Dealing with My Lack of Outrage.

It is difficult for me to get indignant anymore.

I'm not sure why. I think I have eco-global-9/11 overload. Nothing bothers me.

• Landfills full? Who cares.

• New war in Iran/q/Korea? Yaaaawn.

• Melting glaciers? Call me when the water rises.
  

The probable cause of this burnout? Too damn much news. Too many cable news networks with too many "rise up, the sky is falling stories."

When I was a kid, yea, every once in a while a Cuban missile crisis would come along, we'd build a couple of fall out shelters and practice crouching under our desks, or march single file into the school basement. No biggee. Just a nuke or two from Khrushchev. Piece a cake.

Now, with the 24/7/365 news cycle we get a new indignator every day -- and I for one have had it.

So, listen up fear mongers. You pitchmen of panic.

I'm off to the beach. With no TV.
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Why We Like This President.

<--- I am not the white guy playing the President.

It will surprise many of you that I like this President. I do. Not that my disposition matters, but when you get enough of dispositions like mine you get an approval rating in the mid-sixties, which he has, and you get things done, which he does.

Not that I like what he is getting done. I don't. But that's not the point.

This President has high approval ratings because he is liked. A few occurences last week illustrate why:

First is the fly swatting incident. President Obama killed a fly that had been swarming him and had landed on his arm. Swat. During a White House interview. Cameras rolling. If you haven't seen it, it is pretty impressive. It is something every guy has done or has tried to do and to be quick enough to get the fly gets points from me. Then there was the Father's Day address. He talked about the necessity and obligation of fathers to their children. I like that, too. Pretty basic stuff. Swatting a fly and talking about family. But that is, in essence, why he is given the okay sign from the average guy or girl . The fact that I disagree with him shouldn't keep me from treating him like anyone else I like.

President Obama's political ideology is a rebirth of Democratic party ideas that, I think, do us far more harm than good. Some of them are just flat wrong. But my disagreements notwithstanding, the President is a deservedly likable fellow, and he will have my respect and prayers while he holds the Presidential Office.

Elected officials do not establish the kind of people we are, the opposite is true, elected officials are the effect of the public disposition. They are a reflection. If you don't like them, change yourself.

I do wonder, though, can I get in on that game of one-on-one?

The Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington

Have you been?

The Star Telegram ran an article yesterday with this title:
New stadium is expected to become a tourist spot, even when idle.

No surprise there. A 1 billion dollar building of any kind is going to attract attention, add the Dallas Cowboys name to it and you have a mega-magnet. In Arlington. I will be one of those tourists at some point.

My daughter and I got a tour of the Omni Hotel a few weeks ago and it is pretty impressive, especially the out-of-doors bar on the south end of the hotel. I think the Omni was around 125 million to build. Multiply that by 8 and the Dallas Cowboys have one helluva building. How many billion dollar buildings get built anywhere?

Now the Cowboys need to bring a winning team to this building. Fans love the new stadiums but if they had a choice between new buildings and winning teams they will take the latter.

I am still shocked that the City of Dallas let the Cowboys of Dallas out of their reach, but they did. And I believe they will regret it until the day this stadium gets too old and another needs to be built . . . say in 2050.

The tours start today and tickets are $15.

Editor's note: actually $3 until everything is completed, see comments.

Donuts and Data.

Each morning, around 8:45, I walk downstairs to Dunkin' Donuts and join one of the three donuts-and-coffee lines. I choose the same line everyday because the girl at the counter knows me and has my coffee ready at my turn. Normally, I give her $2. The cost is $1.50, she keeps the 50 cent tip.

This morning I had a 5 dollar bill in my pocket. She had the coffee ready, I handed her the five and waggled three fingers at her. My non-verbal communication meant: give me the $3 dollars and keep the change. For a split second she wondered if I meant three coffees, occasionally I do get more than one, but she quickly realized my intent, then smiled and gave me the three dollars. As I walked away I considered some of the calculations she made in that split second, to wit:

• the meaning: three fingers = ?
  
• the expression on my face meant ?
  
• the denomination of the bill = $5.
• my purchase history
• the change is usually a tip.
• the frequency in which I had ordered more than one coffee.
• the other sounds and images in our proximity filtered out.

In addition, she had the pressure of needing to resolve the statement I was making in the finger waggling because of the long line behind me. All of this, and a decision, in about 1 second.

Bear with me, usually (but not always) I get around to a point. It is this:

I keenly dislike the prevailing metaphor of man in our era, i.e, "man as machine." And more particularly, the metaphor of brain and mind as hard-drive or RAM.

It is convenient but inadequate.

What about the source of life itself and the anomalies of the person? What of beauty, courage, selflessness, or of sloth and despair, or romance, where is romance without man "qua" man? What of the unseeable source that enlivens everything? That makes a dead seed "alive." It's not that science has no answers, it is that it has rejected the possibility of the existence of certain knowledge outside of the material. In my view, a mistake of grand proportion.

My three finger message to the girl at the Dunkin' Donuts counter was all that I needed to get the correct result. It was an everyday decision that the mind of a person makes in the midst of everything else that is going on, including all the involuntary actions of breathing, heart rate, etc., and it is fascinating to me.

But, that she said thank you with her smile; that is something only a person can do.

On the Virtue of Tilting

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For some reason I have been been thinking about Don Quixote:

Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire,
"Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless."
"What giants?" asked Sancho Panza.
"Those you see over there," replied his master, "with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length."
"Take care, sir," cried Sancho. "Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone."

