In the midst of trying to sound profound and thoughful during the past week, I haven't posted anything about my new niece who was scheduled to arrive last Thursday. As it turns out, she turned around or did a flip or slid over or did whatever it was she was supposed to do in order to eliminate the need for the scheduled c-section. Instead, my sister-in-law is now scheduled to be induced tomorrow, September 18. This would make baby Rachel a New Year's baby. I plan to drive to Chicago Friday in order to say hello.

The American Conversation has become a soliloquy. While most of us are, I think, still trying to get our hearts and minds around the reality of what happened on Tuesday, our media and national leaders are taking swift action. Latching on to quickie polls and our justifiable desire to DO SOMETHING, we are, in the words of the President, “at war.”

Congress passed a joint resolution authorizing “all necessary and appropriate forces” with just one dissenting vote. ABC News tells us to prepare for war while every screen on CNN is labeled “America’s New War.” Wednesday, Senator Zell Miller (D-North Carolina) spoke for nearly all Americans, "I say, bomb the hell out of them.”

As much as such language gives us confidence in our nation and our leaders, it is time for us to begin analyzing such rhetoric intellectually as well as emotionally. When we begin to look beyond retaliation and start thinking about tactics and strategies, this “war” becomes a daunting, nearly overwhelming task. From the most basic questions of who, exactly, our enemy is to how we will successfully defeat them, we face a number of a number of difficult questions. And even if we are successful at finding a guilty-enough enemy, what do we envision the world will look like at the end of this war?

Our lengthy “War on Drugs” should serve as an important lesson about the difficulty of waging war against an international, multifarious foe.

In the presidential debates, here’s what George Bush described as his criteria for the use of military force:

Well, if it's in our vital national interests. And that means whether or not our territory -- our territory is threatened, our people could be harmed, whether or not our alliances -- our defense alliances are threatened, whether or not our friends in the Middle East are threatened. That would be a time to seriously consider the use of force.

Secondly, whether or not the mission was clear, whether or not it was a clear understanding as to what the mission would be.

Thirdly, whether or not we were prepared and trained to win, whether or not our forces were of high morale and high standing and well-equipped.

And finally, whether or not there was an exit strategy.

I would take the use of force very seriously. I would be guarded in my approach. I don't think we can be all things to all people in the world. I think we've got to be very careful when we commit our troops.

Clearly, our national interests are a factor here. And I have full confidence that the American military and American people are prepared to do whatever it takes to win a war.

But what is the mission? What is the end result?

I don’t in any way mean to suggest that military action is not appropriate or that we should not go to war in this situation. I haven’t had a chance to grapple with that. But we are failing our own values and our history if we engage in such action without a thoughtful debate and discussion about where we’re headed and what we hope to accomplish.

Yes, it is important for America to speak with a single, authoritative voice to the world. And it is important for us to take action against those responsible for this horrendous assault. But a conversation about how best to do that is essential for us to avoid a purely vengeful, costly mistake.

Unable to get my hands around the reality of Tuesday's attack, I find myself grasping onto little side-stories. Nuggets of information that I can actually process and understand. Yesterday, I was most struck with news from around the world regarding this disaster.

.: Perhaps the most dramatic respresentation of our close relationship Britain is the fact that an estimated 100 Britains are among the dead. Our best friend and strongest ally is also apparently a significant victim in the attack.

.: In yesterday's paper there was a photo of a prayer-vigil held in Albania for our country. The Albanians, who for generations have lived lives far more dismal and unhappy then most Americans can imagine, were praying for us.

.: Despite our miserable relationship with Cuba and the fact that we continue to restrict nearly all trade to the island, the Cubans still offered to provide what meager medical supplies they had to help us. An equally remarkable statement was made by the citizens of Russia who, after years of protesting and demonstrating in front of the US Embassy in Moscow, lined the building with flowers.

.: While I will never know who Maria-Garcia Portas is or what she does in Madrid, her simple letter to the paper yesterday brought tears to my eyes.

To the Editor:

What a tragedy! I am with you, America. I weep for you.

MARIA GARCÍA-PORTAS
Madrid, Sept. 11, 2001

.:Finally, Helena Cobban offers some tempered thoughts on how we should respond to Tuesday's disaster. While most of us aren't nearly ready to get beyond the understandable gut-reaction of vengeance, it is still valuable to be reminded that our response could be the loudest statement in 50 years of what America truly values and how we view justice.

