Take my camel, dear…..

Posted on by Leanne Ogasawara

by Leanne Ogasawara

Caltech libraryThere were not many things that drew me back to America, but the thought of joining a bookclub seemed like one potential perk of moving back. I am not sure if bookclubs exist to this extent in other countries, but in the US they are incredibly popular! More and more people I know had been joining, taking part and talking about their bookclubs… And, I became –slowly but surely–intrigued.

So, when the time came and I found myself back in Los Angeles, I started thinking about–and really started heavy-duty dreaming about– joining one. And not just any bookclub, but I was imagining a kind of glittering evening gathering, which could take place in various refined rooms filled with books and art. And obviously, there had to be alcohol. And definitely my bookclub needed men. Part of my fantasy involved a blurring of bookclub, cocktail party and supper club. I had visions of Turin-style appertivo; discussing Nietzsche over our campari; or a dinner inspired by the gourmand extraordinaire, Detective Mantalbano–featuring my famous caponata (in my fantasy, my caponata is legendary).

My longings finally reached a crisis point last November when I read a really charming post at aNewscafe about a ladies' monthly bookclub in Northern California. The post was about the bookclub's most recent read: A Gentleman in Moscow, about which I was also reading and imagining a dinner party of my own. In my fantasies, I would have prepared a lavish dinner beginning with (of course) champagne and blini and then moving on to the mouth-wateringly-described Latvian stew with Georgian wine of the novel. The author of the blog post, Hollyn Chase, seemed to have it all–a gorgeous dining room filled with books, a fabulous menu plan and best of all, great friends.

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Yes, I’m Defending the Millennials, Goddammit

Posted on by Akim Reinhardt

Crystal-ballby Akim Reinhardt

Generational analysis, when done poorly, is half-a-notch above astrology: All the people born at this time are like this!

Of course there's plenty of good generational research and analysis by demographers and other social scientists. However, most people don't delve into that stuff. Most people simply absorb generational analysis from popular culture. That's unfortunate, because you can often get more penetrating insights from a Chinese restaurant paper place mat.

Worse yet, a lot of pop culture generational analysis is passively racist and classist. You know who we're really talking about when we say “Baby Boomers,” right? It's hardly every American born between 1946-1964. Black people? Latinos? Most immigrants? The deeply impoverished? Pushaw. For the most part, we're just talking about the white MCAU (middle class and up), and whoever can pass through their circles. And we're not even talking about them smartly. By and large, we just rehash dumb stereotypes. This generation sacrificed. That generation navel gazed. Bla bla bla.

For example, when I Googled “Baby Boomers are,” the auto complete came up:
selfish
the biggest
entitled

When I Googled “Millennials are,” the auto complete came up:
lazy
the worst
screwed

Indeed, pop culture generational analysis is often so shallow, haphazard, and/or commercialized, that it typically only blathers about every other generation. There's an accordion discourse, which fixates on alternating generations (Greatest, Boomers, Millennials) while largely ignoring the generations between them (Silent, X, Z). As a result, Baby Boomers dominated popular discourse for a long time.

However, Baby Boomers have recently been knocked off their demographic perch. There are now more Millennials than boomers in the U.S. population, and these relative youngens are increasingly the subject of America's generational fascination. As such, they catch a lot of flak, much of it head smackingly stupid. I recently came across a stunning example of this vapid chatter while drinking a blueberry beer in a Lake Placid tavern.

Yes, that Lake Placid, two-time Winter Olympic town and scene of the 1980 Miracle on Ice. And yes, blueberry beer. It was actually quite good, thank you very much, Judgy McJudgerson.

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A brief tribute to Matt Shoemaker

Posted on by Dave Maier

by Dave Maier

MattSIf you google the name “Matt Shoemaker,” the first page of hits is all about the gentleman pictured here, a pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels. It seems that he has recently undergone season-ending surgery on his pitching arm, a shame as the Angels are still in the mix for an AL wild-card spot. People also naturally search, Google tells us, for his Angel teammates, including pitchers Garrett Richards and Jered Weaver. At the bottom of the page, however, we see eight further related searches, including “matt shoemaker injury” and “matt shoemaker fantasy” (the latter no doubt a reference to “fantasy baseball"). These obviously refer to that same person; but among the eight we also see “matt shoemaker music.” What’s that about?

Clicking, we do find another reference to our ballplayer (referring to his “walk up music,” which is typically played over the PA as a batter approaches the plate to bat, although in this case since our man is a pitcher and plays in the AL, that probably hasn’t happened all year). But we also find several references to another person entirely. One of them reports the sad news that this person, an accomplished sound artist with many releases to his name, recently passed away at a tragically young age.

