O Arkansas

Friday

2010-07-09T07:21:00.001-05:00

Last day (hopefully) of WOTP deinstall. Last Friday in to work. I'm going in early so as to enjoy my coffee and paper routine one last time.

More Pie

2010-06-01T22:32:00.001-05:00

Coconut from Chips

Rare Sight

2010-05-28T18:01:00.006-05:00

Look at that empty street! And all that parking! On a Friday lunch hour in the River Market! Riverfest begins tonight, folks, and the police already have the area cordoned off. You have to park and hike in. As to the barricades, I have no idea. But that green storefront is Boulevard Bread, maker of the best sandwich this side of the Atlantic, and walling it off blocks from parking during the lunch hour is just cruel. It's not for myself I say this, but for all the disenfranchised downtown workers without a blog and thus no means to protest. Still, despite all the obstacles, the truly devoted sandwich eater will rise to the challenge.

See? This is lunch for two, plus cupcakes from Brown Sugar. I am on a mission of mercy. Have no fear, friend who is at home, I will bring you a Boulevard sandwich (and a cupcake).

Postpartum Lost

2010-05-25T20:38:00.002-05:00

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Huge Internal Dilemma

2010-05-24T21:41:00.001-05:00

Sarah is Home

2010-05-22T08:00:00.001-05:00

Taking Stock Before Tuesday

2010-05-16T21:34:00.007-05:00

Senator Blanche Lincoln is supposedly in tight but survivable territory as she endures a primary challenge this Tuesday from Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter. Sitting senators almost always win in these scenarios, possibly why there hasn't been a primary challenge to a sitting AR senator from either party in 36 years. This fact was thrown out during the intro to the Lincoln Halter debate this last Friday in an attempt to gild the frame around the event. This was especially necessary as neither candidate had especially impressed in previous debates. The MC went on. A Golden Glove boxing competition was held in this same space last week! Debate is the safeguard of our democracy and our greatest protection from tyranny! And then they brought out the candidates and got down to brass tacks. I was sitting next to Mrs. Davenport, who gave me a pen to take notes in return for a promise to spread the word that her husband Monty is running for land commissioner. Mrs. Davenport was supporting Lincoln. A row of teamsters in front of me were with Halter. In fact my row seemed to be all Lincoln supporters, but as an Amen Corner they were far less vocal than the teamsters.

This feels the race in a nutshell. Halter with lots of Union support, making lots of noise, lots of ads on the radio and on tv, his face in banners on all my news websites including, disconcertingly, the international ones. Lincoln is supposed to be running an intense campaigning too, but it is far less visible to me. I've only seen one ad for her. When I go down to the river to pick up the girls for mentoring, the street is lined with Halter signs. Coming up to the Convention Center for the debate, Halter volunteers were everywhere. Lincoln did get in a dig at the door though.

Lincoln has been dinging Halter for buying a rug with taxpayer money. I doubt it's very effective. Certainly not as effective as all those country accents thanking Bill Halter on the radio, or complaining about Blanche Lincoln's Washington ways.

In the debate Halter was pugnacious and on point, consistently using every reply to contrast himself favorably with Lincoln. Lincoln was sweet and vague. By the close Halter seemed irritable, perhaps tense at not having got more of a rise out of Lincoln and possibly annoyed that the third candidate in the race, a non factor named DC Morrison, had a good showing dryly delivering anecdotes and common sense one liners to the crowd. Halter needs the Lincoln protest vote to go to him if he is to have a chance. But half the time Morrison sided with Lincoln and never really joined Halter to attack the Senator. Meanwhile Lincoln seemed a little unsteady early, but closed strong with a better ending statement than Halter's. She can rightly tout her experience and her chairmanship of the Agriculture Committee.

The truth is, the debate makes clear Lincoln as benefited from weak to non-existent opposition in her political career. This seems true of a lot of state politicians. They rise through the ranks with a combination of timing and luck. Halter's challenge vs. Lincoln also benefits from timing and luck, running in an anti-incumbent year against a senator that national unions are deeply invested in defeating. Even though Halter's union position is very much the same as Lincoln's. But Lincoln voted against card check legislation, and although unions know Halter isn't for card check either, they don't particularly care as long as they can be shown taking a senatorial scalp.

In this way local elections are battlegrounds for groups neither from the state nor with much investment in its welfare. Likewise the results will be read to reflect larger national story lines. My hope is that Arkansas will return Blanche Lincoln, mainly because the Agriculture Chairmanship in good for the state. That Bill Halter will pack up his political ambitions after this race, mainly because his lottery legislation and his letting his campaign be used as a head hunting tool by outside parties strikes me as cynical. And that come the fall, the Democrats nationwide will take stock of the new numbers in the Senate, whatever they may be, and decide it should not be such a bad thing to have a tent big enough to accommodate conservative democrats.

