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Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."

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Friday, October 30, 2009

David Brooks writes a column today in the NY TIMES puzzling over whether Obama has the "determination" required of a "war president." [Am I the only person who thinks that Brooks looks like one of those fat-faced smug little boys, all dressed up in a suit and being fussed over by his mother, who is being pushed forward to ask the four questions at a seder?] The subject, of course, is Afghanistan, and Brooks longs for a Churchill [whom he references] who will doggedly pursue wars to "victory." As columnists often do, he attributes these thoughts to unnamed "military experts," but the opinions are transparently his. [Brooks, of course, like almost everyone else pontificating about matters of war and peace, has never spent a day in uniform, and wouldn't know which end of a rifle to put the ammunition in, but that does not stop him from speaking with calm self-assurance about sending other people into harm's way.]

This set me thinking about what the so often invoked Founding Fathers wanted in a president. By a delicious irony, Obama actually comes very close to what those slave owners had in mind -- someone who seeks to work cooperatively with Congress, who takes a limited and modest view of the title "Commander in Chief," who shuns "entangling alliances" and focuses his energies on the domestic needs of the country. Brooks acknowledges condescendingly that Obama is "intellectually sophisticated" and "is capable of processing complicated arguments and weighing nuanced evidence." But, Brooks says, what really matters is whether Obama possesses "tenacity, the ability to fixate on a simple conviction and grip it, viscerally and unflinchingly, through complexity anjd confusion."

Now, let us think. What recent president exhibited that trait, so much more important, accoridng to Brooks, than mere intellectual sophistication and the ability to weigh nuanced evidence? Ah yes, I remember -- George W. Bush.

If it weren't for the crossword puzzle and Frank Rich, I would cancel my subscription.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, France was far and away the richest and most powerful nation in Europe. French replaced Latin as the language of diplomacy and Versailles served as the archetypal McMansion to which lesser monarchs could only aspire. During that time, France meddled endlessly in the conflicts that were continually breaking out in Europe, secretly underwriting one side or the other, and sometimes funneling funds to both sides in order to maximize its influence.

Since the end of World War II, The United States has assumed the role of Meddler in Chief. So it did not surprise me to learn yesterday that America, through the CIA, has been underwriting Hamid Karzai's drug kingpin and Taliban supplier brother. Louis XIV would be proud.

This revelation has sparked a good deal of moral outrage, which at the moment is a politically useful thing. But the fault of America's Afghan policy does not consist in the fact that we have made a pact with the devil. Inasmuch as we have assumed the devil's role in much of the world, whom else would we throw in with? The fundamental problem of our Afghan adventure is that it has no recognizable or plausible purpose, and serves only to waste lives and resources without end.

The Bourbon meddling was equally without point. In the end, it bankrupted the monarchy, and we all know how that story ended. Do you have your knitting, Madame DeFarge?

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

These past several days have been emotionally wrenching. First the news [overblown] that Obama was trying to kill the public option. Then Harry Reid's bold move [my new hero]. Then Joe Lieberman's apparent announcement that he would vote to support a filibuster. [You have to be Jewish, as I am, to enjoy the privilege of saying openly just how thoroughly despicable he is. The knee-jerk apologists for Israel have a contemptuous epithet for people like me who dare to attack the Liebermans of this world. They call us "self hating Jews." The phrase always amuses a narcissist like me.] Just this morning, Reid and Durbin indicated that reconciliation is not off the table. [I hope my readers are sufficiently versed in the inside baseball of Washington politics to follow all of this].

Rather than try to blog by the minute, I shall let events unfold and instead talk for a bit about Freud's extraordinary book, THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS, which I have finally finished reading. Freud considered it his hauptwerk and he was not wrong. There is obviously much to say about the book, but I want to write about the courage Freud showed in writing it. Freud was, of course, thoroughly a man of his milieu, which is to say a bourgeois professional Jewish doctor in late nineteenth century Vienna. He was ferociously intelligent, classically educated [you need to be up on Greek mythology just to follow his associations to elements in his own dreams], fiercely ambitious, and prudish and proper in just the way one would expect. He routinely refers to masturbation as "pollution" and at one point, about to introduce a dream that features images of urination and defecation, he writes "I have the following short dream to relate, which every reader will read with disgust." [near the end of Chapter Six, "The Dream Work."] My copy is an old 1913 edition of the authorized translation, by A. A. Brill, of the Third Edition, and pasted into the front fly leaf is a slip of paper that reads: "Publisher's Note: The sale of this book is limited to Members of the Medical, Scholastic, Legal, and Clerical professions."

Despite the almost universal rejection he faced when he announced his clinical findings, Freud persevered, acknowledging openly in the accounts of his own dreams the intensity of his desire for professional success and recognition. The fact seems to be that had Freud pursued a more conventional neurological career, he might have actually been appointed to the professorship he so desired [though the fact that he was Jewish worked against him]. Instead, he followed where his research led him, violating enormously the powerful social taboos of his milieu.

The example I find most enchanting concerns the issue of infant sexuality. It was an unquestionable premise of all psychiatric discussion in his earlier days that babies and little children are asexual, only exhibiting sexual feelings and wishes upon entering puberty. But patient after patient, under the hypnosis that was then Freud's principal therapeutic technique [learned from the great French neurologist, Charcot], reported having been sexually molested by her father as a young child. Freud's reports of these findings scandalised his audience. He was, after all, talking about upstanding Viennese bourgeois. Eventually Freud concluded that the reports were actually accounts of infantile wishes, not experiences, an extremely important realization. But this, of course, made things even worse! So, the fathers were not abusers; the little girls were sex mad creatures lusting after their fathers!

We are now so accustomed to these ideas -- thanks, of course, to Freud -- that it is extremely difficult for us to think ourselves into the world that Freud inhabited, and to understand the strength of the inhibitions he had to overcome in order to do his revolutionary work.

Well, enough already. If you haven't read it, I strongly suggest spending several weeks with THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS.

Friday, October 23, 2009

At the moment, as you may have noticed, the Republican Party is engaged in a particularly bitter internecine battle over whom to support in the 23rd Congressional District of New York. This upstate district, which has the distinction of not having gone Democratic in a House race since the Civil War [the real Civil War, not the one the Republicans are now waging], was carried by Obama something like 52-48 in 2008. After Obama named the long time Republican holder of the seat as Secretary of the Navy, a relatively moderate Republican woman won the seat for the remainder of the term. Now the fanatical right-wingers, frantic to shoot themselves in the foot, have thrown their support behind the nominee of the Conservative Party, with the result that in the latest polls, the Democrat is actually leading the three way race with barely one third of the declared voters.

Why do I allude to this obscure race, save for the schadenfreude it affords? Because as we come down to the wire in the epic battle over health care reform, countless ostensibly knowledgeable commentators are making absurd claims about Obama's wimpishness, or his betrayal of liberal principles, or his unwillingess to wield the hammer when it is needed. "The Democrats control both houses of Congress and have sixty votes in the Senate. Why, save for Obama's bizarre lust for bipartisanship, can they not simply pass the bill he says he wants?"

Let me connect up these two matters, as lawyers say. Howard Dean and the Democratic Party made a deliberate decision to broaden their electoral efforts in 2006 and 2008, contesting districts and even states that had previously simply been conceded to the Republicans. They went out of their way to find moderate Democrats, Blue Dog Democrats, who might actually have a chance of taking safe Republican seats. They sought out Iraq War veterans, military men and women with impeccable records of war-time service. They were under no illusion that these candidates, should they win, would morph into flaming liberals. But they made a judgment -- one which, I believe, was incontestably correct -- that it would be better to control both Houses of Congress with a broad coalition of left and centrist Democrats, among whom compromises would have to be struck, than to pare down their numbers to a core of reliably liberal stalwarts, and then try to make compromises with a more and more right wing Republican contingent.

Well, the strategy was a brilliant success. We won a commanding majority in both houses, even slipping into sixty votes in the Senate. And so the inevitable compromising began. Had the Democrats followed their customary practice of writing off supposedly Republican districts, we would be nowhere near 60 votes in the Senate, and we would probably have no more than a slender majority in the House. The Republicans, Lord love them, have opted for purity, and for their trouble, they now are a hairsbreadth away from being a regional faction in a permanent minority. America really is a center left country, which means that realistically, the most we can hope for, with all the skill and luck in the world, is legislation that is canted a bit more to the left than to the center.

How then can we get the truly progressive legislation we desire? The answer is obvious.

