nathan cushing

Essay

2007-04-30T12:22:00.000-05:00

American Sex:

Rethinking the Intention of Sex Education

Sex education has, and continues to be, an issue of much debate. The moral implications that sexual intercourse carries are numerous. Should one be married before committing to sex? What about unintended pregnancy? Sexually transmitted diseases? These are a few of the many concerns parents, teachers, friends, and lovers have when faced with human sexuality. The belief that sex education provides an impetus for premarital sex has largely dictated public sex education. Thusly, educators can be pressured to avoid culturally “taboo” topics. This has stifled objective, scientific discussion of human sexuality, which restricts broader cultural sexual beliefs and practices. Through examination of previous sex education policy that arose from public health concerns, debunking conservative and liberal beliefs regarding sex education, and understanding the strong and broader influence that education has on culture, one sees that the American sex education system is inefficient.

Despite the constitutional notion of a separation between church and state, the United States has been largely built around traditional Judeo-Christian ethics and morals. The union of marriage between one man and one woman is one of the highest attainments under God. The book of Hebrews in the New Testament says, “Let marriage be honored in every way and the marriage bed be kept undefiled, for God will judge fornicators and adulterers” (Heb. 13:04). In the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament to Christians) there is an entire chapter (eighteen in the book of Leviticus) devoted to improper sexuality. These divine instructions include forebidance of various arrangements of incestuous sex.

What is most interesting is that there is no mention in Leviticus, or any other book in the bible, that specifically addresses premarital sex. Instead, one usually finds broad phrases such as “sexual immorality” or the specific mention of adultery, which Jesus does in chapter five of Matthew. Much of the focus on sexual purity arises from the two birth narratives in Matthew and Luke that write of Jesus’ mother, Mary, being a virgin. The reverence that Mary had among followers—and still does in the Catholic and Orthodox churches—in the early Church articulated an unwritten moral goal for young women. By remaining a virgin, one could ascribe to the notions of purity held by the Virgin Birth narratives. Any disruption of this ideal became antithetical to the desire of God.

In his book Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Century, Jeffrey P. Morgan writes of the impact that the underlying religious views towards sex affecting sexual education:

…most Americans persisted in viewing adolescent sexuality—when they considered it at all—as an aberration and a moral failure…[sex educator’s] message focused on preventing disease and immorality rather than on preparing for sexual maturity. (99)

If the cultural ideal was for individuals to avoid sex before marriage, it made no sense to approach sexual education in an open, objective format. To the pious Christian, who was also a “sex educator,” why would they encourage immoral behavior? The way sex education was introduced into the country was through the need to alleviate social health concerns.

In the book Sexuality Education Across Cultures: Working with Differences, Janice M. Irvine writes:

Sexuality education has its roots in the social hygiene movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. These initiatives were organized around specific problems that included the eradication of what were then called venereal diseases. Early hygiene education was largely didactic, and practitioners focused on giving information about diseases and how to prevent them. (125)

Irvine is correct in her appraisal. The Surgeon General under the Franklin Roosevelt administration, Thomas Parran, had to contend with a syphilis problem in the United States. Through a provision in the Social Security Act and the 1938 National Venereal Disease Control Act, Parran’s Public Health Service funneled millions of dollars to state boards of health to aid in syphilis prevention (Moran 115). Parran was not pleased with governmental timidity and excessive moralism (Moran 115). In fact, Parran was more open to approaching the problem of syphilis through education. Moran continues in Teaching Sex: “Parran…called for medical experts in public health to commence a new crusade against syphilis that would frankly confront the disease as a medical matter and not a moral failure” (115). Such change in policy motivation would still not cause an immediate change.

AVERT, an international AIDS charity, lists that syphilis diagnosis was at its highest point in 1946, a few years after the Federal Government began keeping track of such numbers. In 1946, there was 70.9 cases per 100,000 of the population. It would lower to 2.1 per 100,000 in 2000 (AVERT). Although Parran provided an impetus for medical objectivity at the federal level, it would take years of organization, education, and medical advancements to decrease the number of Americans diagnosed with syphilis. However, the lack of government-sponsored health education programs was perhaps most deadliest in the 1980’s.

The election of Ronald Reagan, a social conservative, in 1980 heralded an opportunity for other conservatives to trump the liberal sexuality that they disagreed with. Jeffrey P. Moran writes of the affect the conservative movement had on the “morality” of the country:

In 1981 Congressed passed the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA), which quickly came to be known as the Chastity Act…AFLA denied funds to most programs or projects that provided abortions or abortion counseling, and AFLA mandated abstinence education and units promoting “self-discipline and responsibility in human sexuality” in the sex education programs it did fund. (204)

The social conservative tone during the Reagan years was not responsive to the AIDS epidemic in the United States. This is one of the principle and most vigorous criticisms of Reagan and his social policy. Dan Gilgoff’s article, “Why Critics are Still Mad as Hell,” which appeared in the June 16th issue of U.S. News & World Report, just after President Reagan’s death, writes:

AIDS activists were among Reagan's most outspoken critics, printing posters that featured the president's mug shot and the tag line "AIDSGATE." His detractors say he didn't spend nearly enough on AIDS research; Reagan didn't publicly utter the term "AIDS" until his second term, even as the disease killed thousands of Americans in the early '80s. (“Why Critics are Still Mad as Hell”)

Scathing criticism comes within the article from an AIDS activist: "It's incomprehensible that such hideous inaction hasn't put him in any disrepute," says AIDS activist Larry Kramer. "He's being buried as a saint when in fact he was a gigantic sinner." Hitchens notes that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher launched a massive AIDS public- education campaign in 1987, "making Reagan's inaction triply disgraceful and obviously deliberate. It wasn't that he wasn't paying attention; it was that he didn't want to go there" (“Why Critics are Still Mad as Hell”)

Kramer seems to have a valid point. President Reagan consistently cut the funds allocated by Congress for the fight against AIDS, and in 1991 the Bush administration [George Bush was Reagan’s Vice President] cancelled the government-sponsored American Teenage Study, which was seeking to gather information about teenage sexual behavior and possible approaches to preventing STD’s (Moran 208).

Social conservatives argue that sex education inspire immoral desires that clash with local community codes of morality. Alexander McKay writes in Sexual Ideology and Schooling: Towards Democratic Sexuality Education, that many conservative notions of democracy “…view that the values and traditions of a particular community can be rightly be promoted to contrast to the values or social traditions of the larger society” (115). A government mandate superceding local norms and mores creates tension among the local communities.

Another issue that conservatives have toward sex education is that it promoted the immoral aspect of sexuality, a belief derived from biblical texts and corresponding religious beliefs. Many of these conservatives saw the liberal sexual behavior that began with the female contraceptive pill in the 1950’s, then the sexual revolution of the 1960’s, and into the Roe v. Wade decision in the 1970’s as evidence that American sexual morals were dramatically off-course. The dominant image remained of a sex education course that encouraged students to engage in sexual behavior (Moran 218).

Liberal sex educators hold the opposite belief. To them, sex education does not go far enough. In Teaching Sex, Moran cites a statistic that iterates the concern that liberal educations had about the education system. From the 1970’s onward, fewer than 10 percent of high school students received comprehensive, value-neutral sexuality education (Moran 218). Liberal thinkers thought that if education could be strengthened and increased, it would have likely minimized the mal-effects of the country’s growing openness to sex. In addition, many modern liberals want the fear from religious-based morality to be removed, enabling a more open and objective discussion of human sexuality. Alan Harris writes in the article “What does ‘Sex Education’ Mean?” that, “…it is high time we adopted a wholly positive approach to sex education, instead of grudgingly throwing a few titbits of information in an atmosphere of moral gloom” (22).

Conservatives and liberals, in a broad generalization of sex education outlooks, could not be further apart. Each side feels that they possess true “common sense” in dictating the sex education policy of the United States. However, it appears that the conservative and liberal camps are neither completely correct.

A 1967 study aimed to address the opinion that sex education increases one’s likelihood to participate in sex. The college-aged participants were asked about any previous sex education. Furthermore, they were questioned about their sexual behavior. The authors of the article “Sex Education and Premarital Petting and Coital Behavior,” Gerald H. Weichman and Altis L. Ellis, summarize the results of the experiment:

Those college students in the sample exposed to “sex education” content prior to college were found no more likely or less likely to have experienced premarital petting or premarital coitus than those without such exposure…Therefore, any promotional or inhibitory effect “sex education” content exposure may have had upon premarital petting or coital experience did not become apparent in the data analyzed. (268)

This study infers that sex education, per se, is not a factor which operates in a significant way to influence premarital sex (Weichman and Ellis 268). These results are not uncommon.
Jeffrey P. Moran writes of the numerous studies done to examine both conservative and liberal claims regarding sex education in Teaching Sex:

Various studies from the 1950’s onward have determined that students who complete a sex education course invariably know more sexual facts than students who have not…But none of the dozens of studies by sociologists, psychologists, and educators has discovered that sex education has a significant effect in either direction on adolescent rates of intercourse, use of contraception, and rates of unwanted pregnancies and births. (219)

Sex education is only a small aspect in determining sexual behavior. The first, and most notable, surveyor of sexuality was Alfred Kinsey.

In the 1950’s, Kinsey both shocked and intrigued the country with his scientific analysis of American sex and sexuality. Kinsey found at mid-century that American sexual patterns differed according to gender, class status, race, educational attainment, religion, decade of birth, age at puberty, and geographical location (Moran 222). Education matters only slightly when compared to the many other determinates of one’s sexuality. How can time spent in limited sexual education curriculum make a “dent,” so to speak, in these numerous determinants of one’s sexual identity?

To penetrate these many social and psychological determinates would require a much more broadened experience in sexual education. The minimal education does not do enough to significantly alter sexual behavior. Janice M. Irvine writes in Sexuality Education Across Cultures, “Comprehensive sexuality education addresses the broadest realm of sexuality, including intimacy, relationships, body image, personal values, and self-esteem” (126). A narrow conception of sexual education does little to impact the many determinates that make up one’s sexuality.

Implementing such change, even if such change was willing to be made at present, would not have immediate affects. Michael Schofield has a diagnosis of what is needed in his article “The Sexual Behavior of Young People.” He states that, “The best hope…is to help the generation now at school to become the kind of parents who can speak simply and sensibly about sex to their children” (170).

Extensive sexual education has been used with success in Sweden. Thomas K. Grose writes of the Swedish sex education system in his article for U.S. News & World Report, “Straight Facts About the Birds and Bees”:

The curriculum starts out clinically at around age 6, when children learn about anatomy, eggs, and sperm. From age 12 on, the topics lean more toward disease and contraception. The classes have a moral dimension, as well: Sex within loving relationships is stressed, as is gender equality (56).

The public education system in Sweden, as in the United States, is one of the best ways to impact the respective culture. Although modern U.S. sex education is deficient in its impacting affects of sexual behavior, a more rigorous, insightful, and objective approach within the sex-related ciruculum will have positive influences for the country, as it has for Sweden. Grose writes that, “The rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease in Sweden are among the world’s lowest” (56). In addition, the teenage birthrate is 7 per 1,000 births, compared with 49 in the U.S. (Grose 56). The percentage of teenage girls having sex before 15 is also less in Sweden than it is among the U.S. population (Grose 56). Grose debunks a possible conception that certain conservatives may have that such open sexual discussion may encourage teenagers to engage in sex before their emotional readiness. In fact, Swedish classes urge students to wait until they feel mature (Grose 56).

The enlightened education policy of Sweden is too drastic to be accepted by Americans and their legislators. However, the Sweden-model shows that comprehensive sex education does not have to focus on premarital sex, a largely conservative concern, but can treat human sexuality without the fear and taboo that usually comes with such discussions. If the U.S. were to implement a more enlightened approach to sex, many of the mal-affects of insufficient education would be eliminated. The sexual factors that contributed to such problems in the country’s past, and possible future health issues, would otherwise be already addressed under a comprehensive sex education-model. Yet, the varying cultural norms and mores regarding human sexuality presents conflict to monolithic implementation of sex education. Only by finding common ground among the many participants can the American education system finally move toward an objective, non-religious examination of human sexuality.

Works Cited

Gilgoff, Dan. “Why Critics are Still Mad as Hell.” U.S. News & World Report 13 June. 2004. 13 Apr. 2007

Grose, Thomas K. “Straight Facts About the Birds and Bees.” U.S. News & World Report Mar 26: 56.

Harris, Alan. “What does ‘Sex Education’ Mean?” Sex Education: Rationale and Reaction. Ed. Rex S. Rogers. New York: Cambridge UP, 1974. 18-23.

Holy Bible: The New American. New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1970.

Irvine, Janice M. Sexuality Education Across Cultures: Working with Differences. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1995.

McKay, Alexander. Sexual Ideology and Schooling: Towards Democratic Sexuality Education. Albany, NY: New York UP, 1998.

Moran, Jeffrey P. Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Century. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000.

Schofield, Michael. “The Sexual Behavior of Young People” Sex Education: Rationale and Reaction. Ed. Rex S. Rogers. New York: Cambridge UP, 1974. 168-80

“United States STD Statistics.” AVERT. 28 Mar. 2007. 13 Apr. 2007

Weichman, Gerald H. and Altis L. Ellis. “A Study of the Effects of ‘Sex Education’ on Premarital Petting and Coital Behavior.” Sex Education: Rationale and Reaction. Ed. Rex S. Rogers. New York: Cambridge UP, 1974. 265-70.

Essay

2007-04-09T12:27:00.000-05:00

Separate is Not Equal:

Why the National League Should Adopt the Designated Hitter

Boston Red Sox great Ted Williams said, “Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.” Every player dreams of hitting his way to a .300 batting average, a tell of the successful hitter. Yet, a .300 hitter does not get a hit 70% of the time he steps into the batter’s box. Ted Williams is perfectly accurate. Despite the statistical probabilities, every fan and hitter views an at-bat not in terms of what will most likely happen, but with what could happen. This is the mysterious and majestic quality of the baseball hitter. It is this reverence in which the idea of the designated hitter receives such regard by its proponents. By examining the conditions that warranted its implementation, one discovers the beneficial impact that increased offense has on the baseball’s integrity and financial well-being, arguing for its adoption by the National League.

Babe Ruth ruined baseball. The excitement generated from his slugging prowess changed the game forever. If the players before him were mere infantry of the sport, he was the atomic bomb that revolutionized the game. Before him, the game of baseball was boring and uneventful. In his book The Numbers Game: Baseball’s Lifelong Fascination with Statistics, Alan Schwarz describes the bleakness of baseball pre-Ruth. “Baseball in the teens…had basically degenerated into tedious, daily pitcher’s duels. Runs scored one at a time, manufactured piecemeal by the steal-and-sacrifice style…” (44). There was no excitement, no overt drama. Nothing warranted die-hard fascination from the game’s fans. Baseball needed a savior.

George Herman “Babe” Ruth would revive baseball, his bat would be his Lazarus, and he would turn the game into what it currently is—a game of offense. Even those with scarce interest in sports have heard his name uttered among conversations of legendry. The most common association with the mythical hitter is the homerun. By June of 1919, roughly mid-way through the baseball season, Ruth hit his 11th homerun against future hall of fame pitcher Walter Johnson. In fifteen years prior to that hit, no player in the American League had more than 12 home runs in an entire season. Babe Ruth became a star.

Ruth’s power was unprecedented, if not under appreciated. Schwarz writes, “Home runs at that time were like triples today—freak hits that were too rare to be fully appreciated” (45). However, the spectacle of the home run grew with Ruth’s popularity. In 1920, he would hit 54 home runs. He hit 59 one year later. Ruth and his offensive explosion altered the fan base of baseball. Schwarz describes:

The fans Ruth attracted were no the die-hards who put up with the soporific game that baseball had become before and during [World War I]. These new fans who wanted to see runs score, and relished the thrill of watching Ruth swing mightily to make that happen (47).

There was now drama and excitement in baseball. But, perhaps the most ironic aspect to Ruth’s legend comes from knowing his initial role in the sport. The original position of the man that would launch baseball into an era of offensive power, drama, and statistics was that of the archenemy of the baseball hitter—he was a pitcher.

If only every pitcher had the potential for power that Ruth did. General Managers and their team of scouts would purge the U.S. (and every other country, for that matter) of these anomalies for their rosters. However, the game of baseball has evolved over the years since Babe Ruth launched baseballs into mobs of spectators. The offensive efficacy of pitchers has decreased over the years to the near point of embarrassment. Political columnist, and an avid baseball fan, George F. Will goes so far to refer to many of them as “laughable” (not all pitchers are atrocious: Livan Hernandez has a lifetime .234 batting average, Dontrelle Willis, .222). However, most pitchers do not have the talent with the bat that these pitchers do. Despite this, traditionalists remain skeptical of, arguably, the most radical alteration to the game of baseball—the designated hitter.

The reason for the designated hitter is a logical one. The early part of the 1960’s brought the famous home run race involving New York Yankee great Roger Maris, who hit 61 home runs in 1961. This culminated an impressive offensive performance in the preceding decade. G. Richard McKelvey recounts the offensive explosion occurring in baseball in his book All Bat, No Glove: A History of the Designated Hitter. He calculated that during the 1950’s, major league teams had combined for an average of 17.7 hits and 8.8 runs per game (McKelvey 9). As such, the commissioner of baseball after the 1962 season, Ford Frick, persuaded the rules committee of Major League Baseball to enlarge the strike zone, so pitchers would have an advantage against the prevalent offensive potency of their counterparts. This, combined with an increase in the use of relief pitchers by their managers (as batters have a more difficult time adjusting to numerous pitchers in a game as opposed to one, or two), stifled offensive production. In 1968, the combined major league batting average dropped to .237, the second lowest in the century (McKelvey 12). The plan to “equalize” the offense-defense relationship had backfired, and the American League felt the brunt of the force. In 1971, the NL had topped the AL by 129 runs, and they stretched that lead to 824 in 1972 (McKelvey 16). Separate was not equal.

The fans were well aware of the offensive disparity between the two leagues. Without an offensive race that Roger Maris or a Babe Ruth could provide, fans were reluctant to take in a baseball game at American League ballparks. Eight of the twelve AL clubs reported that they had finished in the red in 1972. However, that same season, the NL had nine of its twelve teams attracted over a million fans, compared to three in the AL (McKelvey 19-20). American League owners began to look awfully hard at the different designated hitter appropriations in their minor league affiliates. Finally, by the start of the 1973 season, the American League went ahead with the designated hitter. This change to the rules of baseball was the first in eighty years, when the pitching mound was moved from fifty feet to sixty feet, six inches.