Ascension Sunday: the Kingdom and the State

2010-05-16T15:49:00.005-05:00

A thought after hearing the sermon today. That politics dominates the human imagination even among people not particularly political, so that even though people hold ideas that describe power in many different ways, when something of enormous magnitude happens imaginations often leap to politics as a sort of secret pinnacle of the transformative.

Consider the resurrection and ascension. Christ is bodily raised. And though Christ has given many explicit and implicit signs that his kingdom is not of this world, and though the disciples have been under Christ's instruction through all of it, they still extrapolate the resurrection out to it's implications for the Romans and Israel's governance. We are not given indications that the disciples are particularly interested in politics. Only one of them is described as having any political identity. Yet the resurrection is such an amazing event it is as if its ends must primarily manifest themselves in human governance. "Are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" the disciples ask at the beginning of Acts. Christ brushes off the question. Instead he points to the coming of the Holy Spirit and commissions them as witnesses. Israel does not get another mention. Then he ascends. The Ascension, for one final and definitive time, separates out the Kingdom of God from the human State. Shifting in systems of human governance will happen, but this won't merit a mention at Christ's farewell. The coming of the Kingdom, as Christ prepares the disciples for it, is an event outside the parameters of the State.

This is worth considering after watching elections for the past few weeks. I've been following the British elections and I'm watching the US gear up for midterm elections too, with primaries this month. For me, fascinating stuff. It's not as if politics doesn't matter or as if health or hurt aren't advanced through the state. But it is true - like the disciples wondering if the resurrection's purpose wasn't going to be a coup - that we are terrible at assigning things their true significance. In default, we order things pretty much as the world orders itself, with governance at the top. The disciples might not have described themselves as overrating the importance of politics. They were all following an itinerant preacher around for a living, after all. But assumptions of the apparent natural order of things operated in them just as strongly. Will you restore the kingdom to Israel?, they ask. We are prone to these same assumptions about the primariness of the state, even when we are not particularly interested in politics. On the day to day level maybe we're right in this assumption. But ultimately the answer is no. The Ascension brushes aside the state as the key to big picture understanding. In the natural order of that world, no coup or election drives the action. Instead, Christ points toward the Holy Spirit. To invest your energies in the world, in whatever arena, with true significance, look there.

Future sermon series?

Civic Duty Lunch Break

2010-05-14T11:00:00.004-05:00

The Arkansas Times is reporting that Lincoln vs. Halter is a toss up, but using Kos numbers for what that's worth. And assuming that pretty much all the undecideds swing to Halter. All this should spice up their last debate. I'm off to find out.

Ha!

2010-05-10T07:41:00.003-05:00

Following the British election I thought it was a choice between Labor (Gordon Brown), Tories (David Cameron), and Liberal Democrats (Nick Clegg). But apparently that doesn't cover all the options.

Activate the Queen

Sleeper cells of monarchy, awake! Your country needs you.

Yen for a Deviled Egg

2010-04-23T13:46:00.001-05:00

There is nothing you can do...

except go to Terri Lynns...

and buy one.

Your Faithful Correspondent Relentlessly Tracks AR Politicians. Let No Coffee Break Go Unnoticed!

2010-04-23T09:04:00.001-05:00

Grabbing Friday coffee and who should show up at Community Bakery but Bill Halter, senate candidate. Caffeinating for tonight's debate? He's down in the polls but closing. Because holding the Senate Ag committee chairmanship is a terrible thing for Arkansas.

Friday Morning Ritual

2010-04-16T13:55:00.001-05:00

...and the movie section of the newspaper :)

Five Embarrassing Misses for an Arkansas Girl

2010-04-10T09:45:00.001-05:00

1. The races at Oaklawn
2. Crater of Diamonds
3. Floating the Buffalo
4. Helena Blues Festival
5. Dog Patch

I've got four months

Hello Spring

2010-03-22T08:13:00.002-05:00

Beginning today, the first full week. Vernal Equinox shout-out.

Yum!

2010-03-10T18:24:00.001-06:00

Dean and Deluca marzipan bunny family

Alice in Wonderland

2010-03-05T02:22:00.002-06:00

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum both say Yay, but in a divided way, as is their wont.

Can't Help Myself

2010-03-03T08:17:00.002-06:00

A book I want to read

A book I can't wait to see

Ha!

2010-03-01T21:51:00.003-06:00

A dream come true

Sunday Morning Links

2010-02-27T22:44:00.006-06:00

A little Sunday morning randomness for your pleasure (and because for two of these items I need to save the links):

MSNBC has a nice slide show up on the long forgotten Clark fortune. So that's where that wing of the Corcoran comes from!

