I like quotes. Spend time searching for them occasionally.
There was a guy named Dalton Trumbo. Extraordinary
wordsmith. Brilliant screenwriter. Good example of the best
that humanity can offer.
His Life was ruined by the McCarthy hearings and the House
Unamerican Activities Committee back in the Fifties.
So, I ran across this excerpt of an early seventies interview. This
is the guy conversing, not writing:
Some suffered less than others, some grew and some diminished, but in
the final tally we were all victims because almost without exception
each of us felt compelled to say things he did not want to say, to do
things he did not want to, to deliver and receive wounds he truly did
not want to exchange. That is why none of us - right, left, or center
- emerged from that long nightmare without sin.
For what my opinion is worth, that statement seems to be the most
concise, poetic, and succinct summary of the human condition that I
have ever seen.
Go now and be excellent to each other, my human family.
Hey, we're making progress. A majority of this country now knows
something that any reasonably well informed person who knows how to
read knew in mid-October 2001:
Remember back when we were the world's largest creditor nation?
Before Reagan and the "Republican Revolution?" Back before the
so-called "Conservative" brand of "Fiscal Responsibility" took over?
Did I mention that I have the greatest job in the world?
Last night was the 36th Birthday Party of the Armadillo World
Headquarters down at Threadgill's, where I am the audio production
guy. Carolyn Wonderland opened (with JC the sound guy at the helm, a
reunion of sorts in and of itself — we've been running into one
another since at least the Mercado Caribe days in the early '80's...)
and Commander Cody closed the place. So many familiar faces, so many
smiles, so many compliments. Eddie Wilson held court; Michael Priest
was the emcee again; Larry Monroe got up and explained how Cody is the
guy who told him to move to Austin oh-so-many years ago, something I
never knew.
So much of my life has revolved around that old place, even to this
day. I was the guy who powered it down for the last time in the early
morning hours of New Years Day, 1981 — Finney couldn't bring
himself to do it, and went home early. It's where I met my partner in
the synthesizer stuff I was doing a quarter century ago; it's where I
met Zappa and Metheny and Feat, and made the jump from cooking eggs at
the Omelettry West to hanging out with rock stars and pushing faders
in arenas. It's where I got the street cred to be able to get past the
front desk and be a recording engineer in a town that pumps out 100
RTF graduates a semester like clockwork. It's where I met most of the
people that I've created music with for the bulk of my life.
You'd think that events like last night would be nothing more than
warm and fuzzy nostalgia, and there's a lot of that for sure. But what
struck me as I basked in the afterglow is that it is all still
alive. All of these wonderful creative people are still
creating, still going strong. We all have a quarter century of tire
marks across our backs, but we're all still of the same family,
too. It is a strange and wonderful thing to walk up to someone that
you haven't seen in a quarter century and resume a conversation
you were having like you'd just stepped away for a minute to grab a
beer. It happened over and over last night. It is so cool.
As I ponder these things, I realize that the Armadillo — which is
a living group of people, not a dead concert hall — has been the
runway from which I launched a pretty interesting life. I took off
from there many moons ago, and I flew high and far, and I saw many
things that most people don't get to see, and now I've landed back
home.
What I realized last night is that I've landed back at my home
not because I am through flying, or because I am tired, or because I
want to be safe. I landed to tell about my travels. I landed to see my
family. I landed to refuel.
Make yourself a cup of coffee and read a bit. This will wake you
up. And it is ultimately optimistic. They start off:
During the 25-year span of the 9/11 generation, the cherished
American way of life will come to an end. Traditions that were
lovingly established since the unholy marriage of mass-produced Model
T's and cheap oil, will irreversibly cease to exist. Some firmly
cemented traditions will linger on, upheld by those with
non-recoverable economical investments, others will vanish overnight
with little fanfare. A new regime of local food production, city
politics, and alternative energy will eventually overcome our
oil-dependent, growth-based economy, with the effect that hardly any
job will stay the same. America's businesses and residences will be
undergoing a reverse engineering process toward local self-reliance
and energy independence if it wants to survive, or fall back into a
category that includes Egypt, India, South Africa, and other
developing nations. America will succeed, because it must. There is no
doubt. The path towards such success, however, is unclear, but already
has a name: it is called the 'long emergency', as dubbed by Howard
James Kunstler.
Tonight's Colbert Report will feature Eli Pariser, the Executive
Director of Moveon.org as the guest. That would be fun enough in and
of itself. But Pariser and his staff decided to up the ante. They
produced a mock attack piece on Colbert to chum the waters:
Well, good. Joe Lieberman, a three term incumbent Democratic
senator in Connecticut was handed his hat in the primary last night
and told to find his way to the egress. It was widely viewed as a
referendum on Bush, and Bush's coat tails took Lieberman down the
drain.
I couldn't be happier. I originally thought that Lieberman was a
pretty good strategic choice for veep in the 2000 election, but it
took me about two weeks to get tired of his "more pious than thou"
religious marketeering and his "knee-jerk centrist" attitude on the
issues that are of import to me. For the last four years, he's been
protesting that he's a "Loyal Democrat" while he rubber-stamped
virtually every outrage that the Republican side could bring up for a
vote in the Senate. Lieberman earned his results last night.
Now we find out who he really is. Instead of a statesmanlike
concession and an endorsement of his party's choice, he is bolting the
party and running as an independent. His response? "For the sake of
our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that
result stand." Oh
really? Your state your party and your country are wrong
because they don't want to give you another six years, mocking them at
the Republican feeding trough? Boo hoo, Little Joe.
This is a big loss for the DLC, for the lobbies of the beltway, and
it strikes real fear into the hearts of the Republican reelection
committees. Look for the spin; it's already starting. The "Democrat"
party has been taken over by wild-eyed lefty hippie peaceniks!! Protect
your children!! The "War on Terrrr" is at risk!
There's only one small issue with that tack - jingoism isn't
working like it used to. A full 2/3rds of this nation believe that
the war in Iraq is a fundamental mistake. More than that believe that
our President is an incompetent fool, even some who support his
policies. Almost 50% of us (Wow!) are now aware that Iraq didn't have
a damned thing to do with 9/11. And we as a people are finally
beginning to more clearly distinguish between legitimate anti-terror
actions and using the military as a tool for big money profiteering.
The American people are slow, but they usually get it right after a
while. Lieberman got bounced in a freely contested election because
he didn't represent his constituents. It is called "democracy." And
there's a lot more of it in the wings, waiting to speak just as clearly.
The Republican Party has a new voter registration project in Fresno
California. It involves luring people to sign a legalize marijuana petition and then
re-registering them as Republicans.
Seems counterproductive at best. They anger the citizenry; they
have a public relations nightmare; they screw up their "likely voter"
profiling and polling, and they get to go to jail.
Yup, great plan there, guys. Cutting-edge realpolitik
innovation. Keep up the fine work.
