Category: Books

Kill the golden goose?

“Sometimes I’ll drive by the old stadium,” Lisa Carver said, “and it kind of feels like a dream.  You can almost hear the cheers from the crowds, even though the place is empty”  (Bob Greene, CNN, Feb. 5).

The annual hoopla is underway again in what has become America’s foremost  celebration, the Super Bowl.  As I write, two of the NFL’s most storied teams, the Green Bay Packers  and Pittsburgh Steelers, will take-on each other like two brontosauruses for mastery. It’s a field day for television, with myriad analysts honing their skills in prophecy like Delphi oracles. Pre-game coverage began hours ago on some networks. In all, 100 million Americans will watch the Fox Network broadcast.  In countless homes,  families and friends will hover in obeisance, gorging themselves  with burgers, beer, and cheese dip into the late evening.  No other happening unites Americans apart from catastrophes such as 9/11 or the assassination of a president.  Today also marks the centennial of  Ronald Reagan’s birth, one of America’s most popular presidents.  The Super Bowl washes away reminiscence. It is the moment, the Super Bowl moment.

When I grew up, baseball was America’s past time.  In those pre-TV days, I would play with trucks and toy soldiers on the living room floor, our radio tuned to the Phillies game.  A daily ritual, I became knowledgeable about the game, followed the players, combed the newspaper for their stats, and above all, checked the league standings.  In summer, each day found me playing ball with neighborhood toughs using a broom stick to bang a half tennis ball against factory walls. I couldn’t get enough. We didn’t have gloves, cleats, Little League.  We didn’t have a playground with manicured grass and raked diamond. It didn’t matter: baseball was our frenzy and stickball our game.

Today, America’s game is  football, whether college or NFL, its culmination, a national playoff for the colleges; the Super Bowl for the NFL.  TV ratings have been the best in 20 years and provided the NFL with 4 billion earnings. Then there is advertising, which has now become an alluring plus for the Super Bowl audience, a kind of Passadena Rose Bowl procession of visual floats, digitally rendered, replete with a prize winner at its end.  One 30 second spot costs 3 million.

After the game is over this evening in Cowboys Stadium,  a monument itself  to money at 1.2 billion, what then?  On March 3, the present contract between the players and the owners expires.  The two sides seem far apart.  A lockout threatens.  Owners want some of the player outlay reduced.
They want new policies regulating rookie salaries and retirement.  They seek revenue enhancement by adding two games, presently 16, to the season schedule.

On the other hand, players don’t want to fork over any percentage of their earnings.  They want to divvy up more of the league revenue, this year, 9 billion. They adamantly oppose adding games, arguing it would increase the chances of injuries.  The last stoppage was in 1987.

In 1994, major league baseball went on strike. They didn’t even finish the season, going out in August.  For the first time in over 60 years, there wasn’t a World Series. The impact was enormous, with the public expressing its chagrin in diminished numbers going past the turnstiles.  Only the burgeoning home run derby of 1996 saved the gave from further demise, though we later discovered its steroid origins.  While attendance is now up, many clubs can barely pay their way, subjecting their fans to engrained mediocrity.

Today, football reigns as America’s passion. The fans have been generous, especially given the worst economic turndown since the Great Depression.  I read today of many out of a job more than two years and losing even their extended unemployment compensation.  One gentleman sent out hundreds of applications. He couldn’t  land even a cashier’s job.  The average cost for a family of four to go to an NFL game is $250.  The ticket price at tonight’s game reserves most of the seating for the money tier. 

These days, big time sports have chosen to get in the “follow the money” lane.  They expect our beleaguered cities to float bonds to finance their sumptuous new stadiums. They threaten to leave if they don’t get their way.  Sometimes they get their way and leave anyway.  Both in football and baseball, the urban landscape is littered with abandoned stadiums financed by the people.  For fans, football and baseball should exist for them; for the owners and players, they exist to make money.

