Tuition assistance fundraising appeal for our chief cook and bottle washer
Updated Wednesday morning, May 1, 2019. Posted Tuesday morning, April 30, 2019. New posts below, but before scrolling down, please read...
Our thanks to all of you who've helped out Ken with his tuition. He is incredibly grateful. He's close to his goal. But in the Department of One Thing Happening After Another: we just got hit with another bill and don't have as much money to help him out ourselves as we thought. We're short about $250. If 20 of you can pitch in $25 that would do it. But every bit helps, so whatever you can manage would be greatly appreciated---by us and by Ken. Donation buttons and links are below. Thank you!
Ken Mannion on Christmas morning, 2018, with his favorite present: the fourth volume of the collected Pogo comic strips.
As you know, things have been hard around Mannionville for the last year and more. But it's been a whole lot less hard thanks to Ken and Oliver Mannion.They've taken great care of Mrs M...and of me. I'd have been lost long ago without their help and support. Each guy has helped out in his own way, complementing each other's efforts and bucking each other up. Right now, though, it's Ken who needs some help.
Ken has been our chief cook and bottle washer. He's my legman and right arm---literally. But most importantly, he's been Mrs M's at home therapist, leading her in her occupational and physical therapy exercises, making sure she does her homework on the days she doesn't go up to the rehab facility. This spring he's done us the big favor of forgoing school for the semester to help save us money. It was hard on him because he missed being in class and attending his clubs. He would like to go back in the fall, full-time now, He's been a non-matriculated part-timer. In order to matriculate he has to apply as a transfer student. He has the grades for it---he's carrying a 3.3 GPA. It would be higher if not for his math grades. His history grades have been stellar. He got a 4.0 in his Latin American history class last fall. The trouble is, of course, money.
As a non-matriculated student he hasn't been eligible for financial aid. With your help, he's been paying his way, but we've always been a semester behind in the payments. His school has been understanding and patient but this means that once again we need to pay off last semester before he can proceed. With the mortgage and car insurance and power bill all due this week, we're scrambling like mad. So once again I have to ask for your help.
If you like what goes on around here and you can swing it, please consider making a donation.
We owe the school $800. If 40 of you can chip $20 that would be great, but every little bit helps, and anything you can manage would be much appreciated.
You can donate via PayPal by clicking on this link or the button below or, if your bank offers zelle, you can donate that way by using my email address lmannion109@yahoo.com.
Thank you for your help, patience, and understanding. And thanks for reading the blog.
This is how Ken celebrated his birthday last summer. The picture was taken when Mrs M was in the rehab hospital. Ken considers it one of his happiest birthdays ever. He and Mrs M still play chess together regularly. Ken has made it part of her therapy routine.
Lance Mannion on Tuesday, April 30, 2019 | Permalink | Comments (0)
"How many questions do you think I'll get on Asia?"
Posted Wednesday morning, May 1, 2019. Originally posted June 24, 2018.
"U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shakes hands with Indonesian Foreign Ministry Director General Retno Marsudi upon her arrival in Bali, Indonesia for the ASEAN and East Asian summits." November 17, 2011. U.S. State Department photo via Wikipedia.
[A note from your faithful correspondent: Mentioning Ben Rhodes' memoir "The Word as It Is" and Hillary Clinton's rather raw relationship with the political press in yesterday's post reminded me of a passage in Rhodes' book, which I wrote about it when I was reading it back in June of last year.]
My working theory about why the political press hates her has been that she can't hide her impatience and scorn when they focus on what she regards as trivialities instead of on the important issues and policies that affect people's day to day lives, specifically whether they eat or go hungry, get sick or get well, work or go broke, live or die.
These are complicated questions and require serious thought and...intelligence to even begin to formulate let alone answer. Political journalists don't like to have to do homework. Clinton has always done hers. So that's another thing. They hate it when she refuses to act the part of political animal and monster of ambition they've assigned her. She hates that they're intellectually lazy if not just plain dumb. I happen to think it's part of the job of politicians to play to the vanity of journalists. She resents having to do that and shows it, and there we are.
In November of 2011, the United States took part in the East Asian economic summit meeting in Bali and as Secretary of State Clinton was there as one of our chief representatives. At the summit, the President intended to announce that he was sending Clinton on to Burma to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi who had just been released from prison by the Burmese military government which was working to hand the governing off to a civilian-led one. Suu Kyi had won the Nobel Peace Prize and twenty years in prison for her efforts to bring freedom and democracy back to Burma. So the announcement of the meeting of the U.S. Secretary of State with one of the world's great dissident heroes should have been big news. Which leads me to this short anecdote Ben Rhodes recounts in his memoir "The World as It Is":
In Bali, we stayed at a hotel with balconies that looked out on a pond of giant lizards. We met up with Hillary, who was joining us for the summit. Our press was always eager to get access to her, and she agreed to do a series of interviews, but lamented the fact that they would likely focus more on her political future than the issues she was working on. "How many questions do you think I'll get on Asia?" she said. "Maybe one?"
Obama the Stoical Robot
Posted Monday night, April 29, 2019.
President Obama looking after his big brother. White House photo by Pete Souza via Vanity Fair.
The relationship between Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden, two men separated by temperament, upbringing, outlook and 19 years, did not get off to a strong start. Mr. Obama arrived in the Senate in 2005 the darling of Democrats, while Mr. Biden had been toiling away there since 1973, working his way through the ranks.
Mr. Obama was assigned to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where Mr. Biden was the ranking Democrat, but the newcomer found the panel frustrating and his party's leader maddeningly long-winded. At one hearing, while Mr. Biden pontificated at length, Mr. Obama passed a note to an aide: "Shoot. Me. Now."
I got a kick out of that anecdote from Peter Baker's chronicling of the friendship between Obama and Biden in the New York Times. It foreshadows the course of their partnership over the next eight years---I can imagine the President passing the same note under similar circumstances to aides again and again, at least in his head, with varying degrees of exasperation but with increasing affection and amusement.
This passage, though, I didn't get any sort of a kick out of, just routine frustration with political journalists' unbreakable habit of seeing everything as confirmation of the narratives they create for themselves over lunch with their like-minded colleagues.
In some ways, Mr. Biden became the human face of an administration led by a president known for robotic stoicism. Where Mr. Obama rarely revealed any inner life, Mr. Biden rarely disguised his. Anger, joy, frustration, eagerness — if he felt it, he expressed it.
Robotic stoicism? Stoicism is a matter of self-discipline not of programming. If anything, it is all too human a philosophy, because it reflects the sad knowledge that we're too often and easily carried away by our emotions.
And known to whom for his robotic stoicism? I think Baker is using robotic as if it's a synonym for computer-like (There isn't a comparable adjective.) and "robotic stoicism" is a figurative way of saying Obama is all brain and no heart. Too logical. No emotion. That was the pundits' knock on him back in the day. Mr Spock. That was a pundit fave. Baker's colleague at the Times, Maureen Dowd, for one, couldn't use it often enough. She didn't mean it as a compliment. Apparently no one told her Spock is a beloved character.
For most of us "No Drama Obama" summed up our admiration. We liked his "robotic stoicism." It was reassuring that such a calm, thoughtful, deliberate man was the leader of the free world. But for many political media types and even for many liberal voters and politicians it was as though keeping one's counsel while thinking things through and reining in one's emotions are flaws in a President. But emotional detachment, at least in public, and a disciplined temper were character "flaws" of our best presidents, starting with Washington---imagine what our access-obsessed journalists would have made of the famously reserved father of our country.
Lincoln's inner life is known to us by way of history and biography; contemporary accounts of him reveal how many people, particularly journalists and other politicians, got him wrong. His inner life was knowable at the time mainly by a careful observation of how it wrote itself on his face in the photographs taken of him over the course of the war; his thoughts and feelings were best understood by attentive reading of his most important speeches. FDR kept journalists guessing and everyone at a distance with his smile and by lying. Meanwhile, the lack of both emotional detachment and a disciplined temper pretty much defines the character of our current and worst president. So you'd think journalists and pundits might want to drop that theme in their narrative of Obama's presidency.
This is just me, but I've often wondered if his reserve, which apparently often borders on coldness, might be the expression of a wariness developed over a lifetime of dealing with white people who either wanted to be the black guy's friend to show how cool they were or were probing for weaknesses and character flaws to prove to themselves that no black guy could be smarter and more together and more accomplished than they knew themselves to be.
But like I would know.
At any rate...
Stoicism is an expression of a person's inner life.
But then so is their whole outer life expressive of what's going on within. The stoic philosopher Seneca made that point in a letter to his friend Lucilius:
Cleanthes could not have been the express image of Zeno, if he had merely heard his lectures; he shared in his life, saw into his hidden purposes, and watched him to see whether he lived according to his own rules. Plato, Aristotle, and the whole throng of sages who were destined to go each his different way, derived more benefit from the character than from the words of Socrates. It was not the class-room of Epicurus, but living together under the same roof, that made great men of Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus.
