a popsicle now

Via firedoglake.com, an analysis by Domenico Montanaro on msnbc.com:

Despite GOP's expected short-term gains this fall – largely owed to the nation’s high unemployment rate — problems still lurk for the party’s long-term stability. Republicans’ ideological civil war, the recent passage of a controversial Arizona immigration law, and an uncertain shortlist of Obama challengers all raise questions about its ability to compete on a presidential level.

“From a presidential perspective, we have real [expletive] problems,” said one GOP operative based in Washington, D.C., who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the state of the party frankly. “From a national candidate perspective, we have real problems.”

No problem. It's going to be She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Lady Voldemoose.

to be kind

My friend Kelly keeps an interesting blog under the name TzviaLane, a hebraicization of her Celtic monicker. Kelly loves to dissect morality, and in her latest entry speculates,

We need to be taught, overtly and carefully, when and how to hurt people. Not how to be mean, not to how to hurt unnecessarily, but to, when it is appropriate and necessary, to handle the hurting of someone, to do so as humanely and healthily as possible for all concerned.

She gives an example she's used with me in conversation:

In explaining to me why he didn't call and explain to a woman he had been dating that he no longer wanted to see her, an acquaintance told me, "I don't like to hurt people." And I thought, "No, you just don't like to be there when it happens."

To paraphrase, I think, Curly of the Three Stooges, I resemble that remark. I've done the falling silent routine, and not only long ago, sorry to say. Since Kelly's pointed it out for me, I've tried to do better, and sometimes succeeded.

In the breaking-up example, there is no way to proceed without wounding. I have done the honest thing. None of those I was frank with evinced any gratitude for my directness.

One of them cried. We fell back together again some time later, and when we parted for good I suppose it was easier for both of us to take the honest option.

One of them wanted a post-breakup face-to-face, at which she told me that her friends all thought I was "just another frightened man." I think that was the purpose of the tete-a-tete. That wasn't pleasant, but knowing I was proceeding consciously eased the sting. I could have replied, truthfully, that I was never that into her in the first place, but that would have exceeded the bounds of conscientious hurting. She had to sting back, and in the long run I'm glad she got her lick in.

And in the third case, fairly early on (no sex yet) I told her that I didn't want to hang out with her any more, because we didn't seem to have anything to talk about. She said, "You can't stop seeing someone because of that!" And I thought, and possibly gently said, "But I am."

[That (no sex yet) reminds me of something my dear lezzie friend Lis once said to me. I told her about an abortive drink-date with a woman I later learned was a flake stuck on a maniac. Lis said, "At least you didn't sleep with her." And I said, "Boy, you really don't understand men at all."]

Kelly's greater point, tho, is that what could be considered cruel acts are a necessary part of self-defense. As somebody who learned late just where his own boundaries are, I agree.

She even proposes that we teach children how to be judiciously cruel. It's an intriguing idea. My brother and his wife are very conscientious about teaching their kids to treat others with respect. I can see what a difficult and vigilant process it is. I don't know if there's time and nuance enough to teach them how and when to be cruel. Perhaps that is what other children are for.

more

FDL:

In his Cooper Union Speech, President Obama called for common sense financial reforms. He was talking to a bunch of the thugs on Wall Street, voracious zombies who don’t deal in common sense any more than the leeches at Wellpoint. They deal in profits, and there is absolutely nothing they won’t do to protect their ability to profit at the expense of every single human on the planet, including their cubicle mates.

The common sense reforms the President supports are meaningless in the face of the depredations of Wall Street which have destroyed the lives and fortunes of millions of their fellow citizens.

Daily Kos:

While Obama was delivering his Wall Street reform speech, Wall Street went to Washington for another meeting with GOP Senators, this time a secret fundraiser. Think Progress has the goods.

contact

I've been watching a series of short documentaries, called Contacts. What you see are contact sheets, while the photographers talk about the pix, the day and moment of shooting, the choosing of the right image.

The first disc concentrates on street photographers of the early to mid-20th century: Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, Klein.

I'm esp interested in William Klein. The photos in his book Close Up fascinate me. Technically they violate every classical rule: massive wide-angle distortion, action blurs, buckshot grain. As art, they wrap themselves around your vision. This is an oversize book, 10 inches wide (thus 20 inches opened up) by 14 inches tall; appropriate scale for the work. I'm sure they've been reproduced smaller, but they were not the same work in such cases.

