Jouvert 2006

This is the second draft of the 2006 Jouvert parade. Enjoy.

And if you want to check out how my work compares with other photographers, try here.

Hot Dick on Hil Sex Pic

That, and intelligent observations as well! In this article in the almost incomparable (okay, we can compare it to the eXile) Buffalo Beast, Matt Taiibi takes Hilary to task for being, well, Hillary, the Republican front runner for President in 2008.

We live in a two-party system where both parties are pro-war; when the wars go badly, the system scrambles to find a way to prevent antiwar sentiment from taking the drastic step of mounting a meaningful opposition.

Therefore from time to time we have to suffer through the spectacle of some status quo dingbat letting his hair down and performing a tortured impersonation of a peace activist during an election season...

Her semantically-tortured apostrophic attack against Rumsfelds incompetence, in which she railed against the administrations strategic blunders but carefully avoided any discussion of the decision to invade that she and most other Democrats so enthusiastically supported, identified her as the status quo dingbat in this generations version of the same old story.

Yep.

All things to everyone

This is classic.

Stay tuned, more to come

Sorry I haven't posted much lately. I've been very busy with prepping photos for upcoming shows, grant applications and working on the long delayed web site. With all that crap, I've pretty much quit generating new work, but yesterday was the annual Jouvert parade, so I got my sorry ass out of bed at 4 am and made my way down to Flatbush avenue to join a few thousand heavy drinking west Indians parading through large clouds of dope smoke down the mean streets of Brooklyn. Nothing like chugging rum at dawn with a bunch of lunatics and getting painted, oiled and talced.

This year's photos were not great, not even as good as last year's. I don't know if the problem was more me or the event itself. The vibe just wasn't the same this year. Nevertheless, in a few days I'll have some kind of website up and will link to it here.

In the meantime, the above picture gives you a bit of a taste, vibe and all.

Sports Report

The American Basketball team lost again at the World Championships. This time they were soundly beaten by Greece, a team with no current NBA players.

Continuously using pick-and-roll plays to beat the Americans’ defense, the Greeks shot 63 percent (35 of 56) from the field and made 31 of 44 shots over the final three periods.

The United States has not played for a world championship since winning the last of its three titles in Toronto in 1994.

Michael Wilbon in the Washington Post explains it like this:

Our arrogance has no boundaries when it comes to international basketball, though it ought to by now, after yet another loss in a major competition. Even Americans who pay fairly close attention to world basketball, people who should know better, took one look at the Greek roster and dismissively figured, "No NBA players on the roster? Then no chance for Greece."

And it's a racial condition as well. We -- and by "we" I mean Americans of all colors -- have conditioned ourselves to look at European teams specifically and dismiss them out of hand because they're white. Or we think they're white. And of course, Americans have led the world in telling folks that white men can't jump, though amazingly some of those Greek kids apparently didn't accept our premise.

Well, yes, but the racial aspect isn’t just that white guys can’t jump, it’s that black guys are selfish losers who can’t play team basketball.

That, of course, is the worst kind of racism. Any cursory glance at the history of basketball definitively proves that skin color or African ancestry does not preclude one from playing smart basketball at the highest levels of the sport.

We can, however, assign a lot of the blame to “ghetto culture.” It’s all about individual status. There are those who dominate and those who submit. It’s not just a racial thing. The same could be said for the Masters of the Universe Wall Street bullshit, but unlike stock speculation, basketball is a team game and a good team always has a chance to beat a collection of better individuals.

But the NBA, NCAA and the television networks share the biggest part of the blame. They are the ones who allow the “me first” and “humiliate the opponent” attitudes that come straight outta the ghetto to dominate the game.

These powers that be in big time sports and television are irresponsible and they may be fools, but they are not idiots. They no doubt have polls and ratings to show that more people will watch ghetto basketball than the more traditional team oriented sport.

This is unfortunate because ghetto basketball reinforces the very worst elements of ghetto society. Being poorly educated, pathologically selfish and abusive works for basketball stars, but doesn’t usually get a person very far in the real world. So very, very few kids will escape their lives of poverty by becoming professional basketball players, yet so much of our culture encourages them to act in the worst possible way for advancing their interests.

On the other hand, the colleges and the NBA could have a positive influence by punishing the ghetto style of play. This is not as radical as it sounds. The rules have been changed over the years to encourage it. They can be changed again to discourage it. That’s a big reason why the U.S. can no longer dominate the international game. Because the international rules favor team basketball. If those who played ghetto ball couldn’t make the team in college, much less the NBA, better values would be pushed back down to the ghetto and people would change.

Krzyzewski and a few players congratulated the Greeks, but most of the U.S. team quickly headed to the locker room.

Yep.

Illusionists

I saw The Illusionist a couple days ago and just finished watching Spike Lee’s Inside Man. It didn’t occur to me going into it, but at some point I realized that the films are very much alike.

Oh, I know, every single plot detail is different, but in the end they are both about illusions and almost every scene is in some way illusionary.

They have other things in common as well. The production values and camera work are excellent. The acting and direction are top-notch. Both movies are able to pull off both the little illusions and the grand finale on first viewing.

The big difference is that all of the illusions in Inside Man stand up to further scrutiny. Once the illusions are revealed, all the plot elements and characters’ actions make sense.

Whereas with the The Illusionist, when the movie is over and you think about it, you quickly realize that it was a bunch of bunk. The characters’ actions moved the story along and provided drama, but ultimately made no sense whatsoever.

They are both enjoyable movies while you’re watching them, but Inside Man has substance and will stay around. The Illusionist, on the other hand, is no more substantial than a CGI generated ghost walking around 19th century Vienna.

Sorry if I seem too harsh. There’s a lot to be said for a very well-produced movie that is enjoyable to watch. I recommend seeing it, by all means. I’m just disappointed because one of its illusions was that it might be high art, but it turned out to be nothing more than good entertainment.

And I’m not saying that Inside Man was high art. It too was good entertainment, ultimately better entertainment, and perhaps it did manage a few moments that transcended the genre.

Straight from the netherworld

I started noticing this writer’s work during the last election. I’m privy to a couple mailing lists run by people who aren’t what you’d call intellectual sophisticates. Most of the emails contain stupid sex jokes or pictures of hillbillies in the outhouse or the like, but occasionally there’s right wing propaganda.

The example below is typical of this writer. I don’t mean this as an example of a stupid argument. It is a very intelligent argument for a very stupid proposition aimed at people who if they are not genetically stupid are willfully so. It is the worst kind of propaganda pure and simple. I do not believe that the author believes a word that she is writing. And I do not believe that she is unaware that she is using logical fallacies. She is more than happy to use them in her rhetoric. She is, I believe, a rhetorician.

These kind of emails are passed around constantly among people who belong to the Elks, the Moose or the Kiwanis club. A lot of them are college educated, but failed to learn anything that didn’t apply directly to their career.

During the presidential election these emails were constantly being passed around among the reddest people in the red states and a lot of regular people of their acquaintance. I'll bet they’re gearing up now for the mid-terms. I’ve tried to trace a couple of them with no success. Given their sophistication, I suspect that it is part of some Republican operation and that the person who writes them gets paid. She’s probably some ivy leaguer living in New York laughing it up while she suckers the yokels with such crap. But that’s just speculation.

What is a Billion ?

The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion" in a
casual manner, think about whether you want the "politicians"
spending your tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising
agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in
one of its releases.
a. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
b. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
c. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
d. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
e. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate
our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at
New Orleans. It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.
Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking the
Congress for $250 BILLION to rebuild New Orleans.  Interesting
number, what does it mean?

a. Well, if you are one of 48,674 residents of New Orleans (every
man, woman, child), you each get $516,528.

b. Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home
gets $1,329,787.

c. Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.
Washington, D.C .. HELLO !!! ... Are all your calculators broken ??

This is too true to be very funny:

Tax his land,
Tax his wage,
Tax his bed in which he lays.
Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes is the rule.
Tax his cow,
Tax his goat,
Tax his pants,
Tax his coat.
Tax his ties,
Tax his shirts,
Tax his work,
Tax his dirt.
Tax his tobacco,
Tax his drink,
Tax him if he tries to think.
Tax his booze,
Tax his beers,
If he cries,
Tax his tears.
Tax his bills,
Tax his gas,
Tax his notes,
Tax his cash.
Tax him good and let him know
That after taxes, he has no dough.
If he hollers,
Tax him more,
Tax him until he's god and sore.
Tax his coffin,
Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in which he lays.
Put these words upon his tomb,
"Taxes drove me to my doom!"
And when he's gone,
We won't relax,
We'll still be after the inheritance TAX !!


Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax),
IRS Penalties (tax on topof tax),
Liquor Tax,
Luxury Tax,
Marriage License Tax,
Medicare Tax,
Property Tax,
Real Estate Tax,
Service charge taxes,
Social Security Tax,
Road Usage Tax (Truckers),
Sales Taxes,
Recreational Vehicle Tax,
School Tax,
State Income Tax,
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA),
Telephone Federal Excise Tax,
TelephoneFederal Universal Service Fee Tax,
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax,
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax,
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax,
Telephone State and Local Tax,
Telephone Usage Charge Tax,
Utility Tax,
Vehicle License Registration Tax,
Vehicle Sales Tax,
Watercraft Registration Tax,
Well Permit Tax,
Workers Compensation Tax.

COMMENTS: Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago and there was
prosperity, absolutely no national debt, the largest middle class in
the world and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.
What the heck happened ?????

Let’s review the argument.

A billion dollars is a lot of money.
Some liberal bitch with a French name wants to give 250 of them to a bunch of low life blacks, 2 million per family.
Good decent salt-of-the-earth (working class whites) pay lots of taxes.
If good decent people didn’t have to pay taxes, we’d be living in heaven on earth.

Of course it’s easy to rebut this nonsense point by point. Obviously nobody’s advocating $2 million per family to flood victims in Louisiana, it’s not like a bunch of islamo-fascists hijacked some airplanes and flew them into the levees. Major infrastructure is expensive. Just ask those throwing those hundreds of billions at Iraq.

And why do the good working class folk pay so many ridiculous taxes? Well, because the very wealthy and the corporations don’t, unlike the good old days of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Beave, and white picket fences.

And there are plenty of countries where working people don’t pay a lot of taxes. Collectively its known as the third world.

But by the time you finish explaining all of that to your imaginary yokel, he or she is already reading the next piece of propaganda. Your story is not so pleasing as the free lunch in paradise for all good people narrative.

Sure, they are suckers, but who wants to hear that about themselves?. Yea, they’ll get what they pay for, considerably less, but nobody’s going to stay tuned for the end of that narrative either.

Unfortunately, there is no opposition party in this country, no one to tell an equally pleasing story that would have such a better ending. We get what we pay for.

Locked Rooms in a City of Glass full of Ghosts

I just finished my first reading of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. I had never read Paul Auster for a couple of reasons.

First because I had the impression that his prose was dry, pretentious and literary. I don’t know why I thought that. Maybe from watching Smoke.

Second, he was highly recommended to me by a couple of people I reflexively didn’t respect much. That’s shallow and wrong of me I know. They are both well-read younger guys with that superior young guy attitude. Intellectually I know better than to let that bother me since I had the same attitude in spades. Ultimately I was able to overcome it and picked up the book.

Much to my surprise Auster wasn’t dry and pretentious at all. The New York Trilogy is deep literature that is very enjoyable and easy to read.

But I’m afraid that’s all I’m going to be able to tell you about it. Although I’m willing to play the critic on a few movies, there is no way I’m going to take away any of the pleasure you may get if you read those books. To discover what is going on in the many layers of the narrative provides much of the enjoyment of reading them. I still haven’t read anything about them, or Auster.

I want to read a lot more before I let others influence my opinion, but I do look forward to that day. Although Auster is fun and easy to read, he is tricky and I can easily see that there are a lot of hidden things and multiple ways of interpreting them.

So I recommend New York Trilogy. Go for it. And go for it in virginal ignorance of Paul Auster if you still can. That’s my advice.

Shape of things

Barbara Ehrenreich whomps on Wal-Mart’s ass, as is her wont.

When Wal-Mart workers can't afford health insurance or new school clothes, the whole working class begins to flail. Furthermore, the Wal-Mart business model increasingly betrays what was once the operating principle of American capitalism, as explained by Henry Ford the First: You've got to pay your workers enough so that they can buy your product; that's what keeps the system going. When the American majority can't buy the very goods they manufacture or sell, that system is cruising for a bruising.

I’ve seen a lot of this myself. By the nature of my work, I’ve spent a little bit of time at a lot of companies over the past few years and, although the people I work with are not quite as low on the economic ladder as Wal-Mart employees, it’s easy to discern the same trends.

Companies are under constantly increasing pressure to cut expenditures and from what I’ve seen they do not go about it intelligently. All too often the decisions on who or what to cut are based on petty office politics rather than competence. And as the more competent people are laid off or bail out, the product suffers and profit declines. Meanwhile, those remaining are required to work ever more hours for which they are rarely paid. Either they are salaried workers or hourly types being offered comp time in lieu of overtime. Of course that comp time is in no way officially tracked and rarely collected. And raises are limited to 3 or so percent annually and promotions are generally out of the question.

Meanwhile only speculators or trust fund babies can afford to buy a house. I made the mistake of calling a realtor about a house I saw the other day. It is an old house, early twentieth century, fairly large but not particularly well built. It needs repairs, has a very small yard, sits near a noisy freeway in a generally ugly neighborhood in a not trendy part of the city. 1.6 million. What’s that in monthly payments? $11,000 dollars. My sister bought a house just like it in a small town in Indiana for $29,000 total a few years ago. People making $80,000 with a couple kids in New York can’t begin to afford a house and have to live paycheck to paycheck just to make the rent and very basic living expenses. And I’m not even talking about Manhattan, or even trendy Brooklyn.

And most of these companies that aren’t paying squat are very profitable. All of the squeeze is to make ever higher returns for the shareholders and top management, most of whom are arrogant sociopaths, many of whom are incompetent at everything besides gaining power.

Ah well, what can you do? Live well and prosper, emotionally at least, while we can. How will the inevitable crash play out? I guess we’ll just have to see.

Shit for brains

Via Atrios:

According to CNN just now a Time poll for a hypothetical McCain-Clinton race has it at 49% McCain 47% Clinton.

First the standard disclaimer: I know, I know, anyone is better than Bush and any Democrat is better than any Republican. Still, if our leaders are the brain cells of our nation, we sure got shit for brains.

It’s all to easy to imagine McCain vs. Hillary. McCain will advocate putting a force of 400,000 in Iraq and gearing up the draft in order to invade Iran and Syria. Hillary will boldly compromise, arguing for a force of 200,000 and a partial draft in order to invade either Iran or Syria.

Yep, that’s the future. Republicans show real leadership with insanely stupid ideas and the Doormatocrats boldly compromise. It sucks to see the future.

I shit bullshit, who shit bear shit?

I was roped into hitting a happy hour with several of my colleagues today and had one of the strangest social experiences I can recall. One of the other project managers, let’s call him Bob, told me about how his father died. I’d chatted with him a few times since starting the job, but we had never had anything remotely resembling a heart-to-heart talk and all of a sudden he guzzles three healthy Manhattans and lays this shit on me.

This is what he told me. When he was 10 years old he was camping with his dad in western Montana when they were confronted by a big black bear. His father pushed the boy behind him and started jumping up and down and barking like a dog to try to scare the bear. The bear rushed them. The father shoved the boy away and yelled for him to run, then tried to duke it out with the bear and was gutted. Bob escaped but was tortured for years because he ran away and left his father to die. For what remained of his childhood he fantasized about killing bears. When he was in his late teens he began to hunt them. Then he learned that he could make a lot of money selling their gallbladders, getting up to $500 a gram, he says. He kept poaching bears into his mid-twenties when one day he realized that he had forgotten his purpose in killing bears and was doing it for the money rather than for his father. Then he started a dot.com but was unable to raise any serious VC money in Montana so he moved to New York and blew his savings. Next thing he knows, he’s data mining. He’s had a fourth Manhattan as he tells this story and is starting on his fifth, says I remind him of his father.

Okay, I say, that’s really tragic man, gotta be going. The job was weird enough before that. Anyone out there want to hire me?

Bringing it all back home

From the Guardian:

The victim's name was Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi. Abeer means "fragrance of flowers". She was 14 years old. According to a statement by one of the accused, the soldiers first noticed her at a checkpoint. On March 12, after playing cards while slugging whisky, they changed into civvies and burst into Abeer's home. They killed her mother, father and five-year-old sister and "took turns" raping Abeer. Finally, according to the statement, they murdered her, drenched the bodies with kerosene, and set them on fire. Then the GIs grilled chicken wings.

