The Tanuki Ramble

My view

For starters, my intent in the previous post was not so much to comment as to present and let folks decide for themselves.  The issues raised are as complex as they are profound, and I felt that  by juxtaposing these two poles, I was providing an opportunity to see both sides more clearly.  And that includes me.

Now this is my take.  Rereading Dennett's views makes me  wonder what he's talking about, because when he and pundits start telling me what religion is, I simply don't recognize it.  He might as well be describing my mother in terms of the periodic table of the elements, or Bizet's The Pearl Fishers by oscilloscope readings.  Or worse yet, by judging the phenomenon of music in its entirety by surveying the efforts of high school thrash metal bands.  Not very scientific, is it?  But what else can you say about a guy who overlooks the message of the Gospels, the cathedral at Chartres, Bach's Matthew's Passion, men like Kolbe, etc., etc., not to mention the Baghavad Gita, the Dhammapada, etc., etc., and fixates on suicide bombers.  Might as well reduce Japanese culture to kamikaze pilots.  Or all scientists, Japanese or otherwise, by those who worked for Unit 731.

I felt that there was a gap, a chasm, an intergalactic interval, between Dennett's characterization of religion and the practice of one man's Roman Catholicism (a rare and extreme example of its practice, to be sure).    I thought the irony was pretty evident--Dennett seems to contrast a caste of enlightened , benevolent scientists, who have somehow come into existence via some process of historical spontaneous generation sans the cultural benefits of Christianity, with murderous yet pitiable religious knuckle-draggers who are on the verge of blowing us all to their idea of kingdom come.  But Dennett is confident that right thinking will drive the irrational belief in the unquantifiable our of existence.

Kolbe story, however, shows the sheer irrationality of religion in a different light.  Caught in a grasp of what, at the time, was thought to be a completely rational and science-based regime, one man who was steeped in a religious code of love and sacrifice, consistently neglected himself to serve others (this to me is more impressive than stepping forward to take the place of the condemned man; many can make one impulsively saintly decision), and dying a slow, painful, yet dignified death  sustained by his faith.  Those who say that Kolbe would have done the same without his religion simply don't know his story and show a blind faith in whatever they think refutes religion.   

In short, there are martyrs, and there are martyrs.  I just wanted append a scenario to Dennett's screed that would suggest that he fails to give a complete characterization of religion. 

Two views

The World Question Center has a fascinating collection of short essays by scientists, for the most part, answering the question "What are you most optimistic about?"

The first essay is by Daniel C. Dennett of Tufts University, and he reveals his optimism about the demise or religion, which he sees as posing a unique threat to the safety of the human race.

  I’m so optimistic that I expect to live to see the evaporation of the powerful mystique of religion. I think that in about twenty-five years almost all religions will have evolved into very different phenomena, so much so that in most quarters religion will no longer command the awe it does today. Of course many people–perhaps a majority of people in the world–will still cling to their religion with the sort of passion that can fuel violence and other intolerant and reprehensible behavior.  But the rest of the world will see this behavior for what it is, and learn to work around it until it subsides, as it surely will.  That’s the good news. The bad news is that we will need every morsel of this reasonable attitude to deal with such complex global problems as climate change, fresh water, and economic inequality in an effective way. It will be touch and go, and in my pessimistic moods I think Sir Martin Rees may be right: some disaffected religious (or political) group may unleash a biological or nuclear catastrophe that forecloses all our good efforts.

...

I think the main problem we face today is overreaction, making martyrs out of people who desperately want to become martyrs.  What it will take is patience, good information, and a steady demand for universal education about the world’s religions.  This will favor the evolution of avirulent forms of religion, which we can all welcome as continuing parts of our planet’s cultural heritage. Eventually the truth will set us free.

Another view might be surmised from the life and death of Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest who died at Auschwitz in 1941. (From Kolbe, the Saint from Auschwitz).

