Mister Fashion Person

If I’m a little quiet in the face of these extraordinary circumstances, it’s because of my innate humility (ahem. . . .), and my observation that everything that can and should be said is being said. There is no end of analysis, celebration, and, from the lunatic right, gnashing of teeth.

But let me raise the one question I haven’t seen raised publicly: What was with the dress!?

Yo, Michelle! Me and my psychiatrist, Sharon, agree. You are a magnificently attractive woman with what seemed to be an unerring sense of style, and you wear this dress as your husband claims victory in the most important election of my lifetime?

Where is Mr. Blackwell when we need him?

A few thoughts as I wait for the fun to begin

I just watched the documentary film Why We Fight. This may not have been the best choice to pass a few hours before election returns start coming in. I have the DVD because it’s one of many I bought over the summer before I had surgery so I’d have a stockpile of materials to entertain and engage. I didn’t get to this one until today.

I can only say I highly recommend it, even if, like me, you’re inclined to think “I already mostly know all that stuff and why get myself depressed by dwelling on it?” Sometimes the right book or film forces us to know something in a way that’s far more profound than the way in which we knew it before.

I have three major hopes for an Obama administration if we’re lucky enough to have one when I go to bed tonight: one is that we’ll begin to turn away from our militaristic, imperial behavior which seeks to project American power abroad under the guise of spreading democracy to the rest of the world. Although this is now known as the Bush Doctrine, as the film makes clear the general idea goes back at least to the 1950s and led President Eisenhower to coin the phrase and warn against the military-industrial complex in his farewell speech to the nation.

Two is that Obama will reject the idea of the Unitary Presidency, the bedrock of the Bush administration and the brainchild of Dick Cheney. Most people don’t even know that under Bush, the whole concept of checks and balances was abandoned in favor of a president with nearly unlimited powers to set foreign and domestic policy, and the Bush Administration was largely successful in achieving that goal. Certainly one of the greatest tests of character is to willingly give up power, and it remains to be seen whether it will even be a goal for Barack. It hardly rose to the surface as a campaign issue.

And three is that we develop a system of universal, affordable health care, with access to health care considered as a basic right of citizenship, not as a commodity to be bought and sold. Most of the rest of the world is there, and it’s long past time that we catch up.

I think all of these hopes are realistic even in a time of financial crisis and the various foreign policy crises which will erupt as soon as the next president takes the oath of office.

So these are a few thoughts as I wait for polls to start closing on the East Coast and early returns to start coming in. For all I know, at least one of the networks has already projected a winner, but I’ll wait a few more hours before I start watching the coverage.

The news from here

With only tonight left before election day, I feel a little lucky that Mary and I spent part of our evening at a City Council meeting at which we were an agenda item. It took my mind off things and reminded me that whoever is elected tomorrow, a lot of what determines my quality of life happens below the level of national and international affairs.

This all stems from a long-standing dispute with a very difficult neighbor—let’s call him “Walter”—who has objected to some improvements we’ve made in the right-of-way which separates our properties. For over a year now, he’s placed complaints against us on the city council agenda, only to withdraw them at the last minute. Although it’s been stressful overall, I admit I’ve enjoyed outmaneuvering him at each juncture, despite his retaining an attorney.

If things go as we expect, “Walter” now gets to expand a driveway, which won’t solve the problems he’s said he has with driving up to his house, particularly in winter, and we have his written promise to drop his complaints, actually an appeal of a decision by the city manager which went our way. This initially made “Walter” so mad he was over at our house making threats against me, and I had to call the police to tell him to stay away. Since then he occasionally throws something at our house. Once, he rolled an old tire filled with mud and water down onto our patio.

If you’ve seen the film, There Will Be Blood, that’s “Walter.” He’s kind of pathetic, but I’ve always believed he’s dangerous.

Since much of this was public record, the local paper picked up the story on Sunday and ran a somewhat distorted overview. I declined to comment, in the same way I generally decline to swat at hornets which don’t seem intent on stinging me at the moment. Today, I watched a succession of cars drive by and even up his driveway to look things over. Some people might be surprised that the paper would carry such a non-story, but I remember several years ago when they ran the headline, “Big Storm Misses Basin!”

Tonight a big storm might actually hit the basin, as winter weather is arriving. We’re home from the council meeting, and I’m planning to watch the Saturday Night Live pre-election special in a little while. SNL, as everyone my age is quick to point out, isn’t a very good program anymore, but Tina Fey has done a lot to get me through some of my anticipatory despair with her locked-on imitation of Sarah Palin.

And then, the election tomorrow, and about this time tomorrow evening, I’ll be settling in to watch returns and probably stay up much of the night, as I have in past years. Last- minute analyses still give Obama the edge but with a lot of commentators seeing ways that McCain could win. I don’t think anybody knows anything at this late stage. I can see a squeaker for McCain or a landslide for Obama, or anything in between. In any case, it will keep me occupied and entertained for several days.

I don’t envy our next president, whoever it turns out to be. Me, I’ve got “Walter” off my back, at least for now, and my snow shovel set out.

What if Barack loses?

Overconfidence among some of my friends is scaring the pee out of me. My friend Marty was sure Barack was going to win by a landslide months ago. Now Michael blogs that the election has been over for about a month, and since he lives in D.C., he's excited about the inauguration. Me, I'm thinking about leaving the country if McPalin wins, which I put at even money

I've been working on my Spanish and looking at tropical little socialist-heavens-on-earth, but going north is also a possibility. And I'm not the only one.

http://www.slatev.com/player.html?id=1842856410

Adios, eh?

Don't know much about . . . . : Continued

Like most people, including most economists, I don’t know much about economics, and therefore I don’t understand at all why we’re facing an economic crisis right now, as opposed to a year ago or a year from now. Something about over-leveraged subprime derivatives, which goes a long way towards explaining why I'm not rich. That’s why I read with interest an article in today’s Washington Post which seems to suggest that whatever it was that went wrong, it was Alan Greenspan’s fault.

For a long time, I’ve thought of Greenspan as the J. Edgar Hoover of finance, although Greenspan only held his post at the Federal Reserve for nineteen years, as compared to Hoover’s 48 years at the FBI. Also, to my knowledge, Greenspan is not a cross dresser.

The Post documents that despite appearances to the contrary, a lot of people have seen the potential for our economic meltdown for a very long time, including some congressional testimony dating back as far as the early nineties. Greenspan, a self-avowed libertarian, always had faith in the corrective power of the capitalist marketplace, in part arguing that integrity was itself a commodity which promotes stability. But now he seems to have leveraged his opinion: “The problem is not that the contracts failed. Rather, the people using them got greedy.” A lack of integrity spawned the crisis, he argued in a speech a week ago at Georgetown University, intimating that those peddling derivatives were not as reliable as “the pharmacist who fills the prescription ordered by our physician.” So there’s nothing wrong with unregulated markets, only with greedy capitalists.

Apparently if Greenspan were a zookeeper, he would offer the lions a balanced diet, confident that they would choose to eat healthy, including lots of fruits and vegetables and not too much red meat. Pharmacists,apparently, are natural vegetarians, so they can serve as a kind of economic control group.

The full Post article, very worth reading, is available here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/business/economy/09greenspan.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1223568417-x4WVFeRo10fLkP1ibrviig

In the meantime, I was pleased to learn yesterday that AIG, which holds all of Mary’s gone-yesterday, here-today, who-knows-tomorrow retirement savings, is so confident in its corporate future that they just held a four-hundred-thousand dollar, week-long retreat for top executives. This got those bad executives a stern lecture from Congress, which seems to think just because it bailed AIG out to the tune of $70 billion, it can tell them they should settle for take-out until further notice.

I'll have the leveraged pot stickers with a subprime pedicure on the side.

The end of an era

As usual this morning, I was sitting at the computer having my third cup of coffee and waiting for the paper to arrive, lately sometime after 9:00 a.m. When it didn’t come, I remembered I had cancelled my subscription a few weeks ago, effective today, October 1st. Thus ends about forty years of uninterrupted daily delivery of a morning paper and a change in the habit of nearly a lifetime. I’m a little surprised it isn’t more painful

I love newspapers. I follow current events like some guys follow sports, with a passion and great attention to detail. I got my first subscription in 1969 when I shipped out (flew out, actually) to Vietnam and my thoughtful mother bought me a subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle. She knew I love to read the paper every morning, and receiving the Chron by mail about a week late kept me feeling connected to home. There was life going on back there and I knew I was going to get back to it sooner or later.

For the last twenty-seven years or so it’s been The Oregonian, which I consider to be a very good daily paper. It used to be delivered about 5 a.m., and I could wake up, have coffee and read most of the paper before leaving for work. Then it started coming about 7;30, so when I was still working I had to read it after I got home in the afternoon. Not as good.

Now, though, it comes sometime after nine, and the distributor explained to me that it had to do with changing routes to use gas more efficiently. By 9, I’ve already read most of the Washington Post and New York Times online and had too much coffee to even think about pouring another cup. At most, I’d scan the front section and read a couple of editorials.

And then they raised the subscription price from $30 a month to $40 a month. I just couldn’t justify the expense anymore.

