A notable absence

In July 1945 Staff Sergeant Jerry Salinger checked himself into a hospital in Nürnberg. He knew he was depressed and needed help and rest. Jerry was a writer as well as soldier. He wrote The Catcher in the Rye. Toward the end of his stay in the hospital, Jerry wrote a letter to Ernest Hemingway.

In the letter, Jerry noted with jest that “…there’s a notable absence of Catherine Barkleys”; a reference to Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms. It’s an interesting one-page letter from one writer to another.

Jerry met Ernest twice during the war. After the liberation of Paris, Jerry snuck into the city and found Ernest at the Hôtel Ritz. Later he found Hemingway in the Hürtgen Forest during that bloody battle. They became friends but not close ones. Jerry was in his mid 20s, Hemingway twenty years older.

In a way, Salinger took his character Holden Caulfield to war. He had written a few short stories before the war featuring Holden and wrote a few more during his stint as a counter-intelligence specialist. Salinger’s job involved interrogating prisoners, asking questions.

I read Jerry’s letter to Ernest for the first time right before Memorial Day. It made me think of our service and now contracted people who fight and return. It made me think of their individual notable absences from life. They feel different. I did. I cannot fully comprehend their absence, though as it is their own.

Salinger emerged from the war a writer. He wrote. He secluded himself well in later years. He reminds me of my Dad who shut himself away from everyone for the last 20 years of his life in a little house by the sea.

Depression now has an acronym: PTSD. Jerry probably had it. So did Dad. A great psychiatrist said I have it, reminding me it sticks around. One needs to be absent at times, but I think it helps to be present for the majority of time. Soldiers understand that “present for duty” term well and know it means more than taking up a space in a formation. When it’s time for them to “fallout” it’s good to hang around.

I hope there are young Jerrys and Janes out there who write and share characters they packed in their rucksacks and sea bags while on campaign over the last decade. I hope they can they stay present as best they can and know when to be absent too when they need that space.

Read more here: http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/a-notable-absence/#storylink=cpy

fin-de-binge

Jerry Saltz critiques and analyzes art for New York Magazine. Here in Kansas City, we rarely read work from a critic like Jerry. We’re nice here and any writing steers one to attend an event and patronize a venue.  Writing about art is not writing anyone cares to purchase or read.

Jerry has a forum for that style of writing about art where art is the centerpiece. What we read about or see about art here is commercial. Of course, Jerry’s trying to sell magazines too. But often writers worry about writing something that will prevent them from ever having lunch again wherever they live.

In 2009 Saltz critiqued a retrospective of James Ensor at MoMA. I liked the article and enjoyed his phrase “fin-de-binge”. I think his phrase means that we’re at the end of a period of plenty when we consumed more than plenty. There’s plenty still out there. The phrase is interesting.

It’s a variation of “Fin de siècle” a French phrase meaning end of the century. When I hear the phrase end of the century I think of the Ramones’ 1980 studio album produced by Phil Spector. Fin de siècle refers to the late 1900’s in France when dissecting the art and the influences of the time.

Saltz suggests we’re in a period of “…starting over, digging deep, and working hard…” and I have the feeling he’s thinking about more than art. We often turn away from critics. Actors receive warning not to believe their reviews. In Kansas City we have few critics who write for a living. One need only a few fingers for the counting and it’s really a stretch to call them critics.

Is the extinction of criticism part of the “fin-de-binge” as we hopefully approach a new  La Belle Époque? People have Facebbok now. Twitter and other other virtual broadcast booths. Blogs. Schmucks like me with a thought or not can think or not and write something, press some enter button and share it with whomever decides to read or not, comment or not. We do it for free on sites making money and you read it for free and get frustrated with the pop-ups. Commenters can comment with short quips or long essays.

From an information perspective it feels like a time of plenty perfect for information binging. I read a lot anyway and it’s dangerous for me to cruise the virtual amazon jungle library with a finger twitching to download. I try my best to select what I’m reading as well as read it closely. Sometimes I skim too quickly or judge writing too often by the opening line, first paragraph or dust jacket.

I’m happy my friend Carla sent me Jerry’s dusty old2009 link about James Ensor (1860-1949). If MAD magazine makes you think and giggle, Ensor will too. If you’re feeling weird about stuff, check out the French. They’re weird and they embrace it. Include the Belgians (Ensor wasn’t French, neither was Jacques Brel). I like the French despite my poor accent which has caused them not to like me in Paris until I learned to speak softly and infrequently and patiently observe. France is more than Paris and pretty mixed-up.

I like the French because they’re by nature non-compliant unlike their and our English cousins. Americans are very compliant. We have lots of rules.

