The White Stuff - 6" and More On the Way

Woke up to the predicted 6" of snow. More is on the way, with freezing rain and sleet by the evening. So, I'm taking the day off to read, relax and probably do nothing.


This is my street at 7AM. When the sleet begins, with the freezing rain, this will all become a sheet of ice. Kind of humbling in a way. 2 wheels, 4 wheels, they're all nothing when pitted against the forces of nature. A great day to slow down. Stay warm!

The Politics of Division and Denial - America As a Third World Nation

The climate of intolerance is rising in America. The people are angry. Though I in no way condone violence, I do understand the tide of intolerance that breeds it. While listening to the news about the tragedy in Arizona yesterday, I couldn't help but be reminded of the the lyrics to "Who Killed Davey Moore", the 1963 Bob Dylan recording which poses the question of just who was responsible for the death of the boxer Davey Moore. The song is a series of denials by all parties involved in the blatant exploitation of Mr. Moore, which resulted in his death. Kind of like politics in America today. It's killing us, yet no one is to blame.

Today, and throughout the week coming, we will hear all manner of finger pointing concerning who/what is responsible for this tragedy. And the answers will be the same as it was for Davey Moore. No one will step up and admit their own intolerance. It's always someone else's fault. Well, I've got a big flash for you;

We are all responsible for the senseless events in Arizona. We are all responsible for the climate of intolerance that currently grips our nation. We were all set up to be divided by the politicians. And our shame is that we let it happen. We have let the Conservatives spread their hateful and divisive views to the point that, "We have," finally, as Pogo once opined, "...met the enemy, and he is us." We are responsible for letting ourselves be divided. Liberals, Conservatives and Tea Party members are turning our nation into a Third World Country. We are already the most indebted nation in the world. Need we sink even lower?

As I watched the news unfold yesterday, I had to wonder how we ever arrived at this point. And all I could think of was the divisive, hateful comments that will come of this. The Conservatives will state that the over reaching agenda on the part of the Liberals is to blame. And the Liberals will claim that the Conservative climate of fear currently gripping the nation is at fault. But it is our collective fault for having let ourselves be divided with "window dressing" issues such as flag burning, abortion, gay marriage and so-called "patriotism" that is really to blame.

I hope that you get what I am driving at. Maybe the lyrics will help to drive the point home. I hope so, for time is growing short, as are tempers, in America today.

"Who Killed Davey Moore" by Bob Dylan

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?

"Not I," says the referee,
"Don't point your finger at me.
I could've stopped it in the eighth
An' maybe kept him from his fate,
But the crowd would've booed, I'm sure,
At not gettin' their money's worth.
It's too bad he had to go,
But there was a pressure on me too, you know.
It wasn't me that made him fall.
No, you can't blame me at all."

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?

"Not us," says the angry crowd,
Whose screams filled the arena loud.
"It's too bad he died that night
But we just like to see a fight.
We didn't mean for him t' meet his death,
We just meant to see some sweat,
There ain't nothing wrong in that.
It wasn't us that made him fall.
No, you can't blame us at all."

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?

"Not me," says his manager,
Puffing on a big cigar.
"It's hard to say, it's hard to tell,
I always thought that he was well.
It's too bad for his wife an' kids he's dead,
But if he was sick, he should've said.
It wasn't me that made him fall.
No, you can't blame me at all."

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?


"Not me," says the gambling man,
With his ticket stub still in his hand.
"It wasn't me that knocked him down,
My hands never touched him none.
I didn't commit no ugly sin,
Anyway, I put money on him to win.
It wasn't me that made him fall.
No, you can't blame me at all."

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?

"Not me," says the boxing writer,
Pounding print on his old typewriter,
Sayin', "Boxing ain't to blame,
There's just as much danger in a football game."
Sayin', "Fist fighting is here to stay,
It's just the old American way.
It wasn't me that made him fall.
No, you can't blame me at all."

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?

"Not me," says the man whose fists
Laid him low in a cloud of mist,
Who came here from Cuba's door
Where boxing ain't allowed no more.
"I hit him, I hit him, yes, it's true,
But that's what I am paid to do.
Don't say 'murder,' don't say 'kill.'
It was destiny, it was God's will."

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?

"The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls

A few years ago I bought Sue this book for Christmas, intending to read it myself at a later date. That was in 2006. Last week I was at the Mooresville Town Library, I can usually be found there several times a week, pouring through the biographies on the rear shelves, and something seemed familiar about the first few pages, I could have sworn that I had read them before. And I had. When picking a book to read,I generally go by the cover, and if I like it I read the first page. If I turn the page to keep reading I assume that I have found a book which I will enjoy. It's a pretty good system that works well for me.