Prisoners at Auschwitz were slowly and systematically starved, and their pitiful rations were barely enough to sustain a child: one cup of imitation coffee in the morning, and weak soup and half a loaf of bread after work. When food was brought, everyone struggled to get his place and be sure of a portion. Father Maximilian Kolbe however, stood aside in spite of the ravages of starvation, and frequently there would be none left for him. At other times he shared his meager ration of soup or bread with others. 

In the harshness of the slaughterhouse Father Kolbe maintained the gentleness of Christ. At night he seldom would lie down to rest. He moved from bunk to bunk, saying: 'I am a Catholic priest. Can I do anything for you?'

A prisoner later recalled how he and several others often crawled across the floor at night to be near the bed of Father Kolbe, to make their confessions and ask for consolation. Father Kolbe pleaded with his fellow prisoners to forgive their persecutors and to overcome evil with good. When he was beaten by the guards, he never cried out. Instead, he prayed for his tormentors.

A Protestant doctor who treated the patients in Block 12 later recalled how Father Kolbe waited until all the others had been treated before asking for help. He constantly sacrificed himself for the others.

In order to discourage escapes, Auschwitz had a rule that if a man escaped, ten men would be killed in retaliation. In July 1941, a man from Kolbe's bunker escaped. The dreadful irony of the story is that the escaped prisoner was later found drowned in a camp latrine, so the terrible reprisals had been exercised without cause. But the remaining men of the bunker were led out.

'The fugitive has not been found!' the commandant Karl Fritsch screamed. 'You will all pay for this. Ten of you will be locked in the starvation bunker without food or water until you die.' The prisoners trembled in terror.  A few days in this bunker without food and water, and a man's intestines dried up and his brain turned to fire.

The ten were selected, including Franciszek Gajowniczek, imprisoned for helping the Polish Resistance. He couldn't help a cry of anguish. 'My poor wife!' he sobbed. 'My poor children! What will they do?' When he uttered this cry of dismay, Maximilian stepped silently forward, took off his cap, and stood before the commandant and said, 'I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. I am old. He has a wife and children.'

Astounded, the icy-faced Nazi commandant asked, 'What does this Polish pig want?'

Father Kolbe pointed with his hand to the condemned Franciszek Gajowniczek and repeated, 'I am a Catholic priest from Poland; I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children.'

Observers believed in horror that the commandant would be angered and would refuse the request, or would order the death of both men. The commandant remained silent for a moment. What his thoughts were on being confronted by this brave priest we have no idea. Amazingly, however, he acceded to the request. Apparently, the Nazis had more use for a young worker than for an old one, and was happy to make the exchange. Franciszek Gajowniczek was returned to the ranks, and the priest took his place.

Father Kolbe was thrown down the stairs of Building 13 along with the other victims and simply left there to starve. Hunger and thirst soon gnawed at the men. Some drank their own urine, others licked moisture on the dank walls. Maximilian Kolbe encouraged the others with prayers, psalms, and meditations on the Passion of Christ. After two weeks, only four were alive. The cell was needed for more victims, and the camp executioner, a common criminal called Bock, came in and injected a lethal dose of carbolic acid into the left arm of each of the four dying men. Kolbe was the only one still fully conscious and with a prayer on his lips, the last prisoner raised his arm for the executioner. His wait was over ...

Monsters, Inc.

Monsters, as in the "the sleep of, produces..."   

I've just read the long, spirit-sapping report by Roger Kimball of The New Criterion on the MLA (no, not the Mendacity Liberation Army, the "Modern Language Association," which you might believe to be nothing more sinister than the nit-picking cabal behind the style manual you may have had to adhere to producing research papers in college).    I got a slight taste of the real nature of the beast during my stint in grad school at U Pitt in attending a graduate seminar about Buddhism which was literally that: we didn't study Buddhism--the primary texts and main streams of thought-- so much as we studied studies about Buddhism. 

I recall the earnest acolytes struggling to become fluent in meta-ese, the indecipherable slang of  the academic ghetto, existing pretty much for the same reason as most slang--to distinguish the in-group from the outsiders.  I suppose they were as blameless as any novice bureaucrats trying to work their way up the ladder.  The rewards were considerable; lifetime employment in a high-status profession ensuring all the comforts of bourgeoisie life which nevertheless entitled you to claim the panache of a transgressive Jeremiah.  Alas, I just didn't have the right stuff to follow suit.

