We don’t live out in the country, but we do live on a hillside with sufficient open space around to encourage owls to nest, coyotes to prowl, and wood rats to multiply.
The owls do flybys of our porch, at eye level, at deepest twilight. The coyotes come and go, sometimes within 20 feet of the house, and we know when they are in the area by their pre-dawn chattering. Nothing we can do about any of that, but then the wood rats took a liking to the crawl space beneath the house.
They come up the slope, more than the owls care to catch, to the edge of the deck, through a little stand of hibiscus, then tear across to the house and down the access to the crawlspace. They are pretty big, and lightning fast. If one ran into your leg at full throttle, it might break your ankle. We saw them in the evening, at a predictable time when the light had been fading for about half an hour. We might be in the living room, watching television, with the French doors open to let in the breeze, and we would glimpse a darting movement – several darting movements, spaced a minute or so apart – from the access back to the hibiscus and over the slope.
Weekend before last, we decided it was time. We got rat poison at Dixieline and plotted our strategy. We didn’t want the critters dying under the house, so we set a tray in amongst the hibiscus just as the sun hit the horizon. Then we closed the doors so Gulliver couldn’t get outside and possibly find the tray. I put a rubber band around my wrist, to remind me to bring in the tray after about an hour and a half, when it was dark.
The first night, there was barely a nibble gone out of the tray. The second night, we couldn’t even find the tray. The third night we found the tray, and it was empty. Hee hee. I don’t like killing anything anymore, even spiders, but neither do I want wood rats to muscle up under the joists one night and carry the house down the slope.
Karen read on the box it took three days for the poison to work. I reasoned they would get sick sooner than that, too sick to get back to the crawlspace the next day. Meantime, the evening track meet disappeared. We entered a period of waiting. Saturday morning, we were sitting in the nook, drinking coffee, reading the papers, minding our own business. The dishwasher was running. From the direction of the dishwasher there came a small click. I didn’t hear it at first, but Karen did. For living things in the house other than ourselves, she has radar like a bat. “Did you hear that?” she said. “No,” I said. Then it came again. Again.
A series of clicks, like water dripping. It was coming from inside the wall, at eye level above the sink. I walked around to the other side of the wall, by the front door, and heard the clicks. They were spaced about 20 seconds apart. Then they stopped. It was Karen, several minutes later, who said in a low voice, “A rat in his death throes.” I wished bitterly that I had said it first. It sounded possible: the hind leg of the rat, jerking in the rhythm of the death spiral, kicking against the interior of the wall.
We should know by the weekend, if we’ll be drinking coffee out on the glider.
March 30, 2009
March 25, 2009
Twittered out
Is Twitter progress?
Well, yes it is. For now. But already, people in the know – most of whom Twitter, or have Twittered – are already referring to Twitter as a “time suck.” That means that Twitter, before long, will assumed its place alongside other digital, Web-based activities that once were smart but now are known time sucks, which suck away a human being’s time without leaving the human being anything to show for it.
To better understand the gravity of such a result, let us recall what it is like to paint wood trim, or moulding. If you have never painted wood trim – around doors and windows in an ordinary bedroom for example – then you have no idea how slow and painful the passage of time can be. Painting moulding is as close to infinity as a human being can approach. That is because moulding possesses all the physical characteristics of infinity. A battleship, seemingly vast, can nevertheless be painted in less time than it takes to paint the moulding in our sample ordinary bedroom.
Now imagine you have painted the moulding with a dry brush. No paint, just bare wood behind you, stretching away to Andromeda. That is the kind of time suck that Twitter is. Ninety-five percent of the Web universe is a bare-wood time suck. Hard to believe, but I can sense the day when we will ask, “What’s on the Web?” Answer: “Nothing but old movies.”
Can you say the word, “bubble?” No, of course, the Web does not constitute a giant unified bubble. There are pockets of content that consumers can learn from and take forward with them, and there is a demographic, constituting maybe 15 percent of Web users, who LIKE time sucks. But it doesn’t take totality for a bursting bubble to shake things up. A relatively small bubble of sub-prime lending just about wrecked the mortgage industry and undermined other financial structures like gophers tunneling away all but a crust of dirt beneath the Taj Mahal.
The Web is thousands of communities attracted to content of interest only to those within those communities. The Web, most of all, is a marvel in making content available to small audiences who the traditional mass media could never serve. All those small audiences taken together, though, add up to significant percentages enjoying the novelty the Web provides them. But in the media world, novelty is totally finite. More finite in some places than others. If you are painting moulding, you may feel novelty for as long as five minutes. Novelty for “Seinfeld” lasted longer, around seven years, and it is still holding for “American Idol,” though it needed re-tooling this season.
