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Pleading the First

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock

Last Friday, GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, first-term governor of Alaska, gave a rare interview, this one with Chris Plante, a talk show host on Washington, D.C., station WMAL-AM. [Audio and video versions here.] It soared through the Internet within hours, with the point of interest being Gov. Palin’s use of the First Amendment. I have tried to transcribe the whole interchange:

Plante:

Is the news media doing its job, are you getting a fair shake, are the Republicans getting a fair shake?”

Palin:

I don’t think that they’re doing their job when they suggest that calling a candidate out on their record, their plans for this country, that their associations, is mean-spirited or negative campaigning. If they [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media. Look at Joe the Plumber, good old Joe the Plumber in Toledo, Ohio. He just asked a simple, straightforward question, and the media started investigating and attacking him. So, you know there is some fear there and in those terms, not, I don’t think they [the media] have been doing their job, in that kind of context.”

As thousands already have pointed out in two days, Palin has this constitutional principle backwards. There’s little for me to add. The Democratic vice presidential candidate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, often is loose-tongued as well but in a different way. The question that matters: Who is better qualified to step up, should the need arise? We have only two choices.

If I gave the best explanation of why Palin’s remarks provoke fear in lovers of democracy and freedom, would it matter?

That is the only issue. In many ways, the tendency for a locked-in mindset is the only thing that shines out from the spring primaries to now. Voters stick to their preferences, once they make them. People who are making their choices this weekend likely are not making pro-and-con lists, studying brochures or reading columns like a jury. Then, those who’ve supported one of the candidates for months or years are not prone to change, despite any new indications of how their candidate will perform once elected. Sen. John McCain may not now be the kind of president he would have been had he been elected in 2000. Sen. Barack Obama doesn’t have many more years of experience than Palin. This plea for reasoning by voters goes for both tickets. Heck, it goes for choosing mayor and county judge, too.

Brick has not had many political postings in October. Maybe it’s from this defeatism. Little can be added to the debate from my Shady Hill manse. But we are now under a hundred hours from election day, with candidates and issues still are being discussed (and here) despite record numbers of absentee (”early”) votes already cast. The outcome of any of Tuesday’s races still is uncertain. It’s not to denigrate the surveys — the good ones are better than ever — but the Undecideds remain numerous enough to sway any race. The Undecideds remain uncounted, until they truly are counted, that is, polled in their precincts.

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Abraham and Sarah

Friday, October 3, 2008

“Today, I wrote about kittens. We’re in a gigantic financial crisis, everybody knows it, everybody is going crazy about it, everybody else is writing about it, so sometimes the best thing to do is write about kittens.”

–  Jon Carroll, quoted last month by his paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, on winning
the 2009 Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

It’s all here, in the U.S. Constitution and amendments. Except for what isn’t in it. Like, “Any child can grow up to be president.”

I heard that at school. It’s not something my parents would say at home.

In my childhood, in the years shortly after ratification in 1788, the promise was a goad. A goad is like a goal but with a large croquet mallet above the kid’s head. Oh my goodness, the blunt object is figurative, for heaven’s sake.

“Any child can grow up to be president” means any child who does well in school, does chores cheerfully and without prompting, and plays well with others, all these things year after year after year, can become leader of America. This is how Bill Clinton became president, and Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, too.

I think the maxim was true enough. If you followed it at the least you became a decent human being, little trouble to others. Whether one wanted to be president of the country was another matter. Whether one would be any good at the presidency was also worth consideration when filling out college applications.

(Me? As a boy I was extraordinarily well-behaved. But I grew up wanting to be a nonconformist. Oh well.)

How the phrase is understood now must have evolved. With decades of self-esteem — every child takes home a trophy — overriding learning how to win and lose — by winning and losing — the “any child” means if you are a native-born U.S. citizen (beyond your control) and if you hit 35 years of age (eating and breathing should take care of that), you can be president.

