I have had my seedling started since the middle of February and now my tomato, pepper, herb and flowers have filled two large plant stands that fill the space in front of two large sliding glass patio doors in our home. Growing plants has become a passion in my life. I am not sure how it was nurtured, but it is something I seem to have a talent for and also something I enjoy very much.
I am not sure when I first got an interest in plants. I do know that I neglected this interest for several years of my life. I have always loved outdoor places and felt at home around plants and gardens. My parents tended a garden and I spent many hours observing my mother and father till, hoe, rake and harvest our little garden plot in out backyard. As an adult, however, I never tended a garden or even took care of plants until I was well into my thirties.
I lived with a girlfriend who kept a few houseplants and I always appreciated these plants, but I did not tend to them. She also kept a stock of cut flowers on display in the rooms of our apartment. We would attend the Farmer’s Market together and admire the fresh produce. When our relationship ended, and I moved out on my own, I immediately sensed the emptiness of my new apartment. I missed the plants.
I went to Frank’s Nursery and Craft and purchased several houseplants and cacti. I bought pots and potting soil. I tended to these plants and discovered a nurturing side of myself and a need to grow things. My plants flourished. They grew huge and became centerpieces of attraction for all who came to visit a bachelor pad I shared with two roommates. Our houseplants were the envy of many female visitors to our little pad.
I had a talent for growing things. I even experimented with some seeds I had found in a purchase I had made for recreational pleasures. Again, my plants grew large, strong and powerful. My friends and I harvested more than a years supply of buds that was shared between 5-10 thirty-something bachelors. My success in growing this item was not to be repeated.
Upon moving to New York State to attend graduate school, my girlfriend, and soon to be wife, rented a small cottage in Schenectady, NY. In the small backyard I started a compost pile and made a small garden plot of vegetables and flowers. In the Front yard, I created a spot to grow the three sisters (corn, beans and squash). Growing Sweet corn right along the sidewalk in an urban area is bound to become a neighborhood attraction and conversation piece.
When we moved back to MN into a suburban home I began a backyard conversion of lawn into a large garden. Over three years I planted strawberries, red raspberries, blue berries and concord grape vines. My garden area grew from a 10 by 10 foot plot to eventually cover nearly the entire backyard which now stands at 110 by 50 foot plot. We have an apple tree and a pear tree. I created a series of raised beds and trellis to grow my plants to the heavens and save room on the ground. I mulch heavily and have a rich compost that I prepare with neighborhood discarded leaves and grass clippings, our kitchen waste, discarded plants, and added soil amendments (Sea Salt and azomite).
I have set up rain barrels in front of the four downspouts that drain the water from our roof and have four more barrels that collect the overflow. I hand water everything, but my soil holds a lot of moisture, so I don’t have to water too often. I don’t use any chemical fertilizers or herbicides and pesticides. I plant clover in the aisles between the raised beds, but welcome an occasional weed if it is not interfering with my harvested plants. Otherwise I control weeds by mulching and pulling. All of this tending the garden is full time work when I am not working for pay at my day job. It is work that I do not abhor, in fact, it is work I love doing and work that makes me understand authors like Wendell Berry and his reflections upon work.
During the height of the harvest we have over 40 blooming tomato plants, 30 some pepper plants, potatoes, garlic, onions, bush beans, pole beans, peas, carrots, lettuce, kale, swiss chard, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, herbs, squash, pumpkins, sweet corn and many other herb and flowers. Our freezer quickly fills with stored produce (fruits and veggies) and our cellar bins fill with garlic, potatoes, squash and apples. We can pickles and jellies and fill large jars with brines with other vegetables. We dry peppers, too and then settle into a long winter of preparing for the next season.
What amazes me is how easy it is to grow things, but how often I am approached by others for gardening advice. Many times I am told tales of woe about an inability to tend a garden or even to grow a plant. I have no secrets. I am perplexed by these inquires from others. I suppose I have what is called a green thumb. I care for my plants and they grow. It’s as simple as that. I don’t neglect them. I watch their growth from seed to bloom/fruit and grow right along side of them. I don’t miss a step along the way, because I am excited for their growth as they appear to be. As much as I nourish them, they nourish me. I suppose that’s the secret to a green thumb as much as anything.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Notes to My Son
Beauty is a manifestation of God, the Great Mystery, Creation or whatever you want to call it. Worry is a manifestation of your own mind. If your mind is occupied with worry and anxiety, focus on what is beautiful in the world. If that is difficult to do at home or at work, schedule a trip where you will be surrounded by God’s creations. These places can be close by. Remember our hiking trips on the trails.
Monday, March 30, 2009
What is economics
So far, my posts on economics have been fairly general if not lame. I have been trying to come up with an approach to talking about the economy that is unique or that would provide insight into its workings that are not available elsewhere. During the current economic crisis there are many cogent examples of intelligent analysis that one can turn to for insight. Paul Krugman, James K. Gailbraith, Amartya Sen, and Joseph Stiglitz are a few of many people I turn to for wisdom regarding the global financial system and the roots of the current crisis as well as proposed solutions. I agree with much of their analysis.
But, it is also true, that I disagree fundamentally with each of these economists in regard to their approach to their field. Economists are trained to do a particular analytical type of analysis that has a heavy reliance upon statistics and mathematics. There is nothing wrong with turning to statistics (or econometrics) or mathematics when doing economic analysis and looking for some insights into how economies function. However, over the last 60 years, as econometrics and neoclassical economics—with heavy reliance upon mathematical analysis and modeling—have increased in importance, economic analysis relying upon rhetoric and storytelling has been shunted aside and the field of economics has become increasingly hermetic and unintelligible to the average person.
My goal is to tell a story about economics that brings this trend toward mathematics into sharp focus, but does not veer away from the ultimate story about what the economy does and how it allows us to live in the world. To do this we have to start from the beginning and describe what economics is.
When I was a graduate student in economics, I taught an introductory level undergraduate course in economics. On the first day of class, I asked all my students to define what economics was. There were as many definitions as there were students. Most of the definitions said something about money. After going through my students answers I told them that Economics is the study of the economy, which begs the question, “what is the economy?”
Lets begin with the standard neoclassical definition of Economics. Lionel Robbins provides the modern definition of economics as “Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between given ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.” This differs markedly from Alfred Marshalls turn of the century definition that states economics as “a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.” Marshalls definition is much more general and allows much more to fall under the rubric of economics and what it is that economists study. Marshal elaborates further to say that economics “examines that part of individual and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and with the use of the material requisites of wellbeing. Thus it is on one side a study of wealth; and on the other, and more important side, a part of the study of man.”
What Marshall was one of the fathers of welfare economics and Robbins did not think economics should be concerned with concepts that were not measurable. Thus, Robbins became the father of a more rigorous economics that tried to study only what was measurable. The influence of Marshall and Robbins was enormous among modern economics known as neoclassical. However, in Marshalls time there were still economists, such as Thorstein Veblen, who relied upon rhetorical analysis and focused on the “more important side, a part of the study of man.” Robbins definition refined Marshalls Welfare analysis, which created supply and demand curves with the Lagrangian equations behind them, and cast aside all analysis from economics that could not be appropriately measured.
Robbins definition of economics as “the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between given ends and scarce means which have alternative uses,” restricts the study of human behavior to relationships. These relationships are all measured using price as the common metric. The given ends are what is produced for consumption and the means are the resources we use to produce them. The alternative uses refer to the choices we make for both production and consumption. All of this is captured inside of equations describing relationships between ends and means with price as the common metric tying them together. Price is the quantity of money, so we can see how the influence of money to the study of economics became the dominating focus of economics until it becomes difficult to think of the economy without thinking of money.
We compare products and make choices based upon price and the amount of money we have. When the price of a product goes up, we demand less of that product, ceteris paribus. When price goes up, producers also wish to produce more to that product, ceteris paribus. The result of all this economic analysis is the false impression that we can measure and predict our choices. No other social sciences come close to economics lofty ambitions for predicting human behavior, although many, such as psychology, are trying very high. Because of this, economics is often referred to as the queen of the social sciences and is said to be closer to a science than all other social sciences – even offering a yearly Nobel prize to economists for their contributions to the science.
I want to go back to describing the economy using rhetoric and focus more on the study of humanity by observation and not necessarily by measurement and relationships. Rhetoric is often called the art of persuasion and many people think it is inferior to science or mathematics because it does not reveal a truth or essence, but rather is capable of tricking or fooling someone into believing a false conclusion. Although it is true that some one may be able to lead a person to the wrong conclusion, rhetoric also requires one to make a compelling argument and allows the reader to come to their own conclusions based upon the evidence provided from the author.
In rhetorical economics, the author (me) is not trying to prove an economic insight or accurately predict the future. It the author could do either of these things he most assuredly would. However, the author believes that neoclassical economics with its overreliance upon mathematics and econometrics is also engaged in rhetoric. Neoclassical rhetoric operates under a false rubric that defines itself as science and claims to be offering proofs instead of evidence.
But, the main drawback of neoclassical economics is that it has become a field in which only a few are baptized and allowed the keys for understanding and then truths are revealed from the high priests above in which we all are supposed to accept without question. If Economics is a part of the study of humanity we should all be able to engage in this discussion.
But, it is also true, that I disagree fundamentally with each of these economists in regard to their approach to their field. Economists are trained to do a particular analytical type of analysis that has a heavy reliance upon statistics and mathematics. There is nothing wrong with turning to statistics (or econometrics) or mathematics when doing economic analysis and looking for some insights into how economies function. However, over the last 60 years, as econometrics and neoclassical economics—with heavy reliance upon mathematical analysis and modeling—have increased in importance, economic analysis relying upon rhetoric and storytelling has been shunted aside and the field of economics has become increasingly hermetic and unintelligible to the average person.
My goal is to tell a story about economics that brings this trend toward mathematics into sharp focus, but does not veer away from the ultimate story about what the economy does and how it allows us to live in the world. To do this we have to start from the beginning and describe what economics is.
When I was a graduate student in economics, I taught an introductory level undergraduate course in economics. On the first day of class, I asked all my students to define what economics was. There were as many definitions as there were students. Most of the definitions said something about money. After going through my students answers I told them that Economics is the study of the economy, which begs the question, “what is the economy?”
Lets begin with the standard neoclassical definition of Economics. Lionel Robbins provides the modern definition of economics as “Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between given ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.” This differs markedly from Alfred Marshalls turn of the century definition that states economics as “a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.” Marshalls definition is much more general and allows much more to fall under the rubric of economics and what it is that economists study. Marshal elaborates further to say that economics “examines that part of individual and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and with the use of the material requisites of wellbeing. Thus it is on one side a study of wealth; and on the other, and more important side, a part of the study of man.”
What Marshall was one of the fathers of welfare economics and Robbins did not think economics should be concerned with concepts that were not measurable. Thus, Robbins became the father of a more rigorous economics that tried to study only what was measurable. The influence of Marshall and Robbins was enormous among modern economics known as neoclassical. However, in Marshalls time there were still economists, such as Thorstein Veblen, who relied upon rhetorical analysis and focused on the “more important side, a part of the study of man.” Robbins definition refined Marshalls Welfare analysis, which created supply and demand curves with the Lagrangian equations behind them, and cast aside all analysis from economics that could not be appropriately measured.
Robbins definition of economics as “the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between given ends and scarce means which have alternative uses,” restricts the study of human behavior to relationships. These relationships are all measured using price as the common metric. The given ends are what is produced for consumption and the means are the resources we use to produce them. The alternative uses refer to the choices we make for both production and consumption. All of this is captured inside of equations describing relationships between ends and means with price as the common metric tying them together. Price is the quantity of money, so we can see how the influence of money to the study of economics became the dominating focus of economics until it becomes difficult to think of the economy without thinking of money.
We compare products and make choices based upon price and the amount of money we have. When the price of a product goes up, we demand less of that product, ceteris paribus. When price goes up, producers also wish to produce more to that product, ceteris paribus. The result of all this economic analysis is the false impression that we can measure and predict our choices. No other social sciences come close to economics lofty ambitions for predicting human behavior, although many, such as psychology, are trying very high. Because of this, economics is often referred to as the queen of the social sciences and is said to be closer to a science than all other social sciences – even offering a yearly Nobel prize to economists for their contributions to the science.
I want to go back to describing the economy using rhetoric and focus more on the study of humanity by observation and not necessarily by measurement and relationships. Rhetoric is often called the art of persuasion and many people think it is inferior to science or mathematics because it does not reveal a truth or essence, but rather is capable of tricking or fooling someone into believing a false conclusion. Although it is true that some one may be able to lead a person to the wrong conclusion, rhetoric also requires one to make a compelling argument and allows the reader to come to their own conclusions based upon the evidence provided from the author.
In rhetorical economics, the author (me) is not trying to prove an economic insight or accurately predict the future. It the author could do either of these things he most assuredly would. However, the author believes that neoclassical economics with its overreliance upon mathematics and econometrics is also engaged in rhetoric. Neoclassical rhetoric operates under a false rubric that defines itself as science and claims to be offering proofs instead of evidence.
But, the main drawback of neoclassical economics is that it has become a field in which only a few are baptized and allowed the keys for understanding and then truths are revealed from the high priests above in which we all are supposed to accept without question. If Economics is a part of the study of humanity we should all be able to engage in this discussion.
The Greatest Rock - n - Roll Band Never Heard
I don’t play in a band anymore. I have an acoustic guitar stored in the basement of my suburban house, but it rarely comes out of its case. I work for the State of Minnesota regulating utilities. This position makes use of a Masters in Economic that I received after giving up completely on a dream to be a professional musician.
In the spring of 1994, I was working in St. Paul, MN as a mail carrier for the United States Postal Service. I was wearing my headphones, listening to the radio for updates on Kurt Cobain who had gone missing for almost a week. I was not surprised when word came in that his body had been found with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. Kurt Cobain had taken the deal I turned down earlier from the same mysterious dark man with steely dark eyes many would refer to as the devil. Cobain met him on a crossroad in rural Washington or, perhaps, an alley in the Seattle urban area. I met him at a crossroads on the outskirts of Fargo in the summer of 1988. Three years later I walked away from the same dark man as he cursed my name from the same crossroads outside Fargo.
As I listened to the reports of Cobain’s death coming in, I realized that the world would have surely be hearing of my similar tragic demise had it been I, instead of Kurt, who took the deal for rock-n-roll stardom. As it was, I was suffering through my own curses when the news of his death reached me. However, since I eventually walked away from the devil, my demons were much milder than Cobain’s. I turned down his offer, but it was not without consequences and it took many more years of battle of suffering the Devil’s curses that haunt me to this day.
