Category: Journal

A Plan for Man

More from Com­ing Into The Coun­try by John McPhee…

This is from Book II, What They Were Hunt­ing For in which the search for a loca­tion for a new Alaskan cap­i­tal is described. On page 133 a Robert Atwood is quoted:

Ide­al­ists here in town see a need for a park in every hous­ing devel­op­ment. They want to bury util­i­ty lines, reserve green belts, build bicy­cle paths. With these things, the bowl could only con­tain three hun­dred and fifty thou­sand peo­ple. They favor ani­mals, trees, water, flow­ers. Who ever makes a plan for man? Who ever will make a plan for man? That is what I won­der. I am known amound con­ser­va­sion­ists as a bad guy.

Fool­ish me. I thought favor­ing ani­mals, trees, water (water!!!) and flow­ers was a plan for man!

Why Man Creates — Memory of a Movie

I attend­ed high school from fall of 1969 through the spring of 1973. In that four years, I was shown the movie Why Man Cre­ates two or three times (I’m real­ly lean­ing towards the three). It is a strange flick and most of it I only vague­ly remember.

I do, how­ev­er, vivid­ly remem­ber one long sequence. I do no so much remem­ber what all was in the sequence, but I remem­ber what it looked like. The con­ceit was that we are look­ing at one long con­tin­u­ous sheet of paper scrolling across the frame top to bot­tom. As the paper scrolls, a pen­cil point enters the frame and draws (very quick­ly) illus­trat­ing the his­to­ry of mankind.

I can still remem­ber the dark ages going by as the pen­cil draws tall tow­ers with arched shut­tered win­dows. Then one shut­ter opens up and a man leans out and says “Egads!! I’ve invent­ed the zero!”. Anoth­er shut­ter near­by opens and a man leans out and says “What?”. The first man responds with “Noth­ing. Nothing.”

I am a big lover of puns and I thought that was great. I’ve always remem­bered it. Or did I?

As you can see, the movie does not quite con­form to my memory.

The nerve.

I see that I took my favorite “dia­logue” from the movie and insert­ed it into the mem­o­rable sequence (the pen­cil sketch­ing). Then I for­got all about Allah and sub­sti­tut­ed “Egads!”. Those two things com­bined gave cred­it for the dis­cov­ery of zero to the wrong cul­ture. This mem­o­ry per­sist­ed even though I knew bet­ter regard­ing where the cred­it lay.

This makes me won­der about the verac­i­ty of my clear mem­o­ry of writ­ing the song Amer­i­can Pie. I’m sure McLean stole it from me.…

Invitation to a Question

I’ve been read­ing Com­ing Into the Coun­try by John McPhee. Yes, I’m thir­ty three years behind the times.

On page 37 and going around the cor­ner to 38, McPhee and com­pan­ions are in the Alaskan wilderness:

Break­fast in the fry­ing pan – freeze-dried eggs…Nobody’s skin is going to turn brown on these eggs – or on cin­na­mon-apple-fla­vored Instant Quak­er Oat­meal, or Tang, or Swiss Miss, or on cold pink-icinged Pop-Tarts with rasp­ber­ry fill­ing. For those who do not believe what they have just read, allow me to con­firm it: in Pour­chot’s break­fast bag are pink-icinged Pop-Tarts with rasp­ber­ry fill­ing. Lack­ing a toast­er, and not car­ing much any­way, we eat them cold. They invite a question.

Oh good! McPhee sees it too. A ques­tion is indeed invit­ed! He continues:

To a palate with­out bias – the palate of an open-mind­ed Berber, the palate of a trav­el­ling Mar­t­ian – which would be the more accept­able, a pink-icinged Pop-Tart with rasp­ber­ry fill­ing (cold) or the fat gob from behind a cari­bou’s eye?

Wait. That’s the invit­ed ques­tion? Yeah, sure, it is an inter­est­ing ques­tion, but it sure as heck is not the ques­tion that I was think­ing about as he con­firmed the pres­ence and eat­ing of the pink-icinged Pop-Tarts with rasp­ber­ry filling.

