The Tale of the Marooned Mouse
The Gods of San Diego cherish my company. My last two visits both ended the same way, with my flight home cancelled. Had matters proceeded as intended I would have scurried home Sunday evening, but as reality set in -- by order of the aforementioned Gods -- I did not get home to greater downtown Criglersville until nearly 5 AM this morning. I have attempted to supress the details of the journey, but will mention (for my Republican friends) that I could have gotten home earlier by flying from San Diego to Boston and thence to (N.B.) "Reagan National Airport." My real reason for not taking that route had to do with milady's dislike of driving the Washington beltway, but for publication, I will invent the claim that I do not trust anything related to the "Great Communicator." My lie breaks down, though, when I mention that the airport I did fly to was named for the infamous cold-warrior, the inventor of "brinksmanship," John Foster Dulles, another Republican. Compound the contradiction with the hours delay out of Dallas/Fort Worth, and you see just how vindictive the San Diego Gods can be when their plans are foiled.
But all was not so gloom-filled as I could make this seem. After my daughter returned to the airport to gather me for another day's visit, we all went out to dinner at a pleasantly raucous Italian restaurant, where we were entertained by my granddaughter's improvised comedic talent. Her spiel revolved around her ambition to be the first female pope, after which she would defrock all male priests who were not handsome and well-built, change the pope's wardrobe, and have a kidney-shaped pool (with diving board) installed in the Vatican. When one of her alter-egos reminded her that to be pope one must first be a Catholic, she seemed surprised but quickly adjusted by falling back on the pope's imagined infallibility. I was never quite clear how that would work but I think it had something to do with a retroactive anullment of the requirement. I could not hear much of the rest. Blame it on encroaching deafness . . . or maybe I just made the whole thing up. (That's my disclaimer in case I have inadvertently ascribed more heresy to her routine than she put in it.)
The folks in San Diego are locally political, and very much so. Seems the unions representing the state's employees (garbagemen, firemen, school teachers, and other necessaries) have obtained a level of power denied their counterparts in other areas of the country. The San Diego treasury has been literally bankrupted. My daughter swears the unionized civil servants now make more in retirement than they did while working. Her attidude toward the unions and their clientele, which was never pacific, got a boost of rancor last Friday. I went with her to the high school to take along a form authorizing the school to send my grandson's grades to the college he will attend this fall. As soon as we entered the office, the civil servant tending the desk scowled, as if to say, "Why are you bothering me?" She then attempted to find a reason why she could not accept the form -- "It's not dated" (date was added); "The student's name is mispelled" (it wasn't, but his name in their records was); "There's a $2.00 fee" (daughter paid it) -- before finally agreeing to accept it. (The totally distracted clerk promptly deposited the form among a miscellany of other papers, where I am convinced it will remain forever).
I'm beginning to understand what Tip O'Neill meant when he said, "All politics is local." He didn't mean that wars fought overseas are not in some sense related to politics, but that the issues that matter most to the voters are those close to home.
Well, it's time for my midday nap. With any luck I'll wakeup tomorrow.
But all was not so gloom-filled as I could make this seem. After my daughter returned to the airport to gather me for another day's visit, we all went out to dinner at a pleasantly raucous Italian restaurant, where we were entertained by my granddaughter's improvised comedic talent. Her spiel revolved around her ambition to be the first female pope, after which she would defrock all male priests who were not handsome and well-built, change the pope's wardrobe, and have a kidney-shaped pool (with diving board) installed in the Vatican. When one of her alter-egos reminded her that to be pope one must first be a Catholic, she seemed surprised but quickly adjusted by falling back on the pope's imagined infallibility. I was never quite clear how that would work but I think it had something to do with a retroactive anullment of the requirement. I could not hear much of the rest. Blame it on encroaching deafness . . . or maybe I just made the whole thing up. (That's my disclaimer in case I have inadvertently ascribed more heresy to her routine than she put in it.)
The folks in San Diego are locally political, and very much so. Seems the unions representing the state's employees (garbagemen, firemen, school teachers, and other necessaries) have obtained a level of power denied their counterparts in other areas of the country. The San Diego treasury has been literally bankrupted. My daughter swears the unionized civil servants now make more in retirement than they did while working. Her attidude toward the unions and their clientele, which was never pacific, got a boost of rancor last Friday. I went with her to the high school to take along a form authorizing the school to send my grandson's grades to the college he will attend this fall. As soon as we entered the office, the civil servant tending the desk scowled, as if to say, "Why are you bothering me?" She then attempted to find a reason why she could not accept the form -- "It's not dated" (date was added); "The student's name is mispelled" (it wasn't, but his name in their records was); "There's a $2.00 fee" (daughter paid it) -- before finally agreeing to accept it. (The totally distracted clerk promptly deposited the form among a miscellany of other papers, where I am convinced it will remain forever).
