Author: stevekuusisto

The photo above shows my father walking his golden retriever Tanya back in 1974 when he was President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges.  Today would have been my parents’ 57th wedding anniversary and I’ve been thinking of them, particularly as they were both admirers of Senator Edward Kennedy. My father died on Easter Sunday in 2000 and my mother passed away only a few months later.

My father was a junior professor of government at the University of New Hampshire and fresh out of Harvard with his newly minted Ph.D. in U.S.-Russian relations when he married my mother. My mom, Evelyn Marsh, who was a  beautiful and eccentric Boston Irish girl (and who, according to many, resembled the young Elizabeth Taylor) was an undergraduate at the university of New Hampshire when she met my father. Together they skulked through the bushes as they liked to say. They broke the rules. A professor dating a student! And in the fifties! Lordy! Lordy!

Their marriage lasted through thick and thin. My mother had difficulties with alcohol and with prescription medications. My dad was a college president during the late 60’s and on into the 80’s and he was often nearly overwhelmed with the stress of his job. Its safe to say that their domestic life together was hard at times. And yet, and yet–they endured. They genuinely loved one another. They held a shared and sweet eccentricity about them. They could laugh in secret. Together they had fooled the old college Dean by daring to see each other in the age of Joseph McCarthy and House Mothers.

I miss you Ev and Al.

S.K.

It was John Lennon who sang the line: “No short haired yellow bellied son of Tricky Dickys gonna Mother Hubbard softsoap me with just a pocketful of hope…”  One may recall that Senor Dicky was promising an end to the Viet Nam war while actually prolonging and widening the conflict with secret bombings in Cambodia and Laos.

Now once more I’m feeling “Mother Hubbarded” which is to say that the United States government is again infantilizing the public by misstating what its doing in foreign military engagements.

American troops remain in Iraq long after President Obama promised they’d be home–and remain with no true end game in sight. Simultaneously U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan are increasing almost daily. Obama has adopted the foreign policy position (late of the Bush administration) that fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan is a war of necessity.

Back in January The Nation published a clear and altogether appropriate editorial urging the new president not to send an additional 32,000 troops into Afghanistan. The Nation’s editors reasoned that escalating troop levels would merely lead to greater instability in the area, increased Afghan opposition to America and her policies, a likely rift with our allies, and would make no discernible dent in the strength of the Taliban. All of this has come to pass. And let us be clear that the death toll of Afghan civilians has further eroded Afghan support for our mission.

One may ask “what is the mission” but you will be Mother Hubbarded all over the place. According to Obama’s State Department we are strengthening democratic initiatives and yet last week’s fraudulent elections suggest that we are far from success. We are, in point of fact, smack dab in the middle of a never-ending tribal and civil dispute that will likely never end, particularly when foreigners are involved.

Now more than ever we should bring our troops home. And with the money saved we might imagine medical benefits for veterans at a level corresponding to their real needs.

S.K.

“The claim that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has a manual encouraging veterans to “commit suicide,” made by Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, is an asinine assertion with no basis in fact.”

–Veterans for Common Sense

See full story at: http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=8414

S.K.

Last night watching the wake for Edward M. Kennedy at the Kennedy Library in Boston and hearing many talented speakers eulogize “Teddy” with affection and grace, with tears and more than a few lovely anecdotes and reminiscences I found I was scowling and leaning at the kitchen table in ways unintended by body mechanics so that I got an ache in my “whatsis” which is somewhere between the shoulder blades and the back of the trachea.

I was recalling D.H. Lawrence’s famous essay on Walt Whitman in which he wrote:

“When the Pequod went down, she left many a rank and dirty steamboat still fussing in the seas. The Pequod sinks with all her souls, but their bodies rise again to man innumerable tramp steamers, and ocean-crossing liners. Corpses.”

“What we mean is that people may go on, keep on, and rush on, without souls. They have their ego and their will, that is enough to keep them going.”

Rubbing my “whatsis” I was tempted to think that the U.S. Senate may now be an assembly rushing on without souls, driven merely by ego and will. Certainly watching the two notable Republican senators in attendance one might imagine the floating victims of Melville’s disaster. Orin Hatch was eloquent and at times sweetly amusing–he even concluded with a schoolboyish poem of farewell to Teddy. John McCain was all ego, talking of his happy disputes with Kennedy with some testosterone brio that I’m sure Teddy would have admired but which, of course isn’t the point.

Neither Hatch or McCain could bring himself to utter the words health care reform–no surprise there, but neither could they pledge to return to D.C. and take up the matter in a spirit of bi-partisan small “d” democratic obligation to a nation in trouble. They will go on, keep on, rush on, all “ego and will” and if you think I’m gilding the lily I’ll simply point out that John McCain was in such a rush to get out of there that he ran right past Senator Kennedy’s widow Vicky who was trying to shake his hand. He was doubtless in a rush to get back aboard his rank little steamer.