There are a lot of reasons at least a few daily papers should stay in business, and a lot of reasons they probably won’t. Give them maybe twenty years. Fifty at the outside. So I guess it is a little painful to step back while they’re still available. I’ll probably still buy the Sunday paper in the newsstands and have breakfast or coffee in a café. Most days, though, I’ll get all my news and opinion online. With email updates from the Times and Post.

I’ll miss the funnies, though.

Huh?

After the vote in the House, I heard this guy on TV:

"During the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution," said Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) on the floor, "the slogan was 'Peace, land, and bread.' Today, you are being asked to choose between bread and freedom."

Huh?

The Bonfire of the Vanities

If there’s any joy in watching the Wall Street Meltdown, it’s the sweet taste of Schadenfreude as at least some of today’s executives and traders watch their fortunes and fame bleed out like an ice cube melting on the floor of the stock exchange. The whole thing has put me in mind of the Tom Wolfe novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, which I read shortly after it was released in the mid-80s. I’ve thought of digging around to see if I still have it. It would probably be a good read again and a reminder that the age of greed didn’t start with the invention of the sub-prime mortgage.

But yesterday I stopped by Blockbuster to pick up something entertaining for the evening, and back in the drama section, there was the DVD version of the film from 1990. I hadn’t seen it before, but with Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, Bruce Willis, and Morgan Freeman, I couldn’t pass it up. Kim Kattrall plays a younger version of her Sex and the City character, and Alan King, an actor/comedian I’ve never particularly liked, turns in the best comic performance of the film in a brief scene.

Directed by Brian DePalma, the plot summary reads like a headline you’d love to see tomorrow morning: “Sherman McCoy was Wall Street’s Master of the Universe—and everything in his life was right. Then one night he took a wrong turn at the wrong place with the wrong woman. And nothing has gone right since.”

I was a little put off at first because the characters seemed drawn as overly large clichés, and it was hard to feel much of the tension I remember from reading it as McCoy watches his life unravel after accidentally running over a black kid in the Bronx. As the film went on, though, I realized it was intended as a comedy, and whether Wolfe had that in mind or not, the general plot line lends itself to humor and became a wonderful comedy once I realized it was okay to laugh.

In the film, Hanks as McCoy has the last laugh, which may or may not be how the book ends or the message it was trying to convey. I’ll still try to dig that up or find it at a used book store, but I’m glad I found the film. Very funny and worth it.

Chapter 11: In which Mary and me is saved from ruination

We had a good meeting with a financial advisor yesterday. Mike Nichols is his name, and I recommend him to local folks who are looking to make big money in the market. He works for Edward Jones, who I don’t think is an actual person.

To my surprise, he didn’t try to sell us anything. He didn’t tell us our savings were in peril or we needed to start making eleven percent interest in high-yield stocks or we would regret it in our dotage. Actually, he told us we were safe right where we were. Well, as safe as anybody can be these days.

In fact, we had a nice visit and he answered several questions we had and explained some things we didn’t know we didn’t know. He spent about an hour with us, which I thought was impressive since he wasn’t selling anything, but he said it had been a rough week, and I think he enjoyed talking to a couple who weren’t facing financial collapse just yet.

So we seem still to be on track to Mary’s retirement at the end of this school year, partly because of one good decision and mostly because of dumb luck. The good decision was to move all of our savings into simple interest-bearing accounts. Zero market risk. We make about three percent no matter what. In good years, we can make about 4.5 percent. We did this several years ago because we’re chicken investors, which this time proved to be smart.

But mostly dumb luck. My heart goes out to all those people who are being hammered by Wall Street greed and the empty promises of deregulation. Since most of my friends are of about the same age, a lot of them have to be facing the same concerns we have. I hope all of them turn out to be as lucky.

Me, I just want to have fun. . . .

It’s hard to know what to make of our country’s ongoing financial crisis. I believe the federal government should have one overarching priority: to protect Mary and me from any loss and ensure our modest retirement exactly as we’ve planned it. Everything else comes second.

It seemed we had mostly achieved that last week when Treasury Secretary Paulson announced that we, the American taxpaying public, were buying out AIG so it wouldn’t collapse and destroy all life on earth as we know it. Since our modest little retirement savings are in AIG, we heartily approved of this transaction. The stock market was up.

Then, the stock market was down again, and it turned out we taxpayers have to buy out pretty much all of the market’s bad investments or face the Great Depression II. I was still on board with this plan because it might add the extra margin of stability I need to be sure our savings are safe.

By Monday, however, it was clear that there was little support for this idea on “Main Street,” since people rightly want to know why they should be held accountable for losses on Wall Street, brought on by the brokers and executives themselves and their Wall Street culture of greed, which has pretty much been the Republican economic policy since Ronald Reagan. The tab is now up to $700 billion—that’s “billion” with a B—or roughly the cost of another war in Iraq, which, as we all know, turned out badly despite our massive and ongoing infusion of capital.

A review of a few of today’s papers makes clear how complicated this whole mess is. One the one hand, I read stories of people like me—retired or soon to be retired—whose savings disappeared in collapsed institutions and nervous markets. The papers state quite flatly that even if the market recovers over time, these folks will never recover with it. Tough beans. Let them eat cake.

Additionally, Congressional Democrats raise important questions about just handing over that kind of money to Paulson, himself a Wall Street insider, without conditions and oversight. And economists of both the left and right seem to question the wisdom of any large-scale bailout at all. Something about throwing good money after bad.

Still, it looks like most of the important players are mostly on board with some version of Uncle Sam playing the part of The Lone Ranger. Whether or not the town stays fixed after the Lone Ranger rides off remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Mary and I meet later today with a “financial advisor,” who himself might be teetering on the brink of disaster, to ask if it’s safe to move our money to a different kind of account, maybe a credit union that has federal insurance and pays two or three percent interest. We’re looking to move in for the big kill. Or is it better to leave it in AIG, which may be one of the safer places to be right now? Do we risk the dreaded “penalty for early withdrawal” if we just transfer money from one institution to another? Not at all clear.

Personally, I already don’t trust anything this advisor might tell us. At risk is our lifetime personal savings of thousands of dollars—that’s “thousands” with a T—and our hopes for Mary joining me in early retirement. We’ve been lucky so far, but as for everybody, our only real security remains false security, and all might be lost in the next morning’s headlines.

True security

It seems that rumors of our financial ruin were premature. After saying it was done bailing out badly run giant corporations, the feds decided that, well, just this one more time: “Fearing a global financial crisis” (that would have included me; therefore, I gave a shit), they are bailing out AIG by means of an $80 billion loan. (It’s no longer necessary to point out that “that’s billion, with a B,” since anything in the mere millions wouldn’t even make the sports page anymore.) In return for the $80 billion, (that’s billion, with a B), the feds are taking eighty percent of AIG’s shares and a controlling interest in the corporation. Sounds like AIG is being given a time out and put on a plan of improvement.

You can tell the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. finally decided to step in and protect the little guy. According to the New York Times, “What frightened Fed and Treasury officials was not simply the prospect of another giant corporate bankruptcy, but A.I.G.’s role as an enormous provider of esoteric financial insurance contracts to investors who bought complex debt securities.” That’s me, okay.

But wait! I found something else: “Small investors, including anyone who owned money market funds with A.I.G. securities, could have been hurt, too.” I think that’s actually me right there.

So in the span of twenty-four hours, we learned that that bad old cancer is gone and I’m probably going to live long enough to get on a motorcycle again—which will probably be the death of me since life loves a good irony—and then that we’re financially ruined—excuse me if I over-dramatize a little here, but still—and then we’re not ruined after all. I’m feeling a little post-traumatic right now.

All of this should lead me to see life in a whole new way: to appreciate the little things, to stop and smell the flowers, to appreciate the little things. But mostly I’m waiting until Friday when I get the catheter taken out so I don’t have to walk around carrying a bucket anymore.

Maybe it hasn’t all sunk in yet, but I realize once again that there is no true security in life, only false security. Given that, I want all the false security I can get.

Good news, bad news

The good news is that my pathology reports came back with negative margins and whatever else they look for in prostate cancer. My urologist, who called about 9:30 last night, said, "We got it all." This actually wasn't particularly a relief for me since I expected to hear exactly that. My concern has been about incontinence and impotence. I'm optimistic about those, as well, but I think it will be awhile before we have a very clear picture.

But still, is my cup half full? It is very half full. Mary especially was relieved.

With all this life and death stuff, you'd think the rest of life would put itself on hold for awhile, but of course it doesn't. In reading and listening to the news yesterday, I was knocked down hard by reports that AIG is one of the struggling financial giants making headlines. Mary and I have all of our non-PERS savings in VALIC, which is owned by AIG.

The picture is not at all clear, but if AIG goes under, which it may well, we might lose everything we've put aside for retirement for over twenty years. In fact, VALIC has been dropped from the company name, and it's now just AIG Retirement. Not a good sign. Our agent hasn’t returned our phone calls, so we can’t yet try to pull our money out and deposit it somewhere else, if that’s even allowed in a tax sheltered annuity. Also not a good sign.

The upshot if this goes bad is that Mary's hopes to retire at the end of the year will disappear, and it might mean I'll have to begin a serious job search. Chances are good she'll have to work an additional seven to ten years. It's hard to say what work I could find locally, especially since I can't work for any PERS-covered agency. At the least, I could continue as an adjunct at the local community college, though that only brings in about $5 thousand a year after taxes. Still, $5 thousand is $5 thousand.

