Why are Americans so Crazy about Oil?
I watched the American rage over rising gas prices this spring with a mixture of sympathy and exasperation – sympathy for working people who can barely afford another cost of living increase and who have to drive to get to work – exasperation with all those other Americans who bought gas-guzzling Hummers, Expeditions, Siennas etc. and are now complaining about how much they cost to fill up.
Then I watched the spectacle of Rudy Guiliani cheerleading Republican conventioners in a chant of “Drill, baby, drill” and felt a mixture of stunned amazement and outright disgust.
“What is it about oil that makes Americans so crazy?” I wondered. A gallon of milk goes over the four dollar mark, and people grumble but they don't get on CNN and threaten their lawmakers with public mayhem. Gas prices hit that point, and people are ready to riot.
It may be the gas prices are one of those “in your face” costs of daily living that we can't help but notice. Stores may bury the equivalent cost of various brands of peanut butter on those little tags you can barely read, or keep prices the same but artfully reshape your box of cereal or your ice-cream container to be a little smaller. You barely notice, and for the most part, you keep buying.
Gas prices, by contrast, are posted in eye-popping dimensions on huge signs for all to view and to seize on as a source of outrage. I doubt that many people can tell you how much the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are costing per week ($2 billion) or how big the current deficit is ($370 billion so far in 2008), but just about any American can tell you how much he or she paid per gallon at the pump at the last fill-up.
But it's not just that so many Americans are irrationally fixed on the price of gas; a majority are also displaying an equal degree of illogic when it comes to reducing energy costs because they focus primarily on the supply side, and then pick the longest range solution – more domestic oil drilling.
This is ironic since the most recent fall in oil prices and accompanying declines in gasoline prices have resulted from a three-year decline in the number of miles Americans drive. In other words, simple conservation (and perhaps declining economic activity worldwide) have already had a far more dramatic impact on prices than any other action either politicians or oil companies could take. On September 9th, OPEC member voted to cut overall output by more than 500,000 barrels a day as a reaction to falling demand. Yet no leader in Washington is out there cheering the American consumer for doing the right thing.
It's enough to make economists wring their hands in despair. Reduce what you consume and producers have to cut their prices. “It's supply and demand, stupid,” one might image their slogan saying.
But what is worse that the lack of understanding and appreciation given to energy conservation is the reckless rhetoric of Republican leaders like Rudy Guiliani, and sadly, John McCain, who seeme determined to seduce Americans into thinking that they can have their SUVs and cheap gas, and that “drilling at home” will not only lower gas prices but create an energy independent America. Oh, and they'll throw in a bridge for good measure.
Senator McCain, who has missed eight votes to extend alternative energy tax cuts, including one that took place while he was in Washington, is not only missing the boat on a new energy industry, but even doing it at the expense of potential jobs in his home state. As Pulitzer Prize winning author, Thomas Friedman, pointed out in a recent interview with Terry Gross, the biggest solar project is ready to launch outside of Phoenix, Arizona, but Senator McCain hasn't bother to show up to vote on an extension that could bring clean energy and good manufacturing jobs to his constituents, (Fresh Air, 9/8/08).
Just as Americans wisely rejected Senator McCain's proposed summer gas tax “holiday” as a cheap gimmick, they should cast a gimlet eye at his proposal that we can drill our way out of our oil addiction. In an election year, politicians will claim you can have your cake and eat it too, but unless you want a severe case of buyer's remorse, voters should pay more attention to who is funding those politicians than to any promises they make.
As The Washington Post reported, “campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Senator John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling,” (7/27/08, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/26/AR2008072601891.html).
Contributions rose to $1.1 million in one month from $208,000 in May, $283,000 in April, and $116,000 in March.
The solution to America's energy needs doesn't have an easy answer. It will require creative thinking, multiple explorations of new cleaner energy sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, hydrogen, natural gas, biofuels, and carbon capture. It will also require “sacrifice,” on the part of the American consumer, if you can call the conservation efforts so many are already taking part in a “sacrifice.”
But if conservation isn't sexy – it still is the cheapest and most effective solution we have at hand. The least we can ask of our leaders and of our presidential candidates is that they encourage conservation rather than undermine or mock these efforts. They also need to promise voters that their decisions on energy policy will be determined by the advice of the best and brightest among our scientists, economists, and engineers, not the slickest sales pitches of lobbyists representing the old energy industries (oil, gas, coal, and nuclear).
