“It’s the end of the world as we know it…”

Last week local news anchors announced gas prices would hit four dollars a gallon this summer. This is in Georgia, the state with some of the lowest gas taxes in the US. This also assumes that the current freedom riots in Egypt don’t move on to the streets of Saudi Arabia. That is not an impossible scenario by any means and if they do, all bets are off as far as the price of oil is concerned. I predict that, after hitting four dollars a barrel, they will settle back down to $3.20 next fall and three dollars a gallon will be the new cheapest base price we ever see, until the next spike.

The spiraling price of gas, weird weather, and reading a chance quote on Face Book, led me to the works of John Howard Kunstler, the author of four non fiction books, two novels, and a play dealing with a post-industrial future, as well as nine other earlier novels. Kunstler also has a website and blog. He began with two books of Architectural and social criticism; “The Geography of Nowhere” and “City in Mind,” both criticizing the presumptive lack of both style and lifestyle in suburban America.

I completely agree with his assessment that suburban life is psychologically alienating and culturally barren. Most architecture built in the past 60 years has been either a grotesque nostalgic caricature, or some version of ugly Modernist monstrosity. I think he is correct as well in suspecting that at least part of the catalyst for crumbling social infrastructure and loss of manners and civility has been caused by an urban infrastructure that destroys a sense of community and inspires contempt rather than affection. Our public spaces give us little substance to inspire our best behavior, or even a greater vision of our collective self.

One novel idea that he explores in City in Mind is that our current love of “green space,” and the insistence that the cure for our social ills is empty lots full of “nature” is inspired by our subconscious loss of confidence that development can be anything but disappointing. Green Space becomes the only alternative to the further spread of ugly depressing buildings. The effectiveness of many of our parks and green spaces is debatable and much of it is little more than a waste of space but Nothing is preferable to the pathetic quality of the “something” that might otherwise take it’s place.

Unfortunately, Kunstler’s third book, “The Long Emergency,” renders the earlier two nearly irrelevant. If it is correct, the time for urban renewal is already drawing to a close. The Long Emergency addresses the end of the industrial phase of civilization due to Peak Oil and Climate Change. Unfortunately, both of these concepts are complicated to understand, easy to obfuscate, and cannot be proven until it is too late. Even those experts who believe in the concept of peak oil (virtually all do) freely admit that we will only conclusively know we are there by looking back several years after we have passed the peak and are seeing the decline.

Since annual oil production varies and small, though comparatively insignificant new fields are being found and new wells are being dug, identifying the particular year where we have reached maximum capacity is difficult at best, however there is some evidence and a growing consensus that it may have been in 2006 and few experts put it further away than 2020, with exceptions of denialists, who apparently think that the earth is rather like a large cordial cherry with a thin crust of rock concealing a core floating in a sea of crude oil.

Even when the peak is reached, there will still be roughly half the oil left in the producing fields. Among other things this means that oil company spokes-people are not lying when they say that we have enough oil left in the ground to power the world for 100 years. What they are not saying is that getting that oil out of the ground will rapidly become more difficult, more expensive, and, rather like slurping the last drop of soda from a cup of ice with a straw, getting every bit is impossible. When oil was first discovered in the U.S. the return on drilling was 20 barrels for every barrel expended in the effort, now it takes the equivalent of one barrel of oil to extract two, any return less than that is pointless.

Recent economic developments have rendered the whole argument a mute point. It does not matter whether the wells are “half full or half empty” when the important question is, “is there enough to go around?” The answer to that is a resounding “No!” Energy usage in the developing nations of Asia, primarily China and India increased more than 25% between 2002 and 2007, from 3000Mtoe per year to 4000Mtoe. At their current growth rate, they will hit 5000Mtoe next year. Even Big Oil executives can hardly bring themselves to pretend that energy production can increase to meet this need.

We have reached a limit beyond which only drastically rising prices and shortages will reign in usage. In a world in which our entire economy depends on oil that will mean economic recessions, as the cost of producing and transporting goods rises beyond consumers’ ability to buy, and eventually food shortages as the production of fertilizer and insecticides are impacted by a lack of raw material. Not only is much of our food shipped half way around the world, modern agriculture is completely dependant on petroleum derivatives to grow crops. Starving people abandon the bonds of civilization.

In The Long Emergency, Kunstler addresses the future impact an oil shortage will have on the economy and society. After almost a decade as a journalist for publications, including Rolling Stone magazine, Kunstler began writing books and produced seven novels over the next 14 years, before publishing The Geography of Nowhere in 1994. Since then, his commentaries on the dysfunctions of suburbia, and modern urban planning, have become standard reading in architectural schools across the nation.

The Hirsch Report, produced by the U.S. Department of Energy, supports the essence of Kunstler’s predictions and recommended drastic changes to U.S. policies and habits. It predicts that a transition from oil to other fuel sources would take a minimum of twenty years and suggests that dire consequences would accompany the advent of peak oil in the interim.

Kunstler’s books are extraordinarily well written and his arguments well crafted and difficult to refute by any method other than simply ignoring them. In The Long Emergency, Kunstler offers a catalogue of alternative energy sources with reasons why each is likely to fall short of being a satisfactory answer. There have been reoccurring rumors, for decades, of various “magic” inventions being squirreled away in the patent archives of oil companies that could reduce our petroleum use to a pittance. Perhaps these exist. If so, we are at the mercy of oil companies playing Russian roulette with the future as they gamble on how long they can ride their wave of fantastic profits before they unveil our new alternative fuel source.

However, as the Hirch report mentions, there is a simple problem of logistics. In 2007, the Department of Transportation released a figure of 254.4 million passenger vehicles in the U.S. The entire production of passenger vehicles in the world is only a little over 50 million. Meaning that it would take the output of every manufacturer on the planet for close to six years to replace just the cars in the U.S. with new fuel technology, let alone the rest of the world. This does not include tens of millions of commercial transport trucks, as well.

