The Imperialism of Sound

A gorgeous and impassioned elegy for silence:

The Colonization of Silence

A composer, Andrew Waggoner understands and suffers more acutely than most (more's the pity) the impact our culture's indiscriminate celebration of noise has on music, and by extension....

I feel this so viscerally in the subway, where like most others, I assume, I feel more human and humanized by the occasional strains of a violin or guitar endorsed by the MTA's Arts Under NY program, but it's mostly because I like the idea that we're a city that cares about the arts. On the whole, the occasional great performance is lost in the mix of pan pipes and improvised percussion (I love going to the USq market on Saturdays; I hate the 4-5-6 uptown. The guy banging on overturned plastic buckets on the platform now has competition from Japanese girls clogging on a makeshift wooden stage at the top of the stair); and everyone is on an ipod and who's about to hang out in the subway anyway? For that reason the MTA program is probably more pernicious than otherwise. What difference can the artist make when you stage the concert on the tracks?

The Quiet Car

When I die and go to heaven, hell, just or the bottom of the East River, I hope to pull in to my destination on the Quiet Car. What is the Quiet Car? why, it's the sanctum sanctorum of contemporary travel, the new colossus for a mobile age:

...The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

So maybe it's stretching a metaphor, but it's the silent lips I'd like to discuss.

Don't we all understand silent lips? Is this an idea the performance of which actually varies over time? by situation? No, it is not. Silent lips are lips through which no utterance, meaningful or otherwise, escapes. No word, no shriek, no snore. Silent lips are the Golden Rule in the Quiet Car. To wit:

Quiet Talking Only, Please:
Customers must strictly limit conversation and speak only in quiet, subdued tones. If you'd like to carry on an extended conversation, please relocate to another car.

Mute Your Device:
Customers may not use any devices making noise, including:

cellular phones
pagers
handheld games without headphones
laptop computers with audible features enabled
portable CD or DVD players without headphones
Customers using headphones must keep the volume low enough so that the audio cannot be heard by neighboring passengers.

This is from Amtrak's web site, but in case there's any confusion, signs reading 'QUIET CAR: no cell phones, quiet conversation only' are posted every few feet, and the conductor generally announces the rules as the train pulls from the station.

Any questions?

Step outside to ask them. Please.

In the past few months, I've had occasion to travel between New York and Boston on three separate occasions. Back and forth, 6 segments. Even on the Acela, that's almost 24 hours. 24 hours on the Quiet Car. Each passenger acknowledging the inconvenience of her presence to her neighbors, all agreeing on a common illusion of solitude.

If only.

In fact, the Quiet Car seems to stimulate an adolescent compulsion that I can only hope is otherwise latent in adult passengers to break the rules because they are there. How else to explain the fact that cell phones are in common use in every Quiet Car, turned off when the conductor walks through to take tickets, occasionally scolding a less vigilant delinquent--and back on again just as soon as his back is turned? Talking, phone calling-- for all I know, break dancing and fist fights-- are invited on every other car EXCEPT for the Quiet Car, so called because it is supposed to be QUIET.

The worst offenders are not teenaged boys; in fact, I have asked two groups of chattering boys on two separate occasions whether they were aware that they were on the Quiet Car, and both looked gratifyingly stricken and apologized profusely as they gathered up their belongings and moved to another car. No, the worst are the old people, the lady with a show tune ring tone who covered her phone with her other hand and turned to the window as if, like a little child, she thought she couldn't be seen or heard by anyone she couldn't see or hear herself. When another passenger said 'excuse me, this is the Quiet Car, no cell phones', she first ignored him and then when he repeated himself, flashed a disapproving glance and said, 'it's just my daughter'. Lady, I don't care if it's just your parole officer. Take it outside. Or the man whose wife on the other end was evidently as deaf as he, who repeated his order to the entire car as the train approached the station. 'No, egg foo young, EGG FOO YOUNG!'.

And of course, that's the other thing, in and near the stations, even law-abiding passengers seem to think the rules no longer apply, as if the nearing prospect of freedom from the unnatural restrictions of the Quiet Car are too much for the most disciplined among us, and the torrents of irrelevant chatter will burst forth. And at this point, the transgressors cease even to mime their awareness of their transgressions, and a general air of relief and gaiety takes over, except in my corner, where I seethe.

And then there was one extraordinary occasion when even I was moved to utterance. In the Quiet Car (as in all the other cars, I assume), there are several sets of seats at either end arranged such that two passengers face two other passengers across a common table. I was seated in one such seat, and across the aisle, four passengers gradually found themselves seated in a similar fashion. First was a young man studying law books, and then a young woman who boarded with skis planted herself across from him and promptly fell asleep. Then another, rather large young man in a suit and shoes as shiny as his hair sat down beside the sleeping girl, and eventually an older woman sat across from him. After a time, the young man in the suit left his seat, and returned from the dining car with a cardboard box of food. Standing in the aisle, he set the box down on the table, and proceeded to remove his jacket, which he spread carefully along the back of his seat. Then, under the gathering glances of the car, he proceeded to unbutton his shirt, which he also removed, and spread with equal care across the shoulders of his jacket. At this point, attired in a wife beater for which I suppose in retrospect one might have been grateful, the astonishing fellow UNBUCKLED HIS BELT AND THE TOP BUTTON OF HIS TROUSERS. Whereupon he sat down, tucked a paper napkin into the scoop of his under shirt, and proceeded to tuck in. By now, jaws had dropped around his table (the girl slept through it all) and mine. The law student looked me in the eye and made a sheepish shrug. It was the older woman who, in the most matter-of-fact tone imaginable, addressed him in ringing tones.

'ARE YOU WARM?' she asked.

He looked up, cheeks full. 'No', he said, puzzled; and then seemed to understand. 'I don't want to get anything on my new shirt'.

Mind you, this is Boston to New York in 2007, not Jacksonville to Atlanta in 1887. (And if you recognize the allusion, you'll recognize that the comparison is also inept in ways I mean to address when I write about 'Richer not Better' [Walter Michaels's The Trouble with Diversity]).

By the time he reached across the aisle and tapped my shoulder to ask, 'do you have a mint or a piece of gum'?', I was so off balance that I actually burst out laughing. I am not proud of that moment, but he didn't seem to take offense, and just proceeded to the next person.

The Quiet Car is an ideal, and perhaps one that depends on the denial of class and other more trivial differences more than I generally care to admit.

But let's take that conversation outside.

Mmmm

When I started this blog I figured I'd be writing a lot about food. It had been my exclusive occasion for internet interaction, aside from email. I started on Chowhound some time in the mid or late '90s? not sure when it actually came on line. But I dropped out a few years ago around the time when it was sold to Chow or whatever, because I got fed up with the fastidious censors who removed one too many of my posts, as well as the grinding and obviously sanctioned dumbing down of the conversation. I was searching for something elsewhere on the internet not long ago and came across a count of my CH posts which was somewhere around the 1,300 mark. I was a little impressed with myself. And a little appalled.

I am sorry to have lost CH outlet in some ways (especially when I'm travelling to new places and need to plan food itineraries) but my relationship to products and restaurants and so on has changed too. Maybe it's partly because the CH engagement is no longer part of the experience. I keep thinking I should report here on recent meals at Fiamma, Magnolia Grill, Watts Kitchen, JoJo, Momofuku, Angel's Share, the Palm, B&G Oysters, Savoy, Back 40, El Quinto Pino, Myth, Tadich, Tsukushi, Cho Dang Gol, twice-weekly Greenmarkets and dozens and dozens of oysters & sea urchins at the GCOB (especially, of late, the Caraquets, Ninegrets & Malaspinas);

but documentation is just not that interesting any more. I think the proliferation of amateur food critics on the web, and their photographs (this really upsets me, that people who wouldn't be caught dead behaving like Japanese tourists [actually, the Japanese are more sophisticated now; let's call them Koreans and Chinese] in the streets have no compunction about whipping out their cameras or phones to take pictures of their food), have put me off the effort to consider, describe and engage with others over what I consider to be an incredibly personal and intimate experience: the food and drink I take into my mouth and my body,the people who prepare, offer and present it, the environment in which it is consumed, the language, memory, humor, trepidation, discovery, disappointment, pacification, comparison it evokes-- these are all so fully commodified now, that I can no longer take pleasure in the act of contemplation and sharing that once was voluntary, occasion by occasion; and now has become performative, competitive.

