Merchants to the Left of Me...

Kurt Vonnegut, whose work isn't called science fiction only by whims of marketing, hasn't always had nice things to say about the genre, likening it to a forgotten file drawer or a private lodge in one interview, and in another , takes a perhaps more charitable route, acknowledging that he came to the genre by writing the stories he wanted to write, and not from imitating the pulps. I get where he's coming from but still it looks a little like a bigoted argument, allowing examples that he personally likes to be excepted from the stereotyped canon. But since it's Kurt Vonnegut, I'm willing to cut him some slack. For one thing, I had no experience with sci-fi (pronounced "skiffy," as a distinction) magazines as a kid either, and from what I've read, a lot of at has been forgotten for a reason. (But that was true of all the pulps). For another thing, I agree that you can still spot the cult of the space-hero in some fans and writers, and a lot of serious aficionados positively get an inferiority complex regarding the sf marketing ghetto that has limited some excellent literature to a narrow, badly regarded market. (I hope Kurt Vonnegut is thankful to his publishers.)

I love science fiction, and I prefer a broad definition of it. One of the things about sf, compared to other written genres, is that working your way around real-world constraints is expected, and any events or settings can be reimagined to suit the story, or to suit the point, and the best work in the genre uses speculative situations to pick apart the human animal, to conduct experiments in plot and character under a wider range of conditions than the actual world is known to offer. I don't want to understate the element of pure curiosity that science fiction is also built on, or the enduring lure of the adventure story, but I can still shoehorn those things into my viewpoint of a literary laboratory, the usual hypothesis being, "it would be interesting to live in a world where…" Of course, this sort of freedom seems like it could invite tendentiousness, and sometimes it does. It's easier to "prove" your crackpot philosophy when you can control how the world works, but even there, it can be undertaken more or less honestly, more or less well.

I can also forgive Vonnegut when I read stuff like this 'Political History of SF'*, which asserted that the heart and soul of the genre occupies some libertarian/authoritarian axis, and has in either case a right-wing spirit, a sort of violent American optimism, expecting change yes, but presuming that sticking to the current path is going to end up great. The pulp sensibility is pretty forthright. To get a feel of just why that's obnoxious, it's worthwhile to consider the history of sf, which goes back almost as far as you want it to. When you're speculating, it takes some contemporary points of reference to create a society, and consciously or not, the choice of what aspects to accept and reject, and at what consequence, is a social critique. It's hard to write well if you don't understand what people are like (or are not like) now. Looking back, Mary Shelly and H. G. Wells were working in this style. They were intentionally using technology to demonstrate their philosophical and political points. You could (and I would) go back even further to include the old Utopias (by Swift, Rabelais, More, etc.), and let's not forget, for that matter, the innumerable divine parables that waned and waxed with civilizations and tribes for as long as people have been speaking. You may not want to call those fiction, but the innumerable stories of magic beings were crafted to keep the political order. It's a similar animal: what happens at a higher level that helps us understand who we are today?

In early twentieth-century America, the pulp markets spent a few decades filling the cheap imagination of an increasingly disconnected and industrialized society, and the copy of those days was more interested in the clever, swashbuckling heirs of John Carter and Phileas Fogg than on the aftermath of Hank Morgan's or Henry Jekyll's bitter realizations. If the sf pulps had a political philosophy, it was the sort of stuff that got teenage boys going: can-do pluck, manly resolve, and American cleverness, the exact synthesis of the detective and western crap that was also being published at that time. When John W. Campbell took over Astounding in 1937, he began a campaign to expand both literary and scientific quality, but he didn't leave the adventurer mindset behind. He had a huge influence in his day, and yes, he grabbed up Robert Heinlein, who did, by all means, often write a higher grade of rugged individualism. But the general problem with the libertarian philosophy when it's expressed in the genre is that it overstates the individual's capability, and often overstates his influence over society. The usual problem with the military, or, God forbid, the feudal fantasies in space or time, was that the social utility of command hierarchies was seriously overvalued.

As the 'Political History' article describes, one of the earlier stands against the dictatorial Campbell style, was by a group of fans and writers called the Futurians, which included writers such as Isaac Asimov, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Judith Merril and Frederik Pohl. Mostly they were left-wing, and a few of them (including Pohl and Merril) were declared Communists. (I don't think any of the joiners held the faith through Stalin. Pohl was allegedly excommunicated from the Young Communist League because he failed the ideological purity test--they disapproved of his escapist writing.) Their mission as a literary society was to bring the social experimentation of sf to a higher level of seriousness. Pohl was successful. He was probably Galaxy magazine's most famous editor, and the publication styled itself as a more thoughtful and socially aware brand. The gadgetry and the spirit took second place, or tried to. Vonnegut had at least two stories published in Galaxy. Other writers did fine too.

I picked up The Space Merchants, written by Pohl and Kornbluth, a few weeks ago, following up on my suspicion that the American skill of consuming ourselves to death was spotted much earlier than is normally credited. I stand by it. Mom and Dad are bullshitting you when they tell you that in their day, everybody was debt-conscious and responsible. They spent it all on gewgaws and mortgages too. They were the first generation that could.

The Space Merchants is a monumental piss-take on American consumer culture, and the authors get some major props for writing it in 1952. Half of what was meant as outrageous satire in that year looks like documentary today, and what remains still looks like an all-too probable future. The plot follows the fall and the redemption of advertising executive Mitch Courtenay, who trips through a future culture of overwhelming pollution, depleted resources, and overpopulation. Pohl and Kornbluth get beaucoups bonus points for all the stuff they got right, including addictive products (and obsfuscatory marketing), the "philosophical problem" of political representation by voting per person vs. per dollar, marketing to neuroses (and creating them), outsourcing actual production to India and leaving the American export product as superior marketing (and the bottomless consumption), government services made inefficient through privatization, smearing political opponents as hippies and conservationists, horrifying synthetic food, paid insurance that doesn't insure, a government run by lobbyists, and, of course, reverence for the power of the CEO. In one of the funnier bits, Courtenay is thrust into a revolting job in food production--the life of a typical consumer--and his servitude is ensured as he trades off debt for a slightly less indecent life, and to satisfy his corporate-ensured cravings. There's also an element of contention between Mitch and his wife, who are both serious professionals (a physician and an advertiser), as they balance their lives as domestic partners and as successful individuals, which is probably it's least controversial prophesy (really, would this have happened to my grandparents?). The Space Merchants does what satire does best: it spots the bullshit with laser accuracy, and makes fun of it. It's a great book.

It's a horrible title, though ("Merchant of Venus," at least?). It comes out of Courtenay's big sell--a hard sell to consumers to convince them to relieve overpopulation by colonizing an unlivable hell-hole one planet closer to the sun--the obvious science fictional element. The style doesn't come off adventure-tale, but it's still a booze-and-cigarettes vintage of prose that I associate with short stories from those days. The plot zips along pretty well, a couple nights of enjoyable bedtime reading, and while I don't like to put too undue merit on self-described serious literature, if Pohl's and Kornbluth's prose were a little more timeless (and if not for the vagaries of marketing), The Space Merchants would be put up on the shelves and discussed by students along with Orwell and Huxley. Maybe it will be yet.

Brave New World (1932) was written in the worst of science fiction's pulp phase, and though it's been presented otherwise, it's sf by any reasonable definition. When science fiction is doing a good job at social experimentation, it chips away at the assumptions underlying the public truths, and if it's manipulating them, it does so consciously. Mainstream stuff evolved out of the right wing models soon enough (and Vonnegut was right--it was just a function of time). As for that 'Political History' dude, it takes some balls to rank Greg Bear and David Brin (two authors I could never get into--loved Greg Benford's Cosm though) as more "pure" than Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. LeGuin. (And for that matter, The Space Merchants is about as Marxist as Animal Farm is capitalist--don't confuse a critique with a prescription.) Much like in the nineteenth century, there's a lot today that could be labeled science fiction, and doesn't end up on the shelves. Claiming the mantle of the right wing is absurd. In my paltry library, I have Ken MacLeod making a case for Socialism by taking production--and capital--out of the equation entirely. Ursula LeGuin has sucked gender conflict out of a society, and examined the results under a sensitive microscope, and Stanislaw Lem has imagined an advanced space age under a moribund eastern European bureaucracy, a dated sort of realism. It turns out I've read most of the dreaded selections on the Socialist sf list and often preferred them. SF as a social critique hasn't gone away. Even as ole Kurt was bitching about it in the sixties and seventies, science fiction was breaking out in depth and style (and if it was still busy congratulating itself, well then). These days you can throw a dart at the bookshelves, and find brilliant stuff of any political orientation. Thank God.

 
*That link via this place. Read my retarded comment.

Nine Billion Shades of Malthus

I've read (or read mocked) too much lately about the demographic pressures facing successful people. It seems like a cultural meme these days, with any number of authors sweating about the breeding patterns of the unlettered brown hordes, the perceived crises that threaten everything from economic growth we're all banking on to the integrity of the culture. I don't really understand this stance: isn't reduced fertility a good thing? In an earlier article, I wondered aloud whether there's a managable population ceiling for this fine globe, or whether some horrible Malthusian catastrophe will correct the numbers for us. For the record, I think agricultural independence is a wonderful way to live, and the idea that consumption patterns can approach zero sum, that is, that my habits can directly take food out of someone else's mouth, is deeply unsettling. (All the indirect consequences are bad enough.) Do we really want to get to the point where there's only so much to go around?

In the eighteenth century, Thomas Malthus famously compared the rates of agricultural production to the rates of population growth, and frightened a generation into believing that the people of the world were rapidly hurtling to an overpopulated doom. Obviously, it didn't happen right away, and the refutation to Malthusian population dynamics was the observation that a higher population density also drives innovation, which, as you might imagine, was generated amid the most rapid technological transformation since agriculture, which Malthus, in 1798, was on the old hardscrabble, self-sufficient side of. The truth is that Malthus was wrong about all of his rate laws, but he was also still basically right about everything. The same is also true about the Cornucopians (as those armchair innovators came to be known), who also perceived important demographic trends, but either model still produces ridiculous results when considered in exclusion and extrapolated to infinity.

