Mikhail Sergeyevich applies the idiomatic phrase “…… vydelyvnet Krendelya” to Karmal. We could use it do describe Karzai, Obama, Clinton, McChrystal, et. al.. It translates literally as “….. is walking like a pretzel.” The figurative meaning is that someone is staggering and weaving like a drunk; that is, not being straight-forward.

The Soviets had the exact same problem with Afghan government legitimacy that the US is having now. They had the same problem with the Pakistan-Afghan border land that we have now. They had a better Afghan Army to work with and still had the problems we’re having. History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes and in this case we’re merely looking at history translated from Russian to English.

Early in the proceedings on 13 November 1986, Gorbachev says to the Politburo:

“We have been fighting in Afghanistan for already six years. If the approach is not changed, we will continue to fight for another 20-30 years. This would cast a shadow on our abilities to affect the evolution of the situation. Our military should be told that they are learning badly from this war. … In general we have not selected the keys to resolving this problem. What, are we going to fight endlessly, as a testimony that our troops are not able to deal with the situation? We need to finish this as soon as possible.”

President Obama is, of course, dealing with the most insubordinate cadre of generals since MacArthur went and lost the Korean War. They are hoping for another 20-30 years to continue learning badly–and attempting to wash out the stain of Vietnam by repeating the same mistakes. Obama could fire the lot of them, but he won’t. The question remains to what extent they will influence the decision making process towards their own, institutional ends. That is the operative process for the DoD here; fighting terrorism or stabilizing Afghanistan is of no concern to Petraeus, McChrystal, etc., they’re concerned with their budgets and their glory. The fate of the nation comes in somewhere well below personal and institutional ambition.

A.A. Gromyko points out, “Too long ago we spoke on the fact that it is necessary to close off the border of Afghanistan with Pakistan and Iran. Experience has shown that we are unable to do this in view of the difficult terrain of the area and the existence of hundreds of passes in the mountains.” My goodness does that sound familiar. The Soviets, of course, could not pressure Pakistan to apply military force to its side of the Durand Line, but it makes little difference. The last eight years have shown the situation to be like applying pressure to a water balloon: press the Afghan side and the insurgents squirt to Pakistan, press the Pakistan side and the insurgents move back to Afghanistan. It is, in effect, the same problem with different uniforms involved.

Gorbachev is clearly thinking about ending the war by this politburo session (in a maximum of two years), much like the D.C. leak-fest is suggesting that Obama wants exit strategies. But the Soviets spend a fair amount of time discussing the problems they have with domestic politics in Afghanistan. Gromyko says, “In the Afghan Army the number of conscripts equals the number of deserters.” And the politburo must contend with distancing itself from Karmal without completely undermining the relationship. “It is also necessary to keep him [Karmal] on the general track; to cut him off would not be the best scenario. It is more expedient to preserve [his relations] with us.”

Domestic politics in Afghanistan are clearly bleeding into wider political questions. “Concerning the Americans, they are not interested in the settlement of the situation in Afghanistan. On the contrary, it is to their advantage for the war to drag out.” If the reader would like to question American motives, he should refer to the statement of Ishmael Khan [a familiar name in current events], “The Americans want us to continue fighting but not to win, just to bleed the Russians.” Today there is no clear cut support for the Afghan insurgency against the US, but that doesn’t mean that regional players are not happy to see the insurgency bleed the United States as the mujaheddin bled the Soviets.

At this point, the politburo discusses involving regional players like India and puts a political settlement to the Afghan conflict at the top of its list. “In one word, it is necessary to more actively pursue a political settlement. Our people will breathe a deep sigh if we undertake steps in that direction.” My best guess is that there was hope in the administration that the Afghan elections would open the door for such a political settlement; to the same end we hear rumors of talks with the Taliban.

Shevardnadze, “Right now we are reaping the fruit of our un-thought-out decisions of the past.” And indeed, history does sometimes repeat itself with alarming precision. The Soviets were in a damned if we do/damned if we don’t situation by the middle of November 1986. We find ourselves in the same situation. Shevardnadze continues, “It is necessary to state precisely the period of withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. You, Mikhail Serge’evich, said it correctly – two years. But neither our, nor Afghan comrades have mastered the questions of the functioning of the government without our troops.”

Akhromeyev (deputy minister of defense):

Military action in Afghanistan will soon be seven years old. There is no single piece of land in this country that has not been occupied by a Soviet soldier. Nevertheless, the majority of the territory remains in the hands of rebels. … There is no single military problem that has arisen and that has not been solved, and yet there is still no result. The whole problem is the fact that military results are not followed up by political [actions]. At the center is authority; in the provinces there is not. We control Kabul and the provincial centers, but on occupied territory we cannot establish authority. The government is supported by a minority of the population. Our army has fought for five years. It is now in a position to maintain the situation on the level that it exists now. But under such conditions the war will continue for a long time.

If the similarities between then and now, the USSR and the USA, weren’t frightening enough already, they get worse. The Politburo continues its discussion and moves into the situation of the Afghans as a population. Vorontsov, “Afghanistan is a peasant country (80 percent of the population are peasants). But it is exactly they who have least benefited from the revolution. Over eight years of the revolution agricultural production has increased by only 7 percent, and the standard of living peasants remains at pre-revolutionary levels.” He then quotes comrade Zeray, “because of various reasons, the status of the peasants in the government zone is in certain ways worse than in regions of counter-revolutionary activity.”

That’s how a large power loses a counter-insurgency in an undeveloped nation, and that’s how the US is losing the counter-insurgency in Afghanistan. Being under the control of the occupier has little or no benefit to the population. Being under the control of the established central government is often worse than being under the control of the insurgency.

Gorbachev sums up the meeting:

“In October of last year [1985] in a Politburo meeting we determined upon a course of settling the Afghan question. The goal which we raised was to expedite the withdrawal of our forces from Afghanistan and simultaneously ensure a friendly Afghanistan for us. It was projected that this should be realized through a combination of military and political measures. But there is no movement in either of these directions. The strengthening of the military position of the Afghan government has not taken place. National consolidation has not been ensured mainly because comrade Karmal continued to hope to sit in Kabul under our assistance. It has also been said that we fettered the actions of the Afghan government.”

It seems that Obama’s first strategic review of Afghanistan took a similar shape to the Politburo’s 1985 decision, and roughly one year later the Obama administration finds itself in the same position as the Politburo’s 13 November 1986 meeting details. If there is any hope for the nation and the Obama administration, someone is brandishing the sheets of paper quoted above. The American experience in Afghanistan will be as fruitless and, ultimately, the same sort of failure as the Soviets experienced…for exactly the same reasons.

Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and it is not hyperbole to suggest that the long-term fate of the United States will mirror that of the Soviet Union if our leadership does not head the lessons available. The USSR expended money and energy badly needed at home in Afghanistan; Afghanistan alone did not destroy that nation, but it was certainly one straw too many. The United States is not unbreakable, and the time for basing decisions on national myths is long passed.

Choose well, Mr. President. The fate of your nation may well rest with the decisions made today.

PDF of the Politburo meeting minutes

Further archival material here and here

In the reflecting pool, the monument points directly at me.

I look back at Lincoln. For the moment, he has company enough—busloads of school kids and vanloads of families. A gaggle of middle-schoolers in red sweatshirts that say “Redwood City, California” race past me, the adults looking every bit as anxious to get up the stairs as the kids.

Instead of following them, I peel away toward the south, toward the Korean War Memorial, just a few hundred yards away.

I come up behind a slightly larger-than-life soldier cast in stainless steel. Draped in a poncho, he carries a hand-held radio and has a rifle slipped over his left shoulder. He looks a little surprised, a little worried, like I caught him off guard with my approach.

He’s one of eighteen such figures trudging through a narrowing triangle of juniper bushes and granite slabs. Spectral white light shines on each figure. They wear vague disquiet on their faces. Their eyes are hollow.

A smooth wall of black granite flanks the men on their right, and etched on that wall are faces, large and small, of men and women who served, who defended “ a country they never knew and a people they never met.” Maybe they’re the ones who went on before. Maybe they’re the ones who didn’t make it back. Now, they keep watch—and they remind me what the memorial means by its inscription “Freedom is not free.”

On the opposite side of the reflecting pool, along a different black wall, I find a watcher of a different kind. He describes himself as “one of the vets who walks The Wall.” I don’t catch his name, but he tells me he has held vigil at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial almost every evening for the past year and a half. “Even before that,” he tells me, “I’ve been coming here at least once a month since 2001.”

On this night, he’s the only veteran at the memorial, but a park ranger later tells me there are several “regulars” who walk The Wall and answer questions and tell their stories.

This vet, in his early sixties, doesn’t tell me about his service in Vietnam, though. Instead, his fight has been with the Veterans Administration. He’s been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and lung cancer from Agent Orange, he says, and the V.A. keeps denying him benefits. He’s hopeful that his latest appeal will get approved, he says, though it won’t be until May. Maybe then, he hopes, he can get the treatments he needs.

Until then, he spends his evenings at The Wall until eleven, when he can retreat to the homeless shelter he stays at. “They kick me out of there at six in the morning,” he says.

He doesn’t ask for money. He just asks to be heard. But then his pocket rings, and he pulls out a cellphone. “Hopefully it’s my buddy ready to pick me up,” he says.

We part ways, and I walk to The Wall’s far panels. In the dim light, I read names like David H. Whitchill and Jessie C. Alba and Nicholas S. Viankovich. There are so many of them. How often do they get read? How often do they get remembered?

The Wall is devoid of the memorabilia I’m used to seeing along the bases of the panels. At the bend in the wall stands a wreath of red, white, and blue flowers sent by an elementary school in Indian Valley, Virginia. Otherwise, there are no flowers, no photos, no teddy bears. The rangers must’ve picked everything up for the night.

On this night I also visit the largest of the mall’s war memorials. It’s the toughest for me to visit, too, because both of my grandfathers served in the war. As actor Tom Hanks once said, their generation did no less than help save the world. That was a pretty big thing for my grandfathers to be a part of.

The World War Two Memorial is comprised of fifty-six columns that form two semicircles—semi-ovals, really—around a rainbow pool alive with fountains. Each column represents a state or territory that sent men into action. A large pillared entryway on the north side of the plaza symbolizes the Atlantic theater of war while a similar entryway to the south, where I enter, symbolizes the Pacific theater.

