People love to make lists. It’s fun and occasionally instructive. For reasons of no particular relevance, I’ve been thinking about “top ten” lists lately, and here’s what I’ve come up with in three important categories for me. In all cases, I’ve restricted myself to a single work by a particular artist and have chosen specific works rather than compilation works (e.g., greatest hits, selected poems, etc.).
(All lists are not rank ordered)
Albums
John Coltrane, Ballads
Charles Mingus, East Coasting
Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster
Art Tatum and Ben Webster, Group Masterpieces
Thelonious Monk, Live at the It Club
Dave Alvin, Blue Boulevard
Dwight Yoakam, Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. (Expanded Edition)
Lucinda Williams, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (Deluxe Edition)
Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska
REM, Automatic for the People
Novels
James Joyce, Ulysses
John Fowles, Daniel Martin
John Gardner, The Sunlight Dialogues
James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Peter Matthiessen, Killing Mister Watson
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Larry Woiwode, Beyond the Bedroom Wall
Vladimir Nobokov, Pale Fire
Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier
Poetry
Hayden Carruth, Brothers, I Loved You All
Jack Gilbert, Monolithos
Louise Glück, The Wild Iris
Robert Frost, North of Boston
Ezra Pound, The Pisan Cantos
Kenneth Rexroth, The Phoenix and the Tortoise
Jim Harrison, Letters to Yesenin
Galway Kinnell, The Past
Muriel Rukeyser, The Gates
David Lee, Porcine Canticles
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Grammar and guns
The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is one of the most controversial. That controversy will doubtless be fueled by the recent decision of the Supremes to revisit the meaning and extent of this amendment in their upcoming session. In a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, Adam Freedman discusses the role of punctuation in understanding the intent of the amendment, in particular the use of commas. The amendment contains "three of the little blighters," though Freedman concentrates his argument on the second comma.
The actual language of the amendment, however, suggests that all three commas constitute problems in terms of grammatical sense:
At first glance, the first and second commas seem to mark a nonrestrictive phrase modifying "Militia." If we remove that nonrestrictive phrase, which we should be able to do without altering the grammatical sense of the sentence, the sentence, in fact, makes no sense:
The full nature of the opening phrase as a conditional is clear when we remove the first comma:
If we remove the opening qualifying phrase (as the NRA so often does, not wishing to deal with the burden of explaining away the beginning of the amendment), "the right of the people" has no condition. That, however, is not the way that the framers intended the language to read.
The whole question of the value of commas in understanding the meaning of the language is completely recontextualized when we look at the third comma. This comma separates the subject of the main clause from the predicate, and thus is completely ungrammatical. Freedman notes that eighteenth century writers did not understand the "rules" of punctuation the way we do today, so we can't put too much weight on "the little blighters." Commas were largely rhetorical in their function rather than grammatical, so commas were placed wherever the writer felt a pause was called for.
Anyone with a smidge of sense should be able to see that the right to own weapons without restriction is entirely dependent upon the need for "a well regulated Militia." The capitalization of "Militia" may not entirely be the era's propensity for capitalizing words for emphasis since that same capital-m Militia occurs elsewhere in the Constitution--Article I, Section 8, and Article II, Section 2. The sense of Militia is clearly tied to state-organized groups that were, before we had a standing military, absolutely necessary to maintaining security. Such groups remained in force until 1903 when the Militia Act created the National Guard, which pulled all state militias together under federal authority. This would seem to render the need for individual citizens to maintain arms without restriction null and void.
And the Supremes have largely upheld this view, most recently in 1939. Despite the NRA's massively funded argument to the contrary, the Constitution, particularly the Second Amendment, does not provide the blanket right to unrestricted gun ownership. In fact, it's questionable that the Second Amendment provides any protection for individual citizens to own guns at this time.
The smart money goes to the Ninth Amendment, that shining gem:
We've already learned to ignore commas in the framers' language, so we have an amendment that says, essentially, "the people" have any rights that are not expressly forbidden. That includes gun ownership. The question of restriction depends entirely upon laws, and those laws may restrict gun ownership, but those restrictions--from a strictly practical point of view--should not be too restrictive. We have a history of more than two hundred years of gun ownership by individuals, and only a self-destructive legislative or judicial body would attempt to restrict gun ownership entirely.