Ensor broke rules. Jerry Saltz wrote a real critique and continues writing. He makes good lunch money and doesn’t care if he offends someone’s sensibilities which results in a broken lunch date. We need lighter lunches anyway. It’s the “fin-de-binge”.

pictured, The Oyster Eater by James Ensor, 1882.

The Vatican meltdown: toward a Catholic Church of America

I see a trend whereby American Roman Catholics, their American institutions, universities, and many businesses, are moving toward a Catholic Church of America. One could study the Church of England’s history. Yet, just as there are Roman Catholics in England still, no break will be a simple clean one. Americans stand upon their own two feet and have choices.

When our Roman Catholic Vice-President shared his support for gay marriage while appearing on the May 6, 2012 program of Meet the Press, people took note I think. Our President announced his supporting view that week. Things happen slowly, so slowly that we rarely have the time or interest to pay attention in this very accelerated time of information access. We tend to establish a day-to-day view of news. We focus upon headlines, front pages, front-ends because we just don’t have the time to follow issues as they develop and connect.

The Vatican (a country as well as the Pope’s residence) cleaned house yesterday. The Board of the Vatican Bank (or Institute for Religious Works - Istituto per le Opere di Religione – IOR) relieved its President, Gotti Tedeschi. An American, Carl Anderson, sits on the board of now four members. The story details will emerge over the coming days. Did Tedeschi leak documents along with the Pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, who also lost his job yesterday?

The Vatican is a sovereign nation and they will settle this sovereign issue. A book released this past week by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi entitled “His Holiness” contains some of the leaked information - unavailable in an English translation today.

And who will bailout the Vatican? And why is the Vatican Bank on a US State Department list of international banks “capable” of fraudulent practices? The Vatican’s Secretary of State and the 85 year old Pope’s second in authority Cardinal (and possible next Pope) Tarcisio Pietro Evasio Bertone seems to be handling all this turmoil quite well. Lack of what we call transparency allows for that flexibility - a sovereign nation that is both church and state, a very real world power.

In American journalism, we rarely see connections. We read about individual issues. Do readers care or have the time to care? Should American Catholics be concerned, or do they know for that matter, that their Holy See and his nation-state flounder precariously along with the other EuroZone financially unstable nations of Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland? In America, when Catholics hit the front page of attention, the story is about ideas, not politics or economics. Here in America, most journalists view the world with an American lens complete with a Church/State, albeit blurry, dividing depth of field.

There may be conspiracies afoot to some, but not to me. I’m a Catholic, yet I see this nation-state, the Vatican in a state of damage control for very good reasons. Yes, my Pope resides there. I sense economic struggle. I read about the struggle of ideas in America. I hear my Vice-President make a pronouncement counter to the Pope’s instructions and counsel. I see how my President stacks his Court with liberal minded judges. I understand why my Pope has stacked his College of Cardinals with what some call “conservative” Cardinals. I understand why American Catholic writers hesitate to write about this complexity in the mainstream media.

The relationships between religion, sovereign national authority, and financial power are close and united in the Vatican. One reads about the worries of Sharia and yet this struggle within the Vatican and the American Catholic Church worries me more. It seems more complex and powerful to me.And amid the complexity, I see a trend whereby there will be a movement among the majority of American Catholics to eventually divest their ties from the authority of the Pope and his nation-state, the Vatican. It will take time, but I felt it was manifested with Vice-President Joe Biden’s announcement, with the Vatican Bank making the State Department list of “questionables” and when JP Morgan Chase asked the Vatican Bank to depart their portfolio…and of course JP Morgan Chase is in a bit of an awkward investigation now with the Federal Government.

I see a Vatican economic meltdown in progress and a trend toward the establishment of a Catholic Church of America.

Turn that Streetcar sticker sideways

A great deal in the news this week about orientation. Here, I’m suggesting our Kansas City streetcar dream be turned ninety degrees from its present north south orientation to an east west azimuth. Consider the implications. Don’t be afraid. I think we need to connect the north south layers of Neapolitan-like cultural ice cream. The results will be sweet.

Seriously, this north south orientation will be more of the same, the MAX buses making a fast clean run from the City Market to Waldo, sometimes Plaza only. The other night, I was chillin’ in Brookside and it occurred to me that none of these folks desire a streetcar ride to The Power & Light. They have fresh veggies at a nice market. Who needs downtown? The Mercedes is safely parked in eyesight, right? Chill.

I recommend this streetcar line run up and down 18^th or so street, west along the forgotten Southwest Boulevard to a park and ride off 35. Connect, connect. East to West, West to East.

And the planners say “But wait! To the north, there’s an airport there above Tiffany Springs!”. Right. Way up there. Do you really think we can get that far with a streetcar?

