I have tried, Lord knows I have tried, to keep my political meanderings off-site, and over at dailykos where they probably belong. But what is going on just now, this weekend and early next week, is extraordinary, and extraordinarily important.
I am far from competent -- far, far, far from competent -- to discuss the proposed $700-billion bailout proposal being rammed through Congress by the same Administration which swore it had incontrovertible evidence Saddam Hussein possessed and meant to use weapons of mass destruction.
The three-page legislation drafted to authorize this contains the following language:
Sec. 8. Review.
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
What that means, for the two or three of you still following at home, is that it is seriously proposed that in order to save our economy from the next Depression we should give the Secretary of the Treasury -- an appointed cabinet official who serves at the pleasure of the president -- unbridled authority to spend $700-billion (or more). With complete immunity from meaningful oversight. By anybody, save the president he or she serves. No Congressional oversight. No judicial review.
We have eviscerated much of the Constitution driven by our fear of terrorism.
But this is outrageous on the face of it, and I have spent much of the afternoon reading liberal and conservative blogs on which this is argued.
I fear what the other hand may be doing while we fret over this language. Regardless, this clause, at least, must be stopped dead in its tracks.
Because otherwise I might have to buy that damned shotgun.
Write those who must be written. And store food for the winter. It could be a long, dark season.
Alas, it is true that I was raised by people who are far more gifted tending to domestic cats than they are with more advanced mammals, or each other. And it is also true that I stayed in a broken relationship for some months until the cancer-ridden dog we jointly tended finally expired, though in my own defense had it been my dog and not her dog I would have done the right thing and put him to sleep. But because I was leaving, and he was dying, and he was her dog...well, he was a good dog, anyhow, and he passed on with a bite of homemade muffin and butter on his tongue.
Fast forward a dozen or more years. I have fallen in with a family more closely attuned to the rhythms of nature, and settled into a pleasant corner of Appalachia. They garden; we garden. As noted previously here, we started with chickens last fall, and now are nourished by their eggs and their flesh, and I seem to have survived my first morning helping with that harvest with no long-term psychological damage.
We have been, this week, handed several further reminders that the economic underpinnings of our society are rusting through, and that we have largely forgotten how to make steel. The reminders out here in the country have four legs and empty bellies.
See, my inlaws live on top of what's called a mountain here, though it would be only a nameless foothill back west. It's a pretty place, connected to town by a long and winding road that is barely wide enough for two cars, which is how they build 'em out here in Kentucky. For the decade I've been a member of this family, and the four and a half years we've lived here, they have had one dog, and somebody dropped it by the side of the road a dozen or more years back. She's a nice dog, not very smart, and not much of a guard animal (she was chased around the house and bitten in the back by a deer, after all).
But even though we live in an especially poor section of Appalachia, to my knowledge that has been the only critter dumped on their 70 or 80 acres in a decade.
Until this summer.
Six weeks ago I went out to the barn to feed the chickens and found two starving puppies under one of the condo units we built. You could count their ribs, and yet they were still sweet wiggle dogs. Later I ran onto two more, who turned out to be their parents. The bitch had a bloody spot on her back, probably from going under a fence at a high rate of speed, and I saw the father only once. In the end, because our daughter has doting grandparents, they kept the little female, found some college girls to take the little male, and took the mother to the local shelter. Since I spent part of my junior high years volunteering at the PAWS shelter in Seattle, I suffer no delusions to her fate, but it was the best we could do.
The new dog has some terrier in her, and having sat through the French film Baxter long ago at the Seattle International Film Festival (sitting in the middle of a row, surrounded by people I knew, and so unable to leave), I have some misgivings about her, but she's a very sweet animal and our daughter adores her. Her brother's tail had been bobbed, and I have minor fears that the family had been raised to fight. Hopefully they were dumped by the side of the road because they were bad at it.
Sunday morning, anyhow, I went out to feed the chickens, harvest okra and peppers from the garden, and finish bushhogging; the rest of the family was at church, but I prefer to do whatever worshiping seems necessary in private. From beneath one of the chicken condos emerged one of the skinniest cats I've seen in many years. Purring. Mewling. We happen to have (courtesy of a local distributor, a friend of the family) some old bread which we keep to feed the chickens, or add to the compost pile, depending on how green it is. So I fed her a piece of bread. And then another. Slowly. Six or seven by the time I was done with my day.