I'm not given to optimism about this sort of thing. The people who latch onto Cornucopian ideas of population growth remind me too much of the (misnamed) global warming skeptics whose goal seems to be to convince themselves that easy times will continue unabated. Eventually--and I wish I had a better understanding of how eventually--it's going to be limited by the fact that it takes energy to grow people, and once we burn all the stuff in the ground that we can reach, it only falls from the sky so fast. (And despite what professional optimists may believe, tapping into the zero point energy looks a lot farther out than oil will take us.) A human population ceiling may or may not reflect the global energy balance, and as I see it, whether it does is the pressing question facing the species over the next couple hundred years.

Demographic trends are estimated by analyzing fertility rates (how quickly people are born) and mortality rates (how quickly they die). Mixed in with that are better versions of Malthus's ideas about land use, about migration patterns, and other ideas about how better organization and technological growth improve agriculture, and how education and increased per capita income relate to fertility, and some reasonable models about how these things all affect one another. Of course, the end result is still an extrapolation, and there are disagreements about the respective rates of this thing or that thing, but a global picture is emerging, with a reasonabl(y large)e degree of uncertainty. Wolfgang Lutz of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis has developed a model that incorporates modern studies of food security, land development and degradation as they pertain to fertility and mortality rates. It's well known that fertility decreases with overall affluence, (or, that is, with food security), but land scarcity and poverty also tend to shrink fertility, despite the story you often hear. (I guess it depends on where you start: in Ethiopia, where he makes a case study, reduced fertility rates are due to both economic growth and remaining poverty conditions. They still haven't dipped below the replacement rate.) These authors also note that migration rates tend to remain relatively slow thanks to resistance to social change, but in their global model, they are obviously important, and will be the primary cause of population growth in the first world (as it is in fact now). Lutz predicts a median estimate of peak global population of about 9.3 billion, in 2070, after which it will decline. The U.N. adopts a number that's a little ower (9.1 billion" in 2050), and Lutz presents estimates ranging from a peak of 14 billion in 2100 at one extreme, to 6.5 billion peaking right now.

The land use model that he employs is broken into geographic bins, and the evolution of the population as a function of the above parameters is borne out per region. Lutz uses "expert surveys" as well as historical data to come up with some of the values of the parameters in his rate laws. That's okay as far as it goes, and he appears to go into acceptable detail in his book (I read a couple of highly redacted chapters on Google Books) even if it makes a letter to Nature look a little cheesy in its absence. I'll note that at the very least, historical rates haven't always varied gently, as the Cornucopians may have observed during the industrial revolution, or as the first world may have observed with the introduction of reliable contraception. Interestingly, he includes the effects of climate change, and it's probably easier to predict how deforestation and development will impact the drier and poorer communities of the world, since it's already impacting those places pretty hard, and they're presumably far enough behind the growth curve that they'll predictably follow hydrological improvements that are already well understood.

I wish he presented resource depletion in greater depth. Presumably it falls under his model of land degradation, but over the next hundred years, we should have a good idea of how finite fossil fuel resources actually are. Peak oil worriers espouse a similar timeline for energy resources as Lutz does for population, and I don't know the extent they're correlated on purpose. The limited supply of global real estate is a lot more obvious. The arable land per capita is approaching the exact area of my tiny lawn, and while I might have a better chance of growing spuds than grass, it'd still be pretty hard to feed the family for 12 months off a piddling quarter acre. Yes, there is land reserved for planting worldwide, and it's engineered to hyper-efficiency, and in the highly-developed countries approaching their population peaks, there remains even a tiny sliver of wilderness and recreational land, all of which is good, sort of, even if it breaks my naturalist heart.

But the prices today are startling, and a correction, if there's one to be made, will take seasons. The Commies at the U.N. are calling for more investment in agriculture worldwide, as well as more international aid. It's probably a redundant plea: the rising prices should encourage investment. As for food aid, the value probably depends on how it's implemented--I'm not sure it's a great idea to shift the food supply even more to subsidized first-world growers, but I'm also pretty certain it's a bad idea to wantonly develop the Amazon or the edges of the Sahara into crappy farmland--but sooner or later investment will mean using the land that we can. Will we go gently over the peak? Will we fight or bargain over the limiting resources? Will prosperity win out over starvation? Lutz's model suggests we may barely get away with it. Here's hoping for the best.

A Proposal for The Party

The heat (if not the light) from the six-month collision of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has revealed deep division in the Democratic party. It's sort of funny watching the Kossies get het up about it, but more regrettably, it's affected people I like and respect. The Party, they argue, can not survive with split loyalties. Elderly white women may not recover from their Clinton support, and will stay home on election day. Jobless Midwesterners can't get past the mean things she said about Obama, and they will vote, inexplicably, for John McCain in protest. Racists, real and imagined, make battle against the living and the phantom sexists. Gaffes (a word that deserves to be buried) are researched with the compulsive zeal of sports statistics, and no one talks much about foreign policy or energy policy (allegedly buried in there somewhere), at least not enough to make an easy comparison, and probably because there's not much to argue about. Schism among the Democrats? I'm registered, but I have to tell you, this is the lamest party I've ever been expected to attend.

As one lucky Democrat prepares to battle an old man who only becomes visible if his voice gets high enough, I hope he's grateful that The Party has managed to milk six months of free air time from the internal contention that was no doubt trying for him and his other alpha contender. I don't discount (and I completely support) the idea of fighting to the last hope, but I doubt that The Party's very upset about the oceans of lucre that the fight has drawn in, nor about all of the brand new cash contributors floating behind Obama's "winner" pheromones like a gang of cartoon hobos entranced by a pie. Each one of those donors has an address, and reeks of a youth that the pledge committees will find irresistible. They can expect to receive mailed donation cards from now until the time they're sucked dry.

Switching metaphors, playing hard until the end of the game ("sixty minutes of football") isn't just good for the team's morale, it's good for the whole system. You keep your advertisers happy, and you don't want to piss off the people that pay for their tickets. And all those scary skeletons drawn out in the primaries? Surely the Republicans, of all people, would have managed to figure out that Hillary is married to Bill Clinton and that Barry Obama is black.

Party unity is an idea that is more important to the system than the people in it, or the people served by it. Unity is like Mom and Dad keeping an air of strained civility so as not to alarm the children, and avoid the notice of their friends at church. It puts a happy face in public, even if he hasn't gotten it up in years, and even though she spends four hours of quality time with gin and sitcoms every night, both of them bored to death of the life, and neither yet reached the point where they realize that no one else could possibly put up with either of them, and the kids are just as fucked up, and everyone's whispering anyway. Party unity is angling for the broadest common connection, and ending up with the nothing but the institutional shell: some made-for-everyone canned satisfaction, huddling in the soulless 'burbs, where they hunker in their garages and entertainment rooms terrified of, and secretly titillated by, their unseen neighbors. Party unity is important: single people don't buy McMansions.

I have a constitutional antipathy for an organization that would command any act for the good of The Party. It calls to mind the political unity imposed by a purely ideological government, and it speaks uncomfortably of the corruption and reach of twentieth-century Communism. Two parties may be better than one, but keeping a steady platform that appeals to the most people doesn't allow a great range of political alternative, comrade. Proposing that The Party stop the fundamental abuses of American government, or that it advocate a fundamentally different service model is hella divisive, exactly the opposite of unity, which is why everyone laughs at Denny Kucinich and Mike Gravel. The Democrats might win this if they heal the razor-thin rift between Hillary's and Barrack's visions of the American dream, but really, what do they win? Or rather, what do the voters win?

So on that note, I move (finally) to a modest proposal. (Since American Idol didn't answer my letters, maybe the chairmen of The Party will.) Instead of voting for a candidate, I want an opportunity to vote against one of them. I know just how popular negativity can be, and here in America, it can give the goobers something really fulfilling to get behind, to cast down their superficial one-issue horrors or their caricatured evil. Do you hate black people, women, or idiots more than you want universal health care? Cast your ballot against one of them. It'll feel good.

The idea would work pretty easily, provided the necessary committees understand how to add negative numbers. Rules would be needed to control the pool of candidates--more stringent than today's rules perhaps, but maybe not much--lest someone completely unknown pull in a victory, and once the ballot is set, citizens will have the opportunity to cast a vote against the candidate of their choice. When tallied, the person that ends up least in the hole proceeds to not lose the race.

This strategy has some serious advantages: it's anti-incumbent (who do you hate more than the person that's been stiffing you for the past four years); it's already adapted to American campaign styles; and it allows the goofy, marginal candidates a greater share of the attention (alarming questions about how the Republic works will be shot down with vigor!). Sure, it's got a downside that it might sneak through even less inspiring suits peddling mild lies about how great everyone is, but this caveat is greatly outweighed by relieving the voters of the embarrassing burden of actually voting for yet another one of these turds. We can admit that we're only letting through the least bad. Imagine the voter satisfaction when elected officials start their terms with negative approval, before signing their name on anything.

Detractors may further argue that a candidate may come along every now and then that really is truly inspiring, but even that could be worked into my system, in fact, it would improve it. An option for "for" votes could coexist with the usual vote "against." In fact it could even be weighted more highly. Idealists that are actually worthy of a lever pulled in their favor can even have an aye vote count extra, and even better, this would preserve an essential comedy of today's system, allowing an odd candidate to take the inspirational high road, or pretend to.

As for me, I'd be a lot more enthusiastic to kick the bums out of office than support their contenders, even at a discount, and I don't think I'm alone in that mindset. Even if the negative vote were half the value of the positive, turnout would still double, and, just like our founding fathers emphatically didn't want, more Americans than ever will have a reason to participate in this wonderful democratic process.