Americans may find the price of gas infuriating, but they shouldn't let that rage make them crazy. At least not crazy enough to fall for the political huckstering we saw at the Republican convention and in the false promises too many politicians are making about the effects of oil drilling.
Because this election is about more that the high price of oil and gas. It's an opportunity for Americans to lead an energy revolution and reinvigorate our economy or find ourselves still trapped in our old addiction while Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, and the like laugh all the way to the bank and keep on writing campaign checks to John McCain and the Grand Old Party.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The Day the Unthinkable became a Reality – A 9/11 Remembrance
The Day the Unthinkable became a Reality – A 9/11 Remembrance
So many of us will never forget where we were when the news came. My husband and I awoke to a phone call from his brother around 6:00 a.m. and I immediately thought, “Someone must have died.” I was right, of course, but not in any way I could have expected or even imagined.
I remember turning on the TV to see the first plane explode and the first building collapse, and I felt as if someone had knocked the wind out of me. “I don't want the kids to see this,” I said turning to my husband, already knowing that this was not only a tragedy but a potential media spectacle.
Recalling how I felt that morning I can't help thinking of Auden's lines:
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking
dully along.
I was sleeping peacefully when people leaped out of windows or called loved ones to say farewell or raced up stairwells to try to save people, and that realization makes me feel strangely guilty and yet lucky at the same time as I think, “There but for an act of fate, go I.”
That morning except for the eerily silent skies—no planes were passing overhead-- we determined to go on as normally as we could. I drove the kids to school, I met a friend for lunch as we had planned, my husband went to work. It was only later after we put the kids to bed that we turned on the television and watched and wept.
America lost more than thousands of lives on 9-11. We lost our innocence and our sense of invulnerability from foreign attack in a way more palpable than any experience since Pearl Harbor.
Many people resolved that such an attack would never happen again on U.S. soil, but I don't believe we can prevent every act of terrorism from occurring, whether it results from the actions of another domestic terrorist like Timothy McVeigh or a foreigner like Mohamed Atta.
Yet I do believe that we can do a great deal more to honor those who have lost their lives, and not just by building another memorial, or reciting a list of names, or standing together in a moment of silence.
Those are all honorable acts, but we are capable of a more profound form of remembrance if we take every opportunity to teach our children not only what happened on September 11th but how strongly we must strive to prevent religious extremism or racial, tribal, or ethnic prejudice from allowing us to forget our common humanity.
The terrible acts of September 11th, 2001 were not simply a strike against Americans but against every citizen of the world. They made the unthinkable a reality, and they diminished our sense of our own decency and regard for the sanctity of every living person. If we take this anniversary as an opportunity to affirm those values as a global community, we can make no better tribute to the lives of those we lost on this day seven years ago.
So many of us will never forget where we were when the news came. My husband and I awoke to a phone call from his brother around 6:00 a.m. and I immediately thought, “Someone must have died.” I was right, of course, but not in any way I could have expected or even imagined.
I remember turning on the TV to see the first plane explode and the first building collapse, and I felt as if someone had knocked the wind out of me. “I don't want the kids to see this,” I said turning to my husband, already knowing that this was not only a tragedy but a potential media spectacle.
Recalling how I felt that morning I can't help thinking of Auden's lines:
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking
dully along.
I was sleeping peacefully when people leaped out of windows or called loved ones to say farewell or raced up stairwells to try to save people, and that realization makes me feel strangely guilty and yet lucky at the same time as I think, “There but for an act of fate, go I.”
That morning except for the eerily silent skies—no planes were passing overhead-- we determined to go on as normally as we could. I drove the kids to school, I met a friend for lunch as we had planned, my husband went to work. It was only later after we put the kids to bed that we turned on the television and watched and wept.
America lost more than thousands of lives on 9-11. We lost our innocence and our sense of invulnerability from foreign attack in a way more palpable than any experience since Pearl Harbor.
Many people resolved that such an attack would never happen again on U.S. soil, but I don't believe we can prevent every act of terrorism from occurring, whether it results from the actions of another domestic terrorist like Timothy McVeigh or a foreigner like Mohamed Atta.
Yet I do believe that we can do a great deal more to honor those who have lost their lives, and not just by building another memorial, or reciting a list of names, or standing together in a moment of silence.
