Jean, of Blessed Memory

Why is my sister a Catholic?
by Charlie Leck

My sister lies dying, within moments of the end of her life, as I write this. I have been suffering through this period and sharing with my closest friends some of my agony as I also keep them up to date on the last moments of her life. The kindnesses they have returned to me have been remarkable and I will always be grateful for that. One friend, a dear Jewish woman, wondered why my sister is so religiously different than I, a liberal protestant to the core. She asked: "Why is your sister a catholic?" I emailed her back the following answer. [My sister died at 6:30 a.m., while I was writing this about her.]

This blog was posted once, a week ago, for about an hour. A friend recommended I take it down and repost it after the funeral and burial. I took his advice.

My mother was raised as a catholic. My father was a protestant. (Forgive all the lower case errors; it’s partly philosophical with me.)

When my mother was 17 and my father 29, they decided they wanted to marry. My grandmother, Emma Svejda, was furious about the age difference and also the religious difference and forbade the marriage. Mother and father went off to Elkton, Maryland, a town that married couples without blood tests or a waiting period. They were married there by a justice of the peace. Of course, my grandmother was really infuriated and then more so when my mother started going to my father’s church on Sundays. In the eyes of the church, my mother was no longer a catholic because she had been married outside of it.

When my sister was born in 1929, my grandmother hovered over her like a bear over its cub. The crash had come and things got very tough. My Grandpa Svejda had a city job that was rather secure. My father’s job was not. My parents both tried to find whatever work they could to keep afloat. My grandmother took care of my sister, virtually, around the clock and going to mass regularly was a part of that care. My grandparents enrolled her in a catholic school and part of that included everyday mass.

So, dear Jean simply became a catholic as a matter of circumstance.

My grandmother Svejda and father never became close. In the years I remember, there was always a strained relationship between them but my father was, at least, polite and civil. My grandfather and father had always been pals, even long before he took a fancy to my mother. In fact, when my mother was a wee one, my father, as a teenager, used to regularly baby sit her for evenings while grandma and grandpa went out on the town. My grandpa Svejda was a big baseball and boxing fan and so was my father. They went to ball games together and to fights when my dad was a boy. Their relationship remained close through all the problems my father had with my grandmother.

Fast forward about twenty years. My sister was working in NYC and commuting back and forth from our home in NJ by train. She had a very nice job with the Woolworth Company as the special assistant to a woman in charge of all product buying for the company stores. Jean was given enormous attention by all the salesman who came and went and our home was filled with special gifts for her at Christmas time, Easter, Valentine’s Day and on her birthday. Among the goodies she received from salesmen were very special tickets to events at Madison Square Garden, the Polo Ground, Ebbets Field and Yankee Stadium. I always had choice seats at the Greatest Show on Earth and the Rodeo, and box seats at ball games. Man, I wanted her to keep her job at Woolworth’s.

However, she met a fellow who was a fast-fry cook at a cafeteria in the building. He was a bullshitter and a con man and, damned to all tar nation, she fell in love with him. Of course, you can imagine how the story goes! She brought him home to introduce him and to announce that she was going to marry him. My mother was furious and refused to allow it. My father stood back and remembered his own private, marriage by flight. He knew my sister would do the same and she did.

But, here’s the twist that brings us back to catholicism. In her anger, my mother informed the local priest that the man was both not a catholic and divorced from an early marriage. My sister was excommunicated for not having been married within the rights of the church -- a sacrament.

Strange, my sister had become the most loyal and devoted catholic known to mankind. Here she was, in a moment, outside the church and not allowed its sacraments or services. She had children -- two boys. She lived in a house within two-hundred yards of our own. My mother hated my sister’s husband. I must admit, he was a rotten guy. He couldn’t hold a job. He couldn’t make a living. He lied like crazy and he was wiling to live off charity from anyone who would offer it. There was eventually an event disastrous enough that caused him to be sent to prison. My sister divorced him. It is difficult to please the catholic church. The divorce was a bad thing in the church’s eye even though they had also disapproved of the marriage. Talk about a catch-22.

My sister never regained official readmittance to the church. Nevertheless, she remarried, moved with her new husband and her young boys to Dallas and took up life. She, of course, went to her local parish and became an intensely important part of it. No one knew or asked about her former relationship with the church. She worked with the poor, homeless and misfortunate as only a saint might. She was unable to refuse the needy. She worked with the elderly in nursing homes and volunteered in hospitals. In her church she became a symbol of what it meant to be as Jesus would have us be. She became the cook and organizer for all the church dinners. The poor and hungry in the town knew they could stop by during a day when she was preparing a feast for the parishioners and be fed generously. The officials of the church always pretended not to know, but they did. My sister never took a penny for all her work within the church.

Eventually, the parish built a new church building and, with my sister’s help, they designed a very special, large commercial kitchen because the highlight of community and church life within that congregation revolved around food and dining together. I wonder why! Dinner was served every Sunday at noon. There was a weekly evening dinner. My sister organized them all.
When the New Orleans disaster happened, Dallas took huge numbers of those refugees and found them housing. Each night of the week, some church had a dinner for the refugees. My sister’s parish, at her urging, offered to be a dining site once each week. About two hundred refugees were bused to the church for dinner. My sister raised the funds to pay for the program, organized the dinners and found the necessary volunteers and cooked the meals. This went on for well over a year, though the numbers who came dwindled as people found jobs and set up their own homes.

