In recent weeks, I've noticed that several blog links in my sidebar have stopped updating, although the actual blogs themselves are continuing as usual. I've tried reloading the links and also clearing my cache, but nothing seems to fix this problem. So I've made a new heading in the sidebar, "Blogs of Note," where I will post the main links to those blogs, starting with the ever-popular Joe.My.God.
If anyone has a clue how to make the old links work again, please let me know in the comments here.
It's hard to believe, but I published my first post in this blog 15 years ago today at this hour. I started it on a whim, with no particular plan, and have continued it on the same principle ever since. For a long time, it was a convenient vehicle for my ranting and raving about the state of the world and the sadly misguided people in it - to put it mildly - but the last few years I have mainly given up ranting, which serves no purpose (good advice is never welcome to misbehaving ears) and keep blogging just to have something constructive to do in retirement. I know it is no great shakes, certainly - your Head Trucker has never been a crowd-pleaser - but it pleases me, if no one else, and that's enough.
I appreciate more than I can say the kind attention of my faithful truckbuddies, who have stuck with me all these years, the ones who regularly comment and those who rarely do so, but merely lurk in the corners. Being effectively housebound at this late age, and resolutely opposed on general principles to what is called social media - a corrosive pestilence that will have to be suppressed sooner or later - the Blue Truck gives me a happy connection from time to time with like-minded friends, and that's a very nice thing to have.
To celebrate this anniversary, I reprint here from my second blog post an excerpt from E. M. Forster's essay "What I Believe," written in 1938 when the dictators and their rat-faced minions were preparing to carve up the world among themselves, bringing death and destruction to millions all around the globe. Thank God for the stalwart leaders and peoples of the democracies who stood up to them and thwarted their evil plans. We who are now old men have lived our whole lives in the long, sunlit afternoon of the postwar order - which, alas, seems daily to be coming apart at the seams, pulled and ripped in all directions by extremists and fanatics of the right and of the left.
In our fathers' time, the democracies were the golden mean, the middle path between the two extremes; and when the democracies finally realized there was nothing else to do but fight or die, they discovered their enormous strength and used it to subdue the wicked and restore peace, liberty, and justice to the world. But is there still a middle way to be found? Does anybody even want to find it?
I have my thoughts, but this Cassandra prefers not to waste breath by speaking them. Nor is it safe to speak freely anymore about any but the most trivial topics. Instead, I offer this excerpt from Forster's essay, which reflects something of my own thinking. I don't agree with Forster on everything, but this passage resonates in my own heart.
"The victory of our queer race . . ."
I believe in aristocracy, though - if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.
I give no examples - it is risky to do that - but the reader may as well consider whether this is the type of person he would like to meet and to be, and whether (going further with me) he would prefer that this type should not be an ascetic one. I am against asceticism myself. I am with the old Scotsman who wanted less chastity and more delicacy. I do not feel that my aristocrats are a real aristocracy if they thwart their bodies, since bodies are the instruments through which we register and enjoy the world. Still, I do not insist. This is not a major point. It is clearly possible to be sensitive, considerate and plucky and yet be an ascetic too, and if anyone possesses the first three qualities I will let him in!
On they go - an invincible army, yet not a victorious one. The aristocrats, the elect, the chosen, the Best People - all the words that describe them are false, and all attempts to organize them fail. Again and again Authority, seeing their value, has tried to net them and to utilize them as the Egyptian Priesthood or the Christian Church or the Chinese Civil Service or the Group Movement, or some other worthy stunt. But they slip through the net and are gone; when the door is shut, they are no longer in the room; their temple, as one of them remarked, is the holiness of the Heart's affections, and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide-open world.
Hugs and good wishes to all my truckbuddies - thanks for riding along in the Blue Truck.
Back in the late 1980s when I was 30-something, my two girlfriends from college and I went out on the town one night at a popular new nightclub called Studebaker's - a franchise now apparently defunct. We usually got together for a long, leisurely chit-chat over lunch or dinner at some nice restaurant, but this time we decided to go see what all the fuss was about.
