Shame! Shame! Shame!
Virginia’s House of Delegates has passed a bill that would strip charities of state and local funds if they provide services to illegal aliens. The land of Jeffersonian ideals has become the home of fear driven reaction.
Under this bill, if enacted, when the homeless and hungry ask for food, clothing or shelter, instead of living their lives in imitation of Christ, the volunteers who give of their time and their humanity will, instead of providing succor to the down and out, have to demand valid green cards before providing the most basic of human assistance. By law, they will be forced to choose between providing for the diseased, hungry and homeless or forfeiting the funds essential for assisting the many legitimate and legal among us who are truly needy as well.
The Virginia House of Delegates is intent on turning the most altruistic among us into a reactionary police force. That President Bush and his administration who are charged by law with enforcing the immigration laws of the land have failed so miserably in this task that those challenged by the blind fear of illegal immigrants have turned to their state representatives and these gutless wonders, instead of demanding that the federal government do its sworn duty, turn to churches and other selfless groups and demand that they become the Nazis of the new millennium.
Those guided by the Bible or just simple altruism who would serve as Good Samaritans will be destroyed by representatives of the Commonwealth of Virginia. If they wish to maintain their ability to receive public funds to assist the legal recognized poor, these kind, Christ like people will be required to turn away those pathetic creatures, hungry, homeless, and cold, standing at their doors unless they can document their immigration status.
How cruel! How Pathetic! These delegates, in their cowardice and desire to maintain their offices at the price of their souls and character, would instead of demanding that the federal government enforce or change its immigration laws force the best and kindest among us to act as Fascists.
This bill is the epitome of cruelty. As these fools and charlatans in Richmond play with the lives of the truly needy who are among us only by the wink and nod of President Bush and the Congress of the United States, and, instead of demanding redress by those charged by law with protecting our borders and our citizens from being overwhelmed by illegals from abroad, play to the mob by turning the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, and other religious and secular charities into the brown shirts of our times.
Shame! Shame! Shame!
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Friday, January 26, 2007
Ralphie Rules
As I’ve said many times, the second most disastrous decision ever made by George W. Bush was to choose Dick Cheney as his running mate. That decision led almost directly to the worst blunder ever made in American foreign policy history, the attack on Iraq. Whew! That’s pretty heavy stuff. Maybe I ought to go to the third worst; that’s easy it was putting Dick in charge of finding Dubya’s running mate. And guess what? Only one person in 280 million fit the bill – and we know who that was. As the ship lists from leaks sprung fore, aft, starboard, port, top and bottom, it’s very difficult to see it ending happily for the crew.
Case in point, the trial of Scooter Libby is both horrifying and riveting. Everybody is scrambling to save their butts as the most disciplined administration since that of Tricky Dick Nixon simply implodes and explodes at the same time. (Is that a violation of the laws of physics?)
You’ll remember – those of you old enough anyway – that as Watergate unraveled the same phenomenon was exhibited. Insiders pointed fingers at everyone else to avoid stays at the Graybar Motel, and dimes were dropping on the Justice Department and the FBI like confetti at a ticker tape parade.
Things are so bad that the big bad guy had to come out of hiding and save the turf from the dweebs and geeks in the media and in the prosecutor’s office. For those of us who love to see the Scut Farkuses of the world get their comeuppances. (Note to the very few not familiar with The Christmas Story: Scut was the bully who tormented Ralphie and his buds to the delight of his toady, Grover Dill, until Ralphie turned the tables.)
So Scut, I mean the Vice President, decided to smack down Ralphie, I mean Wolf Blitzer, and show the American public how a real pro handled the media. Sadly for Dick, Wolf Blitzer was in his best Ralphie mode and exposed Cheney for what he is: a bully with nothing to back himself with but bluster.
You’ve all seen the clips of the interview and roared at the cartoons that resulted. Great things are happening in Iraq, and, if it weren’t for Ralphie and his playmates, the American public would see that we’re winning. But Ralphie wouldn’t back down and Scut’s nose got plenty bloodied.
But Cheney’s mistake is far greater than having stumbled on CNN. He’s now a laughing stock and sends no fear into the hearts of prosecutors. He’s going to have to testify in the Libby trial, and, damn, it’s hard to look like a credible bully with a packed nose.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Case in point, the trial of Scooter Libby is both horrifying and riveting. Everybody is scrambling to save their butts as the most disciplined administration since that of Tricky Dick Nixon simply implodes and explodes at the same time. (Is that a violation of the laws of physics?)
