A Thousand Points of Darkness

Happy Banned Books Week!

Check out this interesting map of book bans and challenges in America. Don't see your hometown yet? Want to put it on the map? Head down to your local library and challenge something. Pick out something you feel like objecting to, or just use this handy list. And thank you for protecting us from books.

It Takes a Graveyard

Neil Gaiman is killing me.

Sometimes, when I read a good book, I am inspired to take metaphorical pen to paper and do a bit of writing myself. “Oh,” I say to myself, “I see what that writer did there. That's great. I'll bet I could do something like that, but make it my own.” Reading, you see, fuels writing.

Then I read Neil Gaiman. “Oh, I say to myself, “that is brilliant. I could never even come close to that.” That's it, pen down, muse drops dead.

This summer I read The Graveyard Book. It has won a boatload of awards, it is brilliant, and yes, I could never even come close to it. And neither could you (unless you happen to be Neil Gaiman, which is pretty unlikely).

Written to be enjoyed by younger readers, it tells the story of Bod Owens, a boy whose parents are murdered, is adopted by ghosts and is raised in a graveyard. That's all I'm going to tell you. The rest you're going to need (and I mean that) to read for yourself. The characters are wonderful and the story is both affecting and exciting. Gaiman takes established elements of fantasy and horror and has quite a bit of fun with them. The prose is suffused with mystery, menace, and magic, balanced by humanity, friendship, and love.

I was pleased to read that the writing of this little volume took Gaiman a long time and was a lot of work. The thought that this was the product of one or two drafts would have been too much to bear. I suppose the encouraging lesson to take from that is that writing is a craft and that if you work at it you can produce good stuff. But it probably doesn't hurt to be a genius too.

Other Owls, Number Three – Nite Owl

Okay, so this guy isn't really an owl. But I like him.
This is Dan Dreiberg, better known as Nite Owl from Watchmen by Allan Moore and Dave Gibbons. If you only know Watchmen as a movie, you have missed out. It is one of the best books I've ever read. Nite Owl is a character who resonates with the comic book geek that I used to be. An intelligent guy who becomes what he admires most, a costumed crime fighter. Batman became Batman because of an obsession; to avenge the murder of his parents and to terrify the criminal underworld as he had been terrified as a child. Nite Owl became Nite Owl because he wanted to dress up like a bird and do good, flamboyantly. In fact, as we learn in the book, it is only when Dreiberg is behind his mask and fighting evil does he feel fully himself and fully a man. It's a little pathetic and, to me, touching.
Putting the abnormal psychology aside, Nite Owl is a pretty cool superhero. He's broadly in the Batman mold as has no super-human powers but relies on his brains, an array of amazing gadgets, and a gigantic bankroll. His greatest gadget is the Owlship, which he calls Archie (short for Archimedes, the owl in The Sword and the Stone). One of the greatest rides ever, it flew and floated with no visible means of support, was a good thing to have in a fight, and was a total chick magnet.
So here's to Dan Drieberg, for dressing up like an owl and fighting bad guys. How cool is that?

That Old Time Religion

One of the intriguing things about reading the Bible is the very ancientness of it. It's a little glimpse into the life of a vibrant, interesting tribe of people as they lived thousands of years ago. That alone would make it a fascinating read, even without the fact that it is the most influential book in western civilization. I've been thinking about the Book of Psalms lately. Imagine singing psalms in the Second Temple. Some of them would have been contemporary. Some of them had been sung hundreds of years ago in exile in Babylon, and some would have been sung hundreds of years before that in the First Temple. You would have felt connected by song, ceremony, and ritual to your whole community, the living and the dead going back more than a thousand years.

I wonder what those ceremonies were like. Had you been in Jerusalem, say 2200 years ago, what would you have seen and heard in the Temple? We'll never know for sure. What was the music like? How did they dance, play, and sing? What were the rituals, the gestures and actions, the stagecraft, if you will, of faith? The psalms themselves sometimes give us tantalizing little clues.

Psalms 75, 76, and 77 include instructions at the beginning like “To the leader: with stringed instruments,” “according to Jeduthun,” or “Do Not Destroy.” The meaning of the first one is obvious, the other two might be something like saying “to the tune of . . .” My favorite bit of instruction is in Psalm 118. This one has what many scholars consider to be a textual error. It's going along normally when the poetry suddenly stops making sense. Check out verses 26 and 27:

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD.
We bless you from the house of the LORD.
The LORD is God,
and he has given us light.
Bind up the festal procession with branches,
up to the horns of the altar.

