auspices and omens

inaugurate [from L. augury, divination from auspices and omens]

And what can we divine from the transition and the first week in office? Are we witnessing the dawn of a postracial, postpartisan era? Herewith a modest hypothesis, more a hunch than a data-driven prediction. I submit the heretical notion that Obama will be a conservative president.

What?! Am I insane, uninformed, or just jaded? Possibly, probably, and it depends on what you mean by 'conservative'.

I'm not talking about an ideologically narrow-minded conservatism wherein all taxes and social programs are evil, all minorities and foreigners are a threat to "our" cherished way of life, and the only civil liberties are property rights and guns.

Nor am I talking about an authoritarian neoconservatism whereby it isn't illegal if the president does it, anyone is an enemy combatant with no due process rights if the department of justice says so, and the U.S. can and should invade any country that can't prove that it isn't doing what some fabricated rumors say they might be doing.

Finally, I'm not talking about an oligarchic conservatism in which a elitist ruling class of naturally superior persons is entitled to control the wealth, manipulate the decision-making power, and change or ignore the laws that govern everybody else. Why? Because they can. Why do you ask?

What am I talking about? When I was a freshman poli sci major at Northeast Swingstate University (soon to be a transfer history-literature major at a major university up north, and then a college stop-out farther up north majoring in yoga and cross-country skiing), I had fleeting contact with a conservative political scientist who argued that FDR was a conservative president. Not in any of the senses sketched above, of course, but more broadly 'conservative' in the sense that FDR shook things up just enough in a genuine national crisis to prevent the country from flying apart at the seams. Roosevelt was not as revolutionary as the radicals thought necessary, and he wasn't as dogmatic as the reactionaries thought prudent.

For the same reason that only Nixon could go to China, Obama cannot and will not do what is needed to get to the heart of the current crisis. Nixon was a symbol that stood for McCarthy-esque anticommunist Amerikan patriotism, so no one could be righteously indignant that he would shake hands with Mao and have dinner with Chou En-lai. Because Obama is a symbol who stands for change, he will walk on eggs to avoid an offending misstep or, heaven help us, actually changing something, lest he be called radical.

There will be no restructuring of the way government does business; more likely a cautious repopulating of the same old way business does government. The players will change, but the grand old game stays the same. Prima facia evidence is all over the cabinet. Take Timothy Geithner - please - and while you're at it, take his Goldman Sachs buddies transferring their conventional wisdom from Wall Street to Washington. Take Mr. Holdover Gates at Defense. Take Ms. Payback Clinton at State.

If Obama stays true to form, he will do in the White House what he did at Harvard Law. He will walk and talk the middle course between hostile combatants in order to reconcile opposing forces and win through nonconfrontation. Then he will appoint three right-wingers for every left-winger, to the dismay of those who put him in office.

Maybe that's the good news. Plenty of symbolic moves and talk of "bold strategic initiatives" while bending over backwards to reach across the aisle to Republican ideologues who don't seem very anxious to meet anyone halfway. Some would call that kind of centrist bipartisanship "pragmatic" and professor whatshisname back at NSU would probably agree. I just hope it works.

Waiting for the electrician...or someone like him

A sixties cultural reference, lost on people who weren't there (except the cognoscenti) and many who were and don't remember it, to a Firesign Theater album of the same name. Think Monty Python's Flying Circus, but for radio instead of TV and American instead of English: four very clever guys whose insane sense of humor coincided briefly with the zeitgeist.

But what I really have in mind is another bright young man, breathing in a different zeitgeist entirely, neither a Firesign nor a Python but with elements of both, who has at long last decided in his own time and manner to go "back" to school, though it's not in any way going back.

My son C.A.A. Jessi S. Golly (perhaps we gave both him and his sister excessive middle name baggage, the least of our commissions and omissions) some time ago dropped out of Ubermensch College halfway through his sophomore year to do other things than go to class, write papers, and study for exams. Imagine, a mere 20-year-old getting the outlandish notion that there are other things to do than go to class, write papers, and study for exams.

So he volunteered at the infoshop, planted a garden, built a bike, cooked and served at the cafe, wrote to prisoners, helped edit EarthFirst! Journal, squatted, built community gardens, tutored kids, fought city hall, rode in Critical Mass, counseled summer campers, got paid for playing Don't Kill the Messenger on the streets of Manhattan, wrote articles, sold graphic novels, harvested cranberries, and six years later - a nice round mythic number - enrolled in the construction skills program at Apex Academy, a trade school in New York.