You’ll remember – those of you old enough anyway – that as Watergate unraveled the same phenomenon was exhibited. Insiders pointed fingers at everyone else to avoid stays at the Graybar Motel, and dimes were dropping on the Justice Department and the FBI like confetti at a ticker tape parade.
Things are so bad that the big bad guy had to come out of hiding and save the turf from the dweebs and geeks in the media and in the prosecutor’s office. For those of us who love to see the Scut Farkuses of the world get their comeuppances. (Note to the very few not familiar with The Christmas Story: Scut was the bully who tormented Ralphie and his buds to the delight of his toady, Grover Dill, until Ralphie turned the tables.)
So Scut, I mean the Vice President, decided to smack down Ralphie, I mean Wolf Blitzer, and show the American public how a real pro handled the media. Sadly for Dick, Wolf Blitzer was in his best Ralphie mode and exposed Cheney for what he is: a bully with nothing to back himself with but bluster.
You’ve all seen the clips of the interview and roared at the cartoons that resulted. Great things are happening in Iraq, and, if it weren’t for Ralphie and his playmates, the American public would see that we’re winning. But Ralphie wouldn’t back down and Scut’s nose got plenty bloodied.
But Cheney’s mistake is far greater than having stumbled on CNN. He’s now a laughing stock and sends no fear into the hearts of prosecutors. He’s going to have to testify in the Libby trial, and, damn, it’s hard to look like a credible bully with a packed nose.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Ready, Set, Go!
No matter what time Google says this was posted, I pressed the button at high noon Eastern Standard Time on January 20, 2007. George W. Bush has exactly two years left in his second and final term as President of the United States. Seven hundred and thirty-one days may not seem long to some, but to those of us who feel we’re serving prison sentences, it looks like an eternity.
As I cross off the days one by one from base camp, the mountain of 731 days looks like Everest. My only hope is that in being superannuated, I’ve served such terms and even longer ones in the past. I only hope that my oxygen supply is sufficient to get me to the peak and back.
These six years have not been without ups. I supported John Kerry, and I’m happy that he lost. Had Bush lost, Kerry and the rest of us appalled by the fiasco in Baghdad would be blamed for losing Iraq. Hard as it is to believe in retrospect, George Bush was able to fake out 51% of the voters in 2004 and convince them that he was the answer. Again, what was the question?
Another positive, the neoconservatives are losing credibility as rapidly as the Titanic took on water. John McCain is done as potential president. Joe Lieberman is the president’s leading publicist and is outed for what he really is, a Republican neocon. These people are dangerous to America, and the voters now fully perceive it. Many evangelicals are also awakening and are beginning to understand that separation of church and state may have some good points and are splitting down the middle.
In every era good ideas are carried to illogical extremes. Ronald Reagan was indeed the embodiment of neoconservative and evangelical hopes and dreams after Vietnam. Republicans following him carried out his philosophy far beyond what reasonable and pragmatic politicians should have, and George W. Bush, clearly a messianic zealot, took Reaganism to heights of folly.
Sadly, the downs of this presidency are beyond discussion. The costs of this madness will be with us for decades. Since we’ve been over them hundreds of times, I’ll simply close by saying that I intend not to miss a single opportunity to cross out another day in this horrible term. The decider has been working too hard, and thinking is not his game. Count with me to the day we can send him home where he can ride his bike and cut brush without ever having to strain his brain again.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
As I cross off the days one by one from base camp, the mountain of 731 days looks like Everest. My only hope is that in being superannuated, I’ve served such terms and even longer ones in the past. I only hope that my oxygen supply is sufficient to get me to the peak and back.
These six years have not been without ups. I supported John Kerry, and I’m happy that he lost. Had Bush lost, Kerry and the rest of us appalled by the fiasco in Baghdad would be blamed for losing Iraq. Hard as it is to believe in retrospect, George Bush was able to fake out 51% of the voters in 2004 and convince them that he was the answer. Again, what was the question?
Another positive, the neoconservatives are losing credibility as rapidly as the Titanic took on water. John McCain is done as potential president. Joe Lieberman is the president’s leading publicist and is outed for what he really is, a Republican neocon. These people are dangerous to America, and the voters now fully perceive it. Many evangelicals are also awakening and are beginning to understand that separation of church and state may have some good points and are splitting down the middle.
In every era good ideas are carried to illogical extremes. Ronald Reagan was indeed the embodiment of neoconservative and evangelical hopes and dreams after Vietnam. Republicans following him carried out his philosophy far beyond what reasonable and pragmatic politicians should have, and George W. Bush, clearly a messianic zealot, took Reaganism to heights of folly.
