Wanted: Fair Witness

When I was taking a required education course at the University of Florida back in 1962, one of our weekly assignments was to observe (through one-way glass) classes in progress at the university's laboratory school and to report on what we saw without drawing conclusions or making assumptions. Just the facts, ma'am. It was amazingly difficult and probably the most useful thing I learned in that course.

Robert Heinlein's  novel Stranger in a Strange Land posits a legal profession consisting of people with superior memories and trained in such factual observation -- Fair Witnesses. These Fair Witnesses, in the white robes of their professions, are invaluable in court, as their testimony is invariably accurate and true -- as far as it goes. For example, when Heinlein's Fair Witness character is asked the color of a house she's looking at, she replies that "It is white on this side," making no assumptions as to the color of the other sides.

Fire and Fury -- Michael Wolff's blockbuster book that purports to give a look inside today's White House -- had me longing for a Fair Witness. How to sort out the truth from the assumptions, hearsay, breathless gossip, and unreliable sources?

Did Ivanka really divulge the secret of her father's strange coiffure? Does DT really strip his own bed? Was the DT campaign really blind-sided by their victory? Is DT really that pathetically insecure and ignorant? Are we being governed by a president with the emotional maturity of a two-year old or by his team of sycophants and handlers?

The book reads like an opera --- palace intrigue, warring factions, a mad emperor and those who attempt to use him. It's fascinating stuff like the car wreck everyone slows down to gawk at. And I have to admit that I'm enjoying knowing that it's really upset the man in the White House.

In the absence of a Fair Witness to assure me of what is true and what isn't, I can only say that much of the book rings true, based on the president's own words in speeches, interviews, and tweets. And his denials and the denials of his surrogates have no validity for me. He and they have proven over and over that, for them, truth is what they want it to be. Alternative facts, indeed!

Still, those of us in the loyal opposition to this administration should beware of the same behavior and not rush to embrace this account as The Truth -- no matter how much we want it to be. Supposedly Wolff has recordings to back up some of his statements -- but, of course we all know that recordings can be altered. Oh, for a Fair Witness!

Quoting Aaron Blake in the Washington Post: "In some ways, this is the tell-all that Trump's post-truth presidency deserves. Trump's own version of the truth is often subject to his own fantastic impulses and changes at a moment's notice. The leaks from his administration have followed that pattern, often painting credulity-straining images of an American president, As the New York Times's Maggie Haberman notes, that makes claims in Wolff's book that would ordinarily seem implausible suddenly plausible."

Ah, sweet irony...

In the Bleak Midwinter . . .

... it's cheering to tend plants and watch them bloom. 

We've Missed You on the Frontier

The plangent notes of the bouzouki filled the air in the smoky tavern. Without thinking, I extended my arms and began the traditional knee-dipping Greek dance. Behind me a man said, "We've missed you on the frontier." 

And as I went into the first low dip, my left leg cramped and I awakened. The next few minutes were spent trying to ease the cramp and wondering where exactly that dream had come from. And where it would have gone... 

And I mused on the word frontier  -- a magical word. We have so few frontiers these days -- these days when condos and expressways proliferate in what were once frontiers.

But what was the frontier referred to in the dream? And why Greek dancing? Alas, my subconscious leads a life of its own -- evidently far more interesting than mine -- and it keeps quiet about it.

I could almost believe that it inadvertently slipped up when it let that dream through and then realized its mistake and shut it down with a cramp before I could learn any more.

(Disclaimer: My only experience with Greek dancing is watching the movie Zorba the Greek -- there's a clip HERE.)

Scavengers' Buffet

Yesterday I visited the compost facility where Justin works, turning garbage from Asheville's finest restaurants into high grade dirt.

It's not pretty and even in twenty degree weather there was a certain odor . . .

But it's a noble endeavor and a good job for a philosophy major. 

What had me open-mouthed in awe though were the birds -- masses of them. Black vultures and crows were what I mainly saw, along with some smaller birds. 

Justin has seen ravens and the occasional bald eagle at this all-you-can eat buffet for scavengers.

It was too cold to linger but I kept taking pictures . . .

From the Archives -- January 2009

The Essex Serpent

I was beguiled by the cover and the title and happy to find that I loved the story. It reminded me of The French Lieutenant's Woman and, to a lesser degree of  A.S. Byatt's Possession, partly because of the setting -- Victorian England -- and partly because of the tangle of emotions amongst the characters -- a widow whose loss has set her free to reclaim her own identity anda clergyman struggling to reconcile his love for a charming, consumptive, and increasingly mad wife with his growing attraction to the widow.

That's just one triangle. There's a whole cast of fully realized supporting characters, equally entangled -- the widow's autistic son; her companion who is a budding socialist; the physician who attended her husband and is enamored of her; the physician's wealthy friend who falls for the companion . . . it goes on and on -- like life. But this is no soap opera -- it's a beautifully written and imagined account of a time when the beliefs and mores of the world were in flux.

Highly recommended. 

The NY Times has an excellent review HERE.

Here She Comes!

And It Was Brrr!

For Luck in the New Year

Greens to put money in your pocket and hog jowl and black-eyed peas for luck . . .

Like walking in the first snow, getting wet in the first rain of May, knocking on wood, or throwing a pinch of spilled salt over my left shoulder -- I don't really believe in these things  -- but I do them anyway, honoring the past and the beliefs of my forebears. I like that kind of continuity, I suppose.

But there are a number of beliefs and traditions, customs and habits we inherited from our forebears that are not nearly so harmless.  I needn't attempt a list -- just anything that makes a person feel that their personal beliefs trump anyone else's -- I'd like to see these hangovers of a less enlightened past discontinued and obliterated.

Here's to 2018 -- May it be a better year for this poor broken world...