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.

Checkout

On a rainy, humid Sunday night that felt more like Florida than New Jersey, I went into a local supermarket where typically shop two or three times per week. Tonight's mission was to buy some strawberries and rolls. I wanted to get out of the store as quickly as possible, and an express line looked like the best choice for a quick checkout.

It was. However, what struck me was the cashier. I'd never seen her before. She was an older woman, older than I. My immediate impression was that "she needed the job." I've been in that position, and one learns that a "normal" schedule is something to hope for rather than expect.

The Sunday night shift struck me as a tough way to make a living.

The cashier was quite deliberate and not particularly skillful in her packing. However, she was very polite and reasonably friendly. There was a man, a gray haired man whom I'd seen around the town, whom she knew and they had a warm conversation once my transaction was done.

The episode reminded me of a Picasso "Blue Period" painting called La Repasseuse. The somber 1904 work depicts a worn-out woman ironing. Picasso rarely seemed particularly sympathetic to people, but his "Blue Period" work is an exception to that generalization.

The time was a curious one for Picasso, as he was new to Paris and was poor. His proximity to human suffering connected with Picasso's ability to see into the personalities of economically struggling people. Picasso did this without bringing ideological baggage into his work.

Sometimes, one wonders what's the point of looking at "old" art, when the urgency and need for art that addresses contemporary concerns is more vital and necessary. While I appreciate the need to be engaged, history has much to show us. Just ask the cashier.

State Fair

A story in this weekend's Financial Times used the Iowa State Fair as its departure point to discuss how Midwestern agriculture has avoided the economic downturn many other Americans are experiencing. The article reminded me of the time I visited that uniquely American institution and ritual -- a state fair.

When I was a young boy, my family lived near Syracuse, New York. Among other things, Syracuse was home to the New York State Fair. My parents weren't crazy about the State Fair, and I only recall going to the fair once. I vaguely remember rides, live entertainment, and some agricultural exhibits.

Living in the New York metropolitan area doesn't encourage enthusiasm for state fairs. The venues are too far away; in the case of Syracuse, it's approximately 300 miles from the Empire

State Building. New Jersey's state fair is a sorry event, and few in the Garden State care about it. I'd like to say my four years of college studies in Wisconsin included a visit to the state fair. They didn't.

However, if a Midwestern style state fair were within a reasonable driving distance from my New Jersey residence, I would love to visit one now.

Norman Rockwell at the Smithsonian

A reason to visit Barack Obama's Washington this fall is the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The show features works from two unlikely Rockwell collectors: Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. According to the Smithsonian publicity for the exhibit, the two moviemakers were attracted to Rockwell's "love of country, small town values, children growing up, unlikely heroes, acts of imagination and life's ironies."

While I view the publicity's assertion with skepticism, I think there's something to be said for two Hollywood power players purchasing an artist so delightfully non-Warhollian as Norman Rockwell. It's easy to diminish Rockwell's work, and prefer something flashy and "contemporary" in sense and sensibility. I think it takes a certain self-confidence to look at Rockwell's work for what it offers, rather than what it lacks.

After I graduated from college, I returned to New York and began to know working artists. I was talking with one over a beer, and we happened to see a Rockwell

illustration from The Saturday Evening Post in a book. I said something snide about the work and about Rockwell in general. The artist very quickly objected, and pointed out to me that Rockwell was a fine draftsman. I understood the artist's point, and began to view Rockwell's work with a more thoughtful eye.

The episode taught me to become a much more independent thinker, and try to view art works, ideas, and ventures with a truly open mind, rather than cultivate viewpoints that just try to sound smart without really being so.

While I don't have an opinion about the Smithsonian's Rockwell exhibit yet, I do look forward to seeing it and understanding what makes his work worthy of an afternoon's visit.

California Municipalities and Highly-Paid Municipal Officials

Hey, how about one million dollars compensation each year for the past four years? Well, that's the case in a small southern California town. Cronies made over half-mil per. Nice work if you can get it. The story is from today's LA Times.

Cooties

I woke up this morning and watched a few minutes of a New York newscast. One of the broadcast's feature stories was a segment on the City's bedbug epidemic. Apparently, the most recent cootie episode took place at a movie theatre. It sounded quite unpleasant, especially as the creatures like to hitch hike on human skin, hair, and clothing.

I admit I'm intimidated by the notion of going to public venues in the City during the epidemic. I don't want bedbugs in my west-of-the-Hudson home. As a result, the idea of doing pleasurable things in New York, such going to the movies, almost seems out of the question.