The joint was hopping: a huge, brightly lit room with a crowded dance floor and a gleaming, honest-to-God Studebaker convertible perched on a dais at one end. Probably there was no motor in it, but it looked showroom-new, and people kept taking turns climbing in, sitting on the back where the top folds down, singing along to the oldies music and waving their arms to the rhythm - of course we eventually took our turn there, too. It was great fun.
The drinks were delicious, the music was marvelous, and everybody was joyously well-behaved. At some point, the staff set up a limbo stick, and a crowd immediately lined up to go under it, dancing their way through. Even your staid and sensible Head Trucker - normally the very soul of decorum - got into the spirit of things and joined the line. The stick was not set very low, and people were merrily dancing their way under it with ease, leaning far backwards. Everyone but me, that is.
Just as I got my waist under the stick, and my chin on a level with it, I realized too late that to go an inch lower would require the use of certain back muscles which had lain entirely undisturbed since I was a schoolboy climbing on the monkey bars in the playground, and who were now loath to be roused from their slumber. Chagrined and perplexed as to how to proceed without knocking the bar down or collapsing on the floor, I hesitated for a second in order to give reverent consideration to the laws of physics.
But of course hesitation is fatal on the dance floor. During that brief second, two other people, one on each side of me, not to be hindered for a moment, came limbo-ing through without so much as a by-your-leave, followed closely by other impatient folks. The crowd was not about to allow time for a rethink or a redo - onward, onward, onward! Too bad for you if you can't make it. Out of our way!
Mortified, I somehow managed to get on through by a kind of crablike crawl - most undignified. But this humiliating experience did teach me a significant lesson about human nature: if you can't run with the big dogs, better stay up on the porch.
This principle applies in ordinary, everyday life as well as in society at large. It is one thing to dance your own dance to the music of the moment - it is quite another to be completely out of step and out of tune with everyone around you. In the latter case, you can waste all your strength and joie de vivre in a lonely, forlorn, unwinnable battle - and what purpose would that serve? - or you can pull off the road and let the traffic diesel on by, going hell-for-leather whither it will.
Only rarely does a single determined soul turn the tide, in the name of a noble cause; but such cases are few, and beyond the strength of most.
Your Head Trucker, now old and gray, and less limber each year, cannot keep up with the mad rush of the modern world. In the last month, I have used what little talent I have to express outrage and call for reform - just one small voice, joined to a great chorus of others. I have said my piece, and more I cannot do. The world is rushing madly around and beyond me, on either side - I have no power to stop the flood or divert it from what seems a looming disaster of willful ignorance and arrogance on both sides.
For several years past, I have paid less and less attention to the news of the day because it is so awful and so depressing - in this great moment of crisis, I have refocused my attention on current events, but now I notice that the upset and dismay are intruding upon my hours of rest and filling my waking mind. News in this day of endless and often mindless reportage, 24/7, is very much an addictive drug - some people are even called, deservedly, "news junkies."
But it serves no good purpose for myself or for anyone else to fill up my thoughts, day and night, with such an obsession; in fact, it is positively detrimental to my physical and mental health. In any case, I have long since outlived my time - this present age, even before the current uproar started, is not at all to my taste. I feel myself very much a stranger in a strange land - an exile far from home. And of course, one can never go home again.
So let the current generation make of it what they will - perhaps a better world, or perhaps something even more ugly, vulgar, and brutal than the present one - even so, why should I let that destroy my serenity and peace of mind? I have no power to help or hinder. I am an old man without family or posterity, and much closer to the end of life's course than its beginning. Soon enough I shall be a thing that is past knowing. I have had my day, a full cup of joys and sorrows - but now the sun is low in the sky, and the night is coming when I shall rest from all labors.