As the productions have developed in variety and sophistication, I have become increasingly less interested in the staging of a meal. Back when it first opened, Craft was my Platonic ideal of a restaurant. Of course it was carefully calculated and executed, but the conceit of each ingredient presented separately and simply was exactly what I was looking for, and even more so now (of course Tom Colicchio has long since abandoned the original and is trading off the reputation at Craftsteaks and other cute variations on the theme in Vegas & beyond. But I digress).

I reject the ideology of authenticity. But I am repelled, now, by the very idea of Atlantic salmon, say, or tomatoes in winter (in NYC). This is not out of any reverence for the idea of 'nature' or the 'local', but because of the specific, documented implications of producing, offering and consuming such 'foods', and the cheat they offer on the plate.

Reality Bites: or, Kentucky Bootleg

Not long ago, I had an emergency root canal, which was interesting in the sense that the tooth that had been throbbing sprouted from the lower jaw but the one that needed the procedure descended from the upper. The periodontist found this out through a few simple and ingenious tests involving the application of cold air to different teeth. I wonder if periodontists' kids perform this trick for their science classes. My father was a scientist, and I offered emulsification. (Hollandaise came much later).

So anyway, he was a very nice young man with a small office on the UES, and in the exam room were 3 framed photos of himself with 3 different patients (or at least that was the suggestion), arm on shoulder kind of thing. One was a woman I didn't recognize and one was a man I definitely did but now can't remember (was it Al Pacino?) because I was so involved in considering the idea that the man in the middle, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and I, had reclined in the same chair and spit blood and saliva into the same basin. I trust that Mr. Hoffman is receiving sufficient remuneration from his tremendous body of work (I'd see anything on the strength of his performance, and Laura Linney's too. The Savages is as good as it gets)not to have needed to avail himself of CareCredit on his way out of the office to the pharmacy to retrieve his vicodin reward. And what is CareCredit? 'CareCredit is a convenient, low minimum monthly payment program for your entire family specifically designed to pay or healthcare and elective treatment not covered by insurance"'. This might have been the perfect answer to the call to blepharoplasty my mirror has been submitting to my drooping, swollen, crepey lids, but an $1,800 root canal bill gets there first.

So on the way downtown the gold crown around which the periodontist has maneouvred falls out, leaving an interesting stump. So I'm back to the dentist in a few days, where for another $295 (thanks, CareCredit!) they install a 'temporary crown', because my insurance won't contemplate the sort of elective nonsense of a real crown for a year following initiation of coverage. So my plaster tooth crumbles at first floss and I'm wondering how much I paid for the fleeting play dough reassurance of tooth against tooth. My tongue finds comfort now in the gap between the stump of my back molar and its semi-detached neighbor that I understand will be next in line for reconstruction.

So CareCredit. CareCredit is great because it offers a limited time, no interest payment plan. I'm on track to pay off my bill well in advance of the deadline. But if something should happen and come spring I've got an outstanding balance, it looks like CareCredit could start assessing a hefty (22.98%) interest charge, which goes up to '28.99% for all accounts in default'. (I don't know what CareCredit considers default).

I'm also facing 2 real crowns, one to replace my temporary and one for the adjacent, as well as a strong recommendation for grafting in an area I've had unsuccessfully grafted twice before. My dentist will charge $2,000 per tooth for a crown, and my insurance, which won't cover such procedures until one year after enrollment (18 January) will cover only 50 per cent of what they assess as 'customary'. So I am looking at an additional $2,000-- at best-- out of pocket. (Forget grafting; I'll invest in saran wrap). My dental coverage is provided by AIG by the way. I have to say that Maurice Greenberg may have been the lucky one. Go Martin.

So anyway, I've been looking into getting the work done in another country, a 'developing' country, where there are more qualified medical professionals per capita (still trying to figure out the dental situation) than in most parts of the world. So far I'm getting a price that's 25 per cent less than I'd pay in NYC. If my insurance covers it, then I'd be paying a total of $500 versus $2,000 (or more) out of pocket for two crowns.

And maybe I could use some of the 'extra' money to help people in my own country who are still waiting for for 'development'.

“Not much has changed over the years here, really,” said Glen D. Anderson, who for two decades has made dentures in Corbin, Ky. He sells a pair of dentures for $400 that many dentists sell for more than $1,200. Like his brother, father and grandfather, he makes them without a license.

"Bootleggers exist here for a reason,” Mr. Anderson said. “People need teeth, but they can’t afford to go to dentists for dentures.” ....

...Dr. [Edwin D.] Smith [who paid $150,000 of his own money to set up a free mobile dental clinic] said, “the only choice a person with a severe infection has is to have the tooth pulled, even if she’s 25 years old and the tooth is right in the middle of her face.” He added that "the [Medicare] program does not pay for root canals or dentures, though it does help pay for a liquid diet for those without teeth."

Manneh from Staten Island

It's an easy pun from among so many temptations ('bushmeat'? Look, I'm a paragon of restraint). But I like to think it is not irrelevant to the analysis Stanley Fish makes available to those of us who would avail ourselves regarding a pending case in which a Staten Island resident defends herself against charges that she has violated US customs regulations and illegally imported 'bushmeat'.

According to CNN

A criminal complaint cited evidence that the illegal importation of bushmeat encourages the slaughter of protected wild animals. More ominously, the complaint warned of "the potential health risks to humans linking bushmeat to diseases like Lassa fever, Ebola, HIV, SARS and monkeypox.

At the center of the case in federal court is a modest woman with nine children and a history of domestic discord.

The case dates to early 2006, when federal inspectors at JFK Airport examined a shipment of 12 cardboard boxes from Guinea.

They were addressed to [Mamie] Manneh and, according to a flight manifest, contained African dresses and smoked fish with a value of $780.

Instead, stashed underneath the smoked fish, the inspectors found what West Africans refer to as bushmeat: "skulls, limbs and torsos of nonhuman primate species" plus the hoof and leg of a small antelope, according to court papers.

.... after she consented to a search, the agents came across a tiny, hairy arm hidden in her garage.

'Monkey,' she explained, claiming the arm was sent to her out of the blue "as a gift from God in heaven.

Well, call me a disciple and pass me a thigh.

NO IT DOESN'T
responds Stanley Fish

to the defense attorney's assertion that the case represents a regrettable but inevitable by-product of the sort of 'clash of cultural and religious values inherent in the [thoroughly discredited metaphor of the] melting pot that is America'.

It represents a more fundamental clash: between the imperatives of religion and the rule of law. The question raised by the case is whether the fact of a religious belief is sufficient to exempt the believer from the application of generally applicable laws — laws (like driving on the right-hand side of the road) that apply to every citizen no matter what his or her religious, ethical or moral convictions. Is religious belief a special case, so special that the devout practitioner gets a pass?

If it is, then I guess it's up to God to save the USA.

New Zealand? or Australia?

I first made Lebanon's acquaintance about a year ago, and can't recall the number of times I've resorted to Alice in response to curious questions about the experience:

I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think--' (she was rather glad there was no one listening, this time, as it didn't sound at all the right word) `--but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?' (and she tried to curtsey as she spoke--fancy curtseying as you're falling through the air! Do you think you could manage it?) `And what an ignorant little girl she'll think me for asking! No, it'll never do to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere'.

No, alas, I've yet to receive the instructive handbill, but I do begin to distinguish heads from tails at least sufficiently to be struck by how profoundly my views are shaped by my birth and citizenship in a nation that (with however many caveats and challenges) nevertheless maintains a government organized into three separate branches: legislative, executive and judicial; that each of these branches is vested with sufficient powers to check the others; and that religion has no part in the exercise of any state power. And though I conflate founding documents, I think there is general agreement in my part of the woods that these divisions exist and are maintained at the pleasure and consent of 'we the people'. Who somehow exist avant la lettre.

