Guilt by association

And the Pharisees and the Scribes murmured, saying, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."
--Luke 15:2

The Republican campaign continues to gasp with alarm over Obama's association with Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obviously, the Republicans are grasping at straws to attack Obama's credibility, and obviously there is no evidence that any radical or racist views by either man somehow rubbed off on Obama, affecting any decisions he would make in the future.

But that isn't really the Republican argument. Republicans argue that Obama's willingness even to associate with these men -- regardless of any effects on Obama's policies or opinions from that association -- is sufficient in itself to prove his lack of good judgment. In other words, one must not merely think correctly himself, but must also not associate with those dangerous people who do not think correctly.

Consider also McCain's outrage -- real or feigned -- at Obama's willingness to talk to the Iranians without "preconditions." And at Obama's meeting with Palestinian leaders when he visited Israel last summer.

A common psychological thread runs through these attitudes.

I sense that many Republicans feel a compulsion to keep themselves (and others) free from any contamination that might result from rubbing up against the wrong sorts of people, ideas and even thoughts. ("He is not one of us!") And they feel this need especially acutely in their leaders. On the other hand, most Democrats, I suggest, feel that exposing themselves to every idea, however outlandish, and to every sort of person, however different, can be only neutral at worst -- and highly valuable at best. If you work the streets as a politician or activist in the black south side of Chicago, for example, you want to learn what motivates the people you are serving, even where those motivations may be unpleasant and despicable. If this means working with 1960's radicals with whom you disagree, or attending a church led by a firebrand pastor -- so what?

Similarly at the governmental level. If the Iranians pose a serious threat to American interests, Democrats believe we should try to understand what motivates them. Does Iran have legitimate interests that motivate its actions, interests that possibly could be satisfied in a less frightening manner? Is the Iranian government motivated by years of American support for the Shah, and, if so, can we do anything to defuse that long-simmering hostility? Is Iran motivated by fear of Israel? By a desire to be a leader in the Muslim world? By nostalgia for the glory of the Persian Empire? Can we help them satisfy any of these psychological needs or compulsions without compromising any of our own interests or the interests of our allies? Are Iranian leaders simply irrational anti-Americans, beyond any hope of rational debate? If so, that would be useful to ascertain as well.

Simply labeling the Rev. Wright or Ayers as dangerous radicals, past or present, should not put those men off-limit to any future contact by responsible citizens. Simply labeling Iran as "evil" -- besides being a gross simplification of any person's or any government's motivation -- does not warrant isolating it from any future contact with our government.

But less interesting than these policy conflicts themselves is the difference in psychology between Democrats and Republicans that may give them birth. As a liberal Democrat (and as an attorney who knows that solutions to most disputes can ultimately be negotiated), my own psychological makeup makes it hard for me to imagine how a policy of "Know Not Thy Enemy" benefits anyone, government or individual. Also, as a brief glance at history suggests, enemies have a way of morphing into useful allies virtually over night.

But not if we have insulated ourselves from all human contact with them in advance.

Reaping what we sow

Even during the war, when I had traveled here, I had thought that if Vietnam hadn't been so beautiful we would not have ravished it, nor would the French have bothered to colonize and plunder it.

--Paul Theroux

For the last seven years we have been at war, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. We are still fighting in both countries. Are we "winning"? Are we making the world safe for democracy? If we lose the war in the Middle East, will we forfeit the respect of the rest of the world.

Right now, I'm thinking not of those questions, but of what Afghanistan and Iraq will be like a generation from now. This question comes to mind from my reading of Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. I've mentioned before my fascination with his idiosyncratic travelogue, The Great Railway Bazaar. That book was an account of his four months of travel by train, in 1973 at the age of 32, from London to Japan, through India and Southeast Asia, and then back to London through the USSR.

Thirty-three years later, having turned 65, he decided to repeat the trip -- again by rail -- insofar as still possible. Ghost Train, published this year, is the story of that trip -- a study of cities and countries, villages and peoples, many of which have changed considerably since 1973, and others that have changed little. The book is also a mirror in which Theroux finds revealed the changes in himself, the image of a much older and somewhat sadder individual, again reacting, but this time differently, to rough travel and third-world peoples.

In 1973, his earlier visit to South Vietnam came not long before the Americans finally pulled out, leaving that devastated land in the hands of a corrupt South Vietnamese government that quickly collapsed when confronting the North Vietnamese military forces. We had occupied and fought in the country for over ten years. We dropped more tonnage of explosives on the tiny area of North Vietnam than we had on Germany and Japan combined in World War II. We said we wanted to preserve "democracy" in Vietnam, and did so by propping up a military puppet government. We wanted to avoid the "domino effect" that our "experts" hypothesized would result from our defeat -- the theory that, one by one, the countries of Southeast Asia would collapse like dominoes before the forces of godless, anti-Western, Communist materialism.

Vietnam did fall. Out of spite, we embargoed the starving country and silently supported China in its war with Vietnam. We supported Pol Pot and his genocidal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia when Vietnam tried to depose him. Vietnam prevailed in both struggles. There were no dominoes. Cambodia is now a kingdom. Laos (on which we also dropped enormous numbers of bombs and landmines in a war that Nixon and Kissinger never admitted took place) remains a professedly Communist state that nevertheless welcomes Western business and tourism. Other states in the area -- Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore -- have varying forms of government, none of which is even remotely socialist, let alone Communist.

