05/04/2008

I Can’t Blog

Maybe it’s like dancing, I don’t know. I’m not very good at that either.

Justin, my web guru (whose Green Galoshes is linked down there to the left), sat me a down over a cup of coffee last fall and tried, as he periodically does, to help me improve this page.

He told me to add tags and categories and hyperlinks and I’ve done all that and will continue and I am grateful. It’s not that.

Justin’s main advice, however, was: “Try to post something every day, or a couple times a day.” I did that for a while and the number of views this page gets went up. It makes sense, the more you post, the more tags and categories and hyperlinks, the more likely you are to be run down by someone’s search engine.

I’ll admit, blogging has its upside. Those half-formed thoughts that will never grow into full-on commentaries or bits of ephemera that will be pointless by the time next Thursday rolls around are perfect for blogging.

On the other hand, most half-formed thoughts deserve to die that way. Constantly chattering about the ephemera passing through my mind seems neurotic. A grandfather once advised me never to miss an opportunity to stay quiet. He had a point.

It is nice to have the opportunity to talk out of turn, as I’m doing now, but there’s something about gestating for a week and then trying to bring forth seven or eight hundred coherent words on a single subject. There’s a rhythm to it that works for and against me. I missed a few weeks last month, for the first time in 11 years, and I felt uneasy until I filled in (and fraudulently dated) those gaps.

So if you’re reading this, you’re among the relatively few who will. Hope you like it.

By floegel | Posted in Asides | Tagged , , | Comments (1)
05/01/2008

Symptoms

Forgive me. Accept my apologies. For the first time in 11 years, I missed not one, but two weeks in a row. I was overtaken by events and in the midst of the overtaking, I realized this is a signature symptom, perhaps the signature symptom, of contemporary life. So I’m trying to fight against it, in part by backfilling commentaries for the weeks I missed. (If you’re so motivated, you can find them at markfloegel.org.)

Being overtaken, as I have been, feels like being caught in the surf. I was so overtaken – by events, work, obligations – that I had very little awareness of things beyond my immediate scope of attention. This was not altogether bad. I didn’t, for instance, pay much attention to the Pennsylvania primary, which I hear was simultaneously boring and gruesome.

Two things that managed to penetrate my wall of busyness were both about slavery. That they should have caught my attention is not surprising: I’m fascinated by slavery, particularly that it survives in our modern, “civilized” world and that our governments and media seem to have trouble registering outrage over it.
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Economy | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
04/24/2008

Life From Above

I watched the houses and trees fade as if into a glass of milk as the airplane ascended into the cloud. I watched the whiteness grow brighter and brighter as we climbed through the bank and broke into the sunshine above. Then I turned back to my book, a collection of essays by Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist.

Mr. Pamuk writes about Istanbul with the same particularity James Joyce used to describe Dublin or Jack Kerouac did Lowell. Again on the ground, I logged onto Google Maps to see the neighborhoods, coastlines and islands described in the pieces I’d read.

I decided to float over to Vermont and see my neighborhood. The photograph you see there, for now, was taken Saturday, 7 May 2005. You can tell because at the University of Vermont horticulture farm, you can see the crew from Branch Out Burlington! planting trees in the nursery, as they do every year on the first Saturday of May. I ascertained the year by the absence of additions to certain of my neighbors’ houses and by the presence of the little blue car Adrienne used to call “Travis” in our driveway.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
04/17/2008

The Luckiest Generation

My father had just celebrated his 14th birthday and was sitting in a movie house in White Plains, New York watching “The Swiss Family Robinson.” The film stopped, the lights came on and a man walked down the aisle. Turning to face the audience, he said in a loud voice, “The war is over!”

It was August 1945 and the Empire of Japan had agreed to surrender to Allied forces. My father walked out to find people cheering and honking horns.

It was an era when wars had an end. That war was fought, on two sides of the globe, by people who are now sometimes called “The Greatest Generation.” My dad and his cohort were a half-step behind that group. He was a member of what might, in retrospect, be called “The Luckiest Generation.”

Of course, one man’s life does not a generation make and “lucky” has always been a relative term. My dad’s cohort had their war in Korea, a war that had no official end and one from which may never returned. Still, Korea was not the horror of World War II nor was it the long futile slog of Vietnam that waited for the generation a half-step behind my father’s.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Economy, Global Warming | Tagged , , | Comments (0)
04/10/2008

Follow-Up Questions

Before the New Hampshire primary, John McCain had his now-famous colloquy with a voter in which he said he doesn’t care if American troops are in Iraq for 100 years, provided those troops are not getting killed or wounded.

There are a number of Republicans running around now, saying Mr. McCain never said that, but he did. He said it on several occasions and used numbers like a thousand or ten thousand years – always stipulating that it’s OK with him only if Americans are not being killed or wounded. It was caught on tape, you have YouTube, right?

For all the fuss that been made, no one seems to have asked Mr. McCain the obvious follow up questions to clarify his position.

Follow-up Number One: If you’re willing to keep American soldiers in Iraq for 100 years – provided none are being killed or wounded – how many years are you willing to keep them there if they are being killed and wounded?
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Electoral Politics, Iraq Invasion | Tagged , , | Comments (1)
04/03/2008

Smackdown! Hilton vs. Yoo!

Let us now bash Paris Hilton. Why not? She’s a vapid, entitled blemish on the face of American culture. Born to wealth and privilege, Ms. Hilton is “famous for being famous,” attracting America’s attention with “reality” shows in which she and ex-friend Nicole Richie attempt, and fail with “hilarious” results, to live like ordinary Americans.

Q: Why is Paris Hilton stupid?
A: Because it pays so well.

Ms. Hilton does, however, provide a public service. She furnishes parents and preachers with an easy morality tale: while being crass and vacuous may be, in some cases, a path to fame and fortune, it’s better to make a positive contribution to society and retain your self respect. If “getting ahead” is all you care about, what separates you from the guy selling drugs on the corner?

On the other hand, let’s consider John Yoo, a professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. From 2001 to 2003, Professor Yoo was in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice.

Mr. Yoo is famous (not “Paris Hilton famous,” but famous enough) for his work at Justice. He is a proponent of the “unitary executive” theory of government, which boils down to: “The president is above the law and can do whatever he damn well pleases.”
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, September 11th | Tagged , | Comments (1)
03/27/2008

Blood and Treasure

Less than a week later, Adrienne and I headed back out for the vigil. The half-dozen senior citizens and nuns who have been there every day for nearly seven years were happy to have us back, even if it meant one of our infrequent thresholds – in this case, the 4,000th American death in Iraq – had been crossed.

There were only nine of us Monday evening. The previous Wednesday, the war’s fifth anniversary, had drawn a crowd of 60 vigilers. Perhaps not enough time had passed between to two dates to bring folks back out. Fewer cars honked to acknowledge us. The teenaged driver of one minivan screamed, “I love waaaar!” as he drove by. At least he had his van packed with the friends he was showing off for, thus making efficient use of his gas, if not his mind.

As we stood on the curb, things were falling apart in Iraq again. Although Moqtada al-Sadr had not called off his cease-fire, it seems the Iraqi government decided to make a pre-emptive strike against his Madhi Army. Fighting is widespread in Basra and Baghdad. American generals haven’t complained about it, so the action seems to have their blessing. Americans have taught the Iraqis something about pre-emptive strikes.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Iraq Invasion | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)