And at the east end of the memorial, with Lincoln’s memorial as a backdrop, stretches a wall with 4,048 gold stars—each star symbolizing more than a thousand of the men who died during the war. “Here we mark the price of freedom,” it says.

My throat catches. I can’t help it. My father’s father wanted so badly to see the completed memorial, but like many of his comrades-in-arms, he died before it was finished. At the time, more than a thousand WWII vets were passing away every day—a rate, according to the Associated Press, that continues to this day. One study suggests that by 2020, all of the veterans of that war will be gone.

The memorial, as proud and sweeping as it is in its grandeur, with its wide granite plaza and magnificent fountain and inspiring words, hardly feels like it’s enough.

I walk back to the Lincoln Memorial to pay my last respects before heading to my hotel. I climb the steps, past the immortal words of Martin Luther King, Jr., inscribed on one of the plateaus to commemorate one of America’s most powerful dreams. I usually stop and stand on that spot, but tonight, something else pulls me.

Near the top of the stairs, I see a sign that says, “No sliding down banisters.” I chuckle because that sign means someone, at some point, thought sliding down the banisters was a good idea and probably learned, the hard way, that it wasn’t.

I pass between two of the pillars and into Lincoln’s memorial chamber. The soft light reflecting off white marble makes Lincoln glow.

To his right, on the chamber’s south wall, the Gettysburg Address looms large, but it’s the north wall I always find myself drawn to—to the closing words of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all…” Lincoln said. He hoped for reconciliation and hoped to move forward with healing, “to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

That just and lasting peace has seemed elusive at times. But that’s what Lincoln and his army hoped for. That is, I think, what the veterans of World War Two, Korea, and Vietnam hoped for, too.

I cannot think of a finer memorial.

I hardly give the Jefferson Memorial a second glance. I see it, like a glowing turtle that has crawled onto the bank, on the far side of the basin. Beneath the memorial’s domed ceiling—modeled after the ceiling of Jefferson’s home, Monticello—Jefferson calls, “What about me?”

It reminds me of that great little scene from “Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington,” from season three of The Simpsons. After seeking advice and inspiration from Abraham Lincoln, who’s inundated with advice-seekers, Lisa seeks out Jefferson for advice instead. The place is deserted. “No one ever comes to see me,” a bitter Jefferson laments. “I don’t blame them. I never did anything important. Just the Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase, the dumbwaiter….”

Lisa, her patience already frayed, leaves him. “Wait!” Jefferson calls. “Please don’t go. I get so lonely….”

The scene always delights me—in part because of what may be an irrational grudge I hold toward Jefferson. The guy has been dead since 1826, passing away within hours of fellow Founder John Adams on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration. (It’s one of the best true stories of American history.)

So why should I hold a grudge against a guy long-dead?

I’m a John Adams man, through and through. History has proven Adams right about so many things—the need for a strong executive, the supremacy of federal over state government, the dangers of a passionate but uneducated electorate—but Adams knew at the time that history would forget him because he wasn’t flashy and because he had the unfortunate habit of calling things as he saw them.

He and Jefferson had been great friends in their early careers, although they made an unlikely pair: Adams was short and rotund and balding, Jefferson tall and thin and red-haired; Adams was a farmer-turned-lawyer, Jefferson a lawyer-turned-farmer; Adams was a self-made man from Massachusetts, Jefferson a member of the Virginia aristocracy.

Yet they saw themselves as comrades in a great struggle. Adams was the voice of the Revolution while Jefferson served as its pen. In fact, Adams was the one who suggested that Jefferson draft the Declaration. After the Revolution, serving together as ministers in Europe, Jefferson was close with the Adams family—so much so that the eldest Adams son, John Quincy, spent countless hours with the Virginia. “He seemed as much your son as mine,” the elder Adams told Jefferson.

But back in America, Adams and Jefferson found themselves on opposite sides of the political battles then waging in the early Republic. For Adams, historian Joseph Ellis has said, friendship trumped politics; for Jefferson, the opposite held true. Jefferson ultimately betrayed Adams, and the wound cut Adams deeply.

Adams eventually forgave his old friend. After twelve icy years of silence between them, and they had both retired to their homesteads, the two former presidents struck up a correspondence that has become one of the most remarkable exchanges in American history. Adams went so far to claim, somewhat disingenuously, that “there has never been the smallest interruption of the personal friendship between Mr. Jefferson that I know of.”

So if Adams could forgive Jefferson, why can’t I?

After all, despite my grudge, I do admire Jefferson, albeit grudgingly. I’ve gotta love a guy who once said, “I have sworn on the altar of god eternal hostility toward every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” He wrote that in a letter to a friend, and it’s not inscribed along the interior of the memorial’s dome.

A perfect child of the Enlightenment, Jefferson was a deep and profound thinker. Historian David McCullough likened him to “a university unto himself.” Jefferson had so many books that, after the British burned the Library of Congress in the War of 1812, the government reestablished the library by buying Jefferson’s. “I cannot live without books,” Jefferson wrote to Adams. I feel like Jefferson and I are kindred spirits in that regard; I could have his quote tattooed on my forehead.

But I’m also deeply bothered by Jefferson’s inability to face the many, many contradictions in his public and personal lives. He was always in debt, yet he spent extravagantly. He pretended to be above the political fray, yet his maneuverings would’ve taken Machiavelli to school. He opposed a strong executive, yet he unilaterally agreed to the Louisiana Purchase.

“The Jefferson style was to evade, maintain pretenses, then convince himself all was well,” Ellis has said.

And, of course, I am bothered by the fact that Jefferson, the slaveholder, had the audacity to write “All men are created equal.” Jefferson even admitted slavery was wrong, but he thought it would be up to the next generation, not his, to do something about it.

Well, it took a couple generations—four score and five years after Jefferson penned his words—but finally a whole bunch of someones did do something about it, and it cost more than 600,000 American lives.

So maybe, in some sad, terrible way, I have myself convinced that Jefferson’s words and Jefferson’s lack of moral courage led to America’s greatest tragedy.

Maybe not directly, and certainly not intentionally. But as the old saying goes, all it takes for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing. Jefferson ultimately chose to sit on his mountaintop perch and occupy himself with anything and everything except the one great question of his day.

For that reason, I suspect it would be virtually impossible to construct a Jefferson Memorial today. FDR proposed the memorial in 1934 at a time when America didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to it checkered history of race relations. The memorial opened nine years later, on April 13th, 1943, the 200th anniversary of Jefferson’s birthday.

It’s a beautiful location, and lit up as it is on the edge of the tidal basin, the memorial stands as one of Washington’s most distinctive pieces of architecture—which is saying something considering the fact that the capital city is full of distinctive architecture.

But it’s lonely over there, too. Jefferson is in a kind of exile, and the pillars that hold up the dome could also be great marble prison bars that hold Jefferson in place.

I’ll visit him at some point. I always do. But tonight, I’m feeling the Adams grudge. After all, my man calls out, too, from across the years: “What about me?”

It’s 7:00 p.m. The last trickle of the evening commute has drained from the capital, and the busloads of school groups haven’t yet arrived from dinner. It’s the perfect time to visit. It’s me and the insects and perhaps ten other visitors. Three Muslim women walk past me, their heads covered with scarves so brightly colored I can see them in the dark.

And there’s the president—a bronze, life-sized statue of FDR in a wheelchair that sits near the entrance to the memorial. Writer Christopher Buckley once said the statue looked “exactly like James Joyce on the toilet,” an image I can now never shake from my mind. What a way to dethrone one of the Twentieth Century’s towering figures.

I walk the granite grounds of the memorial, laid out like sprawling, open-air rooms—four areas to represent each of FDR’s terms in office. Bronze sculptures and bas-relief panels depict scenes from the Great Depression, Fireside Chats, the CCC and the TVA, and even FDR’s funeral procession.

Everywhere there’s water rushing, gurgling, pooling, spouting, splashing, roaring, whispering, frothing, splattering, and spraying. Fountains abound throughout the memorial, and even the jets overhead in their landing patterns can’t drown their sound.

The third room, the room that represents Roosevelt’s war years, is mostly dark except for the muffled glow of a floodlight in the nearby bushes. The fountain is off. And empty. The massive statue of FDR, flanked by his Scottish terrier, Fala, sits in shadow.

However, the words on a wall nearby still illuminate even if they’re unilluminated: “There came a time when men of good will found a way to unite, and produce, and fight to destroy the forces of ignorance, and intolerance, and slavery, and war.”

Sure, it’s a reference to World War Two. But the journalism professor in me can’t help but think the quote could serve as a mission statement for newspapers and other media outlets—at least those that still take their public service missions seriously and haven’t fallen slave to corporate beancounters.

That’s a new reflection for me. My visits to the memorials always give me new and sometimes surprising things to think about. I’ll be able to chew on that particular tidbit for a while.

I’ve been visiting the memorials in D.C. ever since I was a kid. Now, as an adult, I still find great enjoyment when I visit these great American shrines. When I have my choice, I come at night because the crowds are smaller and it’s easier to reflect on my experience. I also like to visit at night because the subdued lighting brings out the memorials’ sublime beauty.

I still have the place mostly to myself. I come around a corner to find park ranger shining his flashlight against a granite wall, twisting the lens to adjust the width of the beam. Satisfied, he turns it off and resumes his rounds. Another jet roars overhead; they come every minute and a half or so.

I make it a point to walk to far end of the FDR Memorial. There, on the wall past the small amphitheater, are inscribed Roosevelt’s famous Four Freedoms: Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear.

Years ago, when my son was five, my wife and I brought him to the FDR Memorial one afternoon. The fountains fascinated him, and he spent a lot of time looking at the sculptures. When we got to the end, we showed him the wall with the Four Freedoms, which he read to himself.

“Yes!” he yelled. “Yes! I have my Four Freedoms! Yes!”

He started to jump around, throwing his hands into the air, whirling almost dervishlike. He was absolutely serious about it, too. He was thrilled to have his Four Freedoms.

“I have my Four Freedoms! Yes!”

