Freedom: Which kind; economic, personal or to be in a state where one does not fear….?

Rockwell’s 1943 Poster

The world’s economies have been morphing into an international conglomeration for several centuries now, perhaps even longer. Money is not as old as man, but we have yet to access exactly and fairly how man values items, thoughts, fears and the distribution of goods among families, tribes and enemies fully throughout the dark recesses of time and even up until today where bitcoin has complicated things even more. Economic archeology should be a starting point for school classes to at least understand what happens when one moves past bartering, or what, indeed is valuation when bartering. That is an interesting concept for the first stages of infant learning; note psychologists’ “one or two donuts (or marshmallows!) for waiting” experiment in order to understand how to value the future of one’s own world.

Human economics, a social science, deals with emotions as well as science, in other words a philosophy of interchange and exchange needs to be constructed and sold to a group. All animals have some form of sharing of the burden within the higher species, though we’re also finding cooperation among lesser animals, and even plants. But that is another musing. For humans, the future beyond simply surviving needs to be considered, as does a trust or a gamble on its arriving as one hoped it would. Art, though, as in life often examines/exposes the times when one is foiled, fooled or flabbergasted in the future not arriving as one hoped.

In economics over the time of imperialism, to capitalism, to industrialization, to urbanization, humans have struggled with the impact of overlapping cultures, traditional stratification of societies into groups of laborers and owners, how property is managed, what is property, and who “owns” property. The polarization on the extremes occurred in the 19th century when a historical economist, Karl Marx, opined that earlier man exploited the laborer and continues up to the present and it was time for the urban proletariat and other laborers to take back the power. Before him Rousseau spoke of a system of social conscience and the continuing roots of social inequality, seeking his own form of social reckoning. How might you assess the present status of economic philosophy in the digital age?

Over the past decades, the argument of government involvement in mitigation of the economy has been foremost in politics. Yet, those arguments have strangely morphed and moved among the principal parties in the States. One might argue that government in general is on the block, with either apathy or antagonism towards politics occupying a significant portion of the potential electorate. Does democracy deliver; study a bit more history to find out.

The electorate; one need only turn eighteen in most states, in all states as long as you do not have a felony record. Some states have a criminal record to restrict voting rights (some equate it as a reaction within the Jim Crow era), even to eliminate whole groups of people from being involved in managing the public purse and power. These sentiments and actions have had meaningful impact on the nation’s history and present demeanor. Voter rights and regulation are the current buzz words in the MAGA era, as is The Southern Strategy, gerrymandering and a host of other methods to temper/tamper one’s means of reaching the polls.

To best incorporate all of the factors in your thinking, the old ones of wages, owners, profit, expenses, quality and distribution are still there. But, the changes incurred through the more recent era of containerization of distribution and either ignorance of or avoidance of qualitative reckoning in a purchase have moved the source of labor overwhelmingly towards inexpensive pools of labor in overseas countries (or Mexico) that are limited in their regulation of production and its affluents. Waste, changing weather patterns and tides, and contamination are starting to be felt on a most personal level everywhere in the world from this ignorance. Will the cost to the environment now be a major factor in commerce and in the laws or will it only spill out through the occasional protest or boycott?

To attend to the common good, and to maintain as much freedom as Locke, Rousseau and other 18th century philosophes hoped was possible, one must ask if the government is a necessary and critical factor. For the Republican Party since the time of Reagan, when he famously stated the government is the problem, the party believed unfettered markets would deliver the best product. Let’s explore that concept.

What is your part in all of this? Are you a scorpion; are we, in the end, all scorpions? The Harvard Business Review examined six new books on economic thinking and opened its article with the parable of the toad and the scorpion. The rest of this musing will attend to the common good, from the national perspectives which were paramount in the past few centuries, to the present perspective that begs for a wider lens to include global commonalities and overlapping goals for the world in this crisis environment.

In exploring history, Keynes and Hayek, writing about and concluding their premises from the evidence of the Great War and ensuing Depression, sought to offer explanations and solutions. Hayek pushed for classic Adam Smith capitalism, Liberal with a capital “L” and unfettered capitalism to keep down unemployment and offer efficient factors towards improved efficiency, better profits and a “tide rising all boats”.  While Keynes argued that government’s thumb on the scale of the economy would insure better employment through regulation and protections for labor from the forces of the market, and board room, that would harm society. 

After the debacle of the failures of the 2007-2009 event that is called The Great Recession, the government took the decision to save the banks. We can explore that option, though it would need its own musing. Did the banks, and the government, learn from their decisions a better way to regulate the market? The esteemed magazine, Newsweek, ran a headline We Are All Socialists Now. Though, some economists felt the government’s decision aimed at saving the home buyers instead of the banks would have been better. But, some people owned many homes and were part of a rentier rearrangement and a new class of capitalists. Should second, third or sixth homes, none of which were ever occupied by the owner, and perhaps even an LLC-owned home, also be allowed to exist? Cities fighting AirBnB are asking the same question.

