Art Trip: Two Days in NYC

               The Golden Age,  Joachim Wtewael, 1566-1638 - Metropolitan Museum of Art

Day 1.

Leaving the tiny but expensive apartment on east 90^th, I walked west, glancing down the always impressive Park Avenue, making my way to the Guggenheim on 5^th Avenue. A fairly short line and I was in, senior discount, $18. Normally one stands at that point in the atrium, the spiral walkway there to take you past whatever show is hanging. Or take the elevators to start at the top - the last exhibit I saw here was abstraction from the 50s, with stand-out, drop-dead DeKoonings.

This time James Turrell has commandeered the space, masterly and expensively sealing off the atrium with what appear to be six unblemished slightly concave sections, resembling the inside of a gigantic Japanese rice paper lantern. There is a specially constructed circular area of seating, allowing you to lean back and enjoy the subtle lighted surface overhead reaching up to the skylight. For a long time it was a light yellow. When nothing happened beyond my own perception (plenty, I know, the point of much of Turrell's work) I moved on up the ramp. Before I had gotten far the color changed dramatically to a rich blue violet. Now I realized it had to be projected light. At the top of the third level there seemed to be a scrim of some kind, filtering the upper levels but I was never sure it wasn't just on my eyeball.

Going up the spiral walkway I was soon behind the finely crafted temporary walls of the installation, sort of backstage. I asked one of the guards if I was looking at sheetrock but she didn't didn't know. I was hesitant to touch it since touching the art always gets you yelled at and it had that rice paper look of fragility. There were other Turrell works, the first a tall narrow opening bright with natural light in an otherwise unlit room. A security guard stationed nearby seemed part of the exhibit, the whole long space being subdued and otherwise empty. Along the way you could duck into an exhibit of Kandinsky which I found as engaging as the Turrell. The alcoves along the Frank Loyd Wright spiral were freshly painted a muted yellow and since there were no paintings hanging where one expects Chagalls and Frankenthallers, Raushenbergs or Johns, the space became charged with the central focus of Turrell's art, the act of seeing. I haven't heard the artist address this but the act of perception is not but a step from the state of being, the focus of much art since the Impressionists.

Many of the Turrell works in this show could be illustrations for psychology text books where perceptual set-ups trick you into seeing what is not there, or the reverse of what is there. The Lichenstein “house” outside the High Museum in Atlanta is a Pop Art version that depends on the viewer moving to get the dynamic effect. Turrell controls the light in a space, usually dimming it and projecting bright shapes into a corner, which from a certain angle take on the appearance of a floating cube. I heard Turrell speak at the High Museum once. He was showing a slide of a piece he did in the Whitney Museum and I was embarrassed to realize I had peeked into that room, thought it empty and moved on. On another occasion I saw a piece that appeared to be a rectangular opening in the wall. You were peering into a very ambiguous space, no way to tell how deep or even if it was really an opening. It was baffling how he achieved that effect. The guy has one of those minds that can assimilate science and utilize optical physics to create puzzling and complex pieces.

As you ascend the spiral walkway you come upon a sign indicating a wait-time of as much as 45 minutes. I spent twenty minutes waiting to get in a darkened room that a guard allowed about 8 people to enter at a time. On the far wall was a horizontal rectangle flanked by low lights. An inside guard wouldn't allow me to get close to it so I wasn't sure whether it was an opening or a mounted flat plane. I stood there waiting for something to happen, aware that in staring at the dark space I was automatically trying to interpret and there was some movement I'm sure attributable to my eyes. In the main space I kept thinking I was seeing a scrim of some kind across the top of the third layer, giving a soft-focus to the further layers but I really couldn't tell if this was on my eye or in the space. If in the space it was very impressively done. That is a very large space to hang something without creating folds or other imperfections that catch the light and so reveal themselves. With the room experience I felt rather let down. I wanted to mime yawning for those in line, considerably longer now, when I left for I really wouldn't recommend much waiting for that piece. But I shyly left it alone. The piece was about perception but more interesting to me were the conversations I heard around me in the line, the dynamics of strangers meeting that I half attended to as I read out of the book I carry for just such occasions. Many others of course “read” from their iPhones. Someone from Arizona talked his way into cutting the line, saying his son had gone in and hadn't come out. The couple behind me happened also to be from Arizona so the three of them explored commonalities. The line-cutter being not so skilled at listening as talking, kept interrupting the woman who had a slight stutter which facilitated his narcissism.

Being a painter myself I found the Kandinsky show appealing. Turrell is a sculptor and sculpture, according to one artist, is defined as, “what you bump into when you back up to look at a painting”. I forget what wit said that. For all of Turrell's genius with materials and scientific understanding I found myself thinking that I've seen more interesting light shows at Rock concerts on youtube, Phish for example. Gorsch, what a Philistine!

I ended my Guggenheim sojourn by finding a seat at the atrium base, experiencing the meditative state one more time and then heading for the Metropolitan Museum of Art just down the road. I made immediately for the modern wing, walked into a room and looked to see who would be first to catch my eye. Not surprisingly, Picasso. But there were plenty of others before my legs started telling me to head on back to my daughter's apartment. Paul Klee for example, more Kandinsky, Matisse, the lush and wonderful Modigliani.

I took a quick look at a current exhibit of Civil War photographs and paintings. I was surprised to learn that the famous Brady actually took very few of the photos he is known for. I was always frustrated by my family's early photos. There were usually a few people posing with great space all around, giving little sense of the people. Whomever took the photos had no sense of composition or portraiture and this is true of many of the civil war pictures. They were documenting momentous historical events but seemed to think it was enough to simple point and shoot. One notorious and macabre shutter-bug though posed bodies into tableau, sometimes using the same bodies in different scenes. I had just reviewed a Civil War book called Shiloh (see the blogpost below this one) so was expecting to see some of the horror I had read about. Aside from some close ups of Lincoln, Sherman, Grant etc; it was easy to skim the show. Well, photos do capture a moment in history but you have to work to get to that when the photography is primitive. Not so the paintings, Homer standing out here. Many of the works were contemporary with rather than scenes of the war but, so claims the curator, registered the ominous rumblings of war indirectly.