This situation reminds me of Jeannie Chang. I made her acquaintance when I lived in Astoria during the Reagan Era. She had a couple of cautious habits which I still remember. One was to walk as far away as possible from construction sites. She believed objects would fall from the structures. I didn't quite buy into the strong version of her theory, until someone died from a falling object just a couple of blocks from where I was working at the time.

Jeannie also would not sit down on a subway train. In those days, homeless people, drug addicts, and others would use subway seats as their futons. Jeannie sized up the situation, and concluded the seats were cootie incubators. She preferred to stand.

I wonder how she would manage in today's bedbug ridden New York.

Classics Scholar Bernard Knox's Obituary

Today's New York Times includes an obituary of Bernard Knox. He was a Cambridge-trained classics scholar. That sounds pretty dull until one reads about his life. He fought on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War. He enlisted in the United States armed forces after the country's entry into World War II, eventually landing in the OSS. His missions included parachuting into France to aid the Resistance, and undertaking a dangerous mission into northern Italy.

Ironically, his passion for the classics was reignited during his Italian foray. According to the obituary, he found a bound copy of Virgil, whose bust, located at the poet's tomb near Naples, is shown above. Knox opened the book to "a section of the first Georgic that begins, 'Here right and wrong are reversed; so many wars in the world, so many faces of evil.'"

That lyric strikes a chord today, while reminding us that history continues to inform us, if we would only listen to it.

Feds Shocked to Find "Gambling" at For-Profit Universities

Most students at for-profit colleges, such as the University of Phoenix, don't fully repay their student loans. The schools tend not to care, as they get all the money around the time students register. Today's Washington Post story on the issue fairly reports the Department of Education announcement of "shock" over this "gambling" at higher ed's version of Cafe Americain. Considering WaPo's Kaplan arm, a prime for-profit offender, is responsible for over 60% of the newspaper's revenue, running the story shows at least some journalistic integrity.

While the for-profit schools are under the federal microscope, what's equally outrageous is how the supposedly non-profit universities more or less walked away from their student loan scams, provided via Sallie Mae. These acts of theft were revealed around the time of the Bear-Lehman collapse, and were promptly swept under the rug.

What no one bothers to explain is that, for over a decade, college tuition and expenses have quadrupled the cost of inflation. Where does the money go? Do you really think it benefits the average college student? Take a look at perks for top profs and administrators at a local institute of higher learning sometime. Or the salaries of big-time college coaches and their staffs.

A Round-Trip Marketing Opportunity via Facebook

Delta Airlines announced its launch of a "ticket window" on its Facebook site, according to a weekend story on siliconvalley.com. This development is a marketing professional's wet dream, especially if Facebook offers its customer data for rent or sale. It also helps Facebook's equity partners, as they continue to drive up the price of the inevitable IPO for the Facebook enterprise.

Delta's business initiative is a marketing milestone. It means word of mouth referrals can be closely tracked. Other consumer habits, and those of one's Facebook community, can be cross referenced. We've come a long way from a travel era in which passengers booked via travel agents, people carried address books, and placed a higher value on individual privacy than Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg does.

The photograph is from the interior of Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center at New York's JFK Airport. It's closed now; many years ago, my wife and I were fortunate enough to walk through the beautiful structure to catch a TWA flight to Italy. One of Saarinen's many exquisite design touches was creating departure tubes that made a passenger feel like they were taking off.

The Thieves of Manhattan

The Washington Post published a review of Adam Langer's The Thieves of Manhattan, a badly needed spoof on the memoir writing industry. I have not read Langer's book, his fourth, so I cannot comment on it from personal experience. However, his target is a juicy one, especially now, as the public relations apparatus promoting Eat Pray Love has initiated a full-court press for the memoir's film and print versions.

Alas, the WaPo review was released in the literary world's Siberia, also known as a Saturday in August.

If you're curious about Langer's work, visit the author's website. One surprising page on his site includes his musical playlists that one could listen to while reading his books and his other works.

Eat Pray Love

Here's a thought just in time for the weekend premiere of the movie Eat Pray Love. The movie's title seems like a modern day version of Julius Caesar's famous message to the Roman Senate: veni, vidi, vici.

To translate Caesar and place it next to Ms. Gilbert's title:

I came/Eat

I saw/Pray

I conquered/Love

Of course, Caesar only came once.

