Not the news

   I learned from reading the Washington Post this morning that this has been the warmest decade in Earth's history. Anyhow, that's what I learned from the headline. Reading into the article itself I learned that this ,instead, was the warmest decade in the era of modern weather data collection, which isn't the same thing at all. A quick google search tells me that the Earth is 4.54 billion years old with an error range of 50 million years. Modern weather data gathering has only been around for about a hundred years. I'm not saying the Washington Post is printing fake news, afterall ,they clarify the length of the Earth's history they're actually referring to in the first line of the accompanying article, but wouldn't it have been nice if the WaPo cared a little more about getting things right ? I'll just answer my own question ; yes, it would have been nice,  but that's not what the Washington Post is all about.
     
       During most of Earth's four and a half billion years of existence the planet was much hotter than today . Carbon dioxide levels have often been much higher . There were also periods of cold, when Co2 levels were quite low. Temperatures effect Co2 levels and vice versa. It's a complicated relationship. During one  period the entire surface of the Earth is thought to have been covered in ice from pole to pole.
     Luckily ,we have only been around for a short time in this long perilous history. We've managed to miss the worst of it. But even over the past 200,000 years Earth's climate has been anything but stable as sudden catastrophic fluctuations have come close to wiping us out. What we are experiencing now is a sweet spot. If the Earth continues warming at the present rate it may be difficult adjusting to temperature increases predicated to amount to +2 C over the next century, but those adjustments are not impossible, nor unprecedented, necessarily catastrophic, or unavoidable.
    The ' avoidable ' part is something we all should be happy about. whatever prescriptions to reverse or modify climate change we endorse. Many activists call for banning fossil fuels. Fossil fuel use has brought us to the level of prosperity we enjoy today. Banning them guarantees less prosperity, especially in the third world.  Some proposals would do this gradually, some more abruptly. Those of us who believe that banning them would have catastrophic effects on the world's economy look to other means to the same end such as carbon sequestration. Technologies to  reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere already exist . Deploying them on a large scale is expensive but  nothing near the prohibitive costs of proposals like the Green New Deal. In the meantime we could plant more trees. Millions of new trees across the planet will improve our lives in many ways while soaking up Co2. It's a low tech example of carbon sequestration, and highly effective.
       The Washington Post occasionally reports on these softer but effective solutions but gives greater weight to solutions that are less practical and more disruptive. It's as if a complete reordering of society from top to bottom is the real goal. " Never let a serious crises go to waste ", to quote Rahm Emmanuel in another context. Scaring people into rash action seems to be working. Look at the climate proposals of every leading Democratic presidential candidate.
      Strangely, I didn't intend to focus this column on global warming. That was just an aside that got out of hand, a digression. I wanted to write about the Washington Post as an example of advocacy journalism. It hard finding any other kind of journalism. Whatever happened to reporting the news? Where's the objectivity? Who's reporting the news fairly or agenda free? The Washington Post is only one newspaper among many but it's a leading paper and representative of the industry. 
     Reading the Post you could be forgiven for mistaking a news article for one of its opinion pieces. There's so little difference. I have no problem with bias, or opinions .I'd just like to see them outside the news pages. If the Washington Post wants to frighten us into reigning in climate change then let them ring that bell as loud as they wish. Just don't call it the news . Fudging stories on climate change is  a small part of their program. The same lazy style of journalism crops up elsewhere. Politics dominates the Post's reporting. Their political reporting  is equally shoddy.  It's a shame. We need a press with more rigorous standards . We need it now more than ever.

