Why Romney can’t beat Obama

Americana, Politics

Everybody talks about the economy when they are discussing the election and I am sure that the economy is important, but running a good campaign is also important and the Romney campaign doesn’t seem to be able to do that. They booked Tiger stadium in Detroit and 1200 people showed up and from the seating arrangement they seemed to know that not many people would show up. Four years ago, Obama FILLED stadiums. Much smaller stadiums but they were full of energy.

Elections usually come down to GOTV – get out the vote – and that takes energy. Romney is not building it. The Romney rally must have been very depressing to anybody who did show up. Community organization – GOTV – is the Obama specialty.

Fat Tuesday, Lent, and the church steps at ChiChi

Around home, Food and Drink, Religion

Last Tuesday, Michele and I celebrated – maybe over celebrated – Fat Tuesday, today our Lent starts. For the next six weeks, we have agreed to stay off of all intoxicants (we don’t count coffee, tea, or sugar). This has pretty much become a tradition of ours and we find it sort of ironically enjoyable to honor Lent without being Christians. Following a nominally Christian ritual without being tied to the dogma – or a Hindu ritual in a temple in Bali for that matter – always gets me thinking how religions build on the religious traditions they are replacing. Maybe build is not the right word, maybe it should be expropriate or piss on.

It seems to me that it takes both temporal and physical forms. Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Christ, takes place at about the time of the old Pagan Winter Solstice festivals. The Pagans were here first with Solstice celebrations like the Roman Saturnalia, among others, and as Christianity became the dominant religion, it took on the trappings of Saturnalia but changed them to a celebration of Christ’s birth. Part of what happens in that the holiday is already there, so tweaking it to become the new holiday is easier than starting fresh but part of it is also sticking a metaphorical finger in their – whoever they are – metaphorical face.

I know that we are doing that in reverse. That is actually what we are doing. Every year we have a Solstice celebration that works because it is already holiday party season: the tree is up, the yule log is lit, so making it about the Solstice is pretty easy. That is also what we are doing with Lent. After all, Lent really is a result of adjusting to the scarcity of late winter, early spring. It makes a virtue of a problem. Like Gefilte fish came from the poor Jews of Eastern Europe not being able to afford a fish worth cooking whole, or beef bourguignon being the peasants answer to tough pieces of meat. The point being, the causes of Lent were already there; the Church just took it over.

In the same way. the Conquistadors, or Missionaries, whoever they were, built their new churches on old sacred sites. They jammed the new religion down the old religion’s throat. Now comes the fun part: in Chichicastenango, Guatemala – and I am sure there are hundreds, if not thousands of similar situations – the Mayas have now turned the Church stairs back into their Temple. They have re-expropriated the Sacred Temple. By acknowledging Lent, by honoring it; I like to think we are doing the same thing.

“To thine own self be true…..”

Psychological Musings

I am not sure how it happened – and it really does not make much difference – but Michele and I have been caught up in Linsanity. If you are blessed enough to not be caught up in this whole Knicks-Lin thing – or, maybe, cursed to not be following this feel good, heart warming, story of Linderella coming out of nowhere – there are plenty of places to get caught up on the background. As Sports illustrated says, Think of the singular demographic alloy at play. Lin, who’s worked endlessly on his strength and his jump shot in the past year, is a normal-sized, Christian, first-generation Asian-American. He’s excelled academically, faced racism on the court, been cut twice and sent to the D-league four times. Now he’s an NBA sensation amid the cultural diversity of hoops-starved New York. Opponents aside, who wouldn’t be a fan?

Anyway, we sat down Sunday afternoon to watch Lin and the New York Knicks play the Dallas Mavericks. A confession is in order here: I was in in Texas -while in the Army – in the early sixties and like anyplace in the South, it was not a good place to be a young man from California or any part of the North; I was also a 49er fan during the Montana years and Dallas was an arch rival; so I am pretty much anti-any-Texas-sports-team. Also, Lin played for Palo Alto High, maybe seven miles from our home, so we were defiantly rooting for him, but there was an underlying feeling that the bubble might burst any game now and the Mavericks were the best team in basketball last year. We would have been happy with a good, close, game.

It was a great game with huge swings in the scoring. In the end, the Knicks won and Lin was the reason. It brought up all the questions of how this kid could have been overlooked; how did the Warriors release him after a season? how did Houston? Because we are all racists, even if it sometimes plays out as anti-racists, the most obvious answer seems to be Because he is Asian. I don’t think that is the main reason, the real reason. The real reason is that Jeremy Lin was trying to fit into the Warrior’s system and he did that by not playing his game. During the game’s halftime, they played part of an interview of Lin by ABC’s Rachel Nichols, the interview starts about 3:50 into the clip below and, for me, gets very interesting at about 5:45 where Lin says , I was trying not to make mistakes, I was trying to fit in….this year I am going to make sure I do it my way.

