I didn’t vote for Barrack Obama.

While I am not a fan of President-elect Obama’s politics, I — am — a realist. Since it became obvious to me last summer that Mr. Obama was going to win the election, I have been nursing the hope that his victory would have a profound effect on the issue of race relations in this country. The elevation of a black man, in an open and free election, to the highest office in this land and, indeed, one of the most powerful positions in the world, is a clear indication of how far we have come.

While it would be foolish to expect the ripples from this election to be felt so soon, it is human nature to hope. The deafening silence from renowned race-baiters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton over the last few months has fed those hopes.

All is not sugar and spice, however.

The blatant attempt to use the race card to affect the decision on whether or not there will be a fight over the seating of Senate appointee Roland Burris is proof positive that the issue of race is still a powerful tool in politics. Instead of focusing on whether the appointment is appropriate or not, based on the scandal surrounding the embattled governor, the race card was thrown in order to deflect the discussion into an area where emotion, and not logic, prevails.

The race issue is not just a political tool used in the big arena. There is a segment of society that clings to the racial divide with a fervor that is, to my eyes, fanatical.

An example of those whose focus is on finding, or creating, racial tension, is a blog I have been reading for a couple of months, Racialiscious. The most recent entry is a typical example of race baiting and hypocrisy that is, sadly, yet another example of how far we have to go.

The article, “White American Culture is General Tso’s Chicken and Chop Suey” is typical of the hyper-sensitive and angry rhetoric on the website. They can’t seem to see the hypocrisy in the constant reference to “White Americans” in what is, to any rational person, a common trait to Americans of all races. I can only guess that the author of this particular article has never eaten a pizza in Italy.

The perception of racism in the corporate world is also not new and has become so ingrained that even highly respected activists like Earl Pace (BDPA Founder) has fallen into the trap. His statement in a recent interview with Computerworld shows how even the best intentions can be derailed by bias: “In my early years, I was vice president of a financial services firm, responsible for hiring technical people, and I hired based upon ability. As it turned out, I probably hired an equal number of African-Americans and whites.”

Don’t let the examples above convince you that I am without hope. For every example like those above, we can find just as many examples of people who are actively attempting to dispel the blind activist mindset and adapt the battle for equality to the changing world around them.

President-elect Obama has declined to back Burris and statements like those of Rev. Eugene Rivers (a black pastor from Boston and senior adviser to the Church of God in Christ, the biggest Pentecostal denomination in the country) show that there are those out there actively working for a cease-fire: ”It is another statement on how black politics is now — that the old regime, the old outlook, the old perspective has been displaced, you can’t use 50-year-old ideas in a new political era.”

I don’t know what the future holds, but this is not 1900 or even 1950. I believe the most strident racial activists need to wake up to the brave new world we live in and realize that they are doing as much harm as good.

One day in November 1973 I was sitting on a Metroliner bound for D.C. I had bought a copy of Newsweek at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, but didn’t even open it because I wanted to finish the book I was reading. This was In My Own Way, the autobiography of Alan Watts, which had come out the previous year

I finished the book, stared out the window for a while, then picked up the magazine — and discovered that Alan Watts had died some days earlier. It was an odd experience, if only because, in the prose I had just been reading, Watts had seemed so very much alive.

I suppose a thrice-married, former Episcopal priest with a drinking problem (”I don’t like myself when I’m sober,” he told a friend) could be regarded as a dubious choice for a guide to religion, but I continue to think that much of what Watts had to say on the subject is worth paying heed to.

In an essay called “The World’s Most Dangerous Book,” for instance, he says something that is very worth pondering. Belief, he says, is “holding to a rock.” Faith, on the other hand, is “learning how to swim.” (By the way, the book referred to in the essay’s title is called the Bible.)

It is, of course, common for people to think of faith in terms of belief, that is, in terms of a proposition or set of propositions to which one either assents or does not. Actually, though, the two words are quite different in both meaning and origin. The word faith can be traced to the Latin word fidere, meaning to trust. Belief comes from an Old English word referring to whatever or whomever one holds dear. Oddly, belief for a time simply referred to trust in God, but by the 16th century had come to mean accepting something intellectually as true.

It should be clear from this what Watts was driving at. Faith is a sense we have of things, a sort of feeling about them, something on the order of what Wordsworth describes in “Tintern Abbey”:

… I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

People are unlikely to quarrel over how they feel about the nature of things. If, however, they start thinking about how they feel about the nature of things and undertake to reduce how they feel into a set of formulae, look out. Christianity split into its eastern and western components over a single word: filioque (meaning “and the son,” and indicating that the Holy Spirit proceeds not from the Father alone, but from the Father and the Son).

Such quarrelsomeness is not confined to religion. Secular ideologues can be every bit as contentious. And then there is the almost preternatural intensity of disputes among academicians.

I do not mean to disparage all belief. I am, after all, a practicing Catholic and subscribe to a few that others doubtless consider bizarre. The Real Presence, for instance, the doctrine that the communion wafer, after the consecration, is the body and blood of Jesus. Why would I believe that? Well, principally because it is an essential constituent of a mythos I grew up with, which has a long and distinguished pedigree, and which I know quite well, and feel comfortable with. I think “there’s something to it,” and I suspect that if I explained this to a Mongolian shaman, he would understand, since for him the world is still a place wherein what Rudolf Otto called the “numinous” periodically manifests itself.

I remember hearing Huston Smith, the scholar of religion, tell of how, when he explained the story of Christmas to his Hindu yoga teacher, the man found it completely believable — because he saw Jesus as an avatar, a divine being who out of mercy had descended into our fallen world.

Put to the service of faith, as a means of articulating its mystery, beliefs can be quite useful. But they can never be allowed to get in the way of what faith is about. That “sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused” is supposed to prompt a certain kind of behavior. “Preach the Gospel always,” St. Francis advised. “If necessary, use words.” Genuine faith is lived, not thought about or argued over. It has to do with being good and kind. If Jesus said anything that just about everybody can agree with, it is that “the Law was made for man, not man for the Law.”

