The years (preliminary)

1669: Sonata representativa (H. I. Biber)
1722: Das wohltemperierte Clavier (J. S. Bach)
1762: Orfeo ed Euridice (C. W. Gluck)
1783: Grosse Messe in C Minor (W. A. Mozart)
1791: Die Zauberflöte (W. A. Mozart)
1827: Il Pirata (V. Bellini)
1875: Carmen (G. Bizet)
1913: Le sacre du printemps (I. Stravinsky)
1927: Potato Head Blues (Louis Armstrong)
1941: Quatuor pour la fin du temps (O. Messiaen)
1957: Agon (I. Stravinsky)
1959: So What (M. Davis, B. Evans, C. Adderley, P. Chambers, J. Cobb, J. Coltrane)
1961: All of You (B. Evans Trio)
1963: Talkin' World War III Blues (B. Dylan)
1966: Wild Thing (The Troggs)
1968: In a Station (The Band)
1969: Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones)
1971: The Wind (Cat Stevens)
1975: The Köln Concert (K. Jarrett)
1977: Watching the Detectives (E. Costello)
1978: White Man in Hammersmith Palais (The Clash)
1979: I Zimbra (Talking Heads)
1981: Themes for Great Cities (Simple Minds)
1993: Past the Mission (T. Amos)
1995: Helicopter String Quartet (K. Stockhausen)
1998: Crawl Back (R. Thompson)
2003: Paranoid Android (B. Mehldau)

Making light

This morning I dressed my wound. I removed yesterday's bandage, applied antibacterial ointment, and began to open a fresh bandage. Bandages come in sealed individual envelopes. You open one by pulling apart two flaps, the loose ends of the two pieces of platicked paper that make the envelope. I was standing in the dark because the sun had not yet risen. As I pulled at the two flaps and the envelope opened, light was released along the unsealing edges. I stopped; the light went out; I continued; the light reappeared. Wonderful.

I fight dirty

25

Here's how I'd describe the playing of Brad Mehldau

Imprecise, adventurous, shy of the dramatic gesture. He'll never do a cover of Richard Thompson's "Hard on me" (one of the angriest songs ever, with two agonized guitar solos wrenched from the diseased pit of murderous despair). He's angular, heading along a road he's never even scouted, trying something he can't quite do but gloriously failing.

Quiz

What do all of these people have in common?

Marcia Wachs Dam
Tosh Junior
Jonelle Niffenegger
Polly Sippy
Hy Speck
Lindy Trigg

Music

There's been some excitement about the rock band Led Zeppelin recently. The guy who sings (Robert Plant, ancient) did a record with a girl who sings (Alison Krauss, middle aged). Also there was a concert this week.
Leads one to think: painful as the Cordula Lippert memory may be for me, this is a truly marvelous band. No one has ever rocked more mightily. Some people think jazz should be one thing (thrilling?), classical another (Apollonian?), folk something else besides, which is tosh. But if you like your rock & roll Dionysian (a word Iggy Pop has to explain to Tom Snyder here), then surrender to the Zepp.

Here's how I'd describe the playing of Kenny Barron

Architectural, yet full of surprises. Bill Evans had the power of enchantment; Barron thrills me. He seems utterly in control, utterly composed, utterly sly. And there is considerable soulfulness.

Antonioni does the great debate

By taking the terms of the debate quite literally in his masterpiece, Blow-up, Michelangelo Antonioni showed that he sided with Sandburg.

Frost, belittling Sandburg: "Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down."

Sandburg, replying insufferably: "The poet that without imagination or folly enough to play tennis by serving and returning the ball over an invisible net may see himself as highly disciplined. There have been poets who could and did play more than one game of tennis with unseen rackets, volleying airy and fantastic balls over an insubstantial net, on a frail moonlit fabric of a court."

Reworking a piece of work

Author, actor and male model Fabio says U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton is his candidate of choice for U.S President. In an online interview, he explained Clinton's virtues: "She's, you know, my biggest reward, because I would love to have two success with her, with a woman president. And so it will be, to me, forgetting the first time I love the women I owe one to. Women: you're smart."

Species

What is a species? Am I one? Have I one on my tongue? Will my offspring be a different species from me? Are there species in outer space?

Bangladesh

Bangladesh exists to remind us that if there is a god, it should be crucified.

Dream of apples

This morning I dreamed that I was visiting a secret neighborhood in San Francisco. Hidden somewhere near Twelfth and Lake is a long country road, with handsome houses to either side, and at the end a house inhabited by Kelly Jo Maynard. I was driving along this dirt road and stopped to look at the house. I recalled that I'd been in it before. I parked and as I got out of my car I wondered whether it would be okay to go inside--it was evident no one was about. I remembered that I used to visit it without permission, while the inhabitants were away, long ago. I stood on the porch, then walked back to my car, seeing apples in an apple tree on the west side of the road. And a black man walking along a road that struck out up the hill to the west. I admired the apples. I saw that I had left my car door open. I closed it and walked back to the house and entered. I walked through the kitchen to a desk. From the bookcase next to the desk I took some of Kelly Jo's cassette tapes and played a recording of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. The house was very empty. I was calmly putting tapes back in a fashion I thought Kelly Jo would approve when I took fright. I headed for the door just as some people were arriving. I opened the door before them and passed out, saying "Hello." The group of three young European (?) bohemians, two men and a woman, replied to my greeting quite calmly. Maybe they were guests of the house. I ran. I ran as fast as I could to my car, but it took ever so long to get to it.

I had dinner with this woman (click here)

Her house is full of damaged animals, not all of them human.

Sohcahtoa

The cars go one way, the leaves another
As the wind brushes east,
Taking what the trees cast off.

I'm not quite ready, my thoughts a disorder
Of ambition unspent,
Plans beginning where I leave off.

Another rattling, shushing gust.

A Sunday alone is that uncountable blessing
At age forty-three, when my untattooed,
Childless arms reach for books, music, lunch,
In the sunlit trigonometry of home.

---------Where things make sense in terms of
What's not here.

Howard & Sam

Thanks to Gina, I can display the picture. Click on it if you'd like a larger view.

Identity

I could not stop staring at a picture on the front page of yesterday's Financial Times. It shows two men in their forties, bespectacled, struggling with two policemen. One of the men has his arm around the other; a policeman is pulling at his other arm, as if he means to drag him away. The scene is Pakistan, probably Lahore; the two men in glasses are probably lawyers. They are part of the protests against the imposition on Saturday night of martial law. As I stared and stared I thought to myself, "Those two men are me and Howard." It would be easy for me and Howard to be that outraged, that angry. And we have been out on the streets to protest our leaders' lawless behavior, but we've been lucky, and policemen have yet to try to drag us away.

I tried to find the photo on the Internet, but I failed. The one I present here is a weak approximation.

Me & meat while asleep

I have a recurrent dream in which I eat meat. I used to dream about smoking. So I'm dreaming about doing the two things that I've decided never to do. The meat is never especially appetizing in the dream, but it's not disgusting. Last night it was a hamburger. I took the meat patty and a bun and placed them on a barbecue grill. Then I sort of realized I don't eat meat.

The artist at work

Flaming bike

Me and the lovedog

Here we are.

