Chasing the Blues

Co2 Readings Hitting Critical Mass

The most important, and ominous, story appeared inside The AJC today, not on on the front page as the article's significance warranted. Scientists have found that the carbon dioxide level in the Arctic's atmosphere has reached 400 parts per millon. That level, the highest in centuries, will soon be measured across the Earth.

Scientists have said the critical point of no return for irrevocable climate change is 450 parts per million. The 400 level has been reached sooner than expected. The Arctic reading is more irrefutable scientific evidence that human activity is causing the buildup of Co2 in the atmosphere, leading to warming and permanent environmental changes.

In the last presidential election, the reality of climate change was widely accepted. In President George W. Bush's presidency, Republicans as well as Democrats called for climate change action, supporting cap and trade legislation. In this electon, climate change is not mentioned except for Republicans claiming that climate change is a hoax. Republicans who once accepted the scientific truth have joined the deniers.

Each day, cars and businesses spew more Co2 into the already overloaded atmosphere. The denial and inaction bring the world closer to crisis. The crucial 450 reading is not far away.  

Farewell, Nicholas Katzenbach

In my morning perusal of The New York Times the other day, I saw an image indelibly etched in my memory bank, from 1962 or so, of Kennedy-era Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach confronting Alabama Gov. George Wallace at the University of Alabama's entrance.

As absurd as it may seem to today's young people, Katzenbach had arrived in Tuscaloosa to enforce the entry of black students to the state university, and Wallace vowed to keep them out. Katzenbach prevailed,and Wallace backed down, a major development in the eventual victory of civil rights.

Back in those days, the events of the civil rights movement and other historical occurrences played out in black and white television, which I watched when I came home from school. Long before CNN and Fox News, the then three networks NBC, CBS and ABC covered the news, breaking into daily programming to give live reports of history in the making. So, I have a vivid memory of the situation captured in the Times photograph, having watched it at home, no doubt hoping for the quick broadcast of one of the local shows that took up the afternoon, my favorite being Count Macabre, who showed old horror movies such as Frankenstein and Dracula.

The photograph illustrated the Times' obituary of Katzenbach, frequently dispatched by the Kennedy administration to hot spots in the deep South. I remembered well the tall, avuncular and well-tailored Katzenbach from TV news that brought the civil rights struggles into our den. Until reading the obituary for Katzenbach, I'd forgotten that he'd gone on to be attorney general under Lyndon Johnson. Katzenbach is also a leading supporting actor in documentaries I've seen about the Kennedy era. I remember one in which he and Bobby Kennedy talk on the phone, chatting about their children and so forth, until Katzenbach tells of efforts to get James Meredith into Ole Miss or some such event.

The obituary gives a complete picture of Katzenbach's extraordinary life, from his days at Princeton then Yale Law, to his service during World War II and for the U.S. government, before a distinguished career as a lawyer in later life. Katzenbach was not one of the major characters of the '60s, but even secondary figures from the time are imbued with greatness.

 

Saints and Tigers Head for Football Top

I'm amazed by Drew Brees and the Saints, their offensive machine even more efficient than when they won the Super Bowl. The Saints got screwed on the seeding, and so face a daunting patch to headed back to the Super Bowl, having to travel to San Francisco and then probably Green Bay, but this is the most proficient offense in the history of football. Watching the Saints, I wonder if I'm in some kind of childhood dream, especially since I remember the old, goofy Saints, a standing joke. 

New Orleans is known for great creativity, in food and music, but the Saints are a different kind of success for which the old city has never been known. Cuisine, jazz, blues and rap are associated with decadence, while pro football success is tied to discipline, business, purpose, teamwork, etc. So, Brees and the Saints bring a different model for the city.

Meanwhile, the LSU Tigers prepare for the national championship. I'm glad the Tigers are enjoying such success in football, but it breaks my heart that the university's academic purpose is severely wounded by budget cuts by the inexplicably popular Bobby Jindal. I love the Southern Review and LSU Press as much as the football team.

One amusing item I saw on Facebook: The Roosevelt Hotel now has a drink for the Honey Badger, LSU's flamboyant defensive back. Seeing the menu raised memories of Huey Long, who loved LSU and strove to make it a great institution, unlike today's short-sited, tax-averse governor. 

