Best commencement speech ever

Someone recently posted this on a cartoonists blog, along with a second link, which I found was dead. So rather than link to the other link, which could also go dead at some point, I'll just republish it here. This is a brilliant speech that all young people should hear, though perhaps it's one of those things that only makes sense once you've been thrashed for not having known it already.

Speech by Bill Watterson

Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, to the 1990 graduating class.
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE REAL WORLD BY ONE WHO GLIMPSED IT AND FLED

Bill Watterson
Kenyon College Commencement
May 20, 1990

I have a recurring dream about Kenyon. In it, I’m walking to the post office on the way to my first class at the start of the school year. Suddenly it occurs to me that I don’t have my schedule memorized, and I’m not sure which classes I’m taking, or where exactly I’m supposed to be going.

As I walk up the steps to the postoffice, I realize I don’t have my box key, and in fact, I can’t remember what my box number is. I’m certain that everyone I know has written me a letter, but I can’t get them. I get more flustered and annoyed by the minute. I head back to Middle Path, racking my brains and asking myself, “How many more years until I graduate? …Wait, didn’t I graduate already?? How old AM I?” Then I wake up.

Experience is food for the brain. And four years at Kenyon is a rich meal. I suppose it should be no surprise that your brains will probably burp up Kenyon for a long time. And I think the reason I keep having the dream is because its central image is a metaphor for a good part of life: that is, not knowing where you’re going or what you’re doing.

I graduated exactly ten years ago. That doesn’t give me a great deal of experience to speak from, but I’m emboldened by the fact that I can’t remember a bit of MY commencement, and I trust that in half an hour, you won’t remember of yours either.

In the middle of my sophomore year at Kenyon, I decided to paint a copy of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” from the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of my dorm room. By standing on a chair, I could reach the ceiling, and I taped off a section, made a grid, and started to copy the picture from my art history book.

Working with your arm over your head is hard work, so a few of my more ingenious friends rigged up a scaffold for me by stacking two chairs on my bed, and laying the table from the hall lounge across the chairs and over to the top of my closet. By climbing up onto my bed and up the chairs, I could hoist myself onto the table, and lie in relative comfort two feet under my painting. My roommate would then hand up my paints, and I could work for several hours at a stretch.

The picture took me months to do, and in fact, I didn’t finish the work until very near the end of the school year. I wasn’t much of a painter then, but what the work lacked in color sense and technical flourish, it gained in the incongruity of having a High Renaissance masterpiece in a college dorm that had the unmistakable odor of old beer cans and older laundry.

The painting lent an air of cosmic grandeur to my room, and it seemed to put life into a larger perspective. Those boring, flowery English poets didn’t seem quite so important, when right above my head God was transmitting the spark of life to man.

My friends and I liked the finished painting so much in fact, that we decided I should ask permission to do it. As you might expect, the housing director was curious to know why I wanted to paint this elaborate picture on my ceiling a few weeks before school let out. Well, you don’t get to be a sophomore at Kenyon without learning how to fabricate ideas you never had, but I guess it was obvious that my idea was being proposed retroactively. It ended up that I was allowed to paint the picture, so long as I painted over it and returned the ceiling to normal at the end of the year. And that’s what I did.

Despite the futility of the whole episode, my fondest memories of college are times like these, where things were done out of some inexplicable inner imperative, rather than because the work was demanded. Clearly, I never spent as much time or work on any authorized art project, or any poli sci paper, as I spent on this one act of vandalism.

It’s surprising how hard we’ll work when the work is done just for ourselves. And with all due respect to John Stuart Mill, maybe utilitarianism is overrated. If I’ve learned one thing from being a cartoonist, it’s how important playing is to creativity and happiness. My job is essentially to come up with 365 ideas a year.

If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood. I’ve found that the only way I can keep writing every day, year after year, is to let my mind wander into new territories. To do that, I’ve had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness.

We’re not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery-it recharges by running.

You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of “just getting by: absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your politics and religion become matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people’s expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury.

At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you’ll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, you’ll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, you’ll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.

For me, it’s been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity. I’ve been amazed at how one ideas leads to others if I allow my mind to play and wander. I know a lot about dinosaurs now, and the information has helped me out of quite a few deadlines.

A playful mind is inquisitive, and learning is fun. If you indulge your natural curiosity and retain a sense of fun in new experience, I think you’ll find it functions as a sort of shock absorber for the bumpy road ahead.

So, what’s it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don’t recommend it.

I don’t look back on my first few years out of school with much affection, and if I could have talked to you six months ago, I’d have encouraged you all to flunk some classes and postpone this moment as long as possible. But now it’s too late.

Unfortunately, that was all the advice I really had. When I was sitting where you are, I was one of the lucky few who had a cushy job waiting for me. I’d drawn political cartoons for the Collegian for four years, and the Cincinnati Post had hired me as an editorial cartoonist. All my friends were either dreading the infamous first year of law school, or despondent about their chances of convincing anyone that a history degree had any real application outside of academia.

Boy, was I smug.

As it turned out, my editor instantly regretted his decision to hire me. By the end of the summer, I’d been given notice; by the beginning of winter, I was in an unemployment line; and by the end of my first year away from Kenyon, I was broke and living with my parents again. You can imagine how upset my dad was when he learned that Kenyon doesn’t give refunds.

Watching my career explode on the lauchpad caused some soul searching. I eventually admitted that I didn’t have what it takes to be a good political cartoonist, that is, an interest in politics, and I returned to my firs love, comic strips.

For years I got nothing but rejection letters, and I was forced to accept a real job.

A REAL job is a job you hate. I designed car ads and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store, and I hated every single minute of the 4-1/2 million minutes I worked there. My fellow prisoners at work were basically concerned about how to punch the time clock at the perfect second where they would earn another 20 cents without doing any work for it.

It was incredible: after every break, the entire staff would stand around in the garage where the time clock was, and wait for that last click. And after my used car needed the head gasket replaced twice, I waited in the garage too.

It’s funny how at Kenyon, you take for granted that the people around you think about more than the last episode of Dynasty. I guess that’s what it means to be in an ivory tower.

Anyway, after a few months at this job, I was so starved for some life of the mind that, during my lunch break, I used to read those poli sci books that I’d somehow never quite finished when I was here. Some of those books were actually kind of interesting. It was a rude shock to see just how empty and robotic life can be when you don’t care about what you’re doing, and the only reason you’re there is to pay the bills.

Thoreau said, “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

That’s one of those dumb cocktail quotations that will strike fear in your heart as you get older. Actually, I was leading a life of loud desperation.

When it seemed I would be writing about “Midnite Madness Sale-abrations” for the rest of my life, a friend used to console me that cream always rises to the top. I used to think, so do people who throw themselves into the sea.

I tell you all this because it’s worth recognizing that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, yes, this is obviously where I was going all along. It’s a good idea to try to enjoy the scenery on the detours, because you’ll probably take a few.

