Nine Eleven. At 8:00am our time, 9:00 New York time, I was on the phone, re work, and had TV news on (maybe MSNBC, don't know....).
Watching the fire in the top of the North WTC tower and puzzling how a plane could run into that -- well accidents happen -- and about 60% of my thoughts said, "Accident," about 10% of my thinking said, "Possibly terrorism," and the other 30% was Stating Firmly and Hoping Desperately -- ACCIDENT -- NOT terrorism....
Then at :03 the second plane hit the other tower,
as I watched,
&
the newscaster's sentence raced up the octaves into a screech
and
the certainty that it was terrorism filled up my head.
------------------ There's that empty, flat feeling, then, that there isn't anything you personally can -- do....I went to my desk and worked.
----------------------------------------
At the time, NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani said,
"The city is going to survive, we are going to get through it, it’s going to be a very, very difficult time. I don't think we yet know the pain that we're going to feel when we find out who we lost, but the thing we have to focus on now is getting this city through this, and surviving and being stronger for it."
-30-
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Monday, September 10, 2012
pleasant Sunday
A lot of times on Mondays people might think to themselves, "Where did the weekend go?" because the time goes fast, & many times the plans and ideas we have for what to do on the weekend exceed the time and energy we realistically have to do them....
Instead of "Where did the weekend go?" author Witold Rybczynski discusses
"Where did the weekend come from?"
in his 1991 book, Waiting for the Weekend. {Viking Penguin, New York}
[excerpt]----------------- Saint Monday was a reflection of old habits, but it was also a premonition of what was to come. The "small holiday" prepared the way for the weekend. First, because it accustomed people to the advantages of a regular weekly break that consisted of more than one day. Second, because it served to popularize a new type of recreational activity -- travel for pleasure.
Until the coming of the railway in the 1830s, modes of travel had been basically unchanged since ancient times. Short distances were covered on foot; longer trips were undertaken on horseback (although only by young and fit males) or in a horse-drawn carriage. Both involved bad roads, mishaps, and, for a long time, the perils of highwaymen. By the early 1800s, the last was no longer a problem, but travel continued to be something undertaken out of necessity, rarely for amusement.
In Jane Austen's Emma, Mr. Knightley frets about the "evils of the journey" that he and his family are about to undertake from London to Highbury, and about the "fatigues of his own horses and coachmen." The modern reader is surprised to discover that the journey is a distance of only sixteen miles. But sixteen miles, by coach, took almost four hours, and it would have been an exceedingly unpleasant and uncomfortable four hours, swaying and bumping over rutted, muddy country roads.*
{footnote: *Emma was written in 1816. It wasn't until the 1830s that metaled roads became common, at least between major cities, and coach travel, in turn, became somewhat more comfortable and more rapid. On a good road, with frequent change of horses, a coach could attain the unprecedented speed of ten miles per hour.}
In the same novel Emma's father, Mr. Woodhouse, has a horror of carriages and hardly ever travels -- except on foot; Emma's sister visits Highbury from London, but she does so infrequently. Most houseguests in Emma stay at Highbury for at least a week or two, since the slowness and discomfort of coach travel makes shorter visits impractical.
The time involved, as well as the expense, ensured that travel was a luxury, if not exactly enjoyed by, then at least restricted to, the moneyed and leisured classes. But the railway and Saint Monday changed all that. According to Douglas A. Reid a historian at the University of Birmingham in England, cheap railway excursions in that city began in the summer of 1841.
The custom established itself quickly, and in 1846, twenty-two excursions (many organized by workers' clubs) took place; more than three quarters of them occurred on a Monday. The train furnished the workingman and his family with a rapid and cheap means of travel, and the weekday holiday provided an entire free day to indulge it. "Eight hours at the seaside for three-and-sixpence," announced a contemporary advertisement. The Sunday-to-Monday holiday also meant that people could leave on a trip one day and return the next. This was not called "spending a weekend," but it differed little from the later practice.
It only remained to transpose the holiday from Monday to Saturday.
The energy of entrepreneurs, assisted by advertising, was an important influence not only on the diffusion and persistence of Saint Monday but on leisure in general. Hence a curious and apparently contradictory situation: not so much the commercialization of leisure, as the discovery of leisure -- thanks to commerce. Beginning in the eighteenth century with magazines, coffeehouses, and music rooms, and continuing throughout the nineteenth century, with professional sports and holiday travel, the modern idea of personal leisure emerged at the same time as the business of leisure. The first could not have happened without the second.
-------------------------------------------
Saint Monday had many critics. Religious groups actively campaigned against the tradition which they saw as linked to the drinking and dissipation that, in their eyes, dishonored the Sabbath. They were joined by middle-class social reformers and by proponents of rational recreation, who also had an interest in altering Sunday behavior.