Now, as I stand there in the cool October evening, I read those same words and relive my son’s excitement.

I know some cynics who scoff at the idea of building great memorials to great men, but that’s hardly the point for me. Certainly FDR, Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, and Teddy Roosevelt all deserve their memorials in D.C., but I try to think about what those men represent. To me, those great men embody great ideas, which their memorials enshrine.

The Four Freedoms, for instance, represent everything America is supposed to be. We often fail to live up to the responsibilities those Four Freedoms require of us, but likewise, those Four Freedoms help us aspire to achieve wonderful, beautiful things. Those Four Freedoms mean that my son can stand there once upon a time and read those words for himself and express his unbridled joy at what they meant to him.

Another jets rumbles over, breaking my reverie. I realize I’d better get a move on if I want to hit the other memorials. Already, I see a pair of busses have pulled up. One of them disgorges a crowd of people chattering in German. The other disgorges a school group.

From one of the walls, I take a final FDR thought with me: “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.”

Yes. Let us move forward. Yes.

The Last Days of Stonewall Jackson
by Chris Mackowski* and Kristopher D. White
Thomas Publications

*S&R’s very own Chris Mackowski

Reading The Last Days of Stonewall Jackson is like poring over a treasure chest of family relics as a wise uncle explains the contents. The wise uncles are the authors Chris and Kristopher. These two historians and writers have taken an amazing number of primary and secondary sources and woven a fascinating tale of the last week in the life of Confederate General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, accidentally shot by his own men at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. They report documented events with insights and an obvious love and respect for the topic.

This accessible volume can be read in a single sitting, but don’t, you’ll be rewarded by savoring the details. The story is told in words, selected art, maps, quotes and historic and modern photos. Each is selected to enhance important points in the storyline. The authors excel at filling in the small details that bring the story to life. The reader knows the weather, feels the confusion of battle, senses the fear when Stonewall is shot, and importantly the authors give us closure in knowing the calm certainty Stonewall Jackson felt in his final moments.

“Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.” – The last words of Stonewell Jackson.

The story has moments as diverse as learning Stonewall Jackson’s arm was buried separately from his body (it was amputated in the aftermath of his shooting, but some days before Jackson succumbed to complications of pneumonia) to a touching passage retelling the moment Jackson met his daughter Julia. There are handy timelines included and an appendix listing the fate of all the characters in this drama. When you finish the final chapter you will be very glad you opened that treasure chest.

The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington: Picturing the Promise a photo exhibition currently at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture Gallery. The exhibition runs through November 2009.

In our time they are a brand: three artistic African Americans from one family, who captured Washington, the District, this community of freedmen. Their images spoke clearly: here are our efforts, our military men, our debutantes, our ministers, our friends, our tuxedos, our cotillions, our geniuses, our great minds, our children. Our lights, our cameras, our work. – A.J. Verdelle

Verdelle is speaking about Addison Scurlock and his two sons George and Robert Scurlock of Washington, D.C. Addison Scurlock’s photography has been called the visual record of W.E.B.Du Bois’ strategy to uplift Black America by the “Talented Tenth.” Du Bois’ vision included an active and successful middle class whose behaviors and practices effectively countered prevailing racial stereotypes about African Americans. The images created in the Scurlock Studios inspired optimism in the African American community of Washington. The images were more than a response to racial stereotypes but a testament to the dreams and hopes of those pictured. These portraits were about how the person wished to be known and remembered.

There was a special “Scurlock look” – dignified, mature and sophisticated. Addison understood how to light the beautiful variety of African American skin tones. The son George Scurlock attributed the Scurlock style to three qualities – posing, lighting, and retouching – with the final image being fine-tuned on the negative itself. The Scurlocks used a large-format five-by-seven inch view camera with five-by-seven film backs. This yielded large enough negatives to permit retouching.

For nearly ninety years Howard University retained the Scurlock Studios as its official photographer. The resulting body of work presents Howard University as a vibrant institution of diversity and intellectual vigor. Those many decades saw visiting dignitaries such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Marion Anderson, the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, Mary McLeod Bethune and Jackie Robinson. Their work not only graced the University but the press as well.

In 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Washington erupted in waves of violence and riots. In response George Scurlock took his camera outside their U Street studio and recorded the neighborhood reaction. His images capture the National Guardsman with rifles and firefighters battling a blaze a few doors down from the studio. One of the images remaining from that period was a sign the Scurlocks displayed in their exterior display case that said “Soul Brothers All the Way.”

Addison retired in 1963 and sold the business to his two sons. He died the following year at the age of eighty-one. His work became known outside the African American community only after his death. Towards the end of Robert Scurlock’s life the vast collection of Scurlock Studio work was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution. The collection includes more than 250,000 negatives and 10,000 photographic prints along with cameras, studio and darkroom equipment, nearly a century of business records. Much of the collection has been digitized and is available to research on-line.

Here are a few of my favorites from this gorgeous collection.

Addison and Mamie Scurlock 1910-20

Charles Tignor Duncan 1930 – as an adult he went on to work on the landmark Brown vs Board of Education, first general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Dean of Howard University School of Law and advisor to Walter Washington during his tenure as mayor of the District of Columbia.

Lt. Alma Jackson 1945

Flappers at Griffith Stadium 1928/29

Howard University Baseball

The curator of the collection adds his thoughts here.

We all know what happens after that. The wickedness of the world is washed away in a deluge of planetary proportions, and only Noah, his family and the two of each unclean animal along with seven of every clean animal (but oddly, no plants) are saved to repopulate the world. Of all the mythological motifs that circle the Earth and run like a string through human history, none is told with more regularity and consistency than the story of the flood.

Myth is analyzed by different methods, and often not consistently with just one method. Until the 20^th century, the Judeo-Christian flood myth was often regarded as historical truth; some Christian archeologists are still searching Mt. Ararat for the remains of Noah’s Ark. Literal interpretations of myth tend to be put forth by believers in a particular religion, and, consequently, are inconsistent insomuch as they dismiss all myths except their own as pure fantasy. The 20^th century saw the rise of symbolic interpretation of myth, drawing from the works of Freud and Jung. A few mythologists have suggested that myth was a form of proto-science: a way of categorizing and explaining the natural world.

To what extent myth served as proto-science is not our present concern; however, with the prevalence of astronomical information—particularly the math of the precession of the equinoxes—included in myths as far separated as Scandinavia and the Indian subcontinent, and ranging as far back in time as the written record exists, we must consider that myth has served as at least a mnemonic device for ancient man’s scientific information.

While symbolic interpretation does a wonderful job of bringing the motifs of disparate mythologies together into an explainable whole, it falls short in a few instances. The inclusion of astronomical data would seem to have little to do with Jungian archetypes. And i have read no symbolic interpretation of the flood myths that strikes me as robust enough to account for the story being so widespread and consistent through time and across cultures. To say that the deluge represents cleansing is no more than a repetition of the myths themselves, which all claim that the flood was unleashed to punish humans.

Combining interpretations to suit a scholar’s needs is a popular method of mythological explanation. For example, the antediluvian king list of Sumer is regularly regarded as fantasy, while the list of kings post-deluge is considered historical fact. Flood stories are often interpreted in semi-literal fashion. That is, the story of the flood is accepted as historical truth, but it must have been a local flood inflated by the literary imagination of the population. This explanation strikes me as particularly weak. We have ancient people capable of making precise records of the heavens, building fantastic architecture and establishing complex social orders, who are also so intellectually primitive as to mistake a flooding river for a world-encompassing deluge.

We can be sure that no mythological record of the flood depicts literal, historical fact, if for no other reason than that so many of them, e.g. the story of Noah, build on and borrow from earlier traditions. The Vedas depict a deluge, but it would strain the bounds of credibility to believe that Manu and the Seven Sages were carried to such a height that they tethered their ship to the highest peaks of the Himalayas. Similarly, we might question how Noah’s Ark was capable of holding (and feeding) all the animals of the planet, and that Noah was able to repopulate the Earth with animals but without plants. A strict, literal interpretation of the flood myths fails by way of the devil in the details.

But can we wholly discount the basis of the stories because of literary embellishments that have accrued over the course of thousands of years?

Common to most, if not all, of the flood myths is the idea that the antediluvian world was populated by great beings. Genesis uses the terms “giants” and “mighty men”. From Sumerian texts and the Vedas we hear of a group called “the Seven Sages”. These antediluvians are often referred to as “gods”, but we would be unwise to assume that the ancients were operating under the same conception of god(s) that we use. The line between godliness and mortal man as solid and impenetrable is a fairly recent construct. Consider also the common theme that the great man/men who survived the deluge bequeathed the arts of civilization to humanity. Manu explicitly saved the cultivated plants and introduced agriculture. Or more precisely, re-introduced agriculture if we take the Vedas at their word, because the agricultural cornucopia must have predated the deluge for Manu to be able to have saved it for the benefit of his fellow men.

To continue we must cross the intersection of archeology and mythology, a hazardous journey in the best of times. In what appears to be a fantastic moment in human history, the arts of civilization spring forth, fully formed in Mesopotamia. Classically, this is considered to have occurred c. 4,500 BCE. That date, however, does not stand the evidence of modern archeology. The great sites of Sumer have revealed themselves to be several thousands of years older than the dates most of us learned in school. Jericho shows signs of settlement going back 10,000 years. And anything written about ancient, Indian history before 1995 is hopelessly out of date. The sites of the Indus Valley (Harappan) civilization were not even discovered until the 1970’s, and research there is ongoing, though it seems to have put to rest the well-worn story of an Aryan invasion. (or even the idea of the Aryans)

Consider that fully modern humans have populated the planet for 40,000 years. Yet we assume that very little happened for the majority of that time in terms of social, cultural and technological evolution. And then one day, towards the end of that history, everything happened almost at once. Perhaps we give our ancestors too little credit. Granted, we prefer to not hazard speculative guesses without evidence, and the hard evidence we possess says very little about time periods before c. 5,000 BCE.

