Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Making My Day

This cartoon appeared in last Sunday's New York Times in the Sunday Review section. Since it is impossible to read, I will give you a frame by frame description.

The first frame shows two students in front of a court building. One is obviously a nerd in a shirt buttoned all the way to his neck and wearing black framed glasses. In his right hand is an apple. In his left, a stack of text books. The other student is in tears while holding up a poster of a brontosaurus and a tyrannosaurus riding in Noah's Ark. The caption says, "In a rare victory for reality, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that teachers can call creationism 'superstitious nonsense,' paving the way for even more reality-based education."

The second frame shows a teacher at a blackboard pointing out the different layers of Earth's atmosphere. In the bubbles she says, "That's right kids, evolution is real! The sky is also blue and above it is space, not heaven."

The third frame shows a teacher seated in front of an attentive group of grade schoolers. He tells them, "Climate change is really happening, and if anyone tries to tell you differently, yell 'No!' Run away, and tell a grown-up."

The fourth frame shows a high school Econ I class with the teacher saying, "Supply side economics doesn't work. It's chiefly a way for the wealthy to hoard even more money."

The next frame shows a junior high kid named Billy with his head down while his teacher corrects the equation (2+2=Obama's a socialist). She says, "There are two things wrong with that equation, Billy."

The sixth frame shows a teacher holding a story book about The Gipper as she explains to her students, "Even Reagan raised taxes to reduce deficits! He also called ketchup a vegetable, but you'll learn about that after lunch."

My favorite frame is the last one. An art teacher is criticizing a horrible drawing by the tearful little girl. "Your perspective's all off, and I doubt your mommy really looks like that." The kid responds, "WAAAH! That hurts my feelings." "Sorry kid," the teacher responds, "facts beat feelings."

If I was still in the classroom, I would blow that cartoon up and put it prominently on my bulletin board where I could refer to it before every class and every parent/teacher conference. It would supply the ballast necessary to make it through the day.

Monday, August 29, 2011

ILL WIND - Nevada Barr

Murder at Cliff Palace

Nevada Barr is a mystery writer in the manner of C.J. Box who writes stories set in national parks. This one is set in Mesa Verde and Katherine read it while we were there a few weeks ago. I picked it up after she finished it and managed to devour it in a couple of days. Reading things, even mediocre things like Ill Wind, that are set in familiar places is one of my favorite things to do. C.J. Box's book about Yellowstone with the climactic encounter at The Old Faithful Inn was terrific. I knew that place and could picture every moment. The same is true about Ill Wind. The central incident in the novel takes place in Cliff Palace and that is precisely the place we toured when we were there.

This is not great literature. It isn't even great pulp fiction. It is just a fun, mindless read to fill the time on vacations you end up spending between meals, operas, and sightseeing. This has everything: a bizarre murder, unrequited love, money grubbing bad guys, and innocent victims. It also offers a lot of information about Mesa Verde that the guides don't necessarily fill you in on. Unfortunately, it also has a lot of sentences that make you cringe: "Consciousness dawned like a foggy day" is one such example. That ranks right up there with "It was a dark and stormy night."

But it is well plotted and you can put it down for days if you are of a mind to and pick it up again without missing a beat. Not much else to say, except I doubt I will be reading many more of her novels in the future.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Have They No Shame

GOP WANTS SOCIAL SECURITY TAX CUT TO END

That was the headline on today's (8/22/11) Nation and World Briefs section in The Denver Post. Let's get up to speed. As part of the onerous deal Obama made with Republicans on spending and extending the Bush era tax cuts, both parties agreed to cut the 6.2% payroll tax dedicated to Social Security to 4.2%. Obama wants to extend that cut for another year. If it is not extended, the payroll tax will go back up to 6.2% on January 1.

The GOP now wants to do away with that cut. That's right. This is the same GOP who was willing to let our country default rather than raise taxes in any form. I seem to remember John Boehner and Mitch McConnel both saying that doing away with cuts that were at one time understood to be temporary were in fact tax raises and they would never hold still for a hike in taxes. In the Iowa debate when the Republican hopefuls were asked if they would be willing to agree to legislation that would address the deficit by employing both spending cuts and raising revenue through tax hikes at a ratio of ten to one, cuts to revenues, they all said no.

Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, a member of the GOP leadership said, "It's always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn. But not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again."

Boy, you can say that again. Apparently, the GOP position is that giving cuts to the wealthy boosts the economy while giving giving cuts to the working class does not.

Yeah, I know that the wealthy are the "job creators" and if we ease off on their taxes they will start hiring people left and right and our economy will be back on track. Just look how well all those tax cuts worked during the Bush Era. Job creation then, compared to job creation during Bush I and Clinton, both of whom raised taxes, was basically stagnant. So was economic growth, except for the banking sector. Personally, if I had put what little money I had under my mattress instead of investing it for those eight years I would be better off today.

And yeah, I know that Social Security is careening toward insolvency. At least that is what Republican profits* of doom would have me believe. They use a strange accounting however. Presidents, both Democratic and Republican, have historically dipped into Social Security reserves to bail out the country during wars and recessions. They all claimed that practice was ok because, after all, it is all ONE budget. Of course, when those raids on the reserve are not repaid and the reserve starts shrinking in the face of larger demands, Social Security no longer seems to be part of that ONE budget and those reserve raiders start alerting the country about the insolvency of the program that they helped create. If it really is all ONE budget, then Social Security is in no more danger of failing than the rest of the country. Am I missing something here?

So it seems to me that there is a little hypocrisy at work here. Isn't allowing the payroll tax cut to expire raising taxes in the same sense that letting the Bush tax cuts expire is?

If I ran the circus, I would agree to let the cuts expire if the Republicans would agree to take that 6.2% out of all earned income. As it is right now, the payroll tax stops for any reported income over $106,000 give or take a few thousand. If you remember, the highly touted deal between Republican icon Ronald Reagan and Democratic icon Tip O'Neal to raise the payroll tax "saved" Social Security, but it did it on the backs of the poor and middle class. It had almost no effect on the wealthy.

Republicans would say that my rant here only serves to foment class warfare. From my vantage point this is no war; it is a massacre.

*I think my spelling error here is quite appropriate given the circumstances, so I will let it stand.


Friday, August 19, 2011

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Probably a finer work than Freedom, but I was not as compelled by The Corrections. That is probably because Franzen's later work reads more like a polemic as it attacks conservatism in all its manifestations. The Corrections, published in 2001, is certainly topical and certainly left leaning, but the focus here is on a more complex group of characters confronted by more universal problems. The fact that the problems hit a little uncomfortably close to home might have contributed to my ability to put the book down from time to time.

Enid and Alfred, the matriarch and patriarch of a barely functional midwestern family now gone their separate ways, want nothing more than for all the kids to come home to St. Jude for one more family Christmas. This is mostly Enid's wish because Alfred's deteriorating condition will make festive family get togethers less likely with each passing year.

From what little we learn at the outset about the mom and dad, the kids are not big on the idea, but with a little luck and a lot of guilt they all make it home by the last 100 pages. In between we get to meet each kid on his or her own terms and we secretly hope the reunion will never take place. We know it will never live up to Enid's expectations.

There are two nice little conceits holding the book together. It seems that Alfred, in his prime a much greater figure than any of his children, holds a patent for an "electro-polymer" that can act as a kind of cranial conductor for mood enhancing electronic signaling, thus opening the door to all sorts of therapeutic and recreational uses. He signs away the rights for a relative pittance, causing yet further strife within this little family group. Ironically, Enid latches onto the very drug Alfred's invention has made possible in hopes that it will jolt her husband out of his depression and back to reality.

There is also the metaphor of Corrections. Gary, the oldest and wealthiest of the kids, has made a fortune by playing the market and buying hook, line, and sinker into the idea that markets must undergo corrections from time to time in order for growth to be robust. That should be the case for people as well and he pins all his hopes for the future happiness of everyone on a discussion he hopes to have on Christmas day before he has to get back to Philly. This discussion will put in place the corrections he thinks his family needs to make.

