A Terrifying Realization

Yankee fans are people too.

That was what I finally understood in the late innings of the game where the Yanks took out the Halos at the new Stadium in the Bronx. Watching the mass of excited faces, some praying, some hiding their faces (the team from Orange County was a hit away from tying it up), some on the verge of tears and some hooting like soccer hooligans, I realized much to my horror and surprise that Yankee fans are just a bunch of New York schlubs and no different than anyone else in this enormous small town.

Traditionally I am a Met fan. Which means I have watched the team crumble four years running; and that includes watching the most recent season become classifiable into that worst of all classes for a sporting event: boring. They have a new stadium--I liked Shea (Shake Shack? I came to watch a ballgame). They decked it out with stuff about some Dodger player--stupid. They have a formerly dynamic shortstop who can't run anymore. They have a young "superstar" who forgot how to hit homers this season and who for several seasons has not gotten many clutch hits of any kind though he has "good numbers". How dull.

You might say I have stopped really caring about the baseball team I've long rooted for. And during this window of sanity I have seen that the notion of "rooting", especially in a two-team city, is a painful, unnecessary distraction (perhaps I would feel different if my team had won 26 World Series); and that it falsely creates a disputatious relationship with one's fellow townsfolk.

I am a lover of the game of baseball--nothing will take away from the beauty of a well-hit line drive nor from the symmetry of men circling the bases trying to beat the throw home--but I think my rooting days are drawing to an end. I remember suffering greatly as the Mets failed in three successive seasons (not including this year when I tuned out very early). I have promised myself I will never allow myself to suffer that way again over anything as trifling as a ballteam.

And one of the happy outcomes of this is I have seen the humanity in the formerly hated Yankee fan. Arrogant and foolish and full of false pride (and an even more false sense of superiority and accomplishment), they are not so different than the run of humanity. Really, they are just typically bumbling New Yorkers trying to feel good about themselves for one night.

I will be watching the World Series. I have in the past of course also hated the Phillies. I don't now. May the best team win.

Awake Ye to the Fake Zebra in Palestine

According to numerous accounts, the Zebra at the zoo in Gaza is a fake. It's actually a donkey spray-painted to look like that striped denizen of the African savannah.

Apparently the specimen is at least healthier than the poor one-eyed lion or some of the other animals who are left dead in their cages to rot.

No doubt the excuse for this paltry zoo is that the Israelis have blockaded Gaza for so long that the Gazans cannot find a way to bring in a zebra even if they could get one.

And while it is certainly true that Israeli expansionism has been the cause of much human discord (milder in form but not unlike that of the Americans vs. the Native Americans); and while it is also true that the Israeli national character, such as it may be, has been sharpened and made angry and even irrational by the constant expressed ambition of its neighbors to kill every Jew in the land; and while I am no particular "fan" of Israel (I have never been there and so have no meaningful opinion of the place physically); for while all these are true, it cannot be said that the fake zebra, put into context with other wrong-headeded deeds committed by those under the spell of Hamas and its murderous minions, does not represent a particular pinnacle of both pathos and stupidity on the part of its perpetrators.

Yet American progressives seem to have a queer penchant for taking up the cause of the Palestinians almost without qualification and certainly without sufficient embarrassment.

Awake, progressives, to the unfortunate character-traits one must associate with those who cannot seem to make a state when all the world would help them make one if only they would stop behaving in a manner so dimwitted it confounds all good sense. For these people, oppressed as they may be, also may be architects of their own wretched fate. They may fear Hamas and perhaps cannot shake them. But we would not accept this excuse from another people. We would say people get the leadership they deserve.

I have only a firm hope that the average Palestinian can one day wake up in a world where he neither terrorizes nor is terrorized, but I do know this: he cannot hope to succeed with fake zebras.

Also, he cannot hope to succeed with cartoon characters whose only hope is to kill every Jew. He cannot hope to succeed with mothers who declare their sons and daughters heroic upon strapping bombs to themselves and killing innocents who may or may not be Jewish so long as they are riding a bus in Tel Aviv at the wrong moment. He cannot hope to succeed with fevered declarations of hate for their neighbors, not all of whom hate them nor wish to see them destroyed. He cannot hope to succeed with tunnels where the import of arms rather than bread is the object, and where, when he can, fires a rocket randomly (and often in futility) at population-centers with no goal but to tear humans limb from limb. These acts together are the raiment of a people long in defeat and with little prospect for success.

American progressives can help the cause of peace in Palestine by making clear (to the Gazans, chiefly) there are certain basic standards that cannot really be compromised. Without giving quarter to Israeli religious fanatics who seek to aggrandize their faith and increase their number at the cost of another's, it must be made clear that while we may smile ruefully about the fake zebra, the rest of it--the Jew-hating cartoon-mouse; the gun-toting government of thugs; the rockets; the inexplicable inability to get real support from so-called "fellow Arabs"; the inability of Gazan "leaders" to negotiate in good faith even as its people practically starve; these deficiencies really put their cause, until such time as the deficiencies are improved significantly, beneath meaningful consideration.