Every close student of the American political system has had occasion to decry the system of seniority in the United States Congress that elevates mediocrities, or worse, to the chairs of the Committee fiefdoms that control the process of legislation. Anyone watching the egregious Max Baucus, lordly representative of three tenths of one percent of the U. S. population, will almost reflexively think of term limits and direct democracy. And yet --- and yet --- every so often, this archaic and deeply undemocratic system elevates just the right person at just the right moment to a position of benevolent dictatorship, yielding guilty delights that one must savor to the fullest while they last.

These thoughts were prompted by several hours in front of the television set watching the markup of the financial services regulation bill, presided over brilliantly, irrascibly, and imperially by the incomparable Barney Frank, long time member from Cape Cod. Frank has always been my favorite member of the House, a stocky, rumpled gay late middle-aged man with an unruly shock of white hair and a perpetually raspy voice who is manifestly about three times as smart as any of his colleagues. The Republicans on the Financial Services Committee were engaged in a seemingly endless delaying action, desperately trying to forestall what was patently inevitable, namely the imposition of some new and badly needed regulations to rein in the people who brought us the current depression. In a parliamentary body accustomed to effulgent expressions of collegial courtesy, Frank is an oasis of straight talk. After one proposed amendment had been shot down, Frank remarked, about the next one fielded by a Republican, "I thought the last amendment was the worst conceivable, but this one tops that." At one point, Frank asked routinely for unanimous consent to do something or other that one of the Republicans desired. The custom, as anyone knows who watches C-Span One or Two or Three, is for the Chair to say, "I ask for unanimous consent to ..." and then, without a moment's pause, to add "without objection." But at this point, Michelle Bachman, who sits on Barney's Committee [how is that for poetic justice?] said, "yes." "No, no," Barney explained, as to a three year old. "The way you show agreement is by being quiet. You only say something if you object." He did not add, "you idiot," but the words hung in the air.

As I say, you must cherish these moments. One final recollection, for those of you who do not know Frank so well. Frank was the first openly gay member of Congress. After he came out, he remarked, "There are plenty of gay members of Congress, and I've danced with all of them." The seniority system has its pleasures.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

For the past several days I have been plowing through Freud's great work, THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS, in preparation for my OLLI course on Freud in the Spring. At the same time, each night, I have been having long, complicated, vivid dreams. It is as though some part of my mind is saying to Freud: "O.K. You think you are so smart? Analyze this!" Of course, Robert De Niro I am not.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

There are two great issues now before the country -- the reform of health care, and the future of America's involvement in Afghanistan. The discussions of both are being confused and distorted by metaphors that badly represent the realities of the issues.

[A curious aside. Some years ago, Susie and I took a Dalmatian cruise that started in Athens. We were standing on a street corner in downtown Athens, idly watching traffic go by, when I noticed a panel truck attempting to back out of a driveway into the flow of traffic. I can read the Greek alphabet, but not the Greek language, so I spelled out what was written on the side of the truck. It was "Metaphoros." With a start, I realized that in Greek, "metaphoros" means "moving." It was a moving van. A metaphor is a literary trope that moves one meaning to another. "Metaphor" is a metaphor! Isn't that neat?]

In the discussion of health care, the dangerous metaphor is "a machine with many moving parts." In the Afghanistan discussion, and the discussion of many other foreign policy issues as well, the metaphor is "nation building." Both metaphors are totally inappropriate, and conceal rather than reveal the nature of the issues. [Another even more widespread and dangerous metaphor is "problem," which implies the existence of a "solution,"but let us leave that to one side for the moment.]

The characterization of the extremely complex health care reform proposals as "machines with many moving parts" is intended to compare them to Rube Goldberg machines [an obscure reference for you younger readers -- Google it] or old fashioned timepieces in which a mechanical complex of wheels and gears and springs and pointers whirrs and turns and uncoils and makes ticking noises, producing a display that tells the time, or --in the case of a typical Rube Goldberg machine -- delivers a biscuit to a pet dog. The clear implication of the metaphor is that if any one thing goes wrong -- a cog slips, a spring uncoils too soon, a gear fails to mesh -- the entire machine will come to a halt and jam up. But the complicated health care reform proposals are not like this at all. They are assemblages of proposed changes to a very large number of institutional arrangements involving the pricing of health insurance, the reimbursement of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers for services, the imposition or removal or alteration of taxes, and hundreds of other things. The proposals are lengthy and complex because health care in America is vast and complex, absorbing up to 15% of the nation's annual gross domestic product. If one or several provisions of one of the proposals fails to produce the intended changes, or produces unintended consequences, there is no reason at all to suppose that that will jam up the other components of the proposal or result in a systemic failure of the entire undertaking. And yet, bolstered by the false metaphor, Republican opponents of reform have made precisely that claim in the past few days.

The metaphor of "nation building" is much, much more dangerous. The implication of the metaphor is that bringing a modern viable nation state into existence is a problem in "social engineering" [another totally illegitimate metaphor.] The Manhattan Project [the World War II effort to make the first atomic bomb] was an engineering problem. All of the basic science was well known among the world's leading nuclear physicists, and what remained was to solve a series of very difficult engineering problems so as to be able to produce the explosive nuclear fission chain reaction that theory said would occur under the right conditions. The effort to send a manned capasule to the surface of the moon was also an engineering problem. Once again, the theoretical science was quite well known -- so well known that writers like Jules Verne were able to anticipate the space flight in their fictions by more than a century. But there is no such thing as "building a nation." The emergence of modern nation-states, now only four centuries or so old, has been a complicated historical succession of events much studied by historians, economists, political scientists, and anthropologists. I am not aware of a single case in which one nation state has actually created another viable nation state through deliberate, intentional state action. The closest examples, I suppose, are the artificial creation of states by imperial powers in Africa and the Middle East through the imposition of boundaries and the setting up of puppet regimes. Much of the present turmoil in the world is the aftermath of these misbegotten schemes. The question facing us in Afghanistan is not whether we are willing to expend the resources and suffer the casualties that would be required to build a successful Afghani nation. The question we face is whether, since that is an impossible and even meaningless project, we can find any national interest that will justify the expenditure of resources and lives. My own view is that the answer is No. But quite apart from what one thinks about that real question, we must all stop talking as though one possible, albeit expensive. option, is to engage in "nation-building."

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

I spent a good deal of time yesterday tuned in to the Baucus Committee hearings leading up to the vote to report out the version of health care reform drafted and negotiated by the members of the committee. As I watched the grim, twitching faces of the visibly distressed Republicans casting their futile "nay" votes, I thought again of the many ways in which modern societies have managed to sublimate the blood lust of battle. Many commentators have observed that the language of early modern science, with its talk of "putting nature to the question" [i.e., torturing it to force it to reveal its secrets], draws on a much older and darker discourse. Mathematicians, the meekest and least martial of academics, routinely speak of "forcing an argument through" or "compelling a conclusion." The covert mayhem of chess was brought forcibly to my attention by my son Patrick when he was nine or ten. Patrick was a chess prodigy, and went on to become a very famous International Grandmaster, twice winning the U. S. Chess Championship. [You can look him up on Wikipedia.] One day, when he was still a little boy, we were driving by a cemetary on the road between our home and the university where I taught. Patrick asked me what the building-like structures were, and I explained that they were mausoleums or tombs. People erected them to hold the coffins of the departed, and then sometimes put little statues on top to commemorate them. Patrick mulled over this bit of information for a mile or two and then said, with that unselfconscious excitement that only children and artists can manage, "I know what would be a good mausoleum for you, Daddy!" I gripped the steering wheel so tightly I thought I might bend it, and replied in as measured a voice as I could muster, "Oh, yes. What would that be, Patrick?" "Well," he explained, clearly warming to the idea, "it would be laid out like a chess board and the white king would be turned over on its side, showing it had been defeated." Not for nothing did the Germans originally call chess "vatermorder."

As the clerk of the committee called the role, I reveled in the discomfort of the Republicans, mentally slamming each vote home like another nail in their collective coffin. There is still a long way to go before Obama has his little signing ceremony, and it is still unclear just what the final bill will contain. But none of that could diminish the sadistic pleasure I felt as Orrin Hatch, Jon Kyle, John Ensign and the rest were forced to sit there silently and see their efforts at destruction turned into ashes. Winning really beats losing every time.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

On Sunday, Barbara Ehrenreich's latest book received a rather tepid or even negative review in the NY TIMES Book Review Section. I have not seen the book, but the review reminded me once again what a thankless chore book reviewing is. I have brooded about this for more than half a century, ever since, as a doctoral student rummaging through the Widener Library stacks as part of my dissertation research, I came across the original 1739 review of David Hume's immortal work, A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE, in a journal titled A HISTORY OF THE WORKS OF THE LEARNED. Here in part is what the reviewer had to say about Volumes One and Two, which were published anonymously in 1739 [the last volume appeared in 1740.] "... a Man, who has never had the Pleasure of reading Mr. Locke's incomparable Essay, will peruse our author with much less Disgust, than those can who have been used to the irresistible Reasoning and wonderful Perspicuity of that aqdmirable Writer." Hume was so devastated by the review that in a later work, his Two Treatises, he included a preliminary "advertisement" in which he disavowed the work of his youth, little realising that it would in time come to be recognized as the greatest work of philosophy ever to be written in English.

