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Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson
TUSCALOOSA, Ala., Jan. 7 - It is 72 degrees in mid-January and still drizzling rain in T-Town. It looks like global warming is taking a toll after six years of being denied and ignored by the Bush administration.
All the national news organizations are focusing on what Bush will say in an address to the nation this week about the quagmire in Iraq.
Trial balloons are being floated over the airwaves saying he will propose sending anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 more troops to face the growing insurgency there. Not many Republicans or Democrats think that will be enough troops to do much good, and most of the Democrats think it will just do more harm than good.
The notable exception is Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, who wants to run for president in 2008 and thinks the only path to that success will be some sort of "victory" in Iraq.
 | Photo by Glynn Wilson | | "Bear" Bryant's image casts a shadow over Tuscaloosa. |
Meanwhile back at the Christian-Republican ranch in Alabamaland, all the buzz is about the University of Alabama's success in recruiting Nick Saban to take over the UA football program.
The only war that really matters here is the one between the Crimson Tide and a smattering of orange-clad opponents on the gridiron, most notably the Auburn tigers and the Tennessee volunteers.
As usual I am torn between the glaring contradictions.
While the people of Alabama claim to be deeply Christian, their Bible clearly says in the venerated Ten Commandments, "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me ... Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image..."
Yet towering over the psyche of this place is a granite statue of the winning football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, who in life was compared to Jesus Christ himself for his mythical ability to "walk on water."
As we reported this week before the Saban press conference, there is an empty spot on the "walk of champions" in front of the expanded Bryant-Denny Stadium for a new statue for the next coach who wins a national championship. Just about everyone around here, including virtually every sports writer at every local newspaper and all the local sports broadcasters, think Saban has what it takes to capture that spot in college football history - even if the national sports press corps thinks Saban is a liar.
The opinion and theory that Saban will be a winner will be tested on the football fields of the Southeastern Conference and beyond.
What I want to know is this: When will the people of Alabama and the local news media start caring as much about good government as they do about a winning football program? When will they get as tough on politicians as they are on football coaches?
If a football program is a business and the coach should be treated as a CEO, then shouldn't we think of government in the same way? If George W. Bush was the CEO of a corporation - or a football coach - he would have been fired in 2004.
But the people elected him again for another four years and the mainstream press for the most part went along with it and even endorsed him.
So much for the theory of the "liberal media."
Now that the Democrats have taken back control of both houses of Congress, there are many of us out here wondering if they will play the role of a national board of directors - and fire Bush by impeaching him and removing him from office.
The people and the press in Alabama so wanted former Gov. Don Siegelman and HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy to go to jail for their alleged crimes. Where is the outrage over Bush's crimes against nature and humanity?
If we had elected Al Gore in 2000, we would live in a different world today - a world with no quagmire in Iraq and perhaps some progress by now in dealing with global warming.
But no, the oil companies and corporate CEOs have gotten richer under Bush's watch - and we've done absolutely nothing to deal with the growing threat to the planet from climate change and the greenhouse effect due to the burning of fossil fuels.
Maybe someone will start caring about that issue here when the sea levels rise and the beaches of Gulf Shores erode north to Bay Minette.
by Glynn Wilson
It's 25 degrees here tonight and there's nothing worth watching on TV and the news is ho hum, and I've already had two naps today in my attempt to turn into a bear.
It didn't work, so maybe this is a good time to take on a subject I've been thinking about for awhile but have avoided dealing with in writing: The definition of success.
How would you define success?
Having spent most of my life in the camp of those who define success basically as a fun life, you know, the pursuit of happiness from the Declaration of Independence and all that, I don't think it ever occurred to me to consider the deeper meaning of the term until maybe toward the end of my tenure as an Instructor at the University of Alabama in 1995 while pursuing a masters degree in communications research.
I distinctly remember it striking me as odd when I heard professors using the word "success" in an academic sense, which basically meant successfully completing an educational program.
Having started down a professional road in the newspaper business with a BA in journalism back in the early 1980s, the only feel I had for the term meant something in the nature of "a successful career."
Prior to that, since I spent my high school years as a drummer in rock 'n' roll bands, success simply meant a paying job for the night or the week and getting laid on a regular basis.
Continue reading "Under The Microscope: How Do You Define Success?" »
by Glynn Wilson
The leaves are falling from the trees in heaps now.
The sun shining through the trees in the backyard still glistens off of a few splotches of burnt red, auburn and rusty gold on the hickories, maples and dogwoods.
A few robins are still coming around to take a bath in the backyard every day.
But the Thanksgiving Holiday signals a transition to one of my least favorite times of the year.
It's not just the shorter days, or the growing cold, especially at night.
It's not just the blatant materialistic focus of the entire American society this time of year, when the singing Santas go up in the grocery stores and the local television media folks start pumping Christmas shopping as news.
As much as anything else, it's the bad TV programming.
 | Photo by Glynn Wilson | | Thanksgiving leaves... |
Baseball season is over. The college football season is pretty much over, except for the bowl games. And the basic cable networks start running every bad Christmas movie ever made.
Bah humbug.
If you have followed this site for any length of time, you must know by now that I am something of a crotchety old news guy who thumbs his nose at sentimentality.
The only thing I am sentimental about is freedom.
My favorite holiday of the year is the Fourth of July. Independence and liberty are worth celebrating.
Which is why I will still catch parts of Mel Gibson's "Braveheart" even though I've seen it way too many times now. I will also catch "The Partriot" when it makes the late night cable schedule.
I would like to say I am not a Mel Gibson fan since he made the politically incorrect "The Passion of the Christ" a couple of years ago. But thinking back on it now, I would like to think he made that movie for the money and not to push his radical religious views on us all.
I could be wrong about that. But the point, at least for me, is that I can take greed more than I can take hypocrisy or the promotion of unreality.
So let's just tell the truth. The Christmas holiday season is all about propping up the consumer spending segment of the economy. It's not about Jesus.
That at least would be honest.
I don't like the so-called "crass commercialism" either, but I can take it to some extent - even though I won't participate in it any more than I would go out and play a character in a church Christmas show featuring a manger scene.
There are a few things I like about winter more than summer. For one, you don't have to worry too much about being bitten by mosquitoes in the wintertime. And in the American South, there are a few decent golfing days in winter, days when you can get outside and hike.
But the best thing about winter in the South is that it only lasts a couple of months.
If I were a bear, I would sleep through winter too and look forward to waking up when the spring breaks out, when the bees and the flowers come out again.
If you are anything like me in these regards, take heart. If we can just get through the Christmas season without throwing up, and hunker down through January and February, before we know it March will be here in all its spring glory.
The birds will return from South and Central America, and we can break out the digital camera again and get some great shots.
It will warm up enough to put the canoe on top of the van again and put it in the water somewhere and run the rapids.
That is what I live for these days.
What is your favorite time of year?
What is your favorite holiday?
Why?
 | Photo by Glynn Wilson | | The leaves in the trees go red and gold this time of year... |
Good writing is good writing ... it sets you free, if you are an artist.
- Anonymous
by Glynn Wilson
TUSCALOOSA, Ala., Nov. 11 - It is an almost surreal feeling to be standing in the cold fog within stumbling distance to Bryant-Denny stadium during an Alabama football game - and there's not a person in sight. Not a soul yelling "Roll Tide."
At this moment Alabama is hanging in there with LSU and only trailing by a touchdown in the first half. But there is not a sound around the campus in the dark.
Except for the voices coming from the TV.
Half of the inhabitants from here are on the road too, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Sipping on just enough Jamaican rum to keep the bones warm, I am watching the game and at the same time trying to think some more about what I might say to journalism students at the university about the state of writing for the Web.
Continue reading "Under The Microscope: Writing, Art and Freedom..." »
by Glynn Wilson
GATOR LAKE, GULF STATE PARK, Ala., Oct. 15 - It is not always easy to find the right first word to begin any composition. When you are hammering out words like nails as a daily newspaper reporter, it sometimes hardly matters. You can start with "The…" and go from there.
The mayor was convicted of taking bribes to allow a developer to flip land and build over some wetlands, you might say, and then go on to give out his name and party affiliation, maybe take the trouble to list his campaign contributions. There's one in Orange Beach worth checking right now, even since the mayor and the city attorney there went down. Too bad it wouldn't matter that much to the faithful in the Bible Belt, or the one's sporting W's on the rear window of their SUVs along the Redneck Riviera.
That's actually pretty easy to do, starting with "the" and just going with it - when you can find a publisher willing to print it who is not in on the deal himself.
Sitting here on the other side of Gator Lake by the public picnic area across from the state-owned hotel and convention center due soon to be torn down - two years after Ivan crashed through most of it, making it uninhabitable - perhaps the first word should take the name of a house on a suspect sliver of terrain known as West Beach in Gulf Shores. To wit: "Wits End."
 | Photo by Glynn Wilson | | My old house at 1109 Lagoon Avenue is now painted pink and is called "Dog Heaven." Many wonderful trips had there, in the hammock listening to the waves crash relentlessly on the sand... |
Revisiting the beach I used to call home 15 years ago, the precariousness of the place is so obvious it is still a mystery to me why every time I've ever ridden down this seven-mile long spit of land there is at least one pair of snow birds stopping in the bike lane to write down the phone number of another beach house for sale or rent. That is, the few houses with the guts still in them and the decks and stairs obviously rebuilt just recently.