I suppose this stuff is occupying  my mind now as I scurry about  to get myself a teaching gig in the States.  Can I make it without a PhD and find work at a community college?  Or how about  a private school?  Should I suck it up and apprentice myself to the  New York State Department of Education, undergo the (re)education programs and teach the Preferred Curriculum?  I suppose I'll wind up having to take what I can get, but I find myself thinking a lot about what it means to be an "English teacher."  Am I really qualified?  Do I know enough about the scope of English and American letters, as well as their foundations in classical and medieval works to make any sense?  Is my background in Japanese literature anything more than a useless accessory?   Is the intellectual environment that fosters this, from the Kimball article,

Literature was indeed the principal casualty of this convention. At almost every turn we encountered an open and agreed-upon hostility to it, and on the rare programs where it was discussed as anything but a disguised form of malign political repression or a “text” for some variety of “transgressive” sexuality, it was either derided, condescended to, or openly attacked.   

any place for me?  Better to go on teaching ESL and maintain and at least be performing a useful function in society. 

Of course, there do exist more balanced minds in academia, as this retelling of the Sokal hoax by Barbara Epstein reveals.  Physicist Alan Sokal wrote a journal article parodying post-modernism ("Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"), which he submitted to a po mo showcase journal for publication...and which was accepted at face value!   Epstein notes that "Sokal's hoax and the laughter it generated shows that the field had become ripe for parody," but this seems an understatement.  When parody is indistinguishable from the genuine article, even mockery is no longer effective.   

Funny, I've always wondered why Goya chose to render most of his "monsters" as rather ordinary- looking owls.  Could it have been because, even 200 years ago, the symbols of learning and wisdom all too often are subverted into things far more threatening?

   

Merry Christmas

   

I'm off to the States!  Merry Christmas everyone, stay safe,  and God bless every one, left and right!   Be back around the second week of January!

(Wood block print by Kawase Hasui)

Aural Fruitcake

This joke may have gone the way of  "groovy"and other artifacts of my generation, but I meant "fruitcake" as in an undigestible Christmas gift that you really wish you didn't get.  Well, in case you're a true blue musical masochist, or happen to be one of the ones who knew me when and want a glimpse of my current state of degeneration, then you'd better pour yourself a stiff one and click on. 

One of my students, Saki Yoshida (in the video, she's the girl wearing the tie), has her own blog, which you should check out here.  Now that's a dedicated language student, who blogs in the language she's studying!  She also captured, for better or worse, a few choice moments of our Christmas party, my school's last one. 

In one of the rare guitar-trombone duos (J.J. Johnson and Joe Pass the only other one that comes to mind), my co-culprit Mark and I torture the kids with our rendition of Pops' 'Zat You, Santa Claus?  Then Saki and Yukari Koshiba rescue the day with When Christmas Comes to Town (from Polar Express) and Santa Baby.  Go here for the vids.  I must say, the poor visual and sound qualities (I think they filmed these on a cell phone!) do wonders for my looks and playing/singing abilities, although they detract from the wonderful female vocals and trombone!

Mark and I also did something I'd patched together, a gypsy swing thing I called "Django Bells," (a minor key Jingle Bells based on Minor Swing) and I felt pretty damned proud of myself for coming up with the name.  Should have known that it was too obvious not to have been done before, and sure enough, a Nashville  gypsy-swing band called The Gypsy Hombres not only had a song by the name, but had used it as the title of their Christmas album five years ago!  You can listen to a bit of it here...although I have to say, in all humility, I like my version of Django Bells (since retitled to "Djangle Bells") better...although the Hombres' musicianship leaves me in the gypsy wagon dust.

