Rainy day in southern Wisconsin

I was chasing some photo assignments through the back roads around Madison yesterday, encountering blinding downpours on roads I wasn't familiar with. The turn-by-turn directions on my iPhone's Google maps were a godsend, letting me keep my eyes on the road without worrying about where I was. I pulled over in Stoughton to catch my breath and relax my white-knuckle grasp on the steering wheel.

Jonathan Franzen and his zombie figures of speech

Like people, figures of speech age, get tired, and eventually die. Just as zombies continue to mimic life without actually being alive, dead figures of speech are no longer part of the living language, but they often continue to shamble along, what vitality they may still have leaking away with each repeated usage. The more we hear them, the less they mean. Call them zombie figures of speech.

"To "have skin in the game" is a perfect example. This usage proliferated in the last decade, especially in the business press; it peaked well before the financial crash, and has trailed off ever since to its status as overused business-speak. Originally it referred to the principal in a business or enterprise having a stake in its success because they made a financial investment in it. This was taken to be a good thing, though the crash showed that this wasn't always necessarily true. The expression has been widely attributed to Warren Buffet, but William Safire debunked this in 2006.

Like zombies expanding their domain, the meaning of to "have skin in the game" has gradually expanded beyond the merely financial. It's now often used to indicate a real commitment to anything one is doing. But it's a tired, clichéd way of putting it. George Orwell talked aout this in "Politics and the English Language."

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose — not simply accept — the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. 

Orwell summarizes this in a short rule: "Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print." It's one of those rules that's honored more often in the breach than in the observance, since most of us talk on autopilot most of the time and "prefabricated phrases" so readily come tripping off the tongue.

Still, it's something conscientious writers and copy editors try to weed out. That's why it was so surprising to see a meticulous prose stylist like Jonathan Franzen using the same zombie figure of speech twice in the same interview in the last Sunday Times Book Review.

I like fiction by writers engaged in trying to make sense of their lives and of the world in which they find themselves, writers who palpably have skin in the game . . . 

Most books I pick up I put down without finishing, either because the writing is weak or feels false, or because I sense an absence of skin in the game.

Perhaps Franzen has been reading too much business writing to prepare for his next work. Most likely it just goes to show how easy it is for zombie phrases to ensnare the best of us. They're all around us.

"1934: A New Deal for Artists" -- what about the art?

Agnes Tait, "Skating in Central Park," 1934, Smithsonian American Art Museum

I had never heard of the American painter Agnes Tait, who was born in New York in 1894 and who died in Santa Fe in 1981. Few people have. "Skating in Central Park" is her best known painting, and the only reason it's known is that it's in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. And the only reason it's in the Smithsonian is that it was paid for by the federal government.

Agnes Tait had long wanted to make a large, festive painting of winter revelers in Central Park, but without a patron she could not take on this project. When the Public Works of Art Project gave her support in the winter of 1933–1934, the artist had her opportunity. As skaters and sledders flocked to the frozen lake and snowy slopes of Central Park, Tait joined them to sketch the winter fun. Then she retreated to her studio to make her painting.

1934: A New Deal for Artists is a Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibit of works from its collection marking 2009's 75th anniversary of the New Deal's short-lived Public Works of Art Project. It's been traveling the country, and today it completed its run at the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison. "Skating in Central Park"  was probably my favorite work in the show. You can see it on the Smithsonian's website, which also contains more information about the painting as well as a bio of the artist, who moved to Santa Fe in 1941, became a regional painter and also an accomplished children's book illustrator.

The government sponsored art during the Great Depression is often mocked for mixing art and politics in the style of "socialist realism." Sure, if you hunted for examples of overly idealized portrayals of workers and farm laborers you could find them. But few of the works in the exhibit conform to this old stereotype. Most are refreshingly free of overt political messages. Agnes Tait, for example, seems to be influenced more by Bruegel than some faceless Soviet cultural commissar.

If there's a message it seems to be, "Look! This is beautiful."

Trading rights for the illusion of "security"

"In America after 9/11, we made a deal with the devil, or with Dick Cheney, which is much the same thing. We agreed to give up most of our enumerated rights and civil liberties (except for the sacrosanct Second Amendment, of course) in exchange for a lot of hyper-patriotic tough talk, the promise of “security” and the freedom to go on sitting on our asses and consuming whatever the hell we wanted to. 
. . .

"Our Faustian bargain was completely bogus, and the devil never intended to hold up his end of the deal. We surrendered our rights to a government of war criminals, who promised us certainty and security in a world that offers none. We should have known better, and in fact we did. At the literal birth moment of American democracy, Benjamin Franklin summed it up in a single sentence: “Those who would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

                                                                            -- Andrew O'Hehir in Salon

Easter Sunday: The horizon is burning

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
        -- Robert Frost, "Fire and Ice"

Easter Sunday in Madison started out sunny, clouded over, and then a brief snow shower passed through. When the sun came out again, it looked like the horizon was on fire. Lake Wingra, Madison.

