The story behind me and this song....
About ten years ago, my friend Scott starting sending me music by Robyn Hitchcock, someone whom prior to that point I'd never listened to. I was attracted to many of his tunes (I loved "Viva Sea-Tac!" especially), but I couldn't say that I became a major fan. Then, in 2001, Hitchcock reunited with some members of his old band The Soft Boys, and they hit the road, including a gig in Washington DC, where we were living at the time. Scott bought Melissa and I tickets to the show, as a gift, and we went--and unfortunately were underwhelmed. Not a terrible show, but not one we could get into; it seemed to us as though Hitchcock and Kimberly Rew wanted to play like they were still 20-something punks, and we didn't care for it. Were we showing our age? I suppose. Anyway, that kind of put a damper on future encounters with Hitchcock's work. Fast forward to 2005 or so, when I was compiling a bunch of music which Scott had sent me over the years onto a single cd. While doing so, I listened to "Mr. Kennedy," a tune Hitchcock had written and recorded for the 2002 Soft Boys album Nextdoorland which came out of that aforementioned tour. I was absolutely transfixed. This is, I thought then and still think, a simply brilliant song--much of the power comes from Hitchcock's and Rew's guitar work, plainly, but still, the lyrics were stunning: a rock and roller, in the midst of a bus tour, talking with the driver (the titular "Mr. Kennedy"; Hitchcock discusses the song's origin here), and discovering a particular kind of quotidian grace and mystery in the everydayness of their life on the road. As a mixture of the profound and artistic in the midst of the banality of touring, it does everything Jackson Browne's "The Load-Out/Stay" does, and more.
Here's the thing: I'd listened to this song before, probably several times, without it really ever impacting me. In fact, I'd heard the song live at that DC concert; Scott actually tracked down a bootleg of it for me, which is awesome (both his tracking it down and the recording itself). Funny how it is something can wash right over you at one point of your life, and at another seem like a tremendous work of art, isn't it? But maybe that's the mystique of pop music right there.
Coming into Harrisburg
Never seen a body look so tense
Tell me Mr. Kennedy
Have you ever seen the clouds so dense?
Coming into Cleveland
Riding in the van with Sebadoh
Tell me Mr. Kennedy
Have you ever seen the clouds so low?
Maybe it'll rain
Maybe it'll rain tonight
Maybe it'll rain
Maybe it'll rain tonight
Coming into Paradise
Thinking that I must have been here once
Me and Mr. Kennedy
Haven't seen a blade of grass in months
Maybe it'll rain
Maybe it'll rain tonight
Maybe it'll rain
Maybe it'll rain tonight
Here it comes
Here it comes again
Here she comes here she comes here she comes
Coming into Pittsburgh
Dreaming of a thousand open shops
Me and Mr. Kennedy
Stretching out to catch the first few drops
Tell me Mr. Kennedy
Can you make it rain?
Can you make it rain tonight?
Maybe it'll rain
Maybe it'll rain tonight
Maybe it'll rain
Maybe it'll rain
Friday, July 27, 2007
Sunday, July 22, 2007
It Ends
That's a pretty pretentious title for a review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, isn't it? Yes, it is--but then, all of us got at least a little pretentious in regards to the Harry Potter books, didn't we? Sometimes? Alan? Tim? Or maybe it was just me. And maybe all that pretentiousness was generated by my head, never the books themselves. Because I must admit it--I finished Deathly Hallows at about 9:45am Saturday morning (got home from the bookstore at about 1am, read until 4am, tried to sleep for an hour, then got back up and read until I was done), and the very first coherent judgment I could come to was "Huh. A children's story after all."
[From this point on, spoilers abound. You've been warned.]
Please note: I am not saying "children's story" with anything like a sneering or condescending tone; I am not saying that Deathly Hallows reveals the story of Harry Potter to be simplistic or childish or immature. Far from it! But I am saying that, somehow or another, over the last two years--led along, I suppose, by my own outrageously detailed predictions, which of course proved to be almost entirely wrong--I talked myself into seeing these books...differently than I had any right to. I read too much that was epic into them, too much that was mythological and psychological, too much that was adult. I wrote before, both here on my blog and on many comments on many others' posts over the months, that if Deathly Hallows turned out to be a book in which Harry and friends have to run through one more puzzle, figure out one more trick, reveal one more twist in Snape's character, learn one more lesson, all to find Dumbledore proudly waiting for them one more time at the end--in others words, if it turned out to be one more step in a long bildungsroman, a bildungsroman that I was convinced had come to an end in the last book--then I would be immensely disappointed. And...well, it did turn out to be a story with new puzzles for Harry, Ron, and Hermione to solve (figuring out the mysterious gifts left for them by Dumbledore), another trick for them to negotiate (the mystery and temptation posed by the Deathly Hallows), one more surprise revelation about Snape (though admittedly this was the biggest of them all), one more difficult lesson taught (Harry's realization that he had to die), and yes, it even had Dumbledore: not just--as we learn at the end--having orchestrated the recovery of the Sword of Gryffindor and much more via Snape from his half-life in his portrait in the headmaster's office, but even showing up for a heart-to-heart with Harry in the afterlife! And yet...I'm not disappointed at all. In fact, I loved it, and turned the last page aching for more.
Surprisingly enough, I should have let the movies call me to my senses. When Melissa and I went to see "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" the Friday before last (just last week! how the past day and a half have seemed to stretch time...), we walked out of theater thrilled. No, of course it's not some cinematic masterpiece, but it is a great, exciting, affecting fantasy film, and we delighted in rehearsing our favorite scenes. But then, just as quickly we were talking about all the great scenes they left out, all the ways in which they failed to "properly" advance the story, all the misfires in their adaptation. ("As usual, they aren't providing what the story requires to make sense of Snape!"--that sort of thing.) As I turned it over in my head, I could only see more and more holes. But then I wondered: if it, like the other films, had manifestly failed, why did I like it so much? Low expectations? No...it is genuinely a good film on its own terms. And that's when it struck me. What are its own terms? Why, the story of Harry, of course--the Boy Who Lived, the boy who is blessed and cursed and destined to love and fight and lead. A hero, in other words. A boy hero, who must grow to be a man. "Order of the Phoenix" gave us a rousing, powerful, heroic final (yet we know far from truly final) temptation and battle, with everything resting on Harry; it was fantastic. The filmmakers (under J.K. Rowling's watchful eye, perhaps?) have never forgotten, whatever their other mistakes, that this is Harry's story. Me...well, let's say that I probably sometimes let that slip my mind.
And so, of course Harry would live; of course he would go beyond but then come right back again. He's the young hero, the one who by being willing to accept his own death, by growing up, surprisingly (or is it, really?) undoes the last sure magic keeping Voldemort, the enemy of all life, himself alive! No tragic, overarching, transhistorical doom here--Harry is not Frodo, a man who must unknowingly ruin himself for the sake of something larger than himself. Neither is Dumbledore Gandalf, an awesomely powerful agent of those larger things, who is nonetheless himself also in the thick of the battle. No, Dumbledore is the father figure who plans and hopes and risks the best way he knows how, the teacher who must plot and trick and sacrifice so his students can learn what they may and then teach themselves the rest. But also unlike Gandalf, Dumbledore is like an ordinary father and teacher in other ways: a man whose knowledge is limited, who is haunted by his own past, his own failures, his own pre-occupations, who is, at best, only guessing (though his guesses are usually good!). Gandalf could never have a brother like Aberforth, and why would he need one? J.R.R. Tolkien was charting the passing of an age; such stories do not require wizards with existential dimensions. But Rowling has charted the arc of a boy as he grew to become a prophesied hero. His most proper parallel (and this has been noted by many, though never, I think, to my embarrassment, by me) is Taran, from Lloyd Alexander's classic Prydain stories. A boy in love, a boy who doubts, a boy with confused yet fiery ambitions, a boy destined to be high king....but only if he can grow and learn the lessons and accept the help and show the courage he must. Which he did (of course he did; it's a bildungsroman, after all!)--and so did Harry, thus doing exactly the growing up which the books had intended of him all along.
