Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Colbert Knows I'm a Hero
I believe that Stephen Colbert has done a better job than anyone in exposing the ridiculous nature of campaign finance laws in this country. Thus, I contributed $25 to Stephen Colbert's Superpac. Then, on Monday night's show, he aptly pointed out that I am in fact a hero. Check out this picture:
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Wide-Eyed Among the Believers: Ralph Adamo Goes to the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans
My friend and colleague Ralph Adamo went to the Republican Leadership Conference held recently in New Orleans. Here's his eyewitness account:
On day one of the Republican Leadership conference in New Orleans, I walked the Hilton to see what true-believing Republicans look like in larger groups. New Orleans is a Democratic stronghold – or has been – by virtue of its African-American majority, its giant underclass, its general history of Laissez-faire attitudes, its (historic) Catholicism. While Uptown has, increasingly, a Republican bent, you still just don’t see that many gathered together. Their work is done quietly here, in boardrooms, law and insurance offices. While there has been a Tea Party presence, it has been mostly generated in the suburbs, among the middle-middle class, those very folks who rarely ever venture into their host city any more for fear of crime and bad odors. Our radio, like everyone’s, is mostly dominated by dimwit right-wingers, but that has little or nothing to do with the character of the city.
So, I walked around. I looked at the exhibitors tables, the NRA table womaned by a slight, downy female with glasses, who looked as if she would not know one bore from another or the value of rapidly repeating riflery. But you never know and making judgments based on looks or gender is foolish on its face. Take Governor Huckabee, whose short entourage I follow toward his book-signing table. If ever a man looked friendly and harmless, it’s Mike, the guy you just have to like because, damn-it, he’s going to like you.
I skipped the first evening’s main event, a 40-minute oration by Newt Gingrich, amply and even lovingly covered by The Times Picayune the next morning. The paper wrote a friendly story, about Newt trading on his years as a Tulane grad student and on the birth here of his first daughter; the word ‘meandering’ was the only unkind note in the story, which essentially noted that he could make the faithful go crazy with his command of paranoia. Well, that would be my interpretation, based on his extraordinary references to Nazis and other enemies during the CNN debate, as well as that literally devilish inversion of his eyebrows (he’d be a natural for a revival of “Damned Yankees”) when he believes he has scored a point.
The second day, with many speakers and much activity, belonged to Michelle Bachman, or that is my reading of the crowd. It is axiomatic, however, to note that the largest and most enthusiastic personal posse belongs to Ron Paul. Paul’s young supporters are genuine enthusiasts, a bit of a mystery in that Paul’s appeal, deep and serious, is to inaction and resignation, however bright a face he paints on the results he foresees. Paul’s young supporters seem to be drawn by two realities: reasonable and laudable dislike of the increasingly remote military adventures in unpleasant foreign lands, and the fact that they have never personally known anyone who really, really needed the government all that much. That is, unless some of its more intricate and occult activities, like protecting food and water supplies and workplace safety, were to be considered. But that brings us back to Bachman, who wants nothing more (after the annihilation of ‘Obamacare’) than the dismantling of the EPA.
A reporter waiting for the ten-minute press conference after her speech discussed and then abandoned the idea of asking her what she might replace the EPA with, to continue the protection of the public and the environment from the natural tendency of the free market to consume and abandon. Finally, the reporter who considered asking the question shrugged and decided not to, as “she wouldn’t answer anyway.”
Bachman, in the ten press-minutes, was on a short leash, only once slipping into unacceptably nutty mode when she advocated teaching Intelligent Design as an equal theory with evolution. Her leash was longer in the big room, where RLC folks and lots of press crowded in to hear her articulate alternative universe ideas, in which the enemies of peace and prosperity are Planned Parenthood, NPR, the EPA of course, and the Cowboy Poetry Festival. She bragged about introducing her Lightbulb Freedom of Choice bill.
Chris Matthews has predicted that Bachman beats Romney (whether that means she wins the nomination was less clear), and indeed, even compared to the receptions given other slingers of red meat, Bachman is the clear favorite through the second day. (I write this before the results of the straw poll are announced.) The RLC crowd stood to applaud on numerous occasions, and nodded vigorously for most of her litany of zingers. She does have a sort of mad glint in her eye, but as the whole process is madness, what’s the harm? They loved her. In person she seems smaller, more fragile than she appears on TV, possessed of a vulnerability that, at this stage, must be adding to her charm, or at least as long as her tough talk belies it. When her speech ended and she went off to meet the press directly, more than half of the press corps got up and walked out on Rick Santorum, as did a noticeable percentage of the crowd.