Escapist Scapegoating

The big day is rapidly approaching, and I'll soon be crossing Santa's flight path as I jet not so far from the arctic circle on Christmas Eve.  If somebody told me back when I was a kid that I'd be sharing the troposphere with the jolly old elf on December 24th, I would have thought it was the coolest thing in the world.  Now, all I can do is grumble that my travel agent couldn't get me a flight a day or two earlier...and imagine the worst: delayed take-offs, blizzards, crowded terminals, battles over the right to the armrest with my next-seat neighbor... oy vey.

Mary Eberstadt, whom I've blogged about before, notes that I'm not alone in dwelling on my fears in this typically thorough piece about scapegoats.   Why on earth are some folks predicting doom and gloom at the hands of Mexican immigrants, Christianists, and George W. Bush?  Yes, I can see the dangers of an open-door immigration policy, believe in the separation of church and state, and find some of Bush's policies worse than ill-advised.  But as Eberstadt points out, the threat from these phenomena is nothing as compared to that of radical Islam.

Now before anybody starts throwing the H(ilter) word around, I should just type up a paragraph-long disclaimer about my conviction that the majority of Muslims are as reasonable and assimilable as the adherents of any other religion.   Unfortunately, you don't have to look too hard to find some real scary talk--and scary actions--from other Muslim  groups.  And I'm talking this century, mind you...

I identify as a Catholic, a poor one, alas, but I would be the first one to condemn as unchristian any Catholic group hacking off heads in the name of the Pope, St Peter, or Jesus Christ himself.  I'd like to think that most Muslims would do the equivalent.  Furthermore, these days, in spite of the greatest provocations against the feelings of Christians, it's extremely rare to hear about any Baptist suicide bombers, for example.  I have no idea why some believe practicing and and preaching Christians pose such as dire threat to American democracy, while on the other hand, some Muslim groups, whose rhetoric is like a cross between Pat Buchanan and Genghis Khan, are sacrosanct. 

Even judging by personal experience, I've met some Muslims whose wonderful modesty, decency, and piety go unjudged by other, more "free-thinking" friends, who would brand a Christian who forsakes alcohol or revealing clothes a "religious nut"...or worse.   Something weird is going on here, and it smells like denial.

One way to begin is to survey the main intellectual and political currents since 9/11, which investigation yields a fact both unexpected and significant. As it turns out, a flight from political reality has indeed been underway on both the left and the right in America in the years since that event, as well as accelerating into more advanced forms in much of Europe. To switch metaphors, in the wake of the 9/11 attack -- and later, related Islamist attacks on civilians, most notably in Spain and Britain -- many Western observers have responded not by absorbing what we now know to be true about our world, but rather by transposing those brute facts into other, safer, more familiar keys.

I'm not sure if I would, like Eberstadt, lump Buchanan-style demonizing of Mexicans with European anti-Americanism as different facets of scapegoating.  To me, the common denominator, if there is any, is that Islam seems more of a distant, exotic menace.  Too often, fighting with one's neighbors and peers seems more tempting than admitting a greater common threat--and  deferring all the insecurities and grudges that are much dearer to the heart.

I'm afraid that I'm not exaggerating much when I suppose that there are  some folks who would rather be beheaded by a jihadi than have a picture of their smilin' face next to that of George Bush at an Evangelical luncheon on the cover of the Washington Post.  So why are such people similar to whitebread Jesus-fearing minute men?  I think that Eberstadt nails it when she posits they both need a "scapegoat,"  which she defines in these terms:

One result of that transposition, the record shows, has been the creation of a world of political scapegoats for the unease and anxiety that are the unwanted companions now of Westerners everywhere. These scapegoats, perverse non-explanations for what really ails us, can be identified by features common to the breed everywhere: The passion invested in them by their antagonists is disproportionate to any real problem the scapegoat represents; they are invoked to explain more about the world than they do; they capture some part of the truth, i.e., have a degree of verisimilitude without which a scapegoat cannot exist; and -- also like scapegoats everywhere -- they pose no threat of retaliation for their overburdening. They are scapegoats in the classic sense: metaphorical beasts seen not in their own right and reality, but rather as communal vessels carrying a political and psychological weight beyond themselves for reasons of communal relief.

