Sherry Chandler

I want to call your attention to this Adam Cohen op-ed in last Sunday’s NYT:

The early stages of the Iraq war may have been a watershed in American optimism. The happy talk was so extreme it is now difficult to believe it was sincere: “we will be greeted as liberators”; “mission accomplished”; the insurgency is “in the last throes.” Most wildly optimistic of all was the goal: a military action transforming the Middle East into pro-American democracies.

The gap between predictions and reality has left Americans deeply discouraged. So has much of what has happened, or not happened, at the same time. Those who believed New Orleans would rebound quickly after Hurricane Katrina have seen their hopes dashed. Those counting on solutions to health care, energy dependence or global warming have seen no progress. It is no wonder the nation is in a gloomy mood; 71 percent of respondents in a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll said the country is on the wrong track.

These are ideal times for the release of “Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit,” by Joshua Foa Dienstag, a U.C.L.A. political theorist. Mr. Dienstag aims to rescue pessimism from the philosophical sidelines, where it has been shunted by optimists of all ideologies. …

Pessimism, however, is the most un-American of philosophies. This nation was built on the values of reason and progress, not to mention the “pursuit of happiness.”

I could have sworn this nation was built on cynicism and exploitation with a little genocide thrown in, but then I read too much history and I learn lessons that differ from Donald Rumsfeld’s. I’m a pessimist. Though actually, I’d call myself a realist. I think we’ve forgotten the word pollyanna is this country.

But it’s true. We work hard to sell ourselves the notion that we’re a nation of optimists. Americans are not allowed to be sad, even if there is plenty to be sad about.

All this happy talk gets on my nerves. Take for example a special report on living longer in the latest issue of AARP The Magazine. Centenarian studies, it tells us in a section called Science, have found that the long-lived have certain characteristics in common:

consistent exercise, not smoking, an ability to deal with stress, long-standing religious beliefs, and an independent spirit.

A little late to be telling me this when I am presumably over 55 (the age at which you first start to become eligible for “senior citizen” stuff), and have been stressing out and vegging out all my life and am unlikely to transform myself. Still, it isn’t really this list that bothers me so much. Just about any doctor will tell you this is the way to stay healthy. It’s author Joe Treen’s implication that all this adds up to the “cheery positive outlook” of their exemplary centenarian, a “charming, gregarious man” who writes songs and children’s stories at 101.

When I read stuff like this, the message I hear is “conform to the norm or die.” (Or, as my son sees it, “be an extravert or die.”) But the fact is, we’re all going to die. Even the NYTimes recognizes that (see Death of a Supercentenarian). And the news seems to scare Americans…um…to death. Or at least to boring hours on the treadmill when they could be watching the trajectory of a humming bird.

I have nothing against cheerfulness. I admire my 88-year-old mother tremendously for the joy she can still find in life in spite of a whole raft of painful health problems. But look, longevity has its down-side. Ask all those old people warehoused in nursing homes. Remember those harrowing photographs of poor old people trapped in the Superdome just a year ago.

To that list of characteristics of centenarians, I wonder whether we could add the luck to be born in places where they could get good nutrition and clean living conditions without the threat of genocidal civil war or epidemic disease, a territory by preference without exploitable resources (like, say, oil).

Just for the record, though it gets me in all kinds of trouble to say these things, I tend to think religious belief is like homosexuality — it’s not a choice. Don’t get me started on faith as an insurance policy against death.

And as for my mother, her biggest fear isn’t death but that death-in-life called stroke.

But back to Cohen on Dienstag:

Optimists see history as the story of civilization’s ascent. Pessimists believe, Mr. Dienstag notes, in the idea that any apparent progress has hidden costs, so that even when the world seems to be improving, “in fact it is getting worse (or, on the whole, no better).” Polio is cured, but AIDS arrives. Airplanes make travel easy, but they can drop bombs or be crashed into office towers. There is no point in seeking happiness. When joy “actually makes its appearance, it as a rule comes uninvited and unannounced,” insisted Schopenhauer, the dour German who was pessimism’s leading figure.

…

Part of Mr. Bush’s legacy may well be that he robbed America of its optimism — a force that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and other presidents, like Ronald Reagan, used to rally the country when it was deeply challenged.

Well, I’m willing to blame George W. Bush for everything including the pimple on the end of my nose, but I have serious doubts about blind optimism. People can be led to do all kinds of foolish things by optimistic leaders. I happen to think Ronald Reagan led us cheerfully over the edge of a cliff like a bunch of optimistic lemmings.

It’s not that I’m a gloom-and-doom type. It’s not even that I think action is useless. I just think it’s way past time to take off the rose-colored glasses. We have some big problems to solve and we need to get solving them.