The President of the National League, Charles “Chub” Feeney was opposed to such a dramatic alteration. “Our League doesn’t believe in change for change’s sake. The people know when a tight situation is coming up and it’s fun to sit back and try to figure out who the manager is going to hit for the pitcher. The baseball fan likes to second-guess the manager.” (McKelvey 24). The DH eliminates a piece of strategy whereby the manager must weigh the option of removing a pitcher from the batting lineup for the sake of a pinch-hitter. The pinch-hitter is later replaced by a relief pitcher when the team moves to defense. The “second-guessing” comes into play when one must debate whether a starting pitcher’s performance is more beneficial to a team than their offensive replacement. A close game in late innings makes this an especially intriguing scenario. The opinion of Feeney echoes common, modern objections to the DH. George F. Will summarizes the protests of those opposed to the DH. “The three arguments against the DH are: Tradition opposes it, logic forbids it, and it is anti-intellectual because it diminishes strategy” (58).

Players themselves are split over the decision. In his book Pure Baseball: Pitch by Pitch for the Advanced Fan, former player Keith Hernandez writes:

…if you believe there’s more to baseball than offense, if you believe that a lot of interesting ramifications flow from the fact that your most important player—your pitcher—is, by way of contradiction, probably a weak hitter and that having him bat for himself, or not bat for himself, makes the game more complicated in a dozen ways, then you’re with me (196).

However, the argument against the DH that it minimizes strategy is not universally shared. George F. Will posed this very question to Tony LaRussa, then manager of the Oakland Athletics (LaRussa led the St. Louis Cardinals to a World Series championship in 2006) in his book Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball“: "Warming to his defense of the DH, he says that handling a pitching staff—perhaps a manager’s most important task—is tougher in the American League. ‘Every decision you make in the American League regarding your pitching staff is based solely on who you think should pitch to the next hitter, or in the next inning. In the National League you get certain times when the decision is taken right out of your hands’” (59). The DH doesn’t eliminate strategy—it only alters it. Will grasps this point:

In some ways the DH makes managing more difficult. Again, most pinch-hitting situations are obvious. What often is far from obvious is when to remove pitchers who never need to be removed to increase offense. That is an American League manager’s problem (59).

There is another distinction between AL and NL ball play. When pitchers are in a lineup the offense needs to be more aggressive to compensate for the inadequate hitting pitchers. Because NL lineups have only eight adequate hitters, one less then in AL lineups, offensive risk becomes more acceptable, namely, through the use of stolen bases and sacrifice bunts. This leaves the prototypical American League third base coach with less responsibility. In his book The Hidden Game of Baseball: How Signs and Sign-Stealing Have Influenced the Course of Our National Pastime, Paul Dickson discusses this phenomenon:

The number of offensive signs…in the American League dramatically declined with the advent of the designated hitter in 1973. Baseball historian Andy McCue interviewed several third-base coaches in 1989. He was told by men in both leagues that there were considerably fewer signs given in the early and middle innings of American League games…‘Taking an extra base [via base stealing] is also a one-run strategy, and since an AL third base coach never has to contemplate a pitcher in the on-deck circle as a runner approaches third, he is much freer to put up the stop sign’ (132).

National League lineups require more adverse risk that ultimately diminishes offensive performance. Should the NL adopt the DH, the league would find a minimal need to compensate for inadequate hitting pitchers by sacrificing needed outs through base stealing and sacrifice bunting.

Just as fans flocked to the offensive mammoth that was Babe Ruth, so did they return to the American League ballparks after the implementation of the DH. The American League became the league of power, the home run, the “long ball.” The National League, maintaining the traditional interpretation of the rules and the affirmation of the “intellectual” aspect of the game, was (and still is) known for “small ball,” because of the lack of reliance on pure power in favor of meager strategy. In 1980, well-known Washington Post sports columnist Tom Boswell compared the two leagues eight years after the American League implemented the DH. He wrote that the AL has scored 10.7 percent more runs per team, almost as great as the 12.7 percent that the NL had prior to the DH adoption (McKelvey 65). Accordingly, the AL surpassed the NL in the growth of fan attendance. Between 1973-1982, the regular season attendance increased by 64% in the AL. There was only a 28% increase in the National League (McKelvey 75). The fans liked watching offense, just as they did with Babe Ruth.

The American League is not the sole custodian of the DH. In fact, it seems that most baseball organizations agree with the rule. In the well-regarded Nine Innings: The Anatomy of a Baseball Game, Daniel Okrent describes the prevalence of the DH in baseball. “Still, by 1982, only the National League, and Japan’s Central League, allowed pitchers to hit. In every other baseball league in existence, from Little League and high schools through all of the American minor leagues, the DH rule prevailed” (133, emphases mine). The National League is behind the times.

The original desire for the DH rule was to rectify the dominance of pitchers. Pitching has become a more specialized phenomenon within the sport since the game’s inception. In the early days, it would not be uncommon for a starting pitcher to work into the ninth inning. Their descendents, on the other hand, do not measure up to the mettle of their ancestors. In 1901, 87.3 percent of all games were completed by the starting pitcher. In 1988 only 14.8 were. In 1989 only 11.4 were (Will 135). Why might this happen? George F. Will offers the opinion that the difference the DH makes has attributed the 46% decrease in the number of complete games between the years 1978 through 1987 (Will 135). Will suggest a correlation between the DH rule and the increased usage of relief pitchers. With the addition of more potent hitter replacing a less-adequate one (the pitcher), pitchers would not have the luxury of an “assured” out. However, the addition of one sole hitter can’t solely account for the 46% decline in complete games. If part of the “intellectual” aspect of National League ball is deciding when to replace a starting pitcher with a pinch hitter, then if there was evidence to suggest that pitchers have decreased in hitting competency, one could argue that managers are “forced” to pinch hit more often, requiring more relief pitchers.

Comparing statistics is one of the more difficult undertakings in baseball. How does one compare the offensive performance between two, or more, players? It is not cut and dry as one might think. For instance, managers will often create a lineup where a proficient hitter will bat before a well-known “slugger.” The rationale is that the opposing pitcher would most likely prefer to avoid the slugger. As such, the pitcher will be careful not to walk the batter preceding the slugger, giving him better pitches from which he can hit. However, if the hitter is in, say, the eight spot (usually before the pitcher in the lineup) will most likely not receive hittable pitches—at least ideally—because, even if he should draw a walk, the opposing pitcher will face the opposing pitcher, a far less formidable foe. Comparing a hitter who bats before a “slugger” and one before a pitcher would not yield a truly accurate comparison—the differing variables surrounding their plate appearance are too strong.

Comparing hitters from different generations is even more difficult. How does one account for the different sizes of ballparks, the lack of night games, a shorter season, even a different baseball between decades? There is no scientific way to perfectly “normalize” every variable, and no way to accurately compare different hitters. However, statisticians do try.

One such statistician is David Gassko who, in his February 2007 article “Hitting Pitchers,” which appeared on the online journal The Hardball Times, looked at this very question. He first examined the combined offensive performance of pitchers. He found that pitchers, as a whole, batted .132 in 2006 (the mean of the best and worst MLB team averages was .271). However, Gassko wanted to examine the offensive performance of pitchers in relation to their fielding contemporaries throughout history. Gassko describes his process:

I calculated the [offensive performance] for each player in each season from 1871 to 2005, using whatever statistics were available [this affirms the lack of statistics recorded in the nineteenth century as opposed to the prevalence of modern statistical observation]…I then classified each player in each season as either a pitcher (if he made at least one appearance as a pitcher that year) or a hitter (if he did not), and calculated the league average [offensive performance] BA for both pitchers and hitters…Pitchers were compared to the pitcher average in calculating their runs above average, which were corrected for park factor and then into wins above average to adjust for varying run environments (Hardball Times).

Below is a line graph displaying the results that Gassko found in his research and analysis.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/hitting-pitchers/

Although occasional spikes from year to year, there is a clear trend of descending pitcher offensive performance with that of fielding hitters. Pitchers are worse hitters now than they were at the game’s inception.

It appears George F. Will’s description of the hitting abilities of pitchers as “laughable” is not so unwarranted. Although the National League maintains the game’s tradition and intellectual dynamic as an essential rationale for avoiding what the majority of other baseball leagues have adopted, one has evidence that NL teams focus too much on the mere words of baseball’s tradition instead of the game’s current spirit and actuality. Of course the original rules of the game stipulated for pitchers to bat, they were actually competent in that day! They no longer are. Fans respond to offense, offense that the designated hitter can provide. The American League exemplifies this point perfectly. Should the NL adopt the designated hitter, they would see similar results, as their fans would see baseball for what it was intended—with nine adequate hitters; not eight.

Works Cited

Boswell, Thomas. “Time to End 9th-Bat Split.” The Washington Post 31 July 1980, sec. 6.

Dickson, Paul. The Hidden Language of Baseball: How Signs and Sing-Stealing Have Influenced the Course of Our National Pastime. New York: Walker & Co., 2003.

Gassko, David. “Hitting Pitchers.” Chart. The Hardball Times. 25 Feb. 2007 Feb. 2007
<http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/hitting-pitchers>

Hernandez, Keith, and Mike Bryan. Pure Baseball: Pitch by Pitch for the Advanced Fan. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994.

McKelvey, G. Richard. All Bat, No Glove: A History of the Designated Hitter. Jefferson: McFarland & Co, 2004.

Okrent, Daniel. Nine Innings: The Anatomy of a Baseball Game. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

Schwarz, Alan. The Numbers Game: Baseball’s Lifelong Fascination with Statistics. New York: Thomas Dunne, 2004.

Twombly, Wells. “Now the 10th Man.” New York Times Magazine 1 April 1974, 21, 23.

Will, George F. Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball. New York: HarperPerennial, 1990.

Literary Realism Essay

2007-03-05T16:49:00.000-05:00

The Civil War was one of the catalysts for the Realism literary movement. The armed conflict brought disillusionment to the country. Not only were Americans fighting their fellow citizens, but photography brought graphic images of death and disfigurement to the public. It comes as no surprise, then, that writers of this era would use the Civil War as a principle theme in their stories. Ambrose Bierce did so in “Chickamauga,” regarded as one of his finest pieces of literature. The lasting impact of death and emotional disillusionment contrasts mightily with more “romantic” views of war: nobility, patriotism, glory, etc. Hamlin Garland’s “The Return of a Private,” uses realistic elements in his story to accurately depict circumstances of the Civil War.

The story begins as a group of Union soldiers return via train to La Crosse, Wisconsin. The third-person narration describes the elation of the returning soldiers upon arriving home. “When they entered on Wisconsin territory they gave a cheer, and another when they reached Madison, but after that they sank into a dumb expectancy” (185). Here, Garland confronts the reader with the conflicting emotions of the soldier’s return. On one hand, they feel a strong sense of elation as their train nears their ultimate destination, from which their cheers derive. On the other hand, there is this “dumb expectancy.” A more colloquial understanding of dumb is a lack of intelligence. However, dumb can also mean silence, or a temporary inability to speak. Most soldiers were away from home for years. Being alienated from loved ones causes natural gaps in emotional inter-connectivity. This can cause a sense of apprehension for returning soldiers. This conflicting, grappling of emotions is a very “realistic” element. Instead of focusing on more romantic ideals of soldiers when they arrive home, Garland admits to undoubted nervousness and anxiety.

Garland also describes the physical detriments these soldiers have undergone. “Three of them were gaunt and brown, the fourth…gaunt and pale, with signs of fever…One had a great scar down his temple, one limped, and they all had unnaturally large, bright eyes, showing emaciation” (186). These are not descriptions of Romantic characteristics. These conditions are extraordinarily “real,” void of sentimental dillusion.

Garland also confronts the reader with another rebuke of Romantic ideology. When modern readers consider the notion of returning, victorious soldiers, images of ticker-tape parades and a famous photograph of a sailor kissing a strange woman in the midst of celebration in New York’s Time Square can easily come to mind. This is a classic image of admiration in post-victorious warfare. Although this example comes far after the Civil War, it nonetheless illustrates a prevailing assumption of the “glory” of war, and the adulation of the adoring populous.

“There were no bands greeting them at the station, no banks of gaily dressed ladies waving handkerchiefs and shouting ‘Bravo!’ as they came in on the caboose of a freight train into the towns that had cheered and blared at them on their way to war” (186). Garland’s story does not include the vocal adoration so prominent in one’s romantic conscience.

One of the most successful government programs in this country’s history was the G.I. Bill of the 1950’s. Returning war veterans were able to go to college, buy homes with discounted loan rates, and could receive generous unemployment benefits should they need it. However, after the Civil War, there were no programs of that magnitude. It appears, after service in the armed forces, soldiers would return home to face the same economic conditions that they left. Garland includes this accurate condition as it, presumably, would play-out in the mid-West. “All of the group were farmers…and all were poor” (186). Many of the soldiers in the story with responsibilities toward their families could not afford a night stay at a hotel before the venturing home the next day. Private Smith, the story’s protagonist, states, “‘Now I isn’t got no two dollars to waste on a hotel. I’ve got a wife and children, so I’m goin’ to roost on a bench and take the cost of a bed out on my hide’” (186). Another soldier affirms, “‘Hide’ll grow on again, dollars’ll come hard. It’s goin’ to be a mighty hot skirmishin’ to find a dollar these days’” (186). Private Smith later contemplates the conditions in which he finds himself. “He saw himself sick, worn out, taking up the work on his half-cleared farm, the inevitable mortgage standing ready with open jaw to swallow half his earnings. He had given three years of his life for a mere pittance of pay, and now!—” (187). Hardly the ideal soldier’s return home.

The pieces of dialogue quoted above exemplify another characteristic of the Realism movement. Very often, Romantic writers would use proper or “enlightened” language in their discourse. In “The Editor’s Study,” 1887, William Dean Howells wrote “…each new artist, will be considered…in his relation to the human nature” (258, emphasis mine). The essential point that Howells, and other Realists, made was that it is detriment that authors create stories and characters that authentically represent people as a whole. The enlightened language of the Romantics was no longer sufficient, in their opinion, because they were so inauthentic. The dialogue exchange between the soldiers in the story is far more justifiable to a Realist. A Romantic writer might shudder to use “natcher’l” as a phonetic depiction of the word natural by one of their characters, as Garland does (187).

Prolonged dislocation from one’s home implies a separation from the realities surrounding that home prior to leaving. Essentially, one would like their home to remain the same throughout their time away. This is more of a romantic desire (although one that’s not easy to remove from one’s thoughts and imagination, even for the most staunch of Realists). It is not unheard of for any soldier to contemplate fondly on, say, their wife’s geraniums in the backyard, the smell of honeysuckle trees scattered around one’s neighborhood, even the smell of grass and dirt at their nephew’s Little League baseball field. These memories of one’s home nourish hope and help dissipate loneliness. However, upon return one can find geraniums uprooted, honeysuckle trees dead, and baseball fields abandoned to the elements.

Garland illustrates such a point with Private Smith. After arriving in La Crosse, Smith imagines the reaction of his family at his long-hoped return. He imagines returning home late, catching his sons milking the cows long after the preferred time. “‘I’ll step into the barn, an’ then I’ll say: ‘Heah! why ain’t this milkin’ done before this time o’ day?’’” (189). Of course, the mock disapproval would be overshadowed by the elation of his sons at their father’s return.

Smith goes on to even include the family dog in his vision. “‘I’ll jest go up he path. Old Rover’ll come down the road to meet me. He won’t bark; he’ll know me, an’ he’ll come down waggin’ his tail an’ showin’ his teeth. That’s his way of laughin’” (189).

After returning home, both the passing of time and Smith’s beard growth perplex his children. “…the youngest child stood away, even after the girl had recognized her father and kissed him” (197). He then turns to his youngest son. “This baby seemed like some other woman’s child, and not the infant he had left in his wife’s arms. The war had come between him and his baby—he was only a strange man to him…” (197). This is not what Private Smith had expected at the train station. Later, his wife informs him that Rover died the previous winter.

Smith’s expectations did match the ideal he envisioned. This encapsulates the criticism that many Realists felt towards the literature of their time, leading up to their literary era. Despite the nobility of Private Smith, and his genuine longing for his family and home, his more Romantic ideals of his return are not met, and he is forced to reconcile his wishes with actuality. Many stories of Realism do not contain the “ideal” ending, but one of conflict and disappointment—just as life is.

Hamlin Garland’s story, based on his own experience of his father’s return from the Civil War, is filled with conflict and a disillusionment of ideals. Using an event that inspired the Realism movement in literature, Garland encompasses primary characteristics of the period in his story to create a more accurate understanding of the human experience after war. He achieves this by using realist notions and depictions instead of Romantic ideals.

Works Cited

Garland, Hamlin. “The Return of a Private.” The Portable American Realism Reader. Ed. Nagel, James, and Tom Quirk. New York: Penguin, 1997. 185-99.

Howells, William Dean. “The Editor’s Study.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature: Late Nineteenth Century: 1865-1910. 5th ed. Vol. C. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 258-9.

Film Review

2007-02-20T17:42:00.000-05:00

Based on the1949 Pulitzer Prize winning series of 24 articles that chronicled corruption and greed on New York City docks, On the Waterfront (1954) is a story of mob rule, violence, and the human conscience. Starring Marlon Brando (The Wild One, A Streetcar Named Desire) as a one-time boxing prospect forced to work on New York City’s docks, the Elia Kazan (East of Eden, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) film shows impoverished neighborhoods controlled by the local Union’s use of fear and intimidation, in a motion picture that would ultimately win eight Academy Awards.

Kazan appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1952. He drew heavy criticism from his peers for divulging names associated with Communism to the infamous committee. Arthur Miller, slated to write the film’s screenplay, refused to cooperate during his own testimony before HUAC, and would become “blacklisted” in Hollywood (he would later pen the famous play The Crucible based on the hearings). Columbia Pictures decided to withdraw Miller’s original commitment to the screenplay, replacing him with Budd Schulberg.

