SmokeSound

It stands there all winter, a dwarf, dwarfed by the huge, long limbed trees of the neighbor, while our Canadian friends send cold air down to meet the moist air, in our backyard, heaping scorn on the sturdy little fellow. I admire its tenacity, its unbending intention to be a tree. Politically, I am certain the little fellow is a liberal, trying to live and let live, not understanding why all trees need to stand tall and assert themselves to be the biggest, best, toughest trees in the universe.   But I am letting Sister Sarah and Our Belle Michele and those Arizona Rough Riders get to me, again!  I do admire diversity!  

The Common Loon is the official state bird of Minnesota.  Common Loons are also our official state politicians.  That is the reason we are debating whether to make Common English the official State language.   Minnesota Talk is what most people use, up here, but there are more recent immigrants who have not yet learned Minnesota Talk.  Even people who are bilingual, who know both Spanish and English, for instance, or Hmong and English, or Somali and English, have trouble understanding Minnesota Talk, so the legislature is proposing that all of us should learn Common English.   I don't know!  If Minnesota Talk was good enough for Paul and Silas and St. Olav and all those Scandinavians who brought their Norwegian and Swedish hymnals with them from the Old Country, it seems to me that we should tear down all those bi-lingual signs that make it easier for people to understand what is going on, and just get on with our lives, you know, then?    ...

I am not sure everybody should own a woman,   just as I am not sure everyone should own a skidloader.   Both are difficult to control.   No one knows that better than religious people and right-wing politicians.   Even the people-- especially the people--who want to keep government  out of our hair, are compelled to turn to government to control their women.   Skidloaders--you know, those Bobcat things you see on job sites, spinning around, lifting muck up and dumping down somewhere else--are difficult to control, but you really don't have to pass laws to control them, as you do with women.  Maybe just a few laws, like keeping them off the freeway:  that's all.   Planned Parenthood, for instance, has to be stopped in its tracks, or women run wild and plan parenthood.   That's a man's job!  The House of Representatives knows that, and wants to defund Planned Parenthood.  In South Dakota, somebody proposed a law to allow...

Rep. Paul Broun (AP Photo/Gregory Smith) This is the ordinary face of a lamentable man.   His name is Paul Broun, and he is a congressman from Georgia. Our Georgia.  Not that one in Europe. He was asked, in a town hall meeting, "Who is going to shoot Obama?" and he just replied that people were frustrated, all right. John McCain is a political fool for asking Sarah Palin to run with him during the last election, but when one of his misguided supporters said that Barack Obama was an Arab, he stopped and said, "No!" When someone told Paul Broun that someone needed to shoot Obama, Broun admitted there was some frustration, all right.   It does not matter what one's political opinions are:  human decency demands that Broun should have stopped, right there, and said that talk of assassination, just talk about assassination,  had no place at his rallies, nor anyone else's.  That is not acceptable:  period! "The congressman just moved o...

I have been arguing that, if you want to understand politics, you should start with family structures, particularly male-dominated families.  Until fairly recently, almost all families have been dominated by husbands and fathers.  In the Judeo-Christian-Muslim traditions, families were a reflection of God himself (sic!).  Men decided, ruled, dominated, and they should do that with care, concern, and firmness.   Such families are autocratic.  Our traditional political structures have been autocratic:  clan and tribal leaders, kings, emperors, bishops and popes.  Even the clergy have admitted women to the ranks of the holy and the wise only partially, and reluctantly.   The husbands are the deciders.  They are the heads of their households, providing the livelihood, making the major decisions about where and how to live, protecting their property and their charges, and giving or selling their daughters to some other male.  Such husba...

I don't know whether the Hampton Town Hall is real, or an owner's joke.  It stands beside Highway 52, in a field, reminding us of the way we have taken to get to our democracy. We have come through the family: autocratic families.  Strong fathers who provide for, and rule over, their families.  Fathers who give their daughters to other men, to found other families. Autocratic politicians are nothing more than traditional autocratic husbands and fathers, writ large.  Kings are just autocrats wrapped in divine rights and splendid clothing.  Many families, and much of politics, is still autocratic.  There are benevolent husbands and heads of state, and despotic fathers and rulers.  The New Testament admonition to families is not to equality, but for the autocrat to be kind, and the wife (or wives) to be thankfully subservient.  Some families are still like that:  consider your church, or Promisekeepers.  Some nations are still like that...

