Fungible Convictions

Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to Be an American” could well serve as the dividing line for two Americas: one that places patriotism above reason and another that places reason above patriotism. Each has its place, its purpose, and its good and bad.

For all the noise about Tea Partiers, the best-intentioned of them fall squarely in the first camp, for whom the lyrics of “Proud to Be an American” make intuitive sense. They would argue—I would say illogically but sincerely—that freedom from overbearing government is paramount, even if it means dying a young, miserable, painful death from lung cancer because the free market couldn’t offer you the affordable health insurance necessary for an early, actionable diagnosis. The line “Where at least I know I’m free” frustrates that second camp (for example, the city government of Washington, D.C., ) to no end, because it’s a way of saying, “I don’t care that our bad health care and prevalence of guns means we die sooner than everyone in western Europe, because at least my life is more free from government control than theirs.” It frustrates the second camp because it’s illogical: how can you enjoy freedom if you’re dead?

But to the reason-above-patriotism camp, the line “who gave that right to me” is even more vexing. Rights can’t be given by man. Certainly not by “the men who died”. Rights are natural; you’re born with them. They come from God. It’s right there in the Declaration of Independence: “…that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Dying on the beaches of Normandy or on Lexington Green did nothing to “give” rights. Certainly they were defended, but not given.

It’s an important distinction, because it’s what gives the patriotism-above-reason camp a peg on which to hang accusations of being unpatriotic, the classic “If you question the mission our soldiers are engaged in, you must therefore be unpatriotic.” The reason-above-patriotism camp retorts, “But what’s the point of sacrifice if what soldiers are dying for is meaningless or counterproductive?”

The irony is that both camps believe they are both fully patriotic and reasonable. Yet neither are. And sometimes it takes a thoroughly loved and hated song by Lee Greenwood to illustrate it.

I read with my wife’s Amazon Kindle for the first time tonight, and I have to be honest, I didn’t like it very much. These are the things I don’t understand about it:

• Why did Amazon choose a slab serif font as its universal typeface? While Caecilia is a lovely typeface, slab serifs are about as pleasant for long-session reading as sans serifs, that is, not very.
• Why didn’t they style the subheads or, quite confusingly, the pullquotes?
• Why didn’t they use “keep” settings so that there aren’t widow or orphan lines?
• Was there no other way to represent progress through a book other than that meter at the bottom of the screen?

These are aesthetic concerns, yes, but they have a lot to do with how I read, process, and remember stories and information. I have no confidence in my ability to remember something I’ve read on a Kindle, because there are no design cues to help me collate what I read. Turning letters into narrative or knowledge needs a storyteller or a teacher, functions good design have traditionally served…that is, functions books have traditionally served.

Coming as I do from remarkably hard-working parents, the question “Do I fear work?” has nagged at me for years. It nags at me because my parents are hard-working: their example both makes it essentially genetic that I’ll work harder than other people but as a son means I’ve learned their lesson and will be protective of my downtime.

Thus it means I get into the office first every day and I get an enormous amount of work done. But it also means I block my office webmail on my home computer and take all my vacation days.

This balance has one bad feature in particular. I tend to read books far less than I used to, because reading feels like work. When reading was work, like in grad school, I read a ton.

I dunno, just a fragment of a fuller thought somewhere out there. I just want to figure out why my leisure activities—working on Readsfeed for example—are so much like work, when actual play, whether it’s reading or bike riding or softball, are things I’d like to do but don’t.

I’ve been there only the past two, but what an amazing ten years CMS has had. For the past few months, I’ve been putting together a history of the program, which is available at cms.mit.edu and on Scribd:

CMS 10th Anniversary

On Friday we held an all-day symposium, featuring about 40 alums, this year’s ten graduate students, and dozens of guests from around MIT. But the highlight by far was on Thursday, when we welcomed back former CMS director Henry Jenkins for a Communications Forum, where he spoke of a career at MIT. I happened to be sitting directly behind the Dean, who briefly shrank to almost nothing when Henry’s first words were, “I hate this fucking place!”, not realizing he was citing the old MIT student slogan (since adopted by other institutions, including the military service academies).

Video and audio of everything from the anniversary will be available next week, but for now enjoy Henry’s amazing talk: http://cms.mit.edu/news/2010/04/podcast_communications_forum_j.php

Christine Lee Zilka, who gives the Internet a good name after helping my wife and me through a tough time without ever having met us, invited a bunch of writers to a literary blog relay. I couldn’t say no. The rules: one writer publishes a 250-word post on his or her web page and tags the next writer in the line-up. Each piece begins using the last line from the previous post linked to a central theme: “A Stranger Comes to Town.”

Post 1: Man and ghost stared at each other. (Wah-Ming Chang)
Post 2: The river, he noted, had darkened. (Jamey Hatley)
Post 3: I didn’t think you’d come. (Stephanie Denise Brown)
Post 4: Jim is here. I feel it. (Mine, below)

“Jim is here. I feel it would be good to go over the one ground rule before we bring him in,” one owner said to two fellow-owners. They stared through the skybox window at the morning shadows, down at two black crewman in khakis who raked the dirt behind second base. “The rule: No one agrees to anything he says. Serious. If he so much as says great day for a ballgame, you stare at him like he’s full of crap.”