In today’s world, one only a bit over a decade from The Great Recession, we see capitalism’s memory is horrible and relentlessly one side pushes for the rising tide option. The Government needs a philosophy of economics and a clear understanding of socialism and Marxism as philosophies. Each has the government’s thumb on the scale with the government either owning some responsibility or perhaps all of the responsibility. Did Marx really want every decision to be made by a commune? Was it Salem we need to worry about, or The Handmaid’s Tale that could arrive from communal commitments to and control of society’s directions by a domineering and impassioned government with oversight over ever dollar spent by it associated to its employees and citizens alike? Does the U.S. Constitution have an economic moral barometer and trigger point? 

Fine tuning the power of government must involve the economy with some form of philosophy, and perhaps always coupled with the environment from now on-even Nixon was strangely sympathetic to this concept. Tariffs were the solution in the early, 18th century, discussion in the time of mercantilism when the fight was about mercantilism versus the free market with one nation’s overall economic health the goal. But today’s world is much more global and the old ideas and ways are now much more intertwined and complex. Trump pushed tariffs to mitigate competition, so does Biden. What will the future economic leaders feel to about government oversight? 

The Columbia professor, Joseph Stiglitz, was one of the six books mentioned by the Harvard Business Review. His new book is The Road to Freedom: Economy and the Good Society. He has certainly tied economics to the function of government in a very dynamic way. Stiglitz recently wrote for The Atlantic to expand on his views to be found in the book. Wolves were in the title. Scott LaPierre, in his review posed the comment;

“Is it the way we’ve grown that has gotten us into this mess, or does growth itself have limits in a world with finite resources? Will technological innovation be the driving force, or do we also need new ways of thinking about our consumption?”

Isn’t this the new salvo to which Stieglitz is referring in the war of economists; we have the method and the means, we need only find a new term that is not a trigger for politicians. The Good Society should start being discussed in kindergarten and continue into the realms of all social circles and dinner parties with the whole considered over one’s own. One’s own is also a concept that should be fully understood from kindergarten onwards. Isn’t education a funny thing?

Oh, speaking of such, if you have a few minutes, the recent substack by Heather Cox Richardson gives a good current insight into government involvement in the economy. Her whole raison d’etre is to educate. Or this clip with her and Jeffery Rosen, author on a new book on the pursuit of Happiness, moderated by Ken Burns. We cannot escape looking back to our own history to inform the future options.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/neoliberalism-freedom-markets-hayek/678124

The Roosevelt Institute team is committed to building a better future—for all.  https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/ 

The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-road-to-freedom-economics-and-the-good-society-joseph-e-stiglitz/20976768?ean=9781324074373 

https://hbr.org/2024/03/does-capitalism-need-reform-or-revolution

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/april-23-2024?r=20qr4w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email 

Israel: It is a country; It cannot speak

As the conflict between the Israelis and Hamas plays out, keeping in mind that one is led by a democratically elected administration and the other has not held a vote in over a decade to decide policy, the world needs to parse this conflict through a world lens. The present issue is a war that is an extension of one that began a long time ago The resolution of any war has to involve many factors, many participants, many sides and issues and outcomes. There is never a perfect solution, only a cessation of the conflict. In such cases there may be adherents to continued violence, but the system, the world’s and the intimate participants, are committed to a non-violent status with guard rails to address any instances of violent involvement by anyone to affect their desired outcome for as far into the future as possible.

When the world enters into this desired political stasis, it is usually because of a long, protracted period of violent attempts to assert an outcome desirable to one side. History is filled with horrible examples of individuals and nations, or should I more emphatically assert- individuals in command of a nation’s direction, diplomacy and military making horrible decisions. We should learn from those bad decisions. It brings to mind the royal leaders, republicans and parliamentarians of five countries (let’s leave ambiguous Italy out of this specific condemnation-it is still trying to figure itself out) in 1914 who decided to commit millions to slaughter to support a dubious premise. It turned out those leaders would be seriously altered or eliminated in their countries, all of which relinquished their position as world leaders that would be finalized in 1945 when those five countries would take a back seat to the USSR and United States, with China’s sleeping Tiger only getting started in its revitalization. Europe has also revitalized, but its three century history of imperialism and plunder is still being assessed by historians. Cultural benefits must be weighted against exploitative outcomes as historians write and explore further.

At the end of this musing I will return to this theme, but the more immediate, prescient and present issue is Gaza/Hamas/Israel. October 7th is yet another incident arising out of the U.N. decision in 1947 to grant the opportunity for statehood of two countries, Israel and Palestine, out of the region then known as Palestine. It is a name that has cultural roots, but for centuries the region was dominated by the Ottoman Turks, its own cultural/historical entity that had been morphing through world history into a more secular version of its former self. The Great War changed this status of the Ottoman Empire irrevocably (the Sultan replaced by Ataturk and secularization and the empire dissolved), with the post war world of its empire divided into regions we are still trying to sort after more than a century.

History can easily claim huge mistakes were made. One was Palestine, first nudged towards today during the Great War with the Balfour Declaration and then with the assigning of “Mandate” status of Palestine to Britain, when it was really just another colony in the waning decades of European world imperialism. By 1947, after World War Two, Nazism, the Holocaust and the fragmenting and continuing push back to that European imperialism which will nearly be extinguished by the 1960s, the newly hatched United Nations took its shot at asserting authority in Palestine. The Brits were happy to pass the baton after their troubles there for the previous three decades. The two sides did not agree, but that is a matter for historians to blame the radicals on each side and the early years of war between them. That outcome left the Arabs on their back feet and the Israelis dispossessing much property from them in their new country. Did they really think it was over….settled? What would it take to get to “settlement”? Hopefully we can see from today’s perspective and recent violence a way forward.