What if we are missing, or misinterpreting, information? We have found the five great antediluvian cities recorded in the Sumerian flood myth (of which we have only a partial record). What we’ve unearthed is at odds with their supposed splendor; ergo their greatness must be a figment of mythological imagination. Imagine 7,000 plus years into the future. Climate change has reduced the polar ice caps to nothing, raising sea levels. The reduced weight at the poles has changed the lithosphere, causing subsidence of some land masses, violent earth quakes, volcanic activity, etc. The records of our civilization are mostly lost and the remainder is hopelessly confused. Future archeologists have scant, but tantalizing, records of a great city called London that was supposed to exist on an island off the coast of Europe. No such island exists. Digs in what we call Ontario reveal a small city called London. With the evidence at hand, these archeologists conclude that our great London was, in fact, a myth.*

Would these future archeologists be correct in their assumption? Can we firmly conclude that our ancestors would not have named a new city after an older, greater city? If we accept our present conclusion because we base it on what we know rather than what we don’t know, aren’t we forced to admit that what we don’t know far exceeds what we do know? Can we simply discount a long tradition spoken of by the ancients that they were heirs to civilization rather than its creators because we don’t have any evidence beyond their words?

We know, based on geological fact, that the world we inhabit is not static and that it has gone through great changes during the time period of modern humans. Yet we assume that humans have lived only in the places we know today, or at least that civilization occurred only in the few places where we’ve found it. Can we discount the possibility that our “pre-civilized” ancestors might have lived in places lost to the sea since the end of the last ice age? Can we be sure that those possible locations did not see the developments we consider to be the hallmarks of civilization?

And if the above questions have any merit, we cannot discount the flood myths as mere imagination. Perhaps the most common of shared, mythological motifs rests on a kernel of truth passed down to us from before our conception of human history. Where antediluvian civilization might have arisen and what it might have looked like can only be speculation based on mythological clues. How it might have been destroyed is a question for geology and climatology. But the question is there to be answered if we’re willing to ask it.

*This is in no way intended to be a prediction of climate change or its effects, but merely a thought experiment.

One series of pictures I found especially moving were from two January days in 1958. He photographed his home town to share with his fiancee, my Mom. Here is a look at London in 1958.

Borlaug went to Mexico in 1944 to work on the problem of wheat stem rust. It was in Mexico that he made his breakthroughs in wheat breeding: pathogen resistance, high yield varieties and dwarfing. He replicated his successes on multiple continents and with multiple cereal grain crops. And he changed agriculture forever, perhaps more drastically than anyone since humans domesticated grains.

He’s loved and loathed for the same reason, but he may not deserve either. All he did was give agriculture a new set of tools – albeit a Nobel worthy set of tools; how those tools have been employed and to what ends has little to do with Norman Borlaug.

In every case to which he applied his considerable energy, serious agricultural problems were averted. He’s credited with avoiding mass starvation in India. But in each of his success cases, nations with severe shortfalls became grain exporters. Had those nations not pushed to become exporters, the problems that resulted from Borlaug’s techniques might not have arisen.

When reading a critic, you’ll generally find the charge that Borlaug’s hybrids “required chemical fertilizers”. That’s not true. His hybrids require more nutrients because they work faster and harder than their non-hybridized kin. Chemical fertilizers are simply the easiest way to provide those nutrients, not the only way. A plant doesn’t care how it gets the nutrients; in fact, a plant can only take up nutrients in element form. Something with nitrogen in it doesn’t do a plant any good. It requires N. Chemical fertilizers are simple elements, so plants use them immediately. “Organic” fertilizer like manure has those elements, but they’re tied together with other bits and pieces. The combined lot is worthless to a plant until a host of soil biota break the organic matter down into forms that the plant can use.

When you’re trying to avert starvation you don’t have the years necessary to build healthy, active soil. Once starvation is averted, however, you’d be a fool to push your luck over the long term for the sake of export revenues.

The problem with Borlaug’s green revolution is in the politics and business of agriculture. The negatives come from pronouncements like “get big or get out” and “fence row to fence row”. They arise from forcing the multiple, overlapping life processes into an industrial model. To be sure, without Borlaug there could not have been the industrialization of agriculture. Between Borlaug’s hybrids and petro-chemical fertilizers, policy makers and money men decided that good horticultural practice was no longer necessary.

That’s the decision that fucked us, not high yield hybrids. Agriculture doesn’t fit into the industrial model very well, at least not if you’re concerned about anything more than tonnage and commodity prices. In even best case scenarios, there’s only so many bushels of any given grain that can be gotten from an acre of land. Borlaug managed to increase that number drastically, but it plateaued again. Once the yield/acre number has been reached, farmers are forced to reduce costs per acre. And every time yields increase the price for the crop decrease, forcing farmers to find “economic efficiencies” at the other end. The vicious circle of industrial agriculture is only sustainable so long as prices are subsidized.

It is cheaper – in the short term – to monocrop; reduce or eliminate rotation; forgo soil building exercises like like green manure cover crops; rely on heavy applications of chemical fertilizers; and fight pathogens and competition with more chemicals. It’s sustainable only when the long-term external costs are socialized.

Maybe Borlaug’s responsible for our belief that nature had been conquered, but if that’s the case it only proves that the rest of us are fools. It’s easy to imagine an alternate history for Borlaug’s contribution to agronomy. Using his hybrids does not necessitate overtaxing the finite resource of arable land. His increase in yield per acre could just as easily have enabled us to concentrate on investing in soil.

I don’t know what Borlaug’s motivations were. He always claimed to be apolitical and working for the well-being of the poor in developing nations. And since he spent most of his life doing just that, including coming out of retirement to work in Africa, it is difficult to cast aspersions. I do know that many people are alive today who wouldn’t be if not for Norman Borlaug.

Maybe Borlaug is the guiltiest man in heaven. He’d be second guiltiest if we blamed Einstein for the fear and horror of nuclear holocaust.

Part 3…God’s own medicine

The Obama administration rescinded the Bush administration’s quixotic order to eradicate poppy fields in Afghanistan. Judging by hectare cultivation numbers and harvest yields, the plan was either never fully implemented or failed miserably. At the very least, farmers in Afghanistan are no longer being punished for trying to make a living. Like Bush, the Obama administration wants to reform Afghan agriculture and move it away from poppy cultivation. Unfortunately, these plans are still “being finalized”. To understand the problems inherent in the administration’s plans and possible futures for Afghan agriculture we need to examine Afghanistan’s situation, the opium poppy, and the history of opium cultivation.

Papaver somniferum (the sleep bringing poppy) has a long history with humanity: seeds have been found in Neolithic burials and recorded use dates to c. 3500 BC in Mesopotamia. For most of those years it was not an evil scourge, but one of the most important plants in the human cornucopia. Gods were depicted wearing its flowers. It offered pain relief without equal in the ancient world, along with mystical visions. But its downside was noticed at least as early as Galen, who wrote that opium users developed a need for the substance and the negative effects of habituation.

As late as the U.S. Civil War, opium was hailed as “god’s own medicine”. God is, apparently, merciful as the plant is widely tolerant of temperate conditions; capable of withstanding drought later in its life cycle; and not particularly susceptible to pests and diseases. More importantly, gathering opium is a fairly simple, if laborious, process. After the flower petals fall, the seed pod is allowed to ripen for roughly two weeks. Then a series of shallow slashes or pin-pricks are made in the pod; latex seeps from these incisions and is scraped from the pod. Sun drying removes the water content, and the result is raw opium.

Not only did our ancestors have an effective pain reliever that could be produced with relative ease, but one that kept indefinitely without processing. In many parts of the world, opium is still cultivated for these same reasons. That opium is non-perishable and addictive makes it the quintessential agricultural commodity. The East India Company built an empire on it and nearly brought down a civilization with it. Users as varied as English intellectuals, Chinese coolies and Southern belles found themselves ensnared by opium, but opiate addiction was treated as an unfortunate malady rather than a social scourge until the beginning of the 20^th century. (It may be of interest to note that morphine was marketed as a ‘cure’ for opium addiction and heroin was claimed to cure morphine addiction.)

Contrary to popular belief, opium addiction does not incapacitate users…that is, the addict will not necessarily waste away in indolence. In the Orient, laborers were the most common users: opium allowing them to cope with the physical and emotional burdens of their low, social station. The US annexation of the Philippines set the stage for opium criminalization, when American officials were horrified by the rate of use on the islands. Until then, cultivation and use was spread broadly around the world, though the former was concentrated in Asia.

A series of control measures were enacted over the course of the 20^th century, which partially curbed opiate use – insomuch as you could no longer buy it over the counter – but also pushed the commodity into the black market.  Opium became even more profitable, though it became significantly more dangerous to profit from it. In 1953, a follow up to the Paris Convention designated seven nations as legal, export producers and allowed any nation to produce a domestic supply.  The major producer nations left off the list ignored the convention. One country appealed the decision and asked for an export license, “arguing opium was a vital cash crop supporting up to 90 percent of the population”. (Booth, 188) That country was Afghanistan, and the appeal was denied.

So it is incorrect to say that Afghanistan has an opium problem because of the violence that has wracked the nation since the late 1970’s; the violence and instability has only exacerbated the “problem”. A rugged, landlocked nation without significant transport infrastructure that receives seasonal rains has few options in cash crops that are saleable beyond local markets. More importantly, the horticultural cycle of poppies allows Afghan farmers to get a poppy crop and at least one other crop from the same earth. The poppy requires c. 120 days to mature; however, it is planted in the fall and survives the winter as an immature plant beneath the snow. In this way, opium can be harvested in the spring, leaving the remainder of the growing season for food crops. It is common for Afghan farmers to plant a second crop like maize, though any vegetable crop could follow poppies.

(There are varieties of Papaver somniferum that mature in as few as 55 days, and as home flower gardeners know, poppies can be perennial…though it would make no economic sense for a farmer to treat the plant as a perennial.)

Many other crops could be more profitable than opium, which is labor intensive, in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, every factor affecting agriculture in Afghanistan works against other crops and in favor of poppies. The US would like to see opium replaced by other short season crops, like cucumbers, but few – if any – of them could harvest as early as fall plantings of poppies. Pushing the date of the first harvest forward constrains the second harvest. Moreover, non-cereal crops rot. Without a reliable way to bring farm products to profitable markets, any and every replacement crop will lose the financial battle. Even as the farm gate price of opium has fallen, farmers still plant it. This is partially a function of reliability: low prices for opium are better than rotten cucumbers worth nothing. It is also a function of credit: farmers (even in the US) generally start the season on credit, so the crop that will get the loan gets planted. In Afghanistan that crop is opium, and much to the chagrin of the US, the creditors are corrupt officials or anti-occupation insurgents.