Of course, at some point the declining need for gas represented by these millions of cars would relieve the economic pressure but it is far from clear whether the world economy could remain stable during this transition, or where the fantastic sums of money to fund such a transition would come from. The impact of requiring every family in the U.S. to absorb the cost of even one, let alone several new cars, into their mostly already strained and over indebted budgets could cause a recession of massive proportions. For a significant number this would not be an affordable option even if the cars were available. Even the question itself rests on technology that we do not know to exist.

The World Made By Hand is Kunstler’s first novel to explore in a rational albeit fictional format what a postindustrial world might look like. At the end of The Long Emergency, Kunstler writes that he has moved to a small town in upstate New York, the kind of village that might have some chance of becoming self-sustaining in the years ahead. His novel is set in such a place during a vague future, perhaps ten years after the collapse of the U.S. economy and national social structure that itself happened in perhaps five or ten years of social unrest and economic upheaval.

Like his nonfiction books, his novel is very well written and easy to read. The scenes are vivid, the plot graceful, and the action mostly believable. The most pointed criticism that can be made regarding The World Made by Hand is that it is too idealistic and unrealistic. It is written about an exceptional place. While a small town such as this would certainly have a higher concentration of craft knowledge than most parts of the modern world, and perhaps access to more seed stock, live stock, and the equipment needed to raise them, there are holes in his logic.

Not many small towns have a natural gravity fed reservoir that would run itself with little maintenance and no power source, not to mention the accompanying sewer system that is, in fact never mentioned.. No explanation is given as to how everyone in town acquired wood burning cook stoves and learned how to use them. Surely, by the time these were unavoidably necessary, the production and shipping capacity needed to produce them would have already been in decline, or unavailable. Other than a few vague references no allowance is made for new clothes. Apparently, even after ten or fifteen years, people still have wearable garments and there is still a remaining supply of commercial fabric to be scrounged up and traded for.

On the other hand, Kunstler manages entirely believable plot twists to bring together the cultures of a traditional rural village, a religious cult, a neo feudal plantation, and a tribe of neo primitive bikers and quasi-criminals. He artfully and subtly plays them off against each other. My only complaints about this aspect of his story is that he underplays the likely violence of the biker gang, while the religious cult is inflected with a surprising and improbable paranormal aspect that leads the novel to conclude with a somewhat disappointing deus ex machina ending that escapes the rather obviously problematic resolution of several situations that have developed in the story.

Kunstler’s idealism is only forgivable in light of the fact that he is writing a book that he obviously hopes will be read and given serious consideration. If he had written an honestly realistic account it would have been too depressing to read and almost too depressing to even believe. As it is, his vision of the future is grim.

His fictional town of Union Grove was the kind of village that is the epitome of a mythological 19^th century rural America. A quaint quiet picturesque town full of generous, upright, kind hearted people. During the 20^th century, it evidently continued to prosper attracting its share of tract houses, strip malls, and (a Kunstler favorite) “fry pits,” and yet remaining the kind of place that people living in cities dream of escaping to.

In Kunstler’s tale, it has rather miraculously returned to a rural Eden, albeit one with a token undercurrent of poignant nostalgia. Many characters express their over all preference for their new world. While justice and the rule of law in a world that exists in a default anarchy is a major pivotal theme in the plot, it is one that is never resolved and the tribe of outlaws acts more like a pack of unruly yard dogs, occasionally snapping at the children and pissing on the floor, than the lawless, raping and pillaging, brigands that they would certainly be capable of being, if not very likely to be.

It is when they do begin acting like the outlaws that they are, that the plot devolves into weird suggestions of paranormal coincidences and then shrugs off the entire problem with a convenient end. The unspoken logical implication is that while things have been somewhere between not good and bad, they are about to get a whole lot worse.

Beneath the thin surface of Kunstler’s pretty impressionistic painting of rural life is a purgatory of monotonous drudgery in the struggle to survive, shrouded in perpetual threats both known and unexpected, circumscribed by incestuous gossip and the claustrophobic lack of mobility or news of a world outside the narrow confines of the immediate area. Even minimal comforts, let alone luxuries, are few and repetitive days of drudgery are only broken by the all too frequent occurrence of tragedy or, at best, pathetically amateur attempts at entertainment.

Those who died without knowing it in the bomb blasts that destroyed Los Angeles and Washington DC, or even relatively quickly from the “Mexican Flu,” before the novel begins were certainly the lucky ones. While Kunstler imbues his major characters with the optimistic can-do attitude that is almost de rigueur in a parable of American survival, it is hard to imagine any but the rare few achieving such a state of optimism in real life, although the literal future of the human race may depend on the ability of those who can.

Kunstler says he wanted to write a hopeful senario about the future as a contrast and alternative to the claasi “Mad Max” post-apcolyptic drama. Unfortunately, once one strips away the improbable aspects of his novel and adds in the things that he ignores one is left with a life that very few modern urban people would find even marginally comfortable, much less, enjoyable.

Those who doubt this should do an inventory of what resources can be found in an area of about 50 miles around where you live. Those would be things one might find imported and available. An area of say ten miles, at most would define one’s social community, although those within a mile would be one’s primary social circle. Anything not grown and/or produced in that area would be gone forever. How would you live through a winter without electricity, natural gas, running water, or grocery stores? That would be the crucial test of your quality of life.

Kunstler has written a sequel to World Made By Hand called The Witch of Hebron. He apparently has two further novels planned. I have little desire to read them. Having read The Long Emergency and World Made By Hand, it is no surprise to me that the majority of the American people are in denial about the fragile foundation of our Industrial Civilization. In fact, it would be a surprise if they were not! On the other hand, simply ignoring a very likely future of our world does nothing to stop it from coming true.

There does not appear to be much of anything that can be done at this point to avoid disaster. Like the pilot of a passenger jet without engines or the captain of an ocean liner headed for an iceberg dead ahead, we can watch the end inexorably approaching but nothing but a literal miracle from God will change our fate.  Like Icarus flying towards the sun, our wings are melting and our hubris, if the glories of man in the 20^th century really are such, will send us plummeting into the abyss.