You have to feel a certain sympathy for the reviewer [also anonymous]. To be handed A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE and be called upon to cough up a review in a few weeks or a month is really not fair! [I felt an even deeper sympathy for the reviewers who were forced to tackle the CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON when it appeared in 1781, although they, aware that its author was already a distinguished Professor at Koenigsberg University, were a good deal kinder.]

But beyond the problem of evaluating a complex and demanding piece of work in a tiny fraction of the time it took to produce, there is another issue that the Ehrenreich review raises. It has always seemed to me to be unfair to judge a minor effort by an established creative person -- author, painter, composer, performer -- as though it were the first and only production of someone with no history of acknowledged accomplishment. "What have you done for me lately" seems to be the mindset of most reviewers -- who of course in the overwhelmiong preponderance of cases have themselves done nothing at all! We do not think that way about the masters of past ages. We take an appropriate interest in Mozart's lesser symphonies [which, on their own merits, are not actually superior to the works of many contemporaneous composers, even Salieri.] We read all of Jane Austen's novels, not just the two or three that are transcendentally great. We put on stage Shakespeare's least notable efforts. The idea behind this is that once a creative person has, through a body of work, earned a permanent place in our estimation, we consider it worthwhile to experience the totality of his or her works, for what the oeuvre can tell us about the mind and heart we have come to admire.

No one would quarrel with this judgment when Shakespeare or Dickinson or Austen or Tolstoi or Matisse or Bach is in question. But do we not owe something similar to the lesser spirits among us? Which returns me to my starting point. Barbara Ehrenreich has written a number of extremely valuable books which, taken together, give us a focused and richly detailed look at the lives of the scores of millions of Americans who languish at the bottom of the income pyramid. She has earned the right to our attention even for her lesser writings. Like Jane Jacobs, say, or Erving Goffman, or Richard Dawkins, or -- to take a very much greater example -- Amartya Sen, she has established a voice that is a part of our conetmporary conversation, and I for one want to hear what she has to say, on her worst day as much as on her best. I feel the same way about great film directors, great violinists, great painters, even great physicists.

Is there a bit of covert parti pris and special pleading in this? I would not be surprised.

Do not believe the reviews! Michael Moore's latest film is one of his very best. It is a strong, funny, gut-wrenching populist argument for democratic socialism, complete with priests and bishops who use Jesus to bash capitalism, and a moving clip of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a year before his death, calling for a new economic Bill of Rights. I won't try to summarize the movie for you. Just go see it.

There were giants in the earth in those days [Genesis 6:4]

I had a dream last night in which I found myself talking to a group of Harvard students [prompted, perhaps, by the telephone chat with my son, Tobias, who is teaching this semester at Harvard Law School.] When I woke up, the dream was still vivid in my mind, and it prompted me to think back to my time as an Instructor at Harvard, in the late '50s and very early '6os [of the twentieth, not the nineteenth, century!] I ended up looking back at my course files from that period, including the file on the tutorial that I taught jointly with Barrington Moore, Jr. in the first year of a new interdisciplinary undergraduate major, Social Studies, now about to celebrate its fiftieth year in operation. I was the first Head Tutor of Social Studies, appointed by McGeorge Bundy, who the next year left Harvard to become John Kennedy's National Security Advisor. Social Studies was intended to give a select group of students an opportunity to study the social sciences in an integrated fashion, without regard for the disciplinary boundaries that at that time so markedly divided the several branches of the sozialwissenschaften from one another. The program has been a considerable success, and is now, I believe the third or fourth largest major field at Harvard.

Moore and I took charge of six sophomores, for whom, it should be noted, this tutorial was an ungraded add-on to their normal course load. Oncde a week, we met in my rooms in Winthrop House, where I was a resident tutor, for two hours. It was a bit like tag-team wrestling. Moore would start in ion them for a while, quizzing them about the reading for that session. When he flagged, he would tap me and I would jump in, picking up the pace. After two hours, the students were wrung through.

To give you some idea of how intense it was, let me simply reproduce, from my notes, the year's reading list [there were, that first year, three tutorial groups of six students each, taught by pairs of faculty so selected that each pair represented two different disciplines.]

The first reading was Adam Smith's WEALTH OF NATIONS -- all 900 pages of it! This was followed either by Schumpeter's THEORY OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT or John Stuart Mill's two-volume POLITICAL ECONOMY [the choice Moore and I made.] Next up was a volume of Marx's writings edited by Lewis Feuer, and then Alexis de Tocqueville's THE OLD REGIME AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [a relatively light bit of reading.] Students now then did an abrupt turn, and tackled the two volume PRIMITIVE CULTURE by Sir Edward Tylor [some groups substituted Maine's ANCIENT LAW.] We were also supposed to go through Franz Boas' THE MIND OF PRIMITIVE MAN, but Moore and I took a pass on that one -- I think we had lingered too long on Marx. This was followed by Nietzsche's GENEOLOGY OF MORALS and Freud's CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS. The Nietzsche was drawn from a large collection edited by Walter Kaufman, and students were advised, parenthetically, that they should read other selections from the volume. Whether any of them did, I do not recall. Well, after that light Freud break, it was back to Emile Durkheim's SUICIDE and 350 pages of Marx Weber [the merest scratching of the surface, as those who are familiar with Weber weill recognize.] The year-long tutorial wrapped up with R. G. Collingwood's THE IDEA OF HISTORY and Alfred North Whitehead's MODES OF THOUGHT [I was opposed to that choice, never having found Whitehead's philosophy, as opposed to his mathematical logic, of much interest, but as the only non-tenured member of the Social Studies Committee I was overruled, even though I was the only philosopher in the group.]

Well, as the Emperor Joseph says in AMADEUS, there it is.

In those days, tuition at Harvard was a couple of thousand dollars a year. I think the students got their money's worth.

Monday, October 12, 2009

I am not gay, and even though I have a deep personal interest in the status of the LGBT community [my son, Tobias, is gay, and I long for the day when I can attend his wedding], I think I need to exhibit a certain restraint and circumspection in offering my judgment about Obama's speech to the Human Rights Campaign meeting in Washington. That said, I would like to explain why I think the speech was an extremely important positive moment in the long struggle for LGBT equality.

Both by his choice of words and by his choice of venue, Obama, in that speech, put the full faith and credit of the presidency behind the agenda of the LGBT community. Many of the specific items on the agenda -- most notably the repeal of DADT and DOMA -- will require congressional action, and that, as is made obvious by the current health care reform battle, is going to be complex and messy. But I think Obama deliberately and knowingly backed himself into a corner with that speech. He made it impossible for him NOT to fulfill those promises without totally alienating one of his strongest sources of political support. Presidents do not do that unless they fully intend to come through.

How should the LGBT community and its supporters respond? Obama had an answer, and it was the correct answer -- by putting even more pressure on him and on Congress to accomplish everything on their agenda. In every possible way, during his campaign, Obama made it clear that he believes change requires bottom-up pressure, not top-down largesse. The ball is in our court.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Spontaneity of wit can be over-valued, I think. The carefully crafted zinger, trotted out when the perfect occasion arises, gives a greater pleasure than the cleverest riposte thrown out on the moment. Oscar Wilde's greatest bon mot, though it appears nowhere in his writings and survives only through the reports of those who heard it, was obviously lovingly shaped in the privacy of his chambers, and held back by him until the moment was right. I refer, of course, to his immortal literary evaluation of one of Charles Dickens' most famous scenes: "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing."

My old friend and Columbia Philosophy Department colleague Sidney Morgenbesser, now sadly departed, was the author of countless repeatable quips. One of my favorites, not all that well known, concerned the New York Jewish pompous, self-important, faux English literary critic, Lionel Trilling, who taught for many years at Columbia. Morgenbesser came upon him one evening at a social gathering where Trilling was, in his customary fashion, pontificating about something or other and trying as hard as he could to seem to be an Oxford Don. Sidney walked up to him and, in his loud, penetrating voice, said, "Ah, Lionel. Incognito, ergo sum, eh?"