Gven and I were delighted, in a maternal/paternal, vicariously psyched, tubular kind of way, when Jessi started talking about becoming an electrician. Both of his grandfathers, a few of his uncles, and some of his cousins have that engineering gene common in homo faber. Initially surprised at the choice of a technical school, but then again not, and equally excited by the decisive change of direction. I would have pictured him getting into teaching, horticulture, bookbinding, semiotics, or animation, but wiring is cool. He is interested in literature and the arts, but what he wants to do for a living is make things and fix things.

The 900-hour program at Apex breaks down to a series of courses in three trades - carpentry, plumbing, and electrical - and we shall see where that leads. What opportunities will there be for work, apprenticeship, or further training? Will technical school itself be as interesting and rewarding as the gainful employment it presumably leads to? Will he find a niche in the sociocultural milieu of blue-collar Big Apple in a way that he did not at Ubermensch? Will the recessionary economy help or hurt his ability to make a livelihood in the building trades?

These are just the kind of questions a theoretically inclined parental unit asks. Who wouldn't benefit from knowing a little carpentry, plumbing, and electrical knowledge? I would if I had the right kind of mind, but some things skip a generation. Much remains to be determined, and the adventure continues.

Hoopaholic

My name is Sven and I'm a hoopaholic.

As I carpe diem, one day at a time, in my 12-step program of recovery from demon basketball, I am obliged to acknowledge that yes, I have a problem, and yes, I am powerless to control the problem on my own, and yes, some entity larger than myself is needed to begin the healing.

I recently had a setback in my struggle to live hoop-free. With invaluable support and encouragement from taiji and qigong practitioners, I was able to find alternative sources of muscle stimulation and healing energy. I was doing fine, and my knees were relatively pain-free most of the time.

Then I walked past the empty gym at Whetstone during a break in the rec center schedule, when no basketball leagues or open volleyball games were going on, and an uncontrollable urge came over me. There was a rack full of basketball sitting there with no one around. Just one shot, I thought, then I'll go home and no harm will be done.

You can imagine the rest of the story. One shot led to another, and pretty soon I was banking in turn-around jumpers, right-hand hooks, left-hand hooks, jump-hooks, layups. Only the gross physical limitations of this mortal coil prevented me from making shots from beyond the three-point arc, and before long fatigue made me stop and rest. Oxygen debt is unforgiving.

The rec center staff were getting ready to close up and go home. Did I pack it in like a rational person? Of course not! I shot another round from both sides of the paint, getting into a rhythm, warming up a bit, and even elevated enough to noticeably leave the floor momentarily. And they say white men can't jump.

I'm here to say even white guys born in the year of the metal tiger, at the very dawn on the second half of the twentieth century, if they have temporarily lost their marbles, can extend their qi and the magical orange orb more than they realized and almost touch the rim. Almost.

And when they happily hobble home in the snow, their knees ache just like they did in high school. But now the knees still ache a week later, and when doing a certain taiji movement, weight shifting right to left, one of the quadriceps gives out for just an instant right where it attaches on the medial side of the knee, and that's no fun. But I think I can work around it if I put my weight in the heel instead of the ball of the foot, there, much better.

My logical left brain says: this is nonsense, you're done, hang it up, and do what heals you, not what hurts. Makes sense to me. That's what I tell my students. Then my spatial right brain says: it's worth it, what I need is more basketball, not less, and those fast-twitch muscle fibers that have atrophied will come to life again.

Sure they will. Which Sven will win this argument? Maybe I'll make it my patriotic duty to play once in a while, out of respect for our new hoop-loving president. In fact, it would be disrespectful not to. Then when the health care system is fixed, I'll get some new knees.

inaugural mashup

Humbled, grateful, and mindful of
rising tides and still waters,
gathering clouds and raging storms,
faithful to the ideals and true to our founding documents.

The indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics,
a sapping of confidence, decline is inevitable;
an end to petty grievances and false promises,
the time has come to set aside childish things.

Greatness is never a given; the makers of things,
obscure in their labor, begin the work of remaking America,
to restore science to its rightful place,
to harness the sun and the wind and the soil.

When imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage,
those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account;
the market can spin out of control,
but it is the surest route to our common good.

Power grows through its prudent use,
our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness;
shaped by every language and culture,
our common humanity shall reveal itself.

