A Change in the Wind
As John Fleck reports, it's been an unusually good year for California so far, given that we're in a strong La Niña condition:
The precip map is showing a classic La Niña pattern – dry south, wetter north, though California seems to be doing better than they might have hoped:
In fact, for left coasters, this doesn't feel like a La Niña much at all.
A couple of years back I did a story on a new local farmer's market, and, in interviewing the founder, learned something. To his way of thinking, a Trader Joe's – despite its cool reputation among the hipster clan — was as much of a rival as a Safeway.
Turns out that for a local community, his antipathy is based in fact. A Trader Joe's, which, despite its folksy, Hawaiian shirt look, is a part of a multinational conglomerate, is no better for the local economy than an other big corporation, whereas a small local store is demonstrably better. To wit:
Still, I shop there sometimes. Where else can a guy find whole wheat couscous?
h/p: Andrew Sullivan
Veteran reporter Don Lee of the LA Times already knows that Congress won't extend unemployment benefits for the long-term out of work, even before the debate is joined:
Economists also worry that consumer spending may weaken. Confidence remains low, and unemployment benefits, which have helped prop up spending, probably won't be extended by lawmakers, given the new political sensitivity to big government deficits. Hundreds of thousands of jobless workers will see their benefits expire this month.
Will the GOP really kill benefits for the jobless in the midst of the worst recession in decades?
Toles seems to think so…
Expect to hear lots of "Scrooge" references from the media for the new Congress.
Well, somebody had to say it. (About gratitude and the USA, I mean.) Why not William S. Burroughs?
For hardcore bitter truth addicts only.
39% of species alive today, according to an assessment by an international group of conservation scientists, face annihilation in the Sixth Extinction. That's total destruction of these species this century.
In effect, we are our own [killer] asteroid.
To prevent this planetary disaster, Ted Rall has an idea:
Incidentally, his description of the Nagoya Protocol fits the facts.
Last time Patti Smith came through town, she was in her rock star mode, and put on an un-freaking-believable show at the Ventura Theater, chatting with fans in line, going on to play all her hits, her clarinet, a Blue Oyster Song, and just generally being a totally giving person and sweetheart.
At one point she told a little story about walking around downtown, enjoying Ventura, and discovering that a bird had shat on her shoulder. She laughed it off. Told us:
You have a really nice town here. Hope you can keep it.
This week she won the National Book Award for her memoir of being a young artist in New York in love. Haven't had a chance to read Just Kids yet, but at her show she also had on sale copies of her poetic tribute to her past lover Robert Mapplethorpe, The Coral Sea, a collection of prose poems she wote as reflections, set off by his beautifully composed but unsettling black-and-white photographs.
It's a book as gorgeous as a dream you don't want to forget, elusive in its plot, but memorable in its mood, tributary and longing. It's about her late friend Robert Mapplethorpe, who was also the subject of her memoir. And it's got the most beautiful "to the reader" little sort of foreward I've ever read.
The first time I saw Robert he was sleeping. I stood over him, this boy of twenty, who sensing my presence opened his eyes and smiled. With few words he became my friend, my compeer, my beloved adventure.
When he became ill I wept and could not stop weeping. He scolded me for that, not with words but with a simple look of reproach, and I ceased.
When I saw him last we sat in silence and he rested his head on my shoulder. I watched the light changing over his hands, over his work, and over the whole of our lives. Later, returning to his bed, we said goodbye. But as I was leaving something stopped me and I went back to his room. He was sleeping. I stood over him, a dying man, who sensing my presence opened his yes and smiled.
When he passed away I could not weep so I wrote. Then I took the pages and set them away. Here are those pages, my farewell to my friend, my adventure, my unfettered joy.
Thank you. Patti Smith, for trusting us with the whole story.
Unlike most media, on-line or traditional, National Public Radio is thriving. It may be the most popular and trusted news source in the country.