There is little hope at all that the pleasures and luxuries of life in the late twentieth century can be maintained for more than a few decades at most, probably far less. The only question is whether we can catch our selves, as his characters have in a lifestyle equal to early Victorians or perhaps even late Renaissance, or whether we will slide all the way back to the Dark Ages. Either way, all of our arts and culture will be lost. Limited mobility and the struggle to simply survive will render them luxuries that we can’t afford to maintain.

Given the little hope that seems evident, and the fact that the only things that may prove to be our salvation are in the hands of a very few who may or may not prove trustworthy, the only thing we can do is be thankful for what we have now. Live every day to it’s fullest. Even the most common pleasures like a cup of morning coffee may be a memory in our lifetime. Stop to notice things, big and small; go to the trouble, take the time, and make the effort to insist that “not bad is not good enough,” at least for now, while it can be better.

E-books and the Crumbling Foundation of Western Civilization

Of course E-books are not bringing two thousand years of Western civilization crashing down around our ears; they do, however, represent a metaphor for what I consider to be a dysfunctional way of thinking that has been slowly corroding our quality of life for well over 50 years. We have become so enthralled with “technology” that we accept each development we are presented with as an unquestioned improvement.

That worship of technology, actually, started with the birth of practical science in the Victorian era. In the beginning most of the discoveries being made certainly were improvements. No one could deny that the automobile was better than horse and buggies, and electric light is far safer and more convenient than gaslight, although I prefer the delicate glow of a flickering flame to the harsh glare of compact fluorescents. 

As the twentieth century progressed, though, our technological developments have moved us further and further from a life with beauty and context. The decorative excesses of the Victorian era, and in some cases they truly were excessive, bred a feeling of distrust in decoration. By the 1920’s and particularly the 30’s, to be “modern” was to be cold, functional, striped down to the barest essentials. Yet the hearts of people still earned for beauty. The architecture of the Bauhaus, while critically acclaimed, never gained popular approval. 

However, after World War 2, soldiers came home to find “modernism” had been used as leverage to reduce ceiling heights to eight feet and crown moldings to the barest sliver of carving to cover the joint between wall and ceiling. The rows of houses being constructed in suburban subdivisions, while still bastardized reflections of every architectural style from the past 500 years, were not even graceful replicas; rather, they were the same box with a vague references to detail tacked on a superficial façade, a gothic pointed arch here, a broken pediment cut from plywood there, and obligatory non-functional shutters, everywhere. 

This trend is not simply architectural. Home cooked meals, made from real ingredients were replaced with almost tasteless pre-made frozen dinners- so amazing, so high-tech, so space age in their aluminum trays that, themselves, would soon be replaced with plastic. Nylon replaced silk and nylon was replaced with polyester, leading to possibly the most uncomfortable garment since Catholic penitents donned burlap “hair shirts”…double knit polyester suits. We accepted each and every degradation of our pleasure and quality of life with open arms and no objection because it was “new” and “improved” and scientific. 

The modern mind is a schizophrenic one in which, decade after decade, we are presented with “improvements” to our lives at the same time that the out-dated former example mysteriously becomes a luxury. High ceilings, hardwood floors, natural fabrics, home cooking, and so many other things that were once taken for granted as the everyday aspects of our material world have been updated out of our ordinary lives and then sold back to us at premium prices, gilded with the bittersweet longing of nostalgia. 

The latest in this long line of improvements is the E-book; although the improvements come so fast now-days pointing to “the latest” is like pointing at leaves floating down a stream. E-books are revolutionizing the world of Print, solving the mysterious problem of the sky rocketing price of printing books, not to mention the heretofore unrecognized problem of books being so terribly unwieldy as to be un-transportable. Odd that people have managed that task for around 600 years. Perhaps medical science should be investigating the atrophy of arm strength in contemporary humans. 

The book industry is, allegedly, on the brink of collapse, and the Kindle (et al.) is riding in like the Cowboy in the white hat to save the future of reading for all of us. Of course the technophiles, still longing for the Jetson’s fantasy of the 21^st century that they were sold by Saturday morning TV, 40 years ago, are thrilled and a younger generation who have grown up in a world where everything but their toothbrush has a digital readout, and there are even toothbrushes with built in timers that beep after the appropriate two minutes of brushing, embrace this new transformation of one of the few remaining low tech human activities into one utterly dependant on electricity, and the magic of circuitry and semi-conductors. 

First there is simply the obvious question of everything that can go wrong. A book does not lose power when you forget to charge it. The spine of a book may break when you drop it, but the pages are still readable. As long as the Latin alphabet is still the basis for Western communication, books will be readable. How many technologies for playing music and video have we been through in the past 40 years, and how many works have been lost because they didn’t make the conversion? How long will a Kindle last before the technology is improved and, like my new computer that wont read my “old” floppy discs, suddenly no longer embrace the books that it once displayed? 

Books are so much more than simply collections of words. When I was in college, I took two quarters of classic French literature. One day, I went to the University library to check out a book of Baudelaire’s poetry. How convenient it would be if this enormous seven story building, packed with dusty volumes could be reduced to a server that would easily fit in the average sized classroom and be accessed by E-Readers from anywhere on campus. 

Perhaps. But then I would not have the amazing experience that I did. I looked this book up in the computerized card file, rode the elevator to the appropriate floor, wondered through the stacks to find the shelf. I pulled an ancient book from the stacks and held its worn leather binding in my hands. It was an original copy from the late 1700’s. Opening the cover I discovered a French lending library label from the period. Next to that was an original UGA library label, listing the “alcove” and “shelf” on which the book had been placed over 150 years ago, long before the Library of Congress gave all the books in the world a number. Turning to the back cover was an old cardstock library pouch with the checkout card still in place. The last date stamped was 1954. 

