Smells of Reality

Thursday, July 31, 2008

In what I believe will ultimately be a vain attempt to appease my failing gallbladder I have been aggressively cutting extra fat from my diet. The calculation is simple, higher fat = more pain. As a result of this shift I have been eating more “direct” foods. I have been consuming a large number of fruits, veggies and grains. While this has resulted in more trips to farmers markets and the like the results have surprised me.

Night before last I made an omelet. Using Pam® or something akin to it (it was in a blue spray can) as the pan lubricant I whipped two eggs together and commenced to cook that yellow shell. Then I added as the center contents 3 or 4 spears of freshly blanced asparagus and one diced fresh organic tomato. I did cheat and add just about 1 ½ teaspoons of shredded (by hand) parmesan cheese. Wow. The texture of real vegetables was something I had almost forgotten. The taste of that fresh from a roadside stand tomato was just awesome. Sensuous food, what a concept that is. Next time there will be mushrooms, flavorful mushrooms.

Clearly I am not a food writer. Clearly this is not commentary on Kant or Nietzsche. But sometimes the rediscovery of something simple is enough to make a day worth living. And I forgot shallots, next time there will be a hint of shallot too.

Eternity in the Palm of my Hand

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

There is greater comfort in the substance of silence then in the answer to a question. Eternity is in the present. Eternity is in the palm of the hand. Eternity is a seed of fire whose sudden roots break barriers that keep my heart from being an abyss.

Thomas Merton, July 4, 1952, II 487

Walking to work this morning from the coffee shop, about a 5-7 stroll, I realized that a morning like this is my favorite kind of morning. It is warm. Clouds are hanging low but there is a promise of clearing in the western sky. The air is humid but not clammy; it still has the cleansed feeling of a recent rain. On morning like this I feel the promise of growth, the promise of a better series of experiences. Not too warm and not cool at all it is the start for what could be a perfect day.

My thought is that mornings like this seem promising because it was on mornings like this my life was better in my youth. A rainy day in school meant no outdoor recess and me the myopic kid would not get my ass kicked for my inability to play ball games in gym class. Corollary to that I would get more time to spend with my beloved books, science fiction tales where the hero was not the alpha male but rather just a clever person with odd bookish traits. I don’t deny these books were lacking in the formalities of great writing. Also there was sexism in these tomes but often the male hero had an equally capable female foil. Rainy days, coke bottle glasses and books about bookish heroes; life was simpler then.

Whatever the genesis my walk in today was six minutes of blissful peace. It was profound silence; it was eternity in the palm of my hand.

I Knew It Wasn't Over

Oh Hell's bells now my beloved wife is incapacitated with a kidney stone. Yowch!!!! I know it hurts and I am doing what I can to aid her, although I think the Vicodin is doing a better job than me. Still after my prior recitation of why I had not been posting I thought that I might be coming to the end of this spate of karmic retribution. It ain't over yet.

A Moment for Understanding

I liked this. It kind of sums my feeling today. However it does of course require that I quit my job and become an itinerant wandering around like Cane in Kung Fu.

“The great obligation of a Christian is to prove himself to be one by hating no person that is by condemning no being, by rejecting no soul. It is a sign of weakness in our commitment to a holy life that so many who claim to be faithful are so impatient with others and they fume at them and verbally damn them. They without hesitation dismiss whole classes, races and nations. Again, hate no one, condemn no one, and reject no one if you mean to live in the sacred.”

MY PLAN FOR WORLD DOMINATION IN SIX EASY STEPS

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Dear readers, all four of you I apologize. To the four of you (trust me I know because I get e-mailed reports from a statistics service about the number of hits my page gets) I bow my head in shame. My lack of diligence in posting is very apparent. My guilt for not staying current weighs heavily on what little remains of my mind. I will try and be more diligent.

It may be the very nature of the whole blog thing. Deadlines and me have just never seen eye to eye. Mostly it is because my life is always awhirl with kids and spouse and work and the other 10 plates that are spinning in the air (remember those novelty acts on the Ed Sullivan show). While I try to keep the blog fresh my efforts are at best inept.