Someone else's long forgotten fortune has appreciated nicely: Woman Tried for Failure to Report Treasure

Vancouver is over, next up Sochi. "Develop a good thick skin and don't shy away from criticism," said spokeswoman Renee Smith-Valade (to the Russians), "because it's healthy and it makes you better at what you do." There is a slight absurdist vein to Russia receiving this advice. In the same vein - Sochi was established as a summer resort under Joseph Stalin. Thank You Stalin! Sochi 2014

A different sort of survival of the fittest: a fascinating article in the London Review of Books on psychological Darwinism

But the world is not all tooth and claw: The Goring celebrates its 100th anniversary. I have never stayed here, but it is the nicest place in London for tea. Big deep chairs, fireplace. I thought it was sort of démodé. It is a little disappointing to learn that it is not.

2010-02-18T12:51:00.001-06:00

A blue sky picture with an iPhone is doomed to fail from the start, but you should know that the sky is blindingly blue and cloudless today.

Alternate Love Stories for Valentines Day

2010-02-14T19:28:00.001-06:00

Lorna's Silence

Just Another Love Story

Let the Right One In

Snow!

2010-02-08T14:11:00.005-06:00

We were not supposed to get snow. Do you know how often Arkansas gets snow even when it is forecast? Almost never! Do you know how often Arkansas gets snow when it is not forcast? Never! And yet...

Snow!

I can finally wear my furry Russian hat!!

Back From the City

2010-02-04T22:53:00.004-06:00

But if New York is a city, what is Little Rock? Clearly not the same type of city. In fact, is Little Rock a city at all?

Nope, I'll say for argument. Little Rock is a lovely place, spread along a river and up into the foothills of the Ozarks, but why call it a "city?" Like half the nation, it is a distended realm of housing and businesses, like a paved prairie for living, and with this distinct shift in the urban environment of the country should come a name to acknowledge the modern feat. Little Rock is not some ancient collection of resources gathered within walls or some honeycomb of culture concentrated within easy distance of inhabitants. "City" is just the name of the government. Once you have traveled far enough away from one government to run into another one, voila!, you've switched "cities." Efforts to revitalize downtown centers the country over are a testament to the fact that most cities are no longer "cities" and are trying to reinvent the lost image of self in the shell of a pre-car downtown root. Nothing wrong with that. But there is the danger of costly boondoggles while trying to get people to live in ways that modern society outgrew (trolleys?). Why not just rename our spaces a title more suggestive of what we are and what we have invented? Maybe thinking of where we live as "cities" is what causes some of the hang-ups with planning because the conceptions are all wrong, old old images that don't apply. Maybe we should name the realms something new and get busy landscaping.

My Dream Is To One Day Perfectly Separate Chopsticks

2010-02-04T12:06:00.001-06:00

Little Rock In The Rearview Mirror

2010-01-27T17:25:00.001-06:00

Ha! A New Take On the Morning Dosage of Politics

2010-01-26T07:11:00.004-06:00

I hope there is more where this came from

Heads Up

2010-01-24T19:23:00.002-06:00

Thomas Hudson will be on Fox 16 at 10 to talk about relief efforts in Haiti. I'll see if I can find a link later.

Heights Nostalgia With My Mother

2010-01-22T15:11:00.001-06:00

Where can you order breakfast till 2:00? Satellite Cafe!

Eggs Hollandaise with extra hollandaise. You have to watch these generous serving types.

"I used to come here all the time, " says Mama as we enter. Back then it was Halls Drug Store.

"That was all a soda fountain," gesturing, "and that whole area there, where they are cooking, was where they did the drugs." Mama has a way of accidently referencing sinister activities in mundane descriptions.

She goes on. The bank across the street on the corner used to be Miss Cordell's, a big old home turned into a delicatessan which smelled, according to Mama, of wood and coffee and which had a pickle barrel and suckers from Europe.

Down the street by the Heights theater was The Food Palace where her mother always bought bread at Frank's Bakery, disappointing all her kids who wanted the white loaves in plastic sacks from the chain stores.

Across the street was Fridays Florist, which was the main florist and designer in town. "There was always sawdust on the floor. Howard was just starting out with Tipton and Hurst against Fridays. Now he's put them out of business." Or almost - I think Fridays is exiled to somewhere out Hwy 10.

Cobblestone and Vine, the boutique at the corner of Club and Van Buren, was Smith's Drug, which served cheesebugers and fries in baskets for the caddies from the Club and for what seemed like all the world on Saturdays.