By all means, read the whole thing, if you haven't already.  Hat tip to the Instapundit, hate to admit it.  The guy blogs more in a day than I do in a month.

History by Dummies

One collection of stones on top of others is a pile of rubble, while another can amount to the Great Wall of China or Cathedral of Chartres.  Likewise, some historians obscure history by cynically throwing together historical vignettes and opinions while others reveal it by presenting the fruits of earnest research.

Oliver Kamm picks through the former and finds nothing but the collapsed remains of a facade. 

In other words, what happens when you seek the help of Howard Zinn to back up an assertion that the horrible carnage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were practically without military value in terms of the Pacific War (and not the cold war)?  (An even bigger rubble heap is the pointless collection of human misery that Zinn amassed - and was lucky enough to find a mass market for - in The People's History of the United States.) 

Kamm is kinder than I would be in stating that  "I am certain Zinn is an honest historian, but equally certainly – on the subject on which Media Lens has sought his advice, at least – he is an incompetent and ill read one."

Pinochet as political litmus

I'm confused about this whole Pinochet thing.  There seems to be no question that he was a vicious bastard, but was he, on the realpolitikal whole, better for Chile than the alternative?  Christopher Hitchens, brilliant writer but erratic thinker that he is, has no doubts, as he writes in a Slate article:

His overthrow of civilian democracy, in the South American country in which it was most historically implanted, will always be remembered as one of the more shocking crimes of the 20^th century.

Waiiiit a minute, Chris...that's a pretty tall order.  In a  century rife with genocides, wars causing the deaths of millions, amoral megalomaniacs like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the Kims of North Korea playing god with the fates of their nations, who's Pinochet to rate so highly? 

On the other hand, James Whelan thinks that in the final tally, Pinochet did more good than evil.

Six months before Salvador Allende was overthrown on September 11, 1973, Volodia Teitelboim told an interviewer for the Communist Party daily newspaper in Santiago that if civil war were to come, then 500,000 to one million Chileans would die.

Teitelboim knew whereof he spoke. He was then the No.2 man in the Chilean Communist Party, the third largest in the Western world (after France and Italy), and a senior partner in Allende's Marxist-Leninist government.

The Communists were then planning to seize total power in the country, though they were not in as much a hurry to do so as the Socialists, the principal party in the Allende coalition and one passionately committed to revolutionary violence. So the Communists and the Socialists shared the same goal - ending once and for all the bourgeois democratic state - but differed on methods. Allende, a Socialist, was somewhere in between, wavering between his own bourgeois tastes and the totalitarian temptation.

Allende had come to power in September 1970 with not enough votes to win outright election - only 40,000 more than the conservative runner-up - and so had to be voted in by Congress in exchange for a statute of guarantees drawn up by the Christian Democrat majority. A few months later, Allende told fellow leftist Regis Debray that he never actually intended to abide by those commitments but signed just to finally become president, having failed in three previous runs for the office.

In those first 2 1/2 years, Allende had plunged Chile into hell-on-earth chaos. Former president Eduardo Frei Montalva - the man more responsible than any other for Allende's ascent to the presidency - called it "this carnival of madness". Violence, strikes, shortages and lawlessness stalked the land.

The Supreme Court declared Allende outside the law. So, too, did the Chamber of Deputies in August 1973 in a resolution that all but demanded the armed forces seize power to rescue Chile from the inferno.

So, when the armed forces finally did act on September 3, they did so in response to the clamour of an overwhelming majority of Chileans and not as the jackboot power bandits of typical Latin American revolts. News stories about what happened on that Tuesday in September routinely speak of the bloody coup. It was no such thing. About 200 people died in the shooting on September 13 and a little more than 1000 in the first three months of virtual civil war.

But not the civil war the Communists were perfectly prepared to accept as their price for power: 500,000 to one million. Indeed, in all 17 years of military rule, the total of dead and missing - according to the only serious study - was 2279. The Chilean Revolution thus was, by far, the least bloody of any significant Latin American revolution of the 20th century, though you would never guess that from reading or watching news reports.

