I need the sea.....Pablo Neruda

I need the sea because it teaches me.
I don't know if I learn music or awareness,
if it's a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining one,
a suggestion of fishes and ships
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.

wood dad

My father could identify wood....by grain, but color, by either, by both.   He was rarely stumped.   I wish he had taught me.

Dinner Roll Deterrence

For nearly 55 years I've have struggled (as I did today) to open the refrigerated dough dinner rolls.   But I have never had smooth sailing.   The foil tears the wrong way, I can't rip to the "black line" even exposed sometimes won't break apart.   And the little markings....is the dough supposed to pull apart easily on those marks?   Mine comes out as twisted candle shaped things.

I grew up with dark jewish bread and rolls, and so in my assimilationist moments these "dinner rolls" represented everything we weren't:  light, cheerful, sweet, airy.

I guess entry into that world was never to be easy.   I still can't open the rolls.   But on the few occasions I have a yen I suffer and feel jewishly inadequate.   It must be something my mother forgot to teach me.

If the necktie fits, wear it......

Click on the above title to link to a wonderful animated film.....with an accordion moral.

A Day in the Life of Daisy the Dog....Told to Abby Becker, age 9, 1998

As soon as I heard the familiar clip clop clip clop of someone on the stairs and knowing it was a person coming downstairs to eat breakfast, feed me let me outside and do many other things I started to shake my kennel, whimper, and bark to let most-like Papa know I wanted out.

He came over to open the kennel.  As soon as he opened it I began running around the house, jumping on him and wagging my tail (or what was left of it) like crazy.

Wait a second let me explain something.   I'm Dasy Mango Becker (Daisy for short) and my pedigree name is Daisy, Princess of All Flowers.   I'm a full-bred springer spaniel and my biological mother's pedigree name is Irrisias Wendella, but her people, or as they like to call themselves "owners" call her Spot.   My real Dad's pedigree name is Sir Joshua Pugsley of Brittany.   I don't know what his people call him.

Anyway back to this morning when Papa fed me, I instantlhy started devouring me meal.  After thay, Papa let me go to the outside room, and as soon as I was done I banged on the see-through, hard, opening, thing that people like to call a window to let whoever was in the inside room know I wanted in.

This time, Papa's wife came to the outside room to let me in.   When I came in I saw Abby, who is the closest thing to my mom (so I call her Mom) and Mom's brother Benny eating breakfast.  They both got up to say hello, saying things like, "Hello, Daisy" and "you're so sweet" to me.  When we were done, they finished their breakfast and left.

Papa had already left.   Papa's wife put me in the outside room.  Then she left.  This is the part of the day that I hate most.  I sit around forever in the outside room.   I and watch for birds, sleep, bark at other dogs, but mostly I'm B-O-R-E-D.

After several hours, Papa's wife came home and let in.   I jumped on her, my tail was out of control, and ran around, which is appropriate since I had been in the outside room for so long.   Soon Mom and Benny came home, and petted me till I almost died from love.

The familiar call from Pap's wife came out, and it was music to my ears.   She said, "Will someone feed Daisy?"   ' I will," Mom replied.   As soon as she fed me I dug in.

After tha, Papa came home, and ai said hello to him.  I jumped on him.   He said, "Off."   I hate the word "off."   When I jump on a person, I'm expressing happiness, and people aren't grateful.   Off is my least favorite word next to no.


Anyways, Papa let me in the outsideroom and when I was done I banged on the "window."   I went inside, begged for food at the dinner table, and got some leftover chicken.  Yum!

Then Papa put me in my kennel and I recited what I always say before I got to sleep:  the letter that mg biological Mom sent.


"Although I miss you, I'm sure you are very happy in your new home.   Are you being goo?   I wanted to let you know that I am fine.   Also my hips are now officially OFA certified.   (Please tell your owners and they will explain the term to you.)  Hope you like the picture.   Be a good little English Springer Spaniel for Momma. Woof-Woof-Woof.

Love
Momma
Irrissias Wendella"


Goodnight!

Like my parents

Like many kids (particularly children of the 60's?) I thought for sure I would never live a life like my parents.....my mother a school teacher, my father a (not very successful) small businessman.   So after years of working in left movements, I settled down into what I thought of as a straightforward technocratic career in occupational safety and health.

But then  I ended up  working as a faculty member at West Virginia University training local union members in health and safety, and eventually founding a soft money institute to support improving health and safety conditions at work.

So in the end....a teacher and a small businessman.

Ode to a newly purchased C Melody Saxophone

You sit in mostly mystery in the rocking chair
I could not bear to hide you in your battered case
Not for the batteredness, but for the intheclosetness.

A few shrieking notes from my mouth
A fine piece of 19th century engineering
Rods, pads, pivots, springs,
modifications to tonalities and overtones

On the low notes I feel the vibration right in my hip

On the high, I note that tone is not just a matter of your mechanics

But our mutual understanding and singing (currently lacking)

Like a new lover, I dare to wish for the music
That we might take and make together

Will we go there?
Will you help me?
Will we practice?
Or...will I betray you for accordion once more

Do you love me?
Do I love you?

hmmmmm
hummmmm

More Nign of Reb Mendel

I continue to listen to this cd.   My first reaction to the music was that the chassidic singer Eli Silberstein reminded me of my grandfather Emanuel (Manny) singing in my home.   He lived with my family till he died when I was about 15.   He was a gentle soul and free spirit.   He loved to tell stories and he loved to sing.   I have a tape of him singing, and sadly, on tape he refused to sing in "jewish." but only sang American songs.   But in person he often sang in yiddish.

My next experience of this CD is the doubling of voice and clarinet.   That's not common in current klezmer, but Rubin says it was not uncommon in an earlier period.   My experience here,  is that there is a l joining of the word and wordless.....ways to spirit.   That joining is powerfully compounding.

I have generally experienced this CD as joyful, but tonight it evokes sadness.   It's taken me a while to track that....and in fact I started this blog entry to help find the sad roots.   Well the music is taking me back to the places in Europe where jews lived, came from, and no longer are present.   But I am not one to romanticize shtetl living.   People were poor, oppressed, and in many ways narrowed.  Romanticization aside, I believe I'm experiencing the contrast with American culture, the restlessness, the drive to almost always be someone else, be somewhere else, do something else.   Lately I've been finding my own ability to just sit still and absorb the present to be heightened.

But back to the music.   The string that is touching me is the lack of this restlessness, this seeking to be other, and a settledness into the music as set in place, in religion, in daily life.       And my sadness: the difficulty in modern life to find that same sense of settlement....  the word authenticity comes to mind, but does not really do justice.....

And so in some way my image of Manny Miller speaks here.   My father regarded him as "simple."   meaning in his terms not an intellectual.   But Manny (in my memory) was settled.   He loved music, he loved his grandkids, he loved to eat, he loved to tell stories, he loved to sing.   I think when he was younger he also loved women and he loved to dance.   At an unsettled time in my life, I am wishing myself back onto his knee as he sang Oy Avram.   Thank you Joel and Rabbi Silberstein.   And granddaddy, thank you for this gift......which took me 50 years to notice.

Simon Rawidowicz on The Jewish Diaspora

I've been wishing to understand today's jewish diaspora and its relationship to the state of israel in a more historical manner.   I've been reading State of Israel, Diaspora, and Jewish Continuity, by Simon Rawidowicz a famous scholar who chaired the dept of New Eastern and and Judaic Studies at Brandeis.  In an early essay in the book he takes strong issue (1949) with naming the new state Israel, rather the Eretz Yisrael (land of israel) because it implies that diaspora jews are not part of Israel.

In the last essay in the book he eloquently states the following:

"There is no quarrel here with kubbutz galuyot, the ingathering policy of the new State.   It is difficult to predict how this process of kibibutz gauyot presently reduced, will develop in the near future.  May that policy one day arrive at its fulfillment.   All I am saying is that as long as a complete kibbutz galuyot has nether happened nor is visibly imminent, 'Israel' means nothing less than the totality of the Jewish people.   Moreover, the total identification of the State with 'Israel' carries dangers to coming generations of Jews born in the State that we dare not ignore.   It can lead to a distortion of the meaning of the Jewish past and present in the world and only serve to intensify the cynical attitude on the part of Jewish youth of the State toward the galut Jew.   It must inevitably give rise to an Israelism or native chauvinism, tendencies that are certainly meanacing to the future political structure and spiritual character of the young State."