Does that forgive all? Not at all. The comparison with Alexander's compact, tight Prydain novels is a good one: if we were not, in the end, to be led to an epic clash of the best and worst of the wizarding and Muggle worlds and the resulting transformations (and while that door remains open, there is nothing in the final chapter or the epilogue of Deathly Hallows to suggest that much is fundamentally going to change--twenty years later they're still sorting people into houses and inspiring rivalries at Hogwarts, for heaven's sake!), but rather, to be led to a concluding series of tests and choices in the life of the Chosen One, and the hard-won victory which follows, then Rowling really could have and should have written shorter (dare I say less "pretentious"?) books! Yet I bite my tongue in even saying that...because if Rowling is anything, she's a charmer of Dickensian proportions. Her scenes, her characters...gosh I wanted more! I wanted to see Ron and Hermionie abruptly decide to get married while on the run with Harry (dude, if you're living practically alone in a tent for weeks and weeks...). I wanted Regulus Black himself to pop up, somehow or somewhere. I wanted Harry to twist the Resurrection Stone one more time, and have that final (necessary, I insist, necessary!) face to face with Snape, in the presence of the ghosts of Snape's greatest enemies and his only love. I wanted to see Horace Slughorn lay it on the line to the Slytherin students, shut Pansy Parkinson up, and demonstrate (as Phineas Nigellus insisted) that there's a real reason for Slytherin House after all. So, ultimately, Rowling the author puts my thinking at cross-purposes: she has given me a work of fiction that in its themes and intentions are really much simpler (though no less worthy and powerful on their own terms for all that) than all the plots and points of view she has loaded her books up with implied, with imbalanced results...and yet contained within all that pretentiousness was stuff and more stuff, not one bit of which I'd want to lose.
Okay, enough with all my ruminations on the big themes. How about my predictions? Well, I was totally wrong about Harry and Snape and Luna and Viktor Krum and Azkaban and the Order of the Phoenix and the Malfoys and Hogwarts, 99% wrong about Percy and Peter Pettigrew and Slughorn and pretty much everything else. I suppose I could claim a few small, small accuracies here and there, but let's face it: I completely blew it. Oh well, no future in teaching Divination for me. How about the good bits in the book? Well, there are no less than three truly spectacular set pieces: the infiltration of the Ministry of Magic, the gloriously wild break-in to (and break-out of) Gringotts, and of course the Battle of Hogwarts--which blew every previous battle in the book away, and intentionally so, as this was Rowling's big chance to bring everyone on for a final bow. (Yes! Percy and Charlie Weasley! The old Quidditch crowd, Angelina Johnson and Oliver Wood! Neville's grandmother! Sir Cadagon! Bane! Buckbeak! Firenze! Kreacher leading an army of house elves! The Molly Weasley-Bellatrix Lestrange showdown, complete with a hat-tip to Sigourney Weaver in Aliens! And Colin Creevy....damn, why did poor Colin's death hit me like fist to the stomach? To say nothing of Fred, Remus, and Tonks!) And that leaves out the escapes from Malfoy Manor (Dobby! You were a free elf, indeed!) and from Nagini at Godric's Hollow. And if battles aren't your thing...well, the departure and return of Ron in chapters 15 and 19, climaxing with Ron's emotionally shattering confrontation with the Horcrux (the only time in reading Deathly Hallows when I did not merely sniffle and tear up, but truly wept), not only provided a payoff to all those who had speculated that, before the end, the one member of the Big Three to whom Rowling had given truly ordinary fears and weaknesses would be forced by Voldemort to face them openly, but also proved to me that if she ever decides to try her hand at adult dramatic or romantic fiction, she definitely has the chops. And how about the comedy? Not much in the middle and latter parts of the book, but the wedding, before everything went to hell, was as witty as all get out (I loved George's suggestion that he teach their new veela cousins "English customs"). And as for quiet pathos, only the hardest heart could fail to be moved, I think, by Rowling's description of the meeting of Harry and Neville before Harry left Hogwarts to meet Voldemort and his death. ("We're all going to keep fighting, Harry. You know that?") So yes--leaving aside what kind of book it was, and whether it should have been or could have been a different book, what it was, was...well, not perfect. But very, very, very fine.
And what next for all of us who gulped down Deathly Hallows madly, desperate to find out how it ends, and now find ourselves satisfied yet sad, wondering about what might have been and making our peace with a story now done? I wandered a bit around the house Saturday morning, exhausted and elated and a little empty--and then into my head popped the final lines of Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, a youth fiction classic that reflects upon deep truths as powerfully as...well, as Alexander's Prydain and now Rowling's Potter books do, too. Milo, the book's young hero, having had a wonderful, dangerous adventure just the day before, rushes home from school to take another trip through the Tollbooth which had mysterious appeared in his bedroom--but instead finds:
[I]n its place was [a] bright blue envelope, which was addressed simply: "FOR MILO, WHO NOW KNOWS THE WAY."
He opened it quickly and read:
Dear Milo,
You have now completed your trip, courtesy of the Phantom Tollbooth. We trust that everything was satisfactory, and hope you understand why we had to come and collect it. You see, there are so many other boys and girls waiting to use it, too.
It's true that there are many lands you've still to visit (some of which are not even on the map) and wonderful things to see (that no one has yet imagined), but we're quite sure that if you really want to, you'll find a way to reach them all by yourself.
Yours truly,
The signature was blurred and couldn't be read.
Thank you, J.K. Rowling, for showing us the way to, if not the best place ever, then at least a very, very good place indeed. And now that you've taken us all the way to the end, well, we've got seven hardback novels on our shelves (and Megan has a bunch of paperback novels of her own!), to help us get back there on our own--though you know, if you ever decide to come back and add a little more to the world you've made, please don't let this benediction stand in your way!
[From this point on, spoilers abound. You've been warned.]
Please note: I am not saying "children's story" with anything like a sneering or condescending tone; I am not saying that Deathly Hallows reveals the story of Harry Potter to be simplistic or childish or immature. Far from it! But I am saying that, somehow or another, over the last two years--led along, I suppose, by my own outrageously detailed predictions, which of course proved to be almost entirely wrong--I talked myself into seeing these books...differently than I had any right to. I read too much that was epic into them, too much that was mythological and psychological, too much that was adult. I wrote before, both here on my blog and on many comments on many others' posts over the months, that if Deathly Hallows turned out to be a book in which Harry and friends have to run through one more puzzle, figure out one more trick, reveal one more twist in Snape's character, learn one more lesson, all to find Dumbledore proudly waiting for them one more time at the end--in others words, if it turned out to be one more step in a long bildungsroman, a bildungsroman that I was convinced had come to an end in the last book--then I would be immensely disappointed. And...well, it did turn out to be a story with new puzzles for Harry, Ron, and Hermione to solve (figuring out the mysterious gifts left for them by Dumbledore), another trick for them to negotiate (the mystery and temptation posed by the Deathly Hallows), one more surprise revelation about Snape (though admittedly this was the biggest of them all), one more difficult lesson taught (Harry's realization that he had to die), and yes, it even had Dumbledore: not just--as we learn at the end--having orchestrated the recovery of the Sword of Gryffindor and much more via Snape from his half-life in his portrait in the headmaster's office, but even showing up for a heart-to-heart with Harry in the afterlife! And yet...I'm not disappointed at all. In fact, I loved it, and turned the last page aching for more.
