerals of Gerald Ford have taken the spotlight off Bush and the war for a few weeks, but for me they also bring back vivid memories of listening to the Watergate Hearings on the radio. Watergate was, as has often been said, a bungled third-rate burglary, but it brought down a president and sent a dozen of his top advisors to prison. I say let the hearings begin on Iraq.

You can order the DVD of “The Dark Side” or even stream the program live here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/

I think if you watch the first minute, you’ll watch it to the end. There are also further interviews and ongoing online discussions.

Five Things No One Knows About Me

My friend Broschat has tagged me to play along with a bloggers’ game of revealing five things nobody knows about me. This confirms my growing realization that Broschat has become a nerd. In high school, he was the coolest guy I knew, but years of working with computers have taken their toll.

I should get out of this blog business while I still can, but for now I’ll play along.

Since this exercise could lead to humiliation, I’m tempted to write witty but obviously untrue items: “Abandonded by my parents in childhood, I was raised by wild rabbits.”

The truth about my parents is that they were notoriously cheap and overprotective, and even into my early teens, they made me go with them to square dances. I lived in fear that someone would find out my parents were square dancers.

Notice the curly blond hair in my blog photo? My Aunt Katie nicknamed me Rossie Tossie Cottontail. I still kind of like the name.

I comment on Broscat’s blog that I was once nearly arrested in France for public urination. That’s true. I actually got roughed up by a gendarme. In France at the time, public urination was as common as spitting on the sidewalk, so I won’t say any more about why I was singled out for attention. I do know I was very drunk.

I like to think I am fast on a motorcycle.

I was a poor trumpet player in the high school dance band. However, I once sang a scat solo to “Jumpin’ with Symphony Sid” at a parents’ night concert. I was good enough that the band director had me take two extra choruses. At home, though, my parents said they didn’t understand what I was singing.

I’m the only guy I know who lost his virginity while—oh, wait!—that was five.

Free to Roam

I’ve been trying to keep a good attitude about my temporary disability, but the truth is I was getting cranky. I know it’s supposed to be comforting that I have it way better than some Sudanese farmer watching the Janjahweed ride into town, but this is my Winter Vacation and I’ve been pretty much confined to quarters. It hurts to walk and it hurts just to stand up for more than a few minutes.

As usual, the practical and emotional solution to the problem lies in getting some new wheels. Candy-apple red!

At last, I’m free again to go shopping and hang around in video arcades. Now all I need is some competition.

Also, I haven’t found the motor on this thing yet, but I know there has to be one.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

The poor little electric car never had a chance. GM made only one mistake. When the California Air Resources Board (CARB) told automakers in the mid-1990s that they had to make ten percent of their fleet “zero pollution at the tailpipe” by 2002, GM turned the project over to its Saturn Division, which actually thought its job was to build a great electric car. Before GM realized its mistake, Saturn had done just that and leased several hundred of them to drivers in Southern California.

Within a few years, hundreds of fully electric EV-ls were in use on the roads and freeways of SoCal. What’s amazing is not so much that GM recalled the cars from loyal owners and buried the project, but that they did such a good job of burying the story.

It took a few years in the late 1990s for the automakers and oil companies to stack CARB with their sycophants and get the new standards eliminated. Once they did, they began to call in the leases on the EV-ls. By 2004, GM had recalled all their electric cars and actually crushed them in wrecking yards. Today, there is only one known EV-1 in an auto museum, and it’s just a shell. The motor, batteries, and drive train have been removed.

The documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? tells the story through interviews with owners, engineers, Saturn executives, and former CARB board members, as well as lots of footage of the cars on the road. The film can be rather depressing, as these David and Goliath stories usually are (only in the Bible did David win), but it’s a fascinating study and it ends with two hopeful notes: one, hybrid electrics aren’t as good as a totally electric car, but the automakers are willing to produce them; and, two, with a Democratic majority in Congress, we might still see more on the electric car.

And if you thought you already hated the Bush administration, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

I highly recommend Who Killed the Electric Car, available through Netflix and your local video store.

The Care and Feeding of Your Hernia

I initially took the news of my hernia rather hard, (“Why me, God!? The horror!”) but I’m actually adjusting to the enforced confinement rather well.

True, I’m impatient to get the operation done and get back to my good old self, however good my old self might be. I was even going to call some local surgeons and see if I could get put on standby. Maybe they lose a patient on the table early in a procedure and they're all scrubbed already, it's a shame to waste all those gowns and latex gloves. What do they do for the next four hours, play canasta?

