The Little Mermaid

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The Danish author Hans Christian Andersen wrote several dozen fairy-tales, many of them having little to do with fairies, as such (in contrast to the stories compiled by the Brothers Grimm), the one that appears to be most popular being The Little Mermaid, helped along by the hugely successful animated feature by Disney.

Hans Christian Andersen's stories are frequently poignant and tragic.  There is the story of the Steadfast Tin Soldier, who loves the ballerina doll.  This story was done beautifully in Fantasia 2000, and is probably the loveliest piece of animation there, reminiscent of the artwork in Snow White, and Pinocchio.




The intended audience of Mermaid, little ladies of around 12, simply adored that movie, though I did not like the representation of the Little Mermaid.  The mermaid in the Andersen story was, as I remember, a lot less self-assured and well-adjusted than the spunky redhead in the Disney feature; she was hopelessly romantic, a typical Victorian teenage heroine.  The celebrated statue in the Copenhagen harbor features a rather big-boned young lady built on rangy Scandinavian lines, but viewed from afar, she made a picture that resonated with several generations of sentimental young men (including myself) of a mermaid pining for the boy she had rescued in a storm.  The most common angle of view of the world-famous sculpture is the one on the right, where the sculptor has got just the perfect angle for the body, expressing hopeless longing.  But you can almost imagine the stubbornness hidden there, the plans being considered and rejected, the sheer persistence of teenage infatuation.  If you've never experienced that desperate desire to possess the forbidden object of your love, it is both a blessing and a curse!

It seems very much as though Andersen understood youthful obsession very well.  One of his other fascinating stories was Snow Queen.  This story of epic proportions scaled-down to teenage size, is of a girl who falls in love with a beautiful boy, who is seduced by the visiting Snow Queen, and taken away to her frozen domain in the arctic snows.  The devastated young girl undertakes a search for the boy, and enlists the help of a robber girl, a rough and rude young lady from essentially a gangster family.  The gangster gal's heart is melted by the sad story of our little lovelorn lady, and the unlikely pair renew the hunt for the boy.  I will let you find out how it all ends, but suffice it to say that the story is so rich and fascinating that it is the basis for at least a couple of modern fantasies, notably one by Joan D. Vinge, a two-part science fiction fantasy consisting of The Snow Queen and The Summer Queen.

The Robber Girl provides a whimsical counterpoint that was quite unexpected in the Anderson story, and at least one of the modern versions of the story I've read has the Robber Girl in it as well.

We have come to expect fairy tales to be fantasy creations, but in many of them there are morals as well.  Morals of redemption and loyalty are welcome, though one wonders whether children should not be taught that mindless and unjustified loyalty does not make sense.  Loyalty for its own sake was a feudal value that society has done well to jettison.

There are other interesting Anderson fairy tales that make less sense to me; for instance the Little Match Girl.  (The girls are generally little, for one reason or another.  You sort of expect the Snow Queen to be little, but then she would be a lot more sympathetic than she deserves.)  I have to wonder whether there was some sort of hidden political message in The Little Match girl.

Arch, who thought he had a lot more to say about this subject than it turned out in the end...

We need a New Organization

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In a song of the eighties, Huey Lewis sang that he wanted a new drug.  I'm getting very impatient with the institutions and organizations we have today.  Mind you, some of them are awesome: I like Jon Stewart and his Comedy Central, and some of the people in it.  I like Democracy Now, and Amy Goodman.  I admire --I forget her name, but it will come to me-- the anchor on MSNBC.  I liked what the Ubuntu folks were trying to do, and other free software advocates, like Richard Stallman.  I like Toyota (and Honda), the folks who bring us things like the Prius, and the Civic Hybrid, and my wife's hybrid.  But I am getting frustrated by many of the other liberal organizations, because they're getting too comfortable with fighting money with money.  I'm getting impatient with Barack Obama, because he has become very much the compromiser, just a little too easily.

We need to create some new organizations that will apply pressure where it counts.  I do indeed deplore the Democrat organizations that keep wanting to do all the right things, but keep asking for money to do it.  Can you chip in $5 to get Mitch McConnell out of the Senate?  While I do deplore the circumstances that make these folks believe that they need to raise cash to use the same --expensive-- tools that the GOP and its plutocrat sugardaddies use in order to defeat the GOP (and I know that these methods have worked for the Dems for the last several years), but it still frustrates me.  But they're focusing on the politicians, without focusing on the issues.

Let me explain what I mean.

While the well-meaning Democrats keep struggling to elect some poor democrat candidate into some office, tons of used batteries are being tossed daily into the landfills.  But look at this: only disposable pens are available for purchase today.  No matter what you write with, it ends up in the landfill.  Even the extreme Frugalistas on the Internet, who advocate a lifestyle of extreme minimality focus on decluttering their homes by getting rid of everything that they do not need.  But the important thing is to get rid of it responsibly.  "Get rid of all those horrible plastic cutlery," she says, and get metal (or whatever) flatware.  Well, if you've got plastic flatware, you'd better jolly well use it until it can't be used anymore!

I want to see an organization that (1) encourages the manufacture of equipment that uses the maximal amount of recyclable or permanent-material equipment: fountain pens, or ballpoints that use refills, rather than ones that you throw away.  Printers, where the ink comes in a glass bottle.  (Many printers use toner cartridges that are completely recycled.)  Encourage companies that manufacture lightbulbs, who take back their own burnt-out bulbs to recycle.

At present, we have to encourage responsible use of materials at the individual level.  We have to buy wisely, but many of us have limited information about which companies generate more waste, and which companies generate less.  Consumers Union was an organization that advocated all the above, but their liberal staffers often get edged out by some sort of pressure from outside (or, who knows? --inside).  Plastic is the material of choice for manufacturing complicated parts of many products.  But it is possible to be responsible to different degrees about the use of plastic in manufacture, or even downright irresponsible.

I would like to join an organization that (2) encourages the manufacture of garments and shoes and equipment like umbrellas and combs that last longer.  We all know that not all clothing and personal equipment is sufficiently well made to survive one user, and the ones that do are to be found in Goodwill and other used merchandise stores.  So, rather than being a source of cheap products for the indigent, used clothing stores are often repositories of truly well-made clothes for a bargain price.

