Chthonic

     What on Earth?  Or what on the under-earth?  Not only was I being introduced to new words (chthonic/coeval?) but also to new visions of life and music, even the cardiac blues (actual condition, that: postoperative cardiac depression).  Not that it affects me mind you, that cardiac stuff (knock wood), but those blues are well known in surgical circles.  To make matters more complicated, the author who underwent the procedure wrote this: I entered the literature when they touched my heart and changed the prosody of my body.  Wait, the what?  So I looked the word up and found this definition in Wikipedia: Often, prosody specifically refers to such elements, known as suprasegmentals when they extend across more than one phonetic segment.  Well, that explains a lot (not)...

    That cardiac surgery was but one story in an issue of the New York Review, with others topics including music and art criticism.  One art piece quoted T.S. Eliot when he wrote: ...most of our critics are occupied in labor of obnubilation; in reconciling, in backing up, in patting down, in squeezing in, in glozing over, in concocting pleasant sedativss, in pretending that the only difference between themselves and others is that they are nice men and the other of very doubtful repute.  How 'bout them apples?  But the author of the review (who was reviewing no less than 5 books about art criticism alone), went on to write about Eliot's words: That isn't so different from the state of criticism today, even if criticism, like any career ot the margins of middle-class life, has become all the more treacherous with the more general marginalization of the middle class.  The reviewer even criticized one of the books' authors who wrote about art critics, saying: I think she misjudges the nature of their power, which is in the richness of what amounts to a private dialogue, some general idea they have about the nature of the art and art's place in the world.  Hmm, before this becomes too highfalutin, let me add that I can sort of identify with what the reviewer was saying (gulp!).

     So to step back just a half step, I'm used to criticism, even if I rarely receive any of it from this blog, at least not in the form of comments (good or bad, I only receive an average of a comment or two per year).  My grand-nephew on the other hand, got targeted on social media and got doxxed with over 10,000 negative bot comments.  Do note that the only "feedback" I can see from my posts is just the daily number of readers, and that's it.  No names or locations or any other data, which is fine.  And if I'm honest, the swings in those numbers of readers are often as wild as the stock market itself, perhaps because I don't allow payment tracking, or whatever it is that social media folk collect with those "likes" in exchange for a few dollars (and for selling your info).  A fluff post of mine may one day get 500 readers and the next day 40; same results with a piece that took a bit of research but gets less than 50 views.  Who knows what does or doesn't click with an audience?  But that's how writing (and singing and art and movies) go.  Hey, we never made it through even 1/10 of the Dylan movie, and found the Springsteen one boring and depressing, despite epic performances (said the critics).  Like any book or movie (or blog), you throw it all out there and see how the public reacts.  Now admittedly, I am quite content with a lot or a few, or any readers for that matter.  I can testify that time is valuable for everyone, even for me; and with so many hundreds of thousands of blogs and podcasts and social media outlets out there, well, who has the time?  And let's face it, all this stuff --as in all of it, including mine-- boils down to just opinions.  Even with a few facts (or in many cases, non-facts) thrown in, it can still feel as it someone is trying to shove a view or outlook down your throat like a goose being force-fed to infect its liver (which is how foie gras comes to be, wrote How Stuff Works:...force-feeding birds to enlarge their livers — up to 10 times the normal size).  But my goal has always been not to force something into your head but rather to cause you to question, and explore, and expand, and possibly look at things from another angle.  Does it bother me that Republicans approved an additional $70 billion in the last budget to keep ICE running if there was another shutdown (TSA, FEMA and the Coast Guard can basically take a hike since they received zip, although Congress still took the week off for their scheduled recess)?  Of course.  Does it bother me that Christian Nationalists (and the scarier National Conservatives) shrug off the fact that Trump's name --so far-- has been mentioned over a million times in the Epstein files, at least the files released so far?  Of course.  Does it bother me that nearly 35% of those polled this month feel that the shooting of 2 US citizens in Minnesota was okay?  Unquestionably.  And finally, does it worry me that Homeland "Security" is now issuing supoenas to social media companies, asking for the names and accounts of those criticizing ICE?  Yup, even if my only social media usage is this blog (no Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, Discord, etc.).   But that's me, and that's my slanted viewpoint.  Maybe it's yours, maybe not, but I often find that more and more readers of this blog tend to back away when anything negative-Trump appears in a posr (which is why I try to always include legitimate links so readers can do their own follow-up if they wish because let's face it, another article in the same issue of the NY Review showed that previous administrations of both parties were not squeaky clean either).  So a quick bit of background and I'll get off this somewhat boring topic.