Santorum has got to stop conflating things, unless he wants to be mistaken for a poet. As he did in his announcement speech, linking U.S. soldiers fighting at Normandy to the Republican urgency to kill off Obama’s health care initiatives, Santorum overdid it today. Working himself up to a nearly teary emotional state, he evoked the immigrant who came to this country to find “a government that believed in us.” Huh? The crowd seemed to share my reaction, but gave him a hand anyway because he was obviously trying so hard. But they loved Bachman.
Let me return to Ron Paul a moment, having been there myself, like Hillary in the mid-sixties, desperate for Goldwater’s clear, uncompromising, thrillingly unrealistic vision to be given a chance. In fact, my whole sojourn to this alien RLC meeting is in some ways a search for a lost self, me, the political idealist of more than a generation ago. So smitten was I that I even volunteered to help in the campaign of the suburban oil industry types who were plotting the over throw of Rep. Hale Boggs (disposed of not long after by the mechanical failure of an airplane in Alaska) and the beginnings of a modern Republican Party in Louisiana. This was the Louisiana of the ‘solid south,’ in which all eight congressmen and both senators (and everybody else) were Democrats. The Republicans, who would lose and lose again before their man Dave Treen finally got to congress, didn’t know how to use me, a high school boy volunteer, so they put me to work tending bar at a fundraiser in one of their homes, a job I did enthusiastically at Jack and Pat Black’s place, watching the erstwhile Republican revolutionaries get normally soused and begin pecking harmlessly at one another’s wives. This did not disillusion me, while other things began to. And when a Democratic activist invited me (from where I stood in a parking lot handing out fliers) to her house to meet Hale Boggs, I went to the Rubio home, was charmed, did not make anything of the fact that the drinking was about the same. Anyway, I can say President Paul without wincing because in fact he is likeable in a way that the more transparent Huckabee can’t be. And, of course, he is the epitome of the lost cause, therefore not a threat.
Is Michelle Bachman likeable, I mean, is she a threat? To me, I mean, as an observer. She worries me only because that degree of wrong seems motivated by genuinely sinister factors and agendas. Certainly all these folks speak, in their coded ways, for the unleashing of the market, by which they seem to mean ungoverned activity by entities whose only reason for being is to make a profit. They can disguise it ten ways from Sunday, and then shroud it in social concerns and theocratic mumbo jumbo, but bottom line -- they are the arguers for the corporations and the corporate state, and they know it. Our own governor, proudly swaggering from having vetoed (and then overridden an attempted override) continuation of a 4-cent sales tax on tobacco, was introduced to the crowd (grown notably thinner) finally by the CEO of Entergy, a corporation that sucked down huge amounts of public money after Katrina, but raised rates none-the-less . They love Bobby, almost as much as Bobby loves himself, as difficult as that might be to imagine. This is a governor by whom no taxes will be raised, no matter how many disabled people have their institutions padlocked, just to reference one of his notable accomplishments. The crowd loved him a little, warily, like maybe – despite it all – being Indian-American and a Rhodes Scholar and all, he might just be pretending to be stupid.
But Bachman, yes, what is it about her appearance? Maybe that she moves her arms awkwardly, uncertainly. I didn’t really get to see her walk, but from her stage presence, I got the idea she might be one of those people who walks without swinging their arms at all. Nothing wrong with that, of course, just saying…
Even walking out into the late afternoon, one is slammed hard by the high heat (95 degrees at 6 PM) joined with the daunting humidity – one temperature and one dew-point married, creating a hell on earth that should win us natives some points in the afterlife. Mere steps from the cool, crisp Hilton and its crisp, sincere guests, I begin to sweat for natural causes.
Tomorrow, Rick Perry enters the arena, as does my sentimental favorite for the nomination, old Buddy Roemer, once a Democratic reform governor of Louisiana, still the smoothest talker in the room. Will they love Buddy? I’m betting they might.