But probably I'll just lounge around like Cleopatra for another five or six weeks. Frankly, I don’t want to do anything that might rush or confuse folks up at the local hospital. They only recently stopped advertising “Now, with anesthetic!” And “cutting edge” is not a comforting hospital slogan.

Despite the enforced confinement, it cheers me up to make a list of things I can’t do and can do. Basically, I can’t do anything that involves lifting or being on my feet for more than about two minutes. This would include all the labors of Hercules, plus such lowly chores as

Help Mary unload and stack two tons of hay for Woody
Shovel snow
Wash the dishes
Vacuum and dust
Clean up dog poop

Things I can do include

Feed myself
Move from one chair to another
Watch DVDs
Play video games
Read
Write letters to the editor about what an idiot the president is
Start an ant farm
Go to bed

I can also watch television, which I’m finding has an occasional fun program. I get four or five stations with my rabbit ears. (I have free television; think about it!) I’m becoming a fan of Ellen Degeneris, who has an afternoon show. I think she’s funny, and I like the idea of a self-deprecating lesbian comic who doesn’t do attack comedy or gross potty-mouth humor.

All in all, this is a life some might call perfect. People a little over-stressed from work who can’t afford a month off in the Caribbean might opt for an elective hernia. I’m comfortable as long as I stay seated or reclining. Mary is always cheerful if I ask her to fluff my pillow or bring me a mint.

Not My Job Award

My Christmas Vacation

I don’t know what the rest of you dudes are getting for Christmas, but I got a hernia.

This was not one of the items on the list I text-messaged to Santa last June so he’d have time to get it right before the advent of the chaotic holiday season, now generally acknowledged to begin the day after Labor Day (renamed by the Bush administration National Right to Work in America Day).

Santa usually totally blows my Christmas list. I ask for a Power Commander titanium slip-on muffler for my VFR, a muffler which will deliver to this fine motorcycle a guaranteed 3.2 percent increase in torque and horsepower and which will allow me to finally blast my zero-to-sixty times below the insufferable three-second barrier known as “The Great Wall of Inertia.”

Santa brings me a wool scarf and says “Hey, an elf checked ‘muffler.’”

Or I ask for a Street Sweeper semi-automatic combat assault shotgun plus a few dozen bowling pins and some watermelons, and Santa delivers unto me a holiday CD, Enya Sings The Sacred Celtic Hymns of the Winter Solstice. It sounds to me like bats on Qualudes.

This year I thought I’d try to lowball Santa and only asked for a new snorkel and three weeks in Belize. Instead, right after classes got out, I was catching up on my laying on the couch when I started to feel some discomfort and pain in what is commonly referred to as the groin and general pubical area. My tolerance for pain is less even than my tolerance for Enya.

Over the next few days, the discomfort grew worse, accompanied by swelling. Of course, my first thought was I have cancer. Cancer runs in my family like some families get frequent lice. If I have a toothache, I assume I have tooth cancer. Pretty much the slightest ache or pain and I go to an emotional DEF-CON 3 and start planning for hospice care.

My second thought was a hernia, maybe a malignant hernia. I wasn’t sure what a hernia actually was, but I had the notion that if you slightly underfill a water balloon and then squeeze it, a hernia would look a lot like that. This seemed like a good description of my groin, so I self-diagnosed probably a hernia

I called Old Doc Novak and made an emergency appointment because my groin was about to explode, and after a record-low three hours in the waiting room I was rushed to the inner-office where another of the interchangeable cute nurses who I had as students only a few years ago went to work measuring my blood pressure and checking my weight. (Am I here because I’m fat!!??)

Novak came in after a few rounds of golf and gave me his usual cheery greeting. “Take off your pants.”

And so, after just a few minutes of groping my balls and sticking his fingers in my butt, Novak diagnosed a bilateral hernia and told me to make an appointment with a good surgeon. I don’t happen to know any good surgeons offhand, so he gave me a few names. As I was leaving, he offered a cheerful parting observation, “This will lay you up for a few weeks.”

“And a happy religiously and ethnically appropriate winter holiday to you and yours as well!” I wished him and his.

I thought, well at least I’m on winter break and I can just pop into one of these surgeons’ offices and get this thing tied off or lasered or whatever they do these days. I’ll use my break time to be laid up and let Mary wait on me. But when I start calling around for a surgeon with a little slack in his calendar, I find the earliest appointment I can get is mid-January.