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Donald Trump is no Leroy Jethro Gibbs

Posted on by Bill Benzon

by Bill Benzon

37093809932_f398eef416Donald Trump, of course, is the forty-fifth President of the United States. He is a real person, but Leroy Jethro Gibbs is not. He is the central character in NCIS, one of the most popular and longest running shows on network television. Gibbs is a Senior Special Agent in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

The Trump campaign is known to have targeted NCIS viewers. Why? What appeal would a show like NCIS have for Trump voters?

The honor to serve

Let’s look at a scene from an episode in season seven, which started airing in 2009. The episode is called “One Shot, One Kill”. It opens in a video game arcade where some teen-aged boys are blown away by the skill of Marine Corps sergeant. We cut to a recruiting office where the sergeant is giving the boys the hard sell about hitching up. He’s talking about Iraq: “Been in the corps 16 years. Closest I’ve ever come to a bullet is…” Shatter! Wham! Splatt! He’s shot. Slumps over on the desk.

Gibbs and his team are called in to investigate. In the course of their investigation the recruiter who replaces the first one is also shot. In both cases, sitting at the desk, shot from long distance, through the window. Sniper.

Gibbs decides he’s got to go under cover. He’ll pretend to be a Marine recruiter, which will be easy form him as he had once been a Marine. To protect Gibbs bullet-proof glass is placed in the window and he wears a bullet-proof vest. Three microphones are placed outside so that, when the shooter fires, their Forensic Specialist, Abby Sciuto, can pick up the sound and use it to triangulate the shooter’s location. We then scoot over there and make the arrest.

We’re in the recruiting office, Gibbs looking sharp in his old Marine uniform. One of his Senior Agents, Kate Todd, is in uniform as a captain. She’s there to profile potential recruits as they visit they office. The major who heads the recruiting unit wants to stay; after all, he’s lost two men to this sniper. Gibbs objects. The major insists.

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Monday, September 11, 2017

Moral Tragedy?

Posted on by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

MaskTragedy168It was probably Aristotle who first took careful notice of the special role that the concept of happiness plays in our thinking about how to live. Happiness, he argued, is the final end of human activity, that for the sake of which every action is performed. Although it makes perfect to sense to ask someone why she is pursuing a college degree, or trying to master chess, there is something decidedly strange in the question, "Why do you want happiness?" Aristotle saw that when explaining human action, happiness is where the buck stops.

Aristotle's insight seems undeniable, but nearly vacuous. To identify happiness as the ultimate aim of human action is simply to assert that we tend to do what we think will bring us happiness. It is to say that when we act, we act ultimately for the sake of what we take to be happiness. As appearances can be deceiving, all of the deep questions remain.

Perhaps this is why Aristotle affirmed also that happiness is the culmination of all of the good things a human life could manifest. He declared that the truly happy person not only derives great enjoyment from living, but also is morally and cognitively flawless. In fact, Aristotle goes so far as to affirm that the happy person necessarily has friends, good looks, health, and wealth. And, as if these advantages were not enough, he holds further that the happy person is invulnerable even to misfortune and bad luck. According to Aristotle, then, happiness is not simply that for the sake of which we act; it is also that which renders a human life complete, lacking nothing that could improve it. It is no wonder that Aristotle also thought that happiness is rare.

Few today subscribe to the view that complete success in every evaluative dimension is necessary for happiness. Surely a person could be happy but not especially beautiful or wealthy. It is important to note, however, that those who affirm this more modest view often take their insight to show that things like wealth and beauty are not really the incontrovertible goods that they often appear to be. That is, the claim that one might be happy in the absence of wealth and good looks is most often accompanied by the rider that these latter attributes are not especially valuable after all. Consequently, the core of Aristotle's second claim is retained, albeit in a moderated form: the happy life manifests not every good that a human life could realize, but all of the really important goods that a human life could realize.

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Monday Poem

Posted on by Jim Culleny

Antony

—I imagine you still playing

You said to me,
unclejim teach me guitar,
and what little I knew I did
You took it and flew, a musical id,
and the places you flew, the music that slid
from fingers to strings was by god a grace bridge,
the kind walked on in skies where geese are
where love and you are
where god's hid
and all
is
.