"Laura," she says, "I wish you could have seen the Heights in its glory days."

Temptation Resisted

2010-01-22T14:07:00.000-06:00

Game Change

Chronic City

Changing My Mind

The Evolution of God

It helps if you make lists.

Rosie Meets Chocolate Pie

2010-01-20T21:32:00.003-06:00

Rosie takes a bite. She is naturally a cautious. What is this strange mass of gelatinous stuff? Or maybe gelatinous stuff is not far from what she is used to. Will it taste like carrots?

Joy! No carrot can compare! It is true, dear child. And this is just your first slice! Welcome to the world of pie.

More Pie

2010-01-14T12:35:00.001-06:00

Coconut pie

Department Mtg!

2009-12-23T10:09:00.001-06:00

The sugar cookies are my contribution

More Pie

2009-11-27T11:38:00.000-06:00

Pumpkin pie

Nooooo!

2009-11-19T23:15:00.000-06:00

Rain Jeopardizes Pumpkin Pie

Book Love: newspaper edition

2009-11-05T08:28:00.001-06:00

I am sitting here at Waffle House while Cross Tire and Auto changes my tires, and I have a Sunday NYT to help me pass the time. And it is beautiful. I read the paper like this maybe once or twice a year. And that trend, writ large, is probably what is killing newspapers. The Internet is so much easier. But every once in a while, with a sheaf of papers that is like a finished book, a novel and a history and a how-to volume summarizing the world as of that day, you can't help but feel a spasm of admiration for what a newspaper tries to do. I wish just now that AR was a true wilderness and a paper might arrive once every few months, let's say the Sunday Times, and you would read it exhaustedly, like a novel, and let the wider world impinge on you no more than that.

Update

2009-11-05T00:23:00.003-06:00

Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes interviews Lisa Phillips of the New Museum: part I, part II

New Museum Blowback

2009-11-04T07:00:00.006-06:00

See William Powhinda's cover for The Brooklyn Rail: How the New Museum Committed Suicide. Also a nice little summary of 50 years of cynicism about the way the art world really works.

Here, by the way, is the link to the Roberta Smith NYT review of the current Urs Fischer show in that space, which Powhida was able to mine for one damning quote.

Calvin Tomkins had a feature on Urs Fishcer a few New Yorkers ago. Really what Marcia Tucker, now deceased founder of the New Museum, had in mind?

Hansel und Gretel

2009-11-02T06:26:00.007-06:00

... opened a sweat shop. Just kidding. We were all here because we wanted to be, 1. because it is gingerbread 2. because gingerbread is an art form (see Carmen, sweet things expert) and 3. because THINC does great work

And look how many survived! Even with Jeremy's ravenous appetite! The key is to feed the us discarded gingerbread chips. Hansel said he learned that tip from the wicked witch.

AR River

2009-10-31T07:51:00.006-05:00

Swollen and bilious, but still beautiful

Ladies and Gentleman, Thomas Hudson

2009-10-30T23:16:00.002-05:00

Dramatic Rescue in Downtown LR Flooding

Coyotes

2009-10-28T23:25:00.002-05:00

Deadly Killers

Indestructible

See Paul? Not feeling great about that pack in the gully...

If You Like Crusty Old Men Giving Cranky Interviews

2009-10-28T22:09:00.003-05:00

Gore Vidal

Charles Krauthammer

Viewership

2009-10-27T16:33:00.001-05:00

Sunday Morning Links

2009-10-25T09:43:00.005-05:00

The return Nefertiti and other repatriation politics in the NYT

Brueghel and a telescope mystery in Technology Review

George Washington, by Gilbert Stuart, by Foeiqua in Art News

Exotic Lands

2009-10-23T15:37:00.001-05:00

Movies Galore

2009-10-23T13:52:00.002-05:00

All in Little Rock for the same happy weekend:

Bright Star
It Might Get Loud
Lorna's Silence
Good Hair

Little Rock is one of the Top 20 Best Places to Raise a Family

2009-10-21T00:18:00.002-05:00

Well, I liked it...

According to Children's Health Magazine

Ut Unum Sint

2009-10-21T00:14:00.003-05:00

Catholics are a making a pitch for disaffected Anglicans

The Anchoress has a roundup of links

Damien Hirst is Getting a Drubbing

2009-10-15T08:16:00.004-05:00

The BBC has a helpful roundup of reviews panning Hirst's foray into painting with his "No Love Lost" exhibition at the Wallace Collection. Mark Hudson at the Telegraph thinks the unanimity among critics is so total it might signal a pivotal moment in the history of art.