Passing through the Egyptian section I was fascinated to see Klee-like doodling on one of those bibs they put on their sarcophagi. Slowed only briefly though I made it to the (north) American Wing, wanting to see that huge Washington Crossing the Delaware. Speaking of sculpture I'm always interested in the way sculptors of busts create an intriguing illusion. By making what look like drilled holes with a little wedge for pupils, when you look at those eyes and step slowly back the eyes, at a certain distance, spring into an animated, “alive” state, that is quite impressive. I never heard this referred to in all the Art History nor studio courses I had in Art School but just stumbled upon it in the Boston Museum in 2001. This was just a month after 911 when the plane was eerily, scantily occupied and Logan Airport was still suffering the malevolent stain of those confused and/or used “operatives”.

Anyway, I spotted a room, just past the Gilbert Stuart Washington portrait, with Sargent, Eakins, Chase and Whistler, a grouping of their full length society portraits, each exquisite and individual in their style. The full length portrait was almost always twice as high as wide and noticing this led me to do a series of full length fictional portraits that were three times high as wide that carried on, intermittently, from 1986 to about 2000 (see www.thinkspeak.net). But that's just an aside. I went on to see Delaware and in the same room, some grand George Inness paintings and a spectacular view of an Indian village on a river below towering majestic mountains. This painting by Bierstadt is full of presumably authentic detail and supremely exaggerated terrain, a sort of composite of grandeur to dazzle the eastern market of the time. And this was about the time my legs started their complaining so, past the Egyptian stuff again and I stepped outside into a pouring rain.

Day 2.

Some productive writing in the morning then, after my shoes had dried, a streets-of-New-York walk to the Met again. This time I inquire about a Valesquez I saw promoted as on loan. I was given a map of an area covering European Painting 1250-1800. On the way to the Valesquez I got stopped by my old friend, Tiepolo. His drawing remains on the painting in the form of a dancing arabesque line that has always captivated me. The face in Valesquez's portrait is fine but the figure seems hurried. Later I see some Valesquez in the permanent collection that is way better, or consistent, not just excellent in the face. I notice the area is divided between Spanish, Italian and French on the one side and English, Dutch, German on the other. I go pretty rapidly through the medieval stuff, though I do love those landscape backgrounds and the portraits, both for their historicity and painterliness. I think of Hockney's book that claims that portrait painters of this period began to use projection and lens and it is a convincing argument, the later stuff being quite realistic, photo-like, not in color but in accuracy of depiction. I float through, high on this stuff, lingering over whatever stops me... two oval works by Tiepolo, figures on clouds surrounded by a gold leaf sky; LaTour and Carravagio, Titian, a beautiful portrait of Michelangelo by one of his students, very abstract, the head and hand rendered precisely but the figure and background only suggested. There's an impressive, large painting by an Italian woman i've never heard of and whose name I misplaced. It depicts a woman fainting in the act of petitioning royalty, quite an unheard of thing in the day, not the fainting, the petitioning by a woman... just as the painting by a woman of the time was quite rare.

I slip off to find a cafe and coffee, write in the ol' journal and return for the English, Dutch, German side. Knocked out immediately by a Bruegel, one of the four-season works, then a follower of Bosch. I took a course in grad school on 17^th Century Dutch Art so these are old buds here. There's a painting by Michiel Sweerts called Clothing the Naked, of a remarkably rendered man compassionately handing a homeless and clothesless person a white garment. The artist had a reputation as a kind and caring individual and he, toward the end of his life, traveled to India and served the poor. The work reminds me of a scene I witnessed on North Avenue in Atlanta. I was driving by in heavy traffic and only glimpsed it but a black man was ministering to a homeless white man who was so touched he was sobbing. The black man was holding him by the shoulders and gently comforting. It was biblical tableau I tell ya.

Next I came upon a painting I had noted in the past but still it happily delighted me. By Joachim Wtewael it is oil on copper, about the size of a piece of typing paper but filled with such painstaking detail and sensitive skill it could make you cry. It's called The Golden Age. Figures fill and cavort in about every space in an expertly lit and composed landscape, all nude, genitals carefully covered except in the case of a few children. There is nothing erotic or hedonistic about the nudity, a utopia described in seductive color. The great thing I discovered, the Met has just about every work on their website. I wanted to show my daughter this painting and I found I could call it up by searching the artist.

Other artists of note in this collection are Van Dyke, Ruebens, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Hals, Ruisdale, Vermeer and, pinnacle of civilization for me that day, Rembrandt. I've never appreciated him so much as with this visit, he just glows with incredible refinement and depth. Oh, I was looking at a Ruebens and a man at the next painting was so excited he had to drag me over to share it with him. And it was worth sharing... a “sketch” of a swirling crowded scene, a Rubens trademark, people, some mounted on masterly drawn horses, sketchy and unfinished, the central area being colored so that it faded off into the muted monochrome of the rest, It had that potent feel that is so hard to describe and it resembled a shallow relief in its dark and light treatment.

Noticing it was 4pm, I still had maybe an hour so I headed over to see the Cezannes, passing up the crowded Punk Fashion show with not much hesitation. There are marvelous Van Goghs of course, and Picassos to knock your socks off but Cezanne, another of those monumental individuals who somehow seemed to see into the heart of things and gave us a glimpse in the work they left.

Ah, a breathtaking two days. And to top off my visit I wrote a song on the bus to LaGuardia, Keep It Goin, the words tumbling into my notebook from the stop-motion reality assembling for me out the window.

When Warriors Meet, Shiloh, 1862 by Winston Groom

The war between the states, as some prefer to call the U.S. Civil War, is what first comes to mind when I encounter George Santayana's quip, “Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.” This applies to war in general, that when each new one comes along we seem to be unaware of the carnage involved and skip gaily into the glorious fray - well, we send the professionals along with the young and naïve as cannon fodder, being too busy (as Dick Cheney said about his failure to serve in Vietnam), to actually attend ourselves.

Another application of the phrase is to military strategy. Winston Groom mentions in his book on the battle of Shiloh that toward the end of the war the military leadership began to realize that Napoleonic tactics were no longer appropriate, given advances in weaponry. Soldiers of both sides were marching smartly across open fields into the jaws of death, as it were. Unfortunately the lesson came less from revulsion at the cost in lives and limbs than from the realization, at least in the south, that they were running out of warm bodies to fling into the caldron.