A perfect example of how to proportion your beliefs to your faith is provided by an odd French cleric named the Abbé Mugnier. A friend of Edith Wharton and much admired by Proust, the abbé was once asked if he believed in Hell. He replied that of course he did, how could he not, it was a doctrine of the Church. Then, after pausing just long enough, he added: “Of course, I don’t necessarily believe that anyone is there.”

It was the common grilled cheese dilemma. As with most fried foods, if the temperature is too high, the bread will burn while the sandwich’s contents remain cold. If the temperature is too low, well, it takes forever to cook. I wasn’t in the mood to wait.

It was New Year’s Eve and I had stayed home to work on this sandwich. I cooked with maximum efficiency. While I sliced the onion, mushroom, and tomato, the first piece of bread and slices of American were already in the pan.

I nibbled on the extra pieces of mushroom and tomato and picked up the Kite Runner to try and escape my hunger into Afghanistan, to waste time. It didn’t work.

I stopped reading to peek in the pan — the sandwich wasn’t done. Forget the Afghans, I’m hungry! I turned up the heat and picked off a piece of lightly-grilled bread.

With spatula in hand, I evaluated the situation, deciding to eat one fourth of the sandwich in its incomplete and uncooked state. I figured if I cut the sandwich into parts, it would cook faster (more exposed surface area), and I wouldn’t be so hungry.

I put the small piece onto my plate and carried it to the dining room, noticing how firm and unmelted the cheese remained, how the vegetables were still plump and uncooked. As I lifted the first bite to my mouth a fluttering tinge of guilt questioned my level of will-power and patience. Why didn’t I just wait until the whole sandwich was done? Have I become this impatient? The voice of guilt grew as it pulled support from common proverb, academic research, literature, and my own psychology:

Good comes to those who wait…
Delayed gratification in children is a predictor of later success…
“It’s like sour apples…Mother said if I had just waited for the apples to ripen (Kite Runner)”…
Is this how my mother raised me?

I took the bite.

It was delicious! What foolish, depriving advice. I was eating! Screw patience! How little it mattered that the cheese wasn’t fully melted. I went to the kitchen to get another piece.

By the time I had finished the first half, the cheese had fully melted and the juice from the tomato and mushroom had properly blended and soaked into the bread. I was able to enjoy the food — a pleasure only heightened by the inferior, yet greatly appreciated, foreplay of the first sandwich half.

And it made me think: Are we not ready for a new folk wisdom? A new moral perspective? Are we any closer to appreciating the nuanced grays of our existence or are people, in general, so hopeless that generalities disguised as wisdom still help more than they hide?

Is there anything else to eat around here?

In the first comment on Jeff Scheuer’s excellent post “Shall we overcome?“, reader Henry Pelifian implies that Governor Blagojovich’s corruption is not a big deal and that his crime amounts to essentially just “loose and foolish talk” because, after all, “[g]oing to war with loose and foolish talk by elected officials is all right politically.” You see, goes the logic (as far as I understand it), since no one seems to care about the foolish and loose talk by President George W. Bush that led to war, and since Bush did something far worse than Blagojovich, we shouldn’t make a big deal over what Blagojovich did.

In a comment on a conversation between Paula Marantz Cohen and Robert Anthony Watts called “Political entitlement — liberal hypocrisy,” in which our dynamic duo discusses the propriety of giving Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat to Caroline Kennedy, reader Ari writes, “I think we’ve got a long way to go before liberals come anywhere near the cronyism of the Bush administration…”

These are only two examples from this site, but I have been seeing this sort of thing elsewhere — in blog comment sections and other op-eds — and maybe you have, too. Apparently, Bush is so dishonest and corrupt and Republicans are so dishonest and corrupt, no liberal or Democrat politician can commit any crime or be corrupt or improper, because whatever they do, it isn’t as bad as what Bush did.

Let us grant for argument’s sake that Bush is guilty of whatever misdeeds, motives, and lies that are attributed to him. The corruption or even downright evil of one politician, or one political administration, does not remotely excuse corruption by other politicians. Democrats, if you want to change the political culture (we heard a lot about change in recent months), the way to do it is not to ignore or excuse corruption in your own party by noting that sure, it isn’t good, but at least it’s better than the Republicans or Bush.

Leaving Bush out of it, there will almost always be some historical (recent or otherwise) example of political corruption and even evil that is worse than whatever is in the news that week. But “not as bad as” whatever is the worst example you can find is hardly something to aspire to. You’ve won the election, guys. It isn’t about Bush anymore. Your politicians must stand on their own accomplishments, policies, and integrity and be judged by what they do. It doesn’t matter how bad the last guy was. You can’t excuse corruption on the grounds that there is worse corruption out there. Have a little self-respect.

At 9:30pm on New Year’s Eve my friend’s two-year-old son threw up. They left by 10pm. My kids were asleep by 10:45pm. My husband and I took our respective drinks to the couch. We flipped through the channels and were bored by everything on. We didn’t want to put on a movie. We wanted to see and feel the spirit of the night (even though we weren’t actively participating in anything very exciting ourselves). For us that meant watching the ball drop in Times Square. I’ve been to Times Square four times to ring-in the New Year but this year I was perfectly content to be with my family; maybe even, as others have said, I couldn’t think of a single happier way to ring in the new year.

So, we chose to watch the pre and post ball-dropping commentary on television. However, I did want to be, at least slightly, entertained — and Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve doesn’t do it for me anymore. Really, I just can’t stand Ryan Seacrest. So we turned to CNN. Really, we did!

Anderson Cooper had Kathy Griffin co-host the evening with him. What a ridiculously unlikely combination. We flipped to CNN thinking we were going to switch out just as quickly as we’d found them. We didn’t. We stayed. And we liked it. They had a lot of time to fill and did a really good job making people feel like they were part of the evening. I’ve never been a fan of Kathy’s — her humor just never did anything for me. However, for this one evening, she was the perfect ying to Anderson’s yang.