The essays were published in 1986, but undated.   Simon Rawidowicz died in 1957.    His unfortunate prediction has proved all too true.

The Nign of Reb Mendel

(Click on title for link.)

I highly recommend this new CD by Joel Rubin and Rabbi Eli Silberstine (and ensemble). These are hasidic songs in yiddish which strongly inform (me) in a major esthetic influence on the klezmer I play. They sound more or less removed from various regional eastern european folk styles. The doubling of voice and clarinet on most melodies strikes me as a powerful evocation of the spoken and unspoken ways to spirit.

On a bad day in Newark......

I lived on Huntington Terrace from about 1949 to 1954.  Our block ran between Eckerd and Renner Avenues.   The street was filled with two and a halves.  These were separate houses with three floors.   They were called two and halves because the third floor apt was smaller than the first two because it was under the roof and eaves.  They had self standing garages and just a little dirt around them.  The Macklesses were our landlords and lived on the first floor.  My father and I called them the Mackleberries.   We lived on the second floor.  Since they were landlords, I had to learn not to drop and thump my shoes on the floor.   The Goldbergs lived on the third floor, and were were the first to get a TV in our neighborhood and I remember intensely my first look at that kinda round screen.

Our apartment was very large.   In fact it was larger than the house we later moved into in Springfield.   Besides 3 bedrooms (parents, me, Granddaddy) it had a living room, dining room (we used it as family room and ate in the kitchen) kitchen, walk in pantry (where my father had his floor scraping business office) one big bathroom, a sun parlor with jalousie windows, and an outside screened porch.   The bathroom had a fancy shower with jets that also shot at you from the side.   I still have the bathroom cabinet with enameled steel top under which I hid the books I sneak read while on the pot.

 I had at least 3 good friends and several other boys in my grade on the block:   I can almost, but not quite remember the names.    Something like Ronnie Rosen,   Howie Redless, Larry Shtier.   So play usually meant going outside and seeing who was around.   Sometimes you might knock on a door to find someone to play with.   On a really slow day I would go around the corner to play with the kids whose houses backed up into ours on Schuyler Avenue.   That was pretty rare.   I didn't really have to go off the block very often.

As I got older I used to hang out with kids further away.   My cousins Ted and Paul Green lived on Wolcott Terrace.   That was all of 3 short blocks away.   I also had a friend Danny Schiff who lived one block down the hill on Osborne Terrace.

Our play had no parent input, no organized sports.   What did we do?  We played stick ball.   We played stoop ball.  We flipped trading cards.   We played mumblypeg (with pen knives.)  We played marbles.   We also did a lot of just adventuring around.   We'd climb to the roofs of garages and jump from one to another.   Sometimes we got into snow ball or mud ball fights with kids from other blocks.   The empty lot on the corner of Eckerd and Huntington was a good place for a fight.   I see from google street view that it is still empty.   If we were really evil we we put ice balls inside the snowballs, or rocks inside the mudballs.

Sometimes we got creative.  Several of us had gone to native american themed summer camps.  We appropriated some clothes poles and made carved and painted totem poles out of them.

I remember that a few times we went into the coal bins of the Redless house and played strip poker (details redacted.)

Street Fear

Huntington Terrace in Newark was not your bare urban street.   Both sides were lined with huge trees...so much so that we had a complete canopy over the street.   They must have been chestnuts (before the blight) because we had lots of brutal fights throwing chestnuts at each other.   I also liked to just hold them and feel how smooth they were.

One day, probably aged 5 or 6, I made a big careless mistake and somehow ran out into the street in front of a moving car.   I almost got hit......I think.   Anyway this act filled me with terrible guilt and fear.  I somehow got the belief that I was in big trouble, and that in fact that the police would now come for me for my crime.   I rushed up to our second floor apartment and dove into the bed, pulled up all the covers and hid in terror.   I don't think my parents knew where I was, so they're not part of the story.   Anyway, it felt like I lay in bed for hours.   I don't really remember the rest.   I guess at some point I just got up.   I do know I didn't go to jail.  I still remember, so you can get an idea how scared I was.

Vaporizer Cures

I feel like I'm catching a late fall cold.   That reminds me of the vaporizer cure:

My parents believed greatly in the value for fighting colds of keeping things moist and humid; and I agree.  So when I got one of those kid colds where you cough and cough and cough all night, they brought out the old vaporizer.

In those days, these were made out of glass  and had a removable plug with two big round prongs.  They tended to have a very fine line between not making steam, so you added salt, and spitting burning hot water threatening to burn you.  I believe the brand was Kaz.

Now the Becker vaporizer treatment only began with the vaporizer.   Objective  number 2, was to get the thing as close to my night time breathing zone as could be.   So the thing was always next to my bed on a chair or stool or other prop.....and I was always afraid I'd knock it over.

Objective #3 was the "tent."   In order to concentrate the steam on me, my father would build a tent out of a sheet.   Since my head was in a corner of the room, the "tent" could be tacked onto the wall on three sides.   For the fourth, my dad would use a badminton pole setup (more of that later.)

Wow it got like a steam bath in there.   But it felt really good.   The gentle sound of the vaporizer steaming away (if it wasn't spitting) and the warmth and enclosure of the steam filled tent.   How could I not get better.   I remember one particularly  night I got sick in the middle of the night and my dad got up from his sleep and built the tent and whole setup.  I was  (and am) aware that this wasn't fun for him.   I felt truly nurtured.   What better way to heal and get better?

I've used vaporizers for myself and sometimes the kids for colds.   I've never built a tent.   Oh well!

OK.  The fourth corner pole:   I lived in Newark and somehow got the idea that I wanted to play badminton.   We had no dirt to stick poles into.   My dad guided me in building self standing wooden poles with bottoms built out of crossed two by fours.   I had no skill to notch these out, so they just crossed one over the other.   I believe I attached the vertical stand with those stainless steal angles.   The thing worked......kinda.  The poles stood up, but could waggle back and forth since the cross pieces did not provide a flat base.   Still we played.....and I built it myself.

Two neat fixes:

Problem:   When I lean back in my wheeled desk chair, it badly creases and wrinkles a nice old "oriental" rug.  After years of restraightening and trying to control my roll, I fixed it yesterday:

Bought a small section of quarater round at Lowes and tacked it down in front of the rug.   Protects 100%  I considered removing the wheels, but that would take away the fun.   Please forgive the use of "oriental" as anochronistic.


Problem:   Place a candle in a pumpkin carved out for Halloween and it usually falls over.  You can't wax it to the bottom because the bottom is wet.

Break off a piece of toothpick and force it a half inch or so up into the candle.   Then insert the other end into the soft bottom of the pumpkin.   Works every time!

Sometimes I can get positively smug about these kinds of things.    Another approach to making the world a little bit better every day....... or at least a  small victory against the forces of entropy.

Hi-Fi (not five)

My parents were big classical music fans.  In the early 1950's they had a custom HiFi set made for our living room in Newark.   The cabinets were custom made of some very blonde wood in that 1950's Swedish modern style (Nina, eat your heart out!)   Well the part with the sound components sat on one side of our couch against the wall and the other big unit with a huge speaker sat on the other side.

The compoenent side had an upper door for the tuner/amplifier.   The bottom door revealed a turntable that pulled out to operate.

Well  this thing could push out a lot of volume.   IT WAS LOUD!

Saturday mornings were radio morning for me.   First I listened to live radio dramas.    I remember one called Smilin' Ed's Buster Brown Show.   There was a character called Froggie.   I remember for some reason, the other folks on the show said something like, "Pluck your magic twanger froggie."   Strange what sticks.

Well after dramas, I listened to records.   Sometimes it was Gilbert and Sullivan, Pirates of Penzance or HMS Pinafore.   (I had learned all the words by attending teaching concerts of these at the Mosque with my mother.)   Sometimes I listened to operas and followed along in the text.   My favorite then was Aida.

Other times I listened to symphones or ballets.   Then I would dance around the living room in the sunlight streaming in the windows.   Now it's come full circle.  While on line this morning I heard some totally get up and dance Norteno on the HIFI and right now I think I'll go downstairs and dance around in the sunlight.

