I tend to agree ...
... with
Brian Janaszek, who writes this past week,
I'm not sure who is worse – the Republicans who have given up on the free market (and the oil companies they love so well) or Democrats who have given up on environmental concerns in the name of lower prices. What we really need right now is a politician who will say what this country needs to hear: higher fuel prices are exactly the bitter medicine we need to get over our addiction to oil.
This subject isn't something I've given much directed attention to, but Brian's wish for a new national ideal for energy use fits my perspective, my broader sensibilities. To this end of a new national ideal, we sure could use a vigorous, ordinary-folks-oriented, green politics bound wholly to the presumption & commitments of neither the left nor the right. And we sure could use some honesty to go with power transactions in our capitals.
Well, these complaints are nothing new in a way, and surely no one expects any wide-spread shift toward common-sense, modest thinking in American politics – not when such a rich variety of short-term payoffs are there to be pursued through policy-making & trade at every level of public life. But who knows? – maybe this encroaching economic pressure will help clear a few heads anyway, and inspire yet something of the thinking smaller that's long awaited thoroughgoing introduction in the national mindset.
An eastward glance
It's been bookmarked for over a year, and now, last night, I've finally managed to get back around to a brief read of
David Koyzis's
A Capsule History of Russia, an overview he put together for his students. The title's apt: a great deal's compressed into a small space. The emphasis is on government & political development, as Dr Koyzis's field is political science. This weight on government doesn't distort the picture for a casual read like mine, I don't think. Descent through personalities in power and changes of regime, I suppose, is natural structure somehow for holding together in one's mind elements of the course of a nation's taking shape over time. Not of course that there aren't other useful angles by way of which to make account of or try to comprehend a nation's story.
I've had some exposure to Russian history in past – took an undergrad class in Russian culture & government in 1993 or '94 at the University of Baltimore – and the subject remains interesting to me, though now in quite a distant way. I'm grateful to have an overview like this so conveniently available, and from a source I know something about & have some confidence in. Of course, there are all sorts of ways I might follow up and reestablish this Russian bit of territory among my interests. But it took me many months, after all, just to get to this slender resource.
Oh, please ...
Heard, while working today, Neil Young's whirlwind-studio-session recording "Impeach the president", on Annapolis station
WRNR – caught only snatches of lyric, but didn't bother to stop what I was doing for a better listen. (RNR's also been playing lately an "I am the walrus" sound-alike that works up, more or less cleverly, an actual recent Bushism, "I'm the decider" – Bush, sound-bited, asserting his authority to hire & fire cabinet members according to his own lights.) I like RNR's indie-flavored approach to radio, generally, and I like Neil Young's sound, generally. I've enjoyed Young's "Then I won't be far from home", which has been on the air a lot around here (especially on great Baltimore station
WTMD) since release last year, quite a lot. But all gratuitous over-simplifications, right & left, of political & social matters disgust me. And what but over-simplification, in environments like the present one, are you going to get from material that suits rock radio play? This is a medium terribly resistant to, and the circumstances besides are unfavorable for, any real acknowledgement of politics, its sources & its fallout. Anyway, I certainly can't see how
this particular strikingly bland piece of old-man-rock that Young's tossed off can claim to be so much as the shadow of a substantive address to the political moment: in my judgment it's altogether a waste of Young's creative energy. And it's an abuse of air time for a station that's supposed to be all about music. I get to muttering (or yelling) sometimes, when it's evident the notion of their own importance in the arena of social/political conflict has again bitten the programmers on one of my 'good' stations, "Stop playing around, and play some damn music!"
(I should say, I suppose, that one beneficial effect of the recent yammering here & there about impeachment may be that it helps somewhat to bring into perspective the conflicting sentiments & the great ugly scene of the more politically efficient, but probably no more really publicly meaningful, effort to impeach Clinton a decade or so ago.)
