There was a documentary that came out a few years ago called Touching the Void. It focused on the story of two young English mountaineers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who ran into trouble descending the Andean peak of Siula Grande.
A storm had slowed their progress and, tied together with 100 meters of climbing rope, they fumbled down the flank of the mountain in waist deep snow. Simpson missed a step and plunged through a cornice of wind-blown snow shattering one of his legs.
The two climbers were stuck. Simpson, at the bottom end of the rope, dangled helplessly, while Yates, at the other end, was slowly being dragged through the powder snow towards the edge of a cliff.
Hopeless.
After several hours, Yates recognized that maintaining his hold on the rope only meant that both climbers would die. He summoned all his courage and cut the rope with a Swiss Army knife letting Simpson plunge to a certain death.
But Simpson did not die.
He awoke in darkness on a ledge in a deep crevasse. Unable to climb the sheer icy walls, he opted to find the bottom of the crevasse. Instead of struggling to climb out, he went deeper and deeper still.
I don't want to ruin the story if you haven't read the book or seen this documentary but Simpson, against insane odds, found that bottom of the crevasse, crawled along it, emerged onto blinding sunlight on the glacier and, somehow, managed to make it back to the base camp.
The Stock Market is down again, today. This time, it was for 280 points. I heard the host of Marketplace, Kai Ryssdal, refer to the Market's recent behaviour as "aggressively seeking the bottom."
I think he meant it in an ominous way but I take a certain amount of comfort that the bottom exists and that the faster we go for it, the faster we will get there.
General Motors is going to fail. Bankrupt. Gone. Chapter 11 will become chaper 7. Liquidate the assets.
It's going to hurt but it's going to hurt either way. Carve up the pieces of GM and let it become what it once was; energetic automobile manufacturers nimble and independent enough to match products with consumer demand. Today's GM is bloated and confused, mismanaged and overmatched by other manufacturers. It's painful to consider letting it fail but more painful to watch it twist and suffer like a kill tormented by lions on the savannah.
Let the Stock Market find the bottom. Let GM find the bottom, too. It's going to hurt a lot. But we need to find the bottom before we can climb out.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Teachers Reverse Stance on Stupid Questions
In a unanimous decision that has surprised experts and sent shockwaves through the educational community, the Union of American Teachers announced that it had reversed its official stance on stupid questions. In a statement as brief as it was important, Union spokesperson Betsy Winkelhofferstein said what many teachers were afraid to say for years.
"Yes," she said. "There are stupid questions and it's time teachers acknowledge the truth that they have known for years."
Winkelhoffer declined to answer reporters' questions after her statement but other members of the Union spoke on condition of anonimity.
"I think it's about time," said one teacher who did little to contain his enthusiasm for the Union's decision. "If I have to listen to one more kid say 'but, there are no stupid questions' I was going to throw up."
Joanne Quigley, the woman widely creditied with introducing the No Stupid Questions initiative in 1961, now in her 90s, responded to the decision through a press release.
"I am terribly disappointed," the release said. "I still believe that there are no stupid questions but now I have irrefutable evidence of stupid decisions."
While it is clear that the decision is already having an impact on educators, the effect on students remains to be seen.
"Yes," she said. "There are stupid questions and it's time teachers acknowledge the truth that they have known for years."
Winkelhoffer declined to answer reporters' questions after her statement but other members of the Union spoke on condition of anonimity.
"I think it's about time," said one teacher who did little to contain his enthusiasm for the Union's decision. "If I have to listen to one more kid say 'but, there are no stupid questions' I was going to throw up."
Joanne Quigley, the woman widely creditied with introducing the No Stupid Questions initiative in 1961, now in her 90s, responded to the decision through a press release.
"I am terribly disappointed," the release said. "I still believe that there are no stupid questions but now I have irrefutable evidence of stupid decisions."
While it is clear that the decision is already having an impact on educators, the effect on students remains to be seen.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Hockey cheers for the economy
I may have mentioned before that several area newspapers published public employee salaries including those of teachers. I'm not exactly sure why but there it is, names and numbers, names and numbers and more, you guessed it, names and numbers.
They had every right to do so. It's taxpayer money, freedom of information laws and all that whatnot.
But all that whatnot gave me an idea. The bailouts are taxpayer money, right? So, doesn't that mean that all the suits at Citigroup, Bank of America and AIG are, wholly or partly, subject to the same rules that make my salary public?
I think it would make for a lot more interesting reading than a bunch of teachers and administrators pulling down $40 to $100K.
Any pissed off guys about to lose their cubes because the Wall Street whizzes upstairs wet the bed want to send me an Excel spreadsheet with names and numbers? We could have some fun.
Yes, I have undifferentiated rage but that might be appropriate when you consider that at the current rate the economy will be a quarter the size it was this time last year. We could be in a rerun of The Waltons within a year or two and as far as I can tell it's because credit got really loose and someone thought it was a good idea to hand out money to Mr. Nojob and Mrs. Badcredit and then call it an investment.
Yeah, I know. Personal Responsibility.
But, seriously, would you have loaned them the money?
