Excused Lame

Where else but the New York Times?

To the Editor:

Rarely have I felt that my identity was such a liability as I do these days. Born to East African Muslim parents of Indian descent, I can hardly say that I am removed from the ramifications of prejudice and racism that this failed attack on New York will bring.

It makes me all the more upset because if you talk to anyone who knows me, despite my being born in Canada, New York is where my heart lies. I am writing to express my frustration about what this means for the rest of us.

I hope that we do not return to those frightening days post-9/11 when fear justified stereotyping based on color and religion.

Or, as the famous headline says, “Muslims fear backlash from tomorrow’s train bombing.”

Beware of Greeks losing gifts:

Greek government workers shut down schools and hospitals and disrupted flights as demonstrators occupied the Acropolis in an escalation of protests against 30 billion euros ($40 billion) of additional wage cuts and tax increases unveiled this week.

The ADEDY union federation, which represents more than 500,000 civil servants having their pensions and pay slashed under measures announced May 2 by Prime Minister George Papandreou, will hold a rally at midday joined by striking teachers. A general strike, the third this year, is planned for tomorrow, with private-sector workers due to participate.

“Protests will increase,” said Spyros Papaspyros, the head of ADEDY. “Opting for the easy path of cutting wages and pensions can’t be accepted.”

Public-sector employees should never, never be able to walk off their jobs without keeping on walking.  It is one thing for a private-sector union to strike against a company, which is all part of the balance between Labor and Capital.  But what “profit” is there for a private-sector union to get a greater share of?  The taxes that citizens are compelled to pay.

If there’s a strike against Ford, I can buy a Honda instead.  If police or teachers go out on strike, what alternatives do people have?  I would want public-sector employees to be able to find relief for grievances but they should never be able to withhold their labors without losing their jobs as well.  The ever-underrated Calvin Coolidge was wise to say during the Boston police strike, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anyone, anywhere, any time.”

Many years ago I wrote on a defunct version of this poor little blog about toy breeds:

Unlike the calm aloofness of the Sighthound, the massive dignity of the Working dog, the headstrong all-weather exuberance of the Sporting dog (“Great day for hunting! Let’s play two!”), the fierce courage of the Terrier or the intensity of the Herding dog, the typical Toy is a smug little bundle of fur, teeth and attitude, yapping at the world through the undeserved prominence of his mistress’s arms.

Well, perhaps I was a bit harsh on the little dears.  It’s not their fault that they were originally bred to attract fleas from their masters and ease the menstrual cramps of their mistresses.

Let us put the blame instead for what Toys and Toydom are on their two-legged owners.  Whereas owners of other breeds treat their dogs like dogs, Toy owners frequently treat their little charges like decerebrate children or Ming vases, oblivious to the world around them and its dangers.

Case the first.  At most shows it is prominently noted in the premium list and judging program, “no crating or grooming at ringside.”  The typical Toy exibitor somehow thinks this notice doesn’t apply to them.  Go by a ringside where Toys are being shown and the exibitors have wheeled their stacks of crates and set up their little grooming tables right in the walkway.  People complain, stern warnings are announced on the PA system:  nothing changes.

Case the second.  Last Thursday I drove out to Beaumont to set up some equipment for this weekend’s shows.  By the time my lovely bride arrived on Friday afternoon, some Toy exhibitors had set up next to us.  My lovely bride had Knight, in whose prey instinct he is truly his mother’s son, up on the grooming table.  As she was working on him, our Toy fancier was fondling and cooing to her little one as she fluffed up its coat, practially waving it around under our boy’s nose.  As a good sighthound, Knight was salivating and ready to lunge, attached to the grooming table or not.  A request to a Toy owner under these circumstances to kindly watch out and not provoke temptation usually brings some variation of the response, “Well, I hope you’ll keep him under control!”  Yes, if you’re going to do that I can, frequently at the cost of a sprained shoulder.

To my horror, I found that Blogger, through which this poor neglected little blog was published, would no longer support FTP publishing as of May 1.  Due to their opaque instructions and clunky dashboard, it proved impossible to keep my domain within Blogger, requiring me to move to new digs. 

So here we are at WordPress.  All the furniture has been moved but new paint is needed on the walls and new carpeting on the floor.  I’ll be a few days working with this but I hope that in the end we’ll have a spiffy new look as well as more posts.