Ralph Adamo on the RLC’s third day
On the final day of the RLC’s New Orleans meeting, the most anticipated speaker was Texas Governor Rick Perry, a man who looks the part of a feckless president in a government noir film, and who in real life is not afraid to press really hard on the right wing’s sorest spots. His biggest applause line came when he decried illegal immigration, and his bragging was focused on Texas’ new tort ‘reform’ measure that says “loser pays,” on the new law requiring voters to produce a photo ID, and the new requirement that any woman considering an abortion be shown a sonogram of her womb. He also claimed to be saddened by Republicans who “duck and cover at pressure from the left” when social issues are under discussion. Perry’s oration had the rehearsed polish the audience might have craved, but the accent in which it was delivered had an uncomfortably familiar ring.
The afternoon saw mostly the same notes being played over and over, except for the discordant one struck by the hired Obama impersonator, who mocked aspiring Republican candidates as much as the president and was finally shut down by RLC organizers. The other discordant note was struck by Buddy Roemer, who told the uncomfortable truth about money and politics, and did not exempt his fellow Republicans from blame in turning the country’s interests over to lobbyists and corporate money. The attendees listened a bit nervously, but Buddy has a way of carrying on with his train of thought in a quiet, persuasive way. The danger he presents to the party is one he’d never overcome even if miraculous numbers of $100 and less contributions flowed in: his narrative puts the party out of business. Got to love his crazy truth-telling, no matter how wrong he might be issue by issue.
When Ron Paul won the straw vote by more than 300 votes more than his nearest rival (Jon Huntsman, himself well ahead of Bachman and Cain, the only other aspirants to reach a hundred votes), a big portion of the crowd in the hall booed loudly. Later, in the halls, one could hear many people telling their companions that Paul’s organized dominance of the vote, which he won four years ago too, rendered the vote itself meaningless.
All in all, hearing the candidates and their supporting casts (like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council) talk was dispiriting; the negative cast of mind in which these RLC attendees dwell cannot be good for their health, or anything else. The country they dream about would scare many of them to death if it existed, a sort of sentimental police state with plenty of ‘exceptionalism’ for the ambitions of the morally righteous. The battle for this nomination promises to become uglier, and to reveal much of the republic’s scar tissue in the process.
On day one of the Republican Leadership conference in New Orleans, I walked the Hilton to see what true-believing Republicans look like in larger groups. New Orleans is a Democratic stronghold – or has been – by virtue of its African-American majority, its giant underclass, its general history of Laissez-faire attitudes, its (historic) Catholicism. While Uptown has, increasingly, a Republican bent, you still just don’t see that many gathered together. Their work is done quietly here, in boardrooms, law and insurance offices. While there has been a Tea Party presence, it has been mostly generated in the suburbs, among the middle-middle class, those very folks who rarely ever venture into their host city any more for fear of crime and bad odors. Our radio, like everyone’s, is mostly dominated by dimwit right-wingers, but that has little or nothing to do with the character of the city.
So, I walked around. I looked at the exhibitors tables, the NRA table womaned by a slight, downy female with glasses, who looked as if she would not know one bore from another or the value of rapidly repeating riflery. But you never know and making judgments based on looks or gender is foolish on its face. Take Governor Huckabee, whose short entourage I follow toward his book-signing table. If ever a man looked friendly and harmless, it’s Mike, the guy you just have to like because, damn-it, he’s going to like you.
I skipped the first evening’s main event, a 40-minute oration by Newt Gingrich, amply and even lovingly covered by The Times Picayune the next morning. The paper wrote a friendly story, about Newt trading on his years as a Tulane grad student and on the birth here of his first daughter; the word ‘meandering’ was the only unkind note in the story, which essentially noted that he could make the faithful go crazy with his command of paranoia. Well, that would be my interpretation, based on his extraordinary references to Nazis and other enemies during the CNN debate, as well as that literally devilish inversion of his eyebrows (he’d be a natural for a revival of “Damned Yankees”) when he believes he has scored a point.