Of course, the whole book is devoted to the corrections, intended or otherwise, that the rest of his family is busy enduring. They are exactly the kinds of corrections we all unwittingly undergo to keep afloat. We can fight them or embrace them; we can never ignore them.

I think this is embodied in a scene I can't get out of my head. Alfred has been placed in a hospital for a couple of weeks of tests. It is clear he will never come back home as he slides further and further into dementia. The freedom everyone else feels now that Alfred is safely stowed away is a nightmare for Alfred as his hallucinatory world view has put him inexplicably in a prison:
A stillness had fallen on the cellblock. He couldn't rely on Chip, he was always disappearing. He couldn't rely on anybody but himself. With no plan in his head and no power in his hands he attempted to loosen the belt so he could take his pants off and dry himself. But the belt was as maddening as ever. Twenty times he ran his hands along its length and twenty times he failed to find a buckle. He was like a person of two dimensions seeking freedom in a third. He could search for all eternity and never find the goddam buckle.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Why In God's Name Not*

There is lots of talk from disgruntled and disillusioned Democrats that Hillary would have made a stronger president through these tough economic times. So much talk in fact that many are calling for her to put up a challenge to Obama for the 2012 nomination. They say that Hillary never would have caved in on the debt ceiling showdown. They look back with fondness to the days of LBJ's tough dealing with Congress both as majority leader and president. He would have outmaneuvered the right wing of the Republican party and stared them down and we would all be better off.

I don't believe any of that for a second. The Tea Party was perfectly content to let the country default and they knew Obama could not let that happen. They were holding all the cards. I don't have to add that it is a budding catastrophe for our country that the debate is now controlled by a group of idealogues who continue to confuse the good of their party with the good of the country.

When Obama was first elected, Rush Limbaugh declared he wanted him to fail and the right wing cheered. What is the implication of that? How could any American want the president to fail? Wouldn't that be bad for the country? Yeah, but it would guarantee a Republican resurgence in the next election cycle and that is, after all, the right wing agenda. I have even become so cynical that I believe the Republican party has purposely pushed their jobs killing agenda in order to win the next presidential election and the country be damned. It is a terrible thing to think, but it is hard to come to any other conclusion.

I still congratulate Obama for trying to do the impossible: Change the poisonous climate in our capitol. He thought that if he went out of his way to be bi-partisan so would his Republican colleagues. What an idiot! The days of bi-partisanship are over. They started disappearing when Ronald Reagan became president by chanting that "government isn't the solution; it is the problem." It was a catchy slogan that gave the right wing the hope they might be able to shrink government and rid us all of the New Deal. They never gave up that hope even though every time we tried "Trickle Down Economics" we came away with a larger debt and precious few jobs to show for it.

Now here we are again. The Republicans, the ones who lambasted Obama and Emanuel for suggesting that we should never let a crisis go to waste, are latching onto this continuing budget crisis to convince people that all we have to do is cut spending to the point where entitlements will be a distant memory, where public works projects will be inconceivable, where the rich will continue to rake in the largess of deregulation, and the poor will be left to fend for themselves. If we do all that, they assure us, the country will go back to the halcyon days of yore when men were men and women ate their young.

I've come to a different conclusion. I think the days of yore aren't coming back. In the fifties we produced 95% of what we consumed and our economy grew and grew and grew. Our economy is no longer based on production; it is based on financial legerdemain to produce quick and substantial profits. When the risk taking fails, as it has time and time again since the Reagan era, the profiteers simply take their bonuses and run, leaving it up to the rest of us, the members of the disappearing middle class, to clean up the mess. Do they get in trouble for their selfishness, for their disregard for the country? No! They get hired by another company so they can start their shell game all over again.

These people, so the Republican orthodoxy goes, are the job creators and must be left alone so they can spur the economy that they have played such a large part in ruining. Where are the jobs? In India. In China. Not here. How do these jobs get created? By research and development. By innovation. By rising to meet the needs of the middle class. The USA doesn't do that anymore. The financial rewards just aren't immediate enough, and so we slide into recession after recession.

