Merry/Happy/Peaceful

Hanukkah/Christmas/Kwanzaa/Solstice/
--
Steve Glines
ISCSPress.com
145 Foster Street
Littleton MA 01460

Review of Jennifer Eagen’s “A visit from the Goon Squad”

I didn't like it. There is something about the last few Pulitzer winners that I haven't liked. I read the books and think, "how the hell did this ever get published?" Such is the case of A visit from the Goon Squad where we learn the story of an aging pop music promoter and his entourage but each chapter takes place somewhere different in time. We bounce forward, backward but when the disjointed chapters are brought together there is isn't much of a story.

The only book I can compare it with stylistically is Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. The book is written almost as a stream of consciousness with independent scenes that do nothing for the story. Faulkner at least started in the present and flashed back. Egan starts somewhere near the present and flashes back to high school and forward to some science fiction future where everyone talks like a text message and eschews tattoos.

While here isn't much of a story as conventional novels go I will admit to enjoying the almost flawless narrative. This is a literary novel. I would love to know the chain of events that lead to its being published.

I'll be at "The Writers Confrence at Hunter College" June 4th

Writers' Conference and Intensives The Writers’ Conference, now at Hunter College, is widely considered one of the finest fiction and non-fiction conferences. In addition to keynote speakers Nelson DeMille and Walter Mosley, the Writers’ Conference will feature twelve panels with a total of seventy distinguished writers, editors, publicists and literary agents promoting hope for the new age of publishing. Meg Wolitzer, Betsey Lerner, and Bruce Friedman will be conducting intensive workshops in the days leading up to the conference. 

http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/ce/the-writing-center/writers-conference-and-intensives

What's next?

For the past two years and then some I have been writing a novel which is why the number of blog entries here have been few and far between. It takes a lot of mental energy and concentration to write a novel. Over that period I have not written a single poem and only one or two short stories that popped up spontaneously. This novel was long overdue. Poplar Hill, this particular novel started out as a chronicle the life of my mother and her family. They were an American aristocratic family. There aren’t many of them left and they have mostly been replaced by the gouache vulgarity of the Donald Trumps of the world. 

I abandoned the first attempt at writing this story when it became apparent that the main character was not going to be Kitty Stevenson but her nanny Bessie MacDermot. I am tempted to make Bessie’s story the second in a series. Bessie’s real story is that my grandparents, as was the custom, made a pass through the orphanages of Ireland searching for intelligent children about to be cast off into the wild at age 12 but willing, grateful even, to be offered a life of service.  Bessie, at age 11 plus was whisked away from the orphanage she grew up in and sent to New York where she was trained to become a nanny. The book is written from the perspective of the 104 year old Bessie living alone in a nursing home in Florida having outlived all the children of those she served. It wasn’t the story I wanted to write then so I stopped writing it.

The second attempt clicked. Here is the briefest possible synopsis:

Poplar Hill is in the middle of the biggest ice storm in a century and Kitty Stevenson is having a heart attack. Her friends and neighbors mount an effort to save her. As she winds her way through the medical system, Kitty decides that as long as she has a story to tell she won’t die, so she tells her life’s story to Barb Barb is Kitty’s closest friend, confident and ultimately caretaker. Kitty came from a wealthy New York family. When Kitty was six she was put in an austere French convent school. During the Depression Kitty was told to leave the convent and find her own way home. After high school Kitty went to Germany to study opera and spend the money her father had invested there after World War One. Hitler had blocked the Mark. Since Kitty couldn’t take the money out of Germany she spent it. She lived the Cabaret lifestyle, she was Sally Bowles but with money. She photographed the Dachau concentration, shook Neville Chamberlains hand and met Hitler face to face on the eve of “Kristallnacht.” When thugs broke the windows of Jewish shops, she took in and protected her Jewish neighbors. As one crisis followed another, she found herself on a Jewish refugee boat heading to Palestine, in a Swiss chalet and on a train to Vienna during the Austrian Anschluss. She escaped Germany, just days before Hitler invaded Poland, arriving in New York on a German ship that had been ordered back to Germany by Hitler. Kitty’s quick thinking convinced the ship’s Captain to continue on to New York.

Of two dozen literary agents only one has sniffed at it and asked to see more, many have dismissed the proposal with a curt form email while the majority are as yet silent.  The literary ecosystem is badly broken but that’s not a windmill I’m going to spend much energy tilting at, at least not today.

So the story of Kitty Stevenson is largely done. While I wait impatiently for my readers to tell me where I need to polish I am confident that it won’t need a major overhaul. So while there is still work to be done on Poplar Hill my mind is wandering elsewhere. It wonders indecisively examining all the projects I’ve started and abandoned or simply outlined. As I said before Bessie MacDermot is high on the list.

The idea that I think I will do next is Tale of the Dragon. If Poplar Hill is based on the life of Kitty Stevenson Glines, then Tale of the Dragon is based on the journal of my father, E. Stanley Glines as he worked in China in 1920 – 1935. Think of a more sedate American version of Harry Flashman showing up at every major event in the history of modern china. He lived the life in 1920 Shanghai, shot his way out of a train robbery on his way to Peking, discovered that he was an unwitting gun smuggler and ran for his life as Cossack army bore down on Ulin Bator in Outer Mongolia. It’s the wild, wild west but in China. Sun Yet Sen, Mao Tse Dung and other characters wander through this work of near baroque art.

