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Maserati?

Really?

I know everybody’s heard of Robespierre, but this guy Saint-Just was also fascinating:

When the Revolution began in 1789, Saint-Just was considered by many to be too young, and he was unsuccessful in his early attempts to get involved. In 1790 he took the Civic Oath and so entered the Revolution through the Jacobin party. The next year he wrote Esprit de la Revolution et de la Constitution de France which was a great success. Finally, in 1792, he became a deputy to the Convention. He was now able to make his speeches in Paris, and he quickly made a name for himself as he called for the death of the king. On July 10, 1793 he became one of nine members of the Committee of Public Safety and, along with Robespierre, very influential in the Reign of Terror. He was elected president of the Convention for the month of Ventôse. During this time he called for the arrest of Danton and Camille Desmoulins (a supporter of Danton). They were soon executed.Robespierre was now opposed by many, but Saint-Just stood by his friend and attempted to speak on his behalf. “I defend the man in question because his conduct has appeared to me to be irreproachable, and I would accuse him if he committed a crime. Great God! What kind of leniency is this that plots the ruin of innocent men?” he said in his last speech. Because of this action, Louis was arrested along with Robespierre, Philippe Le Bas, Couthon and Robespierre’s brother Augustin. On July 27, 1794, Saint-Just was sent to the guillotine with Robespierre and died for his Republic. The “Angel of Death” was only 26.

Maserati commercials during the Super Bowl? Clueless barking at a Moonless Tuesday.

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Old Bull Lee

JunkieOn the 100th anniversary of his birth (Feb. 5), Will Self in the Guardian pulls Uncle Bill back down off the shelf:

Burroughs makes of the hypodermic a microscope, through which he can examine the soul of man under late 20th-century capitalism.

That’s all the way at the end. But Self gets there with a nice rendition about Junky, originally published as you see here as a Two Book in One for 35 cents, complete with Nom de Plume.

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Righteous Anger

Pete Seeger (1919-2014) proved that there is such a thing and much can be accomplished by it.

I’ve been fortunate to get to know one of Seeger’s many folk offsprings (folksprings?) and glimpse into that dwindling window of that time when idealism seized the form (for a while) of speaking to hearts and minds through lyrics. From The Weavers to the Occupy Movement, Seeger spent his life at the forefront of the most patriotic American tradition: rabble-rousing resistance.

Rouse yourself.

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In the Stratosphere of odd news

I certainly don’t know what to make of any of this:

Advisory Board says NSA is ineffective and illegal, should be dismantled.

Public agrees that economic inequality is a problem.

Economic mobility hasn’t decreased in the U.S. – it’s been low for 50 years! It’s just the consequences of that which has gotten worse. Oh, well then.

And, to top it all off, My Fair Lady at le théâtre du Châtelet?

What does it all mean?

 

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Shadow of a boiling frog on a cave wall

I’ve been reading Henry Miller’s Sunday After the War, a present from Mrs. G, and it’s equal parts thrilling, depressing, distressing and hopeful:

The problem of power, what to do with it, how to use it, who shall wield it or not wield it, will assume proportions heretofore unthinkable. We are moving into the realm of incalculables and imponderables in our everyday life just as for the last few generations we have been accustoming ourselves to this realm through the play of thought. Everything is coming to fruition, and the harvest will be brilliant and terrifying. To those who look upon such predictions as fantastic I have merely to point out, ask them to imagine, what would happen should we ever unlock the secret patents now hidden in the vaults of our unscrupulous exploiters. Once the present crazy system of exploitation crumbles, and it is crumbling hourly, the powers of the imagination, heretofore stifled and fettered, will run riot. The face of the earth can be changed utterly overnight one we have the courage to concretize the dreams of our inventive geniuses. Never was there such a plentitude of inventors as in this age of destruction. And there is one thing to bear in mind about the man of genius — even the inventor — usually he is on the side of humanity, not the devil. It has been the crowning shame of this age to have exploited the man of genius for sinister ends. But such a procedure always acts as a boomerang: ultimately the man of genius always has his revenge.

There is so much in there that is brilliantly naive, on point and prophetic. But I have hard time ignoring the idea that if what was happening in the world was happening more quickly, then we might not be able to do such  good job of not noticing it:

Even as we watch the entire world’s climate get more and more extreme, our cretinous right wing and their rich patrons treat it as a joke.  But that isn’t the whole story. This is a bipartisan war on science. How about the fact that because of our single minded obsession with cutting government spending (while continuing to spend lavishly on our military empire) we are also slashing basic scientific research funds that no “private” entity will finance because there is not immediate profit to be had?

I’ll accept that this is strange concept – things should happen faster in a time when everything is whizzing by. But sometimes that’s what happens when you read some old stuff and think about today.

