Tom Watson

You Know Who You Are

"I must tell you that I abhor an informer."

- Stephen Maturin, in The Commodore  by Patrick O’Brian

Pay Up

I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

I Ain't Worrying and I Ain't Scurrying

Yesterday it was my birthday
I hung one more year on the line
I should be depressed
My life's a mess
But I'm having a good time

Maybe I'm laughing my way to disaster
Maybe my race has been run
Maybe I'm blind to the fate of mankind
But what can be done?

- Paul Simon

Silent Sister Veiled in White and Blue

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

- T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

That Reality

I don't believe in Kennedy
I don't believe in Buddha
I don't believe in Mantra
I don't believe in Gita
I don't believe in Yoga
I don't believe in Kings
I don't believe in Elvis
I don't believe in Zimmerman
I don't believe in Beatles
I just believe in me...and that reality

- John Lennon

A Mythical Concept of Time

II must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963

Reading List

Some links outside the cozy confines of this blog to some other stuff I've been working on, involved in, or peripherally tied to:

• Newsweek's Brian Braiker has a piece on "Facebook Philanthropy," a topic I've been interested in since the beginning on the year. Brian focuses on the Causes app that's raising money (tiny) and attention (huge) for causes, and he quotes me as saying the young wired demographic "wears their causes like the way they wear their favorite fashion." True.

 

• Brad Burnham, managing partner of Union Square Ventures (and partner with my old buddy Fred Wilson), graciously gave his post on the Hacking Philanthropy conference he hosted last month to us at onPhilanthropy (where I'm publisher), and we adapted it for our audience of nonprofit professionals. It's very good, and analyzes the effect of capital market forces on philanthropy - please comment on this hot topic.

 

• Speaking of markets and philanthropy, I wrote a piece for onPhilanthropy a couple of weeks ago about a fantastic organization in Kenya that is, in many ways, bringing the philanthropic quotient back to microfinance, which has become big business in recent years: "Jamii Bora (Swahili for “A Better Family”) makes loans to street people, specifically targeting thieves, beggars, prostitutes and the HIV-positive population of Kenya. Yet repayment rates are as high if not higher than some of the big lending programs, and the immediate benefits of lifting the destitute out of poverty are more apparent, said Ingrid Munro, a soft-spoken woman who moved from her native Sweden to Kenya."

 

• You can't get 'em online (alas) but I've also got columns in the current issues of both Contribute and Worth magazines about the confluence of philanthropy and social networking. If I get links eventually, I'll post them but if you catch them in the doctor's office, give them a read and drop me a note.

 

• My longtime partner in crime Jason Chervokas returned to the Silicon Alley beat this week (who'd a thunk it?) with a post in Henry Blodget's Silicon Alley Insider (which I changed my mind on and now read daily) on Halo 3, the best-selling video game for X-Box and his claim that content may again be king. I loved the lead, of course:  "In Silicon Alley's formative years, 'content is king' was the most commonly heard slogan, an article of faith repeated like a mantra from the scruffy tables of Eureka Joe's to the board rooms of media companies uptown. In truth, like the name 'Silicon Alley' itself, 'content is king,' was a phrase we used defensively. Back then we had coder envy. Sure, we clung to the notion of the Internet as a media platform first and a technology platform second, but more than believing it we desperately hoped that it would be so."

 

• Speaking of Silicon Alley, one of its pioneers - the redoubtable Howard Greenstein - joins our lineup of bloggers over at newcritics with a post on (appropriately enough) the geek factor in the new NBC lineup. If anybody knows geek cred, it's Howard. At the same address (and man, I'm really loving the newcritics experience - such a fab crowd), I've got a post on Pete Townshend's masterpiece, Quadrophenia. Pete (I all him that since he posted here last year) is expected in town next week at the Paley Center for the new Who documentary.

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning, praise the dawning
Its just a restless feeling by my side
Early dawning, sunday morning
Its just the wasted years so close behind

Watch out, the worlds behind you
Theres always someone around you who will call
Its nothing at all

Sunday morning and Im falling
Ive got a feeling I dont want to know
Early dawning, sunday morning
Its all the streets you crossed, not so long ago

Watch out, the worlds behind you
Theres always someone around you who will call
Its nothing at all

Watch out, the worlds behind you
Theres always someone around you who will call
Its nothing at all

Sunday morning
Sunday morning
Sunday morning

- Lou Reed & John Cale

The Essence of Great Writing

I think Ken Levine has summed up with some eloquence what it takes to be a professional writer (in this case, a screenwriter - but the principle applies across the board):

If you have ANY connections, now is the time to use them. Call in favors. Reconnect with your estranged father. Email your former fiancée who you caught sleeping with your estranged father if her new boyfriend is in the biz. Drop the lawsuit against her even if she’ll make a call on your behalf. So what if it’s humiliating? You’re a writer. Get used to humiliation.

