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Year: 2006

Power, Corruption & Lies

May 12, 2006 • • 6 Comments

No, I’m not writing about New Order’s excellent 1983 album, though there does seem to be a new order in this country that thrives on that unholy trinity.

Today I read Paul Burka’s Texas Monthly article “Without Delay” that told the tale of the rise and fall of Tom Delay, a man whose every friend, ally and associate seem to be felons. It’s all icing on a very depressing cake.

The more I read the more depressed I become about the state of politics in America. My brother and I were recently discussing the potential for Democrats to take one or both houses of Congress back this year. The polls look good. Wave after wave of scandals are breaking on a seemingly daily basis. Bush’s staff are leaving like rats fleeing a sinking ship and yet, I’m not hopeful.

People want the bastards thrown out, but I worry that they don’t want to throw out their own bastards, only the bastards in the other districts that waste government money by bringing the bacon home to other people.

We’re seeing yet another problem inherent in our two-party system. Republicans are willing to defend the very things that they would consider indefensible if they were being perpetrated by a Democrat president. I can’t imagine how anyone can honestly say that they think it’s a good thing that Bush is allowing the NSA to spy on Americans, that Bush’s aides should be allowed to out covert agents and still keep security clearance, that Americans would ever – EVER – justify the use of torture, that the government would eliminate due process protections at whim, that… well, the list is long and time is short.

The sad thing is that our representatives in congress let this happen by abdicating their constitutional responsibility to check the executive. Since the Republicans control congress they will always make excuses for all abuses. We see that Republicans clearly love their party and their power more than they love their country. It’s a sickening sight.

Now, I am not foolish enough to think that Democrats are naturally less corrupt. Power breeds corruption and the problem is that the Republicans are the party in power, and they have a dangerous lock on that power. The most dangerous aspect of it lies in the fact that any who suggest that the constitution is being gutted are labeled terrorists, traitors, dangerous. This from the party of strict constructionists. This from the party that once wanted less government and more individual freedom.

The Bush problem is one of either incompetence or crookedness, or more likely both. At this point, the only way to address this problem is accountability of the kind Americans were not wise enough to demand in 2004. That accountability can be acheived through divided government, which is why anyone who truly cares about the direction of this country, about competent leadership, and indeed the constitution itself should be supporting Democrats this fall.

It’s not about being liberal or conservative anymore, it’s about ensuring that our government doesn’t continue its ineptness or devolve into a truly autocratic regime. We’ve already seen the dangers of the former and we’re closer than we probably realize to the latter.

Character and Plot

May 11, 2006 • • 2 Comments

As is wont to happen when I read the Gypsy Scholar blog, I find that thoughts become provoked and his post about plot and character (provoked for him by an entry on the interesting Contemporary Nomad blog) is one that provoked this response (though I hope my tone is not too provocative):

I find that when I write short stories (and screenplays) plot tends to come first and the characters serve it. With longer works, characters tend to come first and their personalities drive the plot because it’s the decisions the characters make that ultimately affect what happens to them and how the plot unfolds. For me, the plot changes from what I had intended originally more than the characters.

What you said about leaving out details in the interest of advancing story is very true and important, but the writer still knows those details and they inform the characters’ decisions and actions even if they are never explicitly revealed.

I agree with Jessica’s point about being drawn back by character. As an example, I’ll use To Kill a Mockingbird since it’s the last book I read. I keep turning the pages not because I want to know how the town deals with the trial but because I really like listening to Scout tell the story. I enjoy her voice and her sense of humor.

Perhaps this all sounds flaky as hell, but that’s how it works for me.

Now that school is winding down and summer, which is when I do most of my writing, is fast approaching, my thoughts turn to writing and I find that the character/plot issue is still on my mind.

For me and me alone, since writing is a very individual sport with as many methods as there are writers, character is where it starts and character is what provides the excitement and even the magic of the whole process. At the start of a piece, I usually don’t know the characters very well, but I tend to know them better than I know what will happen to them.

These imaginary people (I won’t call them friends) sort of develop, and I let them talk to one another and to me. We like to talk when we drive. These characters often have stories that are never revealed in the course of a piece of writing.

When I wrote A Place Without a Postcard, I wrote out 30 pages of Sergio (whose dog gives this blog its name) telling his story. I only meant to include a few lines, but I really got into this character’s story just flowing along. I had no idea how much there was to him when I first thought of him.

Once I know the characters I start to get a bead on what happens to them. That’s where the story develops and as the story comes together, I generally have no idea where (or even when) it’s going to end. Sometimes I know how I’d like it to go, but usually it ends up somewhere else.

Oftentimes I overwrite a character. My first drafts are substantially longer than than the final draft and those pages that are cut are often character bits: explorations, flashbacks, asides. All of these become parts of who those characters are and wind up informing their decisions, though they aren’t included in the final draft. Sometimes these deleted scenes, to use the language of DVDs, become separate stories.