“What is this, Canada?” I ask my short-list of Professional Office Administrative Assistants Tasked With Scheduling. “Not! This is America! I have insurance!”

But to no avail. I have to spend my winter break nursing a swollen and painful groin, then when I go back to work in January, I have to get practically major surgery and limp back into the classroom within days to lecture on faulty parallelism and other venal sins.

Or maybe I could show a movie, but I’m just an adjunct now. I don’t have sick leave, and if you miss even one day of class they fire you and give all your remaining courses to one of the many Middle-East immigrants on expired work visas who have an Associate’s in General Studies and who will lecture for food.

Life is so unfair, but at least I’ll be getting a handicapped parking sticker. They’re good for a year and you can cut off fat people driving old Buicks and get the parking place right by the Fred Meyer front door. And maybe my insurance will pay for one of those electric wheel chairs to use during my long convalescence.

I want one with a Power Commander.

Introduction to Poetry

I’ve only recently begun to read poetry, a strange confession for someone who graduated with honors in literature some thirty years ago. But then I haven’t read Moby Dick yet, either, nor Don Quixote, never mind the whole dizzy slew of postmodernists like Pynchon.

(I feel compelled to point out I’ve read plenty of difficult stuff and even partially understood some of it. But my list of things I haven’t read will always be longer than things I have.)

Reading poetry, I sometimes feel angry at the author.

“Why does it have to be so difficult? Why can’t you just say what you mean?” Some poems seem to mean something on a literal level which I can’t quite penetrate. Others seem intended to resist any kind of literal paraphrase.

I find, though, that I’m often drawn more to poems which are hard to understand. I can often say I like it, I just don’t know what it means. (My friend Broschat makes the same observation about films over on his Montlake blog.)

Here’s a poem I think I understand, but I like it anyway. It says something about how I try to read poetry.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

Or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Oregon’s Republican Senator Gordon Smith has made his strongest remarks yet about the war in Iraq: “I for one am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd.”

He used the word "criminal."

Smith said he’d like to see US troops withdrawn “quicker rather than later” and that he would not have voted for the war if he’d known the intelligence had not been accurate: “It was not accurate, but that is history.”

If Smith were a Democrat, people would be crying “cut and run” and calling him a “flip-flopper.” Since he’s a Republican, some are saying he’s just worried about his election in 2008. Granted, no United States Senator gives an opinion on so much as broccoli without thinking about the next election, but I think it takes courage to admit you were wrong and change your position.

I’m proud that all of Oregon’s Congressional Democrats—Senator Wyden and four Representatives—voted against the war. They were right from the start.

How To Save Iraq

The blue-ribbon Iraq Study Group has recommended a slow withdrawl of US troops from Iraq. Not a timed withdrawl exactly. More of a drawdown, but not a drawdown with any particular timetable. A phased redeployment maybe. Something time-released.

Even Donald Rumsfeld, it turns out, was thinking exactly the same thing just two days before he resigned as Secretary of Defense. He said pulling a few troops out would force the Iraqis to "pull up their socks."

I know this is good military strategy because I heard it first thing every morning in Army basic training (1967) when Drill Sergeant Johnson would turn on the lights and roar "Drop your cocks and pull up your socks!!" And by God we did, and just a few months later we were all in Vietnam, and everybody knows how that turned out.

Now, though, conservative pundits are pointing out correctly that if we leave Iraq, things will only get worse. Liberal pundits are correctly pointing out that we've been there going on four years and things have done nothing but get worse. You can see why the President needed a Blue Ribbon Study Group, but I have to say, I have some better ideas, and I didn't even get an expense account.

First, as others have been discussing on the Web, we could rehabilitate Saddam and bring him back.

Dust off the fedora. Give him back his gun.

He's just the kind of tough leader we need right now, and the fact that he's a criminal shouldn't stop us. After he was pardoned by President Ford, Richard Nixon was rehabilitated and was seen as a kind of elder statesmen. I think he even went to China a few times, and China is our friend now.

Still, lots of people would have a problem with that, which is why I did some more thinking and realized there's only one guy who can negotiate a settlement in Iraq.

Dr. Phil.

Dr. Phil is kind of a bully and he wouldn't have any problem telling the Shiite death squads they need to knock it off with the electric drills and all the time dumping bodies.

He would tell the Sunnis, "Saddam's gone! You're not it charge any more! Get over it! "

Like all good counselors, Dr. Phil speaks in exclamations.