Did anyone else watch? Did I miss fabulous programming somewhere? Let me know so I can make note for next year!

At a time of unprecedented national pride and renewal, as we approach the inauguration of America’s first nonwhite president, it’s hard to imagine anything more squalid than the behavior of the president-elect’s home-state governor, Rod Blagojovich of Illinois, who was arrested Nov. 12th on charges of conspiring to sell Mr. Obama’s own seat in the U.S. Senate. Nothing could be more distracting or at odds with the spirit of the moment. Or so it seemed.  

Gov. Blagojovich will of course have the day in court to which he is entitled — followed, most likely, by many years of incarceration. But from the standpoint of racial harmony and conciliation, which is a key subtext of the past election, the present time, and the coming administration, I would single out another chapter of this story for its inappropriateness: something less despicable than what Gov. Blagojovich allegedly did, but in a way, more depressing. That is the reaction of some African-American leaders in Illinois and in Congress, to the Governor’s nomination of a distinguished black politician, Roland Burris, to fill Obama’s Senate seat.

Blagojovich remains governor as of this writing, with the powers pertaining to that office. He himself claims to have a legal duty to fill the seat; duty or not, his nomination of Burris is perfectly legal.

The problem is that the governor is so deeply compromised, not just by the charges pending against him but by the nationally-publicized recordings of some particularly damning evidence for those charges, that any act he performs in his remaining time as governor bears the taint of corruption. 

Obviously the governor, like anyone else, is innocent from a legal standpoint until proven guilty. But not so in the court of public opinion; as citizens, rather than judges, jurors or prosecutors, we are entitled and perhaps even obligated to assess the governor by a different standard. His recorded comments about filling the Senate seat amply show a gross lack of moral character — to put it mildly. 

Barring a court ruling to the contrary, Democratic leaders in the Senate are right, on ethical grounds,  to insist on not seating any candidate nominated by this governor. The Senate deserves a new member free from such taint, and the people of Illinois deserve such a senator. 

Mr. Burris should have refused the nomination, as Rep. Danny Davis did.  And it is unseemly for  his supporters (including Chicago Congressman Bobby Rush, and California Congresswoman Maxine Waters) to profess outrage at the Democratic leadership for not wishing to seat him.  

As an observer of this morality play (my own governor resigned in disgrace less than a year ago; his worst crime was hypocrisy) I find it bizarre and saddening that some black leaders in Illinois and elsewhere not only support the governor’s move to elevate Mr. Burris (who is by all accounts a worthy public servant) but cry racial foul when others seek to block the nomination in order to limit the damage by Blagojovich.

To claim that this nomination is being blocked on racial grounds, in light of the events in Illinois, is preposterous. It seems even more absurd coming just weeks before another black politician from Illinois is due to be sworn in as president of the United States.  It not only denies and demans the implications of that event; it embarrasses the president-elect (who properly sided with his former Senate collegues). It ignores  the strong moral case against letting any nomination by Gov. Blagojovich to go forward. And it virtually implies that any grounds for selecting a senator other than his or her being black are racist. That is itself a form of racism.

Most African-Americans realize that Mr. Obama was elected (among other reasons) because he was able to win many white votes. They see 2008 as a triumph over racism, not just a triumph of race. No one suggests that Obama’s election signals an end to racism in the United States. It is not even the beginning of the end, but perhaps it is, as Churchill said in another context, the end of the beginning.  Millions of us worked to make it happen. 

Choosing this particular moment of racial transcendence to accuse white politicians of racism in the matter of the Obama senate seat suggests that, however justly aggrieved for past racial oppression, some African-American leaders, many other Americans, still have a lot of thinking to do about the proper role of race in our political discourse. It implies that we never can, or should, consider higher principles than the advancement of particular politicians because of their color. It is a stunningly inappropriate statement as our wintry and beleaguered country prepares to celebrate a new moral spring. 

 As a wise man once said, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” So there I was on a brilliant sunshiny January morning dancing up Broad Street wearing an over-sized satiny dress with about 2,000 similarly dressed whack jobs, looking for all the world like Dean Wormer’s worst nightmare, when it occurred to me that nowhere but in Philadelphia can so many guys look like frat brothers from Animal House on New Year’s Day and consider it a way of life. What would Philadelphia be without the mummers? Another city certainly.

Mummers are the bad boys of the western world. The Deltas in an Alpha culture. Been that way since the Romans called it Saturnalia. Kings dressed as slaves. Men dressed as women. City folk dressed as farm boys. The best fool became the wisest man. It was an extended solstice festival, like Christmas through Carnival. And any bozo who dragged it out past the end of March was labeled an April fool.

Philadelphia takes care of all that in a single day, or thereabouts. And that single day identifies Philadelphia to itself. The world may not know mummers but we do. This past New Year’s parade clocked in at a record six hours and 30 minutes. It was a cold glorious day. Brilliant winter light shined on Broad Street as if the sun was a spotlight at the Navy Yard. And yet the crowds took a hike. The fans and first timers remained and had a great time. What’s not to like? A wonderful parade on a beautiful day. But there was nobody there. I’m talking nobody-deep on the west side of Broad and Pine when the ninth string band passed.

I know why, of course. Who would bring their family out to watch a parade that might not happen? Or if it does happen there might be a work stoppage? Or if there is a parade it might turn violent if the fat, drunk and stupid parts of both cultures act up. So the bad press about the mummers-City Hall conflict cooled off the size of the crowd as much as the cold day. And boy what a great show they missed. But one thing is for sure, the mummers are as big a part of Philadelphia as any sports team and the thought of a New Year’s Day without a parade is as unthinkable as a spring without the Phillies or an autumn without the Eagles. And the powers that be ought to accommodate that reality into the annual budget instead of acting like the mummers can be put on double secret probation.

Photo of Clark the Mummer by Chris Dwyer. Photo of Fat, Drunk and Stupid by Clark DeLeon.