It was August in1990 when I was making my second trip to the crossroads to seal the deal I had made a couple of years earlier with this mysterious dark man. I was walking along a gravel road with my guitar case concealing a Gibson Sonix 180 guitar and following in the footsteps of the great blues guitar playing legend Robert Johnson. It was a road outside of Fargo, North Dakota, and a long way from the Mississippi Delta. On this hot day in August outside of Fargo however, I assumed this flatland plain along the Red River of the North was an equally attractive place to meet the force from the dark side so I could seal the deal for my rock and roll future. It could not have been any less hospitable place for the tyrant of eternal hell fires than the flat plains of the Mississippi where Johnson made his deal more than 60 years earlier.
It was 5:00 in the morning and the air was thick with humidity as the temperature still hovered in the high 80’s. I had walked several miles after the bars closed, through the city streets of Fargo until I reached a dusty road south of the city past Interstate 94. I was still feeling the effects of several pitchers of beer served up to me and my band mates by Bob at Ralph’s Corner Bar in Moorhead just across the bridge from Fargo. As I walked my mind was on the band and the recent streak of bad luck we had experienced.
Floored was just starting to get attention in Fargo and soon the local colleges would fill the campuses with students during the days and the bars with young drinkers at night. We were playing well and our sound was bigger than anything you could find on the radio or even on records from bands that were playing in Minneapolis. Many bands, like the Geardaddies, Run Westy Run, Soul Asylum and Jonestown from Minneapolis, knew of us as a great little secret from backwards Fargo. However, our drummer, Rodney, had just been kicked out of his house in north Moorhead leaving us without a practice space. My girlfriend, Sweet Anne, was in Montana and I was feeling the pains of lost love. My former best friend and another band sidekick, Manny Breeze, had a fling with Sweet Anne before she left to Montana leaving a fistfight between best friends in her wake. This proved to be a blessing for Floored, since the band with Manny, Diddy Wah Diddy, was probably not as viable as Floored. But, I was depressed as I walked to the crossroad to offer the rest of my life to Rock-n-roll and seal a deal for Floored that would finally bring rock stardom to all of us.
I had learned of the crossroads from my friend Spooky. Spooky was a piano player—the best one in Fargo. He would play in the back room at Ralph’s for all of us. He had his own band called Spooky Chunks. Although he was only slightly older than all of us, we considered him the wise old sage musician and he was an inspiration to each of us. He would leave town periodically and come back at random intervals. When he was in town he stayed at Rodney’s house and joined us in after hours jams until early dawn when he’d finally announce he had “crickets in his ears.”
Spooky was the one who told me of the crossroads south of Fargo. I wasn’t sure of the exact spot, but after many late nights of wandering and days of driving I found what I assumed was the spot. That was the first time I met the Man with the dark soul, before I had been given the gift of guitar playing to go with my raw and nascent songwriting abilities. When I met the dark man at the crossroads the first time, he ordered me to come back later when I was ready. He gave me some inspiration and cursed me for a portion of my soul and put a retainer on the rest.
Now, I found myself wandering the same route to the crossroad on a hot sticky night outside Fargo to sell what was left of my already seriously compromised soul. I had a long walk to think about what I was going to do. A lot was on my mind-Sweet Anne, Manny, Betsy, Mary, Heather, Molesy, Thumpy, Rodney and, mostly, Spooky. The talk at Ralph’s that night was some recent news we had received from Minneapolis. Spooky was in the hospital.
He had been on the roof of a three-story apartment building dancing, naked under the light of a full moon. He was doing his patented spooky jig that ended up taking him over the edge of the building before he fell and landed on a stair railing in the middle of the night. Spooky would never walk or dance his jig again. He broke his spine completely through in two spots. Spooky was the best blues piano player ever in Fargo and might have been on his way to Blue immortality when the Devil came to collect his dues. Spooky had made the same walk I was making several years earlier and now he would never walk again.
I was contemplating my fate, weighing the pros and the cons of what lie ahead. I knew I was considering a shortened life for a brief period of fame and possibly putting myself in the same class as Dee-Dee Ramone, Keith Richard, Sid Viscious, Bob Stinson, Jimi Hendrix and others. We had already reached the height of a very good rock and roll band - maybe even great. From my perspective, based upon the raw power we could generate that transposrted each of us to the mysterious and unexplainable, we were equal to any band I had ever heard on record or seen live in a club. But, we were stuck in Fargo where the police broke up our parties quickly due to noise complaints and bar owners kicked us off the stage for being too loud.
This story should be accompanied by a soundtrack, but unfortunately the soundtrack does not exist. There would be Gremlin Stomp playing in the background as Molesy stumbled home on a snowy and drunken February evening, Blue Fields of Wheat playing during the adult exploits each of us partook with Betsy our local porn queen, Queen Geraldine whenever I held sweet Anne in my gaze, Guaranteed to Bleed as my fists drove into Manny’s face crushing his nose and cheekbones and I Can’t Get my Dick Up at the appropriate Rodney moment.
But, alas, the music meant to accompany this story has been lost to everyone but me. There are others who remember, particularly my band mates Thumpy and Rodney. My occasional recent conversations shared with them discussing those far away days reveal a shared nostalgia for the music we created almost twenty years ago in Fargo. However, even their memory is tempered when compared to my own. The memory of Floored in each of their minds is one of failure to rise to the level I thought we had reached. Rodney revealed to me he still has some recordings in his apartment in New York City and his descriptions of these recordings today does not support the memory I have of what came roaring from our amps and fingertips. But Thumpy and Rodney never made the trip to the crossroads. I was the only one to make that trip, although each of us paid a price for the curse the man with the steely eyes put upon me. Paul and Rodney’s pursuits for careers in music were similarly cut short by my breaking of the contract I had signed at the crossroads. For that, they were tantalized with limited success in a band called Hammerhead and the subsequent failures accompanying it.
I spent three years living in Fargo from 1988 to 1991 playing in three bands – Diddy wah Diddy, Hammerhead and Floored. I arrived as a twenty-two year old singer/songwriter with limited rhythm guitar playing abilities. I could strum a few chords and string together some songs. After my initial meeting with the devil, I became one of his potential minions capable of harnessing power and magic from my fingertips as they danced along the fret board of my cheap Gibson guitars before releasing it to anyone who dared stand in front of our amps to feel the full force of our songs. We played sparingly to only a few people who remain largely unknown. Later we learned we had actually built up a group of core fans that went on to make the “scene” in Fargo that became modestly famous along the same line as so many other local scenes around the country lasting months to years and producing a limited fame among national audiences.
From 1988 to 1991 however, there was nothing that could be described as a scene except for a small following that included some young and beautiful high school and college girls from nearby small towns willing to play the role of rock groupies for us. Those days from my early twenties created memories that would last a lifetime. In those three years, I did more living than the more than twenty years I have lived since. It seemed everything we touched turned to magic; it seemed that beauty was to be found in every direction we chose to perceive - it seemed I touched something I would never get a chance to touch again, for better or worse.
I have talked to a few others who witnessed some shows of Floored in Fargo. This small group of people is of varying opinions of what they witnessed on the stages of Kirby’s, the back room of Ralph’s, frat parties at North Dakota State University, gigs at area colleges and parties in the house where we practiced in North Moorhead. My memory of the music remains resolute even amongst those who remember a loud, drunk and obnoxious band. I know what we were. We were the greatest rock and roll band never heard.
In the spring of 1994, I was working in St. Paul, MN as a mail carrier for the United States Postal Service. I was wearing my headphones, listening to the radio for updates on Kurt Cobain who had gone missing for almost a week. I was not surprised when word came in that his body had been found with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. Kurt Cobain had taken the deal I turned down earlier from the same mysterious dark man with steely dark eyes many would refer to as the devil. Cobain met him on a crossroad in rural Washington or, perhaps, an alley in the Seattle urban area. I met him at a crossroads on the outskirts of Fargo in the summer of 1988. Three years later I walked away from the same dark man as he cursed my name from the same crossroads outside Fargo.
As I listened to the reports of Cobain’s death coming in, I realized that the world would have surely be hearing of my similar tragic demise had it been I, instead of Kurt, who took the deal for rock-n-roll stardom. As it was, I was suffering through my own curses when the news of his death reached me. However, since I eventually walked away from the devil, my demons were much milder than Cobain’s. I turned down his offer, but it was not without consequences and it took many more years of battle of suffering the Devil’s curses that haunt me to this day.
It was August in1990 when I was making my second trip to the crossroads to seal the deal I had made a couple of years earlier with this mysterious dark man. I was walking along a gravel road with my guitar case concealing a Gibson Sonix 180 guitar and following in the footsteps of the great blues guitar playing legend Robert Johnson. It was a road outside of Fargo, North Dakota, and a long way from the Mississippi Delta. On this hot day in August outside of Fargo however, I assumed this flatland plain along the Red River of the North was an equally attractive place to meet the force from the dark side so I could seal the deal for my rock and roll future. It could not have been any less hospitable place for the tyrant of eternal hell fires than the flat plains of the Mississippi where Johnson made his deal more than 60 years earlier.
It was 5:00 in the morning and the air was thick with humidity as the temperature still hovered in the high 80’s. I had walked several miles after the bars closed, through the city streets of Fargo until I reached a dusty road south of the city past Interstate 94. I was still feeling the effects of several pitchers of beer served up to me and my band mates by Bob at Ralph’s Corner Bar in Moorhead just across the bridge from Fargo. As I walked my mind was on the band and the recent streak of bad luck we had experienced.
Floored was just starting to get attention in Fargo and soon the local colleges would fill the campuses with students during the days and the bars with young drinkers at night. We were playing well and our sound was bigger than anything you could find on the radio or even on records from bands that were playing in Minneapolis. Many bands, like the Geardaddies, Run Westy Run, Soul Asylum and Jonestown from Minneapolis, knew of us as a great little secret from backwards Fargo. However, our drummer, Rodney, had just been kicked out of his house in north Moorhead leaving us without a practice space. My girlfriend, Sweet Anne, was in Montana and I was feeling the pains of lost love. My former best friend and another band sidekick, Manny Breeze, had a fling with Sweet Anne before she left to Montana leaving a fistfight between best friends in her wake. This proved to be a blessing for Floored, since the band with Manny, Diddy Wah Diddy, was probably not as viable as Floored. But, I was depressed as I walked to the crossroad to offer the rest of my life to Rock-n-roll and seal a deal for Floored that would finally bring rock stardom to all of us.
I had learned of the crossroads from my friend Spooky. Spooky was a piano player—the best one in Fargo. He would play in the back room at Ralph’s for all of us. He had his own band called Spooky Chunks. Although he was only slightly older than all of us, we considered him the wise old sage musician and he was an inspiration to each of us. He would leave town periodically and come back at random intervals. When he was in town he stayed at Rodney’s house and joined us in after hours jams until early dawn when he’d finally announce he had “crickets in his ears.”
Spooky was the one who told me of the crossroads south of Fargo. I wasn’t sure of the exact spot, but after many late nights of wandering and days of driving I found what I assumed was the spot. That was the first time I met the Man with the dark soul, before I had been given the gift of guitar playing to go with my raw and nascent songwriting abilities. When I met the dark man at the crossroads the first time, he ordered me to come back later when I was ready. He gave me some inspiration and cursed me for a portion of my soul and put a retainer on the rest.
Now, I found myself wandering the same route to the crossroad on a hot sticky night outside Fargo to sell what was left of my already seriously compromised soul. I had a long walk to think about what I was going to do. A lot was on my mind-Sweet Anne, Manny, Betsy, Mary, Heather, Molesy, Thumpy, Rodney and, mostly, Spooky. The talk at Ralph’s that night was some recent news we had received from Minneapolis. Spooky was in the hospital.
He had been on the roof of a three-story apartment building dancing, naked under the light of a full moon. He was doing his patented spooky jig that ended up taking him over the edge of the building before he fell and landed on a stair railing in the middle of the night. Spooky would never walk or dance his jig again. He broke his spine completely through in two spots. Spooky was the best blues piano player ever in Fargo and might have been on his way to Blue immortality when the Devil came to collect his dues. Spooky had made the same walk I was making several years earlier and now he would never walk again.
I was contemplating my fate, weighing the pros and the cons of what lie ahead. I knew I was considering a shortened life for a brief period of fame and possibly putting myself in the same class as Dee-Dee Ramone, Keith Richard, Sid Viscious, Bob Stinson, Jimi Hendrix and others. We had already reached the height of a very good rock and roll band - maybe even great. From my perspective, based upon the raw power we could generate that transposrted each of us to the mysterious and unexplainable, we were equal to any band I had ever heard on record or seen live in a club. But, we were stuck in Fargo where the police broke up our parties quickly due to noise complaints and bar owners kicked us off the stage for being too loud.
This story should be accompanied by a soundtrack, but unfortunately the soundtrack does not exist. There would be Gremlin Stomp playing in the background as Molesy stumbled home on a snowy and drunken February evening, Blue Fields of Wheat playing during the adult exploits each of us partook with Betsy our local porn queen, Queen Geraldine whenever I held sweet Anne in my gaze, Guaranteed to Bleed as my fists drove into Manny’s face crushing his nose and cheekbones and I Can’t Get my Dick Up at the appropriate Rodney moment.
But, alas, the music meant to accompany this story has been lost to everyone but me. There are others who remember, particularly my band mates Thumpy and Rodney. My occasional recent conversations shared with them discussing those far away days reveal a shared nostalgia for the music we created almost twenty years ago in Fargo. However, even their memory is tempered when compared to my own. The memory of Floored in each of their minds is one of failure to rise to the level I thought we had reached. Rodney revealed to me he still has some recordings in his apartment in New York City and his descriptions of these recordings today does not support the memory I have of what came roaring from our amps and fingertips. But Thumpy and Rodney never made the trip to the crossroads. I was the only one to make that trip, although each of us paid a price for the curse the man with the steely eyes put upon me. Paul and Rodney’s pursuits for careers in music were similarly cut short by my breaking of the contract I had signed at the crossroads. For that, they were tantalized with limited success in a band called Hammerhead and the subsequent failures accompanying it.
I spent three years living in Fargo from 1988 to 1991 playing in three bands – Diddy wah Diddy, Hammerhead and Floored. I arrived as a twenty-two year old singer/songwriter with limited rhythm guitar playing abilities. I could strum a few chords and string together some songs. After my initial meeting with the devil, I became one of his potential minions capable of harnessing power and magic from my fingertips as they danced along the fret board of my cheap Gibson guitars before releasing it to anyone who dared stand in front of our amps to feel the full force of our songs. We played sparingly to only a few people who remain largely unknown. Later we learned we had actually built up a group of core fans that went on to make the “scene” in Fargo that became modestly famous along the same line as so many other local scenes around the country lasting months to years and producing a limited fame among national audiences.
From 1988 to 1991 however, there was nothing that could be described as a scene except for a small following that included some young and beautiful high school and college girls from nearby small towns willing to play the role of rock groupies for us. Those days from my early twenties created memories that would last a lifetime. In those three years, I did more living than the more than twenty years I have lived since. It seemed everything we touched turned to magic; it seemed that beauty was to be found in every direction we chose to perceive - it seemed I touched something I would never get a chance to touch again, for better or worse.