I got back last night from a business trip to Florence, Kentucky. Despite the additional cost of checked bags ($25 per bag on Delta), the current TSA security makes the spendthrift option a much more attractive one.

What happens if I try to take my bag through the line? Liquids in containers no more than 3 oz., all in a one-quart bag. Make sure you take the damn thing out of your suitcase so they can inspect it. Laptop? Take it out of the case. And so on and so on, whatever new policy they think up that day for that airport. Not that all the other indignities we’re put through make us any safer.

By the time I get off the plane and get to the baggage claim, the wait for my bag is rarely more than a couple of minutes. My experience is that it takes just as long for me to claim it in the jetway. I’m not going to use my laptop anyway; I bring a book to read instead. So why should I have some TSA goon pawing through my belongings just so I can drag my suitcase through the airport?

Up to Navasota this weekend for the Brazos Valley KC shows. There are some shows I like going to because the drive there is a pleasant one. This is bluebonnet season in Texas and we passed by fields of bluebonnets and indian paintbrushes on the drive up Highway 6 from Hempstead. Frequently we saw cars stopped along the side of the side of the road and people taking pictures with their children or dogs posed in the flowers.

Lacey’s son Knight (Ch. Soyara’s Sir Agravaine Ex Libris CGC) is back with us for a while for my lovely bride to campaign. He’s only just beginning his specials career here, but we’re really starting to see a lot of his great mama in Knight, particularly the same great attitude to showing.

On Saturday, Knight was Best of Breed under Roger Hartinger and later June Penta gave our boy a Group 4, his first group placement. We trust it won’t be his last.

A graf from a CNBC story about the sovereign debt problems in Europe:

Greece remains in the eye of the storm but this cyclone has an unpredictable trajectory and we should all wake up to the fact that it is not just the “European periphery” that investors will focus on. As the ERM crisis showed us in the early 1990’s, and the East Asia crisis reminded us again a few years later, the path of international speculation rarely abates before every stone has been upturned.

So wake up and get reminded that the cyclone’s trajectory won’t stop its turning up every stone. Right?

The Arts and Letters Daily header on an article by Clive Crook on the relative superiority of the American and European economic systems is “Any European intellectual can easily tell you: Europe, not America, offers the world the best model of social and economic life.” Well, it might… for a European intellectual, offering every intellectual’s dream: influence without responsibility.

What can we say about Europe’s influence in the world today? Let’s consider your Uncle Bob. Back in the day, Bob was really something. Scholar and athlete. His picture is on the university football team’s Hall of Fame and he’s still remembered for that last-second 75-yard touchdown run against Tech back in 1956.

Bob seemed to have the world at his feet. But that was then. Alas, Bob made some really bad decisions. Got into a couple of fights that cost him dearly. Made some terrible investments. There was a marriage that turned sour and cost him a lot of money.

Bob, in short, hasn’t done anything of note for the last many years but still talks as though he was something big and thinks he knows better than you. He’s around your place a lot because he hasn’t anything better to do. He complains about the way you keep your house but when you ask him if he’d help with something he complains that his “bad knee” is acting up again.

Bob’s getting a little soft in the head and, frankly, Bob’s a bore and often irritating but you don’t tell him to go to hell as you’re often tempted to because, after all, you’re family.

Europe that is home to the supercilious intellectual class pointing out America’s faults is your Uncle Bob, once powerful but now played-out and impotent but still pretentious. We may admire Ancient Greece as the birthplace of democracy, but no one turns to the Greeks today for lessons in political science.

Oliver Stone is working on a 10-part documentary entitled, “The Secret History of the United States.” Mr. Stone, whose last foray into history – “JFK” – lionized the absurd theories of a megalomanical district attorney, says that Hitler was “enabled by Western bankers.”

This blog now brings to you other stunning revelations seen in previews of Mr. Stone’s new work:

– Andrew Jackson? Gay as a French horn.

– Kinetoscopes of the McKinley assassination show that Leon Czolgosz could not have fired both bullets. A conspiracy of Rough Riders figures strongly.

– Grace Coolidge wore a form-fitting leather outfit while tying up and whipping her husband Calvin.

– Franklin D. Roosevelt’s illness was covered up by the press during the 1944 campaign (Oh, wait…)

I was listening to the stream from WGUC on the computer last night while reading. A piece I’d never heard of by a composer I’d never heard of was announced: Lux Aeterna by Morten Lauridsen.