In 1973, Theroux's train from Saigon had run only as far as Hue, which by then was a desolate, bombed-out city, part way up the coast. It had been a dangerous ride, with the constant threat of attack from guerilla forces. Beyond Hue, the track was cut as it entered Communist-held North Vietnam. Travel to Hanoi had then been an impossible dream. Hanoi was just a target for American bombing.

Now, 30 years later, travel to Hue, and then on to Hanoi, and even into China, was as easy as buying the tickets.

He discovered, as all tourists do, that Hanoi is a beautiful city of French architecture and planning -- wide boulevards, cathedral, opera house, government buildings, colonial mansions and villas --surrounded by the normal chaos of an Asian city. He contrasted the French occupation of Vietnam with that of the Americans.

The French had been humiliated in battle ... and driven out; but at least they had left long boulevards of imposing buildings behind. And we had left nothing except a multitude of scars and the trauma of the whole miserable business, ten years of terror and seven million tons of bombs.

Theroux talked to many Vietnamese -- in Saigon, in Hue, and in Hanoi. He was overwhelmed by their friendliness toward him as an American. He heard their stories of horror, including accounts of the Christmas bombing of Hanoi -- a "genocidal act of pure wickedness," in Theroux's opinion -- ordered by President Nixon in 1972. He saw the quiet, unemotional exhibits in the war museums, displaying the artifacts and consequences of the bombings, presented as the historical facts of an unfortunate time, not as an attack on Vietnam's adversaries.

One of the greatest aspects of the new Vietnam was its compassion, its absence of ill will or recrimination. Blaming and complaining and looking for pity are regarded as weak traits in Vietnamese culture; revenge is wasteful. They won the war against us because they were tenacious, united, and resourceful, and that was also how they were rebuilding their economy.

As horribly as the war in Vietnam affected our military personnel, as well as the Vietnamese people, we were unbelievably fortunate in our defeat. We were defeated by a people who look to the future not to the past. While our cultures are different, the Vietnamese share with us an entrepreneurial, hard-working spirit that makes them an easy people for us to work with. When I visited Laos and Cambodia last fall, I learned that the French had strongly favored the Vietnamese over their other two Indochinese colonies because of the Vietnamese traits of ambition and diligence. (The Vietnamese plant rice; the Cambodians watch it grow; the Lao listen to it grow. --French colonial joke.) Like us, the Vietnamese are a forward looking people who do not nurse grievances.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, I fear that our luck has run out. Do we see anything in their culture that suggests they ever let by-gones be by-gones? Do we feel they forgive and forget an injury? Does the culture of the Middle East in general suggest a civilization that is forward looking and optimistic?

I suspect we will be paying a heavy price -- paying for our torture and bombings, for our half-baked plans to impose our own concept of democracy, for our perceived coveting of Iraqi oil, for the humiliations we have forced upon these proud and hyper-sensitive Arab peoples -- for generations to come.

Separate but equal?

Chicago's Board of Education is preparing to open its first high school for gay and lesbian students in either 2009 or 2010. The school will provide openings for a maximum of 600 students. Admission will be awarded by lottery from a pool of applicants. Community opinion to date appears to support opening such a school.

The idea of an all-gay school seems analogous to already existing African-American academies and all-girl schools, schools often opened under charter school arrangements. I can see the same benefits in all three cases. I also have the same reservations.

The Chicago school board cites the primary reason for opening such a school to be the high absentee and dropout rate among gay students, because of the hostility, bullying, and violence that they experience, or at least fear. Removal of those factors would make study and learning easier for them. Similarly, studies have shown that in some circumstances, girls and blacks are more self-confident and assertive in voluntarily-segregated environments. Blacks have the opportunity to develop confidence through participation in black studies programs, and girls may do significantly better in math and science when they are not worrying about how boys perceive them when they show interest and aptitude in such subjects.

My reservations about all such programs, especially for gays and blacks, arise from the fact that we don't live in a segregated society. In Brown v. Board of Education, as we recall, the Supreme Court found that segregated schools, at least for African-Americans, were inherently unequal. Unless handled very carefully, separate schools can lead to ghettoization, where students learn to be self-confident within their narrow peer group, but do not learn the social and behavioral skills, and the competiveness, necessary to assimilate and interact successfully with the broader society that they'll confront after graduation.

(Also, of course, a very large proportion of gay high school students feel comfortable attending high school with their straight peers -- or at least as comfortable as it's possible for anyone to be in high school -- but these are not the ones who would apply to a segregated school in any case.)

A less important consideration, especially considering the small relative population planned for such segregated schools -- but still a point to be considered -- is that the majority population learns to get along with minority groups through familiarity. An all white school does not prepare white majority students to work and live beside blacks in college and beyond. In the same way, homophobia, to a large extent, is a fear of the unknown. Gay high school students have won increasing acceptance and assimilation within the last generation, simply because of their increased visibility and prominence in the school population, at all social and leadership levels. This acceptance by others during their student years will carry forward into their peer group's adult lives.