They come with names like "Wits End" or "Satisfaction," "Labor of Love" or "Sand Trap" or "Come Lucky." But the beach sand pumped artificially on the beach side travels steadily, surely north across the road like snow blowing over a mountain trail. You can build all the dune fences and save all the beach mice from extinction, maybe, but the sand will still travel north, like the never ending march of time itself, even faster in between houses close together and faster still in between condo high rises stacked side by side.
The planet is warming and the sea levels are rising and all the millions wasted on "beach replenishment" will only stem the tide for a little while, long enough for the developers to cash in until the next big hurricane hits dead on. Then they will go in and build it again, and again, and someone will get rich every time, especially the friends of the governor and the titans of big oil and construction and automobile sales.
That is the American way, after all, since Manifest Destiney drove these crazy escapees from Europe across the plains and the mountains to California and Oregon. They will plow any forest and build anywhere the pathetically weak governments will let them . . .
Excuse me for a minute. I need to shift gears. A great blue heron just flew across the lake in front of me. Not close enough for a photograph. As I was driving over here a few minutes ago, I stopped the van on the side of the road myself. Not to look at a beach house.
Two hawks, followed by two great egrets, flew right in front of me. I got a few shots as they flew away.
Anyway, back to what I was saying. Even the Bible says only a fool builds his house on shifting sand. Find rock, like the houses of Roebuck east of Birmingham where they build their houses not only on rock, but out of rocks.
No, counting on a house staying in the family for generations on this beach is not sensible gambling, unless you just love to lose.
 | Photo by Glynn Wilson | | No, that's not a garage under an apartment. There were rooms on the bottom floor, beach level at the Gulf State Park Hotel and Convention Center. First Ivan's wind swept them clean, then the water surge finished them off... |
Hang on. Time for a shot of inspiration . . . I'm going to walk over here among the live oaks and see if I can find some birds to shoot. Back in a few . . .
Now, no, not now. Not with this wind whipping in here like it starts to do this time of year, when the skies go grey and the bars get lonely and the only thing there is to do is read, write or drink.
Today is the turning of the tide from the immaculate fall to the not too dreaded winter, where you don't have to worry about the Gulf freezing over - except maybe every 100 years or so. I saw ice in the Gulf in 1990, when that 100-year storm came down from Canada into Dallas and then turned left and froze the Gulf Coast all the way to Panama City for seven solid days.
Three years later, back in Birmingham hanging out on the Southside, I went through the 100-year snow in those hills. Those were the last of the cool years, my friends. They are gone now, unless the Yellow Stone volcano comes to life and spews a dark cloud around the planet and cools things down a bit.
The mercury is rising, they used to say. Now they mean it when they say it, even on the rocking chairs in front of the Cracker Barrel.
It is about time to head north again, since the skies are turning grey and the money's running low. Time to get ready for another winter in Birmingham. There will still be a few late migrant birds coming through there. Maybe the dry summer didn't kill all the fall color and it will be something of a show in Blount and St. Clair counties.
Hang on. It's that great blue again, coming back to the edge of the point. . .
Got a few shots of him flying off, nothing worth printing.
Wits end. That's what I was saying. Homo sapiens are capable of finding that outer limit, that "Island Escape" house or the one called "SOS."
It is a cry for help. A cry for someone to cancel the insurance and raise the interest rates and make it unaffordable, like gasoline will be soon. Then Bush and Riley's economy will be revealed as the frauds they are, fudged numbers as cooked as Health South's books under the now Reverand Scrushy.
But no sir, I am not at wit's end. Not altogether at satisfaction either, if you know what I mean. You know what Mick said about that. You get what you need.
Some people just don't believe that. They like to step over the rest of us and get more than their fair share. Not sure why they think they deserve it, but like the commissioner said in All The King's Men, they get in the courthouse and "gets biggity."
Anyone who thinks they can live on this land forever is "getting' biggity" on the planet. What they may not realize is, the planet will get them, sooner or later, and there ain't no angel from heaven going to come down to earth to save them.
We are all doomed anyway, ultimately, no doubt about it. Dust to dust and all that. So why not live a little? Get out in nature and do something, anything, while there is some nature to get out into. The planet is not at wits end just yet...
End Note: There is high speed wireless on West Beach, at the Gulf Shores Surf and Racket Club. But the yankee bitch there said it was for registered guests only. The old codgers I saw sitting in the lobby would not know how to turn on a computer, and would benefit from the conversation like the Morgan City crowd did in All The King's Men. But no! I missed the closing time at the Dizzy Bean by 11 minutes, so I'm filing from the Gulf Shores McDonald's. Talk about rednecks. The manager did manage to get the connection working, after moving it out from under the food wrappers on his desk : )
 | Photo by Glynn Wilson | | We are not sure if this is an egret and a heron or what fishing along the road in Gulf State Park between the main office and the picnic area on the beachside of the lake. All we know is they were both very large and white and hanging out with what appeared to be two Cooper's hawks. I couldn't get close enough for a picture. Could it be great white herons? Bob Sargent thinks it might be a cattle egret and a great blue heron, but you can't really tell from the photograph. |
Maybe Condi Can Explain It To Him
by Glynn Wilson
Do you ever wake up in the morning with a start from a dream and find yourself calling the president a dumbass?
Oh, I suppose not. That's my curse.
I only wish I could get into the press room with George W. Bush and try to question some sense into him. I wish his handlers would get him to read this column, because it contains a lesson in the difference between myth and reality and how Americans should treat the people of other countries.
As I wound down Sunday night, flipping around the cable TV channels to find something worth stopping on as I often do, I ran across a movie loosely based on a true story called "Hidalgo."
It is a 2004 film based on the life and tales of the famous American horseman Frank Hopkins and his amazing Spanish-American mustang Hidalgo.
While working for Wild Bill Cody's traveling show in 1890 in the last days of American cowboys and Indians, a wealthy Arab sheikh invites Hopkins and his horse to enter the "Ocean of Fire" horse race, a 3,000 mile survival ordeal across the Arabian desert.
Up until that year, the race was restricted to the finest Arabian horses ever bred, the purest and noblest lines owned by the greatest royal families. But the sheikh was a fan of tales from the American West, and Hopkins was billed as the greatest rider the West had ever known and his horse the greatest horse that ever lived to run.
So the Sheikh wants to puts his claim to the test, pitting the American cowboy and his mustang against the world's greatest Arabian horses and Bedouin riders, some of whom are determined to prevent a foreigner - and especially an "impure" horse and rider - from finishing the race. Hopkins is presented as half Caucasian and half Native American, born of a marriage between a European father and a Native American mother. His Indian name is "Blue Child" or "Far Rider."
In spite of the seemingly overwhelming obstacles, Hollywood predictably has Hopkins win the race by a nose in the end. But the sheikh's nephew the prince, who Hopkins saves from quicksand during the race, lives to come in second on the top Arabian horse. The horse of a British woman, who the Arabs in the film call "the Christian woman," comes in third, in spite of all her plots to have Hidalgo killed. Some Christian.
I would like to imagine George W. Bush watching this movie in the White House screening room along with Secretary of State Condi Rice, who explains its meaning to him.
"Don't you see, Mr. President, how this cowboy showed class and humility after he won the race?"
Hopkins befriends the sheikh and his daughter throughout the race and makes a gift of his Colt pistol after it's over. A hundred years of peace ensues between the two countries as a result, even though the myth of the pure bred horse and rider are blown.
The victory by Hopkins and Hidalgo shows that free will matters more than breeding.
To show he's truly a class act, the directors have Hopkins travel home to America after the race and use the $100,000 in prize money to buy hundreds of mustangs the U.S. Government planned to shoot. He releases them into the wild and sets Hidalgo free along with them.
Now isn't there a lesson in this movie about how America should deal with the rest of the world and nature? Isn't that why they used to love us?
For more information about the film, consult the Wikipedia online encyclopedia. And watch for it on a cable channel near you.
by Glynn Wilson
With most of the media attention of late focused on the stupid exchange of rockets between Hezbollah and the Israeli military, another story closer to home has been relegated to a slanted, pro-American capitalist news footnote.
Even the Cuban government got into the act of condemning Israel's bombing of the Lebanese village of Qana this week, calling it "cowardly, vile and criminal" and urging the world to force an immediate cease-fire.
While the rockets continue to land on both sides, the socialist leadership assured Cubans on Friday that Raul Castro was in firm control as acting president, and the health minister said Fidel Castro was "recovering satisfactorily" from intestinal surgery, according to the Associated Press.
While cable news networks took a brief break from the war in the Middle East to give a mini report on the situation in Cuba, they focused mainly on anti-Castro Cubans dancing in the streets of Miami - with no condemnation of people who would celebrate at the prospect that Fidel Castro might be dying.
What are they thinking?
If Castro were to croak now, with Bush and his oil cabal in power here, and if Castro's brother Raul were to appeal to the American government to lift economic sanctions, chances are the oil companies and real estate developers would move in and ruin Cuba forever.