TW Minus One

One less Tom Watson in the world, but he receives an obit any God-fearing, wordsmithing Watson would died for:

"He was a newspaper man through and through. He was a journalist who gave everything to his work - and was not a nine to five man. He was also an editor who was approachable."

The former editor of The Star (Sheffield, UK), described as "a towering figure in Sheffield's journalistic history," was 81.

Steve Gilliard, Our Virtual Brother

One of the great voices of the shared Internet is gone: blogger Steve Gilliard died today at age 41. I didn't know Steve very well personally, but he was a brother in the virtual sense. His voice was entirely his - a true iconoclast with a strong, unyielding point of view. We met a couple of times. Mainly we corresponded in email, in comments, on his blog, on my blog. Just before his illness, he agreed to join our little cultural blogging group over at newcritics. I treasure the fact that his name appears there as an author.

There is another important aspect to Steve - one that I think may be a true legacy beyond his pioneering political blogging. Gilliard brought real perspective to race relations in New York and beyond. An African-American who was unafraid to talk about race, Steve willingly jumped into the deep end on many issues that frankly scared a lot of the mainly-white, predominantly middle-class, well-educated lefty blogosphere. His work during the transit strike, for instance, brought insight that none of New York's newspapers even came close to.

And to me, he wasn't predictable. He did relationship advice. He did military history. He did classic rock. He did food. He did technology. He was a big man in every sense. Steve didn't suffer fools, but he was an open source kind of guy - bring it, he'd say, and back it up.

His partner in the Newsblog, Jen, told us that Steve came to know just how much his voice was missed during his long, terrible illness. I'm glad of that. But the feed's been empty for too damned long now. And it's going to stay that way.

UPDATE: Thanks to Jon Swift, a compendium of links and tributes - some great (and sad) reading: American Street, Firedoglake, Mad Kane's Political Madness (featuring a short interview with Steve), Sisyphus Shrugged, AlterNet.org, Daily Kos, skippy the bush kangaroo, State of the Day, The Carpetbagger Report, TalkLeft, August J. Pollak, Jesus' General, All Spin Zone, the talking dog, The Impolitic, Happy Furry Puppy Story,  The Democratic Daily, culturekitchen, Comments From Left Field, Brilliant at Breakfast, Digby, Orcinus, Avedon Carol's The Sideshow, Meteor Blades, Making Light, Off the Kuff. Note: that wonderful photo above is by Lindsay Beyerstein.

UPDATE II: Jim Wolcott says Steve's voice was "a fiery broadsword in its wrath and softly contemplative in its grief and understanding." Yes, it was. Also, a Facebook group for virtual mourning. 

Famed Hater Dies

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say you helped [9-11] happen."

- Jerry Falwell (1933-2007)

More Twitter Poetry

I love Twitter, but not as much for the pure communications side ot it - I'm enjoying the flow of words. And I can't seem to helping pulling a few threads from the seemingly random nature of strangers' posts. So here are a few verses, pulled from Twitter's public stream and reassembled:

Day Begins

Up
Coffee and cleaning
I'm the duty person today at the office

About to pour myself another cup of coffee
Thinking about work
Getting nauseous

Hungry
Instead of staring at three blinking dots
I'm going to make a sandwich

Awake and fabulous!
Crazy pills!
Cooking!

Waking up, beginning the work day
Waiting for the bus
It's cold outside for a pimp

And another:

Worship Technology

Drinking Schweppes
Dreaming of derivative buddies
I have no time to revise my ethics
I am a miner for a heart of coal

Coding a hotkey, and then going to church
I really need to put my music under version control
Will handle all the funky calls that come in
Safe travel, Audio

Unbroken Wings?

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

From Ash Wednesday, by TS Eliot
Today, it is my birthday so I read this poem.

All Tickets, Please

Metro North GCT, originally uploaded by Jim Van Meter.