She's an ordinary cat, a tabby. Nothing special. She has sharp teeth, but enough sense to nip, not bite. She's not feral, and didn't use her claws on me when I picked her up (though that's how I came briefly to be acquainted with her teeth).
Now, I know there are far worse things in the world, like the torture program promulgated in our name by the Cheney-Addington cabal.
It is telling, to me, however, that people are dumping animals in increasing numbers just now (ours is not the only story along these lines). And it doesn't speak well for those doing the dumping. But what it really suggests is how desperate times are here, and how much worse they can get. The cat and the dogs dumped on us had been well-tended, and probably well-treated; you can tell when an animal's been abused or neglected, and they're dangerous to rescue. Something happened, and the furry ones had to go. Maybe it was a marriage gone south, but far more likely it was an ugly choice between feeding animals and feeding children, or maybe homes lost to the mortgage crisis and landlords unwilling to house critters. Tough luck, anyhow the story went.
Unemployment went up to, what, 6.1% today? There was a piece in the Lexington Herald-Leader over the weekend arguing that the real unemployment rate -- counting partially employed folks or those who have quit looking or run out of benefits -- is a hair over 10%. So I understand why people can't feed their animals.
I just wish they had the basic decency to do something more responsible with them than dump them at the side of the road.
That seems a metaphor for our whole society, just now. But it's a good thing I'm a pacifist, and it's a better thing that I'll never know who dumped those poor little animals.
(This was originally posted, in somewhat different form, on dailykos.com.)
It is not like me to go several weeks without writing, and as this site continues to evolve I wouldn't want my long absence to suggest anything other than that I've been absent.
And in that absence, I've been busy.
The greasy beans are now picked, though we might be able to scrounge one more mess of them for dinner in a couple nights. Today I went through the cranberry beans, an heirloom sent kindly by a seed saver up east who I've never met and picked them, and began to shell them. Colorful, they are, though I've no idea yet what they taste like. And I pulled all the popcorn we planted, though I've no idea how much of it the bugs left alone nor what my wife means to do with it. (It was, I'm told, a great exercise for preschoolers.)
Having worried all summer that we would not have peppers and okra, it's now finally time to begin harvesting those happy vegetables, as well. This morning I cut up three cookie sheets of okra and put them in the freezer. With the half-dozen chickens now roosting in our freezer, that pretty much guarantees a pot of gumbo at least once a month over the winter.
The tomatoes...well...we planted poorly, too many heirlooms and not enough simple red canners, but we'll fix that next year. I mean to keep a notebook next year, so as better to know what we've done and what didn't work.
When it's all done, we'll have to burn the garden this year. Too many bugs, especially those little yellow bean-eaters. And then we'll spread leaves and chicken manure over it, and begin the process of setting new fence posts and doubling its size. Mostly so we can keep the blackberries we planted down the hill away from the deer.
In the evenings, I've been reading. And, of course, watching the political conventions. (And we tore down a wall in the Fuzzy Duck over Labor Day. There's that.)
A couple other times I've written here about torture, and my simple but acute horror that our nation, our people, our government, has found it necessary and appropriate to engage in this practice. The irony that the ruling party has nominated a former POW, that I watched Fred Thompson speak last night at some length about the horrors of Senator McCain's treatment by the North Vietnamese...all that makes little sense to me.
Regardless, I am here to beg.
Please read Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.
Please.
This is not how government is supposed to work, and it is especially not how our government is supposed to work.
And if torture is the new norm -- if we really and truly believe this is how to combat Islamic extremists -- it's something we as a society should have a long and profound discussion about.
I am not yet through with Ms. Mayers' book. It is difficult to read, shattering even to an old cynic's ideals.
As a tonic, I have taken up Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. It is a kind of updated and nonfiction version of The Ugly American, though that old Cold War classic is usually misunderstood in caricature: The ugly American was the hero of that novel. Greg Mortenson offers a different solution to our relationship with the Muslim world.