The defence already pleads post-traumatic stress disorder

Yea, post-traumatic stress disorder, gotta be a lot of that going around. And you know what they say about what goes around...

Yea, peace would be great, but what about the Benjamins

The Congressional Research Service, Congress’s nonpartisan public policy research arm, estimates that our invasions and on-going wars against Iraq and Afghanistan are costing roughly $8 billion dollars a month. That’s close to $100 billion a year.

Just ask yourself, better yet ask your elected representatives, candidates in the next election and media outlets if we wouldn’t be infinitely better off with Osama bin Laden in an orange jumpsuit in The Hague, Sadaam Hussein impotent and surrounded in his castle in Baghdad and $100 billion a year being spent on education, health care, and other pressing needs?

One of the first research problems we could fund would be to find out why so many people who have dug themselves a deep hole and want to get out of it are pathologically unable to grasp the simple fact that the first step to getting out of the hole is to stop digging. Develop a pill to cure that particular pathology would be a great start to a better world.

Murder's what you want...

Well, then murder’s what you’ll get, duh. And probably a whole lot more of it than you bargained for.

But our “leadership” has lost sight of that oh-so-basic fact of life. Today’s example is an article in the NY Times that reports Israel’s goal of killing Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. The Israelis do not even argue that killing this man will solve any problems. It is for revenge, nothing else.

“There’s only one solution for him,” said an Israeli representative, “This man must die.”

Well, no, there is another solution. If there is reason to believe he has committed crimes, he could be arrested and tried in a court of law. That’s how civilized societies handle these things.

And there is a reason for that. The act of murder as a tool of revenge is worse than ineffective, it is counter-productive.

I know it’s difficult for the idiots running our country and their lapdogs in the so-called opposition party or the media to understand, much more so for their followers, but if it’s okay to murder other people’s leaders who are involved in military operations then it is okay for them to kill yours. The same principle holds for torture. If it’s okay for our country to use torture on another’s soldiers, then it’s okay for another country to torture our soldiers.

But murder and torture are not okay. Not for us, not for anybody. Fortunately, there is a very easy way to stop this insane cycle of violence. Just stop. That’s all we need to do. At any moment, we can simply stop it. Nobody is making us create these crimes. Many people say that it would be impossible to stop, but that’s not true. It would be just as easy as it was starting it, possibly easier since historically we have been more about the rule-of-law than wantonly violent and counter-productive retribution.

But alas, we have no opposition party or independent media willing to make such an obvious argument. Instead, we are told that revenge and murder are a good thing, a means to a good end. Many people who write on the internets are already advocating a “final solution” for those who oppose us (and their families, neighbors, countrymen, et.al). And some of these people even make it onto television or get quoted in what were formally respectable publications.

When a society’s discourse begins to plumb these moral depths, the bad things they so ardently wish for are likely to happen. Historically, when societies go insane with bloodlust they only see the errors of their ways when they end up on the receiving end. And if we don’t change our ways, the receiving end is where we’ll be. Whether it’s in two hundred years or 10, that kind of blow back is inevitable.

1973 Redux

I saw the New York Dolls last night at the South Street Seaport. When it comes to great shows, I'm a fan not a critic, so about all I can say is that they were fucking great.

This was no lame-ass reunion bullshit. This was a killer fucking rock & roll band. The crowd was huge and into it, even singing loudly along with the chorus of "Pills," a Janis Joplin cover, and "Human Being." The band looked great from a distance. In retrospect I was surprised at Syl Sylvain's talent on guitar. I guess it wasn't Johnny Thunders playing all of those solos. Steve Conte was good on the other guitar and the new bass player and drummer rocked like the days of yore. Johansen was energetic and clearly enjoying himself. His vocals and harmonica playing were strong.

The stuff off the new album fit right in with the old stuff, which was incedible cause that almost never happens. There was no let down in the energy of the crowd or the quality of the show. Someone unfamiliar with the Doll's catalogue wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. "Punishing World" was particularly great. A rousing "Dance Like a Monkey" ended the main part of the show. My only disappointment was that they didn't play "Running Around."

And some of the old stuff was transcendental. I wasn't around to see any live shows in 1973, but I've seen Johansen perform a lot of these songs in solo shows and they're all on the DVD from the London reunion show, but none of that was remotely as good as last night's show. They did the aforementioned "Pills," which had the crowd screaming, the show started out with "Looking for a Kiss," then there were such standards as "Jet Boy" and "Puss N' Boots." The first encore was an ecstatic version of "Personality Crisis" and the second was a killer "Human Being." The crowd would have happily stayed for the rest of the catalogue, but unfortunately the show was over.

To repeat what I said in the post below, I haven't heard Rock & Roll like that for ages. Even back then shows like that were few and far between.

2006

I’ve been meaning to write more about work. It’s not that I think the horrid details of my pathetic career would interest anyone, but it is interesting how my jobs serve to illustrate much that is wrong with our culture and economy. I’ve experienced most of those headlines you see – dot com death spirals, mass layoffs, takeovers by international investor groups, et. al. – in my wanderings from company to company over the last few years and now I’m on the cutting edge of data mining and consumer profiling.

Yes, I’d like to tell you more about it, but not now. I’ve been going through another round of training this week and just thought I’d share this one small observation. The trainer constantly uses words like “brilliant” or “awesome” to describe the most mundane occurrences. If everyone manages to turn on their computer without spilling coffee on it he gushes that we are all “brilliant” and our skills “awesome.” On and on.

And I know this trend is widespread and has been going on for awhile. “Awesome,” for instance, has been overused for years.

I suspect this is all related to the culture of self-esteem we read so much about. Apparently many kids are brought up receiving sycophantic praise for any little thing they do so I imagine that’s the only way they know to communicate. I guess there’s little harm in it other than further debasement in the way we are able to describe our world. What more is there to say when being able to chew gum and walk at the same time inspires awe and is practiced by the brilliant?

1973

I’m just on my third listen of the new New York Doll’s cd, One day it will please us to remember even this. It’s a great Rock & Roll record. It would be a great Rock & Roll record in any era. In this one it’s the only Rock & Roll record as far as I can tell. Rock ain’t dead yet, but looking at Johansen, I think it’s fair to say it’s getting pretty old.

One day it will please... is fresh, unlike most reunion records. I suspect that is because David Johansen has never stopped working. He played the Bottom line every couple of months for I don’t know how many years as either Buster Poindexter or as himself with the Harry Smiths. I even saw him a couple times at a defunct blues bar playing his solo material and some Dolls tunes with his long time collaborator Brian Koonan and a bar band. So he is not coming back. He never went away.

Sylvain Sylvain is the only other surviving member of the original band and Johnny Thunders wild guitar is missed, but the record is a legitimate Dolls record, not another Johansen solo project. So far Running Around and Punishing World are obvious classics, but I feel quite a few others can grow on me.

But enough of this crap from me. If you want to read a real review, go here.

In the meantime I’m having fun. Best Rock & Roll I’ve heard in ages.

Those were the days...

The Quebec trip went well for the most part. I didn’t have the time or opportunity to do any serious photography, but you can see some tourist pictures here.

This was the first time I had traveled with my wife, we’ll call her “Lola”, for over 15 years. Back then she had sworn “never again” but all of that time apparently softened her brain. It didn’t take long for her to fear she would regret it.

Typically, I only do the most minimal planning when I travel. In this case, my “plan” was to get a car in Montreal, drive about halfway to Quebec and find a hotel. Unfortunately, there was a Grand Prix race that weekend about half way between Montreal and Quebec and there was not a hotel room to be found. We ended up sleeping in the car and it was very, very cold.

But things got better quickly. We had ended our quest for a hotel in a small town called Shawinigan which turned out to be a very nice place. After having a nice breakfast of Paté and Brie on fresh baguettes, all of that from IGA no less, and exploring Shawinigan, we drove the rest of the way to Quebec on a very scenic two-lane highway. The aesthetic differences between the French Canadian countryside and here are wide and deep. Almost every house is treated as an art object. Most are painted in bright colors with many small artistic touches. Every little town has a beautiful old church.

We camped for most of the week in the Le Parc Nacional de la Jacque Cartier in a primitive little campground at the end of a rocky dirt road far from the nearest plumbing or electricity. It was paradise. We also took a couple day trips to Quebec and walked around the old city. As tourist places go, it is one of the best I have ever visited. It’s very beautiful in an old-world way. There are great looking French restaurants and sidewalk cafés, lots of art in the streets, museums, interesting shops, and a few street performers.