The Chilean revolution was different from other Latin American revolutions in another respect: it left the country far better off than the one it found. Indeed, Chile is the envy of the entire region for its spectacular economic progress and for the solidity of the institutions the military government created. Consider: Inflation was slashed from 600per cent to 6per cent; infant mortality rates came down from 66per 1000 to 13 per 1000; urban access to drinking water increased from 67 per cent to 98per cent; and living standards more than doubled.

Among others featured in an NRO Symposium on Pinochet (overwhelmingly favorable), my ideel Theodore Dalrymple, here under his real name of Anthony Daniels, uses his skills as a prison shrink to get to the real reasons that the strong man of Chile is so vilified.

The reason Augusto Pinochet was universally hated by leftists and many academics worldwide was not because he was so brutal or killed so many people (he hardly figured among the 20th century’s most prolific political killers, admittedly a difficult company to get into) but because he was so successful. There is no doubt that there was indeed much brutality and hardship in the wake of his coup, but unlike the much less reviled military dictators of Argentina and Uruguay, he actually achieved something worthwhile, namely the prosperity of his country.

Worse still, he did so by adopting the very reverse of the policies for so long advocated by third worldists and academic development economists, who were certain that the cause of the third world’s poverty was the first world’s wealth, and that everything would have to change before anything could change. His demonstration that a country could draw itself up by its bootstraps, by embracing trade, was most unwelcome. It forced a change of world outlook, never welcome to those who live by ideas.

That a hick general from a humble background should so obviously have done much more for his country than a suave, educated, aristocratic Marxist was a terrible blow to the self-esteem of the Left in every Western country. As for holding a referendum on own his rule and abiding by the result when he lost, that was quite unforgivable, setting as it did a shocking precedent for left-wing dictators.

I am pleased to admit that I found Daniel's comment after I had already commented on Hitchen's point of view. 

It seems that for both left and right, Pinochet  is an embarrassment.  For the left, his example shows that making omelets "for the good of the people" is a lie.  Pinochet actually did what Lenin and Stalin were claiming to do, as the USSR fell farther and farther behind the west.  To raise the standards of living and create a better society, Pinochet was more than willing to be brutal to some.  On the other hand, for those who champion market reforms and criticize socialists who overlook Castro's police state, Pinochet proves that Chicago Boys style economics doesn't always go together with democracy and rule of law.  The "Yes, they have little freedom, but look at the infant mortality rate" argument can cut both ways.

Niall Ferguson reminds us not to forget global politics.  In a world where there are going to be sonsofbitches no matter what we do, we might as well make sure that a few of them are ours.  Ferguson marks the passing of another 70s-80s icon, Reagan's ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick, to make this point.

Kirkpatrick did not claim that these men were good. She simply argued that they were preferable to the alternatives, just as Chiang Kai-shek had been preferable to Mao in China, and Fulgencio Batista had been preferable to Fidel Castro in Cuba. South Korea was no democracy in the 1970s, but it was better than North Korea. Taiwan was still a one-party state, but one that was much preferable to the People's Republic of China, to say nothing of Pol Pot's Cambodia.

The reason our sonsofbitches were better than theirs, she argued, was that while conservative dictatorships undeniably preserved "existing allocations of wealth, power [and] status", they also "worshipped traditional gods and observed traditional taboos". Communist regimes, by contrast, tended to "create refugees by the millions" because their ideological demands "so violated internalised values and habits that inhabitants fled".

Moreover, conservative dictatorships were much more likely than Communist ones to make the transition to democracy, because they permitted "limited contestation and participation".

Very Burkean, that part about traditional gods and taboos. 

Pinochet also brings to light another uncomfortable point for both left and right.  If we say that his strong arm tactics were necessary to prevent chaos and the deaths of far more people, then can we conclude that Saddam Hussein, a sonofabitch's sunofabitch, should have been left in power?  I would say no on several counts.  First, he wasn't our SOB--at least for the last fifteen years or so.  Second, Pinochet's Chile was more prosperous than oil-rich Iraq.  Third, millions of lives were lost anyways in his futile war against Iran. 