Sidney published almost nothing in his life, but a line like that is worth a dozen academic journal articles.

Any prize whose anointees includes Henry Kissinger must be welcomed with some caution, but the Nobel Prize Committee's choice of Obama for this year's Peace Prize is to be enjoyed, if only for the frenzy into which it has driven the Republicans. You have to feel some measure of sympathy for them. They are having a really bad decade.

Several years ago, when I first considered starting a blog, I said to several of my students that it would not have personal stuff on it. "But then it won't be a blog!" they replied. Inasmuch as I am the student of my students in all things relating to contemporary culture [my sons are way too sophisticated to be reliable in this regard], I have from time to time attempted to include reports and reflections that do not rise to the level of political or philosophical commentary. Herewith a few more efforts in that direction.

I begin with the subject of pet cats. Susie and I have two cats: Murray, named after the dog on the old TV show MAD ABOUT YOU, starring Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt, and Christmas Eve, so called because she was found as a stray kitten up a tree and turned over to us in a Whole Foods parking lot by a friend on Christmas Eve thirteen years ago. Christmas is in renal failure, and must receive twice a week subcutaneous infusions of a saline solution. She is underweight, and we are desperately trying to encourage her to eat. Murray, who is eleven, is in fine health, but seriously overweight [he gives new meaning to the expression "fat cat"], and we have put him on a diet at the suggestion of our Vet. Trying simultaneously to get one cat to eat more and the other to eat less is considerably more difficult than anything I had to do when I was the father of two small boys. Murray scarfs his food down and then stares longingly at Christmas while she slowly eats part of what she has been given. If one of us does not stand guard to snatch the bowl up the moment she wanders away, he is on it in a flash. He lies on the dinner table during meals staring longingly and fixedly at the food on our plates. He has indeed lost weight -- 12 ounces in a week, which, proportional to his size, is rather fast. But since the whole point of having pets is to spoil them rotten in all the ways one could not justificably spoil one's children, the strain on Susie and me is monumental. As for Murray, all I can say is that Michael Douglas' famous "greed is good" speech in the movie WALL STREET barely scratches the surface of the emotion that Murray is visibly consumed by.

And now to muscle pain. I do a four mile power walk each morning in an effort to retard the inevitable decay of age. I plow on up and down some significant hills along a path that takes me from Meadowmont Village, where I live, to the edge of the UNC campus, and back again. Despite the fact that I encounter many runners and joggers either passing me or coming the other way, I have for months not been tempted to break into a trot. Ever since I was a boy, running has been difficult for me -- not for any particular physical reason; it is simply antipathetic to who I am. Well, three days ago, in an effort to shave some minutes off my regular time for the walk, I started jogging down the half-mile long hill that constitutes the last portion of the outward half and the first portion of the return. There were two results. First, I managed to cut my time by three or four minutes; and second, my upper legs, from knee to hip, were in such pain that I could not sit down or stand up without using my arms to assist me. Tylenol in massive doses did not even touch it. Now, I used to have serious back trouble, for which I went to a chiropracter, Keith McCormack, who earlier in life had been an Olympic athlete. He explained to me that some substance [I think it is acetylcholine, but I am not sure] builds up on the muscle sheath, and causes the muscles to go into a permanent and very painful spasm. Deep, focused, and painful massage can literally strip the accumulated chemical from the muscle and slough it off, so that the muscle goes out of spasm. Last night, awakened by the pain, I lay in bed and, with my thumbs, dug deep into the large muscles of both upper legs, repeatedly stripping them, or so it seemed to me, of the accumulation. Believe it or not, it worked! I am still hurting, and I shall take a day off this morning, but the severe and crippling muscle ache is gone.

With the public option hanging by a thread, and Afghanistan in the balance, there is not the slightest chance that either of these mini-essays will be of the slightest interest to anyone, but I feel that I have fulfilled the injunction of my students. Now if I could only learn to instant message!

Thursday, October 8, 2009

You high minded types probably don't spend much time bottom feeding on the internet, so you may have missed this story, unless you live in Central Pennsylvania. [See Josh Marshall's TPM site for details.] A soccer mom had her gun permit revoked for wearing a revolver on her hip to her child's soccer game. A higher court reversed, but observed that it was a dumb thing to do. She sued the sheriff who arrested her, charging that the entire affair had caused her great distress. Tragically, she and her husband have just been found dead in their home, apparently a double suicide.

This is a terrible thing for their three children, who were home at the time, and of course for them. But the tag line of the story caught my eye. There is really no possioble comment. Here it is:

The way people look at me sometimes when I am out running errands, I feel as if I am wearing a scarlet letter, and really it’s a Glock 26."

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Fair warning. This is likely to be a long, rambling, brooding blog post. Even Tigger gets depressed from time to time, when the half acre wood is no longer offering its customary delights.

The news leaking out of the White House is that Obama has ruled out drawing down U.S. forces in Afghanistan, but is still debating the requests by the military for troop increases. I have the sinking feeling that he has wandered into that quagmire, and cannot bring himself to take the bold, unpopular, but ultimately politically wise step of winding it down. I think Judith Baker is right, but I also think that there is simply nothing I or others like me can do about it.

It would take a president possessed of divine arrogance to cut our losses. I think Obama has many impressive traits of character, and many gifts of intellect, but that sort of arrogance is, I fear, not one of them.

At the same time, the health care reform effort is stumbling toward a moderately satisfactory conclusion. There will be a bill. It will be a massive improvement on what we have now. It will have something that looks like a public option in it. And it will essentially leave the inefficient, dysfunctional, unsatisfactory American health care delivery system intact.

I do not at all blame this one on Obama. He has handled himself with enormous skill in this effort, and he will be rewarded with a better bill than could have issued from the efforts of any other politician in America today. In this case, the problem is that the source of the dysfunction is not characterological but structural. The decision made at the end of World War II to tie health care to employment, a decision that worked pretty well for three or four decades when lifetime employment by a single employer was much more common, has left us with a vast system of insurance companies, HMOs, capitalist drug companies, and pay for play doctors that now yields inferior results for an exorbitant price.

[Footnote: My French cousin, Andre Zarembowich, retired Physics professor and, like me, a man of the left, tells me that the French system that is so often cited as an example in these debates actually owes its existence to the power and influence of the French Communist Party at the end of the Second World War. So the Republicans who call reform proposals socialistic are essentailly right. What they neglect to mention is that in this case, socialism has yielded a far superior result. Why am I not surprised?]

It was Marx who taught us that revolutionary change occurs when, as he put it, the new order grows in the womb of the old. That is how capitalism displaced feudalism, and it is how Marx hoped and expected that socialism would displace capitalism. To think otherwise is to fall into what Engels labeled "utopian socialism," for which he and Marx shared a contempt with the naysayers of the right. There are many interesting new formations growing in the womb of capitalism, most obvious among which is the transformation of information dispersal and authority structures by the Internet. But nothing remotely resembling such nascent change can be seen in the health care delivery sector of the American economy. That is why the entrenched interests have such an easy time of it resisting reform, and why the reforms proposed so often have the air of utopian fantasies.

I said, a few days ago, that I was tired of being perpetually angry. I also long to be able to hope. How long, O Lord, how long?

Some time ago, as I was preparing my lectures on Marx for the OSHER program, I conceived the idea of following those lectures with a series of "Thought of ..." courses devoted to some of the great social thinkers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries whose insights have been lost to us, or have been distorted by the passage of time. My first thought was to offer a course on The Thought of Sigmund Freud, and I tentatively decided to follow that with courses on The Thought of Max Weber and The Thought of Karl Mannheim.

The Freud course has now actually been announced, and will be given this Spring. I had intended to build the course around the brilliant book on Freud by Richard Wollheim, which I had read many decades earlier. But re-reading the Wollheim in Paris in September, I concluded that it was much too technically difficult to serve as the basic reading for such a series of lectures. Accordingly, I ordered from a fat paperback FREUD READER edited by the distinguished historian Peter Gay. [Full disclosure: at Columbia in '68, Gay and I crossed swords in a debate before more than a thousand students, he defending the university administration and I defending the students. Gay, who had been hugely popular as a lecturer, was so personally affronted by the negative reaction of the students that he accepted an offer from Yale, and finished his career there -- a great loss for Columbia, needless to say.] My current plan is to read the 800 page collection in the next month, and choose from it appropriate selections for the course.