The Time Machine That Got Me Through the Worst of This Cold, Dark Gloomy Winter

In the last six weeks I retreated from our cold, gray, snowy surroundings and immersed myself in a decade long ago and far away -- Europe on the verge of World War, from the Baltics to the Balkans, from Paris to Leningrad. It was the time that Auden summarized in his poem, "September 1, 1939."

I sit in one of the dives 
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
. . .
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

American novelist Alan Furst covers the same territory in a series of spy novels he started in 1988 called "Night Soldiers," after the first book in the series. They're genre novels that transcend genre the same way that the genre novels of Eric Ambler, Graham Greene and John le Carré transcend genre. I started with the most recent, published in 2012, "Mission to Paris," and worked my way back through all 12 books, ending up with the first two, "Night Soldiers" and "Dark Star," a couple of the best and longer than the others. The action ranges all over Europe but always manages to pass through Paris, Furst's second home. What's most addictive is the powerful sense of place and historical detail, driven by episodic but compelling plot. And there's always the tragic futility, as in le Carré, of spy missions that rarely accomplish what they're meant to accomplish. Failure is endemic and yet the fight continues.

I must be the last person in the country to get turned on to Alan Furst. The upside is that I've had 12 books available to read, one after another. It's like binge watching "House of Cards," but better. The experience has lasted longer and been more immersive (and done wonders for my sense of European geography).

An antidote to winter and a time machine with soul.

Spring Equinox: Spring is sprung but the thermometer is leaking

Southwest Bike Path, Madison. A year ago the high was 81°F. Today it's 21°F. That's a swing of 60 degrees. The temperature has plummeted more than the sales of J. C. Penney, and that's saying something.

 Global warming doesn't mean it gets steadily warmer year by year. Rather, the extra energy trapped in the atmosphere makes the weather more variable -- wilder swings in temperature, stronger and weirder winds, bigger storms. Along with a warming trend in average global temperatures, an average that smooths out wild swings here and there. Right now the Jet Stream has turned into a superhighway running straight from the Canadian Arctic right to our backyards. Never a dull moment.

Celebrating the Ides of March the Canadian Way with Bloody Caesars

We were looking for an appropriate way to celebrate the Ides of March, drink a toast to the late Julius Caesar and welcome the approach of spring next week, when T discovered  the Canadian answer -- the Bloody Caesar cocktail.

Woohoo! We Made It Through the Winter Without a Single Alternate-side Parking Ticket!

Today's the last day (one thing to celebrate about the Ides of March). First winter I can remember that we didn't get a single parking ticket during the period of winter alternate-side parking restrictions, otherwise known as the memory tax -- you forget, you pay. And there's a lot to remember. First you have to decide whether the date is odd-numbered or even numbered. Then you have to figure which tomorrow's date will be, since what counts is where the car is parked after 1:00am of the day in question. You also have to remember which side of the street is which, although your address definitely makes a good starting point. And finally, you have to remember to actually park the damn car in the proper place (and if you wait too long, the neighbors will have taken all the nearby spaces and you may have to park far from the house). There's a lot to remember, and it's easy to get distracted.

Most winters I've gotten one or two tickets. Sometimes I'd park the car on what I thought was the right side, but it turned out I was mixed up. Other times I just plain forgot. It's always irritating to pay the memory tax. You just want to kick yourself, especially since the tickets started getting more and more expensive. It's a pretty effective way for the city to collect revenues from some of its citizens, since they can't really complain and only have themselves to blame.

But this year, with focus and discipline, we emerged unscathed. (Setting a daily iPhone reminder for shortly before bedtime also helped.)

My Plan B Faux Comet Pan-STARRS Photograph

We set off on a family walk at sunset tonight to look for Comet Pan-STARRS, probably our one weather window for viewing it this week. The idea was to spot the comet on our way back, when we'd be facing west about 40 minutes after sunset. We were well equipped with binoculars, cameras, tripod and -- most important -- instructions and a diagram of where to spot the little space traveler, i.e., a little above the crescent moon and a little to the left.

I've learned from experience that, when it comes to amateur astrophotography, things seldom go as planned and it's always best to have a robust, easily executed Plan B. This was it -- a target of opportunity that presented itself, a jet contrail photographed just after sunset and later tweaked a bit in Photoshop.

We tried hard to see the comet, we really did. If wishful thinking could have done the job, it would have been there above and to the left of the moon, just as the diagram showed. But it wasn't. We were about to give up (no big deal, there's a supposedly much more spectacular comet due to arrive in late autumn) and head back to the car.

Then we saw some people looking up, holding binoculars and exclaiming, "There it is!" And it was. They showed us where to look -- not up and to the left, but rather down and to the right. (So much for my instructions.) It was closer to the horizon than the moon and at the upper edge of a haze layer, which made it fade in and out of view. But we saw it -- a tiny, underwhelming faded orange ball with an even dimmer tail. It could only be seen with the binoculars.

I could have set up the tripod and tried to get a shot, but from our vantage point there was no detail on the horizon that would make for an interesting photo. Plus, my fingers were getting cold, and I was suffering from a severe sense of anticlimax. Besides, I had my Plan B photo that would help preserve the memory of our outing.

