Okay Blitz Scrabble has scrambled what’s left of my brains. I have been playing far too much today. I walked downtown to sit and read to get away from the computer.

Went to a used bookstore earlier today and found the rest of Mishima’s tetralogy sitting on a display case. Bought the three I don’t own.

Ran into Phillip Muzzy at the coffee shop. He looks great. He just got back to Holland a week ago and is all graduated. Looking for a job as an acoustician.

It is gorgeous in Holland Michigan today.

In today’s Sentinel, local business consultant and adjunct teacher at GVSU, Jeff Wincel, writes about businesses that look beyond the profit motive. (“When the bottom line isn’t the only priority” once again I link it in for those of you with the patience to subscribe to the silly Holland Sentinel web site.)

I began reading the article with skeptisim. I don’t see businesses in the current economic environment do much but maximize (usually short term) profit. After all that’s their purpose, right? Here in Holland there is that goofy idea that profits are rewards from God for good behavior (Calvinistic silliness that also teaches that if you’re having problems it’s because you are not living right. Take that you dang homeless and hungry people. In the words of the Hope College graduate and wild-eyed California evangelist, Robert Schuller: what failures and victims in life need is “Posssssssibility Thinking!!!!!!”)

But Wincel caught my attention with this “Once Magna bought Donnelly, the noble cause of stakeholder service was abandoned by a singular focus on share-holder returns. The same happened with Prince and the JCI buyouts.”

I remember when the locally owned Donnelly Corporation sold itself to Magna. An acquantance of mine was on the board of directors. When he mentioned to me what was going on, he couldn’t look me in the eye.

I knew some of the Donnelly family. They are good people and some are even dang liberals who seem to think that homelesss and hungry people could use some help. But when this sale went down it felt like Gordon “Greed is Good” Gecko time.

“This is your wake-up call, pal.”

I think the profit motive pretty much stinks. But at the same time I am amazed to watch businesses seek short term profit at the expense of long term profit and investment. An obvious example is the auto industry. After the seventies oil crisis, it didn’t take too long for SUVs and other gas hogs to become market dominant. Crazy. I’m not saying they shouldn’t have made what sold. I’m saying it would have been nice to have a choice for more responsible gas mileage. Silly me.

I do believe that this is part of the reason for Michigan’s depressed economy: short term thinking.

Speaking of Charkes Rosen, in his “The Classical Style,” he uses the word, cancrizans. What a great word! It means “to move backwards” and comes from the Latin verb cancrizare, to move backwards.

This word was not in Websters. Did not come up in Google under the “define” command.
Rosen defined right in his prose.

But looking it up on the web led me to this cool site:
The Phrontistery.  At least I think it’s cool.

Phrontistery means “a thinking place” and seems to be a blog mostly about interesting words  Cancrizans is on the Forthright’s  Favorites page of this web site.

Another lovely day in Holland Michigan. Eileen and I went for a long walk this morning. We walk down by the river. It’s a lovely walk and most people don’t seem to know there is a path that runs between downtown and the river’s edge. We did see a few people. But most people were there for the ongoing Tulip Time.

I made more food yesterday. Moussaka for me and pork chops for the wife. Actually I kind of forgot that Eileen doesn’t like eggplant. Ahem. Anyway. She liked her porkchop just find and I had fun making the Moussaka.

Life goes on. I am still reading “Blue:the murder of jazz” by Eric Nisenson and Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima.

Nisenson’s rant is giving me food for thought. He seems to be drawing a line between himself and the neoclassic jazz guys like Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch. I agree with his notion that Jazz needs to keep transforming itself in order to preserve it’s artistic nature. But actually I go much further. I think that most art and music is like that. So Nisenson keeps talking about validity and who should be included on Jazz’s best list. I find this uninteresting. I am interested in what music has meaning for people and why. If that’s old timey Jazz, then that’s fine. But for myself I find that music has a function of helping me make sense of life. This cannot be just from the point of view of historical music Jazz or otherwise. What about now?

Unfortunately, most Jazz by living musicians doesn’t do it for me. I heard Dave Holland‘s group last year and they blew me away.

Here’s a link to 58 seconds on Youtube of Chris Potter taking a solo with this group. He’s the sax player and is also a composer.