The second day, with many speakers and much activity, belonged to Michelle Bachman, or that is my reading of the crowd. It is axiomatic, however, to note that the largest and most enthusiastic personal posse belongs to Ron Paul. Paul’s young supporters are genuine enthusiasts, a bit of a mystery in that Paul’s appeal, deep and serious, is to inaction and resignation, however bright a face he paints on the results he foresees. Paul’s young supporters seem to be drawn by two realities: reasonable and laudable dislike of the increasingly remote military adventures in unpleasant foreign lands, and the fact that they have never personally known anyone who really, really needed the government all that much. That is, unless some of its more intricate and occult activities, like protecting food and water supplies and workplace safety, were to be considered. But that brings us back to Bachman, who wants nothing more (after the annihilation of ‘Obamacare’) than the dismantling of the EPA.
A reporter waiting for the ten-minute press conference after her speech discussed and then abandoned the idea of asking her what she might replace the EPA with, to continue the protection of the public and the environment from the natural tendency of the free market to consume and abandon. Finally, the reporter who considered asking the question shrugged and decided not to, as “she wouldn’t answer anyway.”
Bachman, in the ten press-minutes, was on a short leash, only once slipping into unacceptably nutty mode when she advocated teaching Intelligent Design as an equal theory with evolution. Her leash was longer in the big room, where RLC folks and lots of press crowded in to hear her articulate alternative universe ideas, in which the enemies of peace and prosperity are Planned Parenthood, NPR, the EPA of course, and the Cowboy Poetry Festival. She bragged about introducing her Lightbulb Freedom of Choice bill.
Chris Matthews has predicted that Bachman beats Romney (whether that means she wins the nomination was less clear), and indeed, even compared to the receptions given other slingers of red meat, Bachman is the clear favorite through the second day. (I write this before the results of the straw poll are announced.) The RLC crowd stood to applaud on numerous occasions, and nodded vigorously for most of her litany of zingers. She does have a sort of mad glint in her eye, but as the whole process is madness, what’s the harm? They loved her. In person she seems smaller, more fragile than she appears on TV, possessed of a vulnerability that, at this stage, must be adding to her charm, or at least as long as her tough talk belies it. When her speech ended and she went off to meet the press directly, more than half of the press corps got up and walked out on Rick Santorum, as did a noticeable percentage of the crowd.
Santorum has got to stop conflating things, unless he wants to be mistaken for a poet. As he did in his announcement speech, linking U.S. soldiers fighting at Normandy to the Republican urgency to kill off Obama’s health care initiatives, Santorum overdid it today. Working himself up to a nearly teary emotional state, he evoked the immigrant who came to this country to find “a government that believed in us.” Huh? The crowd seemed to share my reaction, but gave him a hand anyway because he was obviously trying so hard. But they loved Bachman.
Let me return to Ron Paul a moment, having been there myself, like Hillary in the mid-sixties, desperate for Goldwater’s clear, uncompromising, thrillingly unrealistic vision to be given a chance. In fact, my whole sojourn to this alien RLC meeting is in some ways a search for a lost self, me, the political idealist of more than a generation ago. So smitten was I that I even volunteered to help in the campaign of the suburban oil industry types who were plotting the over throw of Rep. Hale Boggs (disposed of not long after by the mechanical failure of an airplane in Alaska) and the beginnings of a modern Republican Party in Louisiana. This was the Louisiana of the ‘solid south,’ in which all eight congressmen and both senators (and everybody else) were Democrats. The Republicans, who would lose and lose again before their man Dave Treen finally got to congress, didn’t know how to use me, a high school boy volunteer, so they put me to work tending bar at a fundraiser in one of their homes, a job I did enthusiastically at Jack and Pat Black’s place, watching the erstwhile Republican revolutionaries get normally soused and begin pecking harmlessly at one another’s wives. This did not disillusion me, while other things began to. And when a Democratic activist invited me (from where I stood in a parking lot handing out fliers) to her house to meet Hale Boggs, I went to the Rubio home, was charmed, did not make anything of the fact that the drinking was about the same. Anyway, I can say President Paul without wincing because in fact he is likeable in a way that the more transparent Huckabee can’t be. And, of course, he is the epitome of the lost cause, therefore not a threat.