Those are all honorable acts, but we are capable of a more profound form of remembrance if we take every opportunity to teach our children not only what happened on September 11th but how strongly we must strive to prevent religious extremism or racial, tribal, or ethnic prejudice from allowing us to forget our common humanity.
The terrible acts of September 11th, 2001 were not simply a strike against Americans but against every citizen of the world. They made the unthinkable a reality, and they diminished our sense of our own decency and regard for the sanctity of every living person. If we take this anniversary as an opportunity to affirm those values as a global community, we can make no better tribute to the lives of those we lost on this day seven years ago.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Sarah in Wonderland
Sarah in Wonderland
It seems incredible that the single nomination of a relatively unknown woman, governor of an enormous yet little populated state, who was mayor of a small town just a short while ago, could have had such a sweeping influence not only on her party but also on media perceptions of the presidential race. But John McCain's nomination of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate seems to have had generated a storm of popular interest, to the point where admirers and detractors alike call her “Hurricane Sarah.”
Trying to figure out just who Sarah Palin is, and what she stands for, much less how she might govern, is a bit like looking at someone in a fun house mirror. Every time you think you've focused on one aspect of the image, you realize that you're just seeing another distortion. To conservative women, especially white conservative women, Sarah Palin is the new Hilary Clinton, a “feminist” they can love because she's so “like them.” For conservative men, Palin seems to be the equivalent of the “trophy wife,” the vice-presidential arm-piece who makes an old and not very inspiring John McCain suddenly seem the man to be envied. And for women on the left who are used to having the “feminist” label to themselves, albeit at the price of being mocked as “feminazis,” Palin is a conundrum: a woman with ambition, drive, and charisma, but who also espouses policies and beliefs that most self-described feminists wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.
And then there are the women—of the left, right, and middle-- who don't necessarily want to judge Palin for her individual choices regarding work and family—but who find some of those choices disturbing, not just because Palin has a larger family than the norm but because she has a family with special needs running the gamut from the baby with Down's syndrome to the pregnant teen.
However, Sarah Palin does have a political record, if a brief one, and it tells a story of some interesting reversals and contradictions, especially if you hold it up against the image of Palin we see through the prism of her political handlers or left-wing bloggers or even her own convention speech.
I found it interesting that Anchorage Daily News columnist Michael Carey,who has followed Palin since she ran for governor, described her convention speech “very uncharacteristic” in it partisan attacks. In his judgment, these attacks on Democrats and particularly her attacks on Barack Obama were "probably inserted by some guys who think they're very smart and are from Washington.”
Noting that Palin's political battles in Alaska have been waged more within her own party than across part lines, he added: “People find... it hard to understand that her biggest problem in Alaska has been with the most conservative elite Republicans and with the oil industry. It hasn't been with the Democrats. She's worked well with the Democrats in the legislature. Legislation has passed that she wanted with their assistance, and it's crucial to her to have the Democrats up there,” (“Finding the Real Sarah Palin in her Convention Speech,” Weekend Edition Sunday, 9/7/08, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94365311).
Palin may compare herself to a “pitbull with lipstick,” but in fact her governing record on spending tax dollars has been less ideological than pragmatic. When it suited her interests to lobby for millions of dollars in earmarks, she did so, even as she now criticizes Obama for also engaging in earmark spending, something you'd be hard pressed to find any Congressperson not guilty of. The infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” to which Palin claims she said, “thanks but no thanks,” was in fact a bridge that she supported during her 2006 campaign for governor. She only formally rejected the project after Congress deleted wording specifying funds for the bridge and when it was a political dead horse (see Politifact.com http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/680/).
What voters may want to consider in thinking about Palin is not just the relative brevity of her tenure as governor (18 months), but the fact that she has been governing a state with a substantial surplus and no major crises. Apart from her success in negotiating with oil companies and getting a new gas pipeline, Governor Palin has undertaken no other policy initiatives. Ironically, one of her biggest detractors is Republican State Senate Leader Lyda Green, who said she thought it was a joke when someone called her to tell her that Palin had been selected as McCain's running mate. "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" Green told The Anchorage Daily News (8/28/08 http://www.adn.com/politics/story/510249.htm). Green is also from Palin's hometown of Wasilla.
