Pax Plena

  • September in the Rain

    The leaves of brown came tumbling down,
    Remember, in September in the rain.
    The sun went out just like a dying ember,
    That September in the rain.

    –Rod Stewart, September in the Rain

    It’s been a wet few days here in Tucson. But not even our Indian summer monsoons could compare to the tears that rained down from Congressional Democrats last night. At the end of an undoubtedly Bourbon-soaked evening, Democrats lost disgraced Rep. Anthony Weiner’s solidly blue Congressional seat to Republican Robert Turner, 47% to 53%. The White House made an effort to put its spin on the results, but the point remains the same: if Brooklyn and Queens aren’t safe for the Dems, what districts are?

    Unlike the unreasonable folks over at HotAir, I won’t read the results as anything other than what they are – an epic repudiation of President Obama’s failed policies that all but portends a historic GOP victory in 2012 and beyond. Objectivity aside, it strikes me that when there is a Republican Congressman from New York City (New York City!?), it’s either a sign of the apocalypse, or the sign of a burgeoning political tsunami. I’m hoping for the latter, but I think there’s some evidence that it may be the former.

    First, the New York Times, ran a reflective piece musing about the travails of living the authentic life. Alas, given that no one at the New York Times is actually authentic about anything, the article does little more than state the obvious. For the curious, the essay sagely observes that the image we project to others is little more than our perspective of how we want others to see us. Startling, I know. According to the NYT, this indicates that no matter how much we change our looks, or how ardently we attempt to conform to social mores, at the end of the day, we’re all about as authentic as a James Frey autobiography. Somewhere in Hell, Michael Jackson is rolling over in his grave singing “Black or White.”

    I suppose matters could be worse. At least many of us have, or will have, the comfort of a stable relationship/marriage to fall back on when times get tough. Unless, of course, you reside in the 2/3s of the country typified by the American South and the American West. These decidedly red states, where God’s faithful foot soldiers defend the citadel of marriage from the onslaughts of gay barbarians – these red states boast the highest divorce rates in the country. The hypocritical-evangelical-Christian meme is tired at this point, so I won’t go there. But I recognize that, with the exception of Kim Kardashian, people aren’t perfect. Still, maybe it’s time to give the gays a chance at being miserable too? Fair is fair.

    With New York turning red, marriages yielding to divorce, and weeks passing without a post, one might think your humble blogger has become more jaded than ever. This simply isn’t true. I start my day with a cup of Joe (that’s coffee, not Biden), and look for the good in the world.

    One source of inspiration for me is the performance of the Oklahoma Sooners football team. OU was recently ranked the No. 1 team in the land for a record-setting 100th time, besting Notre Dame, Ohio State, and USC, coming in lightyears ahead of Texas. Second, returning to the topic of marriage marriage, I was also encouraged to see that roughly 86% of all Americans now approve of interracial marriage, or as they say in Tennessee, miscegenation. Should my wife and I ever decide to have spawn, they’ll grow up in a much more tolerant society than the one Gary Coleman did, and that’s a good thing.

    But then I learn about products for children such as the Thudguard Infant Safety Helmet, and my hope for humanity languishes once again.

    The aim of the Thudguard is to soften the blow, so to speak, while children are learning to walk. This, of course, begs the question, how in 7 million years of human evolution did we ever get by without the Thudguard? God only knows what the poor kids will do once they’ve out-grown their helmet. Walk without one? I realize if you’re Rick Perry, the question may be a little different since the Earth is only slightly older than 5 thousand years. But even a creationist must consider how inexorably different history would have been. Imagine if Goliath was wearing a Thudguard when he fought lowly David? I’m not just saying, I’m just saying.

    After reading about the Thudguard, I immediately recalled the poetics of former hip-hop sensation Aaliyah (RIP), and wondered how the lyrics of her song Try It Again might change given the advent of so ingenious a device. Perhaps we wouldn’t encourage folks to try it again, so much as we would encourage them to be extremely careful while trying it the first time. Naturally, I promptly horrified myself by wondering whether Thudguard made an adult version of the helmet, and how much it might cost. If there’s a moral to any of the above, it’s probably that less is more.