I held a book in my hands, printed almost 200 years earlier, in a world that is only an intellectual fantasy in my mind. How many young hands held that book between then and now? How were they dressed, what did they think, what room did they stand in as they held it? The last time some one read that book, my own parents were still in High School and yet it sat on that shelf waiting for me take it down, carry it carefully back to my room, and listen in my mind as Baudelaire’s voice, slightly fractured by my still unsteady French, spoke to me down through the halls of history; spoke to me through a book, a copy of which he likely held in his own hands. 

I have a book that I found by accident years ago in a wonderful old used bookstore in Atlanta. At that time I had just recently learned of Havelock Ellis, early twentieth century philosopher, sociologist, and fellow gay man. The book is called “The Dance of Life,” and it has been enormously influential in my own worldview. That day, however, it was simply his name that caught my eye. 

It wasn’t a title that I recognized, which in a way made it even more interesting. Then I opened the cover. Ellis had published it in 1923 but this volume was of the 15^th printing, three years later in 1926. Being a twentieth century book, it has a humble cloth cover with a faded gilt title stamped on the spine; no deckled rag paper, or marbled edges. When I opened the cover, though I found an inscription on the end paper. 

Written in blue fountain pen, in the kind of neat script that almost no one knows any more, it says “Jimmy dear-it’s potent just like Newark(?) ‘apple jack’ but I’ll be surprised if you don’t like it. Sammy” This amazing book written by one of the men who helped lay the very first foundations of a modern Gay identity was given by one male friend to another 60 years before I found it and took their very good advice to give it a try. I don’t know that they were gay, and maybe it’s prejudiced to assume that two adult men would be just because they call each other “Jimmy” and “Sammy” with obvious affection. It is however, a tangible link between them and myself, fellow readers and Ellis fans, if nothing else. 

I have another book given to me years ago by my late lover and spiritual mentor. He introduced me to a philosophy that is still deeply important to me today. My friend was a good friend and student of the author who wrote the book and founded the movement. My copy is autographed by the Master and then dedicated to me by my friend, much like Sammy’s gift to Jimmy 60 years before. I have another important book in my collection whose three authors I have been privileged to call friends. One of the authors was house bound with severe health problems by the time the book was published and I guess my copy is one of only a few dozen, at most, with dedications from all three of them. 

A book is more than words on a page. A book is a living artifact of history. Even those who don’t appreciate books generally respect their value. Books are inevitably among the discarded items given to the thrift store, as “worth something to someone,” rather than set on the curb with the trash. Used books remain a thriving market, although the profit margin on operating a store is narrow. This is one of the ways in which modern technology has improved things. The Internet has made it possible to locate rare and obscure books all over the world. 

Several friends with experience in the publishing industry have told me that the reality is that publishing is only marginally worse off than it has ever been. Historically, it was never a market with large profit margins. Few of the Great Works of literature were best sellers. 

It was, however, an endeavor with enormous intellectual cache’. Wealthy families, earning their income in more gritty ways, often owned publishing houses that barely more than broke even, just for the bragging rights of owning them. Bibliophiles squeezed a living out of their bookstores simply for the pleasure of handling these things that they loved, and spending their days in the company of equally passionate customers. 

The thing that has changed far more than anything else in the market is the sale of this whole supply chain to corporate owners, with shareholders who expect not just to break even, but to have a continual growth of five or ten percent a year in clear profit. The E-book accomplishes this by removing all of the cost possible from the product. This is the driving force behind virtually every “innovation” in modern society. 

The improvements we are presented with, more often than not, do not actually improve the pleasure and experience of people’s every day lives. What they improve is the profit margin for the manufacturer who continually strives to offer less, for a greater profit. If, as in the case of E-books, they can do that while lowering the price as well, they consider it a win-win situation, as do too many customers who don’t realize until later that when the smoke and mirrors are cleared away they have in fact inevitably paid less for much less, and they will end up paying much more than previously for the luxury of having what used to be a given. 

Last year there was a huge scandal that, like most scandals in our deluge of news and information, raged for a few days and was quickly forgotten. In an act of inexplicable negligence Amazon put two E-books on the market, only to realize about a week later that they didn’t actually have a copyright to publish them. This was a potentially enormously costly error, so what to do? Erase them immediately, of course. The irony is that thousands of people woke the next morning to find that the book they had recently purchased had been replaced with a E-coupon to buy another book because Amazon had electronically “burned” all of its copies of George Orwell’s “1984.” 

No book could better be an icon of the dangers of the Information Age, than this classic science fiction novel that warned of a future in which the power of technology would be used to control the minds of the masses. Of course, this did not go unnoticed and Amazon quickly patched its legal loophole and returned access to the books. They apologized profusely and yet, rather than changing the software to make such actions impossible, they merely promised that their policy had been changed so that such actions are not allowed. 

This is a case of being damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If all of the books were in the physical memory of your reader, no one could remove them, but you could lose a library of a thousand volumes by leaving it on the bus, or dropping it in the bathtub. On the other hand, a thousand books stored on someone else’s server are only as secure as the person guarding the door and the power supply that sends them to you. At least the burning of the Library at Alexandria required more effort than flipping a switch.

None of the books I’ve mentioned are available on E-readers. The Dance of Life is available in a print on demand facsimile copy. I’ve purchased another rare book in that format. I also have a 100-year-old original, as well. The modern copy is cheap in construction, lacking in life, and very unlikely to last even a few decades, much less centuries. The vast majority of out of print books will never be published in E-book format.

 E-readers have gotten people started reading again. This is certainly a good thing. I suspect, though, that it has not made people as whole more intellectual, or even interested in books. It has simply transformed an old activity into a new fad, by imbedding it in the latest technology. Chasing after the latest thing, these people will leave their E-readers to gather dust in a few years while they run out to buy the next big innovation in technological entertainment.

Meanwhile, those of us who always loved books, the ritual of reading, and the act of self-education will be left with these cold, dead, but oh-so terribly convenient E-readers and a vague, or maybe not so vague, wistful memory of wandering through the narrow isles between  the shelves of libraries and bookstores, waiting for the random title to catch our eyes, and a cover to open like a gate to a whole new world. Certainly not the end of the world as we know it. Just one more insignificant piece shot from the stained glass window of civilization with an arrant pellet from the BB gun of “progress.” Still one might stop and wonder what’s left of the “window” when all of the panes are gone?