The movie’s suspenseful opening involves Terry Malloy (Brando) drawing a fellow dockworker to a roof, where Terry thinks the man is to have a conversation with Union officials. To Terry’s dismay, the young man he lured to the roof is flung off in a brazen attempt to silence a would-be “rat.” Eva Marie Saint (North by Northwest), in her first theatrical appearance, plays the sister of the murdered worker, Edie. Distraught by her brother’s demise, and the reluctance of the fellow workers to confront the Union, she takes it upon herself to solve the murder. In addition, Father Barry, played by Karl Malden, begins his own quest to rid his parish of the Union leadership’s inequities.

Filmed in black and white, scenes in the outdoors during the dock’s working hours contrast with the dark environments in scenes of the local tavern and apartments in nighttime settings. To convey the bleakness within the neighborhood, Kazan used smoke machines to create a strong sense of despair. Music composed by Leonard Burnstein (who would go on to score West Side Story) evokes the moral complexity that certain characters feel, and the tense moments of suspense and action they are thrust into.

Lee J. Cobb (North of the Rio Grande, Twelve Angry Men) plays the wonderfully sinister mob boss, Johnny Friendly. With the loyalty of his foot soldiers to keep the longshoremen in-line, the only way for his workers to remain alive is to be “D and D”—deaf and dumb. Any “canaries” who threaten the monopoly of Friendly’s racketeering meet with a swift, silencing blow.

Terry Malloy begins as a quasi-informant for the Union leadership. However, both the beauty and strong moral conviction of Edie, in addition to the newly found vigor of Fr. Barry, makes Terry reconsider his place in the world, and the fate of his soul. Wrestling with his new convictions of right and wrong, Terry must decide if he will be a “bum” or attempt to redeem himself. With a well-crafted script and wonderful acting, On the Waterfront brings excitement and passion as the audience decides with Terry Malloy whether or not they would rather be “D and D” or a righteous “canary” in the midst of widespread corruption.

Rhetorical Analysis

2007-02-14T12:06:00.000-05:00

Barbara Lerner wrote her essay “The Killer Narcissists” after widely covered public school shootings in the late 1990’s. A free-lance writer and a psychologist, Lerner argues that the existing psychological explanations regarding the mental and emotional make-up of students who organize and carry-out these violent acts is outdated and ill-effective. She states that a pre-1960’s psychological diagnosis would characterize these students as rejected, abused, and with low self-confidence, using such violently brazen acts as an unconscious “plea” for help. Lerner refutes such ideas, arguing that these students embody narcissism, needing strong social relationships and moral conditioning in such volatile adolescent years. Although mounting valid arguments of definition, evaluation, and proposal, Lerner misses the mark with regards to her essay’s soundness.

Although noted as a psychologist, the precise level of her education in the field remains unknown. In light of the fact that her claim relies heavily on psychological premises and assumptions, the ambiguity of her expertise makes critical readers question her reliability, or her extrinsic ethos. Her article appeared in 1999, in the May issue of the National Review, one month after the infamous school shooting at a high-school in Columbine, Colorado. It’s noteworthy to wonder why an essay examining psychological profiling would not appear in a journal of psychology or education, rather a political publication with leaning conservative tendencies (this point will appear later). The lack of Lerner’s expertise on the matter, coupled with her essay appearing in a political magazine, creates skepticism as to underlying motivation. Namely, would such an article attempt to influence policy towards a specific political outcome? Although no concrete evidence either affirms or denies this concern, it does bring Lerner’s extrinsic ethos into further volatility.

Despite this, the logical fluidity of Lerner’s argument is valid. Her first warrant is both justifiably and emotionally relevant after such shocking and horrific violence in this nation’s schools: society must become more adept at discovering and ameliorating students prone to violence. Concluding that the increased number of school shootings is a result of an increased number of narcissistic children in American society, and not previously-held explanations, Lerner cites logical reasons to justify her claim. Below is a diagram of Lerner’s argument.

Barbra Lerner Argument from “The Killer Narcissists”:

Warrant/Assumption: Ameliorating student’s susceptibility to violence is important
Warrant/Assumption: Morality is a foundation to proper development

Premise/Reason: Past evaluation of violent school children is inaccurate and outdated
Premise/Reason: Students who committed such acts do not fit into pre-established diagnoses

Claim: Increased school shootings come from an increase in narcissistic children, and not previously held beliefs.

As previously mentioned, the emotional investment much of the country felt after the tragic events in Columbine, CO gives Lerner a strong appeal towards pathos. After the April 1999 shootings, much of the country felt several emotions: sadness, fear, anger, perhaps even a tinge of hopelessness based on the severity of events. This gives Lerner’s argument tremendous emotional appeal, which provides her essay with strong relevance and significance.

Lerner’s first premise relies on evaluating past thinking towards violent, anti-social behavior. This is where Lerner creates her first fallacy. She states that “sensate” Americans have heard of the old psychological explanations before. These explanations come from experts, teachers, preachers, politicians, and journalists. She concludes that these social forces have engrained into the collective social conscious of America that violent acts are a hidden cry for help.

It is important to identify two aspects of the premise. One, where is evidence to support her reason? Why did she not include data that examined the basic psychological understanding of the American public? Whey did she not include a primary source from one of the many “social forces” she lists that permeate such archaic psychological explanations? Second, it is a very broad assumption to state that the propagation of misinformation on American society can be organized from these numerous social forces. Lerner makes it appear as if it is a coordinated movement. This is a fallacy of hasty generalization.

The second of Lerner’s premises is that students who commit these violent acts in school do not follow the old psychological model of evaluation. Lerner states that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who jointly killed thirteen students and one teacher in the Columbine shooting, had been reared in loving homes, were thought of as “normal” by neighbors, and had received psychological counseling that included anger management. They completed their counseling two months prior to the shooting.

On this point, Lerner offers the reader a logical premise (that Harris and Klebold do not fit into a traditional psychological explanation). However, how reliable is this evidence? Lerner does not provide any source(s) for her information. How are readers to know that this information is credible? Why didn’t Lerner interview, or find an existing interview, with one, or both, of the boy’s counselors affirming their completion of their counseling program? Where Lerner provides a valid premise to her claim, she lacks reliable and credible evidence to support her premise. This further undermines her argument’s soundness.

She goes on to discuss Kip Kinkel, a fifteen-year old Oregon high-school student who murdered his parents, and afterwards murdered two of his classmates, in addition to wounding twenty-five others. Lerner states that Kinkel posed a problem to conventional psychological understanding in explaining his motivation. Kinkel, she states, was raised in a loving family environment, making the reader assume that Kinkel had no severe emotional trauma while growing up. Again, Lerner fails to accompany this premise by including evidence to support it. Lerner forces the reader to take her assumptions as truth. She very well could be accurate, but without corroborating evidence (from, say, a psychiatrist who examined the boy) to support her, the reader must remain skeptical.

Finally, Lerner reaches the zenith of her argument by asserting her claim that there are more “wanton schoolboy killers” because of their narcissism. She defines a narcissist as one who did not grow out of their infancy’s self-love, and who develops inauthentic personal and social relationships. To the narcissist, individuals can become expendable after serving their “purpose,” which can include a violent demise, especially in the emotionally-volatile adolescent years. Lerner warns that the narcissists will favor the exercise of rage, especially through dramatic means. Even if one were to take away guns from their possession, narcissists will choose explosives and other melodramatic examples to express their rage. Lerner mentions Ted Kaczynski and the Japanese subway saboteurs from 1995 as examples of extreme narcissistic behavior.

The banality of this claim comes from a few inadequate rhetorical methods. First, Lerner fails to provide the reader with any evidence, either data or expert opinions. Once again, Lerner forces the reader into blindly accepting her assumptions. The absence of evidence bemoans a sound argument.

Second, there is a problem in Lerner’s definition of narcissism. While articulating the possible repercussions of a severely narcissistic individual, she uses the term as a broad “catch-all” of violent, anti-social individuals (Kaczynski, persons involve in the Sarin gas released in the Japanese subway, and adolescent gun violence in school). It is unlikely that all narcissistic individuals possess such violent possibilities, yet Lerner describes the problem in a similar vein when she correlates school shootings with an increase in narcissistic children. This is another example of the author committing a fallacy of hasty generalization. In addition, her definition of narcissism may come close to many individuals idea of self-centeredness and/or arrogance. It would be wise for Lerner to provide an illustrative example to clarify the psychological distinction. Without providing supportive evidence linking a rise in school shootings to an increase in narcissistic children, this portion of her premise borders closely to a fallacy of false cause.

Lerner’s final analysis ultimately leads to a proposal. She feels that children need to experience morality in the lives of their parents to deflect narcissistic development. In her opinion, anger management will not solve adolescent narcissism, only moral conditioning. She utilizes the importance society places on morality as her second warrant in the argument. Although, morality is a strong undercurrent of contemporary American society, without providing specific recommendations and evidence to support her proposal, the reader may infer a stance of moral superiority with this proposal. This, coupled with the conservative-leanings of the National Review, can make readers wary as to the author’s underlying intent.

Barbra Lerner writes a very emotionally significant article with the intent to shed light on the reasons behind such shocking and traumatic events in the nation’s public schools. Her premises align amicably with her conclusion, but the lack of evidence, in addition to argumentative fallacies, undermine the soundness of her claim. Her psychological diagnosis, or some form of it, may prove to be true (if not already). However, without sufficient, quality evidence void of rhetorical deceptiveness, readers cannot analyze her essay’s arguments of definition, analysis, and proposal without retaining healthy skepticism.

Poem

2007-02-14T12:02:00.000-05:00

To Soldiers

Gentle compatriots flaunting
unabashed skeletons. Moving
towards keystrokes and widgets
widgets to harness the mighty
swords of hieroglyphics.

Dare not be moved in such
wreckless words. Words
to imagine a future
floating amongst dire
needs

dire beaches.

Rhetorical Analysis

2007-02-01T19:26:00.000-05:00

Aaron Lukas’ article “I Love Global Capitalism—and I’m under 30” is rich with opinion and criticism. He states that “carnivals against capitalism” targeting free trade, specifically free trade organizations, shows ignorance of the international economy. Lukas feels most of these protestors inaccurately blame large, multi-national corporations for social maladies. Furthermore, Lukas writes an argument that identifies a specific problem: that the ill-advised view of his contemporaries against global capitalization is uncharacteristic of the majority of his generation, despite public demonstration to the contrary. Although with an interesting claim, Lukas falls short of either a valid, or a sound argument. There are logical fallacies in his premises as relating to his conclusion. In addition, the lack of cited research studies and statistics yield nothing more than a poorly conceived opinion piece. The reader is not only skeptical of his claim that a majority of those younger than thirty years approve global capitalism, but also for his reasons to prove it.

The lack of cited evidence suggests that Lukas’ perceived audience would be predisposed to favor his opinion. The article appeared on the website of the Cato Institute, a political think-tank, of which he was an analyst at the time of the essay’s publication. This background provides the reader with an idea of the author’s possible purpose and intent—his extrinsic ethos. This also could explain why Lukas would elect to forego substantive, supporting evidence when writing for a website whose visitors might be predisposed to similar beliefs (why provide examples when one preaches to the choir?, so to speak). This jeopardizes his intrinsic ethos because he fails in a building competent argument. What could have blossomed into a compelling essay turns into an opinionated rant. Below is a diagram of the Lukas argument:

Aaron Lukas Argument from “I Love Global Capitalism—and I’m under 30”:

Warrant/Assumption: Liberty and prosperity are good for all
Warrant/Assumption: A healthy environment is important

Premise/Reason: Protestors are uneducated to benefits of free trade
Premise/Reason: Free trade benefits workers and environment
Premise/Reason: Liberty and prosperity is sweeping the globe
Premise/Reason: Free Trade agencies do not impede sovereignty
Premise/Reason: Most individuals have some sort of association with corporations

Claim: Most under thirty years favor global capitalism

The “driving force” behind the Lukas argument is two warrants in his essay. It would be hard to find an individual who did not think that a) liberty and prosperity for every person is good, and b) a healthy environment is desirable. These foundations of Lukas’ argument are well established. However, the reasons do not yield a valid claim. Instead of providing premises to justify his conclusion, he cites reasons why people should favor global capitalism. He proposes a non sequitur. His reasons are valid only if his claim argued that individuals should view free trade amicably, not that they actually do. There are no premises that validly conclude his claim. Lukas fails in providing a logical argument.

Essentially, Lukas observes, in his opinion, a prevailing delusion among free-trade protestors that the world is corruptible to both workers and the environment. This, in premise, depicts the participants of the “carnivals against capitalism” as uninformed and uneducated. The Lukas counter to this belief is the prosperity of the West and countries of the Pacific Rim, which has inspired poor, Communist, and developing states to pursue democratic capitalism. Makes sense, right? However, the problem with this Lukas point is the absence of statistics to corroborate his assumption. He does not cite the difference between the wealthy states and the poor ones. Not once does he even mention the most basic of all economic measurements, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), let alone an income per-capita statistic. How are we to believe that these wealthy nations are, indeed, so wealthy? In addition, has democratic capitalism spread over the years? If this premise by Lukas is accurate, how did he come by it? What statistics generated his knowledge? Does a country like China not counter this premise? The reader has only one option—to take the word of Lukas himself.

This is Lukas’ first blunder of validity. We can only assume what he tells us is true. Personal opinions, by themselves, do not work well in arguments. Evidence rules. Unfortunately, Lukas’ counter to protestors (sweeping capitalism across the globe) comes without reliable evidence to support this reason.

There is another aspect of this premise that degenerates Lukas’ argument. He depicts protestors as uniformed, with their only reason to protest being for the sake of protesting in and of itself. Lukas does not cite any evidence, primary or secondary, that specifically informs the reader of the protestors’ beliefs and logic against free trade. How do we know that the protestors believe what Lukas says they do? It is a hasty generalization. Lukas provides no explicit grievances on the part of protestors. Here, as in my previous criticism, the lack of evidence undermines the effectiveness of Lukas’ argument.

Lukas’ second premise, that free trade benefits workers and the environment, shares a similar fate. The reader comes across absolutely no evidence to corroborate his assumption. Instead, Lukas provides a personal opinion. As mentioned above, assumptions do not make for good arguments. Readers must receive evidence to make an argument sound in order to be swayed to the writer’s opinion. There are no wage-increase data, income per-capita statistics, or environmental research. Lukas even fails to provide an expert opinion on either matter. The omission of any form of evidence makes his argument even more volatile.

Not surprisingly, Lukas fails to provide evidence yet again in his third premise: free trade organizations do not threaten state sovereignty. Here, Lukas argues that free trade organizations align themselves closely with the principles and structure of democracy. This is a difficult premise to bolster with evidence of mere data. However, credible expert opinions from, let’s say, political scientists, would have strengthened this argument ten-fold. Lukas even foregoes implementing an illustrative example to examine the similarities between free trade organizations (such as the World Trade Organization) and democratic states. Instead, Lukas merely provides personal opinion instead of evidence. Lukas even goes so far to connect protestors as akin to mob rule and anti-democratic (how one can view the right to public assembly, and those who enter into that constitutional guarantee, as the antithesis of democracy is beyond me). This last point degrades Lukas’ own moral character with the reader, at the expense of an effective ethos with his audience. By leveling a broad assumption in such a “low blow” fashion, he undermines mutual respect, and causes the reader to suspect an alternative purpose to his essay: to rally individuals who share his own beliefs by depicting their opposition (those against global capitalism) in an obtuse and negative fashion.

His final premise is that most young people do not hate corporations. Lukas gives an illustrative example: most are employed by a corporation, know another employed by a corporation, or retain stock in a corporation. In effect, as Lukas argues, who could possibly hate corporations when most individuals have some degree of association with them? The final “deathblow” to the soundness of the argument comes, once again, with the lack of evidence to support the premise. Lukas provides the reader with no evidence that affirms a) most individuals have some degree of corporation-association, and b) most individuals do not hate corporations. Just as throughout the essay up to this point, Lukas leads the reader into assumptions without the semblance of evidence to justify and corroborate his premises.

Examining dramatic, newsworthy protests of global capitalism and their relationship (or the lack of it) to a segment of the population is a worthwhile pursuit. However, the claim from which Lukas derives his premises is an invalid one. Based on his reasons, he should have constructed a conclusion around the need to accept global capitalism as a positive venture, not that it has been accepted. However, the lack of evidence undermines the efficacy of any argument. Without credible and reliable evidence, no argument can withstand healthy skepticism. Personal opinions do not build soundness—evidence does.

Revision: TIME Magazines from the 1950's

2007-01-30T14:08:00.001-05:00

Note: I suppose pride is an aspect of most personalities, including writers. With that in mind, many writers can feel hurt, angry, and even disheartened when they recieve bad marks on even the most trivial of assignments.

It's not a new phenonmenon for me. I would like to think that, as a Senior at age twenty-four, I could avoid investing personal attachment (and my ego) into everything that I write and submit. I still cannot.

Below is a revision of my most recent post, on TIME magazines I read for my Senior Seminar course: 1950's American Culture. I don't think my original copy was awful, by any means, but I was very upset (with myself) when I recieved the proofessor's marks. Most were very simple, stupid mistakes: using an adjective in place of a noun, using "amongst" instead of "among," and the awkward sentence structure of a handful of lines.

Even though I imagine few, if any, read this blog I still devote my time and effort to make this as professional as possible, just for my own sake. Therefore, when I see blatantly silly mistakes in a published post, I become upset with myself.

Instead of just editing the existing post, I think openly admitting my mistakes, and showing my revision, is a far better idea. No one is perfect. We often learn more from our mistakes then we do from our success. I could be looking a bit too much into this, but my writing, any writing, means a lot to me. I would rather admit to faulty writing and be open to learning from failures then to hide them. Sometimes a wounded ego can be good for the mind.

The cover of the January 1, 1951 issue of TIME showed an artist’s depiction of an American soldier. TIME decided that, most likely in light of the remnant glory of U.S. soldiers in World War II and the growing confrontation between Communism in Korea, G.I. Joe should be the “Man of the Year.” I found it interesting that the “Man of the Year” award—still vital to the magazines current publishers—dated back so long. In fact, the annual award has been around since the 1920’s. However, the more significant statement of the 1951 award was the focus on U.S. involvement in an escalating and international crisis—Communist containment. In my reading of TIME issues between January and February of 1951, I could not escape the earnestness that Communism had among the publishers of the magazine and, I would venture to conclude, the public at large.