Also on the list and the nearest to completion in terms of words written (about 25,000) is War Stories. War Stories takes place in a run down bar in Watertown Massachusetts. The narrator is the bartender who listens to two old veterans and a civilian tell war stories. Most of the stories revolve around a vet who is never present but is the former roommate of the only civilian in the crowd. The story is fashioned after The Waves by Virginia Woolf, which has five characters and a very present, yet absent, sixth character around which the conversation revolves. In War Stories Jack and Peter Grimsey start out as roommates right after Jack returns from Vietnam. Jack and Peter both love sailing so they buy a sailboat together and there the problems begin. Jack is always almost sinking their boat and has adopted a fatalistic approach to life. The other two Vets are an old Navy Chief who served during Korea and the other, the owner of the bar is a ROTC marine Captain who spent the Vietnam War as an embassy guard. They have their stories to tell but none compare to the stories of Jack who lives to talk about it, he has 5 purple hearts, a bronze star, a silver star and is nominated for a Congressional Medal of Honor and is also charged with attempted murder of an officer and escapes Vietnam by blowing opium smoke in the face of an Air Force colonel.  

War Stories is a must finish book but it’s not the next one I want to work on, I have three more. The first novel I started changed names many times but the last title was “A brief history of Avalon.” Avalon for short, is about the history of Newfoundland after Québec succeeds from Canada and the United States breaks up and balkanizes after defaulting on its debt. Obviously this story takes place in the not too distant future. Québec is determined to not only become a major force in North America but to reclaim the lost French territories in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. France having become an international superpower after taking over the EU intends to join with Québec in reclaiming dominance over North America. Only Newfoundland can stop this from happening and Johnny D., an expatriate American history buff and engineer, is called on to defeat a French juggernaut. Since novels take on a life of their own once you start to write them I had to quit when I wrote myself into a corner where Johnny D had to be killed. I think I have more discipline now and can control the story. 

The next idea is the one I’m most passionate about, besides Bessie, and the least developed idea is Jury Duty. Jury Duty is based on my experiences with the U.S. Judicial system. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been in any serious trouble but I’ve made it a point to watch how a trial went and how my petty dealings with the court system unfolded. I’m not encouraged. Petty corruption is rife and when I was called to jury duty for a murder trial I let loose my thoughts on the presiding judge. He was not amused and threatened me with contempt. I dared him to hold a juror in contempt when all I did was truthfully answer his questions. I told him I had seen cops blatantly lie on the stand, prosecutors knowingly make false statements and defendants’ attorneys so incompetent Perry Mason, or the actor who played him could have done better. I told him that a tie goes to the runner and to convict there could not be the slightest shadow of a doubt in my mind regardless of his instructions. When he objected I reminded him of the principle of Jury Nullification. That’s when he got mad. The tenor of the novel would be that of Twelve Angry Men but aimed at the system instead. I need to develop an outline and plot.

Finally, I have a Creative Non-Fiction project started years ago but abandoned when I realized how much research it would take. I spent about 2 years developing this project complete with a detailed list of items I needed to research: The Arc Effect.

What if the lost Ark of the Covenant of Israel were real? What if how it worked could be demonstrated? What if it could be shown to exist today, hidden in a church in Africa? What if the lost Ark of the Covenant were just the tip of the technological Iceberg?

In 1990, Graham Hancock published a book titled “The Sign and the Seal.” He detailed, via literary evidence, the travels of the Ark of the Covenant from its creation on Mt. Sinai through its disappearance and subsequent possible travel to Ethiopia. There is also just enough evidence in the literature to deduce how the Ark may have worked. If I am right I can not only recreate the effects of the Ark I can also confirm if the Ark is indeed in Axum Ethiopia as Hancock suggests.

Chapter 1 - The Nature of Insight

Chapter 2 - The Tablets of Moses - The literary effects of the tablets of Moses are illuminated, as are the effects of radiation. They are shown to be identical.

Chapter 3 - The Design of the Ark - The literary design of the Ark is discussed, as is the design of the cloths and accouterments that accompany the Ark. It is shown that the Ark displays a different set of attributes from the tablets themselves. The origins of the ark and the history of its behavior and migrations.

Chapter 4 - The Enigma of the Ark - The problem of reconciling two different phenomena is discussed and a solution proposed. Historic precedent is shown.  A verity of cause and effects are looked at and rejected. The Ark with the tablets enclosed display the attributes of a highly charged body. The effects of the Ark are can best be described as St. Elmo's fire.

Chapter 5 - The Ark Effect - The mechanics of the Van De Graff generator are shown. The mechanics of radiation induced charge is documented and shown and a theory of how the ark worked is displayed.

Part II - History Reconsidered

Chapter 6 - The Challenge - The accepted view of the History of Science is presented.

Chapter 7 - History Reconsidered - Evidence that the accepted history of science is wrong.