Meantime, I look forward to reading Dienstag’s book because, as Cohen says,

…pessimists are generally more engaging and entertaining than optimists, and because, as the author notes, “the world keeps delivering bad news.” It is almost tempting to throw up one’s hands and sign on with Schopenhauer.

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AAAaaarrrrggghhhh! It’s everywhere. I open up my staff newspaper, rather dazzlingly titled UK News, and find this headline: Professor’s books shows pessimists how they can think optimistically. As though pessimists should want to be optimists. As though optimism were the default condition and pessimism somehow a handicap to be overcome.

[Suzanne] Segerstrom [in her book Breaking Murphy's Law] lays out examples, guidelines and practical tips to undo optimism-suppressing thoughts… “Optimism is powerful stuff,” Segerstrom said.

Ah, The Power of Positive Thinking… it never goes away.

Is this just happenstance or another indication that we are headed for the 19th century as fast as we can go:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 — Everyone knows that with the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the number of female Supreme Court justices fell by half. The talk of the court this summer, with the arrival of the new crop of law clerks, is that the number of female clerks has fallen even more sharply.

Just under 50 percent of new law school graduates in 2005 were women. Yet women account for only 7 of the 37 law clerkships for the new term, the first time the number has been in the single digits since 1994, when there were 4,000 fewer women among the country’s new law school graduates than there are today.

…

In a brief telephone interview, Justice O’Connor said she was “surprised” by the development, but declined to speculate on the cause.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed no such surprise. In a conversation the other day, she knew the numbers off the top of her head, and in fact had noted them in a speech this month in Montreal to the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, during which she also observed with obvious regret that “I have been all alone in my corner on the bench” since Justice O’Connor’s retirement in January.

Justice Ginsburg, who will have two women among her four clerks, declined during the conversation to comment further on the clerkship numbers. Why not ask a justice who has not hired any women for the coming term, she suggested.

BTW, the Times has a nice pop-up graphic showing the hiring records of the nine justices, plus Rehnquist and O’Connor. Just click the image to the left.

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Update: Sour Duck has a post, Where are the Women Redux, with lots of good links on this one.

In 1907, Maryland and West Virginia, and in 1918 New York, New Jersey, Kentucky, and Massachusetts passed laws requiring all able-bodied men to be regularly emplyed for the duration of the war. Arizona passed a law forbidding the employment of or giving aid to anyone who was a deserter or a slacker. The point of these laws was less to maximize actual production (much less to contain actual threats to public safety) than to rally the populace around images of, as it was called at the time, “100% Americanism.” The close perceived connection among hobos, socialists, unionists, and foreigners, along with a belief in the necessity of a concerted national “effort,” helped suggest that ferreting out slackers and fighting labor leftists at home somehow constituted an aid to the soldiers fighting abroad.

— Tom Lutz, from Doing Nothing (page 179)

My feminist credentials are a little yellowed with age and weariness, but Melinda Casino over at BlogHer makes me want to shine them up and put them on the mantelpiece. She considered my musings on Garrison Keillor important enough to feature in her Women’s Equality Day post.

It’s a nicely put-together post — I’m envious of that layout — with links to some great blogging and I’m flushed with pride to be included.

I just love the concept of Tennessee Guerilla Women, and you’ll find some great period graphics over there at their site. Those of my readers interested in visuals ought not to miss either of these links.

The Guerilla Women also give us this tidbit:

In the 72 years it took to win the vote, those who were dead set against the idea were many and even included The New York Times.

How did we ever get the idea that the NYTimes is progressive?

Other important links in this post so be sure to click through and give it a look. And thanks very much, Melinda, for the plug. (Is this what I’d want to call a “shout out?”)

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Credit for all this goes to Joanie DiMartino, who first called my attention to the Keillor piece.

If you’ve been with me long, you know that I have an ongoing concern for the antiquities of Iraq and the careless way they have been damaged by our war there.

Earlier this year, I featured a NYTimes article about Donny George and the way he has been rebuilding the National Museum and recovering the treasures looted when the U.S. first took Baghdad.

There was even an article about how Iraq hoped to rebuild Babylon into a sort of theme park for tourists.

But now, according to an article in the Guardian, Donny George has been forced to flee to Syria:

Iraq’s most prominent archaeologist has resigned and fled the country, saying the dire security situation, an acute shortage of funds, and the interference of supporters of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had made his position intolerable.

Donny George, who was president of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, achieved international recognition for his efforts to track down and recover the priceless antiquities looted from Iraq’s National Museum in the mayhem that followed the fall of Baghdad in 2003.

But this week he revealed that he had resigned and was in hiding with his family in the Syrian capital Damascus. In an interview with the Art Newspaper, Dr George said Baghdad was now so dangerous that the National Museum, which houses a trove of Sumerian and Babylonian artefacts, had been sealed off by concrete walls to protect it from insurgent attacks and further looting.

