Kurt Vonnegut on writing and living

November 20, 2012 By 6 Comments

Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse-Five among many others, seems like a much better author when you’re young.  There is a close link between idealism and cynicism, both of which are characteristic of the young and both of which are necessary to appreciate Vonnegut’s dark humor.  I remember reading him as a college student with great excitement and appreciation.  But now. . . it’s just not the same.  Still, you have to appreciate his wit, and an affection lingers.

Dan Wakefield has just published a collection of his correspondence entitled Kurt Vonnegut: Letters.  In a review, Michael Dirda gives us some bon mots from those letters:

“Unsettling business for an artist, where everything that happens in New York has universality, and everything that happens outside is ethnography.”

The term paper, he tells his writing students, should be “both cynical and religious.”

“The secret of good writing is caring.”

“No picture can attract serious attention without a human being attached to it in the viewer’s mind. . . . Pictures are famous for their human-ness and not their picture-ness.”

“I saw The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I took very hard. To an unmoored, middle-aged man like myself, it was heartbreaking. That’s all right. I like to have my heart broken.”

To his son, Mark: “I ask a favor for your mother’s sake: please look awfully nice at your graduation. She is a dear, romantic girl, and I want her to be as happy as she can possibly be at the graduation of her only son. . . .I am talking about hair, of course.”

“Story-telling is a game for two, and a mature storyteller . . . is sociable, a good date on a blind date with a total stranger, so to speak.”

Filed Under: Humor, Literature, Personal Tagged With: 6 Comments

Baseball post-mortem

November 19, 2012 By 8 Comments

I was glad to see that the Washington Nationals’ Davey Johnson won the National League’s manager of the year.  He also won the award for the American League back in 1997 when he managed  the Baltimore Orioles.  On the same day that reward was announced for getting the Orioles into the post-season for the first time in decades, he got fired.  That won’t happen this time, as the 70-year-old agreed to come back to Washington for one more year before he retires for good.  He took a bad, hapless, hopeless team and turned it, virtually overnight, into the winningness team in baseball.

And, along that line, going from old to young, the National’s Bryce Harper won Rookie of the Year.  He was 19 for most of the season and his infectious energy, as well as his penchant for getting on base and then stealing them, contributed greatly to the team’s successful season.

I was hoping for a trifecta for the Nationals, the home team I’m now following in my new home, but the team’s ace, Gio Gonzalez (not Stephen Strasburg, great young pitcher that he is) finished third in the NL Cy Young.  Usually winning more games than anyone, going 21-8, having 207 strikeouts, and a 2.89 ERA is enough to get you a Cy Young, but this year’s award went to the Met’s kuckleballer R.A. Dickey, who went 20-6.  Since the Mets were a losing team, I can see that this was a greater feat.   race despite having

Gonzalez led the Major Leagues with 21 victories, led the team in strikeouts with 207 and had a 2.89 ERA in 32 games. However, Dickey, who went 20-6 with a 2.73 ERA, led the NL in starts, complete games, shutouts and innings pitched. The Dodger’s Clayton Kershaw came in second, despite his lowlier 14-9 record, because he came out so well in the sophisticated number crunching of sabremetrics.

 

Filed Under: baseball, Personal, Sports Tagged With: 8 Comments

Predicting the election

November 12, 2012 By 28 Comments

Now that Florida has FINALLY counted its ballots (why can 49 states conduct an efficient election but Florida can’t?), we know the final tally.  The Sunshine State went for Obama, giving him a total of 332 electoral votes.  Here are the results:

Candidate Popular vote Percentage Electoral votes (270 to win)
Barack Obama 61713086 51% 332
Mitt Romney 58510150 48% 206

This enables us to assess how we did at our pre-election post Your predictions.

The winner?  MY BROTHER Jimmy Veith.  He nailed it EXACTLY.  Here is what he said at comment 22:

My brother is good at predictions. I am a little better.

Obama: 332
Romney: 206

Popular vote: Obama: 51%, Romney: 48%, Others: 1%

Congratulations, Jimmy!  You have proven yourself to be this blog’s  top prognosticator.  And thanks for keeping it in the family.  (Imagine what I am going to have to put up with at Christmas!)

I predicted Obama would get 291, coming short by 41.  The Veith boys, Jason, Todd, Klasie, Darren, & ADB were the only ones who correctly predicted an Obama victory.

I appreciate SKPeterson’s comment in a post-election thread:

It would appear that the Republican Party would be better served if it followed the commentary on Cranach and quit listening to the Limbaugh’s, the Rove’s and the WSJ hack commentariat (as much as I enjoy reading the WSJ too, natch).

He links to this article:  How Conservative Media Lost to the MSM and Failed the Rank and File.  According to the author, Conor Friedersdorf , the conservative media and punditocracy were nearly unanimous in predicting a Romney victory.  They didn’t predict a McCain victory in the last presidential election, but this time wishful thinking trumped reality across the board.

