The Lost Lessons of Art

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

This is something I think about often. This great river of American soulfulness, from Anne Hutchinson to Henry Thoreau to Sojourner Truth to Margaret Fuller to Fats Waller to Bob Dylan to William Carlos Williams to William Faulkner to Janis Joplin…why are our politicians so blind and deaf to the gifts these artists bring to us? Why do they want to reduce life [to] some kind of shadow life, a life in which everything but their own power or pursuit of power is without meaning?

Glenn W. Smith, Brief Note From Nashville on the Soul, www.firedoglake.com

There’s a wall in Washington
And it’s made of cold black granite
They say 60,000 names are etched there in it
In that wall in Washington

Iris DeMent, There’s a Wall in Washington

I don’t often think about the link – or lack thereof – between art and politics, but when I read Mr. Smith’s comment yesterday morning I immediately realized that he was making an extremely cogent point. He raises a fundamental question about American politics that is worthy of our collective consideration: Why, when we have such a deep historical well of intellectual acuity and passion for the arts, are our politics so singularly shallow?

There is clearly something about the American electoral process that enhances already overly aggrandized egos and convinces the bearer thereof that he or she is truly God’s gift to the people. What egomania! If anyone in America – anyone other than an American presidential candidate, that is – announced publicly that they had been chosen by God to undertake a particular endeavor, they would be closely examined by those around them for signs of whether they ought to be committed for observation. American politicians don’t seem to comprehend that they are of the people and that it is the people that give the gift of office to them.

I suppose it isn’t universally true that all politicians are dumber than a post; it just seems that way much of the time. Watching politics these days is not an intellectual exercise. It is, instead, the equivalent of watching Entertainment Tonight – a shallow, gossipy extravaganza which peers into a murky world of so-called glamour populated by folks neither you nor I would ever remotely consider inviting to a sit down meal in our own homes. If someone can stomach the spectacle, it is probably because there is a certain depraved fascination in watching the truly disgusting say truly despicable things about matters of which they lack any real knowledge or understanding. It is the real life equivalent of watching maggots work.

And, yet, these are the people that govern us and adopt our laws. And whose fault is it that they do so? Us, of course, because we elect them.

The real irony of this fact is that many of the people who elect these folks also find abiding pleasure in music, in painting, in dance, and in theater. In these venues and in other art forms, spectators are challenged by artists to use their minds and imagination and reflect upon the wider world from the unique perspective of the involved medium. While the sorts of questions posed by artists are often those without obvious answers or, perhaps, even answers at all, the process of considering the challenges they pose is vitally important to our understanding of how things work and of humanity’s place in a scheme of things grander than that of human commerce, culture or politics. In fact, most who patronize the arts do so for the very reason that it broadens perspectives and challenges the intellect.

More to the issue at hand is that in the performance or presentation of any art form and the audience’s reaction to that presentation or performance lies a deep emotional passion for things profound and sustaining. We listen to music because it helps us transcend the moment; we listen to music because it makes us think past the mundane; we listen to music because it makes us joyful or, at least, lessens a moment of pain; we listen to music because it takes us somewhere we aren’t, somewhere we cannot attain without the assistance of rhythm and melody. This transformative power is not unique to music and is shared by all art forms, but somehow we seem only to allow that transformation to abide the moment of interaction.

Why are we unable to translate the values we glean from interaction with the arts into an on-going practical political reality that will nourish, rather than entertain or appall, us? If we had the answer to this question, we might avert much of the excess that comes from putting the simple-minded in positions of power. Perhaps we put the simple-minded in such positions simply because they are so simple. Life is, after all, a complex equation, and politicians attack it with a comprehensive single-mindedness that seems to prove attractive to those of us unable to cope with the seeming chaos of complexity.

If we had truly learned the lesson contained in Iris DeMent’s There’s a Wall in Washington, could we have avoided the current mess in Iraq and Afghanistan?

If we had truly learned the lesson contained in Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, could we consider someone as a serious candidate for President who believes waterboarding is “an enhanced interrogation technique” (all current Republican candidates, except Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul, recently endorsed waterboarding )?

Maybe if we take the time to consider the meaning of these lines from T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, we can come to the collective realization that leadership ought to be earned and not conferred just because some simpleton believes he or she was called by God to exercise power over the rest of us:

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Or, maybe we won’t take that time and we will acquire additional fodder and additional wasted lives to fuel future ruminations on the subject.

Posted in Politicians and Other Lower Life Forms, Words and Music | Comments Off on The Lost Lessons of Art

Freedom from Manipulation

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

I looked at my watch, which goes very well, and found that it was but six o’clock; and still thinking it something extraordinary that the sun should rise so early, I looked into the almanac, where I found it to be the hour given for his rising on that day. I looked forward, too, and found he was to rise still earlier every day till towards the end of June; and that at no time in the year he retarded his rising so long as till eight o’clock. Your readers, who with me have never seen any signs of sunshine before noon, and seldom regard the astronomical part of the almanac, will be as much astonished as I was, when they hear of his rising so early; and especially when I assure them, that he gives light as soon as he rises. I am convinced of this. I am certain of my fact. One cannot be more certain of any fact. I saw it with my own eyes. And, having repeated this observation the three following mornings, I found always precisely the same result.