In the evening, the commuter train headed north can be a lively, convivial snuggery, particularly late in the work week. Drink glasses clink in the friendly cocktail joust - imagined, of course, as the containers are largely aluminum and often swathed in paper bags - and there's the day's-over banter of anticipated leisure just at hand. If not happiness, then relief; the slight easing of the career and the mortgage at bay, briefly in the speeding cars.

Then there are the unhappy, the morose, the bitter. They too have their place on the evening ride, spouting loudly into cellphones, reading through a late brief, pecking like mental patients on their Blackberries as if the world really cared. These angry and driven ones are also part of the late-day crowd, which is active, engaged, and noisy.

By contrast, the early morning train is the sacred ashram of the commuter towns, a reverent place where people whose lives are recorded by the quarter hour in Outlook can retire, and read, and think.

Do not break the silence - do not chat loudly or prattle on via mobile or blow out your own eardrums while subjecting neighbors to a dissonant static inflicted by iPod - or prepare to suffer the riders' common sneer, their joint but silent censure. Watch the eyes as they roll. The mouths as they turn downward. The shared glances that say: "this one's too damned much, didn't someone tell her the rules?"

Morning riders want to read the sports, dig into their Richard Ford, or laugh (silently) at the foolishness of David Brooks. They want to make a few notes, focus on the challenges ahead. Or they want to doze, to look out the window at the same kabuki landscape: the same towns, the same backyards, the same warehouses, the same Bronx, the same Harlem. They roll by. They're cues that the track hasn't changed, that it still leads to Grand Central, that work and a paycheck still await. Visual mantras of the daily grind.

All the morning cars are quiet cars, as this is the time for introspection or the head-on fatigue that comes from too little slumber. For 29 minutes or 47 minutes or 73 minutes if you live in the farmlands of the Valley, commuters can sink without fear of conscience into their own, private reverie. They can think. Just let the thoughts wander, little markers like those on the hillside at Woodlawn.

This is not the active commute, either. Happiness and anger, distress and elation are all muted. We keep it together, because we're at the start, not the end. The best way to observe this silent morning sacristy of business at rest is in the tunnel on the long, dark approach the Grand Central. There, the various lines get packed together, and the trains must often wait in the recesses for a few minutes until the path can be cleared to Lower Level 111 or Track 29 upstairs.

Looking from one car to its neighbor in the darkness, the dim light shows the other riders. A red car: are those New Haven people really different from me? They seem to read the same newspapers. They seem to snooze and lean on the windows. And they seem to stare back, wondering about those Harlem Line types and their lives in Fleetwood and Tuckahoe and North White Plains.

It's hazy in those tunnels in the morning, and the glass on the older trains isn't what you'd term clear. So the opposing crowd of packed-in commuters is shown in loose expressionist tones, dabs of gray and red and green that form the whole - the painted mirror of our lives. Lately, the trains have been overcrowded. This is caused, the railroad tells us, by wet leaves on the tracks. So the ride is less pleasant and many people stand. It can drag on, uncomfortably.

The conductors jump on the PA to remind us to be neighborly and not place our bags on the middle seats so that someone can claim them (always the choice of women, and some grown men of last resort). Sorry for the delay. This train's short four cars. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Generally, if I'm well-seated - my first choice is always the window - and have my music on (quietly) and the paper on my lap, a commute extended by five or ten minutes can feel like a gift from the heavens. More time to read. More time to think. And the very pleasant but short-lived feeling that I've postponed the world.

Carried in the Current

The storm brought winds from the northeast, and covered the map from New Haven to Barnegat. Squalls swept across Long Island Sound, down into New York Harbor, and on into Sandy Hook. They slowed the ferries on the East River and the Hudson, and made the engineers ride their brakes on the slick rails along the commuter trains from Islip and Greenwich. The fishing fleets in Montauk and Shelter Island and Sag Harbor stayed at their moorings, as did their cousins at the quays down in Manasquan and Little Egg Harbor. The fisherman stayed bottled up in the pubs and bars along the docks, some mending line under awnings and in sheds, others just drinking away a day with neither catch nor pay.

New York Harbor still operated on a day like this, of course, but more slowly; the tugboat crews pulled on slickers and kept a hand free to grapple for safety in the unpredictable swell. At all hours, truckers in the container yards huddled under loading dock porches, smoking cigarettes and talking traffic, while the longshoremen alternated between frantic activity and menacing ease, secure in the protection of their bosses, union and otherwise, and hopeful of overtime pay.