I have talked to a few others who witnessed some shows of Floored in Fargo. This small group of people is of varying opinions of what they witnessed on the stages of Kirby’s, the back room of Ralph’s, frat parties at North Dakota State University, gigs at area colleges and parties in the house where we practiced in North Moorhead. My memory of the music remains resolute even amongst those who remember a loud, drunk and obnoxious band. I know what we were. We were the greatest rock and roll band never heard.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Alone
The older I get, the more solitary I become. I spend more time with my family, but even during this “quality time” I spend many a moment transfixed in my own thoughts. I am often startled back to attention by my wife’s words to my son, “Daddy isn’t listening honey, he’s thinking of something else again.” I’ll quickly try to cover for myself and reach back to the last words I can recall in the discussion, but usually she’s right. So, what am I thinking about and why? Usually, a lot about nothing.
We have been called social animals and it is true, we are. We are defined by our relationships and without them we would not exist. Our thoughts are meaningless without language to guide them and language is the tool that connects us with other humans. But, still, why do I feel so often that I am alone?
I am sitting in a coffee shop and I can feel my heart beating and I am reading of Adam Smith whose heart stopped beating almost a quarter of a millennium ago. As I look around observing everyone walking to and fro, some young, some old, I realize that in another quarter of a millennium all of our hearts will have also stopped beating a long long time ago.
What will that moment be like – when my heart stops beating? Will I know it at the time – that my heart will never make another beat. Will I know my last thought? Will I know when my body will no longer be seeking nourishment or eliminating its last bit of waste.
Of course, my genes will live on in another being whom I am aware of – love deeply – but it cannot be said I know his thoughts, nor will I live on in them. And, yet, I will – in his thoughts, but not my own which will have ceased at some point in the future.
Just as Adam Smith’s thoughts are still alive, my son will keep me alive in his thoughts as he goes through the rest of his life – stuck and immersed inside his own head monitoring his own heart beating. At least that is what I wish, should a catastrophe not fall and my son be taken from me before his time. His thoughts must live beyond my own, for my own sense of worth and being.
I see my father as he is in the last phase of his life. His brain still working, working well, but his thoughts not as cogent as they once were. He is part of me. He raised me. But, he does not have access to my thoughts. Nobody does. We are each alone even as we sit together and speak of baseball games and fishing trips.
My wife is social. She talks. She comes from a family of talkers. I mystify her. She mistakes my quietness for self-assuredness and wisdom. Many people do, but she is my wife. You would think she would know by now. Of course, in many ways she does, but she still thinks I am a thinker. I suppose I am smart. I mean I do think. I think a lot. But, I am not solving quadratic equations in my mind.
I read many other people’s thoughts, too. The ones they put down on paper. Some tell stories and we call them novels. They entertain me, but they also reveal to me the thoughts of the author. Brilliant men and woman, much smarter than I, thinking about what to put down on a paper for me to pick up to read, many of who’s hearts stopped beating a long time ago.
Other authors provide me with a different perspective on many problems in the world worth contemplating. Often when I decide to speak, I have this information readily at hand. People take this for me being smart – knowledgeable. Sometimes, when I contradict someone, they take me for a pompous fool. Indignant, they would say to themselves, if I could read their thoughts.
But, most of the time I cannot, because usually they don’t write them down. They walk away without saying anything and we both leave with only our own thoughts as we wonder what the other might be thinking. Judging each other as we rerun the conversation in our minds and continue it forward all inside our own minds, because our hearts are still beating and we can for as long as we can continue to nourish our bodies, breathing the air and taking in all of the creation.
We each may wonder about our souls, but our bodies and our brains are confined to this earth and one day our bodies will stop working and our thoughts will cease. Then we might find out about our souls, perhaps.
In some ways I am sure I am much larger than what is confined inside my body. What is it my dreams stand for otherwise? I am a part of the ecosystem that has its own metabolism and thoughts. Or is this just a delusion I use to deal with the loneliness of my existence and the knowledge that some day my thoughts will cease.
For that matter, is this why I write down my thoughts? Can I not bear the thought of the conversation ending? Do I delude myself into thinking that by having my thoughts written down others will keep them alive? Of course, this is a worthy goal. Who would not want to be part of the great conversations that live on with Aristotle, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and others? But, even if we can get our thoughts down for the next generations to read this will not keep our own brains alive. For what I wrote twenty years ago does not keep the twenty year old young man alive. Some day my thoughts will cease and my heart will stop beating. I am confined inside this body. We can share thoughts in conversation as long as I am still alive. But, some day this possibility will end.
And when it ends, it will end as lonely as it was when it all began, but much more abruptly. I was not aware of my first thought, but I will be aware of my last even as I am incapable of remembering it. My last thought will not be in conversation with another. It will be alone and I will not be able to share it just as I have not really been able to share with you what it is like to sit here alone and listen to my own heart beat. But, you know that anyway. Perhaps we don’t need to share that. We are each alone even if we are social. We will always be alone in our thoughts.
We have been called social animals and it is true, we are. We are defined by our relationships and without them we would not exist. Our thoughts are meaningless without language to guide them and language is the tool that connects us with other humans. But, still, why do I feel so often that I am alone?
I am sitting in a coffee shop and I can feel my heart beating and I am reading of Adam Smith whose heart stopped beating almost a quarter of a millennium ago. As I look around observing everyone walking to and fro, some young, some old, I realize that in another quarter of a millennium all of our hearts will have also stopped beating a long long time ago.
What will that moment be like – when my heart stops beating? Will I know it at the time – that my heart will never make another beat. Will I know my last thought? Will I know when my body will no longer be seeking nourishment or eliminating its last bit of waste.
Of course, my genes will live on in another being whom I am aware of – love deeply – but it cannot be said I know his thoughts, nor will I live on in them. And, yet, I will – in his thoughts, but not my own which will have ceased at some point in the future.
Just as Adam Smith’s thoughts are still alive, my son will keep me alive in his thoughts as he goes through the rest of his life – stuck and immersed inside his own head monitoring his own heart beating. At least that is what I wish, should a catastrophe not fall and my son be taken from me before his time. His thoughts must live beyond my own, for my own sense of worth and being.
I see my father as he is in the last phase of his life. His brain still working, working well, but his thoughts not as cogent as they once were. He is part of me. He raised me. But, he does not have access to my thoughts. Nobody does. We are each alone even as we sit together and speak of baseball games and fishing trips.
My wife is social. She talks. She comes from a family of talkers. I mystify her. She mistakes my quietness for self-assuredness and wisdom. Many people do, but she is my wife. You would think she would know by now. Of course, in many ways she does, but she still thinks I am a thinker. I suppose I am smart. I mean I do think. I think a lot. But, I am not solving quadratic equations in my mind.
I read many other people’s thoughts, too. The ones they put down on paper. Some tell stories and we call them novels. They entertain me, but they also reveal to me the thoughts of the author. Brilliant men and woman, much smarter than I, thinking about what to put down on a paper for me to pick up to read, many of who’s hearts stopped beating a long time ago.
Other authors provide me with a different perspective on many problems in the world worth contemplating. Often when I decide to speak, I have this information readily at hand. People take this for me being smart – knowledgeable. Sometimes, when I contradict someone, they take me for a pompous fool. Indignant, they would say to themselves, if I could read their thoughts.
But, most of the time I cannot, because usually they don’t write them down. They walk away without saying anything and we both leave with only our own thoughts as we wonder what the other might be thinking. Judging each other as we rerun the conversation in our minds and continue it forward all inside our own minds, because our hearts are still beating and we can for as long as we can continue to nourish our bodies, breathing the air and taking in all of the creation.
We each may wonder about our souls, but our bodies and our brains are confined to this earth and one day our bodies will stop working and our thoughts will cease. Then we might find out about our souls, perhaps.
In some ways I am sure I am much larger than what is confined inside my body. What is it my dreams stand for otherwise? I am a part of the ecosystem that has its own metabolism and thoughts. Or is this just a delusion I use to deal with the loneliness of my existence and the knowledge that some day my thoughts will cease.
For that matter, is this why I write down my thoughts? Can I not bear the thought of the conversation ending? Do I delude myself into thinking that by having my thoughts written down others will keep them alive? Of course, this is a worthy goal. Who would not want to be part of the great conversations that live on with Aristotle, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and others? But, even if we can get our thoughts down for the next generations to read this will not keep our own brains alive. For what I wrote twenty years ago does not keep the twenty year old young man alive. Some day my thoughts will cease and my heart will stop beating. I am confined inside this body. We can share thoughts in conversation as long as I am still alive. But, some day this possibility will end.
And when it ends, it will end as lonely as it was when it all began, but much more abruptly. I was not aware of my first thought, but I will be aware of my last even as I am incapable of remembering it. My last thought will not be in conversation with another. It will be alone and I will not be able to share it just as I have not really been able to share with you what it is like to sit here alone and listen to my own heart beat. But, you know that anyway. Perhaps we don’t need to share that. We are each alone even if we are social. We will always be alone in our thoughts.
Economics: Crisis
First of all, I just want to say, I predicted this current financial crisis a long time ago. I have been saying it for years. Everyone who knows me personally as heard me say it is all a house of cards and one day it will all come down. I said it would inevitably happen, the only question was when. So, is this it?
Has the house of cards finally fell? Yes and no.
What I was saying was two things. On the one hand I said that the US could not continue to mount a debt and have other countries finance it. Eventually, those holding the debt would come calling. It was no secret that U.S. households as well as the U.S. government were living beyond its means. The only thing of value that the US exported to the rest of the world was its military might and why would countries continue to finance our bullying around the world.
So, I said that house of cards would fall soon and this is what appears to be underway right now. I thought it would come sooner, but with each passing year as the debt mounted and the cards stacked higher, I predicted the crisis would be that much greater. I was Chicken Little. I told those that listened that eventually our troops would be stranded in Iraq, because we would be too broke to bring them home. Hmm… I am certainly a nutjob at times. But, my point was still that we could not continue on the pace we were going at. What is troubling is that Obama’s plan to get us out of this mess is still too much of the same thing that got us into this mess. While the debt mounted, the wealth distribution in this country was increasingly being divided between the haves and have-nots. Under Obama’s plan this will continue. The consolidation of wealth and power has never been in so few hands and the ones in the Obama administration writing the plans to get us out of the present financial crisis are the ones who got us into trouble in the first place.
In a way it can’t be any other way. I always said that to get where he is, Obama had to shake hands with a lot of dirty players. The financial sector paid for Obama’s campaign by and large and the deal that was cut was that they would be in charge of certain operations, one of them being any bail-outs or regulations of the finance industry. What else do people make these large donations for, but to further their own interests? Obama’s hands are tied.
But, that does not mean he can’t or won’t do something to make life better for those who actually voted for him, if not the ones who paid his way. Its just that his options are limited.
But, there is another way that our economy was doomed that is much more fundamental and structural than the finance industry and the fact that there were risky investments made by large financial institutions with unregulated derivatives and hedge funds that would some day crash just as every other bubble has done before it. Even if we can get out from under this financial crash, we are still up against another wall or limit. The other crisis I was always warning of to anyone who would listen were limits to growth. Something here would eventually give as well. We could not grow our economy forever. Sooner or later we would come up to a limit that had nothing to do with wealth distributions and debtors/creditors. This limit was with out environment and ecology as well as our own technological limits. We would not be able to solve all our problems with technology, because each technological solution to an environmental problem creates a larger problem waiting down the road. In a way this is similar to the financial crisis where we have been offering temporary solutions time and time again over the last half century as we moved from one crisis to the next forestalling the next bigger crisis until we arrive at where we are today where the solution being offered is again only temporary.
With the ecological crisis (and I am not talking about climate change which is really a small and irrelevant problem compared to other environmental limits imo) we can grow no more without causing more hardship. There are no technological solutions. Human ingenuity has reached its environmental limits. The Earth just becomes too small to support our entire economy and we are forced to adjust through various measures including famine, death and disease until our present means of living and economy are long gone and we learn to once again live day to day with little surplus to carry over and barter with others. That day has not come, yet, but it still awaits us in the future. This present financial crisis says nothing about how close we are to the true economic crisis which will end our civilization as we know it. I’m not sure we can avoid it and if our reaction to this financial crisis is any indicator, we will almost certainly not. We will continue to march right up to our doom.
Has the house of cards finally fell? Yes and no.
What I was saying was two things. On the one hand I said that the US could not continue to mount a debt and have other countries finance it. Eventually, those holding the debt would come calling. It was no secret that U.S. households as well as the U.S. government were living beyond its means. The only thing of value that the US exported to the rest of the world was its military might and why would countries continue to finance our bullying around the world.
So, I said that house of cards would fall soon and this is what appears to be underway right now. I thought it would come sooner, but with each passing year as the debt mounted and the cards stacked higher, I predicted the crisis would be that much greater. I was Chicken Little. I told those that listened that eventually our troops would be stranded in Iraq, because we would be too broke to bring them home. Hmm… I am certainly a nutjob at times. But, my point was still that we could not continue on the pace we were going at. What is troubling is that Obama’s plan to get us out of this mess is still too much of the same thing that got us into this mess. While the debt mounted, the wealth distribution in this country was increasingly being divided between the haves and have-nots. Under Obama’s plan this will continue. The consolidation of wealth and power has never been in so few hands and the ones in the Obama administration writing the plans to get us out of the present financial crisis are the ones who got us into trouble in the first place.
In a way it can’t be any other way. I always said that to get where he is, Obama had to shake hands with a lot of dirty players. The financial sector paid for Obama’s campaign by and large and the deal that was cut was that they would be in charge of certain operations, one of them being any bail-outs or regulations of the finance industry. What else do people make these large donations for, but to further their own interests? Obama’s hands are tied.
But, that does not mean he can’t or won’t do something to make life better for those who actually voted for him, if not the ones who paid his way. Its just that his options are limited.
But, there is another way that our economy was doomed that is much more fundamental and structural than the finance industry and the fact that there were risky investments made by large financial institutions with unregulated derivatives and hedge funds that would some day crash just as every other bubble has done before it. Even if we can get out from under this financial crash, we are still up against another wall or limit. The other crisis I was always warning of to anyone who would listen were limits to growth. Something here would eventually give as well. We could not grow our economy forever. Sooner or later we would come up to a limit that had nothing to do with wealth distributions and debtors/creditors. This limit was with out environment and ecology as well as our own technological limits. We would not be able to solve all our problems with technology, because each technological solution to an environmental problem creates a larger problem waiting down the road. In a way this is similar to the financial crisis where we have been offering temporary solutions time and time again over the last half century as we moved from one crisis to the next forestalling the next bigger crisis until we arrive at where we are today where the solution being offered is again only temporary.
