How Can It Be?

See No Evil

2011-12-05T17:37:00.001-05:00

The poster is awful in so many ways. Craig looks more like evil personified than Mikael Blomkvist but why is he wearing two layers of clothing while Mara wears nothing? Why does he appear to be protecting her when it's Salander who saves Blomkvist? Who wrote the horrid text and what the hell does it mean? Salander's unwavering sense of justice may qualify as vigilantism but the women for whom she seeks justice have been failed by the system and everyone else.

This poster is a shameful distortion of the book and more important, it is a perfect example of how feminism has been distorted and coopted by Madison Avenue, Hollywood and the rest of corporate America.

I don't believe for a minute that feminism, with all it's imperfections, was in any way about freeing women to choose to be exploited, to choose to dress like sexual objects or streetwalkers, to choose to emulate the worst behaviors of men.

Why I

2011-11-06T09:18:00.000-05:00

WON'T

Really, could this not have been taken in the 50's?

When I first moved here twenty-three years ago I felt I had gone through a time warp. I used to describe my new neighbors as a bunch of Donna Reeds because they all seemed to living in the 50's. Things haven't changed much but the kids have grown up and some of the women are moving on to new careers and in Gwyn's case, becoming more serious about the family hobby, politics.

One reason I won't vote for her: too many family members already in politics. She uses her first name, alla "Hillary", as she does because her brother-in-law is also running for office (and maybe another Mannion too). Her husband's step-mother is the mayor of Syracuse.

Another reason is that I can't personally support a woman who has six children in this day and age. I just can't. The same is true for someone who works for military contractors and is pursuing an MBA post 2008. Again I can't go there.

Bottom line is that I see Gwyn Mannion as prime example of why I'm no longer registered as a Democrat.

And then there's that family photo she's been using in her campaign materials.

In the text she lists the names of the six kids and adds, "Also have a golden retriever named 'Jack'". (Look at 'em. Would they have anything but a golden f***ing retriever?)

So who's the young man on the far right? There's no mention of him in the text, not even any mention of The Fresh Air Fund.

Let Them SEE Cake!

2011-04-15T10:38:00.001-04:00

Years ago soap operas provided women with a respite from their daily chores even as they hawked the soap and other products. I'm not sure what they're about now, I'm not a fan, but I suspect they're a diversion that may be even more welcome as more and more people don't have a job to go to.

Nevertheless what really strikes me as odd is that ABC is replacing one of the soaps with another food show.

An estimated one in six Americans experience hunger in any given week, many of them children. I guess if the poor don't have anything to eat the corporate creatures will give them images of food to feast their eyes on.

Self Annihilation Apace

2011-03-27T08:49:00.014-04:00

from Reuters this morning:

Soaring radioactivity deals blow to Japan's plant

I think one of the great mysteries of the century will turn out to be how it was that the rest of the world didn't even try to force Japan to bury this thing after the first reactor blew. Modern man has truly 'evolved' into a thoroughly suicidal creature. I feel like a passenger on one of the planes that was flown into the Trade Center.

Egypt

2011-02-11T11:01:00.001-05:00

Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

The future is all but certain but to see the people of Egypt oust a dictator after 30 years of rule is a gift to the entire world. And they did it without guns, without violence.

Holding My Breath

2011-02-10T10:27:00.001-05:00

Orwell's America

2011-02-06T11:23:00.003-05:00

Unmanned drones, controlled by Air National Guard

from Hancock Airfield, will fly over the Adirondacks

"If you feel like you’re being watched while floating in a canoe or driving along some lonely road in the Adirondacks this summer, you might be right." But not to worry, "the New York flights will not be armed and should be undetectable by those on the ground."

An Evening With Harry Belafonte

2011-02-01T09:07:00.006-05:00

Michelle Gabel/ The Post-Standard

He spoke for almost an hour, no notes, he held the attention of his audience the entire time. Eighty-three years old and the fire burns as brightly as ever. He told stories, some funny, some poignant, he talked about his friends and connections in Syracuse and the Onondaga Nation, he talked about his life of activism and his disappointment in the changes of the past thirty years.