    For all my hemming and hawing, I don’t think the apocalypse will be here any time soon. My Dallas Cowboys still haven’t won a football game, meaning that Hell hasn’t frozen over – unfortunately for the King of Pop. To celebrate the non-event, tonight, I will enjoy a quiet glass of wine with the wife who really is as close to perfect as anyone I actually know. I will be thankful that my marriage is well on the positive side of 50% of marriages in our great and blessed land. And I’ll probably block http://babysfirstheadgear.com/ in my bank account’s security settings.

    But assuming my own happiness isn’t enough to chase away your blues, as always, let not your heat be troubled. Things could always be worse. We could be living in Beijing.

  • Book Review: Irma Voth

    Irma Voth

    The desert of Northern Mexico seems an unlikely place for religious dissidents to settle. Yet, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Mennonite families exited Canada in droves, en route to Chihuahua, Mexico in hopes of finding freedom, cheap land, and the opportunity to maintain their religious and cultural practices – the most important of which included the right to speak the Low German language. Miriam Toews’ latest novel, IRMA VOTH, (Harper; Sept. 6, 2011; $23.99), draws on the Mennonites’ history to present a concept of language that is at times both humorous and haunting.

    First, Toews uses language to fundamentally distinguish the Mennonite wayfarers of Chihuahua from the broader Mexican population. Early on, readers learn that the novel’s eponymous, main character, Irma Voth has married a Mexican man named Jorge. The union creates a host of problems for Irma, not the least of which includes a strained relationship with her mercurial father – who would very much prefer that the Voths live “in” the world while doing all they can to avoid becoming “of” the world.

    The clash between father and daughter results in Irma’s painful exile from her immediate family to a second house on the Voth family property. It’s unclear whether Irma’s father reacts to her marriage angrily because of racial, cultural, or religious differences. All three justifications make an appearance, yet, all three are united by Toews’ use of language as a differentiator. Race and cultural differences between Mexicans and Mennonites are typified in the novel by each group’s embrace of its particular language – obviously, Spanish in the case of the former, and Low German for the latter. The same divisions are present when analyzed from the perspective of religion. Low German is venerated by Irma’s father as the principle method of maintaining religious purity and social homogeneity among the Mennonite campos.

    Second, shortly after Irma’s banishment, Toews uses language in a markedly different way. Rather than using language as a tool for division, Toews uses language as a source of unity to develop the relationship between Irma and her sister Aggie. The entire Voth family has been instructed to avoid Irma. But Aggie is a fiery pre-teen and has absolutely no intention of avoiding her older sister. She mischievously begins a routine of making her way over to Irma’s house. Although somewhat precarious, the clandestine visits restore a sense of family, and love missing from Irma’s otherwise isolated existence. Irma and Aggie communicate in the hushed whispers of Low German to share news from home, and to share hopes for a brighter day.

    In this way, Aggie’s entry into the story presents language as a stark foil of the earlier scenes. Rather than using language to drive Irma away, Toews uses language to draw Irma and Aggie closer together. Language is used in a similar way when the novel’s other gaggle of characters arrive. A ragtag group of Mexico City film makers have designs to shoot a movie about life in the rural campo. The bulk of the novel develops as a result of Irma’s ability to communicate trilingually, landing her a gig as a translator for the film crew. This sets Irma up for exposure to a number of foreign, and secular ideas about life, culminating in a formative decision, that shakes the very foundations of existence as she knows it. But the point about language as it relates both to Aggie and the filmmakers is really the same: language is redemptive, wielding the ability recast a mechanism for dividing into a mechanism for uniting.

    And this manipulation of language is the point of the novel in a macro sense. Toews uses language not only to advance her plot, but also to communicate ideas, thoughts, and emotions. This is true of any story, but what makes Toews’ novel unique is its ability to immerse readers in the exercise of language manipulation from page one. Her prose has been called minimalist, but this is an understatement. The writing style is absolutely Spartan. This has the odd effect of causing readers to dive into her works not only for the sake of understanding the story, but also for the sake of carefully exploring each word for meaning.