People will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy,
nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect;
the world has changed, and we must change with it,
a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.

Let it be said by our children's children
that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end;
we carried forth that great gift of freedom
and delivered it safely to future generations.

Beanhead: My Life and Coffee

This is your brain.



This is your brain on coffee.

Any questions?

Actually, yes. Where can I get some more?

My earliest memories of coffee center around a large stainless-steel pot that my parents used when we lived in Wisconsin during the 1950s. It was a magical, mystical, ritual object, not to be trifled with and not for children. There was a right way and a wrong way to dispense Folger's into the huge, shining hemisphere that sat atop the shining pot, a correct method of stirring the grounds as the water did its alchemical work, yielding the special substance that only adults could drink. Mom drank it black, Dad took half-and-half.

I don’t think I paid that much attention to coffee for the next 12 years or so. It stunts your growth, you know. When I went away to college and started staying up late because nobody could tell me not to, I learned the rejuvenating, drug-like qualities of the dark elixir.

It became almost as hip and cool to drag oneself over to the cafeteria in McSweeney Hall next door to my dorm, Apple Hall (invoke biblical coming-of-age allusions, fall from grace, partaking of the Tree of Knowledge, etc., here) for an early morning cup of java as it was to stay up unreasonably and unproductively late reading or writing a paper in order to undergo the ritual cleansing of the mind, soul, and urinary tract that naturally goes with caffeine dependency.

Needless to say, I was quickly hooked, but it wasn’t entirely my fault. My Scandinavian ancestry made me genetically and culturally predisposed to drinking coffee, loving coffee, needing coffee. They call it a Norwegian blood transfusion, dontchaknow. Don't feel so good? Have some coffee.

It was only after I transferred to Michigan, however, and starting working at the Belltower Hotel that I became a full-fledged coffee addict. Park of my job as “porter” at the little campus-area flophouse across the street from Hill Auditorium was to vacuum the lobby every morning before the cheapskate guests came downstairs to complain about the TV not working and enjoy their complimentary coffee and chocolate donuts. Maureen, the English desk clerk, and I would help ourselves to a styrofoam cuff of Maxwell House and a chocolate donut or two, being careful to make sure the hotel guests, who could have paid twice as much to stay at the Campus Inn, got first dibs. I was well on my way to a life of dissipation on the mean streets of Ann Arbor.

Living in the Upper Peninsula, drinking coffee is a requirement. Even people who don't like coffee drink it because it's what people do in the UP. "Come on in, have a cup o' kah-fee." Most social interaction occurs either over coffee or over beer. Tea drinkers and wine snobs beware: to eschew coffee or beer is to marginalize yourself. Prepare to be called a sugarbeeter.

When I moved to Georgia in the mid-seventies, we milked our Jersey cow, Ms. Red, every morning and skimmed the cream for coffee and oatmeal. Ooh-la-la! If you want to know what good is, it's fresh cream in your coffee, just hours from the cow.

It wasn't until we moved to Chicago and Gven worked at the Heartland Cafe that I discovered exotic coffees. The Heartland served a Mexican coffee called Bustelo that was dark and strong and more complex than regular coffee. I had tasted Cuban coffee in Miami and Turkish coffee in Detroit, but I had no idea: so many coffees, so little time.

At Oberlin at that time, coffee was something to wash down a brownie at the student union snack bar. Since then a coffee renaissance has taken place, and lots of cafes have opened, so the next generation of students has more choices.

When we moved to North Carolina, coffee was usually the beverage after a movie at the Janus Theater. Our friend Richard, in the midst of already animated conversation, would ask for "just half a cup" every time the waitress came around, even after half a dozen refills of half a cup and an increasingly wired talk-fest. I think coffee was Richard's liquor, and he handled it well.

Moving back to Atlanta and becoming parents, coffee took on additional meaning and survival value. I used to order coffee and cocoa at the downtown Howard Johnson's near the old Atlanta Stadium and do some editing work in one of the bright orange booths. Once I saw Hank Aaron come in quietly and sit down. He eyed me warily as I identified myself as a fan going back to his years in Milwaukee, but he said nothing and went back to his meal.