The Deep Magic

The best thing about Catholicism is the apologists. It takes a special mind to wrestle all of the difficult concepts of faith into the observed realities of the world, the modern version requiring a certain combination of complication and muleheaded resolve. It's not something that those Protestant kids have had the time to cook up, having never gone through those tough historical times when religion was the only science, free to flit off and have wild sects every time they disagree on some minor point of catechism. Protestant Christians just don't have the rigor for apology. If their authorities start throwing dogma around, the parishioners can always find their own personal versions of Jesus who, if necessary, can be counted on to tell them more or less what they want to hear.

Of course, I had none of these connections when I first fell into the world of rationalizing the Sprit. Reading C. S. Lewis as a theologically naïve ten-year-old, I didn't get the ham-handed Jesus parallels, but I hardly missed the feeling of the momentous clockwork that the author placed just behind the curtain of his fantasy universe, every action dripping with portent and echoing the divine design. There is beauty in Narnia, and not just the fanciful visions of nobility and naturalism. In that world everything fit: the truths that children could sense made up the deep magic of the place, to use the author's words. But it wasn't really the beauty or the meaning that did it for me. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe had all that, and much as I loved the opening volume, it didn't grab me at a fundamental level the way the sequels did. Narnia worked out well enough for Aslan's four chosen people, but it wasn't until Prince Caspian that Lewis opened his Elsewhere up to anyone lucky enough to stumble down the right rabbit hole. The second publication offered more than a whirlwind tour, it gave us a few days in the life, it put actual people into an actual ecosystem, threw in some hardship and earned some emotion. It made a fantasy world that was magical and real. I tore through the rest of the Narnia books after that, and wouldn't let myself read anything else for the rest of the summer, holding the faith against less pure fantasies and looking out for any funny-looking portals that might pop up in the back yard, because I'd have taken the plunge through one of them in a heartbeat…

Middles can prove the storyteller, especially when they're writing in these richly imagined settings. Once the rules are dispensed with and the obvious parallels are announced, before the denouement (a word that means the opposite of what it means) dutifully shapes the text into a conclusion, the author has an opportunity to pull off some real exploration of his space. I don't begrudge Lewis for crafting a Christian universe, nor for weaving it into some generic mythological setting. I have a soft spot for that sort of thing, and as far as writing goes, it's always what you do with it anyway. Prince Caspian was the first of a middle stretch of four Narnia books that gave us fuller characters, grittier locales, and drama on a variety of human scales. If a blighted land and a crucified lion presented interesting philosophical puzzles, getting in the heads of a few of the menschen and finally getting a chance to peek into the corners the scenery was the stuff that actually made me buy in. (What do you want, I was ten.)

I've really enjoyed the movie versions so far. Although they've suffered from the breezy development that is the usual failing of epic story adaptations, and even though Caspian had an egregious Leo ex Machina for an ending (that didn't even have symbolism to redeem it), I have found them both to be a satisfying ride. There was good acting in parts--Tilda Swinton is great, and Peter Dinklage communicated more with his eyes, under two pounds of latex, than the sum total of all the speaking lines in the second film--and when the script or the talent didn't manage to generate performance, the look of the thing was always spot on. I could lose myself in Ben Barnes' princely hair, and the rest of the Telmarines sported fabulous Spanish scruff. The surly, ambivalent dwarves and the dashing mice were wonderful, and even if she's growing out of it, Lucy still looks a little bit like my daughter. Do they give out awards for casting and character design, or what?

But Narnia aspired to be more than a ride. If the Conquistadors had a certain fashion sense, it doesn't change the fact that they were, in the course of things, rat bastards. Lewis's Telmarines flaunt some piratical charm, but they've committed their share of unnamable horrors in fantasyland. The film showed off some biblical frights, but the parts of this family picture that were actually scary were hidden in the endless swordplay. All the gore, needless to say, spattered and stank just off camera, but there was still plenty of clanging metal and desperate exhaustion, and it got awfully intense under the Dolbies. Does this sort of epic violence seem out of touch with a peaceful, redemptive sense of divinity? When your bad, arrogant decisions cost lives, does it matter that you feel bad? When has the institution of hereditary monarchy ever been worth an apology, and what, for that matter, is all this bullshit about superior races and the divine right of kings?

As a child, I didn't always welcome these ethical intrusions into my escapism, but I have to credit Lewis for struggling with the challenge. (A couple others from that point in my life need revisiting too.) I mean, I appreciated some of it even at ten: I liked Lewis taking on ideas of personhood, where it is the prerogative of the being to speak and assume the mantle of moral consequence, and I was blown away at the idea of pulling a world together (as Aslan did in The Magician's Nephew) out of the essential ether that must have existed before concepts became concrete things. It still fascinates me, but it's definitely an anthropocentric viewpoint (as if there's an alternative), or maybe better call it a philological one. Tying creation to speech is one of the cleverer bits of wordplay the Semites passed on to the world, and the transition from prehistory to civilization, to a world of writing, resonates strongly with the idea of a transition from inchoate mysticism into a physical reality, and it can sure be fun to fantasize what's just over that lost horizon. All of the human beings in Narnia, if I recall right, are non-native, and there is a message that the land was created as an alternative to the Passion Play we've come to know and love. As if a land populated by sentient creatures couldn't be real until humans came along.

Yes, Narnia is biblically informed, and the book of Revelation played strongly in the ultimate volume, The Last Battle. As C. S. Lewis let reality sneak into his pure land, the narrative insisted that it couldn't withstand the indecency and failure of actual people, and eventually it reached a critical mass. What to do but create another fantasy land--this pissed me off even at ten. Calling in a real Narnia as a refuge from an ever-more-visceral Narnia is just insulting. How many times are you going to make me escape, Clive? Not only were my chances of visiting Fairyland vanishingly slim in the first place, now I have to die and get to heaven too? Way to move the goalposts. It's been too long to remember if Lewis rejected the violence, the means to his noble ends that, when examined, were really pretty horrible, or if it was, as usual, a divine instruction to "just trust me." As an adult I take some satisfaction at imagining his Catholic self writhing around these issues, how he must have tortured himself to bring about a world that put evil only in the hands of devils. But in the end, Lewis punted a conclusion straight into the realm of heaven. Once humanity and Christian theology were made to mix it up too much on the same board, victory could only by cheating. Again.

Debate, 2088

The candidate was an imposing presence, with great bushy eyebrows hanging down over his eyes, themselves settled deep in their cavernous orbits. With his aquiline nose, somewhat reddened, and broad ruddy cheeks, and in his uniform, he looked like a figure pulled from some previous century, from the pages of Kipling maybe, or C.S. Forester, every inch the aging admiral. The truth was, he'd fought on the ground in Syria as a young marine, and had been injured by a bullet in the thigh which still caused him to limp, although he preferred to hide it. He was a career soldier in an era where there the need for his kind diminished by the year, as nations, those few civilized lands that had staved off anarchy anyway, had turned to maintaining the battle against dire domestic threats. The sections of the Department of Defense that hadn't been reallocated toward research and food distribution were aimed at controlling separatist movements that occasionally flared up among the variously indignant geographic and economic centers. As the titular head of these federalist endeavors, the candidate was beloved by his soldiers, which most voters did know, although his actual capacity was more as an administrator, which most voters did not. At his advanced age, the candidate spent most of his time, as he himself often phrased it, glorifying the troops. A real throwback.

He had a booming voice, and when it filled the room, it left little space for thought. "I, for one, am sick and tired of so-called 'infrastructure limitations' of the sun sector," he said. "As usual, it all comes down to the council that calls itself wise."

The audio techs amplified the crowd response for the purposes of the broadcast, capturing the predictable gasps.

The candidate went on. "Americans who should be able to use choose their hours of power use for their own benefit. When I was a boy..." he leaned his towering frame forward and glared at the camera, "we had something called the free market that we used to swap goods and services around efficiently. People got the power they were willing to work for!"

His opponent, by contrast, was a dark and wiry little man, with small round glasses that nonetheless made his eyes look enormous. He also wore a tight and archaic necktie, which coupled with is high smooth forehead and magnified eyes, gave the impression of a curious frog peeking from the mud. He needed to tip up on his toes to get his head over the podium and close enough to his mike to offer a rebuttal.

"Now look," he said, and the candidate did, turning his shaggy head toward the little frog man. "As something of a student of economics, I can inform you that most sources say that the rampant growth in capital of the last century was predicated on several irreproducible factors, to wit..."

"Haw! The last century would have turned out fine, if money was concentrated in the hands of the real movers. My Granddaddy used to tell me about Communism! Central government planning! My own father was head of the Walton Conglomerate, got the distribution done right, made the decisions himself!"

"...and growth that was unsustainable vis a vis the finitude of natural resources, and the short-term focus of the so-called capitalist model, which in fact was not capitalist at all, but was heavily supported by the government. In fact, the Wise Council even today encourages free markets on a local scale, but..."

"The council! Haw. The council is the one that declared itself 'wise.'" The candidate had copious gray moustaches, which he used for effect.

"Well, that's not precisely true, but--"

The moderator chose this moment to interject. "Excuse me, honorable candidate, honorable incumbent." The incumbent looked at the moderator, and the candidate glared imperiously at the camera facing him. "This conversation is getting far from the mark. Honorable candidate, how would you propose to increase the power flow to every American?"

The candidate harrumphed. "An excellent question, and I'm glad you asked it. First of all, power should flow to the honest citizens who contribute most to society. Second of all, it's common knowledge that the council hoards petroleum reserves.."

"Hoards? That is not true!"

"Sir, please. You will get an equal chance at a reply when it's your turn to speak. Go on, Mr. Candidate."

"Yes, thank you. As I was saying, if we concentrate the flow of power to honest hardworking Americans, families that have been contributing to our cause for generations, they'll know what to do with it. Make our economy strong. In my Daddy's day, we could always find more oil. If the Wise Council would bother to look for it--"

The incumbent had been fidgeted at his podium, but he couldn't let the last comment pass. "Sir! You know as well as I do that what oil deposist that are still known are preserved for research and in case of invasion. And for that matter, waste from that industry nearly destroyed our arable land and has surely limited our lifespans. If it were not for the work of Wise Council's life sciences commission--"

"Invasion, you say. And what about the South American menace? How will that affect our lifespans? I ask you Mr. Incumbent, and you, America, what about the South American fighters so eager to come across the border? The Free States of Venezuela is starving its people in the name of weapons research." He spit the word. "And breeding an army. They'll re-introduce the nuke, you mark my words. Can we afford to leave America underpopulated?"