Those last two lines don't make any sense. They are singing the name of the Lord, blessing someone “from the house of the LORD,” that is the Temple, and then, what? What do those two lines mean?

Did you ever read a play? You'll notice that the dialog is interspersed with written stage directions. This is likely the same thing, but in this case a bit of liturgical direction has gotten mixed into the verse. It looks like a transcription error, a biblical boo-boo. Read it this way and you can try to imagine what it must have been like. The choir is singing, blessing the one who comes, probably with a festal sacrifice. They sing that the Lord has given us light. Perhaps one of the priests stokes up the fire at that point. Then the priests would bind the sacrifice to the altar. The song continues:

You are my God, and I will give thanks to you;
you are my God, I will extol you.

Which seems an appropriate verse for a sacrifice.

Interesting isn't it? Those two odd lines might just be giving us a glimpse into a ceremony that was centuries old when Jesus was born.

There are a few other psalms that I find particularly intriguing. Psalm 6, which is sung with stringed instruments; “according to The Sheminith,” whatever that was, is a lament and a prayer for healing. The first seven verses recount the psalmists miseries and ask God for help.

I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
My eyes waste away because of grief; they grow weak because of all my foes.

Suddenly, everything is different.

Depart from me, all you workers of evil,
for the LORD has heard the sound of my weeping.
The LORD has heard my supplication; the LORD accepts my prayer.

What happened between those two verses? I wonder if there was some sort of ritual done at this point to indicate God answering the prayer. Something we can only imagine but can never really know. The psalms were not dry literature or poems quietly read, but an integral part of a vibrant religious service.

Can you hear the celebration of Psalm 150?

Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with clanging cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals!

This was a loud, singing, dancing, fervent musical of a sabbath.

Not all of the psalms were quite this joyful. Psalm 51, for example, clearly comes from the time when the people of Israel were captives in Babylon. The Temple of Solomon had been destroyed. The traditional sacrifices could not be made, the traditional rituals could not be performed.

For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a Broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

It ends with a prayer that the Lord will allow the sacred city of Jerusalem to be rebuilt so that He would again “delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings.” The people yearned for the rituals of their fathers.

Who can blame them? Imagine singing and dancing in the Temple, the spiritual home of your people, the physical nexus of your covenant with God, when number 100 is the song of the day.

Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth.
Worship in the LORD in gladness; come to him in singing.
Know that the LORD is God.

It must have been wonderful.

Now Pitching, Ahab

I just saw this over at the NYT. Literary baseball t-shirts – absolutely must have. They're not taking orders just yet, but I can wait. Perhaps a Thoreau or a Poe for me and a Prynne for my friend.

Waiting, Flying, Waiting

Oh man am I pooped. I've been on a business trip this week. Those things always tire me out, but the killer was the ride home. My second flight of the night was supposed to take off at 9:15 and land in Boston around 10:30. No such luck. At about 9:30 someone from the flight deck announced that there would be a delay.

“Aaaaaah, we've got a light on the panel that's not supposed to be on, and aaaaaah, we're having maintenance check that out, we'll see if we can, aaaaaaaah, get underway shortly.”

Something about jet pilots, they all do that aaaaaaaah thing.

Round about 10:00 the stewardess tells us that it is an electrical problem and that they are trying to repair it. If they can't, we may have to get on another plane. Guess what?

“Aaaaaaah, the aircraft has a major electrical problem, the safest way to fix it is to entirely replace a component. That part is in Atlanta, so aaaaaaaaah, we're going to aaaaah, move to another airplane.”

Anyway, we take off about 15 minutes after we were scheduled to land. It wasn't too bad. The passengers took it all with good humor, the stewardesses were very nice, and once we finally got into the air the flight was smooth.

By the time I got back to terra firma the T, our local mass transit system, was running at its absolute slowest. A bus, two trains, and a long wait in a station later, I was back home, at 1:30 this morning. Oof.