I should perhaps explain that I have absolutely no academic credentials to underwrite my offering of this course. Still, it is true that I have over the course of my long life spent twenty years in one form of therapy or another -- teenage analysis, a full scale Freudian psychoanalysis, couples therapy, and once-a-week counseling, all by medically trained psychoanalysts. I have the sort of insight into psychoanalysis that a lump of clay has into pottery.

Gay's reader opens with "An Autobiographical Study"written by Freud, near the end of his life, for inclusion in a collection of autobiographical statements by eminent physicians. I am now halfway through this forty page essay, and I can report that it is a powerful, fascinating, deeply moving piece of work. I strongly commend it to anyone reading this blog. The essay is quite reserved and contains very little of Freud's personal life. What makes it so powerful is the enormous intellectual courage and honesty he displayed at each stage in the development of what we now know as Freudian theory. To arive at an understanding of the psychoneuroses presented by his patients, Freud was forced to engage simulataneously the philosophical preconceptions concerning consciousness and mental life that had dominated western thought for more than two millennia, the prudish and close-minded prejudices both of his colleagues and of the Viennese bourgeoisie, his own internal conflicts and resistances, and the puzzling presentations and manifestations of mental illness exhibited by his patients. The clarity and determination with which he carried out this complex task is such as to command our admiration and respect. I confess that reading a portion of the essay this morning, I found tears coming to my eyes at the sheer beauty of the ideas that Freud formulated to make sense of his data.

This is an essay that is well worth your time.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

On Thursday, I shall give the third in a series of eight lectures on the Thought of Karl Marx, at the Osher Lifelong Leraning Institute at Duke University. The reading for that day is the first fifteen pages of the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, the great tract penned by Marx in 1848. In an attempt to capture for my students something of the feeling that Marx must have experienced at that time, when faced, at the age of thirty, with the prospect of a thoroughoing political and economic upheaval in Germany, I plan to read to the class the poem that William Wordsworth wrote in 1805, recalling his feelings and those of his compatriots at the news of the French Revolution. Here is the entire text of the poem:

OH! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!

For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood

Upon our side, we who were strong in love!

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times,

In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways

Of custom, law, and statute, took at once

The attraction of a country in romance!

When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,

When most intent on making of herself 10

A prime Enchantress--to assist the work,

Which then was going forward in her name!

Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,

The beauty wore of promise, that which sets

(As at some moment might not be unfelt

Among the bowers of paradise itself)

The budding rose above the rose full blown.

What temper at the prospect did not wake

To happiness unthought of? The inert

Were roused, and lively natures rapt away! 20

They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,

The playfellows of fancy, who had made

All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength

Their ministers,--who in lordly wise had stirred

Among the grandest objects of the sense,

And dealt with whatsoever they found there

As if they had within some lurking right

To wield it;--they, too, who, of gentle mood,

Had watched all gentle motions, and to these

Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more mild, 30

And in the region of their peaceful selves;--

Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty

Did both find, helpers to their heart's desire,

And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish;

Were called upon to exercise their skill,

Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,

Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!

But in the very world, which is the world

Of all of us,--the place where in the end

We find our happiness, or not at all! 40

The fourth and fifth lines are immortal. Would that my sons could feel that bliss just once!

Monday, October 5, 2009

This morning, I received an email message from an old friend, Judith Baker. It was a circular message sent by Judith to urge all of us to protest the expansion of the war in Afghanistan while there is still time. Like Judith, I recall LBJ and the Viet Nam War, and like her, I see this war as having the potential to destroy Obama's presidency. [See my post some days ago.] I will continue to do what I can, of course.

But the message reminded me once again what an extraordinary person Judith Baker is. I first met Judith when we both sat on the board of Harvard/Radcliffe Alumni/ae Against Apartheid. Judith is class of '70 at Harvard and Radcliffe, almost a generation younger than I. She was one of the brave souls who occupied Harvard's Administration Building -- and, if I am not mistaken, was denied graduation as a consequence. [Harvard has always been a real class act.]

She then devoted a lifetime to teaching in the inner city in Boston at the secondary school level. Along the way, she got involved in a program that teaches students and teachers how to use writing as a tool for education. She and her husband, Brook, who teaches law at Northeastern, became involved in South Africa, and Judith and I reconnected. For years now, both before retirement and afterwards, she has been spending enormous amounts of time in desperately poor rural regions of South Africa, bringing creative and effective teaching techniques to Black teachers whose education was stunted by the Apartheid doctrine of Fundamental Pedagogics and its associated rote teaching techniques.

Judith is an extremely self-deprecating person, who routinely downplays her own heroic efforts while lavishly praising those of the people around her. [I feel intensely embarrassed when she praises me for my rather feeble efforts in South Africa, since I view myself as ectype to her archetype.]

Thinking again about Judith reminded me of something that is too often forgotten, especially by those who are of the generation after hers. The Sixties [which is to say the late 60's and early 70's] were a famously exciting time, during which millions of young people experimented with drugs, had a go at promiscuous sex [not quite as original as they thought at the time], and even engaged in a bit of political protest and street theater. For many of them, it was a phase of growing up, a time to be romanticized, looked back at fondly, and memorialized in the selection of songs to download to one's IPhone.

But for many, many people like Judith, it was a time that permanently defined who they were and how they would live the rest of their lives. Time passes, and no matter how hard we all try, only a handful of us can manage to spend the rest of our lives on college campuses. So some of the 60's activists became doctors, others became lawyers, still others became machinists, auto workers, architects, health care workers, or small business operators. But they carried their commitment into their adult lives. As doctors, they now staff neighborhood clinics or even work with Doctors Without Borders. As lawyers, they offer pro bono services to those too poor to afford decent legal advice. As architects they strive to design ecologtically friendly structures that promote community, rather than selling their services to the promoters of gated compounds. In short, all across America are people like Judith whose entire way of being in the world is an affirmation of the commitments they made and the ideals they formed in the 60's. [I do not include myself in this group because when the student uprisings began, I was already a tenured professor of philosophy at Columbia. My role was to support the students in whatever way I could, although it is true that six or seven years ago I joined a group of Harvard students demonstrating for a living wage for Harvard employees, and for a few hours helped them seize the Administration Building, carrying my umbrella and briefcase.]

I have seen many of these now aging radicals at Obama events. Our hair is gray [those of us who have any], our walk is a bit unsteady, but all of us, I think, can feel a continutiy of who we are now and who we were then.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Some of my friends have asked me why I am not angrier with Obama for his failure to pursue a more progressive agenda in his first year. Heaven knows, there is enough to be angry about, what with the character of his economic advisors, his failure to move more swiftly on the repeal of DOMA and DADT, and the absence in his inner circle of any truly progressive advisors. I could repeat, as I have many times, that I never expected him to be a passionate progressive, that he faces a moderate, not to say conservative, Congressional Democratic establishment, and that the overwhelming threat of a complete economic meltdown, coupled with the enormous difficulty of putting together a workable health care reform coalition, has forced him to postpone more progressive items on his agenda. But true though all of that is, it is not the real explanation for the tonality of my commentary.

The truth is that at seventy-five, I am simply weary of being constantly, gut-wrenchingly angry all the time. I started getting angry in the late Fall and early Spring of 1960-61, over the impending invasion of Cuba. I worked myself into a permanent frenzy over the threat of nuclear war. I got angrier about Civil Rights and the Viet Nam War. I folded in rage at the outrageously discriminatory professional treatment of my first wife, which triggered my successful effort to get the American Philosophical Association to establish a standing committee on the status of women in the profession. I was livid about Nixon, furious about Reagan, contemptuous of the first Bush, appalled by the second Bush. As Lily von Shtupp [Madeline Kahn] sings in Mel Brooks' immortal movie, BLAZING SADDLES, I'm tired!

When Barack Obama stepped forward as a candidate, I threw myself into the effort, donating the legal limit to his campaign, entering data in the campaign database, knocking on doors, doing poll watch duty. The night he was elected was one of the high points of my life. Damn it! I have earned the right to feel happy, at least for a year!

Saturday, October 3, 2009

On Thursdays, while I am teaching my course on The Thought of Marx in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Duke University, Susie is taking a course next door on The Separation of Church and State. In the first session, the Instructor handed out a number of summaries of Supreme Court cases dealing with claims of conscientious objection, one importantr element of which is the determination of what will count as religion. This is, in the United States, a rather delicate question, of course, what with Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Scientologists, and the Lord knows what else all hawking their wares. Susie showed me the materials, and they put me in mind of the greatest definition of religion I have ever encountered. It is hardly obscure, since it occurs in Thomas Hobbes' immortal work LEVIATHAN. When modern conservatives hark back to Hobbes, I sometimes wonder whether they have actually read the book.

