111509

This week my old friend Adam got us tickets see a Letterman taping. We've been watching Letterman together for some 25 years--he only started 28 years ago. The show live is a total trip. He runs a very tight ship around the studio. Two things I noticed: 1) Paul has started singing a lot and he's a terrible singer, and 2) while Dave does interact with the audience for a few seconds, it's only to gather fodder for the bit he does (I realized it's every single show) about something an audience member said; the rest of the show at commercial breaks he has several rows of people between him and the audience--zero interaction. I always imagined he talked to the audience for a few minutes; 20-30 seconds is all he needs. Way cool of my buddy to get some tickets lined up. Had a blast.

*Status*

Facebook status update, 11.13.09:

The most amazing thing happened yesterday, my 40th birthday: most of my life has been spent continually searching for romantic love (cut me some slack--I am Scorpio), but I realized yesterday I don't in fact need it, or even want it, if I'm to accomplish what I've set out to between now and my dying day. I am finally free.

*Poem*

Ariell

Not long after my ex walked out

I met a young woman; she was 19

and I was 32. She was on the road

and I met her at a poetry reading.

That very night I invited her

to stay at my house; I remember

telling her that what I sorely

missed was simply company, was

knowing my house was not

interminably empty, was the simple

kindness we all take for granted.

One night I took her out to

dinner at a romantic Italian place.

What strikes me most when I

think back on that time is

the blind hope I had that I've

not had again. What strikes me

is that my reaction to being

deserted was to be thankful

and hopeful. But what I also

remember with no small amount

of discomfort is that we,

that I, walked most of the way

to the restaurant, without

even thinking about it.

I was hopeful once after being

abandoned but now I can't walk

to romantic restaurants so

where does that leave me?

*Politics*

By Josh Hammond

"There is a rising chorus of impatient progressive bloggers, some on these pages, calling Obama a failure and a do-nothing president only nine months into his first of four years as president. SNL's "do-nothing skit" on Obama may well have empowered some on our side to start playing on the fringes of the Limbaugh sandbox. While the charges and name-calling are not as vicious as the Limbaugh Lemmings, it has started nonetheless. So what has our newly-minted asshole president been doing for nine months?

"Let's start with what he has not done. He has not found a cure for cancer, reversed climate change, ended poverty, brought peace to the Middle East, ended all wars, created enough new jobs, or created a single-payer healthcare system. These are big ticket items that no president will ever accomplish, so it is a little disingenuous to suggest a standard for Obama that does not apply to all past presidents or to future presidents. As Princeton economics professor Alan Blinder says in assessing what Obama has accomplished so far, "If he seems to have achieved little, it's partly because he set out to do too much." To which I would add, and we created an unrealistic agenda for what we wanted him to accomplish.

"Let's continue with what he has done. First and foremost, none other than the Wall Street Journal, in an assessment titled, "Democrats Quiet Changes Pile Up", says he has accomplished more in nine months than George Bush did in his first nine months. Let's be specific:

"1. Significantly, he buried the Imperial Presidency of George Bush and restored the Constitutional balance of government by respecting the equal standing of the legislative branch of government. As a former constitutional law professor, this is a major matter of change of tone and style that he promised during the campaign, and he has delivered. (Not pretty or necessarily effective given the Reid-less leadership in the Senate, but we are a constitutional democracy.)

"2. Passed and signed the stimulus package, the biggest piece of legislation--ever--in blinding speed, thus being able to start to stabilize the economy, with GDP now projected to grow at the rate of 3 percent by the end of the year. Check the comeback of your 401K since Obama has taken over.

"3. Stabilized the top 20 banks without federalizing them.

"4. Reduced the rate of foreclosures inherited from the Bush administration.

"5. Signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that makes it easier to sue for wage discrimination, a dramatic reversal of the bill's fortunes under Bush.

"6. Granted regulatory power to the FDA to control tobacco products, another dramatic reversal of the Bush years that industry has lobbied hard to prevent.

"7. Signed the Matthew Shepard Hate Act that expanded federal hate crime protection to categories of sexual orientation and gender, to the major consternation of the Religious Right.

"8. Killed the F-22 fighter jet program, a popular program with Congress, saving billions of dollars.

"9. With a stroke of a pen, enacted, by executive order, (see correction below in comments, it was a bill signing) the largest conservation measure in 15 years, spanning the Bush and Clinton records.

"10. Implement an electronic medical record system before any healthcare legislation was introduced. This new technology will be singularly responsible for saving lives and reducing the high administrative costs of healthcare, a key element of reform.