Kitaj has died

I like his paintings and drawings and prints.

Cork is good

The Carbon Footprint of Wine Closures

Natural cork with PVC capsule: 11.2 tons of CO₂ per million units

Fake cork with PVC capsule: 24.7 tons of CO₂ per million units

Screwcap from 70% recycled aluminum: 35.9 tons of CO₂ per million units

Glass bottle: 183 tons of CO₂ per million units

[Reported in Decanter, Nov. 2007, p. 45.]

Echidnas

Comments on Into the Wild

For all the time that we spend with Christopher McCandless, he does not emerge as much but a stubborn nature lover with an aversion to bourgeois American life. There is a reason for this: he could pass for any of us. Sexless, a bit bland, utterly conventional in his choice of unconventional heroes (Tolstoy, Thoreau, Pasternak), this kid is a stand-in for everyone who ever considered quitting a job or running a marathon. And because he's—in all respects but one—so very ordinary, he is immediately loved by all who spend time with him: they just project onto him whatever is missing from their lives (generally a lost loved one). In this he resembles the religious figures who've absorbed so many adoring, desperate gazes.

But unlike Jesus and Siddhartha, who were no friends of the nuclear family, this lad's moment of enlightenment, the delayed acknowledgment that kindly old Ron Franz spoke a truth worthy of Morgan Freeman, is an affirmation of the importance of human community, people, family.

The story involves some deep questions, but it's a story with little in the way of event, so the movie's writer and director, Sean Penn, has crafted a complex interweaving of narratives, with various voiceovers, McCandless's postcards and journal, and even grainy footage of events that don't fit into either of the two main narrative strands: events that took place in McCandless's childhood.

I found the story moving in spite of Penn's unfortunate indulgence in narrative overload and lots of fancy camerawork and editing to convey some sense of (1) McCandless's cognitive meltdown on Los Angeles's skid row and (2) McCandless's death by starvation. So elaborate was the first that I thought for a bit that our hero had taken a puff on some crackhead's pipe; so long had the movie been going on by the second that I just gritted my teeth. As I say, I was moved. We all should be, because we're all guilty of the sort of complacency that McCandless never for a moment endured. We all put off our Great Alaskan Adventures, and so we, unlike McCandless, bathe regularly, chat, go to church, eat foods killed for us by others, survive. Many think that they can escape from the dullness such a life generates by trekking in Nepal or picking grapes in Burgundy or finding God, but I suspect that these mean less than not much. Some people, no matter whether they're mopping floors or teaching autistic kids to read, are simply, in every moment, utterly alive. Most live lives of quiet desperation.

Reasons for carrying on

Music. To be more precise, the songs of Mariza, Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos, Harry Nilsson, The Elected, Heaven 17, and The Band. The melodies of Brahms. The splendor of Art Pepper. The sublime majesty of Johann Bach.

Masterpieces. Such as those by Ozu Yasujiro, Robert Bresson, Val Lewton, Jacques Tourneur, Wang Kar-wai, 成龍, Caravaggio, Caro, Newman, Newman.

Friends. You know who you are and who you are not.

Lotus blossoms.

The scent of my nape.

The thought that some day there may be another dog as fine as Cuchulain.

Carver

Tess Gallagher: keeping the sacred flame burning. New edition: ho-hum. D. T. Max: my hero.

侯孝賢計劃拍武狹片

不可思意。

The Supreme Court and Khaled el-Masri

These are happy days for torturers in America. The Supreme Court has implicitly supported the CIA's black operations and extraordinary renditions program by refusing to hear the ACLU's appeal in El Masri vs. Tenet. While the Roberts court was eager to slap Mr. Bush's wrist over Guantanamo, it will do nothing to protect innocent Muslims from being abducted and tortured by an organ of the US government. As a sort of functional definition, no state secret can be of greater importance than justice.
I understand the idea of a social calculus, and the need to weigh the security of a nation against the rights of an individual and the others whose fates would be judicially linked to his through precedent, but I do not understand how operations that are prima facie violations of international law can be construed as defensible elements of national security.

The week of Angela Hewitt

A Bach specialist, Angela Hewitt will be playing the piano in Berkeley on three nights during the coming week and I'll be there for every show. I decided to indulge--plus it's an excuse to see Scott and (I hope) Nat. Hewitt is not a fiery player or a strong-willed interpreter, but she makes pure, gorgeous, thoughtful music. And it's the Well-Tempered Clavier!

My map

create your own visited countries map

Hey!

Am I the only person who laughs hysterically on listening to a seal speak?

Burma is burning

I was taught to avoid the name Myanmar, the creation of SLORC, the junta that has ruled the country for two decades. Here we face a classic dilemma: what can democratic states do when corrupt and evil rulers kill nonviolent partisans of democracy? Aung San Suu Kyi says to use sanctions, but manifestly they do not work, since passing up economic opportunities means nothing when there are other states (i.e., China) quite prepared to overlook Shwe & Co.'s filthy record of oppression, ethnic cleansing, etc. As long as Burma has an army of 400,000 ignorant butchers, it hardly matters that 400,000 brave and well organized monks are willing to march: nothing will come of it. In the absence of a global consensus (such a thing will never exist), and as long as France, China, the United States and others facilitate oppression by participating wholeheartedly in the global sale of small arms, I believe that there is only one alternative to scolding and waiting. I think it a mistake to refuse to have full diplomatic and economic relations with other states, because the place where we can make a difference is through trade, though economic incentives. If we've already blockaded a harbor, threatening a bigger blockade sounds pretty thin. Only when we're buying lots of your oil and gas and teak do you want to take our call in the middle of a very dark night.

Apology

To all those who may call in the next twenty minutes: "I'm sorry, but I'm sleepy, and I'm going to bed now."

Inventory of shoes

I don't have very many, but what I have is of the very highest quality.
-black rubber boots (two pairs, bought 1990 and 2006)
-black flipflops bought at Yamaguchi on Sawtelle (bought 2004)
-black Yogui slip-ons from Keen (bought 2007)
-red Newport H2 sandals from Keen (two pairs, bought 2005 and 2007)
-orange and black trail runners (bought 2007)
-blue & grey drawstring trail runners from Salomon (bought 2005)
-lace-up cordovan dress shoes from Brooks Brothers (bought 1997)
-black plain-toe lace-up dress shoes from Allen Edmonds (bought 1990)
-black sandals from Church (bought 1993)
-snakeproof bottes sauvages from Gokey (bought 1980)
The last four are all made from animal hide.

John Escreet playing "Bemsha Swing"

Escreet has his own website, but the content is quite limited. Take a look at this.

Come on: how often do you see a YouTube clip that's only been viewed 122 times?

Kwansaba for Alan

My cousin, the one who knows froth,
Alerted me to your recent two cents
And warned me you were going on
About bubbles and froth, froth and bubbles.
Froth is more than one bubble, quotha,
But one bubble can from froth come.
Open a bottle, former chair, daoist sage.