He asked over and over again how activists had missed the turning of the tide. I suspect he knows but that he didn't believe his audience wanted to hear it voiced even by him. It was there though in what he didn't say, the names he didn't drop but could have: Clinton, Obama, Biden, Emmanuel...

After he spoke, two much younger leaders of the Peace Council took the stage and it was back to the 70's because they didn't understand what Belafonte was implying and they do not understand that they were rendered powerless years ago by the Democratic Leadership Council and its spawn.

How can it be that an 83-year-old is vastly more current than so many people half his age?

Still I'm so glad I had the chance to hear him speak.

Change You Can Stick

2010-12-22T09:48:00.000-05:00

President Obama is preparing to sign an executive order in the new year establishing the government’s right to indefinitely detain prisoners without charge or trial. This according to a report by ProPublica. The administration is expected to indefinitely hold at least 48 of the prisoners remaining at Guantánamo. Under the executive order, prisoners would be allowed to challenge their incarceration periodically. ProPublica reports that nearly two years after Obama’s pledge to close the prison at Guantánamo, more prisoners there are formally facing the prospect of lifelong detention and fewer are facing charges than the day Obama was elected.

Not Even Close to Sane

2010-11-03T12:18:00.009-04:00

Kristin Davis, former madam, candidate for governor NY

"This has to be some sort of wicked twisted curse, some kind of Greek tragedy or something. After eight years of Bush and his party dragging the country over the cliff, now we are shackled to Neville Pollyanna Chamberlain Milquetoast, who is busy laying plans for tea and crumpets with the tea party mob who seek to annihilate him, and, for many of them, not just metaphorically either.

That means that during the next two years of multiple continuing national crises, we will be treated to standing by and watching some sort of insane WWE political wrestling match between two leviathans: One, which is murderously vicious and represents the predatory elite oligarchy ripping off the country at every turn, and the other, which is pathetically feeble and represents the predatory elite oligarchy ripping off the country at every turn.

America is so over. Imagine how they must laugh at us over noodles in Beijing. I just cringe for this country every day, with each worse-yet news report from the front lines of a political system that makes full-blown dysfunctionality seem like a panacea by comparison. There seems to be no bottom to the well of our stupidity and greed and hypocrisy and insistence on committing national suicide.

Yep, America is surely over. But, goddamit, does it have to be this embarrassing?"

David Michael Green

The Big Question

2010-09-08T09:38:00.008-04:00

mstink

In recent weeks two writers have asked the big question.

From David Michael Green:
Once there was a political party in America – the one that did the New Deal and the Great Society – that stood up a bit for the middle class and the poor. But Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have led the Democrats down a different path. Now the party stands for a slightly weaker version of the GOP’s plutocracy protection service. And, it seems, for getting its face bitch-slapped bright red at every possible juncture. Both aspects of the New Democrats are a puzzle, but particularly the latter. What sort of psychology of self-loathing explains how a Clinton or an Obama can be so passive, even when getting handed their heads by the most scurrilous of the creeps on the political landscape, soulless creatures who could be destroyed with the slightest show of self-defense, let alone a wee assertion of political courage?

From James Kunstler:
The bigger mystery in all this is: what happened to reasonable, rational, educated people of purpose in this country to drive them into such burrow of cowardice that they can't speak the truth, or act decisively, or even defend themselves against such a host of vicious morons in a time of [crisis]?

BP's Macondo Blowout

2010-04-30T12:10:00.007-04:00

"When Mama's filling up her SUV with little Joey and Lucy in the backseat do you think she wonders for one nano-second how many [creatures] have died to keep her on the highway?"

Gordon Adair in the last episode of
"The State Within"

The Angry Sister

2010-04-20T14:48:00.002-04:00

Something to look forward to...

Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano is nothing to
'Angry Sister' Katla

Every time in recorded history that Eyjafjallajökull volcano has erupted, the much larger Katla volcano has also erupted.
The Christian Science Monitor

Wellness

2010-01-06T09:36:00.008-05:00

Americans enjoy one of the most luxurious lifestyles on Earth:
Our food is plentiful.
Our work is automated.
Our leisure is effortless.
And it's killing us.

How can it be that I'm in better shape than anyone else in my immediate circle? I'm supposed to be the one who's unfocused, undisciplined, easily distracted, always going off on tangents, given to wildly unrealistic expectations... Why am I the only one among the people with whom I have the most frequent contact who is fairly reasonable about diet and exercise?

How can people who have watched a mother deteriorate in her last years with vascular dementia not choke on the food that is guaranteed to bring them to the same end?

Edward Burtynsky

2009-12-06T09:34:00.003-05:00

Shipbreaking No. 30,

Chittagong, Bangladesh 2001

So True

2009-12-01T17:59:00.005-05:00

Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.

The chatter that passes for news, the gossip that is peddled by the windbags on the airwaves, the noise that drowns out rational discourse, and the timidity and cowardice of what is left of the newspaper industry reflect our flight into collective insanity. We stand on the cusp of one of the most seismic and disturbing dislocations in human history, one that is radically reconfiguring our economy as it is the environment, and our obsessions revolve around the trivial and the absurd.

What really matters in our lives—the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the steady deterioration of the dollar, the mounting foreclosures, the climbing unemployment, the melting of the polar ice caps and the awful reality that once the billions in stimulus money run out next year we will be bereft and broke—doesn’t fit into the cheerful happy talk that we mainline into our brains. We are enraptured by the revels of a dying civilization. Once reality shatters the airy edifice, we will scream and yell like petulant children to be rescued, saved and restored to comfort and complacency. There will be no shortage of demagogues, including buffoons like Sarah Palin, who will oblige. We will either wake up to face our stark new limitations, to retreat from imperial projects and discover a new simplicity, as well as a new humility, or we will stumble blindly toward catastrophe and neofeudalism.

Chris Hedges

Please

2009-11-06T09:10:00.002-05:00

Health Care Reform

2009-08-14T15:25:00.008-04:00

"A real health plan would start with public executions of the top thousand CEOs and owners of the major food companies and fast food franchises. It would continue with serious penalties for health workers not washing their hands or merely holding them under the tap without using soap." -Alexander Cockburn

I'd add some folks from Madison Ave.

"Problem number one here is that there’s no such thing [as an Obama health care reform plan]. As in just about everything else of consequence his administration has been involved in, [the president] seems quite content to simply defer to Congress and allow the sausage-making process on the Hill to generate precisely the policy abomination one might expect, with all the political liabilities we’ve come to know and love from such a dispiriting collection of 535 (minus two or three) moral midgets." -David Michael Green

Non-Fiction

2009-03-05T09:18:00.003-05:00

A friend stopped by for a cup of coffee and a chat. She sat where she could see the titles of the books stacked on edge of my desk. She asked me how I could read such depressing stuff.

I don't think I was able to explain it very well. I'm not really depressed by what I read. What really depresses me is the way so many people spend so much time and energy avoiding anything that might make them think anything other than happy thoughts.

Change With No Bearing

2009-02-10T16:21:00.003-05:00

Obama Backs Off a Reversal on Secrets

“Is there anything material that has happened” that might have caused the Justice Department to shift its views, asked Judge Mary M. Schroeder, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, coyly referring to the recent election.

“No, your honor,” Mr. Letter replied.

Judge Schroeder asked, “The change in administration has no bearing?”

Once more, he said, “No, Your Honor.” The position he was taking in court on behalf of the government had been “thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration,” and “these are the authorized positions,” he said.

