Mercurious at the Movies: April 20, 2013

It's rather in vogue to dislike Tom Cruise these days, and indeed there is much reason to roll your eyes when it comes to reviewing his public persona. The apparent arrogance of the man, the role as Scientology puppet, the carefully orchestrated and controlled PR machine....he's not a fellow that earns a lot of accolades for what he's done with his fame.

But when I think carefully about the movies I've seen featuring Tom Cruise, I have to conclude that there is a certain type of big-budget "B" movie (maybe B-plus) that he's really pretty good at.  And in his occasional turns in self-parody, he's also very good. Among the Tom Cruise movies I've thoroughly enjoyed:  Risky Business, Color of Money, Rain Man, Mission Impossible 1, Magnolia, The Last Samauri, Collateral, Mission Impossible III, Tropic Thunder, Rock of Ages.  In fact, when you look at the entire list of 40 or so films, there are really fewer dogs than you might imagine, given the actor is somebody you'd really like to dislike.  I realized that I very often wince when going into a theater showing a Tom Cruise movie, only to emerge a couple hours later to say to myself "not bad," or even "pretty darned good."

To this list I'll now add Oblivion, a very stylish and surprisingly thoughtful dystopian sci-fi film that features great special effects, but used in a manner that remains subordinate to an even more interesting story line. This isn't "Star Wars," for example (films that always frankly bored me  little with their ridiculous cartoon quality), but much more like "Inception" or "2001" in its visual stylishness and conceptual nature.

It's also a very nice homage to some of the very best classic sci-fi of modern times. It has bit of the best aspects of Star Wars effects, as well as traces of the Matrix, Terminator, Star Trek, Close Encounters, and most significantly, 2001, A Space Odyssey. If you are a fan of modern sci fi classics, you will recognize nods to those films in the imagery and directing.

Now, Tom Cruise's ego is such that he will always be "Movie Star ", and is unlikely to find a more socially conscious position in the Hollywood world, like former pretty-boy actors Brad Pitt and George Clooney pulled off. He could never imagine Cruise working with Terrence Malick in a pure art film, for example. Nor can you really imagine Cruise becoming a politically aware humanitarian spokesman like George Clooney or Ben Affleck. He's too self-absorbed for that.  But really, Tom Cruise needs credit where it's due. Oblivion is really quite a good movie, and may be as good a sci-fi thriller as you'll see this year.

The Spring that Wasn't

There are many, many, many good things about Minnesota life. Really, there are.

This isn't one of them.

The first measurable snow this winter came in the third week of October, 2012.  Six months later, this was the scene that greeted me this morning. This in itself wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that our humid, sultry summers are about 4 months long...this means that of the two pleasant seasons of the year, spring is approximately 3 weeks long, and fall a mere 5 weeks or so.

Sigh. I need to think about that retirement to Costa Rica.

Saturday Book Review, April 13, 2011

Like a lot of people who spent their youths in and around farms and farming culture, I have a bit of distain for the paranoia with which most Americans view ordinary microbes, the obsessive concern with cleanliness so rampant in America.  And there's some justification for this: one theory as to why there is such a high incidence of asthma, allergies, and intestinal problems is that people today are too clean, and don't have healthy mixtures of normal everyday microbes and bacteria. It's been shown for example, that farm kids have relatively few instances of asthma, and the reason is that their systems are more robust through lifelong exposure to animal and soil microbes. The people who get flu regularly always seem like the same people overly concerned about hand-washing and general cleanliness.

But reading David Quammen's Spillover has given me a bit of a chill. The next time I vist a farm or zoo, I'll likely be a little more likely to wash up after scratching the critters under the chin.

Quammen's book is a series of case studies of the epidemiology of various cases of zoonotic illnesses—viral diseases that start in other species and spillover into human populations. Like Richard Preston's Hot Zone (though featuring better science) or Laurie Garret's The Coming Plague (but narrower in focus and more up to date scientifically), Spillover is a fascinating and chilling study of the dynamics by which viral diseases arise in human populations and are identified and combatted by disease control experts.