Before you become one of those green and white downtown streetcar sticker supporting persona and sport the sticker on your whatever, consider turning it, the sticker that is, sideways…and consider the amazing implications of connectedness that I dare you to consider.

East / West may be the best.

Is Putin re-reading Tukhachevsky?

Putin cancelled his scheduled Spring vacation to Washington. He’s a busy guy. Russian military forces have been engaged in Syria for a long time. The overt nature of their presence is in the port of Tartus; since 1971. The covert nature of their presence is up to your imagination.

But when you receive the old news via the news which is now gainfully employed analyzing the President’s statement about gay marriage and while we quietly pull up stakes in Iraq and Afghanistan, you’ll really pitch a fit. How could we have not seen this? We’ll compare Russia’s counterinsurgency foray in Syria with our own recent history which we haven’t had time to digest. We’ll wish them ill will and remind them of their Afghan thrashing. We shall wail and worry.

Putin will develop a smart campaign though. Unlike western leaders, he’s enjoyed a bit of…shall we say, ”continuity”. He’s assured of more of that continuity thing. He’s no boogie man. He’s a clever man. While his military forces haven’t conducted any recent live fire exercises since…Georgia, indirectly?...the time has given his military time to study us, US that is. The Russians have created some awesome military theories and practices which we’ve borrowed since Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky’s theory of deep operations. I think Patton wasted time reading Rommel’s book (Infantry Attacks). The US Army began reading Tukhachevsky in the 80s, by the way.

This will indeed be a deep operation in more ways than one. A necessary one. One too complex for the complex UN. There will be denouncements. Turkey will get more nervous. Assad will prevail. Putin will win again. When you realize Russia occupies Syria, when Anderson Cooper calmly tells you, when Stephen Colbert crafts a joke or two about it, it will be over.

I don’t think we, the US, can do anything about Syria, other than offer humanitarian aid and offer Putin a raincheck invite.

Kansas City, 10th and Main

Here because I’m here,

Spring afternoon in the shade

Of downtown commerce broke

Spare another one of those, Man?

Which bus? That one gets you

There

That one? East.

Southwest corner 10^th and Main

Yellow jacketed streetside greeter

Smiles, nods, shakes her head

Again

Don’t sit on the fountain

Yeah, the one with no water

Flowing

Drifting? Nah, stayin’ a while

Across the street, the library

Safe

Haven with books and water

What else do you need?


"Bus Riders", photo by "hanneoria"


 "Uplifted Arms"


Davin Watne and Dylan Mortimer created the public artwork specifically for the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority Transit Plaza at the corner of 10th and Main Streets in Downtown Kansas City.

Inspired by the site's function as a transit hub, Watne and Mortimer collaborated with local bus riders and bus operators on the project.  On a Metro bus parked on site, they conducted a photo-shoot during which they took pictures of more than 100 bus riders who were asked to pose holding onto the bus's overhead "strap."  Taken out of context of the bus, the rider's gestures may suggest contemplation, determination, faith, empowerment, even triumph.  While the figures have been somewhat stylized, viewers may recognize themselves, a co-worker, neighbor, friend or fellow bus rider among them. The artists then created figure drawings based on a selection of those photographs, finally transforming the drawings into sandblasted aluminum cutout sculptures.  The 16 figures have been mounted in pairs onto double-paned tinted tempered glass panels, yielding eight sculptural "units".  The glass panels, which range in color from pale green to deep blue, are set within bead-blasted stainless steel frames that will be anchored to the ground.  They will be installed in a loose path from the northwest to the southeast corner of the plaza, the sculptures will create a sense of movement and progression through the site, augmented by colorful, shifting reflections of the tinted glass onto the plaza's concrete ground.

Is Joe Biden courting Chris Hughes?

A bit of dot-connecting for your consideration. Joe Biden, 69 – Vice President. Chris Hughes, 28 – Facebook co-founder, Mark’s Harvard roommate, now publisher and editor-in-chief of The New Republic magazine. Chris possesses close to a billion points. Joe’s points plummeted today. Chris plans to marry Sean Eldridge, 25 – political activist.

Is Joe Biden courting Chris Hughes in this season of fundraising? Could this May September romance have a future? I think so.

Joe shared his opinion and his opinion will soon become policy despite White House stuttering today. Joe’s points will rise. All will be well and rather profitable.

Chris couldn’t make it into the political-ish columns in this past Sunday New York Times. Chris and Sean made the front page of the “SundayStyles” section though, for they are indeed stylish. Their engagement column engaged one with their engaging business ventures, country estate panoramas, and jeaned/sport-coated poses. They were missing a fluffy golden retriever or chestnut stallion in the rural backdrop.