Conservatives hear their father's voices.   The strict family father was the Decider.    (I wonder whether George W. Bush, who called himself, "The Decider", had a strict father whose authority was not to be challenged.)   Strict fathers tell us what is right and what is wrong, and they enforce right and wrong.   "Discipline" is a big word in families with strict fathers.  The kids are supposed to learn discipline;  that is to say, to internalize right and wrong.   The good prosper, those without discipline fail:  they deserve what they have coming.   Strict fathers are like football coaches.   "Strict discipline builds character," they tell us, so they are strict.  Coaches are often like the head of a household, especially heads of religious households.  The father loves his kids and his wife, but ultimately, he is the authority.   Families with discipline, teams with discipline, win games.   The game of life. ...

I think of this as a two-shear bolt and bent-blower day but, of course, it is still snowing:  there may be more. The city has not yet come through and buried our driveway with snow they have to put somewhere.  The truth is that the drivers try hard not  to fill our driveways, but with a foot, or a foot-and-a-half of new snow, they have their own problems.   I think of today as the day when I may go to jail for attacking the first person who smiles and says how nice it is to have all that dirty snow covered up. New snow as a way to get rid of old snow is insanity. I am prepared to allow only septuagenarians  who shovel their own snow to say right out loud how much they love the seasons, else I shall pay  the city snow plow driver to plow their driveway full. I am, at the moment, not interested in colored leaves, or catching sunfish at the lake.  There is not a shred of evidence that grass will green again, or even exists. Winte...

My good humor is often saved by not being a believer. Right now, for instance, the weather report is that we will get 15-20 inches of snow today and tomorrow. I don't believe it--see above--so I shall not despair. It is true that it has begun to snow-- I just heard Mari say,  "Boy, it is snowing a lot more now!"--but the flakes are small, and they are blowing sideways, so they will probably  end up somewhere over the hill.   Another foot or two of snow is an absurd idea; hardly to be taken seriously.  The ice dam up on the roof has not even properly gone away.   This does put a lie to all that balderdash about climate change, doesn't it?  The climate is not changing!  It is just getting worse! The ice is melting  up in the Arctic, for pity's sake!  How can that explain all the moisture in the air down here in Minnesota; you know, snow up the kazoo, the threat of more overflowing rivers, and budget deficits?  I don...

Here you are!  This is how the U.S. Government spends our money! Let us take seriously the need to get our budget back into balance; that is to say, to get our income to match our expenditures.  Some things will not make much of a difference.  Those things are all grouped under Physical Resources.  General Government expenditures are also large, but not compared to Human Resources and Military spending. More specifically, there are three areas we can cut, realistically:  Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, and the Military.  The other thing we can do is to raise our income. Our military budget is larger than the combined military budgets of the next fifteen largest countries, combined! Do we really believe that old people should have their pensions trimmed back, and their health care reduced? Do we really believe that we are the only industrial country in the whole world that cannot provide universal health care? We need to do two big things:...

You see, we here in Minnesota are not just a one-horse state.  We have both Michele Bachmann and Mike Beard. Our Belle, Michele (not that other Michelle!), is busy hunting down anti-americans in Congress, and heaping scorn on that other Michelle (the one with two "l"s, in the White House, who said something just awful about breast feeding; something like it being a good thing, which Our Belle, Michele, said was another sign of a government takeover of women's things, or something). Our Beard, Mike, from the other side of town (Shakopee),  has not yet expressed an opinion about breast feeding, so far as I know, nor even about anti-americans.  Our Beard is just brimming with good news.  God, he says, has provided us with unlimited natural resources.  "We are not going to run out of anything!" Old-time Minnesota--the Minnesota we used to have before Our Beard and Our Belle and Tiny Tim Pawlenty--passed a moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plant...

Before the concert began, Mari leaned over toward the pleasant-looking man at her right and said something pleasant about the entire pleasantry.  He looked straight ahead, not having heard her. Later, over the crescendo during the first movement, I heard the woman to my left purring her way through something playing in her nap. The concert was enjoyed by all, variously.

On Valentine's Day, Mari and I went to hear the Dakota Valley Symphony.  It was their 25th anniversary concert.  They were pretty good but, of course, they have been practicing for twenty-five years. The guest pianist from Italy--Roberto Plano--was superb but, of course, he has been practicing for twenty-five years, too.  Mr. Plano practiced harder than the orchestra.  It is true that I did lurch, involuntarily, a time or two, but those were just reminders that playing in an orchestra is a rare and hard-earned gift. There are unfortunate reasons why I am quick to admit that we are not all born equal and that, for some of us, no amount of practice could have earned even the last seat in a section in the orchestra.  Life is not fair, but it works out. The Burnsville Performing Arts Center is a gem!  I sat there, in that fine hall, enjoying the fact that it happens, sometimes, that a musician of Roberto Plano's ability and an orc...