On being Thankful…Truly Thankful

Moving is not an easy thing for me. Each time I’ve gotten slightly better at it but it still has the stress of major surgery. When you’ve put together a “perfect” house, the task of tearing it a part and standing in a bare room full of packing boxes a few days later is altogether daunting, exciting, and depressing. Things inevitably get broke. Furniture gets scratched. Things inexplicably disappear. Then there is the fact that I rent, not own my house. It’s a wonderful house, but not without its imperfections, flaws, and things I would choose to do differently. Having neither money nor permission to change them, I have to live with them. Then there is the job search that drags on. And on. And on.

I have been dealing with all of these things the best I can. I well know that allowing my self to get depressed and discouraged is not effective, or helpful. Fortunately, there is much to be happy about. I have old friends gathered around me again. I live in a large vibrant city. For all it’s flaws, my house is wonderful and I have a great skill set and the job will come.

I always have something of a love/hate relationship with “gratitude,” though. This comes from my decisive, sharp, sometimes brutally honest critical evaluation of my life and the world, combined with a protestant childhood that made gratitude an extra burden rather than a relief. No matter how bad things get, even devastatingly tragic, a “good Christian” declares it’s “God’s Will” and faces it with self righteous stoicism. I realized, long ago, that I couldn’t accept that. Religious masochism is just wrong in too many ways to even list! Set backs are not God’s fault, and neither are they a “test of faith.” The worst of it is, when one is being piously compliant, one is not saying “Oh, hell no! I’m not putting up with this,” and insisting on something better. Life is a stone we slowly polish one facet at a time. Sometimes a piece flakes off, revealing the rough interior and we just have to polish that part again.

I’m on the Internet several times a day, so I had heard about the Haiti earth quake several hours after it happened. I felt a twinge of compassion, shook my head, said a little prayer, and went on as one does. I was out running errands around town a few days later. That afternoon was cold and gray, the other drivers were acting like idiots, the store clerks were slow, and I couldn’t find what I wanted. It was a thoroughly miserable afternoon.

Traveling down Memorial Drive, I passed the county municipal complex. The courts, the main police station, and the county jail are all there. A crowd of police officers had set up a banner on the median between the traffic and half a dozen or so were tagging cars to collect donations for the Haitian Relief fund. All the volunteers were African American and clearly very enthusiastic about their project. I looked in my wallet and pulled out two dollars, wishing I could afford to be more generous. As I passed by I stopped for a second and handed them through the window to a lady who said “Thank you” with genuine gratitude in her voice, and emotion in her eyes. For her, this was personal.

I realized she could have friends down there, maybe family, maybe she didn’t even know if they were still alive. The light was green. Other cars were waiting. No time to ask. My foot to the gas, I drove on. And felt tears well up in my eyes.

Poor me. Riding down clear paved streets in my comfortable car. Coming home from the farmers market where I picked through produce from all over the world and pouted because they were out of pomegranates, strawberries were still out of season and too expensive, and the hot house tomatoes were pale and tasteless. I was headed home to a comfortable house that most would call beautiful in spite of the water problem in the basement, a few cracks in the plaster, drawers that won’t open right, and doors that don’t stay closed.

It was a wake up call. Not a new lesson, just a reminder. It didn’t make the ant problem in the master bath less irritating, or the job search less stressful. It did remind me to stop and enjoy the fact that the roof doesn’t leak, that I can drive to a store full of food and still afford to buy some, that, today, at least, I’m not waiting to hear if any of my friends are still living, that I’m not trapped in the rubble wondering if help will come.

The difference in genuine gratitude is that it is not an extra layer of guilt laid on your already troubled shoulders. It’s not discounting the challenges you face. It’s not bracing yourself for another blow from your angry God. Real gratitude is rediscovering forgotten joy. Real gratitude bubbles up inside with the excitement of a basket full of gifts unwrapping themselves in your mind.

 I love coffee. I can hardly get up in the morning without it. How can I forget, so many mornings to taste it? To feel it’s warmth flow into my body? To think about these precious berries from half a world away that a hundred hands have brought to my kitchen, so that I can sit here and hold this cup.

And there is the cup….

And the cream…

And the sugar…

Avatar: A Whole New World of Movies

Avatar (Dir. James Cameron) is truly an amazing movie. It is set on the moon/planet Pandora, in the Alfa Cetauri star system in 2154. Human miners come into conflict with the indigenous Na’vi  humanoids. Its plot is a simplistic tale of good versus evil, Civilization versus the Noble Savage, Industrialization versus respect for Nature. It is the classic Western that Hollywood has made for over a century. This time the “Indians” win, reflecting a shift in cultural perspective to a respect and admiration for indigenous lifestyles and ecologically responsible relationships with our “world.”

Avatar has been criticized because the Na’vi ultimately rely on a human defector to help them triumph over exploitation and drive the miners off of their world. I think this overlooks the fact that, in this case, the human, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), is not merely a patronizing savior but actually becomes a Na’vi warrior. He is only able to save his tribe by combining both his human knowledge and the knowledge the Na’vi teach him.

Sitting in the theater, though, it is not spiritual philosophy and social messages that you experience. It is a three hour roller coaster ride through the most amazing CGI experience put on film. Pandora is a world filled with floating mountains, glow in the dark plants, ten foot tall feline humanoids who ride flying banshees, and deadly predators. It’s believable, breath taking, and sometimes over whelming. My heart raced, my palms sweated, I felt almost sick with vertigo, and more than once closed my eyes, unable to watch characters leaping into death defying open spaces. Rather than reminding myself that “its computer generated,” I literally thought, “it’s ok, he can’t die. He’s the hero.”