Note size of logs in Alta, Utah ski area, circa 1870.
Photo: LDS Historical Archives

     I was/am fortunate enough to have had a good, in fact a great, life.  We were dirt poor as kids, living in a housing project, but could have cared less.  We were kids, and I was blessed with going to public schools where I could grow up realizing that some kids were better looking, were better at sports and math and other stuff, had parents with money or in fact had two parents so that they could wear nicer clothes, the brand-name stuff instead of my PX duds.  But I also worked all my life, from being a paper boy at 12 (when such a thing existed and we "kids" were allowed out at 4:30 or 5 in the morning without fear) to landing jobs that eventually garnished me a pension after one worked a zillion years (in the days when companies did such things).  I went to college when going to a school such as UCLA was still considered a state school and so cost the outrageous sum of $300 per quarter (no typo, that's three hundred --not thousand-- dollars).  I have never been knocked unconscious, had my eye poked out, suffered a stroke, been shot at or stabbed, or gotten a girl pregnant (or a bad disease, for that matter).  I was lucky enough to never be drafted into war (although I would have gone if called because that was what one did back then, almost without question).  I was with a lot of ladies growing up but was fortunate to find my wife of what is so far, 37 years.  And thus far my mental and physical qualities are holding steady, maybe a bit shaky at times but overall steady.  One could say that I could be properly adorned as a golden child by fate, all unbeknownst to me until my later years, leaving me a gift on my final breath with only a few regrets and no complaints.  All that said, I am left questioning how we humans can still fight each other and go to war across the world; how we can watch others die from starvation or cold or thirst; how we can do what we do to our planet and other life as if it were indeed "ours" to use and use and use.  How could we have come all this way as a country and now be afraid to even talk to someone for fear that if we disagree or criticize, we may be shot or arrested or possibly killed?  What is even sadder, in my view, is that even among friends and often family, we now have a tendency to avoid talking politics for fear of ruining the relationship.  Eat, laugh, have another drink, but please, oh please, don't bring up politics (the cartoon below by Mick Stevens says it better than I could)...

“Remember, not a word about our vast oil reserves.”

     Maybe it has always been thus (I don't remember my parents talking about controversial topics) a time when others may have felt "that something has gone wrong with life in the United States."  Sometimes I jump back to that feeling that I am old enough to see the repeating of history, although it seems a bit sad that we apparently haven't progressed much.  As Denis Leary mentioned on a talk show when asked if he would consider leaving the US (he has dual citizenship with Ireland), he emphatically replied, "this is our country, not a President's or some billionaire's; it's ours, where we live."  Hmm, I remember such sentiments in the days of Vietnam when "we" fought misleading wars.  And I wasn't alone; jump ahead an entire generation and another author wrote in NY Books (same issue): I remember a muddle of rumors and TV news, a feeling of foreboding from the adults around me that was borne out in the next great upheavals of my teens and twenties: the Iraq War protests, the 2008 financial crash, Occupy Wall Street, police killings that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement, the 2016 election.  Each of those moments was marked by the question of whether the US had ever been the country it said it was.  The excellent German series, Unfamiliar, shows that the US is not the only nation to fill entire buildings with Jason Bourne-type bureaucrats and operatives, each respective government convincing their "employees" that they are saving the world and that they should take their "secrets" to the grave?  And it has seemingly always been thus, even back in the days of empires and kings & queens.  Off with his head if he talks...really?  As my wife continually asks: what's the point; what's it all for?

    Other pieces in that NY Book issue (yes, same issue) talked of misconstruing religion as something societal, asking: Isn’t nationalism a species of religion?  If it is not, why all the rituals that surround a nation’s flag, and why do we feel it should not touch the ground?  And do we not act as if art, too, were a form of religion?  If not, why do operagoers conduct themselves with such solemnity, to the point of scowling in disapproval at anyone who coughs?  While another article discussed the afterlife where just 1 in 5 report "seeing" something, saying: Cutting-edge resuscitative technologies --for instance, a recently formulated chemcal solution that can restore cellular activity in a pig's brain several hours after its decapitation-- are poised to expand even further.   Along with other topics all over the map (sort of like this blog, it may seem), there were a variety of publishers introducing their new books: Terra Invicta: Ukranians Wartime Reimaginations for a Habitable Earth; Behead the Cure: Humanitarian Work in the Vietnam War; The Shape of Thought: Reasoning in the Age of AI; Needy Media: How Tech Got Personal; The New Negro: A History in Documents; and Graveyards: A History of Living with the Dead.  So many books, so many authors, and here I was reading about my own backyard.