I still haven’t drawn the strip as long as it took me to get the job. To endure five years of rejection to get a job requires either a faith in oneself that borders on delusion, or a love of the work. I loved the work.

Drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn’t in the money; it was in the work. This turned out to be an important realization when my break finally came.

Like many people, I found that what I was chasing wasn’t what I caught. I’ve wanted to be a cartoonist since I was old enough to read cartoons, and I never really thought about cartoons as being a business. It never occurred to me that a comic strip I created would be at the mercy of a bloodsucking corporate parasite called a syndicate, and that I’d be faced with countless ethical decisions masquerading as simple business decisions.

To make a business decision, you don’t need much philosophy; all you need is greed, and maybe a little knowledge of how the game works.

As my comic strip became popular, the pressure to capitalize on that popularity increased to the point where I was spending almost as much time screaming at executives as drawing. Cartoon merchandising is a $12 billion dollar a year industry and the syndicate understandably wanted a piece of that pie. But the more I though about what they wanted to do with my creation, the more inconsistent it seemed with the reasons I draw cartoons.

Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you’re really buying into someone else’s system of values, rules and rewards.

The so-called “opportunity” I faced would have meant giving up my individual voice for that of a money-grubbing corporation. It would have meant my purpose in writing was to sell things, not say things. My pride in craft would be sacrificed to the efficiency of mass production and the work of assistants. Authorship would become committee decision. Creativity would become work for pay. Art would turn into commerce. In short, money was supposed to supply all the meaning I’d need.

What the syndicate wanted to do, in other words, was turn my comic strip into everything calculated, empty and robotic that I hated about my old job. They would turn my characters into television hucksters and T-shirt sloganeers and deprive me of characters that actually expressed my own thoughts.

On those terms, I found the offer easy to refuse. Unfortunately, the syndicate also found my refusal easy to refuse, and we’ve been fighting for over three years now. Such is American business, I guess, where the desire for obscene profit mutes any discussion of conscience.

You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts of your lives, both personal and professional. We all have different desires and needs, but if we don’t discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled. Sooner or later, we are all asked to compromise ourselves and the things we care about. We define ourselves by our actions. With each decision, we tell ourselves and the world who we are. Think about what you want out of this life, and recognize that there are many kinds of success.

Many of you will be going on to law school, business school, medical school, or other graduate work, and you can expect the kind of starting salary that, with luck, will allow you to pay off your own tuition debts within your own lifetime.

But having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another.

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential - as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.

Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it’s going to come in handy all the time.

I think you’ll find that Kenyon touched a deep part of you. These have been formative years. Chances are, at least one of your roommates has taught you everything ugly about human nature you ever wanted to know.

With luck, you’ve also had a class that transmitted a spark of insight or interest you’d never had before. Cultivate that interest, and you may find a deeper meaning in your life that feeds your soul and spirit. Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you’ve learned, but in the questions you’ve learned how to ask yourself.

Graduating from Kenyon, I suspect you’ll find yourselves quite well prepared indeed.
I wish you all fulfillment and happiness. Congratulations on your achievement.

Urban Life

So here we are in the city. Granted, Lebanon, New Hampshire, (population 12,568) isn't much of a city, but if you figure that Zee and I have lived for the most part in farm houses and lakeside cottages, it's pretty exciting stuff.

The slightly darker brick building in the left background is the post office; the lighter-colored brick building directly at the back is the library. They both front on the green, which is the center of town and home to all sorts of festivals in the summer. I can walk not only to my mail and to books, but to my bank, to a grocery store and to a couple of different restaurants, yet I'm a block removed from whatever hub-bub might be generated on a town square that looks like something out of "Back to the Future."

And, today, the wolf-killer and the lion-hunter finally met.

My landlord lives in the front half of the building, and his dog is a Kangal, which is a huge (35 inches tall, 170 pound) Turkish shepherd, noted for its ability to protect sheep in the wilds of Anatolia. My dog is a well-muscled but much smaller 80 pound dog noted for bringing lions to bay in South Africa. What would happen when they came face-to-face?

Well, they're both farm dogs with good judgment. They looked each other over, came somewhat close to touching noses and said, "Yes? What?"

I suppose if some threat came along that was neither a wolf nor a lion, they might have some discussion over who should save the household, but, barring that, they don't seem very interested in talking about turf issues. That's Zee enjoying the sunshine, that's Battal's fenced area in the background, though we've only seen him in there once. And Zee didn't much care then, nor did he.

Meanwhile, I'm working for the Denver Post, editing their once-a-week children's supplement. Here's the front page of a recent issue, chosen not-at-random because it includes an interview with Wimpy Kid author Jeff Kinney. I think you can get a better look by clicking on the image.

The concept is for the piece to be youth-written and we have so far done a pretty good job. In this issue, both Page One stories were written by eighth graders; in the current issue, three of the six stories are written by kids. What I find most encouraging is that I do very little editing; less than I have done with professional journalists at my last two "straight" editing jobs. These kids are talented!

What I find a little scary is that most of the stories are by eighth graders, who will become ineligible to participate in September, when they become ninth graders and thus too old. However, since the publication has flourished for five years, I'm not going to panic. I have a very good boss-and-collaborator in Denver who has a grip on the system.

This is not a high paying gig, and, in fact, it's basically a part-time gig. But I'm happy with a beans-and-rice existence, and this sure beats heck out of shifting deck chairs on the Titanic, which seems to be the journalistic alternative these days.

Besides, I don't have to worry about wolves OR lions anymore. And I can, by long experience, handle the jackals myself.

Cussing in the press

( not a post for the readily offended)

Here is an intelligent discussion from the Guardian about the use of profanity in newspapers, or, more accurately, in their newspaper, which eschews asterisks in favor of a policy of either quoting a person or not quoting them.  Don't click if you don't want to see some naughty words. In fact, don't read any farther in this post if you don't want to see some naughty words.

The graphic above, tracing the rise of profanity in the Guardian, comes from a separate blog post and was referenced in the comments, which are far more interesting than comments at most news sites and are (thus) worth reading.

I agree with the Guardian writer, not only because I already felt that way but because he quotes Charlotte Bronte in his defense. Anyone who can quote Charlotte Bronte in defense of writing "fuck" has my vote right off the bat.

At the same time, I'd offer two observations:

1. As a reporter, it's unfair to use vulgarities yourself while conducting an interview, enticing your subject to also use vulgarities, and then quote him accurately without peppering a representative number of your own throughout the article to capture the tone of the discussion. It's entrapment, causing him to be depicted as someone who routinely goes blue in settings where others would not.

2. When I was in college, only a few years past the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, my father sent me an article from either Harper's or the Atlantic Monthly about the rise of vulgarity, with the intriguing question, "If you say &*%$E##& in public, what do you say to a flat tire in the middle of the Golden Gate bridge at rush hour?" Alas, I am quoting from memory. Would love to read the piece again 40 years later and see how I feel about it now. But there is something to be said for reserving a few truly special expressions for those truly special moments.


