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se ruminations on literature art politics music photography design architecture and landscape wine and spirits c saturday december 31 2016 trump s new transparency politics in the age of trivial spin as a child of the 1950 s i was born in 1947 near the beginning of the baby boom the predominant social media device was the telephone people then would stay in touch by phoning or writing letters or perhaps sending telegrams what an old conduit that now seems to each other early walkie talkies or later cb radios enabled people to talk without land line hookups but those weren t things most people used or had access to in my generation the telephone became a focus of interaction among teenagers who weren t always allowed to meet or associate in person so were relegated to connecting via the family phone i was a somewhat atypical teenager and didn t begin having phone conversations with friends until the last year of high school long avid telephone conversations were something that girls mostly did though they were the crucial conduit for boys who wanted to engage with or seduce specific members of the opposite sex i was born without charm and i had almost no appetite for small talk so regarding the telephone as an essential indispensable tool of my life never really occurred to me when i finally did begin to communicate with other kids it was usually to discuss ideas not to compare notes about the social milieu in that respect as in other ways i was a nonconformist and i would then have rejected the idea that my curiosity or my desire to be in contact with others of my own generation was a priority i rejected all notions of teenage behavior because that would have been an admission that my significance as a person existed within a kind of limbo neither excusable and cute as in childhood nor burdened with the necessities and responsibilities of full adult hood being dismissed as teenaged behavior meant that your actions your ideas your feelings were somehow irrelevant and that seemed entirely objectionable as a status with the coming of the computer revolution and the advent of the cell phone era we ve entered successive plateaus of interactivity which have transformed our culture especially the so called youth culture the old teenage culture when i was an adolescent boys and girls might be preoccupied with talking to each other on the phone sometimes for hours at a time this was regarded at worst as a kind of bad habit how much trouble could you get into by talking on a telephone it might be a waste of time or an unjustified expense of a high er phone bill but mostly it was a diversion from chores homework exercise or just living in unconnected reality every generation regards technological progress with some degree of apprehension even alarm it s often a knee jerk reaction to simple change as if just preserving the status quo were an inherently desirable goal when personal computers first hit the scene i was dead set against our buying one since i suspected that our son would immediately become infected by the attraction of computer games a fear that was eventually confirmed in the end though i was the one who would in due course be most dependent upon the new gadget while the younger generation were moving on from computers to hand held and cell phones i was a late comer to blogging coming in just at the tail end of list serve and chat groups period but once i got a taste for it i crashed the new party posting and commenting with abandon clearly kids talking on the phone the way they did in the 1950 s isn t equivalent to people talking on their cell phones today what is the difference and what can we tell about that difference today no matter where you go or what you are doing you are surrounded by people monkeying with their cell hand held computers whether it s business or pleasure or sheer bored diversion people are constantly calling and receiving calls and browsing hyperspace during the early days of blogging much of the contact consisted of postings brief essays commentary and e mail e mail basically eliminated the need for most telephone exchanges as well as snail mail both cell phone use and the new social media online sites are both expansions of e mail and telephonic exchange as well as a new kind of group interactive forum what i like about blogging is the freedom to write at length to develop thought to conduct real discussions with others while blogging fed the desire for serious interaction it may have seemed slow and lugubrious especially to younger people the makers of computer devices saw that the new horizon was portability and convenience freeing people from their land locked computer units as well as the old land line phones they saw that exploiting the urge to conduct quick low density content messages could open up vistas of commerce hence facebook twitter and the rest of the now notorious online forums this has had the effect of seducing people away from more demanding and unlimited media namely blogging and e mail to progressively quicker and briefer levels of exchange it s inconvenient to type more than a few words in a social media stream especially since one can t address a keyboard with all your fingers in play i ve seen people who ve mastered the thumb technique and can type words almost as fast as i can on a traditional keyboard is touch typing a thing of the past will traditional qwerty keyboards someday become obsolete what s the next plateau of communication going to look like we can now call people send recorded messages instant e mails and group posts on forums will the next generation begin to conduct communications with robots my primary gripe against all this low content exchange is that it encourages people to think primarily in abbreviation as if the only thoughts or opinions that mattered were those that could be summarized in 50 words or less our new president elect donald trump is a child of our age who uses twitter to make statements and comment on the affairs of the day one senses a connection between the triviality of his grasp of current affairs and the media limitations that have grown up around us we ve created a generation of people who think that all the world s problems and issues can be addressed peremptorily with little research also that understanding the meaning and significance of complex matters doesn t require careful considered research and consideration that we can form coherent thought and make progress solving involved disputes and difficult situations simply by making momentary pronouncements we re being told that the new president elect is a new kind of politician one who lunges and lurches from distraction to preoccupation unpredictably and irrationally blurting out sudden statements and tweets impulsively without thinking before hand what the consequences might be we ve come to think that social media which allows people to cohere briefly around a certain point of view has a political meaning and impact that far outweighs its actual meaningful content just because a high office holder can issue a momentary verbal salvo into hyperspace doesn t suggest that his views are any more informed or considered than anyone else s it used to be that holders of high political office had superior access to information that their offices were clearing houses of data and exchange that enabled them to form policy and position the rest of us couldn t in the case of trump it s as if he no longer thinks he