Benjamin Franklin, An Economical Project

Yesterday was the first day of Winter.

While I realize that the calendar says otherwise, the truth, for a working person, is that the end of daylight savings is the true beginning of seasonal darkness. For now is the time of year when I both leave and arrive home in darkness and view daylight mainly from the other side of my office window. I do get out now and then during a working day for lunch or for errands, but, from here on, my main exposure to what remains of Fall will be on weekends.

It is too bad it is so, for Fall in Humptulips County has arrived at that magical moment when the trees are tantalizingly transparent: many leaves have fallen to form heavy drifts of fallen clothing, but enough remain so that the internal skeleton of trunk, limb and twig is seductively semi-revealed. Now is the time to savor the exuberance of Fall by walking beneath the remaining canopy, absorbing the musty air, and listening to the ever present rustling of dried leaves.

We are on the cusp of Winter. Either the next storm or the one following will strip the trees bare and Fall will expire in a festival of organic decay. In a few weeks, the glory of Fall will remain only in the smell of musk that will last until the fallen leaves are finally absorbed into the wet and mud of pre-Winter storms and in the fury of those storms. The joys of this impending part of Fall are not for the fair-weather admirers of color, but for the stouthearted hikers who appreciate the storms of late Fall as nature’s mechanism to clean the air and prepare the ground for Winter.

Fall’s exuberant declamation of color is just about to metamorphosize into the spare simplicity of light and delicate tracery of Winter and I will miss much of that transformation here on the other side of my glass. Living in canyons of concrete and steel, I will fall into the trap of warmth which lies within these walls and miss the power of the coming storms. I will miss the howling of the wind and the pelting of the rain – and probably feel some relief for having done so. But a part of me would much rather be outside on a country lane, well protected by coat and hat, savoring the power of the elements.

And so I reluctantly have turned back my clock, for not to do so would sever the necessary synchronization of human commerce. But as I look at this year’s calendar I now realize that I can begin a countdown of days. For a year from now I will be leaving the shelter of these office walls for the blessings of retirement, one of which will be the enjoyment of the storms of late Fall during the daylight hours then restored to me.

I am more than tempted to mount poster board on my office walls and strike through the passing days until the time comes when I no longer dance to the rhythm of commerce, but only to the rhythm of nature. I look forward to my impending freedom from the tyranny of man’s annual manipulation of the clock.

Posted in Our Place in the Firmament | Comments Off on Freedom from Manipulation

The Myth of the Rear View Mirror

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

And there are more I remember
And more I could mention
Than words I could write in a song
But I feel them watching
And I see them laughing
And I hear them singing along

Lyle Lovett, Family Reserve, Joshua Judges Ruth

Periodically, I find myself remembering my high school days and wondering where everyone I then knew has gone and what they might have been doing during the intervening years. This process has a certain unfailing rhythm: I spend a day or so trying to track down persons with whom I have lost touch and who played some role in my life back then, only subsequently to wonder why I have been wasting my time doing so after coming (once again) to the realization that the only certain thing we then had in common was that we were all captives of our genealogy and the same small town.

We all seem to have some level of fascination with our youth. In some ways, such a fascination seems inevitable: in the restricted view of the rear view mirror, youth was a time of relative ease whose adolescent cares now seem superficial, in retrospect its time seems elastic, and it had a future untainted by our present knowledge. Why not remember those days with a fondness tinged with a sense of ”what if” or the more draconian ”if only”? After all, the glass in the rear view mirror is far from perfectly cast and its resulting physical distortions might only enrich memory at the expense of life’s present realities.

A day or so of wallowing in such memory is all I can usually stand. I eventually realize that some person from the past upon whom I have become sufficiently fixated to spend time searching his or her whereabouts was, in truth, much more of an acquaintance than a true friend. I eventually come to the realization that my teenage cognitive powers were singularly impaired by lack of worldly experience and an excess of glandular enthusiasm. In short, what I really know about most of these folks is so trivial as to amount to no measurable knowledge whatsoever and for me to imagine that we might have something in common after almost 50 years is nothing more than a giant leap of faith.

Once I reach this point in the cycle, I turn again to the future and my mantra of “don’t look back; look forward”. I heartily believe in this mantra and have found many an occasion to chant it during a long life. Fascination with the past seems to me to have little to offer for the future: hurtful experiences in the past can only continue their harm through the practice of continual reminiscence; glorification of the past inevitably detracts from the blessings of the present by obscuring those blessings through the lens of wishful thinking; a constant, sharp backward focus causes stumbling by distracting us from the realities of the present.

To every mantra, of course, there are exceptions. I do have longstanding friends from those days whom I know well due to the knowledge acquired over the long intervening years. With these friends, our long ago youth formed the basis for a long adult relationship and we can look back together on our shared past with humor rather than longing.

