I spent a year in New York City one month during a summer between classes. In the late 60's I shared an elegant flat with two female scholars and a wealthy Iraqi potter who despised Americans. One afternoon I recall having some time on my hands -- this is a vague feeling I almost always have -- and we all took the ferry to Ellis Island. The others took the immediate return boat back to Manhattan, but I felt I had stepped on the hallowed ground of Liberty and wanted to ascend the Lady. In the next hour, I was seduced by joyful strangers, conversationed by memoirists on their Hajj, and back in Manhattan, assaulted by a quartet of robbers.
The seductions went so far as kissing. Foreplay by two delightful older women who simply understood the richness of soft words. Without explanation, they took me into their company as familiars with New York, spending an hour with an obvious country boy. They were filled with puns and the names of food and places. And their lips wandered up and down my face, gently exploring the places in between emotions, between the gift and the longing of lips. Each of them boldly brought kisses--many of them--directly to my mouth. There was joy and sadness, there was the certainty we would not meet again, and that we would never forget the introduction. I learned that kissing can change one's hole idea of the mouth, of breathing, and eating. There are resuscitations of breath shared in the kindness of kisses offered without a hidden pudenda. As they left me, returning to their cruise, we spoke of remembering, and I do.
Half-way up the Lady-- a bronze spiral staircase, an Indian-file passage of simple intimacy -- the line stopped. Years now, looking back, I cannot remember why the processional was delayed, but I do remember that it was unexplicable at the time and disturbed me. As it happens, the elderly fellow behind me was an affable Hungarian who had married an Irish lady. Perhaps only because I was feeling trapped in a long line going nowhere, I asked this couple how they met. They took the "liberty" to tell me their entire life stories--growing up in the motherland, coming to America, and meeting each other. They were obvious characters. Again, my memory banks were overflowing.
As I boarded the ferry returning to Manhattan Island, two young beautiful Californian girls stood next to me. Being from California myself, we struck up a conversation and next thing you know, more kissing.
Finally, as I was returning to the flat later that night, and having been delayed by my own love of the Statue and the crowds and the kisses and the stories, the streets and neighborhoods did not appear to be "safe". I began singing DIES IRAE to myself, transporting my spirit to a place of midieval comforts:
1
Dies iræ! dies illa
Solvet sæclum in favilla
Teste David cum Sibylla!
{Day of wrath! O day of mourning!
See fulfilled the prophets' warning,
Heaven and earth in ashes burning!
As David bore witness with the Sibyll}
2
Quantus tremor est futurus,
quando judex est venturus,
cuncta stricte discussurus!
{Oh what fear man's bosom rendeth,
when from heaven the Judge descendeth,
on whose sentence all dependeth.}
3
Tuba mirum spargens sonum
per sepulchra regionum,
coget omnes ante thronum.
{Wondrous tone/sound the trumpet sounds/; flingeth;
through earth's sepulchers it rounds/; ringeth;
all before the throne it crowns;/ bringeth.}
My whispered missal probably did not attract the four assailants who come upon me in the half-lit avenue coming up to our flat. However, my slight form and obvious indifference to their profiles was at least an invitation to break the tedium of their lives with predation. The four blocked my way, but I saw no weapons. I nodded to one of them who was speaking, then whirled and fired a fist into the solar plexus of the biggest one standing slightly behind me and broke through their ring. I sprinted away into the middle of the street. Frankly I thought they had a "back up" or a leader hidden somewhere nearby and did not want to run into him. I was pretty certain I could outrun any assailant and did not believe they would shoot me even if they were armed. Or at least not without more provocation.
One or two may have started to give chase, but I was well away, running low and straight, then leaping into high gear. I did not even slow down for six blocks, and then I made two corners, cutting off possible visibility. I ducked into an attended valet station and stood smiling at the car jockeys, panting. They looked at me with amazement and waited for me to catch my breath. They were noticably nervous because I kept looking back from where I had come.
The boys standing at the valet station never asked, and I never told them, what I was running from. I will always be grateful, however, for the feeling of protection they quietly offered.
These memories seem to come to mind now on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of Manhattan Island by Henry Hudson in 1609. The present inhabitants may not have the specific details, but they share a general sense that NYC is a marvelous and important place in this universe. For some of us, it is simply a crown jewel of tidal estuaries and urbanity, at the deep-water head of a river system that drains from Minnesota, and then merges and quiets the Atlantic, that mariner's road to the rest of the world. There is no more archetypal city on the planet, and none built so quickly. I never knew what "wall street" referred to until I gazed at its walled streets.
I hope that NYC celebrates its 400th. Without more provocation.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Bernard L. Madoff - the SEC failed to investigate repeated defalcations
Mr. Madoff was a broker-dealer; he held himself out as a sophisticated "genius" at the craft of investing OPM - Other People's Money. The OPM stake was worth billions. It turns out, he simply operated a Ponzi-scheme. He did not craft a brilliant trading strategy, he made no market, and he managed no portfolios in his exclusive floor of a New York skyscraper. He simply took money from people. How smart does anyone have to be to do this?
The SEC had received numerous complaints against Madoff. In spite of documented fraud claims, however, the SEC failed to scrutinize the Madoff securities "market maker" operations which were clearly within its jurisdiction.
The Madoff swindle is in excess of $50 billion. This type of theft at this scale will carve a large hole in the free market, as investors face the fact that hedge fund managers and investment brokers are not "policed" or regulated in any effective way. Thus, we see the debilitation of market entry -- investors now joined with lenders in an unwillingness to place their funds into a "marketplace" overrun by predators. Capital not already in the hands of the pirates, is held hostage or at bay, and no longer available to productive enterprises.
The SEC had received numerous complaints against Madoff. In spite of documented fraud claims, however, the SEC failed to scrutinize the Madoff securities "market maker" operations which were clearly within its jurisdiction.
The Madoff swindle is in excess of $50 billion. This type of theft at this scale will carve a large hole in the free market, as investors face the fact that hedge fund managers and investment brokers are not "policed" or regulated in any effective way. Thus, we see the debilitation of market entry -- investors now joined with lenders in an unwillingness to place their funds into a "marketplace" overrun by predators. Capital not already in the hands of the pirates, is held hostage or at bay, and no longer available to productive enterprises.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Cat Paradise; with apologies to The Hound of Heaven, by Francis Thompson
The Pussy-Cat of Paradise
Calling in the night push-push
I chased her, down the stairway of days and up
the veils of night, I chased
until chastened but not caught,
not in my arms;
there was nothing
Only nothing
I searched for her
Listened for the sound of eyelids opening
and for the songs of cats in love
My ear peeled, my keening throughout the house,
creating the house,
I searched.
I pled, I begged like an outlaw caught
with his red hand in a bucket of greed.
I pleaded for the tender mercies, all for me, and
all about me,
everyone everywhere could hear this oyez plea!
For though I knew love, I did not know I knew,
and knew not how
new love would know.
Or having love, I dreaded what else I must have.
For so often
You get what you never saw
And scratched by its paw.
Was searching so,
through a window darkly for the black cat of love,
dressed to the nines of its liquid life
As Love to pursue
the little spotted margay
so troubling the bear at the gateway of the stars
or the jawed jaguar
Wrestling the alligator of our intermittencies
searching for the furred stop, the rejoinder,
with the mystery of its passion,
frisking the feathers of hope with its love of risk.
I searched on full moon nights the pale ports of mystery.
The shut doors of pure unholy ignorance,
gob-smacked down
the empty halls of cold marble
harked to the echo of distant trumpets
Gone smoking astray
I said to Dusk: be quick – to Dawn: be soon;
With the scattered rose find me one tremendous Lover,
heaping with blossoms
Float this veil and sail the carpetings of magic things
to the solid hearth
Where the heart’s content will lay down among its cats.
Their truth, their soi-disant claims to simplicity.
Only I clung to the whistling dark.
There was no answering purred remark.
I said to the world: be still – to its turning: stop.
With the twine of caresses not yet receiving
did I yearn for Love’s redeeming.
Lip to lip, the soft keening breath.
Be still. And yet, it did not stop.
Lucent-weeping yet, it only promised tears are wet.
The wind-walled palace of my hopes
were spiraled out in milky tropes.
All willful seem the clouds to be
how awful the snortings of the sea
And all that’s born and dies
comes face to face with skies
of possibility and doom.
Felt a failure, the search was done;
hoped for all, but found none.
I was heavy with the Even
and surrounded by the lonely blue shadowings
of cathode rays
around the day’s dead sanctity.
Then, BOOM!
You landed as if from the sea.
You mustered my commingling heats
gathered up the fur
the push-push and curling tail, so curing
the human smart.
Now, let Love live, who lives Love.
Cat my paradise.
Calling in the night push-push
I chased her, down the stairway of days and up
the veils of night, I chased
until chastened but not caught,
not in my arms;
there was nothing
Only nothing
I searched for her
Listened for the sound of eyelids opening
and for the songs of cats in love
My ear peeled, my keening throughout the house,
creating the house,
I searched.
I pled, I begged like an outlaw caught
with his red hand in a bucket of greed.
I pleaded for the tender mercies, all for me, and
all about me,
everyone everywhere could hear this oyez plea!
For though I knew love, I did not know I knew,
and knew not how
new love would know.
Or having love, I dreaded what else I must have.
For so often
You get what you never saw
And scratched by its paw.
Was searching so,
through a window darkly for the black cat of love,
dressed to the nines of its liquid life
As Love to pursue
the little spotted margay
so troubling the bear at the gateway of the stars
or the jawed jaguar
Wrestling the alligator of our intermittencies
searching for the furred stop, the rejoinder,
with the mystery of its passion,
frisking the feathers of hope with its love of risk.
I searched on full moon nights the pale ports of mystery.
The shut doors of pure unholy ignorance,
gob-smacked down
the empty halls of cold marble
harked to the echo of distant trumpets
Gone smoking astray
I said to Dusk: be quick – to Dawn: be soon;
With the scattered rose find me one tremendous Lover,
heaping with blossoms
Float this veil and sail the carpetings of magic things
to the solid hearth
Where the heart’s content will lay down among its cats.
Their truth, their soi-disant claims to simplicity.
Only I clung to the whistling dark.
There was no answering purred remark.
I said to the world: be still – to its turning: stop.
With the twine of caresses not yet receiving
did I yearn for Love’s redeeming.
Lip to lip, the soft keening breath.
Be still. And yet, it did not stop.
Lucent-weeping yet, it only promised tears are wet.
The wind-walled palace of my hopes
were spiraled out in milky tropes.
All willful seem the clouds to be
how awful the snortings of the sea
And all that’s born and dies
comes face to face with skies
of possibility and doom.
Felt a failure, the search was done;
hoped for all, but found none.
I was heavy with the Even
and surrounded by the lonely blue shadowings
of cathode rays
around the day’s dead sanctity.
Then, BOOM!
You landed as if from the sea.
You mustered my commingling heats
gathered up the fur
the push-push and curling tail, so curing
the human smart.
Now, let Love live, who lives Love.
Cat my paradise.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
What lives, hungers.
What do living things "have in common"? The Hunger. As if in order to live, existance has to curl around a need, the desire to live that moves the prepositional object.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Consumer Protection replaced by Consumerism
In AlterNet:
How Our Gutless Media Helped Trigger the Credit Crisis
By Trudy Lieberman, Columbia Journalism Review. Posted November 20, 2008.
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/102963
"As Dean Starkman, who runs The Audit on cjr.org, pointed out in this magazine in March ("Red Ink Rising"), American credit-card debt now stands at more than $900 billion, up 9,000 percent from 1968, having risen by a third between 2001 and 2006. Worse, he noted that more than three quarters of the credit industry's profits now come from people who make minimum monthly payments. As he further reported, these industry-wide changes followed a regulatory rollback and were by and large missed by the nation's press."
During the Bush-Cheney-Rove regime, Americans preserved an appearance of prosperity even as they lost it, by dramatically deepening their dependence on rolling credit. The "investment bank" packaging of CDS/Credit Default Swaps with sub-prime mortgages was just the beginning of the financial collapse. The Trillion Dollar credit card debts which underemployed people will never be able to pay back has not yet begun to blight the rapidly eroding "fundamentals".
How Our Gutless Media Helped Trigger the Credit Crisis
By Trudy Lieberman, Columbia Journalism Review. Posted November 20, 2008.
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/102963
"As Dean Starkman, who runs The Audit on cjr.org, pointed out in this magazine in March ("Red Ink Rising"), American credit-card debt now stands at more than $900 billion, up 9,000 percent from 1968, having risen by a third between 2001 and 2006. Worse, he noted that more than three quarters of the credit industry's profits now come from people who make minimum monthly payments. As he further reported, these industry-wide changes followed a regulatory rollback and were by and large missed by the nation's press."
During the Bush-Cheney-Rove regime, Americans preserved an appearance of prosperity even as they lost it, by dramatically deepening their dependence on rolling credit. The "investment bank" packaging of CDS/Credit Default Swaps with sub-prime mortgages was just the beginning of the financial collapse. The Trillion Dollar credit card debts which underemployed people will never be able to pay back has not yet begun to blight the rapidly eroding "fundamentals".