By the way, the best leg of the trip was getting to the big international airport that I spent so much time in. I started from a small local airport that is surrounded by farmland. From the waiting room you can see the control tower and two silos. I guess that's why they called it barnstorming. I caught a Cessna out of there. It was less crowded than the jet I would be uncomfortably waiting in later. In fact, I was the only passenger. The view was very nice for a few minutes. Then we got into the clouds. We flew through a little storm. Nothing bad, just some rain and wind. The little plane bounced and and bucked. If it weren't for the seatbelt I probably would have tumbled from my chair a couple of times. It was kind of fun.

I've never been a big fan of roller coasters. You get jumbled around, you experience g-forces, and for all that you end up where you started. In a little propeller driven airplane going through storm clouds you get the jumbled around part, but you don't have the heavy g-force, you get to see the sun streaming through the clouds above, below, and around you, and when the ride is over you're in another town.

It's good to be home. I'm going back to bed.

Requiem

Lynn asked for a story about alien violins. It got me thinking, so I dashed off this little thing.

Tony cradled the instrument in his arms. It fit as if it had been made to rest there. The ship had docked twenty minutes ago and he had been waiting to see the commissioner since he got on board. He could wait.

Caruthers strode briskly into the room. “Congratulations. I see you've had some success.”

Tony looked at him quizzically.

“They gave you one of their violins. That's got to mean something. And linguistics is thrilled by how much more of the language you've worked out. I was right to send you.”

“They didn't give it to me.”

“Oh? You were still the best team for the job. Husband and wife, xenologist and musician. Just the right people to study these beings.”

Tony looked at the violin. He was sitting, the bow on the table in front of him. Caruthers sat down facing him.

“Look, uh, I'm sorry about Judith. How long ago was the accident?”

“Four months. We had only been here six weeks when it happened.”

“So you've been alone here all that time.”

“Not alone.”

“No, of course, you've been with them, the Londi. What does it mean, by the way, their name for themselves?”

“I'm not sure about the translation. The nearest I can come is 'keeper.'”

“I see,” he said, not sure that he did. “Well then, you've made some good progress on the language. Hoboken was particularly interested in their music. Did Judith learn anything much about that before . . .”

“Before she died. No, not really. It was what we focused on at first. We'd listen to them play for hours. Every musician playing a unique tune, all beautiful in their own way, but all clearly in the same genre. Totally alien, but eerily familiar. We'd listen to their performances, solo and in groups, we'd record and play them back, but Judith could make nothing of them. She said that the musical system they use is completely unfamiliar, and very complex, but for all that it is still moving, still beautiful.

“We worked on it for weeks. I moved ahead with basic linguistics and made cultural observations, but everything seemed to center on what we called the violins. After a while I began to wonder how they are made.” He took up the straw-yellow bow and held it over the deep green violin, as if he were about to play. After a moment he put the bow down on the table again. “I had gone to ask about that very thing when it happened.”

His head was bent down, as if he were staring at the table top. Caruthers wanted to interrupt, wanted to get him back on track, but he didn't.

“She just tripped. On a step. A slip and fall. What's the worst that can happen? A bad bruise? A sprained wrist? A stupid little accident. No sense.” His eyes were filling with tears. “We travel hundreds of light years. We put down on an alien planet, live among a new species, only the eleventh intelligent life-form we've found. Exotic, amazing, exciting. We're the couple on the recruiting poster. 'See the universe, discover new life, be a pioneer.' All that, and she dies in a household accident? Why?”

“I don't know Tony. It doesn't make any sense.”

“No. I didn't understand. But the Londi, they seemed to. They understood my pain. In mourning, we finally had something universal, something we both understood.”

“They understood mourning? That was some key to understanding?”

“Yes. They talked to me. They showed me how they make the violins.”

“Good.”

“Beautiful, isn't it? Notice how the deep color lightens as you move up the fingerboard? Look at the way it's shaped. All curves. No straight lines, not a flat surface or a sharp angle on it. It seems to flow, as if it were in motion, even though it is still.”

“Yes, they look as beautiful as they sound.” Caruthers waited for Tony to continue, but he seemed lost in thought. “So, uh, they showed you how to make them?”

