Thought That Came Unbidden

From the BBC: China ‘is more popular’ than US

So, does that mean that China has a better chance of getting asked to the prom than the U.S. does? That when the U.S. sits down at a table in the lunch room all the other countries will take their trays and leave?

The headline just amused me given the thoughts that I’ve been having about cool being the antithesis of happiness.

See, I got my compass reset while I was on vacation, and since I’ve gotten back my outlook has improved considerably. Maybe that’s because it’s summer and the days are long, warm, and full of sunlight. Maybe it’s because I got a nice “yes, we notice you’re doing a good job and we appreciate it” raise right before I went on vacation. Maybe it’s because since I’ve gotten back I’ve been actively trying to maintain a positive attitude. And the way I’m going about this is, in essence, the antithesis of everything I’ve ever been told being cool entails.

Part of it is actively appreciating and being thankful for things and people that please me. It’s telling someone when he did a good job running the grill for the company picnic, or when a blouse is particularly flattering on someone, or complimenting the gardener on a beautiful garden as you walk by in the evening.

Cool, on the other hand, dictates that you not care about anything, that you be above it all. In essence, passion and all its more pastel cousins like joy, happiness, and laughter, are banished in the effort to seem untouchable. It is possible, it’s true, to point to figures in history who are considered cool and see passion in those people but I think in those instances we’re mixing up cool and confident.

Confidence is sexy. Confidence is not having to prove anything. It’s being able to admit when someone is better than you at something, that maybe, just maybe, while you have incredible skill there’s still someone out there who can teach you something new. Yes, neither confidence nor cool give a flying shit what you think about them, but confidence does it out of skill and security where cool does the same thing out of derision; it belittles others to elevate itself.

Cool is artifice. It’s the Old West movie set with nothing behind the store facades. Cool does not allow for weakness, or mistakes. There’s no air around it, no chance to be goofy, or genuine. And without room to breathe, without air and the chance to make mistakes and learn, the space is too small for happiness.

Or maybe I’ve been trying too hard and thinking too much. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened.

Either way, it makes me happy to be goofy, to tell people when I appreciate them so, I guess, I’m just going to keep doing it.

Thank you for taking the time to read, and to comment. It means a lot to me.

It really does.

Contrary to what your local meteorologist is or has told you on the news, today is midsummer, not the first day of summer.

Astronomically, the sun reached reached perihelion with the North Pole today causing it to appear very high in the sky for those of us in the northern hemisphere. Where I live we got, officially, 14 hours and 59 minutes of daylight. In Barrow Alaska, which is inside the Arctic Circle, the sun will not officially set today; they will get 24 hours of daylight.

The Summer Solstice had significance for a variety of pre-Christian religions and continues to have significance in some of those religions today.

Enjoy the day light, enjoy the warm summer breezes and the flowers.

But after listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America. So, I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

– Jimmy Carter, The “Crisis of Confidence” Speech, delivered this televised speech on July 15, 1979 (primary document (courtesy of PBS))

Even though he never actually used the word, this speech came to be known as Carter’s “malaise” speech. And while the President’s candor was appreciated initially by the American people, it had a boomerang effect on his popularity. Carter’s presidency never really recovered from that speech, and many historians and political analysts will, even today, name it as the beginning of the end (his inability to rescue the hostages from Iran being the death knell).

Last week my friend Bill sent me this Oliphant cartoon. In case it has cycled off, it shows a sort of chunky male figure on his side, his back to the viewer, napping on a busted out looking couch, a couple of empty cans are strewn on the floor. To the left, at the end of the couch, stands the Grim Reaper scythe and all, holding a paper labeled “British Memos Indicate Bush Mislead U.S. Into War” The sleeping figure on the couch is mumbling “What’s the latest on Michael Jackson? Did he get off?”

When I first saw this it made me groan and sort of chuckle, making fun as it does on its face of Americans’ distaste for hard news, of our inability to pay attention to anything for longer than the life span of the average fruit fly (37 days in case you’re wondering). It made me ask: what is exactly is wrong with Americans that we can’t pay attention to anything serious?

And then I started to think.
[Read more…] about It springs eternal

I’m absolutely fascinated by how ideas move around the web. I’ve been basically news-free for nearly three weeks now and I have to say that I’m feeling much better now, thank you. See, there’s a noticeably weird phenomenon that happens when The Girlfriend and I go on vacation: stuff happens. And I’m not talking about little stuff either, but big, Earth-shaking stuff — like the time we took a long weekend to go to a B & B in the Shenandoah Valley and some idiot bombed the Olympics — either that, or some one dies. This vacation around, we got a little bit of both.

First off, let’s talk about Deep Throat for a second. Am I the only one who finds it amusing that such an important figure in American journalism was given a pseudonym from a ground-breaking porn film which, in turn, took its name from a particular way to perform a particular sexual act? And in the case of Woodward and Bernstein’s career-making figure, who got the blow-job, them or the American people? Based on the way the mainstream media have been treating the so-called Downing Street memo, I have to say that if it’s the American people on the receiving end it’s got way too much teeth in it for comfort.

According to a story in the Style section — yes, the same part of the paper that obsesses over Michael Jackson’s courtroom wardrobe and Paris Hilton’s latest puppy accessory — in Tuesday’s Washington Post the memo was really no big deal:

On May 2, the day after the story hit Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times, the New York Times dealt with the memo in a dispatch from London on the final days of Blair’s reelection campaign, beginning in the 10th paragraph.

Asked why the paper did not follow up for weeks, Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman told the Times’s public editor, or ombudsman: “Given what has been reported about war planning in Washington, the revelations about the Downing Street meeting did not seem like a bolt from the blue.”

Gee, it might have been nice if we’d gotten a chance to decide that for ourselves back at the beginning of May when the three year-old memo first surfaced in the public sector. It might have been nice if we’d been allowed to form our own opinions…oh, wait, right, I forgot. We’re talking about the same American public that will continue to vote for and support politicians that consistently and provably lie to us yet we’ll disregard every single thing a witness says if that witness can be shown to have lied any time in his or her past.

But I digress. Things have a tendency to happen while we’re gone. Or someone dies. While we were in Las Vegas in February, Hunter S. Thompson died. This vacation we came home to find that the incomparable Anne Bancroft had left the land of the living. I still remember seeing her on stage at the Kennedy Center during a field trip in high school. It was that trip that made me understand the beauty and magic of live theater. Remember her for more than Mrs. Robinson. Remember her for the humanity of 84 Charing Cross Road; remember her for the insanity of Silent Movie and To Be or Not To Be.

These are some of the things that happened, and are some of the memes that have been moving around the blogsphere while I’ve been news-free. There are a couple of others I want to consider here more in depth, including bloggers promoting themselves and the people they read, and a little place called hope.

Until then, I think I’m gonna go watch a movie.

Going on a bit of a hiatus for the next couple of weeks, an unwired media fast. There will be much photography on display when I return.

In the meantime, I leave you with this fabulous timewaster courtesy of Sal

See you in June!