Unlike modern issues, the 1951 counterparts did not contain the volume of unique articles by various staff reporters and freelance writers that the modern issues have. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see concise news coverage in the 1951 issues, notably with regard to foreign states. Although the issues lacked the depth of a modern issue of, say, The Economist, there was information on countries such as Iran, Ireland, Italy, France, Nepal, Germany, Indonesia, and Cuba, among others. The blurbs mentioned key figures and events to give the readership a more global awareness. In addition, the layout of information was very simple: National news separated by sections focusing on the Presidency, Congress, Military, etc., followed by International news and insights.

I imagine the prevalence of international examination reflects this era of American history as one in which isolationism was becoming an outdated global philosophy. World War II, I imagine, countered the isolationist view, and the “Great Debate” pushed the U.S. to engage the world’s actors, obviously as a means to counter Communism. I found the term “Great Debate” in a few of the issues. It was a term that regarded two international perspectives: isolationism v. proactive involvement. Former President Hoover was quite outspoken against the latter approach to international relations during the Truman administration. “Any attempt to make war on the Communist mass by land invasion, through the quicksands of China, India, or Western Europe, is sheer folly. That would be the graveyard of millions of American boys” (January 1 issue of TIME). One cannot help but consider this quote as a rather accurate piece of prophecy, considering the outcomes of both the Korean and Vietnam wars.

In the January 1 issue, Truman addressed accusations against then-Secretary of State Dean Acheson, saying he had been “…shot by the enemies of liberty and Christianity.” The Acheson criticism focused on his effectiveness as Secretary of State. This seemed to embody how divisive Communism, and its containment, were for the country. There was no unanimous decision, as I imagine there seldom is, among a broad, governing body.

The cover of the January 8 issue was a life-like artist’s rendering of Acheson, in addition to the statement below his name “A Time for Re-Examination.” That issue reported that many in Congress were uncertain as to the focus the U.S. should place in their broad international policy. TIME held the opinion that the U.S. had no policy at the time, in part because of the large, on-going “Great Debate.” Some leaders felt that Europe was the key, and the Asia was not as significant. Hoover, who largely represented isolationists in the country, had his ideas referred to as the Hoover Doctrine—with the nickname “retreatism.” One cannot help but see some semblance of contemporary Iraq war hawks “cut-and-run” phrase placed on dissenters of the current conflict. Many seemed to view isolationism, from my reading, as an international relations paradigm that was very close to a “defunct” label. Most, if not all, articles and stories did not have an underlying question of “should we pursue Communism abroad?” Instead the apparent attitude represented in the magazine was the more proactive, “how should we pursue Communism?” This corresponds to observations that TIME magazine, at the time, was a more conservative publication.

Later in that issue, TIME published a small map to aid an article describing MacArthur’s troop movement. The title of the map was the clever “Seoul at Stake,” which then referred to Communist forces as “200,000 Reds;” a clear indication that TIME held Communism as a full-fledged antagonist to the country and its interests.

The January 15 issue reported the intra-country debate on “…effectiveness, practicality, and logic” with respect to U.S. involvement on the Asian continent. This underscores, again, the lack of unanimous consent for military actions.

I did find an advertisement in the January 29 issue to be an interesting representation of 1950’s technology. The Zenith corporation advertised a television set with an accompanying “Turret Tuner” (a remote control) that was exclusive to the particular Zenith model.
The February 5 issue contained an interesting quote from Gen. Douglas MacArthur: “I’ll spend the rest of my life, if necessary, fighting Communism. Democracy—the American way of life—is the most wonderful thing we have and it is worth fighting for when it is threatened.” Hard to imagine a more succinct phrase to represent those who favored containment. The issue also had an article titled “Background for War.” It examined the possible outcomes if Russia were able to topple a fragile Iran. Most notably, the article mentioned the vast oil resources in the Middle East, which could come under dominating control should Russia exercise its might.
Not surprisingly, TIME editors devoted much of the magazines I read to the U.S. conflict in Korea and the global “War on Communism” (to alter a common adage used by current politicians when referring to terrorism). However, I noticed a decrease in the conflict’s immediacy in the later January issues. It seemed as though the Korean War and Containment became an ordinary part of American lives. Perhaps, much the same that the Iraq conflict and the “War on Terror” have for the country’s current population.

A suitable way for me to end this brief reaction essay would be to quote a few lines from an article in the February 26 issue. The article from which I derive the following quote had the title “The U.S. Gets a Policy.” The purpose of the article was to commend the quietly established policy among then-government officials, as heard from TIME reporters. “If the atomic umbrella continues to protect a united free world, if the U.S. strengthens Europe and Asia fast enough, if Communism is rolled back, the West can confront the Kremlin with the conditions for peaceful coexistence.”

If only history could have been more cooperative.

TIME Magazines from the 1950's

2007-01-25T09:50:00.000-05:00

The cover of the January 1, 1951 issue of TIME showed an artist depiction of an American soldier. TIME decided that, most likely in light of the remnant glory of U.S. soldiers in World War II and the growing confrontation between Communism in Korea, G.I. Joe should be the “Man of the Year.” I found it interesting that the “Man of the Year” award—still vital to the magazines current publishers—dated back so long. In fact, the annual award has been around since the 1920’s. However, the more significant statement of the 1951 award was the focus on U.S. involvement in an escalating and international crisis—Communist containment. In my reading of TIME issues between January and February of 1951, I could not escape the palpable earnest that Communism had amongst the publishers of the magazine and, I would venture to conclude, the public at large.

First, I would like to comment on the layout of the publication. Unlike modern issues, the 1951 counterparts did not contain the volume of unique articles by various staff reporters and freelance writers that the modern issues have. Modern issues and related publications, such as Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report, usually contain articles and stories that cater to their audience in an attempt to preserve and/or increase readership. A common term would be “fluff pieces,” assuming modern readers do not have the patience or interest to explore news in a more in-depth manner. I was pleasantly surprised to see concise news coverage in the 1951 issues, notably with regard to foreign states. Although the issues lacked the depth of an issue of, say, The Economist, there were information on countries such as Iran, Ireland, Italy, France, Nepal, Germany, Indonesia, and Cuba, amongst others. The blurbs mentioned key figures and events to give the readership a more global awareness. In addition, the layout of information was very simple: National news separated by sections focusing on the Presidency, Congress, Military, etc., followed by International news and insights.

I imagine the prevalence of international examination reflects this era of American history as one in which isolationism became growingly outdated. World War II, I imagine, countered the isolationist view, and the “Great Debate” pushed the U.S. to engage the world’s actors, obviously as a means to counter Communism. I found the term “Great Debate” in a few of the issues. It was a term that regarded isolationism v. proactive global involvement policy competition. Former President Hoover was quite outspoken against the latter approach to international relations during the Truman administration. “Any attempt to make war on the Communist mass by land invasion, through the quicksands of China, India, or Western Europe, is sheer folly. That would be the graveyard of millions of American boys” (January 1 issue of TIME). One cannot help but consider this quote as a rather accurate piece of prophecy, considering the outcomes of both the Korean and Vietnam wars.

In the January 1 issue, Truman addressed accusations of then-Secretary of State Dean Acheson, saying he had been “…shot by the enemies of liberty and Christianity.” The Acheson criticism regarding his effectiveness (also his relationship with Alger Hiss) as Secretary of State, to me, embodied how divisive Communism and containment was for the country. There was no unanimous decision, as I imagine there seldom is, amongst a large governing body.

The cover of the January 8 issue was a life-like artist rendering of Acheson, in addition to the statement below his name “A Time for Re-Examination.” That issue reported that many in Congress were uncertain as to the focus the U.S. should place in their broad international policy (although TIME held the opinion that the U.S. had no policy at the time, stemming from the large, on-going debate). Some felt that Europe was the key, and the Asia was not as significant. Hoover, who largely represented isolationists in the country, had his ideas referred to as the Hoover Doctrine—with the nickname “retreatism.” One cannot help but see some semblance of contemporary Iraq war hawks “cut-and-run” phrase placed on dissenters of the current conflict. Many seemed to view isolationism, from my reading, as an international relations paradigm that was very close to a “defunct” label. Most, if not all, articles and stories did not have an underlying question of “should we pursue Communism abroad?” Instead the apparent attitude represented in the magazine was the more proactive, “how should we pursue Communism?” This corresponds to observations that TIME magazine, at the time, was a more conservative publication.

Later in that issue, TIME published a small map to aid an article describing MacArthur troop movement. The title of the map was the clever “Seoul at Stake,” which then referred to Communist forces as “200,000 Reds;” a clear indication that TIME held Communism as a full-fledged antagonist to the country and its interests.

The January 15 issue reported the intra-country debate on “…effectiveness, practicality, and logic” with respect to U.S. involvement on the Asian continent. This underscores, again, the lack of unanimous consent for military actions.

I did find an advertisement in the January 29 issue to be an interesting representation of 1950’s technology. The Zenith corporation advertised a television set with an accompanying “Turret Tuner” (a remote control) that was exclusive to the particular Zenith model.

The February 5 issue contained an interesting quote from Gen. Douglas MacArthur: “I’ll spend the rest of my life, if necessary, fighting Communism. Democracy—the American way of life—is the most wonderful thing we have and it is worth fighting for when it is threatened.” Hard to imagine a more succinct phrase to represent those who favored containment. The issue also had an article titled “Background for War.” It examined the possible outcomes if Russia were able to topple a fragile Iran. Most notably, the article mentioned the vast oil resources in the Middle East, which could come under dominating control should Russia exercise its might.

Not surprisingly, TIME editors devoted much of the magazines I read to the U.S. conflict in Korea and the global “War on Communism” (to alter a common adage used by current politicians when referring to terrorism). However, I noticed a decrease in my perception of the conflict’s immediacy in the later January issues. It seemed as though the Korean War and Containment became an ordinary part of American lives. Perhaps, much the same that the Iraq conflict and the “War on Terror” have for the country’s current population.

A suitable way for me to end this brief reaction essay would be to quote a few lines from an article in the February 26 issue. The article from which I derive the following quote had the title “The U.S. Gets a Policy.” The purpose of the article was to commend the quietly established policy amongst then-government officials, as heard from TIME reporters. “If the atomic umbrella continues to protect a united free world, if the U.S. strengthens Europe and Asia fast enough, if Communism is rolled back, the West can confront the Kremlin with the conditions for peaceful coexistence.”

If only history could have been more cooperative.

Patience is a Virtue

2007-01-04T10:17:00.000-05:00

It has been a while since my last Nats-related post. Many blogs devoted to the team far surpass, in frequency, my own meager contributions. However, despite the winter lag, there has been promising news for the organization.

First and foremost, the selection of Manny Acta as the new manager should bring exuberance and optimism to a young team who will most likely endure further growing pains as the new ownership builds. The club goes from having the oldest manager in baseball in Frank Robinson, 71 in 2006, to now having the youngest (Acta will be 38 at the start of Spring Training in 2007).

Many fans on message boards and blogs use the term “re-building” when describing the overall philosophy that the new owners have toward the club. As a financial disaster in Montreal, talent was often purged by then-GM Omar Minaya, now GM for the New York Mets. To keep the team financially afloat, MLB, who then owned and operated the fledgling club, saw to a penny-pinching tactics that often including the trading of talent. Much to the ulcer-inducing contemplation of Nats fans, players such as Grady Sizemore, Brandon Phillips and Jason Bay were once in the Expos farm system, amongst others.

As such, when the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals, the Nats inherited that depleted minor league system.

A strong minor league pool of talent helps the major league team in two primary ways: it provides the team extra leverage in a trade, and it keeps the team from the two words every GM and owner hate; free agency.

Even mediocre, aging players can earn millions of dollars when they become apart of the open market.

This presents clear problems to payroll. If a team spends free agency money on, say, three to five players, half of the team’s overall payroll could be allocated to those select players. It is by no means an optimal course of action in fiscal management. Take the Yankees, for example. Because of their league leading payroll, around $200 million, the Yankees were forced to pay a $26 million luxury tax (the Nats 2007 payroll has an on-going estimate of about $30-$40 million).

$26 million wasted. The Yankees weren’t even able to contend in the ALCS, let alone win a World Series, which is what Yankees owner George Steinbrenner has in mind when spending so much money. Was it worth it?

Now, the Yankees are an extreme example. However, they represent what can go wrong when teams buy players at free agency prices.

The term re-building implies a somewhat self-sustaining structure (one that includes a solid foundation) that needs a small number of additions to make it completely whole. The Nats foundation, their farm system, is one of the worst in baseball. They are not in a re-building process; they are in a building-up process. I bring up a subtle disagreement on lexicon, but a necessary one as they create two different scenarios. Without a solid foundation, your structure will never stand strong. That’s the first line in the textbook used in Architecture 101. The Nats need to first establish a foundation for the major league team.

So, the Nats have remained relatively quiet during the free agency period. This is sound wisdom on the part of the newly awarded ownership, under the day-to-day command of Stan Kasten, who went through a similar process with the Atlanta Braves

One of the biggest, and most surprising, moves over the winter came with the dealing of veteran 2B Jose Vidro, 32, to the Seattle Mariners for two promising players: Chris Snelling, 25, and Emiliano Fruto, 22. In addition, the Mariners (for reasons beyond me) agreed to pay $12 million of the $16 million existing on the aging Vidro’s contract.

It’s wonderful move. For the Nationals. Deal an aging, expensive player for two young, cheaper prospects. This is, in essence, the direction that the Nats will take the organization over the next few years. It’s a two handed challenge: on one hand you need to keep the team’s payroll under inflation-control as much as possible without sacrificing the team’s overall respectability in play, and on the other you need to bring in young talent, giving them an opportunity to prove their muster. The two do go hand in hand—but it requires patience and determination.

The Nats have that patience and determination. They know the financial system in which they operate, and will not allow it degenerate the long-term goals of building a winning ball club. Some fans have expressed concern at the Nationals for not staking a greater claim in the free agency market. I would be more concerned if the team started to do this. When the new ballpark opens in 2008, the Nats are projected to have one of the top five markets in all of baseball. However, just because you are a big market team doesn’t mean you have to spend (i.e. “waste”) money like a big market team. We don’t need a Yankees organization in the nation’s capital.

God Bless the Winter Break

2006-12-17T10:43:00.000-05:00

If I had to pick one adjective to describe this fall semester at VCU I would pick: bromidic!

Only one course truly inspired me academically, and that was African-American Literature.
The others, eh...not so much. My Poetry class was interesting, but the lackadaisical approach wasn't amicable to comprehensive focus, which didn't make the class as enjoyable as it could have been.

However, the champion of trite, as it were, belongs to my Chaucer course. My instructor felt that we, students, had the profound ability to suddenly comprehend Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Troilus & Criseyde (read in the original Middle English, mind you) without the need for supplemental class instruction.

To give an extreme example that accurately surmises my experience with the course, the class period after the mid-term elections contained absolutely NO discussion on Geoffrey Chaucer or one of his works. Instead, our instructor digressed (that's the polite term. I prefer "rambled incoherently," myself) on topics from politics, a quasi-famous prison break in Richmond that took place years ago, and (as was common in our discussions of other Chaucerian scholars) how our instructor thought another of her academic brethren was an "idiot." In fact, at one point during the semester, she iterated her elation upon hearing the death of a Chaucerian contemporary. No joke.

To give you wonderful readers (all none of you) an idea of how out of step she was with reality, she gave us an essay assignment that was to be handed-in during our final exam period. When did she provide us with detailed instructions for this assignment, you ask? One day prior to the exam. I kid you not. One day for a three to four page explication of a Troilus & Criseyde passage.

All I can tell you is that I am greatly looking forward to a month-long respite here in Springfield, VA, picking up hours at Michael's, spending time with friends I have not seen in a while, and trying to rid my imagination of the boredom that was this Fall semester.

Poem

2006-12-07T14:16:00.000-05:00

Sura 54

hammer and sickle
amongst the mouse democracy.
the gentle hand of calligraphy
in the memory of Mujahideen.

an osama bin laden
party hat

adorned by

politics lovers who frequently
spat

and, just as the Soviet moon fell under
Afghanistan,

the stature of Albert Pujols
compliments the candles Little Richard
will blow out on his
Captain America

vanilla
frosted

birthday cake

British Lit Essay

2006-11-30T15:12:00.000-05:00

Higher Thought:

Divinity in Romantic Poetry

The Romantic period enforced great changes in English poetry: incorporation of layman vocabulary and linguistic structure, abandonment of past poetic ideologies and practices, and the utilization of new poetic themes and subjects past considered unimportant or insignificant. These changes of traditional poetic principles stemmed heavily, and were greatly inspired, from the American and, perhaps more notably, French Revolutions. The Norton Anthology of English Literature writes, “The [French] Revolution generated a pervasive feeling that this was an age of new beginnings when, by discarding traditional procedures and outworn customs, everything was possible, and not only in the political and social realm but in intellectual and literary enterprises as well” (1318). Poets, noticeably William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, felt their age, which scholars ascribe as falling between, roughly, the years1785-1830, were more open towards a new “renascence” of poetic breadth and evolvement casing a more profound exploration of the poet himself. With the political revolutions taking place in the world a new sense of creative revolution followed suit, allowing poetic freedom to emerge and to showcase each individual poet’s emotional, mental, and, as this paper will explore to more detail, spiritual aspects. One of the more notable characteristics of the age was the prominent description of a “higher spiritual power” residing within the minds of man and its significance towards happiness and creativity. As it will be explored further, that “higher power” does not necessarily facilitate the admittance to God, but is also reserved in the sense of a higher state of being, and, or, consciousness.