Finally, just on the off-chance of confounding an assumption or two, I found this article referenced at Al Jazeera, in a posting about Malaysia's apparent loosening of language restrictions, specifically its non-censoring of the vulgarity-laden film "Kick-Ass."

Interview with an Earth Day organizer

I’m editing a weekly children’s publication for the Denver Post these days, and we did an Earth Day issue in which, on the front page, the young reporters talked about what they do (not “ought to do”) to help the environment, while I interviewed Morey Wolfson, who had been the organizer of the 1970 Earth Day observance in Denver. Morey is now the Transmission Program Manager at the Governor's Energy Office and has been (or still is, in some cases) Executive Assistant to the Commissioners at the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, a member of NREL's Federal Energy Management Program Team, member of the CRES Board of Directors, Solar Program Manager for the Colorado Energy Science Center, and sustainability consultant to David Owen Tryba Architects. I didn’t get to use much of this interview in the paper, so thought I’d share it here.

So how old were you when this happened, and how did it happen?

I was 24. I was involved in student government at Colorado University Denver, and student governments across the country were contacted by the national organizers. We looked at it and several of us saw that a lot of students at CU Denver were starting to think creatively about the environment. As it was, we had the third largest indoor event in the country at Currigan Hall. We had about 5,000 people there, and Senator Gaylord Nelson, who was the person who had started it all, came and spoke to us.

Nelson spoke there? That’s not bad!

It was a very good turnout. A lot of people bicycled in, and it was a young crowd. There were quite a few high school students whose teachers had looked at it and decided to let them leave school if they promised that they were going to go down to Currigan Hall. And there were a lot of college students, and a lot of just environmentally interested people.

This was more of a teach-in than a demonstration most places. Was that the case in Denver?

Yes, there were a bunch of speakers, and a lot of them were older people who were berating the younger people for not being more concerned with the environment. But it was a real mix of different kinds of concerns.

It’s hard to believe how little regulation there was in those days, until Nixon started the EPA.

They consolidated under the EPA a lot of very small and fractured governmental groups, and there were all these monumental laws being passed in '69, '70, '71, things that we now take for granted, 40 years later. It was a different period.

The Platte River was an open sewer. I'm a fourth generation Denverite, and I remember the big flood that wiped out the South Platte (in 1965), and, at that time, there were a lot of factories that used the river as a place to dump their effluents.Today you can go down on the riverwalk, and I'm not sure I'd put my kids in the water, but people do and you can do that today.

I kind of get the impression that, in subsequent years, there was more clean-up and fewer speeches on Earth Day.

I was involved in the activities over the following years for about five years, and, what we did in the following years was that we weren't holding teach-ins. It was more of the community clean up sorts of things. You'd see school children and community groups like Rotary organizing community clean up projects. I think it took the first Earth Day to get people to concentrate on the environment, and each year it grew from there.

It set forth a credibility, and I also think it was something that the older generation could relate to better. Parents could say to their kid, well, okay, you're only 14, but you can go get involved in this kind of counter-culture movement, because there was no element of “patriotism” involved. And I think people did start thinking more about the environment.

A lot of things stemmed from Earth Day and will for a long time. A lot of observers feel that it was a monumental part of American history because it helped set out the thought that allowed American people to show an example to the world.

One of the things I find, as we all get older, is that my friends who were in the Movement haven’t sold out, that the idea that the hippies all cut their hair and went to Wall Street is a lie. They’re teachers, social workers, they’re working with government agencies, they’re still trying to make things better.

I find that a lot of people I've come to know over time who are now involved in public service were inspired by not just Earth Day but by the women's movement, the Hispanic movement, the African-American movement. I think 1965 to 1975 was a period when a lot of these things were all coming together, and the people who were involved in those times were learning to find their voices and they continue now not in "protest" but because, as they grew older, they have gotten into positions of authority.

Was that first Earth Day a “protest” or a “demonstration”?

I think there was more "protest" later. I don't think we were as informed about the details at the time, and, you know, you protest after three or four years of trying, trying, trying, then you protest because you don't feel you're getting anywhere. But we weren't yet in that "we're sick and tired of this" place back then.

There were some powerful things that went on then. That picture of Spaceship Earth, which I think is one of the most viewed photographs ever, was on the front page of magazines, and then you have the man on the moon and Woodstock. I think the pump had been primed, and then you had the Santa Barbara oil spill and DDT issues, and the fact that Congress was moving to pass environmental laws, but it was all at the federal level and we needed legislation at the state level in order for it to work.

So, was it fun?

I had a lot of fun, yeah! It got a lot of people together, we had parties, and we had a lot of stuff to talk about after we pulled it off. Yeah, it was fun!

Fair, balanced, dishonest, incompetent

This would be funny if there weren't a lot of people for whom Fox News is their main source of information. The classic question arises: Is he a fool or a knave? Did Bill O'Reilly actually try to research examples and come up with nothing, in which case he is an idiot? Or is he simply lying because he knows his audience will believe anything he says, in which case, he is consciously undermining honest debate?

In the end, of course, it doesn't really matter. People believe him, and they vote accordingly.

He reports. They decide. And anyone sitting on their hands will simply have to live with the results.

Leonard Cohen at his best

Of religion, culture and productivity (updated)

I've been a little remiss in keeping up with Richard Henry Dana's blog over at "Two Years Before the Mast" and hope to do some formatting and scheduling so it will update more regularly.

Meanwhile, if you haven't visited or haven't done so lately, the current piece is well worth a look. Dana seems to vacillate between scorn for the unproductive crews of ships from Italy, Mexican California and the Sandwich Islands and envy of their more frequent holidays and liberties.

Here's a sample, but the rest is very much worth a read. The crew of the Pilgrim is aloft tarring the ship on the Monday after Easter:

After breakfast, we had the satisfaction of seeing the Italian ship's boat go ashore, filled with men, gayly dressed, as on the day before, and singing their barcarollas. The Easter holidays are kept up on shore for three days; and, being a Catholic vessel, her crew had the advantage of them. For two successive days, while perched up in the rigging, covered with tar and engaged in our disagreeable work, we saw these fellows going ashore in the morning, and coming off again at night, in high spirits.

So much for being Protestants. There's no danger of Catholicism's spreading in New England, unless the Church cuts down her holidays; Yankees can't afford the time. American shipmasters get nearly three weeks' more labor out of their crews, in the course of a year, than the masters of vessels from Catholic countries. As Yankees don't usually keep Christmas, and shipmasters at sea never know when Thanksgiving comes, Jack has no festival at all.

PS -- In other blog news, Weekly Storybook is now featuring oral histories from the WPA Writers Project. The current story is a droll recounting by his son of a preacher's inglorious attempt to eke out a second income as a Nebraska farmer in the 19th century.