Jim Culleny
9/7/17

Parade of Images

Posted on by Daniel Ranard

by Daniel Ranard

20170823_060359

how do you know the moon
is moving: see the dry
casting of the beach worm
 dissolve at the
delicate rising touch:
–A.R. Ammons, in Expressions of Sea Level

During the August eclipse, I overheard a funny bit of philosophy. I'll tell it verbatim, I swear. Tree branches had enclosed a stretch of path in Central Park, where sunlight fell through small openings in the leaves. The light cast hundreds of crescent suns along the asphalt: pinhole images, a natural camera obscura. Beside me, a mother and two children stared at the ground, confused, starting to understand. The father ushered them onward. "It's just a representation of the eclipse we tried to see earlier," he said, and they left.

You probably sympathize with the man. Today it's all images, images; and what about the real thing? So I've compiled a helpful list of ways (for next time) to encounter the eclipse as it truly is.

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Wines of Anger and Joy (Part 2)

Posted on by Dwight Furrow

by Dwight Furrow

Wine-bottle-supplier-300x273Wine language often suggests that wines express emotion or exhibit personality characteristics despite the fact that wine is not a psychological agent and could not literally possess these characteristics. There is a history, although somewhat in recession today, to refer to wines as aggressive, sensual, fierce, grand, angry, dignified, brooding, joyful, bombastic, tense or calm, etc. Is there a foundation to such talk or is it just arbitrary flights of fancy?

Last month I argued that it's perfectly intelligible to conceive of wine as expressive. Wine expresses the geography and climate of a region or vineyard, the vintage characteristics, and the winemaker's idea of those. More importantly, wine can sometimes express the winemaker's feelings about wine, especially the inspirational experiences that explain their love of wine that they wish to communicate to their patrons. But the aforementioned wine language suggests a broader notion of expression, one in which wine, perhaps like art, can express fundamental features of human experience.

In aesthetics, this question of how art can express feelings has typically been pursued using music as the prime example, because there is a broad consensus that music is deeply connected to human emotion. In trying to answer this question about wine, it makes sense to use these resources developed in the debate about music. So bear with me as I go on about music and the emotions for a bit; wine will get its due towards the end of the essay.

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Lying Quotes

Posted on by Gerald Dworkin

by Gerald Dworkin

In three previous columns I have discussed the ethics of lying. I am still working on this topic and, in the course of doing so, have accumulated some interesting remarks. Here is a sample:

Some topics–is it decaf?–require absolute honesty. With others–military secrets, some non-contagious diseases–some legitimate exceptions may be allowed.

—Michael Kinsley

Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you’re offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone’s feelings

—David Sedaris

Can’t come. Lie follows.

—Charles Beresford

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Monday, September 4, 2017

Heisenberg on Helgoland

Posted on by Ashutosh Jogalekar

by Ashutosh Jogalekar

Helgoland_Vogelperspektive_BW_2The sun was setting on a cloudless sky, the gulls screeching in the distance. The air was bracing and clear. Land rose from the blue ocean, a vague apparition on the horizon.

He breathed the elixir of pure evening air in and heaved a sigh of relief. This would help the godforsaken hay fever which had plagued him like a demon for the last four days. It had necessitated a trip away from the mainland to this tiny outcrop of flaming red rock out in the North Sea. Here he could be free not just of the hay fever but of his mentor, Niels Bohr. Perched on the rock, he looked out into the blue expanse.

For the last several months, Bohr had followed him like a shadow, an affliction that seemed almost as bad as the hay fever. It had all started about a year earlier, but really, it started when he was a child. His father, an erudite scholar but unsparing disciplinarian, made his brother and him compete mercilessly with each other. Even now he was not on the best terms with his brother, but the cutthroat competition produced at least one happy outcome: a passion for mathematics and physics that continued to provide him with intense pleasure.

He remembered those war torn years when Germany seemed to be on the brink of collapse, when one revolution after another threatened to tear apart the fabric of society. Physics was the one refuge. It sustained him then, and it promised to sustain him now.

If only he could understand what Bohr wanted. Bohr was not his first mentor. That place of pride belonged to Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich. Sommerfeld, the man with the impeccably waxed mustache who his friend Pauli called a Hussar officer. Sommerfeld, who would immerse his students not only in the latest physics but in his own home, where discussions went on late into the night. Discussions in which physics, politics and philosophy co-existed. His own father was often distant; Sommerfeld was the father figure in his life. It was also in Sommerfeld’s classes that he met his first real friend – Wolfgang Pauli. Pauli was still having trouble attending classes in the morning when there were all those clubs and parties to frequent at night. He always enjoyed long discussions with Pauli, the ones during which his friend often complimented him by telling him he was not completely stupid. It was Pauli who had steered him away from relativity and toward the most exciting new field in physics – quantum theory.