"Underpopulated? Sir, have you no memory of the century you lived through? As it is, we already allow the maximum sustainable--"

"Do you want them to come over the border and attack us? Our precious sun sector rests right on their doorstep."

"First of all, the Mexican Federation, which borders us, is our ally. Second--"

"Gentlemen please," the moderator said, " both sides of this argument deserve equal time. Now Mr. Incumbent, why do you want to expose our precious power resources to the Venezuelan hordes? "

"The Venezuelan hordes aren't--"

"Do you see? He admits they're waiting just over the border! My Daddy, he used to tell me stories about what they do to their women. Can you imagine if they invaded?"

"Your assertions, sir, are simply bizarre."

"Now please, the candidate deserves his chance to speak."

"Thank you. As I was saying, our population would be stable without the South Americans coming over, and--"

"Our population is stable, thanks to the strict administration of the Wise Council."

"Haw. A matter of opinion, of course. Another talking point of the so-called wise. Can you even think for yourself, sir?"

"If it weren't for the Wise Council..."

"Who gets to be on the council? I, for example, am a decorated field commander." The candidate gestured at the patchwork of ornaments on his chest. "And yet, I am childless. I come from a long line of Americans, sir. My ancestors came aboard sailing ships, defying English elitism. My ancestors commanded the American economy, and yet, the Wise Council insists my line must end. You call this a system of merit? Nobler societies fought wars over this, sir."

"We all know the tests are extensive, Mr. Candidate. My own children have not--"

"Your children. So you admit you are a lazy, privileged elitist, then?"

"The council works as hard as anyone."

"Haw! My Daddy used to say 'show me a politician without a manicure, and I'll show you a chicken without henfeathers.'"

"Didn't your father sit on the board of the Walton Conglomerate?"

"And proud of it! A man of the people! Worked hard for his living, just like his Daddy did, on the very same board. With his own two hands!"

"Most historians agree that the loss of industrial base due to corporations like Walton's was one of the primary causes of--"

The moderator interrupted. "Sir, are you going to defend against the candidate's charges of elitism or are you not?" The camera turned to the man, who was shuffling papers, or what looked like them. Like the incumbent, the moderator wore glasses and a necktie, but was somewhat younger, and heavyset. The clothing was the fashion of the leadership academies and frequently it was adopted by the socially conscious, or worn in formal settings like this one. Arranging papers was an old-fashioned on-air gesture, but like the debates themselves, they were a part of American tradition. "Our insta-poll suggests that nearly 53%, an overwhelming majority of respondents, feel that you are not being honest with your responses."

The candidate cleared his throat, which, when processed through the gigantic speakers, sounded like stentorian thunder. Production assistants in the sound booth slid levers to tone down the effect for the viewing public. "The fact is" the man said, "is that my opponent is positively un-American."

"What?"

"And he is bordering on hysteria. Can we really entrust our national security to such an excitable little man?"

"Look, it's only because of the council that our children will--"

"Aha! He meanshis children, America. His children, he admits it from his own lips. Not mine, and not even yours. Who would you like to see living here in a hundred years?"

"Well, I admit," the incumbent said, "that in a hundred years, things will have hopefully improved, and--"

"Elitist!"

The incumbent jumped from behind the lectern, in order to be seen. "Now, see here, this is simply not fair." He took a step across the stage, but stopped when the towering candidate rotated his iron gaze toward him. The incumbent was not a physically imposing man.

The moderator pressed a button, and a bell rang. "I believe our mandatory broadcast hour is drawing to a close." He looked at his notes and raced through the catchphrases of the New American Federation. "Remember citizens, conservation-is-our-strength, and natalism-is-starvation. Good night."

As the cameramen dismounted their rigs, the production booth announced, "power out in two minutes." The incumbent, the moderator saw, was already making his way offstage, gesturing with animation at one of his assistants, something about South American diplomacy and damage control, and then onto something about how plastics mining was looking more productive than ever. The candidate remained at his podium, blinking and staring at nothing. His attendants were making their way over.

South American diplomacy, eh? He'd have to remember that for the next debate. The moderator simply didn't trust those filthy little jungle howlers. American women! He knew as well as anyone that they were hoarding oil, living like Incan royalty in their tropical paradise, half naked women all around them, and dripping with gold, while honest Americans struggled just to keep alive.

The moderator shuffled his meaningless papers and stowed them under the production desk as the fluorescents clicked off, on cue. With the mandatory power-down, the only light was the late summer sun that filtered down through the high windows. Not fair? He'd always wanted children himself, but like the candidate, had never passed the tests. Still, he was smart enough to read history, and learn from it. With such limited and exclusive access to information, the media could be powerful once more, maybe more powerful than they'd ever been in the previous century. He thought of Venzuelan gold, nubile mestizo women, dozens of fawning children. The candidate must get his chance. His own prestige--no, America's prestige--depended on it.

Dishonest Dissent (and Climate Change for Dummies)

Last December, a group of academics wrote an open letter to the United Nations, disputing the official findings of the International Panel for Climate Change. I nervously scanned it for alumni, and was disappointed to find one Howard C. Hayden, professor emeritus of physics from the University of Connecticut. Here he is again, a credentialed speaker classing up a legion of blowhards, think-tankers and non-scientists at the Heartland Institute. (Both of these were pointed out here). I should have at least heard his name before: he was winding up his professorial career at just about the same time I was underachieving my way through grad school at UConn, ten years or so ago. He worked in the field of atomic physics, and I assume that the lab in the basement with all the potential energy envelope functions taped to the wall was his. The physics building was adjacent to the one I worked in, and I walked by those posters almost every day.

Evidently, his contrarian hobby preceded his retirement. For some of the time he was professionally active, he ran a journal for a while dedicated to a dissent of general relativity. In and of itself, I wouldn't call this a bad thing. Stubbornness is a necessary part of any good researcher's constitution, and even the most cherished theories, especially the ones which are hard to verify experimentally, should be challenged regularly. Even if they don't result in a refutation of accepted belief, these exercises can still open up conceptual space (you'll need a good challenge to get through to people), and they can shore up any weak areas in the theory. One can defy convention and still be honest, and this is one reason that I find, say, Roger Penrose's unusual ideas about the intersection of AI and quantum mechanics to be worthy. On the other hand, one of the most annoying cultural developments in modern America has been to confuse contrarianism with truth, that is, to adopt all of the smug counterintuition without the inconvenience of actually having to be right about stuff (a tone which my inner Yankee correctly identifies as the oleaginous voice of Marketing). Any scientific opinion is ultimately judged on its utility. It really does have to match the available observations.

I made a point to watch An Inconvenient Truth before I read Howard Hayden's pamphlet, A Primer on CO₂ and Climate. I don't fault Al Gore for bringing the message to the public, but I do think he made some errors of judgement in the presentation: his graphs had illegible axes for the most part, and he relied too much on projections (isn't ten feet enough?), single plot points ("today's" CO₂), dramatic anecdotal evidence (Katrina and mosquito-borne disease), and false optimism. I furthermore found the whole Albert Agonistes business too goddamn self-indulgent by a mile, but I think he's on the right side of the debate, even if he's doing marketing too.

What separates Gore from Penrose from Hayden? One is where they fit in the hierarchy of political power. Hayden fashions himself a dissenter, but he's really arguing from a position of convenience, saying that nothing could possibly go wrong with our current consumption patterns. I think Al Gore also gets some thrill from defying convention as well, but the people who find his views useful aren't nearly so obvious or powerful (yes, he's stoking an electoral base, and yes, scientists are always greedy for funding, but to my knowledge, there is no Big Climate Science lobby pulling his strings), and conservation as a basic philosophical principal is certainly more defensible than a position that says we can return carbon to the atmosphere indefinitely, and without consequences. There are differences of style and credibility too. Unlike the charming Penrose, Hayden makes a habit of belittling his critics, and, also unlike the mathematician, he has published zero scientific research in the field in he most likes to moan about. For a guy who gets so much mileage dismissing Al Gore's non-scientific background (and others', inaccurately), Howard C. Hayden keeps some strange company on the lecture circuit, and while the position of scientists may tend toward some nuance vis a vis the IPCC's position, Hayden's presents a pile of skepticism that is more reactionary than it is rational. Hayden is a capable guy who's right about some things, who has been an interesting voice at times, but who is, by the available evidence, a professional dickhead.

His Primer is one of several micro-press publication he's put out on a similar theme. He also writes a monthly newsletter on energy, and milks organizations like Heartland for dodgy gravitas and speaking fees. It's about fifty pages long, fluffed with lots of figures, and it's not overly technical. The book is fashioned more as a refutation than as a coherent proposition, but I'm okay with the format. He opens it up with several reasonable-sounding questions (Is the earth warming? Is mankind responsible? Is it bad? Can we change it?) which are fair to ask, but they are light on the culpability. There's no question that we people have dug out and liberated some hundred or more gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere, carbon that had been sitting out of the climate game for a few hundred million years before the industrial revolution rolled around. I prefer to ask: What consequences are reasonable to expect from doing that?

The early pages of his pamphlet focus on the famous CO₂ data from the Mauna Loa observatory, shown here. He plots these data on an axis that starts from zero, trying to emphasize that this increase is negligible and warning the reader of the lies that statistics are capable of. But crying a lie is itself misleading: even counting for the viewpoint of the graph, we're still seeing a 15% increase in atmospheric CO₂ concentration at the observatory.