Similarly, events of my past had, and some cases may still have, lessons to teach me in the context of the present. This is particularly true of the joyless events that come with every life which, because of their inherent angst, can only be profited from by lessons learned well. While I have always worked hard to learn those lessons in order to avoid similar pitfalls or pratfalls, I sometimes find that either there was more to be learned than I was first aware of or that I didn’t learn their lessons as well as I might have. In either case, I have to be taught by them again.

But reminiscence is not all bad if done occasionally and without regret for where you presently stand on life’s road to an unknowable future. This is especially true of reminiscence done with a sense of humor, for if you share with others a common understanding of the concept of “imperfection”, you can laugh together over the unique or shared foibles and pratfalls of long lives.

The occasion for this entry is the realization that in two short years I will be faced with the decision of whether or not to attend a fifty year high school reunion. This was brought home by a recent Facebook posting made by a Facebook “friend” – a woman I now realize I have long known but little know. How could I? She still lives in the small Eastern Washington town where I grew up, and our paths parted sometime during that last, far off Summer following our high school graduation. While I have no reason to think anything other than that she is a charming, well-educated, professionally successful woman, I have no real understanding of who she has become in her passage through the well of experience or of what those experiences might have been. The same is equally true of our respective knowledge of our fellow classmates – or of her understanding of me.

Reunions have never been an important part of my life and I usually refuse to attend them. I might well choose to miss this one, but in contemplating that choice I am reminded of the singular lesson learned from my fortieth law school reunion about which I have written elsewhere on this blog. But since this choice lies in my future, I will simply have to cross that bridge when, or if, it presents itself. At this point on my road, I must look forward, not back.

I have once again arrived at the point of understanding that I can never see the past clearly through the imperfections of the rear view mirror, and I choose not to spend more time today focused upon those long ago years. For I truly believe that it is only in starlight that we can see and appreciate a singular past with any real clarity, and, even then, we can only see as much of that past as the exigencies of distance, time, space and earthly serendipity allow.

Posted in Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on The Myth of the Rear View Mirror

My Indian Summer

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!

Robert Louis Stevenson, Autumn Fires, A Child’s Garden of Verses

Fall is currently on full display in Humptulips County, turning country roads into dark silky ribbons wound through leafy fire, distant hills into patchwork quilts of otherworldly design, and the quality of the light into what must undoubtedly be the visual equivalent of the scent of musk. Winter is but a distant rumor in these days of Indian Summer, colors running roughshod over the nip of day by providing the same sort of internal warmth as suggested by the mere prospect of a cup of hot chocolate on a bleak Winter’s afternoon.

Despite lowered temperatures, I walk abroad in Autumn’s glory wearing only a light coat simply because its fires ignite my imagination and keep me warm. Fall’s warmth springs somehow from my endless curiosity about the tension between its all-too-evident vibrancy and its flagrant foreshadowing of death and decay. Its fires allow for pleasant contemplation of things simultaneously inevitable, incomprehensible and mysterious; things that lie beyond the reach of the senses I presently enjoy.

Since its rampant display is the annual preamble to Winter’s endless variations upon the panoplies of gray, I am wholly unable to comprehend the deep sense of satisfaction which Fall engenders in me. I began this piece with hope that I might shed light upon that mystery; I end it somehow knowing that only in Fall can I wallow in Nature’s sensuality without a worry or a care for my impending rest, but with the certain conviction that something of value surely lies ahead.

 

Posted in Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on My Indian Summer

The Artist At Play And Work

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

William Carlos WIlliams, The Red Wheelbarrow

We spent this weekend on Whidbey Island with our friends, Tom and Carrie. The trip became a thoroughly enjoyable weekend with dear friends – lunch in Coupeville, a visit to Langley and its shops – but was originally intended as a thank you from Tom and Carrie for a recent purchase we made. As these trips often do, it became so much more.

Tom and Carrie are our best friends. We have spent a good deal of time with them over the years and have come to know them well through the practice of practical jokes, home and restaurant dinners or lunches, long after-dinner conversations, the sharing of family and acquaintances, and the enjoyment of mutual friends in all of the above settings. In short, they are the kind of friends one doesn’t find easily and cherishes all the more because of the difficulty.

The secret of our friendship with Tom and Carrie and with the other couples who share in that friendship (Ken and Jan; Bob and Estelle) lies in Tom’s passion. It is Tom’s passion that brought all of us together in the first instance. For Tom is a regular guy with an extraordinary gift. Tom is an internationally known watercolor artist whose personal humility is in inverse proportion to the exceptional brilliance of his work.

The genesis of our weekend trip was our purchase of one of Tom’s paintings of the Fort Casey lighthouse. Tom has painted the lighthouse more than once, each time selecting a different aspect of the building and the play of light along its lines. By way of a thank you, Tom and Carrie wanted us to enjoy a communal visit to the lighthouse which has been lovingly restored by volunteers.