Finally, although Palin has been upfront about her pro-life ideology and open about her religious beliefs, she has yet to provide full disclosure of her views on the separation of church and state and to what extent her religious views will inform her public policy.
Many conservatives have condoned and even celebrated Palin's teenage daughter's choice to have her baby as palpable evidence of her pro-life credentials, even though the pregnancy also violates the conservative belief in abstinence before marriage.
But what does Palin think about teen pregnancy and public policy? Does she remain committed to abstinence only sex education in the face of this personal instance of its failure?
And what about her views of the Iraq war as a reflection of a divine plan? "Pray [for] our military men and women who are striving to do what is right also for this country — that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," Palin told the Wasilla Assembly of God this past June.
Some might wonder about how this view of U.S. military policy would play in international circles, particularly in Muslim countries where an explicitly Christian rhetoric evokes fears of age old Western assaults on Islam as President George W. Bush found out when he used the term “crusade” to describe the war.
Before voters assume they know who Sarah Palin is, they should be asking some hard questions about Palin's past and contrasting her record in Alaska with the new political makeover of Sarah Palin as Vice-Presidential messiah to the Republican party.
It seems incredible that the single nomination of a relatively unknown woman, governor of an enormous yet little populated state, who was mayor of a small town just a short while ago, could have had such a sweeping influence not only on her party but also on media perceptions of the presidential race. But John McCain's nomination of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate seems to have had generated a storm of popular interest, to the point where admirers and detractors alike call her “Hurricane Sarah.”
Trying to figure out just who Sarah Palin is, and what she stands for, much less how she might govern, is a bit like looking at someone in a fun house mirror. Every time you think you've focused on one aspect of the image, you realize that you're just seeing another distortion. To conservative women, especially white conservative women, Sarah Palin is the new Hilary Clinton, a “feminist” they can love because she's so “like them.” For conservative men, Palin seems to be the equivalent of the “trophy wife,” the vice-presidential arm-piece who makes an old and not very inspiring John McCain suddenly seem the man to be envied. And for women on the left who are used to having the “feminist” label to themselves, albeit at the price of being mocked as “feminazis,” Palin is a conundrum: a woman with ambition, drive, and charisma, but who also espouses policies and beliefs that most self-described feminists wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.
And then there are the women—of the left, right, and middle-- who don't necessarily want to judge Palin for her individual choices regarding work and family—but who find some of those choices disturbing, not just because Palin has a larger family than the norm but because she has a family with special needs running the gamut from the baby with Down's syndrome to the pregnant teen.
However, Sarah Palin does have a political record, if a brief one, and it tells a story of some interesting reversals and contradictions, especially if you hold it up against the image of Palin we see through the prism of her political handlers or left-wing bloggers or even her own convention speech.
I found it interesting that Anchorage Daily News columnist Michael Carey,who has followed Palin since she ran for governor, described her convention speech “very uncharacteristic” in it partisan attacks. In his judgment, these attacks on Democrats and particularly her attacks on Barack Obama were "probably inserted by some guys who think they're very smart and are from Washington.”
Noting that Palin's political battles in Alaska have been waged more within her own party than across part lines, he added: “People find... it hard to understand that her biggest problem in Alaska has been with the most conservative elite Republicans and with the oil industry. It hasn't been with the Democrats. She's worked well with the Democrats in the legislature. Legislation has passed that she wanted with their assistance, and it's crucial to her to have the Democrats up there,” (“Finding the Real Sarah Palin in her Convention Speech,” Weekend Edition Sunday, 9/7/08, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94365311).
Palin may compare herself to a “pitbull with lipstick,” but in fact her governing record on spending tax dollars has been less ideological than pragmatic. When it suited her interests to lobby for millions of dollars in earmarks, she did so, even as she now criticizes Obama for also engaging in earmark spending, something you'd be hard pressed to find any Congressperson not guilty of. The infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” to which Palin claims she said, “thanks but no thanks,” was in fact a bridge that she supported during her 2006 campaign for governor. She only formally rejected the project after Congress deleted wording specifying funds for the bridge and when it was a political dead horse (see Politifact.com http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/680/).