Well, I'm no great admirer of President Bush – or of any prominent political players of our times, as far as I know them. But I don't think George W Bush is an idiot or a criminal; in fact I still am inclined to think that his exercise of the presidential role, although undoubtedly diminished in dignity by serious errors of judgment (and of how many presidents, by the way, can the same not be said?), has been genuine and capable. And I do like
Chris Muir's take, though it's a gimme, on Young's
glib, musically stillborn contribution to current public dialogue:
LATER: You can listen to the whole album
Living With War here. I have no sympathy with Young's point of view, from the overall attitude of knee-jerk anti-interventionism to the particular notion that 'Bush is [comparably, in relevant history, at his level of official power] a liar'. And the wish manifested on this album to tie, in simple terms, general American cultural malaise (or global warming, or whatever generational/multi-generational concern) to the Republican party or the current administration is especially grating. Sympathies aside, however, I think some of the songs on the album are pretty good; they're enjoyable as what they are, classic-style rock tunes – especially e.g. 'Back in the days of shock and awe', 'Flags of freedom'. (My loose usage above, 'old-man-rock', shouldn't necessarily be taken as a slur.) I'll continue to believe, nevertheless, that the one song that's demanding the principal media attention now merits, in fact, none.
Work in progress
Now is a great time to
have a look at the fine work under way on my man Jeffrey Fisher's current work in progress.
'You fool, he isn't dead, and your heart knew it.'
Thoughtful readers everywhere of the great variety of stuff (generally called 'content') found on the internet should be glad to know that
this blog is not dead.
Habit (re)forming
For a long time I've been telling myself I'd start drawing frequently again. My mind often turns to this worthy intention ... but my hands don't. "Soon," I tell myself – and of course soon is never
now. I know, though, that drawing for one who draws, like writing for one who makes poetry or playing for one knows an instrument, has to be first a habit, not an ideal. You don't, at bottom, conceive of yourself as creative, an artist, and then enact a plan of study & practice for realizing what you suppose this amounts to – though becoming fully formed as an artist probably does demand assorted attempts at such a plan. But at bottom, at genesis, you
fall into the habit of mind & practice from which being "creative" may come – and thereafter you don't dismiss the urge; you tend it, you privilege it.
I have no aspiration to become an artist, truthfully. But drawing is something early, something basic, for me; and I want to retain it & maintain it, for (at least) the formation of mind it provides for.
And yet I've mostly fallen out of the habit. I need to fall back in. The bit of sketch above is an example of the very kind of thing I need to be doing, whether spontaneously (even irresponsibly) or by way of time set aside. In fact I did just do this a little while ago – an old favorite thing to do, my left hand (the nearest interesting object to hand – literally). A little light drawing, a little unconcerned sketching, simply needs to happen like this here & there, day to day, whether I've expected I'd do it or not. In this case I picked up a notebook in which I've very occasionally drawn something over the several years I've had it; but for what matters, I shouldn't require so much as a sketchbook. My mind, my eyes, and my hands should fall to this, having a pencil & paper handy, as a smoker wanders outside without much thought and lights a cigarette.
(By the way, I don't know ASL! If these sketches suggest signing, it's not intended.)
Creating work for myself
At right is a sketch representing the spatial volume of a stairwell – residue of a thought process.
One of the things I've had to work on this week is an estimate for completing the trim carpentry and painting in a basement I recently drywalled. The last time I was at this job (which is inconveniently distant for a brief run by), I made a sketch of the basement floorplan – that is, the part of the basement I'm working on – and noted various dimensions thereon, so that I could figure materials &c. for doing trim & paint.
It happens, though, that I didn't get dimensions for the stairwell between the 1st floor and basement, for some reason. At home, working on my figures, this presented a problem, particularly for doing the paint estimate. I do a variety of kinds of work as a small remodeling/repair operation – in fact I emphasize versatility, with longer-term goals for my work in view – but my real depth of experience is in drywall finishing. I lack the experience to just look at a space and recognize, for instance, how much paint it'll take to cover it. I have to work out estimates for most things I'm concerned with from measurements & quantity rules of thumb. But here I was mostly without measurements.
So I made a little project of diagramming the stairwell volume on a 3 x 5 card to work out roughly what should be the dimensions, using dimensions I did know (ceiling heights for the 1st floor & basement, and what floorplan dimensions I had for spaces adjacent the stair) along with some knowledge of standard stair construction. But I'd managed to fail to write down sufficient relevant info to put myself to a good deal more guesswork than you'd think this little matter would come to; and though the sketch was quick & unprecise, the numbers took some trial and error. (I couldn't remember so much as the approx. height of the landing relative to eye-level. Really was drawing an unfortunate number of blanks.)
It is a shame I had to use up time for this thing, when other matters were (& are) pressing. But I can't say, on the other hand, I don't find a bit of thought project like this worthwhile. Having to connect scattered pieces of information like this, of course, is an integrative process – so it tends to structure memory, tends to provide framework for further thinking.
