Wagner Blew It

Last Saturday, Ann and I entered the world of Wagner -- The Ring Cycle. A back-of-house tour; four operas (Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday) sixteen hours in all, plus a three hour lecture ahead of each; a five hour seminar covering parodies of Wagner (including Bugs Bunny, of course), Wagner's antisemitism, leit-motifs and musical invention, comparison of Wagner and Verdi; a Q&A luncheon with the director; an evening with Speight Jenkins recalling his thirty years of presenting The Ring; plus entering a contest to create, in treatment form, a "fifth opera" of the cycle. (My entry, Erda's Lament, one of eight from the couple of hundred attendees, did not win.)

We were immersed in a sea of RingChasers. Seattle's quadrennial Ring Cycle is world renowned. Some folks have seen 25 and more Rings on every continent (save Antarctica; a penguin cast Ring, now that would be a kick!)  This was Ann's and my second Ring -- mere pikers.  These professional and dilettante Wagnerites are expert on every arcane nugget --when he wrote what; which philosophers were at the moment affecting him over the course of the 28 years it took him to complete the work, why he chose to use oboes here and clarinets there and to invent his own Wagner Tuba along the way, how his critics carped and complained, and on and on and on.  So my thoughts herein should be regarded as the musings of the rankish of amateurs -- and I am sure they are not unique.  Nonetheless...

... I can't help thinking Wagner blew it.  His set out not only to create a revolutionary new form of musical drama, but also to give the Germanic peoples (they were not yet a country) their unifying myth, as the Norse had in the Edda, the Greeks in Oresteia, the Romans in the Aeneid. (Do we have a unifying myth?  But that is for another ruminations.) He sought to give Germans a hero, one whose values reflect love, freedom, naturalness, and purity, one who does not depend upon intercession of Gods for success and fulfillment. Siegfried was this new hero.  But as Wagner's ideals mutated and changed, as his personal screw-ups and values warped, he let his hero become less and less so.

Siegfried is no hero.  Fearless, yes, as is any teenager; self-centered, arrogant, daring, insensitive to others, dismissive of authority, a braggart.  He slew a dragon not for gain but because it was there.  He had been told no one else could do so.  He braved the fires and awakened Brunhilde not out of love but because it was said only the bravest could do so.  He impulsively was smitten by this first woman he had ever seen, this Valkyrie daughter of Earth and the Supreme God, but despite her renouncing her godliness and teaching him all she knew about the Gods, the world, courage and cowardice, off he stupidly went, this self-proclaimed dragon-slayer, to be flattered, conned, awed by power and pomp, to renounce love and be used as a pawn. No model hero he.

Yet Wagner had his hero in hand all along. Brunhilde is our hero. She is all the prejudiced, embittered, revolutionary nationalist might have wanted. Perhaps he chose not to proclaim her as such, leaving it for us to discover on our own.  Perhaps he was bound by that 19thC presumption of male superiority and precedent. But I think he just got tired and wouldn't think outside his box any longer.  Brunhilde embodies the nadirs of both love and power, one independent and self-determined but aware of her relationship with her world, one compassionate but in touch with her own rights and emotions.

Brunhilde is the hero Wagner sought -- and gave us in spite of himself.            

My Death Is Certain

I have been studying a work by Stephen Batchelor, a notable Buddhist scholar and writer.  He poses this conundrum, which has captured my attention for the past month or so:

                "Since death alone is certain, and the time of death uncertain, what should I do?" 

This profoundly simple question beguiles me.  First, since having left the presidency of a couple of not-for-profits, I have more free time to enjoy and invest; and secondly, I am approaching the end of my eighth decade.  So, since death is certain but the time of mine uncertain, what shall I do?

My answers aren't the point, for one's answers are particular and individual, but I will share how I went about developing my answers.

First, I reviewed my mission statement. Yes, just as in corporate life, consultancy, and not-for-profits, where I helped enterprises clarify their missions, when I retired, I wrote a mission statement for Fletch Waller, thanks to Scott Okie's example. Basically, it's still relevant, but I did modify it in one respect.  Second, I renewed my resolve to stay in shape.  

Third, I thought through what principles or specs could guide me to "what I shall do."  There turned out to be eight of them:

1.  Be of Service to someone, something.   I have been very lucky; the world has treated me well.  I need to pay back in whatever small way I can.

2.  Associate With Good People who can lift me up, teach me, inspire me, provide models.  I don't have time to suck up to "the right people" whose ethics or values or behavior might be questionable.

 3. Work at What I Love; work is the operative word: expend effort.  And don't fart around, Fletch, with should dos or ought tos.

4.  Seek to Lead sounds arrogant, but given experiences and mistakes -- from a few of which I hope I've learned -- try to influence whatever person or group I become involved in.  Lead informally.