The town they have loved so well

This report on the upcoming offensive against the Taliban in Kandahar is remarkable in that it does not show a background of mud huts and people with donkeys. Is it "bias" for Al Jazeera to show a modern city, or "bias" of other media to consistently depict Afghanistan as a 14th century nation?

I don't know and I don't much care. It's easier to wage war against a people who are nothing like you, but, then, the media for the most part couldn't conspire to order a pizza. Maybe it's a conspiracy, maybe it's incompetence, maybe it's a simple matter of showing what your in-country guides take you to see in the first place.

In any case, it's important to remember that, in whatever country at whatever time, a town in the middle of trouble is still someone's hometown. Here's a song written and sung by Phil Coulter about his hometown, Derry, that I'll bet plenty of people in Kandhahar and Kabul and Baghdad and Fallujah could identify with about now.

And now, a better look at animals

If you've never been to a stock show, join Houston Texans' tight end Joel Dreessen and defensive end Tim Bulman at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.

Dreessen grew up in Fort Morgan, on the eastern plains of Colorado, and he can play the wide-eyed novice here, but I'm guessing, to turn the saying to a literal truth, that this ain't his first rodeo.

Bulman, on the other hand, is from Massachusetts and maybe that's why he lets Dreessen do most of the talking.

I'm doing some freelance work for the Denver Post these days and this video just increases my determination to fly out there next January for the Stock Show. The nicest kids in the world exhibit at these things, and there's also an abundance of fried foods that you should never, ever eat. But, of course, out of sheer politeness ...

I've got nothing to add

Peruvian surfer Domingo Pianezzi rides a wave with his alpaca Pisco at San Bartolo beach in Lima, March 16, 2010.   Credit: REUTERS/Pilar Olivares

The best  investment of six minutes you'll make all week

Planxty

Okay, I can't let the day pass unacknowledged. Here's Planxty, a short-lived Irish supergroup. If you've never heard them, you've never heard anything like them. There are other groups with good musical talent, there are others who have a genuine love for the form. There's never been anyone else who ever could blend the talent with the joie de vivre. Liam O'Flynn's work on the uilleann pipes in this song is beyond joy and mastery.

There's not an Irish musician who doesn't pause and look at his feet at the mention of Planxty. They are at once exhilarating and inspiring and absolutely humbling. Their like will not be seen again.

Give a listen.

A diller, a dollar, a dithering

I haven't had a clear view yet of the president's plan to reform education. Perhaps it's brilliant, or perhaps it's another case of a person thinking that, because he's eaten in a restaurant, he's qualified to be a chef.

In anticipation, then, here are some things that nobody with the power to make things happen will bear in mind but that might make a difference in our educational system:

1. Cohort testing. I was at a gathering in Strong, Maine, at a blue-ribbon school, with the faculty and Senator Susan Collins, and this was raised as a major factor in testing. You can't judge this year's fourth grade against last year's fourth grade. It's not fair and it doesn't tell you what you need to know. You need to follow each group as they move through the system. How did this group do in fourth grade, compared to the progress they made in third grade the year before? Collins said she, and her fellow-senator Olympia Snowe, were aware of this issue and wanted it to be part of the re-authorization. Okay, time to step up.

2. An end to hazing of new teachers. This is not a problem everywhere, but it's certainly an issue at a lot of schools, and it has an impact on educational attainment. To begin with, we lose some potentially good teachers because they are hazed instead of mentored. They are deprived of classroom space, they are shuttled to the least desireable assignments, they are given the worst schedules, because they are lowest on the totem pole. That's wrong.

But more to the point, the problem of seniority is that too often, the hardest kids are left to the least experienced teachers. You can't show "adequate yearly progress" when the kids who drag down the school's average are being taught by novices. It is natural enough that more senior teachers would rather not have to deal with the unteachables. But that's what experience is for, and it's not right, it's not fair and it's not good sense to leave the hardest assignments to the faculty members with the least experience. Share the burden, my brothers and sisters.

3. Teach kids stuff they want to know. One common element of other nations' educational systems is that they recognize a difference between engineers and poets. The Big Lie told in American circles is that this system "locks kids in" before they are old enough to know what they really want out of life.

It is not just a lie, but a damned lie, because it is a lie that hurts kids and hurts our educational system. About two years ago, I met with a group of some two dozen exchange students, from at least three continents and a variety of nations that ranged from Serbia to Venezuela to Turkey to Vietnam, and I asked them about the tracking systems in their education. If you were in an engineering program and you decided you wanted a liberal arts education instead, what would happen? They shrugged and said that you would talk to your guidance counselor and you would switch. One of them (one of the two Turks, I think) laughed and said that, if you kept switching back and forth, there might be a problem, and they all laughed at that. But they were flummoxed by the idea that you couldn't change your mind. Of course you could change your mind. You're a kid, after all.

4. College for all is a bogus misdirection. On one hand, it is nonsense to prescribe "college for all" because not everybody needs to know much about Shakespeare. On the other hand, "college" has come to mean any large building with desks and a whiteboard. We need to get clear on what we mean by a K-16 educational system.

To begin with, if it takes 17 years to build an educational portfolio that will get you a job, then we need to make it equitable. All kids, regardless of family fortune, must be able to reach the bottom rung of the ladder, and if that is Grade 16, then let's support that much education. When it only took a "grade school" (i.e, 8th grade) education, we paid for that much, as an investment. And when a high school diploma became the lowest common denominator, we paid for that, too.

The process whereby people get that necessary BA, without which you cannot get an interview,  and end up with thousands of dollars of debt is completely immoral. If it is the base requirement, then we, as a society, have an obligation to invest in our future and make that the hallmark. When college was a frill, it was up to the student to pay for it. But if we are going to dictate college as the base requirement, then we have to pony up and invest in our future.

Which brings us to what I've heard so far: The President wants all students to end up at a point where they are ready for college.

To which I say, okay. But those who call the tune must pay the piper, and it's not fair to call a tune and then charge the dancers for trying to keep up.

Bulgaria Has Talent

Wretches with knotted knickers

I don't want to spoil this by detailing my own response. However, I cannot resist observing that the comments at the end of this outraged blog post seem pretty much divided between the ink-stained wretches and those who are, instead, stained by hair spray.

What's your reaction?

Okay, so it's a commercial.

First of all, I want to apologize to my fellow orcas, my trainers and all the people at Sea World who have been so supportive through all this. I realize that I cannot undo the damage that I have done to all the great things they have worked for so many years to achieve, and I am very sorry.

I also want to apologize to Dawn and to her family and friends. We had worked together for several years and I had no intention of doing anything to harm her or the relationship we had built. She was very special to me and will be impossible to ever replace, although I understand there are applications in the back of the room.

And I'd like to thank the ownership of Sea World for being so understanding throughout this ordeal and for supporting me at a very difficult time. They have gone out of their way to help me to do everything I can to make amends for this tragic event by filling the seats of Shamu Stadium as often as I possibly can in the weeks, months and, I hope, years to come.