There must be finiteness to small communities of people enjoying their hour of accessibility to unusual, even bizarre, pockets of content on the Web. One by one, as those communities burn out, there will be a declining number of communities attracted by novelty, and the number of novel subjects to attract them. For examples, watch television in the middle of the night, where resides content that once was new.
As this novelty fuel is spent, and the last time sucks have consumed themselves, one day a good part of the Web will collapse. Google will teeter then, not Twitter, as the search for novelty crashes. I would guess we could start looking for cracks around 2011.
Well, yes it is. For now. But already, people in the know – most of whom Twitter, or have Twittered – are already referring to Twitter as a “time suck.” That means that Twitter, before long, will assumed its place alongside other digital, Web-based activities that once were smart but now are known time sucks, which suck away a human being’s time without leaving the human being anything to show for it.
To better understand the gravity of such a result, let us recall what it is like to paint wood trim, or moulding. If you have never painted wood trim – around doors and windows in an ordinary bedroom for example – then you have no idea how slow and painful the passage of time can be. Painting moulding is as close to infinity as a human being can approach. That is because moulding possesses all the physical characteristics of infinity. A battleship, seemingly vast, can nevertheless be painted in less time than it takes to paint the moulding in our sample ordinary bedroom.
Now imagine you have painted the moulding with a dry brush. No paint, just bare wood behind you, stretching away to Andromeda. That is the kind of time suck that Twitter is. Ninety-five percent of the Web universe is a bare-wood time suck. Hard to believe, but I can sense the day when we will ask, “What’s on the Web?” Answer: “Nothing but old movies.”
Can you say the word, “bubble?” No, of course, the Web does not constitute a giant unified bubble. There are pockets of content that consumers can learn from and take forward with them, and there is a demographic, constituting maybe 15 percent of Web users, who LIKE time sucks. But it doesn’t take totality for a bursting bubble to shake things up. A relatively small bubble of sub-prime lending just about wrecked the mortgage industry and undermined other financial structures like gophers tunneling away all but a crust of dirt beneath the Taj Mahal.
The Web is thousands of communities attracted to content of interest only to those within those communities. The Web, most of all, is a marvel in making content available to small audiences who the traditional mass media could never serve. All those small audiences taken together, though, add up to significant percentages enjoying the novelty the Web provides them. But in the media world, novelty is totally finite. More finite in some places than others. If you are painting moulding, you may feel novelty for as long as five minutes. Novelty for “Seinfeld” lasted longer, around seven years, and it is still holding for “American Idol,” though it needed re-tooling this season.
There must be finiteness to small communities of people enjoying their hour of accessibility to unusual, even bizarre, pockets of content on the Web. One by one, as those communities burn out, there will be a declining number of communities attracted by novelty, and the number of novel subjects to attract them. For examples, watch television in the middle of the night, where resides content that once was new.
As this novelty fuel is spent, and the last time sucks have consumed themselves, one day a good part of the Web will collapse. Google will teeter then, not Twitter, as the search for novelty crashes. I would guess we could start looking for cracks around 2011.
March 22, 2009
Killer Storm Looms!
I know, it is not easy being a weathercaster in Southern California, a desert next to a mammoth ocean with a cold current running offshore the length of the entire Pacific Coast. As a native Texan weather freak, I try to keep that in mind on mornings like these. For the last four days, the weather burons have advertised "a quick return to winter weather," with a vigorous trough racing southward bringing high winds and some rain, maybe half an inch, starting Saturday night and continuing through Sunday. This morning at 2 I awoke and listened for rain hitting the roof. Didn't hear any. I was disappointed. Texas weather freaks gear up for a promise of storminess the same way 11-year-old girls gear up for a Hannah Montana concert. It is goofy, I know, but it is just within us to go outside with the thunder booming and grin into the gale. We take great pleasure in anticipating same. Frequently, however, in Southern California, a Texan's hopes are dashed. It is idiotic to feel disappointment with the sort of weather I got to view when I went outside this morning. On the other hand, we get to see this almost every day.
The weather burons online insist the front will race through today. Or maybe it has already raced through so fast that no one saw it, not even the Doppler Radar. Now it is March 22, and this event most certainly would have been the last of our rainy season. The Southern California weather freaks can put their hopes away, the same way Easterners store their snowshoes. If you want a closer look at how nice it was this morning, click on the image, then click the Back arrow to return here.
The weather burons online insist the front will race through today. Or maybe it has already raced through so fast that no one saw it, not even the Doppler Radar. Now it is March 22, and this event most certainly would have been the last of our rainy season. The Southern California weather freaks can put their hopes away, the same way Easterners store their snowshoes. If you want a closer look at how nice it was this morning, click on the image, then click the Back arrow to return here.
March 20, 2009
Look! It's the spring equinox!
Here is the moment of sunrise this morning, March 20, marking the first day of spring.