Chris is powerful, it seems. The Times called them “key players” which sounds awkward; jargon given Chris’ business in the land of words – The New Republic. Don’t worry, he won’t mix business, journalism, and fund-raising/giving. Somewhat re-assuring and very stylish.

I agree with my fellow Archmere Academy alum on his “marriage for all” pronouncement. He and I learned a great deal at that wonderful Norbertine School in Delaware. We learned acceptance. We learned to be pragmatic, too. Joe’s a great politician and understands more than you or I will ever comprehend about the ropes inside the Beltway.

Joe’s points are on the climb. Chris will probably share more of his points with Joe. All will be well. Courtship over. Wedding plans set.

Being cool with being provincial

With devices and channels to transmit our ideas in an instant we insist we’re connected. We watch television and absorb political sermons. Some make us laugh. We measure our personal coolness in relation to the news-like performers, the popular culture philosophers who reside in New York City, Los Angeles, and I’ll add London. Washington DC possesses no culture. Just malls.

I read Yael’s columns relating how Colbert’s views affect us here. They’re laughing at us! The affectation is really a struggle in self-[and collective]confidence, I think.

The media we consume thinks us provincial. It’s a good word. This area of America, this nebulous MidWest, provide the fast-paced political coast-dwelling urban hipsters with entertaining material. You may resist this provinciality, but it’s best to accept it. Consider that Jon Stewart (born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz) is a re-invention and an amazing comedian. A New Yorker. Stephen Colbert’s core is acting. He’s a Second City (Chicago) alum.

In their eyes, we are curious and entertainingly naïve. Many people here think them fun and cool. We use their eyes as mirrors. That becomes problematic when we attempt to measure our behavior, and adapt it according to “the rules” of New York and Los Angeles, even DC. Local commentary shows here in Kansas City, and there are very few, attempt a level of coolness and level-headedness. I don’t watch Ruckus anymore as it’s boring to watch and listen to the same people with the same templates and filters week after week moderated by a chap with a well maintained English accent that supposedly raises the IQ of the gathering. It doesn’t fit our provincial context here in Kansas City, but it makes some feel cooler, smarter maybe.

Context is cool. Re-invention can be fun. Authenticity begins with context. Place, and in the case of the Kansas City area, our places are diverse. One can be in a downtown setting and drive a mere 25 minutes in multiple directions and look at cattle over a fence. Our context, our grist, our MidWestern-ness is hard to pin down and summarize. Hard for us to define “us”, much less an entertainer in a New York studio.

Connectedness has created a virtual media “high school” setting in the image of a John Hughes film (Beuller, Beuller?), in the likeness of the Harvard dorm dramas whose temporary residents gave us Facebook and now fund the Obama campaign. Kansas and Missouri may have cool kids, but the cool kids are the kids who moved away to re-invent and develop coolness in the eyes of those who define cool in the media. I think we’re authentically cool here as we are. Not that we shouldn’t change, work hard, and learn.

I think we should accept our provincial context and be cool with it. I think we should develop more local media here and import fewer digits, start some new versions of Ruckus with younger folks. New ideas.

Don’t feel badly when Jon Stewart laughs at you. He was bullied when he was young. That’s sad. But, hey, now he’s cool and his shtick is helping us to laugh at ourselves. You’re cool too. You just don’t know it.

Nervous elders

The elders are nervous. Robert Reich today calls for reforming capitalism. Not to worry about the socialist victory in France. Reform? Reform is white noise, that annoyingly forgettable hissing sound a word reminiscent of Charlie Brown’s teacher. Remember? (wha wha wha wha wha!)

The elders believe we can put the brakes on things. Stop and sniff the roses and other fragrances not so sweet. For the elders, they feel time’s running out. Reform. Let’s recreate the 50s and 60s like they do on Mad Men. Lots of awkward lessons on that show. Turn on the History Channel. Remember when? How’s that Leni Reifenstahl film? Looks like it was shot yesterday. All those lost opportunities: Uncle Ho, Mao, Lenin, Castro, that leader we toppled in Iran right before the Shah? Great guys who coulda woulda shoulda been our buddies. Why, an American Army Captain even helped Ho write his Independence Day speech. Yeah, they plagiarized that guy, Tom Jefferson. Uncle Ho liked Jefferson.

The elders are worried. What are these young people up to, anyway? Besides jobs, what do they want? Jobs, for one thing. But you’ll have to ask them. And when they speak, text, blog, or post, read them. Listen closely.

Yes, there’s linear feet and terra bites of reformation, restoration hardware-like writing by elder states people. There’s that latest installment, volume 4, of an epic biography of LBJ. Clinton likes it. Clinton didn’t get his boots wet in Viet Nam. Ah, a better time, we say. Could we just stop a minute and consider the past, the elders suggest? Sorry, I have a teleconference.