Upon arriving at home I told Sue all about this wonderful book and how it began. She gave me one of those wifely looks that roughly translates into, "What kind of idiot did I actually marry?" It was then that she informed me that we already own this book, and moreover, that I had purchased it. What can I say? When she's right, she's right.

This is a gem of a book. A memoir written out of the pain that comes from being raised in a dysfunctional family. And boy, was this family ever dysfunctional!

The book opens with Ms. Walls in New York City. She is standing outside of her building waiting for the doorman to hail a taxi for her when she sees a woman rummaging through a trash bin. It was her mother. Just how she got there, and how the author dealt with growing up with such unusual parents, is the crux of this beautifully written, no holds barred book.

The authors parents were exceptional people, there is no doubt about that. They teach their chidren to do math in binary numbers prior to 1st grade. They learn to read all the classics before they turn 10. They are children blessed with astute minds and a thirst for learning. They are also burdened with two of the strangest parents one could ever hope to conjure up.

Ms. Walls mother was an aspiring artist who would stop the car in the middle of the desert to paint a Joshua tree. The house was filled with flies because she felt that the chemicals in bug sprays were more dangerous than the flies themselves. This was previous to Rachel Carlson's "Silent Spring."

Mr. Walls was a mechanical genius, always on the verge of inventing something that would pull the family out of the poverty they lived in. His theories were all correct, and would be proven by others, with time and money that he himself would never possess. He was also a hopeless alcoholic.

Bouncing around from the deserts of Arizona to the hills of West Viginia, the family experiences many different hardships. Hunger was a constant companion. There was never any real Christmas holiday celebrated in the usual fashion. The children were almost feral in their lifestyles, roaming wherever they pleased, encouraged by both their mother and father.

The most striking thing about this book is the lack of shame, or even anger towards her parents, that the author feels about her unusual beginnings. This is no "poor me" book. Instead it is an exploration about what happens to the children of those adults, who are too busy fighting their own demons, to be "normal" parents. No matter how strange they may have been, they gave this author the "grit" that she would need to survive. That the author manages to find her own voice, and create a productive life, is a tribute to both her, as well as her parents.

A striking read that was in my house for the last 3 years, or so, and I had to get it from the library! I'm sure to hear from Sue on this one...

"The Diary of Anne Frank" with Millie Perkins, Joseph Schildkraut and Shelley Winters

If you haven't seen this movie in a while, then it is worth re-visiting, as I did last night. In the wake of larger productions such as Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List", as well as some of the more recent film documentaries about the Holocaust in general, which are all magnificent works in their own right, it is refreshing to see a film as simply made as this one. A film that explores the plight of one family, and their guests, in a hidden attic apartment, simply trying to survive. There is no overview of the Nazi Holocaust, it serves merely as the backdrop against which this group of human beings is forced to struggle. Rather than detract from, this approach actaully adds a singularly human element to the film.

It's easy to get lost in the history of the Nazi's, focusing on the atrocities. But sometimes it can be more telling to step back and look at the effect on one family in order to gain a wider understanding of just what it meant to be hunted and persecuted like animals. The horrors of the conentration camps are so cruel and terrible, that viewing them can seem almost abstract, when compared to the more easily imagined discomfort of being shut away from all that you have known. The small, cramped attic apartment can be even more daunting, in some respects, than the open areas of a concentration camp. In the camps, you were already discovered, and rid of that fear. Your fate was sealed. In the attic, there was still hope, but with that hope came the constant, unrelenting fear of discovery. And that way of living can take it's own toll as well.

The tiered construction of the set, comprising the 3 floors of the building in which the Frank family lived, gives the viewer a good idea of just how close the family was to discovery with each passing day. Confined to bed during the daylight hours, with no talking allowed, the only view of the sky through a skylight, wondering if that police siren is coming to you, these were the circumstances under which the family lived and Anne Frank wrote her diary.

Millie Perkins is wonderful as the young Anne Frank, stumbling through her early teenage years hidden away in the attic. Joseph Schildkraut, arguably one of the best actors of all time, is gentle and nuturing as her father. He is the leader of this band of hidden refugees. His words are always measured, his decisions always clearly thought through. He is a responsible and very well liked man.

Shelley Winters is in fine form in this film, playing Petronella Van Daan, the wife of Peter Van Daan, played by Richard Beymer to perfection. They are the couple who have come to stay with the Frank family. She is a woman who is frustrated and angry, someone who wishes that she could just go back and do it over. It is clear that she does not love her husband. He, on the other hand, is a man who feels beaten and betrayed by everything, including his wife.

