A Death in the Family

A Death in The Family

With apologies to James Agee, whose remarkable opening sentence: "We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child." is one of the great opening lines in American literature: thanks to Robert Blake, my Director of Advertising at General Mills, who taught me to revere Agee, and so often made me look smarter than I was . . . and am.  

Anyway, we are talking now about the death of the wolf spider who inhabited our laundry room -- or perhaps it is we who inhabited his.  He was a surreptitious member of the family; he and I both knew to keep his presence secret, for Ann does not share my regard for nor tolerance of wolf spiders. 

From time to time, one finds dead wolf spiders -- legs drawn up in stiff angles -- but never before have I found one in the process of dying.  He was sitting on the floor in morning daylight, acting quite dead for they usually hightail for darkness when caught out in light.  But when I probed him with my toe, he stirred, took a few steps and went back into his retracted leg position.  He did not appear to have been attacked, nor eaten by a female after copulation as so often happens to the males.  He was dying, that was clear -- whether from illness or old age or something he ate -- who could tell?

How can you not love that face?

Wolf spiders are prodigious eaters.  They hunt, at night, with astounding night vision -- six eyes, two large for max sensitivity, four smaller for discerning movement and depth perception.  They forage the house for mites, bugs large and small, and other less welcome spiders (if wolf spiders can be considered welcome other than by sorts such as I.)

When I returned from rowing after three hours, he was hunkered down where I had left him.  Ann had not noticed.  I leaned down and gently prodded him.  He took off with a typical burst of speed but lasted only eight inches or so before settling down into his death pose once again.  When I checked back about four hours later, he was still there, but dead.  I felt loss; a remarkable fellow creature gone.

I had known of his presence before this morning.  I know of a couple more in the house, where they hang out, and there are undoubtedly others unknown to me.  He was the first I have ever watched die, however.  A death in the family.

(photos from Wikipedia)

A Photo of Meanings

How many meanings can a photo hold? 

• There she is, a twenty-something American girl abroad -- Doc Martins; contra-conventional, near buzz cut; shades; skate board in hand; guitar and pack on her back; the very picture of openness to the world. 

• Under the signs of St. Peter of Rome and Santo san Pere -- the Catalan born Pedro Nolasco who founded the Order of Mercy to redeem captives held by the Moors -- Europe struggles for a unity which once Rome provided and a pluralism with succor for today's victims of Muslim chaos.
• A Catalan street, where independence from and loyalty to engage in a timeless struggle being played out in one nation or another on every continent.
• A drain; is Spain going down the drain? Or Cataluña?   Or Europe?  Or her generation?  Or our Western values of tolerance and progress?  No way; no way if she and her generation have anything to say.
• An arrow points to the future -- and she looks that way in confident expectation.

BTW, "she" is my granddaughter Liza.  

Here is another shot of a romantic-moody Liza by her Indian friend Radhika, also an exchange student in Barcelona, with a wonderfully evocative eye.

A Groundhog Day Foreign Policy

No, not Punxsutawney Phil; I mean Bill Murray's classic Groundhog Day  -- in which he's trapped in days and events that repeat themselves again and again.  Unlike Nick Payne's Constellations, which Ann and I saw last night at the Rep -- don't miss it --  which movingly explores a loving relationship through the quantum mechanics concept of co-existent, multiple universes and an infinity of possible outcomes, our foreign and defense policies appear to have only one, universal outcome -- more, more, again and again.  Like Bill Murray, we are condemned to re-live it.

Despite Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter's call (Feb 2nd) "Today's security environment is dramatically different than the one we've been engaged with for the last 25 years and it requires new ways of thinking and new ways of acting" here's what's up:

• The Pentagon is calling for more advisors and trainers in Iraq. Please, go re- read Frances Fitzgerald's Fire in the Lake on how we got sucked ever deeper into Viet Nam after Dien Bien Phu.  
• No boots on the ground.  Oh, don't worry; those aren't boots, just a few special forces units doing black ops around Damascus and Raqqa.  What -- are they wearing tennies?
• Feb 3rd: Secretary Carter names Russia our number one threat. Uh, about those ISIS guys who want to behead me . . . .
• Last July, both Putin and Carter hinted at new nuclear arms development and Carter talked of "affordable" nuclear encounters. OMG!
• Yesterday, the Administration announced a 25% build up of NATO forces and equipment in Eastern Europe.  Dr. Evelyn Farkas,  Dep. Asst. Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine & Eurasia, said on NPR today "We're still in the game and we're putting more in."  Uh, that's the cold war game, right, like Kennedy/Khrushchev and  Reagan/Brezhnev?
• And where's that $3.4billion expense coming from?  Why, the Iraq/Afghanistan pot of money, of course. And where's it going to be spent?  In Romania and Poland. Huh?
• Doesn't that contravene the 1997 NATO - Russia Founding Act, prohibiting NATO bases in Russian's adjacent, neighboring countries?  No, these are just rotating deployments, not permanent bases, so they don't count. What the . . .!?!
• DOD Secretary Carter also asked Congress for more billions to counter China's initiatives in the South China Sea. Remember Quemoy and Matsu and the 7th Fleet?