You are prepar­ing to go into the Alaskan wilder­ness for an extend­ed peri­od of time and you pack Pop-Tarts?!

And I’ve got to believe that the unbi­ased palate would pre­fer food (the fat gob) over man­u­fac­tured crap (Pop-Tarts), though I sus­pect I would seek a third option.

But that’s just me.

Ted Kennedy’s Senate Seat

Sen­a­tor Kennedy has request­ed that the Mass­a­chu­setts leg­is­la­ture and gov­er­nor move to change the law regard­ing how a vacant Sen­ate seat is filled. Kennedy’s inter­est is due to his own seri­ous health issue and the pre­car­i­ous nature of health reform leg­is­la­tion in the US Sen­ate. Health reform has been one of Kennedy’s top con­cerns his entire career.

Noam Scheiber over at The New Repub­lic thinks it would be a bad idea for Mass­a­chu­setts to change the law.

Scheiber thinks that Kennedy’s vacant seat after his death would increase the like­li­hood that health reform leg­is­la­tion would pass.

… it would be sui­ci­dal for the GOP to fil­i­buster the cul­mi­na­tion of the last Kennedy broth­er’s life­long crusade.

I see two prob­lems here. I’m not con­vinced it would be sui­ci­dal for the GOP to do that (though pos­si­bly). More impor­tant­ly, I doubt the GOP would see it that way.

Fur­ther, I don’t see what dif­fer­ence it would make if Kennedy’s seat was filled by the gov­er­nor’s appoint­ment or not. If the GOP did believe it sui­ci­dal to “fil­i­buster the cul­mi­na­tion of the last Kennedy broth­er’s life­long cru­sade” why would the seat being filled change that calculation?

Scheiber goes on to say:

I sus­pect the cov­er­age of Kennedy’s death would silence health­care reform crit­ics and boost pro­po­nents in a way that net­ted at least a cou­ple of waver­ing mod­er­ates – so clear­ing the 51-vote thresh­old would­n’t be a prob­lem. Heck, you might even see Utah Repub­li­can (and long­time Kennedy friend) Orrin Hatch back in the reformist camp.

This may very well be true, but again, I don’t see how the gov­er­nor nam­ing some­one to fill the vacant seat dis­rupts this all that much. An addi­tion of a cou­ple of mod­er­ate votes would be help­ful to get to 60.

Final­ly, Scheiber is assum­ing that Kennedy is con­cerned about what will hap­pen after his death. It could be that Kennedy is pre­pared to resign the moment Mass­a­chu­setts makes the appro­pri­ate change in the law. Kennedy might be at the point where he now knows he will nev­er be on the floor of the Sen­ate again, but also know­ing his vote (read: his replace­men­t’s vote) will be needed.

I can see an argu­ment that Mass­a­chu­setts should not change the law based on the idea that laws should not be altered for polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy. The Mass­a­chu­setts law used to allow the gov­er­nor to appoint some­one to a vacant Sen­ate seat but the leg­is­la­ture changed it when there was a faint hope that Ker­ry would vacate the seat to become Pres­i­dent and the Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor at the time was a Repub­li­can. Not that I would be per­suad­ed in this par­tic­u­lar case by such an argu­ment, but it is a good one (and should have been heed­ed the first time around).

Hawaii. A State?

This year Hawaii cel­e­brates fifty years of statehood.

This year, Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling found that six per­cent of Amer­i­cans do not con­sid­er Hawaii to be part of the Unit­ed States. And four per­cent are not sure.

Ten per­cent of Amer­i­cans are not sure of Hawai­i’s sta­tus as a state.

I have seen sev­er­al of Leno’s Jay­walk­ing seg­ments demon­strat­ing that there are plen­ty of peo­ple who are unaware of what most of us con­sid­er to be com­mon knowl­edge, but ten per­cent? Sure­ly the sam­ple size was too small or some oth­er fac­tor skewed the results. I just have a hard time with ten percent.

Why?