Reflections on global warming

We’ve had a very cold winter in most areas of the nation, with persistent below-freezing temperatures accompanied by weekly snows.  This is true even in Kentucky.  Daily I see newspaper reports of cities and towns already exceeding their budgets for snow removal and salting roads.  With the cold, what’s all this business about global warming?  I had been shopping at the local Kroger, eager to reap the 10% discount for senior citizens the first Wednesday of each month when an elderly gentleman asked me this very question in the parking lot as we both headed to our car trunks, a thrashing wind gust encouraging our rapid steps.  I was briefly startled, wishing to reciprocate his well-meaning pleasantry early in the morning of truly a not very nice day.  The best I could manage was, “It’s complicated.” The poor chap looked bewildered, and I can’t say that I blame him. The truth is that all this cold and recent snow may very well relate to what we call ”global warming.”  
The facts are worrisome, like finding out at the doctor’s that you’ve got inoperable cancer. Best make your plans.  All the praying and fussing won’t help.  Global warming is here and we’re vulnerable.  As Tony Blair tells us, “Climate change is perhaps the most challenging collective action problem the world has faced.”  Can you fathom that statement?  Bubonic plague, the flu epidemic of 1918, two world wars, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, AIDS–all pale before this present menace.  Though we cannot halt it, whether a cyclic change or a catastrophe human induced, we can modify its impact. Unfortunately, few are listening, even as the hands ot the clock near  midnight.
What makes things so difficult are the seeds of doubt some have sown, disparaging the notion of global warming as a hyperbolic conflation of temporal cyclic change with something approaching the eschatological, or Armageddon, of fatal consequences, with humanity their primary catalyst.  Where does the truth lie?
Until 1975, we weren’t sure whether the earth was cooling or warming. In that year, however, we developed computer models indicating that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would raise global temperatures five degrees.  By 1988, scientists became so concerned that they established a panel to report every decade on global warming.  Their last report, in 2001, gave alarm.
For 10,000 years the world’s”thermostat” has hovered around 57 degrees.  Carbon dioxide is  pivotal to the Earth’s temperature.  Undetectable by color or smell, it’s vital to maintaining the balance necessary to sustain life.  Planets such as Mars and Venus have atmospheres dominated by carbon dioxide. Thus these planets cannot support life. On earth, in our modern age, every time we cook, drive, or even turn on a light, we send carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it remains for a hundred years.  In doing so, we increase Earth’s temperature. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, meaning it has the capacity to entrap heat near the earth’s surface and produce global warming.
Automobiles contribute significantly to carbon dioxide emission; even more so, power plants that use coal to generate electricity.  Black coal is minimally 92% carbon.  Additionally, power plants are often inefficient.
20,000 to 10,000 years ago the Earth experienced the fastest increase in surface temperatures in its history, or a nine degree increase.  However, that increase happened at a rate of  two degrees every millennium.  In our time, we are doing so thirty times faster.  Just since the advent of  the Industrial Revolution, the Earth’s temperature has risen 1.13 degrees.  Nine of the ten warmest years have been since 1990.  2010 was the warmest of all.
Some argue that our turbulent weather patterns can be explained by the phenomenon known as El Nino, which when severe, can produce sustained droughts, heavy moisture, and blizzards. New evidence indicates global warming can unleash semi-permanent El Ninos.
The consequences of global warming aren’t hard to see. Antarctica is turning green; the polar caps are melting; island settlements are being evacuated; species are rapidly disappearing or are threatened; then there is this exponential increase in violent weather. Of all countries, the United States faces the greatest threat with its susceptibility to the most variable weather.  Katrina was a bellwether of our possible future.
There are many things each of us can do at the private level to help control the consequences of global warming. Both in the private and public sectors we must give priority to transitioning to non-fossil fuel sources.  No matter what we do, global temperatures will rise. We can, however, mitigate against a maximum rise that would imperil all life by taking action now.
Unfortunately, we face two formidable barriers: complacency and cynicism; the former because the threat isn’t perceived as immediate or personal; the latter, because of those who discredit the threat and its proponents.  As I write, Fox News (imagine my surprise) is soliciting sources to dispute Al Gore’s statement that global warming can, indeed, cause cooling in some instances (the guy in the parking lot syndrome again). See HuffingtonPost

On Christians and gays

In a story unlikely to grab the headlines, we learn of the death of David Kato, Uganda’s leading advocate for gay rights. 

The other night I caught Piers Morgan’s interview of current high profile preacher, Joel Osteen, whose broadcast services now reach 100 countries. Author of 20 books, his estimated net worth is 40 million dollars.  In the interview, Piers asked his views on homosexuality. Osteen replied that he isn’t a judge, God does that, but that homosexuality is a sin.  (Did I miss something here?) His gospel is one of love.  Hey, I think I’ve heard this line before: love the sinner; hate the sin. Pope Benedict VI informs us that protecting humanity is just as important as saving the world from climate change.