As somebody who takes pictures with what could be called a computer with a lens rather than a camera with a chip, it amazes me that Klein worked with a wide-angle, fixed focus lens, guessing exposure as he shot. It's a skill you don't acquire anymore as a necessity, only an option, almost an eccentricity.

I was hoping for some additional insight about composition and selection; I haven't quite gotten that. Klein talks about this crowd and this moment and that, but when it comes to discerning the one he just says, "Now, this is a photograph." Elliot Erwitt, whose work I am just coming to fully appreciate and admire, says of one of his selections, "A good frame and a good moment."

For a moment, I'm frustrated; I was hoping for something more utile, more nuts and bolts. But then I cheer up. Here's something I remember out of focus and out of context: I can't remember who said this, an Abstract Expressionist, probably Ad Reinhardt or Philip Guston, or possibly the composer Morton Feldman (I was reading a lot about all of them at the same time). "Art is done in the dark." Craft is plan, art is immediate. Day, night.

I've been wondering how much of an art photography is, really, how much of the night goes into writing with light. It's a mystery to the masters. They become masters because they just make it, trust it, doubt it, see it, and convince us.

yesterday, today, above, below

So on Saturday I took the pic that's now posted below under yesterday. I edited it on Sunday, so I think the post title is honest.

There's always a difference once a pic is posted. Some of it is no doubt introduced by the website. I usually have to refine the pre-posted file on my computer, tuning up the way it looks on the site. This is an aesthetic variable I don't see much attention paid to.

The black painted wall at the top of the pic wasn't as delicious as it looked in the original file. It lacked licorice. I was too tired by the time I posted last night to do anything about it then, so I resolved to edit and post in the morning.

This morning when I opened it up, I was disappointed to see that the amber in the sign at the top right wasn't as glowy as it was in my edited file. Phooey. And even worse, I saw that I had liked the glowy wood against the flat black paint so much during the original process that I kept it in the composition even though now I could see it detracted from the overall. So I tuned up the licorice and cropped away until I had this:

This is stronger, I think.


I also tried a variant crop that includes the glowy sign:

Not as good as the one above, but interesting.

yesterday, today

An unexpected weekend for me, photographically.

For Xmas 2008 I bought myself a Canon Rebel Xsi, my first DSLR. I was thrilled with the clarity of the first shots I took, but somehow over the course of months I didn't find I was taking that many pictures I really liked. I kept pushing at it, figuring that I had to let the camera become more of an accustomed and instinctual tool for me.

I suppose it was spring 2009 when I realized it just wasn't happening. I picked up my older camera, a so-called "prosumer" model by Panasonic, the Lumix DMC-FZ18, and bam bam bam took more shots in a day that I liked than I had in the six months before.

My life has a certain material elasticity - it was not a disaster for me to have spent $600 on the Canon, which I thought I'd never use again, but it wasn't a negligible matter either. I comforted myself with the thought that I never would have known for sure that a DSLR wasn't for me until I had one in my possession, and wondering about it would have bugged me. Taking pix is a large part of my sanity maintenance regime, so the overall experience was worth it, esp if I could sell the Canon.

I handed the camera off to my friend Chris, to try out and if he liked it, buy. For his own reasons he didn't take to it, and he returned it to me this past Saturday. Since learning he wasn't going to buy it I had been mildly obsessed with selling it and using the proceeds to buy an even higher-end Lumix (I love the whole line, totally recommend it to anyone who wants the best quality pix without the weight and complexity of a DSLR). But having the Canon back, I wanted to handle it one last time before putting it on the block.

I was surprised at how right, instantly, it felt in my hand. Not only was every control sensibly placed (sometimes, cleverly, placed twice), but I knew exactly where each one was - a tribute not to my memory but to what I knew even the first time round was some smart design.

So I began snapping pix around the house. And again, I loved the clarity. And the depth of field. The Lumix, as much as I grok the shots it takes, is a super-high-end point-and-shoot. Getting everything so you know you get what you want is the priority designed in. You can set the controls to compensate, but you're not working with what the cam does best. But it was easy to adjust, to flip back and forth, with the Canon.