Both of these books are selling well just now. Our hopes and our fears.
Please read them. Please make time.
This is the season of hope, possibly our last season of hope.
It is a relief once again to fall in love with an album -- an entire album -- to become enraptured by the music of artists who are unknown to me. To discover something of such great and glorious sounds that it is worth moving from the truck to the house stereo and back, to find music so rewarding to listen to that I have not opened the mail for a week, because this is enough. This is plenty.
The album is called Como Now: The Voices Of Panola Co., Mississippi, and it is formally released on Tuesday, August 19 by the Daptone label.
Panola County, Mississippi, was the site of several Alan Lomax field recordings in the 1940s and '50s. It is, apparently, a citadel of gospel singing. Como Now was recorded during on July 22, 2006, and offers 16 a cappella tracks from a variety of strong, singular voices, from the aged and revered Brother and Sister Walker (whose harmonies remind me of Blind Willie Johnson) to the extraordinary Como Mamas, who sing counterpoint to the equally extraordinary Mary Walker.
It is a funny thing, coming to gospel as an unbeliever. As a nonbeliever. As someone who does not seek, does not need that kind of truth. I would argue generally that mine is a simple faith: That things work, that doing right is worth doing for its own worth. That if there is a god, he or she or they is unknowable, and none of our human efforts to describe the such a being have done any justice to the job. Nor led to much justice, for all that.
But I love the music, when it soars. (Hell, I love all music when it soars. When the magic is in full force.) It is possible that I am now drawn to gospel because it is sufficiently close to the other sounds I have spent the last 13 years listening to that it is familiar to me, and sufficiently removed from those sounds to be new. All that said, I have to trust the evidence of my once-trained ears, and this is a striking album. Whether one believes, or not.
Como Now is not a field recording, though it was recorded in a small brick church, and the best of the region's singers are said to have shown up for the occasion. It is neither professional, nor unpolished. There are times when one yearns for slightly better microphone placement, but they pass quickly.
I would particularly like to draw your attention to Irene Stevenson's "If It Had Not Been For Jesus," which she wrote. Of course she wrote it. It is too personal, too private a testimonial to learn from a book.
And to draw your attention to "Trouble In My Way," with the trio of Como Mamas backing Mary Moore, the most extraordinary and exhilarating song on the album. Had I any formal musical training, I could perhaps explain how the harmonies work, but I don't, and they work fine without my knowing how. It's not quite call and response, more like question and answer...the chorus isn't simply a counterpoint to Moore's leads, but a full-throated response. The song spins around a simple riff (the answer is mostly "Jesus, he will fix it"), and then, after a litany of woe, resolves simply and beautifully not with "Jesus, he will fix it" but with a tempered line of acceptance: "After a while."
Ah. And the John Edwards Singers' "New Burying Ground," which I so much wish to start a radio show simply so I can segue into "Wreck On The Highway," and maybe the version Jon Langford sings.
I may no longer be a good judge of such things, but this is -- by far -- the best album I've heard this year.
"Don't pick the beans until they're full," Dan said before leaving for the week to tend to his mother. He is not, ordinarily, a man given to lots of words, but by his daughter's count he told us this at least six times. She is not a woman given to exaggeration.
Dan and Marge have a nice log house on a fair bit of land, and own two businesses, but his greasy beans are the legacy which most concerns him, at least this season. The thing he is most proud to hand down, the treasure of his family. The greasy bean appears to be one of the treasures of the Appalachians, and the name seems to cover a handful of somewhat different heirloom beans. You cannot buy them in the store, that much is certain.
They are delicious, to my taste.
We have come to find out that beans, like churches and child-rearing practices, are a very personal taste. Sometimes an acquired taste. It is not true that my wife's family hoards greasy beans, but it is true that they share them only with their closest friends, with people who appreciate them. They are the only beans we eat; last year we canned 100 quarts. This year, it appears, we will put up a bit more than that.
And we will serve them to friends who come to dinner. Fresh, they are cooked in the pressure cooker, with new potatoes on top, and salt, a little oil.