Catchy title in the subject line, eh? The NSA has already called. The rubric however really has nothing to do with the content of this post. I just thought it would be a good attention grabber.

The last twenty days have been frenetic and frantic. There was a flood in our home’s basement over the 4th of July. Still can't pinpoint the cause. Repairs, well actually sucking the water out and drying the drywall cost $2,500. Youch.

Then,

Came the transport of Child #1 to camp about 1.5 hours away. A music camp. No real contact with him for 10 days. He has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. It appears to be quite mild but still it means challenges. Time at camp thus left my wife constantly worried. The whole social interaction thing can go so wrong so quickly with a kid with this disorder. Great intellectual focus but interactions with others are a challenge. Hmmmh. Wonder if he got that from me.

Came the insurance claim for the flood. How do you quantify all that stuff we have collected over the years in dollar terms. Some things are easy, like the Wii. Some are not like the video of various family events.

Came taking Child #2 to camp 4 hours from home. Of course we showed up two weeks early due to a scheduling faux pas on my part. Child #2 was notably upset. However after begging (how many times can I beg and say I am sorry) they worked him in.

Came the work projects of my wife, drafting a proposal to some NGOs I think for the government of and island chain in the Pacific to get special status as a preserve. This meant she was up to 1 a.m. for the week our kid was away typing. When Mom is not happy, nobody is happy.

Came the doctor’s report that my gallbladder will have to go. I am going to try and hold off on that a bit. Still, every day it hurts a little.

Came the summer cold and total inertia for five days (Francie has it now, go figure).

Came the letters home from child #2. I quote them in their entirety, "Camp sucks, at least send cookies" and the second letter "Camp still sucks, the Dunes suck, I barfed, send more cookies". The pictures at the website of the camp belie this recitation for in each he is foisting a peace sign or a thumbs up and is smiling.

Came the trip to IKEA and getting two living room chairs(flood replacements), a loft, a table and several picture frames into a Prius. Riding strapped to the side of the vehicle on the ride home I got a new appreciation for what it means to be an auto grille. I am still getting that glowing lightning bug goo out of my teeth.

Came the one day and two evenings of assembly of the aforementioned stuff-insert tab A into Slot B and use Allen wrench to snug. Ugh, I am still tired from that task.

Came the trip to Camp 1 (Blue Lake Music and Fine Arts Camp) to pick up child #1. Despite all the rest of the above this was really good. The boy made acquaintances. He simply hasn't done that before. He said hi to people. He liked the camp and his camp report card with the exception of the note that "he eats like a barbarian" was good. Oh and there was his orchestral take with the other campers on Stairway to Heaven. It rocked.

On Saturday we pick up child two. We will see what that report card is like.

Okay, I am not totally depressed or completely overwhelmed but I am close. I promise I will try and post something cheery tomorrow, or maybe the next day, or perhaps the day after that.

The Water of Life

"My life is like a stroll on the beach...as near to the edge as I can go."
--Thoreau

In all my life there has never been anything that gave me peace and calm like wading into the water at Ocean City, NJ on a calm warm summer evening as the sun was going down. It was as if I was one with all of existence. There are only a few times you ever get to feel that sensation. Sexual climax doesn't do it, job promotions don't do it, romantic emotional couplings don't do it.... Only the water, the sky and the fading light have ever brought me peace. At the water's edge I will lay me down and await the coming of the indigo evening.

Hey Baby It's the Fourth of July

On of the most under rated bands of the American Punk movement was X, the quintessential lost souls of the new West. Perhaps the reason for this lack of prominence is that while that put together great individual songs their albums (with the exception Much More Fun In the New World (or whatever it is really called) were hit and miss affairs. For me their defining X moment other than singing “Devil Doll” on Dick Clark’s Rocking New Year’s Eve was a cover of the Blasters/Dave Alvin tune “4th of July”. It is a heartbreaking affair. Every year around this time I pull it out and listen to it. It stills just hits me hard, just like the first time I heard it. Here are the lyrics. Go find the song on the web and give it a listen.

