Iowa. New Hampshire. Really?

Iowa and New Hampshire have an inordinate amount of influence in the presidential primaries.  In our two party system, primaries can be the time when a great variety of ideas from across the spectrum can be debated.  But so often, the field of candidates is narrowed very early and on the basis of results in Iowa and New Hampshire. The dialogue is cut short.  I grew up in North Carolina and by the time the primaries got to us, it was over. 

I don’t understand why Iowa and New Hampshire should be given such influence.  Every election cycle they are the focus for months and months and months while the rest of the country is virtually ignored.  It skews things.   Just as one instance, the argument can be made that the placement of Iowa in the primaries has a lot to do with why we have grain subsidies and ethanol.

 In actual fact, ethanol may not be a good idea, in terms of the environment.  (Here’s an interesting article on that debate: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ethanol-corn-climate) It is a positive sign that a number of Republican contenders this year are opposing federal subsidies.  Of course Gingrich and Romney, the front runners, support them.  That is probably not a coincidence. (You may read more here: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/bachmann-says-she-opposes-enthanol-subsidies-at-iowa-forum/)

New Hampshire is a strange choice to be given such power and status in the primaries.  For one thing, “white” people comprise almost 94% of the population.  The State is hardly representative of the ethnic diversity in the country at large.   In addition, New Hampshire is just plain cranky.

I am reading a novel by Alexander Theroux that presents an interesting take on the State.  The protagonist of the novel says, “New Hampshire has always been cheap, mean, rural, small-minded, and reactionary.  It’s one of the few states in the nation with neither a sales tax nor an income tax. Social services are totally inadequate there, it ranks at the bottom in state aid to education…and its medical assistance program is virtually nonexistent.  Expecting aid for the poor there is like looking for an egg under a basilisk.  It places lowest nationally in what it spends on anything.  The state encourages skinflints, cheapskates, shutwallets, and pinched little joykillers who move there as a tax refuge to save money. There isn’t a significant cultural center anywhere.  There are part-time police forces, all-volunteer fire departments, and no municipal water or sewage or disposal facilities.”  (page 77 in “An Adultery”)

I get the whole “yankee thrift” thing.  And I can enjoy “cranky” as much as the next person.  Assuming  Theroux’s description is accurate to some degree, I believe there is a place for a pinched point of view in the larger dialogue. 

But that place is not at the top of the presidential primary schedule election cycle after election cycle.  The country would be better served if we would change it up.  Am I just being cranky?  Maybe.  But don’t you think we should give change a chance?   Wouldn’t it be nice to see candidates doing something other than eating deep fried butter in Iowa or hanging out with white people in yet another coffee shop in New Hampshire?   What if Mississippi and Oregon went first next time?  Or North Carolina and Nevada?  I can think of a lot of combinations I’d like to see over the same old same old.  And that’s the view from here.

Here, There, Everywhere

The final stanza of the theme song to Martin Scorsese’s film “New York, New York”  includes the lines, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.”  New York truly is an amazing city and it has drawn incredibly talented people from all over for more years than I can count.  You name the interest and there is a group in NYC focusing on it. 

As a popular music fan, I have enjoyed reading about the folk music scene in the early sixties and the rock scene around the time Jimi Hendrix showed up.  Every time I go the NYC (which is not often, I admit) I try to go and spend an evening at the Village Vanguard.  At $25  a ticket for a 90 minute set it is a great value.  I have never been disappointed and have been introduced to folks like Bill Frisell and the Bad Plus there.

Having so many talented people in one place at one time has given rise to some great art and some great “scenes.”  I sure there is a lot of mediocrity as well, there always is, but that doesn’t erase the amazingly good music and art that has come out of NYC.

It is possible to think, I suppose, that if you are serious about your art (or whatever else) you really need to take it to a place like NYC and try it out.  A case can be made for that.  But we shouldn’t give into the tendency to think that if it doesn’t come out of NYC (or some other world class center) we needn’t bother.   Let’s not forget that great art (or music) can happen anywhere. Interesting music develops all over the place.  Just think about Muscle Shoals or Seattle or San Francisco or Memphis and on and on …you name it. 

