Hurt Feelings on Wall St.

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As he often does, Paul Krugman’s analysis in his NY Times column today totally captures the moment. He begins the piece, titled “Egos and Immortality,” like this:

“In the wake of a devastating financial crisis, President Obama has enacted some modest and obviously needed regulation; he has proposed closing a few outrageous tax loopholes; and he has suggested that Mitt Romney’s history of buying and selling companies, often firing workers and gutting their pensions along the way, doesn’t make him the right man to run America’s economy. Wall Street has responded — predictably, I suppose — by whining and throwing temper tantrums. And it has, in a way, been funny to see how childish and thin-skinned the Masters of the Universe turn out to be.”

This critique reminded me of the anecdote in a NY Times Sunday Magazine story from a few weeks ago that one denizen of Wall Street, in a meeting with an Obama emissary, urged that the president should give a major speech, similar to the one he gave on America and relations during the ’08 campaign, explaining why Americans should not revile the financial industry. I was struck then, and again in Krugman’s column, by the bloated self-importance that these folks assign to themselves and their industry. Many people, after causing a major debacle would be somewhat sheepish about insisting that one is entitled to regain a privileged place at the table, but not this crowd. I’d have imagined that crashing the economy would induce humility in those responsible, but clearly not so. And of course, the same is true for Republicans who act as if the 2000-2008 period never occurred.

Krugman ends his hard-hitting column this way:

“Think about where we are right now, in the fifth year of a slump brought on by irresponsible bankers. The bankers themselves have been bailed out, but the rest of the nation continues to suffer terribly, with long-term unemployment still at levels not seen since the Great Depression, with a whole cohort of young Americans graduating into an abysmal job market. And in the midst of this national nightmare, all too many members of the economic elite seem mainly concerned with the way the president apparently hurt their feelings. That isn’t funny. It’s shameful.”
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#FridayReads, May 25–“Bill Veeck” and “BEA Buzz Books”

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#FridayReads, May 25–Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick, Paul Dickson’s superb life of the progressive-minded baseball team owner, filled with fascinating social history and baseball lore. Also dipping into BEA Buzz Books, the ebook collecting 30 top books to be featured at this year’s Book Expo America, with selections from Neil Young’s Waging Heavy Peace, Mark Helprin’s In Sunlight and In Shadow, and many others.

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A Likable Low-Tech Campaign Ad

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This is a nice piece of homegrown political advertising from Jeff Barth, a Democratic hopeful for a South Dakota congressional seat currently held by Republican Kristi Noem. Before he can face her, however, Barth has a Democratic challenger for the nomination, Matt Varilek, a former aide to Senator Tim Johnson. Varilek is much better financed than Barth and probably favored. Still, I like Barth’s approach in this ad–plain-spoken, clever props (note the mannequin, chess board, rifle and rubber chicken) with dashes of humor. And as a Rapid City Journal story reported earlier this week, Barth has come out in support of marriage equality, while Varilek opposes it. This is a five minute video so it’s probably going only to get fully seen on the Web, but it’s so authentic I bet clips will also show in the local TV market. I like Jeff Barth and his ad. I encourage you to spread it around. For my part, I’m also going to his website to make a contribution to his campaign. H/t @JamilSmith and @TimothyMurphy

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A Renovated Digital Home for the CBC Archives

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Cool stuff on the Web from the CBC Archives is now accessible to virtually all computer users. The national broadcaster of Canada goes back to 1936 but until now their Internet archive was more frustrating than enlightening. Now, however a post on the CBC’s in-house blog explains that the old site has been updated, with a side benefit that MAC users–formerly shut out–should now have as full access as folks on Windows machines. It does look much better now and you can savor TV and radio clips of musicians Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Glenn Gould, writers Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Farley Mowat, and Pierre Berton, comedians Bruce McCullough and Scott Thompson from Kids in the Hall and Catherine O’Hara of SCTV and Patrick Watson* (the longtime broadcaster, not the current day musician), to name only a handful. I should add it’s not all about the artistic luminaries–the correspondents and journalists who’ve long made up the CBC, such as Patrick Watson* (the longtime broadcaster, not the current day musician) and the late Barbara Frum, co-host for many years of “As it Happens,” Canada’s “All Things Considered,” represent great broadcast talent. This archive is a veritable youtube for Canuckaphiles and honorary Canadians like me. For a taste of one artist, enjoy this 2 1/2 minute clip on stellar rapper Cadence Weapon, celebrating his selection in 2009 as Poet Laureate of Edmonton, Alberta.