It’s not just us, OK? China elders are very sweaty, angsting about this younger generation. I’m not suggesting you to get a new wardrobe, kick off your slippers and act trendy. I’m just suggesting to my fellow elders that we chill out a bit. Relax. Shut up with the “wayback when lectures”. Listen to young people.

Listen. Forget reform.

Faites attention, États-Unis d'Amérique

With 80% of their citizens having casted votes, France elected François Hollande their new President. Hollande is a socialist in the modern sense; a label hard to define these days. Why should we care? I believe we should pay attention because he wishes to steer his nation away from austerity to a trend of growth via higher taxes on corporations.

Americans tend to ignore France. Culturally, we are Anglophiles in love with Masterpiece Theatre (with an “re”) and the Royal Family fashion news. Most Americans do not know that France possesses nuclear weapons and leads the world in nuclear power technologies three to four generations ahead of our latest American nuclear plants in the making. France’s colonial ties with Syria make France a heavy player in the diplomatic wrangling with Mother Russia. The US is a rather limp bystander there. But we pay little attention to France except in fashion magazines. While we long for England we forget that the French helped us win the Battle of Yorktown. Names like Comte de Rochambeau and Marquis de Lafayette familiar?

We will ignore France until something drastic occurs like when David Cameron steps down as Britain’s Prime Minister in the coming wake of the ongoing Murdoch kerfuffle. We’ll ignore France and their internal crisis to absorb and embrace a growing multi-cultural population. Serious problems one doesn’t see on Paris school trips abroad. We’ll ignore France until we realize they’ve successfully powered Western Europe with nuclear power and become the world’s leading nation in non-fossil fuel technologies. We may pay attention to France for a few days this summer when the price of their wine jumps higher. Then we’ll ignore them again.

France sets trends in culture, too. Unfortunately we receive the trends via New York City, translated and Americanized with a dash of prudish air-brushing. Yet, today, if we choose, we can simply click a translate button ourselves…if we choose to pay attention.

We could do a bit of “faites attention” practice by paying a bit more attention to our very France-friendly neighbor, Canada. I think we should engage with the French deeply and ditch our Anglo-fascination. Of course your vacation dollars will go far over the coming year in England.

In the meantime, I predict this trend toward socialism to become something to which you’ll pay some attention in the coming years as Europe (those using Euros), England, The Irelands, Wales, and Scotland (for the preceding 4.5 countries do not consider themselves European) choose between austerity, or growth, middle-ground, and the ways and means to achieve it. Their choices will affect us and we should pay attention closely.

à bientôt

Kansas City Missouri music going south without alcohol

Kansas City Missouri music is not going south in the sense of failure. Quite the opposite from my humble observations. The “original music” scene in town is rich and interesting. I hear musicians discuss the possibility of taking the music south to Johnson County Kansas.

Johnson County has money. In the city, musicians receive compensation for fuel and a personal pan pizza. There is no one epicenter in Kansas City for the music scene, but the choices of venues to see musicians perform their original music appear to me to dwindle. My perspective may not have the history you possess. Perhaps, over the long haul, the process rolls along naturally. Venues with a space-in-time individuality.

Could people in Johnson County connect with original music? Possibly, over time.

Musicians and their music cannot connect alone. They need help, starting with a venue or two; places willing to take a leap of more than faith. Music scenes, historically, center on a venue. A bar may come to mind. And that’s the problem for a Johnson County dream. I don’t think a bar will work. The Johnson County context doesn’t include bars.

When in college, I frequented the Towne Crier Café in Beekman New York. The place opened in the colonial era Beekman Hotel for music in 1972 when I was a freshman. The Towne Crier moved to Pawling in 1988.

The Towne Crier Café did not serve alcohol. Great coffee, I remember, in those expresso pots. Delicious pies, cakes, and cookies. Music was the centerpiece. At the time, I didn’t appreciate the richness of the place and the people. One night I shared my sugar bowl with Rick Danko of the Band. Saw Pete Seeger in the audience once. Smoke breaks listening to Levon Helm on the front porch between acts.  Libations and fragrant smoke across the street. This was what it was, a few years before that Last Waltz film. It was a time, but no more interesting than the people and the music scene I absorbed last night at the recordBar.

That sort of place, where people play and celebrate music without all the deep fryers, alcohol spigots and vessels, catsup bottles and salt shakers could fit in a rural-ish suburb setting like Johnson County. In fact, it would work well just on the edge, where the burbs meet the diminishing prairie out in the 140s. Interesting things usually happen on edges. The old Town Crier was on an edge at that time, just before the canonization of the Woodstock folks, and the blessing of the farmland, site of the muddy fest now part of legend.