However, before I resume my work here, I need to take some time to reassess my responses to certain stimuli and to undergo some impulse control therapy, and I hope that my fans will understand if it is a week or two before I am able to perform for them again.

Finally, I'd like to thank my wives and 14 children for standing by me. I want to apologize to them for the hurt that I have caused them through my own thoughtless actions, and I'd like to ask the press to please respect the privacy of my family throughout this difficult process, except when they are performing, at which time I hope you will take many photographs that can be licensed for promotional uses.

Thank you all for coming and, again, I am very sorry for everything that has happened and very eager to put this behind me and get back to work making Sea World the most exciting display of captive marine mammals anywhere in the world. Don't forget to stop in the gift shop on your way out.

And now, this message ...

Okay, it's a commercial. But it's a pretty interesting commercial from a guy who, until a couple of years ago, never did interviews or talked about his work. I know this because I did a series of interviews with cartoonists who were carried in the paper where I was then working, and he was the only one who turned me down, though he did so very politely.

Which means that I look at things like this and think, "If I'd only done that series about three years later, I'd have had the complete set of artists ..."

In any case, it's a commercial for something my handful of readers might actually want.

Moderate schools of Islam face pressure

It's worth remembering that not all of Islam is militant. In fact, most Muslims are not. In this report, students at a Sufi school in Yemen talk about their studies, and about the pressure their schools face under the eye of a critical Western world that sees the growth of al Qaeda in the area and does not understand or differentiate between types of Islam.

Here's a graphic I did just after 9/11 as part of my educational work at the Post-Star in Glens Falls, NY. We offered it to other papers and several published it in the days following that disaster. I don't know if it will blow up enough in a new window to be legible, but, if you click on it, you'll at least have a better chance of reading it.

 Your Time Will Come

Johnny Clegg and Savuka (1993)

WAQAMB' AMANGA MUS' UKUQAMB' AMANGA

[you were lying, do not tell lies]

WANGI QAMBELA AMANGA UFUNA UKUNGILAHLISA

ITHEMBA LAMI WEMAME!

[You told lies, trying to mislead me,

so that I would give up my faith and hope.]

WASHO NJALO! WATHI IKUSASA LETHU

SELIMNYAMA HAWU WASI QAMBELA AMANGA

[that is what you said -- you said that our future is hopeless,

our tomorrow is bleak, you were lying,

trying to mislead us]

NGEKE SIVUMA -- NGEKE SILAHLA ITEMBA

[No can do! we will never relinquish our faith]

Chorus:

KUZULONGA UKUTHI NINI? ASAZI!

[Everything will be all right --

It's just when this will be, we cannot know]

KUZOLONGA WENA 'MNGANE WAMI

[Everything will come right, I tell you friend]]

MASUKU LAHLA ITHEMBA LAKHO

[Do not throw away your hope]

MINA NGAPHA WENA NGAPHA SIZOYI BAMBA

[Me holding on one side, you holding on the other side

together we will pull through]

THINA NAWE, THINA NAWE

[you and me, you and me]

UMOYA WAMI ONAKELE

[my spirits are down]

WENA WEMTAKA ANTIE HAWU WANGI SHAYISA UVALO

[I say to you child of my aunt, you have caused me great fear]

WASHO NJALO! WATHI IKUSASA LETHU

SELIMNYAMA HAWU WASI QAMBELA AMANGA

[You told lies, trying to mislead me,

so that I would give up my faith and hope.]

WASHO NJALO! WATHI IKUSASA LETHU

SELIMNYAMA HAWU WASI QAMBELA AMANGA

[that is what you said -- you said that our future is hopeless,

our tomorrow is bleak, you were lying,

trying to mislead us]

NGEKE SIVUMA -- NGEKE SILAHLA ITEMBA

[No can do! we will never relinquish our faith]

Chorus:

KUZULONGA UKUTHI NINI? ASAZI!

[Everything will be all right --

It's just when this will be, we cannot know]

KUZOLONGA WENA 'MNGANE WAMI

[Everything will come right, I tell you friend]

KUZOLONGA 'MNGANE WAMI NGIYAKUTSHELA

[It will be all right my friend, I'm telling you]

WOZA WESIBINDI! UYAPHILISA UYABULALA

[come true courage, for it is you who gives

life and takes it away

MINA NGAPHA -- WENA NGAPHA SIZOYIBAMBA

[me on this side, you on the other,

we will hold it together]

UNGALALLELI LAW' AMANGA 'MNGANE WAMI

[don't listen to the lies of my compatriot]

OH SIZOBAHLULA THINA NAWA

[we will be victorious in the end, just you and me]

OH THINA NAMA

[just you and me]

I saw the Berlin Wall fall

I saw Mandela walk free

I saw a dream whose time has come

Change my history -- so keep on dreaming

Dream on dreamer, dreamer

In the best of times and in the worst of times

gotta keep looking at the skyline

not at a hole in the road

Your time will come, sister, your time will come

nobody's gonna rush history, we have to ease it along

-- just ease it along

http://johnnyclegg.de.vu

http://www.johnnyclegg.com

Soft opening

I'm still tinkering around with this new website, but I'm at the stage where I could use a little feedback before I try to promote it to a larger world.

It's a pretty simple idea -- just put up a strip each day, provide a little entertainment and maybe point two or three people a year to some of the collections that are available out there.

Comic strips, and their creators, are in an odd kind of bind. People like comics. They clip them out and put them on their refrigerators or tape them to their cash registers or pin them on their cubicle walls, but not enough people make the next step and actually support the artists by visiting their web sites or buying their collections.

So how do you try to raise that consciousness? It is a puzzlement. If they pursued comics more rabidly, they would find the collections on their own. But people tend to be passive. They see what is in the paper and they often like what is in the paper. They'll even bombard the editor with complaints if the cartoon is left out of the paper or, lord help us, dropped from the line-up.

But they don't see what is not in the paper, nor do they think much about it. And I don't know that this will help. But it will make me feel like I'm doing something, and, after all, isn't that what it's all about? The appearance of action?

Anyway, come visit www.comicstripoftheday.com and let me know what you think.

(We will now commence a stretch of 10 consecutive days during which there will be no funny or remarkable comic strips at all.)

Remembering a neighbor

Not me. I just got here, and I live about 25 miles too far away anyhow. But plenty of people down the road a bit lost a good neighbor recently.

Here's how they'd help him out.

Here's how they remember him.

Folks around here make good neighbors. And, yes, sometimes good fences come into it, to reference another New Englander. I think even Frost must have known, as Jerry clearly did, that you can always reach over, even climb over, a good fence.

If you throw a tantrum and nobody notices, does it count?

There is a lively and worthwhile discussion going on this week about CBS's decision to accept a Super Bowl advertisement from Focus on the Family that is reputed to carry a strong anti-abortion message. The issue isn't over the actual message of the ad so much as it is that networks have, in the past, rejected advocacy ads for the Super Bowl.

