Michelle Obama's alleged red blotches

Dear Kim,

I've been so involved in citizen politics lately that I've barely read 'Style & Taste.' Your piece about Michelle Obama caught my eye because I like your writing and sense of fair play.

I admire Michelle Obama's confidence, graciousness and devotion to the good of the country. It's nice that she cares about her appearance and enjoys clothes shopping. But for me, that's a footnote.

If she wants to hire a stylist, that's fine. Maybe the bloggers will critique the stylist from then on -- or Michelle Obama for hiring the wrong one! My point is, fashion is an art form we happen to wear, so art critics naturally pay attention to prominent people. But in a society where class is equated with wealth and the wealthy often lack class (ie. the gilded parachute), perhaps we could let Michelle be Michelle, enjoy her individuality and focus on the good work she wants to do.

Thanks for writing,
Susan


photo Craig ONeal (cc-by-sa-2.0)

To my family, the morning after

Indian summer, from a bare back porch.

This morning, I did two things. Clean the house. Ride my bike.

While I cleaned, I thought of the family I came from and grew into. Our diverse ideas. The choices we make. I considered how the events of the past 24 hours would be met by each of us.

I was moved by John McCain's concession speech, especially his call to come together for the sake of the country.

I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited... I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president.
-- John McCain 11.4.08

Like a good family. Like my family, where love is stronger than differences. But I wonder if Senator McCain was calling for more than live-and-let-live. He seems to consider the problems of our time too big for only half a population to manage.

Then I rode my bike to Forest Hills Park, the wild old Rockefeller estate on a bluff overlooking Cleveland. I never know whose path I'll cross over there. Strangers by foot, by bike, with and without dogs, with and without companions, accents, ipods, canes. Just about always with smile. A goodly number of geese surround a small lake I can picture the Rockefeller family picnicking by on a day like this. Now it's here for the common folk, clearing our minds the day after the first black family is invited to live in the great white house.

I want to do my part to mend what's broken in the world. I don't know what this will mean, but I thank John and Barack for taking the high road last night. I think this is the one we'll need to take now. I thank them for the leadership. And you, for inspiration.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand: that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
-- Barack Obama 3.18.08

photo acaben (cc-by-sa-2.0)

Web 3.0 mandate: time = life

Time is money. So the saying goes. But this one's aging fast.

A body's alloted time is finite and therefore rather precious. Until we come up with anti-death serum, this part won’t change. But when it comes to equating time with money, much has changed already.

Old think

Remember Titanic? That film took a lot of time to make. People time, coordinated by the director, James Cameron. We used to equate the hours of human life consumed in the making of an epic film with great value. We forked over money (earned with hours of our lives) to see Titanic, told our friends to spend their time-money on it and, in some cases, repeated the cycle until we decided to spend our riches elsewhere. A simple formula, really: human life (in hours) it takes to make Titanic translates into human life (hours devoted to getting the paycheck) consumers are willing to give up to have it.

New think

Enter Web 2.0 with media-rich social networking. It’s all about time. Post a video of your baby laughing on YouTube and the time you put into it (relatively speaking, zilch) can yield high viewing time by YouTube fans. Except for the cost of web access, money is irrelevant here. Lots of time is spent in a lopsided spiral. You spend a pittance of your finite life on your baby’s video debut. Millions of baby lovers and laugh addicts spend their finite life hours to see and spread it.

Looks like time doesn’t always equal money anymore. Now small time investment can translate into big time return and every PR guru is out to figure what meme will stick and how to nurture the knack of predicting the next viral spiral.

Artists are not immune from old-think or new-think. We of little money can be smugly proud of using precious ‘time’ making unique masterpieces while our materialistic friends spend their ‘time’ getting all that money which must be spent on useless toys that weigh down the tree-lawns on garbage day. But (secretly) we might like to find an easy way to take the Zeitgeist by storm whereby zillions of appreciative time-owners line up to purchase our humble creation with time-extravagant ready cash, and tell their friends to send us even more money.

Ah, how very hypocritical of us. We claim time is more precious than money, but don’t care to share this gift of time. Consumer money would save us time. We could spend less time scrounging around, more time creating masterpieces. In the end, artists can be just as fond of the idea of time=money as anyone else and welcome the internet’s promise to get us both.

