written 23 Nov 2009 over dinner
Hmmm…so if you go to Google Maps and search for nathan swartz, pittsburgh pa or clicknathan, pittsburgh, Dale’s Bar and Grill comes up. My website is listed as there website. I don’t believe I’ve ever been to the place, but as you can see from the Street View image below, it looks about as rad as they come.
I can definitely dig that 1987 laser block glass window thing they’ve got going on. So from now on, let’s just consider this my bar.
written 19 Nov 2009 in the late evening dusk
It may take months for a painter to finish a masterpiece. A similar amount of time may be invested in creating an album by a musician, or a great novel by a writer. And while the results of the following may vary depending on your particular tastes, tonight I ponder the results of that same amount of time spent by varying types of artists and the lasting endurance each medium brings to the consumer.
A painting, even a great painting, can be seen in an instant and certainly easily be digested in a matter of maybe 15 minutes. Sure, it can hang on a wall for centuries but after one looks at it, really looks at it, how often do you enjoy it in that same way again? Perhaps when friends come over and see it for the first time, but all in all, a painting becomes background relatively quickly after it has been hung.
A good novel lasts a few days, a week, maybe a month for those with more hectic schedules. Once a book is read, how often does a person reread the same book? Some folks, I know, read books over and over again but for most, I suspect, the year or so the author spent writing it will mean some amount of hours of actual reading time for his audience, yes lasting memories if it leaves an impression, but it will likely never be consumed again syllable by syllable from front to back.
An album though, can last a lifetime. If you love a record, you might listen to it every day for a month after first acquiring it, then often and on and on until you die.
I am in no way saying any particular type of production that I’ve listed above is better or worse than any other, but it’s interesting to think about. An album, something that will provide a lifetime of listening, only costs $10 these days. A book maybe $20. A painting will go for hundreds and hundreds, sometimes ridiculously more, though admittedly paintings are less reproducible than the other two mediums. I wonder how this value was established, considering the potential worth of all of the above mentioned.
The idea relates to purchasing digital music as well: a song on iTunes goes for $.99 and you can listen to it a million times before growing tired of it. A television show sells for $3 or $4 and maybe you’ll watch it a dozen times in as many years.
written 28 Sep 2009 while the sun tried, at least, rising
We had spent the past Spring eliminating all of our worldly possessions save some clothes and a few tools necessary to even the modern human, a hammer, two mugs, some other dishes, two forks, two spoons, a good knife. We purchased a pack mule and loaded it up with the supplies we would need in the place we were going. I surprised her with a dog one morning, told her his name was Question and though the gift was as much for me as her, when it’s scruffy mutt face, shaggy gray hair and dripping wet nose started sniffing and licking her, she couldn’t resist. The two of us, as soon as the rain had slowed and all of the snow was melted, and our animals — we brought two chickens for eggs and two goats for milk — all headed into the forest, up into the mountains. Thirty nine miles after we left the nearest small town, and small it was indeed, a grocery store, two churches and a bar, and barely enough people in the houses to fill them all at once, we found a flat grove in the hillsides and decided to lay claim to our new stake.
I spent the summer building us a small house, one room, a bed made from feathers I found around the forest and from a few birds I’d managed to kill with an ever impressively growing skill at throwing rocks quickly and accurately, a stone fireplace for warmth and cooking, a small desk for sewing or writing or sharing meals over. She built a chicken coop, a fenced in area for the animals and planted a garden. The summer was full of long hours of toil, the good, fulfilling kind of work that comes from building your own life, not the kind of “building a life together” that people call securing a 401k and going to Home Depot for solar powered driveway lights, we were actually building our life, carving it out of the mountain forest home we were procuring. She would bake flat breads for us and I would bring home fish or nuts or whatever wild vegetables and fungi I could find, she would check them over and let me know which were potentially poisonous. We mended our own clothes, kept one another warm through the nights and took Saturdays, or whichever days we imagined were Saturdays, time had been lost on us, to hike around our new woody neighborhood or lay naked in a small nearby field and I’d tell her stories or read poetry and she’d pull out any ingrown hairs that may have been trying to get back into the warmth of my neck. She learned to make cheese and we had fresh milk and eggs every morning. The Summer lasted forever, and the house was complete. The area had been properly readied for Winter, and we had just finished the second and most bountiful part of the Harvest as she was cutting open a great squash to prepare for dinner. That night it began to rain, the temperature dropped, and snow fell over the house, the garden, the land. I held her as close to me as I could, we were layered thick in blankets and were prepared for the coming cold, well prepared.