 

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The Irascibles

It’s akin to a cliché folding in on itself and forming a kind of ironic paper airplane that gets tossed into the future.

the-irascibles

It landed on my table in the form of the Stevens and Swan biography of Willem de Kooning and it’s funny to set aside your naiveté or nostalgia – or invite them both in for a drink – and think about our mid-century art heroes. To set the scene, the Metropolitan Museum of Art decided to include no judges sympathetic to abstract art on the panel of its juried show “American Art Today, 1950”:

The snub was a godsend to the downtown artists: the museum performed to perfection the part of stuffy, blinkered fool, evoking the famous failure of the bourgeois Salon in Paris to include many of the great modernists. The artists around the Club could now, in turn, play the part of the slighted impressionists. They wrote an “open letter,” intended to be widely disseminated, to the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dated May 20, 1950, and reported two days later on the front page of the New York Times under the headline, “18 Painters Boycott Metropolitan: Charge ‘Hostility to Advanced Art.” the letter began, “The undersigned painters reject the monster national exhibition to be held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art next December, and will not submit work to its jury.” The artists patronized the Metropolitan – the presumable guardian of eternal values – by offering its leaders a history lesson: “We draw to the attention of those gentlemen the historical fact that, for roughly a hundred years, only advanced art has made any consequential contribution to civilization.” The group also picketed the museum, attracting further attention.

Emphasis mine. Part of that further attention was that Life magazine, “following the actions of the avant-garde with bemused interest since its feature on Pollock,” decided to publish a piece on the opening of the controversial exhibition – including the above picture of the excluded protesters.

Published under the headlines of “The Irascibles,” a name taken from an earlier editorial in the Herald Tribune criticizing the protesters, the photo by Nina Leen portrayed fifteen of the original eighteen painters who signed the letter to the Met. Highly theatrical, the artists were “arranged like a still life, staring into space, their expression serious, skeptical, demanding. Not one smiled.”

Pollock is at the center, very carefully positioned, with de Kooning on the upper left. The only woman is Hedda Sterne. A key to all the people in the photo is here. “Together, the artists seemed to embody their headline, “The Irascibles,” a name that was itself a dramatic piece of public relations that brought to mind every cliché about the struggle between the avant-garde and bourgeois society.”

And yet, can you imagine any subject getting a group of artists on the front pages of national publications today? Wait, don’t answer that.

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50th anniversary of the War on Poverty

30_Days_of_Gratitude-_Day_15_(4104711435)Krugman offers some background on  whether the War on Poverty was/is a failure. Spoiler alert: no, it wasn’t:

The narrative in the 1970s was that the war on poverty had failed because of social disintegration: government attempts to help the poor were outpaced by the collapse of the family, rising crime, and so on. And on the right, and to some extent in the center, it was often argued that government aid was if anything promoting this social disintegration. Poverty was therefore a problem of values and social cohesion, not money.

Again, broken record-ish, Republicans will not commit to helping people by giving them money because of moral hazard arguments they do not apply on any other level. Inequality continues to be the source of many evils; meanwhile, so many people cannot see through the haze of their own advantages to see fit to extend them to anyone that doesn’t already have them.

Better rich people, please.

Image: 30 Days of Gratitude – Day 15, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Solar Power Projects vs. Casinos

As public investments go, there’s one and then there’s the other. Let’s compare this:

Minnesota soon could see at least a sevenfold expansion of solar power.

In an unprecedented ruling, a judge reviewing whether Xcel Energy should invest in new natural gas generators vs. large solar power arrays concluded Tuesday that solar is a better deal.

If the finding by Administrative Law Judge Eric Lipman is upheld by the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC), Edina-based Geronimo Energy plans to build about 20 large solar power arrays on sites across Xcel’s service area at a cost of $250 million.

“It says solar is coming in a big way to the country and to Minnesota,” Geronimo Vice President Betsy Engelking said of the ruling.

Geronimo’s Aurora Solar Project would receive no state or utility subsidies, but would qualify for a federal investment tax credit. Engleking said it is the first time in the United States that solar energy without a state subsidy has beaten natural gas in an official, head-to-head price comparison.

“The cost of solar has come down much faster than anyone had anticipated,” she said in an interview. “This is one of the reasons solar is going to explode.”

to this:

Revel has been, to put it lightly, a disaster. Originally imagined as more of a resort than a casino, Revel cost $2.4 billion to open. Even before Revel opened it was considered a high risk investment in a city already on the decline due to gambling competition from Delaware and Pennsylvania. Progressives opposed state investments in the project which came during the same time Governor Christie was cutting education and healthcare services for women. Christie invested $261 million of New Jersey tax money via credits as Morgan Stanley backed out of Revel fearing it was a loser.

Not soon after Revel opened it became clear the resort idea was as dumb as many thought it was and “Revel Atlantic City” went into bankruptcy. The bankruptcy put the State of New Jersey on the hook as Revel announced that the casino’s value had dropped from $2.4 billion to $450 million. Ouch.

So these arguments about public infrastructure and investment as economic development are all just gas baggery if actually beneficial projects aren’t part of the calculus. And even that argument aside, solar’s ascendancy seems clear. But we shouldn’t leave it to the side at all – that’s the point. Hydrocarbon energy production will begin to loses its privileged place regarding public support (and hopefully casinos as well) and the howling will be intense. But make no mistake about how we’ve been explicitly supporting senseless gambling/retail fiascos for so long. A turn toward making sense might someday actually feel like it does.

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Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement

Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) was founder of the Green Belt Movement, 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the subject of this terrific documentary I watched last night, Taking Root: the Vision of Wangari Maathai:

Her simple act of planting trees grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, protect human rights, and defend democracy in Kenya.

Their workshop topic of the ‘Wrong Bus Syndrome’ remains particularly applicable throughout the world.