I suppose we should welcome, even with its latent irony, this upgrade in Christian tolerance reflected in Osteen’s remarks, given the historical record.  Christianity, however, isn’t alone in its hostility towards homosexuality. In seven countries, mostly Muslim, the death penalty applies. Iran has executed 4,000 gays since 1979. In the world at large, seventy-six countries criminalize homosexual acts.  While cultural and political contexts may apply, I would argue that the seminal factor, in most instances, is religion. 
In Uganda, homophobia has swept the nation. Its parliament is presently considering a bill calling for the execution of homosexuals, despite the threat of several European nations to cut off aid.  According to Val Kalende, chair of one of Uganda’s beleaguered gay rights groups, “The Ugandan government must take responsibility for David’s blood”  (reported by Jeffrey Gettleman, NYT, Jan. 27, 2011).
She was referring to American evangelicals, who held rallies and workshops throughout Uganda in 2009.  Although these Americans have denied promoting violence, it was shortly thereafter that the antigay bill was drafted, with some of its sponsors acknowledging their attendance at the rallies and subsequent discussion of the legislation with the Americans.  Recently, Uganda’s minister of ethics and integrity, James Nsaba Buturo, a devout Christian, declared, “Homosexuals can forget about human rights” (qtd.in Gettleman).
Wednesday afternoon, David Kato’s body was discovered. He had been bludgeoned to death with a hammer. Police have suggested robbery as a motive.

Farewell, dear Jack

Fitness guru Jack LaLanne died yesterday at his California home of pneumonia at age 96.  I first began watching him  on TV in the 60s, inspired by his zeal for the healthy life of exercise, juice and veggies.  He set the plate for my turning to weights when I simply couldn’t stand the pangs of being over six feet, yet weighing only 135 pounds.  High school was bad enough, with students calling me giraffe or zipper. Once I was told not to turn sideways, lest they not see me.  

The day I went down to Sears and purchased the110 pound set of vinyl weights, including bar. remains embedded in my memory. I began with an empty bar, starting with one set of 5 reps, before moving to a subsequent set when I could do 6 reps, then to a third when I could complete 7 reps of several exercises.  In the following weeks, I pursued the same regimen, except for adding 5 pounds every week.  I was lucky to have a wonderful little paperback guide to follow, which I still have.  It promised underweight readers that if they followed the exercise routine within six months they would be 25 to 30 lbs heavier.  I worked hard, never missing a workout, saying no to fatigue and distractions.  Every week, two pounds or more in weight gain, six months later, the promise had delivered, and I bathed in a sea of  compliments.
Jack was a pioneer when it came to the value of weights.  In 1936, the pervasive notion was that weights made you muscle bound.  He also fostered body building for women.
His own physical feats were legendary.  When he was 43, he performed 1000 push-ups in 23 minutes.  At 60, he swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf, hand- cuffed, shackled and towing a boat.  At 70, he pretty much repeated the event in Long Beach. 

I had begun to suspect that Jack was exempt from mortality.  I had hoped, at the very least, he could reach the century mark.  Recently, following heart valve surgery, he had remarked that he couldn’t die, for it would ruin his image.  

But now, Jack, you can rest, your inspiration alive and well in all of us privileged to follow your recipe for active living and long life.  Thank you, dear Jack.

Why I shut the door on Facebook

I spent at least two years in Facebook, only to become increasingly chagrined about the site. On the one hand, I valued its putting me in-touch with friends, many of them my former students that time and space had relegated to a diaspora of specters. Still, I was uncomfortable with several features. I wanted outreach beyond my circle, with the option of linking with those with whom I shared compatibility of interest.

I also wanted substance, not shibboleths, only to find Facebook a shallow water trough with its drive-by narcissism, the self-pitying, sentimental and hyperbolic.
I tired of the plethora of “I’m going to bed now”; “I’m married to the best husband in the world”; “I thought Friday would never get here.”  Some used the site as a platform for in-your-face political statement.

Then there were those legions of turf conquerors, anchoring their egos in a competitive tally of friends. How can one possibly have 200 or more genuine friends, particularly in Facebook where you often as not get a request for friendship without any message or any to appear in kingdom come?  It vaporizes the very meaning of the term.