With the ecological crisis (and I am not talking about climate change which is really a small and irrelevant problem compared to other environmental limits imo) we can grow no more without causing more hardship. There are no technological solutions. Human ingenuity has reached its environmental limits. The Earth just becomes too small to support our entire economy and we are forced to adjust through various measures including famine, death and disease until our present means of living and economy are long gone and we learn to once again live day to day with little surplus to carry over and barter with others. That day has not come, yet, but it still awaits us in the future. This present financial crisis says nothing about how close we are to the true economic crisis which will end our civilization as we know it. I’m not sure we can avoid it and if our reaction to this financial crisis is any indicator, we will almost certainly not. We will continue to march right up to our doom.
Notes to my Son
It is hard not to find evidence for God in the world. There are so many unexplainable and mysterious examples of beauty and perfection around us. Accepting that there is a God is easy. Accepting that there is evil as well is difficult, despite the equal amount of unexplainable and mysterious examples of ugliness and imperfections around us. The universe is far from perfect and God cannot make it so, because there is an equally powerful force in the world to destroy us along with God’s creations. Beware of that force.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Introductory Economics: Foundations
Before I get into simplifying the economy for clarification purposes by talking about households, I think I should address something I brought up in my previous post on economics. I said that the reason I studied economics was to answer certain questions I had about the world. What were these questions?
My first questions were not necessarily economic questions. The questions I had in my mind as a young and impressionable undergraduate were philosophical ones. What is the meaning of life? Why is there injustice in the world? Who has power? What is democracy? Why is there war and hate in the world? What should I do with my life? With my limited experience and understanding of the world, the best answers I could come up with any for any of these questions had to do with money, as in the instruction – follow the money. In other words, my intuition told me that if I could understand how the economy worked, I would be much closer to having answers to all the above philosophical questions that plague many a young and inquisitive mind.
My first college economic course was taught by a raving free market economic lunatic who would later host a conservative economic blog that brought him national prominence. He was a fascinating teacher and he instilled in me the economic notion that people operate according to what is in their best interest. This is a basic assumption in economics. Assumptions are important to economic thought and theory. Most of the underlying assumptions for economics, such as people make decisions based upon what is in their best interest, are not only conceivable, but are not overly objectionable. The assumptions that are taught in introductory economics are important because they form the mathematical foundations of a theory that is taught in upper level and graduate economic courses. I will go into these assumptions in greater detail in another post. Suffice it to say that the final outcome of this assumption of individuals making decisions according to what is in their best interests is homo-economicus or economic man.
Economic theory postulates a society populated by economic man; an entire population of identical actors making decisions that will maximize each of their happiness and the result of this is a society that is the most well off. The fin de siècle economist and social critic, Thorstein Veblen, described these economic actors called homo-economicus as “homogeneous globules of desire.”
Some of this may be familiar to those of you who have suffered through the introductory economics course while you were an undergraduate student. The mere mention of introductory economic classes to most individuals can bring a sense of insecurity. I have often heard statements such as, “the only course that I got a C in was Intro to Econ,” or “I don’t remember much from the class except how incomprehensible it was.”
Introductory Economics provides the first exposure to concepts such as supply and demand curves, general equilibrium, consumer and producer surplus, price elasticity, gains from trade, comparative advantage, prisoner dilemmas, externalities, perfect competition and other economic concepts that can be a trying and forgetful experiences. However, what often sticks in peoples minds from these courses are certain counter intuitive concepts that were apparently proved to the young student using the economic model introduced in these classes; i.e., minimum wage actually will end up hurting young and poor wage earners, restrictions on trade are detrimental to economy, or that taxes from the government will undoubtedly lower the overall welfare in society. The actual details of the proof are lost to most of us, but the enthusiasm of the instructor who introduced these concepts to many people remains and are vehemently trotted out as absolute proofs daily around the blogosphere today.
As we are bombarded with news reports about the falling stock market, unemployment figures and bank failures, I don’t think an understanding of economic theory is necessarily going to help us understand exactly why our economy has failed this time around, because there are no simple answers and economic theory is a simplification of a very complex process. However, there is a very important reason for getting a handle on exactly what the economic theory says and that is the fact that we should know enough to know when economists are basing their opinions on a theory that is a simplification and the conclusions drawn from these theories are not always applicable or helpful when dealing with real world problems. A famous economist from the past, Joan Robinson, once said, “the purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
Simplifying for the sake of understanding concepts is a very good thing, but we should also understand all the assumptions that underlie these models of simplification. The result of many people’s exposure to a limited set of neoclassical economic ideas is often fundamentalist maxims such as “government is awful and cannot do anything worthwhile,” “restrictions on trade are always bad for both importing nations and exporting nations,” and/or “raising the minimum wage will always lead to lowering the welfare of the least well off people in society.” People often believe they have discovered a Truth about the world after sitting through the introductory courses on economics and then want to go out and change the world to conform to the simple models they were introduced to in these classes often with the encouragement of professors or entire economic universities or think tanks espousing similar ideas at the expense of intellectual honesty.
Whenever you hear the cry from people or pundits that the we must have “free markets” or “lower taxes” or call any government program “socialist,” you can be sure that these people or pundits are informed by these simplified models in economics and are using them to their advantage. For there is one truth from economics that we can take away introductory economics that does provide light on individuals who describe themselves as “capitalists” and “free market activists” while calling those of us who criticize such fundamentalist beliefs “socialists.” These individuals are doing what we all do; they are operating according to what is in their own best interest because there is a hell of a lot of money at stake in the economy. I sometimes think we should all carry around certain moral assumptions when we are in possession of objective models that we are told provide us with scientific proof. Moral assumptions such as “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and that wealth is the surest means for obtaining power, because there is nothing objective about those who ask for the freedom to do whatever they wish to do with their wealth regardless of the negative effects this may cause society. These people want money and power and they will do what ever it takes to obtain it and to hold on to it. This is the meaning and motivation behind many large and historical events we witness in the world that we place the label “evil” upon.
It looks like I will have to wait for households and a simplified model of economics for another day. Don’t worry, we will get to it. I’m not sure if will be the next post or one further down the line. Actually, I have no idea what the structure of format for all these posts on economics will look like. But, we will get to the nitty-gritty sooner of later.
My first questions were not necessarily economic questions. The questions I had in my mind as a young and impressionable undergraduate were philosophical ones. What is the meaning of life? Why is there injustice in the world? Who has power? What is democracy? Why is there war and hate in the world? What should I do with my life? With my limited experience and understanding of the world, the best answers I could come up with any for any of these questions had to do with money, as in the instruction – follow the money. In other words, my intuition told me that if I could understand how the economy worked, I would be much closer to having answers to all the above philosophical questions that plague many a young and inquisitive mind.
My first college economic course was taught by a raving free market economic lunatic who would later host a conservative economic blog that brought him national prominence. He was a fascinating teacher and he instilled in me the economic notion that people operate according to what is in their best interest. This is a basic assumption in economics. Assumptions are important to economic thought and theory. Most of the underlying assumptions for economics, such as people make decisions based upon what is in their best interest, are not only conceivable, but are not overly objectionable. The assumptions that are taught in introductory economics are important because they form the mathematical foundations of a theory that is taught in upper level and graduate economic courses. I will go into these assumptions in greater detail in another post. Suffice it to say that the final outcome of this assumption of individuals making decisions according to what is in their best interests is homo-economicus or economic man.
Economic theory postulates a society populated by economic man; an entire population of identical actors making decisions that will maximize each of their happiness and the result of this is a society that is the most well off. The fin de siècle economist and social critic, Thorstein Veblen, described these economic actors called homo-economicus as “homogeneous globules of desire.”
Some of this may be familiar to those of you who have suffered through the introductory economics course while you were an undergraduate student. The mere mention of introductory economic classes to most individuals can bring a sense of insecurity. I have often heard statements such as, “the only course that I got a C in was Intro to Econ,” or “I don’t remember much from the class except how incomprehensible it was.”
Introductory Economics provides the first exposure to concepts such as supply and demand curves, general equilibrium, consumer and producer surplus, price elasticity, gains from trade, comparative advantage, prisoner dilemmas, externalities, perfect competition and other economic concepts that can be a trying and forgetful experiences. However, what often sticks in peoples minds from these courses are certain counter intuitive concepts that were apparently proved to the young student using the economic model introduced in these classes; i.e., minimum wage actually will end up hurting young and poor wage earners, restrictions on trade are detrimental to economy, or that taxes from the government will undoubtedly lower the overall welfare in society. The actual details of the proof are lost to most of us, but the enthusiasm of the instructor who introduced these concepts to many people remains and are vehemently trotted out as absolute proofs daily around the blogosphere today.
As we are bombarded with news reports about the falling stock market, unemployment figures and bank failures, I don’t think an understanding of economic theory is necessarily going to help us understand exactly why our economy has failed this time around, because there are no simple answers and economic theory is a simplification of a very complex process. However, there is a very important reason for getting a handle on exactly what the economic theory says and that is the fact that we should know enough to know when economists are basing their opinions on a theory that is a simplification and the conclusions drawn from these theories are not always applicable or helpful when dealing with real world problems. A famous economist from the past, Joan Robinson, once said, “the purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
Simplifying for the sake of understanding concepts is a very good thing, but we should also understand all the assumptions that underlie these models of simplification. The result of many people’s exposure to a limited set of neoclassical economic ideas is often fundamentalist maxims such as “government is awful and cannot do anything worthwhile,” “restrictions on trade are always bad for both importing nations and exporting nations,” and/or “raising the minimum wage will always lead to lowering the welfare of the least well off people in society.” People often believe they have discovered a Truth about the world after sitting through the introductory courses on economics and then want to go out and change the world to conform to the simple models they were introduced to in these classes often with the encouragement of professors or entire economic universities or think tanks espousing similar ideas at the expense of intellectual honesty.
Whenever you hear the cry from people or pundits that the we must have “free markets” or “lower taxes” or call any government program “socialist,” you can be sure that these people or pundits are informed by these simplified models in economics and are using them to their advantage. For there is one truth from economics that we can take away introductory economics that does provide light on individuals who describe themselves as “capitalists” and “free market activists” while calling those of us who criticize such fundamentalist beliefs “socialists.” These individuals are doing what we all do; they are operating according to what is in their own best interest because there is a hell of a lot of money at stake in the economy. I sometimes think we should all carry around certain moral assumptions when we are in possession of objective models that we are told provide us with scientific proof. Moral assumptions such as “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and that wealth is the surest means for obtaining power, because there is nothing objective about those who ask for the freedom to do whatever they wish to do with their wealth regardless of the negative effects this may cause society. These people want money and power and they will do what ever it takes to obtain it and to hold on to it. This is the meaning and motivation behind many large and historical events we witness in the world that we place the label “evil” upon.
It looks like I will have to wait for households and a simplified model of economics for another day. Don’t worry, we will get to it. I’m not sure if will be the next post or one further down the line. Actually, I have no idea what the structure of format for all these posts on economics will look like. But, we will get to the nitty-gritty sooner of later.
An Embodiment of Evil
I might be prone to conspiracy theories. I’m cynical by nature and I rarely trust official versions of stories given to us. I don’t think I am alone in believing that it is entirely possible that there were more people involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy than Lee Harvey Oswald. I am also open to the possibility that we will never know the true version of events that happened on that November afternoon in Dallas in 1963. I was also immediately suspicious when my senator’s plane crashed on October 25, 2003 killing him, his wife and daughter and all other passengers. Does being suspicious make me a conspiracy theorist? If so, then my doubts about the events of September 11, 2001 must also make me prone to outrageous allegations by crackpots, etc.
I am not going to join the listing of blogs our in the blogosphere calling for Truth about the events of 911. I don’t know what happened that day anymore than anyone else does. However, there are enough inconsistencies in the official version of what happened that day to make anyone who does believe what the government tells us happened on that day much more susceptible to “tin hat” theories and crackpots than those that question what happened.
I’m not an expert and I am as susceptible to flawed information as anyone else. However, David Ray Griffin has presented enough questions and evidence that contradict what the government and the 911 commission have told us happened that day. These questions have not been answered. I don’t want to argue those questions and put my opinion out there as another among many in the Truth 911 movement. If you want to know more, go read David Ray Griffin’s books and come to your own conclusions. Here is a small list of the unexplained phenomena that happened that fateful day.
1. Why didn’t US defenses scramble to intercept any of those three flights that day?
2. How did inexperienced pilots with a record of poor flying manage to fly these jets to their targets in three of the four cases?
3. How did 3 (not 2) skyscrapers collapse at a freefall speed into their own footprint due to fire and minimal structural damage on that day (the first time ever that any skyscraper anywhere in the world has collapsed because of a fire).
4. Recorded Phone calls made from passenger on the four planes on that day when technology in 2001 would not have allowed those phone calls to go through.
5. The Pentagon building damage was not consistent with damage of a plane hitting it
6. other inconsistencies in the pentagon “attack”
7. The reports of named highjackers still be alive.
8. inconsistencies in the report of flight 93 and the apparent crash after passengers rushed the cockpit.
There are more inconsistencies and much evidence that makes the official version of what happened on that day unconvincing. This is the problem that most people have with those that question the official version. If four planes were not highjacked on September 11, 2001 by operatives of Al Qaeda and flown in the twin towers, pentagon, and a field in Pennsylavnia, if this version of events is not true, then what other explanation is there. The only other possible explanation is that we were attacked by someone else with the involvement of many top level officials in our government, military and corporate institutions and this explanation seems more implausible than the official theory.
I don’t think this is true however, especially in light of what we now know about the administration at the time and all the lies and criminal acts they were involved in such as the selling of the Iraq war to the nation, torture, extraordinary renditions, US attorney general scandal, etc. I don’t doubt that there was the necessary evil consolidated in top level positions to pull off an attack by our own government against its own people to bring about a change in our government, make the case for war in the Middle East, and continue to privatize our military while making huge contracts available to a few corporate entities. It wouldn’t be the first time pure evil had found itself in a position of power and made decisions leading to catastrophic events and the deaths of thousands if not millions of people. I am not a religious man, but I do have a belief in good and evil and I can entertain the idea of a cosmological war being played out in front of us between God and the Devil. How else can you explain a historical anomaly like Hitler and the extermination of millions of Jews? Likewise, I think it is a perfectly plausible explanation that George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and others in that administration were agents of the Devil set forth to bring evil and destruction to God’s creation on this Earth. For we should also not forget how the administration came into power with the dubious election of 2000 and the Supreme Court intervention in Florida as well as their dubious reelection in 2004 with all the election anomalies in Ohio and around the nation. Could there not have been some help from an evil powerful entity making all this possible?
Another, more human, explanation is that they were drunk with thoughts of wealth and power that accompanied the Presidency and a consolidation of powers and were eager to bring about a cultural change in America to benefit a small few while instituting a new neoconservative ideology into the largest superpower in the world. Regardless of whether evil is a human or metaphysical construct, I have no doubt that it is possible for certain events to arise that only the most heinous explanations will provide us a level of understanding for what happened on those days. And once we allow us the possibilities that are increasingly becoming actualities, such as that the administration condoned use of torture, the firing of US attorney Generals for not investigating dubious allegations of voter fraud, spying on US citizens with wiretaps, lying to get us into war, etc., it becomes more and more believable that nothing was out of the question for reaching the objectives set out for by this administration even before they came to power in 2000. Events such as the election night frauds in 2000 and 2004, the orchestrating of an attack killing thousands of US citizens on our own soil, and downing an aircraft of a sitting US Senator who was most oppositional (with a considerable level of influence) to the administrations wants become not only possible, but even likely if we are ready to accept that a certain amount of evil was in charge of our Democratic institutions for a period of time in the US. Perhaps this evil has always been there and is still there at some level. All I know is that it is possible.