Dan's mother is 95. She has been eating greasy beans all her life. His mother-in-law is, well, well into her 80s, and eats them as well, though I'm not sure she was raised with them. I do not mean to suggest they are some kind of fountain of youth, but clearly the eating of such things has served these two formidable women well. (Now if we could convince little Maggie to eat them...but at five it's more important to her to say no than to try new things.)
Full greasy beans are tight to the touch, and you can feel the peas well formed within the pods. Having picked only ten or fifteen gallons of them in the last 48 hours, I am far from expert in these matters, but have been advised by the canning contingent of our little commune -- the women, that being their chosen but not designated side of this work (except my wife, who both gardens and cans, twining her family's traditions) -- that the beans are good, I am well pleased.
They finish at the base of the vines first, and the vines rise a good four feet. Which makes the first two pickings, at least, stoop labor. Because we hurried -- fighting a wet spring, and still dodging a wet summer (not likely to be a good year for peppers) -- the rows, they are a bit tighter together than we might now wish. There are six rows in the garden, plus another row we planted later so as to have beans further into the season. Two of the rows run the full 100 feet of the garden, the other four are cut short by the asparagus and rhubarb patch, where we harvested garlic and failed to grow much lettuce. Not that short.
We pick, mostly, sitting on plastic pickle buckets, and it is possible to fill one of these five-gallon buckets on a long row just now.
When I was a boy I picked blackberries, almost obsessively. My mother -- a child of the depression -- did not waste them, but I am sure she did not feel the need of as much blackberry jam as I provided the means to make. As I got older and more clever I took to borrowing the garden shears and cutting the vines back so as to get to promising troves of blackberries. Now my brother lives in the apartment buildings they cleared that patch to plop down in the middle of suburbia, and so it goes. (We have had some difficulty growing tame blackberries down by the orchard.)
Picking the beans reminds me of that. It is a meditative time. Susan has come out with her iPod, and we have a second one which I could load and figure out how to play, but I like the silence. Rather, I like the noise of the place. Because it is bloody hot here still, and humid, we tend to pick at the end of the day. (I haven't entirely given up rock 'n roll hours, and early mornings are tough, still.) As the sun sets we can hear the chickens scurrying up in the barn, where Survivor #1 -- the rooster we will keep because he was the lone living chicken out of the first 25 we bought -- is teaching the young hens the arts of chicken love, which sounds to be a one-sided pleasure but is just beginning to produce eggs. And the frogs down at the pond below, they chime in. And then, as the sun sets more, the rest of the forest begins to make its night sounds, and sometimes they are fearful sounds.
It is a meditative time, and that word "full" has been ringing in my head as I bend over to lift up leaves and hunt for ripe greasy beans. This is a full life, just now. Without the visible stature I once had as the co-editor of a small music magazine -- not so much status, of course, but it's funny to watch it drift away, nevertheless -- it is still a full life. Not simpler; often more complex.
Close readers will have observed my obsession with artists who continue to produce past the flush of youth. Sometimes I think I have come, by a quite random road, to this small town to learn about the second half of life, and how it ends. Perhaps.
But my days are full, and my hands are sore, and my back is tight in new places, and as I watch from the sidelines while my two partners work to make this website a viable and interesting business, I am grateful.
Full is also the title of Jon Dee Graham's last studio album, and I am mindful, as I sit on my bucket and pick beans, that he lies in a hospital bed in Austin recovering from an automobile accident. We are not friends, have only really met once, but we are almost the same age and I am somewhat acquainted with some of his demons, somewhat acquainted with the nature of his journey. He is, I think, one of the most spiritual men I have spent time around, and that includes a friend who is now a priest. Deeply conflicted, I would guess, and unresolved. I cannot guess how badly hurt he really is from the spare reports I've picked up from Austin, and I do not wish to pry. Being in a hospital is bad enough.
I am not a praying man, but I am on my knees here in the field, and he is often on my mind. Maybe that's praying.
That story I wrote about Jon Dee, it was the hardest thing I've written in years, and I still think I only got it half-said. "All of this is confusing enough" he sings in my ears, and I know his voice is not for everyone. But, as I wrote to a friend in Texas, his voice sounds like I imagine mine would, if only I could sing. And I can't.
So I will listen to Jon Dee in the silence of this morning, and pick beans. And hope for the best.