They wanted their countrymen to adopt the so-called Continental Sunday, a day on which French and Germans of all classes mingled together in easy and decorous intimacy in promenades and pleasure gardens -- the kind of civilized Sunday in the park that was depicted a little later by Seurat in [the painting] Grande Jatte.
These were the sorts of Sunday activities that were promoted by such improving societies as the newly founded Young Men's Christian Association, the Sons of Temperance, and especially by the P.S.A., or Pleasant Sunday Afternoon. For all these groups, Saint Monday, and the popular working-class entertainments of which it was an integral part, was an enemy.*
{footnote: The religious reformers and the proponents of rational recreation were not always on the same side, however, for the latter called for Sunday museum openings and band concerts, which were anathema to the Sabbatarians.}
----------------------- [end excerpt]
Oh! - the wild and crazy behavior displayed by those museum-goers and concert-listeners! What will society come to?!
(It's like the old joke:
Q. What is the definition of a Puritan?
A. A person who goes through life troubled by a persistent, nagging suspicion that -- somebody, somewhere, is having a good time. ...)
-30-
Instead of "Where did the weekend go?" author Witold Rybczynski discusses
"Where did the weekend come from?"
in his 1991 book, Waiting for the Weekend. {Viking Penguin, New York}
[excerpt]----------------- Saint Monday was a reflection of old habits, but it was also a premonition of what was to come. The "small holiday" prepared the way for the weekend. First, because it accustomed people to the advantages of a regular weekly break that consisted of more than one day. Second, because it served to popularize a new type of recreational activity -- travel for pleasure.
Until the coming of the railway in the 1830s, modes of travel had been basically unchanged since ancient times. Short distances were covered on foot; longer trips were undertaken on horseback (although only by young and fit males) or in a horse-drawn carriage. Both involved bad roads, mishaps, and, for a long time, the perils of highwaymen. By the early 1800s, the last was no longer a problem, but travel continued to be something undertaken out of necessity, rarely for amusement.
In Jane Austen's Emma, Mr. Knightley frets about the "evils of the journey" that he and his family are about to undertake from London to Highbury, and about the "fatigues of his own horses and coachmen." The modern reader is surprised to discover that the journey is a distance of only sixteen miles. But sixteen miles, by coach, took almost four hours, and it would have been an exceedingly unpleasant and uncomfortable four hours, swaying and bumping over rutted, muddy country roads.*
{footnote: *Emma was written in 1816. It wasn't until the 1830s that metaled roads became common, at least between major cities, and coach travel, in turn, became somewhat more comfortable and more rapid. On a good road, with frequent change of horses, a coach could attain the unprecedented speed of ten miles per hour.}
In the same novel Emma's father, Mr. Woodhouse, has a horror of carriages and hardly ever travels -- except on foot; Emma's sister visits Highbury from London, but she does so infrequently. Most houseguests in Emma stay at Highbury for at least a week or two, since the slowness and discomfort of coach travel makes shorter visits impractical.
The time involved, as well as the expense, ensured that travel was a luxury, if not exactly enjoyed by, then at least restricted to, the moneyed and leisured classes. But the railway and Saint Monday changed all that. According to Douglas A. Reid a historian at the University of Birmingham in England, cheap railway excursions in that city began in the summer of 1841.
The custom established itself quickly, and in 1846, twenty-two excursions (many organized by workers' clubs) took place; more than three quarters of them occurred on a Monday. The train furnished the workingman and his family with a rapid and cheap means of travel, and the weekday holiday provided an entire free day to indulge it. "Eight hours at the seaside for three-and-sixpence," announced a contemporary advertisement. The Sunday-to-Monday holiday also meant that people could leave on a trip one day and return the next. This was not called "spending a weekend," but it differed little from the later practice.
It only remained to transpose the holiday from Monday to Saturday.
The energy of entrepreneurs, assisted by advertising, was an important influence not only on the diffusion and persistence of Saint Monday but on leisure in general. Hence a curious and apparently contradictory situation: not so much the commercialization of leisure, as the discovery of leisure -- thanks to commerce. Beginning in the eighteenth century with magazines, coffeehouses, and music rooms, and continuing throughout the nineteenth century, with professional sports and holiday travel, the modern idea of personal leisure emerged at the same time as the business of leisure. The first could not have happened without the second.
-------------------------------------------
Saint Monday had many critics. Religious groups actively campaigned against the tradition which they saw as linked to the drinking and dissipation that, in their eyes, dishonored the Sabbath. They were joined by middle-class social reformers and by proponents of rational recreation, who also had an interest in altering Sunday behavior.