Again, a nation does not speak. There is no spokesman for Palestine or Israel in 1947 who arises out of a democratic process. I attended to this issue and consequence in earlier musings. If you return to these two musings, you can see I devoted much time, words and effort in my attempt to understand and illuminate the issue and its factors. Since October 7th, when my first musing addressed the incident from our perch in Dublin, where we were vacationing, I used the 1916 reaction of the British to the failed uprising of the Irish in Dublin, the Bush administration’s dismal reaction to 9/11 by ducking Afghanistan and invading Iraq, and Israel’s opportunity to avoid catastrophe after October 7th if they (who are the individuals in this “they’?) make a reasoned decision on how to react to the horrors Hamas perpetrated on the innocent citizens of Isreal. The world, or a vast majority of the world’s citizens, were rightly horrified by the methods used by the invaders. They seemed to be begging for Armageddon. Have the accomplished that?

The “They”, formed extraordinarily after the attack, were five men. Since then these five are the ones making a final decision, but since then the world has also opted to push back against what they consider. The big players are the United States, whose most important leader in the policy making and pushing is Joe Biden, the Israeli populace, who does not in big numbers like Israel’s current leadership, the Arab countries with a Sunni-leaning leadership and many fingers in the world’s pie of politics, the European Union and its NATO membership, and on the other side, the Shia-led leadership and followers of Iran (with the caveat that Shia Afghanistan and the Taliban are still thorns in the region), China, Iran and now a new version of Turkey under Erdogan. 

These five men, all leaders in Israeli politics, were brought together out of necessity by Netanyahu immediately after the attack in extraordinary circumstances. They are not a close-knit group of friends, more like a Lincoln cabinet of rivals needed to lead during a time of war. After it is over, perhaps one of the five will be the new Prime Minister. It will be a most interesting time for Israel, which has let the last two and more decades transpire by building more settlements in the West Bank, tacitly accepting, even financially supporting, Hamas as a Palestinian factor, and attempting to crystallize the ground game and gains of the past nearly sixty years as de facto “Israel”. Only history will tell if the real solution is something very different.

Who will be Israel’s future spokesperson? Who will be the Palestinian’s? Those are the two questions in search of a critically important answer for the next two or three decades. The world is watching. I have opined that the best answers would be leaders who accept that the horrific violence, the unsustainable status quo and the unfair nature of displacement of so many individuals over the last three generations needs to be addressed. In 1947 the spokespersons for rationality and reason lost out to ones who picked up guns and settled the initial outcome violently. The Jewish factors nearly lost but prevailed and accepted the initial premise of a two-state solution but amended it with new borders and conditions in their newly formed country. Arabs did not get to keep all of their land within the Israel they formed and nor did they have equal citizenship status. Since the ‘48 war there have been numerous violent clashes and wars, revisions to boundaries, more refugees, and attempts, usually with.an American president presiding and twisting arms to get some rational spokespersons from either side to address the issues and accept a solution. There are templates from those talks to which the future can turn. It is my hope that Biden is the one to start the next talks, with more moderates from Israel and Palestine convening to form a final “Two-State” solution that looks back to 1948, or at least 1967, to address everyone’s (of the moderate factions, that is) concerns about the future. For centuries Islam and Judaism, plus Christianity, found common ground and allowed for a mosque, a church and a temple to exist on three of the four corners of an intersection. Let’s return to those days. The world must have that in the United Nations, in resolving ecological issues, in expanding the concept of humanism and human rights throughout the world, and in tempering the impact of economic polarization as the markets continue to mesh and expand throughout the world. All of the major issues need input, regulation, agreement and governance by rational individuals to allow for a peace coexistence.

This musing arose out of watching Brooks and Capehart on their Friday exchange where they review the week. The three men easily used the terms Iran and Isreal as entities that spoke and decided. They replaced the country names with :they: as the discussion progressed. I objected in my mind and set about writing. It is Netanyahu, Biden, the Ayotallah, and a bunch of very important people on the moderate sides who will need to choose which of the first three get to solve the problem of Israel and Palestine. Not the usual suspects. I think Biden, I hope Biden, is the one leading the discussion…I think he may be already doing it behind the scenes……..Fania Oz-Salzberger also has a viewpoint. I like what HE says, “The peace-seeking, justice-pursuing part of Israel’s public sphere is vast, and far from placid.”   Happy Spring.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/20/israel-war-cabinet-iran-netanyahu-gallant-gantz

Time’s Winged Chariot Hurrying By: Old Codgers, Thoughts of Life, and a Goodwin Era

The BabyBoomer generation is beginning to feel its age. I, born in 1946, top out the group. In previous blogs the concept of age, and of gaining context between generations, have intrigued me. What is apparent in all this contemplation that there is no substitute for experience for aiding contextualization. It is a genius who can sort out life’s opportunities and connections and alter our cultural and political experience from a perch of youth.