Changing Afghan agriculture will be herculean task. Only 25% of Afghanistan’s pre-war irrigation systems are operational, a fact that does not limit poppy farming but does make it difficult to bring the other half of Afghanistan’s arable land into production or replace poppies with other cash crops. Only 58% of rural Afghans have access to even seasonal roads, and many of them live an average of three miles from those. Fertilizer prices rose 30% between 2007 and 2009. And, amazingly, there is a perennial shortage of seeds that might grow replacement crops. (from the CFR)

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is keen on replacing opium with combination of common, market-garden crops and orchards. Several people have placed great hope in the Pomegranate, for which Afghanistan is famous. Tree crops, unfortunately, require years of dedicated land before producing reliable yields. Worse, many of Afghanistan’s orchards were destroyed after the US invasion…to plant poppies. Wheat is affected by world commodity market markets far more violently than opium, so any switch to wheat will last only as long as high wheat prices.

Replacing opium in Afghanistan will continue to fail so long as funding for agriculture is anemic. Between 2002 and 2006, USAID spent $4.4 billion in Afghanistan. Only 5% of that went to agriculture. The $24.7 million requested for agriculture related projects in 2009 is paltry compared to other expenditures, and it only raises the total spent since 2007 to $107.7 million. How much of those funds actually reach, and stay in, Afghanistan is questionable. USAID subcontracts many of its activities to private firms. (CFR) And the USDA will only have 64 staffers in Afghanistan by 2010; a massive increase from the three who were stationed there in 2003, but not anywhere near what’s needed.

If our commitment to Afghanistan is genuine, then our priorities must be rearranged. Attacking the opium trade is, in the long term, futile. If anything, all efforts should be directed at trans-shipment out of Afghanistan. Success in such a strategy would have the perverse effect of increasing farm gate prices, but that would help the Afghans who need it most. Farmers receiving more for their opium would need to plant less or be able to invest the proceeds in improving their farms. A civilian surge may well be required, though not under the assumption that Afghan farmers are ignorant and backwards. What Afghanistan does not need is to have the green revolution, export commodity model of agriculture forced upon it.

A hungry man is an angry man. Our efforts should focus on building sustainable agriculture models that provide sustenance and economic activity locally and regionally. High value export crops can be added after agricultural stability is attained, and any farmer worth the soil that he works will seek those out without any help from the USDA or Land ‘o’ Lakes. For the time being, opium fills that niche. We should avoid trapping Afghanistan in the globalized agriculture market, because that scenario is mostly likely to produce a return to massive poppy cultivation as soon as Afghanistan’s agricultural sector experiences any shock. The Afghan government is a long ways from being able to provide stability producing subsidies to farmers as the US does.

For every problem there are an infinite number of solutions and the problem of opium cultivation in Afghanistan is no different. Unfortunately, it appears the US has settled on the worst solution: lots of money for bullets and paramilitary drug war adventures. Until such time as our priorities for Afghanistan make sense in Afghanistan for Afghans and we focus our efforts on building the foundation of a stable society (food: politics starts at the breakfast table), we will reap only failure, violence and instability.

When I took this picture what caught my eye was the disorderly nature of this row of mailboxes. It appeared that despite efforts at uniformity the owners just could not pull off a clean organized row. I captured the image and went on my walk.

Encountering this photo last week I saw something very different. This time the grouping had a sad melancholy feel. The exuberance of disordered anticipation replaced with a quaint antique feel. Newspaper holders for product no longer delivered, fancy large mailboxes that receive only junk mail and bills, and an efficient line that means the mailman/woman doesn’t even interact with you anymore.

It’s a scene in America I hadn’t expected to feel so old fashioned within my own life time.

Friend of mine saw a link somewhere that wondered what it would be like if Team Obama applied its logic on health care to other progressive battles in history. He lost the exact link, which I don’t have either, so I hope my list below isn’t copycatting someone else too closely (email or comment if so, esp. if you have the link in question).

Anyway, here are a few headlines from history, if Obama logic was at work…

McKinley encourages gun presence at town hall meets
Popular president gleams, ‘Americans exercising rights is a beautiful thing’

HOOVER FILLS TREASURY WITH J.P. MORGAN EXECUTIVES
‘RICH PEOPLE GOT US INTO THIS MESS, THEY’LL GET US OUT’

FDR Drinks with Hitler at Berghof ‘Beer Summit’
Hails Chamberlain approach, says ‘no one even knows’ where Sudetenland located

TRUMAN ORDERS DRONES OVER JAPAN, KOREA, CHINA
‘Tojo could be anywhere, but we’ll get him’; warns wedding parties

KENNEDY: MOON MISSION, ‘SPACE RACE’ NOT WORTH EFFORT
‘Let Soviets do it’; JFK says NASA broke, funds better spent on eavesdropping tech

LBJ: ‘War on Poverty’ too costly
President focuses budget priorities on bank bailouts

NIXON BEGS CHINA: BUY OUR PRODUCTS!
Admits US markets weak but insists ‘dollar still groovy’; polls in freefall

Ford pardons Nixon, Haldeman, Mitchell, Liddy, entire Watergate crew
To horror of even GOP lawmakers, president says ‘time to put past behind us’

CARTER DECLARES ECONOMIC DOWNTURN ‘THROUGH’
Foresees easy reelection in post-Nixon political era

Reagan Kowtows to Dems on Welfare, Soc Security
President says bipartisanship, talks with liberal Yellow Dogs ‘keys to success’

EX-VP BUSH TAKES REINS, NAMES NANCY REAGAN SEC. OF STATE
Inauguration Promise: ‘Read My Lips, No New Taxes on the Middle Class in First 100 Days’

Clinton backtracks on ‘don’t ask don’t tell,’ prefers straight military
Disappointed gays left in lurch; author Morrison calls Clinton ‘first white black president’

BIN LADEN CAUGHT, AL-QAEDA DESTROYED
‘Proud’ President Bush brings US forces home, UN promises Afghanistan rebuild
WORLD HAILS SADDAM STEPDOWN IN IRAQ; ANNAN CREDITS US DIPLOMACY
VP Cheney says Patriot Act to be rescinded accordingly — Dow rises to 20,000

Crossposted from JAZZ from HELL

In thinking about technological change, and our relative inability to often recognize the transformational technologies at the time they come along, consider the electric guitar. Particularly the solid-body electric guitar invented by Les Paul, who passed away Thursday at the age of 94. The NY Times story does him justice – he was just messing around and came up with this thing because he couldn’t find it anywhere. And I don’t imagine that in his wildest dreams he could have foreseen the impact it would have; certainly no one else did at the time.

But in retrospect, it’s clear that the electric guitar is one of those things that changed everything. First came rock and roll, which led to the sixties, when led to the breakdown of everything…. No, wait, first came rock and roll, which led to drugs, which led to the breakdown of everything…. No, darnit, let’s see, first came rock and roll, then came… I can’t remember.

But it’s true. The electric guitar changed everything. It made music more interesting, certainly, and the cultural landscape has never recovered. Actually, the US culture wars of much of the second half of the 20th century focus on rock and roll as much as anything else, perhaps more so. I remember my first (and only) visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. We were on The Older Daughter’s college tour, which took us out to the Midwest – Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa – and it was a great holiday, one of the great family trips we took. And I remember insisting, over the bemused objections of everyone else in the family, that we should make a visit. Everyone was a pretty good sport about it, as I recall.

And it was worth the trip. For the rock and roll audience, it was interesting – most of the people we saw there would have looked completely at home in your standard Indianapolis 500 crowd. And the upstairs part, where the inductees have been enshrined, is a bit weird and over the top, actually. Of course, since so many of them are dead, maybe it’s a not inappropriate venue. (Les Paul was inducted in 1988.) But the really interesting part of the museum is the actual museum itself, which lays out, in a very serious but undeniably clever way, the history of rock and roll in America. And you realize, in a way that I’ve seen crystallized nowhere else, that the history of rock and roll in America is inextricably bound up with two other aspects of American life – race and censorship.

And both are still with us. The race thing is obvious – think of the South, changed on the surface but perhaps not underneath (given the racists they repeatedly elect to Congress and their local legislatures), and the outrage among a substantial part of the US population against Obama that is currently driving the tea party and healthcare protest lunacy. If America does permanently schism, as it shows every intention of doing, it will be over race. Which will be tragic, but perhaps nonetheless unavoidable. The censorship thing, too, is still around – fundamentalists of all stripes (who in the US are primarily, but not exclusively, Christian) will never stop trying to ban stuff, and if they can’t, they’ll burn stuff, and if they can’t do that, they’ll think of something else instead – as recently as a couple of years ago Dixie Chicks CDs were being bulldozed. The overlap between these two sets would make an interesting Venn diagram.

And rock and roll, for as long as it’s been around, has epitomized both of these conflicts. Early radio stations refused to play “Negro Music.” While it was on separate stations, that was fine – but as soon as white teenagers started listening in, civilization started to collapse, or something. But people really believed it then, and they still believe it now. Rock and roll in the US is inevitably political, in a way that it’s not in, say, Holland (which brought us one of the best rock guitarists, Jan Akkerman, who plays a Les Paul guitar too). Even in this day of corporate rock and roll, it’s still a principal outlet for the other, in Fanon’s framework, and always will be. Anyone can pick up an electric guitar and a bass and a drumkit and go to town. So the censorship thing will always be there. And who knows how long the race thing will still be around for – it may need for my generation to finally die out before America is mature enough to come to grips with it. Rock and roll has historically been one of the principal modes of attack on racism, ever since white boys like Carl Perkins first picked up his Les Paul Gold Top and came out with “Blue Suede Shoes” in 1956. And without Les Paul, no rock and roll as we know it.

So let’s all hope that Les Paul was greeted by a heavenly choir wearing sunglasses, all strumming away on their Gibson Les Pauls to “How High the Moon.”

Wufnik is an American who lives in London, has too many advanced degrees for what he does for a living, and has strong feelings about rock and roll.