They wanted their countrymen to adopt the so-called Continental Sunday, a day on which French and Germans of all classes mingled together in easy and decorous intimacy in promenades and pleasure gardens -- the kind of civilized Sunday in the park that was depicted a little later by Seurat in [the painting] Grande Jatte.
These were the sorts of Sunday activities that were promoted by such improving societies as the newly founded Young Men's Christian Association, the Sons of Temperance, and especially by the P.S.A., or Pleasant Sunday Afternoon. For all these groups, Saint Monday, and the popular working-class entertainments of which it was an integral part, was an enemy.*
{footnote: The religious reformers and the proponents of rational recreation were not always on the same side, however, for the latter called for Sunday museum openings and band concerts, which were anathema to the Sabbatarians.}
----------------------- [end excerpt]
Oh! - the wild and crazy behavior displayed by those museum-goers and concert-listeners! What will society come to?!
(It's like the old joke:
Q. What is the definition of a Puritan?
A. A person who goes through life troubled by a persistent, nagging suspicion that -- somebody, somewhere, is having a good time. ...)
-30-
Friday, September 7, 2012
it's the professionals...
Theodore H. White's The Making of the President, 1960 described the major political advisers of the day as a few dozen Washington lawyers, "who in their dark-paneled chambers nurse an amateur's love for politics and dabble in it whenever their practice permits." By 1991, that description had the dated feel of a sepia-toned photograph, harking back to an era when political consultants, like tennis players in long pants, were not paid for their work.
There were still amateurs who loved the game in 1991, but campaigns were now run by professionals.
--------{excerpt, All Too Human, by George Stephanopoulos}
Reading that paragraph in Mr. S.'s book -- realized my tiny, insignificant "sideswipe" experience in state politics in the 90s -- even though it was the 90s, approximated the 1960 style Theodore White described, more closely than national-campaign-style of the then-current 90s.
State-level is different from national;
and a citizen legislature that meets for two months in the winter is different from full-time congress.
Most lobbyists I knew were lawyers or non-lawyers who loved the political process ("the Process"). Loved the knowledge, loved seeing what would happen, loved predicting and being right, even loved predicting and being wrong, (a few) loved having the Latin phrase for something, loved the understated, bare-bones "pageantry" if you could call it that -- in short, I guess, people who loved.
---------------------- [excerpt All Too / George S.]: The professionals with the hot hands that fall were Carville and Begala. Earlier that month they had guided former JFK aide Harris Wofford to an upset landslide victory in his Pennsylvania Senate race against Bush attorney general Richard Thornburgh. Every Democrat in the country hoped the race was a harbinger for 1992, and most of the candidates wanted to hire the men who had helped make it happen.
Paul Begala and I were friends from our days together on Gephardt's staff. I spent most of my day on the House floor, but whenever I got back to the office, there he was, at the desk across from me, having more fun in front of a word processor than I thought was humanly possible. Watching him write a speech was like watching Ray Charles play the piano. He would rock back and forth and talk to the screen, groaning one minute, laughing the next. The speeches he produced had perfect populist pitch....
With his lizardlike looks and colorful patois, Carville was the better-known partner, but James wouldn't have been James without Paul.
...The heart of the narrative -- part buddy movie, part perverse morality play: the story of Dick [Morris] and Bill [Clinton]. It was the tale of two political prodigies -- one from the North, one from the South; one short, one tall; one a consultant, the other the candidate of his dreams. Idealistic, fast-talking baby boomers, they ...believed in the power of politics to help people but loved the sport of it even more.
When they met in 1978, Dick was a fledgling consultant scouring the country for candidates and Bill was an ambitious attorney general of Arkansas looking to make a move. They bonded by poring over polls and bantering about campaign strategy the way baseball fans study box scores and relive their favorite plays. And together, they won.
But it wasn't an easy or equal relationship.
When Dick looked up at Bill, he saw a future president; when Bill looked down at Dick, he saw the devil he knew -- the part of himself that confused power and popularity with public service and principle. Dick knew how to win, but by the time he met Bill, he wasn't scrupulous about how he did it or whom he did it for. His other clients were Republicans, and his attack ads were the roughest in the business. Word was that he would work for both sides of the same race if he could get away with it.
So after Bill became America's youngest governor, he fired Dick for being, as Morris put it, an "assault on his vanity." Two years later, Bill had become America's youngest ex-governor. Tried to do too much too fast, let his ideals get the better of him. Chastened, he summoned Dick to plot the comeback.
...He was the dark buddha whose belly Clinton rubbed in desperate times.