After spending a couple of weeks in Cuba during the Christmas holidays in 2002, I came away with the impression that about the only thing the Cuban people really need from the United States is more food - and maybe some investment capital to rebuild Havana.
An honest, educated and realistic comparison of Havana with any American city would reveal a wild dichotomy that few American reporters seem willing or able to understand or report.
Thanks to the policies of a true socialist-democracy under Castro, virtually everyone in Cuba has a college education - even the chicas, or prostitutes.
There are no illiterate dumbasses roaming the streets of Havana with guns like there are in every, single American city. Crime is almost non-existent in Cuba.
For all the talk from the Bush administration and the conservative movement about being pro-education and anti-crime, they could learn a thing or two from Castro – if they were willing to listen, learn and conduct an honest assessment.
 | | Photo by Spider Martin | | A little old lady smiles for the camera in downtown Havana, Cuba, December 2002 |
There are also no toothless, homeless people in Cuba, like there are in every American city. Every single human being in Cuba is entitled to free health care, including dental care.
But the supposedly richest and most powerful country in the world cannot provide that for its citizens right here in the good old U.S. of A.
Does anyone else see the irony?
And here's an interesting fact. While studies show more obesity and related health problems in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world, there is no such thing as obesity in Cuba. I walked from one end of Havana to the other, talking to people and taking photos with Spider Martin, and we never saw a single fat person. Not one.
The irony here is that the food in the homes and restaurants was sparse, simple and frankly scarce. But they are not starving either. They just live on fish and rice and do not over eat.
Imagine the boon it would be for Alabama chicken, soybean and corn farmers if only they were allowed to sell to Cuba?
According to research for a story I wrote about that trip, estimates show that lifting the sanctions on trade with Cuba could result in U.S. exports valued at $658 million to potentially $1 billion a year, or 17 percent to 27 percent of Cuba's total imports.
But no, the South Florida anti-Castro Cuban lobbying money, which funds the campaigns of Republicans such as Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his brother in the White House, prevents a reasonable policy toward Cuba. That money even trumps the pro-business and conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which for years has urged Republican and Democratic Party presidents to lift the sanctions against Cuba.
So we hope the press releases out of Cuba are accurate, and Castro will be back on his feet and well soon. We hope he is able to survive until a more reasonable Democratic president and Congress regain power in the U.S. and finally decide to change our policies toward Cuba.
It is a beautiful place in the universe.
With a good bit of honest forethought, re-engaging with Cuba could be a win-win situation for America, Cuba and Alabama.
But it would best be done with some planning for sustainable redevelopment, not American-style suburbanization. The oil companies should not be able to rape Cuba's environment and spoil the beaches. And real estate developers should not be allowed to put a McDonald's on every block and a highrise condo on every dune.
While Soviet-style Communism proved it cannot work indefinitely, due to its propensity to lead to totalitarianism, that does not mean a bit of socialism mixed with democracy can't create a better world for everyone – not just the privileged few, the born rich.
 | | Photo by Spider Martin | | For the fun of it, here's the photo Spider shot of me with the guy who drew the caricature used for these columns. He did it unbeknownst to me and then offered it to me for something Americans are banned from spending in Cuba - one American dollar. How could I refuse? |
"Only sound methodology can ensure success."
- Bobby Jones
by Glynn Wilson
It is somewhat surprising no one has suggested this before. If body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger can be governor of California, and commentators can suggest a run for governor of Alabama by basketball player Charles Barkley, why not Tiger Woods for president?
Then again, why would anyone want to run for political office in these strange times when you can play golf for big bucks all day long every day?
Judging by their television ads during the British Open, even the corrupt Southern Company, parent company of Alabama Power, realizes that Bobby Jones was onto something when he talked about a sound methodology leading to success.
What I'm wondering is: What if George W. Bush had actually trained all his life for the presidency like Tiger Woods trained to be a great golfer, instead of fucking off most of his life?
Maybe now we would not be mired in ill-conceived wars in the Middle East if our dicktater-in-chief knew more about foreign policy than he does about eating peanuts, drinking Jim Beam whiskey, cutting brush and riding mountain bikes.
In flipping back and forth this morning between the British Open on ABC and "Meet The Press" on NBC, the juxtaposition of success and failure was striking.
Tiger Woods clearly prepared well for the British Open and had a successful game plan for approaching the links course at Royal Liverpool. The Bush administration quite obviously had an incomplete and bad game plan for fighting the war in Iraq and now can't seem to figure out what to do about the growing war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
This neo-con crowd also doesn't seem to know what to do about the nuclear ambitions of Iran or North Korea.
The plans and executions of the Bush administration have been so bad that Washington Post columnist Thomas Ricks has written a new book called Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.
In improvising a response to the insurgency in Iraq, U.S. forces frequently were led poorly by commanders unprepared for their mission by an institution that took away from the Vietnam War only the lesson that it shouldn't get involved in messy counterinsurgencies. The advice of those who had studied the American experience there was ignored, Ricks says in his column in the nation's capitol newspaper today.
The other lessons from Vietnam, which have been taught at colleges and universities for years now, including West Point, are that you can't win a war in a far off country where the people do not support you. And you cannot continue to fight a war with mounting casualties and obvious failures when public opinion does not support you at home.
For all of Bush's claims that he doesn't care about public opinion polls, what that means is he doesn't care what the American people think. He is the president and "the decider" after all. Translation: We are all just peons in his empire.
If someone died and put me in charge, I would tell Tiger Woods to take his 2-iron, which has been so successful off the tee this week, and bash Bush over the head with it.
I would rather be playing 18 holes myself. Instead, I am watching in dismay as the world comes unraveled because of the fiasco that is our country's foreign policy.
So what about it folks? Tiger Woods for president?
Letting The Press Off The Hook
by Glynn Wilson
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., July 4, 2006 - It would almost be an understatement to say that the American press has been on the bad end of a few bad mouths of late, especially as it concerns recent coverage of the Bush administration's supposedly secret surveillance programs.
If I were a CIA "agency" man, I might celebrate the CIA's losses in war today. If I were a solider, I would celebrate other men and women in uniform, alive and dead, on this Independence Day.
But I am a writer and a journalist. And since everyone here knows there would be no independence without some world class writing, as well as spying and soldiering, I believe the press deserves something of a break today.
So I will tell you a story about one of the greatest newsmen to ever be conceived on Alabama soil, at least by today's standards of how we judge people in this United States of America.
 | | LF | | The One That Got Away, Indeed |
In his new memoir, The One That Got Away, Howell Raines writes of great and small fish and fishers, giants and dwarfs of the written word - and then there's politicians. He writes of interesting people he knows and has met - and what makes for an honorable life.
By the end of it, he is released in his mind not only by the great blue marlin he fought for seven and a half hours and then lost off Christmas Island in the Pacific. You get the feeling that he writes the last short sentence of the book as if he is "released" from his grief at his great fall - and perhaps now that the story is written and on its way to the publisher.
I want to believe it is true, all of it, like I want to believe that his Minolta underwater camera failed when he tried to take a picture of that blue marlin as it ran alongside the boat and was almost within his guide Tuna's reach.
But fish tales, like memoirs, are often fraught with hype and yes hubris. Hubris is a word Raines uses a lot, perhaps because his public image as an arrogant SOB will live with him for the rest of his life no matter what he does in the future or what he writes.
And the truth is, I'm not big on fish tales or fishing anyway, perhaps because it was my long-dead father's favorite pastime, not mine. There was no such thing as catch-and-release in Eschol Wilson's day, 1926-1973. Then, the idea was to catch the most and the biggest bass you were skilled or lucky enough to get hooks into - then clean, fry and eat the buggers for supper.
Mr. Raines must certainly know that the fish releasing him is the perfect metaphor for his life and how he was run off from the New York Times and left with the time to fish. He's the first Alabamian to ever hold the three best jobs at that lofty newspaper: Washington Bureau Chief, Editorial Page Editor, and Executive Editor.
We've never had a president from Alabama, although we did have one serious candidate for awhile during Howell's lifetime, which is likely one of the reasons he bagged his first shot at the New York Times job in those days of segregation and the fight for Civil Rights.
But he played the journalism political game well and made it all the way to the top. Then just when everything seemed just about perfect - from a record seven Pulitzer Prizes to his new Polish bride and country house in the Poconos - it all came crashing down like it did for Icarus, who you will remember flew too close to the sun.
The image Raines would leave you with is another metaphor, one from Hemingway, one of his literary and journalism heroes. Although curiously, Raines fails to mention the fisherman Santiago's words of life's justification when he lost his marlin, but not his life to the sharks, in Old Man And The Sea. This is an oddity, since Raines makes a big deal out of remembering his nanny read it to him in bad old Birmingham, and then finding a copy of the Life magazine it was first published in after he "made it" to New York.
I guess it would be admitting too much to come out and say, as Santiago did, "man is not made for defeat....A man can be destroyed but not defeated."
If you are into fly fishing and literary journalism of the personal kind, you must like this book. Raines learns from and quotes all the great fishing writers, and has the resources to fish in some incredible places.