So i saw them 35 or so times between 1993 and 1995 in the Midwest. I never toured. Seriously, by 1993 Jerry was too junked up and the band not nearly good enough to follow it around the country as a gypsy hobo. Besides, i had jobs and school. Deer Creek was my favorite, and i saw all the gigs there during those few years. Fittingly, that was the last place i saw them and by the time that was over, the band pretty much was too.

It was a fine venue to see the Dead on a summer tour: plenty of fresh air, big skies and an outdoor venue. That it was nestled in the middle of the Mellencamp country of pink houses and farm land made it surreal. The town of Noblesville , IN is not – exactly – a hippie paradise. I seriously doubt that the liquor store generally had cases of Sammy Smith’s Oatmeal Stout stacked to the ceiling or that the town restaurant usually ran straight buffet with tie-dyed servers. But it was not a simple situation of locals capitalizing on heads who needed to eat, sleep and drink. (They did, of course, and i’m sure that a great many vacation/Christmas funds were padded when the Dead came to town.) The locals charged a very reasonable fee to let the heads live in their yards. They served breakfast in their garages. Contact softened the face value differences, and it felt as if Noblesville welcomed the heads like an eccentric cousin. The Dead would be in town for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, meaning the heads were there all week. But it was in between the stupidly large weekend show crowds so it was as chill as thousands of deadheads could be.

By the summer of ’95 i was already pulling away. My sights were set on Europe, and i almost didn’t bother with Deer Creek for July 2 & 3 because i had a flight on the sixth. But i went for one last hurrah. Unfortunately, scheduling had put the Deer Creek shows on a weekend. The crowd was much larger than usual, and while i don’t remember the police presence being over-the-top, i do remember that nothing about the scene felt right. That might have had something to do with me having very little hair at the time and getting weird stare-downs for it…funny how judgmental hippies can be. But whatever, it was ugly bad craziness from the start. I kept hearing Gill Scott-Heron talking about hippies alienating themselves from everything except money with long hair, grime and dope. I had a ticket; wasn’t interested in getting out of my head; and planned on just seeing the show.

Deer Creek is your standard, Midwestern summer concert venue. Stage, pavilion, and a grassy hill topped by a fence. The back side of the hill is open, with the bottom forming the HQ for law enforcement and emergency services. It always tempted a few heads to see if they could sprint the hill and climb the fence before the German Sheppard caught them, but none succeeded. At least they hadn’t until that night when someone introduced teamwork into the equation. There had been lot rumors of something afoot and for people to meet at X spot at Y time. When Y time came, i was seriously digging on the fact that they were playing Dylan’s “Desolation Row” (my favorite Dylan tune). Not far into the song a few people came barreling down the hill through the crowd…different than the random hippie freak out run…then a cheer unrelated to the song rose up. I turned around to see people clambering over the fence. Others, on the inside, were busy tearing the fence down. The band almost flubbed the song.

I don’t know where some people learned how to be hippies, but that kind of shit was never in my curriculum. The band finished the first set and, according to rumor, were asked to play the second so that what was happening in the lot wouldn’t get worse or spread inside the venue. House lights and the circling helicopter sort of killed the vibe, not to mention the band being noticeably pissed off. When it finally ended i walked up the hill. My friends told me not to go up there, but i got zero hassle from the SWAT trooper in full riot gear with a dog. The look of mortified anger on my face probably placated him (or maybe it was my lack of hair). I stared through a gaping hole in a wooden fence wrought by bare hands. Below was the aftermath of chaos. There were cops and flashing lights everywhere, streams of hippies and a few small fires to give it that dystopian gloss.

I learned about the rocks and bottles hurled at the pigs later. I heard of the flipped police car and multiple golf carts that were trashed. And a whole lot of people thought that it was pretty fucking cool until the next morning when the show for the third was cancelled. I couldn’t even look the locals in the eye. These people had put their prejudices aside and, i believe, had even come to like the heads. But all that was gone, and i felt guilty. Then i got pissed. And by the time we were driving home i wanted not-a-damned-thing to do with hippies anymore. Sure, i knew that it wasn’t everyone who did it but disillusionment comes easy for me.

The band wrote a letter to the fans reminding them that libertarianism only works if people don’t act like assholes. It could have been my mother’s favorite speech about privilege being in direct proportion to responsibility. I guess that i didn’t really care whether it fell on deaf ears or not. I was gone and nothing was gonna bring me back.

The news of Jerry’s death reached me when my girlfriend – who had come over to meet me and travel – called her parents from a payphone at the base of castle ramparts in Wales. She was inconsolable. I felt strangely relieved and struck by the perspective my surroundings gave the situation. Too many people forgot that there was a world outside of the tour and the “family”. They were a fine band that threw some of the best parties you could ever hope to attend, but you can’t make a life of partying. And in the end, you cannot paste over a life of partying by dressing it up as an experiment in communal-libertarian counterculture.

I think that the band was a victim of the hippie-chic movement. Too many trustafarians without honorary uncles to give them the old-school angle came on board. And for all the outpouring of grief at Jerry’s passing, i’ve always wondered how many stopped and thought about how we killed the man. That whole tour, but especially Deer Creek, must have broken his heart. I imagine that he dove deep into the junk, to the point that everyone told him he simply had to stop. He died trying to kick the heroin that had taken over his life without being able to turn to the ideal he’d based that life upon because that had been blown to pieces. After 35 years on the road the man could not have known anything else, but it had to have been clear that they’d never be able to go back out and have it be like it was.

But damned shames happen too, don’t they? I turned hard against the scene for a long time, and i didn’t listen to the Dead for a long time. I’ve come back to some degree. I love listening to a show from the 70’s while cleaning the house or driving. It feels like summertime, freedom, and innocence…even if it is innocence lost. But i’ve never quite gotten around to forgiving hippies. A hippie above the age of 40 has my instant respect. The youngsters, however, get the opposite until they prove otherwise. It’s too easy to grow dreads and stop bathing regularly. It’s too easy to cloak greed, shallowness, self-centered behavior and even violence with a veneer of outward style. Yeah it’s wrong and bigoted, but that’s what happens when you see the rotten end of an ethos brought about by jackasses of just such a description with your own two eyes.

I thank the boys for all the music they gave us, the good times, the trips, the friendships and the lyrics etched into my mind. And i’m still sorry that it ended the way that it did.

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortunetelling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he’s dressing
He’s getting ready for the show
He’s going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row

~Bob Dylan

Part one of a two-part series.

From Cronkite to Couric: the Kingdom of Signal is swallowed by the Empire of Noise

The recent death of Walter Cronkite spurred the predictable outpouring of tributes, each reverencing in its own way a man who was the face and voice of journalism in America for a generation or more. The irony of all these accolades is that we live in an age where “broadcast journalist” is such a cruel oxymoron, and we seem to speeding headlong into an era where the word “journalist” itself threatens to become a freestanding joke. Why, against this backdrop, would so many people who are so involved in the daily repudiation of everything that Cronkite stood for make such a show memorializing the standard by which they so abjectly fail?

As I read what people had to say about Cronkite, I realized that something I studied and wrote about over a decade ago helps explain why our contemporary media has gone so deeply, tragically wrong.

First, let’s state the simple part: Cronkite was about signal. Contemporary media is about noise.

When you flipped on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, you were engaged by a program where every attempt was made to sift through the static, to filter away the disinformation, and to present in a direct, clear, calm voice the essence of what was happening. More importantly, what was happening mattered, tangibly, in the lives of the audience. The emphasis was on the substance of what was needed instead of the shallow style of what was wanted.

At the end of the broadcast he’d close with his trademark signoff: “And that’s the way it is.” When he did, the assertion was credible because the news hadn’t relied on smoke and mirrors, dog and pony shows, cyniacally choreographed screaming matches (in order to assure “balance”) or artful PR-mongering. It was, instead, the proud product of professionals whose ethics stressed getting at the facts of the day. To be sure, other luminaries like Hunter Thompson warned us about confusing fact with truth, but what Cronkite and his colleagues wrought in 30 minutes was, on the whole, pretty useful at maximizing clarity and minimizing clutter.

The next question follow logically: why have media operations (sorry, but when people like Katie Couric are at the helm, I just can’t make myself use terms like “press” and “journalism”) abandoned the sacred quest for signal in favor of a decadent wallow in noise? How did this happen?

The answer, I fear, gets a little wonkish. If you’ll bear with me, though, I think I can lead us to some signal about noise.

Shannon vs. Barthes

In 1990, UCLA professor and scholar Katherine Hayles published Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science.* One chapter of the book, in particular, fascinated me. It looked at two of the 20th Century’s more prominent intellectual figures (prominent within their respective research communities, anyway) and contrasted them on how their work dealt with signal and noise. The first luminary was engineer and mathematician Claude Shannon, the father of information theory, and the other was Roland Barthes, the French post-structuralist “theorist, philosopher, critic and semiotician.”

Dr. Hayles parallels the development of Shannon’s information theory** with the radical post-structuralism of Barthes, explaining that both were concerned with the same issues in their respective communications systems. Varying institutional dynamics, however, led them to widely divergent approaches in addressing “noise” in the system.

Shannon, working at Bell Labs, was directly concerned with message clarity – it was his job to minimize noise in the system, thereby enabling as high a degree of communication between points as possible. In Shannon’s formulation, unwanted noise was defined as the “equivocation,” and one of his most important theorems posits that equivocation is reducible to zero if the proper code is employed (Hayles 188).

Barthes, on the other hand, argued that “literatures are in fact arts of ‘noise’,” and that this equivocation is what readers “consume.” As such, noise in the system is to be encouraged and maximized as much as possible (Hayles 188). In other words, what Barthes suggests as the optimal goal of criticism is the absolute negation of what most would see as the essence of communication. In a very real sense, it is the role of criticism not to facilitate communication, but to actively prevent it.

With equivocation thus maximized, the reader is encouraged to partake of this massive new body of noise which, Barthes suggests, is more interesting than the original intent anyway. This position, while stated “in a risqué fashion,” nonetheless represents the mainstream belief of the critical community (Hayles 189).

So far, so good. But why would anyone – even a French intellectual – want to destroy the possibility of communication (and in doing so, annihilate the possibility of shared meaning)?