When World War I. Raised its ugly head, it brought us carnage on an even grander scale. The great military minds had suffered yet another bout of amnesia, utilizing once again Napoleonic strategies, marching old-fashioned soft bodies into new fangled hard contraptions such as machine guns, poison gas and artillery of unprecedented size and capacity. One wonders what went on in the military colleges. Did they study dusty tomes from the ancient past, welcoming innovation of weaponry but punishing as heretical any corresponding innovations in strategy? Santayana suggests that this is to be expected even though West Point could not have been ignorant of history. Perhaps it is selective history that is the problem.

Then there are the politicians, the statesmen (mostly men, yeah) whose history reading is selective indeed, filtered through a fine screen of rosy if deadly patriotism and/or corruption... or sociopathic dysfunction.

So, enough editorializing. Groom's book covers the battle, enlivening the chess analogy often employed in Civil War books, to tedious effect, by selecting characters of all ranks and following them through the battle, characters who left memoirs, letters, diaries and of course those who went on to become famous, failed business man Grant to General Grant to President Grant. Other notables in the battle were General Sherman of march-to-the-sea fame, Henry Stanley who later “found Doctor Livingston”, Ambrose Bierce, later a popular writer who disappeared in Mexico, and infamous calvary officer, Nathan Bedford Forest, whose name was removed from a street in Atlanta when finally black politicians came into prominence in the 1970s and resented his involvement with the Klu Klux Klan.

One anecdote illustrating Forest's reputation: after the Confederate retreat Sherman proceeded to engage in a little harassment. He came upon Forest's calvary unit who immediately attacked. Forest got out beyond his troops and suddenly was surrounded by Yankees trying to kill him. He reached down, scooped up a federal officer and using him as a shield, made his escape. The man was apparently fearless, a definite candidate to have a southern street named after him. In retrospect some offered that the war might have had a different outcome had Forest been given command.

Some ink is spent rehearsing the climate leading up to the war. There were heartless slavers and zealous abolitionists, anti-and pro-secessionists, slave and free states and territories. Gore Vidal, in his usual iconoclastic mischievousness, has suggested that many lives would have been saved and suffering averted had the North simply accepted secession, adding that slavery would have died out naturally. Grant called the Union the greatest form of government ever achieved and it was worth war, in his mind, to prevent its dissolution. He believed, or at least said, that democracy itself was at stake. I have heard more than one person invested in the “southern heritage”, claim that slaves enjoyed their position and were well treated. Others see the conflict as a clash between north and south ruling classes with the average person having little actual investment to defend. Quite a range of opinion on the subject.

Vidal was certainly correct that there was massive death and suffering. Groom depicts horrific stories, gleaned from his sources, of repeated withering assaults, obscene decapitations and carnage from the various, devilish creations of death machinery. Artillery of all kinds, sometimes balls and shot, sometimes nails and chains, thinned the ranks of attackers (thinning the ranks, now there's a euphemism)... the rifles and pistols and bayonets, swords, and, whatever was at hand in a desperate horror show of close quarters combat. The author does a little macabre math, utilizing the fact that a soldier could fire three shots per minute so that the air on the battlefield would have been abuzz with deadly flying metal, 12,000 per minute per brigade... and there were 30 brigades.

Artillery batteries poured devastating fire on troops and attempted to silence each other so that in addition to the metal just mentioned in the air there were cannon balls also aloft. A strange phenomenon was noted that sometimes balls would come bouncing across a field seemingly in slow motion and you could step out of the way and watch it go by. But there were those who would see it coming and impulsively put up their boot to stop it and that miscalculation cost them a foot.

Speaking of limbs, the primitive nature of battlefield medicine meant that the surgeon's saw was the most frequently used tool. Before antibiotics, the prospect of gangrene and death were treated with a liberally applied procedure called amputation. Outside hospital tents there were piles of limbs and hospital boats could be seen chugging downstream with legs and arms regularly being tossed overboard.

Other near unspeakable happenings were fires started by the constant barrage, trapping the screaming wounded in an inferno. On top of that, wild hogs would come foraging, not distinguishing between the dead and the merely wounded.

Not to put too fine a point on it but the soldier victims of foolish politicians were far from enjoying the glittering, honorable glories of combat but rather suffered what Sherman, who surely knew of what he spoke when he said, “War is Hell.”

So, in a nutshell, or a shell casing: a major force of Confederate troops, surprised an equal number of Union troops along the Tennessee River, at first light, June 6, 1862. In the course of a ferocious day of fighting, the Federals were pushed back into a precarious position, bounded by river and swampland. As in most military encounters, inexplicable flukes arose to now advantage one side, now the other. Acts of imbecilic stupidity and awesome bravery in turn had their stupendous effects on both sides. The Federals were certainly advantaged in equipment, having iron-sided boats from which to lob explosives, and heavier artillery but the chaos of a battlefield makes for unpredictable outcomes. The decisive advantage for the Union was probably a 25,000 soldier army which arrived late on the first of the two day battle, which provided fresh troops to fight an exhausted Confederate force.

Groom closes with a synopsis of the subsequent lives of the characters he selected, those who survived. Grant of course became President where a tendency to fall under the spell of charlatans undid him; Bierce disappeared, caught up in the 1913 Mexican revolution; Wallace became the bestselling novelist of the 19th century; Stanley found Livingston; Sherman fled politics for western military operations (another euphemism) and Nathan B. Forest survived to the ripe old age of 56, but not before rising to leadership in the KKK and dissolving it in disgust over its behavior (so claims Groom). It of course arose again when “needed”, like cancer or nuclear power, ever alert for the worst of human corruption to which it can embed and resurrect itself.