What really made me head for the exit was the ubiquitous tampering with member privacy in Facebook’s exponential subordination of one’s profile for mercenary ends revealed in ever more ads.  Now comes the investiture of 1.5 billion from Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technology (a Russian conglomerate) lifting the site’s estimated worth to around 50 billion. This investiture, however, will not apply to the U. S. site and its members.  The United States Security Exchange Commission requires companies having more than 499 shareholders to file quarterly reports, a number Facebook anticipates exceeding shortly.  As CNN tells it, “Keeping American investors out of the pool limits the scrutiny   U. S. regulators can apply to the deal” (CNN Money, Jan 21, 2010).

As in life, you sometimes find the noise too much and you shut the door, I shut the door on Facebook.  Did you hear the slam?

The crowning of Colin Firth

I was delighted that Colin Firth won for best actor in this week’s Golden Globe Awards for his role in the spectacular The Kings Speech.  When the film concluded in our local theater, the audience erupted in applause. I can only remember this happening one or two times in many years of seeing movies.  Like many, I first saw him in BBC’s stellar TV production of Pride and Prejudice (1995), where he plays Mr. Darcy, now nearly a pseudonym.  As he wittingly commented in a French magazine interview, “There are three women in my life:  my mother, my wife, and Jane Austen.”  Indeed, he’s played Mr. Darcy in the films, Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001) and its sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004).  In a 2003 film, he plays Henry Dashwood from Austen’s Sense and Sensibility in What a Girl Wants (2003).  

I was struck with his wit, eloquence, and sensitivity in his acceptance speech.  I found it the most memorable acceptance speech, not only of the night, but of any similar award ceremony I’ve viewed with their plethora of thank you’s, tears and, sometimes, political advocacy.  Several seasoned commentators on the celebrity scene picked up on this as well.

What I like best about Firth transcends his acting prowess.  A man of conscience and compassion, he waxes hot at injustice.  Founder of  the website, Brightlife, he is engaged in the formidable struggle to bring dignity and resolution to the plight of refugees and indigenous people worldwide.  A splendid actor,  he’s for real as a “royal” human being.

Bashing teachers

Teachers have been taking a terrible bashing lately and are increasingly blamed for the woes plaguing our public schools.  Behind this is the assumption that if Johnny and Susie don’t get it, then it’s the teacher ‘s fault. This assumption, familiar to students of logic, is a non-sequitur, since other factors may be at work, among them, a large influx of disadvantaged students, inadequate funding, competing priorities, and a lack of parental involvement.  For me, while there’s no single factor, I hold that parents are vital to their children’s success. Unfortunately, many homes lack both parents, although many single parents do compensate with valiant, and successful, efforts.  If you ask teachers about what happens when they assign homework, a key indicator of parent involvement, they’ll tell you that much of it never gets done. They may send emails home, make phone calls, yet the problem will persist among some students.  And the teacher is the blame? The assumption that bad teachers are responsible has exacerbated in the incipient efforts of “civilian” cadres to rid the schools of tenure, seen as protecting these alleged incompetents.  Again, this is another non sequitur.  Tenure does not protect a teacher from dismissal. It does assure, however, due process.  Consider what might otherwise happen, given extraordinary federal, state, and local budget deficits consequent with our economic downturn: one can maximize reductions by targeting senior teachers.  Age discrimination can be neutralized under the pretext that it’s incompetent performance that is the criterion of dismissal.

This debate is now sharply underway in the NYC school system.  It’s further premised that talented new teachers shouldn’t be sacrificed for entrenched, ineffective teachers protected by tenure. Now there is merit to this view, but only if exercised in a context of due process with empirical evidence of incompetence assessed from multiple criteria.
I remember well how a few years ago a troubled suburban school district in Illinois found they could maximize savings by dismissing teachers with master degrees.  In fact, the district got rid of all of them.

The No Child Left Behind approach with its reliance on performance measurement, initially of schools, now increasingly of teachers, began in the Republican administration of George W. Bush. Its subsequent implementation is supported by Arne Duncan, current Secretary of education.  Its best known proponent in the DC schools was  Michelle Rhee, who resigned following the defeat of the mayor, who supported her policies. The truth is that despite years of investiture in the billions and reliance upon testing, our schools continue to decline.

I will bring more to this discussion in a later entry.

