November 27th, 2008
As we sit down to eat today, on this great American day of feasting, I would like to take a moment to remember those who are hard-pressed to join us. Almost every week brings another round of corporate bankruptcies, and even the survivors are shedding jobs. Nearly three million jobs have disappeared in the past year, and more are sure to follow. Food banks are stretching to their limits, even though they do incredible things with their donated funds.
When the things we want are out of reach, we give thanks for the things we need.
Some people are struggling to have even that.
August 7th, 2008
Today I’m going to tell you a story about a boy and his car. The car is the template, after all, for our first great status symbol and our first great step to personal independence, and thus, from there the Great American Love Affair. We never forget the first cars that made us stop and stare. The years wind by and men who’ve long since forgotten the names of the girls they took to Senior Prom can still rattle off the years, makes, models, and option-packages of their first cars.
Somewhere near Milpitas and not so long ago (either 2003 or 2004), there was a boy, I think, in love with the Mustang SVT Cobra. I imagine he was a boy, at least, but she may have been a girl; nobody needs a Y-chromosome to appreciate the Cobra’s beautiful, all-American brand of power and handling. Still, it suits my sense of aesthetics to believe that this was a boy, and so this is a story about a boy and a car.
The dealer, sadly, put too high a price on love, and the sticker on the Cobra weighed in at over $33,000, almost exactly an entire year’s wages for the average American man. This is a very old story, actually, at least as old as money and really as old as trade. Too frequently our wallets are too small to contain our hopes and dreams. I imagine him breathing deep in disappointment, but really this boy was still far from a pauper, modestly successful in his own right, and he let the dealer guide him around the lot, showing him less exotic breeds of pony. He might have seen the Mach 1, loud and brash as its name, and every dealer would have a few proud GTs, Gran Turismo cars built to run great long stretches of open American road.
Even these are expensive cars, though, and in time the dealer would have shown our boy the basic-model Mustangs. At $18,000 they were still badges of modest success, sports cars for those who refused to settle into the comfortable domesticity of Camrys and Accords. These, he could afford.
Still, he loved the Cobra, not the Mustang. Two hundred horsepower divided the two, to say nothing of the refinements in handling and trim. The Mustang is an American classic for its tunability, but the Special Vehicles Team had raised it to the level of art, and with the extra 800ccs of engine he could not hope to compete. Besides, the Cobra name brings a special, exclusive sort of cachet, and I am sure he dreamt of its effects on his circle of lady friends.
What would he do? He could tune the Mustang, of course, and even if it could not race the Cobra, he might well be able to match the Gran Turismo. That was a lot of work, though, a commitment to bury himself to the elbows in grease for months on end and pore over the tachometer’s wobbling like a scientist over his graphs, and he probably did not know how. The muscle-car gearhead is a dying breed. Perhaps he could drive a lesser car, something practical and boring, something economical that might let him save for a Cobra in five years’ time, but that was a desperate move. Like so many American boys, ours wanted his gratification now, when he was still young and full of flash.
No, none of these would be good enough. If this boy could not have his Cobra, he would make it.
Or fake it.
June 7th, 2008
Ann Barnett, the County Clerk down in Bakersfield, has decided that, rather than perform civil wedding ceremonies for homosexual couples, she will end civil wedding ceremonies in the county entirely. The Californian is a fine paper, and I admire the way it investigates her claims without editorial.
The whole situation reminds me more than a little bit of the Massive Resistance policy that Virginia implemented for Brown v. Board of Education, and of Prince Edward County’s extreme steps in particular.
I don’t think I need to say much more than that.
May 20th, 2008
A high-school buddy just recently sent me an interesting email. She’s doing a fundraiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, volunteering to be locked up “behind bars” until her friends raise some unspecified amount of money for the cause. Charity is an important part of a complete and responsible membership in society, and even though the MDA spends fifteen cents of every dollar on more fundraising and seven more on administrative overhead (compare to the Shriners Hospitals for Children, who spend nine cents on both put together), I do admire her dedication and willingness to help. My friends can usually count on me for donations to their causes.
That said…
May 2nd, 2008
It is always comforting for people on grand adventures to hear stories from other adventurers. Stories are from people like Dr. Livingstone, T.E. Lawrence, and Sir Richard Francis Burton are always wonderful, because they are professionals among adventurers. Indiana Jones is supposed to come out of retirement later this summer. He is probably out of Nazis to fight so I will be very curious to see what he has been up to.
Lately though, I think my favorite stories come from an adventurer named Kino. They are collected in a nice little box called, appropriately, Kino’s Journey. Kino is not a professional, though she is very good at adventuring. Like your friendly neighborhood Catboy (me), Kino is short, friendly, cheerful, and often not entirely sure where she is going (professional adventurers know where they are going, even if they are not sure how to get there exactly). She does have a map, which is helpful, and the ever-important distinctive hat. Most importantly, though, she (and her companion, a talking motorcycle named Hermes) understands that is the getting-there and not the “there” at the end that is important about adventuring.
Kino’s world is a place full of wonder, slightly super-technological and slightly magical at the same time. Most notably it is missing airplanes and CD players and things like this, even though there are holograms, clever Victorian-looking robots, and very big computers with mysterious panels of blinky lights. It is almost like a fairy tale that way, a little bit out of step with the normal flow of time. Also it is like a fairy tale because it is a compellingly moral sort of world; Kino spends an awful lot of time having to consider the necessity of her guns and the strange justice (or injustice) of the countries she wanders through (most of the time they are really closer to large walled towns).
Even though some of the countries are not very nice (some of them are just plain dangerous), Kino believes that “the world is not beautiful; therefore it is.” What she means by this is that even the unpleasant and dangerous parts of the world make the world a more beautiful place in which to live, because they make people appreciate how wonderful the rest really is.
This is a thought of which I approve very much, partly because it is a little bit like my “flakes, raisins, and almonds” theory. I do recommend that you enjoy Kino’s story for yourself.