5.  Be Forward Looking instead of loitering in the caboose reflecting down the tracks on where you've been.  Stay in the present, mindful, alert, asking "what might this portend; what is coming next?"

6.  Empathize.  Try to imagine what the world looks like through the other's eyes.  Empathy is the essential bridge builder, the connective tissue of civilization.

7.  Make Amends to all ignored, harmed, hurt by me.  Don't check out with bills unpaid.

8.  Act; with apologies to Nike, "Just Do It" diligently, relentlessly.  No time for grand plans, no procrastination.

Try the question on for size.  Since death alone is certain and the time of death uncertain, what should you do? 

PS re FISC

The NYT reported that the secret court received 1800 requests for warrants last year -- and issued 1800 warrants, some very sweeping dragnets not focused on a particular event or suspect.  Let's see: a year might be 50 weeks, a work-week five days, so 250 days; 1800 warrants, that's 7.2 per day, or nearly one per hour.  Quite a pace for careful jurisprudence by this secret court of eleven secret jurists. Feel safer?

McClatchy has brought a second item to light.  After young Spc. Manning dumped docs to WikiLeaks, Obama, in October of 2011, signed an Executive Order making it an offense for government employees not to inform on co-workers who display suspicious attitudes or behavior, employees who later come under investigation.  Called "Early Warning" or some such innocuous, positive name -- remind one of Stasi by chance?  No, perish the thought; our elected officials are so much more trustworthy than that, and it's for our own good, all in pursuit of security, right, right, right-oh, on we go!

Snowden Isn't the Story....

This Snowden kid has had me tongue-tied; I haven't blogged for a month because people keep asking me what I think, where I come out -- traitor or hero?  It's taken me time to take my eye off Snowden and look at the real story.

A novelist coming up with this plot would be laughed out of his editor's office.  Yet here is Snowden, on ice in Moscow, passport-less, cooling his heels in the Sheremetyevo Novotel's in-transit wing -- as deep in a freezer as the journalists' cell phones he demanded be checked into his hotel room refrigerator back in Hong Kong.  Bizarre....  No, he hasn't entered the Russian border their foreign secretary sanctimoniously assures us.  But you can bet his computers and thumb drives have crossed many a border -- seized. copied and cracked by China's MSB and Russia's SVR, FSB and FSO.

OK, so traitor or hero?

                                                                                                                        

Clearly, he is a traitor to his oaths, to his employers and their trust.  And among his employers to whom he swore oaths were the NSA and the CIA.  In releasing information about snooping on foreign governments -- friend and foe -- he has betrayed US government secrets.  His grand motive, he alleges, is to alert the US public to illegal snooping on us -- but that is quite different from his information on international snooping, which is merely unethical, immoral, embarrassing, unwise, self-damaging and stupid -- but not, unfortunately, illegal.  Now we learn that his real job was not system administrator but infrastructure analyst -- searching for ways to penetrate secure systems for intelligence gathering and, potentially, sabotage.  This, too, he has revealed.  So, yes, he is prima facie a traitor.  And his treachery has hurt the US -- with adversaries, allies and those on the sidelines simply keen on indulging their schadenfreude at our expense.

Hero?  Hardly.  Nothing heroic about this self-absorbed computer geek anointing himself as defender of truth.  His allegations about his plans, his job history, his course work at Johns Hopkins, his adoption of Buddhism in Japan while not liking their culture, running off to Hong Kong because of their dedication to liberty??? What kind of naif is this? Facebooking about his sexual prowess; unable to finish high school or community college; claiming he broke his leg in special forces training in the Army Reserve (there isn't such a thing -- there are two National Guard special forces units, otherwise the only five others are regular Army.)   No, no hero is this Snowden.

What of redemption?  

Well, perhaps he has performed a public service if -- a big if -- the public ire is finally aroused to demand a wholesale change, a dismantling of the intelligence-contractor-congressional complex.  Whatever happens to Snowden will be punishment -- whether put on trial here, eking out a living in Ecuador, accepting asylum in Russia, being a pawn in the game of let's embarrass the United States.  Whatever happens to Snowden is not the story.

The story is how our government has prostituted its values in the name of security.   Abraham Lincoln said "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."  The intelligence-contractor-congressional system of circular authorizations bolstered by sweeping warrants granted by a secret judiciary is no different than the star chamber justice of Tudor England.  That was finally overturned in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and we reiterated our rejection  of such process in 1789.