Or something like that.

In this context, an argument such as Stephanie Coontz advances in her recent NYT opinion piece,'Taking Marriage Private' makes a great deal of sense. Why should society cede the state the right to sanction relationships that are understood to be affective and personal: ie, that of the choice of one's affective or domestic partner?

[There's another issue here that I will refrain from pursuing beyond the digressive notation: why is it that other types of affective personal bonds--bonds of friendship, and its many variants for example, which are at least in English not recognized with special language; bonds of elective proximity and....? -- are exempt from state and religious scrutiny, and equally from the protections and sanctions both regimes traditionally have extended?].

But then there is the other side of the earth, or as Alice put it, 'the Antipathies'.

What difference would it make to achieve civil status for the institution of marriage, now pro- or pre-scribed according to religious law as mandated by the state?

Not much, I think; so long as the state itself is a constitutionally sectarian entity, it can make little difference whether it arrogates to itself the administrative functions of marriage or assigns them to its religious proxies. [Incidentally, I link a link to a reprint as the full text is no longer available at the Daily Star]

And what difference would it make if a (nominally)non-sectarian state were to get out of the marriage business? Coontz's hopelessly liberal recommendation confuses privilege with preference ('Perhaps it’s time to revert to a much older marital tradition. Let churches decide which marriages they deem “licit.” But let couples — gay or straight — decide if they want the legal protections and obligations of a committed relationship') which misses the entire point that 'couples--gay or straight' (and why is she limiting the rights question to couples? Because she--and the state-- already derive their relational framework from religion) can't just 'decide' they want protections. Their standing from which to petition is granted or withheld by the state, directly or through religious proxies. As it is in Lebanon.

I started thinking about this paradox the other day, and was happy to find this article about mutaah or urfi in today's IHT. I don't know anything independently about the practice or accuracy of the report, but it makes perfect sense-- in the same way and for similar reasons that the Netherlands should have contained illicit activities such as drug use and prostitution by making them licit through licensing and taxation.

Christian fundamentalists in the US who deplore extramarital, juvenile, or other forms of sex could learn a lot from their Muslim counterparts. Mutaah or urfi could offer American religious leaders (whether they hold government posts or not) a very practical shortcut to the double grail of moral victory and a new revenue stream.

The Trouble with Genocide*

In a city that doesn't want for them, I think the NYPL Live series is one of New York's great resources (Paul Holdengraber* notwithstanding; although undoubtedly I unfairly discredit his contribution on account of my allergy to his attitude. About which I am nevertheless willing to modify my impressions, see below). Sadly, I find myself too often unable to attend events, usually because of my travel schedule. That said, I hadn't realized how much I'd missed until I heard that tonight's Robert Silvers Lecture with Nicholas Kristof was the final NYPL Live event of the season. The talk was preceded by a screening of excerpts from the recent event with Norman Mailer-- evidently his last public appearance. I really hadn't paid a lot of attention to him after 'The White Negro' which I read when I was reading everything about race and can't actually recall the essay but guess I didn't think it that important. Mailer didn't really figure for me; not my period, not my paradigm. But he was keen and unsparing in this final video which will send me back to the text. If I were a writer, that's the kind of legacy I'd want.

Anyway that was a preamble, delirious and bracing: Felix the Cat to the main event.

Nicholas Kristof's presentation was surprisingly unpolished and correspondingly effective. I hope that doesn't sound cynical, a quality I do not attribute to his performance. In large part, it was his coverage that introduced and engaged me and so many many others to and with the situation in Darfur. His courage in pursuing the story and the personal commitment were both evident and evidently sincere tonight.

But so too was a hopeless humanism. Clearly, Mr. Kristof is moved and motivated by the pathos of the individual. I think I remember now that
he bought a sex slave in SE Asia at one point in order to free her from bondage? There's no question that the stories he told (and the pictures he showed) are outrageous, and no question that the conditions obtaining in Darfur are unacceptable, that pressure from the international community is necessary and right.

I have to give credit to Mr. Holdengraber* for demonstrating an unaccustomed restraint in his role this evening, as well as for carefully synthesizing what he said were over 100 comments submitted in writing during the talk (written submissions are a wise programming decision, I think) into a few relevant questions. Apparently a number of people wanted NK to justify his argument that the crisis in Darfur merited priority attention from the international community (and individuals in the audience) over against say malaria, or the Congo where the deadliest war in recorded history supposedly ended in 2003.

The gist of Kristof's response was that genocide-- defined as a state policy of extermination of a race, ethnicity or other characteristic believed to be heritable or otherwise essential-- is the greatest challenge to our humanity and therefore automatically belongs at the top of the agenda of those who would pursue peace and justice for the peoples of the world.

A post-Enlightenment subject would find it difficult to reject this argument out of hand. Indeed, I confess that there were points during his presentation when I reached for my handkerchief. (I'm cutting back on kleenex). But I also find it incredibly uncomfortable. Leaving aside everything else, it reflects a quaintly modernist and decidedly 'western' conception of how power is organized and effected much less of the role of the state in its engagement and exercise. There's the whole ISA thing which I think is very important, and beyond that something I'm just beginning to glimpse from my recent exposure to part of the middle east, about which I don't feel sufficiently well versed, instructed, or experienced to comment beyond saying that I begin to realize, to my horror, that the Enlightenment project (within which I have understood my entire life) was likely always more idiosyncratic than I was aware, and even more minor tomorrow than today.

*with apologies to Walter Michaels.

Access denied

The first time I skimmed the post introducing this resource (see and click above), I gathered it was mainly a map of areas where Facebook and other sites that encourage kids to commodify themselves were not available. While I do take my first amendment rights seriously, I have little use for 'social networking'. Adults should not require formal mechanisms to facilitate social relationships, which are by their very nature arise out of one's existing relationships or by happenstance; in this I acknowledge a kernel of romanticism, but friendship is gossamer and specific, and doesn't answer to an ad.

Yesterday, however, I tried to go to the Daily Star, which I do most days. Somehow my computer has captured some regional US paper that is also called Daily Star and it fills in this address when I try to type it in the bar at the top of the page. So I googled daily star, and the first result is the correct one, but Google prohibits access to the site! I find this incredible and of course I do realize that social networking sites play a different role in places where there is no first amendment, and where rights of assembly, free speech and a free press either don't exist or are otherwise more fragile than they are in the US today, at least for the time being. See Naomi Wolf, The End of America (or, as the Guardian puts it:) 'Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps'.

Disarming

This is an update to my post 'the Chrysanthemum and the Tulip'. More yet to come on the question of the proper role of anthropology in the military and the military in anthropology as the meeting of the American Anthropological Association (28 Nov-2 Dec) proceeds. The Chronicle article is maddeningly bland and 'even-handed', but it taken in parts it does offer some priceless gems. To wit:

Felix Moos, a 78-year-old professor of anthropology at Kansas who has trained several human-terrain participants, passionately supports the program. He has roughly a dozen different ways of saying "A better-educated military will kill fewer people, not more."

I expect I confess my naivete when I reveal that my overall impression had been that an unarmed civilian population has had better success with this objective.