So we're still in the position of believing we're in better shape than most American families. There are certainly a lot of people who would feel no sympathy for a couple of teachers who end up not being able to retire early. You call that hardship?

But it's a bitter pill to watch all our savings disappear overnight with no warning. We've long said that if we're ever in real trouble, the whole country will be in real trouble with us. Guess what?! Alan Greenspan says this is a “hundred year event,” and Alan has never been known for hyperbole.

Maybe, we hope, AIG will survive. Reports at this time are far from encouraging.

But hey, cancer free!

Final report

Okay: done; home; comfortable; upbeat.

No further reports to come unless there are new, unexpected developments. Everyone has been wonderful. Medical technology is amazing. Life is good.

We're going in!

Everything is a go for surgery tomorrow. Mary and I met with my urologist yesterday, and like all surgeons, he was able to put us at ease and develop a warm, personal relationship in our brief time together. For example, he told us my heart is fine and there was no problem going ahead with the operation. He could have told us this a week ago after my repeated calls to his medical assistant (what in hell is a medical assistant, anyway?), but he chose to tell us in a warm, personal way when we finally met him in his examination room. I always appreciate this kind of warm, personal treatment from surgeons.

Mary and I had a three-page list of questions, and as Mary read them, one by one, he briefly set aside some paper work he was doing to respond with admirably warm but concise answers. After a minute or two of this, he took the questions and answered them one by one in his warm, reassuring manner:

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Depends.”

“Depends.”

“Depends.”

“Everyone’s different.”

“Depends.”

He made a little check mark next to each question so we’d remember later that he’d answered it.

What I look for in a surgeon, though, is someone who can cut and stitch with absolute precision, and this guy has a good reputation. His personal warmth is just a side benefit, and a surprise one at that in someone whom I would describe as a “Type Triple-A Personality.” Since he knew what we were going to say anyway, he never made us actually finish a sentence.

So, I’m going in tomorrow about noon and hope to be out the next day. I’m anxious to get on with it. I’ve stocked up on some audio books, which might be easier than actually reading if I’m a little goofy for a few days. I got Anna Karenina in case recovery goes a little slower than I expect. I tried to get Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward, but they were out of stock.

I should be walking right after surgery, walking around the neighborhood in a few days, and mostly back to my old self in a few weeks. Maybe a few months. No motorcycles for a month, he said, which is a bummer, but does leave a little riding time at the end of fall. Incontinence and impotence, well, I’m optimistic, but everyone’s different, and it depends. (I’m not stocking up on Depends yet.)

And cancer free, I fully expect.

Get your PSA tests, guys.

The candidate accepts

So, how did John McCain do in his acceptance speech? I’d heard that he is not a particularly good public speaker. After watching him last night, I’d have to say that overstates his skills. As a college professor who taught public speaking for over twenty years, I give him a C minus, this allowing for the fact that he didn’t even write it himself. Only Obama writes his own speeches in this election.

For the most part, I enjoy teaching speech, but it can be painful when a particularly bad speaker takes the floor. Unlike reading a student essay, I can’t hold my head with both hands and let out audible groans. But minutes turn to, uh, longer minutes, and last night McCain spoke for forty-five painful minutes. I held my head and moaned. I confess I flipped over to The Simpsons a few times.

The crowd cheered at all the appropriate moments, which was pretty much after every line, but the cheers seemed mostly desultory. When the cameras panned the audience for Obama, many of the delegates were openly weeping. During McCain’s speech, many were yawning. I am not making this up.

McCain is said to be very good in a town hall format, and good public speaking probably isn’t a leading factor in election success. In a close election, though, nobody can afford to be bad at anything.

And please: enough with the prisoner of war thing. It’s a compelling narrative, as they say, but it shouldn’t be the focal point of every speech by and about John McCain. Nor did it help when he talked about hearing that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. The only Pearl younger voters relate to might be Jam.

But mostly lackluster delivery trumped content.

Yawn.

I am Joe's prostate update

I'm doing mostly fine emotionally and scheduled for surgery next Wednesday. Things are still up in the air, though, because I'm "equivocal for distal anterior cerebral artery aneurisms." Sounds scary as hell, don’t it? but my family doctor tells me my heart health is probably good and I'm fit for surgery (probably). I’m “equivocal” because I have a “branch bundle blockage,” which is “not a nerve but it’s like a nerve” in my heart which is causing an irregular heartbeat. A BBB is not itself a problem but can mask other conditions. It’s up to me, the doc says, and since I happen to be a heart surgeon in my spare time, I feel well qualified to make a decision.

Or maybe it’s a bundle branch blockage. . . . Beach blanket bingo. . . . Bleach banquet bunko. Anyway, it’s not a nerve.

I'm waiting to hear back from the surgeon if he's willing to go ahead. I have a pre-op appointment Monday and may not know more until then. Urologists don't seem great about returning calls. My friend John has had the same problem.

I feel really bad for John. We're calling and emailing a lot since we're kind of doing this on the buddy system. John didn't get good news after surgery, and although his prognosis is still good, he has more therapy, side effects, and uncertainty ahead. The emotional effects for him and his family are tough, but he’s a tough guy. Hang in, John!

Me, I’m a weenie.

I’ve found the best way to handle this is to spend a lot of money on myself. I bought some flashy new leathers to assure myself of my virility in case I have erectile issues after surgery. Actually, every guy has erectile issues after surgery, but there are many therapies available to help Willie stand tall again, some of which sound damn fun. You wouldn’t believe what some guys will do to get a boner. I’m looking for a good source for powdered rhinoceros horn.

Then I bought a new helmet, which I actually did need. Then I bought a new watch since ten years on a $40 Timex is enough self-denial. I can’t think of anything else to buy right now, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

The support of friends and the kindness of strangers, especially cute nurses, has meant everything to me. If you’re wondering what you can do to help, send me presents. Send Mary some presents, too. Talk about cute nurses.

Sarah on the stump

Give Sarah Palin her due, she delivered a terrific speech to the Republican convention last night. It was do or die for Sarah. With all the questions about her meager experience and minimal qualifications, she had to be much better than just adequate; she had to electrify. Clearly she did that in front of an audience that wanted badly to love her. And with all my negative bias going in, I was surprised to find her smart, witty, and utterly likeable.

I told Mary I thought she was charming. Mary’s response was less favorable, especially after I said she was charming.

Even given that her speech was almost certainly written by other people, she still delivered her punch lines with mastery: "Here's how I look at the choice Americans face in this election. In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change." In only one line did she come across as snarky about Obama: “What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet?"

We’ll see how the polls play out, and especially the only poll that really matters, which is the election in November. But in her performance last night she succeeded in fully winning the hearts of the Republican conservative base and probably won over some undecided voters who are easily swayed by mere likeability.

For those who actually look for substance, she’ll still face the issues of her fitness to step into the presidency any day after January 20th. In addition to all the experience questions, she’ll have a hard time defending her record as a reformer who will cut government spending. As mayor of Wasalia, she hired Washington lobbyists and secured over $20 million in earmarks for her town of fewer than 7,000 people. When she says that as governor, she just said no to the bridge to nowhere, she doesn’t add that she still kept the money and spent it on other Alaskan highway projects.

But Sarah made clear last night that she’ll be a formidable campaigner. Unlike Dan Quayle, who always seemed to have a deer-in-the-headlights look about him, Palin was composed, confident, and, well, charming.

She’s cute. She hunts moose. It’s rumored she rides a motorcycle. Can she turn back the waters?

More ringing endorsements for Sarah Palin

This from yesterday’s column by Richard Cohen:
“One of the great sights of American political life -- a YouTube moment if ever there was one -- was to see the doughboy face of Newt Gingrich as he extolled the virtues of Sarah Palin, a sitcom of a vice presidential choice and a disaster movie if she moves up to the presidency: ‘She's the first journalist ever to be nominated, I think, for the president or vice president, and she was a sportscaster on local television," Gingrich said on the Today Show. "So she has a lot of interesting background. And she has a lot of experience. Remember that, when people worry about how inexperienced she is, for two years she's been in charge of the Alaska National Guard.’"
And in an interview with PBS’s Gwen Ifel last night, I watched two Republican congresswomen defend Palin’s foreign policy experience. One pointed out that only the Aleutian Islands separate Russia from Alaska, and the other added that Alaska also borders Canada.
You can’t make this shit up.

The Republican Follies

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about the Republican Follies—er, convention—this week. First, John McCain announces his pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate. As many have pointed out, she seems to have absolutely no credentials whatsoever to serve as Vice-President or, heaven forbid, President, if McCain should die in his first term, something seventy-two-year old cancer patients can up and do on you without a lot of notice.

This speaks not only to McCain’s bad judgment but to the apparent paucity of qualified Republics who can pass the doctrine tests. If he really wanted to select a woman, and it’s clear why he would, are there no Republican congresswomen with more experience and a long enough record that we might make a reasonable assessment of their skills and abilities? No governors with more than two years experience? How about Condi Rice, was she ever considered? A black woman would seem to trump the Democratic ticket on every count.

Maybe a female director of a federal agency? It’s enough to make you wish Dan Quayle would put on a skirt—make that a pants suit—and start preparing to debate Joe Biden.