The elite political journalists are in a better position than the rest of us to observe a politician's character in action. But that's not what they're after when they hustle for access. They want gossip.
They want the politician to unplug and let them in on secrets. They want juicy, "off-the-record" quotes and insider knowledge. They want to feel like players. I admire the ones who are fighting back against Trump's despotic contempt for the First Amendment and his attempts to shut down the free press. But I can't help suspecting that many of those in the fight are mostly mad that their access to the company of the powerful is being thwarted. It's part of why they hate Hillary. She resents their demand that she let them in on the game and shows it. Obama was not much more accommodating or less obviously resentful.
Baker quotes Obama deputy national security advisor, speechwriter, and friend Ben Rhodes and refers to Rhodes' memoir "The World As It Is". But I wonder if Baker read it or read it through.
"The World as It Is" would have had Seneca nodding in approval. It's a chronicle of Rhodes sharing Obama's life, at least that part of it dedicated to formulating and enacting his foreign policy, seeing into his hidden purposes, and watching to see if he president according to his own rules.
Obama's inner life was on constant display. It's there to be discovered in his speeches. It's in his best-selling memoir! You could see it when he was with Michelle or his daughters. You could see it in his interactions with other politicians and world leaders. You could see it in the pictures of him with other people's children and with people, famous and ordinary, who were not political insiders. You could see it in his friendship and working relationship with Joe Biden---in fact, that's a theme of Baker's article.
At Beau Biden's funeral mass. White House photo by Pete Souza via Vanity Fair.
Filed under The President Checks In and Newshounds. Related Mannion Re-run: "It's Joe".
To read the Baker's whole article, follow the link to "Biden and Obama's 'Odd Couple' Relationship Aged Into Family Ties" at the New York Times.
References to Seneca or any Roman writers aren't things I have at my immediate disposal. It just happens that I've had Seneca on my mind the last few days thanks to Maria Popova who recently wrote a post about him on her indispensable blog Brain Pickings: "A Stoic's Key to Living with Presence: Seneca on Balancing the Existential Calculus of Time Spent, Saved, and Wasted".
"The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House" by Ben Rhodes is available in paperback and for kindle at Amazon and as an audiobook from Audible.
"Dreams from My Father" by Barack Obama is also available at Amazon, in paperback and for kindle, as well as an audiobook from Audible.
Lance Mannion on Tuesday, April 30, 2019 in Newshounds, The President checks in, The Presidential Horserace 2020 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Virtual Bird Watch. April 27, 2019: Long-lived survivors, marsh sentries, shy American specialties, and cocks-of-the-What?
Posted Saturday morning, April 27, 2019.
Off on another virtual bird watch. We're starting down in South America. Make sure the doors on the overhead luggage compartments are securely latched.
Our first sighting, before we even land, is the Andean Condor.
An official symbol of many Andean countries, the Andean Condor is among the heaviest flying birds, weighing up to 33 pounds with a wingspan of up to 10.5 feet. These birds are so large they make their close relative, the California Condor, look like a lightweight.
Because Andean Condors are so heavy, they prefer areas where they can easily find strong thermal air currents to boost them into the air. Once aloft, they can soar for hours without a wing beat. The birds travel hundreds of miles each day in search of food.
Unfortunately, this near-threatened species is hunted for sport or by ranchers who mistakenly view the birds as a threat to livestock. Primarily a scavenger, condors can be sickened by consuming animals that have ingested lead or plants laden with pesticides.
Since these birds only reproduce once every two years, their populations are especially sensitive to each individual loss. Birds that escape these threats can live a long time—up to 70 years in captivity. [Read more about these "Long-lived Survivors" at the American Bird Conservancy's website.]
Next, from the mountain cliffsides, we descend to the subtropical and cloud forests on the mountain floor to observe: The Andean Cock-of-the-Rock. Try to resist the jokes. There are children and ladies present.
Four subspecies are recognized, resident in Andean subtropical and cloud forest from Venezuela to Bolivia. Despite the males' vivid color, this bird is more often heard than seen, sounding off with weird, raspy clanks and croaks on the lek or in flight.
Aside from its distinctive appearance, the Andean Cock-of-the-rock is also known for its elaborate breeding displays. Like Greater Sage-Grouse and Greater Prairie-Chickens, males gather at communal gathering spots called leks, where they show off their bright plumage and smooth moves.
Once a group of males gathers, competitors perch in pairs or small groups to perform mock confrontational displays, which feature bowing, wing-flapping, head-bobbing, bill-snapping, and bizarre squeaking and grunting calls. They frantically redouble their display efforts when the rufous-brown females approach to assess their performances. [More here: "Cock-of-the-What?" ]
You couldn't resist, could you? Never mind. Let's move east from the Andes to the Brazilian coast. Here's a bird that'll make you happy to check off your life-list: The Banded Cotinga…
Cotingas are an American specialty, found only in Central America and tropical South America. Like other cotingas such as the Hooded Berryeater, Banded Cotingas are shy, unobtrusive birds that dwell high in the forest canopy, where they feed on mainly on fruit, perhaps supplemented by seeds and insects.
They are sexually dimorphic, meaning that males and females look different. The female is dusky brown and white, completely different from the male's stunning blue and purple plumage.
Males also have specially modified primaries (the biggest flight feathers) that produce a whirring sound when they display.
Unfortunately:
...the Banded Cotinga is a priority species for us, likely to become extinct without intensive conservation. The biggest threat to the Banded Cotinga is habitat loss.
Deforestation within this species' Atlantic Forest range has restricted populations to a few protected areas. Also contributing to this cotinga's decline are the collection of their feathers and capture for the cage-bird trade. [ "Shy American Specialty" ]
We have to wing our way back to the United States now. Along the way we'll be swinging over the Gulf of Mexico, and if you aim your binoculars out your window you can catch a glimpse of flocks of that small wanderer the...Ok, more jokes. Get them out of your system...the Band-Rumped Storm-Petrel:
The dainty Band-rumped Storm-Petrel, known as the 'Ake'ake in Hawai'i, is named for the white band across the top of its broad, squared-tipped tail. Its genus name, Oceanodroma, derives from the ancient Greek words for "ocean" and "runner," probably derived from the bird's habit of paddling with its feet while it flies low over the water.
A full-grown Band-rumped Storm-Petrel weighs only about one-and-a-half ounces — about the same as a golf ball. It's similar in size to an American Robin.
Like many pelagic species, Band-rumped Storm-Petrels wander widely. From ocean-going boats off the Carolinas and Gulf of Mexico, birders call out these birds' short wing strokes and rigid glides, contrasting this flight pattern with the Leach's Storm-Petrel's bouncy, erratic flight and the Wilson's Storm-Petrel's fluttery strokes. [ "Bird of Geographic Distinction" ]
And back in North America where here, there, and everywhere there are marshy edges of woodlands and ponds up and down and side-to-side on the continent there a plenty of one of my favorites, the Red-winged Blackbird:
The liquid, burbling "conk-a-ree!" of a male Red-winged Blackbird on territory is a sure sign of spring, or at least its pending arrival. This bird's common name derives from the sleek black males' distinctive shoulder patches, or epaulets, which flash red in flight and while the bird is singing on territory…
Red-winged Blackbirds are sexually dimorphic, meaning males and females have very different appearances. They also play very different roles during the breeding season.
Breeding males stand sentry, ceaselessly singing and chasing intruders. Meanwhile, the streaky brown females — easy to mistake for large, pointy-billed sparrows — skulk in nearby vegetation, stealthily building nests, laying eggs and incubating, then doing much of the feeding of their young.
But it's usually not just one pair that occupies a territory. This species is polygynous, meaning that one male will mate with and share territory with more than one female. Red-winged Blackbirds usually nest in loose colonies, with a male attracting up to 15 females to nest within a territory. And there's another wrinkle: Females frequently mate with males other than the territory holder, and so they often lay clutches of unknown paternity. [ "Marsh Sentry" ]
We've landed. Have a safe drive home. Hope you remember where you parked. I'm going back to my house to sit on the porch with my coffee to listen for the blackbirds who live down the road raspily herald the spring and watch the sky for the sight that makes them one of my favorite birds:
Males chase and mob intruders of all sizes — not only competing males, but also Great Blue Herons, crows, and raptors, and even people wandering too close to their nests.
Never been mobbed by blackbirds myself. Once an angry barn swallow made a dive at me, but that's a story for another day.
Filed under "Virtual Birdwatch".
Lance Mannion on Saturday, April 27, 2019 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tim Blake Nelson, Socrates, "Socrates", populism, and the problem of too much democracy
Posted Friday morning, April 26, 2019.
Michael Stuhlbarg (Right) as the title character in Tim Blake Nelson's play "Socrates". Photo by Joan Marcus, courtesy of the Public Theater
A. "Socrates" is a play by Tim Blake Nelson I wish I could see.
B. If wishes were horses beggars would ride.
C. I won't be riding a horse down to New York City to see "Socrates". Dammit.
Nelson, one of our best known and beloved character actors, lately known and beloved for "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", is also an accomplished playwright. And a diligent one. Before sitting down to write "Socrates", he did his homework. He re-read Plato, of course. Then he contacted one of his old college professors, a classicist, and asked her for a reading list.