In Manhattan, the rain created a shine on the impressionist painting of urban modernity, the grim overcast shrouding the tops of the tallest office buildings. Pools gathered on the streets, but little torrents ran down the avenues. Yellow cabs backed up on the elevated roadway above the station, turning through huge swamps at the bottom of the ramp onto 42nd Street. The musty smell of soaked wool and sweat filled the cars of the IRT and drifted through the expanses of Grand Central Terminal, where newspaper hawkers were chased from their street corners to shout headlines in the humid side passages. They sat by the bundled piles of newspapers, the broadsheets face up with grim news out of the eastern battlefields; the tabloids were face down, showing photos of a troubled ballplayer.

In the Bronx, the rain blanketed the tenements of Mott Haven and Mosholu, the depot at Hunts Point and the low warehouses and factories down near Hell’s Gate. It soaked the back streets in Melrose and Belmont, and up in Riverdale, the old trees of Delafield’s estate swayed in the storm, and a sea of black umbrellas held back the water outside of a small stone church not far from the bluffs above Spuyten Duyvil. There in the drive, the rain rolled off the polished black hood of a hearse that delivered the casket to the church.

Truth was, a heavy rainstorm didn’t clean New York as much as it stirred up the dirt, and caught the detritus and slime of eight million and floated it like sewage to the surface. The hot, dry pavement spattered with warm rain gave forth the telling odor of its borough, its neighborhood, its block. Stale beer in front of Tammany-era saloons, thin paper down Broad Street. Animal blood and rended fat swam in the meat-packing district; reeking fish guts on Fulton Street, and assorted oils, cabbage, and turned milk clouded rainwater puddles in the ethnic bedroom stretches of the outer boroughs. The city ran with its own filth in the rain, and some of it washed into the East River and the Hudson River and the Sound and the Harbor; the waters turned a satisfying gray-brown, the true melting pot of New York, neither pleasant nor aromatic, just overflowing and full of filth.

Tags: New+York NY

A Day that Broke Up Your Mind

The officer gently tapped the sleeping hulk on the tiled station floor with the toe of his shiny black shoe. No movement. Covered by a tattered gray blanket, sparse brown and white hair flowing from under a greasy cap, the man was as quiet and still as a living person can be.

"Hey buddy, you with us. Hey. Hey buddy, you with us, man?"

He turned my way. The nameplate on his pocket said Salerno. "Well, he's not dead. This how you found him?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I don't think he's moved. Thought he might need help."

The man on the floor twitched, his shoulders swerving upwards and to the right with an unctrolled heave, scattering the blanket and lifting two large feet off the floor. The sudden movement startled the cop, who had been leaning in expecting the barest slurred movements of a drunk deep, deep into his muted version of the night. This guy looked strong. Long, stringy hair, some brown with the gray and white, sparse beard on a dirty face and the darkened, hollow eye-sockets so common on the early morning rounds in the tunnels of Grand Central.

Only the eyes were different. Green and alert. Darting curiously around the corridor, and then back into the cop’s face. Not drunk at all. Small pupils too. "Let’s do this right." Officer Salerno tapped the radio button on his left lapel. "Psych case, shuttle passage." All the while keeping the man locked in his gaze.

"Listen buddy, my good friend Officer Monroe and I are going to take you someplace warm, get you some coffee maybe something to eat, have the doctors take a look, ok? Hold steady there a minute pal."

The man sat up, ran a grimy sleeve over his mouth, and clicked his tongue loudly. The noise echoed down the tunnel.

"We got it, buddy. Thanks."

I nodded at the cop, pulled up the raincoat around my neck, and walked away.

Seventh Inning Stretch

Lou Gehrig, originally uploaded by baseballart.

There are tales of ballplayers and their feats, their drinking, their whoring, and their dying that make for good company around a table of beer glasses, whiskey shots, and smoking butts. These are the stories that make lesser men feel grand for a moment, puffed up on booze and tobacco and someone else’s moment in the sun.

Why do grown men weep at the story of Gehrig? Why do traveling shoe salesmen identify with Ruth? Why do accountants, and pharmacists, and clerks worship at the altar of Mays and Aaron and Mantle? At some point, they shift their ambitions and their hopes for life into the physical actions of others on the ballfield, in the ring, on the course. They tamp down their dreams to pay the mortgage and keep the wife happy. Two weeks at the Jersey Shore, and call it a year.

