Soles Afire

Dismiss all that does not befit your age, with equanimity yield to your years: thus it must be.                                                                   -  Lucretius, “De Rerum Natura” (Bk. 3)

Whoever puts his decrepitude into print plays the fool . . . .
                                                  -  Michel de Montaigne, "Of Physiognomy," (Bk. III, essay 12) 

The older I get the more closely I resemble my grandfather. There's nothing for it when the combined forces of genetics and geezerhood play hell with an old man's countenance, his consciousness and his consent. Nothing trumps consanguinity. I can see that much in the mirror - the square head grown blunter, the complexion once sandy-haired, nowadays grizzled, the frame grown stockier, the blue of the eyes rheumier, the eyebrows wiry and bristling beneath deepening furrows. 

I swore I'd never crop them into blunt stubble; now I trim them without a thought, so much bothersome physiognomic brush to manage. I swore I'd never be one of those codgers who cut his own hair, now I have little enough remaining that paying someone else would be throwing good money after bad. My grandfather had his hair cut by someone until the end of his days (a friend, by the look of it) and looked no better than does his grandson the autotonsurist. A certain age brings with it the privilege of bargaining thus with vanity.

Grandpere

I cannot entirely approve of the continuing resolve and geriatric brio of the 97-year old Australian chappie who has just earned his fourth academic degree, a master's in clinical science. His third degree (a law degree) he earned at the age of 91, supposing it to be his last until he found time heavy on his hands once more. His academic advisor tells the press that he is "a tremendous inspiration to those who aspire to age well." That's as may be, I suppose, though for my part I would rather age on my own, like a cheese in semi-darkness, without the additional burden of inspiring other cheeses or being set an example by a suffering old wheezer who won't sit down.

'Managed care' for cheese

It is perhaps too much the other extreme to awake in one's favorite chair with one's foot afire, as did a fellow in Texas recently, in front of the telly with his 5-year-old granddaughter who pointed out to him that he was aflame. "Searing pain in my right foot, and when I woke up, I could see the room kind of exploded," he said. It seems he had the order of things a bit addled, understandable since a stray lightning bolt had entered his shoulder and exited by his foot. "I'm glad I still have my legs, but I'm sure going to miss that chair." Nothing like advancing age to bring philosophy in its train.

I suppose what brought about these musings is the fact that as of now I am on the growing roster of Social Security recipients, it being my year to become fully eligible, a true "senior" American in good standing, one of the first wave of baby boomers who will all too quickly pass this way - or not, depending on just how old you may be yourself. Eligibility for Social Security checks (it still being an age in which that phrase has meaning), like being an American or a Presbyterian or a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, is just a happy accident of birth - there's not a thing one could ever do to change it short of commiting treason, denying predestination or drinking too much at too many Elks mixed smokers.

I haven't yet decided what it all means. I don't foresee any more academic degrees in my future, though that may be preferable to an immobility that attracts lightning. Whatever I do, I will do it as a cheese would, aging slowly, gradually, filling each room I occupy in turn with the vaguely sulfurous air of profane soliloquy. Meanwhile, back to work.

Not me (not yet)

(by Michel Soucy)

Suicide Soccer, Texas Style

Earlier this month, the New York Times reported (and subsequently editorialized on it) that the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (Tapps), an association that regulates sports events among private, mainly Christian schools in the state, refused membership to Iman Academy SW, an Islamic school in Houston that sought membership to the organization in 2010. Basically, a group of high school kids, who also happened to be Muslim, wanted to play soccer and were refused.

They were refused on the basis of the school's answers to a questionnaire. Apparently, Tapps had learned its lesson the hard way - the association had already drawn national attention earlier in March when it refused to reschedule a state semifinal boys basketball game for an Orthodox Jewish day school, which could not play at the scheduled time because its players observe the Sabbath. Under legal pressure, Tapps rescheduled the game for Friday afternoon. The Orthodox school, Robert M. Beren Academy, defeated the Covenant School 58-46 to advance to the state title game later in the week. So much for turning the other cheek.