Robin Eubanks is the trombone player and is also a composer. Here’s a video of him playing with a larger group but you can get an idea from it.

This is Dave Holland standing next to Miles Davis in 1991. I think he played with him at one point. As I listened to the Dave Holland group play, I quit thinking about whether it was Jazz or Contemporary or whatever. I just thought it was good music. But still most contemporary Jazz stuff I hear isn’t as interesting as what these players did when I heard them live.

The drummer, Nate Smith was pretty amazing. Very intuitive. Anticipated what soloists were doing and played right along with them. He’s playing on the Chris Potter video.

Anyway. I’m also plugging away on Mishima. I read some Mishima when I was young. I started reading Spring Snow because David Mitchell (who is an author I like right now) said Mishima’s tetralogy was a masterpiece. Spring Snow is the first volume.

The following articles are among the ones that caught my eye in today’s New York Times.

“I know what happens in a country when you don’t teach history correctly…. It’s insane not to teach your children the truth.”

This man is Michael Honda. He’s a Congressman from California. He was a teacher. Now he is a Congressman who stands up for what he believes in. His family was sent to the Japanese interment camps. His wife is a survivor of Hiroshima. Read the article, “A Congressman Faces Foes in Japan as He Seeks Apology” by Norimitsu Orishi

In the story, “A Father’s Pain and an Empty Pizzeria,” Richard G. Jones tells the story of the father of the accused terrorist who scoped out Fort Dix when he delivered pizzas there. The father is now ostrasized by the locals who used to patronize his pizzeria. They shout epithets. So the father has put up a sign, “Under New Management.”

So the story is about hate and fear. The response is to put up a sign that isn’t true. Hate, fear and lies.

Finally, Charles Rosen is the subject of “At 80, He’s Hardly Done Talking or Performing” by Vivien Schweitzer. I admire this man very much. I have read most of his “The Romantic Generation” and also other works by him. He brings a performer’s insight into musicology.

I tried to add a favicon (favorite icon) to my web site. I seemed to have failed (according to Sarah J. in England). I can see the icon I designed on my computer using Mozilla, but nothing in Explorer.

But in the meantime I noticed that my middle column was not way down on the bottom of the Explorer page as usual. Hmmmm. So if someone is reading this in Explorer and is not experiencing the usual difficulties, it would interest me to know that.

Also if you happen to see a little green icon somewhere, I’m also interested.

Yesterday I made crepes.

This morning, I fried up some apples.

Then put the apples in the crepes and topped with peach yogurt. Yum.

In Michigan we are about to run out of money for our State government. As I understand it, the bucks end on June 1. Local services in this state are in trouble. Education is being cut.

But we are largely a conservative state that abhors taxes.

Still I hear people complain that there must be too much fat in Lansing (our state capital).

In today’s local paper, Rep Arlan Meekhof tells us the gospel that tax hikes are unnecessary. (“Simple Reforms Make Tax Hike Unecessary“) I’ve linked in the story but like so many people on the web, our local paper insists on an annoying registration in order to access their site. I emailed them this early on in their web site days. But true to form, I got emails back not acknowledging my comments but arguing that I basically didn’t know what I was talking about. Screw the public.

You may think that I’m just kvetching here and indeed I am doing so (the privilege of the blog, right?). But it drives me crazy how people in the public sector don’t seem to think that they have a responsibility to the larger community. Just their own usually narrowly defined interests.

Take Meekhof for example. In his article he instantly compares our governor to a CEO of a company and “her” proposed tax hikes to raising prices.

Here’s how he says it:

“If the state of Michigan was a corporation, CEO Granholm would never even consider raising taxes. Any good CEO will tell you that when times are tough, the last thing you do is raise your prices. Yet raising prices is exactly what the governor is trying to do.”

Get it?

That makes us citizens not shareholders but customers.

I have a problem with that.

This dang business metaphor has taken over all aspects of society.

And how does Meerkof propose fixing our problems here in Michigan?

1. limited able-bodied welfare recipients to four years of benefits

2. place just 5 percent of Michigan’s prison population in privately run prisons

3.reforming public school health insurance benefits. By opening insurance contracts to competitive bids and requiring reasonable co-pays and preferred-provider networks

So cut back those dang moochers (of YOUR money) on welfare and privatize prisons and reduce health care for teachers.