Surprisingly enough, I should have let the movies call me to my senses. When Melissa and I went to see "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" the Friday before last (just last week! how the past day and a half have seemed to stretch time...), we walked out of theater thrilled. No, of course it's not some cinematic masterpiece, but it is a great, exciting, affecting fantasy film, and we delighted in rehearsing our favorite scenes. But then, just as quickly we were talking about all the great scenes they left out, all the ways in which they failed to "properly" advance the story, all the misfires in their adaptation. ("As usual, they aren't providing what the story requires to make sense of Snape!"--that sort of thing.) As I turned it over in my head, I could only see more and more holes. But then I wondered: if it, like the other films, had manifestly failed, why did I like it so much? Low expectations? No...it is genuinely a good film on its own terms. And that's when it struck me. What are its own terms? Why, the story of Harry, of course--the Boy Who Lived, the boy who is blessed and cursed and destined to love and fight and lead. A hero, in other words. A boy hero, who must grow to be a man. "Order of the Phoenix" gave us a rousing, powerful, heroic final (yet we know far from truly final) temptation and battle, with everything resting on Harry; it was fantastic. The filmmakers (under J.K. Rowling's watchful eye, perhaps?) have never forgotten, whatever their other mistakes, that this is Harry's story. Me...well, let's say that I probably sometimes let that slip my mind.
And so, of course Harry would live; of course he would go beyond but then come right back again. He's the young hero, the one who by being willing to accept his own death, by growing up, surprisingly (or is it, really?) undoes the last sure magic keeping Voldemort, the enemy of all life, himself alive! No tragic, overarching, transhistorical doom here--Harry is not Frodo, a man who must unknowingly ruin himself for the sake of something larger than himself. Neither is Dumbledore Gandalf, an awesomely powerful agent of those larger things, who is nonetheless himself also in the thick of the battle. No, Dumbledore is the father figure who plans and hopes and risks the best way he knows how, the teacher who must plot and trick and sacrifice so his students can learn what they may and then teach themselves the rest. But also unlike Gandalf, Dumbledore is like an ordinary father and teacher in other ways: a man whose knowledge is limited, who is haunted by his own past, his own failures, his own pre-occupations, who is, at best, only guessing (though his guesses are usually good!). Gandalf could never have a brother like Aberforth, and why would he need one? J.R.R. Tolkien was charting the passing of an age; such stories do not require wizards with existential dimensions. But Rowling has charted the arc of a boy as he grew to become a prophesied hero. His most proper parallel (and this has been noted by many, though never, I think, to my embarrassment, by me) is Taran, from Lloyd Alexander's classic Prydain stories. A boy in love, a boy who doubts, a boy with confused yet fiery ambitions, a boy destined to be high king....but only if he can grow and learn the lessons and accept the help and show the courage he must. Which he did (of course he did; it's a bildungsroman, after all!)--and so did Harry, thus doing exactly the growing up which the books had intended of him all along.
Does that forgive all? Not at all. The comparison with Alexander's compact, tight Prydain novels is a good one: if we were not, in the end, to be led to an epic clash of the best and worst of the wizarding and Muggle worlds and the resulting transformations (and while that door remains open, there is nothing in the final chapter or the epilogue of Deathly Hallows to suggest that much is fundamentally going to change--twenty years later they're still sorting people into houses and inspiring rivalries at Hogwarts, for heaven's sake!), but rather, to be led to a concluding series of tests and choices in the life of the Chosen One, and the hard-won victory which follows, then Rowling really could have and should have written shorter (dare I say less "pretentious"?) books! Yet I bite my tongue in even saying that...because if Rowling is anything, she's a charmer of Dickensian proportions. Her scenes, her characters...gosh I wanted more! I wanted to see Ron and Hermionie abruptly decide to get married while on the run with Harry (dude, if you're living practically alone in a tent for weeks and weeks...). I wanted Regulus Black himself to pop up, somehow or somewhere. I wanted Harry to twist the Resurrection Stone one more time, and have that final (necessary, I insist, necessary!) face to face with Snape, in the presence of the ghosts of Snape's greatest enemies and his only love. I wanted to see Horace Slughorn lay it on the line to the Slytherin students, shut Pansy Parkinson up, and demonstrate (as Phineas Nigellus insisted) that there's a real reason for Slytherin House after all. So, ultimately, Rowling the author puts my thinking at cross-purposes: she has given me a work of fiction that in its themes and intentions are really much simpler (though no less worthy and powerful on their own terms for all that) than all the plots and points of view she has loaded her books up with implied, with imbalanced results...and yet contained within all that pretentiousness was stuff and more stuff, not one bit of which I'd want to lose.
Okay, enough with all my ruminations on the big themes. How about my predictions? Well, I was totally wrong about Harry and Snape and Luna and Viktor Krum and Azkaban and the Order of the Phoenix and the Malfoys and Hogwarts, 99% wrong about Percy and Peter Pettigrew and Slughorn and pretty much everything else. I suppose I could claim a few small, small accuracies here and there, but let's face it: I completely blew it. Oh well, no future in teaching Divination for me. How about the good bits in the book? Well, there are no less than three truly spectacular set pieces: the infiltration of the Ministry of Magic, the gloriously wild break-in to (and break-out of) Gringotts, and of course the Battle of Hogwarts--which blew every previous battle in the book away, and intentionally so, as this was Rowling's big chance to bring everyone on for a final bow. (Yes! Percy and Charlie Weasley! The old Quidditch crowd, Angelina Johnson and Oliver Wood! Neville's grandmother! Sir Cadagon! Bane! Buckbeak! Firenze! Kreacher leading an army of house elves! The Molly Weasley-Bellatrix Lestrange showdown, complete with a hat-tip to Sigourney Weaver in Aliens! And Colin Creevy....damn, why did poor Colin's death hit me like fist to the stomach? To say nothing of Fred, Remus, and Tonks!) And that leaves out the escapes from Malfoy Manor (Dobby! You were a free elf, indeed!) and from Nagini at Godric's Hollow. And if battles aren't your thing...well, the departure and return of Ron in chapters 15 and 19, climaxing with Ron's emotionally shattering confrontation with the Horcrux (the only time in reading Deathly Hallows when I did not merely sniffle and tear up, but truly wept), not only provided a payoff to all those who had speculated that, before the end, the one member of the Big Three to whom Rowling had given truly ordinary fears and weaknesses would be forced by Voldemort to face them openly, but also proved to me that if she ever decides to try her hand at adult dramatic or romantic fiction, she definitely has the chops. And how about the comedy? Not much in the middle and latter parts of the book, but the wedding, before everything went to hell, was as witty as all get out (I loved George's suggestion that he teach their new veela cousins "English customs"). And as for quiet pathos, only the hardest heart could fail to be moved, I think, by Rowling's description of the meeting of Harry and Neville before Harry left Hogwarts to meet Voldemort and his death. ("We're all going to keep fighting, Harry. You know that?") So yes--leaving aside what kind of book it was, and whether it should have been or could have been a different book, what it was, was...well, not perfect. But very, very, very fine.
And what next for all of us who gulped down Deathly Hallows madly, desperate to find out how it ends, and now find ourselves satisfied yet sad, wondering about what might have been and making our peace with a story now done? I wandered a bit around the house Saturday morning, exhausted and elated and a little empty--and then into my head popped the final lines of Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, a youth fiction classic that reflects upon deep truths as powerfully as...well, as Alexander's Prydain and now Rowling's Potter books do, too. Milo, the book's young hero, having had a wonderful, dangerous adventure just the day before, rushes home from school to take another trip through the Tollbooth which had mysterious appeared in his bedroom--but instead finds:
[I]n its place was [a] bright blue envelope, which was addressed simply: "FOR MILO, WHO NOW KNOWS THE WAY."
He opened it quickly and read:
Dear Milo,
You have now completed your trip, courtesy of the Phantom Tollbooth. We trust that everything was satisfactory, and hope you understand why we had to come and collect it. You see, there are so many other boys and girls waiting to use it, too.
It's true that there are many lands you've still to visit (some of which are not even on the map) and wonderful things to see (that no one has yet imagined), but we're quite sure that if you really want to, you'll find a way to reach them all by yourself.