In the last few decades, there have been mentors from the Greatest Generation who have assisted my own growth and maturation. For those coming in behind my generation, they know these people from newsreels or documentaries. People like Walter Cronkite, for instance. He was so important as a journalist in his career that his thoughts and comments could alter the direction of the country as he did when he commented on the Vietnam War.

Cronkite was one of those from the previous generation who overlapped our, Mary and my, lives in physical terms to a degree. He was a sailor, loving his sail boat, Assignment, which he moored in Martha’s Vineyard. He loved Castine, Maine, not too far from Camden, where he would summer for two months nearly every year. In the latter part of his life, our own lives had taken us to Martha’s Vineyard for a summer business we started on the island-we would carry on this venture for over twenty years, ending on Mount Desert Island in Northeast Harbor with a summer shop. Our partner in the venture, Kathy, and her husband, Leon, had a home on Martha’s Vineyard and wonderful connections that allowed us to fend our wares from China in wonderful settings on the island, all the while having fantastic conversations with the island’s residents. 

One day Leon, freshly arriving on the island from the ferry, where he had come across and spent the trip outside enjoying the sea breeze and sights outside, shared the ferry deck with Cronkite, himself coming back from the mainland. Leon did not intrude, knowing Cronkite was probably accosted dozens of times per day by the public. Regardless, Cronkite came over alongside Leon and shared the breeze and view. Just two passengers loving the Vineyard experience. Cronkite commented on the value of the view and the quality of life, or something to that affect, to which Leon heartily agreed. They spent a short time living that moment sharing it without comment. To Cronkite, it was probably part of his life’s assessment that was second nature to his journalistic demeanor, but, for Leon, it was a moment with a giant who was actually not so assuming. Leon loved the trip. For Cronkite, he was simply on the water, which he always loved. He loved to be on Assignment, as he was when he was not on air, and not really on an assignment.

The president who took the hit on the comment Cronkite made about Vietnam was LBJ. The war ruined LBJ’s legacy, and at least the latter part of his political life. He was never the same after 1968, deciding not to run for a second term. It was during his presidency, and then at his ranch in Texas after office, that Doris Kearns Goodwin, wife of the Goodwin in this musing’s title, comes into view.

A Southern vice president, needed by JFK to pull in those votes, the two men were chalk and cheese. JFK was a seeming novice compared to the craft LBJ practiced in Congress. It was during their tenures that another almost Baby Boomer, Doris Kearns, came into her own. Born in 1943 she is not technically a boomer, but her sentiments and importance, joined to her husband, Dick Goodwin, a few years her senior, was critical to shaping the direction of the 1960s. That decade was the defining decade of the Boomer era. So stark is the contrast between the 1950s and the 1960s that a simple listing of events and changes marks the radicalization of the country and beginning a new era.

That it was ushered in by Camelot and a forty-two year old president was a defining feature. At age 28, Goodwin was brought onto the scene, mentored by JFK’s speech writer, Ted Sorensen. Sorenson had joined Kennedy in 1953 as an aide to JFK’s burgeoning Senate career. Sorenson noticed Goodwin during the 1960 campaign and brought him onboard. He remained a major factor in the Democratic Party from then on.

Goodwin died a few years ago, leaving Doris in their rambling 19th century home in Concord, Massachusetts. In those last years of his life, the two of them had begun digging through the many boxes of files, notes and other documents accumulated in their political/journalistic lives. In this case, it was not your normal stuff crammed into the attic, basement or garage as the rest of us do. It was a record of the central years of the Cold War and more.

Doris Kearns Goodwin has taken it up as a topic of her new book, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s. I may be just about ready to revisit that decade, though it will be challenging. So much was possible, and we have squandered any advantage it presented. The war, Nixon, and so much tied to the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy and voter suppression, gerrymandering, judge-shopping and stuffing, have not endeared me to our later history. Doris was recently on the Colbert Show plugging the new book. In this clip, she, too, looks back at the hopefulness of the 60s and admonished the youth of today to get out and work for the future. Take a look. It is being reviewed now by the likes of Heather Cox Richardson, whom we saw and heard speak in Belfast last night. She curiously remains cautiously hopeful as a historian. Rachel Maddow, Anne Applebaum, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Levitsky and Ziblatt, Fareed Zakaria, Timothy Snyder, Masha Gessen, David Horowitz and others have tackled our present era seeking its roots and causes and why so many are leaning towards authoritarianism now. The 60s may be more appropriate nostalgia for this aging codger. I’ll let you know. 

Listen to Kearns Goodwin on Morning Joe as a teaser. And, a nice article by and about her in The Atlantic is also wonderful.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/05/richard-goodwin-jfk-lbj-speechwriter/677844

Prince to King: What Do You Think of King Charles III?

The Tudors? The House of Windsor? William the Conqueror? The Victorians? Of these leading royal families in the history of Britain, what do you make of them? If you felt Richard the Third got a bum deal from Shakespeare and did not deserve to end up his life for a millennium under the ground where eventually a parking lot would be constructed, or that the history of the island without a 1066 invasion would have left the present England a very different, and more inclusive place after the Battle of Hastings, or the deal after James II, son of another Charles in the distance British past, allowed Parliament to choose another branch of the family that did not speak English in order for the recently empowered Parliament to dominate British politics for much of the 18th century, then you might lean more towards the House of Windsor. The final outcome is still up in the air, though the present day is leaning in favor of it staying.