The only other excitement was a little white-water canoe trip we took. It was the first time Lola had ever canoed. She can’t swim and five minutes after putting the canoe in the water we were going through class III rapids. Unsurprisingly, we tipped over. All our stuff got soaked, we lost an oar and her purse, she was terrified and we were facing four more hours on the river. While she was holding onto the tipped over canoe for dear life and watching her new hat float away, I could see her thinking “never again.” But we found the oar and the purse, it turned out to be a beautiful day and we got through the rest of the rapids.

And then we spent the last night at the Ritz Charlton in Montreal. I had a lot of Marriott points from my previous job so we got it for free. It was a nice hotel, but for the most part people pay for the name. And Montreal was a let-down. It’s a nice city, but it was so much nicer to be out of the city for a week. Everything was so much better in the countryside.

We went the whole week without radio, television or newspapers and a great deal of it with no city or industrial noise. The lack of news was very refreshing. When we turned on the TV in Montreal and heard about the latest terror plots, war news, and administration idiocies it was very depressing. And since I was mostly speaking and thinking in my limited French, I wasn’t able to bother myself much with complex thought. And then hearing nothing but rapids for long stretches left my head blessedly empty of mundane thoughts of the daily grind. Thoughts of the job, the bills, the wars, the idiots floated down those rapids and away. I didn’t catch up with them till Montreal.

Scouting trip

Our son starts second grade this year, but it's never too soon to start planning for his future. Since odds are fair that by the time he graduates high school, we'll have a 2 million man army occupying the entire middle east and select environs, we want to get a jump start on finding a good place for him to dodge the draft. And hopefully we'll get some small pleasures out of the trip as well. "Mountains of Quebec" in August has a nice ring to it. I've been repeating it like a mantra all week.

So It'll be at least 10 days before I post anything again. In the meantime, I've created this little slideshow for you. My advice is to get a nice bottle of wine or two, find some appropriate music and watch it over and over again, at least 10 times. To get started, just click here.

Safety in numbers

“If it were my own child,” she said, “I would want more time for play.” -- Keisha Rattray, Kindergarten teacher.

In other education news, the New York Times reports that children in Kindergarten are no longer allowed to play.

Now, with an increased emphasis on academic achievement even in the earliest grades, playtime in kindergarten is giving way to worksheets, math drills and fill-in-the-bubble standardized tests...

The classroom has no blocks, dress-up corners or play kitchens. There is no time for show and tell, naps or recess. There is homework every night. For much of the day, the children are asked to sit quietly with their hands folded as their teachers drill them in phonics, punctuation and arithmetic.

The quote I led with from Ms. Rattray is telling. She is an education professional and that is not how she would want her children taught. Note as well that that is not how the elite private schools teach the children either. The best schools, the ones that feed the Ivy League, have plenty of time for play in the early grades and typically do not give any homework until second grade. Meanwhile the public schools are saddling children in Kindergarten with an hour of homework per night.

But I have a lot of personal experience with this issue and it is not as simple as it sounds. My son went to Kindergarten in a very challenging New York City public school and to First Grade in one of the better independent schools. In his Kindergarten class there was little, if any, time for play and he literally had one hour of homework per night. He suffered through endless phonics drills and spent a good part of his day writing, which is very difficult, and often counterproductive, for a kid that age. In First Grade at the independent school, there was no homework and a good portion of the day was spent in play. A lot of it was superbly directed play, but quite a bit was simply play.

Still, when we had to choose between the insanely rigorous curriculum in a challenging public school and a typical public school that would provide little, if any, intellectual challenge, we chose the insane curriculum. So I do not blame the parents in East New York (three words for hellhole) who opt to send their children to the rigorous academic program.

The pressure to make kindergarten more academic can be especially intense in poorer neighborhoods. Schools there, struggling to meet the demands of the federal law known as No Child Left Behind, are ratcheting up academic expectations.

“Our real mission is closing the achievement gap,” said Diahann Billings-Burford, director of external relations for Achievement First in New York.

Yes, this gap needs to be closed. The problems go much, much deeper than how the kids are taught in the public schools, but a rigorous academic program is one part of a solution that can definitely help. The elite schools have quite a bit more leeway because their kids get a lot of education at home. The kids at the poor schools more likely do not get much good education at home and often get a lot of bad education around the house. A very challenging education starting as early as possible gives them the best realistic opportunity for success. Still, by not allowing time for play, the children miss out on educational opportunities.

And while it may seem like a good thing to teach reading, writing and arithmetic as early as possible, most early childhood experts agree that play is crucial for both social and academic development.

Constructive play helps children develop social skills while laying an important foundation for reading and math, said Dominic F. Gullo, a professor of elementary and early childhood education at Queens College.

For example, he explained, children who set up a pretend post office or a restaurant in what is called a “dramatic play area” learn how to take turns, how to speak clearly to one another, and how to make up their own stories — stories that are the foundation for writing.

I do not doubt a word of that, but for it to happen in the real world, there has to be an element of order. A typical public school classroom has 27 students and one teacher. My son’s first grade classroom had 17 kids and two teachers. Maintaining a loose and productive learning environment for 8 or nine kids is doable. Maintaining it for 27 is impossible, especially when those 27 kids come from impoverished backgrounds.

Right now, today, given the educational resources available, parents and educators have to choose and I simply cannot blame those who come from impoverished neighborhoods for choosing the path of rigorous academics even at the expense of playtime.

I can, however, blame our society for not providing that necessary eight or nine to one student-to-teacher ratio in the lower grades that would allow all children to achieve the best education. As a society, we are too poor only by choice. If we cut half of the insane waste, useless weapons systems and pork barrel patronage in the military budget and put it towards smaller class sizes, we could easily achieve a much better education for many millions of children. I have no doubt, not a single one, that providing much better educations for millions of children would make us much safer as well.

The invisible almost shines

The New York times reports that art education benefits literacy skills in third graders, at least according to a study conducted with funding by the Guggenheim Museum.

Does learning about paintings and sculpture help children become better students in other areas?

A study to be released today by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum suggests that it does, citing improvements in a range of literacy skills among students who took part in a program in which the Guggenheim sends artists into schools. The study, now in its second year, interviewed hundreds of New York City third graders, some of whom had participated in the Guggenheim program, called Learning Through Art, and others who did not.

The study found that students in the program performed better in six categories of literacy and critical thinking skills — including thorough description, hypothesizing and reasoning — than did students who were not in the program. The children were assessed as they discussed a passage in a children’s book, Cynthia Kadohata’s “Kira-Kira,” and a painting by Arshile Gorky, “The Artist and His Mother.”

The Guggenheim’s program began in 1970 in response to New York City Public Schools cutting programs for the arts. It’s hard to imagine that this was a big issue in 1970 since it is still such an issue today. You’d think that there wouldn’t be anything left to cut. But I guess there’s still a little bit of blood left in that big old apple.

Of course it’s not just New York. Programs for the arts are being cut in schools all over the country in favor of additional classes in reading, writing and arithmetic. And it’s not just the visual arts, but music and even academic subjects such as science, history and social studies are being cut.

The ability to test is what distinguishes which programs are out of favor. Curriculums for art and music are all over the place, if at all. Without a national curriculum, it is impossible to even conceive of an arts or music test for fifth graders nationwide. Even with a curriculum, the competitive judging of a students art or music knowledge and skills would be so subjective as to make it worthless, if not actually harmful.

But whether a student is actually talented as an artist or a musician is not the issue. The question is whether or not an arts education is helpful to an overall education. Is it good for the brain? Most people see the answer as simple common sense. Unfortunately in this case there is no "common" sense on the subject. Some think the answer is obviously yes, others that it's obviously no. The value of an arts education is something that has proven difficult, if not impossible, to quantify.

I can tell you this from personal experience. I spent over a year researching the finest independent schools in New York City. I did a lot of reading, I spoke extensively with independent experts, I visited the schools, met with teachers and headmasters, and sat in on many classes. These schools, many of which are rated as among the best in the country; these schools that feed the Ivy league and other elite universities; these schools that are as exclusive as exclusive gets; these schools emphasize the importance of an arts education. Their arts programs are one of their strongest selling points.

The belief is that an arts education teaches skills that get to the heart of basic intelligence, especially in young children, such as sequencing, pattern recognition, and spatial reasoning. As the child progresses through the grades. the belief is that the arts provide an essential base for the understanding of our place in the world, of history, civilization, social studies, and ethics. It’s an overused example, but Guernica says more about the morality of war than most of the history books combined. Music builds complex pathways in the brain. The theatrical arts bolster confidence an public speaking. The creativity that goes into any of the arts applies to everything else in life. The best in any field, be it medicine, law, business, architecture, or whatever, are creative individuals. Learning to be creative enhances a person’s opportunities in almost any field.