Dear Ruby,
I know this is a bad time to think about leaving my job, but I hate it and I don’t think I can stand it much longer. I have a micromanaging boss and some bad coworkers, but mostly I’m just tired of what I do. It’s office work and not very creative. I’ve been trying to stick it out, but I find myself surfing around online all day and I’m afraid that I’m going to get caught and fired before I find something better. Should I stay or should I go?

Ken

Dear Ken,
You didn’t tell me whether or not you are supporting a family, but I’m going to try to answer in a way that would address both situations — stay.

Put down the letter opener, I don’t mean forever. What I do mean is, end it like a man. End it honorably, like an agreement, like a marriage, like any obligation. You need a plan and a timetable, so I am providing you, free of charge, Ruby’s patented 3 Weeks to 2 Weeks’ Notice program:

Week 1: Get some real work done.
On Monday morning for two hours, figure out what you need to accomplish in the coming week to get caught up on your work, or at least close to it. Close your office door or tape off your cubicle opening, turn off your phone. You could even send out a “please do not disturb me from 8-10″ email to those likely to disturb you. If your boss gives you crap about it, tell him or her that it’s something you read about in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and you hope it will help you be more organized. It is likely that your screwing off has already been noted and this explanation will give your boss hope that you are getting back on track and that he or she will not have to fire you. It is false hope, but you don’t have to explain that.

I know what you’re thinking — if you could get yourself to work more you wouldn’t be in this position. The problem was that you weren’t incentivized. Here’s your incentive. After every 2 hours of work you complete, you get to spend 20 minutes on your resume and you get to pick one personal item to take home. Maybe it’s 20 minutes reading an online article about interviewing or maybe it’s 20 minutes of writing out a really flattering description of your current position. By the end of a week, you should have a spiffing resume in progress and a desk drawer or two cleaned out.

At night, it goes without saying, you’re Facebooking, LinkedInning, and hitting the job boards. Hard. But, only at home, where you have time to write carefully compelling cover letters and catch the errors before you hit “Submit.”

Week 2: Hanging curtains in the escape tunnel
Monday morning is again your special time to plot out the week. In addition to getting work done, you are also thinking about things like portfolios and references that you will need in case you get called for an interview. Those 20-minute time slots are perfect to call old co-workers or managers and ask whether they’d agree to be a reference for you — and maybe even write you a letter of recommendation.

This week, create a new folder on your desktop. The folder should be called “2008.” In this folder, you will start a list of all your accomplishments this year. Big projects, little projects, everything you did. You can work on this during the 20-minute time slots or the 2-hour time slots because this document will do double-duty for both your upcoming job interviews and your outgoing exit interview or possibly your resignation letter. Start with just a list at first (”1. Created tradeshow report.”) and then flesh out as you think necessary. Every time you think of something, jot it down in here. Don’t know where to start? List all the software you use in your job and then think about the things you’ve used them for.

Week 3: Seeing the light
This Monday, you may want to schedule a lunch or two with someone you’ve networked with. Maybe you already have an in-person or telephone interview set up. Start thinking about your successor. What can you put together so that they’re not walking into a minefield of problems that you’ve already overcome? Start a new folder on your desktop titled, “Manual,” and start jotting notes about vendors or deadlines or other useful information you would have appreciated if you were starting your current position. This is called, “going out on a high note.”

Your resume is gorgeous and up-to-date. You have a copy with you at all times. Your inbox is in good shape and your boss is off your back a little. You’ve hardly seen the inside of the Yahoo! games arcade — and you don’t miss it. You’re finding quite a few interesting opportunities, maybe even some inside your own company, or maybe you’re thinking about going back to school. Don’t be surprised if you start to think about sticking around.

It could happen. The combination of boredom and guilt is incredibly potent, but once you get over the hump of trying to avoid avoiding work, you may discover that an okay job is not only survivable but has hidden potential. Either way, it’s the best possible stepping stone to a great job.

In any economy, it’s smart to leave something in better condition that it was when you found it. Good luck, Ken! 

What’s Ruby on about now? Find out.

I had the best New Year’s Eve I’ve had in a long time and I didn’t even go anywhere. I stayed in with my parents and Callie, my 4-year-old. We ordered from Outback and we watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Well, we tried to watch it in between Callie yelling for us to all come out to the balcony because the “Fire Man” was doing “sparkles” again (fireworks on the beach).

Neither of my parents actually made it to midnight. Mom went down around 10 p.m. and Dad followed at 11:30. But Callie stayed up the whole time until the ball dropped. I think it’s the first time she’s been up until midnight other than when she was an infant and routinely woke up at all hours of the night. She and I alternately watched the intermittent fireworks from the back bedroom of my parents’ condominium, which overlooks the Intercoastal Waterway, and from the front balcony, which overlooks the beach and the Gulf of Mexico. Not a bad place to spend New Year’s Eve.

Of course, in years past, it was the absolute last place you would have found me on the biggest party night of the year. Since about the age of 20, I’ve spent the majority of my New Year’s Eve nights at some sort of big concert. Phish for New Year’s 2000 in the Everglades was a memorable one. We waited for 13 hours on Alligator Alley to get into that show, which was attended by thousands upon thousands of my closest friends and was a 3-day extravaganza during which I got very little sleep and surely killed lots of brain cells. Widespread Panic in Atlanta was a tradition for several years on and off, including a recent one two years ago. That was a liberating girls’ trip during which I celebrated my newly single status and cemented a lasting friendship with two newish girlfriends. And, of course, there was Day by the River, the college band from the University of Miami. Over the years, the band members and their fans have become some of the best friends I have. We followed them all over the place. My best friend Tracie and I even made a pact to move to Atlanta by the following year at a Day by the River New Year’s concert in Miami Beach.  We did it, too.

Suffice it to say, I’ve had no shortage of fun times on New Year’s Eve. So for me to say that this one, which involved no music whatsoever, no friends and, for the first time ever, no alcohol, is kind of a big deal. Even in the years since she was born, I’ve either had a babysitter or it was her dad’s year with her. This year I decided to eschew party invitations because I wanted to spend it with Callie. What a gift to get to see New Year’s Eve through the eyes of a 4-year-old. She was giddy to see all the fireworks and to watch the ball drop in Time Square for the first time. She wasn’t sure about the whole “ball dropping” thing, but she seemed to understand that it was important from watching everyone on TV counting down and cheering when it finally happened.