I woke in the morning, our first snow plated mountain morning together, we were to celebrate with a feast of rabbit, vegetable stew and a bottle of homemade wine. I opened my eyes and went to stir her awake, to dive into this great new day. She didn’t move. I leaned over her to kiss her into the morning, but she had died in the night. This dream of mine, perhaps much more mine than hers, had brought her up here, set her to work, and then taken her life, and with it the dream.
I carved a hole into the ground that afternoon, the bottle of wine emptied, and laid her body — wrapped in a thin Afghan blanket — in the ground. I slaughtered the goat and let it’s blood run down into the spaces between her stiffening, bluing form and the cracks in the dirt, and falling snow mixed with the crimson as I said some final thing, perhaps outloud but of course, no one to hear or know what was happening. I ate what portion of the goat could fill me, raw, and lit the whole thing on fire. The flames licked at my boots and then raged up to singe eyebrows and beard. I turned and left everything behind me, one footprint in the snow at a time.
Within a month the chickens would be eaten by some wild hungry animal, the mule left to wander through the mountain cold, Question, who’d stayed behind at her burning side when I left, would go off to join or be killed by some pack of wolves. Eventually I returned to the town, though not on purpose, famished and pointless. When two people have spent so much pure energy together, for so many long decades, well when one dies they both die, one to burn up or be eaten by worms or locked forever in some casket, the other to roam for some many more years on this planet wandering how hard he might have to beg for an end.
written 5 Sep 2009 over a light lunch
The old man looks back on his life and wishes he could do it all over again, oh the changes he would have made, oh the living he would have done. The young boy looks forward to adulthood, rushing through his youth.
We are so rarely satisfied with our current station in life, too often trapped in reminiscent nostalgia or making plans for future ambitions that we miss the only part of existence that matters, as it is the only part that is real, the living present. I am a happy camper for every day I learn to live a little closer to the moment. I am endlessly intoxicated by a drive to explore, to adventure, to sit and ponder the future and what grand goodness it will unfold before me, though I’ve noticed that life doesn’t unfold as much as it unravels. The analogy of time passing is perhaps more akin to kicking the sheets off of the bed throughout the night rather than making the bed in the morning.
I find it interesting, my current desire to live now, the shedding of my recent love of thinking toward the future, and how those compare in contrast to my younger self, always full of desire to get back to the past, to when things were better, the good old days. Maybe we’re not in control of how we look at our lives in the universe at all, perhaps the situations we find ourselves in dictate our ability to enjoy present over past or future.
The means, not the end.
written 5 Sep 2009 over a light lunch
Nearly fifty years ago a dashing Russian man by the name of Yuri Gagarin was the first Earthling to visit the black expanse of infinitely full, endlessly empty space. Not to be outdone, the United States sent Alan Shepard up less than a month later. Since then, some 500 people have left the planet Earth in a spaceship. It would take China 42 years to become the third nation to send a ship into the black void, though citizens of around 35 nations have had the pleasure of accompanying those three nations on their voyages.
Now fast forward to the future. Over the next 16 years, India, the European Space Agency, Iran and Japan intend to send up their own vessels, as well as tentatively planned but as of yet unscheduled programs by North Korea, Turkey, Malaysia and Romania. The last one particularly intrigues me, as I have always thought of Romania as being one of those few remaining Eastern European countries that still lives in the days of Dracula, of Vlad the Impaler, where dirt roads leading up treacherous mountain passes to cliffside castles still exist.
Keep in mind that in the past, Japan, Iraq and the European Space Agency have all abandoned plans to send manned shuttles into space, and as one might imagine, the organization, funding and even the very prospect of the mission is daunting. We have trouble enough packing up the minivan to take the kids to visit Grandma in New Hampshire, let alone making it out of our own atmosphere. Even still, as our robots explore Mars and we contemplate sending humans there, as satellites continue to clutter in orbit, and we have a full time outpost where astronauts are living and working right now, the possibilities of tomorrow are exciting, and certainly frightening.