One of my favorite Bloom County comic strips features Opus or Steve or somebody being shot into space. When asked to comment on how the planet looks he says, "It's really really big. Like a giant globe. It's just really . . . really . . . big." In the final panel he turns around and says something like, "We really need to get some poets up here one of these days."

I mention this because yesterday, of course, is a day that only poets can describe. Sean rightly pointed out that one of the president's lines sounded like empty political rhetoric. Of course the whole speech was empty rhetoric. As were the statements by congressional leaders, tv anchors, analysts. We were all grasping for words that always came up short.

Hatred
by Wislawa Symborska

See how efficient it still is,
how it keeps itself in shape -
our century's hatred.
How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.
How rapidly it pounces, tracks us down.
It's not like other feelings.
At once both older and younger.
It gives birth itself to the reasons
that give it life.
When it sleeps, it's never eternal rest.
And sleeplessness won't sap its strength; it feeds it.
One religion or another -
whatever gets it ready, in position.
One fatherland or another -
whatever helps it get a running start.
Justice also works well at the outset
until hate gets its own momentum going.
Hatred. Hatred.
Its face twisted in a grimace
of erotic ecstasy.
Oh these other feelings,
listless weaklings.
Since when does brotherhood
draw crowds?
Has compassion
ever finished first?
Does doubt ever really rouse the rabble?
Only hatred has just what it takes.
Gifted, diligent, hard working.
Need we mention all the songs it has composed?
All the pages it has added to our history books?
All the human carpets it has spread
over countless city squares and football fields?
Let's face it:
it knows how to make beauty.
The splendid fire-glow in midnight skies.
Magnificent bursting bombs in rosy dawns.
You can't deny the inspiring pathos of ruins
and a certain bawdy humor to be found
in the sturdy column jutting from their midst.
Hatred is a master of contrast -
between explosion and dead quiet,
red blood and white snow.
Above all, it never tires
of its leitmotif - the impeccable executioner
towering over its soiled victim.
It's always ready for new challenges.
If it has to wait awhile, it will.
They say it's blind. Blind?
It has a sniper's keen sight
and gazes unflinchingly at the future
as only it can.

So I was going to make some snide remarks about the fact that Wednesday will be declared Loni Anderson Day here in Minnesota while Friday was Jim McNerney Day in South Dakota. However, I thought this breaking news from Aberdeen was even better then both of those stories combined.

Back in Microeconomics 501, we talked about quotas. Specifically, the sugar quota. You see, we here in the United States pay much more for pure sugar than we should. Here's how our textbook described the problem:

In recent years the world price of sugar has been as low as 4 cents per pound, while the United States price has been above 25 cents per pound. Why? By restricting imports the U.S. government protects the $3 billion domestic sugar industry, which would virtually be put out of business if it had to compete with low-cost foreign producers. This has been good news for U.S. sugar producers. It has even been good news for some foreign sugar producers---those whose successful lobbying efforts have given them big shares of the quota. But like most policies of this sort, it has been bad news for consumers.

But the fact that this is bad news for consumers (in economic terms, increased deadweight loss) is only part of the picture. Because sugar costs so much in the United States, most of the sweet stuff you and I consume isn't made with sugar at all. It's made with corn syrup. Which means that the largest and loudest proponents of sugar quotas in the United States aren't sugar producers . . . they're corn producers.

Messing with the market almost always has unintended consequences.

I was thinking about this when I read the cover story in today's Star Tribune, which provides an overview of the just-like-making-sausage-process used to craft our farm bill. Farm subsidies and agriculture policy in our country has gotten so turned around, that we actually pay Glen Taylor, the owner of the Timberwolves, $230,000 a year. While farm subsidies were supposed to be phased out by 2002 they have instead ballooned to $26 billion.

Of course, as conservative representative Gil Gutknecht says, these aren't handouts or a safety net. "The term I like to use is 'shock absorber,'" Gutknecht said. "I don't like to say 'safety net' because it sounds too much like welfare." And we certainly wouldn't want to confuse cash payments to poor farmers with cash payments to poor city dwellers.

I don't know why I got the 9th in my head as the day I started blogging. I mean, it's not too hard to drill down and find the very first entry around here and it's not very hard to read the bold, orange text that reads, "Tuesday, September 05, 2000" (which is most certainly NOT Saturday, September 09, 2000). But for whatever reason, I had the 9th on my mind and put it on the upcoming events column and wrote a little anniversary post which I have now finally figured out is four days late. So here’s what I wrote for today, even though I should have posted it Wednesday:

Wow. It sure doesn’t feel like I’ve been doing this for a full year, but that’s what the calendar says. For the most part, I’m pretty pleased with what’s gone on around here. Sure, the copy editor could have been a bit more thorough and I probably could have taken better advantage of my recent moment in the blog-of-note box. But for the most part, I’m proud of the content and the writing and the fact that I still do this (almost always) for me.