It is one of the oldest lessons out there and one of the hardest to follow. It is as old as the Bible, Polonius said it in Hamlet, This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man, and they still say it in every self improvement book; be yourself. And it is so hard. When Lin had been cut by two teams, when he was afraid he would be playing in Europe,  or on some unknown D-team, or maybe not playing at all; in other words, when he had nothing else to lose, he became true to himself, he started playing his game. His game, it turned out, that fit the Knicks system like a glove. By playing his game, by being true to himself, I suspect, he was able to play with a lot more intensity.  His game, it turns out, includes a lot of assists and his generosity and intensity have transformed the Knicks. With Lin in they are less of a collection of outstanding players and more of a Team.

Untethered, untethered at last

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I was going to say Free, free at last, but then I saw the Wyatt Cenac  on the Daily Show and thought better of it. But I did get my PICC line removed yesterday after my blood test showed that I am infection free.

 

 

150 years ago continued

Americana, General U.S. Grant, War

 

On February 16, 1862, Brigadier General Simon Buckner surrendered Fort Donaldson and about 13,500 men to Brigadier General Grant. Buckner and Grant had been friends in their previous and now different lives. The  military leaders of both the North and the South had often been in the old United States Army together and most had gone to West Point together. When the Civil War started, the majority of the seasoned officers were from the South and most of them deserted the Union. Simon Buckner was one of these.

Buckner had been born in Kentucky   but went north to go to West Point and graduated one year after Grant. He fought in the Mexican-American war and then Buckner returned to New York to teach at West Point but – and I love this part – he quit the teaching post as a protest of West Point’s policy of compulsory chapel attendance. About this time, he married a woman from Connecticut. When the war broke out, Buckner was offered a generalship in the Union army by President Lincoln himself, but he turned it down and, eventually ended up in the Confederate army. And then ended up at Fort Donaldson under a general who deserted his post, leaving Buckner to face Grant.

Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant but his mother dropped the Hiram when he went to West Point. She realized his initials would be HUG when she was stenciling his footlocker and she was afraid that he would be teased which, at 5′-1″ and 117 pounds was probably right (the Congressman that sponsored Grant to West Point added the S for Grant’s mother’s maiden name of Simpson, but, in a clerical error, it was changed to S for Sam and he became Sam Grant at West Point). Like Buckner – and Robert Lee, for that matter – Grant fought in the Mexican-American war. He then hoped to teach math at West Point; instead, he ended up at the almost end of the world, Fort Vancouver in Oregon Territory.

Away from his wife and probably bored, Grant left the Army in disgrace for binge drinking. On his way home, broke and in disgrace, Grant ran into Buckner in New York and – probably very embarrassed – borrowed money from him while he was waiting for money to be sent from Ohio so that Grant could get back to his wife and his home. Buckner and Grant met again, almost eight years later, at Fort Donaldson.

The surrender of Fort Donaldson and an army of 13,500 men was the first major victory for the Union and the first of only three times during the Civil War when an entire army was captured – all by Grant. It was an equally major catastrophe for the South. The victory kept Kentucky in the Union and opened up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers for the North to start driving south in a campaign to open the Mississippi River all the way to New Orleans.

Buckner expected his old friend, Sam Grant, to be sympathetic to his position and asked for special consideration in his and his army’s loss, but for Grant, war was war and it trumped friendship.  He replied to his old friend and one time benefactor, in a letter that included the famous quotation, “No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.” A pissed off Buckner replied “Sir:—The distribution of the forces under my command, incident to an unexpected change of commanders, and the overwhelming force under your command, compel me, notwithstanding the brilliant success of the Confederate arms yesterday, to accept the ungenerous and unchivalrous terms which you propose.”

Grant offered to loan Buckner money and to help him with his imminent imprisonment, but a still pissed Buckner declined and was sent to prison in Boston. Five months later, he was exchanged for another general.  Grant became instantly famous and was promoted to Major General U. S. – “Unconditional Surrender” – Grant.

While Grant only had about 500 killed, he did have another 2,000 wounded and the battle was not as easy as it later looked.  Grant made several major mistakes – like leaving the battlefield to meet with the Navy but not leaving anybody in command – that he was able to overcome and Grant being Grant, they were mistakes that he never made again.