--------------------
{All Too Human, by George Stephanopoulos. Copyright, 1999. Little, Brown. Boston, New York, London.}
I guess I like the amateurs better than the professionals.
-30-
There were still amateurs who loved the game in 1991, but campaigns were now run by professionals.
--------{excerpt, All Too Human, by George Stephanopoulos}
Reading that paragraph in Mr. S.'s book -- realized my tiny, insignificant "sideswipe" experience in state politics in the 90s -- even though it was the 90s, approximated the 1960 style Theodore White described, more closely than national-campaign-style of the then-current 90s.
State-level is different from national;
and a citizen legislature that meets for two months in the winter is different from full-time congress.
Most lobbyists I knew were lawyers or non-lawyers who loved the political process ("the Process"). Loved the knowledge, loved seeing what would happen, loved predicting and being right, even loved predicting and being wrong, (a few) loved having the Latin phrase for something, loved the understated, bare-bones "pageantry" if you could call it that -- in short, I guess, people who loved.
---------------------- [excerpt All Too / George S.]: The professionals with the hot hands that fall were Carville and Begala. Earlier that month they had guided former JFK aide Harris Wofford to an upset landslide victory in his Pennsylvania Senate race against Bush attorney general Richard Thornburgh. Every Democrat in the country hoped the race was a harbinger for 1992, and most of the candidates wanted to hire the men who had helped make it happen.
Paul Begala and I were friends from our days together on Gephardt's staff. I spent most of my day on the House floor, but whenever I got back to the office, there he was, at the desk across from me, having more fun in front of a word processor than I thought was humanly possible. Watching him write a speech was like watching Ray Charles play the piano. He would rock back and forth and talk to the screen, groaning one minute, laughing the next. The speeches he produced had perfect populist pitch....
With his lizardlike looks and colorful patois, Carville was the better-known partner, but James wouldn't have been James without Paul.
...The heart of the narrative -- part buddy movie, part perverse morality play: the story of Dick [Morris] and Bill [Clinton]. It was the tale of two political prodigies -- one from the North, one from the South; one short, one tall; one a consultant, the other the candidate of his dreams. Idealistic, fast-talking baby boomers, they ...believed in the power of politics to help people but loved the sport of it even more.
When they met in 1978, Dick was a fledgling consultant scouring the country for candidates and Bill was an ambitious attorney general of Arkansas looking to make a move. They bonded by poring over polls and bantering about campaign strategy the way baseball fans study box scores and relive their favorite plays. And together, they won.
But it wasn't an easy or equal relationship.
When Dick looked up at Bill, he saw a future president; when Bill looked down at Dick, he saw the devil he knew -- the part of himself that confused power and popularity with public service and principle. Dick knew how to win, but by the time he met Bill, he wasn't scrupulous about how he did it or whom he did it for. His other clients were Republicans, and his attack ads were the roughest in the business. Word was that he would work for both sides of the same race if he could get away with it.
So after Bill became America's youngest governor, he fired Dick for being, as Morris put it, an "assault on his vanity." Two years later, Bill had become America's youngest ex-governor. Tried to do too much too fast, let his ideals get the better of him. Chastened, he summoned Dick to plot the comeback.
...He was the dark buddha whose belly Clinton rubbed in desperate times.
--------------------
{All Too Human, by George Stephanopoulos. Copyright, 1999. Little, Brown. Boston, New York, London.}
I guess I like the amateurs better than the professionals.
-30-
Thursday, September 6, 2012
I play bass
24 hours ago, writing about political operatives put me in mind of this song, for unknown reasons -- "World Turning."
written by
Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie
recorded February 1975
for Fleetwood Mac album
released July 1975 on the
Reprise label.
-------------------
Everybody's trying to say I'm wrong
I just wanna be back where I belong
World turning
I gotta get my feet back on the ground
World turning
Everybody's got me down
Maybe I'm wrong but who's to say what's right?
I need somebody to help me through the night
World turning
I gotta get my feet back on the ground
World turning
Everybody's got me down...yeah
Maybe I'm wrong but who's to say what's right?
I need somebody to help me through the night
World turning
I've gotta get my feet back on the ground
World turning
Everybody's got me down
World turning
Everybody's got me down
World turning
Everybody's got me down
----------------------
and an interesting interview from Rolling Stone magazine, March 24, 1977
RS # 235: Fleetwood Mac -- the author of the piece interviewed each member of the Mac -- here he's visiting with John McVie
If “Fleetwood Mac” had been a mediocre-selling album for the band, there would have been no desperation or breakup. If Buckingham or Nicks hadn’t worked out, McVie would have dutifully helped find replacements. He’s a strange creature to rock and roll: a patient man.