College dalliance

In the fall of 1962 I was starting college at Haverford.   I was dating a young lady  (from Ohio I believe) who attended Bryn Mawr.  I  had fixed up a friend with another Bryn Mawr young woman and they hit it off (and later got married.)

The two couples took off on what felt to me like a wild adventure sometime during that winter.   The friend must have had a car, because we drove to New York City and then stayed out at his house (parents were away) out on Long Island.

Here's what I remember:

It seemed to be night for the entire trip....the drive, NYC, the "island"   I have no memories of daylight.

We went to the Five  Spot in NYC and heard Charlie Mingus.   He was a true force and power.   He refused to play when he thought the crowd got too noisy.   I was incredibly impressed.   He was one angry man.   Black Power.   There's a great video about him, which I've seen on TV a few times.

We got to the Long Island house.   So many dilemmas...where to sleep, how to sleep, what to do, alone with an attractive woman.   Understand it was risque and "not done" to be alone at night with someone of the "opposite sex."So much tension around what today would be a no brainer.

Does the reader want to know the denouement?   Suffice to say I and she remained virgins.   But the suspense was delightful.

Holiday Tipping

Here's a guide based on a Consumers' Survey of what people tip for the holidays:


Cleaning person: $35;
 Child's teacher: $20; 
Hairdresser (wish I needed one): $20; 
Newspaper carrier: $15;
Barber: $10; 
Manicurist: $15;
 Pet-care provider: $20; 
Lawn crew: $25; 
Mail carrier: $20; 
Garbage collector: $20.




Okay, other than getting up a 5:00 a..m. how do you tip the garbage collector?

More school technology

1. Window openers:  Our classrooms at Hawthorn Ave. School had huge windows.   You couldn't open them from floor level.   We had long (I'm guessing 12 feat at least) wooden poles with matched steel fittings on the end that fitted small receptacles on the window tops that we used for opening and closing the windows.

2. Eraser cleaners:  Down in the furnace room was a fast turning buffing wheel that was used to clean chawky erasers.   It was considered a great privilege to be nominated to take the classroom erasers to the basement and hold them against the running wheel to clean off the chawk.  The privilege came from leaving the routine of the classroom and getting to this room that was a dark mystery....to be totally on your own.   Today liability considerations would probably not allow any kid to run a powered wheel on their own, much less to be in the furnace room of a school.

Ink Pens

I started at Hawthorn Ave. School in Newark in 1949.   We sat in those old wooden school desks with black painted iron frames and wooden box tops with lids.   I believe they were fastened one to another front to back in rows.   And they all had ink wells.   And we still used dip pens until sometime around 1951.

So into each ink well fit a small glass "jar" which was filled with ink.   (I don't remember anyone ever putting ink in, so there must have been some "miracle of the ink filling."    I do remember once getting into big trouble because I was fooling with the ink well and spilled all the ink.   BAD!

So we each had a black dipping pen with a changeable nib.   Dip in the well, then write.   Try to control the amount of ink, especially so you don't drip.   I was not good at this at all.   I was terrible at it!

Well the big deal was our technology conversion to fountain pens.   We had a kid in our class who's father was able to get us a discount on fountain pens, and we all had to buy them (albeit at discount.)    They seemed very expensive and very special.  They were Esterbeke j models.   My first one was red.    I still remember the lesson in how to fill it.   Pull the little metal lever on the side to suck up ink out of a closeable ink bottle.



They also tended to dry up and clog.   They you went to a sink, pushed out all the ink with the lever, and pulled in water untill everything ran free.   I recall how the sink full of water looked as black ink swirled around and gradually turned the water all dark.   (Today we might say psychedelic.)

The nibs were changeable so you could do fine work with a fine nib or bold work with a broad nib.   I don't remember how, but I still managed to make plenty of messes with these.   I remember one failed in my pocket and leaked ink all over a new pair of chinos.

Those desks stayed in use for years.   The ink well holes always seemed lonely.   We should have invented another use for them.    Maybe we could have used the old ink jars for flowers and had flowers on all our desks.

Since corporations are citizens:

See 2010 Supreme Court Decision "Citizens United."

Corporations can bear arms (Second Amendment to the Constitution.)
Corporations can be drafted (to use those arms at no charge- watch out Blackwater.)
Corporations can run for office (Jerry Brown vrs Ebay)
Corporations can be forced to go to public school from age 5 - 18.
Corporations can't have any drinking until 18yrs old.
Corporations should learn to play the fiddle
Corporations can sue for punitive damages for pain and anguish
Corporations will need passports to travel abroad.
Corporations will need to pay taxes (many do not)


etc. etc. etc.
Have any ideas?

Supreme Court Coup(s)

In 2000 the Supreme Court determined the presidential election by finding for Bush in Gore vrs Bush (remember the hanging fads.)

In 2010, scads of corporate money newly allowed by the Supreme Court's Citizen United decision fueled the size of the Republican Congressional election victory.   Unaccountable corporate funds will continue to play larger and larger roles in US elections.   The corporation as person has been raised to a new level. 

I'm wondering whether corporations have second amendment rights as well.

The Cloud in Trousers Poetry by Vladimir Mayakovsky

Rummaging through the basement I found this book of poetry given to me by my first girl friend, Trudy York.


Your thought,
nursing on a sodden brain
like a bloated lackey on a greasy couch
I'll taunt with a bloody morsel of heart;
and satiate my insolent, caustic contempt.

No gray hairs streak my soul,
no grandfatherly fondness there!
I shake the world with the might of my voice,
and walk - handsome,
twentytwoyearold.

Tender souls!
You play your love on a fiddle,
and the crude club their love on a drum.
But you cannot turn yourselves inside out,
like me, and be just bare lips!

Come and be lessoned -
prim officiates of the angelic league,
lisping in drawing-room cambric.

You, too, who leaf your lips like a cook
turns the pages of a cookery book.

If you wish,
I shall rage on raw meat:
or, as the sky changes its hue,
if you wish,
I shall grow irreproachably tender:
not a man, but a cloud in trousers!

Me and Forest Gump

A few years ago I was siting in the dining hall at Jackson's Mill (nation's first state 4-H camp) describing a few of my political adventures in the 60's and 70's.   One of the listeners said, "you're like Forest Gump...you were everywhere in the 60's!"   So just for purposes of listing, (not intending to drop names, but just list the people I met and places I was at:

1. Chicago Democratic Convention Demonstration (mentioned anonymously as urban guerilla in Chicago Tribune)
2. Woodstock (produced and printed poliltical newspaper decrying corporate cooptation of rock & roll.
3. Filmore East
4. Hitchhiked across country twice
5.Levitation of the Pentagon
6. 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice (Martin Luther King I have a dream speech)
7. 1965 March on Washington where SDS' Carl Ogeslby identified imperialism as the enemy.
8.Many concerts at Filmore East
9. Madison Wisconsin the summer Army Math Research Center blown up with unfortunate death....I was briefly held by FBI and questioned.
10. Arrested in Philadelphia 1967 demonstration by black students in Philadelphia over treatment of blacks in Phila. schools.   (Tough cop Frank Rizzo set the police loose on the demonstrators.)
11. Arrested at April 1969 Mobilization for Peace Rally in Central Park
12. Took Muddy Waters and his band for Mammer Jammers in Philadelphia 1968
13. As a goof, attended Young Americans for Freedom Rally in Madison Square Garden, 1964.   They were mostly responsible for nomination of Barry Goldwater for Pres.
14. Took over NYU printing presses during student strike.
15. Present on day after riots on streets in lower east side....holiday atmosphere of folks trading "liberated" goods.
16. Peace Press member in Los Angeles, 1971-4
17. Worked on Pentagon Papers defense producing weekly newspaper with Daniel Elsberg andTony Russo.
18. Worked on Elaine Brown (Black Panther Party) electoral campaigns in Oakland CA



People:
Abbie Hoffman
Jane Fonda
Dorothy Healey
Mario Savio
Muddy Waters
Otis Spann
Mike Bloomfield
Marge Piercy
Michael Harrington
Cornel West
Barbara Ehrenreich

I'll add to this as I remember more.

Who would you have put in the Cabinet?

I was recently bemoaning to a friend Obama's appointment of Lawrence Summers, Roahm Emanuel and others of their ilk as his leadership team.   The friend asked, "Who else knew how to deal with the crisis."  Seems like a reasonable question which I was not knowledgeable enough to answer.   I do remember that during the campaign Austan Goolsby was Obama's economic spokesman.   He would have made a great sec'y of treasury>

Whom do you think Obama should have nominated?