The young ingrates of the Beren Academy basketball team

Now, what sort of questions would a reasonable person expect to find in a questionnaire designed to canvass the suitability of a school's athletic program for membership in an athletic association? First off, the presumption is that a school applying to a consortium of private schools will be a private school. 

But beyond that, there are things the association might want to know about a prospective new member: how many students in your school's athletic programs? proportion of male to female athletes? segregated or coeducational teams? proportion of the school budget dedicated to sports programs? These are the sorts of questions which seem reasonable to ask and which didn't seem to get asked. Rather the questionnaire, according to the Times article, included these questions:

• Historically, there is nothing in the Koran that fully embraces Christianity or Judaism in the way a Christian and/or a Jew understands his religion. Why, then, are you interested in joining an association whose basic beliefs your religion condemns?
• It is our understanding that the Koran tells you not to mix with (and even eliminate) the infidels. Christians and Jews fall into that category. Why do you wish to join an organization whose membership is in disagreement with your religious beliefs?
• How does your school address certain Christian concepts? (i.e. celebrating Christmas) 
• What is your attitude about the spread of Islam in America? What are the goals of your school in this regard? 

None of it was at all about the game, nor about the students involved. “We didn’t see how it had anything to do with Tapps or our kids and sports,” noted an administrator of Iman Academy SW. But the questions do reveal a mind, of sorts, at work here - a fearful, timid, hand-wringing mentality conjuring up a set of questions that could not possibly be answered to a private satisfaction unencumbered by notions of fairness or any transparent standards of inclusion. There were other, more honest questions the Tapps geniuses may have well asked, ones beginning in theological confusion, working through denial, suspicion, anger and all the typical stages of true religious bigotry. For example, how about this questionnaire?

Theological confusion: Our Bible commands that you should love your enemy as yourself. We are your enemy. According to the Bible (our Bible) we are permitted to hate evil and shun evildoers. We hate you. Why can't you even like us?  

Wishing they would just go away: You do realize, of course, that many of the balls sanctioned for use in Tapps sporting events are made of pigskin? Feeling as you do about pigs in general, would you really want to play with something made from the skin of an animal you regard as unclean?

Fear and suspicion: Would you willingly allow one of your players to blow himself or herself up on the playing field if you thought by doing so your team would win the game? 

Trick question: True Christians believe that Israel is the promised land of the Jewish people and that the world can only end in Jesus's triumphal return when their land is restored to them and they all reside in it and not in Texas. You do not believe that the Jews have any claim to Israel. How do you intend to resolve this so that Texas can be free of Jewish influences and can welcome the Second Coming and the Judgment? 

Sanctimonious defensiveness: The Bible says, "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." (Matthew 28:19) Both the Bible and the Constitution make it very clear that this is a worthy and laudable enterprise, not to be compared with the intentions of the Islamic tradition. Knowing this, how could anyone possibly interpret Christianity as seeking "world domination"? 

 

 Texas Jesus

Knucklehead Ranch

Does owning a hunting camp called "Niggerhead Ranch" make you a redneck? Absolutely. A racist? Not necessarily. No more, probably, than climbing Squaw's Tit (Alberta, CA) might qualify you as a groper, or running a jet ski across South Dakota's Squaw Humper Dam or casting a worm into Little Squaw Humper Creek would make you a wenching, antifeminist misogynist (although casting one's worm anywhere these days could . . . never mind).

Owning a scrubgrass rattlesnake ranch called "Niggerhead," however, does make you a . . .

 Knucklehead

. . . unless, of course, you've only ever invited select fellow "lawmakers" to join you there. (Lawmakers are like neighbors who all own barking dogs - none will ever complain about the excesses of the others' dogs.)