Memory is a funny thing. I have a memory of hearing Randy Travis sing on the radio in 1978, probably on the AM country station I occasionally listened to in my 1967 Camaro convertible, the one that had been left top down in the rain and run into two bridge abutments before I spent $500 on it, the car my brother showed me as a lesson in what not to buy.
It's a really strong memory, too, a song I heard him sing with the line "work your fingers to the bone/and what do you get?/bony fingers!" that I typed out at my typesetting terminal and printed out and waxed and pasted on the console of the Comp IV that my friend Betty worked on at SeaGraphics. I think her name was Betty. She was an older woman, a kind woman, a good typesetter, and the only person at that shop who took the time to teach me that setting type was more than simply typing the words right. And she had Sonics tickets, back when blue collar types could afford such things; one night she either gave me tickets or let me drive her to the game, I can't remember.
It was probably Hoyt Axton singing, now that I think about it, and I note with barely restrained anticipation that the fine folks at the Australian reissue label Raven are about to reissue Axton's Fearless on one of their splendid two-fer LP packages. I'm hoping I'm still on their mailing list, and, by way of further digression, was delighted to note that Darrell Scott pointed to that album in the liner notes of his new album of covers, which he calls Modern Hymns and which is being released by Appleseed. (Although I think Mr. Scott rushes his take of "The Devil" a bit, but it's a quibble.)
Randy Travis, of course, had his first #1 hit in May of 1986 with the masterful country song, "On The Other Hand," part of country's brief new traditionalist movement. (It went #1 almost in time for his 27th birthday; Randy Travis and I were born a few weeks apart in 1959, and on Tuesday Susan and I sat in church pews to say goodbye to a friend who was born those same few weeks, so I am keenly aware of that time just now.) By which point, the spring of 1986, SeaGraphic had long gone down the tubes and I'd started my own typesetting shop, and was already in the process of selling the equipment to an office partner. I listened to a lot of country music, on KMPS, back then, even took another office partner to see the Judds' final tour, with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, sat with her in the third level of the Paramount Theatre trying to remember why I liked live music and wondering why she kept dating some guy who wasn't me, even though I was hardly her type. (Nor she mine, to be fair.)
The point, I guess, is that it feels like Randy Travis's voice has been a part of my life forever. He's right in there with Hoyt Axton and Don Williams (and not so far from JJ Cale, though I've never bought one of his albums), one of those easy, calm, inescapably masculine voices that strokes the psyche and is carefully unafraid to betray emotion.
In the main, Travis has ended up being a mainstream country artists whose career is best summarized by greatest hits packages, and I can't remember the last time I played a new release of his and could hear more than a trace of the electricity and craft and beauty he can bring to a song. Even, oddly enough, in his gospel albums.
So I didn't have a lot of hope for this new one, Around The Bend. But I was doing some typing here and his is a comforting voice to work to, and it had come in the mail, and I was tired of all the stuff on the shelves that also came in the mail from people I've never heard of that none of the rest of y'all will ever hear of, but whose dreams will not easily be rebuked by the likes of me.
They'll call this one a return to form, I suppose. And I suppose it is, though I can't guess and no longer care whether country radio will notice. But in these friendly confines I'd like to encourage you all to notice, for he still has that great, deep, resonant, kindly voice. And, this time, he has some songs which deserve that voice: "You Didn't Have A Good Time," a tri-write from Kris Bergsnes, Jason Matthews, and Jim McCormick about the drunk we all used to hang out with (and some of us still do); "Every Head Bowed," a wry memory piece by Brent Baxter and Brandon Kinney; "Faith In You," an intriguing tri-write from Tom Douglas, Joe Henry, and Matt Rollings (the last of whom is best known as Lyle Lovett's keyboard player); and the spectacular "From Your Knees" from the pen of one of Nashville's two or three best country songwriters, Leslie Satcher (and I suppose she'll never get to make another album on her own; more's the pity).
There's some dross. He doesn't do much with Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," and the opening "Around The Bend" (from Tania Hancheroff, Marcus Hummon, and Tia Sillers) begins in wonderful voice, but settles into a hackneyed chorus, supported by a chorus of voices.
