Quote from "Destiny of the Republic" by Candace Millard

"They must not be knocked down with bludgeons. They must have their throats cut with a feather." James G. Blaine, Senator from Maine, on dealing with the Stalwarts.

A Year Since Donald Trump Won the Election (Allegedly)

Well, the world is still here (for now). Though it does feel like watching a film where all the plot strands are inexorably linking into a collective noose for our species.

That Russia's authoritarian leadership worked to assist Trump (our would-be autocrat) to win the presidency is clear. Indictments of Trump campaign personnel have been unsealed (Manafort, Gates, Papadopoulos). The Republican Party appears compromised, by also aligning with the Russians and/or condoning their attacks on our election(s).

The GOP continues to allow our citizens to be slaughtered by deranged gunmen, chooses to abdicate action to address climate change, and wants to deliver a substantial tax cut for the wealthiest Americans by, in part, denying health care coverage for millions of less financially fortunate Americans.

Trump's sole motivations apparently are to be loved and to further enrich himself. While mulishly determined, he seems pathetically inept. Through his clumsy efforts to assert economic nationalism as a means to American greatness, the rest of the world (and particularly the Chinese) senses a vacuum in global leadership.

Much has been written about the precipitous decline in American Exceptionalism. One has to wonder if Trump is the catalyst or just an inevitable symptom. The latter seems more likely, and, therefore, more pernicious. Fortunately, Trump has also served as a catalyst to action.

Many citizens (myself included) are paying more attention, and an increasing number are taking steps to stand against Trumpism. The effort is focused on the ballot box, and Democrats recently were elected to the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia. Can we maintain our democracy? We shall see.

And Now for Something Completely Different . . . and Unexpected, and Scary, etc.

Dear Diary, the most incredible thing happened! Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. You cannot imagine how surreal that statement seems at this moment . . . which is, just for the record, 3:36 AM on Wednesday, November 9, 2016. 

About a million more voters in our country believed that Mr. Trump is the right person for the job rather than Ms. Clinton. That means almost 56 million of my fellow citizens are sharing in some version of the angst and stunned disbelief that I'm experiencing. 

I sincerely hope that in a few years I will read this and chuckle to myself that I was so concerned that the 45th president of our country might, at best, not "drain the swamp" but rather drive us collectively deeper into realms of swampiness we could never have imagined, or, at worst, manage to initiate a human race-ending armageddon. Haha . . . it's not funny; nor meant to be hyperbolic. I really, sincerely worry that Mr. Trump might blow us all up. 

Oh, Mr. Trump, will you censor the press? Will you define disagreement and dissent as disrespect worthy of punishment? It seems impossible that this might come to pass, but then your election seemed impossible also. If I reread Eugenia Ginzburg's Journey Into the Whirlwind will it seem a cautionary tale of what may become of America? Please do not be another iteration of Stalin, or Hitler, or any other demagogue. 

You've done so little to convince us (even many who voted for you) that you have the ability to do the job of president. Maybe all the things you said as a candidate were just showbiz riffs? Maybe you will throw off the charlatan's robe now and be revealed as an enlightened, intelligent, magnanimous leader. Please let that dream be the reality . . . and not this nightmare that I'm enduring while wide awake in the middle of this long and truly dark night. 

Notes While Reading "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning"

It's Christmas. My son has given me a copy of Chris Hedges' book. A book whose premise is that, as a species, we don't sincerely desire peace on earth. That's boring.

In fact, Hedges cites a calculation by the historian Will Durant ". . . that there have only been twenty-nine years in all of human history during which a war was not underway somewhere." While I cannot cite an academic to verify it, I would wager that almost every human who has lived and not experienced war is thankful to have been spared.

Though, as Hedges contends, most of us are susceptible to the allure of the concept of war as a unifying mission. What I don't see explicitly identified in the opening Introduction is the idea that our susceptibility arises from the basic desire to belong in order to defend ourselves. We are vulnerable individual beings who find our odds of survival enhanced through banding together. Once bound together, we view other groups as threats to our group . . . and they are.

However, it's usually a very few people within any group that instigate fear and action (e.g. war) in response to that threat. These individuals have a myriad of reasons for doing so,  from ego satisfaction, economic gratification, or simply garden variety sociopathic lunacy. Hedges identifies this fact in his opening chapter, when he observes that our era's wars " . . . are manufactured . . . (and) run by gangsters, who rise up from the bottom of their own societies and terrorize all, including those they purport to protect."

Sixfold Poems

I was fortunate to have my group of four poems included in the Fall issue of a new publication called Sixfold. It's a cool concept . . . the writers who submit vote on and determine what will be published.

For what it's worth, I also recorded myself reading the poems . . . maybe it will be interesting to listen to these a few decades down the line, to recall how I sounded at this point in the journey.

