Death of Conservatism?

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

The Oxford American has a list

Meanwhile

Little King

Spotlight on...

the donor

Diversified Plastic

No More Half Measures

Case 65 Soon To Be Swallowed in Massive Maquette

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

Shelly marvelseals a riser


Erin measures for fabric

I prepare to receive crates

Today

Stormy weather


A pause

Of Course

And They're Off!

Cases finished (mostly) and off to the museum

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

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

Gulliver

in Matthew Barney's Lilliput

Wayne T and Me

At work

Broadway Bridge

Meet the World's Most Problematic Riser

Too Darn Hot: Ella Fitzgerald and Hwy 64

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

Purple Cow Ice Cream pie

Arkansas Book and Paper Show

August 8th and 9th, Jacksonville Community Center

Wanye T and Me

Morning coffee

Display Cases for the Exhibition

Hast la vista fellas. See you Monday.

Heh

Stone samples from the Education dept.

Laying Out Walls

Degrees of Difference

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

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

Jun Kaneko de-install

August in Arkansas

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