Let’s return to the fight, this time from our sideline camera. I wish we could bring you the action close up, but our close up camera was axed in a manner of speaking–not due to budget cuts. This is a longer fight than we had for a few weeks, and it’s a fascinating display of tactics.

Today was about money, at least as I experienced it.

First of all, I paid the bookstore’s taxes. Deadline is Feb. 5, but I dread the experience so much I figured I’d just go ahead and file. One more week won’t make a lot of difference. Since most of our sales volume is textbooks for our school, exempt from sales tax in this state, we don’t really have to cough up a whole lot. It hardly seems worth the trouble. Not that I have any plans to skip it some year and see whether anybody notices.

I recall an old episode of “Death Valley Days” (why am I thinking about old TV westerns this week?). I think it was in the Ronald Reagan years or later (although for me “The Old Ranger” [Stanley Andrews] was always the proper host. When they replaced him with Ronald Reagan, I just assumed he’d died, but according to Wikipedia they simply fired him on account of his age. I guess nobody’d ever noticed before that The Old Ranger was… you know, old. So they brought in Reagan, who [this may surprise younger readers] was not always ancient. Then came Robert Taylor and Dale Robertson). Continue reading For a few dollars more →

New HBO competitor to launch online before broadcasting via cable or satellite. Studio 3 Networks is the effort of three major movie studios to create “an entirely new category of entertainment service for consumers that is unlike anything that currently exists.” The site will be called “epix” and allow Netizens to watch full length recent and classic movies from these studios as well as see “directors’ script notes, outtakes, auditions and other extras like trivia and games.”

Consultants were hired; a report submitted. Apparently, the Chattanooga-Hamilton County library system needs work. The Times-Free Press reports:

The Chattanooga libraries spend about $2.04 per capita on materials, almost $2 less than most other libraries in the benchmark group. The money the library does spend is overwhelmingly used for books and periodicals for adults — 88.5 percent — which the consultants called a poor allocation of resources because almost 35 percent of materials checked out are for children and teens.

Many materials in the library are rarely used, such as federal documents, which are largely available online but take up nearly an entire floor of the downtown library, the consultants said.

At one library branch, Ms. Kent said she found a college guide from 1998, something that should have been discarded years ago.

“They kept it because they didn’t have the money to replace it and figured something was better than nothing,” she said. “There are a lot of instances when nothing is better than something.”

The report says visits to the library are down, but an earlier article claimed they were up, in part due to job seekers using the Internet. Note this beautiful sentence from the library director (I believe this was spoken, not written, so maybe the verbage is understandable). “Our library circulation has gone up at 4 days a week at the branches over what it was when it was 5 days a week in the branches and the book budget is lower than it was in 1985.”

Honestly, I don’t know what to think about this. I know the system needs improvements, but I don’t like hearing complaints about ugly public buildings. I fear it means raising taxes, and I’m fairly suspicious of that at the moment. I want to hear wisdom and restraint from my government leaders at every level. If we need fund-raisers for the library, great.

Years ago, I was walking across the campus of Augsburg College in Minneapolis with my roommate. We were discussing our personal weaknesses. My roommate confessed that he coveted wealth. I replied that my inordinate lust was for fame.

I have one autograph (Sissel’s), but I didn’t ask for it. My Viking friends procured it for me (no doubt by means best left to the imagination). I’ve always had an arrogant idea that I’m the kind of person who gives autographs, not one who asks for them.

This meditation on fame was sparked by this piece by James Lileks today, in which he talked about old local radio personalities (WCCO Radio used to be the commonly accepted broadcast public square of southern Minnesota. Nowadays, not so much), in which he mentioned Cedric Adams. Adams is almost forgotten today, even here, but in his day he was both the most popular columnist and the most popular radio personality in the Twin Cities. Airline pilots said they could always tell when his show was done, if they were flying over the metropolitan area, because all the house lights went out at once. Continue reading Meditation on fame →

A radically different image for today’s fight:

Rembrandt’s The Blinding of Samson, painted in 1636. Click the image to see the whole composition.

And Delilah said to Samson, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and you have not told me where your great strength lies.” And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day, and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. And he told her all his heart, and said to her, “A razor has never come upon my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak and be like any other man.” When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called the lords of the Philistines . . .

Mark Swed says Obama is probably an arts president, so he should do better than the “hokey” quartet by Yo Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Gabriela Montero, and Anthony McGill.

If he really wants change, he will have to have the courage to listen to artists who can’t be controlled, whose vision is greater than his and his handlers. We need artists not merely to sing our achievements but to communicate new ideas and to spread our voice through the land and the world. Obama must mobilize the arts to help him change the mood of our nation and raise our energy.

“Artists who can’t be controlled”? Politicians don’t usually go for lack of control.

I still haven’t finished the Schulz biography, so what to write about tonight?

Further memories of the AFLC Service Section, I suppose (see yesterday’s post). It was one of the more colorful places I’ve worked.

The Service Section (shipping and mailing) was to the America Lutheran Church Headquarters what The Weird Brother We Keep Locked in the Basement and Never Talk About is to some family living next door to a Flannery O’Conner story. The suits (and clerical collars) worked in a tall, pale building on the south side of the block, above Augsburg Publishing House. We SS guys* toiled like orcs in an ancient, creosote-stained, low building on the north side of the block. In order to physically pass from the Shambles to the Tower, you had to either go around outside, or take a freight elevator down to the basement, then follow a tunnel through the rumbling presses of Augsburg’s printing department, to another elevator back in a corner. Continue reading Service Section memories →

Delancy’s Place has a couple excerpts from how Washington’s and Lincoln’s inaugurations went. At one point for Washington, “a chorus of white-robed girls tossed flowers from their baskets in his path while singing a tribute to ‘The Defender of the Mothers, The Protector of the Daughters'” For Lincoln, he wore a soft felt hat instead of his trademark stovepipe hat to avoid recognition while he slipped out of Harrisburg for the trip to Washington.

Today is a wonderful day in American history. It’s wonderful for two reasons.

1) The color barrier to the highest office has finally been broken.

2) The new president hasn’t yet had time to implement any of his policies.

There will be a very few of these wonderful days, so enjoy them!