So I think I will now attempt to redirect my thoughts and spirit to more peaceful things, abstaining from further comment on current events, unless something truly earthshaking happens - and please God, it won't. In the past month on this blog, I have stated very clearly where I stand, and I am sure that my stand is very much in line with the moral arc of the universe, and of the highest Good - that patient, impartial, eternal Love that moves the stars.
So this old dog is going to lie back down in that shady spot on the porch. If any of y'all want to run yourselves crazy chasing cars, have at it. I'm done.
Better is an handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit.
Today is the tenth anniversary of my little blog, strange to say. Where does the time go? I started it on a whim, and have continued it ever since on the same principle. Consequently, it has never amounted to much - a poor thing, Sir, but mine own - nevertheless, it has been for the most part a happy little hobby, an agreeable routine to pass the time with amid the changing seasons of life.
Your Head Trucker doesn't amount to much, either - just an old dog lying on the porch, watching the mad world go by. If any of my 3,690 posts has uplifted my truckbuddies, shown you something you didn't know, or raised a smile on your face sometime or other - then my small efforts have not been entirely in vain.
To mark the occasion, I am serving up once again one of my favorite slices of literature for your diversion: an excerpt from E. M. Forster's collection of essays, Two Cheers for Democracy (1951), which I posted ten years ago today. The waiters will be handing out glasses of champagne while you read - no tipping and no pinching! Enjoy.
I believe in aristocracy. . . — if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.
I give no examples — it is risky to do that — but the reader may as well consider whether this is the type of person he would like to meet and to be, and whether (going further with me) he would prefer that this type should not be an ascetic one. I am against asceticism myself. I am with the old Scotsman who wanted less chastity and more delicacy. I do not feel that my aristocrats are a real aristocracy if they thwart their bodies, since bodies are the instruments through which we register and enjoy the world. Still, I do not insist. This is not a major point. It is clearly possible to be sensitive, considerate and plucky and yet be an ascetic too, and if anyone possesses the first three qualities I will let him in!
On they go — an invincible army, yet not a victorious one. The aristocrats, the elect, the chosen, the Best People — all the words that describe them are false, and all attempts to organize them fail. Again and again Authority, seeing their value, has tried to net them and to utilize them as the Egyptian Priesthood or the Christian Church or the Chinese Civil Service or the Group Movement, or some other worthy stunt. But they slip through the net and are gone; when the door is shut, they are no longer in the room; their temple, as one of them remarked, is the holiness of the Heart’s affections, and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide-open world.
Grateful thanks to all my truckbuddies for riding along with me in the Blue Truck.
Say fellas, go check out the new blog by my best friend, M. P., called phood filosophie. I've also added a link to it in the sidebar under "Truckbuddies Blogs" for future reference.
M.P., the other half of the Pork Boys, is a wonderful self-taught cook who understands the intimate connection between the garden, the kitchen, and the table, and wants to share what he knows with the world. As he puts it:
In each season, I can elaborate on how traditions for foods start and give ideas on how folks can appreciate the season's foods with some recipes.
I can also write on where to find various foods, growing your own herbs and veggies, and harvesting, drying, and canning.
I have a lot of plans. This is to be my retirement teaching tool, also with stories, spirituality, traditions, amusements, my own philosophies and table settings and presentations.
There is so much out there about all this, but I'm gonna do it anyway, if nothing more than to share what i know . . . which will be more comprehensive than any one blog I've seen yet. Most are just recipes or how to cook certain dishes explained out.
Your Head Trucker can testify that he really knows his stuff - and his cooking is larrupping good, I tell you what. Longtime readers of the Blue Truck will recall the many amazing holiday feasts M.P. has prepared that I've documented here with photos and descriptions; see our last Thanksgiving feast, for example.
Now with his new blog, you'll be able to try some of his recipes yourselves, and expand your culinary horizons. I think his concept of the Wheel of the Year, connecting different foods with the seasons and the holidays is just fascinating, to give one example. I never realized or even thought about any of that, growing up in an age of canned goods, frozen foods, and supermarkets, but I wish I had.