Seeing the light

Briefly: I always disliked Bob Dylan's music, with the exception of a single album that my parents had in the house from my infancy. Then I watched Scorsese's documentary and found there were songs I liked a great deal. The post-crash music can't interest me much, but I am utterly blown away by the energy, the Rabelaisian wildness, of "The Freewheelin' BD." Something of that feeling surfaces in a strange, long song on "Time out of Mind" called "Highlands," but having listened to "Love & Theft," I just don't see much in the new music.

Pairing up after prime time

If Dave and Oprah can hug and make up, so can the Sunnis and Shiites. But why waste the time and money? According to the GAO and Bain & Co's Steve Ellis, the dollars would be far better spent in a massive bombing campaign. It is estimated that five days of intensive bombing could eliminate 75% of the population of Iran, drive a remaining 15% into neighboring countries, and convert the remaining 10% to a cretinous caste of slaves. For a mere $1.5 billion, the oil resources of a country made up of terrorists and generally bad people could become the solution to America's biggest headache, namely, the problem of withdrawing troops from a country where subsequent violence might tarnish America's global reputation.

A solution

Let's bomb Iran, kill everyone there, then move the Sunni Iraqis there. Then we can supervise an Iraqi election in which Moqtada al-Sadr is elected and withdraw all coalition troops from Iraq. If there are any bombs left, let's bomb Gaza. It would be good to bomb the West Bank too, but what if we hit a settlement by mistake? That would be a tragedy.

In memoriam

The people killed in Manhattan.
The people killed in Washington, DC.
The people killed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Every human being in Afghanistan killed by American bullets, shells, missiles, and bombs.
Every human being in Iraq killed by American bullets, shells, missiles, and bombs.

My heroine and heroes

I am not among those who cite their mothers as their greatest heroes. Mothers are a dime a dozen, some good, some shit. Even the greatest of mothers can produce murderous little lads and lasses and it's just not their fault. I like to be able to trace etiology a bit more reliably. Thoreau is a great hero of mine. He was stubborn, decent, peevish, poetic and did not hesitate to take up a minority position. Balzac, because of the great intensity of his commitment, I admire. He handled his money and his love affairs foolishly; he was unstinting in the labor needed to create a simulacrum of the real world; he understood women as well as he did men. Pablo Picasso, Anthony Caro and David Smith, who enabled us to enjoy the world in very new ways. Virginia Woolf, whose voice is unthinkable, wrote an essay so beautiful, so strong, so marvelously angry, relying on a cat without a tail, an imaginary sister, and an ear for language few have matched.

Things this blog will never mention

Frida Kahlo
Walter Benjamin
Giorgio Agamben
Harry Potter
the credit crunch
George Clooney
Agnes Martin
Bjork
The iPhone
sous vide
Annie Lebowitz
that/which
Burning Man
CGI
chickens
PTSD
The White Stripes
The Mars Volta
fado
twittering
labradoodles
the death of professional tennis
Barack Obama
global warming
string theory
free-range anything
grass-fed anything
microbullage
the evils of bottling water

poem

Pillows for Howard

They float and fall like lumpen clouds
A fat woman's bosom for his undyed locks

Ambition

I also want to be a pioneering preview critic. I'll review movie previews, including classics, and acquire the world's largest collection of previews. And I'll finally give the geniuses who direct, edit, choose music for, and narrate movie previews the respect and recognition they deserve.

My calling

I've finally confronted my fate: I am going to become the next David Frost. But better, of course. I'm starting by interviewing everyone I know, and I'm going to place the interviews on YouTube. This is going to generate tremendous buzz, leading to a major network deal.

Thank you, Eugene, for alerting me to my talent as we walked across a parking lot in Hawaiian Gardens.

I want you to love Junior Senior

tinyurl.com/29bdvk

I want you to love baby Jesus

tinyurl.com/34u8x9

Things the cats say to me

“Art is an abstraction; derive that abstraction from nature by dreaming before her.”
"Pay attention to the silhouette of each object; a clear outline is the prerogative of a hand that is not paralyzed by a faltering will."

Things I say to the cats

Hello, gravel rollers!
Come on in out of the cold.
Don't drink that water--it's gross!
Come here, kitcat.
Off.
You made the seat sooo warm!
That's unacceptable.
Peaceful kingdom.
You are a love bucket.
Don't be a brat.
Do you like the possum?
Are the fleas falling from you like black rain?
What are you doing?
It's all right.
Are you OK?
You're funny.
It's OK.
Bye.

My wish

If I had a single wish, it might involve vegan donuts. But it's more likely I'd opt to attend a certain kind of party. I am fascinated by fancy parties attended by throngs of men and women dressed in gorgeous clothing. Just such a party (photo of Cate Blanchett shaking hands with Michael Bloomberg) is illustrated in the recent issue of Vogue. I'd like to be there, wearing something nice, accompanied by a friend who knows everyone. Have I such a friend? If I did I'd already be at the party.

birth, etc.

Eric Arthur Blair born on this date in 1903.
Michel Foucault died on this date in 1984.

Rough sketch for a poem not to be composed

Opening the book, finding the hollow within,
Disappearing onto a page, like a single letter
e
or a phrase such as
he said
or
wantonly wretched
both of which occur in "A History of Sadness."
Copyright 2007 Samuel Ross Gilbert

David Lynch on product placement

Take that, Elvis!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4wh_mc8hRE

Lots of Democrats and even more Republicans are grotesquely ignorant

http://www.galluppoll.com/videoArchive/?CI=27838

Childish

Leafing through Saveur magazine (The Steak Issue), I came upon an ad for some credit card featuring a big picture of Elvis Costello playing a big guitar. "I know it's just disgusting . . ." You don't have enough money, Elvis? Next to the picture was a hypothetical list of pleasures one could buy with credit. Many of these involved travel to exotic locales. I feel I need to cross everything from my own fantasy list that occurred on that tainted list: fortunately there was no mention of Udupi Palace, Dönnhoff, or Venice. Am I just being childish or is there something truly vulgar about shilling?

Cravings

I am experiencing food cravings, sort of nonspecific cravings for savory foods I love. This nonspecific craving could be satisfied (temporarily, of course) by any of the following:
Cinderella Bakery piroshki (but they're not vegetarian, so I wouldn't eat them)
Haig's Delicatessen falafel sandwich
Magic Carpet melawech with spicy tomato topping
Burma Superstar tea leaf salad
Udupi Palace uttapham
Dasaprakash cashew fritters
India Sweets and Spices samosas
鍋貼 (potstickers) from that astounding stand in Yonghe (see note for piroshki)
those battered and fried potatoes from that tiny Korean place outside the west gate of Beijing Yuyan Xueyuan
蔥油餅 (scallion pancake) from the place Danai and I went to last month in the Sunset

What was Beijing really like?

I lived there a year but have always felt that I got to know the tiniest corner of it. This despite fluency in Chinese, a fine bicycle, plenty of time and money, friends at BTV, the film studio, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, The Asian Wall Street Journal, and many students born and raised in the capital. I need to know more about Beijing's temples.

Those the brokes

The emotional topography has not changed, the riffs are much the same, but by a sort of layering, The Magic Numbers have made a second album that has a kind of aural filigree that the first album lacked. And the songs are longer, more playful. It's like listening to the first album after a really gifted arranger added strings and overdubs galore.