"In addition to warning me about the extremely thorny issue of separating the Socrates in Plato from the actual historical figure, she started me off with Gregory Vlastos's 'The Philosophy of Socrates,' Brickhouse and Smith's 'Plato's Socrates,' and a host of other books and essays," he said. "To which, of course, I added her works, in particular an essay on Alcibiades in 'The Fragility of Goodness.' I also steeped myself again in the Dialogues, which I really hadn't read with any meaningful diligence since college, other than the 'Crito,' which I read aloud with my boys just because the argument is so fun."
Nelson's college was Brown University. He was a classics major. Phi Beta Kappa. Won the Workman/Driskoll award for excellence in Classical Studies. His old professor is Martha Nussbaum.
A. Nelson studied with Martha Nussbaum.
B. I read Nussbaum's book "The Fragility of Goodness".
C. Tim Blake Nelson's got nothing on me.
Tim Blake Nelson at a rehearsal for his play "Socrates" engaging in a dialogue with the play's director Doug Hughes. Photo by Garlia Cornelia Jones, courtesy of Playbill.
The quote is from Mark Singer's "Talk of the Town" piece on Nelson in The New Yorker. The bit that struck me was his having read the "Crito" for fun. And with his kids. I wonder how old his sons were when they read it together. When Ken and Oliver were still of an age they liked me to read to them and with them, they were interested in Greek mythology but Greek philosophy? Not so much. I'm imagining saying to them, "Let's give Harry Potter the skip tonight. How about some Plato instead?" I'm not sure I'd have liked having kids who could follow the arguments in the "Crito" and find them fun. They would've scared me. I don't know how old Nelson's sons are now---Wikipedia doesn't say---or when they read the "Crito" for fun. They might be in college now themselves. They might be following in their old man's footsteps, studying the classics at an Ivy League school. They might be very precocious junior high students. Whatever their ages, they seem better read than me, and now I feel like I have to re-read the "Dialogues" for fun.
And as homework.
Strikes me that if I manage to acquire a horse to take me to New York to see "Socrates" in the next few weeks I should do the required reading. There might be a quiz after the show. Nelson himself might come out on stage to give it. Or Michael Stuhlbarg. That would be fun. Stuhlbarg plays "Socrates". He could wander up and down the aisles in character, picking out members of the audience to question. The actor playing Plato could follow him around, writing it all down on parchment.
A. Tim Blake Nelson is a beloved character actor who became famous for his role in the Coen Brothers' "O Brother Where Art Thou?"
B. Michael Stuhlbarg is a beloved character actor who became famous for his role in the Coen Brothers' "A Serious Man".
C. All character actors who have had roles in a Coen Brothers' film become famous and beloved.
Here's another bit from Singer's piece that has me scratching my head, but with more serious implications:
When Nelson began to write, he hadn't anticipated where the politics of his own republic were headed. During a scene in Act I, his Socrates encounters Megasthenes, a forger of metals, as he makes a breastplate for an Athenian warrior. Though he disclaims an interest in politics, he questions Megasthenes about the war with Sparta, eventually proposing that perhaps Megasthenes would like to rule Athens.
Megasthenes: I'm better equipped and more deserving to rule than any of these rich boys who skip the ranks because their fathers lease out slaves, or sell figs across the border, and can afford to buy them their station.
Socrates: Would you rule justly?
Megasthenes: I'd rule to make Athens great. That's what's just.
"I finished the play before Trump ran," Nelson said. "When he emerged, I realized people would think I wrote it because of him, but he had nothing to do with it."
Still, doesn't "Socrates" make a case against populism?
"Yes, it does," he said. "That's where the play veers a little more toward the view Plato advocates in the Republic. Plato hardly advocates for democracy. But I believe Socrates was suspiciously admiring of it and he wanted to perfect it. He's probably more Churchillian in his view: democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. I'm not anti-populist, but I think that, when you do have a person like Trump elected, questions need to be asked. That's why I believe, in our moment, Socrates feels so tragically relevant."
I can't figure out what Singer and Nelson mean by "populism". They seem to be in agreement about what it means in a general sense---too much democracy leading to mob rule. But then Nelson seems to use it as a synonym for democracy, period. If I could have a Socratic dialogue with him, that's the question I'd be quizzing him on. What do you mean by it and what do you think Socrates would have made out of it if he could hear how the word is applied today by political journalists? It's almost meaningless as they use it in their stories and analyses focusing on contemporary American politics, which is as a sympathetic cover word for any political appeal made to the fears, anxieties, and resentments of the middle and working class, regardless of the actual political leanings of the supposedly populist politician making those appeals and his or her plans for addressing those fears, anxieties, and resentments. That's how Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump all get described as populists.
I've always thought of American populism as having both a sunny and hopeful side, and a dark and vindictive one. I've also thought of it as one step away from mob rule with a charismatic demagogue building a cult of personality around himself at the head of the mob. Both sides, however, are obsessed with finding enemies to blame and punish for their adherents' troubles. Populism on the left and the right is about voters' getting their own back.
It's also what Timothy Snyder calls in his book "The Road to Unfreedom" the politics of eternity, which he describes as offering a "cyclical story of victimhood".
And I've tended to see it, historically, as being challenged by a liberal and egalitarian elite and have sided in my head with the elitists: Washington---but not Hamilton---against the leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion; Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Quincy Adams against Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun; Theodore Roosevelt against William Jennings Bryan; Franklin Roosevelt against Huey Long; Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders.
This doesn't mean I don't find anything to criticize about the elitists or anything to like about populist appeals or admire in the populists. I can even find a few points of sympathy with Calhoun, although one of my points of sympathy with Andrew Jackson is he wanted to see Calhoun hanged.
But when it comes down to it, these days, I don't think Warren, or Sanders, or Trump---Trump, especially---are populists.
A. Donald Trump is a demagogue appealing to his mob's anxieties, fears, and resentments and has built his cult of personality from the right.
B. Bernie Sanders is a demagogue appealing to his mob's anxieties, fears, and resentments and building his cult of personality on the left.
C. Elizabeth Warren is a traditional liberal and egalitarian elitist who happens to be more liberal and egalitarian than most other liberal and egalitarian elitists and who, while taking note of people's anxieties, fears, and resentments isn't basing her campaign on appeals to those anxieties, fears, and resentments and isn't interested in building a cult of personality; instead she's focusing on people's problems and proposing plans to help solve those problems.
Shoot. That one didn't work the way syllogisms are supposed to, did it?
Point is, this doesn't mean there aren't things about Warren I don't like or things about Bernie I do. (I don't like anything about Trump because there isn't anything to like about him.) It is one of the reasons why in the primaries I'm already siding with all the other top contenders against Bernie---Harris, Booker, Warren, Buttigieg, Castro, and Biden, in that order.
That's what I'd like to talk over with Nelson---or Socrates---if I get my beggar's wish. Meantime, you should read Singer's whole Talk of the Town piece, "Tim Blake Nelson, Classics Nerd, Brings 'Socrates' to the Stage" and, while you're at it, if you have the time, this 2016 profile of Martha Nussbaum by Rachel Aviv: "The Philosopher of Feelings", and I should wrap up this post and go dig out my old copy of Plato.
A. Since dopey syllogisms only I find funny have been a running gag and the controlling rhetorical device of this post I should end it with another dopey syllogism.
B. This is a dopey syllogism.
C. This must be the end of this post.
"Socrates" a play by Tim Blake Nelson, directed by Doug Hughes, and starring Michael Stuhlbarg, is in performance from April 26 through May 26, 2019, at the Public Theater in New York City. For tickets and more information visit the Public's website or call 212.967.7555 Monday through Saturday between the hours of 11:00AM and 7:00PM, or Sunday from 12 noon to 6:00PM.
Lance Mannion on Friday, April 26, 2019 | Permalink | Comments (1)
It's Joe
Posted Thursday night, April 25, 2019. Originally posted Saturday, April 6.
From the Departments of Like I Would Know and God, I Hope Not!
[Note from your faithful correspondent: I really didn't think he'd get in it. Actually, I hoped he wouldn't. But he has. So I'm reposting this one from three weeks ago. Keep in mind I wasn't endorsing him. I'm still not. But I'm still worried and for the same reasons.]
It's Joe.
It's Joe the way it was Trump.
People know him. They like him. What's more they think he knows them.
In Trump's case they liked the "Donald Trump" they knew from "The Apprentice."
In Joe's, they like Barack Obama's Vice-President.
And once people know someone and like them they're inclined to forgive them just about anything. Try to convince them that something someone they like has done is not forgivable or excusable and they will happily explain how it is, usually by telling you that what that someone did isn't at all like what someone else they don't like did that they agree wasn't excusable or forgivable when that someone else they don't like did it.