So, to an investor or group wishing to invest and take a chance, consider a liquor-less venue, where even kids can hear music until 9pm. In order to take the music south, musicians need an “inn”, with room, a safe place, a welcoming place…something like the old Towne Crier Café.

Transcribed by Tom Ryan from a recording at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMY68vNcLT8

On a material matter…I mean the towels are disappearing too fast. I don’t mean that they’re being taken away or anything, it’s just they go too fast…and we got…we apparently have enough…given at the beginning of the week. So what…so the best way to handle a towel situation is to…start with (chuckle)…ex novices don’t laugh, folks…start with two…see…and instead of throwing one into the…into the basket everytime you take a shower, have two towels…the one you sort of get good and wet…and the other you finish the job see…and the second one isn’t too wet. Put the wet one on the line and dry it out. So you’ve always got one towel dry a maybe on the line and the other one on the line if necessary. And you throw one in the basket a week, or two in the basket a week, somethin’ like that. I mean you don’t…the thing is those towels are getting completely used up (chuckle) just being washed, see? I mean you use, you take a shower and you dry yourself once with the towel which uses it a tiny little bit and then you send it to the laundry (chuckles) and get used up real good getting washed then it comes back and you use it just one little bit again, see? So I think there are ways and means of…handling the situation. Well now I gotta, this is going to tie into…course I gotta a lot of interesting…stuff tucked away but I gotta…get down to some…main points. Ah…what is the perfection of the monastic ideal? How did they do it? What was their approach, I mean how did they go about this business of…ah…of a…of a…saying how you were going to live a monastic life? What did they do? Anybody? Ah…Timothy.

TIMOTHY: They lived it.

They went and lived it and then what…then they thought…how has it been lived, see. And then they always came up…like for example…in these desert fathers stories that we got there…somebody comes to saint Anthony and says…What am I gonna do, he says. Don’t ask me! He says. Well, I’ll tell you three ways people have done it…one did this and another did this and another one did that. You go try this or try somethin’ else…See…well…this is the way the monks have approached the thing, see. So in other words you go into the possibilities that exist. And that’s absolutely the only way to do it. And we are here and everywhere…although pretty much most places stymied by this business of you see …of being face to face with an idea and all the time butting our heads against the idea and never making any kind of a…of a…junction between the idea and the reality, see. And not starting with the reality and not respecting the reality. The way it usually goes is this…It’s the old…we ask ourselves the question what is God’s will? And we ask it wrong. See, we ask it…we don’t don’t ask that question as Christians. See. We ask that question as payment…what we are asking…see…what is my fate, see. This is the way we habitually ask ourselves the question what is God’s will? In other words, we assume that God is something that’s pre-determined…see…That it is…that God has set up there in a little secret office, see…And he reached into the filing cabinet and he pulled out the file and looks in it and says ah boy (chuckles)…and archangel Michael, come over here…what’s the plan for alpha? And archangel Michael (shrugs)…ahhhh well bababa…well…so there’s this secret plan…and here’s alpha, he don’t even exist yet, see…and then he comes into life and he reaches the age of reason and he says to himself, I gotta find out the plan…and so this is what we all do and we spend our life looking for this secret plan which we possibly can never find out. We try all sorts of gimmicks for finding out the secret plan, see. So we go to some…ah…somebody with a magic answer. And we say, well now the authorities of the Church, they gotta magic answer, or if they know God’s plan they…he’s fitted them into the plan some such way so…they’re oracles, see. And you go to somebody and you ask them what is God’s will for me? And with the utmost profundity, he looks at ya and says…You are to be a “bridgetine”…you are the first of the bridgetine branch of men, see…and like you’re a woman hater and all…absolutely allergic to femininity…see… you never got along with your mother or sister…and you say oh Lord this must be it all right ‘cause I hate most of ‘em now already… But this is absolutely arbitrary. See, this isn’t the way life is supposed to be. God’s will. When it comes to the ten commandments. I mean when it comes to the ten commandments, things are determined beforehand, see. There are certain things that are determined beforehand…thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal and those things, thou shalt not and thou shall…this and that. But when it comes to contingent affairs, where there’s a matter of choice…what is God’s will? And how do ya find out God’s will? For I mean…you wanna consult somebody…but not as an oracle. How do you determine God’s will in the matter of vocation? It’s the question of freedom, see. God has given us…ah…in the pagan situation, see…you look for fates. Ah, you getta sheep, you kill ‘em, you cut ‘em open and look at the entrails and then you get an expert in entrail examination and he looks at em…and gives you an ambiguous answer…and if you put the comma in the wrong place…and if it comes out wrong he can always say well that comma was in the wrong place, shouldn’t a been in there, there was this…that was your fault, see. A Christian is free. And the will of God in the work of the Christian is the work of the Christian and God working together, both freely. This is the work of two freedoms working together. So that your vocation isn’t something that’s in a filing cabinet in…Heaven. That is pulled… kept secret, then whipped out at the last judgement…says, ya missed, ya didn’t guess right. But what it is…your vocation is…anything in life, is an invitation on the part of…on the part of God, see… which you’re not supposed to guess and you’re not supposed to figure out, it’s something you work out by free response. And what are the indications of the invitation? See. You have to take them in their existential facts. They’re there or they aren’t, see. In other words, what happens is you judge byt the concrete facts, the realities that you run up against…in life…see. And these things are manifestations of what God has planned, and they’re manifestations of what…His whole idea which isn’t a plan beforehand, so much either, for we talk…we talk…God really has this certain point of view…has no plan. In the sense of a plan beforehand because there’s no before and after with God. He works it out…as he goes along. Except that it’s all one with him, there’s no past present and future….with Him…see. And we think in terms of having a plan and working it out because that…it’s humanely looking at it and when a wise human being,…normally thinks before he acts…and there’s nothing wrong with that, see. I’m not saying that you’re not supposed to think, see. This question of an inexorable will, completely determined beforehand which we…have to meet up to…is not the idea of God’s will, but of fate. See. God’s will is free and our will is free. And God is inscrutable as far as he is free…because you don’t know how your brother’s gonna act with his freedom. So of course, you don’t know how God’s going to act either…with his freedom. What are you going to do about that? Do you have to know beforehand what God…is going to do with his freedom? Where do ya, where do ya fit that in? I mean supposing He…decides to blast you with a thunderbolt or somethin’ ? If he wants to why…what about it?