Last year, the kitchen was completely remodeled under my sister’s direction. The parishioners insisted that it be named the "Jean Davidson Kitchen of Life." She had become too ill to cook regularly, but she found the volunteers to do it and she trained. them and she remained in charge of purchasing up until just a few weeks ago.

All of this she did as acts of contrition for her sins, for her inappropriate and failed marriage. Fortunately for her, she had a good, hard-working husband who was willing to pay for these acts of saintliness.

She never asked that her excommunication be over-turned or reversed or lifted. Her boys, strangely, became protestants -- one very devoted and the other in name only.

Now these people come to my sister’s bedside, as if needing to look upon her face one more time or to touch her kindly and in reverence, as if touching a contemporary saint. They leave on her bed rosaries, crucifixes and other religious pins and medals. They are so numerous that her sons need to clear them away from time to time because of the weight of them. The waiting line to visit her is long and worshipfully silent.

I have known many kind people who have devoted their lives to service in the name of their God. I have never known anyone like my sister. She is truly one of God’s very special servants and I am very proud of her. If there is a special place in heaven for the saints, she will certainly be allowed entry.

So, the question becomes not "why she is a catholic?" but really "is she a catholic?"

I have always harbored a special ill will for the catholic church and, for that reason, do not capitalize it when I spell it out. I simply don’t understand how an institution of the Jesus I know could cast off someone who was (is) so faithful and so Christ-like in character. It will always be one of life’s great mysteries for me.

You asked what time it is. I built a watch for you! However, this will now become a part of the stories I am preserving and setting aside for my grandchildren.

Evidence: An indicator or an outward sign!

Be reasonable, even intelligent about this global warming debate!
by Charlie Leck

I heard a father (happened to be a Texas conservative) tell his son last night that there was no evidence of global warming. They were having a private, somewhat personal conversation. Yet, they were within immediate earshot. Think I could keep my mouth shut? Silly question!

“Son,” the father said, “there is no solid evidence in support of global warming.”

“Young man,” I piped up, “of course there is. There is a mountain of supporting evidence indicating there is global warming.”

“No there isn’t,” the father insisted, speaking more loudly.

Now, had the father been talking about proof – as in proof about global warming, or as in proof that there is a god – I would have butted out; however, he was talking about evidence, which is defined as an indicator or an outward sign. To say that there is no evidence, when, in fact, there are mountains of indicators and outward signs that point toward global warming, is indeed verging on stupidity.

Indeed, there is no proof that God exists. Yet, there is reasonable evidence – though not convincing evidence. There certainly is more solid, hard-core evidence that there is global warming than the young man’s father is willing to look at. He’s another prime example of the blind, conservative right that is willing to jeopardize the planet.

Want to see the evidence, stacked in neat piles for your examination? Just take a look at the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. The documentary lays out the evidence, as of last year. America is the only nation among the thinking, reasonable nations of the earth that is still having this debate. Most other nations are trying to put plans in place that will stem the tide.

Pay Attention

While I travel, you take a look at these items
by Charlie Leck

Governor Charlie Crist
Watch what the Republican Governor of Florida is trying to do to the Democratic Party. This is so transparent it’s comical. The Governor is trying to interfere with Democratic Party Politics by pressing The Dems to seat the delegates that were elected in a primary that was not authorized by the Party.

All of this is giving the Florida Governor an opportunity to get before the cameras and bad mouth the Democrats. I was actually giggling at the TV screen this morning as this fellow acted so righteous. What is he asking? That the Democrats break their own rules and that the Democrats ignore the fact that they promised the candidates those votes wouldn’t count.

Keep your eyes on the Florida Governor and watch how he uses this opportunity for a blatant political attack on the Democratic Party. It’s pretty disgusting.

If he’s so concerned about democracy here, have him pay for a new set of primaries to be held next month. There’s still time.

A Unique look at William F. Buckley
For a look at a far different opinion of William Buckley, from the one that I wrote in this blog last week, which brings you a picture of the man as he TRULY was, I suggest you read this powerful article on AlterNet.org. It’s good stuff and the different angle on Buckley’s life is worth reading. [Let’s Pay Tribute to the Spectacular Wrongness of William F. Buckley by David Michael Green]

Let me just say again, I really like AlterNet.Org. The purpose of this web site is to give you an alternative news source that approaches the news in a completely different and non commercial way. They succeed in what they’re trying to do. Give them a try for a while.

END

Democracy is More than Periodic Elections

Democracy involves having informed citizens!
by Charlie Leck

At the end of last week, economists Joe Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes appeared on a video production for Democracy Now and answered questions posed by Joseph Gonzalez and Amy Goodman. I've had a little fun with the interview in an attempt to make the point even more dramatic and alarming than Stiglitz and Bilmes were able to do in that bland interview. Have some fun with this and enjoy it!