Yours truly,
The signature was blurred and couldn't be read.
Thank you, J.K. Rowling, for showing us the way to, if not the best place ever, then at least a very, very good place indeed. And now that you've taken us all the way to the end, well, we've got seven hardback novels on our shelves (and Megan has a bunch of paperback novels of her own!), to help us get back there on our own--though you know, if you ever decide to come back and add a little more to the world you've made, please don't let this benediction stand in your way!
Friday, July 20, 2007
Friday PSTSS: "More I Believe"
This is from The Proclaimers' 1994 Hit the Highway, my favorite album by the Scottish R&B/folk/gospel/rockabilly duo. Their previous album, Sunshine on Leith, was the one with their big American hit, "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)," but their follow-up surpasses that earlier album on I think every level--musically, production values, and especially lyrically. In fact, it's nearly impossible for me to pick out one pop song from this album to focus on, as so much of it is so rich and thoughtful and fun: "Let's Get Married" is one of the wiser love songs every written; "Follow the Money" is a high-charged ditty about shrugging off all that "mystical Celtic bull" and getting down to earning a living; "Shout Shout" and "Don't Turn Out Like Your Mother" are riotous accounts of a, shall we say, rather tense relationship; and "The Light" is a terrific, at times bitter, attack on those who find easy religious comfort in the smooth words of professional preachers. But for this week, I'm focusing on another Christian song from the album, the only serious rock and roll song I've ever heard which takes a Calvinist line on the sovereignty of God, the works-grace dispute, and the final judgment. (Which, really, shouldn't be the case: there's a lot of room for righteous, Job-like, rock-and-roll defiance in the context of that particular kind of faith.) I've heard the Proclaimers sing this one live, and I guarantee you--contemplative piety is not what comes to mind! All the better for the song though, I say.
The life that I've been living
From the day I first drew breath
Has been my way of forgetting
I'm on the journey to my death
You make my soul rise up
You make my eyes to see
When I place my faith in you
And I lose my belief in me
The less I believe in me
The more I believe in thee
The less I believe in me
The more I believe in thee
I don't believe in beads or crystals
Instant karma or mother earth
I don't believe that what I think
Makes any difference to what I'm worth
I don't believe in reincarnation
I'm not coming back as a flower
I don't bow my head to kings or priests
'Cos I believe in your higher power
The less I believe in me
The more I believe in thee
The less I believe in me
The more I believe in thee
Oh you've given me a plan
That I don't understand
'Cos I've wandered over half the world
But I've remained an ignorant man
One thing that I know
Is when the final bell tolls
Human love won't be enough
Good deeds can't save my soul
Well I'm not afraid of dying
But I am afraid of you
Because you hear me when I'm lying
And you see the things I do
So the hands go round the clock
As the light goes from the room
And I can't help thinking to myself
I'm going to find out much to soon
Oh you've given me a plan
That I don't understand
'Cos I've wandered over half the world
But I've remained an ignorant man
One thing that I know
Is when the final bell tolls
Human love won't be enough
Good deeds can't save my soul
I believe
I believe
I believe
I believe
The life that I've been living
From the day I first drew breath
Has been my way of forgetting
I'm on the journey to my death
You make my soul rise up
You make my eyes to see
When I place my faith in you
And I lose my belief in me
The less I believe in me
The more I believe in thee
The less I believe in me
The more I believe in thee
I don't believe in beads or crystals
Instant karma or mother earth
I don't believe that what I think
Makes any difference to what I'm worth
I don't believe in reincarnation
I'm not coming back as a flower
I don't bow my head to kings or priests
'Cos I believe in your higher power
The less I believe in me
The more I believe in thee
The less I believe in me
The more I believe in thee
Oh you've given me a plan
That I don't understand
'Cos I've wandered over half the world
But I've remained an ignorant man
One thing that I know
Is when the final bell tolls
Human love won't be enough
Good deeds can't save my soul
Well I'm not afraid of dying
But I am afraid of you
Because you hear me when I'm lying
And you see the things I do
So the hands go round the clock
As the light goes from the room
And I can't help thinking to myself
I'm going to find out much to soon
Oh you've given me a plan
That I don't understand
'Cos I've wandered over half the world
But I've remained an ignorant man
One thing that I know
Is when the final bell tolls
Human love won't be enough
Good deeds can't save my soul
I believe
I believe
I believe
I believe
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
My Second-To-Last Harry Potter Post Ever
What more is there to say? As I sit here in my office, there is just under 3 and 1/2 days left until I can get my hands on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I think it is quite possible I will not sleep at all Friday night, preferring to read straight through until dawn Saturday morning. I've done that before, working all night at a desk, reading, but it's been years; my body may not be up to it any longer. We'll see.
What more is there to say? I could talk about Harry Potter and my family, I suppose. I'll be going with Megan, our oldest daughter, to a book-release party--a "Deathly Hallows Ball"--at our local mall's Border's Books and Music (yes, I know, not an independent bookstore, but the only one in town that will be carrying Deathly Hallows is all the way over on the east side, and Megan wanted to see some friends of hers here) this Friday. I could certainly take some time to talk about her, adding new details to my last "Pottermania" report from nearly three years ago. She started out a seven-year-old reader, outstripping her classmates, wanting something more to feed her imagination, yet not really knowing at that point what feeding one's imagination meant; she now approaches Deathly Hallows a skilled reader of nearly eleven years old, having read and reread and watched and rewatched all the books and films so far, but having furthermore mastered Pullman and Hale and Lewis and McCaffrey and Tolkien and Riordan and Dahl and McKinley and Alexander and Levine and a dozen more authors of youth (and not-so-youthful) fantasy and fiction. And her sisters our copying her, trying to catch up. Yet our second-oldest, Caitlyn, knows that this is an experience she's missing out on, as much as she tries (she's kind of at the frustrating point Megan was at, back in the summer of 2004: she's had read to her Sorcerer's Stone through Prisoner of Azkaban, but isn't ready to go further), and it saddens her; Megan, for her part, has absorbed the uniqueness of this fan moment, as we all wait--adults and children alike--like New Yorkers on a late-19th-century dock, yelling at ships as they come in, asking the passengers what the latest twist has been in whichever of Charles Dickens' serialized masterpieces were appearing at the time. Megan, like millions of others, will remember herself as a "Potter child," and that may be something worth talking about.
What more is there to say? I mean, when popes and critics and readers of every stripe have had their crack at the books, condemning them and praising them and investigating them from all sorts of angles, one more interpretation of Harry Potter does become wearisome. The bitter or condescending or oh-so-contrarian positions taken by those who like to act like they are--or who honestly believe themselves to be--too good for or too old for or too educated for or too "realistic" for Harry Potter don't particularly interest me; it's a story, people, a good and even, in some ways, great one, and if you can't agree, well, then leave well enough alone. The only critical readings of Harry Potter that I've ever learned anything from are those who assess it in terms of (im)moral instruction; and I've learned things from them because, mostly, their accusations have not been reflected in my own or my wife's or my children's experiences with the books, and I want to try to understand where they're coming from. I've said my piece about the morality and the modernity (and the compatibility of the two) of the Harry Potter books before here. Perhaps, particularly if the J.K. Rowling takes us into her understanding of love and death and the soul the way I have come to suspect she may in Deathly Hallows, I may have more about the mystery of Rowling's faith after I've finished reading it; but then again, maybe not.
What more is there to say? I suppose I could go into prediction mode. But I've already done as much of that as I care to. Thanks to Alan Jacobs and several others across the internet, that old post of mine--which Alan kindly titled my "Great Harry Potter Post"--has received more traffic than any blog post (indeed, probably more readers period) than anything I've ever written before; and really, when you've gone so very public with predictions that detailed, the principled thing is to let them stand or fall on their own, and be proclaimed a true or false prophet, rather than hedging your claims as the reveal draws near. And oh, yes, I could hedge: I've rethought the roles of Kreacher, Alberforth, and some other secondary characters, I've come up with some new speculation based on the covers, and so forth. But the time for speculation is passed, I say. All I ask now is for an ending that thrills and inspires and entertains. Because, really, in the end, that's what it has all been about.