These are just ideas, but Henry Kissinger has been hanging around the White House lately, and the last thing we need is to let him get involved. It took him years to get us out of Vietnam (Peace with Honor), and he already has a Nobel Peace Prize. Give somebody else a chance!

Celebrity Diplomats

When Captain Kangaroo died a few years back, millions of parents faced the tough decision of how to tell their kids. Most didn't want to say Captain Kangaroo was dead because kids that young don't understand death. Instead, many parents chose to say he had been "cancelled." Since then, a lot of kids have been hoping Captain Kangaroo would come back one day.

And now he has.

Turns out, the good Captain was hiding out as the US Ambassador to the United Nations under the assumed name of John Bolton.

Now he's resigned because of what President Bush called the "stubborn obstructionism" of the Senate, which refused to confirm him.

Others thought the Captain had some management issues. In an unprecedented public letter to the Senate, 64 former American ambassadors and diplomats wrote "On many occasions, [Captain Kangaroo's] hard core go-it-alone posture . . . alienated the bulk of the diplomatic community and cost the United States its leadership role with the U.N."

Oops.

The Captain, at least, can return to his role as the beloved host of his popular children's show. But who will the President nominate to be our next Ambassador?

Actually, I know a former kid's show host who's looking for work.

The Explodiness of the Whale

I'm proud to be an Oregonian. We may not read much Melville, but we know how to handle a beached whale. Moby Dick itself might have been a little more entertaining if Melville had thought to use dynamite.

Here's a link to an Oregon site which shares part of a Dave Barry column then takes you to a YouTube video of one of our prouder moments.

http://www.blueoregon.com/2006/11/oregons_explodi.html

Melville Revisited

In comments to an earlier entry, my friend Pat gently chides me (“Cretin! Philistine!”) for not fully appreciating the elegant prose of Melville. He’s right: I’ll have to take another look at Moby Dick. It’s on my reading list, which I’m now organizing based on how many more years I might reasonably expect to live and how essential it is that I finally read a certain book before I die.

But I might ask my friend Pat, “So, you say you’ve read Melville, but have you actually been there?! Non?!” Well, I have!

In 1999, I landed a job teaching summer school aboard the California Maritime Academy’s training ship The Golden Bear, a 500-foot former Navy sub chaser. More about that adventure another time, but one of our stops was Nuku Hiva, described below in an excerpt from the journal I kept at the time. I was reading Paul Theroux’s The Happy Isles of Oceania and comparing my impressions of these still mostly unspoiled Pacific islands to his. He called Nuku Hiva possibly the most beautiful island in the Pacific, and I couldn’t disagree with him.

In this excerpt, I’m taking a trip across the island on the only road—steep, muddy, and treacherous—with some CMA students and a native guide driving a Toyota pickup. I was reasonably sure we’d never get back to the Golden Bear alive:

****

We stopped a few times for pictures, then continued down a sharp canyon road into the village of Taipivai, the setting of Melville’s Typee. Although Melville only lived in the village a month, the experience led to his first and, during his lifetime, most popular novel. Theroux says it’s still the best account of village life in the Marquesas, excluding the few modern features like the bank and post office. I expect that statement is rather more inaccurate than less, but it does catch a little of the flavor of island life as I saw it.

We followed a road up out of the small village and stopped at the stone foundation of what was said to be Melville’s house, now overgrown by jungle. There was little to see or photograph, but I took a few pictures for the record. [This concludes my scholarly discourse on Melville.]

The road as it climbed the next steep ridge was even more harrowing than it had been, and the views at the top even more spectacular. We looked out over huge valleys of dense vegetation. At one time, when the islands had as many as 80,000 inhabitants, the bottoms of these valleys might have been inhabited, but now it seemed clear they had quickly been reclaimed by the jungle. It was as remote and dramatic a place as I’ve ever seen. Above the jungle valleys, the tops of mountains are in many places bare rock pinnacles. Theroux says “It is almost impossible to overstate the ruggedness of the islands—the almost unclimbable steepness of their heights or their empty valleys. At the head of every valley was a great gushing waterfall, some of them hundreds of feet high.” We stopped for pictures of one across the valley, a drop of what certainly seemed to be hundreds of feet over the bare rocks.

Then on to our next stop, the first of two archaeological sites. Our Marquesan guides, playful and personable guys, spoke reasonably good English and showed us around the ruins, stone foundations of what had been thatched huts for families and religious places. The site was being worked by one native and two French archaeologists, all of whom spoke English. They were mostly busy cutting back the jungle and had a large fire to burn the branches and vines they cut. From there they could then start to excavate and reconstruct the site. Much work had been done and the area we visited covered a few acres and had perhaps twenty separate structures uncovered.