It’s old-fashioned to think that what this country needs are brilliant, maniacally self-disciplined leaders well-practiced in both team leadership and taking advice. Abe Lincoln is said to be the inspiration for the aphorism. And that such leaders practice what they believe, that democracy works and civil rights define freedom. Old-fashioned once was a patronizing but spot-on definition of conservatism. Now, expediency and cynicism are.

With a clicker and a handful of kibble, we’ve trained Tiki the former alley cat to hop over a cane and leap from chair to chair on command. At age 7, he is in his 40s in human years and without a doubt is native born. He brims with self-confidence. Pound cat Rosemary, a year (and a decade) younger, will leave the sunny window for clicker training about every third time — my kind of gal.

If I rummaged in the shed I might find a bicycle tire. Tiki would have no trouble picking up jumping through hoops. But to what end?

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Giving Puppies

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock

How do anyone know how much to give, to what to give to? Let’s label this, charity. Non-profit, that could be lots of things besides charities. My professional organization, can you call that a charity? A wing of it is a card-carrying (tax ID) non-profit and sponsors an annual scholarship contest, but it ain’t curing cancer.

At some point as an old teen or young adult, I saw slow-to-anger Dad read in the Fort Smith paper how it was sponsoring some drive for Make A Wish. He gave a shout — we startled — then wrote a letter to the editor. Make A Wish arranges for children with chronic or terminal conditions to get a wish fulfilled: visit Disneyland or receive a visit from a star. The newspaper should put its good offices, he said, behind a charity that can do some real good and help these kids, like medical research. The letter ran, the drive continued as before, and for the next several years.

One learns first from parents, what they do more than what they say. Not that we kids follow, just remember it better. Dad belonged at one time or another to every service organization in town: Rotary, Kiwanis, JayCees etc. and his favorite, Noon Civics Club. Business-networking then and now (though not called networking decades ago), but engaged in good charities. He was a Mason. A member of the Reform temple. Dad also was active in the local chapter of the Red Cross, even serving as its president. Decades of volunteering for the Fort Smith Little Theater and Broadway Theatre League of Fort Smith, term after term of board seats on both. Backstage work, sets and lighting, was his art; if not life-saving, it refreshed his creative soul.

Mom was a lifelong volunteer no less than weekly, usually at hospitals (Sparks) and projects for disabled children (via Bost). She retired, the last being afternoons at the med center gift shop when her hearing loss grew to where it kept her from answering its phone adequately, just months from moving to assisted living.

What’s enough? It’s a question that pops up, most recently on the death of a medium friend with multiple sclerosis, whose closest friends essentially trained themselves as informal practical nurses and worked in shifts in his home for several years. One reason or another and I decided not to qualify.

So I’m not a nurse. It’s a calling only some answer to. I have taught, though, and I could be a teacher in the future; the ease and satisfaction I feel there can be translated as a calling. Not everyone can be a journalist, either, and I have had that in me my entire adult life. Journalism requires a compulsion to fairly render something that happened or something said. To see that’s a gift you only have to try to read hand-cranked newsletters or small-potato news releases. Isn’t it interesting such helping professions are clustered at a certain point of the salary statistics? Charity works on middlin’ pay, some benefits, and ideals.

I might point to this weekend’s Bikes, Blues and BBQ, which insists it’s a charity. (Continued)

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The Server Ate September

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

OK, kids, here’s a lesson — back up even files other entities are saving for you. Here’s what I learned from my service, Hosting Matters:

The primary drive on this server failed over the weekend, and all sites were restored [on Sept. 22] from the last error-free backup, from Aug 29, which would account for both the stats and content gaps.”

Missing from the message were both an official or informal apology and a promise that steps are being taken to prevent this admittedly rare occurrence — never in the four years I’ve used this company — from happening again, or if it does that the most recent automatic back-up be one week or 10 days, not nearly a month.

I had drafts — minus varying amounts of polish, and all the hyperlinks — of the month’s three Brick essays in my Mac’s trash, which I deliberately don’t empty very often. Just in case.

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Where Has September Gone?