Anyway, check it out and see what you think. Tell him Russ sent ya.
I started this blog three years ago this month on a whim one Friday night, with no particular plan or purpose. And it's still just a pastime, a leisurely Sunday drive down the back roads of my mind, going nowhere special.
But even if it's not worth writing home about, I am gratified to note that the Blue Truck now has 100 followers and a little over 120,000 unique visitors, a quarter of a million page views, and 1700 posts.
Thanks for riding along with me, guys. Now reach behind the seat and open another cold one.
By way of explanation to my longtime readers: when I started this blog on a whim in 2008, in the midst of an emotional election campaign in this country, I had no definite plan of what to say or do with it; but among other thoughts that came to mind, it did seem at that moment like a great new way to excoriate and expose the follies of the world in general. And for a time I did enjoy having a place to vent and rant and sound off on things that seemed to deserve comment.
But now, with me it's more and more a case of passion spent: once past the half-century mark, you begin to notice the shadows slowly lengthening as the road turns homeward, the great hopes and adventures of youth all lying behind you now. And you come to realize that it gains you very little to be continually upsetting yourself over things you can never hope to change. The world is what it is, and one might as well try to stem the ever-flowing tide as to divert the course of human nature. Il faut cultiver notre jardin, said Candide, and there is a great truth there. "Work without disputing, for it is the only way to render life tolerable."
A fatalistic attitude, to be sure; not one that will ever recommend itself to people younger, more idealistic, or better placed to make a difference in the world. But for some of us, a necessary attitude to retain some semblance of peace of mind through whatever years are left to us to enjoy here. Unlike Tennyson's Ulysses, most bloodied veterans who have somehow survived the strife and struggles of life are content to sit quietly by their own fireside at the end of the long, long journey - that is, if contentment can be found anywhere in this uncertain, tumultuous world. The unexamined life is not worth living, most assuredly; but once you have thoroughly examined it - and seen through it - a rest of heart and mind is needed.
I haven't lost all interest in current events, of course, and sometimes I still feel a need to comment on something or other; but less so now than when I started out. A blog makes a bully soapbox, a miracle that countless writers of all persuasions who lived before the Internet age would have dearly loved to make use of. But there's not much I have to say to the world that hasn't already been very well said by much greater minds; and if the world at large has ignored their counsel - or indeed, rewarded their trouble with a cup of hemlock - it certainly will take no notice of my small, obscure voice. Which perhaps is just as well.
So this blog is evolving into something different from what it has been; what that is remains to be seen, and I still have no definite plan. It remains an amusing hobby, a toy to pass the time with, nothing more. But I thank my faithful readers for their interest and comments from time to time; even when one is saying nothing of any importance at all, it's always nice to feel heard.
Below, a handful of links to stories that illustrate, in one way or another, the ignorance, the foolishness, the blindness, the ugliness, the cruelty, the unreflecting self-righteousness of the human animal: the very same stuff that was grist to the mill for Swift, Johnson, Twain, and others so well suited to puncture the pomposity of human vanity. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. Another time, I might have commented at some length on the implications of one or more of these items; but now I leave the essential points to the discernment of the reader.
And if you don't get the real point of these things, which lies somewhere beneath the surface of the texts, well then - why should I spend the better part of a sunny afternoon trying to convince you? If people lack the wit or imagination or depth of soul to see truths that are self-evident . . . well that's just very sad, isn't it? The long, sad, troubled story of mankind, which needs no comment from me in the late afternoon of a glorious spring day, with lillies and roses blooming just outside my front door.
. . . is the title of today's must-read Frank Rich column in the NYT. Which is remarkable for two things: first, his recounting of the story of Judith Peabody, socialite and early champion of the AIDS crisis, who died last week. Read more about her wonderful life in the NYT's obituary article. Thanks so much, Judith - I'm sure there's many stars in your crown.
