onparkstreet

I don’t usually read poetry but….

by

One hundred years after her birth in Worcester, Mass., in 1911, Elizabeth Bishop stands as the most highly regarded American poet of the second-half of the 20th century. She is admired in every critical camp—from feminists to formalists—who agree on little else. Her work also attracts a wide general readership. Taught and studied in high schools and universities, Bishop is, for the time being at least, the most popular woman poet in American literature after Emily Dickinson.

– Wall Street Journal (via Arts and Letters Daily)

Filling Station

Oh, but it is dirty!
–this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it’s a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Read more

Ronald Reagan Roundtable: The past is a different country. Except that it’s not.

by


(Photo credit: Ames Historical Society.)

In 1982, First Lady Nancy Reagan visited my junior high school in Ames, Iowa in order to promote youth drug prevention (as part of the“Just Say No” campaign). My memory of that day is vivid. I was standing at the back of the cafeteria which was emptied of its usual lunch tables. The cafeteria was filled with a crowd that spilled out onto what approximated a “hallway,” given the largely open-plan nature of that ’70s era building. Our classrooms didn’t have a full four walls. They had moveable room dividers and no doors and you might be able to hear the class next door. Groovy, man. Except no ’80s preteen that I knew of would use the word groovy. The ’70s were to be firmly pop-culture-repudiated. I remember the First Lady standing on a stage and surrounded by the white hot glare of television lights. How eye-wateringly bright the lights were! And how smooth – almost translucent and pearly – her skin was! Dainty. Controlled. Petite. It was my first real-life encounter with the soft rich textures of glamor.

After the First Lady’s talk, while in conversation with someone or other, I remember saying that, “I would NOT shake the President’s hand” if I met him in person. The young man speaking to me was incredulous. “You wouldn’t shake the President’s hand?”

I can’t remember now why I was so adamant. I wasn’t political as a teen and my hard-working immigrant parents rarely mentioned politics at home. By what form of cultural osmosis had I absorbed the idea that President Reagan was a bad and terrible man? By the osmosis of growing up in a college town surrounded by the children of faculty and life-long Story County Democrats. If you click on the Ames Historical Society link above, you will find an Ames Tribune photograph of a demonstration against President Reagan’s policies held during the First Lady’s visit. “Cheese for the POOR and champaigne for the RICH” reads one sign.

In the college town environments of my youth and early adulthood, Republicans were universally understood to be cold-hearted stupid warmongers. There was no, “I don’t like his policies but I like him personally” stuff. By what process of misremembering and selective editing have we smoothed over the roughest edges of that era, the nasty snide anti-Reagan jokes, the huge anti-Reagan missile protests in Europe, the near universal disdain of the man and the movement among intellectuals? A certain percentage of said intellectuals admired their own personal starry-eyed vision of the Soviet Union and that’s the truth.

You want to know how bad the disdain was in some corners of our society? When President Reagan was shot, my junior high classroom erupted into spontaneous applause. To the credit of the teacher, she became immediately and visibly distressed and told us to stop. She was shocked. I am shocked to remember it. We were nice kids growing up in a middle-class Midwestern college town, dreamily innocent in some ways, and primarily concerned with getting good grades and impressing that cute boy or girl. Yet, our first instinct at that moment was to clap. I remember being surprised at first, then smiling in confusion, then noting that the teacher was upset so that our reaction must be very wrong. How had we preteens thought such horrible behavior appropriate? What must we have heard, day in and day out, for that to be our response? How bizarre. How remarkable. How shameful.

Don’t let anyone talk you into thinking that the rough-and-tumble political world we live in now is something entirely new. If there is a crudeness to it, that is because our society has become more crude. Adult behavior and decorum is not what it once was. John Derbyshire of National Review has a point: our popular culture is filth. (By the way, thinking that doesn’t mean that you want the government to regulate anything and everything, okay?)

BONUS ’80s ANECDOTE: A girl in my Iowa high school was a lesbian and quite open about her sexuality (and this before the days of “Will and Grace”). Now and again, she got roughed up, I think. She wore her sandy blonde hair in a sort of 1950s dippity-do haircut, wore a voluminous keffiyeh wrapped around her neck, and sported wrap-around New Wave sunglasses. She spoke admiringly of the “brave freedom fighters, the brave Mujahideen!” fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Well, there you have it. The past is a different country. Except that it’s not.

Afghanistan Links: Endstate

by

Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster’s Task Force Shafafiyat (Dari for “transparency”) is building and will put in place an integrated plan to tackle corruption in the Afghan government, largely circumventing individual leaders. Lieut. Gen. Bill Caldwell’s Herculean effort to train the Afghan military aims to “thicken” Afghan forces and deny sanctuaries within Afghanistan, slowly changing the perception of the fight among Afghans from what is essentially a civil conflict to a war against invaders trained by the Pakistani secret service.