I'm beginning to understand what Tip O'Neill meant when he said, "All politics is local." He didn't mean that wars fought overseas are not in some sense related to politics, but that the issues that matter most to the voters are those close to home.
Well, it's time for my midday nap. With any luck I'll wakeup tomorrow.
posted by Benedict S. at 1:12 PM
9 Comments:
How terrible for you to be stranded like that,and that's the very reason I don't like to fly,ones luggage is surely to end up other than where it's supposed to go.
"All politics is local." How very true and let's not forget all problems of our society exist first at the local level. Our attempts to
solve social ills have been woefully unsuccessful precisely because we have attempted to apply "one size fits all" solutions to them at a national and/or global level. This approach ignores a fundamental truth ... we affect our world from the inside out. Our actions ripple out in a pattern of concentric circles, affecting first those in our immediate circle, and moving outward to the neighborhood, district, municipality, county, state,
region, nation, and only then finally the world.
It is because politicians attempt to solve problems from the outside in,
that the individual feels disenfranchised and powerless. At the same time,believing that the bigger problems are being attended to by "others," the individual is free to ignore them. Besides, there is nothing that "one person can do anyway." The problems are "too big." They require "big
solutions." And the problems remain or worsen.
Specious politicians deluge us with rhetoric about this program and that
which will "cut to the heart of the problem," as they fill the coffers of their influential constituents, who could care less about poverty in the other guy's back yard. Honest politicians, knowing no other paradigm, pass bill after bill aimed at solving problems that they cannot solve, meanwhile chipping away at our individual liberties, not so much by design as by inevitable inertia. All of them get us to buy into such actions by offering
us something for nothing - solutions to problems that plague us without
having to get our hands dirty.
A "solution" that comes to us from the top down, must go through layer after layer of bureaucracy, with each layer skimming a part of the funding, until nothing is left when the program finds its way into your community. What money that does filter down becomes subject to controls from people thousands of miles away, imposing and enforcing standards for the use of
that funding that is oblivious to the real needs of that community. All communities must do the same things, even if those things are guaranteed to bring failure in a particular setting of circumstances. Conformity, in the name of "fairness," becomes the over-riding imperative. The problem itself
becomes secondary to the means.
I am glad to have you back.
Hej Mouse, great to have you back and what a cheap shot. I mean really, the surly, distracted, bureaucratic, cause of all of America’s woes, the old mythological overpaid civil servant “school clerk” scenario.
But once again mouse misses the obvious. The clerk was not distracted the clerk was focused on her job. First she catches the obvious error of the missing date. Then being even more sharp eyed and on the ball, she catches the misspelling of the name, which if not corrected could have caused a great delay and a missed deadline if returned or the remote but real possibility that his grandson would have had his college application denied by a not so forgiving computer. Mouse, more interested in having his ego stroked by the clerk, doesn’t turn to his daughter and say, “Honey I love you, but are you so distracted by civil service pensions that you can’t take the time and focus your attention on properly filling out this very important form, and by the way have you been so distracted with getting government off you back and reducing your school taxes that for 12 years you have failed to notice that your son’s named is misspelled in the official school records. Thank my Spinozian god, we have this real life Clerk to help and save us instead of a mail slot”.
As to his whining about paying a 2 dollar fee, a tiny fraction of what is a 50-75 dollar service cost, maybe that is the real reason that San Diego’s coffers are empty. Nobody wants to pay for anything. Pay as you go service fees are at the heart of every conservative, privatization, argument for reducing taxes and government costs and yet when it actually comes to paying the real cost they indignantly insist and complain about paying a highly subsidized version, including their college education.
San Diego is one of the biggest military welfare recipient cities/bases in the country. Yet you don’t hear local politicians or the local public crying about reducing all that wasted, pork barrel, tax money coming in from the rest of the country. Yes, politics are local and studies have shown that the levels of corruption and criminality are higher as you go down the political ladder to the local level.
If you are interested in what a real life society looks like when you totally privatize and strip away essential governmental services by following neo-liberal/conservative economic fantasies, I just finished reading, “Planet of Slums” by Mike Davis. It is powerful, well documented, and not a book for the feint of heart or the squeamish. I thought by experience and education I was pretty knowledgeable, but this is a book that will make you re-examine all of your pre-conceived thoughts on the roles individuals and the responsibilities of government at every level in the harsh light of the reality that is fast encroaching upon our western world of fantasy economics and cheap shot cliches.
John (S): You're so right! I'll pass your remarks to my daughter. I'm sure she'll be thrilled to know that all civil servants are dedicated, selfless, and ultra-efficient. As a retired one of them, I already knew it, but this will certainly come as news to her.
What a load of crap John S.How long has it been since you have been to America? Walk into any department store,regardless,Wal-Mart or Dillards and does anyone wait on you? NO.All grocery stores now make you carry out your own groceries.Ask someone where something is and you recieve a curt"That's not my department".Ok,I agree these people aren't civil servents but same difference.
Your being to hard on the mouse,he is mouse,hear him roar fella.