Part III - History Reconstructed

Chapter 8 - The Egyptian Scientist - Imenhetop and the gods of Khnum.

Chapter 9 - The Ancient Scribe - It is shown that there are ample literary allusions to radioactive substances.

Chapter 10 - The Travels of Moses - Placing Moses in the right place at the right time; means motive and opportunity

Part IV - The Philosophers Stone

Chapter 11 - Finding the Right Stuff - Geological explorations in Sinai and Egypt

Chapter 12 - Modern Alchemy - The simple chemistry of turning ore into the tablets of Moses

Chapter 13 - The Ark of the Covenant - Building a modern prototype

Part IV - The Quest

Chapter 14 - The Search for the Lost Ark of the Covenant, a trip to Axum

Allegedly perpetrating a crime

It was the third time this week the reporter had stood in the middle of the street to report a bank robbery by saying, “The alleged perpetrator exited the building, hopped in a getaway car and took off at a high rate of speed and is still at large.” The first time I heard this I laughed. This was a professional reporter whose eloquence is supposed to set an example. Where did this guy learn his English? By the third time he said this I called the station to complain. There must be hundreds of English teachers cringing every time they turn on the news and listen to a reporter trying to sound as tough (and as stupid) as the first cop on the scene. “The alleged perpetrator of the crime,” he said. Is he really questioning the commission of a crime? According to Merriam-Webster word alleged means “said without proof, to have taken place.” He could have just said, “After robbing the bank the perpetrator hopped in a car and left the scene.” Not as dramatic but more accurate if you actually believe the cops that someone robbed the bank.

Why did the perpetrator have to take off at a “high rate of speed?” Allow me to parse this abomination. Speed is already a rate as measured in miles per hour, inches per second, etc. So a high rate of speed should mean that the speed is changing quickly. Isn’t that called acceleration? The reporter could have said: “The robber ran out of the bank, hopped in his getaway car and got away leaving a trail of burning rubber in his wake.”

He could have said that but then he would have sounded smarter than the cop he interviewed.

Understanding Libya

Everything I know about Libya I know second hand from an ex-pat petroleum engineer who lived in Libya for almost 20 years. This is what he tells me:

The Libyans are considered to be the hillbillies of the Arab world; in general the Libyans aren’t well educated, they still live in a tribal culture and generally behave like spoiled children when traveling abroad in other Arab countries. They are not well liked. What is well liked is Libyan money and they have a lot of it. So much that it attracted petroleum engineers from around the world more than willing to violate their own government’s embargoes to go work there. A Texan once said, “Oh yeah, the US government is going to tell me where I can and can’t work. Right! Can they tell me where I’m going to find a job in Dallas? No!”

There is no native Middle Class in Libya. The professional classes are imported from other Arab countries as guest workers or are members of the now permanent Palestinian Diaspora. It’s these last that form the bulk of the Libyan professional infrastructure. Having no place to go home to so these Palestinians have taken root in Libya and form the bulk of middle management in both industry and the Libyan military. Indeed while the majority of the officers in the Libyan army are members of the tribes loyal to Kaddafi it is also true that the bulk of the non-commissioned officer ranks, the sergeants, are well trained and disciplined Palestinian mercenaries. Their loyalties are clear; their well being is, for the present, tied to Kaddafi. Change that and you change the outcome of the civil war in Libya.

When the revolt began there were reports of large numbers of military units defecting to the opposition only to turn into the undisciplined rabble being reported in the media today. There should be little wonder why this happened when most of the officers as well as all the NCO up and left leaving a hollow core of undisciplined recruits.

So why hasn’t Kaddafi crushed the revolt? I suspect the revolution is as much a palace revolt as it is a genuine uprising and Kaddafi is reluctant to let any large army assemble so he is content, for the moment, to use his mostly mercenary air force on obvious targets while allowing small units of his Army to prove their loyalty by local butchery. If I’m right then Libya will descend into the kind of lawless chaos we see in Somalia. I think one of Kaddafi’s sons said as much.

China Goes to Nixon

I love reading this series. It reminds me of the thesis I would have written if I hadn’t run out of money (Oh the irony). This is why the current slump we’re I isn’t a normal business cycle:

A “normal” business cycle is relatively simple; it’s a swing between short term inventory and employment. When the supply of goods is low (relative to demand) then the demand for workers to create those goods goes up and with that wages and prices and demand. This pushes both inflation and inventory until inventory is appropriate for demand at which point excess labor is shed and the house of cards tumbles only to be regenerated as inventories shrink to below a minimal demand. This is the “normal” five to seven year business cycle. On a Swan diagram it looks like a circle over time.

He key to the business cycle is short term (consumable) inventory. One can go on forever (and some do) about what consumable inventory means from a business cycle perspective but the average Joe knows, it’s what he finds at the average store in the mall, stuff you buy that has a short lifespan.

That’s not the end of the story. Simon Kuznetz discovered that the economy also had a periodic cycle of about 20 years superimposed on the business cycle. Kuznetz suggested that his cycle revolved around the construction industry. Jay Forrester suggested that by substituting durable goods (washing machines, refrigerators, industrial stoves, etc., items with a lifetime over 10 years) for consumable inventory in a business cycle model a Kuznetz cycle would be the natural outcome. This might suggest that the housing bubble is the high inventory, low employment segment of a Kuznetz business cycle and it might be true but the story still doesn’t end there.