As always when we spend time with Tom and Carrie we are blessed by the friendship – the humor, the sharing of small intimacies, the joy of seeing things in a fresh light, the pleasure of adult conversation and not-so-adult humor. But field trips are always special because the level of sharing is always elevated by the application of Tom’s unique passion. Tom’s ability to see things in his special way makes everyone around him see things more clearly and to see beauty where it might otherwise be missed.

Watching Tom “see” whatever Tom sees is a pleasure in and of itself. He becomes at times a pointer – still, staring, focused, and alone in a world of light and angles that only he can truly comprehend. I have become better over the years at anticipating what he might eventually produce from these shared experiences, but I am never completely free from surprise that what he saw was so much more than I was able to see in a shared moment.

Such is the artistic process. It is simultaneously a mechanical process of appreciation of the many variations of light and color, a mysterious ability to transform the ordinary into something symbolic, and the uncanny ability to capture and quantify the ineffability of emotion. While I never completely comprehend how Tom does what he does, I never tire of watching him at work and trying to anticipate what he might produce. Watching Tom at work is as close to the sublime art of creation as I am likely to come.

Tom is always at work, even while at play. He cannot help himself. I suspect the artistic process owns him as much as he is its master. At several points during the lighthouse visit, Tom strayed off on his own and stood staring at what only Tom can see – his mind composing and considering angles, themes, and ideas while simultaneously listening to the messages of long dead builders being transmitted by a non-sentient building.

His gift is not constrained to the product of human creation. I have seen this process at work with living things as well. Once, while walking with Tom on a forest path deep in conversation over the trivial, I suddenly discovered that our conversation had become one-sided because he had become entrapped and mesmerized by messages being sent by a fallen leaf. On beach walks, he is often caught by a discarded feather. I have learned to wait out such moments, for he will inevitably return and resume our conversation where we left off as if the hiatus had never occurred. When I try to locate what he is focused upon in his trance, I can usually identify the subject matter but remain unable to understand the message he sees and hears until some weeks or months later when I am privileged to see, and be wholly surprised by, a painting inspired by that very moment.

I, in turn, can easily be mesmerized by Tom’s work. I can hear sounds, sense smells, and feel the grittiness of nature and life – things that no paint brush can actually apply to canvas; things that a completed painting can only hint at and which are only brought out through the viewer’s interaction with it.

In his great poem Paterson, William Carlos Williams says that the final product of any creative process is nothing more than the ashes of the fire of inspiration. I suppose this is true from the artist’s point of view, but for the rest of us those ashes are all that we are privileged to appreciate and what we often struggle to comprehend. In doing so, we don’t usually focus upon the agony of the artist’s creative process (and that it is a form of agony, I have little doubt); we focus, instead, upon our own interaction with the completed work – with the message that a completed reflection (in Tom’s case, a painting; in Williams’ case, a poem) of an ineffable something sends to us: a message taken from the inspiration that an object or an experience gave to the artist; a message distilled from that inspiration by the artist’s creativity and choice of medium; and, finally, a message diluted by our own creative interaction with the artist’s completed work product.

And so it is that a weekend in Humptulips County with an artist was so much more – a chance to experience the external manifestations of the creative process at work. While I can only guess at Tom’s mental processes, I could observe their physical manifestations and wonder at the internal processes that drove them. It is inevitable that whatever painting Tom might produce from this weekend’s visit will surprise me despite my ability to have seen him at the beginning of its creation, for the surprise lies in what his mind will eventually make of the information he was processing last Saturday.

I fully suspect that Tom will be as surprised at his final work product as I will be, for the joy of any creative process is in the unexpected form of its aftermath.

In his other life, Tom is known as Thomas William Jones. Anyone interested in his work can find a sample of it here: http://www.ajkollar.com/artists/artist.php?artistID=148. To truly appreciate Tom’s work, make an appointment at the Kollar gallery and go see it in person – nothing else suffices.

So this is my thank you to Tom and Carrie for a wonderful weekend in Humptulips County. I hope for the joy and beauty of many more. I am grateful for our friendship.

Posted in Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on The Artist At Play And Work

The Life Force

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

TANNER: No, a thousand times no: hot water is the revolutionist’s element. You clean men as you clean milkpails, by scalding them.

ANN: Cold water has its uses too. It’s healthy.

TANNER: [despairingly] Oh, you are witty: at the supreme moment the Life Force endows you with every quality. Well, I too can be a hypocrite. Your father’s will appointed me your guardian, not your suitor. I shall be faithful to my trust.

ANN: [low siren tones] He asked me who would I have as my guardian before he made that will. I chose you!

TANNER: The will is yours then! The trap was laid from the beginning.

ANN: [concentrating all her magic] From the beginning— from our childhood—for both of us—by the Life Force.

George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

Two weeks ago, in the final throes of the Summer that Humptulips County didn’t have, I sat outside, alone, on our back patio admiring the flower garden Helen has planted there. As the heat drained from the day and the evening descended into twilight, I enjoyed their color, their graceful dance in the light breeze, and their perfume. In the moments prior to my return indoors, I was struck by the inherent contradiction of flowers: the fragile beauty inherent in their wispy petals and wondrously pliant stems when compared to the strength of the mysterious force that impels them, annually, to be and to bloom.