Ants - why we like them - complex system analysis
For those of us who really love ants, the Web is wonderful bait. My essay on the thirteen Great Myths About Ants (part of my series on almost everything you believe is just wrong) is already out of date.
One current view and point of research is running the hive as a model for Complex Systems. Ants have no leader, and they get their marching orders from larvae, yet millions of ants -- and the scale is part of this interactive success pattern -- following almost pre-instinctive rules of individual behavior, can build bridges with their bodies and forage for food along vast efficient highways. They farm, cultivate, protect, and have thrived with an almost indifference to evolution, in their present form for 100 million years.
What are the rules these little guys are following? Can we run the model and project it to the next scale?
In complex systems, through local interactions and self-organization, stable or semi-stable patterns emerge at a next level or a higher scale. They project.
They adjust to small changes in the system or initial conditions and re-apply across new conditions. Very promising research models.
....Well, back to the ANTS, here is a short Digg List:
Army Ants Have Defied Evolution For 100 Million Years (May 9, 2003) — Army ants, nature's ultimate coalition task force, strike their prey en masse in a blind, voracious column and pay no attention to the conventional wisdom of evolutionary ... > read more
Clemson Fire Ant Research Uses Biological Approach (Dec. 21, 1998) — In the ongoing war to control fire ants, a new, biological approach is being tested at Clemson University. Entomologists here have introduced a naturally occurring disease into fire ant colonies as a ... > read more
Parasites Prevent Ants From Protecting Coffee Plants (Aug. 8, 2003) — Azteca ants are voracious predators that live on coffee plants and aggressively defend their territories. That’s generally good for the coffee plants, which are protected in the process against ... > read more
Some Tropical Birds Depend Completely On Army Ants To Flush Out Prey (Oct. 17, 2007) — In the jungles of Central and South America, a group of birds has evolved a unique way of finding food -- by following hordes of army ants and letting them do all the work. Some of the birds rely ... > read more
Army Ants Form Living Pothole Plugs For Their Roads (May 28, 2007) — Certain army ants in the rainforests of Central and South America conduct spectacular predatory raids containing up to 200,000 foraging ants. Remarkably, some ants use their bodies to plug potholes ... > read more
Ants Are Experienced Fungus Farmers (Mar. 25, 2008) — It turns out ants, like humans, are true farmers. The difference is that ants are farming fungus. Entomologists are providing new insight into the agricultural abilities of ants and how these ... > read more
Get 'Two Steps' Ahead Of Fire Ants With Organic Control (May 12, 2004) — Red imported fire ants love wet, rainy, cool days like the ones that ushered in spring. That's why so many of their mounds have been popping up all over Texas this year. But help is only two ... > read more
Ability To Capture Large Prey May Be Origin Of Army Ants' Cooperative Behavior (Dec. 15, 2005) — Scientific insights come at the darnedest times. Animal behaviorist Sean O'Donnell was having an afternoon cup of coffee when a giant earthworm exploded out of the leaf litter covering the jungle ... > read more
One current view and point of research is running the hive as a model for Complex Systems. Ants have no leader, and they get their marching orders from larvae, yet millions of ants -- and the scale is part of this interactive success pattern -- following almost pre-instinctive rules of individual behavior, can build bridges with their bodies and forage for food along vast efficient highways. They farm, cultivate, protect, and have thrived with an almost indifference to evolution, in their present form for 100 million years.
What are the rules these little guys are following? Can we run the model and project it to the next scale?
In complex systems, through local interactions and self-organization, stable or semi-stable patterns emerge at a next level or a higher scale. They project.
They adjust to small changes in the system or initial conditions and re-apply across new conditions. Very promising research models.
....Well, back to the ANTS, here is a short Digg List:
Army Ants Have Defied Evolution For 100 Million Years (May 9, 2003) — Army ants, nature's ultimate coalition task force, strike their prey en masse in a blind, voracious column and pay no attention to the conventional wisdom of evolutionary ... > read more
Clemson Fire Ant Research Uses Biological Approach (Dec. 21, 1998) — In the ongoing war to control fire ants, a new, biological approach is being tested at Clemson University. Entomologists here have introduced a naturally occurring disease into fire ant colonies as a ... > read more
Parasites Prevent Ants From Protecting Coffee Plants (Aug. 8, 2003) — Azteca ants are voracious predators that live on coffee plants and aggressively defend their territories. That’s generally good for the coffee plants, which are protected in the process against ... > read more
Some Tropical Birds Depend Completely On Army Ants To Flush Out Prey (Oct. 17, 2007) — In the jungles of Central and South America, a group of birds has evolved a unique way of finding food -- by following hordes of army ants and letting them do all the work. Some of the birds rely ... > read more
Army Ants Form Living Pothole Plugs For Their Roads (May 28, 2007) — Certain army ants in the rainforests of Central and South America conduct spectacular predatory raids containing up to 200,000 foraging ants. Remarkably, some ants use their bodies to plug potholes ... > read more
Ants Are Experienced Fungus Farmers (Mar. 25, 2008) — It turns out ants, like humans, are true farmers. The difference is that ants are farming fungus. Entomologists are providing new insight into the agricultural abilities of ants and how these ... > read more
Get 'Two Steps' Ahead Of Fire Ants With Organic Control (May 12, 2004) — Red imported fire ants love wet, rainy, cool days like the ones that ushered in spring. That's why so many of their mounds have been popping up all over Texas this year. But help is only two ... > read more
Ability To Capture Large Prey May Be Origin Of Army Ants' Cooperative Behavior (Dec. 15, 2005) — Scientific insights come at the darnedest times. Animal behaviorist Sean O'Donnell was having an afternoon cup of coffee when a giant earthworm exploded out of the leaf litter covering the jungle ... > read more
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Spam - the unwanted tide
The number of unsolicited and unwanted emails transmitted on the Internet exceeds 180 billion per diem. Spam now makes up 90% of the content of email. Curiously, the 10% balance is roughly double the Postmaster's figures for the percentage of personal snail mail. We seem to combine a tolerance for wildly arbitrary commercial assaults with reticence, no matter what form of communication our technology provides.
I am reminded that in 2004, Bill Gates predicted that the distribution of bulk emails spam would be marginalized. Was he not making a serious prediction? Or was he just that wrong?
Clearly, it is "personal life" that is marginalized; persons as such have almost no life. Between being over-run and being bored, or between being a victim of mass media and being one of the spammers, what vitality is left?
I am reminded that in 2004, Bill Gates predicted that the distribution of bulk emails spam would be marginalized. Was he not making a serious prediction? Or was he just that wrong?
Clearly, it is "personal life" that is marginalized; persons as such have almost no life. Between being over-run and being bored, or between being a victim of mass media and being one of the spammers, what vitality is left?
Saturday, November 15, 2008
CRIMINALITY OF STEALING MONEY / PRIVATE FRAUD REMEDIES
New laws and regulations are not necessary to "save" the world from thieves. What has been missing for 8 years is a prosecutor, or a "police" agency willing to maintain conventional standards of behavior in the Market place.
It appears that the appointment of a vigorous Prosecutor would resolve both the financial and psychological aspects of the present "crisis" presented to us by the defalcation of President Bush, who appointed an Attorney General who did nothing to protect us. What is The Law for that we do not enforce?
There are also conventional "private" remedies -- civil causes and even class actions. However, these were also compromised by an Executive who was extremely hostile to legal relief for consumers against institutional predators.
If an investor has been damaged by a fund manager, the investor may have a cause of action against the manager. If a pension fund is involved, the fiduciary duty is even higher. The point is, investors can hire private attorneys to sue investment bankers for breach of fiduciary duty, negligence, or fraud. Interestingly, most of the investment bankers have liability insurance policies covering negligence.
The cause of the present financial crisis is that poor credit risk sub-prime loans were deliberately packaged by investment bankers as "high grade structured credit enhanced leverage funds" for sale to our pension funds. In other words, by giving the security a title that makes it appear to be financially "sound", the bankers were able to aggregate sub-prime loans into "derivatives" that created billion-dollar transactions to support their million-dollar bonuses.
BTW, no one even knows WHAT these new securities are, much less how much they are worth. When it is an aggregation of billions of dollars assigned distantly from the initial loan parties, a CDS - “credit default swap”, or a “derivative” is a meaningless description for an unknown gas for which no amount or value can be attached, but which apparently floated huge bonuses to CEOs.
For years, the plaintiffs' Bar has been trying to put a check on this kind of fraud by suing the bankers -- but of course, there were no "damages" while home equity was rising, and nobody asked, "By the way, how much is the collateral actually worth?"
Bankers with almost no information about the borrowers or the collateral, and with no basis for believing they knew what the value of the security was, were trading the paper. By consolidating huge piles of this paper, they increased the paper value -- pulling enormous commissions out on each successive assignment.
But isn't it fraudulent to NAME this consolidated paper a "high grade structured credit enhanced leverage funds" when in fact it was drawn from a loan broker without verification of income or reasonable "collateralization of risk"?
Isn't it a breach of fiduciary duty to put our pension funds into a "high grade structured credit enhanced leverage fund" the managers have not actually collateralized? Calling this a "derivative" may be fraudulent, because up until July of 2008, the word gave the impression that the Seller was financially sophisticated.
We must also note that there is a hybrid Janus-like quality of both foreseeability and "surprise" in the marketing of derivatives. The collapse was not unforeseeable or unforeseen -- many economists and investors (apparently all outside the Bush Administration and Treasury) had warned about the over-valued and fictionally-valued derivatives.
Nothing suddenly happened. The "due dates" for balloon payments, and stock calls, were all known in advance. The investment bankers like Lehman Brothers and insurers like AIG, all knew well in advance what dynamics were in place.
All the more reason to question the tactic of declaring an emergency so as to obtain a government bail out on the eve of a regime change in Washington DC. ALL of the "risk" was anticipated, joked about ( http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/187.html ), and in fact discounted by the securities market already.
The fact that Paulson pressured Congress for funds (which Congress would have to borrow, ahem, from "Lenders") in order to buy worthless and toxic assets FROM LENDERS to keep them in business, and when Congress gave him the billions he asked for HE DID NOT DO WHAT HE SAID HE WOULD DO, raises at least some question about whether he understood what appears to be an entirely fictional "crisis".
Paulson may have a good faith belief that there was a "crisis". ALL of his friends are investment bankers, and many of them were CEO's on whose watch their corporate vessels had run into the unpleasant shoals of "due dates" and money famine. And there is no question that the prosperity of the country depends upon the availability of loans.
However, if "loan availability" is necessary, why not just set up a "bank" (or a central bank that loans to local banks) that makes loans? Why was it necessary to invest in worthless paper or inject bail-out money into sinking ships? Is there any question in anyone's mind that the CEO's who secretly awarded themselves million dollar bonuses on the eve of the crash of their companies cannot be trusted with money?
It appears that the appointment of a vigorous Prosecutor would resolve both the financial and psychological aspects of the present "crisis" presented to us by the defalcation of President Bush, who appointed an Attorney General who did nothing to protect us. What is The Law for that we do not enforce?
There are also conventional "private" remedies -- civil causes and even class actions. However, these were also compromised by an Executive who was extremely hostile to legal relief for consumers against institutional predators.
If an investor has been damaged by a fund manager, the investor may have a cause of action against the manager. If a pension fund is involved, the fiduciary duty is even higher. The point is, investors can hire private attorneys to sue investment bankers for breach of fiduciary duty, negligence, or fraud. Interestingly, most of the investment bankers have liability insurance policies covering negligence.
The cause of the present financial crisis is that poor credit risk sub-prime loans were deliberately packaged by investment bankers as "high grade structured credit enhanced leverage funds" for sale to our pension funds. In other words, by giving the security a title that makes it appear to be financially "sound", the bankers were able to aggregate sub-prime loans into "derivatives" that created billion-dollar transactions to support their million-dollar bonuses.
BTW, no one even knows WHAT these new securities are, much less how much they are worth. When it is an aggregation of billions of dollars assigned distantly from the initial loan parties, a CDS - “credit default swap”, or a “derivative” is a meaningless description for an unknown gas for which no amount or value can be attached, but which apparently floated huge bonuses to CEOs.
For years, the plaintiffs' Bar has been trying to put a check on this kind of fraud by suing the bankers -- but of course, there were no "damages" while home equity was rising, and nobody asked, "By the way, how much is the collateral actually worth?"
Bankers with almost no information about the borrowers or the collateral, and with no basis for believing they knew what the value of the security was, were trading the paper. By consolidating huge piles of this paper, they increased the paper value -- pulling enormous commissions out on each successive assignment.
But isn't it fraudulent to NAME this consolidated paper a "high grade structured credit enhanced leverage funds" when in fact it was drawn from a loan broker without verification of income or reasonable "collateralization of risk"?
Isn't it a breach of fiduciary duty to put our pension funds into a "high grade structured credit enhanced leverage fund" the managers have not actually collateralized? Calling this a "derivative" may be fraudulent, because up until July of 2008, the word gave the impression that the Seller was financially sophisticated.
We must also note that there is a hybrid Janus-like quality of both foreseeability and "surprise" in the marketing of derivatives. The collapse was not unforeseeable or unforeseen -- many economists and investors (apparently all outside the Bush Administration and Treasury) had warned about the over-valued and fictionally-valued derivatives.