Wearing Blinders for Israel

When I drove a taxi part-time while an art student in Milwaukee I learned that a prestigious club barred people of color and Jewish persons. That was kind of shocking to a naïve kid from Michigan's rural upper peninsula, especially since many of my pickups at that club were judges, lawyers, CEOs etc; the naïve kid expecting people of that status to be enlightened. Women were also excluded except in the company of members. So things have changed in the ruling class. From a blatant and crude anti-semitism to a blatant and crude pro-Israeli foreign policy. It has become unthinkable to criticize Israel in mainstream circles. Just ask Jimmy Carter who was promptly attacked by the likes of Nancy Pelosi and vilified by the press generally when he published his book, Peace or Apartheid, that laid out with, apparently dangerous, clarity, the land-grab and human rights injustice going on in a state the U.S. lavishes with annual and mucho bushels of money.

How is it that in only a generation the powers that be have reversed their bigotry? Some suggest that the Israeli lobby, like the NRA, is so organized and well financed that no politician dare take positions that provoke it (see www.IfAmericansKnew.org for an elaboration of this POV). There undoubtedly is some truth in that but Noam Chomsky claims that if you examine the record, whenever a U.S. position clashes with an Israeli position the U.S. position easily trumps. If true, that would mean Israeli policies toward Palestinian land seizures and human rights violations are shared by U.S. planners or at least tolerated so long as they don't interfere with U.S. objectives. So what could these objectives be?

Chomsky, again, has described Israel as a U.S. aircraft carrier. U.S. aircraft carriers are positioned to defend U.S. interests (translation: U.S. corporate interests) and in the middle-east the obvious “interest” is oil. But don't get the idea that corporations are in love with oil, no, they are in love with what oil brings in, money. Just thought I'd clarify that. During the so-called Cold War U.S. foreign policy was aimed at preventing the spread of Godless Communism (translation: any alternative to capitalism). With the dissolution of the Godless hoard U.S. policy has now shifted to... ah, at first, the threat to our way of life represented by evil drug lords but this “enemy” was makeshift and pretty unconvincing though its “failure” had the side effect (maybe the point actually) of keeping the unhappy inhabitants of poverty-adled neighborhoods from organizing around their mutual interests. It took 911 for Reagan's candidate, terrorism, to replace the lost Godless enemy (translation: any alternative to capitalism) for which no budgetary sacrifice is too great, so threatening is it to the survival of “our way of life” (translation: elite rule).

So whether U.S. policy blindly supports Israel due to monolithic lobbyists or New Order Imperialists, there is a story about Israel's creation and evolution, and occupation, that you'll have to travel far from the mainstream to hear. Over in obscure corners of the global newstand, the low-circulation rags not owned by Rubert Murdock et al., you will hear this contrasting story (which relies heavily in fact on a flyer from IfAmericansKnew.org, information which comports generally with other trustworthy sources):

In the late 1800s a radical movement called Zionism began moving Jews into Palestine with the dream of eventually colonizing it. As their numbers increased, especially with anti-semitic and fascist regimes coming into power in Germany, Italy and Spain, and Zionist intent became clear to the inhabitants, tension and violence resulted.

In 1947 the United Nations intervened, granting 55% of the land for a Jewish state despite only 30% of the population by that time being Jewish, owning only 7% of the land. Contrary to mythology, Israeli forces outnumbered Palestinian and Arab combatants and Arab armies intervened only after some thirty Zionist massacres. By war's end Israel occupied 78% of Palestine.

In 1967 Israel conquered still more land in the Six-Day War, taking the Gaza Strip and West Bank. I remember excitedly watching TV coverage of this skirmish which glorified the Israelis and fell head over heels in love with the highly sophisticated Israeli PR machine. Arab and Palestinian representatives allowed on the U.S. media seemed Hollywood-cast villains with their broken English and three-day beards.

International law forbids the taking of territory by force so that these lands were and are illegally occupied. Parts of Egypt were later returned but gains in Syria remain occupied to this day. During the Six-Day War Israel attacked a U.S. ship killing and injuring over 200, obviously an act of war, officially confirmed by a high-level commission chaired by Admiral Thomas Moorer. Our patriotic-when-it-pleases-power media failed to carry this report and the Johnson Administration played down the whole incident, something not likely to happen had an Arab power been the perpetrator.

The Palestinian Intifada of 2000 resulted, according to the folks at IfAmericansKnew.org, from two primary conditions:

the original population of what is now Israel was 96% Muslim and Christian. Those who fled the terror are prohibited from return and those who stayed are subject to systematic discrimination, obviously necessary to maintain an ethnically preferential state.

Israel's military occupation and confiscation of land that, according to the Oslo peace accords, is set aside for a Palestinian state, necessitates a brutal occupation and continuous human rights violation. The Israeli so-called security wall, contrary to statements by U.S. officials like Hillary Clinton, has little to do with security and everything to do with walling off and confiscating Palestinian land. The wall is not on Israel's borders but rather cuts into Palestine, sealing off the best land and water and illegally settling it. The aircraft carrier has so far been correct in its operant assumption that the U.S. will not concern itself with her choice, referencing President Carter's book, of Apartheid over Peace. The attached graphic makes this clearer than all the words I've used in this article.

The Swimming Pool Qs

Anything characterized by high energy, originality, humor and intelligence is bound to get my attention. I was at an annual fund-raising party for an alternative art center called Nexus in about 1986. Touring the studios I kept being distracted from the visual art by some very interesting Rock 'n Roll. I wasn't the only one. A large segment of the crowd was gathered around the Swimming Pool Qs in the courtyard. Once in their vicinity I was there for as long as they would play.

In any field of endeavor certain efforts stand out and the Qs were (are) definitely one helluva group. I've taken every opportunity to be in their musical presence since - most recently at the Inman Park Festival where the audience was dampened and thinned by rain. Sound-wise the instruments were turned up so high the vocal mics couldn't compete without feedback so the singing was way buried. Since I could hardly hear the vocals I focused more on the players, a rewarding experience, if a little hard on the ears. But missing the singing is no small loss. The venue is partially responsible, the stage being on the short side of a narrow tent. That arrangement gives everyone a ringside seat but the sound people failed to take control and the volume drove a few people off.

Unfortunately for the Qs they did not quite, though they came very close, manage to catch the fickle tide of megabuck pop success. They were the opening act for a Lou Reed tour which helped sales on the first album with A & M Records. The second got little promotion and so low sales. Their “failure” has blessed me however with the opportunity to see/hear them in some very intimate venues. I use the term blessed because that experience has always been a near religious one.