The history of the world is the history of dominant civilizations giving way to others. Holland gave way to England. England gave way to the USA. It is now our turn. The only remnant of American Exceptionalism is the exceptionally myopic view we seem to have of our demise.

That is why I am slowly but surely losing interest in Republican straw polls in Iowa and Obama's bus trip build up to the 2012 elections. I just don't think it makes much difference. Obama's Hope and Change mantra will never come to pass because Republicans won't allow that kind of change. Bachman's and Perry's right-wing-born-again-Christian promises will never come to pass because Democrats won't let them. Our country is doomed to remain in this suicidal holding pattern until we all realize that we are no longer the Hope of the World.

In order to affect change, I would think some sort of dialogue should take place in the country. But there is no chance for such a dialogue. Listen to the Republican stump speeches in Iowa. They all had the same message: Obama is ruining the country and under no circumstances will taxes be raised in any of their administrations. These people are not serious about budgetary responsibility. No serious person believes it is possible to address our budget needs without raising revenue. On the other hand, we need to address the increasing strain of entitlements on our budget, an issue on which the far left is almost as recalcitrant as the far right. What is a fellow to do? Watch baseball? I would, but I live in Colorado.

It isn't just the politicians who refuse to compromise. Compromise is something that is getting rarer and rarer. I get my information from newspapers and a few carefully selected web sites; I avoid television news, except for sports, as much as possible. My conservative friends (strike that: acquaintances) get their information from Fox News. We live in parallel universes and there is no middle ground period.

We listen to different music. We eat at different restaurants. We drive different vehicles. We shop at different places. According to the Cook Political Report, 89% of the Whole Foods stores in the US were in counties taken by Obama in the last election; 62% of Cracker Barrel restaurants were in counties carried by McCain. Conservatives and liberals alike point to that last statistic with smugness, but the smugness comes from very different convictions.

The proliferation of product choices since I was a kid have rendered compromise no longer necessary. I used to have to compromise to buy anything, but with ever expanding variety I can get something tailor made to any need. I can buy shoes for tennis, another pair for aerobics, still another for running, and one for just hanging out. When I was twelve it was a pair of Chuck Taylors or nothing. Compromise? Why?

Where does all this lead. Read the papers. Members of the disappearing middle class in places as disparate as London, Tel Aviv, and Cairo heed a call from Facebook and start rioting. Why? Why in God's name not?

* Read "Adrift in Iowa: Tired Rituals in Tough Times" by Frank Bruni; "You Want Compromise? Sure You Do" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg; and "A Theory of Everything (Sort of)" by Thomas L. Friedman in Sunday's New York Times (August 14, 2011).

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Michelle Bachman and Gender-Colored Glasses


Katherine here today. Generally I look at the world through rose-colored glasses. One of the delights of travel is that I can try on different points of view. My Mexico lenses shimmer with pools and books and tans and zip lines, whales, and pirate (sigh) adventures. My Belize lenses add some reverential focus on Mayan ruins. When we go to Jenny Lake the lenses are more personal, more romantic, more connected to my physical being, to nature, to a beautiful dining room. These glasses frame the rest of my existence.

We were headed to Mesa Verde National Park and Santa Fe and I was looking forward to seeing the world through a very specific set of glasses. I wanted to think about art. I wanted to see if the art and architecture of the Ancestral Puebloans matched that of the Guatemalan Mayans in antique Tikal. How did the art on Canyon Road in Santa Fe compare to the art in downtown Puerto Vallarta? How did my love of Sergio Bustamonte (he did the ladder statue on the Malecon walk by the ocean in downtown Puerto Vallarta) hold up to the Frank Howell's and R.C. Gormans of the Santa Fe Plaza?

I made the mistake of checking Face Book while Jim was getting breakfast from a counter at Bongo Billy's in Buena Vista (good place). I either ignore FaceFook or I play a lot. I'm the same way with texting. Anyway, there were all these postings about Michelle Bachman and comments about her "submissive" statement. Later, I gather, she said "submissive" was somehow synonymous with "respectful." She evidently gloated in the Republican debate in Iowa about her world-shaking "Freedom of LightBulb" legislation.

