On error and risking everything

I have been stuck at home for days with a fierce cold.

Hot & sour soup from the local Chinese restaurant was the best medicine, and a steady stream of episodes of The West Wing. Then, when I could read a little (coffee suddenly brings back the focus), Malcolm Gladwell's new bit in The New Yorker about Albert O. Hirschman and how errors in planning lead to innovation - and the first example: the stunning miscalculations that preceded work on the Hoosac Tunnel. 

Gladwell does a great job of pitching Jeremy Adelman's recent biography of Hirschman, but more than that, he reinvigorated for me the notion of a true thinker. Hirschman was an economist who wrote unashamedly about unpredictable outcomes, and the role of creativity in problem solving. Interdisciplinary thinking is what we call it now, but all great thinkers have been able to draw on a broad body of knowledge and a good gut instinct.  

The other current in Gladwell's piece is his characterization of Hirschman as a man of action - and summing up Hirschman's opinion on the choices of exit or voice in responding to problems within an organization. Leaving, being the choice of exit and voice, staying and contributing your opinion, trying to fix something broken from within. The example given in the essay is school vouchers. Quoting Hirschman 'Those who hold power in the lazy monopoly may actually have an interest in creating some limited opportunities for exit on the part of those whose voice might be uncomfortable." Gladwell's argument is that Hirschman wasn't always afraid of the losing battle, or at least of not knowing whether success would be clear.  

This, from a man who fought in the Spanish Civil War, and in World War II brokered deals with gangsters in brothels to sneak Jews out of Nazi territory. An economist who routinely got his hands dirty, one of his enduring lessons must be: You can't always know if it will be worth the fight, but perhaps it is better to fight. 

 

 

 

The simple answer

Troubles come like the toy surprise in the cereal box. You aren't sure what it is until you pull it out and get a look at it. The car and whatever's inside it. The fridge has lost its luster. The rabbit - what the hell is wrong with the rabbit?
Nothing is wrong with the rabbit tonight - but he gave us a scare. Who knew a bunny could sleep so soundly, or be so pissed off when we woke him?

Every news story feels like an attempt to just get a grip on things. Predictability offers a high rate of return - but it isn't real. The economy is going up and down. Joblessness holds its knife to your throat. The election looming in the dictator state - why do they even have an election there when it's so rigged?
Sensible questions often hang in front of a news story with no place to dock - the dirigible of reason incongruent in the political landscape.

There is a simple answer. For everything.
The Taliban thrives in a power vacuum.
Iran prides itself on the farce of democracy. The American economy rides the rails of a broken growth equation.
Real life is not a policy. You don't have a stake in it.
Getting a grip on things - really - requires that you claw your way through, or swim. Context itself becomes our hope, our music.

Free expression in the age of no privacy

There's rain tonight and a wish. Cool air blows in. Midnight beer. The government violating our privacy is all in the news. To be honest, this was, at one time, more of an outrage. Since the PATRIOT Act, it seems we've lost our taste for protecting our privacy. More than a decade ago, I wrote an op-ed defending librarians as they tried to keep patrons' records from being violated. Now, well, it seems like we don't care so much, as long as our government is catching bad guys.

A government is only as good as the standard to which its citizens hold it.
It seems fairly simple to me. Also, Internet privacy is an oxymoron. I use my private phone to say goodnight to my daughter when I am working two blocks up the street. I use oh-so-insecure-Skype every day to talk to my student in Kabul. We discuss the weather, literature, our families, religion, culture, the Taliban, climate change, and sometimes - poetry.

There are plenty of security threats, foreign and domestic.
We pay for a government to protect us. If we do not keep track of what they are doing, they will abuse their power.

Perhaps most important: If freedom of expression is sacrificed by a creeping self-censorship in the name of some ill-conceived unified feeling of security, we've completely lost at our own game.
If we have no privacy, then please, keep the conversation lively and honest.

Night bloom in the first heatwave

Heat has arrived in the little town and everything keeps it.
Brick, concrete, paved streets - even silence is warm as I step out onto the sidewalk just before midnight.

Something in this town is blooming. Some tree or flowering bush has been triggered by the heat, because suddenly the town is swimming in a sweet perfume.

There is nothing special about this town except for its absolute town-ness. The definition of an American town can be found in the crossword of the streets here. The trees mark the sidewalks with authority. Each building speaks with its own beautiful, old voice. Every molecule of the night air is frosted with the sugar from that unknown flower.

The summer night-town promises a boundless intimacy: everything here is yours.