Lawrence Lessig is a Stanford law professor who “teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, contracts, and the law of cyberspace.” He is someone I admire and pay attention to. He has decided to switch from these kind of issues to another important issue.

“I have decided to shift my academic work, and soon, my activism, away from the issues that have consumed me for the last 10 years, towards a new set of issues.”

His new issue is “corruption.” Corruption in public rhetoric and professional rhetoric. One person who inspired him to pay more attention to this emailed him this comment:

” [He] wrote me a reply to an email I had written to him about net neutrality. As he wrote, “And don’t shill for the big guys protecting market share through neutrality REGULATION either.”
Shill.

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shill, n. One who poses as a disinterested advocate of another but is actually of the latter’s party; a mouthpiece, a stooge. (this is from the online OED)
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This caught Lessig’s attention.

He goes on:

“But this friend’s use of the term [shill] not to condemn me, but rather as play, made me recognize just how general this corruption is. Of course he would expect I was in the pay of those whose interests I advanced. Why else would I advance them? Both he and I were in a business in which such shilling was the norm. It was totally reasonable to thus expect that money explained my desire to argue with him about public policy.

I don’t want to be a part of that business. And more importantly, I don’t want this kind of business to be a part of public policy making. We’ve all been whining about the “corruption” of government forever. We all should be whining about the corruption of professions too. But rather than whining, I want to work on this problem that I’ve come to believe is the most important problem in making government work.”

the whole article is here.

I look forward to what Lessig ends up saying about this issue.

One of my teachers in high school used to admonish us that there were more important and pertinent things in poetry than the news. My newscarrier seems to agree with him and delivers my New York Times after the leisurely hour of 7:00 or 7:30 AM. This morning was typical. No paper yet. So before turning on my computer, for some unfathomable reason, I turned to the first Satire of John Donne.

It’s a dialogue between Donne’s soul and his body. In the course of the poem, Donne first resists the body’s plebian needs and impulses. Then he accompanies his body to the street where he watches and eventually succumbs to the ravishments of young men and whores. Good morning. My paper is here now.

“In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book.” much more in this excellent little article!!!  How to Write About Africa (Granta) by Binyavanga Wainaina

I personally love the fact that he uses the Pink Panther Theme for background music for the museum movie. Good Stuff.

Check it out… this guy is great!!!!!

Schuman went mad. He was kept away from his pregnant wife and collegue, Clara. Young Brahms consoled her with music. He played Schubert’s A Minor piano sonata for her as well as other pieces. And Brahms and Clara continued their professional collaboration during this period. Very sad.

I am reading a bio of Brahms. After reading about this period in his life, I played through the Schubert A Minor piano sonata myself. I like it.

Our local paper keeps featuring opinions that seem in tune with the hate that permeates the discussion around illegal aliens.

First of all, yesterday, Rep. Hoekstra had a guest article, “Leave No Felon Behind.” (Note: The dang Sentinel requires registration in order to access their lame online edition. Once again when I wrote and protested, I received an angry response from their webmaster explaining to me how great an online registration was. Sheesh.)

Then today, local resident Alan Helvig writes “No Citizenship for Illegals.” His web site also has his article.
Hoekstra says, “Democrats in Congress and President Bush want to reward law-breaking, illegal aliens with amnesty.”

Helvig asks, “Well, Mr. President, exactly which clause of the Constitution are you preserving, protecting and defending by offering citizenship to illegal aliens?”

I am reminded of the careful but explicit public expressions of anti-semitism during WWII by politicians. Father Coughlin’s rabid radio sermons from the Shrine of the Little Flower preached hate then just like talk radio does now.

Coughlin and his followers even were thinking along the lines of Hoekstra and Helvig

“On December 18, 1938 two thousand of Coughlin’s followers marched in New York protesting potential asylum law changes that would allow more Jews (including refugees from Hitler’s oppression) into the US, chanting, “Send Jews back where they came from in leaky boats!” and “Wait until Hitler comes over here!” from Wiki article.