Upon further reflection, it strikes me that all life is similar to that manifested so elegantly by flowers: fragile, in the inability of an individual living thing to stand up for long to a determined adversary intent upon its destruction or to an immovable object placed unluckily in its path; collectively strong and determined in each species’ will to survive, such that the death of one, single life will not doom the species. Indeed, the death of an entire species cannot prevent the life force, itself, from continuing to manifest itself in its myriad, mysterious ways. For each living thing – each flower, each person, each life, each filum – is nothing more than a temporary medium by which the life force moves just that much further toward whatever goal it may seek.

I first realized this truth watching my youngest son, who was born almost three months prematurely, in his incubator struggling for the life that he so obviously demanded and, eventually, claimed.

Peter will be be 29 this year and no longer fits into the palm of my hand as he did at birth. It was two weeks into his two month stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the University of Washington Hospital that we were told that “he might live”. For two months, we could only watch his survival struggle and encourage him by touch and voice and give him whatever support our twice daily visits had to offer. In the end, he survived only because he was determined to do so; he survived because that tiny fragment of the life force which dwells peculiarly within him was too strong to be denied by the forces then arrayed against it.

The life force persists in total ignorance of the many, heated arguments about why it exists, who or what created it, or what its destiny might be. It has no independent obligation to understand itself or its destiny. Its sole obligation is to persevere, a task at which it is supremely capable and competent. The tools it wields are a wholly mysterious ability to quicken matter coupled with an indomitable will – a will to be or, perhaps, a will to become.

Fascination with the life force stems from this last discrepancy. Is the struggle for survival an end unto itself, or is there a destination to which the life force is slowly meandering? And, if the latter, what role does each form of life play in its grand design and why must some species consume others in order to participate and survive?

Humanity has been intently focused on this conundrum throughout its entire existence. For much of its presence upon earth, humanity’s fascination with this issue has been entirely self-absorbed and human-centric and has created at least as much ill (some in the form of true evil) as it has good. Humanity spends far too much of its time thundering about whose God is bigger, stronger, more powerful, or speaks a more correct or pure “Truth”. In humanity’s pursuit of an answer to the meaning of life, it has created far more demons than Samaritans, far more belligerence than understanding, and far more death by means of war and mutual hostility than is good for the continuation of any species. In short, humanity is, seemingly, far from being the ideal vessel by which the life force can move onward.

And, yet, it too survives – at least for the moment and perhaps for the future if it, as a species, can remain clever, inventive and adaptive.

In comparison to humanity’s incessant thunder and lightning, I much prefer the survival methodology of flowers: the furthering of whatever goals the life force seeks by a periodic display of beauty seemingly intended as the leavening in the temporary struggle of each individual to survive.

As a species, humanity has much to learn from its fellow travelers (whether sentient in ways we comprehend or otherwise) on the life force’s meandering path – and the very first thing many of us ought to learn is that we have all sorts of fellow travelers from which to seek inspiration.

Posted in Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on The Life Force

The Paranoia of Double Dip Death

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Eliot Mentor

Many definitions come with ambiguity. Others with a built-in rigidity.

Take the word “recession.”

One definition of that word is “two quarters of negative GDP growth.” In plain English, that means two quarters of “economic decline.” A somewhat different view comes from the National Bureau of Economic Research which now has the last word.

Having defined “recession,” the experts picked a date for the commencement of the recent economic embarrassment. Some say it began in late 2007. Others say the date was sometime in April 2008. It makes no difference. The pain was the same.

Having believed that they could say what a recession was and when it began, they also believed they could declare when it ended. The recession, they concluded, ended in June of 2009.

Believe that, if you will.

More recently, journalists, media commentators and economists have shattered our meager confidence by suggesting that the sky might fall again. None, however, explicitly says “the sky may soon fall again.” What do they say? Their words forecast a possible “double dip recession.”

Reliance on the word “recession has led to the point where the very thought of that word, and its corollary “double dip,” now dominates all market-generated decisions — whether to buy a new HD television, hire more employees, produce more of whatever it is a business produces, buy or sell stocks and bonds and on and on flowing into every crack and crevice of our economy.

A simpler word, one in common usage and where reliance on experts was not the key to understanding, would have served us better.

If instead of “recession,” the economy had been described as being in a “slump,” most folks could have related what they knew to what the experts said. Economists, government spokesman and the media, however, told us that there had been a “recession,” and then they said it was over. We believed them. When the sirens began singing a “double dip” death chant, we believed that, too. The result has been lack of confidence by consumers, uncertainty in the business community and volatility of unbelievable proportions in the securities markets. One day we are asked to believe the economy may be improving. The next that “double dip death” is at the door.

The real skinny is that the economy went into a “slump” sometime, maybe in late 2007 or early 2008 — when is not important —and it’s still in a “slump.”

