Sartre smoked

The grave of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Be...
Jean-Paul and Simone's grave, to which their paths of glory led

* The cigarette was brushed out of Jean-Paul Sartre’s hand for an exhibition in 2005.  Sartre smoked, but not in the commemorative picture years after he died.  He was also one of the great sexual athletes of history.  So was his lifelong love, Simone de Beauvoir, a switch-hitter whose girl friends captured Sartre’s fancy now and again.  One of these resisted his advances and near broke his haunted heart, however.  It was not easy being a king of sex, so uneasy lies the head wearing that crown.

— from Jean-Pierre Boule’s review of TETE-A-TETE: The lives and loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, by Hazel Rowley (Chatto and Windus) in TLS 3/17/06

* We hear complaints about senseless acts of violence, but never praise for sensible ones.  Is this wise?

* At Bread Kitchen during Xmas week, “Tum te tum tum” (Drummer Boy) overhead for the thousandth time this season is bad enough.  But what of the woman at the next table picking up on it and humming along lightly?

* Comedian Shelley Berman had a shtick where he spoke of dropping ashes in his lap while driving.  Parked at a light on a busy street, he brushed furiously at his lap, looked up and there was an elderly female bus passenger looking at him censoriously.  Likewise, I looked down while on a Bread K stool and saw that my belt was undone and my fly was unzipped.  Oh boy.

* Old joke, but in view of recent highly publicized developments, is it time to revive “Crook County” as replacement name?  No?  Whatever.

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Lit’ry matters

* U.S. southern novelist Walker Percy was a medical doctor.

* Longfellow is the most put to music of English-language poets.

(Items from Times [of London] Literary Supplement, hereafter TLS)

* The idiosyncrasy of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry may be explained by the “constraint” of Jesuit life.  Toeing the line in all else, he broke out in his verse.  (You could say he sprang out with his rhythm.)  Indeed, the tension he experienced — conflict between vocation and creativity — may have been productive.  (Simon Humphries, “A Eunuch for God,” TLS 12/22&29/06)

* In Honor: a History (Encounter), James Bowman (no relation) displays “a propensity to be judgemental and didactic.”  (Ditto Harvey C. Mansfield in Manliness [Yale].)  Thus reviewer George Feaver, retired poly sci prof at U. of British Columbia and this year at UT-Austin, who was left with “nagging suspicions” about Bowman’s judgment of U.S. military decisions, having read to the end of his “dense, discursive account of the alleged ‘decline and fall’ of Western honour.”

In this and other matters, Bowman offers a “gloomy reading” of history, “overly selective” in Feaver’s view, as in its ignoring the civil rights revolution of the ‘60s and “real-life heroes” such as Martin Luther King and the New York firefighters on 9/11.  Feaver closes with commendation of both books, “despite their shortcomings [for reminding us] of the importance of remembering the past, and standing up for beliefs central to the achievement of our civilization.” (“Limp Responses,” TLS 12/22&29/06)

* Reviewing Patrick Wyse Jackson’s The Chronologer’s Quest: The Search for the Age of the Earth (Cambridge), John North says J. has “useful things to say,” albeit with “a weakness for discursive irrelevance.” 

Whether J. displayed this weakness or not, I do not know, nor do I know if other reviewers’ comments are well-aimed, but I do find that phrase helpful.  May writing teachers and editors everywhere hold discursive irrelevance to be a weakness not a strength. (TLS 1/12/07)

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Movie, No-Child

Hot tip: See the movie Station Agent as soon as possible.  It’s on DVD.  A dwarf stars or co-stars with a grief-stricken 40-something soulful good looker and a 20-something handsome bloke with a hot dog stand.  Dwarf lives in abandoned station, he and the good looker find relief from their troubles with help of the handsome bloke.  How do you expose the sorrows of afflicted people without maudlin display?  See this movie to find out.  Beats Sun Also Rises (novel) or at least matches it.
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In Sun-Times we find a good word for No Child Left Behind in story about on-line parental notification.  (Child, we have your parents’ email address, so don’t try anything and shape up.) 
 