That does, however, leave room to mandate proper care and storage of firearms (e.g., use of trigger locks) and to outlaw ownership of ordnance with no lawful purpose (e.g., machine guns, bazookas, assault rifles). Pennsylvania is one of the states in which the bar on owning a handgun is pretty low (maybe too low; you can walk out of a store with a handgun in less than an hour--hardly enough time for the blood to cool if you're passionately determined to shoot your cheating spouse), so I own a handgun. I'm a law-abiding citizen with no criminal record and no history of violent instability. Under the Ninth Amendment, I assert my right to own my guns, and I'm not about to give them up--especially not when such well-regulated militia-like organizations like Aryan Nation and Posse Comitatus are running around with theirs.
The actual language of the amendment, however, suggests that all three commas constitute problems in terms of grammatical sense:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the
right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
At first glance, the first and second commas seem to mark a nonrestrictive phrase modifying "Militia." If we remove that nonrestrictive phrase, which we should be able to do without altering the grammatical sense of the sentence, the sentence, in fact, makes no sense:
A well regulated Militia the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shallAdding a comma after "Militia" only serves to clarify the nonsensical nature of this construction. "A well regulated Militia" only makes sense if we include "being necessary to the security of a free State."
not be infringed.
The full nature of the opening phrase as a conditional is clear when we remove the first comma:
A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State,
the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
If we remove the opening qualifying phrase (as the NRA so often does, not wishing to deal with the burden of explaining away the beginning of the amendment), "the right of the people" has no condition. That, however, is not the way that the framers intended the language to read.
The whole question of the value of commas in understanding the meaning of the language is completely recontextualized when we look at the third comma. This comma separates the subject of the main clause from the predicate, and thus is completely ungrammatical. Freedman notes that eighteenth century writers did not understand the "rules" of punctuation the way we do today, so we can't put too much weight on "the little blighters." Commas were largely rhetorical in their function rather than grammatical, so commas were placed wherever the writer felt a pause was called for.
Anyone with a smidge of sense should be able to see that the right to own weapons without restriction is entirely dependent upon the need for "a well regulated Militia." The capitalization of "Militia" may not entirely be the era's propensity for capitalizing words for emphasis since that same capital-m Militia occurs elsewhere in the Constitution--Article I, Section 8, and Article II, Section 2. The sense of Militia is clearly tied to state-organized groups that were, before we had a standing military, absolutely necessary to maintaining security. Such groups remained in force until 1903 when the Militia Act created the National Guard, which pulled all state militias together under federal authority. This would seem to render the need for individual citizens to maintain arms without restriction null and void.
And the Supremes have largely upheld this view, most recently in 1939. Despite the NRA's massively funded argument to the contrary, the Constitution, particularly the Second Amendment, does not provide the blanket right to unrestricted gun ownership. In fact, it's questionable that the Second Amendment provides any protection for individual citizens to own guns at this time.
The smart money goes to the Ninth Amendment, that shining gem:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
We've already learned to ignore commas in the framers' language, so we have an amendment that says, essentially, "the people" have any rights that are not expressly forbidden. That includes gun ownership. The question of restriction depends entirely upon laws, and those laws may restrict gun ownership, but those restrictions--from a strictly practical point of view--should not be too restrictive. We have a history of more than two hundred years of gun ownership by individuals, and only a self-destructive legislative or judicial body would attempt to restrict gun ownership entirely.
That does, however, leave room to mandate proper care and storage of firearms (e.g., use of trigger locks) and to outlaw ownership of ordnance with no lawful purpose (e.g., machine guns, bazookas, assault rifles). Pennsylvania is one of the states in which the bar on owning a handgun is pretty low (maybe too low; you can walk out of a store with a handgun in less than an hour--hardly enough time for the blood to cool if you're passionately determined to shoot your cheating spouse), so I own a handgun. I'm a law-abiding citizen with no criminal record and no history of violent instability. Under the Ninth Amendment, I assert my right to own my guns, and I'm not about to give them up--especially not when such well-regulated militia-like organizations like Aryan Nation and Posse Comitatus are running around with theirs.
