Guilt and Innocence: A daily primer

About that Bit of my Childhood

As many of you know, I grew up in New Orleans, so Katrina has been a bit hard for me. Of course, my regret for the loss of the city of my childhood has seemed inconsequential in the faces of the people still trapped in the city. Those who are suffering, looting, and standing on their roofs deserve everyone's attention, so I've neglected to say much about how I feel. However, I found a very well written pieve in the Guardian that I think captures some of what was lost.

Richard Ford on the tragedy of New Orleans:

For those away from New Orleans - most all of us - in this week of tears and wrenching, words fail. Somehow our heart's reach comes short and we've been left with an aching, pointless inwardness. 'All memory resolves itself in gaze,' poet Richard Hugo wrote once about another town that died. Empathy is what we long for - not sadness for a house we own, or owned once, now swept away. Not even for the felt miracle of two wide-eyed children whirled upward into a helicopter as if into clouds. We want more than that, even at this painful long distance: we want to project our feeling parts straight into the life of a woman standing waist-deep in a glistening toxic current with a whole city's possessions all floating about, her own belongings in a white plastic bag, and who has no particular reason for hope, and so is just staring up. We would all give her hope. Comfort. A part of ourselves. Perform an act of renewal. It's hard to make sense of this, we say. But it makes sense. Making sense just doesn't help.

...

It is - New Orleans is - a city foremost for special projections, for the things you can't do, see, think, consume, feel, forget up in Jackson or Little Rock or home in Topeka. 'We're at the jumping-off place,' Miss Welty wrote. This was about Plaquemines, just across the river. It is - New Orleans - the place where the firm ground ceases and the unsound footing begins. A certain kind of person likes such a place. A certain kind of person wants to go there and never leave.

And there are the streetcars (or there were). And there are the oak trees and the lovely French boulevards and stately, rich men's houses.

...

Something will be there when the flood recedes. We know that. It will be those people now standing in the water, and on those rooftops - many black, many poor. Homeless. Overlooked. And it will be New Orleans - though its memory may be shortened, its self-gaze and eccentricity scoured out so that what's left is a city more like other cities, less insular, less self-regarding, but possibly more self-knowing after today. A city on firmer ground.

And I think for me, the moment when this all hit me squarely was just a couple days afterward, when standing at Walmart, some blackberries caught my eye, and I said, "I used to have a blackberry bush in my backyard," and as I said those words I realized that that same bush, if it's still there is underwater.

I should know better than to trust this president for more than half a second.

U.S. to Open Remote Forests To Logging.

The Bush administration, in one of its biggest environmental decisions, moved yesterday to open nearly one-third of all remote national forest lands to road building, logging and other commercial ventures.

The 58.5 million acres involved, mainly in Alaska and in western states, had been put off limits to development by President Bill Clinton eight days before he left office in January 2001.

Sigh. I'm too mad for eloquent words about how Bush is not a compassionate conservative.

An Alternate Universe of Doom

Steve Johnson offers a terrifying picture of what popular culture could have been:

"Imagine an alternate world identical to ours save one techno-historical change: videogames were invented and popularized before books. In this parallel universe, kids have been playing games for centuries—and then these page-bound texts come along and suddenly they’re all the rage. What would the teachers, and the parents, and the cultural authorities have to say about this frenzy of reading? I suspect it would sound something like this:

Reading books chronically under-stimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of gameplaying—which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements—books are simply a barren string of words on the page. Only a small portion of the brain devoted to processing written language is activated during reading, while games engage the full range of the sensory and motor cortices.

Books are also tragically isolating. While games have for many years engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children. These new 'libraries' that have arisen in recent years to facilitate reading activities are a frightening sight: dozens of young children, normally so vivacious and socially interactive, sitting alone in cubicles, reading silently, oblivious to their peers.

Many children enjoy reading books, of course, and no doubt some of the flights of fancy conveyed by reading have their escapist merits. But for a sizable percentage of the population, books are downright discriminatory. The reading craze of recent years cruelly taunts the 10 million Americans who suffer from dyslexia—a condition didn’t even exist as a condition until printed text came along to stigmatize its sufferers.

But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can't control their narratives in any fashion—you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. For those of us raised on interactive narratives, this property may seem astonishing. Why would anyone want to embark on an adventure utterly choreographed by another person? But today’s generation embarks on such adventures millions of times a day. This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they’re powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, participatory process; it’s a submissive one. The book readers of the younger generation are learning to 'follow the plot' instead of learning to lead."

In that world, I would be a crazy sociopath child. And sad. Very sad. (Originally seen on Kottke.)

Britain's Parents Want Ban on Cartoon Cereals

Link: 'Cut cartoon food promotion ploy'

A bunch of British parents are saying that the find it too hard to say no to their kids when there are cartoon characters on cereal boxes. Furthermore, they believe this is something the cereal companies or the government should be doing something about.

Is it just me, or have parents forgotten how to parent? I don't remember my parents having a hard time telling me or my sister, "No," when we asked for something we shouldn't have or they didn't want to buy is. Well, unless it was books; I could always get books out of them.