  

". . . new ways of thinking and new ways of acting . .  ." ??? 

Nine smart friends of mine -- they get together once a month to discuss foreign affairs -- spent yesterday afternoon dissecting NATO.  I learned a lot.  First, how bureaucratic and far-flung its structure; how ambiguous its decision making process (no votes, no majority rule.)  Second, a new way of thinking about NATO's eastward expansion -- not to thwart (and alarm) Russia but as one WWII vet said "to spread the blanket of non-aggression over more of Europe." That view posits NATO as the EU's Defense Department, not withstanding that we pay for 3/4ths of it, and the prime vehicle through which Europe has enjoyed 70 years of peace.  To them, NATO is an asset.

The group's younger members (that's a relative term) see NATO as a potential entanglement, a liability in the sense that countries like Turkey and Estonia hold us hostage; they have a call on us.  And, it was pointed out, there is a co-dependency between our military - industrial complex and Russia's military - industrial complex; they each need the other to scare the bejeezus out of their citizenry so as to be granted ever larger budgets.

I conclude, in the end,  that NATO is all of the above -- asset, entanglement, liability, and self-perpetuating burden -- all at the same time.

The group strongly agreed that unilateral expansion of NATO is old thinking.  Such expansion must be accompanied by, if not replaced by, candid summit talks about intentions and goals, common interests, collisions of interests, and conflict avoidance.  Candid talk and active listening generates empathy and new options.  Out of such talk come deals. Such talk and listening must take place. 

Two of my smart friends, one a seasoned internationalist, the other a Russian now naturalized US citizen, proposed that Presidents Putin and Obama go on three week exchange tours of each other's country.  That might be a start.  Premier Khrushchev spent two weeks touring the US in September of 1959, changing both his and Eisenhower's views of each other.  And, in 1961, it was Eisenhower that called out the military - industrial complex.  (The original, more accurate phrase was military - industrial - congressional complex, but "congressional" was removed so as not to incite Congressional ire.) 

And now it's Obama's turn, who said of the Pentagon's proposed "McChrystal surge" into Afghanistan “So what’s my option? You’ve given me only one option.”  

One option: that's the tyranny of the military -- what C. Wright Mills in 1956 called “military metaphysics”, that "cast of mind that defines international reality as basically military.”  When our only option is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail; we must have other options.

 

Today, God knows, "new ways of thinking and new ways of acting" are long overdue.  Let's not trap ourselves in a Groundhog Days Foreign Policy any longer.

(I'm going to resist the temptation to speculate on the quanta of possible outcomes under the next administration. I leave that for you to imagine; it's too scary for me.  But I am going to send this to my Congressional Representative and Senators.  If you agree with any of it, please send it to yours, share it and ask your friends to do the same.)

Christmas and New Year's Letters -- Cheesy?

Our egos went Pop! when two of our (five) kids pronounced our new year's "annual report" Cheesy.  We thought the 100 or so letters sent to family, friends and acquaintances rather clever and informative.  Cheesy?

Well, they really meant -- isn't it cheesy to crow about what a great year we had, how lucky we are, what travels our good health accommodates?  It's cheesy enough to puff ourselves up, but to be cute to boot?  And on reflection -- they're right.  While we did wish others well, as such holiday greetings ought to do, even then it was self-congratulatory; we wished 2016 would be as good for them as 2015 had been for us.  OMG, Cheesy indeed!

Good for Amy and Cam.  Despite a few (very few) comments from friends and acquaintances that they welcomed the update, we feel properly chastised.  One New Year's resolution is not to be cheesy next year.

Some news might be welcome to those far away -- in time or distance.  But perhaps the best model is the card from Tiger and Babs -- a lovely poem about the holidays, a photo of them showing good health and happiness without bragging about it, and a heartfelt wish for us.  Simple and thoughtful -- with no preening or crowing. So here's to simple, short and other-centered.