The book examines many of the diseases with current buzz in popular culture, including HIV, avian influenza, swine flu, and ebola. Contrary to popular opinion though—which is that our courageous scientific community can find the answers to most of these problems—the message coming through is the rueful acknowledgement that for a great many of these diseases, we really know next to nothing about the original hosts of the diseases, not have any real idea of how to control them. Ebola virus, for example, has entirely decimated large populations of chimpanzees an gorillas in many forested regions of Africa, and is 75% fatal whenever it spills over into humans, yet we know absolutely nothing about whether it originates in bats, or birds, or insects, and we know almost as little about how it is transmitted.

A highly recommended book, to be sure, though one that might keep you up nights.

By the way, whenever you are looking for a good book to read, I heartily recommend looking up any list of National Book Award nominees from a recent year. Invariably, you will find excellent suggestions. It is a far better predictor of fine reading than, say, the NYT best-seller list.

Too Much Freedom Can Enslave You

"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites....Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without...Men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions are their fetters."  —Edmund Burke—

 I came upon this quote again in an unusual context recently. David Brooks, in a NYT article syndicated in my local paper, was arguing that the reason Americans are steadily coming around to acceptance of gay marriage is that marriage, by its nature, is a voluntary surrender of personal freedom—two people choosing to relinquish individual freedom for the sake of union. Brooks suggests that because modern culture is now so overwhelmed with demands and exhibitions of personal liberty, people are secretly admiring the contrary impulse toward sacrificing liberty, and are quietly applauding the gay community for their willingness to do just that.

"Johnny has two grandmas" 

A slightly odd argument, to be sure. But the underlying observation about personal liberty and freedom is worth exploring.

I acknowledge a bit of irony that I find Burke's sentiment so appealing these days. As Geezer friends will tell you, in my youth I spoke like some kind of borderline anarchist. But I have lived a good stretch of time now, and have come recognize an interesting paradox:  pure, total freedom is exhausting and diminishing, and you actually become freer when you voluntarily surrender some of your liberty. It's similar to the way in with free-verse poetry is generally gibberish, whereas poets who dedicate themselves to the limitations of iambic pentameter or sonnets can produce masterworks: a life that is lived entirely without boundaries quickly becomes life that is pretty much meaningless.

David Brooks, in this fascinating article (titled "Gay Marriage: A group of Folks Willing to Give up Freedom), argues that modern American life has become so mindlessly dedicated to utter and complete personal liberty that we are no longer very free at all. There is, he says, a backlash beginning among us. The demand of gay culture to be granted the right to marry is paradoxically an self-imposed offer to curtail freedom in order to achieve something more meaningful.

I couldn't agree more with the underlying premise. Here are a handful of observations regarding "libertarian" trends that turn out to be enslaving.

Not Mecurious' wedding. But pretty close. 

 Bypassing marriage. It was once nearly a social must that young adults would eventually settle into married life. In 1979, this was so much the expectation that my partner and I, when we tied the knot at age 23, felt like we were a little late to the party. 34 years later, things could be no more different.

It was also generally expected that children would be conceived and raised within the context of marriage. Young couples did conceive kids, obviously, but in most of these cases the couples quietly got married if a child was conceived. And these marriages were not disastrous, generally, as is sometimes believed today.  Some shot-gun marriages were problematic, sure, but quite a lot of these accidentally necessary marriage went on to be perfectly good lifelong unions. 

Flashforward 34 years and we’re now at a point that among young adults under the age of 30, more live together as non-married couples than as married. There’s nothing wrong with kids testing the waters before tying the knot—Mrs. Mercurious and I did it too, and our own kids are living that way right now to perfectly fine results.

Looking around, though, and you’ll notice that a good many adults are bypassing the committed married life forever. And in most cases they will tell you it’s a matter of “wanting their freedom.” And it has also become perfectly acceptable to conceive kids in these circumstances—I’ve heard teachers tell me that at least 25% of their students have parents who aren’t married.