Last week, the Joint Economic Committee in Congress began public hearings on the cost of the war in Iraq. Senator Schumer chaired the Committee and some distinguished witnesses appeared on Thursday. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, feels strongly that the war cost will reach 3 trillion dollars. Mr. Stiglitz lamented the great opportunities that our government has missed. With Harvard University economist, Linda Bilmes, Stiglitz has written a book called The Three Trillion Dollar War. Go ahead, click and find out more about this book on one of my favorite web sites. In it, they claim that the Bush administration has kept a set of secret records that indicate the real cost of the war. Publically, the White House low-balls these costs.

Stiglitz is a former chief economist for the World Bank and currently an economics professor at Columbia University.

"For a fraction of the cost of this war, we could have put Social Security on a sound footing for the next half-century or more."

Another distinguished witness, Robert Hormats, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs International, agreed. He testified that both Social Security and Medicare could have been given a solid foundation. He also pointed out that the amount spent on the war EACH DAY could enroll 58,000 children in a Head Start program for a YEAR. That daily expense could also pay the annual salaries of 11,000 new border patrol guards.

Stiglitz pointed out other hidden costs of the war; like covering the costs of health care and disability benefits for returning veterans. That's only the beginning and it will go on for decades.

Of course, the straight-talking, up front Bush administration circles around the highly scrutinized budget process and, instead, finances this war through emergency appropriations, which are watched over with less intensity. Recently, in an interview on the Today Show, Bush denied that it is the war that has so hurt our economy. Instead he claimed that "this economy is down because we built too many houses."

Okay! You got Professor Stiglitz on one side and George W. Bush on the other. They've offered opinions on what the war has done to our economy. Who are you going with?

Oh yes, Senator McCain has his hand up! Did I hear you correctly, Senator? You're siding with the President on this one?

White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, explained these economic fine points to the White House press corp.

"People like Joe Stiglitz [he calls him Joe because they're great drinking buddies] lack the courage [oops, they are probably not buddies anymore] to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure. One can't even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9/11."

There you have it. The well reasoned economic theory of the White House. Makes 'Joe' look sort of 'bush' league, doesn't it? Well, Tony, here's a little na, na, na-na na for you from your buddy, Joe.

"Well, I think the White House lacks the courage to engage in a national debate about the cost of the Iraq war. The Joint Economic Committee has asked the White House to come down and discuss the numbers; they've refused. Security is important, and we don't deny that. The question is whether this war has been the best way of obtaining the security. And no matter what you're going to do—you know, what you think about security, you still have to look at the cost."

When the TV journalist, Amy Goodman, asked Stiglitz how he came up with the 3 trillion dollar price tag, Stiglitz got complicated.

"Well, the way you approach this problem is basically adding."

Okay, Joe! Right! But, you see, that's complicated for this President, who runs out of fingers and toes at twenty.

From there, Joe wandered into deeper water.

"There are a whole set of macroeconomic costs, which have depressed the economy. What's happened is, to offset those costs, the Federal Reserve has flooded the economy with liquidity, looked the other way when you needed tighter regulation, and that's what led to the housing bubble, the consumption boom. And we were living off of borrowed money. The war was totally financed by deficits. And eventually, a day of reckoning had to come, and now it's come."

There you have it, Mr. President, and it's very simple: "We built too many houses!"

Is anyone talking about the cost of oil? It was about $25 per barrel before the war and now it is going beyond $100 for each little ole' barrel. What do you say to that, Joe? Last night I filled my daughter's car up at the middle-level pump and it was $3.13 per gallon. Analysts everywhere are predicting that'll we'll soon need to pay in excess of $4.

Who said that?" The President asked a reporter. He was dumb-struck – you know, that usual lost look he has! "I'm not hearing that," the President said.

What about these oil prices Joe?

"But if you look back, in 2003, futures markets, which take into account increases in demand, increases in supply—they knew that China was going to have increased demand, but they thought there would be increases in supply from the Middle East—they thought the price would remain at $25 for the next ten years or more. What changed that equation was the Iraq war. They couldn't elicit the increase of supply in the Middle East because of the turmoil that we brought there. So we think, actually, the true numbers, not the $5 or $10 that we used, because we didn't want to get in a quibble, but really a much larger fraction of the difference between $25 that it was at the time in 2003 and the $100 we face today."

Then there's the whole question of rebuilding Iraq. But don't worry; the administration is guarantying us that this won't be expensive. It positively won't cost any more than 1.7 billion dollars. Andrew Natsios, the former administrator of USAID has put his kiss upon this guaranty. On the TV show Nightline, Ted Koppel got this absolute guaranty out of Nantos.

Joe, what do you think? Oh, excuse me! Ms. Bilmes wants to respond to this stupidity.

"…the amount that we have spent in trying to rebuild Iraq has far eclipsed what Andrew Natsios had said, obviously."

You don't say! Well, you see, this gets back to what I was saying earlier about fingers and toes! Nevertheless, let's move on. Ms. Bilmes, What about this cost to us for all these serious injuries to our troops?