A MONK: that’ where faith, hope, love…

Faith, and where love…hope, the theological virtues come in. And there you put things on a completely different plain. See. Theological virtues deal with persons and not with essences, see. When you’re dealing with essences you’re dealing with what’s fixed beforehand. When you’re dealing with people you’re dealing with what’s free. So when it comes to faith hope and love you set God as one who loves you freely. And you trust his love. See. And you trust that his freedom is going to be the freedom of one who loves. And you trust love. And it’s a totally different dimension. And when you’ve got…you don’t ask for love to guarantee his plans for the next five-hundred years. See. Love is…love! And you let it be love, that’s all.

The artist’s elevator speech

You have a mere 140 characters, spaces included. The previous sentence was 48 characters, including the space after the sentence separating it and this one. I just went 16 characters over my allotted 140. Buzzer! Thanks for playing. Failed again.

I hear that artists are crafting elevator speeches today; tweet length versions of their “pecha kucha’s”. Cut and paste the term into your browser to learn more.

Like the rest of us in other endeavors and elevators, artists browse the marketplace, art-in-hand, seeking buyers and investors. Competition is very keen. Art collectors, investors, and paying audiences are busy folks with a fixed amount of cash and diminishing lines of credit. This better be good, so in the department store elevator we go! Ready?

This better be good. I’m busy. Excuse me while I text. Go ahead. Fire away. Press send.

A friend of mine, a funny savvy East-Coast business person, always asks “what is it?” It’s hard to get frustrated with that question for me now. I get it. Distill it and pour me a glass of bourbon! I don’t need to know how you made it. That’s your problem.

What is it? What is this elevator speech everyone aches to create and spout?

It is what it is. It’s gotta be tweet-able. Short. Sweet.

Put down the verbose William Faulkner book you’re reading. Ditch the Shakespeare, OK? Yo, Hamlet! What is it?

HAMLET: It’s a play, a “poem unlimited”, life, death, parents, children #HaroldBloom #poetry #drama

BUYER: 91 characters with hashtags. Good job, Ham.

I’ll buy it. I’ buy the reality today that we must pitch it clearly, succinctly, with words selected carefully to pique someone’s interest. Pique. Nice word. 6 characters.

Well, I’m off to return a few books at the Kansas City Central Library, and as I do because I have a reading-sickness, pick up a few more because that’s how I roll… I like it there. One can ride the elevator and not hear any speeches.


Happy Derby Day!

notable absence

In July of 1945, Staff Sergeant Jerry Salinger checked himself into an Army hospital in Nürnberg [Nuremberg] Germany for “battle fatigue”. Salinger, part of the Army’s Counter-intelligence Corps (CIC), had been attached to the 4th Infantry Division’s 12th Regiment. He landed with the 12th on Utah Beach in the second wave on D-Day June 6th 1944.

