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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Good Day, Paul Harvey; Rest In Peace 

...it occurs to me, on learning that Paul Harvey passed away today, that an odd - at least for me - aspect of my place in this world since about the age of 16 is the way people have reacted to my voice. Over the years, any number of people - interestingly enough, mostly women - have approached me after some meeting or presentation or training session or other circumstance where I have had to do a lot of talking to tell me how much they love my voice. Over those same years, I have been asked, brow-beaten, and pressured to join church choirs and other singing groups to contribute what has been insisted is my "wonderful" singing voice to those groups. It was, in fact, other people's interest in my voice that led me (in a complicated series of circumstances too tangled to explain here) to become a 'disc jockey' at my small hometown radio station during the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school. This was where I first really came 'face to face' with Paul Harvey...

There wasn't a lot of radio to listen to back in the 1960's and early '70's out there in the wilds of Central Idaho. Actually, there was only one AM station to listen to during the daylight hours - the one I eventually worked at - and it was part of a small local network that relied on ABC Radio for its national feed. That package included roughly 5 minutes of news at the top of the hour, a variety of half-hour programming that was usually played early on Sunday mornings, and three daily programs featuring Paul Harvey: the morning news report, a 15-minute noon news program (which, unlike the morning report, also ran on Saturday), and "The Rest Of The Story", which ran locally in the weekday mid-afternoons...

Harvey's was a comfortable, warm. avuncular voice that could deliver all sorts of straight news in a way that made the issues clear and even provide a warning for those shocking moments - the death of Pope John Paul I comes immediately to mind - that could cushion the shock of the moment. While his later work, especially in my later post-DJ days living in small eastern Oregon communities that were once again places where radio choices were limited, began to sound like a halfhearted, ill-equipped effort to become the ABC Radio answer to Rush Limbaugh, Paul Harvey still had those journalist chops that would clearly distinguish him today from all the cable talking heads and radio icons who have taken over our national political discourse...

It isn't politically correct to say so if one wants to maintain that progressive street cred, but the hell with all that. Paul Harvey's passing marks the departure of another of those benchmarks that have defined my own life. I will never be able to add up all the hours I spent flipping switches to make his voice stream out through the transmitter to the local population or the hours I spent recording his Saturday noon report on the ancient cranky reel-to-reel recorder in the sad, cramped little room we called the "recording studio" for play in our time zone. I can't even begin to tally the hours I spent in a tight little radio station control room listening to Paul Harvey or the number of angry phone calls I got for what we shall refer to as "technical difficulties" when the tape reel dedicated to Harvey's Saturday noon report (which came over the network feed at 9 AM) wasn't large enough to actually record all of the Saturday noon report...

In some strange way, Paul Harvey taught me how to think about things. His effort wasn't successful in the normal sense, because he had natural conservative proclivities that I ended up rejecting, but he was a major voice in the conversation that represents my advent to adulthood. He was once a part of my life in a way that could never be untangled from any of the other parts; regardless of the places that he went in his later years, that memory is meaningful and precious. May he rest in peace...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:22 PM 0 comments

Friday, February 27, 2009

When Apology Is Fail 

...there occasionally comes the moment in many lives when, having exposed the deep-seated putrid swill of which one's own soul is constructed, there is nothing left to do but make a desperate grab for that last remaining lifeline connected to any common understanding of social decency and offer an apology for one's actions. This apology isn't, of course being offered with any particular sincerity, given that its basis is anchored in an absurd insistence that our intellectual capacity must be suspended in order to reasonably accept the apology. Today's episode this vein is offered by the soon-to-be-former mayor of Los Alamitos, California...

Inquiring minds want to know: if the mayor wasn't somehow aware that watermelons are a classic racist icon, why was the cartoon funny? Would it have been as much a knee-slapper to the mayor if the objects in the cartoon had been, say, Casaba melons or cantaloupes...or maybe Ponderosa pine cones or English walnuts? Is this some sort of big-city horticultural reference implying that the presence of a garden on the White House lawn precludes the ability to actually hide Easter eggs amongst the resulting vegetation rather than just setting them out on the grass for all the kids to see because big city kids can't deal with overlying vegetation?