Friday, December 28, 2007
The incovenient convenience
How quickly we become acclimated to changes in technology. The pervasiveness of cell phones today often causes me to wonder how people did without these things that seem attached to their ears. What do they have to talk about that occupies them for such long periods of time? Were things so much less important a dozen years ago?
But I digress. I've gotten as used to technological convenience as the next guy (depending, I suppose, on who that next guy is), including the ability to pay my bills online. Car loan, auto insurance--all paid online. Since Comcast provides my cable, telephone, and internet, that's one easy payment. Who needs stamps? Well, suddenly, payment to Comcast isn't quite so easy. The company's retooled their access to bill paying, and I seem to have fallen into a massive glitch in the new program. I can't log-in to my account, which means I can't pay my bills, and I've spent--quite literally--several hours on the phone, sometimes on hold but often working with a series of frustrated customer service representatives and technicians who are unable to figure out exactly how to get me into my account so that I can pay my bill.
How easy to take ease for granted--until, of course, the technology fails. If worse comes to worst, I've still got actual paper checks and a stamp.
But I digress. I've gotten as used to technological convenience as the next guy (depending, I suppose, on who that next guy is), including the ability to pay my bills online. Car loan, auto insurance--all paid online. Since Comcast provides my cable, telephone, and internet, that's one easy payment. Who needs stamps? Well, suddenly, payment to Comcast isn't quite so easy. The company's retooled their access to bill paying, and I seem to have fallen into a massive glitch in the new program. I can't log-in to my account, which means I can't pay my bills, and I've spent--quite literally--several hours on the phone, sometimes on hold but often working with a series of frustrated customer service representatives and technicians who are unable to figure out exactly how to get me into my account so that I can pay my bill.
How easy to take ease for granted--until, of course, the technology fails. If worse comes to worst, I've still got actual paper checks and a stamp.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
No snowflake falls
Zen Master Obaku in one of his sermons notes that no snowflake falls in an appropriate place. If we take this at its word, it suggests a very different way of being in the world. I like to think of this in more direct terms: whatever happens happens because that's the only way it could happen; if it could've happened another way, it would have. Not particularly consoling words, perhaps, but then I've never been entirely certain that the purpose of religion is to comfort. I'm not certain Jesus had consolation in mind when he told the crowd that only those who were themselves without sin should stone another. I doubt very much that, when the crowd dispersed, the members left feeling very comforted.
Zen is about living in the moment, or so the backporch platitudes tell us, but being in the moment also means understanding that we are in this particular moment because everything in our lives brought us here. Karma, which essentially preconditions the terms of our existence, gives us a place to start. That's it. What we do with what we've got to start with may be constrained by that origination, but it doesn't preclude much by way of how we conduct ourselves along this path.
One way I explain conditioned origination is to liken it to a house. When tenants leave, the house remains as it was following the way they used it. If they held rock'n'roll parties and smashed the windows out, that's what the next tenant inherits. He can ignore the squalor and spend his time thinking about other things, or he can work to clean the place up and repair the windows. He can leave it a much better place than he moved into. And the house progresses from tenant to tenant, each worsening the place, leaving it pretty much the same, or working to make it better.
That's our choice entirely. If this doesn't make sense, just think about Stephen Hawking. If you feel like you can't get a break, yeah, think about Stephen Hawking. What have you done to rehabilitate your life today? Can you understand that each moment--this moment--is everything you've done to make it what it is? Can you live it like there's no other choice, bringing your all into now. This now. And this.
Zen is about living in the moment, or so the backporch platitudes tell us, but being in the moment also means understanding that we are in this particular moment because everything in our lives brought us here. Karma, which essentially preconditions the terms of our existence, gives us a place to start. That's it. What we do with what we've got to start with may be constrained by that origination, but it doesn't preclude much by way of how we conduct ourselves along this path.
One way I explain conditioned origination is to liken it to a house. When tenants leave, the house remains as it was following the way they used it. If they held rock'n'roll parties and smashed the windows out, that's what the next tenant inherits. He can ignore the squalor and spend his time thinking about other things, or he can work to clean the place up and repair the windows. He can leave it a much better place than he moved into. And the house progresses from tenant to tenant, each worsening the place, leaving it pretty much the same, or working to make it better.