From what we know, Salinger spent the month of July 1945 recovering. In a letter dated July 27th 1945, he shared a bit of his hospital experience with Ernest Hemingway. Salinger had sought out and met Hemingway at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris shortly after the city’s “liberation” in late August 1944. Salinger recounted that meeting in a September 9th letter to his agent at the time, Whit Burnett.

It seems to me that from out of his brief stay in hospital, Salinger emerged a writer again. From his July 27th 1944 ltr to Hemingway, I hear Holden Caulfield talking. Salinger references “A Farewell to Arms” – “a notable absence of Catherine Barkley”. He mentions Holden Caulfield as well.

What happened in that Nürnberg hospital during Salinger’s notable absence?

This is the premise for a play I'm writing… working title – “…notable absence…”

In my own experience with this thing we call depression or PTSD as it’s named today, I found that writing was a way to see what I thought. Actually, I should use the present tense.

…see what you think… some excellent guidance from a psychiatrist named Don. For me, the seeing turned into a journal, actually a number of them; something I continue to create. Sketchbooks where I allow myself to write.

I think of other people wresting with the grey clouded fluff of mental darkness and guilt, recovering from rather inhuman human experiences, possessing a file with PTSD or something like it written therein, people without files wandering, people medicated, people self-medicating with off-the-shelf things, and those like me scrawl and scribble, paint and sing, even write something coherent once in a while.

I think of Salinger and my Dad. Two veterans of the same war, who walked the same fields at the same time. Two people of many. One guy I read. The other guy was very hard to read. In reading the one guy closely, I’ve learned to read the other guy, my Dad. Both guys are gone but there’s many more women and men to replace them. The veterans of recent wars are crafting their “Catchers” I hope.

I get weary reading correspondent renderings of wartime narratives. Those authentic stories will hopefully emerge from those who lived them. My wish is that they imbue their stories with subliminal stories like “Catcher”… where they write themselves out of the story and yet embroider their writer’s DNA into the atmosphere and characters. That’s hard to do and one cannot expect a book deal from such an artistic endeavor. Happily today one can self-publish.

It’s interesting to consider that Salinger created Holden before landing on Utah Beach. Interesting to me is how Holden emerged from that eleven months of combat. I wonder what happened in that hospital?

And I wonder what’s happening in hospitals today with our Holdens, Jerrys, and Janes?

Strategy sleeps

I think strategy, like breaking up, is very hard to do. Successful leadership demands juggling skills, that multi-tasking thing. Juggling well does not make for strategy. Strategy is hard and yet fluffy, like a dust bunny under your bed. It swirls around when you try to nab it.

Strategy is more of a process than a thing bound in attractive binders or downloadable in .pdf format. The process has much in common with making sausage. We’ve built automated sausage machine-like simulations. Users of these military, economic, and political tools stretch from Wall Street to Pennsylvania Avenue to Fort Leavenworth.

Today we want results. Don’t bore us with the process details. Let’s develop an App, please. Today it’s apparent to me that strategy is beyond a lost art. Strategy is no longer a concept worth discussing. Strategies have now been fashioned into algorithms. The most sophisticated of these serve the god of finance.

Strategy challenges people to see connections where connection is possible and identify gaps. Gaps can be opportunities. Strategy requires us to ask hard questions reminiscent of those Mike Wallace posed. One has to appreciate the present tense of things while backward planning from some definition of success. There can be multiple versions of acceptable success. George Marshall likened strategy to thinking of time as a stream. Two people wrote a book about strategy called “Thinking in Time”.

I studied this book over the course of a year with fifteen other people. We dipped into Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest May’s collection of guided case studies as a sort of hobby in the midst of our regular course work. We came to agree that “Thinking in Time” taught us more than a few things. We even developed a process, our own “sausage machine” based upon the book. The machine consisted of a mind map; a left to right, right to left, up and down mosaic of ideas. It worked because it kept us curious.

A friend eloquently summarized strategy: the orchestration of means in ways to achieve desired ends.

That was then. Financial transactions, driven by the technologies developed by “quants”, outrun the human ability to plan. Intellectual problem solving is an anachronism in this contemporary atmosphere where finance drives all else. Profit is the end. We no longer care about the process.

Public policy, democracy, even institutions like higher education and health care operate within the new cathedral of finance and banking. I’ve shelved “Thinking in Time”. The dust jacket has a purpose now. Those strategic lessons have no contemporary meaning.

Citizen movements like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street amplify the issues but change will not come from encampments or marches. Change will come when institutions such as universities, health care corporations, municipalities, religious institutions, and sovereign nations fail. Only then will we see the necessity for financial reforms. Until then, banks reign. Until then, strategy sleeps.