Cultural death in threes –

I am experiencing a rather weird feeling - three cultural icons whose flames burned brightest during my own youth have all been extinguished in the same week. First Ed McMahon, who, for years has been but a caricature of himself, died, essentially of old age, at 86. Not a big surprise, except I wonder how someone who was so vibrant when I was a teen managed to get that old?! A friend pointed out that deaths like his make her feel old, and I get that. But so do the deaths of Farrah and Jacko today - at least for me. Because I can still remember believing that only old people lose contemporaries in any large number - and perhaps because we lost a mom at my oldest daughter's school to ovarian cancer this month - I'm feeling a bit too close to death's doorway. I was never a big fan of Farrah, but I know several men who, as boys, would glaze over just staring at her poster on their bedroom walls. She and her fellow Angels were early purveyors of girl-power - except it was the toxic kind, a power that came primarily from great bodies, beautiful faces and big hair. Oh, and yeah, they could kick butt against the bad guys, of course. Theirs was a cultural impact similar to Barbie's - a completely unrealistic picture of femininity to strive for, girls! But still, they were women in formerly man-held roles, and they were part of my girlhood, for better or worse. Farrah, of course, was always the top angel. Not a role model, although back then some tried to paint her as such; just an icon, replete with faults that became more apparent as she got older and the media more intrusive. Like her or not, I am saddened by the long suffering she had to endure up to her end. As for Michael Jackson, I simply don't know how to feel.

Continue ReadingCultural death in threes –

Unnerving bus trips south of the border

I'm never forget my bus trip to Otavalo, two hours north of Quito Ecuador. I was traveling with my friend ("Susan") back in December, 1998. We decided to take the public bus from Quito. The trip only cost a couple dollars. All kinds of people, and several kinds of animals (e.g., chickens) piled onto the bus and off we went toward Otavalo, over some rather serious hills. It turned out to be a bus ride strong of heart. The bus driver took us around some rather serious mountain curves at high speeds that suggested that our high center of gravity would topple the bus over the edge of the road and it would then tumble down the mountain and burst into flames. This sort of accident never happened, but I was fairly certain it was going to happen. In fact, I was absolutely certain that it was going to happen on several occasions. Susan and I both agreed that we should not be alive today based upon that bus ride. Not only did the driver take the bus around sharp curves, but he passed other buses on the outside while going uphill around many of those same sharp blind curves. I will admit, the bus ride only cost us two dollars each, but we assumed that we would feel safe to our journey. Even before we got to the twisting mountain roads, the bus sped along since straight highway at about 60 miles an hour, even though there was a 3-foot shoulder on which tiny children were walking to school. Some of those children looked to be only four or five years old. I couldn't believe that the bus was actually shooting past these children, only two or three feet away. It made us all the more nervous to see flowers and crucifixes marking the highway deaths every few miles. Actually, I haven't come to the part of the story that made me the most nervous. While we were speeding around mountain curves, passing on the outside, the driver called to his assistant and told him to check out a mechanical problem with the bus. The driver did not pull over. Instead, the assistant opened up a panel on the floor of the bus (just to the right of the bus driver) and was reaching down into that big a hole with some tools while the bus was speeding around the mountain curves.

Continue ReadingUnnerving bus trips south of the border

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.

Continue ReadingHappy Father’s Day –

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.

Continue ReadingSocialist Saturday in the park

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.

Continue ReadingNo Excuse—A Personal Gripe