Nothing suddenly happened. The "due dates" for balloon payments, and stock calls, were all known in advance. The investment bankers like Lehman Brothers and insurers like AIG, all knew well in advance what dynamics were in place.
All the more reason to question the tactic of declaring an emergency so as to obtain a government bail out on the eve of a regime change in Washington DC. ALL of the "risk" was anticipated, joked about ( http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/187.html ), and in fact discounted by the securities market already.
The fact that Paulson pressured Congress for funds (which Congress would have to borrow, ahem, from "Lenders") in order to buy worthless and toxic assets FROM LENDERS to keep them in business, and when Congress gave him the billions he asked for HE DID NOT DO WHAT HE SAID HE WOULD DO, raises at least some question about whether he understood what appears to be an entirely fictional "crisis".
Paulson may have a good faith belief that there was a "crisis". ALL of his friends are investment bankers, and many of them were CEO's on whose watch their corporate vessels had run into the unpleasant shoals of "due dates" and money famine. And there is no question that the prosperity of the country depends upon the availability of loans.
However, if "loan availability" is necessary, why not just set up a "bank" (or a central bank that loans to local banks) that makes loans? Why was it necessary to invest in worthless paper or inject bail-out money into sinking ships? Is there any question in anyone's mind that the CEO's who secretly awarded themselves million dollar bonuses on the eve of the crash of their companies cannot be trusted with money?
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly - incompetent critics
Criticism is a vital part of the polity. The fact that a position or a decision is evaluated by people not predisposed to it, or "yes men", is what corrects our course. Diversity in the POV (Points of View) is what makes for wisdom, in Crowds and in Kitchen Cabinets.
However, our polity is crippled by the commercial success of idiots who are given voice and attention by mass media which they dominate. How did this happen?
It is a simple process:
(1) NEGATIVE INFORMATION. "Bad news" sells well. Negative information has pretty legs. Elections actually require ventilation of choices and investigations into the lives of the candidates. Hence, even "Swift-boating" -- a campaign of distorting the facts on the eve of an election with a Big Lie -- has almost First Amendment protection, although legal counterattacks for slander may remain viable, and there is a scientific question about whether attack ads "work" or not. Credit Reports pay for derogatory information, and provide almost no positive reportage. The fact is negative information has serious commercial value.
(2) ATTRACTS IDIOTS. Of course, what kind of person is most attracted to the purveying of this commercially valuable negative information? Greedy idiots who are indifferent to truth. And the examples abound in Talk Radio. Nasty little people with shameless motives are instinctively attracted to the money and the content of negative media events.
(3) SUCCESS TURNED ON ITS HEAD. Once the negative purveyors become commercially successful, then their ends continue to justify their destructive means. People who become rich by attacking others with lies, simply take their place in the halls of notorious figures, and begin to blend in with other public figures. For example, there is a qualitative difference between the content of the New York Times and the content of the periodicals known for "yellow journalism". And yet, many of the "yellow" journalists and editors actually make more money than the actual reporters of true news events. Negative and mendacious voices naturally sell more, and ride to success over the heads of the true or positive.
(4) COMPETENCE. The problem for the Polity is that we really NEED criticism; we need to hear the people who disagree with the choices, who see dangers perhaps not clearly recognized by our leaders. And we have to listen to criticism. However, criticism which is dishonest and outright misleading is not helpful. When the criticism is motivated by hatred or greed, it is not even "criticism" -- it moves into pure fabrication and malicious fiction. For example, Talk Radio provides an abundance of criticism, but much of it is simply incompetent noise or hate-mongering -- not helpful.
We need Critics, but we only need "competent" critics. People who tell us the truth, even if it is not what we want to hear. Three leading radio hosts in particular are Great Disappointments in terms of guiding a mature polity:
RUSH LIMBAUGH. This self-serving drug addict claims to have the largest number of listeners at 25 million. In fact, the actual number is closer to 2 million depending on what a "listener" is, and this exaggerated distortion, is just the beginning of his lies, which only get bigger and bigger. Limbaugh's hypocrisy was highlighted without refutation in a book by the notorious Al Franken.
Recently, and I mean three months before Obama had ever set foot in the Oval Office, Limbaugh announced that "the Obama recession is in full swing". Apparently the fraudulent packaging of subprime loans as high-grade securities by investment bankers, the collapse of the automobile industry, and the tripling of oil prices have less impact on economics than the arrival of a campaigner who could motivate millions of people to join an effort to bring hope back to America. We all know how the stock market reacts to Hope...wait, doesn't optimism tend to increase participation? The eagerness to assign blame to people who are not responsible, and the inability to research the objective facts of causation, is the watermark of a Nazi.
SEAN HANNITY. This Fox News anchor is angry and eager to assign blame to "liberals", using that word in a manner he would like everyone to misunderstand. Hannity describes Obama as "an extreme liberal", and excoriated Obama for choosing "one of the hardest left-wing radicals on the left", Rahm Emanuel, as his chief of staff.
Somehow Hannity overlooked the fact that Emanuel's record and history reveals a Clintonesque Centrist, described by McCain's ally, the South Carolina Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham, as "a wise choice". Graham spent years working with Emanuel and described him as "honest, direct and candid...willing to work to find common ground".
The use of an inflammatory label as a conclusion, "hardest left-wing radical", without bothering to substantiate a basis for the conclusion, is the watermark of an idiologue.
BILL O'REILLY. The creator of "the No-spin Zone" in the highest rated news network, this former attorney and creator of news, a "news entrepreneur", is as intensely ideological as any: He constantly spins. He is unique from other media personalities in his claim that he is NOT ideological. His hypocrisy is highlighted in painful detail on the website, www.oreilly-sucks.com. O'Reilly is perhaps the most wealthy of the bullies in the sandbox, and he apologized for failing to give close oversight over the Bush Administration and its defalcations with respect to the "massive corruption" forces which have destroyed America. He apologized! During the campaigns, in an interview with Guiliani, O'Reilly recommended that McCain appoint Guiliani as Attorney General and Romney as Secretary of Treasury -- with both of them empowered to interrogate "and punish every banker" involved in the financial collapse. This is an example of a "solution" that is barely more than self-promotion, and makes no practical sense. To his further credit, O'Reilly did acknowledge that Wall Street was taken over by "gangsters". But appointing one of them, Romney, as a "go to guy" to PUNISH investment bankers, would solve nothing.
The Polity really needs commentary, recommendations, and hearings. We need the jury poll, the forum, the marketplace of ideas. We just do NOT need hate-mongerers appealing to our fears. We do not need people who got rich by spouting ignorance all over our public airwaves. We need people who will address the urgencies and gravities of our days and our nights, as we fall deeper into this impoverishment of opportunities. We need critics of policy who are competent to investigate facts.
However, our polity is crippled by the commercial success of idiots who are given voice and attention by mass media which they dominate. How did this happen?
It is a simple process:
(1) NEGATIVE INFORMATION. "Bad news" sells well. Negative information has pretty legs. Elections actually require ventilation of choices and investigations into the lives of the candidates. Hence, even "Swift-boating" -- a campaign of distorting the facts on the eve of an election with a Big Lie -- has almost First Amendment protection, although legal counterattacks for slander may remain viable, and there is a scientific question about whether attack ads "work" or not. Credit Reports pay for derogatory information, and provide almost no positive reportage. The fact is negative information has serious commercial value.
(2) ATTRACTS IDIOTS. Of course, what kind of person is most attracted to the purveying of this commercially valuable negative information? Greedy idiots who are indifferent to truth. And the examples abound in Talk Radio. Nasty little people with shameless motives are instinctively attracted to the money and the content of negative media events.
(3) SUCCESS TURNED ON ITS HEAD. Once the negative purveyors become commercially successful, then their ends continue to justify their destructive means. People who become rich by attacking others with lies, simply take their place in the halls of notorious figures, and begin to blend in with other public figures. For example, there is a qualitative difference between the content of the New York Times and the content of the periodicals known for "yellow journalism". And yet, many of the "yellow" journalists and editors actually make more money than the actual reporters of true news events. Negative and mendacious voices naturally sell more, and ride to success over the heads of the true or positive.
(4) COMPETENCE. The problem for the Polity is that we really NEED criticism; we need to hear the people who disagree with the choices, who see dangers perhaps not clearly recognized by our leaders. And we have to listen to criticism. However, criticism which is dishonest and outright misleading is not helpful. When the criticism is motivated by hatred or greed, it is not even "criticism" -- it moves into pure fabrication and malicious fiction. For example, Talk Radio provides an abundance of criticism, but much of it is simply incompetent noise or hate-mongering -- not helpful.
We need Critics, but we only need "competent" critics. People who tell us the truth, even if it is not what we want to hear. Three leading radio hosts in particular are Great Disappointments in terms of guiding a mature polity:
RUSH LIMBAUGH. This self-serving drug addict claims to have the largest number of listeners at 25 million. In fact, the actual number is closer to 2 million depending on what a "listener" is, and this exaggerated distortion, is just the beginning of his lies, which only get bigger and bigger. Limbaugh's hypocrisy was highlighted without refutation in a book by the notorious Al Franken.
Recently, and I mean three months before Obama had ever set foot in the Oval Office, Limbaugh announced that "the Obama recession is in full swing". Apparently the fraudulent packaging of subprime loans as high-grade securities by investment bankers, the collapse of the automobile industry, and the tripling of oil prices have less impact on economics than the arrival of a campaigner who could motivate millions of people to join an effort to bring hope back to America. We all know how the stock market reacts to Hope...wait, doesn't optimism tend to increase participation? The eagerness to assign blame to people who are not responsible, and the inability to research the objective facts of causation, is the watermark of a Nazi.
SEAN HANNITY. This Fox News anchor is angry and eager to assign blame to "liberals", using that word in a manner he would like everyone to misunderstand. Hannity describes Obama as "an extreme liberal", and excoriated Obama for choosing "one of the hardest left-wing radicals on the left", Rahm Emanuel, as his chief of staff.
Somehow Hannity overlooked the fact that Emanuel's record and history reveals a Clintonesque Centrist, described by McCain's ally, the South Carolina Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham, as "a wise choice". Graham spent years working with Emanuel and described him as "honest, direct and candid...willing to work to find common ground".
The use of an inflammatory label as a conclusion, "hardest left-wing radical", without bothering to substantiate a basis for the conclusion, is the watermark of an idiologue.
BILL O'REILLY. The creator of "the No-spin Zone" in the highest rated news network, this former attorney and creator of news, a "news entrepreneur", is as intensely ideological as any: He constantly spins. He is unique from other media personalities in his claim that he is NOT ideological. His hypocrisy is highlighted in painful detail on the website, www.oreilly-sucks.com. O'Reilly is perhaps the most wealthy of the bullies in the sandbox, and he apologized for failing to give close oversight over the Bush Administration and its defalcations with respect to the "massive corruption" forces which have destroyed America. He apologized! During the campaigns, in an interview with Guiliani, O'Reilly recommended that McCain appoint Guiliani as Attorney General and Romney as Secretary of Treasury -- with both of them empowered to interrogate "and punish every banker" involved in the financial collapse. This is an example of a "solution" that is barely more than self-promotion, and makes no practical sense. To his further credit, O'Reilly did acknowledge that Wall Street was taken over by "gangsters". But appointing one of them, Romney, as a "go to guy" to PUNISH investment bankers, would solve nothing.
The Polity really needs commentary, recommendations, and hearings. We need the jury poll, the forum, the marketplace of ideas. We just do NOT need hate-mongerers appealing to our fears. We do not need people who got rich by spouting ignorance all over our public airwaves. We need people who will address the urgencies and gravities of our days and our nights, as we fall deeper into this impoverishment of opportunities. We need critics of policy who are competent to investigate facts.
Extinctions - blood-suckers, flesh-borers, meat wasps...
Why is the polity so tolerant of pestilence, and at the same time so willing to see wonderful forms of life disappear right before our eyes?
MOSQUITOES. As fascinating as this tribe is, they are not an essential part of a food chain (could be replaced by other creatures), and their hemotaphagous dirty needles spread immense suffering: The Culiseta family is the most dangerous disease vector known. WHO estimates about 250 million people are infected by malaria, and mosquitoes also spread West Nile virus, four forms of encephalitis, yellow fever, dengue fever, rift valley fever, meningitis, and other diseases. Not to mention they also cause sleepless nights and ruin fishing trips and the crepuscular magic of the tropics. Who could possibly miss them? Ironically, I still find people KILLING the "mosquito hawk", Toxorhynchites, in paroxysms of bug-ophobia. This giant of the mosquitoes actually cannibalizes its nasty little brethren. It should always be protected and released.
MEAT BEES ("yellowjackets"). I value creatures whose lifestyle includes eating the other undesireables in my neighborhood. It is my understanding that most of the Vespidae Family, and the Vespula Genus in particular, eat an assortment of insect pests. Our local picnic area and watering hole is often made tricky to use by invasions of aggressive flies which mimic wasps, and a few wasps. Although the sting, usually repeated, of a wasp is painful, and an altercation with a large hive can be fatal, I recommend letting them "be", so to speak. When the occasional paper wasp nest or hornet hole is found too close to my work in the garden, of course, I remove it.