My New Bumpersticker

2008-12-06T09:32:00.000-05:00

http://www.cafepress.com/DontBlameNader

Hot Off the Presses

2008-11-08T08:15:00.004-05:00

Vano Shlamov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Three months after the fact, The New York Times finally reports that Georgia "may" have been the aggressor. I wonder if McCain or Biden have commented somewhere...

Election Day

2008-11-04T15:49:00.009-05:00

I was able to ride my bike into the village to vote on a beautiful Indian summer day.

As much as I want to see the Republicans driven into a dark place where they can pupate into a higher life form, as much as I'd like to believe the Democrats will handle their new found power with grace and courage, I could not vote for Obama and, more particularly, Biden.

My easiest and most heart felt vote was for local activist, Howie Hawkins for Congress. If only there were more like Howie Hawkins...

American Know How

2008-10-30T16:36:00.003-04:00

How is it that I can be even more embarrassed to be an American? All these images that make the U.S. looking like some third world incipient democracy that hasn't figured out how to conduct an election.

Decision Clarified

2008-10-28T14:43:00.002-04:00

Apparently Joe Biden likes the way Dick Cheney has redefined the role of the vice president.

Undecided

2008-10-28T01:22:00.008-04:00

How can it be that one week before the election I am undecided? I live in a state where I have the luxury of voting my conscience but still I can't decide...

I had intended to vote on the basis of my opposition to U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan and now Pakistan and now Syria... but in past few days I've been thinking about what has happened to America in the last forty years. I've been thinking about the first time I put a war above everything else and may have missed something equally important. I've been thinking about a man I thought I loathed but whom I've now come to see as the most courageous man to have served as president in my lifetime.

I would like to honor the civil rights that give me an opportunity to cast my vote for the first presidential candidate of African decent but I just don't know if I can face the possibility of witnessing him escalating U.S. military action.

"Heat"

2008-10-23T09:57:00.014-04:00

This week's edition of Frontline kept me up all night. I thought I'd read enough, seen enough to give me a pretty good picture of climate change but this program brings it all together and the impact is gut wrenching.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/heat/

Unconnected Dots

2008-10-20T17:41:00.006-04:00

A week after I first saw this sign it's still there, a perfect demonstration of the disconnect that many people still maintain with the reality of failed governmental policy. This sign is in Fayetteville and there's another one in the village of Manlius in front of another vacant building.

Newsweek

2008-10-06T09:28:00.005-04:00

Illustration: Steve Brodner for Newsweek
"The Fall of America, Inc."

Takin' It To The Street

2008-09-30T19:21:00.008-04:00

NICHOLAS ROBERTS/AFP/Getty Images

Demonstrators protest the proposed 700 billion USD Wall Street bail-out in front of the New York Stock Exchange in New York City on September 25, 2008. In response to the global financial crisis, protesters, from a variety of activist groups, denounced the capitalist system, Wall Street and the administration of US President George W. Bush.

Paul Newman 1925-2008

2008-09-28T09:13:00.010-04:00

I guess one good thing about modern technology is the way it allows us to perpetuate images and keep memories alive. But as the losses accumulate, I wonder if images will still give us pleasure. When the polar bears, the emperor penguins, the frogs, the forests are gone will it be too painful to be reminded of all that we've destroyed?

Dear God What Does It Take?

2008-09-22T09:02:00.030-04:00

Alexander Cockburn has it about right.

By all rights this financial disaster has brought us to the crossroads where neoliberalism should be buried with a stake through its heart. We’ve now had thirty years of deregulation and loosening of government supervision. This has been the neo-liberal mantra preached by both major political parties, the whole of the establishment press and almost every university economics department in the country. It is central to the current crisis. And for symbolic figures in the legislated career of deregulation, there are no more resplendent culprits than the man at McCain’s elbow, Phil Gramm, and the man standing at Obama’s elbow at his press conference last week, Robert Rubin.