In any event, the Chicago school is a worthwhile experiment by a well-intentioned school board. Herding all gay and lesbian students into separate schools would be -- as it would be with girls, blacks, Jews, or red-haired students -- a horrendous idea with serious civil rights implications. But schools tailored to help a certain limited number of students who are having a particularly difficult time "fitting in" during their adolescent years may be an experiment worth trying.

The results and consequences should be carefully monitored, as I suspect they will be.

Sacrificial trees

The University of Washington has one of the most beautiful, tree-shaded campuses in the nation. It came as a shock, therefore, as I strolled across campus today, to hear the harsh buzz of a chain saw. Suddenly, off to one side of me, I saw a tree wobble, collapse to the ground, and die. Closer investigation showed a number of neighboring trees also destined for immediate death.

Bit by bit, areas of the campus, once densely forested, have been cleared and built up as the university reaches out for ever more classrooms. Today's traumatic episode begins the construction of Paccar Hall. This new building for the business school is being built just north of Denny Hall, and just east of the new law school, on the southeast corner of Memorial Way and Stevens Way.

You can't stop progress, as they say. In this case the new construction does represent progress -- even at the cost of a few trees. Most of Paccar Hall will replace existing surface parking, and the cost of trees will be minimal. Once completed, a second adjacent building will replace Balmer Hall, an existing rather tacky 1950's building now serving the business school. The two new buildings will be joined together. Landscaping ultimately will no doubt restore the sacrificial trees.

The UW has unusually uniform and attractive "collegiate gothic" brick architecture. During the 1950's, one of the more lamentable eras in American architectural design, a few jarringly modern buildings were constructed. Besides Balmer Hall, these included the unfortunately named "Sieg Hall"(formerly called simply the General Engineering Building), and a central section of Suzzalo Library. This construction not only clashed with the rest of the campus, but was inherently unattractive even by the standards of the time.

During the last fifty years, however, the university has returned to brick construction that may lack the ornate detailing of the earlier buildings, but nevertheless blends attractively with the rest of the campus. (And within the last ten years, the school built a substantial addition to the old physics building that completely matched the gothic, castle-like appearance of the original, showing that the necessary skills to detail such buildings have not been lost.)

I hate to see even one tree fall to the ground, let alone a grove. But I'm pleased to live near a university that has shown as much care for the esthetic integrity of its campus, including trees and landscaping, as it has for the utility of its new construction. A friend, a graduate of Yale, visited me from out of town a few years ago. He expressed regret that his own alma mater had failed to show the same care in preserving an overall design to its campus.

So, I'm looking forward to seeing the new building as it rises. Together with the law school, it will present an impressive introduction to the campus through the main north entrance.

Time to let the dogs out -- Woof, woof, woof, woof!

If the law supports you, argue the law. If the facts support you, argue the facts. If neither the law nor the facts support you, pound on the table.

So goes the humorous old recipe for winning at trial.

And for John McCain, in these last 30 days before the election, it's apparently fist-pounding time. The voters don't like his views on the issues. They don't respond to his personality (although they may be at least intrigued by that of his running mate). All that's left is the old razzle-dazzle, the misdirection play, the smoke and mirrors.

Time for the attack dogs!

Thus Sarah Palin's mock horror yesterday at Obama's "palling around with terrorists." Thus GOP analysts' suggestions that McCain must win by undercutting Obama's personality, making him appear "supremely unacceptable" in the eyes of the average voter (twelve percent of whom already believe him to be a Muslim). Thus the comment in this week's Economist that "If the election is fought about anything except culture, then the Republicans are on difficult ground."

So. Expect to suddenly hear more about abortion and gay marriage. Expect to hear more about elitest, wine-drinking, Harvard-attending arugula-eaters. Expect to hear more about wishy-washy liberal peaceniks.

More darkly, expect to hear from anonymous blogs -- although probably not from McCain himself, who will take the "high" ground -- incendiary talk about Obama's middle name, references to "towel heads," dismay directed at the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, curiosity about why a nice American colored boy would be sent to school with Muslims in Indonesia, references to "The Manchurian Candidate." Expect to hear the word "uppity."

"Who is this guy, anyway?" -- the question that the average Joe from Appalachia has been asking all along -- will be the McCain-Palin subtext from now until November. Watch for it playing on your local TV set.

The descent of American politics into pig-wrestling has dismayed America's best friends abroad.
--The Economist (10-4-08)

Let's face it. The low road, the path of cultural resentment -- perfected, as the Economist notes, by Richard Nixon in the late 1960's -- worked in spades for the Republicans in 2000 and 2004. Why mess with a proven ad campaign, especially when you know that the consumer doesn't like your product?

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

For those of us interested in such things, church calendars set aside today's date to commemorate the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Because, many moons ago, at confirmation, I chose St. Francis as my patron, his life story tends to come to mind each October.

I suspect many people squirm a bit at mention of St. Francis. Not only because of excessive use of his statue as decoration in gardens and homes of a certain sort, but because stories of his life are so frequently sentimentalized. Paintings of Francis preaching to the birds -- cute, fluttery little fellows hovering about him like Disney's birds singing with Cinderella -- are either charming or nauseating, depending on your own temperament

But he was a real person, not a cartoon confection. Francis was born in about 1181, son of a rich merchant. He had a privileged upbringing, hung out with wealthy friends, became a troubador (the rock singers of his time) at the height of that fashionable activity, and aspired to write French poetry.