[img]http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png[/img]

To decide whether that is a significant increase as far as global climate is concerned, we have to consider how the absorption of energy by CO₂ affects the heat balance of the earth. All objects emit energy as a function of their temperature, and hotter objects emit higher energy (shorter wavelength) radiation and more of it. The emission spectrum of the earth has a peak in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, but it varies from that of a black body (that is, an ideal emitter) in several ways. Where the atmosphere is transparent to infrared, the emission is dominated by the earth's surface, which is hotter than the atmosphere. Most infrared is absorbed by atmospheric gases, however, (mostly by water vapor) and is re-emitted above the earth (all matter will emit energy as a function of temperature), but not all of it goes into space, some goes back down. The effect is reduce the rate of heat rejection to space. The system gets a little bit hotter and therefore more emissive until it gets to the point where it eliminates energy as fast as it takes it in.** A good analogy is a radiation shield (the heat shield under your muffler is one), which, unlike one dumb point by Howard Hayden, is in my fundamental (okay, introductory) heat transfer text. Still, if you're not careful with your vocabulary, you can get into traps that cranky deniers will dance over like goblins on a grave. (Heat is radiated back from the atmosphere to the hotter surface, at least mathematically, but net heat transfer still preserves the second law of thermodynamics. Good absorbers also, by definition, are good emitters, and most of the energy emitted to space is done by the greenhouse gases, but it's still true that they "block" or shield it by radiating in all directions, including down; don't call it reflection.)

Hayden is right that there's not a big spectral band where CO₂ can really play a role in the infrared. Only about 6% of the outgoing radiation is available to take part in this process (according to those hacks at NASA anyway). Most of the important radiative processes in the atmosphere involve water vapor, but at wavelengths from about 6 to 13 ?m, water is transparent, and that is where carbon dioxide absorption matters most. Here's a typical atmospheric absorption spectrum at infrared wavelengths (from astronomy sources, with no dog in this fight). Carbon dioxide has an absorption band in the middle of this spectral "window," nabbing about 40% of the radiant energy that has a wavelength near 12.5 ?m. Hayden makes a lot of noise about the saturation effect of CO₂, harping that at some point, only so much light can be absorbed by the stuff, but the band 12.5 ?m is definitely not swamped. In fact, the exponential behavior of light absorption means that at low starting concentrations, the effect of increasing the amount of absorber is very pronounced, but at relatively high concentrations, when most of the radiation has been scavenged already, adding more material doesn't do anything extra. The transmission given in the figure is at known CO₂ concentration (about 360 ppm, averaged roughly over MLO's sampling time), and it's easy to estimate what a 15% increase will get us, about 1-2% percent. A 30% increase would be about 5% more energy absorbed in that small portion of the spectrum.

[IMG]http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc74/Keifus/CO2absorption-1.jpg[/IMG]

At the poles, another 10% of incident solar radiation is reflected off the ice, and although this seems like another small number to work with, it also affects the surface temperature. When there is less ice, there is more solar absorption at the bare surface, increasing the surface temperature slightly, which melts the ice. Increasing temperature also causes enhances the CO₂ level in the atmosphere, since the solubility of the stuff in the oceans goes down (and more carbon in the atmosphere causes the temperature to further increase, etc.). When I look at the CO₂ and temperature data from ice cores, the salient feature I notice is that there are two relatively stable values near which the CO₂ concentration (and temperature) variation is usually restricted. On the earth, at least for the past 400,000 years, it's a good hypothesis that the limiting values correspond to the limiting values of those adjustable parameters, that is, there is only so much ice to melt or freeze, and the effect of carbon in the atmosphere can only be so big. The reason it pushes toward the extreme values may well be that they're stable compared to intermediates. (I tap vague memories of control theory, and think it looks like a two-state oscillator, an often-cited system which can switch suddenly between two (or many) different periodic behaviors. Follow the link at the end, and tell me if you agree.) The in-between points of systems like this are generally unstable, and the tendency to jump between one extreme or another is due to a sensitivity of the system to its various parameters. Plausibly, the subtle orbital mechanics of the Milankovitch cycles can nudge the climate behavior to one limit or the other--it doesn't seem to be an exact match (which bugs climatologists), but the periodicity looks right.

[IMG]http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc74/Keifus/doublewelloscillator.jpg[/IMG]

The upper limit of this cycle is probably not due to optical saturation of the 12.5 ?m band, but it may be a case of running out of carbon to spread around the system. Hayden makes a really annoying point that CO₂ levels in the Jurassic period were far higher than they are now, neglecting to mention that the temperatures were a whole lot higher then too. On a geological scale, the earth is now in a cold period, one of a few dips down from what has otherwise been a fairly steady average temperature through Deep Time. Atmospheric carbon, which is also at a low, influences this, and so does the position of the landmasses (continents at the poles to support glaciers matter), and, likely, the population and diversity of biota. (The relation between the CO₂ level (high) and temperature (low) way back in the late Ordovician is interesting and the explanations are shaky. It's a much better response to climate change arguments than anything Hayden actually bothered to look up.) To the extent that maximum optical absorption by atmospheric CO₂ can be taken to set the upper stable limit of earth's temperature, then we're still well short (ten average degrees) of it, and it'll take more than a few tens of percent concentration increase. I would be confident that we're only merely riding out a peak of the warming behavior that's been repeating for 400 kiloyears if it weren't for the fact that we've resurrected a good deal of carbon from previous geological eras and put it back into the climate system, and we will continue to do so until it's too hard to get. It's a pretty ballsy bet.

There are a number of sources and sinks for both carbon dioxide and energy that occur across the planet, and for sure, they vary with latitude and surface features. Pointing this out is not a refutation of climate models, but Hayden gives it a shot anyway. Correlation is certainly not the same as causation (and even Al Gore chose his words carefully there), but often in complicated systems, various parameters influence one another, and keeping track of them all to estimate where they balance out is not only the right way to defeat oversimplification, it's exactly what a climate model is. When you find yourself smugly pointing out the shortcomings of the simple explanations, and then complaining that the detailed explanations have too many parameters, then it's safe to say that you're just being an asshole. It's true that more adjustable parameters gives you more room to fake the results, but Jesus, they're putting in real data to the extent they can, and always using known physics. Picking on the vernacular and pointing out "many" minor errors in a popular field that generates hundreds of papers a year is pretty fucking annoying too. Not all of them make it into Science.

Near the end of An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore hopefully suggested activities that might cut away at carbon emission: conservation, sequestration, renewable energy resources. (Oddly enough, he doesn't want to renege on the highway system or the other entitlements of the American dream.) And here I regrettably join company with Howard Hayden. I don't think we'll ever manage to replace the stuff, and barring scarcity or a dramatic reduction in the human population, the world will never curb its carbon emissions. Still, Hayden stoops to speciousness even to diss the more tenuous dreams. Maybe there's not an ideal storage mechanism for electricity right now ("no mechanism" is obviously untrue) but it's something that's within reasonable ambitions of engineering. I am not any more pro-hydrogen than he is, but that's one potential storage mechanism right there. It's not so much that Hayden is flat wrong, it's that his dissent to climate change is dishonest. You don't need to drop $13.95 and half an hour on a shitty pamphlet to realize that of course, but this time I felt obligated.


*Also writing outside my field, here. Although I am a minor author on a tiny paper out there about scrubbing aerosols from exhaust streams. I suppose that puts me one up on Hayden in terms of climatological cred.

**Presumably the flux of energy from the core to the surface is small, and presumably tidal effects and so forth don't amount to much (except maybe every 10,000 years or so).

Free Reading:

1. Good description and historical review of climate change from those godless hippies at the American Institute of Physics.


2. CO₂ and temperature in geological time. Really interesting stuff.


3. Do climate cycles over 4000,000 years look like the behavior of a double-well oscillator? Learn about them here.

A Candidate I Could Have a Beer With, Part III

It's been nice, in a way, to see the town so awake these past couple of weeks, responding to the presence of all these powerful strangers, but it's made for uneasy variations in the old routine, waking my mind up in ways that it's not really used to. Maybe one of these days I'll start to keep the same sort of cool that my wife manages. There is a woman who can make connections. On Friday, all three of us--Jane and I, with little Simon toddling along (he was an opinionated baby, and we named him after our favorite music critic)--over to Applebee's, which is something of a payday tradition. That place gave us the strangest run-in so far. Even at the entrance, you could tell something was off: there were these identical-looking guys in suits everywhere, and I had to push my way through them just to get over to the hostess and drop off our names.

Forcing my way back, I reported to the boss. "It looks like its going to be a wait, Hon. You want anything to drink for now?"

She shook her head, but since my teeth were already clenching, I decided to body surf my way over to the bar for an aperitif. I pushed my way through the clones, past some jokers setting up lights, and I squinted at the glare from those upside-down umbrellas. The very end of the bar had the only open space, and I wedged found myself there with my elbow between some cheesy decorations, a dusty football and a framed photo of a sunny family picnicking in Anywhereville, USA.

At Applebee's, I like to get a Yuengling or two, my weekly attempt at upscale beer-swilling. I drink 'em a little slower, and my wife doesn't give me as many funny looks as we get through our meal. I looked back over the crowd at her, and she was, to my surprise, looking right back at me, excited as hell.

I mouthed a brilliant response. "What?"

She waved her arms around, and made grimaces off to her left.

I smiled back and gave her a thumbs up.

She hitched her hands left again in an even more exaggerated fashion, almost pulling little Simon to the floor. I looked over, and under all the light--in the middle of the shoot I'd just bowled through--was this blonde woman in a pantsuit, looking right pissed off. I smiled dumbly at her and shrugged an idiot apology, and then looked back at my wife. Yeah, she looked familiar, I tried to say with my face, maybe she's on TV? I looked at the crew again to see if I could place her, and in her place was standing a long-haired hippie type (who reminded me of myself in college, before it all fell out) was looking at one of his colleagues. He pointed at me a couple times, turned and pointed to Jane and Simon, nodding so that his ponytail bobbed up and down. (Just you wait, pal.) I finally spotted Ms. Powersuit in that conferring as well, but she'd turned her back to me. She shook her head at some comment or other, and then nodded curtly. All at once, the three of them turned these steel gazes right at me. Ponytail whispered something to a guy behind him, and I could see, with growing apprehension, a ripple of gray twill moving through the crowd in two directions, one at my family, and the other straight at me. The last one, some unsmiling red-haired woman in a black business suit and wire glasses, who had until that moment been edging me into the wall-mounted Americana, turned her face right into my craw and said, "she wants you." I've never felt smaller. Weakly, I nodded.