Garden Song ...Dave Mallett

Inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
All it takes is a rake and a hoe
And a piece of fertile ground
Inch by inch, row by row
Someone bless these seeds I sow
Someone warm them from below
'Til the rain comes tumbling down

Pulling weeds and pickin' stones
Man is made from dreams and bones
Feel the need to grow my own
'Cause the time is close at hand
Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in nature's chain
To my body and my brain
To the music from the land

Inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
All it takes is a rake and a hoe
And a piece of fertile ground
Inch by inch, row by row
Someone bless these seeds I sow
Someone warm them from below
'Til the rain comes tumbling down

Plant your rows straight and long
Thicker than with pray'r and song
Mother Earth will make you strong
If you give her love and care
Old crow watchin' hungrily
From his perch in yonder tree
In my garden I'm as free
As that feathered thief up there

Inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
All it takes is a rake and a hoe
And a piece of fertile ground
Inch by inch, row by row
Someone bless the seeds I sow
Someone warm them from below
'Til the rain comes tumbling down

'Til the rain comes tumbling down

Boys Will be Cowboys

In my LA political activist days (not to say activism has ceased) I met several times with Jane Fonda because of her work in the Indochina Peace Campaign. It's a long time ago, so I hope I'm getting this story right that she told:

Her father used to play poker with some of the other cowboy actors:   John Wayne, John Ford, Ronald Reagan.   Apparently they would dress up in full cowboy gear and toy guns when they played.  

When I first heard this story I thought,  "How Ridiculous!"   Now that I've indulged my own male poker ritual in Morgantown for nearly 20 years, I have a softer view of.. ..."kinda' sounds like fun."

General Store

A recent NY Times article described the decline of the child's picture books.   Expense to produce is one side, but more importantly is parents' presumption that pushing kids to read is important for their future (despite evidence of the importance of picture books to childrens' developmental progress.)

I recall vividly spending literally hours staring at some of my childrens' picture books.   My Golden Book of Childrens' poems was wonderfully illustrated.  I recall one picture of Ogen Nash's poem about Belinda and the "cowardly" dragon.  Another from the same  book was the illustration for the Owl and the Pussycat...all sea green and sparkly.

The picture I spent the most time looking at was of a poem about a general store.   The picture was full of so many objects.   I kept going over it identifying and naming and thinking about each item in the picture:  tools, clothes, candy, dishes, all in rich Norman Rockwell style realism and colors.  The picture was so rich with different "things"  that I could occupy myself focusing on one at a time, thinking about its purpose and uses.   But most of all marveling at the richness and splendor of so many things all in one place!   So much to see!   And if I were in the store, so much to touch!

For the time I spent with that picture,  I inhabited that world.  While words could take me on a journey, the journey is not as sensual as that of these pictures.  The picture world became surrounding with color and light.   I hope kids never lose that experience.    And video games don't get it either, because the imagination does not need to work.

Daisy Dog RIP

Friday I retrieved Daisy from the kennel.   She was happy but could barely walk.  She had just had a shot a week ago   The kennel people said she had been that way all week.

 At home she got stuck on the kitchen floor and couldn't get up.   For the first time she was crying.   Mom and I decided it was time.  This morning we took her to the vet at 11:00a.m.  We were both with her.   First they put in a catheter and administered a sedative.   That took about 15 minutes.   Then the vet administered phenobarbitol and she died within a minute.  She felt nothing.  We were holding and stroking her.

We brought her home in a basket covered with one of her cleanup towels.   I dug a hole in the soft soil under the porch right by the doors from the basement.  We said kaddish and erected a temporary set of stones.   She lies close by forever.

She was a dog who gave us so much for 14 years.   Just being her sweet loving self, she played with us when she and we were happy, and nuzzled and loved us when we needed companionship.   I know for you, there were times that hugging Daisy was the best way to sooth sadness or a wound.

We said goodbye for all of you.   Our memories will ever be with us.

Fleeting Acceptance for Accordions

" The modern piano accordion is rapidly making great strides in the legitimate musical world.   Once only a novelty instrument played at square dances, in taverns and social occasions, it is now heard in concert halls and syphony orchestras and it is accepted in conservatories, universities and schools."

The Accordion, by Toni Charuhas, 1955 (Masters's Thesis)  published by Accordion Musical Publishing Company

....and now again, mostly a novelty.....though frequently heard in advertisements to invoke nostalgia, and in some rock bands.

Words to "Chosen"

4. Chosen

She was old like the night

Thin like rain

Watermarked with pain

Her story had been mistold 

In her head it was all wrong

Her song should have been sung strong

The night was white heavy and dead

And stale thoughts rose to her head

I'm here  she said

Not for myself

I'm here for god 

And god has given me a child

to protect.

Her baby with a fever kept her body awake

Her dark eyes and strong hands never made mistakes

But the night shut her eyes when she woke from a dream

And the windows opened and closed as she screamed

The moon reflected in her eyes and in his sleep

The fruit of her womb was stolen

God's child now

To keep

Heather Masse - Chosen

True cruelty and transformation

One day in Newark I heard the Good Humor bells going down Huntington Terrace.   I rushed upstairs of 88, and got my quarter.   By this time the good humor man was down the block to Huntington and Seymour Ave.   Well I caught up to him on the corner and asked for an original ice cream bar....vanilla ice cream with chocolate covering.  I gave up my money and was handed a bar.   The good humor man drove off down Huntington Terrace towards Beth Israel Hospital.  I opened the wrapper, bit into the bar, and practically went into shock.   The ice cream was some kind of light brown stuff and it tasted HORRIBLE.    I couldn't bear to eat it.  The guy was gone, and I was too shy and scared to protest anyway (I assumed I had made some mistake.)   I ran home, and my mother identified this as coffee ice cream.    How can I look back now and understand, but it was a really bad bad moment.  

Now my favorite icecream at Cold Stone's is coffee lovers' delight.   What goes around comes around.

Depression Echoes

Even though my parents seemed to survive the great depression pretty well economically, they were scarred by the experience.    One way I suspected that was that they refused to talk about it.   There were some echoes I experienced:

Syrup:   Syrup for pancakes an waffles was corn syrup.   I knew nothing else till I went away to Farm and Wilderness summer camp and tasted maple syrup.   I was in heaven!   And I wondered why I hadn't gotten to taste it before.

Margerine:   Likewise my first taste of butter was at summer camp.   We lived on margering...which my parents told me had first been (by law) colored green to differentiate from butter.

Of course I never have corn syrup, always buy the fanciest maple syrup I can find, and never eat margerine except (by kosher) in a meat meal.

Probably more significantly than these little food artifacts, I seem to have gotten a pretty good work ethic.   Not only can I work hard, but I actually like it.   It helps that most of the work I do I love....my job, practicing music, sanding and painting my boats.   But the truth is I feel pretty good during and after hard work that is not a labor of love.   I am pretty lucky to have developed that trait!

Yes to Value Judgement

The US Govt is considering new information requirements for new cars. One proposal is a grading system (as in "A", etc.) that combines fuel consumption and greenhouse gas pollution.) An average vehicle on fuel efficiency and emissions would  receive a B-.   Electric vehicles would recieve A+.  Plug-in hybrid would receive an A.  Gas electric hybrids like the Prius would receive an A-   TOyota Camry would receive a B oro B- depending on engine.

Spokeswoman for Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers said, "the letter grade inadvertently suggests a value judgment taking us back to school days where grades were powerful symbols of passing or failing."   Better believe it!

Abby Re Jerusalem

If I could take a picture of the smell ofJerusalem
it would look like shit and chlorine.
And in the middle, one goat
chewing graves on the mountainside
with David glaring down.

This is the goat of desecration
eating what’s left, the first word,
last week’s paper.
It wishes to eat all Jerusalem.

It wishes to eat all Jerusalem -
to digest the wall and spit out the ramparts.
Its organs are dusted with Jerusalem stone,
its horns are the Mount of Olives and Zion,
and its coat is desert, desert, desert.

One goat, four stomachs.
One goat, many peoples
worshipping the heart
which beats like an onion,
excreting oils and harvesting tears.

Everyone falls to their knees
at the heart of a goat.
Everyone lies prostrate -
praying for another bite.

