114. The age of Supers

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"We hold these truths...

...to be self-evident: that all men are created equal...." The last time I quoted this I was interested in slaves and Native Americans -- the individuals who were not "self-evidently" equal at the time of the American Revolution. Now I'm interested in the "supers."

Super heroes, super stars, super models. All the individuals our culture places not below the "equal" but above. This train of thought left the station as I was riding the elliptical this morning at the gym. (The inclusion of "at the gym" there hints at my fantasy of some day having an elliptical machine in my apartment. This would be after I discover the extra room I never realized I had.)

Film and TV are currently obsessed with super heroes. The DC 'verse has Superman and Supergirl and "Metas" who are humans but with special powers -- I can't really explain "metas," because DC. The Marvel 'verse, my home, has mutants who are also humans with special powers. Then there's my other home, the Whedon 'verse.

Buffy also falls into the superhero category since she is mostly human but part demon -- as we learn late in the series. Season four of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (BtVS) is one of the weakest, but one of the few things that season I liked was when Buffy tries to team up with a secret government anti-demon force called The Initiative. They are para-military with fancy weapons and technology. But Buffy is in another league. We, the fans, know she is special just as the fans of the Harry Potter films knew he was special. Buffy thrives (to the extent that she does thrive) because of her relationships with her merely human friends, just as Harry thrives, in part, due to his mudblood friends. But "we" understand that in the end Buffy and Harry are the "special" ones. 

The Lord of the Rings, especially The Return of the King, and countless other books and popular movies, extend this superness to nobility of blood. Even Neo in The Matrix is "The One." 

Sports is all about superstars, those rare individuals who excel at some particular activity. (If only Barry Bonds had been bitten by a radioactive spider instead of doing whatever he did to "augment" his natural abilities, we wouldn't be having a debate about his belonging in the baseball Hall of Fame.) Joe Montana is still just shy of a god here because he excelled at activities, and in situations, that even other superstars struggle in. You'd think people would pull for the more average guy, but it's the thrill of seeing the exceptional person soar above the rest that draws people to these events. Mediocrity isn't that interesting to see. 

I suppose the gods were the original superheroes and you have to wonder if the same desire wasn't, at least in part, behind their creation. Inventing powers we wish we had, or at least that we would like to see.

Bringing this around to government, you could say, in favor of Napoleon, that at least he was exceptionally good at something, and so more deserving of imperium than the average Bourbon. (Though I would insist on making Berthier co-Emperor if we're going to base this on his military reputation.) Of course democracy is (or should be) more about compromise than excellence. But, then again, LBJ should have been the perfect leader -- and maybe would have been, except for the Vietnam War.

BRT

If you go to Google Earth and search on "Van Ness Avenue" you will probably still see a street with a median lined with large and small trees, but not for long. All the trees around the intersection with Sutter Street are already cut down, with more trees now destined for destruction.

Not only is this bad news for the trees -- and those of us who breath oxygen -- but this would seem to be an unfortunate time to cut the trees as I imagine birds have already built nests in some of these trees in anticipation of spring. And all of this is to make way for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lanes that I really doubt will make that much of a difference. I do hope I'm wrong about this.

Cantigo

These books are giving me surprisingly little to work with. My favorite thing so far in Candide is a quote from Voltaire in a footnote right after we learn that the Old Woman is the daughter of a Pope Urban the Tenth and a Princess, "Note the extreme discretion of the author; hitherto there has never been a pope named Urban X; he avoided attributing a bastard to a known pope. What circumspection! what an exquisite conscience!" Though Voltaire may seem to have been less discreet in the future as, after our current Urban IX clears the stage, it will be rather awkward for another cardinal to assume the name Urban. Either the current pope is Urban the Last, or the next Urban will be, or at least might be seen to be, a rake.

Vertigo p104 ...In this little booklet [Der Beredte Italiener], which had belonged to a maternal great-uncle of mine, who spent some time working as an office clerk in northern Italy toward the end of the last century, everything seemed arranged in the best of all possible ways... even the greatest of horrors were safely banished, as if to each dark side there were a redeeming counterpart, to every evil its good, to every pain its pleasure, and to every lie a measure of truth....

This is an overwhelmingly odd novel. I'm 116 pages in and have no idea what it's about. We just had what I would take to be a plot device, except that so far the course of the book has seemed more random than plotted. While staying in Limone sul Garda (not clear why) the protagonist's passport goes missing and has presumably been given to another departing German by mistake. He then goes to Milan to get a new passport from the German Consulate there. OK, but wouldn't you assume that Herr Doll would notice -- and probably quite soon -- that he also lacked his proper passport and would desire to retrieve it? Wouldn't the rational thing be to stay where you were for at least a day or so and see if your passport would return to you? That's what I would do.

Next - 115. Crossroads

113. Books For Living

Previous - 112. I immediately regret this...

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Some updates

Since I bought that special tool to tighten the chair screws at Peet's, they've tightened them all properly. So I only got to use the tool once. Either this is the usual thing that happens with me where I call about something or see a doctor right before the problem goes away on it's own or the package shows up in the mail; or my offering to tighten up their chair screws made them finally address this on their own. I'd like to think that it's the latter, but I doubt it.