"And this is one of the really outrageous situations about trying to get information about this war, because even today, if you go to the official DOD website, what you will find is a number around 30,000 wounded, but that is only the wounded in combat. Now, the number of fatalities, which is approaching 4,000, is wounded in combat and non-combat. But if you want to find the non-combat wounded—and that includes, for example, soldiers who are injured when they're driving their vehicles at night, because it's unsafe to drive during the day; soldiers who are wounded when they are being transported between one place and another, who never would have been there otherwise—it's much larger. It's more than double. And that is a number which is very hard to get. We had to use the Freedom of Information Act to get access to that number. It is impossible to sort of underestimate how difficult it is to get hold of information that should be completely in the public domain."

Is that right? You guys had to use the Freedom of Information Act to get the information you wanted. It seems amazing to me that the White House wouldn't be more helpful. Yes, Joe, you want to say something.

"That's right. I mean, one of the very disturbing things is that we went to war for democracy, and yet democracy is more than just having periodic elections. It really involves informed citizens being able to have perspectives on the important decisions. But to be informed, you have to know what is really going on. And that's why it was, you know, so upsetting that we had to used the Freedom of Information Act to find out this or to find out, for instance, that while the government was saying, the President was saying, we'll supply all the equipment that the military needs, back in early 2005 there were urgent requests for MRAPs, these vehicles that will resist the IEDs, these explosive devices, and protect our soldiers, but because of wanting to keep the apparent cost down, they refused to order them.

"And, of course, the total cost—and this is one of the important points we make in our book—the total cost is not just the upfront cost, but the cost that you have to face for decades later in terms of the injuries and, of course, the cost to the families. So, being penny-wise and pound-foolish means our country is suffering because of that kind of economic decision."

That's all good and fine, Joe, but we must repeat that the President is assuring us that all of this is not pushing us into recession. Why just the other day he said: "I don't think we're headed to a recession. But, no question, we're in a slowdown."

What do you think of that, Joe?

"Well, first of all, the economy is almost surely heading into a recession. I was at the American Economic Association meetings. In the past, the probability of going into recession was fifty-fifty. The general consensus is now 75 percent probability of going into recession. But whether we go into recession or not, the real fact is that it is a major slowdown. It's going to be one of the—I think clearly the deepest downturn in the last quarter-century. The loss of output, the difference between the actual output and our potential output, will be at least one-and-a-half trillion dollars, and that's not money we're talking about in this Three Trillion Dollar War. This is a serious problem. And I think at the core of this is the war. You know, in the election campaign, people said there are two big issues: the economy and the war. I think there's one big issue, and that's the war, because the war has been directly and indirectly having a very negative effect on the economy."

Well, Joe, I have a feeling that John McCain is not going to touch that one with a ten foot pole, but let's move on. With all these huge amounts of dough President Bush expended and spread around, someone must be profiting by this war. What do you think?

"Well, actually, there are two big gainers in this war and only two: the oil companies and the defense contractors. And you see that's where the pools of wealth are being created. One of the big pools of wealth are in the Middle East, the countries that are the oil exporters. We are transferring hundreds of billions of dollars from American consumers, businesses, to the oil exporters. You can look at it as simple as that."

Joe, what countries are we talking about here, which are benefiting so from this war?

"Well, Saudia Arabia, Iran, Venezuela. You know, if you asked who were the countries that we would not want to help, many of them would be on the list that we have been helping."

Wow! Joe, this is getting complex and we've moved way beyond fingers and toes into a whole realm of complex language. I don't think our President could understand that sentence, sir. Let me try to rephrase it for him.

"Mr. President, we are actually helping a couple of the points of the Axis of Evil – Venezuela and Iran. Holy cow, Joe!"

"Exactly. And one of the things that—you know, as economists, we talk about 0pportunity cost, what you could have done with $3 trillion to win the hearts and minds, to advance security. One of the aspects of this—everybody talks about security. While we were focusing on weapons of mass destruction that did not exist in Iraq, another country joined the nuclear club: North Korea. And so, it shows you, you know, there's limited resources, time and effort, and we were focusing on the wrong problem. While we were focusing on Iraq, the problems in Afghanistan got worse, and the problem of security in Afghanistan is much worse than it was five years ago. So there's not only an economic opportunity cost; there's a security opportunity cost."

Joe, this is mind blowing, but do you think the President can really get his brain to grasp something like this?

"Well, this was one of the big points that came up in the joint committee hearing that we were in yesterday."

Joe, you've said it all. We built too many houses! It's that simple.

The Sunday Newspaper

Reading the Sunday papers for you!
by Charlie Leck

I rise about 4 o’clock in the morning on Sundays. It’s my wife’s morning to sleep in and I can be sure I’ll have a few hours of deafening silence in the house and I can begin to read the Sunday papers – one of my absolute favorite activities. The Minneapolis paper will not have arrived yet. It arrives at approximately 5:30. So, I begin with the New York Times and the Washington Post.
There’s just nothing like it. I flash through the opinion pages, the entertainment and arts sections, and go to the blogs that the paper sponsors. Good stuff. Here are some tidbits from my Sunday morning reading.

