Spin your wheel of fortune

This morning occupants of the Tall Building exhibited their carved pumpkins in the downstairs lobby. While there were the creative presentations of a pumpkin turned into a large tortoise, or a pumpkin house squashing striped-stocking feet a la the Wicked Witch of the East, the best pumpkin had to be the spooky merry-go-round "Scare-ousel" from Wells Fargo Consumer Credit Services.

Thanks, Wells Fargo, for taking us on the ride.

We gotta clean up the human being side of town

Though the outcome of this year's presidential campaign hasn't been decided, I really hope that one thing has been revealed: Campaigning for the 51% win isn't a way to lay a foundation for effective governance to address the massive changes we need to make as a nation to maintain any semblance of the quality of life we currently enjoy.

Though we may never reach the people who don't want to be reached- the 29% who think Bush is such a peachy keen Prez of the Ages and the fringe lefties whose identity is consumed by the need to oppose the mainstream no matter where the stream diverts itself- I truly believe that we need to have some sort of consensus to move forward and re-invent the American Dream(s) so that is attainable for a majority of citizens and is less energy and resource consumptive.

This also requires us to redefine economic indicators so that our economic health isn't measured by how severely we bludgeon the earth and deplete valuable resources. Current indicators trumpet how many cars and houses the sausage factory spit out last month to maintain our Sprawl Life, and leave us anxious if the earth had a good month. A steady state economy may seem far-fetched right now, but eventually it may be the only choice we have left. But we have to chose it- more than 51% of us.

Ode to Billy Joel

As Woody Guthrie once spoke for a generation (or a nation, take your pick), an unlikely fellow spoke to us early Gen-Xers when we were growing up. Yes, I'm talking about the Piano Man. Although there are few that would readily admit it, but we didn't have Glass Houses in our record collections because our distaste for modern architecture was aligned with the leather clad man about to hurl a rock through the windows of a bland weekend chalet.

No, we loved Billy Joel because he provided a soundtrack for our school gymnasium dances, girls synchronized swimming routines, and basement party sing-a-longs. I didn't realize this until I looked at the track listing for one of his greatest hits packages that Mrs. B owned. I was amazed. He did so much for me, yet I left him by the side of the road while I trudged along to loftier listening ambitions. Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone, I said.

Despite my negligence, Billy J is undeterred. He's still relevant and hasn't been in the news for a messy divorce or traffic accident for years. I don't need to worry for him, 'cause he's all right.

I found a reason to keep living

It comes from a quote attributed to John Maynard Keynes: "Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking."

A connecting principle linked to the invisible

I don't know if it's just me, and this sort of stuff happens to everyone but they don't make a big deal out of it, but my life is littered- heavily laden I tell you- with coincidences. While I haven't done any statistical analysis of this phenomenon, it appears that simple conjoining of random events could produce this string of events, all of which have occurred in the last week or so:

--I notice that the publisher of one of the kid's books is Troll Publishers. That's odd, I think, because that's my grandmother's maiden name and it does not have wide currency. (Dear Reader, I can see you smirking out there and asking when we moved out from underneath the bridge. It's a German name and we pronounced it "trawl." So there.) I wonder if it's a family business and if we're related to that family. The next day I do some research and find out that Troll Publishing has been absorbed by the Scholastic Book empire. Then the day after that, the kids bring home a Scholastic Book catalog.

--On the iPod I hear Dylan doing "This Land is Your Land." The next song, randomly played from a set of over 10,000 songs, is Woody's version of the song.

--I come from a humble suburb of Cleveland. On a single day I read the name of the suburb in a mid-90s American novel and a research paper on transit-oriented development.

--I've thinking lately about how I used to travel the Money road, which folks said at night was a dangerous road because of the risk of running into a drunk driver. (Money, MS was where Emmitt Till met his tragic end.) So today I read that the town is in the news again because to some folks what happened in 1955 still makes them uncomfortable.

See what I mean? Is it just me, or does this regularly happen to everybody? Well, I guess it happened to Jung with enough frequency that he developed his concept of synchronicity around it.

Here comes the sun

A 5MW solar thermal plant went on line today in California- the first new one in 20 years.