March 19, 2009
Damn near the spring equinox
This is the morning of March 19, a day before the spring equinox, and I thought I better get pictures because the weather bureau says there is a good chance it will be cloudy tomorrow morning. I took this image before the real sunrise began because of the fog plopped into the valley and because of the contrails left by early morning flights.
I don't know if it is airliner Grand Central Station out there every morning, but the contrails show that kind of traffic present today. These flights are headed east, north, and south.
Here is the moment when the sun for several seconds is like a diamond on the rim of the world. You can see it is about to transit a horizon feature that we call Dolly's Right One at Five. I hope I can show you exactly where it comes up tomorrow, the actual equinox, but there may be clouds, you know.
And here is the almost-equinox moment of sunrise on the left, showing the distance across the horizon the sun has traveled since Dec. 21, when it rose out of Tut's eye, at the far right. As always, click on the image for a closer view. Then click the Back arrow to return here.
I don't know if it is airliner Grand Central Station out there every morning, but the contrails show that kind of traffic present today. These flights are headed east, north, and south.
Here is the moment when the sun for several seconds is like a diamond on the rim of the world. You can see it is about to transit a horizon feature that we call Dolly's Right One at Five. I hope I can show you exactly where it comes up tomorrow, the actual equinox, but there may be clouds, you know.
And here is the almost-equinox moment of sunrise on the left, showing the distance across the horizon the sun has traveled since Dec. 21, when it rose out of Tut's eye, at the far right. As always, click on the image for a closer view. Then click the Back arrow to return here.
In San Diego, a newspaper page turns
When I started writing a column for The San Diego Union in 1978, my “hole” was 30 column-inches. When I wrote my last column in 1992, my hole had shrunk to 16 column-inches, and the paper’s pages themselves had shrunk as costs rose and revenues flattened. I took note of that in my goodbye column, saying newspapers were “trimming their newsprint sails, in an effort to stay afloat.”
The San Diego papers THEMSELVES had shrunk. In 1992, Helen Copley killed The Evening Tribune. They called it a “merger” of the Trib and the Union, but it was a mercy killing of an evening paper whose circulation had dipped below 100,000. Remember the first law of media: the media is a business. If the media doesn’t make money, it will go out of business.
So the newspaper media in San Diego was already in trouble in 1992, and that was BEFORE the Internet roared in from space and blew everything up.
It has been at least 10 years since, going out to get the paper one morning, I realized I was going out to pick up a dinosaur. Now the dinosaurs are actually toppling. Yesterday the Union was sold to a type of business called a “private equity firm.” I doubt if any of its principals can cite the First Amendment. The first analysis I read suggested that not the newspaper, but the land it sits on – 13 acres in Mission Valley, across the San Diego River from the Fashion Valley Mall – was the key factor in the sale. I can close my eyes and see a hotel there now. Hell, I don’t even have to close my eyes.
Surveys insist that Americans don’t care about newspapers much anymore, and would not miss them. The San Diegans I have encountered today contradict the statistics. My dentist’s first question to me was, “What will happen to the Union?” Ditto his dental hygienist, who went on for five minutes in support of newspapers as I waited there with my mouth open.
This, I believe, is because when push comes to shove, people back their newspapers, because the newspaper is the repository of a community’s civic, social and institutional memory. People can reconnect to that San Diego memory, going back 81 years, only by going into the newspaper’s files. Only in one place is it all in one place. To lose that would be unthinkable.
If people feel that way, how do you think newspaper people feel? Many of our files are now accessible online. I was one tiny player in the history of the Copley Press in San Diego, but a search for my files from 1983 to 1992 yields 1,384 documents. Multiply that by thousands, and there starts to appear above the building in Mission Valley a spectral congregation of journalists shaking hands and patting backs for a community memory well, if sometimes imperfectly, preserved. No one else could have done it.
Paper was our medium, on which we moved history from the city through the presses and into the streets. That will change, and it will not be easy. I am totally addicted to picking up a newspaper and sitting down with it. But paper is only a medium. Journalism is the message. It will flow on a new river. I just got a Kindle for my birthday, and it feels clumsy and awkward and restrictive, but it also looks like the journalism medium of the near future. It’s journalism, not newspapers, that communities must keep alive.
The San Diego papers THEMSELVES had shrunk. In 1992, Helen Copley killed The Evening Tribune. They called it a “merger” of the Trib and the Union, but it was a mercy killing of an evening paper whose circulation had dipped below 100,000. Remember the first law of media: the media is a business. If the media doesn’t make money, it will go out of business.
So the newspaper media in San Diego was already in trouble in 1992, and that was BEFORE the Internet roared in from space and blew everything up.
It has been at least 10 years since, going out to get the paper one morning, I realized I was going out to pick up a dinosaur. Now the dinosaurs are actually toppling. Yesterday the Union was sold to a type of business called a “private equity firm.” I doubt if any of its principals can cite the First Amendment. The first analysis I read suggested that not the newspaper, but the land it sits on – 13 acres in Mission Valley, across the San Diego River from the Fashion Valley Mall – was the key factor in the sale. I can close my eyes and see a hotel there now. Hell, I don’t even have to close my eyes.