I can’t help but think about Columbus setting foot on New World soil. The centuries it took to get from then to now, the advancements, the genocide, slavery, destruction of Earth that ensued. The glorious advances and enlightenment that followed, as well. There is such an overflowing mug of human potential, used or abused, and to be alive in 3000 looking back over our current new century would be an exciting prospect.
written 4 Sep 2009 over a light lunch
Before I begin, let me assure you that I not only have a mug that clearly states I am the #1 Dad, but at least 50% of my boxer shorts make a similar claim. Now that I have most indefinitely established myself as the foremost authority on all things children, and given the evidence of this website I believe it to be clear that I’m at least proficient to a level easily deemed “better than average” at building, using and bearing disdain for the Internet, I shall proceed.
Computers are eating your children. The average child is smaller than an adult, their brains are not yet quite as developed, and as anyone who’s ever seen a 12 year old wreck his bike into a barbed wire fence at 25 mph and not feel the need to cry until he realizes no one will wait up for him to hear his story, they are nearly invincible. My point is, that children are not real, they are simply a developing organism which will someday turn into a jumbled twine of conscious thought, buried emotions, and ever-mounting divorce papers. The only “real” thing about children is their immense propensity to spew energy and imagination, breaking all laws of science and nature by both running at 110% of capacity on 13% of the fuel and imagining the most wonderful scenarios for play, whether they’re hiking down into the Grand Canyon or sitting in the backseat of a car on a long trip to Grannie’s.
So if we are all in agreeance, and at this point I believe we are, that children are precisely made of 50% energy and 50% imagination, how can we most easily destroy them? By transforming them into an input rather than an output. Television, including that damned Big Bird, is the succubus of the 20th century, and just when you thought it was safe to sell your HD TV and move into an old station wagon to live in a Walmart parking lot, the Internet appears on the scene. High schools across these great United States are all faced with a monstrous dilemma: How to afford computers for each and every child. Technology is important, and keeping our children at the cutting edge of the latest Firefox download will ensure that we are able to survive well into an Asian dominated future, right? Correct. Even before our children can read, they’re given a username and password in the hopes that when someone does get around to teaching them the fine art of connecting verbs and nouns, penning out their thoughts and distancing themselves from the shackles of the momentary nature of thought without graphite, we’re literally signing them onto the instant access Wide Web of Worlds. I write loosely, in jest today, perhaps, because it is a lovely summer day, cool in the desert as the rain flirts between a trickle and a downpour, but I am being quite serious in undertone. NPR today reported that schools across the country are concerning themselves with how they’ll be able to afford new computers, personal laptops in fact, for each and every child that comes through their doors. One little girl had to have her teacher spell out her password for her, because she is not yet even able to read.
And what will a child who can’t read, or a teenager for that matter, do when they finally dial in? Read the Wikipedia article on the history of the collapse of the Roman Empire? Research their genealogy on Ancestry.com? Youtube a monkey getting it’s head stuck in an elephant’s ass? That’s the one.
Children are meant for but two things: doing chores that are too mundane for parents and running wildly through the forest expending all of that unbridled energy and imagination so that one day they might have some semblance of reality. And not the reality that involves house, babies, cars and jobs, and then insurance for each of those items, but the one that so few of us ever have the pleasure of realizing, the one that involves doing what makes you happy for these short 8 or so decades we have on this planet.
In short, if you’ve ever thought about how you wish you could have gone to Spain, or would have taken up knitting, or actually written that novel or tried out for that play, and you’re still wishing it, project that onto your child and then remember that you yourself were born in a time when having a Nintendo was the chief distraction, and that was only something that could be played at home. Now look in the rear view mirror as your little boy becomes part of his little Game Boy. Take a break from coffee at Grandma’s as your teenager is checking out the singles ads on Myspace from his cell phone. In Nevada, you can’t walk into a store without reaching across a gambling machine to pay the clerk. In the rest of the United States, you can’t walk ten feet without reaching across an iPhone to chat with a friend.
In summation: children, eat your parents before they let the computer that lives under your bed eat you. And that #1 Dad mug, handmade by my very own son, only moments before I allowed the very same Internet I make my living from and love to badmouth like a good boss gone drinking, eat me.
written 23 Aug 2009 while the sun tried, at least, rising
Interesting, dramatic illustration of gun death statistics in the US by the New York Times (from 2007).