2016 launches with a good lesson for me.  Cheers.  

The Simpleton Dreamer's Foreign Policy

The talking heads and those Republican clowns have made much about our "failed" foreign policy.  Even friends question whether we have one.  In this month's Foreign Affairs, Edelstein and Krebs argue that we shouldn't bother with having one; that the world is too chaotic, competitions too multi-faceted, for any effective foreign policy other than just reactive pragmatism[1]. 

 Obama's "don't do stupid shit" is fine as far as it goes, but he has taken it no further, leaving us in a purely reactive mode, responding to events over which we neither have control nor apparently anticipation.  A "no policy" policy is not enough. That aimless reactionism has led to fourteen years of mucking around in the Mid-East (thanks to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, Tenet, Rice and the like who fed 43's ego and impulsiveness.)  Now we're in a here-we-go-again mode as Obama reacts to Congressional, political, popular and military pressures to "do something about those bastards."

In order to "win", by which I mean achieve success, one must decide which games to play in, and which not; determine what success looks like in each; determine the policies to guide one's plays; and then make tactical moves that play to your strengths.

 

Certain policy principles logically can lead to desirable but highly improbable, un-feasible, wishful outcomes.  But identifying the far-out sometimes triggers ideas which, upon reflection, turn out to be feasible after-all, reachable mile-posts on the way to success.  So, in keeping with that, the simpleton makes these suggestions of where to play, of how to define success, of policies, and of some far-out tactical moves:

1. .       Halt the foreign "war on terror" and begin to treat international terrorism just as we do domestic terrorism, as police and criminal justice matters.  Share info and fully cooperate with international police efforts -- allies or not.
2.            Re-position the CIA as a spy and analysis agency and withdraw them from special ops.  Their extra-judicial assassinations generate order-of-magnitude more terrorists for every one they kill.  Use the military to do militaristic things; hold both agencies accountable to transparent civilian authority.
3.      Repeatedly veto military appropriations containing congressionally-mandated weapon purchases that the joint chiefs do not want until Congress gives up in order to fund DOD.  Direct Joint Chiefs to focus on delivery of military force quickly, responsively, forcefully and productively.  After all these years, get an audit of DOD expenditures.
4.        .  Pursue base closures overseas as well as domestic ones.  Re-invest savings in the diplomatic corps and Peace Corps, and link DOD budget increases to increases in diplomacy budgets.
5.            Don't just respond to terror inflicted on cultures we identify with; show we care equally about Madrid, Beirut, Ankara, Jakarta, Nairobi, Mumbai, Karachi, Jeddah, Kano, Kunming, Jerusalem, Moscow, Sharm el Sheikh,  Buenos Aires, Bamako  and many more....
6.            Define specifically what our "national interest" means in each troubled region (Eastern Europe, Mid-East, North Africa and Arabia, Southeast Asia, South America, the Arctic, etc.) and make the definitions clear to those nations involved.
7.            Adopt and publicize our respect for self-determination; drop our  insistence on establishing universal democracy.  If citizens select some other form of government, so long as it has been self-determined in a fair way, accept it, tolerate it even if we do not support it.
8.            Continue our "pivot" toward Asia but forego any more mutual defense treaties.  Restrain NATO support and shift NATO burden increasingly onto European shoulders.
9.            Stop calling countries "friends"; they are nations, each with its own self-interest supreme, just as is ours.  It is particularly galling to call Saudis and Pakistanis our "friends" while they disseminate hate and nurture terrorists.
10. .         Cancel the lease and give Guantanamo back to Cuba in return for taking in some of the detainees.  (Is a 19thC naval base still that relevant to a 21stC navy?)  Have the Justice Dept. enforce that detainees subject to US justice must be held in US jails and be subject to habeas corpus.  This means transfer of remaining Guantanamo inmates to Federal Maximum Security prisons.  Dare Congress to sue and/or impeach; in the meantime, the courts will have no place to which to send inmates back.
11. .         Support creation of Kurdistan by Iraqi, Turkish, and Syrian Kurds.  Provide air and other support for self-defense at a price of not aggressing against neighbors.
12. .         Support creation of an independent Sunnistan in contiguous parts of Syria and Iraq.  Get word to former Baathists that in return for squelching their ISIS crazies, we will support a new Sunni state, borders to be defined by Iraqi, Syrian and Turk negotiators, and will support its self-defense against Shia neighbors.
13. .         If those left in a rump Syria choose to retain Assad, pledge to accept and ignore the bastard.  In a rump Shia-Iraq, accept whichever crazy their representatives select.
14. .         Support Israel, but undertake a steady, five-year scaling back of military assistance to both Israel and Egypt.  Drop commitment to a two-state "solution" (which is no solution at all) and encourage Israel to move toward Palestinian citizenship.  (A "religious democracy" is an oxy-moron if its population is heterogeneous.  Either it's a theocratic autocracy or a secular republic.)
15. .         Become increasingly energy independent and self-reliant on critical resources.
16. .         Underscore our secular system of governance by removing "under God" from the pledge and "In God We Trust" from our money (yes, I said these are simplistic.)
17. .         Re-join the International  Court of Justice; sign the land mine convention; ratify the Convention on the  Law of the Sea (the best backing for our passive/aggressive resistance to Chinese claims in the South China Sea); and work to agree on -- and sign -- a global warming treaty in Paris.