Gramm is near the top of any list of the architects of the current economic mess. At the behest of the banking industry he wrote the laws that enabled the huge balloons of funny money debt that exploded this year. The deregulatory statutes bearing his name prompted Wall Street’s looting orgy in the subprime scam.

But is he Numero Uno? No,no,no. That honor surely goes to Robert Rubin and to the economic course he set for his boss, the eagerly complicit Bill Clinton. Gramm (along with Joe Biden) has been a hireling of the banking industry but Rubin is at the beating heart of Wall Street finance, and he and Lawrence Summers at Clinton’s Treasury, were the guiding forces for financial deregulation.

Robert Pollin, "Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity"

Still the Damage's Been Done

2008-09-20T07:57:00.006-04:00

Charges Dropped Against DN! Journalists -
Investigation Needed

The St. Paul City Attorney's office announced Friday it will not prosecute Democracy Now! journalists Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman also issued a statement Friday that "the city will decline to prosecute misdemeanor charges for presence at an unlawful assembly for journalists arrested during the Republican National Convention."

Both announcements come two weeks after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention where over 40 journalists were arrested while reporting on protests taking place outside the convention center.

Upon learning of the news, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman said, "It's good that these false charges have finally been dropped, but we never should have been arrested to begin with. These violent and unlawful arrests disrupted our work and had a chilling effect on the reporting of dissent. Freedom of the press is also about the public's right to know what is happening on their streets. There needs to be a full investigation of law enforcement activities during the convention."

Huh?

2008-09-17T08:34:00.003-04:00

How 6,700 Tons of Radioactive Sand from Kuwait Ended Up in Idaho

I read it and I still don't know how.

Bit by Bit

2008-09-16T08:40:00.001-04:00

Bit by bit our freedoms are being taken away while few seem to care.

Forty years ago people seemed to care at least about the war, one way or the other, and to care about the protests which were fully covered by the media.

I don't think it's just me, just my skewed perspective; I think this is much scarier.

Another Shoe or...

2008-09-15T10:46:00.002-04:00

another domino?

A Real Monster

2008-09-11T07:57:00.003-04:00

How can it be that I'm sitting high & dry in central New York, less than 100 miles from the Canadian border for god's sake, and yet I have this profound sense of dread. Hurricane Ike is enormous, creating signifigant storm surges simultaneously on the coast of the U.S. and that of the Yucatan peninsula. I'm concerned about the welfare of the people in its path but they at least can move. The migratory birds who are heading that way and who depend on the area as a way station before their big push on to South America will have no other options.

Didn't Know He Had It In Him

2008-09-10T15:50:00.002-04:00

Despair

2008-09-10T10:48:00.020-04:00

Doug Mills/The New York Times

A lot of people I know firmly believe that McCain's choice for a running mate was purely political but they are unable/unwilling to see Obama's choice that way, or worse, they tell me Obama had to pick someone like Biden, that he couldn't pick a liberal. How can it be that so many people have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by the mainstream media and come to accept the notion that liberalism has no place in American politics?

Anyway I've been seeing this image of Pat Leahy in my head for the past few weeks, every time I think about Joe Biden, and I finally found the photo. It was taken when Biden was blathering on and on during the Alito hearings before he finally got around to asking a few lame questions.

The Shoes Begin to Drop

2008-09-08T09:48:00.005-04:00

They did it, they managed to hold off until after the conventions. How can it be that they're so inept in so many ways but when their collective asses are on the line they manage to cover 'em when it counts.

Instead of one big October surprise it appears there will be several September-October surprises. I just hope Ike isn't going to be one of them.

Pass the Prosac

2008-09-04T08:08:00.005-04:00

And once again the Democrats prepare to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Once again the Republican boldly plays to his base as the Democrat abuses his and that would include moi.

How can it be that the Democrats are still following the Clinton/DLC/neo-liberal playbook after it lost them the Senate and the House and now at least two presidential elections? Why do they not understand that their hero, Ronald Reagan, didn't win because of his positions but because voters responded to his sense of conviction?

