Libya Revisited

And so begins Operation Odyssey Dawn eight years after the launch of the Iraq War, one week after the sudden onset of the Japanese earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster. I am weary already. How about you?

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

John Coltrane: My Favorite Things

John Coltrane (Quintet), My Favorite Things -- recorded in 1960, released in 1961. Trane on a roll -- a third fiftieth anniversary celebration this year. Hard to follow, hard to beat, but he could and he would and he did.

Clip from Stockholm of the title track live.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

John Coltrane: Song of the Underground Railroad

Fiftieth anniversary of the John Coltrane Quintet's Africa/Brass, a beautiful record album.

Also reading Patti Smith's Early Work, 1979-1979 (1994) after finding a first printing, first edition. Here's a snippet from "to the reader" (p. x):

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon.
In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.




Today's St. Patrick's Day Rune: Warrior.

John Coltrane: India

Musical interlude: John Coltrane and company's "India" -- recorded fifty years ago this coming November. 

Today's Rune: The Self.  

White Noise: The Airborne Toxic Event Revisited

A fitting time to reanimate this one, originally posted on October 6, 2006:

Would you be shocked if you found yourself dragged out of your home and sent to an evacuation center in the dead of night? After 9/11, probably not. Still . . .

Very early this morning in Apex, North Carolina (not far from Raleigh, the state capital), some 17,000 residents were evacuated in the wake of explosions and toxic fires at the humorously named Environmental Quality Company, whose headquarters are based in Wayne, Michigan. The fiery cloud release includes chlorine gas, the type used in trench warfare during World War One, and other agents that cause respiratory distress and, potentially, death.









This horror show immediately reminded me of one of the most perceptive novels of the past fifty or so years that I have read – Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1985), especially its Airborne Toxic Event. DeLillo finished this brilliant satirical work after the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India, which by now has caused the deaths of perhaps 15,000 people (12/3/1984). The following year came the Chernobyl nuclear disaster (4/26/1986).










This is the third major plant fire fiasco in North Carolina in the past fifteen years that I can recall. In Hamlet, John Coltrane’s little hometown, a grease fire (it was a large vat, apparently) at the chicken-nugget plant owned by Imperial Foods led to the immediate death of 25 workers – the emergency exits had thoughtfully been chained shut by management to “prevent theft of chickens” (9/3/1991). At West Pharmaceutical Plant in Kinston, an explosion killed at least four outright and injured another 37 (1/29/2003).

One thing we can count on: there will be plenty more Airborne Toxic Events to come, and not just potentially above Iran and North Korea.

As for White Noise, there are rumblings this year that Barry Sonnenfield is going to produce a movie version. It’ll be just like real life, only more so. [Hasn't happened.  Instead we've gotten additional doses of real life. Just like fiction -- only more so].










Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Do svidaniya!

The Man in Black Revisited

Here's another selection culled from the first five years of "Erik's Choice." This one was first posted on June 8, 2006:

Johnny Cash (2/26/1932-9/12/2003) was a man of faith, an American, a country and pop icon, a tortured but compassionate singer and songwriter. He sang songs -- partly originals, partly written by others -- that cover the range of human behavior and emotions. I’ve always thought that he was a close spiritual cousin to bluesman John Lee Hooker, coming from another world and yet essentially coming from the same world. And while I admire Johnny’s later work, the resurrection as it were, I can’t help but go back to the ones that grabbed me as a kid, songs like “Folsom Prison Blues,” “I Walk the Line,” “Ring of Fire,” and even “Hey Porter.” Not to mention a zillion others. My parents used to play Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (1968) quite a bit, and I loved (and still love) every minute of it.

When I was in college, I read a lot of Albert Camus and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and have always wondered whether anyone else has drawn direct comparisons between a song like “Folsom Prison Blues” by the Man in Black and the short novel The Stranger (L'Etranger, 1942) by Camus or Crime and Punishment (1866) by Dostoevsky. It always seemed clear to me, anyway.

But I shot in man in Reno
Just to watch him die. . .

Some people find this chilling, but I find it merely honest – seriously, there but for the grace of God go I or any of us. I’ve certainly had fantasies of blowing away people I detest, and in the fantasies, at least, I’m more than happy to watch them die. Think of Ruth’s fantasies if you’re a Six Feet Under fan, taking out each of her exes, one at a time, with a happy little smile; or any other fantasy sequence like it. Johnny Cash never killed anyone, yet he could obviously understand and empathize with the impulse. So, too, Dostoevsky with the set up of Crime and Punishment, and with even closer alignment, Meursault’s killing of an Arab in Algeria also just to watch him die in Camus' The Stranger.

But I know I had it comin',
I know I can't be free,
But those people keep a-movin',
And that's what tortures me.