Of course the Republicans are just the Republicans. Its the big and small “d” Democrats we should be concerned about. Will they fail in this fight for true health care reform because they were smaller men and women than the senators and representatives who passed the civil rights bills in ’64 and ’65? Or will they perform the routine business of the slave state and say, like Kenneth Rexroth’s version of Pontius Pilate, “And what is love?” and wash their hands?

I suspect there’s a vast supply of hand sanitizing lotion on Capitol Hill.

S.K.

Everyone knows that the U.S. is in a big hole. In fact this appellation isn’t fair to the rest of the big holes but so be it. Sometimes one has to lean on an old figurative crutch.

Let’s sell our history. The United States has a great history. Let’s sell the whole humongous glockenspiel. Why the hell not? If we don’t want to pay taxes for roads and schools, for clean water and air, for energy self-sufficiency; if we don’t want medical care for our less fortunate, or medical care for our vets; if we don’t care anymore about civil rights for the elderly or people with intellectual disabilities; if all we want is to sit and listen to the creosote lips of right wing radio jockey-jackals–if, as I say these are the operative conditions then let’s finally have a big, fat ass bake sale and be done with the whole thing.

First we can sell off our nation’s sacred constitution and our Declaration of Independence. Then we can get down to real business, sell our national libraries and museums and educational institutions. Why not?

Oh sure, once you’ve sold your artifacts you can never get them back. But really, America is now like one of those sad characters in a Louis Auchinclos novel who must sell the family paintings and nick-nacks. 

Then we can get back to a mild, prosperous catatonia?

S.K.

This is the political version of Hansel & Gretel—we must hurry. And we must hurry for the night is coming. Hurry because, well, if you’re over fifty you’re on the “back 9” and there’s no help for it. Hurry. Even the birches shaking their long autumn circlets of yellow leaves tell us to go faster. Perhaps you should take more vitamins, eat more roughage, subscribe to a new magazine, become an anthroposophist.

We have almost no time. The clocks are almost obsolete for when nature is dead what’s left to count—are there “days” when the water is gone? Oh hurry, the private companies own most of the water, they’re buying what’s left even as we loiter here. Didn’t we care? We said so. Long ago, maybe some thirty years now, we went to a reading by the poet Gary Snyder. We wept for the earth’s condition. Back in those days we thought we still had time. We were silly. We spent too much time in the libraries. We thought too much about our own poems. We did not love the earth with our whole hearts.

Hurry. The leisure classes dance to songs of sugar and brandy. The television shows fractured skulls and blood on the pavements of Mumbai.

The clocks are almost obsolete. Remember when time was just time? Now we are on water time, roots time, oxygen time.

Hurry. In these post-modern moments we are not supposed to give off a political cry.

Hurry your weeping. Its not sufficiently ironic for “The Daily Beast” or the network.

Hurry up but be Zen about it.

Hurry. Stop talking. Hurry. Talk as much as you want.

Earth, as we call out to you now, you have the right to expect our full attention.

S.K.

The poet Kenneth Rexroth once wrote: “History continuously bleeds to death through a million secret wounds of trivial hunger and fear.”  This morning with the rain falling outside my window in Iowa City and while the television repeats ad nauseum the social lie of the Republicans that health care reform might have been possible in the U.S. had only Senator Ted Kennedy “been there”–a post-facto assertion replacing logic with cynicism, its antecedents akin to saying, “If only the top dog in a slave state was like Spartacus, well things would have been different…”

This morning the bleeding industry with its hunger and fear is thriving in the United States and one ought not imagine that because the C.I.A. is getting some comeuppance for its experiments with power drills that the captains of bleeding are any worse for wear.

As Rexroth would say: “War is the health of the state.”

The Republicans (and many Democrats) in the Senate want to be the top dogs in a slave state. A principal requisite for the job is to pledge privately to overwhelm and reduce the citizens of the nation. Erode their civil rights and liberties; create wars of choice and send the children off to fight–even if the war is a bust the captains of the bleeding industry can amortize their catastrophe (Haliburton, Blackwater, etc. etc.)

Health care reform in the U.S. isn’t dead yet. But the debate has been recast by the bleeding industry into a metaphor of socialist trickery. The bleeding industry has always used the fear of lefties to scorch out of each generation of Americans anything like a humanitarian domestic politics.

It is worth pointing out, however feebly that there are no socialists in the United States senate. But the bleeding industry’s captains are fully aware that America’s lower middle class wants, more than anything to experience the satisfactions of appetite–the poor Americans who make $40,000 to $60,000 a year and have a family to boot, well they want to accumulate “stuff” by God, and its easy to make them afraid–very afraid.

And so the GOP and the quisling Dems light a fire with the identification papers of the writhing middle classes and Lo, the sum of the conflagration is tepidity.