*In 1979, one year after my family bookstore Undercover Books opened for business, Patrick Watson published an excellent suspense novel titled Alter Ego. My brother Joel read it and wrote to Patrick inviting him to visit our store. With the participation of his publisher, Viking, Patrick visited our store for an autographing and a great book party that moved from the store to my family’s nearby home. I recall that Patrick, an accomplished pilot, flew his own small plane from Toronto to Cleveland. I bumped into him in 2003 on the convention floor at Book Expo Canada. We had a pleasant reunion. He’s a grand fellow and has had a fascinating career as broadcaster, actor, author, and engaged citizen. Apart from the thriller Alter Ego, Patrick is also the author of a book in my art book library, Fasanella’s City, on the American painter known for his colorful canvases that depict May Day celebrations and demonstrations of workers’ rights amid clamorous scenes of urban density.

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Ruth Gruber’s Photojournalism at Soho Photography

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To mark Jewish American Heritage Month, Open Road Media–which has recently brought out five ebooks by my longtime author Ruth Gruber–has published a celebratory post on the Open Road Blog. In addition, Ruth’s photojournalism, for which she’s received the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award, is on exhibit through June 2 at the gallery Soho Photography on White Street in Tribeca. Among Ruth’s mentors was Edward Steichen, who exhorted her to “Take pictures with your heart.” I recommend you read Ruth’s inspiring books and go see her photographs, including the two accompanying this post. The image above was taken when Ruth was sent to Alaska in 1940 by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, her boss in the FDR administration; the one below was taken aboard the prison ship Runnymede Park, on which the refugees from the Exodus were forcibly sequestered during the summer of 1947, a chronicle that Ruth tells in her book Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched a Nation, which is illustrated with more than 100 of her photographs. I published it with Ruth in hardcover in 1999, and in trade paperback in 2008. It is still only available in hard copy, and is not yet among the ebooks from Open Road. For the record, the titles available as ebooks are Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 WWII Refugees and How They Came to America; Inside of Time: My Journey from Alaska to Israel; Raquela: A Woman of Israel; Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman; and Ahead of Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent (also the title of an excellent documentary covering mostly the first four decades of Ruth’s life). For readers’ handy reference, I’ve previously blogged about Ruth Gruber, here and here.

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Celebrating Woody Guthrie at the Brooklyn Folk Festival

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I was at the opening of the Brooklyn Folk Festival last night when the upcoming 100th birthday of Woody Guthrie was observed. There were a number of great performances and I’ll be heading out there again later today for Day II. If you’re looking for live music tonight this is going to be a great place to hang out. The venue is in downtown Brooklyn, at 345 Jay Street near Metrotech, very close to an A train subway stop. Highlights of Day I included, but by no means were limited to these memorable moments:

  • Hearing Ernie Vega and Samoa Wilson of Four Flowers sing Woody’s “I Ain’t Got No Home,” whose melody seemed a close cousin to the equally classic, “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum,” also the name of a 30s movie with Al Jolson;
  • listening to John Longhi read from his father’s memoir, Woody, Cisco, and Me, that chronicles the time the three friends shared as merchant seamen during WW II;
  • listening to Greenwich Village 60s era folk stalwart John Cohen read from lists of hundreds of song lists that Woody catalogued alphabetically–all the songs that began with the letter ‘H,’ all that began with the letter, ‘L,’ etc. Woody knew hundreds of songs. It was like one of those extravagant lists that John McPhee is wont to put in his long New Yorker pieces. I met Cohen after his reading and told him that what he read from Woody’s notebook (John brought the original valise and notebook with him) was like a symphony in commas;
  • Finally hearing Peter Stamfels, leader of the psychedelic 60s jug band, The Holy Modal Rounders, who was in the house with his current group Ether Frolic Mob. They’re a boisterous seven-piece outfit full of primal hoots and hollers led by Stamfel on banjo and fiddle and his daughter, Zoë Stampfel, who, seated near her dad, played the djumbe drum and really tore up the tracks. John Cohen also sat in with this assemblage.
  • Dennis Lichtman’s Brain Cloud, who played inspired, hot, western swing, and had an amazing vocalist, Tamara Korn, who threw her voice in all sorts of ways, imitating other instruments in the band–clarinet, fiddle, pedal steel, lead guitar–twinning with them in her sweet, darting voice. It was something special to behold/behear.