And then I had my epiphany, which had to have been one of the stupidest epiphanies any photographer has ever had about photography. It wasn't the Canon that was at fault. It was the lens that came with it. The Lumix 12X optical lens, fixed to the camera, zooms from close-up to telephoto. I'd gotten used to zapping right in. The lens that came with the Canon was perfectly fine but designed for a shorter range. I needed a different freaking lens, that was all.

I took the Canon for a walk around the neighborhood, not shooting for art, but to take fast shots that would match up with the kind of thing that usually turns me on - grids, scraps and chaos, natural light mixed with artificial. I covered a route much like one I had taken recently with the Lumix, trying to recreate the conditions under which I'd taken a pic with a tree that knocked me out in the center, but with crazy distorted buildings teetering in at the sides.

Comparing the shots I wanted to go for with the shots the cam - I should say, the lens - could take, I confirmed my stupid epiphany.

I changed over from obsessively comparing cameras at dpreview.com to obsessively comparing Canon-compatible lenses. And yesterday I bought myself an 18-135mm Canon zoom lens. Again, duh, any photog should have put this together ages ago. But every process has its tempo, I suppose.

I haven't had a chance to try it outside the apartment yet. But I did take one pic with the old lens on Saturday that I really liked, and it's posted under "today," below. Some comment on that pic, above.

today

wrong

President Obama widely quoted today as saying he has been a little amused over the past couple of days by people at Teabagger rallies complaining about taxes.

"You would think they'd be saying thank you,” he said, referring to the near-universal reduction in taxes this year on all but the wealthy.

He's right on the facts, wrong on the politics. His opponents already dominate a media narrative that Dems are, say it with me, tax and spenders. Amusement, a joke, are the wrong response, and will only be bent against him, as if demonstrating callousness or estrangement from real life - remember Bush I and his bemused encounter with a laser code-reader?

choke

In case you haven't been following the copyright/censorship fight, everything quoted below is on the record, not speculation:

In the US, the MPAA and RIAA... just submitted comments to the American Intellectual Property Czar, Victoria Espinel, laying out their proposal for IP enforcement. They want us all to install spyware on our computers that deletes material that it identifies as infringing. They want our networks censored by national firewalls.... They want border-searches of laptops, personal media players and thumb-drives.

They want poor countries bullied into diverting GDP from humanitarian causes to enforcing copyright. And they want their domestic copyright enforcement handled, free of charge, by the Department of Homeland Security.

The boldface is mine, the article is Cory Doctorow's for The Guardian, UK. I hate the name of his website, but he's extremely smart about digital freedom and many other things.

broken star, more

Since yesterday's post, I've been thinking a lot about the evolution of my attitude towards Israel, and this morning I'm wondering what I would write that would interest a random visitor to the blog.

The place I've come to is not unusual for an American Jew, progressive in politics, born in the 1950s. I abhor what Israel is doing to a subject Palestinian population, and I resent that affiliations in religion, culture, and history would make anybody, Jew or Gentile, assume I support its actions.

My argument with friends on the Left for many years was twofold: that the actions of Israel were wrong, but wasn't it peculiar that Israel was always first on the list of offenders? When you compared apples with apples, the apple full of Jews was always first on the sinners' list.

My second argument was with the simpleminded conclusion that if the Israelis were bad, the Palestinians had to be good. This is the same dopiness that had some in the 60s making heroes of the Vietcong. Just because South Vietnam was corrupt and America had no biz being there didn't make the VC angels with guns. Ditto the Palestinians. You could support Palestinian independence without wrapping yourself in a keffiyeh.

You don't have to think somebody is a nice person to allow them their rights, their liberty, their freedom. They possess these things no matter what you think of them.

My assessment and my feelings began to change with the Shatila and Sabra massacre, in 1982. Most of the history following is of overt violence, territorial seizure, and viciousness of bureaucracy. Gradually, grinding, going almost always in the wrong direction, the policies and actions of the Israeli government have seemed determined to prove the beliefs of every last anti-Semite in the world, and then create some new ones.

I don't think that the Israelis have to be nice people to deserve their safety, their liberty, their freedom. But I do believe that they have to stop bullying the Palestinians if they want my support.