What voters may want to consider in thinking about Palin is not just the relative brevity of her tenure as governor (18 months), but the fact that she has been governing a state with a substantial surplus and no major crises. Apart from her success in negotiating with oil companies and getting a new gas pipeline, Governor Palin has undertaken no other policy initiatives. Ironically, one of her biggest detractors is Republican State Senate Leader Lyda Green, who said she thought it was a joke when someone called her to tell her that Palin had been selected as McCain's running mate. "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" Green told The Anchorage Daily News (8/28/08 http://www.adn.com/politics/story/510249.htm). Green is also from Palin's hometown of Wasilla.
Finally, although Palin has been upfront about her pro-life ideology and open about her religious beliefs, she has yet to provide full disclosure of her views on the separation of church and state and to what extent her religious views will inform her public policy.
Many conservatives have condoned and even celebrated Palin's teenage daughter's choice to have her baby as palpable evidence of her pro-life credentials, even though the pregnancy also violates the conservative belief in abstinence before marriage.
But what does Palin think about teen pregnancy and public policy? Does she remain committed to abstinence only sex education in the face of this personal instance of its failure?
And what about her views of the Iraq war as a reflection of a divine plan? "Pray [for] our military men and women who are striving to do what is right also for this country — that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," Palin told the Wasilla Assembly of God this past June.
Some might wonder about how this view of U.S. military policy would play in international circles, particularly in Muslim countries where an explicitly Christian rhetoric evokes fears of age old Western assaults on Islam as President George W. Bush found out when he used the term “crusade” to describe the war.
Before voters assume they know who Sarah Palin is, they should be asking some hard questions about Palin's past and contrasting her record in Alaska with the new political makeover of Sarah Palin as Vice-Presidential messiah to the Republican party.
California Dreaming
California Dreaming
Every day I seem to hear yet another news story about the demise of the “California Dream.” From Sacramento to Fresno to Los Angeles to San Diego, people seem to be losing their homes, losing their nerve, and seeking their dream of a better life outside the Golden State. I hear their complaints: plummeting housing prices, a high cost of living, traffic, too many people fighting for too few resources, and my rational side says, “Of course, they're right; California is overcrowded, overpriced, and overrun.”
But my California dream is located in a beautiful corner the Bay Area peninsula, where the housing crisis hasn't reached the same monumental proportions that people have seen in other parts of the state, and where my memories of fog rolling over the Santa Cruz Mountains, or the sun rising over the South Bay still tug at my heart strings.
So my family is bucking the trend of the California exodus. We just moved back to Palo Alto, California from Albuquerque, New Mexico this summer, primarily because of me, a 45-year-old not-quite-stay-at-home mom. I want to reclaim my California dream, which means getting off the freeway, out of the car, and back into a suburb with a small-town feel, where I can bike to get groceries, and my kids can go to good public schools.
Huh? Yes, New Mexico did live up to its reputation as a slow and easy land of mañana, but I also discovered that getting around Albuquerque meant spending a good part of every day in my car, and ultimately I was willing to trade the beautiful wide open spaces I could see from almost every part of the city for a more densely populated suburb where just about everything is accessible on foot, bike, bus or train.
Now it takes me about two weeks to empty my gas tank, and I love that feeling that every trip I make on my own power is one less contribution to the smog that is the downside of daily life in the Bay Area.
In fact, it nearly deflated my euphoria at the prospect of coming home to see the brown haze spread all over Silicon Valley when we first crossed over from I-5 in the middle of August. I hadn't remembered the air quality being quite that bad, and after the clear, intensely blue skies of the Southwest, I did stop to think, “What in the world am I doing to my lungs moving back to this?”
It still gives me a twinge every time I climb the hills behind Stanford University where I have an unrestricted view of the valley from San Francisco to Oakland to San Jose and see the smog that hangs over the whole expanse, especially in the hot still days of late summer when there's no breeze to blow it all over to the Central Valley (another source of guilt for Bay Area residents).
But if home is smoggier and more crowded than I remember, it's also full of friends who have welcomed us all back so warmly that I can't believe my good fortune. It seems that every day I run into someone else who says, “You're back! We're so glad you're back with us!” and I think that wherever you live, the real sense of being at home comes from the community you find and build there.
Every day I seem to hear yet another news story about the demise of the “California Dream.” From Sacramento to Fresno to Los Angeles to San Diego, people seem to be losing their homes, losing their nerve, and seeking their dream of a better life outside the Golden State. I hear their complaints: plummeting housing prices, a high cost of living, traffic, too many people fighting for too few resources, and my rational side says, “Of course, they're right; California is overcrowded, overpriced, and overrun.”