You know, she just pisses me off and she interrupted my thinking enough that I dropped my comfy artsy-craftsy point of view and ended up looking at the world through gender-colored glasses. Thanks a lot, Michelle.

After six days of looking at the world this way, I've decided to share my thoughts here. Maybe that way my mind can move on and I can think of something else. I don't intend this to be generic. This is just the way gender roles seemed to be playing around me during our outing to Mesa Verde and Santa Fe.

I am the driving force when it comes to travel. Even though girls are traditionally the nesters, Jim is the nester here. We would stay at home and cook great stuff and play tennis and go for hikes close to home and do stuff around the house and he would be the happiest camper ever. Except Jenny Lake. He would always do that. Jim's first thought almost anywhere we go is when does he get to go home.

I like to go places. I like to frame my wonderful ordinary life with outings. I learn new stuff. I try stuff I would never try otherwise. My nesting instincts emerge because I like to go to the same places over and over again until they are second homes.

Packing has gender divisions around here. Jim is efficient and minimal. I am not. I always over pack and it's usually weather-determined (what if it's hotter than normal, colder than normal, rainier than normal,etc.). I always assume the needs we have (life jackets and kayak paddles and hiking gear and two weeks of clothes) will fit in the hatch of the car. Getting luggage into a car seems to be Jim's concern and worry. Jim is always worried if it will ALL fit in the car. He approaches the problem like a serious geometry problem (it usually is) and he always solves it and is pleased as punch with himself for getting everything packed away so cleverly. Why should I worry--he never fails.

Jim does most of the driving. I do relief driving. I like to drive, but I'm also happy day-dreaming. I've been day-dreaming in cars since I was a kid. Jim's a better driver. He read some book about a famous Monte-Carlo style driver when he was a kid and he holds the steering wheel in race car fashion and straightens out all the curves on mountain passes and he passes slow cars with authority. I, on the other hand, drive far too much like Seymour Glass and I have to work to focus on the roads rather than the trees. Best to keep me to highway driving and relief stages only.

Jim and I have different roles when we looked at galleries or the ruins at Mesa Verde. I ask questions. I get friendly with strangers and I had a really nice talk about low blood pressure with a Mom and daughter from Canada just after we all climbed up the four ladders outside the Cliff Palace to return to the paved parking lot and our tour bus. I feel the ruins and art. Jim stands back and looks at ruins or paintings more aesthetically, with more distance. He asks logical questions--"Why is there no sense of play in these Ancestral Puebloans?" and I ask emotional questions--"How did they keep the kids from falling off the ledge?" He looks at paintings and sees shapes and light and motifs and ideas. I decide which ones I want in my house.

We went shopping in Santa Fe. In the right store (Origins in the Plaza area), he is the perfect shopping companion. He has wonderful taste and has always bought things for me that were just right. He goes through stores like that finding me wonderful things to wear. Often he finds something that I wouldn't have picked for myself, but I should have. He bought me a turquoise shirt that would fit in that category.

If the stores are not just right, he's not a perfect shopping companion. Years ago he told me there was less oxygen in a mall and we had to get out. He's not happy if a store has too much stuff or too little space because he's a tall guy. He's not happy if the stuff isn't quality stuff--no kitsch for him. He doesn't like to shop for himself. Period. He's not happy if any haggling might be involved. He likes quick purchases--if he likes it, he'll buy it, he'll leave. He usually hangs outside the store if it's not a good one for him. It's one of the rare times he can be caught on a cellphone in public. He's very good about that. I am not.

I think there's a sense of protection Jim has for me. I pass out from low blood pressure, get migraines from who knows what, get cranky and lose appetite when my blood sugar crashes on occasion, and there's always that lurking cancer ghost that we both feel if I have any ache or pain. He's protecting me when he wants to drive and he worries a lot when I hike up or down trails or through ruins because I'm clumsy and I look at the trees too much. He keeps me from falling down and running into poles and oncoming traffic. He's protective enough that when he zoomed home on his bike on dark Belize streets I got bent out of shape and then even more bent out of shape because I had gotten upset at all.