The poet perhaps best known and affiliated with the Romantic period was William Wordsworth. Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads contained a preface, revised and extended with each succeeding edition, totaling three, explaining the many characteristics of the anthology’s works, with those characteristics influencing other poets of that generation as well as poets of future generations. The third preface to Lyrical Ballads, quoted from the Norton Anthology’s reprinting, explains Wordsworth’s own revolutionary thinking and justification towards what a poem, and poet, should be and aim to accomplish:

The principal object, then, which I proposed to myself in these poems [ within Lyrical Ballads] was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men; and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them…the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement. (1438)

Each of these points of Wordsworth’s poetic practice was radically indifferent to past ideology of poetry, formed, essentially, by the neo-classicists within England, especially the “excitement” taking place in the poet’s mind. Wordsworth writes, “For the human mind is capable of being excited without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this, and who does not further know, that one being is elevated above another, in proportion as he possesses this capability” (1440). Two points can be taken from this quotation: the first is that Wordsworth’s thinking that one’s mind possesses an underlying sense of strength and creativity and, thusly, admits that man’s mind retains a higher power. In the prior Eighteenth-century, people, including writers, felt that humanity had a precise and limited range of thought and capability. With the rise of the Romantic period, however, these notions were challenged and rebelled against. The notion that man possesses and retains an intangible and “divine” power would have been refuted by many prior to the Romantics. The Norton Anthology goes on to describe:

Through the greater part of the eighteenth century, humans had for the most part been viewed as limited beings in a strictly ordered and essentially unchanging world. A variety of philosophical and religious systems in that century coincided in a distrust of radical innovation, a respect for the precedents established through the ages by the common sense of humanity, and the recommendation to set accessible goals and to avoid extremes, whether in politics, intellect, morality, or art. (1325)

By Wordsworth’s own belief that poets are “to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them…” this new exploration of artistic thinking would unequivocally arise within specific poetic works. Wordsworth’s sonnet “It is a beauteous evening” perhaps best illustrates his own thinking.

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquility;
The gentleness of heaven broods o’er the Sea:
Listen! The mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder—everlastingly.
Dear Child! Dear Girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year;
And worshipp’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not. (1490)

Several references within this poem inspire thought towards Wordsworth’s notion that a higher power does exist within the mind of man. “Listen! The mighty Being is awake, / And doth with his eternal motion make / A sound like thunder…” (Lines 6-8). Wordsworth states that “The mighty Being is awake” clearly suggesting a divine power, and that it makes an “internal motion,” implying that the “Being,” note it’s capitalization implying importance and significance with the verse, lies within. The ending lines of the poem conclude with “Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year; / And worshipp’st at the Temple’s inner shrine, / God being with thee when we know it not” (12-5). Here Wordsworth states that the girl with him is constantly around “divinity” throughout the year, implying a never severing relationship, and that she worships “at the Temple’s inner shrine,” again reiterating an internal power. Wordsworth goes further by addressing this power as “God,” who is “…with thee when we know it not.” The idea of “God” possessing divine power is nothing unique to the Romantic period, but, what is unique is referring to an almighty internal power as “God.” William A. Ulmer, professor of English at the University of Alabama, writes:

Wordsworth transfer the heavenly redemption celebrated in Luke—“and it came to pass that the begger died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:22)—to a child in her natural innocence, finding in that innocence, however, not merely a sign of God but a reconfirmation of Christian spiritual deliverance. While “It is a beauteous Evening” ignores Church doctrine, it establishes a resonantly Christian religious perspective for the scene it describes. (94-5)

In the sonnet Wordsworth clearly emphasizes that one possesses and retains a “God”-like power, even if it clashes with societal norms of religion and its practice.

The belief that a higher “internal” power is not solely applicable to William Wordsworth’s own personal belief. A fellow Romantic poet, and friend who aided in the writing of Lyrical Ballads, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also held this belief. His poem “The Eolian Harp” also provides evidence to this new expressive thinking. An eolian harp, named after the god of the winds, Aeolus, contains strings that, when placed to allow exposure to wind fluctuations, vary with played musical notes. This harp was very common in homes during the Romantic period. “The Eolian Harp” was composed a year after Coleridge married Sara Fricker and was commentary on Coleridge’s love of her and the various emotions that were spawned within that love. The first stanzas of the poem utilize the presence of the harp inside the cottage of the two newlyweds. Coleridge uses the harp as a metaphor for the peace and tranquility given to him by the love he possesses for his wife, Sarah. Coleridge later goes on to ponder that perhaps every man possesses their own “eolian harp”, pleasantly and peacefully struck by the winds within one’s own mind. “And what if all of animated nature / Be but organic harps diversely framed, / That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps / Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, / At once the Soul of each, and God of All?” (Lines 44-8). In these lines one can see that Coleridge, much the same as Wordsworth, feels that “God” is a divine power amongst nature as well as inside one’s mind. This pantheistic belief is met with criticism within the lines of the poem. Coleridge’s own wife rebukes his comment. “Well hast thou said and holily dispraised / These shapings of the unregenerate mind…” (54-5). Here Coleridge cites that Sarah feels his spiritual belief is unfounded and incorrect. In a book analyzing Coleridge’s use of biblical imagery and natural symbolism, author H. W. Piper comments, “What Sarah here particularly points out is that he [Coleridge] has forgotten that God is incomprehensible, and that the proper response to him is simply awe and deep feeling…Certainly he let the speculations stand as, apparently, the main purpose of the poem” (34). This reiterates that the line-of-thinking regarding the belief that a great power, “God” in this case and the former, lying within the mind was not commonly accepted in Romantic society.

In another example presenting the ideology of divine power within man’s mind comes from Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley was in line for a baronetcy and, subsequently, was sent to Oxford for schooling. While attending Oxford Shelley and a close friend published a pamphlet titled The Necessity of Atheism and mailed it to bishops and heads of the Oxford colleges, which resulted in his expulsion from school.

After his expulsion Shelley published “Queen Mab”, a poem about a fairy, Mab, and her journey through a horrific past and present and culmination in a rejoice-filled future. The character Mab refutes institutional religion and maxims of morality, feeling they are the cause of evil within society. In keeping with Shelley’s Oxford expelling pamphlet, one can very easily presume that Mab’s beliefs parallel, even to a slight degree, Shelley’s own. Ergo, as an atheist, one could also presume that Shelley would not harbor beliefs that a divine power would be prevalent outside or within the minds of man. However, Shelley’s poems did not exempt the reference towards such a power.

In his poem “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” Shelley devotes the entire work towards the admittance and explanation of a higher power. The first stanza begins “The awful shadow of some unseen Power / Floats though unseen amongst us…” (1.1-2). Here Shelley does, in fact, admit that there is “some unseen Power,” note, again, the significance of capitalization. Stanza two decries “Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate / With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon / Of human thought or form,--where art thou gone? / Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, / This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?” (2.3-6). Here Shelley ponders why this “Spirit of BEAUTY” is not constant, and can be unattached, leaving man to sadness and despair. Shelley continues the poem by commenting on society’s creation of “God.” “No voice from some sublimer world hath ever / To sage or poet these responses given-- / Therefore the name of God and ghosts of Heaven, / Remain the records of their vain endeavor” (3.25-9). Shelley explains that this “Spirit of BEAUTY” has been given the name of “God” and the existence of “Heaven.” “Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart / And come, for some uncertain moments lent. / Man were immortal, and omnipotent… / Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart” (4.37-41). Here Shelley states that love, hope, and self-esteem do indeed cease to be and if man could retain those divine characteristics this “spirit” would be indefinitely present. Within the poem Shelley goes on to recount his religious upbringing associated with his youth and his search for the metaphysical. “While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped / Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin … / Hopes of high talk with the departed dead… / I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed; / I was not heard—I saw them not…” (5.49-54). In a book analyzing metaphysics within Romantic poetry the author, Jack G. Voller, writes:

This passage has an autobiographical aspect; Percy Shelley dabbled in necromancy as a youth, but the passage refers equally well to his early literary explorations of the supernatural. Just as he raised no ghosts with his youthful incantations, the Gothic fictions supplied no answers, provided no high talk with the departed dead. The “answer,” if such it is, lies ultimately not in the realm of the supernatural but the natural: (176)

“When musing deeply on the lot / Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing / All vital things that wake to bring / News of buds and blossoming, -- / Sudden, thy shadow fell on me; / I shrieked, and clasped my hand in extacy!” (5.55-60). Shelley goes on to cite “I vowed that I would dedicate my powers / To thee and thine…” (6.61-2). “Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind / To fear himself, and love all human kind” (7.83-4). Here again Shelley remarks of the “Spirit.” Although his explanation of this higher power differs from that of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s label of “God,” it does parallel their belief that a higher power is indeed present.

Correlating with the vast changes of society, i.e. the American and French revolutions, the poetry of the Romantic period carried out a revolution of its own shelling the ideas and traditions that came before it. With the vast expansion and movement of “acceptable” norms, the poetry, and poets, of the period became preoccupied with the “liberation” of man and his powers. The Norton Anthology underscores, “The Romantic period…was also an age of radical individualism in which both the philosophers and poets put an extraordinarily high estimate on human potentialities and powers” (1325). Fitting with the new individualistic “freedoms” pursued by the generation, fresh and enlightened thoughts of a “higher power,” and its place within man, was pursued more extensively. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge did not abolish the existence, or name, of “God,” but went against the established pietistic notions of that “God” by suggesting divine powers lie inside, not away from, the minds of man. However, this view was not uniformly shared within the age. Percy Bysshe Shelley was noted for expressing atheistic views, yet he to admitted to searching for, and feeling, a higher power above the state of normal consciousness. With past traditions being broken and ignored in the Romantic age one clearly sees that a protrusion of that traditionalistic rebellion is the thinking of what man’s mind truly possesses and is capable of.

Works Cited

Abrams, M. H., Stephen Greenblatt, eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume B. 7th Ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.

Piper, H. W. The Singing of Mount Abora: Coleridge’s Use of Biblical Imagery and Natural Symbolism in Poetry and Philosophy. New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 1987.

Ulmer, William A. The Christian Wordsworth: 1798-1805. New York: State University of New York Press, 2001.

Voller, Jack G. The Supernatural Sublime: The Metaphysics of Terror in Anglo-American Romanticism. Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994.

African-American Literature Essay

2006-11-28T11:19:00.000-05:00

The Harlem “Dream Deferred:”

Frustration and History Represented in the Weaving of Theme and Form

In 1925, Alain Leroy Locke, the first African-American Rhodes Scholar, said, “Harlem has the same role to play for the New Negro as Dublin has had for the New Ireland or Prague for the New Czechoslovakia.” When humans begin a process of rebirth, so does their environment. This is what took place during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920’s. Yet, the hopeful bastion of African-American creativity and hope was doomed by financial disaster. By looking at the historical foundations of Harlem and its Renaissance, and then examining a poem by one of its instrumental figures, Langston Hughes, we can trace the emphatic hope and tragic loss of a unique period in American history. Hughes’ poetry, years after the death of the Renaissance, flows through image and structure dichotomies, mirroring the sadness and frustration of Hughes and his generation.

There was exuberance in the city of New York during the zenith of the Harlem Renaissance in 1926. A major population shift after Reconstruction involved, approximately, five million African-American migrants. These migrants ventured to northern states where a burgeoning process of industrialization was taking place, increasing chances of employment and financial well-being. In addition, another notable lure of the American north was the diminished presence of racism (the creation of the Klu Klux Klan took place during the Reconstruction period following the Civil War).

However, despite the containment of racist ideology, the floundering economy and environmental factors of the American South after the war played the biggest role. In his seminal book on the subject When Harlem Was in Vogue, David Levering Lewis writes, “The real reason for the mass migration was economic. The deadly blows to the South’s economy from natural disasters during 1915 and 1916—drought and rain and the boll weevil—launched the evacuation” (21).

So, the migration began. New York City had been a major metropolis of American society and industry, and the section of the city known as Harlem became a vital center of a re-birth of artistic culture and ideas: a community of writers, poets, artists, and dancers, amongst many others, interjected creativity originally quelled by slavery and social slighting. Now, in a community whose artistic ability fed off the participants, African-American culture was changing. Lewis continues: “[the population]…shared in equal measure what might be called Harlem nationalism—the emotional certainty that the very dynamism of the ‘World’s Greatest Negro Metropolis’ was somehow a guarantee of ultimate racial victory” (169-170). This new social optimism was not limited to a select number of the burgeoning populous, but to everyone.

To a remarkable degree that collective optimism touched everyone—the humble cleaning woman, the illiterate janitor, and even the criminal element. Nowhere else in America were ordinary people as aware of the doings of their artists and actors, composers and musicians, painters and poets, sculptors and singers, and its literary and academic writers than the Harlem of the mid- and late twenties (Lewis 170).

However, the Stock Market crash of 1929 blanketed the country in financial destitution. No creative movement could sustain its strength in such impoverishing conditions, especially in already poor sections of the country, like Harlem. The light of the Harlem Renaissance had been effectively extinguished. It is here, in lost hope, that we find Langston Hughes’ poem, Harlem.

When reading “Harlem,” one immediately senses a frustrated disillusionment of the speaker’s current condition. Hughes published the poem in his anthology Montage of a Dream Deferred in 1951, over twenty years after the end of the Harlem Renaissance, a period still very much on his mind. In his essay “Langston Hughes: Cool Poet,” Arthur P. Davis describes the collection; “Actually one long poem of seventy-five pages, this work employs a ‘jam session’ technique that allows the poet to make use of a host of varied, blending and contrasting vignettes to paint a full picture of Harlem’s frustration” (22).

The poem begins with the posing of the question, “What happens to a dream deferred?” (1). Hughes refers to the feelings of disenfranchisement, even disempowerment, to the ideals asserted with the Harlem Renaissance. Where has this “dream,” the Harlem Renaissance, gone?
Hughes supplies the reader with imagery that resembles the withering-away of 1920’s Harlem: a raisin drying in the sun (2-3), the festering of a sore (4), a stench of rotten meat (6), the crusting of sugar (7), the sagging of a heavy load (9-10), and the final image of an explosion (11).

The imagery is very appropriate for the theme that Hughes attempts to create. In addition to the images that Hughes kindles for his audience, he incorporates rhyme that provides a dichotomy to the decaying visualizations.

Beginning with the second line, the poem adopts a rhyme scheme of abcbdedfgf. What is odd about this use of rhyme, considering the subject matter of the poem, is that it has an air of playfulness, lightheartedness. This is a polar opposite of the speaker’s lamentations about the foregone Harlem Renaissance. In their book Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, David Mason and John Frederick Nims write on phonetics in poetry that, “…People find [rhyme] fun. Poetry has been seen as the supreme example of the play spirit in human beings…the use of rhyme has been seen as a subconscious recollection of the fun of childhood” (181).

Rhymes do have a sense of childlike appeal and conjuration. If so, why would Hughes use end rhymes, especially in shorter sentences that exacerbate playfulness, when dealing with the vanishing of the Harlem Renaissance? The amalgam of both rhyme playfulness and subject somberness creates a dichotomy and tension against form and tone that mirrors the environment of 1951 Harlem. In another of his essays on the subject, “The Harlem of Langston Hughes’ Poetry,” Arthur P. Davis writes, “Perhaps the dominant over-all impression that one gets from Montage of a Dream Deferred [again, the anthology where Hughes published "Harlem"] is that of a vague unrest. Tense and moody, the inhabitants of this 1951 Harlem seem to be seeking feverishly and forlornly for some simple yet apparently unattainable satisfaction in life…” (142). Hughes very adeptly uses this dichotomy to underscore the frustration experienced by those who had seen the Harlem Renaissance, and the ideals it represented, disappear and not return. Davis continues:

…this theme of Harlem’s dream deferred marches relentlessly throughout ["Harlem"]. Hughes knows that Harlem is neither a gay nor healthy but basically a tragic and frustrated city, and he beats that message home. Because of the fugue-like structure of the poem, it is impossible for the reader to miss the theme or forget it (142).

Immense hope and creativity once filled the streets of Harlem. An influx of slighted people, with new, but unclear freedoms, reinvigorated this area of New York in the 1920’s. This part of the city represented more than just a new home; it represented a life unclaimed. Its subsequent crumbling through the fate of the Stock Market crash crippled the movement, the people. Langston Hughes writes of the sadness and frustration of what was, but now no longer is, in "Harlem." His dream deferred floats amongst dichotomy, and counterintuitive poetic relationships that bring into the mind of his readers what was in the hearts of his contemporaries. It could be argued that the “dream deferred” would float unfulfilled until Martin Luther King Jr. spoke under the gaze of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, speaking to the world the great dream of the Harlem Renaissance and Langston Hughes.

Works Cited

Davis, Arthur P. “The Harlem of Langston Hughes’ Poetry.” Critical Essays on Langston Hughes. Ed. Edward J. Mullen. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1986.

Davis, Arthur P. “Langston Hughes: Cool Poet.” Langston Hughes Black Genius: A Critical Evaluation. Ed. Therman B. O’Daniel. New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1971.

Hughes, Langston. “Harlem.” The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. 2nd ed. Ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay. New York: WW Norton & Co., 2004.

Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Penguin Books, 1979.

Mason, David and John Frederick Nims. Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2006.

Who's got Left?????

2006-11-27T17:35:00.000-05:00

The loss of Alfonso Soriano (now a Chicago Cub) to free agency gives the Nationals an opening in their roster for left field. I think the most obvious choice to replace Soriano is Ryan Church. But Church comes with apprehensive baggage.

The most recent example comes with his refusal to participate in Mexican winter ball, in which to improve his success with breaking pitches. In 2005 some felt Church did not display either the physical or mental toughness to allow his potential to come through.

Yet, he is by far the best option for the club.

Although he is no spring chicken, Church is 28 years old, which is considered relatively “young” in MLB years. In 196 at bats his numbers (OBP / SLG / AVG) were .353 /.466 /.287 . Although mindful that Soriano had 647 at bats in 2006 (.351 / .560 / .277), Church went toe-to-toe with Soriano in OBP and AVG.

Another option that the Nats have is to play Alex Escobar. In 87 at-bats: (.394 /.575 /.356).

Obviously, offensive numbers in 87 at-bats is in no way a strong prediction as to how that player’s numbers will evolve in 500+ opportunities. Despite this, Escobar has evident talent. That is clear.

However, he has severe trouble remaining healthy. After an in-game shoulder injury last August then-manager Frank Robinson said, “It's like he has a cloud hanging over his head, a negative force…I feel bad for him and I know he feels bad about this.”

100% health can never be guaranteed for any player, but no one should assume that Escobar can remain healthy throughout the 2007 season given his previous health-related concerns.

I would like to see Escobar in a CF platoon situation with Nook Logan, at least at the onset of the Spring Training and the regular season. New Manager Manny Acta said this about Logan shortly after the club announced that he would replace Robinson: "Logan played well during the month of September…Nook has a tool that never goes into a slump and that is speed, especially playing in spacious RFK Stadium. This team has not had a reliable center fielder the last three or four years. We are going to give him every opportunity to win the job."

