History Maker Malfunction

I may have miscalculated just how much words matter, at least words that have time, research, and thought behind them.

Back in January, I launched what I had hoped would be a weekly exercise in presenting history, most notably people and events that currently receive short shrift, or have been the subject of some recent revisionism.

This was not an insignificant undertaking, as trying to post something that I considered substantive, and not a mere rehash of someone else's work, required considerable effort.

Each one of the 10 posts that became History Maker Mondays involved reading, research, and then the requisite time necessary to put the information into a readable format. What I thought might become a boost to my site's traffic, for whatever reason, has instead resulted in a decrease in readership.

Despite the drag my takes on history have become to Words Matter, I don't consider these exercises in research and information retrieval to have been total waste of time. Each one of my weekly forays back into the past have helped me to have a better understanding, and further cemented my belief that history is important. It also reinforces my belief that much of what remains important to me puts me in the place of swimming upstream, against the superficial, and overly simplistic and banal.

My decision to suspend my weekly history posts isn't just about a lack of positive feedback, however. When I set out to try to tackle something substantive, in January, I was looking for a way to prime my creative pump, and possibly push my writing forward, hoping it would allow me to fall into book project mode. I think it may have had its desired effect.

While I'm not abandoning the Words Matter ship entirely, I've experienced a noticeable shift in my interests of late. Typically, this blog has been about my views on politics, culture, media, with other subjects tossed into the mix (including history). While I still maintain an interest in these matters, I've become aware of the day-to-day drain on my psyche that these subjects engender. Instead, I'm choosing to focus more on books, reading, the craft of writing, and because of this, a literary focus has emerged.

For the short-term at least, I'll probably post infrequently here, preferring to concentrate on books, other authors, and the progress I'm making towards developing book #3. You can find these musings over at my writing blog.

Moral nihlism

We live in an age of moral nihilism. We have trashed our universities, turning them into vocational factories that produce corporate drones and chase after defense-related grants and funding. The humanities, the discipline that forces us to stand back and ask the broad moral questions of meaning and purpose, that challenges the validity of structures, that trains us to be self-reflective and critical of all cultural assumptions, have withered. Our press, which should promote such intellectual and moral questioning, confuses bread and circus with news and refuses to give a voice to critics who challenge not this bonus payment or that bailout but the pernicious superstructure of the corporate state itself. We kneel before a cult of the self, elaborately constructed by the architects of our consumer society, which dismisses compassion, sacrifice for the less fortunate, and honesty. The methods used to attain what we want, we are told by reality television programs, business schools and self-help gurus, are irrelevant. Success, always defined in terms of money and power, is its own justification. The capacity for manipulation is what is most highly prized. And our moral collapse is as terrifying, and as dangerous, as our economic collapse.
--Chris Hedges, Truthdig, 3/23/2009

Hedges never pulls any punches. If you can pull yourself away from Twitter, and your other social networking endeavors long enough, think about making Hedges' Truthdig column a weekly habit. Better yet, stop thinking about it, and just do it!

Lining the birdcage

If words matter, and I think that they do, why are so many newspaper and other media people, as well as writers, limiting themselves to 140 characters, thinking that Twitter is the solution to their problems? This isn't about being concise, it's about being suicidal.

Hence, David Sirota's Salon column comes along, and reminds me that all these hip, oh so ironic media bloggers are part of the problem, instead of being part of the solution. It doesn't hurt that he drops a David Simon reference, either.

Sirota laments,

Beltway scribes didn't have to miss the Iraq war lies or the predictive signs of the Wall Street meltdown. Election correspondents weren't compelled to devote four times the coverage to the tactical insignifica of campaigns than to candidates' positions and records, as the Project for Excellence in Journalism found. Business reporters didn't need to give corporate spokespeople twice the space in articles as they did workers and unions, as a Center for American Progress report documents. National editors weren't obligated to focus on "elevat(ing) the most banal doings" in the White House to "breaking news," as the New York Times recently noted.