The crew (I was thinking "press gang" by that point) somehow maneuvered me under the lights, which, I realized, were focused on a single table, which had chairs arranged on only one side of it. Jane and Simon were already sitting in two of them, she eager and he only a little bit terrified. Four plates were arranged in front of us, and as Red pushed me down into the chair, she said "eat some of it." I gave her a dumb look. "Don't worry, it's on the house," she said. Gingerly, I took a sip of my black and tan, thinking it would have to last.

"What's going on," I asked my wife.

"Can't you see the camera, Bob?"

"Holy shit."

Ponytail broke out of his endless conference and wormed his way over to the table. "Here's the deal," he said, "you need to act like your sharing some really interesting ideas with the candidate. Do you have family dinners?"

My wife interjected. "Is she--"

It got her a glare, shot her way over little round glasses. "She's going to sit and talk to you. Act like it's an fascinating family discussion." He looked at me and shook his head. "Okay, what I mean is, you can ask her a question if you like, but most of all, you need to look interested and engaged. You," he looked at me again, "just do your best to act like you're pretending to understand."

"I see..."

"Exactly."

My wife: "She's going to--"

"Yes. Quiet now."

He jerked his chin at an assistant, and a short man scampered up with a little plush animal to entertain Simon. The boy grinned, and soon he was happily chattering with a stuffed donkey. Of all of them, this assistant seemed nice: I considered asking him for a refill, but instead took another tiny sip. I took a bite of the hamburger they provided, which under the lights, tasted like something you'd get at a truck stop at 3 AM. The fourth plate, salmon and vegetables, had been carefully half-eaten, with bites strategically taken here and there.

Just as I dribbled a little mayonnaise (hate the stuff) down onto my chin, yet another assistant swung by. This one smiled at Simon (who was enjoying himself by now, with all the attention), and whispered to my wife in collaboration before dotting her forehead with a compact a couple of times. She turned and looked at me more critically. After she wiped the white goop off of my face with a napkin, she held me under her gaze, shaking her head but holding her powder puff at bay. "Authentic," she muttered. Some of us are perfect the way we are.

The ponytail came bobbing back. "Now, now!"

The crowd of bodies parted, and the woman in the pantsuit walked down the breach, framed by glaring light. Jane stood up, beaming, and I followed. The woman looked at me first. "Hi, I'm Bob," I said, and shook her hand, which she returned gently, but with authority. She was lovely for her age, but this close, I got a good look at all the makeup caked into years of stress lines. Damn, if she didn't look familiar. I tried to not let my eyes wander from the cracks around her eyes. "Hillary Clinton," she said, the very edge of wryness getting into her voice. Finally the recognition dawned, and I sat down fast. My wife squirmed a little as she introduced herself, but before she could speak anymore, the director started waving his arms, and babbled something about a strict timeline.

Jane and Mrs. Clinton both took their spots. Evidently, we were done eating, but I held onto my half beer, wishing I had a few full ones. The red-haired assistant was at my shoulder again, a constant hum of instructions directed right into my ear. I got the gist--act interested--and began practicing the art immediately on my temporary advisor. Clinton was looking away from us, listening to the last-minute directions from the ponytail man, and my wife nervously was nodding her own guide, no doubt listening for real. When someone yelled "go," Mrs. Clinton turned toward us again, and became effusive. Suddenly, Jane, Simon and I were not just at the center of her attention, but were the entirety of it. This calmed my wife down a lot.

"Is this a popular place in town?" Clinton asked. "How are the gas prices?" She went on with inconsequential small talk like that for a couple minutes, and as she went on, she patted the air authoritatively with her hands, making the most inane comments and questions seem deeply edifying. As Jane responded, the candidate would tilt her face toward the lights like a benevolent gibbous moon, and she laughed expansively or chuckled thoughtfully at my wife's most trite conversation.

She turned to me, "How are jobs here, Bob?"

I can't tell you how I replied, but it didn't seem to matter. She listened graciously, and when I was done gibbering, she grew serious without losing her appearance of camaraderie. She could communicate with her employees, but she was definitely in charge, the Cee-Eee-Friggin-Oh. "We have to keep industry in Pennsylvania," she said, "we can't let Republican outsourcing and mismanagement cripple the most vital sections of the economy." She made a fist for emphasis. She was tough. She cared.

Something occurred to me. "Mrs. Clinton?"

Perhaps taken aback at my interruption, she raised her eyebrows and smiled to wait for the question. It was a surprisingly disarming expression.

I stammered. "D-d-d..."

Pure patience from her, and I took the last swallow from my glass. "I, um, was talking to some guys at work last week. D-didn't you v-vote for--"

Ponytail snapped something. "That'll do it," he shouted.

The warmth instantly melted from Clinton's face, and I noticed the spackled crow's feet once more. She stood up, and thanked the crew. "I think we can use this," she said. Jane and I were dumbstruck (Simon was babbling sweetly), and as she got up to review the footage, the lights already began clicking off. Until then, I hadn't really appreciated how hot they had been. I looked helplessly at my wife, who didn't notice me, eyes glued to the candidate.

The red-haired woman was coming to the table with some papers for us to sign, but Mrs. Clinton strode our way for a last moment before joining her escorts, and the assistant dove out of the powerful woman's way. Clinton turned her camera smile on a last time for Jane, thanked her, and politely shook her hand. She clucked Simon under the chin, and then turned to me. "Please vote for me next week," she said politely, but the gaze she nailed me with could have frozen the sun.

A Candidate I Could Have a Beer With, Part II

I don't like to think of myself as a racist. I grew up without thinking ever about the subject, didn't need to, but the hateful crap that my in-laws shout about makes me feel guilty about all those times I ignorantly nodded along with someone's vague view of blacks and foreigners, always stealing someone's job or other. In college, I hung out with a few black guys, and didn't find them any more or less worthy than anybody else. Hell, one dude basically got me through P. Chem. But you know, that place was it's own expensive little world, and nowadays I hear my father-in-law's voice in a lot more white people, and it makes me uncomfortable. It's gotten to the point that when I do meet a black guy--pretty rare--I fall all over myself trying to treat him like a normal person, which you know, isn't normal at all. I don't like to think of myself as a racist, but I have to admit, that's kind of fucked up.

Anyway, it had to be this sort of thinking that got me talking to this Barry guy yesterday. Here he was standing outside of my lunch hangout, a gangly scarecrow of a man, talking to one guy with a camera, and another one with a handheld gizmo that he was taking notes on. I walked up to the door, and stumbled a little. There have been a lot of strangers around, but like I was saying, I didn't want this particular guy to think we aree all a bunch of backwards hicks over here. Like a moron, I hold the door open and asked if they're coming in for lunch.

It took Barry a second to really register what I was doing--the air felt heavy for a second there as his partners stared at me--but then he gathered himself and said, "sure, why not." Joining me at the counter, and after we introduced ourselves, he told me that he was visiting, doing some "politics work" he said, and maybe I could tell him a little bit about life around here.

"You want a beer," I asked?

"All right, Bob. Say, do you usually get a chance for a long lunch?" He was being diplomatic. No let's face it, he was being patronizing--he enunciated everything like a teacher trying to draw out a six-year-old, and when he wasn't speaking, he slowly rotated his head in a vaguely upward direction, to listen I guess, but seeing far, trying to fit the kindergartner's story into the scheme of his big grownup's world. But he had a smooth, deep voice, and to be honest, it's nice to have someone act like they give a damn for a change, even if they don't, and it did evaporate my nerves straight away.

I explained: "They give me Wednesdays off. Save's 'em a few bucks on benefits to keep me short of full time. I'm hired as a contractor, sort of."

He pursed his lips and nodded. "And what services do you contract, Bob?"

"Geology. I advise some different companies in the Westmoreland Group about mining operations." The guy with the Blackberry was taking notes. I was uncomfortable all over again.

Barry took the smallest sip from his glass. "This," he said, is really excellent beer," and then pushed it away, leaving it untouched for the rest of the conversation. (It's not excellent beer at all.) "Coal is a vital industry, you know. Domestic, plentiful, big donors, important lobby. I can see how skilled geologists are important to the industry. I believe Westmoreland is a member of the National Mining Association. Tell me, Bob, do you work with clean coal technologies?"

"Basically, my job is to keep track of runoff patterns that result from mining operations. Take some measurements and surveys, make some estimates, turn in a report every couple weeks. Clean? It's coal."

"And how does the runoff affect the local towns? The wildlife?"

"Most of the mass ends up in the back woods, really, so it doesn't get a lot of attention. And we try to keep existing waterways going, sort of. But there's a lot of shit--excuse me--that comes out of there."

The truth is, I hate my job. The towns don't go away, but there are valleys out there full of rubble, yellow streams running off of them that stink more or less, depending on how recently the mines dumped. I stopped looking at Barry and stared at my glass. The guy with the camera snapped my picture just at that moment. Thanks pal.

"Do you drive a lot, Bob?"

"You bet."

"How's gas prices?"

"Through the roof."

Barry, still holding that visionary stare, tapped his lips a couple of times. "Now Bob, you pay a lot for gas. The way I see it, we have a basic tradeoff here, wouldn't you say? We should clean up coal mining, and inspire the industry to abandon mountaintop projects." He was making connections. As Barry got animated, he started thumping his forefinger on the table with each point he made. "We should invest in clean coal technologies, technologies that require the industry to better study the runoff patterns and minimize environmental impact. We should look toward exploiting our fuel resources in a safe and friendly way! Wouldn't you agree?"

I nodded weakly, imagining how my bosses would buy this, but I had to admit that even if it didn't accomplish anything, they'd probably need me to take more measurements and file more paperwork. I nodded a little more certainly.