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Worms are the perfect pets: 7 reasons why everyone should have a wormery

Posted on by Emrys Westacott

by Emrys Westacott

IMG_5316Here is my one-word piece of advice to anyone hoping to get with the times, be healthy in mind and body, attain happiness, promote peace, fight injustice, and leave the world a better place after they've gone: worms. More specifically, red wriggler compost worms which you can keep all year round in a wormery. A typical small-scale wormery is a set of nested plastic perforated trays. You put your kitchen waste in the lower ones; the worms eat the waste, poop it out, and eventually crawl upwards through the holes in search of more food, leaving behind a tray of worm casts that is just about the best fertilizer you'll find anywhere. You scrape it out, use it in the garden or on houseplants, and put the empty tray back on top ready to receive more waste. Repeat. Forever.

Here are seven reasons for keeping worms.

1. Worms are dirt cheap. You don't have to buy them kibble or tinned food or overpriced little liver treats. They don't need shots, collars, leashes, or toys. You never need to take them to the vet, or to the groomer. You don't have to board them when you're away, or hire a pet sitter, or a dog walker. A wormery can involve a one-off outlay of around $80 (less if it's used), or you can make one yourself for virtually nothing.

2. Worms are very clean. They stay in their wormery. They require no house training. From day one, they only poop where they are supposed to. They never throw up on the carpet. They don't roll in deer carcasses, get themselves sprayed by skunks, or bring dead birds into the house.

IMG_53193. Worms are care-free companions. They are entirely free from neuroses. They never complain. They never wake you up in the night. They do not kick, bite, peck, scratch, sting, hiss or growl threateningly. They are not picky eaters, but they don't chew anything they aren't supposed to. They don't roll their eyes at you or act surly when you try to give them good advice. Their needs are marvelously simple. They like it dark, obviously. The temperature of the wormery should be kept between 50 and 75 degrees F (10 and 24 degrees C). And they need to be fed. If you're going away for several weeks you can just leave them with a decent supply of edibles and they'll be fine. They won't invite friends around; and they won't trash the place. Their habitat will actually be neater when you return than when you left.

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We Are All Immigrants

Posted on by Carol A Westbrook

by Carol A Westbrook

On Labor Day we honor the contributions of the hard-working people who helped build our nation. Many of them were immigrants who fled war, religious persecution, and poverty, who gave up their own countries to become Americans. This cycle of immigration and assimilation has been repeated since the founding of our nation, and arguably it is one of the most defining aspects of being American. Most of us have immigrant roots. PA_Coal_Miners_2

An elderly Lithuanian woman told me the story of how she moved to America at the end of World War II. Like many Europeans, her family had been displaced due to changing boundaries and Soviet annexation after the war. Though she was only five years old, she remembers this as one of the most fun and exciting times of her life. Her family was housed in a German castle for months with other Lithuanians, where there set up a church and a school; there were lots of other children to play with, and they looked forward to going to America! They had so much fun! I'm sure it was anything but fun for her parents. They had lost their homeland, and the Russians forced them to move. Theirs was an uncertain future, confined to an immigration camp and waiting for resettlement in any country that would take them in.

I nodded in understanding and sympathy.

"Like the Syrians," I said.

"No No NO, " she exclaimed, with a horrified look on her face. "We were not like the Syrians!" She explained that she was, after all, a Lithuanian, and is now an American. She insisted it's not the same!

But isn't it? Resettled World War II refugees like her faced hostility and resistance in the US. They were insultingly called "DPs" (Displaced Persons), and ridiculed for their strange language, peasant clothes, and unpronounceable names. Yet today, they are as American as anyone else. As a matter of fact, almost all of us have immigrant roots — even the founding fathers.

Today's Middle Eastern, Latin and South American immigrants are refugees from war and oppressive governments, or fleeing soul-destroying poverty. We fear their strange customs and clothing, their alien religions, and the threat of terrorism. Yet it's not much different today than it was in the past.

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What Are Your Five Favorite Things?

Posted on by Max Sirak

by Max Sirak

ScreenHunter_2809 Sep. 04 11.45(Scroll down for the audio version.)

What are your five favorite things?

No. Seriously. I'm asking.

Can you – lovely reader you are, patron of this fine site, gracing us with your most precious of resources (attention and time), answer my question?

What are your five favorite things?

No one's here to judge you. Hell, unless you speak them loudly and in public, no one will even know your particular quintet. And it's not like there's a wrong answer.

It's just an exercise in self-knowledge. An excuse for each of us to take a moment, reflect, and become consciously aware of things in our lives which we love. No more. No less.

Here, I'll show you. I'll go first.