Or if you can get them to admit---grudgingly---that you have a point, it looks bad, they'll then tell you that what the someone they like did is like someone else they like and you like too did and you find yourself in the position of having to explain why that thing the someone you both like did wasn't like this thing; or, even more awkward, that there were mitigating factors that made what that someone you both like forgivable or excusable or at least not as bad; or---really awkward and not at all convincing--- that someone else should have paid the price you're now arguing the someone they like should be paying.
And inevitably, somewhere in the course of the argument, they're going to say, "Well, you can find something bad to say about all them."
Please don't try to tell me all the ways Trump is worse. I know he's worse. I've written about how bad Trump is a few times. If you're a glutton for punishment you can vett me by reading a few old posts in my archives: here and here.
Or you can just scroll down.
There's a lot that should be counting against Joe. Maybe it will given the time between now and the first debates.
Among the particulars:
His handling of the Clarence Thomas hearings and particularly his taking Thomas' side against Anita Hill. His vote on the Iraq War. His being in the pockets of the credit card companies. But the Clarence Thomas debacle didn't do him serious political damage at the time, and it was twenty-seven years ago. The Iraq War vote didn't count against Kerry and it didn't count against Hillary, and that was sixteen years ago. And with the bankruptcy bill he was serving the interests of one of his state's biggest industries and isn't that something voters want their congressional representatives to do? And, oh yeah, that was fourteen years ago.
None of that has figured majorly in the popular image of him. But his eight years as Vice-President fixed him in people's imaginations...and their hearts.
If any of the above was going to count against him it would have been in 2008 when Obama was vetting him for his VP.
Then there's this. A lot of Democrats and Democratic-voting independents and Republicans thought he should have been the nominee in 2016. They wanted him to get in it. They're convinced he woulda won. And he woulda. If. There's always an if. Bernie woulda won if. Hillary woulda won IF. Biden's if is lower case and unitalized and comes with a implicit "But it probably would have worked out in his favor."
Biden is Joe in a way Bernie isn't Bernie and Hillary isn't Hillary. There's no edge when people say his name. The edge in Hillary or Bernie is either defensive or sneering. When people say Joe there's nothing but affection.
People like him. People don't like Hillary or Bernie. Those of us who love either have a hard time getting our heads around this. People don't love our favorites and see their worth the way and to the degree we do. My dearly departed and sorely missed uncle, an old, white guy from a blue collar town loved Hillary. But my aunt didn't. Boy, how she didn't. And she's as liberal and true blue a Democrat as my uncle was. Mom Mannion doesn't like her. Hasn't liked her since she appeared on the scene. Pop Mannion wasn't a fan and only came around when he started seeing her in comparison to Bernie. He really didn't like Bernie.
I play a mental game with myself: Which of the Democratic contenders would Pop Mannion be getting behind? I think he'd have liked Pete, but that's because I see Pete as having a lot in common with Pop. That wouldn't have clinched it for Pop, though. He wasn't that vain, particularly when it came to politics. What I think would have drawn him to Pete was Buttigieg's experience, talent, and success as a local politician. That was one of the things he liked about Joe. Biden has been much more of local politician than most senators are but which the great ones have always been. Ted Kennedy was a Boston pol as much as he was Massachusetts senator and a national leader of the Democratic Party. Joe was Pop's guy in '88. And he held out hope he would jump in in 2016. Like I said, he wasn't alone. Hillary benefited from her apparent inevitability and from her having been Obama's Secretary of State. Bernie benefited from his not being Hillary. Among both their supporters were sizable contingents of voters who wished they had another choice, and among them was a sizable cohort who wished that other choice was Joe.
The others running---the ones I like and am rooting for ahead of Joe and I believe have the best chances: Harris, Warren, Booker, Buttigieg---might have political skills and talents of their own to match his. But I'm worried that with Joe in it they won't get to show them off on TV. The political media won't give them the air time or column space. If Joe's on the debate stage come June, they won't be---that is, they might as well not be for all the attention they'll get from the media. That's another way he's our Trump. The media will cover him to the exclusion of the others except to ask them what they thought of how Joe did. Maybe they'll still be infatuated enough with Mayor Pete that he'll get attention in his own right too. But then the horse race "analysis" will focus on how Joe should pick him for his VP.
By the way, just throwing this out there: Biden-Gillibrand.
Anyway, that's what I'm thinking this morning. Keep in mind I started writing this post as soon as I rolled out of bed, and I might have woken up from a bad dream. All my thinking on this could be the result of a mood of the moment. Three more mugs of coffee might cure it. And, once again, like I would know. I honestly didn't believe he'd get in it. I had myself convinced that all his talk was just that, talk---the talk of an old man indulging his vanity by imagining a return to glory days that never really were. Maybe that's what's still going on. But probably not.
My own reluctance to get on the Biden bandwagon has to do with his age. As I keep saying, no more presidents older than me. This isn't ageism. It's realism. Biden is in good health and apparently of sound mind. But at his age both physical and mental decline---even without dementia---can be precipitous. We don't want another president who doesn't have the mental or physical energy to do the job. I'm not talking just about Trump. I'm thinking of Wilson, FDR, and Reagan too. But Biden's age is a factor in another way makes me even less enthusiastic about him. His time has passed.
He says he gets it. It's a new era. Times have changed. He admits he has to change with them. The problem is that's not something eighty year olds find easy to do. The wisest of them don't change, they just know to get out of the way. They resign themselves, contentedly and cheerfully, to watching from the front porch as the world carries on without them. I'm afraid Joe's would be a nostalgia campaign.
But, for the hundredth time, like I would know.
I don't believe Biden's our only hope for beating Trump. I don't even think he's our best hope. But an awful lot of people think he's both. And I can see how they see him as such.
He's Trump's mirror image, his inverted double. He's his William Wilson (Mayor Pete can cite Joyce. I can cite Poe.), the good man Trump knows he isn't and can't be: A skilled and talented politician with a record of achievement, who appeals to working and middle class voters of all colors and both genders without appealing to their hatreds, resentments, and fears. An old school shake every hand-kiss every baby campaigner who knows how to talk to people and, more important, listen to them. A regular guy with a real sense of humor, a bit of a goof but in a lovable way, who happens to be smarter than most everybody else in the room but doesn't make a show of it. Someone who is capable of enjoying life without his enjoyment coming at other people's expense. A tall, strong, loving man whose whole adult life has been devoted to public service. A good husband (and this would come up. Where's Biden's first wife? Not collecting on her pre-nup and dropping bits of gossip when the mood takes her) and good father. Which brings me to one more thing.
He wrote a book.
Lance Mannion on Thursday, April 25, 2019 in The Presidential Horserace 2020 | Permalink | Comments (4)
"A cyclical story of victimhood"
Posted Thursday morning, April 25, 2019.
"AMERICA HAS BEEN INVADED": A reminder that Trump was an effect before he was a cause. Photo from an anti-immigrant protest in 2012. Chris Pizzello via Salon.
Following from last night's post, also a quote from "The Road to Unfreedom": Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Of course it does. But notice Snyder doesn't mention Trump by name. That's because he's not writing about Trump. Not just Trump, anyway. Trump is an effect before he's a cause. He's the American embodiment of the politics of eternity but not the only embodiment in the world:
The collapse of the politics of inevitability ushers in another experience of time: the politics of eternity. Whereas inevitability promises a better future for everyone, eternity places one nation at the center of a cyclical story of victimhood. Time is no longer a line into the future, but a circle that endlessly returns the same threats from the past. Within inevitability, no one is responsible because we all know that the details will sort themselves out for the better; within eternity no one is responsible because we all know that the enemy is coming no matter what we do. Eternity politicians spread the conviction that government cannot aid society as a whole, but only guard against threats. Progress gives way to doom.
"In power, eternity politicians manufacture crisis and manipulate the resultant emotion. To distract from their inability or unwillingness to reform, eternity politicians instruct their citizens to experience elation and outrage at short intervals, drowning the future in the present. In foreign policy, eternity politicians belittle and undo the achievements of countries that might seem like models to their own citizens. Using technology to transmit political fiction, both at home and abroad, eternity politicians deny truth and seek to reduce life to spectacle and feeling.
---from "The Road to Unfreedom" by Timothy Snyder.
Lance Mannion on Thursday, April 25, 2019 | Permalink | Comments (0)
"The American politics of inevitability, like all such stories, resisted facts."
Posted Wednesday night, April 24, 2019.
The Berlin Wall falling, November 1989. Almay photo via the Guardian.
Americans and Europeans were guided [through the end of the 20th Century and into the 21st] by a tale about "the end of history, by what I will call the politics of inevitability, a sense that the future is just more of the present, that the laws of progress are known, that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothing really to be done. In the American capitalist version of this story, nature brought the market, which brought democracy, which brought happiness…
...Americans reasoned that the failure of the communist story confirmed the truth of the capitalist one. Americans...kept telling themselves their tales of inevitability for a quarter of a century after the end of communism, and so raised a generation without history.