What more is there to say? Why, my book review, of course, just like the last one. And like the last one, you can probably expect it by Saturday night--unless I'm too wasted, in which case, Sunday, at the latest. Meanwhile, I see you in line. Megan and I will be the ones with the scarfs.
What more is there to say? I could talk about Harry Potter and my family, I suppose. I'll be going with Megan, our oldest daughter, to a book-release party--a "Deathly Hallows Ball"--at our local mall's Border's Books and Music (yes, I know, not an independent bookstore, but the only one in town that will be carrying Deathly Hallows is all the way over on the east side, and Megan wanted to see some friends of hers here) this Friday. I could certainly take some time to talk about her, adding new details to my last "Pottermania" report from nearly three years ago. She started out a seven-year-old reader, outstripping her classmates, wanting something more to feed her imagination, yet not really knowing at that point what feeding one's imagination meant; she now approaches Deathly Hallows a skilled reader of nearly eleven years old, having read and reread and watched and rewatched all the books and films so far, but having furthermore mastered Pullman and Hale and Lewis and McCaffrey and Tolkien and Riordan and Dahl and McKinley and Alexander and Levine and a dozen more authors of youth (and not-so-youthful) fantasy and fiction. And her sisters our copying her, trying to catch up. Yet our second-oldest, Caitlyn, knows that this is an experience she's missing out on, as much as she tries (she's kind of at the frustrating point Megan was at, back in the summer of 2004: she's had read to her Sorcerer's Stone through Prisoner of Azkaban, but isn't ready to go further), and it saddens her; Megan, for her part, has absorbed the uniqueness of this fan moment, as we all wait--adults and children alike--like New Yorkers on a late-19th-century dock, yelling at ships as they come in, asking the passengers what the latest twist has been in whichever of Charles Dickens' serialized masterpieces were appearing at the time. Megan, like millions of others, will remember herself as a "Potter child," and that may be something worth talking about.
What more is there to say? I mean, when popes and critics and readers of every stripe have had their crack at the books, condemning them and praising them and investigating them from all sorts of angles, one more interpretation of Harry Potter does become wearisome. The bitter or condescending or oh-so-contrarian positions taken by those who like to act like they are--or who honestly believe themselves to be--too good for or too old for or too educated for or too "realistic" for Harry Potter don't particularly interest me; it's a story, people, a good and even, in some ways, great one, and if you can't agree, well, then leave well enough alone. The only critical readings of Harry Potter that I've ever learned anything from are those who assess it in terms of (im)moral instruction; and I've learned things from them because, mostly, their accusations have not been reflected in my own or my wife's or my children's experiences with the books, and I want to try to understand where they're coming from. I've said my piece about the morality and the modernity (and the compatibility of the two) of the Harry Potter books before here. Perhaps, particularly if the J.K. Rowling takes us into her understanding of love and death and the soul the way I have come to suspect she may in Deathly Hallows, I may have more about the mystery of Rowling's faith after I've finished reading it; but then again, maybe not.
What more is there to say? I suppose I could go into prediction mode. But I've already done as much of that as I care to. Thanks to Alan Jacobs and several others across the internet, that old post of mine--which Alan kindly titled my "Great Harry Potter Post"--has received more traffic than any blog post (indeed, probably more readers period) than anything I've ever written before; and really, when you've gone so very public with predictions that detailed, the principled thing is to let them stand or fall on their own, and be proclaimed a true or false prophet, rather than hedging your claims as the reveal draws near. And oh, yes, I could hedge: I've rethought the roles of Kreacher, Alberforth, and some other secondary characters, I've come up with some new speculation based on the covers, and so forth. But the time for speculation is passed, I say. All I ask now is for an ending that thrills and inspires and entertains. Because, really, in the end, that's what it has all been about.
What more is there to say? Why, my book review, of course, just like the last one. And like the last one, you can probably expect it by Saturday night--unless I'm too wasted, in which case, Sunday, at the latest. Meanwhile, I see you in line. Megan and I will be the ones with the scarfs.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Friday PSTSS: "I.T.H.O.T.M.O.A. (In The Halls Of The Malls Of America)"
For this Friday, yet another a cappella song, and yet another song about alienation and the modern economy...except this one is by The Bobs, an irrepressible--and peerless, I say--bunch of comedic jazz improvisers and vocalists; and this song, far from exploring the hopelessness which comes when the world passes one by, instead looks joyfully towards all the wonderful ways in which our local mall will serve our post-alienation needs. Sarcasm? Irony? Probably--but find and give this tune a listen anyway (from The Bobs' 1995 album, Plugged), and you'll find yourself dancing to the most delightfully upbeat paen to the salve of mindless consumerism ever written.
I want to fill that empty hole
My pockets are full but there's a hole in my soul
I need a purpose, but I don't know where to look
Then I go to the mall and I go shopping
Maybe I'm buying maybe "just looking"
I hope to find something, I don't know what it is
I wish I knew what I was searching for
In the halls of the malls of America
Something to love, something to adore
I.T.H.O.T.M.O. America
I need to wear the latest fashion
My look should move you to a fit of passion
I want an image, but I don't know what it is
I need to buy a new direction
Please have a sale on human connection
I shop for meaning still I don't know where it is
I wish I knew what I was searching for
In the halls of the malls of America
Something to love, something to adore
I.T.H.O.T.M.O. America
No one to help me, I'm safely enclosed
There's dance music booming -- mannequins posed
No outside weather, no traffic, no crime
Please take my money -- I'm just spending time
I wish I knew what I was searching for
In the halls of the malls of America
Something to love, something to adore
I.T.H.O.T.M.O. America
I want to fill that empty hole
My pockets are full but there's a hole in my soul
I need a purpose, but I don't know where to look
Then I go to the mall and I go shopping
Maybe I'm buying maybe "just looking"
I hope to find something, I don't know what it is
I wish I knew what I was searching for
In the halls of the malls of America
Something to love, something to adore
I.T.H.O.T.M.O. America
I need to wear the latest fashion
My look should move you to a fit of passion
I want an image, but I don't know what it is
I need to buy a new direction
Please have a sale on human connection
I shop for meaning still I don't know where it is
I wish I knew what I was searching for
In the halls of the malls of America
Something to love, something to adore
I.T.H.O.T.M.O. America
No one to help me, I'm safely enclosed
There's dance music booming -- mannequins posed
No outside weather, no traffic, no crime
Please take my money -- I'm just spending time
I wish I knew what I was searching for
In the halls of the malls of America
Something to love, something to adore
I.T.H.O.T.M.O. America
Casinos and the "Inevitability Argument"
So, as I just said below, once again I've been out of it for a while. I guess being hit by a bad flu bug one week followed by the July 4th holiday the next followed by needing to catch up from all that wasn't done the previous two will throw you off like that. I missed some major events that I would've liked to have blogged about (and maybe still will) during the past little while: the end of Tony Blair's premiership in Great Britain (I probably praised Blair more during the early months of this blog than any other political leader, living or dead); the collapse of the immigration bill in Congress (the issue of immigration and assimilation also having been something I discussed much in the past); and a few more. All big-news items, to be sure. But today, I want to write about something local.
Last April, after a lot of contentious debate and not a few late-night legislative shenanigans, the Kansas legislature approved, and Governor Sebelius signed, a bill which would get the state of Kansas further into the business of gambling. We're already in the gambling business to what I would consider a foolish extent: the Kansas Lottery was established way back in 1986, and there has long been pressure to expand the sort of games which the Lottery offers (according to the state constitution, all gambling facilities in Kansas must be owned and operated by the state, and that means through the Lottery Commission--though the exact meaning of "owned and operated" has been subject to serious dispute). It is this "pressure"--those forces that make the need to expand state-owned gambling seem compelling, a high priority, popular, even "inevitable"--that I want to explore, as Sedgwick County voters prepare for an August 7th vote as to whether or not to give approval for the state to accept various investors' bids and build a casino or install more slot machines (or both, or neither) here in Wichita.