But they wonder at the shoestring catch, the galloping triple, the curving called strike three. They thrill at the long ball. Their eyes shine, lighting their way much as the ancient call of the kings to war lit the fires among the peasantry to take up arms.

But the path is not to arms at all – but to our modern substitution for it: sport. It is sport that keep the yeoman legions in their line, in quiet reserve; sport that allows them to ignore the endless, numbing, ceaseless labor; sport that shines that light and offers the rescue beacon to youth and ambition. Baseball and a cold beer are a sweet summer reward for work.

As Others Direct

He was the kind of man other men take advantage of. It’s not that he was unskilled, or without prospects. Not that he lacked talent or drive. He had all of those qualities. But he had another quality that led men to take advantage of him. He was willing.

Indeed, he was downright cheerful about it. Made secure by the knowledge that his ability to relate an event to others would keep him afloat for the entirety of his adult life (and it had), he allowed himself to be pulled and used by others, like a sailboat happily slipped its moorings and rocking on cool, clear water. This is important as well: although he was willing, he was no one’s lackey. Nor did he curry favor. Rather, favor curried him and asked for his assistance in return. And because he didn’t like to say no, he answered the call most of the time. He was quite willing.

The Manly Pursuits

I know what men want, she said quietly. She looked down at the wet pavement, and her shoulders shook slightly. It’s all they want, she said.

No, he wanted to scream. Men want many things. They want beauty. They want hope. They want surrender, and warmth, and safety. They want a home and path through life shared by someone else very much like them, if only a little different, perhaps a little tougher and a little more realistic.

They want a salve to the violence in their souls – and all men have violence within -- a reason to fight the hardest battle of their lives; that is, making the choice between working for others, or simply working for themselves. And quite selfishly and consciously, they’ll trade that hard choice for the currency of domesticity and familiarity and comfort. They want their sentences completed, their thoughts anticipated, their needs met.

And the best men want poetry, lyrics to accompany the time stamp of the years. And they want a conversation spoken silently, in gestures and movement and the song of the body.

But he said nothing. He took her gently by the elbow and guided her across Seventh Avenue to the cab-stand, and put her in a yellow taxi alone, for the sad ride home.

After This Our Exile

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

- T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

The Social Climber

The ladies who had first introduced him into society were surprised to discover how wide the circle of his acquaintances had grown. Their feelings were mixed. On the one hand they were pleased that their young protege had made so great a success, and on the other a trifle nettled that he should be on intimate terms with persons with whom their own relations had remained strictly formal. Though he continued to be obliging and useful to them, they were uneasily conscious that he had used them as stepping-stones to his social advancement. They were afraid he was a snob. And of course he was. He was a colossal snob. He was a snob without shame. He would put up with any affront, he would ignore any rebuff, he would swallow any rudeness to get asked to a party he wanted to go to or to make a connection with some crusty dowager of a great name. He was indefatigable.

- Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge

The Nobility of Dissent

Ever have one of those purely organic writing moments, when your thoughts and writing become almost physical, so closely aligned are they with your existence? Jack Grant had one of those this morning over at the The Moderate Voice, publishing the best post I've seen yet about the Coretta Scott King funeral and the pathetic controversy stirred up by the whining, lockstep conservatives in thrall of Presidential power. Go read it. This is a taste:

What is democracy about? What is America about?

Dissent...Our nation was founded on dissent. We should never forget that the American Revolution was a rebellion against the legal, legitimate government of the colonies, and the Declaration of Independence was nothing more than an attempt to justify an illegal rebellion against a legitimate government.

My Tea Is Nearly Ready

Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by.
Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Whenever the trees are crying aloud,
And ships are tossed at sea,
By, on the highway, low and loud,
By at the gallop goes he.
By at the gallop he goes, and then
By he comes back at the gallop again.

- Robert Louis Stevenson, Windy Nights, from A Child's Garden of Verses

Master of Words

We tend to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as both a leader of a movement and a martyr to a greater cause. But I wonder if we would remember him much at all - whether, for instance, we would have this day of reflection - if it had not been for his mastery of language. His words, it seems to me, are stunning in their use during his own day: bold, intellectual, reasoned, and religious. Those words provided the soundtrack for the marches - and they have endured as a powerful echo alongside the black and white footage and yellowed news clippings.

