An Amish Saturday

It’s not every day I have a roadside conversation with a barefoot farmer. But yesterday was not just another summer Saturday. Here’s what happened:

My wife and I were driving along back roads through the heart of Pennsylvania’s Amish counties when we saw a compact white wooden stand with some vegetables in quart paper containers. Given that we were a four-hour drive from home, I didn’t think purchasing anything was a good idea. But I was kidding myself: the red peppers and corn looked tempting. My wife knew I was fretting about passing them up.

“Why don’t you go back and get something?”

I couldn’t say no. I admired Amish farming techniques from my first visit to the area three decades ago. They have embraced organic farming. Their use of horse-drawn equipment echoes methods little changed since the Roman Empire rose and fell. Amish farms remain strikingly fertile and productive. I have often they were doing something right, at least when it came to agriculture.

So yes, I would purchase something. Back I went and pulled up aside the stand.

The gorgeous, slightly hot red peppers nearly overflowed their container. The price? Two dollars: a steal by the standards where my wife and I live.

However, before reaching for my wallet, I felt a presence near me, as if a spirit had materialized. 

Turning toward the farm house, I saw a real flesh-and-blood woman wearing a simple, long dress and a white prayer cap. We were nearly the same height, so she could look me in the eye through her thin glasses. But I had the sense she was seeing me in ways I could not conceal.

We talked red peppers. They were grown in her garden, something the woman communicated to me with something as close to pride as Amish religious practice probably permitted.  I had to suppress my curiosity about her: She was Amish, an exotic species, living apart from contemporary ambitions. Her community was defined by centuries-old practices that defied what Americans often call “progress.”

It was when I paid that I noticed her large, seemingly misshapen feet. They weren’t dirty -- rather, the farm’s dark soil seemed a part of her tanned skin, like an inherited genetic trait. The dark threads and patches appeared to continue along her legs, suggesting her relationship to the earth, her labor, and a strict, spiritually-driven way of being.  What I perceived as that life’s rigor and contentment was something I took with me, along with the quart of peppers.

When I returned to the car, my wife asked me if I were glad to have returned. I said yes, and then I checked my feet. They had a little bit of the farm’s soil on them. That’s something that doesn’t happen every Saturday for me.

Sailing from "Inner Harbor" to Crime Fiction Writing

Since 2010, I have written a blog called "Inner Harbor." The posts tend to be a vehicle for my reactions to current events. I typically comment on issues or incidents promiscuously discussed in social or traditional media. Certain posts involve episodes whose root was either an immediate, personal incident or a reflection on some aspect of my own life. In some cases, I comment on people or contexts which aroused my curiosity, but were otherwise unknown to me.

"Inner Harbor" began when my wife, the fine art photographer Amy Becker, suffered a serious illness. My posts were intended as a daily commitment to our love and firm belief in each other's talents. Every post offered an opportunity for her to hear my voice and witness its growth. Without Amy's strong encouragement and visceral commitment, I would not have developed "Inner Harbor," nor used that blog as a vehicle to generate a style and voice suitable for a creative journey.

I believe I have now achieved "Inner Harbor's" purpose. This summer, I stopped writing in "Inner Harbor." At that time, I came around to the notion that nonfiction could not adequately represent contemporary issues. "The rule of law" crowd, through its ruthless use of intimidating litigation and restrictive legislation, made nonfiction writing a debilitating exercise in risk management. Having people speak "on the record" has become an excruciatingly difficult task for even the most skillful or highly placed writers. Public discourse became a realm where spin doctors, investigative wolves, and data "scientists" commanded the media's high ground. Entertaining distortions took precedence over intelligently presented fact, something exploited most shamefully via "reality TV" and political propagandists.

This degradation of rationality compelled my move into writing mystery/detective stories. This pulpy world has historically, successfully been viewed as a portal into depictions of contemporary reality. Fiction allows the weaving of character, context, and motive in useful, and yes, entertaining ways. Coinciding with ceasing "Inner Harbor" posts, I read a number of Italian crime novels. The ones I have read embrace a mixture of reportage and fiction -- exactly the formula I wanted to pursue. Their sharply drawn characters struck me as entirely, unsentimentally real. And the books integrated current events, such as human trafficking and institutional corruption, with men, women, and children whose flaws and strengths displayed the writer's and audience's interest in humanity that no software wizard could "engineer."