Avatar is the Star Wars of our time. Both movies re-imagine a classic Western mythology to reflect the values and concerns of their time. Like Star Wars, Avatar does this in the context of a film that pushes the technical and visual limits of the medium, setting a new standard by which the movies of the future will be judged. I wish I could say Avatar was perfect. It’s not. The mineral which the humans desperately seek, to the detriment of the Na’vi people and the humans own dignity and moral decency is, unfortunately, named Unobtainium. The discoverer of a new mineral has the privilege of naming it virtually anything they want, placing this blatant cliché within the bounds of real possibility, but such a shameless pun seems cheap and almost satirical on screen. Likewise the two bad guys, Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) the director of the mining operation, and the head of security, Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), are unfortunately one dimensional characters. Like the Unobtanium they seek, they are not completely beyond being believable but there is no excuse for their characters to not have been at least slightly more thoughtful and emotionally complex.

Before going to see Avatar, I read that there are support groups online for people who have been overwhelmed by depression after leaving this amazing cinema fantasy to return to the mundane real world. I thought this was probably a clever publicity stunt. While I don’t feel in need of such help myself, I can now see how some people might. It really is that captivating. What I did feel leaving the theater was a sense of bitter sweet regret. Since the advent of video, we have almost always been able to purchase the movies we love for repeat viewing later. Avatar in 3D, particularly on an IMAX screen, takes one back to the early days of cinema in which the movie each week was a unique adventure in fantasy, all the more magical because one was not likely to ever see it again. Like post cards brought home from a trip to a foreign land, any DVD of Avatar that is released can’t be anything more than a pale reminder of the original. Take the journey to Pandora while you can.

There and Back Again

Or…What I learned Above the Mason Dixon Line

Or…People are People, Wherever You Go

Or…Home is Where the Heart Is, Not Necessarily Where You Wish It Were 

Two years ago, before I began this blog, I left my native city, Atlanta, GA, and moved 1,000 miles away to Syracuse, NY, otherwise known as The Great White North. It was the pursuit of a Masters Degree in Arts Journalism that led me north; the same pursuit that inspired this blog. The decision to make this journey was made in about a month. Fortunately, I had almost six months after that to prepare and steal myself for the move. The move back to Atlanta, a month ago, was made on similar short notice with no extra time at all. On the other hand, this time I was moving back to something familiar and comfortable. An easier and more joyful prospect, by far.

 I’m Home now. That’s home with a capital “H.” Home is not just the residence where you put your stuff, or your official mailing address, or the place you are registered to vote. Home is not even necessarily that place in close proximity to your source of income. Those designations belong to a lowercase “home” which, if you are fortunate, happens to be Home, as well. Home is a place whose rhythms beat with your own heart, a place where people don’t just speak as you speak but mean what you mean when you speak, a place whose color and texture, rhythm and song is as natural and inevitable as the palms of your hands and the breath in your lungs.

 Atlanta is far from a perfect place. It is, however, the place my family has lived for generations. More importantly, it is the place I’ve lived my whole life. My first experience of Home was a three month trip to Europe when I was 23. My parents were so certain I would stay there that my father promised me $1,000 and an airline ticket to any place in the world that I chose to live, if I would come home and finish my bachelor’s degree. I did come home, and the day after I arrived I got in my car and drove into town: up the expressway from my parents house in the southern suburbs, exiting downtown, and taking Peachtree street north to Buckhead, and then Piedmont road south again back to Midtown. It was at that point that I pulled the car into a gas station, put my head down on the steering wheel and cried. The tears were half joyful relief to be back again and half frustrated defeat. London, Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice; Europe was beautiful, bright, shinning, and sophisticated. Atlanta was Home.

 Needless to say, I’m a far different man today than I was twenty years ago and this time I left unsure of whether I would ever move back again. I felt ready for a change; for something new. However, I felt a similar, although far more subtle tug at my heart strings when I came back to visit for the Christmas holidays, six months after I left. I stayed with friends in the neighborhood where I now live. My second day there, the neighbors had a pot luck dinner to decorate the tree on the beach of our community lake. I was introduced, in passing, to an older gentleman.  A few minutes later, he came back to renew the conversation by saying “You’re a Tidwell? I knew a family of Tidwells many years ago in Nebraska. Very nice people! Would they be a part of your family?” Perhaps similar conversations do take place in other parts of the world, but this conversation with this gentil man, with a soft southern drawl struck me as the very essence of being Southern; the ineffable rhythm of a life that I had been secretly proud not to have missed since I went away. It was that almost genetic familiarity that one can only find in a place where one has always been.

 One of the first things I learned in moving to central New York was that people aren’t that different. Neighbors are friendly to you, if you are friendly to them. Bored shop keepers are happy to chat on slow afternoons. People who live in the suburbs are intimidated by life “downtown,” whether downtown is barely a city, or a major metropolis. I also discovered locals don’t see their town through the same eyes that a stranger views it.

 Syracuse is a small city of 100-400,000 people, depending on how far out you want to count. A century ago, it was a major transportation hub and manufacturing center, much like Atlanta, but with both railroads and the Eerie Canal running through town. Unlike Atlanta, the capital of Georgia, Syracuse was passed over as the capital of New York, narrowly beat out by Albany. Atlanta has been growing steadily since the Civil War, while Syracuse stalled. Since the 1950s, Syracuse has been shrinking, both economically and in population. The silver lining in this cloud is the fact that most of the original architecture and urban fabric has been preserved. The shops may be empty, the paint may be peeling, the bricks in need of repair, but it is there just waiting for a reason to be reborn.

 I moved to Syracuse determined to fall in love with it. Like an arranged marriage, I was stuck with it and knew I must make the best of it. Mostly, I found that an easy task. The locals, though, have spent fifty years and several generations looking back to better times. Whether ten years, or fifty, things were better then than now. My compliments on the town were often met with outright laughter. “Syracuse is charming!” brought forth disbelieving giggles and guffaws! Charming? Syracuse? Surely not! But it is. The experience of walking many streets in Syracuse today is little different from 100 years ago, apart from the kind of traffic and the clothes people wear. I leave with the hope that they will one day rediscover the gem that lays waiting behind those dusty windows and faded dreams.