Trauma drama

        The left often refer to their ideological opponents on the right as Nazis, Fascists, and racist. For them ,it seems the right is not about ideology at all. The right may propose smaller government, greater autonomy for individuals, reversing destructive trends in government and culture , etc., but they're really all about keeping disenfranchised and marginalized groups in their place, and advancing the interests of the already powerful. The rest is just a smoke screen. For their part, the right replies with claims that the left misunderstands everything it sees, often projects it's own pathologies on opponents, exalts feelings over facts, and disregards reality wherever reality contradicts what they wish to see. When the left claim offence ,or feeling threatened by the actions or words of the right, they're dismissed as " pearl clutchers " and " snowflakes ". I sometimes wonder how much all this apparent offence taking is sincere.
       Last Sunday the Daily Northwestern, the student newspaper at  prestigious Northwestern University published an editorial, signed by It's editor and chief and seven other editors of that paper, including it's chair of inclusion and diversity. I wonder how many newspapers have a chair of inclusion and diversity?  I have a feeling that the diversity they are encouraging doesn't extend to diversity of ideas. Gender identity, racial identity, and god knows what else have siezed the day, and cancelled out that quaint consideration. The world of identity politics has swepped aside everything in its path. What makes this particular editorial interesting isn't the number of signers, it's the apology it contains from the paper to the student body. The editors are sorry for their coverage of a recent speaking event on campus by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. They're sorry for posting photos of some of the protesters who showed up to shut down the event and prevent Sessions from speaking ( an outcome they were largely successful in causing ), and for their reporters gathering student comments .The editors were sorry that the paper did it's job, because in doing what newspapers do, and are supposed to do, some students felt threatened, and that their privacy was compromised.
        The editorial is available online. For me it's entire contents are fascinating to read. I'd love to quote fully, but it's longer than I have space to include. Here are excerpts from its last paragraph, at least, " Although the paper desires to document the gravity of the events that took place on the campus, the editors have decided to prioritize the trust and safety of students... We feel that covering traumatizing events require a different response than many other stories. While our goal is to document history and spread information, nothing is more important than ensuring our fellow students feel safe- and in situations like this, that they are benefiting from our coverage rather than actively being harmed by it. We failed to do that last week, and we could not be more sorry. "
       The word that stands out above others is " traumatizing ". Apparently the short visit by the former A.G. from the Trump administration to the campus was traumatizing, particularly to " those who identify with marginalized groups " as earlier mentioned in the editorial. I get it that many Northwestern students might not agree with Sessions, or the president he represented, but how could his presence represent anything remotely traumatizing? And if by some flight of imagination it could be construed as traumatizing to anyone, weren't they free to stay away ? What made some students feel compelled to shut down the event? If, instead, the taumatization refers to some student activists finding their faces connected with the protest then that" trauma" was easily avoided as well by their being somewhere else on that day.                                                                 Why do many students across the country feel similar compulsion to shut down the speeches of conservative speakers? Why must the University's hosting these speaches spend many thousands of dollars, millions all together, to secure the safety of conservative speakers and not for anyone else ? When did these bastions of free speech become antagonistic to the whole notion. When did free inquiry go out of fashion there, and why? When did the dogmas of the left become unassailable ? When did questioning the left's hegemony in these institutions become so sacred that it requires violence and heckling to defend? 
       Yeah, I've got lots of questions. I'd like to know when answering to the baying mobs became the chief duty of journalists, forcing basic reportage and truth telling to the back seat? 
        I was raised generations before child car seats and widespread helicopter parenting. College students today are from a more sheltered generation.  I suppose their expectations of protection and coddling are considerably higher than what I'm familiar with.  I guess providing safe spaces for their pampered students is increasingly considered the University's highest calling and the press must play along. Good luck with that.