“Fleetwood Mac was doing fine before that album,” he figures. “People are always asking me how does it feel to have made it. If that’s the case, what do I do now? Now that I’ve made it. I hate that phrase.” For once, his voice is audible above the din of the marina. “I didn’t anticipate all the commotion around the last album,” he says. “Not as much as 4 million sales. There’s a lot of good albums we’ve done. It’s just one of those things – the right album the right time. But that’s the criteria of making it in this business: a big album. Then you get your own TV show, you go make a movie. It’s not important. Being seen wearing a Gucci suit… that syndrome is so sad.”
So what’s the motivation to be around it for more than 14 years?
“Playing bass,” comes the ready reply. “I’m not a dedicated musician particularly, but it’s the one thing I enjoy doing.”
Would he soon consider retiring?
What would I do? Sit on the boat, but that would get as boring as sitting around the studio…”
… “If I had anything that I thought was world shaking or profound, I’d say something. I really can’t come up with anything on politics, state of society, the relation of music to society… it’s just horseshit. I play bass.”
{Site: The Uncool (the official website for everything Cameron Crowe)}
...world turning...
-30-
written by
Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie
recorded February 1975
for Fleetwood Mac album
released July 1975 on the
Reprise label.
-------------------
Everybody's trying to say I'm wrong
I just wanna be back where I belong
World turning
I gotta get my feet back on the ground
World turning
Everybody's got me down
Maybe I'm wrong but who's to say what's right?
I need somebody to help me through the night
World turning
I gotta get my feet back on the ground
World turning
Everybody's got me down...yeah
Maybe I'm wrong but who's to say what's right?
I need somebody to help me through the night
World turning
I've gotta get my feet back on the ground
World turning
Everybody's got me down
World turning
Everybody's got me down
World turning
Everybody's got me down
----------------------
and an interesting interview from Rolling Stone magazine, March 24, 1977
RS # 235: Fleetwood Mac -- the author of the piece interviewed each member of the Mac -- here he's visiting with John McVie
If “Fleetwood Mac” had been a mediocre-selling album for the band, there would have been no desperation or breakup. If Buckingham or Nicks hadn’t worked out, McVie would have dutifully helped find replacements. He’s a strange creature to rock and roll: a patient man.
“Fleetwood Mac was doing fine before that album,” he figures. “People are always asking me how does it feel to have made it. If that’s the case, what do I do now? Now that I’ve made it. I hate that phrase.” For once, his voice is audible above the din of the marina. “I didn’t anticipate all the commotion around the last album,” he says. “Not as much as 4 million sales. There’s a lot of good albums we’ve done. It’s just one of those things – the right album the right time. But that’s the criteria of making it in this business: a big album. Then you get your own TV show, you go make a movie. It’s not important. Being seen wearing a Gucci suit… that syndrome is so sad.”
So what’s the motivation to be around it for more than 14 years?
“Playing bass,” comes the ready reply. “I’m not a dedicated musician particularly, but it’s the one thing I enjoy doing.”
Would he soon consider retiring?
What would I do? Sit on the boat, but that would get as boring as sitting around the studio…”
… “If I had anything that I thought was world shaking or profound, I’d say something. I really can’t come up with anything on politics, state of society, the relation of music to society… it’s just horseshit. I play bass.”
{Site: The Uncool (the official website for everything Cameron Crowe)}
...world turning...
-30-
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
world turning
Last week, thought of this:
...The Republican party (or maybe its -- people you hire to help you win, political operatives, or something) wanted to "hijack" the [extremes and extremists] drawing them into the party & get the support of their votes, and then the [extremes], having been drawn in, hijacked the party...------------------
...and I began thinking about political operatives who maybe have changed the game and "poisoned the well" in our country's politics.
In George Stephanopoulos's book, All Too Human (his memoir / working for Clinton) he wrote briefly about the phenomenon of the political-op and how the way of doing things had changed since the Kennedy era, & the 1960 election, when journalists, thinkers, and miscellaneous lawyers kind of hung around, smoking a pipe or whatever, and discussed issues and came up with the best plan they could, to offer to the American people.
(Offer.
Offer.)
Then -- enter the "ops" -- the James Carvilles, Dick Morrises, and Karl Roves of the world, & then the process changed from an exchange of ideas and honest competition for who had the
best plan,
into a
process of
creating a competition to see who had the
worst
things to say about the other.
Cheapening the process, lowering the standards for substance and even behavior, both in
running for office, and even in
governing.
My impression, from reading what George S. wrote in the book, was that with the entry of the political operatives into the process, the overall attitude became "cut-to-the-chase-and-WIN" and basically, over a period of time, this shift in focus slowly corrupted the process.