The absolute best part of the night was when she and I ran out to the front balcony after the ball dropped to catch the fireworks on the beach. We yelled “Happy New Year” at the top of our lungs and I held her up for a better view. She screamed “I love this!” with the most genuine excitement and delight I’ve ever heard and she hugged me hard. She took the words right out of my mouth. I would trade every concert I’ve ever attended for being with Callie last night.

She passed out from exhaustion by about 12:07, cuddled up with me on the bed watching the last of the fireworks peter out over the Intercoastal Waterway. Her last words of the night were, “I love my family.” Again, exactly what I was thinking. I don’t know how that little person can be such a conduit for pure love, but I am eternally grateful that she is mine. I can’t think of a single happier way to ring in the new year.

Nearly every morning last year I went into my office with a single intent — to write. Something. Anything. Nothing. Instead, other than the few posts made here, I have managed to play 386,427 games of spider solitaire. Sadly, I don’t win often, but I do have an impressive twelve-win run in easy mode, which is totally pathetic.

I am discouraged.

Rest assured that there is an abundance of gross incompetence, general stupidity, and blatant disregard for truth and justice in the world that I would gladly comment on. At this very moment there are dozens of diatribes dancing around in my head fighting to find a direct pipeline to my keyboard.

This is not a case of writer’s block. There are big, big, big things going on that piss me off and I, like thousands of others in the blogosphere, have opinions and judgments that I think are unique, brilliant, and deserving of being blasted throughout the universe because, well, um, I am right and you are wrong.

No, this is not writer’s block. My deserving diatribes on the big issues are not absent. My truth is out there. But unlike everyone else in the blogosphere, I am the victim of a cruel conspiracy. My rage has been stolen and broadcast as a ‘special comment’ by Keith Olbermann.

Yes! You Sir, have pinched my blog! 

At first I thought it was Arianna Huffington, but she is just too nice. Don’t get me wrong, the woman is truly brilliant and has used my words to effectively skewer many an adversary through their cold, misguided, republican hearts. But then I saw her on television and noticed that her eyes don’t bulge obscenely when she gets irate, her head doesn’t turn a garish shade of purple or swell to huge proportions, and she doesn’t use 128-word sentences. Well, that just isn’t me. Although her impression of me in print is quite admirable and worthy of note, she is no Keith Olbermann.

Rachel Maddow was in the running. She captures my scathing wit and satirical nature perhaps even more than Keith. But again, I think outrage should alter your physical appearance. Olbermann is really an albino pygmy, you know. He just looks bigger and redder on TV. At the very least you should be able to spin your head 360°. That is outrage!

So here I am, once again, sitting at my computer this morning reflecting on all the big, big, big things that piss me off. In addition to the big global stuff, there is my own personal big stuff that sucks: cancer, baldness, chemo-induced menopause. What will I write?

I am overwhelmed.  

Perhaps I should change my strategy. Maybe my would-be rants are too big. I could try to write about things that don’t piss me off. I could reflect on 2008 and write about the things I am grateful for. Perhaps I could find a happy balance. A look on the bright side… examine the silver lining, if you will.

• I have cancer, but I’m alive
• I am bald, but I haven’t had to shave my legs in over a year
• I’m in full-blown menopause at 42, but my older sister still has her period
• Bush is an asshole, but he’ll be gone in 21 days

 No, that won’t work. Keith would never go for it.

 Maybe tomorrow.

December 19, 2008
I dream there is a sparse crowd in a theater watching movies of old magicians. In the audience is Chanin, my magic mentor from my teen years. I am amazed that he’s still alive, as he must be in his hundreds by now. I try to talk to him about his salt trick, but he is more interested in his nursemaid. When we leave the theater we use vampires as a mode of transportation. We climb onto them and ride them to Borgo Pass, where we have to make a transfer.

July 6, 1999
I dream Gail and I show up after having missed a day at our editing jobs. Oddly enough, we find a very relaxed place with no stress and nobody seems to care that Gail was absent. To satisfy the authorities, my boss asks Gail to write on a piece of paper that she had mono. We wind up in an entertainment environment in which a production of Dracula is playing. Dracula is about to terrorize a group of hand puppets who are in bed together. I recognize this, of course, as the original Bela Lugosi version of Dracula. Then they run an old Three Stooges short made with replacement stooges after the originals all died.

June 13, 1999
I dream I am a modern-day Van Helsing working in the last minutes before sunrise to destroy Dracula, who is played by Kelsey Grammer. Grammer has to get back to his coffin and my associates and I have to kill him. Through my palm sized computer-communicator I see that Grammer is trying to con one of them into transforming him back into a human instead of destroying him with stake and garlic. I tell my associate that Grammer is lying; he’s trying to fool you and what you should do is load Grammer’s head with bullets.

No writer is quoted more reflexively than Shakespeare, which is too bad, because Will’s best lines not only repay close attention, but often demand it. Take the advice Polonius gives his son Laertes:

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Spoken like a true courtier, which is what Polonius is — a temporizing careerist whose summum bonum is survival. He is also a “wretched, rash, intruding fool,” as Hamlet — uncharitably, but accurately — calls him after impulsively running the old duffer through in Act III.

It seems safe to say that, for Polonius, being true to yourself means nothing more than giving top priority to your own self-interest. My guess is that, in Polonius’s view, everyone is out for himself, and that this defines the extent to which anyone can trust anybody else — which is to say, hardly at all. It is a supremely cynical outlook, and how exactly it ensures against being false to anyone else is far from clear.

There is another play in which the notion of being true to yourself figures: Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. When Peer visits the trolls, the troll king explains that the difference between humans and trolls is that while, among humans, the maxim is “to thine own self be true,” among trolls it is “to thine own self be — enough.”