No-Child has been “a key driver” of education software systems, says an analyst — the writer using a familiar barely-English term — emphasizing as it does data, reporting, and accountability.  This barely-English slip aside, it’s a very good story by Sandra Guy. (WHICH I COULD FIND ONLY BY USING GOOGLE, BY THE WAY, NOT THE VERY BAD, VERY CLUTTERED, SUN-TIMES SITE, FOR WHICH THE BUSINESS HEIRS OF CONRAD BLACK SHOULD ASK THEIR MONEY BACK.)
 
She got a good quote for closer from a Naperville schools staffer speaking in favor of new systems: “You spend more time weighing the hog [testing students] instead of feeding it [teaching them] if you don’t have the technology.”
 
(NEITHER COULD I FIND STAFF EMAIL ADDRESSES, SUCH AS ARE READILY FOUND ON CHI TRIB SITE.)
 
Later: I found them out.  You search the writer, go to his or her bio page (a nice touch), and on the side is email link.  For Sandra Guy, for instance, go here.  There.

Where’s Marlene?

Ran into Bruce Samuels, one of OP’s leading Green Party members, discussed Greens’ gains in recent general election.  In course of chat, on OP Ave. outside ex-book store turned real estate office, he said he can’t get in touch with the Republican chair for OP, one Marlene Lynch, a travel agent who beat out the (appointed) incumbent last spring.  Bruce had been in conversation with her (elected) predecessor.  We both mourned that good man’s passing. 
 
But where is Marlene L.?  And when is the next Republican gathering and what happened to the regular emailing of alerts to party stalwarts?  Hey, even if you meet in a phone booth, you still meet, don’t you?
 
I’m not the only one wondering:

Has anyone heard from Marlene Lynch . . . ? Does she know there is an election coming up? No news. No email. No meetings. No Signs. No Nothing!

Her phone number isn’t even listed on the Cook County Clerk website! She has no official email or website according to the Cook County Republican website. Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to anyone?

asked Oak Park Conservatives some time back.

One Jimmy bought, sold, delivered

Egad, did I read in this morning’s Chi Trib or Sun-Times about Jimmy Carter, author of heavy anti-Israel book, being on the take (big-time, to use a once going phrase of choice) from A-rabs and Muslims?  For a long time, even to saving his peanut farm in ’76?  As at Belmont Club?
 
Let me check before I say it’s so.  (Checking, wait.)  Nope, it ain’t in either paper, or it escaped the long arm of Google, which has nothing on the subject in either paper.
 
Nor is anthing from either paper among the blogs, again says Google.  
 
Oh well, just another case of what interests mainstream editors.  Ho-ho-ho-hum.
 
OR: It’s the usual lag between mainstream and digital coverage.  Ho-ho-ho-hum 2.
 
It is not easy teaching the old dog something new.

Obama drugged, Jesus risen, Hitler studies, Irving’s Dresden, Foie gras in Chi, Macy’s, Revolutionary stew

* Barack O’s drug use is less the issue here — vs. various scandals or non-scandals that have bothered campaigns for many decades — but his being author of self-revelatory book with literary value (ck: have to read the copy of Tales from Father that I got for my birthday).  this is the new thing he brings. 
See: “Past drug use may test Obama” at http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/197111,CST-NWS-sweet04.article
 
* Two Jesuits on bodily resurrection of Jesus, some time past:
1. Don’t play logic game, said one, a theologian and university chair-holder, when I put it to him, did J. rise bodily or didn’t he?  (He’s not with Aquinas et al., who put logic up there with the best of mental exercises.)
2. Doesn’t matter to me, said another, a publisher of spiritual books.  (He’s not with the fanatical Paul, who said we are the most miserable of people if J. did not rise.) 
See: tenacious if quirky memory of James H. Bowman, ex-SJ.
 
* Hitler studies?  Whence came he philosophically?  Try Mark Dery’s Shovelware, 8/7/05 http://www.markdery.com/archives/blog/dept_of_hitler_studies/ and find extremely wry commentary on swastika as brand, etc., all based on absolute-evil concept, with references to the devil, yes.  Not much help here.
 