And if you are married, the freedom to easily leave that marriage if you don't like it is now taken as a given. Easily more than half of all unions end in divorce, and folks with three or four marriages  are no longer uncommon at all. It is, of course, true that we once were too rigid in maintaining marriages where abuse or fatal incompatibility were inherent. But almost everyone who has stuck through the normal good and bad times of a marriage for decades will tell you what a blessing it can be. In a marriage where there is commitment and voluntary surrender of some personal liberty, the reward is the freedom to be yourself without the fear that a partner will flee at the least sign of discomfort. And there is actually considerable freedom in surrendering the narcissism of single life. 

Aren't you glad for the freedom to be a single parent?

A related trend is that of having and raising kids in one-parent households. Sometimes this is the result of flightly partnerships or marriages breaking up, but it’s also quite common for young women to simply choose to have kids alone. This sounds like freedom to choose, of course, on the part of those parents. But how free is a parent who must struggle both to make a living and to nurture and raise kids all alone?  The folks I know who parent this way are pretty much exhausted all the time, with virtually no freedom of relaxation or socialization. Whether straight or gay, making the personal sacrifice to raise kids with a partner surely must increase your genuine freedom in the long run.

Relaxation of drug prohibition.  This is a tricky one, as the insane paranoia of Reagan-era punishment for simple drug use was not something I'd advise returning to. But I seriously question whether it's really wise to make drug use, even for marijuana, broadly legal as seems to be the growing trend.  Society needs to voluntarily set some limits on itself, and I think my youth would have been much impaired without the secret thrill of breaking the law by sneaking an occasional joint. What juvenile thrill is available, if every behavior is judged acceptable and legal and you can choose among dozens of cannabis brands at the medicinal marijuana shop on the corner?

In the words of BB King: "The thrill is gone."

Real freedom, it seems to me, lies in clear consciousness. Did you ever know a drug addict who appeared free? I'm certainly freer now in self-imposed prohibition than I was in the youthful days when occasional chemical abuse was present in my life. 

Even the trend locally toward making liquor available for sale 24 hours a day and seven days a week seems like a bad idea to me. Though no teetotaler, I think occasional self-imposed restraint on this front is a helpful thing.

The collapse of 40-hour work weeks and 5 day work weeks. Time was when it was pretty much a social rule that the workweek ended at 5:00 on Friday afternoon, resumed at 8:00 Monday morning, with the individual work days in between following those same time boundaries. As anybody in the modern workplace knows, though, to get ahead now requires considerably more than that. I actually work a fairly relaxed workweek myself, yet it's entirely common to put in 50 or 55 hours each week, and 60 or 70 occasionally happens. I have friends who routinely work 80 hours a week. We do this, basically, to outperform our peers and thereby make enough money to buy the very nice things available to us.

And yet, the freedom to earn as much money as our energy allows means we've lost the

Today's "starter home."

freedom of unscheduled time in which to enjoy them. Rereading Bill Bryson's "Thunderbolt Kid" memoir recently, I observed his wry comment on just this—two wage earner homes really became a necessity in the late 60s simply because the post-war industrial society converted from war manufacture was offering so many tantalizing toys and products and appliances that you needed two careers in order to afford them.  To our grandparents, the notion that two automobiles are a family necessity would be laughable. Now, for many of us, two cars doesn't seem likely nearly enough.

When geezers like the Professor and I were kids in a small Midwestern town with a predominately Scandinavian culture, it was regarded as an embarrassment and affront to display too many conspicuously expensive things around your home. These days, perfectly good, habitable homes are routinely torn down to make way for monstrous mini-mansions that serve little purpose other than to make the neighbors feel subservient. Yet it’s the owners of these new Taj Mahals who must work like absolute slaves in order to afford the feeling of lordliness.

Lax traffic law enforcement. Generally speaking, getting a traffic ticket these days is pretty hard, compared to my young adult years. On Minnesota freeways, you have to be moving at about 80 mph in a 55 mph zone to even be mildly worried about getting stopped. And basic pedestrian protection is such a joke that the small city of Minneapolis sees, on average, one pedestrian a week killed or gravely injured. (This cuts two ways; walking back from lunch the other day, I observed so many pedestrians ignoring "don't walk" signs while drivers ignored the "walk" permissions, that the entire landscape was one chaotic mess.) 