Sadly, the downs of this presidency are beyond discussion. The costs of this madness will be with us for decades. Since we’ve been over them hundreds of times, I’ll simply close by saying that I intend not to miss a single opportunity to cross out another day in this horrible term. The decider has been working too hard, and thinking is not his game. Count with me to the day we can send him home where he can ride his bike and cut brush without ever having to strain his brain again.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Making it UP
This is the continuation of my series on how you – yes, you - might write the Great American Novel. Those of you who have already made up your stories should ignore this posting and keep on typing. This note is for those stuck staring at a blank document.
I guess we might begin by attempting to figure out what kind of story might make a novel for you. I think the novel must have a plot rather than simply relate a story. Think about it; stories are simply recitations of the facts in sequence while plots are stories that have causes.
A pretty straight forward story might be: `Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.' There is no plot here; rather it is a recitation of what happened in time order.
For there to be a plot causation must be added. Even in this little fairy tale the possibilities for cause are almost infinite. Jack might have fallen because he tried to get fresh with Jill and when she reacted badly he stumbled and fell on his head. Conversely, she might have surprised him with attention and he fell down in trying escape. And on and on go the possibilities.
There have been successful novels written without conflict and barely a hint of causation but they’re few and far between, so you might want to add a little conflict. A violation of one or more of the Ten Commandments is always a good starting point when you’re seeking trouble. Murder, adultery, and coveting one’s neighbor’s wife or goods have been the sources of lots of ideas. War is a solid starting point for many great stories, and the battle of the sexes is the fodder of many tales. Coming of age is big so is court room drama. But you get the point; the more rage the better.
As I’ve said, novels may be characterized as belonging to an almost endless number of genres from private eye, Gothic, anti-war, fantasy, to whatever, but, in addition to plot which I discussed above all genres spend time on character development.
I hate to say it, but the process of creating novels gets a little dicey at this point because there’s no clear line of distinction between character and plot. One of my favorite books on writing novels, Oakley Hall’s The Art & Craft of Novel Writing, cites one of the great novelists of the past who was also one of the first and best analysts of the craft, Henry James, whose opinion was that character determined incident and incident was the illustration of character.
Let this very humble novelist try to clarify the difference. Writers who emphasize plot leave character development to a secondary role. Action books such as those written by Tom Clancy stress the intricacies of plot and their heroes demonstrate character by tending to punch, shoot, sweat and bleed a lot. Ian Flemming easily fits into this mode as well, and his James Bond, while memorable, is not a person with whom we can empathize, except in fantasy.
Character driven novels on the other hand stress the impact of events and conflict on the ethical, moral, or psychological aspects of their protagonists. Anna Karenina, David Copperfield, Huckleberry Finn, and Atticus Finch are memorable for their moral courage, ethical dilemmas, or epiphanies rather than for scaling tall buildings in a single bound.
I might pause here to opine that if in this day and age your goal is to become rich from your writing – truly a long shot but there’s no harm in trying – you might stress plot. On the other hand, if you want to try your hand at literary excellence then character driven tales might just be for you. I’ve chosen the latter without great material reward to date. Although the annual pizza parties for the grandkids is a very happy affair even if I have to dip into capital to spring for the tip.
Those of you already well along with your story might wish to take time to make judgments on whether to stress plot or character. Those still working on your opening sentence, how about: “Call me Ishmael.” Or, “It was love at first sight.” Just kidding, these have been taken by people who sat before the blank page too.
I’ll be back.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
I guess we might begin by attempting to figure out what kind of story might make a novel for you. I think the novel must have a plot rather than simply relate a story. Think about it; stories are simply recitations of the facts in sequence while plots are stories that have causes.
A pretty straight forward story might be: `Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.' There is no plot here; rather it is a recitation of what happened in time order.
For there to be a plot causation must be added. Even in this little fairy tale the possibilities for cause are almost infinite. Jack might have fallen because he tried to get fresh with Jill and when she reacted badly he stumbled and fell on his head. Conversely, she might have surprised him with attention and he fell down in trying escape. And on and on go the possibilities.
There have been successful novels written without conflict and barely a hint of causation but they’re few and far between, so you might want to add a little conflict. A violation of one or more of the Ten Commandments is always a good starting point when you’re seeking trouble. Murder, adultery, and coveting one’s neighbor’s wife or goods have been the sources of lots of ideas. War is a solid starting point for many great stories, and the battle of the sexes is the fodder of many tales. Coming of age is big so is court room drama. But you get the point; the more rage the better.