Debussy Arabesque....by me at April, 2010 showcase

Click on title to go to link and see/hear music.

Ratdog, Carry Me Home

Ratdog, Carry Me Home

Bike memories of Newark

I lived in Newark from age 4 till 10.  I still think of it as home.

I learned to ride a bike on Hungtington Terrace on a old full sized coaster break, no gears women's bike.   It was way too big for me, but somehow I managed.

I sometimes rode to the grocery store or the "variety" store on errands for my parents.   My incentive was that I got to keep any pennies in the change and put them in a big display sized liquor bottle my father got through his liquor store in Passaic NJ.   (When I finally cashed the bottle in, there was around $40.00 in pennies... a huge fortune.)  The Variety store was on Osborne Terrace (one block down and two blocks over from our house.)  and I think the grocery store was on Wolcott Terrace (three blocks up and two blocks over.)   At the grocery store, I was fascinated by the gripping gadget the grocer could use to grab things off tall shelves.   They also had a sliding ladder to get more stuff from upper shelves.   I didn't have a basket or bike rack, so I'd wrap the bag around the handle bars and ride off holding on for dear life.   It put the bike pretty off balance, but I don't remember dropping anything.

Another bike excursion was the to the local library.   The branch on Osborne Terrace is still there:  http://www.npl.org/Pages/Branches/Weequahic/Weequahic.html

Actually I didn't go to the library much, though I read 3-5 books a week.  My father was into encouraging reading, so he picked up 5 books each week for me.   I would now call a lot of these books high end adventure:   Studs Lonigan, Captain Blood, Horatio Hornblower Series.   Later he got me more serious stuff like Melville, Dos Passos, and Hemingway...but that was after we moved to Springfield.

Sometimes I would just take off and explore.   Anything further away than three blocks in any direction was foreign territory.   I remember going down Hawthorn Avenue below Bergen Street.   It felt like another world.  There were factories, and bars, and railroad tracks.  I thought it was very cool and certainly a big adventure.

I still like to explore new territory by bike.   You cover more territory than walking, but move at a pace slow enough to take in new sights, sounds, smells, worlds. 

West Bank Security Barrier Draws Artists and Advertisers – Forward.com

West Bank Security Barrier Draws Artists and Advertisers – Forward.com

Here are all the possibilities. Barrier/prison wall used for art. Wall used for restaurant menus. Art chopped out of wall and sold/. Critics who say prettying up the wall is wrong thing to do. Lots of work here for culture and art analysts, and political commentators.
\

I think it's neat.

Why vote for Ken Hechler

Click on title for campaign song.   


Why should a 95 years old Democrat suddenly file his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in the August 28 primary?

1. As a long-time opponent of Mountain-top removal, I want to give an opportunity to the thousands of opponents of mountain-top removal to register their opposition by casting their ballots for me.
2. I believe it is a violation of our time honored system of free elections for one individual to anoint himself as an uncontested winner.
3. The voters of West Virginia are entitled to register their choice as the legitimate nominee of the Democratic party for the November General Election.

Click this link for wikipedia link on Ken....an extraordinary politician:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Hechler 

Let's Tool and Die, 1950: Philip Levine

Shared with me on facebook by Chuck Levenstein.  Click on the title to see this great poem.

Chocolate Lava

As with the accidental discovery of the vulcanization process, I wish to share a new accidentally discovered recipe.   While making brownies (for a party that I had the wrong date for) I forgot to put the eggs into the box mix.   Just mixed put the mix, water, and oil.   It looked kinda a funny as the water kept boiling off the top.  About 5/8 through I finally figured out the error, and thinking I'd throw good eggs after bad, mixed in the two beaten eggs and cooked.   The  eggs tried to congeal as quickly as the met the brownie mix.  What turned out has been named (by friends) chocolate lava.  It's kind of a crunchy candy.   You need to mix the egg thoroughly as it congeals, and I know I didn't cook the full 40 minutes.  More to follow as I perfect the timing.  See's Candy, watch out!

Balkan Camp, August, 2010

Just came back from a week at Balkan Music and Dance camp in Monticello, NY   (Catskills) at Iroquois Camp.

The core of the experience is overwhelming presence of live music.  Greeted the first night by a friendly experienced camper I listened to a phenomenal Bulgarian band, XXXXXXX,  They included a singer, accordion player, gaida (bagpipes) and kaval (flute.)   Great energy.  I really liked the hot leads taken by the gaida player.  He and I exchanged friendly smiles all week though he spoke no English, and me no Bulgarian.

Right from the start I found the people welcoming.   Plenty of interesting meeting, greeting, and talk at meals (we generally ate at outside picnic tables)   Cabin six was coed and (except for Abby and me) all middle aged couples. It was a very friendly group. 

The schedule called for 5 class slots.  I ended up taking 4 and taking a nap or doing other things the last period of the afternoon.   I took:  Santouri (Greek Hammered Dulcimer) Accordion, Albanian Ensemble, andTupan (a field drum with a high sound on one side and a low on the other)   Teachers were both great musicians and great teachers.   Everyone was good.

The accordion class(about 17 of us) worked on the same music that was performed in the Albanian Ensemble.   It was very high energy music and tough to learn by ear.  The ensemble included the accordions,  drummers, some brass, a few violins (including Abby) and a bass.  It was a wall of sound....like being on a freight train that just kept running.   Was I a passenger car, the caboose, or an engine?   Each from time to time.

Tupan class required a new kind of left side right side independence that was challenging.   As I got it, I felt somehow this was good for my brain...to stretch in this way.    This class did its performance for a dance (no melody instruments) and I hear it was pretty powerful.   It was a lot of un.

The Santouri class learned one song with (for beginners) a fair amount of left hand right hand complexity.  I think the sound of 7 instruments was really great.

Each night there was a dance with a professional group (some assembled by faculty for the camp.)   Besides the Bulgarians who played twice, high points were an Albanian folk/pop band with a charismatic singer (wife of the Albanian accordion teacher.)   They live in Caldwell, NJ, but apparently she is very popular in Abanian.

A great Hungarian fiddler also pulled together a high energy group.

Each night after the dance ended at midnight, the camp opened up a Kafana (cafe) with drinks, grilled food, and volunteer groups.   Abby and I played a klezmer set with a bass player I've known from Northampton and a cello player from Madison, WI.   We sounded pretty good considering.   I really enjoyed playing back and forth with the cello.   Mostly I didn't stay up late enough to go to the Kafana.

There were a lot of other camp traditions.   One afternoon was Martini's served before dinner.   Another afternoon there was a soccer game between the brass ensemble and the Trans Carpathian ensemble.  (brass won, despite Abby playing for Trans Carp)

One night they held a benefit auction.   I offered a beginning or klezmer accordio lession.  Two parents were bidding up to $100 for this, so I said I would do both.   I had a 14 yr old girl and a 16.  They both did very well, and it was great fun for me.   I also gave two "lessons" to an accordion player on Klezmer style.   She said the most useful thing I taught her was to breathe and visualize the music before she started.

After camp and before Abby flew out of JFK for Israel, she and I had an afternoon in NYC.   We walked some of the southern part of Central Park  (seemed like half of New York was out on a nice day), listened for a while to a latin music concert, and then ambled down Broadway for a while, the took the subway to Katz's.   Ate pastrami with (of course)  cole slaw and Russian dressing.   Our transport from the hotel at JFK to Manhattan was on a bus and subway.   We were the only caucasians on the bus....an interesting turn around for the environment in which I live.  The subway at the LIRR in Jamaica was actually a Jamaican neighborhood (I think this is accidental but don't kow) was vibrant and we at a fast food meal of "patties."

Next day on way home I returned to Manhattan and stocked up on knishes at Yonah Shimmels.  It was also a culture shock to turn on the radio and hear a yiddish music program.  

These things can make me miss New York!

Republican on Republican

click on title for video.

Besides the duplicity of republicans illustrated in this video, it's sad how many republican policies Obama has supported.

Cal Judge Invalidates Prop 8

Judge Walker, Federal Court Judge of California struck down California's Prop 8 which banned gay marriages.   For the first time gay marriages is to be considered a constitutional right.   Of course there will be appeals, and looking at the current Supreme Court's recent decision is scary.