I'm opposed to the effort to build casinos in Sedgwick County, and plan to vote no on August 7th. Those who have read my blog for a while probably could have predicted such a vote on my part: it's not like I have a record of shying away from proposals concerning the common good which shade over into the moralistic. Personally, I think most forms of gambling involve both citizens and the state itself in habits and practices that are frequently addictive, often socially destructive, and always corrupting (morally, to be sure, but also financially). Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, gambling in almost every context imaginable ends up being profoundly unfair in its civic impact, as it is nearly always the case that those most affected (in terms of wasted incomes, loss of property values, family breakdown, an increased criminal presence, and so forth) by the arrival of gambling are poor and minority members of the population. I'll gladly admit that there is a hierarchy of harms which come along with different forms of gambling, and that sometimes, in certain circumstances, a case can be made that the (usually unpredictable and in the end rather small, but still occasionally real) economic benefits and other incidental virtues associated with some types of gambling (the job opportunities, the potential to renovate areas of urban blight, etc.) are worth the social harms which they bring along with them. If this vote was solely about expanded gambling opportunities for the sake of , say, helping out existing horse and dog racing venues in Kansas, I would be more hesitant with my vote, despite my dislike of slot machines, because I acknowledge some value in the act of racing; and if this vote gave us the option to choose casinos in exchange for getting rid of the lottery, my choice would be a snap, as lotteries are by far and away the most exploitive and manipulative of all forms of gambling, far more than casinos. (And, tragically, for reasons like those mentioned above, often therefore the easiest to turn into law, politically speaking: lotteries get most of their money from those slices of the population who live in neighborhoods dominated by low wages or levels of employment, and high levels of alcohol or drug consumption, meaning that their discriminatory social impact will rarely be felt by those voters ensconced in the suburbs and in pricey neighborhoods downtown.) But this vote is not giving us those sorts of choices and alternatives; it is an up or down, yes or no vote on whether we want to let the state take bids from big-league investors in regards to building a casino here in Sedgwick County. I don't.
All that being said, I'm not going to spend a lot of time rehearsing my arguments in regard to the above with the intention of convincing anyone; you can find all you need and more at websites like No Casinos in Sedgwick County and We Believe in Wichita, and you can catch up on all the news by looking at the Wichita Eagle's archive of gambling-related stories. My interest here is primarily in a certain kind of rhetoric which I've heard defenders of casinos use often over the past few months. Call it "the inevitability argument." Basically, it works like this: Sedgwick County should vote yes on August 7th because Sumner County has already approved the building of casinos there, which means there's going to be casino gambling in south-center Kansas whichever way Wichitans vote, so shouldn't we want to have one built here rather than there? Or like this: the most common forms of gambling--a state lottery--has been the law in Kansas for over twenty years, so what's the point of complaining now about the addition of a few potentially lucrative, high-end gambling options? Or like this: we've already got folks who love gambling--and with gambling addictions--driving to north to Topeka and south to Oklahoma on a regular basis, and they leave their money there while bringing the costs of their addictions home, so why not expand gambling locally so we can at least hold onto those dollars? And so on, and so forth. It's like some variation on the "build it and they will come" approach to economic policy making: gambling exists, the law exists, market forces exist, so isn't it just logical to go with what the people want, try to make some money off it, hope for the best, and deal with the consequences later? If we don't get on board the casino train, then we'll...well, we won't have casinos, we'll be left behind, we'll be ignoring the reality of the situation.
The problem here is with what I see as a profoundly cramped and reductive view of our ability as Wichitans to make choices, to democratically determine our destiny. This is not a left or right thing; conservatives and liberals alike (as well as every other ideological perspective under the sun) has a tendency to invoke "the people" or "the market" or "growth" or "human nature" as an excuse to let what are, in truth, powerful forces (whether personal or impersonal) with particular agendas or unconscious assumptions to roll forward relatively unmolested. Which is, of course, simply incompatible with any serious defense of democracy and representative government. "The market" would dictate that scads of money could be made if Wichita would legalize cage-matches to the death between chickens with razor-blades embedded in their wings and blindfolded pit bulls; "the people," on the basis pretty massive and obvious evidence, would choose to make speed limits optional, reserving for themselves the right to drive to Hutchinson at 105mph. But no serious person believes that a proper democratic regime operates on such a mindlessly plebiscitarian or majoritarian basis; obviously, we can collectively choose, through reasoned discussion and carefully and equally administrated voting, to subject ourselves--and thereby also subject those forces which we confront in our daily economic, social, and cultural lives--to laws and common aspirations. When you put in straightforward language like that, most citizens of the U.S. would probably agree. But when you dilute the democratic principle here with all sorts of often murky specifics, people waver: suddenly, the arguments like "well, casinos are inevitable, so I might as well get on board," or "if people are going to gamble, I guess they might as well do it here," or "if all these investors want casinos, how can I say no?" appear somewhat persuasive. But they shouldn't be.
This is not to say that one should or ever entirely could ignore financial or political details. But I find it frustrating how many of some of the most prominent voices in the Wichita area (and I'm thinking in particular of some Wichita Eagle editorials and opinion pieces here) tend to fall back into this inevitability mode when discussing casinos. "Gambling is here to stay," they say; "there will be casinos in south-central Kansas," they add; "Wichita can't pretend to be a small Kansas town anymore," they comment; and then they act as though any of those are actual arguments. But of course they're not, or at least not if you agree with the central democratic idea that self-government is something separate from and higher than whatever what a random survey or an economic model or cultural peer-pressure may have to say. It's entirely possible that the voters of Sedgwick County will agree to let the Kansas Lottery Commission select some interested parties who will get to build a casino in Wichita. I hope not; I think such a result would be bad for the county in the long run, and possibly the short run as well. But if they do so choose, I hope it's because voters have been positively convinced of the supposed goods that a casino would bring. That's a vain hope, I know; in this election, as in almost every election, the majority of people will vote in accordance with their private interests, and so the real determining factor will be how many voters there are out there who want to gamble, and furthermore will want to take a financial gamble on possibly receiving some cultural benefits from a casino being built here. But even that kind of self-interested vote is better than one which chooses to support the expansion of gambling because...well, because "everyone" wants it, or because "growth" is inevitable, or because "everybody else" has casinos, so why not us? That's not the action of a responsible citizen--that's the example of a citizen who, when confronted by some seemingly neutral (but of course often highly partisan and constrictive in its framing of the issue) faction or trend or spreadsheet, throws up their hands and says, "whatever...it's not like it matters to me."
Well, actually, choices do matter. A change in the law to allow liquor stores to sell on Sunday (which just went into affect here in Wichita) wasn't some inevitable result of market forces which tied peoples hands; it was the result of choices and actions (or, in the case of liquor laws, inactions) which arose in response to those forces. Similarly, there are a lot of forces--again, both personal and impersonal--that support the local construction of casinos. Those forces are not neutral, inevitable realities; they present choices, any response to which carries with it possible benefits and likely harms. To any Sedgwick County voter who reads this I can only say: consider those benefits, weigh those harms, then go make a positive vote, a vote on behalf of a specific intended outcome, one way or another on August 7th. And whatever you do, don't vote "yes" simply because that seems like what everybody wants you to do.