    This is largely how the novel reads in its entirety. Each page is a potential hiding place for beauty – whether it’s a thought, a feeling, or an insight. And all the while, a reader’s search for these gems inexplicably unveils the novel’s plot.

    I suppose in this way Toews’ work mirrors life. In Irma Voth, she demonstrates life’s complexity through language, underscoring that life is not often lived in the world of black and white envisioned by Irma’s father. Rather, it is lived in the shades of gray where our ethical, moral, and religious suppositions are challenged by life itself – a world trafficked by Irma and Aggie, and all of the wonderful characters they meet.

    Miriam Toews’ Irma Voth is set for public release on September 6, 2011. It is available for pre-order here.

  • Just a Typical, Tucson Bike Ride

    Tucson had its first signs of fall today. Rather than topping out at 106 degrees, it was a balmy 103.

    The weather seemed ripe for a bike ride since my trusty steed had sat dormant due to the extreme heat. I also needed to mail in the rent check, so a stop by the post office was on my to do list as well. As Uncle Dave Ramsey says, in a pinch, one can skimp on some payments, but rent should never be among them. I think his rationale is that it’s a lot harder to do without shelter than it is to do without an iPhone. I’m not sure that he’s entirely right. But it seems wise to pay rent all the same.

    As I etched my name to the corner of the check, and sealed up the envelope, it occurred to me how antiquated the notion of check writing is. My landlord and I could easily set up a balance transfer, and she would have the money as soon as I authorized it. Yet, we opt to play the game of formalities once a month, and I write the check for her to cash.

    I made my way out the door and realized that 103 degrees isn’t terribly different from 106, so I rode my bike a little slower. The post office is located conveniently along the River Bike Path so I took my usual route through the foothills. As the sun beat down on my back, and the cacti and lizards greeted me along the way, I wondered whether my experience was similar to the pony express riders who carried mail through the desert west almost two centuries ago. It probably wasn’t much similar at all, but it was a fun thought. After all, we have roads. And ponies smell.

    In short order, I made my way out of the foothills, and headed toward the River Bike Path’s entrance. Access to the path isn’t direct for me, so I dutifully walk my bike along a twenty-yards stretch of sidewalk. It’s quite illegal to ride a bike on the sidewalk, and nothing annoys me more than cyclists who break the law. While walking my bike, I noticed an oddly clad young man who was himself walking in the middle of River Road. He was asking cars that had pulled up to the stop light for a ride to Campbell Avenue. The request seemed a bit odd, seeing as Campbell Ave. is less than a mile away from this particular intersection. I don’t think he was mentally stable. Still, I felt sorry for the man, until I re-remembered that it was a balmy 103 degrees. Of course, I then re-realized that 103 degrees isn’t much different from 106, and I silently re-hoped that someone would give him a lift – even if it was less than a mile away. Much to my surprise, someone did. The good samaritan was a surly looking man, driving a mini-van in such a way that he he told the world how depressing his life was. Still, I was glad the somewhat unstable young man had found a ride, even if his benefactor did reminded me a bit of John Wayne Gacy.

    After reaching the post office, I noticed a postal worker schlepping mail from the curb-side mailboxes. I quickly rode up to her, gave her a bright and friendly greeting, before asking her to include my envelope with the other items in her cart. After making this utterly reasonable request, one of Jane Austen’s famous lines came to mind. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that an employee of the U.S. Postal Service is among the most miserable of human beings to walk this planet.” Jane Austen didn’t write that. But it’s a universally acknowledge truth all the same. True to form, rather than addressing me, or otherwise acknowledging my existence she pushed her cart past me, grunting in a way that only female postal workers can, and indicated that I should put my envelope where the sun doesn’t shine – presumably she meant in the mailbox, which as luck would have it had yet another pick up time at 5:00PM.