But, this present branch of the English monarchical house is really just an extension of all the others who either had too many wives and also destroyed some magnificent monasteries, not because they were offering poor advice to the poor, but because the lead in the windows was valuable. That that family, the Tudors, could not resolve the succession issue or the fairness of accepting various interpretations of language and power as outlined in the Old Testament and would rather limit the power of the Pope to do so, killed many of their own, meaning family members, as well as Brits, and a variety of other Europeans, and Africans, and indigenous peoples throughout the world, while along the way accepted a heir who was very Protestant, meaning Presbyterian, from Scotland, where a branch of ultra-orthodox Christianity stemming from Calvin’s brutal interpretation of the Christian messages, had been planted in the early 16th century. They also tried to marry themselves into wider power throughout Europe, only to find those other powers sought to abridge that power and conquer the British Isles.  English history is really complicated, and certainly messy.

It was touch and go for a few centuries between James I and his first Charles, who was beheaded, for the descendants of Henry VIII, but those pesky Brits kept securing wider control of the world with their ships, explorers, conquerors and scientists as they sought dominion. After a few Georges, and finally a queen who outsurvived many male other heirs to inherit the throne and marry her first cousin, an age was named after Victoria. History is still trying to sort out their opinion of that era, when much imperialism was the rage.

That this practice was widespread in royal families throughout Europe is an understatement. Protecting power and keeping it in the family had been the norm for centuries, with some historical anomalies the result. Victoria and cousin Albert will continue the practice with their many children, ending in the Great War being waged between three cousins begotten from Victoria and Albert’s union, and having cousins fighting cousins in many other houses. In fact, due to the Great War, the English throne’s strong lineage with German houses became an embarrassment and that is why they chose the castle name to the west of London for their new family name.

The present bunch comes from that family on the Thames west of London. They have continued marriages built from the great English families, with a notable exception because of Edward VIII, and more recently Meghan Markle. Still they can really draw a crowd. What the present British public feels about the royal family is mixed, though polls show the royals mostly supported, even if there are weak spots and issues aplenty. Like the Austrians who have lost their royals even as they still have much of the physical infrastructure of what they created, is it useful to ask the question “Is a country better to have a parliamentary monarchy for a variety of reasons rather than to jettison the system?”

Looking at the present monarch in Britain, King Charles III, is a complex process. His life has been scrutinized like few others in public service with a long history of one’s family to flavor opinions. His own life has been dissected from the point of his birth to the present day. Documentaries, motion pictures and media platform series have been devoted to the Windsor’s impact on 20th century history, for which Charles gets drawn into the assessment. 

His own specific role dates from early family photos and the long-assessed relationship and impact between Elizabeth II and her Prince Philip. Here are some official facts about their wedding. The Vogue account of their relationship has some facts that don’t mesh with the royal account, and is very positive towards the two. The Guardian’s account, from a newspaper who did not give much of a lease to the royals, has a bit of fun posting the testier side of their relationship. The Independent newspaper, another not-too-friendly British paper to the royals, reported on the relationship between Charles and his father. The television series, The Crown, took on the relationship between the Windsors from its early days to the death of Diana. This last portion, between Charles and Diana, saw the series’ producers and writers speculating about what was said in private between important members of the royals and others that did not offer the most supportive vision of how Charles handled his relationship with his immediate family, especially between Diana and his two sons. History will continue to parse these years.

But one program that endeared me to Charles is one focused on the life he made at Highgrove. One feels, after watching the clip, that Charles needs such a place to remove himself from his duties. Yet, after waiting patiently for a lifetime to assume the role of king, he seems to be managing the role with aplomb, maneuvering through his strong feelings about environmental issues even while assuming to be apolitical as the monarch, managing the post-divorce world with his consort after the marriage of Harry to Meghan, which is still unresolved, and now with his, and Princess Kate’s, illnesses dominating the news. The Windsor history, with the dirty laundry of some of the remaining members still to be completely aired, and the further unfolding of the two brothers and their life’s decisions to transpire into a more concrete public position, all leave the world’s public choosing sides between Charles, William and Harry. I am not sure any account will be either fair, or accurate, in such a family dynamic.

But, to get a side of Charles as he celebrates his home at Highgrove on the eve of a specifically commissioned concert piece celebrating the gardens at Highgrove, Charles talks of the future, of the environment, his mission to educate and share, through his garden there, how one can build a life around planting and watching plants grow and observing the fauna enjoying it, too. There is much to recommend, and for us all to follow, even though the video is over a decade old. What will happen in the next few years as Charles ages and passes, and William takes over, and Harry does what he and Meghan will do, is still awaiting a page on which to write that history.