Through the eyes of a child

"Nobody around here is voting for Senator McCain and Senator Palin. Senator Obama is going to win. I just know it."
-K, age 5

Saw her today at the reception

I imagine that Ms. Palin envisions her first day of being in charge of the Senate like a debutante party, similar to how Emily Post describes it in "Etiquette": "It is your evening, and you are a sort of little princess! There is music, and there are lights, and there are flowers everywhere … all for you! Up the wide staircase come throngs of fashionables ... on purpose to bow to you!"

I wonder if she's printed invitations yet.

Come Sail Away

While riding home today, I saw the Pedal Cloud parked in a front yard!

Johnny Too Bad

The underlying meme for conquest in the 2004 presidential race, scribed by the mysterious Men by the Curtain, was "certainty." Resoluteness was seen as the pre-emptory leadership quality for our national leader. Although stubborness without accompanying good judgement seemed to me a virtue more appropriate for when a South-going Zax meets a North-going Zax, millions of voters dutifully absorbed this message and re-elected G. Bush to a second term.

It is of course too early to state unequivocably the victory meme of our current presidential campaign, but the fear of imminent terrorist acts and gut certainty are not a big part of the conversation. If I could hazard a guess based on the current state of the race, the big meme is composure- who will act responsibly and prudently in the midst of a crisis and provide stability, or at least project the aura of stability. In this arena, Sen. McCain fails miserably.

Between his campaign "suspension" historionics, racist demogogue impressions by his running mate, and outright lies, he is not running with a Zax mentality but more like the Cat in the Hat who arrives unannounced and creates havoc on unsuspecting house caretakers.

John McCain, will you please go now!

ps. and on a not entirely off-topic note: Alton Ellis died. May he rock steady in peace.

Thane to the Throne

The political campaign season incites a whole host of horrors and stupidities, particularly evidenced by campaigns in their last throes. But rarely do campaigns inspire the sort of brilliance that will last long after the ballot boxes are toted away. This post sets the stage for all that is comic and tragic in the McCain/Palin Scare Talk Express.

Sons of northern darkness

I can't imagine that the scions of Wall Street ever thought they would have to learn Swedish.

Now I've got a recipe for hate

Sarahcuda has taken off her gloves (and hood) and the Hatefest roadshow continues.

When the levee breaks

William Alexander Percy's autobiography "Lanterns on the Levee" contains passages that chart the rise of resentful poor whites who overthrow the paternalistic plantation landowner class from elected offices. As a teenager in 1910 Percy witnessed a crowd of poor Mississippi whites who had assembled to listen to his father, a member of the planter ruling class, speak in his campaign for US Senate. Percy describes them as "the sort of people that lynch Negroes, that mistake hoodlumism for wit, and cunning for intelligence, that attend revivals and fight and fornicate in the bushes afterwards. They were the undiluted Anglo-Saxons. They were the sovereign voter. It was so horrible that it seemed unreal."

Even though one hundred years have passed, the current tactics of the McCain/Palin campaign show that the same ingredients- demagoguery, hatred of the "other", and baseless accusations-can be manipulated to whip the right crowd into a frenzy.

Calamity John comes to town

Due to a scheduled McCain/Palin appearance at the city center, a school district in suburban Cleveland is cancelling a half-day of classes for students. The local news report: "A school district spokeswoman said the half-day will not be counted as a calamity day."

And the silence was astounding

It is a much repeated axiom that what isn't said/played is as important or more important than what is said/played, whether it's prose, politics or music. I don't think I've experienced this so acutely on a few recordings that begin with a slight stir- a brush on strings or tinkle on a piano-such the initial songs of Sufjan Steven's Illinois or the Mountain Goats' Get Lonely. I felt those intimate beginnings just suck the wind out of my lungs and I had to gasp to recover and wonder: what in the hell happened?

In a similar vein, the quietness is equally compelling when restraint far exceeds the volume, as on Slint's Spiderland. I mean, those dudes were in a third tier southern midwestern town(Sorry, Louisville shares more with Cincinnati than Memphis) in the nascent years of "grunge." They either should've been worshipping Pavement or Amphetamine Reptile bands. So they release this thing that has melody, roars, and has this oroboros ability to snake around and eat it its tail. I guess Tortoise coming out of its shell wasn't that unprecedented.