The missing bicycle

       The trickiest bit about traveling with a bicycle isn't the riding, it's the conveying. Bikes take very well to being ridden. They seem to take umbrage at being transported.  True to their passive aggressive nature they take their revenge by tossing off washers and bolts, or anything else left unsecured while your'e not looking. Bike touring is pretty straightforward. You strap everything to the bike you think will be useful and sit on the seat and peddle. But, every once in a while you get as far as you can easily get by peddling and throw your contraption on to some other machine and trust that you'll both get to your destination unscathed.  That doesn't always work out. Things can go wrong. For me, they often have. I've had my bikes bent and made unrideable by careless baggage handlers. I've made them unrideable myself when I've lost or overlooked necessary pieces of hardware . Once I even got at my my destination only to open the box I'd placed my bicycle in finding that I'd left the wheels behind. I've sometimes left out the pedels. I can't even count the number of times I've botched reassembling the headset and had to take it in to a bike mechanic for adjustment. The last time this happened the mechanic took pity on me and showed me that all I had to do is remove the handlebars and I could leave the headset alone. Traveling with a bike in tow has involved a lot of trial and error, but mostly error.  
        I'm traveling Amtrak as I write this. The train has stopped for ten minutes or  to pick up passengers in Johnstown Pa. I rode to Grand Junction by the scenic route and I'm taking the train from there to New Jersey to see my family. Amtrak supplied me with a large box to carry the bike and most of my camping gear in. It's so large that I didn't have to remove the wheels to fit the bike into the box, so there's no danger of leaving them out but I'm wondering what I did with those peddles. I'm not so worried about what happened to them as I am worried about the bike generally. There have been two transfers on this journey. Can I really expect Amtrak to get it right and move that precious box at the right time to the right location? I don't know. It's out of my hands. A traveler has to live by faith the same way that your garden variety saint does. You need to trust that things will work out, and if they don't, you need to trust that works out too. You could try traveling without faith, maybe put the responsibility on a travel agency, have everything planned and reserved for you. I'm not sure how much that resembles  traveling the way I do it. It sounds like  all the real traveling has already been done for you. The only interesting part for me is the uncertainty. If I wanted certainty I would have stayed home. But what do I know? I'm the guy that packs his bicycle without noticing that I've left out the wheels.
       The train has just crested a mountain range. Which is it ,the Tuscarora, the Blue Ridge, the Kittatinny , Allegheny? It's very misty up here and overcast. I can see a freeway winding it's way through the mountains below.  Most of the trees still have leaves attached with colors  from deep red through all the hues of amber, to bright yellow.  Oak is the dominant tree on these mountains, especially white oak. There's also maple and hickory. The conductor has just announced that we are now rounding " the world famous horseshoe curve".  I know train spotters think highly of this landmark. The scenery is great here, especially with fall colors, but the horseshoe curve isn't so impressive. The evening before last the California Zephyr was descending the front range into Denver. That was a more spectacular descent by far, including an unannounced horseshoe bend. The view was vast. The drop immense. There was a foot of newly fallen snow.  Behind the peaks the sun was setting  casting a golden glow over everything, the city ,the plain, the mountains.  The scale of the West is so far beyond anything in the East . An obscure eroded cliff or gully, a little noticed mountain, in the Western U.S. wouldn't pass unnoticed in the East. It would attract tourists. It might be named a National park. 
       Here's a postscript ,written the next day. Surprise, surprise, the bike didn't make it. Amtrak just called to say they have it now.

The fourth is nearly here and the town is filling with visitors already

Painting inside out

       In a former life I found myself in Munich during Oktoberfest drawing portraits out on the street. Some of the best street performers in Europe show up during Oktoberfest to pry whatever change they can from the pockets of the millions of tourists who come for the party. At the bottom wrung are  lowly portrait artists, always looking over our shoulders for the police, always ready to adjust a price or adjust someone's features when flattery is in order.  O.K. ,not the noblest profession.
       This Oktoberfest was not many years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I worked beside three Russian artists, refugees from that cataclysm, all of them graduates of the Leningrad academy ( now St. Petersburg academy ), Russia's premier art school. I admired their work. It was some of the best street art you'll ever see. Their portraits demonstrated the quality of their rigorous academic training. The only flaw to their approach was that it always took so long to produce a portrait. Professional models may hold a pose for two hours, but people off the street cannot. Eventually your subject grows tired, fidgety, exasperated. The artist, truthful to a fault ,follows the sitters expressions  , beginning with a smile that gradually turns more sour, or stilted. They could charge more than I did, but I was able to dash out six or more portraits to their one . America 6, Russia 1, that was the score. Besides, I had the quick sketch market cornered. Luckily none of my Russian friends bothered with them.
      There's a trick to making quick sketch portraits.  Rigorous academic training helps. I had my share. It's nice to know the basics before you start. The most important factor is practice. Draw hundreds of faces, make that thousands. After a while you may become really good at it. You're no longer tentative, wondering where to place eyes or chins. After enough of them you no longer measure or calculate, you just let it happen on the paper. Something takes over, and all falls into place.  
       I don't want to get too woo woo, but you may find yourself operating on a higher plane. Suddenly your sitter is far more than just a subject.  It's as if their essence slipped right out of the body where it's safely kept imprisoned all day to freely play and dance with yours. It's from that soul to soul contact that I've found my most successful portraits coming. They tend to really look like the people because they were drawn from the inside out instead of the other way round.
       When this happens it's like catching fire. There are days when it doesn't happen at all so you just plod on. Some days you may be on your second or third portrait when it hits. Numbers four through ten happen in rapid succession because you're not the only one feeling it. The atmosphere is electric. People are lining up behind you working out who will sit in what order. You're the conduit, the medium, the master magician! 
         I don't know why it's taken me so long to figure out that this applies ,or should apply ,to landscape paintings. I can be a very slow learner. The connection now seems so obvious. It came to me yesterday .  I was trying to figure out why  plein air paintings often reveal more than their studio cousin even while containing less. I went to the internet for an explanation. There were several articles listing the advantages of plein air ( meaning " open air"  ) painting. None of them really were all that convincing. There was something missing in their advocacy , but what was it? 
          My mind flashed to those summers in Europe, drawing the quick sketch, getting it down to ten minutes, keeping one step ahead of the police, enjoying the vibe of pedestrian streets and outdoor cafes . I thought of Oktoberfest and working beside the Russians. I think those Russians were at a disadvantage. Between themselves and their subjects there was a barrier. They missed the inside. While they laboriously drew what they could see I was busy soul dancing, digging in deeper, showing less.                                                                                                     Natural scenes and scenes around town have a surface to them just as people do. And as with people ,the real story lies within. Unlock it and a painting rings. The only way to paint nature is to go out there and respond to what your senses tell you.  Plein air artists are about to ascend to Telluride. They'll be painting what they see, call these the facts, call them the surface. They'll probably be adding something more. They'll  go beyond what they're seeing to reflect what they're feeling, and that part is marvelous. That's the inside out part. Now that's a noble profession.