Honey

My wife and I get honey from a husband-and-wife team in a nearby municipality. They keep bees and jar their own products. Sometimes, my wife buys small jars of honey and gives them to others as gifts. We use the honey ourselves and have developed a preference for its clean, clean taste. My wife has consistently claimed local honey was the best honey money can buy (sorry, no pun intended in the direction of Maria Bartiromo). I can't independently confirm my wife's assertion, but I certainly enjoy the honey we get. And that will just have to do for now.

It gives us great pleasure to support this sort of cottage industry, and especially those who create desirable environments for the endangered bee. There was quite a bit of justified alarm in New Jersey last summer, when the bee population plummeted throughout the state. The crisis brought into perspective the critical role bees play in agriculture and horticulture, and how we simply take their activities for granted.

To learn more about the buzz about bees, beekeepers, and honey, explore the link to today's Philadelphia Daily News . The story's writer, Deborah Woodell, also keeps a blog about honey, and it's worth checking out, as well.

The ancient Greeks were very partial to bees; Ephesus' symbol was the bee. The silver interior of the pendant (above) is modeled on an ancient Greek coin.

Moody's: 2008 Money Market Fund Crisis Far Greater Than First Reported

Now that the recession is over for the wealthy, and the depression still very much around for all other American economic classes, Moody's released a very curious report today about the 2008 money market fund crisis. The Washington Post, to its credit, gave the story some play on its website's landing page.

The gist of the story: the 2008 money market fund crisis was far, far worse than first reported. Not just one money fund was ready to sink. No, not just two funds, not just three or four. Try over thirty of the "safe" funds were quite unsafe.

How full is your mattress?

They Call It "Media Monday," and Tuesday's Just as Bad

The pun on the opening lyric to Stormy Monday brings us to some interesting events in the media.

1. Google and Verizon publicly launched their plan to amend "net neutrality". The San Jose Mercury News, which reflects Silicon Valley thinking, offers a little analysis.

2. A very curious story in the Financial Times about Rupert Murdoch waving the white flag in China. Guess this one didn't make Fox Business. Yes, I checked.

3. Gambling in the Casino Department: The Washington Post Co. got egg on its face when its Kaplan education arm was cited for misleading prospective and active students, resulting in Kaplan raking in oodles of money. Keep in mind WaPo's media component is a money loser; Kaplan is a huge money maker.

4. Cablevision, owner of Madison Square Garden and its resident sports franchises, just publicly embraced Isaiah Thomas and made him a high-level employee again. It's incredible, although in keeping with ownership's lack of morals. Thomas had been tarred in a sexual harassment suit, the proceedings for which unveiled the Garden's Borgia-like corruption.

5. A snippet of Ric Burns' "documentary" on Goldman Sachs has been leaked, via Minyanville. For those unfamiliar with the case, Goldman commissioned the work and has complete editorial control over it. This is on top of Goldman's first quarter results, in which its trading desk did not lose money on any day in the quarter.

Angela Bofill

My friend Phil Dorsey, whose thebocx.com offers wonderful music, played an Angela Bofill song yesterday. I had not listened to a Bofill song in over two decades. I associated her music with a first marriage that didn't work out, and I did everything possible to not revisit that period. That even included music from the time that I enjoyed. They were memories and associations I put in my deepest freezer.

For reasons I don't understand, I was open to listening to Bofill's songs yesterday. Her classically trained, three-octave voice and emotional range gave her songs old-school musical authority. Some of her earliest material, such as Under the Moon and Over the Sky, went in intriguing directions. And she was a rare musical curiosity at the time: a Bronx Latina who crossed over to R&B.

Unfortunately, her very strengths worked against her. Her initial fan base, attracted to her jazz, R&B, and Latin dexterity, abandoned her when she went for Clive Davis' handling. Her style fell out of favor, once popular music taste decisively moved towards rap, and she was condemned to music's margins.

I read some online accounts, and a Bofill Facebook page, that stated she suffered strokes in 2006 and 2007. Tragically, Bofill did not have health insurance. Some fund-raisers have taken place, and one can only hope this angel of the night finds the financial means and emotional wherewithal to persevere.

The "New" Coney Island

My wife and I, along with a friend, went to visit the "new" Coney Island a couple of weekends ago. We enjoy its urban, hot weather atmosphere, and find it a source of photographic subjects. I even felt inspired to shoot a bit, mostly attempts at impromptu portraits, such as the Asian woman milling around the fringe of an amateur variety show on the boardwalk.