Just one thing: Next time I try to photograph an astronomical event, I'll make a point of not relying on just a single source found on the Internet. Nobody's perfect, not even on the Internet.

Words matter -- how the right hijacked Social Security INSURANCE and turned it into an ENTITLEMENT

Imagine a world in which homeowners insurance was demonized as an entitlement. A world in which people who paid insurance premiums and then were able to be reimbursed when their house accidentally burned down were portrayed as some sort of social parasite, collecting some sort of fishy-sounding "entitlement."  Critics would argue, year after year, "This is wrong! People are taking out more than they put in! The system is going bankrupt."

That would be a world in which people did not understand the concept of risk pooling known as insurance. In any insurance plan, benefits for those who collect are subsidized by those who don't, plus investment income on the money paid in. It makes economic sense, because it protects policyholders from catastrophic risk that would wipe them out.

Insurance is a pervasive fact of modern life, and most people have no problem understanding the general principle. That's why the right has been systematically demonizing our biggest insurance program of all -- Social Security insurance -- by replacing the word "insurance" with the word "entitlement," and repeating it over and over again until it sticks. It's one of the most successful propaganda campaigns of all time, to the extent that even some Democrats talk about Social Security as an "entitlement" that needs to be reformed.

The right has deliberately blurred the distinction between a defined contribution plan like a 401k and a defined benefit plan like Social Security, as if the 401k were some sort of ideal model. In a 401k, your retirement benefits only consist of what you (and maybe your employer) paid in, along with accrued investment earnings. That's exactly why most people's 401k accounts aren't nearly big enough to fund a decent retirement -- because most people don't earn enough to fund a decent retirement entirely on their own and would end up outliving their resources.

That's why Social Security was invented. The insurance component bridges this gap and insures us against the risk of outliving our resources. And, as an insurance program, the premiums and benefits are designed by actuaries to be self-funded and solvent. Before Social Security, for most working Americans old age was a wretched combination of poverty and reliance on family -- and that's when families were bigger than they are today.

Whenever you hear people talk reducing Social Security "entitlements," that's really what they're talking about. Ditto for Social Security "taxes." We should be talking about Social Security insurance and Social Security premiums. We've paid premiums and we've earned our Social Security insurance benefits.

Words matter.

Useful Utility Tool? Weapon of Mass Destruction? Or Just Security Theater?

I've always thought of my little key chain-size Swiss Army knife as the former, but since 9/11 the TSA considered it the latter -- until they changed their mind the other day. Although this finally brought the US in line with air security policies in the rest of the world, there has been a massive backlash and now it seems the TSA's reversal might itself be reversed. The prevailing sound bite seems to be "Knives on airplanes! What were they thinking?"

As for me, I'm as attached to the little gizmo as I am to my iPhone, and I've carried it for a lot longer. The "knife" is an inch and a half long. It's useful for cutting fruit or slicing cheese, opening plastic wrap, and the tip is useful for tightening those pesky little eyeglass screws that have a way of coming loose at the most inconvenient  times. There's also a tweezers, a toothpick, a nail file that's also useful for taking the rough edges off a lot of things, along with a miniature pair of spring-loaded scissors that are easy to operate with one hand. Since I usually don't check luggage, I always resented having to leave it at home when I travel. The ban always struck me as silly and unnecessary, just another example of bureaucratic overreaching that's turning us into a nation of sheep, made fearful by the war on terror.

Is the knife dangerous? Only theoretically, in about the same way as a fountain pen or ballpoint could theoretically be life threatening in the hands of someone trained to use it that way. We don't normally worry a lot about fountain pens and ballpoints as security threats. But because pocket knives are subsets of a larger category of "knife" that includes some very dangerous weapons indeed, they've been mindlessly confiscated along with weapons that pose a real threat.

The backlash against the TSA's sensible decision is another example of our simplistic, finger-pointing soundbite culture. "Knives on planes! What were they thinking?" -- pandering politicians and pundits jumped on the bandwagon, all competing to score points against TSA (normally an easy target), and to establish that the speaker sincerely cares about public safety. (Seriously, John McCain, don't you have anything more important to do than ranting about knives on planes?)

Usually, when sound bites come in the door, common sense usually flies out the window. I hope it returns soon.

Deregulatory Wayback Machine

Capitol Square, Madison, 1976. Deregulation was big that year -- deregulation, "unshakled" free enterprise, was going to solve everything from airline ticket prices to banking reform.  Reaganism was picking up steam with the California governor's unsuccessful run against Gerald Ford. Although Carter won that year, Reganism was on a roll and triumphed four years later. Three decades of laissez faire capitalist excesses have brought us to where we are today. Probably time for some shackling again, especially on Wall Street.

Madison's BB Clarke Beach in 1982 -- Mobile-free Zone

BB Clarke Beach, Madison, 1982 -- years before the Mobile Singularity. Nobody talking to themselves, or into a little thingie the size of a small coin purse. Nobody is tapping on a little metal and glass slab. Nobody is aiming a little box smaller than a cigarette pack at their friends, pretending to take their picture. How ever did they amuse themselves? Clearly, they had nothing to do but lie around in the sun.