 I knew, coming home, that I had many friends to welcome me back. I didn’t realize how many people who I thought of as “mere” acquaintances would express genuine delight at my return. Absence may not really make the heart grow fonder, but it does give people an excuse to tell you what you have meant to them. It would be easy, and certainly pleasant to just settle into this cozy social cocoon, as if I had never left all, however, I came home determined to look at Atlanta through the eyes of a foreigner. If the people of Syracuse taught me that you can find good people wherever you go, they also made me stop and think that, at least in some ways, I could be as blind to my hometown as they were to theirs.

 One thing that I did in Syracuse, to help myself cope was to focus, not on what I had lost, but on what I needed. I could no longer run over to the Dekalb International Farmers Market and get just about every possible vegetable, cheese, and meat that it’s possible to import into the United States. Quel Dommage! The question became: what is it that I want and where can I get it? For several items the answer was “in some town bigger than Syracuse, NY,” but most things could be found somewhere in some, often times more interesting, shop tucked in an out of the way corner of town. Now I’m home and curious what I may have overlooked in my reliance on convenient answers like the farmers market. This will be a year of stretching out, exploring corners and easily overlooked alleyways. I won’t complain again about Atlanta not being Manhattan, until I feel like I know what Atlanta is.

 This trip has changed my life in many enduring ways. Everyone should go to Europe, preferably for more than a seven cities in seven days package tour. Everyone should pack up and move across the country at least once. You can go “there,” and come back again. You can love it, or hate it, and most probably you’ll do both. You’ll make new friends and discover you had more old friends than you thought you did. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and at some point you’ll be very afraid but the end of your journey will find you a far stronger, better, person than when it began. Step out and wander far across the wide world and trust your heart to bring you Home again.

Noblese Oblige: Privilege and responsibility

Throughout Western history, since the Renaissance, Aristocracy has defined the standards and parameters of good taste. This seems to almost be a natural occurrence in any social structure with an upwardly mobile middle class. Style and fashion are engendered by those with education money and privilege, those with social aspirations follow suit, and the “latest things” then flow out into the provinces to be replicated as best they can be. Of course, the industrial revolution in the 19^th century made mass production possible. This means that, today, those living far from urban centers of style can have most of the same things those living in the cities have, and fads and fashions are produced in a range of quality and price, giving one and all as much style as they can afford to have. 

This was true up until World War 2. Two world wars and a world wide depression combined with the various effects and influences of modern civilization erased the social power of the aristocracy and the respect it once commanded. However, even as pop culture celebrities took over the reigns, guiding the future path of aesthetic innovation, there was still an overall attitude of aspiration in society. People endeavored to put on the best front possible; sincerely maintaining their “respectability” and superficially “keeping up with the Jones.” The only real difference was they looked to Hollywood instead of high society for inspiration. 

Over the past fifty years, however, the aspiration has faded. People have become increasingly satisfied merely watching their idols live out the collective fantasy of a “good life.” Part of this is undoubtedly the far too often ignored fact that the American dream is slipping further and further out of the reach of ordinary people. Another issue is the fact that the media has dominated every day life with images so unrealistic that ordinary lives seem impossibly small by comparison. But there is also the modern philosophy that all things are equal; “Culture” was just a snobbish affectation and the difference between symphony concerts and American Idol is nothing but a matter of taste. 

So, if that’s true, why should one want to aspire to anything beyond easy reach? As I always say, perhaps even too often, because the pleasure it adds to life is worth it. At least, I always find that to be true. However, I have to admit that, as a Southern Gentleman, a belief in Western Civilization runs deep in my blood. I was brought up believing I was the future patriarch of a “fine old southern family.” We trace or roots back to the earliest days of recorded English history. I always believed that depending on the exploits of ones ancestors was a poor excuse for personal pride. In fact, while my grand parents did take significant pride in our history, even they taught me that “fine old families” only stay that way by the continued success of future generations. As much as my past was something to be proud of, it was also something to live up to. 

The positive side of this, and the one relevant here, is that they gave me permission to both expect a lot out of life and to feel that I deserve it. A few weeks ago I mentioned the possibility that people shopping in Thrift store often think the best clothes there are “too nice.” That attitude pervades some people’s whole lives. I suppose it is a natural thing for people who feel permanently consigned to a life of poverty, where all the “good things in life” are permanently out of reach to psychologically defend themselves with reverse snobbism; the “important things” being those things within ones own reach. An Internet acquaintance recently confessed that his house unsuitable for entertaining. There was a mention of piles of plastic bins and the fact that having nice things in the ghetto was just encouragement to get robbed. But then he went on to say he hated dinner parties anyway, or any other reason to have to get dressed up and “act fake all evening,” and his friends had finally learned not to invite him over to their houses, either, unless the were just going to” kick back and hangout.” That attitude may salve ones feelings against envy, but it does so at the cost of the pleasure and experiences that one could have. 

Years ago I worked at a craft shop in the local mall, just outside of the main entrance to Rich’s Dept. Store (the upscale store in the south back then). One afternoon I was having a conversation with another clerk in food court and she expressed surprise that there was a craft store. When I told her where it was she replied “Oh, I don’t go to that end of the mall. I can’t afford Rich’s.” Half the shopping mall was off limits because the store at that end was “expensive.” In fact clothes there were as cheap or cheaper than Sears at the other end, when they were on sale, and generally much nicer. 

I have a small collection of silver serving pieces, several actually sterling and the rest plate, that I inherited. I’ve added to those with a number of silver plate items I picked up at the thrift store. Of course silver isn’t to everyones taste but I think it looks nice on a table. One recent purchase was a vintage 1920′s silver ice bucket complete withtilt top lid and mercury glass liner. I was feeling cheap so I waited for it to go half price, which took a whole month. I thought it would be gone and felt stupid for waiting. It’s certainly worth far more than the $15 they were asking. I’m stubborn, though, and when I feel cheap I’m as rigorously cheap as I can be luxurious at other times. Amazingly, it sat there for a whole month and I got it for $7.50. I can’t help but wonder how many $18 tacky plastic ice buckets WalMart sold during the same time. 