He does cast into the waters a few other metaphors, from baseball and of course football. It you know anything at all about Howell Raines, you probably know that he sometimes likes to quote the great but flawed University of Alabama football coach, Paul "Bear" Bryant. You may or may not know how that very thing was one of the annoyances that made the "mandarins" in New York, as he calls them, come to hate him.
And he just can't resist an allusion to the Civil War and the Battle of Gettysburg. In fact, the central test of character from the book comes from none other than the great general of the Confederate Army, Robert E. Lee, who Raines claims not to idolize, being from one of those rare strongholds in North Alabama where his family members hid in the woods to escape the fighting and sold goods to the Yankees.
If I were to construct a similar narrative, I might use a canoe trip down a river or the sometimes maddening or sublime game of golf. But it's his story, and he tells it well - if inevitably incompletely.
There is one key person in this drama, another Alabama writer, who is never mentioned in the book - perhaps at his request. Since he does not want me to write about it either, I will not tell the story here. But one of these days, that story will be told.
For now, let's change Cherokee directions - something I learned about from reading Raines' book and should have known - and imagine another fish tale.
Historians sometimes have to do this, when people are too afraid or dead to talk.
I like to imagine a world in which Ralph Nader and the Green Party, along with the U.S. Supreme Court and some hanging chads in Florida, did not hand George W. Bush the election of 2000 like every gift he ever got in his life of high crimes and misdemeanors.
But that might be too much of a "stretcher" to pull off here today, so let's move forward a bit and bring this fishing trip back to the press.
What if someone had been willing to stand up to the writer's guild and just say no to promoting Jayson Blair? You will remember Blair as the short, black kid who made stuff up at the New York Times and filed plagiarized stories high on cocaine from the suburbs of New York rather than get on the plane to Virginia and Texas. He was given a golden opportunity over a thousand other fine reporters who spent years vying for the chance, and he not only blew his own career up his own nose. He damaged the great ship that was the New York Times like the sharks ate holes in Santiago's boat.
The tribunal is still out on whether this little confabulating missile will sink that ship.
But from my observation point - and I was one of those vying for the chance and got it, for a little while - Howell Raines could have been just the editor America needs right now, to go up against Bush and Cheney and Karl Rove.
Yes, he also listened to Judith Miller, who listened to Chalabi and beat the drums for war. But she was the star of the Washington bureau on the subject of weapons of mass destruction, having written a book about it. And after 9/11 - and I know this from multiple sources - virtually everyone at the Times believed deep down in the ultimate thematic truth that a nuclear attack on New York was likely and that it would be the end of civilization as they knew it.
Faced with what we know now - about no WMD, massive and illegal domestic surveillance, all manner of corruption from Iraq to New Orleans - the so-called "hard charging" Howell Raines who "ate gunpowder for breakfast" - would have unleashed the troops and "flooded the zone" on these assholes in charge in Washington today.
And no matter how mean he was as a boss (he was actually more aloof to me the times I met him), I would like to know what it would be like to live in a world with Howell Raines at the helm of the New York Times today - sans the torpedo in its broadside.
I may just be dreaming, and of course I am because that is not the world we live in today. But by damn, I would like to live in that world.
Everybody else running news organizations today seem like pantywaists to me, and I'm sure to Howell. The PR doctors and the spinmeisters have totally taken over the country now.
I won't spoil the entire book for you by going into all the details he likes to drop in here and there about how bad the news business is and how to fix it. Best I can tell, he is right as rain on most of that advice.
I do, however, have a couple of quibbles.
For one thing, Raines likes to talk in terms of sociology almost as much as he likes to quote Bear Bryant. But I think Mr. Raines' sociological bibliography is as limited as his grasp of the literature on communications research generally. He was an English major, after all. He would be better off talking in terms of political science or journalism history, both of which are flawed disciplines to be sure.
But he would be on sounder footing in his stream of thought that way, like when he says the reason a large audience turns to Fox News is for fake, made up news. That's not it, at all. Really it's not. It's not even that Fox is the Republican network. Roger Ailes' genius there, and of course I disagree with it as much as Raines, is that Fox News is the pro-American patriotic network, what I like to call "America's Al Jazeera."
As for what he says about blogs and bloggers, well, I'll let him off the hook for that. I doubt he reads this one, although another writer and a friend of his does, down in Florida.
And I suspect Mr. Raines is too old and too ink-stained to get this - although he was there when the Times embraced the Web.
Maybe there is hope. A Howell Raines blog. Hell, I would write for it - in the flash of a rise of a fine silver fish . . .
-30-
For the blog diary record, here's the text of the letter I wrote to Howell Raines eight days after September 11, 2001. One particular friend told me to cut the military references and send it. I didn't listen. It went out just like this.
September 19, 2001
Howell Raines, Executive Editor
The New York Times
229 W. 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
Dear Mr. Raines,
A number of witnesses to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center said words could not describe it. Yet somehow The New York Times put together a package of words like nothing I have seen in my 22-year association with the news business. Like millions of Americans who would now die to serve their country, I would die to serve The New York Times.
So take me, sir, and do with me what you will. I am single and willing to track down Osama bin Laden in the caves of Afghanistan if necessary. I am versatile in a way very few new hires could be. I can do breaking news on deadline with wire service precision. I know politics, and have sources the Times could use at this time. My specialty in more recent years has been science and the environment. I know the American South, and could be useful in this region. As a pioneering Web developer, I could be useful to the Times online. I know literary non-fiction and can do features as well.
After working for weekly and daily newspapers, magazines and wire services since 1979, and reading the Times regularly since in the early 1980s, I decided in the mid-1990s that the newspaper business was dead for me in a way. It just did not seem so vital anymore. The news seemed stale. I thought there were no more courageous newspaper editors in the world, that no big stories existed. So I escaped to the halls of academe and began a love affair with teaching the craft of journalism.
After reading your coverage of this gut-wrenching story, however, my only thought was, "I want to be part of it." All I ever wanted in life was to be a reporter, to work for a great newspaper, a great newspaper editor. Judging by your performance in the face of this tragedy, you are one of the last of the great newspaper editors. So as a loyal soldier might report to his commander in chief, I salute you and stand ready to serve.
With deep sincerity,
Glynn R. Wilson, A.B.D., Ph.D., UT
University of Loyola New Orleans
We have two American flags always: One for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.
- Henry Miller
by Glynn Wilson
It is 90 degrees in the shade on the screened-in porch on Saturday before the Fourth of July, which falls on a Tuesday this year. These would be unremarkable facts by themselves, since it should always be hot as Hades on the first day of July in Alabama. And except that it means the weekend will extend for at least two extra days, three for the truly bright and playful who learn early in life how to stretch out the pursuit of happiness to its fullest potential.
The Baltimore Orioles are beating the Atlanta Braves 4-1 in the third inning as we put away the dirty dishes after the best summer meal of the season by far: Homemade chicken salad, rattle-snake green beans, fried okra, salad peppered with fresh Dothan tomatoes, cornbread, sweat iced tea, and squash "cooked to death" and drowned in butter - the only way to make the stuff edible, like they do things in New Orleans.
 | | Photo by Glynn Wilson | | Liberty National's Lady Liberty on I-459 |
We ate so much we saved the strawberries, old fashioned pound cake and Bluebell ice cream for later, which is probably why I am awake to write this and not fast asleep in the Stratolounger.
The reason for writing today, dear blog diary, is to relate a tale from the past that also illuminates the present and contains portent for the future. The subjects are the Fourth of July, the American flag, the true meaning of liberty, and the freedom embodied in the great phrase in the Declaration of Independence: "The pursuit of happiness." We also have a few things to say today about the current American president, the United States Supreme Court, and the very recent conviction of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy.
There are times in a writer's life when the convergence of events must be taken down in some fashion. For some practitioners, a pencil will do. Having never liked the feel or sound of lead on paper, however, perhaps because my earliest memories of it involve being forced to perform math, this recording could be done with a modern pen.
Or, it could be hammered away on the old black manual Uniroyal typewriter that adorns the coffee table in the old technology museum here in The Bunker, which stays as cool as a cave even in summer.
The story could simply be typed in a word processing program on a computer and rest there for no one to read but myself or some future book publisher.
But due to the technological nature of the times and my own predilections for publishing online - and to hell with the pretenses of New York hierarchy - this story will be relayed first on a blog.
If you watch the Google ads on this site at all, especially the ones on the front page with the bridge picture, you might run across an ad for turning a blog into a book. Some parts of the blog archive being created here may one day see print. It is all being saved for that purpose. But to publish a book, I do not need to purchase any more software than already exists on my trusty blue and white Mac.
When I get ready to sell a book, I can lay it out and publish it myself and sell it right here - and keep all the money, not just the 4-6 percent you get to keep when the mandarins of Manhattan deem you worthy.
It is also being published here to aid my brain as I pass middle age. While the newspaper industry fears this medium, I will use it along with savvy readers to remember what happened in the past, lest we forget history and all - even if it is personal and perhaps not globally consequential. It is interesting to note here that even the Library of Congress chose our archive on Supreme Court Battles to store for posterity as one of the early examples of blog publishing.