From the first few measures, I was transfixed. Scored for chorus and small orchestra, this is an extraordinary work. In five sections and based on the Catholic Requiem mass, each section refers to light and the work as a whole may be thought of as a movement from darkness to light. Now pungent, now serene, now simple, now complex, Lauridsen’s writing never fails to go straight to the heart. We may be reminded in its mood of the Fauré Requiem but Lux Aeterna stands on its own, transcending the modern and the ancient to embrace the eternal longing for peace and rest.

The performance was by the Los Angeles Master Chorale conducted by Paul Salamunovich. Recommended enthusiatically.

The special election in Massachusetts appears to be, at the very best, uncomfortably close for the Democrats’ taste. More pessimistically, the seat may well be lost to the Republican candidate.

How is that possible, some may cry. After all, this was the seat held by Ted Kennedy, who held the seat for 46 years.

But why must a Senate seat held by a member of one party for many years be retained by that party on the death or retirement of the incumbent? History is full of examples of party switches:

1983: Henry Jackson (D-WA), who held the seat for 31 years, was succeeded by Dan Evans (R)

1968: Carl Hayden (D-AZ), who held the seat for 42 years, was succeeded by Barry Goldwater (R)

1974: George Aiken (R-VT), who held the seat for 33 years, was succeeded by Patrick Leahy (D)

1978: James Eastland (D-MS), who held the seat for 36 years, was succeeded by Thad Cochrane (R)

1988: John Stennis (D-MS), who held the seat for 41 years, was succeeded by Trent Lott (R)

2004: Ernest Hollings (D-SC), who held the seat for 38 years, was succeeded by Jim DeMint (R)

2008: Pete Domenici (R-NM), who held the seat for 34 years, was succeeded by Tom Udall (D)

The affection voters have for a long-standing incumbent may be for them alone, not the party. The politics of states can change over a long tenure. Or maybe, as in Massachusetts, voters may be sufficiently ticked off at events to throw the bums out. Even so, if Martha Coakley wasn’t an unattractive candidate of almost limitless ineptitude this one would be in the bag for the Democrats.

A rich vein of Coakley voters waits to be tapped.

With Lacey no longer with us, we wanted her sister Silver to have a companion as a house dog and decided on Silver’s half-sister Belle. We figured that quiet, unassuming, unassertive Belle would be the perfect house-mate for our old lady.

We were wrong. Within days of coming into the house, Belle went completely off the rails: taking things off counters and out of containers, chasing Fluffy the cat (God, what a name!), taking over the only bed in the laundry room, sneaking through doors we opened a crack to get through, shoving her way into first place to lick off plates and pans, loudly reminding us at 8:00 PM sharp to start making her dinner and stomping her feet and tossed her head in anticipation of getting it. In short and in sum, she was displaying all the privileges regally assumed by her late half-sister. It’s as though even if Lacey was no longer with us in body, her spirit had been assumed by another.

Odd. Indeed, eerie.

The Vengeance Trio from Act II of Götterdämmerung, with Birgit Nilsson as Brünnhilde, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Gunther and Gottlob Frick as Hagen. Georg Solti conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

From all the Hounds of Soyara:

Ch. Soyara’s Silver Angel JC (Silver)
Ch. Bokhara Soyara Fjor (Fred)
Ch. Soyara’s A Joy to Behold (Joy)
Ch. Soyara’s Beautiful Dreamer (Diva)
Ch. Soyara’s Singer of Songs (Alan)
Ch. Soyara’s Faith Tis Herself (Faith)
Ch. Soyara’s Magnolia Honey (Honey)
Ch. Soyara’s Southern Belle (Belle)
Ch. Soyara’s Sir Agravaine Ex Libris (Knight)
Ch. Soyara’s Ace of Spades (Sarge)
Ch. Soyara’s The Force of Destiny (Ali)
Ch. Soyara’s Smoke and Mirrors (Smudge)
Ch. Soyara’s Cunning Little Vixen (Tess)
Soyara’s Gandalf of Dana Dan (Stanley)
Soyara’s Against All Odds (Chance)
Soyara’s The Flying Dutchman (Dutch)
Soyara’s Ilya Murometz (Ilya)
Soyara’s Celeste Aida (Aida)
Soyara’s Carmen Fantasy (Carmen)

Plus Talker the Whippet and Fluffy (God, what a name!) the cat.