Last April, after a lot of contentious debate and not a few late-night legislative shenanigans, the Kansas legislature approved, and Governor Sebelius signed, a bill which would get the state of Kansas further into the business of gambling. We're already in the gambling business to what I would consider a foolish extent: the Kansas Lottery was established way back in 1986, and there has long been pressure to expand the sort of games which the Lottery offers (according to the state constitution, all gambling facilities in Kansas must be owned and operated by the state, and that means through the Lottery Commission--though the exact meaning of "owned and operated" has been subject to serious dispute). It is this "pressure"--those forces that make the need to expand state-owned gambling seem compelling, a high priority, popular, even "inevitable"--that I want to explore, as Sedgwick County voters prepare for an August 7th vote as to whether or not to give approval for the state to accept various investors' bids and build a casino or install more slot machines (or both, or neither) here in Wichita.
I'm opposed to the effort to build casinos in Sedgwick County, and plan to vote no on August 7th. Those who have read my blog for a while probably could have predicted such a vote on my part: it's not like I have a record of shying away from proposals concerning the common good which shade over into the moralistic. Personally, I think most forms of gambling involve both citizens and the state itself in habits and practices that are frequently addictive, often socially destructive, and always corrupting (morally, to be sure, but also financially). Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, gambling in almost every context imaginable ends up being profoundly unfair in its civic impact, as it is nearly always the case that those most affected (in terms of wasted incomes, loss of property values, family breakdown, an increased criminal presence, and so forth) by the arrival of gambling are poor and minority members of the population. I'll gladly admit that there is a hierarchy of harms which come along with different forms of gambling, and that sometimes, in certain circumstances, a case can be made that the (usually unpredictable and in the end rather small, but still occasionally real) economic benefits and other incidental virtues associated with some types of gambling (the job opportunities, the potential to renovate areas of urban blight, etc.) are worth the social harms which they bring along with them. If this vote was solely about expanded gambling opportunities for the sake of , say, helping out existing horse and dog racing venues in Kansas, I would be more hesitant with my vote, despite my dislike of slot machines, because I acknowledge some value in the act of racing; and if this vote gave us the option to choose casinos in exchange for getting rid of the lottery, my choice would be a snap, as lotteries are by far and away the most exploitive and manipulative of all forms of gambling, far more than casinos. (And, tragically, for reasons like those mentioned above, often therefore the easiest to turn into law, politically speaking: lotteries get most of their money from those slices of the population who live in neighborhoods dominated by low wages or levels of employment, and high levels of alcohol or drug consumption, meaning that their discriminatory social impact will rarely be felt by those voters ensconced in the suburbs and in pricey neighborhoods downtown.) But this vote is not giving us those sorts of choices and alternatives; it is an up or down, yes or no vote on whether we want to let the state take bids from big-league investors in regards to building a casino here in Sedgwick County. I don't.
All that being said, I'm not going to spend a lot of time rehearsing my arguments in regard to the above with the intention of convincing anyone; you can find all you need and more at websites like No Casinos in Sedgwick County and We Believe in Wichita, and you can catch up on all the news by looking at the Wichita Eagle's archive of gambling-related stories. My interest here is primarily in a certain kind of rhetoric which I've heard defenders of casinos use often over the past few months. Call it "the inevitability argument." Basically, it works like this: Sedgwick County should vote yes on August 7th because Sumner County has already approved the building of casinos there, which means there's going to be casino gambling in south-center Kansas whichever way Wichitans vote, so shouldn't we want to have one built here rather than there? Or like this: the most common forms of gambling--a state lottery--has been the law in Kansas for over twenty years, so what's the point of complaining now about the addition of a few potentially lucrative, high-end gambling options? Or like this: we've already got folks who love gambling--and with gambling addictions--driving to north to Topeka and south to Oklahoma on a regular basis, and they leave their money there while bringing the costs of their addictions home, so why not expand gambling locally so we can at least hold onto those dollars? And so on, and so forth. It's like some variation on the "build it and they will come" approach to economic policy making: gambling exists, the law exists, market forces exist, so isn't it just logical to go with what the people want, try to make some money off it, hope for the best, and deal with the consequences later? If we don't get on board the casino train, then we'll...well, we won't have casinos, we'll be left behind, we'll be ignoring the reality of the situation.
The problem here is with what I see as a profoundly cramped and reductive view of our ability as Wichitans to make choices, to democratically determine our destiny. This is not a left or right thing; conservatives and liberals alike (as well as every other ideological perspective under the sun) has a tendency to invoke "the people" or "the market" or "growth" or "human nature" as an excuse to let what are, in truth, powerful forces (whether personal or impersonal) with particular agendas or unconscious assumptions to roll forward relatively unmolested. Which is, of course, simply incompatible with any serious defense of democracy and representative government. "The market" would dictate that scads of money could be made if Wichita would legalize cage-matches to the death between chickens with razor-blades embedded in their wings and blindfolded pit bulls; "the people," on the basis pretty massive and obvious evidence, would choose to make speed limits optional, reserving for themselves the right to drive to Hutchinson at 105mph. But no serious person believes that a proper democratic regime operates on such a mindlessly plebiscitarian or majoritarian basis; obviously, we can collectively choose, through reasoned discussion and carefully and equally administrated voting, to subject ourselves--and thereby also subject those forces which we confront in our daily economic, social, and cultural lives--to laws and common aspirations. When you put in straightforward language like that, most citizens of the U.S. would probably agree. But when you dilute the democratic principle here with all sorts of often murky specifics, people waver: suddenly, the arguments like "well, casinos are inevitable, so I might as well get on board," or "if people are going to gamble, I guess they might as well do it here," or "if all these investors want casinos, how can I say no?" appear somewhat persuasive. But they shouldn't be.
This is not to say that one should or ever entirely could ignore financial or political details. But I find it frustrating how many of some of the most prominent voices in the Wichita area (and I'm thinking in particular of some Wichita Eagle editorials and opinion pieces here) tend to fall back into this inevitability mode when discussing casinos. "Gambling is here to stay," they say; "there will be casinos in south-central Kansas," they add; "Wichita can't pretend to be a small Kansas town anymore," they comment; and then they act as though any of those are actual arguments. But of course they're not, or at least not if you agree with the central democratic idea that self-government is something separate from and higher than whatever what a random survey or an economic model or cultural peer-pressure may have to say. It's entirely possible that the voters of Sedgwick County will agree to let the Kansas Lottery Commission select some interested parties who will get to build a casino in Wichita. I hope not; I think such a result would be bad for the county in the long run, and possibly the short run as well. But if they do so choose, I hope it's because voters have been positively convinced of the supposed goods that a casino would bring. That's a vain hope, I know; in this election, as in almost every election, the majority of people will vote in accordance with their private interests, and so the real determining factor will be how many voters there are out there who want to gamble, and furthermore will want to take a financial gamble on possibly receiving some cultural benefits from a casino being built here. But even that kind of self-interested vote is better than one which chooses to support the expansion of gambling because...well, because "everyone" wants it, or because "growth" is inevitable, or because "everybody else" has casinos, so why not us? That's not the action of a responsible citizen--that's the example of a citizen who, when confronted by some seemingly neutral (but of course often highly partisan and constrictive in its framing of the issue) faction or trend or spreadsheet, throws up their hands and says, "whatever...it's not like it matters to me."
Well, actually, choices do matter. A change in the law to allow liquor stores to sell on Sunday (which just went into affect here in Wichita) wasn't some inevitable result of market forces which tied peoples hands; it was the result of choices and actions (or, in the case of liquor laws, inactions) which arose in response to those forces. Similarly, there are a lot of forces--again, both personal and impersonal--that support the local construction of casinos. Those forces are not neutral, inevitable realities; they present choices, any response to which carries with it possible benefits and likely harms. To any Sedgwick County voter who reads this I can only say: consider those benefits, weigh those harms, then go make a positive vote, a vote on behalf of a specific intended outcome, one way or another on August 7th. And whatever you do, don't vote "yes" simply because that seems like what everybody wants you to do.