According to Theroux and the guidebook I’m reading, all the Polynesian peoples practiced cannibalism, but none apparently with more relish than the Marquesans. (Oh, I am proud of that pun!) The best evidence was what we were told was a sacrificial altar site. At the center was a banyon tree, one of the most extraordinary living things I’ve ever seen: huge, but made up of what looked like not a single trunk but many separate trunks, each joining the total structure at the base or further up the tree. This structure, a giude explained, allows the tree to live in poor soil and also hold on in the hurricanes which might otherwise level trees of such size.

Next to the banyon was a stone slab where the victims were killed. We were told that their heads were put among the roots of the banyon. Most striking, though, was the “bone pit,” perhaps thirty feet deep, lined with stone, where the feasters tossed the bones of their dinner victims. Perhaps this was to fertilized the tree or somehow further consecrate the site.

Oddly, it didn’t feel too eerie or horrific to be here, perhaps partly because the students were clamoring around being their usual goofball selves, partly maybe because the anthropologists were there to provide some scientific distance. In a sense, being there and talking to the Marquesan guides and scientists somehow reduced the sense of dread I’d had in the past when reading about such horrible things and places. Not that getting eaten by your enemies would be a fun way to go out, but these had been a fierce people, with each valley populated by a clan that would fight for its territory and food supply, which was more seasonal and uncertain here than in other tropical islands.

*****

Cannibals figure large in both Typee and The Happy Isles. Theroux’s theory is that Pacific Islanders love Spam because it tastes most like boiled human flesh. I’m not sure of the basis for this theory.

Typee was indeed Melville’s most popular book because it contained not only adventures among cannibals but highly suggestive intimations of free love among the beautiful young women of the islands.

I’m a little sorry we did make it back.

Speaking of Starbucks

I don’t spend that much on lattes, but when Starbucks went up to $3 for a grande, I kept track for a week or so, and it adds up. It seems a good part of what I’ve been saving on diesel fuel has gone into specialty coffee drinks. Another reason I’m not rich.

So I decided I’d buy my own espresso maker, one that would steam milk so I could froth up a good head of foam, which I like. The cheapest one I could find locally was $50, but it wasn’t hard to find a high-end steam engine for over a grand. In the end, I decided to stick with the occasional store-bought.

Then, a few weeks ago when I was shopping, I was in the coffee section and noticed the Melita one-cup coffee maker. I had an idea, so I bought one for two bucks, along with some paper filters and espresso beans.

Back home, I heater water in a kettle and ground enough beans to make a very strong shot. Meanwhile, I started heating milk on a hot stove, stirring gently with a wire whisk so it wouldn’t scald. When the water got hot, I poured a shot-full through the cone and into my Starbucks Tokyo mug, which I bought in Tokyo in 1998 when I was teaching English there for a semester.

While the shot was seeping through, I picked up the pace with the whisk. In a surprisingly short time, I had a nice head of foam. I poured the hot milk into the coffee and spooned a little peak of foam on top. It looked like the real thing. I let it cool a minute and took a sip. Delicioso!

I find that one- or two-percent milk works best for my tastes. Nonfat isn’t quite as sweet. Also, I can make a good mocha by just adding a shot of espresso to a cup of hot chocolate, then spurtzing whipped cream on top.

Yum.

Now I’m saving as much on coffee drinks as I am on commuting costs, with only a tiny investment up front.

Still, I’m not rich and will have to look again at the budget.

Mr. Starbuck!

Somewhere in my profile I joke that I never finished Moby Dick. Has anybody? Why?

Over on defective yeti, which is a funny blog, our poor blogger has set himself the task of somehow reading the whole book and reporting as he goes: Here's his report at the 1/4 mark:

Page reached: 140 of 522 (26.82%)
Status Report: Oh, man. Chapter 32. This is probably a strong contender for the title of Most Skimmed Chapter In Classic American Literature. I would have skipped it myself if I hadn't resolved to read this book in its entirety.
Thirteen pages long -- about three times the length of the average chapter -- "Cetology" has the narrator giving an impromptu lecture on the nature of the whale, grouping the beasts into fourteen categories and offering lengthy descriptions of each. Here, Melville uses a literary technique known as OMG BORING! In some other context I might have found this engrossing, but here it's like, "Dude, you got your marine biology lecture in my adventure story!"
I wonder how many people have quit reading Moby-Dick at "Cetology". I bet this chapter is a veritable Goodwin Sands, with a thousand shipwrecked readers littering its shore.
I could have been one of them, as Moby-Dick is perilously close to violating my One-Third Reading Policy, which states that I shall abandon any book that I am not enjoying when I am a third of the way through it. Unfortunately I am determined to finish this thing, so quitting on page 174 isn't an option. But Cetology has sapped my of all momentum. Chapter 32 is a disabled vehicle in the center lane of this book's narrative.