Meursault understands that through his exercise of freedom, he’s committed an act that is condemned by the laws of society, and thereby has lost his freedom. He only fully understands the idea of freedom when he is in prison, condemned to death.

In all truth, perhaps the only thing holding back mayhem is civil society, the existence of a legal system and prisons, and religious codes that proscribe killing, leading to haunting feelings of guilt and remorse for those who believe yet kill anyway.

Existentialists, of course, often wore black, as did nihilists, Beatniks, and punks. Johnny gave several reasons for his donning of the black, including that it made choosing outfits a lot simpler. I can go with any and all of his reasons. I also love black, as anyone who knows me well can attest. It may seem a bit funereal sometimes (like on a sunny afternoon), but so what? It’s a tragic world and we should always be thinking of the dead: let the dead bury the dead. Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 while still in his forties, but died in a car accident three years later. Dostoevsky was lined up to be shot in a firing squad in Russia, then given a last-miniute reprieve. Imagine what that does to a person – talk about post-traumatic
stress. . .

If you haven’t picked it up by now, I’m a strong advocate for mixing up genres and art forms, blending, and thinking beyond categories and ratings that have been, when you think about, handed down to us by God knows who. The canon and all – better a loaded cannon than a load of canon. Which is one of the things I love about the internet – it’s a free for all!

p.s. The Cure’s “Killing an Arab” is a short single cover of The Stranger. And since everybody in our immediate Michigan blogland seems to adore Johnny Cash, too, I’ll put in an additional vote for “Cocaine Blues,” as well. Among a zillion others.

I hear that train a'comin' . . . . .

Today's Rune: Joy.

Nuclear Disaster: Now and Then

The nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan makes me think immediately of Chernobyl, which I first posted about just under five years ago. This year will be the 25th anniversary of that nuclear disaster, and the first anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon Gulf petroleum disaster. I can only come to the conclusion that humankind is too clever for its own good, very foolish and myopic, nothing less than tragic. Post first dated April 26, 2006:

I remember the Chernobyl nuclear disaster very well because it began in the Soviet Union the same day as my first wedding took place back in the USA. The exact date it started was worse than an omen, because we flew to Europe that evening and arrived in London -- just as the first rumors of the accident were making their rounds. This was before ubiquitous internet access and 24 hour news, so it was hard to get any facts. But we knew about it immediately.

Many Londoners, however, seemed oblivious during the first few days of the “toxic event,” even while radiation continued spewing out of the burning reactor number four. Someone or some article from the International Herald Tribune suggested swabbing iodine above one’s knees and one’s wrists as a block against fallout. Don’t drink milk, avoid rain, and wait for news updates. Some honeymoon!

Wild rumors began flying: Kiev was under martial law. Thousands of Soviets were poisoned and dying. The Red Army had sealed off dead zones. Warsaw was in the path of a large plume; Sweden would be next, then Scotland.

My newlywed wife Liz Pauk and I warily proceeded and next made our way to Paris. Since we had unlimited Eurail passes, we could hop most trains and go just about anywhere in Western Europe. We headed for the south of France, where Liz became ill, but recovered enough that we pushed on to Italy via Pisa, and eventually we made it as far east as Vienna before heading back west via Germany. By that time, a clearer picture was emerging. Yes, the Iron Curtain borders were being sealed as a safety and security precaution by the Warsaw Pact countries. Yes, radiation was a real danger, but there wasn’t much anyone could do about it. We flew back to the States from Paris.

The Soviets lost something like thirty-one killed either in the initial accident or trying to contain it. Twenty years later, we still don’t know how many have died or suffered as a result of the disaster. Estimates range from 9,000 to over 90,000 dead or dying from radiation poisoning.

The timing for us personally was so bizarre it still makes me wonder. What are the chances of getting married on such a day? We chose that date out of convenience, having been just laid off by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill as they transferred their business operations out of North Carolina and therefore had a block of time before starting new jobs at Duke University.

All in all, 1986 was a rough year. The space shuttle Challenger blew up in January, and Ronald Reagan and his crew of yahoos were acting like scary war mongerers, supporting Islamic extremists against the Soviets in Afghanistan and fighting a series of clandestine guerilla wars in Latin America. The Reagan administration funnelled weapons to Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, even while it also supplied weapons to Iran and propped up the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. All in keeping with George Orwell's dystopian 1948 vision for 1984.

Oh, the ironies abound for today, exactly twenty years later. A salute to the rescue teams and all those who died.

Early on, I have no idea whether this is an accurate projection of radiation fallout. I do know this: don't ever believe Big Energy "experts" -- they are either liars or fools or worse, well-meaning zealots who are just plain wrong in their over-optimism about "safety."  


Today's Rune: Defense.