As I’ve said, novels may be characterized as belonging to an almost endless number of genres from private eye, Gothic, anti-war, fantasy, to whatever, but, in addition to plot which I discussed above all genres spend time on character development.
I hate to say it, but the process of creating novels gets a little dicey at this point because there’s no clear line of distinction between character and plot. One of my favorite books on writing novels, Oakley Hall’s The Art & Craft of Novel Writing, cites one of the great novelists of the past who was also one of the first and best analysts of the craft, Henry James, whose opinion was that character determined incident and incident was the illustration of character.
Let this very humble novelist try to clarify the difference. Writers who emphasize plot leave character development to a secondary role. Action books such as those written by Tom Clancy stress the intricacies of plot and their heroes demonstrate character by tending to punch, shoot, sweat and bleed a lot. Ian Flemming easily fits into this mode as well, and his James Bond, while memorable, is not a person with whom we can empathize, except in fantasy.
Character driven novels on the other hand stress the impact of events and conflict on the ethical, moral, or psychological aspects of their protagonists. Anna Karenina, David Copperfield, Huckleberry Finn, and Atticus Finch are memorable for their moral courage, ethical dilemmas, or epiphanies rather than for scaling tall buildings in a single bound.
I might pause here to opine that if in this day and age your goal is to become rich from your writing – truly a long shot but there’s no harm in trying – you might stress plot. On the other hand, if you want to try your hand at literary excellence then character driven tales might just be for you. I’ve chosen the latter without great material reward to date. Although the annual pizza parties for the grandkids is a very happy affair even if I have to dip into capital to spring for the tip.
Those of you already well along with your story might wish to take time to make judgments on whether to stress plot or character. Those still working on your opening sentence, how about: “Call me Ishmael.” Or, “It was love at first sight.” Just kidding, these have been taken by people who sat before the blank page too.
I’ll be back.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Friday, January 12, 2007
UP and DOWN
People tell me they could write a book but don’t know how. In my last posting, my bona fides as a novelist were clearly established and, based on this great track record, I’m going to tell you in one sentence the great secret of how to write a novel. MAKE IT UP AND WRITE IT DOWN.
I’ve read more books on how to write novels than anybody I know and probably more than people paid to tell you how to create the great American novel. The answer is always the same: UP and DOWN. For those of you that are among those included in the first sentence of this posting, you should already be at your work station and working right now. You’ve already made it UP so now write it DOWN.
You’re skeptical? Don’t be. If you really want to write a novel you have to have story. It could be a Tom Clancy knock-off, a bodice ripper, a private eye story, or, like mine, a story from history, whatever. Tolstoy went to a coroner’s inquest on the suicide of a young woman. It seems she threw herself under the wheels of a train after an adulterous affair ended badly. Voila: Anna Karenina. Hemingway went off to the Great War as an ambulance driver. Enough blood and gore to turn his stomach and he produced A Farewell to Arms.
I’m not advocating that you have an affair or join the marines and go off to Iraq. My point is that inspiration is all around us. It’s up to you. J.D. Salinger went to a museum and got an idea, and people are still reading about that little snot, Holden. I museumed too and wrote my novel, Au Revoir, L’Acadie, about ethnic tensions during the Great Depression.
How the bodice rippers do it is beyond me, but they do. And so could you.
The experts, those that have written books explaining the process, can’t make it any simpler or say it more clearly than this: MAKE IT UP; WRITE IT DOWN. You got your story from this morning’s newspaper. Eureka!
So now it’s down to business, and, as you write, you just have to figure out what makes it interesting to others. There’s where the experts come in. It really is just technicalities and tricks that great writers like Tolstoy, Austen, Hemingway, Dickens, Alcott, and hundreds of others have discovered and applied, and you can use them too. But not now; for now, just write your story down.
Obviously, the enemy is inertia. Hemingway, when asked how he went about writing a best seller, replied as any honest procrastinator would, “First you clean the refrigerator.” Okay, so you’ve cleaned the fridge, cut the grass, and put the dog to sleep. No more excuses? Go!
It’s as simple as that. UP and DOWN.
Remember your high school English class; write your topic sentence. Done? There, you’re already crawling, and, in future postings, I’ll describe more baby steps you can easily take. Goodness, before you know it you’ll be racing to the climax of that great novel. Your grandkids deserve pizza as much as mine; do it!