Along this line, there is a fantastic art school in Greenville, NC (East Carolina University School of Art). Paul Hartley, who headed up painting and drawing department for many years prior to his death in 2009 was an incredible artist.  (Check out some of his paintings at this link.)  Greenville is definitely off the beaten track but it had and has some great artists.  They are worth knowing about and paying attention to.

And, I’d also like to highlight a little known band from the early 1970s, also from eastern North Carolina.  I am not arguing that they produced high art or anything of the sort.  But they were a great band and did produce a wonderful single, entitled “Blue Surf” which was a regional hit.  They were called “The Huckleberry Mudflap”(weird name I know!) and you can listen to the song at this link.   There is a great guitar lick at the one minute mark.  You can also read more about the band at this link.  Is there anybody out there who remembers this band?

You’ve probably seen the bumper stickers, “Buy Local” urging us to buy food from local farms.  We can pay attention to the local art and music scenes (or comedy, writing, political theory “scenes”…whatever) as well.  While you are planning you next trip to the “Big Apple," don’t forget that something wonderful might be just around the next corner.   Amazing things crop up, here, there, everywhere. 

Are Mormons Christian?

Recently a Baptist pastor in Texas said that Mitt Romney, Republican candidate for President, is not a Christian.  The assumption seems to be that if Romney is not a Christian, then he is not a good choice for president.  So the media frenzy began, some saying he is a Christian, others that he is not.   The question I’d like to see discussed is - “What difference does it make what faith our president is?”    I was so proud of Colin Powel in the last election cycle.  As he endorsed Obama he said:

“I'm … troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, ‘Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim; he's a Christian.  He's always been a Christian.  But the really right answer is, ‘What if he is?’ Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America.  Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?  Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, ‘He's a Muslim and he might be associated [with] terrorists.’ This is not the way we should be doing it in America.”

( see - http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/john-farrell/2008/10/20/colin-powells-endorsement-of-barack-obama-and-eloquence-about-anti-muslim-bigotry-in-america)

Thank you General Powell.  But… before I get to the real question, let me address the presenting question:  “Are Mormons Christian?”  I would say that they are not traditional Christians.  I believe that anyone who is baptized with water and in the name of the Holy Trinity is a Christian.  But Mormons do not believe in the Holy Trinity.  They believe that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three separate Gods.  They may be right.  But holding such a belief places them outside of traditional Christian faith and theology as affirmed by the Nicene Creed.   Mormons believe they have restored the faith that Jesus originated and they base this belief on the Book of Mormon.  I respectfully disagree that they have restored the faith.  In my opinion the Mormon religion, while using elements of the traditional faith, is actually a new thing. 

Now, what difference does faith make?  I do not believe that faith is simply a private matter, that it applies only to personal morality.  The faith we hold (or don’t hold) defines our outlook, public and private.  The question to ask of candidates then is, how does your faith affect public policy?   So, if you are Jewish it is fair to ask, “What is your view of Israel and of the United States’ support of Israel?”  This, by the way, is also a fair question for evangelical Christians, whose theology dictates support for Israel.  Also, if you are a conservative Christian, it is fair to ask you about your opinion on abortion and on women’s rights. This is a fair question for Roman Catholics too.  If you are a liberal Christian I might wonder about your opinion on capital punishment or gun control. I might probe your opinions about capitalism, the wealthy and taxes. And on it goes.

Where Mormons are concerned I wonder about their understanding of the United State’s place in the world.  Mormons believe that at the end times, Jesus will come again to this world and he will come to North America.  (The traditional Christian view as expounded eloquently by Tom Wright, is that the entire creation will be renewed. Follow this link to read more. )   At any rate, how does the Mormon view affect the foreign policy outlook?

Mormons did not allow African Americans to be priesthood holders until 1978.  The reasons for this are varied and one explanation is that people of color sided with Satan in the war in heaven that took place prior to creation, so that they were born into this world with dark skin.  Have Mormons repented of what might fairly be called racism?  Do they consider their now abandoned theology to be racist?  How does their faith affect public policy where race is concerned?  (Let me hasten to add that the record of traditional Christianity is nothing to brag about where racism is concerned.)