Or Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise http://www.amazon.com/White-Noise-Contemporary-American-Fiction/dp/0140077022 whose main character announces himself on p. 4: “… I am chairman of the department of Hitler studies at the College- on-the-Hill. I invented Hitler studies in North America in March of 1968. …”  Nor here: it’s a riff on evil again.  We know he was evil.  We wonder how he got that way, something beyond unhappy childhood and the rest.  Anybody?
 
* Holocaust-denier and currently jailed David Irving’s The Destruction of Dresden gave Kurt V. Jr. the data for his 1969 novel Slaughterhouse Five, as the # of dead, 135G in bombing of D. vs. # of dead, 71G-plus, in b. of Hiroshima.  (Item from N.B. column by J.C. in Times Lit Supplement, 3/17/06)
 
* Sell no, give yes: That’s foie gras in Chicago, where inspectors gave up on imposition of fine because ordinance applies only to what’s sold, not to what’s given away, as f.g. with other dishes at Bin 36 restaurant.  But nobody said it was easy being a legislative meddler: Alderman Joe Moore (sponsor of ordinance), tear down that law!  Or at least fix it, for gosh sakes, to cover shameless defiers of same on technicality and at same time defilers of animal rights!  [Ald. Joe sees no need for fixing it, by the way.] 
See: “Their goose isn’t cooked” at http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/195054,CST-NWS-foie03.article
 
* Heard in nursery: “Mommy, Mommy, please take me to see Santa Claus at Macy’s iconic State Street location?” 
See: Chi Trib cutline 1/3/07, p. 1 top left under pic of new store manager, who may be a mommy herself but definitely has the capacity to be one biologically speaking. 
See: “Macy’s learning what’s in a name” at http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0701030050jan03,1,3348903.story?coll=chi-news-hed
 
* Meanwhile, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez appears in ads for Mexican restaurant saying, “Long live socialist revolution.”  “People took offense,” says manager.  It’s Las Palmas, 1835 W. North Ave.  The ad’s designer said there’s an “abstract but real” connection between ads and Las Palmas.  The ad is part of “a melting pot of ideas.”  A pot of stew, perhaps?  That’s it!  Las P. should offer revolutionary stew, a mish-mash of goulash.  They can serve it on a silver platter, with abstract but real silver soup spoons inscribed with the provocative but intellectually tasty question, “Were you born with one of these in your mouth?”  The implication would be that now you pay for the sins of your parents and grandparents. 
See: “Eatery’s ads turning stomachs” at http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/195085,CST-NWS-palmas03.article

OP’s Don Harmon a go-to man in senate

Ill. state Sen. Don Harmon (D.-Oak Park) is co-sponsor of a new law making it a misdemeanor not to install carbon monoxide detectors.  Enforcement is another matter, but people die from monoxide poisoning, so the lawmakers felt they had to do something.
“The last thing we want is to be known as the carbon monoxide police, meaning we’re looking for detectors every time we go in someone’s home,”
said Robert Buhs, executive director of the Illinois Fire Chiefs Association, adding,
“But it’s the [homeowner’s] responsibility, and for the safety of their family, to have these devices installed.”
If it’s the homeowner’s responsibility, why is the state shouldering it, and ineffectually at that?  
“It seems like an easy risk to protect ourselves against, by creating an expectation that you have one,”
said Harmon, offering a garbled but perhaps helpful answer: the state speaks, and homeowners listen.  It’s how they make (and score) points in Springfield, with new laws.  But an ad campaign would do the job at least as well, and without giving us the opportunity to ignore yet another one or giving law enforcement something else to do by way of interfering with people’s lives.

Walking, jumping, visioning [?]

A WALK IN THE PARK:

I think I was a hate-crime victim. Guy called me a white faggot as I walked through Scoville Park in the gloaming a few weeks ago. I didn’t stop. He and his friends were irritated at my NOT stopping. They were desperate for my attention, and I refused it. This was my offense, and so I got victimized. Or was I?