{further list}
MOSQUITOES. As fascinating as this tribe is, they are not an essential part of a food chain (could be replaced by other creatures), and their hemotaphagous dirty needles spread immense suffering: The Culiseta family is the most dangerous disease vector known. WHO estimates about 250 million people are infected by malaria, and mosquitoes also spread West Nile virus, four forms of encephalitis, yellow fever, dengue fever, rift valley fever, meningitis, and other diseases. Not to mention they also cause sleepless nights and ruin fishing trips and the crepuscular magic of the tropics. Who could possibly miss them? Ironically, I still find people KILLING the "mosquito hawk", Toxorhynchites, in paroxysms of bug-ophobia. This giant of the mosquitoes actually cannibalizes its nasty little brethren. It should always be protected and released.
MEAT BEES ("yellowjackets"). I value creatures whose lifestyle includes eating the other undesireables in my neighborhood. It is my understanding that most of the Vespidae Family, and the Vespula Genus in particular, eat an assortment of insect pests. Our local picnic area and watering hole is often made tricky to use by invasions of aggressive flies which mimic wasps, and a few wasps. Although the sting, usually repeated, of a wasp is painful, and an altercation with a large hive can be fatal, I recommend letting them "be", so to speak. When the occasional paper wasp nest or hornet hole is found too close to my work in the garden, of course, I remove it.
{further list}
Thursday, November 06, 2008
The Pollsters did a very good job of predicting the outcome...
My favorite Poll-master - at Electoral-vote.com, has analyzed the relative success of polsters against actual voting results. Looks like ARG, Insider Advantage, and
Quinnipiac U. were on the money at 100% accuracy/correspondence to reality.
Mason-Dixon and Rasmussen were relatively inferior, missing the close calls, although even they came in favoring Obama in overall outcome.
"In Colorado, for example, the scaled poll predicted an Obama vote of 52.7% and a McCain vote of 45.9%. The candidates got 52.5% and 45.9%, respectively. Thus the polls were remarkably close to the actual vote and there is not a hint of Obama polling well but doing badly on election day.
Now look at the eight other swing states. In Florida the pollsters were right on the money. In Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia they were off by a maximum of 1.2% for Obama. In the other two states, Nevada and New Mexico, the polls for Obama were off by 4.1%, which is within the margin of error. In both cases Obama did better than predicted, so clearly there is no Bradley effect here. If nothing else, any future discussions of the "Bradley effect" can be quickly ended with the statement: "It didn't exist in 2008."
Comparison of the Pollsters
There are various ways to compare the pollsters. Professional statisticians look to see if the actual results were within the bracketed range predicted by the pollster. For example, if a pollster predicted Obama 51% and McCain 49% with a 3% margin of error and the final result was McCain 51% and Obama 49%, the pollster would claim to have gotten it right because Obama fell within the predicted range of 48% to 54% and McCain fell into the predicted range of 46% to 52%. Laymen would probably say the pollster got it wrong--because they don't understand what the prediction really is. To keep it simple, let us use the second approach and see which pollsters predicted which states right. Here are the data.
Pollster CO FL IN MO NV NM NC OH VA Rt/Tot Pct
ARG Yes Yes Tie Tie - - Yes Yes Yes 5/5 100%
Insider Advantage Yes Yes - Yes Tie - Tie Yes - 4/4 100%
Quinnipiac U. Yes Yes - - - - - Yes - 3/3 100%
Opinion Research Yes Yes No Yes Yes - Yes Yes Yes 7/8 88%
SurveyUSA - Yes Tie - - Yes No Yes Yes 4/5 80%
Research 2000 - Yes Yes No Yes - Yes - - 4/5 80%
Mason-Dixon Yes Yes - - Yes - No No Yes 4/6 67%
Rasmussen Yes No No - Yes Yes No - Yes 4/7 43%
In some cases the pollster predicted a tie, that is, said it was too close to call. Let us remove those from the sample. In that case the scores for these pollsters are given in the last two columns. If you want to play with the data yourself, here they are .csv format."
Quinnipiac U. were on the money at 100% accuracy/correspondence to reality.
Mason-Dixon and Rasmussen were relatively inferior, missing the close calls, although even they came in favoring Obama in overall outcome.
"In Colorado, for example, the scaled poll predicted an Obama vote of 52.7% and a McCain vote of 45.9%. The candidates got 52.5% and 45.9%, respectively. Thus the polls were remarkably close to the actual vote and there is not a hint of Obama polling well but doing badly on election day.
Now look at the eight other swing states. In Florida the pollsters were right on the money. In Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia they were off by a maximum of 1.2% for Obama. In the other two states, Nevada and New Mexico, the polls for Obama were off by 4.1%, which is within the margin of error. In both cases Obama did better than predicted, so clearly there is no Bradley effect here. If nothing else, any future discussions of the "Bradley effect" can be quickly ended with the statement: "It didn't exist in 2008."
Comparison of the Pollsters
There are various ways to compare the pollsters. Professional statisticians look to see if the actual results were within the bracketed range predicted by the pollster. For example, if a pollster predicted Obama 51% and McCain 49% with a 3% margin of error and the final result was McCain 51% and Obama 49%, the pollster would claim to have gotten it right because Obama fell within the predicted range of 48% to 54% and McCain fell into the predicted range of 46% to 52%. Laymen would probably say the pollster got it wrong--because they don't understand what the prediction really is. To keep it simple, let us use the second approach and see which pollsters predicted which states right. Here are the data.
Pollster CO FL IN MO NV NM NC OH VA Rt/Tot Pct
ARG Yes Yes Tie Tie - - Yes Yes Yes 5/5 100%
Insider Advantage Yes Yes - Yes Tie - Tie Yes - 4/4 100%
Quinnipiac U. Yes Yes - - - - - Yes - 3/3 100%
Opinion Research Yes Yes No Yes Yes - Yes Yes Yes 7/8 88%
SurveyUSA - Yes Tie - - Yes No Yes Yes 4/5 80%
Research 2000 - Yes Yes No Yes - Yes - - 4/5 80%
Mason-Dixon Yes Yes - - Yes - No No Yes 4/6 67%
Rasmussen Yes No No - Yes Yes No - Yes 4/7 43%
In some cases the pollster predicted a tie, that is, said it was too close to call. Let us remove those from the sample. In that case the scores for these pollsters are given in the last two columns. If you want to play with the data yourself, here they are .csv format."
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Politics - the legacy of joy and profundity has begun
With the huge turnout and participation of The People in this election, we demonstrate a love of the "State" in the true sense of patriotism. The one in which l'etat c'est moi, and moi has a dog in the race. A wonderful dog. We are our best friend. Suddenly we have a future again. Time to get over the obstacle of outrage and shame.
Remarkable - John Cusack has expressed the Reality
The actor, John Cusack, provides a wonderful description of predator economics and the Bush Legacy. He provides a wonderful description of both history and present reality, both of which are necessary for understanding the Set Stage which we must now take as Opportunity. What is remarkable is that he does not hold back the recrimination, but does not permit the outrage to impediment a sense of great opportunity: The economics of grace, true Grace.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-cusack/no-currency-left-to-buy-t_b_140250.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-cusack/no-currency-left-to-buy-t_b_140250.html
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs
Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs: "Contrast those figures with the current debt problem ascribed to the reckless pursuit of predatory lending. Incidentally, predatory lending was made illegal in most states until overridden by President George W Bush to protect Wall Street profit opportunities.
The US mortgage holdings are some $14.8 trillion, including some $3 trillion of commercial mortgages. Local government debt is about $3 trillion. But, even these gigantic figures pale in comparison beside the $20.4 trillion of consumer and corporate debt. Therefore, the total of non-federal government debt is in the region of $38 trillion!
Of course, not all of it will default. All things being equal, possibly only a small proportion will fail, at least initially. But today, all things are not equal. We know that we are heading into a recession. This means that increasing amounts of debts will default.
The main problem is that predatory lending incurs a high default rate. So if only 10% of outstanding loans default, the government will have to raise some $4 trillion, or more than five times what Congress is being asked. It will increase the US government public debt by some 80%."
The US mortgage holdings are some $14.8 trillion, including some $3 trillion of commercial mortgages. Local government debt is about $3 trillion. But, even these gigantic figures pale in comparison beside the $20.4 trillion of consumer and corporate debt. Therefore, the total of non-federal government debt is in the region of $38 trillion!
Of course, not all of it will default. All things being equal, possibly only a small proportion will fail, at least initially. But today, all things are not equal. We know that we are heading into a recession. This means that increasing amounts of debts will default.
The main problem is that predatory lending incurs a high default rate. So if only 10% of outstanding loans default, the government will have to raise some $4 trillion, or more than five times what Congress is being asked. It will increase the US government public debt by some 80%."
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Instead of bailing out AIG with $85 billion....let's do the math
I received this wonderful email that got a surprising and rapid circulation.
Of course, the math is wrong. By three zero places. It's $425 for each citizen.
But notice that Bush and Paulson are now proposing a $700 billion bail out. Hmmm, the added zero...and the right principle, so it could work....?
___________________________________________________
Hi Pals,
I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.
Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a We Deserve
It Dividend.
To make the math simple, lets assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S.
Citiz ens 18+.
Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and
child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up..
So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00.
My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a We De serve It
Dividend.
Of course, it would NOT be tax free. So let's assume a tax rate of 30%.
Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes.
That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.
But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.
A husband and wife has $595,000.00.
What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?
Pay off your mortgage - housing crisis solved.
R epay college loans - what a great boost to new grads Put away money for
college - it'll be there Save in a bank - create money to loan to Entrepreneurs.
Buy a new car - create jobs
Invest in the market - capital drives growth Pay for your parent's
medical insurance - health care improves - Enable Deadbeat Dads to
come clean - or else
Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks
who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company that is
cutting back. And of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.
If we're going to re-distribute wealth let's really do it...instead of
trickling out a puny $1000.00 ( "vote buy" ) economic incentive that
is being proposed by one of our candidates for President.
If we're going to do an $85 billion bailout, let's bail out every adult
U S Citizen 18+!
As for AIG - liquidate it.
Sell off its parts.
Let American General go back to being American General.
Sell off the real estate.
Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.
Here's my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn't.
Sure it's a crazy idea that can "never work."
But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party!
How do you spell Economic Boom?
I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion We
Deserve It Dividend more than I do the geniuses at AIG or in Washington
DC.
And remember, The Birk plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because
$25.5 Billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.
Ahhh...I feel so much better getting that off my chest.
Kindest personal regards,
Birk
T. J. Birkenmeier, A Creative Guy & Citizen of the Republic
PS: Feel free to pass this along to your pals as it's either good for a
Laugh or a tear or a very sobering thought on how to best use $85 Billion!!
Of course, the math is wrong. By three zero places. It's $425 for each citizen.
But notice that Bush and Paulson are now proposing a $700 billion bail out. Hmmm, the added zero...and the right principle, so it could work....?
___________________________________________________
Hi Pals,
I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.
Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a We Deserve
It Dividend.
To make the math simple, lets assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S.
Citiz ens 18+.
Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and
child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up..
So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00.
My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a We De serve It
Dividend.
Of course, it would NOT be tax free. So let's assume a tax rate of 30%.
Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes.
That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.
But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.
A husband and wife has $595,000.00.
What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?
Pay off your mortgage - housing crisis solved.
R epay college loans - what a great boost to new grads Put away money for
college - it'll be there Save in a bank - create money to loan to Entrepreneurs.
Buy a new car - create jobs
Invest in the market - capital drives growth Pay for your parent's
medical insurance - health care improves - Enable Deadbeat Dads to
come clean - or else
Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks
who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company that is
cutting back. And of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.
If we're going to re-distribute wealth let's really do it...instead of
trickling out a puny $1000.00 ( "vote buy" ) economic incentive that
is being proposed by one of our candidates for President.
If we're going to do an $85 billion bailout, let's bail out every adult
U S Citizen 18+!
As for AIG - liquidate it.
Sell off its parts.
Let American General go back to being American General.
Sell off the real estate.
Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.
Here's my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn't.
Sure it's a crazy idea that can "never work."
But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party!
How do you spell Economic Boom?
I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion We
Deserve It Dividend more than I do the geniuses at AIG or in Washington
DC.
And remember, The Birk plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because
$25.5 Billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.
Ahhh...I feel so much better getting that off my chest.
Kindest personal regards,
Birk
T. J. Birkenmeier, A Creative Guy & Citizen of the Republic
PS: Feel free to pass this along to your pals as it's either good for a
Laugh or a tear or a very sobering thought on how to best use $85 Billion!!
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Bringing up the subject of Politics - do it, and do it nicely
Opra made a plug for Daniel Kurtsman's books: HOW TO WIN AN ARGUMENT WITH A CONSERVATIVE, and HOW TO WIN AN ARGUMENT WITH A LIBERAL.
* Fight with humor. Daniel says. "If you can make them laugh, they'll be much more likely to listen to the next thing you have to say." Jon Stewart is a good example of someone who uses humor in an argument.