This is how Hoekstra puts it in his article: “It is impractical to immediately deport the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal aliens in the country, but there are measures that can be pursued that would help resolve the problem and recognize the rule of law.” Gentler but still he wants “these people” out of here.

Helvig writes: “In order to establish justice, we must enforce all existing immigration laws. To insure domestic tranquility, we must stop illegal immigration and control the flow of all immigrants. To provide for the common defense, we must secure our borders and strengthen our border patrol. To promote the general welfare, we must require proof of legal residency for all public services, including emergency health care and especially public education.”

Just as the language in Orwell’s 1984 gradually weakens and becomes more the servant of the state, the language of these two men is firmly entrenched in the current framing and polemic of illegal immigration by people who do not like brown people. It’s that simple.
I am reminded of watching the camp busses arrive at the local Catholic church, a few years ago. It would be obvious who the coyote was. He was the one everyone (including me and the priest) would kowtow to. He was the man in charge. If he said go to Mass, everyone went to Mass. If he said, stay in the fields, everyone stayed in the fields. At least this was the way it seemed to me.

I was just the musician. For several months, the priest was gone. i remember him hiding away in the rectory and then there was no priest in charge. The Migrant Mass was floundering. I started attending even though I could not speak Spanish. It felt like the right thing to do, so I did it.

I remember eventually helping with the music ministry at this Mass. There was a man who played accordion. He and his children met with me one time to prepare materials for the musicians. He was a gentle man and his kids were charming. They spoke Spanish and I spoke English, our common language was music.

Later I heard that this same man had his hand cut off by a machine he had not been sufficiently trained to use. He would never play again.

Meeting people who actually work in blueberry fields is a different experience from listening and reading white people’s talk about the illegal alien problem. The people I met seemed as caught in their system as I am in mine. All of us seem helpless in the face of the people with the power. That would be the coyote, the Congressional representative and the local columnist.

I think the situation the US is in right now regarding illegal aliens is very complex. Our national government is broken and in the hands of business and other lobbiests. This is not exactly a prescription for problem solving.

I am sure that the people who live in the United States (legal or illegal) should be allowed to continue to live here. I think the wall idea is ridiculous. I think that fear and hate have clouded the discussion so much that it is almost impossible to make sense about it.

Something is drastically wrong with us in the United States. The illegal alien discussion (just like the terrorism discussion)  is a symptom not a cause.

I would suspect the cause has something to do with the dishonesty and incoherence that pervades almost any public discussion. The secrecy in our government is also very destructive.

We are living in a time of emotional not rational thinking. I suspect that it is only rational thinking and discussion between people who differ that will save us from ourselves.

When I mentioned to Eileen that it seems like GVSU might have been trying to get me to quit taking adjunct assignments there, she immediately agreed with me.

Her reasoning was that they keep offering me class times that I have mentioned I don’t want.

If she is right, this is silly. I would have prefered they just stop offering than to play games with trying to get me to not take classes.

My reason is this might be true (I mean the fact that they might have been trying to get me to quit) is the weird way people (teachers and staff, not students) act at the GVSU Music Dept. I wasn’t around very much, but it seemed as though there was an awkward distance between me and everyone else.

I must have contributed to this. Since I have a tendency to wear my heart (and my mouth) on my sleeve, I sometimes go the other way and try not to say anything or act too weird.

I finally received my student evals from the last two terms. My social experiment of dressing in a suit and tie seems to have worked. These are the first evals where no one has mentioned my appearance. I had already concluded that blanding out my dress helped students by not confusing them or distracting them. So I guess reading the written evals confirmed this or something.

It’s hard for me to actually believe that GVSU was trying to get rid of me. I’m not sure they even knew I was there most of the time. Oh well, it’s not that big a deal now. I do keep examining my own actions. I want to make sure if by saying no to stuff, I am shooting myself in the foot I am taking good aim, so to speak. In other words, doing what I want to do. So far, it feels definitely like the right thing, but I do keep thinking about it.