To this day women are not allowed to be priesthood holders in the Mormon Church.  So, questions about the place of women in society are fair game.   (I garnered some of the information about Mormons from a Public Broadcasting website. Click here for a helpful FAQ.)

At any rate these are the kind of questions I’d like to see where faith is concerned.   Instead we have a Baptist pastor talking about cults and then saying he rather have a cult member as president than Obama, because Obama doesn’t hold true Christian values. Yes…in case you are wondering…God died, and that Baptist pastor has taken over.  We may all be in trouble!  At least that is the view from here.

Reality and Abstraction

I was driving in the car a year or so ago in the company of great young man, in his twenties (I was born in 1954 and the young man in question was born in 1985).   As is often the case when I have control of the music being played, Bob Dylan was on.  Desolation Row played.  I love that song and the lead guitar which runs through out is brilliant.  When it was over the young man laughing said, "Do you realize that there wasn't one line in that song that made any sense?"

Well...yes and no.  There are songs that are plain, they tell a story.  Country songs are good at this.  There are some songs that make no sense and are pretentious.  And then...I would argue, there are some songs that don't make literal sense, at least complete literal sense, but they communicate very well.

I read the memoir of Dave Van Ronk a while back. (If you don't know him you can read about him at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Van_Ronk)  In this memoir he wrote about his own song writing and how Dylan had opened up new possibilities for him.  But he also had problems with Dylan.   He said, "...the more self-consciously 'artistic' the writing became, the less interest I had in taking part.  As someone once said, 'When I hear the word 'art' I release the safety catch on my Browning.'  That whole artistic mystique is one of the great traps of this business, because down that road lies unintelligibility.  Dylan has a lot to answer for there, because after a while he discovered that he could get away with anything...So he could do something like 'All Along the Watchtower,' which is simply a mistake from the title on down: a watchtower is not a road or a wall, and you can't go along it...Poetry is automatically suspect to me, because if you are a good enough poet, you can make bullshit sound so beautiful that people don't notice that it's bullshit...I eventually came to the conclusion that you should never say anything in poetry that you would not say in prose.  Poetry has the same obligation to make sense as any other statement by the human mouth."  ("The Mayor of MacDougal Street: A Memoir" by Dave Van Ronk with Elijah Wald, pages 206-207,  De Capo Press, 2005) Well, Mr. Van Ronk, tell us how you really feel!

He has a point.  But there is a reason there are different genres, poetry and prose, and you can do some things in one you can't do in another.  Regardless of the genre, this argument that it must "make sense"   is a bit like the argument about abstract and realistic art. There is a place for both in my world.

Sean Wilentz talks about Dylan working in a mode of what T. S Eliot called "the dissociation of sensibility...cutting off discursive thought or wit from poetic value, substituting emotion for coherence."  When talking about the lyrics of "Blonde on Blonde" Wilentz says they "never completely lose their delirious quality."  ("Bob Dylan in America" by Sean Wilentz, Anchor Books 2010, pages 125-126) With "Desolation Row" I suppose the lyrics are "delirious" all the way through!

I still love "Desolation Row" and "All Along the Watchtower," for that matter.   (I'd always pictured something like the great wall of China where the latter is concerned.)  But for now I will leave off with a beautiful painting by Gerhard Richter.  He did paint some realistic paintings but he also did these absolutely astounding paintings where he used a squeegee to move paint across the canvass.  What does it mean?  Hard to say in an analytic way.  Does it communicate?  Absolutely.  So here's one of his paintings.

This painting may be found in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Va.

Beautiful, yes?

You can read the lyrics of "Desolation Row" at this link: 

 http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/desolation-row

Welcome and Hello!

I am often slow to embrace new things...bought LPs until they weren't sold anymore (but they are making a comeback of sorts!)...then cassettes until they disappeared...then CDs....and now...digital downloads.  You know what I miss with downloads?  Album notes!  Some include them as a PDF but not most.  But I digress.

So, probably when blogs are on the way out, I create one.  At any rate, here we go.  My interests focus around music, faith, politics, life in general...and books as well but that was too long to put in the title.  So maybe I should change it to Art (Music etc).

More later...that is all I have time for today.

Peace.