I look forward to the challenge of creating work worthy of these Italian writers, along with iconic American detective novelists whose work I admire. Whatever I do, I will have also fulfilled advice my father offered me on his deathbed. He held me hand firmly and asserted that I should pursue fiction writing.

It took me a generation to embrace my father's perspective. I'm ready now to begin that journey to create work into a world Raymond Chandler aptly characterized as one where "the streets were dark with something more than night..." To that end, "More Than A Fresh Corpse" will be a blog/sketchbook for this effort.

Chinese Firm Purchases Spanish "Ghost" Airport

It's hard to imagine a developed nation having an abandoned airport capable of handling transcontinental flights. Yet, that's the case with Spain. When the Iberian nation was feeling flush, a rush to build new airports took hold. This phenomenon manifested itself most ambitiously with a grand facility intended to service Madrid. (Anyone who has landed at or departed from the Spanish capital will appreciate the need for more runways and terminals.)

Alas, the newly minted airport at Ciudad Real lived a short commercial life, opening in 2008 and going bust four years later. One could suppose its extremely inconvenient location and the financial disaster of that time led to its demise. Since 2012, the structure has looked as ruined as the background of a dystopian movie set.

According to a BBC report, the billion-dollar airport was sold for 10,000 Euros to a Chinese consortium. The Asian business group will use their new possession to provide entry for Chinese firms and goods.

"Ruin porn," such as the photographic images of the airport, have a certain cachet today. The shambles of Detroit, structures from the former Soviet Union, and buildings in Palermo (skillfully photographed by Letizia Battaglia), are among the settings that have attenuated interest in empires whose grandeur or oomph have passed. The obvious inference from this interest is an unconscious belief that the current world is undergoing an "evolution" for which Detroit, Moscow, or Sicily may be harbingers.

This reflective stance also suggests that the future feels both unknown and a little creepy. That's certainly the case at an abandoned airport whose presence serves as a visual signpost at the intersection of the past, present, and future.

Billboard report: US Users' Music Streaming Doubled From Prior Year

Theverge.com summarized a story originally appearing in billboard.com regarding music streaming in the United States. The gist is that the streaming music current is moving swiftly (no pun intended) stronger. According to theverge.com's story, the volume of streamed music has doubled over the prior year's activity. By any standard, that's a profound amount of interest in musical content. Little wonder, then, that Taylor Swift and other A-list music celebrities want substantial control over their sales and distribution.

Interestingly enough, music videos represented the largest user increase. This phenomenon dovetails with social media marketing's current mantra that videos and still images drive much more traffic than mere alphanumeric tweets, pins, or posts. I can't speak to the reliability of the Nielsen data quoted in theverge.com's article. However, anecdotally, I see plenty of people watching some video clip on their cell phones. God only knows what has them entertained or absorbed. In a YouTube universe, that consideration becomes the territory of analytics, data "scientists," and "innovators" sizing up the relationship between social engagement, content, and gross profit.

Music tends to be a Trojan horse for digital trends. Whether the power in the streaming relationship remains with the consumer is a thorny question. "Free" always sounds good, until you're the one giving your merchandise away, and your counterpart views gratis acquisition as an entitlement.

Obama's Third Gitmo Closure Envoy: Is Third Time the "Closing" Charm?

Among the sore points in US-Cuban political relations is Guantanamo Bay. The military base rankles Cubans; the terror prison rankles the world. In the 2008 presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama asserted he would make every effort to close the Gitmo slammer. Seven years later show a distinct lack of progress toward that goal. The president has hired, and accepted resignations from, two emissaries called "Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure." Their job was to negotiate prisoner release to the home countries of the incarcerated. Those discussions were filled with obstacles and a general sense the prisoners were not welcome to return.

Lee Wolosky
(Image: blfllp.com)

Obama's third envoy is a New York attorney named Lee Wolosky. According to a story in today's Miami Herald, the 46-year-old barrister brings more than Harvard Law smarts to a very rough game. He's worked with both GOP and Democratic administrations on sensitive national security matters. Wolosky currently represents clients suing the Bank of China for its alleged role as a conduit for terrorist funding. He's a partner in David Boies' law firm. In case you're keeping score at home, the publicity-welcoming Boies has repped the likes of former A.I.G. Maurice Greenberg, Al Gore's ill-fated legal action in the 2000 presidential election, and Apple. One can suppose from that background that Wolosky can manage "difficult" clients, intransigent counterparts, and complex cases.