The Rich article also has some very pertinent remarks on the Perry case and Judge Walker that you ought to check out. Excerpt:
There has already been an attempt to discredit Walker, who has never publicly discussed his sexual orientation but has been widely reported to be gay. The notion that a judge’s sexuality, gay or not, might disqualify him from ruling on marriage is as absurd as saying Clarence Thomas can’t rule on cases involving African-Americans. By this standard, the only qualified judge to rule on marital rights would be a eunuch. No less ridiculous has been the attempt to dismiss Walker as a liberal “activist judge.” Walker was another Reagan nominee to the federal bench, recommended by his attorney general, Edwin Meese (an opponent of same-sex marriage and, now, of Walker), in a December 1987 memo residing at the Reagan library. It took nearly two years and a renomination by the first President George Bush for Walker to gain Senate approval over opposition from Teddy Kennedy, the N.A.A.C.P., La Raza, the National Organization for Women and the many gay groups who deemed his record in private practice too conservative.
The attacks on Walker have fizzled fast. With rare exceptions from the hysterical fringe — Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich — most political leaders have either remained silent about the Prop 8 decision (the Republican National Committee) or punted (the Obama White House). Over at Fox News, Ted Olson silenced the states’-rights argument in favor of Prop 8 last weekend by asking Chris Wallace: “Would you like Fox’s right to a free press put up to a vote and say, well, if five states have approved it, let’s wait till the other 45 states do?” (No answer was forthcoming.)
Most of those who do argue for denying marriage equality to gay couples are now careful to say that they really, really like gay people. This, like the states’-rights argument, is a replay of the battle over black civil rights. Eric Foner, the pre-eminent historian of Reconstruction, recalled last week via e-mail how Strom Thurmond would argue in the early 1960s “that segregation benefited blacks and whites and had nothing to do with racism” — as if inequality were O.K. as long as segregationists pushing separate-but-equal “compromises” claimed their motives were pure.
What I Say: The other day a famous gay blogger slimed a less-famous but well-respected conservative gay journalist as a "quisling" - for the mere reason that Maggie Gallagher's National Organization for Marriage used a quote from the latter as part of a statement against same-sex marriage; in the excerpt they quoted he was favoring civil unions as a more winnable achievement.
Which ignores the fact that this writer has written numerous articles, and an entire book for that matter, arguing the case for gay marriage. And in fact did marry his partner earlier this year in D. C. So, far from being a traitor to our cause, he is indeed working on the same team - with us, not against us. Having read his blog articles many times in the past, I believe this conservative blogger is making the case for achieving a solid, permanent goal of equal marriage rather than a Pyrrhic victory that will remain questioned and unsettled in the public mind for years to come, like Roe v. Wade.
Which is a legitimate concern, and a worthy subject for discussion and debate; and while your Head Trucker wants to see equal marriage the law of the land in this country as quick as we can get it, I also admire greatly anyone who can make a clear, cogent case for something in impeccable English, based on logical reasoning and a command of all the relevant facts. It's important to consider carefully who is and who is not the enemy. As Frank Rich makes clear in his column, Walker's nomination was fiercely opposed by gay groups at the time - but supposing they had succeeded in blocking his appointment to the bench? Where would we be today with the Perry case, under some other judge, eh?
Of course, even reasonable people with a fine command of facts, logic, and language can still disagree on ways and means to a worthwhile goal - and what seems best at one moment in history may be found later to have been an honestly mistaken view; that's the whole idea subsumed in the concept of freedom of speech, which is the very bedrock of our frame of government and democratic society: the lifeblood of our body politic. Disagree if you like with someone's conclusions, but disagree with respect for the other guy's character, if not his point of view.
If you are going to claim American values, it's important to live them yourself. Otherwise, you are morally on the same level with the enemies of individual liberty. You want freedom for yourself, you must want it for others as well - or you are simply being a self-centered hypocrite. Acting the part of a nasty brat.
Which is what your mama and daddy were trying to get across to you when they made you share your cookies with the other kids, and not wolf down the whole box all by yourself, ya know?