One gets a sense of the "old" Coney Island in the "How Much" photo (not taken by any of the three of us). Our search for the "old" Coney Island uncovered a mixed bag of holdover goofiness and rather sanitized rides. The majority of visitors to Coney Island remain poor people, recently arrived immigrants, and misfits. Fortunately, their beach, boardwalk, and amusement park behavior tends to be raw, blunt, and uninhibited. This melange gives the area an appealing vitality, a quality lacking among beach communities catering to "nice people."

Unfortunately, our observations of Coney Island don't lend themselves to an optimistic outlook for New York City's marquee beach destination. Why? The city government's intention with Coney Island seems clear enough: get rid of just enough funk to make it palatable to sell to hotels, "luxury" condominium developers, and colorless chain restaurants. Even Robert Moses, whose zeal for middle-class suburban expansion did so much to shape the city, would not have gone this far. Then again, he considered Coney Island a distant, almost useless outpost -- a principal reason why he moved the New York Aquarium from Battery Park to the city's oceanfront. The fish didn't mind the move.

Ironically, Moses' spiteful banishment of the Aquarium ultimately helped the facility retain a certain unglossy character. The Aquarium's dull structure and very placement in the middle of nowhere ensured its avoidance of the city's "classist cleansing" efforts, an unofficial campaign that has transformed Manhattan south of 96th Street into America's version of a European bourgeois capital. The Aquarium remains a place where New Yorkers -- not tourists or MSM looking for "iconic" structures for TV consumption -- take their kids for closeup looks at the marine life presumably steps away in the Atlantic Ocean.

However, powerful commercial forces see gold along Surf Avenue. While one can hope and push for Coney Island to keep its funky soul, the financial forces coming to bear on the area may be too powerful to resist. It's like trying to stop the tides.

Robert F. Boyle on Facebook

Sometimes, Facebook makes sense as a community bulletin board. The page for recently deceased film production designer Robert F. Boyle is a case in point. I haven't looked at it exhaustively, but I liked what I saw.

Boyle worked on The Birds and other Hitchcock films.

Kings of Pastry

Kings of Pastry, a D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus documentary, sounds like delicious fun. The film's subject is a high-profile pastry making competition held in Lyon once every four years. A pastry maker I know compared the event to the Olympics. Here's a synopsis of the documentary from imdb.com, and a link to Pennebaker/Hegedus' site promoting the film.

If you live in the New York area, the movie will be shown at Film Forum from September 15 through the 28th. The showing, along with the Museum of the Moving Image's winter retrospective on the pair's work (coincident with the completion of the space's renovation), suggests Pennebaker/Hegedus will be in the midst of a major market publicity drive this fall and winter.

Suso Cecchi D'Amico -- RIP, Part Two

The Italian press service ANSA provided an English language article on Suso Cecchi D'Amico's funeral service in Rome. Director Mario Monicelli, shown below, spoke at the service. He's 95 years old; D'Amico passed away at age 96.

Robert F. Boyle and Suso Cecchi D'Amico Obits

A tough day for the movies, as two giants in their respective cinematic fields passed away.

The LA Times obituary on Boyle talks about Boyle's career with some feeling.

Robert Boyle was a great production designer. He designed, among other incredible feats, the Mt. Rushmore scene in North by Northwest. Boyle began under the wing of Hans Dreier, one of Hollywood's legendary art directors. Nominated for 23 Academy Awards during his lifetime, Dreier won an Oscar for Sunset Boulevard. Twenty-three!

Suso Cecchi D'Amico's fingerprints were all over Italian post-war cinema. The Italian directors who worked with her form a Who's Who of that time. Her best known work was with Luchino Visconti, notably Il Gattopardo (The Leopard). At their best, her scripts displayed carefully conceived structure, a strong sense of human drama, brains, and useful insight into our shared condition. She was also the rare woman who successfully navigated the very male, very willful world of Italian movie making. In the photograph, she's talking to Anna Magnani; I believe Visconti is the bug-eyed man looking at D'Amico.

Phone Apps for Religion

I can't imagine many hipsters filling their smartphones with prayer apps. However, the decidedly unhip world of conventional religion has discovered the gadgets' expressive utility. A Washington Post story published today explores this curious phenomenon.

One can only imagine what would happen if a religiously inclined individual were to reach his or her version of the pearly gates. Attached to the gates would be a sign that reads "Cell phone-free zone. Forever." How would they feel?

Of course, hell for some might consist of coexisting for infinity among cell phone abusers. One can only wonder what circle of hell Dante would have found suitable for them. I think the Florentine poet, who possessed a spiteful personality, would have found a special place in hell for cell phone executives.