Gitmo will certainly challenge Wolosky's skills. Meanwhile, let's see if Obama's third Gitmo envoy is the charm that brings this bizarre episode to a desperately needed ending.

Puerto Rico Near Financial "Death Spiral"

In February, 2014, I blogged about Puerto Rico's impending fiscal disaster and its impact on the US municipal bond market. The financial earthquake from a likely Puerto Rican bond default appeared to be substantial. What changed between then and now? Until recently, nada.

In the past few days, Puerto Rico's rulers have thrown in the towel. According to a story in today's Washington Post (and elsewhere), the Commonwealth is $72 billion in the hole. Meanwhile, the debt meter is running without hope of repayment. Puerto Rico's governor has characterized the island's financial situation as entering a "death spiral." Ugh. Considering the majority of domestic mutual bond funds hold Puerto Rican paper, this scenario is a problem that could jar millions of American retail investors as well as institutional players.

The nearly certain Puerto Rican default, coupled with the Greek financial crisis, makes it a tough holiday week for high finance's Masters of the Universe. Predictably, Puerto Rico's governor has asked creditors to "share the sacrifices" the island's residents will soon be asked to endure. There has been no evidence to request has met any sympathetic ears.

$72 billion is a lot of money, even by today's tawdry standards. However, a little perspective might be helpful. In 2003 alone, the Department of Defense officially spent $54 billion on the second Persian Gulf war alone. Including operations in Afghanistan, the DoD raised the ante in 2004 to $70 billion. Those conflicts remain ongoing.

So does the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico's financial bleeding.

Sikh Immigrants Seek Stabilty, Success in Italy's Parmesan Region

Donald Trump
(Image: guardian.co.uk)

The zeitgeist against useful immigration policies reached its most absurd, bigoted level this month when Donald Trump denounced Mexican "rapists." His shameless fear mongering, part of Trump's clown act, provides red meat for right-wing Americans for whom xenophobia translates into a thoughtful foreign policy direction.

Alas, Trump is not alone in an increasingly global concern over immigration. Since the end of World War II, Western Europe has experienced social unease as its population began to include "guests" from Africa and Asia. Recently, that concern has spread, as a wave of Eastern Europeans and Balkan nationalities prefer the hardships of existence in Germany or Italy to the known desperation of life in their respective homelands. Of course, the tragic North African exodus to Mediterranean countries is a major Italian political and social issue. Italian crime fiction writers, such as Massimo Carlotto and Andrea Camilleri, frequently and effectively weave these immigration phenomena into their works. The consciousness and impact of immigration is a live wire issue, although most Americans think it is contained to the United States and to Donald Trump's racist nightmare scenarios.

Sikh working on northern Italian dairy farm
(Image: bbc.com)

With all the social, legal, and criminal issues swirling around these new arrivals to Europe, it was heartening to read a BBC feature on an immigration success story. The unlikely heroes are Sikhs who emigrated to northern Italy's agricultural heartland. They found that the flat, fertile area that's home to Parmesan cheese production was similar to their native Punjab. Given their own rural backgrounds, the Sikh immigrants were quite comfortable working with the Italian region's milk-producing cows. They also did not have to be fluent in Italian to work with the bovines. And the long hours of farm life did not bother the Sikhs at all.

The Sikh immigrants, according to the BBC story, have played a significant role in resuscitating a once-threatened Parmesan production culture. They live in harmony with their neighbors, their bilingual children are proudly Italian and Sikh, and the productive, wealth-generating livestock remain in skilled hands.

Americans have long believed, or at least paid lip service, to the virtues of a sensible immigration policy. For Western Europeans, this perspective is something of an acquired taste, as their societies were not built on immigration. (Italy is somewhat exceptional in this regard, because of the mass migration of unemployed southern Italians to the more prosperous north.) The massive flow of humanity around the globe is one of the 21st Century's immediate issues. How it is handled will be part of this decade's political narrative. Hopefully, the Sikh success story will be one path toward the resolution of population migration in our time.