From that, it appears that the club wants Logan to win the job outright with his performance, which does not attenuate my initial thoughts about a center field platoon.

There is no dispute that Logan needs to improve his offensive production, especially his OBP. His exceptional speed, in addition to making him an above-average defensive player, needs to be used on the base paths. Although Acta has admitted that he is not extremely aggressive with base stealing, no one denies that it is far more preferable to have speed on base as opposed to not. Whether or not any offensive improvements warrant a full-time position on the roster remains to be seen.

In addition, Kory Casto has impressed many in the organization, being named the club’s Minor League Player of the Year in two consecutive years. His 2006 numbers at AA Harrisonburg in 489 at bats were .379 /.468 /.272.

However, I think Casto should get ample playing time during Spring Training, but should start out in AAA Columbus. If at any point during the season there is an opening in either LF or CF, he should be called up.

There are many factors that will determine the opening day lineup. Many won’t occur until Spring Training, should the roster remain as it does currently.

However, of all the outfielders, excluding RF Austin Kearns, Ryan Church has had the most consistent success (which is slim in and of itself).

I think that Church’s talent potential, his relatively young age, and his inexpensive contract will make him quite valuable in the months and weeks leading up to the trade deadline of July 31. Church would be an expendable player knowing that Kory Casto would, presumably, improve in the minors. By giving him consistent playing time, his value will be maximized, giving the Nats a better chance of acquiring starting pitching or any other position that needs amelioration.

Obviously, coaches and personnel are going to have a better idea as to how these players fit into the club and its future. But by giving Ryan Church a consistent shot to test his metal, the club will most likely improve an eventual return on its investment.

Thoughts on Iraq

2006-11-08T22:56:00.000-05:00

The removal of Donald Rumsfeld from the office of Secretary of Defense will interject new ideas and new policy to the Iraq war. The move, in step with the eventual release of findings by the Baker Institute and the Democratic “thumping” in the recent midterm congressional elections, shows that the environment in Iraq is at a disconnect with the goals of the Presidential administration and the public.

The midterm elections were a referendum on the Republican leadership. The underlying issue that seems to have generated the referendum-feel, and also an increase in voter turnout across the country, was not a national issue, but a foreign policy issue—The Iraq War.

But can Iraq be fixed? Can the hopes of the President that Iraq will be a peaceful, democratic bastion in a region as volatile as the Middle East?

Probably not. At least not in the near future.

A mistake that war planners at the Pentagon and Central Command (under now retired Gen. Tommy Franks) made was that they did not foresee the animosity that was to be unleashed, a virulence amongst Shiites and Sunnis, against one another, that Saddam Hussein repressed under dictatorial control. In fact, they had no substantive strategy for post-Saddam Iraq (referred to as Phase IV of the war plan). Thomas E. Ricks in his book, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq:

It wasn’t that there was no planning. To the contrary, there was a lot, with at least three groups inside the military and one at the State Department working on postwar issues and producing thousands of pages of documents. But much of the planning was shoddy, there was no one really in charge of it, and there was little coordination between the various groups (79).

The lack of significant preparation and adequate troop numbers caused Iraq to explode. Looting was widespread and difficult to control. In addition, the minimal number of troops allowed a free passing of select Iraqis into neighboring Syria (and would also be the impetus for Iraqi civilian abuse at the hands of U.S. soldiers, notably General Odierno’s 4th Infantry Division), some of whom would fund characters of insurgency. In addition, it is a prime violation of counterinsurgency warfare to allow a lax control of territorial borders (see Lt. Col. David Galula’s, French army, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, a counterinsurgency “bible” despite its dated publication, 1938.)

Paul Bremer’s implication of de-baathification (removing all individuals once associated with Hussein’s party) and the abolishment of the Iraqi army effectively rooted insurgency in the already unstable country. Roughly half a million individuals were slighted, dishonored, and now without paychecks to support their families.

The current unemployment rate in Iraq is between 30%-70%, with notable percentage differences in various sections of the country. The creation of jobs in the country is essential. This will require extensive amounts of money. Perhaps Iraq’s neighbors, Syria and Iran, can help to build-up the fragile Iraq economy (both Syria and Iran have no need for a continuing unstable Iraq, which would cause an influx of refugees and could insight intra-religious violence amongst Muslims in their own countries).

In a recent article for Newsweek magazine, Fareed Zakaria puts forth this contemplation: “If you think that Iraq's tumult is a product of its culture, religion and history, ask yourself what the United States would look like after three years of 50 percent unemployment. Would there not be civil strife in Manhattan, Detroit, Los Angeles and New Orleans?”

There is one bright spot in Iraq, which is the growing economic strength of the Kurdistan region in the north. “While the government in Baghdad is still haggling over its petroleum law and violence wracks much of the country, the Kurds are about to pass their own oil law. They have already signed contracts with a handful of foreign oil companies, and they’re aggressively wooing more” (Fang, -style: italic;">U.S. News & World Report, Nov. 13, 2006). Fareed Zakaria further adds this notable characteristic: “…it is a Muslim region in the Arab world that wants to be part of the modern world, not blow it up.”

Iraq needs to find a way to allocate petroleum revenue to both Kurds, Sunnis, and Shias. This will generate much needed income if the new country is to grow.

However, the sustained violence curbs development in the country, and security is not at the levels it needs to be. This is the primary difficulty that the new Secretary of Defense will undertake. However, it is a pipedream to assume that U.S. forces can eliminate the sectarian violence in the country. The best hope that forces have is to keep the violence at minimal levels so the economy, based in oil revenue and employment-creation, can grow and become, at some level, self-sustaining without the aid of American troops.

I’m not quite sure how Americans view the situations in Iraq, nor do I comprehend their best wishes and intents (even their realistic goals) for that fragile country. But, we would be kidding ourselves to assume that a peaceful and a working democratic country will take form in the none-to-distant future. It will take many years, possibly generations, for a stable economy to emerge amongst sustained security and prevalent democracy.

However, there is no guarantee that this will happen.

Run, Barack. Run????

2006-11-02T16:23:00.000-05:00

A few hundred people crowded onto the property of Virginia Union University in Richmond to participate in a rally for Virginia senatorial candidate Jim Webb. Sharing the stage with him were three of the most famous Virginia Democrats in the history of the Old Dominion: current Mayor Douglas Wilder, current Governor Tim Kaine, and former Governor (and a once hopeful presidential candidate) Mark Warner.

Despite the local stature of these individuals, it was a Democrat from Illinois that received the loudest cheers from the crowd: Sen. Barrack Obama.

I have heard a great deal about the Illinois Senator. He left his first nationwide impression during the last Democratic Convention where he gave a rousing speech. That speech inspired many to think that, perhaps, they were hearing a future President. If so, Obama would be the first African-American President of the United States.

I was surprised to see the Senator with a sense of meekness in the chilly, sunny autumn November. He, at times, seemed as though he was a bit overwhelmed with the attention he has been receiving of late. During the occasions when one of the local politicians would insinuate that Sen. Obama could be the “next President,” he would smile sheepishly, even once looking to the ground, made awkward with the crowd’s cheering.

Who can blame him? Within the past two years, he has moved from “high-level prospect” status in the Democratic Party to starting shortstop.

Yet, his humble demeanor did not derail is ability to inspire the crowd. Yes, he was among members of his own party, who are further electrified with leaders of their own party as Election Day is less than a week away. And yes, he himself is not running for election, but using his “star power” to elect a hopeful Democrat into the Senate. But that doesn’t guarantee that a politician can still electrify the crowd. His strong presence today did not come from an overt Type-A personality, but a genuine honesty and a relatable quality that makes him especially hard to dislike.

One of his best lines recanted the decision-making process he had when deciding to run for public office. He did the two things that every would-be politician does: he first prayed, and then asked his wife for permission. With a yes from both “almighty decision makers,” he decided to run for Senate.

Whereas Mark Warner comes across as a politician that you can like, Sen. Obama comes across as an individual that you like. There is a difference.

To prove this point, after the rally had ended, and the politicians onstage walked down the steps leading to the grounds of VUU, Senatorial candidate Jim Webb was easily and readily accessible for a handshake, picture, or autograph. However, the swarming crowd forced Senator Obama to return back up the stairs and into a VUU building to avoid those eager to meet him.

At one point, every news camera was inches away from Barrack Obama, with the rally’s spectators crowding the Illinois Senator with copies of his two most recent books for him to sign.

As I began my walk back to the Fan district of Richmond, I saw one man selling t-shirts and buttons that read “Obama for President.”

It’s hard to imagine not seeing more of those as 2008 approaches.

Op-Ed Piece

2006-11-01T15:15:00.000-05:00

“Hey Congress, Where Ya’ At?”

The current presidential administration bears much of the blame that circulates regarding the Iraq War. The executive branch of the government must shoulder the responsibility of a wartime United States; our President is the country’s Commander in Chief.

However, the structure of the Constitution does not delegate full authority to the branch of the executive during times of war. The legislative branch shares its own authority, and thusly its own responsibility, as well.

The current congress (the 109th in U.S. history) has relinquished its own power of oversight when examining the actions and policy of the executive branch. Oversight enables Congress to examine how their legislation is carried out, in addition to “checking” and “balancing” the other two branches of government.

Under the Clinton administration, Congress formed an oversight process to investigate whether or not President Clinton had used his Christmas card list to petition possible campaign contributors. The Congress took in roughly 140 hours of testimony on the matter. Contrast this with the number of testimony-hours the current Congress took, 12 hours, when investigating the Abu-Ghraib abuse allegations.

The state of military involvement in Iraq has been given slighted attention. In June of this year, the Republican Congress began a debate to decide whether to enact formal resolution to “stay the course” over, the largely Democrat position to, “cut and run.” This debate was the first formal Congressional discussion on U.S. / Iraq military relations since 2002, when in October Congress voted the use of force in Iraq.

In addition to the lowered numbers of oversight discussions in the legislative branch (in the 60’s and 70’s Congress held a biannual average of 5,700 subcommittees, between 2003-2004, roughly 2,100) the current Presidential administration views oversight discussions as an annoyance, and unnecessary. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld begrudgingly attended an Armed Services Committee meeting in August of this year, only after Sen. Hilary Clinton (D-NY) turned Rumsfeld initial refusal into a favorable political issue for the Democrats.

Another example of how the current administration approaches oversight came in May of 2004. The Armed Services Committee, in light of the Abu-Ghraib scandal, asked Rumsfeld and various army personal about proper chain of command. When Rumsfeld was about to demonstrate the command, he was informed that one of his accompanying Generals neglected to bring a prepared chart for the committee to use as a visualization aid.

A lack of interaction between both branches may cause many to feel that it is necessary for opposing parties to control the executive and legislative branches separately. Competition is good for the political market. However, it does not need to come to this. Congress is an independent force in the American government, as is the Presidency. Both need to keep an “eye out” on the other. Had Congress been more vocal about oversight discussions, or more vocal about a lack of cooperation on the part of the Bush administration, perhaps the Iraq war would not be in the position we find it now. It is necessary for Congress to reinvigorate oversight to minimize failures and to better, and quickly, adapt to changing circumstances.

Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX) said, “You don’t need the [oversight] hearings” when one party controls both the executive and legislative branches of government. Hopefully, just as Rep. Delay, that ideology will be pushed out of Congress.

Book Review

2006-10-31T19:05:00.000-05:00

Few writers have the ability to present history to their readers with both historical integrity and quality narration. The former allows the reader an accurate appraisal of history. Yet, writers can easily neglect the latter. It is far easier for them to approach their recount with dry objectivity, void of a human “touch,” and void of a true story.

Victor Sebestyen accomplishes both tasks in his book Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Filled with vivid accounts and character analysis, which comes from Sebestyen’s in-depth research, a largely forgotten historical event of the Cold War finds new life.

As a satellite of the Soviet Union, Hungary fell under the control of Maytas Rakosi, a torrid dictator eager to please his appointer, Joseph Stalin. Under Maytas, Hungarians came to know the AVO (the Hungarian equivalent to the KGB), who under the leadership of Gabor Peter, implemented the “salami tactics” of Rakosi to subdue dissent and retain control of the communist country.

After the death of Stalin, and the subsequent approval of Nikita Khrushchev to lead the Kremlin, Rakosi influence in Hungary diminished. Khrushchev and his associates, well aware of Rakosi’s brutal “salami tactics” diminished his power. One way in which the Kremlin accomplished this was through the appointment of Imre Nagy as the country’s Prime Minister.

Nagy represented a communism that sought to withdrawal from the harsh affronts of Stalin, mirroring the desire of Khrushchev, in favor of a more amicable system for the Party and Hungarians through his “June Road” plan. A polar opposite of the much harsher Rakosi, an embodiment of Stalin-communism, Nagy quickly amassed a loyal following amongst his compatriots. His rival-like stature to Rakosi, the First Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, was not unseen by the country’s leader. As he had done before with perceived rivals, Rakosi attempted to oust Nagy through trumped-up charges, which would ultimately lead to a show trial (a preferred method amongst Soviet communists to remove threats).

Rakosi failed at this, and was only able to fire Nagy from his position. Khrushchev later tired of Rakosi, and removed him from power. His successor, Erno Gero, would ultimately be in communist power when the Revolution began.

A communist student organization desired to march into Budapest City Park. A last minute approval by Gero sealed the eventuality. What began as a protest march, partly inspired by rhetoric heard on the U.S. sponsored Radio Free Europe, quickly turned into a revolution. Hungarian soldiers joined the side of their country, and what began has a mere protest to voice concerns turned into a hostile takeover of Budapest. The people rallied around the implementation of a Nagy-led government. Yet, the still loyal communist was unable to inspire and govern a rebellion, whose hatred of communism had grown since initial Soviet takeover of the country after World War II.

Intermixed between these events, Sebestyen places his readers inside both the Kremlin and the White House. Had the Eisenhower administration taken a more proactive stance to support rebellious Soviet satellite countries, the revolution might have brought significant change for the country. Instead, a more passive approach to communist “containment”, coupled with a developing Egyptian crisis, doomed the revolution of help from the West.

In the Kremlin, a Polish upheaval days before the Budapest march gave way to a more moderate communist led country with stronger autonomy. Initially, Khrushchev did not want to retake the country with military force, opting more for the agreement that had been reached in Poland. Yet, the violence exhibited by the revolutionaries pushed Khrushchev to invade, twelve days after the initial protests.

The succinct writing of a well-researched subject makes the book feel more of a narrative than a historical textbook. The reader quickly aligns themselves with the Hungarians through Nagy and various other insurgents based on their immense reproach of Rakosi and the communist leaders. Despite knowing the outcome of the uprising from the beginning of the book, one reads Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution with the investment of possibility, inspired by hope.

A W.B. Yeats Takeoff Poem

2006-10-26T19:16:00.000-05:00

This Fine Autumn Day

On Stephen’s Green her beauty shines proud
In a restless fit of old thoughts and dreams
A tender walk through an old mountain stream
Becomes a relic, more than Turin’s shroud

How many walks I made in younger years
Were filled with deep silence and solitude
And many doubts about Love’s fortitude
Drenched my mind in a great many of fears

Yet, now in older meek and humble ways
I search for a touch to come from your hand
Like an ancient jewel entrenched deep in sand
Longing to meet on this fine autumn day.

A New Piece in Chaucerian Lore!!

2006-10-26T15:59:00.000-05:00

Fabliaux and the Bible:
How Biblical Allusions Shape the Miller’s Tale

Since the canonization of the New Testament in the 4th century under the supervision of Roman ruler Constantine, the Bible became a collection of books with strong prominence in society. Many pieces of literature have incorporated biblical allusions and undertones since its canonization. Geoffrey Chaucer used biblical allusions in the Miller’s Tale to supplement the story’s fabliaux quality. These allusions can often be indiscernible to modern readers, with diminished biblical comprehension in a growing secular society.

The Miller’s Tale follows the noble and chivalric Knight’s Tale. Where the Knight is an honorable figure, the intoxicated Miller parodies the Knight’s character and tale with a drunken story of adultery and flatulence. In the tale, one of the characters, Absolon, is a feminine looking parish clerk: “Crul was his heer, and as the gold it shoon…His rode was reed, and his eyen greye as goos” (MilT 3314-3317). Absalom was also the name of King David’s favorite son, who was a physically striking individual: “In all of Israel there was not a man who could so be praised for his beauty as Absalom, who was without blemish from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (2 Samuel 14:25).

The similarities of the two characters, according to Paul E. Beichner, “…suggests the biblical character and the traditions of vanity and effeminacy that came to be symbolized with that name” (qtd. in Cook 178). The usage of biblical allusions was common in Chaucer’s time. Lawrence Besserman, author of Chaucer’s Biblical Poetics, writes, “References to the Bible…were commonplace in medieval poetry. Accounting for the abundance of partial quotation and oblique biblical allusion in Chaucer’s works is therefore not especially problematic” (136).

By inferring a biblical character, Chaucer insinuates a moral aspect to the tale. In The Old French and Chaucerian Fabliaux: A Study of Their Comic Climax, Thomas D. Cooke writes, “Readers of the tale have long noticed various religious allusions that give the story a ‘moral edge,’ but more recently scholars have been finding enough religious allusions to force that moral edge into the center of the story” (178). The “moral edge” presents an interesting dichotomy to the common fabliaux characteristic of sex, specifically, the audacious affair between John’s wife, Alisoun, and her lover Nicholas. The biblical allusion strengthens the overall disregard of morality in the fabliaux, allowing the moral issues to lurk just behind the characters (Cooke 185). Another biblical allusion provides a comedic finale to the tale.

An amusing ending is a primary characteristic of the fabliaux. The climax consists of two elements: it comes as a surprise, and yet it has been carefully prepared for in such a way that when it comes, it is seen as artistically fitting and appropriate (Cooke 13). Chaucer references a famous biblical story to accentuate the comedic ending of the Miller’s Tale.

The great flood by God intended to wipe away the inequity of the Earth. He spared Noah and his family, commanding that Noah construct an Ark. “The Lord wiped out every living thing on earth: man and cattle, the creeping things and the birds of the air; all were wiped out from the earth. Only Noah and those with him in the ark were left” (Genesis 7:23). This is one of the most memorable stories of the Bible.

To coax John away from Alisoun, Nicholas, a scholar and astrologer, instructs him that God will bring about a second Great Flood.