In the 1920’s Nikolai Kondratiev published a paper arguing for longer, fifty year, business cycles, the so called Kondratiev wave. When Forrester substituted Capital Goods (Hoover dams, houses) for durable goods in the same models he used for the business cycle a forty to seventy year cycle emerged. Kondratiev himself was able to show cycles going back into the late eighteenth century and Vilfredo Pareto showed (a bit before Kondratiev) that there were long wave cycles going well into the middle ages (known then as Goldsmith Crisises) and hints of the same in Roman times.

The Goldsmith Crisises were characterized by enormous unpayable debts and equally enormous paper wealth. Few people realize that in an age that accepted only species currency (gold) that a goldsmith could create fiat money by issuing promissory notes. Imagine an era when a peasant wants to borrow money to hire laborers to dig a well so he can irrigate his fields. He promises to pay the loan back from the increased production from his fields. Soon everyone of his neighbors do the same but the increased production drives prices down so no one can repay the debt. Substitute your favorite Capital Good here and you see what is happening today.

There are hints this may phenomenon may have been well understood by the ancients who had data running over multiple millennia rather than just a few centuries. The Bible tells of the Jubilee cycle, a roughly 50 year cycle at the end of which all debts are forgiven. One suspects forgiving debts was the obvious solution to what amounted to mass bankruptcy. There is also the dictate to let slaves go after 7 years and to let the ground lie fallow for a year. That would institutionally get rid of excess inventory and avert the typical business cycle.

However that’s a digression. Economics ultimately is a psychological endeavor, how people respond to economic conditions and perceived trends is what drives the real world economy. At the depth of a business cycle businessmen are loath to hire new workers until the business picks up and demand increases. Typically, inventories are high relative to demand, income is low and since no one wants to spend money the velocity of money is also low, people save if they can. Credit evaporates and the money supply (in the largest sense) declines.

We are in the trough of the first Kondratieff wave after the Great Depression. Our Capital stock has never been larger. Here in Boston the Big Dig is over as is the building boom. While some of our older infrastructure is in dire need of repair we don’t need any new roads, bridges, dams or other massive Capital projects. Industrial capacity is at an all time high even if demand is low. Our collective debt is greater than it’s ever been and with a soured economy repaying of that debt looks doubtful. Our instinct is to cut back even further to weather this storm. We tighten out collective belts and watch the economy shrivel still further.

We are, presented with several solutions. We can continue to tighten out belts and hope that free enterprise jump starts the economy or we could declare the equivalent of a Jubilee and simply wipe out all debts corporate, personal and national. Based on historical precedents, we will surreptitiously cancel our debts through monetary inflation. We’ve done it before. We monetized the Vietnam War and Cold Wars and look what it gave us the: the 1990’s.

The Place of the Yellow Woodpecker

The Place of the Yellow Woodpecker
By Hugh Fox
185 pages (2010)
The Drill Press, Cedar Park TX
ISBN 978-0-9840961-5-2

Review by Steve Glines

Hugh Fox is a perpetual mystery to me. I’ve read about a dozen of his books (and edited one) but, for me, it’s hard to tell where one book ends and another begins. I’m convinced that Hugh Fox sits at his typewriter/computer and types for three or four months or until he thinks he has enough material to fill yet another volume whereupon he cuts it off, slaps a title on it and calls it a book and oddly enough he often finds someone to publish it.

This little volume, The Place of the Yellow Woodpecker, takes place on an island off the coast of Brazil during the course of roughly a year. All the usual suspects are there, Harry Smith, Bernadette, Blythe, and assorted characters (or is it caricatures) from his other books. Hugh slips easily between non-fiction and fiction with the same characters appearing in both and only a disclaimer on the cover informs us of the difference. This is fiction … I think or he thinks. I don’t really know.

Hugh’s style is stream of consciousness. Sometimes descriptive – at one point he spends three pages describing the little hamlet, too small to be a village – that serves as the location for this work – sometimes pure narrative – we learn all about the characters that inhabit this place. My personal favorite is the old man who sits in his kitchen all day reading Thomas Aquinas. Why? We’re never told except that he serves as a foil for his mid thirties daughter, an old maid by local standards – sometimes philosophical – not in any organized way but more like the wise comments your grandfather used to utter at odd moments.

Be warned, reading Fox is not for the faint of heart; strong coffee, a bright light and a willingness to place yourself completely in the hands and mind of this prolific scribbler are required to suck the elusive juice from the page. Fox combines the best (and worst) of Charles Bukowski (of whom Fox is a well renowned scholar) and the worst (and best) of Kerouac. In short, I love him and hate him all at the same time. Your mileage may vary.

Wilderness House Literary Review Volune 5 number 2

For those of you not otherwise on one of the many mailing lists I broadcast on - Wilderness House Literary Review - Summer 2010 issue is out. I hope you like it.

a blog for Kathleen Spivack

I just finished setting up a blog for Kathleen Spivack at http://kathleenspivack.blogspot.com/
If you know her work check it out.