Recently, I read a piece by Tom Friedman in the Times about how America's future depends on cities with great universities, a vibrant, creative population and innovatative busineses. Baton Rouge could be a city like that, and has been at fleeting moments, but LSU and Louisiana's capital city has often been crippled by short-sighted, corrupt politics and a provincial, uncommitted population. 

 

Dog Days Keep Barking

The PGA at Atlanta Athletic Club shows again how that once maligned, fourth-sister major, is gaining ground each year. The U.S. Open,with Congressional disgracefully weak this year, has been in freefall for at least a decade. First, the USGA folks killed the excitement with the unplayably hard courses, then swung too much the other way...The Tiger Woods-Rocco Mediate playoff in 2008 was the last memorable open.... Once the PGA had inferior courses, but now the Atlanta Athletics Club proved a much more challenging championship test than Congressional. ...The USGA held the open once at the AAC, then never again, while the PGA has held four championships there. What doesn't the USGA come back?

...Gee, hooked on the Braves again. The Giants-Braves series was a good one. Any lover of good pitching feels sympathy with Tim Lincecum, who has received no runs at all in 10 games this year. He must feel like a great football defense that keeps seeing its quarterback throw interceptions. ..Baseball, at least in the National League, has really shifted to a pitching-dominated game in which one or two runs is usually good enough to win. Baseball dinosaurs like me might like it, but pitching duels likely bore the videogame generation. No doubt baseball can be a tedious event; the other day I grew irritated when a pitcher kept looking around at a baserunner, etc. A football team would have run three plays and an NBA team scored three goals in the time it took him to at last throw a pitch.

..I'm beginning to warm up to Freddi Gonzales as manager, but I still find his batting order screwy. I like Brian McCann, and he's a good hitter, but I don't see him as No. 3. And, while Constanza's been a spark, I'd like to see Heyward playing everyday, no matter how badly he's been going.

...The GOP is screaming about Obama vacationing in Martha's Vineyard. He would be much closer to the people if only he had his own ranch in Texas. ...Government can't create jobs, the conservatives say. The old Tammany Hall Tweed gang, as well as Southern populists like Huey Long, did pretty well in crearing jobs. 

August, the Dog Days, or is that old man wolf howling at the door?

Another long assumed certainty crumbles: the U.S. no longer has a AAA credit rating. Chatterers on CNN say don't worry, it really means nothing. The Wizard of Oz scenario once more; pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Nothing better to do while waiting for the Apocalypse and or the start of college football season than to deeply engage with the Braves. Now they are playing at the Mets' Citi field. Although the Mets are severely diminished, another victim of the financial crash except for the splendid Reyes, the Braves playing there always seems more like real baseball than when they're playing against a team like the Arizona Diamondbacks, which could disappear tomorrow and I wouldn't care. New York among other things means baseball to me. 

Of course, watching the Braves on TV pushes my tolerance for the cornball announcer Chip Caray, who shows little of the talent for low-rent humor of his dad, Skip, or his grandad, Harry. Recently, I escaped Chip by listening to the Braves on the radio with Don Sutton and whoever his partner is. Sutton and pal give more insightful analysis and a more pointed, adult humor. But, I like to watch on TV. Perhaps I'll turn down the sound and listen to the radio.

Last night, the Braves at last bested the Mets behind Dan Uggla's amazing revival. The Braves broke through when the Mets removed their young knuckleballer R.A. Dickey, one of the traditionalists who wears his uniform trousers above his stockings. Watching Dickey's knuckleballs, I wanted the pitch to be banned, like the spitball. Although I loved Phil Niekro, and even Hoyt Wilhelm, the knuckleball seems bogus, based on trickery more than skill. Dickey appears to be an OK guy, a bit nervous, but I say throw the slider, the fastball, the curve or get out of the game. Ban the knuckleball!

Even my TV viewing's lost, after the end of "Treme." I watched the three episodes of a strange little show on PBS, "Zen," which starred Rufus Sewell as a detective in Rome. I liked the depiction of the ancient, corrupt Italian city, and a luscious Italian actress who after making it as a Bond girl to Daniel Craig now does three-episode Masterpiece series shows. I'm unable to get back to "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Entourage," both of which I've already buried. 