"11. Extended a $2500 tax credit to 5 million families to help with college tuition.

"12. Cooperated with Japan in bringing a $5 billion stabilization package for Pakistan.

"13. Engaged the Muslim world in a dialogue, beginning with his unprecedented speech in Cairo, followed by an interview with Al Arabiya, and face-to-face discussions with Iran, a total reversal of the Bush years of Muslim baiting and hate.

"14. Dramatically reversed the reputation of the United States around the world, with now most nations looking favorably on the US, and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize as one consequence.

"15. Agreed to plan for bringing the troops home from Iraq, at a slower pace than what he promised, but based on knowledge that commanders-in-chief, not candidates, have.

"16. Brought the White House online, doing for the White House what he had done for political campaigning. There are now online Q&A's with the administration, and a White House blog.

"17. Released the names of all visitors to the White House, a total reversal of the secret Bush years.

"18. Told Mexico that the US is responsible for some of their drug problems, a no small, but truthful admission.

"19. Restored the rights of states to regulate the medical use of marijuana without fear of federal law enforcement intrusion.

"20. Banned the use of torture, and he has begun a complete review of the torture policies under Bush.

"21. Appointed the first Latina to the Supremes: Imagine what would have happened to the Supreme Court under four more years of radical Republicans. Obama has thus averted a long-term dramatic swing to the extreme right on the court, and appointed a progressive to keep matters in check.

"In summary, and to those on these pages and elsewhere who see things differently, I say this feels a little like Waiting for Godot. Let's recall one thing that Samuel Beckett said in the mischievous play: "The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased.""

*Letter/poem*

Dear Ariell

I love you too. You must know that you touched me deeply, while I knew you. I often pray for you, in my own way, specifically I pray that somehow, out from under the misery of divorce and disease, I managed to set you on some kind of a right path. I know that whatever path you have followed and will continue to follow in fact has little to do with me. I was destroyed, in total, by abandonment and I've only just started to emerge--to re-collect myself again from ashes. I had no capacity to feel anything when I knew you, and for that I am interminably sorry. But I have risen from ashes many times before. It's frightening to reveal just how many layers I'm made of. My life has been peeling away the layers, and one day I'm sure to end up a single hulking mass of Central Nervous System.

You sang Summertime Rolls to me the first night we met. No one I've ever known has given as much to me as you did Ariell, no strings attached, free, loving. While I always felt I deserved that in some way, I have never gotten myself to feeling generally deserving of anything even remotely like that kind of unconditional love. The months and years after I met you were the darkest in my history. Somehow I made it back to where I belong. I'm alive again. I can feel every moment. I'd like to say I would treat you with the love you deserve now, but I can't be sure I would. All I've known, the world over, has been straining just to stay alive. The MS has gotten significantly worse over the past few years; I'm still straining, and I will be indefinitely. I don't think a person who struggles to get through each day could ever really love. I've given up the search.

I need to become the greatest natural perfumer the modern world has yet known. I need to become a brilliant novelist and playwright. These are my two objectives with the time I have left. It's going to be a party. If love fits in somewhere, great; if not, so be it. Five years ago, I never would have said that. Being home again and being 40 have transformed me. I do love you and care about you a great deal. I trust now that everything works out for the best. We will see each other again--how could you never come to New York? This is the epicenter of everything great in the universe. It's, "Show us what you got or shut the hell up." Best of the best around every corner. Letterman, the UN, Broadway, poets, music, etc etc.

Hope to see you again some day. My thoughts and heart are with you. Love, Adam

*Quotations*

Whether it’s self-medicating, anger or violence, these are the consequences of war, and you have to think about all the people affected by soldiers coming home, the parents, spouses, children, brothers, sisters, aunts and cousins.

--Cynthia Thomas

One finds, especially by the time one reaches one's fifties, that there are a limited number of types of people in the world, and you went to high school with every single one of them. You can visit the Eskimos, you can visit the Bushmen in the Kalahari, you can go to Israel, you can go to Egypt, but everybody you meet is going to be somebody you went to high school with.

--PJ O'Rourke

[I can't tell you how true this is. In China, I often remembered people by who they reminded me of from high school. The danger is forgetting that they are _not actually_ like those people.]

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o'er life's solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

To be great is to be misunderstood.

--Mary Ann Evans Cross

No really great man ever thought himself so.

--William Hazlitt

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

--GK Chesterton

There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.

--William F Halsey

A man can be short and dumpy and getting bald but if he has fire, women will like him.

--Mae West

Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?

--Nietzsche

The young man who has not wept is a savage and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.

--George Santayana

Peace love and ATOM jazz