Remember: UP and DOWN. Till then,
Blog on!
Wild Bill
I’ve read more books on how to write novels than anybody I know and probably more than people paid to tell you how to create the great American novel. The answer is always the same: UP and DOWN. For those of you that are among those included in the first sentence of this posting, you should already be at your work station and working right now. You’ve already made it UP so now write it DOWN.
You’re skeptical? Don’t be. If you really want to write a novel you have to have story. It could be a Tom Clancy knock-off, a bodice ripper, a private eye story, or, like mine, a story from history, whatever. Tolstoy went to a coroner’s inquest on the suicide of a young woman. It seems she threw herself under the wheels of a train after an adulterous affair ended badly. Voila: Anna Karenina. Hemingway went off to the Great War as an ambulance driver. Enough blood and gore to turn his stomach and he produced A Farewell to Arms.
I’m not advocating that you have an affair or join the marines and go off to Iraq. My point is that inspiration is all around us. It’s up to you. J.D. Salinger went to a museum and got an idea, and people are still reading about that little snot, Holden. I museumed too and wrote my novel, Au Revoir, L’Acadie, about ethnic tensions during the Great Depression.
How the bodice rippers do it is beyond me, but they do. And so could you.
The experts, those that have written books explaining the process, can’t make it any simpler or say it more clearly than this: MAKE IT UP; WRITE IT DOWN. You got your story from this morning’s newspaper. Eureka!
So now it’s down to business, and, as you write, you just have to figure out what makes it interesting to others. There’s where the experts come in. It really is just technicalities and tricks that great writers like Tolstoy, Austen, Hemingway, Dickens, Alcott, and hundreds of others have discovered and applied, and you can use them too. But not now; for now, just write your story down.
Obviously, the enemy is inertia. Hemingway, when asked how he went about writing a best seller, replied as any honest procrastinator would, “First you clean the refrigerator.” Okay, so you’ve cleaned the fridge, cut the grass, and put the dog to sleep. No more excuses? Go!
It’s as simple as that. UP and DOWN.
Remember your high school English class; write your topic sentence. Done? There, you’re already crawling, and, in future postings, I’ll describe more baby steps you can easily take. Goodness, before you know it you’ll be racing to the climax of that great novel. Your grandkids deserve pizza as much as mine; do it!
Remember: UP and DOWN. Till then,
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
You can do it
I’m beyond outrage and have said everything within – and even beyond - the bounds of propriety about George Bush and his war in Iraq. Since my goal is to build and store bile until the 2008 election cycle, I have little to add to my displeasure with the president over the coming months; besides, Ted Kennedy and other Democrats are giving voice to my complaints and there’s little need for me to pile on. But I do want to maintain your interest until the time comes to gear up for the big one that will send the decider back to Crawford and let him settle on what brush must face the machete.
Since I am a professional novelist, I thought you might find some of my experiences and observations about writing interesting. This especially true since I make enough money from my royalties to indulge each of my grandchildren with half of a pizza (medium) and a soft drink (small) every year. I’m actually one of the better sellers among present day American novelists, so don’t give up your day job until you hear me out.
Should every one of my readers give authoring a novel a try? That’s for each of them to decide; George Bush won’t help with this one. You should consider, however, that more than 10,000 novels come on the market each year, and most of them, like mine don’t make much – or even any - money for the owners of their rights. In addition, tens of thousands additional tall tales fail even to make into print every year. Are you clear on my point? This isn’t really something that most people can do to keep the wolf at bay. Do not give notice or describe in detail the talents of your bosses until you have a satisfactory publication advance in hand – make that cashed and in your account.
Let me begin by saying it’s easier to get published today than ever before. You write it; it can be printed. I self published my first book, A Tattered Coat Upon A Stick. I had a fairly high opinion of it but couldn’t get a single agent or publisher or agent to even read it. Had they read and rejected it, I might have given up and there never would have been the market for half pepperoni and half onion and green pepper pizzas that has surged since I plunged. The cost of self publication is small and has never been easier; more on this in a later posting.
My three published novels represent but the tip of the iceberg. I began by attempting to be a commercial novelist and wrote two thrillers. They weren’t bad, but let me tell you the people who successfully write in this genre are very good, very competitive and very well connected. After looking over the products I was seeking to displace, I concluded that I wasn’t up to the task. I’m proud to say that draft copies of these two great books along with hundreds of rejection slips make up a significant part of the highest point on the South Coast of Massachusetts. Methane from these rotters will be lighting homes in the Bay State for decades to come. Those trees did not die completely in vain.