    After dropping the check into the mail, I immediately felt lighter – around $850 lighter, in fact, and I quickly made my way to Gwyn. I rode quickly because I had a slight, nagging fear that Helga might come back with her Norsemen chums from the Post Office break room, and I didn’t want to be anywhere near the vicinity when they returned.

    In all, I made fairly decent time getting to my wife, arriving five minutes early. This earned me only about a ten minute wait in the sun, and a quarter-mile walk to the truck, but I still call that a win. At least I wasn’t standing in the middle of the road asking errant motorists for rides.

  • My Trip to Costco

    Alexas Loves Costco.

    I took my first trip to Costco earlier this afternoon to purchase a membership. On the advice of a couple of friends, my wife was persuaded that the amount of groceries we purchase would easily make up for the price of joining over time. I’m not sure that it ever will, but that probably won’t keep us from trying to milk every bit of savings that we can out of our membership. In addition to an obscenely large bottle of Scotch, we also bought a doggy bed for Alexas that is certifiably many times larger than she is, selling for roughly half the cost on Amazon.

    Walking around the massive warehouse, I had several mixed reactions.

    My initial thought was “this is exactly why Al Qaeda hates us,” and while the conclusion is dramatic, it’s also quite true. If Costco isn’t the poster child for American opulence, then I’m really not sure what is. By every objective measure, that store is huge. Huge. It’s shelves, which span the entire height and length of the building, are stocked full of every conceivable product one could ever want or need. (Although, there was a notable absence of products from Apple). From discounted computer software to relatively inexpensive and presumably, relatively fresh salmon, the store was a treasure trove of American consumerism. Given economic disparities between countries like America and, say, countries like Afghanistan, it’s easy to see how the seeds of envy, jealousy, and hate could grow. Any ‘reasonable militant’ could simply look at places like Costco (or Sam’s Club, BJ’s, Walmart, Target, etc.), realize that such stores will never exist in her home country, and blame every economic woe on the ‘greedy Americans’ hogging all the goods.

    On the other hand, I realize that I’ve used a loaded term, consumerism. In fact, somewhat frightening, and almost certainly annoying protests were held this weekend warning of the coming ‘class war,’ demanding to know ‘which side are you on.’ I fancy myself as more of a Switzerland whenever the class wars are waged, but as an unabashed proponent of the free-market, the libertarian in me responds to the sentimentalist above by noting, “That’s just how markets work. Someone had the idea to form a company based on the concept of selling bulk products to consumers rather than selling to retailers only, and I’ll be damned if the idea wasn’t a smashing success. I will drink my ridiculously inexpensive alcohol tonight, and, accordingly, sleep like a baby – albeit a very drunk one.” The simple point being that if local supermarkets can’t compete, then shouldn’t they go out of business? Why should the market reward inefficiencies?

    But again the sentimentalist in me considers that the ground isn’t exactly level at the foot of the economic cross. Companies like Costco can leverage billions of dollars in annual revenue to sell products at deeply discounted prices thanks to their incredibly low product mark-ups. Mom and Pop supermarkets could never compete because they lack billions of dollars to leverage and offer competitive pricing.

    And on, and on the conversation goes. I don’t claim to have a solution. If I did have a solution, you could (and should) contact the folks at the Nobel Headquarters, and tell them this year’s Nobel Prizes for peace and economics have all but been picked up. I’d certainly be a more worthy recipient than our hapless President who somehow won the Nobel Peace Prize while orchestrating three wars around the world. Of course, he was only a warmonger twice-over at the time.

    Still, the interesting thing about shopping at Costco was the simple fact that no one seemed to be having the internal dialogue above in their heads – except for me. That’s when I realized that I am weird. So, rather than revel in my eccentricity, I happily walked up to the checkout to pay for the doggy bed and scotch, knowing that I would drink the scotch, and knowing that Alexas would still sleep in our bed rather than the doggy bed I had just purchased. In fact, after posing for the photo above, Alexas promptly got up, and lay down on our king-sized bed. And maybe that’s the lesson of consumerism.