Here is the definition, from the great fourth chapter of Part 1, entitled "Of the Interior Beginnings of Voluntary Motions; Commonly Called the Passions; and the Speeches by Which They are Expressed." It is contained in an extraordinary long paragraph, which begins: "For appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called HOPE. The same, without such opinion, DESPAIR..." and, after giving definitions of fear, courage, benevolence, covetousness, ambition, liberality, natural lust, and many more terms, comes finally to this:

"Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed, RELIGION; not allowed, SUPERSTITION. And when the power imagined, is truly such as we imagine, TRUE RELIGION."

Reflect on that a bit. Tales publicly allowed, Religion; not allowed, Superstition. There is not a more mordant, laconic, unillusioned, a-religious sentence in all of English literature.

I recently switched to a Southwest Airlines credit card, in an effort to win some free flights to see my grandchildren in San Francisco. The man who signed me up in Midway Airport as I was passing through on my way home gave me a number to call to get credit for flights I have taken with Southwest in the past two years. I called today, expecting that I would be told that I had to have kept my boarding passes or at least know the flight numbers and dates.

Not a bit of it. The nice lady asked me for my email address [I always buy E-tickets] and proceeded to scan their computer while I waited, turning up half a dozen flights. She offered to scan my old credit card number to see whether she had missed any flights. It seems I already have more than enough points for a free round trip flight.

We all recall, after 9/11, the embarrassing testimony before Congress, to the effect that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is incapable of doing a computer search for a person unless they know his full name and address. As a consequence of this fact, they could not track the people who, they actually knew, were planning evil deeds.

Now, inasmuch as outsourcing to private corporations is the way in which the United States now handles prison management, national defense, and just about everything else, I would like to propose that the FBI be privatized, with the primary management contract going to Google,, NetFlix, and Southwest. Not only can they find anyone within seconds. They can also tell in that time the person's taste in books, music, home furnishings, and porn sites, and can suggest movies that he or she might enjoy. What is more, I would bet that they could set up a user-friendly interface among their data bases in a matter of days.

I mean, if we are going to consign ourselves to the tender mercies of capitalism, couldn't we at least get the cutting edge version?

Friday, October 2, 2009

I. My big sister, Barbara, who will be eighty next year, has had an extraordinarily distinguished career. After winning the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and graduating summa cum laude from Swarthmore, she went on to earn a doctorate in Biochemistry at Harvard. She then worked for a while on a project headed up by the Stanford Philosopher and logician Patrick Suppes to teach mathematics to Central American children by radio, before joining the Education Department of the World Bank. Having served on projects in such places as The People's Republic of China, South Yemen, and the Central African Empire, she was elevated to the position of Ombud of the entire World Bank, a post from which she retired some years ago. She radiates a focused, practical intelligence that is enormously impressive.

When Barbara was a teenager, she took a test to see what she might have an aptitude for. After reviewing the results, the psychologist administering the test gave her one piece of advice: "Don't ever become a secretary!"

I thought of that this morning as I struggled with my computer to merge print the letters that will form this year's fund-raising appeal for the scholarship organization I run, University Scholarships for South African Students. I have been doing this for twenty years now, and Microsoft Word has all manner of mail merge wizards and little drop down menus to take you through the process. Since I break my donor list into eight sub-groups for mailing purposes [different address structures, different degree of personal touch in the salutation, etc.], I have to go through the mail merge process over and over before the letters are ready to be folded and stuffed into the envelopes [which have already been merge printed]. This is, you understand, pure rote work, requiring nothing more than patience and a modicum of intelligence. And yet, I find it the most stressful and tiring thing I do all year. Teaching a class, which I did yesterday, is by comparison a breeze. I suspect had I taken that test, I would have received the same advice.

II. The NY TIMES has a long story this morning detailing the scrimy doings of that perfectly coiffeured, Hollywood handsome scumbag, Senator John Ensign. If you follow the story to an inside page, you will find a photo of Ensign and his wife, his top aide and his wife [with whom Ensign had the affair], and Ensign's chief fund raiser. Look at Ensign's wife and the woman with whom he strayed. They could be twins! It is creepy.

III. I spent some time yesterday watching the Baucus committee's debates and votes on the health care reform proposals. [C-Span 3, if you get it]. Washington Senator Maria Cantwell is really impressive. The contrast between her manifest intelligence and decency, and the appalling inadequcies of Kyl, Hatch, and the other Republicans on the committee is a sight to behold.

IV. As I predicted, health care reform is alive and well and will almost certainly include some form of a public option. When this is all over, I will explain how I know these things.


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A Book is a Frame

Typography and Book Design Course

3rd year, Shenkar

Inspired by the cinematic montage, I designed a soft covered book which deconstructs and reconstruct themes and ideas. While referring to the art of film making, the design synthesizes new ideas from the elements placed on the page.

This project is dedicated to Ilan Tzarfati

Ron Baltuch
Tel Aviv


text:
coffee and white brandy

Yesterday morning it really was tipping it down. We had already decided to visit Croatia so we packed our walking shoes and were off.
First stop was Novigrad where it was still pouring so we ran into a very traditional coffee shop/bar by the church and had coffee with white brandy chasers. The rain eased so we had a quick look around but sightseeing is not for naturalists so we were quickly away searching for characteristic habitats.
Just I land we spotted a woodland glade and we were off:
Nightingale singing
Pearly heath
Lulworth Skipper
Large chequered skipper
Wood white
Knapweed frittilery

Possibly a Weavers fritillery (all look the same to me)
Adonis blue
Echers blue – female (cmon not from this distance)
Cardinal female
Violet Frit
Olivaceous warbler rattling in the undergrowth
And lots more
For lunch we bought baguettes from this fabulous bakers with chocolate croissant bun things to die for.
We travelled back to the coast for these to Savudriga I think, northern tip of the Croatian coast.
Then we were back in real Karst landscape in the hills facing Piran where the limestone is exposed as very sharp angular blocks shining white amongst the flower rich grasses and shrubs.
A small disused church caught my eye but inside it alone was too much like the Blair Witch project so I was out quick as possible.
Highlights here were a pair of bee-eaters on the wires above us. A painted lady (on holiday from Africa David assures me) and the biggest and most photogenic bush crickets I have ever seen.
Phone calls from both children made this a Fathers day to remember and my first ever time out of the European Union.
Dinner at a local hostelry was mixed meat grill – I still can’t face the squid and random fish parts with a complimentary spirit full of redcurrents which made our eyes water.
Off to the Alps this morning when Joanna and David return from their daily swim. Chow.

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Product information

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Lottery win!

John and I were having an in-depth conversation last night about winning the lottery. We have just started buying a ticket each week and I was telling John the importance of asking the universe to help us to win. Now in case you don’t know if you are wanting material gain the universe will not grant that wish easily. No the secret is that yes, you can ask for anything but it has to benefit others also.

An example of what not to do would be.

Please Universe let me / us win the lottery this week, I could buy a Ferrari 😉and a big house. What the hell, I could buy houses all over the world and spend the odd week here and there using them. I would go on around the world trips in first class, dripping in gold. Wearing designer labels. I would give the kids loads of money, they would never want for anything again.

This was the conversation I had with John last night.

John: I’ve bought a lottery ticket for tonight.

Me: Oh yeah

John: It’s an estimated 154 million pounds

Me: 😳 good grief, that’s an obscene amount of money, what could someone do with that amount of money

John: I know

Me: If we won that amount of money would it be wrong to want to move into a bigger place so I could have a proper art studio and never have to think about ordering canvases or paint

John: I don’t think that’s unreasonable

Me: Getting into the spirit of it now….. I would like to give our children some money but not too much. Just enough to make their lives easier, perhaps pay off their mortgages . Then they could still work but perhaps do something different. My youngest would like to start her own cleaning business and make celebration cakes on the side.

Me: Oh I hope someone wins it that would spread the joy around

John: Well I have already begun making a list of charities.

Me: That’s great, you could manage how the money is spread around, 154 million!

John: nodding

Me: Some come on let’s ask the universe  or I think we need to write it down so it means more! I did that for the caravan and it worked 😳 honestly it did!

We sat in silence for a bit thinking. This morning I asked John…..

Me: John Did we win?

John: Well we have got a email from the lottery site

Me: what does it say, what does it say?

John: wait a minute, smiling he said…….

Your ticket has finished do you want to play again !