But my California dream is located in a beautiful corner the Bay Area peninsula, where the housing crisis hasn't reached the same monumental proportions that people have seen in other parts of the state, and where my memories of fog rolling over the Santa Cruz Mountains, or the sun rising over the South Bay still tug at my heart strings.
So my family is bucking the trend of the California exodus. We just moved back to Palo Alto, California from Albuquerque, New Mexico this summer, primarily because of me, a 45-year-old not-quite-stay-at-home mom. I want to reclaim my California dream, which means getting off the freeway, out of the car, and back into a suburb with a small-town feel, where I can bike to get groceries, and my kids can go to good public schools.
Huh? Yes, New Mexico did live up to its reputation as a slow and easy land of mañana, but I also discovered that getting around Albuquerque meant spending a good part of every day in my car, and ultimately I was willing to trade the beautiful wide open spaces I could see from almost every part of the city for a more densely populated suburb where just about everything is accessible on foot, bike, bus or train.
Now it takes me about two weeks to empty my gas tank, and I love that feeling that every trip I make on my own power is one less contribution to the smog that is the downside of daily life in the Bay Area.
In fact, it nearly deflated my euphoria at the prospect of coming home to see the brown haze spread all over Silicon Valley when we first crossed over from I-5 in the middle of August. I hadn't remembered the air quality being quite that bad, and after the clear, intensely blue skies of the Southwest, I did stop to think, “What in the world am I doing to my lungs moving back to this?”
It still gives me a twinge every time I climb the hills behind Stanford University where I have an unrestricted view of the valley from San Francisco to Oakland to San Jose and see the smog that hangs over the whole expanse, especially in the hot still days of late summer when there's no breeze to blow it all over to the Central Valley (another source of guilt for Bay Area residents).
But if home is smoggier and more crowded than I remember, it's also full of friends who have welcomed us all back so warmly that I can't believe my good fortune. It seems that every day I run into someone else who says, “You're back! We're so glad you're back with us!” and I think that wherever you live, the real sense of being at home comes from the community you find and build there.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Seize the Day
Seize the Day
New Mexicans joke that this state is the land of “mañana,” and before I leave I am going to purchase my favorite T-shirt which has the slogan: “Carpe mañana.” However, now that my sojourn here is winding down to its last thirty days, I'm thinking more along the lines of the original Latin - “Carpe diem” and trying to take advantage of all the unique experiences Albuquerque has to offer.
First and foremost that means early morning bike rides along the “bosque,” the forested area of cottonwoods and native trees that runs along the Rio Grande about a quarter mile from my house. In this area of New Mexico the Rio Grande is not very impressive - “el rio no muy grande” (the river that is not very “grande”) is a family joke, but the ribbon of green that borders the river on either side is very impressive, a striking vision of green in a landscape that otherwise paints itself in muted tones of browns, yellows, and the darker blues and greys of the mountains.
At 7:00 a.m. with a cool breeze blowing across my face, it's just about the most wonderful thing I can imagine to bike along side the river and have the city disappear from view as the green space on either side and the gentle slope of the hills create the illusion that there are no housing developments over the horizon. A gentle curve brings me face to face with the Sandia Mountains, bathed in the soft light of the morning sunrise or cloud-covered as they are so often now in monsoon season.
A family of geese will waddle across the bike path; a rabbit will dart in front of me; or a road-runner disappear into the brush with a lizard in its mouth. Only once or twice have I seen a coyote, but I know they are there as well, waiting in the shadows.
For a brief hour I can imagine there really still is a “wilderness” in this metropolis of 600,000, and even when another biker or walker or roller-blader crosses my path, there is the pleasant exchange of “Good morning” or “Passing on your left,” followed by “Thanks” and a wave.
I kick myself for not having discovered this pleasure when I first arrive, for letting the goat thorns that deflated my tires, or the homesickness that made any sight of the desert unwelcome, keep me from the pleasures of speeding or strolling along a path that brings me in view of all the beauties Albuquerque has to offer while conveniently obscuring its urban sprawl.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Dumped by the Democrats, or What have the Telecomms Got that I Ain't Got?
Dumped by the Democrats, or What have the Telecomms Got that I Ain't Got?