Newer think

Web 3.0 is coming and, politics willing, hope is on the move. We’ll live to see the hive of social mediacs move too. One thing we’ve established is that as long as we’re peering at a bunch of pixels, we’re not grazing the isles of big box emporiums that fill our time and space with junk. It doesn’t appear too likely we'll up and abstain from the wonders of the web, addicted as we are to its virtues. But all is not well. The internet is a great place to put your nonrenewable time stamp unless you happen to derive pleasure from all your senses, including a sense of responsibility for a life well lived. Observers decry the multiple screen sucking ploys that steal our precious time.

The future I see is this. Artist-geeksters reinvent what’s possible online, underscore the finitude of hours, emphasize the sensual breadth of experience and keep in mind the worth of time. In short, we celebrate time as the new wealth. CEOs cease to duke it out over the biggest wad of cash; their reputation will rise and fall on how much they enhance stakeholder time. We’ll see this attitude reflected on the ticker tape, replacing the blingfest. Hey, once the roof’s sound, the body’s whole, and the kids are OK, what’s the point of the gilded life?

Time is the new currency. Though some are slow to notice, money’s lost its luster.


public domain painting Willy Stöwer

Wallstreet smirk

When regulators took over mortgage finance Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac this month, they eliminated $12.59 million in exit payments for executives Daniel H. Mudd of Fannie Mae and Richard F. Syron of Freddie Mac. The executives will now get a combined $9.43 million upon their exit.

The Washington Post with its giant DC circulation may be able to slide mention of this monetary peccadillo into the beltway news without fanfare, but how does it play in Peoria? Tales of yet another incredulous stunt by the mega moneyed do not the happy rustbelter make.

But if we could take a moment and reflect upon the stress of Freddie and Fannie ex-execs who, between them, have nearly thirteen million dollars less to retire upon than they had planned upon, perhaps we'll feel less put upon. For all we know, as we sputter on about small oil sticker shock, Mr. Fannie may be auctioning his condo in Tahiti as Sir Freddie maxes out his credit cards to fuel the yacht.


public domain painting Paul Gauguin ~ Deux Tahitiennes, 1899, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Palin pales

The liberal mainstream media set me up. I tuned in to hear a speech by a spitfire self-starter with maverick creds surpassed by none. Instead, I heard talking points dressed in hocky ma shucks.

It was embarrassing, as a woman, to see her squander her talents by pandering to a mean spirited conservatism. She lied about the Democrats' middle class tax cut.

"How are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy?"

She lied about the Democrats' renewable energy policies.

"America needs more energy. Our opponent is against producing it."

She insulted citizens who take responsibility for their communities.

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities."

She ignored her party's distension of the national debt and generous tax cuts to the well-to-do.

I was led to believe 'maverick McCain' would rattle the cages of his grand old party with a young, vibrant, new-thinking dynamo running-mate. Come to find out, with the glibness of Guliani and the vainglory of her new elitist friends, Miss Congeniality only finds it necessary to embrace the protectors of their own narrow perspectives and swollen purses.

Let the vetting begin.


Image uploaded to Commons by Ranveig licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Wisdom of insecurity

If we must be nationalists and have a sovereign state, we cannot also expect to have world peace.

If we want to get everything at the least possible cost, we cannot expect to get the best possible quality, the balance between the two being mediocrity.

If we make it an ideal to be morally superior, we cannot at the same time avoid self-righteousness.

If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.

-- Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety (1951)

Hmmm....

They cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
-- Barrack Obama

Pessl re Dylan

'Artist' can’t make even the briefest public appearance without extensive baggage. The next time you’re at a party and someone asks what you do for a living, boldly say artist, then sit back and watch the jolting effect that little word has upon a conversation. Above 14th Street, you’ll be offered money, food, some tips on where to find free lodging. Below 14th Street, the person will smirk, dutifully ask “What kind?” or appear to start swallowing an egg, which is a disguised yawn. You’ll get a hug in the Midwest. In Santa Monica, you’ll get “sweet” and an invitation to go Rollerblading. In certain parts of the country you’ll get tied up and thrown into the back of a pickup truck, and no one will ever hear from you again. But every now and then, the word perfectly explains a certain person.
-- Marisha Pessl

Ms. Pessl's piece about “Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series,” must have cost her a gold mine of focused attention. She shares her savory perceptions like a spread at a lavish party.

Observations about Bob Dylan are hardly rare. He's an intriguing being.