You may guess from the Henry Miller quote that heads this piece that I am not in a totally friendly frame of mind as it concerns the leadership of the country or the flag at the moment.
I think Miller was right and I think there are two Americas. And I think they are growing further and further apart with each passing year. Every time we celebrate our independence from the British Crown, we seem to come full circle back to part of our past, the part where the masses of people would rather be subjects of a divine empire than independent souls with real freedom of thought and action.
It is possible that this realization has dawned upon me many times in my life. But the instance I am recalling today took place on the weekend of the Fourth of July in 1989.
For those of you who know precious little about me, let's just skip to the good part by saying by the summer of 1989, I had experienced a music career of sorts in the 1970s, a journalism career in the 1980s, and had even gone through the experience of owning my own business, a bookstore, newsstand, coffee house and hang out for leftists and curious independents and libertarians on the Southside of Birmingham.
After three years in business, with two stores to run for the past 12 months, I was burned out on the retail business and about to move to Fairhope and then Gulf Shores to get back into newspapering for another stretch covering politics and the environment on the Gulf of Mexio coast.
But it was, after all, the Fourth of July weekend and, being my favorite holiday of the year, a celebration was required. In those days, when I still had the last of my youthful looks, a celebration meant a real celebration. Something special.
I was never much up for the Christian holidays, Christmas or Easter, or any of the other petty holidays meant to give Americans a day off from work to shop. There has always been something special, though, about the Fourth of July. Maybe it is the journalist in my bones, or the revolutionary in my DNA.
And lets get these facts right: 1989 and 1990 were special years for the holiday, the flag and this thing called American freedom.
In 1989, the 101st Congress had passed that Flag Protection Act as a political gesture, as they often do when they get patriotic about reelection. This patriotism often seems to come around the Fourth of July, often the beginning of the mid-term reelection season, as it did this year, when the Senate killed a similar measure by only one vote.
On June 11, 1990, the Supreme Court in the case of United States v. Eichman struck down the Flag Protection Act, ruling again that the government's interest in preserving the flag as a symbol does not outweigh the individual's First Amendment right to disparage that symbol through expressive conduct.
The first attempt to make it a crime to burn the American flag in public came in reaction to protests during the Vietnam War, when the 90th Congress first enacted something called the Flag Protection Act.
But on the Fourth of July, 1989, it was still a crime to burn the American flag, even though the appeal of the case had already been filed with Supreme Court and experts were saying the law would never stand. So the opportunity presented itself to celebrate freedom properly. But where?
There in the local newspaper was a story about the largest replica of the statue of liberty next to the one on Staten Island. The one-tenth the size Lady Liberty had adorned the Liberty National Life Insurance building in downtown Birmingham for years. But the new managers of the Torchmark corporation decided to take her down, give her a bath, and move her to its new headquaters in the burgeoning suburbs in view from the new bypass Interstate highway, I-459.
Well being patriotic young men, my comrades and I who considered ourselves the rightful heirs of the Sons of Liberty title figured we could not resist such an opportunity. On the appointed night before the official dedication of the statue's new berth, we snuck out there behind where the American Boy Scout headquarters now stands - armed with a six pack of good beer, a smoke of fine stuff, a little store-bought American flag, and a cigarette lighter.
With no guard in site, we climbed up Lady Liberty's skirt. We climbed the scaffolding still left there by the workers who erected her. Once at the top, we lit the smoke, toasted freedom and the U.S. Supreme Court, and burned the flag right there between Lady Liberty's feet.
It was the only time the feat has been accomplished for sure. How do I know? Because when we bragged about it in the bars of Southside, maybe Dugan's Irish Pub, other friends wanted to go immediately and repeat the ceremony.
But it was not to be. The Liberty National folks must have found the cans and paraphernalia we left behind. The next night, when we pulled up to the newly locked fence, there was a full-time guard on duty 24-hours a day.
Now do you see how elusive freedom can be? One day you are free to pull a harmless prank with the tacit approval of the Supreme Court. The next day you are staring at a padlocked 12-foot fence and the headlights of a security cruiser.
That is America today in a nutshell. If you are born rich or manage to steal a fortune in the midst of run-amok corporate capitalism, as Richard Scrushy did, you are free and you fly the flag and feel all is well in the world. You are safe.
Your sons and daughters are not fighting in the desert in Iraq or cooking hamburgers for $5.15 an hour or begging for change on the mean streets of America.
Now, what of the poor - which is most of us now - and what are we going to do on this Fourth of July about the flag? If you do not see danger, revolution and anarchy lurking in that flag enough to burn it, then you are as blind as a bat and, one day very soon you are going to be shocked.
Did you hear Osama bin Laden put out another video the other day? You should know what that means. If you don't, watch out for the fireworks. They may not be toy explosions afterall.
Now, I could go on with this diatribe, since I tend to write long. But I think I will stop, dear diary blog, and take a break to watch the new Superman movie for some journalistic inspiration a-la Clark Kent.
If the GD Web site is not attacked again over the weekend, I have a feeling I will have more to say on the subject of freedom between now and Tuesday.
For now, I'll just crack open another Yuengling and say, "Up, up and away. Is it a bird? A plane? No, it's SU-PER-MAN!"
Watch out bad guys. The caped defender of truth, liberty and the American way is on the case. Somehow we don't think he is on George Bush's side.
 | | Photo by Rowland Scherman | | The Triad of Dissent, the Garage Cafe courtyard, June 23, 2006 |
by Glynn Wilson
Dodging the cavernous potholes in the streets of New Orleans on the way home from Mayor Ray Nagin's victory party at the Marriott Hotel on Canal Street last weekend, I began to think about all the problems of governance that seem to plague us in what historians may refer to as "the Bush years."
The words of one New Orleans resident - a native of Walker County, Alabama, who got out - echo in my head: "Fix the streets, dammit. I would vote for anyone who would just fix the streets."
On and off for the past half a century, the United States has teetered back and forth between electing politicians who bash big government and those who strive to make government work.
What will the country's political landscape look like at the end of the election cycle in 2006?
Before Hurricane Katrina's deluge overwhelmed New Orleans, Nagin had three years to fix the streets. His administration did find about $100,000 hidden by the previous administration and paved a few. But the response in the wake of Katrina showed that government was not prepared at the local, state or national levels, even though experts had warned for years about the inevitability of "the big one."
This makes New Orleans resident and historian Douglas Brinkley mad.
Brinkley appeared on C-SPAN'S "Washington Journal" this week. Even nine months after Katrina, he still appeared to be mad not only at President George W. Bush and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. He is still mad at Nagin for hiding out on the 27th floor of the Hyatt Hotel for a week and then disappearing to a house in Dallas, Texas, for five days at the height of the disaster's aftermath.
In a rare timely narrative from a historian, Brinkley wrote a book about that week, The Great Deluge, which became a campaign issue when it came out before the 2006 hurricane season opened on June 1.
Nagin bashed the book during the final days of the campaign and made national news out of it, according to the Washington Post.
"Nagin denounced the book without reading it," Brinkley said. "If he had ignored it, I don't think it would have become an issue. People love the food fight - it was suddenly the Tulane professor from Uptown versus the mayor. It got framed as a square off."
You can read excerpts from the book in Vanity Fair magazine.
The blurb?
As Hurricane Katrina bore down and weather experts sounded the alarm, every hour counted. Yet Mayor Ray Nagin waited to order a mandatory evacuation, FEMA director Michael Brown held off on readying adequate relief, and Governor Kathleen Blanco and President Bush exchanged form letters instead of urgent phone calls.
The kicker?
In the span of one week last summer, the United States was changed, and not just along the battered coastline of the Gulf of Mexico. The nation, eventually, could always bounce back from a natural disaster. Instead, the Great Deluge of New Orleans had turned out to be a disaster of another sort - one that, through breached levees and massive governmental incompetence, the country had actually brought upon itself.
During the C-SPAN interview, Brinkley was hammered by a few callers for pointing out that Nagin was a Republican, not a Democrat, as he was identified by virtually every national pundit on cable TV.
In a story for the Dallas Morning News that appeared on December 6, 2003, I tried to point out that Nagin's honeymoon was about over. In the gubernatorial runoff campaign between Lt. Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Bobby Jindal, Mr. Nagin endorsed Mr. Jindal, the Republican, which was part of the problem that led to a lack of cooperation between the city and the state after Katrina.
But voters in New Orleans felt Nagin endured the Katrina crisis with them. So enough of them voted to give him a second term and a second chance to lead - to fix the streets and bring New Orleans back.
Now with new elections looming this summer and fall, a key question is: Will Americans turn out at the polls to vote for candidates who seem to have the ability to get the job done, to fix the streets?
Or will the reactionary, anti-government forces continue to tip the balance in elections to the likes of the conservative Republicans who now hold the power in both houses of Congress?
A lot of liberals I know are totally disengaged from politics. They tell me this all the time when they read my Web site and see that we tend to focus on politics more than science or something else. I tell them we do this because it is important now, perhaps more important than ever.