I know, I know: idealistic, impolitic, illegal, infeasible, fanciful and naive ...  But on these policy principles can be built a concerted foreign policy of leadership -- respect for self-determination, well articulated national-interest in each troubled region, a balance between Europe and  Asia, support of world treaties, diplomacy balanced with military might -- these are foreign policies from which goals and winning strategies can be formed. 

Anyway -- in the meantime -- don't do stupid shit.

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[1] Nov/Dec 2015 Foreign Affairs, Delusions of Grand Strategy, David Edelstein and Ronald Krebs

An "Unloyal" Opposition?

"His Majesty's Opposition" was coined in 1826 by John Hobhouse, Radical, later a Whig, to proclaim his ability to oppose the sitting government while at the same time being loyal to nation and regent.  The phrase has come down to us as "The  Loyal Opposition," a distinction too often ignored in Mid-East and Asian autocracies these days.  Erdogan, Putin, Sisi and lots of others treat opposition as disloyalty if not outright treason.

In a representative democracy, like ours, to what should an opposition be loyal?  Not king nor President but certainly to the foundation of law and governance.  But in these contentious days, it seems that our oppositions are increasingly disdainful, if not outright dismissive of the processes of representative governance -- reaching compromise, searching for pragmatic solutions to move forward.

Yes, I'm thinking of the Tea Party but also of the Occupy movement.  And of the Freedom Caucus.  And of the Ted Cruzes and Jim Bishops and Donald Trumps of American civic life.  Are they loyal to the processes of representative governance?  And the anarchists -- well, anarchists are disloyal.  But I'm not ready to name the rest disloyal, but are they not an "unloyal opposition?"   Do they not eschew compromise and collaboration; do they not simply seek confrontation, denial and disruption?    

David Brooks wrote recently that the center is not holding -- extremes are becoming ever more strident and disinterested in the art of governing.  There is no strategy of positive opposition, only tactics to destabilize and destroy.  Destroy those governing whether of one's own party or the other.  Destroy the "enemy" opponent.  Seed suspicion, disbelief, and disdain.  

Look at Trey Gowdy, of the  4th of South Carolina, confronting Hilary Clinton: prove your innocence.  After the 11 hours of disbelief and attack, he said that she had "answered as she always has" clearly implying that she's "still lying under oath."  (Gowdy has starred in a couple of reality TV episodes -- would you buy a used car from this dandy?)

And what of Jim Jordan (4th, Ohio) who demonstrated less the former federal prosecutor and more the former high school wrestling coach: this isn't an inquiry; grab a hold, don't let opponent catch a breath, go for the pin?  Or Mike Pompeo (4th Kansas -- what is it about these 4th Congressional Districts anyway?) persisting in false claims that Mike Blumenthal was Hilary's only source of advice on Libya to the point that Andrea Mitchell was moved to sacrifice her reportorial impartiality and counter him in public?  Or Martha Roby (2nd Alabama -- trying to work up to a 4th level inquisitor?) prim, judgmental, thin-lipped and humorless, channeling Cotton Mather while fixated on meaningless e-mails between low-level State Dept. staffers Hilary never heard of?

This attitude of suspicion, of sniffing out conspiracies, of distrust of representative governance is not isolated to Congress.  At a local candidates forum here in our little town, the challengers to city council members were tight lipped, negative, suggesting conspiracy, and calling for "citizens' advisory votes" on complex issues of governance that have been studied and debated in depth.  They oppose and lack faith in representative government. 