2008-08-09T08:19:00.001-04:00

Crash!

2008-07-20T09:46:00.010-04:00

******
How can it be? A week ago today I put up the picture of my favorite cyclist, Oscar Pereiro. This morning I'm following stage 15 online as the riders descend Col Agnel into Italy in the rain when they report that Pereiro has crashed. Now they're reporting that he has a broken shoulder and femur. I can't believe it. I wonder if he'll ever ride again.

But then I wonder if I'll be able to see Le Tour de France again anyway.

The entire enterprise has come to epitomize the insanity of the petroleum age, taking the concept of an individual on a beautiful, man-powered machine and turning it into an event with one ginormous carbon footprint. Every time they pan the countryside and I see the helicopters, the pursuit vehicles, the cars of the spectators lining the roads I wonder how much longer they'll be able to do this, how much longer I'll be able to enjoy, despite my misgivings, a little virtual summer vacation in France.

update: Pereiro is reported to have a broken shoulder but no broken femur.

******

Viva Oscar!

2008-07-13T15:34:00.002-04:00

Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Best Quote Ever?

2008-06-23T08:05:00.001-04:00

90% OF WHITES COMFORTABLE WITH BLACK PRESIDENT

Some people reading the above headline at The Huffington Post yesterday might ask, "How can it be?"

I know, I know!

Celebrity-Babies

2008-06-18T11:22:00.000-04:00

I am so sick and tired of the celebrity-baby crap.

"Zahara Jolie-Pitt will produce 45,000 lbs of CO2 yearly compared with 221 if she had continued to live in Ethiopia."

2008-05-19T17:33:00.002-04:00

It was raining through most of the first game. Ohio State apparently started off flat-footed and Duke was up 9-1 when we got there late in the first quarter. The weather cleared a bit and there was even some sun for the Syracuse-Notre Dame match when despite a poor third quarter, SU won to go on to the final four.

The real excitement here though is the SU womens' lacrosse team who are going to the final four for the first time in the school's history.

"Stranger Than Paradise"

2008-05-17T07:49:00.000-04:00

There is just something–I'm not sure what–about the films of Jim Jarmusch that appeals to me. I've come to him late, only since "Broken Flowers", but every so often I pick up another of his films and I'm always glad for it.

2008-05-15T08:49:00.000-04:00

My first blog has been disabled. A year of almost daily entries is no longer accessible to me. It feels a bit strange but also in some way liberating. Now I'd like to sort out my ambivalence about blogging in general and try to do something here. Maybe.

2008-04-04T09:43:00.000-04:00

In a world increasingly gone mad there's a bit of life-affirming joy to be found in placing an heirloom tomato seed in some dirt.

...even though two of the Burpee envelopes were labeled "origin Thailand" and "origin China". How can that be?

On the other hand I also have some Italian seeds this year with everything written on the envelopes in Italian.

tomato Brandywine, Black Krim, Persimmon, Marvel Stripe, Green Zebra, Costoluto Fiorentino, San Marzano, Golden Mama, Sweetie, Miribelle, Black Pearl, Italian Ice

eggplant Purple Rain, Nadia, Beatrice, Rosa Bianca

pepper Purple Beauty, Romeo, California Wonder, chili ancho/poblano San Luis

cardoon Pieno Inerme (broad, defenseless, a variety with wide ribs and few spines)

2008-04-02T10:31:00.000-04:00

We watched FRONTLINE last night, "Bad Voodoo's War". It's a picture of the U.S. in Iraq that is never shown by the American corporate media.

"FRONTLINE goes to war in Iraq with a band of California-based National Guard soldiers who call themselves the "Bad Voodoo Platoon" to tell their very personal story in Bad Voodoo's War. To record their war, from private reflections to real-time footage of improvised explosive device (IED) attacks on the ground, director Deborah Scranton (The War Tapes) creates a "virtual embed," supplying cameras to the soldiers of the Bad Voodoo Platoon and working with them to shape an intimate portrait that reveals the hard grind of their war.