I haven't seen the paintings, obviously, so it's hard to say much there, but actually it hardly seems necessary when the real story is the critics. That is what everyone seems to want to talk about, concerted critical dismissal attached to so prominent a figure coming along so rarely as it does. Knife and fork, please. Mark Hudson has one remarkable quote in the article linked to above, speaking of

"...writers with an understanding of the art of all eras who have had to pander to every kind of money-inflated idiocy in order to appear relevant in our ever more uncertain cultural market place – in order, simply, to keep their jobs. But now the critical worm has turned."

What is he saying? That critics have been faking it with work that but for "money-inflated idiocy" they might have considered rubbish? Is he so sure "the critical worm has turned" that he wants to raise the curtain like that? Hudson's is the giddiest expression, but reading these reviews you do get a sense that some backed up bile is enjoying an overdue venting of the spleen.

In contrast, the paintings themselves, both in the glimpses from the press photos and as outlined in the reviews, seem too nondescript to incite this sort of response. For an artist who made his name with adjectives like "outrageous," what is remarkable is that so little of the chutzpah is on the canvas. When the reviews puff about Hirst's gall they are chiefly complaining about his venue, the Wallace Collection being one of the grandest of grand old master galleries. It's as if, outraged criticism being no longer able to go hand in hand with outrageous art, critics have retreated to guarding original genius and treating the quality of being merely "derivative" as the original sin. The ire does not fit the crime. Moreover, there is an inversion at work in a model where the artist staging absurdist installations and literally phoning in work to subordinates is taking the critically safer path than the artist working in oil on canvas himself with more or less transparent references to other artists.

Rain, Rain, Rain

2009-10-15T08:15:00.001-05:00

I love it

Nobel Status Anxiety

2009-10-09T23:32:00.011-05:00

Little follow up. Is Obama getting this award because the Committee is eager to demonstrate it is not provincial? Maybe this seems like a stretch, but indulge me.

Remember back last year the big kerfuffle when Horace Engdahl (thank you, Google) ripped American literature as "isolated" and held back by "ignorance" of the wider world? A common defense on this side of pond was to note that the provincialism was all with Horace and and Noble Committee. That when American literature had focused on the rural and slowly built up still in the shadow of other traditions, it well pleased the Committee to award it the occasional prize. But as American literature flowered in the post-war years with countless major authors representing a global cultural and linguistic American presence, so to did American visibility in the Nobel awards slow to a trickle. In other words, America could be appreciated while its literature embodied certain stereotypes or as the country mouse to Europe's city, but not so much as an engine in its own right of international culture. "Europe," Horace had huffed, "is still the center." Provincialism, replied defenders, explaining Horace's en masse dismissal of American writers, his ignorance of the American literary scene, and his trite use of geography to locate a "center" for literature. It was provincial in another way as well. The attempt to pretend, both in the quote and in the Prize's ignoring of American literary contributions for the past several decades, that American literature didn't matter all that much smacked of les provinciales mocking les parisiennes in old French plays (coarse! not really so important!), with the Europeans in the role of les provinciales.

Seen this way, the controversial quote from Horace last October was a statement born of insecurity. The comically politically overdetermined awarding of Barack Obama might be seen as an attempt to play a relevant role in American politics. Perhaps it was meant to demonstrate the Committee wasn't as tone deaf as those Danes over the border. However it was meant, the case for continued relevance that the award unavoidably makes every year has been made ridiculous by its utter misapprehension not only of the US political scene (high octane political fodder for Obama opponents at crucial time for the president), not only of the political moment (ends a week of Obama being satirized SNL, Stewart, and Maher for accomplishing little), and but perhaps most appallingly of race in America. Even while the award undermines him (as a distraction and unwelcome occasion to play defense) politically, it crosses him up symbolically as well. There is a suggestion here of awarding Obama for African American-ness, a position both terribly patronizing (you need a political crutch only we can provide) and reductionist (he is black and powerful and so must be the same as Martin Luther King). Maybe the Committee wished to show that it had come away from the provincialism of anti-Americanism, away from the Danish squares unable to recognize the man of the moment, and into a continued relevance to great power politics and world brotherhood. Instead, they simply underscored that they have little conception of what they were doing.

Nordic Nation Suckerpunches Obama (Again)

2009-10-09T18:19:00.004-05:00

What does the Baltic have against Obama? Are they trying to make him look ridiculous? First Denmark and the Olympics, now Norway and the Noble Peace Prize. Suddenly, through no fault of his own, Obama has to try and distance himself from the silliness of it. When I saw the news in the NYT this morning I thought it was The Onion following up on the SNL Jack Squat skit. Although, I will say, as someone who likes to read pundits, Norway has made today oh so entertaining. Michael Tomasky exaggerated nothing when he envisioned heads exploding across the fruited plain.

