Sense and Nonsense

New York -- and a Film

We were in Brooklyn, NY, this weekend, visiting son Tom.  He and his two roommates have done a great job with the challenging living space they have available to them.  New York sucks, in my opinion.  But when I look at it through the eyes of these young musicians, I see its magic.

Also magical is a movie we took in over the weekend -- Bright Star, Jane Campion's superb new film starring Abby Cornish, with Ben Whishaw as John Keats.  A lovely, literate film.  Go see it.

More on Chimerica

Jim Fallows has posted an elaboration on the argument he had with Niall Ferguson at the Aspen Ideas Festival about China's political evolution.

Sue and I had dinner with Jim and Deb in Aspen last night.  They head to Washington today.  We stay on. The Rockie Mountain high is wonderful.

Blogging Slowdown

I've heard from a number of you by email, wondering what accounts for the gradual slowdown, then cessation, of blogging here.  You kindly inquire about health and family.  Thank you.  In fact, I have been dealing with the recent hospitalizations and growing needs of my elderly mother.  Otherwise, all is well.  There just hasn't been much time lately for blogging activity.  Please don't abandon this site completely.  Eventually things will return to normal.  I assume.

Fatherhood

The incomparable Bill Waterson.

Celebration

One of our nephews (the son of my wife's brother)
is getting married today in the Bahamas.  We have
a special spot in our hearts for this wonderful
couple.  Our love and congratulations to them 
and their parents. 

Tom Fallows and Elizabeth Bennett

Rock Warrior

Careful readers will recall that our son Tom (at left) is a musician.  He plays a number of instruments, but the guitar is his love (second to Kara, of course).  He performs in two bands, noted here previously: Big Tree and Red Sails. 

Neither of those is a heavy-metal band.  That's not really his thing.  But he has been asked to play guitar for Warship, a heavy-metal band, for its month-long national tour that kicks off in Austin, TX on Feb. 2.  Put in your earplugs and go hear them when they appear near you (see tour schedule on their website).

A Dispatch Worth Reading

Jim Fallows once again shows what a smart guy (and fine brother) he is:

In several previous dispatches (here, here, and here) I emphasized what good news it was that Barack Obama had chosen Steven Chu as his new Secretary of Energy. I based this on Chu's own reputation and record:

Because he is an eminent physicist, Chu's very presence in the job would hearten proponents of more emphasis on pure science. Because he has devoted his attention in recent years to the technological advances and the international cooperation necessary to deal with climate issues, he would both symbolize the important of this challenge and potentially lead the Administration's efforts. There were many other virtues of this choice.

I said all this without having any idea of the kind of team that would surround Chu at DoE. But if this report, on Al Kamen's Washington Post site is correct, he has made an inspired choice for his Deputy Secretary and closest working associate. This is Susan F. Tierney, of Boston.

She has been a leader in energy, environmental, and climate-change issues for decades, in academia, government, and business. Her bipartisan bona fides are such that she was appointed a commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities by Governor Mike Dukakis, and then Secretary of Environmental Affairs by Governor William Weld. She was an assistant secretary at DoE during Bill Clinton's first term, and since then has worked as a consultant at the Analysis Group and served on countless national and international commissions dealing with energy, environmental, and climate issues. She is as honest a person as you will find in public life, and is a skilled manager. Assuming Kamen's report is correct, this is another superb choice.

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I am not an expert on energy or climate issues, but about Tierney's character and temperament I feel very confident in my assessments. I have known her as long as any person on earth has, since I was just under two years old when she arrived in the household as my little sister. Her mother and father would be extremely proud; her sister and two brothers, plus her husband and two sons and many others, are proud enough to make up. Really, her only failing is that she has never, once, given me any inside info of any sort on any topic that she has been working on. Sisters!

The iPod of an Earlier Generation

That's what Elsa Dorfman, the famed portrait photographer, calls the Polaroid camera of the 1960s.

The Polaroid camera was my generation's iPod, our BlackBerry, our GPS, our Kindle -- that piece of technology that wows and then becomes an extension of the hand.

It was not the little hand-held Polaroid camera that made Dorfman famous, but rather her beloved 20-by-24 inch Polaroid Land Camera -- a huge-format "refrigerator-sized" beast that she has tamed for a couple of decades in the service of great portraiture.  She writes in today's Boston Globe about the sad and senseless disappearance of the film that this camera needs to operate.  (Along with the op-ed column, there's a self-portrait of her with her camera.)

And here, following, are three photos that Elsa took this summer.  The first is of the whole Tierney family.  After the jump are the other two -- of sons James and Tom, respectively.   Each print, incidentally, is about 2 feet by 3 feet, beautifully framed by Elsa in an acrylic-glass case.

© Elsa Dorfman

Best Christmas Ever

Yesterday was perhaps the best Christmas I've ever experienced as an adult.  Ever since I left childhood behind, I've found the excessive consumerism that Christmas encourages to be depressing -- frankly, nauseating.  This year, thanks to the economic downturn and other family circumstances, we decided to drop all of it, except the tree.  We had a gift ban for the extended family afar -- which is something we've tried before, with only limited success -- AND for the immediate family in Boston (excepting the elderly matriarch).   So, except for a few modest items for her, the space around the tree was bare, instead of covered with unneeded, unwanted crap, spilling many feet into the room inside nicely wrapped boxes.

It was the best Christmas ever.  We had a nice family dinner on Christmas eve (a schedule dictated by a visiting brother's scheduled departure mid-day Christmas), and Christmas day itself was calm, quiet, and free of the revulsion that I usually have felt, surveying all the waste and unbridled consumption.

The best ever.  There's no going back.

What Christmas Means to Me

I saw this clip from "A Christmas Story" on fdl today, and it called to mind a reminiscence from my boyhood, written about some time ago.  Part of it is excerpted here, in honor of Christmas:

The Tierney household in Denver in the 1950s and very early 1960s reflected many of the characteristics of the Wild West, of which it was a vestigial part.  What made it so?  Partly it was the spirit of independence and self-reliance -- those hearty values of the rugged frontier -- that prevailed among the four Tierney boys.  Much to our regret, of course, we weren’t out slaughtering buffalo or Injuns, nor were we herding cattle or taming the wilds.  But we were independent young cusses, loved by our folks, but left to find our own way, with a bare minimum of parental steering or intervention.  It was parenting by benign neglect.  Like millions of American kids of that generation, we were out of the house early on a summer’s morning, the screen door slamming behind us, often with no thought of return, or maternal expectation of it, until supper.  It was a measure of independence, wrought by the relative absence of those things that limit youthful independence these days -- fears about kidnappings or abuse by strangers, heavily programmed schedules, and the like.