That’s what the elite education establishment believes, and I think it’s safe to say that educators in general agree. But we live in a time in which metrics rule. Value must be quantified. If the numbers do not support it, then it does not exist.

So the folks at the Guggenheim give it a go. And although they report some happy results, not all is well in metric-land.

Yet the study also found that the program did not help improve students’ scores on the city’s standardized English language arts test, a result that the study’s creators said they could not fully explain. They suggested that the disparity might be related to the fact that the standardized test is written while the study’s interviews were oral.

“We purposely chose to have students talk to us instead of writing because we thought they would show language skills, not purely reading and writing skills,” said Johanna Jones, a senior associate with Randi Korn and Associates, a museum research company conducting the study over three years with a $640,000 grant from the federal Department of Education.

Does this failure of an arts education to improve results on standardized tests indicate that arts education is not as valuable as its adherents believe or does it indicate a limitation of the standardized test?

Well, I have my opinion, as do you. But what I find interesting about this study is that the people who conducted it have their opinion as well, and they do not hide it.

“We really held our breath waiting for this year’s results, and they turned out to almost exactly the same — which means that last year’s don’t seem to have been an anomaly,” she said. “That’s a big deal in this world.”

While it is unknown exactly how learning about art helps literacy skills, she said, “the hypothesis is that the use of both talking about art and using inquiry to help students tease apart the meaning of paintings helps them learn how to tease apart the meanings of texts, too. They apply those skills to reading.”

The researchers admittedly have a hypothesis and great hopes that the studies will prove them right. And as much as I, too, believe that their hypothesis is correct, I am uncomfortable with researchers cheerleading for particular results, especially when those results also match the hopes and dreams of those funding the research.

Officials at the Guggenheim said they hoped the study would give ammunition to educators in schools and museums around the country who are seeking more money and classroom time for arts education.

“Basically, this study is a major contribution to the field of art and museum education,” said Kim Kanatani, the Guggenheim’s director of education. “We think it confirms what we as museum education professionals have intuitively known but haven’t ever had the resources to prove.”

So I wouldn’t even categorize the Guggenheim’s effort as a nice try. It is an exercise in advocacy research little, if any, better than outright propaganda.

I understand that showing a link between arts education and an improvement on standardized reading tests would be a great thing, but I don’t think unapologetic advocacy research is going to do a lot to help the cause. And it’s possible that the link simply doesn’t exist. My layman’s guess would be that it would be more likely to show up on math tests than literacy.

And my layman’s advice would be to consider a different type of testing. If arts education enhances brain functioning, it should show up on a CAT scan. or whatever kind of scan shows brain activity. That’s the kind of test I’d like to see. Take brain scans of kids at the beginning of third grade. Teach one group a curriculum heavily integrated with arts, music and recreation. Teach another group today’s preferred curriculum with its heavy emphasis on preparing for standardized exams. Then let them take both brain scans and standardized tests. I’d like to see those results.

The awful fullness of life

We sat in his backyard under the trees.
He drank beer.
I opened a bottle of red wine.
That is when he said it had taken him a thousand years, a hundred lives to get to this moment, this place, this pain, this understanding.
It all made perfect sense to me.
That is what this book is about.
Getting to this place.”

Charles Bowden’s latest book A Shadow in the City: Confessions of an undercover drug warrior tells the story of a very successful undercover narcotics officer in an unnamed American city.

The story is true, or as true as these things can be. Possibly even more true. Bowden is one of the great writers of our time and he has gone far, far deeper into the drug world, the heart of which encompasses both sides of the U.S. and Mexican border, than any other writer, great or not.

This man he portrays, this undercover narcotics officer, is one of the very best at what he does. He would never open up his life to such an extent for anyone less competent than himself or someone who did not understand the world in which he operates. Bowden is the only writer on earth that could have gotten this story. No one else is that competent as a writer and as knowledgeable about the life, as they call it.

Probably the main reason that Bowden is not better known is that he is so difficult to categorize. His early books are classified as “environmental.” He was friends with Edward Abbey, he wrote a prophetic book about the loss of water resources in the southwest. That makes a certain kind of sense. But then he became something more. In Blue Desert, Desierto, Blood Orchid and Blues for Cannibals he describes the Sonoran desert, among other things, in simply incredible prose. Many pages and paragraphs are truly as good as it gets. He also works with photographers. Jauarez: the laboratory of our future showcases the work of Mexican photojournalists and tells the story of hundreds of poor, young Mexican girls who were kidnapped and murdered. Others describe beautiful places and peoples who are endangered by encroaching modernity and the destruction that accompanies it. And he is a journalist. He had unusual access to Charles Keating and wrote or co-wrote several books on the S&L scandal. His previous book, Down by the River told the true story of a DEA agent whose nephew was killed.

A Shadow in the City is journalism. It is the kind of journalism that used to be called “new.” Bowden does not just describe the man’s actions. He is inside his head, speaking the man’s thoughts.

“Here are some rules, like all rules made to be broken. never use product, that will take away the edge. never relax, that will let danger near. Never get close to anyone, that will destroy judgement. Never share information, that will cause death and ruin. Never trust, never, never, trust.

Never drink to excess, or when the moment comes that drink takes over the senses, be in a safe place. Never believe there is a safe place because that place will become a tomb.

Never hurry, no deal is ever better than the deal not done.

Never make a mistake, eyes are watching.

And enjoy the wait, savor it, cherish it, languish in it.

The wait is the test. Impatience is a tell, a clue to others, blood in the water, a signal for a feeding frenzy and destruction.

Tires whir down the night street, the wait continues, and what is your favorite book?“

Yes, this man has some issues. He lives in a world of which most of us are only dimly aware, at best.

The arc of the story concerns two major heroin deals, over half a billion dollars street value total which leads to a great number of individuals being imprisoned in three or four countries. Note that this is no way portrayed as any kind of victory. Many of the details surrounding these and other deals bring new depth to the term ”bittersweet.“

But the book is not about the deals. It is about the man and the the things he has seen, the things that haunt him. They include:

A young girl, strangled in a snuff video.

The death his young son and the resulting heartbreak that can never be fixed, and only barely tolerated.

A Jew in the concentration camps finding reasons to live in the worst of human degradations.

The sickness that comes with destroying people, especially people one comes to like, perhaps even love, and respect.

The despondency of working for a bureaucracy of losers you view as less honorable and hard working and ultimately less moral than the drug dealers whose lives you destroy.

The “innocent informants,” high school losers, wanting to be popular, conned into dealing drugs by this narc to become popular. How does it feel having targeted people like that after they commit suicide when the bust comes down and they face long prison terms?

A beautiful woman who lives only for her children. A love story that is not to be. A casual betrayal. Putting one you love in prison for life. Why? Out of habit? What kind of person does something like that? How does it feel?

These are the stories that help define a man who cannot define himself. A predator ferociously waging a war in which he does not believe, doing a job of which he is not proud and taking great pride in doing it better than everyone else.

When you sense danger, instantly move, fuck reasons, don’t sort it out, move, and if you must, kill, but for God’s sake don’t pause, don’t ponder, because you get only one serious mistake and then it’s over.

The reason for the move, the reason you act, the signal you have picked up, well, you can sort that out later. Maybe you will never understand what you sensed. That does not matter. But paying attention to this feeling, this sudden warning shout within your body, that does matter. And if this shout is loud and raw, and you bring that gun up and fire, then shoot to to kill, empty the whole fucking clip except one fucking round, don’t try any finesse, forget marksmanship. Obliterate the thing that threatens you.

He has learned that the best backup is your willingness to stab someone over and over and over, to be hyper-aggressive.“

The world of guns and murder and multi-million dollar drug deals are far outside my personal frame of reference, but in my distant youth I was involved in countless small time drug deals (for personal use only) in many countries on four continents. I understand what he says about paying attention to the feeling. I’ve had a gun pointed at my head in D.C. during the murder capital years and been threatened with a knife in several African countries without feeling the least bit of fear. Other times I was in situations in which everything seemed just fine but I felt intense fear and walked away as fast as I could. You rarely know if that kind of fear is justified when you walk away, but I’ve always trusted my instincts and my lack of fear in seemingly dangerous situations takes away any macho bullshit about cowardice. The only time I ever learned for sure was one time in Tunisia when I walked away from a deal and was immediately accosted by the police. All my experience tells me that what the narc in Bowden’s story says is true. There is such a thing as extra sensory perception and I can well believe that people in those kinds of dangerous situations better damn well pay attention to it. Like he says, so many times throughout the book that it is a mantra, "no deal is ever better than the deal not done."