Explaining the Book of Mormon to Ross
Three weeks away from blogging, I finally get some free time to blog on stuff that, as usual, has piled up...and then my plans are thrown for a loop by a request from one of the big names of the blogosphere, Ross Douthat, to say something smart about the "seemingly fantastic beliefs about the prehistory of the Americas" which are presented with the Book of Mormon, a text which we Mormons take to be scripture. What can I say? Thanks for the compliment, Ross; I'll try to help you out.
I'm a philosophy and political theory guy myself (and a long-winded one at that; as evidence, consider my long blog-essay on Mitt Romney and Mormonism from a while back), and so I won't pretend to pose as an expert on how completely the Book of Mormon's narrative does or does not contradict settled interpretations of Mesoamerican history. That it seems perfectly outrageous to many is indisputably true...but I think that, if you actually take the time to do some reading, and are open-minded about the hermeneutical and theological issues involved in the sort of interpretative claims which Joseph Smith originally made (is it a literal translation? an expansion of an ancient source? how are we supposed to think about the idea of something being revealed in modern times by God, anyway?), what you'll find is that most of what seems outrageous to historians of the ancient Americas is not, for the most part, what's actually in the book itself, but what people say about the book (and here I include Mormons and non-believers alike).
That's why you need, when looking for a "smart" defense of the Book of Mormon, to look also for an author who can set those defenses into a historical context, thus showing how Mormon readings of their own scripture have changed over the decades. Pretty much the standard book to read on what Mormons today make of the claims about ancient America presented in the Book of Mormon is John Sorenson's An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. The book itself is over twenty years old (though a new edition came out in 1996), but it permanently changed the way the Book of Mormon is read by Mormons, and so that's the place to start. For example: Matt Yglesias claims in the Bloggingheads video that the Mormon church teaches that "the New World, in pre-Columbian times, was dominated by two vast rvial empires." (Those would be "the Nephites," the people who carried on the family name and traditions of an early prophet named Nephi, and "the Lamanites," a group named after his brother and enemy, Laman.) While the history of Book of Mormon interpretation over the past 180 years is actually pretty complicated, the basic facts are that Matt here is correctly describing what most Mormons who read the book believed...up until about 20-30 years ago, that is. The Book of Mormon itself never suggests the existence of massive, continent-wide, roaming empires; rather, serious readers have come to recognize that in fact the book talks about a couple (or actually more than a couple) pretty densely populated yet nonetheless localized tribes, and nearly everything presented in the book as fact takes place, according to its own narrative, within an area that a person on foot could cross within week, if not less. This is what we Mormons called the "limited geography" thesis: specifically, that the book isn't telling us the whole history of the Native Americans (which many Mormons admittedly thought the primary purpose of the book was for decades), but rather telling the story of some relatively restricted groups, whose story God thought important enough to make certain it would be preserved and brought forth in our day. The introduction of this thesis, and the conceptual changes it has wrought in how the text as a history of (a small part of) Mesoameria is read by Mormons, has had a huge impact in Mormon thought; probably the best synthesis of these changes, combined with the latest scholarship on the origin and details of the book, can be found in Terryl Givens's By the Hand of Mormon, which I've written a bit about (again, from the perspective of philosophy and political theory) here.
Now, if you're looking for a stone with someone's name from the Book of Mormon carved on it ("look, it says 'Nephi'!"), providing indisputable evidence of the truth of the BoM, then you're not going to be satisfied (at least, not yet; people interested in the subject know that Mesoamerican studies is actually filled with plenty of fluid, always contested, not-yet-proven claims: it's not nearly as clear-cut as Matt makes it out to be). But even the absence of definite proof doesn't mean there isn't at least a fair amount of circumstantial evidence out there (both in the text itself and in the ground around Mesoamerica) to make the Book of Mormon's claims--or at least certain interpretations of them and of Joseph Smith's actions in production of the text--quite plausible. I would recommend checking out Book of Mormon Authorship, as well as its much better (and 15 years more recent) sequel, Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited. Of course, there are plenty of books, articles, and websites out there which challenge most everything said in the BoM's defense in these and other studies, and there are those which take pretty unique approaches to explaining the material as well. But you said you wanted some smart, mainstream Mormon defenses of the Book of Mormon; these will give you plenty of places to start.
I'm a philosophy and political theory guy myself (and a long-winded one at that; as evidence, consider my long blog-essay on Mitt Romney and Mormonism from a while back), and so I won't pretend to pose as an expert on how completely the Book of Mormon's narrative does or does not contradict settled interpretations of Mesoamerican history. That it seems perfectly outrageous to many is indisputably true...but I think that, if you actually take the time to do some reading, and are open-minded about the hermeneutical and theological issues involved in the sort of interpretative claims which Joseph Smith originally made (is it a literal translation? an expansion of an ancient source? how are we supposed to think about the idea of something being revealed in modern times by God, anyway?), what you'll find is that most of what seems outrageous to historians of the ancient Americas is not, for the most part, what's actually in the book itself, but what people say about the book (and here I include Mormons and non-believers alike).
That's why you need, when looking for a "smart" defense of the Book of Mormon, to look also for an author who can set those defenses into a historical context, thus showing how Mormon readings of their own scripture have changed over the decades. Pretty much the standard book to read on what Mormons today make of the claims about ancient America presented in the Book of Mormon is John Sorenson's An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. The book itself is over twenty years old (though a new edition came out in 1996), but it permanently changed the way the Book of Mormon is read by Mormons, and so that's the place to start. For example: Matt Yglesias claims in the Bloggingheads video that the Mormon church teaches that "the New World, in pre-Columbian times, was dominated by two vast rvial empires." (Those would be "the Nephites," the people who carried on the family name and traditions of an early prophet named Nephi, and "the Lamanites," a group named after his brother and enemy, Laman.) While the history of Book of Mormon interpretation over the past 180 years is actually pretty complicated, the basic facts are that Matt here is correctly describing what most Mormons who read the book believed...up until about 20-30 years ago, that is. The Book of Mormon itself never suggests the existence of massive, continent-wide, roaming empires; rather, serious readers have come to recognize that in fact the book talks about a couple (or actually more than a couple) pretty densely populated yet nonetheless localized tribes, and nearly everything presented in the book as fact takes place, according to its own narrative, within an area that a person on foot could cross within week, if not less. This is what we Mormons called the "limited geography" thesis: specifically, that the book isn't telling us the whole history of the Native Americans (which many Mormons admittedly thought the primary purpose of the book was for decades), but rather telling the story of some relatively restricted groups, whose story God thought important enough to make certain it would be preserved and brought forth in our day. The introduction of this thesis, and the conceptual changes it has wrought in how the text as a history of (a small part of) Mesoameria is read by Mormons, has had a huge impact in Mormon thought; probably the best synthesis of these changes, combined with the latest scholarship on the origin and details of the book, can be found in Terryl Givens's By the Hand of Mormon, which I've written a bit about (again, from the perspective of philosophy and political theory) here.
Now, if you're looking for a stone with someone's name from the Book of Mormon carved on it ("look, it says 'Nephi'!"), providing indisputable evidence of the truth of the BoM, then you're not going to be satisfied (at least, not yet; people interested in the subject know that Mesoamerican studies is actually filled with plenty of fluid, always contested, not-yet-proven claims: it's not nearly as clear-cut as Matt makes it out to be). But even the absence of definite proof doesn't mean there isn't at least a fair amount of circumstantial evidence out there (both in the text itself and in the ground around Mesoamerica) to make the Book of Mormon's claims--or at least certain interpretations of them and of Joseph Smith's actions in production of the text--quite plausible. I would recommend checking out Book of Mormon Authorship, as well as its much better (and 15 years more recent) sequel, Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited. Of course, there are plenty of books, articles, and websites out there which challenge most everything said in the BoM's defense in these and other studies, and there are those which take pretty unique approaches to explaining the material as well. But you said you wanted some smart, mainstream Mormon defenses of the Book of Mormon; these will give you plenty of places to start.