What this country looks like in the future will be up to the brighter voters, who should stop being cynical and get back involved in the political process. They have the power to turn the tide, if only they will get themselves informed and work to make a difference.
One final story to bring this back home to Alabama. Another friend who follows this site sometimes said something astounding the other day.
This is someone who is having a hard time making enough money these days, who did quite well during the days when Bill Clinton was in the White House and the Democrats still held power in at least one house of Congress.
He reads the Birmingham News at work and listens to talk radio all the time. But he did not even know there was such a thing as public radio and public television low down on the radio and TV dial. And he scoffed when I urged him to watch For the Record on Alabama Public Television.
"Why do I need these idiots to tell me what's going on," he said.
Well, he depends on the Birmingham News and listens to the uninformed idiots on talk radio. And he will most likely vote for Don Siegelman in the Democratic Party primary June 6, even though Siegelman is still on trial in Montgomery and looking more and more guilty with each government witness.
That is not the way to change things. We hope people wake up and decide to vote for candidates who will show up for work every day - and fix the damn streets.
by Glynn Wilson
There are a number of myths in American journalism and history. Some of them are based on a central truth about how life works. Some are false myths designed for a few publishers to make a lot of money and avoid criticism.
Part of the fun and power of publishing online without having to answer to corporate publishers is the ability to tell the unvarnished truth and reach around the bureaucratic publishing world - which is still by-and-large controlled in New York - and find an audience.
Myth One: People do not like to be preached to. Most American journalists take this tenet on faith. Editors will often say something like this: "Don't be preachy. People don't like that."
But the fact is, it's a false myth. Where's the evidence? Count the number of churches in your community versus the number of bars. Case closed.
Myth Two: It doesn't matter where you come from. In America, if you work hard and play by the rules you can do anything you want.
This myth makes for a great fairy tale about the American dream. And it may work on very rare occasions. But by-and-large, it is false.
There are a limited number of spots available in the NBA and the NFL. Not everyone who wants to play professional baseball for a living will grow up with the requisite physical skills and get the breaks. And while there are a number of incredibly talented musicians in the world, very few of them will ever become rich and famous by devoting their lives to playing in a rock 'n' roll band.
There are also a number of talented writers in the world. But not all of them will be lucky enough to write a memoir that makes it big on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Ditto with politicians. As the song goes, "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains."
As we know from studying evolution, chance and luck and timing matter. There is very little evidence that praying matters much, except perhaps to focus the power of the mind on a goal.
All those suicide bombers who think they are destined for a heaven filled with vestal virgins, well, let's just say they will find another phrase from scripture to be true: "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust..."
None of this is to say it is impossible to succeed at anything. Far from it.
Just take the example of Tom Wolfe. He's a great Southern writer who made it big, and not just by writing about himself.
If you have a propensity to watch C-SPAN, check him out tonight. He will be speaking to the North Carolina Festival of the Book today, or at least Book TV will be showing the program today at 1:30 and 7 p.m.
The blurb?
Author Tom Wolfe presents a lecture entitled "What's Southern Today?" Mr. Wolfe argues that southern Americans have a much more common sense approach to life than other Americans. He recounts his experience growing up in Richmond, Virgina and describes what he has observed traveling through the southern states. Mr. Wolfe also talks about the influence the region has on his writing.
Personally, I think the South had more to do with how he talked and dressed than how he wrote, but that's just my opinion. Would he have been as successful if he had worn blue suits instead of white? You decide.
Several things Wolfe said last night became the inspiration for this column, in part because some of the points he made are the perfect counter to some of my critics.
In trying to make the case that place matters, some people don't seem to get these central facts: Where you come from matters. And where you write from matters - in the material you produce.
Myth Three: In every literary journalism program in the country, Wolfe says, professors will tell you to "write what you know." This myth comes from an old story about William Faulkner, who failed at being a newspaper reporter in New Orleans at the Times-Picayune. An editor there reportedly told him to go back to Mississippi to write about something he knew about.
It worked for Faulkner, but who in their right mind would spend a lot of time reading Faulkner today? His writing is the modern equivalent of trying to read Beowulf.
You would be better off reading Wolfe. He made an early name as a writer by injecting himself into his stories and, as a result, he became known as one of the early practitioners of "New Journalism."
Today he advises young writers to look outside themselves and where they come from for great stories. In fact, if it is possible to attribute any great theory to Wolfe's philosophy of life and success, this might be it.
He likes to quote the German philosopher Hegel on the "spirit of the age" or the "zeitgeist," an idea that each era has a moral tone that influences the life of every person living in that period - whether the person wants to be influenced or not.
It is not clear that Wolfe's interpretation of this idea is totally correct, but he's onto something.
Here's my interpretation of how this works, going beyond what Wolfe says about it. And you can quote me on this.
A person's psychology is determined by the intersection of three things: Where they come from, where they go and what they experience, and events that take place in their time.
I believe it is an absolute fact of life today that it is damn near impossible for any creative person to succeed by staying where they come from, especially if they come from the South.
Even musicians in New Orleans know they have to go to LA or New York to break out and become a real success, unless their ambition is to play all their lives in bar bands.
Today musicians might try to "make it" on "American Idol." But guess what? There's only one winner. The rest get booted off the show.
Tom Wolfe did not stay in Virginia. He moved to New York.
Willie Morris of Yazoo City, Mississippi, once wrote: "My town is the place which shaped me into the creature I am now."
But he also said this:
I have always found a close, beguiling parallel between Southern writers and Northern Jewish writers. I spent a lot of years in New York, and living up there, I knew a lot of really fine Jewish writers.
I always detected a parallel there. In the case of both Southern writers and Jewish writers there is a profound sense of history and of the past and of time passing, a mutual sense of loss and a belief in words....
The Jews have this same sense of place.... I have always felt that.
Growing Up Southern - Willie Morris
Some of the best journalism I've done in my life came out of New Orleans. Some of the worst has come since I've been back in Alabama. It's not just the place. It's events happening in our time. Wolfe and Hegal were right about this.
While I would rather be writing about science and nature, politics has taken over - because of George W. Bush and the policy failures of his administration. There's no escaping it.
Until he is gone from the nation's landscape, trying to educate people about the evils of the Bush administration is inevitably my fate. Due to other events beyond my control, I am forced to preach to the choir from where I was raised, right here in Alabama.
If there is a future out there beyond these wars we now fight, I will one day escape again and find another voice - in another place.
Links of note
Hegel's theory of the Zeitgeist
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Editor's Note: If everything goes as planned, we will be reporting from New Orleans, again, next weekend.
by Glynn Wilson
Rummaging through the authentic antiques and fake newer junk at thrift stores and flea markets is not only a cool way to find cheap stuff for the home in these strange political and economic times.
With a bit of imagination, the growing pastime called "junkin,'" which even has it's own television show on the Turner South network where the stuff is sold on eBay, can even be more than a creative trip down memory lane.
It can be an education beyond the computer games that now train the neurons of today's youth - and may save your life one day much sooner than you think.
Approaching the practice with an eye focused on the future might give you some ideas on how to survive when the inevitable big time apocalyptic shit goes down…
 | | Photo by Glynn Wilson | | An old fashioned wash stand and oil lamp... |
Whether you are a believer in a Biblical vision of Armageddon, a reader of Nostradamus on the Internet, or more like me a practical individual, it is not that hard to see the world cannot continue to commute indefinitely in gas guzzling SUVs to jobs that do not pay enough to survive.
That is, of course, if you are not a poor Mexican family who walked a hundred miles to get into the United States and know how to live with eight people in an apartment off of beans and tortillas on a minimum wage job picking fruit or cleaning the floors at Wal-mart. Most Americans who live in the suburbs would not walk two blocks down the street for a six pack of cheap beer.
Start first by imagining what the world would be like without cell phones, cable TV and SUVs.
That may not be so hard if you are over 40. You may actually remember when there were only three television networks and an antenna was required. You may remember when cars ran on leaded gas with no pollution controls.
But can you remember black and white TV? How many of you reading this Net only column today can remember when the chief source of information was the radio, or before that, a mass circulation daily newspaper?
I doubt there are many readers alive who can tell us what it was like to get around in a horse and buggy - but it might be a good idea to learn what it was like. You can still buy old saddles and bridles in some antique shops, although they come at a premium.
You can find old transistor radios in the junk shops and copies of old newspapers from days when the news was really big, like the day the stock market crashed in 1929 that set off the Great Depression, or the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
If you can remember these things you are a dying breed. But the world may one day in the not too distant future see similar times - by the time Bush is done creating havoc in Washington and heads back to the ranch.
Go ahead. Laugh and call me crazy. Then stop and think about it. We'll see who gets the last laugh.
Go back and read some of the stories out of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, or for that matter, read what is was like to live in Bagdad after the U.S. attacked Iraq.
Cell phones were the first technology to fail. The Internet was useless. The power grid was not there to depend upon, and neither were the water or sewer systems. In New Orleans, all the roads were flooded. In Iraq, most of the roads were bombed.
For four days after Katrina, there was no newspaper to deliver in New Orleans, no way to deliver it and not many people left in the city to read it in any event.