Surveys insist that Americans don’t care about newspapers much anymore, and would not miss them. The San Diegans I have encountered today contradict the statistics. My dentist’s first question to me was, “What will happen to the Union?” Ditto his dental hygienist, who went on for five minutes in support of newspapers as I waited there with my mouth open.
This, I believe, is because when push comes to shove, people back their newspapers, because the newspaper is the repository of a community’s civic, social and institutional memory. People can reconnect to that San Diego memory, going back 81 years, only by going into the newspaper’s files. Only in one place is it all in one place. To lose that would be unthinkable.
If people feel that way, how do you think newspaper people feel? Many of our files are now accessible online. I was one tiny player in the history of the Copley Press in San Diego, but a search for my files from 1983 to 1992 yields 1,384 documents. Multiply that by thousands, and there starts to appear above the building in Mission Valley a spectral congregation of journalists shaking hands and patting backs for a community memory well, if sometimes imperfectly, preserved. No one else could have done it.
Paper was our medium, on which we moved history from the city through the presses and into the streets. That will change, and it will not be easy. I am totally addicted to picking up a newspaper and sitting down with it. But paper is only a medium. Journalism is the message. It will flow on a new river. I just got a Kindle for my birthday, and it feels clumsy and awkward and restrictive, but it also looks like the journalism medium of the near future. It’s journalism, not newspapers, that communities must keep alive.
March 14, 2009
Mr. Kindle, come here, I need you
I got a Kindle for my birthday!
Karen said she wanted to give me one for Christmas, but they were out of stock. Just as well. By my birthday, Kindle 2 had been introduced, with some useful feature upgrades. Not that I could tell you what they were, or how to use them.
A "Kindle" is, of course, the book-reading hardware sold by Amazon.com. It is the debut of a new age in which paper, an excellent medium now in its second millennium of service, will be replaced by some new, flat, flexible, foldable medium on which words do not appear via impressions of ink but by the excitement of molecules. As nifty as it is to sit in the kitchen nook, command Kindle to download a book or newspaper, and receive that publication faster than you can pour a cup of coffee, I get the distinct impression that I am working with a primitive prototype.
The Kindle, to me, must be like the first telephones were to people in the 1890s living in the dawn of the telephonics age. It is a marvel unto itself, but only a starting point, the first planting of a new technology that will sprout unimaginable produce, the same way the astounding communications products of our age – including the Kindle – trace their roots back to the first primitive, prototypal, telephones.
I wonder, in the 1890s, when someone brought a telephone into our house for the first time, who I would have wanted to call first. Ceremonially, I set aside the startup instructions for the Kindle, took the Kindle off its charger, and tried to decide which writer I wanted to download first. I decided on E.B. White, the famed 20th-century essayist and author of "Charlotte's Web," and history's reigning expert on humor. "Humor can be dissected, as a frog can," White wrote, "but the thing dies in the process, and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." Those words have guided a multitude of careers.
But Amazon has yet to provide any E.B. White titles in its inventory of Kindle availability, a features shortcoming that I am sure will be upgraded any day now. And so I moved on to Eudora Welty. Here I did slightly better, finding and downloading an anthology of Southern writers that included Miss Welty. Then I hit a snag, that developers of this new print medium technology will need to fix, or risk driving all future readers to the loony bin. In a book, you can turn to a page. In Kindle, you can't. At least not that I have yet discovered. In the anthology, if they are collected alphabetically, as I suspect they are, since the first work is that of James Agee, then I will have put a lot of miles on the Next key, and my thumb joint, before I reach Welty.
As yet, I have chosen not to do that. Instead, this primitivity invites me to look backward and forward, as I do often when I try to picture the media of the future. Since it was my 66th (!) birthday, I looked backward to 1943 and wondered what sort of state-of-the-art communications technology I might have received as a birthday gift at that time. I happen to have in my possession a couple of Life magazines from the 1940s, one from '41 and one from '42. They were huge magazines, up-to-date but also impossibly quaint, and delivered by mailmen.
There is no way to fast-forward from a 1942 Life magazine to a Kindle. The only way we could have gotten here is one day at a time. Likewise, looking forward, we must get there one day at a time. On the way, I predict (as I predicted 10 years ago) newspapers and books will be printed on a wide sheet, folded in the middle, to create in essence four pages of print. We will start on Page One, turn to Page Two, then Three and the back page, Page Four. We will press some kind of trigger in the material, and the next four pages will load.
But 66 years from now, I predict the Kindle will have evolved into a tiny chip, embedded in our audio-video neural complex, eliminating all need for external hardware such as screens and speakers. Our volume and channel controls will be managed by our thoughts. We can watch or read or listen to the content of our choice, simply by bidding it to happen.