Planned Obsolescence has been deplored for half a century.  But there is no organization that (3) opposes the principle of planned obsolescence as its principal goal.  This planet CANNOT AFFORD PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE..

It is the habit of most people to laugh at anyone who opposes planned obsolescence and the like.  They say that "people don't like to use old things!  Businesses have to deal with reality!"  Well, here's the reality: either we stop taking planned obsolescence as reality, or businesses will have to face the reality of using garbage as their principal resource material.  The world of Wall-E, it seems to me, is not very far from the future that we could easily get.

(4) We need to organize ourselves into a group that will only buy energy-efficient automobiles.  It is senseless to battle irresponsible automobile manufacturers each of us on his or her own.  We must band together and be a million-strong power block that refuses to buy environmentally bad cars.  A hybrid (A) uses less gas, which is good for everybody, those of us who drive high mpg cars and those of us who drive trucks, and (B) generates less CO and CO2 pollution.  Instead of smiling approvingly at me in my hybrid, guys in big SUV's tend to scowl menacingly.  It could mean that he thinks "Ha.  Another bleeding tree hugger," or he may just be jealous of my shiny new hybrid, which really doesn't cost very much.

A lot of utilities and banks are eager to get their customers to switch over to a paperless agreement, where they send our statements by e-mail exclusively.  But these same companies make their websites impossible to navigate!  I'd like to join an organization that encourages all businesses that conduct their affairs on consumer websites to (5) follow standards of sane website layout, so that customers will have more faith in their ability to find their information on the company website, without having to fall back on paper records.  Recently my electric company claimed that I had called in to cancel my account.  It was with difficulty that we managed to have our re-activation fee waived.  If we conducted our business exclusively on paper, this situation could have never arisen.  How can we have faith in a paperless relationship with this utility if they continue to be flaky about their records?  Nobody wants to go onto a paperless system than I, but in this case, I'd prefer not to do it.  Some US businesses are the least professional in the universe, and still this country deigns to set itself up as the standard of professionalism.  Grow up, people!

[To be continued.]

Living MORE with LESS!

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That was the title of a book I bought (probably second-hand) a couple of decades ago, when I was more excited about the whole business of reducing my footprint, and setting an example for my children and my students.

Let me interrupt what I’m saying to briefly place on record just how much I hate both MS Office 2013, and Windows 8.  Thanks for indulging me!  Ok, back to our program.

D. J. Longacre, in her youth.  She died at age 39.

The book, by one Doris Janzen Longacre, was by a Mennonite, for fellow-Mennonites, where the author justified the entire concept of frugality from her Bible.  Now, I was never a Mennonite; I was brought up in a Methodist household, and in our church frugality was not a guiding principle, but simple living (which is not exactly the same) certainly was.  Our lifestyles were tied to that of the early Methodist Church in England, which was born out of rebellion against the excesses of Anglicanism, as it was practiced then which, I suppose, reflected the Baroque sensibilities of the British upper classes of the eighteenth century.  Dancing, alcohol, gambling, smoking, were all either forbidden or strongly discouraged; simplicity was all.
Mennonites, it seems to me —without getting too deeply into the denomination and its philosophy— takes simplicity a lot further.  A quick read of a couple of pages of the book (which, if I were a Christian of any flavor, would be a wonderful read), revealed that it was rather steeped in not only theology, but the sociology of the Mennonite community, which seems to be, at first glance, concerned to the point of being preoccupied, with its distinctness from its surrounding society.  When I was growing up, the Methodist community was a little similar, and there was a lot of emphasizing that we were not to get drawn into the lifestyles we saw around us.  After all, everything around us was sinful, and all our neighbors desperately needed to be guided away from Sin into the Way of the Lord.

Doris J. manages to communicate pretty much the same thing, albeit in far more diplomatic language.  The Mennonite philosophy is steeped even more than Methodism was, in simplicity in every aspect of life.  If I were still interested in matters of religion —and, quite honestly, I was more interested in social matters from a religious perspective— I would have been fascinated by what the Mennonites had to offer.  Heaven knows that Methodism today has no simplicity to offer; it seems to me that to be a Methodist in America today is to be practically nothing.  The only thing that can be said to their credit about the United Methodist Church in the USA is that it has championed the cause of education, and done it wholeheartedly.  Unfortunately, Methodist educational establishments tend to be primarily for the education of future Methodist ministers, and though they may not actually come right out and say this, the rest of the establishment seems only to serve to give the future Methodist pastors experience in living among, well, non-pastors.

My point is that, if people can’t adopt a simple lifestyle for its own sake, maybe they will do it for religious reasons.  Unfortunately, the minute a Mennonite loses his or her religion, there is a small possibility that they might turn into Donald Trump.  This is a risk one takes in using Religion as a basis for any sort of right thinking and right living.  Fortunately for me (and for Society), when I lost my religion (some time before Michael Stipe), I kept my social and moral attitudes, probably because it seemed to me that religious people only paid lip-service to the spirit of the teaching, and honestly, barely observed the letter of the law, either.

There are a number of different things we could choose to adopt as principles for living.  As an educated man, I think I am obliged to use language carefully, so let’s see what these words are, and what I think they mean.  I’m going to list them here first, right out of my skull, and then check out their meanings just to see if I’m right.  Those of you who like to get just the facts, (like the fellow on Dragnet,) might be frustrated at this fanciful approach to precision of expression, but since I write this blog from a combination of motives, which include your edification and my entertainment, you might bear with me.

No it isn't.  Dolts.

Frugality.  Hmmm.  I think this word means to extract the greatest possible use of the resources available, which by implication means that you might need fewer total resources, but of course that doesn’t really follow.  Think of the story of Esther, which my grandmother was fond of telling.  (If you don’t know the story, it is well worth finding out about.  Esther was one cool babe.)

Simplicity.  Again, I think this means to shun complication.  It is taken to mean also to avoid elaboration, ornamentation, ostentation, embellishment and similar things, by extension.  But the original meaning is worth hanging onto, since there are other words one can use to mean those other things.