If a big hitter drops from a .300 batting average to .200, we say he’s in a “slump.” The next time he hits a double, the sports writers don’t write that his “slump” is over. Everyone waits. Will he hit another double? Maybe even a couple of singles? Sports writers don’t speculate on whether the player may have a “double dip slump.” What they write makes no difference about whether he hits or strikes out next time at bat.

What the economists, government leaders and journalists say and put into their columns, however, matters greatly. Their statements have a major impact on our decisions, on how we behave, what and when we buy, if businesses hire and how we invest. The word “recession” and its corollary “double dip” have had too much influence.

Face it. We’re in a slump. We don’t need a technical definition to send us off on fools’ errands when we have twenty-five million under- and unemployed workers, countless homes in foreclosure or candidates for that process, markets that are highly volatile and investors and consumers lacking confidence. It’s like what Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography: you can’t define it, but you “know it when you see it.” The men and women in the streets know we’re in a slump. When we’re out of it, they’ll know it, too.

As Lyndon Johnson put it in 1965: “… fear of a recession can contribute to the fact of a recession.”

Stated differently, words move markets.

.

Posted in Civics | Comments Off on The Paranoia of Double Dip Death

Making Remembrance Count

Posted on September 10, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

The tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks is upon us, and I find myself vividly recalling that moment. Each of us has our own story of where we were, who we were with, and the horror we felt that Summer morning. This piece is not about my story, as it is not remarkable in any sense except to me. It is, rather, about the curious aftermath of 9/11.

Two things strike me about the first two or three months that followed the events of 9/11. First, it was as if there was a great greasy pall of grief lying heavily over the world. You didn’t have to be a New Yorker to feel the pain. You didn’t have to be a United States citizen or resident to feel the pain. To feel the pain you simply had to be a human being with the barest modicum of empathy for others. It was one of the few times in my life where almost everyone truly seemed to be citizens of the planet, undivided by artificial political boundaries or other distinguishing factors. The horror of a deliberate, senseless act of intentional evil caught live as it happened, and the endless broadcast replays that followed, had the positive result of making most rational people believe in the essential kinship of all humanity.

The second thing that strikes me about the aftermath is how united Americans were during those months. For a brief time, we had common cause and shared goals. For a brief time, we could talk to one another as if we truly were long standing neighbors speaking casually over a backyard fence about things of mutual interest or need. For a brief time, we worried together, prayed together, hoped together, began to plan together, began to take heart together and worked with common cause. Even our politicians sang together on the Capitol steps in a sort of Orwellian opera.

It took tragedy to make it happen. It took only moments to rip it apart.

Instead of building on the gift of togetherness that the 9/11 tragedy gave to us and creating something culturally unique within humanity’s chronicles, we proceeded, as rapidly as we could, to toss the gift away as if it were a hot potato or some form of worthless trash. We have placed ourselves so distantly from the gift that we turned planning about the means of reparations for the families of the 9/11 victims into venues of dispute and ill will. Despite the long history of religious tolerance upon which this country was founded, we took it upon ourselves to castigate entire belief systems for the actions of a few. We turned discussions about the establishment of memorials to the 9/11 fallen into occasions of mistrust, vile thoughts, and nasty hostility.

Ten years on, we are as segregated a people as I have known at any time in my life. I am not speaking about race when I use the word “segregation”, and I have chosen the word carefully. In 2011, we are a people segregated by political affiliation, by wealth, by religion, by heritage, by the possession of a job or the lack thereof, by having or not having things, and, yes, by the very color of our skins. Ours is not a separation born of bigotry (although the bigots and zealots are in full cry, for these are the sorts of times when they thrive); ours is a separation born, instead, of our respective world views, our respective Weltanschauung.

Never have I lived in a time of such palpable division, when each “adherent” to a cause, purpose or simple condition of nature distrusts, dislikes and, yes, even hates his or her antithesis – or, for that matter, anyone who simply looks somewhat askance in his or her general direction. Never have I lived in a time so lacking in the virtues of mutual understanding and tolerance.

There is nothing new to the idea that people belong in various groupings defined by interest, achievement level, physical attributes, beliefs or any other form of demarcation one can contemplate. In ordinary times, any single individual can live a patchwork life as a member of varying groups of one kind or another. In ordinary times, each of us does our “thing”, and moves within a diverse society sampling of the variety of its offerings and feeling enriched by doing so.

What is new in 2011 is the open animosity that exists between political groupings and the virulence and zealotry of their respective membership. It is as if many of these groupings are tribal units defined by blood rather than by belief. Red states hate blue states and vice versa, with neither color’s membership giving any significant thought to why they bear their appointed label, choosing only to wear it with pride.

The damage done by 9/11 was not limited to the loss of the Twin Towers or the 3,000 lives taken that day. The fear inspired by the 9/11 attacks created a climate in which animosity, hatred, bigotry, and thuggery could flourish, and, consequently, the victims of 9/11 include civility, tolerance, and the ability to listen introspectively and learn from others of differing persuasion. While our ability to self-govern had been coming into question prior to 9/11, it clearly took a major hit during post-9/11 times to the point now when our elected leaders are not only unable to govern, they take pride in their very inability by claiming partisanship as a virtue.