I like to think that I have a pretty good sense of humor, but - for the life of me - I can't imagine why a cartoon reference to watermelon plants would be a funnier Easter egg hunt reference in an otherwise racism-free world than, say, a hill of strawberry bushes. Clearly, I am not qualified to serve on the city council in Los Alamitos, California; my sense of humor just simply isn't as well developed as my sense of the history of racial innuendo...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:35 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

But It's BALSAMIC, Dammit! 

...Central Oregon has a lot of things going for it that make it a nice place to live. There are many, many - no; seriously, way more than societally or environmentally responsible - golf courses nestled amongst the pine trees and bitter brush that provide the vegetative backdrop to our little corner of heaven. There are also a host of outdoor recreation opportunities afforded from skiing to fishing to wilderness exploration. The social cultural scene is another one of those things that make my little corner of the world that makes - or used to make - that nice place to live...

The cultural and economic center of Central Orygun, the city of Bend, used to be but isn't anymore one of those things, for reasons that have lots to do with dramatic collapse of hyper-inflated real estate prices and an unfortunate combination of too many McMansions and too little affordable housing for the people who work in the service economy that used to make our tourism-based economy succeed. Home foreclosures are rampant, once-breathtaking housing prices are plummeting, unemployment is at nation-leading high levels, and now we make the national news-stream with this desperate but strange story...

It's ironic, in a strange cruel way, that all the problems that are plaguing Central Orygun these days can be condensed at some national level into some bizarre story about a crime spree at a local specialty store involving the theft of balsamic vinegar. That's right, America; things have grown so bad in what was once one of the shining examples of The Cool Places To Live that desperate unnamed perps have been reduced to stealing bottles of balsamic vinegar for purposes that one can only imagine are so dark and twisted that they cannot be discussed at a family blog such as this one...

The majority of people who live in Central Orygun these days are not native-born; lots of us weren't raised here and - in many cases - our children weren't born here. For one reason or another, many of us ended up here because this was The Place To Be that our parents told about as we were growing up. Now, however, we are fetched up against the same sorts of punishing shoals of economic reality as the rest of the nation, and our Star Turn on the national stage is the random but vexing theft of...well...bottles of balsamic vinegar...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:11 PM 0 comments

Sunday, February 22, 2009

A Message Behind The Crassness? 

...courtesy of Politico, we see not only one more reason why Senator Jim Bunning may not even make it out of his 2010 Republican primary but also what tribulations may lay ahead for President Obama if at some point he is confronted with the prospect of naming a nominee to the Supreme Court of The United States. Aside from the fact that Bunning - who the folks at Time Magazine - of all people - called one of the Five Worst Senators in 2006 - proves beyond any question that there is a measurable gulf between the talent necessary to be a Hall of Fame pitcher and that necessary to be a United States Senator, there is the underlying suggestion that Republican Senators may finally push all the buttons necessary to finally address the Senate filibuster rule on judicial nominations....

It could just be Bunning being Bunning, of course. There are plenty of examples over a surprisingly short tour demonstrating that he is one of those Senators living in the "just a matter of time" category; there is also the simple fact that the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee is quietly, frantically trying to find someone who doesn't exemplify the phrase "loose cannon" that can hold onto that seat to avoid slipping over the edge into long-term status as Meaningless Minority. But there is also a disturbing undercurrent to Bunning's mindless prattle:
The paper reports that Bunning reiterated his support of conservative judges, saying “that’s going to be in place very shortly because Ruth Bader Ginsburg…has cancer.”

The interesting undercurrent behind Bunning's typically heartless Republican crassness is that whole idea of a possible insistence that any Obama judicial nominees hew to some conservative orthodoxy or face obstruction. This, of course, would be totally in contravention to the views of Republican Senators over the last eight years when it comes to a president's right to nominate the person of his choice. Never mind that, though, because we learned long ago that the normal rules don't apply to Republicans. They already know that Democrats will blink when it comes to the "nuclear option" regarding the filibuster rule, and we already know that they will play hardball while Senate Democrats are debating just exactly which wiffleball bat to bring to the game...

Jim Bunning, if the report is to be trusted, said something that generations of parents would have boxed their childrens' ears for saying in public in order to teach them proper manners. The interesting part of what he said, though - that part beyond the customary crassness of a typical Republican commentary - that certainly catches one's attention...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:38 PM 0 comments

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