Roles

What sort of role do I want to play in the lives of others? Do I want to change how my friends feel and think? Do I want to be someone they admire and long to see? Do I want to be invited to their parties? Do I want them to dedicate their novels to me and have me to their children's bar and bat mitzvahs? Do I want to serve as their conscience? Do I want them to trust me? Do I want them to remember things that I say, write them in their diaries, claim them as their own? Do I want them to make dinner for me? Do I want them to think me good or strong or uplifting or wise? Do I want them to trust me? What sort of role do I want to play in my own life?

風與花

Today it is windy here. The tress bend, their branches whipping. And the Romneya coulteri I planted in the fall has grown terrifically tall, taller than I, so it is bent and whipped too by the wind, its tissue white flowers sadly clinging to the stalks they crown. Inside I listen to music, loll, braise kabocha.

Michael G. Belanger, you are such a drip.

Dear Sam,

It is not often that I am genuinely embarrassed when an error is pointed out to me, but in this case the embarrassment is genuine and deep. I regard Mary Cassatt as a great painter (with no regard to gender), and a few years ago it was with great pleasure tha [sic] I attended a major exhibit of her work. At the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, "Mary Cassatt" attracted record-breaking crowds. The year of her birth must have been prominently displayed, and I never thought to check if any of our books got it wrong.

As much as I am chagrined by the incorrect birthdate for Cassatt, it pales in comparison to the horror I am experiencing upon learning that Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary has an incorrect date for Caravaggio. Mary Cassatt is a geat American painter. Caravaggio is one of the giants of art. On my list of all-time favorites, Caravaggio--or, 'Cary' as you casually call him--is outranked only by Rembrandt and Vermeer. (Artistic genius aside, you have to admire someone responds to an insolent French waiter by shoving a platter of hot artichokes in his face.) Who knows how many times I have encountered the correct birthdate for this enfant terrible in books and museum exhibits--and never thought to check to see whether all of M-W's references got it right.

Our online dictionary is based upon the hardback "Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition." The errors involving Cassatt and Caravaggio--I don't think that I can bring myself call him 'Cary'--go back through several editions of the Collegiate Dictionary to an out-of-print biographical dictionary that we used to publish decades ago. Judging from the entries for artists in that biographical dictionary, I would say that the editors had no knowledge of, or interest in, art. The entry for Howard Chandler Christy is much longer than the entry for Picasso.

Fortunately, not all of our publications are so artistically illiterate. The single-volume "Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Encyclopedia" not only has the correct dates for Cassatt and Caravaggio, it also has an article on Picasso that sounds like it was written by someone who had heard of the guy. Alas, Howard Chandler Christy did not make the cut; in his place is an entry for Christo.

Amazingly, you are the first person to notice the misinformation for Mary Cassatt and Michelangelo Merisi. Congratulations on your sharp eye, and shame on everyone else for missing it.


Michael G. Belanger
Associate Editor
Merriam-Webster,Inc.
Springfield, MA 01102
mbelanger@Merriam-Webster.com
http://www.Merriam-Webster.com

Life

Do we all get to a certain point in our lives and ask ourselves whether the structure of life has been set? As I was walking to P Market this evening (moon through tissue of cloud, streets quiet) I thought to myself, "How many days have you spent like this? And how many more will there be?" The day was fine. I saw flowers blooming on a Point Reyes hillside, thought a thought about turkey vultures and skunks, decided against calling the local police about the motorcyclist who roared around me past a stop sign, spoke with a close friend. I spent the day alone, as I do most of my days. So I could not help wondering, "Is this it?" Even the most dramatic upheaval rarely changes this sort of structure. I wonder whether I responded so strongly to the trip to Taiwan because I spent so much of it with another human. I often claim that it's best to travel alone and my trips to Bali and Hong Kong and New Zealand and New York and Chengdu and so on were memorable, romantic trips but maybe it's not such a bad thing to get practice being human.

The girl from Djibouti

There is magic in this phrase. I was told today that I was formerly wont to use it to refer to a girl, a sort of splendid and unattainable creature, for whom Roger Hochschild harbored a profound longing. She became a sort of stand-in for all of our desires, which in those days were without exception unconsummated. I wonder whether she refused to dance with a fellow in a kilt. Of course, she wasn't from Djibouti. She was probably from Baltimore or Trenton.

My Mouth

Something is happening to the corner of my mouth. This is not a part of me I'd have much noticed if not for a comment Abigail Asher made in 1984. Since then the mouth has not much changed—until now. A noticeable line now extends south from the corner about one-quarter of an inch. It's a wrinkle but it might not be. It might be the fissure that begins the utter erasure of the bottom part of my face. It might be a crack into which fall all of my finest comments and adages, unheard and unheeded. It might be a pit that collects the finest tidbits of fine foods (blood oranges, for example, or guacamole). Please let this line mend itself.

Desert Island Discs

The conventional limit is eight songs or pieces of comparable length. Phooey to that.

(1) Blue
(2) London Calling
(3) Gould Goldberg 2
(4) Richter WTC
(5) Manifesto
(6) Mozart serenades
(7) Sacre
(8) Köln
(9) Shostakovich piano concertos
(10) Liebeslieder Waltzes
(11) Love Is All Around
(12) Norwegian Wood
(13) O Superman
(14) Big Pink
(15) Sail Away
(16) North Country Fair
(17) Electrolite
(18) Foolish Love
(19) Ma suites
(20) Prettiest Eyes
(21) Sonata representativa
(22) Sur incises
(23) Ballades
(24) Lutoslawski cello concerto

Flute & violin

Really a divine combination. I'm listening to Bach's trio sonata in G. (My feet are cold.)

raining now

meteors later

I'm listening to The Beta Band, wearing my cardigan, enjoying a day without cats. Even if it's raining on them. Oh, poor cats.

What we had at Gary Farrell on Sunday 15 April 2007

2004 Chardonnay-Russian River Valley, Rochioli-Allen Vineyards (311 cases)
2004 Pinot Noir-Russian River Valley, Rochioli Vineyard (396 cases)
2004 Pinot Noir-Russian River Valley, Allen Vineyard, Hillside Blocks (203 cases)
2004 Pinot Noir-Russian River Valley, Rochioli-Allen Vineyards (396 cases)

2004 Chardonnay-Russian River Valley, Russian River Selection
2004 Pinot Noir-Russian River Valley, Russian River Selection
2004 Zinfandel-Dry Creek Valley, Bradford Mountain Vineyard
2003 Merlot-Sonoma County
2002 Cabernet Sauvignon-Sonoma County

Rufus & Judy

23 September 2007, at the Hollywood Bowl. Rufus will be performing the songs that Judy Garland performed at the Hollywood Bowl in 1961 with a full orchestra.

Listening

Andrew Manze & Richard Egarr, "Mozart Violin Sonatas, 1781"
Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté, "In the Heart of the Moon"
Guillemots, "From the Cliffs"
Roxy Music "Flesh + Blood"
Billy Bragg, "Sexuality"
Mariner & AoSMitF, "Mozart: The Great Serenades"
(I adore the Mozart serenades and am particularly fond of the violin bits in the Haffner.)