And then, thank you Jesus, the Lord has delivered unto us a hurricane verily more mighty than Katrina, a perfect excuse to cancel the first two days of the convention and send Cheney and Bush back to their bunkers. McCain needs to do everything he can to distance himself from the Bush administration, even as he runs on a platform that seems like a backup file for the past eight years. Nothing like an act of God to keep W and The Evil One off the stage.

He may reject the notion that his election would amount to a third term for W, but it’s hard to see anything in his campaign talking points that would differentiate the two. It’s the perfect question for a debate moderator to put to him: Where and how do you differ from W? Be specific. Give examples. Try not to mangle your syntax.

And still, it promises to be a close election. I’m leaning towards crying.

The new Democratic Party

I watched most of the major speeches from the Democratic convention this week, and like many others, I was often moved to tears by their eloquent rhetoric and fighting spirit. Hillary Clinton was forceful and gracious in her endorsement of Barack Obama. Bill Clinton gave an even more compelling and stirring speech. And to my surprise, John Kerry gave the best speech of the night and of his career on Wednesday: rousing, inspiring, and tough.

For too long, Democrats have been on the defensive, and for me it’s thrilling to hear our leaders speak movingly and without apology about our core values. Although the bar seemed impossibly high for Barack in his acceptance speech last night, he spoke with grace and power. I was moved not only by his words, but by the fact that in my lifetime I was watching an African American candidate accept the nomination of my party to be president of the United States.

Republicans and especially right-wing talk radio hosts have worked determinedly to demonize the word “liberal” for decades. No convention speaker used the word “liberal,” or even its euphemism “progressive” at the convention, but every speaker was clear on our message of compassion, activism, and the proper role of government in facing the challenges of the new American century. I was especially moved by the fierce patriotism of the speakers, a patriotism that goes beyond flag waving and bellicose pronouncements of our military superiority. As Kerry said, “Other countries are inspired more by the power of our example than by the examples of our power.”

It’s going to be a tough election, but I’m cautiously elated at the prospect of a Democratic President working with a newly energized Democratic Congress. Putting our principles to work in a complex world will be an enormous challenge, but at this moment for me, the sun shines brightly on the American Experiment.

History has already been made.

Ivory at the Ragland

Last night, the Ross Ragland Theater (now a lovely performing arts theater) kicked off its new Monday Night at the Movies series in grand fashion. Director James Ivory, a graduate of Klamath Falls Union High School many years ago, introduced his film A Room With A View and took questions for forty-five minutes after the screening.

Eat your heat out New York City. K-Falls is making a determined run at becoming the new American cultural capital. And the series is free. (Five dollar donation requested. I dropped in a twenty because I’m such a big spender.)

It was a fine evening. About six hundred people showed up to see the film and hear Ivory talk about growing up in Klamath Falls and coming to the Ragland to watch movies when it was an Art Deco-styled movie theater during the war.

After the showing of A Room, he answered a range of questions about directing, casting, his artistic vision, and growing up in Klamath Falls. Listening to him talk gave special meaning to the film we had just seen. And of all the questions, only one was truly stupid. Actually, three questions were truly stupid, but they were from the same woman. A touching moment, to be expected, came when the current drama teacher at KU said she has her students read A Room With a View and then watch the film. Ivory was featured in a recent KU yearbook, which she presented to him. Several of the questions were obviously from her students, most of them a variation on “how do I get started in the movies.” And his patient answers were always a variation on “watch a lot of movies, go to a good film school, work hard.”

A Room with a View is based on an E. M. Forester story, and I hadn’t seen it before. It’s a lovely film set in Italy and England, a light comedy of manners. Sadly, the sound quality was not great at the screening and I missed at least half the dialogue, but now I’ll just rent it to hear what I missed. (I usually have trouble with British dialogue anyway.) He also said his favorite personal film is Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, which I also haven’t seen, so I’ll have to start there in my plan to view all of his films.

Ivory is eighty years old but looks and acts much younger.

The series continues, not every Monday night, with planned screenings of The Hunt for Red October, The Philadelphia Story, and On Paper Wings. Various screenwriters and filmmakers are scheduled to introduce and take questions.

I look forward to more.

With a little help from my friends

Mary and I saw Joe Cocker at the Britt Festival last night, and I’ve got to say, the old guy has his chops. He’s lost most of the spastic intensity of his physical performance and just a little off his range, but I still love his covers of mostly Beatles songs, along with Randy Newman’s deliciously racy “You Can Leave Your Hat On.”

But his signature song is “With a Little Help From My Friends,” and it brought a few tears to my ears, in part because of the few troubles I’m facing in my own life right now. In part because I'm a sappy sentimentalist.

For a somewhat doctored and very humorous clip of his legendary Woodstock performance of that song in 1969, check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4_MsrsKzMM I almost went to Woodstock, but that's a story for another time.

It was a perfect evening for an outdoor concert, with mild temperatures and wild geese circling in to land in the ponds around the amphitheater. And thousands of aging baby boomer rock and roll fans like Mary and me still getting up to dance now and then to the anthems of those years that seem both far away and still very near.

Steve Miller Band also played, also very good though they were never a band I particularly followed. We drove back to our trailer that we'd camped on the Rogue River and had broiled steaks and microwaved mashed potatoes at midnight, a perfect evening.

The good cancer

Generally speaking, prostate cancer don’t get no respect. Going into my biopsy, I was reasonably sure I had it because of family history and four elevated PSA scores. I wasn’t much concerned, though, because as everybody knows, prostate cancer is slow growing and rarely fatal unless you catch it very late. I already knew what my treatment option was going to be: watchful waiting, meaning I’d test again in a year and see if it was going anywhere. If not, more watchful waiting.

I was half right. I have prostate cancer. Over the last few months, though, I’ve learned more than I imagined possible about the dizzying array of treatment options. In the end, the patient has to make the tough choice of which one is right for him, and for me, watchful waiting is not an option.

If you’re diagnosed at, say, age seventy, chances are good that your cancer is slow growing and you’ll probably outlive it. Plenty of men choose to treat it aggressively anyway, but an equal number choose to watch and wait. It would be my choice at that age.

At sixty, though, which is my age, your cancer by definition is more aggressive, and now the choice is between surgery, radiation, implanting radioactive seeds, or a host of less common treatments. There’s still time to look at all the options carefully and make a choice that’s best for you, but it’s not something you want to put off for a year and see how it’s going. In a year, it could be too late. My friend John was just diagnosed at age 45, and for him it’s important to begin treatment immediately. His outlook is also favorable but there’s not the luxury of going on vacation for a few months and then getting serious about treatment options when you get back.

This has been a hard decision, but I finally settled on surgery, radical prostatectomy, which is considered the “gold standard” treatment if the cancer is still organ confined. Still, it’s not an easy choice. If they don’t get all the cancer, follow-up treatments include radiation, chemotherapy, and/or hormone therapy, also cheerfully referred to as “chemical castration.” Or then again, there’s actual castration.

Even if you have a good outcome on the surgery, the complications can be life changing: mild or serious incontinence (which I frequently mispronounce as “incompetence”) and mild or serious impotence. Everyone experiences some degree of these conditions, but in most cases men regain at least near-normal function within about a year. Some men never do.

I’m optimistic. I’ve chosen a surgeon in Medford, who has much more experience than our local guy here in Klamath Falls but is still close enough that I can be out of the hospital and back home in a few hours. If there are complications, and there usually are to some degree, I can be back in his office equally quickly.

I’m scheduled for September 10th.

Generally, my emotional state is very good, though I sometimes get either depressed or angry about the whole thing. In the end, though, I expect to have all of this behind me a year or so from now. In the meantime, I’m trying to keep a good attitude and stocking up on good books and films (with an emphasis on comedies).

Again, I urge all my men friends to get regular PSA tests. Since I’ve learned I have prostate cancer, it’s amazing how many men I know who have the same thing, most of them my age or younger.

Once more to Laguna

My plans for getting down to Laguna Seca this year were the same as they have been for the prior three years since MotoGP has returned to US soil. I like to get an early start, like five days early, take my time riding my motorcycle down the coast and the back roads of Northern California, and stay with friends in Santa Cruz the Wednesday before the race. Thursday, I move on to a campground to meet up with my friend Keith, who trailers his CBR 1000 from Eugene in a one-day crunch down I-5.

But as race week approached, my plans were looking increasingly doubtful. Over 2,000 fires were reported burning in NorCal, and the state map posted on the Cal Fires website looked like a minefield. My first stop this year was going to be in Redding to stay with friends I hadn’t seen in a few years, and from the map it looked like Redding itself was in flames. My usual trip down highway 96, the Klamath River Highway was complicated by a major fire near Happy Camp. Going west from Redding looked like the worst option available, with major fires in and around Whiskeytown and Weaverville.

Fortunately, I’d decided not to camp this year at Big Sur for the races because Big Sur was fighting off the biggest fire in the state, and all the campgrounds there, and everything else for that matter, have been evacuated. Checking the weather reports for various towns along the way, I found heavy smoke warnings for every location I looked at. It seemed destined to be an uncomfortable trip at best.

Things looked so bad I actually thought about waiting until Thursday and going the I-5 route. The smoke along the interstate was reported to be as bad as everyplace else, but at least I’d be in it for fewer days. Going the back roads and camping along the way was looking like a ride into Dante’s Inferno.