Hey guys, first chance you get, I'd be much obliged if you'd drop by and check out the blog of my good buddy M. Pierre: waters. He's a very interesting guy with some unique perspectives, but just getting started with blogging for the very first time, learning the ropes - so give him a friendly welcome to the Blogger community. Tell him Russ sent you.
Sometimes you just need to close the door, get out of your day clothes, and be alone in your own space to sort stuff out. Not something anybody else can do for ya.
Appreciate the kind comments and emails, guys. I'll be back on track soon. I hope.
May take a break from blogging this week. Work is kicking my butt. Don't feel very well, either. And for another thing, it's one of those times when the general foolishness of collective humanity just irks the hell out of me, to the point that I don't want to comment or even think about it all. Rather just curl up with a good book in a cozy, sunlit corner and let the world roll on by.
The intimate lives of writers have always had a special attraction for readers, perhaps because we imagine that people who can shape ideas and arrange scenes on the page should be able to offer us some special insight into how to order our messy off-the-page lives. This has rarely been proven the case—writers often seem less, rather than more, gifted at the mechanics of everyday existence; all the same it has not stemmed our interest in finding out what Sylvia said to Ted or why Simone pimped for Jean-Paul. This interest speaks, I think, to a dream of coherence—a matching-up of intellect and emotion, of romance and reason—that continues to inspire us even as it eludes our grasp.
And of course, that idea that we can truly know someone merely through what they write is utterly fallacious. As anyone who's ever tried online dating knows, or ought to know.
Okay, surely this can't be just me. The last 24 hours I've been getting dire Area-51-type pop-up warnings from McAfee SiteAdvisor on some of your blogs, guys. Yesterday it was when I tried to open the comment box on Sebastian's blog; tonight his is okay, but Frank's blog does the same thing when I try to post a comment, and Gary's whole blog is radioactive, apparently.
Shit. I loves the Intertubes and all, but things are getting out of hand here. Let me know if this kind of stuff is happening on my blog. Not that I have one fucking clue what to do if it is - but I guess it's the kind of thing your friends ought to tell you, like when your fly is open.
Been having some trouble with the Blue Truck the last 24 hours or so, weird error messages and things freezing up, which is why I've deleted nearly all the HTML/Java scripts on this blog, including the LinkWithin feature. Now, at 3 a.m., everything seems to be running smooth, but I don't know if I fixed the problem or not, and I got other things like my real job, etc., that demand my attention right now.
So just wanted to let you fellas know, if I don't blog for a couple days it's because I had to take the engine apart and got all the parts spread out on the shop floor. I'd appreciate it if any of you guys would let me know about any particular difficulty you may be having getting the blog to open up. My email address is on my profile. Thanks guys.
Found this a while back on Andrew Sullivan's blog. I think it is still very much to the point.
I am disgusted to see Dos [Passos] said that writers should not write now. If a writer has any guts he should write all the time, and the lousier the world the harder a writer should work. For if he can do nothing positive, to make the world more liveable or less cruel or stupid, he can at least record truly, and that is something no one else will do, and it is a job that must be done. It is the only revenge that all the bastardized people will ever get: that somebody writes down clearly what happened to them.
After writing that post about "Real Christian Thinking" last night, I ran smack into this post on Sullivan's blog; and it seemed, in a strange and indefinable way, to be something intended for my notice:
"Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself," - Thomas Merton, "Letter To A Young Activist"
. . . it's time to celebrate and say Thanks Pardners for 100,000 hits here in the Blue Truck. Nearly a thousand posts, too; 965 to be exact. Had no idea of going this far when I started, but have to say I'm enjoying the ride and having a helluva good time rolling down the road here. Hope you are too.
Thanks much for your support and your company on the drive. A trip always seems only half as long, if you got somebody to ride with ya, you know? You guys are the best - appreciate ya.