A death

On returning from work this evening, I found a small corpse on the patio behind my apartment building. For nearly a year I've lived in Petaluma, a town of fifty-six thousand that straddles Highway 101 thirty miles north of the Golden Gate. I work for a publisher of calendars and what-have-you on the far side of town and ride my bike to and fro. When I wheel into the gravel of the parking area behind the three-story converted house the neighborhood cats eye me and stretch, stalking off. Today only the silver was about and we are not on friendly terms. He ignored me. I parked my bike where it would block the woman who lives upstairs from claiming an extra space (she does this when her lover comes to call; both own large vehicles) and walked over to the patio area that leads to my back door. There, at the base of one of the posts that supports the upstairs balcony, lay the dead animal. I had never seen it before but I knew its parents: this was the offspring of the pathetic possum who blundered into my bedroom five days ago just before sunup. I see the possums from time to time, and hear one almost nightly, the sound it makes while eating the cat food left on the patio terrifically loud. The cats want to be the possums' friend, and the youngest cat, the black one, eases right up to it, is ignored. The dead possum lay on its side, its pink tail only slightly curled at the very tip, its white fur fresh and soft, its mouth only very slightly agape, revealing tiny sharp teeth. I wondered whether it had been killed by one of the two cats who sleep on my bed and the idea angered me, but seeing no wounds and refusing to draw any conclusions from a single feline hair on the dead possum's lip, I became far more interested in the body of the animal than in the identity of its murderer. Only a possum's ears have any claim to beauty, and a young possum has translucent, spotted ears not entirely unlike the petal of the Romneya coulteri that bloomed today outside my window. I buried the possum, hacking through the thin concrete skin poured over the parking area, making a small, deep hole between the handsomest of the trees, carrying the small, soft, limp body on a clean sheet of newspaper and setting it gently in the bottom of its grave, then hurriedly raking the dirt and stones over it.

Why YouTube matters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEbYtOEftc0&mode=related&search=

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C8R6qYoaJo&mode=related&search=

Listening

The Beautiful South, "0890"
Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté, "In the heart of the moon"
Amy Winehouse, "Back to black"
Bach violin concertos played by Andrew Manze, Rachel Podger and the English Concert
Cécile Kayirebwa, "Rwanda"

Spring

A pair of sparrows have built a nest on a crossbeam of the front porch and the whole thing is visible from where I sit at my desk. But I never noticed until this morning when I was plucking caterpillars off of my Romneya coulteri and lively chirps caught my attention. Good luck, sparrows.

Why I like spring

Because it's pretty. Trees have lots of little flowers on them. And because in P and SFO spring is a time of great vinosity, with people standing at every corner passing out glasses of Musar, Christoffel, Gary Farrell, Gimmonet, Fevre, Beaucastel and other tasty wines.

Hurray

Asparagus!

Proof

As if further evidence that Nicolas Cage is the worst actor on the planet were necessary: http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/next/
Also constitutes proof that Julianne Moore is the second worst.

The role of silence in e-mail communication in the early twenty-first century

Have you noticed how silent an e-correspondent suddenly gets when things turn a bit touchy? A suggestion fails to draw a response. A critical comment goes unrebutted. And if that correspondent writes again, the subject of the previous dialogue is not mentioned. E-mail is a good medium for people averse to engagement. Of course, it's also the favorite medium of flamers and nutjobs.

Listening

The Byrds "Untitled"
Elsa Lanchester "Songs for a Smoke-Filled Room"
Love & Rockets "Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven"
The Guillemots "From the Cliffs"
"The Best of the Cowsills"
Jelly Roll Morton "The King of New Orelans"
The Beautiful South "Superbi"

speculation

What if the god who made this world is the lowest deity in a pantheon that includes far wiser creatures? Is there an appeal process? How do we get this lowly god's handiwork reviewed? I think it's about time some managerial god interceded. I mean, would a higher-ranked god have made a world without vegan donuts? Not in a googol years, my friends.

small pleasures

God I love Metafilter.

A flit of waxwings

Drying lettuce, I stood under dripping skies in the gravel pit out back. And suddenly, marvelously, a flit of cedar waxwings sprang—thirty birds at once—from the tree overhead and curved off and up and then back, landing with a sound like raindrops. They did this, singly, in sixes, all together, again and again until the eucalyptus to the east seized their interest. They are small, crested birds.

William Forsythe's new work, "Atmospheric Studies"

Though it contains some nice things, the new piece is a failure. As though he was incapable of making any decisions, Forsythe includes everything, crowding the stage with movement and ideas until it's just a blur. The idea was to dissolve the distinction between a woman suffering because her son has died and artistic depictions of that suffering, using dance, color, dialogue, distorted and very loud sounds, and that old genre somewhere described by Michael Baxandall, the literary description of a painting. The problem is that we remain on the margins, distanced by a range of quasi-Brechtian techniques that remind us again and again that the artist's enterprise is doubtful, visible, too artificial by half. The dancing is a bore, the dialogue devolves into a moment straight out of "Sprockets," and the final scene is a mess. Naturally the applause at Zellerbach on Friday night went on and on. (I spotted Peter Sellars when he arrived and there were marvelously dressed women in the audience.)

What is Important in a Compost Mix?

In the wild, many alpines grow in situations where water drains away very quickly and easily—this is known as "sharp" drainage. This results in many air spaces around the roots. When growing in a pot, we need to provide similar conditions and make a mix that while holding sufficient water to supply the plant, drains excess water very rapidly to leave lots of air spaces. Before looking at how to achieve this, let's first ask:

Why is it important to have lots of air spaces?

Roots not only take up water, they take up and need oxygen too. Roots are normally covered by a thin film of water. Oxygen has to diffuse across this before it can enter the root. Oxygen diffuses through water relatively slowly. So the thicker the layer of water around the root, the longer it takes oxygen to diffuse through it to get to the root, which may result in the roots being starved of oxygen. Without it, they cannot metabolise and perform their functions—one of which is to take up water. This explains why the symptoms of plants being over-watered or under-watered are the same: If under-watered there is insufficient water to supply the plant and so it wilts. If over-watered, there is plenty of water around but the roots cannot take it up due to being short of oxygen. So the result is the same—the plant may be sitting in water but it wilts because it cannot take the water in.

The reason for going into all this is that plants vary on just how sensitive they are to the amounts of oxygen in the growing medium - and alpines are among those plants that require a high degree of aeration. This is why when growing alpines we aim to produce a mix which is very free-draining, so leaving plenty of air spaces in the medium. The percentage of the volume of a medium that contains air after it has been saturated then allowed to drain is called the Air Filled Porosity (AFP). For the majority of plants, a figure between 10% and 20% AFP is aimed at; for alpines this figure needs to be at the higher end of this range or even above. So when we say a plant needs good drainage, it may be more informative to say that what they need is good aeration (which is created by good drainage).

What factors affect drainage?

1. Pore Size - Pores are the spaces between (and within) the solid parts of a medium and they contain the air and water required by the plant for growth. Pores vary enormously in size. The relative numbers of large and small ones, the way they are grouped and how interconnected they are will determine the rate of water movement through the mix and also determine how much air and water are retained. It is these factors that you can alter by adding drainage material such as grit, and the extent of the effect will vary depending on the particle size of the grit you use and the amount you add to a mix.