The American politics of inevitability, like all such stories, resisted facts. The fates of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus after 1991 showed well enough that the fall of one system did not create a blank slate on which nature generated markets and markets generated rights. Iraq in 2003 might have confirmed this lesson, had the initiators of America's illegal war reflected upon its disastrous consequences. The financial crisis of 2008 and the deregulation of campaign contributions in the United States magnified the influence of the wealthy and reduced that of voters. As economic inequality grew, time horizons shrank, and fewer Americans believed that the future held a better version of the present. Lacking a functional state that assured basic social good taken for granted elsewhere---education, pensions, health care, transport, parental leave vacations---Americans could be overwhelmed by each day, and lose a sense of the future.
Lance Mannion on Wednesday, April 24, 2019 in First as tragedy, then as farce, Political Fictions | Permalink | Comments (0)
Alpher, Bethe, Gamow: A Greek alphabet of famous physics professors I have known...of
Mined from the notebooks Tuesday, April 23, 2019. Posted Wednesday morning, April 24. Revised and corrected below, Thursday morning, April 25.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Hans Bethe at the blackboard at Cornell in 1967, around, I'd guess, fifteen years after the young RPI physics major Pop Mannion attended one of Bethe's seminars. Photo courtesy of the Department of Physics at Cornell University.
"Bethe is an odd figure, large and clumsy with an exceptionally muddy old pair of shoe. He gives the impression of being clever and friendly but rather a caricature of a professor; he was second in command at Los Alamos, so he must be a first-rate organizer as well." ---from a letter by Freeman Dyson dated September 25, 1947, collected in Dyson's autobiography in letters, "Maker of Patterns".
I wonder if Pop Mannion would have recognized Freeman Dyson's description of the great Nobel Prize-winning physicist Hans Bethe. It's from a letter Dyson wrote in 1947, when he was a doctoral student at Cornell and Bethe was his professor. That was at least around five but maybe ten or even fifteen years before Pop himself met Bethe.
Pop counted Bethe as one of his teachers. It was a minor point of pride with him. Minor as in he kept it in perspective. Bethe taught at Cornell. Pop earned all three of his degrees---Bachelors, Masters, and Ph.D.---at RPI. But at some point in his career as a student, Pop took a week-long seminar with Bethe. I can't remember exactly when. My impression has always been it was when he was an undergrad. That would put it in the early 1950s. But it might have been while he was working on his masters. At that point, Pop was running the computer department at GE's atomic power lab (and, incidentally, managing the department's softball team to the company championship.) That would put it in the late 50s or early 60s and Pop would have been around thirty years old. I like thinking it was when he was a degreeless student, no more than twenty. It's hard for me to imagine Pop as a college student. Not because he was "born older" like George Bailey. He was. But that's not the point. It's simply that he didn't tell us many stories about that part of his life that didn't include the girl he was dating at the time, and Mom Mannion wasn't in college with him, or the United States Air Force, which had him in its ranks as an ROTC cadet. His post grad career I remember because he worked on his Masters and Ph.D. at night and on weekends when I was a little kid and that meant he often wasn't at home when we Mannion kids wanted to play with him, he was at class or in the library or lab at RPI, and when he wasn't there he was working and studying at his desk in his "den", not to be disturbed. The other thing about his seminar with Bethe I can't recall is where it was held. Bethe might have visited RPI. He might have visited GE. But I like to imagine Pop went down to Cornell when he was an undergrad because Pop lived at home when as an undergrad and I like picturing him making his first long trip away from home. Like I said, having taken that seminar with Bethe was a minor point of pride for him, and he didn't crow about it. What he was prouder of---well, vainer about, as much as Pop allowed himself a vanity---was the joke he got of it.
Pop also counted George Gamow as one of his teachers, along with Ralph Alpher, who was a friend and a colleague at GE. Gamow he knew through Alpher. It's more accurate to describe both as mentors. But it was better for the joke to call them his teachers. Here's the joke:
Pop liked to tell people the list of his physics teachers was so long it ran the whole twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet, starting with Alpher, Bethe, Gamow.
His jokes were usually funnier than that.
He was proud of the joke, but he wasn't satisfied with it. It bothered him that he didn't have any famous professors whose names could be used for a pun on Omega.
I took my copy of "Maker of Patterns", Freeman Dyson's "autobiography through letters" with us on our trip up to the Old Mannion Homestead to celebrate Easter with Mom Mannion and various friends and relations. I'd have taken it up to show him if he was still with us, expecting of course that he already owned it himself. "Maker of Patterns" would have been a perfect gift for his birthday, which is coming up on Saturday. That's why I'm convinced he'd have owned it already. Pop had a habit of buying himself books that would have been perfect birthday, Christmas, or Father's Day presents for him. It was frustrating. But he didn't do it to be perverse. He bought books for himself regularly---too regularly in the opinion of Mom Mannion, who had to find a place for them all. If it was left to Pop they'd have piled up in the living room to the point that eventually they have walled him in in his favorite reading chair and eventually one of the towers would have toppled and crushed him where he sat reading his newest acquisition. It was one of his indulgences, of which, like his vanities, he allowed himself few. But if, wonder of wonders, on the off-chance he didn't already own it, I'd have gotten a kick out of showing him the series of letters Dyson wrote to his family in the late 1940s when he was a doctoral student at Cornell and Bethe was not only his teacher but the head of his dissertation committee. And I'm sure Pop would have especially enjoyed this story, because it includes as a character another physicist he greatly admired:
Dyson writes:
The event of last week has been a visit from [Rudolf Peierls, an old physicist friend of Bethe's who'd, at about the same time as Bethe, escaped Hitler's Germany to England where he'd become one of the leaders of the British nuclear bomb project] who has been over here on government business and stayed two nights with the Bethes before flying home. He gave a formal lecture on Monday about his own work, and has been spending the rest of the time in long discussions with Bethe and the rest of us, at which I learn a great deal. On Monday night the Bethes gave a party in his honour, to which most of the young theoreticians were invited. When we arrived we were introduced to Henry Bethe, who is now five years old, but he was not at all impressed. The only thing he would say was "I want Dick. You told me Dick was coming, and finally he had to be sent to bed, since Dick...did not materialise. About half an hour later [Dick] burst into the room just had time to say "so sorry I'm late. Had a brilliant idea just as I was coming over," and then dashed upstairs to console Henry. Conversation then ceased while the company listened to the joyful sounds above, sometimes taking the form of a duet and sometimes of a one-man percussion band.
The one-man percussion band was---you guessed it---Richard Feynman.
Richard Feynman with students at a coffee hour at Caltech's Winnett Center, June, 1964. Photo by Kent McCaulley, courtesy of Caltech Magazine.
It's possible Pop met Feynman at Cornell. Barely possible. But only if Pop took that seminar with Bethe at Cornell and when he was a freshman at RPI. Feynman left Cornell in 1951. Fact is, however, I'm pretty sure he never met Feynman. He'd have never stopped talking about it if he had. It would have been more than a minor point of pride for him and he wouldn't have cared if he got a good joke out of it. Feynman was one of his heroes.
So he'd have enjoyed this from Dyson's letter home, dated November 19, 1947:
"Just a brief letter before we go off to Rochester [New York, about a two-hour drive from Ithaca]. We have every Wednesday a seminar at which somebody talks about some item of research, and from time to time this is made a joint seminar with Rochester University. I am being taken in Feynman's car, which will be great fun if we survive. Feynman is a man for whom I am developing a considerable admiration; he is the brightest of the young theoreticians here and is the first example I have met of that rare species, the native American scientist. He has developed a private version of the quantum theory, which is generally agreed to be a good piece of work and may be more helpful than the orthodox version for some problems. He is always sizzling with new ideas, most of which are more spectacular than helpful and hardly any of which get very far before some newer inspiration eclipses them. His most valuable contribution to physics is as a sustainer of morale; when he bursts into the room with his latest brain wave and proceeds to expound it with lavish sound effects and waving about of the arms, life at least is not dull."
Updated and corrected Thursday morning, April 25, 2019 because DAMMIT! there are holes in my memory that need to be plugged: The Alpher, Bethe, Gamow joke wasn't Pop's. He appropriated it---from Gamow. Gamow wrote a seminal paper on the Big Bang with Alpher, who was his doctoral student at George Washington University, and he added his friend Bethe's name so that it would always be cited as Alpher-Bethe-Gamow. The paper was published in 1948, when Pop was in high school. But Pop read it, although probably not when it was published, and of course understood it and appreciated its ramifications, as well as getting a big kick out of the joke, which he told me about and explained to me when I was just out of grad school and reading Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", one of my and Pop's favorite books. I'd asked him in he'd met any of the physicists mentioned in the book. That's when he told me about taking the seminar with Bethe and about the paper and the joke and his connections to Alpher and Gamow and how he liked to tell people about the paper, the joke, and how the joke could be applied to his own resume. Pop never took credit for somebody else's work or their jokes.