But as much as the particulars of this book are about the deals, the book itself is not. It is about humanity and the struggle to hold onto it in obscenely degrading circumstances.

He remembers when his boy died, and then the bad times came and the viciousness poured out of him like lava, and the killings followed and the beatings and the sense of being numb to what he was doing but not near numb enough to what he had endured, he remembers that time and how, finally, he realized he was crossing lines, lines inside himself.

So he holed up for three days and wrote, tried to sort it out, to make some sense of the evil he felt within himself and the evil he saw around him. And the dead boy also, he tried to face that.

Maybe that is alone. Or maybe that is finally facing the awful fullness of life.

A Shadow in the City: Confessions of an undercover drug warrior is an important book. It tells a story that needs to be told and is well-written far beyond any other story of its kind. If there is a moral, it is not the one you would expect and it is neither simple nor straightforward. Take from it what you will.

Polish Beer Review

This is a new feature. For the foreseeable future I will review Polish and other eastern European beers. For the purposes of this series, Czech beers will be considered western European.

Today's beer is "Warka." According to the label it is brewed with natural ingredients and spring water. The Warka brewery is located in the Mazovia region of Poland, which is the home of some nobleman and general with a difficult name to read in the fine print. He was also a hero of the American revolution, or so they say.

The beer is typical of the lesser eastern European beers in that is is heavy and cloyingly sweet. I do not like it. I do not like it at all. I wouldn't go so far as to say it really sucks, but I am comfortable saying that it kind of sucks.

Final grade: B+.

(In order to locate C on the curve, we condsider Budwieser to average)

Late City Final

I’v been staying away from the news lately, but I picked up a New York Post off the subway on my way home. What the hell? Let’s check it out!

The front page features a large picture of Hillary Clinton in the arms of a creepy teen stalker. They are looking deeply into each others eyes, apparently about to kiss. The creep’s wife is giving him a dirty look. The picture is from 2001, long before anyone knew the guy was a stalker. The “story” is that he gave her campaign contributions. Yep, sucking up to Rupert Murdoch sure is paying off.

The other front page headline announces a major Israeli victory in their insane murder spree across Lebanon. I read the headlines and the ledes in all the major papers today, but that’s the first time I heard of a “major victory.” All of the other stories featured lines like “unexpectedly strong resistance,” “growing international outcry,” “targeting civilians,” “bombing the U.N.” or “war crimes.”

A side note mentions that Hillary’s opponent in the Democratic primary accused Israel of atrocities against Palestinians. “Accused?” Wouldn’t “noted” be the accurate way to phrase it? A Clinton advisor said it was “outrageous, deeply offensive and beyond the pale.” Not the atrocities, mind you. For Clinton and her fellow Republicans, it the honest reporting of reality that they find deeply offensive and beyond the pale. What a sick, empty shell of a woman... I didn’t even know she had an opponent in the primary. Man, I should register.

In other news a massive marlin spears a fisherman and a man bites a dog.

Then Bloomberg gets the treatment. For those of you unaware, thousands of people in Queens have been without power for about a week now and Bloomberg is defending the electric company’s management. Probably not a good P.R. move on his part. Once a CEO always a CEO and in these times catastrophic failure merits a multi-million dollar raise and stock options. Bloomberg speculates that there's a cabinet position in that guy's future.

Meanwhile, a deadbeat dad gets half the estate of the tragic girl he abandoned and Bush vows troops for Baghdad. Yep, another victory on the horizon. Once we finally capture Baghdad, the war will be over. Millions weep with joy as Bush wins again and his opponents are forced to eat their livers.

While all that’s happening, a $1M scam doc gets two to six, a slay buddy ‘fesses up, a ’family’ bust KOs a champ, a hubby and wife are caught in a city bid scam, there was a hit and run slay on 3rd avenue, a killer rips his victim’s kin and cops kill a pit bull.

In another shocking development, a perv files a lawsuit against his boss, police are hunting a midtown bank robber, a teenage girl was arrested fro stabbing another youth, a Bloods gang member was arrested after shooting a Crip, a man was arrested after dowsing a coworker with gasoline and trying to set him afire, two cousins were arrested after they attacked each other in an argument over cigarettes, two men were arrested in a double stabbing in Sunset Park, a driver was arrested after he nearly mowed down two cops, a drug addled driver was arrested after he struck a police officer and a ‘rape’ teen flipped, resulting in freedom for the guy she wrongly accused.

Turning the page, there was a bloody rumble in the ramble, weight doomed a tourists’ boat, a creepy obsession was the motive in a slaying, CUNY faces a bias probe, a slay nightclub lost its license, a gang in N.J. was taken down, there was a gay-tryst murder in Chelsea, banking bigs were caught in a check-cash rap, a Bronx tot choked to death on a pill, peaceniks, it turns out, are lethal, U.S. ‘allies’ back terror, Kofi blames the victim, a goat and an adding machine were used in the ritual of a western sect and a topless dancer likes decorating her home with body parts. She had six human skulls and a human hand she called “Freddy.”

I wonder what’s on tv?

Dick in the Observer

Andrew Sarris writes a review of Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly in today’s New York Observer. You may recall that chuckling made a few comments on the same move a few weeks ago.

Sarris, as you will find if you click on the link above, is a god among movie reviewers. I very much enjoy reading him, but only if I do not plan to see the movie. Like all of the top reviewers, he gives away too much of the plot. The practice of regurgitating the plot is so widespread, I suspect that it is a requirement to get a review published. I guess most people will not continue to read a critic if they did not find out what happens in the movie, and they certainly wouldn’t want to see anything that they couldn’t prejudge based on a plot synopsis. Like, The Godfather, is like, a movie about gangsters, you know, and I don’t like movies about gangsters, but A Scanner Darkly is a movie about drugs, and I like drugs, so I wanna see that.

The mobilization of fate

I’ve gotten an unusual amount of feedback on the tornado photo and the post below. Several friends have wondered why I didn’t mosey on up the road to photograph the mobile home park. After all, I am not a Christian fundamentalist asshole who would exploit the tragedy simply to reel in a few more suckers to fill up the pews and, more importantly, the collection plate. Any work I did would be valid journalism at the very least, and maybe art if I had a good day.

That’s the thing though. In that kind of scene, a good day would most likely be pictures of people grieving, or poignant artifacts of trailer park lives strewn among the devastation. I am capable of that kind of thing. I can stick a camera in the face of someone who doesn’t want to be photographed, or take pictures of the pathetic remnants of their lives, but I have to think it’s worthwhile. In this case, I simple didn’t think it was worthwhile. The event was several days past and it was extremely unlikely that I would get anything that hadn’t been gotten a thousand times before. Over twenty people died. Many lives were ruined. It was not a good day.

And I didn’t give it a lot of thought at the time, but now that I’m looking at the pictures and writing about it, I am content to communicate the message of the trees. These forests were healthy. I’ve seen a lot of tornado damage in my time. That was some fucking tornado. Any little tornado can rip up a trailer park, but you don’t see too many that decimate a healthy stand of trees like that. No, you don’t.

The picture above is a bit more stylized, or if you want to be technical “way over-exposed.” I only offer it as an alternative view.

The neighbor of indifference

I was going through some of my photos from last year that I had half forgotten. It was Thanksgiving week and I was visiting family. In most ways, it is a very bad place, but on the positive side I can work on two of my ongoing photo projects while I’m there -- power plants and ancient Indian sites. There are hardly any patches of land back there where a power plant is not visible in the distance and major pre-columbian sites are all over the place. I’ve seen artifacts from within miles of my family’s properties in museums from Seattle to Brooklyn. The Smithsonian Indian museum currently has a two pots from there on display. Of course very few people back there other than relic hunters (that’s the polite term for grave robbers) know anything about it. Nothing is taught in the schools and there are no historical markers.

From a few spots I can frame Indian mounds in the foreground and a power plant in the background. But that kind of shot, unfortunately, is only interesting to me, and then only intellectually. Aesthetically I have yet to capture what I know about the scene with the camera. That’s not always the case at the ancient sites. Sometimes there is a palpable aura that remains manifest in the photograph even though there’s no outward clue, but not there, at least not on that day.