Perhaps getting a real zebra at the zoo would be a humble start at rehabilitation--I am sure there is a zebra somewhere in the world that might be put to good use in the greater service of peace in Palestine.

In the meantime, I am told children seem to enjoy the painted donkey. And I will admit, thinking of children at a zoo and a fake zebra, that the world is a complicated, baffling place.

The Thrill of Vinyl

Records--you remember them if you're of a certain age.

And if you're younger than that, you may have noticed that sales of vinyl recordings are up rather significantly, perhaps because you have started buying them lately--perhaps in rebellion against the churlish nature of the recording industry and its "digital rights management" drones.

I'm in both camps. I have a lot of old vinyl lying around. I think the last LP I bought brand new was by a band called "Crowded House" back in the eighties and it is better not spoken of. But there are literally about a ton of classics in the collection as well.

The other day I bought a substantially produced re-issue of a vinyl recording by The Smiths. I placed it on a turntable and marveled. The platter spun, the mechanical arm gently floated over to the beginning of the first track--a slight hiss--and then: wonderful sound! So much richer, even on a pieced-together mess of a stereo system, than from a CD or an MP3 or 4 or whatever latest, least-lossy format our chipmakers have invented.

I am finding old LPs in great condition at cheap prices all over. And sure, I bought a turntable that can turn them into iPod-ready digital candy. But that's not the news. The news is that, due to a number of factors like: "I bought it, I own it and I can lend it and record it a thousand times and do whatever the hell I want with it including sell it to a used record store"; and "Holy crap, this sounds fantastic"; and perhaps most pleasantly: "there's something wonderful about watching an actual machine--with little wavy lines engraved in plastic and a tiny needle picking up vibrations--function before your very eyes like some strange jurassic denizen sprung suddenly to life in the full, colorful vitality of its youth", I am unlikely ever to spend much more than a pittance on either CDs or iTunes.

Or maybe I am thinking of my own youth. I don't know.

There is also substantial sensory pleasure in handling vinyl albums, in dusting them and blowing on them, in looking at album cover art and liner notes and inner sleeves and often enough, gratuitous "stuff" (posters, postcards, lyric sheets) that used to be tossed in with no particular fanfare.

Armed with my MP3 turntable, I never need worry about some stupid message from iTunes about where the song I bought "belongs" or ever worry that somehow it might be "withdrawn" the way Amazon recently "withdrew" some digital files from some folks' Kindles. Oh, and by the way, I own lots of actual books, too. I carry them around and read them. Shocking!

I Love Science for its Mistakes (Moonbomb)

The other day--the same day, in fact, that our President controversially won the Nobel Peace Prize--NASA bombed the moon.

The poet in me--and many others, from what I can gather--was wounded. How could you want to bomb that mystical night-rider, puller of tides, mysterious mover of hearts? How to bomb that pale smiling disk for which wolves howl and that once shone a ghostly gleam on the polished sides of the Great Pyramids at Gizeh? It was one thing to gently land, take some rocks, romp in big funny suits, and depart in a flash. Quite another to hit the soft body of the moon with a missile, expecting to "throw up a six-mile high plume" of debris, and then with a second projectile, take measurements. It seemed in a way ignominious and certainly disrespectful to--and I think we can all agree--a lady.

But the rationalist in me could barely squelch a cheer. It sure sounded exciting! And anyway, the moon, a celestial body like any other, is bombarded by projectiles hundreds of times a year. Look at those craters! They didn't get there because poets were worrying about the moon's complexion. Then there was the whole "looking for water" gambit, which also held promise. Does anyone really hate the idea of a sustainable moonbase? Are we supposed to be stuck here on this stinky old Earth forever, or what?

The best part of the whole thing, and my point in this post, was that it certainly appears that the moonbombing was a very public, much over-hyped flop. There was no visible plume. Who knows what happened? It made no sense. And that is what I love about science.

Unlike the more vulnerable constructions of the universe (for instance that of, say, the literal Christian religion), science (should I capitalize it?) can withstand repeated failures and still not fail as a system of inquiry. For as we all know, science is based on hypothesis, discovery, and inference. Science never claims to "know" anything--only to have observed what appears to be, and can be demonstrated again to be, cause and effect.

This ice-veined method has given us much in the way of sustenance and comfort. Rampant, it has also threatened our very existence. Clearly the scientific method holds awesome power and only the simplest or most obstinate would deny its benefits (or its potential for harm). But it is the ability to fail--this fearlessness of failure; in fact this self-invitation to failure such that one can learn from the failure--that is the heart and soul of the discipline.

While I am certain there were a few red faces around the table at NASA after the expected result(a big, visible plume of dust) failed to materialize (though they claim to have caused enough disturbance to make a study in any case), the event certainly did not, despite not having lived up to expectations, deter a single scientist from belief in the usefulness of the discipline or even the mission itself.