“At first, I thought it was just a funerary rite. When we were on Silaris a tribal elder died. They built a fantastic boat with great gray sails, laid him on the deck, and sent it out during a storm. When we were part of the contact team on Trimania we learned that the dead were boiled in a mild acid, cleaning the bones of all flesh. Once every sixteen days for the rest of the year relatives open the tomb and wash the bones. I thought it was a Londi ceremony, nothing more. I was touched that they grieved with me.

“They helped me bury her. A little more than three feet down, no box, just Judith, in the rich, black soil. We buried her slowly, gently, one handful at a time. And right there, right over her heart, I placed the bulb.

“It was a little violet thing, half the size of my fist. When the all the soil was in place, we watered it. Tears, of course, but more. Her grave was like a mud pie.” He smiled slightly at the thought.

“Some sort of symbolism perhaps? Water of life?”

“I thought the same. Even in mourning, even then, I was still a xenologist. But no, not symbolic. Practical.

“In a few days the plant sprouted. It grew surprisingly fast. In a week it was a meter tall. In two, it began to twist. They showed me how to tend it, how to direct the growth so that it finally grew into the proper shape. This shape.”

“The violin? The instrument is grown? Any craft work? Whittling, cutting, sanding? What about the strings?”

“No. When it reaches it's final shape the stalk is cut, and that's all. The strings grow right where they are. You have to tend it carefully to make sure that they grow where you want them, but they do grow.”

“And they grew it over the grave. Why?”

Tony didn't answer. Not at first. He picked up the violin, the neck in his left hand, the base of it pressed against his chest. He took the bow in his right and drew it across the strings.

He had never been particularly musical. Not like Judith. Judith loved music, and she was good at it. But now he played, and the music was wonderful.

Judith had been a sad and lonely little girl. Alone much of the time with a drunken father and an emotionally distant mother, she had escaped into her studies. In her whole life she had never seen a happy marriage and didn't think they existed. Then she met Tony. Tony brought joy, enthusiasm, and unconditional love into her life. Her adult life was as different from her childhood as a lake is from a desert.

In time she felt that something was missing, something she needed but couldn't name. It was Tony's idea at first. She had never wanted, never dreamed that she would want to bring life into the universe. Now she knew. She wanted to be a mother. She wanted to make a baby with Tony, to have the family that she never had before. It would be soon, they would start right after this mission. They would take a leave to start their family. She loved the child, yet unborn, not yet conceived. The image of it was her great joy.

All this, all this and more, was in the music that came from the violin. Caruthers had only ever met Judith in passing; he barely remembered her, but now he felt all this, her joy, her pain, her dreams, her love, her yearning, hopes, prayers, tears, and desires. It was all there, in the loud, soft, soaring, simple, rich, vibrant music that Tony drew from the violin.

Caruthers thought of himself as a hard man, a tough man. He wasn't used to crying, certainly not in front of other people, but now he did. He looked into Tony's eyes as the music ended and he felt the man's loss.

“The music, it's . . .” He wasn't sure what he was going to say.

“It's their souls. The Londi play the souls of their dead, all their lives, and long after.” For a long minute he held the instrument close to him, then raised the bow and began again.

Divided We Fall

Today Barack Hussein Obama, a secret Muslim from Kenya, began his plan of indoctrinating American children in the tenets of radical socialism and laid the groundwork for a Hitler Youth-like mobilization of our kids.

That would be a funny sentence, if only you couldn't hear pretty much the same thing being said in seriousness by rather a lot of my fellow Americans. I just want to pause for a moment and ask something.

What the hell? Seriously, what the hell has happened to people? The President of the United States wants to speak to school children about the value of education and hard work. How can this be controversial? He is our chief of state. He speaks for our country. Whether you agree with him on the issues or not, whether you even like him or not, he deserves respect and polite deference. It is, or used to be, the American Way.

Back in the 1950s there was a children's TV show called The Small Fry Club. Every weekday host Big Brother Bob Emery would lead kids in a toast (with milk) to President Eisenhower. Once upon a time our youth were taught about courtesy, respect, and good citizenship. In time this practice declined. With it, I fear, so has America.

Back in 1988 President Reagan spoke to a group of school children. His talk touched on such issues as free enterprise, open markets, and low taxes. The speech was broadcast to schools around the country on three different days. There were no protests, there was no controversy. The leader of the free world wanted to speak to children. It was only right and proper that he do so.