And, besides, it may leave behind it as residue an interesting little spatial sketch on a 3 x 5 card.
Pups
The photo with the clipped bit above, scanned from the
weekly arts & events insert out of today's
Baltimore Sun, immediately put me, when I opened to it, in mind of the
delightfully miniature whimsies of
Laurie Bertrand. Laurie is the feminine half of a thoughtful Christian couple, blogging creatives from Houston whose pages I try to keep up with regularly.
Her husband Mark's main blog is in the sidebar at right.
Looking in on Laurie's
shop, I can't help thinking I really ought to have a girlfriend, if only to have a good reason to buy some of this amusing, eye-catching stuff. : )
The Maryland State Boychoir
On Wednesday this week
The Baltimore Sun ran in its entertainment/fashion/about-town section an
article of good length whose subject I found especially appealing. The piece, by
Sun music critic Tim Smith, profiles (very engagingly, I should say) an organization I was entirely ignorant of,
the Maryland State Boychoir. The occasion is the Boychoir's receipt of a large donation that allows it to purchase the building of the declining church who've given it a home for the last five years. But a good deal of the piece looks at the program's history and the quality of the experience it gives the kids, ranging from 7 to 20 in age and currently numbering about 140, who participate in it.
"The mission in 1987 was to reach out to boys who love to sing, and provide them with a safe environment where they can feel it's OK to sing," Cimino says. "These are not geeks. They play football, they're in the Scouts, they appear in school plays."
Some boys, of course, look warily at the idea of singing in a choir. "They would not expect boys to like this, because it's not masculine or something," Johnson says. "But I know some kids in my school who want to audition now, which is cool."
With rehearsals, concerts all over town and the possibility of traveling around this country or abroad, as well as three-day winter and weeklong summer camps, membership in the Maryland State Boychoir asks a heavy commitment.
"You get attached to it," [Miguel] Boluda says. "It's a part of your life."
What's particularly noteworthy, to my mind, about the article & its subject isn't just exposure of a thriving institution that's drawing boys & young men into an area of the arts they're no longer in any kind of numbers supposed to find interesting, let alone worth a lot of time & energy; although this alone definitely is worth noting. Beyond this, what I'm excited to find here is something that looks like a vibrant, locally established model of formation of young minds in a definite, durable discipline – a discipline both intellectual & practical, realized in community & carried through into enough of the young participants' ordinary experience that you'd expect some, at least, might indeed be said to be coming to
inhabit it. I think there's a great depth of good to be discovered under such a model.
This would be a great point to launch into further discussion! But for now I'll just say that this idea of coming to inhabit a discipline is one of the themes I want to try, with time, to draw out for exploration as this blog develops.
Photo by Elizabeth Malby, copyright Baltimore Sun.
Eugene McCarraher on Hannah Arendt
Eugene McCarraher, toward the end of a
long article in
Books & Culture (via
Arts & Letters Daily):
As with so much of her work, Arendt's repudiation of theology illuminates her insistence on preserving politics from contamination by social issues. In On Revolution, Arendt articulated two competing ontologies of human community. Pointing to the stories of Cain and Abel and of Romulus and Remus, she claimed that the founding stories of "our biblical and secular traditions" conveyed a sobering truth: "whatever brotherhood human beings may be capable of has grown out of fratricide." But if human community originated in bloodshed—"in the beginning was a crime"—salvation commenced in peace: "in the beginning was the Word." Once again, action miraculously saves the world. Yet Arendt never reconciles these two political ontologies. If crime lies at the origin of community—and Arendt seems clearly to think violence the more historically probable ontology—then it is hard to see how words can avoid being tarnished. And if action is as unconditioned and arbitrary as Arendt conceives it, how can it avoid becoming another form of violence?
But if the world and human community are founded in an order of love, peace, and plenty, then we—those rooted in Christian theology—would have to recognize that Arendt's difficulties here stem from her reluctance to join fully in what Charles Taylor has called "the affirmation of ordinary life." Since, as Taylor observes, the modern affirmation of ordinariness can be traced to the Judeo-Christian tradition, Arendt's stratospheric conception of politics can be traced to her rejection of theology. Though clearly inflected by her inordinate regard for an idealized polis of Greek antiquity, Arendt's refusal or inability to see social life as an inherently political realm ultimately stems from her lack of faith in a created order of abundance and love.
________________________________________________________
By the way: For more on Hannah Arendt, this
short bio at the Jewish Virtual Library – via an
interview on the occasion of her centennary at
SignandSight – is interesting & seems to be a balanced treatment.)