On the other hand, recall the non-functioning cable car override switch? It's been weeks since I first noticed it wasn't functioning and tried to report it yet it still isn't working. I've finally noticed that this malfunction gives me more time to walk across Bush street -- the harder direction to cross at that intersection -- so I'm just going keep quiet and let the car traffic remain delayed. 

New books

Having finished Absalom, Absalom!, I ventured yet again to Green Apple Books to sell a bunch of books and to buy something new to read. Just as happened last time, I had a long list of books to find and couldn’t find most of them. They didn’t have A Tale of Genji, I’m sad to say, and their shelving system is so chaotic and poorly signed that if they had any of the non-fiction titles on my list I couldn’t locate them. (Granted, I would have been surprised if they had had The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerbach.)

What I did find was Candide by Voltaire and Vertigo by W.G. Sebald. I’ve started Candide and already found my next role in life. But is there still time for me to become an instructor in metaphysico-theologico-cosmoloonigology? 


And now Vertigo. Oh, my! The beginning is also about war in Europe -- though a century later -- and the protagonist (Beyle) already suffers, along with Pangloss, from our old friend syphilis. And Beyle starts his story as a youth in Napoleon’s army as it crosses the Great St. Bernard Pass for the first campaign in Italy. While nominally a dragoon, he doesn’t seem to take much part in the war and only visits Marengo fifteen months after the battle. His merely dropping a few names, like Kellermann and Marmont take me back to an almost unimaginable past -- since I’ve almost exclusively read about the 1815 campaign for so long. (Oh, the names... Berthier, Lannes, Desaix, Masséna, Murat, Victor. It's like recalling the 1st or 2nd 49er Superbowl teams back in the '80s. The first glimpse of people destined to become legends.) Was Napoleon crushed by the failure of his old Marshals to rally to him after he landed in France after Elba? Fifteen years of war! You could write an Iliad about Napoleon’s endless wars -- with the Marshals grousing in their tents; refusing, like Achilles, to put on their armor and fight. Only wondering if they would ever be able to retire home to rest in peace. 

Anyway, Destiny or which ever Hellenic Deity is the God of Books, mandates that I blog these two titles next, and together, apparently. 

The basics

Candide by Voltaire (originally by "Doctor Ralph")
The Norton Critical Edition, 2nd Edition, 1991

(Finally thought to look up the entire library of Norton Critical Editions... that could keep me busy for a lifetime or two.)


Vertigo by W.G. Sebald 

A New Directions Book, 2nd Edition, 1990

Candigo (the shipper mashup of Candide + Vertigo)

It occurs to me that our modern optimistic liberals share a good deal with Pangloss. While many wish for a world where people are not discriminated against on the basis of their various statuses, the only thing people seem to really agree on is that they themselves would rather not be discriminated for their own statuses. While many wish for a world where young women can dress as they please and drink as they please without having to worry about being molested by Bulgars, the modern Pangloss thinks we actually live in that world, all evidence to the contrary.

Schwalbe

Last night I went to a Will Schwalbe book signing on West Portal (a posh neighborhood commercial street) with a couple people from my book club. Our Meaning Of Life Book Club was inspired by his The End of Your Life Book Club, which was also our first title. His current title is Books For Living in which he talks about books that he feels he read at just the right time and that taught him important lessons.

He's an interesting writer and possibly a better public speaker. He brought up a number of points I wanted to go into more detail about, but, unfortunately, the signing was very well attended, so I couldn't really get into it with him. 

I haven't yet read this book, so all I have to go on is what he said last night. It seems to me that to do this right, you would have to first lay out the proper circumstances under which you should read the titles he's selected. Some of these are easy: After the death of someone very close to you; or When you realize that the path you are on in life isn't that satisfying. But others are more challenging. It would be interesting to describe the perfect circumstances for ones reading the books you yourself have found most important. Sometimes this would include having already read prerequisite books. Sometimes you might have to be at the right age or level of maturity. 

(And of course there is the reverse of this idea: Books you should not read at certain times -- either because of what you're dealing with or because of what you haven't yet experienced or learned. I'm now imagining "trigger warnings" on books. For Metamorphosis, "Avoid this title when your residence is experiencing an insect infestation.") 

Someone in the audience brought up the lack of books in translation on his list, which he loved since in his other life he is a publisher of books in translation -- mostly from the Far East. 

He also made what may be the most frightening comment I've ever heard, I brought up my question about the possible existence of books that are better in translation than in the original, and he said he had heard from German speakers that some English translations of German philosophy are actually better because the translator had to struggle to make sense of, and then translate, ideas that were even more puzzling in the original German. I have always assumed Kant and Heidegger and the rest must be at least a little more understandable in German. I even tried to tackle Kant in German back in the late '70s... no wonder I didn't have any luck (as if that was the real problem).

It turns out he has dreams of a type I also have, but had never heard mentioned before. The kind of dream where you suddenly discover your house has rooms (or sometimes just storage areas) that you had previously been unaware of. I love these dreams. A variation on the genre are dreams where you discover you still have things you haven't had for decades. I recall a dream where I discovered my old P-38 automatic had simple been stored in an unlikely place (since high school, I guess.) 