Karen said she wanted to give me one for Christmas, but they were out of stock. Just as well. By my birthday, Kindle 2 had been introduced, with some useful feature upgrades. Not that I could tell you what they were, or how to use them.
A "Kindle" is, of course, the book-reading hardware sold by Amazon.com. It is the debut of a new age in which paper, an excellent medium now in its second millennium of service, will be replaced by some new, flat, flexible, foldable medium on which words do not appear via impressions of ink but by the excitement of molecules. As nifty as it is to sit in the kitchen nook, command Kindle to download a book or newspaper, and receive that publication faster than you can pour a cup of coffee, I get the distinct impression that I am working with a primitive prototype.
The Kindle, to me, must be like the first telephones were to people in the 1890s living in the dawn of the telephonics age. It is a marvel unto itself, but only a starting point, the first planting of a new technology that will sprout unimaginable produce, the same way the astounding communications products of our age – including the Kindle – trace their roots back to the first primitive, prototypal, telephones.
I wonder, in the 1890s, when someone brought a telephone into our house for the first time, who I would have wanted to call first. Ceremonially, I set aside the startup instructions for the Kindle, took the Kindle off its charger, and tried to decide which writer I wanted to download first. I decided on E.B. White, the famed 20th-century essayist and author of "Charlotte's Web," and history's reigning expert on humor. "Humor can be dissected, as a frog can," White wrote, "but the thing dies in the process, and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." Those words have guided a multitude of careers.
But Amazon has yet to provide any E.B. White titles in its inventory of Kindle availability, a features shortcoming that I am sure will be upgraded any day now. And so I moved on to Eudora Welty. Here I did slightly better, finding and downloading an anthology of Southern writers that included Miss Welty. Then I hit a snag, that developers of this new print medium technology will need to fix, or risk driving all future readers to the loony bin. In a book, you can turn to a page. In Kindle, you can't. At least not that I have yet discovered. In the anthology, if they are collected alphabetically, as I suspect they are, since the first work is that of James Agee, then I will have put a lot of miles on the Next key, and my thumb joint, before I reach Welty.
As yet, I have chosen not to do that. Instead, this primitivity invites me to look backward and forward, as I do often when I try to picture the media of the future. Since it was my 66th (!) birthday, I looked backward to 1943 and wondered what sort of state-of-the-art communications technology I might have received as a birthday gift at that time. I happen to have in my possession a couple of Life magazines from the 1940s, one from '41 and one from '42. They were huge magazines, up-to-date but also impossibly quaint, and delivered by mailmen.
There is no way to fast-forward from a 1942 Life magazine to a Kindle. The only way we could have gotten here is one day at a time. Likewise, looking forward, we must get there one day at a time. On the way, I predict (as I predicted 10 years ago) newspapers and books will be printed on a wide sheet, folded in the middle, to create in essence four pages of print. We will start on Page One, turn to Page Two, then Three and the back page, Page Four. We will press some kind of trigger in the material, and the next four pages will load.
But 66 years from now, I predict the Kindle will have evolved into a tiny chip, embedded in our audio-video neural complex, eliminating all need for external hardware such as screens and speakers. Our volume and channel controls will be managed by our thoughts. We can watch or read or listen to the content of our choice, simply by bidding it to happen.
March 08, 2009
March 05, 2009
Blowing concerned conservatives clear of Rush
Whether they agree or disagree with President Obama’s direction for the nation, Americans are quickly forming the opinion that his team doesn’t miss much.
For example, someone on the team last fall jotted some notes on the success of “Sarah’s Base Hardener” in continuing the work of that icon of conservatism, William F. Buckley. Buckley’s work: “I’ve spent my entire lifetime separating the right from the kooks.”
“Sarah” was, of course Sarah Palin. Quickly, she established an identity among many Americans as Billy Mays (the screeching TV pitchman) in lipstick. John McCain put her to work hardening the GOP base, and her success exceeded the lifelong hopes of William F. Buckley. Throughout the late summer and fall, “Sarah’s Base Hardener” was separating the right from the kooks in boatload numbers. It featured a secret ingredient that, when dumped into a party-full of conservatives, acted to eliminate choice. At the molecular level, it removed any molecule that didn’t look like and act like the molecule next to it. Those molecules (including David Brooks and Christopher Buckley, William’s son) rose to the top in a confused, multi-colored froth, while the base molecules, all exactly identical, sank to the bottom, so enraptured by their liberation from choice that they cried out against any agent of choice, including but not limited to Barack Obama, intoning, “Treason!” “Terrorist!” “Liar!” “Kill him!”
Rush Limbaugh was beside himself with envy and gratitude for this hardened base that cemented his natural and lucrative constituency. When Sarah visited his radio show, he told her, “I’ll tell you, I’m in a quandary here this morning. I admire you so much. I really don’t even know what to ask.”