…

Dr George painted a bleak picture for the future of Iraq’s ancient treasures. He said that excavation and conservation projects in Iraq had stalled and that all the foreign archaeologists had left the country.

He said the 1,400 members of the special antiquities protection force would be going without pay, meaning there would be little to stop further looting at the country’s 11,000 archaeological sites. “From September there is no more money for their salaries,” said Dr George. “The coalition has to do something about this.”

…

“The board has come under the increasing influence of al-Sadr,” claimed Dr George. “I can no longer work with these people who have come in with the new ministry. They have no knowledge of archaeology, no knowledge of antiquities.”

Dr George, a Christian, said he had battled to prevent an Islamist and anti-western agenda from taking over at the antiquities department. “A lot of people have been sent to our institutions. They are only interested in Islamic sites and not Iraq’s earlier heritage. The Sadrists did not like me having any contact with anyone from outside,” he said.

Since the war Dr George has travelled the world, highlighting the plight of his country’s ancient heritage. He had forged close ties with foreign institutions, including the British Museum. Hannah Bolton, a spokeswoman for the museum, said the museum promised to continue cooperating with the Iraqi authorities, and also hoped to continue its close relationship with Dr George.

The culture ministry could not be reached for comment yesterday but a senior Sadrist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Dr George had served throughout the former regime and “had done nothing to stop Saddam carving his name into the walls of every brick” during the reconstruction of the ancient palace at Babylon.

Knowing that I have an interest in how Christianity has been politicized in this country, a reader pointed me to this Bill McKibbon article from Harper’s 2005 entitled The Christian Paradox: How a Faithful Nation Gets Jesus Wrong. I’ve been trying to digest it for a week or so, thinking how I might talk about it here without just simply throwing fair use to the winds and excerpting every third sentence. It really is that good, in my humble opinion.

Mr. McKibbon begins like this:

Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments*, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation’s educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture.

You remember Ben Franklin? He’s the guy who invented the “Christian work ethic” while himself believing that it’s better to look busy than to be busy. The guy whose daily calendars and self-improvement lists inspired that other great American, Jay Gatsby.

Ben Franklin was a great American but he was not really all that much a Christian. Continues Mr. McKibbon:

The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.

The problem is that Americans never let anything as mundane as science or fact interfere with what they believe.

And therein is the paradox. America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. That paradox—more important, perhaps, than the much touted ability of French women to stay thin on a diet of chocolate and cheese—illuminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, careening culture.

Mr. McKibbon argues that what we practice in this country and call Christianity should more accurately be called Franklinity: the idea that the righteous are rewarded here on earth and the poor deserve to be so. Like Jay Gatsby, we all believe if we work hard, live clean, and make self-improvement lists, we’ll wind up among the idle rich. (And if we have to sell a little illegal booze along the way, maybe run a few guns, well, so be it.)

Franklinity doesn’t have so much trouble with the concept do unto others as you would have others do unto you. That so-called Golden Rule is pretty much universal, though I tend to think of it as Greek. It’s a very practical concept, one that keeps the wheels of society well greased. But McKibbon argues that the central tenet of Christianity is much more radical than that:

36″Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
38This is the first and greatest commandment.
39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
— Matthew 22:36-40

By the way, “love your neighbor as yourself” is part of the Mosaic law, too, so Jesus is following precedent here:

18You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
—Leviticus 19:18

But this version, while it stops the revenge cycle, seems to keep the love within the tribe. McKibbon thinks Jesus applies this commandment more universally:

Love your neighbor as yourself: although its rhetorical power has been dimmed by repetition, that is a radical notion, perhaps the most radical notion possible. Especially since Jesus, in all his teachings, made it very clear who the neighbor you were supposed to love was: the poor person, the sick person, the naked person, the hungry person. The last shall be made first; turn the other cheek; a rich person aiming for heaven is like a camel trying to walk through the eye of a needle. On and on and on—a call for nothing less than a radical, voluntary, and effective reordering of power relationships, based on the principle of love.

It’s the Beatitudes, not the Ten Commandments, that we should be posting on the courthouse wall.*

Think about that.

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Added note: Not all proponents of placing the Ten Commandments on the courthouse wall can quote more than a few of these same commandments. For reference, this Colbert Report segment.

I think we should all read this post at Talking Points Memo from a Katrina survivor:

…I think that Katrina proved that America has absolutely abandoned its underclass. We don’t like poor people. And that serves up a big dollop of shame to go with my sorrow.

Yes, New Orleans was built in a f——up way in a f——up place. And yes, the local and state govt has done nothing at this point to get things — anything — going again. And yes, we need to knock some Corps of Engineers heads because of the levee situation. And yes, the insurance companies are screwing OLD PEOPLE every which way they can to get out of paying. And yes, Nagin is a jackass and Bush is a nincompoop.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about any of that. But sweet Jesus, how are we not talking about poverty and class? I can’t watch that footage, I really can’t. It tears me up.

Read the rest of it.

A correspondent has pointed out that, in his Writers Almanac today, Garrison Keillor celebrates the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — the one that give women the vote — without mentioning a single woman by name. This amendment was known as “The Anthony Amendment,” after Susan B. Anthony. But all the actors in this item are men:

It was on this day in 1920 that Bainbridge Colby, the Secretary of State, issued a proclamation announcing the incorporation of the 19th Amendment into the U.S. Constitution. It ended more than seventy years of struggle by woman suffragists. It proclaimed, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

It had passed through the House and Senate, and now fell to the states. Thirty-five had ratified it, but thirty-six were required to complete the two-thirds majority. Finally, on August 18, Tennessee pulled through. Twenty-four-year-old legislator Harry Burn decided to vote for the amendment at the last minute because his mother wanted him to, tying the vote. Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to approve suffrage for women.

Implication here that the Mama’s boy caved?

The certified record of the Tennessee vote was sent by train to Washington, D.C., and arrived early on August 26. Colby signed the proclamation that morning at 8:00 at his residence, with no ceremony of any kind, and no photographers to film the event. Colby had one and a half cups of coffee and then signed the document with a regular steel pen. Then he said, “I turn to the women of America and say: ‘You may now fire when you are ready. You have been enfranchised.’” None of the leaders of the woman suffrage movement were present.

And still none are present.

Would have interfered with the narrative, I guess. It is a great story.

Though I personally think Mr. Colby could have come up with a better line. Too bad to go down in history uttering such a cliché.

So here folks, from Wikipedia, a list of Suffragists from many countries, including such obscure women as:

Susan B. Anthony
Amelia Bloomer
Alice Paul
Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A nice timeline here.

And from the Library of Congress, “Votes for Women” Suffrage Pictures 1850-1920. This one is of Governor Edwin P. Morrow of Kentucky signing the “Anthony Amendment” on January 6, 1920.

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Just a note for those women of you who, like me, were born with the vote and tend to take it for granted, there are any number of women alive who were not. My mother was not born with the vote and my grandmother was a grown woman and twice a mother herself before the 19th amendment was ratified. My mother always votes. I urge you to do the same.

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Update: A reader Joanie DiMartino writes to clarify the role of Harry Burn in passing the Anthony Amendment in Tennessee:

…the fact that Burn changed his mind upon receiving a telegraph from his mother that read “help Mrs. Catt put the Rat in Ratification” is accurate, and now the stuff of legend. He didn’t tie the vote (which would have held ratification up even longer) he was the tie breaker, and as the youngest member of the TN legislature made history (or herstory). I like to think I encourage my son to ‘do the right thing,’ as well. Given that women spent 72 years trying to convince men to ‘do the right thing,’ I don’t view Burn (or his mother Feb’s attempt to influence) too harshly.

Nor do I judge him harshly. In fact, I think he may be a bit of a hero. But that is not exactly how he is portrayed above. Mr. Keillor truncates Burn’s role to the fact that he was twenty-four and changed his vote “because his mother wanted him to.” I think I understand the dramatic choice here to dwell on Colby’s show of disdain — the cup and a half of coffee, the “regular steel pen.” And perhaps a desire to tell the story in a way it hadn’t been told before. Nevertheless—

Neil Akin, editor of The Chapbook Review, a publication in blog form, describes its mission thusly:

The idea for The Chapbook Review has been kicking around for some time. As a struggling poet in Los Angeles, I kept thinking there should be some better way to market my chapbook. As I talked to other poets and built up a collection of their chapbooks, I was amazed at the diversity of work and appearance. Chapbooks ranging from 15 minute Kinko productions to painstakingly stitched or wire-bound ensembles. And, in one case, a poet-artist produced a series of poem-post-cards, each illustrated with her own watercolor artwork.

So, in the spirit of community, The Chapbook Review seeks to present new and old chapbooks from all over. I will begin with the ones I own, but welcome any chapbooks you wish to send in for review. If you have chapbooks you love and want to write a review, I’d also love to hear from you. See the Submissions page for directions on sending your chapbook(s) or reviews. Sorry, we can’t afford to purchase chapbooks at this time.

I picked this link up from Heraclitean Fire. It’s a new site and not much is going on with it right now, but I certainly do think it’s a grand idea. Chapbooks have become a major form of poetry publication but they are somewhat invisible as far as bookstores and reviewing publications are concerned.

Wanna see some Dylan?