Our behavior since 9/11 has been such that it is almost as if we wanted al Qaeda to triumph.

It is not a time to assign blame for our post 9/11 failures, as there is more than enough to go around and that game leads only to further division. It is, however, a time for us to be collectively ashamed and to consider the value of what we have lost as a result of our societal failure to continue the knitting together that characterized those short few months following 9/11. We should have gotten our revenge on the 9/11 attackers by strengthening the American melting pot, rather than bowing to their will by falling into a morass of disunion.

We used to be strong and our strength came from our diversity. We are now significantly weaker and that weakness comes from our segregation. Segregation is the antithesis of diversity: at the heart of diversity is a collective joy in the creativity of all humanity as a species as shown by the varied ways in which people navigate the time between birth and death; at the heart of segregation lies the basic fear of the unknown and the different with which each human is hardwired.

We have confused selfishness for individualism in that we speak and act as if the collective put down of others is an expression of individualism. To me, the concept of “rugged individualism” means that you must not only have the courage to be the self you wish to become, you must also have the courage to honor others seeking to do the same. To me, ”rugged individualism” cannot include the collective cowardice inherent in groups attempting to blame others for their own failings – the same kind of cowardice that, taken to an extreme, allowed the ideological masterminds of the 9/11 attack to sit safely within their remote caves of cultural supremacy, while allowing their minions to take the lives of so many innocents along with their own.

In short, we have reverted to a form of tribalism born of suspicion and fear and have forgotten how to best consider the collective good.

There are quiet voices urging that we find the courage to return to a society based upon broad-based civility and mutual respect, and it is time for those voices to sing out as loudly as they can. In doing so, they could do no better than to sing the words of Eric Bibb:

“I got my own list of questions, got my own truth to live,
Got my own hand-made gifts, that I’m longin’ to give
Got my own star to follow, my own rivers to cross
In my own time

Got my own way of talkin’, got my own way to smile,
Got my own way of walkin’, my own look and style.
Got my own way of prayin’, my very own way to sing

Still, I’m connected, to you, and every one and every thing”*

Imagine what might happen if all those politicians returned to the Capitol steps and sang that in unison!

* Connected, music and lyrics by Eric Bibb

Posted in Civics | Comments Off on Making Remembrance Count

The Gods of Summer

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Gavin Stevens

Summer evenings on our Humptulips County farm are my favorite time of year. Since I live sufficiently far from work and its attendant stress, by the time I arrive home each Summer evening I feel as if I am on vacation at a remote mountain cabin or some other out-of-the-way place. The work/home switch in my mind has flipped during my drive home, and, except in extraordinary circumstances, work no longer intrudes.

My greatest pleasure on Summer evenings is sitting on our front porch watching evening’s shadows lengthen, stretch, commingle and eventually knit themselves into night. Twilight is the sweetest part of this process, for it’s then that the first mysteries of the night begin to make themselves felt and heard: the light is sufficient for sight, yet dim enough to fool the eyes and make each odd movement equally a matter of vision and of imagination.

Summer evenings are a restful process which is promotive of the contemplation of larger issues than those we face on an every day basis. Sounds are muted, vision is reduced, and the smells of a warm day cooling into night are paramount. It is at such times that thoughts of the infinite seem appropriate and non-threatening. As the sky rolls away and the heavens open, I can easily transport my thoughts to the nearest star or puzzle over the eternal riddle of our existence.

Yet on Summer nights, I often wonder about gods. There is something in the ancient traditions of multiple gods that appeals to me, and I often wonder whether those of us of monotheistic faith have lost something important. In so saying, I am not lamenting the loss of the larger, dramatic gods of antiquity, such as those that lived on Mt. Olympus or in the fjords of Scandinavia and celebrated war, love, jealousy and other basic human emotions. To the contrary, it is the smaller gods I miss – the creeping god of the forested land behind our house, the rustling god of our pastures where the field mice hold sway at night, the bubbling, laughing god of the distant creek, and the flying god at roost somewhere among the pines that line our driveway. I can almost conjure these small gods into full existence on quiet Summer evenings, but my beliefs are so entrapped by modern thought that these gods no longer voluntarily make themselves visible to me. Instead, I must rest content with mere rumors and hints of their possibility.

On such Summer nights, I wonder what it is that mankind has lost to the trappings of civilization. Since I never lived in a time when a belief in magic was considered rational, I cannot be completely certain about what we who live in these times are missing, but I am convinced that it is something of immense size and importance. On Summer nights I can hear the remnants of whatever-god-it-might-have-been rustling in the hidden places of our farm, in the underbrush and in the branches of the pines, as if it were trying to communicate its continuing existence to the larger mysteries living overhead amid the interstices of the stars – the larger mysteries that mock our ongoing failure to understand all that the darker reaches of the heavens might contain or, perhaps, mean, just as whatever-god-it-might-have-been mocks our continuing lack of appreciation for the earth that nourishes us.