Anyway, this is not about power plants or ancient Indian sites. That morning I came across several isolated patches of forest that had been severely damaged by tornados that had passed through several nights before. So I snapped a few tourist-ish pictures of the damaged trees like the one above. About ten miles from there, one tornado had touched down in the obligatory trailer park and killed over twenty people.

At dinner that night my brother-in-law wanted to show us a movie he had helped make for his church. Bill is one of those salt of the earth types. He is a man of few words, a high school graduate who works low skilled blue collar jobs. He is currently driving a fork truck. Unlike most people of his class back there, he doesn’t drink, smoke, or shoot meth, He is hardworking and trustworthy and I’ve no doubt he’ll eventually manage a warehouse or small factory. He is a volunteer fireman, the type of guy you can count on him to help a stranger fix a flat or a friend or family member move or paint the house. He is a very active member of a fundamentalist Baptist church. It’s not quite a mega-church, but is moving in that direction.

So, being a movie buff as well as a student of human nature, I was interested to see this DVD. It was a record of the devastation in the trailer park. It started with scenes taken from a circling helicopter and then focused on the twisted metal and scattered debris and the people doing their best to salvage what they could. It also included interviews with government workers, Christian groups and other volunteers who were there to help. The soundtrack was an upbeat Christian pop song with a message of hope. The point seemed to be that God was good and merciful because people were helping the survivors.

I was very surprised by the quality of the work. It was professional. Not Hollywood professional or even the late local news, but it was technically in the realm of corporate videos. It was clear that the people working the cameras and doing the editing had some training.

And they did have some training. I learned that there is a movement within the fundamentalist churches to train their members in the video arts in order to take advantage of events such as the tornado to entertain the flock and bring in new members. His church had a little studio with lighting, several cameras and a couple editing stations and offered classes to members.

I found the video to be disgusting and ultimately scary. I think a lot about photojournalistic ethics and can argue many situations either way, but this was outright exploitation. Over twenty people were killed and over a hundred homes were destroyed or severely damaged. I can see filming that from a photojournalistic perspective. I can see filming it from an artistic motivation. Hell, I can even understand people snapping tourist pictures of the devastation. But to use it for a propaganda film, and one that extols God’s mercy at that, is just sickening. The fact that these people are acquiring sophisticated tools and techniques to create more effective propaganda is very disturbing.

A distant and surrounded place

I'm going on vacation in a couple of weeks. Every year I spend a week in early August in the Catskills. Taking the week off was one of the conditions of accepting the offer for the new job. That's how much it means to me. Not that I wouldn't have canceled the vacation and took the job, but I was willing to bluff.

Since my days in Arizona, I find it necessary to spend at least a week every year lolling under cold waterfalls on sweltering hot days. Back then, i.e. in the good old days, I only had to drive a couple miles to find waterfall paradise. Here it takes a couple hours and is complicted by the fact that I don't have a car. Still, I insist on once a year, minimum.

People who have never been to New York would likely be shocked by the incredible natural beauty that is so close to the city. A two hour drive to the Catskills will take you to scenery that is the equal to jut about anything out west.

I started exploring the Catskills because I became interested in the painters of what came to be known as the Hudson River School. These include Thomas Cole and Frederic Church, among others.

In one of those “victim of a series of accident” sequences, I became interested in the Catskills because of avant-guarde accordion music. One night I was trolling the radio channels and came across this incredible music on the classical station. I thought it was some kind of bizarre quartet, possibly playing music from the middle ages or something, never in a million years would I have guessed that it was one guy playing an accordion. But it was Guy Klucevsek and, coincidentally, he was playing at The Kitchen the following night.

So I went to the show. It was great, but that’s neither here nor there. The important part is that one of the segments featured the painting “The Heart of the Andes” by Frederic Church, which is a very interesting painting on several levels.

Anyway, even though “Andes” wasn’t set in the Catskills, I looked into Church and found that he was part of the Hudson River School, which led me to Cole and the other Painters and ultimately to the Catskills, where I have camped, hiked, and spent many good hours under cold waterfalls on hot days for the last three years.

I have yet to do any serious photography there, but perhaps this year. Since the kids are abroad and my wife would rather have her toenails ripped out than camp for a week, I will be alone, so I will be able to get up before dawn and hike up a mountain to get the early morning light.

But I have taken a few tourist pictures over the years. I don’t have the time or motivation to make a "best of" presentation right now, but if you are interested, here is last summer’s little slide show I put together for the family.

Parrots drunk on impalpable words...

I'm sick of reading and writing about insanity and murder tonight; the new job is just plain bizarre, the 16 part philosophical treatise on Studio Ghibli is stalled, I still can't bring myself to finsih the Mermaid Day video, so I revisited an ongoing project that had kind of slipped off my radar.

For several years I've been photographing power plants and oil refineries. Given my propensity to spout about politics and history of writing for environmentalist publications, you'd think I'm trying to make a stupifyingly obvious political statement with these photos, but strangely enough, that's not the case. I genuinely find these things beautiful. Perhaps there's something deeply buried in the human psyche, part of our collective unconscious, that finds billowing clouds of smoke beautiful.

Anyway, I've had a few adventures during this project. Security has tightened quite a bit since 9/11. Sometimes, considerably after it's too late, I realize that I am trespassing. It takes awhile for the meaning of those ubiquitous no trespassing signs to sink in, and by that time I have my photos. I am slow to comprehend. What can I do?

And it's not unusual to be confronted by rednecks asking why I am taking picture of power plants. It doesn't help that I usually have New York plates. Most of these places are so deep in Redstateistan that regular people consider it a toss up between who is worse -- Al Quaeda or New York. But even when I borrow a local car, I'm usually confronted by some suspicious types, especially when I'm parked outside of their houses taking pictures of the power plant that dwarfs them, or standing in their yards.

But I am honest and honesty is usually disarming. These things are beautiful, I tell them. and it's beauty that I'm looking for. The typical answer is that I wouldn't find it so beautiful if the fucking power plant was sitting in my back yard, smothering my house with pollution. And I've heard a few stories about eminent domain abuses that would make you shake your head, but still, I separate the beauty from it's consequences and am pretty sure that if I lived there I would spend the evenings of my shortened life rocking back and forth on the porch swing, awestruck at the giant clouds billowing majestically into the sky while I contentedly sucked in carcinigens that would kill me before my time. Honestly, if I lived in such a place I'd probably have a joint in one hand, a whiskey in the other, and a cigarette or two burning in the ashtray. It would be a mad race among the poisons and carcinigens to take my life.

Anyway, if you want to see a larger image if this particular example, you can find it here.

It is a reeling world indeed...

I saw Hilary Clinton on the late local news last night and she was truly a sad sight. The Senator had the resolute leader resolutely calling for other people’s death and destruction act totally mastered. She reminded me of Mr. Pitt giving that speech with the Hitler mustache on Seinfeld. Had she started stomping and chanting “Israel über alles” it would have been totally within the spirit of the moment.

What a hollow soulless woman she appears to have become. This is understandable on a number of levels. Probably the best reference I have read on the subject is Mario Vargas Llosa’s book A Fish in the Water, his memoir of running for the president of Peru. In it he talks about how politicians may actually have lofty ideals when they begin, but once the campaign is underway everything is unrelenting and often insane day-to-day strategy.

Hilary has been involved in that unrelenting and insane day-to-day, often hour-to-hour strategy for how long now? At least since 1990 and she’s bore far more of the worst aspects of the spectacle than probably anyone else in American politics. No one, not Al Gore, not John Kerry, not Michael Moore, none of the whining pansies on the right like George W. Bush, not even Bill “fucking” Clinton has been hit by half the shit that’s been thrown at Hilary.

Yes, she has grown some serious armor, no question about it, but it seems to have cost her whatever used to be inside. After seeing that performance, I realized that she could very well be our next president. The combination of naked ambition and demented hatred she projects should be very appealing to the right wing nutzoids. Note that she is spending a lot of time lately with Rupert Murdoch. The road is being paved. If only she could get rid of Bill, she’d be a shoe in. Don’t be surprised if he has some weird mishap where he slips in the bathtub while playing with an ice pick, or something like that. Al Gore might want to watch his back as well.

And that’s too bad. I used to genuinely like Hilary. Although she failed, she genuinely did care about health care and tried harder than just about anyone else to do something about it. And “It takes a village, to raise a child” is a blueprint for a better society as well as a nice sentiment. But unfortunately, the wacko I saw on television last night would more likely write something more along the lines of “It takes a lot of missiles to kill a lot of children, let’s make more missiles.”