That's our choice entirely. If this doesn't make sense, just think about Stephen Hawking. If you feel like you can't get a break, yeah, think about Stephen Hawking. What have you done to rehabilitate your life today? Can you understand that each moment--this moment--is everything you've done to make it what it is? Can you live it like there's no other choice, bringing your all into now. This now. And this.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
I'm dreaming of a mild Christmas
A mild enough day--temperature in the fifties, the sunniest day we've had in a week. This is not the Christmas of my childhood. We had serious snow in those days. Feet of it, several times each winter. Enough snow that my backyard was heaped with snow deep enough to tunnel through pretty much from early to mid-November until early April, at the least.
When I moved to far northern New York--the real North Country, north of the Adirondack Mountains--the snow was even more extreme. Summer, we used to say (sort of joking), was the one bad week of ice-skating in August. Snow from early October all the way into May. Then, further south, but into the country of lake-effect snow, snow storms in Syracuse and Ithaca were monumental--like climate, rather than paltry seasons. At least once every year we'd have an ice storm of the sort Frost describes in "Birches." The ice would coat everything, sometimes as much as an inch of absolutely clear ice. The slender branches of trees sheathed. Roads so treacherous you drove slowly--if you drove at all--and even that was no guarantee that you wouldn't skid uncontrollably.
Now, here in southeastern Pennsylvania, winter becomes increasingly less winterly. I remember shortly after I moved here a few monster storms, but not so much so these days. A couple of years ago we had a nice blizzard that left a foot or more of snow, but that was a couple of years ago, and we've had little snow since.
Most people dream of going to Florida when they retire; not me. Give me Montana, the Rockies, the space--absolute dumps of pure white snow.
I wrote this poem for Thanksgiving, but it fits today, as well:
Sixty Degrees
and they call this Thanksgiving. Good God,
when I was a child we often ploughed through
snow to walk to my great-aunt and -uncle’s house,
my father’s appetite whetted by the sweat
expended to shovel our double-wide driveway
the whole way across and heave the wet
snow over the white picket fence into a small
chain of mountains in the backyard. I step
outside to bring in wood for the fire we won’t
need tonight and I’m warm in the tee-shirt
and pajama bottoms. Sandal weather in the second
half of November. You can’t even call it
Indian Summer; we’ve had not even a week’s
worth of weather that qualifies as fall, two mornings
when the far slope glittered with frost, and mist
spread from the ponds and rose in ghostly
corkscrews into the morning sun. I’ve heard
that in twenty years all the ski resorts in New England
will be closed because winter temperatures won’t
ever drop enough for it to snow. I used to say
I wanted to retire in Montana—wide expanses of
land,the jagged peaks of the Rockies, and all that sky
curved so high and wide you know that it
won’t ever stop—and, of course, the cold and
the snow—deep snow, drifts high as a barn that
last until late spring. Jesus. Jesus. I guess I’d better
consider making that final move to Alaska.
When I moved to far northern New York--the real North Country, north of the Adirondack Mountains--the snow was even more extreme. Summer, we used to say (sort of joking), was the one bad week of ice-skating in August. Snow from early October all the way into May. Then, further south, but into the country of lake-effect snow, snow storms in Syracuse and Ithaca were monumental--like climate, rather than paltry seasons. At least once every year we'd have an ice storm of the sort Frost describes in "Birches." The ice would coat everything, sometimes as much as an inch of absolutely clear ice. The slender branches of trees sheathed. Roads so treacherous you drove slowly--if you drove at all--and even that was no guarantee that you wouldn't skid uncontrollably.
Now, here in southeastern Pennsylvania, winter becomes increasingly less winterly. I remember shortly after I moved here a few monster storms, but not so much so these days. A couple of years ago we had a nice blizzard that left a foot or more of snow, but that was a couple of years ago, and we've had little snow since.
Most people dream of going to Florida when they retire; not me. Give me Montana, the Rockies, the space--absolute dumps of pure white snow.