Everyone is understandably concerned about employment, jobs and from where they will come. But let us not forget that the good jobs, the ones we worry about losing today have their origins in the quixotic activity of yesterday's garage and dorm-room inventors. Young men who were told to get a real job, to give up the pipe dream, to accept the status-quo. But they are the guys who founded: Dell, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, not to mention the corporations from the old days, like Hewlitt/Packard, Ford, and GE whose origins are just as humble.

So, if we really want to develop more jobs, I conclude that we need fewer business schools, and more schools with a course on Don Quixote.

"your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions."
Joel

Support the Fort Worth Opera

A little plug for our local Opera Company, one of the 14 oldest opera companies in the nation, and the oldest continuously performing opera company in Texas, the Fort Worth Opera. As of the end of the 2007 Season, the company has produced 219 main-stage operas.

I mention this because the FWO just received a plug in the July, 2009 magazine, Opera News with a headline article featuring our new Director, Darren Keith Woods.

It may surprise visitors to "Cowtown" but little old Fort Worth has possibly the premier piano competition in the world in the Van Cliburn*, one of the top ten music halls in the world**, and an opera company that is serious about bringing top-tier opera to Texas.

But they need your support.

It is a year away but next season features one of my favorites: Mozart's, Don Giovanni. I will be there, probably more than once.

http://www.fwopera.org/

* "The most prestigious classical piano contest in the world..." (Chicago Tribune)

** "Bass Performance Hall is one of those rare halls in which the music heard by the audience is the same as that heard by the performer. The clarity of sound heard throughout the entire range, in addition to the warm, welcoming environment, makes Bass Performance Hall one of the very best." --- Yo-Yo Ma

Speaking of aging . . .

If you watch TV (and I do) you will have noticed that drug companies promote the notion that by taking a pill we can have the vitality of a twenty year old.

The most recent televised target: low energy. I figure that's a pretty big audience of prospective buyers -- like everybody I know. This particular commercial named the cause of the lower energy , "Lower T." The suggestion was that even though I am 56, overweight, and under exercised, I should have more energy, and that if I were to take one of their pills I would have more energy.

Also recently, I have learned that if my eye's tear ducts aren't working I can take Resistrol, and that if my prostate is malfunctioning, and I am embarrassed by frequent men's room visits, I can take ... oh I forget ... and there is Lipitor for my high cholesterol, and I haven't even mention the dreaded V/pill and its all natural cousins.

I am certainly not suggesting that there are not wonder drugs. The lowly aspirin is one of them. Where we would we be without Penicillin? I do not object at all to those who do need to take one pill or the other. I am thankful that we have them. But I do tire of the drug commercials on television, their actor-doctors and nurses with feigned interest in the actor-patient's health, and all the silver-haired men and woman who suggest that life can be extended forever in full vitality by taking this pill -- the one they produced, of course.

I remember thinking how odd where the stories of Ponce de Leon searching for the Fountain of Youth, but we are not that much different.

Jack in the Box Ad (Hey, this is a food blog)

Concert in the Gardens, 2009.

I can't say that I have heard any of the bands playing this season at Concert in the Gardens, but it is an enjoyable venue to listen to music and to spend an evening. Those of you more accustomed to the chorale and classical music at "Concert" may be disappointed. The performers are a little different this season. It still looks good to me.

The location is the Botanic Garden and the shows begin at 8 p.m.

For detailed information on tickets go to:

http://www.fwsymphony.org/concerts/citg-tickets.asp

The Concert Schedule

Friday: Mingo Fishtrap
Saturday: Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers
Sunday: The Crawfish
June 12-13: Super Awesome Laser Adventure
June 14: Riders in the Sky
June 19: Cherryholmes
June 20: Jailhouse Rock: A Tribute to Elvis with Kraig Parker
June 21: Best of the Big Bands: Music of Glenn Miller and Friends
June 26: N’Awlins Gumbo Kings
June 27: Take It to the Limit: The Music of the Eagles
June 28: Stairway to Heaven: The Music of Led Zeppelin
July 2-4: Old-Fashioned Family Fireworks Picnic
July 5:1812 Overture

Tempus Fugit and the American Automobile.

1950 Pontiac

Things change.

We are watching the official demise of the Detroit-based auto industry. It has been about 100 years that automobiles and Detroit went together. No mas. There are causes for the failure, and like all failure, there will be a search for whose failures came first.

It is particularly troubling for those of us old enough to recall the golden years of the American auto, the cars of the 60's: GTO, Mustang, Corvette, the pick-up truck itself. Even if today's cars are more reliable and easier to use, they don't have the allure of those old ones.

Which is why many of us been in denial this last year. I hoped that someone, a modern day Lee Iococca, could save this dying beast, this whale washed ashore, gasping for air. But he can not. They will not. The present costs are too high: the pensions, wages, insurance and salaries are above the competitive scale. In economic terms, the market just won't bear it.

Cars will still be needed, they will be purchased, someone will be making them, and they will be made here as well as overseas. The jobs will be moved around, the wages and benefits will match the demand for the skill, and something good could come out of all of this. That is a difficult change. That is the sad reality for the thousands of workers in Detroit, and the auto dealers nationwide.

But this change carries a greater, more symbolic meaning and it is this: the auto industry is a symbol of the country. Its weakness reveals our weakness. An American currency default is as possible as a GM default, and in some ways is already occurring, and a nation with a weak currency and burdened with debt is a nation that will become a slave to the lender it needs.

Things do change -- but the laws, and consequences, of economics are as fixed as the laws of gravity. No matter who is President.