'A dozen different ways of saying "a better-educated military will kill fewer people, not more"'. Any striking writers willing to take a guess? Not directly a propos, but I found some cynical alternative army slogans posted in 2001 on a site called 'Free Republic.com: A conservative news forum' that also deserve the broader audience we here at Punctum et Studium are proud to boast. Point being that if self-identified conservatives and (as it appears from the comments) members of the military are as clear sighted and unsentimental about their purpose and deployment as this-- then Moos and other apologists for the 'human terrain' initiative have even more--a great deal more-- for which to answer:

1. "Kill All That You Can Kill"
2. "Shower With Men"
3. "Knock Up Foreign Broads"
4. "All The Grits You Can Eat"
5. "Be A Flame Thrower, Not A Flame Broiler"
6. "Purple Hearts = Free Beers At Hooters"
7. "Whimsical And Human, Just Like M*A*S*H"
8. "Cubicles Are For Wusses"
9. "Napalm Means Serious BBQ"
10. "Over 1,000,000 Sheared, Beaten, And Worked Into A Sub-Human Fury!"
11. "Totally Beefcake and Proud of It"
12. "Beat Up Sailors"
13. "We Won't Screw Your Mind Up As Bad As The Marines Will"
14. "Kicking Nazi Tail Since 1942"
15. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Accessorize"
16. "Risk Your Life for Freedoms No One Appreciates!"
17. "Play Doom For Real"
18. "Sure Beats Lurnin'!"
19. "Because Terminators Are Real"
20. "Forget Nation-Building -- Let's Destroy One!"

Giving Thanks (a gesture to the bird)

It would be banal to say that I hate the holidays, but truly I don't understand the fuss. If you like turkey, eat it. If you like eating it en masse, do it (but please try to keep the volume down). If you like shopping at Walmart at midnight, well, I really don't know where to begin. But why bottle up all this enthusiasm for one day out of the year--and go public in the process? I have always considered turkeys like roller coasters: something I encounter so seldom that I can always convince myself to try it again just to see if I haven't acquired a taste (and lost the impulse to throw up after). I am sorry to say that on each occasion-and here I concede to the Thanksgiving spirit by foregoing my ever tenuous restraint: I hate both. This year I had a decent meal at Savoy, peconic bays with porcini followed by quite a nice venison. But it bothers me that restaurants must trot out (please ignore the execrable pun) prix fixe menus and special seatings and compel a different sort of engagement from patrons, and basically function as surrogate families. The whole point of going out is to avoid subjugation to that condign institution. It also bothered me that my friends were tarted up for a 2:30 pm dinner as if they were going out to a nightclub. The point is to be as discreet as possible about this embarrassment of a nationally sanctioned group activity, isn't it?

One of my best Christmases was one I spent a few years ago at Palm Springs with a friend. I was living in LA at the time and confit'd spiny tail lobster and terrine'd fois gras and candied nuts for the three weeks prior and bought a case of rose champagne and we drove it all out to Casa Cody (I love Casa Cody but their cats are vicious) with the dog and sat around the pool eating and drinking and plucking the occasional lime or orange from the trees above. Next day we went to a spa for massages and scrubs and swims and had a flat tire but even that didn't dampen spirits. But sure as flooding follows a storm, I'll be on to Christmas soon so this is just to demonstrate that I'm not ideological about my disfavor and can just as readily enjoy the day called Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever just as I can readily enjoy any other day off so long as I am compelled neither to profess nor respond in kind to sentiment.

But getting back to my complaint about Thanksgiving: on the more spiritual side of things (and after all, whom are we thanking?) I have to say that if you aren't grateful for food and shelter and mobility and a job or whatever assets you have on the other days of the year, I don't see how you are going to manufacture it on Thanksgiving nor why you should bother. Either you are grateful or you're not. If you think you should be more grateful than you are, then you should deal with that but surely it's a personal matter or something to take up with your therapist or priest or closest and most tolerant friends. But honestly, there's a reason why new year's resolutions (oh and we'll get to that day, too) are a joke. Nobody transforms over night, even on 31 December.

Anyway, I suppose I am entitled to a properly puritan sense of self satisfaction along with my thanksgiving satiety this year on at least 2 accounts: 1) a friend (who shall be nameless, not least because I fear this person may encounter this blog and recognize this person's self in the description) contributed to the Farm Animal Sanctuary in the name of my pet and 2) I didn't order the turkey option for my dinner thereby registering my disapproval of this year's turkey slaughter. If it's absolution enough for the president, well, by George, that's good enough for me.

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay

might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

I first saw The Wooster Group perform The Emperor Jones-- Kate Valk and Willem Dafoe at the Performance Garage. I was about to say around 1998, but just looked it up and it was 1993. That means I was just a couple years into my academic career, and can only be relieved that I didn't take the occasion to write something about blackface about which I would now be embarrassed. I could digress further in a few directions but suffice to say that I retained the memory and wanted to make it back to other things (I have to one or two but which?) including the revival at St Ann's last year which I'm really sorry to have missed. Is it possible that it's been 14 years? Hamlet was electric, and I don't agree with Ben Brantley that it was all about the mimesis. Every element of the performance from staging to acting to design was obliged to report on every element of the text and performance (via Gielgud via Shakespeare and via however many other interventions) from staging to acting to design, and the result was why we huddled masses stick it out in New York. That said, I have to confess that he's on to something with 'hypnotic to narcotic', but I attended last Friday at the end of a long week and long day and my sympathy extends of capacity not of judgment.

One Plane, One Vote

I heard today from some one who knows that (topping the news reports) the Dubai Air Show saw $130 billion in sales--in 2 days. This included $35 billion in sales to Qatar alone, which, as this person observed, would provide sufficient aircraft to put the entire Qatari population in flight a la fois. There is so much that is so grotesque about that but I will limit myself to the observation that it does tend to bring one back to reality with respect to the limitations on the possible impact of individual decisions on the overall future of the planet, or of anything that takes place upon it. I liked the little garbage game I wrote about in the previous entry ('Gotham Garbage'), and I don't intend to withdraw it as I make no claims about what I'm doing with this blog, but I do feel the need to acknowledge, with some distaste, the relative whimsy of this and so much else that I think and do and write.

I started out so much more aware of the futility of liberal politics, and somehow have backslided as I have aged. I didn't bother voting in the first election for which I was eligible. Not because of apathy, mind; but out of a conviction that party politics in the US was essentially an alibi--and not a benign one-- for not engaging in the more demanding work required to build a more just society. While I don't think I ever stopped believing that, I did get to a point where my activism had declined to the point where my (well grounded!) theoretical radicalism had become my excuse for failing to behave as a political actor at all.

Today I vote. On the whole I guess I think it is better to have the right and exercise it than otherwise, even if it is still largely coke vs pepsi. I don't despise the marginal comfort I take from the idea that, while I may ever be haunted by the Mondale presidency that might have been, I am blameless (in an electoral sense) for the depredations of Mr. Bush.

This is a ways from Dubai. Whimsy.

Gotham Garbage

Living in New York, I can only shop for as much food and other supplies as my two hands can carry in, yes, plastic bags (loaded down, paper tears sooner). If I'm not travelling, I usually make it to two farmers' markets per week, where I buy most of my food. But sometimes this doesn't happen or it does but I don't plan well enough and get home late or just tired, usually lazy, and decide to order in. Like other New Yorkers, I consider the luxury of a wide variety of delivery options at all hours to be an entitlement. I can't buy much in advance (how will I transport it? where will I put it?) but if it's 10 pm and I want a whole roasted branzino or salt and pepper lotus root or pastrami on rye with a pickle, I can have any one or all of these on my plate within the hour, with no more effort than it takes to pick up the phone or click on a web site.

Each time I take the easy way out, I'm left with mountains of garbage--or recycling, as I prefer to think of it. Not that that should make me feel much better. The sheer volume of plastic containers--often containers within containers-- is pretty staggering. I'm trying to cut back.

I guess I'm still going to have to do better. Check it out:

I played The Gotham Gazette Garbage Game and sent 2,014,352 tons of refuse across 793,937 miles.

Smile

I wouldn't have paid so much attention to this if I hadn't received an evaluation the week before in which my actual performance was acknowledged as benefiting the organization and but I was threatened with imminent termination on account of anonymous and unspecified complaints of my 'condescending' and 'contemptuous' attitude toward various employees. I'm not ready to lay out a brief here. But in my follow up interview my supervisor, a semi-closeted gay white man who is preparing for retirement within the year, actually volunteered that he 'suspected that gender was at issue' in the reaction I have incurred--and which he credited in his assessment (left in writing on my chair as he left the office for the weekend). Mind, my (women) colleagues with whom I shared the evaluation have called it 'insane'.