The portrait of Dante, by the way, was painted by Andrea del Castagno in 1450. Its current home is the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

Laissez-Faire Education in a Parochial School

One powerful current in the American social experiment is to shift education from a public school model to one in which public funding will support parentally-driven "school choice." Included among the choices are parochial schools, whose principal mission is to inculcate religious values into those attending their institutions.

I attended parochial schools from kindergarten through high school. During the time I attended those schools, teachers and administrators had wide lattitude to say or do just about anything. This laissez-faire educational approach was especially true in high school.

My experience in that environment was a deeply negative one. Some instructors were inept, or had barely enough qualification to transmit useful subject information. One instructor, who I thankfully did not have, directed his geometry class to make paper birds for three months; they did not do anything else, such as connect the project to geometric principles. Other instructors' grasp of pedagogy was not always apparent, though not as egregious as the bird brain teacher's wackiness.

Another instructor had a history of mental illness, including injuring a stud

ent during a class by slamming his head into a blackboard. The teacher was allowed to continue his profession in the same school, after taking a well-timed leave of absence. The high school guidance counselor did not demonstrate the slightest grasp of expertise in psychology, and once publicly described a student to the pupil's peers as "a bum." The counselor's only known gift was an ability to shoehorn seniors with borderline academic credentials into local Catholic colleges.

School assemblies included speeches from staff members in support of right-wing politics and political beliefs. These were not open forums, where contrasting views could be explored. School attire was jacket and tie, which we were told would "prepare (you) for the business world." This approach struck me as opposed to the encouragement and development of open inquiry, the use of which is the sign of a strong, independent mind.

At the time, the high school's main calling card was athletic achievement. In fairness, I'll point out that the coaches were highly qualified and helped get college scholarships for otherwise nothing-special student-athletes. The basketball coach was connected to the New York basketball mafia, with college and pro contacts cramming his address book. The track coach eventually became an athletic director at a Jesuit university, which seemed fitting.

Both coaches possessed a very strong sense of self-assurance and a willingness to impose their will on their student minions or just about anyone else they could push around. They were not interested in inquiry and discovery as much as "measurable achievement," demonstrated in fast sprint times or points per game. However, I respected their competency, although I loathed their methods.

I could not say the same for the teaching staff, with a couple of exceptions. But, by golly, there was discipline of a sort. For me, that part of the experience was pointless, since it was not grounded in my heart and was unpersuasively taught.

Clearly, the parochial high school was not the right fit for me. I chose to attend a public university -- The University of Wisconsin-Madison.

After much wandering in the wilderness of classes catering to a 30,000-plus student body, I began to develop the emotional wherewithal, the love of curiosity, and the willingness to embrace risk, that was never part of the educational package in the parochial high school I attended.

It is my contention that parochial schools are philosophically and practically unable to present such a package to today's students. Whatever the problems of public schools are, parochial schools are not the answer.

Ghost Teachers

This morning, I watched a BBC program focusing on education in Sierra Leone, in which a correspondent toured the West African nation. The Virgil to the BBC reporter's Dante was blind musician Sorie Kondi, whose photograph is to the right.

The well-developed, approximately twenty minute segment, visited different areas of Sierra Leone, including the "blood diamonds" region. Its approach skillfully blended big-picture concerns with interviews of teachers, parents, teenage children, and local advocates for social change. BBC online provides a clip of the segment, but try and view the segment in its entirety.

One issue that hampers Sierra Leone's educational progress is the phenomenon of "ghost teachers." Essentially, the term refers to instructors remaining on the payroll even after they've passed away, moved, or simply cannot be found during a roll call. No one knows, at least for the record, where the money for the ghost teachers goes.

The segment also interviewed a parent, whose daughter was taught by all too human an instructor. The teacher knocked up the teenage girl (and another girl, as well), and presumably bribed his way out of legal and administrative trouble.

When people complain about the American educational system, they should take a harder look around the world and stop being so hysterical about "success." Concern regarding America's "diminished academic competitiveness" are often put into a framework of fear and implied racism. The current fashionable comparisons are to the academic achievements of student masses in China and India. It wasn't so long ago that similar comparisons were made about Japan. Do we really want to emulate Japan's educational system? Or China's? Really? And if America's school systems are so ineffective, how does one explain the current "success" of America's CEOs and senior management?

It's not as if they were educated in Asia or Scandinavia, or by West African ghost teachers.