Troy, 4?

p72 Schliemann began his search for Troy after retiring from his business enterprises as a millionaire at age forty-five or so...

Schliemann made his money as a successful businessman, who earned one fortune selling indigo, tea, coffee, and sugar in the Crimea, and another during the California gold rush in 1851-52. It was in California that he served as a banker/middleman in Sacramento, buying gold dust from the miners and selling it to the Rothschild banking family, via its representative in San Francisco. He bought low and sold high -- and, some say, kept his thumb on the scales while doing so. He may well have left California one step ahead of the law, perhaps with as much as $2 million in profits, amid charges concerning the amount of gold dust that he was shipping....

I had no idea he had a local connection. I'm not going to go into any detail about Schliemann (since I don't really care) but I will say that the account of him here reminds me a great deal of Donald Trump -- though Schliemann may have been more deceiving than delusional. Well, maybe a few more details,

p75 Upon his return [to the Eastern Med.] from the United Sates, in September 1869, just a few months after procuring both his American citizenship and divorce through unorthodox and possibly illegal means, Schliemann married Sophia Engastromenos in Athens. He was forty-seven; she was sixteen. They had two children, whom they named Andromache and Agamemnon -- but that would come later...

Schliemann was in such a rush to get down to Troy II, which he believed to be the Troy Homer wrote about, that his workers dug through and dumped the more recent layers of Troy on the mound -- the remains of cities more recent in time -- including Troy VI and VII, which are now believed to be the actual levels of interest. He literally destroyed what he had been so desperate to find.

Next - 114. The age of Supers

112. I immediately regret this...

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Trump

I have a confession to make. Since G.W. Bush, I've tried to avoid hearing Presidents speak and, to the extent possible, avoid reading about their antics. From everything I've run into about Obama, he was exemplary (though still just more of the same when it comes to trade and all that trade implies -- this relates to my hatred of David Ricardo) and yet I still mostly avoided listening to his speeches. I've really done an excellent job of avoiding listening to Trump. 

I mention this because it seems that I may have over estimated his usefulness in my anti-Ricardo scheme. This morning I woke-up to a conversation on the local CBS radio news station about how reporters were learning to be very careful about calling Trump a liar as the growing consensus -- in just his first week in office -- is that he is actually delusional. Just as Bill Clinton taught us all how to parse statements about sexual relationships, Trump is helping us to understand that it isn't "lying" if you actually believe the "alternative fact." We may already be to the Annette-Bening-nude-in-the-hallway scene of The Grifters -- the instant where the audience suddenly comprehends she's bat-shit crazy. 

Since I never watched his TV shows or his campaign speeches or the debates, I had assumed that he was at least a high-functioning whack-job. I will still take Pence over Ted Cruz, but he is not going to give me the only thing I was hoping to get out of this debacle. 

Absalom

I never pay much attention to descriptions of settings, rooms and scenery and the like, (well, rarely) but this passage at the beginning of the final chapter is so brilliant. Again we have the contrast between winter Cambridge and summer Jefferson. Shreve and Quentin are in their cold beds -- Shreve even opens the window onto the snowy, icy night. And then we get this,

p362 [Quentin] ... He could taste the dust. Even now with the chill pure weight of the snow-breathed New England air on his face, [Martha Grimes would love that] he could taste and feel the dust of the breathless (rather, furnace-breathed) Mississippi September night. He could even smell the old woman in the buggy beside him, smell the fusty camphor-reeking shawl and even the airless black cotton umbrella... He could smell the horse; he could hear the dry plaint of the light wheels in the weightless permeant dust and he seemed to feel the dust itself move sluggish and dry across the sweating flesh just as he seemed to hear the single profound suspiration of the parched earth's agony rising toward the imponderable and aloof stars....

p365 ... he led the mare from the road and tied one rein about a sapling in the weed-choked ditch...

I'm sorry, but horses in books and films are so much more accommodating than the horses I've known. If I had tied up my horse like that I would have been walking back to town cursing.

Something that suddenly struck me reading again this final chapter, which contains a good deal of dialog, I've never "heard" a Southern accent while reading this. When I read Barry Gifford's Wild at Heart, I could hear the accent. Maybe this is because I've not been around Southern accents recently. Maybe Mississippi (and in the early 20th century) had different accents. I don't know.

So Charles Bon is the one associated with the biblical Absalom? I'm afraid I don't know my Bible well enough to quite follow that. It would seem Henry would work just as well.

And that brings to a close my reading of Absalom, Absalom! 

John Green

John Green is a popular young novelist I have not read, but he's one of my favorite YouTube personalities. I've watched hours of videos by both John and his brother Hank. But what struck me again tonight is how great his novel titles are. According to Wiki, he's written four novels (plus two projects "with" another author, that I know nothing about). All four titles are excellent: Looking For Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, and The Fault in Our Stars.

Each of these titles, if I noticed them in a shop, would make me pick up the book to at least find out what it's about. I collect book titles myself -- though I have no plans to write books to go with them. My favorites (not counting the ones a friend of mine has suggested) are: I immediately regret this..., A Question Yet Open to Some Controversy, The Three Musketeers (biography of Constant, Byron, and Goethe), The Streetlights of My Life, Paper Bullets of the Brain (from Much Ado About Nothing), and A Failure to Thrive.