But how strange it is to encounter the argument that Iraq was better off with Saddam in the same political neighborhood as that which holds the Pinochet condemners.  Give Hitchens credit in that he is consistent in his argument against both.

Oy to the world, et. al.

Times are tough here in Tanuki-land.  The high school connected to our outfit, where I teach one class in literature, has just announced that it will suspend recruitment and close out within a year or two. 

This is, of course, the inevitable result of countless management oversights, blunders, and incredible indifference to its main product: education.  Our outfit is ultimately run by an accountant.  It's kind of like finding yourself signed onto a cross-country bus tour planned and organized by a bus mechanic.   "OK folks, we're going to spend the first two thirds of our trip touring the truck stops of Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas as the flat terrain will be best for the shocks.  And heck, we won't even have to leave the interstates!"

I find it difficult to suppress the nasty wish that those whose are responsible for this pass we've come to will experience at least a part of the confusion and inconvenience (to put it mildly) that the students and staff have gone through.  Though to be honest, the clueless folks concerned may have been so removed from the actual workings of our school that they might never fathom even a tenth of the damage they have done.  Others closer to the action, I'm sure, will have their share of sleepless nights. 

As for the teachers, well, we're in it for the kids, and have to do our best even though it'll mean squat for us careerwise--and it galls  to put in free overtime for a racket that's given you the shaft.  In most jobs, I suppose, the drones treated this shabbily would drag their feet and do the minimum while they wait to be escorted to the front door.  In the meantime, they'd take the sick days.  Shuffle and reshuffle papers and look busy.  But such is not the path of virtue.   

And yet, in spite of it all, 'tis the season...isn't it?   I've been trying to keep my mood up by listening to some good  Christmas music.  Now, far be it from me to shill for anybody, but I've downloaded some true classics from Emusic.  I'm not getting a dime for them, by the way, and this is a purely unsolicited endorsement.  But I hope you'll check out some of these albums and bands.  You can listen to 30 seconds of the cuts for free, and I think you still get 50 free tracks if you sign on.  Or go out and buy the albums individually.  Either way, I'm sure they'll become a part of your Christmases for years to come. 

First stop is Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Anybody (of my approximate generation, at least) will instantly recognize the first few bars of Linus and Lucy, a piano driven, feel-good gem of a swingin' rock piece.  But the rest of the cuts, some featuring a deliberately selected group of amateur kid singers, is so wistful and sweet, the standards so familiar yet so fresh, and the new cuts so charming,  that you'll find that the album will satisfy a wide range of your Christmas moods.   These days, I find it nearly as essential as my morning pot of earl grey to get me going.

Disclaimer:  I am jug band fan.  My first experience of jug band music was with an odd group of guys called the Provincetown Jug Band that played the Boston Irish bars when the Cape was too chilly to find anybody to play to there.  That led me to check out classics like The Memphis Jug Band, newer incarnations like Jim Kweskin, and great compilations like Ruckus Juice and Chitlins.  I guess the  band I played with back at Chuck Wagon Honky Tonk Saloon in Fukushima was a jug band in most ways.  Ah yes, jug music has changed my life.

So it may be an acquired taste, but if you like good time music played loose but well, the vocals just off key enough to sound good, then you'll love the Christmas Jug Band.  Yeah, you'll do the band more good if you order their CDs directly from them, but you can get them for a song, ahem, at emusic.  Band members included grizzled old pros like Dan Hicks, ex Commander Cody members, and Van Morrison and Thunderbirds musicians. 

The Christmas Jug Band has some great originals (these from Rhythm on the Roof) like the polka-flavored stomper "Christmas Time Is Here" (not to be confused with an identically-titled tune from the Guaraldi album) and the homeless Christmas anthem "If I Don't Have a Chimney."  Oh, don't forget the rap song "Santa Don't Do It (Don't Shave on Christmas Eve):"  "Now you may know me as a jolly little FEL-low/But cut the cracks about the belly full of JELL-o." 