Ed Wynn is his usual mixture of comedy and pathos, playing the role of Albert Dussell, a non observant Jew who is thrust upon the family in the middle of the film, at a time when the Jews were being snatched off the streets and taken away for the "Final Solution." He is crass and angry, with a feigned allergy to the cat that lives in the attic with the family.

Frances Goodrich wrote the play, as well as the script for the movie, using the Diary of Anne Frank. If you have ever read the book, then you have marveled at how this 14 year old girl was able to capture all of the nuances involved in living in such close quarters, both with the people she loved, as well as perfect strangers. Where did such insights come from?

When the Nazi's do finally come in, it is with all the force and brutality that one expects. And in the end, all that is left is Anne's diary. That little book will stand on it's own merit for eternity. In it are the hopes and dreams of not just one young girl, but of all humanity, calling out collectively for dignity, freedom and justice. Is that too much to ask for?

Demonizing Twain - When PC Goes Too Far.

They're at it again. Those self appointed pesky Politically Correct Speech Monitors are working in overdrive to alter some of the best literature ever written. Allan Gribben, a man who professes to be a Professor of Literature at Auburn University, in Alabama, approached Suzanne La Rosa at New South Books last July with the idea of releasing "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" in a combined edition, sans the word "nigger." Oops! I mean the "N" word. You know what it stands for, you say it to yourself when you read it.

Mark Twain has often been misunderstood, mostly by people in the publishing industry, who are, after all, just businessmen seeking to make money from the words that others labor to write. I can understand that. Those who can't write sell the writings of others. Thus has it ever been.

Editing has always been an honorable task, helping a writer to better hone the message that he is seeking to impart. But when you take the words of a book which has been recognized for well over 160 years as a Classic, and then change those words, you have surpassed the realm of editing and entered the murky world of censorship. And to what end? Mr. Gribben states that he is not attempting to "sanitize Mark Twain. I just had the idea to get us away from obsessing about this one word and just let the stories stand alone." This is bunk.

When reading "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" in grade school (yes, they actually allowed us to read these books) we were told about the use of the word nigger and what it meant in the context of the times in which it was written. This was in 1965, which for those too young to remember, was a very racially charged year. And the lesson learned in class was that the word was confined to literature. We were made to understand the superiority of Jim, in both his morals and actions, to the white men, I mean the evil "W" men who were chasing him. That lesson will now be lost.

To be fair about it, Mark Twain did state, in his autobiography, that although these books were children's stories, he preferred that they be read by an older audience. That is all very well, and perhaps there is merit there. I only know that I loved these two books from the very first time I read them, never construing the use of the word nigger to be offensive in it's intent.

This is not the first time in which Mark Twain has been misunderstood in regards to race, or religion. When he returned from his trip around the world in the 1880's, he wrote about the Jewish community in Austria. The piece was entitled "Concerning the Jews." It was hailed as "Philo-Semetic." That means that it was favorable to the Jewish people. Within weeks the word had been misunderstood and the more well known phrase "Anti-Semetic" was substituted in it's place. It would be more than a century before the cloud of Anti-Semetism hanging over Mr. Twain's head would start to clear away.

As the Publishing industry continues to salivate over the profits to be made selling Mr. Twain's books intensifies in the wake of the newly released Autobiography, you can expect more of these misrepresentations of the author's work. Imagine how much money Suzanne La Rosa, co-founder of New South Books, and Mr. Gribben, thought they were going to reap from the publication of a bastardized version of two of the greatest American novels ever written.

You can reach New South at 334-834-3556. Let them know how you feel about this politically correct version of the book before it is released in February. And if you see it on the shelves at your local book store, be sure and bypass it in favor of the authors original work, which is readily available in paperback for just a few dollars. And if you'd like, you can borrow the older version free from your local library.

I wonder what book Mr. Gribben will find offensive next?

"Weird Michigan" by Linda S. Godfrey

This is a fantastic book, something along the lines of the book and film by Mike Lassiter and Scott Galloway, "Our Vanishing Americana", both of which I reviewed here a few months back. If I thought my state was strange, well, you know the saying, "The Grass Is Always Greener on the Other Side?" This book may prove that to be true.

All states have their own regional qualities and assortment of quirky artifacts and legends, but Michigan seems to abound in these things. The book is organized into categories such as Local legends, Mysteries, Fabled Places, Phenomena, Beasts, Oddities and even a section entitled "Haunted Michigan."

The book reads well, too. The author has carefully written down the legends and stories in a most readable manner, guaranteed to preserve these local oddities for generations to come, at least on paper and in photos. Just as in "Our Vanishing Americana" you get the feeling that these things will not be with us for that much longer.