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111. Miscegenation

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Absalom

p340 Still Shreve, "... Jesus, think of the load he [Henry] had to carry, born of two Methodists (or of one long invincible line of Methodists) and raised in provincial North Mississippi, faced with incest, incest of all the things that might have been reserved for him, that all his heredity and training had to rebel against on principle, and in a situation where he knew that neither incest nor training was going to help him solve it..."  

I wonder how they teach this book at Wesleyan? And incest is a curious choice for misdirection here, except that it works so nicely when Henry finally comes to terms with the incest only to then choke on that spot of "alien blood." 

p347 In '65 after Bon decides, "...and Henry said 'Thank God. Thank God,' not for the incest of course but because at last they were going to do something, at last he could be something even though that something was the irrevocable repudiation of the old heredity and training and the acceptance of eternal damnation..." 

p356 [Bon] --So it's the miscegenation, not the incest, which you cant bear...

p357 --You are my brother.

--No I'm not. I'm the nigger that's going to sleep with your sister. Unless you stop me, Henry... 

Remember, that is a Confederate officer in General Johnston's Army speaking.

--You shall not!...

--You will have to stop me, Henry...

So, in the end, not your standard RomCom. This is less an indictment of the South as it is of religion (wonderfully represented by the strict sect of Christianity also associated with temperance and woman's suffrage) and of the human tendency to go along with the members of our group -- regardless of what that group happens to believe. 

I'm now going to do a search on the novel and "Methodist" and see what I find.... nothing. Well, that was just a quick Google search. But the Wiki entry doesn't even include the word "Methodist." Disappointed. But then this is why I prefer to not read any analysis until after I've thought something through myself. If I was teaching this book I would start with a detailed lesson on Methodism. I mean, it's not like Faulkner is subtle about this.

Troy 3

Now he's debating who Homer was and how reliable the account is. This is actually rather interesting. Some people think "Homer" was a title for any person who traveled around reciting or singing these stories, and not a single person. Some of the details are accurate for the Bronze Age when the events happened, but others reflect the Iron Age when Homer was telling the tale. This is similar to Medieval European paintings that show Ancient subjects dressed or armed in a contemporary style.

It turns out there is a German Neoanalysis School (Germans, of course) who argue that the entire Troy Cycle combines events from more than one time in history. Ajax and the first attack against Troy are examples where previous epics dating from centuries before the historical Trojan War had been blended in. Reminding me of what I've heard about traditional English Christmas pantomimes.   

Next - 112. I immediately regret this...

110. Tainted blood and sticky buds

Previous - 109. Oakland

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Pork People

I'm back at Coffee to the People after having breakfast at the Pork Store. I'm sitting at a different table and this one, I'm delighted to find, has a concert poster for "Not In Our Name" an anti-war benefit in Berkeley from 2003 headlined by Ani Difranco, who I love. Cool. 

Absalom

p321 Shreve imagining Bon, "...It should have been me that failed; me, I, not he who stemmed from that blood which we both bear before it could have become corrupt and tainted by whatever it was in mother's that he could not brook...."  

p323 Still Shreve talking to Quentin, "...and you said North Mississippi is a little harder country than Louisiana, with dogwood and violets and the early scentless flowers but the earth and the nights still a little cold and the hard tight sticky buds like young girls' nipples on alder and Judas trees and beech and maple and even something young in the cedars like he never saw before..."  

I haven't a clue what Shreve/Faulkner means by this, or what Ivan/Dostoyevsky means by "sticky little leaves", but it would seem there's some male descriptive tradition here that I've never known about -- though I wonder if it can be traced back to either Goethe or Byron. In this day, however, "sticky buds" sounds like potent cannabis.

"besides knowing that that sherbet [Judith] is there for you to take... and him [Bon] not used to that since all the other cups [women] that had been willing and easy for him to take up hadn't contained sherbet but champagne or at least kitchen wine..." 

I must confess here that it's never occurred to me to compare women to beverages. Now I'm also wondering what beverage I would be. This is why reading is so valuable :-|

Next Shreve speculates about how incest might differ from other "fleshly encounter[s]." The idle curiosity of sister-less boys. 

Troy 2

Still reading that other book. Finished the part where he covers what is now known about the Hittites and Mycenaeans (some) and about the Trojans and "Sea Peoples" (next to nothing). For someone who has spent far too much time reading and thinking about obscure areas of history (and philosophy) I have very little interest in subjects we are unlikely to ever know much about. The best case scenario would be our discovering some historical text -- carved into clay, probably -- by a precursor of Herodotus. How would we ever be able to judge the veracity of his (or her) account? Maybe "alternative facts" go back a thousand or more years BCE -- in fact I'm sure that they do. (I really like Kellyanne's "alternative facts" coinage. This is a term the study of comparative religion has always needed.)

What's more important? What actually happened over 3000 years ago or what the Attic tragedians, and Homer and the others, were able to make of it. Just as what actually happened to the characters in Absalom, Absalom! (nothing, in fact) is less interesting than what Quentin and Shreve see in this Rorschach-like story.