needs to consider the background or history of a problem that an impulsive reaction has as much legitimacy as decisions tempered by advice and research it s not just that trump seems unable to understand the world he actually seems to think it doesn t matter that action even on the national and international level can be conducted by amateurs that power itself somehow legitimates bold impulsive decision making uninformed by facts or information this is an entirely new stage in the development of political life it s as if democratic office holders now feel they have the freedom once relegated to dictatorship that of acting without ordinary curbs and checks like a child moving little lead soldiers on a battlefield board table it s unsettling to think that our new president may feel he can decide to go to war one morning by simply announcing his decision on twitter leaving his beleaguered subordinates to work out the details by lunchtime most astonishing of all it may be that people now accept that as a given means of action and communication that american presidents can conduct business in full view of the world without prior restraints or inhibitions a sort of wizard of tweet tinkering with the future of the planet as if it were a board game posted by curtis faville at 10 16 am no comments thursday december 8 2016 bottoms up classic of the genre oh my another cocktail blog this is surely going to ruin my reputation as a serious blogger since no one in his or her right mind would consider drinking alcoholic beverages a sophisticated endeavor it wasn t always so once upon a time cocktails and the opportunity to indulge in them were considered something mostly confined to people who afford them access to a well stocked bar isn t an universal privilege booze has always been expensive and concocting different combinations or mixes requires a variety of goods and ingredients and then there was the imputation of naughtiness which alcohol has always had recently in my travels as a book scout i came across a copy of one of the classic texts ted saucier s bottoms up with illustrations by twelve of america s most distinguished artists decorations by russell patterson cover design by al dorne new york greystone press 1951 visually it feels very much like esquire magazine s look and style with a few tasteful distaff illustrations of ladies in compromising poses which i suspect were included not just for atmosphere but to sell more copies of the book back in those days there were few legit places men could see pictures of nudes and any excuse to acquire them added to the interest of the product the idea that drinking might improve your romantic opportunities has always been an adman s short hand and since its author ted saucier was in the public relations advertising business the connection fits saucier was identified with the waldorf astoria hotel in new york which still survives today and puts out its own proprietary bar book he knew how to eat and drink and he collected recipes from all over the place many of them associated with celebrities and bon vivants which are named for or linked to them to judge from the reach and range of the batch he gathers here you d think he must have spent half his life bar hopping around the world sampling signature drinks it contains as one would expect a good number of the usual suspects famous and reliable which every bartender is expected to know from memory the more complex the mixture the more different ways there are to vary it so for those who like to experiment and discover a typical gin martini is pretty vanilla cocktail mixing books will give you the rudiments of how recipes are created but once you re familiar they aren t really necessary any bartender worth his salt is going to experiment and discover new combinations that s what i do i ve probably tried over a thousand different combinations guessing how one or another ingredient will taste when put with another the best mixology books bring something else besides just recipes they can give a different spin on the world their authors inhabit or imagine thank goodness i don t live in a muslim country where drinking is officially forbidden thank goodness for the sexual revolution which freed my generation and those that followed from some of the hang ups that beset our elders i can t quite figure out what s supposed to be happening in the illustration above is it an open air circus performer in london up and down back and forth as those odd little figures in seats watch the traffic go by are they priests i tried one drink from the book the bullfrog courtesy embassy club the windsor montreal juice 1 2 lime 1 1 4 oz canadian rye 3 4 oz apricot brandy shaken and served up with a cherry as garnish very nice the windsor hotel was quite an establishment in its day opening in 1878 it survived until 1981 pictures of the place in its heyday are below i couldn t find any of the bar but i ll bet it was elegant the world it represented is long gone never to return but we can still sample the drinks they enjoyed there posted by curtis faville at 6 39 am no comments monday december 5 2016 the tale of dan de lion part the second this is the second part of a blog about tom disch s poem the tale of dan de lion is this propaganda you bet your life it is is it saved from being propaganda framed as innocent clever rhymes not at all we don t really need to be reminded that juvenile literature contains as much violence jeopardy sadness hatred and remorse as grown up literature do we most juvenile literature falls flat and there s mountains and mountains of the stuff because it fails to engage with and confront life s fiercest challenges and difficulties and contradictions when it becomes an escape from reality a magic world into which the self retreats instead of returning us to the truths of actual life it becomes ultimately irrelevant the personification of good and evil expressed in horticultural terms becomes a short hand for a larger point about nature versus civilization environmental husbandry and ethics dan s descent into the symbolic underworld where death gets all confused with birth takes us into the philosophical arena where important questions about mortality rejuvenation and endurance are worked out in the poem s cosmology earth becomes a source of refuge renewal and life is butterworth the evil witch she seems to be in this story should we regard her merely as a sophisticated hybrid of the kind who clubs up in ladies and garden groups striving to out flower each other with superior specimens so if it s revolution you want then cheer for the upstart weeds whose determination and pluck have overcome attempts to wipe them out even thwaite the slave to belinda s selfish aims deserts her and so endeth the lesson copyright page tom disch older posted by curtis faville at 9 25 am no comments the tale of dan de lion part the first tom disch 1940 2008 was a gifted poet critic and science fiction writer in a fit of depression he shot himself in the head 68 isn t young but you d have to believe he could have gone on to write more novels and poems if he d lived longer for a complete account visit his wiki page here he began as a poet but his sci fi novels were his his most popular work disch didn t write the kind of poetry that i find satisfying but he was clever and could make delightful metaphors and narratives though i ve never been a big fan of juvenile literature occasionally i can 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