The band formed in 1978, with frontman Jeff Calder writing the songs, mostly, and singing many in his gravelly inflection; Bob Elsey playing a siren-song guitar, and the woman with the great name, Anne Richmond Boston, singing like an angel. Drummer Bill Burton was settled in when I first saw them and the original drummer was now playing bass when I last saw them. They'd been through a few bass players, J.E. Garnett coming and going but the core of Jeff, Anne, Bill and Bob remained (remains)... except for Anne who left the group for 16(!) years. This after their two albums with A & M failed the public whimsy and record company promotion test. But as I said, their misfortune was this writer's listening profit. My priority has been to make the art of my choice and, since I'm even less successful than the Qs at dipping into that money stream, my strategy has been to live frugally so as to have the time to do so. That means concerts by those who have caught that tide are not in my budget.

At the Inman Park Festival the Qs were promoting the re-release of the two albums they did for A & M, 1984-86, the self-titled Swimming Pool Qs and Blue Tomorrow. The package I got is a generous and tastefully assembled box including three CDs and a DVD of performances during those years along with an essay by music critic Geoffrey Himes. Photos of the youthful group capture some of their whimsical Dada, one shot depicting them surrounded by Shetland Ponies.

The bonus CD is titled Pow Wow Hour, Rarities 1982-1986. This includes some of the only love songs I've heard the Qs do. But they're far too ironic to do these without tongue-in-cheek. The DVD film, Kickstarter, is credited to drummer Bill Burton. Some of the footage seems to be on the west coast, beach scenes, I suppose shot near L.A. as they flirted with the fame machine out there.

The record company must have failed to fully promote the group because, as the DVD richly shows, the Qs had all the star ingredients – young, attractive, imaginative and skilled performers, intellgent song-writing, great costumes – didn't seem to be any stinting there, some of those outfits had to be costly. Anne's performance of The Bells Ring is just magical on the DVD. Her voice is unique, sonorous, and expressive. Jeff is no slouch in the singing department but he was (is) very fortunate to have Anne's voice to write to. Apparently she started out as back-up singer but it couldn't have been too long before the group noticed her talent went way beyond and put her up front with Jeff. Calder's witticisms, both between and in the songs themselves, and in banter with Anne, reveal an intelligence that characterizes lyrics, stage presence and musicianship (and their progressive politics). It is a real pleasure to watch any of the performers at any time as they all seem to be constantly giving 100%. They draw from an experience and talent that makes it all seem so easy. And still fun after all these years. The drumming is intense. Bob's guitar playing is typical Qs' standard, casually standing there, complete confidence, but with a half smile as if he's as surprised as you are at what's coming off those strings. And maybe he is. Jeff pounds away at his blue-green electric also, occasionally dashing off a lead lick himself but mostly providing rhythm and vocals reminiscent of, I don't know, Jagger? Steve Earl?.. but mostly Jeff Calder. The Qs are playing Smith's Olde Bar, in Atlanta, June 15 if you want to catch'em.

Drifting Toward the Waterfall

Does it drive me careening ca-razy when I see O'reilly, Beck, Hannity etc; with books on the bestseller list? That would be a yes! These (mostly) white (mostly) guys capitalize on their positions in the media to sell books. Their TV and radio shows propagate a point of view that just happens to support an economic system that the billionaire owners of the media, their ultimate bosses, approve of. Their books send the same message, keeping their followers dumbed down and focused on side issues that distract from an examination of the system that so enriches said bosses and impoverishes increasing numbers. So, when a media personality with a different agenda publishes a book it's like, what's going on? Well MSNBC, for whatever reason, has opened things up quite a lot these past few years and Rachel Maddow is one of the more delightful consequences. It's not like she's pitch perfect but compared to the neanderthals otherwise dominating the mainstream media she is truly a breath of unpolluted air.

Maddow's book, Drift, has a dedication page which reads, “To former vice-president Dick Cheney, oh, please let me interview you.” He knows better than to square off with Rachel, preferring softball questions from the other bestsellers, the ones that drive me mad! Rush Limbo etc; It's not that i'm against diversity, nope, i'm for it and they don't provide it. They stand in their highly visible media spotlights and, in opposition to the obvious facts, ridiculously complain that the media, their platform, is biased to the liberal left. Meanwhile thoughtful critics, supposedly dominating the media, are rarely invited into the discussion, to such an extent that when a carefully filtered appearance is occasionally allowed their point of view is so unfamiliar that it appears radical, out there, fringe. This arrangement shields privilege from examination. Thus the puzzling case of MSNBC. Maybe it has to do with the market, so saturated with “wingnuts”, as Rachel calls them, that the ratings war leaves little choice for the losers but to seek another segment of the “demographic”. Capitalism works in mysterious ways.

But, the book: Drift is subtitled, The Unmooring of American Military Power. Maddow laments the drifting away from the early concerns of folks like Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton for keeping the military small to avoid it becoming an anti-democratic self-perpetuating force. And keeping the power to go to war out of the hands of one person, investing it instead in the congress, making it difficult to go to war. Rachel sketches out how this limitation, as seen from the executive office, has been gotten around, until eventually the congress has simply handed it over to the “one person”, reducing the hurtles and hoops that one person has to navigate such that going to war is just one of the perks of office, sort of the ultimate guy video game. Of the women who potentially have a shot at that office, like Maggie Thatcher before them, there is a filtering that guarantees the proper level of testosterone so as not to threaten unmanly changes in the agenda.

General Abrams, Army Chief of Staff during the drawdown in Vietnam, reorganized the military to reduce the chances of frivolous war, arranging so that a call-up of the reserves would be a necessity to go to war. The thinking was that citizen soldiers called up would affect everyone, bringing the war home to the average citizen who would not support lightly undertaken ventures. Desire to end the Vietnam quagmire was so strong in 1973 that congress overrode a Nixon veto of the War Powers Act, that required (or re-required) congressional approval of any military venture over 60 days. Shortly after the bill's passage congress, tired of the expense in lives and treasure of the Vietnam invasion (for that is what it was) marched down to the White House, then occupied by Ford, informing him that no funds were available for further fighting. Funding for withdrawal was all he was going to get. This tardy re-assertion of congressional responsibility came a bit late for the 50,000 U.S. troops and millions of Vietnamese killed, demonstrating just how bad things have to get before our representative will represent us. Of course the people they usually represent, their campaign contributors, were also war weary so maybe the apparent shift was still business as usual.

