Enjoying the Night Sky

My wife and I went for a walk on this final evening of August. What I enjoyed most, besides holding my bride's hand, was looking with her at the night sky. A few stars, no moons, and no aircraft were clearly visible. The animal world, discreetly busy with nocturnal activity, did not distract us from our shared, upward gaze. The evening's minimal traffic did not disrupt our thoughts or our dialogue. While I could not identify the stars we could see, I knew with confidence they were the same stars that we observed in the previous year's sky.

Fascination with astronomy does not come naturally to me. I've never owned a telescope, and I've never gone out of my way to visit an observatory. I failed my college astronomy class, tried to take it again, and got out before disaster repeated itself. I did read a book in French about astronomy that was written at the equivalent of a sixth-grade level. I very much liked the reading and subsequent looking at the sky.

Two of my three favorite astronomical experiences were with my wife. One was in rural Vermont, far from distracting city light pollution, and we saw the night sky in all its brilliance. Another time was on the Pacific Ocean off the Mexican coast. There is a darkness on the high seas that is unforgettable. Its inkiness is a throwback to a more ancient way of being. At sea, I felt connected to the ancients from just about anywhere, including the star-savvy Mexico's pre-Columbian Indian empires. Last, but not least, was our view of the night sky from our window in the Alhambra. We got the room through the intercession of a well-known flamenco dancer I knew. What a night! Our window opened out onto the romantic complex, its gardens, the nearby Moorish neighborhood, the Gypsy caves in the adjacent hillsides , the peaks where nature remained untouched, and then the star field in all its glory. At that moment, I understood why Muslim poets wrote beautiful lyrics about the night sky.

I brought that memory home to New Jersey, and cherished it tonight, as my wife and I walked hand in hand under the stars.

Gay Talese

I just finished Gay Talese's A Writer's Life, a very well written nonfiction memoir. This quote, from page 372 of the hardcover edition, nicely summarizes Talese's approach to his work and frames his intellectual integrity:

If I were a practitioner of fiction, a creator of novels, plays, or short stories, I would have the option of doing what these writers can do whenever they feel compelled to write intimately about themselves and/or individuals whom they are close to -- they can change everybody's names and otherwise falsify the facts in ways that they hope will protect their works from lawsuits or other forms of redress arising from so-called injured parties. And thus what is most truthfully and tellingly conveyed about private life in public literature and other means of communication is categorized and conveyed as "fiction." But as I have already tried to explain, since I am a fastidious exponent of nonfiction -- a reportorial writer who does not want to change names, who avoids using composite characters in narratives, and who makes every effort to adhere to factual accuracy -- I am in a quandry here because I suspect that there exists a conflict of interest between my role as a writer and myself as a subject in this section of my story.

Here's a proud writer standing by his craft's demanding rigor, trusting his skill and talent, and believing in language's illuminative power. Thank you, Mr. Talese.

Blues Like They Never Went Away

I purchase music online via a monthly deal with a legitimate Internet music provider. I principally use the service to purchase new or relatively new releases in music I enjoy, such as funkand its "neo" offspring, acid jazz, soulful female vocalists, downtempo, old school r&b and vintage jazz, some dance, some electronic, some soundtracks, and an occasional rap or Latin song.

In my zeal to accumulate, I neglected music from where I began my most ardent listening -- the blues. One reason for missing the exit for the blues was that I have a slender vinyl collection, along with some 45s and 78s. I like them, although from a serious collector's perspective, these relics of long-gone vinyl eras are nothing special. However, they've always been there, through the good times and bad, analogous to an insecure child's stuffed animal. Still, I ignored the recordings in my recently reawakened desire to understand and enjoy contemporary music.

The music provider recently offered me some extra tracks for free. These allowed me to consider purchasing some blues. I bought some, and I've included images of three musicians -- Blind Lemon Jefferson, Howlin' Wolf, and Charley Patton -- to provide a sense of my taste in blues.

The listening feels good.