At some point, he became disturbed at the poverty around him and turned aside from his more-or-less slacker pleasures to devote increasing amounts of time caring for the poor and the ill. In about 1205, he experienced a mystical vision that confirmed him in his new life. He eventually came into conflict with his bewildered father. Like the Buddha in India, who underwent a similar transformation 1,500 years earlier, he renounced his inheritance, gave up all his property including the clothes on his back, and went out onto the streets to live as a beggar. (Something to think about as we walk contemptuously past a bearded guy on the sidewalk, holding a cardboard sign.)

Eventually, he felt moved to form a new community, now known popularly as the Franciscan order, the first religious order that focused on preaching to the common people rather than living apart from them in a monastic setting. He preached throughout the Mediterranean world, died in 1226, and was declared a saint two years later.

St. Francis loved nature and wildlife, and his biography is full of stories, real or simply devout, about his ability to communicate with animals. He is said to be the first poet in the Italian language, a century before Dante, writing in his native Umbrian dialect rather than Latin. He is the patron saint of nature and of environmentalists, of merchants and stowaways, of Italy and the Philippines.

When a young person chooses a patron saint at confirmation, he indicates in some way the kind of person he aspires to be. Measuring his life later against his youthful aspirations is always humbling, and always worth the humiliation. Is devotion to household pets, a devotion I share with the late Leona Helmsley, my only connection to the sanctity of Francis of Assisi? Certainly I've never had mystical visions, or even a stronger than average sense of divine providence in my life.

But Francis's life, despite his later meetings and negotiations with popes and bishops, teaches that a worthwhile life need not be based on dramatic events, visions, martyrdoms, crusades, scholarly writings and debates, charismatic leadership. A good life is based essentially on small choices made day by day that go unnoticed, perhaps even by the person making the choices. Still not an easy goal, by any means, still a goal we all fall short of, but a goal at least within the aspirations of the average person.

St. Francis was a man of great talents, but he saw himself, at heart, as a simple beggar, one of God's fools, living close to nature, confronting his Creator in the face of his neighbor. Not a bad role model to choose when you're young. Not a bad view of life to keep in mind as you get older.

Realpolitik in Louisiana

This election year, when a certain amount of populism has come back into fashion, seems a good time to remember the remarkable career of Louisiana governor and senator Huey Long.

Long (aka "The Kingfish") was one of the few Democrats to oppose FDR's New Deal as being too conservative. He freed Louisiana from total domination by corrupt corporations, notably the Standard Oil Company, to the acclaim of its poverty-ridden citizens and the horror of its educated and wealthy elite. Between 1928 and 1932, he rammed through the legislature a remarkable program of public works and progressive taxation, surviving impeachment in 1929, and winning election to the U.S. Senate in 1932.

Long's accomplishments did not come without a cost: his total personal domination of every agency of Louisiana government -- he virtually eliminated self-government for New Orleans and other cities -- and deliberate, planned corruption and cronyism in the awarding of government contracts. Long was loved by the masses, but he was completely ruthless in destroying the careers not only of his political opponents, but of their innocent relatives as well. He was compared, at the time and since, to Mussolini. Assassinated in 1935, he left a dynasty that exerted great influence in the state, right up until the death of Senator Russell Long in 1987.

As a guy with some modest literary pretentions, I'm embarrassed to admit that I've never read Robert Penn Warren's 1946 novel, All the King's Men, based loosely on the life of Huey Long. Nor have I seen either the 1949 Oscar-winning movie of that book, or the less successful Sean Penn film from 2006.

However, last night I did see Intiman's theatrical production, adapted from the book by Adrian Hall. The production was totally delightful, and may have provided me just the push I need to go back and read its source. From plot summaries I've read of Warren's novel, the play followed the plot of the book closely.

First of all, I can tell you that I'm very happy not to have grown up in the rural South, and, especially, not in 1930's Louisiana! The people and events -- and certainly the accents -- at times were creepy reminders of the gothic plays of Tennessee Williams, although Warren's interests, intent, and philosophy of life were quite different from that playwright's. The play (and, I gather, the book) tells the story of Willie Stark, a self-described "redneck" politician, and his ascent to political power -- an ascent based on class resentment and the support of the hitherto powerless masses, and on Stark's determination to govern for the benefit of the underprivileged. Stark scorns his critics, reminding them that corruption and sin are simply the human condition; unlike his critics, he acknowledges and accepts that fact and uses life as he finds it -- including fear, bribery, graft and corruption --to advance the welfare of the lower classes.

But Stark's rise is but a background to the primary story, which is that of Jack Burden. Burden, a newspaper reporter with roots in Baton Rouge society, becomes first an amused observer of the Willie Stark phenomenon, and ends up as Stark's right hand man.

The play presents Burden's life: his progress from detached observer, to ironic participant, to philosophical nihilist, and, finally -- transformed by shame for bowing to Stark's pressure and betraying his own step-father, causing his suicide, by the loss of his childhood sweetheart, and by Stark's ultimate assassination -- into a more fully realized human being who accepts the paramount importance of a man's responsibilities to others and participation in their lives.