I was a feminist before I got out of braces. No flabby Friedan for me, nor Robin Morgan; I toted and quoted Shulamith Firestone throughout my early teens. I was deeply impressed by her unsentimental take on motherhood: 'giving birth is like shitting a pumpkin'. I've never been pregnant. I don't have a family. Could this be a reason? Just now I returned to look up the reference. The pages are yellow and the binding cracks as I open The Womens' Press paperback (with the iron logo). I'm too old even to wince any more at the marginalia; I'm almost ready for compassion--even admiration-- for me, nearly 30 years ago.

What did I know at 14, to underline: 'The smile is the child/woman equivalent of the shuffle; it indicates acquiescence of the victim to her own oppression'? or to find a boyfriend whom I could persuade to read the book, whose own comments (for example, in response to a passage in a section entitled 'The Racial Family: Oedipus/Electra, the Eternal Triangle, the Brothel-behind-the scenes', reading 'What the white woman doesn't know is that the black woman, not under the thumb of one man, can now be squashed by all. There is no alternative for either of them than the choice between being public or private property [my original underscore!], but because each still believes that the other is getting away with something, both can be fooled into mischanneling their frustration on to each other, rather than on to the real enemy, "The Man"' --) would read, in still pink ink: 'NOT GOOD'?

(To be fair: this same boyfriend was even then amassing an arrest record and FBI file that will ever put me to shame).

I'd thought this was all part of the detritus of my adolescence. That first world feminism belonged in classrooms, as a useful set of historical references that might help tomorrow's Goldman analysts better appreciate their opportunities, and maybe think twice about the life-work issues they, their colleagues, hires or (more theoretically) supervisors might face as women (who are still weirdly defined primarily by virtue of their reproductive function).

'Feminism is the inevitable female response to the development of a technology capable of freeing women from the tyranny of their sexual-reproductive roles--both the fundamental biological condition itself, and the sexual class system build upon, and reinforcing, this biological condition'.

Thus sprach Shulamith in The Dialectic of Sex, back in 1970. I picked it up nearly 15 years later, and after an initial conversion, left it on the shelf for a long time. There's a lot to leave behind (specifically, its repudiation of class in favor of gender as the fundamental basis of social order and struggle) but there's a lot more with which I find a renewed sympathy and inspiration as I brush the crumbs of dried binding glue from my lap.

Mother Earth

I attended an update on the millennium development goals at the UN today and learned that 80 per cent of sub Saharan Africa's small farmers are women. They walk an average of 4 miles a day to get their water, and they produce 90 per cent of the continent's food (elsewhere I've seen reports at 75- 80 per cent. Regardless: a preponderance). But for a variety of reasons, including the fact that (and this may be garbled; at the very least an overgeneralization; but I couldn't stay long enough to clarify during the q&a) they are not considered farmers socially (qua gender, as I understood it), they have the least access to technical and other information to help them improve their methods and lives. Only 17 per cent of the arable land in the region is under cultivation. Almost half of the population of the region lives on less than $1 per day.

(None of this is really surprising, of course. But I am reminded of how much is really at stake in an internationalist feminism: something I've always believed in and at times fought for--but if you live in a wealthy nation and don't commonly find yourself in the academic or activist situations that would tend to remind you--well, it does tend to become an abstraction. Even modest activities such as today's are salutary under such circumstances).

These statistics were offered as part of a presentation on progress toward millennium development goal #1: 'Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger'. The chart that accompanies this update in The Millennium Development Goals Report shows that since 1999, progress (even if slight) has been made toward this goal in every region except for Western Asia, where poverty rates have more than doubled since 1990. The narrative report doesn't comment on this. I can think of a few possible reasons. Check this out, too.

the Chrysanthemum and the Tulip

IS the Pentagon truly going to deploy an army of cultural relativists to Muslim nations in an effort to make the world a safer place?

A few weeks ago this newspaper reported on an experimental Pentagon “human terrain” program to embed anthropologists in combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan. It featured two military anthropologists: Tracy (last name withheld), a cultural translator viewed by American paratroopers as “a crucial new weapon” in counterinsurgency; and Montgomery McFate, who has taken her Yale doctorate into active duty in a media blitz to convince skeptical colleagues that the occupying forces should know more about the local cultural scene'.

So begins an op-ed piece in the NYTabout the engagement of cultural anthropology in the service of military operations. I've read the article a few times through and still don't get it. The author, Richard Schweder, concludes that 'It turns out that the anthropologists are not really doing anthropology at all, but are basically hired as military tour guides to help counterinsurgency forces accomplish various nonlethal missions'; but nevertheless comes out against the Network of Concerned Anthropologists [which] has issued a statement that reads in part:

'We, the undersigned, believe that anthropologists should not engage in research and other activities that contribute to counter-insurgency operations in Iraq or in related theaters in the “war on terror.” Furthermore, we believe that anthropologists should refrain from directly assisting the US military in combat, be it through torture, interrogation, or tactical advice'.

Schweder gets all weak at the knees over the 'heartwarming' vision he 'began to imagine [of] an occupying army of moral relativists, enforcing the peace by drawing a lesson from the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans lasted a much longer time than the British Empire in part because they had a brilliant counterinsurgency strategy. They did not try to impose their values on others. Instead, they made room — their famous “millet system” — for cultural pluralism, leaving each ethnic and religious group to control its own territory and at liberty to carry forward its distinctive way of life'. As much as the Armenians, say, have doubtless appreciated and profited from the Ottomans' do your own thing hippie philosophy, I have a hard time seeing how that example justifies an endorsement of anthropology's contribution to what the Network of Concerned Anthropologists describes as 'a brutal war of occupation which has entailed massive casualties'.

Further, it strikes me as somewhat disingenuous that he doesn't acknowledge that the pursuit of anthropology has always been intimately tied up with the pursuit of practical, tactical information, directly or indirectly in the service of military or otherwise national interests. See (for example) Ruth Benedict.

Thumbing

My father recently sent me an email that read in part: 'just read an article in the Atlantic, called 'This is not a Charity', on Bill Clinton’s new philanthropy approach. Very innovative and exciting. Hope his idea spreads like a wild fire across the globe' (my father speaks excellent English but it remains a third language and that's evident in some peculiarities in his delivery. I found this annoying when I was young, but powerful now, and endearing).

I haven't yet read the article which I assume is an excerpt from the book. But source material was pretty much for extra credit (if not derision) in my erstwhile profession so I don't mind saying I can pretty much guess. (This helps). Still, I wouldn't mind checking in to the Peabody Hotel about now to watch the parade. Slate's suite of articles today, published under the rubric 'Gifts for You' does offer some points to consider. I skimmed them all (except for the one with baseball in the title, doubtless betraying my fundamental un-American-ness and non-competitiveness). Some random observations on each:

1) 'The Rockefellers and Angry Commoners': it can't possibly be a coincidence that the article on the brutal origins of American philanthropy--conceived in capitalism's creation and rape of the American workforce-- illustrated by the Rockefellers'epigrammatic example-- is introduced by musings of Sandy Weill. Let anyone who's interested look into who has been advising both parties of late;

2) 'Great Expectations: Why Big Donors Back Teach for America': when I worked for a certain Ivy League institution, one of our boasts was that more TfA faculty were alumni of our university than of any other single school. Be assured that none of these well meaning recent graduates--or their parents--planned on actual careers in teaching inner city or rural school children;

3) 'Virtue for Sale: Will Customers Pay More to do Good?': Fact is, I do buy my towels at ABC, and you'll appreciate the fact that I take exception to the claim that 'As anyone who has ever paid a visit to ABC Carpet knows, its customers are not normal people'. As I figure it, abnormal people suffer exceptional deficits or enjoy exceptional benefits. I rejoice in and regret my exclusion from both categories. Respectively.

Me too

'“Bush lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves'. Surely all Americans must shiver in the cold light Frank Rich directs on our complicity in the criminal and terroristic acts we commit, increasingly openly, and often indifferently if not proudly, in the name of democracy and our republic.