I could rant several more pages about the intelligence swamp we are hip deep in: about the contractors who hire geeks like Snowden despite a crazy personal and professional history, and pay him twice what a comparable civil service post can pay; about 850,000 people or more with top secret clearance, of whom 1 in 3 work for for-profit contractors rather than for the taxpayer; about Defense Secretary Gates testifying that  "I can't get a number on how many contractors work for the Office of the Secretary of Defense;" about the training of CIA spies being contracted out to a for-profit company.  But I won't indulge ....

Suffice to say that information empowers.  And many believe that withholding information empowers absolutely, despite that information is fungible and eventually -- always -- leaks.  Yes power corrupts, but more to the point, John Adams warned that “Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak."  We have seen it over and over -- the beguiling quality of "secrets" whether wielded by J. Edgar Hoover tempting the Kennedys, or IRS files tempting Johnson, or CIA tempting Nixon, and on and on.  The Frank Church hearings in 1976 restored some constraint on the Executive Branch, but it leaked away again in Iran Contra under Reagan, and again after 9/11 under Bush, Cheney and Obama.  I'm shocked to list Obama in that set but the hubris is the same.  In 2004, we learned of domestic spying; in 2010, The Washington Post explored the runaway intelligence establishment.  Haven't we come to see that these intelligence czars are just as self-anointed as Snowden, thinking alike that they know what's best for us?  When will we learn to distrust any and all of them?  They don't have souls any greater than yours and mine.

The American public accepts this pernicious intrusion because they've been sold a "War on Terror."  There's the root of the problem:  the paradigm of war, that sense of imminent danger which allows those empowered by information to trade us "security" in return for giving up our rights.  But they didn't forestall the Boston Marathon bombers or the guy who tried to blow up Times Square or the guy wearing explosive jockey shorts.  There is no such thing as "security."  And now, the administrations' (plural) lies and wholesale snooping are naked before us.  James Madison wrote "no nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare" but that's what we've been sold -- and we have been losing our freedom.  Talk to those denied airline flights with neither explanation nor recourse.  Madison was talking about the danger of concentrating power in the executive long before NSA, CIA, DIA and a hundred other snoop bureaucracies were even dreamed of.

  

Snowden isn't the story.  The story is we are overdue for a sweeping change in what rights we cede to our government and how it accounts for its protection of our rights and its constraint of them.  Now is the time to begin writing that story....

2ndtermitis

Obama has caught 2ndtermitis, that so-often self-inflicted malady that has derailed every 20th Century US President and his administration who were rewarded with a second term.  The only ways to avoid it were not to seek or fail to win a second term.  Teddy Roosevelt, Coolidge,Truman and Johnson chose not to seek. Roosevelt and Coolidge went out on a high, Truman and Johnson were driven out on an exhausted low. Harding and Kennedy died.  The re-election bids of Taft, Hoover, Ford, Carter, and Bush 41 were rejected.  Otherwise, the record is daunting:

• Wilson: League of Nations rejection; stroke
• Roosevelt:  Supreme Court packing, AFL/CIO divorce
• Eisenhower:  Sherman Adams' mink, Gary Power's U2, Little Rock
• Nixon:  Archibald Cox, Watergate tapes, Cambodia
• Reagan:  Irangate
• Clinton:  Lewinsky, impeachment
• Bush:  Valerie Plame, waterboarding

You wonder that any President chooses to run for a second term. Their hair turns white; wrinkles deepen; hopes and plans are highjacked by hubris, fate, embittered opposition, and/or stupid and venal subordinates.  

Guys: if it ain't over in four, declare victory, retire, and do good deeds with your well-earned fame.

What's On Our Minds? or Train Wreck; Avert Your Eyes!

The New York Times on-line has a feature I find quite revealing: their ten Most E-Mailed items.  So here we are, faced with serious problems in economic recovery, debt management, education, infrastructure and so on.  Meanwhile, the paper is full of Justice Dept. snoops, IRS snoops, Benghazi cover-ups, sectarian violence and Israeli raids on Syria.  And the public's confidence in our political leaders is in free-fall.

Today's ten Most E-Mailed ?
1. Germs in our gut
2. Salt in the diet
3. Pastrami
4. The 7 minute workout
5. Mastectomy
6. How to fry chicken
7. Getting kids into college
8. Horses on the farm
9. Yoga for middle age
and
10.  Moving to Latin America or the Caribbean

The order changes all the time, but doesn't this tell us our fellow citizens -- at least my fellow NYT readers  -- just can't deal with and/or don't want to share reality? Train wreck: avert your eyes!
  

Mother's Day -- Adult Sons' Style

Saturday eve, May 11, voice mail: "Mom, could you come over and baby-sit tomorrow so we can go furniture shopping?"

Sunday morning, May 12, cell phone text message: "Fletch, tell Mom Happy Mothers Day and that I will call her later."

Yes, I told her, and told her as well that she was and is a terrific Mom....