You can follow the fun at http://www.defectiveyeti.com/

Spring Lake

About a month ago, Mary wanted to take the scooter for a ride on a beautiful fall afternoon. I followed along on my motorcycle.

I thought I’d ridden pretty much every road within at least a hundred miles in my many years of motorcycling around Oregon, but Mary led the way on a few country roads that were new to me, and in less than ten miles from town, we were at Spring Lake, which I’d never seen before. It’s a beautiful small, natural lake surrounded by farmland and rolling hills, and the fall colors were spectacular.

The north end of the lake is natural, with wetlands, reed beds and lots of waterfowl, including herons and egrets, as well as a variety of hawks. (In the winter, the basin is also home of the largest concentration of bald eagles in the lower 48, but the eagles haven’t arrived yet this year.)

The south end of the lake was a particular surprise, with a tidy but very modest trailer park with single- and double-wide trailers and a few spots for RV overnighters. The park had a beautiful lawn with a small dock and tables and chairs. Although it’s private property, we stopped for awhile and enjoyed watching geese and a trio of pelicans sitting on a floating log.

I was struck by this scene in part because the surrounding farmland is starting to be bought up by land-rich retirees, mostly Californians, who are building luxury mansions often costing over a million dollars. This lakeside property has to be worth a fortune, but a lucky few regular folks get to live there for now. I didn’t ask what a monthly rent might run, but I have a feeling it’s still an inexpensive little secret.

I was struck also because the longer I live here, the more beautiful I think it is. Spring Lake is just another delicate, picturesque little spot that’s been there all along, only a few minutes from home.

I’ve posted a few shots to my site at Flikr, and you can view them by clicking on the Ross’s Photos link in the right-hand column.

Life the hound Eqivocal

Mary and I were sort-of attacked by pit bulls over the weekend, and let me first assure friends and family that we made it out alive and with all of our fingers and toes.

Watch: QWERTY

See?

Right hand: POIUY

We decided to spend the three-day Veterans Day weekend at the Lava Beds National Monument, which is only about an hour south of town and which has several virtues.

First it’s only about an hour south of town.

Also, it is a historic battlefield and you can visit the sites of various battles between Modoc Indians and United States Cavalry in what was the last Indian war in North America. (Basically, the Indians won all the battles but things didn’t turn out so good for them anyway. The rest is history.)

Finally, there are lots of caves.

The best thing about the lava beds is that it’s almost entirely deserted in winter and has a nice primitive campground, so when there’s a lot of snow in the passes, Mary and I can pull our trailer down there with a reasonable chance of making it back home when we have to. Since I’m not a big fan of battlefields, caves, or even lava, for that matter, the best part for me is building a big fire, because it’s very cold in the winter, and listening to coyotes while I look up at the stars at night.

In my drinking days, I would drink a lot and howl at the moon. Now I just howl at the moon. It’s amazing how much fun you can still have sober.

Except, anyway, this time as we drove down to the campground we couldn’t help but notice that every campsite was occupied by multiple vehicles, numerous tents, and dozens of kids, most of them of the teenage persuasion. We drove around awhile and weren’t sure we were going to be able to find a place to even stay, so we finally asked one group what was up. They told us that there were one or two sites still open and that they were Pathfinders.

Pathfinders?

Like Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, but for Seventh-Day Adventists.

Sweet Holy Jesus (!), (literally), I’m thinking they’ve got back issues of Awake! or The Watchtower in all those utility trailers they’re towing and Mary and I are the only heathens within fifty miles. I’m feeling a lot of solidarity with the Indians, but we decided to set up the trailer in a rather nice remaining spot and whatever happens, we don’t answer the door.