Drivers ticketed for speeding will now react with righteous indignation, arguing cases in court. "It's my right to drive as I see fit," goes the argument. But traffic laws is one of those prime examples of the benefit of voluntarily giving up freedom to gain the freedom of peace of mind. Without traffic laws (or laws in general) can you imagine how exhausted you'd be, just from the free-for-all of driving a shopping mall on Saturday? I can't see that a highway system dominated by road rage is somehow more free than ones where traffic laws are fully enforced.

Softening of ethical/moral training.  Now, I'm very much for separation of church and state. I really cannot stand the idea of public schools mandating Christian prayer; it's not exactly a religious underpinning that I'm advocating.  But some form of ethical and moral training seems quite necessary in society. The tide began to turn, I think, when it became acceptable for the government to sponsor and encourage state-sponsored gambling. To do so seems exactly opposite to the role government should be taking—which is encourage citizens to be diligent, responsible, and fiscally careful. 

I recently heard an editor propose investment on a book of advice for people who want

Not as much fun as you think.

to "swing" in their romantic/sexual relationships. The idea that such practice is now seen as standard and acceptable is quite strange to anyone who has lived a little while on the planet.  The appeal of this kind of life can only be held by immature young adults holding a deluded sense that they are entitled to utter liberty to do what they want, and who haven't recognized the consequences. As a child of the 60s and 70s, I've certainly known people who thought this kind of life would be enjoyable and interesting. Without exception, these same people in their geezer years acknowledge that it was a horrible mistake, and they are profoundly remorseful for those times. 

(Oddly, the decline of a moral/ethical framework in society on the one hand seems to explain the shrill presence of an ultra-conservative religious right on the other. I strongly suspect that if society at large still had a solid moral underpinning, these wackos would cease to have an audience.)

So my takeaway is this: complete and full personal liberty is frankly a huge pain in the ass. If you have freedom to make each and every choice in life, no matter how trivial the issue, you then are forced to make each and every decision and live with the consequences. It would be exhausting, especially as we get older and simply haven’t the energy for anarchy any longer. Adults (and cultures) who mature from childhood into reasonable adults seem to eventually recognize the merit of surrendering some personal liberty in order to genuinely pursue happiness. Happiness requires carefully selected freedom, not universal liberty. 

But by and large, modern culture today seems to be having trouble maturing.  We seem to labor under the delusion that absolute personal liberty is something that is good for us, and which we deserve from our society. 

Silly us. We deserve better than that.

A Pleasant Downtown Surprise

I found something of a gem today in downtown Minneapolis. Like most cities, our small midwestern enclave has striking little examples of very nice architecture that won't make any national registries but are still very nice in their own way. 

The Lumber Exchange is one such little gem in Minneapolis. It was built in 1885 to serve the bartering of timber goods in the upper midwest, much the same way the grain exchanges began to have their hey-day a few years later. The upper midwest was, of course, densely forested with amazing stands of pine in the 19th century, and this building served as a small "stock exchange" for the buying and selling of lumber moving down the upper Mississippi River and then onward to other US cities and foreign ports. 

(Actually, at the time the Exchange was built, furs and other traded goods could be transported south via river only this far due to white water rapids here, and then had to be transferred. A few years later, when the army corps of engineers constructed the lock-and-dam network to making full length river shipping a possibility, the gain and flour industry that was replacing the timber industry in the upper Midwest would find it possible to ship all the way to New Orleans via the mighty river. But before 1900 or so, the Grain Exchange, and indeed the city of Minneapolis itself, had sprouted because this was the spot where river transportation had to give way to wagons, trains, and other means of transporting traded goods from the north. The stretch of rapids here offered other benefits: it powered mills for sawing the timber into lumber, and later, grinding grain into flour.)

I have walked through this building at least a couple of times a week for five or six years now, because it is connected to other parts of downtown via skyway. Even in good weather, though, the hardwood and marble interior surfaces alway draw my attention. Though I know nothing about architecture, really, I certainly do know what appeals to me, and the Lumber Exchange is one such structure I'll go out of my way to see regularly. 