I do find it irritating, however, that he finds it necessary to summon the WWII-as-watershed-of-human-history analogy (which we Americans love because it's the best way yet we have hit upon to inscribe ourselves as history's winners and its heros; never mind the villainy we have come to perpetrate under this alibi), in order to drive home his indictment of our present conduct in the world. Irritating because I take objection to the special status to which WWII and its particular crimes and terrors have been almost universally accorded within the modernist project even by those who would not recognize themselves as adherents; and also appalling-- this because the exceptionalism of the claim (and I don't mean to single Rich out, but he does participate) tends to absolve us from the many other moral claims to which our nation's representations in the world and to us, its own citizens, should make it subject and accountable. 'Whatever remains of our country’s good name' indeed.

walkabout

if the last hot piss
had trickled down my thighs
some time, maybe days, before
and I'd stripped the sour chafing jeans
and my mouth was cracked and dry
and I found you in the desert
would you receive my kiss?

***

I set up a surreptitious tent
in the back garden
of a woman and her daughter
her daughter who dove
into a pool I could barely glimpse within, from without.
I hid but brought them jewels
to pacify in case they found me
trespassing.
There was a reason, something else I had to offer
and a cab, and I tried to remember which side of the road
and investors, people who would have made it all worth while,
but I had to return and fold up the grass mat or was it a futon
by now the morning was interrupting
and I was inventing characters, trying to make sense
return to oblivion, discover the secret
in fact there was tea, lovely tea, but
no way around the discovery of my shame.

****

27 October 1992-11 October 2006

What is to Be Done?

A year ago today, at this hour, I was on a plane coming home to New York. I'd been travelling for nearly a month in eastern Turkey and Syria, and had saved Istanbul for last, thinking that I'd be rewarding myself for the adventure with its cosmopolitan pleasures. Things turned out rather differently.

I went because it was as far as my frequent flyer miles would take me from JFK (I stretched by connecting with Turkish Air from Istanbul to Urfa on the way over) and because I had become uncomfortable with the growing gap between who I was at 16 (and I'm actually surprised and a little tickled to discover that I still retain enough of my paranoia and self-importance from the time to hesitate to name my activities) and who, decades later, I had become (about which I'm actually too boring and therefore and too embarrassed to elaborate).

Suffice it to say that by 1980, I might have known all the words to 'L'Internationale' and 'We Should Overcome' but by 2006 I couldn't have told you whether Iraq was majority Sunni or Shia, or which side my own government was taking, in my name.

I figured it was time to reconcile my ideals with my reality, and not being ready to settle down in a trailer in front of a tv, that left getting up and going over.

(I wonder, as I write this, how many American soldiers may have been motivated by something similar).

There is much more to say. Here is one statement about US engagement in the middle east that actually deserves a wider audience. My thanks to a new friend, for bringing it to my attention.

Democracy in the Citizen; or, President of the World

Everyone had their own particular reasons for despising Times Select and I've already noted that one of mine was the fact that it put Stanley Fish off limits. (Nicholas Kristoff, too). Since the velvet rope has been lifted, I've been chastened by his read on the Bollinger-Ahmedinijad match at Columbia, and now alerted to this great project, Why Democracy?. It's a rich site, almost overwhelming, and I have only viewed a couple of the projects to far, but you have to check out You Cannot Hide from Allah, and the trailer for Taxi to the Dark Side.

But with 241 responses and counting, I wonder if Professor Fish isn't contemplating the erstwhile comforts of a nice peer-reviewed journal, just about now.

Nah.

Murray Hill mayhem

Makes you almost nostalgic for the swaggering kids let loose from second rate universities, and the B&T crowd they will soon supplant. I guess I need to work out a guardianship arrangement for Ursa, and maybe some kind of id tag, in case our next walk ends in misadventure. I think we'll be staying in more often.



pedestrian killed by cab

pedestrians attacked with knives

Yokozuna?

I lost all my pictures from Japan in 2004 except this one, with Asashoryu, who was at the top of his game at the Fukuoka Kyushu Basho in November. The sport is so beautiful... and so ugly.

MASS mess

I hear there's more than one artist with an unregulated superego. It's their prerogative, isn't it? not to say cultural imperative. The quadrangulation amongst 1)the exhibiting organizations (typically non-profit entities such as museums), 2)their donors (often also collectors, see (3 & 4), 3)the artists and 4)their gallerists is a sordid business, and it's the workers--the employees of each of these public agents-- who sacrifice to maintain their employers' investments in social viability, avoiding lawsuits, nailing the reviews and upgrading clients and donors. In more or less that order.

In the end, though, you can sacrifice only so many starry-eyed (or zodiac-tattooed) interns, assistant directors picked ripe from Bard or the Courtauld, and professional cpas or fund raisers at the altar of your fascination with a romantic idea before the whole thing falls apart, in public. The artists do no more damage with their their exaggerated egos than do the organizations that indulge them, and in so doing betray the public trust. It's mainly the musea (can I say musea? it's my blog so yes I can. Thank you, Mrs. Vanneman) and other public venues that make the reputations and fortunes of the artists and their gallerists. They have a special obligation, both legal and ethical, but too often collapse in fascination with their own proximity to celebrity, whether contemporary or historical.

For all the hand wringing about the dangers of non-profits turning the reins over to business people, they can hardly be worse than the substantial class of presidents and senior managers who at some level share Mr. Thompson's aversion to basic measures to protect institutional assets--not least of which are the human assets-- as 'anathema' to their organizational cultures.

In my experience, the non-profit leaders most successful with their boards and their publics are frequently those who run the worst operations-- coddling underperforming employees in the name of 'institutional memory'; and sabotaging others charged with making changes that everyone sees are necessary for the fulfillment of the mission, but no one really has the stomach, or the other requisite organ, to see through.

I am told that the Dutch have a saying: 'Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je gek genoeg', or 'act normal, it's crazy enough'. This pretty much captures the ethos of a lot of not for profit organizations, that will always revert to the status quo. Why go to the effort to do better, if you can get away with less?

I better not get started on the Dutch.

What I brought home from the Farmers' Market today

1 bunch of green garlic
1 bunch of narrow leeks
3 small onions
5 small yellow and green streaked pattypan squash
1/4 lb of shiitakes
5 small heirloom tomatoes, because it won't last much longer, the season
I container of ricotta
1 cup of lemon basil tea (actually, I consumed it on the spot)
1 lb of grass fed minced beef, for the dog over the course of the week
2 dozen littlenecks, for me, soon
a mess of greens

I didn't get flowers as my Wednesday zinnias are still bright; and we're in between for fruit-- no more peaches, and early apples and pears are not that appealing. Some one had blueberries, but I doubt them this time of year, and I don't especially care for raspberries. Oh--loads of grapes, but the best ones, like scuppernongs, have bitter rubber skins, and the lychee inside clings to its pits, and I just don't enjoy the process. That said I bought some sliced and peeled cactus fruit on the way home, so perhaps there's no way around the sacrifice the changing season demands.

It was hot today, and crowded. I enter on the southeast side, from the subway exit on Park Avenue South and 15th Street, then make my way up past the mulchers on the left and the meat folks on the right, who are slow as mulch then never have bison hangar once they get to me, but do offer Ursa bits of jerky. Ursa hates crowds as much as I do and her tail goes down as we press on. I was looking for Yuno. Her stand has the freshest and most exquisite produce, and we chat about haircuts. I'll catch her on Wednesday, at Dag Hammarskjold, and ask why she wasn't at Union Square today. I ate her shishitos last night, and a few of the golden bite sized tomatoes left over from my Wednesday pint. As we head south on Broadway, the sun is in our eyes. I think about eggs from Knoll Crest but there's a line and my arms are growing heavy. There's a pork place with great bacon that's in my freezer right now, and occasionally they have just laid pullets, but not today. An unwitting fellow dog-accompanied marketeer stops to let his retriever greet Ursa, who shows him what's what (or rather, who's who) before I can pull her away. Corn is out of the question today; I have only two arms, and the pull of the lead in addition to the pull of gravity. Corn's getting awfully starchy lately anyway. I skip Ronnybrook, as I have been preferring the non-homogenized milk from Evans that I buy at Murrays Cheese. But Ronnybrook's glass bottles are the best. I actually remember having a tin box on the back patio, where milk was delivered, a creamy morning miracle.