Neither would I.
This is when I just give up and start yelling like I'm at a college hockey game.
Hey, AIG, you're not an insurance company, you're a sieve...
...you're not a sieve, you're a funnel...
...you're not a funnel, you're a vacuum!
YOU'RE NOT A VACUUM, YOU'RE A BLACK HOLE!
YOU'RE NOT A BLACK HOLE...
YOU JUST SUCK!
SIEVE! SIEVE! SIEVE! SIEVE!
It's all your fault! It's all your fault! IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!
They had every right to do so. It's taxpayer money, freedom of information laws and all that whatnot.
But all that whatnot gave me an idea. The bailouts are taxpayer money, right? So, doesn't that mean that all the suits at Citigroup, Bank of America and AIG are, wholly or partly, subject to the same rules that make my salary public?
I think it would make for a lot more interesting reading than a bunch of teachers and administrators pulling down $40 to $100K.
Any pissed off guys about to lose their cubes because the Wall Street whizzes upstairs wet the bed want to send me an Excel spreadsheet with names and numbers? We could have some fun.
Yes, I have undifferentiated rage but that might be appropriate when you consider that at the current rate the economy will be a quarter the size it was this time last year. We could be in a rerun of The Waltons within a year or two and as far as I can tell it's because credit got really loose and someone thought it was a good idea to hand out money to Mr. Nojob and Mrs. Badcredit and then call it an investment.
Yeah, I know. Personal Responsibility.
But, seriously, would you have loaned them the money?
Neither would I.
This is when I just give up and start yelling like I'm at a college hockey game.
Hey, AIG, you're not an insurance company, you're a sieve...
...you're not a sieve, you're a funnel...
...you're not a funnel, you're a vacuum!
YOU'RE NOT A VACUUM, YOU'RE A BLACK HOLE!
YOU'RE NOT A BLACK HOLE...
YOU JUST SUCK!
SIEVE! SIEVE! SIEVE! SIEVE!
It's all your fault! It's all your fault! IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Calling it Quits
The National Weather Service has shaded Washington County purple to indicate a Winter Weather Advisory. A Nor'easter is pinwheeling up the coast as I write. It is perhaps this winter's last offensive.
But, despite the imminent arrival of still more snow, most of the white stuff has been chased to the colder corners of the fields by a sun that grows stronger every day.
Now is when we see the barren armature of winter's true nature. It is now that the dead, brown earth is laid out for everyone to see. A massive cull has taken place. Trees have lost limbs that now lie like bones on the ground. Here and there a tuft of fur remains of an owl or a fox's hurried meal.
This winter has also claimed the lives of two newspapers; our beloved Main Street and, of course, the much larger Rocky Mountain News.
Main Street was a valiant effort. A weekly with a decidedly leftist editorial slant, it attempted to give a voice to the liberal Washington County dwellers, many of them new arrivals. It was an experiment that lasted longer than many thought it would. At the end of the summer, the publisher of Main Street announced that the paper would no longer be free and that readers would have to shell out a whole dollar to read it.
Its readership disappeared.
There was also a fund-raiser art show held in an old post-and-beam barn to benefit Main Street. Crowds of people showed up to mill about and consume the free wine and local cheeses. I include myself in the this description and perhaps I was representative of the crowd when I say that really I was just a liberal tire-kicker when it came to the art on the walls. Perhaps we were tapped out from writing all those checks to the Obama campaign.
But the art didn't sell and the silent auction turned noisy as local public radio host Joe Donahue attempted to cajole a few more people to open their wallets and support the paper.
Had I realized that the ink was running out, I might have bought one of those watercolors but, then again, probably not.
And then there's The Rocky Mountain News.
My father, Blaine Littell, got his first job as a reporter at that paper and launched a career in journalism that lasted forty years. Part of me thinks that he continues to live as a cub reporter on yellowed newsprint in the morgue at The Rocky. And now that that paper has closed its doors, I feel a small aftershock of loss for him. I often wonder what he would say about the events of the past decade that I have lived without him. What would he have said about the Swiftboating of John Kerry, about the Iraq War, Dan Rather's fall from grace and the triumph of Barack Obama?
When I say goodbye to The Rocky, I say goodbye also to a small piece of Blaine.
Goodbye
But, despite the imminent arrival of still more snow, most of the white stuff has been chased to the colder corners of the fields by a sun that grows stronger every day.
Now is when we see the barren armature of winter's true nature. It is now that the dead, brown earth is laid out for everyone to see. A massive cull has taken place. Trees have lost limbs that now lie like bones on the ground. Here and there a tuft of fur remains of an owl or a fox's hurried meal.
This winter has also claimed the lives of two newspapers; our beloved Main Street and, of course, the much larger Rocky Mountain News.
Main Street was a valiant effort. A weekly with a decidedly leftist editorial slant, it attempted to give a voice to the liberal Washington County dwellers, many of them new arrivals. It was an experiment that lasted longer than many thought it would. At the end of the summer, the publisher of Main Street announced that the paper would no longer be free and that readers would have to shell out a whole dollar to read it.
Its readership disappeared.