A recent article in Slate points out that, "The U.S. Board on Geographic Names . . . issued two blanket rules decades ago to erase racial slurs from federal maps. In 1962, they replaced “Nigger” with “Negro” in the names of at least 174 places. You can still find such locales as Free Negro Point in Louisiana and Little Negro Creek." Of course, one is free to translate into the regional dialect - as you might expect, federal cartographic standards do not always apply locally. And then you can always find those little cartographic obscurae on private property, Rancho Cabo de Negro a case in point.

Some "liberal pundit from Guvuner Perry's home state" (not an oxymoron, apparently) on one of the left-leaning talk shows pointed out, quite reasonably, that there is a good deal of "residual racism" in this country and that a place name for example, particularly of a place that's been in a family for decades, can escape notice as much from familiarity as from insensitivity or racism. I'm guessing that's the case with Guvuner Perry, although the subsequent song-and-dance about the offending piece of rock having been painted over sometime just after the last Ice Age is predictable, lame, and strains credulity. One does not strain to imagine the sort of guest generally in attendance chez Domaine de la Tete Noir . . . 

"Oh, dwat! Pwugged one before Wamadan."

. . . as opposed to others generally pas invitee . . . 

College educated hunting party, Cornell University, 1969

So think of it this way: does owning a hunting camp called "Niggerhead" make you a knucklehead? Well, does naming your first-born "Dalejunior" make you a redneck?  

"Dalejunior"

Does Elmer Fudd have trouble with the letter 'R'?

"Happy Wamadan, Wick!"

Did John Wayne make movies?

Does Herman Cain know who's his Daddy?

Can you see Wasilla all the way from Russia?

So far, not so good. It may take the Supreme Court to bag this election. Guaranteed 5-4, just say the word.

God and Texas Hold'Em

Said the rainmaker to the people, 'Tell me what you are prepared to pay. . . '

Said the rainmaker to the people, '. . .and I'll conjure up a rainy day.'

                                                                           - Harry Nilsson, "The Rainmaker"

I just spent two solid weeks in Kansas, and the bank thermometers were hitting thermal jackpots like a drunk in a casino. It's been a hot summer so far.

(Thought he might need that overcoat.)

The air conditioner in my 16-year old pickup barely makes a dent in the sweltering prairie heat - I don't see there's much to be done except get an air-conditioned motel room and cool down between hurried sorties into the blistering countryside. But I'm only one man, a private citizen at that. I don't have much to say about the weather and so I try not to talk about it (present instance excepted, naturally, and I hope forgiven as well).

No, I'm no Guvuner Rick Perry. Perry is the current guvuner of Texas who on Saturday last, with true Texan brio, overlooked the Constitution's separation clause just long enough to convene some 30,000 fellow evangelicals from around the nation in Houston for a good old "inclusive" state-sponsored prayer rally. "The Response," as he dubbed it, was intended as a sort of rain dance in which participants get to ask God for stuff they need or think other people need (like rain, or that "wisdom" be granted to President Obama, who definitely stands in need of some but couldn't make it to Houston). Houston, for the day, was hallowed ground.

Rick among the New Apostles

It was the ultimate Glenn Beck Moment - in fact, Perry may have out-Glenned the Beck. The Houston Chronicle reported "a day of singing, praying, praising and — for some — fasting." Fasting is, like deer hunting, something evangelicals consider a divinely sanctioned blood sport, though the Chronicle reporter conceded that "Long lines besieged concession stands throughout the day." (Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, you can count on long, well-upholstered lines at the concession stands - the link between hot soup and evangelical fervor is an historic one.)

  "SevenEleven corn dogs - only way we can get 'em in here."

According to one news source, "The event was Perry's idea but was financed by the American Family Association, a Tupelo, Miss.-based group that opposes abortion and gay rights and believes that the First Amendment freedom of religion applies only to Christians." (Surprising they'd fork over their good money after Perry as much as said that the State of New York is within the law to grant resident gays the right to marry.)