New York green markets

Good night and veel geluk

The New Yorker sent an email to say that the lineup had changed and Ayaan Hirsi Ali could no longer participate in tonight's scheduled event. I'd seen the article saying that she'd had to return this week to Holland (as those icky people call it) and wondered. Ticketmaster refunded my purchase. Martin Amis and Ian Buruma are discussing now. I had a ticket for the conversation on Iraq with George Packer, too, but reversed the times, so when I thought Ali was cancelled, settled in for another hour before I realized. It was an fabulous double bill. I am suffering the loss, and myself as the loser.
Refugee from Western Europe

Conditions of Utterance

So Times Select has released
Stanley Fish.
I think he's right, despite my previous comments.
Unfortunately that means I am going to have to figure out
another career objective.

Silver Lining

I was out of town for Naomi Klein at the NYPL . I'd heard her on Brian Lehrer, and read the Harper's piece on the flight out. It's a smart if popular (or should I say, and popular?) analysis and I'm glad she has written it and that it is getting so much attention. One ominous-felicitous term she uses is 'disaster apartheid'. This is what happens to communities that lose their public services to private contractors, a phenomenon that is exacerbated in crisis or catastrophic situations (the US war in Iraq, for example). The reconstruction (I use the term advisedly) of public education in post- Hurricane Katrina New Orleans demonstrates how government and the private sector exploit emergencies to transfer the social contract to market, such that the citizen goes to bed with rights and responsibilities, and wakes the next day with a bill for services rendered.

Michael Ontdaatje (a few stanzas from Secular Love, replacing is with to as I recall a red moon)

I write about you
as if I own you
which I do not.
As you can say of nothing
this is mine.

When we rise
the last hug
no longer belongs,
to your fiction
or my story

Mulch for the future.

Whether we pass
through each other
like pure arrows
or fade into rumour
I write down now
a fiction of your arm

Playing with my food

As a child, I loved games of imagination, and was forever mapping new continents on the local rocks and trees and streams and populating them with hapless neighborhood children assigned to represent complex genealogies of colorful characters with multisyllabic names. In more recent years, my playground, like that of many urban Americans, has been restaurants. The venue, the menu, the lighting, the designers, the company, the relationships with chefs and suppliers and critics and diners are among the multiple variables in an improvisation in which everyone conspires to assist in and be promoted by a winning performance.

I have that in common with at least one other person I have known for whom a successful performance required props on the order of wagyu carpaccio, gold leafed sushi, and magna of Cristal. As tiresome and embarrassing as I found him and his insistence on misrecognizing my own epicureanism as equivalent to his own, there is no way around the fact that I enjoyed many of the benefits of his company and incidental largesse. I might buy local when no one is watching, where he would do so solely to burnish his image (actually this is not a good example, because buying local was not something that registered to him, or his people. That may have changed.), but the uncomfortable truth is that however much I might want to distinguish our values, interests, and styles, we weren't all that different either in our net impact or in our recognition that dining out was about so much more than just the food.

So anyway, this is partial context to how I came to frequent a particular Hollywood restaurant that caters to the self important. Once, Benicio del Toro reached across my table to introduce himself to Don Rickles, who introduced himself to me in turn. On another occasion, Ron Jeremy held court at an adjacent table with a number of very young female--colleagues. Once George Clooney was in the house, another time Robert Shapiro. There was a big menu, but only a few items worth ordering: the swordfish, the steak a la Dabney Coleman, the bouillabaisse, the caesar. And cocktails.

Occasionally it was really a lot of fun, late at night (and they are open late, so it was actually kind of a default or last resort) to show up and be recognized and get a table right away.

I've been away for several years now but ended up on the red vinyl banquette again the other night, for much the same prosaic reason--late hours--that often put me there in the past.

This time, it was no fun at all. The loud parties of tarted up women and botoxed men (some older ones with hennaed hair) and the waiters with their calibrated posture between abuse and subservience and especially the meat-- a steak that I'd enjoyed in the past was just so obscenely thick and fleshy, I might as well have torn into the haunch of a living beast. And then there was the feeling that my friend and I both felt nothing, except that the past truly was past.

One of my favorite LA restaurants was always Yongsusan. This time, the banchan included things like iceberg salad in mayonnaise dressing and dumplings (not mandoo). There was a mingy eun dae gu jorim with bizarrely tablet-shaped slices of turnip (2 of them, actually) and fried bits in the soup and other things tasted old or freezer burnt. The kimchee in cabbage leaf-- the piece de resistance, was soggy and poorly pickled. I even suspect this was frozen. I loved this place but I would now consider it one of the worst Korean restaurants. Barely even a Korean restaurant.

Craft LA was also a disappointment. I was prepared to allow that Century City might have been transformed but in fact it was troupes of conventioneers wearing name tags, and giant portions of food (peas & prosciutto and sweetbreads for me), rather than the small focussed plates that made me fall in love with Craft back in the 1990s. That said, I haven't been to Craft proper in a couple years and maybe they've changed too. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson came and left and looked terrific actually. So what do I know.

Take 62

I live and work in the neighborhood, so for the past week have navigated barricades, stalled traffic, clusters of ill-assorted men in ill-fitting suits, and all the other annual inconveniences of the General Assembly. The protesters with bullhorns have been less in evidence and I'm trying to recall whether I've got my seasons confused and they really only appear in the spring and summer (I know they do show up then but I thought now too). At any rate, there is one group that has set up along the Second Avenue side of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza for the past week, protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency and his appearance before the UN. They have set up a barricade of lurid photographs depicting the executions over which he and his government have presided.

I am conditioned by the anti-abortion lobby and their crude intimidation tactics to disregard gruesome close-ups of aborted fetuses and other visual, visceral efforts to supplant reason and law with emotion and religion.

One photograph disturbs me terribly though. It's a woman in a white chador, facing the camera with an expression of extreme anguish. She is at a 30 degree angle, buried above her elbows, surrounded by men with shovels who are intent on completing the job.

It's incredibly ugly. But however righteous, indignation and outrage should not supplant discussion and debate.

The Good Society (part 2 of 2)

The philanthropy of the wealthy serves many purposes, but primarily it assists in the social reproduction of the upper classes.

So Teresa Odendahl concluded in Charity Begins at Home: Generosity and Self Interest Among the Philanthropic Elite. In addition to demonstrating that the primary beneficiaries of the philanthropy of wealthy individuals are wealthy individuals, Odendahl criticized the complicity of the US tax code in perpetuating this kind of self-dealing, through limitations on the threshhold for itemizing charitable deductions, for example, and an estate tax code that preserves the prerogative of the wealthy both to familial inheritance and institutional influence. Since charitable tax deductions are justified on the premise that the individual and the state are and should be partners in a trust for the public good,it's hardly surprising that Odendahl's book was received in 1990 with skepticism from parts of the non-profit and academic (ie university) communities that were implicated in its findings. (This is anecdotal; a google search turns up a lot of other more supportive academic responses as well).

I'm not a scholar in this area, and until Stephanie Strom's piece in the NYT (see part 1 of this 2-part post), I hadn't seen her analysis showing up in popular discourse on philanthropy, which has itself exploded thanks to the celebrity billionaires who realize that saving the planet is a good long-term (and short-term) business strategy, and the eager media who cover their missionary activities for the same reasons.

Not surprisingly, these increasingly prominent and influential donors are approaching their new philanthropic enterprises with the kind of entrepreneurial, often creative, sometimes speculative strategies and expectations that worked for them in the corporate world, and in the process they are reshaping the way traditional not-for-profit organizations do business.