Still, are kids so spoiled and parents so ineffective that the government, here and abroad, needs to mandate everything? First television, now cereals.

Come on! Someone step up to the plate and take some responsibility.

The Texan in the Library

I like the fairy tale idea that the President is reading I am Charlotte Simmons.

Okay, maybe it's all one big public relations move, but seriously, just the idea that the president might be reading Wolfe's novel makes the next four years a little more bearable for me.

I mean, he may screw us over on every last piece of policy, but at least he can pick one good book.

Saying Farewell to Fear and Loathing: Hunter S. Thompson passes away at 65

For once, I didn't hear about this online. I was actually sitting down at lunch, yesterday, in my temporary state of grace before I check my e-mail for updates about the world, when Graft mentioned that some author died. I inquired further, only semi-curious, and he said, "Thompson or something, I think?"

"Hunter S. Thompson?" I asked.

Turns out I was right and a bit shocked.

Hunter S. Thompson, 65, Author, Commits Suicide

For one thing, he's not that old. He was only sixty-five and as of last year was still publishing articles. Furthermore, this is the first time an author's death really struck me. I remember being a little bit disappointed when Douglas Adams died a few years ago, but I suppose I wasn't expecting anything more from him.

When Arthur Miller died earlier this month, I was half-surprised to hear he was still alive.

The thing is, as far as the authors I'm familiar with, this is the first time I can recall being truly cognizant of one of them moving from the group of living authors I admire, to the ones who have passed away.

Furthermore, I think its clear that I admired Thompson's work more than some others. After all, the name of this blog itself came from a quote from The Great Shark Hunt. Thompson was so distinctive to me. He seemed to be one of the last individual voices.

The first thing I was reminded of was my sophomore year in High School when my friend Rob, who absolutely admired Thompson, came to school one weekend in an ecstatic glee after visiting Thompson's "fortified compound" in Aspen. "You guys," he yelled, "I got shot at by Hunter S. Thompson!"

In retrospect, the whole incident seems a bit sadder, now.

Bush Calls to Extend Patriot Act.

I'm so tired of this game..

Durring the formal swearing in of troture-lauding Attorney General Gonzales, Bush decided to rub some salt on the wound by remarking, "To protect the American people, Congress must promptly renew all provisions of the Patriot Act this year."

I had problems with the Patriot Act from the very moment of its conception, but to a degree I understood that in the game of politics when something as earthshattering as 9/11 happens, you sometimes have to fight fire with fire. I figured that as long as sensitivities were running high there was no way anyone was going to stand up to the Patriot Act regardless of the fact it's a vile piece of legislation.

Now, since it's been over three years since 9/11, I was hoping that the government could view the Patriot Act with a more scrutinizing eye and realize that the lmitis it places on civil liberties are unconstitutional and unnecessary, in addition to being most ineffective when it comes to the purpose of fighting terrorism.

As the ACLU remarked, "The president and the attorney general must realize that security and liberty are not - and cannot be - mutually exclusive."

Yes, and they must realize it soon.

Speaking of governing pants...

Because what the government needs to be doing is legislating fashion.

Forget the Ides of March...

Link: January 24th determined to be the worst day of the year.

And I thought today felt like a kind of crappy day. Now, I just can't wait until Monday.

Another Chance for Dean

Governor Dean announced his candidacy for DNC chair, today.

His announcement letter.

I know a lot of people think Dean is too outrageous, too liberal, and too energetic, but I think tis is what the sad beaten and battered Democratic party means. Dean is one of the few politicians that will stand up for anything anymore and I like that about him. He's the rare democrat who doesn't back down and doesn't take his words back.

However, I think his chances of getting the nomination are slim. Most of the party just isn't ready to take a chance on him.

Am I the only one who feels a bit aprehensive about this?

Court Won't Block KKK From Highway Cleanup

Okay, yes legally they have to allow this, but sometimes I wonder about the state of our country when blatant hate groups are allowed to advertise on the sides of public roads.

Like Missouri really needs more bad publicity.

In Galveston, a glimpse of heartbreak in Asia

Okay, I promise after this no more links to commentary on the tragedies in Asia.

Littwin: In Galveston, a glimpse of heartbreak in Asia.

But, as the roommate can attest to, when I can't quite deal with something I tend to drown myself in news coverage of it. (See Presidential Election 2004.)

However, Mike Littwin has always been one of my favorite local columnists. I actually met him at a High School Journalism conference once while my co-editor laughed as I gushed over his articles. This sort of piece is why I like Littwin. He can cover the whole scope of human emotion. He can be funny one week and deadly serious the next. It's that ambidextrity that I love about him.

A Time to Mourn

The New York Times: A Time to Mourn.

I think this opinion piece does a good job of vocalizing all the thoughts I've had about the events in Asia. This has been one of those occurences that stirs me so badly that I cannot find the words I need, and look for them elsewhere.

Tragedy

Death Toll exceeds 70,000

I really didn't see any reason to change the address on my Time subscription when I was home for winter, but now I wish I had. I can't even fathom the amount of destruction these waves have caused. The amount of panic going on in those countries.

Wow. 70,000.

That's just too many to comprehend.