(When using the word "corrupt" or "corrupted"-- fear sometimes thought might veer off-track & people will say "corrupt politicians"
[and some would say that they, like the poor, "will be always with us" as Bible says though don't think that Book mentions specific Republicans or Democrats - !]
but when we write, "corrupted" here we don't mean individual "pols" we're talking about the process and that's infinitely more important. And more troubling if it's indeed corrupt.)
Was thinking that if our political process has been reduced by political operatives -- who are after all just people hired for a job, like a garbage collector, a pallet-jack driver, or a neck cutter -- to an unseemly and unbecoming Race To Win At Any Cost, an Endless Contest, it represents a misuse of our democratic process and a disservice to voters.
A smart and effective and long-experienced lobbyist who was a life-long Democrat told me in the Capitol cafeteria in the mid-nineties that he watched James Carville on television and, "He's the devil; the guy's the devil." I was surprised to hear him say that, but I realize now he must have been observing a change and evolution in a bad direction, that he did not like to see.
Carville worked for the Democrats, & the lobbyist who told me that was a Democrat, so he was not berating opponents, he was criticizing tactics. And a passel of Republicans could be found to say the same of Karl Rove, so that's -- you know, it's the tactics. And the Ultimate Misplaced Focus.
Over the years the impression has grown that some if not all of the political "Operatives" that both parties use, now, behave with the reflexive aggression of rabid weasels and operate with the ethics of Tonya Harding.
The win-at-all-costs-with-negative-tactics Strategy is like steroids in sports, it's misplacing the focus and wrecking stuff, it's no wonder a lot of people don't feel like voting. They want to distance themselves from the behavior and attitudes. I may join them.
(Come to think of it, I may nominate them....)
There's a world of difference between
winning by Being Best, and Outperforming the competition
vs.
winning by destroying the opponent.
-30-
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
very busy
[excerpt, Waiting for the Weekend / Rybczynski]---------------- Walter Lippmann's 1930 article in Woman's Home Companion entitled "Free Time and Extra Money" articulated "the problem of leisure." He warned that leisure offered the individual difficult choices, choices for which a work-oriented society such as America had not prepared him.
{A man I work with said once, after a three- or four-day break, "The more time off you have, the more money you spend."}
Lippmann was concerned that if people didn't make creative use of their free time, it would be squandered on mass entertainments and commercial amusements. His view spawned many books and articles of popular sociology with titles such as The Challenge of Leisure, The Threat of Leisure, and even The Menace of Leisure.
...In Work Without End, Benjamin K. Hunnicutt describes how...the shorter workday had eventually, and often reluctantly, been accepted by management; one reason was that studies had shown how production increased when workers had longer daily breaks and were less tired.
The same did not apply, however, to the weekend. "Having Saturdays off," Hunnicutt observes, "was seen to offer the worker leisure -- the opportunity to become increasingly free from the job to do other things." And if these "other things" were not good for him, then it was only proper that he should be kept in the workplace, and out of trouble.
{! These days some folks like to say the word "nanny-state" -- sounds like back in the day they had "nanny industry"...? The discussion of people being "free from the job to do other things" made me think of the day one worker "called-in", not "Sick," but rather "Very busy," causing his supervisor to murmur, with perfunctory tolerance / annoyance, "I'll very-busy him. ..."}
...There were different views as to what people should do with this newfound freedom. Some economists hoped the extra free time would spur consumption of leisure goods and stimulate the stagnant economy.
{"The more time off you have, the more money you spend."}
Middle-class social reformers saw an opportunity for a program of national physical and intellectual self-improvement. That was the message of a book called A Guide to Civilized Loafing, written by H.A. Overstreet in 1934. Despite the title, which in later editions was changed to the more seemly A Guide to Civilized Leisure, the author's view was that free time was an opportunity, and the book described a daunting array of free-time activities, from amateur drama to volunteer work. Overstreet was prescient in some of his recommendations, like bicycling and hiking, although other of his enthusiasms -- playing the gong, for example -- have yet to catch on.
-------------------- [end excerpt]
{Waiting for the Weekend,
by Witold Rybczynski. Copyright, 1991.
Viking Penguin, New York.}
-30-
{A man I work with said once, after a three- or four-day break, "The more time off you have, the more money you spend."}
Lippmann was concerned that if people didn't make creative use of their free time, it would be squandered on mass entertainments and commercial amusements. His view spawned many books and articles of popular sociology with titles such as The Challenge of Leisure, The Threat of Leisure, and even The Menace of Leisure.
...In Work Without End, Benjamin K. Hunnicutt describes how...the shorter workday had eventually, and often reluctantly, been accepted by management; one reason was that studies had shown how production increased when workers had longer daily breaks and were less tired.