Intiman mounts its production with a cast of 18. The cast sings in ensemble a number of songs from the period, songs that convey a feeling for life in the Depression South. John Procaccino and Leo Marks, who play Stark and Burden respectively, give outstanding, nuanced performances as real people doing their best in a corrupt and selfish world. This production plays nightly through November 8 at Intiman Theatre.

Honey, I discarded the kids

A troubled teenager, in a novel I read recently, worried wryly that his parents probably lay awake all night debating whether a "fifty-fourth trimester abortion" might not be a viable option.

Post-natal abortions aren't yet an option for frustrated parents, but Nebraska has come up with the next best thing: legal abandonment. Like all or most other states, Nebraska has adopted a "safe haven" law, permitting a mother to leave a child with a state facility without facing criminal penalties. These laws were passed to prevent "dumpster babies," unwanted newborn babies abandoned by their terrified mothers.

But Nebraska's new law is unique, in that it applies to all children up until the age of 19.

By Sept. 23, two more boys and one girl, ages 11 to 14, had been abandoned in hospitals in Omaha and Lincoln. Then a 15-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl were left.

The biggest shock to public officials came last week, when a single father walked into an Omaha hospital and surrendered nine of his 10 children, ages 1 to 17, saying that his wife had died and he could no longer cope with the burden of raising them.

--Erik Eckholm, New York Times (10-2-08).

Officials blame these abandonments on family financial crises, lack of available psychiatric services and the insurance to pay for them, and parents who are confronting behavioral problems they simply don't know how to handle.

All of these concerns are real. And yet something is wrong. Americans for generations reared large unruly families on virtually no money at all. Farm families relied on subsistence farming. Urban families squeaked by on tiny, pre-minimum-wage incomes. Pre-Dr. Spock parents did not have the advantage of child care manuals or state agencies that promoted enlightened child care policies. Children and teens were no less rebellious and unruly then than now.

But parents did the best they could, and usually got the job done. A few kids turned out great and far exceeded their parents' expectations. Most became reasonably decent citizens, much like their parents. Some were disappointments, ran away from home, became criminals or deadbeats. But all were loved, or -- even if not loved -- raised to the best of their parents' abilities.

I feel uneasy judging others for their response to problems I haven't faced myself. And yet, we seem to be confronting a growing social tendency to give up in the face of adversity, a tendency that carries over to child-rearing itself. Like those who abandon their beloved, healthy pets -- or have a vet put them to sleep -- whenever the animal becomes a bother, or who declare bankruptcy at the earliest opportunity rather than struggle to meet their obligations, many people today seem willing to just walk away from inconvenient responsibilities.

Not most people, of course. Although the abandonments described in the NYT article are dramatic, they obviously represent a small minority of all the Nebraska families that are facing the very real pain of raising "problem" kids, many of whom will turn out just fine in a few more years.

But the story from Nebraska still illustrates a gradual, but discouraging, decline in our ability as a society to face adversity, or even simply annoyance, without flinching.

House GOP repeats 1929 performance

Dave Horsey, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

A penny saved is ... a real bother

As I write this, our nation is contemplating the purchase of $700 billion in bad debt, more money than the entire Iraq fiasco has cost us to date. No one seems interested in discussing where the cash will come from. The Bush administraton has run up a massive debt of its own since taking office in 2001. There is no surplus to fall back on. And no one, it seems, proposes raising taxes to pay for the $700 billion pledge. As a result, do you hear that humming noise coming from Washington, D.C.? That hum comes from the printing presses being warmed up -- to print the money that will pay for this splurge.

And what's that anguished screaming you hear in foreign capitals? It comes from individuals and governments, trying to unload their dollar holdings -- buying euros or gold or other commodities -- as fast as possible, before they're hit by the greenback's further devaluation. For us here at home, expect sharply increased inflation, as we need more and more dollars to pay for the same goods and services.

But let's turn our attention from great matters of global finance, which just makes our head hurt, and look at something related, but closer to home.

On my dresser top is a messy pile of coins, mainly pennies. It has been there for a long time, sometimes growing higher, sometimes shrinking lower-- but, over time, climbing higher and higher, spreading to the edges and falling onto the floor. I also have boxes of pennies stashed away from previous frenzied attempts to clean up my dresser. I try to remember each day to put a few pennies in my pocket, so I can avoid getting more pennies in change, but I usually forget. I'm inundated.

At the same time that the government was taking steps, in effect, to radically devalue the dollar, the U. S. Mint was announcing plans for the humble Lincoln penny. To celebrate Lincoln's 200th birthday, the reverse of the penny is being redesigned in four different forms, each with a different scene from Abe's life. This new issue will apparently encourage collectors to seek them out and hold onto them. As if there was any problem with people holding onto pennies.

The real problem is that it now costs more than its face value to make each penny. In 2007, it cost 1.7 cents to mint a penny. As a result, the government had to make it illegal to melt pennies down and sell the metal. Thus the penny is different from the quarter dollar. With quarters, the government makes a profit from every quarter that get socked away in boxes or put into collections, because its face value is substantially more than its cost to produce.