The heart of the matter is that the judge found no "rational basis" for singling out unions of gays for prohibition, and so he found Prop 8 to be discrimination.   One of the interesting arguments in the decision notes that changes in relationships brought about by the women's movement, that is equality of roles between men and women in marriage, have lead to the opportunity to reach this decision.  The judge specifically throws out "moral" arguments saying that the state needs on overriding interest in the ban (from the point of general society) to allow Prop 8 to stand.

Wow, that is great!

Morning Row

As I rowed in from Fortune to the Holiday Hill dock Monday morning, I stopped and just floated ...and floated.  I texted the following to a friend who graciously called it a sonnet:

Quiet row in on light breeze
Mixed clouds
Duck and bird sounds
Just floating right now
Fish break the surface

Christ Lag

Cllick on "Christ Lag" to watch the video!

My roommates at Haverford introduced me to older vocal music in 1962.   This opening of Christ Lag in Todesbanden is one of my favorite moments in vocal music....up there with the flower duo from Madama Butterfly.   I prefer it a bit slower.   However, listen as it slowly grows and interweaves.  In fact my image is of a very fine Native American needle basket I just bought at Chesapeake Bay Fold Festival in St. Michaels.

Meaty Post

Eating
How we could eat then -
innards, gizzards, calves' brains,
cholent, petcha (with garlic)
brisket and tongue
on the fleishig sideboard.

It was why we were there,
at the big table -
to daven and sing
and slurp the marrow
from those bones.

BhikshuniWeisbrot
Jewish Currents
Summer 2010

Yiddish words:
Cholent: A 24 hour stew to be eaten on the sabbath (because you don't have to light a fire)
Petcha: Cow's Foot Jelly
Fleishig: Meat
Daven: Pray

1950's race and religion in Newark

In 1954, I was in the fifth grade at Hawthone Avenue School in Newark.   It was one of those urban brick school, where the walls went right up to the sidewalk and seemed to hulk over everything.   The neighborhood was Weequahic, which we knew was a native american name.   We thought it was pretty weird because we could no signs of Native American anything around us (we were looking for anything we had seen on Roy Roger...teepees, bows and arrows, etc.)

At any rate about half my class was black and about half was Jewish.  So I concluded that race and religion were categories that always went together.....all Jews were white, all whites were Jewish, all blacks were Christian, and (of course what else is left) all Christians were black.

Well in the early fall of 1954 I told my father that I didn't believe in God, that I was an atheist.   He just said OK.   Hmmm....I didn't get much reaction out of that one.   Later in the fall come the Jewish holidays, so I'm sleeping in my bed thinking, "well I don't need to get up and go to school."    Along comes Dad and says, "get up."   I ask, "why?"   He says," if you don't believe in God, you get to go to school on the Jewish holidays."   "Okay," I said, surely not backing down on my principals.

So off I trot to school, expecting to see all the black kids, and none of the white kids.   Well I had a really big surprise waiting.   Sitting in class was one white girl!   So I went up to her and said, "are you agnostic or atheist?"    Her answer, "I'm Catholic."    That just destroyed my view of the world.

Well if I had been a bit more worldly, I would have known....because her name was Rosemary......not a very good Jewish name.   Well of course thinking she was terribly exotic, I promptly developed a huge crush on her.

This story went very well with my West Virginia union friends, because most of them grew up never seeing a Jewish person.   What different little worlds!

What will it take to move the economy forward?

I've just read two approaches in three magazines on this issue....the Nation, the Economist, and Business Week.

All three agree that the economy is stalled and that recovery and growth are not obviously in the offing, with the chance of a double dip recession (another drop in spending, jobs, etc.)

All three magazines see the need for something to stimulate the economy, and none of them expect that government stimulus can be significant to put us on the track to full recovery.

The Economist and Business week say that growth can come from either or both of two sources:   technological innovation, or increased exports.   They propose government intervention that would favor these developments.  (BTW there is an implication that the lack of these two helped to cause the recession.)

The Nation (and Robert Reich, specifically)points at economic inequality in the US as both leading to the recession and (if corrected) the way out.   This is a traditional argument, possibly first made by Karl Marx.   When wealth concentrates in  a relatively small part of the population, they do not spend it in a way that creates economic activity, jobs, etc.   Not only does Reich criticize Regand and the Bush's for their policies that accelerated economic inequality, but is also contrite about his own and the Clinton administration's poor record in this area.   So his solution is tax and other policies that will put money in the hands of those who will spend in ways that will drive the economy.

What do I think.   Well certainly I agree with Reich that we need to "spread the wealth", not only for fairness, but because that will fuel a recovery.  Government support for technological innovation should also be a part of the picture, especially "green" technologies.   Exports...if the other two occur, that will take care of itself.   It's already happening because the low value of the dollar.   I'm not an economist, but this seems just common sense.

accordion....life lessons

I made an offer to write on a topic chosen by anyone who joined my blog.   Abe Belhassen chose "what learning and playing accordion have taught me about life."

Okay.  So when I began accordion, I sat in a klezmer accordion class with  (the great) Allen Berne (sic).   He had all us former pianists just play a ditty on the treble keyboard, no moving the bellows.   Low and behold, no sound.   Well to make the obvious point telling, the bellows is one part of what accordion playing is all about.   You've got two machines with reeds and controllers for air, connected to a bellows which provides the breath.

So starting with the bellows, you need to squeeze them (as in squeezebox.)   That's a lot of love!   Start playing the accordion with love and you'll do fine.   And what does the accordion do when you squeeze?   It breathes.   It don't take a yoga fan to know how central to life is the breath.   So playing the accordion is like loving a central element of life.

Now hidden away in the bass and treble machines are metal reeds.   Yes metal.   Yes, kinda base metal.   As in twang.  And they would twang if you struck them.   But the beauty here is that you don't strike the reeds, your bellows breathes (loving breathe) through them.  And (depending on the care and materials in the reeds) they can make some beautiful sounds....akin to a pipe organ. 

Now what's left?   controlling or providing purpose to the breath.  Which reeds are gonna sound.   Well the engineer in me loves the arrangement of cams, levers, rods, pads, that open and close holes that allow loving breath to vibrate the reeds.  In some cases one little button opens up three reeds in multiple registers (octaves.)   The method here is perfect 19th century engineering....many many many pieces of simple material (wood, metal, leather, wax) integrated into a Rube Goldberg array to allow the whole to work in concert.   So control of your life and emotions (sometimes constructive) and providing a purpose may seem simple, but is often complicated.   You need to be well integrated to make it work.  Without purpose no sound.

Modern accordions have actions (keys, rods, cams, pads, valves) that operate much more quickly, smoothly, and quietly than old ones.   We don't have to work so hard as a musician to control the instruments.   But as a loose generalization, older accordions had better reeds with finer tones.   What does that say?

Back to the lungs, or bellows.  For us pianists the bellows are a challenge.   We tend to put them on autopilot, with lots of gasps and gaps in the wrong places.   We don't know how to really express through belows force, velocity, and acceleration.  So (as yoga tells us) we need to pay continued attention to the breath.

There is kinetic movement involved in playing all musical instruments.  The accordion requires small precise motions from the fingers and big broad movements of the left arm that sweep the music out of the instrument.   I believe the most effective people are those who can execute both the big picture and little details as well.   Most of us lean towards one or the other.   Few can do them both.   Accordion analogy????

As a musical instrument, the accordion has strengths and weaknesses.   The strength is that it can sustain a long note or chord, and even vary the volume within that note.   The weakness is that there is almost no attack to the way the sound emerges.   Thus you have a lush sound....which is why you hear accordions in commercials to evoke nostalgia.  But without attack there is a certain monotony in the sound (shared by organs) due to the lack of attack.   I believe that one of the best combinations is an accordion with a mandolin.   Accordion has sustain without attack, mandolin has attack and struggles for sustain.   Is there a life lesson there?

Well Abe, this is for you.   I'm not sure I hit too hard on the life lessons, but I think they are at least strongly implied from the above.   Thanks for getting me to think about this stuff.

Vilsack/Sherrod: VWhat does child rearing have to do with being a good bureaucrat?

I spent five years as Associate Director of West Virginia University's Extension Service.   When I took the job, I had very little experience as an administrator.   I was a little concerned about not having the right knowledge and skill set to be an administrator.

