Month: September 2004

While others adored Simon and Garfunkle’s “The Sounds of Silence,” my favorite song on the album was always “I am a Rock:”

I am a Rock

A winter’s day
In a deep and dark december;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
I’ve built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

Don’t talk of love,
But I’ve heard the words before;
It’s sleeping in my memory.
I won’t disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.
If I never loved I never would have cried.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.

The irony, of course, is that I’m much closer to the person portrayed in this song than I’d like to be. However, knowing I am this person also makes me realize the futility of trying to hide behind poetry and books.

Stangely, while poetry that portrays the sorrow of human existence puts us in touch with a certain kind of “truth,” it also separates us from that truth and makes it possible to see it without actually feeling it. Poetry, and perhaps literature in general, is a double-edged sword, isolating us from the world while still drawing us to that world.

It’s possible to find a kind of happiness dwelling in the world of books. I find it easy to retreat to books the same way I’m drawn to playing D&D games, endlessly defeating the virtual forces of evil in adventure after adventure.

Unfortunately, when you put down the book or turn off the computer, the real world, at least the real world as portrayed by the media, is still there, threatening to overwhelm you.

Following up on an earlier posting about Chechnya, I was pleasantly surprised to find an in-depth article about Russia’s reaction to the Beslan massacre at
The Christian Science Monitor and another viewpoint at alt.muslim.

For me the most ominous note in the Monitor article was the one that noted that “Critics charge that the brutality of Russian forces in Chechnya has itself enabled radicals, and paved the way for support by groups such as Al Qaeda. When Putin came to power in 1999, he vowed to “rub out” the Chechen rebels “in the outhouse.” But today terror attacks continue and even his policy of “Chechenization” is in disarray.” Sound familiar? And equally ineffective?

The alt.muslim article provides more background from a muslim viewpoint, while a comment points out that parts of the Islamic community are beginning to speak out against these kinds of terrorist tactics.

not taken today. Well, technically speaking it was the trail not taken, but even prose writers are allowed poetic license when it comes to producing a headline.

You’d think that after hiking Pt Defiance Park’s trails for over a year I’d know all the trails by now. You’d be wrong. I proved that again today when I managed to take an unmarked trail that I haven’t taken before and somehow managed to get myself lost. Maybe not lost
, but certainly disoriented.

My first reaction when I realized I no longer had a clue where I was, or even a clear idea of how to retrace my route, was a little burst of sweat, which might have been masked by the fact that I was already sweating rather profusely from walking three miles with a dog that always insists on pulling on the leash no matter how fast I go. That was followed by a single explicative. “Shit.”

There’s always something disconcerting about being lost, particularly for someone like myself who prides himself on his hiking skills. After all, I taught map reading in the Army, managed not to get lost in the jungles of Vietnam, and have spent much of the last forty years hiking the woods of the Northwest, usually without a map.

If it hadn’t been so overcast today and the forest hadn’t been so thick, I might at least have been able to figure out what direction I was going by noting the location of the sun. Failing that, though, I was left with little idea of which branch of the trail to take.

The wisest choice would probably have been to retrace my route, which I probably could have managed to do with Skye’s help. He probably knew exactly where we were all the time, and, if he hadn’t been so concerned with protecting me from all the other dogs using our trails, he might even have shown me the way home.

Generally too stubborn to given in to the the wisest idea, I pushed on, determined to see where this trail would take me. Unfortunately it took me to yet another set of branching trails. By now I’d run into a couple of walkers, and could have asked for directions, or at least asked if they knew what direction I was headed in, but being a man I decided to push on in the direction I was headed and figure it out by myself.

A couple of miles later I found out exactly where it was headed, the far side of the park from home. When I hit the Puget Sound, I decided it was time to turn back since I hadn’t brought my kayak with me. Once I finally knew where I was, though it was relatively easy to find my way home.

I finally got home about an hour later and quite a bit more tired than usual. I’m sure I learned something from this experience, though it’s unclear exactly what that might be. Hopefully the extra miles at least made me a little stronger and better able to cope with getting lost the next time.

According to recent stories from the
BBC and
The Christian Science Monitor the middle class continues to suffer under the current administration.

The BBC’s article is largely based on a recently released report by the Economic Policy Institute, a “non-profit and non-partisan think tank.” According to their report ” average wages have fallen, job satisfaction has declined and the rich-poor gap widened.”

Worst of all, the BBC reports that despite an improving economy the institute found that wages were “eroding,” largely accounted for by the fact that “annual wages for staff in contracting industries were an average of $51,270 a year, while those in expanding were paid just $30,368.” In other words, more and more middle class workers are being forced to move from manufacturing jobs to service jobs.

The report also found that “the ranks of the poor grew by 1.3 million people to 35.9 million,” increasing evidence of the growing gap between rich and poor.

Using entirely different sources, the Christian Science Monitor article echoes most of these findings. Michael Alter of SurePayroll Inc calls this recovery a “”pay less’ economy.” Statistics tend to back his observations up, for as the Monitor article points out the median income in America fell by $1,500 between 2000 and 20003.

Statistics from FactCheck.org indicate that the statistical middle class, those between $25,000 and $75,000 per year, has declined by 1.2 percent while households making less than $25,000 grew by 1.5 percent.

Some economists have begun to wonder whether California’s “hourglass economy,” an economy where bottom level and top level jobs grow faster than middle income jobs, isn’t a bellweather of America’s future.

Let’s hope not, because the American Dream, and the dream of democracy itself, is dependent on a growing middle class.