In the NY Times, Paul Krugman warns us that an Obama nomination does not guaranty a land-slide victory. He doesn’t think the candidate will really inspire the activist-left of the party to get out and work for the vote or to even necessarily vote. Krugman is not sure the election can be won on Obama’s charisma and magic.

”All in all, the Democrats are in a place few expected a year ago. The 2008 campaign, it seems, will be waged on the basis of personality, not political philosophy. If the magic works, all will be forgiven. But if it doesn’t, the recriminations could tear the party apart.”

In a video commentary in the NY Times, Tom Friedman brings together the 9-11 Attack, the New Orleans Hurricane Disaster and the Flattening of the World, to explain why America has gone as green as red, white and blue. The attack on the Twin Towers made us realize we are funding, through the purchase of oil, a part of the world that hates us. New Orleans made us realize that environmental calamities have grown more possible on this altered planet. The flattening of the world has merely “brought 3 billion new consumers on to the global economic playing-field from India, China, Russia, Brazil – all with the American dream.” With that much demand for product, what does that do to the sensitive environment of the planet? This is a video worth listening to! A few of my best friends, and some good thinkers I know, think Friedman is a light-weight. Listening to him in his video, makes me wonder how they can think that.

I’m a regular reader of Stanley Fish. He’s a bit too ponderous for most people. He moves slowly (sometimes painfully so), but he moves with clear steps of logic and blatantly allows you to see the progression of his thinking. This week he indicates that John McCain will have certain very clear advantages over Barack Obama in the general election and most of those advantages will come from the war in Iraq. At first blush that seems crazy, but read Stanley Fish’s column and you’ll see just what he’s talking about. Amazingly, however, Fish suggests that John McCain, as a non-candidate, would likely vote for Obama in the privacy of the voting booth.

Who is Stanley Fish? Get to know him. He’s a real pleasure to read.

“Stanley Fish the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Flordia International University and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Duke University. He is the author of 10 books. His new book on higher education, Save the World on Your Own Time, will be published in 2008.”

I breezed through Bill Kristol’s column on William F. Buckley also. I don’t recommend it. Kristol is a light-weight conservative and he doesn’t really understand Buckley and this column if full of platitudes, generalities and bluster. Where is the information about Buckley’s opposition to the 1964 civil rights legislation? What about Buckley’s avid support of Joe McCarthy in the 50s? These are important connection considering the theme of Kristol’s column. I’d put my own blog about Buckley’s contribution up against Kristol’s drivel anytime.

Every Sunday I spend time with The Opinionator. This blog takes me through the major blogs in the country and les me know what’s being said by them in summary fashion. If I’m interested in reading the entire out-put, they give me the appropriate links. Much like I’m doing for you here.The Opinionator sent me quickly to read Andrew Sullivan’s blog in the Atlantic Monthly on Obama’s position on gays. Very interesting! If you’re curious about how gays are looking upon Obama, go read this thorough, well written piece.Within the Opinionator itself, Chris Suellentrop wrote a particularly interesting and informative piece that compared the kind of people Bill Clinton gathered around himself during his initial campaign for the presidency and those that Barack Obama has pulled together. They are not alike and they show a very different approach to what we might see in an Obama administration.

Freakonomics, as many of you know, is my favorite blog. I don’t miss any of its new postings. These two guys are great! Their book, of the same title, was wonderful. I turn to this blog without fail during the few hours I set aside for reading on Sunday mornings. I always find myself giggling and oohing and ahhing with great delight. This Sunday was not an exception.

George Will’s column in the Washington Post (published in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on Sunday morning) was especially interesting. It warns us about the possibility of a John McCain presidency. He talks about McCain’s ability to see the splinters in his fellow Senator’s and Representative’s eyes, but not the log in his own eye:

”Such certitude is, however, not merely an unattractive trait. It is disturbing righteousness in someone grasping for presidential powers.”

Garrison Keillor tells us why he lives in Minnesota, even though March is a generally dreary and crappy month (Sorry, the Tribune Media Services refuses to put this column on-line):

“I want my kid to grow up in a society that values knowledge and hard work and public spirit over owning stuff and looking cool. That’s why I live in Minnesota. It isn’t for the climate.”

I’m pretty shocked that I’ve read two consecutive Lori Sturdevant columns in a row with which I agree. On Sunday she described the depth of the budget deficit we are likely to face due to the current “economic lag.” Here in Minnesota, the Governor has the power to indiscriminately slash spending in order to get the budget balanced, which it must by law. She warned Governor Pawlenty against doing that without working through these decisions with the legislature. The last Governor to do this was Al Quie and the state got itself into an awful mess as the result of his actions.

“’If I had it to do over again, I’d have called a special session,’ Quie said last week. By acting alone, he gave every candidate, including his fellow Republicans, license to criticize him. He didn’t recover from the political damage he sustained. It put him in a weaker position to govern the state through two more years of economic trouble.”

Syl Jones, local journalist and playwright (and the son of extraordinary civil rights activists) was asked to argue the side of electing the black man over the woman, both from traditionally ignored groups in national office. Jones wrote well and reasoned wisely, but, in the end, pointed to Obama’s election.