We had to laugh, I do hope whoever has won does do the right things with the money. Money does not bring us happiness, it brings us choices and those choices could be lifesavers for so many people.

So if you have good fortune, spread it around 😀

  1. Hi Elaine. I agree, greed doesn’t win anyone any points with the universe. As a parent, if I won a large amount of money, helping my boys realise their dreams would be my first priority. After that, as I am not a material person and possessions mean nothing, a cabin in the bush would be the answer to my dreams. Wishing you luck!

    Liked by 2 people

  2. This made me chuckle! It makes me sad when I read of someone who was lucky and fortunate enough to win big on the lottery, only to blow it on stuff for themselves (like a boat, drugs, lots of partying, fast cars), then wind up broke and miserable afterwards. Spreading some joy and helping others out would surely be priceless. Better luck next time to you & John!
    Caz x

    Liked by 1 person

  3. “Ask and it shall be given” – but you’re right, there is a process. Do it with a joyful heart, release your list to the universe with a ritual burning and then leave it up to Spirit – no expectations 🙂


text:
Pixie Dust

All posts tagged Pixie Dust

Pixie Dust Project Gets a Reboot for the Web: An Update

Published May 1, 2015 by vfdpixie

PillJarPosterPortrait (1)

It has been an interesting journey for Damon Colquhoun and his Pixie Dust project.

Not so long ago, I interviewed him as he started an indiegogo campaign to raise funds for a fantasy film about a young girl, her mentally ill mother and a family secret.  While he didn’t make his goal, he did get accepted for a grant fellowship from NBPC 360, a funding initiative by the National Black Programming Consortium media arts organization that is committed to “educating, enlightening, empowering and engaging the American public.”  The Harlem based non-profit strives to “support diverse voices by developing, producing and distributing innovative media about the Black experience and by investing in visionary content makers.”  Since 1979, they have provided content for outlets like PBS and PBS.org among others, and invaluable mentoring for up and coming Black filmmakers.

With this opportunity presented, Colquhoun rewrote Pixie Dust as a 10-part web series including sample footage, and his treatment was the only entry with a script.  The project was almost cut due to its fantasy based subject matter since the committee focuses mainly on non-fiction.  Fortunately some well-known producers, namely Ron Simons who was behind Blue Caprice as well as Deniese Davis who produced the Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, fought to keep Pixie Dust in the running.  After passing the muster at “Pitch Black”, the final pitch session where a group of seasoned producers and executives make their final choices, and with the help of cinematographer Arthur Jafa and director Terence Nance as mentors, Colquhoun will get between 50 and 100K for his project.  He is well on his way to a promising breakthrough for programming as the industry becomes more accepting of interesting and unique content for a growing niche market.

Damon Colquhoun pitching his ideas to top industry execs.

Damon Colquhoun pitching Pixie Dust to public television industry execs on April 23rd, 2015. Photo by Lindsey Seide (NBPC)

I am excited that a great organization has recognized the need for science fiction/fantasy in their roster, as many Black and other visible minority viewers crave content including people of colour in a genre that has been lacking in visible minority representation.  Congratulations to Damon as he embarks on his new route with Pixie Dust and I’m really looking forward to seeing the final series.  Stay tuned for more info!

Pixie Dust interview with writer/director Damon Colquhoun

Check out the NBPC site for more information on the organization and one of their series based on stories from the African Diaspora called AfroPop.tv.

Pixie’s Best of 2014 and 2015 Picks

Published December 30, 2014 by vfdpixie

Theatre 13…where all horror films should be seen…Wooooo!!

2014 in review made me a little nervous to be honest.  I feel like I didn’t see nearly enough films, or maybe it was because I feel like I didn’t review a lot this year?  Who knows, but I did come up with a few.  A lot of them are indie films, and a lot I saw on the festival circuit.  Some have been released and some you may have to search for on demand, but I recommend seeing them!  Click on each film title for my reviews or links to trailers, and if you have any to add, please comment!  I’d love to know what your favourites were!

Godzilla:  I don’t like remakes, but I really enjoyed this one.  Big ol’ monsters smashing things made up for a so-so storyline, and it was a fun blockbuster event for me.

Maleficent:  Another blockbuster movie with one of the best makeup looks.  I couldn’t take my eyes off of Angelina Jolie’s beautifully altered face, and the effects were great.

Guardians of the Galaxy:  So much fun. Just so much fun.

Lyle:  This 65 minute film is pretty incredible.  Shown free of charge for a brief time to raise funds for his next project, writer and director Stewart Thorndike serves up a modern version of a Rosemary’s Baby-like suspense horror that is deeply moving.  A lesbian couple move into a brownstone with their baby Lyle, and mysterious neighbours coupled with a family tragedy gets the paranoia going full speed ahead.  Gaby Hoffmann, the current indie film darling of the moment, shows why she is in such demand.  Her portrayal of a mother on the brink is memorable, and I loved the haunting score.  You will have to follow the film’s Facebook page to find out when and where you can see it, as it is currently not available online.

Wyrmwood:  The zombie movie for action movie fans.  It is going to be released by IFC on February 13, 2015, so keep your eye out for it!

Predestination:  A wonderful spiralling tale of time travel and love.  This has a limited release date of January 9th, 2015.  Find it!

Housebound:  I’m not a comedy horror movie gal, but this one is superb!  Great pacing and a great cast.  Seems like it was released on DVD this past November, so again, find it!

Oculus:  a slow burner with a cool story, and one I will be adding to my collection.  Done by Mike Flanagan, the man behind Absentia, which I also loved for its unique story.

Two Canadian films I recently saw were Black Mountain Side and Berkshire County.  Both take on classic horror fare and make it their own.  Berkshire County seems to have an April 2015 limited release date, and Black Mountain Side will hopefully come out in 2015 as well.

Another Canadian gem was Hellmouth.  Starring Stephen McHattie, one of my favourite Canadian actors (whom I finally met this year! Yay!), this surreal quest for redemption will take you away with its visuals and retro feel.

The Babadook:  One of the most talked about films that actually lived up to the hype.  Tense, scary and dark, this is a must see for all horror fans out there.

Only Lovers Left Alive:  Starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston, this beautiful love story about lonely vampires will make you ponder your existence and purpose.

What will 2015 bring us?  Apparently a ton of sequels and remakes (big surprise!), but I’ve sifted through the fluff to find a few that seem to have a bite that is just as good as the bark!

First up is It Follows.  This film has made the festival rounds and is getting quite the buzz as being a refreshingly terrifying addition to the tormented teen horror roster.  After a steamy date, a girl is now being followed by a creepy unknown.  Love the Carpenter-esque score.  I will definitely see this one in March when it comes out in wide release!

Z for Zachariah has my interest because I still have my dog-eared copy of the book I loved as a teen.  Chiwetel Ejiofor stars and I hope they do the story of post-apocalyptic survival justice.

Chappie is about a robot with heart, intelligence and innocence.  Directed by District 9‘s Neill Blomkamp and starring Hugh Jackman, Dev Patel, and Sharlto Copley, it is sure to be one of the bigger films with the great special effects that Blomkamp is known for.

Directed by Hostel and Hemlock Grove‘s Eli Roth, Knock Knock is a “horror/thriller” about a man terrorized by two gorgeous girls.  Not really sure about this one, but Keanu Reeves is in it.  All I can say is:  Don’t. Hurt. My. Man.

Insidious 3 and Sinister 2 are on their way.  I feel like I need to see them because I was there from the start.  Also from the producers of  the Insidious, Paranormal Activity and Sinister series comes another Amityville movie, which I also have to see because, again, I was there from the start.  In this case, Jennifer Jason Leigh stars in Amityville The Awakening, so there will be guaranteed intensity with her performance.

The aforementioned Mike Flanagan is coming out with a new one called Somnia, about a kid whose nightmares become real.  He is known for creepy atmosphere, so I expect something great.

I need to see Jupiter Ascending just for Channing Tatum in those ears, and Mad Max Fury Road because it looks like totally insane and brutal fun.

I would really, really love to see Pixie Dust realized in 2015!  Check out my interview with writer and director Damon Colquhoun and donate to get it made!

Lastly, Guillermo del Toro’s new gothic horror Crimson Peak about tragedy and a haunted house will probably be a good bet.  Also, Charlie Hunnam and Tom Hiddleston are in this.  Yup.  That will get my bum in a seat.

So there you have it.  A 2014 wrap-up and my 2015 picks all in one long-winded package!  Wishing you all a wonderful new year that brings us all good, great, no-FANTASTIC luck in life, love and health!