Despite the fact that it loses money on every new penny, the government put 7.4 billion new pennies into circulation in 2007, and now is encouraging collectors to demand even more of them by its commemorative changes in design.

The purchasing value of the dollar in the 1950's was almost ten times what it is today. In other words, a dime bought as much as today's dollar. A penny bought as much as today's dime. Americans got along fine without 1/10 cent pieces in the 1950's; they'd get along fine without pennies today. Even the nickel borders on useless, worth the same as a half penny in the 1950's.

Britain abandoned its half penny coin -- worth roughly the same as our penny -- in 1984. We should stop making pennies today, and certainly not encourage additional demand for a coin that costs more to make than it's worth.

Maybe then, finally, I could once more see the surface of my dresser top.

Pumpkins threaten Russia

Smashing pumpkins! Breaking hearts! Stunning news out of Russia.

The Russian Duma (analogous to our House of Representatives) is considering a bill to ban celebration of Halloween and Valentine's Day as "bad influences on Russian youth," according to a story in USA Today. Not because of religious objections, but because the two holidays represent Western cultural threats to Russian civilization.

Maxim Mishchenko, a Duma member, says he is pushing the bill to guard the "moral and spiritual upbringing" of the nation's youth and to promote traditional Russian culture and values rather than those imported from the West. ...

"If the state won't interfere, they (Russia's youth) will behave like little monkeys, copying what doesn't fit with the soul of our culture," Mishchenko says.

Russian legislative leaders concede that an absolute ban would be counter-productive. Any legislation probably would be designed primarily to prohibit observance of the holidays, including the wearing of costumes, within the schools.

My first reaction is to laugh. Yeah, right, I think, and we should ban observance of St. Patrick's Day and Cinco de Mayo. I'm sick and tired of Irish and Mexican cultural imperialism. What a joke! But then I remember that even so rational a people as the French have fought for years to protect the purity of the French language from any foreign influence, especially the adoption and adaptation of English words ("Franglais"). (Recent reports suggest the French are gradually giving up this battle, but it still rages on in Quebec.) Fear of losing one's culture appears to be a natural human response.

All of which makes me realize how unique we are in the United States, and how lucky. We have a salad culture, an immigrant culture that is a mixture of ingredients. Plain old lettuce -- the culture of Great Britain -- may still constitute the matrix of the salad, but additional fruits, vegetables and spices are constantly being added from other countries. These new flavors don't "ruin" the salad. To the contrary, they add new interest. We don't "taste" the same now as we did fifty years ago, or even ten. There's no way we can predict how we'll taste in another decade.

When anyone claims that Hispanics or Vietnamese or east Indians are changing America, you have to just shout "duh!" ... and ask which America are they changing? The America of 1950? Or 1980? Or last year? "All is flux, nothing stays still," wrote Heraclitus, 2,500 years ago. He could have been talking about American civilization today.

While various acts are properly illegal in this country, no thought or idea is "un-American," because no prescriptive standard exists for what is "American." We have no "soul of our culture" to protect, other than our willingness to accept and experiment with novelty. This trait makes our lives more complicated, in some ways, than the lives of a Frenchman, or a Russian, or a Thai. But we remain the most cosmopolitan society in the world. That cosmopolitanism makes us innovative and flexible. It's not a weakness, but one of our greatest strengths.

Telling kids they can't celebrate with skeletons and cupids is just another example of an age-old Russian tendency toward isolation, a tendency that's caused them no end of grief in the past. They should get past it.

Benaroya Hall

"Seattle is the cultural dustbin of the nation." Those horrifying words, allegedly spoken in disgust by Sir Thomas Beecham, one of the great British conductors of the twentieth century, after a year of conducting the Seattle Symphony in the early 1940's, left Seattle traumatized and culturally defensive for decades to come.

Those of us who grew up around these parts often saw ourselves as living in an isolated frontier town, less scorned than totally unknown by the rest of the nation. Only gradually have we begun taking heart from high rankings in "best cities" polls, and from frequent laudatory articles in the New York Times. (Gawrsh, that's a real big city newspaper, too!) We still may feel inferior to older cities with more established cultural traditions, such as San Francisco, Cleveland, Philadelphia -- but we sense that the gap with many of these towns is closing, if not already closed.

A major step forward from our cultural adolescence was the construction of Benaroya Hall, whose tenth anniversary we celebrate this month. Until 1998, the Seattle Symphony performed in the Seattle Opera House (now remodeled as McCaw Hall), a venue located out at the Seattle Center (the old 1962 World's Fair grounds) that it shared with the local opera and ballet companies. Benaroya Hall, built specifically for the symphony, was constructed in the center of downtown, across the street from the then recently-built Seattle Art Museum. Re-location of those two institutions accelerated the development of downtown Seattle as a residential, entertainment and dining center, an enjoyable and safe area to be enjoyed in the evening as well as during the day.

Benaroya Hall has an audience capacity of 2,500 in its main auditorium, and 500 in a smaller performance hall. The acoustics are excellent. The symphony plays virtually nightly, from September through June, to full houses in the main auditorium.