Key Murdoch Minion Tapped for Top Newark Public Schools Job

Newark, New Jersey has a long history of "troubled" public schools. All the king's men and all the king's horses have not been able to put the Garden State's largest K-12 system together into something approaching satisfactory performance. It got to the point where the state took over the school system. Local voices were pushed away, while Newark's public education efforts attracted the attention of political opportunists and wealthy "we-know-what's-best-for-you" ideologues.

Cami Anderson
(Image: state.nj.us)

Ironically, bellicose GOP governor Chris Christie and liberal media darling Cory Booker found common ground regarding Newark's schools. During Booker's tenure as Newark's mayor, Christie installed Cami Anderson as Newark's superintendent of schools. This was done with Booker's blessing. Ms. Anderson was no stranger in the night in the movement to "reform" K-12 education. She had served in executive capacities with Teach for America, an organization which used marginally trained, well-intended college grads as instructors in some of the nation's most desperate urban schools. (The teachers work like dogs, last about a year or two, and then in the vast majority of cases find another career.) This 21st Century version of a children's crusade also provided administrators with leverage against teachers' unions. Later, Anderson worked in New York for Wireless Generation, which later became Amplify, a Rupert Murdoch-owned enterprise whose ostensible purpose is K-12 "reform" via data-driven imperatives (supplied and managed by Amplify). Murdoch's education biz, through former NYC Education Commissioner Joel Klein, established a lucrative beach head in Gotham. Among Klein's key associates was Chris Cerf.

Chris Cerf
(Image: nj.com)

Cerf supervised Anderson's work with the NYC Department of Education. He later crossed the Hudson and worked as Governor Christie's Acting Commissioner of Education. His key hire was...ta da...you guessed it, Cami Anderson, as Newark's K-12 boss.

In 2014, according to The Star-Ledger reporter Bob Braun, Amplify Education (one of Amplify's corporate entities) received three contracts totaling about $2.3 million contract from the Newark public school system. At the time, Cerf was in the midst of a transition between his role as the state's top education dog, and jumping onto Amplify's payroll.

Recently, Ms. Anderson decided to call it quits in Newark, about eight months before her contract would have expired. A new mayor, a pissed off community whose wishes were consistently ignored by Booker and Christie, and a governor who would be king were three strong reasons for her departure. The new superintendent? Chris Cerf. He'll get a three-year deal to run the system his way. Cerf, to no one's surprise, advocates more charter schools, defanging the teacher's union, installing data-driven "solutions," and lots and lots of electronically-based testing. He'll also feel at home with "concerned" billionaires who have their own education "solutions." As it happens, Newark is an ideal petri dish for these social experiments.

Chris Christie, Oprah Winfrey, Corey Booker, Mark Zuckerberg
at the announcement of the Facebook boss' $100 million stock "donation"
to improve Newark's public schools.

We'll see if Cerf engages the parents of Newark children, something Anderson did not manage to accomplish to anyone's satisfaction. It will also be interesting to follow the money. Power brokers, notably Booker and Christie, have stonewalled any attempt at transparency regarding the Newark school system's finances and program decisions. Will Cerf be different? His political and corporate connections suggest that will not be the case.

YouTube Launches Newswire Team to Curate Eyewitness Footage of News

Google's YouTube has, for better or worse, become a significant, primary news source. The ability of a person-in-the-street to provide in-the-moment video and post it on YouTube has changed information dissemination. For TV networks, the emergence of YouTube and its Newswire project would suggest a greater migration of eyeballs to the online world.

The fly in this ointment is its rawness. How could one trust the veracity of an amateur video? It's not as if an outsider video provider had any institutional connection that would bring ballast to the "must-see" moment. Well, to solve that issue, the folks at YouTube have announced the formation of "YouTube Newswire." This team's role will be the curation of the day's hot news videos. According to a story in theverge.com, the Google group will partner with Storyful, a social news outfit whose primary mission will be to vett the video content.

As Google itself pointed out, over five million hours of video are watched on YouTube every day. Not all of them are cute doggies, charming babies, and celebrity baloney. There's hard news. However, as Google knows, trust is a big world in the social media universe. The YouTube Newswire alliance with Storyful seems a small price to pay to maintain that trust.