As it happens, Pop's connection to the Manhattan Project and the making of the atomic bomb and probably initially to Bethe was through his boss as GE, Richard Ehrlich, known to Pop and Mom Mannion as their good friend Dick but to us Mannion kids as Dr Ehrlich and someone we had to be on our best behavior around when he visited our house, although I remember him as a kindly, avuncular, and always broadly smiling man. Dr Ehrlich had worked under Bethe at Los Alamos, amd since Dr Ehrlich and Mrs Ehrlich were regular dinner guests at the Mannion Homestead, I can claim one degree of separation form the bomb dropped on Nagasaki and isn't that special? But it makes it likely that Pop took that seminar from Bethe when he was working at GE and not when he was a student and that it was held in Schenectady. One other thing about Dr Ehrlich. His influence on Pop was political as much as professional. He was the chair of the local Democratic committee when we moved to Niskayuna and he recruited Pop to run for town board. Pop got skunked that time out. But he learned valuable lessons that he put to work when he ran for supervisor a few years later.
All this came back in a rush last night when Mannionville stalwarts Joel Hanes and Kaleburg reminded me in the comments here and Facebook pal Neil Calkin reminded me over there about Alpher-Bethe-Gamow. Thanks, old chums, for calling attention to the paper and to my incipient senility.
"Maker of Patterns: An Autobiograhy Through Letters" by Freeman Dyson is available in hardcover and for kindle at Amazon.
Another of Pop Mannion's favorite books by about science was Gamow's "One Two Three...Infinity". He cherished his first edition copy all his adult life. It was published when Pop was in high school so it may have been the first adult science book he owned. His affection for it wasn't just nostalgic either. He thought it was a classic of its kind and recommended to everyone as the best introduction to scientific and mathematical thinking about how the world works. He might have known this, but if he didn't it would have done is heart good to find out it's still in print. "One Two Three...Infinity" is available in paperback and for kindle at Amazon.
Pop would also recommend Feynman's "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
Lance Mannion on Wednesday, April 24, 2019 in Fragments of an autobiography, Pop Mannion, Ruining my eyes, That's SCIENCE! | Permalink | Comments (3)
Happy Easter to all, truly all
Posted Easter Monday morning, April 22, 2019.
"We Welcome All": Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church, Niskayuna, New York. Around 7:30 a.m., Easter Monday, April 22, 2019.
This church is in the neighborhood of the Old Mannion Homestead. The church owned a house on our street when I was growing up that was used as the rectory or manse by the pastors passing through over the years. Each succeeding family became friends with ours, but I was closest to the family of the pastor who lived there when we moved in. One of their daughters my age. Their son was just a few years older. I don't know what path in life the daughter took but the son became a minister himself. He's the pastor of a church in California these days. He's made a career of being a social justice warrior, punctuated by arrests for trespassing on military bases and not dispersing fast enough when the police decided the protest marches he was leading needed to be broken up. I don't know if his father's old church has been the site of any same sex marriages but I'm sure my old friend has lost count of the many marriages he's performed. I don't understand how the Methodist Church came to the current crisis. But my friend and his father would be proud to see that this church has taken its stand on the side of social justice and that obscure preacher from Nazareth whose disciples included all sorts and conditions.
From all of us Mannions and our friends and relations at the Old Homestead, we hope you had a happy Easter, if Easter is a holy day you celebrate, a happy weekend otherwise, and that whatever you did yesterday, wherever you went, you were welcomed by all.
Lance Mannion on Monday, April 22, 2019 in Post cards | Permalink | Comments (0)
This post has been moved. I'm sorry for the inconvenience. To read it, follow the link to "Happy Easter to all, truly all".
Lance Mannion on Monday, April 22, 2019 | Permalink | Comments (0)
A symbol of the best in all of us
Mined from the notebooks, Easter Sunday morning, April 21, 2019. Posted the first Sunday of Easter, April 28.
[Editor's note: This is another attempt by me to catch up on my blogging by clearing out my notebooks.]
Happy Easter. Shh. We're at mass. Father Bob's leading us through a rousing recitation of the renewal of our baptismal vows.
"Do you reject Satan?" he asks at the top of his voice while smiling broadly, knowing we will.
"We do!" we shout back with great good cheer.
"And all his works?"
"And all his empty promises?"
Ok, that was me. And I said it under my breath. The rest of the congregation cried out lustily that they do.
Yes, I'm taking notes in church. It's my form of meditation. You might be surprised that I'm in church and at mass. We're here with Mom Mannion. We're visiting the old Mannion Homestead to celebrate Easter with her and my brothers Larry and Lyle and my sister Liz and their families. After mass we're all going out to brunch. Right now there's nothing for me to do but pretend I'm still a good Catholic or at least a dependable CAPE one. I have to say Father Bob gives good a good mass. He's a big barrel-shaped, moon-faced, gray-haired cleric of about fifty-five. Mom Mannion thinks the world of him. Pop Mannion did too. I don't trust him. But I don't trust any priests these days. I enjoy his sermons though. I've sat through three in the last two months. That makes three masses more than I attended in the year before, and one of those was a funeral mass. Pop's funeral. Father Bob said the mass and delivered the eulogy. He did Pop proud. He also did the benediction at the dedication naming the town hall after Pop. Last time we were up here Father Bob's took for his text for his sermon the parable of the Prodigal Son. I got a real kick out of it. I should write a post on that. I took notes. Naturally.
Now he's moved on to expanding on the baptismal vows.
"Do you mind if I ask you a few more questions?"
Of course we don't.
He fires off the questions---too fast for me to keep up. I'm writing them down as I catch them, so I'm not putting them in order. I got the first two in order.
"Do you believe in BELIEVING?"
Here are the ones I caught after that:
"Do you believe in Fairness?"
"Do you believe in Justice?"
"Do you believe in Mercy?"
"Do you believe in Peace?"
"Do you believe that this year our family is going to make a difference?"
Our family is the parish. The difference is that together we're going the world a fairer, more just, merciful, and peaceful place for everybody.
Father Bob's turned this part of the mass into a pep rally for Social Justice. This isn't perfunctory or rote. Father Bob, without being preachy about it, preaches regularly that the point is social justice. Everybody means everybody. As in we're all in this together. As in nobody gets left behind. It's implicit in the parish's mission statement, which is printed on the front page of the weekly bulletin:
We are an Evangelizing
Roman Catholic Community
of Christ's Disciples that
Welcomes All
Prays Joyfully
Grows in Faith
Proclaims God's Kingdom Acts
Justly:
This is our Mission
The parish has a Social Justice Ministry. Its members are busy organizing the parish's participation in next weekend's CROP Walk. Father Bob will be leading the parish contingent on the walk.
Today's gospel was John 20:1-9. The painting up top, by Annabile Carracci, depicts a scene from Luke's Easter story. I couldn't find a painting I liked based on John's. There's a great painting Alexander Ivanov based on John's story of Mary Magdalene encountering Jesus outside the tomb while Peter and John are taking a look around inside, but it's not as colorful or joyful as Carracci's. I like John's story better than Luke's. I like what John has Jesus saying to Mary--- "Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" ---but I imagine him smiling when he says it and then nearly laughing when she still doesn't realize it's him---she thinks he's the gardner---and he snaps her into focus with an amused "Mary!" in the tone he'd use to say "Wake up and smell the coffee." But he isn't smiling in Ivanov's painting and doesn't look even mildly amused. He looks still mostly dead and as if he spent all day yesterday harrowing hell and it took more out of him than being crucified.
Father Bob gave his usual lively reading. It's more accurate to say he performs the gospels rather than reads them. Today's sermon started with the Easter story but he moved on to touch on other things. He told us about a couple of minor frustrations he'd experienced in the past week, Both his chalices broke. One was chipped on the lip, which he discovered when he went to drink from in during the Eucharist. The other sprang a leak. "A chalice is made to do one thing!" he said in mock dismay and irritation, as if he was saying "You had one job!" But he was leading into reminding us what a hard year we've been through, in which his frustrations were trivial in the grand scheme of things. Here's something he said that made me sit up and take notice, which I think made a lot of people around me take notice too:
The Church, he said, had another hard year "mostly brought on by its own doing."
We all knew what he was referring too. Even the Pope has trouble bringing himself to be that self-accusatory.
But Father Bob left that to sink in. He worked his way to his main subject.
Notre Dame.
"A symbol of the best in all of us."
Symbol. That's the key word. Symbol. Not totem. Not icon. And of all of us. The Church first, but only as the starting point. All of us.
Then he conjured up for us the image---the altar with its gold cross still standing, looking almost untouched by the fire amid the burnt wreckage and scorched ruins. Another symbol. Not a miracle. A piece of luck giving us something to focus on and think about: that no matter the trouble and the suffering and the difficulty we go through, some good can still be left standing inside us and from that and around that we can rebuild.
Mass is ending. We're going in peace.
Lance Mannion on Sunday, April 21, 2019 in Sunday Sermon | Permalink | Comments (2)
The young physicist Freeman Dyson attends a concert in Geneva, New York
"The Pilgrimage to Canterbury" by Thomas Stothard. Circa 1806-07. The Tate Gallery via Wikimedia. Freeman Dyson's father, the composer George Dyson, based a choral work on Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales".