Once a first draft is completed the plot may shift, and characters might change, but typically the plot changes more than the characters do. I do, however, frequently fire characters when I realize they are only there to advance the plot and whatever they were there to do suddenly seems uneccessary or can be accomplished more organically by another character.

I sometimes wonder if perhaps this stems from ways of viewing the world. Plot coming first feels to me like destiny. Character coming first feels like free will. I tend to lean towards free will and so the plot in any given piece of writing tends to spring more from the choices a character makes rather than what I need for him or her to do to get to the ending that I originally imagined.

That probably sounds a bit high-minded because in reality I don’t think about this at all when I’m actually writing. Besides the end result should be something in which character and plot and all the other elements that make up a whole and compelling tale flow seamlessly along leaving only chicken-and-the-egg musings such as this post.

Ultimately a writer has to be able to handle both. While in graduate school studying screenwriting, I learned about plot, because that seems to drive the writing process for scripts, but plot doesn’t get me writing. Characters do. Of course once I have a character that intrigues me, that character’s story will keep me going as I discover what exactly it is.

Finally, this brings to mind an analogy that one of my film professors used to use when encouraging students to learn both film and video (back when there was a difference): you’ve got to be able to play the piano with both hands. I think plot and character are like that. Every writer will start from a different place, but for the story to work for the reader, the two must be woven together, each supporting the other.

Party On, Dude

May 10, 2006 • • 1 Comment

Beer and Syringes

Yeah, you get looks at the grocery store when all you’re buying is beer and syringes, but what can I say? My dog gets allergy shots and, well, I get thirsty.

There is cause for celebration, though: I’ve finally finished editing the Camp Periwinkle yearbook video. This is a task I normally complete late in February, but due to multiple hard drive failures and having to start over at square one (twice) it is now May and I’ve only today sent off the approval copies to the camp and foundation directors.

Video editing is a tedious and frustrating, but ultimately rewarding endeavor. Nothing seems to work, the shots I wish I had don’t exist, I can’t find the one shot I remember shooting. Basically, there’s lots of cussing and wishing I was outside playing kick the can with all the other kids.

I then remember why I’m doing it and I keep going. For some kids with cancer the video becomes a reminder of one of the few times they were happy or felt normal. For some parents, it’s a chance to see their kids, who are fighting for their lives, actually smile or even laugh. It’s worth giving up every Saturday for four months.

But the technical frustrations build until just as I begin formulating excuses for why there won’t be a video this year, I watch what I’ve got and it starts to hold together. It becomes a maze and I can see the way out by tightening a shot here, moving a sequence there, and then all of a sudden the thing comes alive with the speed of a runner racing downhill.

Suddenly, the next thing I know I’m sending approval copies off to the powers that be and stopping at the grocery store to pick up a celebratory beer and a bunch of syringes. For my dog.

Party on.

Of Storms and Weird Light

May 9, 2006 • • 2 Comments

I haven’t slept well for days. The weather radio, a necessity when living on the edge of Tornado Alley, goes off every night in advance of severe thunderstorms that have rolled through nearly every night for the past week.

The Steven Hawking voice of the National Weather Service Austin-San Antonio explains that there are dangerous storms in Travis, Williamson, Hays, Blanco and Burnet counties. There is also always flash flooding in Burnet County. Always. Every time it rains.

Some nights it wakes me up to tell me to stay away from windows because of storms that produce golf ball sized hail. I usually stay in bed and listen to the thunder boom closer and closer. I watch the lightning flicker across the ceiling, illuminating the fan as it increases in frequency and violence before drifting off to eastern counties.

I think tonight will bring more of the same.

As I was working at the computer, I noticed the room filled with the strangest orange glow. I went outside and saw the skies to the south were dark, purple and forbidding. To the north and west the setting sun had cast the whole sky in an unnatural dirty orangish glow, not the orange of Longhorn victories and summer nights, but a sickly smoky orange. Overhead the orange and the purple met in an eerie and twisted swirl of clouds.

I suspect the weather radio will be keeping me up again tonight.

To Kill a Mockingbird

May 9, 2006 • • 2 Comments

In the long list of books I never read in high school, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the one I most always meant to read. It’s not that I didn’t read it because I was lazy, it just wasn’t ever assigned and there’s something about “school classics” that causes kids to not read them unless forced to do so.

I guess it’s because if a book is deemed acceptable by teachers, students assume a lack of substantial violence, substantive nudity, substandard language, and substance abuse.

Invariably, many of us who stuck with trashy sci-fi novels when given the choice, grow into adults who eventually pick up and read the few “school classics” that weren’t assigned (To Kill a Mockingbird, A Separate Peace, Fahrenheit 451, etc) and yet somehow remembered. As an adult, it’s easy to see why so many teachers assign these books, and I always wish I’d read them when I was younger, but then I wouldn’t have read the other “school classics” that I was assigned to read.

Can’t read ’em all, I suppose, but dammit, I’m gonna try!