New Jersey's "Race to the Top" Flops

New Jersey's Race to the Top application fiasco boiled over yesterday, when Governor Christie fired his education commissioner, Bret Schundler (in the white shirt and in presumably happier times). The episode quickly offered unseemly finger pointing, political posturing that badly backfired, and a sense of bureaucratic ineptness that transcended ideological zealotry.

Much has been made of the Schundler team's gaffe in providing incorrect information on its application. That error cost five points in the Race to the Top's evaluation scheme. Those points greatly mattered, as New Jersey's application was out of the money by three points.

Originally, the Christie Administration called the mistake a "clerical error" that anyone with common sense would have simply adjusted. While one can understand the point, the spin conveniently ignores the reality of documentation requirements in the worlds of grant funding, RFPs, and other legally generated requests for funds. Any grant writer, any attorney (including Christie, a former federal prosecutor who touts his adherence to the letter of the law), any firm preparing business pitches knows that following submission directions is the first rule of proposal writing. It's akin to a golf pro signing her or his scorecard at the conclusion of a round. In short, the Christie administration's thin excuse for an incorrectly managed proposal does not pass the smell test.

Further, the governor's obsession with his ideological struggle with the New Jersey teacher's unions led him to hastily rework Schundler's initial, well-crafted proposal. Christie's revisions, frantically conceived and hammered together at the last minute, and over a Memorial Day weekend, did not include the teacher's unions sign-on to the proposal. This stipulation was part of the Race to the Top conditions. The New Jersey governor's calculated maneuver, according to a story in today's New York Times, cost the Garden State's application more points than providing information from the wrong fiscal years did.

Christie has blamed everyone except himself for his state's equivalent of coming in fourth in a race that only paid for win, place, and show. However, I'm not convinced Christie really wanted to win. Conservatives such as Christie have been uneasy over Race to the Top. His administration was lukewarm to the funding chase from the get-go. The governor publicly screwed Schundler over a sensible deal the then-education commissioner made with the teacher's unions to get them on board with Race's first application. Politically speaking, Christie benefits from continued unrest in the state's school systems. Volatility keeps an unpopular statewide group such as the teacher's unions readily available as a convenient collective scapegoat to castigate for the state's many issues. Does this strategy sound familiar?

Yet, education financing is a volatile issue in New Jersey, as well as other states. Christie's suburban and rural constituencies will feel a continuing pinch in education services, as a combination of diminished property tax revenues and, ironically, decreased federal funding will mean larger class sizes, fewer after-school activities, and declining physical plant maintenance. One "solution" may be a de facto deflationary strategy, in which "expensive" teachers find retirement the better choice of valor. Younger, cheaper teachers will be the fresh meat for the public education grinder. In that way, costs are "managed," and a "new dawn" will rise for New Jersey education.

The "solution" is likely to run aground on standardized testing and "data-driven" teaching. Education funding, and other payment schemes such as merit pay, are chained to test results. Yet, the notion that statistical analysis equals understanding psychological truth goes against the grain of human experience. That has not deterred conservatives and "concerned" liberals from having an almost religiously-held belief in this profoundly flawed premise. Their imposition of their unquestioned, unshakable faith in quantitative analysis as education's salvation has largely gone unchallenged. "The data shall set you free?" That sounds more akin to arrogant hubris than thoughtful spiritual awakening.

Bret Schundler tried to navigate this difficult passage. His spectacular failure to make the "three-point play" for federal funding sealed his bureaucratic doom. However, the larger failure is at the top. That's a race with plenty of horses in it, running hard, running strong, running wrong. In that "race to the top," who would you put your money on?

(Pittsburgh) Pirates Make Millions

Who said piracy is dead? According to documents leaked to deadspin.com, the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball franchise made over $30 million last year. For years, the team's management has pleaded poverty, traded any player who would command a marginally high salary, and showed no commitment to improve its team.