The Old Man

His tired body falls heavily on the stool. The unlit stub of a cigarette hangs limply from his lips while his eyes stare distantly into a small makeup mirror hinged on a makeup box. An aspirin swallowed with half a shot of fortification to ease the pain of arthritic bones.

He studies the forced smile reflected in the mirror, moving his head back and forth. Outlines in greasepaint aging smile-cracks on reflected image, titanium white, ruby red and lampblack. “Curtain call, 5 minutes.” He takes a deep breath, stands up, stretches, shaking pain from his joints and memory.

At the edge of the curtain he takes his place with the others; to bury, for a time, ego and age. It’s Show time! A thespians pride in performance, a flawless ballet performed for the ten thousandth time. No adjustment necessary, none needed. Applause! He glows. Fulfilled for a brief moment, he retires from the stage after 3, no 4 curtain calls.

Tired, his body falls limply on the stool in front of the small mirror. He stares into the distance and smiles, recalling the applause, the bows and the hurried “good job” from the ring master as he swiftly moved the troupe off stage. He smiles and re-lights the stub of a cigarette. Two heavy puffs, deeply inhaled.

Old tattered terry cloth wipes the night from a skin deeply pored and cracked from a lifetime of greasepaint and sweat. Lukewarm water and rose scented soap, a gift from a Carney girl, clean all but the deepest pores leaving the suggestion of a mask of permanent happiness. Some fortification for the night to come.

Alone now, a small tear runs swiftly down a cheek rejected by traces of a thespians mask. The age of regrets. He shakes it off, closes the mirrored box and walks into the night. Tents to take down, lions, tigers and bears to feed and elephants too and 150 miles to drive before sleep in a shanty built with pride on the back of a pickup truck, home for now.

He pauses before sleep to gaze upon the breath of another sleeping town. Smoke curls from chimneys. Here will be the life he always dreamed of, here will be happiness, here will be one last performance before the mirrored box closes for good. It will be a great performance tomorrow but tonight it’s cold. More fortification for the night to come.

Life in a minor chord

I used to wonder why I wasn’t Jewish, almost everyone in the building was. I asked my mother why we didn’t go to temple and why we didn’t have a menorah in the house and why our neighbors laughed at Santa Clause and why we called Chanukah, Christmas. I thought that maybe we came from a different country where Chanukah was called Christmas. I tried to imagine one word morphing linguistically into the other.

My mother explained that Jesus was a Jew and that in some places they thought he was the son of God and in other places they thought he was a pretty good prophet and in other places they thought he was just an overly reformed Jewish rabbi. All that sounded important so I sat there nodding, it was a lot for a four year old to think about.

Our neighbor was named Sophie. She spoke mostly Yiddish and what English she knew my mother had taught her in our Kitchen. On the Sabbath, Shabbos – which I figured must have come from our word Saturday, or the other way around – Sophie would have me fetch the newspaper and her mail from the doorman and follow her around her apartment following her orders, issued mostly in Yiddish. Working for Sophie was fun, turning on lights, turning off lights, picking this or that up and placing it here or there and even turning the oven on just before I went home for supper. The final thrill of Shabbos was watching the blue flame of the gas stove explode just inches from my nose when I set her teapot on the stove and turned it on. I was her Shabbos goy and a real mensch she said patting me on the head. I took it as a complement and told my mother with pride that I was a mensch because Sophie said so. My mother would laugh and say, “You are indeed my little mensch.” I told the doorman that I was a mensch, he laughed, shook his head and said, “Oy, look at him kvelling so much.”

When I was in High School in a town known for its WASP occupants, it suddenly became fashionable to be “ethnic” and some of my school friends suddenly discovered their Jewish heritage. We formed the Yiddish Club and since I was the only one who could speak any Yiddish I was elected president. “Oy, Got in Himmel,” was the only thing Sammy Silverberg at the cigar store could say when I told him. Sammy’s wife, also named Sophie, rolled her eyes heavenward and gave me another token for the pinball machine.

CHRONOLOGIUM ACADEMICUS

CHRONOLOGIUM ACADEMICUS
By Guy Cutrufo
$65 at www.chronaca.com

Review by Steve Glines

There was something about the Victorians you have to admire. They searched for the source of the Nile River; they built magnificent cast iron, filigreed suspension bridges; they published multi-volume novels and generally established what was meant by the word “Civilized.” If the project was enormous there was some crazy Brit or determined Yankee willing to try it. Although we still build enormous things like the Space Station or the Saturn V moon rocket or Boston’s “Big Dig.” Somehow they just don’t have the same magnificence, the same panache of their Victorian ancestors. Even the Channel Tunnel lacks the touches the Victorians would have embellished it with.

These are silly complaints of course, progress marches on. If projects on the scale of the Suez Canal aren’t done anymore then the progress in microelectronics and communications is just as astounding. Still it’s gratifying to find a humanistic project befitting of the highest Victorian standards. Chronologium Academicus is a project of this scope and perfection.