The street musician project here in Holland started Thursday and I was relieved that I had not signed up for it this year. My reasoning for saying no to this was that last year was crowded and carnival like and they crammed in even more spots for musicians and other acts this year.

When music acts are close together, it’s hard to distinguish your music from the music of the people around you. And all of us seemed like barkers at a carnival trying to attract people to YOUR act. At least that’s how it felt to me.

The idea behind all of this of course has nothing to do with music and everything to do with getting people’s billfolds downtown to spend money in the shops.

Finished “Suffer the Little Children” by Donna Leon yesterday. I picked up on this author due to a recommendation from Ursula K. Leguin in the NYT. It’s kind of fluffy but has some interesting stuff in it.

First of all, Leon has lived in Venice for 25 years and you a get a good dose of life there. The story in this one is pretty interesting. She manages to have sort of a mystery and a twist at the end without the traditional murder. There’s lots of food in it as well. It reminds me of a contemporary Italian equivalent of Simenon’s Maigret mysteries.

The main investigator, Guido Brunetti, is pretty believable.  You get to look over his shoulder as he manuevers through investigations and departmental power struggles. All the while he keeps his cool and Leon’s world view and political view comes through nicely.

At one point, someone is pontificating about the injustice of the police breaking into a residence and beating up someone. They comment, you can’t do this is here, This isn’t America you know.

Heh. How true.

After I finished “Suffer the Little Children” I walked over to the library and checked out three more by Leon. What the heck.

Acqua Alta (I read about half of this last night)

Also, picked up an impulse novel on the new shelf:

I admit the cover caught me. “Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto” by Joshua Cohen has that old “Schirmer Music” design. I opened it up and read a bit.  It looks typically experimental. Googling just now I find that  it’s his first novel. I don’t promise to read it but thought it was worth carrying home to look at.

I also picked up a couple of Italian cookbooks to complement Donna Leon reading:

This is quite charming. It is written by a chef from California who has a restaurant in Sacramento. It’s called the “Biba Restaurant.”   There is something about Italian cooking that is very attractive to me. I wanted to make pasta last night but Eileen was more in the mood for pizza. I made Spinach Romano the other day. It didn’t exactly work because it relied on careful treatment of simple quality ingredients (wilted spinach, tiny raisins, olive oil scented with garlic and pinenuts). Just as the recipe warned my final product tasted too much of olive oil and not enough of the other ingredients.

But with a little mozzarella it made an excellent filling for my breakfast omelet yesterday morning.

Anyway.. I also checked out

Nice photos and recipes.

This morning I was playing through Mozart and Bartok.

Mozart’s slow movement to his piano sonata K. 311.

Good way to start the day. The for some reason I pulled out Bartok and started pounding away at Mikrokosmos vol VI. (This is one of my favorite volumes… it has the 6 Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm).

Then I put an old recording of the Bartok String quartets on to play while I was making breakfast.

Feist has been hovering in my brain lately as well. I listened to The Reminder yesterday.

For some reason these three musicians fit nicely together in my brain: Mozart, Bartok and Feist. All have a fresh and “feisty” feeling to me just now.

Started working on another piano piece today. I was thinking about it laying in bed this morning. I was thinking it would be good to write a little hispanic type piece in G major and title it something to do with landscaping (“Leafblower”?). My reasoning is that brown people working on the yard seem to be invisible to the white people. Just my theory. Somewhere in there is a bit of irony floating around.

According to Bill Moyers’ Libby’s judge, Reggie B. Walton is “.. a no-nonsense, lock-em-up-and-toss-away-the-key type, appointed to the bench by none other than George W. Bush.”

Good article by Moyers which has a nice overview of all the neocon hawks who got us into Iraq bemoaning their one little casualty (Libby) on his way to his businessman’s prison/country club.