It's the fate of a progressive Democrat. You keep hoping this time your party is going to tie the knot and make all your dreams come true, and there you find yourself all alone at the chapel, jilted one more time as Democrats make nice with the Bush administration allegedly to court the “center” of the electorate.
Actually, I've never been that naïve about any political party, but it has been a hard slog these past eight years watching the Bush Administration and a Republican-controlled Congress eviscerate the regulatory authority of agencies from the EPA to NEA, try to deep-six any factual information about climate change, and wreak havoc with the Constitution, especially when it comes to Americans' civil liberties.
But I really feel betrayed by Democrats over the recent so-called “compromise” FISA legislation which is less “compromise” than “capitulation” by the one group of politicians progressives have supported through thick and thin, mostly thin, for the last eight years.
What is going on with the Democratic party? Here we have a piece of legislation that will tear the guts out of a law Democrats sought as a check on unbridled executive power when Nixon authorized the burglary of the Democratic National Headquarters that created the Watergate scandal. And yet Democrats are voluntarily lying down in front of this legislative steamroller, led by Representative Steny Hoyer, and Senators Pelosi and Reid, as if they had never heard of Nixon, Watergate, and have suffered collective amnesia about the Bush administration's repeated attempts to subvert constitutional checks on its power at every turn. Have they even read any of Bush's recent signing statements?
I hate to seem paranoid, but I can can only wonder what the telecommunications lobbyists have been up to on Capitol Hill lately. According to Wired, for example, “Top Verizon executives, including CEO Ivan Seidenberg and President Dennis Strigl, wrote personal checks to [Senator Jay] Rockefeller totaling $23,500 in March, 2007. Prior to that apparently coordinated flurry of 29 donations, only one of those executives had ever donated to Rockefeller (at least while working for Verizon),” (http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/dem-pushing-spy.html). Jay Rockefeller is one of the main proponents of the “compromise” legislation.
On the other side of the aisle, Republican presidential candidate John McCain has “dozens of lobbyists [with] political and financial ties to his presidential campaign — particularly from telecommunications companies, an industry he helps oversee in the Senate,” according to USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-03-23-mccainlobbyists_N.htm).
According to statistics compiled by MAPlight.org, Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint gave contributions averaging $8,359 to each Democrat who changed their position to support immunity for the telecommunications companies and $4,987 to each Democrat who remained opposed to immunity. 88% of the Democrats who changed their position to support immunity(83 of 94 Democratic representatives) received PAC contributions from telecommunications companies affected by the proposed legislation during the last three years.
As the late Molly Ivins used to say, “It's not that they sell themselves that hurts, it's that they sell themselves so damned cheap.”
From the 69-28 vote in the Senate today, it's clear that Democrats really don't want to fight the administration any longer to protect Americans from whole-sale spying. Instead they've been buying into the Republican spin that we should protect and even thank these “patriotic” corporations for their assistance in the fight on terrorism. Oh sure, please read my email, listen into my phone calls – does anybody really care about unreasonable search and seizure anymore?
I wish I could still find words to convey a sense of outrage that this latest assault on the very values we once fought an empire over – the right to free from government intrusion on our lives – has now been turned on its head – and any resistance to government intrusion recast as “unpatriotic.” But frankly, I feel exhausted by the accumulation of eight years of being told we have to give up our civil liberties in order to be “safe” without anyone debating whether we really want to be safe at that price.
But I should remind Democrats that in an election when every vote counts, they may have sold their patriotism cheap. The same progressive anger that fueled the rise of internet political actions groups like MoveOn.org can easily turn off a significant portion of their base support if voters like me are so disgusted with their so-called compromise that we keep our money in our pockets and turn out as merely opponents of John McCain instead of partisans for Barack Obama. Change needs to mean something, and one of things it has to mean is a serious commitment to restoring Americans' civil liberties and putting real limits on executive power.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Alienation at the Art Museum
A few weeks ago I visited the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, and it sparked an epiphany: I really don't enjoy viewing art in the constrained circumstances that many museums now impose.
I still love going to a museum like The Metropolitan in Manhattan where you can get lost in small rooms where only one or two visitors ever venture or where you can see so much art (the Egyptian tombs, for example, or the amazing new installation of Greek and Roman statuary) in natural light.