Here they are:

Surliness in the Green Mountains

Meditation Waiting for the Orange Line

Blowing the Third Eye

Under the Influence

Russia Blog

I feel the need to blog more . . . there are so many things that I'm forgetting!

I promise myself to start soon, but for now I want to link to my Russia blog from last December.

To Russia With Anticipation

So, having typed a couple paragraphs, what I'd written vanished. Why? Cosmic editing of fuzzy writing is the only plausible explanation. Though, this is in keeping with how preparations for this trip have unfolded. Akin to the vanishing airline reservation specifically. I had my confirmation . . . I even had a seat assignment on Delta . . . and then when I called Alitalia to request a seat assignment, I suddenly didn't have a ticket, nor a reservation. Thank you Alitalia for not having online seat request capability. Otherwise, I'd be showing up at Logan this morning with my bags and a smile, and no chance of getting on a flight to Moscow.

As it turns out, I'm now on a train to NY, to get to JFK, to get on a flight to Moscow. It all worked out. As long as this unexpected loss of power and forward movement in New London proves temporary.

Appropriately, it was snowing this morning as I walked over to Back Bay Station. Just enough to whiten the ground, but I appreciated the gesture. It appears that the weather has finally turned wintery in Yaroslavl, too. This makes me happy. It wouldn't have been quite the genuine winter welcome I was hoping for without snow around.

My 46 Pimsleur Russian lessons now seem wholly inadequate. I just now got to, "How's the weather?" And, I had to look up snow on my own: снег. Pronounced: Snerg. You can see in this small example one of the principal challenges in trying to tackle Russian as a second language. The alphabet is on one hand familiar, but full of amusing misdirections. с = s; н = n; г = g. And, then there are the extra letters that are more hieroglyphic in nature: жфю. I am glad that Cross Cultural Solutions will have a translator nearby at all times!

Thinking of all I don't know how to say, and even more how limited my ability to comprehend anything said in Russian, I feel compelled to return to Lesson 1 and try to reinforce the most basic and essential components: "Do you speak English?" "I don't understand." "Please help me."

Adding to the Really Baffling . . . Let's Mutate Bird Flu to Make it Airborne

The logic apparently is that by manipulating H5N1 to become transmissible between ferrets (which are, appropriately, nature's closest stand-in biologically for human scientists), we can ferret out (too irresistible to not have a little pun with these creatures while we kill them) how the bird flu virus might mutate in the non-laborotory world.

Not that we can do anything about the resulting pandemic should it occur. Though presumably we could establish a vaccine protocol that might be effective in impeding the virus's ability to infect.

So, developing a way to make H5N1 transmissible to and between humans will enhance our ability to warn anyone who hasn't already seen the videos of folks succumbing to bird flu that a killer virus is loose?

Of course, now we'll never know if we loosed the killer virus on ourselves or if it was a result of nature doing what nature does.

But at least we can be certain that many ferrets are going to suffer and die, and how can one argue that this is not a good thing?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/21/science/scientists-to-pause-research-on-deadly-strain-of-bird-flu.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23

Method for Enhancement of Surface Plasmon Polaritons to Initiate & Susta...

This would be revolutionary . . . I wonder why it won't be?

Industrial Beauty (or Two Pilgrims Watching the Sun Set)

Physicists and Theologians Unite!

Here's an interesting update on the latest crisis facing physicists. To make sense of the fact that our particular universe is attuned to the precise conditions that have made life (as we perceive it) possible, an increasing number of physicists are guessing that we must be citizens of one of a countless number of universes.

If the number of potential universes is infinite, then one of them would have the conditions we find ourselves existing within. That we most likely can never test this hypothesis is a concern, of course. We're being asked to take it on faith that this must be the logical explanation for why things are as they are . . . and why, consequently, we are.

God (or whatever) works in mysterious ways!

Momentary Celebrity (Sort Of)

Ambushed by the local Fox News station, I stammer through a series of probing questions about the proposed hike in fares to ride the subway and/or bus in Boston. Oddly, I almost always walk to and from work . . . partly because I am cheap, but mostly so that I get some exercise. And, besides, I am lucky that my "commute" entails walking through Boston's Public Garden and across the Common, past the State House on Beacon Hill, and down past King's Chapel (a diminutive, stone edifice from the 18th century), before arriving at the late 20th century granite, steel, marble, and glass high-rise where I do what I do to pass the days and make a living.

MBTA riders face fare hikes as high as 43 percent: MyFoxBOSTON.com

Wisdom for Writers

"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."

Thomas Mann

Showing Off For an Itchy-Assed Pal!