Have I been particularly blessed by that elitist side of my upbringing? Does one have to be “to the manor born” to aspire to the best of everything? This situation is something I wonder about and don’t have an answer for (comments would certainly be welcome).  Perhaps people who grow up without a sense of culture can’t ever take the initiative to reach for it. Judging from what seems popular on TV, they certainly haven’t lost interest in it. The sales of lottery tickets indicate a deep desire to get rich for some purpose. Will money give them permission to live well, or is the need to “get rich” simply a reflexive matter of habit; something they’ve been told to desire? I hope that’s not true.  If we can not find a sense of pride not just in the exsistential fact of being human, but in the very real fact of living human lives, then all hope for art and letters, and whatever dignity and granduer Western Civillization has had, is lost.

I regret there are no pictures this week. the unfortunate obligations of life has left me without time to arrange them. I hope my words are enough.

Exquisite Serendipity

I had several ideas of what I might write this week tussling with each other in my brain. Part of the struggle is that they sort of overlap and link together. I don’t want to end up repeating myself. I’ll arrogantly assume my loyal readers will read everything and therefore don’t need to see it twice. Then out of “nowhere,” as it were, thought in fact it was an email from a very specific someone, I received a YouTube video that I have kept coming back to all day. It is the most charming thing I’ve seen in ages and if you think you have something more charming, please do send it to me!

This is just wonderful on every possible level! “My Modern Metropolis,” says this was done on the morning of March 23 at the Central Station in Antwerp, Belgium. The only downside is that I have to confess it was staged by the Belgian TV station as publicity for a reality TV show called “op Zoek naar Maria,” which I’ve seen interpreted as “In Search of Maria.” I don’t speak Dutch so forgive me if that’s not accurate. This is a version of a recent BBC show called “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?” in which Graham Norton join forces with Andrew Lloyd Webber and West End producer David Ian in search of an unknown star to play Maria in a revival of “Sound of Music.”

 

It’s true; I hate reality TV with a passion. However, the difference between a snob and an elitist is that an elitist never argues with success. This video flashed onto the Netisphere in the last few days. I’ve received in two separate emails from different places today. YouTube says it’s been viewed over 314,000 times when I watched it (6 times) and the title pulls up over 125,000 hits on Google (which makes me wonder if the count on YouTube is accurate). People are smiling and “LOL!”ing on blogs around the world.I hope this blog aims a little higher than merely passing on Net spam, though.

Daphodil from the Hawley Green neighborhood planting in Syracuse, NY.

I was in a rather poor mood this morning before this brought a smile to my face. After I saw it I couldn’t stop going back to it. I started thinking about that. We desperately need more joy in the world. We need more silliness in the world. More play. We need random acts of serendipity! A group of people in my neighborhood got a community grant to buy several thousand bulbs. One Saturday afternoon, last fall, they ran around the neighborhood with auger drills planting bulbs around street signs, in random clumps along the edge of the sidewalk, and beside some people’s front steps. Spring is here and now, as if by magic, the whole neighborhood is breaking out in blooms. Not near as show stopping as 200 people dancing in a train station, but they are making people smile, and I’m sure it’s making them wonder “where those flowers came from,” too.

 

 

Someone, on one of the dozen or so blogs I’ve looked at today, searching for the back story to “Do Ra Me” called it “Guerilla Joy.” I think that’s perfect. In a world oppressed by Recession, wars, and terrorism, we desperately need Guerilla Joy. That morning, 200 people made several hundred others smile and tap their feet. It doesn’t stop there, though, they poured out of that train station across the city of Antwerp smiling at other people, being kinder than they might have been which in turn made other people smile. Now, like the proverbial bread cast upon the waters, the video is going around the world touching hundreds of thousands and every comment I saw about said “It made me smile!”

 

I know my readership is still small and unlikely to have much influence. Still, just imagine if this idea were to gain traction in the world. What if all those people wasting time watching reality TV got together with neighbors, Sunday school classes, high school drama clubs, Boy & Girl Scout troops, Masonic Lodges, and started plotting random acts of Guerilla Joy.

 

What better response to terror and hatred than laughter? About five or six years ago, hate monger Fred Phelps decided to picket a Gay bar (unfortunately I can’t remember where and couldn’t find it). The bar owner sent out an SOS to the local Drag Queens who, in a matter of hours had set up a “Pray-a-thon” in front of the bar where Phelps was demonstrating across the street. The queens were raising money for the local AIDS charity in the form of donations and pledges based on how many hours Phelps would pray. With donations on the “tote” board racking up at over $500 an hour, Phelps packed up and hit the road before the day was over.

 

Would it be possible to stage a “9/11″ of guerilla joy? What would it take? What would it look like? It’s something to think about. Imagine an act of random beauty so exquisite that it stopped the whole world in its tracks. So touching grown men weep. People calling each other saying “you’ve got to get to a TV…find this on the Web, now!” CNN running the clip over and over all day. Pundits shaking their heads “Well, Bob, what else can you say it…it…was just amazing.”

President Barack Obama addresses a rally of about 14,000 people at the Taco Bell Arena at Boise State University February 2, 2008 in Boise, Idaho.

The President calling a press conference to say, “My fellow Americans today marks a new beginning for mankind. We have awoken to a new world and things will never be quite the same. We must band together and carry this spirit forward…”

 

Maybe instead of a Department of “Homeland Security,” we need a Department of General Welfare and the Pursuit of Happiness. A “Corps d’Esprit” to fan out across the land and build the esprit de corps of our nation. A Peace (and Happiness) Corps to spread joy around the world. This week, put on some Boogie Woogie music and dance around your living room with the blinds up and the curtains open. Buy a handful of flowers and pass them out to people in your office (or strangers on the bus!) saying “Happy Spring!” or maybe just “Happy Monday!” Smile at strangers on the side walk. Spend a few minutes at least wondering…is it possible…dancing in a train station…something bigger… a laugh heard around the world.