Of course, I recognize that many art works cannot be placed in natural sunlight without suffering damage, but does that mean that the artificial lighting in so many museums has to be so poor? At the Blanton I simply gave up trying to look at one Frederic Remington painting because the glare from the artificial lighting on it made it impossible to see one section of the canvas; no matter where I moved, it was obscured by a stubborn bar of refracted light.
More and more art museums also seem calculated to keep the viewer at distance and to impose a sense of constant surveillance more in keeping with a prison than an institution designed to let people see and enjoy art. Between the checking of bags, the security gates, and the fish-eye you get from the guards, you might find an eerie resemblance to the TSA. “Will they ask us to take off our shoes next?” I wondered to myself.
For example, if you have any kind of purse (especially the small backpack kind), a guard will descend on you and tell you it's not allowed because you might back into an artwork. I'd like to hear of an actual instance of this happening, and every time I have to listen to this rationale delivered in the falsely apologetic tones of a customer service operator, I want to ask the guard: “Oh really, and when did this last occur?” I really can't imagine backing into an art work because viewing art is a visual experience, stupid, and what would be the point of approaching it backwards?
However, in this instance, I once again divested myself of wallet, keys and other ID to the relative security of a coin-operated locker and returned to the gallery where I hoped I could browse undisturbed.
At the Blanton, before you can enter any gallery, you first have to pass through an enormous hall that opens up to the second story with a broad staircase that is blindingly (and I mean literally blindingly) white. Each time I ascended and descended this staircase, I kept my eyes firmly fixed on my feet hoping I wouldn't trip and fall.
The hall has all the charm and warmth of an operating room; as far as I could tell there was no artwork whatsoever in it – no tapestries or wall hangings or anything to break the sterile expanse of whiteness stretching in every direction. It made me want to run for cover.
Once past this alienating entryway, I did discover one of the best collections of contemporary Latin American art that I've seen in recent years, and my mood had improved a good deal while I was wandering through it. Yet here there were also not too subtle messages keeping me at arm's length, this time in the form of lines drawn around various installations and signs indicating that one should never touch the art work or cross those clearly demarcated boundaries.
And I thought to myself, “Why should art only be seen and not touched?” Public art rarely has this “Noli me tangere/don't touch me” aura about it so that students can happily rub the protruding foot of a statue of a former Yale president without anyone frowning at them, and even hold weddings in front of Rodin's “The Gates of Hell” on the Stanford campus without anyone giving them notice of trespass or bad taste.
I remember looking at late paintings by Monet and wanting so badly to touch the thick swabs of paint on the canvas and trace their swirls with my fingertips. Sacrilege, clearly. But would it be so out of bounds for modern artists to consider making their work a little more interactive? Maybe they could provide even a sample section of canvas for visitors to touch and hold and add a tactile dimension to their visual experience.
I believe this need to touch art is deeply embedded in our psyche from childhood. Who can't remember seeing something both crafted and beautiful as a young child and wanting to hold it but being told, “No, no, don't touch, just look”? For me these early aesthetic experiences were intensely frustrating, resulting in furtive attempts to hold a figurine or a china cup when I wasn't being observed.
I was reminded of this tension between “art” as object only to be viewed and “art” as object to be touched when I was in the Dallas airport during the holidays, and a voice came over the PA system to request that the “parent or person responsible for the child climbing the public art work please retrieve him.” I knew immediately that the child in question was my youngest son, and I was torn between fury that he had disobeyed my strict injunction not to climb the art and my frustration at the utter stupidity of this rule.
After all, place a steel structure that looks like skyscrapers fused together at odd angles with a hollow interior and convenient little fissures that look just like foot and hand holds in an airport terminal, and what would you expect a normal five-year-old to do? “Just look at it?” I thought incredulously as I ran over to retrieve my son and listen to the same-old, same-old spiel from the security guard. “If he'd fallen, he could have been killed,” he lectured me, adding the threat of mortal danger to the relatively innocent faux pas of not keeping an eye on my kid.
It didn't surprise me at all when I read the other day that one of the things mothers wanted most from the developers of a new shopping mall was “art their kids could play around or climb on.” What could be more natural?
And what could be a greater act of poetic justice? After all, a good deal of modern and post-modern art is all about the impulse to shock its bourgeois viewers out of their complacency. Why not turn the tables and break the conventions of viewership? Let's break at least a few of the barriers keeping art at arm's length and bring more artworks into the public sphere that can be touched, walked on, even surmounted by little boys with good climbing skills.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