From the beginning, he’s been a mixed medium artist. He’s never been a straight linear person. He’s had a whole lot of miscellany.
-- Christopher Ricks

There's the bard himself in all his glorious miscellany. Then, the legions who honor his every word, sound, brushstroke. Witnessing his effect on these observers and their works about him, you begin to glimpse the power of a single person capable of silencing every naysayer within and without for the sake of his salient virtue.


photo Walt Campbell

Digital aplomb

She understands her future,
loves the gradual warmth
of the new brain marinade.

Befriending time,
she tells the countess
of caffeinated mediocrity
to leave her shoes on the stair
before coming in.

Youth is beautiful these days,
thanks to structure
evolved by kindly geeksters.

When time is ripe,
she ventures into its elegant mist,
exhales and evaporates.

Chiming.

Sammy

This little boy
points at my guitar case
on the frivolous preschool carpet
keen to be knighted
sir latcher of latches.

He kneels into the task
studious
remembering the groove of
slide
latch
click
each movement his personal best.

When the day comes
that he is master of projects
that change the way
we think and ask and thrive
it will have been music
that once answered prayer
of his fingering mind.

Verbiage

the Poets unbraid it
with punked up graffiti

the Pundits rebuke it
with bludgeons of grandeur
and voices of silt

the children reclaim it
their tongues on the throttle
their minds on the guttural
pulse of unknowing
in backward progression
from silence to sound

Artist re artist

You almost have to be full of yourself to be an artist, right? As in

I'm special.
I have something important to say.
The world needs my _____.
I owe it to the universe to live out my (stellar) trajectory.

Once you get enlightend about your status as just one of the gang, do you give up or hunker down? This is all pseudo art, after all. Real art is real life, however you live it. Charles Kuralt ambles by (he's dead of course -- artists are not immortal, dear) to ask about the scooner you're building in your parched yard or the bicycles you fix for neighbor kids who can't afford bikes, let alone repairs. You'll be humanly interesting for a minute, inspire somebody to get off the couch and weed the potatoes, but you won't see yourself Rolling-Stone blow-dry-air-brushed anytime soon.

Which leaves you with this. When the magnificent artist brain fits back inside the cranium, you start to see straight again. The bones that broke under your spectacular youness get strong and dear and appreciative of stuff like bird conjugations and orange rinds.

John McCain suggests his wife enter a topless beauty contest

This is how you get a rap for being a prude: rowdy guys leer at Cindy McCain and if you find her husband less than honorable for putting her in their sites, you (presumably) lack a sense of humor and adventure.

The same dynamic plays out in the litany of mega-artsy outside-the-boxers from New York to Hollywood who want you to 'lighten up! -- a little sex in the city never hurt anybody.'

A brave new citizenry will (soon, if it isn't here already) figure out how to make what is both creative and respectful of the human spirit trés cool.

Cindy McCain looks like she is smiling away in her roomy work shirt and crossed wrists on that biker rally stage, but like Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton and so many politico-wives through time, we'll never know what she's thinking or who's neck she's secretly wringing.

My visit with Sarah

Twenty four hours ago I might have been pleased with myself for groping my way to pen and pad through the work strewn room at 4 am.

But that was before Sarah.

It was a visit I dreaded and desired since hearing that my friend's granddaughter had lost both optic nerves by a gun badly handled. I'd last seen Sarah in passing, as she kissed her granny through the car window, her bleached bangs screaming wild. The way news of family filters through friends, I knew her as the wayward child. What would I, mother of sons, think to say, or do, in the presence of this newly blind young woman?

She was resting, down the hall, as we came and sat and wrapped our hands around wet glasses. Her mother's even keel belied her taut vigilance, bound to the sudden, changeable winds. What choice did she have in a home with a child who wasn't always keen on living?

Someplace within the lull of our murmurings, Sarah had joined us. She was curled in a bundle of gray hoodie, jeans, and black converse sneakers. We talked around and past her for awhile, swirling our best intentions her way like dervishes on tiptoe. When we lighted on braille and her new teacher, the tools came out and Sarah showed us the fingerwork she'd practiced.

It was really Sarah who broke the ice. "Show Susan the notebook, Mom -- maybe we can do the thing with random pages." I inched toward the lovely girl with auburn hair and dark glasses, starstruck by her grit and grace.

So we did the drill. She took each page I handed her and went to work, tenderly teasing the alphabet from tiny bumps, accepting me like the great aunt who passes through town on business. But this was not my business, it was hers, and she had her plans.