"What's more, if there were alternate technologies--and I'm not just talking coal here, Bob, not anymore, but wind and solar, and geothermal" he wiped his arm across the sky, "there would be jobs for not just geologists, but all kinds of technical people. Can you imagine it?"

I supposed I could. Barry talked about jobs for a good while, moved into the cost of housing, and religion, feeling out the corners of my life with Oscar-worthy empathy, and pontificating out a grand story every time enough concepts had gelled together to make one. As he got going, his stature seemed to expand, his chest inflated and an imaginary wind lifted his brow. Every now and then, he decorated the perforamnce with a passable regular-guy laugh, and most of these landed in the right place, but I wasn't really adding much to the conversation by the time I got to the bottom of my glass. I thought again about how ridiculous I must have looked trying to act casual when we walked in. At the end of it all, Barry God-blessed me (an expression which always makes me uncomfortable), and the guy with the handheld asked me to sign something. Barry marched straight-backed and loose-limbed out of the restaurant as if he were performing a stage exit. I could practically hear the brass section crescendo and then fade with the closing of the door.

I stuck around for awhile after he left, thinking it all out. When I finally did get home, my wife was pissed at me for being so late. I told her about the conversation. "Did you say 'Barry?'"

"Yeah."

"Do you know who that was? Jesus Bob, you're probably going to end up in a political anecdote."

I don't really follow politics, and my wife knows this, but here was my rare spotlight. I did my best to grunt something confident but noncommittal.

"Well," she went on, "what do you imagine he'll do about all of those things?"

"Do? You know Hon, I think he's going to do pretty much the same old shit. But it sure sounds nicer coming out of his mouth."

She thought about this for a second or two. "Bob?"

"Yeah?

"Let's not tell my Dad about this."

A Candidate I Could Have a Beer With, Part I

I hoisted the pint glass up to my eyeball and scowled down the frothy sides. Time for another, I decided, and made a twirling motion with my hand. I knew that the gesture pissed Mabel off, but it always seems to get me another cup the fastest. Maybe she spits in it enthusiastically or something. I don't care. The days have been feeling so long lately.

I looked at the rows of hooch lined up like soldiers under the bar mirror. I have my system: when their labels become too blurry to read easily, that means it's time to get back to the family. The bottle of bitters is one of my favorites to stare at. Tall and tapered like the end of a trumpet, it has been there since I first hoisted a stool at the Homely Barrel, some twenty years ago. Now and then, some young novice might come in and order a mixed drink that Mabel has to look up in a book, but not even college kids find a reason to drink bitters. It's safe to say that anyone who comes to this place more than twice is an Iron City man like the rest of us. I squinted at the old bottle, and noticed that there were handprints drug across the dust on its surface. The cap was clean too, and a drop of liquid glistened at its edge. What the hell?

I sat up straight, thinking I'd had one too many. I looked frantically around, and noticed this older guy, swirling his glass around jovially, looking puzzled at the new MP3 jukebox here, at the stained wooden walls there, and then at me. I tried to look away, but it was too late, I was spotted.

"Say Mister, can I buy you one of those?"

Well, he couldn't be all bad. He had a round wispy head with a big elfin grin pasted on it. It was hard to tell if the smile was sincere. He bobbed jauntily as he covered the three paces to the bar, like he was enjoying the novelty of it all, like he was lost, but didn't care. "Whaddya got there, son," he said, but didn't look at me when he spoke, rather glanced all around, taking in what passed for ambience at the Barrel, or maybe he was checking to see if anyone was watching.

"Um, just a beer," I said.

"Just a beer!" He beamed at this announcement like he'd made an unexpectedly brilliant deduction. "Waitress, just a beer for me and my good friend here." And he patted me on the back and took up the stool next to me.

"So," he said, "nothing like a beer between friends, um…"

"Bob," I said.

"Just a beer, for me and my good man, Rob."

"What is that you're drinking? If you don't mind me asking."

"I asked for something old fashioned." He paused, and his eyes got dark. His voice became low and reedy. "It tastes like piss if you ask me, Ron. Piss. Do you know what piss tastes like? The things they made me do. I'd kill every last…" He trailed off into a confused, threatening mutter.

"Uh--"

"…wouldn't give in to the bastards--"

We both stopped awkwardly. Desperate to change the subject, I blurted out the first thing that came into my head. "What do you think of all the strangers in town, all the cameras and stuff?"

This perked him up. He lifted his head high and thrust out his jaw. I couldn't tell if the effect was more Uncle Sam rolling up his sleeve or Popeye elbowing his way across the deck. "My fellow Americans," he said, and winked at me.

"Yeah, it's an election I guess. Everybody's talking about it, but it's kind of hard to think about those things, with the wife and the kids to worry about, you know?"

"Yeah pal, you gotta pay attention to 'em. Or next thing you know, there's some hot young…"

"Well, it's not that. The gas prices and the health care are killing us, but we can't afford to move closer to work. Hell, I'm lucky that I got a decent job at all."

"Taxes, mate," he said solemnly. "The crisis government your investment housing money responsible subprime authority." He leered, and I noticed that the corner of his mouth was shiny. I hurriedly gulped at my beer. "I'm not really an expert on economics," he concluded. "Marry money, Tom, that's my advice, take the opportunities. Hire an accountant, and a lawyer." His laugh was as thin as his voice, and it didn't really seem to come very far out of his mouth, like most of it was directed inward. Hhnn, hhnnn, hhhhnnn.

I looked around, and twirled my hand desperately at Mabel.

"Heh, I don't know why they say you buy beer, more like renting it."

"Huh?"

"You like Arabs, Jim?"

"What?"

He glowered at me. "America's got to stand tall, wouldn't you say? Isn't that what you people say?" His moods, I was realizing, were unpredictable. His bitters and his Iron City were sitting at the bar, untouched.

"I don't really know any Ar--"

He was speaking through clenched teeth. "Look, it's military tradition Ben, and it's an American tradition. America needs to be strong, needs a strong leader, and sometimes we have to kill a lot of people. These are important times."

I was taken aback. I couldn't tell if he was talking to me or to himself.

"I want your solemn oath Fred, that you will go out and vote in the primary next Tuesday."

"Um, sure, okay."

"Put her there, my friend."

I rose (with gratitude, truth be told), but as I stretched out my hand, he cleverly dodged it and leaned into an embrace, his puffy cheek pressed right against my chest. Haltingly, I patted his back a couple of times.

As he walked out the door, I considered telling my wife about the encounter with the strange old man. Or maybe I'd just have another beer. Surreptitiously, I grabbed his, but left the tumbler full of yellow liquid. It was much too early, I could still clearly see the handprints on the bottle.

The Holy House of Mouse

Religious training for me was an odd thing. We weren't a church family, but my parents pushed us kids toward some measure of Christian exposure, just on the off chance it might take. We went to Sunday school, to Jesus camp, got conscripted into inept musical performances at services, which my Mom and Dad would attend only under pressure to support the kids. (To this day, they'll neither confirm nor deny their agnosticism, which I suppose is how you do it.) The church was like someone else's house, that I visited frequently. The faith belonged in the building, but I somehow fit in there too, all its nooks I knew, all the places a kid could tear around and play or act serious when people were looking.

So there I'd find myself for a Sunday a month, accompanying the yearly murder of Bach, or otherwise taking my part in some divine pageant or other, trucking the blue vinyl robes off their shelves, and hanging the silly gold diamond from my neck so that it would fall down my back in the most dignified way. The choir robes, at least those for us irregulars, had all the grace and durability of a graduation gown, consciously designed for appearance and not wear. It conforms with my enduring impression of church: insufficiently vacuumed back rooms, sterile kitchens, rooms full of battered folding chairs, boxes of filthy waiting-room toys, ragged stages heading auditoria of linoleum tiles, institutional smells. It's not as though these places lacked love, but it is impossible to apply the same sort of attention to an official space as the rickety box you spend most of your days living in. And it's not merely a flaw of the easygoing Protestants. The Catholics in town have it even worse, married to larger notions of frugal grandeur: "stained glass" of peeling applique, threadbare pews and fraying carpets, grand entrances with atrocious drafts. On Sunday evening, whether following the Latin or otherwise, all of the sacred vestments must necessarily get stuffed into some closet or other, maybe next to the choir robes, forgotten between cigarettes, coffee, and whatever business the cloth undertakes until they're used again at the next service. These objects can't take the sort of beating, the sort of love of everyday use. We don't caring for them like we do our dishes or our jeans, it's more like the occasional attention we pay to our halloween costumes, ignored for 50 weeks a year.

These humble dioceses, they'll attract their aesthetes I suppose, and certainly their locals, but in the business of marketing salvation, you need to have the look of success. Once upon a time, maybe it was enough to wave damnation around and send the flagellants through the town square every once in a while, selling, you know, that pie in the sky. Life used to be cheap enough (and no doubt it'll eventually be cheap enough again) to pull off the soft sell. For the rest of the Thomases, there's always the might of Rome to pound in the nails. What draws the discriminating into the the house of Peter? The thought that there's some mere spirit floating through the collective unconscious isn't going to do it, you can find that blowsy poetic crap any time people are left alone long enough to dream. Something must convince our unseemly pragmatic minds away from the low and local versions of wonder, and into the official corporate mysteries. The doctrinaire are pulled to the trappings of wealth, no faith worth its divine endorsement can subsist on Wonder and Welch's. If you've ever wondered what draws the penitents and pilgrims to Rome, it ain't the purity, it's the idea there is, in fact, no salvation on a budget. I've never been to St. Peter's, but I assume it's spotless, opulent. The Pope either scrubs the grease off the chalices himself, or else wipes his bedazzled sleeve over them and declares the blemishes holy. Whichever, and whoever, and who gives a fuck, so long as it's made of gold.