“It’s a shame when one marginalized group has to compete against another for the presidency, especially since good leadership is at a premium. But 2008 is destined to be the year when racial politics is finally turned upside down and the last shall truly be first.”

There’s lots more…

A slide show in the NY Times of Robert Weaver’s 1962 drawings from baseball spring training of that year. I went through them slowly and they brought me great pleasure.

I happen to love Dick Cavett’s sarcasm and dry humor. I read his blog, Talk Show, regularly. On this particular blog Cavett savages the Academy Awards program with his very unique and special sarcasm.Well, enough. As Cavett said in the blog above:

“I’m sick of this subject, and you probably beat me to so being. I shall drag you and it no further.”

It’s untrue, of course! I’m not sick of it at all, but I have dragged you through my reading quite far enough.

END

Photoshop Gets a Bum Wrap

This photograph of one of my grandchildren
was taken by an inexpensive camera. In Photoshop™
I was able to burn some of the edges and areas of
the photograph to force the eye to the areas of
importance; that is, the areas the photographer
intended to be the subject of the photo. The
technique is no different than those used in
darkrooms 50 years ago – as a matter of fact,
that’s where the term ‘burning’ comes from.
The old, darkroom masters also used a system
they called ‘dodging’ to lighten areas to draw
the eye to them. Nothing really changes.
It’s just that it’s much easier and faster now.

It still takes a good photographer to get a great photograph!
by Charlie Leck

This past summer I was at a great photography exhibit at our community art center. I was amazed at the quality of the photographs on exhibit, but a friend who wandered over by me was less than enthused. She began a long rant about how she hated Photoshop™, claiming that it made photography too easy for the masses and now “everyone” thought he/she was a good photographer. She thought it was too easy to repair one’s mistakes and “fix up” things that should have been taken care of at the time the photograph was taken. She was a film user, she proudly announced, and she had no intention of going over to digital.Too bad, I thought. You’re missing out on great fun!

She is too nice a lady with whom to argue in such a public setting (we were packed shoulder to shoulder), so I let it go. The comments have hung around in my mind ever since she made them, though, and I need to rebut them. So, I wondered, why not use my blog to do it.

Lately I’ve been watching some video tutorials on blurring, dodging and burning in Photoshop.™ In watching the tutorial I was amazed to discover how “the old time photographers” used these studio techniques in their development laboratories to alter, enhance or improve the photograph from what the camera’s lens had actually taken. Ah, hah! It’s true. That darkroom was where so many of the great photographers, such as Ansel Adams, went to work to correct problems in the film as the camera recorded the photograph. They were master photographers because they knew how to use the tricks that the dark room would allow them to apply. They could enhance or soften contrast. They could burn or blur certain areas to force the eye to focus on more essential elements in the photograph; and they could lighten or brighten still other areas to make them the highlighted elements in a photo. These great photographers also had correction techniques that allowed them to remove evidence of dust that may have been on their lens and they knew how to fix a scratch here and there. If they got unwanted reflections, there were darkroom techniques to alter those problems, too.

Photoshop™ has just made the whole process of photograph enhancement and improvement much easier. Many of the wonderful instructors from whom I’ve taken Photoshop™ or Lightroom™ tutorials are themselves masters of film photography. They explain that taking the photograph is only half the process in producing great film photographs. The other half takes place in the darkroom.

I recently applied some of the burning techniques I’ve been learning to a photograph that someone else sent me – of one of my grandchildren – and I was flabbergasted at the results and the improvement the techniques made. And, they were really very minor adjustments. And also, they were the kind of adjustments that could have been made to film in the darkroom.

Sometimes it’s very difficult to accept change. My friend, that day at the art center, was blown away by the colorfulness, the crispness and the perfection of the photos she was viewing. She shouldn’t think that any old photographer could have done that just because he/she had Photoshop™ available. No, these were great and wonderful photographs, first and foremost, because they had been taken by a wonderful photographer. I see evidence of this all the time. I’m getting to be a master of Photoshop™, but I’m still unable to get the kind of production from my own work that the truly talented, artistic photographers can get.

Up from Conservatism

True Conservatism is a worthy opponent!
by Charlie Leck

I have been working on this essay about true conservatism for months. It seems a bit silly to think that I, a self-admitted liberal, could write such an essay. That's precisely why I've been struggling. With the death of William Buckley in the last few days, I knew I had to move on with the task.

I was about to turn 19 years of age and I was soon to leave for college. It was 48 years ago. I was just starting to develop an interest in politics. I was very confused about what it meant to be a Republican, which my father claimed to be because he liked Ike, or a Democrat. I was asking myself some serious questions. What did it mean to be a conservative? What was a liberal? I'm not kidding when I say that I had no real idea.

A cousin of mine, two years younger and about 6 grade levels brighter, gave me a copy of a newly released book by William F. Buckley, Jr., Up from Liberalism. I have no idea why she gave it to me. She urged me to read it. I tried. I couldn't. It got shoved away on a bookshelf and it has survived all these years and stands now on the shelves in my study. The foreword to the book was written by John Dos Passos. I had no idea who he was in 1959. Now he is one of my favorite writers. As Vonnegut might have said, "That's the way it goes."