“‘Now John,’ quod Nicholas, ‘I wol nat lye; / I have yfounde in myn astrologye, / As I have looked in the moone bright, / That now a Monday next, at quarter nyght, / Shal falle a reyn…so hidous is the shour, / Thus shal mankynde drenche, and lese hir lyfe.’”(MilT 3513-3521).

John accepts the young scholar’s deliberately misleading prediction and even agrees to build his own ark that, at Nicholas’ command, John will drop from his roof. This plan eventually backfires later in the story (thus supplying the comedic ending) when Absolon rams a hot poker in the ass of Nicholas. In searing pain, Nicholas cries for water. John assumes Nicholas is referring to the flood. John releases his ark, tumbling to the ground in idiocy, later ridiculed by the public. As was John, modern readers may be inclined to the plausibility that God would undertake a second flood.

However, careful reading of the Genesis story shows that such a scenario would not occur, should one take the biblical story literally. After the flood dissipates, God says, “I shall establish my covenant with you, that never again shall bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood, there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth” (Genesis 9:11; emphasis added). The rainbow that follows rain showers represents this Covenant. Modern readers, unaware of the full story of the Covenant, would not see the humor of John’s biblical ignorance if they were ignorant of the biblical narrative themselves.

In addition to supplying a very humorous end to the tale, John’s general aloofness in the story causes tension with one of the traveling pilgrims. The Reeve takes offense to such an unflattering depiction of a carpenter; fitting as the Reeve once served the profession. In the following tale, the Reeve tells a story depicting an unsavory Miller as an act of revenge.

Chaucer uses biblical allusions that become apart of the fabliaux structure in the Miller’s Tale. The inclusion of a biblical name introduces a play on morality and a major biblical narrative accentuates the comic climax of the tale. By recognizing these allusions to biblical stories, one better understands and appreciates the Miller’s Tale.

Works Cited

Besserman, Lawrence. Chaucer’s Biblical Poetics. Oklahoma UP, 1998.

Cooke, Thomas D. The Old French and Chaucerian Fabliaux: A Study of Their Comic Climax. Missouri UP. London, 1978.

The New American Bible. P.J. Kenedy & Sons. New York, 1970.

An essay from my African-American Literature course

2006-10-10T10:30:00.000-05:00

Poeticizing Tragedy:

Selected Poets and the Middle Passage

“‘Middle Passage:’ the WORD means blues to me” is the opening line of James A. Emanuel’s poem The Middle Passage Blues. The first horrific steps of the slave-trade were aboard the Middle Passage, the route taken by slave-wranglers to bring Africans to England and the United States. A majority of scholars on the subject estimate that for every one African to make it through the arduous journey across the Atlantic, five or six Africans would die. The Middle Passage forced an estimated sixty million Africans into its belly. Art very often becomes a means to deal with tragedy and history. It should come as no surprise that many African-American poets have composed art to deal with the tragedy of the Middle Passage. Many of these poems differ in terms of poetic techniques. Looking at selected poems by Robert Hayden, Lucille Clifton, and Phillis Wheatley one will see just how different these poems are. The methods vary between these three poets and their poems, yet all three of these works recapture and/or comment on the horror burdened by millions over the Atlantic Ocean many years ago.

One of the first poetic techniques found in Robert Hayden’s Middle Passage is intertextuality. Hayden includes lines from a Protestant hymn: “Jesus Saviour pilot me / Over life’s Tempestuous Sea” (20-21). Middle Passage adopts multiple perspectives within the narrative. Not one of those perspectives, however, comes from an African slave. Instead, Hayden opts to include narrations from members of a slave crew. John Hatcher, author of From the Auroral Darkness: The Life and Poetry of Robert Hayden, writes, “Hayden’s most adept handling of narrative to achieve poetic effect is his synthesis of voices and points of view” (261). Hayden uses these perspectives to achieve irony: a shipman onboard a vessel transporting slaves appealing to God. The plea continues: “We pray that Thou wilt grant, O Lord, / safe passage to our vessels bringing / heathen souls unto Thy chastening” (22-24). Immediately, the reader cannot help but feel a sense of hypocrisy on the part of the speaker. The act of an individual who participates in the slave trade, a grotesque endeavor, appealing to any compassionate God for a secure voyage is a delusional. Hatcher continues, “…any indictment of the slavers comes from our own reaction to the powerful irony of the accusations of the slavers themselves…” (139).

This notion was common during the years that the slave trade remained a working function of the American colonies; many found no religious hypocrisy in relationship to their actions and the spiritual teaching of Jesus Christ. Because the modern reader would be confused, horrified, and baffled by the fact that individuals would actually feel Jesus Christ condoned the slave trade, it creates a powerful (and historically accurate) representation of the Middle Passage. Despite the severe physical, emotional, and mental scars inflicted on fellow human beings by the functionality of the slave market, certain practicing “Christians” felt no hesitation or shame in facilitating that slave-market. Hayden employs this irony for the emotional benefit of his poem. This irony helps influence the reader into viewing the multiple narrations in a negative regard. What is interesting is that the vast majority of first-person narrations involve the protagonist, or the “good guy.” It is very unusual, although very effective, for Hayden to cast the first-person perspectives (the slave-shipman) in a negative connotation. This strengthens the reader to feel sympathy for the slaves and resentment for the practitioners of the Middle Passage.

In contrast to Robert Hayden’s rather lengthy poem, Lucille Clifton’s [the bodies broken on] is a shorter work, consisting of only eleven lines. The length of Hayden’s poem allowed him a larger poetic “palate,” if you will. He allowed himself more opportunities to generate thoughts and emotions to his readers by the simple fact of lengthening his poem—the more space one has to write, essentially, the larger amount of ideas one will convey.

Clifton’s poem is the opposite of Hayden’s endeavor. The shorter length of limits her space to generate thoughts and emotions. Therefore, Clifton employs language that achieves a great deal in minimal allocation. One of the first examples of this comes with the mentioning of the Trail of Tears. In 1838, under President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Americans were marched west. Thousands died under the harsh conditions.

The affect that this historical event has in the poem is the conveying of death at the hands of a power (the United States Government) over those who lack power (the Cherokee). Immediately afterwards, Clifton mentions “the bodies melted” (3) in the Middle Passage. The poem’s speaker associates a harsh physical aftermath with the Middle Passage, and the slave trade, very quickly in the poem. The severity of melting bodies pushes the actual repercussions Africans under the slave trade. Although there were deaths, beatings, disease, broken families, no bodies physically melted. Yet, the statement in Clifton’s poem generates powerful imagery, one that brings total human destruction—a statement of the horrific journey of millions of Africans. In addition, Clifton further adds melodramatic imagery when the speaker comments how both the bodies of the Trail of Tears and the Middle Passage are “married to rock and / ocean by now” (5-6). Ultimately, the mountains’ crumbling on white men and the ocean’s pulling white men down “sing for red dust and black clay / good news about the earth” (10-11). Here, Clifton suggests retribution for the actions of past white’s in their treatment of others. What makes this poem so effective is usage of imagery and associations on the part of the reader. In their book Language in Thought and Action, S.I. and Alan R. Hayakawa state this about poetry: “…one has to admire…their [poets] deep awareness of the mechanisms of human perception and conceptualization that has made it possible for them to express so much so effectively in such condensed form” (196). This is precisely how Clifton influences her readers; painting strong imagery that lingers in one’s mind.

Regarded as the first African-American poet, Phillis Wheatley offers her readers insight into the Middle Passage, and slavery. Born in the African continent and raised in the American colonies. One of her poems, On Being Brought from African to America, uses language and form to describe her thoughts on the slave trade. On the surface, her poem can appear to be contrived and dogmatic, akin to a brainwashed work of art. However, subtle nuances within the poem paint an entirely different picture than initial readings yield.

As Lucille Clifton’s poem, Wheatley’s work is similarly short (only eight lines). The first lines of the poem play into the common societal beliefs of her time: “‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land; / Taught my benighted soul to understand / That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too” (1-3). The first impressions readers gain is that Wheatley’s poem is the byproduct of colonial ideals toward Africans. However, Wheatley hides, or “masks,” her true feelings by putting on airs. The last few lines highlight this: “Some view our sable race with scornful eye; / “Their colour is a diabolic die.” / Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, / May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train” (4-8). By using a quotation to represent her society’s belief toward Africans (“Their colour is a diabolic die”), Wheatley now detaches herself from the more apparent tone of slave-trade “testimonial” and initiates her own commentary. For modern readers, this tactic in subtlety may seem confusing and unnecessary. What readers need to keep in mind is that Wheatley was not afforded protections that others were (there were no First Amendment rights for African-Americans). She would have to deal with the repercussions of openly criticizing the Middle Passage and colonial slavery. Therefore, she used poetic tact and cunningness to create a safe barrier between her own thoughts and those that were easily discerned in the poem—“masking.”

Note the italics in the second-to-last line. She highlights Christians, Negroes and also Cain (the evil son of Adam and Eve). Also, be mindful of her comma usage. First readings may yield a statement made toward Christians (i.e. Remember, Christians, Negroes black as Cain…”). However, there is a comma placed after Negroes: “Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain” (7). Using Wheatley’s grammar, one sees that the statement the speaker is making to both Christians and Negroes. Combined with both social identifiers italicized (suggesting a uniformity or together-ness), the reader discovers that Wheatley is comparing both Christians and Negroes as being black as Cain. The significance of the Cain reference is that many who read the Genesis account in the Hebrew Bible thought the mark sustained by Cain for murdering his brother, Abel, was to be interpreted as the “mark” of black skin. In Black Imagination and the Middle Passage the authors write, “…the dominant culture uniformly saw blackness as a stigma, the mark of Cain to be “refin’d” away, if not materially, at least spiritually…” (283). Her contemporary white readers (the vast majority of her readers would have been white colonials) would have inferred the “black as Cain” reference as one pertaining only to Africans, as commonly believed. Yet, Wheatley’s reference pertains to both Africans and Colonials. As such, her message can also be reread to infer that both Africans and Colonials “may be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train” (8). If an African slave, especially a young woman, openly suggested that white Christian colonials also shared the mark of Cain, she would have faced numerous reprisals, death being one of the many possibilities. By nature, artistic “masking” is subtle and difficult to extrapolate. Perhaps, Wheatley felt that her African contemporaries needed to be “refin’d.” However, the text can also suggest that Wheatley was not at a loss to comment on white-superiority/black-inferiority notions of her time. There is substantial logic for Wheatley to have incorporated a “masking” technique in light of the legal stranglehold held against the African-American contemporaries of her time, making her “true” intent difficult to separate from her masked rhetoric.

Robert Hayden, Lucille Clifton, and Phillis Wheatley use varying techniques in their poems that describe the Middle Passage. Hayden incorporated the Christian religion to build a poem around irony. Clifton used minimal syntax, focusing more on strong lexical associations and Wheatley “masked” her true thoughts, blanketing them in prose that is more ambiguous. These poetic measures differ, but they both focus on, bringing into higher awareness, the immense tragedy that followed the ships of the Middle Passage across the Atlantic. By reading and understanding the art that describes such tragedy, we may better understand it. Doing so will give cadence to the memories lost over that broad sea.

Works Cited

Diedrich, Maria, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Carl Pedersen. Black Imagination and the Middle Passage. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.

Gates Jr., Henry Louis and Nellie Y. McKay, ed. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.

Hatcher, John. From the Auroral Darkness: The Life and Poetry of Robert Hayden. Oxford: George Ronald, 1984.

Hayakawa, S.I. and Alan R. Hayakawa. Language in Thoughts and Action. New York: Harcourt, 1990.

From a loosely inspired assignment on transitions

2006-10-03T10:52:00.000-05:00

the lost Marconi

there is a lost Marconi wave
hidden deep in the temples
of the Aztec rulers
just before inventing
soccer.

herding the elderly to their deaths

or

singing old Woody Guthrie songs,
that one wave,

unaccounted,

floats breathlessly
in satin sheets
and nights crawling
with religion

A brief essay on a Charles Bukowski poem

2006-10-02T14:13:00.000-05:00

The poet Charles Bukowski is quoted as once saying, "It's up to a man to create art if he's able, and not talk about it, which, it seems, he's always more than able.” However, much to the dismay of this notion, I counter Bukowski’s opinion with that of the necessity to “talk about” art in order to understand, and be ultimately moved, by any creative work, specifically his poem I’ve seen too many glazed-eye bums sitting under a bridge drinking cheap wine. By exploring this poem’s respected usage of narrative-addressing and adopting a post-structuralism approach in interpretation readers have a more defined aptness in understanding the poem’s principle architecture and will become more aware of new implications that, quite possibly, would go un-noticed during an initial reading.

The poem’s narration is in the first-person (note the usage of the pronouns “I”; “you”; and “we”). This type of narration, an addresser-centered approach, aims to place the reader directly within the scope of the main character to view situations, emotions, and thoughts within the vantage-point of the individual—essentially, one views the world as the main character does. Upon reading the poem one discerns that the addressing within the text (i.e. the narration) is monologic; the communication is between the addresser and the addressee with no inter-communication between the two parties—the narrator is the only “voice” heard within the poem. From this observation, readers can place attention on two main attributes of the narration: 1) the reader can focus on what the narrator explicitly states and 2) focus on what the narrator does not explicitly state. The latter is far more intriguing. It is in identifying “absences” and “gaps” within the poem that furthers the reader’s understanding(s) of this Bukowksi poem.

When examining the usage of language in the work we discover there are no rhyming patterns in the poem—it is a free-verse work. In addition to the free-verse structure, there is an absence of proper (or traditional) grammar when Bukowski forgoes capitalization with the first letter of the word that follows the end of a sentence: “have you seen the animal-eater.../ they show death. / and now I wonder…” (ll. 5-9). It would be a ridiculous to imply Bukowski simply forgot, or was not educated, that abstaining from this capitalization standard is a strict violation of grammatical norms. This suggests that this omission was intended. What one could discern from this observation is, possibly, that Bukowski is, for one, trying to rebel against the “chains of grammatical oppression” (which I find to be highly unlikely). Another could suggest that this might imply a psychological “dis-harmony” (on the part of the subject-narrator and/or Bukowski himself) corresponding to the dis-harmony of grammatical usage and a lack of rhythmic structure. However, I am more swayed with the notion that this is an example of regression, a more primitive usage (primitive is derived here from the absence of conforming to grammatical norms) of language corresponding to a more primitive state of being expressed in the work. This argument is strengthened when one examines the poem’s focus on death, “they show death” (l. 8) and consuming, “we consume animals / and then one of us / consumes the other” (ll. 16-8) which, traditionally, are two aspects that one could very easily harmonize with the notion of being primitive—the need to consume along with the inevitable reality of death. In addition, the lack of proper capitalization, and it’s primitiveness, parallels the early inclusion of the “animal-eater documentaries” (ll. 6-7) which I feel denotes television documentaries that shows the very basic (and primitive) need for animals to attack, kill, and eat other animals to ensure survival. This connotation established with the “animal-eater documentaries” becomes the basis for the poem’s dominant subject—the various degrees of “consumption” with the “new woman.”

A very notable absence in the text is the usage of details regarding the “new woman”: “you sit on the couch / with me / tonight / new woman.” (ll. 1-4). There is no mentioning of any physical characteristics or specific relation (minus the “my love” (l. 19) line which will be addressed below) of the woman-figure other than the fact that the woman is “new” (a new girlfriend? A new prostitute? A new friend? A newly reconciled long-lost family member?)—we are told seldom anything about this individual. I feel this is because the specific woman mentioned in the story is not overtly important—if she were she would be mentioned more prominently and with particular attention paid to explicitly describing “her” significance. Yet, the narrator uses the “woman” to expound upon the “eating” and “consumption” process that takes up the vast majority of the poem: “which animal of / us will eat the / other first” (ll. 10-2). Also, notice the pattern of the woman’s placement and usage within the poem. She is introduced in the beginning, catalyzing the moving towards the “animal-eater documentaries” (which introduced the connotations of death and consuming another for survival) and is re-introduced within the volleying of “consumption” between the two entities in the poem. This “new woman” exists in the text with a very sharp and direct association with the “physical” and “spiritual” consumption that is ultimately expressed—she is focused more as a symbol of that physical and spiritual consumption in the text and not a carbon-based female individual. From this standpoint, and correlating with the lack of details attributed to “her” in the story, I suggest the possibility that this “woman” is not, in fact, a woman but acts as a signifier for something else entirely.

If one were to replace the “woman” nouns and references in the poem with nouns signifying, let’s say, alcohol, narcotics, or pornography there would be a harmonious fit with no textual conflict because the absolute absence of details that would identify the “woman” as an actual biotic female are not present—the usage of the woman subject would serve as a “poetic lament” drawing on contextual usage of a “female” in describing non-sex related objects and/or themes (i.e. “she’s a beauty” when describing a newly purchased boat, commenting that “she was a mean wine” when referring to a not-so-agreeable Merlot one had last evening, etc.). This paradigm would also effectively explains the usage of “my love” (l. 19) not as an intimate addressing of an individual but as a poetic gesture. For example, if a devout patriotic American stated that he was “in love with Lady Liberty,” whom would he be referring to? I doubt he would have a physical attraction to the actual statue off Ellis Island in New York City but would instead refer, in an affectionate manner, to the concept, of freedom symbolized with a “woman,” i.e., Lady Liberty.

As stated earlier, the “new woman” is not the sole subject in the poem; the digression into “consumption” constitutes the main intention of the work to which the woman is attached with. There is both a “physical” and “spiritual” consumption at work: “and now I wonder / which animal of / us will eat the / other first/ physically and / last / spiritually?” (ll. 9-15). Although one could replace “new woman” with “CD player” and have no textual conflict (grammatically it fits fine) it would not amicably align with the “spiritual” degradation that is expressed. For that reason, there must be a subject-matter agreement that would also fulfill the “spiritual” side of the expressed “consumption.” That is why when I introduced the idea that “new woman” did not necessarily suppose a biotic female I used alcohol, narcotics, and pornography because they have very common, and a more acknowledged, spiritual debasement, in addition to a physical one, through the hands of addiction, compulsion, and obsession. Could the narrator (and, inductively, Bukowski himself) be commenting on the physical and spiritual taxation that an addiction carries with it? Very possibly. However, one cannot offer an explicit definitive affirmation of this. Because of the omission of detail attributed to the woman figure in the poem there is a large array of interpretations. However, one must acknowledge that this “new woman” could have been an actual woman. If so, the adjective “new” suggests there have been others in the past. With this in mind, and with the supplementation of the discussion regarding a physical and spiritual “consumption,” one could, very easily, feel that the narrator is implying a new girlfriend or a new prostitute (a possible source for “spiritual” consumption found in a biological female?)—there are possibilities.