I am not going to join the listing of blogs our in the blogosphere calling for Truth about the events of 911. I don’t know what happened that day anymore than anyone else does. However, there are enough inconsistencies in the official version of what happened that day to make anyone who does believe what the government tells us happened on that day much more susceptible to “tin hat” theories and crackpots than those that question what happened.
I’m not an expert and I am as susceptible to flawed information as anyone else. However, David Ray Griffin has presented enough questions and evidence that contradict what the government and the 911 commission have told us happened that day. These questions have not been answered. I don’t want to argue those questions and put my opinion out there as another among many in the Truth 911 movement. If you want to know more, go read David Ray Griffin’s books and come to your own conclusions. Here is a small list of the unexplained phenomena that happened that fateful day.
1. Why didn’t US defenses scramble to intercept any of those three flights that day?
2. How did inexperienced pilots with a record of poor flying manage to fly these jets to their targets in three of the four cases?
3. How did 3 (not 2) skyscrapers collapse at a freefall speed into their own footprint due to fire and minimal structural damage on that day (the first time ever that any skyscraper anywhere in the world has collapsed because of a fire).
4. Recorded Phone calls made from passenger on the four planes on that day when technology in 2001 would not have allowed those phone calls to go through.
5. The Pentagon building damage was not consistent with damage of a plane hitting it
6. other inconsistencies in the pentagon “attack”
7. The reports of named highjackers still be alive.
8. inconsistencies in the report of flight 93 and the apparent crash after passengers rushed the cockpit.
There are more inconsistencies and much evidence that makes the official version of what happened on that day unconvincing. This is the problem that most people have with those that question the official version. If four planes were not highjacked on September 11, 2001 by operatives of Al Qaeda and flown in the twin towers, pentagon, and a field in Pennsylavnia, if this version of events is not true, then what other explanation is there. The only other possible explanation is that we were attacked by someone else with the involvement of many top level officials in our government, military and corporate institutions and this explanation seems more implausible than the official theory.
I don’t think this is true however, especially in light of what we now know about the administration at the time and all the lies and criminal acts they were involved in such as the selling of the Iraq war to the nation, torture, extraordinary renditions, US attorney general scandal, etc. I don’t doubt that there was the necessary evil consolidated in top level positions to pull off an attack by our own government against its own people to bring about a change in our government, make the case for war in the Middle East, and continue to privatize our military while making huge contracts available to a few corporate entities. It wouldn’t be the first time pure evil had found itself in a position of power and made decisions leading to catastrophic events and the deaths of thousands if not millions of people. I am not a religious man, but I do have a belief in good and evil and I can entertain the idea of a cosmological war being played out in front of us between God and the Devil. How else can you explain a historical anomaly like Hitler and the extermination of millions of Jews? Likewise, I think it is a perfectly plausible explanation that George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and others in that administration were agents of the Devil set forth to bring evil and destruction to God’s creation on this Earth. For we should also not forget how the administration came into power with the dubious election of 2000 and the Supreme Court intervention in Florida as well as their dubious reelection in 2004 with all the election anomalies in Ohio and around the nation. Could there not have been some help from an evil powerful entity making all this possible?
Another, more human, explanation is that they were drunk with thoughts of wealth and power that accompanied the Presidency and a consolidation of powers and were eager to bring about a cultural change in America to benefit a small few while instituting a new neoconservative ideology into the largest superpower in the world. Regardless of whether evil is a human or metaphysical construct, I have no doubt that it is possible for certain events to arise that only the most heinous explanations will provide us a level of understanding for what happened on those days. And once we allow us the possibilities that are increasingly becoming actualities, such as that the administration condoned use of torture, the firing of US attorney Generals for not investigating dubious allegations of voter fraud, spying on US citizens with wiretaps, lying to get us into war, etc., it becomes more and more believable that nothing was out of the question for reaching the objectives set out for by this administration even before they came to power in 2000. Events such as the election night frauds in 2000 and 2004, the orchestrating of an attack killing thousands of US citizens on our own soil, and downing an aircraft of a sitting US Senator who was most oppositional (with a considerable level of influence) to the administrations wants become not only possible, but even likely if we are ready to accept that a certain amount of evil was in charge of our Democratic institutions for a period of time in the US. Perhaps this evil has always been there and is still there at some level. All I know is that it is possible.
Notes To My Son
Periods of monotony and melancholy will, at times, seem endless and insurmountable in comparison to those brief moments of absolute joy and fulfillment in your life. These brief interludes of bliss interspersed amongst the long periods of repetitiveness and glum are what sustain us in life, however. You provided me with many of these sustaining moments of euphoria.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Introduction to Economics
As the banks fail and our economy suffers, there are many who think the recession we now find ourselves in will be much worse than any previously for most of our previous histories. Most of us did not live through the Great Depression and this recession has a feel that is closer to a depression than any recession that we all have lived through. What happened?
In many ways it is not hard to explain. I have wondered for years when the house of cards would collapse. But, of course, the economy is much more complex than any simple explanation, but economists thrive upon simplifications. I was trained as an economist, so I will attempt to start with simple explanations.
First, I want to say that I hope to write a series of posts on the economy as an exercise for myself. I hope these posts can be of some benefit to others, but mostly I am trying to formulate thoughts that have been swimming around my mind since I was an undergrad trying to form into a coherent economic theory that I was convinced would explain much of what I experience in the world. I abandoned this pursuit while striving to complete a PhD in economics while in graduate school, partly because I had become disillusioned by the framework within which all PhD in economics are written. When it became obvious to me that my dissertation would not explain much about the anything I was experiencing in the world, I provoked a fight with my advisor that led eventually to me spending the last year of my grad school experience taking philosophy and mathematical courses while nixing economics as a field worthy of further investigation.
The framework in economics has been called the neoclassical theory of economics and usually demands statistical analysis of some segment in the economy with a large enough data set to make some sort of judgment on a particular sector or segment in the economy based upon the neoclassical theory. Although, some will argue that there are alternative theories to neoclassical economics that can be found in graduate programs under the heading of heterodox, these schools still have a neoclassical basis and are some variation of the neoclassical model. Even the behavioralists that have been getting much recent attention merely provoke minor criticisms of the rational actor called homo-economicus by study actual human behavior that demonstrate a more complex and varied human that underlies the assumptions of the neoclassical model. However, these variations in human behaviors have not produced a coherent of workable model for understanding the economy.
I never came up with a theory or model for economics that would have been a better alternative to the neoclassical model used in all university graduate programs in economics. If I could have developed an alternative theory to present for a dissertation it would have never been approved by a committee in my graduate university economics department nor would it have been accepted in any other economic department at any other university in the world. Because any alternative I could have come up with as an alternative to the neoclassical model would have been outside the scope of economics as it is studied in economic departments around the world today, although it may have begun to answer many of the economic questions I came to my graduate studies with.
This series of posts on the economy will be an attempt to work outside the boundaries of neoclassical theory and answer economic questions that I, and I hope others, have had for many years. It will stumble from topic to topic, but I hope, in the end, to have a coherent theory or explanation of our modern economic system and prescriptions for many of the ailments in our economy that have befallen us. And, if not, well…I suppose it will be still fun to try, although it may be painful for you to read. Also, bear in mind, that most of these posts will come unedited and will be the result of the free flow of thoughts as they leave my mind and make their way to my fingers upon the keyboard. The fruitful results, if any, may someday be formed into a more coherent whole. All right, lets begin.
Our economy collapsed or is in the process of collapsing, because we have become a nation of consumers purchasing from a very few select producers often referred to as the corporations. Wait, that is only part of the story (I warned you there were going to be some if not many simplifications). Actually, those suffering from the current collapse are consumers who no longer can afford to purchase from the producers and also large producers who can’t find consumers who will purchase what they produce. How did we get to this stage?
We have to begin by asking what an economy is and what we want an economy to do. An economy is a distribution mechanism. It distributes goods throughout society by some means. One of these means is a market where people come together to buy and sell these goods. Markets are efficient ways to distribute goods. Markets are also human inventions that operate according to rules written by humans. There is no such thing as a free market that operates outside of these written or agreed upon rules. Sometimes the rules are written to be favorable to some groups or individuals. Sometimes rules are written to exclude individuals from participating as either a consumer of producer in a market. Sometimes the reasons behind these types of rules are fair and sometimes they are not. The presence or absence of these rules has no bearing on whether a market is free or not, because, of course, there is no such thing as a free market. Markets would not exist unless they were invented by humans and these inventions require rules of participation and operations.
Sometimes individuals, groups or governments extract a price for participating in the market. There are an infinite variety of rules for the operation of a market and the market for some products requires a different set of rules than the market for other products. The first understanding or notion of an economy that we should begin with is the banishment of the idea that there exists anywhere in the world an entity that could be called a free market. Markets are not free, they are invented. And the people who invent them write the rules. Often the ones who have written these rules write them to benefit themselves. This is human nature and is at the core of understanding market economics. We are all motivated by self-interest, even those who have made the rules for the operation of certain markets.
Again, let’s begin with a simple example, the household. What does the household need from an economy? Lets save that for another post.
In many ways it is not hard to explain. I have wondered for years when the house of cards would collapse. But, of course, the economy is much more complex than any simple explanation, but economists thrive upon simplifications. I was trained as an economist, so I will attempt to start with simple explanations.
First, I want to say that I hope to write a series of posts on the economy as an exercise for myself. I hope these posts can be of some benefit to others, but mostly I am trying to formulate thoughts that have been swimming around my mind since I was an undergrad trying to form into a coherent economic theory that I was convinced would explain much of what I experience in the world. I abandoned this pursuit while striving to complete a PhD in economics while in graduate school, partly because I had become disillusioned by the framework within which all PhD in economics are written. When it became obvious to me that my dissertation would not explain much about the anything I was experiencing in the world, I provoked a fight with my advisor that led eventually to me spending the last year of my grad school experience taking philosophy and mathematical courses while nixing economics as a field worthy of further investigation.
The framework in economics has been called the neoclassical theory of economics and usually demands statistical analysis of some segment in the economy with a large enough data set to make some sort of judgment on a particular sector or segment in the economy based upon the neoclassical theory. Although, some will argue that there are alternative theories to neoclassical economics that can be found in graduate programs under the heading of heterodox, these schools still have a neoclassical basis and are some variation of the neoclassical model. Even the behavioralists that have been getting much recent attention merely provoke minor criticisms of the rational actor called homo-economicus by study actual human behavior that demonstrate a more complex and varied human that underlies the assumptions of the neoclassical model. However, these variations in human behaviors have not produced a coherent of workable model for understanding the economy.
I never came up with a theory or model for economics that would have been a better alternative to the neoclassical model used in all university graduate programs in economics. If I could have developed an alternative theory to present for a dissertation it would have never been approved by a committee in my graduate university economics department nor would it have been accepted in any other economic department at any other university in the world. Because any alternative I could have come up with as an alternative to the neoclassical model would have been outside the scope of economics as it is studied in economic departments around the world today, although it may have begun to answer many of the economic questions I came to my graduate studies with.
This series of posts on the economy will be an attempt to work outside the boundaries of neoclassical theory and answer economic questions that I, and I hope others, have had for many years. It will stumble from topic to topic, but I hope, in the end, to have a coherent theory or explanation of our modern economic system and prescriptions for many of the ailments in our economy that have befallen us. And, if not, well…I suppose it will be still fun to try, although it may be painful for you to read. Also, bear in mind, that most of these posts will come unedited and will be the result of the free flow of thoughts as they leave my mind and make their way to my fingers upon the keyboard. The fruitful results, if any, may someday be formed into a more coherent whole. All right, lets begin.
Our economy collapsed or is in the process of collapsing, because we have become a nation of consumers purchasing from a very few select producers often referred to as the corporations. Wait, that is only part of the story (I warned you there were going to be some if not many simplifications). Actually, those suffering from the current collapse are consumers who no longer can afford to purchase from the producers and also large producers who can’t find consumers who will purchase what they produce. How did we get to this stage?
We have to begin by asking what an economy is and what we want an economy to do. An economy is a distribution mechanism. It distributes goods throughout society by some means. One of these means is a market where people come together to buy and sell these goods. Markets are efficient ways to distribute goods. Markets are also human inventions that operate according to rules written by humans. There is no such thing as a free market that operates outside of these written or agreed upon rules. Sometimes the rules are written to be favorable to some groups or individuals. Sometimes rules are written to exclude individuals from participating as either a consumer of producer in a market. Sometimes the reasons behind these types of rules are fair and sometimes they are not. The presence or absence of these rules has no bearing on whether a market is free or not, because, of course, there is no such thing as a free market. Markets would not exist unless they were invented by humans and these inventions require rules of participation and operations.
Sometimes individuals, groups or governments extract a price for participating in the market. There are an infinite variety of rules for the operation of a market and the market for some products requires a different set of rules than the market for other products. The first understanding or notion of an economy that we should begin with is the banishment of the idea that there exists anywhere in the world an entity that could be called a free market. Markets are not free, they are invented. And the people who invent them write the rules. Often the ones who have written these rules write them to benefit themselves. This is human nature and is at the core of understanding market economics. We are all motivated by self-interest, even those who have made the rules for the operation of certain markets.
Again, let’s begin with a simple example, the household. What does the household need from an economy? Lets save that for another post.
Luddite? More Like Sellout
I have this account, now, on Facebook. You might think that’s funny for a confessed luddite. But, its really not that much different than having a blog, accept that Facebook is a bit more interactive (especially when compared to this blog). Although, I admit, I am still faced with the same dilemma with the Facebook account as I was with starting this blog (read the archives). Why? Jesus, I mean, it all seems so goddamn lonely (Don’t cha think?). I imagine all these people out there, sitting before a big screen downloading photographs and trying to create a persona that presents an image to others of who they are. They don’t do this by making connections or even having conversations, it is all about whom they know, or even how many people they know and also how good they can look on a screen (I say “they” and, of course, I mean “I” and “me” amongst “them”).