Austerity.  This one is tough.  I think the word austerity means to be both simple and to shun showy ornamentation or ostentatious conduct in a social context, as an example, or as a social means to a social end, such as forgoing transportation and walking during an energy crisis, or fasting during a drought, not because one cannot afford transportation, but to show solidarity for those who cannot afford transportation.

Self-denial.  This one is like austerity, but is intended to be a private thing: forgoing various things, or certain specific things for personal reasons.  The objective is not usually to achieve some objective to do with the world outside the individual, but rather to achieve something in the individual himself, or herself.  Of course, a poor mother might starve herself to feed her starving child, but that would not be called mere self-denial.

Ok, let’s see.

What do we have for Frugality?

1. Practicing or marked by economy, as in the expenditure of money or the use of material resources. See Synonyms at sparing.
2. Costing little; inexpensive: a frugal lunch.

Well.  I am disappointed.  The word economy gets close, but the idea of making resources stretch is missing.

What do we have for Simplicity?

1. The property, condition, or quality of being simple or uncombined.
2. Absence of luxury or showiness; plainness.
3. Absence of affectation or pretense.
4. (Not relevant: simple-minded)
5.

a. Clarity of expression.
b. Austerity in embellishment.

 I suppose this captures (and goes beyond) what I was trying to say.  Good.

What do we have for austerity?  Oh, this will be good.

1. Severity or sternness in disposition or appearance; somberness and gravity: the austere figure of a Puritan minister.
2. Strictness or severity in discipline; ascetic: a desert nomad's austere life. See Synonyms at severe.
3. Having no adornment or ornamentation; bare: an austere style.
4. (Economics) reduced availability of luxuries and consumer goods, esp when brought about by government policy.

It is the last meaning that is closest to what I was thinking.  The other meanings of the word have nothing to do with the family of meanings I was trying to present here.

Finally: Self-denial.  The online dictionary gives

Sacrifice of one's own desires or interests. See Synonyms at abstinence.

Enough of that.  This post is running away from me.

I want to come up with a plan for non-religious folks like myself to live more with less: Live More With Less for Non Believers, or LMWLNB.  Holy mackerel, that certainly is a mouthful of alphabet soup.

Let’s pretend that we’re going to write a book with this title.  What would we put in it?

A.  Why ordinary people should do with less.  If you were not driven by the ideology of your particular religion or denomination to be austere, simple or frugal, why would you do it?

It seems to me that there are several reasons.
(1) There is not enough stuff in the world for everyone, unless some of us do with less.
(2) It is always a good time to set a good example to the kids, and few examples are more telling than the example of someone who is willing to consume less.
(3) These days, everything you procure for consumption comes with a whole lot of packaging, and even if you’re going to consume every little bit of whatever the actual product is, the packaging will go to the landfill.  Our objective must ultimately be: nothing in the landfill.
(4) Consuming certain kinds of things —particularly foods— have their own liabilities.

B.  Exactly what are we going to do with less of?

(1) Food.
(2) Energy.
(3) Things that go in the landfill, like paper, and packaging.
(4) Real Estate.  This is a biggie.  People are in the habit of eating up land, mostly for unnecessary things: large yards, businesses, roads, parking lots.  And now: well-pads for fracking.  Ostentatious buildings.  Soccer fields.  Enormous fancy supermarkets.  Houses.  When I was young, I thought it would be nice to get an enormous piece of land, and build an enormous house, in which all my family and friends could come and stay for holidays.  Well, I do have a big house, but nobody comes.  It seems that we must make a bigger effort to get people to visit; but if people want to visit, they would come whether we had a big house or not.
(5) Cars.  When you have a big car, you not only need a lot of gasoline, but you end up also needing a lot of clothes to wear while your driving around in it.  Isn’t that curious?  It’s the same with a house.  You’d think that you can get in your house and hang out without any clothes at all.  But apparently the privacy laws in certain parts of the country require you to be modestly clothed even in your own freaking house, which is disappointing.
(6) Packaging.  Thank goodness some things come with little or no packaging, like a truck, for instance.  (Can you imagine how large a carton would have to be to put a truck in?  On the plus side, the kids could probably build a playhouse with it pretty easily, but forget about flattening it for recycling!  Whoa.

C.  Does this mean, we take all the fun out of life?  This was the thrust of the original book that started me off.  No.  You may have to take my word for this, but trying to do something with limited means is a lot of fun.  This is true in so many situations that one is tempted to make a general principle out of it, but we have to be careful.  But in mathematics, or computer programming, or culinary arts, or graphic art (plain ol’ old-time art), or music, creating something with limited means is actually more fun than using an infinite set of resources.  Architecture is another example.  Theater.  It is an interesting challenge to write a play to be performed by, say, five people.  Some of them may have to play multiple roles, but that simply adds to the fun!

D.  Unusual examples of doing more with less.  The original book was centered around cooking; it was initially a cookbook.  But I envisage a book that one could give a young couple, who were getting married in austere times, such as the present.  The idea of frugality is principally to choose resources that serve multiple purposes.  Be it clothing, or planning your home, or planning your time, making one resource do twice the work is healthy.

We have a dog, so we have to walk her.  There is absolutely nothing she likes more than a walk.  (Unfortunately she was never trained as a pup, and she tends to drag us along, rather than walking to heel like a good little doggie.)  But we combine the walk with any number of other activities: exercise, mailing our bill payments, going to breakfast on Saturday, running to the corner store for a carton of milk.

Those who home-school their kids know that their youngsters need to get together with other children on a regular basis, as part of their social development training.  But combining that with exercise, or play, or artistic activity, or music, is a natural thing to do.  And, as a bonus, it is invariably entertaining.

If you were born into a family of limited means, such as I was, you would realize what a blessing it is; it seems to me that to be born to wealth is misery.

A poor child learns to shop for clothes with great imagination.  A poor adult can draw upon those experiences to make the more complicated decisions about what clothes to invest in for all the activities you may need to take part in.

I was recently informed that most women never wear a party dress more than once!  I had heard this often, but I put it down to an urban legend.  But now that I am more aware of what is going on, it seems true: women may as well buy disposable party dresses.  It makes more sense if the dress were to be edible, especially since the morning after the party, you’re normally not in a mood to fix breakfast.  We really need a dress than can be shredded, microwaved, and eaten for breakfast!  Inventors, where are you?  Note: do not jump to the conclusion that my own family follows this pattern.  My wife has been known to wear the same dress for several parties.  But it usually undergoes subtle transformations that extend its useful life.