Title of this post sounds like the title of a poem doesn't it?
I got the new collection of Wendell Berry's essays out of the library. It's his selected essays. Someone else selected them. British writer. Paul Kingsnorth. Book's called "The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry". It's been at the top of the stack of books I intend to read, honest, for a week. I can't bring myself to start in. I don't have the room in my head, and I'm way behind in my blogging as it is. I don't need to add to my to-do list the hundred posts even one of his essays will inspire. I have to get a dozen I have in various stages of progress out of my head and off my chest before I can even think about starting new ones. Trouble I'm having there is most of them are about Trump. I'm sick of writing about Trump. I don't want to write about him. I don't think it's good for me to write about him. As the man says, everything Trump touches dies. That includes little bits of your soul whenever he barges into your thoughts. But all the other posts I have cooking are about basketball. I don't believe my readers care what I have to say about basketball.
Except for Trump and basketball, all I can think to write this morning is to go on and on some more about Buttigieg. Probably what I'll do when I finish this letter. Of course, what's really occupying my mind and what I want to go on and on about is A's situation. Everything else is a distraction from that.
A. says hi, by the way.
Tell you, though: my other trouble is I don't seem to be able to muster the mental energy and focus the way I need to. Did you see the Vonnegut quote I posted Sunday, about how writers need to concentrate and your concentration is the first thing to go as you age? That's what I'm afraid's happening to me. Not just when it comes to writing. With everything I have to do. I can't keep track of all I have to keep track of, and I need to keep track of all of it.
Slept in this morning. Got up at five. I've been trying to make a practice of not reading anything online before sunup. Definitely nothing about politics. In my stack of books are several that aren't specifically about politics. One of them is Freeman Dyson's "Maker of Patterns". He calls it "An Autobiography Through Letters". As you can figure, it's his life story told on the fly in letters he wrote to family, friends, colleagues, and professional and political acquaintances that he bridges and places into context with short notes to the readers of the book. My dad would have loved this book. He enjoyed reading collections of letters, and he admired Dyson. I think he even met him a couple of times. Of course I can't ask him. Or share the book with him. You know the feeling. You've been living with it for, what? Twenty years now? And of course for C. it's still fresh. I keep forgetting he's gone. I'll think, Pop would be interested in this. I should give him a call. Then I'll remember. Oh yeah. A just went through it again herself when Tiger won the Masters. Old Father Blonde loved Tiger. A. could see her dad beaming and hear him going on and on excitedly recounting Woods' victory and his memories of Tiger's career. At any rate, I'd have liked to have given Pop "Maker of Pattern" for his birthday---it's coming up next week---except that if he was alive and well he'd have already bought it for himself. He did that, buy himself books that would have made good birthday, Christmas, and Father's Day presents close to his birthday, Christmas, and Father's Day. So in his memory I pulled it out of the stack this morning and started in by opening it randomly, and you'll get a kick out of this.
First letter I read was from 1952. Dyson was a young professor at Cornell. He was writing to his parents back in England to tell them about a concert he and his sister, who was visiting from England, had attended in Geneva, New York!
Dyson's father George Dyson was a musician and composer and, at one time, the director of the Royal College of Music. The concert was a performance---the first performance anywhere---of one of George's choral compositions, "The Canterbury Pilgrims". Freeman learned of the concert, and with only the vaguest idea where Geneva was in relation to Ithaca, drove up there in the rain on a gamble. In those ancient pre-internet days, when he and his sister got to town they had to buy a copy of the local paper to find out where and at what time the performance was. I don't know what they'd have done if it had been cancelled or they had the wrong date. But it wasn't and they didn't, and Dyson judged the drive up well worth it:
I don't know what you would have thought of the performance musically. To my inexpert ear, it seemed that the chorus and the soprano soloist were excellent, the orchestra good, the tenor and bass soloists mediocre. The whole thing came across clearly all the time, it was never confused or dull, everything was lively. As we drove away after the show, we passed five or six girls of the choir in their long evening dresses, walking home and singing "A Merchant Was There with a Forked Beard" at the top of their voices. That was a beautiful finale…
Beautiful image too. And a nostalgic one. I imagine those girls were William Smith students, and, because some things never change, I'm sure I must have seen that image play itself out many times when we taught there.
Dyson reports the performance received an enthusiastic reception from the audience he judged to be of about a thousand. "[T]hey clapped like five thousand when the show came to an end." He doesn't name the concert hall or say where in town it was. I suppose it could have been on the campus, but wasn't there an old opera house in the section of downtown that hadn't been emptied by Wal-Mart's arrival? I have a vague memory there was. I think it was next to the bank branch I used sometimes.
Here's the part of the letter I thought you'd get the kick out of though:
About the city of Geneva, I know nothing, except that it is about the same size as Ithaca and has a flourishing beer-brewing industry…
I don't remember any signs of that either current or left-over when I was there.
But you'll love the punchline:
And I regret to say that until yesterday I had never heard of Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
Oh well. It was 1952. How long was that before your father took over as president?
That's all for now. Sun's up. Time to get to work blogging about Buttigieg. Or basketball. I suppose I could write about baseball, but, tell you the truth, I've lost track of both the Mets and the Red Sox. From what I've heard, I'm not missing much. Maybe I'll stick with basketball. Celtics won again the other night. Did you see the game? They seem to have the Pacers pretty well figured out. Kyrie's being Kyrie, which is great. And Haywood seems to be coming back into form just in time. I don't see them getting past the Bucks when the time comes though. Nets lost last night. I've been having more fun watching them lose than watching the Celts win. Still, I'd rather see them win. Don't know how I'll feel if they end up playing Boston in the next round.
Hope you a C. and Harls and Caitlyn are well.
Mannion
Fluent in Political Journalese: Mayor Pete, pundit whisperer. One
Posted Thursday afternoon, April 18, 2019.
Mayor Pete on the porch: South Bend mayor and candidate for the Democratic nominee for President Pete Buttigieg campaigning in Marshalltown, Indiana, Wednesday, April 17, 2019. Photo by Sara Jordan-Heintz/Times-Republican.
[Editor's note: I haven't hopped on Mayor Pete's bandwagon and hold no brief for him. I haven't decided on whose bandwagon to hop on, although I'm leaning towards Kamala's.]
First lesson I learned watching Pop Mannion supervise during his first go-round as town supervisor when I was in high school and college was that I was not cut out for politics.
Too short-tempered. Too shy. Too lazy. Too dumb.
Second lesson I learned was this, explicitly stated in various rephrasings by Pop many times during both his tenures as supervisor, usually after he came home from a town board meeting:
Don't make the mistake of thinking because you know what the the problem is and know what needs to be done to solve it you've effectively solved it and actually doing the work to get it done is a minor detail that will take care of itself. Knowing what needs to be done is not the same as knowing how to do it.
Pop generally knew how to do it.
He also knew how to explain how to do it to others so that they then knew how to do it too and could help him do it or, better yet, do it themselves, freeing him to take care of other problems. Those other problems usually required him to explain to more people how to do the work that would solve them.
Third lesson is more of a corollary to the second. People don't like being told how to do things, especially if what you're telling them is how to do their jobs, and they'll resent you for telling them and resist adopting your plan over theirs, even if they know in their hearts your plan will work better.
It isn't a whole lot to go on, but based on things he's said, the way he talks, what I've read---most impressively, his book---I think Buttigieg knows how to get things done. I think he does.
Don't read "Shortest Way Home" if you don't want to find yourself on Mayor Pete's bandwagon.
Atrios has another one of his trenchant posts, this one primly titled "The Pigfucker Whisperers" , which begins with this trenchant burn of elite political journalists and pundits:
The problem with the concept of "coastal elites" is that they are basically a certain segment of elites who happen to work in media/politics on the coasts, and by coasts we mean NYC and DC, who narrate this concept of "coastal elites" as if they were talking about people other than themselves.
My whole time "in" politics centrist goobers have been talking about cracking the code to speak in the mysterious languages spoken by people not in their social circles. The Real American has taken various forms in this popular conception, though I will say in the past this mythic creature seemed to bear some relationship to actual people, while the media's creation of The Trump Voter or the (white) Working Class in this latest chapter of their novel seems to be almost wholly fiction. Not that Trump voters don't exist - they obviously do - they just aren't recognizable in any of the portraits painted of them by the Art School graduates at the New York Times.
As it happens, though, the particular centrist goobers Atrios had in mind when he was writing work for Slate and the Washington Post, Will Salentan and Aaron Blake.
Blake wrote a non-trenchant column that Saletan approvingly and enthusiastically linked to on Twitter with an egregiously non-trenchant tweet, of which Atrios says;
If you're thinking about how "we" need to talk to "them" then you've already lost this particular struggle, and coastal elites who imagine we can send an ambassador from Harvard because he picked up some pigfucker at some point in his life and he can use his language to talk to the natives of that strange land known as Real America are as dumb as, well, Will Saletan. Who is always dumb.