Things stared to go sour back in 1991. Then President George H.W. Bush spoke to America's kids urging them to stay in school, stay off drugs, and don't become hoodlums or whatnot. America, on the whole, thought nothing of it, naturally enough. But a few political leaders of the opposition criticized him for his “political advertisement.”

As the 90s wore on things got worse. The right absolutely hated Bill Clinton. They threw every bit of mud they could scrape up at him. It was nasty. But I didn't think that American civility was dead. In my naivety I thought this had more to do with Clinton being the type of man that he was than any serious change in the “American Way.” Clinton, after all, played hardball politics harder than most and made a lot of mortal enemies. Since he was a flawed human being with a penchant for lying and obfuscation, he became a pretty easy target and a polarizing figure. I thought that once he left office things might revert to normal.

Silly me. During the Bush Administration the concept of civility and polite deference to the president died an altogether ugly death. Bush was a monkey, Bush was a Hitler, Bush was evil, stupid, venal, traitorous, and America's greatest enemy. He was either behind the 9/11 attacks or knew about them in advance and did nothing to stop them. In a few cases anti-Bush hysteria reached levels of criminality. Bush campaign headquarters were vandalized. People were intimidated. Tolerance for people with different points of view was no longer a virtue. It was a weakness.

But Bush too was a polarizing figure. Perhaps, I thought, when he passed from the scene things would calm down. Obama came into office as an inspiring figure, the best communicator to hold the job in twenty years. The problems we face together are serious. American political debate has always been passionate, vigorous, and acrimonious, but now, I thought, the madness can come to an end.

And again, silly me. Anti-Bush fervor sowed the wind. Now we reap the whirlwind. Those who said that the president stole the election have been replaced by those who say that the president is not a citizen. Those who said that the president allowed 9/11 have been replaced by those who say that the president has a secret pro-Islamist agenda. Those who said that the president was a fascist have been replaced with those who say that the president is a socialist. And those who said that the president is a new Hitler have been replaced by those who say that the president is a new Hitler.

It is the ultimate in hardball politics and demagoguery. Anything that the other side does is not simply wrong; it is evil, stupid, or both. American politics is now a zero-sum game. Anything that could be counted as a win for one side is a loss for the other. Can we compromise? Impossible. What is best for America? Insignificant.

Who says that it's time to back off from the precipice? Laura Bush, for one. What really got me thinking about this (and breaking my own rule about political blogging again; perhaps it is time that I admit that it is a silly rule) was this editorial in that radical lefty rag, Forbes:

Call me naïve, but I believe that Americans ought to accord their president a formal, ex officio respect, irrespective of party affiliation. He is, after all, the president of all of us (whether we like him or not), and it is unseemly that we should withhold civility from him on grounds of political disagreement. As things stand, no blow seems low enough, no criticism off limits, if the president happens to be from the other side. The pursuit of happiness has given way to the pursuit of picayune point-scoring.

I'm beginning to think that it is too late. Crazy days are here to stay. A demand for fairness, moderation, and civility does not seem to be building up in our country. I see a growing dissatisfaction with politics and a desire to reject both parties, but I see nothing to replace the current model. The leaders of the right will stop any serious medical insurance reform so the left can't score a win. The leaders of the left will demand prosecution of officials from the former regime (and guess what will happen when the balance of power shifts again?). Their followers scream at each other and occasionally come to blows. And nobody seems to care that they are fighting in a burning house.

August 32

Did you have a good Mootday? We sure did. The traditional Mootday Breakfast of cold cereal and milk was enlivened this year with the addition of dried raspberries. And there was much rejoicing.

The annual discussion of a possible Mootday Parade was glorious. Several bands were discussed, including one fairly exciting high-stepping troupe of youths, as well as the famous Top Secret Swiss Drum Corps and at least one band that featured a cello section. Ragtime and klezmer musicians would be included. There would be acrobats and a guy on stilts, but clowns were to be excluded. This ban extended to professional politicians.

After the parade people retired to their front porches, where lemonade, iced tea, or good beer was consumed. Some chose to stroll through the park and sit on the grass. Ice cream vendors nearly ran out of cones. Jimmies were plentiful. In the evening diners, clam shacks, and roast beef joints were all crowded with hungry celebrants. The relative merits of fireworks were discussed. Most agreed that the ones that look sort of like chrysanthemums were pretty.