The disruptor

      Early on in the Trump administration the President arranged for the release from detention Egyptian -American Aya Hijazi. She'd been held for three years along with her husband and four employees of their charity that cares for Cairo's street children. The charges against them pursued by Egypt's justice department that they had sexually abused children are widely recognized to be baseless. Despite the the dubious charges and  Aya's American citizenship no resolution for this tragic situation presented itself until there was a new occupant in the Whitehouse. Trump had run as an outsider, a disruptor, a negotiator. Aya's case would put these claims to it's first test.
     In order to secure her return to Virginia Trump had Egypt's strongman president Abdul Fattah al- Sisi over to the Whitehouse and said a few nice things about him . Al-Sisi got the full on schmuze treatment. Trump's schmuzing incensed the Washington press core no end. The previous administration had kept al-Sisi at arms length , but reversing course did the trick. When Aya visited the Whitehouse to thank the President for his effective intervention it was covered by all the networks and most newspapers. Fox news was almost alone in demonstrating any enthusiasm. Democrat lawmakers, even those that had begged for her release earlier were strangely silent now. The public  either offered effusive praise for the President, or kept quiet. Following the most divisive election in a lifetime, the breakdown was predictable. Those who had supported the President in the election were apt to congratulate him . Those who didn't had nothing to say.
      I wondered if maybe we were just too close to the election at the time . Hurt feelings still stung. People were still talking about Hillary's three million vote advantage. For them Trump only prevailed on a technicality. Or maybe this would be the new normal. For 40% of us Donald Trump can do no wrong, while for another 40% he can do nothing right. The remaining 20% are an endangered species. Unfortunately the political divide is still growing. We're closing in on the sort of tribalism common to the least happy and successful nations on earth. This is the new normal.
       Last Sunday when it was announced that Mexico had agreed to sweeping proposals to remedy the crises at our southern border cheers were not heard from the plush new studios of NPR. Silence on the subject from media sources and Democrat presidential candidates would be an improvement compared to the swill they offered . You may have heard that Trump's threatened tariffs elicited no new policy proposals from the Mexican side. You may have heard that threatening to place tariffs on a country to force actions outside of trade is reckless and counter productive. You may have heard or read that Trump achieved nothing more than resolving a problem that he himself created. You may have heard these ideas because they are hard to avoid from  newsroom echo chambers . None are true.  Truth is beside the point when it comes to racking up points against Donald Trump. I think the thinking goes that Trump is so awful that anything you say against him is justified. It serves a larger truth even if it lets a few untruths sneak out in the effort. Giving him credit for anything is never acceptable.
        Credibility is no longer a matter of getting things right, unless getting things right means something much different from what it once did. It has morphed into picking sides politically and only broadcasting what appeals to your political faction while casting  others in the worst light possible. This is what passes for " the news" these days.
         Our President is unique. He's one of a kind. I get it if you find his style unpalatable. He's made me squirm often.   I can't believe the stuff that comes out of his mouth. For style points the guy rates around minus 4. When it comes to what he's actually done, there's more reason for hope. If you're not on board with tax cuts for 80% of taxpayers, reducing burdensome and unnecessary regulations,  reforming criminal sentencing so that deserving inmates don't have to spend their lives rotting away behind bars,  full employment, or rewriting  trade agreements that disadvantage us then you certainly have good reason to disapprove of , if not hate him. If you think any of these accomplishments have merit and you still can't stand the President then maybe you ought to rethink that.  Maybe you're favoring style over substance. Maybe you're listening to Trump's negative press without granting it the scepticism it richly deserves.
        I didn't support Trump in 2016. I'm reconsidering that position for 2020. Maybe the argument we heard for him during that last election was correct afterall. Maybe a disruptor is exactly what we needed. Maybe we need him still.

