Category: Current Affairs

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Then and Now

June 15, 2008, in Redding, California: We were on our way back to the Bay Area from Eugene, and between filling up the minivan and the U-Haul truck that Thom was driving, I probably spent about $200 at this station. This may have not been the highest price I saw in California in June and July, but it was probably the highest I paid.

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December 6, 2008, Berkeley:

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Today’s price is down 3 cents from yesterday at the same station (at Hopkins and The Alameda). Everyone around the country is seeing this happen. Still, the fall in prices has been more dizzying than the rise. In fact, since the price decline is connected to the problems in the rest of the economy, yes, it’s positively unsettling. The unease aside, it’s sure a lot cheaper to fill up.

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Holiday Gift-Buying Guide and Presidential Memento Treasure Chest

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Today is just another day, unless you happen to be a “President Martin Van Buren admirer.” Fans of the eighth president convened today in Kinderhook, New York, his hometown, for the U.S. Mint’s unveiling of the handsome and valuable $1 Martin Van Buren commemorative coin (good for all debts, public and private, unless incurred in a vending-machine environment). Van Buren is a long-ago-deceased chief executive whose legacy is often associated with lack of stature–he was our second-shortest president . But his other accomplishments must be remembered. Among them is co-creator credit for the Panic of 1837. In fact, he might be looked on fondly as being one of the few presidents more economically inept than the current resident of the White House.

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Dwell not, though, on hard times. The holidays are near, and someone close to you might want a single Van Buren buck, a roll of them, or a whole sack. Hurry! you can get a 25-dollar roll for $35.95 and a 250-dollar sack for $319.95! Or if you want just a single handsome Van Buren proof dollar in a stunning Van Buren proof dollar folder (pictured above left), that’ll run you $5.95. It’s a chance to buy a piece of history, grab on to a conversation piece, and sock away cash for your Emergency Gruel Fund — all in one.

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And if you’re wallowing in this year’s hedge-fund profits — among the top pastimes of this site’s readers — you can secure the “2008 First Spouse Series Half-Ounce Gold Proof Coin: Van Buren’s Liberty” for only $549.95. If you’re on the fence about this purchase, consider: “The reverse … depicts Martin Van Buren as a young man at the family-operated tavern in the village of Kinderhook.”

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Big Screen

From the Associated Press:

NEW YORK – A Wal-Mart worker was killed Friday when “out-of-control” shoppers desperate for bargains broke down the doors at a 5 a.m. sale. Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and customers shouted angrily and kept shopping when store officials said they were closing because of the death, police and witnesses said.

Sale-crazed holiday shoppers trample a store employee. As Wal-Mart says, it’s a “tragic situation.” It’s also too easy a target. Yeah, there might be something wrong in people’s head when they’re so heedless of people’s safety that they’ll run over them. But there’s also something wrong in the way this whole event is framed in the AP’s lead.

The motive for the shoppers’ behavior? Desperation. For what? Bargains. Think it through: You’re being told that there are people out there so starved for price breaks on big-screen TVs, or whatever else was piled up inside, that they turned into animals? I’m not buying it. There’s something selfish, callous and crass going on in mobs like that–but desperation? No.

Interesting to try to square it with everything else we’ve seen here in the last few months: the crash of the housing market and the ensuing economic crises; the anything-goes bailouts; the suggestion that our last redoubt of heavy industry, the car companies, is about to collapse; the rising above differences that seemed to be one of the forces driving the outcome of the presidential election. I’m sure that Wal-Mart shopping crowd fits in there, but I just can’t figure where right now.

For a little contrast with a situation that does convey true fear and desperation, I recommend The New York Times’s excellent photographer’s journal on the Mumbai attacks. Especially striking, somehow, the final two frames of a crowd of onlookers.

[Later: Peter S. Goodman, a Times writer, later made a game attempt to explore and explain the tragedy. He puts the desperation into a much larger and far more convincing context.]

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Times Five

Brief historical note: I posted my first entry here five years ago yesterday. A basic stat for the Infospigot era: 1,679 posts. An average of 336 a year, or 28 a month. I’ve never figured the average number of words per post, but I think I’ve mixed it up: a smattering of short ones, long ones, and in-between ones. Plenty that were mostly about the pictures I was putting up. I’ll make a ballpark guess and say the average length has been 350 words. If true, the total verbiage here totals something like 600,000 words. That’s the equivalent of 2,400 typed pages: a very long book, but with no plot, no central subject, little action, and a dimly understood protagonist. All I can say is thanks for reading. Thanks for returning. And thanks for all the responses along the way.

We’ll soldier on, despite a recent newsflash that blogging is dead. Let’s see what the next five years brings.

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Now It’s Done

Last weekend, NPR aired a segment on the Depression-era ballad “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?” I’ve heard the song forever; I think my mom and dad had a recording of The Weavers’ Eric Darling singing it. The melancholy in the tune and lyrics always made an impression; and I always felt that my parents had a direct connection to the song, that it was about a time they had lived through. Our very own economic crash prompted NPR to do its piece: online, the segment is titled “A Depression-Era Anthem for Our Times.”