Israel is the largest recipient of American foreign aid. This is no secret. Let's start cutting that by 10% a year, until the Israeli government stops pushing itself to the forefront of the sinners. Egypt is the second-largest recipient of American foreign aid. Let's cut them back in tandem, and see whether the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak (expected to be succeeded by his son) manages to become a little more mellow and democratic, and whether it needs to be bribed not to attack its neighbor.

Because of a residual mistrust of Left and Right anti-Semitism, I usually believe mainstream American reporting on Israeli/Palestinian matters when the story is critical of Israel, and lefty sources when the Israeli peace movement is the topic. I try to check my understanding from Israeli sources, the daily newspaper Haaretz, for example. Al Jazeera English picks up stories from them, too. The book I most depend on is Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999, by Israeli historian Benny Morris.


The good little secular Jewish boy I was regrets that Israeli is not a better place. But as a friend of mine says, forget Israel, America is the Jewish homeland. And she's right. But America, what's happening here, it's such a shondeh....

broken star

Just appalling. Israelis using the Star of David as an emblem of dominance over Palestinians. Sources: Haaretz, The New York Times, The Madison Times, Time magazine. The actions of the Israeli government over the last couple of years have extinguished the last of my sentimental attachment to that country as a homeland for the Jews.

continuum

three consecutive items from Talking Points Memo:

Looking at the American Patriot Foundation's representation of Lt. Col. Terence Lakin, it occurs to me, what's more patriotic than an active duty member of the military refusing to obey a lawful order?

and

Gay Stein, founder and leader of Armed Forces Tea Party Patriots, sends out statement offering reassurance that his group is not calling for a military uprising and recognize[s] Barack Obama as the legitimate Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces.  

and

We now have another Republican (albeit one in the House) saying that the seemingly preposterous claim that Health Care Reform is unconstitutional will be a key issue in the upcoming Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

It occurs to me that the Tea Party is to the Republican Party as the Republican Party is to the Democratic Party. Yeah, I know it's not a truth derived from the three propositions above. But it did just occur to me.

Post scriptum, 60 seconds later:
Firedoglake's Scarecrow eviscerates Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner's editorial in The Washington Post:

I’m not an economist, but I think his answer boils down to “trust the not-really bipartisan Senate bill to give not-even-close-to-credible regulators like him the authority to get it right next time.” 

Tea Party is to Republican Party as Republican Party is to Democratic Party.

watch out

My friend Bill Brown is one founder of the Situationist-inspired performance group, The Surveillance Camera Players. He describes the SCP as "a small, informal group of people who are unconditionally opposed to the installation and use of video surveillance cameras in public places."

They have presented brief versions of theatrical plays (Ubu Roi), an adaptation of 1984, and such original works as God's Eyes on Earth and It's OK, Officer, for the benefit of the unblinking eye and the blinking public.

Bill continues to perform his walking tours of surveillance camera installations in various cities - there are more of these cameras around, situated to no overt purpose, than you might think. Contact him via SCP(at)notbored.org.

It's been a while since a new SCP-inspired performance group sprang up, but Bill is pleased to share the info that a new group, The COMO Surveillance Camera Players, has sprung up in response to a proposed festering of cameras in downtown Columbia, Missouri.

More info about SCP, Bill, Guy Debord and other Situationists can be found at notbored.org. Or you can read his book American Colossus: The Grain Elevator, 1843 to 1943, which, despite its title, is not a trashy summer read, but nonetheless interesting.

cats

(yes, I'm writing about cats. don't like it? skip it.)

When my last cat, Butch, died, I planned to wait a couple of months - we were close - and then get a kitten. All my cats have been rescued, grown, so I've never had a cat from the kit-go.

Then my friend Lauren told me about Bella, a cat her friend Colleen had rescued. Bella was too aggressive with Colleen's older cat, always wanting to rassle, so she was kept to one room most of the time. Not a good life for a cat.

I went out to Jersey City to meet Bella. The room she lived in was tiny, with food and water bowls and a chair by the window so she could watch the birds. Colleen was doing what she could for Bella - she just didn't have the resources and total (crazy) tenderheartedness of another friend of mine, who basically paid the rent on an apartment for her two cats because the great love of her life was allergic.