The Obama strategists watched this, and took notes. Their particular interest was the colorful, confused froth left at the top of the GOP, and the November votes that might be extracted from it. But the ultimate national value of this froth, and how to capitalize on it, may not have occurred to them until last weekend. Or they may have just been waiting for the right opportunity, the right conditions to experiment on the froth.
Then, last Saturday, Limbaugh delivered an 85-minute speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference that was textbook hard-base Limbaugh, so textbook that it rattled the Republican National Chairman, Michael Steele, who called it “incendiary” and “ugly.” The next morning on national television, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel threw the switch. Of Limbaugh, Emanuel said: “He is the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.”
Imagine those words passing through David Brooks’ body, and you see the colorful, confused GOP froth, separated from the hardened base, but still in the party pot with no place to go, nowhere to turn, converted instantly to live steam on being touched with the voltage of an intellectual association to Rush Limbaugh. There they are this week, a huge conservative cloud blown into the atmosphere, looking for a place to precipitate out. Buckley’s work is at last completed. And by Democrats! With a huge assist, when he selected Sarah Palin, from John McCain. Talk about reaching back and forth across the aisle.
It will be interesting in the weeks and months to come, to see how the cloud precipitates out. Wherever it is, there are some good people up there, important to this country’s near, intermediate, and distant future. I will bet you $7.50 that Obama knew that.
For example, someone on the team last fall jotted some notes on the success of “Sarah’s Base Hardener” in continuing the work of that icon of conservatism, William F. Buckley. Buckley’s work: “I’ve spent my entire lifetime separating the right from the kooks.”
“Sarah” was, of course Sarah Palin. Quickly, she established an identity among many Americans as Billy Mays (the screeching TV pitchman) in lipstick. John McCain put her to work hardening the GOP base, and her success exceeded the lifelong hopes of William F. Buckley. Throughout the late summer and fall, “Sarah’s Base Hardener” was separating the right from the kooks in boatload numbers. It featured a secret ingredient that, when dumped into a party-full of conservatives, acted to eliminate choice. At the molecular level, it removed any molecule that didn’t look like and act like the molecule next to it. Those molecules (including David Brooks and Christopher Buckley, William’s son) rose to the top in a confused, multi-colored froth, while the base molecules, all exactly identical, sank to the bottom, so enraptured by their liberation from choice that they cried out against any agent of choice, including but not limited to Barack Obama, intoning, “Treason!” “Terrorist!” “Liar!” “Kill him!”
Rush Limbaugh was beside himself with envy and gratitude for this hardened base that cemented his natural and lucrative constituency. When Sarah visited his radio show, he told her, “I’ll tell you, I’m in a quandary here this morning. I admire you so much. I really don’t even know what to ask.”
The Obama strategists watched this, and took notes. Their particular interest was the colorful, confused froth left at the top of the GOP, and the November votes that might be extracted from it. But the ultimate national value of this froth, and how to capitalize on it, may not have occurred to them until last weekend. Or they may have just been waiting for the right opportunity, the right conditions to experiment on the froth.
Then, last Saturday, Limbaugh delivered an 85-minute speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference that was textbook hard-base Limbaugh, so textbook that it rattled the Republican National Chairman, Michael Steele, who called it “incendiary” and “ugly.” The next morning on national television, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel threw the switch. Of Limbaugh, Emanuel said: “He is the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.”
Imagine those words passing through David Brooks’ body, and you see the colorful, confused GOP froth, separated from the hardened base, but still in the party pot with no place to go, nowhere to turn, converted instantly to live steam on being touched with the voltage of an intellectual association to Rush Limbaugh. There they are this week, a huge conservative cloud blown into the atmosphere, looking for a place to precipitate out. Buckley’s work is at last completed. And by Democrats! With a huge assist, when he selected Sarah Palin, from John McCain. Talk about reaching back and forth across the aisle.
It will be interesting in the weeks and months to come, to see how the cloud precipitates out. Wherever it is, there are some good people up there, important to this country’s near, intermediate, and distant future. I will bet you $7.50 that Obama knew that.
March 03, 2009
The branding news
I will admit, I was more excited than the average Abilenian when the city almost two years ago announced plans to “brand” itself, like New York is branded “The Big Apple” and Dallas is “Big D,” the better to draw business and tourism to the city from all points of the globe. Abilene leaders were very excited, willing to commit $107,000 through its “Abilene Branding Partnership” to pay for the brand’s development. I could see the day when my hometown would display its brand in “Conde Nast Traveler,” “Forbes,” and travel sections in The New York Times and International Herald Tribune.