The owner stepped back out. Ice cubes clinked in a pitcher. Outside, behind home plate, sprinklers marked the seconds with a thik-thik-thik.

The door opened.

“Ellison Jim, SuperFan Contest Winner,” the owner said through a half smile, “welcome to New York. These are my colleagues.”

They all shook hands, and the four sat down at an diamond-shaped table. Wearing torn jeans and—challenging his hosts’ very hospitality—a Red Sox windbreaker, Jim unfolded a doodle. He said it simply:

“My son and I had this idea, right? Instead of having $500 luxury seats behind home plate stay empty all game, what if you guys let fans show up half an hour before the first pitch and bid what they want to pay?”

The others stayed duly quiet. One finally sucked in through his teeth and said, “You want us to bid down our best seats so that a wholly-drunk, half-employed HVAC repairman can get his logo-painted gut on ESPN?”

Ellison Jim didn’t as much as blink.

“It’s this or nothing, am I right?” he said. “And while raking in another mil’, you’d get to be working class heroes to me and my kid.”

The entire relay team in order of appearance:

1. Wah-Ming Chang http://wmcisnowhere.wordpress.com/
2. Jamey Hatley http://jameyhatley.wordpress.com/
3. Stephanie Brown http://scififanatic.livejournal.com/
4. Andrew Whitacre http://fungibleconvictions.com/
5. Heather McDonald http://heathersalphabet.wordpress.com/
6. Christine Lee Zilka http://czilka.wordpress.com/
7. Jackson Bliss http://bluemosaicme.blogspot.com/
8. Jennifer Derilo (to be posted on http://czilka.wordpress.com/)
9. Alexander Chee http://koreanish.com/
10. Nova Ren Suma http://novaren.wordpress.com/

I came across that quote today, attributed to beloved former Baltimore Oriole John Lowenstein. Having listened at one point or another to color commentators from half the MLB teams out there, I’m ridiculously lucky to have lived with Lowenstein and, here in Boston, Jerry Remy.

But I found that quote after finally finding details of a Lowenstein story my dad once told me. It’s a classic.

Steiner’s signature moment in an Orioles uniform took place on June 19, 1980 at Memorial Stadium. Baltimore trailed the A’s 3-2 in the bottom of the seventh inning, but had two on with two outs against Oakland pitcher Rick Langford. Up stepped Lowenstein to pinch-hit, and he pulled a single to right-field to score Mark Corey with the tying run as Al Bumbry raced from first to third. Brother Lo’ tried to take second on the throw home, but A’s first baseman Jeff Newman cut the ball off and gunned it towards second base. The baseball bounced off Lowenstein, allowing Bumbry to score the go-ahead run! It proved to be the game-winner, as the Orioles went on to win 4-3.

But wait, Lowenstein stayed down, and replays indicated that the ball had hit him in the back of the neck. A stretcher came out to carry him off the field, and the concerned crowd of 15,491 murmured among themselves. Then, just before the stretcher descended into the Orioles dugout, Lowenstein sat up abruptly and raised both his fists. The fans went nuts! “I had it planned halfway to the dugout,” Steiner admitted later. “You have to acknowledge the cheers of the fans, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to come back out after the game.” He wasn’t hurt badly, and returned to the lineup exactly one week later with run-scoring singles in his first two at bats.

I was doing some research this morning on Gatsby’s family tree. It traces all the way back to an Amish industrial town on the Main river: Püp am Main.

Just remember, for all the focus on Jesus on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, he wasn’t alone on either day. He was one of many crucified by the Roman government, and as he died on Golgotha, two men died on either side of him. Despite the Christo-centrism of Easter, it took centuries for him to be widely recognized as a) the son of God and b) the son of God who was unjustly killed for what amounted to sedition. Instead, on the day he died, he was to Romans just a criminal—and to a small group of friends an inspirational leader.

The point being: anyone can lead the life Christ led during the three years of his ministry. Being Christian isn’t a precondition for being kind. Believing in God isn’t necessary for selflessness. All that’s needed is a sincere belief that your actions have an effect on the world around you.

Wife went to western Mass. yesterday for a day-long workshop. Returned with these:

Available year-round at Atkins Farms, 1150 West Street, Amherst, MA

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You yell from one room to the other, to your husband, “I was just talking to my mother on the phone. We found out our family history is totally different than what we thought. Our name was changed. My last name is made up. My great-grandfather was actually Polish and not Irish and changed his name to be able to get a job. God. I’m stunned. We’re all stunned. I’m not sure who I am now.”

You hear him yell back, “So, like, where are my genes?”

“Exactly!” you say. You start to continue the conversation in depth as you walk into the other room. You see him folding the laundry.

“The new button-fly ones,” he says. “They didn’t make it into the wash. Now, what were you saying?”

You punch him in the back of the head. Because he’s too awesome.