At a higher level, city planners have to learn to create multi-use spaces.  They have to encourage more creative uses for the facilities they do have.  For instance, our town has a band-shell that seems to get used maybe five times a year.  Why not more often?  Why not a rock concert put up by local kids?  Why not theater?  A magic show?

E.  Creative recycling of materials makes enormous sense for children.  We should encourage kids to make greeting cards out of old calendars, Halloween costumes out of things lying about the house, recycling old clothes to make new ones---that was a good one when I was growing up.  I learned to sew on my grandmother’s ancient Singer machine.  Many of my friends are surprised to learn that I can sew.  (I helped my daughter make her Senior Prom dress.)  But leave alone guys, girls are growing up unable and unwilling to sew.  This is sad, not only because buying all your clothing at the store is a huge expenditure that takes money away from all that extra cholesterol you could be buying instead, but because sewing is actually a lot of fun!  As is cooking.  As is gardening, I’m told, but I just have a brown thumb, and I tend to forget that plants need water.

There are tons of toys that are entertaining, inexpensive, and which can be used for other purposes once they have been used.  Making Christmas tree ornaments, for instance, is quite entertaining.  At the moment, our collection of ornaments is small, but we’re determined to add one ornament a year, and no more.  We must think seriously about actually making the ornament ourselves.  (I’m talking about our own little family.)

[I just Googled "frugality", and got an eyeful.  There are dozens of websites that encourage and coach people who want to get into frugality and minimalism in a maximal way.  Those of my readers who have a stronger constitution and want to jump into the deep end of the frugality and minimalism pool might think of doing that, but it can be very off-putting to be told that a little frugality doesn’t really cut the mustard.  But, fairly soon, we’re going to have to do that.]

Something to think about, eh?  Wishing you all a happy end of the Summer, and a good Fall season!

Arch

[Added later, 2013/8/27:]

I started this blog post with the intention of elaborating far more on these points, but I somehow got sidetracked.

Personally, I believe that frugality is going to be a much greater part of the lives of concerned citizens in the future than it is now.  As I have been at pains to explain above, this most definitely does not mean a lower standard of living, in the most enlightened sense of that phrase.  (I also do not mean citizens who are concerned about their bank accounts exclusively, but rather citizens who are concerned about the future of their world.  This would leave out a large number of those who we normally label conservatives, though ironically, while the rest of us are more preoccupied with the conservation of the parts of our environment that cannot be artificially restored, conservatives are blissfully unconcerned with anything that would get in the way of business.  This naive trust in the efficacy of business, and Capitalism generally, marks most so-called conservatives.)

Perhaps those last few remarks should not have been parenthetical.  The greatest threats to the well-being of the vast majority of citizens of the planet come from business, and I’m going to expand on this idea.

Business, as it is understood now by most conservatives, has been used as a means of dividing the real problems of society.  The so-called business model (about which I know nothing good, really), is to cut up everything into separate packets, each of which tries to make as much profit as possible.  But the cost is measured in terms of cost to the business concerned, which means that it will be revenue to some other business.  So, in its very nature, the business model is one where everything is relative, and the cost is most certainly relative.

So how do they make their profits?  How can the sum of all businesses make a profit?  Someone has to be the loser.  Either businesses make money out of nothing, or there is a hidden source of revenue somewhere.  Marxists have contended that the wealth is created by the labor of workers, whereas Capitalists (i.e., the Business World) maintains that wealth is actually created by the ingenuity of businesses, who create value out of practically worthless raw materials.  But very early in the twentieth century, it became clear that whoever controlled the raw materials would control the wealth, and the political power.  Later in the same century, it began to emerge that it was rather whoever controlled the labor would control the wealth.  By the end of the century, a new factor emerged: who was controlling the information and the technology?  Finally, who was controlling the energy? sd

It is certainly confusing, but confusion is the delight of economists and business.  The less people know about where wealth is coming from (and where it is, at any given moment), the happier business is, except for very young businessmen who are desperate to make a show of affluence.  We can conclude, somewhat hesitantly, that Business uses energy or labor, and natural resources, to influence the flow of purchasing power in various ways.  There is no such thing as wealth, really; it has been replaced by purchasing power.  The Arab States and the US use oil to gain purchasing power (yes, the US has a lot of oil), and the US purchases wars to gain more oil, with which to get more purchasing power.

Conservatives and the Business World view frugality with great alarm.  Why?  Because it is bad for business.  If people stop buying, business will slow down, which slows the flow of purchasing power to business.  Modern Western society has come to depend on escalating consumer demand to be its engine.  In other words, just to maintain the running of Western society, (and now Chinese and Indian society as well), the using up of the environment, the destruction of the wildernesses of all five continents must actually accelerate.

Since I, for one, am vehemently opposed to this, it follows that I am opposed to business, and so I heartily embrace anyone who embraces frugality.

Stop building new homes.  Repair old homes, and make them work for you.  Anyone who clears new ground for a new home deserves our strong condemnation.

Buy only new vehicles when your old ones cannot be repaired.  (Luckily, we are told, automobiles are supposedly the commodities that are recycled most efficiently.  I’m not sure whether to believe this, since I have seen junkyards containing literally a hundred acres of junked cars.)

Wear old clothes.  Shop for clothes at stores such as Goodwill, and American Rescue Workers, and Salvation Army.  Clothes that survive one wearer are practically guaranteed to be of superior construction.  Many women’s clothes bought off the rack today are fit for wearing only once, my wife assures me.  She recently attended a wedding wearing a dress she brought at Goodwill, and I was exceedingly proud of her.

Pick up litter, and dispose of anything in a responsible way.  Picking up after wild teenagers is frustrating, but litter attracts more litter, and litter can ultimately destroy a neighborhood.

Recycle your books promptly.  I myself own several hundred volumes that I will never read, and I am intermittently depressed that the longer I keep them, the less use they’re going to be to anybody.  I’m too lazy, and my wife is too busy to think of an imaginative way to get them out where someone can read them.  (I had better do it before we are faced with a generation that doesn’t have the vocabulary to read the books.)