I'm basically done. I don't understand Michelle Bachman at all. I don't understand Sarah Palin at all.

Friday, August 12, 2011

On The Road


The five young people, all except the lone girl speaking in a foreign tongue, had the same message on their tee-shirts. "Road Trip Mode: On," it read.

They happily crowded around a table that had no business holding four let along five, but Cafe Pasqual's, judging by the line stretching outside its front door, is the place to be for breakfast in Santa Fe. It was also fitting for us to be sitting next to them since we too were on a road trip of sorts.

Months ago we had arranged to spend a few days in Santa Fe with Jerry and Cindy going to a couple of operas, eating at restaurants funky and great, and checking out the gallery/museum scene in northern New Mexico. Katherine, always on the look out for an interesting getaway, had managed to add a night and a day at Mesa Verde onto the front end of the trip, so what had been initially planned as a quick 500 mile round trip to Santa Fe turned into a 1200 mile loop through southwestern Colorado and the art scene of New Mexico.

The beauty of the drive up 285 through South Park, Buena Vista, Ouray, and up and over the Million Dollar Highway intro Durango was more surprising than I thought it would be. It had been almost twenty years since we last made that trip and we had forgotten the miniature Switzerland that abounds in southwestern Colorado. I have to admit that our trips to the Tetons and recent drives over Beartooth Pass between Yellowstone and Red Lodge, Montana have made us pretty smug about experiencing scenery, but the vistas all along our Colorado excursion are more varied and at least as spectacular.

The room at the lodge in Mesa Verde was barely adequate, but the dining room was rich and beautiful and the menu has rightly earned rave reviews. We got up the morning after our arrival to a breakfast of cold burritos at a nearby visitor center and boarded a bus for our ranger led tour of the park. Ranger Dave, he of the acting up allergies and scratchy voice, did a yeoman's job of filling us in on park trivia. He told us the story of the tourist who wanted to know why the ruins were built so far from the road and then waited for us to laugh appreciatively, just like all the other busloads of visitors surely have been laughing at the same line for years. There was the other good one about the tourist who wanted to know at what altitude a deer becomes an elk. In between these bursts of ranger humor was lots of great information about the dwellings and a memorable walk through Cliff Palace.

After we were all deposited back at our pick up point, Kathie and I jumped in our trusty little Infiniti--it is more fun to drive without the kayak on top--and drove the five hours to Santa Fe where would hook up with the Garlands the next day.

This was our third time to Santa Fe, but the first where we would spend more than one or two nights. It wasn't until this trip that I understood why so many of my friends love spending time there. There were all those wonderful breakfasts at La Fonda, and Tia Sophia's, and The Teahouse, and Cafe Pasqual's. The dinners at La Fonda and Cafe Pasqual's and some other places that were good, but not in the same league. Lunch at The Compound broke up a wonderful stroll down Canyon Drive lined with one great gallery after another.

On Monday and Wednesday evenings we went to the opera: Faust and then La Boheme. Mephistopheles was so likable that I smiled every time he opened up his big bass voice. Gounod's adaptation admittedly thinned out the complexities of Goethe's masterwork, but the music was a lot better. And then came La Boheme on our last night. I suspect a true opera aficionado is supposed to look down his nose a bit at the way Puccini's accessible melodies have wormed their way into popular culture. They have become the default music for anything denoting doomed love. But I was overwhelmed and the tears started flowing half way through Rodolfo's first aria in Act I. Both evenings flew by and we are currently figuring out how we can manage to go back next August for the next opera season.

The whole trip was characterized by juxtaposition. The ancient dwellings of the Anasazi (now called Ancestral Pueblans because Anasazi is no longer politically correct) next to the jutting lines and angles of The Crosby Theater. The inadequate room in Mesa Verde next to the sumptuousness of our Diamond Resort in Santa Fe. The heavy metal band playing in the Plaza just across from the cathedral, the one that I can't walk into without weeping. And of course the classy restaurants around the plaza and on Canyon Road next to the Number Three Extra Value Meal I had in Trinidad on the way back to Denver.