Bashing teachers

Teachers have been taking a terrible bashing lately and are increasingly blamed for the woes plaguing our public schools.  Behind this is the assumption that if Johnny and Susie don’t get it, then it’s the teacher ‘s fault. This assumption, familiar to students of logic, is a non-sequitur, since other factors may be at work, among them, a large influx of disadvantaged students, inadequate funding, competing priorities, and a lack of parental involvement. 

For me, while there’s no single factor, I hold that parents are vital to their children’s success. Unfortunately, many homes lack both parents, although many single parents do compensate with valiant, and successful, efforts.  If you ask teachers about what happens when they assign homework, a key indicator of parent involvement, they’ll tell you that much of it never gets done. They may send emails home, make phone calls, yet the problem will persist among some students.  And the teacher is the blame?

The assumption that bad teachers are responsible has exacerbated in the incipient efforts of “civilian” cadres to rid the schools of tenure, seen as protecting these alleged incompetents.  Again, this is another non sequitur.  Tenure does not protect a teacher from dismissal. It does assure, however, due process.  Consider what might otherwise happen, given extraordinary federal, state, and local budget deficits consequent with our economic downturn: one can maximize reductions by targeting senior teachers.  Age discrimination can be neutralized under the pretext that it’s incompetent performance that is the criterion of dismissal.

This debate is now sharply underway in the NYC school system.  It’s further premised that talented new teachers shouldn’t be sacrificed for entrenched, ineffective teachers protected by tenure. Now there is merit to this view, but only if exercised in a context of due process with empirical evidence of incompetence assessed from multiple criteria. I remember well how a few years ago a troubled suburban school district in Illinois found they could maximize savings by dismissing teachers with master degrees.  In fact, the district got rid of all of them.

The No Child Left Behind approach with its reliance on performance measurement, initially of schools, now increasingly of teachers, began in the Republican administration of George W. Bush. Its subsequent implementation is supported by Arne Duncan, current Secretary of education.  Its best known proponent in the DC schools was  Michelle Rhee, who resigned following the defeat of the mayor, who supported her policies. The truth is that despite years of investiture in the billions and reliance upon testing, our schools continue to decline.

I will bring more to this discussion in a later entry.

Beginnings

from my garden
I’ve never done a blog before, so I looked up sundry models, only to make the discovery that blogs, like flora, fauna, and humans, come in variegated shapes, sizes, and hues.  And so I’ll do what works for me, making mistakes along the way, but with practice becoming more sure-footed. 
In fact, I don’t know quite know how to begin. So many things interest me: hot news items, accounts of injustice and cruelty, scenarios of human heroics and compassion when we can indeed overcome, music, books, etc. I know that I’ve always been in love with the realm of ideas. I enjoy discussion, civilly delivered, rebuttal as well as endorsement. I have always  wanted to have an informed perspective, and I have long held that today’ s truth may  be tomorrow’s lie. I don’t see the wisdom of holding on to the gods of yesterday.  I love the beauty of nature such as  the rose above which graced my garden for several days last summer, reminding me of Keats’ poetic rendering:  “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”  
Do you have an experience you’d like to share that helps define beauty?  It need not be of nature.  In a troubled world, beauty sometimes triumphs in the human spirit, offering redemption and forgiveness, eroding the cynicism that sometimes takes hold.

Beginnings

I’ve never done a blog before, so I looked up sundry models, only to make the discovery that blogs, like flora, fauna, and humans, come in variegated shapes, sizes, and hues.  And so I’ll do what works for me, making mistakes along the way, but with practice becoming more sure-footed. In fact, I don’t quite know how to begin. So many things interest me: hot news items, accounts of injustice and cruelty, scenarios of human heroics and compassion when we can indeed overcome, music, books, etc. I know that I’ve always been in love with the realm of ideas. I enjoy discussion, civilly delivered, rebuttal as well as endorsement. I have always  wanted to have an informed perspective, and I have long held that today’ s truth may  be tomorrow’s lie. I don’t see the wisdom of holding on to the gods of yesterday.  I love the beauty of nature such as  the rose above which graced my garden for several days last summer, reminding me of Keats’ poetic rendering:  “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”  Do you have an experience you’d like to share that helps define beauty?  It need not be of nature.  In a troubled world, beauty sometimes triumphs in the human spirit, offering redemption and forgiveness, eroding the cynicism that sometimes takes hold.

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