No, they certainly did not, but they did.

That's why this morning, when I thought about driving two miles to our town's one variety store, for the Maine Sunday Telegram, I poured a second cup of coffee and picked up the memoir I'm reading, instead.

A beautiful thing

Once upon a time, I wanted to save the world. I know, pretty idyllic, and not grounded in any sense of reality, either.

By the time I hit thirty, life had kicked the idealism out of me. Yeah, I still sought the perfect solution, but falling short of that, which was nearly always, cynicism became my daily bread. Family responsibilities, a string of soul-deadening jobs, and the only time I was able to escape was my weekly stint on the mound for a variety of beer league ball teams, which only reminded me of what might have been if I hadn’t blown out my shoulder in college.

Five years ago, I reinvented myself. The transition from bitter, ex-believer, failed baseball hopeful, and consummate asshole, to someone doing what he was meant to do with his life didn’t happen overnight. These things are only immediate on television, and in the movies.

This morning, I sat in a room at the Cross Building in Augusta, and was part of a group of collaborators that have accomplished something pretty amazing over the past three years—we’ve taken a grassroots project and parlayed it into a program that is having a positive effect and making a difference across the state.

As I glanced around the room of educators, members of various non-profits, and others committed to making their little corner of the state a better place, I realized how foolish I was to have at one time had the world as my focus. By “brightening the corner” where we all are, we are all having an effect on something larger.

No one in the room was there to promote their own personal agenda. In fact, many of the participants purposefully put their own pet projects, and priorities aside, for the good of the group. The irony of being in Augusta wasn’t lost on me, and I’m sure many of the others. What occurred in our three hour meeting was a model of how these kinds of things should work, and possibly, how government could function, when people don’t grind ideological, or personal axes, and put the group before individual wants. I think what I experienced was an example of community organizing in the purest sense of the word, and in its most functional form.

[Weekly musical non-sequitur:

The Tragically Hip: Up To Here-

Released in 1989, nearly a decade after I graduated from Lisbon High School, listening to Gord Downie in the boys in their early days always makes me hearken back to those halcyon high school years.

The vibe is “classic rock,” albeit with a literary bent on the lyrics, courtesy of the poetic Downie’s songwriting prowess.
I scored Up To Here on a trip to Montreal, and a consumer excursion to Eaton’s Department Store, on St. Catherine Street. Apparently Eaton’s is no more, going out of business in 1999, a victim of Wal-Mart and other big-box monstrosities, just like similar retailers in the U.S.

We were visiting our hospitable neighbors to the north, soaking up the European vibe that is a visit to Montreal.

I had heard “New Orleans Is Sinking” on WTOS, still a freeform FM mainstay. The song was like nothing else being played on the radio at the time. While The Hip were virtual unknowns in the U.S., except on the few stations like ‘TOS that prided themselves on real variety, in Canada, they were rock and roll royalty.

I picked up both Up To Here, their third release, and Road Apples, their 2nd record. Actually, back in 1992, I actually bought both on cassette, subsequently replacing them both with CDs over the past few years.

It’s been awhile since I’ve listened to The Hip, even though they’ve spent considerable time in both cassette decks, and now, CD players of mine. Pulling the disc down off the shelf Saturday, I’ve been playing it regularly the past several days, including today’s trip north, to Augusta.

One hot August day, in 1998, my wife and I had gotten away for an afternoon at Old Orchard Beach. As was common, single prop planes flew overhead, with the usual advertisements for Lisa’s Pizza, local drink specials, and other assorted tourist trap enticements trailing behind. On this day, however, the trailer read, “Tragically Hip: Tonight at the State Theater.” I said to Mary, “We’re going!”

Apparently, the show was poorly promoted, as about 500 people showed up to see Canada’s Rock Gods put on the kind of high energy show that has won them legions of fans for the past 25 years. This chance encounter was one of the top five rock shows I’ve ever been to.

Long live (Canadian) rock!]

Barry Schwartz makes a case for wisdom