The Green Revolution is getting into high gear, it seems.Unrest has been simmering in Iran since the huge protests over the corrupt election last June. Now things are getting very violent, with police and state milita forces beating and killing protesters - and in one reported case, running over them with an SUV going at high speed through a crowd - and the big, bad militia guys are targeting women in particular, the fucking cowardly bastards. Unarmed protesters are fighting back, burning police cars and motorbikes, even ripping up pieces of the sidewalk for stones to throw at the security forces. Sullivan comments on the anti-government outbreaks across the country:
This has to be seen now as a crippling blow to the coup regime. This vivid demonstration that they simply cannot command the assent of the Iranian people except by brutal, raw, thuggish violence, and that resistance to the regime is clearly stronger, more impassioned and angrier than ever before is their death knell. They have lost any shred of legitimacy - and the Green Revolution is outlasting them in conviction and energy and might.
The significance of this day, Ashura, the day Khomeini regarded as the turning point against the Shah, cannot be under-estimated. Its symbolic power in Shia Islam, its themes of resistance to tyranny to the last drop of blood, its fusion of religious mourning and political revolt: this makes it lethal to the fascist thugs who dropped any pretense of ruling by even tacit consent last June.
We cannot know yet, but this might be it: the pivot on which our collective future hangs.
The situation over there is complex, and I'm not in a state of mind to keep up with all that here in the Blue Truck, though my sympathies are entirely on the side of the people fighting against a corrupt, brutal, theocratic dictatorship. As much as I've blogged in the last week or two about my personal religious convictions, that's a matter for inward contemplation. As history has amply shown, it just doesn't work well in the long run to try to impose a religious ideology on the workings of government. Government should be entirely secular: of, by, and for the people, with equal justice under law. Putting religion into the mix results in inequality and oppression, sooner or later.
I refer my Truckbuddies to the New York Times news blog, The Lede, for continuing updates on events, as well as Andrew Sullivan, who as he did last summer is live-blogging the historic developments around the clock, with the help of his small staff. Both provide links to many other blogs and sites that are receiving updates out of Iran minute by minute.
Also of note: today the White House, in contrast to the cautious statements made by the President in June, has issued a blunt condemnation:
"We strongly condemn the violent and unjust suppression of civilians in Iran seeking to exercise their universal rights," National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer said in a statement. "Hope and history are on the side of those who peacefully seek their universal rights, and so is the United States. Governing through fear and violence is never just, and as President Obama said in Oslo -- it is telling when governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation."
However, your Head Trucker is a little mystified over Mr. Hammer's wording: "universal rights"? Is that the Next Big Thing? All my life, people have been talking about civil rights and human rights - what's with this new lingo - or was he just in a hurry, and thinking of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights? The adjective applies, however, to the declaration, not the rights. Am I the only one who pays attention to sloppy thinking like this?
Anyway - the very interesting thing here is the seismic change this country boy is seeing in the way news is gathered, transmitted, and recorded. When I was a kid, there were only three TV channels: ABC, CBS, and NBC. I was in high school before anyone ever heard of PBS. There was the news on local radio stations, which was usually tied in with a major radio network; and the local newspaper. That was it. There was no USA Today, and the only place you could read the New York Times was in the public library - and of course, nobody bothered to go do that.
Now all of a sudden the bloggers - with the help of thousands of people with cell phones and digital cameras - are taking the lead in news reporting, with or without formal credentials in journalism. And even Facebook and Twitter - which I only heard about last year, and thought was too silly to last - are turning out to be extremely valuable sources and conduits for information. The revolution in Iran simply highlights the enormous worldwide revolution in communication that's taken place in the past decade.
Even more shocking - and your Head Trucker doesn't get satellite TV, so I wouldn't know from watching, myself - it seems the big networks today are NOT covering events in Iran. I'm flabbergasted; how can this be - and why the hell not? What's wrong with this picture? It seems just not very long ago I and the rest of the country were watching enthralled as the major news networks showed live coverage of the Berlin Wall's overthrow, the protests in Tiananmen Square, and so forth. So what gives here?