Is Michelle Bachman likeable, I mean, is she a threat? To me, I mean, as an observer. She worries me only because that degree of wrong seems motivated by genuinely sinister factors and agendas. Certainly all these folks speak, in their coded ways, for the unleashing of the market, by which they seem to mean ungoverned activity by entities whose only reason for being is to make a profit. They can disguise it ten ways from Sunday, and then shroud it in social concerns and theocratic mumbo jumbo, but bottom line -- they are the arguers for the corporations and the corporate state, and they know it. Our own governor, proudly swaggering from having vetoed (and then overridden an attempted override) continuation of a 4-cent sales tax on tobacco, was introduced to the crowd (grown notably thinner) finally by the CEO of Entergy, a corporation that sucked down huge amounts of public money after Katrina, but raised rates none-the-less . They love Bobby, almost as much as Bobby loves himself, as difficult as that might be to imagine. This is a governor by whom no taxes will be raised, no matter how many disabled people have their institutions padlocked, just to reference one of his notable accomplishments. The crowd loved him a little, warily, like maybe – despite it all – being Indian-American and a Rhodes Scholar and all, he might just be pretending to be stupid.
But Bachman, yes, what is it about her appearance? Maybe that she moves her arms awkwardly, uncertainly. I didn’t really get to see her walk, but from her stage presence, I got the idea she might be one of those people who walks without swinging their arms at all. Nothing wrong with that, of course, just saying…
Even walking out into the late afternoon, one is slammed hard by the high heat (95 degrees at 6 PM) joined with the daunting humidity – one temperature and one dew-point married, creating a hell on earth that should win us natives some points in the afterlife. Mere steps from the cool, crisp Hilton and its crisp, sincere guests, I begin to sweat for natural causes.
Tomorrow, Rick Perry enters the arena, as does my sentimental favorite for the nomination, old Buddy Roemer, once a Democratic reform governor of Louisiana, still the smoothest talker in the room. Will they love Buddy? I’m betting they might.
Ralph Adamo on the RLC’s third day
On the final day of the RLC’s New Orleans meeting, the most anticipated speaker was Texas Governor Rick Perry, a man who looks the part of a feckless president in a government noir film, and who in real life is not afraid to press really hard on the right wing’s sorest spots. His biggest applause line came when he decried illegal immigration, and his bragging was focused on Texas’ new tort ‘reform’ measure that says “loser pays,” on the new law requiring voters to produce a photo ID, and the new requirement that any woman considering an abortion be shown a sonogram of her womb. He also claimed to be saddened by Republicans who “duck and cover at pressure from the left” when social issues are under discussion. Perry’s oration had the rehearsed polish the audience might have craved, but the accent in which it was delivered had an uncomfortably familiar ring.
The afternoon saw mostly the same notes being played over and over, except for the discordant one struck by the hired Obama impersonator, who mocked aspiring Republican candidates as much as the president and was finally shut down by RLC organizers. The other discordant note was struck by Buddy Roemer, who told the uncomfortable truth about money and politics, and did not exempt his fellow Republicans from blame in turning the country’s interests over to lobbyists and corporate money. The attendees listened a bit nervously, but Buddy has a way of carrying on with his train of thought in a quiet, persuasive way. The danger he presents to the party is one he’d never overcome even if miraculous numbers of $100 and less contributions flowed in: his narrative puts the party out of business. Got to love his crazy truth-telling, no matter how wrong he might be issue by issue.
When Ron Paul won the straw vote by more than 300 votes more than his nearest rival (Jon Huntsman, himself well ahead of Bachman and Cain, the only other aspirants to reach a hundred votes), a big portion of the crowd in the hall booed loudly. Later, in the halls, one could hear many people telling their companions that Paul’s organized dominance of the vote, which he won four years ago too, rendered the vote itself meaningless.
All in all, hearing the candidates and their supporting casts (like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council) talk was dispiriting; the negative cast of mind in which these RLC attendees dwell cannot be good for their health, or anything else. The country they dream about would scare many of them to death if it existed, a sort of sentimental police state with plenty of ‘exceptionalism’ for the ambitions of the morally righteous. The battle for this nomination promises to become uglier, and to reveal much of the republic’s scar tissue in the process.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Poverty Point State Historic Park
Poverty Point is an amazing archaeological site in northern Louisiana that I've wanted to visit for many years. We went yesterday, and the visit left me very intrigued and wanting to learn more about this bizarre group of people. The site consists of massive earthen mounds constructed at about the same time as Hammurabi, ca. 1750 BCE. The site is best viewed from the air, as it is huge. Here is an aerial shot from 1938 I believe:
On the grounds each of these giant concentric ridges formed a settlement ridge. They are hard to see on the ground, and have been reduced due to erosion and agriculatural plowing. Here is what one ridge looks like from the ground:
There are also several giant earthen mounds nearby. This one, Mound A, is said to be in the shape of a giant bird facing north. Here are the steps up one of its massive wings:
One of the biggest of many questions I have is how could so many hunter gatherers live in one location, as I thought hunter gatherer societies lived in small groups?