If you have records, listen to them now before you lose your hearing!!!  What a tragedy that would be.

Support local businesses.  Many local businesses are an entirely different sort of animal than national chains.  If you think about it, a local bookstore is simply a warehouse that has decided to select books that its patrons might find interesting.  They buy the books cheap, and sell them at a profit, but if you did not see the book on a shelf at the store, you would probably not buy it.  If we all did all our shopping online, though, the bookstore would cease to exist, and would be the end of the employment of several people.  Similarly, a grocery store, or even a supermarket, does provide a service.  Many of them recycle food that isn’t selling quickly enough, by preparing it partly, so that you can take it home and complete its preparation into a meal.  These half-prepared (or even completely cooked) meals are usually found at the extensive Deli sections of the supermarket, which are effectively now cafeterias.  When I say businesses, I mean industries, brokerages, energy companies, chain stores, all sorts of businesses that are never satisfied to maintain a steady level of business, but insist of expanding.  We will always need stores.  But we probably do not need WalMart, which seems bent on putting up a new outlet every five minutes.  Business expansion is destroying our world.  Remember, you read it here.  Business expansion, and the politicians who facilitate it, are the enemy. It is just like a cell in your body.  For normal body function, cells multiply, and in that way, replace cells that die.  But some cells stop everything except multiply like crazy.  Similarly, initially businesses concentrated on manufacturing products that people needed, and getting it out to the customer.  Today, businesses go far beyond.  They manufacture products that are already being manufactured by others, which results in more of a product than can be used by anyone.  They put other businesses out of business.  They try to convince people who may not need the product to become customers.  They trick customers into buying their products by changing their descriptions.  They promise one thing, and deliver another.  They pay low wages.  They influence government and subvert the legislation process to frustrate the will of the people.  They transport revenues offshore to avoid having to pay taxes.  But most of all, they use up energy irresponsibly, and pollute the environment.  They consume the planet to make a profit.

Arch.

Empty Pews: Some Surprising Weaknesses of Cool Churches

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I am not personally concerned about this phenomenon, but some of you must be.  A little insight is emerging about it: at least one writer thinks he (or she) has a handle on what might be contributing to young people leaving the church.  Leaving the church is a manifestation of a number of different things, but a minister is looking at it from the point of view of “ministry”:  What are we doing that results in kids leaving the church?  That’s what they’re asking themselves.  For Ministers, of course, keeping people in church is the main business they’re interested in.  You can read the original article here, but I have de-churchfied the ideas for you, to make it less repugnant.

In the bad old days when I attended church, it was a community of people of all ages who participated in a variety of activities throughout the week, peaking on Sundays, for obvious reasons.  To my (admittedly peculiar) mind, looking back, the most valuable aspect of being a member of the Church culture was that you belonged to a community that shared certain values, and which enjoyed certain activities that might not make sense to the wider society, either because they didn’t subscribe to the bases of those activities (the Bible, etc), or because they felt they would not be welcome at those events unless they agreed to become members of the church, and pay their dues (which was largely true; money has always been a big deal in the church).

To a certain degree, activities were age-segregated.  Sunday School was for little kids.  When one was too bored by the structure of Sunday School, one graduated to Youth Fellowship, which met regularly once a week, but often at other times to play Ping Pong, or Bible Study, if the minister could talk you into it.  Often, the Youth Fellowship got persuaded to join the Choir, which, unfortunately, was considered the domain of some very old ladies, and some rather embarrassed older gentlemen.  Ladies in their thirties had the Women’s Fellowship, and were involved with flower arranging, and fixing food for church events, while adult men were pretty much in charge of everything else.

Presently, it became common for churches to deploy Youth Ministers to exclusively handle the ‘problem’ of Youth.  The Youth had to be put through the Confirmation procedure (a Protestant invention; for Catholics, I believe, the First Communion event is a lot more routine, and involves less serious indoctrination), and as times changed, the Youth had to be given special Events: Youth Services that were conducted exclusively by Youth, which were initially barely tolerated once in a while, but gradually became weekly events in every church.  It had finally come to the point where the Youth had their own services, while everyone else had their service at a different time.  This was the point at which, some observers believe, the whole thing went to hell in a hand-basket.

The actual fine mechanism is not clear; the statistics seem to show that the youth who have attended a church with a special youth program leave the church in greater numbers than the youth in churches that do not have a special youth program.

The article also deplores large Mega Churches.  In these churches, in which the weekly sermon becomes a major occasion for charisma and oratory, the Sunday services are more entertainment than humble worship.  It appears that most Christians are being told less and less about the true implications of the teachings of Jesus, the ways of the so-called Christian Life, and its roots in the sayings of Jesus and the disciples and the First Century Christian Community, and instead being coached to consider society as a hostile environment, and taught to consider the particular Church to which a person belongs as an endangered species that desperately needs total allegiance.

The author of the article concerned seems less interested in the psychological reasons (or even the so-called ‘spiritual reasons’ for the phenomenon), but rather looks at the statistics, and suggests that pandering to the kids’ preference for a ‘Cool’ church ultimately leads the kids to leave the church for whatever reason.  Note: the writer also seems to think that correlation is the same as causation.  It just may be that something about the nature of the communities in which special Youth programs are considered essential might also be conducive to loss of faith (or at least, loss of membership).

At least to me, the reason seems to be clear:  the Cool Church is no longer cool for adults; the concept of Cool is a tiresome thing for older people, and the rich interplay between intelligent adults and eager youth is entirely absent in Cool churches.  An age-stratified coolness is doomed to failure by its very nature.  To belong to a church means to belong to a community that requires a certain amount of toleration for the preferences of others.  There has to be give and take, and honestly, there is some satisfaction in a moderate degree of accommodation to the needs of others.  The only thing that has to be held in check is the tendency of the very, very old to hold the church in thrall to stale old principles and traditions that are not really related to the needs of the church or its so-called ‘mission’.  To the extent that the minister in charge could moderate the influence of the senior citizens, and their death-grip on all church institutions (such as choirs and bible studies and various subgroups), the church governance would be representative of the community at large, and the representation of various age groups would be proportional to their population.  But this extreme of slicing up the church into sectors of various age-groups that never meet all together except on special occasions appears to be a strategy that provides temporary comfort, but is ultimately doomed to reduce the numbers in the church.