The most important factor is the relative proportion of big pores to little ones. This is because of a key point: small pores hold onto water more strongly than large ones—due mainly to capillary action. This means that small pores (called micropores) retain water, which leaves no room for air, while big ones (called macropores) tend to drain most of their water leaving air in its place. It follows that fine sands are not suitable as drainage components- the fine particles simply fall into the larger air spaces, clogging them up and producing smaller pores that hold on to water—in other words you get poorer drainage, the opposite of what you want. So, use only coarse grits as drainage material—in practise, this means ones with most of the particles larger than 1.6mm diameter.

2. Quantity of Grit Used - If you add a very small amount of grit to a medium it will not help the drainage, it will simply displace some of the medium. For grit to work as a drainage medium there must be enough of it so that it exceeds what is called the threshold proportion. The threshold proportion is where there is just enough grit that the particles touch each other. At this point, the pores between the grit are still filled with soil and humus and no new macropores have been created. More grit must be added to further "dilute" the medium so it exceeds the threshold. At this point, new macropores are created that drain readily and provide aeration. In practice, most alpine growers use between 30% and 50% (by volume) of grit in their mixes to achieve this.

3. Pot Depth and Perched Water Tables - When you water into a pot and excess starts coming out the bottom, it is coming out due to a mix of gravity pulling on it and the weight of water above pushing down on it (the "hydraulic head"). As water drains, there is a point at which gravity or the hydraulic head are insufficient to push any more water out. So at the bottom of each pot there is a layer where ALL the pores are filled with water. This is called a perched water table. This is true of all pots whatever mix it contains - at the bottom of every pot there is always a perched water table. Wouldn't it be good if we could prevent this?

This brings us to the old myth. "Put a layer of grit or other coarse material at the bottom of pots and containers to provide drainage." You will hear such advice repeated again and again in books, on websites and TV programmes. Materials recommended for such use may include gravel, grit, sand, broken up clay pots or polystyrene bits, all to be added "for drainage." If you ask the person giving this advice as to EXACTLY why they think this will work, they often don't know - it's just something they have been taught or read about and they have never stopped to think why it might work. If they do have an explanation, it is usually to point out that coarse materials have large air spaces that drain more easily than small air spaces. This is of course correct as we saw earlier. HOWEVER this applies to the materials ALONE. They don't stop to think what happens if you start putting materials in layers. What actually happens is that drainage is HINDERED by this practice and water tends to accumulate at the boundary between the two layers. This happens for two reasons:

a) As we learned earlier, small pores hang on to water more strongly than large ones. Because of this, when you have a medium with smaller pores above one with larger pores, the water has difficulty crossing the boundary. There is insufficient "strength" in the larger pores to pull the water out of the smaller ones above where they are held more strongly by capillary action. So instead of the water draining evenly from the pot, it drains to the interface between the two layers then slows down or may even be stopped altogether until a sufficiently large hydraulic head has built up again to force it across the boundary. This of course means when the compost above is completely saturated! Since the stated goal for using a layer of coarse material is "to improve drainage," it is ironic that this practice actually causes the very state it is intended to prevent!

b) Secondly, the natural "perched water table" we learned about has now been forced to form higher up the pot giving what is called a RAISED perched water table. This leaves even less of the volume of the pot which contains well-drained and well-aerated compost.

There is however a way to remove the perched water table from a pot, so that the whole volume of the pot is well drained: Plunge the pot in a sand plunge. For this to work, ensure that the compost in the pot makes good contact with the sand beneath. This has the effect of greatly increasing the length of the pot so that the perched water table doesn't form until the water reaches the bottom of the plunge. Sometimes people put a piece of broken pot over the drainage hole of clay pots—but this will break the continuity between the compost and the plunge so this will not then work. A good modern alternative is to cover the drainage hole in clay pots with a piece of plastic net. This will help stop compost trickling out but not entirely break the continuity between compost and plunge. Removing the perched water tables from pots is probably the most important function that a plunge serves, so it is strange that this aspect is rarely mentioned these days when the functions of a plunge are discussed.

Why I hate Russians

I wrote the following:

This book of postcards presents thirty of the finest paintings from the fabled collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Founded by Empress Catherine the Great, the Hermitage occupies ten buildings, five of which were erected in the eighteenth century. Grandest of all is the Winter Palace, the richly ornamented home of the ruling Romanov dynasty until the Russian Revolution. So imagine that you are walking along echoing halls, across gleaming parquet floors, under vaulted ceilings from which hang gold-plated chandeliers, as you take in this assortment of landscapes, madonnas, still lifes, and portraits from Russia, Italy, France, England, Holland, Flanders, and Germany.

They wrote:

Vaulted ceilings are hardly typical of the palatial and museum interiors - please rephrase

I wrote:

Dear Olga,

Gina has passed to me your request for a series of
changes to the back cover text, which I wrote. Thank
you for your careful and thorough inspection. I have
never visited the Hermitage and so am at a real
disadvantage when it comes to describing the museum. I
had to rely on information and images presented on the
official Hermitage website, hence my confusion. My
suggestion that a walk through the Hermitage might
involve passing under vaulted ceilings was the
unfortunate result of the website's pictures of the
Raphael loggias, the War Gallery of 1812, the Peter's
(Small Throne) Room, the Alexander Hall, the Gothic
Drawing Room of Grand Princesses, the Gold Drawing
Room, the White Hall, the Corner Drawing-Room of
Emperor Nicholas I, and the Study of Empress Alexandra
Fyodorovnas. My apologies.

Yours very truly,
Sam Gilbert

And Steven Linberg commented, from Paris:

It would be odd if the Hermitage didn't have vaulted ceilings. The fucking
thing wasn't built by the Bauhaus, after all. Believe me, as a translator,
I've encountered this thing a million times. If queried, it will turn out
they think "vaulted" means either that there are safes in the ceiling
or Sergey Bubka cleared it at one go.

Soviet-built steamrollers, Olga and Nataha replied to another part of the text, which reads:

Friend of French philosophers and foe of Russian serfs, Catherine the Great acquired a collection of fine European paintings with which she adorned the Winter Palace, a treasure-house the empress coyly likened to the retreat of a hermit. Forty-five years after Catherine’s death, the nineteenth-century traveler Johann Georg Kohl noted the preponderance of Netherlandish works in the collection, citing “more unroasted and roasted game, than roasted martyrs; more hares transfixed by the spit of the cook, than St. Sebastians by the arrows of the heathen.” Culinary subjects lost their prominence as Catherine’s successors snatched up masterpieces by Titian, Leonardo, and Raphael; Fragonard, Sisley, and Renoir; Gainsborough, Gauguin, and Friedrich—all of whom are represented in this book of postcards. Under the reign of Joseph Stalin dramatic changes reshaped the Hermitage, as an antibourgeois purge of many works was followed by an influx of art taken as booty by the Red Army during World War II.
Today the Hermitage is incontestably one of the world’s greatest museums. Its doors long open to all, it has not served as a monarch’s private retreat since 1852, when it was first opened to the public. Most recently, satellite Hermitages have popped up in Amsterdam, London, and Las Vegas; one will soon open in Ferrara.