But should you attempt such a work for your personal satisfaction? Why not? The Young and the Restless, the soap opera my wife has been watching for more than thirty years, preaches that everyone has at least one novel in them and there is almost always one author in residence on the set at all times. It appears that a working writer provides the show the necessary gravitas to keep the homebound intellectuals glued to their chairs with minimal guilt.
My friends, after much private laughter, now treat me as if I am a real writer, albeit one who starves. A thick skin and a decade of work will do that for you. I can remember the shame and unworthiness felt when I told the local bookstore owner that I was a writer and wanted to have a signing for my self published masterpiece. She didn’t laugh in my face although there were same strange noises emanating from the back room when she excused herself to get writing material.
I’ll drop it here and pick it up next time. Perhaps Home Depot can provide our motto: “You can do it; we can help.”
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Since I am a professional novelist, I thought you might find some of my experiences and observations about writing interesting. This especially true since I make enough money from my royalties to indulge each of my grandchildren with half of a pizza (medium) and a soft drink (small) every year. I’m actually one of the better sellers among present day American novelists, so don’t give up your day job until you hear me out.
Should every one of my readers give authoring a novel a try? That’s for each of them to decide; George Bush won’t help with this one. You should consider, however, that more than 10,000 novels come on the market each year, and most of them, like mine don’t make much – or even any - money for the owners of their rights. In addition, tens of thousands additional tall tales fail even to make into print every year. Are you clear on my point? This isn’t really something that most people can do to keep the wolf at bay. Do not give notice or describe in detail the talents of your bosses until you have a satisfactory publication advance in hand – make that cashed and in your account.
Let me begin by saying it’s easier to get published today than ever before. You write it; it can be printed. I self published my first book, A Tattered Coat Upon A Stick. I had a fairly high opinion of it but couldn’t get a single agent or publisher or agent to even read it. Had they read and rejected it, I might have given up and there never would have been the market for half pepperoni and half onion and green pepper pizzas that has surged since I plunged. The cost of self publication is small and has never been easier; more on this in a later posting.
My three published novels represent but the tip of the iceberg. I began by attempting to be a commercial novelist and wrote two thrillers. They weren’t bad, but let me tell you the people who successfully write in this genre are very good, very competitive and very well connected. After looking over the products I was seeking to displace, I concluded that I wasn’t up to the task. I’m proud to say that draft copies of these two great books along with hundreds of rejection slips make up a significant part of the highest point on the South Coast of Massachusetts. Methane from these rotters will be lighting homes in the Bay State for decades to come. Those trees did not die completely in vain.
But should you attempt such a work for your personal satisfaction? Why not? The Young and the Restless, the soap opera my wife has been watching for more than thirty years, preaches that everyone has at least one novel in them and there is almost always one author in residence on the set at all times. It appears that a working writer provides the show the necessary gravitas to keep the homebound intellectuals glued to their chairs with minimal guilt.
My friends, after much private laughter, now treat me as if I am a real writer, albeit one who starves. A thick skin and a decade of work will do that for you. I can remember the shame and unworthiness felt when I told the local bookstore owner that I was a writer and wanted to have a signing for my self published masterpiece. She didn’t laugh in my face although there were same strange noises emanating from the back room when she excused herself to get writing material.
I’ll drop it here and pick it up next time. Perhaps Home Depot can provide our motto: “You can do it; we can help.”
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Congratualtions Connecticut
Congratulations to moderate Democrat, Republican and Independent voters in Connecticut. In polls taken prior to last fall’s election it was clear that while the vast majority of these folks were unhappy with the Iraq War, they were reluctant to vote for the ultra-liberal Ned Lamont who was painted by Joe Lieberman as a Senator likely to call for precipitous withdrawal from the fray.
It is very clear that these voters wanted as rapid an end to the conflict as possible consistent with the best national security interests of the nation so they stuck with tried and true Joe Lieberman for their senator. Joe promised to remain an independent voice in congress and to caucus with the Democrats.
Now that President Bush is in the final stages of planning a major surge in troop levels in Iraq and especially around Baghdad despite what even strictly objective observers such as Wild Bill viewed as a repudiation of the entire misbegotten venture by the electorate last November, he has two major cheerleaders in the Senate, John McCain and JOE LIEBERMAN.
So to you good folks in Connecticut who thought you were voting for a rational phased withdrawal from Iraq, welcome to the new world of building up the troop levels and preparations for allowing the next president to begin the escape from this nightmare with all of its attendant casualties and costs to our troops and to the Pin The Tale on the Donkey Party for the winner of the Who Lost Iraq Contest.