And so it is that a Summer evening passes slowly and wonderfully into night. As I rise to go to my bed on such an evening, I do so with the certainty that the coming of the following morning will reveal the lengthy shadows on our grass disengaging from the night into their separate constituencies, only to shrink into the heat of Noon until they reappear, in reverse, upon the advent of tomorrow’s nightfall.

I am as certain as I can be that such a marvelous, mysterious and seemingly eternal cycle can only result from magic wielded by gods.

 

Posted in Our Place in the Firmament, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on The Gods of Summer

On Education and Money

Posted on June 29, 2011 by C. (Gaius) Charles

“Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”
Will Durant

The funny thing about education is that sometimes one doesn’t realize the value of it until the moment is long gone. Oftentimes, it has taken me several years to realize the value of something that I was taught long ago – not because age carries with it wisdom, but because often, it takes encountering something in a different light in order to realize its worth.

But our nation’s educational institutions are in a funny spot – for all the value they provide, they must somehow sustain themselves such that they can continue to provide that value and the learning experiences necessary for future moments of discovery. After serving on the enrollment coordination committee in college, I find myself in something of a unique position to understand this, since often, the gut reaction of the populace is that education should – sometimes must, regardless of who suffers as a result – be free. Often, what these discussions entirely miss out on is that our educational institutions have to have some sort of income to survive, and the amount of income they need is directly related to how much support that institution receives from various sources. Another of my alma maters, the University of Washington, currently contemplates one of the most significant tuition hikes in its history.

As a public institution, I can say that the University of Washington has served me well; it educated me, kept me fed by way of a chain of student assistant positions, and generally provided me with a strong foundation I needed in order to pursue what I wanted to do with my life. It is with a good deal of distress, then, that I find an uproar against that very same institution for trying simply to survive. In an era where state support is constantly being reduced and alumni/ae donations are something that can no longer be counted on as a strong source of revenue, the University is forced to make up for losses by using the only other strong financial tool in its arsenal: tuition. Danny Westneat, writing for the Seattle Times, gives probably one of the best summations of the situation I’ve seen to date:

Today, it’s all about market solutions, not public benefits. Voters demand it. In Congress they’re even talking about privatizing Medicare. We’re apparently no more willing to pay extra for health care for seniors than we are for college educations, so in lieu the answer is to run it all like a business.

OK, done. People this week are asking why their public university jilted them. But it was the other way around.

– “UW gives us what we asked for“, April 5, 2011

It is quite true that colleges must adjust their tuition in times like these in order to survive. By my observations, they are extremely calculating about exactly how many in-state versus out-of-state students can be accepted in order to make up for any revenue shortfalls, either forecast or actual. Often, the balance ends up tipped towards out-of-state students because they simply pay more. That results in the in-state students being handed something of a dilemma: delay entry to four-year collegiate institutions, become an out-of-state student themselves and pay higher tuition elsewhere, or simply don’t go to college at all. Are all combinations of this situation a travesty? No. Is it bad that someone might decide not to go to a four-year college because of increased tuition, attend a community college, get an associates’ degree, and be perfectly happy with the job they land as a result? No. Is it a travesty that the citizenry cannot seem to make the mental leap from lessened public support to increased tuition without crying bloody murder and falsely accusing the institution when they should look in the mirror? Absolutely. They have made their bed – they must now sleep in it.

What perhaps most disturbed me in reading the coverage of the Seattle Times on this issue, though, is the presentation of a poll asking how much the University of Washington should charge and presenting a list of the proposed or actual tuition figures from other public universities across the nation. Basic common sense would tell you that this is an apples and oranges comparison – what the University of Oregon, Eugene or the University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign charge for tuition means absolutely nothing to the University of Washington except as a measure of competitiveness for students. To mislead the public by asking them to pick a number from some other public institution and suggest that as tuition for a leading university is dangerous, as it doesn’t take into account any of the factors a university must face: the number of local high school graduates who might feed into the system or local costs for education, including faculty cost of living increases, utilities, supplies, and a whole myriad of other concerns. Why does the media not instead choose to decry the dumbing down (or complete lack of) science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, the fact that many high school graduates couldn’t write their way out of a paper bag, or the pure and simple conclusion that the spectacle is worth far more to them than the plain, factual truth?

I am grateful to my parents, who taught me that perhaps education isn’t all about book learning and immersing yourself in a classroom environment. There is more to the world than sitting in a classroom, and the more I don’t sit in a classroom, the more I realize that the act of doing so is what prepared me to be where I am. The more I think back, the more I realize that Durant was right – being educated means knowing that you know nothing. For that, I am quite glad I spent the tuition that supports our public universities and colleges; even backed up against the wall and forced to act more like a business, they still manage to impart a sense of wonder about the world around them. And that is never an easy task.

~ C. (Gaius) Charles

Posted in 'Tis a Puzzlement, Civics, Media and Mayhem | Comments Off on On Education and Money