You can even say that what Trump does will be less interesting (though it does look like it's going to be compelling TV) than what the rest of us do with this situation. Will this turn into America's "Finest Hour" or, as an article I read suggested, is this just a Hegelian thesis, antithesis situation waiting for a synthesis. 

My tendency to see American history as an echo of the Roman Republic is consistent with this Hegelian view, I think. Though I'd never thought of Roman History in that way. I've always viewed the swings between the popular and senatorial Roman factions as like a machine falling out of balance and finally toppling over. But I guess you can see the Empire as a kind of synthesis. And of course the core of this synthesis was that, while the Roman people continued to hold elections and the offices of the Republic remained, the real power was removed from their hands. If anyone before had doubts about why one would want to do that, they should be gone now.

Though I still think there is a chance for a synthesis that preserves the Republic. But that could change if The Opposition can't get it's shit together in the next several years. If instead we go all Italian, I'll have to reconsider the desirability of the Imperium.

Finally

Our rains are finally letting up. On the one hand I don't mind: We've got a good supply of water and snow, and I would like to start getting back to the gym regularly. On the other hand, now people are going outside to smoke again. Now we'll get to see if the air cleaner I bought for myself at Christmas actually works.

Next - 111. Miscegenation

109. Oakland

Previous - 108. Creating fiction

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Absalom

p317 ...who could know what times he [Bon] looked at Henry's face and thought, not there but for the intervening leaven of that blood which we do not have in common is my skull, my brow, sockets, shape and angle of jaw and chin and some of my thinking behind it, and which he could see in my face in his turn if he but knew to look as I know but there, just behind a little, obscured a little by that alien blood whose admixing was necessary in order that he exist is the face of the man who shaped us both out of that blind chancy darkness which we call the future; there -- there -- at any moment, second, I shall penetrate by something of will and intensity and dreadful need, and strip that alien leavening from it and look not on my brother's face whom I did not know I possessed and hence never missed, but my father's, out of the shadow of whose absence my spirit's posthumeity has never escaped... 

How does Bon know to recognize this similarity? And do half brothers really look so much alike? 

...this flesh and bone and spirit [Henry] which stemmed from the same source that mine did, but which sprang in quiet peace and contentment and ran in steady even though monotonous sunlight, where that which he bequeathed me sprang in hatred and outrage and unforgiving and ran in darkness... 

Through most of this, Shreve could just as easily be talking about God (the Father) rather than Supten. And Henry could be shorthand for the White race and Bon for the Black race. This even sounds biblical.

Women's March

After 40 years I don't even think about riding through a metal tube under the bay every time I take BART between SF and Oakland, except when the train stops in the middle and just sits there. Today I volunteered to sort and collect the trash at the City Hall end of the anti-Trump march. I may not be able to do anything about the political situation, but I can handle the trash like a rock star.

I left Oakland after 4pm (I'm always happy to let the younger people put everything away at the end), and found a crowd of people at the 12th Street BART station either leaving our event or headed for the much bigger SF march. Maybe some were doing both. The crowds were so big at the SF Civic Center BART Station that the trains were backed up far into the tube. It took us quite a while to make it to the first SF station, where I bailed since I figured walking was more predictable than being stuck in the train. 

You would think that exiting two stops early would mean more walking, but really it only amounts to a block or two. It's that darned Market Street diagonal again. As the bird flies, it's about the same distance to my house from all three stations. I chose a walking route that is two blocks longer because it avoids the steepest block. If it had been raining harder (and I had thought of it) I could have grabbed a cable car and been dropped a block above my apartment. My plan is to take advantage of that option once I'm eligible for the Senior discount -- making the most of my Golden Years.

Checking in on Facebook this evening, I knew people who had attended marches in SF, DC, St Paul, Mexico City, and even Flagstaff. Everyone seemed to feel better because of the marches. In Oakland I felt a little ashamed of myself for hating David Ricardo more than I hated Donald Trump.

And I missed that Kumbaya feeling other people had because the recycling scavengers were stealing not only the cans and bottles (which we didn't care about) but, in at least two instances, they took the entire bag leaving no place for people to recycle. So this is now the first event of 2017 and I'm ready to kill them. It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Postscript

Thanks to the Golden Cheeto I'm thinking about greening two months early, damn him. One of the things I'm best at in my greening career, is adjusting to unexpected circumstances at events. Yesterday I had no idea I was going to be the virtual crew chief at Oakland City Center and also virtually the only experienced staff. After we got set up, the woman who suckered me into this gig took off to join the march so, it was just me and three untrained volunteers until almost the very end. But I really prefer to plan and to be prepared.

If I had anticipated having to coordinate volunteers I would have come up with a plan, but, taken by surprise, I just explained the basic of Oakland trash sorting -- which you could almost see passing through their heads the way gold passes through the GI tract, not being affected and not having any effect -- and then turned them loose with pickers and bags. In fact this worked out fine. They came with a notion of walking around with pickers and keeping the grounds fairly clean, which they managed quite well. Again, had I been anticipating my role here I would have made a mental note to encourage them about all this, but instead I just focused on my task of keeping all the three-stream stations sorted and accessible (not over-filled). 