The Chronologium Academicus is an enormous poster that represents an intellectual timeline on a world wide scale. The Chronologium Academicus is to history and intellectual thought what a World Map is to geography. To quote from its website (www.chronaca.com):

“Just as a world map is a representation of the physical world, Chronologium Academicus is a representation of the academic landscape. Chronologium Academicus provides an overview of the “geographic” differentiations of academic areas, disciplines, and time that bound or computer-based references can not match. It presents the first visualization of the whole of history and academia, which effectively delimits and systematizes the scope, breadth, and parameters of academia.

The layout devised for Chronologium Academicus was of central importance to its development. Vertically, its 14 columns present the history of every major academic discipline from the development of language by Neanderthal man to the present, and it’s bordered by 700 portraits of the greatest contributors to that history. … its horizontal layout: at any point all the way across the columns, each row covers the same years. That feature places the isolated bits of information of every major discipline into the historical and academic context of every other discipline, which facilitates our ability to make linkages between events, individuals, and works that occurred during the same period.”

This is truly a monumental work. The poster itself is an enormous 53.25″ x 73.25″ which means it would take up far more space than anything but a “Jumbotron.” Unless you live in a barn or have an unusually large unused wall this poster is not for the amateur. We temporally mounted the Chronologium Academicus across a large glass sliding door (It still had to be curled up at one end) to get a good look at its breadth of information. We stood staring in awe until the spell was broken by a viewer who said, “I’d hate to have the fact checking job on this.”

A very spotty check of a dozen or so “facts” matched up with Wikipedia. That’s neither an endorsement or a condemnation of the data presented. Given the incredible volume of information presented it would be surprising not to find an error. However we will leave that onerous duty to others. In the mean time it will become a challenge to find a public wall in our little town that is unencumbered enough to do the Chronologium Academicus justice.

G.O.P. Considers a 'Purity' Resolution for Candidates

The Republicans have recently come up with a set of 10 positions that the faithful must take to be considered "pure". I wrote a rebuttal of these in an email to Paul Avella a Littleton Republican and a past and future candidate for State Rep. and a member of the Littleton Rotary Club.

----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Glines
To: Paul Avella
Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 5:54:03 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: G.O.P. Considers 'Purity' Resolution for Candidates – The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com

So now I know what you stand for. ;)

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/gop-considers-purity-resolution-for-candidates/

----- Reply Message -----

Paul Avella wrote:
And which of the ten do you disagree with?

Cheers,
PJ

----- Reply Message -----

Steve Glines wrote:

PJ - Here are MY thoughts:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

Calling it Obama's bill is a pushing it a bit. Everyone wanted it. If McCain had been elected he would have done exactly the same. Democrat and Republican economists gave exactly the same advice - pure Keynesian economics. Heck even Nixon once said, "We're all Keynesian now."

Obama was very conservative. Real Keynesian theory would have dictated almost $3 trillion in spending (the GDP deficit) but since the Fed created $3 trillion in new money to prop up friends of the Republican party (wall St.) Obama and friends restrained themselves. Besides it would have been hard to spend that much short of creating another war. Bush/Cheaney would have created another war (Pakistan? Korea?) which is one of the reasons why I think Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize.

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;

Why not support the 1960's style Blue Cross/ Blue shield system (which worked very well) where each state had only one non-profit monopoly. More to the point I believe that it's the function of government to provide (or at least regulate) those things we can't provide for ourselves. I think government should run (or heavily regulate) our education system, our "Public Works" - water & sewage, our communications systems, our roads, railroads and even the airline industry, our defense (including police) and, yes, our health care system.

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

If global warning is real and CO2 is the problem then how would you propose solving the problem ... within a market economy of course? Cap and trade worked very well with CFC's in a market economy.

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

Absolutely so long as the ballot really is secret and organizers are allowed access to the employees and companies aren't allowed to manufacture artificial, temporary workers.

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

Well, they are here and they aren't going home. Since most of them are working, paying taxes and contributing to society (and we obviously need them as workers) why not acknowledge that fact and give those working to earn the American Dream a way into American Citizenship., After all most of us are immigrants and I'll bet not all of us started out as completely legal immigrants.

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

I may differ from most of my colleges in at least partially agreeing with you. The fact is we're there and we made a mess of Iraq so are honor bound to clean it up. As to Afghanistan I'm inclined to simply nuke it enough to get Bin Laden then declare victory and leave. If the Afghans can't get it together then to heck with them. Al qaeda is the enemy not a bunch of foolish religious nuts that are happy living in 1400. But then I'm not the president … thank god you're thinking.

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

Containment certainly but containment without engagement is a long term loosing proposition. Neither of the nut cases will be around forever and we must be in the position to take advantage of a change in leadership to bring those countries back into the international fold. Obama knows this but I get the impression that most Republicans don't. Bush and Chaney certainly didn't think that far ahead.

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

When I was running for school committee in Belmont a lady asked me what I thought of abortions. My answer was that it was none of my business. As far as I was concerned the abortion issue was a very private matter between a woman, her doctor and her conscience/religion and that since it was none of my business, by extension, it was none of the states business either. I would say the choice of domestic partner falls into the same category.