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

That’s what I’d like to know. Sometime in the last couple of days, all of the Brick essays I published in September have disappeared. Poking around my Web site indicates that the problem originates not with WordPress but Hosting Matters, which operates my domain overall.

This posting serves first as a test for whomever might be checking on the support ticket I have submitted. It also is an apology for those who want to read the latest in Brick. I have one just about ready to go, but I don’t want to post then lose it.

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Valiance

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock

Over the decade (since February 1998) that we’ve lived in Northwest Arkansas, Ginny and Nick Masullo have thrown the most fantastic and memorable, surreal and comforting parties. Some involved costumes, a number had modest bonfires, and all had warmth, lots of food and a truly wide assortment of guests. The one Monday night, the 8th, was no exception. That it was Nick’s funeral almost was beside the point.

Multiple sclerosis isn’t contagious, but Nick’s joy, humor and zest continued to be infectious throughout his house and yard. In the drizzly darkness, we had light.

Robert, MC’ing at the start, claimed Nick choreographed his memorial in detail. The crowd of 60-70 laughed. Nick’s illness began slowing him down about six years ago. All circles of friends had been wishing this week wouldn’t come. Yet we laughed a lot Monday night.

The community loved him. His friends loved him. I loved him. Was I a friend? When the call went out about five years ago for friends to be volunteer caregivers, I held back. My reasons made sense then and since. Yet

Nick and I were not best friends nor in the next circle or two of closeness. Compared to most of Monday’s tribe, My Beloved and I are newcomers to the Fayetteville artistic community. That we were welcomed as deeply and quickly as we were remains a big reason why we’ve stayed here, even through job losses and stuff.

M.B. and I were more friendly with Nick’s wife. Ginny is a poet and for several years wrote the poetry column in the Northwest Arkansas Times. The Masullos’ “couple” friends were long-established. On his own, Nick hung out with songwriters and other musicians, Kelly and Donna, Emily, Keith. Nick was a folkie, a gifted, witty, not-quite-sentimental-at-the-end lyricist. Composed with a guitar. Nick also wrote poems and performed them comically and with great stage timing, even when short of breath. In the last year he turned columnist as well, (Continued)

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Hurricane Mahler

Monday, September 1, 2008

This very short essay was deleted by my hosting service, but its drafts aren’t to be found. It was the second of two about Sarah Palin with an allusion to Hurricane Gustav and just about three quick paragraphs. If a reader pulled off a copy, please send a copy to me — ben (at) benpollock (dot) com — and I’ll repost it.

On the other hand, there wasn’t much to it and maybe better left forgotten.

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Palin Comparison

Friday, August 29, 2008

Sen. John McCain chose Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate. Details are a click away, but here’s quick thoughts from the hour since the announcement.

McCain just evened the Brick odds of winning. Once the primaries indicated the top candidates, I never saw him as beating Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., outside of calamitous news or solid scandal (both these men can beat down soft scandals).

  • It’s Iraq and Afghanistan — and now likely Russia.
  • It’s the early symptoms of an economic depression — let’s call it what it is — but at a time when it can be reversed in months not years.
  • It’s jumping gasoline prices with Detroit years away from making sensible cars — at a time when global warming effects seem to be accelerating.

McCain just won a battle with a poor military tactic: He won the proverbial last battle, not looking to any of the likely future battles. The old battle is over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s supporters. If they haven’t endorsed Obama, they’re still progressive sorts, not likely to be wooed by a conservative, perky, intelligent lady. Conversely, war, economy and environment are not old battles, they’re current wars. Obama was looking ahead when he picked Sen. Joe Biden for his political and foreign policy acumen. If Obama was looking at the past, he never would have chosen a man with Biden’s history. The Biden-Palin debate scheduled for Oct. 2 will prove the former’s tact: How can he flaunt her inexperience while avoiding the playground stigma of “hitting a girl”?

McCain just returned to his feisty, independent reputation, a plus in my book for these soon-to-be-hard times. Can you imagine his campaign managers and veteran GOP officials for continuous days begging him to pick anyone but Sarah Palin? Pleading, whining, threatening. …

I can’t wait for the tell-all, behind-the-scenes memoirs — coming late this winter if McCain-Palin lose and in the next decade if they win.