Robin, Honey: The Mouse has roared. “John (S): You're so right!” I believe was the roar that echoed throughout the blogvillian Jungles of Spinozan gods and Social Darwinism. As far as scat-o-logical arguments on this blog you are the ranting dumping queen of the desert. If this continuous anal dribbling is the end result of 4-year college education, you should immediately stop payment on all your student loans and find whatever uncooperative college clerk you can at the student loan office and demand your money back. Mouse, I think you should start thinking about saving your daughter some real money and start home schooling your grandson. I feel as if I’ve woke up from a nap to find myself, not in Kansas anymore, but in a place beyond a mythological rainbow, where some huckster god of a wizard hands you a diploma and declares you have a brain and a distracted clerk in the department of IQs inadvertently inverts an IQ score of a ”watch out, I am 22 y/o and I don't demand the respect or dignity you older folks here expects from us writers”, Robin, and makes all us little more than fearful of a future left in her hands.
As for your argument let’s begin with the basics, you don’t read with comprehension, so your argument about incompetent, rude, non-existent clerks at the local mall and Wal-Mart has no relationship to what was being discussed. What was being argued was Mouse’s use of simplistic political ideological clichés to distort the actual reality of his experience with a particular clerk. It focused on the hypocritical nature of those who chant those ideologies when they come to be played out in real world situations. Your clichéd argument and description could actually, in a very overly simplistic way, be used to support my contention that the virtually mythological positive values of privatization are not a cure for the virtually mythological, negative aspects of government, that Americans have come to cherish and believe.
To finish off, so I go weigh in on the much more meaningful Alpha Male controversy developing over a ff’s, there are qualitative important differences between public and private sector clerks. One of which is the private sector clerk is there to serve you as a customer for the purpose of making a profit for a corporation, the public service clerk is there to serve the system of rules and regulations that enable a well functioning government to meet its obligations to the people. Governments are not businesses and monkeys are not people and a fundamental failure to not to notice the obvious differences of all sorts of things leads to all sorts of cheap shots, lazy thinking, bad science and ill-formed concepts and arguments. The serious engagement and study of Art, it proofs, practices and reality based human perceptions teaches precisely, more than science, how to define, move beyond and deal with the superficial notion of similarities.
John S.You are right of course,I had worked my ass off last night and was very sleepy,I should never have commented on this blog.I don't have my degree as of yet,still two more years to go.
John S.If you don't mind my humble opinion - art is not a skill to be
learned. It is rather a perception of truth to be refined in oneself.
But first and foremost, one has to be humble and drop one's ego, so to
speak. Only then will the truth of the subject you are about to paint
to be reviewed to you.
Enlightenment in the arts is when you no longer create a painting. The canvas tells you what it should be. The book wrote itself. The
composer just transcribed what they heard in their head.I believe it was Michelangelo who said he never sculpted anything, he just released what was already in the stone.
True enlightenment will morph into ego if it is centered on the self.
Hej John A.
Not only is Art not a skill that can’t be taught, I fundamentally believe it shouldn’t be taught, at all, at any level, for any reason. However engagement in the process can, should and I would argue needs to be facilitated. No need to be so humble, much of what you wrote expresses many of the arguments most life-dedicated artists and I myself make everyday. I’m a little frustrated here, as I am a bit tired of mind today and your reply deserves much more than I feel I can deliver at the moment but I will leave you with this:
There are essentially two paths to ultimately negate the ego; one is by a process of personalized reductive elimination of expression, which takes you Reinhardt’s “Black Squares”. The other is by an expansive dissolving of the ego’s effect, which takes you to the heart my Social/Artworks, exemplified by “Madison Square Park” and “Self/Portrait of City”.
Both lead to the artistic aspects of spiritual enlightenment.
We almost universally recognize the arts as the greatest achievement of the human mind. Even in mathematics you have to admit that the elegances and dynamics of certain equations and solutions go beyond pure mathematical function into the realm of art. I would humbly suggest that I think one of the reasons why mathematicians have a preference for working on Blackboards is, they’re painting, and the physicality of the visual and spatial relationships of the sequences of formula’s and numbers are an essential part of solving the problem.
If you are interested in going deeper into some of the between relationships of Art, Science and Spirituality I recommend two books, Vassily Kandinsky’s concerning the Spiritual in Art, and Leonard Shlain’s, Art & Physics, Parallel Visions in Space Light and Time”.
I’ll get back with more relevant points of Art as a way of knowing. It was Leonardo DaVinci that observed: “Art is the Queen of All Sciences, communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world”.
Robin: You have done all of us a great service. Without your more or less humdrum support of the Mouse's foolishness, we would naver have had the opportunity to read the two Johns' beautiful commentaries on the arts. And thank you John (A) and John (S). I wish the world could read the things you said . . . and grasp the fullness of their meaning. But at least one old Mouse -- and hopefully, one young Robin -- have benefitted deeply from your thoughts.
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