But how do those differ, really? In both cases, the standard remains … yourself. The problem, I think, is that we tend to conflate the notion of being true to oneself with being true to one’s conscience. But the two are far from being the same thing, since being true to one’s conscience may occasionally make it necessary to act against one’s self-interest.

I have, a couple of times in my life, done what I thought was right even though doing so was bound to have — and indeed did have — a retarding effect on my career trajectory. Why? For the same reason Ring Lardner Jr. gave for not cooperating with the House Un-American Activities Committee: because to do otherwise would have meant “I would hate myself in the morning.”

It is easy to see why fidelity to conscience gets confused with fidelity to oneself — because we feel we are most true to ourselves when we are true to our conscience. At least most of us feel that way. Polonius probably wouldn’t; he’d likely regard fidelity to conscience as a luxury a courtier could ill-afford.

What makes this quote from Hamlet so intriguing is that, once you start thinking about it, you are forced to ask a prior question: Who is the self to which one is called upon to be true? It is a question that corresponds to the motto inscribed over the entrance to the temple at Delphi: Gnothi seauton: Know thyself.

Easy advice to give. Not so easy to follow.

After all, who am I? The fellow who did the right thing when to do otherwise seemed unacceptable — to him (that is, not in accord with his self-image) — or the fellow who, more often than not, followed the course of least resistance whenever there wasn’t any good reason not to? Well, I’m both.

We like to flatter ourselves that our true selves are reflected in our best qualities. Unfortunately, our true selves are precisely the mix of good and bad, the congeries of inconsistencies and contradictions, that we happen to be. We are only too true to them too often, which is why we are so often dissatisfied with, yes, ourselves.

And yet I suspect each of us feels that there is some essential core to our being that either transcends or else is somehow immune to the embarrassing messiness of our quotidian selves. I have a sense of this when I write poetry, which for me has always been a way of putting into words as precisely as I can a record of an experience that has struck me, for whatever reason, as peculiarly meaningful.

Only I never quite feel that the poem is mine exactly, something that I own, and that owes its existence solely to me. I feel, rather, that it is something that has come to me, been given to me, and that my role was simply to get it down on paper as accurately as I could. It is a lot like the feeling I have when I stare blankly out a window at nothing in particular and a certain calm comes over me. I am, at such times, aware of myself and of the world, but my self seems to have become an empty vessel, and my mind is suddenly free of its usual inconsequential chattering. It is then, oddly, that I feel most alive, most real, most myself. And yet my usual “I” seems no longer to be there.

I didn’t do as careful a job tracking the books I read this year as I did last year, but I think the below covers it (they’re listed more or less in the order I read them — I sometimes read more than one at a time). The list is about as long as last year’s; it seems that these days I read only 22 or so books a year. I used to read many more books each year, but I guess that was back when I didn’t have papers to grade or an online magazine to run or a child to play with. I hope next year the list will be a good deal shorter, since that would mean I’m spending more time writing my new novel in 2009 — I tend not to read fiction when I’m writing it.

Anyway, I hope your 2008 in books was a good one, and I’d be interested to hear what you thought about any of the below, if you read any of them (most of them are not new books). And do you keep track of what you read each year? I just started doing that the last couple of years. Since I’m asking questions, what was the best book you read in 2008? The worst? 

One of the below was really, really, bad; a few were not very good; a few were disappointing; a few were relatively painless and easy to get through, if unremarkable; a few were interesting enough even if not as good as they’d been hyped up to be or even if flawed in some major way; and a few were memorable and well worth reading. How’s that for specificity?

1. The Ladies of Grace Adieu, stories by Susanna Clarke

2. I, The Jury, a novel by Mickey Spillane (I wrote about it here)

3. Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

4. Boomsday, a novel by Christopher Buckley

5. The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

6. The Kite Runner, a novel by Khaled Hosseini

7. The Rape of Nanking, by Iris Chang (I wrote about it here)

8. The Thirteenth Tale, a novel by Diane Setterfield

9. The Godwulf Manuscript, a novel by Robert B. Parker

10. How the Mind Works, by Steven Pinker

11. The Tyranny of Good Intentions, by Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton (I wrote about it here)

12. Everything Bad is Good for You, by Steven Johnson

13. The Big Sleep, a novel by Raymond Chandler

14. Enter Jeeves: 15 Early Stories, by P.G. Wodehouse

15. Gutenberg: How One Man Remade the World with Words, by John Man

16. Hyperspace, by Michio Kaku

17. The Time Machine, a novel by H.G. Wells

18. Consider the Lobster, by David Foster Wallace

19. V for Vendetta, a graphic novel by Alan Moore

20. Freedom Evolves, by Daniel C. Dennett

21. The Misanthrope, by Moliere

22. The Bourne Identity, a novel by Robert Ludlum

I just discovered that Facebook has a breast controversy.

According to several news sources, the social networking site deletes photos of women if they are breastfeeding… or is it that their babies are breastfeeding?  Okay, I’m a bit confused on the verbiage, but Facebook is not confused about the Terms of Use.  If you have a Facebook account, you agreed to the Terms of Use, which includes the provision that “photos containing a fully exposed breast” are subject to removal from the site.  No caveat for when the breast is being employed in a mammary fashion versus the Girls Gone Wild display that was certainly the impetus for the rule in the first place.  And thus, controversy.

Of course, nothing is ever this clear.  For example, one of the photos in question is so un-indecent that the Washington Post feels comfortable posting it on their site.  And in that photo, I don’t even see a fully exposed breast.  Sure, it would be exposed if the opaque baby’s head wasn’t in the way.  But we could say that about all breasts–they would be exposed if you were to just move a few opaque items that are currently in the way.  Facebook seems in this case to be stretching the letter of their own law just a bit.

The woman in this particular photo has started a group called “Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding is Not Obscene,” the membership of which was just under 70,000 the last time I looked.  Obscene is a legal term, so let’s look at the law for a moment.  The website for the National Conference of State Legislatures offers a summary of the breastfeeding laws of various US states and territories.  It says,

Forty states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands have laws with language specifically allowing women to breastfeed in any public or private location.