They gave the subject 10 minutes of air time, and used it well. Rob Kapilow, a composer and student of popular song, deconstructed both words and music. His summary: “Lyrically, it’s the entire history of the Depression in a single phrase: ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ ”

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Our American Perspective

I edited a story that aired on KQED this morning about a Lebanese-American man, a U.S. citizen, who was seized by state security in the United Arab Emirates nearly three months ago. The man, named Naji Hamdan, has not been charged, and the Emirates haven't seen fit to explain why he's in custody. One reason for that may be that the United States asked the UAE to pick the guy up because the FBI considers him a terrorism suspect.

That surmise aside–the allegation is made in a lawsuit that's supposed to be filed today on Hamdan's behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union–the U.S. embassy in the Emirates seems in no hurry to find out what's happening to an American citizen held without charge by the local secret police. It took the embassy 51 days after the arrest to meet with Hamdan in prison. In response to inquiries from Hamdan's family and Rep. Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, a consular official described the meeting, the prisoner's status, and then offered this perspective on the situation:

"This extended detention, while very unusual from our American perspective, does not run counter to the laws of the United Arab Emirates."

See? The situation only seems unacceptable because of our American perspective. If someone disappears you, accuses you of being a terrorist, roughs you up, and god knows what else–well, you have to understand that's the way they do things in their own country.

Put our pretensions to global omnipotence aside. Put aside, too, our rhetoric about democracy and due process. Still: wouldn't you hope for a little bit more from your government if you found yourself tossed in some hole without explanation?

Here's a story on the case from McClatchy: Did U.S. Push Detention of American Without Charges?

Here's the link to our story, by Rob Schmitz of KQED's Los Angeles bureau: Naji Hamdan case.

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‘Revolutionary Suicide’

Thirty years ago today: the Jonestown mass murder. Last week, the San Francisco Chronicle posted an MP3 of what I guess is popularly known as the Jonestown death tape. I listened this morning for the first time. Three things I wasn’t ready for: the fact that just one of the 900 people who were about to die is heard resisting Jonestown leader Jim Jones and trying to talk him out of the course he had decided on; Jones’s lisp; and the funerary music playing in the background throughout the proceeding. The recording is 44 minutes and 29 seconds long. The final two minutes are silent except for the music and what may be a distorted voice on a shortwave radio in the background. Jones’s final recorded words:

“… Take our life from us, we laid it down, we got tired. We didn’t commit suicide. We committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.”

Here’s the tape, by way of the Internet Archive:

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Still Fun to See

Delayed gratification: Someone in the house Tivoed the CNN election night show. Since I was in a newsroom myself that evening, I never got to just sit and watch (and enjoy) what was going on. Tonight, I watched a little of it. It holds up better a week after the fact than most CNN newscasts.

First Xmas lights: On a walk through the neighborhood last night, I spotted what I thought were the first bona fide holiday lights of the season (I’m not counting Halloween displays that are still up — they’re holdovers from a different observance). The lights were near the top of a tall redwood about a half a mile from our place. When I got closer, and turned a corner, I could see the lifts spelled out “HOPE.” So now I’m not sure they were really holiday lights; or at least not from the holiday I was thinking of.

Large fish: Like many of my species, I’m fascinated by the doings of a fish known, in its Linnaean taxonomic parlance, as Oncorhynchus tschawytscha. That’s the chinook (or king) salmon. One reason I’m fascinated is the uphill battle they have for survival in California, where their most important natal rivers and streams have long been dammed and far beyond the reach of returning spawners. “Returning spawners” is a term that probably marks me as a little bit of a salmon geek, especially since I’ve never gone out to catch one myself. But anyway, I follow the news about them, which has been generally only OK in the best years and bad to dreadful in most years. The number of salmon returning to spawn in the important Sacramento River tributaries last fall was very low, and another poor season is anticipated this year.

Which is why this news — Monstrous Chinook salmon discovered in Battle Creek shallows — is sort of thrilling. Just when the species in near its nadir here, something magnificent happens. In the words of one of the Department of Fish and Game biologists who found the 51-inch fish, ““Hopefully this fish was entirely successful in passing on its superior genetic potential. This is one of the few bright spots this year for one of California’s great sport fish. …”

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All-Nighter

The first election night I worked in a newsroom was 1972. Nixon beat McGovern, and the election was called, not prematurely, at 6 p.m. or so, about the same time I walked into the office to start a double shift. My impression of that night is one of disappointment and bleakness mixed with the fun and satisfaction that I’ve always had in doing the news for events both great and small.

I’m not sure I recall the last election evening I was in the newsroom. For a presidential election, it might have been ’88–one that deserves forgetting.

Last night I’ll remember for awhile. Yeah, I’ll admit the outcome was satisfying (though I think my main feelings were relief and a sense of how surreal it is that what came to pass came to pass). But I’ll also remember it for the fun and satisfaction of working with a group that responded well to the work at hand. I went in at 5 o’clock with only a general outline sketched out of where we wanted reporters to go and what sort of stories we’d like them to do. I left after 6 a.m. after watching everyone generate enough good stuff that we could have filled our regular newscasts several times over (luckily, we had an expanded time slot today).

I slept a little. Not enough. I don’t have to work this evening, so I have today to regroup and reflect and hope I won the office election pool.

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Polling Place

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Noontime. Thom and I went to vote together, with the dog in town. Our polling place was quiet. The optical scanning machine used in Alameda County displays how many ballots have been registered for the day, and I was Number 92. So many people do early voting or mail-in voting in our area — maybe 60 percent — that lines at the polls may be a thing of the past.