Today, though, I had to drop off some work-related paperwork at a lawyers office on the sixth floor of the Lumber Exchange building, and for the first time I used the elevator in the building. As I rose to the intended floor, I saw that the back of the elevator was glass paneled, and that once above the third floor, looked out upon an entirely walled off atrium that extended all the way from the third to the 12th floor. The enclosed atrium had a modern water feature in it, and was surrounded by small patio tables and park benches. Best of all, nobody at all seemed to be using it, even though we were in the heart of lunch hour. 

After running my errand, I got off on the third floor and entered the atrium. It had been formed, I saw, by closing off the alleys to seal the space between three separate building occupying the entire city block: the L-shaped Lumber Exchange, a modern addition to that structure added in perhaps the 1960's, and another building that is otherwise pretty ordinary. The roof area had then framed in by timbers and lined with skylights far above. The result was a restful little indoor park area, with dim diffused lighting offered by the sky far above that is augmented by period street lamps and fixtures attached to the old brickwork that once formed the back outside walls of the buildings within the back alleys. 

For the half hour I sat there quietly, not another soul appeared, and I realized I'd discovered a rather perfect place for a bit of quiet reflection on those days when the hustle of the office and downtown gets on my nerves. The sound and sight of running water from the fountain gives this space a very nice Zen-like aura.  On warm summer days, I have another outdoor park that serves this function, but on cold and rainy days (and they are plentiful in Minnesota) this new refuge will serve nicely. 

Such discoveries are the reason I'm constantly glad that we moved our office from sterile suburbs to an urban downtown. 

Spring in Minneapolis

Dateline Minneapolis. March 27, 2013

Her Holiness, the lawn nun, emerges from winter hibernation. 

For One Day Only..

For one day only, public policy makers seem to behaving somewhat rationally.

First, on yesterday's "This Week" ABC news program, we heard GOP strategist Karl Rove say that he can imagine the next Republican presidential candidate supporting gay marriage.  Now, Karl Rove (former adviser to George W. Bush) is such an evil little troglodyte that your immediate thought must be to wonder at what his secret agenda is, exactly. You can imagine him saying audacious things simply to ignite a firestorm of conservative indignation, for example.  But for the sake of graciousness, let's just imagine that this represents a bit of intelligence making its presence felt within the conservative right wing.

Then, and most encouraging for me, was a local state case in which Administrative Law judge Barbara Nielson ruled in favor of the Minnesota Department of Education in upholding the Department of Education's curriculum guidelines for social studies in public schools.

A group call Education Liberty Watch (along with a group of Republican legislators) had filed suit, arguing that the Department of education had ignored the concept of "American exceptionalism", removed the role of God-given rights, and called the US a 'democracy' rather than a 'republic' at the core of its social studies curriculum.  Judge Nielsen did not find these arguments to have merit.

(By the way, Education Liberty Watch is the Minnesota equivalent of those groups in places like Texas and Mississippi who have successfully forced schools into teaching evolution as merely a theory that offers a different, unproven alternative to the REAL truth of 'intelligent design'. Minnesota, too, has some folks out there on the fringe.)

At the heart of the argument for our Minnesota group is their belief that Americans somehow enjoy special blessings from God Above, causing Him to favor our form of government above all others. Secondly, they find something sacrilegious in the curriculum saying that our rights are bestowed by citizen agreement, not by God. The reason for the group's last dispute—that calling our form of government a democracy rather than a republic is sinister—is less clear. Perhaps it simply had to do with panicky fear of anything that represents change of any kind.

A Minnesota judge, at last, recognized insanity when it showed itself openly, and ruled in favor of logic. The Minnesota Department of Education, she said, had indeed weighed all points of view and opinions, and had selected its curriculum in a way that was logical and reasonable. It was a nice way of saying "go away, nut-cases."

It's a very safe bet to assume our policy makers will continue to make me fume in the near future. So all the more reason to celebrate small blessings when you can.