End times

By far the best, most concise and still technical enough way to follow the end of the world (economy) as we know it. Still, for some reason, this isn't a depressing thought. Am I being naive? Uninformed. Trust me, my optimism is not only steeped in Obama-rama. What then? I'll let you know when I figure it out. Till then, it's a damn good show. Talk about reality-TV.

From Oprah's "Big Give" to that show where millionaires go undercover to find deserving people to give a wad of cash to, TV entertainment has moved from greed and humiliation based shows to philanthropy. Not such a bad thing, eh?

All of this is part of a trend I've been seeing and talking about with others lately. A move towards humility and gravitas, sobriety and maybe even solemnity. Unquestionably there's a pragmatism, at least economically, but it's more than that. There's a blurb in The New Yorker recently about how businesses are using less flashy, more restrained and simply designed bags or packaging for their stores and products. Perhaps not so much in other parts of the country, but here in NYC, where we travel to and fro together, there's beginning to be a noticeable absence of haggard (or just gag inducing) women (or, see below, their boyfriends) using their well-worn Victoria's Secret bags for every-day portage, with all the damaging mental images they bring. Thank you, economic downturn, thank you.

The Moral Majority is dead! (Well at least the guy that coined the term.)

And it's about time. Relax, he was in ill health for some time and was super-old. But, really, when you help foment a movement as destructive and backward as this has been, you're just asking for it. Asking for what? Asking to have your grave danced on, punk! Oh no you didn't! Oh yes, I did.

Kissinger on Charlie Rose

When asked what he would call these times of upheaval we are experiencing, Kissinger paused, thought and responded, "Perhaps, a time of Compatible Interests." Word? Has the realist thinker in international affairs of days gone by become an optimist, an internationalist?

Revelation: Macabees Revisited (or: Festival of Slights)

Watching BBC World on PBS the other day; and to my shock, discomposure and disorientation, I was shown something I had heard and read about but not ever seen shown on TV: kippah'd and taleet wearing Israeli-jewish settlers living on Palestinian land (according to internationally recognized borders), throwing rocks down a hill onto non-violent Palestinian civilians in the town below--just because.

(Plainly, there's not much to do out in the desert. Things can get a bit tense with one group on the top of the hill praying and bobbing and swaying, and the other at the bottom kneeling and bowing and praying... and praying and bowing and squatting and kneeling! Oh my!)

Hard Times (or: "May you live in interesting times.")

Sometimes it feels thrilling to live in this world, in this time. To know not the end of history and, if not, then the most we can know for sure is that things change, necessarily. So, as to what will happen to our “city on a hill,” one can only wonder. That’s part of the thrill. It's also the faith that it can’t get worse, or won’t. But really, it can. It’s hard to imagine, since, to remember a similar time would require memories I don’t contain. Not that memories are terribly reliable anyway.

My hundred-year-old grandmother has them, memories; in fact, that’s all she seems to have left. Crisp as digital video from some ancient Greek orator, her youth of first-generation east coast, big city American Jewish. But there’s no connection to now, so far as I can tell, no comparison of memory to present, no comfort in knowing. Though, too, she doesn’t remember the unhappy news of today tomorrow, at least she’s spared that knowledge.