Specifically, CBS turned down an advertisement from the United Church of Christ in 2004 that showed minorities and gay couples being turned away at some churches but being welcomed to services at a UCC church.  According to this article, the reason given was a policy against any advertisement which "touches on and/or takes a position on one side of a current controversial issue."

CBS apparently has admitted to loosening the restrictions in light of the current economy, but still rejected an advertisement for a gay dating site, reportedly because the ad showed a gay couple celebrating a touchdown by kissing.

So the question is, has CBS decided to accept controversial ads, or just the ones somebody in their power structure doesn't consider controversial?

And, to be fair, the other question is, does the Focus on the Family ad say the things its critics claim? I add all the "reportedlys" to this because I happened to be working at an NBC affiliate when Donald Wildmon, a conservative clergyman noted for protesting indecency and blasphemy in the media, launched a campaign against a planned miniseries on the life of Christ, threatening sponsors with a boycott because the story was blasphemous, based on wild and baseless rumors of what the script contained. Today, Zeffirelli's "Jesus of Nazareth" is a staple of Christian broadcasting around Easter.

But let's assume the advertisement is what it is said to be: Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother saying how glad they are that she didn't choose to have an abortion when she was pregnant with him. I don't see how this ad is less controversial than an ad from the UCC saying, "All people are welcome here" or an ad for a dating service that suggests that gay couples kiss when they are happy. No more controversial, but also no less. And thus the question of why CBS is airing the ad deserves to be asked, and the question of fairness answered.

I would go farther and say that I approve of boycotts as a way of expressing displeasure, and, if people want to write to other Super Bowl sponsors and express their anger, individually or collectively, I would encourage them to do so.

However.

The comments section of the above-linked article on HuffPost contains threats by a number of outraged readers to not watch the game. I strongly dislike reading these comments because I kind of like to cherish the notion that  liberals enjoy some intellectual advantage over conservatives. This "that'll show'em" response makes it impossible for me to hold onto an attractive idea which I already knew wasn't true.

Yeah, don't watch their damn Super Bowl. That'll show'em!

But ... that'll show who?

Small gestures matter, even if they are only personal ones. But they have to carry some weight, however light. I carry on my own personal boycott of Arizona Iced Tea and its affiliated products, because they had proposed bringing out "Crazy Horse Malt Liquor" over the protests of his family, who asked them not to use the name, noting the damage alcohol has done to Indians, and, in particular, the staunch temperance views that their famous ancestor had held. The proposal fizzled anyway, but I'm not buying their damned drinks. Now, I don't think that's going to cause any comment in the board room at Arizona Iced Tea because (A) I haven't told them and (B) my dollar a month canned beverage habit isn't going to nudge their P/L by a whole lot one way or t'other. Still, it's money they aren't getting from me and to hell with'em.

That said, how on earth does not watching the Super Bowl show anybody anything? There is, in these outraged statements, a sense that, if we don't watch, their ratings will fall. Now, unless you happen to be a Neilsen family this week and are keeping a ratings diary, the only way this will happen will be if it turns out that television ratings are the result of magical spy satellites that track all our viewing habits.

Let me just say that nobody who believes that is in any position to make jokes about tin foil hats.

If you don't want to watch the game, don't watch. But don't claim you're making a statement, because you are not costing CBS a single ratings point or a single penny of revenue. You are not having an impact on Focus on the Family. You are not advancing the cause of women's right to privacy or to control of their bodies.

You are simply having a very private, very quiet hissy fit that will have no possible effect on anyone except, perhaps, those who have to hear about it at the office. Either do something or do nothing, but don't be silly.

And, finally, for those who wonder where God stands on all this, I submit this Owen Dunne cartoon, which ran in January, 2000, after the Rams won the Super Bowl over the Titans in a squeaker. (Click on it for a more readable size.) Of course, we all know that, if God doesn't give the New Orleans Saints a victory, it means He really did strike down the city as divine punishment for the pro-choice policies of America, just like Pat Robertson said.

Interview with Elfego Baca

(I was updating "Two Years Before the Mast" and needed to find pictures of well-off Mexicans, as the chapter I was editing involved Dana's first impressions of the locals. While poking around, I came across a reference to Elfego Baca (1865-1945), a lawman, gunfighter and attorney who was born in the US, in New Mexico, and thus completely wrong from both a geographic and temporal point of view. But so what? I began to read about him and was led to this interview done by Janet Smith for the WPA Writer's Project in 1936. The gunfight to which he alludes was an occasion when 80 cowboys surrounded a house he was in and poured lead into it for two days, at the end of which someone came and negotiated his surrender. He was unharmed, four of the cowboys were dead. He was an interesting chap, even more interesting than the fictional version of him that Walt Disney created. And if anyone would like to re-create the WPA as part of our economic recovery, I'd happily go out and get some oral histories like this for the next generation to enjoy.)


"I never wanted to kill anybody," Elfego Baca told me, "but if a man had it in his mind to kill me, I made it my business to get him first."

Elfego Baca belongs to the six-shooter epoch of American history. Those were the days when hard-shooting Texas cowboys invaded the territory of New Mexico, driving their herds of longhorns over the sheep ranges of the New Mexicans, for whom they had little liking or respect. Differences were settled quickly, with few words and a gun. Those were the days of Billy the Kid, with whom Elfego, at the age of seventeen, made a tour of the gambling joints in Old Albuquerque. In the words of Kyle Crichton, who wrote Elfego Baca's biography, "the life of Elfego Baca makes Billy the Kid look like a piker." Harvey Ferguson calls him "a knight-errant from the romantic point of view if ever the six-shooter West produced one."

And yet Mr. Baca is not a man who lives in his past.

"I wonder what I can tell you," he said when I asked him for pioneer stories. "I don't remember so much about those things now. Why don't you read the book Mr. Crichton wrote about me?"

He searched about his desk and brought out two newspaper clippings of letters he had written recently to the Albuquerque Journal an local politics. The newspaper had deleted two of the more outspoken paragraphs. Mr. Baca was annoyed.

I tried to draw Mr. Baca away from present day politics to stories of his unusual past, but he does not talk readily about himself, although he seemed anxious to help me. Elfego Baca is a kindly courteous gentleman who is concerned to see that his visitor has the coolest spot in the room.

He brought out books and articles that had been written about him, but he did not seem inclined to reminiscing and answered my questions briefly. "Crichton tells about that in his book" or "Yes, I knew Billy the Kid."

Finally I asked him at random if he knew anything about the famous old Manzano Gang which I had frequently seen mentioned in connection with Torrance County.

He replied that he broke up that gang when he was Sheriff of Socorro County.

"There were ten of them," he said, "and I got nine. The only reason I didn't get the other one was that he got over the border and was shot before I got to him. They used to go to a place near Belen and empty the freight cars of grain and one thing and another. Finally they killed a man at La Jolla. Contreros was his name. A very rich man with lots of money in his house, all gold. I got them for that. They were all convicted and sent to the pen."