Coffee was in vogue when we moved to Columbus in the mid-eighties, and hipster cafes were opening up all over town. During graduate school I became a denizen first of King Avenue, then Arabica, then Insomnia, then Stauff's. Each had its own distinctive vibe, subculture, and dress code - smoking, nonsmoking, bohemian, punk, or self-consciously intellectual. I got a lot of reading done on those nights, a little valuable ethnographic observation, and maybe a bit of posturing too.

During grad school, coffee took on a communal dimension. The Physical Club was founded on coffee and Buckeye Donuts across High Street from Ramseyer Hall after Dr. Rosen's philosophy class. That's another story entirely, except to recount that Coach Estes, Swami Bob, and I did what we could to emulate C.S. Peirce, William James, Justice Holmes, and Chauncy Wright's Metaphysical Club, and the coffee helped. Later on, Bob and I would deconstruct and reconstruct line by line several drafts of his dissertation under the influence of plenty of French roast and Heavy Cream (Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton, circa 1969).

Our coffee place in Fairhope, Alabama, was the snow cone shack across the road from the beach with like a hundred flavors of ice to choose from - and the world's best chicory coffee in tiny paper cups. I guess that year was not entirely wasted.

I haven't become a regular at any particular cafe in recent years, unless you count the cafeteria downstairs, where I look forward to a short chat with Lynda as much as the Starbuck's in the company mug. Clintonville, like Oberlin before it, sprouted a dozen coffee shops about the time we moved out. Come to think of it, one of them stands on the ruins of our front yard, but the coffee doesn't taste so good where they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

Most of my coffee is drunk at home nowadays, which is why the holiday gift of a French-press coffee pot from Jessi Golly was so timely. It came with two pounds of neighborhood-roasted beans from a couple of spots I'd like to visit someday in Brooklyn, New York, and I've been enjoying it a lot.

My current favorite in Methodistville is Java Central on State Street, where the people are nonideological, the brew is tasty, and I've gotten some serious editing done on the brick sidewalk outside. And it will have to do until our ship comes in (fantasy) and Gven and I open Earthies' Bookstore/Cafe. But where? I say Halifax or Traverse City; she says Taos or Savannah. Let's have a cup of coffee and discuss it.

prolegomenon to a critique of snow shoveling

A friend at work asked me today if I like the cold weather. I didn't know what to say at first, so I pulled out the old chestnut, "It builds character." We proceeded to compare our weather in Central Swingstate with winters in Madison, winters in LaCrosse, Marquette, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and moved on to other topics.

Yes, there are other topics, even when it's four above zero outside. When you're tired of talking about the shitty weather, you can talk about the shitty economy.

Anyway, it got me to thinking, and when I got home I swept the den floor, which gets very dusty, what with cat hair, woodstove, humans wearing shoes and all. It made no sense to sweep without cleaning out the stove, so I shoveled the ashes into a bucket and dumped them in a low spot outside under the snow and mulch. If you're going to sweep, you might as well water the plants, dust the table, and move things around a little. The fire will require kindling and more wood, so I shoveled the walkway back to the woodshed and brought in some firewood.

Shoveling was the least of the afternoon's chores and probably the most immediately gratifying. Path blocked by six inches of dry snow...wide-bladed shovel...bend legs, bend back, rest, repeat. Now the path is righteously clear under slanting late-afternoon rays. It took five minutes. Everything is in order, and I feel so darn virtuous I could give myself the Dudley Doright good citizen medal.

There's something about discomfort that focuses the mind. Not that I want to be uncomfortable all the time in order to keep my focus, but once in a blue moon it can be a good thing. Cold weather is like that. I don't want to be out there in subzero wind for long periods of time without recourse. I'll go out again tonight to bring in more wood, clear a path for the mail carrier, or take out the recycling, and before any body parts freeze, I'll come back in. Small doses are just fine; no need to do anything stupid.

I'll lace up my boots, put a hat and gloves on, of course, but probably not a coat for just a few minutes' foray in the frigid night. There is no heat like self-generated heat. Like night and day: the difference between being externally warmed by the space you're in and using the old internal furnace, preferably with a shovel in your hands.

exit bushism

In his poignant, humble, tough-guy farewell address, Dubya did what only the most gifted performers are able to do - leave 'em laughing. In bowing out from the world stage, our soon-to-be-former president gave his successor some sage words of warning:

"I'm telling you there's an enemy that would like to attack America, Americans, again. There just is. That's the reality of the world. And I wish him all the very best."

What can be said about this act of truth telling, or truthiness, or inadvertent candor? Good-bye, George, you have done your part.