My volunteers (including the barefoot one and the one who had deep thoughts about the environment that took a surprising amount of time for him to express) brought their unsorted bags to our gathering point -- much like a cat coming home with a dead bird or mouse -- so when I made it back there after hitting all our stations, I then took their bags to a busy nearby station where I sorted it into those bags until I had full compost and landfill bags to label and drag back to our headquarters. If it was a Green Mary event the collectors would probably have been able to do their own sorting, but maybe not as well or as quickly as I can, so, again, it worked fine.

In the end, they kept the grounds reasonably clean while I kept the stations reasonably sorted, and at the end of the day I was even able to sort-down and shut down most of our stations so that when Liza returned all she had to do was load already sorted and marked bags into a pickup truck and then return all the gear to the garage where we collected it in the morning. I would give everyone passing marks, except for me as volunteer coordinator. But then again I didn't kill any of the recycling scavengers, so I should get some bonus points for that.

According to the morning news, both Oakland and San Francisco drew crowds of 100,000 -- which I have a hard time believing. I would have thought Oakland was less and SF more, but then the plaza at the end of the march wasn't big enough to hold all the marchers so I never saw all of them at the same time (thank god.) Santa Cruz, where one of my Buffy friends was marching claimed 10,000 and Flagstaff, where a friend from college was marching managed 1,200 in a snow storm. Didn't look up St Paul or DC.  

Oakland

This was the same setting as the Art and Soul Street Festival we work every summer -- only less of it. I spent much of the day looking around Frank Ogawa Plaza and, as usual, thinking about how far Oakland falls short of its potential. (Wiki seems to have gone to some trouble to not show any decent photos of the place so I'll include two below, the first shows my main view on Saturday -- though I was at ground level -- and the other shows the visual focus of the plaza, the handsome Oakland City Hall, during Art and Soul.) 

Sadly, many of the retail spaces in the area are vacant. Partly this is because few people live in the area and the people who work near here are only here for work. Another reason, and a reason I wouldn't have a business here, is that since at least the Occupy days this area has gotten vandalized and or looted any time people have gotten upset about anything. 

One relatively nondescript building on the plaza I had never really noticed before is the Rotunda. I just looked it up and it's gorgeous inside, and apparently primarily a wedding venue.

If Jerry Brown, during his years as mayor of Oakland, had just allowed unlimited residential zoning within a two block walk to a BART station, downtown Oakland could be as vibrant as SF by now. Actually I doubt that -- Oakland can always find a way to screw itself.

Next - 110. Tainted blood and sticky buds

108. Creating fiction

Previous - 107. More social contract

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Quatre Bras

While looking for something else (number of horses Marshal Ney lost at the Battle of Quartre Bras, still unknown), I noticed something interesting about Ney's conduct of that battle -- a battle I'm sad to say I've read very little about, because the other three battles have always seemed more interesting to me. What's interesting is that he used horse artillery very well. This is surprising because, at Waterloo, it's like he completely forgot such a thing existed. Now I'm wondering if the French lost Waterloo at Quatre Bras when their horse artillery was expended. 

As I've written before, at this time horse artillery was the most elite unit in the armies of the day. They combined the increased knowledge and training (and intelligence) needed to operate artillery in general, with the boldness of cavalry, and required a very large number of well trained horses to pull the guns around the battlefield at the speed of cavalry. They were like a combination of today's Delta Force "operators" and the crews that operate the Little Birds that often carry them into the fight. 

So what horse artillery did the French have at Quatre Bras?

2nd Bty, 4th Horse Arty (four 6 lb., two 6" how.)
3rd Bty, 2nd Horse Arty (four 6 lb., two 5.5" how.)

And at Waterloo?

Old Guard Horse Artillery - 399 men, 4 batteries, 24 pieces + 73 men, 1 battery, 6 pieces

So, yes. The only French horse artillery at Waterloo were not under Ney's command. Here's a key quote, "[French] Horse artillery was scarce to boot. Most of it had been ordered to reinforce the massed battery by General Lallemand, commander of the Old Guard foot batteries." -Source


So Quatre Bras was a classic Pyric Victory for the French. They won but at a cost so high that they were at a disadvantage a few days later at Waterloo. It could also be argued that Lallemand bore some responsibility for wasting his horse artillery, but you could also blame Napoleon for not committing his Guard earlier. Or you could blame Napoleon, or maybe Soult, for not detaching the Old Guard horse artillery so that Ney could have used it.

All that being said, I still keep to my previous idea that it was in fact the mutual hatred of Napoleon's Marshals that was the undoing of the French in this campaign. But at least now I can take back what I've said about Ney's failure to employ horse artillery during the battle, he apparently didn't have any under his command to employ. 

Trump

I avoided as much of the inauguration as I could today -- and I never assume politicians mean what they say -- but if Trump really means any of what he said today about jobs he's going to have to toss David Ricardo onto the ash heap of history. I would put up with a good deal to get that outcome. And who but a "populist" (nominal) Republican could achieve such a thing? He could be like Nixon with China... though maybe in reverse as it comes to China. 