And unlike the baseless, harebrained claims made by adherents to other belief systems (the world will end in 2012, the world was going to end in 1999, the world will end when the righteous are pulled up to heaven in the Rapture), science can continue to make considered predictions, have them fail, dust itself off, and try again. It does not claim to have "known" anything. It just keeps trying, and trying, and trying. And eventually, by all evidence, it will somehow succeed.

And as opposed to the spurious certitudes of seers and priests, how can you not love that about science?

One More Invader Repulsed

Afghanistan--can you believe we fell for it?

I think it was Kipling who said something like "Woe betide the man who tries to hustle the East". And apologies to General Westmoreland if it wasn't him who indicated we might have to destroy a Vietnamese village in order to save it.

We should have left Afghanistan after it was clear Osama had left.

We should have devoted all of our military might (and, while it may have been oxymoronic, intelligence) to finding his cave in Waziristan or Pakistan or his warren of rooms in Peshawar, and then penetrating the complex with bunker-busting ordinance. We still should.

But it doesn't take 40,000 troops to do this--it might take a couple of thousand and just like any manhunt, it would eventually come to an end with the culprit Dillingered and lying dead with a somewhat surprised look on his face.

Having chased the cruel Taliban out but not having won the hearts and minds of the Afghans (who knew?), we have now joined the long list of invaders who have been repulsed or who are about to be repulsed, or at least to go home in a military form of tatterdemallion, without having achieved any objective.

To be fair to the President, he never said he was hoping to pull out of Afghanistan. But that was then. There's no good reason to stay there. And you knew he couldn't have said he wanted to pull out of there anyway during the campaign because then McCain would have clenched his teeth even tighter and maybe even would have convinced someone that Obama would make a poor Commander in Chief.

I don't want to make this a referendum on Obama--but it's time to quit fooling with Afghanistan. To heck with what General McChrystal says. Nobody elected him. He's a fighting man and he's telling the boss what it would take to win.

But we don't need to win there, and should get out before they kill more American soldiers for no good reason. We should just focus on Bin Laden--that's all.

Support the Troops in Afghanistan. Time to come home.

--Renaissance

The Apparent Decline of Misu

Our family adopted a tiny, very pretty little black and white cat from a shelter in the suburbs in the summer of 2000. We named her Misu. And until earlier this summer when my daughter lobbied hard and with ultimate success for another "animal rescue" as she called it, Misu was the only feline and except for a brief cohabitation with a turtle that escaped upstate (don't ask) the only quadripedal non-human amongst us.

Misu has always been furtive--even rather retiring in nature. She is a house-cat, and has been known to lie in the same spot on the same couch for hours on end. She never has gone outside (except for one mad dash during a car-house transfer many years ago of which she rapidly thought better), and never has had long periods of interaction with other animals. Well, there was the turtle, covered by mesh that she often bothered; and the brief presence of goldfish whom she hunted, without success, by dipping her paw into the water over and over again. And perhaps as we might have taken better note, a month when a neighbor-cat stayed with us and left poor Misu utterly spooked and, I think, traumatized. It was a rescued alley-cat and was bolder than mild Misu, and Misu, though able to hold her own with back-arching and tail-fattening and hissing and bouncing sideways like a creature possessed, seemed altogether put out by the notion of having to share space with another un-caged animal.

Now there is Indy, a male, neutered of course, but full of youthful vigor and full of the classic curiosity with which cats are known to delight their masters. Misu's opinion of Indy is one of high-minded disdain, but this is also mixed with resentment towards us and, towards the newcomer, a total lack of camaraderie or good humor. Indy, a kitten now nearly full-sized, has tried to romp with Misu since the day of his arrival. Misu's response has been angry hissing and rapid retreat. Misu will not eat in Indy's presence. She tolerates Indy's physical proximity if she is drowsy, but not within a perimeter that appears to be approximately four or five feet in any direction. The two of them sometimes spend minutes at a time staring at each other, crouching as if to pounce.

That's all fascinating cat-drama. What seems sort of sad, and it may have to do with Misu's aging--she's now about nine, and certainly a middle-aged lady at this point--is her apparent overall decline in both attitude and vigor. She is more droopy than she once was, and has a tendency towards being short-tempered even with her humans, to whom she had always been indulgent. She also seems more afflicted with minor physical ailments than before. And it all seems to have coincided with the arrival of Indy.

My personal belief is that the arrival of Indy was a blow to Misu's delicate spirit and that she has not recovered. I think her mental condition is depleted, I think the stress Indy unwittingly causes is somewhat debilitating, and I think it has all brought on a physical frailty rather suddenly and, to me at least, quite noticeably. It's unfortunate that Misu has not been able to cope with the presence of what she clearly sees as a fierce rival, and her attendant decline has taken me by surprise and saddened me. She hides much more frequently now, and though she was often off in her own corner of pillows before, now she is almost never to be seen at all.

Misu's decline is perhaps inevitable but most unwelcome to see. For eight years she was ruler of the cat-domain. She seems to have abdicated, or at least retired. I would like to bring back the younger, more playful Misu but that of course is impossible. In the meantime there is Indy, who is a beautiful young cat with no shortage of cat-charisma. But it isn't the same.