But as Jack Lessenberry points out in his recent essay, “Taxing,” taxes are lower than they used to be, we don’t have enough money to educate Michigan’s children and we will never slow the rushing loss of jobs in our state by reducing infrastructure.

It’s a simple notion. You get what you pay for. If we want to have schools, roads, police, firemen and godforbid libraries, they must be paid for. By us.

We are shareholders. We are stakeholders. We don’t consume the government. Government is us.

The notion that a market philosophy will govern the society well is not working. Markets, businesses and shareholders are more interested in short term profit than long term investment.
So ultimately, greed is good and screw the public.

“like Spiderman’s “spider sense,” a soldier could be alerted to danger that his or her brain had sensed, but not yet had time to process.” story link on Wired

“GOOGLE is to add sounds to its Google Earth virtual globe.

Users will soon be able to hear birds, tropical storms, whale song and other noises as they zoom into the planet on their PCs.

Natural modern-day sounds will play alongside those of past decades to show man’s environmental impact.

from the Mirror

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.
– Charles Bukowski

“A young man was dead and he and his motorcycle lay at the side of the road at the end of a short skid mark.” more

There was a check in the mail today from Holland High School. Let’s see that was back in December of last year. I had pretty much figured I would never get paid unless I went and rattled some cages over at the high school.

The funny thing is the check was $230.00. I could swear they owed me more like 300.00 something but what the heck. At least now I have been paid something. Toujour Gai, Archy.

Hamas Mickey Mouse clone mimes using an AK47.

Youtube video of him

Der Spiegel article: Hamas Mickey Mouse Teaches Jihad

John Buckman the founder of Magnatune Music is giving a talk today about How to Piss off the Music Industry for Fun and Profit at Queen Mary, University of London, Department of Electrical Engineering, aka The Centre for Digital Music.

I just got back from the computer doctor. Apparently the registry was corrupt. In the meantime, my back up computer was acting up.

I was doing some recording and noticed that the mic was picking up the computer noise. So I shut down. When I tried to restart the dang thing did what it did before and only came up to an E screen (it’s an E machine).

I am using recording for writing this time. This means instead of writing a song and then recording it, I am recording ideas while I am still writing the song. There are plusses and minuses to this. I don’t have too much in the way of lyrics yet but basically have a verse and chorus of a song with some ideas about how it should sound.

Anyway, I took the sick computer in and picked up the healed on and am now writing from it.

I do think it’s pretty much a necessity for me these days to be connected to the Net.

Humvee doors trap troops USATODAY

Once again the military personnel are on the short end of the stick. It drives me crazy that politicians use the military as a reason to stay in Iraq and a stick to beat each other with. Isn’t the military a tool not a policy?  Staying in Iraq is not about the lives we have sacrificed or sufficiently funding our military. It’s a policy decision.

I have difficulty condoning war at all. I am reminded of the late Kurt Vonnegut’s comment that when Bush called himself the “war president” it was as ridiculous and inappropriate as if he called himself the “syphillus president.” War is awful. It combines the worse aspects of the violence of human nature with the insipid evil of institutions. Just my opinon.

So. I don’t think people in the United States have been educated enough into thoughtful reasoning. Voters vote against their own self interest. Taxes get cut, but then so do services and people blame leaders. Being a leader becomes very uncomfortable. So then the only people willing to serve are extremely ambitious, obsessive, angry or partisan. In his book, “Servant Leadership,” Greenleaf mentions that leaders need to be cultivated and sought out by  groups. Today leaders are shot down constantly in our society, figuratively and literally. So only the grimly determined survive, usually questionably motivated.

Library services are being cut severely in Michigan. Education is being cut. Whose responsibility is it? The politicians? Nope. It’s everyone’s responsibility. Right now when I hear complaining, I respond (usually inside my head but not always, sometimes outloud) what’s happening in our state and country must be what people want to have happen.

Education must be a lower priority than less taxes. Bush got re-elected because a majority of voters subscribe to some or most of his policies. I disagree with both of this situations but am willing to accept that I am in the minority and will continue to exercise my responsibility as a citizen to inform myself and vote and even write a letter to somebody once in a while.