Also, given our foreign policy over the past 16 years, a little "America First," and let the rest of the world sort itself out, may not be the worst idea. It's hard to see how he could do any worse than George W. Bush. Maybe he can even get the Navy to reduce the number of carriers they think they need.

In either of these cases, I'll believe it when I see it.

Absalom

p303 ...It was Shreve speaking, though... it might have been either of them and was in a sense both: both thinking as one... the two of them creating between them, out of the rag-tag and bob-ends of old tales and talking, people who perhaps had never existed at all anywhere, who, shadows, were shadows not of flesh and blood which had lived and died but shadows in turn of what were... shades too...

So, just as this is not just a novel about a family in Jefferson or just a novel about Race -- or even Race and Class in the South -- you also have to add that it is a novel about the creation of fiction. Like the beginning and end of that Alain Tanner film -- where the camera begins by passing through the film crew to the actors and the action, and then at the end pulls back out so we again see the film crew -- here the author gives us characters spinning the tale he is telling out of thin air... alternatingly ice cold and then hot and humid. There is no illusion that he is telling a "true" story, except in so far as "truth" is what we, like Devi, dream up.

Which means, now I think about it, that the story they are creating is also their story. This cooperative fiction should be telling us something about them. Of course to get that I would have to read more of the novels that feature them as characters. It's either cunning or cruel to force me to read more novels to confirm my suspicions here.

p308 Still Shreve, now talking about the octaroon, "...Men seem to have to marry some day, sooner or later. And this is one whom I know, who makes me no trouble. And with the ceremony, that bother, already done. And as for a little matter like a spot of negro blood --" [sic, I think " should be '] not needing to talk much, say much either, not needing to say I seem to have been born into this world with so few fathers that I have too many brothers to outrage and shame while alive and hence too many descendants to bequeath my little portion of hurt and harm to, dead; not that, just 'a little spot of negro blood --'...."  

So this is, I believe, the first hint we have of the "little spot of negro blood." To join the boys in their plotting, I do find it surprising that the mother, given the circumstances of her being set aside, would allow her son this alliance. And does this presume that the lawyer didn't know about the other "spot of negro blood?" Did the lawyer-client relationship extend to winking at something like that in the Old South, I wonder. So we have Bon in a relationship just a shade darker (see what I did there?) than Sutpen's but handling it just a little differently, not setting aside the octaroon but rather the institution of marriage as it came to her. Had the marriage with Judith have come to pass, would the octaroon have taken it better than Bon's mother? This treatment would seem to be if anything a little worse. Unless you were Mormon. Also, isn't it interesting that we are never even given a name for "the octaroon?" She seems to be treated shabbily by everyone. I would love to read a feminist examination of male-female relationships in this novel. The juxtaposition of "Penelope" and Milly in that crucial scene is no accident. For Sutpen marriage has more to do with animal husbandry than anything else. 

And I can imagine Charles Swann reading about Bon's possession of the octaroon with considerable interest. Not just a marriage contract but a chattel contract as well. Then he would really be assured of always getting a good cup of tea. Though the Russians wouldn't care for this, as the opportunity for laceration would be sadly reduced. Or so one would imagine. 

Troy

Yesterday while rooting in my backpack for something, I discovered The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction, by Eric H. Cline. I can't recall who gave me this, probably someone in my book club. I started reading it today. It is, so far, a decent summary of what is currently known (as of 2013) about the various accounts of the Trojan War and about what historical facts might lie behind these tales. It's always concerning when Herodotus is mentioned as a source of information, but so far the author seems to be doing a decent job. Though I would have emphasized the use of this story in Attic Tragedy. 

It is a little odd, I admit, that I (with my interest in history in general and military history in particular) think the story of the House of Atreus is more interesting than the tale of the war that is at the heart of all their travails. And isn't that just a tiny bit like the situation I just described in Absalom? Take a sketchy account of a long ago war and spin it into gold by adding in betrayal and sacrifice and revenge and still more revenge. 

There's a famous quote about how no one would have known of Hector's virtues if the Greeks had not come to plunder Ilium (even the Stoics wouldn't have made such an heartless claim); but I would say a tragic tapestry woven of the tales of Iphigenia, Cassandra, Clytemnestra, Electra, and the rest is almost worth the death and destruction described in the Cycle. Maybe it even justifies the slave economy that Attic tragedy was built on.

As much as I love The Odyssey (and especially that final ur-action scene at the end where Odysseus reclaims his kingdom with the assistance of Athena, I feel that The Odyssey is a pointless tangent that takes us away from the main story of what those wacky Atreus kids will do next. 

Next - 109. Oakland

107. More social contract

Previous - 106. Cincinnati & Traveler

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Social contract

The other day I ran into an interesting article about the current political situation in the U.S. of A. (see here) that got me thinking again about the social contract and the viability of democracy. I've never been that sold on democracy since I don't have that much confidence in the sense of the common man. The "genius" of democracy is supposed to be that, collectively, we can make better decisions than we would be able to make individually. Time will tell how that works in the 21st century, but I still haven't given up hope.