There was also a fund-raiser art show held in an old post-and-beam barn to benefit Main Street. Crowds of people showed up to mill about and consume the free wine and local cheeses. I include myself in the this description and perhaps I was representative of the crowd when I say that really I was just a liberal tire-kicker when it came to the art on the walls. Perhaps we were tapped out from writing all those checks to the Obama campaign.
But the art didn't sell and the silent auction turned noisy as local public radio host Joe Donahue attempted to cajole a few more people to open their wallets and support the paper.
Had I realized that the ink was running out, I might have bought one of those watercolors but, then again, probably not.
And then there's The Rocky Mountain News.
My father, Blaine Littell, got his first job as a reporter at that paper and launched a career in journalism that lasted forty years. Part of me thinks that he continues to live as a cub reporter on yellowed newsprint in the morgue at The Rocky. And now that that paper has closed its doors, I feel a small aftershock of loss for him. I often wonder what he would say about the events of the past decade that I have lived without him. What would he have said about the Swiftboating of John Kerry, about the Iraq War, Dan Rather's fall from grace and the triumph of Barack Obama?
When I say goodbye to The Rocky, I say goodbye also to a small piece of Blaine.
Goodbye
Friday, February 27, 2009
Please, Senator, don't sit on my Stimulus Package
Judd Gregg made it clear this morning that he has no intention of "carrying water" for the Obama administration any time soon. I guess the grass on the White House lawn wasn't quite as green as he had only a few weeks ago when he submitted his resume to the "Yes We Can!" crowd. Now that Bobby (Cindy, Greg, whatever) Jindal is out of the picture, Senetor Gregg seems like he has his eyes on 2012 and is looking to make a name for himself.
Silly man. Doesn't he know he's a pencil-necked geek spewing the tired rhetoric of a failed economic philosopy?
Mr. Gregg took aim and fired at the administration's plan to pull the plug on a Bush-era tax cut. That tax cut allowed Americans lucky enough to earn more than a quarter of a million dollars to stuff even more of that cash in their piggy banks after April 15.
Only 1.5% of Americans reaped this rich reward but Gregg made it sound like they were the other 98.5% of the nation when he defended their right to avoid taxation.
Bored of numbers? Senetor Gregg hopes you are because the numbers hide a dirty little secret. Sure, that tiny elite of Americans who collected those big fat checks DO pay a lot of taxes but they don't pay their fair share. They get off light and they should pay more.
It's simple. Those guys at the top earn over a third of all the income in the United States. Yet, that same group only pays about a quarter of the tax burden.
If they control a third of the money, they should pay a third of the taxes. That's fair.
Not one to rest on his laurels, Senator Judd went on to criticize the Obama budget for it's reliance on deficit spending to revive the flagging economy. He whined that it was an irresponsible burden on the youth of our nation and that they would simply be unable to repay the debt.
Nonsense!
Judd should look at his history or, at least, the line graph gracing front page of today's New York Times. This nifty little piece of graphic wizardry clearly demonstrates that the proposed spending we are now debating is downright puny when compared to the whopping debts this country ran up during World War II.
That spending slammed the door on the Great Depression and Americans (literally and figuratively) got buzy after the war. Literally, Americans wasted no time in paying down that debt and figuratively, just look at the Baby Boom.
Come on, Senator Judd, you almost said it a few weeks ago until you chickened out. Say it now, "Yes, we can!"
Silly man. Doesn't he know he's a pencil-necked geek spewing the tired rhetoric of a failed economic philosopy?
Mr. Gregg took aim and fired at the administration's plan to pull the plug on a Bush-era tax cut. That tax cut allowed Americans lucky enough to earn more than a quarter of a million dollars to stuff even more of that cash in their piggy banks after April 15.
Only 1.5% of Americans reaped this rich reward but Gregg made it sound like they were the other 98.5% of the nation when he defended their right to avoid taxation.
Bored of numbers? Senetor Gregg hopes you are because the numbers hide a dirty little secret. Sure, that tiny elite of Americans who collected those big fat checks DO pay a lot of taxes but they don't pay their fair share. They get off light and they should pay more.
It's simple. Those guys at the top earn over a third of all the income in the United States. Yet, that same group only pays about a quarter of the tax burden.
If they control a third of the money, they should pay a third of the taxes. That's fair.
Not one to rest on his laurels, Senator Judd went on to criticize the Obama budget for it's reliance on deficit spending to revive the flagging economy. He whined that it was an irresponsible burden on the youth of our nation and that they would simply be unable to repay the debt.
Nonsense!
Judd should look at his history or, at least, the line graph gracing front page of today's New York Times. This nifty little piece of graphic wizardry clearly demonstrates that the proposed spending we are now debating is downright puny when compared to the whopping debts this country ran up during World War II.
That spending slammed the door on the Great Depression and Americans (literally and figuratively) got buzy after the war. Literally, Americans wasted no time in paying down that debt and figuratively, just look at the Baby Boom.
Come on, Senator Judd, you almost said it a few weeks ago until you chickened out. Say it now, "Yes, we can!"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)