In his harangue, Perry conceded to the Almighty that, "as a nation, we have forgotten who made us, who protects us, who blesses us. And for that we cry out for your forgiveness." It was so Glenn, a jeremiad against our national waywardness. So Old Testament for all of that . . . I had an image of Peter Lorre in "Casablanca," chased by Nazi goons into Humphrey Bogart's bar, pleading piteously, "Rick, Rick - save me, Rick!"

The Golden Calf (another bad idea)

Oh, well. When you can't figure out what to do about the weather and the drought and the national economy, and you can't plausibly blame the President's political party for all of it, and you don't believe that expertise may be the first step in looking for a solution, then it can appear that the only recourse is either a willful ignorance, prayer, lethal injection or any combination. 

Personally I'm not aware of any transgressions that I need to answer for, but Perry may be a wiser man than I - after all, anyone who thinks that God is the sort of thing to which personal petitions and grocery lists can be addressed probably is also the sort of brash fellow who approaches God like he would approach some poor sod he's caught cheating at Texas hold'em - someone, in other words, who is likely to do whatever he's asked.

"Paint my house."

The Chronicle reporter further remarked that "the seven-hour event resembled nothing more than a boisterous Sunday-morning worship service at evangelical churches across the nation. The prayers were long and heartfelt, the remarks earnest, and the music - gospel and Christian rock - inspired rapturous frenzies of arm-waving, swaying and singing along."

For my part, 30,000 people swaying and arm-waving to Christian rock should be penance enough to satisfy a lust for adulation in even the most monstrous of deities. Taken altogether, the day sounds so . . .  tribal.

Javelina Journal: My Texas Vacation

I just returned from two weeks spent in Texas, one of the states in which Obesity assists Christian Endeavor. I went to Texas in order to experience Nature firsthand, so I went with my friend Peter, who is a desert ecologist. Desert Ecology is one of those disciplines that begs comparison with John Cage's musical composition 4' 33", in which content is necessarily at a minimum (it's a desert, after all). So we went to these deserts and we didn't see a whole lot except javelinas, which are unpleasant even when not approached and which I understand are the only North American pigs.

Divine, the Other White Meat

I met lots of nice people in the campgrounds, many of whom had come to Texas for the catfishing, which is said to be spectacular. As it was a desert, however, no one seemed to be having a great deal of success. These folks were despondent of their chances and, as their vacation dwindled away, were considering the prospect of trying another place, maybe a place with "Lake" in the name. I suggested Lake Erie.

"Wanna play Yahtzee?"

But I was there to recreate, as they say. A successful vacation should refresh the mind, bring new insights and perspectives with the change in scenery, so I thought of this Texas sojourn as a sort of blogger's holiday, or "blogiday," an opportunity to escape the pressures of regular blogging for money and refresh the fund of ideas. Instead I rode my bicycle.

Riding a bicycle in the desert requires that you be aware of the landmarks, the geological features in particular. Many of these features seem to be named for the devil's various body parts and accoutrements - the Devil's Thumb, Eyebrow, Nose, Needle, Playground, Jawbone, Hedge Fund, and so on. I chose for my turnaround point the Devil's Foreskin, by which I demarcated a particularly notable geological prominence situated at the apex of a three-mile climb. (Geological prominences in a forbidding landscape should have august names, so I thought 'foreskin' had more gravitas than, say, its Yiddish cognate 'schmeckel.')

At the top of this three-mile hill I met a group of Texans, fellow cyclists whom I had been meeting occasionally along the road as they passed me, all of whom applauded my ascent in the 90-degree heat, offered me their lunches, some chocolate chip cookies, God's undeservd blessings, and made me regret having ever aspersed any of their fellow citizens.