Perhaps my brother Jimmy will explain how he reached his completely accurate conclusion.  (I wouldn’t be surprised if wishful thinking had some influence, Obama fan that he is.  I myself wished for the opposite of what I predicted, which I daresay is even rarer.)  But here is my reasoning, first, in regards to the election results; and second, in regards to the arguably more impressive feat of predicting Obama’s election in 2008 before he won any primaries, Romney’s nomination before the Republican primaries, and Obama’s re-election at the lowest point of his popularity.

For the election, I ignored the popular vote, which has little to do with electing a president.  The electoral vote is everything, so the state-by-state results are everything.   In general, unlike most conservatives, I trusted the poll results.  Survey research has gotten extremely sophisticated.  Journalists might be biased, but it does no good for professional pollsters to be biased, since their livelihoods depend on accuracy.  One can question their sampling techniques, but these guys usually know what they are doing.  That is to say, it’s a matter of vocation.  It’s true that poll results will vary, so I paid most attention to the poll aggregators at RealClearPolitics, which posts the average of all polls.  Most of the states were strongly for one candidate or the other, with neither scoring the necessary 270 total.  So everything hinged on eight too-close-to-call “battleground states.”   For Romney to win, he would have to win virtually all of them.  I thought that was unlikely.  Obama only needed a few.   The day before the election, the polls showed him leading slightly in most of them.  As my brother somehow knew would happen, he won all but two.

So much for my quantitative analysis.  For my qualitative analysis that predicted the outcomes before the races even started, I picked Romney as the best of an exceedingly weak field.  And by “best” I do not mean the most conservative or the one who would be the most effective chief executive.  I mean the one who presented himself the best and seemed least likely to pull something embarrassing.  (Republicans have GOT to field better candidates.)  Americans like their presidents, for better or for worse, to be inspiring and have a compelling story, to have a mythical quality about them, to be larger than life.  Not all presidents are that way.  George W. Bush wasn’t,  but then again neither was Al Gore or John Kerry.  Nor do such figures necessarily make good presidents.  But Barack Obama had the “it” factor, so I thought he would go far.

Filed Under: Blog, Personal, Politics, Social Science Tagged With: , 28 Comments

Digging out

October 30, 2012 By 8 Comments

Superstorm Sandy did a lot of damage, as forecast:  Sandy Death Toll Climbs To Over 30 As Millions Remain Without Power « CBS Connecticut.

We escaped pretty much unscathed.  We’re over an hour from the ocean in northern Virginia, so we missed the worst of it.  Yesterday we had quite a bit of rain and wind all day, but it wasn’t until 8:00 p.m. that the wind really started to roar, with the trees lashing and the skies opening up.  Remarkably, though, we did not lose our electricity.  Other people in our area did, but we were spared.

There is flooding in the area, but we aren’t on low ground or by a river.  A tree across the street was blown down.  Ours are fine.  Two screens blew off and one of our gutters was blown so that it sticks out from the house, strangely.  But that’s the only damage I’ve seen at our place.

So I’m very thankful, while also grieving for those who were harmed, in their persons or in their property, by the storm.

Were any of you impacted by Sandy?  (I realize that if you are one of the millions who lost power that you have also lost access to the internet!)

Filed Under: Nature, Personal Tagged With: , 8 Comments

Frankenstorm

October 29, 2012 By 86 Comments

We’re battening down our hatches, getting ready for what they are calling “Frankenstorm,” a monster begotten by Hurricane Sandy becoming one flesh with a Northeaster.  The brunt of the storm is supposed to hit us today and/or Tuesday.  We’re in northern Virginia, not the coast, but we may get lots and lots of wind and rain.  We’ve stocked up with food, batteries, and other necessities.  We’ve pulled inside the lawn furniture, my prized Hasty-Bake BBQer, and everything else that might blow away.  So I guess we’re ready.   A soft summer breeze is enough to blow out our electricity where we live, so I can only imagine what a Frankenstorm will do.

But at least, as my wife says, people here in the D.C. area are talking about something other than politics.  The storm is going to affect Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and the undecided, all equally.  We are all in this together.  The storm is a unifying factor.

At any rate,  if I don’t post anything for the next day or so, that means we lost power and got knocked off the internet.  Stay tuned, and I’ll report when I can.

Hurricane Sandy Will Affect Millions and Cost Billions.

 

UPDATE:  Since my school has been cancelled, until the electricity goes out, I think I’ll put up some posts timed to appear on the next couple of days.

Filed Under: Nature, Personal Tagged With: 86 Comments

The death of a true intellectual

October 29, 2012 By 2 Comments

Jacques Barzun died at age 104.  A scholar of breath-taking range, Barzun, a French immigrant, was a cultural historian wrote about literature, history, music, philosophy, religion, education, how to write well, and baseball.  (He is the source of the quotation, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”  A champion of the liberal arts, he was a key developer of the “great books” approach to higher education.  He was a critic of Darwinism, existentialism, and other modern and postmodern philosophies.  Though his positions seemed largely in accord with a Christian perspective, he did not profess any personal Christian convictions.  And yet, he was baptized and sometimes attended both Catholic and Protestant churches.  (See this for the question of his religious beliefs.)