She's waitin' for me
when I get home from work
oh, but things ain't just the same
She turns out the light
and cries in the dark
won't answer when I call her name

On the stairs I smoke a
cigarette alone
Mexican kids are shootin'
fireworks below
Hey baby, it's the Fourth of July
Hey baby, it's the Fourth of July

She gives me her cheek
when I want her lips
but I don't have the strength to go
On the lost side of town
in a dark apartment
we gave up trying so long ago

On the stairs I smoke a
cigarette alone
Mexican kids are shootin'
fireworks below
Hey baby, it's the Fourth of July
Hey baby, it's the Fourth of July

What ever happened I
apologize
so dry your tears and baby
walk outside, it's the Fourth of July

On the stairs I smoke a
cigarette alone
Mexican kids are shootin'
fireworks below
Hey baby, it's the Fourth of July
Hey baby, Baby take a walk outside

Good Comments on A Political Decision by a Court

There was a time when the courts in this country we populated by people who when they placed their judicial robes on set aside set aside their partisan pasts and tried to wrap the legalistic part of their intellects around what decision made for the most common good. Judges appointed as conservatives once fully immersed in the whole cloth of the Constitution would focus on the balance of individual obligation to the social compact and protection of individual freedoms and rights. Their were no litmus tests except what is just and in accord with our valued principles of freedom. It does not feel that way anymore. It seems that the courts have shifted and that judges no longer are taking the long view of what is best for our survival as a democracy. I offer the following piece from today's Detroit Free Press as exemplary of that shift.

Democracy wounded
Jocelyn Friedrichs Benson • July 2, 2008

A few years ago, I served as a law clerk to Federal Circuit Judge Damon J. Keith, who famously wrote that “Democracies die behind closed doors.”

Democracies also die, I believe, when citizens’ fundamental right to vote is limited or disregarded. They die when Americans seeking to cast a ballot are turned away or deterred. And they die, as we have seen in Zimbabwe, when governments fail to ensure that avenues of competition and access are free and unfettered by threats and acts of intimidation.

Taking this analogy a bit further, this “death” does not always manifest through one fatal blow.

It comes through a series of wounds and injuries, often times seemingly minor or insignificant, but that collectively threaten the constitutional right of all voters to participate in the electoral process.

Last week, the Michigan Court of Appeals struck such a blow to the health of our democracy.

In a per curiam opinion, three judges concluded that Macomb County Clerk Carmella Sabaugh was not permitted to mail thousands of absentee ballot applications to citizens over the age of 60, who under state law are permitted to vote absentee without having to provide an excuse. (Voters under the age of 60 in Michigan who wish to vote with an absentee ballot are generally only permitted to do so if they state that they are physically unable to get to their polling place on Election Day).

So in other words, though these senior citizens are automatically able to request an absentee ballot, their county clerk – who produces the ballots – is not permitted to simply send these voters a form that enables them to request such a ballot.

In fact, the clerk is not permitted to do this even when her county government – in this case the Macomb County Board of Commissioners – expressly authorizes her to do so. According to yesterday’s decision, the county commission’s authority to “pass ordinances that relate to county affairs” does not include ordinances that address elections – even if county offices are on the ballot.

But what is perhaps the most striking aspect of the court’s opinion is its conclusion that county clerks duties – which include preparing and distributing ballots to voting precincts and distributing election materials - do not “relate to increasing voter turnout or making the election process less onerous for voters.”

This distressing conclusion is more than a confused interpretation of state law.

It is also a conclusion that appears forgetful of the fundamental right to vote that the United States Supreme Court found to be implicit in the rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

The Michigan Court of Appeals seems to omit consideration of this basic tenet of our democracy in declaring that local election administrators have no authority to lessen a burden on the right to vote - even where it involves such a simple act as mailing an application for absentee ballots to a community that under state law is expressly permitted to cast such ballots.