So I finally read To Kill a Mockingbird so that I could finish teaching it to a group of students who had already started it with another teacher. Couldn’t put it down. I knew, generally, what it was about, and I had seen the movie years ago, but the book really struck me.

Continue readingTo Kill a Mockingbird

Oh, Just Burn Me at the Stake

May 4, 2006 • • 2 Comments

When I used to coach debate I often had interesting conversations and (of course) debates with my students. One young man was a self-described Christian conservative who loved to debate politics with me. It was lots of fun and he hadn’t yet developed the tendency to shut out the ideas of those with whom he disagreed as so many do who are adamant in their beliefs.

One day he asked me why I was a liberal (I’m actually more of a left-leaning moderate, but I didn’t get into that since the reasons are the same). It wasn’t sarcastic or mean-spirited; he was just curious. I told him that there were three institutions in which I was raised that played such a role in developing my beliefs that they continue to inform my thinking today even though I’m not actively involved with any of them anymore.

The first was the US Navy. Growing up with the military overseas is to live in something of an ideal, almost utopian, society. There is full employment. Schools are well-funded and high performing. There is universal healthcare. People of all races, religions and ethnic backgrounds work together in an environment of (mostly) mutual respect.

Second was the church. I was raised Episcopalian, and I learned that it was wrong to disregard the needs of the poor and the suffering. I learned that wealth was not the most important thing in life and that it was obscene to pursue material gain at the expense of others. It was quite clear from an early age that the ideals of the Democratic party were less unchristian than the ideals of the Republican party.

Finally, the Boy Scouts of America. When I was involved it was about camping, hiking, boating, and learning to live in and appreciate nature. The Boy Scouts taught me that conservation and environmental protection are the absolute most important issues we face. When choosing between business and the environment, I learned that the environment has to come first.

So there it was. I watched his jaw hit the floor as I explained that I was liberal because of church, the military, and boy scouts. I’m sure this is all heresy.

Thinking About Seagulls

May 3, 2006 • • 14 Comments

Seagulls have always fascinated me. As a boy growing up on naval bases I used to enjoy watching them dive from great heights and skim across the surface of the water. I always thought of them as the ‘eagles of the sea,’ despite the fact that the sea eagle is an entirely different type of bird. I also conveniently ignored the fact that most seagulls are really scavengers that would prefer trailing garbage scows looking for moldy refuse rather than preying on the creatures of the deep.

Their flocks, which at distances appear to be great swarms of white insects, enthralled me and often, as a teenager living on the shores of Narragansett Bay, I would hike out to a small bird sanctuary and spend hours watching them argue with one another on the beach, chase one another through the air, and at times my gaze would fix upon one lonely gull flying high above the others majestically scanning the world below his steady wings as if he alone were the king of all he surveyed.

Gulls are interesting fliers. They can soar for long distances, gaining speed as they gently descend, or they may flap their long wings and execute cunning maneuvers with great skill and daring, wending their circuitous way among their kin. They are just as interesting in repose, however. They may bob up and down on the swelling waves for hours on end looking more like a duck than the great and mighty seagull.

Occasionally in fits of anthropomorphic fancy, I have decided that seagulls are sentient in much the same way as people. I’ve read that gulls have been known to live up to forty years and one day, as I sat on the railroad tracks on northern Aquidneck Island staring out at the gulls calling and chasing each other away from their food, I began to wonder what thoughts might come to a mind that spends hours on end, year after year, soaring over the desert of the sea.

Continue readingThinking About Seagulls

Daydreaming

May 2, 2006 • • Leave a comment

Several postcards hang next to my computer. Here’s one of them…

Daydreaming

Sometimes I’m the last alive inside this hidden land.
Dreams speak louder, visions brighter
than mere newspapers in that other world.

My eyes drift to the bulletin board, confront that angry photo of Geronimo.
He clutches his rifle in gnarled old warrior’s hands and says,
“Get back to work.”

My Side of the Mountain

May 2, 2006 • • 2 Comments

Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain is a book that I probably wouldn’t have picked up had I not suddenly found myself having to teach it after the recent tragedy at work. It’s a book for young readers that somehow I missed when I was growing up.

The story is simple: a kid named Sam runs away from New York City sometime in the 1950s to go live in the woods. He spends a year living alone in the Catskill Mountains, hunting and trapping for food. He learns to live off the land with the help of a falcon named Frightful that he stole from her nest and then trained to hunt for him.

It’s a sweet and touching book about living in harmony with nature, a kind of fictional Walden for young readers that even references Thoreau on a few occasions. Most impressive are George’s vivid descriptions of the woods and its animals and how they all change with the seasons. George never idealizes nature, choosing instead to just describe the natural world through young Sam’s eyes, yet what emerges is an ideal world that slowly changes Sam as he discovers that true independence has its price.

My Side of the Mountain is a pleasant (and quick for an adult) read that reminds me of camping trips during my New England Boy Scouting years and makes me want to run away to the woods and live off fresh fish and berries.