"After I learn the braille, I want to get good at cane walking and how to cook and do laundry so I can help my mom around here. I'll probably go to school in Pittsburgh -- I think it will be good to meet some other blind people. I don't know anyone who's blind."

And neither did I, but now, it seems, I do.

Something in Sarah reminds me of Dave, best friend of one of my boys. Dave ROTC'd his way through college, served and blogged his way through an Iraq tour and ended up, miraculously, alive. Both of them exude a sort of ironic alertness to the present, tense as it may feel from the fallout of choices they did and did not make. Their words carry the intelligent lilt of skepticism; their humor takes you in stride.

Her mom brought her a crisp new dollar, which Sarah began to fold and crease and fold again as talk turned to watches that speak and pills that dull the relentless pain of bullet wounds. Maisie, the golden mutt, bellied up for scratches on the braided rug. Voilà! Sarah's origami creature, a wee elephant that couldn't be spent in a million years, landed in my palm. "Every waiter says the same thing when I leave a row of these on the table," she says, pleased and weary. "I'll never be able to spend that tip."

It was time to go, my pachyderm a gift to cherish, a parting sack of chocolate eggs in shiny foil tucked in Sarah's pocket. We stood and hugged and said the normal things. "So good to see you, Sarah."

And Sarah said, "good to see you too, as the saying goes."

New Yorker 7.21.08

I reserve the right to be as offensive as I want in my cartoons, and to exaggerate however I please -- but I want my cartoons to work, to be good cartoons. A cartoon that fails to communicate its message in a way that readers understand is nothing more than a bad cartoon.
Daryl Cagle political cartoonist

If The New Yorker wants to get into the political cartoon business, it ought to hire some political cartoonists.
Ted Rall Association of American Editorial Cartoonists

If you're spending time on this, it must be summer!
Signe Wilkinson editorial cartoonist

Now that we've had our group fainting spell over the latest New Yorker cover, our bloggers exhausted, our pundits redundant, our analysts spent: this might be a time to wonder... what was that exactly?

Did all the huffiness and bilge amount to much besides the artist (what's his name?) getting a boot of notoriety and the rest of us (who are we again?) lavishly spinning our spokes?

Will a single voter change course because of this picture? Will the bungled satire cause two exhaustively scrutinized citizens to thicken up their skin against the muddy season? And if they do, so long as they keep their bright minds on the prize, this apparently being our collective inalienable freedoms to frazzle ourselves silly over words and pictures if we want to, what's the harm in that?

Sunseeds

I'm at a hospital or rehab center, visiting family. Simultaneously, I'm in Greece or Isreal with O & N, my niece and nephew. One wing of the building is noticeably run down; it's where the welfare patients live. I want to fix this, eying the foyer to the wards, wallpaper stained and peeling. I could pull down that paper, fix and paint the walls. I have skills in this work. Surly the authorities would approve. I consider getting permissions as I shrug off the fact that tackling this job will keep me inside for days.

O & N clamor for the great outdoors. I feel them pull my hands and laugh and clown around me. I reach like a woman obsessed for a peeling corner of pink flowered paper and rip away a good sized chunk, blinking with equal satisfaction and dread. As I wonder if the institution might finish the job, a couple of nun type characters show up, nod their approval, leave the completion to me.

The foyer has modest walls and painted ceiling. It opens into a giant hall with infinite ceilings that, lo and behold, are plastered with more flowered paper. Walls and ceiling have cracks and grooves begging a professional's hand. Away I peel into the vast hall, vaguely cognisant that papered walls need endless scrubbing before the paint goes on.

The place takes on a dingy feel, a musty smell, a hopeless sound of muffled laughter as two Israeli bikers rev up along the sparkly sea with its blinding sand reflections. I hope and hope, against all evidence, for rescue, working wildly, perplexed by my choices.

In the end, I wake up, panting, aware. My bondage to pink fading flowers never was nor evermore shall be.

Womb II

Once upon a cell, you did divide. You piled up cells unthinking, happy to comply with nature's plan. But even in her womb, your mama's booze, your dad's cigar, your older brother's angst took shots at you. Or maybe you were met by gentle souls who jellied up your appetite for calm.

Infinite possibility flooded by finite mitigations nobody planned so precisely as to ready you for this, life on the outside.

I call it second womb.

