Stepping Up Finally

I’ve been hesitant to write anything about the Susan G. Komen fiasco. Not for fear of invoking controversy, but because things started unraveling so fast it was difficult to know when it would play out. Here is a handy overview of the series of events. The position taken by the Komen charity group shifted, mutated, and reeled in the sudden upwelling of negative response, that on any given day whatever I might have said would be irrelevant the next morning. One aspect, however, strikes me as significant. That response. It came swiftly and it came from all quarters and it came with cash. I cannot recall a similar response happening so swiftly and so decisively in this ongoing struggle over abortion rights. One of the most annoying things about being progressive and/or liberal is the tepidity with which we meet challenges. It would appear that all of us who espouse a progressive view, when it gets down to the nitty gritty of political position-taking and infighting, have feet not even of clay but of silly putty. It is actually heartening to see an abrupt and united response that is categorically decisive for once. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingStepping Up Finally

A Last Picture Show

The last motion picture theater of my youth is gone. For several years, The Avalon, sitting on Kingshighway in St. Louis, across the street from a mortuary that has now become a church, has been shuttered and slowly decaying and finally has met its inevitable fate. In a way, good. It has been an eyesore for some time, a constant reminder of neglect and a ruin of a bygone era. Hyperbole? Indeed, yes, but true nonetheless. As you can tell by what remained, it was an elegant, simple building, with a lovely facade. A symbol of an age thoroughly gone—the single-screen, stand-alone movie theater. The last film I saw there was back in 1986 or ’87—The Last Temptation of Christ. The theater had passed into the hands of a single owner who was a bit of an eccentric, and he tried everything to keep it going. He had a bit of a windfall with that film because of the timidity of every other movie theater in the city and county. They all refused to show Scorcese’s flawed depiction of Jesus’ final days. The Avalon announced it would screen it and it was no doubt the last time it had sell-out audiences for several days. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingA Last Picture Show

Conservative Fantasy Role Playing

I wonder sometimes how a modern conservative maintains. Romney has won the New Hampshire primary.  All the buzz now is how he’s going to have a much tougher fight in South Carolina, primarily because of the religious and social conservatives who will see him as “not conservative enough.”  There is a consortium of social conservatives meeting this week in Texas to discuss ways to stop him, to elevate someone more to their liking to the nomination.  And right there I have to wonder at what it means anymore to be a conservative. I grew up, probably as many people my age did, thinking of conservatism as essentially penurious and a bit militaristic.  Stodgy, stuffy, proper.  But mainly pennypinching.  A tendency to not do something rather than go forward with something that might not be a sure thing. I suppose some of the social aspect was there, too, but in politics that didn’t seem important.  I came of age with an idea of fiscal conservatism as the primary trait. That doesn’t square with the recent past.  The current GOP—say since Ronny Reagan came to power—has been anything but fiscally conservative, although what they have spent money on has lent them an aura of responsible, hardnosed governance.   Mainly the military, but also subsidies for businesses.  But something has distorted them since 1981 and has turned them into bigger government spenders than the Democrats ever were.  (This is not open to dispute, at least not when broken down by administrations.  Republican presidents have overseen massive increases in the deficit as opposed to Democratic administrations that have as often overseen sizable decreases in the deficit, even to the point of balancing the federal budget.  You may interpret or spin this any way you like, but voting trends seem to support that the choices Republican presidents have made in this regard have been supported by Republican congressmen even after said presidents have left office.) [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingConservative Fantasy Role Playing

Name the largest city in North America prior to 1790.

Name the largest city in North America prior to 1790. I'm betting that you named one of the biggest cities list on this result from the 1790 U.S. census, which indicates that New York only had 33,000 people and Boston only had 18,000 people. You probably didn't mention the settlement of Cahokia, Illinois, located just east of St. Louis, Missouri.   An article titled "America's Lost City" in the December 25, 2011 issue of Science indicates that Cahokia was a "large urban complex," perhaps home to as many as 50,000 people.  Cahokia was "in its heyday" in the 12th century, and it was "by far the largest concentration of people north of Mexico until the late 18th century."  Although this excellent article in Science is available online only to subscribers, you can access this recent article on Cahokia by National Geographic.

Continue ReadingName the largest city in North America prior to 1790.

More Postal Problems

I am currently fuming at FedEx because UPS couldn't deliver a package because they couldn't locate my post office because USPS had to consolidate because congress put a burden on the post office that any other corporation could have sued to get out from under had they tried to inflict it on them. I explain why FedEx in Who is Killing the Post Office? Current frustrating details: I ordered a new scanner from TigerDirect a few days ago. Today I wondered why it hadn't been delivered. They usually have things at my door within a couple of days. So I tracked it online, and found the UPS reported that the recipient had moved and left no forwarding address. Me, moved? I haven't moved in 21 years, and regularly get deliveries from this company. So I called TigerDee. They only knew what I knew from the online tracking. I called UPS. Several tries at hacking my way through their labyrinthine voice mail system and I finally reached a person who could inform me that UPS now uses USPS for local residential deliveries. But as of this month, my local zip code office apparently no longer handles our zip code. And UPS couldn't figure out where to send the package. So they returned it! Because UPS couldn't locate the post office!

Continue ReadingMore Postal Problems