It turns out that Seventh-Day Adventist teenagers are unimaginably well-behaved, enough so that it was starting to creep us out a little. Mary teaches junior high and I’ve substituted eighth grade, and we know something’s not right with these kids. But still, the weekend is quiet considering our few hundred neighbors. I shivered beside my campfire, and our dogs had some nice walks. No coyotes, but the dogs prefer it that way after a close encounter in the Grand Tetons last summer.

Sunday morning as we were packing up, a young woman of twenty-something, not quite looking like an Adventist somehow, walked by with two pit bulls. Nice dogs, she assured us, and they were, if a little oafish. Still, these are scary looking dogs even if they’re licking your hand at the moment. Brindle, they were, which is pit bull for camo. She said she got them at the pound and one was part lab and one was part Shar Pei because it had wrinkles. And I’m thinking “Right, and I’m part white mouse because I have blond hair going to gray.” These were pit bulls, but she never uttered the “PB” words. Our dogs were safely tied to the picnic table and not acting like idiots for a change, a pretty good sign they know who not to mess with. They didn’t mess with the coyote in Grande Tetons, either.

We had a nice morning packing up, and then we decided to take the dogs for a last walk around the campground before we left. All the Adventists were packing up and leaving, too, and the next part reminds me of a poem I read recently.

The Hound
By Robert Francis (1901-1987)

Life the hound
Equivocal
Comes at a bound
Either to rend me
Or to befriend me.

I cannot tell
The hound’s intent
Till he has sprung
At my bare hand
With teeth or tongue.
Meanwhile I stand
And wait the event.

Since Mr. Francis lived to be 86, I assume life was more or less friendly to him. (I’ve noticed that most poets seem to live to an old age. I think I might take up writing poetry.)

In our case, Life the hound turned out to be the pit bulls and I was fairly clear on their intent. They were going to kill us or kill our dogs, maybe both. Mary saw them first and yelled a commanding—NO!!—which they ignored and came on fast. Their heads were down, hair up, and they were growling. This wasn't a social call to see if we'd like to read a few Bible tracts.

Each of us had one of our little dogs, Bandit and Nick, on a leash. The pit bulls separated and one went for Mary behind me and the other for Bandit, and I, I had my trusty walking stick which I pretty much don’t leave home without any more because this kind of thing isn’t all that rare. My stick, actually an aluminum pole, has a big wooden ball on one end and a sharp spike on the other. I’ve done this before, and as the pit bull closed in I gave it a good Old Testament smite on the head and it stopped him in his tracks. I could see he was looking at some stars of his own. He was still eyeing Bandit and growling, though, so I smote him again, and he backed off.

Meanwhile, Mary just behind me had picked up Nick and turned her back to protect him, and some saintly Adventist guy had intervened and somehow got a hold of the second pit bull’s collar. Thank you, Jesus.

The whole thing lasted a few seconds and was accompanied by a lot of shouting on our part and barking by all the various dogs, and then it was over and there were dozens of Adventist kids looking at us with their mouths open and you could tell everybody was really scared, us included. I just said “Let’s go” to Mary, and we walked away, me with the spike end of my stick covering our retreat.

So that was it. Life the hound equivocal, and I’m reminded sometimes that it can swat you dead, in a heartbeat, like a bug, and there’s really not a lot you can do about it. My walking stick wouldn’t deter even one really determined pit bull unless I actually ran it through with the spear end, and I doubt I could ever do that in time because you never know if it’s an actual charge or just a regular dog thing that will end with everybody sniffing butts.

It all got me wondering what I’d do in a more serious attack, so I checked out some martial arts web pages when I got home. One said to wrap a shirt around your arm, then when the dog bites the shirt, fall on it and pin it with your chest, then gouge its eyes out with your thumb. Be sure to get them both because a pit bull will keep coming if it has a good eye left.

Good idea! These martial arts guys, they’re such kidders! I don’t recall having a lot of time to wrap a shirt around my arm.

Or, I have a gun, but that would risk hitting an Adventist kid, and there’s no better way to ruin a nice campout than by shooting someone else’s dog. My gun is totally false security, but I’ve long realized that false security is the only security. (We’re currently in a very nasty war prosecuted on that premise, but the administration is loath to explain it that way.) I like my gun because I sleep better when I have it with me out in the woods, but I wouldn’t want to ever actually shoot something with it.

So it’s best to laugh about the whole thing and remember what that pit bull looked liked when I conked him on the head and just hope that next time there will be another nice Adventist man to pull off the second dog.

But really, two pit bulls, they’re probably going to win if it gets serious.

Track Day

I was hoping to get in a track day this fall but didn't make it, partly because of money, partly because I got too busy with school.