Idaho, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin are the ten who are not listed with that specific language.  But Michigan law states that public nudity laws do not apply to a woman breastfeeding a child.  South Dakota laws exempt mothers who are breastfeeding from indecency laws.  Virginia law guarantees a woman the right to breastfeed her child on any property owned, leased or controlled by the state, and exempts mothers engaged in breastfeeding from indecent exposure laws.  Washington law states that the act of breastfeeding or expressing breast milk is not indecent exposure.  Wisconsin laws provide that breastfeeding mothers are not in violation of criminal statutes of indecent or obscene exposure.

A note to Facebook:  That leaves Idaho, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Dakota, and West Virginia whose laws don’t expressly address breastfeeding in public as acceptable.  That’s five (5) low population states out of the whole nation.  And again, we’re talking about breastfeeding, not sexual displays or gratuitous toplessness in the streets.  (To be clear, I am not opposing gratuitous toplessness in the streets.  Nor advocating it.  I’m just saying it’s not the issue here.)

But let’s also note to the upset breastfeeding moms on Facebook that the internet extends a bit beyond the territory of the USA, and Facebook’s idea of indecency has to take into consideration the laws and mores of every nation on Earth.  International organizations and websites have to decide how to handle the varying mores and attitudes around the globe, and it appears that in this case the company in question has chosen to err on the side of caution.  You and I may feel that this is prudish, but the fact is that if one doesn’t like Facebook’s rules (and if one can’t convince the site to change them), then one doesn’t have to use that website.

While I applaud the group “Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding is Not Obscene,” and their attempts to persuade the site to change their policy, I do hope that everybody in the group recognizes that the definition of obscenity is actually complex and subjective.  Facebook is probably doing the best it can to promote universal accessibility.  For now, that may mean that when it comes to obscenity, Mark Zuckerberg and his team will have to rely on the famous wisdom of Justice Potter Stewart: “I know it when I see it”.

Michelle, you’ve got the right idea … and I am speaking from experience. Do everything you can to convince your mom to move into the White House with you. I know she’s super independent and also wants to give your family some space to be a family — my parents said the same thing — but who really needs that much space? Don’t let her get away with it. Her moving to her own place near the White House just won’t be the same as you all living under one roof.

My parents moved in with us back in June and, honestly, it’s been fantastic. I never have to run out to get milk or eggs. I get weather updates every morning so I know how to dress myself and my kids. I change 50 percent less poopy diapers. I no longer need to feed the goldfish (although I wouldn’t expect mom to walk the new puppy coming your way; however, she may be willing to walk with one of the girls as they walk the new puppy). I get to sleep in every once in a while because my kids go down to my parents and bug them to get breakfast going. When my husband needs to work late I can still go out for a coffee to catch up with a friend. When my husband doesn’t need to work late we can put the kids to bed and then catch a 10 p.m. movie without worrying about a babysitter. Every once in a while my mom will cook (and it isn’t half bad). Plus, there is always someone to get my daughter off of her school bus when my husband and I are at work.

OK, so maybe some of my benefits won’t exactly translate to things you will get (or need) from your mom. However, what you will get is a comfort that is immeasurable. Knowing that there is someone else you trust, implicitly, living in your house is the unspoken benefit. Someone else there that will help keep your kids grounded and guide them when you and Barack get pulled away. Someone to read them bedtime stories when you are not around. Someone for the girls to talk to when they need the love that only a parent or grandparent can give. And I am not sure how Marian is with sweets… but my kids always know they get a little something extra for dessert if grandma is in charge.

So, to Marian, mother to the first-lady-elect and grandmother to two adorable girls about to transition into an entirely new world, move in to the White House. Your family needs you — and besides, you will get as much out of the next four years as they will. Just ask my parents.

The father of history is a man named Herodotus, a Greek writer who lived in the ancient times before the birth of Alexander the Great or even Richard Nixon. Herodotus has been called the first “historian” in that he made it his business to write down the story of mankind as best he could with the available information in the 4th Century B.C., which was way before Google or Wikipedia.

As a result Herodotus has been referred to, even by some of his contemporaries, as “the father of lies.” His chief sin seems to have been a willingness to report popular lore alongside verifiable fact. For instance, during the reign of the Persian king Cambyses, the evil and murderous son of the first Persian conqueror, Cyrus, Herodotus wrote that a Babylonian journalist threw both his shoes one after another at the most powerful ruler in the world during a farewell press conference in Baghdad. 

Centuries later scholars of antiquity doubt if such a preposterous event could have taken place in such a heavily guarded and hyper vigilant venue as a close quarters photo-op by a universally unpopular and commonly detested foreign monarch in occupied territory.

Clearly Herodotus was just making this stuff up. And so, undoubtedly, will our current technological state-of-the-art Geek historian — You-Tube-Us — be rejected by future generations who will be expected to believe that the President of the United States was dodging hurled shoes like some kind of Whack-The-Mole video game.

Puh-LEESE! We all know how this kind of “live” video can be digitally enhanced, altered or completely fabricated. Will we expect intelligent life forms 2,500 years from now to believe that that was a a real event featuring the actual United States President, George W. Bush, grinning that infuriatingly guilty grin of his, ducking those Iraqi soles last week?

I have wealthy cousins — men — who judge others by the shoes they wear. When I was a teenager, I remember hearing one of them advise that you could tell if someone was really rich by looking at his shoes.

Shoes were the last thing I was thinking about when my grandmother died on Christmas day, 2006, two days before her 95th birthday. We were at my aunt’s, just starting her Christmas party for family and friends, when my father’s cell phone rang with the news from the nursing home. I was just finishing my first deviled egg.