Mr. Baca settled back in his chair and made some remark about the late Senator Cutting whose photograph stood on his desk.

I persisted about the Manzano Gang. "I wish you'd tell me more about that gang. How you got them, and the whole story."

"Well," he said, "after that man Contreros was shot, they called me up at my office in Socorro and told me that he was dying. I promised to get the murderers in forty-eight hours. That was my rule. Never any longer than forty-eight hours."

Mr. Baca suspected certain men, but when a telephone call to Albuquerque established the fact that they had been in that city at the time of the killing, his next thought was of the Manzano Gang.

Accompanied by two men, he started out on horseback in the direction of La Jolla.

Just as the sun was rising; they came to the ranch of Lazaro Cordova. They rode into the stable and found Cordova's son-in-law, Prancasio Saiz already busy with his horse.

"Good morning," said Elfego, "what are you doing with your horse so early in the morning?"

Saiz replied that he was merely brushing him down a little.

Mr. Baca walked over and placed his hand on the saddle. It was wet inside. The saddle blanket was steaming. He looked more closely at the horse. At first sight it had appeared to be a pinto, white with brown spots. Mr. Baca thought he remembered that Saiz rode a white horse.

"What happened to that horse?" he asked.

The man replied that the boys had had the horse out the day before and had painted the spots on him with a kind of berry that makes reddish-brown spots. "Just for a joke," he added.

"Where's your father-in-law?" asked Mr. Baca.

Saiz said that his father-in-law had gone the day before to a fiesta at La Jolla and had not returned.

"I understand you're a pretty good shot," said Sheriff Baca. "You'd better come along, and help me round up some men I'm after for the killing of Contreros in La Jolla."

Saiz said that he had work to do on the ranch, but at the insistence of Mr. Baca, he saddled his horse and rode out with the three men.

"About as far as from here to the station," went on Mr. Baca, "was a graveyard where the gang was supposed to camp out. I rode over to it and found where they had lunched the day before. There were sardine cans and cracker boxes and one thing and another. Then I found where one of them had had a call to nature. I told one of my men to put it in a can. Saiz didn't know about this, and in a little while he went over behind some mesquite bushes and had a call to nature. After he came back I sent my man over, and by God it was the same stuff -- the same beans and red chili seeds! So I put Saiz under arrest and sent him back to the jail at Socorro with one of my deputies, although he kept saying he couldn't see what I was arresting him for."

Mr. Baca and his other deputy proceeded in the direction of La Jolla. Before long they saw a man on horseback coming toward them.

"He was running that horse like everything. When we met I saw that he was a Texan. Doc Something or other was his name. I can't remember now. But he was a pretty tough man."

"You a Sheriff?" he said to Mr. Baca.

"No," replied Mr. Baca, "no, I'm not a Sheriff. Don't have nothing to do with the law, in fact."

"You're pretty heavily armed," remarked the man suspiciously.

"I generally arm myself this way when I go for a trip in the country," answered Baca, displaying his field glasses. "I think it's safer."

"Well, if you want fresh horses, you can get them at my ranch, a piece down the road," said the Texan.

Mr. Baca figured that this was an attempt to throw him off the trail, so as soon as the Texan was out of sight, he struck out east over the mountains for Manzano. Just as he was entering the village he saw two of the gang coming down the hill afoot leading their horses. He placed them under arrest and sent them back to Socorro with his other deputy.

It was about two o'clock in the morning when Mr. Baca passed the Cordova ranch again on his way back. He roused Lazaro Cordova, who had returned from La Jolla by that time, and told him to dress and come with him to Socorro.

"The old man didn't want to come," said Mr. Baca, "and kept asking 'what you want with me anyhow?' I told him that he was under arrest, and on the way to Socorro I told him that unless he and his son-in-law came across with a complete statement about the whole gang, I would hang both of them, for I had the goods on them and knew all right that they were both in on the killing of Contreros. I put him in the same cell with his son-in-law, and told him it was up to him to bring Saiz around. They came through with the statement. I kept on catching the rest of the gang, until I had them all. All but the one who got himself shot before I caught up with him."

"If you ever go to Socorro you ask Billy Newcomb, the Sheriff down there now to show you the records. You might see the place on the way down where they buried a cowboy I shot. It's a little way off the main road though.

"That was a long time before I was a real Sheriff. In those days I was a self-made deputy. I had a badge I made for myself, and if they didn't believe I was a deputy, they'd better believe it, because I made 'em believe it."

"I had gone to Escondida a little way from Socorro to visit my uncle. A couple of Texas cowboys had been shooting up the town of Socorro. They hadn't hurt anybody that time. Only frightened some girls. That's the way they did in those days -- ride through a town shooting at dogs and cats and if somebody happened to get in the way -- powie! -- too bad for him. The Sheriff came to Escondida after them. By that time they were making a couple of Mexicans dance, shooting up the ground around their feet. The Sheriff said to me 'Baca, if you want to help, come along, but there's going to be shooting.'"

"We rode after them and I shot one of them about three hundred yards away. The other got away --- too many cottonwood trees in the way.

"Somebody asked me what that cowboy's name was. I said I didn't know. He wasn't able to tell me by the time I caught up with him."

I asked what the Sheriff's name was, and when Mr. Baca said it was Pete Simpson, I said, "The one you were electioneering for the time of the Frisco affair when you held off about 80 cowboys for over 36 hours."
This is the one of Mr. Baca's exploits that has been most frequently written about.

"Hell, I wasn't electioneering for him," he said. "I don't know where they got that idea. I couldn't have made a speech to save my life. And I didn't wear a Prince Albert coat either. They didn't have such things in this country in those days."

"Is it true that you ate dinner afterward with French and some other men who had been shooting at you, and talked the affair over," I asked.

"I ate dinner with some men afterward but I don't remember who they were now. I don't think that man French was there at all, although he must have been in the neighborhood, as he seemed to know all about it. But I don't remember him. Jim Cook was one that was shooting at me though. He was a pretty tough man, but he came near getting it."

He showed me a photograph which Jim Cook had sent him recently. The picture showed an old man who still looks as though he could not be easily trifled with. It was inscribed "To Elfego Baca in memory of that day at Frisco."

"Did you see the letter that Englishman wrote to Crichton? He wanted to hang me. 'Why don't you hang that little Mexican so-and-so?' he asked. I said, 'Why don't you be the one to do it?' and pulled my guns, and wooo, he wasn't so eager. You know I surrendered only on condition that I keep my guns. They placed six guards over me, but they rode 25 steps ahead of me all the way to Socorro.

"Those were great old days. Everything is very quiet now, isn't it?" said Mr. Baca looking up. "I think I'll run for something this fall, but I don't know what yet."

 

Abandoning the Creeping Meatball

Having little to risk, and still less to be grateful for at their hands, I recently began the process of transferring my banking from a large, interstate, TARP-gobbling megabank into a small community bank.