Forgotten By History: Consider Instead OMOTENASHI おもてなし

Humans of most cultures have the persistent and long-documented aspiration to be remembered after they are gone. Somewhere in history, those living decided it would be advisable, in order to maintain memories, that edifices be erected to hold those lives of the departed dear and present in some form of visible construct. It could be a metaphorical physical structure, perhaps with some visible connection to the departed, or it could be a chant, or some written or orally repeated commemoration. For those departed of special notoriety, perhaps an annual commemoration, accompanied by a community gathering of some number might follow. Some cultures, interpreting the afterlife as one similar to the living life, provided food and other items of necessity to accompany the deceased in to their journey in these netherworlds. That there seems to be a consistency of sorts over that millennia of human exchange and cultural development is intriguing.

Only in the past couple centuries, with Darwin’s speculating that any living entity is only interested in survival, the true meaning of this word must be contemplated. As best as we can make out, even though we humans of the past millennia or so have allowed wide contemplation of competing ideas about other species, even extending as far as perhaps extraterrestrial or in some spirit form that influences and perhaps has their own “history” and “afterlife”. Survival drives economics, psychology, cultural structure and hopefully allows us to understand its implications to us who are still living through science. Science has been the most reliable form of mitigation in the last millennia, but wouldn’t it have been wonderful if those first “humans”, contemplating their place in the “universe” understood the concept of explaining the past and present for the future so persistently that each generation, like the indigenous settlers in North America who preceded the Europeans for twenty or so millennia, and many of whom appreciated decision-making from the perspective of seven generations into the future, had all had some written record. And, each culture and its writers would have all been committed to passing it on. Coupled with an appreciation of each other’s differences in recording words in a visible form, each culture would have committed to their legacy and made sure their version was translatable to a “universal dictionary” from the beginning of recorded time..perhaps a hundred millennia ago(?) What would that mean? Archeology is attempting to do a work around because of the absence of such a dictionary. Of course, there’s that problem of the authority controlling history and expunging earlier versions. I know this is also in our nature and has been completed innumerable times.

So my thoughts of how a culture best remembers itself, why many of us are concerned with legacy and being remembered, is getting a nudge from science in the usage of DNA. Skip Gates has also intrigued us. A recent program with Michael Douglas took him back far further than he had ever understood about himself. He knew a bit of his Jewish ancestry and his roots to the Pale in Eastern Europe,but only so very vaguely. The program, through his mother’s “American” roots, took him back several centuries here to a relative who was central to George Washington’s success and is honored through a statue in New Jersey. Who knew…someone did, but not the Douglases. Now they do. How much don’t we all know?

My thoughts were taken on a different journey, though, by another program found on PBS. It is on the On Demand section of the new method of platform plundering and searching we must all now engage in, or, as is another option within YouTube, which seems to be the other platform taking over much of my life. This fifteen minutes are your option for a new beginning, and then another one, and another……

The link above will engage you for fifteen minutes of a life’s lesson. It is reported by the son, G, a Japanese/American rapper whose sister and parents also feature in their story. The word of the day, OMOTENASHI おもてなし, means in the worst form of translation “hospitality”. But, to a Japanese person who embraces what has been passed down for at least a millennium, beginning in the far distant Japanese past but formalized through the Tea Ceremony, it is a way of life. For the son of the couple featured in those fifteen minutes, G, his takeaway from a life with his parents, who have passed on the concept to him, is “The greatest heirloom that can be inherited is philosophy.”

The restaurant no longer exists, but has been replaced in their retirement by one who practices the craft of the Japanese Tea Ceremony. The Triangle in North Carolina is a bit more than than Raleigh and Durham, which also encompasses Cary, North Carolina, or, for local Carolinians, The “Containment Area for Relocated Yankees”. It is another example of the question, who is an American, which relates to the senior Yamazawas and their two children, who will carry on the concept in their lives. Where will those ripples extent, and finally end? Or, is there only always another beginning? And never an ending..How do we remember or preserve or pass on what is valuable? Shed the shallow and seek the profound. Thank you, Greg Cox, for your quest to do so all those years ago. Pass it on…….. click on the link at the bottom to see what it is today.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by George (@gyamazawa)

https://www.yamazushirestaurant.com and what it is today

When Do Your “Frissons” Inhabit You?: Embrace Them or Not, They Are Messages from an Important Source.

The Human Animal is a wonderful, terrible thing. We have accomplished so much over our millennia on earth, yet, our collective history is filled with tragic, horrendous disappointments. History’s arc, as captured by many historians, hopes for a positive bend. Well…..

The morning’s “frisson” came from viewing an interview with Martin Amis, a British author whose novels have offered his readers rich discourse and mind-enhancing ideas and images. His fictional works are built on much research in order to construct a paradigm and appearance from the past that both reflects that era but also inserts it into our present feelings and moments. In an interview with him years ago after he had written Zone of Interest, he used the word to describe how the source of his thoughts and plots sometimes come from a frisson.

One of the best modern authors able to conjure images and characters from constructing language was Martin Amis. I must admit to this as a recent fan, though, arriving at his feet to champion him only after his passing. As he succumbed at the age of 73, I find that alarming and much to my dissatisfaction. Losing a great mind and arbiter of human foibles while she still has stories to tell, ideas to bandy about, provocateuring to do is always a sad day for the rest of us who have benefitted from another artist’s, scientist’s, philosopher’s or historian’s point of view.. This interview about his recent book, Zone of Interest, will avail you of his wit, memory, craft and mind….and why he is also sometimes called, and embraces, the moniker curmudgeonly. Sad, his passing is.