     It's funny how many of us never explore the history of where we live, freely checking out travel shows or PBS documentaries of distant or foreign lands, or ancient civilizations far away, while the building of our own towns and cities falls by the wayside.  So it was interesting to be reading The Lady in the Ore Bucket.  Skiers, summer visitors, and residents driving through our Wasatch mountain canyons will be treated to views of full and healthy forests blanketing the hillsides, the cold (so far) blocking out the pine beetles, and the greenery (so far) limiting any massive fires.  So it is difficult to think that just 150 years ago pretty much all of those canyons --from Millcreek to Little Cottonwood (home to the Snowbird and Alta ski areas)-- were logged to the point of the last logging operator leaving in the early 1880s by saying that "all the good sawlogs had been cleared out."  The canyons were denuded and left pretty much bare.  The trunks of trees back then were often 3 feet thick (note the above photo), some being as large as 6 feet in diameter (the author of the book notes that finding a "mature" tree today in the canyons will likely be 2 feet or less in diameter).  Once the loggers left, miners arrived and because so much of the area had already been logged out, timber was brought in from other areas, even other states.  A visitor traveling up the canyons today will never see that.  So how did our forests become so full of what seems a "natural" forest of growth?  About 100 years ago, the Forest Service embarked on a massive reforestation program, as in massive.  Reading that it made me realize how quickly our planet can heal and how people (and governments) can band together in the harshest of conditions, a view depicted in the movie version of The Narrow Road to the Deep North (which is terrific, and based on actual events, but not pleasant to watch).  Too depressing?  Then watch Buddy, a Danish documentary that shows how patient and loyal and helpful service animals can be, from helping "owners" who are disabled, children who are autistic, or a true gentleman who grudgingly admits that he had to drop his "guide dogs are only for blind people" attitude.  The film with break your heart but lift your spirits... 

     Old age is no joke, wrote centenarian Calvin Tomkins in The New Yorker.  You look everywhere for your glasses, until your wife points out that you’re wearing them.  I turn a hundred this year.  People act as though this is an achievement, and I suppose it is, sort of.  Nobody in my family has lived this long, and I’ve been lucky.  I’m still in pretty good health, no wasting diseases or Alzheimer’s, and friends and strangers comment on how young I look, which cues me to cite the three ages of man: Youth, Maturity, and You Look Great.  On the other hand, I’ve lost so many useful abilities that my wife, Dodie, and I have taken to calling me Feebleman.  Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!  No, it’s Feebleman!  Dodie doesn’t want me to know how old she is, but she’s nearly three decades younger than I am, and I become more dependent on her every day.

     My wife and I aren't big fans of Woody Harrelson but watched his truly stunning performance as LBJ, a film now being re-shown on Netflix.  After Kennedy was assassinated, Lyndon Johnson had to overcome the unified coalition pf Congressional southern conservatives, and yet managed to push into law: civil rights, Medicare & Medicaid, voting rights, wilderness protection, Head Start, and funding for public broadcasting which would later become the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (Trump rescinded that funding and the CPB has now dissolved).  Fighting a portion of Congress each step of the way, Johnson still managed to win the election with over 60% of the popular vote, but also became the only president in recent history to decide not to run for a second term.  The point was that Johnson fought for what he felt was right for the people, and for the country.  And so it goes...this is what our country is about.  Our country.  My wife and I could still freely choose to watch or not watch that Rob Reiner version of events, just as you can still choose what you want to watch, and still choose how you want to vote, and still choose which side you want to be on or not be on, and still choose what you want to read, even to voice your opinion when you want (albeit, perhaps with a watchful eye out for a concealed weapon).  Little has changed since Johnson's days when crowds were beaten and sprayed with fire hoses and attacked by police riot dogs.  People protesting then were also largely ignored.  History doth come back...one step forward, two steps back.  

     So how do I deal with all this criticism, you may ask?  What I face is probably nothing compared to what politicians and others in the public eye encounter.  Juggling a comment or two from a blog is simple when compared to facing an angry constituency, so hats off to those doing so on both sides.  Give them feedback, especially if you like what they're doing (you know they're getting a lot more negative input so balance that out with your positive comments).  And if you're the one feeling angry and negative and frustrated, try and step back a bit and see how much energy that is taking from you, and whether you could use that energy somewhere else.  Whatever your views or opinions, there will always be other views and opinions.  It is what makes us who we are, even when you're 100 and feeling feeble.  Practice what those Japanese US citizens did when forcibly put into internment camps...gaman: to bear the seemingly unbearable with dignity and grace.  Or take 15 minutes of your life to watch the Oscar nominated short, Singers.  Or do what I've been doing and venture off into an entirely new world.  The BBC Radio 4 audio dramas have been ongoing for years but a good place to start may be learning about a young child learning to be an apprentice to Death (wait, what??).  For a jolly good listen, here's a place to start...

Little Cottonwood canyon today...