The older cat was safely tucked away, so we humans and cat went down to the living room. Colleen demonstrated Bella's enthusiastic response to a cat dancer (long stiff arc of wire with dancing fibrous end for cat to grab at). This was to demonstrate Bella's playfulness, but now it reminds that cat playfulness is always predatory. Colleen also showed me that Bella would eat dry food from one's hand, so far as I know a rare thing for a cat.

When she wanted Bella back in her room, Colleen stood and said "Bella, time to eat," and Bella hurtled back up the steps. That was the moment I knew I had to take her. I couldn't leave an animal so bound to her physicality to live in that little room. I may have also felt sorry for her to be so helpless against her appetite.

Declawing a cat makes life in an apartment so much easier and safe from destruction. But Colleen pressed me not to do so, pointing out that it's like amputating the ends of a human's fingers.

I'm such a soft touch.

(to be continued)

to come

I've stayed away from politics for a couple of weeks; that's going to change. In the meantime, put a pin in these:

Ron Paul OK with Teabagger threats and rhetoric: "I can't defend the views of everybody who ever shows up at one of my events because that would be impossible. I mean, we don't screen people.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has again proclaimed April “Abortion Recovery Month.”

Southern Republican Leadership Conference  2010 Straw Poll Results
If the primary election for president were held today, for whom would you vote? Please check the box by the candidate of your choice.
Newt Gingrich    18%
Mike Huckabee  4%
Gary Johnson    1%
Sarah Palin       18%
Ron Paul           24% (438 votes)
Tim Pawlenty   3%
Mike Pence      3%
Mitt Romney    24% (439 votes)
Rick Santorum    2%

10 to 1 your Republican candidate for President in 2012 is on this list.

Post scriptum - Oh, the good news just keeps piling up. Military teabaggers:

Many people in the military "feel like they can't speak out against Obama or Congress," said Stein. "The armed forces should have a little bit more say than we think we do," he said.

new

Waiting to See the Art

sided

It's a popular misconception that what distinguishes a Mobius strip is that it is "infinite," that it is "never-ending." A Mobius strip is no more never-ending than a loop of paper made without a half-twist is never-ending.

If you take a pencil to one-side of a regular loop and trace a line around, it will meet its end. You can keep going around and around the loop, but the line will pass its beginning every time. You will never run out of loop, but that doesn't mean it's infinite in length.

A Mobius strip is exactly the same. It's more difficult to get that pencil around the Klein bottle - the half-twist - but you will come again to the beginning of your line.

What distinguishes a Mobius strip from its cousin is that it only has one side. You can trace your line around a conventional loop all you like - but the inner side of the strip will remain untouched. Trace your way around a Mobius strip once, and you will cover what appear to be both sides - but if inside and outside are continuous, what you have yourself is a one-sided object.

What brought this to mind is a "Briefly Noted" review in The New Yorker, April 5, 2010, of Gina Welch's book In the Land of Believers. Welch, who grew up an atheist in California, goes to graduate school in Virginia and becomes a member of Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church. Her intentions are secular, but she finds herself moved by the human touch within the church (shades of Donna Minkowitz's 1998 book Ferocious Romance).

Here I quote The New Yorker quoting Welch: "Unlike human love, she realizes, God love is a 'Mobius strip... calm and complete, unflinching in the face of anything you could reveal about yourself.'"

No, I thought, another misuse of the Mobius concept. It would not indicate the infinite love of God in the face of all and anything. It would actually describe the love of God as one-sided no matter how far you travel. And Jerry Falwell's God seems to me one who demands one way, one path, one side - not a universal embracing.

On second consideration of the Welch quote, it occurred to me that the one-sided aspect of the Mobius strip might be what she intended after all - there is no dimension but God's dimension, you are of it even if you think you are on another side, it transcends your ordinary conception of reality.

I don't know which she means, but for my purposes I don't need to know. My interest is in presenting and knowing the Mobius loop properly. Does that mean Welch and I are on different sides of a loop, never touching? Or does it put us on a Mobius plane, co-existent?

pix 2010

Waiting to see the art at MoMA.

found poem

CROSS HER PALM

"My hands are itching

on the inside.

That means either

I'm getting money

or I'm gonna die."