All the guy did was toss out a “white faggot” to an unassuming white fellow trying hard to mind his own business. I had passed them earlier. One was jawing at another, three or four others stood chatting each other up. It’s a free country, I thought, go ahead and jaw. I got a few steps past them and heard, “Hi, brother.” Who, me? I’m not a brother, I thought — except to an octogenarian in Gurnee and a septuagenarian in Arlington, VA — and kept walking.

Again the call: “Brother.” I’ll bet it’s me, I mused. But out of 40-year-old misty memory came a guy yelling, “Hey, you with the collar!” in an open field at 13th and Loomis on a midsummer night in 1966, as helmeted police gathered all down Roosevelt Road. The caller had me cold, I wore the clerical collar. I ignored his cry for attention. Twenty-something and intent on mischief, he had an audience of five or six teen-aged boys, to whom he would have given a lesson in how to deal with the likes of me. No, thanks, I muttered, continuing my way towards the Baptist church at the other end of the project, where do-gooders were gathering ineffectually.

Ignoring this Scoville Park greeting came easy, therefore. But my response rankled, and when I returned 15 minutes later heading the other way, I was accused incontinently of being “a snob” who “wouldn’t talk” to them. I was “Sherlock Holmes” in my floppy hat (heh). I was told to commit an indecent if not impossible act. These were truly disgruntled youth. Later on Lake Street, I ran into them again. This time they tossed the N-word at a fellow African American, who was also told to commit an indecent if not impossible act. Now I ask you, were we all victims of hate crimes?.

JUMPING TO CONCLUSION:

You hear a lot about the school achievement gap, but what about the basketball gap? White kids can’t jump, but so what? So they don’t suit up or if they do, they warm the bench. That’s what happens to the American dream in a dog-eat-dog society. Look, white kids are grossly underrepresented on basketball teams not just in Oak Park and River Forest but nationally. I say enough. Let’s train our sights on this gap too. And nuts to this can’t-jump stuff, which is transparently racist. It’s environment, folks. How many white fathers shoot hoops with their sons?

THROUGH A PRISM DARKLY:

The Oak Park District 97 strategic plan draft calls schools “the educational prism through which students realize meaning and purpose in their lives.” It says they are “to guarantee that each student achieves optimal intellectual growth while developing socially, emotionally and physically.” That’s all?

How about the prism through which students realize how to read, write, and do long division, not to mention shut up when teacher is talking and otherwise cooperate for the more or less common good? And who says schools are a prism in the first place? In what respect are they “a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that refract light, the exact angles between whose surfaces depend on the application”? Beats me.

As for “realizing” — learning? achieving? both, splitting the difference? — the meaning and purpose in life, oh my. Are these schools or houses of worship? And there’s a guarantee of optimal growth? Listen to that carnival barker. Maybe we would all pay more attention to a plan that made more sense. Or did not belabor the obvious, favoring “a culture of inclusion that respects and promotes diversity.” This deftly undercuts the powerful exclusion and uniformity lobby, but it’s also grand language impossible to disagree with, reeking of groupthink and lack of imagination, cobbled together in meetings. The good news is, it’s a draft. So hello Baby, give us rewrite.

Beware what they imply

This ain’t from a Chicago newspaper, and it’s a longer excerpt than I usually fall prey to, but it’s quite good about the importance of party affiliation as way to cut through “superficial campaign positioning” when judging national security issues, and it’s beautiful in identifying B. Obama as our decade’s Jimmy Carter:

Hillary has been posing as a foreign policy moderate for some time now.  Obama is apparently as left as left can be, yet he covers this stance with soothing moderate rhetoric.  In a way, Obama is the new Carter.  Carter won, despite his relative obscurity and inexperience, because he was the breath of fresh air needed by a country exhausted by Watergate.  Carter’s religious convictions and seeming moderation were emotional balm for a traumatized nation.  It never occurred to anyone that Carter’s foreign policy might make the first serious break from America’s Cold War toughness.  Best keep all this in mind when listening to Clinton and Obama.  They’ll jump through campaign hoops to prove their toughness.  But in the end, we’ll get a Jimmy Carter foreign policy from either one of them.

Thus Stanley Kurtz in “NRO Corner.”