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion;

Yikes you've got to be kidding, health care is rationed today and not providing a public non-profit option is a death sentence to many. The health care ration available to the indigent, low income and unemployed is limited to the suggestion that they take an aspirin and the advise that they get a job. That's not acceptable. The health care bill working its way through congress is designed to insure that health care is available to all regardless of economic status. There will always be some kind of health care rationing lets just not define it by income.

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

I've always read both clauses as forming a single sentence. If there were two thoughts the use of a coma would have been replaced by a period. As a single thought the first phrase frames the rest:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

In other words each town is allowed to have and manage its own police force (militia) and there is nothing the state or the federal government can say about it. To me that also says that the police (the well regulated militia) as controlled by the local government has the right to regulate all private arms within its jurisdiction. Of course, all citizens are part of the militia by default whether they are armed or not. I suspect most police would not necessarily like my interpretation any more than they like the Republican interpretation which permits a greater chance of being shot at.

Cheers
Steve

Search for the Literary City on the hill

At least it wasn’t the Manhattan of my parents and grandparents’ world, a baron wasteland full of borsch belt comics turned ad men on Madison Ave. or literary dilatants turned journalists at the Times and the New Yorker. New York was a place of debutants and professors. A place where everyone was simply brilliant and everything was swell. Yes Manhattan was like that in the 1920’s, 30’s, 40’s 50’s and even into the 1960’s and I wanted no part of it.

I wanted red meat and New York City was nothing but honey. There was no room in that tight little society for a newcomer, a raw talent in need encouragement. No, the New York City literary society could grind you up and spit you out like so much meat through a sausage grinder.

I went to Boston. The idea was this: Find a town where I was likely to find smart people at roughly the same stage in their career as I was. That meant college students not afraid to scribble without an assignment. I found lots of them. Then they left when their school days were over. What was left were a bunch of shriveled academics that refused to engage in enlightened banter outside of their own hallowed halls. The academic world of Boston was not the literary hub it once was. The preferred attitude is to snub anyone of lesser stature in your own microscopic field and to ignore everyone else. I had better chats with plumbers than with Nobel laureates. I went underground, I had no choice there wasn’t anyone to talk to.

Later I realized that Boston was just a suburb of New York and that anyone seriously into a literary career was already in New York not Boston. Dorothy Parker was dead but someone took her place at the Algonquin even if they no longer talk of poetry and polemics there. In Boston it’s hard to find anyone that knows what polemics means save that old adjunct professor of Rhetoric still hoping to get tenure after all these years. Good luck buddy.

twitter entry

I just twittered:

I have an interview in the Somerville News - See http://tinyurl.com/p556kj

an item recieved in the mail

I spent more than 20 years in the Information Systems world, computers. I have programmed computers, designed accounting systems for computers, written books about computers and managed hundreds of computers. For years most of my friends were also in computer systems. One by one they lost their jobs and wandered off onto the void. It became harder and harder to get jobs in information systems regardless of experience.

The last time I was in a large data center I was the only American citizen in the building. I'm not exaggerating. Everyone working in the data center was from South Asia. Every one working in the data center was working on an H1b visa. A visa that allows American companies to bring technical expertise from outside the U.S. if no such expertise can be found within the U.S. Of course, persons with H1b visas are supposed to be paid the same as their American counterparts which don't exist because if they did exist there would be no need for H1b visas holders.

I got this via email. My own opinion is that we should drop the H1b visa program altogether. It's clearly been abused. This is food for thought.

Durbin bill introduced today: takes discrimination of US workers head-on!

Legislation offered today by Senators Durbin (D-IL) and Grassley (R-IA) may finally remove the handcuffs that have long prevented effective federal policing of H-1b job outsourcing based on discrimination against US workers. "Congress needs to put their "big-boy pants" on and fast-track this bill up to the President's desk," demanded Conroy. "IT professionals are now poised to join with the AFL-CIO and other national groups to make corporations play fair - now. No nation can remain strong when laws allow corporations to bypass its own citizens." "We're thrilled that Senators Durbin and Grassley are requiring employers to seek local talent first. They recognize that American IT professionals have the talent, know-how and experience to push America’s economic recovery into high-gear," said Donna Conroy, a former IT professional and Director of Bright Futrue Jobs. Here's a snippet of Durbin's press release: Employers can legally discriminate against qualified Americans by firing them without cause and recruiting only H-1B guest-workers to replace them. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has said: “H-1B workers may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of a foreign worker.” Some companies that discriminate against American workers are so brazen that their job advertisements say “H-1B visa holders only.” And some companies in the United States have workforces that consist almost entirely of H-1B guest-workers. To address these problems, the Durbin-Grassley bill would, among other things: Require all employers who want to hire an H-1B guest-worker to first make a good-faith attempt to recruit a qualified American worker. Employers would be prohibited from using H-1B visa holders to displace qualified American workers. Prohibit the blatantly discriminatory practice of “H-1B only” ads and prohibit employers from hiring additional H-1B and L-1 guest-workers if more than 50% of their employees are H-1B and L-1 visa holders. Here's the entire release: http://durbin.senate.gov/showRelease.cfm?releaseId=311910 Who We Are: Brightfuturejobs.com is a grassroots lobbying campaign dedicated to counteracting claims that Americans can’t do science and technology. We lobby to require employers to seek local talent for US job openings before recruiting abroad. Our exposure of federal government documents declaring that the H-1b law’s intention is to bypass the US workforce resulted in the introduction of the bipartisan Durbin-Grassley “"The H-1B and L-1 Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2007" (S. 1035). We were instrumental in securing the passage of a Cook County resolution urging passage of the Durbin reform bill in September, 2007. Donna Conroy dmconroy@brightfuturejobs.com Chicago, IL 773-764-5865

To the shores of Tripoli

International – It’s rough out there: the headline in the New York Times reads, “Pirates Seize Ship With U.S. Crew Off Coast of Somalia.” Few things change.