Dr. King's use of language withstood both the stern tests of the day and those of the ages. Some of it was style and delivery. His measured tones and resonant, educated voice brought stark contrast to his more hateful opponents and rallied support among the white media. But even without that distinctive voice, the words are masterful - presidents of the modern era have speecch-writers and CEOs have ghostly composers; Dr. King wrote himself, sermons, essays, speeches. He did not write "low" for the masses, he wrote high for posterity. So this morning, I was reading Letter from Birmingham Jail on the Nobel site and I came across the following paragraph, and it blew me away: its meaning today is as powerful as it was then, not so much in terms of race relations now, but in terms of mild, political moderation and the price we pay for adopting the safe route. Read it and see if you agree [my emphasis on the last sentence]:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

UPDATE: Speaking of Dr. King's words resonating in the modern world, Andrea has a nice post on why the Drum Major Institute is so aptly named.

UPDATE II: Of course, there are those who say that conservatism in this country has no connection to racism, hasn't used it to gain political power. Here's just a quick taste of what's running on Free Republic [no link], the most popular mainstream conservative Web community in the nation, the main online bulwark of the Bush loyalists: "I wonder. Would I be called insensitive, politically incorrect or bigoted if I proposed a "Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Long-range Rifle Match?" Nice. The answer is yes.

Many Years Later

When the short days of winter came dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we returned to the street light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the corner we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan's sister came out on the doorstep to call her brother in to his tea we watched her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We waited to see whether she would remain or go in and, if she remained, we left our shadow and walked up to Mangan's steps resignedly. She was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed and I stood by the railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.

- James Joyce, Araby, from Dubliners

Selective Recall

If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.

- Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Holmes for Christmas

Now I am myself a branded thief, without ever having touched the wealth for which I sold my character. God help me! God help me!" He burst into convulsive sobbing, with his face buried in his hands.

There was a long silence, broken only by his heavy breathing and by the measured tapping of Sherlock Holmes's finger-tips upon the edge of the table. Then my friend rose and threw open the door.

"Get out!" said he.

"What, sir! Oh, Heaven bless you!"

"No more words. Get out!"

And no more words were needed. There was a rush, a clatter upon the stairs, the bang of a door, and the crisp rattle of running footfalls from the street.

"After all, Watson," said Holmes, reaching up his hand for his clay pipe, "I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies. If Horner were in danger it would be another thing; but this fellow will not appear against him, and the case must collapse. I suppose that I am commuting a felony. but it is just possible that I am saving a soul. This fellow will not go wrong again; he is too terribly frightened. Send him to jail now, and you make him a jail-bird for life. Besides, it is the season of forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward. If you will have the goodness to touch the bell, Doctor, we will begin another investigation, in which, also a bird will be the chief feature."

- Arthur Conan Doyle, The Blue Carbuncle

Generosity Is a Lucky Charm

During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking full upon him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear.

"A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make these silly folks so full of gratitude."

"Small!" echoed Scrooge.

The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig: and when he had done so, said, "Why! Is it not! He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?"

"It isn't that," said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. "It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."

- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

On the Nightstand

Some people love lists, especially at this time of year. I am not one of them. But because it's the season of giving and getting, and because I enjoy sharing recommendations with friends, this post is a list of books consumed over the past year that I give my whole-hearted "thumbs up" to.

As an aside, when I started this blog, I expected book reviews to be part of a steady diet of postings. Hasn't worked out that way and I'm not sure why, really. Perhaps it's my restless reading habit and frequent detours from the best-sellers; perhaps it's laziness. In any case, a yearly omnibus of (only positive) reviews seems useful (and easy).

Now, a few caveats. This is hardly a "Best of 2005" queue. Many of these books were not actually published this year; indeed some were not published this century. My nightstand is more of a neighborhood than a functional piece of furniture. Sure, it has a few books upon, competing with the lamp, the water glass, the radio, and the pills. But what I think of as "the nightstand" is really a region of stacked, printed material - and not even organized by genre, paperback or non, serious or pulp, etc. The stacks are purely random - to use the fave descriptor of the teen set these days - and my reading, while steady in consumption, is hit and miss. I read constantly, but often several books at once and I accumulate more quickly than I consume. I imagine many of you suffer from the same pleasant malady (the bain of spouses and significant others who appreciate the tiniest crumb of order).