What is frustrating in all this is the depth of the cluelessness at the Noble Committee. You are possibly the most prestigious international award in the world. But you've taken some hits in recent years alleging your premiere prize is partisan and political. So you give a guy an award for changing what is essentially atmospherics, for not maintaining the status quo of the guy who came before (although some aren't willing to go even that far, see Medhi Hasan in The New Statesman). This only proves your critics point. Not to mention the disservice it does to the recipient. Who wants to receive the Noble Prize for not being the other guy? Even if the you really wanted to give it to Obama, couldn't you have at least waited four years, so that you could pretend it was for something other than telegraphing what sort of American politicians Norway approves of?

Two Down, One to Go!

2009-09-24T01:30:00.004-05:00

Working my way through openings

Almost Done

2009-09-18T19:15:00.001-05:00

2009-09-11T11:56:00.001-05:00

What Will Obama Say?

2009-09-09T18:33:00.003-05:00

Getting ready to listen to Obama tonight... Here is my guess on the health care speech. That if Obama rejects a public option in an effort to pass something now, or if Obama retrenches and extends deadlines for passage, then he will have sacrificed some of the glamour of reformer, because to reject a public option is to pass on a potentially good idea and to retrench is politically embarrassing. However, in doing so he would also be putting results first, because to force the public option over Blue Dog Democrats trying to retain support in Republican leaning districts, over Independents skeptical of the legislation, and over Republicans via reconciliation is to pass legislation with the suppport of the left wing only and so sow doubt that reformers will proceed with moderation, with explanation, and with the hard groundwork of building support in the middle. That's my reading of his options. But what does he think? We are on the verge of finding out.

The River

2009-09-06T08:49:00.001-05:00

While waiting on my carpenters...

2009-09-02T10:22:00.001-05:00

Amish beard

Mullet

Shelly

2009-09-01T17:42:00.002-05:00

at work

Meeting

2009-09-01T15:58:00.001-05:00

Me

2009-09-01T12:42:00.002-05:00

at work

Death of Conservatism?

2009-08-31T23:24:00.007-05:00

I read and liked this interview with Sam Tanenhaus this morning.

Of course "death" is overstating things. Instead Tanenhaus is critiquing conservatism's slippage into radical opposition, which doesn't seem that unusual for movements out of power and so is probably just a phase. Still could there be a worse moment for it? Maybe public emotion against health care reform, or bank bailouts, or stimulus packages is real. That is no excuse for Republican demagogic riding of it for short term political gains. Take health care reform. Suppose it does fail to pass. Do Republicans think the push for reform is based on nothing? The same underlying stresses will still be there. A few more years of spiraling costs and the mandate for a massive government program will be even greater. And the chance that it is executed in an ill-thought gush of legislation riding on popular emotion will also increase, since people will be worried about the window of political will. So conservatives should be all the more eager to spell out now what a bottom up ideal health care system would look like while seeking reforms with Democrats that can relieve some of that building pressure. For example, what about ending the tax incentives for comprehensive care insurance (thus putting consumers in more direct contact with health care suppliers for the basic stuff), while instituting a public option (or single payer system, while we're dreaming) for the big stuff (thereby covering the uncovered)? I don't know much about health care, so there are probably good reasons why this proposal is nutty. But the point is why doesn't the opposition start acting like the loyal opposition and start coming up with ideas that could spell out new ways of pursuing 21st century goals in American terms. You can live most anywhere in the developed world and have a high degree of state interference in your life. The charm of America to me was always that it was option B, an experiment in a slightly more free and open system. There ought to be at least one place in the world you can live like that. But it will only be viable if its proponents are taking the best of other systems and other ideas and refitting them for improved American lives. Not pretending that anything already outside the fort is taboo.

Best Southern Novels of All Time

2009-08-31T21:29:00.003-05:00

The Oxford American has a list

2009-08-31T17:10:00.001-05:00

Meanwhile

2009-08-31T16:05:00.001-05:00

Little King

2009-08-31T14:59:00.001-05:00

Spotlight on...

2009-08-31T12:18:00.000-05:00

the donor

Diversified Plastic

2009-08-25T16:59:00.001-05:00

No More Half Measures

2009-08-25T15:37:00.001-05:00

Case 65 Soon To Be Swallowed in Massive Maquette

2009-08-25T14:45:00.001-05:00

What if I have to change out the dessicant in Case 65? I asked Jimmy.

You can climb up through the interior with a flashlight, he said. Just where jeans to work that day.