Even at the Supreme Court -- supposedly the steadying governor on the engine of our democratic republic, we see dissenters using  disdainful ad hominem attacks to discredit majority opinions.  Scalia and Thomas in dissent seed scorn and disrespect for our democratic representative process.

Can another kind of opposition thrive?  Of course.  Remember the happy warrior, Reagan?  And what of Justin Trudeau in Canada, coming from behind to majority by opposing with respect, with positive proposals and optimistic belief in the system.  Trudeau has strengthened Canada's center. 

Let's squeeze out an unloyal opposition.  Don't fund them.  Encourage those who seek compromise, who practice respectful, affirmative listening, and who work to create pragmatic collaborations.  Find more Joe Bidens and John Kasichs.  Deny unloyal opposition a place to stand; vote them out of our democratic representative system to which all of us should be loyal.  Demand of them: what are you for, not just what are you against?

Art's In Our Lives

Welcome to Arts and Humanities Month.  President Obama's proclamation (click) is not likely to make headlines, competing as it must with Putin's Syrian escalation, the Roseburg tragedy, resurgent Taliban,  slumping Trump, Malaprop Kevin McCarthy, Europe's migrant mess,  Francis' admonitions and all the rest of the turmoil that dominates our attention.  But Arts and Humanities Month should ... for it is the arts and humanities that make us, at root, civilized in spite of the inhumanities we deliver on each other.

By coincidence, Ann and I started off the month with a burst: Thursday at ACT to see the premiere of Steven Dietz' new play, Bloomsday, inspired by and an ingenious twist on Joyce's Ulysses; Friday at SAM to view the Mellon collection, Intimate Impressionism, from the National; Saturday morning at the opener of the Met HD season, La Traviata, and Saturday evening at SRJO's performance of Count Basie's 1960s collaborations with Sinatra -- It might As Well Be Swing and Sinatra at the Sands.  And in between, our house is filled with music.

The arts matter to us.  For a UW course on the history of the '60s Ann is reading Making of the President, 1960 and, next up, On The Road.   I will be at a Pratt Fine Arts Center marketing committee meeting Tuesday, at an Exec Committee session on Thursday, and later in the month, at a dinner for our Pratt instructors and artists at the Chihuly Garden and Glass.  This month, Ann will have her annual Seattle Chamber Society board retreat (she serves as Treasurer.)  And coming in the next four weeks: Seattle Rep theatre, Seattle Opera, and more Met HD.  Meanwhile, Vladimir, my in-process limestone challenge, patiently awaits my hammer and chisels at the Pratt stone studio.  We came home from Africa with only a found-driftwood sculpture, more decorative perhaps than fine art, by Botswanian Boniface Chickwenhere (we don't have room for any more major art in the house unless we have a remove-and-replace haggle, which neither of us has the guts to undertake.)   So, yes; arts matter to us -- and we believe, to our civilization.

The arts get short shrift in these times, what with funding needed for education, transportation infrastructure, homelessness and mental health -- not to mention the $51 billion authorized this year for overseas  military contingency operations -- read ISIS, Iraq and Afghanistan.  Think what that money could do -- a Marshall plan for Syria suggests Alexey, my new Russian-American friend; schools and hospitals in Iraq; support for an independent Kurdistan and one percent of it for the arts.  That would be  $510 million by the way, over three times the current budget for the National Endowment for the Arts.  But that's a mere hypothetical -- more Federal arts funding ain't gonna happen in this Congress nor with a Democratic one.

So that leaves contributions -- from state and local governments, foundations, and individuals.  Contributions keep art accessible and music orgs alive.  Program revenues, i.e., ticket sales, contracted performances and ancillary sales,  generates only 44% of what it takes to keep the symphony lights on; 42% at the opera; 32% at Seattle Chamber; 52% at Pratt; 44% at SRJO's jazz orchestra, 58% at ACT; 47% at the Seattle Rep. [1]  Neither Ann nor I like to ask folks for money; we don't like giving money very much, either.  But we do it -- for arts orgs matter to us and, we believe, to our society, to our sense of being civilized.

Yes, we know you care about social needs, education needs, poverty and mental health needs.  But if you haven't tacked an arts org onto your donation list, consider adding one -- theatre, children's theater, dance, pop music, literature orgs, whatever.  Small donations add up.  Arts matter -- to us and to you.      

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[1] These are from the latest IRS 990s.  To check an org about which you might be curious, go to GuideStar  (http://www.guidestar.org/