These are my thoughts in the rain today and in advance of the funeral of Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

I’m certain that whoever takes Ted Kennedy’s place will arrive on Capitol Hill with the appropriate delusive credentials.

S.K.

Poem after poem elegiac, the bodies of friends swept up like the streets of old Russia…

& goodbye, goodbye, strings played with a thumb…

If I think how fragile you are I will lose my words.

Silly to admit,

I’d thought the books of youth prepared us

But Deborah’s cancer, Toni’s,

& losing Gary at sea—

The pages cocalcimined by time

Books gone yellow

& the fervid dark coming in…

& night spurring its black flanks pierced with stars.

S.K.

I am in no way inclined to sentimentality about our losses. I will not succumb to the American sugar of extravagant farewells–I’ll leave that to Larry King and his ilk. Nor shall I engage in the Washingtonian hand washing in the manner of Pontius Pilate–with those rhetorical sophistries that proclaim that its sad that the last good man in the world is dead. When I hear John McCain or Joe Lieberman on the irreplaceable nature of Senator Kennedy I want to throw up. What Edward M. Kennedy accomplished was a good, progressive Irish Catholic conscience. What Edward M. Kennedy achieved was to live daily in accord with the Golden Rule in act and deed. Its safe to say that the G.R. doesn’t get practiced much in Washington anymore, nor, for that matter do we find it often enough in churches.

There will be others who persist in public service; who overcome personal flaws and work tirelessly on behalf of those who are less fortunate; who endure a lifetime of slurs and derision and yet hold firm to communitarian values; who risk assassination for defending the civil rights and liberties of others; who possess enough emotional intelligence to negotiate with vandals and jackals; who inspire others by their tireless affirmation of liberty and of human dignity. There will be others. I shall say that its not likely that Senator Kennedy’s descendants in public service will find places in the Senate or the House. Those institutions are now largely dead and future progressives will have to lead from the pulpits of business and law and education and the arts and non-profit philanthropies. Perhaps one day the Senate will return to doing the people’s work. But not in our time. Not in this age of the radio controlled lobbying vultures who have taken the place of our elected officials. It is worth noting that Edward M. Kennedy was electable and able to do the people’s work because of his family name and his loyal electorate in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I suspect that Ted Kennedy was more than the last lion. He was the last man who couldn’t be bought.

S.K.

By Andrea Scarpino

Los Angeles

Last night, I heard Placido Domingo sing. He wore a black bow tie and his white hair shone in the lights. He sang the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard, even though he sang in a language I don’t speak. Even better: he sang while Yo-Yo Ma accompanied him on cello. An entire orchestra sat behind them, and thousands of people sat in front of them and August sky opened above the Hollywood Bowl, the Big Dipper above my head, but you wouldn’t have known anything else existed in the world, in the universe even, but that cello and that voice.

Even better: it was a total surprise. The show was Placido Domingo’s first time conducting at the Bowl. Yo-Yo Ma was on the ticket to play the first half. But having Domingo sing, and then having him sing when you didn’t think he would, and then having him sing to Ma’s accompaniment . . . and with the Big Dipper overhead? And a crowd of thousands silent in their seats?

And while they played and sang, Ma’s cello answering every question in Domingo’s voice, I thought about art and the way that art can make you feel immortal, even if you know you’re not. How you can drink red wine and watch the Big Dipper and hear the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard, and think, maybe, art will save you from death’s fate.

And after they played, I thought about the role of the artist in the world, how one clear note across the summer sky can make an entire audience gasp, sit silently, wish for nothing more in life than to keep hearing that note. How when it was clear that Domingo was going to sing, there was a rumbling in the crowd. He’s going to sing! I said to Zac. He’s going to sing, I heard whispered around me. I thought about how an artist can have that kind of power over an audience and still maintain his humbleness. I have known many lesser artists than the two I saw last night who think nothing of bragging about each of their books, how famous they are and who they know in the scene, who silence other artists every chance they get, who refuse to share their art, who want to be on top, no matter who they step on/sleep with/humiliate to get there.

In front of me last night, I saw two amazingly accomplished artists demonstrate, instead, a generosity of spirit, a way for the artist to be humble in the world. After Ma finished his performance with the orchestra, he made sure every key player stood to take a bow. He hugged the first violist and cellist. He hugged Domingo. He looked ecstatic to be appreciated, and wanted to share that ecstasy with the ones who helped him shine. After he played an encore solo, he brought out his friend Domingo to sing with him. And they hugged, again. And they both looked full of joy.

I don’t know what type of people they are off-stage, of course. But last night at the Hollywood Bowl, they taught me how to move a crowd with nothing more than the sound of a voice, nothing more than one bow, one instrument. And they taught me how to be an artist in the world.

Andrea Scarpino is the west coast Bureau Chief of POTB. You can visit her at: www.andreascarpino.com