I'm also partial to their reworkings of jazz standards as Christmas songs, like "I Know What I'm Getting" ( "Exactly Like You"), "Twas The Night Before Christmas" ("Ain't Misbehavin"), "I'm Your Santa As Seen on TV" ("Sheik of Araby"), etc.   There are some songs you may want to play after you tuck the kids in for their long winter's nap, such as Uncorked's  "Santa Lost A Ho:"

But there ain't no joy cause just one toy is missin' from Santa's shack                             Cause he's never had a doll go AWOL once he got her in the sack.

The Christmas Jug Band plays the spectrum, from standards to blues to rap to rock, but if you want to swing hard for Christmas, The BSO is the way to go.  No, not the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Brian Setzer Orchestra.  He takes the Stray Cats' Rockabilly back to it's swing/boogie woogie roots and melds the power of an amped-up Gretsch to a full jazz band.  They make Christmas swing like mad.  There are two albums available, Boogie Woogie Christmas and Dig That Crazy Santa Claus.   I hope more are coming.

Now, I like Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby Christmas stuff as much as any body else, but I also enjoy Christmas tunes with a little edge, preferably as sharp as the shards of a shattered ornament.  The Klezmonauts have this edge, ecumenically putting chestnuts like "God Rest You Merry Gentlemen" and "Joy to the World" to a Klezmer beat.  And they don't stop there.  It's a rare cut on their album that doesn't shift genres at least two or three times; you'll hear strains of the Ventures, Ennio Morricone, James Brown, salsa, blues, and rock.  By all means, listen to Oy to the World and celebrate the birth of the world's most famous Jew.

Time to slow things down?  One of my students eats lunch in my office, and thought the Klezmonauts and Brian Setzer were"Kurisumasu rashikunai (not Christmassy).  He gave me no complaints with this album by guitar master Charlie Byrd.  Byrd's most famous for his bossa nova work with Stan Getz, but has a nice touch with the standards, as a listen to these albums will prove.  Being an amateurish guitar player myself (I won't dignify myself with the moniker of amateur), I care more about music than musicianship, and Byrd's the kind of musician that seems bent on crafting beautiful music rather than displaying his chops or carving out a place for himself among the innovators.  God save us from those who would save us from our own better judgment, music-wise.

Oh yes, there are more albums, like the blues-soul compilation "Merry Christmas, Baby;" my favorite active band, the Asylum Street Spankers' offering "A Christmas Spanking" (featuring a hauntingly beautiful "Silent Night" played on the saw!), the lounge lizard's dream, "Silent Nightclub," (featuring "Christmas in Las Vegas"), etc.  Check out this emusic member's list, which he calls "Christmas music which sucks slightly less than usual."

Bullshit.  S/he loves it as much as I do.  All year I gaze longingly at my Christmas music CD folder, and am in my glory when the Macy's parade finally gives us the OK to stark cranking the Christmas tunes.   

The bleak (for some) facts

Why should it be such a surprise that it's the church-going , family-oriented folk who donate more money, and not the blue-staters known for their tendency to lecture conservatives for being stingy and unfeeling to the unfortunate?

This has been out for a while now (and I did link to this story about a week back), but as I reread Bleak House, I can't help but be struck by how aptly Dickens pegged so many types of folks whom we still bump into today. 

Apropos of Mrs. Jellyby, whose children and husband have to fend for themselves while she dashes off letter after letter for her schemes to aid the poor in Boorioboola-Gha; Harold Skimpole, who condescends to let others support him on the assumption that they should be grateful for the chance to bask in their own charity; and Mrs. Pardiggle (a rival of Jellyby), who mandates that her youngsters give up their pennies to various charities; we have this:

We observed that the wind always changed when Mrs Pardiggle became the subject of conversation: and that it invariably interrupted  Mr. Jarndyce, and prevented him going any farther, when he remarked that there were two classes of charitable people; one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.