One of my first challenges was dealing with faculty member disputes.   Someone would come to me with a complaint about a supervisor or another faculty member.   They were always completely sincere and convincing.   I was tempted to make up my mind and act based on a single conversation.   Then I remembered my kids and how their versions of stories contradicted.  So I pulled in the other party and heard their story.   Usually equally sincere and convincing, but 180 degrees different.  I learned to always get the other side.  and then it occurred to me that many concepts in good child rearing applied to administration:

Encourage appropriate autonomy
Praise more than criticize
Be empathetic
Model behavior
Emphasize rewards over punishments
etc.etc.

The recent forced resignation of Shirley Sherrod by Tom Vilsack could have been avoided if Vilsack had gathered more information.   His action apparently came based on a video fragment of her speech at an NAACP event which left out an important part of her message.  He now apologizes saying he did not have complete information.  He could have avoided this embarasment, by checking things out...starting with Sherrod.

No Choice at All in the Gulf

Click the title to see a video of the gulf oil burnoff.


We (the people) are left with terrible choices:   The entire ecology of the gulf vrs worker safety and health and pollutions of our environment.   That's no choice at all.  We need to change the rules of the game

King Coal Australian Style

Australia is the world's largest exporter of coal (and iron ore.)  The growth of the industry has had negative economic outcomes for Australians not in the coal industry.   The currency has risen, hurting other export industries.   The cost of  borrowing (interest) has also risen, squeezing consumers and other industries.   There is a shortage of skilled workers available for other industries as well.

In an effort to ameliorate these economic distortions, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tried to increase taxes on coal and decrease them on other industries.   In June coal had him booted out.

John Williams in his book Captains of Industry describes the conscious efforts of big coal to control both WV's and the nation's policies to coal in an effort to insure no barriers to profits.   AT Massey blatantly continued this policy with his "buying" a WV Supreme Court Justice.

Kind Coal Australian style, is just another example of corporate SOP (Standard Operating Procedure.)

Cuch Alaine (sic)

In the fifties, the men worked and the women were at home. So what happened in the summer? The women and children went downdashaw (down to the Jersey shore) with the children. Where did they stay? Motels barely existed then. They stayed in a cuchalain (pardon my very poor transliteration.) This was essentially a boarding house where each family of mother and kids had a cramped sleeping room. Then there was a kitchen in which each family had space in a refrigerator for their food and used the kitchen to cook.

Now my mother did work as a school teacher. But she was off in the summer, so the effect was the same. I believe we had this adventure at least 3 times. I remember we went once with her cousin Estelle...who was at that time single. The idea of an unmarried woman in her 30's was strange to me. (Estelle later did get married....no kids. Her husband sold imported jewelry. My mother bought a very sparkly bracelet out of something called Marcusite from him. I remember it being a big deal so maybe it was expensive.)

I think we went to either Asbury or Bradley Beach.

I remember:

It was very hot in the house
The kitchen was tiny
I got knocked around by the waves
I got sand in my eyes
All the food was delicious
I remember eating soft ice cream (we called it frozen custard)

In retrospect, there was something special about vacations with just my mother. (There were also the summer months at Maple Manor.) Lacked the excitement my father generated. Much more laid back. But what a nice warm cocoon. The little things like getting lunch, eating grapes, walking to the boardwalk hand in hand, stick (and that is exactly the right analogy) in my mind and heart.

P.S.   I'm sure you can guess how to tranlate cuhalaine from the yiddish.....

Der Milnern's Trern,,, The Miller's Tears

click on the title to hear and watch the video. This is one of my favorite yiddish songs.   The words are terribly painful, but  the melody is actually tender and not pained.   I always thought of this song as an individual lament.   A commentary suggests this is an allegory for living under the czar. Sidor Belarsky was a Ukranian singer who died in 1974. Lyrics" Oy, vifl yorn zenen farforn Oh how many years have passed Zayt ikh bin a milner ot to do. Since I’ve been a miller here? Di reder dreyen zikh The wheels turn Di yorn geyen zikh, The years pass Ikh bin shoyn alt un grayz un gro. I’m growing old and grey. S’iz teg faranen There are days Ch’vil mikh dermonen I would have wanted to remember Tsi kh’hob gehat a shtikl glik— If I had only had a bit of happiness Di reder dreyen zikh The wheels turn Di yorn geyen zikh The years pass Keyn entfer iz nit do tsurik. No reply do I hear Ch’hob gehert zogn I’ve heard it said Men vel mikh faryogn They want to drive me out Aroys fun dorf Away from here Un fun der mil. And from the mill. Di reder dreyen zikh The wheels turns Di yorn geyen zikh The years pass Oy, on an ek un on a tsil. Without end and without purpose Fun glik fartribn Exiled from happiness bin ikh geblibn I remain without it On vayb, on kind ot do aleyn. Without wife or child–myself alone Di reder dreyen zikh The wheel turns Di yorn geyen zikh, The years pass Un eylent bin ikh vi a shteyn. I am lonely as a stone Vu vel ikh voynen Where will I live? Ver vet mikh shoynen Who will care for me? Ikh bin shoyn alt I’m already old Ich bin shoyn mid – I’m already tired Di reder dreyen zikh The wheels turn Di yorn geyen zikh, The years pass Un oykh mit zey geyt oys der yid. And with them too goes the Jew. translated by Richard Silverstein (with initial assistance from Jenny Levison’s translation at Zemerl) After listening to the above link for the traditional song, check this out: http://www.myspace.com/yiddishprincess

diners

Being from NJ, and naturally funky, I have a lifelong affection for Diners.  My first Diner was the Weequahic Diner at the bottom of Howthorn Ave.   Little did I know that this Jewish Diner was an anomaly among diners.  Besides great deli sandwiches like pastrami (corn rye, cole slaw, russian dressing) they made a gourmet puffy bread french toast.

New Jersey diners seem to be mostly owned by Greeks these days.   You need a back belt to be able to pick up the menus.    How can a restaurant make a living when its menu is 20 pages long.

I remember a diner I used to eat at at the tip of Bayonne.  I was working as a Good Humor man and ate there every day.   (Bayonne was great for the ice cream business)  All summer long I would get a big plate of blueberries in sour cream.


There was a diner that became a teen hangout on Rt 22 in either Springfield or Union.   I don't remember the food, but I do remember the very very large neon sign that simulated a huge flame blazing up and down.

When I went on sabbatical in Massachusetts in the 90's, I discovered several pre-war diners that were even funkier than New Jersey.   No chrome, and tiny.  One was the Owl.   It was in Lowell.   It was alleged to be frequented by a leader of the "Beat" writers/poets.   I can't remember who.

There's a lot of interest in diners as an icon of pop culture.   Here's the site for the American Diner Museum:  http://www.americandinermuseum.org/site/history.php

As with all these small worlds, the different "experts" and organizations fight over the true definition of a diner.   Does it have to have chrome?   Can you include chains like White Castle?

Last week I ate at French's Diner in Marlinton, WV.   I had a ham on bisquit sandwich.   The ham was a bit salty for me (recall I was below the Mason Dixon Line where salty food is part of a way of life.)   The bisquit itself was melt in your mouth.   The cooks, were wonderful, friendly.   While high on the funky scale, the diner didn't look like one, and probably wouldn't meet an afficionado's definition.

Here are some pictures of the owl:

Lowell, Mass’. Owl Diner nears completion of new vestibule! « Diner Hotline Weblog

Lowell, Mass’. Owl Diner nears completion of new vestibule! « Diner Hotline Weblog

Naturalism and Mastery, which way environmentalism

This somewhat academic article in Tikkun raises important consideration of the "naturalist" and "mastery" strands of environmentalism. Naturalism takes a humble approach and looks for harmony with nature. Mastery says industrial and social forces have taken us past the point where we can solve environmental problems... by harmonizing. The author accepts the necessity for some mastery (re global waring, for example) but suggests it needs to be informed by naturalistic impulses.

Click on the blog post title to view the Tikkun article.

 

A Long Time Comin'

Go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE4qBjKCtBM

Sam Cooke's It's Been a Long Time Comin' is certainly one of my top 5 songs. Sam was a not a civil rights leader, but was disturbed by incidents denying him lodging on tour in the south. He was also considering the death of his brother when he wrote the song.

The song subsequently became an anthem of the civil rights movement. Obama paraphrased the song in his presidential acceptance speech.

Wikipedia lists 33 covers (not counting rap and hip hop samplings) Name 5 and you're good. Name 10 and you're an R&B allstar.