Still, I try to keep up my technique.

Motorcycle School

The earliest motorcycle was a coal-powered, two-cylinder, steam-driven motorcycle that was developed in 1867 by the American inventor Sylvester Howard Roper. It is recorded that when he looked upon his work he was well-pleased and said, “I shall call it Harley-Davidson.” The bike remains largely unchanged since then.

A gas-powered motorcycle was invented by the German inventor Gottlieb Daimler in 1885. His mostly wooden motorcycle had iron-banded wheels with wooden spokes. This bone-crunching vehicle was powered by a single-cylinder engine. Some fifteen minutes after his first test ride, his son asked, “Hey Dad, can I have the bike tonight?” Daimler is said to have replied, “Gott in Himmell! Not vhile you are livink in my house!”

So the kid snuck the keys and went for a ride anyway, crashing into the garage door when he returned home and bending the iron-banded front wheel. Shortly after, he started running with a bad crowd and listening to hip-hop. He also got a tattoo that said, "Ride hard, Die frei."

And so was born the motorcycle and the ambivalent attitude among enthusiasts anytime a loved one indicates a desire to learn to ride. Such was the case for me after we bought the Vino and Mary said she wanted to get her endorsement so she could ride the scooter to school and around town. I could hardly say no since this had been the essence of my sales pitch in the first place. I was even thinking ahead to when she would want her own motorcycle and I would help her pick out an appropriate first bike, say a Ducati Monster or a Triumph Speed Triple.

One thing at a time, though, and two weeks ago, Mary completed with flying colors the demanding Beginning Rider course offered by Team Oregon, a program co-sponsored by the DMV, Oregon State University, and The Gypsy Jokers, who have moved to Klamath Falls and are trying to become more active in community service.

For three full days, she sat through demanding classroom lectures and quizzes (“Never pass a snow plow on the right. In fact, never ride your motorcycle in the winter. In fact, never ride your motorcycle during a month that has an R in it.”)

When they weren’t in the classroom, they performed demanding maneuvers in the parking lot involving dump trucks pulling in front of you, deer leaping out from cover when you’re riding a forest road at a buck-twenty, and minivans drifting into your lane while the driver talks on her cell phone, applies makeup in the mirror, and slaps at the kid in back who is screaming because his sister won’t stop looking at him.

Mary’s experience on horses served her well, and she completed all the maneuvers successfully. She was particularly good at looking through the turns rather than fixing on obstacles such as potholes the size of a suckling pig or the lifelike baby dolls instructors would sometimes thrown a few feet in front of unsuspecting riders. “Baby in the road!!”


Monday after work, Mary went to DMV and got her motorcycle endorsement, which costs seventy dollars but they knock off ten bucks if you sign a organ donor card. On Tuesday, she rode the Vino to work unaccompanied, and I know how great it feels to arrive in full regalia: helmet, gloves, and a worn leather jacket to die for. Nothing is more gratifying than the admiration of children: “Hey, Ross,” as a neighbor boy called out when I recently rode into my driveway on my VFR. “You’re a cool old man!” (This is true.)

And, of course, Mary received lots of admiring comments about the Vino from colleagues: “It’s so cute!”

Things turned a little sour when she got home and tried to turn around in our narrow street to get a good straight run up our driveway and into the garage. Despite my calls to “Look up! Look up! Agghhh!” she fixed on the opposite curb and did a Laugh In style tip-over that wounded only her pride and left a few rough scratches on the beautiful cabernet finish of the Vino. (Maybe it’s more of a burgundy. Definitely not a claret. )

“It happens to everybody. Don’t be a wuss,” I said, trying to cheer her up in guy fashion. She coached me in how not to be a male idiot. “Say, ‘You must feel terrible about your accident.’” So I said that and she felt better but was still pretty deflated by the whole thing.

With the beautiful fall weather, though, we anticipate lots of opportunities for training outings together, her on the Vino and me riding behind on the VFR, trying not to fry the clutch as she grows comfortable at higher speeds such as seventeen miles per hour.

Meanwhile, we still rarely use the car or truck. One of us grabs the electric bicycle in the morning and the other uses the Vino, and a big gas week for all vehicles combined might be ten bucks.

With gas prices dropping rapidly in recent weeks, I’ve been thinking about picking up a Hummer for running errands, but I’ll probably hold off until after the election when I expect major oil companies to discover they forgot to carry the six in their estimates of strategic oil reserves, causing prices to soar once again.