If you’re unhappy with the way things seem to be turning out, tune in to the lamentations emanating from the Senate Democratic Caucus which I guess Joe uses as source of information on Democratic strategy for his Republican cohorts and blame the face in your own looking glass.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
It is very clear that these voters wanted as rapid an end to the conflict as possible consistent with the best national security interests of the nation so they stuck with tried and true Joe Lieberman for their senator. Joe promised to remain an independent voice in congress and to caucus with the Democrats.
Now that President Bush is in the final stages of planning a major surge in troop levels in Iraq and especially around Baghdad despite what even strictly objective observers such as Wild Bill viewed as a repudiation of the entire misbegotten venture by the electorate last November, he has two major cheerleaders in the Senate, John McCain and JOE LIEBERMAN.
So to you good folks in Connecticut who thought you were voting for a rational phased withdrawal from Iraq, welcome to the new world of building up the troop levels and preparations for allowing the next president to begin the escape from this nightmare with all of its attendant casualties and costs to our troops and to the Pin The Tale on the Donkey Party for the winner of the Who Lost Iraq Contest.
If you’re unhappy with the way things seem to be turning out, tune in to the lamentations emanating from the Senate Democratic Caucus which I guess Joe uses as source of information on Democratic strategy for his Republican cohorts and blame the face in your own looking glass.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Monday, January 01, 2007
2007
As the New year begins, we are filled with the need to resolve to make changes in ourselves. The media is filled with the contemplations of wise men and women, and there is little need for Wild Bill to add to your woe.
The following piece from the New York Times is the effort by one very old historian to shed a little light on his passion and our guidepost. As an amateur historian, I felt a real kinship with the assertion.
I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
By ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER Jr.
Published: January 1, 2007
MANY signs point to a growing historical consciousness among the American people. I trust that this is so. It is useful to remember that history is to the nation as memory is to the individual. As persons deprived of memory become disoriented and lost, not knowing where they have been and where they are going, so a nation denied a conception of the past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future. “The longer you look back,” said Winston Churchill, “the farther you can look forward.”
But all historians are prisoners of their own experience. We bring to history the preconceptions of our personalities and of our age. We cannot seize on ultimate and absolute truths. So the historian is committed to a doomed enterprise — the quest for an unattainable objectivity.
Conceptions of the past are far from stable. They are perennially revised by the urgencies of the present. When new urgencies arise in our own times and lives, the historian’s spotlight shifts, probing at last into the darkness, throwing into sharp relief things that were always there but that earlier historians had carelessly excised from the collective memory. New voices ring out of the historical dark and demand to be heard.
One has only to note how in the last half-century the movements for women’s rights and civil rights have reformulated and renewed American history. Thus the present incessantly reinvents the past. In this sense, all history, as Benedetto Croce said, is contemporary history. It is these permutations of consciousness that make history so endlessly fascinating an intellectual adventure. “The one duty we owe to history,” said Oscar Wilde, “is to rewrite it.”
We are the world’s dominant military power, and I believe a consciousness of history is a moral necessity for a nation possessed of overweening power. History verifies John F. Kennedy’s proposition, stated in the first year of his thousand days: “We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient — that we are only 6 percent of the world’s population; that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind; that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity; and therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.”
History is the best antidote to delusions of omnipotence and omniscience. Self-knowledge is the indispensable prelude to self-control, for the nation as well as for the individual, and history should forever remind us of the limits of our passing perspectives. It should strengthen us to resist the pressure to convert momentary impulses into moral absolutes. It should lead us to acknowledge our profound and chastening frailty as human beings — to a recognition of the fact, so often and so sadly displayed, that the future outwits all our certitudes and that the possibilities of the future are more various than the human intellect is designed to conceive.
Sometimes, when I am particularly depressed, I ascribe our behavior to stupidity — the stupidity of our leadership, the stupidity of our culture. Three decades ago, we suffered defeat in an unwinnable war against tribalism, the most fanatic of political emotions, fighting against a country about which we knew nothing and in which we had no vital interests. Vietnam was hopeless enough, but to repeat the same arrogant folly 30 years later in Iraq is unforgivable. The Swedish statesman Axel Oxenstierna famously said, “Behold, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.”