In the end, though, I decided to stick more or less to the original plan. If things got bad enough, I figured I’d find a motel to hide in and hope conditions would be better the next day. In fact, it turns out I had the best trip down and back of anybody I talked to, purely out of dumb luck and one good choice. Redding, though smoky, wasn’t much worse than a moderate smog alert in LA or San Jose, two cities I grew up in. I was in my twenties before I could personally confirm that the sky was actually blue.

After staying in Redding, I rode the thirty miles down to Red Bluff and cut over for the coast on Highway 36 and was lucky the whole trip. I rode through one extensive burn area, but by the time I got there the fire was out, with only a few spots where I still noticed some smoldering undergrowth. The worst of it was having to ride with special care because of all the fire crews, trucks and equipment on the road.

I had the same good luck in Santa Cruz. My friends there reported that smoke conditions had run from bad to worse for several weeks, but the day I arrived we had a nice breeze off the ocean. As usual, the ride across the Golden Gate Bridge was exhilarating, and the coast highway from San Francisco to Santa Cruz was sunny and brisk.

But once I got to the track at Laguna Seca, all thoughts of smoke and fires evaporated in the excitement of the races and the pageantry of thousands of race fans, most of them riding sport bikes ranging from the commonplace to the exotic. Crowds were down a little, which is never a bad thing, and the weather was perfect.

And the racing was some of the best I’ve ever enjoyed. Although all of us were there primarily for the MotoGP, I had a hunch the best races of the weekend might be the Red Bull Rookies cup, two races featuring the most promising young road racers, ages thirteen to sixteen, from North and South America. I wasn’t disappointed. These twenty-four riders, at such tender young ages, all have years of racing experience already behind them.

Riding KTM two-stroke 125s, identical even down to the paint scheme, the races are pure tests of rider skill and maturity, and the best riders quickly move to the front of the pack where they fight it out with perhaps less finesse than older riders but a wild determination that makes the races thrilling. In race one on Saturday, thirteen-year-old Benny Solis of California and sixteen-year-old Argentinean Leandro Mercado traded the lead frequently around the demanding Laguna Seca track and were never more that a bike length or two apart.

On the last lap, Solis dove under Mercado in the last turn and they came out dead even in an elbow-throwing rush to the finish line, with Solis winning by 1.0001 second. That’s one ten-thousandth, if I’m not mistaken. Lots of people, including the track announcer, were saying it was the most exciting race they had ever seen, and I had to agree.

Sunday’s Rookies Cup was almost as good, with the addition of Hayden Gillem in a tight three-way race for the win. In the end, though, it was Solis first across the line again. Watch for this kid to be riding in the big leagues in a few more years. For more on the Rookies Cup, visit the official website at http://us.redbullrookiescup.com/index.php.

After all that excitement, the GP race might have even been an anti-climax, especially with Casey Stoner absolutely dominating practice and qualifying. It looked all but certain that if he got the race lead, he’d ride away from the pack, and the only real interest to the race would be in who else would make the podium. And Stoner did get the jump and lead going over turn one, but by turn two, Valentino Rossi made a bold pass on the brakes and the race was on.

Stoner had the slight advantage in bike speed but Rossi kept the pressure on, with frequent lead changes until Stoner finally made a mistake in turn eleven and went into the sand. Even after dropping his bike, he still got back on the track in second place, but by then Rossi had a commanding lead and the race was virtually over. American Nicky Hayden could only pull out a respectable fifth place, but Rossi, ever popular no matter where he races, got a huge ovation from the crowd. Good racing makes heroes of everyone.

After all the fun at Laguna, I decided to make a quick trip home with a blast up I-5 and made it to the door for dinner Monday afternoon, tired but happy once again.

As long as MotoGP comes to the West Coast every summer, I hope to be able to make it down. For me, Laguna Seca remains the premier motorcycle event of the year in the United States.

Healing and the mind

Here’s an article that was posted in an online forum on prostate cancer. Following is my reply that I posted online:

The Median Isn't the Message by Stephen Jay Gould

“My life has recently intersected, in a most personal way, two of Mark Twain's famous quips. One I shall defer to the end of this essay. The other (sometimes attributed to Disraeli), identifies three species of mendacity, each worse than the one before - lies, damned lies, and statistics. “Consider the standard example of stretching the truth with numbers - a case quite relevant to my story. Statistics recognizes different measures of an "average," or central tendency. The mean is our usual concept of an overall average - add up the items and divide them by the number of sharers (100 candy bars collected for five kids next Halloween will yield 20 for each in a just world). The median, a different measure of central tendency, is the half-way point. If I line up five kids by height, the median child is shorter than two and taller than the other two (who might have trouble getting their mean share of the candy). A politician in power might say with pride, "The mean income of our citizens is $15,000 per year." The leader of the opposition might retort, "But half our citizens make less than $10,000 per year." Both are right, but neither cites a statistic with impassive objectivity. The first invokes a mean, the second a median. (Means are higher than medians in such cases because one millionaire may outweigh hundreds of poor people in setting a mean; but he can balance only one mendicant in calculating a median). “The larger issue that creates a common distrust or contempt for statistics is more troubling. Many people make an unfortunate and invalid separation between heart and mind, or feeling and intellect. In some contemporary traditions, abetted by attitudes stereotypically centered on Southern California, feelings are exalted as more "real" and the only proper basis for action - if it feels good, do it - while intellect gets short shrift as a hang-up of outmoded elitism. Statistics, in this absurd dichotomy, often become the symbol of the enemy. As Hilaire Belloc wrote, "Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death." “This is a personal story of statistics, properly interpreted, as profoundly nurturant and life- giving. It declares holy war on the downgrading of intellect by telling a small story about the utility of dry, academic knowledge about science. Heart and head are focal points of one body, one personality. “In July 1982, I learned that I was suffering from abdominal mesothelioma, a rare and serious cancer usually associated with exposure to asbestos. When I revived after surgery, I asked my first question of my doctor and chemotherapist: "What is the best technical literature about mesothelioma?" She replied, with a touch of diplomacy (the only departure she has ever made from direct frankness), that the medical literature contained nothing really worth reading.“Of course, trying to keep an intellectual away from literature works about as well as recommending chastity to Homo sapiens, the sexiest primate of all. As soon as I could walk, I made a beeline for Harvard's Countway medical library and punched mesothelioma into the computer's bibliographic search program. An hour later, surrounded by the latest literature on abdominal mesothelioma, I realized with a gulp why my doctor had offered that humane advice. The literature couldn't have been more brutally clear: mesothelioma is incurable, with a median mortality of only eight months after discovery. I sat stunned for about fifteen minutes, then smiled and said to myself: so that's why they didn't give me anything to read. Then my mind started to work again, thank goodness. “If a little learning could ever be a dangerous thing, I had encountered a classic example. Attitude clearly matters in fighting cancer. We don't know why (from my old-style materialistic perspective, I suspect that mental states feed back upon the immune system). But match people with the same cancer for age, class, health, socioeconomic status, and, in general, those with positive attitudes, with a strong will and purpose for living, with commitment to struggle, with an active response to aiding their own treatment and not just a passive acceptance of anything doctors say, tend to live longer. A few months later I asked Sir Peter Medawar, my personal scientific guru and a Nobelist in immunology, what the best prescription for success against cancer might be. "A sanguine personality," he replied. Fortunately (since one can't reconstruct oneself at short notice and for a definite purpose), I am, if anything, even-tempered and confident in just this manner. “Hence the dilemma for humane doctors: since attitude matters so critically, should such a sombre conclusion be advertised, especially since few people have sufficient understanding of statistics to evaluate what the statements really mean? From years of experience with the small-scale evolution of Bahamian land snails treated quantitatively, I have developed this technical knowledge - and I am convinced that it played a major role in saving my life. Knowledge is indeed power, in Bacon's proverb. “The problem may be briefly stated: What does "median mortality of eight months" signify in our vernacular? I suspect that most people, without training in statistics, would read such a statement as "I will probably be dead in eight months" - the very conclusion that must be avoided, since it isn't so, and since attitude matters so much. “I was not, of course, overjoyed, but I didn't read the statement in this vernacular way either. My technical training enjoined a different perspective on "eight months median mortality." The point is a subtle one, but profound - for it embodies the distinctive way of thinking in my own field of evolutionary biology and natural history. “We still carry the historical baggage of a Platonic heritage that seeks sharp essences and definite boundaries. (Thus we hope to find an unambiguous "beginning of life" or "definition of death," although nature often comes to us as irreducible continua.) This Platonic heritage, with its emphasis in clear distinctions and separated immutable entities, leads us to view statistical measures of central tendency wrongly, indeed opposite to the appropriate interpretation in our actual world of variation, shadings, and continua. In short, we view means and medians as the hard "realities," and the variation that permits their calculation as a set of transient and imperfect measurements of this hidden essence. If the median is the reality and variation around the median just a device for its calculation, the "I will probably be dead in eight months" may pass as a reasonable interpretation. “But all evolutionary biologists know that variation itself is nature's only irreducible essence. Variation is the hard reality, not a set of imperfect measures for a central tendency. Means and medians are the abstractions. Therefore, I looked at the mesothelioma statistics quite differently - and not only because I am an optimist who tends to see the doughnut instead of the hole, but primarily because I know that variation itself is the reality. I had to place myself amidst the variation. “When I learned about the eight-month median, my first intellectual reaction was: fine, half the people will live longer; now what are my chances of being in that half. I read for a furious and nervous hour and concluded, with relief: darned good. I possessed every one of the characteristics conferring a probability of longer life: I was young; my disease had been recognized in a relatively early stage; I would receive the nation's best medical treatment; I had the world to live for; I knew how to read the data properly and not despair. “Another technical point then added even more solace. I immediately recognized that the distribution of variation about the eight-month median would almost surely be what statisticians call "right skewed." (In a symmetrical distribution, the profile of variation to the left of the central tendency is a mirror image of variation to the right. In skewed distributions, variation to one side of the central tendency is more stretched out - left skewed if extended to the left, right skewed if stretched out to the right.) The distribution of variation had to be right skewed, I reasoned. After all, the left of the distribution contains an irrevocable lower boundary of zero (since mesothelioma can only be identified at death or before). Thus, there isn't much room for the distribution's lower (or left) half - it must be scrunched up between zero and eight months. But the upper (or right) half can extend out for years and years, even if nobody ultimately survives. The distribution must be right skewed, and I needed to know how long the extended tail ran - for I had already concluded that my favorable profile made me a good candidate for that part of the curve. “The distribution was indeed, strongly right skewed, with a long tail (however small) that extended for several years above the eight month median. I saw no reason why I shouldn't be in that small tail, and I breathed a very long sigh of relief. My technical knowledge had helped. I had read the graph correctly. I had asked the right question and found the answers. I had obtained, in all probability, the most precious of all possible gifts in the circumstances - substantial time. I didn't have to stop and immediately follow Isaiah's injunction to Hezekiah - set thine house in order for thou shalt die, and not live. I would have time to think, to plan, and to fight. “One final point about statistical distributions. They apply only to a prescribed set of circumstances - in this case to survival with mesothelioma under conventional modes of treatment. If circumstances change, the distribution may alter. I was placed on an experimental protocol of treatment and, if fortune holds, will be in the first cohort of a new distribution with high median and a right tail extending to death by natural causes at advanced old age.“It has become, in my view, a bit too trendy to regard the acceptance of death as something tantamount to intrinsic dignity. Of course I agree with the preacher of Ecclesiastes that there is a time to love and a time to die - and when my skein runs out I hope to face the end calmly and in my own way. For most situations, however, I prefer the more martial view that death is the ultimate enemy - and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light. “The swords of battle are numerous, and none more effective than humor. My death was announced at a meeting of my colleagues in Scotland, and I almost experienced the delicious pleasure of reading my obituary penned by one of my best friends (the so-and-so got suspicious and checked; he too is a statistician, and didn't expect to find me so far out on the right tail). Still, the incident provided my first good laugh after the diagnosis. Just think, I almost got to repeat Mark Twain's most famous line of all: the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