It was in this interview about Zone of Interest that Amis described the various sources for his inspiration about themes and characters. We all must admit to being influenced by the occasional frisson, though for many of us we are often unaware of the nudge and simply let it pass unawares. It is the author, the artist, the actor, who best plucks them from the ether before their image dissolves to add weight, heft and history to their arrival on the scene. Thank heavens, or whomever or whatever, for this human conceit.

In his own quest for devising a world intentionally constructed through the written word with the cause of “War Against Cliche”, Amis found the theme of writing about the Holocaust from the perspective of the family of Rudolph Höss. Amis has his critics, but they cannot deny his attention to the loom of language skills. He apparently was bequeathed his curmudgeonly status from his father, though they gladly separated their approaches from each other in interviews. That the son was gifted is fully apparent by his success has been affirmed by both his admirers and critics. History and the anthologies of the future will determine the length of the legs he will have with future readers. 

In the linked YouTube interview above with Amis, he mentions his compatriot writer, Sadie Smith; quoting her as saying literature, or was it the novel, will be dead by the end of her lifetime. We’ve all on the literary side of things lamented the sad demise of younger readers who have succumbed to the click or ding and the distractions of AI. Who knows, or will they even be able to discern, if AI in the future provides them with their “truths”.As any good student of literature must confront, there have been giants in the past, who stood on the giants of their own past and who wished to bend the conventions of literature in order to move “forward?” and offer a new construct for presenting ideas (It took me more than seventy years to reapproach and finally reap the benefits of Joyce in Ulysses.. Such conceit, such wisdom, such wealth proceeds from these exercises. Sometimes writers get it right…..sometimes they get bent into pretzels and pass away. Along the way, they at least provoke.

When I was first confronted with Zone of Interest, it was in its cinematic form. This was presented by another interview, sought out by me after the interview with Amis about his written version, to see how Jonathan Glazer would handle the topic of the Holocaust through a different approach. He, too, had ambition to use his artistic skills with the medium of film to address humans’ ability for cruelty, as perhaps best exhibited in the NAZI Final Solution. Yet, Glazer did not want to expose yet another example of this cruelty, this absolute epitome of evil, through visiting the camps from the inside. Still, he wanted his viewers to know the evil was there, in the frame, both in the characters’ minds and actions, but also in the ether of the surrounding sets and within the moments his audience would see and hear what was crossing the Fourth Wall. His own walls within the shooting process became a unique experience for the actors in the cinematographic masterpiece. He was fairly comfortable that many in today’s world have already availed themselves of the myriad opportunities to see the fotos and videos, or have read the versions like those in literature so well encapsulated by authors like Primo Levi. Within the pages of the books he wrote in his attempt to either purge or address his daemons which had been created within Auschwitz, we see the horror and the humanity Levi felt. 

By the time I concluded the Glazer interview, in his case a panel discussion with the producer, cinematographer, main actors, and the other critical artistic contributors assembled to carry out the thoughts of Glazer that had been conjured over many years in his attempt to tell the story of how humans can construct barriers between the unpleasant stimuli in their lives in order for them to carry on a “normal” daily routine. The main purpose of the film is not necessarily to convey the entirety of Auschwitz, but to allow each of us to contemplate whether we are appalled at what we witness on screen or can commune in some way in how the daily lives of the Höss family members as they carry out mundane experiences in the garden, lounge, dinner table, or in family and professional meetings.

Rudolph, the Commandant, had married Hedwig Hensel in 1929. Between 1930 and 1943 they had five children: two sons and three daughters. It is the idyllic life they experience for the several years during which Rudolph was charged with orchestrating efficiency, profit and comprehensive abilities to manage the thousands of lives at his mercy. This was his whole “Zone of Interest”, including his family, which was utilized by Glazer to tell his story of the Holocaust. If you were previously unaware of Höss, though you understood there was certainly such a commandant at Auschwitz, I recommend a reading of his Wikipedia page and especially the letters he wrote to his wife and his elder son just before he was hanged by the Polish for his crimes against humanity.. 

Once you have engaged in the author, Amis’ accounts for his purpose in constructing his text as he did, and then the concert of collaboration that took this initial theme beyond the words and attempted to capture the very essence of family life virtually on the walls of Auschwitz’s camp, it was agreed none of what happened there would ever be witnessed by the movie audience when Glazer came to his own decision about the format of his own storytelling. Yet, the sound track is always reminding you, along with the script and the uniforms and dress, that you are in that period and place as you watch the Höss family carry out their “idyllic” lives on screen. In fact, it looks as brand new as it would have been in 1943.

The methods utilized by the cinematographers, from cast to custom designers, embraced by the composer of sounds and his technicians, the props and the set, were all meant to be experienced without the obvious intrusion of the film crew. Cameras were hidden on the set, with the technical side of the capture of images housed in the basement out of view and hearing from the actors. Scenes were filmed and collected from at times more than ten cameras stealthily placed around the set based on that day’s shooting requirements. The same for the microphone placement. The actors felt obligated and obliged in their attempts to embody the very moment of the conceit of action taking place in 1942 and 1943. What a wonderful attempt at a verismo approach. This excellent account in the Hollywood Reporter will avail you of how Glazer took Amis’s fictional family over and replaced them with the Höss family. If you’ve gotten this far, then you will be fascinated by the interview with Sandra Hüller and Christian Friedel about their journey to becoming involved.