Wind and Water

Pretty soon T. Boone Pickens will own the rights to all of it. If water is the new oil, and if wind is the alternative energy source of the future, then T. Boone, having bought large expanses in the Great Plains, is well positioned to take advantage of the increasing demand for both.

This fact came up in conversation the other night, and it didn't hit me until today that those words, wind and water, are the English translation of feng-shui (in Wade-Giles) or fung-xue (in pinyin), the traditional Chinese art of placement, or locating things with respect to natural forces, sometimes misleadingly called 'geomancy'. The ancients knew that wind and water are important forces in the life of the planet, and apparently so does T. Boone Pickens, though probably for different reasons.

Or not. Their reasons may not be entirely different. Traditional feng-shui involves choosing the best site and situation for a house, business, bed, or graveyard so that the qi (ch'i, or energy in its many forms) of the place will favor the humans who frequent it. Bad feng-shui tends to drain away health, vitality, fertility, good luck, and money. The wealthy Cowboy entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens is interested in, among other things, money, Oklahoma State football and more money.

So there is considerable common ground: wind power, water rights, and gaining more money. I see a great cross-cultural wedding of strange bedfellows in or around Stillwater. You heard it here first.

Agent of C.H.A.N.G.E.

Keep it under your hat, but I'm working undercover as a fifth columnist (the fourth columnist got fired for bad spelling) in a secret organization known variously as Cooperative Hands Attempting Naturally Good Efforts (C.H.A.N.G.E.), or else Connecting Hopefully About Newly Generated Energy (C.H.A.N.G.E.), or maybe Coherent Harangues Against Never Getting Even (C.H.A.N.G.E.), or a name to be played later.

One of the rituals conducted by this clandestine organization is starting the year with a hush-hush reaffirmation of what everybody already knows in an effort to do what nobody every does, that is, turn over a new leaf. In our attempt to set a clear intention and start the year on the right foot, we ritually make commonsense statements as if they were big discoveries. This time, our annual new year's oracular consultation yielded the following amazing predictions:

1. It's a good year to use one's power to serve, to make a sacrifice to benefit someone else's development, and to imitate the good we observe in others. (I Ching)

2. It's a good year to be humble, to gain by giving, to use one's gifts to help others and thus indirectly to gain materially, and to let the consequences be what they may. (Tarot)

3. Society has some of the same afflictions outwardly as individuals do inwardly, and individuals can make a dent in many social problems by addressing their own ethical baggage, chips on shoulders, and knee-jerk nastiness.

Who knew? So as a result of these startling revelations, I am going to make an attempt to do things a little differently. While other people are making "resolutions" - pause for convulsive laughter - to lose ten pounds, get in shape (what shape, I ask, a triangle? a tetrahedron? a pretzel?), quit smoking, change jobs, or some other meaningful but self-serving goal, I hereby pledge my intention to do something useful.

It could be argued that by trying to be useful, I am also making a self-serving attempt to benefit personally through appearing to be altruistic, kind, and clever. Look at me, I'm so very humble and selfless and helpful, you should really admire me, double my salary, or speak well of me to potential disciples. Point taken.

I admit that those things would be cool, too, but it doesn't count if you're looking in the mirror all the time and listing your good deeds in your resume. Nor does it expiate those self-centered desires if you do the old self-deprecating schtick, thus allowing the ego to do an end-around - self-aggrandisement through self-abnegation - otherwise known as "do-gooder." Given the tendency for good intentions to pave the road to someplace bad, maybe it's better to stay put, stand pat, and play the hand you're dealt.

Habits are stronger than anything, and the smart money is usually on things not changing significantly any time soon. All things being equal, you and I both will continue to do the same things we've been doing in pretty much the same way we've been doing them. And that's the good news. Any real change will occur incrementally if at all, and a good bit of it will involve backsliding, resistance, and reaction. Have a nice day.

Here's the rub: it's incomparably more entertaining to push against inertia than to succumb to it. Aside from the uncontrolable question of whether anyone actually benefits, I guess it's the effort itself - to lose ten pounds, to reorganize the automotive industry, to correct that misplaced comma - that's worthwhile.

Since we're talking about small actions taken one at a time by individuals, at best what happens is that people change themselves, not other people or the institutions that entrap them. My efforts to change the corporation or the country won't change the corporation or the country, but they might change my habits, and that will have to do this time around.