As I say, I was more excited than most. I counted a dozen or so letters to the editor in response to the branding news, most against paying any money to any advertising outfit to create a tomfool brand the city didn’t need. In fact my reaction ran in the opposite direction. I decided to BECOME one of those outfits and was ready to offer the partnership (at a discount) my recommendation for the brand: “Abilene, Texas Style.” But it didn’t work out. You can read all about that in previous blogs on the issue.
A contract was let to some tomfool Tennessee company to develop the brand, and after a year or so it was revealed at a civic gathering at the historic Paramount Theater on Cypress St. downtown. The brand: “Abilene Frontiering.” It was godawful. The letters count went way up. After a few days, the hubbub died down. Since then, things have been pretty quiet. A couple of weeks ago, I started to wonder about it. I was reasonably comfortable that “Abilene Frontiering” was not going to pop up in The Times travel section, so somebody I know wouldn’t be asking me, “You’re from Abilene, aren’t you?” and starting a “frontiering” cross-examination.
But it seemed reasonable that any civic group wanting a brand bad enough to pay $107,000 for “Abilene Frontiering” would find a way to move forward. This week, a new story broke. The brand was farmed out to a local ad agency, that came back with a spare design that shows the word “Abilene” with a blue shooting star across the top. It was a definite improvement over the “Frontiering” logo that was littered with colored stars that looked for all the world like the stars we got on good spelling papers in school.
The story said this new design was intended only for directional signage within the city, to help find visitors where they were going. I was disappointed. From showing visitors the way from Europe and Asia to Abilene, the brand had shrunk to showing visitors the way from South First and Sayles to Shotwell Stadium. The mayor was beside himself. “I think this is going to change the face of the community,” he said. His being the mayor, I take this to mean the city is officially out from underneath “Frontiering,” which couldn’t help but make any community feel better about itself.
Maybe he is right, and that those of us with feeling for Abilene should be satisfied. There is no doubt in my private mind that Abilene is a city that deserves branding, and could rise to it, if it were a good one. But it may be a thing best left unencouraged, in the sense of being careful what you wish for from a project judged satisfactory when it helps people find their way from one side of the city to the other. “At least now we’ve got a logo that can be used for some time that really embodies that Abilene is a special place out there,” said one official. A city name, a blue star, gangbusters.
As I say, I was more excited than most. I counted a dozen or so letters to the editor in response to the branding news, most against paying any money to any advertising outfit to create a tomfool brand the city didn’t need. In fact my reaction ran in the opposite direction. I decided to BECOME one of those outfits and was ready to offer the partnership (at a discount) my recommendation for the brand: “Abilene, Texas Style.” But it didn’t work out. You can read all about that in previous blogs on the issue.
A contract was let to some tomfool Tennessee company to develop the brand, and after a year or so it was revealed at a civic gathering at the historic Paramount Theater on Cypress St. downtown. The brand: “Abilene Frontiering.” It was godawful. The letters count went way up. After a few days, the hubbub died down. Since then, things have been pretty quiet. A couple of weeks ago, I started to wonder about it. I was reasonably comfortable that “Abilene Frontiering” was not going to pop up in The Times travel section, so somebody I know wouldn’t be asking me, “You’re from Abilene, aren’t you?” and starting a “frontiering” cross-examination.
But it seemed reasonable that any civic group wanting a brand bad enough to pay $107,000 for “Abilene Frontiering” would find a way to move forward. This week, a new story broke. The brand was farmed out to a local ad agency, that came back with a spare design that shows the word “Abilene” with a blue shooting star across the top. It was a definite improvement over the “Frontiering” logo that was littered with colored stars that looked for all the world like the stars we got on good spelling papers in school.
The story said this new design was intended only for directional signage within the city, to help find visitors where they were going. I was disappointed. From showing visitors the way from Europe and Asia to Abilene, the brand had shrunk to showing visitors the way from South First and Sayles to Shotwell Stadium. The mayor was beside himself. “I think this is going to change the face of the community,” he said. His being the mayor, I take this to mean the city is officially out from underneath “Frontiering,” which couldn’t help but make any community feel better about itself.
Maybe he is right, and that those of us with feeling for Abilene should be satisfied. There is no doubt in my private mind that Abilene is a city that deserves branding, and could rise to it, if it were a good one. But it may be a thing best left unencouraged, in the sense of being careful what you wish for from a project judged satisfactory when it helps people find their way from one side of the city to the other. “At least now we’ve got a logo that can be used for some time that really embodies that Abilene is a special place out there,” said one official. A city name, a blue star, gangbusters.
March 01, 2009
Paul Harvey, Bob Cluck, and the Top 50 Banquet
Bob Cluck and I lost a friend yesterday. Paul Harvey, the radio personality, died.
Mr. Harvey did not know that he was our friend, but he was, since the evening in spring of 1961 when he was the featured speaker at the Abilene High "Top 50" banquet. In fact he provided unique content to the friendship that Bob and I had begun in 1955, in seventh grade. We found great humor in insulting each other, gently. The trick then became always having something handy to insult each other about.