Pixie Dust: A Journey Into The Fantastic With Director Damon Colquhoun

Published December 23, 2014 by vfdpixie

There is a lot of great talent within the indie film scene, and social media is making that more than evident.  All it takes is a follow here, a tweet there, and you are exposed to writers and directors who have a unique vision.  One such person is Damon Colquhoun.  Based in Harlem, New York, this photographer, writer and filmmaker used his multi-faceted talents to create a short film which was a 2013 finalist in Ron Howard’s Project Imagint10n, based on his winning photo “Manhattan’s Many Moons”.  The film, entitled Transporter, is about a young man Darien, whose family is involve in shady, criminal activity.  Darien has a unique ability that is doomed to be exploited by them, unless he can escape.  This 10 minute film is a dark, grim tale of a young man trying to leave his harsh reality behind.  I was really intrigued by this short, which will now be a feature film, and I loved the style and tone of it, so of course when Colquhoun let me know about his next project, Pixie Dust, he got my pixie attention.

Pixie Dust is an urban fantasy about a powerful 13-year-old girl named Faye and her mentally ill mother. Faye’s mother suffers from a mental illness which sends her into violent spells. She refuses to take her medication, forcing Faye to find a way to get her back on track. Through Faye’s journey, she discovers a magical family secret which could help her save her mother, but it could also kill Faye.”   (Excerpt from http://www.damoncolquhoun.com and the Indiegogo campaign currently underway to fund the project, but more on that later…)

I wanted to find out about the mind behind these dark and fantastical stories, so I got a chance to ask him a few questions about his life as an artist, the project and his process.

1.  You started out with an art degree, and through your artistic journey, made a stop in the film world.  What got you interested in film?
I actually started as an actor. I studied at a pretty serious acting conservatory, and was in few indie films. During my training I kept getting into trouble because I had this urge to control staging, and other actors’ performances. I would get really frustrated if one of my classmates didn’t deliver what I thought they were capable of. Finally, one of my instructors told me I might want to consider directing.
I directed a couple of things, got fed up with the no budget process and went back to school. I studied art because I wanted a career in VFX [visual effects]. I figured, learning VFX would allow me to make films on my own, but once I got a job in the industry, the 9-5 hustle took over. Plus I really didn’t care for the tediousness of the work.
I went back to directing because all-in-all it’s the right place for someone like me: a jack-of-all trades who’s a control freak with stories to tell and a clear vision through which to present them. Plus, new technology allowed me to make movies the way I wanted to.
2.  Tell us a little about the melding of fairy and fay lore with the story of Pixie Dust.
I wanted to paint a picture of a modern urban fairy. Some fairy traits are incorporated in an anecdotal way to tease those who know fairy lore. At the start of the film, it’s not obvious that Faye is a fairy, but, for those in the know, there are hints. The most obvious hint is her name, then there’s the fact that Faye doesn’t care for salt. Their landlord is going to wear her sweater inside out as a way to protect herself when delivering the bad news to Faye.
Fairies are nature spirits, so Faye is there to restore balance within nature’s black sheep, humans, hence her ability to see people’s inner beast (a metaphor for [their] psychological issues).
I also wanted to subvert the popular image of pixie dust. Faye ends up finding her own kind of pixie dust in the form of her mother’s medication, but medication is a double-edged sword: they have side effects. A fairy can be both “good” and “bad,” the viewers have to ask themselves, are Faye’s actions ultimately good or bad?
3.  Your cast for Pixie Dust looks amazing! (Mia Guzman as Faye; Rocio Mendez as her mother; and Mary Looram from Orange Is The New Black as the Landlord) How influenced are you by diversity, and in light of the recent Chris Rock essay, how difficult is it to stay true to your community and how it is represented within the independent film world?
Thank you! Getting your hands on a great cast is tough. So, yeah, I got lucky.
In terms of diversity, it comes organically for me. Growing up in NYC’s Upper West Side means that my world was full of diversity, therefore, diversity is essential to an honest retelling of my experiences. It’s the story that dictates the specific variety of diversity. In a film like Transporter, diversity meant a cast that was African-American, Haitian, Nigerian, and Israeli.
Filmmakers have to be true to their stories. Color is not the important thing, ethnicity is. Americans are products of their ethnic backgrounds, which are steeped in history and culture, which create a distinct POV. But look, if you’re a filmmaker who grew up around nothing but middle-American White people, then please don’t add a token Black person to your film. Instead, make certain that you look deep enough into your world to reflect in your film the cultural isolation you were raised in and what effect that had on you and therefore your story.
4.  With your short film Transporter, your main character Darien is an introvert and lives in his head.  I wondered at times how mentally fit he was.  In Pixie Dust, the film focuses Faye and her mother’s mental illness.  I can see a thread with both films that deal with mental illness using a fantasy backdrop, making it easy to open the subject up to discussion.  Was that your intention in order to address this seemingly still taboo subject in the African-American community?
Believe it or not, I had no intention of focusing on the theme of mental illness in the way I have, but it’s a personal topic to me, so it happened organically.
I was shot when I was 8 years old. The bullet fell out of the sky, hit my leg, just missing my head, ripping a chunk out of my thigh. I didn’t tell my parents about it, just my sister, so the only treatment I got was a gauze pad and some ointment. From that point on, it felt like death could just descend upon me, seemingly out of nowhere. Many years later I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and OCD. Through therapy, I’ve learned to manage it all pretty well.
Once I came to understand the symptoms of anxiety-based mental illnesses, I began to see it everywhere in my Harlem neighborhood: it’s a look people have in their eyes; it’s in their breathing pattern; it’s in the way they communicate or fail to communicate. It’s wild. So yeah, I guess as a filmmaker, mental illness is my raison d’être.
5.  Tell us a bit about Faye’s character and where she draws her strength.
She’s actually modeled after my wife who is 5’, 100 lbs, but grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The schoolyard chant [in those days] went something like this:
Come from the Ville
Know I’m chill
Picture me runnin
Must be buggin
Walk up in your face
Beat you down and walk away
So yeah, Faye is a fighter. She’s uncomfortable showing emotion, but is full of love. Unfortunately, her mother’s constant need for care absorbs most of it. Faye [is also] a naturally attractive girl – the type who attracts boys without trying to, or wanting to. The boy-girl dynamic is still foreign to her – she’s got a lot on her plate. The fact that the boys like her means that a lot of girls don’t like her. Faye has to prove her toughness once every couple of school years.
Faye draws her strength from her grandmother. Her grandmother was a fairy as well. There’s a confidence that comes from knowing that you have one more weapon than everybody else. For some people, it’s brains, for some it’s brawn. For Faye’s grandmother, it was brains and magical brawn – likewise for Faye.
6.  Do you find you have more freedom for storytelling in the fantasy genre?
I would say so. Reality is a bitch! It’s often hard to digest. So trying to get an audience to explore a difficult subject head on is often asking too much of people. The things you explore and say in a fantasy film can certainly be more overt. At the same time, it’s easier to lose the subtleties – the humanity – when you make an all out fantasy film. That’s why I prefer something closer to a hybrid, like Urban Fantasies.
7.  You mention films like Take Shelter (which I loved), and Melancholia having a similar vibe to Pixie Dust.  What are some your favorite sci-fi, fantasy or horror films?
As I mention earlier, I like hybrids. There’s nothing like watching human beings interacting without reservation. At the same time, there’s nothing like watching a human being fly!
Here is his list (which is pretty darn great!):
La Jetée – Delicatessen – Children of Men – Battle Royal – Stalker – 12 Monkeys – Alien – Empire Strikes Back
Tin Drum – Blade – Beasts of the Southern Wild – Pan’s Labyrinth – Brotherhood of the Wolf – TLOTR Trilogy (epic) – The Dark Knight – The Wiz
Let The Right One In – The Birds – Rosemary’s Baby – The Shining – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – Suicide Club – Halloween

Now that we know a little about the film and the mind behind it, I hope the insider info makes you want to see it as much as I do!  This project is in pre-production, with an Indiegogo campaign that will close on January 2, 2015.  $15,000 is needed to create Pixie Dust, with majority of the money going to actually paying cast and crew.

Let the holiday spirit inspire you!  If you can make a contribution, please do, and if you’re not sure, go to the link below where you get a chance to read his great script to help make your decision.  How unique is that?!

I think it is important that we support independent filmmakers who make genre films that defy cookie cutter cinema these days.

Make your contributions here:

and check out all the in-depth info about the production!

Thanks to Damon for taking the time to answer a few questions so candidly, and I can’t wait to see the finished film.

Good luck!

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