They said:

There is a problem with intro text. It looks funny and even smart, however, unfortunately, it's untrue in most of its statements and cannot be published in a book of postcards which we are going to sell inside the Hermitage museum.
For your guidence, attached please find some texts taken from the official Hermitage web site and from the St Petersburg Rough Guide. We do hope this will be helpful and useful to create something more plausible for this and forthcoming postcard books on the Hermitage collection.

I could only say

I mean, how am I supposed to cope with such boneheads? If they knew a vaulted ceiling from a Gazprom stock offering I'd be willing to enter into a conversation with these ignoramuses but when they fail to identify a single error or inaccuracy in my introduction and summarily reject it I just want to point every anti-ballistic missile in Europe at Saint Petersburg and fire away. I'd crawl over broken glass from Moscow to Khartoum if Olga showed me a single mistake in my introduction.

Cultural Quiz

(1) What is The Gherkin?
(2) Who is William Forsythe?
(3) Why did Elgin want the marbles?
(4) What piece of technology was crucial to the house that Mickey built hard by MoCA?
(5) What book did Philip Roth declare "the best English novel written since the war"?
(6) Which painter wrote a book disproving the myth that van Gogh sold only a single painting in his lifetime?
(7) When did espionage become a subject for serious books and movies?
(8) Name a poet who makes you laugh.
(9) Does anyone write symphonies any more?
(10) Who owns Olivier Messiaen's ondes Martenot?
(11) What is it about Finland?
(12) Which novelist do I refer to as The Pisspot and why?
(13) Is anyone safe?
(14) Which great composer wrote wonderful dance music?
(15) Who has a nice voice?
(16) When all else fails, do a crossover album--ok or not?
(17) Can a movie be exciting without guns or cars or hiphop dancing?
(18) Should painting be decorative?
(19) Should Bill Viola switch to cello?
(20) What is your favorite song?

Faith

I don't want religion, I just want the church dinners and the warm greetings of one hundred of my townsmen on a weekend morning.

Today's music

Mercury Rev "All Is Dream"
Radiohead "Kid A"
Nick Drake "Way to Blue"
Jonathan Richman "You Must Ask the Heart"
Jeff Buckley "Grace"
Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger "Libro quarto d'intavolatura di chitarone"
Josef Haydn "Andante con Variazioni f-moll Op.83 Hob.XVII:6"
"Stan Getz Meets Gerry Mulligan in Hi-Fi"

What I'm reading

Ivanhoe
The Occupation
Wine Snobbery

(just read The Stepford Wives)

O my gawd

Possibly the most hilariously awful dancing ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfGc4wcil2g

Things I don't like

war
new age thinking
Brussels sprouts
cruelty
selfishness
waste
tobacco
bad skin
refusal to confront evil
Liszt
Schumann
Robin Williams
TV
football
baseball
extraordinary renditions
cellular telephones
parties
baseball caps
spring-loaded hair clips
take-out food
coffee breath

Things I like

the walk along the railroad tracks (some madman is making Mark Di Suvero sculpture on a big lot upstream from the feed and hay place)
rowing on Tomales Bay, morning and dusk
nuts
citrus
Eloise and Lucy
dancing
萊陽酥餅
Elephant Rock, between Tomales and Dillon Beach
flowery perfume
making juice with Won Sun and Eloise and Lucy
Musar
Christoffel
traveling with Liz
臺北
spider-leg tea
remembering my dreams
Stan Getz
my vacuum cleaner
walking in San Francisco
hand-me-down clothes
calochortus

The agony of Saint Lambert

A seventh-century Flemish patron of surgeons, Lambert was once sentenced by abbey elders to a night in a snowdrift for breaking his monastic vow of silence: he had farted.

Fantasy

If you could inhabit any creature for a day, another for a week, another for a year, what would they be? For me, a day of being a trout would be enough, a week of being a cheetah would go by in a flash, and a year would permit me to experience all the seasons of a merlin's life. But a year as Michael Stipe would be fun too.

Okay, it's not a hard test, but I love being perfect.

Why Yahoo is losing market share

Hello Sam,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Address Book.

Our engineering team is aware that it is no longer possible to send an email using the nickname only. They are diligently exploring efficient and effective methods that will resolve this issue in as timely a manner as possible. However, there is no timeline for a resolution. We appreciate your patience in this matter.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Regards,

Elizabeth

Yahoo! Customer Care

to the beach

I went to the beach and she wasn't there. I went to the forest and she wasn't there. I went to the mountains and she wasn't there. I went to my house and opened the door and there she was. Together we went to the beach, the forest, the mountains.

The good wrought by imperialism

Buc'hoz, Pierre-Joseph (1731-1807)
Dissertation sur le durion, arbre des Indes orientales, qui donne un fruit bon à manger et qui mérite d'être cultivé dans nos colonies

My income

My gross monthly income is $3,333 per month at Pomegranate. Isn't that a lovely figure!

Title of nobodility

Book I want to write: "Leo Tolstoy and Russian Philoserfy."

I am so not from Chicago, guys

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North   You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Midland
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The South
The West
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

War Powers Resolution of 1973

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution

American Constitution, acticle 1, section 8, in part

Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

To establish post offices and post roads;

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress . . .

Cowardice among the powerful

In today's Financial Times is an excellent opinion piece by Jacob Weisberg, an FT columnist and the editor of Slate.com. Weisberg points out that the constitution of the United States of America very specifically grants the legislative branch sole authority to declare war and the power to create, fund, and regulate the armed forces. The 1973 war powers resolution, Weisberg reminds us, "creates a 60-day period after the onset of hostilities for presidents either to get congressional approval or withdraw troops." Plus, "a provision of the war powers resolution states specifically that the president must remove forces when Congress so orders." This provision was invoked again and again by Republican Congresses under Clinton. So enough with the whining, Democratic senators, the time has come to stop this war.

Renditions

I am reading "Ghost Plane," which opens with an imaginary visit to a secret prison in Damascus that was, in 2002 and 2003, home to a number of suspected terrorists abducted from various places around the globe. These prisoners, tortured daily, were part of the now well publicized CIA covert renditions program authorized by George Bush after September 11. At the same time that he was publicly excoriating Syria for human rights abuses, including torture, Bush was enthusiastically supporting a program that took advantage of the the willingness of the Syrian government to torture terrorists. Or suspected terrorists. Many of whom proved to be innocent, as investigations in Canada and elsewhere have shown. The CIA and the SIS (aka MI5) would fax lists of questions to the interrogators at the Syrian prison. I have a lot more to read.

Remember Haditha

In the vast list of wartime atrocities, Haditha ranks very low, but the remarkable transparency provided by the American media permits us to look closely at a small massacre (fifteen people) to understand how men act in war.

Here are a few passages from the New York Times article of 7 January 2007:

"An American government report on the killing of 24 Iraqis, including several women and children, by marines in the village of Haditha in 2005 provides new details of how the shootings unfolded and supports allegations by prosecutors that a few marines illegally killed civilians, government officials said yesterday.