* Ask a rhetorical question. Asked gently, this can put them on the spot while giving them an invitation to join the conversation. "When you can put someone on the defensive like that", Daniel says, "that's how you can begin to seize control of the debate and get the upper hand."
* Keep it simple. "This is one area where I feel the Obama campaign has been pretty effective," Daniel says. "Their core message, at this point, is: 'John McCain is more of the same.' It's easy to latch onto; it's not a 10-point plan." A long winded, nuanced, complex argument is a guaranteed ticket to disaster, Daniel says. No one is certain What the McCain core message is -- successfully converted prisoner of war into "war hero"? Maverick?
* Don't become overly emotional. Daniel says if your goal is to try to be persuasive, set aside some of the emotion to move toward the argument. You also need to "release" it--don't stay upset or aroused, people will want to flee.
* Don't become conspiratorial. Avoid the common tendency to discuss conspiracies about the candidates. "There are so many good arguments to seize on, why go toward those kinds of crazy arguments that will discredit you?" Daniel asks.
* Fight with humor. Daniel says. "If you can make them laugh, they'll be much more likely to listen to the next thing you have to say." Jon Stewart is a good example of someone who uses humor in an argument.
* Ask a rhetorical question. Asked gently, this can put them on the spot while giving them an invitation to join the conversation. "When you can put someone on the defensive like that", Daniel says, "that's how you can begin to seize control of the debate and get the upper hand."
* Keep it simple. "This is one area where I feel the Obama campaign has been pretty effective," Daniel says. "Their core message, at this point, is: 'John McCain is more of the same.' It's easy to latch onto; it's not a 10-point plan." A long winded, nuanced, complex argument is a guaranteed ticket to disaster, Daniel says. No one is certain What the McCain core message is -- successfully converted prisoner of war into "war hero"? Maverick?
* Don't become overly emotional. Daniel says if your goal is to try to be persuasive, set aside some of the emotion to move toward the argument. You also need to "release" it--don't stay upset or aroused, people will want to flee.
* Don't become conspiratorial. Avoid the common tendency to discuss conspiracies about the candidates. "There are so many good arguments to seize on, why go toward those kinds of crazy arguments that will discredit you?" Daniel asks.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Remembering...how everything is familiar but little is left.
Journal of Forgetting. September 23, 2008
1. I never forget anything. At the least, I certainly don't remember forgetting anything. What I learned was so small, so skeletal, so spacial. A patch of steam already cooled. The wisp of smoke rising imperceptibly, caught in the lungs with a small cough.
2. I have no regrets. At the least, I have no regrets that I regret. I owe this redemption to the fact that there is so little I remember to regret.
3. The inhabitant within this body is not claiming it; it has not tilled the soil, or soiled its till; it has not homesteaded itself; it has lightly lived, as if free; not formidable, not a threat, and not very familiar. It was new every day, and in every day dream. Within the bounds of its dreams at night, it was a surprise.
4. Most people are a danger to themselves. They raise up a Golden Horde of ghosts against themselves. They fret over each passerby, not realizing, they ARE the passerby.
5. I have forgotten more than I ever knew. There was music – I heard it played, and then it was gone.
6. Why is everything “strangely familiar” and infinitely wonderful? A “foreign exchange student” is always a member of the family living in the house.
7. Why is there curiosity?
8. I vaguely remember everything. Deja vu is a bell which rings across the symphony of my life. As I hear it, I remember what it was and anticipate what it will be, now.
9. I remember, and I succumb. I forget and folly is victorious. I find myself constantly in a victory parade looking neither left nor right, leading to isolation.
10. Between fight and flight, between amygdala and cortex, between perpetual question and instantaneous answer, I remember not knowing.
11. There is a place to sit in every situation, especially when you are mentally on your feet. There is a dance, you can feel it, especially when at rest inside it. You can gather the zone of “interest” around you, breathing into the spell of presence, the attention of attention, appointing the inctus in the morphological space created by the rhythm of conversations and glances. The facial geography opening and closing curtains and continents of discovery and reassurance.
12. What other people think they are thinking is a gong. It waits to be struck. They wheel it out and you can either ignore it and hurt their feelings, make them feel unimportant or irrelevant. Or you can strike it hard and shatter or offend them. Or you can give it an appreciative bong of attention, and they will resonate gently, and lives will go on in this vibration, this “ing-ing” of the gong.
13. There is no such thing as “conversation”. Communication is an abstract and theoretical concept. The worm – the world’s great conqueror – is always stretching, ready to contract or extend, sometimes immediately in response to a stimulus, and sometimes simply as a result of being able to.
14. The key to understanding communication is to not get locked into the ideological trap of dyadism. Understand that the act of speaking and listening is almost never stimulus/response, A interacting with B. It is almost always a tribe encountering another tribe, everything interacting with everything, and nothing being nothing, and the passage of time drawn across the many strings of the bowed universe.
15. Suddenly someone is talking about something. Extraordinary.
16. All understanding has a hard shell and a soft underbelly.
17. Once you define your terms you have defeated any hope for communication. You have begun to spin a web. You are casting a concrete net and you will only catch the lies and flies whose interest is carrion. Misunderstandings will be laid and maggots born. The nibblers will have their way.
18. I remember I have work to do. I am here for some purpose. This is clear to me, and I have surrounded myself with obligations freely undertaken with an informed understanding of the foreseeable consequences. But this gets ugly. Now I am surrounded by the obligations of my purposed commitments, and they imprison me. I am no longer free. And the rut of commitments cut me off from the surrounding possibilities, of which I am no longer aware. I am walled off. My purpose has blinded me to what I can do.
19. I do not know what I am doing, how I can do it, or why I am doing it.
20. A Singularity is always the result of time working on a plurality.
21. I tell anyone who will listen that communication is impossible.
1. I never forget anything. At the least, I certainly don't remember forgetting anything. What I learned was so small, so skeletal, so spacial. A patch of steam already cooled. The wisp of smoke rising imperceptibly, caught in the lungs with a small cough.
2. I have no regrets. At the least, I have no regrets that I regret. I owe this redemption to the fact that there is so little I remember to regret.
3. The inhabitant within this body is not claiming it; it has not tilled the soil, or soiled its till; it has not homesteaded itself; it has lightly lived, as if free; not formidable, not a threat, and not very familiar. It was new every day, and in every day dream. Within the bounds of its dreams at night, it was a surprise.
4. Most people are a danger to themselves. They raise up a Golden Horde of ghosts against themselves. They fret over each passerby, not realizing, they ARE the passerby.
5. I have forgotten more than I ever knew. There was music – I heard it played, and then it was gone.
6. Why is everything “strangely familiar” and infinitely wonderful? A “foreign exchange student” is always a member of the family living in the house.
7. Why is there curiosity?
8. I vaguely remember everything. Deja vu is a bell which rings across the symphony of my life. As I hear it, I remember what it was and anticipate what it will be, now.
9. I remember, and I succumb. I forget and folly is victorious. I find myself constantly in a victory parade looking neither left nor right, leading to isolation.
10. Between fight and flight, between amygdala and cortex, between perpetual question and instantaneous answer, I remember not knowing.
11. There is a place to sit in every situation, especially when you are mentally on your feet. There is a dance, you can feel it, especially when at rest inside it. You can gather the zone of “interest” around you, breathing into the spell of presence, the attention of attention, appointing the inctus in the morphological space created by the rhythm of conversations and glances. The facial geography opening and closing curtains and continents of discovery and reassurance.
12. What other people think they are thinking is a gong. It waits to be struck. They wheel it out and you can either ignore it and hurt their feelings, make them feel unimportant or irrelevant. Or you can strike it hard and shatter or offend them. Or you can give it an appreciative bong of attention, and they will resonate gently, and lives will go on in this vibration, this “ing-ing” of the gong.
13. There is no such thing as “conversation”. Communication is an abstract and theoretical concept. The worm – the world’s great conqueror – is always stretching, ready to contract or extend, sometimes immediately in response to a stimulus, and sometimes simply as a result of being able to.
14. The key to understanding communication is to not get locked into the ideological trap of dyadism. Understand that the act of speaking and listening is almost never stimulus/response, A interacting with B. It is almost always a tribe encountering another tribe, everything interacting with everything, and nothing being nothing, and the passage of time drawn across the many strings of the bowed universe.
15. Suddenly someone is talking about something. Extraordinary.
16. All understanding has a hard shell and a soft underbelly.
17. Once you define your terms you have defeated any hope for communication. You have begun to spin a web. You are casting a concrete net and you will only catch the lies and flies whose interest is carrion. Misunderstandings will be laid and maggots born. The nibblers will have their way.
18. I remember I have work to do. I am here for some purpose. This is clear to me, and I have surrounded myself with obligations freely undertaken with an informed understanding of the foreseeable consequences. But this gets ugly. Now I am surrounded by the obligations of my purposed commitments, and they imprison me. I am no longer free. And the rut of commitments cut me off from the surrounding possibilities, of which I am no longer aware. I am walled off. My purpose has blinded me to what I can do.
19. I do not know what I am doing, how I can do it, or why I am doing it.
20. A Singularity is always the result of time working on a plurality.
21. I tell anyone who will listen that communication is impossible.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Christians? If only.
WAS JESUS A CHRISTIAN?
Christianity has been taken over by their tithe-masters. Jesus Christ would not recognize the monster parading as "christian religion" today. The teachings of Jesus Christ come down to us through "copies" and hearsay, but regardless of the provenance -- which is moot on this point -- the heuristic body of teachings are closer to Manichean Buddhism and the Dalai Lama, than to the "Trinitarian" polydeism taught today in Churches. Most Churches today are not "fundamentalist" at all.
The revenant Gospels of Jesus Christ repeat and repeat and repeat a message of love. The fresh and vital core of the Christian gospel is inclusion, empathy, unity, and grace. There is no suggestion that greed is good. No parable of salvic vengence. Above all, from swaddled babe in a manger to crucified savior, Jesus is completely silent on the subjects of Homosexuality and Abortion. Both were as widely practiced then as today.
In fact, in the descriptions of Jesus and his disciple John "the beloved", it is clear that Christ was a practicing homosexual. He never married and never had children. He never mentions tithing. He does not urge his followers to give money to rich evangelists; he repeatedly suggests giving money to poor people, NOT to rich people. Wealth is an express disqualification to the Kingdom of Heaven.
WAS ST. PAUL A CHRISTIAN?
With St. Paul, we do not even have an issue with provenance. We have authentic letters written by a documented historical figure. In his letters, he does not pretend to have ever been attracted to people of the female persuasion, he repeatedly introduces his male traveling companion as "my beloved". He never married and never had children.
St. Paul preached a redemptive message of love and inclusion. He risked his life to take this message to people who were hostile -- walking and talking among them without weapons or threats.
WAS ST. AUGUSTINE A CHRISTIAN?
In his Confessions, the Berber St. Augustine writes of "The Mysterious Force of Memory", and its tie to Guilt, which keeps us from Grace. Augustine speaks of PRIDE as the most sinful of all temptations. None worse.
Augustine wrote a lot, and we have his entire library -- it was preserved from barbarian depredations "as if by miracle" -- according to his surviving lover. Augustine develops the Creation story and the Trinity as forms of analogy; not "literal" but logical. Foremost in his analysis is the use of Reason--which he can only conclude is "God-given". He elevates the role of Mary in the salvation of human kind, recognizes the pastoral authority of women, and rejects millenarianism.
As important as Augustine is to Christian orthodoxy, curiously, he is of no help in explaining the current obsession with (1) homosexuality, and (2) abortion.
(1) HOMOSEXUALITY. Augustine was gay. When his mother pressured him to marry, the only honorable solution available to him was to become a monk. His active homosexuality (there is really no question he was plagued his entire life with carnal desires) was succored and forgiven behind the cloistered walls with the privity of his friends. The outside world was as hostile to homosexuality then (in Africa) as it is today.
(2) ABORTION. Augustine did not believe abortion was murder, or that human life begins with conception. The fetus was not "en-souled", and therefore was not human. He preached the salvic importance of baptism, and yet he did not advocate baptism for fetuses.
CONCLUSION
Today's professed Christians have been taken over by tyrants. These tyrants live on tithe-taking, that is, by filling the sheep with fears and then extorting them for money.
The present Church preaches almost NOTHING about the terrible terrible damning SIN, which is PRIDE. Worse, the Church actively preaches two divisive heretical errors about Life. The BIBLICAL TRUTH as construed by Jesus Christ, St. Paul, and St. Augustine is:
Homosexuality is sexuality, it is not sin;
Abortion is death, it is not murder.
Christianity has been taken over by their tithe-masters. Jesus Christ would not recognize the monster parading as "christian religion" today. The teachings of Jesus Christ come down to us through "copies" and hearsay, but regardless of the provenance -- which is moot on this point -- the heuristic body of teachings are closer to Manichean Buddhism and the Dalai Lama, than to the "Trinitarian" polydeism taught today in Churches. Most Churches today are not "fundamentalist" at all.
The revenant Gospels of Jesus Christ repeat and repeat and repeat a message of love. The fresh and vital core of the Christian gospel is inclusion, empathy, unity, and grace. There is no suggestion that greed is good. No parable of salvic vengence. Above all, from swaddled babe in a manger to crucified savior, Jesus is completely silent on the subjects of Homosexuality and Abortion. Both were as widely practiced then as today.