Many critical approaches are available for the expert reader. However, one does not need to be professional critical analyst to appreciate poetry. Being aware of the authors organizational principles in the construction of narration and contemplating what is not admitted into a work are informative ways in which to immerse oneself into a greater understanding of that respected work. In engaging this Charles Bukowski poem by asking, “Who’s doing the addressing and who’s being addressed?,” and by deliberately centering attention to what is not the textually-based focus of that addressing we, by increasing our awareness of these features, increase the breadth of our comprehension and enjoyment.

A response to an article on J.D. Salinger

2006-10-02T14:08:00.000-05:00

In Dominic Smith’s article “Salinger's Nine Stories: Fifty Years Later” which appeared in The Antioch Review, Fall 2003, the purpose is one, mainly, of exploring J.D. Salinger’s psyche—shaped by his historical contexts, and their subsequent repercussions, surrounding his life and works.

Smith reports of Salinger’s involvement in the wartime effort during World War II: “His job as a soldier was to discover Gestapo agents by interviewing French civilians and captured Germans; he also landed at Normandy and took part in the Battle of the Bulge” (Smith). Smith highlights this experience to show a major catalyst in Salinger’s evolvement; in his life and his writing. Salinger’s war experiences caused him to become very troubled. After returning from war he married—a marriage that lasted only eight months. The divorce, coupled with his war experiences, caused further feelings of alienation from society, and self, which spurred an interest, for Salinger, in Zen-Buddhism. From this perspective Smith feels that we gain a very prominent insight into studying and interpreting Salinger as a man and a writer—through spiritual means. Smith points out that a major correlation between Zen Buddhism and post-WWII outlooks of the time were the concepts, and consensus, of life as illusory, life as suffering, non-attachment to fixed meaning, experience as fragmentary and subjective, intuition as central, a sense of the absurd in human experience, the necessity of irrationality combined with a turning away from absolute coherence and unity (Smith). From this realization one can approach Salinger’s works—especially Nine Stories from which our English 301 class will read “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”—with a more accurate disposition attributed to the mind of Salinger himself.

It was most assured, Smith postulates, that there was an interest on Salinger’s part to explore the psychology of the human mind: rational and irrational, poignant and absurd. Smith goes on to say that “the mysterious inner lives of his characters, the labyrinth of character and story through which he minimally guides us, that slight sensation that we have missed some vital clue to a character's downfall yet recognize that this is the same clue we miss every time we watch the disasters of the evening news or a neighbor's life reduced to tragedy--these arise out of navigating between these poles and become Salinger's fictional legacy” (Smith). The feelings of alienation are common in his works, Holden Caulfield in A Catcher in the Rye, for instance, because they correspond to Salinger’s own feelings of alienation. The stories derive meaning without ever sacrificing the mystery of human experience; they try to suggest more than they try to illustrate and in this way remain illusive at their core (Smith).

I feel that Smith’s insight offers readers, young and old, to explore a unique realm within the works of J.D. Salinger. By understanding the man’s life and experiences we can approach his fictional narratives to be, in some sense, non-fictional interpretations of his great “Zen Quest” of the human mind via his intriguing characters and stories. When our class discerns his “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” we can better understand occurrences of illusiveness and intrigue as literary manifestations of Salinger’s trek into the human mind to explore our thoughts and behavior—one of immense searching for understanding. I, for one, will be very interested to hear Salinger’s take on things.

An essay composed when contemplating the meaning of life

2006-10-02T14:05:00.000-05:00

It is a question quite possibly as old as humanity itself—why? What is the purpose, the intent, the meaning to begin every day by simultaneously opening our two eyes, to re-enter into consciousness and be apart of our environment and our world? Where does our motivation come from, and where should it come from?

I don’t believe that after the physiological termination of our bodies we are destined to either arrive at “the gates of Heaven” or the “fires of Hell.” I neither believe that Heaven, nor Hell, are physical locations just as Berlin, Africa, or Augusta St. in Staunton, VA are. If we lead the lives that we were “supposed to” or “ought to have done” and do, indeed, arrive at the Heaven exit just off the inter-galactic super-highway, what would we do all day? After we re-connect with our family members, our friends, and meet people from the great spectrum of history and time how would we satiate our existence? Would we mow Heaven’s lawn? Play darts? Attempt to have sex with Marilyn Monroe—it just doesn’t make logical sense to me.

If then, I now come to the conclusion that our lives are important for the present. I don’t think life is comparative to the college student working in the summer months so they may take a trip to Europe once they complete their Bachelor’s degree. I don’t think life, here and now, is to invest in a future award that will be “named later.” Albeit one could sculpt their lives, behaviors, and thoughts with this premise, I think they would encounter, at some point, an emptiness that would haunt.

So, the question still remains; why?

I am not a scientist. I know remarkably little of the world that surrounds me and the organic "world" that is in my body. If what scientists say is true, then human-kind has evolved from something not entirely of its present condition. The amoeba existed and over time the amoeba became the primate, and the primate became the human. From the beginnings of the human we have pursued the world around us (physical science) and the world within us (psychology). We have increased our knowledge, increased the efficiency of our brains, and still have not satiated our appetite for more of these.

Our existence is reliant on change. Even within the scope of humanity, look at how much has changed (evolved) with us from the past four thousand years. Fire as turned into electricity. Walking has turned to trains, to automobiles, to space flight. Humanity has done remarkable things in the brief time the species has inhabited Earth—both good and bad.

This is where I begin to find a “meaning.” One day (thousands of years from now? Millions?) humans will evolve from our present state. Just as the amoeba turned into the primate, and just as the primate turned into the human, humans will turn into our future. What if Love evolved as much as technology has done? What would the human mind be able to see and experience when fully initiated into the characteristics that associate the one Love? Have we seen glimpses of it already? Was Prince Siddhartha, and his Nirvana, a glimpse of what will one day come? Was Yeshua of Nazareth and his claiming that a “Kingdom of Heaven” resides within? Were the respected “Enlightened One” (the Buddha) and “Anointed One” (the Christ) possible figments of the eventual burgeoning change that will one day befall?

Quite possibly. Maybe even probably.

And it is here where I find meaning. I would rather further the inevitable change—not hinder it. I want to be the amoeba seeking to become a primate. I want to be the primate seeking to become a human. I want to be a human seeking to become what is destined to be. In “A Burnt-Out Case” Graham Greene writes, “I think of Christ as an amoeba who took the right turning. I want to be on the side of the progress which survives.”

The much more difficult task, and the one that both fills me with anxiety and excites me with unfathomable possibility, lies in its accomplishment.

I don’t want to be an amoeba.

Book review of "Voice of an Exile" by Nasr Abu Zaid with Esther R. Nelson

2006-10-02T14:03:00.000-05:00

Is the Qur’an the literal Word of God revealed to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel? Islamists in power, and many Muslims of the current age, feel that this is so—it is the present orthodoxy within Islam. However, one notable exception is Nasr Abu Zaid. In his book co-authored with Esther R. Nelson Voice of an Exile: Reflections on Islam, Zaid feels that certain “… people resist looking at God’s Word as a document expressed in human language, thinking that understanding in such a way goes against belief or faith”(97). Nasr feels that “Language does not emerge from a vacuum. Language has a cultural, social, and political context. Human beings populate these contexts. Human beings, living throughout the world in specific places at specific times, leave their mark on language” (96). Islamic fundamentalism has always insisted that the Qur’an is God’s eternal, uncreated speech. Because it always existed it was never created and fundamentalists feel, thusly, that the text should be read literally and applied uniformly across time and place (Zaid and Nelson 3-4, italics mine). However, just as Bishop John Shelby Spong argues similarly for the interpretation of the New Testament Scriptures, Zaid feels that modernity should approach the Qur’an using the seventh-century context in which it was created in order to extrapolate meaning for the modern age. Zaid feels that the divine text became a human text at the moment it was revealed to Muhammad. How else could human beings understand it? Once it is in human form, a text becomes a book like any other. Religious texts are essentially linguistic texts. They belong to a specific culture and are produced within that historical setting. The Qur’an is a historical discourse—it has no fixed, intrinsic meaning (Zaid and Nelson 97). Yet, Zaid is not trying to debunk or make the Qur’an, Islam, or Muslims illegitimate. He states early in his book that “… I identify myself as a Muslim. I was born a Muslim, I was raised a Muslim, and I live as a Muslim. God willing, I will die a Muslim” (11). A major stance that Zaid takes issue with comes from state power that does not separate from religion. Zaid comments, “When the state identifies itself with a certain religion, folks who belong to another religious tradition inevitably are discriminated against. In addition, those folks who belong to the religion officially sanctioned by the state, but don’t hold orthodox views…become subject to persecution on the grounds of apostasy and heresy” (183).

It is on the grounds of apostasy and heresy that Zaid was forced into exile away from his beloved home of Egypt based on his ideas of how the Qur’an should be read and interpreted. Even though Zaid offered new insights and encouraged only debate, not allegiance, toward his ideas, the powerful in the current Islamic orthodoxy forced him to live in exile from his homeland. Zaid feels one should pursue religious texts through historical context and hermeneutics. By placing yourself within the specific time of any religious document you enable yourself to discover new insights that a literal, or “face value”, interpretation will not uncover. The foundation of any sacred writing is constructed, molded, and whose intentions reflect, around the society in which it was born. I feel that fundamentalists in Islam, and in any other religion, have a right to think, discuss, and preach how they feel. However, when Islamic fundamentalist powers censor anyone amongst “the ranks” by any and all means necessary they undermine the central theme of their Prophet, their Qur’an; the central theme of Nasr Abu Zaid—justice.

Poem

2006-10-02T13:56:00.000-05:00

Here's a recent poem from my poetry workshop:

"Sura 54"

hammer and sickle
amongst the mouse democracy.
a sailor’s grave tattoo impregnated
in the memory of Mujahideen.

an osama bin laden
party hat

adorned by

politics lovers who frequently
spat

and just as the Soviet moon fell under
Afghanistan

the stature of Albert Pujols
compliments the candles Little Richard
will blow out on his
Captain America

vanilla
frosted

birthday cake

Washington Nationals Prospectus (as of october 2006)

2006-10-02T10:51:00.000-05:00

As the inaugural season for the Washington Nationals drew to a close, many fans were filled with optimism. Although the first-year-Nats finished in last place in the NL East, their 81-81 record exceeded the expectations of most. As such, many viewed the 2006 club as a possible contender for the Wild Card, much as the 2005 team was up until the closing weeks of the season.

However, with the exception of a few players who engrossed fans with their play, this season was a disappointment.

One of the most exciting and hopeful pieces of news came off the field with MLB naming Ted Lerner, with his family and partners, as the autonomous owner of the Nationals. As such the team, which had been led through the dark under MLB ownership under the Expos/2005 Nats, had little to be hopeful for.

As GM of the Expos, Omar Minaya traded away young talent: Brandon Phillips, Grady Sizemore, and Jason Bay (amongst others). What was once a good farm system became barren under the financial limitations imposed on a club based in Montreal, Canada.

The inheritors of the Nationals were wisely aware of their new team’s limitations. President Stan Kasten, overseer of the Atlanta Braves success, expressed that “pumping” the MLB team with money will not make a long-term, consistent franchise. Instead, money will go towards a “building-up” of the franchise: personal, closer proximity of the AAA affiliate, the creation of a new A affiliate, etc.

What I would like to do is to glance around the diamond and look at what we might see in 2007 and beyond.

Starting Pitching: Starting pitching has hurt the Nationals most this season. Our starting squad has an ERA of 5.35 (second worst in front of the Kansas City Royals). No offense should have that burden.

With Livan Hernandez now in Arizona, our staff lacks a #1 starter. John Patterson will be back next year, as will Brian Lawrence (acquired in the Castilla trade with the Padres). Both Ramon Ortiz and Tony Armas Jr. are free agents after this year, whether or not they return will probably be based on how little money they will accept to return in light of disappointing years (5.40 and 5.22 ERA, respectively).

Those who have been called up from the minors throughout the season: Billy Traber (7.47 ERA), Mike O’Conner (4.72 ERA), and Shawn Hill (4.66 ERA) may still be given a shot to (re)prove themselves during Spring Training. The wonderful performance of Beltran Perez against the Braves recently also suggests that he will be considered for a starting role next season.

The “youngbloods” in the farms system: Colten Willems, Jhonny Nunez, Garret Mock, and Matt Chico (the latter two come from the Hernandez trade with Arizona) will probably not see consistent playing time until 2008.
Relief Pitching: This is one of the few upsides to the future team. With an improved Ryan Wagner, (from the eight-player trade with the Reds) who has changed mechanical foibles sustained in Cincinnati, the bullpen contains Jon Rauch, Saul Rivera, Roy Corcoran, Chris Schroder, Kevin Gryboski, Micah Bowie, Chad Cordero, and Luis Ayala. Rauch, Cordero, Ayala, and Wagner seem to be the more consistent relievers, but promising work by Rivera suggest that one of the better attributes of the club could also improve by next year.

Catcher: Brian Schneider has had a disappointing year. His average fluttered around .220-.230 for most of the season and his slugging percentage (.327) is below his 2005 performance (.409). However, since a post-game “blow-up” about a month or so back, he has brought his average back to .251. Most likely, this season was a “fluke” and we will probably see an improved and more consistent hitter next year.

Brandon Harper has become a promising back-up prospect. His numbers through thirty at-bats (.429 / .633 /.367) suggest consideration as a right-handed backup for the left-handed Schneider. He will most likely receive ample time to further prove himself in the spring.

Robert Fick, the primary backup catcher this season, seems to lack the defensive capabilities that Harper has. In addition, Fick is also a left-handed batter (Schneider usually sits when the team faces a southpaw—one would prefer to be able to send up a right-handed batter in his place, strengthening Harper as the lead candidate).

First Base: Nick Johnson leads the team in OBP (.430). This is his first year where he has not been side tailed with injuries, yielding quality numbers (23 homeruns, 77 RBI, 45 doubles, and 109 walks. His BB total is second only to Barry Bonds in the entire Major League and his 2B total makes him tied for seventh place in the entire Major League). Ideally, Johnson would serve offensive production better as the number two or three batter in the lineup with his high propensity to get on base and accumulate doubles. However, his SLG (.523) and AVG (.292) also make him a candidate to drive in runs, and not just comprise them.

Robert Fick can also play first base, which may be necessary should Johnson remain susceptible to injuries in 2007.

Middle Infield: This is somewhat problematic. The addition of Felipe Lopez, a young player with good batting attributes and speed, was an excellent acquisition. His OBP (.363) is the highest in his career. Lopez is not a “power-guy.” He needs to focus on improving his OBP further and strengthening his base-stealing skills. He very well could be our leadoff hitter in 2007.

Jose Vidro is a veteran of the Expos/Nationals organization. However, his aging knees have resulted in a poorer slugging percentage (under .400 for the first time since 1999) and a hampered range at second. His recent start at first-base suggests that the team might try to shop Vidro as a more flexible defensive player. In addition, his OBP and AVG (.345 and .286) are not poor numbers, which make his marketability slightly higher.

Cristian Guzman had a tremendously poor season last year (OBP / SLG / AVG = .260 /.314 /.219). In addition, Guzman is due to receive 4.2 million, making his marketability via trading very, very bleak. Because of Vidro’s relative healthiness, he is more marketable to trade despite his $7 million due next season, the last year of his contract.

If Guzman were to have a strong year next season, and it is only a possibility, but if so, he might kindle interest for a trade. This might be a way for the Nats to pick up additional young talent for a push for a strong, competitive team by 2008, or 2009 (which is Stan Kasten’s plan). This remains to be seen, however.

The signing of Dominican Esmailyn Gonzalez (16 years) will most likely trickle upwards from the farm system in 2008 or 2009, at the earliest.

Third Base: This is a no-brainer. Ryan Zimmerman leads all rookies in RBI (he will most likely surpass 100 by the season’s end) and is second in hits with runners in scoring position to David Wright of the Mets. His excellent glove and wisdom beyond his years (22 years) makes him a jewel of the organization. It would be foolish, and costly, for the organization to part with this player. With RISP Zimmerman is batting .311.

Outfield: Austin Kearns will most likely remain in RF. The baggage of Jose Guillen has most-likely soured management. In addition, Kearns is relatively young (will be 27 in 2007) and has shown sustained offensive improvement over the past two years.

I think it would be wise to try a batting order of 1) Felipe Lopez 2) Nick Johnson 3) Ryan Zimmerman 4) Austin Kearns

The trade to acquire Nook Logan does strengthen the outfield defensively. However, Logan’s offensive production does raise some concerns. Logan is not a power-hitter. He should utilize his great speed by improving his bunting and his OBP. When on base, he is a nuisance to pitchers. He needs to be on base more often.

I’m assuming that Alfonso Soriano will want about $12-15 million as a free agent. I will also assume that Stan Kasten, despite fan’s fondness for Alfonso, will choose to utilize the money that Soriano cost this year ($10 million) for other purposes (see introductory remarks).

This will leave a hole in LF. In 166 at-bats, Ryan Church has put up improved numbers over last year’s (.348 .453 .266). His power-potential makes me see him as a good number five batter. There are some defensive concerns (hence the trade for Logan in CF), but LF is a far less demanding position (hence Soriano in LF) and I think Church will perform well. In addition, there were reports of interested takers of Church before the September trade deadline. Church may be a very marketable player for an off-season trade.

Since being sent down to AAA, Marlon Byrd has posted good numbers (.363 / .465 / .271). Quite possibly he and Nook Logan will vie for the starting spot in CF next spring, with whoever loses the spot as the back-up outfielder.

Despite the poor performance (the Nationals are the fifth-worst team this year) the organization are in a better stance for the future then they were at the beginning of the 2006 season.

The hiring of Mike Rizzo as assistant GM will bring established scouting and organization to a team that needs it. The previous success of Stan Kasten in Atlanta should bring confidence to fans that we are in good, capable hands.

Over the next few years I believe that the team will improve greatly. It shall be immense fun to watch the process unfold.