Obviously, as Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate, these measures proved inadequate. Maddow devotes ink to the Reagan phase of the unmooring, as she puts it in her subtitle, of U.S. military power. Not an especially sparkling metaphor. Out of control yeah, but unmoored? The Gipper was not the first U.S. president guilty of terrorism but the first to be convicted by the world court for it - for which the court ordered the U.S. to pay billions in reparations to Nigaragua. Our free press showed its usual servitude to power by not reporting the judgement in 1985 so few citizens actually know about this little incident. The U.S. predictably missed its first and all subsequent payments, all while railing against Soviet and Cuban terrorism.

Reagan, Maddow informs us, made propaganda films for the army during WWII. but later exercised his flexibility with facts by claiming combat experience. This penchant for ah, lying, manifested itself during Reagan's presidential campaigns and time in office, something his loyal supporters either willfully deny or don't care about. He harped on about how the U.S. was militarily second to the Soviets (not true), how Panama was a sovereign part of the U.S. (even John Wayne criticized him for that one) and Nicaragua was a major threat in our own “back yard”... something John Kerry, who should know better, has lately taken to using to justify ugly Central American polices. The analogy of neighbors would work but, back yard? When does our neighbor's property become our back yard? Legally and ethically, simply proclaiming it does not make it so. But of course it's a propaganda term to lead the naïve to support policy. That our leaders would use such methods casts grave doubts on whether we would support the policy if honestly presented. Even Carter, according to Rachel, emphasized military metaphors to pursue his agenda when proclaiming that the U.S. was at peace everywhere in the world might have struck a chord. The old tried and true always does for the risk-averse. Carter did actually make the reference to peace but his emphasis became military as he felt the thugs closing in on him as the disastrous election approached.

Once Reagan took possession of the White House he proposed the biggest peacetime military budget increase at the same time as announcing the biggest tax cut in U.S. history. For some strange reason (I'd venture a billionaire-owned press played at least a major role) Reagan's popularity was up around 70% which made congress very leery of opposing him. His tax cut was transparent sleight-of-hand. The first phase was a 10% cut, heavily covered by the press. Not so heavily covered was a 10% increase in social security tax, which of course neutralized the cut for those making less than $100,000, leaving the real cut to those above $100,000. Do I have to say it? If you're in the top brackets 10% amounts to alotta jing-wa.

Drift goes on to document how this same mentality governed in virtually all areas, leading to Keystone Cops shenanigans, very funny if they weren't so dangerous, involving nuclear weapons and other WMD. When a million people gathered in New York's Central Park to oppose nuclear proliferation the administration opined that Soviet agents had helped to organize it. Integral to what we might call the John Birch Society administration was a disregard for inconvenient facts that has not exactly evaporated with the passing of that regime.

Rachel gives accounts of the Iran/Contra scandal, the invasion of Granada, the first war with Iraq, the prime movers involved and their goulish return under Bush II., the service to international corporations called NAFTA, privatization especially as it involved the military. Clinton's Serbia/Bosnia adventure gets a little cloudy. It's sometimes hard to tell whether Rachel is criticizing, approving or merely reporting on this bewildering situation but she might have gotten a little clarity from Noam Chomsky's book, The New Military Humanism. A shift to the Afghan/Iraq debacles follows with drone coverage and little flirtations with just how far we can push nuclear-armed Pakistan around. And Rachel closes with a note about how when you buy a house you accept the expensive task of maintaining it or it quickly returns to the earth. With our major investment in the military we face a similar maintenance problem on a monumental scale. I suppose her use of “unmooring” in her subtitle is meant to convey this idea, that if we don't get control of the battleship, its drift is going to be expensive and catastrophic. Get my drift?

Wishful Thinking

It is all too tempting to dismiss James Howard Kunstler as a doom-and-gloom pessimist but the nagging questions he leaves us in his books and blog, are pretty insistent in their demand that we prove him wrong (Too Much Magic, Atlantic Monthly Presss, 2012). This exercise, to have any meaning, would have to be done by what Kunstler calls, “reality-based adults”. Good luck finding such individuals and pray to the god (small cap) of your choice that they are successful. You might be such a person. Kunstler's conclusions are too dark for my sunny disposition so I beg, someone, please demonstrate the flaws in his argument.

In my world view, previous to reading this book, the life system operant on the only planet we have has been under serious threat from several quarters: pollution, over-population and nuclear nightmare. These are interrelated and probably share a common source rooted in human disfunction. To these three perils must be added, so says Kunstler, a fourth at least as potent, made more so by being pretty much off the radar.

It is a sad and bitter prophesy that, if Kunstler is on the mark, all the great books, music movies and other products of the imagination, advances in science, technology, medicine... are about to slide into the inaccessible area called the past, of no further use, at least that portion of them dependent on oil and electricity. What will be useful, life-sustaining, is the ability to walk where you're going and grow food. Accompanying a wholesale die-off of complex civilization will be a die-off of that portion of humanity without those skills. Even the guns will one day rust and bullets will peter out so the NRA-schooled bully boys will be reduced, once again, to clubs. A small club is good for turning a hollow log into a musical instrument but, given the rate of success we've had instituting non-violent conflict resolution when we've had the leisure to develop it, we're going to need big clubs too. Those of us not in the die-off.

Afraid perhaps of losing his audience Kunstler is not quite so blunt. Rather he couches his view in a persuasive objectivity and scientific grounding, citing interesting tid-bits across many disciplines to bolster his credibility, such as the number of barrels of oil used daily in the U.S., economic assumptions about infinite growth and investment, fusion, alternative energy strategies (fantasies), the savings & loan bail-out under Bush I., the “leveraged buyout of the U.S. government by big banks”, the abandonment of downtown Johannesburg's business district, climate change, the petroleum industry con called fracking, the coal industry con called “clean coal”, Nixon's downfall, Carter's anomie, and the blissful ignorance or denial of the implications of peak oil.