Tosh.0	Tosh Tuesdays 8pm / 7c
M. Night Shyamalan Twist Ending of the Week - The Weightlifter
www.comedycentral.com
Tosh.0 Videos Daniel Tosh Web Redemption

Mark Twain Commentary on Idiots and Congress

100 years after his death, Twain remains a relevant commentator on our current state of affairs:

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

Shelby Foote's Advice to Writers (Paris Review Interview 1999)

INTERVIEWER

What kind of advice would you give young writers?

FOOTE

To read, and above all to reread. When you read, you get the great pleasure of discovering what happened. When you reread, you get the great pleasure of knowing where the author’s going and seeing how he goes about getting there—and that’s learning creative writing. I would tell a young writer that. Of course I would tell him: work, work, work, sit at that desk and sweat. You don’t have to have a plot, you don’t have to have anything. Describe someone crossing a room, and try to do it in a way that won’t perish. Put it down on paper. Keep at it. Then when you finally figure out how to handle words pretty well, try to tell a story. It won’t be worth a damn; you’ll have to tear it up and throw it away. But then try to do it again, do it again, and then keep doing it, until you can do it. You may never be able to do it. That’s the gamble. You not only may not be able to make a living, you may not be able to do it at all. But that’s what you put on the line. Every artist has that. He doesn’t deserve a whole lot of credit for it. He didn’t choose it. It was visited upon him. Somebody asks, When did you decide you wanted to be a writer? I never decided I wanted to be a writer. I simply woke up a writer one morning.

What in the Sun Causes Radioactive Decay Fluctuations?

From an article on EurekAlert:

The strange case of solar flares and radioactive elements

Intrigue at the speed of light (almost)

But there's one rather large question left unanswered. No one knows how neutrinos could interact with radioactive materials to change their rate of decay.

"It doesn't make sense according to conventional ideas," Fischbach said. Jenkins whimsically added, "What we're suggesting is that something that doesn't really interact with anything is changing something that can't be changed."

"It's an effect that no one yet understands," agreed Sturrock. "Theorists are starting to say, 'What's going on?' But that's what the evidence points to. It's a challenge for the physicists and a challenge for the solar people too."

If the mystery particle is not a neutrino, "It would have to be something we don't know about, an unknown particle that is also emitted by the sun and has this effect, and that would be even more remarkable," Sturrock said.

Hello Beta

How many strolls along the surf line have I taken in my life? Hundreds and hundreds. And how many shipwrecks have I come upon? None . . . until this Labor Day . . . when the remains of the British schooner Beta appeared in the waves. The ship foundered in April 1886, while en route to Boston from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Three lives were lost, including two young sisters, ages 8 months and 3 years, who "were torn by the sea from the arms of their mother and drowned."

Golf Gods

Last summer, after too long a hiatus, I began regularly tormenting myself on the golf course again. The only good thing about my game was the company I kept while watching my ball fly off course (literally, sometimes): two actuaries and my son. We've had a lot of fun chasing par over the past two summers. Unfortunately, good things do apparently have to end. Rob (one of my favorite actuaries of all time!) is moving to Atlanta this fall. The game will simply not be the same without him. The group portrait above was taken at the conclusion of our final round together: September 5, 2009. A bittersweet day indeed. Sanjay, Drew, and I will miss you, man.

Observations on the Parade Outside the BPL

Sitting on the granite steps outside the Boston Public Library, after being evicted from the blessedly air conditioned Bates Reading Room at 5 PM, I am appreciative of the slight breeze and the parade of people passing through Copley Square this late afternoon . . . the intricacy of detail on Trinity Church across the way.

Apocalypse seems quite remote . . . though a woman with an African accent and a baby in a stroller continues to wander back and forth in front of me proclaiming that God loves and that Christ can provide a better night's sleep and safety upon waking. It's easy to fabricate some horrific past for this woman, in a country where death and torment are more overtly present.

It's easier yet to observe the reactions of those who pass her as she makes her rounds. I particularly appreciated the neanderthal dude who turned and yelled at her, "What the hell are you yelling about?" . . . and, in doing so, lost control of the unlit cigarette dangling from his yap. It fell directly and irretrievably into a crevice between the walkway's granite slabs. God works in humorous ways at times!

Just now, a little fellow with the most gigantic curly mane and a white button-up shirt and a terrific smile has found the statue near where I am sitting fascinating and worth the effort to climb the steps to be near. The exuberant inquisitiveness of childhood is infectious. He really likes this statue! I have no idea what he is saying as he comments on this public work of art, but he is enthusiastic in his assessment.

So many iterations of our human carnival available for perusing. I've been working on revising my long poem "These Days Appear Particular" this afternoon, and sitting here just makes it clearer how particular each of our experiences truly is . . . familiar, similar, yet particular in its details. Billions of story lines all wavering and weaving their way on this small blue marble.