Happy Father’s Day –

- to all the men out there raising honest, compassionate, inquisitive children. - to all the dads who aren't afraid to show their children how much they love them, all the men who model participation and positive values, good health and a passion to learn. - to the fathers who say no when they need to and who teach their children that mistakes are part of the journey; the dads who forgive, who tell stories and know how to laugh at themselves. - to every man who makes sure his children know, without having to ask, that he will be there for them, in form or spirit, whenever he is needed, for the rest of their lives. - and to the other fathers out there, somehow, may they learn how important their presence could be, and find a way to get there.

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Socialist Saturday in the park

Yesterday I was riding in a cab driving by Hakim, a young man who came to the U.S. eleven years ago from Kenya. During the cab ride to downtown KC, we discussed the many businessmen who treat professional sports like a religion. Many of them spend several thousands of dollars per year for the privilege of showing up several times per week to watch millionaire-athletes play games while eating $6 hotdogs and drinking $8 cups of beer. The conversation then turned to some of the many things one can do without spending much money, as well as many alternative ways to spend the $4,000 you might spend to watch a package of baseball games over the course of a season. Hakim works to support his family here in the United States, but he sends an extra $200 per month to Kenya each month, which fully supports his widowed sister and her three children. Hakim is also going to school to learn computer programming. He was a thoughtful and enterprising fellow and I really enjoyed our conversation. I continued thinking about money and healthy ways of spending discretionary time this morning at the Tower Grove Farmer's Market, in Tower Grove Park, near my home in St. Louis, Missouri. But then it struck me that there was a lot of ugly low-priced socialism going on all around me. You see, the government runs the park, inviting families to come swim in a big fountain and shop for food directly from farmer-vendors, no corporate middle-men and no heavy-handed corporate sponsors taking control of the natural ebbs and flows of those who attend (though a few good-hearted local businesses pitch in to make the event possible). I took the following photo of the many socialists splashing in the fountain (I tweaked it with Photoshop, trying to make it artsy and also because I wanted to obscure the identities of the folks in the photo. BTW, feel free to click to enlarge the image). fountain-rendered-as-sponge-drawing As I drove to the park on a government-paid road, I had passed a government-paid (socialist) police officer. It occurred to me that this sort of socialism is not unusual. There is both a socialized fire department and a a socialized library near the park, as well as many socialized (public) schools. Then, to exacerbate the situation, Steve Albers showed up, unpaid, to provide live music (disclosure: Steve is my brother-in-law). Steve, who is an excellent blues musician but a confused capitalist, decided to put out a bucket for cash donations--all of it to go to the organizer of the market so that it could hire out other local professional music acts on future weekends. Image by Erich Vieth Bottom line: a government operated park, no heavy-handed corporate sponsors, free music, free fountain, donations for future non-profit endeavors. People self-organizing without the assistance of any corporate mascot, without anyone telling them how to have fun. Lively and thoughtful conversation everywhere. Children spontaneously dancing, with dedicated parents nearby. Tall trees, fresh air and the recurring thought that this is what life is really about. Ubiquitous healthy food. The honest and spontaneous power of the grass roots--people choosing to be the people they are. I'm hearing Chicago's "Saturday in the Park" as I write this. I've seen the dour faces of the people who attend high-priced "fun" at corporate entertainment, while slurping their $8 beer. They are people who are barraged with advertisements all over the stadium, and they are constantly being told when to applaud by a corporate-sponsored scoreboard and PA. Image by Erich Vieth They are carefully searched on the way into the stadium to make damned sure that they don't bring in their own alcoholic drinks (oh, year, 12% of this expensive and unnecessary new stadium was constructed using taxpayer money). I can guarantee that the fun per dollar spent was much higher today. That's my thought for this morning: that we don't need to be told how to have fun by big corporations. We are better off spending next to nothing creating our own low-priced entertainment.

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No Excuse—A Personal Gripe

Generally speaking, I don't like to criticize books. Tim Powers told us at Clarion that a sale negates all criticism. That may be more true with fiction (though I reserve the right to privately diss any book that's badly done, regardless) but when it comes to nonfiction, I find it inexcusable. I've been slogging---slogging, mind you---through a history of the rise of the Spanish Empire under Fernando and Isabel, the period during which the New World (?) was discovered by Europeans and Spain became the pre-eminent power on the global scene. The book is called Rivers of Gold and it was penned by one Hugh Thomas, published in 2003. I'm finding it virtually unreadable. Partly this is a style issue. The prose are flat, lifeless. He makes the mistake of introducing casts of characters in one-paragraph lumps, as if the average reader is going to remember all these people, many of whom do not seem to matter in later parts of the narrative. We are given chunks of delightful detail about some things (the make-up of Columbus's crews on both the first and second voyage, which is very telling about the geopolitics of the day) and the rather revolutionary nature of Fernando's and Isabel's co-rule (for it was genuinely a partnership) and then little about other things (like the ultimate disposition of the Muslim populations after the fall of Granada and what happened to their libraries, which directly impacted the rest of Europe). But these are small quibbles. Thomas seems to have a bias toward Christianity, but he is clearly restraining himself throughout and attempting to be even-handed, and largely succeeds (sincere mourning for what became of the Jews). He orders the events well, so that we see the relevance of Fernando and Isabel adhering to Law rather than acting as autocrats and their background and education as it affected their judgment concerning what Columbus found and what his enemies told them.