As Sullivan says: "If you want actual news, don't switch cable on. Go to the blogs." The times, they are certainly a-changing.
P.S. - Do keep American soldier Bowe Bergdahl in your thoughts and prayers; he's being held by the Taliban in Afghanistan and was made to participate in a propaganda film, in which he says he's being well treated. Sullivan:
If and when he is released or rescued, we will know the full story. But it stings deeply to realize that the Taliban can now preen as morally superior in their treatment of prisoners than the US under Bush and Cheney - and have a smidgen of a point.
Until his rescue, please pray for him and his family - and for all the servicemembers out there today, risking their lives for us, and for all those military families who spent this Christmas with someone missing, and in harm's way.
I can't keep up with the modern world: all this technology, all the possibilities. Blogging, I've discovered, is tremendous fun, a very cool hobby. Now, I just found out, you can turn your blog into a book: the printed word.
For those of us who came of age before there were any home computers - much less the Internet - that phrase still carries an aura of the sacred. A connection with the long transmission of human knowledge and thought down through the centuries. A sense of permanence that no triffling electronic gadgetry can convey.
So it was with eager delight that I began investigating last night a couple of sites that will slurp (gotta love the terminology they use) your blog up and spit it out as a real, live, honest-to-God book, complete with hard covers and even a dust jacket if you like.
But after spending four or five hours tinkering with the possibilities, I was disappointed with both sites. The first one I looked at, Blog2Print, is fairly easy to use, but the results are very limited in terms of design and format. Everything is in one font, one size, no choices, and that font is something like Arial: not very reader-friendly. You get the same dinky font in the same size for the cover, where you would naturally want a bigger, bolder font. And in your posts, hyperlinks don't show, neither do imbedded videos. And block quotations are printed as standard text, so you can't see where they begin and end. There's no way to change these default formats.
The other site I looked at, Blurb, goes too far in the other direction of complexity. To use it, you have to download a very sophisticated editor, which might be fine for somebody who is already trained in desktop publishing and has a bigger, faster computer than mine - it nearly crashed my system. And it has its drawbacks too. Whereas Blog2Print lets your specify "all posts" or only those within a date range, Blurb slurps up every single post you ever wrote; you have to go back and manually delete, one by one, all the posts you don't want included. I have nearly 900 posts now, so you can imagine how tedious it was to delete all but the first four months' worth, to get the book down to semi-manageable size.
Plus, the editor is far too complex for an amateur: unlike with B2P, the controls are not very intuitive, you really need to sit and study the software before you begin working on the book. And I couldn't get it to change the text flow: it starts every single post, no matter how short, on a new page; and every image in every post is reduced to something not much larger than a postage stamp, and cropped to fit the preset size. And every hyperlink is changed to a footnote at the bottom of each post, which looks silly.
If you are serious about producing a very handsome-looking book at home, whether from a blog or not, Blurb has lots of fancy print and cover options; but it's just too hard to operate.
I did a trial run on both sites; and to print one copy of just the first four months of Blue Truck, Red State posts would cost about a hundred bucks. Now, feeling as I do an old-fashioned reverence for the printed word - not mention more than a little authorial vanity (grin) - I would actually be willing to pay that much per volume, just to have, eventually, a little set of my books sitting on the shelf next to Shakespeare, Whitman, Wilde, and all the other big ol' queer authors. (What would you pay to have your ego tickled in such famous company, huh?)
But I think I'll hold off on all that until I can get a finished product that looks decent and doesn't require a graduate degree in computer skills to accomplish. Who knows, technology is advancing so rapidly, somebody is sure to improve on the process any day now.
Meantime, if any of you fellas want to stroke your egos a little, check out those sites, and also Google up "create blog book" to find some other self-publishing sites I haven't looked at yet. A very cool idea - just waiting to be perfected.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
CAUTION: For mature gay men only beyond this point. Some posts and links may not be suitable for children or the unco guid. You have been warned.
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My Story
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Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