Because Hawaii and Alas­ka are the easy states. When learn­ing about the states back in grade school, Hawaii and Alas­ka were the eas­i­est to remem­ber. There they were set apart from the oth­er forty eight states, each in its own lit­tle box, look­ing noth­ing like each oth­er. After learn­ing your own state was­n’t Hawaii and Alas­ka next?

I under­stand that there are peo­ple who can­not name the fifty states. Most of my life I could not do it myself. Today I can. But I made a point of cor­rect­ing the defi­cien­cy. (Don’t ask me about cap­i­tals!) I do not see it as a prob­lem that there are Amer­i­cans (prob­a­bly lots of them) who can­not name the fifty states.

But that ten per­cent can­not cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fy that Hawaii is part of Amer­i­ca when asked? Yikes!

I Forgot…Part 2

In my post the oth­er day, Hunger, I admit­ted to spend­ing all my mon­ey on com­ic books and Coca-Cola.

I should have includ­ed cig­a­rettes. I don’t smoke now, but I was a pack a day smok­er then. I don’t remem­ber for sure, but I think I still had cig­a­rettes even though I had no food.

So now you know the whole truth (at least until I remem­ber more).

Checks At Checkout

Yes, I still write checks.

I wrote a check for gro­ceries yes­ter­day. The clerk had me fill out the check com­plete­ly. Then she ran it though the reg­is­ter, had me sign a receipt the reg­is­ter print­er out, and gave me back my void­ed check with my receipt, the mon­ey being elec­tron­i­cal­ly removed from my account.

Why do I have to fill out the check?

A cou­ple of years ago, Wal­mart was not yet doing the elec­tron­ic check, but they were offer­ing the option of the reg­is­ter fill­ing out the check as opposed to the cus­tomer fill­ing out the check. The cus­tomer was asked to sign the check and then the clerk would run it though the reg­is­ter. Pre­sum­ably this saved time. On a cou­ple of occa­sions, I sug­gest­ed that I would sign the check after it was filled out. Both times the clerk respond­ed neg­a­tive­ly and repeat­ed that I need­ed to sign the check first.

Why do I want to sign a blank check and hand it over? Sure, they let the cus­tomer look at it after print­ing, and I can under­stand that it might save time, but if a cus­tomer objects to sign­ing it first, why would­n’t they accom­mo­date that?

Noth­ing to do with a check, I stopped at a gas sta­tion for gas the oth­er day. I was going to pay cash. I pushed the but­ton to choose “pay inside” and wait­ed for the machine to process. And wait­ed. Well, thir­ty sec­onds. Then the voice comes over the inter­com to say that if I am not pay­ing by card at the pump I have to prepay.

Why is there not a sign on the pump? I know it is just thir­ty sec­onds, and it is not like I don’t have the time to waste.…

Missed Opportunity

Today seems to fea­ture a short video of Con­gress­man Bar­ney Frank respond­ing to a town hall attendee ask­ing about the Nazi poli­cies in the health care reform.

Frank responds to her with a dis­mis­sive insult. It is fun­ny. And, yes, I would not argue with the state­ment that she deserved the response she got. From what I’ve seen around the inter­net, lots of Democ­rats are gid­dy with delight over Frank’s response.

I’ve been watch­ing the “high­lights” from var­i­ous town meet­ings for a cou­ple of weeks or so. Lots of shout­ing from peo­ple who are against health care reform. Not dis­cus­sion, but dis­rup­tion. I under­stand how frus­trat­ing that can get. Peo­ple yell out stuff based on lies and no oppor­tu­ni­ty to explain how they are wrong is allowed.

Frank gets the rare case of a cit­i­zen ask­ing a bel­liger­ent ques­tion in a civ­il man­ner. She asks the ques­tion and then she stops talk­ing. Frank could actu­al­ly take a minute and explain why her assump­tions are incor­rect. He could explain how the Nazi com­par­i­son makes no sense. But no, he is dis­mis­sive and insulting.

To be clear, I seri­ous­ly doubt that there is any­thing that Frank could have said to change how the woman feels about the issue. But it is pos­si­ble that a few peo­ple would see the video of the exchange and learn something.