In fact, in the descriptions of Jesus and his disciple John "the beloved", it is clear that Christ was a practicing homosexual. He never married and never had children. He never mentions tithing. He does not urge his followers to give money to rich evangelists; he repeatedly suggests giving money to poor people, NOT to rich people. Wealth is an express disqualification to the Kingdom of Heaven.
WAS ST. PAUL A CHRISTIAN?
With St. Paul, we do not even have an issue with provenance. We have authentic letters written by a documented historical figure. In his letters, he does not pretend to have ever been attracted to people of the female persuasion, he repeatedly introduces his male traveling companion as "my beloved". He never married and never had children.
St. Paul preached a redemptive message of love and inclusion. He risked his life to take this message to people who were hostile -- walking and talking among them without weapons or threats.
WAS ST. AUGUSTINE A CHRISTIAN?
In his Confessions, the Berber St. Augustine writes of "The Mysterious Force of Memory", and its tie to Guilt, which keeps us from Grace. Augustine speaks of PRIDE as the most sinful of all temptations. None worse.
Augustine wrote a lot, and we have his entire library -- it was preserved from barbarian depredations "as if by miracle" -- according to his surviving lover. Augustine develops the Creation story and the Trinity as forms of analogy; not "literal" but logical. Foremost in his analysis is the use of Reason--which he can only conclude is "God-given". He elevates the role of Mary in the salvation of human kind, recognizes the pastoral authority of women, and rejects millenarianism.
As important as Augustine is to Christian orthodoxy, curiously, he is of no help in explaining the current obsession with (1) homosexuality, and (2) abortion.
(1) HOMOSEXUALITY. Augustine was gay. When his mother pressured him to marry, the only honorable solution available to him was to become a monk. His active homosexuality (there is really no question he was plagued his entire life with carnal desires) was succored and forgiven behind the cloistered walls with the privity of his friends. The outside world was as hostile to homosexuality then (in Africa) as it is today.
(2) ABORTION. Augustine did not believe abortion was murder, or that human life begins with conception. The fetus was not "en-souled", and therefore was not human. He preached the salvic importance of baptism, and yet he did not advocate baptism for fetuses.
CONCLUSION
Today's professed Christians have been taken over by tyrants. These tyrants live on tithe-taking, that is, by filling the sheep with fears and then extorting them for money.
The present Church preaches almost NOTHING about the terrible terrible damning SIN, which is PRIDE. Worse, the Church actively preaches two divisive heretical errors about Life. The BIBLICAL TRUTH as construed by Jesus Christ, St. Paul, and St. Augustine is:
Homosexuality is sexuality, it is not sin;
Abortion is death, it is not murder.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Popular Music - the 1960's was the Golden Age
A Word about the Music of the 60's - to flag up some good memories....
Like all of us getting ready for ReUnions, we are looking at life from “both sides now” – thank you Joni Mitchell.
A “high school” ReUnion is going to be a chance to re-live (at least in memory) that period of time. A ReUnion of re-living people could HIT our self-image and consciousness-blazing saddles the hardest. Perhaps only second to Getting Married, a ReUnion is life-changing.
I am stewing over the Chronology of our Class:
What was happening when we came in?
What was “there” while we were there?
And what foam came down the moving wave of its afterwards?
1968 was in many ways a turning point for many things. Certainly the race riots, four political assassinations, the Apollo manned missions to the moon, Dutch Elm Disease, and the USSR invasion of Czechoslovakia, caused life as we loved it to change. http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1968.html
There were many things “happening”. And until the late 60's nobody ever said “have a nice day”, or “what’s happening?”. Food was fast (McDonalds), and Cars were faster (e.g. Corvette). Politics and photography was polarized and Polaroid. Summers were still endless and people had vacations, and could remember when “The Mom” did not have to work. But of all the things “happening”, you have to really appreciate the fact that music just EXPLODED.
"Far Out" - AND THERE WAS MUSIC.
Our generation put unprecedented emphasis on Music. Not to sing, or play, but to listen to. Within a generation, we went from people who knew hundreds of songs “by heart” (hootenanny, caroling, canziones), to paying money to listen to Rock Stars playing in Coliseums. Why was the music so important? In this way?
We were born into the realm of mothers sending us for piano lessons, and dreaming of the glamorous life lived by the “Rat-Pack” – a nice metaphoric description of the entertainers’ actual (not-so-glam) life at the time. You could hear the “stars” in small clubs – Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, and some wonderful female participants, including Shirley MacLaine, Lauren Bacall, Angie Dickinson, Marilyn Monroe, and Judy Garland. All of them could remember lines and tunes, write, sing, dance, talk, mime and mimic and act – and as part of a group with a mission bigger than their egos. We have not seen their likes since.
I remember coming into the musicality of the age with revenant “Hootenannies” and Sing-a-Longs. Folk music brought us together. We were led by talent, not by Tyrants. People like Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Odetta, Marion Anderson, and Pete Seeger were our guides.
Pete Seeger still lives, perhaps the greatest American of his generation – although Black-Listed from TV, in 1963 his amusing protest single, “Little Boxes” (written by Malvina Reynolds), was number one in the nation's Top 40's radio hits. His compositions remained the anthems of our age for a decade – Kumbaya, Turn Turn Turn, We Shall Overcome, If I had a Hammer, Long Time Passing. In the 1960s, Seeger toured college campuses extensively. He usually accompanied himself on a custom-made acoustic 12-string guitar, modifying an instrument of Mexican origin associated with black bayou blues balladeer, Lead Belly.
Other widely-beloved folk performers included three very independent women:
Joan Baez (daughter of Mexican/ Scot immigrants, 3-octave vocal range) "Blowin' in the Wind" - when she married David Harris in late 1967, it was reported as “the wedding of the century”. (Baez, performing while visibly pregnant - “Diamonds and Rust”, “The Night they drove Old Dixie Down”). Remember the way she sustained long notes--almost breathing into the tone, and sometimes lightly yodeling between registers. She never "oversung", never showed off her voice, but the emotion was "strong"--she had no mercy when singing about cruelty or war. We often wept.
Judy Collins (father was blind, she started as a child prodigy at classical piano, son suicide) “Send in the Clowns”, “Wildflowers” - stunning purity and sweetness of her soprano, accompanied by her acoustic guitar playing. Her 1968 album: Who Knows Where the Time Goes, with Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills &Nash). She was the major interpretive folksinger of the '60s.
Joni Mitchell (Canadian immigrant) - singer-songwriter folk-rock scene in Southern California, divorced and launched her solo career in 1967. One of the best female guitarists, famous for her open tuning and innovative harmonic technique – including polymodality, chromaticism, polytonality, and strict pedal points.
At the same time, Rock and Roll was sizzling. We actually saw Elvis Presley perform and become the King. But in Orange County we had a special variation of R&R, that sort of started in Southern California – the Surf Bands were everywhere. “Pipeline” was an irresistable, and frankly obnoxious, “wipe-Ooooouuuut !” Almost anytime, anyplace.
In the 60's, Rock & Roll matured into a full-bodied all-year everywhere throbbing river of infinite immersion. It was no longer bass blues arpeggios, with candy cane lyrics and swivelling hips. By the late sixties it was a wall of sound rolling out of stratocaster canons into the drug-haze of Woodstock. Let’s look at the details:
By the 60's we entered the first of many flowerings. Bob Dylan, started acoustic and ended electric. People would karaoke him before there was karaoke, memorize long poem-songs. In 1965 he rolled out “Like a Rolling Stone”.
The acoustic folk-rock musical traditions of successful bands like The Lovin' Spoonful were re-interpreted by new groups “going electric" and looking for a dirtier sound. For example, the Grateful Dead pulled terrain from everywhere–folk, jazz, country, gospel-- to make an incredibly eclectic synthesis featuring electric instrumentation for outbursts of passion, apocalyptic apotheosis, and dirt. The “Wall of Sound” was developed for the Dead (75-tons of amplification-- eighty-nine 300-watt solid-state and three 350-watt vacuum-tube amplifiers, generating a total of 26,400 watts RMS of audio power – the largest portable sound system ever built).
By the late 60's, historians like “Patrick the Lama” tell us we were at the Golden Age of psychedelic music. Bands were migrating down from San Francisco. http://members.tripod.com/lysergia_2/LamaReviews/lamaMain.htm
Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use Pete Seeger’s old term. And this amplified language ran "psychedelic" for a few beautiful years in the late 60's. It was still rock, but the riffs included “far out” explorations of the mind, and the senses, and feelings no one had really interpreted before.
In 1968, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix played together. Separately, they led the way for later bands, combining guitar feedback powered by overdriven amplifiers with brilliantly original expansions of traditional blues (B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Elmore James) and rhythm and blues guitar skills ( Curtis Mayfield, Steve Cropper). Hendrix would mondegreen entire songs - deliberately misinterpreting and creating distortion in every part of the track – e.g. “Purple Sky” [kiss the sky, kiss this guy]. Hendrix's rendition of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" is a complete departure from the original, and includes one of the most highly praised guitar arrangements in modern music.
In 1968, the Doors album, Waiting for the Sun " Hello I Love You " was so simple and complex that it created a kind of religion of its own. The Doors, the Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane became moving cathedrals of Rock & Roll, spewing a catholic catharsis.
The Cream (Eric Clapton), and Pink Floyd (with original founder Syd Barrett), embraced psychedelic music fully, becoming two of the first truly specialized psychedelic bands. Sometimes a band would switch from one “sound” to another. The Beatles did this with each album. Country Joe and the Fish suddenly dropped their tempo and came out with really psychedelic masterpieces, like "Bass Strings".
I remember Country Joe in 1966 performed an upbeat but shocking protest song in a raw jug band style. Just one year later, the piece changed dramatically – put into lower tempo, delayed vocals, added reverb, studio reversed cymbals, electric organ, traveler lyrics, and a continuous blues guitar solo which together turned the piece into a mind-blowin’-in-the-wind "psychedelic" track.
Curiously, almost all the popular bands were almost all male. The perfect pitch drummer, Karen Carpenter, was sort of the exception that proves this tune. At the same time, so many solo female vocalists of our generation were exceptionally strong.
1. Aretha Franklin - 1967 single, "I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)", a blues ballad in gospel style. "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" in classic R&B. Her feminist version of Otis Redding’s "Respect" brought her superstardom. Then the album, I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You, reached million-seller status, followed by top ten singles hits including "Baby I Love You", "Chain of Fools" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman".
2. Tina Turner - “What's Love Got To Do With It?” R&B/Rock/Pop-fused “Private Dancer”
3. Janis Joplin (d. 1970) - April 10, 1968, invaded Anaheim Convention Center, with a relatively obscure group called "Big Brother and the Holding Company."
4. Bonnie Raitt - her eponymous debut album came out in 1971, singer and bottleneck guitarist at a time when there were very few. Her second album, Give It Up, was released in 1972 to universal acclaim. "Nick of Time" , "Something to Talk About", "I Can't Make You Love Me".
5. Joni Mitchell - "Both Sides Now", "Clouds", and "The Circle Game."
6. Billie Holiday (d. 1959) - “Bless the child” - her melisma may still be heard in R&B singer Mariah Carey, or any “American Idol” today.
7. Linda Ronstadt - “You’re no good” and 3 multi-platinum albums: “What's New”, “Canciones de Mi Padre” and “Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind”.
8. Diana Ross/ The Supremes/ The Temptations - "Where Did Our Love Go" · "Baby Love" · "Stop! In the Name of Love" · "I Hear a Symphony" · "You Can't Hurry Love" · "You Keep Me Hangin' On" · "Love Is Here and Now You're Gone" · "The Happening" · "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me".
Powerful women kept the heart and intimacy in popular music.
In 1965-1967, The Beatles were recording psychedelic rock with tunes like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" , and the Summer of Love anthem “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band”. They proceeded to lead the entire popular genre, each album anticipated for “familiar novelty” – so aligned with our lives that each cut seemed tailored to our counter-cultural creation myth. " Hey Jude ", “Norwegian Wood”.
Simon & Garfunkle - The 1966 album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, refined their folk rock-ballad sound in 1967, "The Sounds of Silence," "Mrs. Robinson," "Bridge over Troubled Water," and "Homeward Bound". The Bridge over Troubled Water album was released in January 1970, with Garfunkel's soaring vocals on its title track . The album includes other top-twenty hits: "El Cóndor Pasa", "Cecilia", and “The Boxer”.
Other R&R voices kept us dancing – Jackson Browne, Tom Paxton, Ani DiFranco, Billy Bragg, Eliza Carthy, Bruce Springsteen, Roger McGuinn, Indigo Girls, Dick Gaughan, Martin Simpson, Odetta. Blood Sweat & Tears re-introduced an entire brass section.
1964-1967 - “The British Invasion” - Arrival of The Hollies [still playing!], Dusty Springfield (with her late 1963 hit single "I Only Want To Be With You"), The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Animals [whose signature song is arguably the best version–beginning with A-minor chord arpeggio – of “House of the Rising Sun”, which is arguably the first US blues-rock tune], Cilla Black, The Dave Clark Five, Petula Clark, Donovan, The Who, etc.