But it's a pretty good record. Hugh Prestwood's "Love Is A Gamble" is a sweet song, the kind of thing John Anderson could turn his voice around, too. "Everything That I Own (Has Got A Dent)" is the kind of loser's anthem that Jerry Reed made a nice and somewhat improbable living singing (this one's from Tony Martin and Mark Nesler).
It's a pretty good record, and sometimes that's a pretty good thing. That's what Travis makes, pretty good records. And every once in a while he nails a song. The thing I like about Around The Bend is that it's alive, again. That the three songs stickered on the cover as potential singles aren't the ones that I would pick, that the choices aren't obvious, that the filler is only barely filler, for the most part. That I'm pretty sure if I were to make a compilation that tried to justify my fondness for his voice, three or four of these tracks might make the cut. That's a significant accomplishment for a guy whose first country #1 was twenty years ago.
And if you don't love that voice when it's rippling through the speakers...I can't help you.
I started to title this little digression, "Why Randy Travis still matters." But I'm not sure he ever mattered, not the way George Jones or Billy Joe Shaver or Loretta Lynn matter. Mattering isn't what it's all about, not all the time. Sometimes it's just nice to hear a friendly voice offering a few well-chosen words.
Note: An earlier draft of this piece was posted a few days ago on dailykos.com, a liberal online community. I have taken many -- most -- of my political musings there, where they sink like a stone, rather than burdening y'all with them. I realized, later, that this wasn't really about politics, and so have taken the opportunity of a quiet morning to revisit and repurpose the words.
It is, I would add, an interesting thing to compose words anonymously in the dailykos world. I have come to take for granted the premise that most of my readers in the ND community either know me or have a working familiarity with my writing persona. As a confessional writer, I find anonymity a curiously limiting construct. But a useful learning tool, as it were.
In 1942, as part of the war effort, John Steinbeck wrote a book called Bombs Away: The Story Of A Bomber Team, reprinted in 1990 and picked up off the remainder table in a weak moment because for some unknown reason I had gone on a mild Steinbeck binge. And because it was cheap. An extension of my "rescue good literature from the thrift shop" school of acquisition.
(And I note, in passing, that Steinbeck was part of a war effort, that there was a war effort embraced by artists and artisans and even most partisans; and that there is not now, has not been for decades.)
The premise of Bombs Away, in any event, was that American men entering the military in 1942 would find that their natural-born civilian skill-sets translated nicely into the component parts of a bomber team; and that not everybody should want only to be a pilot, that there was honor in each job on the plane.
I was struck, reading the book so many years after the last good war, that much had changed. That I had none of those skills -- not the hunting and shooting, nor the repairing and welding of things, nor even the physical fitness that comes with labor -- for they were no longer a part of the life of the typical American suburban kid.
Much has changed since 1942, and much since Steinbeck's book was reprinted in 1990.
But I was reminded of it a few weeks back when my wife broke up a long car trip by reading to me an essay she had found on the back page of the summer edition of Spin-Off magazine. The author's name is Abby Franquemont, and the headline reads: "What Are You Doing? And Why?", not coincidentally the same question my wife would ask were she to walk into my home office just now and find me writing for free again, but no matter. Ms. Franquemont was explaining why she likes to spin her own yarn, and snapped:
"Look," I said, "do you want to live in a cave, wearing skins, without fire, knapping flint to enable you to hunt and gather, and be dead by age twenty-five? Because this -- this right here in my hands -- this is why you don't. Without this, that is all you can do. Without this, there is no civilization, no technology, no history, no agriculture, no animal husbandry, no permanent settlements, and the whole of human history just did not happen. Without what I'm doing right now, making yarn, there is no life as we know it."
Textiles are at the root of many essential advances in civilization, both in terms of the textiles themselves and the technologies needed to create them. Cultures lacking in textile production capability don't generally advance beyond hunting and gathering. Which is fine, but given a choice, few of us today would opt to live such a life.
The full substance of her argument is well beyond my competence, and it is not clear to me whether textiles are an indicator of the possibility of civilization, or a prerequisite to its development. Nor, for my purposes today, does it matter.