Grandma Flo was as strong a person as I’d ever met. At 90 she had still bowled every week. She had higher scores than most of the old men. Then she broke her hip and had to be moved from Century Village in Florida, where almost no one she knew was left, to an assisted living facility on Long Island, to be closer to the family. Her mind remained sharp, her sense of humor and wit intact, as her body slowly betrayed her. Then assisted living wasn’t enough, and there was the nursing home. When her eyes and ears got worse and, at the end, her mind started the way of eyes and ears, Grandma was ready. When she died, sad though it was, it wasn’t a great shock. Ninety-five years of health and living long enough to know eight great-grandchildren doesn’t usually make for tragedy. And in any case, there wasn’t time to mourn just yet.

First, there was the Christmas party. I’d driven in from Pennsylvania with my wife and son the night before. For my aunt’s sake, the whole family had been determined to make this a joyous, uplifting day. Her second husband had died at the age of forty-seven a couple of months after the previous year’s Christmas party. She had decided to go through with hosting the party again this year. Even after the phone call from the nursing home, we were trying to treat it like any other Christmas. Each arriving guest was greeted with the news that Grandma Flo had died, and the party went on. Tragedy or not, the food was heating up in tins and those deviled eggs weren’t going to eat themselves.

Second, though it was in fact a family Christmas party, we were in fact Jews (my aunt’s late second husband, like her ex-husband before him, was the ostensible excuse for the decorated tree). And even Jews who attend Christmas parties don’t mess around when it comes to funerals. It might be the next day, or the day after, but no later. In-between accepting condolences and eating lasagna and exchanging gifts, my father had arrangements to make. The funeral would not be the next day — the rabbi wasn’t free until the day after: December 27th, Grandma’s birthday.

That gave me one day to find something to wear. When I’d packed for the anticipated two-day stay in New York, no one had said anything about a funeral. I only had jeans, brown loafers, a sweater, and sweatshirts. You don’t go to your grandmother’s funeral in jeans.

The shirt and tie were easy — my father’s fit me fine. My father also had a black suit jacket that I could get away with. It was big, but it would do.

I couldn’t wear my father’s dress pants. I had the waistline of a reasonably thin man in his thirties. My father was not a man in his thirties. And my brother and brother-in-law are both taller than I am. I considered driving back to Pennsylvania to get my own clothes, but two hours each direction is a long way to go for pants. Even for a funeral. Buying new pants would be a pain — I rarely find my size off the rack and there might not be time to have it hemmed. Fortunately, my brother-in-law’s friend already had plans to fly in with his family from Florida to New York to stay at my sister’s house for the week, and the impending funeral hadn’t changed that. He was about my height, so a pair of black dress pants would be on a flight up the East Coast tomorrow, the day before the funeral.

My only remaining concern was shoes. I have small feet. Depending on the brand and style, I usually wear a seven or seven and a half. No one’s shoes would fit me. I’d have to go shopping. I almost never find shoes in my size and had visions of store after store of futility, all sizes nine and above. Maybe supernatural forces were looking out for me — the dreaded vision didn’t come true.

In a matter of minutes, at a Payless on Bell Boulevard, I found simple black casual dress shoes, size seven and a half. They were sixteen dollars. They didn’t hurt my feet. I bought them and wore them to the funeral the next day with my ragtag assortment of borrowed clothes flown in from across the land. The jacket was too long in the sleeves and the pants stayed up only with the help of a very tight belt. I looked a little like Tom Hanks at the end of Big, when he turns back into a child wearing grown-up clothes. But the shoes were fine, and what a bargain.

My grandmother had lived through the Great Depression and wasn’t one to waste money — she’d drink half a can of soda and plug the hole with tin foil and put it back in the refrigerator for later. She would have been happy to know that I found shoes for her funeral for only sixteen dollars. She’d have been even happier to know that those sixteen-dollar shoes were the same shoes I wore to work each day for months after.

They fit me.

December 21, 2008
I dream I am attending some kind of professional conference that is held in a public park. The keynote address is about to be given from the top of a pyramid shaped tower/building. The building is very crowded, but they have speakers set up so you can hear from anywhere on the grounds. Suddenly, just as the speech is about to begin, the pyramid transforms into a huge amusement park ride that looks like a windmill. The people on the pyramid are thrown upside-down and spun in various directions. People are amazed at this new innovation, and I am delighted because a) it is magical-looking and b) I am not on it.

June 11, 2000
I dream I work as an attendant on a tower of death ride. My one job is to look for problems and push a panic button. At the end of the day, I am dropped off at a mall/arcade near my house and I run into my brother, Dan, who is trying to impress a young lady. The young lady instantly takes a shine to me. I charm her by using my foot as a puppet.

October 21, 1998
I dream I awaken on the floor of a garage on the edge of a seashore amusement park. My brother and I look for an attraction called “The Murder House,” a dark ride that you can only find by going through laundry rooms and maintenance areas until you come across a creaky old service elevator made of dark, rotting wooden slats. Other people seem to know of the ride, too, and we all go onto this elevator and press “down.” The elevator descends to a frightening, awful level filled with wailing demons that reach through the wooden slats and fondle us. The demons are genuine, and I am so scared that my brother promises to sue the amusement park for me.

A former bandmate of mine went to engineering school, then scuttled the guitars to write heavy metal with…actual heavy metal. Ground Control Magazine has a great video interview up with him now showcasing the sounds of doom and apocalypse he is able to wrestle out of his huge drone machines. It’s that rare circumstance of something totally unique being created, a pairing of uber-smarts and primitive roar.  

A Saudi judge has refused to annul an arranged marriage between an 8-year-old girl and a 47-year-old man on the grounds that the mother, who requested the annulment, did not have legal custody of the child. The father gave the girl to the man to pay a debt.

I was ready to launch into a rant about how slavery is apparently legal in Saudi Arabia and maybe would have taken a shot at those cultural relativists who argue that, given how flawed America and its history is, we have no right to judge other cultures by our Western standards. But then I read this sentence in the CNN article and understood that there was nothing, really, that needed to be said beyond the facts:

The judge did ask for a pledge from the husband, who was in court, not to consummate the marriage until the girl reaches puberty…