Kunstler doesn't do much to persuade the reader of his assertion that peak oil was reached in 2006, apparently feeling his previous book, The Long Emergency, had already established that “fact”. He does define peak oil as when the amount of oil produced daily peaks, and from then on less is increasingly available to a growing consumer base. So something, increasingly, has to give. Living in a capitalist society tends to instill a reluctance to share and this value, combined with a dominator's willful ignorance of non-violent conflict resolution skills, should produce a lively if brutish existence for the survivors of Kunstler's long emergency – should he be right.

Desperate to find something to oppose in this book I have to point out that the author or his editor must have found all their ideas for titles already taken. A line from the sub-title would have been snappier and clearer – Wishful Thinking. As it is, Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation is as awkward and cumbersome a title as you could come up with. Would that this criticism negated the book's thesis. The nation, as Kunstler sees it, wishes to maintain it's consumerist and wasteful life style unimpeded by a reality-based adult consideration of facts. With little sign of a fessing up to what Kunstler calls a “hallucinatory globe of falsehood”, neither by public officials nor citizens, we drift, as Einstein said in a slightly different context, toward unparalleled catastrophe.

Part 2. The Untold History of the U.S. , by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznik

The Cuban Missile Crisis: background

After outlining how the U.S. was taken over by a cabal of unbalanced individuals at Roosevelt’s death, the Untold History goes on to document some later consequences, starting with the shameful 1954 coup that overthrew Guatemala’s democracy. This criminal action installed a murderous regime for which the U.S. had no criticism so long as it operated in ways that profited U.S. corporations, most particularly United Fruit, many of whose directors did the revolving door thing where they would work for the State Department then return to United Fruit… I’d say serving two masters but actually it was only one. The coup that overthrew Iranian democracy the same year is summarized also and these two “incidents” serve to deconstruct the mythology that the U.S. leadership wishes to promote democracy.

The book then goes on, in a section titled JFK, to lay the ground for the telling of the extremely close call the life system had with a lethal nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Russia. In the early 50s, as today, no one could get near the presidency who did not embrace the religion of anti-communism. Eisenhower thus rejected Kruschev’s call for an international meeting to create a formal framework for non-violent conflict resolution and place nukes in the hands of an international body. Ike wanted nukes as defense-on-the-cheap and seemed to think of them as just another weapon in the arsenal. So an opportunity was again squandered and the nuclear clock moved us a few beats closer to armageddon. It’s possible that Kruschev’s proposal was sincere but that thesis could have been tested rather than rejected. A reason for rejection, that is consistent with what we know about U.S. foreign policy, policy not rhetoric, would be that non-violent conflict resolution is incompatible with domination and hegemony and therefore at odds with prime U.S. goals. Another despicable act under Eisenhower was the assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumamba of the Congo, one of numerous historical characters who succumbed to the rule, familiar to the mafia, that if you can’t be bought you can be murdered. The elected Lumamba was replaced by a tyrant who ruled for 30 years, siphoning billions of the nation’s treasury into his own pockets while keeping his citizens in line with the usual methods. The freedom-loving USA had no problem with Joseph Mobutu, maintaining friendly relations for the entirety of his long, bloody career. As if any were needed, more evidence of U.S. duplicity.

What was true of many of our closest allies was claimed about regimes which refused to follow the dictates of the Godfather. Cuba was quickly isolated when, after Castro’s successful revolution, policies were shifted away from service to U.S. corporations and the mafia that was running casinos, prostitution and other unsavory operations. Nationalizing land and instituting other policies revealed the wicked “dictator’s” evil plans to focus government on providing for the needs of the people instead of global corporations – an unacceptable option. Eisenhower appointed CIA veteran Edward Lansdale to organize the overthrow of Castro’s regime. CIA director Dulles called Lumumba the “Castro of Africa”, to utilize the already demonized Castro to demonize the uncooperative prime minister. Now that he was properly disposed of, the noble effort was turned back on Castro.

But there was opposition afoot. Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein organized prominent scientists to sign a “”manifesto” in 1955 attempting to awaken the public to the dangers of nuclear weapons. Similar efforts were happening in Europe – a lesson for us perhaps, that organized citizens can have an impact. These efforts set off a reaction among the ah,.. reactionaries. Ike and his team, using taxpayer funds of course, attempted to brand these efforts unpatriotic and to propagandize the public back into the fold by unleashing an “atoms for peace” campaign, including the infamous promise that nuclear energy would be “too cheap to meter”. I put that in quotes as a reminder that the pro-nuke folks, ah… LIE!. Other irresponsible policies continued, including threatening the use of nukes repeatedly, whenever it seemed there was a crisis. Adlai Stevenson called for a test ban during his run for president, unfortunately losing to Ike. But the pressure continued to build leading eventually to a test ban under Kennedy. Part of the irresponsible policies was to try to convince nations to believe that they weren’t really with it, modern, unless they built some nuclear plants – oblivious to the obvious proliferation dangers.

Rube Goldberg-esque schemes were dreamed up to reverse hurricanes by dropping a nuke in front of the on-coming storm, to dredge harbors and other “evacuation” schemes, all accompanied by assurances that the radiation would harmlessly settle. When Kennedy was elected he was shocked to hear recommendations for a surprise all-out nuclear attack on the Soviet Union put forth by his military leaders, one claiming that if there were two U.S. citizens left standing and only one Russian we would have “won”. These were our guys making these proposals. We obviously didn’t need an “enemy” abroad, we had all we needed in our own government. And we were encouraged to believe, then as now, that questioning our leaders is not patriotic.

The range of opinion among U.S. leadership is so constrained that Ike, despite his irrational policies, would be considered a moderate. He signed onto a Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) that his advisors opined would cause millions of deaths if enacted. When he came into office the U.S. arsenal stood at one thousand nukes. When he left there were twenty thousand, soon to reach thirty thousand due to his initiatives. Ike’s famous farewell address warning against the Military Industrial Complex was giddily disingenuous given his role in creating it, but never-the-less worth the read. Into this context comes the great “liberal” JFK, opportunistically attacking Ike and Nixon for allowing a fictitious missile gap favoring the Soviet Union and policies that “coddled” Castro. Like the case of southern politicians, existing bigotry was just too tempting and effective not to use, whether the politician was bigoted or not.