Some of the Pirates' loot comes from revenue sharing, a scheme in which prosperous franchises such as the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox give small market teams some money. The notion is that the funds would be used to improve the small fries' talent pool and thus add more equitable competition to major league baseball.

The Pirate organization chose to keep the money, and essentially stiff its team's fans and sponsors. Major League Baseball is fighting furiously to shut the deadspin.com leak. However, this leak has as much life as BP's leak in the Gulf of Mexico. And for greedy baseball team owners, the financial documentation leak demonstrates their view of credibility parallels BP's perspective on the subject.

This leads me to the conclusion that Pittsburgh's team might be the most aptly named sports franchise in America.

Trial of Alleged USS Cole Bomber Halted

According to today's Washington Post, the Justice Department quietly announced that it plans to stop its planned prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The Saudi national was alleged to have masterminded the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in Aden nearly a decade ago. His capture and subsequent incarceration at Guantanamo Bay was a headline in the post-September 11th era. He and other Guantanamo prisoners remain a sticking point for American and international jurisprudence, as well as for the often very dirty business of counterterrorism.

The Bush (43) Administration's insidious twisting of judicial standards remains a heavy burden for America. The Obama Administration, which made closing Guantanamo a presidential campaign position, has backed away from the issue without expressing any clear line of reasoning for its decision. One wonders why.

The Justice Department's decision on Mr. al-Rahim al-Nashiri's case reminds one of another Bush Administration initiative that didn't go exactly according to plan. The administration publicly declared its interest in tracking down terrorist funding, especially through the hawala network. This effort threatened the core of a great deal of very unpleasant activity, possibly among sensitive, high-level Middle East officials, families, and religious figures. It also had the potential to inconveniently expose connections between Western institutions and double dealing Middle East figures.

The unloved program fell out of the light and eventually lost bureaucratic support. Meanwhile, the Cole case remains in limbo. Guantanamo remains open. What's wrong with this picture?

Katrina

A Yahoo news link today noted that we're in the midst of the five year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I thought about this, only because I met a very human Katrina earlier this evening.

The flesh-and-blood Katrina works as a pharmacist in a supermarket pharmacy. During our conversation this evening, she offered pleasant, even funny comments on my purchases and my observation of her first name.

Yes, people comment on her name, and she tried not to look annoyed or tired of the question. She didn't have a stormy personality, but I unfairly wondered whether her seemingly balanced disposition could suddenly, destructively change. That sort of act would have certainly been in keeping with her name.

Seth Godin to Traditional Publishing: RIP

The Financial Times published a story about literary agent Andrew Wylie and Random House kissing and making up over their recent e-book spat. Looking at Mr. Wylie's photo, I'm wondering who at Random House couldn't wait to smooch with the publishing world's version of Scott Boras.

The more interesting part of the story involved best selling writer Seth Godin. He has decided to abandon publishing traditional books, and focus on a viral, guerrilla-style marketing/publishing hybrid business model. Key to his approach is personal appearances, which are very lucrative for highly visible authors.

Godin's approach isn't for everyone. It's hard to imagine publicity-shy writers, such as Don DeLillo, embracing relentless self-promotion tactics. Sometimes, privacy is a virtue, and many writers have preferred productive privacy to publicity's siren song.

Baseball's Dog Days

The fourth week of August is, in the baseball world, its "dog days." They're aptly named. It's this period in the baseball season when the sport's wolves prowl on their prey. The hot weather, the season's length, and the road trips wear down weaker teams, while the strong survive and prosper. Consequently, the statistics of good players accelerate in a desirable direction, as the New York Yankee second baseman Robinson Cano has recently shown.

This season, the American League has the stronger teams, the better players, the more prosperous franchises. While the Yankees have the best record as of this morning, they may not even make the playoffs. That is indicative of the competition, the quality of players on each contending team, and the demands of the schedule. I don't know who will win the three American League divisions, or the identity of the league's wild card playoff team, but it promises to be an exciting race. And that's something a baseball fan -- and I am one -- can get excited about.