Through their daily experiences, acting platoon leader Sgt. 1st Class Toby Nunn, originally from British Columbia and the father of three, and Spc. Jason Shaw, a 23-year-old from Texas, give us a firsthand look at the impact of the U.S. military's policy of multiple deployments to Iraq and how the Army's role has changed on the ground."

The entire program was disturbing but the part that we found absolutely chilling was Sgt. Nunn advising his men to put loosened tourniquets on their legs in case they hit an IED. Then when one of their humvees does hit an IED they stand around all day in the scorching sun waiting for Kellogg Brown & Root before another platoon finally comes along and helps them.

And this all takes place during the relative calm of the so-called 'surge'.

"There Will Be Blood"

2008-03-21T18:57:00.002-04:00

I can't believe he actually got an Oscar for this schlock. It was dreadful; we laughed through most of the last two thirds of the movie. The only mystery was why we sat through the whole thing. Just plain awful.

I wish I'd read this by Stephanie Zacharek beforehand because it's spot on, especially the part about John Houston:

"...in playing Daniel Plainview, Day-Lewis doesn't so much give a performance as offer a character design, an all-American totem painstakingly whittled from a twisted piece of wood. The care Day-Lewis has taken in building this character borders on obsession: His locution, the precise but laconic way he unpacks his tattered leather suitcase full of sentences, is borrowed straight from John Huston; he even mimics perfectly the grayed, whiskery undertones of Huston's voice. At first the choice seems brilliant. What voice better represents gruff, manly American determination than Huston's? Then again, once we notice an actor's choice, that choice is no longer transparent. And past a certain point – once we begin to notice, and even perhaps marvel at, the way an actor squints to signal mistrust or doubt, or screws up the side of his mouth just so – his choices move to the fore and the character recedes.

And that's how easily we can lose a great actor like Daniel Day-Lewis to greatness.

When I think of Daniel Plainvew and Bill the Butcher, I see technique, a set of artful schematics. When I think of the scruffy blond scrubber, Johnny, in "My Beautiful Laundrette" (1985), or the wheelchair-bound artist and writer Christy Brown in "My Left Foot" (1989), or the unjustly imprisoned Gerry Conlan in "In the Name of the Father" (1993), or Danny Flynn, the fighter with an IRA past in "The Boxer" (1997), I see people who live on the screen with so much clarity and vitality that the last thing I'm thinking of are the actorish smoke and mirrors it may have taken to put them there. In those performances – and in numerous others, like those in "The Age of Innocence" (1993), "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (1988) and, most recently, "The Ballad of Jack and Rose" (2005), directed by Day-Lewis' wife, Rebecca Miller – Day-Lewis cuts to the truth of his characters' lives by challenging us. There's no challenge in Daniel Plainview: no moment where we fear, against our better judgment, that we might have some confusing, conflicting emotions for him."

An $8.00 Loaf of Bread

2008-03-16T11:32:00.000-04:00

Some theorists have said the current epidemic of obesity in the U.S. is at least in part due to the abundance of cheap food. If that's true, will we soon be seeing fewer weight-related health problems? Will we all be finding it a lot easier to finally reduce our food & calorie consumption? Hum?

From The New York Times Saturday:

"Government figures released Friday showed that grocery costs had jumped 5.1 percent in 12 months, the latest in a string of increases. In fact, the nation is undergoing its worst grocery inflation since the early 1990s.

With a few exceptions, nearly every grocery category measured by the Labor Department, which compiles the official inflation numbers, has increased in the last year. Milk is up 17 percent, as are dried beans, peas and lentils. Cheese is up 15 percent, rice and pasta 13 percent, and bread 12 percent.

No food product has gone up as much as eggs, jumping 25 percent since February 2007 and 62 percent in the last two years."