And here’s my reply:

Thanks so much, Dutchy, for posting this piece by one of my favorite writers. Here's a summary of his article that might be easier to understand:
"In July of 1982, Gould was diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma, a highly deadly form of cancer affecting the abdominal lining and frequently found in people who have been exposed to asbestos. After a difficult two-year recovery, Gould published a column for Discover magazine, titled "The Median Isn't the Message," which discusses his reaction to discovering that mesothelioma patients had a median lifespan of only eight months after diagnosis.[6] He then describes the true significance behind this number, and his relief upon realizing that statistical averages are just useful abstractions, and do not encompass the full range of variation. The median is the halfway point, which means that 50% of patients will die before 8 months, but the other half will live longer, potentially much longer. He then needed to find out where his personal characteristics placed him within this range. Considering the cancer was caught early, the fact he was young, optimistic, and had the best treatments available, Gould figured that he should be in the favorable half of the upper statistical range. After an experimental treatment of radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery, Gould made a full recovery, and his column became a source of comfort for many cancer patients."
Gould in fact lived twenty years, not eight months, before his cancer took him. He became something of a mix between a rock star and a guru at Harvard because of his status as one of the great scientists of our time and his exuberance for life. He believed it was his positive attitude that kept him alive so long, and also allowed him to die with acceptance and a love of life right up to the last minute.
Three books have become very helpful to me as I face my own much more encouraging diagnosis: Surviving Prostate Cancer is already well-known here for its easy to understand explanations of this complicated disease. At the heart of Dr. Walsh's message is one of great optimism.
Bill Moyer's Healing and the Mind documents the great successes many physicians are finding in treating a variety of illnesses with a combination of traditional medicine with nontradional methods such as diet, exercise, and meditation (although "non-traditional might not be the best term since these practices have been with us for thousands of years!). And Jon Kabat-Zinn's Full Catastrope Living is a handbook for "using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness." Kabat-Zinn is a doctor at the Harvard Medical School and for many years has run classes that help patients live longer and live better, even in the face of the worst possible medical conditions.
Over the last few years, I've been moving steadily to turn around some of the bad habits that were destroying my health and quality of life. I've quit drinking and smoking, to name the two most important ones. Now that I'm facing cancer, I'm using these three books not just to help me get better physically but to grow emotionally and spiritually as well.
A fuller biography of Gould can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould

Trial by fire

Every year in July, I ride my motorcycle down to Monterey for the MotoGP races at Laguna Seca. These are the best riders on the fastest bikes in the world. The races themselves are deliriously exciting, and it’s a huge festival atmosphere.

I take a week or so to get down, riding some of the back roads from I-5 to the coast, then down the coast to San Francisco and on to Santa Cruz, where I stay with friends. I camp along the way and take my time getting back home as well.

This year, the whole route is threatened by the over-1000 fires burning in Northern California. The fire map of the state looks like a minefield. So far no road closures, but I don’t know how bad the smoke might be. The Biscuit Fire in Southwest Oregon in 2002 burned half a million acres (!), and the smoke here in Klamath Falls kept us indoors for the better part of three months. That fire was a hundred miles away, but wind conditions are everything.

One of the big fires is in Big Sur, which isn’t that far from the races. I camped there last year, but this year I’m staying at Mt. Madonna county park, which is near Watsonville. No fires there, as far as I can tell.

I hope none of this spoils my trip. Life is so unfair.

Two recent concerts

Last week, Wynton Marsallis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra played a concert in Portland, and the review in the Oregonian was glowing. The band, it said, played jazz from all the eras of its long history, but the arrangements were modern and challenging and the soloists were brilliant.

Mary and I saw them a few nights later at the Britt Festival in Jacksonville, and though it was an enjoyable night out, I left feeling dissatisfied. How can this be with fifteen of the best jazz musicians in the country on the stage at the same time? Blame Wynton.

It’s true that some of the arrangements were modern versions of old classics. The band played a particularly appealing arrangement by Ted Nash of Down by the Riverside, rhythmically complex while only faintly alluding to the original melody. Nash also composed the most interesting piece of the evening, a musical reflection on painter Jackson Pollock, and Nash himself was a brilliant soloist. And there were other spectacular solos. Trumpet player Ryan Kisor was brilliant and evocative with a plunger mute.

In fact, everybody who took a solo was sufficiently brilliant, but often the performance seemed just lacking enough in energy to feel like something essential was missing. Wynton sat back in the trumpet section and never stood, whether announcing a song or taking a solo. After a song, he would acknowledge some of the soloists but not all, including the Kisor solo, which to me was the highpoint of the concert.

Marsallis has won just about every award possible in music, including a Pulitzer Prize. He’s the only musician ever to win Grammys for best jazz and best classical album in the same year. But he’s long been unpopular and even reviled among long-time jazz listeners for what is seen as his reactionary attitude towards jazz. It’s not just how he plays, which can sometimes be modern enough, but what he says. Under Marsallis, jazz stays put more than it moves forward, and he seems better overall in marketing himself than advancing as a musician. I’ve liked him best as a sideman with other musicians, but I’ve never thought he was among the best trumpet players in jazz or a particularly interesting composer.

In contrast, I saw Return to Forever a month earlier at the Britt, and although fusion has never particularly appealed to me, the reunion-tour concert by Chick Corea, Al Di Miola, Stanley Clark and Lennie White was one of the most exciting jazz nights I’ve ever enjoyed. Their on-stage energy was enormous, and though they first played these songs together some thirty-five years ago, their solos and unison passages were as fresh as they were explosive. They were clearly having fun, and I can't say I saw much fun in the JLCO.

Even at its most introspective, jazz is about energy, or so it seems to me. If I’m not bopping in my seat, something is missing, and I did little or no seat bopping with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. With Return to Forever, I risked rupturing a disc.

Call it my seat-of-the-pants critical theory, or as Ellington put it, It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing. Sad to say, the JLCO don’t swing.

The little c

I worked for the American Cancer Society in Spokane for a couple of years in the late ‘70s. It was a good job, and for a layperson I learned a lot about cancer. I left to go back to graduate school in English, but I could have seen myself staying there for a career.

Back then, not that long ago, cancer was still mostly a taboo subject. People tended to keep it secret. In obituaries, people died of “a lingering illness.” Even patients themselves were kept in the dark if their doctor or family didn’t think they could handle the news. It’s amazing to think that people could go through surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy and the doctor would never tell them they had cancer, but it happened rather often. Didn’t they suspect?

That began to change slowly in 1969 when Elizabeth Kubler-Ross published On Death and Dying, still a book worth reading today, even if you’re not. Journalist Betty Rollin opened the door further to the general public in 1976 with First, You Cry, her personal account of breast cancer.