When the housing market first began to go into the tank, 18 months or so ago, I happened to be in Farmington, Maine, the same town as a fellow who sits on a national board of bankers that advises the Fed. He was a good source to interview as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began to fall into chaos, but he really had very little doom-and-gloom to talk about for the local Maine banks. They had not behaved foolishly and had not exposed themselves to extraordinary risks with subprime loans and the like.

"We lend money to people who will be able to pay it back," he said, and it seemed like a good policy to this old business writer.

It was not just his bank that stayed aloof from the more speculative mortgage ventures, but the bulk of small community banks. A year later, when TARP funds were being distributed, I was in New Hampshire and did an article on that. Of four local banks, only one had requested TARP funds and they had apparently done so to make sure they could get them if they needed them; they almost immediately assessed the situation and turned them down as unnecessary. Again, a lack of speculation on their part had left them on relatively solid financial footing.

Of course, we're all subject to the effects of the overall collapse, but I've seen minimal impact on community banks. Is that a reason to transfer your money to them? Not really. We're all protected by FDIC, and you're not anymore likely to lose your life savings at one bank than another.

There is an issue of passing the whiff test and of whom you choose to do business with, however, and after viewing a few documentaries on the financial collapse, I decided I'd rather not be in bed with the people who had not only created the subprime mortgage debacle but whose credit card policies were geared to exploiting the lower middle class.

I like to choose with whom I do business. I also went years without eating table grapes and I stopped drinking Coors before I had developed a more sophisticated taste in beer anyway. My reasons aren't as good as the Rotarian who, during a discussion of foreign automobiles, remarked, "I don't buy Japanese cars. They used to shoot at my airplane." But they're good enough for me.

I will admit, however, that, just as nearly any beer made is better tasting than Coors, there are benefits to dealing with community banks that go beyond the warm glow of having abandoned the creeping meatball of heartless capitalism.

For instance, I maintain two bank accounts at Bangor Savings, more than a year after leaving Maine. Why? A big reason is that I can use a Bangor Savings Bank card in any ATM in the country and never pay a fee. Okay, I sometimes pay the fee. But it is instantly credited back to me by my bank. This negates the disadvantage of working with a community bank -- not having a branch available when you're out of town.

But I do have to deposit checks, and it's a pain to mail them to Maine. So a few days ago, I opened an account at Mascoma Savings Bank here in town. It was a Thursday morning, which I mention because I walked out with the little folder of starter checks, but, the following Tuesday, I received my debit card in the mail. And then my printed checks arrived on Saturday, nine days after I opened the account.

In the same mail was a hand-written note from the customer service rep who had dealt with me when I opened the account, thanking me for my business.

As I see it, I'm making a statement, and, in so doing, I'm also getting to work with efficient, responsive, personal bankers who appreciate my business. Oh, and I'll apparently be able to move money back and forth between New Hampshire and Maine easily because Mascoma Savings offers free online bill paying. The larger banks charge fees for that.

It's a little hard to find the downside to all this.

The Chamber of Commerce Express

The upstairs bathroom in the rented home I'm sharing with my son and his family has wallpaper with a pattern of old advertising posters, several of which I've been able to track down. This is one of them, and, until I got a large version with no overlapping posters, I hadn't seen how many commercial plugs it contains. If you click on it, I think you'll see what I mean.

The Hamilton plant of the Mosler Safe Company, which was headquartered in Cincinnati, can be seen through the window of the dining car, but there are plenty of plugs within the car itself, most of them wildly irrelevant to the theme of travel, unless they are suggesting that people will choose a train not just for the comfortable Pullman cars (a common and sensible thing to promote), but for the fact that it serves Cabinet Whiskey and Peebles Perfectos, both by the Joseph R. Peebles' Sons Company of Cincinnati, though apparently the chap with the Burnside sideburns would prefer to sip an Aurora Export beer from the Crescent Brewing Company of Aurora, Indiana (less than 40 miles from Cincinnati).

And there is more, as you will discover. This 1894 poster is a feast of product-placement, which makes me wonder if the good old Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad paid anything out of pocket to have it printed.

And you thought it all began in 1982 with that trail of Reese's Pieces.

The story's written. I just need a quote.

Wish I had a link to the video, but Houston Texans' Coach Gary Kubiak's final press conference of the season was live on-line, and live for an undisclosed number of reporters who attended in person. I don't know how many people were in the room because it's pretty bare-bones -- a single camera trained on the podium, with Kubiak taking questions from off-camera writers who don't bother to identify themselves because they cover the team all season and he knows who they are.

What I found funny in today's conference was the way one or two reporters phrased their questions. It was clear that they had already roughed out their season wrap-up and simply wanted the coach to provide a quote that would validate their central thesis. It was something like, "Coach, would you say that the third-and-down run by X___ in the sixth week was the turning point of this season?" or "Coach, did the passing game finally fall into place with the addition of Y-factor?"

I'd love to have the video because I can't remember the actual questions -- they were so precise and convolutedly pointed that they defied off-the-cuff recall. But they were similar to those English exam questions that force you to agree with the instructor's point of view: "In what ways does Turgenev depict Uvar Uvonovich as an out-of-date, irrelevant remnant of Russia's old guard, pre-1848 social order?"

Given that we're talking the sports section, this was pretty funny. In the newsroom, sports is referred to as "the toy department" and given little credibility. Sportswriters work different hours and, at many papers, they don't attend the meetings, briefings and trainings that other reporters come in for. There is a general sense that they aren't really covering "news."

On the other hand, sometimes the comic view is simply a clearer view. A clumsy sportswriter fishing for pre-determined quotes is funny, but, having been on both sides of the interview, much of my laughter comes from experiences that didn't provoke giggles.

I've been interviewed by reporters who already had the story written in their minds and only wanted quotes to flesh it out. The first few times, I was horrified when I saw the story that resulted, but, after awhile, I began to recognize it when it was happening. Unfortunately, even staying relentlessly on message doesn't always thwart a reporter who isn't listening, who is only scribbling down the parts he wants to hear, and use.

This is not an issue of "the mainstream media," a foolish phrase used by conspiracy buffs. But it is something you kind of wish you could leave behind when you climb from small papers and tiny TV stations into the Big Leagues. You would like to think that it all stays in the minor leagues, along with (no joke!) the local TV reporter who, at a murder scene, asked the lead investigator, "How was the perpetrator able to get through all this yellow tape?"

Not so. Watch the next time a more important coach, Coach Obama, has a press conference. Listen for the questions that are based on what the reporter has already decided to write.

(Addendum: They have posted the press conference, though I can't imagine anyone who isn't a Texans fan sitting through it. However, it did allow me to find one of the questions I had in mind: "Gary, if you had to point to one thing with regard to (quarterback) Matt (Schaub), would you say that the way he came back from the shoulder injury in that Jacksonville game propelled this team and showed them what leadership is all about?")