In about 1972, a good friend convinced me to read the Dos Passos trilogy, which included the 42^nd Parallel (1930), Nineteen-Nineteen (1932), and The Big Money (1936). This is not the place to break down these novels. The point I want to make is that when I read these I certainly would not have gotten the idea that Dos Passos was, in any way, a conservative. So when I carefully read Buckley's book ten years ago, I was mighty confused about why Dos Passos was associated with it. Let me answer that very simply. Dos Passos saw the conservative political movement as an attempt to conserve something – to preserve the principles upon which the nation was founded. Is that what true conservatism is? Let's delay the answer to that question.

"The radicals of the period of the first of the century's great wars were trying to conserve something too. We were pretty conscious of the fact that we were trying to conserve the independence of the average citizen which we felt the power of organized money was bent to destroy. This was the underlying theme of the Populist agitation, of the Progressive and Socialist and Farmer-Labor parties. Through the referendum and recall and primary elections and labor unions and cooperatives we thought that something like the old townmeeting type of self government could be revived. The aim of all the diverse radical movements of that politically fertile period was somehow to restore the dignity of the man who did the work. Staid Single-Taxers, direct action IWW's and bombthrowing anarchists had the same eventual goal. They believed that if every man could be assured of the full product of his labor, the Kingdom of Heaven would be installed on earth. Their quarrel was about ways and means." [John Dos Passos, foreword to Up from Liberalism by William F. Buckley, Jr., 1959, page viii).

There, you see? Dos Passos was the radical when he wrote his trilogy in the 30s. So where was he in 1959?

The argument that Dos Passos puts forward is that the great crash of the economy in 1929 did not lead to a takeover of power by the working man. He calls the crash the abdication of business and that gave birth to the new bureaucracy. "The radical theorists from the colleges crowded into Washington." The managerial class was born. Roosevelt personified it, managing both the massive labor unions and the community of big businesses. When the second Great War came to an end in 1945, massive government took over and "towered" over both the working man and big business. He sees the period as the birth of militant liberalism.

Enter William F. Buckley, Junior.

When the brilliant Mr. Buckley talks about conservatism, he is talking about preservation. He writes in the introduction to the book that the nation "is in danger of losing her identity – not on account of the orthodoxy that we are being told in some quarters threatens to suffocate us; but for failure to nourish any orthodoxy at all." These are the presuppositions he works from as he begins to develop his thesis.

His thesis then is that "conservatism is the only apparent rallying point." His objectives in the book were to "discredit doctrinaire Liberalism and plead the viability of enlightened conservatism." Buckley also argues that the differences between liberals and conservatives are completely negotiable even though the liberal community doesn't think so."

This conservative ideal, the grand concept of preserving what the founding fathers intended for the nation was the principle upon which Buckley and people like the famous Senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, built the conservative movement of the early 1960s. Buckley says that conservatism is not "a crassly materialist position, unconcerned except with the world of getting and spending money." Remember, Buckley is speaking about classical conservatism.

Buckley's great fear (and the fear of the classical conservative) is a loss of freedom by attrition. His view (in 1959) was that the society in which he lived was moving head-long toward totalitarianism; that is, government's absolute control over virtually everything. It is nearly 50 years since he wrote of that fear. I don't think we're there and I don't think we've even inched in that direction although, in fairness to Buckley, the following, according to him, would be evidences of a diminishment of our freedom: "…the progressive income tax, the ban on religious teaching in public schools, the union shop, the FEPCs, the farm laws.."

In the end, it turns out, it is "the welfare state" that Buckley fears the most. Buckley warns that there is a significant difference between government services that provide dollars to the people, to do with as they wish, and providing services for him (by which he means things like "…federal aid to education, housing, rural electrification, small business,… insurance programs…" like health and accident insurance.

Here we must look at William Buckley to really understand where he is going with his strong argument against liberalism. First of all, it is quite easy to document that William Buckley was deeply in fear of communism and its worldwide outreach. Remember, Up from Liberalism came to the market in 1959. Most of the nation was living in absolute fear of communism. That fear had made the McCarthy movement possible. It is also easy to document that Buckley was a great supporter of what Senator McCarthy was trying to do when he began his hearings meant to expose suspected communists active in our government and society. It wasn't until late in the 60s that Buckley could admit that he had been wrong about McCarthy and that his great fear of communism was misplaced. By the time Vietnam came along, Buckley could see the foolishness of the McCarthy endeavor and of communism itself.

Pure conservatism, as Buckley envisioned it, is a worthy and significant political movement – that is, the kind of conservatism that Buckley defines in the book we are writing about in this essay. Buckley had no appreciation for the kind of right wing conservative movement that was introduced into politics by the likes of Richard Nixon. The current right-wing, Christian evangelical movement of today's Republican Party is something that Buckley could have done without completely.