The people who stayed behind in New Orleans know what it was like to live without power or modern communications for days. The people of Iraq know.
 | | Photo by Kenny Walters | | A grey squirrel, yuck... |
What would we need in America to prepare to live in that world again? Take a look around the flea market near you.
Is it possible that, rather than traveling in our own space ships in the future of America, we may one day soon be using outhouses and oil lamps again? Can you imagine using a handsaw rather than a power saw and be forced to straighten out old rusty nails to provide shelter for your family? Can you imagine having to carry water every day in from a creek and boil it on a wood stove?
What if Bush continues to piss off the folks in the Middle East to the point where Osama recruits enough suicide bombers to destroy 10 major American cities? Or more?
He released another video this morning, in case you missed the news.
In New Tape, Osama Bashes 'Zionist Crusade' Against Muslims
Does the Bush Homeland Security Department have enough bottled water and duct tape to fix things in the event of that kind of a disaster?
I'm wondering where the American militia movement stands on these issues, whether the survivalists are prepared to live in the pre-modern world? We haven't heard a peep out of them since "their man" Bush got elected.
I'm well on the way in my own home makeover and will soon be pissing in a water closet, washing my hands from an old fashioned wash stand in a basin filled with water drawn from a pitcher, in an underground room lit by an oil lamp.
With any luck, there will still be a way to access the Internet even after the printing presses fail and you will still be able to read my Sunday columns. I'm told the people of South America are getting Net access even in remote jungle villages where newspapers are not delivered and gas guzzling SUVs are not sold.
Maybe that's what the future will look like soon in Alabama. Instead of "Back to the Future," this movie should be called "Fast Forward to the Past."
 | | Photo by Glynn Wilson | | A morning dove, yum... |
Are you prepared to handle it? Are you ignoring the warning signs? Or are you counting on a mythical rapture or savior?
Stock up on beans and shotgun shells. You may need them sooner than you think.
Oh, and by the way, have you ever eaten possum? I'm thinking the idea may be more than a Hollywood joke from the Beverly Hillbilly's in the America of the future. People in Appalachia used to hunt and cook them, along with squirrels and all kinds of forgotten protein from the woods.
The depression was so bad in Birmingham in the 1920s that, according to historians, the people survived on roots.
There are a couple of opossums making their home in the woods behind the house. That could be sustenance for a week or two
There are enough squirrels to make it for a month or longer.
And as much as I love those morning doves that fatten up on the backyard bird feeder, they would make fine eating…with some homegrown tomatoes, and a tub of homemade beer.
by Glynn Wilson
Is there a newspaper publisher left in Alabama or America with any brains or courage at all?
If so, I would like to meet you. Let's do lunch.
There are so many issues in the press these days being covered as if we as a people know absolutely nothing about history, science or the law. It's enough to make intelligent readers lose their Sunday lunch. And that includes all that Easter chocolate - a major contributor to America's status as the most obese nation on the planet.
Where to begin a diatribe this Sunday morning? That is the question.
How's this for starters.
No matter what you think of lawyers generally, the Alabama Bar Association did something quite remarkable this past week. Not that a single editorial writer in this "God fearing" state took notice.
The bar association's 72-member governing board unanimously inducted Hugo Black into the Alabama Lawyer's Hall of Fame.
But when the newspapers and TV stations covered the story, they highlighted the criticism of his induction by none other than Ten Commandments Judge Roy Moore's pick for state Supreme Court Chief Justice, Tom Parker.
In a statement that ran in every version of the story in every newspaper and on every TV news show in the land, Parker called Black's induction a "shameful disgrace to the people and state of Alabama."
Why does he feel that way?
Because he said Black "personally launched the war to kick God out of the public square in America."
Parker, a Republican candidate for chief justice, also called Black "one of the worst justices in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court . . . I would never look to Hugo Black as an inspiration."
According to the Associated Press account, Black grew up in Ashland and served in the U.S. Senate before President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1937. Black died in 1971 after serving 34 years on the court, where he influenced the court "through a period of social change." In case you lack the ability to read between the news lines, that is a classic bit of understatement.
Black was a strong defender of First Amendment rights and always carried a copy of the Constitution around in his pocket. He described himself as a "strict constructionist" and a "literalist."
But he was seen as a liberal proponent of integration in public life. And he was a staunch defender of the doctrine of the separation of church and state - a doctrine under attack on many fronts in America these days by a bunch of people whose life reading list is, let's just say, a bit limited.
Black was inducted into the Hall of Fame Friday along with the late Alabama Supreme Court Justice Oscar Adams, the first black on the court and first elected statewide since Reconstruction; William Douglas Arant (1897-1987), who was state bar president 1936-37; and Harry Toulmin (1766-1823), who was appointed by Thomas Jefferson as a judge in the Tombigbee District and was elected as one of the state's first circuit judges following statehood.
Parker will meet Nabers in the Republican primary on June 6 and the winner will advance to the general election Nov. 7 against Democrat Sue Bell Cobb, a judge on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.
Also according to the AP account, Parker was elected to the Alabama Supreme Court in November 2004 not long after being appointed as Special Projects Manager for The Foundation for Moral Law, where he coordinated a federal legislative effort, under Article III, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, to combat "liberal" judicial activism.
Parker was appointed by Chief Justice Roy Moore to be the Deputy Administrative Director of Courts in January 2001, where he served as General Counsel for the Alabama court system.
Parker graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, according to his online overblown resume, and he received his Juris Doctorate from Vanderbilt University School of Law in Nashville, Tennessee. He apparently won a Rotary International Fellowship to study law at the University of Sao Paulo School of Law, where he was ostensibly the first U.S. student in Brazil’s law school.
Parker also served in the Alabama Attorney General’s Office under Jeff Sessions when our now Bush-ass kissing Senator held that office.
Before that, he was a partner in the Montgomery law firm Parker and Kotouc.
He claims to have been the founding executive director of the Alabama Family Alliance (now the Alabama Policy Institute), and the Alabama Family Advocates, that strange group with ties to the radical Dr. James Dobson and his weirdo group "Focus on the Family."
In a profile for the Legal Times newspaper, Parker was described as "a man at war with the U.S. Supreme Court."
Books on prominent display in his office are Mark Levin's conservative attack on the U.S. Supreme Court, "Men in Black," and Phyllis Schlafly's "The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It."
He was sworn into office in Alabama by none other than the Uncle Tom Clarence Thomas, the token conservative black on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Parker is now famous for an op-ed piece he wrote for The Birmingham News, in which he attacked the high court's "blatant judicial tyranny."
"State supreme court judges should not follow obviously wrong decisions simply because they are precedents," Parker wrote. "After all, a judge takes an oath to support the Constitution - not to automatically follow activist judges who believe their own devolving standards of decency trump the text of the Constitution."
Exactly, except that only applies in the screwed up minds of these anti-court conservatives when "liberals" follow precedent. When conservatives step all over precedents - which are part of the living Constitution, believe it or not - they do not call that "activism."
They somehow think their reading of the Constitution trumps the reading by courts past, including Hugo Black's far more educated reading of the text and history.
So what is needed now? A bit of public and press activism to stop this idiot from being reelected to the state Supreme Court.
Where are you activist members of the public who care about the future legal direction of your state and nation? Where are you newspaper editorial writers?
Editor's Note: When we first posted this story, the Alabama Bar Association press release pdf file link was not working. I e-mailed them and it was fixed on April 19. So here's the bar association press release pdf file. It's a pretty minimal document. It would have been nice to see a longer profile on Hugo Black and a full explanation for why he was chosen.
by Glynn Wilson
CLAY, Ala. - It had been 15 years since I last ran into Bob Sargent, a retired electrician and amateur bird scientists from Clay, Alabama. It was nice to see he still practices his passion for birds and their habitat and is still working hard to educate the young about the importance of conserving the environment.
He and his wife Martha were instrumental in helping to launch the Clay Elementary Bird Fest last year, along with Shirley Farrell's fourth-grade enrichment class. The second annual festival took place Saturday. Here's the link to the little story about it in the Birmingham News.
Clay Students Meet Some Big Birds
That last time I talked to Mr. Sargent, the United States Navy was trying to take out a 200-square mile area in the Gulf of Mexico off Alabama's coast to locate an electromagnetic pulse simulation device to test ships for hardening against an atmospheric nuclear blast.
He spoke out publicly against some bad science being conducted as part of that project by University of Southern Mississippi researchers. And along with a budding environmental and economic public movement against the project and some aggressive press, he helped to kill the program's $78 million line item in the Defense Department budget and put the EMPRESS II in dry dock - permanently.
I quoted Sargent in the first of about 40 stories I wrote on the subject. And since that story was one of my favorites in the series, you can now read it on this Web site in my old clip archive.
Research Ruffles Birders' Feathers
Sargent well remembers the EMPRESS battle and acknowledges that the publicity provided by a chain of newspapers along the Gulf Coast made the difference in that fight.
"It made the difference in us putting them out of business, permanently," he said.
The problem for the important migratory bird habitat on the Ft. Morgan peninsula today is the unchecked development in the area, he said, exacerbated in part by the annexation of that 22 miles of beaches and wildlife habitat by the city of Gulf Shores.