And so, in no particular order, here is The List - you may buy (for Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Solstice, Wild Card Saturday, Boxing Day, or the Feast of St. Thomas Becket) with my personal guarantee, though this carries no monetary or return value whatsoever. [I do not include the many clunkers I waded through, at least partly]. Note the lack of current political books; no accident - can't stand 'em, in most cases. Please, your own reviews and/or recommendations in comments please....And awaaaay we go:

Alexander Hamilton - Ron Chernow
The most important Founding Father (not including Franklin) never to be President, richly captured in this very serious, deft and thick one-volume biography. Best parts for me: Hamilton's incredible influence in the creation of the New York we know today.

The Bad Guys Won - Jeff Pearlman
The wild stories behind the 1986 New York Mets championship - Straw, Doc, Mookie, Davey, Carter, Backman, Dykstra and the rest. It's sloppy and all over the place, but a winning tale - much like that team itself.

Berlin Noir: March Violets/the Pale Criminal/a German Requiem - Phillip Kerr
The omnibus version of Kerr's three detective novels set in Germany before, during, and after the Second World War. Goes down real easy.

Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama and the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution - Diane McWhorter
An incredible story of a rapidly thrown-up Industrial Age city that never really relied on pre-Civil War slavery, but adopted all the worst of post-war racism. Written by a woman who grew up there in a sheltered, white middle class family and only came to understand what had happened - and her family's own role in the story - years later. I read this after visiting the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum and in the process learned about one of the figures of the civil rights movement whose name doesn't appear in many textbooks - Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a true hero.

The Catsitters - James Wolcott
A clever tale of modern love that told me more about the inner life of thousands of lonely New York apartments than about relationships.

A Coffin for Dmitrios - Eric Ambler
Actually picked this up on whim in "Tom's Store" on Amazon, and rediscovered a mystery master from the 30s and 40s.

The Complete Aubrey/Maturin Novels - Patrick O'Brian
Ah yes, the third time through - for the writing and for the philosophy; meeting O'Brian before he died was like meeting Dickens for me. (The complete hard-cover set of all 20 novels and the fragment of the 21st is both a bargain and a pleasure).

The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945 - Michael Beschloss
Great pulp history on the drive toward unconditional surrender for Germany, and the moral crusade behind it that has largely been forgotten. The hidden hero: Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau.

Darknet - J.D. Lasica
Easily the best book on citizen's media, written with an open mind - not crazy, misguided, libertarian fervor - by a long-time analyst. A realistic account of how big media needs control to assure profits, at least in the minds of technology-challenged executives anyway. If you read one book on Web 2.0, Darknet is the one.

Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America - Erik Larson
Incredible Chicago world's fair scandal, who knew?

Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany 1944-1945 - Russell F. Weigley
Dense, detailed history of the men who made the invasion of Europe the largest undertaking of arms in history, recommended by my good friend Eric.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 - Hunter S. Thompson
Kerry should have read this one, which I picked up as a requiem read. Hilarious, sure. Truthful (in the whole, anyway) certainly.

Flyboys: A True Story of Courage - James Bradley
Torture and murder of American prisoners of war in the Pacific, a little-known story that's chilling and real.

Flykiller - Robert Janes
Another in the wonderfully dark detective series set in occupied France.

The Heart Knows Something Different: Teenage Voices from the Foster Care System - Al Desetta
These stories will break your heart, impress you with the inner strength of the young, and make you want to do something.

Hard Times - Charles Dickens
Thie fellow Dickens is on to something here - this combo of societal misery leavened with real human kindness may have a future on the best-seller lists.

Here is New York - E.B. White
Again to the masterwork from a fellow Mount Vernon man.

His Excellency: George Washington - Joseph Ellis
Washington the politician, written from letters, with real insight into the sphinx.

Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda - John Keegan
No one writes military history better than Keegan, and this book doesn't let the side down; moreover, it's a tough book for very tough times - would that Americans at the highest points of government had read this book first.

Jefferson's War - Joseph Wheelan
Adventures of an American president who sent an invasion force to the Middle East.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
I did not expect to like this massive, epic, rambling tale of magicians and politicians set in the London of Holmes and Watson. But damn if I never put it down. What fun it is creating an alternative world.