After the visit, we set up our tent at Poverty Point State Park and then I slept very little.
Glad to be back home.
On the grounds each of these giant concentric ridges formed a settlement ridge. They are hard to see on the ground, and have been reduced due to erosion and agriculatural plowing. Here is what one ridge looks like from the ground:
There are also several giant earthen mounds nearby. This one, Mound A, is said to be in the shape of a giant bird facing north. Here are the steps up one of its massive wings:
One of the biggest of many questions I have is how could so many hunter gatherers live in one location, as I thought hunter gatherer societies lived in small groups?
After the visit, we set up our tent at Poverty Point State Park and then I slept very little.
Glad to be back home.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Pharaoh Nagin
There's been a great deal of unfavorable reaction to Nagin's memoir Katrina's Secrets, self-published no doubt because publishers force authors to fix typos and more important, to fact check. Basically Nagin presents a scenario where it is him against the world. Untrustworthy government officials at worst are trying to poison him, and at best they are doing nothing because they are cowards, Republican, and in one case, female. These haters hate him, African Americans, and the Big Easy. But despite all of these countless obstacles the Great Nagin is victorious because God likes him. The most ridiculous part that nobody corroborates is that Nagin led a planned freedom march of stranded folks at the Convention Center across the bridge and they were on their way to the capital Baton Rouge. In volume 2 I'm sure Nagin played a key role in the Tracy Porter interception that sealed the Saints' Victory in Superbowl XLIV.
This all reminds me very much of ancient Near Eastern battle accounts in which various kings brag about how they alone courageously vanquished treacherous foes. One in particular that comes to mind is the Bulletin of Ramses the Great in which he defeats the Hittites. Most of the evidence suggests that at best this was a stalemate for the Egyptians, as they had to turn and high tail it back to Egypt. So go ahead and read this modified version, where the only changes are as follows:
Ramses to Nagin, Hittites to Baton Rouge, chariotry to buses, countries to parishes, ford to bridge, and Thebes to Poydras.
"Now while Nagin’s majesty sat speaking with the chiefs, the vile Foe from Baton Rouge came with her infantry and her buses and the many parishes that were with her. Crossing the bridge to the south of Baton Rouge they charged into his majesty's army as it marched unaware. Then the infantry and buses of his majesty weakened before them on their way northward to where his majesty was. Thereupon the forces of the Foe from Baton Rouge surrounded the followers of his majesty who were by his side. When his majesty caught sight of them he rose quickly, enraged at them like his father Mont. Taking up weapons and donning his armor he was like Seth in the moment of his power. He mounted 'Victory-in-Poydras,' his great horse, and started out quickly alone by himself. His majesty was mighty, his heart stout, one could not stand before him. All his ground was ablaze with fire; he burned all the parishes with his blast. His eyes were savage as he beheld them; his power flared like fire against them. He heeded not the foreign multitude; he regarded them as chaff. His majesty charged into the force of the Foe from Baton Rouge and the many parishes with her. His majesty was like Seth, great-of-strength, like Sakhmet in the moment of her rage. His majesty slew the entire force of the Foe from Baton Rouge, together with his great chiefs and all his brothers, as well as all the chiefs of all the parishes that had come with him, their infantry and their buses falling on their faces one upon the other. His majesty slaughtered them in their places; they sprawled before his horses; and his majesty was alone, none other with him. My majesty caused the forces of the foes from Baton Rouge to fall on their faces, one upon the other, as crocodiles fall, into the water of the Orontes. I was after them like a griffin; I attacked all the countries, I alone. For my infantry and my buses had deserted me; not one of them stood looking back. As I live, as Re loves me, as my father Atum favors me, everything that my majesty has told I did it in truth, in the presence of my infantry and my buses."