1) Conversation

For about as long as I can remember, I've always felt my most authentic self when I'm in the middle of a conversation. I'm not talking about small talk. Trivial banter about unimportant matters with acquaintances doesn't count. I mean an honest-to-goodness conversation about life and ideas.

I remember being in Whole Foods a number of years ago and seeing a rack of magnets being sold near the checkout. You know how it is, little knickknacks conveniently placed near the cash registers in hopes of inspiring impulse buys. Well, I can't say I'm much of an emotional spender, but I remember that magnet to this day.

It was a riff on something attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt. "Small people talk about people. Average people talk about events. Great people talk about ideas." While I'm not trying to feign greatness here (despite the fact, that is what my name actually means…), I do think the magnet's wisdom holds, at least for me.

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Poetry in Translation

Posted on by Rafiq Kathwari

YOU AND I

By Mohammad Iqbal

You know the secret
I lack depth

You govern the sky
I am desire’s hostage

You have a home
I am a nomad

You profit by interest earned
I am losing the duel

Your ship sails in the air
Mine has no sails

There is no rest in this garden
You are spring; I am fall

You are weak; you are strong
I am this; I am that. So?

Translated, from the original Urdu, by Rafiq Kathwari / @brownpundit

August Screeds For September

Posted on by Maniza Naqvi

by Maniza Naqvi

ScreenHunter_2808 Sep. 04 11.36Blindness

The total eclipse of the sun, a one in several lifetimes flood, a jester becomes king. Through the emulsion coating of a negative containing memory of childhood—that image protecting me from the searing blindness of light, I watched the moon block out the sun.

National Geographic

At the beginning of summer a National Geographic cover promised to tell us why we lie. Declaring us all liars by doing so. As if we all did this and it was okay and would be scientifically explained to us. The article mentioned all sorts of sweet things. But never Iraq. Never why we all lied and let the lie, lie. The last page of the issue was as if on our tolerance. It was on Himalayan bees that produce a hallucinogenic honey. The honey produces a psychotropic effect that lasts awhile.

Violence Vortex.

Violence is a vortex. A whirlpool. You can join in at the edge of it on one end and pick your side but you will quickly get swept up into the velocity of its madness, the whirling and spiraling. Quickly disoriented and forgetting where you had entered, how, when and why. Only the what will remain. Violence.

What's Not to Like?

We're all in boot camp now with Mr. Trump. He's sandblasting, blow-torching and yelling the safe spaces out of us. Pulling the trigger on the triggers. He's triggering the triggers right out of us. He's lacerating the growing blister full of unspoken pus of self-righteousness, latent racism and hate that is thinly veiled as liberalism in America. Whether he is doing this consciously or not, it seems as if that's what's happening. We're toughening up, able to argue and withstand an opposing point of view an argument delivered loudly without shrinking away and wilting, as if we were all Victorian ladies, fainting and in need of protection. We're no longer concerned about niceties. Or maybe we're exhausted and just not concerned. As long as Netflix and Amazon Video keeps streaming.

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A is for Always

Posted on by Christopher Bacas

by Christopher Bacas

RaviniaThe first time I saw A was backstage at Ravinia, summer of 1984, holding court, in blazer and turtleneck, amid a thicket of horn players; his new band. He came out of retirement to front a group playing his music. One of the true masters of his instrument and a complete musician, A stopped playing nearly 30 years before. That quitting both a petulant and supremely honest action; ending a long personal struggle with celebrity and the corrupt music business. He also told a much younger musician that he had been "a slave to the instrument" and wanted to do other things. In bright sun and a festival atmosphere, a guitarist and saxophonist played "Sweet Sue" for him, the guitar accompanying intricately. After listening a bit, A barked:
"it's a simple song, don't make it so goddamned complicated!"
The players stopped. A continued his audience with sidemen. They were used to blunt assessments. For his re-entry, A rehearsed the band and now acted as MC. He'd selected one stellar Soloist to play dozens of his recorded solos and hire the all sidemen. Later, on stage, A showed flashes of the erudition which separated him from his swing era colleagues. My current boss, Z, one of those contemporaries, listened respectfully, finally offering:

"He was always a brilliant man…and a fucking pompous ass!"

The band was a crack outfit: Boston cats, a mix of generations and built around the Soloist's long-running small group. That core group, the strong soloing, a program of choice arrangements from A's huge library and the excitement of presenting this music with the man who created it, made an inspiring set. A professorial air hung around it, but this wasn't a ghost band. A didn't continue long as Maestro,though. With no patience for nostalgia-heads, slick promoters or fawning radio personalities, he left the road and let Soloist run the store.

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