One thing I brought away from this relaxing time was the ability to keep my own counsel, to refrain from blurting the first thing that springs to mind. For example, whilst admiring the grandeur of the evening sun setting on El Castolon, the iconic formation in Big Bend National Park, I thought to myself (but did not say aloud), "Hey! that looks like a giant hat!" My patience was quickly rewarded by the fellow behind me, who promptly said it for me.

 

The Devil's Hat

Likewise, standing awestruck in the bowels of Carlsbad Caverns, wanting to but daring not speak its name, I heard in the semi-darkness of the cave a fervent voice: "Hey! That looks like a giant asparagus!"

The Devil's Asparagus

New ideas are hard to come by, even on vacation.

Things To Do Today: Start My Own Country

Leonard Caslin, a.k.a. Prince Leonard I of Hutt, is a man for all seasons. Hutt, or more properly Hutt River, is a micronation on the Australian subcontinent (Australia is the Texas of the South Pacific). The Prince of this patch of western Australia is the unsung hero, the lodestar of the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, the superannuated, the ignored, the sidelined and the just plain pissed off of the globe. He is a model of adaptation, of self-invention, of landing squarely on one's feet, of one who can make lemonade from lemons (now there's a trick).

Forty years ago, Leonard Caslin farmed an anonymous 18,500-acre patch of wheat in western Australia. Angered by a government-imposed quota on his chosen commodity, Leonard seceded from the body politic and inaugurated his own 18,500-acre principality, dubbed himself as aforementioned, and proceeded to starve the larger beast by withholding taxes. Leonard was, in a word, the self-appointed Howard ("Mad As Hell") Beale of the subcontinent. 

His primary interest does not seem to have been the wider spread of democracy so much as the institution of a limited anarchy such as that of Great Britain. Nonetheless, and being far enough away from the center of Australian civilization that no one cared enough or could get there soon enough to stop the proceedings,  the great experiment in nation-building took - Leonard displays in the royal compound a laminated and framed letter from the Australian tax authorities stating that he has “been deemed to be a non-resident of Australia for income-tax purposes.” (The Australian authorities, being the very devils of irony, clearly intended to compliment Leonard by deeming him to be a "non-resident of Australia.") Further, the news account remarks, Hutt River, "tapping into Australia’s convict history and an enduring popular disdain for central authority, also inspired a proliferation of new micronations across the country."  The engine of history, as Marx noted, is economics.

Hutt River is now a going concern, although not officially recognized as a separate nation by the Australian (or any other) government. But it attracts young backpackers, mostly Germans, by the thousands each year, who walk up the gravel road into the Huttian capital where they are issued official tourist visas and have their passports stamped by none other than the Prince. The capital, like London, Washington or Rome, boasts its own national sculpture in public spaces, not exactly Lord Nelson in Trafalgar Square, but at least you can tell who it is.

 

  "Done 'im meself. I'm saving up for a plinth."

Once you are a prince, of course, there's no retirement in sight. Always something to do. Perhaps the most inspiring aspect of such secession from the main body is its self-sufficiency and complete autonomy. Hutt River has about 20 residents, a commonwealth of about the size that allows the local potentate plenty of leisure for civic projects (see photo) or just to be alone with his hopes and dreams.

Naturally it might occur to anyone possessed of sufficient leisure to take a page from the Book of Prince Leonard,

cast off from the safe haven, strike out on one's own, and occupy one's allotted time with self-determination and autonomous government. My own rationale for secession is two-fold: I could balance my national budget and keep anyone I wished out of my yard. Balancing the budget, a dicey matter even in the best of times, would be easy in my country since I have no plans to return to school myself and can mandate the teaching of creationism as a way to prepare my nation's students for careers in the 21st century (no education line item); need no roads or highways, seaports, airports, transmission grid, etc. in my yard (no infrastructure); can rely, as Canada does, on the extravagant military expenditures of the United States for my own national security (no defense budget); already know a naturopath who works cheap (affordable quality healthcare for everyone in my country). 

I could, in short, replicate Texas in my yard and tap into my own convict history.