Here's Blake being as dumb as Saletan:
For all their desire to beat President Trump in 2020, the Democratic Party hasn't figured out how to talk about his supporters. Hillary Clinton christened many Trump voters "deplorables" in 2016, and to this day the liberal base has a strong distaste for suggesting Trump voters were motivated by anything other than fear and bigotry. Claims that they were acting on "economic anxiety" have become a regular object of ridicule on social media. There is a sense that this glosses over Trump's real, baser appeal and even bestows undue legitimacy on his presidency.
Trump's real, baser appeal is to his mobs of hideous men who are motivated by fear and bigotry and deplorable. That's what the WALL is about. That's why the government was shut down for for over a month. That's why Trump declared his national emergency. That's why there are troops on the border who he laments can't get tough the way they can in other countries.
Go back even farther, to the day Trump staged his announcement he was running for President Trump Tower. He began with that unsubtle symbolic declaration that he was rich as Croesus (which is a lie, the lie that's given him the platform to make his thousands of lies since) and immediately, unambiguously stated he was going to run a racist, xenophobic campaign.
Most of the political media was dazzled by the golden elevator and in one way or another based their coverage of the election repeating the Trump campaign's line that his being a rich guy was why he had such appeal to working stiffs. They were "economically anxious" and he knew how to make money, ergo, he would make them money. The Trump's a populist who can speak to the hard-pressed (white) working class of myth and legend narrative was a way for journalists to fawn over his lifestyle of the rich and famous.
What's more, his voters told them what motivated them. In every report from the "Real America" where Hillary never went (except when she did), the hideous men and women who lived no place else but in diners said it: they hated and feared brown and black people and were rallying around Trump because he was going to make America safe for white Christian people like them again. And the journalists would dutifully write it down and include it in their reports and then ignore it.
"So you're worried about losing your job?"
"No, I'm worried one of Those People will take it from me."
Blake doesn't seem to have been there for those parts.
But then apparently neither were many of his colleagues in the art schools of the elite liberal media. And they have themselves convinced that what the Democrats need to beat Trump and win back the White House is their own Trump---a big, strong, tough-talking, no-nonsense white guy with (white) working class appeal. That's why Biden. That's why Beto. That's why Brown, momentarily, back before he took himself out of it. That's why Buttigieg. That's what they'll look for if Buttigieg falters.
The reason it's not Bernie is they like him as something else---an irritant. He's good at and good for making Democrats mad which leads to "Democrats in Disarray" stories that practically write themselves.
The reason it's not Booker is obvious. But he's also not all that tough-talking and his way of being no-nonsense is too calm, too reasonable, too charitable, and too steeped in religion.
My own feeling is that O'Rourke is too full of nonsense. I think his nonsense was beginning to worry the pundits. Buttigieg has come along just in time for them. Maybe that's why they're working so hard to bring him to the fore. Cause and effect are real mixed up here.
For the moment, Mayor Pete fits the bill. And he's more than happy to play up how he fits it.
He's calculated that his best chance lies in going after Bernie and Biden voters. A month ago, Bernie's campaign was afraid of Beto and directed their efforts at knocking him out of Bernie's path. If they know what's good for them now, they'd be terrified of Mayor Pete.
But he's also calculated that his chances are improved by his winning over the goobers in the elite media art schools.
But here's where Atrios gets less trenchant.
Mayor Pete isn't an "ambassador from Harvard" who "picked up some pigfucker at some point in his life" and "can use his language to talk to the natives of that strange land known as Real America". (I feel like Atrios meant language skills, and meant it as a dig at Buttigieg's over-praised and swooned-over facility at picking up foreign languages, and skills got left out in the typing). Buttigieg is an Indiana native, born and bred. He knows how to talk to people who live in those pigfucking towns (I also suspect Artios knows how sneeringly elitist "pigfucker" sounds and he intends it as a satire of the media elite's true feelings about the Regular Americans they claim to sympathy with.) because he grew up in a state that's dependent on pigfuckery and its attendant occupations and businesses for its economic well-being and he paid attention, as he apparently did to most things. Among the many things he was and is precocious at, he was precociously observant and attentive. And he met and got to know lot of pigfuckers and their families, friends, neighbors, business partners, bosses, and employees around the Hoosier state when he ran for state treasurer. He didn't need to learn to speak their language for that campaign or this one. He already spoke it. Fluently.
What he's learned to speak is political journalese.
Buttigieg isn't a pigfucker whisperer.
He's a pundit whisperer.
End of Part One. Part Two is finally off the assembly line. Follow the link to "He Makes Them Feel Smart".
Might as well read Blake's whole column: Follow the link to "Pete Buttigieg stresses empathy for Trump voters. Democrats may not want to hear it." at the Washington Post.
"Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future" by Pete Buttigieg is available in hardcover and for kindle at Amazon and as an audiobook read by Buttigieg himself from Audible.
Weather Report. Monday, April 15 2019: Watching the tornado watch go by
Mined from the notebooks, early Monday morning, April 15, 2019. Posted late Tuesday morning, April 16.
Monday. 6:34 a.m. 56 degrees. Wind out of the east, 3 mph. Startled awake at four by wind and rain and thunder and Oliver coming downstairs with his laptop to report a tornado watch. Rain heavy on the deck, the roof, and the porch outside the door. Loudest on the porch because the gutter was overflowing and the water was spilling out of it in a curtain that rattles the aluminum and slaps on the wood. The wind was gusting from the southwest at 29 mph. The tornado watch included our area and counties to the south and southeast all the way to New York City. The weather app said a severe thunderstorm warning was in effect until 4:15. Sure enough. Almost on the dot. Rain stopped, wind died, front had moved on. Silence. Lasted for about an hour then the birds start singing. They're still at it. Sun's up. Rain started falling again. A light shower this time. It's let up but the prediction is it'll be on and off all the rest of the day, sometimes heavy, sometimes just more showers. Wind will kick up again too. But the tornado watch has been cancelled and for now all is calm outside and cozy, snug, and warm within.
Filed under How the Weather Was.
Lance Mannion on Tuesday, April 16, 2019 in How the Weather Was | Permalink | Comments (0)
No place for persons of domestic tastes
Posted Monday morning, April 15, 2019.
"The President's Levee or All Creation Going to the White House". Crowd in front to the White House waiting to be admitted to the reception for Andrew Jackson's first inauguration, 1829. Illustration by Robert Cruikshank, 1841. Library of Congress via Wikipedia.
I half-expected Martineau to finish this paragraph with "I spent five weeks there one day…"
Harriet Martineu arrived in Washington [in 1834] in the aftermath of the nullification crisis. She didn't think much of the city or its inhabitants. "Washington is no place for persons of domestic tastes," she wrote. "Persons who love dissipation, persons who love to watch politics, and those who make a study of strong minds under strong excitements, love a season at Washington. But it is a dreary place to those whose pursuits and affections are domestic. I spent five weeks there and was heartily glad when it was over."
---from "Heirs of the Founders" by H.W. Brands.
Martineau was an English writer and reformer. Her affections and pursuits were domestic...and scientific and sociological and literary and educational and, sometimes tangentially, sometimes directly, political. Her Wikipedia entry is admirably and inspiringly exhausting. She was friendly with Darwin and almost married his brother Erasmus but he couldn't keep up with her. Charles wrote to his sister:
Our only protection from so admirable a sister-in-law is in her working him too hard." He commented, "She already takes him to task about his idleness — She is going some day to explain to him her notions about marriage — Perfect equality of rights is part of her doctrine. I much doubt whether it will be equality in practice…
I can't tell if Darwin was taking an affectionate swipe at Martineau, his brother, or both.
Lance Mannion on Monday, April 15, 2019 in Political Fictions | Permalink | Comments (0)
How Kurt Vonnegut hid in his profession
Posted Palm Sunday morning, April 14, 2019.
Uncredited AP photo of novelist Kurt Vonnegut looking pensively at the camera via SyFyWire.
Most of my adult life has been spent in bringing to some kind of order sheets of paper eight and a half inches wide and eleven inches long. The severely limited activity has allowed me to ignore many a storm. It has also caused many of the worst storms I ignored. My mates have often been angered by how much attention I pay to paper and how little attention I pay to them.
I can only reply that the secret to success in every human endeavor is total concentration. Ask any great athlete.
To put it another way: sometimes I don't consider myself very good at life, so I hide in my profession.
---from "In the Capital of the World", one of the essays in the collection "Palm Sunday" by Kurt Vonnegut.
Lance Mannion on Sunday, April 14, 2019 in Scrapbook, Writer's Workshop | Permalink | Comments (1)
Scripture for pagans
Lifted from the cell phone, Monday, April 1, 2019.
Post card from the eye of the goddesshead: On our trip up to visit Mom Mannion at the beginning of the month, we stopped in at the local B&N where I considered picking one of these up. But I couldn't decide between "The Fairy Bible" or "The Angel Bible". Sale table. Barnes & Noble, Colonie Center, Colonie, New York. Monday morning, April 1, 2019.