Once here, you would build your perfect womb -- your well stocked home, diversions and routine -- to serve more cell divides. But with second womb construction and maintenance, scant time leaks out to lube your passage into the wilderness you're bound for the minute ovum joins sperm.

We're conceived as cells. We grow more cells in utero, and once outside we pad our cells with matter no one asked for. We form thick walls around the impetus, the spark of life, the only part of us that's born to thrive.

Can't buy me love

"What consumer culture does is to privatize people. It makes them focus on their own personal well being. And not just material well-being. Why shouldn't people be concerned with their material well being? But they see in acquisition of material goods a kind of self liberation, a kind of upward rise socially, and a kind of freedom. And to the degree that consumer culture captures your imagination, you lose a social imagination. You no longer see yourself as part of some kind of collective."
Steve Fraser on Bill Moyers Journal 6-13-08

You get one chance to be proud. This can elude you, but don't be discouraged. One day, or sleepless night, it may come to you without the slightest provocation. A sense of pride in yourself, your place in society, that has nothing to do with status or consumption. A sense of human worthiness.

Still, trouble will come as messengers barrage you with one request: that you lift a wad of money out of your workshirt, stick it into the seller's fist. Marketeers lavish you with images of actors pretending to be incredibly satisfied with stuff.

Monks and shamans warn against selling your soul for the coinage of the realm. They sound so quaint and angry, quite the opposite of your suave superself out to buy the world and rest content in the lap of acquisition. Now you have your toys and baubles, your sleek car, your sleeker game console. You can live forever in the cosmos of your dreams. The hustlers cherish you you you my child: so important as statistic, insignificant as self.

But are you worthy, sister? Are you satisfied? Do you stealthily resist the huckster parade, blunderbussing you in its tractor beam?

Let the junk mail flutter down the ad soaked street. Let the superheroes flap their capes and flex their talons at your new found sight. Deny them any power to impress you. This is a great day where dead men walk and manic women lay aside their cloaks of unbelonging. Proper ladies take up megaphones to bleat their poetry at the lawless night. Image consultants weep themselves to sleep and the sweet elves of tomorrow tuck them in with fierce communal pride.

Everything youtube

So I was testing the capabilities of iMovie before plunging into more robust video editing software. Showed it to a few people I knew to get some feedback before posting it on YouTube, yesterday. Today, 1,690 views and counting, I'm surprised by something happening (as I cruise around YouTube gathering inspiration and toolkit ideas) beyond me. Makes me wonder what's going on in the lives of the people who take the time to look at it. Here's the flick... enjoy! (and leave a comment, so I'm not left completely clueless...)

Suckerpunch

It's one of those memories that only comes when a fresh wound conjures the ghosts. A bully on the school bus bound for Loveland Elementary pulled back a fist and belted me in the gut as he strode down the isle. I couldn't breathe at first; I sat in mute confusion, blinking. Who was this kid? Why did he attack me?

I recently learned that my friend once endured unthinkable brutality by a stranger. Her rage has festered, dank as its cave, poisoning the well. But now she stalks the demons, hunting down the details of her attacker's horrific childhood. She throws it all at the sun -- the rapist, her self-blame, systemic failures that breed violence, day in day out.

Her relentless pursuit invokes my courage. As a woman, as a citizen, as a mensch.

I have choices. If I want to, I can see the bombings of 9/11 as a cruel attack that had nothing to do with me or anyone I know. I can condemn Jeremiah Wright for saying our nation of imperialists provoked the bombings. I can ridicule others who denounce torture as a sanctioned government response to terror. I can define patriotism as unquestioned loyalty to a system that produces humanitarianism -- as well as bullying, rape and torture.

Or, I can dig. Not because it's a citizen's fault for being bombed any more than a woman deserves to be raped. I would dig to understand the broken system of have and have-not, victim and aggressor, remembered and forgotton. I would dig to unearth a lie that grows lethal in the dark -- the lie that blames the victims and ignores systemic origins of abuse.

In the end, no matter how distant the memory, it's up to the little girl to decide, with her lunchpail clutched to her sore belly, staring out the window at her new found knowledge of the world.

Buffalo

Diane: I listen to Buffalo every single day. It has shaped my character.

Susan: Can you elaborate?

Diane:

I can elaborate in that
I wake up each day
as a person
who feels like a mat
on which people walk
but the strong voice
in the song
and the strength of the beat
makes me feel my spinal cord
has much more give
and I want to go out and live.

Listen to the hoofbeats here.