At least Ramses has the leadership skills not to tell us about his bowel movements after the battle.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
More Solar Panels
In January of 2009 we had 16 Solar Panels installed by Solar Works on the roof of our house. It cost about $25,000, and the only reason we were able to afford the panels was because of tax credits: 30% Federal and 50% Louisiana State (the highest in the country I believe). Here is a picture from Google Maps showing the panels:
We were very pleased with their production, so in April of this year we added 18 more panels, maxing out our roof.
Here are the 20 panels on the NW side:
Here are the 14 panels on the SE side:
Using the Enlighten system from Enphase Energy, we can monitor the production of the entire system and any one panel. Here is what is taking place right now as I type this:
Right now they are producing 5.12 kWh. Each panel is producing somewhere between 142 to 159 watts. We have a reversible meter from Entergy so right now we are selling electricity to the company, and later, when it's dark, we'll be buying watts back.
The 18 newest panels cost just under $30,000, so the entire system of 34 panels cost $55,000. However, after the 2011 tax credits, we'll have invested just 20% of that, or $11,000. With the energy savings, the system, we hope, will pay for itself in five to ten years.
We were very pleased with their production, so in April of this year we added 18 more panels, maxing out our roof.
Here are the 20 panels on the NW side:
Here are the 14 panels on the SE side:
Using the Enlighten system from Enphase Energy, we can monitor the production of the entire system and any one panel. Here is what is taking place right now as I type this:
Right now they are producing 5.12 kWh. Each panel is producing somewhere between 142 to 159 watts. We have a reversible meter from Entergy so right now we are selling electricity to the company, and later, when it's dark, we'll be buying watts back.
The 18 newest panels cost just under $30,000, so the entire system of 34 panels cost $55,000. However, after the 2011 tax credits, we'll have invested just 20% of that, or $11,000. With the energy savings, the system, we hope, will pay for itself in five to ten years.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Greece is the Word
Cassandra was cursed to see the future clearly, but unable to do anything to change the outcome. Such was the case for our wise friends in Athens, Lefteris and Daniel. Many summers after doing archaeological projects in Israel and Jordan, Therese and I would stop over for a few weeks in Greece. I remember vividly Daniel and Lefteris warning about the repercussions of Greece joining the European Union, and adopting the Euro. They explained that while such moves would greatly benefit the Swiss and German bankers, it would be devastating for the modest Grecian agrarian farmers and the workers. They said it was all devised so that people in northern Europe could pay lower costs for tomatoes and TVs. It is sad to see all of that playing out so vividly. And now the more cuts the Greek government shoves down the peoples' throats, the better the stock markets do around the world. Now Greece's unemployment rate is over 15% and set to rise.
While in Greece I recall watching the Marxist organization 17 November riot in protest because of a visit by President Bush 41, who they claim had played a role in supporting the Greek Military Junta. While I don't condone assassinations, I remember being impressed that at least some of the people would fight back against oppression. And honestly, I'm happy to see the people of Greece protesting these cuts today. It's hard to imagine people in Louisiana doing something similar. I would love to see a revolution. And oddly, perhaps we could model it on our own military. Nicholas Kristof wrote a column I read today about how the U.S. military has excellent healthcare, pays for education, and gives a living wage to all without the "top brass" earning 300 times what the lowest level employees are paid, as is the model with many corporations.
While in Greece I recall watching the Marxist organization 17 November riot in protest because of a visit by President Bush 41, who they claim had played a role in supporting the Greek Military Junta. While I don't condone assassinations, I remember being impressed that at least some of the people would fight back against oppression. And honestly, I'm happy to see the people of Greece protesting these cuts today. It's hard to imagine people in Louisiana doing something similar. I would love to see a revolution. And oddly, perhaps we could model it on our own military. Nicholas Kristof wrote a column I read today about how the U.S. military has excellent healthcare, pays for education, and gives a living wage to all without the "top brass" earning 300 times what the lowest level employees are paid, as is the model with many corporations.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Ain't That A Kick in the Head
Last weekend my brother Jim and his family were in town. They are fans of the Miami Heat so I was glad when they left. While they were here we went to Ship Island. There, my son Gilgamesh climbed on top of me and kicked me repeatedly in the face. Therese took pictures.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Bacon Donut Served by Pigs
I have lived 45 years without knowing that such an amazing culinary combination was possible. Some local police opened Blue Dot Donuts right around the corner from our house. They have many regular donuts, but one certainly stands out. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give to you, Blue Dot Donut's Bacon and Maple Donut:
Friday, May 13, 2011
Trained and Experienced Teachers with No Value
I just finished a week-long seminar during which I focused on how to improve by Religions of the Ancient Near East class by promoting an open space learning environment. This informative workshop about student self-authorship was put on by Xavier's Center for the Advancement of Teaching. While reflecting it struck me that so much of my work the past ten years has focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning, and I’ve had to learn a new “eduspeak” vocabulary and methodology. My graduate program, like the vast majority, trained me how to be an expert in my academic field, but offered little guidance in how to effectively create a learning environment. It’s been very difficult for me these past ten years to give up complete control of my classroom and get away from the centralized lecture format. But I'm trying.