Note also the films in 1964 “A Hard Day’s Night”, and the Sean Connery “James Bond”, and Julie Andrews “Mary Poppins” films.
Not to be confused with the “Second British Invasion” in the 1970's – David Bowie’s ballad – "Space Oddity" – the story of Major Tom, who becomes lost in space, and the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Police, Dire Straits, etc. The Rolling Stones big US tour was 1972. Bob Marley - mid 70s. By 1983, well over 50% of the Billboard Hot 100 in America were by overseas artists.
1964-1971 - Big Sur Folk Festival. When I was there, everybody had a bedroll, and some kind of instrument – a guitar, or a conga. (I was the only “folk trumpeter”). Beautiful batiks spread out under the trees of the Esalen Institute. Everyone danced like children, and many of us were.
In 1969, Karen Carpenter, a drummer with perfect pitch, signed with A&M Records, with her piano prodigy brother Richard, as "The Carpenters". She sang most of the songs on their first album, Ticket to Ride. Their next album, 1970's Close to You, contained "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun" which was broadly construed. They peaked at #1 and #2, respectively (the latter was written by Paul Williams).
1967 - “The Summer of Love” - 130,000 young people migrated to San Francisco. “Hippies” also gathered in cities across the world at the same time – millions came out dressed in the “uniform” of bell-bottom jeans and long hair. A defining moment, whose failure was not then apparent, in an attempt to redefine cultural reality and the underlying unity of all humanity .
1969 - Woodstock - three days on a Bethel dairy farm in upstate New York, the biggest party in history on 600 acres with 500,000 mostly young people left remarkably to their own devices and virtually no disturbances in spite of rainy and uncomfortable conditions.
Many of the "descriptions" and books published laterly miss the point that a lot of effort was put into this -- the message of it as well as its execution.
The effort was to change the things that the young people thought needed changing. All unjust things were addressed by this generation. But the beauty of Woodstock was that these "changings" were not directed or even expressed: The event itself was a political statement, deliberately skipping the attempt to control or tell people things unnecessarily. This is a generation that showed what can be done when cultural social justice free-speech and emergent moon-landing stratocaster technology mix.
The Life-changing line-up included:
Folksingers (Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie [talking blues], Hardin, Sommer, John Sebastian);
International multi-genre (Incredible String Band, Sly and the Family Stone, Canned Heat, Crosby, Stills & Nash &Young, Santana, Joe Cocker, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Sweetwater, Keef Hartley Band, Blood, Sweat and Tears);
Indian ragas and talas (Ravi Shankar);
Gospel doo-wop (Richie Havens),
Blues (Johnny Winter, Paul Butterfield Blues Band);
Happening head bands (Quill - which has since disappeared in obscurity);
Psychedelic jam bands (Jefferson Airplane, The Who, Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe and the Fish ); and
Classic Rock and Roll [now considered "retro rock"](Sha-Na-Na).
The late 60's also saw the rise of intense new performers like Stevie Wonder - who now holds the record for a solo artist, 26 Grammies. Mid-60's – "Uptight (Everything's Alright)", "With a Child's Heart", and "Blowin' in the Wind", a Bob Dylan cover, "A Place in the Sun", "I Was Made to Love Her", “For Once in My Life", and our 1968 anthem, "Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day". But he had not yet even gotten into his “classic” production period.
REPRISE:
And then, somehow, we lost it. The Golden Age. Self-inflicted wounds, and then angry “performers” and mega-wealthy labels taking over the manufacture of “popular”. Music became industry, driven by greed and the mysterious attraction of manufactured "stars" to the herd of convention. The lip-synching ship was launched and “stars” would fill huge venues up with egos, illusion, and literally, “noise”. Nobody knows the words. And the words are no longer poetry. Consciousness-raising is not a thing to do.
Concerts are no longer about talent. Huge venues are sold-out to suckers and weak-minded dead-heads with too much time and money. The ticket prices alone tell you it is about greed. The Industry executives boast about their victims, their conquests, the market share they seized. Performers orchestrate victims -- mosh pits, denigration rap, grunge, the rape and fire nightmare of Woodstock ‘99, all-night boners “hittin’ it, and workin’ it, and doin’ other stuff to it". Digitization re-tooled the acoustic vulcanized rubber voice-overs with a “texture” of trance banging hypno-minimalia jumble-bum metal acid gear. Bobble heads famous for being famous. The musicians are somewhere in glassed-off rooms taping for shows they will never see, performed by "front" groups assembled by the Labels. Hard to believe this is a description of the Music World.
And yet, Pete Seeger still lives! And in the last decade, the industry has been collapsing to the raw origins of the Internet. The collapse is temporary. It is just a matter of a little time for the greedy predators to take over the Internet.
Like all of us getting ready for ReUnions, we are looking at life from “both sides now” – thank you Joni Mitchell.
A “high school” ReUnion is going to be a chance to re-live (at least in memory) that period of time. A ReUnion of re-living people could HIT our self-image and consciousness-blazing saddles the hardest. Perhaps only second to Getting Married, a ReUnion is life-changing.
I am stewing over the Chronology of our Class:
What was happening when we came in?
What was “there” while we were there?
And what foam came down the moving wave of its afterwards?
1968 was in many ways a turning point for many things. Certainly the race riots, four political assassinations, the Apollo manned missions to the moon, Dutch Elm Disease, and the USSR invasion of Czechoslovakia, caused life as we loved it to change. http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1968.html
There were many things “happening”. And until the late 60's nobody ever said “have a nice day”, or “what’s happening?”. Food was fast (McDonalds), and Cars were faster (e.g. Corvette). Politics and photography was polarized and Polaroid. Summers were still endless and people had vacations, and could remember when “The Mom” did not have to work. But of all the things “happening”, you have to really appreciate the fact that music just EXPLODED.
"Far Out" - AND THERE WAS MUSIC.
Our generation put unprecedented emphasis on Music. Not to sing, or play, but to listen to. Within a generation, we went from people who knew hundreds of songs “by heart” (hootenanny, caroling, canziones), to paying money to listen to Rock Stars playing in Coliseums. Why was the music so important? In this way?
We were born into the realm of mothers sending us for piano lessons, and dreaming of the glamorous life lived by the “Rat-Pack” – a nice metaphoric description of the entertainers’ actual (not-so-glam) life at the time. You could hear the “stars” in small clubs – Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, and some wonderful female participants, including Shirley MacLaine, Lauren Bacall, Angie Dickinson, Marilyn Monroe, and Judy Garland. All of them could remember lines and tunes, write, sing, dance, talk, mime and mimic and act – and as part of a group with a mission bigger than their egos. We have not seen their likes since.
I remember coming into the musicality of the age with revenant “Hootenannies” and Sing-a-Longs. Folk music brought us together. We were led by talent, not by Tyrants. People like Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Odetta, Marion Anderson, and Pete Seeger were our guides.
Pete Seeger still lives, perhaps the greatest American of his generation – although Black-Listed from TV, in 1963 his amusing protest single, “Little Boxes” (written by Malvina Reynolds), was number one in the nation's Top 40's radio hits. His compositions remained the anthems of our age for a decade – Kumbaya, Turn Turn Turn, We Shall Overcome, If I had a Hammer, Long Time Passing. In the 1960s, Seeger toured college campuses extensively. He usually accompanied himself on a custom-made acoustic 12-string guitar, modifying an instrument of Mexican origin associated with black bayou blues balladeer, Lead Belly.
Other widely-beloved folk performers included three very independent women:
Joan Baez (daughter of Mexican/ Scot immigrants, 3-octave vocal range) "Blowin' in the Wind" - when she married David Harris in late 1967, it was reported as “the wedding of the century”. (Baez, performing while visibly pregnant - “Diamonds and Rust”, “The Night they drove Old Dixie Down”). Remember the way she sustained long notes--almost breathing into the tone, and sometimes lightly yodeling between registers. She never "oversung", never showed off her voice, but the emotion was "strong"--she had no mercy when singing about cruelty or war. We often wept.
Judy Collins (father was blind, she started as a child prodigy at classical piano, son suicide) “Send in the Clowns”, “Wildflowers” - stunning purity and sweetness of her soprano, accompanied by her acoustic guitar playing. Her 1968 album: Who Knows Where the Time Goes, with Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills &Nash). She was the major interpretive folksinger of the '60s.
Joni Mitchell (Canadian immigrant) - singer-songwriter folk-rock scene in Southern California, divorced and launched her solo career in 1967. One of the best female guitarists, famous for her open tuning and innovative harmonic technique – including polymodality, chromaticism, polytonality, and strict pedal points.
At the same time, Rock and Roll was sizzling. We actually saw Elvis Presley perform and become the King. But in Orange County we had a special variation of R&R, that sort of started in Southern California – the Surf Bands were everywhere. “Pipeline” was an irresistable, and frankly obnoxious, “wipe-Ooooouuuut !” Almost anytime, anyplace.
In the 60's, Rock & Roll matured into a full-bodied all-year everywhere throbbing river of infinite immersion. It was no longer bass blues arpeggios, with candy cane lyrics and swivelling hips. By the late sixties it was a wall of sound rolling out of stratocaster canons into the drug-haze of Woodstock. Let’s look at the details:
By the 60's we entered the first of many flowerings. Bob Dylan, started acoustic and ended electric. People would karaoke him before there was karaoke, memorize long poem-songs. In 1965 he rolled out “Like a Rolling Stone”.
The acoustic folk-rock musical traditions of successful bands like The Lovin' Spoonful were re-interpreted by new groups “going electric" and looking for a dirtier sound. For example, the Grateful Dead pulled terrain from everywhere–folk, jazz, country, gospel-- to make an incredibly eclectic synthesis featuring electric instrumentation for outbursts of passion, apocalyptic apotheosis, and dirt. The “Wall of Sound” was developed for the Dead (75-tons of amplification-- eighty-nine 300-watt solid-state and three 350-watt vacuum-tube amplifiers, generating a total of 26,400 watts RMS of audio power – the largest portable sound system ever built).
By the late 60's, historians like “Patrick the Lama” tell us we were at the Golden Age of psychedelic music. Bands were migrating down from San Francisco. http://members.tripod.com/lysergia_2/LamaReviews/lamaMain.htm
Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use Pete Seeger’s old term. And this amplified language ran "psychedelic" for a few beautiful years in the late 60's. It was still rock, but the riffs included “far out” explorations of the mind, and the senses, and feelings no one had really interpreted before.
In 1968, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix played together. Separately, they led the way for later bands, combining guitar feedback powered by overdriven amplifiers with brilliantly original expansions of traditional blues (B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Elmore James) and rhythm and blues guitar skills ( Curtis Mayfield, Steve Cropper). Hendrix would mondegreen entire songs - deliberately misinterpreting and creating distortion in every part of the track – e.g. “Purple Sky” [kiss the sky, kiss this guy]. Hendrix's rendition of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" is a complete departure from the original, and includes one of the most highly praised guitar arrangements in modern music.
In 1968, the Doors album, Waiting for the Sun " Hello I Love You " was so simple and complex that it created a kind of religion of its own. The Doors, the Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane became moving cathedrals of Rock & Roll, spewing a catholic catharsis.
The Cream (Eric Clapton), and Pink Floyd (with original founder Syd Barrett), embraced psychedelic music fully, becoming two of the first truly specialized psychedelic bands. Sometimes a band would switch from one “sound” to another. The Beatles did this with each album. Country Joe and the Fish suddenly dropped their tempo and came out with really psychedelic masterpieces, like "Bass Strings".
I remember Country Joe in 1966 performed an upbeat but shocking protest song in a raw jug band style. Just one year later, the piece changed dramatically – put into lower tempo, delayed vocals, added reverb, studio reversed cymbals, electric organ, traveler lyrics, and a continuous blues guitar solo which together turned the piece into a mind-blowin’-in-the-wind "psychedelic" track.
Curiously, almost all the popular bands were almost all male. The perfect pitch drummer, Karen Carpenter, was sort of the exception that proves this tune. At the same time, so many solo female vocalists of our generation were exceptionally strong.
1. Aretha Franklin - 1967 single, "I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)", a blues ballad in gospel style. "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" in classic R&B. Her feminist version of Otis Redding’s "Respect" brought her superstardom. Then the album, I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You, reached million-seller status, followed by top ten singles hits including "Baby I Love You", "Chain of Fools" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman".
2. Tina Turner - “What's Love Got To Do With It?” R&B/Rock/Pop-fused “Private Dancer”
3. Janis Joplin (d. 1970) - April 10, 1968, invaded Anaheim Convention Center, with a relatively obscure group called "Big Brother and the Holding Company."
4. Bonnie Raitt - her eponymous debut album came out in 1971, singer and bottleneck guitarist at a time when there were very few. Her second album, Give It Up, was released in 1972 to universal acclaim. "Nick of Time" , "Something to Talk About", "I Can't Make You Love Me".
5. Joni Mitchell - "Both Sides Now", "Clouds", and "The Circle Game."
6. Billie Holiday (d. 1959) - “Bless the child” - her melisma may still be heard in R&B singer Mariah Carey, or any “American Idol” today.
7. Linda Ronstadt - “You’re no good” and 3 multi-platinum albums: “What's New”, “Canciones de Mi Padre” and “Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind”.