And the fact that this is for meis precisely the reason that I have spent significantly less time on this site (and online in general) during the past six weeks. My life has been changing in a lot of positive ways, and I’m spending my time in other places. In the last three weeks alone, I’ve seen three live performances, joined a health club, reconnected with lots of dear friends, spent evenings assisting the local high school marching band and gone to work forty thirty-five-ish hours a week. The time it takes to do all that stuff has to come from somewhere and for better or worse, it’s come from here. Hanging On has slid down the priority list for me and in general I think that’s a good thing. To me, it means that I’m finding more opportunities in my daily life to talk about the things that I write about here. It means I’m beginning to pay attention to other aspects of my well-being that are important.

There are a few things I try really hard in my life not to say. I try not to use curse words. I try never to refer to work-life balance. And I try my best to avoid saying, “there wasn’t enough time.” For me, that’s an excuse for not prioritizing, for not making difficult decisions. We each have all the time in the world and the hard part is figuring out how to spend it. It would be pretty easy for me to tell you that I haven't blogged much lately because I haven't had time. But that would be untrue. I haven't blogged much lately because I've chosen to do other things.

Some people claim there are still body parts inside the charred remains of the factory. The roof is caving in, the windows are broken and vines have begun to overtake the structure. If you didn't know what they were, you might not know how to make sense of the sooty hand-prints that are still visible on a tile wall.

Twenty-five people lost their lives in this building when a fire spread through the factory. When firefighters finally arrived, they found dead bodies huddled against the door which was covered with the foot prints they made trying to kick it open. They were unable to open the doors because they were locked from the outside. Locked by the owner of the factory who thought they might steal from him.

As much as we'd like to think that this kind of worker tragedy is relegated to the third world or to unenlightened times, the reality is that these 25 workers died ten years ago yesterday in Hamlet, North Carolina. Twentieth Century America.

Eventually, the man who ran the factory served four years in prison and was fined $800,000. That's about 58 days and $32,000 per death. He's alive and free today.

If you find yourself wondering why we celebrate Labor Day, why OSHA still exists, why unions still have a place in our modern economy, you need look no further then the 25 names etched in stone in Hamlet.

Spent the afternoon ploughing through my reading pile. Here's what I found:

.: Yesterday's article in the NYT Magazine about Nathan Lane could easily be written off as a pretty lame bit of self-absorbed, celebrity whining. But I for one found it quite good. I guess I thought Lane's story was more universal then the usual "oh-my-riches-don't-make-me-happy" stories.

.: So they have released the final voting tallies from the election. (And in case your curious: No, I still haven't come to terms with our presidential race, but that's not what this is about.) Turns out that Minnesota had the highest percentage of eligible voters who actually went to the polls. (Although, really folks: 68.8 percent ain't exactly something to celebrate.) Even more interesting were the rest of the states rounding out the top six voting rates:

1. Minnesota, 68.8%
2. Maine, 67.3%
3. Alaska, 66.4%
4. Wisconsin, 66.1%
5. Vermont 64.0%
6. New Hampshire, 62.5%

If I worked here or here, I'd probably write a headline like: "Snow improves voter turnout!" or "A New Civil War? Northerners outvote Southerners!" or "Shark attacks depress voter turnout!"

.: On Sunday it occurred to me that the New York Times sports editor is very very gay. How else to explain the stunning eight by ten color photograph of Andy Roddick gracing the cover of Sunday's national edition? How else to make sense of the delightful pic of 19-year old Landon Donovan who is shown, not playing soccer, but merely putting on his shoes? Not that I'm complaining.

.: My love/hate relationship with Fast Company continues apace. Found an interesting article from the September issue that includes an excellent discussion about the shortcomings of the "new" economy to deliver proper customer service. The participants do a terrific job of diagnosing the problem, "This is my take on the customer experience: underwhelmed, overpromised, underdelivered, excessively high expectations." and a lousy job of offering any solutions, "Find the biggest pain point, and then go to work to reduce it." Oooooooh! That's what we need to do!

.: Neat. Cash in your scrap miles for crappy magazines.

Lynsey: Ohmigod! It's like porn.

Eric: Like?