Wendell Castle
In the issue of
Woodshop News I received last week there's a feature article about the work, past and present, of 'art furniture' maker Wendell Castle. I'd never heard of Castle, but that's not to say he isn't well known. He's enjoyed a successful, four-&-a-half-decade career as an artist and university professor in upstate New York. A large old industrial-space-turned-workshop with several employees operates under him to produce his pieces. An extensive portfolio of those pieces, past & present, is on view at his web site – many varied, highly finished items & sets. The works themselves are sufficient statement of the artist's career success, as each one screams extravagance of labor and material expense. I won't describe them further; I encourage readers to check out his site – which richly rewards the eye, at least – and see for themselves:
wendellcastle.com.
I thought a sidebar in the
Woodshop News article listing 'Wendell Castle's 10 adopted rules of thumb' – a handy collection in the think-outside-the-box, gather-no-dust vein – would be good to pass on to readers here.
- If you are in love with an idea, you are no judge of its beauty or value.
- It is difficult to see the whole picture when you are inside the frame.
- After learning the tricks of the trade, don't think you know the trade.
- We hear and apprehend what we already know.
- The dog that stays on the porch will find no bones.
- Never state a problem to yourself in the same terms it was brought to you.
- If it's offbeat or surprising, it's probably useful.
- If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it.
- Don't get too serious.
- If you hit the bull's-eye every time, the target is too near.
Miscegenation
Macs will soon be shipped able to run Windows natively. This development was expected, after Apple went over from IBM-made to Intel-made chips last year. But the change in the wind is still startling: for the first time, since the great Mac/PC rivalry grew out of the chaotic competition of popular personal machines in the 1980s, you'll be able to have it both ways – right out of the box.
It's interesting to consider whether this is more a win, so to speak, for Apple, as technology leader and amplifier of 'design' culture, or for Microsoft, as marketplace leader and amplifier of consumer culture. No doubt there's thoughtful commentary out there touching on this question. I haven't bothered to turn any up, though.
Quare id scribiam?
Why take up blogging? I've resisted all thoughts of joining the blogging class in the two years, roughly, that I've taken a regular interest in the blogs of others. Why should I change my ways now?
This isn't an easy question for me to answer. The change of mind to start a blog and see if I can maintain it, in fact, is singular and kind of sudden. On the other hand, the factors that seem to be contributing to this relatively quick turnaround are varied and mostly developments of a number of months, at least.
This isn't the first time I've tried to set up a web site, certainly. And some of the old notions of the sorts of benefit that I've thought I could find in having a non-blog site are now renewing themselves in my mind, with the difference that it now seems to me that a blog is likelier to be kept up than a site with no running, dated system of organization. We'll see if that holds true.
Perhaps first among those old, nagging notions of benefit to be gained with a web site is the hope that I'll start bringing together diverse interests so that they feed one another and grow together in an integrated way. In my mind, thinking about architecture, theology, and language, to take examples, have always seemed to belong to the same stream of recurring & interwoven movements of reflective & creative inner life. But it is difficult to keep much of a definite sense of the direction or strength of ideas' growth, or of the points where some important shift in my thinking may be happening. I've gotten a bit better lately at jotting down thoughts in a little journal/sketchbook I keep; but it's still intermittent. A web site makes certain kinds of 'jotting down' easier — particularly where a published idea or image might be connected to what's been on one's mind.
I could go on here. There's a lot that could be said about blogging as journal keeping, pro & con. In sum, though, I've decided to get a practical feeling for the pros, and to challenge myself on the cons as far as possible in my circumstances.
There's a remaining reason for my own descent into blogging, worth mentioning here. It has to do with the example of bloggers whose efforts I've followed for a while with appreciation, some of whom are listed in the sidebar links. Over time I've observed that it's not so much the quality of individual posts or exchanges generated that represents a blog's contribution to the quasi-community of people, bloggers & readers together, who have some interaction by way of it; as it is the continual tucking- & tying-together (as a bird or mouse weaving weak stuff into a framework not necessarily very strong but nevertheless whole & useful), the kneading-through, of things recognized as material to well-living &
responsibility — however lightly or awkwardly any one post or comment may touch the material things. I begin to think, then, in view of others' examples, that I can stand to try keeping some of my own little bits of idea & pursuit 'live', out where they can be poked at, picked over, & passed around by any who find their own interests stirring in kind.