I've been reading about the increase in wheat prices for several months but it still came as a shock yesterday when I was at the Farmers' Market and realized the loaf of bread I wanted was $8.00. It was double loaf, about 3 pounds, but last summer it was $6.50. I can't help but wonder what's going to happen as prices continue to increase. Will Heidelberg still be making the 60 mile trip from Herkimer to Syracuse? Will Boyd Bissell be able to get his flour from the small mill in Quebec, Meunerie Milanaise, where organic grains are stone milled?

On a happier note, Max and Esther, 83 and still going strong, were at the market with the first of their '08 crop of maple syrup and it's fabulous. One gallon of grade A light amber, $43.00, up $1 from last year.

2008-03-12T15:52:00.000-04:00

I think the picture says it all.

Suburban Turf Wars

2008-03-06T10:05:00.000-05:00

Oil prices hit a record $105.10 a barrel Thursday, a day after a surprise drop in U.S. crude supplies and a decision by OPEC not to boost production.

The price of spring wheat has more than doubled since January. The March futures contract closed at up $4.75 at $24 a bushel, the record price for any US wheat contract.

You might think, given the economic news, that school systems would be worried about how they're going to pay for increasing costs but no, not here in the Fayetteville-Manlius NY district. Here the issue that brought out a record number of people to vote yesterday was a new $4.6 million high school athletic stadium with FieldTurf. And what a supreme clusterfck it was.

A few weeks ago, while I was in Ohio, Jim mentioned I would be coming home to a sign in the front yard (we live on a main road and we're usually fairly festooned at election time). A good friend had asked if he could put up a sign like the one in the photo and that was how we learned there was even going to be a vote. From that point on signs began springing up everywhere, most of them professionally made and in favor of the stadium.

The first sign was stolen and JP replaced it with a huge handmade sign, one side of which said "There's a big difference between 'need' and 'want'" and how could anyone disagree with that?

Anyway, that's about when the news crews started showing up and I knew things were officially out of hand.

Now I will admit that in the almost twenty years we've lived here I have only voted once before on a school budget. Having no children and not being particularly knowledgeable about the schools I haven't really felt qualified but the fact that the voting takes place at one elementary building with horrible access has been a big reason I don't vote.

With all the media attention and all the curfluffle you would think the administration would have anticipated a big turnout and added a second voting location but of course they didn't. The traffic was a nightmare all day and a friend called last night about 8:30 to tell me she was looking at a 20 minute wait to vote. The amount of gas wasted and exhaust generated by idling vehicles was obscene and there's absolutely no reason on earth why this isn't done by mail in the first place.

And we get to do it all again in May because, and this is the fundamental reason I voted against the damn thing, they tried to sneak this in before we even see the budget for the coming year and the tax hike that's likely needed just to cover existing costs. Lovely!

Last night's tally: 4,213 'no' and 2,296 'yes'

The American da Vinci

2008-02-06T12:10:00.000-05:00

Viktor Schreckengost

1906-2008

How can it be that so many people who, in one way or another, have been an important part of my life are disappearing? This is one aspect of aging that I'm not ready for, one that I find particularly hard to accept. Growing up in Cleveland, I always seemed to hear some mention of Viktor Schreckengost around the time of the art museum's May Show and over the years I came to realize that he was one of the few artists/designers whose work I always seemed to like. He was the one who confirmed my suspicion that art could be brought to every aspect of day-to-day living.

Sea Change

2007-10-02T07:53:00.000-04:00

From the current issue of Mother Jones, an image from the photo essay by Robert Knoth and Julia Whitty (http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/sea-change-26.html)

"October storms have become more frequent and violent due the rise of the temperature in the Artic. In the past the ice would protect the island against the waves, which now eat away at Shishmaref at a rate of 6-15 meters per year. These days, there is no ice until the end of December."

So how can it be that there are so many images of stranded polar bears in the various media and so few of the human beings who are losing their habitat?