When push comes to shove, God changes sides. Ethics come from our communities, not from our religions.  What we call right and wrong is a consensus of our group.  We lend weight to our opinions by saying they come from God.  Obviously, they don't, because if they did, God would not be offered as evidence for just about everything. For instance, during the American Civil War, almost every American denomination divided itself, north and south, along the Mason-Dixon line; pro-slavery and anti-slavery.  After the Union was saved, most of those same denominations gradually goth back together, again.  Most of them. To the credit of the Quakers, they stoutly resisted supporting slavery, but they had the advantage of not being significantly large.  Roman Catholics were not as indigenously involved, with strong control from outside the country. Almost nobody, today, from any of those denominations would be sympath...

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 divided the States along a line running east and west—the  36° 30' parallel--to delineate between the agricultural, pro-slavery South, and the anti-slavery, industrial North.  The compromise lasted until 1854, when the Kansas-Nebraska Act stipulated that settlers would decide whether their States should be free or slave. It was a time of political reorganization.  A Know Nothing Party was formed to express anger at the new immigrants, particularly Irish Catholics.   Out of the turmoil, the Republican Party emerged, which elected Abraham Lincoln in 1860.  The long-term result was that Republicans pretty much controlled politics in the North, and nationally, until 1932, when the Great Depression overran them.  Democrats dominated Southern States.   Today, the party of Abraham Lincoln dominates the South, and Democrats have moved north.  Even more curiously, it is the Democrats who have elected a Black man to the ...

Democracy is not just the Statue of Liberty, nor our own Constitution. Democracy is France, and England. It is a Parliament, and a Storting, and a Town Hall. Democracy is Egypt today; Egypt, with 7,000 years of history; with Pharoahs, and Caesars, and Despots. Today, democracy is the people of Egypt, and we do not know what it shall look like. We do not know whether the people will have a secular society, or a Coptic Christian/Muslim state, or something we have not imagined. We do not know whether democracy will succeed in Egypt, or whether the military will do what Mubarak did, and prop up an old General to suck the nation dry. If democracy succeeds in Egypt, the Egyptian people will decide what Egypt will be, and we, here, in another democracy, may or may not like it, but it is their nation, and they have tasted what it is to decide for themselves, and it is a sweet taste.. We have the oldest democracy in the world, and we know--or should know--as well as anyo...

We see conspiracies for very good reasons.  For most of human life, people who did not see conspiracies were very likely to be hurt.  It is dangerous to be among strangers, and not watch one's back.  It is no wonder that we imagine conspiracies today, even when there are none. It has been  an aid to survival that we are leery of people who look different from us.  A lone stranger, surrounded by people from another tribe, scarcely had a chance.  We bond, and find security, by dressing alike, speaking the same way, eating the same foods, and sharing social manners. Reality is a social construct.  What counts as real obviously differs from place to place, and time to time, but what counts as real for us is an agreement, and we maintain that agreement in conversation.  Most of the time, it is actual conversation, but sometimes it is what we read, what we hear, what our family drums into us or, much later in history, what we are taug...

Conservative Republicans have invited Donald Trump to address their right-wing convention.  That is good news! It adds a touch of class to what otherwise might be regarded as just a gathering of malcontents.  The Donald brings hair! He brings comb-over, and confidence, and gilded towers! If he does decide to run for the Presidency on the Tea Party Ticket, he should just skip Iowa.  Those Iowans will just ask him about his faith in God and where he goes to church, and that will just sidetrack him from what he can bring to the Presidency:  wives, and girlfriends, and glamor, and gaming.  And if he runs as a Republican, maybe even guns. At last!  A sign that Republicans are getting serious!

FOX News interviewed Republicans in Iowa, of whom a majority were convinced that Barack Obama was a Muslim, or that he was not really an American.   It is of no consequence that Obama says he is a Christian, and that the State of Hawaii has his birth certificate, or that two newspapers reported his birth, at the time.  His middle name is Hussein.  His father was born in Kenya.  The earth rests on the back of a turtle.  Lots of the turtles live in Iowa.   Barack Obama is very clever--one can hear the old lady denying science, again--but it is no good!  "It is turtles all the way down!" Those Iowans are going to caucus and nominate someone to run for the Presidency of the United States, and they believe the earth rests on an endless stack of turtles.   It isn't that they are Iowans.  It is true that Steven King is an Iowan, and that he disproves, by his very existence that Neanderthals not only are a part of the human lineage, but...