Old Ironsides sits in Boston harbor as a reminder that when push comes to shove the U.S. Navy can and does act worldwide in the interests of both the US and other nations. In 1803 she was designated the flagship of the U.S. Mediterranean Fleet and was used to blockade, bombard and intimidate the Barbary pirates.

Trouble began in July 1785, when the Barbary pirates from Algeria captured two American ships and the Dey of Algiers held their crews captive for a ransom of nearly $60,000. Thomas Jefferson, then minister to France, opposed the payment of tribute and proposed an association of countries to deal with them. Jefferson argued that "The object of the convention shall be to compel the piratical States to perpetual peace." The plan fell through when both England and France continued to pay ransoms.

When Jefferson became president in 1801 he rejected Tripoli's demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States. President Jefferson quickly dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean. Jefferson said in his first annual message to Congress: "To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . ."

Ultimately a small force of marines was sent to re-install the hereditary ruler of Tripoli. The U.S. marines raised a mercenary army of Arabs and Greeks and began the difficult march across the Libyan Desert towards Tripoli, winning a bloody victory in the outlying town of Derne. Just as soon as victory was assured the marines were informed by messenger that the war was over. The treaty that was signed guaranteed the return of American prisoners but little changed. North African piracy continued until France brought the era to an end by invading and colonizing most of North-West Africa.

The Boston Globe threatens bankruptcy – good riddance

Local – All politics is local: This morning I walked the half mile to the train station with my daughter’s dog hoping to pick up a copy of the Boston Metro. There was a time when the Globe and Herald had boxes where, for a quarter, you could pick up an hours entertainment (if you call news entertainment – and I do) while the filthy industrial grade train rumbled and swayed its way into Boston. Those boxes are gone. Neither the Globe nor the Herald tries to sell papers anymore. They gave up paperboys years ago claiming that paperboys were unreliable. Maybe they became that way, a generational thing I suppose.

The metro box was empty save for a religious diatribe some intellectual vagrant deposited in the hopes of a miraculous conversion. It was empty the last time I looked too. I don’t know if it was empty because they didn’t fill it with enough papers or they too have stopped promoting their paper. I walked home empty handed.

The very first article I ever sold to a newspaper was a 300 word story about the development of teenage cabals. I was paid $30, or 10 cents a word. That was in the mid 1960’s. By the mid 1990’s I was paid $50 per story by Community Newspapers, still about 10 cents a word. Today Community Newspapers doesn’t buy stories and I won’t write for free as a matter of principle.

The last time I tried to sell anything to a Boston newspaper was back in the early 1980’s. Both the Globe and the Herald had the attitude that I should consider it an honor to get a byline in their paper never mind that the honorarium for a 1500 word story that took me 2 weeks to research and write wouldn’t pay my rent. At least back then you could rework the article and resell it until the Globe decided that they owned the article in all its forms forever. That decision made it impossible to earn a living as a freelance journalist in Boston and I stopped reading it Globe. There is no news in the Globe and just because it occasionally gets a Pulitzer Prize is no reason to read a newspaper with no news.

The joke was that the Wall Street Journal had more news on its front page than the Boston Globe had in its entire paper was not far from the truth until recently. Now the Happy News/Pretty News contagion has infected even the Wall Street Journal making it almost impossible to find “news” anywhere in print. Most newspapers have become nothing more than advertising mediums wrapped around AP and Reuters feeds. Who cares? Between Yahoo and the still useful New York Times web site I don’t need to read a printed paper. I’d like to read a paper, it’s more substantive than TV and more relaxing than the web but without news its worthless and without paying writers a decent wage why would I expect anything more than rewritten press releases or egotistical, self indulging pronouncements passing for news. I wouldn’t and I don’t.

I still have to wonder why a newspaper with over 300,000 paying subscribers can’t make money. When the New York Times paid over a billion dollars for the Globe many freelance journalists wondered why they didn’t just create a new newspaper for far less. If the Boston Globe goes out of business, and I think it will and should, someone will eventually step up to the plate and for very short money create a daily newspaper worth reading again.

Of course if all print newspapers go broke and freelance writing for the World Wide Web doesn’t begin to pay better I wonder if we could be on the edge of another dark age. I’ve often wondered if anyone bothered covering the last meeting of the Roman Senate.

First twitter of the year

First thunderstorm of the year
spring and flickering lights,
a glass of wine and an open fire
chilly, raw,
not yet summer.