I hope you sometime in the future submit to its viewing. I will do so shortly and perhaps this musing with have another paragraph or two after this is accomplished……..

Your Next Question?: The Most Important Question of the Moment? Asked On PBS? WHY? How many citizens of this country have ears filled with cider?

Information, rooted in the word “Inform”, which, for any living organism it important to prepare for the future. Some questions are simple in their importance and whether an answer is existential. Others are more critical in they get to the root of existence. But, in which category of questioning should we all engage? Sometimes the questions roll around an empty theater and are delivered to an adoring audience willfully hoping that the performance will deliver a message that leads them out into the light. Ah, then there’s the unsolicited response in a performance like Marlon Brando, as Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, warning that unsolicited promptings from a person offering the illogical and outlandish in order to get into your head, your pocketbook or “your vote”…..

Sky Masterson : “One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand-new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not accept this bet, because as sure as you stand there, you’re going to wind up with an ear full of cider.”

As always on Fridays, PBS has two commentators on from differing perspectives to give its audience the opportunity to listen to a moderator ask questions to each to perhaps arrive at disparate responses for the audience to consider in order to become better informed. Would that it was that simple. 

Consider the terms:Inform, Context, Audience, Source and Purpose. In order to ask a question, the asker needs to understand the context of the question being asked, who is involved in the process and who is listening to any answer. The audience of PBS is a skewed on that prefers those two answers and probably listens deliberately to find a nuance to allow them better information to conclude in a particular way. The source, PBS and the three individuals engaged in the Friday practice have always been respected within a particular audience. The vast majority of the overall important audience, voters in this country, do not watch PBS on Fridays. My own proclivities and the modern algorithms that skew my life presented me with this option for viewing within the week following its airing last Friday….I clicked. I “paid” little out of the significant funds laid out by me to gather information to move my life foreword to hear and see the clip, and its message gave me a needed answer. Yet, why was it not satisfying to hear and see the clip. Because it was preaching to the choir. Prior to the 1990s, none of what has transpired in your last few minutes of reading this was not possible…I could not have seen this clip in the manner provided me today, I could not have typed out this musing in the manner I did, and you would not have been able to be a part of my audience to listen and see this musing. Most likely, too, the population of the entire United States would have had a fairly aggregated view of what was happening in the world, presented on less than a dozen “air waves” to he population, which was also dominated by a fairly centralized written media empire that sought advertising revenue to say vital economically from hard print copies. Magazines and newspapers are a very different form of information at this point. Our “subscriptions” are varied and the vagaries of attending to all, whether for entertainment or information, is a central part of our life’s frustrations at present.

At that earlier time in the 1980s, cable television became available to split up, to allow for hundreds of choices as an alternative to “over the air” to deliver information. Those sending information wanted advertising revenue to garnered to influence the audience into spending their money for a product. Also, candidates utilized a variety of methods to inform the electorate about an upcoming choice in an election They wanted to get out the vote, and their voters, to support them in the most critical arena of buy and sell, an election. How times have changed.

In the PBS clip, with the two opposing viewpoints voiced by Jonathan Capehart and David Brooks, Capehart, after answering with a slightly mocked air of exasperation offers the comment…”Your next question?” Or, duh, isn’t it obvious? Shouldn’t we all know the answer to that question? Yet…..we don’t all know. We, have a significant number of the minority of our voting electorate actually choosing suicide, in that they willingly want our system of government to crash, to have a person who does not accept the will of the majority gain the power to make decisions for the country in an ad hoc, authoritarian way. 

Actually, though, the perpetrator in this instance, the one claiming he can produce the Jack of Spades out of an unsealed deck is not spewing ad hoc comments, he is very deliberate. But, is he earnest, honest, looking out for our best interests? Those watching PBS know the answer to the previous question. “Your next question?” What is it?

Lamentations….we are all about to suffer them for the next seven-plus months. Advertising, campaign events, placards, bumper stickers, painted drop doors on the back of pickup trucks, dinner conversations, overhearing comments in the vegetable aisle…..oy vey iz mir! Sind wir…

Of the world’s many billions, a portion of them in this country are allowed to vote…perhaps between three hundred and four hundred million….about three percent of the earth’s populace are going to decide the fate of earth in November. Strange times. Of that three percentish total, it is only in a few states, due to our strange electing process, that the votes make any difference, and in those states, the disparity is going to be between Exburb City Dwellers and rural voters. Many, too, will choose not to vote, or to vote for one of the non-binary options on the ballot. Each of those choices, not voting or not voting between to two obvious choices, is a major influence on the outcome. How do all of those in that position in the potential electorate in the United States take their responsibility to heart? Ah, the next question?

So, as you go about seeking to become informed, choosing the best sources, opening up as far as possible to alternative options, how do you feel about the rest of 2025? It is my sincere wish that you are one of those avoiding cider in your ears, and not simply by wearing a football helmet around to avoid all the other intrusions into one’s sanity and the gaining of meaningful information. Have a wonderful April and spring.