"We are still working to protect the birds and their habitat, trying to ensure the birds have a safe place to land," he said. "We've had some successs, but more failures. The free-wheeling development being carried out there now on a huge scale is a real problem. We may not be able to do anything to stop it. The only thing we can do is to speak out against it."
This week, Sargent and his team will be loading up the trucks and vans to head down to Ft. Morgan next weekend for the annual two-week-long bird banding excursion. The spring migration is especially important, since hundreds of bird species stop, rest and refuel with food in the Bon Secour National Wildlife refuge and the surrounding area after their long trans-Gulf flight from South and Central America. It is also important in the fall, when the birds stop there to rest and fatten up before heading south across the Gulf for the winter.
He said the much improved Mobile Press newspaper does a pretty good job of covering the issues there these days, although Gulf Coast Newspapers became very week chain indeed after my time there.
"But the newspapers can't change the laws," he said. "The Baldwin County Commission has never seen a developer they didn't like."
Another problem, he said, is the Alabama Legislature's underfunding of the Ft. Morgan Historical Commission.
He said there are some emerging stories along the Gulf Coast involving development scandals that include local government officials. But he declined to go into the details since there are ongoing investigations by law enforcement authorities as well as the press.
Sargent may be best known for his published studies of humming birds. The Hummer Study Group, a non-profit organization, is still going strong, he said.
As for the Clay Bird Fest, he said it is a small festival but important to his local community and the next generation's education into conserving the environment.
Mr. Sargent was surprised to hear the news that the community of Fultondale submitted more checklists in the Great Backyard Birdcount of 2006 than any other community in the United States or Canada, according to the official results from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society.
He said the bird count, while mostly conducted by mom and pop bird feeders and not real professional or amateur birders, "does provide some very important data."
Speaking of the environment and the press, Whit Gibbons, a professor of zoology and senior biologist at the University of Georgia, wrote a guest column in today's Tuscaloosa News which sets out the Top Ten List of Environmental problems facing the country and the world.
Sorry to give away your lead, Dr. Gibbons, but the conclusion is that the number one environmental problem facing us today is public "apathy."
Top Ten Lists and the Environment
We would add to the top of the list a lack of leadership on science and the environment out of the White House, where the priorities changed drastically after the election fiasco of 2000.
On another bird science note, while we were off traveling to New Orleans last week, there was another development in the ongoing controversy over the reported sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker in the Big Woods of Arkansas.
The upshot is that some researchers are questioning the validity of a recent video, which is reportedly the first sighting of a live ivory-bill in decades. You can read all about on the LiveScience.Com Web site.
by Glynn Wilson
NEW ORLEANS - When George W. Bush stole the election of 2000 from Vice President Al Gore, he set out to change things in Washington, America and the world. With his presidency already in serious trouble in September 2001, it was beginning to look a lot like Bush would go down in history as a do nothing president.
Then Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda carried out the long-planned attack that brought down the World Trade Center twin towers in New York and damaged the Pentagon, and the world was changed by it - although not necessarily in the way Bush and his backers imagined.
Rather than just setting out to conduct a police action against the radical Muslim extremists who conducted the attack by going into Afghanistan, Bush and his neo-con advisers set the nation on an all out war footing and launched a think tank planned war in Iraq.
 | | Photo by Glynn Wilson | | Jay Craig loads up his guitar for the trip to New Orleans |
Bush likes to say his job as president involves "making a lot of decisions." That decision turned world sympathy away from support in the wake of 9/11 into massive bad will around the globe.
Then came the stories and photos of U.S. military and intelligence personnel torturing prisoners at Abu Graib, the snail-paced federal response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and confirmation that the Bush administration subverted the law and the Constitution by launching a massive domestic spying operation through the National Security Agency.
While the picture appears to be incredibly bleak, demonstrated by the protests going on this week across the globe on the third anniversary of the Iraq war, perhaps out of all this destruction and bad faith the old cliche can come true. Maybe there is a sliver lining somewhere in this dark cloud of a debacle.
After being stuck myself in a Birmingham bunker for the past few months, posting the bad headlines and blogging and not knowing what else to do to fight the growing tyranny, an opportunity to take action and maybe help even just a little bit presented itself this past week.
An old friend and activist called and asked if I was ready yet to take a trip back to New Orleans. After living there for almost four years, from the summer of 2000 to the winter of 2003, I watched the Katrina situation from afar with a great deal of trepidation. I resisted taking the trip back for a variety of reasons. Chief among them was the lack of a good place to access the Internet and keep the LocustFork.Net Web site updated on a daily basis.
But when Jay Craig, the former publisher of The Southsider newspaper, called last week and asked if I was ready to make the trip, I started thinking the timing might be right. When we found out about the Mobile-to-New Orleans protest march, it was hard to resist the opportunity to make the trip. Then, when a friend in New Orleans said he had finally established a high speed Internet connection and offered to put us up, it seemed like the time to go.
 | | Photo by Jay Craig | | Laura Parenteau and Glynn Wilson load Katrina relief boxes into the Chevy van for the trip to New Orleans |
Then something else happened that even made the trip more worthwhile. Here's where the silver lining comes in - one little demonstration of how the world has changed under Bush's incompetent and corrupt leadership.
As we were about to head south out of Birmingham to catch up with the protest march in Mississippi, an e-mail message and a phone call came in from Laura Parenteau, the Katrina disaster relief coordinator for Birmingham's City Action Partnership program.
She asked if it would be possible for us to deliver a load of goods to the Common Ground disaster relief distribution center in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans.
Now what readers should understand is that the traditional ethics of journalism normally ban this sort of direct involvement in a story. But we have begun to see that change in all kinds of places. Even CNN correspondents have told stories about stopping their reporting to help people in Iraq and New Orleans. It doesn't happen often. But when presented with the opportunity to help as well as report, what is a blogger to do?
A traditional, mainstream, objective newspaper reporter would have had to decline such an offer. But what the heck. We dropped by the warehouse in downtown Birmingham and picked up a load of food, toilet paper, socks and underwear and headed south.
We caught up with the Gulf Coast protesters in Long Beach, Mississippi Thursday night to snap some photos, conduct a few interviews, and find out the plan for the remainder of the march into New Orleans.
Then we headed on into the Big Easy and spent the night on Dupre Street. Friday morning, we made our way into the Ninth Ward to find the Common Ground relief center and drop off our load and meet some volunteers there.
 | | Photo by Glynn Wilson | | Workers begin to clean up salvagable houses in the Ninth Ward |
It was hard not to gawk at the utter devastation everywhere we looked along the way. Almost seven months after the levees failed and the New Orleans bowl flooded, there are still piles of smelly, moldy debris everywhere you look. Abandoned houses stretch for block after block, many of them flooded to the roof back in August and September.
There are holes in roofs where people in some cases used axes to escape the flood waters and beg to be picked up and saved by U.S. Coast Guard helicopters. Most of the old shotgun shacks have markings on the side indicating in code what rescue teams found on their house-to-house inspections.
In some houses, they found dogs and cats left behind and noted that in neon paint. In others, they found the dead bodies of people who drowned, many too old or sick to evacuate or escape.
But there in the heart of all that destruction, we discovered an Army of volunteers handing out food and water, clean clothes, even rakes and other tools for the crews now hard at work gutting the houses that may be salvaged and perhaps lived in once again when the people decide to return.
Amy Squires, a 21-year-old recent Colby College graduate from Boston, came down during Mardi Gras and has stayed behind to help coordinate the constant caravan of trucks and vans pulling up to unload donated supplies from all over the country.
She said there were 750 volunteers from around the world living in tents and the abandoned St. Mary's Catholic School in the neighborhood working day and night to help the survivors who stayed behind or have returned to rebuild their lives.
Why did she come? And why did she stay?
 | | Photo by Jay Craig | | Wilson helps volunteers unload Katrina relief supplies at the Common Ground distribution center on Pauline Street |
She too saw the images of destruction on television news and decided to make the trip for Mardi Gras. What she found in New Orleans made her feel the need to help.
"Help was needed, and I had the time and the resources," she said. "So here I am."
What do they need most now? She said they need cleaning supplies, bleach, laundry detergent and more tools.
After dropping off our load, we took a tour of the neighborhood, snapping photos everywhere. At the house right across the street from the church being used as a community center for the relief effort, we got a whiff of the smell of moldy refrigerators and death that reporters have been talking about for months.
When time ran short, we headed back uptown and grabbed some lunch at the new Mona's, a Middle Eastern cafe on Carrolton Avenue, then headed over to Audubon Park for a break.
Since the city was doing its best to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, Friday night I headed over to one of my favorite neighborhood bars on Magazine Street, Le Bon Temps Roule (let the good times roll), and caught a couple of sets of Country Fried.
I also stopped in to check on the King Pin bar, and made sure the Maple Leaf was still there, along with my favorite restaurant in New Orleans, Jacquimo's on Oak Street.
On Saturday, we headed out to catch up with the protesters again and arrived just in time for the press conference at the intersection of Highways 11 and 90 by the Bayou Savage Wildlife Refuge.
(See the full protest story above and the Cindy Sheehan story below).
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