The same did not apply, however, to the weekend. "Having Saturdays off," Hunnicutt observes, "was seen to offer the worker leisure -- the opportunity to become increasingly free from the job to do other things." And if these "other things" were not good for him, then it was only proper that he should be kept in the workplace, and out of trouble.
{! These days some folks like to say the word "nanny-state" -- sounds like back in the day they had "nanny industry"...? The discussion of people being "free from the job to do other things" made me think of the day one worker "called-in", not "Sick," but rather "Very busy," causing his supervisor to murmur, with perfunctory tolerance / annoyance, "I'll very-busy him. ..."}
...There were different views as to what people should do with this newfound freedom. Some economists hoped the extra free time would spur consumption of leisure goods and stimulate the stagnant economy.
{"The more time off you have, the more money you spend."}
Middle-class social reformers saw an opportunity for a program of national physical and intellectual self-improvement. That was the message of a book called A Guide to Civilized Loafing, written by H.A. Overstreet in 1934. Despite the title, which in later editions was changed to the more seemly A Guide to Civilized Leisure, the author's view was that free time was an opportunity, and the book described a daunting array of free-time activities, from amateur drama to volunteer work. Overstreet was prescient in some of his recommendations, like bicycling and hiking, although other of his enthusiasms -- playing the gong, for example -- have yet to catch on.
-------------------- [end excerpt]
{Waiting for the Weekend,
by Witold Rybczynski. Copyright, 1991.
Viking Penguin, New York.}
-30-
Monday, September 3, 2012
left, right, and center
Paris After the Liberation: 1944 - 1949
written by the London-based married couple Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper;
published at Doubleday by Jacqueline Onassis.
{excerpts, Jackie as Editor by Greg Lawrence}--------------------- At the time much had been written about the Nazi occupation of France and the efforts of the underground Resistance. Less well known were the chaotic postwar years during which France conducted its..."legal purge" of French officials who participated in or cooperated with the detested Vichy government. This period, which Jackie had studied extensively, also saw a three-way struggle for power in France,
with the communists on the left,
the Gaullists on the right, and the
social democrats defending the fragile center.
Paris After the Liberation reads like a novel, with the familiar names of de Gaulle and Malraux, Sartre and Camus, Picasso and Cocteau, Koestler and Céline popping up in the most unlikely of combinations. Of course, this was another historical sojourn for the book's dyed-in-the-wool Francophile editor, who had known many of the major figures who were a part of this era. Beevor and Cooper not only tell this complicated story in fascinating detail but also paint a portrait of a devastated Europe struggling for subsistence after five years of aerial terror, and they describe the intellectual machinations that the intelligentsia put themselves through in order to remain allies with the devious communists and the naive but gung-ho Americans.
...The book was already set to be published in England when Jackie acquired it. [Author Beevor]: "That was all fixed up with Hamish Hamilton here. I think Jackie got to hear about it -- I'm not sure how that came about -- and she grabbed the book when at Doubleday, which obviously for us was absolutely wonderful. She turned out to be a superb editor with excellent judgment. Her comments were extremely subtle and elegant, but also clear at the same time.
"One little story quite amused me: I remember getting terribly excited in a French archive -- it's part of the Ville de Paris archive -- where I found what I thought was the absolutely perfect jacket photograph. I sent this with huge excitement to Jackie. And back came the most elegant putdown I've heard in my life. On one of her pale blue cards decorated with a white cockleshell, she simply wrote: 'Dear Antony, I think you should understand that over here choosing a jacket is rather akin to a Japanese tea ceremony.' It was a very, very elegant way of saying: 'Stay out of it, because designers here do not like authors messing around with jacket selection.'"
...Beevor continued, "By the time we'd more or less finished the book, we were really under very heavy pressure because the fiftieth anniversary was looming and we had to get the book finished in time. I showed the last chapter to my wife, Artemis, and she had to come back, saying that it did not work. I was exasperated, but I knew she was right. Then, our English editor, who was highly admired, also could not see what was wrong. So we sent it over to Jackie -- this was literally about three weeks before she died, and she must have been already very ill by then. Yet she put her finger on the problem in a second. . . . And as soon as she said it, everything was clear and we were able to finish. And then to our horror we heard . . . that she had died."
-------------------------------------
Jackie celebrated her sixty-fourth birthday on Martha's Vineyard on July 28, 1993. She was in good cheer when Joe Armstrong [of Rolling Stone magazine] visited her the following month and was her houseguest for a week. He said, "I took her a cassette of the Beatles' 'When I'm Sixty-Four,' and I played it on her stereo and her knees just buckled she started laughing so hard. I said, 'You never heard this?' And she said, 'Never!' The Beatles made that thirty-five years ago, when sixty-four seemed like ninety. All of the sudden sixty-four is no longer old, so she thought that was hysterical."