As Bill McKibben reports:
Public radio claims at least 5 percent of the radio market. National Public Radio’s flagship news programs, Morning Edition and All Things Considered, featuring news and commentary alongside in-depth reports and stories that can stretch over twenty minutes—are the second- and third-most-popular radio programs in the country, each drawing about 13 million unique listeners in the course of the week. These NPR shows have far larger audiences than the news on cable television; indeed, all four television broadcast networks combined only draw twice as large an audience for their evening newscasts. Morning Edition and All Things Considered are supplemented by well-regarded programs like The World, a BBC coproduction with Boston’s WGBH, and the business broadcast Marketplace—programming produced outside of NPR itself but within the larger world of public radio. In polls, public radio is rated as the most trusted source of news in the nation. The audience for most of its programs dwarfs the number of subscribers to the The New York Times or The New Yorker, or the number of people who read even the biggest best sellers.
In fact, the burgeoning success of NPR seems to be driving the right in this country a little crazy.
Today Republicans in the House tried to eliminate the money the Federal government gives indirectly to NPR, without success. (Even if they succeed in cutting its stipend totally, they likely won't kill it off: The government only contributes about 15% of its budget.)
And Roger Ailes, the mastermind behind FOX News, called the people who work at National Public Radio "Nazis."
“They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don’t want any other point of view. They don’t even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive.”
Howard Kurtz, who recently left the Washington Post for the Daily Beast, got this quote.
Impressive.
Ailes took it back later — sort of.
To hear the FOX News honcho compare the famously modulated NPR voices to perhaps the worst villains in the history of the world?
It's a bit surreal — and very schoolyard. One wants to pull out the old "I'm rubber and you're glue" witticism from the sixth grade.
The critics don't like Sarah's new reality show. Alexandra Stanley complains:
In a way it’s like “The Sound of Music” but without the romance, the Nazis or the music.
Steve Brodner, for The New Yorker, artfully makes the same point:
Don't think Sarah will care what some New York smarties think. But when some of her fellow FOX News pundits disrespect her show — in candid comments, thinking they were off air — well; that's got to sting.
For decades the witty H.L. Mencken had a good time bemoaning the tase of Americans, decrying the booboisie. the philistines, the "swinish multitudes," but also insisting that "The United States…is incomparably the greatest show on earth."
In his book Life the Movie, a decade ago, the critic/writer Neal Gabler took this idea a step further, arguing that in this country, life has been overtaken by entertainment values, such that Americans see their own lives as an inferior form of the real thing. As Gabler puts it:
It is not any ism but entertainment that is arguably the most pervasive, powerful and ineluctable force of our time — a force so overwhelming that it has finally metastasized into life.
If the overwhelming popularity of reality shows weren't proof enough for this alarming thesis, here today comes objective fact.
The newspaper USA Today, according to its own staffing records, now has more reporters and editors covering entertainment (27) than reporters and editors covering science, the White House, the federal government, and Congress — put together (23).
Gabler goes on to argue that entertainment has led us to think that our own lives are second-rate versions of what they would be with better entertainment values. Think how charming we might be if cleverly rewritten; how handsome we would be if played by George Clooney!
No wonder the planet is ignored. Its changes come too slowly. Climate change isn't disastrous enough — needs better production values!
But leave it up to The Onion to put the same thought more entertainingly:
WASHINGTON—According to a report released this week by the Center for Global Development, climate change, the popular mid-2000s issue that raised awareness of the fact that the earth's continuous rise in temperature will have catastrophic ecological effects, has apparently not been resolved, and may still be a problem.
[cut]
Thus far, the study has gained unanimous favor in the scientific community, which was admittedly surprised in 2008 and 2009 at how quickly a defining issue that will undoubtedly affect everyone on the planet became so heavily politicized and took a backseat to health care reform, the housing bubble, and replacing Jay Leno on The Tonight Show.
Perhaps the Ignorital pills to be marketed in the far, far future will help.
Kit Stolz