The idea of her as president is genuinely scary.

150,785 over par, but who's keeping score?

I find it odd that three days into Israel’s insane rampage of death and destruction, no one seems to have noted that it represents another catastrophic failure on George Bush’s resume. Whether it proves to be as colossal as 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, the economy, the rule-of-law, etc., remains to be seen, but in comparison to any normal president, or sentient being for that matter, his performance is miserable.

Of course we can excuse the mainstream media since they cannot be expected to seriously analyze things they don’t see staring at them in the mirror; and we know the (so-called) Democrats will be unable to get themselves up off the porch to say anything beyond “step on me(again)"; but I am a bit surprised the liberal blogosphere is so slow to comment on the obvious. Have we just become so accustomed to Bush’s catastrophic failures that they no longer merit comment?

And I don’t read every word, so maybe I missed it, but as far as I can tell a very important question has gone unasked: What, if anything, did the Israelis tell us before going on their insane murder spree? Do they no longer respect Bush enough to brief him before invading other countries? Did Bush o.k. it? Did the information even get to Bush or was the okay given further down the chain of command? Does anyone in our government have an ounce of sense?

If we were not a one party state, I would seriously ask if it Is it possible to impeach someone for sheer incompetence, or bettery yet, the entire execuive branch, but why bother? Give them another Mulligan and tell them how great they are. That’s the ticket.

E pluribus cruor

Of all the possible issues to write about in the world, current Israeli politics is the last subject about which I would ever want to comment. Seriously, the very last. I’d rather comment on anything else. American Idol, Paris Hilton, you name it.

And it’s not that I necessarily shy away from Israel-related subjects. I’d be happy to comment on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish history circa the first century, Old Testament studies, or the beauty of the B’nai B’rith architecture in Haifa until dawn spreads her rosy fingers, but contemporary stuff – who needs the aggravation?

But the current Israeli government, and by extension our own, has gone so completely fucking insane, I just can’t stop myself. Consider this:

A Lebanese civilian convoy was hit near the coastal town of Tyre after fleeing the border village of Marwaheen, resulting in 16 deaths. The Israeli military said the area was a target because Hezbollah had used it to launch missiles, and regretted any civilian casualties. It was the deadliest single attack in the past four days of fighting.

The villagers left after the Israeli military told them to evacuate over a loudspeaker, Reuters reported.

Seriously, is there anybody on the planet that is stupid enough to believe that this sort of wanton murder will result in a lasting peace and prosperity? Of course not. This is not about peace. This is not about democracy. And it is certainly not about justice. It is murder. And let’s face the harshest fact of all: It’s not even about revenge. It is murder. Mass murder. That’s all the right wing nut-cases in Israel and the United states have left. After so much killing has resulted only in so much more animosity and armed opposition – so much more murder, so much more mass murder – the only logical explanation for their actions is that they like committing murder. Murder is what they want. Murder is what they do. And murder is what we get in return. It will only get worse.

The ball is in our court. We are the ones with the power. It is we who have to stop the cycle of murder. When people commit murder, no matter where they are from, they need to be caught, tried, and imprisoned. Our current policy of murdering those other murderers' wives, their children, their neighbors and total strangers who live in the same geographical area as the murderers is not only doomed to catastrophic failure, it is horribly immoral. Ours is the preferred policy of the worst regimes since the beginning of human history. And if we do not renounce our murderous ways before it is too late, we will suffer the same fate. As some wag noted a few years ago, that's the future, babe, it is murder.

A meticulous tableau wracked with internal and external pressures

Last night I watched The Twilight Samurai, a Japanese film that was nominated for an academy award in 2004. I was genuinely shocked by the quality of this movie. The story is superbly-crafted. Not a single element, and there are many, is clichéd and almost nothing happens as you would expect, yet the plot and the actions of the characters ring emotionally true in every scene. The use of foreshadowing is genuinely marvelous. A few of the major plot elements you can see coming. Others fit so naturally into the action that their eventual revelation is incredibly satisfying.

Visually, it is well-done but not overwhelming in its beauty. Most shots are framed conventionally, but that serves to showcase the several instances of incredibly dramatic cinematography.

The acting is excellent. Hiroyuki Sanada plays the title character and is in almost every frame. His performance is nuanced and multi-dimentional as it has to be to pull off the story. His interactions, and lack of interactions, with his daughters demonstrate rare acting skills that place him, for this performance at least, among the top practitioners of the craft.

But it all comes backs to the story. These days it is practically impossible to tell a story that is entirely original, particularly if it is an historical drama. The story of The Twilight Samurai has plot elements that are found in other movies. What sets the story so far apart from the cinematic norm is its nearly flawless construction (I’d like to drop the “nearly” but am sure I could find something to criticize if I watched it again).

I don’t like to describe much, if anything about a movie’s plot details and generally don’t like even giving the 40,000 foot view. A simple recitation of Twilight's plot elements that you will read in any mainstream review will make the movie sound boring. Yet the story has depth far beyond its superficial description and its cinematic execution by the director, cinematographer and actors makes it great art.

Yet I know, audiences demand it, so I will say this (*If you don’t want any information about the plot, stop reading now*). The film shares many conventions with the classic American western. A lone man struggles to survive in a society that is far more concerned with codes-of-honor than rule-of-law. The man is a Samurai, a fighter, who does not want to fight. He may or may not eventually fight. Until the actual denouement, the question remains. The action takes place at the end of an era, depicting the last gasps of a way-of-life that will soon be wiped out by advanced in military technology. Although it shares some of the characteristics of the western genre, The Twilight Samurai is not a victim of them. It is simply a great story well-told.

The title of this post, which comes from a review by Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times, is an excellent description of the film. If there is any chance you will see the movie, I recommend you do not read Mitchell’s review (for the reasons stated above), but if you must, you can find it here.

I scream helps the hurt

I was saddened to read an embarrassingly bad article by Colson Whitehead in the New York Times Sunday Magazine today. Although his recent novel Apex Hides the Hurt received some lukewarm reviews, I never suspected someone with his talent could fall so far so fast.

Mine is the story of a man who hates ice cream and of the world that made him.

I was once like you, always quick with a “Two scoops, please” and a “Whipped cream, damn it, whipped cream!” I loved a Breyers vanilla-chocolate-strawberry rectangle straight from the freezer. Never mind if it was a bit long in the tooth, nestled in there next to a half-empty bag of carrots-and-peas medley — scrape off the icy fur and it was good to go. Orange sherbet? Cool. In Baskin-Robbins, I used pure will power to persuade the red digital lights of the Now Serving machine to announce my number, which was a sweat-smudged blob on the pink paper strip in my quivering hand.

That reads like something a high school girl would write for the school newspaper.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so critical? It’s not easy to make a living as a serious writer, especially in New York. If the New York Times Sunday Magazine wanted me to write a cutesy article about ice cream, teddy bears, bobby sox, or whatever, I’d ask “how cutesy do you want it, ma’am?” as I bowed and scraped. But unlike chuckling, Whitehead has a position to defend. He is a novelist who everyone agrees has a lot of promise. He should do better.

Back when Christianity was halfway cool

One of the great things about New York, or the trendier parts of Brooklyn anyway, is that you can find just about any book that’s ever been printed for 50 cents or a dollar at a stoop sale. Today I picked up a beautiful leather bound collectors edition of The Confessions of Saint Augustine for a buck in Red Hook. I’ve only read a few pages of the introduction but thought I would share this little piece of knowledge about the early Christians that is not widely discussed today.

Back in Augustine’s time (early 400’s) Christians were generally not baptized into the faith until they were in their mid-thirties or so. It was taken for granted that young men were too horny to be proper Christians . Augustine kept a concubine who bore him a child, but marriage to such a person of low social stature was, of course, out of the question. Although some may be shocked at such apparent hypocrisy, it’s really just another example of the more things change the more they stay the same. No one expects Rush Limbaugh to marry any of the whore’s he fucks on his Viagra-fueled sex vacations to third world countries. That doesn’t make him any less of a saint, at least to his followers.

Augustine later repudiated his early indiscretions and claimed to be celibate, so that made it all okay and he was eventually canonized. Knowing what we know now, it’s probably safe to infer that “celibate” was synonymous with either “impotent,” or more likely “only wanted to have sex with young boys.” He is, after all, one of the most influential personages in the Catholic faith.

Fuck a bunch of silly words

Chuckling doesn’t feel like writing tonight. It’s been a long day with many words done gone.

Just look.