So, after long days of eyeball-searing work, I ruin the old orbs even further with reading. Faulkner's "The Hamlet," a long tome on World War I, books on Huey Long, Jonathan Yardley, the New Yorker, Commonweal, the Kenyon Review, the New York Review of Books, The New York Times. At times, I'll sit down and play the piano, lately I've been practicing on "Rally Round the Flag Boys."

 

Crawfish, and Flood, Season in Louisiana

We crossed the Mississippi on the trip to pick up the crawfish. Looking down from the Mississippi River Bridge from Baton Rouge to West Baton Rouge, I saw that the water line had reached near the top of the bank.

"If they hadn't opened the Morganza spillway, LSU and downtown Baton Rouge would have flooded," said my sister, in the driver's seat.

Big ships still plowed down the heart of the river, leaving a wake of white turbulence behind. The day was hot and dry; a juxtaposition of drought and high water. My sister turned to the ramp headed to West Baton Rouge, and we were headed through Brusly, divided into Back Brusly and Front Brusly, as my brother-in-law reminded me from the back seat.

I was visiting from Atlanta, interested tyo see this road, La. 1, that I used to travel frequently when my late father had a camp in Bayou Pigeon in Iberville Parish. We would not be going that far today, but would stop in Bayou Sorrell on the other side of Plaquemine to get two sacks of living, writhing crawfish for boiling that afternoon.

As we road, my sister and brother in law commented upon how much the area had grown; and sure enough, what I remember as sugar cane fields now were covered with strip shopping centers, condos, apartments and subdivisions. Appaently, the recession had not hit the area that badly, although Louisiana's state budget was in serious arrears.

Just outside of Plaquemine, my sister pointed out a commercial crawfish pond, and I turned to see a long, rectangular body of dark, still water. A squad of white herons stood on sentinel duty, statoned about 20 feet from each other in rows. They looked real, but in retrospect might have been fake birds to scare off whatever predator a crawfish pond might need protection from.

Headed into Plaquemine, the trip began to feel familiar. I saw the old rusted railroad bridge at the Plaquemine city limits and the lovely collection of ante-bellum homes. The names of the politicians on the eternal political signs were also familiar, dynasties of one or two families that had been running the parish when I left 30 years ago were still running things. Plaquemine had an exhausted, run down atmosphere, as if the 20th century and now the 21st had not quite settled in deeply. To my amusement, I noticed a sign for an Islamic temple beside a low-slung house of yellow stucco.

"I'm surprised Osama Bin Laden wasn't found in southern Louisiana," my sister said.

We turned off on the road that led to the Atchafalya Spillway and the road where my father had his camp. Again, homes, quite nice ones, lined the road where once sugar cane fieids lay. We turned off on a street where mobile homes and trailers alternated with nice houses. I recalled the strength of Louisiana's off-the-books economy. Although the state lags far behind most economic indicators, it's really quite prosperous, with many industries conducted outside of the bounds of govermental accounting.

We turned into a nice house with a big boat in front and picked up the crawfish. I looked at them in their sacks, packed in tightly with their familiar, distinctiive brown-gray color. We threw them in the back, and my brother in law covered them in newspaper to keep them from dying in the brutal sunrays beaming through the back window.

We headed back toward Baton Rouge, traveling beside the stressed levees along the Mississippi. I'd last traveled this road as a young man, and here I was back again at 60, taking part in a unique Louisiana ritual. We crossed the bridge, Huey Long's state capital rising into the bluish-white sky to our left, Tiger Stadium and LSU to our right. Folks had been flooded in the Morganza Spillway, but Baton Rouge was dry, by God, dry and resplendent beneath the hot Louisiana sun.

Virginia Thomas' Spelling Skills Have Passed

In reading the bizarre story about Clarence Thomas' wife, Virginia, seeking Anita Hill to recant her sexual harassment charges against Thomas, I was struck for some reason by Virginia's lack of spelling command. In her written statement as quoted in the New York Times and by the AP, she said she wanted Hill to "get passed," not "get past," the allegations. What strange subconscious meanings could be tied up in her misspelling? The whole story is strange, why now would she want to dredge up that traumatic hearing from years ago?

Meanwhile, NPR reporter and Fox News pundit Juan Williams is fired from NPR for saying Muslims make him uneasy. With his appearances on Fox, Williams has been weakening his journalistic objectivity for sometime. NPR has been nervous about its reporters appearing on Fox, so maybe NPR saw this as a good opportunity to part ways with Williams. He'll probably remain at Fox, where he's liked as the stock liberal punching bag for Fox's right wing pundits.