In span of years that has seen the enactment of new identification requirements for voters and a botched presidential primary where one party’s eventual nominee was not even on the ballot, yesterday’s decision by the Michigan Court of Appeals struck yet another wound to the health of our democracy.

Michigan voters deserve better.

***

Jocelyn Friedrichs Benson is an assistant professor of law at Wayne State University Law School.

A Good Word Sometimes Is Hard to Find

There used to be a little used book store in our downtown that I loved. It was owned and operated by people who valued ideas and loved to talk to people about the books where magical thinking came from. A mere hole in the wall, this merchant’s parlor was a place that could and did only last so long as the rent was cheap; it was a place where words and ideas flowed about readily. Banter there was seasoned with a wry, sly sense of humor. The store is gone now. Used book stores, just like second hand clothes stores that try to be tres' chic and also like weird single purpose stores like “All Things Purple”, just don’t seem to last.

I am not concerned so much about the passing of emporiums that carry eggplants and Prince vinyl in their inventory, but losing a good used book store is a big deal. It is in a used book store where you will find out what matters and what doesn’t in current thought. Maybe that term should be relatively recent thought.

When you walk into a used book store and you see that stacks of titles from the Oprah book club or piles of that book with the raised imprinted in foil quirky font letters in the title and the eerie cover art that was all the buzz just a year and half ago and they are selling for $1.25 each you pretty much know you don’t have to read either tome. They have been measured and found wanting. This isn’t always true, but more often than not it is. If the book was any good it would have been handed off to a friend or it would still be a shelf to be reread or loaned out to someone you know who needs to read it.

If you listen to the denizens of a used book store talk you will get clues to things that might be of value to read. A conversation that begins between two aging hippies and one says to the other, “You know I read this the year I lived in Denver, just after the co-op farm thing fell through. The writer was a realist about how ideals are good but just aren’t enough standing alone …” Right after a phrase like that you try to inconspicuously look at the spine of the book not trying to be too obvious you circle back when they have moved on and give it a serious perusal.

Or you see a title by someone mentioned in an article you read in Harpers a few years back, and the copy is a little raggedy but it is a later printing and the accolades on the cover are ones that seem to be something other than the kind that scream “they paid me to say this”. And when you crack it the page it falls open to a section where the writer is speaking about a sense of loss they can comprehend, or an awakening that you have sensed was possible or of an idea you have been revisiting for a decade or two in your mind and you aren’t sure if you are the only person who ever thought about this. Books in Barnes and Noble don’t fall open to pages like this.

Sometimes it is the little lady that sees what you have in your hand book wise and says “You know he was heavily influenced by what happened to his buddy Dalton Trumbo. Did you ever read Trumbo’s “Johnny Got his Gun?” “Odd book, but strangely moving when you are finished with it.” And then you look and sure enough there is a copy of the Trumbo book tucked in down the aisle somewhere and you pay the $2.00 for it and then you try and get your mind around the poker playing Christ. You don’t meet little old ladies like this in a new book store. There they are quiet islands unto themselves too focused or too formal to offer up their opinions to strangers. Or they sit in the obligatory coffee shop and nurse a decaf latte as they wait for a Sunday meeting with the kids or grandkids. However in a used book store they assume you are a fellow traveler and that talk to you about things you should be reading.

A good used book store like a good pastor can gentle guide you into places where you should let your spirit roam. I miss that place.

A Book that Covers Everything

July 1, 2008

Merton in his journal for July 17,1956 talks about wanting to write about everything. The monk seemed to think that an apt analogy for living is writing a book. His thought was that if you live openly you are placing pages in the very special, very sacred book. If you have lived nothing then ultimately there is nothing in this book of life for you. Merton in concluding the entry states that he wants to write a book that contains a little of everything, a book that has its own life. My question; isn’t that what blogging is?

Before I forget, Happy Canada Day, eh?