Today

2009-08-21T14:28:00.003-05:00

Shelly marvelseals a riser

Erin measures for fabric

I prepare to receive crates

Today

2009-08-21T02:03:00.001-05:00

Stormy weather

A pause

Of Course

2009-08-18T15:06:00.001-05:00

And They're Off!

2009-08-18T09:06:00.001-05:00

Cases finished (mostly) and off to the museum

Bargains Galore or Too Darn Hot Part II: Other People's Commemorative Music and Hwy 64

2009-08-17T23:26:00.008-05:00

Again with the sweltering heat. But I gamely went back out Hwy 64 to see if there were Bargains Galore. It was the afternoon of Day Three of the event, so lets just assume things were picked over. Still, it was definitely more on the flea market side of the antiques and collectibles divide.

I started in Morrilton:

And there were some interesting things:

And some bargains:

($20)

But what else did 64 have in store?

Lots and lots of yard sales

Interspersed with cows

Lots and lots of hot faced children and women and men sitting under shade trees

Sadly I was a little frightened of some of the more interesting sales and so did not stop and did not get pictures of those

But this was OK because once again I had the perfect sound track for Hwy 64, this time a collection of favorite songs from the past year that some friends put together in commemoration of their third year of marriage, helpfully entitled "3." 3 was great company. If only yard sales could so successfully offer you selections that you enjoyed on their own terms even as they came to you as samplings of someone else's experience, little boutiques of someone else's nostalgia. Then Bargains Galore on 64 would have been a wonderland. But maybe that was Day One.

Saturday Morning

2009-08-15T10:02:00.001-05:00

Gulliver

2009-08-14T14:38:00.001-05:00

in Matthew Barney's Lilliput

Wayne T and Me

2009-08-14T11:10:00.001-05:00

At work

Broadway Bridge

2009-08-12T23:28:00.004-05:00

Meet the World's Most Problematic Riser

2009-08-10T16:41:00.001-05:00

Too Darn Hot: Ella Fitzgerald and Hwy 64

2009-08-09T19:06:00.004-05:00

Saturday afternoon I drove out Hwy 64 all the way to Morrilton listening to Ella Fitzgerald and enjoying the beautiful day, although after a while it felt impossible to keep the heat out of the car. So I did a really smart thing: I pulled over and walked a block or so of downtown Morrilton. It really was too unbearable to be outside. Nobody was besides me, and some guys painting up on a crane and cursing in Spanish and English. There were fliers in the windows declaring: Bargains Galore on 64! August 13th -15th, 2009. I wonder what sort of things you find in a Morrilton wide (and wider) yard sale? Is Bargains Galore stuff from the small towns like Morrilton along 64? Or are yard sale sellers traveling in from other places with extra fare? What fills the attics of Morrilton? If it is feasible, I might try and find out next weekend.

It is a pretty little downtown, if fairly lifeless (only partially due to the heat - the shops weren't much). A railroad track runs parallel to the main street/highway. The station appears to now be a museum. Across the tracks were a couple of steeples and a shady neighborhood. When Morrilton sprang up what did it do? Timber? Farming? Something to make it important enough to be the county seat. I passed a County Court House. Do you know what interests me about small towns? It is like looking at big towns early on, back when people were still moving out to build new towns. The stabs at institutions and even grandeur. The facade of a First National Bank. The old home implying First Family of wherever it is. Now when people move out into the country you get a clutch of chain stores around a junction and incorporation into one of two centers competing sprawls.

I couldn't handle more than a few minutes outside. Back in the car with the AC up and Ella Fitzgerald crooning Cole Porter I stuck to 64 through a few more junctions before turning off for the interstate and home. Ella Fitzgerald does not work on the interstate. So much better on state highways where you can take it easy.

More Pie

2009-08-08T17:06:00.002-05:00

Purple Cow Ice Cream pie

Arkansas Book and Paper Show

2009-08-08T15:31:00.001-05:00

August 8th and 9th, Jacksonville Community Center

Wanye T and Me

2009-08-08T12:16:00.001-05:00

Morning coffee

Display Cases for the Exhibition

2009-08-07T18:28:00.000-05:00

Hast la vista fellas. See you Monday.

Heh

2009-08-07T16:31:00.001-05:00

Stone samples from the Education dept.

Laying Out Walls

2009-08-07T15:41:00.001-05:00

Degrees of Difference

2009-08-07T15:20:00.001-05:00

The red I'm OK with. The taupes are are maddening given the shades shift dramatically with the light and will effect in crucial ways the appearance of stone. Also not helpful to be opporating object-less. Need stone samples...?