A nation informed by a vivid understanding of the ironies of history is, I believe, best equipped to manage the tragic temptations of military power. Let us not bully our way through life, but let a growing sensitivity to history temper and civilize our use of power. In the meantime, let a thousand historical flowers bloom. History is never a closed book or a final verdict. It is forever in the making. Let historians never forsake the quest for knowledge in the interests of an ideology, a religion, a race, a nation.
The great strength of history in a free society is its capacity for self-correction. This is the endless excitement of historical writing — the search to reconstruct what went before, a quest illuminated by those ever-changing prisms that continually place old questions in a new light.
History is a doomed enterprise that we happily pursue because of the thrill of the hunt, because exploring the past is such fun, because of the intellectual challenges involved, because a nation needs to know its own history. Or so we historians insist. Because in the end, a nation’s history must be both the guide and the domain not so much of its historians as its citizens.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who has won Pulitzer Prizes for history and biography, is the author, most recently, of “War and the American Presidency.”
The following piece from the New York Times is the effort by one very old historian to shed a little light on his passion and our guidepost. As an amateur historian, I felt a real kinship with the assertion.
I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
By ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER Jr.
Published: January 1, 2007
MANY signs point to a growing historical consciousness among the American people. I trust that this is so. It is useful to remember that history is to the nation as memory is to the individual. As persons deprived of memory become disoriented and lost, not knowing where they have been and where they are going, so a nation denied a conception of the past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future. “The longer you look back,” said Winston Churchill, “the farther you can look forward.”
But all historians are prisoners of their own experience. We bring to history the preconceptions of our personalities and of our age. We cannot seize on ultimate and absolute truths. So the historian is committed to a doomed enterprise — the quest for an unattainable objectivity.
Conceptions of the past are far from stable. They are perennially revised by the urgencies of the present. When new urgencies arise in our own times and lives, the historian’s spotlight shifts, probing at last into the darkness, throwing into sharp relief things that were always there but that earlier historians had carelessly excised from the collective memory. New voices ring out of the historical dark and demand to be heard.
One has only to note how in the last half-century the movements for women’s rights and civil rights have reformulated and renewed American history. Thus the present incessantly reinvents the past. In this sense, all history, as Benedetto Croce said, is contemporary history. It is these permutations of consciousness that make history so endlessly fascinating an intellectual adventure. “The one duty we owe to history,” said Oscar Wilde, “is to rewrite it.”
We are the world’s dominant military power, and I believe a consciousness of history is a moral necessity for a nation possessed of overweening power. History verifies John F. Kennedy’s proposition, stated in the first year of his thousand days: “We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient — that we are only 6 percent of the world’s population; that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind; that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity; and therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.”
History is the best antidote to delusions of omnipotence and omniscience. Self-knowledge is the indispensable prelude to self-control, for the nation as well as for the individual, and history should forever remind us of the limits of our passing perspectives. It should strengthen us to resist the pressure to convert momentary impulses into moral absolutes. It should lead us to acknowledge our profound and chastening frailty as human beings — to a recognition of the fact, so often and so sadly displayed, that the future outwits all our certitudes and that the possibilities of the future are more various than the human intellect is designed to conceive.
Sometimes, when I am particularly depressed, I ascribe our behavior to stupidity — the stupidity of our leadership, the stupidity of our culture. Three decades ago, we suffered defeat in an unwinnable war against tribalism, the most fanatic of political emotions, fighting against a country about which we knew nothing and in which we had no vital interests. Vietnam was hopeless enough, but to repeat the same arrogant folly 30 years later in Iraq is unforgivable. The Swedish statesman Axel Oxenstierna famously said, “Behold, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.”
A nation informed by a vivid understanding of the ironies of history is, I believe, best equipped to manage the tragic temptations of military power. Let us not bully our way through life, but let a growing sensitivity to history temper and civilize our use of power. In the meantime, let a thousand historical flowers bloom. History is never a closed book or a final verdict. It is forever in the making. Let historians never forsake the quest for knowledge in the interests of an ideology, a religion, a race, a nation.
The great strength of history in a free society is its capacity for self-correction. This is the endless excitement of historical writing — the search to reconstruct what went before, a quest illuminated by those ever-changing prisms that continually place old questions in a new light.
History is a doomed enterprise that we happily pursue because of the thrill of the hunt, because exploring the past is such fun, because of the intellectual challenges involved, because a nation needs to know its own history. Or so we historians insist. Because in the end, a nation’s history must be both the guide and the domain not so much of its historians as its citizens.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who has won Pulitzer Prizes for history and biography, is the author, most recently, of “War and the American Presidency.”
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