Reading a book requires sustaining thought. Sustaining thought longer than the number of lines on a screen or minutes in a television broadcast. It takes thought to look beyond the propaganda of most of the news reporting in the world, much less in the USA. Partisans are often surprised when their agendas are applied to themselves or someone they love. I think this is a lack of foresight or reasoning.

When I am asked to explain why Proust is important to me I usually feel like I do a lousy job. Then I remember that Proust took seven volumes to say what he had to say. And that he had a fine mind that I continue to learn from.

Conversation can illuminate. And in some way I think of reading as extended conversation. Proust has taught me things about life experience, memory and the “aha” moment.  There is so much more to his ideas than the basic shock of unbid memories that come to him from his teacup.

I guess I think that community is the womb of ideas. The concept of community is very weak in the USA right now. I look to my small group of friends and family but even more so to the people  who have recorded their responses to living.

This means books, music, poetry and art.

Recently I have been playing through the music of an obscure Cuban-American composer, Rene Touzet. Since he is obscure, it intensifies the effect that his notions about music (playfulness, dance, elegance) come directly from him to me via the notes he wrote down (mostly in his old age). It is like a transmission from him (now dead) to me through the medium of beauty. He is teaching me even though we will never meet.

This is true to some extent of much of the music, poetry and writing I read. It’s why I seek out the stuff of the past. Not because I think it is a heritage I need to preserve but because it continues to help me learn how to live and enjoy life.

I didn’t think I would be writing this post this morning. My back-up computer died last night. It was running very slowly and when I tried to restart took so long that I did an improper shut-down (i.e. turned off the power) and then it refused to come back. It would boot up to the black e-machine screen and that’s as far as I could get it. I gave up and read Proust.

I am re-reading Lydia Davis’s translation of Swann’s way, the first volume of Proust.  I don’t remember finishing it. I honestly don’t remember reading it, but I have notes up through about a third of it. The new translation of Proust has a different translator for each of the seven volumes. It seems to me if I had finished the first volume I would have ordered the second. That’s my plan anyway. I tend to wait and order the next book I want to read by an author when I can see I am just about finished with the current one.

I get the distinct feeling that less and less people are reading books these days. I guess it’s not that big a deal. Book readers have always been a minority. Michigan is suffering under tons of budget cuts. Our Republican problems predate the country’s. Govenor Engler cut taxes and then on the eve of his last days in office cut education funding entirely. His idea was that if he cut the funding the next adminstration would have to figure out how to fund education. Schools in Michigan have been in trouble ever since then.

It’s so ironic, because I feel like schools in the USA in general do not do a good job of educating. I think it is directly related to the crisis of government and country we find ourselves in today. People tend to think of democracy as another word for capitalism these days. Democracy failed in Iraq. It never had a chance . Jeffersonian democratic theory says educate the people and they can govern themselves.

The United States population is uneducated. Reasoning capacity takes a back seat to consumerism and entitlement for me but not for thee. Our situation has a certain amount of logic to it. When there is a vacuum of coherence in government, state and local, it seems that people will be more likely to enter the situation for the wrong reasons (personal profit or agenda). People have lost a lot of the notion of representing citizens. Locally, I have contacted members of the state government and media with questions and comments. Surprisingly, I get responses that are argumentative. They point out the error of my ways or worse they don’t respond. Hmmm.

Right now, once you get into a position of power whether it is government or media or business, you exploit it no matter if you represent 51 % of voters or an even smaller per centage of your organization of choice (business, church, whatever).

The United States is about power right now not representation. It will probably stay that way as long as he or she with the most money wins (elections or anything else).

You can see that I am glad to have my little pulpit back.

I think books can sustain ideas and propositions in ways that inform things like governing and life choices. There is wisdom in books not advertisements or blips on the screen. Just my opinion.

“Mormon-Scientologist Mitt Romney (pictured here with The Joker) was down at Regent University earning a master’s degree in Pretend World History yesterday, and he told an audience of future Monica Goodlings all about a crazy land called “France,” where the ladies wear no pants and people only mate every seven years on their home planet of Vulcan ”

read the full story on Wonkette