{Jackie As Editor: The Literary Life Of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Greg Lawrence.
Copyright, 2011. Thomas Dunne books.
An imprint of St. Martin's Press.
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.}
When I get older, losing my hair,
Many years from now...
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine.
If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.
You'll be older too,
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.
I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride,
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?
Every summer we can rent a cottage,
In the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck & Dave
Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view...
Indicate-precisely-what-you-mean-to-say
Yours sin-- cere-- ly --
Wast - ing away!
Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.
{Lennon-McCartney, 1967. Sgt. Pepper}
on Parlophone (UK), Capitol (US)
-30-
written by the London-based married couple Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper;
published at Doubleday by Jacqueline Onassis.
{excerpts, Jackie as Editor by Greg Lawrence}--------------------- At the time much had been written about the Nazi occupation of France and the efforts of the underground Resistance. Less well known were the chaotic postwar years during which France conducted its..."legal purge" of French officials who participated in or cooperated with the detested Vichy government. This period, which Jackie had studied extensively, also saw a three-way struggle for power in France,
with the communists on the left,
the Gaullists on the right, and the
social democrats defending the fragile center.
Paris After the Liberation reads like a novel, with the familiar names of de Gaulle and Malraux, Sartre and Camus, Picasso and Cocteau, Koestler and Céline popping up in the most unlikely of combinations. Of course, this was another historical sojourn for the book's dyed-in-the-wool Francophile editor, who had known many of the major figures who were a part of this era. Beevor and Cooper not only tell this complicated story in fascinating detail but also paint a portrait of a devastated Europe struggling for subsistence after five years of aerial terror, and they describe the intellectual machinations that the intelligentsia put themselves through in order to remain allies with the devious communists and the naive but gung-ho Americans.
...The book was already set to be published in England when Jackie acquired it. [Author Beevor]: "That was all fixed up with Hamish Hamilton here. I think Jackie got to hear about it -- I'm not sure how that came about -- and she grabbed the book when at Doubleday, which obviously for us was absolutely wonderful. She turned out to be a superb editor with excellent judgment. Her comments were extremely subtle and elegant, but also clear at the same time.
"One little story quite amused me: I remember getting terribly excited in a French archive -- it's part of the Ville de Paris archive -- where I found what I thought was the absolutely perfect jacket photograph. I sent this with huge excitement to Jackie. And back came the most elegant putdown I've heard in my life. On one of her pale blue cards decorated with a white cockleshell, she simply wrote: 'Dear Antony, I think you should understand that over here choosing a jacket is rather akin to a Japanese tea ceremony.' It was a very, very elegant way of saying: 'Stay out of it, because designers here do not like authors messing around with jacket selection.'"
...Beevor continued, "By the time we'd more or less finished the book, we were really under very heavy pressure because the fiftieth anniversary was looming and we had to get the book finished in time. I showed the last chapter to my wife, Artemis, and she had to come back, saying that it did not work. I was exasperated, but I knew she was right. Then, our English editor, who was highly admired, also could not see what was wrong. So we sent it over to Jackie -- this was literally about three weeks before she died, and she must have been already very ill by then. Yet she put her finger on the problem in a second. . . . And as soon as she said it, everything was clear and we were able to finish. And then to our horror we heard . . . that she had died."
-------------------------------------
Jackie celebrated her sixty-fourth birthday on Martha's Vineyard on July 28, 1993. She was in good cheer when Joe Armstrong [of Rolling Stone magazine] visited her the following month and was her houseguest for a week. He said, "I took her a cassette of the Beatles' 'When I'm Sixty-Four,' and I played it on her stereo and her knees just buckled she started laughing so hard. I said, 'You never heard this?' And she said, 'Never!' The Beatles made that thirty-five years ago, when sixty-four seemed like ninety. All of the sudden sixty-four is no longer old, so she thought that was hysterical."
{Jackie As Editor: The Literary Life Of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Greg Lawrence.
Copyright, 2011. Thomas Dunne books.
An imprint of St. Martin's Press.
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.}
When I get older, losing my hair,
Many years from now...
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine.
If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.
You'll be older too,
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.
I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride,
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?
Every summer we can rent a cottage,
In the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck & Dave
Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view...
Indicate-precisely-what-you-mean-to-say
Yours sin-- cere-- ly --
Wast - ing away!
Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.
{Lennon-McCartney, 1967. Sgt. Pepper}
on Parlophone (UK), Capitol (US)
-30-
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