I feel like an old curmudgeon whenever I start having these thoughts about our modern ways of communication, but it all seems so terribly odd. First of all, I am not the most social person to begin with. I mean, I have some close friends (my cronies) and we have a deep connections to each other that is based on a deep, dare I say, love for one another. I also have a family consisting of my wife and son and a larger family of brothers, sister, mother, father, nieces, nephews, cousins, uncles and aunts (not to forget one remaining grandparent). All these relationships are based upon love and sustained through conversations and face to face meetings. Some of these relationships have some tensions and aren’t always on the best terms, but like most families and friendships you learn to either talk through or around these problems. But, social networking is not my strong point. I am not a good conversationalist at work or in social settings like bars or parties. I have very few close female friends (we can save that conversation for another day). I don’t like to talk about the weather or last nights game with people I don’t feel a connection with – what is the point, I wonder. Sometimes, after much work and exposure, I can find and then develop a relationship with someone who I am in frequent contact with and we will slowly form a friendship that could be considered lasting. The older I get, the harder it has to form these lasting relationships.
Electronic relationships are easier to form, but they are rarely lasting. I happen to have always had a gift for expressing myself on paper or on a screen. I have always found putting words together on paper or on the screen is fun. It’s something I think I am good at and also something that is necessary for my current daytime employment. So, I have developed many relationships over the internet with all types of individuals – male and female – participating in games or on blogs and through email. However, I could not call any of these relationships friendships and neither can I say that any of them have been lasting. Although, they have all been interesting and the best ones were formed within a community that was constantly in flux and changing. These communities were always interesting to watch form and to participate in, but all of these communities ended up either disintegrating or, at least, left to themselves after I became bored with them.
Facebook is different, because many of the “friends” are old and current acquaintances that I once had or am currently nurturing with face to face contact. There are also “friends” (a currently fast growing number) who are listed on my wall who I have only minimal recollection of – from some long distant past, like high school, many metamorphoses ago.
I have also tried to be “friends” with someone I was once close to in the past and striking up a conversation is often difficult and awkward. I have yet, to master the social skills of nurturing these “friendships” on Facebook and am really left with exasperation over whether it is even worth it in many cases. What do you say when someone confirms you as a “friend” or asks to be your “friend?” Do you write on their wall or do you send them a note in their inbox? I have tried both and, I’d like to believe it is not just me, more often then not, this reaching out to someone is met with silence and I am wondering why we both elected to be “friends” in the first place. The successful conversations I have struck up with “friends” on the wall or in the inbox are usually short-lived or abruptly ended because there is no cordial way to end a conversation in email with friends. It is all too business like and the answer to when the conversation is over in an email exchange is something that has and will always elude me, I am afraid.
But, there is still something fascinating about Facebook and I wonder why so many people seem to have placed so much importance upon it. I mean, for Christ’s sake, why? The short answer is that we are all voyeurs and we love to get a glimpse of others’ lives and Facebook not only allows us to do this, but it also allows us to create our own reality TV show on Facebook for others to view us in an image we create for ourselves. We start by finding flattering photos of ourselves and our families. Then we go out and acquire a list of friends. Having a large and eclectic list of friends is an immediate means for showing we are fun and happy with a large contingent of friends at our disposal whenever we need them or come calling. It is all an illusion, of course, and too similar to everything else we have seen on TV or the monitors in front of us.
I am also afraid there is a longer and more complex answer having to do with the loneliness that results from this increasingly electronic world. We witness on TV and Movies what “friends” are and then we go on Facebook and try and recreate what we’ve previously witnessed on the screen, but human relationships are more complex than that and require much more time and effort that can ever be given on a screen “communicating.” Friendships need love and touch and especially conversation with both sides listening. We all know this but yet I think many of us think that we can get this on Facebook. We can’t.
Facebook is not bad and there is a potential for great utility. There truly our many wonderful people from my past who I have forgotten about who I’ve recently reacquainted with on Facebook. I’ve gone out and met a couple of them for beers and really hope that I can keep alive these few reformed friendships by nurturing them with more outings in the future. But, there is still a great loneliness permeating from Facebook that I can not shake. It’s a loneliness at least partly fueled by my inability to get anything lasting out of so many of my so called “friend” listed on my wall. Who are they? I wonder of the majority of them and what do they do? It is also a loneliness that I see whenever I meet real peoples faces as I make my way through my day. A loneliness that I am sure many have tried to cover up with facebook pages they have created for themselves.
Right now I have a list of 47 “friends” on my facebook account and it is a list that is growing. But, my friends know who they are and I see them frequently and we talk. I have never had more than a dozen friends at a time that I would consider close outside of my family. When I die, there will less people at my funeral than listed on my facebook page and that is the way I want it to be, no offense meant to anyone who I may somehow have reached through electronic media.
I feel like an old curmudgeon whenever I start having these thoughts about our modern ways of communication, but it all seems so terribly odd. First of all, I am not the most social person to begin with. I mean, I have some close friends (my cronies) and we have a deep connections to each other that is based on a deep, dare I say, love for one another. I also have a family consisting of my wife and son and a larger family of brothers, sister, mother, father, nieces, nephews, cousins, uncles and aunts (not to forget one remaining grandparent). All these relationships are based upon love and sustained through conversations and face to face meetings. Some of these relationships have some tensions and aren’t always on the best terms, but like most families and friendships you learn to either talk through or around these problems. But, social networking is not my strong point. I am not a good conversationalist at work or in social settings like bars or parties. I have very few close female friends (we can save that conversation for another day). I don’t like to talk about the weather or last nights game with people I don’t feel a connection with – what is the point, I wonder. Sometimes, after much work and exposure, I can find and then develop a relationship with someone who I am in frequent contact with and we will slowly form a friendship that could be considered lasting. The older I get, the harder it has to form these lasting relationships.
Electronic relationships are easier to form, but they are rarely lasting. I happen to have always had a gift for expressing myself on paper or on a screen. I have always found putting words together on paper or on the screen is fun. It’s something I think I am good at and also something that is necessary for my current daytime employment. So, I have developed many relationships over the internet with all types of individuals – male and female – participating in games or on blogs and through email. However, I could not call any of these relationships friendships and neither can I say that any of them have been lasting. Although, they have all been interesting and the best ones were formed within a community that was constantly in flux and changing. These communities were always interesting to watch form and to participate in, but all of these communities ended up either disintegrating or, at least, left to themselves after I became bored with them.
Facebook is different, because many of the “friends” are old and current acquaintances that I once had or am currently nurturing with face to face contact. There are also “friends” (a currently fast growing number) who are listed on my wall who I have only minimal recollection of – from some long distant past, like high school, many metamorphoses ago.
I have also tried to be “friends” with someone I was once close to in the past and striking up a conversation is often difficult and awkward. I have yet, to master the social skills of nurturing these “friendships” on Facebook and am really left with exasperation over whether it is even worth it in many cases. What do you say when someone confirms you as a “friend” or asks to be your “friend?” Do you write on their wall or do you send them a note in their inbox? I have tried both and, I’d like to believe it is not just me, more often then not, this reaching out to someone is met with silence and I am wondering why we both elected to be “friends” in the first place. The successful conversations I have struck up with “friends” on the wall or in the inbox are usually short-lived or abruptly ended because there is no cordial way to end a conversation in email with friends. It is all too business like and the answer to when the conversation is over in an email exchange is something that has and will always elude me, I am afraid.
But, there is still something fascinating about Facebook and I wonder why so many people seem to have placed so much importance upon it. I mean, for Christ’s sake, why? The short answer is that we are all voyeurs and we love to get a glimpse of others’ lives and Facebook not only allows us to do this, but it also allows us to create our own reality TV show on Facebook for others to view us in an image we create for ourselves. We start by finding flattering photos of ourselves and our families. Then we go out and acquire a list of friends. Having a large and eclectic list of friends is an immediate means for showing we are fun and happy with a large contingent of friends at our disposal whenever we need them or come calling. It is all an illusion, of course, and too similar to everything else we have seen on TV or the monitors in front of us.
I am also afraid there is a longer and more complex answer having to do with the loneliness that results from this increasingly electronic world. We witness on TV and Movies what “friends” are and then we go on Facebook and try and recreate what we’ve previously witnessed on the screen, but human relationships are more complex than that and require much more time and effort that can ever be given on a screen “communicating.” Friendships need love and touch and especially conversation with both sides listening. We all know this but yet I think many of us think that we can get this on Facebook. We can’t.
Facebook is not bad and there is a potential for great utility. There truly our many wonderful people from my past who I have forgotten about who I’ve recently reacquainted with on Facebook. I’ve gone out and met a couple of them for beers and really hope that I can keep alive these few reformed friendships by nurturing them with more outings in the future. But, there is still a great loneliness permeating from Facebook that I can not shake. It’s a loneliness at least partly fueled by my inability to get anything lasting out of so many of my so called “friend” listed on my wall. Who are they? I wonder of the majority of them and what do they do? It is also a loneliness that I see whenever I meet real peoples faces as I make my way through my day. A loneliness that I am sure many have tried to cover up with facebook pages they have created for themselves.
Right now I have a list of 47 “friends” on my facebook account and it is a list that is growing. But, my friends know who they are and I see them frequently and we talk. I have never had more than a dozen friends at a time that I would consider close outside of my family. When I die, there will less people at my funeral than listed on my facebook page and that is the way I want it to be, no offense meant to anyone who I may somehow have reached through electronic media.
Notes To My Son
Know that you were, are and always will be loved. You do not ever have to go searching for it. Be brave and courageous in your pursuit to find meaning in your life and love will find you.
My First Guitar
I was born in Little Falls, Minnesota and moved to a suburb outside of Minneapolis when I was two years old. While riding the bus to school in kindergarten, the school children often broke into song.
Marijuana, Marijuana
LSD, LSD
Mommy makes it
Daddy takes it
Why can’t we?
Why can’t we?
It was 1970, and drugs were not yet vilified by parents – by the parents of our parents? Perhaps, but I grew up during a permissive era in the white American suburbs. We wouldn’t hear about the dangers of drug use until middle school and, by then, we had already formed a fairly high opinion of them. There were teachers smoking in our classrooms in elementary school and our middle schools had a “back 40” reserved for students to smoke cigarettes, too. Before school, children gathered outside of the middle school smoking cigarettes and passing around joints received from older siblings. My first drawings in elementary schools were of hippies smoking joints and holding boxes labeled “LSD.” They were standing before banners saying make love not war and peace symbols were pasted in the background next to the sun. I was not peculiar, but was merely drawing what everyone else in class was drawing.
My parents were not hippies. Before kindergarten, my mom stayed at home. Her stack of albums included artists such as: “Peter, Paul and Mary,” “Simon and Garfunkel,” “John Denver,” “Glenn Campbell,” and “The Carpenters.” She would clean the house as these albums spun on the living room turntable. I learned to sing in perfect key to songs like “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “Feelin’ Groovy,” “Cecilia,” “Sunshine on my Shoulders,” “Rocky Mountain High,” “Like a Rhinestone Cowboy,” and “Sing a song,” just like they were nursery rhymes from Mother Goose. In grade school, I was always picked to sing the lead parts in our chorus performances.
I asked my mother and father for a guitar at a very young age, so I could learn to be like John Denver when I grew up. They did not buy me one right away. It may have been the money or perhaps they thought it was a stage I might grow out of. I remember sitting in the backseat of my fathers Pontiac when I was a young boy. My father was driving and my mother was in the passenger seat. I had recently learned from my music teacher in school that there were only 12 notes on a staff. I pleaded with my parents from the back seat that time was wasting and, if I did not get a guitar soon all the songs would be written before I learned how to play guitar and no more would be left. There were only 12 notes after all and almost every combination had to be used up by then. They chuckled from the front seat, but a guitar did not arrive.
When I was 8 years old, I opened a Christmas present and discovered a ukulele. My parents must have immediately sensed my disappointment. They began telling me that a guitar was too big for my hands and I had to learn how to play a Ukulele first. I could get a guitar after I learned how to play the ukulele. I held it in my hands and ran my fingers along the nylon strings. I sang “My dog has fleas” and turned the tuning pegs till they matched my voice. I went to my room and sat on my bed holding it and plucking at the strings. Then, I got up, opened my closet door, put the ukulele on the back shelf, and closed the door shut tightly.
A few months later, I saw Pete Townsend smashing a guitar on the television. It might have been on the news or perhaps it was a late night show. Or maybe, I just saw a picture of him in a magazine. I opened the closet door, went inside, grabbed the Ukulele and shut the door from the inside. Then, I raised the Ukulele high above my head and brought it crashing down to the floor, shattering the ukulele, sending pieces flying as a loud pinging noise went echoing throughout the house. My mother came running into my room and found me in the closet holding the ukulele in my hands as tears streamed down my face. She grabbed me by my hand and led me to my bed. My pants came down and she wore a wooden spoon out until the welts appeared upon my buttocks. My parents never bought me another instrument and I stopped singing in school and at home. Though my musical training was cut short at this early age, I was being groomed as a rock star from that day forward. I would not buy my first guitar for 10 more years, and punk rock was still a ways off in the future. I got a later start on guitar and, lucky for me, for the purposes of puck rock, that was a good thing. I also learned through my studies in mathematics about powers of 12 and through music listening about time signatures, choruses, verses, lyrics, harmonies, and bridges. In short, I came to realize that availabilities of notes may be limited but the possibilities for songs were infinite, while my oppositional nature and rebellious streak was slowly emerging as I entered my teenage years.
Marijuana, Marijuana
LSD, LSD
Mommy makes it
Daddy takes it
Why can’t we?
Why can’t we?
It was 1970, and drugs were not yet vilified by parents – by the parents of our parents? Perhaps, but I grew up during a permissive era in the white American suburbs. We wouldn’t hear about the dangers of drug use until middle school and, by then, we had already formed a fairly high opinion of them. There were teachers smoking in our classrooms in elementary school and our middle schools had a “back 40” reserved for students to smoke cigarettes, too. Before school, children gathered outside of the middle school smoking cigarettes and passing around joints received from older siblings. My first drawings in elementary schools were of hippies smoking joints and holding boxes labeled “LSD.” They were standing before banners saying make love not war and peace symbols were pasted in the background next to the sun. I was not peculiar, but was merely drawing what everyone else in class was drawing.
My parents were not hippies. Before kindergarten, my mom stayed at home. Her stack of albums included artists such as: “Peter, Paul and Mary,” “Simon and Garfunkel,” “John Denver,” “Glenn Campbell,” and “The Carpenters.” She would clean the house as these albums spun on the living room turntable. I learned to sing in perfect key to songs like “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “Feelin’ Groovy,” “Cecilia,” “Sunshine on my Shoulders,” “Rocky Mountain High,” “Like a Rhinestone Cowboy,” and “Sing a song,” just like they were nursery rhymes from Mother Goose. In grade school, I was always picked to sing the lead parts in our chorus performances.
I asked my mother and father for a guitar at a very young age, so I could learn to be like John Denver when I grew up. They did not buy me one right away. It may have been the money or perhaps they thought it was a stage I might grow out of. I remember sitting in the backseat of my fathers Pontiac when I was a young boy. My father was driving and my mother was in the passenger seat. I had recently learned from my music teacher in school that there were only 12 notes on a staff. I pleaded with my parents from the back seat that time was wasting and, if I did not get a guitar soon all the songs would be written before I learned how to play guitar and no more would be left. There were only 12 notes after all and almost every combination had to be used up by then. They chuckled from the front seat, but a guitar did not arrive.