"The report, by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, contains thousands of pages of interviews with marines, Iraqi Army soldiers who had accompanied them and Iraqi villagers who had seen the attack. The shootings followed a roadside bombing that killed a young lance corporal and wounded two other marines, said a senior Defense Department official and another official who had read the report.

"The evidence contained in the report, the most exhaustive of several inquiries begun by the military last year to determine what happened in Haditha that day, led prosecutors to charge four enlisted marines with murder. Four marine officers, who were not present during the attack, were also charged with dereliction of duty and other crimes for failing to properly report details of the episode.

"The four enlisted men charged with unpremeditated murder, all members of a squad of Company K, Third Battalion, First Marines, are: Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich of Meriden, Conn.; Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz, 24, of Chicago; Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt, 22, of Carbondale, Pa.; and Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, 25, of Edmond, Okla.

"The attack on the Iraqis began after the roadside bomb blew up one of four Humvees the marines were traveling in on Nov. 19, 2005. Minutes after that, the report portrays Sergeant Wuterich, the squad leader, and Sergeant Dela Cruz as killing five men who had nervously piled out of a taxi that had stopped near the marine convoy, the officials said.

"The men 'were shot by Wuterich as they stood, unarmed, next to the vehicle approximately 10 feet in front of him,' the report said, according to a person who has read it.

"Sergeant Dela Cruz said that as he approached the taxi, he saw some men standing near it with their hands in the air, officials said. After Sergeant Wuterich shot them, he continued shooting as they lay on the ground, and later urinated on one of them, an official said.

"The marines, taking small arms fire from several locations near homes on either side of the convoy, attacked a home nearby, killing six people, including a young boy, a woman and two elderly people, none of them armed, the report said, according to officials and people who have read it.

"In one of the houses the marines raided, the report said, a 13-year-old girl, Safah Yunis Salem, said she survived by pretending to be dead after marines killed several family members, including her 3-year-old sister and 5-year-old brother, government officials said."

Martin Scorsese's list

Among the movies to which Scorsese makes admiring mention in "A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies" are the following.

All That Heaven Allows (written by Peg Fenwick, directed by Douglas Sirk, 1955)
All That Jazz (written by Robert Alan Arthur and Bob Fosse, directed by Bob Fosse, 1979)
America, America (written and directed by Elia Kazan, 1963)
Anna Christie (written by Frances Marion from a Eugene O'Neill play, directed by Clarence Brown, 1930)
The Bad and the Beautiful (written by Charles Schnee, directed by Vincente Minnelli, 1952)
The Bandwagon (written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, directed by Vincente Minnelli, 1953)
Barry Lyndon
Bigger Than Life (written by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum and Ray and Mason and others, directed by Nicholas Ray, 1956)
The Big House (written by Frances Marion and others, directed by George Hill, 1930)
The Birth of a Nation
Bonnie and Clyde
Broken Blossoms
The Cameraman
Cat People
Citizen Kane (written by Pauline Kael)
Colorado Territory (written by John Twist and Edmind H. North, directed by Raoul Walsh, 1949)
Crime Wave (written by Crane Wilbur, directed by André de Toth, 1954)
The Crowd (written by King Vidor and others, directed by King Vidor, 1928)
Death's Marathon (written by W. E. Wing, directed by D. W. Griffith, 1931)
Detour
Double Indemnity
Duel in the Sun (written by David O. Selznick, directed by King Vidor and William Dieterle, 1946)
East of Eden
Faces
The Fall of the Roman Empire (written by Ben Barzman and a guy with the wonderful name Basilio Franchina, directed by Anthony Mann, 1964)
Footlight Parade (written by Manuel Seff and James Seymour, directed by Lloyd Bacon, 1933)
Force of Evil (written and directed by Abraham Polonsky, 1948)
42nd Street (written by James Seymour and Rian James, directed by Lloyd Bacon, 1933)
Forty Guns
The Furies
Gold Diggers of 1933 (written by Erwin Gelsey and James Seymour, directed by Mervyn Leroy, 1933)
The Great Dictator
The Great Train Robbery
Gun Crazy
Hell's Highway
Her Man (written by Tom Buckingham, directed by Tay Garnett, 1930)
High Sierra
Intolerance
I Walk Alone
I Walked with a Zombie
Johnny Guitar
Kiss Me Deadly
Land of the Pharoahs
Leave Her to Heaven (written by Jo Swerling, directed by John M. Stahl, 1945)
The Left-Handed Gun (written by Leslie Stevens from a teleplay by Gore Vidal, directed by Arthur Penn, 1958)
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Lolita
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Man with the Golden Arm
Meet Me in Saint Louis
Murder by Contract
The Musketeers of Pig Alley
My Dream Is Yours (written by Harry Kurnitz and Dane Lurrier, directed by Michael Curtiz, 1949)
The Naked Kiss
The Naked Spur
One, Two, Three
On the Waterfront
Outrage (written by Collier Young, Malvin Wald, Ida Lupino, directed by Ida Lupino, 1950)
The Phoenix City Story (written by Crane Wilbur, Daniel Mainwaring, directed by Phil Karlson, 1955)
Pickup on South Street (written and directed by Samuel Fuller, 1953)
Point Blank
The Public Enemy (written by Kubec Glasmon, John Bright, directed by William Wellman, 1931)
Raw Deal (Anthony Mann, 1948)
The Red House (written and directed by Delmer Davies, 1947)
Regeneration (written by Raoul Walsh, Carl Harbaugh, directed by Raoul Walsh, 1915)
The Roaring Twenties (written by Jerry Wald and others, directed by Raoul Walsh, 1939)
The Robe (written by Philip Dunne, directed by Henry Koster, 1953)
Samson and Delilah (written by Jesse Lasky, Jr., Fredric M. Frank, directed by Cecil B. De Mille, 1949)
Scarface (Hawks)
The Scarlet Empress
Scarlet Street
The Searchers
Seventh Heaven (written by Benjamin Glazer, directed by Frank Borzage, 1927)
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
Shock Corridor
Silver Lode (written by Karen De Wolfe, directed by Allan Dwan, 1954)
Some Came Running
Stagecoach
A Star Is Born (written by Moss Hart, directed by George Cukor, 1954)
A Streetcar Named Desire
Sullivan's Travels
Sunrise
Sweet Smell of Success
The Tall T (written by Burt Kennedy, directed by Budd Boetticher, 1957)
The Ten Commandments (1923)
The Ten Commandments (1956)
T-Men (written by John C. Higgins, Anthony Mann, directed by Anthony Mann, 1948)
2001: A Space Odyssey (written by Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Two Weeks in Another Town (written by Charles Schnee, directed by Vincente Minnelli, 1962)
Unforgiven (written by David Webb Peoples, directed by Clint Eastwood, 1992)
The Wedding March (written by Erick von Stroheim, Harry Carr, directed by Erich von Stroheim, 1927)
Wild Boys of the Road (written by Earl Baldwin, directed by William Wellman, 1933)

07.01.01

Morning light is streaming through my front windows, warming me and the cat, lighting up boxes and piles of books and the deserted saucers for the pots still dripping on the back porch. No music, just the susurrus of passing cars and motorcycles and the bass of upstairs voices and shifting furniture. Can the world really be as peaceful as this? Might it be?