Category Archives: What’s a man?

Slavery and Confederate History Month

Americana, Current Affairs, Photography, War, What's a man?

To me, from now, from here, slavery seems so improbable. Not informal, chance slavery like bringing home a captured souvenir from winning a war; but institutionalized slavery. It requires a belief that the slaves aren't really as human as the owners – how does someone do that to a person they are living with every day (and, more than sometimes, having sex with), it requires complex laws to define who are the slaves and who are the owners, it requires an huge infrastructure to  keep the slaves from escaping, it must, I think, require a preoccupation that permeates every part of society. 

That is why the whole concept of slavery in the south is abhorrent but not really real. And that is why a post, entitled Honoring CHM: One Drop, on Ta-Nehisi Coates's blog, is so horrific. With little commentary, it shows a picture of eight people and reprints a letter asking for money to educate them. They are  emancipated slaves.- eight individual, traumatized, human beings.

8slaves

The letter describes each one of the people with passages like this

Wilson Chinn is about 60 years old, he was "raised" by Isaac
Howard of Woodford County, Kentucky. When 21 years old he was taken
down the river and sold to Volsey B. Marmillion, a sugar planter about
45 miles above New Orleans. This man was accustomed to brand his
negroes, and Wilson has on his forehead the letters "V. B. M." Of the
210 slaves on this plantation 105 left at one time and came into the
Union camp. Thirty of them had been branded like cattle with a hot iron,
four of them on the forehead, and the others on the breast or arm. 

I really recommend that you follow the link back to the original post. It is hard to read – at least it was for me – but it makes real what we often think of as abstract. Check it out.

Obama 24/7

Americana, Obama, Politics, What's a man?

I want to start with a quote from last weekend by Michael Scherer of Time's Swampland 

About
20 hours ago, I was in Bagram Air Base, watching White House advance people
change the television station in a troop mess hall, so that NCAA basketball
would show in the background as President Obama shook hands, not motorcross,
which had been playing.

and then go on to the fact that Obama held a second – now annual – Whitehouse Seder last week. From the article in the NY Times, it seems like it was non-political act. Just a personal gesture that has become a tradition.

28seder_span-articleLarge

and finish with a reference to a story of one letter in an article in the Washington Post on the ten letters -that have been culled from hundreds – that Obama gets every day. The letter is tragic, touching, inspiring, you know – all that stuff.

If you haven't already, read these two articles. They are pretty short.

I am fascinated by Obama's attention to detail, the cautious consideration given to doing a good job, to doing things right – not just as president, but as a man, as a father, as a mensch. In Obama, it seems to be coming from the inside rather than from the outside to look good.

Who we are vs. who we want to be dept.

Books, Web/Tech, Weblogs, What's a man?


I have never played a MMO – Massively multiplayer online – game or, even, seen one played. All I know about them is from reading Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson. As I understand it, the players can pretty much make their avatars anybody or thing. What they come up with is pretty interesting.

From a book by Robbie Cooper via a blog called The Swedish Bed here are some real people and their avatars.

Robbiecooperavatars1
 
Robbiecooperavatars3

Robbiecooperavatars7

Bob White, RIP: probably the greatest pilot you have never heard of*

Americana, Current Affairs, What's a man?

* with the same caveat that I had for Lynn Hill

Bob White, or – if you like – Robert Michael White, died last Wednesday, March 17 2010. He died peaceably, presumably in his bed, at the age of 85.

Given Bob White's life, that was a pretty unlikely event. When he was twenty, he was flying P51 Mustangs in combat over Germany. He was still only twenty when, after 52 missions, he was shot down and taken prisoner. Then he flew in combat over Korea. Then he became a test pilot, eventually flying the X-15.

X-15 Flying
While flying the X-15, on November 9, 1961, White flew at 4093 mph. That is over 68 miles a minute. That is six times the speed of sound. At one point, the shock waves and vibration did this to his canopy.

X15 Canopy

And White still landed the plane safely and lived to die, peacefully, at 85. I hope we are all so lucky.

The Blind Side

Americana, Books, Current Affairs, Film, Religion, Sports, What's a man?

Michael Oher and family

I just finished reading The Blind Side by Michael Lewis and I would recommend it to anybody who is interested in football, or US social policy, or the human potential, or race relations, or, for that matter, just wants a good read.I just finished writing about David Foster Wallace and how much I have enjoyed his writing and The Blind Side is the polar opposite.

With DFW, I am always aware of, and dazzled by, the writing. In the The Blind Side, the story is everything – more accurately, what is being told is everything. All the words, all the sentences are pushing a narrative forward. And I mean that in the best possible way. 

At this point, I think everybody knows the basic plot – how a poor black kid, Big Mike who become Michael Oher,  is discovered (not quite the right word, maybe found) by a very rich, white, Christian, family and how his life and their lives are changed. That does not do it justice. Michael Oher is a 350 pound, 6'4", freakishly quick, and astonishingly graceful black kid who is invisible.  He goes to school, sort of, but nobody cares if he learns anything – they just pass him on to the next grade where he is invisible again.  He is one of those kids we read about every once in a while that just slipped through the cracks. At 6'4" and 350 pounds!

Except that, when he is starting his junior year in high school, everything changed. Michael is very likable but he is very lucky. As the book says, among other things, Pity the kid inside Hurt Village who was born to play the piano, or manage people, or trade bonds. This book made me realize, again, that we, me and the people who read this blog, were all born on third base, at least, and, even on our best days, think we hit a double.We didn't we are just enormously lucky.