If I had to pick my favorite piece from the book it would be "The Glass Tower." It was built by Michael Evans in the town of Matherton, 25 miles northeast of Lansing. Rather than attempt to tell you about it myself, I will use the words of Mr. Evans cousin to describe it. He also has a webpage about it with a few more photos, including one of the Tower as it used to look at night when lit.

"If any of you have seen the book "Weird Michigan", then you've read the story about this tower. My cousin built it in the 70s. He died in 1987. He had been in a Automobile accident and was in a wheelchair when he built it.

According to the book the tower is 20 foot tall and shaped like a bottle. It was built between 1973 and 1983. People gave him bottles and he and the kids picked up bottles along side of the roads. (For a time Michigan had a no return policy for bottles, so many of them littered the highways). It has about 10,000 bottles in it.

He had a lot of help from the local teenagers, and about everybody in this town (population about 250) were related to him in some way so he had a lot of relative help too."

Here is the link to the Tower site; http://www.pbase.com/image/75040405

For me the Tower of Bottles is a very personal sort of thing, as I collect them. I have always loved glass bottles, as a kid I considered them to be art.(Eventually the rest of the world caught up to my thinking.)

This is a fun, quirky book about the funny and quirky people that we all are deep inside. It's just that some people have a way of putting their ideas into action, creating all the unusual things that there are to see around us. And it seems there is an over abundance of these things in Michigan. I just might have to take a drive up North this summer and see them.

"The Wind That Shakes The Barley" with Cillian Murphy, Liam Cunningham and Padraic Gelaney

This was a hard film to watch. Taking place in Ireland at the time of the "troubles" in 1920, the film takes a hard and uncomfortable look at the violence and hatred, on both sides, in a struggle that would last for another 80 years. To this day there are still issues that threaten the peace. I could delve into the history of the conflict, but that would take days. And in the end my conclusion of whom is right, or wrong, would make no difference. So, I will confine myself to the movie.

Filmed in Ireland, in the towns Ballyvorney, Bandon, Coolea and Timoleague, all in County Cork, places the action right where it happened, lending a reality to the film that could never be achieved in a studio. The early morning fogs, the damp weather, all serve to make the viewer uncomfortable, which is just what Director Ken Loach had in mind when he made this film. This is not "A Quiet Man."

Damien O'Donovan, played by Cillian Murphy, is a young doctor on his way to London and a job in a hospital there. His brother, Ted, played by Padraic Delaney, is a leader in the local IRA militia. The two brothers are on opposite sides of the fence about the British occupation. While Damien feels that there is nothing to be done, save submit, his brother Teddy is busy organizing, and fighting, for Independence.

After a hurling match the brothers return home, only to be rousted by the British Black and Tans, who beat his friend Michael to death after he refuses a strip search. Still determined to leave Ireland he prepares to board the train to London. But an incident at the station, where the engineer refuses to transport the British soldiers, resulting in a brutal beating of the train's elderly conductor, changes his mind. He returns home and joins his brother in the fight for Independence.

Staging raids on the local British arsenal gains them a supply of arms, and the wrath of the British, as they search, house by house, for the culprits. When they find no men at home, they burn the houses down. When the women won't answer questions, they are beaten, and their hair is shorn and ripped from their heads.

After being captured themselves, the brothers are tortured, just as the Anglo-Irish Treaty is about to be signed. This treaty would only make Ireland a Domain of Great Britian. As the Irish Free State becomes the law of the land, some of the old militia, including Teddy, join up with the new, British backed, Irish Army. This only infuriates Damien. After all, he gave up his career to bring forth a free Republic, not a vassal state of the British.

At this point Damien begins his own war against the new Irish Army, directly fighting against his brother. When he is captured in a raid and sentenced to the firing squad, Teddy pleads with him to reveal the names and locations of the IRA members and their weapons caches. Damien, who never wanted to be in this struggle to begin with, refuses. He writes a farewell letter to his lover, Sinead, played by Orla Fitzgerald, stating his undying love for her and letting her know that he faces death unafraid. He is then placed in front of the firing squad, and Teddy, fighting back tears, gives the order to fire, killing his own brother. When Teddy informs Sinead of Damiens death she physically attacks him, and bans him from her life forever, underscoring the deep divisions that the "struggles" have caused.

At 121 minutes, the film can feel a bit long, but the acting and direction carry the day, as the viewer is compelled to see how this all ends. And when it does, you are find yourself painfully aware of the fact that this struggle continued for another 80 years, tearing families apart. A stunning portait of a very dark era in the history of both England and Ireland, Ken Loach has given us a truly realistic and disturbing picture of the darker side of human nature.