For one thing, they are demanding unprecedented levels of organizational control in exchange for their 'gifts', and are succeeding in attaining this control in the name of 'accountability' and 'transparency'-- virtually unassailable pieties in this post-Enron era. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the establishment of the lofty sounding Center for Excellence in Higher Education 'that will advise donors on how to attach legally enforceable conditions to their gifts'.

In other words, the difference between 'donors'[:a term that conventionally describes those who make 'gifts'(:a term that not only conventionally but legally describes payments made with no reciprocal exchange of goods or benefits)] and 'purchasers' (a term conventionally understood to describe those who are specifically and explicitly engaged in the reciprocal exchange of goods or benefits) is no longer meaningful.

I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that (and I would welcome legal opinion on whether) the IRS exceeds its mandate in granting 501(c)(3) status to an organization established to 'advise donors on how to attach legally enforceable conditions to their gifts'.(A relevant passage from the IRS web site on criteria for exempt status:The organization must not be organized or operated for the benefit of private interests.... No part of a section 501(c)(3) organization's net earnings may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual. A private shareholder or individual is a person having a personal and private interest in the activities of the organization. If the organization engages in an excess benefit transaction with a person having substantial influence over the organization, an excise tax may be imposed on the person and any organization managers agreeing to the transaction).

All of these developments bespeak the increasing deference of the state to the market and its abdication of responsibility for the public good to those who have the least interest in pursuing it.

Major universities and other not-for-profit organizations could certainly benefit from external audits that might puncture some of the simultaneous hubris and false humility many regard as a badge of honor and service. (The classic equation is: we'll pay people badly, but reward loyalty, long hours and commitment to the cause and culture. Never mind performance. This plays well to boards comprised of wealthy people who serve in order to enhance their social positions and placate their consciences).

Today's capable and increasingly activist donors are rightly lauded for their commitment and worthy ambitions, but they also threaten the independence of not for profit entities and the public good and public trust they represent. It's been so long now, I'm trying to think of what you call the indigenous managers who implement colonial rule. That's what our American ngos risk becoming under the influence of high stakes, big money philanthropy, and that's what threatens the interests they are authorized and privileged to represent. It's odd that Americans are so quick to condemn and eager to regulate large contributions to individual public servants on the general assumption that big gifts obviously buy influence; and yet so indifferent to the growing influence of large donations to corporate public servants (ie, not for profit 501(c)(3)s) . Obviously individual and corporate interests are much more closely intertwined than this dichotomy suggests, but this is yet another instance where we Americans continue to demonstrate our willingness to sacrifice real individuals to our constitutional fetish of the individual.

My Name is Paul Holdengraber

I had read some of the New Yorker pieces and Istanbul and My Name is Red before my first trip to Turkey this time last year, and while frankly I have found Orhan Pamuk's exquisitely detailed universes to be more admirable than engaging (the miniature is truly his metier), I was very keen to attend his 'Conversation with Paul Holdengraber' which opened the fall season of the NYPL's LIVE series this past week. He's got a big fat new hardcover collection of essays called Other Colors and Sonny Mehta was in the audience which I know not because I saw him but because in the 10 minute ad with which Paul Holdengraber introduced and promoted the series and himself, he made sure that no one could be in any doubt about cultural and social importance of the occasion. (Along with Mr. Mehta, Holdengraber singled out Pamuk's publicist, 'absolutely the best publicist in all of New York'. What do you want to bet a big fat new hardcover of Conversations with Paul Holdengraber is in the works)?

I better understood my own response to Pamuk after hearing him talk about his return to painting (he had trained as a painter during his youth and is co-teaching a class at Columbia this term called Word and Picture which sounds charmingly mistranslated) and repeatedly referring to books and essays as 'objects'.

But mostly what I understood was that like an interview with Barbara Walters or a photo with Elvis (and no I'm not linking either), a conversation with Paul Holdengraber is never really about anything, or anyone, else.

The Good Society (part 1 of 2)

There have been a couple of articles recently in the WSJ and NYT that go a ways toward exposing, or inviting the exposure, of some trends and fallacies in contemporary philanthropy that should be of interest to anyone who participates in the 'not-for-profit' economy and that's pretty much all of us.

Stephanie Strom's piece in the Times focuses on, and disrupts, two foundational premises about charitable giving in the US: 1) the 'common perception of philanthropy ... that one of its central purposes is to alleviate the suffering of society’s least fortunate and therefore promote greater equality'; and 2) (quoting Eli Broad) "what smart, entrepreneurial philanthropists and their foundations do is get greater value for how they invest their money than if the government were doing it". The merit of Mr. Broad's assertion can be assessed both with respect to data documenting the impact of private vs public dollars on causes that we might all agree are of 'greater value' (ok, I know I beg indulgence here) and also with respect to the overall social contract such a statement implies. Are individual entrepreneurs providing greater value to society than the state? Is this desirable? What is the cost?

A recent study co-sponsored by the University of Indiana Center on Philanthropy and Google found 'that less than one-third of the money individuals gave to nonprofits in 2005 was focused on the needs of the economically disadvantaged. Of the $250 billion in donations, less than $78 billion explicitly targeted those in need'. One telling statistic concerns charitable giving to benefit the poor as a percentage of income. Out of 4 income brackets: 1) less than $100,000, 2) $100,000-$200,000, 3)$200,000-$1 million and 4) $1 million or more, those reporting income of $1 million or more gave the LEAST to causes that benefited the poor-- 22 per cent, as opposed to over 35 per cent for those making incomes of $100,000 or less. What's especially fascinating about this finding is how sharply it contradicts the self-reported priorities of wealthy individuals as documented in another important Center of Philanthropy report, the Bank of America Study of High Net Worth Individuals. The BofA study, which defines high net worth individuals as those with an annual income of over $200,000 or net worth of $1 million or more, found that the top motivations for giving reported by this group were to 1) 'meet critical needs' (86.3 per cent) and 2) 'give back to society' (82.6 per cent). By contrast, such self interested motivations as making good business sense, doing what was expected of one's social set, and leaving a legacy were reported by between 26 and 29 per cent--- the lowest scores on the survey (with the exception of 'limiting funds to one's heirs', which suggests nobody wants to confess keeping company with Leona Helmsley).

Strom notes that there are also substantial amounts of money-- largely from or patterned on The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, going 'primarily to improve the lives of the poor in developing countries'. The Gates Foundation's 2006 990 describes approximately two thirds of a total $1.5 billion in grants as being dedicated to 'global development' or 'global health'. (I was looking for the actual awards but haven't found them yet which is odd because they are usually spelled out on every 990. Maybe they submit their appendices differently). I really don't want to fault the Gateses of the world, or Bono for that matter, for aiming to eradicate disease, end poverty, and generally address the kind of extreme problems that you'd be embarrassed to contemplate unless you were God, Miss America, Mr. or Mrs. Gates or Bono). I mean, these people could be using their billions to colonize outer space or run for office (there were too many candidates to decide on a link so I leave that one to your imagination). But it's more than cynicism to observe that a population that is unemployed, uneducated, diseased and deceased does not spring to mind with the words 'emerging market'.

And of course, we all know that those who can make money, should. This was Carlos Slim's contrarian rejoinder to the benediction Warren Buffett was accorded following his paradigm-shifting decision to give away a fortune, to another agency that didn't bear his name, to spend down on today's needs rather than to augment its coffers that it might continue to dole out smaller amounts over longer periods of time to redress/sustain problems that will have persisted due to the paternalistic spending policy of the comfortably endowed granting foundations.

Earned money used to follow inherited money where charitable giving was concerned. And for the most part it still does. What's different is the level of control to which today's newly rich, often young and entrepreneurial donors are accustomed to exercising and are now capable of bringing to bear in their charitable activities. In courting and securing the megagifts that are increasingly the lifeblood of not-for-profit organizations (I will return with data), entities that are privileged--both by the state and by the public--on the basis of their claim to serving the public good, are at serious and deserved risk of losing the public trust.

What's worse is that the'public' may not care.

Coming soon: the business of philanthropy, the philanthropy of business, and 'good' government.