    The point of consumerism isn’t really to be satisfied. That would make the world markets tank for sure. The point of consumerism is to feel you need something, pretend you enjoy it, and then lumber back to the bed you’re used to sleeping on.

  • Thoughts on Blogging, and Time

    Wasted Time

    Earlier this week my wife was twenty minutes late getting out of work. I took my typical 11 mile bike ride to reach her office by 4:30PM, only to swelter for twenty minutes in 106 degree heat. By the time she emerged from the cavernous enclave better known as Tucson Medical Center, the water in my water bottle tasted like a hot cup of tea, minus the tea.

    To understate matters, I was upset. But not with my wife. The lone thought that came to mind over and over while I baked on my favorite bench was how much I hate wasting time. The situation was a bit like Dostoyevsky’s white bears, no matter how hard I tried not to think about wasting time, I ended up thinking about wasting time. This may seem a bit compulsive, and it really is, but I realized from a young age that time is the only thing in life that you can’t get more of. You can get more money. You can acquire more possessions. If you are lonely, you can fill your life with with more relationships. The super lonely, like former NY Gov. Spitzer, can even pay to fill their lives with more relationships.

    But as ex- Apple CEO Steve Jobs demonstrated yesterday, you can’t get more time, and that’s why time is life’s most important commodity.

    It’s a bit dramatic to say that a few minutes in the sun profoundly shifted how I think about blogging. But in some ways it did. Over the past week I started thinking seriously about this blog, the time I’ve devoted to it, and most importantly what I hope to see from it – not only in the coming days and weeks, but in the months, and hopefully years still to come. While I have changed templates, and layouts many, many, many times, I have never tried to make the blog anything more than it is: a place where I can opine, and hold court on whatever topic strikes my fancy. And I’ve done this for nearly seven years, come December 24th.

    In that time span, I’ve made just under 2600 posts. My traffic has gone from an anonymous voice crying in the wilderness (NH) to a voice with a slightly bigger bullhorn, crying in a different wilderness (AZ). Our readership is still fairly modest, averaging only about 2500 hits per month. But that’s still much better than when I averaged only about 40.

    Given that our blog isn’t very topical, it’s probably a small miracle that anyone reads Pax Plena at all. The bulk of my posts concern politics, music, faith, book reviews, cycling, and the occasional Lolcat of the Week. But Pax Plena isn’t devoted to any one of these topics in particular. Still, in the greater blogosphere, the actual range of blogs and their topics is as wide and as varied as the internet itself. Some blogs are very narrow in scope, covering niche areas like the intersection of life and career building, and the affairs of a specific technology company (guess which company). Stiil, other bloggers cover broad topics like Indian Law, politics, technology, cycling, faith, minimalism, sports, sport teams, etc.

    I guess my conclusion is that that after seven years of blogging, it’s time to start narrowing down the focus here at Pax Plena. To be clear, I’m not worried about missing out on traffic. That’s not the point. But I am interested in developing the blog into something that is more engaging, more interesting, and more useful to readers. I want Pax Plena to maximize the effort and time I put into it. And I think I can do this with a couple of adjustments.

    Let me add, I don’t feel these seven years have been wasted. (Although, I have, at times, been wasted during these past seven years.) I sincerely appreciate each and every hit that comes my way. You readers make the whole exercise worthwhile. My itch for change stems primarily from the fact that I don’t want to waste the next seven years of blogging because I didn’t create a vision for Pax Plena when I had the chance.

    My task over the next few weeks will be to figure out what exactly this means in terms of content, and quality. I suspect it will mean higher quality pieces (e.g., no more short posts containing only snarky links for your perusal). And, in terms of content, I suspect that the blog will cover a narrower range of topics, in effort to become more topic-specific. Or at least more topic-specific. But for you the reader, this simply means what it always means. Stay tuned.

    And, regardless of which direction the blog takes, let not your hearts be troubled. Lolcats of the Week are here to stay. Your blogger loves you.