I needed gasoline for my pickup, and because it is not a frugal beast, and because fuel prices are rising, I decided to drive a long ways to buy cheap gasoline at Costco. While there, I bought a few other things, in bulk, which is more than we can use but it saves so much money that I could not refuse.  One purchase was a jar of artichoke hearts. Well, not just a jar:  half a gallon. I couldn't get the lid unscrewed. I tried an old Scandinavian trick of rolling it around on a cutting board at about a 45 degree angle.  No luck! I tried an old Washington State trick of beating at it with a wooden spoon. Our old lid opener was too small. I punched a hole in the lid. Finally, for the fifth and last time, I sat down in a chair, clamped the jar between my legs, and used both hands to try to unscrew the top. I take high blood pressure medicine, you know, for moments like this By all the saints in heaven!, I said, or something related to that, ...

I just thought I should explain to you  why I may be quitting my day job,  and moving to somewhere warm. By the most inexplicable of coincidences,  a gentleman in Sumatra, Indonesia, who has  the very same name as I,  has died and left behind $19 million dollars.   Oh, wow!  Wow!   What do you suppose the odds are that there has been another Conrad Røyksund, in Sumatra, and that he died of a heart attack because all the members of his family died together in a tsunami disaster  on the itch December 2004? My own guess is about 19,000,000 to 1.   I do not have the details yet from Esq Thong Kim Wong, or is that Esq Echoing Kim Wong, or is that Bar Chong  Kim Wong Chambers, but I will guess that all I have to do is to send him, or them, a bank deposit number so that they can stuff all that money into my personal account, if I will  just send what little I do have to show good faith and to cover some rela...

One of my earliest memories was of a box-like radio with a great round speaker sitting on top.  It did not work very well. Mostly, it produced magic static, interrupted by an occasional actual radio broadcast, only to be overcome by static, again. Later, better radios brought whole broadcasts. Not necessarily better; just whole broadcasts: Father Coughlin, for instance.  "Cog-lin". Father Coughlin earned the title, "Father of Hate Radio". First he supported Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, even calling it God's work.  Then Father Coughlin and God began to get suspicious about FDR and all those Jewish bankers that Father Coughlin saw everywhere.  Coughlin began to display some sympathy with Hitler and Mussolini. Bad stuff.  Hateful stuff.  By 1938, Coughlin's followers were marching in the streets chanting, "Send Jews back where they came from in leaky boats!"  Back to Nazi Germany. Glenbeck is my Favorite New Convert...

"Should the West fear democracy in the Mideast?" That is about Egypt, of course.  It is a magazine headline. Democracy:  governance chosen by the people, whoever the people are, rather than a form imposed on them. Of course what is going on in Egypt is worrisome, and it does concern us, not because we should try to impose something on them, but because whatever they chose will affect us, too. To tell the truth, I worry about democracy in Arizona, too. After all, the people of Arizona chose Jan Brewer, and John Kyl, and John McCain, too, who chose Sarah Palin. If it becomes legal for students to carry concealed firearms in Arizona, it will be as a result of a democratic process. To speak entirely non-partisanly, every time someone in Congress says something genuinely stupid, or racist, or homophobic, or sexist, I try to remind myself that those people were elected to office, democratically. So if the people of Egypt actually do get a chance to shape t...

Let us speak kindly of George W. Bush and call him "George W.". George W. was a disaster for our economy.  He inherited a massive surplus from the Clinton administration.  George W. spent it all, and a lot more.  He also inherited the goofy notion from the Reagan era that cutting taxes would increase revenue for the government. That only works under one specific, short-term condition not worth explaining here.  Reagan knew that.  He, very soon, started raising taxes.  About eleven times he did so. George W. did a lot of economically irresponsible things. He really, really  wanted a war against Iraq.  We can omit those lamentable reasons, too:  they have been spelled out. But he refused to pay for that war, just as he had refused to pay for the war in Afghanistan, which did not please him as much as the war in Iraq:  Iraq has more oil.  George W. simply spent the money, but never arranged to get the money, anywhere. ...