When I was 8 years old, I opened a Christmas present and discovered a ukulele. My parents must have immediately sensed my disappointment. They began telling me that a guitar was too big for my hands and I had to learn how to play a Ukulele first. I could get a guitar after I learned how to play the ukulele. I held it in my hands and ran my fingers along the nylon strings. I sang “My dog has fleas” and turned the tuning pegs till they matched my voice. I went to my room and sat on my bed holding it and plucking at the strings. Then, I got up, opened my closet door, put the ukulele on the back shelf, and closed the door shut tightly.
A few months later, I saw Pete Townsend smashing a guitar on the television. It might have been on the news or perhaps it was a late night show. Or maybe, I just saw a picture of him in a magazine. I opened the closet door, went inside, grabbed the Ukulele and shut the door from the inside. Then, I raised the Ukulele high above my head and brought it crashing down to the floor, shattering the ukulele, sending pieces flying as a loud pinging noise went echoing throughout the house. My mother came running into my room and found me in the closet holding the ukulele in my hands as tears streamed down my face. She grabbed me by my hand and led me to my bed. My pants came down and she wore a wooden spoon out until the welts appeared upon my buttocks. My parents never bought me another instrument and I stopped singing in school and at home. Though my musical training was cut short at this early age, I was being groomed as a rock star from that day forward. I would not buy my first guitar for 10 more years, and punk rock was still a ways off in the future. I got a later start on guitar and, lucky for me, for the purposes of puck rock, that was a good thing. I also learned through my studies in mathematics about powers of 12 and through music listening about time signatures, choruses, verses, lyrics, harmonies, and bridges. In short, I came to realize that availabilities of notes may be limited but the possibilities for songs were infinite, while my oppositional nature and rebellious streak was slowly emerging as I entered my teenage years.
I have found my way back!
I apologize for being away for a year. I took a new job. I am still a bureaucrat, but I no longer work for a municipality. I can no longer post while I am working (internet policy) so I bring you my thoughts via a county Library terminal on the weekend. I am still a luddite after all.
First, let me send a shout out to Richard, one of the rare visitors (can I call him a fan?) to this dilapidated blog who has been popping in periodically to see if I have got it up and running again. Let’s hope he has not completely given up on me and finds his way back.
I really don’t have much to report. I am writing more as a result of the winter duldrums than anything. Actually, this blog should probably be renamed as “The Nightshift,” since most of my posts will be late night creations when I am unable to sleep. You see, I actually think I am a fairly creative individual. Really, I believe we all are creative, but some of us don't find enough time to exercise our talents. As we get older, the we become lazier and lazier often until we eventually find ourselves sitting in front of a monitor or TV laughing at those who are much less talented than our own selves or so we deceive ourselves.
But, I hope to get some thoughts down for the rare visitor and also for my own inspiration to stoke the creative juices. Let’s hope I am able to make a more sustained run of blogposts this time.
I won’t be making daily observations like before from my workspace, but rather posts will come in bunches. Feel free to read them over a span of days rather than take them all in in one sitting. I will have continue with thoughts on my life, the economy, politics and everything else under the sun, including occasional excerpts from stories and more ambitious projects I am currently working on.
Glad to be back, or should I begin this as I once did when I first began “The Dayshift.”
WELCOME BACK!!
To myself, since I will be the only visitor for some time and some more time to come.
First, let me send a shout out to Richard, one of the rare visitors (can I call him a fan?) to this dilapidated blog who has been popping in periodically to see if I have got it up and running again. Let’s hope he has not completely given up on me and finds his way back.
I really don’t have much to report. I am writing more as a result of the winter duldrums than anything. Actually, this blog should probably be renamed as “The Nightshift,” since most of my posts will be late night creations when I am unable to sleep. You see, I actually think I am a fairly creative individual. Really, I believe we all are creative, but some of us don't find enough time to exercise our talents. As we get older, the we become lazier and lazier often until we eventually find ourselves sitting in front of a monitor or TV laughing at those who are much less talented than our own selves or so we deceive ourselves.
But, I hope to get some thoughts down for the rare visitor and also for my own inspiration to stoke the creative juices. Let’s hope I am able to make a more sustained run of blogposts this time.
I won’t be making daily observations like before from my workspace, but rather posts will come in bunches. Feel free to read them over a span of days rather than take them all in in one sitting. I will have continue with thoughts on my life, the economy, politics and everything else under the sun, including occasional excerpts from stories and more ambitious projects I am currently working on.
Glad to be back, or should I begin this as I once did when I first began “The Dayshift.”
WELCOME BACK!!
To myself, since I will be the only visitor for some time and some more time to come.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
My Guitar Gently Screams
I used to be in a band. It was one of the most memorable periods of my life. I have a book in my mind titled "The Greatest Band Never Heard." I lived 3 three years of my life in Fargo, North Dakota from 1988 to 1991 and crammed more memories and stories into those three short years than the following decade and a half. There were many girlfriends, wild sex, drugs, band practices, band fights, drinking, writing, and working odd jobs for little pay. It was a glorious time of youth and I think anyone who witnessed a show (and there weren't many who did) observed three young men with chips on their shoulders ready to take on the whole world. We took shit from no one. When they pulled the plug on us (and bar owners always pulled th plug on us in Fargo, when they forgot who we were) we stayed on stage staring out across the bar. "You gonna let us play or what?"... "Jesus fucking Christ, What's the matter with this town?"
"Turn it down and you can play," Kirby, the bar owner, would shout from the back.
The bass player and I would walk back to our amps and crank em all the way up. The electricity would turn back on and feedback would immediately wail from the amps and we'd launch back into the song at an even greater decibels until the electricity would be cut back off again and we'd launch into another profanity filled tirade. None of this won us any respect at the time. We'd carry out our amps, guitars, drums and equipment amidst threats from Kirby that we'd never play there again. Luckily he had a short memory. But, years later we'd hear from people who were there, or even weirder still, underage kids who used to sit outside the bar and listen through the doors, then watch us as we loaded up our equipment, cursing and drinking beer as our breaths emitted frost in the cold night air. They later went on to form bands of their own that eventually created a scene in Fargo that the bar owners tapped into.
Years later, I have a job. I am awaiting a promotion while waiting word from another agency on a job offer. My fellow band member from those many years ago has a job in the computer world making three figures while our drummer still toils away in NYC - reliving our dream/nightmare. We grow up and dreams die. Eventually we take shit quite readily and get laid a whole lot less. Not sure why, but it just happens. we get old and then we become embarrassing - like Shaq these days in Miami.
My friend in the computer business has gotten the bug again and an opportunity to play with another aging musician to go out on the road again. He wants something more in life that we can't get at our mundane jobs. He wants to recapture some of that feeling of rock stardom and ass-kicking take no shit from anybody. I went to their first show a couple of weeks ago. I knew they would be good, because their good musicians. But, there was a part of me that was nervous it would be a little embarrassing, like watching Mick at the Superbowl half-time show a coupel of years ago swing his 60 something year old hips like a 16 year old girl. But, they surprised me. They rocked. They kicked ass. They said Fuck You to the world much better than most 19 year old adolescents can say it, because they could say it with a whole lot more history and mean it. That was Punk rock. I almost quit my job the following morning when my boos said good morning to me. But, I soon fell back into my routine.
We age. We get safe. We grow bored and we cease following youthful dreams. Hey, my friend and his band know that it is inevitable - that eventually they will embarrass themselves. There is just nothing redeeming about saying "fuck you" right up until you step in your grave. Eventually you got to make peace. But, that doesn't mean you have to take any shit. Somewhere there has to be a middle ground. Its out there somewhere near some dreams.
Maybe I should dust off my old guitar...
"Turn it down and you can play," Kirby, the bar owner, would shout from the back.
The bass player and I would walk back to our amps and crank em all the way up. The electricity would turn back on and feedback would immediately wail from the amps and we'd launch back into the song at an even greater decibels until the electricity would be cut back off again and we'd launch into another profanity filled tirade. None of this won us any respect at the time. We'd carry out our amps, guitars, drums and equipment amidst threats from Kirby that we'd never play there again. Luckily he had a short memory. But, years later we'd hear from people who were there, or even weirder still, underage kids who used to sit outside the bar and listen through the doors, then watch us as we loaded up our equipment, cursing and drinking beer as our breaths emitted frost in the cold night air. They later went on to form bands of their own that eventually created a scene in Fargo that the bar owners tapped into.
Years later, I have a job. I am awaiting a promotion while waiting word from another agency on a job offer. My fellow band member from those many years ago has a job in the computer world making three figures while our drummer still toils away in NYC - reliving our dream/nightmare. We grow up and dreams die. Eventually we take shit quite readily and get laid a whole lot less. Not sure why, but it just happens. we get old and then we become embarrassing - like Shaq these days in Miami.
My friend in the computer business has gotten the bug again and an opportunity to play with another aging musician to go out on the road again. He wants something more in life that we can't get at our mundane jobs. He wants to recapture some of that feeling of rock stardom and ass-kicking take no shit from anybody. I went to their first show a couple of weeks ago. I knew they would be good, because their good musicians. But, there was a part of me that was nervous it would be a little embarrassing, like watching Mick at the Superbowl half-time show a coupel of years ago swing his 60 something year old hips like a 16 year old girl. But, they surprised me. They rocked. They kicked ass. They said Fuck You to the world much better than most 19 year old adolescents can say it, because they could say it with a whole lot more history and mean it. That was Punk rock. I almost quit my job the following morning when my boos said good morning to me. But, I soon fell back into my routine.
We age. We get safe. We grow bored and we cease following youthful dreams. Hey, my friend and his band know that it is inevitable - that eventually they will embarrass themselves. There is just nothing redeeming about saying "fuck you" right up until you step in your grave. Eventually you got to make peace. But, that doesn't mean you have to take any shit. Somewhere there has to be a middle ground. Its out there somewhere near some dreams.
Maybe I should dust off my old guitar...
Monday, December 31, 2007
The Future of Baseball on the Eve of 2008
Its the last eve of 2007 and I have baseball on my mind. I'm a lifelong sports fan raised on Fran Tarkington, Alan Page, Tony Oliva, Rod Carew and Harmon Killebrew. Everyone knows there is something magical about the baseball field, but the latest Steroids scandal has me wondering. There are no shortage of writers who have reminded us of the mystical qualities of the game of Baseball. But, perhaps all this magic and spiritual observance of America's pastime is only a cliche. Maybe, some of these baseball blogs written by female sports fans are not testaments to the game but rather testaments to their fathers - who never really cared all that much for the game anyway, just one more remembrance that added unknown mystique to the game.
I mean, what can be mystical about watching baseball inside. As I young adult, I observed games in the HHH dome where I personally witnessed magical events such as a no-hitter, 3 players reach 3000 hits, a couple of Worlds Series championships and Kirby Puckett's last game (where the sound of bat meets baseball echoing through the stadium was replaced by the smack of the ball hitting Kirby's face). So, what is so magical about baseball that Carlos Silva commands a four-year $48 million contract?
I'll tell you what I find magical about watching baseball. Its not sharing my passion with 30,000 other people crammed into the Metrodome. I abhor crowds and I detest the fact that Baseball is so profitable that Carlos Silva (mind you, he's a nice enough man) not only has a job among the sports most elite players, but he also is signed to a ridiculously large contract that will probably appear small in a year or twos time from now. I like watching baseball on a weekday afternoon in a near empty stadium where you can hear Dennis Martinez's slider hit and break Kirby Puckett's cheekbone from the left field bleachers and then the murmur of a few season ticket holders behind homeplate as Tom Kelly's footsteps slap across the infield. What makes baseball magical is not something you can share with thousands of people and it isn't something that makes the select few so rich that they become celebrities far removed from their fans.
Carl Eller read children's stories to our elementary school and it wasn't a charitable event. I am sure our school forked out a much appreciated hundred dollars or so. I thought Carl Eller wasn't that much different than my dad or one of my grade school friend's dad. These guys were mythical, but no more so than our fathers. Now, sports heroes are celebrities and baseball titans are mere cheaters making millions. They are as far removed from their fan base as the billionaire beneficiaries of permanent tax-cuts are from your average working American. But that doesn't stop us from paying tribute to the magic of baseball anymore than it stops middle-aged white guys from voting republican.
So, thats why I still read the sports page and comb box scores everyday, whether its baseball or basketball. Its out of institutional habit more than a spiritual necessity. Bad habits are hard to break and I don't suppose my likelihood of breaking it is any greater than a lifetime smoker on the verge of lung cancer will quit smoking tomorrow. After a while, when our dreams long ago died, we come to terms with the fact that we all got to die someday, just like we realize that the American dream is no more mythical than America's pastime. We aren't willing to embrace the fact, so we just ride it into the sunset.
I mean, what can be mystical about watching baseball inside. As I young adult, I observed games in the HHH dome where I personally witnessed magical events such as a no-hitter, 3 players reach 3000 hits, a couple of Worlds Series championships and Kirby Puckett's last game (where the sound of bat meets baseball echoing through the stadium was replaced by the smack of the ball hitting Kirby's face). So, what is so magical about baseball that Carlos Silva commands a four-year $48 million contract?
I'll tell you what I find magical about watching baseball. Its not sharing my passion with 30,000 other people crammed into the Metrodome. I abhor crowds and I detest the fact that Baseball is so profitable that Carlos Silva (mind you, he's a nice enough man) not only has a job among the sports most elite players, but he also is signed to a ridiculously large contract that will probably appear small in a year or twos time from now. I like watching baseball on a weekday afternoon in a near empty stadium where you can hear Dennis Martinez's slider hit and break Kirby Puckett's cheekbone from the left field bleachers and then the murmur of a few season ticket holders behind homeplate as Tom Kelly's footsteps slap across the infield. What makes baseball magical is not something you can share with thousands of people and it isn't something that makes the select few so rich that they become celebrities far removed from their fans.
Carl Eller read children's stories to our elementary school and it wasn't a charitable event. I am sure our school forked out a much appreciated hundred dollars or so. I thought Carl Eller wasn't that much different than my dad or one of my grade school friend's dad. These guys were mythical, but no more so than our fathers. Now, sports heroes are celebrities and baseball titans are mere cheaters making millions. They are as far removed from their fan base as the billionaire beneficiaries of permanent tax-cuts are from your average working American. But that doesn't stop us from paying tribute to the magic of baseball anymore than it stops middle-aged white guys from voting republican.
So, thats why I still read the sports page and comb box scores everyday, whether its baseball or basketball. Its out of institutional habit more than a spiritual necessity. Bad habits are hard to break and I don't suppose my likelihood of breaking it is any greater than a lifetime smoker on the verge of lung cancer will quit smoking tomorrow. After a while, when our dreams long ago died, we come to terms with the fact that we all got to die someday, just like we realize that the American dream is no more mythical than America's pastime. We aren't willing to embrace the fact, so we just ride it into the sunset.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Eelpout guts and Iraqi brains.