As I posted on this blog a couple days ago, Eli Smith directs the festival, now in its fourth year, in coordination with a Brooklyn cultural institution called the Jalopy Theatre. I learned last night that up until a few weeks they believed the festival would be held in the same venue as last year, which included some outdoor space, but it suddenly became unavailable to them; fortunately, they found an alternate venue. It’s a converted hardware store in downtown Brooklyn, which is quite spacious and conveniently located near the Jay St. stop on the A train. Eli and his cohorts did a fabulous job of converting the space and lending to it a theatre-like ambiance with stage lighting, maroon curtains all around the stage, and handsome murals evocative of old Brooklyn and New York harbor. They are to be congratulated for figuring all this out at the veritable last minute. Photographs that I took last night will be found below. It was a great night and I’m headed back later tonight, and possibly Sunday. I urge you to stop by for this fine example of homegrown, acoustic musical entertainment. // more. . . click through to full post for all photos

 

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#FridayReads, May 18–“Atlantic Fever”, “Anatomy of Injustice,” and “Bad Blood”

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#FridayReads, May 18–Joe Jackson’s Atlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the Atlantic, with a cast of obsessed and scheming aviators who all wanted to make Paris first. Among the schemers is Admiral Richard E. Byrd, whose machinations and manipulations on the stage of world-class feat-making would make him almost as legendary as Lindbergh. In the 1990s and early 2000s I published Jackson’s first three books, including the co-authored Dead Run, with an Introduction by William Styron. Jackson’s a very gifted writer of narrative nonfiction. Kirkus Reviews says of his latest: “With stirring detail and perceptive insight about the pilots and the public, Jackson recaptures the tone and tenor of a frantic era’s national obsession.”

Also reading and finishing two powerful true-crime narratives: Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, Raymond Bonner’s masterful dissection of a flawed and corrupt prosecution of an innocent man; and Casey Sherman’s Bad Blood: Freedom and Death in the White Mountains, a compelling tick-tock of a deadly case I know too well, the violent 2007 episode in New Hampshire, near where I attended Franconia College, when a cop and and a young man he had stopped both ended up shot dead.

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Savoring Great Books with a Dying Parent

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Longtime book world friend Will Schwalbe published a lovely Op-Ed on Mother’s Day, drawn from his forthcoming The End of Your Life Book Club. It opens with Will and his ailing mother in a medical office awaiting a chemotherapy appointment. He asks her what she’s reading–it’s Wallace Stegner’s aptly titled Crossing To Safety. “It was a book that I’d always pretended to have read, but never actually had. That day, I promised her I’d read it.” Soon, over the months of treatment and convalescence until her passing, they find mutual comfort in discussing the books they are reading in a kind personal book club all their own.

It’s touching story, and as I read the column I found myself in Will’s place, glad for the solace provided by these books and the opportunity for closeness shared reading offered them.

Having operated a family-owned bookstore–Undercover Books in Cleveland, Ohio–and later losing both my parents, Earl and Sylvia, and my brother Joel, I look back on all the books we shared and enjoyed over the years. I just have to look at my home library and dozens of memories and conversations come cascading forth, from the novels alone: Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale; Peter Rushforth’s, Kindergarten; Jack Finney’s Time and Again; Mary Tirone-Smith’s The Book of Phoebe; James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss; Howard Frank Mosher’s Disappearances; Philip Kerr’s March Violets; Ernest Hebert’s Dogs of March. This list could go on indefinitely.

Will’s new book will be out in the fall. I’m eager to read it.


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