8. Diana Ross/ The Supremes/ The Temptations - "Where Did Our Love Go" · "Baby Love" · "Stop! In the Name of Love" · "I Hear a Symphony" · "You Can't Hurry Love" · "You Keep Me Hangin' On" · "Love Is Here and Now You're Gone" · "The Happening" · "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me".
Powerful women kept the heart and intimacy in popular music.
In 1965-1967, The Beatles were recording psychedelic rock with tunes like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" , and the Summer of Love anthem “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band”. They proceeded to lead the entire popular genre, each album anticipated for “familiar novelty” – so aligned with our lives that each cut seemed tailored to our counter-cultural creation myth. " Hey Jude ", “Norwegian Wood”.
Simon & Garfunkle - The 1966 album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, refined their folk rock-ballad sound in 1967, "The Sounds of Silence," "Mrs. Robinson," "Bridge over Troubled Water," and "Homeward Bound". The Bridge over Troubled Water album was released in January 1970, with Garfunkel's soaring vocals on its title track . The album includes other top-twenty hits: "El Cóndor Pasa", "Cecilia", and “The Boxer”.
Other R&R voices kept us dancing – Jackson Browne, Tom Paxton, Ani DiFranco, Billy Bragg, Eliza Carthy, Bruce Springsteen, Roger McGuinn, Indigo Girls, Dick Gaughan, Martin Simpson, Odetta. Blood Sweat & Tears re-introduced an entire brass section.
1964-1967 - “The British Invasion” - Arrival of The Hollies [still playing!], Dusty Springfield (with her late 1963 hit single "I Only Want To Be With You"), The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Animals [whose signature song is arguably the best version–beginning with A-minor chord arpeggio – of “House of the Rising Sun”, which is arguably the first US blues-rock tune], Cilla Black, The Dave Clark Five, Petula Clark, Donovan, The Who, etc.
Note also the films in 1964 “A Hard Day’s Night”, and the Sean Connery “James Bond”, and Julie Andrews “Mary Poppins” films.
Not to be confused with the “Second British Invasion” in the 1970's – David Bowie’s ballad – "Space Oddity" – the story of Major Tom, who becomes lost in space, and the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Police, Dire Straits, etc. The Rolling Stones big US tour was 1972. Bob Marley - mid 70s. By 1983, well over 50% of the Billboard Hot 100 in America were by overseas artists.
1964-1971 - Big Sur Folk Festival. When I was there, everybody had a bedroll, and some kind of instrument – a guitar, or a conga. (I was the only “folk trumpeter”). Beautiful batiks spread out under the trees of the Esalen Institute. Everyone danced like children, and many of us were.
In 1969, Karen Carpenter, a drummer with perfect pitch, signed with A&M Records, with her piano prodigy brother Richard, as "The Carpenters". She sang most of the songs on their first album, Ticket to Ride. Their next album, 1970's Close to You, contained "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun" which was broadly construed. They peaked at #1 and #2, respectively (the latter was written by Paul Williams).
1967 - “The Summer of Love” - 130,000 young people migrated to San Francisco. “Hippies” also gathered in cities across the world at the same time – millions came out dressed in the “uniform” of bell-bottom jeans and long hair. A defining moment, whose failure was not then apparent, in an attempt to redefine cultural reality and the underlying unity of all humanity .
1969 - Woodstock - three days on a Bethel dairy farm in upstate New York, the biggest party in history on 600 acres with 500,000 mostly young people left remarkably to their own devices and virtually no disturbances in spite of rainy and uncomfortable conditions.
Many of the "descriptions" and books published laterly miss the point that a lot of effort was put into this -- the message of it as well as its execution.
The effort was to change the things that the young people thought needed changing. All unjust things were addressed by this generation. But the beauty of Woodstock was that these "changings" were not directed or even expressed: The event itself was a political statement, deliberately skipping the attempt to control or tell people things unnecessarily. This is a generation that showed what can be done when cultural social justice free-speech and emergent moon-landing stratocaster technology mix.
The Life-changing line-up included:
Folksingers (Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie [talking blues], Hardin, Sommer, John Sebastian);
International multi-genre (Incredible String Band, Sly and the Family Stone, Canned Heat, Crosby, Stills & Nash &Young, Santana, Joe Cocker, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Sweetwater, Keef Hartley Band, Blood, Sweat and Tears);
Indian ragas and talas (Ravi Shankar);
Gospel doo-wop (Richie Havens),
Blues (Johnny Winter, Paul Butterfield Blues Band);
Happening head bands (Quill - which has since disappeared in obscurity);
Psychedelic jam bands (Jefferson Airplane, The Who, Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe and the Fish ); and
Classic Rock and Roll [now considered "retro rock"](Sha-Na-Na).
The late 60's also saw the rise of intense new performers like Stevie Wonder - who now holds the record for a solo artist, 26 Grammies. Mid-60's – "Uptight (Everything's Alright)", "With a Child's Heart", and "Blowin' in the Wind", a Bob Dylan cover, "A Place in the Sun", "I Was Made to Love Her", “For Once in My Life", and our 1968 anthem, "Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day". But he had not yet even gotten into his “classic” production period.
REPRISE:
And then, somehow, we lost it. The Golden Age. Self-inflicted wounds, and then angry “performers” and mega-wealthy labels taking over the manufacture of “popular”. Music became industry, driven by greed and the mysterious attraction of manufactured "stars" to the herd of convention. The lip-synching ship was launched and “stars” would fill huge venues up with egos, illusion, and literally, “noise”. Nobody knows the words. And the words are no longer poetry. Consciousness-raising is not a thing to do.
Concerts are no longer about talent. Huge venues are sold-out to suckers and weak-minded dead-heads with too much time and money. The ticket prices alone tell you it is about greed. The Industry executives boast about their victims, their conquests, the market share they seized. Performers orchestrate victims -- mosh pits, denigration rap, grunge, the rape and fire nightmare of Woodstock ‘99, all-night boners “hittin’ it, and workin’ it, and doin’ other stuff to it". Digitization re-tooled the acoustic vulcanized rubber voice-overs with a “texture” of trance banging hypno-minimalia jumble-bum metal acid gear. Bobble heads famous for being famous. The musicians are somewhere in glassed-off rooms taping for shows they will never see, performed by "front" groups assembled by the Labels. Hard to believe this is a description of the Music World.
And yet, Pete Seeger still lives! And in the last decade, the industry has been collapsing to the raw origins of the Internet. The collapse is temporary. It is just a matter of a little time for the greedy predators to take over the Internet.
Popular Music: The Fender Guitar and the Air Guitar
The Fender Stratocaster has 21 frets crossed by six strings. It delivers 126 individual notes and tens of thousands of chord combinations. And it was the preeminent instrument, the great axe, which hued inside almost all of the Golden Age of 1960's music.
By the simple fact that the inventor had his work-shop in Fullerton, Orange County is where this instrument first appeared. The invention was more than mere amplification of the acoustic guitar. The following paragraphs may help explain the significance of Fender Guitar:
The two great Guitars: Acoustic, and Electric.
1. ACOUSTIC. "Classical Gas" is an instrumental piece written by Mason Williams. In 1968 he played the track on an acoustic guitar accompanied by an orchestra. It reached Number 2 on the American charts and went on to sell over a million copies. Williams asked an experimental filmmaker named Dan McLaughlin to create a video montage of classical art works edited in time to the music, using a visual effect now known as kinestasis. The pioneering work, "3000 Years of Art", premiered in the summer of 1968, widely broadcast on film and Television.
I mention this to emphasize that there was no market NEED for a “better” guitar. Many fine musicians were playing, and continued to play, acoustic instruments -- Denver, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, etc. The classic Spanish guitar, produced inexpensively in Mexico, was accessible, was performing very well in the hands of popular musicians, and is a fully-developed expressive instrument. It could shape the Melody, punch the Rhythm, and fill the Harmony -- an all-in-one instrument you could play while still singing the words or playing harmonica simultaneously! Bob Dylan was one of the first “folk” singers who moved from acoustic to electric, but many other brilliant musicians did not.
2. ELECTRIC. Enter, the Fender - the earlier “Telecaster” and then the more contemporary “Stratocaster” models. In the 1940s, Leo Fender, the owner operator of an electronics repair shop in Fullerton, California, developed a solid-body electric guitar. The solid body improved the amplified tone, basically by eliminating the “feedback” from the hollow-body of an acoustic instrument. The sound is bright and cutting. And of course, louder!
Leo Fender also introduced precision mass production techniques to the manufacture of his simple modular design. By eliminating the expense of individual luthiery, he dramatically reduced the cost. Even the components were produced inexpensively in quantity on an assembly line. The bodies were band-sawed and routed from unitized blocks of wood or other materials. In addition, Fender did not use the traditional glued-in neck. He bolted it on, making it removable and replaceable.
The Telecaster neck was cut from a single piece of maple and the fingerboard frets were set directly into the wood surface. On traditional acoustic guitars, a rosewood or ebony fingerboard would be glued onto mahogany necks. Fenders typically have 22 frets (the baritones have 24-fret necks). The characteristic Telecaster 'twang' can be produced by picking near the saddles, and players can mute strings at the bridge with the side of the palm.
Now add the electronics – humbucking pickups powered by active circuitry featuring a TBX expander and an MDX midrange booster with 12dB of gain. Other lineaments included a Freeflyte hardtail bridge and die-cast tuning machines with pearloid buttons. Eventually, the Fenders also featured a BiFlex truss-rod system, low-friction EasyGlider string trees and pro-active electronics. You could coordinate with foot pedals, wah-wah effects, and even simultaneous play-back harmonics.
Finally, and you’ll love this: The Fender body contours are curved for comfort - especially appreciated across the thighs in long rehearsals and marathon bungie-chord concerts. The design LOOKS sexy. You never see thousands of people wiggling around playing acoustic “air guitars”! It took the Fender to lift arms and bodies into the working space of integrated human senses so that virtual players could EXPRESS themselves with music they cannot actually play!
By the simple fact that the inventor had his work-shop in Fullerton, Orange County is where this instrument first appeared. The invention was more than mere amplification of the acoustic guitar. The following paragraphs may help explain the significance of Fender Guitar:
The two great Guitars: Acoustic, and Electric.
1. ACOUSTIC. "Classical Gas" is an instrumental piece written by Mason Williams. In 1968 he played the track on an acoustic guitar accompanied by an orchestra. It reached Number 2 on the American charts and went on to sell over a million copies. Williams asked an experimental filmmaker named Dan McLaughlin to create a video montage of classical art works edited in time to the music, using a visual effect now known as kinestasis. The pioneering work, "3000 Years of Art", premiered in the summer of 1968, widely broadcast on film and Television.
I mention this to emphasize that there was no market NEED for a “better” guitar. Many fine musicians were playing, and continued to play, acoustic instruments -- Denver, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, etc. The classic Spanish guitar, produced inexpensively in Mexico, was accessible, was performing very well in the hands of popular musicians, and is a fully-developed expressive instrument. It could shape the Melody, punch the Rhythm, and fill the Harmony -- an all-in-one instrument you could play while still singing the words or playing harmonica simultaneously! Bob Dylan was one of the first “folk” singers who moved from acoustic to electric, but many other brilliant musicians did not.
2. ELECTRIC. Enter, the Fender - the earlier “Telecaster” and then the more contemporary “Stratocaster” models. In the 1940s, Leo Fender, the owner operator of an electronics repair shop in Fullerton, California, developed a solid-body electric guitar. The solid body improved the amplified tone, basically by eliminating the “feedback” from the hollow-body of an acoustic instrument. The sound is bright and cutting. And of course, louder!
Leo Fender also introduced precision mass production techniques to the manufacture of his simple modular design. By eliminating the expense of individual luthiery, he dramatically reduced the cost. Even the components were produced inexpensively in quantity on an assembly line. The bodies were band-sawed and routed from unitized blocks of wood or other materials. In addition, Fender did not use the traditional glued-in neck. He bolted it on, making it removable and replaceable.
The Telecaster neck was cut from a single piece of maple and the fingerboard frets were set directly into the wood surface. On traditional acoustic guitars, a rosewood or ebony fingerboard would be glued onto mahogany necks. Fenders typically have 22 frets (the baritones have 24-fret necks). The characteristic Telecaster 'twang' can be produced by picking near the saddles, and players can mute strings at the bridge with the side of the palm.
Now add the electronics – humbucking pickups powered by active circuitry featuring a TBX expander and an MDX midrange booster with 12dB of gain. Other lineaments included a Freeflyte hardtail bridge and die-cast tuning machines with pearloid buttons. Eventually, the Fenders also featured a BiFlex truss-rod system, low-friction EasyGlider string trees and pro-active electronics. You could coordinate with foot pedals, wah-wah effects, and even simultaneous play-back harmonics.
Finally, and you’ll love this: The Fender body contours are curved for comfort - especially appreciated across the thighs in long rehearsals and marathon bungie-chord concerts. The design LOOKS sexy. You never see thousands of people wiggling around playing acoustic “air guitars”! It took the Fender to lift arms and bodies into the working space of integrated human senses so that virtual players could EXPRESS themselves with music they cannot actually play!
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