Mega Churches

Meanwhile, we know that “ministry” has become a specialized occupation, and theological seminaries are approaching their work with the attitude of business schools.  They’re likely to counter the charges of over-accommodating Youth by saying that this is a very different World today than the World of the past, where youth would participate in the activities of either adults or kids.  In this brave new world, young people insist on their own areas, times and places not polluted by either the very old or the very young.  Youth Ministry is now a specialized area of work, just like malpractice law (they will claim).  Unfortunately it is impossible to counter any arguments that take that position, since by definition this world is different from the world of five minutes ago.  If a Youth Minister claims that the youth of the last five minutes need a different ministry than the youth of ten minutes ago we are helpless to refute his claim, but it is still open to question whether the particular approach he was trained with in seminary is one that will work.  The effectiveness of the approach must be justified both by its results and by the principles of Christianity and Christian morals and ethics, and educational principles too.  Heaven knows that educational principles have not held up very well;  schools of education have not done much better than seminaries in preparing teachers and administrators to deal with their work.  Unfortunately, of course, educationists are just as likely to reject any criticism from outside their discipline, while from within their discipline they can justify almost any course of action, since standards of demonstrating effectiveness in the discipline of education are notoriously dubious.

It seems to me, though I am a perfectly happy atheist, that the reason that actual believers leave the church is because it is, perhaps, no longer a place where the faithful can comfortably and rationally discuss the religious basis for their morality and their search for justice among like-minded people, without being bullied by sundry special-interest groups within the church.  There is still a need for a functioning church; young parents, anxious to bring up their children in a religious environment, still need a spiritual home.  But Cool Churches probably do not provide that.  I’m too uncomfortable inside a church to actually go and check it out.

Arch

“”‘’—

Look on the Bright Side!

“”‘’—
Heaven knows, I’ve never been accused of being a Polyanna.  (If you don’t know the reference, you should see the Hayley Mills / Disney movie of that name.)  Nevertheless, there are a whole lot of bright sides to practically anything we could want to complain about.

We are in rather a bad recession, we’re just emerging from two expensive wars, the economy is in bad shape, and Congress has succeeded in doing almost nothing except prevent President Obama from dealing with the problems that face the country and its people.  But, for those who care, the so called National Debt is actually said to be shrinking.  I wish I could tell you more, but I think this is one of those things that is difficult to get a handle on, because the fabulous National Debt could mean different things.  It could be (A) the amount by which actual government expenditure exceeded the revenue (money the government made from taxes and other levies).  This should actually be called the amount by which the National Debt is Growing.  [The National Debt] could also be (B) the difference between Government expense and revenue as a fraction of the Gross Domestic Product.  It could be (C) any of the earlier quantities adjusted for inflation.  It could be (D) any of the earlier quantities, together with the interest we owe on it.  In any case, some authors insist that it is growing faster than ever before, and others insist that in the past year and a half, it has shrunk.

We certainly are fighting wars, but to some extent the personnel deployed in the battle zones are outsourced to companies like Halliburton, some are security companies that have been hired to protect various parts of the operation, which is both an advantage, and a disadvantage, because the conduct of those personnel does not fall under US martial law, and their position under various conventions might be open to question.  For instance, if they are caught behind enemy lines without uniform, can they be considered spies?  The US taxpayer does indirectly pay for them (and they are quite expensive), but at least they are not the young people who sign up for the army, and I can’t bring myself to care about them as much as I do about the enlisted troops.

The rate at which unemployment has fallen since October 2008 is much faster than the rate at which jobs increased in all previous major economic crises.  (Again, I don’t know where to look for this data, and I’m relying on White House information.)  In addition, by next year, even the unemployed will have the opportunity to sign on to medical insurance, which the unemployed in years gone by did not have.  The Republican Congress has been busy with a massive campaign to discourage the people from taking advantage of buying health insurance when offered, which would make the insurance higher for those who do, because the insurance companies must make a profit, and they will only make a profit on those who buy insurance.  (This is the contradiction in the position of the Republicans.  They insisted that the Insurance Industry must be a player in Health Reform, but they don’t want to work with the Health Reform plan they insisted upon, for political reasons.  They worked with the Insurance Lobby when writing the law, but continue to subvert the intent of the law.  To be honest, it was a different set of Republicans who cooperated with the Democratic majority in 2009, when the law was put together.)

Today, we have a crisis in education, with kids doing badly in US schools.  But remember: (A) they are only doing badly compared with the rest of the world, which is trying very hard to be better than the US.  But, let’s face it: it isn’t too difficult.  Also, (B) our kids have to deal with parents who are spending more time at work than they did in the fifties, for instance.  Women are out working, too, which means they are not at home, helping kids with their homework, etc.  But think: the parents of our kids today are far more likely to have a high-school education than their parents were.  Unfortunately, parents today are probably more likely to have forgotten practically everything they learned in school.  (C): most kids are finishing school today; the dropout rates are low.  (D) kids have instant access to factual information on the Internet, if only they know enough to see though fake information.

Look at TV.  We’re seeing a ton of junk on practically every channel, in contrast to the highly predictable junk we used to see in the seventies, for instance.  TV executives are not the smartest fries in the Happy Meal, but  they’re beginning to figure out how to make money without delivering the real goods, which is what people learn in Business School.  So there is a lot of junk, and a lot of people mindlessly watching the junk.  But I see several silver linings in this particular cloud.

Some of the programs available today are really good.  I wish I could steer you to them, but I’m not at a TV long enough to learn where to look.  All I know is that I do see amazingly good shows, usually when they’re on YouTube.  Just the other day, my wife showed me a really funny program that used to air on MTV in the bad old Beavis and Butthead days; it was called Daria.  I think there was even a live-action movie based on that animated series, but I only saw the trailer.  So, the take-away: there is good stuff on Cable TV, but you have to look hard for it.  If your idiot friends (or spouses) have control of the remote, you’re out of luck.  There is no bright side to having stupid friends.

