The Duck Creek Chronicles

Test

Test

Test.

John Updike, R.I.P.

John Updike is dead. I just read an interview with him someplace. He didn't say anything about planning to die, but lung cancer got him, so he must have been ill.

Updike wrote more books than a lot of people read in a lifetime. Some of my favorites are "The Witches of Eastwick," "Rabbit Run" and "S."

Leaving behind an incomplete selection of books that runs four pages at Amazon.com is quite an achievement. As is the fact he did it without accepting a single advance from his publisher.

Sad news. Always is. For whom the bell tolls and so forth. AP story below in the extended entry area.

Rush replies to Obama

Read about it in the National Review Online.

No dissent allowed

So it’s official, or almost so: no one is allowed to disagree with President Obama. The media (of which I am one) has already mostly agreed to go along.

One of the more interesting stories in the news today is the President advising Republicans, during a Friday sit-down, not to listen to Rush Limbaugh.

“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” he is reported telling GOP leaders. 

Limbaugh, love him or hate him, is one of the very few people critical of the new administration’s ideas amid the breathless comparisons of Obama to Lincoln, JFK and Martin Luther King. Limbaugh thinks the Obama agenda is to convert us into a socialist nation. The fact that Congress -- controlled by Democrats -- and the previous Republican administration’s fiscal policies have already got that ball rolling notwithstanding, Limbaugh’s concerns are worth hearing.

Ironic that the party of letting everybody do and say whatever they want whenever they want is bidding for a no-dissent-allowed climate now that they’re in charge. It’s great to say all good Americans must to come together to support the plan when it’s your plan. The rule apparently didn’t apply for the last guy’s plan.

I suppose this is what happens when former dissidents come to power -- they try to limit dissent. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as the French surrender monkeys would say.

I wish the President well. I disagree with some of basic assumptions, but maybe he’ll prove me wrong. He seems pragmatic. If he sticks to what he thinks might actually work, as opposed to a certain doctrinaire program, he could be a success. He certainly has the press behind him.

But all plans, and all men, are fallible. Commentators and journalists are supposed to ask hard questions and help the public test ideas, which sometimes require push back to prove their worth.

I hope the Republicans in Washington, who are the authors of their own exile from power for abandoning their principles, continue listening to Limbaugh. Who knows? The day may be approaching when the FCC will decide it is not "fair" for him to be on the radio. 

Morning rituals

Get out of bed.

Tell Drew to get up.

Make coffee.

Tell Drew to get up.

Go outside and retrieve the newspapers from under the car or in a snowbank.

Tell Drew to get up.

Make Drew’s breakfast. Pour his milk into either the golfing cow or Bulwinkle Moose mug -- the lucky mugs.

Tell Drew to get up. (Quite loudly now.)

See Drew materialize in the kitchen door, indignant I've yelled when he’s obviously up and dressed.

Drink first cup of coffee and OK reader comments posted to the newspaper website.

Tell Drew to eat some breakfast and not just sit there reading the comics.

Fix anything that is screwed up or needs to be replaced to minimize the risk of killing people with boredom.

Take Drew to school.

Drink more coffee, read email. Delete most of it. Answer anything crucial. Debate whether to be seduced by come-hither enticements from Amazon and Borders.

Take shower, get dressed, pour any remaining coffee in a travel mug and head for the office.

Another day in the kingdom.

Trout fishing, mandolin playing and Irish fiddling

A conversation.

TATER:

I have a hard time listening to much Scottish/Irish fiddling. Must be from having my kids overplay that damned "River Dance" DVD.

MR:

A river runs through it, Mister Tater, and I ain't talkin' no River Dance!

TATER:

Where exactly does that river run?

MR:

The river runs through it, sir. It. The big It. Straight through It.

Have you read "A River Runs Through It," Norman Maclean's story collection about trout fishing? Redford made it into a movie. Maclean's idea applies to music as well as fishing. Irish and Scottish fiddling and hillbilly mandolin picking are different but have much in common, and the thread of commonality resting beneath the external differences is perhaps the truest part of the music. The rest of it is attractive wrapping paper. Local color, as it were.

And the river runs through it.

"Eventually, all things merge into one, and the river runs through it."