That's right boys and girls, Lynsey and I headed off to see The Car Man and last night and lemme tell ya, no matter what flavor of sex wets your whistle, you'll find it in this show.
-- Shirtless, eventually naked men: done.
-- Hot, passionate, man-woman coupling: check.
-- Good old fashioned two-boys-in-the-back-of-the-car: we gotcha covered.
-- Playful shower scene with snapping towels: no problem.
Want something a bit rougher? How about a prison sex scene? Or an adulterous affair that leads to . . .< cue music > . . . MURDER!

Although that makes this sound like a sordid bit of X-rated titillation, the show is, in fact, a remarkable work. The Car Man is a dance. But it feels much closer to musical theater. Think West Side Story without the words; Stomp without the equipment. The music is based on George Bizet's opera, Carmen (Carmen . . . Car Man . . . clever, eh?) arranged by Rodion Shchedrin and Terry Davies for strings and percussion. The story (original to this production) follows the residents of Harmony, a small American town, who are "drawn into a spiral of greed, opportunism, sex and murder."

To me, Bourne's choreography feels much more real then what little other dance I've seen. For years I've gone to ballets and always felt . . . nothing. I mean, sure I could appreciate the incredible athleticism and understand the remarkable talent of the dancers. But as a whole, the movements always seemed to be in a foreign language. Aside from the most basic of emotions, I have never learned to appreciate, to decipher, what most classical ballet is trying to say. I always wanted the dancers to go away so we could listen more carefully to the orchestra. Bourne's work is much more literal and passionate. It's contemporary and staged with modern costumes (tight jeans and white t-shirts have rarely looked better) rather than dance tights. I understand this language of movement.

Which is not to say there isn't artistry or subtlety in the work. The scene where both Lana and Angelo are lost in their separate, individual loves for the same man is stunningly beautiful. Luca's transformation from preppy wimp to hardened prisoner is nuanced and poignant. Most important, we believe in these characters and understand them. The Car Man, like Bourne's earlier Swan Lake, is crowd pleasiong, flashy and dramatic. But like all great art, it tells a tale we can all relate to and expresses the emotions that most of us are pathetically inept at describing.

Miscellaneous
.: So Nathan hasn't been blogging much because he just started Law School. For my part, I haven't been writing/posting much since I just finished school. The grass is always greener, eh?

.: In addition to the fact that I'm now required to actually be at a specific place and time doing specific things for eight-ish hours a day, I've also been taking advantage of life in the big cityies. On Saturday, Sara and I saw Amadeus at the Guthrie which was just delightful (more on that later). Sunday was spent getting together with all 4.9 million of my long-lost Minnesota friends at the State Fair. Monday after work A Crazed Fan and Mrs. Fan invited me to join them at the Lake Harriett Bandshell in order to see Brio Brass. Yah sure youbetcha it's good to be back.

.: I'm shocked."For cable and satellite television service, it seems that customers have been largely overlooked . . . .As companies scramble for market share and continue to stretch their resources by large investments in technology, there seems to be a corresponding lack of attention paid to the customers. Price is perceived as high and quality as poor."

.: A Crazed Fan and I have been spending a good deal of time discussing Gary Condit's public relations disaster and so he (ACF, not Condit) sent me this interesting piece from City Pages. While the cheap shots at the PR profession are worthy of discussion, I think the most interesting nugget from this story regards the news media. "One study, completed in the mid-Eighties and cited in the Columbia Journalism Review, found that 45 percent of the stories in sampled newspapers 'either came verbatim from PR releases or with perfunctory additional reporting.'" Given the reduction in staffing at most newspapers, I'd hazzard a guess that the percentage of "news" stories lifted directly from press releases has only increased in the last decade.

.: And you think I spend too much time complaining about the President's economic policies.

The mail finally started catching up with me on Thursday after my move to Minnesota. Although a bit dog-eared and crumpled, the September Atlantic arrived mostly intact.

Last night I read Cullen Murphy's short piece on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) attempt at preserving the "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity." This is a by-product of the better known, World Heritage Center which goes around awarding nice plaques to various important world sites like the Statue of Liberty and Stonehenge. In this, it's first year, the list includes the 'cultural space' of the Semeiskie people in Russia and the music of the transverse trumpets (also known as Gbofe) of the Tagbana community in Cote d'Ivoire. The MOTOAIHOH listing raises all sorts of interesting questions, not the least of which is who, exactly, gets the lovely plaque and where, exactly, said plaque will be displayed. Murphy proposes that the white lie and the weekend would also make fine award recipients, although personally I think greed and guilt have had a stronger impact on our human condition.