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To Serve Dragon

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

(A reference to the Twilight Zone classic episode, “To Serve Man.”)

At Shady Hills, we worry a bit about the cats’ diet since that canned-food scare last year. Most current pet food books recommend raw foods. After all, who cooked for Rosemary and Tiki in Fayetteville fields and alleys? Besides their finding handouts and garbage cans, and never mind germs and parasites, which besides predators decrease the average lifespan to 24 months — high school in people years.

Meanwhile in Western states, pet owners increasingly keep their critters inside because coyotes have started to find their good-natured and smaller fellow predators easy prey.

Monday’s Wall Street Journal front-page feature, on an Indonesian reserve for Komodo dragons (no fire-breathing or wings, kids, it’s just the largest living lizard), made me realize it’s not man’s job to restore nature’s balance.

It is humanity’s job, but it’s to modify the balance. Nature never is out of sync. Balance just shifts; it’s an equilibrium. People always are part of the balance.

Enter the dragon.

The Journal reports (may not open so try here or this ecology blog for a summary, plus a refutation by one of those interviewed) that The Nature Conservancy — to my mind one of the least radical such organizations — has turned the balance, forcing the reptiles to supplement their diet with people.

Komodo National Park houses, the article says, 2,500 dragons and 4,000 people. It’s on the coast, they’re fishermen living in four villages. They had it all figured out: Believed their Komodos are reincarnated relatives, they avoid killing them. That’s likely why this is the only place they’re not extinct, the newspaper reports. Their pet dogs keep the dragons away from their houses. When they hunt deer, they leave what they don’t eat for the dragons. They sacrifice an occasional goat, for them to eat.

In 2005, the Indonesian government asked the Conservancy for advice. It recommended fencing around the villages to keep the dragons, but that apparently is too expensive for the people. A previous deer-hunting ban now began to be enforced. Dogs were declared an “alien species” and outlawed. Goat sacrifices were stopped.

Hungry dragons. (Continued)

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Deus Ex Machina

Monday, August 25, 2008

Close Calls for Second Chances from Second Sight

Copyright Ben S. Pollock 2008
Brick paused. Posting this month has been more inconsistent than usual. Bricks do get started but tossed to the slag heap. The lump, with its gaps and off corners, can be reshaped or mushed with others. After all, none of those has been fired yet and won’t be glazed.

Second chances are welcome.

In every place I’ve lived since college, I occasionally would move a tall stool to a corner of the main room and perch on it. Sometimes this helped me rearrange the furniture, and other times it was a good place to think big thoughts about work or romance. A new physical perspective can inspire intellectual insights.

It’s second sight, of a sort.

More recently, I’ve found that regular writing provides better insights more often. No, I don’t write atop a stool near the ceiling. With research, planning and trusting my gut — plus the stool-vantage and journals — I’ve made all the best choices all along.

See where that’s gotten me? Too many close calls.

The problem is no one really can predict the future, outside of the sun will come up tomorrow and the morning after that. (When that prediction fails, the others won’t matter.) Breakfast? Corn flakes this week. I know that future. Unless I microwave a ramekin of egg white.

It’s the close call. Say you brake just in time to not hit the stoplight-running SUV. You absolutely know you’re not going to die, not right now, so you reflect, have you been living well? That calmness lasts a moment, maybe hours. The rest of the time, I wonder, can see anyone my internal turmoil? A while ago, the erratic fellow a few desks down tripped over a thin line so he’s not around anymore.

Aren’t I at least as erratic? Eccentric? Ergonomic? That’s a good thing for office supplies, unless:

Longhand, put down that stapler. We have you surrounded. With staple removers.”

Job security comes from sitting still. Yet I have to move. Work demands a jolt, and the coffee pot is way over therrrrre.

As much as I love coffee and avoid idiots in other cars, neither gives quite enough insight. I crave wisdom on, for example, work. Yes, take my job. Please. (Continued)

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