Finished a little piano piece today. I called it “Down Here on the Ground” or “Here on the Ground” or something like that. Here’s a pdf of the score and here’s a rough mp3 of it. Free music.

Jeremy Daum suggested that if I really wanted people to hear my music, I or one of my creative friends should make videos of my music. He is so right. I struggle with the whole self-promotion idea.

This graphic novel by Arioch seems to be entirely online. Cool.

P.S. Oops. Further reading indicates the work is not done yet.  He’s still working on the lengthy first chapter. But the prologue seems to be done. Heh.

I sometimes mention this scene in The Fisher King. Waits’s character has a great speech:

NY station hall.

Jeff Bridges as DJ Jack Lucas.
Tom Waits as disabled veteran in wheelchair. Legs hidden. Holds cup which says “I love NY”.

TW: Did you hear Jimmy Nickels got picked up yesterday? JL: Oh yeah?
TW: Yeah, he got caught pissin’ on a bookstore. Man is a pig. No excuse for that! (woman throws coin in cup )
TW: Thank you babe. We’re heading for social anarchy when people start pissin’ on bookstores. (man throws coin next to cup )
JL: Asshole. Didn’t even look at you…
TW: Well, he’s paying so he don’t have to look. You see, the guy goes to work every day. Eight hours a day, seven days a week. He gets his nuts so tight in a vice he starts questioning the very fabric of his existence. Then one day by quitin’ time, boss calls him into the office and says: “Hey Bob! Why don’t you come on in here and kiss my ass for me will you?” Well, he says: “Hell with it! I don’t care what happens. I just want to see the expression on his face as I jam this pair of scissors into his arm.” Then he thinks of me. He say: “Wait a minute! I got both my arms. I got both my legs. At least I’m not begging for a living.” Sure enough Bob’s gonna put those scissors down and pucker right out. You see, I’m much like a moral travellight really. I’m like saying: “Red, go no further! Boo-ie, boo-ie, boo-ie, boo-ie, boo-ie, boo-ie, boo-ie, boo-ie, boo-ie… ”

Funny, I remember him saying a “moral stoplight.” Anyway, the concept is still intact in my little pea brain (nice writing and Waits rocks!).

Found the Tom Waits Library today.

This morning I was playing through Bach’s F# minor fugue from the WTCII and it struck me that I need to spend the rest of my time on this planet doing things that I really want to do. Although, I admire the discipline and art of ballet and am pretty sure that the local people are good at it, I emailed Linda Graham a pass on it.

Also, ironically, when I got back from the grocery store today, there was a message from Erin at Grand Valley wanting to talk to me about teaching classes this fall. I just got off the phone with her telling her to tell the chair that I would be busy this fall. Same rationale as above.

Unlike the way GVSU has treated me, I resisted stringing them along and putting them off for as long as possible. It did take a bit of resisting since they have been so thoughtless and inconsistent in their dealings with my class assignments. It’s a great relief that I won’t be working with this department. Right now I feel no regret whatsoever. Not an itty bitty bit.

I did mention to Erin, that I was “wondering” what was going on with them since I hadn’t heard anything and “Danny” (the chair) had said something briefly to me at the end of last term but I wasn’t clear on it. See old post: Campus Hijinx for the story on that. Heh.

I was thinking about the “Straw Man” Fallacy recently as I read some partisan screed. Can’t remember which one. I have been reading a lot on the left and right of the political stuf on the web lately in an attempt to not be as narrow as most partisans seem to be.

If you don’t recognize the phrase, “Straw Man” fallacy is where you state your opponents supposed stand in a way that allows you to rip it to shreds.

It drives me a little crazy because it’s not hard to pick apart an argument that you yourself have designed. Much harder to understand what someone else is proposing.

So I was happy to run across a list of the 42 fallicies. I immediatley bookmarked this sucker.