None of this is meant to say that Up from Liberalism was not an alarming book. It was. Clearly stated, the purpose of the book was "to bring down the thing called liberalism, which is powerful but decadent; and salvage a thing called conservatism, which is weak but viable."

I would never have known it as a young man, but now I do; that is, Buckley's understanding of, and definition of, liberalism is all wrong. He claims that liberals believe that the human being is perfectible and also that "social progress predicable." Nonsense! Liberalism believes quite the opposite, but, nevertheless, moves toward the hope that man can be better and less self-centered and that society can be fairer and more just than it is.

In 1959, Arthur Schlesinger accused Buckley of being more interested in preserving his reputation "as the conservative enfant terrible than with any serious attempt to understand what contemporary liberalism is all about." I think this was more true of Buckley than any of us know.

A great deal of Buckley's 1959 book is a rant against Social Security – a still popular tirade among contemporary conservatives – and it becomes weak in its logic the longer it goes on. Finally, his most serious complaint is with the compulsory nature of social security, even with the understanding that "very few people, if given the opportunity, would opt for exclusion." He finally concedes that government could go ahead and give this money to folks, but it should hold the line on welfarism, which provides services to people.

Buckley also reveals a mild dose of ignorance in the book when he continues to defend government's denial of the vote to black Americans – an idea he later in life confessed was stupidity. Buckley would also oppose the civil rights legislation of 1964 and it wasn't until twenty years later that he finally acknowledged it was worthy and needed law. He also finally matured into the knowledge that his book (1954) defending McCarthyism was wrong and so was his illogical fear of communism. It is so odd to me, in reading this early Buckley book, that he was so willing, for the sake of rooting communists out of our government, to throw out all the constitutional protections he so reveres today.

Fortunately, Buckley matured over the years and, in the end, staked out a solid and defensible conservative position. Do not confuse Buckley with the John Birch Society, Newt Gingrich, Carl Rove or George W. Bush. He liked none of them nor did he care for their politics. According to Sam Tanenhaus, Buckley has said that "if the United States had been a parliamentary system, President Bush would be subject to a 'no confidence' vote." And Buckley was so uncomfortable with the war in Iraq that he wrote many columns in the National Review that clearly opposed it.

"He initially supported the war because he was impressed by the case Vice President Dick Cheney made that Saddam harbored weapons of mass destruction. Once this was proved to be untrue, Buckley told me that if Cheney had known the actual truth, then President Bush would be a candidate for impeachment." [Sam Tanenhaus]

We cannot forget, even though we would like to do so, that conservative Republicans have ruled the nation for 20 of the last 32 years. They remain a powerful force of political possibility in every state in the union. If credit is to be given to any single person for being the motivating force behind this movement, it would have to go to William Buckley who, as the founding editor of the National Review (with the credo, "It stands athwart history, yelling Stop"), formed his movement of conservative youth at his Connecticut home in 1960, and was the basic educator of political conservatives from that time until his death two days ago. As Dan LeRoy wrote in 2005:

"With the death of President Ronal Reagan last year, Mr. Buckley became the major living symbol of the modern conservative movement he helped found."

Russ Limbaugh has called Buckley "the godfather of the modern conservative movement." For the first time in my life, I may be in agreement with Mr. Limbaugh.

In 1965, embarrassed by the decisive defeat of Barry Goldwater in his run for the presidency, Buckley anointed himself, in humor, the conservative candidate for Mayor of New York City. His platform, printed in the National Review, contained some surprising proposals.

-To fight crime, either lock up teenage felons or make their parents legally responsible for them
-Legalize drugs for adults
-Cut off welfare to everyone except invalids and mothers looking after children 14 years of age or younger
-No more busing to achieve racial balance

The Sam Tanenhaus account of Buckley's run for Mayor in 1965 is one of the most delightful and interesting political accounts I have ever read. After reading it, one puts it down with the realization that William Buckley truly had gonads. Truly!

What really broiled Buckley was a haughty attitude he sensed among liberals – an attitude that allowed "the reflexive equation of liberalism with virtue" (as Sam Tanenhaus has described it). Buckley believed, right to his death, that liberals did not use logic and the intelligence that God gave them to arrive at their convictions, but that they were driven by petty emotions and the desire to do good.

In its 28 February obituary, the New York Times says that Buckley "was a magnet for controversy." Indeed, he was! Many of his contemporary men of letters were in constant and angry disagreement with him – men like Mailer, Styron, Vidal, Capote and Baldwin.

Had I read Up from Liberalism when it was given to me in 1959, I would not have understood it. I would not have realized how critical sarcasm and hyperbole and outrageous humor were to Buckley. Might it have changed my life if I had read it then? Would it have turned me away from the liberal ideology with which I fell in love? I doubt it very much. I think I would have been as shocked then by William Buckley's basic unfairness about the plight of people of misfortune as I am when I read him and listen to him today.

Let's give him all this, however: He was a man of humor and of serious letters; he had a great stage presence; and he spurred serious dialogue.

END

An excellent source for information about Buckley and his brand of conservatism: George H. Nash: The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America.

An on-line source of most of Buckley's writings: Hillsdale College web site.