Mid-October

Another October drifts away. After Halloween and baseball's end, we'll be on the fast track to the holidays and winter. Summer, its dreadful heat, feels long behind us. Before Thanksgiving and Christmas, we'll have the huge national elections, with a lurch to the GOP in the offing.

Fall; someday soon will come the day when I'll be moved to reread Keats' "To Autumn," as I've done for years when a certain November Day matches the poem's mood of grand weather etched with foreboding. The college football season is already past its halfway point, only a month or so of games left.

The leaves have not yet changed. Two weeks or so left in another gorgeous October. Another year hurries into the past.

 

BP Well Declared Dead

The BP well that spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico was declared officially dead Sunday by Thad Allen, the former Coast Guard officer who led the government's response to the crisis. The apocalyptic images of the seemingly unstoppable leak now have receded into the collective memory banks. Yet, despite government claims that most of the oil has dissipated, reports keep rising that the oil is coating the bottom of the gulf, that significant amounts remain to threathen marshlands and beaches. All in all, though, the oil leak appears less damaging than initially feared. The gulf coast's fishing and tourist industries will rebound. Gulf coast residents hurt by the crisis will receive payments from BP's billions set aside.

The good news shouldn't let us forget the  constant disappearance of wetlands and other problems threatening the Louisiana coast. When the oil-leak crisis was at its height, President Obama appointed a panel to come up with ways to preserve the wetlands. Such panels frequently issue reports that sit on shelves with no further action. While not as visually dramatic as shots of oil spewing from a broken pipe, this is a major ecological catastrophe that demands action.

While the oil spill's damage is less than feared, so are the effects of the government moratorium on deepwater well drilling. Sen. Mary Landrieu and others claimed a huge loss of jobs from the moratorium and that oil drilling rigs would abandon the gulf. So far, these dire predictions haven't occurred.

...In a recent post, I said that Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell hadn't received a big turnout in her surprise victory over establishment candidate Mike Castle. According to The Wall Street Journal, the race actually inspired a large turnout for a GOP primary in the state. I was relying on a statement by Vice President Joe Biden, former Delaware seantor, who told Rachel Maddow that Delaware has 130,000 Rpublicans, but only 30,000 voted for O'Donnell. Many Republicans did stay home, but the turnout was still comparatively large. O'Donnell faces big odds in inspiring a larger share of votes, including those who voted for Castle.

The Tea Party Rises, as the Dormouse Said

After the win of Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, Karl Rove and others in the GOP establishment appear more spooked than Democrats. Rove sounded like a Demoratic operative in counting O'Donnell's deficiencies. After playing such a major role in creating the polarized political environment in which previously fringe politicians like O'Donnell flourish, Rowe looked shocked at his creation. It was like seeing Dr. Frankenstein confront his monster when it opens its eyes.

Meanwhile, the irrepressible Sarah Palin goes forward with her gift for wacky metaphor. She said GOP white men like Rove and the deposed Mike Castle in Delware need to buck up or stay in the truck. Palin is on quite a streak with endorsing winning candidates. Perhaps she'll look askance at O'Donnell, who's in the Palin mold, a photogenic, energetic woman with a gift for glib sound bites that overcome a lack of deep knowledge. If O'Donnell loses the Senate race, as expected, nice Mr. Roger Ailes, always looking out for a bright new face, will likely find a place for her at Fox News.

One thing striking in the rise of the Tea Party candidates is how they are winning through voter apathy. O'Donnell received only 30,000 votes in Delaware to beat the miffed professional Castle, who decried the criticism from Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. That's what U.S. Rep. Castle got from responding to Barack Obama's bipartisanship plea. As in the Alaska primary, many Republican voters stayed home, either assuming Castle would win without them, or showing a general disgust. This is puzzling when the so-called pundits keep talking about an energized GOP electorate in this fall's election. Does the GOP really have the broad appeal needed to gain control of the House? The GOP appears to be ceding the Delaware Senate seat to the Democrats, making GOIP control of the upper chamber unlikely.

Washington, D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty's loss was significant, an apparent repudiation of School Superintendnet Michelle Rhee's reforms. Rhee, a favorite of Obama edcuation chief Arne Duncan as well as the conservative charter school crowd, now might leave.