Fourteen years ago I left Seattle for a job at RayGun Publishing in Los Angeles. I brought with me my books and my records and my CDs and my power tools -- not so many tools, then, just a drill and a saw, really -- and not much else except the cabinetry to hold all that stuff. And though I was theoretically a member of the senior staff -- indeed, though I had broken a finger playing basketball (again) -- when we added staff and needed new office furniture assembled, it fell to me to do the job. Because I could read directions, because I had tools and knew how to use them. (I also cooked. I was a freak. I didn't mind being a freak, that part came naturally. LA, on the other hand...)
Today, we are well down the road to losing most of the hand skills necessary to function in the world we have built. Or paid others to build on our behalf. Children aren't taught to drive a nail, or change a toilet, or even to change the oil in their car (which I did all of once, and stripped the bolt). We're not taught how to make things, how to cook food from fresh ingredients, how to sew. Which is, to a degree, fine. Some people shouldn't drive cars, either.
Two problems, though: First, we -- as a culture -- devalue those people who do know how to fix and make things. (Unless and until we need them; and then they are talked down to, and about, and we don't understand what they're doing, why it works and fails, nor even how to communicate clearly and honestly with them.) In passing, this has made it easier to undercut the union movement. And we have whole-heartedly embraced the exportation of those jobs abroad, ensuring -- much like the capital flow T. Boone Pickens laments on television each night -- that the skills necessary to build and operate and staff a modern manufacturing enterprise are no longer native to our shores.
We're forgetting how to make things. On purpose. (Unless it's a hobby, or a quaint anachronism; or unless we're trying to get off the grid, still very much a minority position.)
What's been offered instead is an information economy, a service economy, a world -- ah, the pristine vision -- built around intellect.
An illusion, that.
My stepmother clipped a column from the July 7-14 Newsweek, written by a man named Sal Nunziato, who until recently owned a CD store in Brooklyn with which I am otherwise unfamiliar. He writes eloquently about knowing his customers, knowing their tastes and temperaments well enough to suggest music they might like, to order things specially for them, to nurture their community. And like many CD stores, he is out of business, his specific knowledge of that community -- and of the music in the marketplace -- lost to that corner of Brooklyn, lost forever.
Replaced, perhaps, by Rhapsody and Amazon, both anxious to use mathematical equations and the science of the computer to do the job of a smart and intuitive human. Of a man with taste.
Having labored as a music critic for 21 years, I feel Mr. Nunziato's pain.
Friends of ours own a bicycle shop. We live in a small town. They are the local experts in bicycles and canoes and climbing equipment. People come to their store and talk and talk and talk. And then they go online and distill that knowledge into a purchase that does nothing to support the local business.
Do we really value knowledge?
Surely the present administration did not value nuanced views of Iraq, does not value the science behind global warming, and a dozen other things we might profitably carp about another time. Indeed, Mr. Bush behaves like a mediocre student who is unable to make sense of competing and complex theories about a system he is studying, and so decides simply to go with the answer he wants to hear, seeing instead of the anarchy of the intellectual process the arrogance of a salesman.
Because it's all about the sale, isn't it, in America?
Here's the question, then: Who's going to fix it when it's broken? Who's going to build the new one?
This, in part, is why I now refer to myself as a semi-retired music critic, and an apprentice farmer. Which is not to say that I aspire ever to sell what we grow; but which is to say that I hope to learn enough to grow what we eat, should we wish to do so, and to share whatever bounty we may unexpectedly have with our neighbors. Which is not to say that I ever wish to work on my car, but which is to say that I have no objection to changing out the toilet should it need doing again.
Hand skills are not my gift. But I played basketball from the time I was seven or eight year old well into my 40s, and it wasn't until some point in my mid-30s that I finally figured out the mechanics of a jumpshot, the part where the jumping helps to propel the ball toward the hoop. I have put out publications of one kind or another since 1974 or 1975, and yet only in the last few years would I have suggested I was anything more than a hack designer, and I am barely better than that, even today. A certain tenacity is, apparently, my gift, and like every student I believe that if I apply myself I will acquire knowledge. Though, in fairness, that never worked in physics class. (Bad teacher, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.)