LYRICS:

I was born by the river in a little tent
Oh and just like the river I been a runnin' ever since
It's been a long, a long time coming but I know
A change gon' come oh yes it will
It's been too hard living but I'm afraid to die
Cuz I don't know what's up there beyond the sky
It's been a long, a long time coming but I know
A change gon' come oh yes it will

I go to the movie, and I go downtown
Somebody keep tellin me "don't hang around"
It's been a long, a long time coming, but i know
A change gon' come oh yes it will

Then I go to my brother
And I say "brother, help me please"
But he winds up knocking me
Back down on my knees
There been times that I thought I wouldn't last for long
Now think I'm able to carry on
It's been a long, along time coming but I know
A change gon' come, oh yes it will

dysfunctional capitalism

More and more articles in the press identify the ways in which unfettered capitalism is dysfunctional. In this article the NYTimes identifies the short term time horizon for profits as leading corporations to underinvest in research and expansion. In this time horizon, these are just seen a costs. 

 

Karl Marx would be proud of the NYTimes!

I'm Goshen Be Silly

My son Benny has been in Chile for nearly a year.   Back nearly a week, he, his sister, Abby, and I took an outing the other night to play miniature golf at Coal Country Miniature Golf, and eat a meals in the retro diner Pokie Dot in Fairmont WVa.   (Coal Country Miniature Golf is notable for having:
1.  Real machinery out of coal mines.
2. Good music about coal mining
3. Educational placards at each hole explaining coal mining history and process.

Well first of all it was fun!

On the way home we passed the Goshen Road Exit from I-79 N.  Well I have tended for all these chidrens' lives to make (VERY!) bad puns off of passing road signs.   So as we passed I said something (inane) like,  "Well, now we're goshen on home."    The kids, realizing that this may have been the worst pun I have ever tried, and aware that there was some family tradition involved, broke out laughing......and giggling.....and hooting.   We tried a number of other puns in which we Goshened this or that.   By the end, our sides were aching.   I know that on the written page this isn't even vaguely funny.   Yet we all three had an incredible laugh.  

A family moment, yes.   A funny moment, yes.   A fun and loving moment,  VERY YES!

Save Capitalism??????????

The Economist recently published an opinion piece that began with an analysis of Pres Obama's response to the BP Oil Spill.   In this piece, they called for Obama to seize the political moment to make the larger point.  That point is that two of his crises, the oil spill and the financial meltdown, were both due to the same problem.   That problem was identified as capitalism's inclination to act through a level of greed that was ultimately destructive to the world, its peoples, and to capitalism's own survival.   And specifically the Economist cited the last thirty years in which regulatory rules in the U.S. were systematically rolled back, allowing business to be its own worst enemy.   Obama was advised to connect the two crises and note that unregulated business was not good for America and that we needed to revive reasonable regulations.   Again,  according to Economist, the reasoning was not just to make political hay for Obama, but to save capitalism from imploding.

I also read Business Week, which also takes "liberal" positions on finance and corporate greed (Business Week has been editorializing against excessive executive salaries for more than a decade..)

The idea that forward looking capitalists or business men would desire reasonable social compacts, reforms, and regulations was eloquently stated by James Weinstein in his book Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State.   In his introduction, Weinstein states:

"This book is not based upon a conspiracy theory of history, but it does posit a conscious and successful effort to guide and control the economic and social policies of federal, state, and municipal governments by various business groupings in their own long-range interest as they perceived it. Businessmen were not always, or even normally, the first to advocate reforms or regulation in the common interest. The original impetus for many reforms came from those at or near the bottom of the American social structure, from those who benefited least from the rapid increase in the productivity of the industrial plant of the United States and from expansion at home and abroad. But in the current century, particularly on the federal level, few reforms were enacted without the tacit approval, if not the guidance, of the large corporate interests. And, much more important, businessmen were able to harness to their own ends the desire of intellectuals and middle class reformers to bring together "thoughtful men of all classes" in "a vanguard for the building of the good community." These ends were the stabilization, rationalization, and continued expansion of the existing political economy, and, subsumed under that, the circumscription of the Socialist movement with its ill-formed, but nevertheless dangerous ideas for an alternative form of social organization."

I guess we used to call this cooptations

Urban Underground Graphic

In 1968 I was a member of the Urban Underground, a left organization of city planners in NYC.   They were a chapter of Movement for Democratic Society (MDS) which sought to continue SDS organizing off campus within careers that college graduates were taking, thus Teachers for a Democratic Society (TDS), Welfare  MDS (welfare workers), etc.

Ultimately the name Urban Underground was taken as the name of a citywide tabloid newspaper published by MDS, the Urban Underground.   A classic full page cover photo (simulation) was of a man with a business suit and fancy briefcase descending a subway stairs wearing gas mask.  It was a very powerful graphic, and I wish I had a copy.   Maybe somewhere deep in the archives I do.

(Urban air pollution was the subject of that issue.)

Israel is self corroding

Going back to assassinations by Israeli secret service, collective punishment of arab families, and documentation of torture, I have been very saddened by the anticipation of the way in which these actions, and Israelis' compliance and complicity with them corrodes the "jewishness" of the "Jewish" state.

Upon Israeli denial of entry of Naom Chomsky to the West Bank of Naom Chomsky, Gideon Levy (editor of Ha'aretz) is quoted in an interview:

"In the last year there have been real cracks in the democratic system of Israel...It's systematic - it's not here and there.   Things are becoming much harder."

and in Ha'aretz:

"When Israel closes its gates to anyone who doesn't fall in line with our official positions, we are quickly becoming similar to North Korea.   When right-wing parties increase their number of anti-democratic bills, and from all sides there are calls to make certain groups illegal, we must worry, of course.   But when all this is engulfed in silence, and when even academia is increasingly falling in line with dangerous and dark views...the situations apparently far beyond desperate."

Excellent NYTimes article documenting oil rig's known risks

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/us/21blowout.html?hp

Nose Blueberries

Sometime befor age 5, my mother and I would spend most of summers at a country "resort" called Maple Manor.  The place was a former farm somewhere Dingman's Ferry, PA (but in NJ)  There was a "lodge" with a big old fashioned porch where we ate,  individual cabins for families, and a swimming pool.   It was close to Child's State Park (now national forest) with wonderful waterfalls.

Generally the women and children stayed much of the summer and the father's drove up on weekends.  We went with our friends the Dorothy (mother) and Susan (daughter) Nadels from Brooklyn.

Some events I recall were an annual costume party.   I remember getting one of those foldup crepes paper toys that you whizzed around your head and it made a singing buzzing noise.   Also once or more a summer someone would bring horses for us to ride.   I remember sings that happened in the farmhouse.   I remember loving the words to "Grandfather's Clock"   There was one family with a governess and children who stayed in the main house.

Once I recall floating on a blowup mattress on the pool.   I didn't yet know how to swim.  Somehow, next thing I knew I rolled off into the water and sank straight towards the bottom.   As you can see, I was rescued.   It was VERY scary....partly because of the big fuss everyone made afternwards.   (Later my son Benny repeated exactly this experience in a pool owned by my brother and sister in law in Long Island.   He was rescued by quick action by Peter Hein.)   (Another time Benny just walked off the side of my sailboat Cygnus into the water.   Either he had a life preserver on or could swim at that point, since there was no scare.)

One day several of us children went into the woods to play.   Somehow we got the idea of stuffing blueberries up our noses.   We did it so thoroughly that they got jammed in and we all got scared.   We ran to our Mommies, who extricated the blueberries from nasal passages.   I do remember being pretty worried that we would be in trouble.   I think my mom was just happy to conduct the rescue.

This reminds me of some other similar adventure at an unspecified time and place where I busted bubble gum on my face and couldn't get it off.   I was totally plastered.   Mom to the rescue again!

Which Obama will history remember?

Will it be the one who appointed wall street "bigs" to run the US governments financial institutions?  The one who calls for scaling back Congress's efforts to regulate the financial sector post the 2008 financial melt down?

Or the Obama who twists corporate arms to reduce financial executive pay, fire a General Motors CEO, and gets BP to set up a free standing fund to pay financial losses due to the oil spill.

Will trying to do both lead to a perception that he is an astute, pragmatic, and successful politician, or will he please no one and fail to be reelected because he doesn't excite his natural supporters enough to really care?