I wrote this poem for Thanksgiving, but it fits today, as well:
Sixty Degrees
and they call this Thanksgiving. Good God,
when I was a child we often ploughed through
snow to walk to my great-aunt and -uncle’s house,
my father’s appetite whetted by the sweat
expended to shovel our double-wide driveway
the whole way across and heave the wet
snow over the white picket fence into a small
chain of mountains in the backyard. I step
outside to bring in wood for the fire we won’t
need tonight and I’m warm in the tee-shirt
and pajama bottoms. Sandal weather in the second
half of November. You can’t even call it
Indian Summer; we’ve had not even a week’s
worth of weather that qualifies as fall, two mornings
when the far slope glittered with frost, and mist
spread from the ponds and rose in ghostly
corkscrews into the morning sun. I’ve heard
that in twenty years all the ski resorts in New England
will be closed because winter temperatures won’t
ever drop enough for it to snow. I used to say
I wanted to retire in Montana—wide expanses of
land,the jagged peaks of the Rockies, and all that sky
curved so high and wide you know that it
won’t ever stop—and, of course, the cold and
the snow—deep snow, drifts high as a barn that
last until late spring. Jesus. Jesus. I guess I’d better
consider making that final move to Alaska.
Monday, December 24, 2007
'Twas the night before Christmas
If I try, I can remember the excitement I used to feel as we approached Christmas. Christmas Eve was almost unbearable. I'm not entirely certain how I managed to sleep, though whatever sleep I managed was for a very short time. My parents established a hard and fast rule about how early I could wake them, so I watched the sky gradually lighten at my curtained window until the time arrived.
The bounty always lay scattered like gemstones in a fantasy around the tree, soon enough piles of paper and ribbons and bows. Then came the befuddlement of trying to play with several toys simultaneously. Lunch and dinner were breaks I didn't want to take and suffered through the time I was required to sit at the table. Then back to the living room and the bubbling lights on the tree.
Once we started traveling to see my mother's family on Christmas morning, the true excitement moved to Christmas Eve. Once dinner was finished and the plates were dried and neatly stacked, we'd move to the living room, and I got to play Santa, distributing presents to my parents and-of course--to myself.
When I had children of my own, Christmas regained some of that shine, and I instituted the tradition of one of my sons handing around the presents, everyone waiting while each present was opened and admired.
Now my sons are full grown, and Christmas lacks mystery and wonder for me. My Jewish wife now gets excited at all the activity she missed out on for most of her life, but even that isn't enough to inspire me. I've been Rinzai Zen Buddhist for more than a dozen years, so Christmas has absolutely no religious significance to me. It's another time I get together with my sons and sometimes my step-children and grandson, though my wife's children usually have other plans. I see the purely mercantile face of the holiday, stripped of any real sense of wonder at something beyond gifts--wrapped up stuff.
Bah-humbug. Sometimes I think we need a little more Scrooge to balance out the gluttony and greed that run without restraint.
The bounty always lay scattered like gemstones in a fantasy around the tree, soon enough piles of paper and ribbons and bows. Then came the befuddlement of trying to play with several toys simultaneously. Lunch and dinner were breaks I didn't want to take and suffered through the time I was required to sit at the table. Then back to the living room and the bubbling lights on the tree.
Once we started traveling to see my mother's family on Christmas morning, the true excitement moved to Christmas Eve. Once dinner was finished and the plates were dried and neatly stacked, we'd move to the living room, and I got to play Santa, distributing presents to my parents and-of course--to myself.
When I had children of my own, Christmas regained some of that shine, and I instituted the tradition of one of my sons handing around the presents, everyone waiting while each present was opened and admired.
Now my sons are full grown, and Christmas lacks mystery and wonder for me. My Jewish wife now gets excited at all the activity she missed out on for most of her life, but even that isn't enough to inspire me. I've been Rinzai Zen Buddhist for more than a dozen years, so Christmas has absolutely no religious significance to me. It's another time I get together with my sons and sometimes my step-children and grandson, though my wife's children usually have other plans. I see the purely mercantile face of the holiday, stripped of any real sense of wonder at something beyond gifts--wrapped up stuff.
Bah-humbug. Sometimes I think we need a little more Scrooge to balance out the gluttony and greed that run without restraint.
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