Nathaniel Fick, CNAS Commentary

The military is, believe it or not, winning in the Helmand, Kandahar, and other provinces where they have left the FOB’s and at (sic) embedded in with the population. In the big scheme of things running the Taliban out of their southern hunting grounds is not going to solve that many problems. But if we concentrate on the military while continuing to fund and lavish attention of (sic) the Major Crimes Task Force while never deviating from our anti corruption message we could end up finding an acceptable endstate. Doing that requires solid vision, leadership, and planning from on high and that is currently a bridge too far for our national command authority.

babatim, Free Range International

Here’s the video of Monday’s Defining Success in Afghanistan panel discussion at American Enterprise Institute. I watched it live and thought it very informative and thought provoking – whether you completely agree with a particular view on the war or not.

Dave Dilegge, Small Wars Journal

Pay particular attention to GEN. Keane at around the one hour mark. His explanation of the differences between Iraq and Afghanistan (urban versus rural insurgency) and how to think about safe havens and sanctuary in the context of Afghanistan is very interesting.

This paper presents a scenario for resolution of the Afghan conflict in a manner that achieves U.S. objectives in Afghanistan. This scenario takes the current U.S. approach as the starting point and adds 1) a more detailed theory of the conflict that highlights the political effects that must be achieved; 2) emphasis on bottom-up measures that can produce momentum in the short term, and 3) a political diplomatic strategy embraced and pursued in concert by the Afghan government, the United States and key international partners. Finally, the paper identifies requirements for a smaller follow-on military force to pave the way for a long-term advisory and assistance effort.

Linda Robinson, Small Wars Journal

UPDATE: I was actually very surprised at how similar the insurgent situation in OEF is to OIF (3-5 years ago). Reading through reports and listening to discussions, it was like deja-vu. I read/heard the same discussions and arguments I remember hearing in OIF years ago. Many of the same TTPs are being implemented – SLOWLY – in OEF and they are working. But, just like years ago in OIF, there are people who don’t believe these concepts will work. They will, I guarantee you, but not without the senior leadership implementing them. – commenter Todd at this SWJ thread. His comments are incredibly educational. I encourage you to read the entire comment.

“The Wormhole: A time traveler’s coffee house”

by

“A viewer posted a message on my wall – “Have you been to the coffee shop with the DeLorean yet?”

No. And why hadn’t I? I’m a huge fan of the “Back to the Future” franchise, and to hear that a new coffee shop had opened inspired by the movie? I was so there.

I found that the Wormhole isn’t just a “Back to the Future” coffee bar – it’s a 1980’s pop culture explosion. Artifacts are everywhere – a “Top Gun” poster, “Star Wars” action figures, an Atari 100. But most important – the coffee is top notch. The owners recruited baristas from other local spots, and they’re brewing Metropolitan coffee among other local blends.” – Marcus Leshock, ChicagoNow

From this article on the 15 best coffee shops in Chicago.

Nation-building in South Asia

by

This would need clarification in the constitution. Presumably Jinnah, the lawyer, would be just the person to correlate the “true Islamic principles” one heard so much about in Pakistan with the new nation’s laws. But all he would tell me was that the constitution would be democratic because “the soil is perfectly fertile for democracy.”
What plans did he have for the industrial development of the country? Did he hope to enlist technical or financial assistance from America?

“America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America,” was Jinnah’s reply. “Pakistan is the pivot of the world, as we are placed” — he revolved his long forefinger in bony circles — “the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves.”

He leaned toward me, dropping his voice to a confidential note. “Russia,” confided Mr. Jinnah, “is not so very far away.”

This had a familiar ring. In Jinnah’s mind this brave new nation had no other claim on American friendship than this — that across a wild tumble of roadless mountain ranges lay the land of the Bolsheviks.

I wondered whether the Quaid-i-Azam considered his new state only as an armored buffer between opposing major powers. He was stressing America’s military interest in other parts of the world.

“America is now awakened,” he said with a satisfied smile. Since the United States was now bolstering up Greece and Turkey, she should be much more interested in pouring money and arms into Pakistan.

“If Russia walks in here,” he concluded, “the whole world is menaced.”

In the weeks to come I was to hear the Quaid-i-Azam’s thesis echoed by government officials throughout Pakistan.

“Surely America will build up our army,” they would say to me. “Surely America will give us loans to keep Russia from walking in.”

But when I asked whether there were any signs of Russian infiltration, they would reply almost sadly, as though sorry not to be able to make more of the argument, “No, Russia has shown no signs of being interested in Pakistan.”

This hope of tapping the U. S. Treasury was voiced so persistently that one wondered whether the purpose was to bolster the world against Bolshevism or to bolster Pakistan’s own uncertain position as a new political entity.

Excerpt from Margaret Bourke-White’s 1949 book, “Halfway to Freedom”. Via Pundita.

Chicago Boyz readers (and bloggers) tend to show a keen interest in history. As a historical recording, the above excerpt is fascinating. And chilling.

Pundita opines that the above excerpt holds many lessons for AF-PAK today. I am curious as to our reader’s opinions on the subject.

UPDATE: There is much more at the link than the bit I’ve highlighted. That wasn’t clear in my original post. Sorry.