After winning the presidency he asked his Secretary of Defense to research the actual missile gap. The report documented a huge one but all in the U.S. favor. At first Kennedy kept this secret in order to advance military spending but later, when it was politically opportune, made it public, to the consternation of the military “big spenders”. He pronounced his top foreign policy goal to be the overthrow of the Castro regime, appointing CIA veteran Edward Lansdale to lead the effort. Lansdale asked the Joint Chiefs (the guardians of democracy remember) for a list of justifications to invade Cuba. Items that made the list: shooting down a planeload of vacationing students and blaming Castro; blowing up planes and ammunition at Guantamano and claiming it was an attack by Cuba; sinking a boatload of Cuban refugees; shooting down a U.S. Plane over international waters; Another, just a teensy bit less outrageous was to blame Castro if an up-coming space mission failed. The U.S. Coerced the OAS (Organization of American States – no, not Texas, Alabama etc; American states, as in South, Central and North America) to expel Cuba, not too hard since most of those states were run by an elite that didn't like the elite-questioning ideas sailing out of that island.

Another bit of background for the Cuban Missile Crisis was Vietnam. Kennedy had said in the early 50s that it was hypocritical for the U.S. to malign Russia for invading Hungary but support the French in Indo-China. Yet he supported Diem's cancelation of elections in violation of the Geneva accords that required elections and reunification of the country, north and south being only a temporary division. When it was clear that the popular Ho Chi Mihn would easily win those elections the U.S. demonstrated, once again, its limited commitment to democracy. Kennedy objected not to Diem's oppressive rule but to his apparent failure to defeat the Viet Cong. One would be tempted to utter the phrase, “It all comes back on you.” when contemplating Kennedy's acquiescence in the assassination of Diem. Instead of using Diem's oppression as an excuse to exit Vietnam Kennedy increased aid and military advisors, his vice-president Johnson publicly calling Diem the “Winston Churchill of Asia.” To give Kennedy a break, like Kruschev he was surrounded by Hawks, even fearing a coup if he veered too far from the hysterical status quo. Resisting his advisors who wanted U.S. troops Kennedy agreed instead to what came to be called the Phoenix Program which was a forced resettlement of rural peasants into barbed wire encampments, bounties of “suspected” Viet Cong, and the agent orange defoliation project that victimized U.S. personnel as well as Vietnamese.

The Crisis

When it was discovered that Cuba had Russian nukes and were assembling the missiles to deliver them the Joint Chiefs, led by General Curtis LeMay, predictably wanted military attacks on the bases, claiming that Russia would not respond, just as he had assured us that radiation from nuclear projects would settle harmlessly. When Kennedy suggested that Russia may not respond in Cuba but would in Berlin LeMay said he'd welcome the opportunity to get rid of Russia once and for all. Kennedy walked out of the meeting, appalled at the cavaliar attitude his miltary advisors held toward nuclear war. Kruschev suggested a face-saving compromise, removing U.S. missiles from Turkey in exchange for removing the Cuban missiles and a U.S. promise not to invade Cuba. Kennedy insisted that the Turkey component remain secret so that he could be seen to have backed down the Communist menace. Some advisors advocated for rejecting Kruschev's proposal, apparently disagreeing with his statement that saving face is not worth millions of lives. In a letter to Kennedy that actually moved him, Kruschev described the innocents who would die if they did not reach a solution. Still, Kennedy insisted on the secret component, considering apparently his political future to be more important than the fate of the earth. Kennedy even feared a military coup, not unrealisitc considering the cavaliar attitude he witnessed. Unfortunately this fateful decision left Kruschev humiliated and within a year he was ousted, bringing the hawks to power - who promptly decided that nuclear parity with the U.S. was the only way they could achieve security. The assassination of Kennedy accomplished the same on the U.S. end with consequences for Indo-China and the arms race.

The “happy” ending to the missile crisis was not preordained. It has been called the most dangerous moment in history because it was. Egos and incidents battered fate around for weeks. Two missiles were fired toward the Marshal Islands from California in a test launch which was interpreted by Air Defense as in-coming Russian missiles and, without consulting with the president, high alert was established with SAC bombers in the air, kept there by aerial refueling. The navy discovered a Russian submarine off Cuba and began dropping depth charges, unaware that it was a nuclear armed sub. The stressed out Russian officers voted 2-1 to launch their warheads (it required 3 of 3) so one assertive officer saved the world from nuclear holocaust. Just as there were U.S. hawks, so there were Russians and had there been three we might not be here to discuss it.

Stone and Kuznik portray a schizophrenic JFK, a leader obsessed with assassinating Castro yet reaching out to discuss differences, a preacher of democracy, tolerance and coexistence yet a supporter of brutal dictators... a product of the post-Roosevelt “coup”, if not a captive of the hawks certainly subject to their intimidating presence and pressure. In his speeches can be found contradictory statements about his intensions regarding Vietnam and the cold war and the authors think they have evidence to explain his hawkish views as response to the very real and powerful presence of hawks in his military, his own advisors and the country at large... hell, his own self. Yet speeches and conversations with aids support the idea that he wished to transform relations with the Soviets, withdraw from Vietnam and promote peaceful co-existence and he recognized that nuclear weapons had changed everything, that we end war or we end our civilization. These two forces battled within his psyche and within the nation. And as with the coup-like transformation after Roosevelt, the hawks grabbed power and ran with it. Their previous behavior speaks clearly for them. This patriarchal faction was neither incapable or disinclined to rid themselves of impediments to their dominance. If they didn't organize the shooting in Dallas they certainly celebrated the changes it portended.

We are at a primitive stage in our evolution and it is not clear that we will mature fast enough to avoid extinction via nukes, pollution or the related threat of over-population. Carl Sagan's suggestion seems apt: if we encounter alien visitors they will be peaceful, for any intelligent species arising anywhere will eventually discover the dreaded atomic knowledge and either perish by that discovery or end war by the adoption of non-violent conflict resolution.