Noise as the Servant of Institutional Demand

Here we get to the part that’s so important to understanding the sorry state of 21st Century media. As Hayles explains, Shannon’s attempts to decrease noise in the system were spurred by the well-defined institutional needs of the country’s growing telephone industry. Those of us old enough to remember the static in the average long distance call will immediately appreciate the value of Shannon’s work.

The deconstructionist desire to increase noise in the field of literary criticism, Hayles argues, was also driven by institutional demands. Before post-structuralism, she says, literary critics were relatively limited in the number of acceptable texts available for analysis. Aside from the new texts introduced by living writers, this body of subject texts remained relatively constant for decades. At the same time, however, the literary establishment experienced enormous growth, resulting in a comparative shortage of canonized texts for scholars to critique. “Too many critics, too few texts” ( Hayles 189):

Post-structuralism, especially deconstruction, overcomes this scarcity by showing how each text can be made into an infinite number of texts. Moreover, it actually converts scarcity to excess by proclaiming that theory’s proper subject is not only literature, but theory itself.
…
Thus the increasing number of theoretical texts in literary criticism, as well as their tendency to organize themselves in increasingly complex ways, can be understood as responses to the discipline’s systemic economy (189-190).

In other words, post-structuralism’s war on communication and meaning do not serve society’s need to better understand art or what art can reveal about the nature of culture; it is not driven by any evolution towards greater enlightenment in society; it is not about helping society overcome its “false consciousness” or moving us toward a more equitable form of self-governance; it is not even, as its proponents often suggest, designed to give voice to previously unempowered demographics: these are merely rationalizations.

Instead, the rage for noise was quite simply a response to the research university’s need to find tenure-track assistant professors something to do. It is, in the terminology of Complexity Theory, an adaptive response aimed at enabling the survival and growth of an evolving system. It is not about students, communities, meaning, authenticity, art, knowledge, or any of the other things scholars might use to justify their work.

Those who knew me in grad school can probably recall my indignation at what I termed the “DeMeaning Project.” As I put it in a paper I once presented at a conference (to a room full of Barthes devotées, I should note):

The De-meaning Project is, purely and simply, about the value-free perpetuation of academia’s ideology of research. It is about the exaltation and empowerment of the scholar, and if this comes at the expense of those the university is alleged to serve, so far nobody seems much concerned.

From the systemic demands fueling deconstruction, it is a small step to further envision the need the academy has for self-validation in a world increasingly obsessed with celebrity. Each step of the project I have here outlined finds the academic engaged in the deprivileging of someone or something non-academic. We must ask ourselves – once the individual is gone, once the artist is discredited, once the text is infinitely imprisoned within a bottomless pit of signification, once literary texts are replaced at the center of scholarship by critical texts – once this project is completed, what remains? What remains, and more particularly, who benefits? The academy has sought in the insecurity of the De-meaning Project to discredit all except for itself, and if it should succeed, then its stars become the only stars.

To sum it up: once upon a time scholars and critics were engaged in what we might call a process of signal, where they studied canonized literary texts and sought a communication and meaning-making connection with both the original text, the author and the audience. In time, the canon ran out of accepted books and things to say about them, which was a problem for all the young scholars who needed something to establish their records and justify their cases for tenure. The result was a new kind of scholarship that dynamited the canon, the idea of the great author, and even the very possibility of communication or meaning.

The institution had given up on discovering or cultivating signal, and so it shifted its focus to noise – which is exactly what happened to the American press.

Tomorrow: The Media Empire of Noise

______________________________

* Hayles, N.K. (1990). Chaos bound: orderly disorder in contemporary literature and science. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

** I link to Wikipedia in multiple places above because it provides quick, accessible overviews of the people and topics referenced. Please, forgive my slothfulness – I know that Wikipedia isn’t always the best of resources. Those interested in a more detailed explanation of the concepts are encouraged to check the links at the bottom of each entry, many of which will take you as deep into the subject as you’d like to go (and farther than I’m probably capable of going).

Q: Let’s say you’re sick with a potentially deadly disease. Who do you want for a doctor?
A: The smartest, most experienced and highly qualified expert in the field.

Q: You’re looking to invest your life savings. Who do you trust to handle your money?
A: The brightest, most agile financial mind I can find.

Q: You’ve been selected to participate in a “private citizens in space” program. Who do you want in charge of building the rocket?
A: The most brilliant and reliable engineers in the nation.

So far, so good. One more.

Q: You live in a time of unimaginable complexity and danger. Who do want to be the leader of the free world?
A: Somebody I can have a beer with. You know, a regular guy, a Joe Sixpack.

It’s said that people tend to get the leaders they deserve, and I can’t imagine better proof than the United States. At present we’re watching as a new president attempts to arm-tackle an array of national political and economic crises of evil supervillain jailbreak proportions, and at this early stage it’s far from clear that he’s Rushmore-bound.

• He may or may not get health care reform passed, and if he does it may or may not be as comprehensive as the programs pursued by previous arch-progressives Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower.
• He may or may not bog us down in a vastly expanded quagmire in Afghanistan, although at present only an idiot would bet on him meeting his campaign promises regarding getting the heck out of Iraq.
• He may or may not decide to honor the pledges he made to the gay community.
• He may or may not spearhead a green revolution that saves the species from itself.
• And his economic policies may boost us to new, unprecedented levels of universal prosperity. Or they may plummet us nards-first into a meat grinder of a global recession so epic it will make the Great Depression look like a weekend in the Hamptons.

So the jury is still out on Mr. Obama. But… While past performance is no guarantee of future results, there’s also that thing about those who don’t understand history being doomed to repeat it. And America’s history of electing dolts, buffoons, scoundrels, knaves, low-jackers, pig-fuckers, gomers, dog-whistlers, Kloset Klansmen, recidivists and sheep pimps to the Highest Elected Office in the Land does not make one optimistic about the prospects for Barackapalooza. I’d love to be wrong, but let’s be honest. An indicator that can pick a loser 100% of the time is every bit as valuable to the shrewd investor as one that always picks the winner, and the Electoral College is as reliable a Finger of Doom as the world has ever seen.

Let’s review, shall we?

George W. Bush: Worst president ever? Dumbest president ever? Hard to say for certain, although put me down for “hell, yes.” The nation apparently elected a string of semi-housebroken wombats in the 1800s, and contemporary polling feels obliged, in the name of “balance,” to humor the estimations of conservative “scholars” who rate him the sixth-best ever. For my money, that opinion alone is sufficient for the credentialing institution to revoke the PhD, but such is the price we pay for the privilege of living in an society that not only tolerates fools gladly, it gives them television shows.

Bill Clinton: In so many ways, Clinton was the archetypal president of our age. He was the distilled, undiluted essence of the modern political animal. He was like everything in Washington, only moreso. And I don’t mean that in the good way.

Bubba may not be the man who invented the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, but he was damned sure the one who established it as the only wing that mattered. The irony, of course, was that he was reviled by the GOP. I’ve always wondered if the source of that rage was that Clinton was a better Republican than they were.

In addition, he cheapened the office at every turn: whether renting out the Lincoln Bedroom to the highest bidder, pardoning Marc Rich or “hiking the Appalachian Trail” like mink freebasing Viagra, it seemed as though his every action left us feeling the need for a shower. From the poor house to the penthouse to the whore house, we’ve never seen anything like him. God willing, we never will again.

George HW Bush: It’s still hard to fathom how this mealy-mouthed little wimp stumbled into the White House. All the Democrats had to do in 1988 was find a candidate with a pulse. Instead, they trotted out Mike Dukakis, a man with all the charisma and passion of an accountant on a phenobarbital drip.

Bush the Elder was the latest incarnation of an established and thoroughly corrupt dynasty, and between him and his fuckwit kids there is no better argument, could be no better argument, in favor of a 100% inheritance tax. If they’d had to earn anything on their own merit their only entree into a country club would be as assistant assistant assistant greenskeepers reporting to Carl Spackler at Bushwood.

Ronald Reagan: Wow. Where to start. Back in the 1960s Marshall McLuhan, in writing about where television was taking the culture, predicted Reagan in terms so accurate that you’d think you were reading a history instead of a precognition. The only thing missing was the name and home address. The failing in McLuhan’s analysis, if there was one, was this: as cynical as he was, the reality turned out to be even worse than he feared.

Ronnie was as anti-intellectual a leader as we could have imagined prior to Dubya. A man who somehow managed to remain immensely popular despite the fact that most Americans disagreed with his policies. One of the most corrupt collections of advisors, staffers and appointees in history. And the man who represented the grand triumph of years and years of scheming by wealthy conservatives bent on by god rolling the rich-poor gap back to feudal levels. An intellectually void, amoral cesspool of a human being who will nonetheless go down as one of our “great” presidents.

Jimmy Carter: Carter has the distinction of being one of the very few politicians that Hunter Thompson ever said anything nice about, and his record since leaving the White House has made clear what an outstanding statesman and humanitarian Carter really is. History will not mark him down as the most adept practitioner of the presidential arts, however, and for those who bemoan the erosion of the line between church and state, let’s remember just how very publicly Baptist Jimmy was. Now, thanks in part to him, we’ll never get the smell of the fundamentalists out of the furniture. (Which reminds me – Phish is playing four dates at Red Rocks, so those of us who live in downtown Denver are hoping the wind isn’t blowing straight west-to-east for the next few days.)

Gerald Ford: Nice enough guy, seemed like. For a politician and all. But he wasn’t ever elected.

Richard Nixon: Please tell me we don’t really need to talk about this one.

Lyndon Johnson: Ever heard of Vietnam? It’s hard to recall the last time somebody took an idea so bad and managed to make it even worse. He does get credit for important civil rights legislation, at least.

Still, in the final analysis he was a president from Texas with a lust for illicit, unwinnable wars. If that reminds you of somebody else, don’t blame me. I’m just reporting the facts.

John F. Kennedy: He invaded Cuba, and once the troops started landing he changed his mind. He nearly got us into a hot nukular shooting war. Then there was that Vietnam thing – he and LBJ can share this honor. Marilyn Monroe was either a plus or a minus, depending on where you stand with respect to the marital infidelity issue.