Books

2009-08-05T20:51:00.004-05:00

With every exploding detail of the new exhibition, the temptation for books in the evening has grown. Door-stoppers, the most impractical books for harried lives, are piling up around my bed. A fat new biography of an old president, a re-evaluation of the Middle Ages, a complete volume of poetry by someone inclined to epics, a 19th century magnum opus novel, a volume of South American noir that could also be used as a bludgeon in self-defense, and so on. Not that I'm reading them all, but their fat, slow, stodgy selves presuppose the beach. They presuppose uninterrupted stretches of time. This is I think the source of my current temptation. I am not reading but pretending. It is fantasy, like storing books under the covers as a kid with the illusion that once under I would be in my own private woodland den (from Brambly Hedge) lined with honey pots (from Pooh). I never read under the covers. But imagination benefits from a few props. Hence my buying another volume of history today and a testy personal memoir. The stack grows.

Blue Man

2009-08-03T21:07:00.003-05:00

Jun Kaneko de-install

August in Arkansas

2009-08-03T20:48:00.003-05:00

And things are still green. The benefits of it raining all July.

Why Isn't Health Reform Isn't Sailing Through? Because of States Like Arkansas.

2009-07-26T18:00:00.004-05:00

Rep. Mike Ross, D-AR, has been in the news a lot lately for leading the Blue Dog conservative Democrats' charge against the health care bill in its current form. John Brummett is sympathetic, noting that Blue Dogs have already been strung out leftward on the cap-and-trade vote and need to look moderate for their swing districts. Michael Tomasky is not, noting that Ross coasted to victory last time out. Local lib provocateur Max Brantley is just bitter, saying that Mike Ross hates poor people.

Tomasky is right. Ross isn't opposing the current bill out of re-election fears. Some people down here, in reference to his political skills, have called him Clinton's second coming. Brummett is right too. Blue Dogs are more conservative on principal. That's what happens when you expand control by winning in more conservative areas. Mike Ross doesn't necessarily have to be facing a tough re-election campaign to wince at the Congressional Budget Office's latest health care tallies. Still, he is a politician and there has to be politics in this. Tomasky just picked the wrong race. Maybe it's not a re-election campaign worrying him so much as a run for the governor's office. That is a statewide race in a state that alone in the country went more Republican in 2008 than in the previous presidential election. Clearly he doesn't think it will hurt him, whether health care sinks or swims, to have been the guy begging Congress to keep the price tag low.

PS - I actually agree with David Brooks; it would be good politics for Democrats long term if they would yield more, not less, to Blue Dog concerns.

Working Lunch

2009-07-22T13:28:00.001-05:00

Treasure Hunt

2009-07-20T23:06:00.011-05:00

The Main Library downtown had another book sale this last weekend. Paul belongs to FOCAL (Friends of Central Arkansas Libraries) and here is his spring/summer haul:

If I ever read Ulysses I'm borrowing this copy off Paul. I've also never read Moby Dick. Boo Hiss

A travel memoir written by a nun?

For me

Same Allsopp as in Allsopp Park? The family also had a bookstore? I wish it were still around

Ivanhoe...

...which used to belong to the women's college in Searcy, which later joined with Paul's Alma Mater to form Hendrix. I wonder what happened to the campus

Emerson must have been read more in schools a few generations back. Used copies of his work are always half a century old

Never read Last of the Mohicans without the N C Wyeth plates. To get through you will want the pictures

A soldier's gift. How apropos. Adventure + torrid romance

How did Paul emerge for the FOCAL crowd scrum with two Scribners Classics?

A history of the Arkansas river

A first printing if not a first edition

Nice dated typeface

He likes Ulysses

and old paperbacks

Catch-22 is everywhere in that printing of about a decade ago. I've never seen this paperback edition before

Wild! Moving! Shocking! and this is your bookplate. No matter how modish or mocking your novel, don't underestimate the power of the American bourgeoisie to domesticate it.

Annals of Zany Crime

2009-07-17T00:00:00.003-05:00

Start with Jonesboro, add Wendy's. Wendy's Forgets Straw, Amputee Pulls Gun.

The combination of a local population clearly up on the liberties and rights of man and a Wendy's with poor customer service was bound to be explosive. But did Wendy's have to play with fire? Did they have to forget to give a straw to an amputee with an apparent case of alopecia nervosa? Not smart, clearly.

Looking on the Bright Side

2009-07-16T20:19:00.001-05:00

of a rain delayed baseball game

More Pie

2009-07-12T23:05:00.002-05:00

Cold peach pie

Serendipitous Alignment of Netflix Queue and Telegraph Culture Feature

2009-07-10T08:21:00.004-05:00

Kind Hearts and Coronets

Careful, It Was Made By God

2009-07-09T16:15:00.003-05:00

Deinstalling Stock Exchange Snowball, Andy Goldsworthy, 2007