From his obituary in the Washington Post:

Jacques Barzun, a Columbia University historian and administrator whose sheer breadth of scholarship — culminating in a survey of 500 years of Western civilization — brought him renown as one of the foremost intellectuals of the 20th century, died Oct. 25 in San Antonio, where he had lived in recent years. He was 104. . . .

Dr. Barzun was 92 when he published what is widely regarded as his masterwork, “From Dawn to Decadence, 500 Years of Western Cultural Life: 1500 to the Present.” Journalist David Gates spoke for a majority of critics when he wrote in Newsweek magazine that the book, which appeared in 2000, “will go down in history as one of the great one-man shows of Western letters.”

Dr. Barzun sustained one of the longest and brightest careers in academia, having first risen to prominence as a professor who helped shape Columbia University’s approach to general education. He later was dean of the graduate school, dean of faculties and provost. . . . [Read more...]

Filed Under: Culture, Education, History, Literature, Personal Tagged With: , 2 Comments

OK, now it's a depression

October 22, 2012 By 6 Comments

The Dust Bowl has returned to my native Oklahoma.  A huge  dust storm hit Blackwell, Oklahoma, causing a 30-car pileup on I-35.  Blackwell is where my daughter, son-in-law, and three grand-daughters live!

Dust storm causes thirty car pile-up with injuries near Blackwell Oklahoma

 

 

 

Dust storm in Oklahoma causes highway to close and thirty car pile up – Oklahoma City Everyday People | Examiner.com.

Filed Under: America, Nature, Personal Tagged With: 6 Comments

Plot to bomb my old church

October 10, 2012 By 32 Comments

I used to live in Miami, Oklahoma.   The local college, Northeast Oklahoma A&M, was my first teaching job out of grad school.  That was where I became a Lutheran, being catechized and received into membership at the wonderful congregation of Mt. Olive Lutheran Church.

Imagine my surprise to hear about Gregory Arthur Weiler II, 23, of Elk Grove Village, Ill., who had a list of 48 churches, with maps and diagrams, that he planned to bomb in and around Miami.  An alert motel worker noticed that this particular guest was collecting materials for what appeared to be Molotov cocktails.

Miami police arrested Weiler and found in his room, in addition to the bomb-making equipment and the list of churches, a journal and other writings, including this statement of his plans:

“Self-Promote for the next 4 years while beginning list of goals written out in Oklahoma having to do with destroying and removing church buildings from U.S., a tiny bit at a time — setting foundation for the years to follow.”

Mt. Olive would have had to have been one of the churches on his list. The churches were all in Ottawa County, and 48 would have had to include them all.

I grew up in the next county over from Miami (pronounced “my-am-uh”). And in yet another case of the news striking close to home, I  see that Weiler’s court-appointed attorneys are from a law firm run by a guy I used to go to school with!

 

via Motel workers discuss church bomb plot arrest – KansasCity.com.

HT:  Anthony Sacramone

Filed Under: Church, Law, Personal, terrorism Tagged With: , 32 Comments

But now I see

September 20, 2012 By 14 Comments

Things have hard edges.  The leaves on a tree are distinct from each other.  Each pieces of gravel on a path is separate from the others.  Faces in a crowd don’t blur together.  Who knew?

Those who think there are no boundaries between right and wrong, true and false, beautiful and ugly; the blurrers of distinctions; those who think there are only shades of grey; the Hindu sages and New Age gurus who think “all is one”–these people are not just making philosophical errors.  They just need cataract surgery!

Filed Under: Medicine, Personal, Philosophy Tagged With: 14 Comments

Back under the knife

September 18, 2012 By 24 Comments

Having completed several weeks of recovery from cataract surgery, we do it all again starting today, as my left eye gets operated on.

Despite the forced inactivity, I was able to keep the blog going pretty well, so I hope can do the same this time.  This eye, though, will be corrected for near vision–the other one was for distant vision–so this operation may affect me more in reading and blogging, at least for a few days until the vision stabilizes.  When that happens, I should see really well in both eyes.  But if I’m not able to blog at my normal pace, you’ll know what has happened.

The plan, after taking out the cataracts, is to put in new artificial lenses that will correct my vision so that I might not even need glasses.   But it will work like this:   My right eye will be for distant vision. My left eye will be for near vision.  My brain supposedly will work the board, cutting from one camera/eye to the other.  This is called “monovision,” and I’m told that quite a few people with contact lenses have this arrangement.

But isn’t “stereo” better than “mono”?  If I just use one eye at a time, won’t that throw off my depth perception?  Will I be able to see 3-D movies?  If not, I don’t really mind, since I have never seen 3-D effects in a movie that I liked, with the exception of the Michael Jackson short film at Disneyland, and this will save me a lot of money in extra ticket prices.  But I’d sort of like to see 3-D effects in real life.

Would glasses let me use both eyes together?  I haven’t been wearing them since the first surgery since the prescription isn’t valid anymore, and I realize that I feel weird not wearing the things.  I actually like wearing glasses.  I hate to give them up, especially since the styles I first wore in 7th grade have finally come back in fashion and are defined as “hipster” frames.

I know, I know, I should have asked my doctor about all of this, but I always want to get out of the doctor’s office as soon as possible.

Filed Under: Medicine, Personal Tagged With: 24 Comments