Today, in contrast, it seems like the first thing anybody does after a cancer diagnosis is call their agent: I Am Lance Armstrong’s Malignant Testicle! I have a book by comedian Robert Schimmel called Cancer On Five Dollars a Day, his account of his fight against lymphoma. Amazingly, it's funny.

All of these personal narratives seem to have the same theme, which is that you have to be positive and have a good attitude about your cancer. You have to “survive.” Failure (that would be death) is not an option. Wear an ugly pink plastic thing on your wrist. Walk/run for the cure.

It’s enough to make your hair fall out, but who am I not to join the parade? Last week I got my biopsy results back and I have early stage prostate cancer. This is way better than most cancers but worse, say, than getting a tooth pulled or the hernia surgery I had a year and a half ago. Although actually, the hernia was uncomfortable and then painful, and I had to wait five weeks to get surgery because of the surgeon’s busy schedule. Prostate cancer is asymptomatic, (it doesn’t hurt), and I’m waiting until winter to schedule a few days in the hospital because why ruin a good motorcycle riding season, plus I have some concert tickets and I don’t want to miss any concerts: Taj Mahal. Joe Cocker. Wynton Marsallis, even. I saw Return to Forever last week, and what a band! I was never big on jazz fusion, but these are four of the great jazz musicians of our generation, and it was an electrifying concert. (Pun way too obvious.)

Anyway, despite my professional past and also my father died of prostate cancer, I’m finding I know very little about this disease, and some of what I know is wrong.

That’s enough for now, but I’ll post more from time to time because what else is new? I can only post so much about the utter moral corruption of the Bush administration. Every day in the paper is a new outrage, but it has become so commonplace it usually only makes page two or three. Dennis Kucinich has introduced articles of impeachment, which will never go anywhere, but Marie Cocco wrote a column about it and said it was a stunning indictment of “the current occupant,” as Garrison Keillor calls him. I don’t think it’s at all hysterical to talk about a war crimes trial, but don’t wait around for that, either.

My prostate I can do something about, and suddenly I have lots to learn and think about. It’s like a new hobby. You can get a t-shirt. For my guy friends, I hope you’re getting an annual PSA test. One in six men will get prostate cancer, and it’s completely curable if it’s caught early.

(This isn’t actually true, but get a PSA test anyway.)

Mr. Obamma

If I'm going to endorse this guy for president, I should probably spell his name correctly. It's Barack, with a C.

Carry on.

Barak

The media have at least mentioned what a historic occasion is the nomination of Barak Obama, but only just. Despite my vow to quit watching the nightly news on any of the networks, I tuned in last Wednesday when Obama had locked up the Democratic nomination. It seemed the commentators couldn’t move on quickly enough to the story of Hillary and whether or not she would go after the vice-presidential nomination.

This was Obama’s day and a day of historic proportions, and the television media reduced it to what will become a footnote of the political campaign. Not to take away anything from Hillary Clinton’s own historic campaign, but still. . . .

It all made me reflect back on some of my own experiences involving race in America, only a few of which I will relate here.

In 1967, though I barely understood the significance at the time, “The case is Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 ruling in which a unanimous Supreme Court found that state laws prohibiting interracial marriage violated the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. The decision has been on my mind recently because of the death this month of Mildred Loving, the African American woman who dared to marry a white man and try to live with him in Virginia.” (I quote from an online essay and apologize that I’ve lost the link.)

“. . . My car radio crackled with the tinny voice of Virginia's lawyer urging the court not to usurp the state's "legitimate legislative objective of preventing the sociological and psychological evils which attend interracial marriages."

This was part of the backdrop against which I was being drafted into the army and only months away from landing in Vietnam. I made a quick rush down to the Coast Guard office to see if they were looking for any help but ended up enlisting as a GI in hopes of staying out of the infantry.

In January of 1968, I was at Fort Gordon, Georgia in Signal Corps school. Weekends, we would go into Augusta, where in the bus stations I first encountered drinking fountains and bathrooms labeled “white” and “colored.” I felt like I had landed in a different country.

In April, Martin Luther King was assassinated, and my company went through a quick day of riot control training in case we had to go into Augusta to put down riots. We were issued rifles and bayonets and confined to the company compound on ready alert for the week. A lot of good we would have done. Fort Gordon was also home to an MP school and an Airborne school, and presumably they would have gone in first. The Signal Corps motto, we said among ourselves, was “Last to Fight!”

Augusta didn’t riot, although plenty of other cities did. In May I was in Vietnam, and racial tensions in my unit were high. They didn’t get any better in the two years I had left in the army.

The struggle for civil rights, and even voting rights, has been a background to my whole like, starting with my earliest memories of the Freedom Riders when I was very young. Some of those early activists were murdered and their murderers are only now being brought to justice, some fifty years later, racist old men with hate still in their eyes. I celebrate their belated convictions.

I watched, as we all did, news reports of demonstrations in Southern cities in which peaceful protesters were beaten, had fire hoses and police dogs turned on them. We watched as National Guard troops, ordered in by President Johnson, escorted black children into newly integrated schools while white parents screamed hateful, shameful slurs at them.

So it says everything to me that we Democrats have now nominated an African-American to be our next president. It seems to me still utterly impossible that I am seeing this in my lifetime. Obama is a remarkable man, but right now he looks to me like a very fragile human being. I see him and I see my own experience of a fifty-year struggle for civil rights in America, an observer’s experience, but still one that has deeply shaped my consciousness. I hope he’s up to it. I hope we all, finally, are.

How to be a famous cartoonist

In the short list of reasons to go on living, I include the cartoons in the New Yorker. In recent years, there has been a contest on the last page in which readers are invited to submit their own captions for cartoon drawings. I don't know what the prize is other than being able to say you wrote for the New Yorker, but for most New Yorker readers, that would be enough.

So if you're interested in reading how one man did it, go to http://www.slate.com/ today to read "How To Win the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest: A champion reveals the recipe for victory," by Patrick House. An excerpt here:

"Today I can finally update my résumé to include "Writer, The New Yorker." Yes, I won The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest, and I'm going to tell you how I did it. These observations have been culled from months of research and are guaranteed to help you win, too. (Note from Slate's lawyers: Observations not guaranteed to help you win.)

"Most people who look at the winners of the caption contest say, "I could've done better than that." You're right. You could have. But that doesn't mean you could've won the caption contest—it just means you could've done better. And if your goal is not to win the caption contest, why bother entering? There is one mantra to take from this article, worth its own line break:

"You are not trying to submit the funniest caption; you are trying to win The New Yorker's caption contest."

Well, I thought House's caption was pretty damn funny.

No, I still don't ride a Harley

I first wrote here about my contempt for most Harley Davidson riders in August of `06 in a piece I called “No, I don’t ride a Harley.” I don’t like them any more now than I did then, and one of the things I hate is their over-the-top patriotic displays.

Here’s an excerpt from a piece by Garrison Keillor:

May 28, 2008 “Three-hundred thousand bikers spent Memorial Day weekend roaring around Washington in tribute to our war dead, and I stood on Constitution Avenue Sunday afternoon watching a river of them go by, waiting for a gap in the procession so I could cross over to the Mall and look at pictures. The street had been closed off for them and they motored on by, some flying the Stars and Stripes and the black MIA-POW flag, honking, revving their engines, an endless celebration of internal combustion.
“A patriotic bike rally is sort of like a patriotic toilet-papering or patriotic graffiti; the patriotism somehow gets lost in the sheer irritation of the thing. Somehow a person associates Memorial Day with long moments of silence when you summon up mental images of men huddled together on LSTs and pilots revving up B-24s and infantrymen crouched behind piles of rubble steeling themselves for the next push.
“You don't quite see the connection between that and these fat men with ponytails on Harleys. After hearing a few thousand bikes go by, you think maybe we could airlift these gentlemen to Baghdad to show their support of the troops in a more tangible way. It took 20 minutes until a gap appeared and then a mob of us pedestrians flooded across the street and the parade of bikes had to stop for us, and on we went to show our patriotism by looking at exhibits at the Smithsonian or, in my case, hiking around the National Gallery, which, after you've watched a few thousand Harleys pass, seems like an outpost of civilization. . . .
“No wonder the Current Occupant welcomed them with open arms at the White House, put on a black leather vest, and gave a manly speech about how he'd just "choppered in" and saw the horde "cranking up their machines" and he thanked them for being so patriotic. They are his kind of guys, full of bluster, giving off noxious fumes, and when they leave town, nobody misses them.”

Dissertation abstracts

Almost anyone who has ever written a dissertation knows what happens after those years of work are finally over. It gets filed in the library stacks of the granting institution and no one will ever read it again. I finished mine sixteen years ago.

So I was astonished and not a little flattered today to receive this email. I've checked it out, and Professor Kuykendall is legit.

I feel rather like I've been complimented on a sweater and my response is "Oh, this old thing?" But still, you have to love it.

***

Dear Ross: I am reading your dissertation for something I am writing about votes of no confidence. I think your dissertation is very well written and provides a rich set of case studies. It's a great resource on a number of levels.

I would love to chat with you about the research issues you thought about in writing the piece. Perhaps you have put all that behind you, but if you have some interest in good research and in advancing consideration of the topic you wrote about, perhaps you could take some time for a chat.