These weren't shouted insults, declared out loud, but almost an inside joke. Others might get our humor, but more by inference than intent. Both of us had – still have – low thresholds of mirth, but the mirth was low-key. I think our elders had a lot to do with that. My grandmother was an icon of taciturnity, and her humor was almost the soldier's humor, crafted and honed in the battles of the Great Depression, when she was a widow raising six kids. My uncle Clyde must have studied her closely. Yesterday in a blog, I asked you to look at my blog photo, and note the smile. Clyde smiled exactly like that. But not often. When he did, it was for him the equivalent of jumping up and down on the coffee table.
When Bob and I got to the point where we were going to each other's houses, I found a kindred spirit in his mom, Katherine. She was always composed, never laughed out loud, as most people laugh out loud. When she was really tickled, she would sort of chortle in place, and a look would come into her eyes as if to say forgive me for this outburst. She looked like she could have studied under Jack Benny, or Bob Hope. We formed a bond. I know she was usually glad to see me. I hardly ever walked in the Clucks' door on Grand Ave. that she hadn't just made a lemon icebox pie.
Charlie, Bob's dad, was an insurance executive and by necessity more emotive. Still, he was of a reserved turn of mind. One day, fooling around, Bob and I knocked a hole in the sheetrock of their living room wall. Well, actually, I was the one. I pushed Bob backward harder than I meant to. I thought that was it, for me, in the Cluck household, but Katherine and Charlie, inspecting the hole, found humor in it, as did Bob, heaven knows, who had something he could use on me forever.
When Mr. Harvey came to town in 1961, Bob and I were seniors at Abilene High. I was one of the top 50 graduates, gradewise, and was invited. Bob was not. He has never let me off the hook. Nor I, him. I took to telling people that I taught Bob everything he knows. Bob took to telling people that he knew Mike Grant, who was invited to the banquet and met Paul Harvey. Bob is a greeter at the First Baptist Church in Abilene and I would like to know how many people he told this morning that he knows Mike Grant, arguing, seriously, as a listener might begin to believe, why they don't have a Mike Grant Day in Abilene.
That is Paul Harvey's lifelong contribution to the friendship of just two people in the world he knew. I mourn his loss particularly for that.
Mr. Harvey did not know that he was our friend, but he was, since the evening in spring of 1961 when he was the featured speaker at the Abilene High "Top 50" banquet. In fact he provided unique content to the friendship that Bob and I had begun in 1955, in seventh grade. We found great humor in insulting each other, gently. The trick then became always having something handy to insult each other about.
These weren't shouted insults, declared out loud, but almost an inside joke. Others might get our humor, but more by inference than intent. Both of us had – still have – low thresholds of mirth, but the mirth was low-key. I think our elders had a lot to do with that. My grandmother was an icon of taciturnity, and her humor was almost the soldier's humor, crafted and honed in the battles of the Great Depression, when she was a widow raising six kids. My uncle Clyde must have studied her closely. Yesterday in a blog, I asked you to look at my blog photo, and note the smile. Clyde smiled exactly like that. But not often. When he did, it was for him the equivalent of jumping up and down on the coffee table.
When Bob and I got to the point where we were going to each other's houses, I found a kindred spirit in his mom, Katherine. She was always composed, never laughed out loud, as most people laugh out loud. When she was really tickled, she would sort of chortle in place, and a look would come into her eyes as if to say forgive me for this outburst. She looked like she could have studied under Jack Benny, or Bob Hope. We formed a bond. I know she was usually glad to see me. I hardly ever walked in the Clucks' door on Grand Ave. that she hadn't just made a lemon icebox pie.
Charlie, Bob's dad, was an insurance executive and by necessity more emotive. Still, he was of a reserved turn of mind. One day, fooling around, Bob and I knocked a hole in the sheetrock of their living room wall. Well, actually, I was the one. I pushed Bob backward harder than I meant to. I thought that was it, for me, in the Cluck household, but Katherine and Charlie, inspecting the hole, found humor in it, as did Bob, heaven knows, who had something he could use on me forever.
When Mr. Harvey came to town in 1961, Bob and I were seniors at Abilene High. I was one of the top 50 graduates, gradewise, and was invited. Bob was not. He has never let me off the hook. Nor I, him. I took to telling people that I taught Bob everything he knows. Bob took to telling people that he knew Mike Grant, who was invited to the banquet and met Paul Harvey. Bob is a greeter at the First Baptist Church in Abilene and I would like to know how many people he told this morning that he knows Mike Grant, arguing, seriously, as a listener might begin to believe, why they don't have a Mike Grant Day in Abilene.
That is Paul Harvey's lifelong contribution to the friendship of just two people in the world he knew. I mourn his loss particularly for that.
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