Ultimately, though, the only thing that saved his legacy was death. Had he lived to serve out his term(s) he’d be judged today based on his record, which falls somewhat short of the legend.

So, when was the last time America elected a president it could be proud of? By today’s standards Ike isn’t looking bad at all, and his two predecessors, FDR and Truman, also score high marks.

If you look at that chart in the link above, it seems like maybe the country’s ability to elect somebody half decent runs in cycles.

Let’s hope that’s the case, and that the wheel is turning back in our direction. Because damn, America is due.

I can assemble with others to complain about the government. I can petition the government for redress of grievances. I can practice a religion free of government interference. Most importantly, I have the right to speak my mind. I can say whatever I want about the government short of advocating violence against it. I am free to speak or write critically about the actions or inactions of my government.

I can be a critic of my government because for hundreds of years, hundreds of thousands of Americans before me fought and died for my right to do that.

In this young century, however, Americans have suffered increased assaults on their rights — especially privacy — by their own government, all in the name of the proclaimed need for “national security.” Because of fear, government continues to attempt to foreclose on constitutional protections.

Government may erode constitutional guarantees in the absence of the watchful eye of the governed. Rights not exercised may become rights lost. It is an obligation of citizenship for Americans that they continually critique and comment on the actions of their government. That is how we shape our government. Failure to do so allows government to shape us and our rights instead.

At the moment, America has a slew of problems confronting it — record unemployment, a shrinking economy, two foreign wars, a two-party system run amok, and an enormous fiscal deficit, just to name a few.

As we toss the steak on the barbecue and watch the fireworks today, let’s keep in mind the rights and riches we do have, the historical cost of attaining them, and the future risk of losing them if we fail to speak up when government displeases us.

Anyhow, it’s always nice when a listener/reader/viewer sits down and truly invests themselves in a work of art, and that’s exactly what happened over at Secondat a couple of days ago. Not only do they examine the music, they also reflect back, in great detail, on the summer of 1977 – the Summer of the Son of Sam itself. That was an eventful three months, to be sure. As the writer points out, a lot happened during

the long summer of 1977: New York City’s historic blackout, the deaths of Elvis Presley and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and a radio telescope reception from deep space. The song also evokes some of the turmoil of the time: political kidnappings, murders, airplane hijackings, and the deaths of Andreas Baader and other members of the Red Army Faction; expulsion of the Gang of Four from the Chinese Communist Party; and conflicts between Anita Bryant and gay activists. It was a time of NASA launches and of wild enthusiasm for the first of the Star Wars films. We saw then the beginning of the disco fad. Early in the year the Episcopal Church ordained its first woman priest and President Carter pardoned draft evaders of the Vietnam War.

It was also the summer in which the “Son of Sam” killer, David Berkowitz was captured. Berkowitz claimed to be a Satanist, pursued by devils, including demon sent by a neighbor of his, Sam Carr.

When Jeff found this link and sent it to me the other night, he suggested that he may not be entirely worthy of the reading that Secondat gives the song. If that is true – operative word there being “if” – then all I can really say is that it’s better to dive too deeply into a great work of art than not deeply enough (or not at all).

Great artist. Great song. And a truly thoughtful, reflective examination of it. Thanks to all.

“You have never been to China until you’ve climbed the Great Wall,” Chairman Mao once declared.

By that definition, the twelve days we’ve spent in the country thus far don’t qualify.

I can see Mao’s point, though: it would not feel like a trip to China unless we visited the Great Wall. We’ve all been looking forward to the chance to finally see it, and now that we’re nearly done with our trip, the Great Wall feels a bit like the grand finale.

The most visited section of the Great Wall is called the Badaling, about fifty miles northwest of Beijing. We’re going to a slightly less touristy section, about forty miles from the city, called the Juyong Pass (also called the Juyongguan Pass).

“Wait’ll you see this place,” my colleague, Carl Case, says. “You’ll see why it’s a little less touristy.”

Situated in the Guangou Valley, the pass served as the most important gateway through the Wall from the capital to the territories north. A huge fortress sits at the center of the pass. Once upon a time, the fortress helped protect the Middle Kingdom; today, it serves as a gateway for all the tour busses.

From the valley floor, the Cuiping and Jingui mountains rise up like Yin and Yang on the east and west. Cuiping stands 150 meters high while Jingui—the mountain we’ll climb—is 350 meters high. That’s just under a quarter of a mile tall.

But the path to the top is a lot longer. The mountains twist and turn and fold back in on themselves like a Chinese dragon, with the Wall riding the ridgeline of the dragon’s back.

“This is where people find out how strong they really are,” Carl says. “This is about mental toughness.”

The Great Wall of China stretches for some 4,160 miles, although, if you count all the branches and offshoots, it’s closer to 5,500 miles. 

The first sections were built just after 700 B.C., although Emperor Qin of terra cotta warrior fame is generally credited with being the guy who ordered construction of the first parts of the Wall as we know it sometime around 220 B.C.

Time proved to be the worst foe of the Wall, and sections fell into disrepair over the centuries. In 1368, the first year of the Ming Dynasty, the emperor ordered reconstruction of the Wall, following the general footprint of Qin’s original structure. They started their work at the Juyong Pass and took some 100 years to complete the full project.

During the course of construction, somewhere between two and three million people died. They were buried within the Wall itself.

Parts of the Wall have again fallen into disrepair, and no one has ever done a comprehensive study of the Wall’s condition. But in 1992, government officials undertook a massive renovation project at Juyong Pass so it could serve as a tourist area.

We’re one of the first busses there, but the lot fills up by midmorning. “Less touristy,” as Carl described it, is only a relative term.

Carl tells us that a student last year counted 1,604 steps to the top. “I’ll see you there!” he says, and off he goes. Four of the grad students on the trip take off with him, determined to beat him. If one of them does, Carl will buy them a drink. (He will get to keep his money.)

I resolve to take my time. “So I can take notes on the way,” I tell myself.

The lowest section of the Wall, from the fortress to the foot of Jingui Mountain, is crowded with people. Parasols are popular with the ladies, as are high-heeled shoes. “For climbing the Wall? Are you kidding?” I ask myself. The slope upward isn’t strenuous, but it’s not gentle, either.

The Wall here stands over thirty feet tall and a little over ten feet wide. The idea was that four horsemen could ride side by side. Near the fortress, where our tour bus passed through, the wall was over fifty feet wide.

At the first tower, I catch a breather to take in the view. I’m up above the fortress and have a good view of the nearby dam. Above me and to my right, a little pagoda sits alone on a ridge that juts out from the mountainside.

The Great Wall is already turning into the Great Stairway of China. The wall has narrowed into a steep staircase that leads to the next tower. At its narrowest point, the Great Wall is just over four feet wide.

The stairs are uneven, too, so  so it’s really even more appropriate to call the Great Stairway of China the Great Uneven Stairway of China. Their unevenness makes the going tougher because it’s impossible to find any kind of rhythm. Emperor Qin’s achievements included standardizing money and standardizing the written language. Why couldn’t he standardize steps?

On my way up, I pass a stair sweeper singing to himself as he swishes his switch broom in what might be rhythm to his song, although I can’t quite tell over the throbbing of my heartbeat in my ears.

As I near the second tower, the Great Staircase of China turns into the Great Winding Staircase with a Single Rickety Handrail of China. The path switches back on itself precariously as it rises into the cool shade of the tower.

Workers constructed towers every 300-500 meters. The Wall has about twelve hundred of them in all. Builders averaged about one tower every five days for five straight years. They served as observation decks, weapons storage, and battle platforms. Today they serve as places for tired climbers to rest.

Traffic thins out past the second tower. No more parasols. No more high heels. I hear people huffing and puffing in German, French and Australian. “Chinese keep going,” says one man, pausing for a scrap of shade. “Japanese stop.”

All along the stairs, people cling to shade the way a lizard clings to a rock in the sun.

I finish a flight of stairs and come to a straight stretch of about fifty feet or so. I can’t stop because it’s in the open sun. The temperature is in the mid-nineties. Sweat rivers down my back, and I can feel my brain drying up. I am glad I brought water with me. “You don’t need to carry any up with you,” Carl had said. “You can buy some at the top.” That’s assuming a person makes it.

There’s a tourist shop at the third tower. A tourist shop? Who has to lug all that kitsch up here to sell it? “T-shirt?” a vendor asks. “Hat? Chinese lantern? Painting?”

How about some oxygen?

Hikers sprawl in every bit of shade. “Enough is enough,” one British woman says. “It’s not clever to keep going, is it?” “It’s a bloody long way to the top,” her husband replies.

Red-tasseled good luck charms hang from a display. I already feel lucky for having made it this far.

I continue up, falling in behind a young woman who has “Hongda” written along the bottom cuffs of her Capri’s. I have no idea what the word means. It’s just something to focus on so I don’t have to think about dying. She also wears ankle socks with pom-pom bunnies on them. I want to stop again, but I urge myself onward. “Keep your eyes on the bunnies,” I say. “Follow the bunnies.”

The girl stops to ask me for the time, which halts my pace. She keeps going; I begin to worry about the Great Cardiac Arrest of China.

I notice the little lonely pagoda I had been measuring my progress against is suddenly way, way below and behind me. I keep trudging upward.

The next tower reeks with the stench of urine. There are pools of it under each window. I don’t stay although I desperately want the shade.

The next leg of the journey is relatively easy: an uphill ramp that passes another shop. I don’t even have the breath to say “Booyah” to the vendors as they try to sell me something.

The ramped section leads to sixteen steps downward—agonizing because those are sixteen steps of lost ground I’ll have to make up. I plod along.

I hear cheers above me. As other members of the group make it to the top, those already there give cheers. I get one, too, when I finally arrive. I am number twenty-two out of twenty-four and, as it turns out, the last one who’ll make it all the way. It took me an hour and twenty minutes.

“I made it in twenty minutes,” Carl tells me. “Beat my old record by two minutes!”

I’m too exhausted to throw him from the battlements. Instead, I smile and nod and take in the scenery. Beijing’s famous smog is gone. The day is sunny and clear and glorious, and I can see the Wall wrap itself over mountain after mountain into the distance.

It is one of the most accomplished feelings I’ve ever experienced.

Now I have been to China. I have climbed the Great Wall.