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The sounds of freedom at night in Iran

Andrew Sullivan has had ongoing detailed coverage of the post-election events in Iran, including this short post and video of the sounds of freedom being called out from the rooftops at night. Interesting, how American neoconservatives (and Israel conservatives) could only talk of bombing Iran, year after year, demonizing the entire country based upon the belligerence of high-placed officials. Iran now also has a face of youth, hope and potential change, though the situation is incredibly dangerous at the moment. I would add that Barack Obama has shown masterful restraint and read-between-the-lines encouragement to the forces of freedom and dissent in Iran:

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Public transportation slows me down

I had neck surgery two weeks ago and I'll be wearing a cervical collar for another four weeks. My cervical collar restricts my neck movements quite a bit. Many people are surprised that it is nonetheless legal for me to drive a car even while my neck motion is so restricted. It's not legal to drive while wearing a cervical collar in every state, although in Missouri and many other states, it is legal. Not that I'm comfortable driving a car without the ability to rotate my neck freely. I've only done it twice during the past two weeks, and it was on low-traffic roads during off-peak driving periods. For the most part, I now get around by exploiting a public transportation monthly pass. Using public transportation has slowed me down quite a bit, but I'm enjoying it immensely. I'm learning the routes much better than I ever did before, and I'm seeing that it's possible to get a lot done without a car, even in St. Louis, because we have a fair number of bus routes in the city, along with several light rail lines. What I've repeatedly noticed is that you can't just get anywhere you want. Now can you get where you want when you want to. You need to check the schedule and work with the system. Sometimes, the buses are not exactly on time. If you're not careful, you'll just miss a bus and then you'll need to wait another 20 minutes for the next one. If you don't think ahead, you'll get rained on because you forgot to bring your umbrella. Sometimes, the places you want to go are not exactly on the bus route, and you might have to walk a mile after getting off the bus. If you have something that you need to bring along, you can't put it in the trunk because there is no trunk. You either carry it with you or you don't bring it at all. I find that I'm really becoming much more empathetic about other folks who must use public transportation. Yesterday, I because really frustrated when I saw a woman barely miss the bus. What if you need to take your kids somewhere and you don't have a car? Well, you use public transportation. Last week I saw a woman with five young children pile them all onto the bus. They were all quiet and well-behaved as their mother carefully put six bus fares in the fare box. There's also quite a few characters on public buses. Today, I sat next to a man who was selling pirated DVDs to fellow passengers. One woman told him that she didn't need a DVD, so he told her that he sold cosmetics too. His entire inventory of DVDs and cosmetics was in a paper bag that he carried along with him. It's inspiring to see how often people in public buses help each other out, helping each other with the doors or with each other's bags, or calling out to the bus driver if someone needs a little extra help. There's other kinds of characters too. Some of them don't smell so good. Others talk to themselves rapidly. Some of them are extremely friendly and willing to give lots of encouragement to a stranger with a neck brace. Others sit quietly and still others look notably confused. Many people strike up animated and entertaining conversations with fellow passengers, oftentimes with people they don't know. Many of the passengers are overweight, and it's tempting to see how they will fit themselves into the smallish seats between two equally large passengers. Taking a bus is much different than driving a car. When you take a bus, you don't have to worry about your car. You don't have to worry about maintaining it or parking it or keeping it from being stolen. You don't have to worry about getting distracted and running over a young child in a crosswalk. What I most notice about taking the bus, however, is that the rhythm of life changes. I can't have what I want exactly what I want it anymore. I can't just get downtown in 12 minutes on a whim. Rather, it will take 10 minutes to get to the bus stop, another 20 or 30 minutes to catch a bus up to the light rail stop, and another 10 or 15 minutes to get downtown on the light rail. It really does take about four times as long for me to travel one way to my place of employment (that's about twice as long as it takes to ride a bike there-- I've been told that a bill to ride a bike again in about a month or two). Some might think that it would be extremely frustrating to not get where you want when you want to get there, but I'm finding that these moments are golden opportunities to think about important things and not important things, and to enjoy being out in the world with a lot of decent people who don't have fancy cars or fancy houses. There's not a lot of bus passengers trying to impress each other with what they own because on the bus most people don't own much. You can see it for the way they dress and you can see it from how they talk. You won't hear people bragging about taking a trip to some fancy vacation spot. There's nobody trying to impress anyone else with his BMW. You won't hear people confusing who they are with what they own. It's all so refreshing, relaxing, therapeutic, normal.

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