Pride in one's city, like pride in one's country, can be either silly and boosterish, or constructive and worthwhile. Benaroya Hall provides a focus for the best sort of civic pride, a city's pride in the accomplishments of its artistic community, and in its own willingness and ability to support the arts, both financially and by attendance.

So happy birthday, Benaroya Hall.

-----------------------------

Sir Thomas left Seattle humiliated, and so it's nice to learn that he in turn had his own bad moments:

The story is told of how, around 1950, Beecham met a lady whom he recognised but whose name he couldn't remember. After some preliminaries about the weather, and desperately racking his memory, he asked how she was.

"Oh, very well, but my brother has been rather ill lately."

"Ah, yes, your brother. I'm sorry to hear that. And, er, what is your brother doing at the moment?"

"Well... he's still  King", replied Princess Mary.

--Wikipedia

Lorsque vous n'avez aucun Bud, vous n'avez pas de bière.

"Hey, Janice! Ya gonna space out by that TV all night, or d'ya think maybe you could spare some time to bring us that pitcher of Bud ya got in yer hand?"

"Don't you mouth off to me, Sam," the barmaid grinned, sliding the full foaming pitcher onto the table. "Save your smartass remarks for your poor wife."

Just another Friday night at Riverside Tavern. The usual gang of ten befuddled beer guzzlers sitting at the back of the room, their elbows wet from beer slopped on the table

"Damn shame about Bud," one sighed, downing his glass in a gulp.

"You mean those Frenchies or whatever buying it up?"

"Yup. Next thing you know the goddam White House will be up for sale."

"And the damn government back in Washington sits around worrying about Canadians sneaking across the border. Couldn't care less about a bunch of frogs buying up our whole damn country!"

"We should sue!" Bill, who usually sat quietly drinking and listening to the others, spoke up loudly, surprising his friends. "Why wait for the damn feds -- let's do it ourselves!"

And I suppose that's how ten self-described beer drinkers ended up bringing suit in St. Louis federal court today, seeking to block the sale of Anheuser-Busch to the Belgian beer maker InBev. Luckily, these ten typical boozers managed to find Joseph Alioto -- one of the nation's most prominent anti-trust lawyers, who has reportedly brought anti-trust lawsuits at one time or another against virtually every major American company -- to be their attorney.

"The famous Clydesdale horses will be put out to pasture and the great American lager will no longer be American," Alioto declared in a statement released to the press.

The lawsuit claims that the combined company would exert an effective monopoly over beer production in the United States, allowing it to dictate prices to the consumer.

St. Louis based Anheuser-Busch produces Budweiser (the country's top selling beer) and Michelob. InBev is best known in this country for its Stella Artois brand, a niche beer most famous for its clever filmed advertisements shown in art theaters, and for its slogan, "Perfection has its price."

The effect of the proposed merger on American consumer prices would be similar to the effect on auto prices if General Motors decided to purchase the Lamborghini division from Volkswagen. Would that affect what you pay for a Chevy?

Sorry, guys, Bud's Belgian now. À la votre!

Just keep whistling ...

On Wednesday, European scientists will flip the switch and turn on their brand new Large Hadron Collider (LHC), smashing protons together at such high speeds that their energy will create conditions similar to those that existed in the first one-trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. But on an infinitesimal scale, of course.

The currently accepted "Standard Model" in physics predicts an array of subatomic particles, all of which have been identified experimentally except for one -- the so-called Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is a particle that's needed to explain why we all have mass and aren't just clouds of disembodied energy. If it turns out that there's no such animal as the Higgs boson, then it's back to the drawing board to explain why we seem so sure that we're solid

One alternative explanation would be that perhaps ten or twelve additional physical dimensions to the universe exist, beyond the three that our human senses can perceive. This theoretical assumption would fit into the proposed "string theory" of the universe, which I don't really understand and you don't either -- don't try to BS me that you do. Another alternative would be that every elementary particle has a "supersymmetric partner," with various unusual qualities, a partner particle that we haven't been able to detect, but that might explain the nature of "dark matter."

But the truly fascinating question about the LHC start-up on Wednesday is the possibility that it could create a tiny black hole, a black hole that would begin gobbling up everything within reach as it grew bigger and bigger, ultimately sucking you, me and Britney Spears into the perimeter of its event horizon, thereby causing some significant changes in our plans for next weekend.

European scientists scoff at this fear, but a lawsuit has been filed in federal court to block the LHC's start-up. I doubt if the federal judge hearing the matter is going to find she has jurisdiction to issue an injunction preventing European scientists from conducting an experiment in a laboratory located on the French-Swiss border. And beyond jurisdictional issues, the evidence offered to support such an injunction is a lot of complex and controversial -- not to mention speculative -- theoretical physics, evidence she will have difficulty absorbing between now and Wednesday.

Anyway, some scientists foresaw a possibility that the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Alamogordo would start a chain reaction that would consume the entire world. Ha! We dodged that bullet, right? Anyway, only 18 percent of voters in an MSNBC poll are worried that the experiment might destroy the world. That's a pretty small minority, and I'm sure the rest of the voters polled know what they're talking about.

So flip that switch, dudes! But I'm not bothering to mow my lawn until after Wednesday.