Actually, the whole magazine this month was quite excellent. In addition to the Rwanda piece I mentioned last week, there's also an extended excerpt from Garrison Keillor's latest book and James Fallows work on early admissions to college. Meanwhile, over at the Web site you can take a gander at an interview with Philip Gourevitch about his latest book, or scan the archives and reread Eudora Welty's A Worn Path, first published in the magazine in 1941.

It would seem that the best thing I can do to generate traffic around here is . . . to not post anything for four days.

Miscellaneous
.: It was 100 years ago today (according to MPR) that then-Vice President Teddy Roosevelt told Minnesota State Fair goers: "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Unfortunately, he was not talking about big sticks of Walleye or, one of this year's new foods at the fair: deep fried candy bars.

.: Also on the radio this morning was a wonderful essay describing whitewater rafting through the Grand Canyon. Ms. Lee's piece perfectly describes the joy of outdoor adventure. Her essay was followed by a fun mystery.

.: Happy Birthday to Blogger turning two today! Believe it or not, we're just thirteen days away from our own birthday right here at Hanging On! Which reminds me . . . it's been way too long since I've posted a poem . . . .

.: "It is always tempting, when old warriors retire, to lament their passing from the political stage. In the case of Senator Jesse Helms, that is a temptation to be resisted."

.: The hypocrisy of President Clinton's biggest critics continues to astound me. In all of their talk about "morality" and "upholding the office" I have yet to hear any of that vast right wing conspiracy criticize his administration's greatest moral failing. New evidence continues to mount that we (the United States) knew exactly what was happening in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. As a refresher: 800,000 people were murdered in 100 days in Rwanda while the US, the UN and Europe sat on the sidelines. This moral outrage is apparently not nearly as important as the former president's libido or sleazy friends.

So I notice that all of a sudden I'm getting all this traffic this afternoon and discover that Ev has linked to me and I think to myself "Wow! One of the A-listers wants to point out my witty banter, my cleverness or, better yet, wants to encourage the entire blogging community to engage in a discussion about my most recent post regarding big societal goals!" and I get all excited and imagine the fascinating email and debates that may head my way and all the new folks who will be so taken with my site and, well, with ME, frankly, that I will be setting all sorts of new traffic records in the weeks ahead and maybe I'll become a Blog of Note and maybe I'll have to upgrade my site to reflect this new, overwhelming popularity and I get all exhausted just thinking about this as I head on over to Evhead to read why he linked to me.

Turns out, he was only referencing my site for a Simpsons quote I posted way back in January.

The Democrats are working hard (rightly, in my opinion) to hold President Bush responsible for the economy and our now-nearly-non-existent budget surplus. It appears as if all of Washington is finally closing the chapter on our historic economic boom.

It's a bummer, of course, that we once again have to face the reality of a downturn. Good people will lose their jobs, politicians will argue about who is responsible, governments will have increased demand for limited resources and only the very lousiest of corporate CEO's will make any money. But the most disturbing part of this change in our economic health is the fact that after seven years of unprecedented wealth and prosperity we have, frankly, little to show.

We have so bought into the notion of individual wealth creation as the purpose of a society, that we no longer ask what, exactly, we're producing all this wealth for. It is taken as a given in our public/political life that smaller, limited government is always better. It was Bill Clinton after all who informed us years ago that, "The era of big government is over." So too, apparently, is the era of big ideas or of tackling big problems.

Although it isn’t in vogue to say so, for much of the twentieth century "big government" did amazing things for our society. We sent people to the moon with NASA, we nearly eliminated poverty among the elderly with Social Security, we saved Europe in World War Two, we outspent the Russians and defeated communism, we built the interstate highway system, we invested in basic scientific research that has resulted in nearly every major medical advance of the century, we built the very foundation of the Internet. All made possible because billions of tax dollars were pumped into big government programs. More importantly, we were given big plans, big dreams to achieve. Our leaders were willing and able to put a stake in the ground and say, "Together, we can do better."

Today we are content to address any societal problem merely by tinkering around the sides, putting off any serious questions for some other, undetermined generation. Listening to our current leaders of both parties one might think that the world is peaceful enough, that our ability to lift people out of poverty is strong enough, that our commitment to the healthcare of our citizens is equitable enough, that our educational system is good enough. There is, apparently, no need to challenge us to greater heights, no need for any significant improvements at all in America.

The last seven years have proven yet again that our societal problems, our shared challenges, are not addressed simply by encouraging individuals make lots and lots of money. It takes big leaders with big dreams. We have neither.