Lincoln's War: The Untold Story of America's Greatest President as Commander in Chief - Geoffrey Perret
Abraham Lincoln the stone-cold killer among hesitant, over-trained generals.

Live from New York - James Miller and Tom Shales
Belushi and the rest, a dazzling oral history tossed my way by Steve-o.

Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire - Jason Goodwin
And we think we understand the Persia of today - what fools we westerners be. A lush and complex history that shows just how strange the pathways to modernity can be.

Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig - Jonathan Eig
Strength at the end, humility at the beginning, brilliance in between.

The March -  E.L. Doctorow
Master of the historical novel, Doctorow admitted making up Sherman's diary entries and letters to serve his own cinematic purposes. Good on him; it's his world, related to the truth, but deriving more truth from portraying human nature than from documents.

No Country for Old Men - Cormac Mccarthy
Begins with death in the heartland, and tracks death throughout. A brilliant, violent turn with no romanticism whatsoever for the heartland.

On the Road With Bob Dylan - Larry "Ratso" Sloman
Hilarious, rambling first-person account of Ratso's (successful) attempt to infiltrate Dylan's inner circle during the wild and brillant Rolling Thunder Revue.

Pennant Race - Jim Brosnan
Baseball in the 60s, all nicknames and tobacco juice and beer, written by a Reds pitcher.

A Piece of My Heart - Richard Ford
His first novel from the mid-80s about a violent episode in Mississippi hunting grounds - cinematic, spare, stark like a song off of Springsteen's Nebraska.

The Plot Against America - Phillip Roth
Alternative history imagined by Roth. A reach, but a brilliant, engrossing reach that succeeds - just barely - in the required suspension of disbelief.

Press Box: Red Smith's Favorite Sport Stories - Red Smith
Of Cobb and Rockne and Louis - you know this stuff, and you want more. Put in your commuter backpack and carry it for those dead moments when the subway gets stuck and you need some reading as sweet and smoothe as caramel.

Persuasion - Jane Austen
The one I hadn't read, but as tasty as a strawberry Fribble from Friendly's.

1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World - Frank McLyn
I read this for the French and Indian Wars, but I hadn't understood the importance of this moment in every corner of the world until this book - a fascinating and serious read.

1776 - David McCullough
Washington, what a stud. Even when nothing went right.

To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World - Arthur Herman
What stands out is the failures, even for the proudest navy in world history. Failures, piracy, loss of empire - but also the incredible cost in treasure, lives, and effort that went into creating the world's first and foremost mobile extender of power.

Where I Was From - Joan Didion
Years, she sadly rules the best-seller list but this one from a few years ago tells the story of California - which in turn tells us so much more. Engrossing, real, powerful.

The Golden Mist

The companionship of Hayward was the worst possible thing for Phillip. He was a man who saw nothing for himself, but only through a literary atmosphere, and he was dangerous because he had deluded himself into sincerity. He honestly mistook his sensuality for romantic emotion, his vacillation for the artistic temperament, and his idleness for philosophic calm. His mind, vulgar in its effort at refinement, saw everything a little larger than life size, with the outlines blurred, in a golden mist of sentimentality. He lied and never knew he lied, and when it was pointed out to him said that lies were beautiful. He was an idealist.

- Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

Come and Gone, Again

The truth is, however, we know little and can find out precious little more about others, even though we stand in their presence, hear their complaints, ride the roller coaster with them, sell them houses, consider the happiness of their children - only in a flash or a gasp or the slam of a door to see them disappear and be gone forever. Perfect strangers. And yet it is one of the themes of the Existence Period that interest can mingle successfully with uninterest in this way, intimacy with transcience, caring with the obdurate uncaring.

- Richard Ford, Independence Day

Weathering the Forties

It was as though he were running a race: a race in which he had done fairly well for a while, after a slow start, but one in which he could not hold his lead and was being overtaken, perhaps from lack of bottom, perhaps from lack of judgment, perhaps from lack of that particularly nameless quality that brought some men success when it just eluded others, though they might take equal pains. He could not put his finger on the fault with any certainty, and there were days when he could say with real conviction that the whole thing was mere fatality, the other side of the good luck that had attended him in his twenties and thirties, the restoration of the average. But there were other days when he felt that his profound uneasiness was an undeniable proof of the fault's existence, and that although he himself might not be able to name it, it was clear enough to others, particularly those in power: at all events they had given many of the good appointments to other men, not to him.

- Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbor