In central Texas this Easter morning, it is raining. Slowly, in fits and starts, but with luxurious quantity.
After the drought of the past few years, we open to rain in the way a resurrection plant from West Texas does.
We lie dormant, brown, dessicated--and then the slow rain falls and we fill with moisture; we swell, become plump again with greenness. We ready ourselves to receive sunlight once more and grow.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Slow Words
How many of us are familiar with the Slow Food Movement? That's slow food, as contrasted with fast food--Burger King, MacDonald's,the Colonel, et al. The idea is that by taking care with the preparation of food, and giving ourselves time to eat it in the company of family and friends, we enrich our lives--and improve our digestion, BTW.
I think that communication has undergone a similar transformation--to fast words: These are words that move from our transient whim to the cyber-verse in a split second. Think Facebook status update, or Twitter: Bam! You've spoken. You blink and your blink is seen by people you really don't know very well, if at all. How tasty and satisfying is that, after you've gotten over the initial intoxication?
(I grant that a blog might seem like a strange place to be commenting on this, but most bloggers take time to reflect before posting.)
I think that the current obsession with speed speaks to a fundamental emptiness in our culture. I think we have a greed for ease in every area of our lives. It has driven the rise of convenience stores, fast food restaurants, and much of the cell phone universe, as well as providing all the wonderful machines that have made women's lives in particular less burdensome.
But it's like we've responded by being always in a hurry, and the more mod-cons (modern conveniences) we get, the faster we whirl. Why? Why do we need an eight minute lunch? What awaits us that's so urgent? It can't be work, since so many people spend so much office time on Twitter and FB, fighting boredom.
Why do we need constantly updated news? Why do we need instantaneous books? What are we afraid that we're missing?
So I'm advocating a change. Try Slow Words for a start. Don't buy a book on Amazon if there's a bookstore within reach as you follow your daily routine. Call the store and order the book you want; pick it up next week. Savor it under a tree, in the bath, at the swimming pool, in your living room (with the TV turned off). A book is the longest lasting, least expensive form of escape and entertainment there is.
Instead of momentary diversion with fast words, followed by emptiness, take time for Slow Words. They taste good and leave you feeling full of fine feelings accompanied by deep and satisfying thought.
I think that communication has undergone a similar transformation--to fast words: These are words that move from our transient whim to the cyber-verse in a split second. Think Facebook status update, or Twitter: Bam! You've spoken. You blink and your blink is seen by people you really don't know very well, if at all. How tasty and satisfying is that, after you've gotten over the initial intoxication?
(I grant that a blog might seem like a strange place to be commenting on this, but most bloggers take time to reflect before posting.)
I think that the current obsession with speed speaks to a fundamental emptiness in our culture. I think we have a greed for ease in every area of our lives. It has driven the rise of convenience stores, fast food restaurants, and much of the cell phone universe, as well as providing all the wonderful machines that have made women's lives in particular less burdensome.
But it's like we've responded by being always in a hurry, and the more mod-cons (modern conveniences) we get, the faster we whirl. Why? Why do we need an eight minute lunch? What awaits us that's so urgent? It can't be work, since so many people spend so much office time on Twitter and FB, fighting boredom.
Why do we need constantly updated news? Why do we need instantaneous books? What are we afraid that we're missing?
So I'm advocating a change. Try Slow Words for a start. Don't buy a book on Amazon if there's a bookstore within reach as you follow your daily routine. Call the store and order the book you want; pick it up next week. Savor it under a tree, in the bath, at the swimming pool, in your living room (with the TV turned off). A book is the longest lasting, least expensive form of escape and entertainment there is.
Instead of momentary diversion with fast words, followed by emptiness, take time for Slow Words. They taste good and leave you feeling full of fine feelings accompanied by deep and satisfying thought.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Brrrr
Oh, darn,darn. All day we've been watching as the weather site forecasts 37 degrees overnight which is close to a frost, but barely misses it for us. And then, just before bedtime, we check again and suddently they've surrounded us with promises of 31 to 33 degrees--as in a freeze.
It's nice and still outside right now, moonlit, crisp and dry, lots of stars--beautiful and the worst possible weather for plants in a freeze. All I can think of is our heirloom tomato plants, lined up so green and healthy and waiting for the nice warm growing weather they'll have tomorrow afternoon. If they're still alive by then.
I hate freezes in April. It's plumb unnatural.
It's nice and still outside right now, moonlit, crisp and dry, lots of stars--beautiful and the worst possible weather for plants in a freeze. All I can think of is our heirloom tomato plants, lined up so green and healthy and waiting for the nice warm growing weather they'll have tomorrow afternoon. If they're still alive by then.
I hate freezes in April. It's plumb unnatural.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Calming Down
That big wind that's blowing today across central Texas is the result of area shop and restaurant owners letting out a long breath of relief. Antique fortnight is over. That is, the spring version is over; the whole thing happens again in October.
It was a busy final Saturday, though.
The Winedale Historical Center had its spring symposium, focusing this year on Early Texas Furniture. (For the disbelieving non-Texans who might be reading this, the furniture in question is not made of rustic logs.)
Central Texas enjoyed a large influx of German immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century, and they included a surprising number of accomplished cabinetmakers. The seminal book on this subject by Lonn Taylor and David Warren came out in 1975, and now sells for a surprising amount of money in rare book stores. (I did 1/3 of the photos in that book with a 2 1/4 Rolleiflex, a fascinating experience as we had to shoot the furniture, often quite large, in the owners' houses or front yards.)
The authors are currently in the process of updating it with many new discoveries, hence the content of their presentation yesterday. (The photo below of the mockingbird was taken on the grounds of the center.)
Also, the DYD Club of Round Top concluded its "fair on the square". DYD stands for Do Your Duty. (The pix of the sparkling whatevers and of the girl in her new cowboy boots were taken within a few feet of each other in the midst of that event.)
On the way home the back way via Hackemack Road we spotted a blue barn with bluebonnets that epitomized for me the serenity that will return to our neighborhood tomorrow. The bluebonnets are at their peak, and joined now in fields and verges with stands of Indian Paintbrush (red), pale Pink Evening Primrose, magenta verbena, and vivid yellow daisy-like flowers, too small to be rudbeckia. With any rain at all, the flower show, at least, should last a while longer.
It was a busy final Saturday, though.
The Winedale Historical Center had its spring symposium, focusing this year on Early Texas Furniture. (For the disbelieving non-Texans who might be reading this, the furniture in question is not made of rustic logs.)
Central Texas enjoyed a large influx of German immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century, and they included a surprising number of accomplished cabinetmakers. The seminal book on this subject by Lonn Taylor and David Warren came out in 1975, and now sells for a surprising amount of money in rare book stores. (I did 1/3 of the photos in that book with a 2 1/4 Rolleiflex, a fascinating experience as we had to shoot the furniture, often quite large, in the owners' houses or front yards.)
The authors are currently in the process of updating it with many new discoveries, hence the content of their presentation yesterday. (The photo below of the mockingbird was taken on the grounds of the center.)
Also, the DYD Club of Round Top concluded its "fair on the square". DYD stands for Do Your Duty. (The pix of the sparkling whatevers and of the girl in her new cowboy boots were taken within a few feet of each other in the midst of that event.)
On the way home the back way via Hackemack Road we spotted a blue barn with bluebonnets that epitomized for me the serenity that will return to our neighborhood tomorrow. The bluebonnets are at their peak, and joined now in fields and verges with stands of Indian Paintbrush (red), pale Pink Evening Primrose, magenta verbena, and vivid yellow daisy-like flowers, too small to be rudbeckia. With any rain at all, the flower show, at least, should last a while longer.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Springtime in Texas, I
Despite a "Jack Frost" (local term for a frost) the past two nights, we have the following springtime scenes. The antique show here is at Warrenton, part of the Antique Fortnight along Highway 237 and nearby roads that ends around April 4. The first image is a typical back road before the antiquing began.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Slow and Easy
I’ve been thinking about the slow food movement and wishing that we could extend its main precepts to other realms of human activity. It’s a cliché that older people find the world moving too fast for them. I am certainly aware of the many reasons for that sensation. Interestingly, however, it appears that the world is moving too fast for everyone, at present.
Some examples:
• The effect of the 24/7 news cycle on the news media;
• The effect of the internet on the well-being of newspapers;
• The effect of the 24/7, digitally enhanced, world financial market on almost every nation’s financial well-being;
• The way an accelerated speed of communication allowed hasty judgments to multiply in a geometric progression as investment bankers and hedge fund operators raced to keep up with the creation of new money-making instruments;
• The way the accelerated speed of communication allows for hysterical responses to each new piece of economic or political news;
The seduction of the “breaking news report” in general, and “news” in one’s specific area of expertise on a smaller scale, distracts both the writer and reader. We are hard-wired as a species, in fact, to prefer breaking news. It gave us an edge on survival. The saber-toothed tiger is eating people, village by village. Run!
What is being lost is the opportunity for reflection, not just by the purveyors of information, but by its consumers, and all of us suffer as a result. The writers of the news stumble over themselves trying to keep their breaking stories updated. There’s no time for fact-checking or digging a bit deeper. There’s no lag time between the arrival of information onto the writer’s desk and its launch into the public arena, where the public panics and inundates Congress with email.
One really good example involves the AIG bonus debacle. It ought not to have become public knowledge within minutes of the moment the Obama Administration heard about it. Instead of hysterical headlines, leading to panicky and angry action by Congress, there ought to have been judicious jaw-boning on the part of the Obama administration, resulting in the voluntary refusal of the controversial bonuses by their recipients.
Even a few years ago the scenario for this mess would have gone down like this: Treasury Secretary Geithner would have been informed by staff of a rumor that AIG was about to hand out huge bonuses to the bozos that created the risky instruments that caused the world-wide financial melt-down. He and the President and other economic advisers would have had a few hours before the news hit the first newspaper editions during which time they could explain to AIG that this would be a disaster of monumental proportions and must not happen (jaw-boning). And it would not have happened. Honestly, this has been the way a number of near-disasters have been averted in years gone by. It’s a technique of governance that we no longer have at our disposal in this 24-7 news hungry world.
And it’s not going to get better, I’m afraid. Newspapers, which are the originators of most in-depth news coverage, are down-sizing with dizzying speed, in size of the paper format, in complexity and amount of material covered, in accuracy of the speeded up coverage, and most importantly (since this affects the quality of coverage) in size of staff.
You have to look carefully to ascertain the degree to which the diversity of print media is vanishing across the country, since the individual papers affected often carry only vaguely worded stories. Daily papers decrease to 3 days a week; some go out of print altogether; no major daily has the same staff they had 6 months ago. Floods of talented, experienced journalists—people who had perspective on what they were covering—are out of work, or working in fields where their valuable understanding can no longer be used for the public’s benefit. Instead, we have young reporters learning the ropes on internet editions. We have many, many blogs, some by people with a broad and deep knowledge of their subject area, some just with bloated opinions. We have lost the middle-man, the filter, who could help us see the larger picture.
What we are experiencing as a result is the rise of democracy in place of the representative system of government our forefathers created. They gave us representatives for a reason: reflection; distance from the whim of the masses. Now the passions and fears of the masses have become the governors of us all and our representatives in Washington have become their prisoners instead of their leaders.
Some examples:
• The effect of the 24/7 news cycle on the news media;
• The effect of the internet on the well-being of newspapers;
• The effect of the 24/7, digitally enhanced, world financial market on almost every nation’s financial well-being;
• The way an accelerated speed of communication allowed hasty judgments to multiply in a geometric progression as investment bankers and hedge fund operators raced to keep up with the creation of new money-making instruments;
• The way the accelerated speed of communication allows for hysterical responses to each new piece of economic or political news;
The seduction of the “breaking news report” in general, and “news” in one’s specific area of expertise on a smaller scale, distracts both the writer and reader. We are hard-wired as a species, in fact, to prefer breaking news. It gave us an edge on survival. The saber-toothed tiger is eating people, village by village. Run!
What is being lost is the opportunity for reflection, not just by the purveyors of information, but by its consumers, and all of us suffer as a result. The writers of the news stumble over themselves trying to keep their breaking stories updated. There’s no time for fact-checking or digging a bit deeper. There’s no lag time between the arrival of information onto the writer’s desk and its launch into the public arena, where the public panics and inundates Congress with email.
One really good example involves the AIG bonus debacle. It ought not to have become public knowledge within minutes of the moment the Obama Administration heard about it. Instead of hysterical headlines, leading to panicky and angry action by Congress, there ought to have been judicious jaw-boning on the part of the Obama administration, resulting in the voluntary refusal of the controversial bonuses by their recipients.
Even a few years ago the scenario for this mess would have gone down like this: Treasury Secretary Geithner would have been informed by staff of a rumor that AIG was about to hand out huge bonuses to the bozos that created the risky instruments that caused the world-wide financial melt-down. He and the President and other economic advisers would have had a few hours before the news hit the first newspaper editions during which time they could explain to AIG that this would be a disaster of monumental proportions and must not happen (jaw-boning). And it would not have happened. Honestly, this has been the way a number of near-disasters have been averted in years gone by. It’s a technique of governance that we no longer have at our disposal in this 24-7 news hungry world.
And it’s not going to get better, I’m afraid. Newspapers, which are the originators of most in-depth news coverage, are down-sizing with dizzying speed, in size of the paper format, in complexity and amount of material covered, in accuracy of the speeded up coverage, and most importantly (since this affects the quality of coverage) in size of staff.
You have to look carefully to ascertain the degree to which the diversity of print media is vanishing across the country, since the individual papers affected often carry only vaguely worded stories. Daily papers decrease to 3 days a week; some go out of print altogether; no major daily has the same staff they had 6 months ago. Floods of talented, experienced journalists—people who had perspective on what they were covering—are out of work, or working in fields where their valuable understanding can no longer be used for the public’s benefit. Instead, we have young reporters learning the ropes on internet editions. We have many, many blogs, some by people with a broad and deep knowledge of their subject area, some just with bloated opinions. We have lost the middle-man, the filter, who could help us see the larger picture.
What we are experiencing as a result is the rise of democracy in place of the representative system of government our forefathers created. They gave us representatives for a reason: reflection; distance from the whim of the masses. Now the passions and fears of the masses have become the governors of us all and our representatives in Washington have become their prisoners instead of their leaders.
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