Each bullet represents one death per day, 81 people being killed in the US every day.
It really puts into perspective what kinds of people are being affected by guns and in what ways. For example:
All in all, by far children and women are the least likely to die due to gun related injuries. Black men are the most likely to be killed. White men are the most likely to kill themselves.
written 21 Aug 2009 while the sun tried, at least, rising
The following chart outlines deaths in the USA by various, preventable means. Note that I am in no way encouraging readers to quit smoking, stop drinking, or anything else. Live fast, die dumb, people, and I live by that.
| Cause | Effect (US deaths per year) |
|---|---|
| Smoking | 440,000 |
| Alcohol | 75,000 |
| Auto Accidents | 42,000 |
| Guns | 29,500 |
| Marijuana | 0 |
written 19 Aug 2009 while the sun tried, at least, rising
President Clinton strongly hinted for the first time Thursday that he might raise tobacco taxes to finance medical benefits for all Americans.
So reported the Baltimore Sun in 19931. Back then, Clinton estimated that by 1997 it would cost between $30-$90billion to “guarantee universal access” to health care. The tax has come, and increased, and increased again, and in April the largest cigarette tax increase in history was passed, raising taxes $0.62 in one go, and another hike is scheduled to go through any day now3.
So the taxes have gone through, but where is the “guaranteed universal access”. Of course, all dreams of a Clinton-era public health care program went out the window when he was lame-ducked a good year or so early by the Lewinsky scandal. Leave it up to Republicans to convince Americans that it’s worse for their President to have oral sex than it is for them to have free, easy health care.
Cigarette taxes raise $99billion in revenue every year. Universal health care in the US would cost $1trillion.
Today, an estimated $45.3 million Americans smoke cigarettes. Since cigarettes cost $1.10 in 1994 and cost about $7.00 a pack today, it would seem that those Americans are now paying roughly $6 / pack in taxes. Do the math and that results in $99.2billion in revenue from cigarette taxation. So how does that compare to the cost of universal health care?
Well, Obama stated during the campaign that his plan involved $50-$65 billion / year to fund. Fox News claims it would cost $1.5trillion / year. The Guardian (a UK paper and in my opinion therefore neither as biased as Obama or Fox), puts the number at approximately $1trillion, right in the middle2.
So cigarette tax alone would nearly cover the cost of universal health care if it weren’t being diverted to whatever it’s been diverted to over the past 15 years. Not to mention the taxes we should be similarly imposing on alcohol, guns, driving, and marijuana, the other big causes of hospitalization and expensive deaths in this country. Well, not marijuana, I just think we should tax it because then it’ll be legal.
The bottom line is that Republicans successfully befuddled health care reform in the Clinton era by exploiting America’s love affair with a love affair, and Democrats are now successfully following in their dream party’s footsteps by bickering amongst themselves while they hold complete power. The money is there, it’s just being used for purposes it wasn’t originally designed to be used for, as confusing as it might be to discover exactly where those funds have been diverted. While this seems like statistics and numbers for the most part, what it means is that 700,000 Americans go bankrupt every year, while Congress bickered and guffawed1. Bankruptcy sucks, sure, but realize that when they’ve gone bankrupt, they have no money to continue to pay for their medical treatment. For many, that simply means they die.
Supporting Links
written 16 Aug 2009 while the school buses headed home
Thank you, the pleasure has been all mine. I cannot wait to visit your country and skip your countrymen in line, not move over even an inch as you barrel down the sidewalk, and return your general rude attitude.
Also, thank you for proving to me how very, very tough and/or gay you are by staring at me from across the cafe, the bus and the parking lot for as long as I am in your presence.
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This is the online corner of my life, where I combine syllables, contemplate molecules, confront the issues confronting us all, and generally talk about transit and bikes. (more)
Here's what I listen to: (?)
I use Last.fm's Mac Menu Bar Scrobbler, which builds an RSS feed out of whatever I'm playing in iTunes. If you think it's as nifty as I do, check out Last.fm and if we seem to have similar taste, feel free to make me your friend. :)
Here's what I've done lately: (?)
I use Twitter to help me keep track of the things I do in life that I find enjoyable. For example, if I go for a bike ride or take a walk with my family, I just make a quick note. That way, if I'm ever feeling like life's lacking, I can just get a little reminder.
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