Some summary thoughts about the collection, and movie, which I think supports my contention without directly mentioning F-5s:

"A River Runs Through It" concerns the Macleans, a Presbyterian family in early 20th century Montana whose views on life are filtered through their passion for fly fishing The novella is presented from the point of view of older brother Norman who goes on one last fishing trip with his rowdy and troubled younger brother Paul in an attempt to help him get his life on track.[1] After a brief introduction of his early life, most of the action takes places in the summer of 1937 and both Norman and Paul were in the early 30s.[2]. The novella is noted for using detailed descriptions of fly fishing and nature to engage with a number of profound metaphysical questions, and is recognized as an American classic.[3] Chicago Tribune critic Alfred Kazin, stated: "There are passages here of physical rapture in the presence of unsullied primitive America that are as beautiful as anything in Thoreau and Hemingway".[4]

And:

The film tells the autobiographical story about two boys, Norman (Craig Sheffer) and Paul (Brad Pitt) growing up in 1920s Missoula, Montana, under the watchful eye of their father, a Presbyterian minister. Their mornings are spent in school and religious study, while their afternoons are devoted to fly fishing in the nearby Blackfoot River. At home, however, the family's stoic emotions hint at trouble to come - Norman matures and channels his rebellion through his writing while dating Jessie Burns, while his reckless brother Paul turns to gambling and liquor.

And:

Pastor Rev. Maclean (Tom Skerritt) and his two sons constantly return to that river to practice the art of fly fishing, and find healing and reconciliation there. The older son, Norman (Craig Sheffer), is the story teller. The younger, Paul (Brad Pitt) is caught up in a gambling addiction--yet, in many ways (metaphorically, as a fisherman), he is an object of beauty and perfection.

Now, tell me that that isn't talking about mandolin and fiddle playing, and mandolin players and fiddlers.

A river runs through it.

An now, an important announcement

Believe it or not, this kind of thing is not at all rare in the world of journalism:  Press conference to announce pending announcement.

The Illinois idiocracy

As a card-carrying member of the journalistic world, I have to admit it is a red-letter day when some craven numbskull lurches into the public view and proceeds to inspire new standards for foolery with his behavior.

These past weeks I have gleefully followed Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s slow-motion head-on collision with infamy. In the grand fashion of history’s greatest fools, Blago is never content to slink quietly away in shame when he can make things worse for himself, and the state, by opening his mouth.

Indicted this morning,  he called an afternoon press conference. Anybody expecting him to resign, or perhaps express remorse, was instead regaled with a bid to use caring about sick old people as an excuse to auction off President-elect Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder.

Sweetest of all are remarks in which Blago attempts to sound literate and, by extension, stoic and philosophical.

Here’s what he said when Tribune reporters found him taking a jog this morning -- his way of grappling with the fact that the House was at that moment meeting to vote his impeachment.

"Let me simply say I feel like the old Alan Sillitoe short story 'The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.' ... And that's what this is by the way, a long-distance run."

I sincerely doubt Blago has ever read Stilltoe’s story. Probably the closest he’s come is being in the room, leafing through a Penthouse magazine, while the old Brit film version was on the Classic Movie Channel. Beyond the pomposity of these hapless literary references is the irony of the reference.  Stilltoe’s long-distance runner is an impoverished Nottingham teen-aged petty criminal who gets sent to reform school after knocking over a bakery and discovers he’s good at the other kind of running, too.

Blago is like a mobster in the “Sopranos” trying to sound cultured but always getting it wrong. (I can just imagine the conversation when Blago and the boys sit down with a bottle of bourbon to talk strategy: "Quasimodo predicted all of this." "She's an albacore around my neck." "Revenge is like serving cold cuts." “You know, Sung Tizzoo! The Chinese Prince Matchabelli!")

Perhaps Blago aspires to robbing bakeries. It would be a step up in class for him. 

A new year

It'll be interesting to see what 2009 brings. And I mean "interesting" not in the sense of the Jewish curse, "May you live in interesting times."

Our dear friend Proust describes New Years as one of those imaginary dividing places in time where we feel we have stepped over a line and can, through an act of will, leave the bad behind and start anew. An illusion no doubt but good mental hygiene.

I didn't make any resolutions but am going to try to simplify my life by focusing on a few things that really matter.

Do you have a Rule of Life? I'm trying to formulate one.