Unlearning Whiteness

   Anyone looking at the photo of me that accompanies this column may have guessed that I am a white guy. Funny , but I don't really notice that myself. I see a wrinkly guy. I see, most of all an individual with traits, and quirks, and failings, like anyone else. Human beings are not clones. I love them for that. Sure, I know I'm white. I'm not like the character Steve Martin played in The Jerk  who having been raised by a black family is convinced that he is black himself, but I don't give my whiteness a lot of thought. Some people claim that this is a symptom of my entrenched white privilege. Others may not have the luxury of such color blindness ,they're judged every day for their color, slighted ,and marginalized because of circumstances beyond their control. I don't entirely disagree.
      I went to a coffee talk hosted by Mountainfilm last week on the subject of white fragility to get an ear full of what two progressive women, academic and author Robin DiAngelo ,and activist Favianna Rodriguez think I ought to understand about whiteness. 
       Robin DiAngelo encouraged the white members of the audience ( approximately 95% of us, it was a Telluride crowd afterall ) to " break down our identity from the core and rebuild it". She said we should ask ourselves "how has our whiteness shaped us." She confessed that " I was born into hierarchy and that system has shaped my life. ". She pointed out that white supremacy is all around us. It's in us. It's not just a handful of Klan members  marching around the town square. Its a problem for all of us, particularly those who won't acknowledge it, or work to excise it from our unconscious thinking. Without a critical mass of white people acknowledging their racism ,systemic racism is here to stay. 
        The best quote of the morning came from co- presenter Favianna Rodriguez who claimed " whiteness must be unlearned ". Her audience didn't bat an eye at this remark. I challenge you to examine this prescription for yourself. I" must unlearn my whiteness"? Doesn't that sound a tiny bit insulting, maybe even a tiny bit racist? Modern progressives have redefined racism in order to weaponize it against philosophical opponents while providing themselves a handy formula for misunderstanding them. They don't know what racism is, but are certain that it is everywhere, influencing everything. The same goes for patriarchy, or homophobia. I doubt she'd recognize real racism if she saw it, having twisted the concept so far beyond recognition. 
     Are whites more inclined to judge others by their skin color, their accents, their culture? More than Chinese , more than Pakistanis, than Kenyans, than a mestizo living in Mexico or Ecuador, more than anyone else ? I'd like to see the data on that. I suspect this is a firmly held belief without any basis in fact. The speakers had a lot of those.
     What if she had said this about any race or group other than  Caucasian?  Say something comparable to Polynesians, or Hxoza's, or Zulus or Indo-Africans ,or anyone in South Africa other than whites and what might we say about the speaker? She'd rightly be branded a racist. Why the pass on whites? It's not hard to trace this trend to earlier currents in academia that have long beeno popular. Now they're doctrine. Anti-colonialism, Anti-imperialism, Anti-Western have morphed into Anti-white, and now and then, Anti-Semite. We've steadily wound ourselves into this perplexing state and no one dare question it. Once academics considered it their duty to open the minds of students. Once ( but I'm not sure when) the Socratic method of unflinchingly holding every piece of accepted wisdom up to scrutiny was thought to be praiseworthy and valuable. Without our noticing ,academics have assumed the role of medieval priests and inquisitors, stamping out heresy wherever they find it, and enforcing dogma.
    
       What's it matter anyway? Of the races of man ,whites are first on the list to go the way of the Dodo. We're not reproducing at sustainable rates. Europeans haven't been replacing their numbers for generations, ditto Japanese. White Americans have finally joined them. Soon we'll find the white race as extinct as the Valley Floor prairie dog. I'm not passing judgement, just passing on a few facts. As someone who is nearly extinct himself, it really doesn't matter to me whether future generations look more like Brad Pitt than Tiger Woods ( but wouldn't it be great if we could look like Brad or Angelina and play golf like Tiger ?). I care more about what our progeny do and think than their skin color. Some ideas really ought to follow the Dodo.