---------------------

ILLUSTRATION (J. Pequenão / CERN / ATLAS) Artist's conception of particle tracks expected to be generated if particle collision results in creation of a black hole that instantaneously decays.

A twitch upon the thread

I caught him with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.

--G. K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown

I've been re-reading Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited this week, after finally getting around to watching Hollywood's movie version. The story is probably more commonly known to most of us through the 11 ½-hour mini-series that was televised on PBS, and that can still be rented on DVD.

The mini-series was an opulent re-creation of the period between the world wars, as viewed from the limited and privileged position of the British aristocracy. University life at Oxford, manorial life at Brideshead (filmed at Castle Howard in Yorkshire), and misty scenes of Venice as seen from softly gliding gondolas, pre-Mussolini and pre-mass tourism. If only we could have lived then, we think (assuming, of course, that we were titled nobility)!

Waugh was an unapologetic Tory. He wrote his novel during the hardships and deprivations of World War II. He lamented the democratization of Britain which, as he viewed it, had led to the permanent lowering within Britain of all sorts of cultural and esthetic standards. The novel certainly does wallow in nostalgia, as did the mini-series. But Waugh's nostalgia was incidental. Waugh was a Catholic convert, and his novel expresses primarily his sense of how the same narrative events could be interpreted from opposite directions, depending on whether they were seen through the eyes of the world or through the eyes of faith.

The narrator, Charles Ryder, an intelligent, sensitive artist, and an atheist, interprets what he sees as the world does, and as we no doubt would. He forms a close friendship at Oxford with Sebastian Flyte, the eccentric son of a Catholic aristocratic family headed by Lord and Lady Marchmain, a dynasty whose family seat is the magnificent estate called "Brideshead." To varying degrees, the members of the Flyte family, unlike Charles, interpret the events that so deeply affect their lives through the eyes of faith, and come, as a result, to very different conclusions.

Charles Ryder feels as the story develops, as indeed most of us would, that each member of his friend's family has been ultimately destroyed, tragically, as a result of the family's devotion to its church. The youngest of the Flytes, Lady Cordelia, who was only a funny and engaging child when first met, speaks for her faith when she later insists that the ups and downs of their lives, whether their lives are happy or unhappy, is of little importance. The salvation of their souls is all that really matters; a life of great unhappiness as the world views it is beneficial if it serves as the means for God to pull one back -- like the "twitch upon the thread" in Chesterton's detective story -- to himself.

As Charles narrates the novel, he sees his best friend, who we meet at the outset as a witty and charming young man, develop into an habitual drunk, living in poor health and squalor in Morocco. Lord Marchmain has fled his wife and England and lives in Venice, shunned by his own society because of his mistress. Lady Julia Flyte, Sebastian's sister, with whom Charles ultimately enters into a passionate love affair, refuses to marry him because of her church's refusal to permit a second marriage. Lady Cordelia leaves the convent she once joined, and ends up working alone in Africa, serving the most desperate of the poor. And Lady Marchmain, the matriarch of the family, who loves each of her children and whose faith is the most certain and unyielding, dies a lonely death, separated from them all because of the demands she has placed on them throughout their lives.

In the end, all the family members have either died or wandered away from Brideshead, leaving the mansion empty and available for the billeting of troops during World War II. But each of them has died at peace with God, or is finding his or her way back to God, or, like Sebastian, is living an outwardly degrading life as a "holy fool" for God. Charles returns to Brideshead as a depressed and lonely middle-aged army officer, and recalls the golden, hopeful days of his youth, filled with joy and surrounded by beauty within its walls, in the company of Sebastian and his family.

In a not-quite-convincing conclusion, Charles, while stationed as an army captain at Brideshead, stumbles upon Bridehead's abandoned private chapel. He finds the sanctuary lantern still burning in the darkness, a red beacon upon the altar. Piercing his skepticism, the still flickering candle suggests to him the real and continuing presence of God. Despite the unfortunate events of his life, events that have left him alone and friendless, awkwardly serving in an army for which he is unsuited by his artistic temperament, he feels suddenly happy for the first time in years.

"You're looking unusually cheerful to-day," said the second-in-command. -- These are the final words of Waugh's novel.

The "twitch upon the thread" has apparently begun its work, pulling not only the members of the Flyte family, but Charles Ryder as well, back to the God of their ancestors.

The movie now showing in theaters is just ok. The photography is beautiful. Although the film makes a mess out of portions of Waugh's plot line, its director does seem to acknowledge, at least, that the theme of the novel in some way concerns the consequences of religious faith, faith of a very deep (and today unfashionable) (and to the director, unacceptable) variety.

Brideshead Revisited, the book, is beautifully written, and far more complex in characterization, dialogue, and plot (and much funnier in parts) than this short post can suggest. It is not just a reminiscence, lamenting the loss of happier days in a more golden England. When I first read the book in college, in fact, I did so because it was a required reading in a course called "The Theological Novel in Modern Europe." The story is entertaining, but it engages the mind and spirit as well. You need not agree with Waugh's theology to appreciate his skill in weaving an uncompromising theological position into a story that was, for the 1940's, quite contemporary and even somewhat scandalous.

In short, my usual suggestion: Skip the movie and read the book!