Clearly the university I am at values education and the scholarship of teaching and learning, but it seems to me not too many other places do these days. I see this as especially true in New Orleans, where the charter movement is heralded on a daily basis for being the education messiah. Nearly all of our education leaders come from legal and corporate backgrounds, and they have no education about education, nor do they have classroom experience. Everyone says we need to run “public” schools like a business. In New Orleans, principals are now called CEO's and they make twice as much money as did pre-flood principals. Schools have no unions, and they much prefer 22-year-olds with no experience over the more costly senior teachers. Many of these new teachers majored in other disciplines, can't find jobs, and so come to teaching with no classes on how to be a teacher. So it would seem the field of education doesn’t value education. And it’s not just Louisiana, I read today that in Texas there are lucrative for-profit companies that offer teacher certification. The thing is though, that teachers are able to get certified without one minute of experience in front of a room full of students.
This all makes me furious. While I admit there are cases where charter schools are doing well, I wish there was more news about the drawbacks. Thing is though, charters are favored by powerful businesses, so voices favoring great schools for all students with shared power in which teachers made decisions at neighborhood schools, well, we don't get a very big audience. If I were a journalist, I would do two things in regards to charter schools: I would follow the money to learn about lucrative food contracts with Sodexo and I would look into how much money each school is spending on busing. People like to talk about how corrupt things were when the school management was centralized. I would argue there is just as much corruption now, it is just more difficult to find.
Clearly the university I am at values education and the scholarship of teaching and learning, but it seems to me not too many other places do these days. I see this as especially true in New Orleans, where the charter movement is heralded on a daily basis for being the education messiah. Nearly all of our education leaders come from legal and corporate backgrounds, and they have no education about education, nor do they have classroom experience. Everyone says we need to run “public” schools like a business. In New Orleans, principals are now called CEO's and they make twice as much money as did pre-flood principals. Schools have no unions, and they much prefer 22-year-olds with no experience over the more costly senior teachers. Many of these new teachers majored in other disciplines, can't find jobs, and so come to teaching with no classes on how to be a teacher. So it would seem the field of education doesn’t value education. And it’s not just Louisiana, I read today that in Texas there are lucrative for-profit companies that offer teacher certification. The thing is though, that teachers are able to get certified without one minute of experience in front of a room full of students.
This all makes me furious. While I admit there are cases where charter schools are doing well, I wish there was more news about the drawbacks. Thing is though, charters are favored by powerful businesses, so voices favoring great schools for all students with shared power in which teachers made decisions at neighborhood schools, well, we don't get a very big audience. If I were a journalist, I would do two things in regards to charter schools: I would follow the money to learn about lucrative food contracts with Sodexo and I would look into how much money each school is spending on busing. People like to talk about how corrupt things were when the school management was centralized. I would argue there is just as much corruption now, it is just more difficult to find.
Cecilia Fitzpatrick
Therese is on her way to Omaha. Her grandmother, Cecilia Fitzpatrick, passed away. Therese was very close to GeeGee, as Therese called her, or Ceil, as others did. In fact, Kalypso's middle name is Cecilia, named in honor of Cecilia Fitzpatrick. Cecilia was born on October 31st in 1913. As a Halloween baby, she had a large collections of witch dolls. I will always remember her sense of humor, self-deprecating demeanor, and kind heart. Here is a picture from about 10 years ago showing GeeGee and Kalypso. We'll miss you GeeGee, and thanks for all that you did for Therese and the rest of those who knew you.
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