Last summer I was open to voting for Sanders, though I was not a Sanders enthusiast. At one point I was considering the possibility of voting for Trump in the primary here to prevent Ted Cruz from getting the nomination... and I still stand by that preference. (For the record, I voted for Sanders in the primary because I thought he had the best chance of defeating Trump. I still stand by that choice as well, though I was pleasantly surprised by Clinton winning the popular vote in the general election. However, I suspect a great many of the most ignored Americans don't bother to vote. If everyone was required to vote, I suspect Trump would have won the popular vote as well.) I voted for Clinton in the general election because there's no way I could have voted for the Golden Cheeto, but I have to acknowledge that Clinton would have done nothing to make the problem -- that we've not been dealing with since at least the 1970s -- any better. The Clintons, Bushes, and even Obama, have all been part of the problem. 

The problem, I now think, is the failure of America to abide by crucial aspects of the social contract, in particular the requirement to give a shit about the success of the average American. This applies to the "forgotten" white middle and lower classes, but also to the now feral people I see on the streets every day. Also people of Color! Even the best liberals have only been interested in the common people -- or their rights and status -- in general, not in the success of individual people. 

Will Trump address this? Probably not, at least not successfully -- though both religious and fanatically political associations are often quite good at this, so he still could surprise me -- but I would like to hope that the Left will respond by taking up Sanders' banner and sincerely trying to address and even solve this problem. Though to be honest, I'm no more optimistic about this than about Trump. But that's what needs to happen.

There's a famous quote about the U.S. needing periodic revolutions (should have been by Thomas Paine, but I can't find it at the moment). The point being that the American Revolution ought not be a one and done proposition. As a Burkean conservative, I have reservations about this, but it's true that governments at least require periodic reforms. The tendency of man is to sink into policies that favor the wealthy and clever (like Sutpen, I suppose) and screw over the common people. Since it's unreasonable, apparently, to expect the favored to notice this and level the playing field, it seems to be the role of the common people to finally say, "enough," and force the favored/ruling classes to give in. That is what I see happening with Trump.

Viewed in this way, I have to say it is indeed genius. What better way to say "This is how little we think of your Bushes and Clintons and 'qualified' leaders. We're going to put an orange, business failure/ entertainer in their place." The Democrats tricked us all with a very attractive candidate (Obama) last time and we fell for it, but he was really just more of the same as far as his policies went. Better than Bush or Clinton, but not substantially better. I'm tempted to borrow Sarah Palin's lipstick on a pig quote here.

Entropy 2

Take an economic system. Say you're Sutpen raising cotton and you produce bales worth an amount $X. These bales are shipped to Cressbrook Mill where the cotton is spun into thread. Now, thanks to the work of capitol and those orphans, the cotton is worth $X+Y. If it is then transported to California where it is dyed indigo and turned into jeans (ignoring for the moment that transport costs were too high for this in the 19th century) you get a product that is now worth $X+Y+Z. 

I admit that it would be difficult to continue this entropy reducing trend unless you have access to a time machine that could bring worn out jeans to, say Tokyo today, where they might have an inflated value. Or you could have a skilled quilter turn the worn jeans into a prized quilt. So it gets increasingly difficult and in fact unlikely.

This is almost the lesson of the "Cradle to Cradle" idea for recycling. Cradle to Cradle is an economic or resource equivalent of a perpetual motion machine, a state of affairs where entropy stays constant.

Absalom

p294 ...Not two of them [Shreve and Quentin] in a New England college sitting-room but one in a Mississippi library sixty years ago... and they -- Quentin and Shreve -- thinking how after the father spoke and before what he said stopped being shock and began to make sense [that Charles Bon was Henry's brother], Henry would recall later how he had seen through the window beyond his father's head the sister and the lover in the garden, pacing slowly... to disappear slowly beyond some bush or shrub starred with white bloom -- jasmine, spraea, honeysuckle, perhaps myriad scentless unpickable Cherokee roses -- names, blooms which Shreve possibly had never heard and never seen although the air had blown over him first which became tempered to nourish them. It would not matter here in Cambridge that the time had been winter in that garden too, and hence no bloom nor leaf even if there had been someone to walk there and be seen there since, judged by subsequent events, it had been night in the garden also. But that did not matter because it had been so long ago. It did not matter to them (Quentin and Shreve) anyway, who could without moving, as free now of flesh as the father who decreed and forbade, the son who denied and repudiated, the lover who acquiesced, the beloved who was not bereaved....

This is such interesting fiction. Everyone busy composing the story. Or rather the author busy composing versions of the story from a variety of perspectives and giving those character/perspectives leave to re-imagine the setting. You can even imagine them all working together to dream up the best story and best presentation of the story.

I wonder if anyone has ever tried to tell the actual story as concisely as possible. I bet you could do it in a page or two. Where Martha Grimes gets distracted by characterization, Faulkner seems to get distracted by the telling of his stories... and how Southern is that. Unlike with Grimes, I'm pretty confident Faulkner knew exactly where he was going to end up. The telling is like a seduction. 

p302 "...who would in return surrender all his miseries and follies and misfortunes to the lice and fleas of Coke and Littleton..." Sir Edward Coke? I really have no idea what this means.

Next - 108. Creating fiction