There have been two appallingly bad Presidents of recent times: the Bushes, pater and fils.  But, on the bright side, we have elected not only an African American for the first time in US History to be the President, but an articulate, elegant and persuasive man.  Furthermore, we’re very very likely to elect a truly effective woman President in 2016, though we may have to endure a vituperative and vicious election season.  If Chris Christie wins the Republican nomination, and if he and Hilary Clinton run a civil race, despite the disgusting rhetoric that certain segments of the population are wont to indulge in, I will be happy, and I will say: I am ready to die; Swing low, sweet chariot.

We have learned, painfully, that it is not the extramarital sex enjoyed in the White House, but the state of the country and the laws that are passed, and the way they are enforced, how programs are funded, and the quality of judges that are appointed that reflect on the quality of a particular Presidential administration.  Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter were two of the greatest presidents that this country has known, but Republicans work day and night to denigrate their records.  We do not know, but as far as we can tell, the Republican presidents have had far less exciting private lives in the White House than the Democrats.  One wonders why, though, all this furious Republican continence has not accompanied real gains for the country!  A White House Conduct versus National Progress chart, if one could make such a thing, would look very confusing.

Culturally, it will appear to most Baby Boomers as though the music available today is terrible compared to the music that was being played in the earlier part of the last century.  Certainly the popular dances of the old days seem more graceful and fun to watch than the jerky Hip-Hop dances we see on YouTube.  Perhaps Hip-Hop is fun to dance; I wouldn’t know.  But Ballet is alive and well, but not a lot of people attend the Ballet.  Ballet companies across the country are in trouble, as are the big orchestras.  We have to do something about this.  There is no lack of rich individuals and corporations who would support such things as Ballet and Opera and Classical Music, if only they were confident that people wanted them to continue to exist.

The big problem is with the lack of leisure time, and the energy to enjoy it when we finally  have a free moment.  Unless we turn to solving the problem of lack of leisure very soon, our society will unravel.  On the other hand, the things most people do to unwind after work are uninteresting, uncreative and dull.  This is a big problem.  Our culture consists now mostly of playing complex electronic games, and watching reality TV, and we need to be saved from this.  There is no lack of creative talent out there; we know that.  But it isn’t being managed and promoted in a way calculated to improve and develop leisure time activity.  The almighty dollar is skewing things a lot more destructively than it did in the previous century.  Why is this?  Perhaps because there are a lot of no-talent businessmen with insatiable appetites for money, who have got a lock on all sort of businesses.  Business today is good for nothing but business itself.

Young kids today are definitely brighter than any previous generation, but they do seem to degenerate into boring teenagers far more rapidly, even if the rates of degeneration vary wildly from family to family and locality to locality.  Admittedly, any given person has less insight into what any other person is doing than ever before, because there is such diversity in our modern society, so a lot of what I’m commenting on is based on very incomplete information indeed.  (This increase in diversity is another manifestation of Entropy, the increase in randomness, which in Physics serves to describe the phenomenon that extremes in temperature gradually give way to a uniform warmth, and ultimately at the end of time all matter will be at a uniform temperature, and all processes will come to a halt.  You ask: is it temperature differences that drive processes?  The answer is: Yes.)  Undoubtedly, there is a lot of wonderful stuff going on in various backwaters of America, but there is just too much going on for anyone to recognize enough of it.  TV, which in the past showed us ourselves, has stopped portraying the typical family or community, and focuses on portraying what they deem to be the most interesting to watch, which of course are the most outlandish.  Someone must tell them to stop this.  PBS, arguably, shows the least exciting, but the most heartening material.

Ultimately, we’re in a position of having to take on faith that good things are happening out there.  We know some things are better: homosexuals and minorities have a larger say in what happens; even the highly conservative Supreme Court has come out in support of certain progressive reforms.  The Democratic Party is still in business, and its supporters are a lot less complacent now than they were a decade ago.  Still, the expenses of getting decent people elected to public office are totally unreasonable.  Lobbying reform, campaign reform are all desperately needed.  The tendency to get lobbyists to write laws on behalf of Congress is very distressing indeed.  There are numerous accusations that the Insurance Lobby wrote large portions of the Affordable (Health) Care Act.  This could be taken to mean that members of Congress simply do not have the expertise to write effective legislation.  On the other hand, the accusations might simply stem from the fact that Congress permitted the Insurance Industry to participate in writing the proposed legislation to lessen the suspicion of the Insurance Industry that it would be hugely negatively impacted by it.  Why they need to be reassured, I don’t know; they have surely fleeced the population for long enough.  I would not be surprised if there have to be further reforms in Health Care in the coming years; this first step was, in my own mind, an experiment.  It might not have been intended that way, but it will certainly show the Conservatives just how little the Insurance Industry can be trusted with the common good.

One thing I’m not in favor of is the Democrat insistence on maintaining the looseness of voter identification requirements.  True, lots of blacks and senior citizens don’t have photo ID.  But look, what century is this?  How hard is it to get a photo ID?  If you have no way of establishing who you are, how are we to deal with your dead body if it shows up in a morgue?  Our whole society depends on getting things to the right people.  Be it food stamps, or a package in the mail, we need to know that you are who you say you are.  I’m with the GOP on this one.  I know it is a matter of politics to be against voter ID reform, but I believe it is better to spend some money in getting everybody dependable photo ID than to keep the laws allowing anyone to vote without satisfactory proof of who they are.  It is probably worth the money spent to get ID for people who can’t afford to do it themselves, than to spend it on TV spots for some loser Democrat who will probably turn conservative once he or she gets into Congress.

It is very difficult to get intelligent, cooperative, energetic people who can think on their feet to run for office as Democrats.  All those who are interested in running for office seem to be conservatives.  This is a major problem.  But the youngest generation, those just out of college and those going into college right now are far more liberal than they have been for many years.  We have to keep our message out there: the Democrats have a lot to offer, and this is their time.