When my children were young enough to be easily impressed, we toured our share of low-budget amusements. Mother Goose, bereft of copyright and bound to her stations of the cross--here imprisoned the Shoe, there in a treetop Cradle, there with One Shoe On--immortalized, at least for a while, in rotting plastic, gathering mold seven months of the year, and dusted off by lackluster teenagers for the adulation of the cheap summer rubes. Icons of glory, um, lapsed. As children grow, many develop higher expectations of their faith. There is the expensive honor due the institution, sacred obeiscances and glorious tithes available to only to those of appropriately molded imagination. You can buy a hundred cartoon knockoffs, but in its deepest mysteries, Disneyworld markets the whole-family Hajj with the full force of its copious shareholder accounts, cramming an unfunny cartoon mouse onto cruises, into plastic fairy castles and styrofoam mountains, onto roller coasters, reducing him to ears (a bifurcated and bulbous excuse for a cross), and replicating those dispensible icons in profusion and moving them through innumerable gift shops. Make no mistake, there is no ground-in grime on Goofy's nose, and at the first hint of wear, his rubber suit is rapidly recreated in the smoke-belching Imagineering foundries. I do my best to bring my children up decently heathen, but the Spirit calls to them, it calls.

Seth Stevenson made a good pass at the experience, noting the corporate horrors, the more seductive for the enormous endowment glimmering from every carefully arranged crack. The reactions of the comments section is telling: how dare he question the teachings of Mickey? The truth of any living God must be in the myriad interactions of His smallest elements, eye-motes and tumbling sparrows and all that, but the Mouse's epiphany is decidedly top-down. Yeah, there's quality in there sometimes, but quality is only a gateway. Even the most precious Disney Moments are cribbed from better written material, and any actual genius is thoroughly digested to pap in the corporate tract before it is finally shit out as canon. The immortal Sheherazade gets a shade of Robin Williams, does a stint with the Disney Princess, dancing on lunchboxes with the rest of the shamelessly co-opted fables, makes a brief stop at Burger King before finally nestling snug in the landfill, eternally staring at wishing stars along with a generation's worth of other plastic dreck.

I guess what really pisses me off about the Disney experience is that vaunted attention to detail. They lay claim to the wonder of the mind in carefully packaged detail, much like the church would corner our spiritual journeys and the less coherent political and commercial powers are well served by a country that sucks up the idea of the American dream, shoehorning us all into the suburbs, onto highways, married with kids, struggling with shifting minutae of planned moral behavior, crippled under eternal and massive debt. There's nothing wrong with these narratives in themselves, but it chafes my spirit to watch my life shuffling along according to the mapped outlines. Real imagination takes us beyond the obvious story, at least in our minds, and maybe even pulls us out of the patterns of fervent consumption. To angle a monopoly on the very process of dreaming, sucking dollars off of it as it tumbles down every step of the value chain--that's inhuman. It takes a mouse.

It was a slow day

It was a slow day

…and the sun might have been shining somewhere in another hemisphere. Icy New England winds whipped grit around under the sidewalk lights, which, if I turned around, I'd be able to see through the big windows. I thought about it--turning around that is--but the chilly outdoors didn't hold a lot of allure either.

"Tedious? Could you say it again?"

"Tedious."

"T-E-D-E--" Ooh. Evidently there are no take-backs in official, certified spelling bees. She sighed and continued, eyes drifting floorward and shoulders slackening. "…I-O-U-S."

The panel had been as hopeful as I had been (probably for different reasons), although they tried to keep any feelings under their black suit jackets. I could see it in the slight tilt forward, and hear it in a brief indrawn breath on the microphone. From the back row of the audience, I could only see the backs of the panel members, dark business-wear to a woman, heads varying from black to gray and cropped in severe educator fashions.

"That is" [pause] "incorrect."

I guess they can't point out how close they got either, but everyone knew.

The speaker's hair was dark, cut in a horizontal line just above her shoulders, and it rippled a little bit every time she moved. When she looked down at her sheet, a cheek or jaw sometimes flashed, and I found myself wondering, without much interest, what she might look like, if she had bangs, maybe if she had wrinkles. Evidently she took this thing seriously--moreso than anyone else--so maybe she was there in some official lexicographic capacity. But that wouldn't describe the disappointed pause. Did it come from a freshly minted naiveté, still young enough to hope? Maybe it came from a bureaucratic frisson of seeing someone (almost) succeed within the rules. Her voice had neither the piping lightness of a young woman nor the breathy warble of an older one. "Is that person a teacher?" I stage-whispered to my younger daughter, who looked me in the eye for a second before scooting even further out of reach and deeper into her own fantasies, chattering softly. I myself daydreamed about a soft-eyed spinster handing me a form at the DMV.

"Your word is: 'Soldier.'"

Here's a kid with a lot of tells. The odds were bad just by the way he was standing, kind of shambling in place, not suggestive a lengthy attention span by any means. But in his defense, it's 6:30, he's still at school, and at three times his age, I was also fidgeting. He raced into a reply, without confidence or concern.

"S-O-L-J-U-R"

"That is incorrect."

He grinned his way to the losers' bench. The children who had had their turn were a badly organized row of disconsolate wrecks and, like the last contestant, overanimated goobers. The only thing that kept them from bolting was the glare of the principal. The ones who hadn't yet had their turn remained orderly and attentive.

"M-E-D-I-C-I-N-E"

Score, and about damn time. This is shaping up to be the shortest spelling bee in history, which is good, but there has to be some dignity salvagable from this sham. I mean, there were two hundred people and change stuck in there. Out of the first thirty or so contestants, "medicine" was the third correct answer. What are the odds they could spell 'decimate?' (Actually, decimate wasn't right--what's the word for one in ten left alive? For that matter, does 'medicine' come from the famous Florentine family? Nah, probably not. What's going on up there?)

"Um, could you use define that, please?"

Ha, someone had seen this done. Maybe there would be a competition after all.

"A musical term describing the perfunctory application of a musical note, usually with upbeat rhythmic phrasing."

Somehow, I don't think that helped.

"Um…S-T-A-C-C--"

Yes, yes…

"Um…E-D-D-O"

Jesus.

"That is incorrect."

Staccato signals of constant information… The bastards put those three words together on purpose, didn't they? A loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires, and… "Daddy, stop singing!" (The nerve of that kid. Well, what could I say?) "Don't cry baby, don't cry."

The little one has been working for months to perfect a withering stare, and I got one of her best. I glanced around at the crowd, and there was no evidence that anyone had made a similar connection. Just what the hell is wrong with these people? I hate this town.

"Your word is: 'Distraction.'"

The colons were all audible.

"D-I-S-C-H-R…"

One game you can play while feigning interest at this sort of thing is to watch the kids, and try to surreptitiously guess which parents are theirs, based on how they dress and how they sit, what they seem to think of all this. The fat kid's parents are garrulous and large, the sorts of people that take up twice their allotted space, figuratively and physically. A few cute kids have ugly parents (and vice versa), but mostly it looks like the same crowd regarding itself through slow glass. The poor girl who flailed on "staccato," her parents appeared confident and caring, and not particularly concerned about this ridiculous event, a smile at the earnest attempt, a sympathetic eye-roll at the missed ending. I liked them on sight, but not so much that I wouldn't avoid a chat if it got me out of there thirty seconds sooner.

"Your word is: 'Chagrin.'"

The only parents that I already know were already sitting at the other side of the room when I walked in, which was just as well. Their daughter didn't come close to getting her word right, tacking on a string of nonsense letters at the end to fill up the space. My own little girl whiffed too, but made a passable guess at a word she'd never seen. She so much like me it's scary sometimes, but in fifth grade, I was always reading. This one, you have to twist her arm.

In that year, I came in a tightly contested second place in my own school spelling bee, ultimately missing on "freckle," which I spelled, like a dolt, with an "el." I remembered to share the story with Junior on the ride home, and performed my best fatherly scowl when I mentioned reading habits. I felt like a tool, and probably looked like one too.

"Your word is: 'Plebian.'"

"Can you use that in a sentence, please?"

The only thing that was keeping the curtain from falling was that a child, for the victory, also had to correctly spell a bonus word. This was a tough order, under the circumstances. Only one girl made it through the first three rounds, but she missed her game-winner. As a consequence, all eight survivors from the previous round had to be called back up for a replay. I felt bad: some other little kid ended up on the stage after that spelling for the victory, a little boy whose best effort that day would only get him shamed in the state competition and waste his whole family's day. Well, there was a trophy. The principal was looking uncomfortable on the side of the stage, and if I wasn't imagining it, the spinster's movements were getting just a little bit more stiff as she called off the final word. Could this be it?

"Condescension."

"Okay, C-O-N-D-E-S-" [come on…] -"C-E-N-S-C-I-O-N"

But you know, these people are all right. What's more annoying than a spelling Nazi anyway? There can't be a more useless measure of intelligence than spelling prowess: it's no substitute for actually using the vocabulary, for effective language. The most valid reason to aspire to good spelling is to insulate yourself from looking stupid, but really, at the point you might actually consider using some non-Latinate, multisyllabic string of gibberish, you shouldn't anyway, and even when you insist, no one will get upset if you look it up first. Competitive spelling is the celebration of rote over critical thinking, of memorization over imagination. Maybe it works as a sport? Maybe the inspiring moments come from mining the improbable depths of the brain's resources, making the most tenuous inner connections and coming up right. My early vision of overeducated and underfulfilled parents slavering at the sideline as their diminutive homeschooled twerp morosely prattled out "phlegmatic" or "magniloquent" or whatever in front of a crowd of hundreds at some drab heartland community college theater turned into something more pleasant, the thrill of victory, or better, since it's not the sport that usually gets positive attention, a subplot of secretly held hands and unexpected kisses stolen from other little helicoptered kids, alone backstage for a few minutes, cornered, for once, with someone else's sympathetic fears and passions.

I also can't avoid noticing that I take some pride in being a fairly good, if utilitarian, speller myself, and all of these life prescriptions I'd been spouting looked, just a little uncomfortably, more like projections than anything. It's something that might really have sunk in if I gave it time, but the kids were pouring off the stage by then, and the little one was tugging at my sleeve and the older one needed a hug. The crowd of mostly strangers pushed through the door together tightly for a moment and then spread into the cold evening. The way we look to us all, oh yeah, oh yeah.