As it is, the video sim­ply jus­ti­fies the antics that have tak­en place pre­vi­ous­ly (with more to come, no doubt). Why not shout down the oppo­nent when the oppo­nent is only going to indulge in insults.

It prob­a­bly makes no dif­fer­ence, but it would be nice if some Demo­c­rat actu­al­ly explained why health care reform is not lead­ing us down the road to a fas­cist state (and why there was nev­er any plans for death pan­els that would pull the plug on grandma.…and.…)

Hunger

Yes­ter­day I slept late. Late even for me. So I ate a late, light break­fast and made it through most of the after­noon with­out think­ing about food. By sup­per­time I was hun­gry. I could feel the empti­ness of my stom­ach. I was remind­ed of the first time in my life that I felt hunger.

I was 21 years old.

I had stayed at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty in Bloom­ing­ton for the sum­mer to take a cou­ple of class­es. I believe the dorms were all closed for the sum­mer so I sub­let a trail­er and spent what amount­ed to a most­ly mis­er­able sum­mer. I took a cou­ple of class­es, but I did not get a job so I was depen­dent on mon­ey from home.

I should point out that the U.S. Post Office rou­tine­ly scanned the mail from my par­ents to me. If the scan revealed a check to be in the enve­lope, then the let­ter was shelved for a few days before deliv­ery. When no check was present, the let­ter arrived in my mail box the day after it was mailed. I know this makes me sound like a con­spir­a­cy nut (which I’m not despite my belief that Oswald did not act alone) and a bit para­noid (but when every­one is out to get you, you won’t care what you sound like either).

Any­ways, checks always seemed to take awhile. Added to that was the prob­lem that I spent my mon­ey poor­ly. I blew it on, gulp, com­ic books and Coca-Cola. There, I’ve admit­ted it. Sad but true. I have box­es of com­ic books in the garage to prove it. Don’t wor­ry, I already gave the few that had any val­ue to my son.

Any­ways, I was dim­ly aware that I man­aged my mon­ey poor­ly, so I tried to delay ask­ing for mon­ey as long as pos­si­ble. At one point that sum­mer, I went though my mon­ey quick­er than usu­al and so I delayed the call home longer than usu­al. And just to keep the roll going the Post Office shelved the let­ter longer than usual.

I ran out of food.

If you’ve read this far, it is prob­a­bly not a sur­prise to you that I grew up in a rea­son­ably well to do house­hold and that my exis­tence had been some­what pam­pered (in spite of the part time job through­out high school) up to that point. As a result, I had no clue that I could have found some one will­ing to feed me (at least, I assume that is true).

The only edi­ble thing left in the trail­er was Cool Whip. I ate that.

I was begin­ning to feel a bit weak and I dreamed of stacks of pan­cakes, of which I am not all that fond.

And I thought about how I had nev­er expe­ri­enced hunger before. Sure, I had used the word, but only in the sense that it seemed every­one used the word: it’s been three or four hours since I ate so it is time to eat so I am hun­gry. That was all the word meant to me, that it was time to eat.

After a few days, the check arrived and I still had the strength to buy gro­ceries. For some rea­son, the urge to eat pan­cakes had passed, so I spared myself that.

And despite yes­ter­day, I have nev­er felt true hunger since.

Knock on wood. (I always hit my knuck­les on my head with that phrase since one can nev­er be sure of the com­po­si­tion of objects that once upon a time were reli­ably wood­en. I do not doubt the wood­en­ness of my head).

More Pence for Pres

I first blogged that Indi­ana con­gress­man Mike Pence was con­sid­er­ing run­ning for Pres­i­dent in 2012 on June 17.

Con­gres­sion­al Quar­ter­ly picked up on my post­ed the idea on July 13 (as I already not­ed).

And now The New Repub­lic also posts the idea (though with the caveat that he was not like­ly to win).

I notice today that Pence’s blog has now been com­plete­ly tak­en down. “This web­site has been dis­abled”