[2013/8/14]
My older relatives deplore the spread of e-books.  (To be honest, it isn’t the very young who read e-books, but folks in their fifties or forties who buy these devices; we can only hope that the younger people will read more eventually.)  But look on the bright side: literally millions of public domain books are being put online by public service projects.  Since these books are out of copyright, their authors (or their representatives) are no longer interested in publishing them, so they do not get printed, for the most part, except for really hugely popular books such as Treasure Island.  Some of these books are not worth reading, but many of them are.  They would not be available conveniently if not for e-books. I urge my readers to save up, and buy these e-readers, and read these public domain books!

[To be continued.]

Fritz Kreisler — Immortal, and Soon to be Forgotten!

—“”‘’

I sometimes panic, thinking that some of the great names from the past: musicians, writers, thinkers and scientists, will be gone, to be forgotten with the rest, to quote Rudyard Kipling (a case in point).  In some cases these names are gone because the folk alive and doing today just don’t have need of them.  In other cases, there is great need of their thinking and their work, but for various reasons they weren’t brought to the limelight when this generation was paying attention, and so they have been missed.  Young people today have such a huge host of noisy contenders for their attention that the oversight can be easily excused.

Fritz Kreisler (‘Fritz’ is a diminutive of Friedrich; you can look it up) was at one time the best known violinist in the world; he presided over the musical scene of Europe and America for many, many decades.  We can safely say that Kreisler probably tripled the number of people who enjoyed music in the classical tradition in the early twentieth century.

The music associated with Fritz Kreisler is small-scale music; the pieces he introduced to audiences, usually around the size of a large drawing-room (a Salon, as they were called), were around 3 minutes long, in other words, about the length of a modern-day pop song.  He extracted popular tunes from operas and borrowed from folk songs; then he looked around for small pieces and movements written by other composers, both well-known and less well known.  Finally, he made up his own imitations of the work of other composers after they were safely dead, and introduced spurious works by Handel, Couperin, Tartini and others.  This writer (Blair Sanderson) puts it very well: “Fritz Kreisler was one of the most beloved violinists of the 20th century, universally known for his Liebesfreud and Liebesleid, and a quantity of other popular encore pieces. Yet Kreisler was also an industrious arranger and clever pasticheur, who sometimes composed attractive works in the styles of Baroque and Classical composers and gave them false attributions, though more out of a wish to amuse than to deceive.”  If you continue to read, you get the impression that Kreisler’s fame is mostly alive, and mostly well, but in my opinion it is now limited to a small circle of music aficionados, who are relatively a small proportion of the general population.

Let’s begin with Leibesfreud, Love’s Joy, one of Kreisler’s own compositions, and introduced as such from its origins.  Anyone who likes such music as Pachelbel’s Kanon is sure to like this piece, and I’m also fairly sure, many others of Kreisler’s pieces.



Remember, this is Kreisler himself, and recording technology of around 1930.  If you want to hear a modern recording, played by Itzhak Perlman or Joshua Bell, it is relatively easy to search for them on YouTube.

Next, let’s see whether Liebesleid (Love's Sorrow) is on YouTube ... ah, here is Itzhak Perlman, with a wonderfully simple rendering of this melancholy tune:



If you look, you can find a performance by Anne Akiko Meyers that raises the emotional level of the piece to that of great tragedy.  Well, that’s interpretation; you’re allowed to put a certain amount of spin on a piece.  I think it was originally intended to be a foil for the former piece, to present both the joys and the sorrows of love.

Schön Rosmarin (lovely Rosemarie) is also well known.  This recording is by Zino Francescatti.  (It seems like a good idea, while we’re at it, to introduce you to some of the most famous performers of the past; I’m regarding Kreisler in this post as mainly a composer.)




The bowing technique used heavily in this performance is called spiccato, where the violinist gets a very disconnected sound by almost bouncing the bow off the strings.  It is an advanced technique, in that it takes a lot of control to do it evenly and well.  (If any budding young violinist you know uses this technique appropriately, be sure to praise them well!)

Talking about disconnected, the generic term for it is, of course, staccato.  Spiccato is a technique only available to bowed string players; but you can even do staccato on a piano, or organ, for that matter.

A well-known piece by Antonin Dvořák, called Humoresque started out as a piano piece, but was adapted by Fritz Kreisler as a violin piece for his many concerts.



Here next is a performance by one David Nadien, a name I’m not familiar with.  Notice that the piano part influences the character of the performance a good deal, and here we seem to have a very good pianist.



Mr Nadien has borrowed many little mannerisms from Fritz Kreisler.  Performers of Kreisler’s era were well known for introducing little mannerisms that added to the attractiveness of a solo performance (but of course were completely out of the question for using in an ensemble).  Itzhak Perlman remarks on this phenomenon in the DVD The Art of Violin, and he observes that many experts dismiss these mannerisms as mere tricks, but, he says, so many of us would love to know how to apply them!  So though Kreisler could be accused of making a relentless search for an endearing style of violin playing, he was a great violinist in many ways, establishing a style of playing that held sway for at least half a century.  When the authentic movement sought to return to a style more appropriate for Baroque performance, a good part of what they had to break away from was the style established by Kreisler, especially regarding vibrato.

Caprice Viennois



The performer here is Christian Ferras.  His phrasing is very reminiscent of Kreisler’s own.

If a violinist is reading this, don’t forget that the most highly regarded cadenza for the Brahms Violin Concerto was written by Fritz Kreisler.  This concerto is an amazing piece of music though it is by no means a showpiece for violinists.  Paganini is famously known to have refused to play it, because there were no tunes in it for the violin.  But Kreisler decided to play it, (or was promised a vast sum of money if he would play it, possibly) and decided to write his own cadenza.  It stood as the most tasteful and balanced cadenza for many, many years, and is so to this day.  If you listen to Jascha Heifetz’s cadenza written for his performance of the Brahms, you will see how much it was influenced by that of Kreisler.

Fritz Kreisler wrote scores of pieces, and performed hundreds of them.  He lived just at the time that television and film and music recording tape were coming into common use, so there are lots of recordings, audio, and platter (and even some video I believe, but I could be wrong), of Kreisler’s performances.  Keep a lookout for it.  And if you see a collection of Kreisler pieces performed by a modern violinist, it would be a good bet for light listening, and great to play for the edification of very young people, while they’re engaged in jig-saw puzzles, or what have you.

Archimedes