The Walleye is a revered fish in Minnesota and is also known to be finicky, especially in the winter. When watching the bobber go down below the ice, it often is taken slowly. If you set the hook too early the walleye will drop the minnow and you will have to take up all the line and check your bait, before dropping it down 20 feet or more to begin again.
Sometimes the bobber goes down fast when the walleye is hungry and you need to set the hook immediately as the walleye is running away with its dinner. If she is a "good one" it will feel like you are setting the hook into solid ground and there will be little give before the line starts to pull in short jerks away from you.
But, when the walleye isn't really feeding you have to let the bobber go for a while. Sometimes it will pop back up, but you can tell the walleye is still down there playing with its dinner by the movement of your bobber. Slowly it sinks and you need to give it some line. It will eventually stop taking line and this is where you have to be patient. The walleye still might be just playing with the minnow and getting ready to spit it out at the slightest provocation. Sometimes you have to wait for a minute or more. Then, the line will start to get taken again a little more forcefully. Hold the line tight till you feel the fish and then pull hard to set the hook. Again, if its a "good one" it will feel like you are setting the hook into solid rock.
There is only one problem with this approach. The dreaded eelpout. An eelpout is an introduced fish to Minnesota from Europe, I believe. I was told they were rough fish, like carp, as a kid and should be treated as such. Eelpout take the bait just like a walleye, but they usually are not playing around. While you are waiting they are swallowing the minnow and hook deep into their bellies. They also are taking the minnow and swimming in circles and, more often than not, tangling up the line in other nearby holes. One of the first clues that you may have an eelpout at the end of the line is that the other fishermen or women in your party will be kneeling before holes near you anticipating their own walleye as their bobbers disappear below the ice in succession one after the other. When setting the hook into an eelpout it will also feel like you have set it into solid rock. But then, there will be long steady pulls of the line against you instead of the short quick rapid burst from the tail flicks of the walleye. When other people ask you if you got a "good one?" the response of "nope, pout!" will immediately clear everyone away so they don't get drawn into the inevitable lengthy untangling of line, cutting of hooks and reattaching a new rig and minnow.
The eelpout is slimy like an eel and it is difficult to handle. Once it comes up through the hole it will immediately curl up into itself like a snake. Its mouth is clamped shut and it is necessary to step on its back or stomach to force it open. If you can't see the hook you will often just need to cut the line. No one keeps eelpout to eat, though there have always been rumors that they are good eating and healthy for you. Instead, they are tossed onto the ice in disgust and left to die on the frozen tundra. On a Minnesota lake, like Mille Lacs, in the winter near ice fishing houses the lake is often littered with eelpout carcasses.
As a boy, after an eel pout was caught by myself, my dad or other members of our fishing party, I would often put on my Sorrell boots and march out into the cold after them and proceed to stomp on the backs of the eelpout until all of the organs and entrails were forced out of its mouth. This desecration of the eelpout was made possible because this fish was hated and its life was considered worthless and a stain upon the revered walleye waters of Minnesota. I was a normal kid and the stomping I did was not done because I had a vicious streak inside me extending towards other animals and humans. It was done out of boredom and because it was fun and also because the life of an eelpout was considered worthless.
It is the way humans are. If we are taught that a life is worthless we will be conditioned to destroy it and kill it out of boredom and for entertainment. Thats what marines are trained to do with Iraqis. Kill. Its what we train our youth to do with video games. It is what we see in Colorado and Oklahoma. It is why we don't flinch at the idea of specious extinction due to climate change - not even our own. In our society we revere little life. Certainly the military portion of our society reveres none. What returns from Iraq and Afghanistan will be with us till the end and the end is coming nearer simply because we can no longer love. Marines congratulate each other because soldiers today are much more likely to fire their weapons in battle than soldiers of yesterday - like WWII. They are trained to kill and they do it efficiently without flinching. They think that is progress. Iraqi brains and blood on the desert streets in Baghdad or other Iraqi towns is no different than eelpout guts lying frozen on the ice covering Minnesota lakes. That is until years later, when we become haunted by our conditioning as we discover the last remnants of love and humanity residing inside each of us below the ever-present conditioning to hate we get from our society.
I don't see the blood lust of the modern marines as progress. I see it as a tragedy that, if it is not corrected, will eventually lead to the end of us all. As Scott Ritter once said. "Weapons of mass destruction? A platoon of marines with unlimited ammo - that is a weapon of mass destruction." or a kid with big boots in the case of an eelpout.
Sometimes the bobber goes down fast when the walleye is hungry and you need to set the hook immediately as the walleye is running away with its dinner. If she is a "good one" it will feel like you are setting the hook into solid ground and there will be little give before the line starts to pull in short jerks away from you.
But, when the walleye isn't really feeding you have to let the bobber go for a while. Sometimes it will pop back up, but you can tell the walleye is still down there playing with its dinner by the movement of your bobber. Slowly it sinks and you need to give it some line. It will eventually stop taking line and this is where you have to be patient. The walleye still might be just playing with the minnow and getting ready to spit it out at the slightest provocation. Sometimes you have to wait for a minute or more. Then, the line will start to get taken again a little more forcefully. Hold the line tight till you feel the fish and then pull hard to set the hook. Again, if its a "good one" it will feel like you are setting the hook into solid rock.
There is only one problem with this approach. The dreaded eelpout. An eelpout is an introduced fish to Minnesota from Europe, I believe. I was told they were rough fish, like carp, as a kid and should be treated as such. Eelpout take the bait just like a walleye, but they usually are not playing around. While you are waiting they are swallowing the minnow and hook deep into their bellies. They also are taking the minnow and swimming in circles and, more often than not, tangling up the line in other nearby holes. One of the first clues that you may have an eelpout at the end of the line is that the other fishermen or women in your party will be kneeling before holes near you anticipating their own walleye as their bobbers disappear below the ice in succession one after the other. When setting the hook into an eelpout it will also feel like you have set it into solid rock. But then, there will be long steady pulls of the line against you instead of the short quick rapid burst from the tail flicks of the walleye. When other people ask you if you got a "good one?" the response of "nope, pout!" will immediately clear everyone away so they don't get drawn into the inevitable lengthy untangling of line, cutting of hooks and reattaching a new rig and minnow.
The eelpout is slimy like an eel and it is difficult to handle. Once it comes up through the hole it will immediately curl up into itself like a snake. Its mouth is clamped shut and it is necessary to step on its back or stomach to force it open. If you can't see the hook you will often just need to cut the line. No one keeps eelpout to eat, though there have always been rumors that they are good eating and healthy for you. Instead, they are tossed onto the ice in disgust and left to die on the frozen tundra. On a Minnesota lake, like Mille Lacs, in the winter near ice fishing houses the lake is often littered with eelpout carcasses.
As a boy, after an eel pout was caught by myself, my dad or other members of our fishing party, I would often put on my Sorrell boots and march out into the cold after them and proceed to stomp on the backs of the eelpout until all of the organs and entrails were forced out of its mouth. This desecration of the eelpout was made possible because this fish was hated and its life was considered worthless and a stain upon the revered walleye waters of Minnesota. I was a normal kid and the stomping I did was not done because I had a vicious streak inside me extending towards other animals and humans. It was done out of boredom and because it was fun and also because the life of an eelpout was considered worthless.
It is the way humans are. If we are taught that a life is worthless we will be conditioned to destroy it and kill it out of boredom and for entertainment. Thats what marines are trained to do with Iraqis. Kill. Its what we train our youth to do with video games. It is what we see in Colorado and Oklahoma. It is why we don't flinch at the idea of specious extinction due to climate change - not even our own. In our society we revere little life. Certainly the military portion of our society reveres none. What returns from Iraq and Afghanistan will be with us till the end and the end is coming nearer simply because we can no longer love. Marines congratulate each other because soldiers today are much more likely to fire their weapons in battle than soldiers of yesterday - like WWII. They are trained to kill and they do it efficiently without flinching. They think that is progress. Iraqi brains and blood on the desert streets in Baghdad or other Iraqi towns is no different than eelpout guts lying frozen on the ice covering Minnesota lakes. That is until years later, when we become haunted by our conditioning as we discover the last remnants of love and humanity residing inside each of us below the ever-present conditioning to hate we get from our society.
I don't see the blood lust of the modern marines as progress. I see it as a tragedy that, if it is not corrected, will eventually lead to the end of us all. As Scott Ritter once said. "Weapons of mass destruction? A platoon of marines with unlimited ammo - that is a weapon of mass destruction." or a kid with big boots in the case of an eelpout.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
They ought to be in Jail
I suppose some might say I'm a liberal. However, I've had plenty of liberals accuse me of being a wingnut. I'd say I'm liberal. But, I also think I have a streak of conservative in me. I believe in community. I support home-schooling and community supported schools and I am critical of Public schools. I think Roe vs. Wade is flawed in its argumentation, but I support abortion in 99.93% of the cases. Some liberals think I want to control a woman's body because of the 0.07%.
I'm a liberal who would have prosecuted Bill Clinton for War crimes and thinks his wife Hilary is not a good candidate for President. In fact, I'd rather see Mike Huckabee and I'm not a right wing Christain - although I believe in many of the teachings of Jesus Christ such as Blessed are the Peacemaker for they shal inherit the Earth. My preferred candidate is Dennis Kucinich, but I stopped preferring candidates after the last presidential campaign. I think Dick Cheney really did order the murder of Senator Paul Wellstone and I have zero evidence. I just think it fits his profile.
What I'm trying to say without sounding partisan and someone who is on a mission to reestablish a Democratic presidency further reducing the influence of the GOP in Washington is that current and past members of the present administration should be going to jail - forever. Throw away the key. How much more of this will we take. We can just forget about the Iraq war and torture and all that inexcusable bullshit. Lets just talk about the Kyoto protocol and the Nuclear non-proliferation agreement. I realize we are all guilty of contributing to the destruction of the natural world through our participation in this consumer culture in America, but this is what we have leaders for. And, as slow as politics are, there has been progress towards - at least - coming to terms with the impacts of CO2 and climate change. But, is there any excuse for the arrogance of withdrawing from all discussion with the other countries in the world. Likewise, the rollback of the goals towards a future without the proliferation of Nuclear weapons. There was means for discussion with the countries in the world and this administration has made the world a more dangerous place by its policy of preemptive strikes and the consideration of limited nuclear strikes against wayward countries.
We should be a participant in discussions of the major issues facing our planet in the future. It does not get anymore important the nuclear weapons and climate change. For this alone I would put them all in jail, without even considering the lack of a true discussion on Palestine, torture, domestic spying, the Iraq War, the budget deficit, permanent tax cuts, corruption, Blackwater, privatization, etc. They are not mere poor decision makers. They are criminals and we need to treat them as such.
I'm a liberal who would have prosecuted Bill Clinton for War crimes and thinks his wife Hilary is not a good candidate for President. In fact, I'd rather see Mike Huckabee and I'm not a right wing Christain - although I believe in many of the teachings of Jesus Christ such as Blessed are the Peacemaker for they shal inherit the Earth. My preferred candidate is Dennis Kucinich, but I stopped preferring candidates after the last presidential campaign. I think Dick Cheney really did order the murder of Senator Paul Wellstone and I have zero evidence. I just think it fits his profile.
What I'm trying to say without sounding partisan and someone who is on a mission to reestablish a Democratic presidency further reducing the influence of the GOP in Washington is that current and past members of the present administration should be going to jail - forever. Throw away the key. How much more of this will we take. We can just forget about the Iraq war and torture and all that inexcusable bullshit. Lets just talk about the Kyoto protocol and the Nuclear non-proliferation agreement. I realize we are all guilty of contributing to the destruction of the natural world through our participation in this consumer culture in America, but this is what we have leaders for. And, as slow as politics are, there has been progress towards - at least - coming to terms with the impacts of CO2 and climate change. But, is there any excuse for the arrogance of withdrawing from all discussion with the other countries in the world. Likewise, the rollback of the goals towards a future without the proliferation of Nuclear weapons. There was means for discussion with the countries in the world and this administration has made the world a more dangerous place by its policy of preemptive strikes and the consideration of limited nuclear strikes against wayward countries.
We should be a participant in discussions of the major issues facing our planet in the future. It does not get anymore important the nuclear weapons and climate change. For this alone I would put them all in jail, without even considering the lack of a true discussion on Palestine, torture, domestic spying, the Iraq War, the budget deficit, permanent tax cuts, corruption, Blackwater, privatization, etc. They are not mere poor decision makers. They are criminals and we need to treat them as such.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Second interview.
I got as call back from a first interview for another position within another large bureaucracy. Its a job working for an institution providing expert testimony on behalf of the Public's interest concerning rates charged before the Public Utilities Commission.
My current job is rather mindless, but it requires a sense of order I have managed to sustain for two years. I am capable as an accountant/auditor keeping records and such, but my tendency is still towards the creative and chaotic - at least in comparison to what you will normally find inside bureaucratic institutions. A Public Rates Analyst is not exactly a position filled by artists and poets, but it does require the application of theory and is much more stimulating than a position as a record-keeper that I currently am employed as.
I imagine my days will be much busier, but also more interesting. Essentially, I will be employed as an economist - which is what I trained as in graduate school. However, an economist that only studies one specific industry (telecommunications) recognizing trends and setting up the terms for just and fair markets. In my second interview I have to give a presentation on some subject that has yet to be revealed to me. I go in on a week from today.
I look forward to it as a break form my current schedule and routine consisting of mind-numbing monotony. However, age has tempered my penchant for assuming that a new job will finally bring me the sense of satisfaction I am looking for. A job is a job and my ultimate satisfaction can only be found away from employment. For now, however ( and likely till I am old and decrepit) employment is necessary and I am coming on three years in the same job. With some luck and a good performance, change may soon come.
My current job is rather mindless, but it requires a sense of order I have managed to sustain for two years. I am capable as an accountant/auditor keeping records and such, but my tendency is still towards the creative and chaotic - at least in comparison to what you will normally find inside bureaucratic institutions. A Public Rates Analyst is not exactly a position filled by artists and poets, but it does require the application of theory and is much more stimulating than a position as a record-keeper that I currently am employed as.
I imagine my days will be much busier, but also more interesting. Essentially, I will be employed as an economist - which is what I trained as in graduate school. However, an economist that only studies one specific industry (telecommunications) recognizing trends and setting up the terms for just and fair markets. In my second interview I have to give a presentation on some subject that has yet to be revealed to me. I go in on a week from today.
I look forward to it as a break form my current schedule and routine consisting of mind-numbing monotony. However, age has tempered my penchant for assuming that a new job will finally bring me the sense of satisfaction I am looking for. A job is a job and my ultimate satisfaction can only be found away from employment. For now, however ( and likely till I am old and decrepit) employment is necessary and I am coming on three years in the same job. With some luck and a good performance, change may soon come.
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