I hope we can talk at some point.

Sincerely,
Mae Kuykendall
Professor of Law
Michigan State University College of Law
463 Law College BuildingEast Lansing, MI 48824-1300

***
Well, of course the answer is yes. We have a phone date for next Friday. I found my dissertation in the basement, and now I get to read it again after all these years.

More overstimulated

For me, Pandora continues to be the best way to get my music, and it keeps getting better. Pandora is an internet music service located at www.pandora.com. It’s been around a few years. It's free.

You go there, set up an account and log in, then type in the name of a group or a song. It asks you a question or two, then sets up a station. Right now I’m listening to my station based on Todd Hildreth, who’s a piano player and teacher I met in an internet group. I added Michael Brecker and John Scofield to expand the range a little and Pandora starts streaming songs by these artists and other similar ones. If I like a song I can click a thumbs up and it plays more songs like that. If I don’t like a song, I click thumbs down and it doesn’t play that song any more.

In other words, the station learns. Over time, it gets closer and closer to music I’m going to like. There’s a danger that it could over-stimulate the pleasure centers of my brain.

I’ve added several other stations representing different styles of music I like. I can also listen to shared stations other people have set up. You can listen to my stations, but at any given time, we’re actually listening to different songs.

Wow.

The range of available music is astonishing. My Luciana Souza station has introduced me to dozens of musicians from a variety of Latin American coutries and styles.

Even more astonishing is that every song is individually listened to by Pandora people and “hand coded,” so to speak, in dozens of criteria. I have no idea how they accomplish this. Pandora is produced by The Music Genome Project. Again, I have no idea.

Pandora has added new features lately that make it even better. Click here, it says, to go to a biography of this artist. Click there to go to album information, including side men and a song list. Click in that place if you want to buy the CD from Amazon or download from iTunes.

They’ve also added classical music, though I haven’t tried that so can’t say anything about its quality.

Downside? I miss a good announcer, but then there are very few good announcers. If you find a good late-night jazz DJ, it’s like you’re the two hippest guys on the planet and this is your time together. Pandora is like listening to a computer. It’s a very hip computer, but still.

I’ve also stopped listening to my public radio station except for the news sometimes. I really should send them a check anyway.

Over stimulated

Any day now, Mary and I should be getting our economic stimulus check from the federal government. We’re expecting $1,200, and the patriotic thing to do with this money is go out and buy something to stimulate the economy. For $1,200, we could buy a good laptop, for example, and even one made in America.

But after only a little discussion, we’ve decided to use our money to buy food. Actually, half of it already went to buy a new freezer. When the check gets here, we’ll use the other half to buy food to put in the freezer.

Mmmmm, ice cream.

Buying and storing food now seems to be the best investment by far for families of moderate income. My bank is currently offering 2.44 percent on a CD. It’s hard to get a handle on actual price increases for food, but take one example: rice. The Oregonian reported that the one-year increase in the cost of rice is 300 percent. “What started with a shortage in Thailand and a typhoon in Bangladesh is now putting tremendous pressure on domestically produced rice,” according to one expert. Stores around the West are limiting purchases; Costco, for example, will only sell you one twenty-pound bag, and Costco is still running out. Asian restaurants in Portland report having to go to several suppliers every day to buy enough rice to keep their doors open.

There are food riots in many parts of Africa, and all of this before the typhoon took out the rice crop of Myanmar/Burma last week. But that’s over there.

Back at home, it isn’t just rice that is going up dramatically every month. I figure if we can buy one year ahead on food and other supplies, we’ll be saving, what, twenty percent, thirty percent? Even more?

Around here, lots of farm families and Mormons have always believed in a full pantry and a one-year supply of food. I used to think that was very old-fashioned. Now I think it’s a good investment. It might be more than that.

We did buy an American freezer, though: GE.

An end to misery

For the last week, I’ve been thinking that four things could not end soon enough:

The Democratic primary race

This miserable spring weather

My cold, and

The Pope's visit.

Well, one out of four.

Peru Negro

Last night, Mary and I went to see the Peruvian dance group Peru Negro. We’re blessed in our little town with a first-rate performing arts center that would be the envy of a town twice our size. Maybe even a town ten times our size. Sometimes we get performances worthy of the facility.

Peru Negro was one of the most exciting and enjoyable spectacles I’ve ever seen. I wish it had gone on for hours more, and I’d go back tonight to see it again if they were still playing here. It brings to the stage 22 dances, musicians and singers. Obviously, it celebrates the African slave heritage of Peru. In costumes and sometimes mannerisms of the dance, there’s a striking resemblance to American plantation life. The dances range from primitive to modern, but the music is always the driving, drum-centered rhythms I associate with Afro Cuban music. The singing simply stands your hair on end. In short, it was one of the most exciting performances I've ever seen. I found it very hard to slow down, my excitement was so great long after the performance.


Not the least of it was the costumes, which came alive with color, and color became a central part of the spectacle.

I see by their website at www.perunegro.org/ that they’re in Davis tonight, so I wanted to send a heads-up to Ed and Rhonda to try to make it if you possibly can.

¡Peru Negro!

Barack and Race in America

Barack Obama won my vote last night. In what might become one of the new century’s defining orations, he directly confronted the issue of race in America. Here’s part of what the Washington Post said about his speech:

“Mr. Obama's speech was an extraordinary moment of truth-telling. He coupled it with an appeal that this year's campaign not be dominated by distorted and polarizing debates about whether he or his opponents agree with extreme statements by supporters -- or other attempts to divide the electorate along racial lines. Far better, he argued, that Americans of all races recognize they face common economic, social and security problems. "”

I’ve heard often about his ability to inspire with rhetoric, but as yet I hadn’t seen evidence of it. Yesterday, he chose to rise above merely distancing himself from his pastor’s remarks, he dared to directly challenge the issue of race in America. The speech was all the more impressive because he wrote it himself, staying up until two in the morning the night before to finish it. It was a masterpiece of content and delivery that will reverberate for years, possibly generations. It might well rank with John Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you” and Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream.”

Will it work to quiet the criticism of guilt by association? Absolutely not. It’s clear that this will be the Obama swiftboat. On the other hand, McCain’s comment that we might be in Iraq for a hundred years, a thousand years, a million years, will become a sound bite we’ll be seeing often in the campaign. In the end, it might all still be about the economy, stupid.

But taken as a eloquent statement of hope for a country that could take a giant leap forward in the seemingly intractable problems of race, Obama’s speech will last long beyond the current presidential campaign. It brought tears to my eyes as it raised the possibility of a new politics of reconciliation.

El Sol de Medianoche

¡Bienvenidos amigos a mi blog en español, El Sol de Medianoche!

Estudio español por cinco meses. Verdad, solo sé unas cuantas palabras, asi qué espero mi español no es demasiado chistoso.

Empecé en un clase a el colegio comunal donde enseño dos clases, pero hablamos español en clase casi nunca. Tuve mucho frustración y deseé gritar. Pero ahora estudio con la tutora al colegio. Ella es de Honduras. Su inglés es perfecto, pero habla español conmigo casi todo. Y ella es muy simpática.

Me gusta mucho estudiar español. Es difícil de aprender, pero muchos personas lo hablan en mi pueblo. Trato estudiar uno o dos horas por día. A veces, estudio más. O menos.

Adiós, amigos. No escribiré mucho en español, yo prometo.

It's Only Rock and Roll

This year, Santa Baby brought me two presents for Christmas, just what I had asked for: the DVD sets, available from PBS online, of the two Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Festivals.
I happened to catch most of both of them on TV (I'm sure they repeated many times), one last year in Chicago, one a few years ago in Texas. The DVDs are much expanded, four hours each.

I was amazed at how much I loved this music, much of it familiar to me, but not very. I’ve followed jazz rather closely over the years and would even go so far as to call myself an expert, though I wouldn’t make too much of a point about that. Rock and roll, on the other hand, I picked up mostly from tuning in to FM radio in the 60s and 70s without focusing too much on individual players or bands.

What interested me watching these programs is that I have a fairly low threshold for blues-inspired rock. Most of it has such a sameness that only the best of the best can keep my interest for much beyond a few songs. These live concerts kept me glued to the screen for hours. Jazz critic turned rock groupie Ralph J. Gleason said way back in the mid-60s that the musicianship of the best rockers rivaled that of the best jazz musicians. The free-love thing was probably what cinched the decision for him. It's about a lot more than just technique, though.

The Crossroads sets feature just about everybody who is still alive from those old days, and a good sampling of the best younger players out there now. A perfect example is the too-short set by Jeff Beck doing some stunning effects on guitar, all to good musical effect, and accompanied by a young woman on base who looks fifteen and soloed magnificently across some very complicated times and rhythms. Instant crush, so I googled “jeff beck’s base player” and discovered she’s 21-year-old Australian Tal Wilkenfeld. She’s toured England with Beck and Europe with Chick Corea, and I’m ordering her first album as lead, Transformation.

Other names from the Crossroads DVDs: B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Carlos Santana, Jimmie Vaughan, John Mayer, John McLaughlin, Jonny Lang, ZZ Top, Los Lobos, Steve Winwood, and of course, Eric Clapton. And many more.

If you’re about my age, (soon to turn 60), these songs are something of a soundtrack for our generation.

People who like this sort of thing are going to like this very much.